Chapter 1Chapter 2, Part 1Chapter 2, Part 2Chapter 2, Part 3Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9A Weekend with Danny - 1992Donny hung up the phone and wandered into the kitchen. Eric was making a salad. “Hey, how was your weekend?” he asked.
“Good.”
“You see my note?”
“Yeah.”
Eric wiped off the knife. “He sounds like you. Do I sound like Greg?”
“Sometimes,” said Donny, swiping a piece of tomato off the cutting board. “He’s coming out here.”
“Your brother? When?”
“Next Friday. Memorial Day weekend.”
“The four of us should get together. Twins night out. We can freak out a waitress or something.”
Later he called Mike to tell him.
“I’d like to meet him. How about we have dinner some night? We can go to The Great Wall. It’s a little Chinese place I know of. Small, quiet, and they have good food. How about Friday night?”
This caught Donny off guard. “Uh… well, sure,” he said.
“Great. I’ll call you later this week.”
“Love ya.”
“You too. G’night.”
The thought tracked through Donny’s mind that this trip wasn’t just a spur of the moment idea. Danny never did anything spontaneously, but planned everything out to the last detail. He always had. The train set in the basement went together slowly as he measured every turn, every piece of track, even drawing out the layout on graph paper. Schoolwork was done in sequence, the assignments neatly followed. When he was the quarterback, plays were not sketched out on a clipboard, but written down, memorized, and followed like high-speed choreography. His military career was a natural choice. Donny wondered what prompted the planning and the execution of this particular mission. He resisted the powerful temptation to call him back and ask. If he had wanted to tell him, he would have.
The flight from Denver was on time. Donny waited in the gate area where he could see down the jetway. Danny was wearing civilian clothes, but he walked like a soldier, and his short hair and stern expression were unmistakable. They saw each other at the same time, broke into identical grins, and once Danny had broken out of the line, grabbed each other in a powerful embrace. “Good to see you,” said Danny.
“You too. Damn, you’ve gotten strong.”
“It’s all that good PT they make us do.” Danny squeezed Donny’s biceps. “You’re no slouch either.”
“Got any other bags?”
“Nope, just this carry-on.” Danny held up a GI duffel.
“Great.” They headed for the parking lot. “So, what do you want to do?”
“The tourist bit, I guess. Never seen Disneyland. I should go see Ron and Barbara. But I just wanted to see how you were doing out here in La-La Land.”
It took fifteen minutes to get to the truck and get out of the parking lot. Friday night traffic was heavy, and they moved slowly up the freeway. They talked about home, how things were going at the Academy, and what kind of work Donny was doing. Donny said nothing about where he’d spent the last weekend.
“Hey,” Donny said as they waited for traffic to move, “how about dinner with a friend of mine tonight? Chinese.”
“The food or the friend?”
“The food, wise ass.”
“Great. Who’s the friend – someone from work?”
“Just a guy I know. Name’s Mike. Mike Lankowski. He’s an actor.”
“Really? How’d you meet him?”
“Hanging out at the beach, got to talking. He’s from Michigan. He’s shooting a new series for the fall.”
They pulled up to the house. No one else was home. Rob was working, and Eric was still at the office. Donny dropped Danny’s bag in his bedroom, showed him where the bath was, and took him through the house. “Hey, this is nice,” said Danny. They went out to the patio. Danny looked at the neat yard and the palm tree in the corner. “It’s good, twin.” That was all he needed to say; Donny knew what he meant.
Mike was waiting in his car outside the restaurant, and got out when Donny parked the truck across the street. Donny introduced Mike to Danny, and they shook hands. “Heard a lot about you,” said Mike, and Danny shot his twin a quick look of amused curiosity. They got a table in the back under a velvet painting of a dragon, and Mike sat with his back to the door. The conversation drifted from small talk about living in California to being in the Air Force to what’s on television. The food was good, the restaurant was quiet, and when the meal was over, Mike picked up the check in spite of the twins’ protests. They stood on the sidewalk and said goodnight, shaking hands once again. “Good luck in your career,” Danny said to Mike.
“Same to you,” Mike said. “I admire you for doing it. Donny thinks you’re the next head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
“Oh, hell no, not me,” Danny grinned. “Just a lifer, hoping to make colonel before I die. And good luck with your series.”
“Thanks.” Mike gave Donny a pat on the shoulder. “Have fun with your brother. I’m heading to D.C. tomorrow. I’ll call you.”
