Cody in Wyoming - 8. Chapter 8

What a horrible, tumultuous, baleful day. Thank god it was over. But what a sweet ending!

I shifted my thoughts from the horrific events of the day to more pleasant imagery: the beauty of the landscape surrounding the ranch, the thought of spending time with Rence in this rural retreat, the idea of joining my future to his: sharing his home, his ranch, his body. I got carried away on that vein of thought: loving his body, licking his body, nibbling his nipples; running my fingers down the muscles of his sides: latissimus dorsi, serratus anterior, abdominal obliques, down to his buttocks, cupping his buttocks and pressing toward him, pressing his erection against my own, all the while kissing him, sucking his tongue into my mouth, exploring the back side of his teeth, breathing his exhalations, taking his breath into my lungs, the oxygen in his breath passing through the alveoli in my lungs and into my blood to be pumped by my heart to the furthest extremes of my body and to my brain, where the entire concept would calm and relax me... The calming thoughts that were gently leading me towards sleep were hijacked as the sexual images overtook my mind’s eye.

Following those charged thoughts, I couldn’t fall asleep and, when I finally dozed, didn’t sleep soundly. I glanced at the clock at 12:18, at 1:34 and again at 2:06. I heard Rence get up at 4:30. I listened as he went about his morning ritual. I heard him when he checked on Aiala and coaxed her outside to relieve herself. The next thing I knew – and far too early – Rence was calling my name to get me up and get me started on my day of travel.

After a full breakfast – eggs, bacon, sausage, American fries, toast – we settled into the warm cab of his truck (it must have been idling for 10 minutes to ward off the bitter cold of another clear Wyoming day), each with a cup of steaming coffee. I was looking forward to seeing the countryside Alain and I had traversed in the dark of night only 36 hours before. I looked forward to a more companionable return trip and an uninterrupted hour in Rence’s company, though he had yet to begin speaking. In the light of a cold dawn, Rence began, “So, Karl, you’ve gone way out of your way to visit me so you could get to know me better – thanks, by the way – so, whadya think?”

“Uh…Rence, I… ”

“Christ! I’m putting you on the spot before you’re even awake. Sorry. Lemme start over. Or, how’s about if I start?

“Last night you said you liked me a whole bunch – or words to that effect. Lemme start by telling you how I feel…”

“Wait! Stop! Just a moment. Sorry, but I just want to be ready for whatever you say.”

“Don’t worry, Karl. It’s nothing bad. You might even like it. What do I think about you? I think you’re pretty cool. I think you’re sexy as hell, but I don’t want my libido to get in the way of my thinking about you. I want this to be about my thinking and not my gonads!”

“We hardly know one another yet Rence and I want to… no, I need to know you better before we talk about the status of our affections, but ditto on the sexy stuff. You know, you’re pretty attractive yourself. At least, I think you are.”

I was starting to wake up. “So Rence, you think I’m cool?”

“Oh yeah, you’re much more than cool. You’re cool and you’re sexy.” Rence glanced over at me with a lifted brow, a curl to his lips and a slight smile, maybe even a smirk. “Yeah Karl, you’re cool and sexy as hell! But also, and more to the point, I like that you work hard at what you love, that you devote yourself to your career, but despite that, you’ve made a point to spend time with me and have gone out of your way to see me, especially on this trip. I know I’m repeating myself, but thanks for dealing with the problems yesterday and rolling with them. And, I like that you’ve spent time with your family when they’ve needed you, that you’ve prioritized family. You seem like a solid guy.”

“Thanks, Rence. I’ll take that as a compliment. And that’s exactly how I would describe you – you’re a solid guy. That’s one of the things I like about you. You can do stuff that I don’t know a thing about, practical stuff. You handle emergencies well, or at least, you did with Aiala. I feel like I could count on you if I needed to.”

“And I’m sexy!”

“And you’re sexy… and humble, too!”

“Yeah, humble too. Spectacularly, phenomenally humble!”

