Mikey, a studly 18-year old finds himself intimate for the first time with Mike, his namesake 24-year old uncle whom he's idolized all his life during a cross-country drive. Steve is the 20-year old collegiate gymnast who hitches a ride with them.
Steve had emptied out his backpack and put in a clean tee shirt and shorts, his little toilet kit, and he was ready to roll, almost. He also stuck in a big envelope.
Outside, he asked Mike to back the truck up to the garage, and he gestured to a large outbuilding close by. It had a conventional door on one end, and four overhead doors on each long side of the building. Steve and I entered through the side, and walked through what seemed to be a sports store. It was a sizeable room filled with skis, golf bags, canoes, baseball equipment, scuba gear, and so forth on shelves and racks. The next room to the left was set up as a gym. Not just with some weight machines, it had a floor exercise mat, a pommel horse, and parallel bars. Rings hung from the ceiling.
Passing through we entered into the garage proper, where there was a pair of Chevy trucks, a Mercedes S600 -- his Mom's car -- and a cobalt blue metallic Boxster with Wyoming "SRM" plates. I didn't see what was in the other half of the garage. Steve opened the overhead in front of the Boxster and got a foldable tow bar from a rack. As Mike manoeuvred the truck, Steve crawled under the Boxster and attached the bar and then secured it to the truck's hitch. He explained that he rarely drove the Porsche. Going to campus and back he usually drove an old Honda, just as his Mom mostly drove one of the Chevys.
Almost immediately we pulled away, and we were on the road. Our goal was Lovelock, Nevada, 865 miles away. Fortunately, it was 865 very scenic miles. At Cheyenne, we finally left the Great Plains behind us, and there would be mountains and ridges and basins the rest of the way to California. As usual, as soon as we hit the road, we pulled off our shirts.
Steve, sitting by the passenger window said, "So tell me more about you guys. What was it like growing up in Pennsylvania?"
So I began. I explained that our family lived in near New Hope, Pennsylvania, in Bucks County. My father was an architect. He's a partner in a New York City firm founded by my grandfather (Mike's father). He works two days a week in the City, taking the train from nearby Princeton Junction, New Jersey. The rest of the time he works in his studio at home. He and my mom have been happily married for just over 18 years. I was born "prematurely," my mother just 18 at the time; and my father was barely 20 and an architectural student at Cornell. My grandparents were not thrilled with the idea of their daughter "having to get married," but they did rather like my father. By the time my father had finished his B. Arch., my grandfather had founded a new firm with some partners from his old firm, and he hired my father (his son-in-law). My father eventually became a partner himself, and he and my grandfather (his father-in-law) get along very well. "They are almost like father and son, wouldn't you say, Mike?"
"Well, Mikey, that's an interesting subject. I would have thought by now you would have known, or suspected, or maybe just intuited it, but your dad and mine have been more than just friends, since before you were actually born. Your mom told me many years ago. My dad has had an ongoing relationship with your dad since just after your folks were married, starting when your father was only 20. To you, like most people, it looks like a father-and-son relationship, but in reality it is far more complicated than that."
That really got me to thinking. What Mike said was certainly congruent with everything I knew, but until this moment I would never had put one and one together. It's true that they both worked in the City Monday and Tuesday, sharing their little Upper East Side condo when they are in town. And they couldn't be more affectionate. It's also true that Grandad built Mom and Dad a house on a lot he owned three doors from his house, but that seemed perfectly normal.
In confusion, I left this subject, and turned to something I thought I knew a lot better, Mike. Mike, I explained, at six years older than I, could always do everything in the world far, far better than I ever could. Growing up, as far as I was concerned, he lived life on an entirely different plane. He was like a superhero, hell, I thought he could leap tall buildings at a single bound and stop speeding locomotives. I frankly and unabashedly idolized him. He could have easily abused me, mocking my worship, taunting me for my inadequacies, but quite the contrary, he was like an beneficent Olympian god in my little world.
I went on: Since we lived only three houses apart, I saw him very often until he went away to college. He came to our house -- his sister's -- very frequently, maybe to have dinner when his parents were in the City, or to babysit me and my little sister, or just on some errand, or, it seemed to me, just to drop by to see me and hear what my Cub scout pack was doing or how my piano lessons were going (I studied piano before taking up the trombone), or whatever. But far more often I was at my his house (my grandparents' place of course). Occasionally I'd spend the night if my parents were in New York or Philadelphia, and when I was little I'd sometimes sleep in Mike's bed with him. It would be a big treat for me: he was so big, so strong, so talented, so extremely handsome, had so many friends, and, best of all, was so goddamn sweet and indulgent to me. Though I was deeply cherished by my parents, they didn't put up with any crap, and they had certain expectations of me. Not that it was ever an issue because frankly I was the kind of kid who always seem to go with the program, and everything in my life has sorta come easy. I dunno. So far anyway.
