by k.l.g.
�Let�s take a quick stop here,� I suggest, pointing to the large green sign that reads, �Welcome to Cary, North Carolina.� Robert rolls his eyes, but turns the wheel, allowing us to glide off of I-40 smoothly and directly leading us into Cary. It�s meant to be a joke, since my ex-boyfriend�s name is Cary, but Robert cruises down the road anyway, muttering under his breath that I�m fucked up in the head and that he�s tired of my faggot shit.
The only thing that bothers me about being on the road is gas stations, an inevitable pit-stop when traveling the amount that Robert and I do. It�s not that I have something against gas station attendants � I wouldn�t mind sitting all day selling cigarettes and beer to eager minors. I just could never get over the fact that the first time Cary tricked was in a gas station.
Cary was fresh meat, seventeen, and willing to get his hands on anything to give him a high. At a gas station, he and a friend met a guy who was generous enough to give Cary E, but not generous enough to tell him the price before pressing it to his lips, Cary�s tongue swirling around the man�s dirty fingers, no doubt. The guy asked Cary if he�d trick for it. Cary followed the man to the back of his truck and opened a world for Cary that he never left for several years later. He was seventeen.
In a truck at a gas station, Cary?
�It was kind of nice. There was leather interior.�
A gas station, Cary?
�He was kind of hot.�
Maybe. But to this day, I can�t look at a gas station without thinking of Cary, unaware of his sexual power and the hundreds of tricks he�d land later on, being lead to a truck in a gas station parking lot. Parting awkward legs, looking up at the canvas ceiling, a larger, grubbier man on top of him, thrusting into Cary the frustration and relief of finding a boy for the night. Cary said he tried not to cry. But, in this holy vehicle something began for Cary�a life of club bathrooms and seductive hip-swaying, casual and unpaid sex, misconnected and failed relationships, all resting on the urgency for Cary to return to that spot, trying to return to the place that hurt and felt good. He was held by someone stronger, that made him believe that everything would be all right.
We pull up to a gas station, and I throw Robert five dollars across the stick shift. He gets out of the car and pumps the gas while I survey my surroundings. There are a few busy pedestrians wandering around shopping areas that all seemed to be Jesus related.
We decide to get the hell out of Cary, North Carolina. I realize as we get into the car that I have no favorite memory of Cary. Not any of the kinky adventures or the frat parties or even the time when we went camping with my parents when I was still in the closet and we were ecstatic when we realized I�d forgotten my sleeping bag and we had to share one. There isn�t a specific time or place. Rather, what makes me remember Cary is all our random lazy Sundays put together, both of us living in our luxury of time, the sun pouring in on us with the buzz of the city offering us a background of reality.
There we�d spend our mornings exploring each other in a sort of way that wasn�t as vacant as I knew Cary was capable of being. They were mornings where I didn�t feel like another one of Cary�s jobs, like something more, something Cary wanted me to believe I was. He smelled of metal and Old Spice, the smell blanketing my bedroom, something exotic yet close to home. There would be fingers and tongue running over collar bones and Adam�s apples, arms snaking around boyish torsos and limbs, legs intertwining, sweat accumulating, necks and backs arching, pelvises smashing together, and I never felt alone.
Prior to leaving, we walk down the rows of What Would Jesus Do shops, looking in windows, our reflections bright against stained glass crosses and crucifixes. I sip my warm Coke that�s been in the car for hours in the hot North Carolina sun. Robert points ahead at a flagpole, standing triumphantly in front of a Super K-mart with an American flag and a Confederate flag flapping softly in the breeze.
Two days ago, Robert and I had stopped by Legends to check out the scene and pretend we were younger than we actually were, checking out the queens and attempting to ignore the fact that along with our sexual preference came the reality that being twenty-five was middle-aged. I spotted Cary at the bar, talking with a couple of guys, his hips slanted forward and arm slung over some guy�s shoulder. To these guys, he was fruit on the garden of Tantalus that they could only taste for a twenty dollar-bill.
I sat next to him, Cary immediately turning towards me and striking up conversation like it was two years ago and we could still speak honestly. He told me about what he�d been doing, but never how he�d been feeling. He told me about his new place in the Bronx and what a bitch it was to climb five flights of stairs every night when you get in at five a.m. He told me that there�d been some guys, but not many, and that he was as selective as he always was, but never as selective as he could be. As he talked, his skin glowed and his eyes were dim, but it was like we�d seen each other yesterday. We talked until the bar closed.
I walked him home, and he never stopped talking until we got to the corner of 231st street. The wind was cold as we hugged. We stood there hugging for what seemed like days, and his smell took me everywhere I needed to be at that moment. I smelled the first time we skipped class to just sleep in, his screams over the phone when he told me he�d been raped, the distant look he gave me when I showed up at his place while he was fucking a fifty-dollar guy he picked up at Saints. I smelled on his neck those random Sunday mornings where time stretched before us, reminding us that sooner or later, we wouldn�t have this time at our dispense.
I asked him if I was allowed to go up with him. He questioned my sanity at the moment. We went to bed, and in the bed with us I found the knowledge that none of what we had could ever be again, and that we were both all right with that. There had been too much happiness or sadness, or just too much. I relived that night the dirty looks one gets when they hold the hand of another man, the liberation and devastation of coming out, the innocence of virginity and the innocence without it. Time stretched out before us like it used to, and in the back of my mind I remembered how it always seemed like it would last for eternity, and that I was scared shitless of what to do if it didn�t. It felt great.
As we leave Cary, North Carolina (�Cary, North Carolina � Come Back Soon!� the sign reads), we pass by station wagons with wood paneling, red clay, and blissful stares. There is something peaceful about this place.
�Hey,� I say, turning to Robert. �Now we can both say that we�ve been in Cary.�
Robert rolls his eyes and scowls. Next week, I promise to take him to lesbian night at Saints. He�s definitely tired of my faggot shit.