There was that curl of the lips, the lift of the single eyebrow – that smirk again.

I would have liked to swat him, but the truck’s cab was too wide, I wouldn’t be able to reach him from the passenger seat without releasing the seatbelt. Instead, I worked up a sniff of disdain and he responded with a brief chuckle.

“OK, so we admire one another. We both think the other’s sexy and cool and solid and reliable. You admire my practical knowledge. I admire your devotion to your career. And, I gotta say, I envy your access to culture. I’d love to be able to attend a concert or a play.

“So, Karl, where do we go from here? What does it matter that we’ve formed this mutual admiration society or ours?”

“Yeah, that’s the question, isn’t it? Where do we go now?”

“Yup, that’s the meat of the problem.”

I looked at him briefly before catching on. “Um… The crux of the issue?”

“The… Oh, hell, I can’t think of another…”

“The horns of the dilemma?”

“Yeah, that too!” Rence reached across with his right arm and swatted me on the shoulder. Damn! Maybe I could have swatted him earlier. Or, maybe his arms were longer than mine.

Rence continued, “So, back to the question: what’ll we do? ‘Cause, if we lived in the same place, we could be courting. We’d start by going out for coffee. Then, we’d go to a movie on our second date. Or maybe dinner and a movie. We’d do that a few times, then maybe a play or some dance performance or the symphony or something. Somewhere in there, I might invite you up for some coffee or a drink to cap the evening. If it felt right, we’d start smooching and get physical and then if it really felt right, we’d have sex and if it really, really felt right, you’d stay the night and we’d check out what it felt like to wake up together in the morning and then maybe we’d be boyfriends. And so on and so forth. And that might could feel really, really good.”

“But we don’t live in the same city. We live a thousand miles apart. If we decide to explore ‘us’, we’re going to have to go about this completely differently. And we have yet to decide we want to explore ‘us’.”

Rence looked over at me. “Well, I kinda have.” No smirk this time, just a pleasant but serious glance before he turned his attention back to the snowy dirt road.

“Yeah, I guess I have too. I told you I made this trip just to get to know you better, but that was a white lie. It was the excuse I needed to get me out here. Really, I made the trip wanting us to hit it off. I wanted to get to know you well enough to like you well enough to decide to work out ways for us to get closer. It’s funny, because I was impatient with Peio trying to set us up, but I had the same intention, myself.”

Rence slowed the rig and pulled to the side of the road before putting the truck in park. He turned to me and took my hand. There was no humor in his face, now.

“Karl, I’m so sorry that we didn’t get time to be together yesterday. I’d hoped we would get to know each other a whole lot more. Going to Maarietta’s party and meeting the family would have been a mistake. This visit really should have been about just the two of us. Instead, it was about how we handle emergencies. Yesterday was an awful day, but your being there made it a lot easier for me. Thank you. We worked well together. You fed me. You listened to me. You cared for me. You made an awful day a lot easier on me. I guess we got to know a lot about each other, just in ways and in situations we hadn’t expected. What you did for me meant a whole lot… well, means a whole lot to me.”

Rence leaned towards me to give me a kiss. I moved towards him as well, that is, until my seatbelt stopped any forward motion. There we were, my nose directed to the left of Rence’s, our lips barely four inches apart, all puckered up but immobile.

“Damn highway safety!” Rence undid his seatbelt, while I fumbled, trying to do the same.

Within moments, he was out of his belt and his near arm had circled my shoulders and he was drawing me into his arms and into a deep kiss. The truck’s central consol was digging into my side, separating us, but it didn’t stop me from enjoying our first passionate kiss. Rence pulled away to swing the console out of the way while I located the release for my seatbelt. Within seconds, we were in each other’s arms again, kissing again and beginning to moan.