“Okay,” replied Donny in an upbeat tone, hoping there wasn’t any exterior sign that they were anything more than just buddies. Mike twirled his car keys on his finger and snapped a jaunty salute to both of them. He caught a little rubber as he pulled away from the curb.
“Nice guy,” said Danny as they climbed into the truck. When they got back to the house, Eric’s door was closed, the stereo muffled. Donny got a couple of beers and they sat on the patio. Some moths battered around the floodlight over the back door. Danny sank back into the plastic straps of the lounger. “So,” he said casually, “are you in love with him, or is it just for the sex?”
Donny took a moment to light a cigarette and put the match out in the plant saucer that served as his ashtray. He looked back into his brother’s steady gaze. There was no point in saying anything other than what he knew his twin could already see in his own eyes, and a smile grew on both their faces at the same time. “Well,” he said, blowing out a stream of smoke, “the sex is pretty damn good.”
“That’s great. Like I said, he’s a nice guy.”
“That he is.” Donny took a long swallow of beer. “So. Is it obvious?”
Danny shook his head. “Not to anyone else, I’ll bet. But…”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And I kind of knew, anyway.”
“How?”
“When I called last weekend your housemate said you were away for the weekend with some friend. I guess it was with him, right?”
“Yeah. Palm Springs.”
“And then, remember when I went back home at the end of March on leave? I went to a party over in Perrysburg with Tom and Rusty Weaver. Some friend of their sister was getting married, so they took me along to balance out the male/female ratio or whatever. Anyway, I was sitting out on the patio around ten o’clock, just watching everyone else get all shitfaced, and Scott Welles staggers out, drunk as a skunk. He sits down on the wall next to me, stares me in the face for a moment, then reaches over, pats my crotch, and whispers, ‘How about one more time, just for old time’s sake?’ Before I can even remove his hand he gets this horrified look, says, ‘Holy shit, you’re not Donny, you’re Danny,’ and pukes in the myrtle.”
“What’d you say?”
“Nothing. He was so embarrassed I thought he was gonna start crying. He starts in on how you were the only guy for him and all. I guess he thought I knew everything about you and him.”
“D’you tell him you had no idea what the fuck he was talking about?”
“Nah. After a while he kinda sobered up. I guess barking chow into a flowerbed does that for you. He said it was good to see me, to say hello to you, and excused himself.”
“So that was it, eh?”
“Pretty much.”
Donny put out his cigarette. Eric’s stereo had stopped. The noise of the night insects was steady and deep. A couple of houses over a dog barked three times. “I wondered how I was going to tell you,” Donny said quietly.
Danny finished his beer. “Sorry to rain on your parade, twin. But if it’s any consolation, I knew before Scott blurted it out.”
“How?”
Danny shrugged. “I just knew. Something… somehow.”
“Twin communing.”
“Yeah, okay. Or maybe it was hearing you jerk off when we were kids.”
“I waited until you were asleep.”
“I only pretended to be asleep.”
“I only pretended to jerk off.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You want another beer?”
“Sure.”
When Donny came back outside Danny was standing by the back fence looking at the roses. “What kind are these?”
“They were here when we moved in.” They sat in the loungers again.
“So was Scott your first?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘first.’”
“First guy you had sex with.”
“Not really.”
“He wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Yeah? Who?”
Donny lit another cigarette. “Craig.”
Danny let out a soft chuckle. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Well, damn.”
“What?”
Danny chuckled again.
“What?” Donny repeated.
“Me too,” said Danny, and laughed.
“You’re kidding,” said Donny.
Danny shook his head. “About a week before I went off to my first summer of camp, we were up in his room up in the attic. Hot as hell under that roof. He had this stash of old Playboys he’d swiped from his brother. We were looking at the pictures and both of us got a hard-on. Well, he pulls out his wiener—”
“And he dares you to suck it,” interrupted Donny.
“Yeah,” nodded Danny. “I told him no, but then he starts to go for my dick. We wrestle around for a while on his bed, and he pulls off his pants, and – well, I had a boner too. Hell, I’m fifteen and a soft breeze could get me hard at that age. Anyway, he really wants to suck my cock. I mean, he’s begging for it, ‘Aw, c’mon, lemme suck it.’ Well, I figured if I let him do that, he’s gonna want me to do him. But I don’t want to, so finally I just flipped him over and fucked him.” Danny took a long drink from his beer.
“Wow,” was all Donny could manage.
