I sprinted to the front door, and I wanted to rush into Bart's arms and do the whole movie-kiss thing. I wanted a Montgomery Clift and Deborah Kerr wallow in the sand from here to eternity ( even though I'd have to settle for a roll in a Wal-Mart comforter ). I wanted my Rhett to plant a good one on me and then pick me up and carry me up the stairs where we would be quixotically gone with the wind ( A trip to my liberated bedroom would suffice in this situation, but I'd imagine an elaborate Gothic staircase as he carried me away to rapture ). I wanted to be bent over backwards and smooched like the nurse-chick in Times Square in the 1940s V-J day photo ( but I wouldn't slap him when he released me )...............I was ready; my lips were ready................ I'd made Bart wait long enough....................My heart thumped then pounded as I reached for the door knob and gently turned it. Frigid air rushed in all around me, and I craved the warmth of Bart.....................BUT...............all of the romantic visions faded to one single Judas kiss as I looked up to behold Mr. Deliverance with a chaw of tobacco in his jaw. My hopes had been betrayed. My lips immediately shrunk back from their pre-kiss position, and my heart fell with disappointment.
"I need to talk to you about somethin'," he said as he pushed his way into my apartment. I seated myself atop one of the women-at-the-well prints on my velveteen sofa, and prepared myself for his talk.
"Your contract says that you can't have overnight visitors, and you've been having some blond guy over here for a week," he said flatly.
He hit me with this remark at the wrong time, and I had grown weary of hearing his rants about the contract -- which I still couldn't find. It was probably under my bed somewhere............under black socks and Jesus. I thought to myself for a minute: My rent was paid on time, I wasn't a problem renter, and I remembered the bedroom antics of my neighbor that I had heard since I moved in, ((but I did acknowledge to myself that all had been quiet for several nights in his apartment.))
"My neighbor has visitors.........or something. I hear them all the time," I argued and had to wonder why Mr. Deliverance was awake and away from his wife at this time of the night. It had to be after one a.m.....and Bart should have been here by now.
"He's been working out of town for over a week, and I never knew he had anyone spendin' the night there," he said flatly as he took a seat ( uninvited ) in one of the Naugahydes and spread his legs wide open. One hand rested on top of his over-sized belt buckle as he leaned a little too comfortably into the chair, and the other hand casually raised a styrofoam coffee cup to his lips where he spat into it. Some small tobacco spit stains dotted his tight white T-shirt from where he'd obviously missed his cup earlier in the evening ,and his voice had a superior air about it, like someone who enjoyed using his self-perceived power over an innocent.
"I hurt my ankle, and a friend was helping me out," I explained but wondered why I needed to offer an explanation. I had to remind myself that I still lived in America and wondered if this redneck knew that.
"So, he won't be back?" he asked with a little bit of hopefulness in his voice and a tad-bit more superiority. He also tilted his head forward a bit and raised his brow to indicate his seriousness in the matter. I knew exactly why he was hopeful and this hillbilly reject didn't have a chance in hell with me, and his superiority could be shattered with the mention of a few words....... I decided to take the conversation on a different course, and to use some of my bitchiness that had been bred into me. I tended to think that my brazenness was part of my Cherokee heritage, but like Superman, I only used my special powers when necessary. You'd be surprised at some of the wonders I had worked with my forked tongue. Being a bitch is painful, but unfortunately it is compulsory in a world that perceives gays as being weak. I doubted I could beat this guy at arm wrestling, but I had a few cards up my sleeve that would insure a win. His own mouth had given me my ammunition.
"I was just wondering if you and your little brother had gone to the deerwoods this year, since it is deer season now," I said ever so genteely.
The deerwoods was an Arkansas cultural event that took me years to fully understand. Deer hunting was a religion down here in Arkansas. Many men and women were members of lodges around the state where they hunted deer and other game throughout the year. Deer season was the apex of the custom, and it usually fell near Thanksgiving. Kids were withdrawn from school to celebrate this yearly ritual. Some school districts even shut down for a week or two at a time so their students could participate. So many inhabitants of this state joined in this custom that local economies plummeted until the deer hunters returned home. Not only did they hunt deer, but they also hunted wild boar , geese, ducks, rabbits and coons depending on their own personal liking and the time of the year. Entire families would disappear into the deerwoods and emerge reeking of the wild (( showering or bathing revealed their presence to the deer, so they let their bodies get ripe with sweat to blend into the wilderness )) and toating venison that they later transformed into deer chili and other culinary curiosities. (( It seemed that every family had its own special recipe to purge the gaminess from the deer meat that ranged from soaking it in Buttermilk to curing it in garlic for two weeks or longer.))
