Fur, Feathers, and Claws

Chapter 2-2

It was around the age of twelve that Tucker began to feel ashamed. Despite having a wide variety of clothing to choose from, he wore the same white T-shirt several days in a row, with the same pair of dungarees, and the same tighty-whities underneath. He could have worn something different every day and never repeated outfits, not that the clothing piled around him smelled much better than what he had on. Musty versus boy odor: it never occurred to a sixth-grader to do laundry. Sadly, it rarely occurred to his father, either.

Baths were few and far between by then as well. Within days of Emily Bishop becoming too ill to object, the bathtub was full of crates and trash bags, filled with a variety of assorted things—what the hell was in any one of them was anybody’s guess. Mostly, Tucker Wade bathed in in the sink, most often the one in the kitchen, even when his mom was still alive.

When Emily Bishop was well, bath days were always Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Three baths a week, and Tucker Wade had still pitched a fit. Back then, he had taken his mother’s touch for granted. He’d actually been glad to see the tub slowly fill with junk. It sure beat having to come in an hour before Ed Sullivan and seeing the damned thing brimming with smelly, girly bubbles! There’d been something good about bath time, though: listening to his mother sing. She always sang as she washed Tucker’s hair: music to calm the savage beast. And though Tucker Wade fussed at the start, he would end up lingering in the lavender-scented froth ‘til the water went cold, just to hear one more song. Sometimes, his mom would hold his tiny hand in her medium one and rub at the nail beds until spotless. When Tuck took over the task, he did the same.

“Gimme your little paw, boy.”

Grimy nails and all, dad’s and son’s, Tuck would wrap his giant one around Tucker Wade’s—just to hold—because nail scrubbing, well, Tuck was not that detail-oriented. More memories in mind: pictures only, sadly seen, but not felt.

Tucker’s dad’s baths were quicker, for sure. “My God, he’s out already?” Emily asked the first time.

“Under his arms and his little man; how long can it take?” Tuck asked, which made his wife giggle.

A week or so later, when Tuck had sighed at the thought of removing the junk to fill the tub with water, wise guy Tucker Wade suggested a quick rinse in the sink. “Mom’ll never know, pops.” But maybe she did, because the very next night, she insisted Tucker Wade be washed in the kitchen.

The counter offered a good view from the living room couch—that was the reason she gave. It let her be a part of the process, down to twice a week, when she was too weak to partake or protest too much. Sometimes she’d sing a bit, though, something from Elvis or Wilson Pickett. Not a lot, as she tired quite quickly. As far as baths went, kitchen baths weren’t so bad. The three laughed a lot and Tuck got silly with the dish soap. They could have gone on a little longer as far as Tucker Wade was concerned, but they didn’t, because his mother died.

Tuck had continued the tradition for a while, though not twice a week, or even once a week. One day in June, the summer of ‘59, out of nowhere, it was determined, yet unsaid, that Tucker Wade would be in charge of bathing himself from that day on. Was it a rite of passage, Tucker wondered, or had his father just forgotten? Either way, before access to the kitchen sink became blocked like everything else, Tucker continued to clean himself up there, bare naked, in the middle of the room, whenever the rare urge struck. It was no big deal to him, even after he’d started sprouting his “grown-up” hair around his “little man.” He was growing up, he guessed. No one bathed him. No one met him at the bus stop or held his hand on the way home. No one touched him on a regular basis anymore. He was now at that age, however, when he was just discovering the thrill of touching himself.

Tucker had never really thought about whether sudsing up armpit fuzz or pubic fluff in the middle of the room you were supposed to cook and eat in, while a bunch of cats tongued at their haunches and a dog licked the dripping foam that ran down your leg, was normal or not. One day, when Mrs. Burke and her teenage son showed up at the open screen door when he was doing it—and also touching himself—and one of them screamed, Tucker discovered that some people did. He’d never asked his friends if they bathed in the kitchen. He figured most of the other kids in his class bathed in the tub, like he used to, but surely some of them bathed in the kitchen. Right?

“God! Do you ever shower?” Roy McKenna asked one day.

No. He never had. He’d never showered at home, never showered in school—that was for high-school kids, not middle-schoolers—and he never showered at a friend’s house after a sleepover, because Tucker Wade didn’t have those kind of friends. In elementary school, he’d had some genuine chums, playmates, and goof-around pals. Roy McKenna had been one of them. Tucker realized eventually that little kids are less judgmental. Roy and the other friends he’d made in kindergarten and first grade, when his mom was around and he looked and smelled like the rest of them, stuck with him through second, third, and fourth. By fifth grade however, the long hair that his father never tended to, the one outfit he wore daily, and the odiferous outward signs of internal raging hormones made Tucker a bit of an outcast. There were still some nice kids who talked to him, but even they kept their distance—literally. Savannah, Roy’s sister, she still said “hi” when she passed him in the hallway. Though if she stopped, she always held her hand under her nose. Tucker noticed it immediately, but only realized later that it was probably to smell the perfume on her wrist over his less-pleasant scent. Still, she was nice, while others, like Roy, eventually, turned on him. Both Tucker and Chad Burke, once Chad entered public school, often found themselves on the receiving end of Roy McKenna’s taunts. Chad became “Scooter” after an incident in gym class, and one day on the school bus, Roy came up with “Skunker,” because Tucker Bishop smelled.