“Yeah. He wasn’t wild about it at first, but after some strategically applied Vaseline he got into it.”
“I didn’t fuck him,” said Donny. “We just jerked off out at Lorenzen’s quarry.”
“He’s getting married, y’know.”
“He is?”
“Yeah. First weekend in July. Some girl he met at college. She’s from Defiance. The baby’s due around the first of October.”
“Whew.”
“Hey, maybe I should go to the wedding. I mean, what the hell – I busted his cherry for him – the least I can do is wish him well.”
“So,” Donny wondered, “have you been with any other guys since then?”
Danny shook his head. “Nah, just that one time, and it wasn’t that much fun. Guess that means I’m straight. Well, of course, you know there was the usual horny teenager circle-jerk stuff in school and that kinda crap, but that’s it.” He took another long pull on his beer. “I take it you haven’t told the ‘rents.”
“About Mike?”
“About any of it.”
“No.”
“You gonna?”
“Think I should?”
Danny shrugged. “Do they need to know?”
“What’s to tell? We’re just….”
“Fuck-buddies?”
“No,” said Donny with a tone sharper than he meant. “Friends.”
Danny raised his eyebrows. “C’mon, twin, don’t get pissed off. You never answered my question.”
“What question?”
“Do you love him?”
Donny lit a cigarette. “I don’t know.”
“Fair enough.”
A door in the house closed, and Eric appeared in the patio door. “I didn’t hear you come in.” Introductions were made, Eric got a beer, and they sat and talked. Danny said he remembered Eric and Greg from junior high school, and Eric asked polite questions about the Air Force. Donny listened, joining in when necessary, but he spent most of the night rocking gently in his chair looking at his brother. So now he knew. It was like a weight had shifted.
They sat out until after midnight. Getting ready for bed, it was like they were back home, falling into the wordless routine of sharing the bathroom and undressing.
“I see you’re till going the jockeys route,” Danny said as Donny pulled off his jeans.
“Yeah. You’ve gone boxer?”
“Works better with the uniform.”
Donny sat on his bed and watched as his brother put his clothes away. How long has it been, he thought, since they slept in the same room; a year, two years? He realized how much he missed his twin, how much he needed the other voice that he knew so well. Mike, for all his friendship and passion as a lover, was a complete stranger compared to Danny. And as if he was hearing these thoughts, Danny sat on the bed next to him. “I’ve missed you,” he said softly, and they hugged each other, at first fighting back the tears, then letting them go. For a long time they held each other in silence, then Danny kissed his brother on the cheek. They got into their beds, Donny turning out the light, letting the faint glow of the streetlight and the incessant chirp and buzz of the night bugs take over the room.
“I was going to tell you,” whispered Donny, in the same whisper he had used when he and Danny talked after the lights were out.
“You didn’t have to. I knew.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Well, I figured one of us had to be gay. Isn’t that the old story about twins? And since I knew it wasn’t me…”
“Hey, I wasn’t the one who fucked Craig. We just jerked off.”
“I can’t be gay. I’m in the Air Force.”
They giggled and waited instinctively for their father to tell them to go to sleep. Then Donny sighed, “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too. Goodnight, twin. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
They went for a tour on Saturday, using Eric’s directions and a street map. They pulled up outside Disneyland, but the lines and the crowds made it unappealing. They drove up the freeway to Hollywood, saw some of the sights there, and then drove out to Malibu, along the coast. That night they went to dinner with Uncle Ron and Aunt Barbara in Whittier, catching up on family news. Ron hadn’t seen the twins together in ten years, and he regaled them with stories of his years in the Army and his two tours of Vietnam. They left the house late with a Tupperware bowl of chicken pasta and a promise to come back soon.
Sunday afternoon Eric announced that Greg was coming over that night for dinner.
“What can I do to help?” offered Donny.
“Nothing. I’ve seen you cook.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“We’re just gonna barbecue some steaks and do baked potatoes. It’s not like a big deal or anything.”
“Danny and I’ll cut the grass and tidy up the house.”
“Fair enough.”
Greg arrived at six with a bottle of wine and a six-pack of Heineken’s. He shook Danny’s hand and smiled broadly. “The last time I saw you, you were throwing a long bomb to some kid for a Hail Mary, and Dennis Kasperzak sacked the crap out of you…but the kid caught the pass and you beat us.”
“I remember that,” said Danny. “He hit me so hard I heard birds chirping, just like in the cartoons.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, he’s now running the film counter at the K-Mart in Bowling Green. How long are you here for?”
