About Carl - 2. Algonquin Park

“Hey, man – pay attention!” Carl said, his mouth full of half-chewed cheeseburger. “You're going to miss the exit!”

Busted. I had been looking at Carl out of the corner of my eye, watching the wind ruffle the hair on his bare legs. I wasn't paying attention to the road signs, and I had failed to slow down for the off-ramp.

Carl laughed at my inattention. “Get your head in the game or we're going to wind up in fucking Sudbury.”

It was late August and I was driving my dad's enormous Pontiac station wagon north up Highway 400, a canoe strapped to the roof. Carl was slouched in the passenger seat, his bare feet up on the dashboard, a paper bag of burgers and greasy onion rings that we'd picked up at a rest stop in Barrie beside him. I turned my eyes back to the road ahead, slowed the car down, and navigated the tricky interchange where Highway 11 diverges from the big four lane expressway and veers off toward Lake Simcoe. Leaving the bedroom communities of Toronto behind, we headed into the open countryside towards our destination, the wilderness of Algonquin Provincial Park.

I was thinking about the last two months, amazed at how the two of us had grown so close. We had become more than just workmates; our friendship had developed into something much more affectionate. All summer we did little things that strengthened the bond between us. At work we avoided the cafeteria and ate lunch together outside on the lawn, just the two of us. We arranged our schedules so that we had the same days off, and we spent a lot of those days golfing, swimming in my parents' backyard pool, or just lounging in the sun drinking beer. It was a glorious, carefree summer.

We passed many long nights at the Chestnut Inn, feeding quarters into the jukebox, and engaging in long passionate discussions about politics and philosophy. Many of those late nights ended in my parents' backyard, where we would strip in the dark and swim naked to cool off from the humid summer heat. We'd float around, whispering to avoid waking up my family. Carl would drift close to me in the warm water so we could talk. I would watch his wet body moving languidly in the dim light.

We were both aware that our friendship was starting to include a physical attraction, but we never acknowledged it. I was confused by what was happening between us. He had a bit of a reputation as a womanizer in school and was never long without female company, so the mutual attraction was puzzling to me.

Then there was his girlfriend, Julie. She occasionally went out with us on our evening trips to the U.S., but we had a habit of getting into long convoluted discussions that were hard for outsiders to penetrate, and as a result she grew a little resentful. Eventually she just let us do our thing together without her. I didn't see much of Julie; Carl made sure to spend time with her aside from our time together.

My feelings for him were causing me no small amount of anxiety. I was constantly fighting my attraction to other men, but damn, he was making it difficult. The reasons for my mental struggle aren't hard to pinpoint in retrospect. I was exposed frequently to casual homophobia at school and at home, and I was well aware that gay men often lived not only as social pariahs, but with the fear of physical violence as well.

Until 1969, homosexuality was illegal in Canada, and gays were described in the criminal law statutes as “criminal sexual psychopaths”. During my years at university there were frequent news stories about vicious gay bashings; in one notorious case a gay Toronto teacher was beaten to death in a park by thugs. Police regularly rounded up homosexuals in bars and bathhouses.

When I was in high school, my home town police once arrested a number of gay men in public washrooms during a coordinated raid at several local shopping centres. The men were charged with “gross indecency”, and their names and addresses were released to the public. The next day the local newspaper covered the arrests and published the names of the men charged. I can remember my parents tut-tutting about the “perverts” over dinner. Careers were ruined, marriages ended, and several men were forced to leave town. One man, a married father of two, a church-going Sunday school teacher, committed suicide in the parking lot of the mall where he had been arrested by dousing himself in gasoline and setting himself on fire.

This constant background noise of homophobia had a deadening effect on me. I was surrounded by evidence that being gay was a ticket to a life of public humiliation and danger. I didn't want that. I wanted what my father had: a wife and kids, a good job and a beautiful home. I felt that all that would be impossible if I was gay.

Carl and I lived in a small town where everyone knew us, and not only were our parents friends, but our fathers were prominent members of the community. It seemed to me unthinkable that anything physical could happen between us. The resulting shame and embarrassment would be overwhelming.

