"Home sweet home," Roy said as he cut the engine.
We had pulled up to a small late '40s or early '50s Frank Lloyd Wright style house with a sloping roof. It was modest and located in a neighborhood that was beginning to go to seed, but was very tidy and well maintained.
There were two bedrooms with one bath and it had a carport for a single car that also housed a small utility room. In that was a small washer that was outdated even for the '70s, but it worked and was all Roy needed.
Most of the drying was done on the clothes line in the back yard. It was the square kind that rotated. Heavier items could be washed and dried at a corner laundromat that was within walking distance if push came to shove.
It was very unpretentious and met all our basic needs. If someone had asked me to sketch what I thought Roy's house might look like I think it would've been almost exactly what greeted me in Pensacola.
Roy was good for his word. His every reference to it on the trip there had been joined to the words 'we' and 'our'. From the moment I saw it, 'home' was exactly how it felt.
I was still in a bit of shock from the confrontation we'd had with Bruce. Having someone as close as we'd always been suddenly turn his back on me over something as simple and natural as love was devastating. There was also the uncertainty of my future relationship with my parents looming over me.
It was a couple of weeks before I screwed up the courage to try calling them to see what they knew and where we stood. Suffice it to say it didn't go well.
In his anger Bruce spilled the beans about his discovery to my dad. I had no idea how detailed he might have been, but my parents were 'God-fearing Christians' who found the thought of their son in a loving relationship with a man too much to handle, much less one who was a bit older than they were. I was effectively disowned.
There was the matter of my car. Roy offered to drive me there to get it. I was honest with him that I thought it best if I took care of it myself.
Dad had been suitably impressed with Roy's imposing build as my guardian, but who knew what kind of scene might unfold with the revelation that he was my lover and sex partner? Roy said he understood.
We agreed I would take the bus back to Kentucky to collect my car and what few belongings I still wanted from the life I'd led there. The experience was jarring to say the least. They acted as if I was a stranger.
It was a difficult trip, but it gave me time to think about my future. I quickly decided any future that didn't include Roy was one I wanted no part of. In my mind I'd made my commitment to him for better or worse during that more than six hundred mile drive from Bristol to Pensacola.
By the time I got back there with my car I had come to terms with my orphan status and knew that there was no looking back; only forward.
Roy had allowed his own family ties to crumble away and felt they were extremely important. He always encouraged me to leave the door open for reconciliation.
My parents and I did eventually reconcile, but Roy was gone by then and they never accepted him for the ally they'd had in him. He taught me before he passed not to begrudge them that; not by his words so much as his deeds and the simple goodness of his heart.
But that's a story for another time.
This one picks up with my return to Roy and the ties we formed as we forged ahead. He made it implicitly clear they were unconditional on his part and I strove in every way to reciprocate.
I turned twenty that November. It was just Roy and I.
We had no peers we were aware of. Pensacola was a military town and very hostile to the unorthodoxy of same-sex relationships. A May/December romance like ours would have been frowned upon even more.
When he turned fifty the following February it was the same. It might sound like a lonely life, but we never saw it that way. As long as we had each other we both believed we had everything we could ask for. I guess we learned that being on the road.
This is not to say there weren't stressful times. Roy was a crew chief who no longer had a crew. However little he might've let it show, I think losing that must have weighed heavy on him at times.
He was always on the lookout for new carnival circuits, but refused all offers when they excluded him being able to take me with him as a paid employee. I encouraged him to follow his chosen vocation but he wouldn't hear of it. He said eight months a year without me was no life worth living as far as he was concerned.
It seemed to break my heart much more than his when that proud man would have to claim unemployment to make ends meet during those first twenty-two months. Roy always said it was no handout. He said he'd paid it in while he was working so it was rightfully his. Of course he was right.
His strength of character and clearheaded wisdom never cracked. More than anything else, that was what got us through.
Whenever I was insecure and needed his sex to comfort me he never denied it. I comforted him the same during his more vulnerable episodes.
However financially lean it was, life with him was giving me a level of confidence I had never known.
My constant fear of 'discovery' kept me meek before the advent of our relationship. I had been living my life like a sheep, being herded along by the will of others. Roy's influence changed that.
The night he first invited me into his bed I realized that I shared my sexual proclivities with a man nobody could mistake for anything but a man. My self-confidence immediately began to blossom. The longer we were together the more it flowered.
One afternoon we had a large load of bed linens to wash that our washer had no hope of handling. Roy needed to take care of some business at the bank.
He pulled up to the laundromat and we loaded our laundry into a couple of washers. The place was empty except for us so I told him to go on to the bank while I stayed with the clothes.
Roy hadn't been gone long when I heard a motorcycle roll up outside. A guy walked in.
He was about Roy's size, but soft looking by comparison. He was probably in his mid-thirties, dressed in ragged bluejeans and a leather vest with nothing underneath it.
The man's body was probably the hairiest I've ever seen; I'm talking 'missing link'. His hair was greasy and on the long side. He had an unkempt beard and wore a 'fuck off' scowl that never broke.
He strode right up to me and sneered. His body odor was foul and he smelled of alcohol.
"You must be the new butt boy."
"The what?" I asked in disbelief.
"Butt boy...you deaf?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Well I know Roy Manus when I see him. He dropped you off here to do his laundry. If what they say about him is true then I'll bet that ain't all you do for him...butt boy."
He gave his crotch a squeeze.
My heart was pounding by then. I had a pretty good idea where he was going with the confrontation and I didn't like it.
"It's Roy 'MAC'Manus..."
Why I bothered correcting him I'll never know.
"...and I still don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't matter," he said, leering at me, "I'm done talking. I want my dick sucked. You're going to do it...and before he gets back...now get in that bathroom!" he ordered me, pointing at the small toilet facility.
"No."
He grabbed my hair and slapped the shit out of me. Using the handful of my hair to gain my cooperation he pulled me to my feet and then started walking toward the restroom with me behind him.