“Till Tuesday morning.”
They went out to the patio and opened the beers. Eric poked the coals on the grille and ripped the top off a bag of Fritos.
Greg looked at Danny for a moment. “Y’know, I know you’re identical twins, just like us, but…there’s a difference.”
Donny tensed a little. “Yeah, like what?”
“Search me. Just something.”
“Well,” replied Danny, “I’m left-handed…Donny’s a rightie. Are you both the same hand?”
“Yeah,” said Greg, waving his right hand, and Eric brandished the barbecue fork with his right hand.
“I’ve also spent the last six years in military training, while he’s been bumming around… college dropout, carpenter, you name it.”
“Oh, yeah, that must be it.”
“You guys don’t look all that identical yourselves,” countered Donny.
“That’s because Greg refuses to get his butt out of the office and go to the gym,” said Eric. “He’s the ‘Before’ picture on the Charles Atlas ad, and I’m the ‘After’!” He clownishly flexed a veined bicep and they all laughed.
“So, how do you like L.A?” Greg asked Danny.
“It’s nice,” said Danny politely.
Greg didn’t believe him. “C’mon, tell the truth.”
“He’s not impressed,” injected Donny.
“You’re right,” Danny said, putting down his beer and scooping up some Fritos. “This town is like Toledo with cancer. It just goes on and on. There’s no point to it.”
“No point?”
“Cities are supposed to have a reason to exist. New York is the entry point. Boston’s a seaport. Chicago is the lake port. Minneapolis is where they ship the grain from the grain belt to send it down the Mississippi. St. Louis is the Gateway to the West. Hell, even Detroit has a reason. But this town – there’s nothing here to justify its existence. The Big Earthquake could happen tomorrow, shake it into the Pacific, and no one would ever notice. Did you know that a hundred years ago the only thing that they had here was orange groves? Now it’s just one big strip mall.”
“The weather’s nicer than any of those towns,” said Donny, slightly defensive about his newly adopted hometown. “Besides, it’s got a reason. If it wasn’t for Hollywood, this place would still be orange groves.”
“Hollywood looks like a pretty run-down place.”
“The streets, maybe,” said Eric, “but it’s still rockin’. Movies, TV, music; there’s a lot going on. Not to mention our business.”
“Computers?” said Danny doubtfully.
“Shit yeah. Special effects, computer-generated graphics, sound effects, and even animation. They’ve already started to take hold. And we’re going along for the ride.”
“Didn’t know that,” said Danny. “But I don’t go to a lot of movies.” He looked at Donny. “You know about all of this?”
Donny nodded. “Yeah, we sell a lot of stuff to production companies.”
Eric speared a steak and placed it on the grille, causing a hiss of sizzling and small grease fires. “The sky is the fuckin’ limit,” he said. “Gruggie, get the salad.”
They ate and talked late into the night, finishing off the beer and wine. By the time Greg decided to go home, Eric vetoed the idea of him driving, so he made up his spare bed and he spent the night. The next morning, after several head-clearing cups of coffee, they went to the beach.
They arrived after ten o’clock. Being a holiday weekend, it was already crowded, and they walked nearly a quarter of a mile before finding a place to set up camp. They stripped down to swimsuits and spread out the beach towels. Greg handed Danny suntan lotion. “Do it all over, Dan. You’re whiter than the belly of a Safeway chicken.”
A hundred yards away a bunch of kids were playing beach football. A long pass landed the ball near them, and Danny trotted over and picked it up. One of the boys, fourteen or so, ran towards them, but Danny rifled it back to him, and the boy caught it neatly. “Thanks, mister!” Danny waved and sat down again in the sand.
“Mister?” teased Eric.
“It’s his awesome build,” joined in Greg. “The kid was intimidated.”
“You’re both full of it,” said Danny.
“Nice toss,” said Greg. “You still play?”
“Nah, just fart around – touch pick-up games now and then.”
“Want to see if they’ll let us join in?”
Danny looked at Greg to see if he was serious. “You’re serious?”
“Sure. Tell ‘em we’ll split up between teams.”
“What the hell. How ‘bout it, twin?”
Donny had dug himself well into his towel. “Nah, you go ahead. I’m still a little overhung from last night.”
“Me too,” said Eric.
“Suit yourself.” Greg and Danny trotted down the beach and caught up with the kids. Donny watched the pantomime as they introduced themselves, shook hands all around, and offered to join in, one on each team. There was a general nodding of agreement from the kids, and they formed up ragged lines to play.
