A story about a chance meeting from a while back. The young man is no longer quite as young but is much wiser.
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Chapter One: Off the bus
How I found myself at that bus station in Fort Wayne, Indiana is a long and not very interesting story that can be condensed in a few paragraphs.
I had suspected that the man I had been living with for the last several months was seeing somebody else. When I had asked him whether or not that was happening, Donald had told me that I was crazy, and I think that he even told me that I had it all wrong that afternoon when I came home early and saw him in our bed, gobbling the dick of another guy.
Not thinking, but only knowing that I had to get out of there as fast as I could, I threw together some things and bolted out of our apartment. The next thing I knew I found myself in the bus terminal buying a ticket to Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Why Fort Wayne? I have no idea, except that when I was a kid I used to listen to hockey games on the radio, and the Komets radio station used to come in really clear at night despite how far away Fort Wayne was from my Albany home.
That wasn't a very good reason to go there, but I wasn't thinking very clearly at the time. I was hurt, because I thought that I meant more to Donald than that. He had an eye for younger guys, which was how I had ended up with him to begin with. I guess that 19 wasn't young enough for him any more, at least if the twink I had caught him with was any indication.
Once I arrived in Fort Wayne I wandered around the city for hours, totally lost. Coming there was stupid, not because of the city itself, which seemed alright, but I didn't have a clue as to what I was going to do now. Hell, it wasn't even hockey season.
That was when he saw me. The pickup truck that had gone by me going the other way had swung back around and was now pulling alongside of me and stopping.
"Come on with me," said the voice inside the cab of the truck as the passenger door swung open.
There was nothing all that inviting about the offer; the truck was a rusty piece of crap that was probably as old as I was and the man with the deep voice that had invited me inside certainly wasn't all that friendly looking either.
Just the opposite. The man that beckoned me looked like something out of a horror movie. Bald and grim looking, he resembled Tor Johnson from those old Ed Wood movies, although in much better shape. No one in their right mind would have gotten into that truck that evening, which says a lot about my state at that moment because there I was, climbing in and closing the door.
"I'm Kenny," I said, after thanking him for picking me up. "Kenny Charles."
"Connor," the gravelly bass voice replied, and I didn't know if that was his first name or his last name.
"I'm not from around here, so I don't really know where I'm going," I told him.
"With me," was his answer.
...
Chapter Two: With Connor
As we drove out of town those were the last intelligible words he said to me. Although I talked the entire fifteen minutes we were in the truck, all I got in response from any of my comments and questions were grunts. By the time we pulled into the driveway of the little house on a dark and dusty road somewhere that was 10 miles away from Fort Wayne in who knows what direction, all I knew was that I was a dead man.
This was like a scene out of a horror movie. There I was walking into a strange house with a guy I didn't know, and as I walked behind him I was struck by the size of the man. It was obvious even sitting in the truck that he was a big guy, but he had to be at least 6'6" or better because he towered over me and I'm almost 6' tall, and he probably weighed close to twice my 165 pounds.
Not fat though, that was for sure. He was wearing bib overalls and a red and white checkered flannel shirt with the sleeves torn off, exposing arms that looked to be the size of my legs. Despite his shiny bald skull, the rest of his body seemed to be covered with a pelt of hair.
Connor was ageless, and by that I mean that he could have been anywhere from 35 to 65. All I could think of was that this had to be a relative of that old wrestler George "The Animal" Steele, and I wondered whether my mentioning that would be appreciated. Would that be better than having a guy say that you looked like Tor Johnson?
Would he even know who either of these men were? That was a valid question, because while there was a bent and twisted antenna on the roof of the little house, there was no evidence of it being needed. No TV was in the house, and it only took a quick look for me to figure that out.
The living room and the kitchen were all one big room, about 20' by 10', and all that was in it was a roll top desk and chair in one end and a kitchen table with one chair in the other, with a wood burning stove in the middle of the room. Talk about living simply! This man was a real minimalist.
I could see that there was a bedroom off of this room, because there was no door, and inside that room the only furnishings were a bed, a night table with a lamp on it and a small dresser.
"Uh, excuse me Mr. Connor," I said meekly.
"Connor," he replied with a grunt, so I assumed that it was his first name. Either that or he wasn't into titles.
"Can I use your bathroom? I asked, and Connor nodded behind us to a small room off the kitchen area.
There was a door to the bathroom, but the bathroom was furnished much like the rest of the place, or should I say unfurnished. There was a toilet, a sink, and a metal shower stall and a towel hanging on a nail. On the sink was a bar of soap, a tube of generic toothpaste and a toothbrush.
I was a bit surprised that there was a roll of toilet paper, figuring that maybe there would be a pile of leaves instead, but at least the plumbing worked and it was clean. Surprisingly clean, as was the rest of the house. It was rustic in an odd way and everything in it seemed to be a relic of the 60's, but it sure was spotless.
When I emerged from the bathroom, Connor was at the ancient stove, heating up a pot filled with some kind of stew. Who knows what or who was in the mixture, but it did smell good, and after my offer to help was answered with a grunt that I took as a no I stood by the table and watched until he was finished cooking.
He grabbed a couple of plates from the cupboard; one a red plastic and the other of white china with a faded gold trim around the edge, and after he set them on the bare table he motioned for me to get the other chair that was at the desk.
When I returned he had put a couple of glasses filled with water beside the table. Mine was an old Flintstones jelly glass featuring Barney Rubble, and his was a tall gold glass that looked like something you would get at a gas station giveaway. Two bent forks completed the dinner setting, and I vowed to be neat enough to not need the napkin I didn't get.
