Out of Position (14 page)

His paw cups the front of my pants, and he growls softy, rubbing. I press back against him, arms tightening around him. He pulls back from the kiss, leaving my tongue hanging in the air and an undoubtedly goofy look on my muzzle. “I like it better when you wear the skirt,” he says.

For a minute, I think he’s saying he likes me better dressed as a woman. Then I see the sparkle in his eyes and realized he’s trying to goad me. So I give him a nasty grin back, and say, “It’s all the same once it’s off.”

From that point, the tenderness is on hold until we’re panting, exhausted, naked, and sticky in bed. Usually I get up to shower pretty quickly, but this time I don’t want to leave the warmth between us. Months ago, lying in the curl of his arm next to his broad chest, my paw on his stomach, would have felt awkward. Hell, weeks ago it would’ve been a little awkward. Now it feels right, and I don’t want to do anything to spoil it. So I hesitate, and then say, “I’m gonna miss you.”

He leans back against the pillow, still whuffing softy. “Yeah, me too.”

“I was thinking,” I say, hesitating, “maybe I could call you on Christmas.”

He’s quiet, processing that for a bit. “Yeah,” he says finally. “Call me.”

“Can I talk to your mom?” I say, nosing him in the neck.

He growls and squeezes me. “Don’t push it.”

Our minds must be following that remark in similar directions, because after a little silence, he says, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to take you home.”

Which I’d just been thinking about, too. “Why, mom and dad not into the whole ‘fag’ thing?”

He flinches. “Not so much, really.” He turns his head so his muzzle is touching mine, our eyes less than a hand’s breadth apart. “I suppose your parents are fine with it.”

I return his look evenly. “They know about it.” Which he already knew. Hard for them not to, when their son comes home with a stack of “Queer Fox Power” stickers and wears his pink triangle button all over. “Do you want this to be more than just an at-school thing?”

His eyes remain level with mine, but their focus slides away, and then he turns his head to rest back against the pillow again. “I don’t want to think about that right now.”

“We’re going to have to think about it sometime,” I say. “At least sometime in the next six months. You know, before graduation.”

“I don’t want to think about it
now”
he says.

“Suit yourself,” I say, and bury my nose in his shoulder.

A moment later, he sighs. “I don’t know, Lee. It’s just so strange, still. I just barely feel normal like this.”

“You feel normal to me.”

He squeezes me again, with affection this time. “Maybe that was the wrong word. I feel good like this. And all that stuff I learned in church and school boils down to the fact that we’re not hurting anyone and we both feel good, so that’s it, right? What’s wrong with it? But it’s more complicated. There’s my folks, and friends, and…”

And football. “Yeah, I know,” I say. “If it’ll help, it’s complicated for me, too.”

“Really? I thought you had everything figured out two moves ahead.” His paws tickle my side, teasing me.

I squirm happily, and then the downstairs buzzer rings.

I know who it is immediately, and so I reach for it. Dev says, “You’re expecting someone?”

“Not really,” I say. “I hoped he wouldn’t come. Go away, Brian,” I say as I hit the buzzer.

His voice comes back, not slurred. Good. He’s not drunk, just buzzed. “Let me in. I know he’s there. I just wanna say hi.”

“Go away.”

“What’s the matter, Tip? Did I catch you in the middle of things? Sorry about that. I thought you never took longer than five minutes. Maybe that was with all the other guys.”

I release the intercom and lay back in the bed with a sigh.

“Your best friend?” Dev says quietly.

The intercom buzzer sounds again. “Once,” I say, without reaching for it. “Now, I don’t know. We’ve developed some… philosophical differences.” But ‘developed’ isn’t right; they were always there, just under the surface and theoretical.

It goes off again, and another time. “Like when to leave each other alone?” Dev says.

“Among other things.” I growl softy and get out of bed, padding naked to the closet to grab my robe.

“Can’t you just turn down the volume?”

