A Tale of Two Trucks (5 page)

I’d taken him clothes shopping several times already and had successfully persuaded him to get a few nice outfits to wear when I dragged him out to the movies. I made sure his work clothes were right for his skin tone too. He had a lot of blues in his wardrobe now, which accentuated his blue-gray eyes, and some jeans that fit him better. Apparently, even the guys at work had noticed the change and teased him by calling him “Mr. Spiffy” sometimes, but he swore he didn’t mind.

“They’re just jealous ’cuz
they
don’t have a ‘shopping consultant’,” he said with a snobbish air, making me choke on my drink.

“Yeah, well,” I spluttered after a few coughs, “you’d better be careful not to let on how often you’re over here! They might get some ideas, you know….”

“Bah! Doesn’t matter. I can just bash their heads in if I want to!”

He flexed his biceps as he said this, making it difficult for me not to drool.

One of the advantages of having him as a semi-permanent houseguest was that I could catch glimpses of his extraordinary physique. Not that he was shaped like a body-builder, with all those abnormal steroid bulges, but he was muscular in the way a man can only get if he does heavy manual labor for a living. Hammering, sawing, and hauling lumber and equipment had shaped his wide back into a perfect
V
with sinewy muscles holding his huge frame together. If I could see him naked (as I fantasized sometimes, alone in my room at night), I was sure he would look
exactly
like a Greek god.

But another thing I admired about him was his complete indifference to the opinions of others. Not that he was rude—far from it; he was very sensitive and accepting of my orientation, for example—but he truly didn’t care what other people thought of him. He was who he was, and he was very comfortable in his own skin. Even if his work buddies ever found out he was “sleeping over” at a gay man’s house and teased him about it, it probably wouldn’t have bothered him any more than a mosquito bite. Although that’s not to say he wouldn’t cuff them on the head a few times, just for good measure.

I envied him that objectivity, which was so polar opposite of my own deep-seated desire to please and be accepted. I’m well aware that my insecurity is rooted in my childhood, when my mother would come home and ignore me, usually stoned or high or both. We never knew who my father was because she’d been walking the streets to get enough cash for her drugs. Yet another nail in the coffin of my self-esteem: I was the offspring of some loser who had to
pay
for sex.

As hard as it was, it had been a blessing in disguise when she’d overdosed. I was twelve at the time. I can still remember vividly the day Gramma came to school and took me home early. She tried to break what had happened to me gently, but it still felt like the ultimate rejection. My mother had been so self-centered that she hadn’t cared for me while she was alive or about what would happen to me if she died, either. But at least I had Gramma. She was my rock, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say I meant the world to her too.

However, the fact remained that someone I needed in my life had abandoned me, and it had left a mark. Even my relationship with Brandon, I can see in retrospect, was driven by my need to please. I should have noticed the little signs that indicated he was getting bored or irritated with me, but I chose to ignore them. And I still get stressed out when people, even perfect strangers, think of me in less-than-flattering terms. Which is why I will never go back to Cocktales, where Brandon’s cronies would all look at me and mutter darkly about the “crazy bitch,” staring as though to expel the outcast from their midst with their vibes of loathing alone. Sometimes I wonder if Brandon hadn’t gone around telling lies about me just because he knew how much it would bother me.

But for now, life was good. Joe and I worked at our respective jobs, my business was going full tilt, my assistant Rick was a proud father, and I even stopped by to see his wife and baby occasionally with Gramma’s famous Bacon Potato Casserole, which Missy adored. We threw a couple of parties at Joe’s new-and-improved bachelor pad for his work buddies, who—while somewhat leery of me, as though I had gay cooties that might be catching—all appreciated my cooking.

Silly me! I should have known that Lady Luck wouldn’t let me off so easily. Even though I have no idea how I could have possibly pissed her off, she’s definitely been no lady in her dealings with me. Come to think of it, she must be in cahoots with Cupid too! That would certainly explain a lot….

T
HE
night before, Joe had come home (it was hard to think of my place as being anything other than “home” for him too, anymore) tired and hungry. I was ready for him with a large homemade pizza since it was Friday, and we both tucked in with relish.