The sensations were amazing, familiar but distinct. Rence kissed in his own, unique way. His warm tongue, wet saliva, soft lips, scratchy beard… the pressure of Rence’s chest against mine balanced by the pressure of his large hands pressing against my shoulder blades… they were all his alone. I was caught in an uncomfortable twist, with my legs still facing forward. Rence’s weight was pushing me against the passenger door; the armrest was digging into my waist. All that, and my hands at the back of his neck pressed him against me while my tongue explored his teeth, the inside of his lips, the root of his tongue. And it was really, really good.

Minutes passed. Finally, we came up for air, panting.

“Whew!” Rence blew out his breath. “Damn! Oh, man! Karl, you… you’re…” He leaned back into me and mashed my lips all over again.

I put my hand against his chest, feeling its rise and fall, feeling the motion of his breath. I liked that position. I liked the motion of his breathing. I liked that particular connection. I found my breath falling into rhythm with his, calming me as we leaned back and looked into one another’s eyes. I liked the shape of his pecs, too.

I hadn’t yet caught my breath. “Rence… that was… awesome… fuckin’ incredible! I’m never gonna forget that! I wanna do it again.”

Rence slid back to his side of the truck and leaned against his door. His near leg was cocked, knee on the bench, foot hanging over the footwell, giving me a direct view of his crotch. After sliding back, the denim of his jeans was pulled tight across his thighs and groin. There was a swelling against his left thigh. It looked appetizing. I wanted to run my tongue over his lips while I ran my hand over the mound of his jeans-covered genitals.

From that short distance, he studied me. As our breathing settled, the cab quieted but for the sound of the wind. The truck rocked unpredictably in the gusts. Even in our brief make out session, we’d steamed up the windows. He reached for my near hand and held it.

“Karl, man, you’re so… oh babe, we’ve gotta cool it. I could spend the rest of the morning makin’ out with you. You’re amazing.”

He let go of my hand and reached to the dashboard to turn the defroster on high.

“We’ve gotta get you to the station so you can pick up your car and catch your plane. Unless you want to head back to the ranch? We could spend the day in. Can you postpone leaving until tomorrow?”

“Rence, there’s no way. I’ve gotta get back to Butch and I’ve got to be in LA by the beginning of next week. I’ve got some work set up and I’ve gotta drive down. I’ve got to get home.”

“Damn! I just said how I respect your work ethic. Now I’m regretting that work ethic!”

Rence curled his lip at the irony and then turned to the front and rebuckled his belt. Before I did the same, I scooted across the cab and, with my hands cupping the back of his head, I kissed him once again, not passionately this time, but thoroughly. Then I slid back and buckled my seatbelt. Rence put the truck in drive and we crunched back onto the road and continued towards the gas station, my rental car and my return to my work and my life.

“Thanks, Rence. It’s nice to feel desirable.”

“Oh come on! You? Not desirable? You must get a shitload of attention. You know you’re a looker, don’t you Karl?”

“OK. Yeah. Kinda, but that’s not what I meant. You’re not just into my looks or my image or my… well, you know, the Hollywood, movie thing. You see me, all of me. You desire all of me. Or at least I think you do. Maybe I’m just projecting on you. Maybe that’s just what I want from you. But it feels like you want and care for and desire me for, well, you called it my ‘solidity’. I can’t tell you what that means to me.”

“Yeah, that and your sexy body, you studmuffin ‘o mine!”

“Oh, alright, I can be your studmuffin if you’ll be mine. But, back to our original question, problem and dilemma, Rence: what do we do now?”

“Well, For starters, I drive you to your car and you head home. I head back to the ranch. We’ll separate but we’ll keep in touch and we’ll make plans to see each other again. You have your commitments and I have my duties. I don’t expect you’ll leave your acting. You’ll have to live where you work and I know there’s no professional theater out here. We won’t be living together, ‘cause you know I’m not gonna leave the ranches.

“Can we do a long distance relationship? Put it another way, can we not do a long distance relationship? Whadya think?”

