Z.A. Maxfield

Continued from Through The Years, 1988.

© Z.A. Maxfield, All Rights Reserved

1998

Paradise.  All Ethan could think about, all he could bring himself to get interested in was the sunset, the balmy trade winds, the acrylic champagne flutes, and the crisp, dry, ice-cold Cristal in them.  Paradise.  The secluded Jacuzzi bubbled and swirled around him; the water just hot enough to relax his muscles but not so hot he’d have to get out.

By far the most beautiful thing in paradise, though, was Barry.  The little shit had shimmied out onto their private lanai in the tiniest pair of swim nothings and was currently singing a disco tune.

“Lap dance,” he crooned, leaning over, holding out both hands in supplication, and then spinning away just as Ethan was just about to grab for them.  “Lap dance, for loooooooove.”

Ethan snorted and the champagne got all fizzy in his nose.  He was shaking his head trying to get a grip when Barry, still gyrating like a first class go-go boy, slipped into the water beside him.

“So…Let’s dance, that lap dance,” he threw a leg over Ethan’s knees, and did precisely that.  “Let’s dance, that lap dance.  Let’s dance, this lap dance… Toniiiiiiiiiiight!”

“Uhn,” Ethan’s head dropped back as the friction became quality and then some.

“This was the best idea, evah,” drawled Barry after drinking a little more champagne.  As usual, Barry was not enough of a drinker that he didn’t go all Tallulah when he got a little faced.

“Well, I figured after twenty years…”

“Mm, baby don’t remind me,” Barry said against his throat while his hands found their way down that back of Ethan’s board shorts.

“Like you forgot,” Ethan teased.  “You’ve been telling me it’s our twentieth since New Year’s Eve.”

“I didn’t forget,” Barry said.  “Didn’t you notice, I was singing our song?’

“Our song is about a lap dance?”

“Uh, no.  Try to keep up, baby.  Our song is Last Dance by Donna Summer.  That was the song that was playing when we-”

“When I first got my hands of that magnificent, nekkid ass of yours,” Ethan finished for him.  “Like I’d ever forget that.”

“Or when coach McAllister pulled us both out the men’s room by the scruffs of our necks and called our parents.”  Barry rolled his eyes.  “I always had this theory that he was just jealous.”

“Who wouldn’t be?  You were hot.  All wrapped around me, humping me like a bad dog.”

“What about you,” Barry said, and Ethan thought, oh here it comes, the mockery. “You were all like, snort, belch look at me, I’m a fucking baseball star, man.  I love me some pussy…”

“All right, all right.” Ethan conceded.  “Not my finest hours.  We’ve had some good times though, huh, baby.”

“Yeah, Bubba, we have.”  Barry sighed contentedly.  Then he began his assault, grinding against Ethan, kissing him like he meant it.  Ethan let him take the lead, knowing that they’d end up right where he wanted to be whoever started the parade.  “Gonna shake your groove thing with me baby?”

“As long as we’re reliving the disco days,” Ethan lifted him and stood up, moving to the center of the Jacuzzi where they could sink down together into the water if they got on their knees.  Nothing better than a wet Barry Sanders.  They danced like that, on their knees, as their kisses got hotter and deeper.

Barry was just untying the laces of Ethan’s board shorts when they heard the distinctive sound of the slider opening.

“Ew,” Sammi came out onto the lanai.  She was unzipping the white terry robe she was wearing to reveal her own swimsuit.  Barry felt Ethan’s entire body go rigid with shock under his hands.  “Get a room you two.”

“We have a room,” Barry told her.  “This is our room.”

“Yeah, it’s so cool,” Sammi said as she dropped into the water beside them.  “You guys are so lucky to have a private Jacuzzi out here under the stars…”

Barry made that confused cartoon noise.  “Remind us again what you believe private means.”

Ethan had gotten his grip and was breathing again.  “And also, young lady, while people are asking questions.  Can I ask you what you are thinking about wearing a bathing suit that is nothing more than a satire of the very term?”

“Uncle Ethan,” she razzed him.  “This isn’t the olden days.  Nobody cares anymore if you show a little skin.”

“Sammi, I can’t believe your mother is aware that you are wearing that.  You’re not just showing a little skin.  You’re only barely hiding a little skin.  The very least you could get away with and not be offered money!”

