Alexander and Rob Pt. 01

The chunky man ambled away and I turned and said, a little petulenly: "What's so funny?"

"You are, Rob. I don't think you liked that man, and what's more, I think you are afraid that I don't know I am a Negro."

"Shit, no, I didn't like him. He was a toad. But about the other part, I don't want to hurt your feelings by saying something stupid."

"Like whether I can get a sunburn?" He paused and smiled. "I can, you know. And that is because white men have been fucking the women in my family for three hundred years."

I must have blushed. "It's O.K.," he said. "I didn't say you fucked them."

"It's complicated," I stammered. "It is hard to know what people will take offense at these days."

"Yes, it is." he said gently. "For white people it is. But relax. Don't for an instant think that we do not know what is going on around us. When you are as light as my family is, you get it from both sides. Not white, and not black enough to be authentic. In New

Orleans, we were aristocracy. Up North we are just colored folks that look too white."

"Is that what happened to get you exiled here for the summer?"

"Something like that. Sometimes you get the double whammy."

I didn't know what he meant by that, but he touched me on the upper arm as I looked up to see a family looking at the shirt counter. "Gotta go sell," I said, grateful at the opportunity to avoid the sudden honesty. "Maybe we can catch a smoke in a while."

"I'd like that," he said. Then he smiled and I felt my stomach tighten once more. He was so handsome.

I was glad it was busy. Alexander made his first sale, and I admired the elegance of the way he bagged the shirts, the little flourish as he handed it over as though it were a prize of great price and not just a couple Arrow shirts. The late afternoon traffic stayed pretty brisk and it was coming up on dinner when the Nerd told me he would keep Alexander and show him how to close out, since he came in late and I had opened up. "OK," I said, though I wouldn't have minded staying just to be around him.

The Nerd said he would be writing a new work schedule to accommodate Alexander's arrival and I said "good night" to the Nerd and told Alexander that I looked forward to working with him.

He extended his hand and I noticed for the first time how slender and graceful his fingers were. I did not clasp his palm in the death grip I usually use. His touch was firm and his flesh supple and warm. I walked out into the still-bright sun and found my little Beetle, though I was mostly thinking about how his hand had felt. And the things he might do with it. The vinyl seats were hotter than shit, and I think I was blushing when I turned the key in the ignition.

I roared home with the windows down, wishing the little car had air conditioning. I took a swim in the pool out back and found a place in the field out in back of the house to go drink a couple semi-cold Pabst Blue Ribbon beers. I was daydreaming as the shadows grew longer and night fell.

I was daydreaming about Alexander's fingers. I wondered if it were true, about the proportional relationship between fingers and cock. And if all the Caucasian blood had any effect on how big it was.

Shoot, I thought. I wonder if I am a fucking homo?

When I lay in my bed later, I got rock hard and images of him flashed through my mind as I grunted and rubbed my throbbing dick. When I came, I thought of him shooting all over me. When I licked it up, I imagined it was his.

Shoot, I am a fucking homo, I thought.

Now what the fuck do I do about that?

The Passion Pit

I woke the next morning with an erection. I blushed when I thought about it and was running late and did not get a chance to do anything about it but thrash in the shower. In the water thrusting down from the faucet I thought about what I had been thinking the last time my dick had been this hard and came with a shudder with the scalding water cascading down around me.

I dressed in a hurry, chino slacks, pin-striped striped button-down Arrow shirt and rep tie. They liked us to look prep at the Department Store, and I didn't mind. I thought I might grow my hair out in the fall when I went to school. But in the meantime I was happy to maintain a low profile and slide as effortlessly as possible through the summer.

Everyone else in the house was long gone, Dad to the office and mom to teach summer school. The store didn't officially open until 10:00, but they wanted us to open up by 9:45. I had slept late. I poured some of the cold coffee back in the top of the drip percolator and turned it on to give it a kick.

Then I was out the door and buzzing in the little VW down Westbrook Road to the Mall.

I made it pretty much on time and was at my place by the register when the Nerd came by to check.

"I want you to push those new wheat-colored jeans," he said. "And thank-you for your help with Alexander. I think I will have to watch him, but he seems clever and will do a fine job for us with adequate supervision."

"I think you are absolutely right, Boss." He took it as a sign of respect that I called him that. I don't think he knew I was laughing at him, the pompous shit. Alexander had more going on between his ears than he ever would.

"I have made up a new schedule for you. For the next week or two I am going to have you come in late and be with him to close up at 9:00 each night." I could see that he didn't trust the Negro to close up. But I didn't mind. That meant I could sleep in till eleven in the morning if I wanted to. It was a pity that I was still too young to go to the bars in the downtown area and the only thing mildly interesting to do was go to the big double screen drive-in and drink a beer to two, or a jug of Dad's wine.

There was nobody to date and sitting alone in the car drinking a purloined bottle of my father's homemade wine was hardly my idea of a wild time. Still, it was out of the house and the buzz was good. It didn't get dark until then, and if I went to the theatre after we closed it was still light enough that they were only playing the dancing hotdogs movie trailer to get us to go to the snack bar when I got there.