“Mmm,” he moaned in ecstasy. “This is the best pizza
ever
!”

“Of course it is,” I grinned. “I don’t skimp on the sauce, and there are three whole layers of cheese on this bad boy!”

Being tired and stuffed, it wasn’t surprising that he fell asleep on the couch not an hour after dinner. I hated to wake him up, but there was no way I could carry him upstairs—heck, I couldn’t even move him off of the couch if I tried!—so I poked him until he was semi-awake and prodded him up the stairs to bed. I made sure his alarm clock was turned off so he could sleep in as well.

Saturday mornings were usually lazy affairs, and I made do for breakfast with leftover potato salad on toasted English muffins, watching cartoons with the volume turned down. It was almost noon when Joe lumbered down the stairs.

“The paper here yet?” he asked groggily.

“Dunno. Haven’t checked,” I told him, keeping my eyes glued on the TV screen so I wouldn’t ogle him in his wifebeater and boxers. (The mental discipline it required was almost too much for me!)

He stepped out onto the front porch to pick up the paper, and a moment later I heard it drop to the ground. I looked up to see Joe standing in the doorway, transfixed, staring at something.

“What is it?” I asked. When he didn’t answer immediately, I got up and went over to see what it was.

“It” was his truck, parked in my driveway. Which was now spattered and smeared all over with raw eggs and tomatoes. With something spray-painted underneath the mess, in bright red paint.

“The
hell
?” he exploded, finally getting over his shock enough to verbalize his outrage. I was still working through the process, but I followed him out, zombie-like, as he walked over to survey the damage.

As we got closer, the smell told us the eggs and tomatoes had been rotten before they’d been hurled at his truck—at his beautiful, almost-brand-new truck! And up close, we could read the graffiti scrawled on the side:

CraZY BiTCH

The same message had been sprayed on the other side as well and, on the tailgate, it was simply
F
and
U
on either side of the logo. As the reality of the defilement sank in, I was assaulted with a barrage of emotions—fury, hatred, guilt, helplessness, frustration, anger—and cleared my throat, knowing I owed Joe an explanation.

“I’m so sorry,” I told him, fighting back tears. “This… this was Brandon’s doing.”

“Your ex?” he exclaimed incredulously.

Chapter 8

“Y
EAH
.
It has to be my ex!” I said with conviction, ready to strangle Brandon if the opportunity presented itself. “Well, either him or the boy toy he was cheating on me with… but I just saw him with a different boy at the store, and since he saw me in my new
truck
—”

“—that looks
exactly
like mine,” Joe finished, filling in the blanks, “he did this thinking it was
your
truck!”

“Yeah,” I agreed, miserably. “I’m so sorry, Joe! This should’ve been
my
truck!”

Joe looked long and hard at the mess, sighed deeply, then said—in as comforting a tone as he could manage, under the circumstances—“Yeah, but don’t apologize, Mike. It’s not
your
fault!”

I groaned aloud, startling him, but the worst was yet to come.

“That’s just it, Joe—it
is
my fault! This was payback for what I did to him….”

Now I had to confess, to a shocked and astounded Joe, what I’d done when I found Brandon in bed (
my
bed, which I’ve since replaced) with another man. His jaw hung open when I told him I’d chased them out of the house—both naked—and pelted the boy’s car with eggs and tomatoes. It was no coincidence that Joe’s truck was now covered in eggs and tomatoes too.

“If I hadn’t gone ballistic on them,” I concluded, “he, or they, wouldn’t have come back and done this. When he saw me driving my new truck the other day, he probably thought it would be a good way of getting back at me!”

“Yeah… I can see that,” Joe said, contemplating the mess before us. “But just smell this, Mike. This stuff had to be rotten! What
you
did was in the heat of the moment, and totally understandable considering what he’d done to you. But this… this was
premeditated
. You can’t just go to the store and ask for a pack of
rotten
eggs, or a bag of
rotten
tomatoes—he had to buy this stuff and let it sit out in the sun for
days
before using it!”

