All sex is consensual between parties over the age of eighteen.
BUDDY, MY BUDDY
Long before I was certain of what my life was all about, I spent most of my free time cultivating friendships with men and chasing pussy. My chasing in the pursuit of full fledged fucking wasn't always successful, but I wasn't striking out either. There was something about the world of soft tits that definitely excited my hard cock. That was around the time I began to meet up with Buddy.
I haven't thought about Buddy in years. I just sort of put the whole thing out of my mind, something I do with events that don't end well. When friendships go haywire, even a few days afterwards, I have often forgotten the names of these so called friends. I haven't had lots of bad things happen with friends, some of my friendships go way back, but odd things do happen. I guess that's why I had erased Buddy from my mind.
I hadn't thought of Buddy in years, as I've said, but I was reading one of Larry McMurtry's books and that brought him to mind. If you never read his Texas stories you've still probably seen McMurtry's screenplay for "Hud," a big Paul Newman hit that was culled from one of his early novels. It was McMurtry's descriptions of Texas, its towns and particularly the detailed portraits of its inhabitants that brought Buddy back out of my subconscious.
Out on the Texas panhandle where the wind blows cold and dust storms compete with icy rain, back during a period of unemployment, a half starved family of four made its way to the environs of a big city in the East. Not deep into the octopus but on the outskirts, the father found a job in that part of town we called 'Oil City.' A collection of oil storage tanks and piles of castoff empty oil drums surrounded with a high rusting wire fence in the bleak industrial section on the outskirts of our small suburban town.
Somehow this rustic installation existed to satisfy the big city next door's demand with fuel for its cars and its appetite for heating oil. There were also two lone gas pumps, almost an afterthought, for its own trucks and the town folks who were willing to drive out to this dirty road stop where everything had a coat of grime and mineral blackness.
Buddy was nineteen, tall, square jawed, with light brown hair that sort of fell perfectly in place without being combed. He was the perfect Texan, all he was missing was a stalk of straw in his mouth. He wore his hair short and would run his fingers through it when he spoke, as if stirring his brain to help him speak and magically every blade of hair would realign as if a barber had carefully combed it. He was slender but big boned, you could see he had a bit more to grow into his Dad's size. He was thinner and lankier but like a pup with too much skin, you knew he was going to fill out.
He stood a few inches taller than I, was muscular and had the air of a boy out of the country. A scant look in the upper quadrant of his sky blue eyes revealed a tiny empty spot that had never filled in. I had learned the rudiments of his pilgrimage but there was much about him that I didn't know.
I don't like to ask people questions, I'd rather that they tell me what they want to say, what they want to reveal. Eventually most stuff spills out of their mouths like catsup from a squeeze jar. It takes a while to get the measure of a man and casual conversations here and there won't do it. It takes time. Sometimes you think you know a person and then it turns out you really don't.
I've fund that to be more true with women than men. Women seem to be born with an innate ability to lie and manipulate. Like the virginal college girl I'd met who told me I had to get her home at 10:30 on a Saturday night. What she didn't tell me was she'd scheduled a second date. I warmed her up and some other guy got to fuck her.
I had met Buddy when we were in High School so I'd known him about two and a half years. I now into my first year of college and home for the summer. It had become a warm sunny summer with rain puddles and I'd already had to chase the mosquitoes hiding in the corners of the bedroom with a rolled up newspaper if I wanted to sleep without their buzzing in my ear.
I'd spent time with Buddy and considered him a friend. I imagine I was the first to befriend him when he'd moved here. A tall skinny Texas kid obviously out of place standing there in the school gym. The slickly varnished wooden floor surrounding made him look like the lone tree in the forest. He looked out of place in his ill fitting t-shirt and ragged sneakers, his shorts the wrong color for our school.
As the designated leader of the gym exercises, when Holstein, our ex-marine coach with a paunch was too tired to do his job, I ran the class though the usual assortment of jumping jacks, squat thrusts and twenty push ups that most of the class failed to complete. Buddy was having no problem although he looked bit dazed.
