On one of the DVD covers, two men were sharing a tender moment, their lips barely connected, nothing but pure adoration on either of their faces. It was the first time I ever saw something like that. Back home, nobody ever said nothing about two men loving each other that way. I never heard about it at school, but our school only had ten other kids, and none of them were my age. I spent most of my time planting and pulling potatoes in the field out back with Daddy and my brothers. There were so many sights I never saw before on that DVD shelf—witches and demons and Cheech and Chong—but my eyes were locked and loaded on those men. I don’t know how long I stared at the cover, trying to make it make sense in my head, but at some point, someone put their hand on my shoulder and asked, “Are you okay, bro?” When I looked over my shoulder, Bubba was there with a concerned look in his eyes.
“These guys. They’re kissing,” I told him, waving the DVD case in his face, probably looking shellshocked.
Bubba cocked an eyebrow at me and simply said, “Yeah, they are. You got a fuckin’ problem with it?”
I shook my head, because I didn’t have a problem with it. At least, I didn’t think I did. It made me feel all jumbled-up inside like someone tossed me in the butter churn and whipped my insides around and around. I didn’t feel grossed out though.
“Why are they kissing?” I asked him, but he stared silently at me, making me feel like I said something wrong again. I stared down at the picture again, but it still didn’t make sense. “Guys can kiss each other?”
“They do it all the time,” Bubba told me. “And there ain’t nothin’ wrong with it.”
I swallowed. “They don’t do that back in Dunsberry.”
“Dunsberry, Arkansas?” Bubba asked, and when I nodded, he laughed. “Well that explains it. You must be the hillfolk boy, come to stay with Ms. Dorothy. Johnny, was it?”
Come to find out, Bubba knew Auntie Dot from his poetry club, and she already told all her friends about me and my family, and how we lived outside of society, keeping to ourselves. Bubba said Auntie Dot had gone around town telling people to be on the lookout for me, because I didn’t know nothing about anything. It made me feel real stupid when he said it, so I just stood there blushing, staring at my feet, shame coursing through every inch of my body. I never had anyone call me stupid to my face before, because back in Dunsberry, I was the smartest kid in school. The one everyone thought would make it big one day. The kids at school used to say I’d probably get myself a real nice job at a gas station in the next town over. They said I’d probably even make the minimum wage, which for people like us is like telling a city kid they might be a television star one day, but none of the folk in Dunsberry owned a television set, so I guess they went with the next best thing.
“But I don’t think that’s true at all, is it Johnny Boy?” he asked, putting his hand back on my shoulder. Bubba told me he liked my spirit and offered me a job working at his machine shop making a whole lot more than the minimum wage. We became best friends, and we’ve been thick as thieves ever since. He introduced me to the outside world, and I became the person he turned to when he needed to talk, coming to me before he went to his wife with whatever was bothering him.
Now he turns to Ezra too. Our bond is as strong as ever, but I don’t like sharing him with anyone. I know Bubba better than I’ve ever known anyone. I stuck by him through his divorce. He showed me the wonders of Fleshlights and buttplugs, even though the plugshe would order online scared the fuck out of me because of how big they were.
Bubba has met my family a whole bunch of times. When I first moved to town, I couldn’t talk to Momma. I couldn’t write her a letter or call her on the phone. I missed her so fuckin’ much it felt like I might break, but I couldn’t let myself break in front of Auntie Dot, and I sure as shit couldn’t break in front of Bubba. It was before I felt comfortable crying in front of him.
Eventually, that’s exactly what happened. After two years of being his best bro, my heart cracked in half, right in front of him. He threw me a twenty-first birthday blowout, just The Core Four, Jaden, and Faith. It was one of the best nights of my life, because Bubba hugged me a whole bunch of times, and it was the first time I felt my heart race because of someone else. After too many damn Jello shots, Bubba and I sat on the back porch, looking out into the long, lonely stretch of East Texas forest behind his house. I was missing my momma real bad, and he must’ve known, because he took my hand like it was his to take, and he squeezed it so tightly, it felt like it might break. And so, I told him. I broke down, and I told Bubba how I hadn’t been home in over two years, and how much I’ve missed my family.
He cradled his face in my hands, wiping away tears as they fell from my cheek, and said, “Oh, Johnny Boy. Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
Six hours later, Bubba and I pulled up to my momma’s house in Arkansas. He didn’t even ask if I wanted to go, he just stood up from the porch and dragged me through the house by my hand, not stopping until we were out front, in his truck, heading toward the highway.
Momma and Bubba have been close, right since the start. She made him promise to take care of me, no matter what. She didn’thave to ask, though. No one has ever had to tell Bubba to care for me. He always has. I hope to God he always will.