There were some truly awful movies out that summer. But I must have seen "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" about fifty times. I didn't mind seeing it over and over and after a while I started to memorize the lines and would recite them along with Robert Redford, looking back at the Pinkerton agents s chasing them down.

"Who are those guys?" I would say. When it was over I let the rest of the crowd gather up their kids or put their clothes back on, whichever category of people they were. Then I would navigate sedately home, lurching over the mounds of dirt that pointed the noses of the cars up so they could see the screen better, trying to avoid the poles where the speakers hung down on the curly wires.

I had to wait patiently through the slow morning traffic for Alexander to arrive. I decided that the images I had of him were just private things. After all, I had never had a black friend and with the shortness of the season before we all moved on, it didn't seem like this was anything more than a work relationship. I was a little embarrassed by how I had felt, thinking about the feel of him, when I jerked off last night.

Those were private thoughts of a private moment, I told muself. Just be professional and aloof. You can deal with the homo thing when you get further from home and the folks aren't watching.

That was pretty much how I felt, right up until Alexander actually showed up for work.

He looked just as good as he had the day before. He had a slim build that showed off his shoulders in his Norfolk jacket with the little sewed belt in the back. He had one of the big collar shirts and a wild floral tie. He had slacks that were tight at the waist, showing a suspicious bulge in the crotch and flared nicely at the knee. There was a slight break to the hem of his trousers at the well-polished brown shoes. The whole thing was a package of style, grace and elegance.

"Hey!" he said. "I hear you are going to rescue me from the Nerd from here out."

"I'll do what I can. That means I get eleven hours today to get onto the new schedule. I think the Nerd doesn't want to stay late."

"And he doesn't trust the Negro- right?"

"I'm sure that isn't it. You are just new."

"Uh-huh." He shook his head with a knowing look. I think I blushed. I hate it when that happens.

"The Nerd says we are supposed to move the Wheat Jeans today. Let's get the stacks sorted and get ready for some selling."

"Yessir, Boss" he said. I gave him that look.

"Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Alexander."

"Yessir." Then he gave me that gleaming smile and hit me on the shoulder and we started folding the jeans and stacking them by size.

I felt relaxed again. This guy had a sense of humor and his easy way with the jeans, the way he folded them back into out-of-the-box condition, made things go quickly. We yacked about a lot of stuff that day. He didn't know much about the city, and though I didn't know much more, I told him what I could. There was not much of a black population in town, and they seemed to keep pretty much to themselves. I told him how far away the lake was, and which places sold beer to the under-aged with fake ID.

"Where do you go to drink?" he asked.

I told him about the field in back of my house. And then I told him about the drive-in theater.

"Oh," he said. "The Passion Pit."

"Not here," I said. "You would need a hot date for that. I just like to go and drink in the car. No one bothers you there, if you are quiet. The block-head Dutch would never suspect there is anything going on there except solid respectable people watching a movie..."

"And young kids screwing their brains out!" he said, laughing. "I know what it was like back home. I thought it was funny, the way they would look at us when we drove out to Glenn Ellyn and they thought we had another five kids in the trunk."

"Did you?'

"Of course."

My ass was starting to drag around dinnertime. The Nerd gave me an hour for a dinner break and I took it. I had an idea. I drove home and got a gallon jug of the homemade wine from the metal storage chest in the garage and put it in the back of the VW. I stopped at the Mickey-Dees on the way back and got a sack of burgers that I shared with Alexander. We stashed them back in one of the dressing rooms and munched them between customers.

We got to the 8:30 slack time and started to do our tallies. It had not been a bad day, and we had moved some Wheat Jeans. The Nerd had been pleased before he rushed out to have dinner at home with the wifey.

We held down the last half hour on our own. We dealt with a crazy woman who had to have a pair of black slacks for her husband and he was a 40-30. It's an odd size. We had plenty of 40-34's, but she wanted them right away and we had to look through everything. We finally found one that was the right size but had a mark on them. She wanted a discount and I patiently explained we were not authorized to do that. She sniffed and bought them anyway.

She wasn't happy, though, and let us know it the whole time we made the sale. By the time she was gone and the register tape was removed and folded with the tally cards, the grillwork was coming down on the main doors and the place was closed.

"Whew," I said. "I don't know why it always gets like that at closing. Makes me all agitated."

"You handled it fine, Bob. But I would have just given them to her. They don't have any inventory control here. The Store would never have known."

I stood there, a little stunned. "I never thought of that." Jeeze, he was right. And we wouldn't be minutes late getting out of there.

He picked up his jacket and slipped it over his shoulders. "Got any big plans tonight?" he asked. "I am not looking forward to watching TV with my Aunt until it is time to go to bed."

I smiled. This was fantastic. "Well, I thought I might go down to the movies and catch Butch Cassidy again."

"Quite an original mind, Rob. I'm not much of a Western guy, but that is a very pretty movie. Mind if I join you? I'll miss the bus, though, and you will have to give me a lift home."

"I'd be happy to, Alexander. It will be fun to see it with someone. The dancing hotdog reel for the snack bar is worth the price of admission alone."

"You don't know the half of that," he said with a smile. I didn't know precisely what he meant by that, but I had a feeling I was going to find out.