The Weekender

Chapter 3: History

Chapter 3: History

I grow up with Corey in a small town outside of Erie, Pennsylvania called Harlington. Our houses are three doors apart on a one-way street named Padamere. We spend the first eighteen years of our lives together as best friends, the last three of which are intimate. His father works for the United States Post Office in Harlington. His mother has her own catering business called Cathy’s Fine Eats. His older sister lives in a strange city called Anchorage, Alaska. Our lives are perfect as boys who grow into young men, for the time being.

We swim together at Harlington Herring, camp out in his backyard on the weekends, and rollerblade and play baseball together. We watch a porno called Dudes Diving in his basement numerous times and tweak each other’s n*****s. He gives me a blowjob and I give him one in return. We stroke each other off the way high school boys in “love” do. We try nasty ass-s*x with each other for the very first time and love it, claiming we are queer.

He goes to college in the fall after we graduate from high school. He’s undecided what he wants to take. He says something about wanting to open a gay bar, someday.

“You’re crazy,” I say. “That will never happen. It sounds like too much fun for it to really happen.”

“Watch me, Gage Wellton. It’s going to happen.”

It does.

* * * *

Before he leaves for college, a number of things become interesting. Corey gets a Camaro from his uncle and I get a job as a cashier at a gas station called Fitmon’s. He lets me shave every hair off his body, we drop acid for the very first time and decide never to do it again, and Corey has s*x with another guy named Titan against a bathroom wall.

I become jealous over his one-afternoon fling with Titan, but I get over it because he seduces me on a Sunday afternoon and lets me eat ice cream off his hairless and smooth chest. The Titan incident is temporarily forgotten.

And then my father dies of a sudden heart attack at the age of fifty-five and my entire world shifts into a different direction.

My mother becomes a widow with seven sons overnight. I’m the youngest, still living at home. I can’t leave her side when she says, “We’re moving to Kansas. I have to be with my sister. They have a farm. They raise Mustangs. How do you feel about being a cowboy, Gage? You like cowboys, right?”

A cowboy? What’s a cowboy? How does one become a cowboy?

Mama doesn’t get an answer from me. I move to Hiding, Kansas with her because she cries all the time, because the guilt of leaving Pennsylvania is overwhelming, because I’m a good-hearted son who loves his mother and thinks the world of her. I work for my Uncle Sam. I become a cowboy and purchase my own ranch, horses, and create a world for myself.

Ten years pass before we both know it.

Ten years of my life is lived without Corey Cassidy.

We drift apart. We don’t call each other. We don’t write. Until recently. A month ago. We make contact again.

He finds me on the Internet. He sees my face in a picture on a website called Rodeo Men. He finds my address, phone number, and Corey calls me. We talk for four hours straight and I still like him, because I will always like him.

He says the craziest thing: “I miss you. You should come and visit me.”

“Where are you at?”

“New York City. I have a bar called The Warehouse.”

“You don’t?”

“I told you I would someday own a bar.”

Four weeks later, I get on a plane and fly east. He picks me up at a famous president’s airport, gives me a long hug, a kiss to my neck, and the rest becomes history.