Find The Peanut

Once we left Lady Cadbury and our virginities behind, England became our lusty playground. I was living out my --- E. M. Forster fantasy, rolling around with Rick in emerald fields with castles and royal mansions standing by, reminding me that I was not home. Thank God. Not back in that unforgiving, censuring place.

While I was stumbling around in glee, face smiling up to paradise, Rick was stumbling around in a daze. Whatever gay teen-age scenarios he may have imagined, holding hands with his male lover in the streets of England was not one of them.

PDA, he used to call it (public displays of affection) but I thought it ran deeper than that. He was always uncomfortable with me physically and deeply afraid of being found out. But nobody gave a damn; we were invisible. I was amazed at the physical proximity and ease of the men walking around us. Arms over shoulders, hands gently slapping buttocks, leaning in, shoulder-to-shoulder --- and those were the straight ones.

We arrived at Aunt Jennie's and were immediately swept up in the chaos. She was the eye of the hurricane and all around her whirled the neighbor's bratty kids, another distant relative of Rick's (doubtless a fifth cousin twice-removed?) who had shown up unexpectedly, three mutts and, perhaps the neediest of all, her husband Bill. He seemed made of clothespins and string, but what he lacked in presence he made up for in volume.

"Christ on the cross, Jen, where is Petey? Where is he, goddamn it!"

He had gone past the stage of practical demands: eyeglasses (always on his head), the newspaper (which he couldn't read even with the glasses), and custard tarts (into which Aunt Jen mixed most of his medicine). Now he was constantly stamping overhead, crying out for ghosts long-passed, like his younger brother Peter, who had died in World War II. Aunt Jen was up and down the stairs several times an hour, dishtowel over her arm, dragging someone or something with her. When she opened the door for us she had a tray in her hands and Alistair, a fat little five year old from next door, riding on her leg.

"Oh thank God. Thank God you made it and -- oh, this is Dan?"

"Doug," Rick replied.

"Good good good! Come on in Ricky, and Dan -- let me clean up some of this --"

Alistair decided this was a good time to release his hold and bounce on the sofa.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!" he cried.

"Pay him no mind, boys, he's just found a new word. Picked it up from Bill, no doubt."

"How's he doing?" Rick asked, closing the font door.

"Well, sweetheart, good days and bad. Good days and bad."

"Where the fuck is Petey?"

"See what I mean? Now listen boys, we've got an extra body here this week, my daughter-in-law Herta..."

" -- Herta?" I whispered.

"Married to Jennie's son, Uncle Walter. Dead now."

"Oh."

"The men die young in our family."

"I have to go the loo and I don't think I'm going to make it, goddamn it!" Bill called.

"Well, most of them."

"...so I had to give her the third bedroom for the week, which means you boys will have to bunk in together in the blue room," Jen explained, heading for the kitchen. I pinched Rick's ass as he followed and he smacked my hand.

"No, that'll be fine," he said.

"Oh sure, we do it all the time," I said. Another swat.

"We do have twin beds, though, so you won't be on top of each other."

I cleared my throat.

Once ensconced in "the blue room" all the din disappeared. We fell back on one of the beds and conked out.

In the nights, he dropped his inhibitions and became as bold as I think he wished he could be in daylight. Every night was an illicit adventure and now there was a new bed we could sleep in, although sleep we did not do; we bought extra Kleenex from the chemist. Red-faced, Rick also bought a pack of condoms, and tried to slip them under the tissues as we paid. We never used them. Every couple has their own style and we were much more the Jerkers than the Pokers. Plus, we had discovered blowjobs in London and were content to alternate between our two newfound vices. But with wild abandon comes carelessness, as you ignore the world around you. Two days after arriving, sequestered in our room, I felt the urge to do a little deep sea diving.

"Stop it!" he said. "Not in the daytime. C'mon."

Taking no for an answer has never worked with me. A couple well-placed squeezes and a quick unzip and I was on my knees.

"C'mon, no..." he said as he pulled the back of my head closer. Reading the newspaper a moment before, he had been focused on Bosnia and I on Madonna. But as we now focused on something of mutual interest, we didn't hear the bedroom door creak open.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuuuuuuuuuuck!" Alistair exclaimed, announcing his presence.

Luckily he had belted out the first fuck before opening the door, giving us five seconds before sprang onto the bed. I dropped to the floor. Rick snatched the paper and pulled it over his exposed crotch.

"Reading?" Alistair asked.

"Uh huh..."

He craned his chubby neck over the bed and found me.

"Hiding?"

"Yes, Alistair. We were just playing a little game."

"I play?"

"No, no - this is a grown-up game." Rick said. "Didn't your Mommy tell you to knock before you come into someone's room?"

"No," he answered flatly. "What's the game?"

I stood up and went to the chair. "It's called find the peanut."

"Can I play?"

I pulled him away from Rick who was zipping up under the entertainment section.

"No no, buddy --"

"Did you find the peanut?"

"Well, I had it one minute, and the next minute---"

Rick glared. "You really aren't helping."

He spun the chunky monkey around, pointed him toward the hall and gave him a push. "And Alistair, remember to knock on people's --"

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuuuuuck!" he sang out, stomping down the stairs.

You'd think that The Great Blowjob Calamity would have taught us a little something about enhancing security. Keeping our secret just remembering to lock the door.

"And if you'd done that today we wouldn't have come so close to traumatizing the --- "

""Me??"

We pushed the twin beds together every night, our thighs and chests and asses pressed together.

Aunt Jen turned on the radio every morning and started to sing quietly to Barry Manilow or Abba or whomever, and about twenty minutes later she'd call up and say breakfast was ready. But in the early morning the day after Alistair's raid, Rick and I were dozing as usual on top of the conjoined matresses, buck-naked and erect. Suddenly I heard the floorboard creak outside and the doorknob turn.

"Jesus, I thought you locked it!" he said.

"Me???"

We jumped up, pushed the beds apart and covered our asses, although I was sure anybody with half a brain would have put two and two together.

"Petey? Petey?" called Don Quixote in the doorway.

"William, get out of there and let those boys sleep!"

"Where's Petey?" the old boy asked once more, and then walked out.

"Jesus, I'm gonna have a heart attack." Rick said.

We made plans to leave the next morning. As we dragged our suitcases out onto their lawn, Aunt Jen managed to grab both of us in one warm hug. "Oh, thanks so much for coming, Sweetheart. It means so much."

She took a step back and looked at the two of us standing together. Nobody said anything.

"Yes," she finally said, tearing up. "Yes. Good journey, dears."