“You must be thinking of those ritzy places you athletes live in,” I say, cinching the robe loosely around my waist. “Just stay like that. I’ll be right back.”

“You sure you don’t want me to come down?” he says as I open the door.

“Positive. I can handle this.” I slip outside and start down the two flights of stairs, hoping I can live up to my bravado.

He’s leaning against the doorframe, looking bored as he presses the button over and over. When he sees me, he perks up his ears and smiles. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down,” he says through the glass, and puts a paw on the handle, waiting for me to buzz it open.

I fold my arms. “I came down to tell you to go home, Brian.”

“Aw, Tip, I came all the way here. I promise, I won’t cause a scene.”

“You already have,” I say. “Why can’t you just let well enough alone?”

“Because I don’t want to see you hurt!” He matches my tone. “Because I care about you!”

“This isn’t about me. This is about you.”

“Don’t be like that. Come on, just let me in. I just want to come in and make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine. You happy? Now get out of here.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this. As long as we’ve been friends. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Doesn’t it mean anything to you?” I counter.

“Of course it does. That’s why I’m here!”

I sigh and shake my head. “I’m not going to let you in. You know I’m as stubborn as you are.”

“Oh, Tip, you don’t have the slightest—” His eyes widen. I hear heavy treads on the stair behind me. Great. Just what I needed.

Dev’s put his pants on and is on the bottom stair, looking at us. When I turn, I motion him back upstairs. The last thing I need is for him to threaten Brian, to make everything worse. He puts a finger on my muzzle and crowds me forward to the door, sliding his arms around me to hold me against him. I look at his face and then squirm around to face Brian. We face him together.

He looks up at Dev and down at me. “So you’re the one taking advantage of Wiley,” he sneers, hiding his fear pretty well. I can see the twitch in his ears before he steadies them, and the way he brings his paws up in front of his stomach looks more nonchalant than it really is.

“Nobody’s taking advantage of anyone,” Dev rumbles. “We’re just trying to have a nice talk and a sleep, and we’d appreciate it if you’d keep the noise down.”

“I just wanted to say hi and meet you.”

“And now you’ve said hi. Good night,” Dev says, and starts to turn.

“If you hurt him,” Brian says in a high, scared voice, “I’ll hurt you twice as bad.”

We turn back around, and Dev brings his paws up to my chest. “I love this fox,” he says. “So don’t you worry about that.” And with that, he leaves Brian speechless, scoops me up in his arms, and carries me two stories up to the apartment. My robe hangs open enough for anyone passing by to see my sticky sheath, but I don’t give a crap. I spend the whole time just leaning against Dev’s shoulder, processing his words.

When he deposits me on the ground back in the quiet apartment, I’m grinning like a fool. He doesn’t look me in the eye right away, but I keep quiet and I know he saw me. Finally, he looks up, shakes his head and says, “What?”

I poke him gently in his bare stomach. “I knew you loved me,” I say with my best sly grin.

He rolls his eyes. “Foxes,” he grumbles, and chases me back to the bed, where the robe and pants soon fall by the wayside, and, for now, everything is perfectly all right.

(Lee)

 
December 2006

As of last year, if you grew up without siblings, you’re three times more likely to be in therapy than if you had a brother or sister. Just a bit of empirical evidence that perhaps the undivided attention of your parents is not necessarily a good thing.

Over the years, part of our Christmas ritual has become the Reviewing Of The Past. Father loves to shoot home movies. We were the first family in Fox Hollow to have a camcorder, back when they were bulky things that nearly put him in the hospital with a strained back. Mother loves to show home movies, and since their chick (that would be me) flew the nest to attend college three and a half years ago, the Reviewing Of The Past has gone from “we’re all sitting around stuffed after dinner, why not throw in some movies,” to “Wiley! Come into the living room, we have to start the movies now or we won’t be done by bedtime!”

