I was in the Automotive section of K-Mart, scanning the stack of air filters for the right part number, when I noticed him. He was about thirty-five, dressed in a cowboy hat and boots, with an expensive western shirt and blue jeans. His body was slender but strongly muscled. His eyes were shadowed by his hat brim, but I could see he had a bushy moustache. He'd been staring at me for a couple of minutes.
He looked awfully familiar, but I couldn't place him. Then he removed his cowboy hat and I saw his brilliant green eyes and unruly curly black hair.
"Jeff! Jeff Cramer!" I exclaimed as I walked over to him.
"Ken James, it's really you," he replied. "I sure didn't expect to see you here after all these years."
That's true. I hadn't been expecting to meet anybody I used to know. Cheyenne Wyoming was my home town but I'd moved to Texas thirteen years ago and had been in college in Laramie before that. Cheyenne might be the state capitol and home of the world's oldest rodeo, but that hadn't stopped me and all my buddies from leaving for good.
"I'm still in Austin," I said. "I've got my own computer business. I came back to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. Didn't I hear that you were in Texas for a while?"
"Yeah, I went to vet school at A & M. It's probably the best in the country. When I graduated, I came back here and joined Dad's practice. You didn't drive here, did you?"
"No. I'm helping Dad tune the pickup and we needed some parts."
"Look," Jeff said, "I've got some calls to make this afternoon, but I'd like to talk to you some more. Maybe you could come over before you go back. We can have a few drinks and go over old times."
He gave me his address and phone number and I agreed to come over that night. I decided I could put up with his wife, who I'd never met. It would be hard, though. I remembered those old times too well. It had started over twenty years ago . . .
I was spending the night at Jeff's house when he introduced me to male-male sex. We were both thirteen. Our relationship continued for four years. We never thought of ourselves as gay. We were little cowboys, making do until we could get real girls. We stopped having sex at sixteen, when Jeff started dating.
We never kissed. We weren't sissies. Cowboys don't kiss - other cowboys.
It would still be a few years before I discovered the big secret. Cowboys DO kiss. I didn't know if Jeff had ever discovered it. Somehow, I doubted it. He married a girl in college and their first child was born a few months after the wedding. By the time he graduated from the Texas A & M School of Veterinary Medicine, he'd added two more kids to his heterosexual credentials. The last time we'd made it had been on a drunken night when we were seniors in high school. Jeff refused to face me after that.
We ran into each other once in Laramie while we were attending the University of Wyoming. He was a pre-vet cowboy while I was a computer science major with hair halfway to my ass. We went to the Fireside, a bar where both cowboys and freaks were welcome, and talked about (non-sexual) old times over a couple of pitchers. We never got together again after that.
Jeff's address was in a new development. I was surprised to find it was a little duplex, not at all suitable for a family with three teen-age children. Jeff understood my puzzled expression instantly. "Carol and I were divorced about a year ago," he explained.
We spent the next couple of hours talking about careers, politics, and how we'd solve all the world's problems if the rest of humanity were just wise enough to give us absolute power. We also hoisted a few and were pretty buzzed by the time the conversation turned really personal.
"I told you Carol and I were divorced," Jeff suddenly said. "What about you? Did you ever get married?"
I wondered if I should keep playing the game or just come right out and tell him. "No, I never did."
Jeff looked at me for a long time without saying anything. Then he suddenly changed the subject, sort of. "You remember all the stuff we used to do when we were kids?"
"You mean like the man-sized cardboard glider that flew like a rock, the underground fort, and the jailbreak games we used to play in your dad's kennel?" I asked innocently. "Or the time we locked Sandy Oakes up until she showed us her tits. I still don't know if she was embarrassed because she wasn't supposed to let boys see her or because she was so flat-chested."