“I was never crazy about playing football,” said Eric.
“It was okay,” mumbled Donny, his eyes closed, feeling sleepy from the sun.
“Yeah, well, you were a jock.”
“Was not. I just played ‘cause I went to a small school. I just liked bashing into people without getting hurt.”
“Your brother’s a great guy. I like him.”
“I like yours, too.” A moment later Donny thought of something and sat up. “You called him ‘Gruggie’ last night.”
“No.”
“Yeah, I heard you. ‘Gruggie, get the salad,’ or something like that.”
“It must have slipped out. I don’t remember saying it.”
“Was that his family nickname?”
“No, that’s what I called him. No one else did.”
“What did he call you?”
Eric was silent for a moment and for an instant Donny was afraid he’d crossed a line.
“I was ‘Airy.’ Sometimes ‘Airy-Fairy,’ but mostly just ‘Airy.’”
“‘Airy-Fairy’?”
“Repeat it anywhere else, and you’re a dead man.”
“No,” said Donny chuckling. “I think it’s cool.”
Didn’t you guys have names like that?”
“Not really. He just calls me ‘Twin.’ I call him Danny.”
“Once in a while Greg calls me ‘Redundancy’ since he’s the older one.”
Donny laughed. “I’ll have to remember that.”
Eric stretched out his legs. “I don’t have to tell you what it’s like. You know what he’s thinking, don’t you?”
Donny nodded. “No secrets.”
Eric let out a long whistling sigh. “Well, speaking of secrets…”
Donny pulled off his sunglasses and squinted, an ominous course of adrenaline making its way through his body, making his fingers tingle. “Hmm?”
“Remember the other night when you and Danny were talking on the patio after you came back from dinner? I had the light off in my room…I guess I got so wrapped up in what I was doing that I just didn’t turn on the light. Well…I heard you two talking. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
“Oh,” replied Donny.
“I’m sorry. I figured I better tell you. I suppose I could just have kept my mouth shut, but I wanted you to know that… well, I heard.”
“Okay. Guess I should have told you.”
“Not unless you wanted to. But in a way, I kinda wished I’d known.”
“Well, it’s not something I tell people.”
“I’m cool with it. Very cool.”
“You are?”
“Yeah.”
“So why did you kinda wished you’d known?”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now. It’s…”
“What, you wouldn’t have hired me? You wouldn’t have gone in on renting a place with me?”
“Fuck no,” said Eric with a note of disgust, “you know me better than that.”
“Well, why do you kinda wished you’d known? Is it because you’re my boss as well as my housemate?” Donny said, watching Greg running to catch a pass and tumbling into the sand.
“Whoa,” said Eric. “I’m not your boss. We’re not that kind of place…we all work together. Yeah, Greg and I are the guys that started it, but we’re not some fucked-up corporate structure.”
“You sign the checks,” Danny replied.
“Big deal. Someone’s got to. The reason is that I’m gay, too,” Eric said off-handedly.
Down the beach someone scored a touchdown and kids were jumping up and down and shouting. Someone tried to spike the football, but it buried itself halfway into the sand.
“I didn’t know that,” replied Donny.
“Yeah, I kinda figured you didn’t.”
“I take it Greg knows.”
“Where do you think ‘Airy-Fairy’ comes from?”
“Ah ha.”
“But you know, now that I’ve been thinking about it, I guess I could have figured it out on my own. About you, I mean.”
“Yeah, how?”
“Oh, like your comings and goings some nights. I figured you were seeing someone, and no one goes off to Palm Springs by themselves. That sort of stuff. Not that I was prying or anything. So how’d you meet this guy?”
“Here,” said Donny. “I went to the beach one weekend in March. He was sitting near me, and we started talking.”
“What’s he do?”
“He’s an actor. Just started shooting a series.”
“Hmm.”
“You said that like you had a problem with him.”
Eric shrugged. “I don’t even know the guy. It’s just that…well, actors…”
“What about them?”
“The gay ones I know – and I know some – are pretty closeted people, especially if they have any kind of name recognition. Remember what happened to Rock Hudson? They denied he was gay and that he had AIDS until the day he died. It was the world’s worst-kept secret, but it wasn’t until after he was dead that they even said he had the disease, and it took a spokesperson for the hospital in France where he died to tell the world. And you know, it’s weird, ‘cause the entertainment industry is full of gays in every part of the business, but they’re still working on the mentality that if Joe Sixpack in Buttfuck, Ohio gets the idea that there are fags in movies and TV they won’t watch it. It’s a bunch of crap.”