It’s December twenty-third, and the feature tonight is Memorial Day Barbecue 1992, starring Firefox Wiley, age 7. I press myself against the side of the sofa, curl my tail over my lap, dig my elbow into the arm of the couch and rest my head in my paw, watching the fourteen-year-old film. I can’t tell anymore whether I remember this day or just think I remember it because I’ve seen the film so many times. It’s one of Mother’s favorites.

“You’re so adorable in that little helmet,” she says. I resist the temptation to tell her it got stolen by Jimmy Galgin in third grade, even though I know it’s the next thing she’ll ask. “Whatever happened to that?” she says.

She doesn’t really want to know. That’s just the cue for my father to make some comment about his friend the volunteer fireman, the one who gave it to me. “You know, Boll’s second in line for the chief of the V.F.D. now,” he says, right on his mark. “Vic Holbrush is fourth.”

Vic is my age, a high school classmate who beat the concept of species sympathy right out of me. “Vic couldn’t hit the urinal from a foot away,” I say. “I had better aim at seven.”

On the screen now, I’ve just turned on the water and am running back to the business end of the hose. In a minute, I’ll spray my father and the barbecue grill, ruining fifty dollars’ worth of steaks.

“Those were top choice sirloin from Morningstar Farm,” my father says, watching Firefox Wiley take aim. “Cost me fifty dollars. That was real money back in ’92.”

“It’s real money now,” I say.

“Do you need money, dear?” Mother’s eyeshine appears in my peripheral vision as she turns toward me.

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“He doesn’t mind needing money,” Father says, “or he wouldn’t be majoring in English.”

I’ve positioned my arm on the sofa so that I can see the faintly glowing numbers on my wristwatch. Technically, it’s twenty-two minutes until I’ve told Dev I’ll call him. I consider making up an excuse to leave, like another promised phone call. But then I’d have to find someone else to call until I could call Dev, and though there are a number of people I could try, I can’t guarantee that any of them would answer. Then I’d have to explain why the person I was trying to call wasn’t answering, and they’d give me a hard time when I left to make the call I’d really scheduled.

Lying would be more fun if it weren’t so goddamn complicated.

The barbecue is dripping now. It’s always amusing to sort out who’s laughing and who’s cursing during the next few minutes. Father’s friends Kellen and Yolanda, whose names I only remember because it’s Kellen’s bushy white tail I run to hide behind later in this video, have pleasant laughs, oddly similar trebles. Mother’s laugh is faster than it usually is, probably nervous because Father is cursing and so is the wolf who used to work with Father. Uncle Roger is doing both, and Aunt Millicent’s trying vainly to straddle both sides. Their daughter, Amy, now married with two cubs, is somewhere inside.

“You were a good fireman,” Mother says.

It’s futile to point out that I was only seven and playing with a garden hose. “There wasn’t even a fire,” I say, “and besides, I was seven. Who picks their career based on dressing up at the age of seven?”

“Ruined fifty dollars worth of steaks,” Father repeats.

“Didn’t you have fun doing that?” Mother asks me.

I sigh. “Of course I did. Anytime I got to cause chaos and ruin something expensive of Father’s, I had fun. But you don’t base your life on what’s fun, now, do you?”

“Wiley’s right,” Father says, but of course what the one paw supporteth, the other paw undermineth. “You pick a career based on earning potential. At least, that’s what I did.”

We let that statement hang in the air, shifting on the leather sofa as the expensive wall projector plays movies onto the specially coated living room wall. Rather than steaks, my father is now serving burgers, and over the footage of my mother handing me one, his voice is clearly audible saying, “Great, he’s getting rewarded for ruining my steaks.” In spite of that, or maybe because I can hear it—my ears are fully perked, as they usually were back then—I bite into the burger with almost orgiastic glee, meat juices running through my white muzzle fur, ketchup dripping down my black paws. Mother’s paw is visible in frame, the ineffective napkin easily dodged as I devour the burger.

“So what are you going to do?” my father asks. “Graduation’s coming up, you know.”

“Really?” I say. “They didn’t tell us that.”