Brody Comes Home

Chapter 2-2

Brody and Pete cleared the table, carrying everything back into the kitchen. When Brody offered to do the dishes, Pete gave him a dirty look, but his mother said, “No, thank you anyway

, Brody dear, but you boys must have a lot of catching up to do. It won’t take me long to put away the leftovers and load the dishwasher.”

“Well, thanks for a great meal, Mrs. C. Now, I’m wondering if Pete would like to see my apartment. It’s not much, but I haven’t been able to show it to anybody yet.”

“Of course. You boys run along. As I said, I know you have a lot to talk about.”

As they were getting into their cars, Brody said, “My apartment is nothing special, but I thought we might want some beer later, and we’ll have some privacy there. Somehow I didn’t feel right about going up to your room with you.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean. Though we spent a lot of time in each other’s rooms when we were younger, didn’t we?”

“Sure did. So, you gonna follow me over?”

“Right behind ya, dude!”

When they got to his place, Brody kicked off his sneaks. Pete took off his Birks. Brody noticed what nice feet his friend had. He wasn’t a foot fetishist or anything, but he did admire the long toes with the little tuft of dark hair on each.

“How about a beer?” he asked his guest. The two hadn’t been drinkers in high school. They’d been too young to drink legally, and they had never hung around with the crowd that always managed to get beer or stronger stuff illegally.

“Yeah, sure. I acquired the taste in college. Apparently you learned to like it in the Marines?”

“Can’t be a real Marine if you don’t get drunk with your buddies once in a while.”

He grabbed a couple of cans of Rolling Rock and handed one to Pete.

“C’mon, let’s sit,” he said, going into the living room. He sat on the sofa, gesturing Pete to his favorite recliner.

Pete sat, took a swallow of beer, and grinned at his friend. “f**k, I can’t believe how good you look. It’s great to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too, bud,” he said, lifting his beer in salute.

“So, you never complained in your emails about life in the service. I was surprised when you told me you were getting out. Mind telling me why?”

“You should be able to figure that one out. For one thing, I didn’t fuckin’ want to get killed in Iraq, and for another, the Corps is no place for a gay guy.”

Pete looked steadily at him for a moment and then said, “Yeah, I guess I should have figured that out. And that explains why you didn’t want to talk about it in an email.”

Brody nodded.

“Do you mind talking about it now?”

“Not with you.”

Pete set his beer down and leaned forward. “I thought you liked the Marines.”

“I liked a lot of things about the Marines. They whipped my ass into shape. I learned a lot about discipline, both external and self-imposed. I learned something about loyalty. I mean, you and I had a certain feeling for the other guys on our baseball team, but that was nothing like what you feel for your buddies in the Corps. I got into better shape even than I’d been in high school. I learned how much I was really capable of, mentally and physically.”

“Okay, I get all that. But then why the change of heart?”

“Well, think about it. When I enlisted, the summer of 2001, right after we graduated, things looked pretty good. Then came 9/11 and fuckin’ Bush went crazy. We should never have been in that war, as I think most people see now. I saw buddies get killed in Iraq. They’re fuckin’ dead! For what? So Dubya could say he has more balls than his old man? I mean, a Marine has to do what he’s told, do or die. And I admit a lot of my buds would disagree with what I’m saying.”

“Yeah, from what I’ve read, most service personnel think the peace protesters here at home are unpatriotic and are being disrespectful of the military.”

Brody took a big swallow of his beer. “It’s not disrespectful to say that my friends shouldn’t be sacrificed in an unnecessary war.”

“I’m with you,” Pete said. “I’m just surprised to hear you saying all this.”

“Well, not being able to say it for most of four years is one of the reasons I didn’t re-up.”

“And then there was the gay thing, too?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Mind telling me what that was like?”

“When did you come out?” Brody asked.

“I told my parents that summer after we graduated because I was tired of hiding it and wanted to be free to be myself in college.”

“Uh huh. You know the military policy. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Well, in the Marines you sure as f**k don’t tell. Or let on. Or act like. I had plenty of opportunity to f**k women. Off base. On weekends. And I did sometimes. I mean, you gotta get your nut, or your balls will give you grief, right?”

“So you did mess around with women?”

“That’s what I just said, asshole,” Brody said, grinning at his friend.

“Okay, dickhead, I just wanted to understand.” The two were lapsing back into a habit of name calling they’d had throughout their high school friendship. “But did you ever get to be with men?”