Tucker had his very first shower at age sixteen, right beside Roy McKenna. It was comical to present-day Tucker, ironic even, how a boy who would once do anything to avoid getting wet now loved the sensation so much. Adult Tucker almost needed the rush of water to feel whole. That first shower may have started it all.

Roy was older. He was taller than Tucker at first, but then Tucker caught up and got taller than him. Roy seemed so grown-up, even when he was only thirteen. Tucker was immediately drawn to the boy for some reason. Not in a “crush” kind of way, but more like he wanted to be him, so popular, so tough. Even when Roy called him “Skunker,” Tucker hated him and admired him simultaneously. It was a little confusing, to say the least.

There was a period in time when he hardly saw Roy at all. Roy went off to junior high, then high school, ahead of Tucker. They rode different school buses, went to different buildings, and even when Tucker entered ninth grade, they were in different sections of the same one. Roy called him “Skunker” the first few days on the bus, but then he moved to the back, where he smoked with the cool kids, while Tucker sat up front with Chad Burke, the other kid no one else wanted to sit with. When Tucker entered eleventh grade, though, the first day he showed up for gym class, there was Roy McKenna. A senior by then, shirtless, athletic, and blond, Roy looked handsomer and hairier than ever, a dreamy cross between Paul Newman and Tab Hunter. Tucker was mesmerized by Roy’s lower gut. It had the thickest dark trail from the navel to the waistband of his gym shorts. He was smooth as silk near everywhere else—everywhere that showed—but had a habit of putting his hands in his pockets, shoved down so deep, he would make them ride down, showing off thick, golden pubic hair on purpose, perhaps to show the underclassmen that he was the alpha male among them. He even flashed the top of his manhood once or twice. The sight made Tucker want to touch himself. He immediately put the image in his mind bank, even before he realized the value of the deposit.

The high school gym had a pool. The kids were told to bring in trunks. Which Tucker easily found, several pair, in fact, among the piles of clothing at the house. Roy and Tucker were paired up by the coach. Tucker was scared at first, of both Roy and the water. But Roy was actually surprisingly kind. “You know how to swim, Bishop?”

‘Bishop,’ not ‘Skunker,’ maybe because Tucker smelled okay that day. Truth be told, he’d noticed his own smell a bit by then, and sometimes engaged in a kitchen sink bath just because it seemed like the right thing to do. The night before the first day of school was certainly an occasion when it had.

Tucker shook his head no. Everyone knew the McKenna’s had a pool, but Tucker had never been invited. He’d never been in one at all.

Roy stretched out his arms. “Climb up, man,” he said.

“What?”

“Lay across my arms. Move your arms and kick, Slick.”

“Umm…” Tucker looked at Roy’s hairy arms. His own were even hairier. He glanced at Roy’s pits. His own were even bushier. Tucker even had some hairs on his chest already. Not Roy—none that could be seen without staring too long. There was just that one line, thick and lustrous down his middle: the one Tucker couldn’t stop staring at.

“Bishop!” Roy snapped, but he smiled. “C’mon. I won’t, like, drop ya, ya know.”

“I think I might need to go see the nurse.”

“Why? You on your period?” Roy asked. “Come on, so coach don’t flunk us both.”

Roy walked along, as Tucker stroked and flailed, buoyed by his muscular, outstretched arms. Tucker felt secure. His flesh touching Roy’s, he felt safe. When they made the trip back across the pool, he started feeling something else, though, and as hard as he tried not to feel skin against skin, the tingle in his groin, Roy’s fur strip against his arm, or Roy’s hand against his thigh, as hard as he tried not to imagine Roy’s trunks slipping down so his pubic hair showed like it did when he flashed it to the younger boys on purpose, Tucker couldn’t stop what happened next. He put his hands over his crotch once Roy had set him down. He kept his lower half under water, willing his b***r to go away, which never really worked, but mostly made things worse.

“Outta the water, Bishop,” the coach said.

Crap!, Tucker thought.

“Hurry up,” the coach bellowed. “We ain’t got all day.”

Tucker did his best to hide what was happening, his hands still atop it, which again, just made it get harder. He felt his face warm and redden. He knew he was blushing, and when he glanced at Roy, a panic in his eyes, not knowing where else to look, he’d have sworn Roy was grinning. Here we go, Tucker thought. Busted City. Roy is going to let me have it in front of everyone.

But he didn’t. He actually got out first, grabbed a towel, and positioned himself in the perfect spot to shield Tucker as he handed it off. He quickly signaled, with only his eyes, for Tucker to hold it in front of his hard-on. “Bishop’s going to hurl, man,” Roy said to the coach. “First-period gym is too close to breakfast time. Check it out. Swimming and Alpha-Bits…not the best combination, dig.”

Roy was a fast, efficient liar, and also a bit of a comedian. The other boys laughed. They laughed at the joke, not at Tucker and his titillated manhood.

“Get a drink or something. Or go puke in the locker room.” Coach Giroux was all concern.