“Ugh! Rence, I know what I want and it’s not a long distance relationship. I want to come home every night after a hard day of rehearsal or night at the theater and find my partner waiting. I want a partner who I can snuggle up to each night… who holds me and desires me and loves me. I’d like you to be that guy. And I know what I don’t want. I don’t want us to be separated by a third of the nation. I don’t want us to communicate only by phone or e-mail or skype. I want to communicate by touch, and taste and scent, by glances and smiles.”

I must have sighed because Rence glanced over at me briefly. “Maybe I’m just indulging in a modest little fit of pique. Maybe I have to man up and accept things as they are. But, a long distance relationship isn’t what I’d chose given a choice. And like you said, I’m not going to give up my career and move here just so we can be together.”

I had been looking out the truck’s windows at the pine dotted foothills to the left and the gentle slope of sagebrush stretching into the distance on the right. There wasn’t a single house in sight, just dirt road and powerlines and poles… and the ubiquitous sage.

“I’m sorry, Rence, but there’s nothing here. At least for me, professionally. But it’s not just that. This place is desolate. It’s empty. I know you see it differently. I know it’s where you grew up, but it’s not where I grew up. It’s not what I picture when I picture home. I’m learning about its beauty. I’m getting glimpses… you know, the openness of the range, the folds of the hills, the long vistas. But it doesn’t look vital to me or thriving or alive. This landscape is all about survival but not about flourishing. I don’t know if I could ever feel at home or settled here. Still, I know this is your home. This is where you’ve chosen to spend your days. I get that. I just don’t think I can ever see it that way. I’m sorry.”

He was quiet for a while, eyes on the road, fingers drumming on the steering wheel.

“I’m sorry to be so negative, Rence.”

After a couple breaths, he drawled, “OK… that’s OK, I suppose. If that’s how you see it. Does this mean there’s no hope for us being together?” His eyes never left the road.

“No! Oh.. yes? Yes, there’s not no hope… Oh, Christ! I’m all confused. Yes, there’s hope. Rence, there is hope for us, only I can’t see how we’ll work out the logistics of our homes, our jobs… of our careers.”

“Karl, I’m not proposing marriage, not yet at least. I don’t know what to hope for in the longer term. I still want to get to know you better and I’ll admit, I want getting-into-your-pants to be a part of getting to know you. Is that too crass? I suppose I’ve spent too much time alone out on the ranch. I’m only saying that we need to figure out if we want to ‘date’. I want to. I think you’re special. I think you might like to ‘date’ as well.”

He reached over and squeezed my hand where it lay on the center console before returning his hand to the wheel.

“So, if we’re gonna date, what’s our next date gonna be, Karl?”

“Persistent, aren’t you, Rence?” He caught my smirk before his eyes refocused beyond and behind me.

“Hey, Karl, check it out. Pronghorn.”

I followed his pointing finger and saw an antelope off to the right of the rig. It was a couple hundred yards away, standing stiffly upright, legs straight, it’s back a tawny color, it’s ventral surfaces white and with a broad black slash that ran from it’s for quarters back to it’s haunches, separating the two shades. It stood still, head elevated, sniffing the breeze. Then I noticed others behind it. As we topped a rise, we saw an entire herd spread across the road. They stood stock still as we slowed, all eyes on us – the ‘predator’. The tawny beasts had been heading east as a group, crossing the road in front of us. Those in the snow-covered sage and scrub bent to browse once more while those on the road just watched us as we rolled to a stop.

“How many are there? There’s scores of ‘em. Rence, they’re beautiful!”

“Yeah, they sure are. There’s probably a hundred or more. Wait, look, they’re moving now.”

The herd cleared away from the road, so we began to creep forward once again. When we gained speed, a large male started to run beside us, keeping pace as we accelerated. Rence kept an eye on him, though he kept to the modest speed we had maintained before we came across the herd. The buck followed us for about a mile, never easing off our 30 mph, until he suddenly sprinted ahead of the truck. Not thirty seconds later, he cut in front of the rig and continued to pull away from us, until he came to an abrupt stop and watched us as we passed him by.