It wasn't really a competitive sport; it was more like a sport that carried bragging rights and taxidermists flourished in this part of Arkansas. Dead deer heads hung over many mantles and 8 x 10's of Grandma's holding up a dead deer's head with a huge rack ( no, I'm not talking about the bosom of granny. I'm referring to the head full of horns the deers had. ) adorned many family dining room walls amidst china cabinets filled with depression glass. Just like fishing, every amateur hunter had a story of the Buck that got away.
The deerwoods sounded like a mystical place to me since I'd never been there, but it was really just the broad expanse of forest that surrounded this mountanous area of Arkansas. The lodges ranged from mansion-like wood and stone structures to simple pre-fab metal buildings. Families with less means usually just went to the deer camp, and they set up tents on family land to hunt the great white tail. It seemed that every family who had long roots in this area owned their own family structure or land where they celebrated deericide. Kin fought over the inheritance of the deer lodge or deer camp at the death of the patriarch OR matriach in whose name it resided. Deer hunting was a serious, sacred event in Arkansas and what happened in the deerwoods, stayed in the deerwoods.................. unless you pissed a smart queer off......
"Yeah, we went for a few days. Just me and him," He said as he grinned broadly ( like a dirty old man ) and reached down and groped himself suggestively.
"Does your wife know just how close you are to your little brother?" I asked with feigned innocence.
"Are you kiddin'? She'd throw my ass out," he said with some fervor and then spit again.
"I really don't see anything wrong with Bart staying here a few days a week, do you?" I paused with a sly smile. "It would be just awful for your wife to find out about your deerwood rendezvous with your brother....................... now, wouldn't it?"
"You wouldn't tell her. Would you?" he sat up from his relaxed state and closed his legs.
"She'd probaby divorce you, and you know she'd tell your Mama and Daddy and all your relatives would find out. It wouldn't be long before everyone in Garland county would know that you and your little brother had been stemming the rose in the deerwoods for a couple decades...." I trailed off in a very sweet, unassuming voice.
And I paused and just looked at him with my eyebrow cocked. Suddenly the look of superiority disappeared from his face, and he crumpled into the Naugahyde. Truthfully, I enjoyed watching this ingrate squirm. Of course, I'd never play my cards -- not because I was necessarily nice -- but because the threat of playing them gave me more power for a longer time than simply throwing the cards on the table in front of the unsuspecting wife. He deserved the feeling that I'd flung on him for multiple reasons. The least of which was what he was trying to do to me. His wife was completely innocent in the matter, and she deserved better. I somehow knew safe-sex was anathema to him, and it didn't take a genius to realize that Deliverance's sibling wasn't his only sex partner. The possibility of viruses and bacteria circulating through his blood and semen was imminent, and the mother of his children should be protected. I imagined that he'd started dominating his little brother into performing incestuous deeds many years prior...probably when the brother was a child who had little choice in the matter........Yes, we were having a "come-to-Jesus" meeting, and I knew that it was long over-due.
"As long as Bart can stay here as often as he'd like and as long as no one enters my apartment when I'm not here, I don't see any reason in breaking your wife's blissful ignorance." I continued to smile. "Know what I mean?"
"Okay.......I get it." he murmured quietly and then rose from the Naugahyde. His face had blanched white, and he waivered a bit as he stood before me........"I get it................I see how you are," he said with some finality as if I were the one in the wrong.
"It's not how I am," I said firmly. "It's how you force me to be to survive," I uttered the final sentence to the world in general, not to simply the less-than-intelligent brother fucker who slipped through my door with his tail between his legs.
He'd made me resort to it. The part that really pissed me off was that he thought he could intimidate me because I was gay. Typical of straight men, he had miscalculated me and had no idea that I was also a cunning Cherokee.
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