Chuck Fisher. There he was, drinking a cheap beer under the dim lights of the Groom Ramada's Bay Field Hall. I let the door swish shut behind me and when I looked again his brown eyes were right on mine.
I looked back. Let him see me, let me see him. He tilted his face to the floor, sucked in the mouth of his bottle. Then he peeked back up at me.
I moved on, looking past and around him to the crowd of about a hundred, the badly-dressed and almost middle-aged lot of them. My class. Groom Senior High Class of 1993.
There was Monica Berretz, slurping a Long Island iced tea, makeup thick as buttercream frosting on her tore-down face. Oh she'd been a bitch to me, particularly in our junior-year history class. We reported on a pop-culture figure from the sixties/seventies, I did David Bowie. I mentioned his bisexuality and she said something like, "Well now we all know why Shane did his report on him."
She was talking to a short, round woman whose name I couldn't remember, getting in her face, making some sort of point by poking a skeletal finger at her.
Phew. I needed a drink if I was going to get through this so I sidled up to the bar and ordered a martini from the sorta-cute bartender. "And a shot of whisky," I added on second thought.
"Shane. Shane Scully?" I looked to my right. A string bean of a woman looked back at me. She had a nest of curly hair on her head, bright orange earrings.
"Molly Ignario," I said.
"As I live and breathe," she said, and embraced me. She held me out, looked me over. "You have held up well. I like those shoes."
"Thanks," I said. The shoes - bright pink as just as expensive as my tailored suit and hot pink tie, thank you very much - had been a color-as-message masterstroke. It said Hola motherfuckers, I'm gayer and more successful than you'll ever be, so suck it up. "You don't look so bad yourself."
"Pff." She leaned into me, her hand held up next to her mouth conspiratorially. "Better than some of these folks, that's for sure." I laughed. I liked Molly. She'd always been nice to me. "I saw your article - The New York Times...that's large potatoes, mister. Congratulations."
"Eh, it was just a profile. Sunday edition." She rolled her eyes and jabbed her elbow into my side.
"Still, that must be great for your business. Christ I'm practically selling my soul to get a mention in the Groom Gazette. Though, all in all, my store is doing pretty well, I mean I can honestly say that I'm doing better than some of the small business owners out there..."
Her voice drifted to the back of my brain. He was looking at me again. Chuck fucking Fisher.
Talk about holding up well: Chuck had matured into exactly my type. Or maybe he'd been my prototype, despite the fact that I'd considered him my worst enemy in high school.
He was with four other guys all of whom I unfortunately remembered. The douchebag brigade - they'd all harassed me at one point or another in high school. Brody Ravenstal, Jim Gallaway. Chuck was shorter than any of them - shorter than I remembered, muscled and fit, with a barrel-wide chest (hair peeking from the collar of his beige oxford shirt). He was poured into his Dockers, with thick thighs and an ass that looked better than I remembered, cheeks thick and plump as succulent chicken breasts. A big round bulge up front.
Nobody had been worse to me than Chuck. I knew that part of the reason I was at the damn reunion (and looking so fly) was because of the chance that he might be there. I wanted him to lap it up.
Now he was, like a thirsty dog in the heat of summer, and it made me a little uncomfortable. While Chuck had never been physically violent to me, he'd been plenty threatening. He'd called me every name in the queerbasher's handbook. The douchebag crew in the hall, Chuck right up front: "Hey Shane, how much cum did you swallow last night?" Not a high school day had gone by without Chuck asserting that I had less worth than the crust on the bottom of his shoe. I dreaded coming to school. I threw up nearly every morning of my sophomore year, mostly because of him. Now he was staring me down and I felt helpless all over again. I couldn't be sure of what his gaze implied, but it was persistent.
"So yeah, that's my life in a nutshell." Molly, still talking. I turned to her, nodded, and when I turned back Chuck was walking toward us. Toward me, his tits leading the way, his tight core contracting as he maneuvered his way through the crowd. Molly looked at me, looked at Chuck, and shut up.
"Hi Shane," he said.
"Chuck." He glanced at Molly for a moment. She got the message and slipped away.
"I'm glad to see you here," he said in low, confident voice. A familiar voice. It was the way he'd say faggot in my ear when passing me in the hall, a low rumble. "You look good."
"Thanks."
"Look..." he said. I looked. "I know in high school I was a dick to you." I nodded. He held out his hands. "I'm sorry. I just want to say that."
"Okay," I said. My defenses were hard as steel. "Thank you." It was hard to reconcile the contrite man in front of me with the sneering bully I remembered, but there was something in his eyes that stuck - a fierce, kinky gleam I'd forgotten about.
"I'll see ya around," he said, and walked back to his friends.
I ordered another drink. I caught my breath. I caught up with some old friends, mingled.
He never stopped looking at me. I tried to ignore it at first - smiled at him, nodded - but it wouldn't stop. I started to see it for what it was - not hostility, not even anxiety; more like curiosity. Maybe even interest. Was I getting cruised by Chuck Fisher?
Everyone got drunker. Chuck stuck with his posse. God I hated those guys. They slapped him on the back but Chuck seemed above it, on a different wavelength. I suppose he seemed that way to me in high school - the leader, the alpha - but I got the distinct sense that I was the alpha in the room now, at least in his eyes.
I went outside to smoke a cigarette. I listened to the lonely sound of highway, cars rushing past. The door opened, I turned and there was Chuck.
Was I surprised? Not exactly.
"Hey," he said. "Can I bum a cigarette?" I paused. I shook one out for him. He held it between his fingers. "Got a light?" I produced a lighter. He leaned forward, touched the tip to the flame, inhaled. It crackled and glowed. He nodded thanks.
"What do you do these days, Chuck?"
"I run an insurance company. Big company, out in Denver."
"Married?"
"Yeah."
"Kids?"
"No." We sucked our cigarettes. "Are you married?" he said.
"Nope."
"Got a...partner?"
"A couple boyfriends." Chuck paused as if to gauge my seriousness. Then he snickered - not out of malice. He just seemed tickled. "So your wife didn't come with you?"
"She works for a tech company," he said. "An upstart. It's hard for her to get away." He looked at me and I knew. I just knew.
Over the years I've gotten better at spotting ones like Chuck. It's surprising how many there are out there: guys in high-powered, high-stress positions who spend ninety percent of their time at their jobs and juggle family life at the same time. They're so high up on the totem pole and so inured to erotic domination that a dominatrix just won't do it anymore. They need the total humiliation and release they can only get from a man. They need to be fucked, frankly.