Put in that light, it was even more heinous. Although our first impulse was to wash it off, we decided to call the police and file a report, and also (my idea) take photos of it. I contemplated seeking out some of Brandon’s friends—even going to Cocktales if I had to—and showing them
these
pictures as proof he was a vindictive piece of shit!

Some of my neighbors came over to offer their condolences, but nobody had seen the crime being committed, so when the police arrived, we had no evidence to offer except the damage itself. When I insisted that it had to be Brandon, the middle-aged officer (who had looked bored all through his “investigation”) simply shrugged.

“I’m sorry, boys, but there’s nothing I can do without some hard evidence,” he said, putting away his notepad. “At least most of this will wash off, and as long as nothing’s been tampered with under the hood, the only damage is cosmetic.”

“B-but, aren’t you going to question him, at least?” I demanded, noticing he hadn’t written down Brandon’s address when I gave it to him. He shook his head.

“I have no reason to—no probable cause. Now, if you can find a fingerprint somewhere in all of this,” he said as he glanced doubtfully at the goo on the truck, “then you’re welcome to have us come out and lift it. But for something like this, even if you
can
get a conviction, all they’d get is a slap on the wrist. Frankly, I’ve seen worse pranks on Halloween.”

I was about to retort that maybe he would feel differently if it were his
own
car, when Joe placed a heavy hand on my shoulder and distracted me (more than he could know).

“Well, thank you for coming out, officer,” he said politely. He was much calmer than I was, even though this was an outrage committed against
his
property. “We’ll just wash it off now.”

After the cop left, I was still seething and stomped into the garage to pull out the garden hose, but Joe followed me in there.

“Look, Mike, there’s only so much the police can do,” he said in a patient, hushed voice. “And really, your ex has just taught us a valuable lesson!”

“
What
?” I yelled, staring up at him as though he’d taken leave of his senses.

He grinned, a wicked twinkle in his eyes.

“He’s shown us that the important thing is to
not get caught.
”

W
E
spent the next hour washing off the besmirched truck, and then, at my insistence, we switched the trucks so that his was in the garage and mine was in the driveway. My hope in doing this was that Brandon would drive by the scene of the crime and be at least perplexed when he saw a perfectly clean and graffiti-free truck. And also, just in case he came back to do more, I wanted it to be on
my
truck (even though it was my baby), not Joe’s.

As for Joe, he revealed to me his devious side, which I hadn’t suspected even existed. But then again, having your new vehicle violated tends to change a man.

“My first impulse was to find the bastard and beat him to a pulp,” he admitted as I made lunch, “but then
I
could get in trouble with the law. No, we have to play it smart and not leave any incriminating evidence—just like
he
did.”

“Well, between the two of us, we’ve certainly watched enough crime dramas to pull this off,” I agreed.

We worked together to hash out our plan and, after lunch, continued to discuss it while I took my painting supplies to the garage. It would be extremely expensive to get the panels repainted professionally, but since I still felt that this was my responsibility, I’d asked Joe if I could cover up the graffiti with some hand-painted art.

“I can try to get the paint off with benzene,” I explained, “but that would take the shine and probably the original paint off too, making it more susceptible to the elements. If you trust my painting skills, though, I can put some designs right on top of it so it’ll look like you had it detailed.”

“I trust your painting skills implicitly,” he vowed, so I opened up the garage door a crack for ventilation and got started.

I was a bit nervous having Joe watch my every move, but once I’d decided on the picture, it flowed easily off my brush. Since the background was that lovely midnight blue, I went with a night scene and put a full moon right where the dot of the
i
was, surrounding it with a pine forest. I added a shimmering lake under the moon and, in silhouette, the majestic horns of an elk stepping out to get a drink at the lake. Not only was it a night scene, but the elk tied it in with hunting and made it feel more macho.

“That’s just… amazing…” was Joe’s comment, repeated every so often. I added a few bright stars in the sky and stepped back to take in the completed effect. It was stunning, if I do say so myself!