Nevertheless, our friendship grew increasingly intimate as the summer wore on. After one particularly long night out, we realized we only had a few hours until we had to be at work. We decided to go straight to the park and pass the remaining hours of the early morning until it opened. After I pulled my dad's station wagon into the employee parking lot, Carl suggested that we climb into the back of the car to get a few hours of sleep. There were a few blankets there, so we arranged them on the hard surface and rolled up our sweatshirts to use as pillows.

“Jesus Christ, it's cold tonight,” Carl said to me. “Get the hell over here and let's keep each other warm, or neither of us is going to get any sleep.”

“Are you serious?” I said.

“What's the matter; are you afraid I'm going attack you?” he said. “Don't flatter yourself.”

I cautiously moved closer and turned my back towards him. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me closer. I could feel his erection pressing against my ass and I immediately had a hard-on of my own.

I thought about making a dumb joke, a variation on the old Mae West line, “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?”, but before I could say anything I heard him start to snore. I felt his warm breath on my neck.

I was awake all night. I just lay there in Carl's arms, feeling his body wrapped around me, listening to his breathing. When the sun came up we staggered out of the car and headed into the park.

Carl said, “You look like shit this morning. Didn't you get any sleep?”

“Not much,” I said. I wonder why. Who could sleep with your dick poking him in the ass all night?

“For God's sake go take a shower. You look like a corpse – you'll scare away the tourists,” he said.

The summer continued like that; working together, spending our time off relaxing with each other. Near the end of August, we decided to mark the occasion of our impending return to school by taking five days off for a canoe trip to Algonquin Park, a huge wilderness area a few hours drive north of Toronto. We spent hours poring over maps, planning the route, and assembling the food and equipment we would need. When the day for our departure arrived we packed up my dad's car, strapped the canoe to the roof, and left just as the sun was rising.

That's how we found ourselves on Highway 11, heading north on roads that gradually diminished in size and quality. The urban landscape changed to farmland and then eventually to untamed boreal forest as we drove further. At last we found ourselves on a gravel logging road heading towards our jump-off point deep in the park. We were literally at the end of the road.

We parked the car and hauled our canoe and equipment out to the dock. It was very hot, and clouds of aggressive mosquitoes swarmed around us. We loaded the canoe and climbed in, Carl in the bow and me in the stern, and paddled out onto the lake.

Carl let out a whoop that echoed off the surrounding hills. “We made it!” he yelled. “Five days of R & R!”

Now that we were away from the insects, he stripped off his shirt and tilted his head back, his eyes closed and a big smile on his face. As he soaked up the hot sun, I watched the muscles in his back flex and a few drops of sweat roll down between his shoulder blades.

I followed his example and took off my shirt too. We sat in the canoe together for a few moments, clad in nothing but shorts, smiling at each other, just glad to be there together. We picked up our paddles and started across the lake to find a campsite for the night.

We had chosen a big circular route that would take us back to the car in four days, one that required long hours of paddling and some strenuous portages over steep rocky terrain. Every day we got up early in the morning and broke camp, traveled until around five o'clock, then set up camp again. In the late afternoons we went swimming naked in the pristine lakes, sunbathed on the rocks and cooked our dinner over an open campfire. We would stay up late into the night around the fire, sometimes talking, sometimes just quietly listening to the burning wood crackle and looking up at the spectacular display of stars overhead. Then we would crawl into the tent and immediately fall into the deep restful sleep that comes from hard physical exertion.

On the last night of the trip, we broke out a couple of bottles of wine that we had been saving. We drank late into the night, talking, solving the world's problems. The Milky Way sprawled across the sky over our heads, and loons were sending their eerie cries out across the lake. Eventually, drunk and exhausted, we retired to the tent.