Barry cut in.  “What I think Ethan is trying to say, Sammi, is-”

“I’m not trying to say anything, Barry,” Ethan growled.  “Sammi, there’s this thing we like to call modesty here on planet earth, and-” the slider on the lanai opened again and Sarah and Jim joined them, stepping into the bubbling water, laughing at Ethan’s outrage.

“Uncle Ethan,” Sammi chided, “I never thought I’d hear you talking like an old dude.”

Sammi waded to her father who put an arm on her shoulder.  “I’m not sure I like the suit either,” Jim said.  “What do you think, Queer Eye,” he asked Barry.

“Doesn’t do a thing for me,” Barry said.

“All right, that’s enough out of all of you.” Sarah said, and four pairs of eyes rested on her.  “She’s wearing that because I said she could, while were here in Hawaii.  When we go back home, this one gets put away except for back yard sun bathing.  When she’s by herself.”

“Someone makes sense at last,” muttered Ethan.  Barry gave his hand a squeeze.

“Geez,” Sarah said.  “A private Jacuzzi.  What a great hotel, Ethan.  You were a genius to suggest this trip.”

“Tell me again,” Ethan asked as she lifted his acrylic flute of champagne to her lips, “what you think the definition of ‘genius’ is?”

***

The bedroom was warming up due to the light streaming in from the window when the light knock at the door signaled them that room service arrived.  Ethan rolled over as Barry got up to answer it.  The native Hawaiian woman who normally brought their breakfast was her usual cheerful and efficient self.  Ethan could hear her chattering with Barry as she brought in a cart.  He heard the door close as she left, her lovely voice round and rich with the big broad island vowels when she told Barry Aloha.

“Papaya, mango, fresh pineapple” Barry called to him.  “Somebody’s going to be happy.  Oh, dear heaven… French toast stuffed with cream cheese.  Syrup with toasted coconut.  This is…” His voice trailed off.

“Sounds wonderful,” Ethan got up and ambled into the bathroom to pee.  “Be there in a sec,” he said.  He washed his hands and brushed his teeth.  While he was drying off he heard the crash and clatter of breaking china in the other room of their suite.  “Barry?”

Barry was silent when Ethan got there, standing in his bare feet where the china cup had hit the floor oblivious, reading the newspaper.

“Don’t move, you’ll cut your feet,” said Ethan, turning around to get a pair of sandals so he could help clean up the mess.  When he returned Barry still hadn’t moved.

“What?” he asked, finally realizing that something was wrong, Barry wordlessly handed him the newspaper.

Ethan scanned the page carefully for what was upsetting Barry, because even though he hadn’t said a word, Ethan could feel the tension just beneath his skin.

And there it was.  James Byrd Jr., murdered in Texas… a dragging death for fuck’s sake, where his body had hit a culvert, severing his arm and head.  Right there in the New York Times in fucking 1998.  “Shit,” Ethan said.  He looked up to find Barry was white faced and shaking a little.  “Oh, baby,” he sighed.

Ethan picked Barry up and carried him to the sofa where he could put his feet up and called for room service to bring him a broom and a dustpan.  When the server who’d brought them breakfast returned she wouldn’t allow him to touch a thing, just made him and Barry sit on the lanai eating their breakfast while she swept and vacuumed up the mess.  Barry wasn’t eating.  He stirred his coffee with one of those elegant little spoons but he just kept on stirring absent mindedly, never actually drinking it.

“What’s going through your head,” Ethan asked.

“Hm?” Barry looked up.  “Is today the day we’re doing Haleakala?”

“What?” That came out of the blue.  “No tomorrow.  You’re supposed to see the sun rise.  We have to leave while it’s still dark out there to see it properly.”

“What’s today?”  Barry asked, still stirring his coffee.

“I don’t know.  Maybe luau?  I can’t remember.  Barry, lover, talk to me.  Really.  What are you thinking?”

“I’m sad, all right?” Barry looked up.  “I’m upset.  Stuff like that bugs me.  Sorry if I’m not the best company right now.  Sorry if that bugs you.”

“Don’t put words into my mouth.” Ethan snapped.  “I know you’re upset.  I don’t need you to be company.  And for the record, stuff bugs me if it hurts you.”

Barry put out a placating hand.  “I know.  I’m sorry.  I was shocked.  I overreacted.”

“I’d hardly say that,” Ethan said, scanning the article.  It appeared that Byrd, walking home from his parent’s house, was picked up by three men and taken to the woods, where he was beaten, then chained to a truck and dragged for two miles.   Parts of his body were found on one place and parts in another.  Fuck.  “I wonder if it’s even possible to overreact to something like that.”