“What was that? What was he doing? That was incredible! Have you ever seen anything like that, Rence?” I twisted in the seat to watch the tawny animals blending into the native brush until they became nearly invisible.

“Well, dear, they do that sometimes. If the road were clear of ice and we could have sped up to 50 mph, he would have done the same thing. They’re that fast.”

“Whoa! 50? Amazing… Wait, you called me ‘dear’!” I turned back in my seat to look at Rence.

“Yup! That I did… hun.” He had that mischievous look again, the smirk with the glint in his eye. “That a problem?”

“Um… no, actually. I kinda like it… Babe.”

“Ooh, he’s a fast learner!” He knocked my thigh with his knuckles.

Changing his tone, Rence continued, “I hope it’s alright being that familiar with you. When we left the ranch earlier today, I started by saying that I like you. Karl, you should know that I really like you.

“In some ways, we’re so different with our careers and all. Like two ships… we’re not on parallel tracks in our lives. Man! Talk about tortured metaphors! Let’s retire the ships and talk about trains, how’s about? OK, let’s say we’re a coupla trains on diverging tracks. But I like to think we could, I don’t know, warp our life-tracks or bend them or something to stay closer together.”

It was fun watching Rence as he drove. His hands were busy with gestures that sketched the bending or warping ‘life tracks’ as he described them. He was fully engaged in his description of how we might adjust our lives to be together.

Rence continued, “I like to think we could work something out. We could make arrangements to be together at least some times. And I don’t mean like fuck buddies. I mean like a two career, professional couple. We could pencil each other in for lunches!” He looked over at me and snickered.

“You know Karl, if I were in my twenties, I wouldn’t even consider trying to make this work. You said it earlier, a long distance relationship is not the goal. Thing is, we’re not kids. We’ve got a lot of personal history. We’re established in our lives and work. We’ve got too much invested to just toss it and start over. But I’m willing to bend a little. Heck, I’m willing to bend a lot. I’m willing to make some compromises. ‘Cause I don’t see anything else that looks better and I can’t imagine anything better coming my way. Maybe for you, working in your industry, you could meet some better prospect. But that’s not an option – well, not a probability – for me out here in Wyoming, stuck out on the ranch. It’s just not gonna happen! I’m used to it, but I don’t like it – being single that is. I want this to happen.”

“Rence, that’s not exactly a heart warming testament of undying love, ‘I can’t imagine anything better coming along.’ I think I know what you mean, though.

“Yeah, there might be a guy out there who inhabits my world who would be perfect for me, but I don’t’ want to try to find him. And I have no interest in dating. I’m bad at being single and I want to be in a relationship but I don’t want participate in the ritual of courting. And that’s what it’s like in my circles, these guys in these intricate pavanes and gavottes, vying for attention and affection and position.”

Rence shot me a questioning look which broke my train of thought. “Pavanes and gavottes?”

“Oh, yeah…um… courtly dances, like the minuet. I was kinda on a roll there, wasn’t I?”

Rence snorted but didn’t say anything more.

“What was I saying? Anyway, I’m not looking to experiment and I’m not looking for thrills and that’s what’s going on for dating out on the coast. Rence, I want comfort. And I’m comfortable with you. I know that’s damning with faint praise. Kinda my version of ‘I can’t imagine anything better coming along.’”

I checked to see if I’d lost him by he seemed to be listening still.

“Rence, I worry that it would be like accepting a compromise, settling for a part-time partner, but you wouldn’t be the compromise, ‘cause there’s nothing compromised about you. You’re amazing. It’s just the set up that’s second class, the long-distancedness of it. I’m comfortable with you. You’re a comfortable guy. Well, I don’t know you well enough to be certain but what I do know about you feels comforting to me and I like that. I want it.”

Rence let that sink in for a few minutes before picking up the thread. “So, we’re back to the question we’ve raised a lot today, ‘What’ll we do now?’”