“So what’s that got to do with Mike?”
“Think about it. You’re never gonna be able to live with him or hang out with him in public.
People magazine will never run a feature article on him and his happy homo home life, unless he gets so big that no one cares. What’s his full name?”
“Mike Lankowski. His screen name’s Lance Michaels.”
Eric did a slight double take. “Tall, kinda blond, buff guy that looks a little like a young version of Ted Danson?”
“Yeah, you know him?”
“Seen him on TV.” Eric nodded approvingly. “Not bad for your first Hollywood romance. My best shot was the son of a well-known director when we were in high school.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Nah, just the usual teenage stuff – jacking off, groping. He went off to NYU and lives with some actor in Greenwich Village.”
Donny squinted at Eric. “So, are you dating?”
“Nope.”
“Looking?”
“Always…but not seriously. Don’t have the time, and most guys our age are only interested in just getting laid. Been there, done that.”
“Looking for love, huh.”
“Yeah. To quote the Beach Boys, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice.’”
The football game broke up and Danny and Greg ran off into the water, calling to Donny and Eric to join them. They dove in and swam for a while, then went and found a hot dog stand for lunch. The beach got very crowded, and they left around four. Since it was Danny’s last night, they agreed that another dinner together was in order, this time at a restaurant. They had a good dinner and got a classic double-take from the waitress when she realized she was waiting on two sets of twins. They gave her a generous tip.
When they walked into the house, Donny’s phone was ringing and he grabbed it.
“Hey, how’s my hot stud?” a voice shouted.
Donny held the phone away from his ear. “Mike?”
“Oh man I am so fucking horny I wish you were here I’d get you naked so fast and throw you on the bed…”
“Mike, where are you?”
“Washington Dee-Cee the nation’s capital. Actually, some fancy hotel in Maryland. Nice place…huge room, fully stocked minibar, huge bed. God, I want you now.”
Danny was standing in the door. He mouthed, “Who is it?” Donny held his hand over the phone. “Mike. And he sounds like he’s shitfaced.” Danny scowled.
“Hey, Donny, you there?”
“Yeah, Mike. How’s it going?”
“Oh, great, man, except I’m all alone in this big bad town with no man to screw around with…And I gotta huge boner.” Donny heard muffled sounds like cloth rustling. “I’m tryin’ to get undressed.” The receiver clunked down something, then there was a long silence, followed by shuffling sounds. Donny looked at Danny and shrugged.
“What’s going on with him?” Danny asked.
“He put the phone down. Said he was getting undressed.”
The phone was picked up again. “Hey,” Mike said, “your hot brother still there?”
“Uh, yeah, he leaves in the morning.”
“Oh, man, I’d love to have a three-way with you two guys…man, that would be so fuckin’ hot. Every man’s fantasy—twins, man, especially if they’ve got hot bodies. Ohhhh…..” There was another long silence. Donny gave his brother a puzzled look.
“What’s going on?” Danny whispered.
“No idea,” Donny whispered back. “Mike? Hey Mike?” He got no answer for a moment, then heard a familiar groan of pleasure. Another few moments passed, another groan, then something knocked the receiver on the other end on the floor with a loud clunk. He heard a distant “Oh, man….unhhhh!”
Donny gaped at the phone, then at his brother. “I think he’s jerking off.”
Danny recoiled slightly. “You’re kidding.”
“Sounds like it.”
A few moments later, the phone was picked up. “Oh…man…I just shot a huge load. What about you?”
“Uh, yeah, sure…it was great.”
“Mmmm. Wish I could see it.”
“Yeah.”
“Mmmm. I love you, man.”
“Love you too.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool. Oh, man, I better get a towel. I’ll call you, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Kiss your brother for me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“G’night.”
“’Night.”
The phone went dead, and Donny hung up. “Well, that was weird.”
“Did he?” asked Danny, making a jerking motion with his fist.
“He was drunk as hell.”
“Does he do that a lot? Get drunk, I mean?”
“First time I’ve ever heard of it.”
Danny shook his head.
“You want some ice cream?” said Donny.
After they were in bed, lights out, Danny said, “You told him you love him?”
“I did?”
“Yeah. Just before you hung up.”
“Huh.”
“Do you?”
“He said it first.”
Labels: "Small Town Boys"