Barry closed his eyes.  “I keep picturing what it would feel like,” he whispered.

“I know.” Ethan said.  He knew, too, that although they’d never really spoken of it, Barry had memories from his time in Burma that made it more than likely he knew first hand what thoughtless brutality people were capable of.  “I’m sorry.”  How really trite that sounded, even to his own ears.

“No.  Well.  The FBI is there, working on it.  It will probably be called a civil rights violation and the NAACP is calling for them to add kidnapping, making it a capital offense.  They’re doing a prayer meeting, it said…in the article.”

Ethan stared at Barry.  After twenty years it was almost as if he had subtitles.  He waited.

“Anyway.  Luau?  Maybe we could learn to spin those poi ball things.”  He brightened and smiled

“Oh geez.” Ethan said, throwing down his napkin.

“What?!” Barry pushed his chair back and stared at him.

“At least say it.  At least admit that you think it’s a big fucking waste of time being here when people are being persecuted, beaten, dragged around behind cars, and beheaded by haters.”

“Now who is putting words in someone’s mouth?”

“This shocked you.  Appalled you.  Don’t talk to me about luaus, damn it!  Get angry!”

“Do you think I’m not angry?” Barry asked pushing out of his chair and going to the window.  “Are you insane?  I’m sick with it.  What the hell good does that do James Byrd Jr., or anyone else for that matter.  What does that do at all, except cause me to snap at the one person I care about most in the world.” He came back and sat down on Ethan’s knees.  “You’re such an idiot.”  He still faced the window, away from Ethan, but he settled in and rested his back against Ethan’s chest.  His head lolled onto Ethan’s shoulder.

Ethan absently brushed back Barry’s hair.  “I meant, aren’t you mad at me?”

Barry looked at him like he was nuts for the second time in as many minutes.  “You?  I read the article, but I guess I missed the part where it said, ‘San Francisco native, Ethan Holmes, was personally responsible for the crime in which’-”

“Shut up, you know what I mean.  I know you wish you could do something.  Organize something.  Go where the case will be tried and make trouble on the courthouse steps.  I know you.”

“I made a decision a long time ago-”

“No, you made a promise.  To me.  And you’ve kept it.  And Amnesty International and PFLAG and Unicef and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir have all had to muddle through without you.”

“Ethan, why are you being such a shit?”

“Because I’m angry.”

“I see.”

“And there’s this little, craptastically unhappy part of me that wonders if maybe…maybe you could have been doing something for ten years that would make this kind of thing go away, only I didn’t let you.”

Barry tensed in his arms.  “You can’t seriously believe I could have changed the outcome of that, Ethan.”

“No.” Ethan whispered.  “But we’ll never know will we?  And you’re thinking, if I know you, that since you haven’t been part of the solution you may well have become part of the problem.”

“No.  I’m not,” Barry sat up and looked back at him with troubled eyes.  “I’m really not, Ethan.”

“I wish I weren’t.”  Ethan muttered.

“What are you saying?”  Barry held still, but something sparked to life in his eyes and Ethan saw it with as much dread as he had hope.

Ethan had to remind himself to think about that later.  “What was your gut instinct when you read that?  What was your first reaction?”

Barry didn’t hesitate.  “I wanted to get on a plane to Texas and find whoever’s holding that prayer meeting and see if I could help.  Maybe do something for the family, for funeral expenses for James Byrd Jr.  Then I thought of Andrew Frye, because he piloting an anti-bullying program in the schools in Washington State.  I wanted to see if his program is cutting down the number of race or gender-orientation-related school bullying, do the math, you know, and then see if I can’t find legislators who will listen, state by state, to…”

Ethan smiled.

Barry slumped back against Ethan’s chest.  “Maybe I can do the math at home, and then find people who have the freedom to go and work on that.  Headquarter it in San Francisco, but let others do the traveling.”

“Aw Barry.”  Ethan felt both fear and resignation building inside his chest like one of the museum Volcano films they’d been watching during their stay in Hawaii.  “Maybe we need to renegotiate, huh?”

“No, Baby, I made you a promise, and-”

“We were younger, then,” Ethan reminded him.  “And you’d been through a terrible ordeal.  I was so scared I’d lost you.  Not that I’d lost you personally because I had, but really… that the world had lost you.  That you were never, ever coming back.”