We’d been driving on hardtop for a while now, on a road that had left the foothills a while back. The road curved gently towards the west and I was surprised to catch the glint of the sun reflected on cars as they sped along the interstate. After scanning the route of the interstate, I picked out Rence’s gas station. Our trip and our conversation were nearly over.

“It’s only another few minutes till we get to the station, Karl. I guess we’ve already answered that question as we’ve been talking: we’ll correspond and we’ll make plans; we’ll get to know one another better and we’ll decide later if we can justify forging a commitment. That’s what I think we both want in the long run, to have a committed partner. And maybe we can be that for one another. I know that’s what I want.”

“Me too, hun… me too.” I stretched across the width of the cab and was just able to slide my fingertips under the side of his thigh without feeling too uncomfortable.

For the last few miles and minutes of our trip, we kept our silence.

------------- ~ o ~ -------------

I was in my kitchen, leaning against the counter, spoon in hand, eating yogurt. Butch lay in the dining area, his head flat on the floor but his eyes glued to me. I had just picked him up from they folks who had cared for him during my recent trip and he hadn’t yet let me out of his sight. It amazed me that it was only five days previous that I had spent an evening with Mona and… what was his name… Tony? Yeah, what an amazing few days!

I thought back to leaning against Rence in the kitchen of the apartment above the station, just before I left to drive back to Denver and my return flight to Seattle. Rence had pulled me upstairs for a private ‘goodbye’. He had leaned back against the fridge and pulled me into an embrace. With his shoulders against the fridge, the only place for my hands was his full butt. I had remembered the thoughts that had kept me from sleeping the previous night: sliding my hands down his sides to finally clasp the roundness of his glutes. The actuality was as satisfying as I had imagined. But the sensations coming from my hands paled to those coming from my lips. We were in a lip lock again, this time, without the discomfort of the armrest digging into my side. This time, we were in full contact, from thigh to chest and I was wedged between his splayed legs, groin pressed to groin. I didn’t know which of us was more responsible for the completeness of that contact, his pulling me against him or me leaning into him. We were both into it, so into it. All I can say is that there wasn’t a square centimeter of my thighs, groin, hips, abdomen or chest that wasn’t in full contact with his. As we kissed, I felt more contact developing between us. A new shape became apparent down by my groin, down by his groin. A distinct and firm presence was pressing into the fold at the top of my thigh. I rolled to my right to increase the pressure and enjoyed the moan that slipped from my partner’s throat.

‘Partner’? What a welcome thought. Standing there in my townhouse kitchen, I enjoyed the reminiscence. I enjoyed the thought of having a partner and of that partner being Rence. It was silly, really, to be thinking of him that way. We’d never done more than make out, but it didn’t’ matter, I was thinking of him as a potential partner, nevertheless.

Rence and I… we were so very different in so many ways but we shared some core values about work and family. Did we share enough values to keep us together? How would we get to know one another well enough to know if we could make ‘us’ work in the long run? How would we arrange the logistics of our divergent homes and careers? Would it be worth the trouble? And the biggest question: could we love one another?

I had a few minutes to kill while my clothes finished drying. Soon, I would be repacking and loading the car to drive south to LA. Soon, I would be getting on with my life. This chapter, this time in Seattle seemed to be drawing to a close. It was time to be done with wistful hopes for my failed relationship with Joel. It was time to return to LA and return to the maelstrom that was ‘the industry’ in SoCal. My schedule in the coming months was uncertain: a few voice-overs, taping a pilot for a TV series. I had some gigs lined up. I would need to put the Seattle townhouse on the market. Damn, I was probably going to take a hit in the current market. No matter. Time for me to move along. I finally had a reason to think of the future. I knew my family would be happy to hear of my newfound resolve.

The dryer buzzer cut short my wool-gathering. The thought of wool-gathering held a new meaning for me. I grinned to myself. I rinsed out the empty yogurt container and threw it in the recycling as I headed back to the laundry. Butch followed close at my heels.