After the exercises were finished and the kids were shooting hoops, I introduced myself to Buddy and after that, you might say I took him under my wing. I tried to answer whatever questions he might ask, not that he asked very much. Sometimes he would pause and his eyes would look up as if his mind was traveling to a distant place, and then he'd look down and reset. `
I'd tried to fill him in on our little town, where to go, how the school functioned, who was who and even which shops were good for lunch, also who to watch out for. There were a few dangerous guys in the school best left to their drug induces slumbers at the back of the room, guys you would not want to wake up.
We didn't share any other classes so we'd clown around during gym, shadow boxing, sparring with each other. Sometimes we'd meet up at lunch time and get a sandwich at the old deli down the block where a bunch of us kids would line up at lunch time for roast beef sandwiches or turkey and red fruit punch soda.
I'd driven him across town one time, after I'd seen him hanging around outside the Marine recruiting office on Main Street. I dropped him off nearby but up until then I didn't realize he actually lived in Oil City. I didn't know that anybody lived there.
That summer at home I'd learned he lived there quite by accident. I'd come across town to fill up my white Thunderbird convertible with the less expensive gas they sold at Oil City. I saw him standing not far from the pumps. He waved and we rekindled our friendship. Of course the car was my Dad's, a white Thunderbird convertible with reclining seats that could fold back and turn into a bed if you were lucky enough to be on a date with the right girl.
After high school, I had gone off to college, but Buddy was undecided as to what he wanted to do. He had some odd notion of being a patriot and was attracted to the military where he thought he might get some useful training. College or trade school did not really interest him.
When I needed gas, I'd drive over to Oil City, pump the gas tank full, pay and park over on the side and walk behind to the rustic house where Buddy lived. I'd drop in and he usually was there. Buddy introduced me one afternoon to his dad. John Connolly was a tall man, greying and looked more like Buddy's grandad than his father. His mom was rarely visible in the small dark dwelling that the oil company provided.
Buddy's Dad's job required, being on-call 24 hours tending to whatever problems might crop up and prepared for those off hour oil deliveries. John always had a dark smear of grease or oil on his hands or face the few times I saw him.
After meeting his dad and seeing his mom through the window in the shadows of the dark kitchen busy cooking or washing dishes, Buddy and I walked over to grab a few beers. There was an old fashioned Italian bar/restaurant nearby that catered to the industrial areas workers and the long haul truckers who delivered oil or took it away.
There was a juke box full of country western songs that the truckers liked. We'd sit at the curved wooden bar and order a glass of draft beer while the music was blaring some lyric about "I met you somewhere before" and I recall how Buddy stopped right in the middle of downing his beer when that song went on,
"Now that's real music, not that sick shit they have on the radio."
I just nodded. I was into heavy rock but I didn't care for most of the stuff on the radio either.
"Yeah, country music is a collection of little stories set to music, reflections of country life, our modern folk music."
"Yeah, you got it," said Buddy.
There was something about the differences between us that attracted me. I've always been attracted to opposites. I came from a middle class family, we lived in an old house my Dad had rebuilt; we had a recent car, a few dogs. My parents were hard workers and hard spenders. We probably appeared to be more affluent than the Connolly family but not by too much.
We lived month by month without any sizable saving bank balance and every now and then my dad would borrow a thousand from his sister's husband to tide us over a rough spot. But my Mom would have considered us a notch above, maybe that's what a little extra schooling provided, a dash of snobbery. I didn't subscribe to those values.
Now with that confession you might ask what I was doing driving a T-bird. Well, it was like this. Trying to persuade my parents to cut costs I steered they toward buying a cheap foreign car, a VW in fact. They left with that intention but the salesman talked them into a two year old Thunderbird instead. Mom said it was a bargain. That was when I realized there had been no chance of them downsizing.
The summer was passing so fast and no one seemed to have time for planning. It was catch as catch can. When I needed gas I'd drop by and mostly I'd find Buddy. From the grease on Buddies overalls I imagined he was lending more than a helping hand around the place. Still we always seemed to have time to grab a beer and listen to the jukebox.