“I made it home though.  And I’ve never once doubted where home was after that.”

“I know.  But we’re bigger now, aren’t we?” Ethan asked.

Barry punched him playfully.  ”Maybe you are,” he teased.

“I mean we’re stronger.  Bigger.  More solid.  And I think it’s time I told you how honored I am that you chose me, but that, well.  Maybe you shouldn’t have had to choose.”  He swallowed.

“I didn’t have to.  I.  I may have made you think…” Barry fell silent.

“I love you.” Ethan told him.

Barry slid a hand back over his shoulder and brought Ethan’s mouth down on his for a hungry kiss.  He turned and wrapped around Ethan completely, holding him tightly.  “I’m scared.”

“I know.”

“What if I don’t make any difference at all?  What if something happens, and I lose you, or you lose me, or-”

“Not gonna lose me, Barry,” Ethan said.

“If I travel you’re going to be lonely again.” Barry bit his lip.

“You think that I’d-” Ethan was shaking his head.  “Oh hell no.  There will never, ever be another man as long as you’re alive.  Apart from everything else that’s happened, I made that promise, and nothing on earth is going to change that.”

Barry ran his open palm over Ethan’s heart.

“On the other hand, did I hear you mention Andrew Frye?”

Barry rolled his eyes.

“Seriously.  Hearing his name… just for a minute, I felt really pissed.”

“There’s only you,” Barry said, “there will only ever be you.”

Ethan licked his lips.  “Care to put your life where your mouth is?”

“What?”

“Marry me?”

“What?” Barry stood up like he’d been goosed and sat down across from Ethan on the other chair.  The tiny spoon started around the coffee again.

“Will.  You.  Marry.  Me.”

“Aren’t I married to you already?”

“No.”  Ethan didn’t understand.  He was reasonably sure Barry would fill him in.

“Yes I am.”

“Did we get married when I wasn’t looking?”

“Well, you can’t get married.  I mean we can’t.  What would be the point?  I meant aren’t we already married in all the ways that count.”

Suddenly, the thing that Ethan wanted most in the world was to get married.  “No.  We aren’t.  You haven’t promised to cleave only unto me,” he said peevishly.

“What the hell does that even mean?” Barry asked.  “It sounds awful. It sounds dangerous.”

“It just means you haven’t stood up in front of all our friends and made an honest man out of me.  It means we’ve been shacked up for twenty years.  It means you could go away to Texas tomorrow…” he swallowed hard.  Dang.  “And not come back.”

“Well shit.”  Barry looked at him with what Ethan thought might be new eyes.  “You’re a conservative little thing under all the hokum, aren’t you?”

“I guess.”

“Well, then.”  Barry finally, finally put that tiny fucking spoon down.  “Let the tournament begin!”

***

Dawn broke over Haleakala, and just as everyone said, it was breathtaking.  Ethan ignored it completely.  He and Barry were facing each other, their elbows bent, their hands clasped under their chins.  Jim was the first to wind plumeria lei around their wrists.  For a made up ceremony, Ethan thought, the girls had outdone themselves, in the short amount of time they’d had to figure out a special Hawaiian-inspired hand-fast wedding for them.

“For the past, which you’ve shared, in joy and sorrow,” Jim said, working the fragrant string of blossoms around Ethan and Barry’s large hands.

“For the love you give each other, which has no beginning or end.” Sarah said, as she wrapped another strand of flowers around them.

“For the commitment you’ve made, one to another, to be bold, and faithful, and fearless in your future together,” Sammi said, using her own flower lei to bind them.

The all said in unison, “You are one.”

“We are one,” Ethan and Barry echoed in unison.

Jim had to clear his throat.  The girls were all smiles.

Ethan stood there, tied to Barry by a mound of flesh-soft petals.  So many things filled his head and his heart.

It was beautiful.  A magnificent sunrise was just beginning to warm the earth beneath his feet.

It was hokey, he never could abide any kind of ceremony, and he wanted to blush, or giggle, or make some kind of a lame-ass joke.

It was dead sexy, but only because of the way Barry was looking at him.

“Love you,” Barry said, starting to disentangle them, carefully pulling the leis off their arms and depositing them around Ethan’s neck.

“Love you too,” Ethan told him.  It wasn’t marriage, but his family stood up for him and shared his joy.  Barry loved him and accepted his promises.  It was plenty.  It was enough.  It would have to be.