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From: jordan@u36.com
Subject: STORY: The Fence [mm romance] Jordan Shelbourne
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Still cleaning out the back drawer as part of my retirement.
This one's a little different. A little homoerotic piece.
Jordan
"I'm sorry, I thought you
were alone."
"I tried it that
way. It wasn't as
much fun."
[THE CHEAP DETECTIVE]
THE FENCE
Jordan Shelbourne
[Tedious legal material:
[Copyright by the author, 1998. All rights retained. Please do not
archive without permission; for permission, contact me at
jordan@u36.com. This story and others are archived at
http://www.u36.com/jordan.]
Copyright 1998 Jordan Shelbourne
There was one moment, I never loved him more. I never owned him
less.
We were working on his house the way we were always working on his
house, because someday he'd sell it for a profit. That day it was
a fence for the back yard. It was June after a wet, wet spring,
and we were glad for the sun and the heat.
We found the surveyor's marks and pounded our wooden stakes carefully
inside the property line, the heavy sledge raised and dropped with
a whuff-thump, whuff-thump. We pulled the string tight and he
fussed, as he always did: the right knot, so we could save the
string; sight it by eye as well, to compensate for wind and the
weight of the string. It was a very long yard.
I peered down the string, lining up two stakes in the distance,
looking at him in his drab and stained work clothes. The clothes
were used and sturdy. They were known quantities. Like him. And
I was proud that he let me help him. That he trusted me, a slob
and a fumblefinger and a faker in so many ways.
I repaid him a bit by coming up with a clever way to mark the post
locations: an X cut out of cardboard, we threw it on the ground
every eight feet and sprayed the spot with fluorescent orange paint.
The smell of the paint was sharp in our eyes and nostrils. I
watched as he drew his arm across his forehead, careless of his
part, his dark hair already starting to mat with perspiration.
We were using a hand-held auger for the postholes, and it was a
mistake; I knew it when I saw how much clay there was in the soil.
He looked at me as if daring me to comment on it; I didn't. We
had to work the auger together, it was a tee-shape: a big wooden
handle atop a metal post and a claw. One of us would stomp the claw
into the earth, freeing the smells of the earth and of broken grass.
Then I took one arm of the tee and he took the other, and we heaved
and hauled and grunted. To keep digging (the posts had to go three
feet deep), we reached across the bar and pulled down, our arms
and hands touching. It was awkward. We were clumsy at first, like
new lovers. I loved it.
He had strong forearms with clearly-defined muscles that shifting as
he adjusted his grip. The wind caught and lifted the fine dark hairs.
After the second hole, our muscles ached. After the fourth, they
screamed. The sweat soaked through our shirts. We stripped down
to our undershirts, feeling the honey sunlight pour down on us,
drawing sweat and the winter's poisons from our skin. Sometime
after that, we stopped noticing how much we hurt: there was only
the moment, the two of us striving together. I don't know how long
that union lasted.
Sometimes I think that the world exists only in these moments, and
our desire for continuity is so strong that we make up the connecting
bits, the rest of time.
We stopped for lunch: fresh buns, cold meat, ripe plump tomatoes,
fresh strawberries, cold lemonade. He took off his gloves and I
admired his wide strong hands. We sat there at the end of the
driveway, grimy-faced, elbows on knees, together, watching the
world walk by.
He said softly, "Should've gotten a power auger. My fault."
I nodded, too tired to speak but happy. I could have told him then,
told him how I felt. But:
He nodded in the direction of a woman walking by. She wore shorts
and a halter top. Her breasts jiggled as she walked. "I like the
summer. I like the sights."
I looked right at him and said, "Me too."
He didn't notice. He was only building a fence.
--
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