It was very hot that night, so we both lay on top of our sleeping bags, stripped to our briefs. Crickets were chirping loudly and there was a buzz from the mosquitoes gathering around the mesh window of the tent. Carl appeared to fall asleep quickly, but I was wide awake, full of emotion from having spent four days alone with this beautiful man, my best friend. I was sad, too, that our idyll was about to end and that in a few days we would move away to our different schools. I wanted to say something to him, to share the love I was feeling.

“Carl,” I whispered. There was no response except for his heavy, rhythmic breathing.

“CARL,” I said again, a little louder. Still no response.

I rolled onto my side, facing him. He was lying on his back, his head turned away from me. In the dim starlight I could see his body, his muscles defined even in the dim light. I was close enough to feel the heat radiating from his skin. He smelled like wood smoke and bug spray.

The sight of him there, almost naked, just a few inches away from me me, made my heart race uncontrollably. I stared at him, lying with his legs spread slightly, his arm over his head revealing the hair under his arm. He had a big mosquito bite just over his nipple.

I felt like I was going to hyperventilate. I was overwhelmed with the desire to reach out and touch him, but aware that this would cross a line in our relationship and might end our friendship if he woke up and caught me. Eventually I rolled onto my back and let my arm fall down beside his, barely touching him. I prayed that he would make the first move.

A few minutes later, he shifted his body and dropped his arm. His hand fell into my open hand. I laced my fingers with his and gently stroked his thumb with my thumb, terrified of his reaction. He didn't move. Had I felt his hand squeeze mine slightly, or was that my imagination?

Trembling, I rolled onto my side and let my other hand fall on his chest. Still there was no reaction. The sensation of his skin under my fingers felt like electric shocks were running through me. I moved my hand lower, following the little trail of hair that led down his belly, until I reached the waistband of his briefs. He had an erection that tented out the fabric and grazed against my hand. Slowly, I slipped my hand under the elastic and gently wrapped my fingers around his cock. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack from the sheer pleasure I got from touching him. His shaft felt hot and hard in my hand. I thought I could feel the blood pumping under the silky skin, but it might have been my own pounding heartbeat. I slowly started to move my hand up and down, stroking him the way I knew I liked to be stroked.

Suddenly he took a deep breath and quickly rolled away, his back towards me. He reached down and pulled his underwear up. I was paralyzed. I had awakened him, and he had found me with my hand in his shorts. What now? Was he disgusted with me? Would he panic and hit me?

I held my breath, silently begging him to make the next move. I wanted him to do something, anything, to let me know that things were alright between us and he wanted this too. Minutes went by and nothing happened. Eventually his deep breathing seemed to indicate that he was asleep. The moment had passed.

I got up and left the tent as if to take a piss, and pulled out my own stiff prick and started to jerk myself. It took just a few strokes to produce an explosive orgasm that left me gasping for breath.

I returned to the tent, weak-kneed and breathing heavily. Carl hadn't moved and seemed to be still asleep. I crawled over to my side of the tent and turned away from him, trying without much success to get some rest.

The next morning, hung over, we went for a swim and cooked breakfast over the campfire. I waited for him to say something about the previous night, but he carried on as if nothing had happened. We lapsed back into the familiar pattern of our friendship, laughing and joking with each other. At one point, though, I caught him looking at me and our eyes met. He gave me a look full of pain that seemed to say "I remember what you did, and I wanted it, but I'm afraid." Then we both looked away, embarrassed.

We finished the trip that day and went home. We never mentioned the incident in the tent. We had another week to go at our summer jobs, and then it would be time to go back to school.

On our final day together we agreed to make one last visit to the Chestnut Inn. We laughed and talked like we usually did, drinking beer and eating wings, listening to the jukebox and talking, but for the first time the evening was tinged with a little sadness. The start of school was approaching and we wouldn't be seeing each other again for a long time.

When I dropped him off at his house late that night, we just sat in the front seat of the car, not saying anything. Suddenly he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. I reached up and caressed his face with my hand. I turned towards him.

“Carl ...” I whispered. I didn't know what else to say.

He looked me in the eyes. “Goodbye,” he said. He got out of the car and walked off into the darkness.

Summer was over.