“Twice a year, maybe. You can imagine how careful we’d have to be to do it where nobody would see us. Usually in a motel room a long way from the base. And never in Iraq. There were some guys who were messing around, but it just wasn’t worth the risk.”

“So, have you come out here at home?”

“No. I’m going to tell Bobby next week, if I can catch him long enough. And then I suppose I’ll have to tell my folks. I’m gonna do it quietly and gradually.”

“You’ll feel a lot better about yourself when you do, Brode.”

“Hey, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Pete had picked up his can. He drained it, crushed it, and set it back on the chairside table. “What’s that?”

“You remember Sheila Henderson, used to be Sheila Brown?”

“Sure. You were bangin’ her for a while senior year, right?”

“That’s her. Well, now she’s working at the shop, so I see a lot of her.”

“How’s she doing? I hear she’s got a little girl now.”

“Yep. The kid’s name is Susie, and she’s really cute. I’ve seen pictures of her.”

“So, what do you have to tell me about Sheila?”

“She figured out about us while she and I were dating.”

Pete grinned. “Busted, huh? Did she say what gave us away?”

“This is kind of embarrassing. She said that when we were f*****g she didn’t think my heart was in it, that something was missing. And she said she could tell by the way you and I looked at each other that we were a couple.”

“No s**t! She really said that?”

“Yeah, dumbfuck, that’s what I just told ya, isn’t it?”

Pete grinned. “Well, old Sheila must be quite a girl. Is that why she dumped you?”

“She never said, so I’m not sure. Besides, who said she dumped me? Maybe it was the other way around.”

Brody went to the kitchen and brought them each another beer.

“So, was it?”

“Was it what?”

“The other way around? Who dumped who?”

“Oh, I don’t remember. I was just using women as cover so people wouldn’t catch on to us.”

“Me, too.”

“Guess we weren’t as clever as we thought we were.”

“Apparently not. But, like I said, Sheila must be a pretty decent woman if she knew all that and is still friendly with you today. Suppose she’d like to start up with you again?”

“No way. She says she’s crazy about Jeremy, her husband, and I can tell she’s really happy.”

“Since you’ve got to work with her, you’re lucky she’s not the kind to carry a grudge.”

“I guess I am.” Brody took another swallow of his Rolling Rock.

The rest of the evening passed quickly and Brody and Pete continued to catch up, drinking as they did.

Brody got Pete talking about some of his university experiences. Since he was about to start his own university career, he was interested in what Pete could tell him about academics, classes, professors, college life in general.

With a little encouragement from his host, Pete also talked about the guys he’d had s*x with. Brody envied him having been able to live with someone he liked, someone who was gay, someone he could fool around with.

“Yeah, well, it’s not all easy,” Pete admitted. “As the old song says, ‘Breakin’ Up Is Hard to Do.’ You get attached to some guy. He becomes an important part of your life, and then for whatever reason, he leaves you.”

“Or you leave him?”

“True. Sometimes I was the one to break it off. And even that can be painful. After all, you like the guy enough to live with him, go to bed with him every night. So, even if you decide the relationship’s not going anywhere, you lose a part of yourself when you break up. I hurt for a long time after you left.”

Brody hadn’t been prepared for that last comment.

“Say what?”

“It hurt when you left me, when you enlisted. You never told me you were going to do that. I moped around home all summer after that. It wasn’t until I got to college that fall that things began to look brighter for me. And then I kept comparing every likely guy I met with you.”

“Christ, Petey! I never meant to hurt you, man. You got accepted to a good school. I was pretty sure they’d never accept me. I felt like I was the one being left behind. Besides, at that time I still wasn’t sure whether what you and I had was just something special between two guys who’d been best buds forever, or whether I was really gay. I thought being in the Marines would help me get that figured out. And it did.”

Neither spoke for a few moments. It was Brody who broke the silence. “Pete, I’m sorry. Jesus, I never felt about anybody before or since the way I felt about you. But like I said, I thought you were moving on and I didn’t want to hold you back. I guess we should have talked, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess we should have.”

Brody went to the kitchen for a bag of pretzels. It had been a while since supper. When he came back into the living room, he tossed the bag to Pete.

“You remember Dave Cromer?”

Pete grinned. “Yeah, he was the dude who rode your ass so much sophomore year.”