Bubba wasn’t just a best friend, he was also a surrogate father of sorts. Losing Daddy so young meant I only had Momma to teach me what it meant to be a man, and as strong as she is, there were things she didn’t know. Things only a man would know about being a man. How to trim and style a beard. The way to win a woman’s heart. He told me everything I needed to know about women, actually, but he always looked really sad when he’d talk to me about it. He would say how lucky the woman I settle down with would be, and it always made my heart hurt a little, like someone jammed a nail file through it.
Then I met Annie. Knowing what I know now—knowing what he means to me, and what I mean to him—it must’ve been hell on him to watch me stumble my way through the dating world. He told me Annie was a lucky woman, and that I was going to make her so happy. He wasn’t always right. There were things he didn’t warn me about. Things he got wrong, and Bubba is rarely wrong. He didn’t tell me Annie and I were never going to be long term. He never explained how my heart couldn’t beat for her, because it was already beating for him. Didn’t he know? Bubba knows everything, why didn’t he know that?
The Core Four used to tease me, because even after six months of dating, I spent more time with Bubba than Annie. They’d tell us we looked more like a couple than either of us did with our chosen partners. I think I may have felt it then, but it felt too strong to name. Eventually, Annie said she had enough. We lived together for a few weeks before the big blowup. I came home after work one night, and she saw I changed my phone background to a picture of Bubba and me. She started yelling about playing second fiddle to a man. She even said I wasn’t good in bed, and that hurt worse than anything, because I knew it was true. I tried to make her feel good, but every movementfelt wrong. We never felt right. Bubba said sex with someone I loved would leave me with an overwhelming sense of completion, but once my load was shot, all I felt was shame. Shame for doing something I knew was wrong. Why did it feel so wrong?
After the breakup, we had to put Auntie Dot in hospice, and I didn’t want to move back home with Momma, because moving home meant leaving Bubba, and I could never leave him. Bubba asked Faith if I could move into their spare room. Faith said it was the final nail in their marital coffin. I didn’t understand it then, but I get it now. Unintentionally, I was worming my way into their marriage, the same way Ezra is weaseling his way between Bubba and me. Their marriage was already on the rocks, but having experienced it for myself now, it must’ve sucked. Faith moved out the day I moved in, and Bubba and I haven’t lived apart since, except for the handful of weeks I went away a few months ago, after Bubba told me how he felt and I got scared.
We were good for a while. Bubba would wake me each morning with breakfast in bed, like I did something along the way to earn that level of care. We rode to work together, spending all day shooting the shit with our buddies at the shop, and then we would come home and spend our evenings side by side on the sofa. At some point, I started sleeping in his bed, because it felt nice not to be so alone.
Then, D-Day.
We were lying in bed, him asking me about the end of my relationship with Annie, me dodging his questions. When we were together, I didn’t like wasting time talking about her. She already moved on, and I had my best friend. I didn’t want to think of anyone but us when we were in our bubble. As the conversation kept going, he got vulgar, asking about our sex life, asking what I liked her to do to me. Bubba and I have always been open books, so I knew I ought to be open about that as well.
I told him Annie and I only ever tried to fuck a few times, and each time, it felt like putting square pegs into round holes. I couldn’t stay hard for shit, and the one or two times I was able to get it up, my dick would go limp the second she touched me.
I told him about how, when I fucked her, every sensation felt wrong, and my mind kept going back to him. Him and me at work, and the way he would pull me down on his lap sometimes, during our lunch break. The way my mind would wander to him and me swimming in his inflatable four-feet-deep pool while the sun baked our pale skin until we were both blistered red. I told him, most of all, I thought about the coveralls he wears at work. The ones that cling all over.
Bubba, Bubba, Bubba.
He listened as I explained it all, but in the end, all he did was stare sadly into my eyes, gently scratched my bald head, and said, “Oh, Johnny Boy,” like I was the most pitiful soul in the world. His touch was soft, but his hands felt like fire the longer he held on.
Then my best friend—my Bubba—said three of the prettiest words in the world to me, scaring the hell out of me to the point I could barely move. He leaned in real close and said the words again, pressing a tender kiss to my lips. We were motionless for a few seconds, and then he opened his mouth like he was going to say something, and I didn’t want him to say those words again, so I opened my mouth to change the subject. That’s what I told myself, at least. We were mouth to mouth already, and when Bubba shut his lips, they wrapped around mine, I whimpered into his mouth. I don’t remember much else about the moment, but I remember the raw, needy sounds that escaped me, and how he swallowed them down smooth like whiskey.
“Bubba,” I said, but I didn’t have anything to follow it with, so I just kept moving my mouth with his. Eventually, my wits returned,and my eyes bulged like saucers. It scared the hell out of me, because I wasn’t supposed to be kissing on boys. That wasn’t who I was, not that there was anything wrong with it. You’d think there was by the way I reacted, though, because in a rush, I pushed and kicked against the mattress to get away, falling off the bed and onto my ass, staring in horror at my best friend’s heartbroken expression as he loomed over me. I was scared, because the kiss rocked me to my core. It made me think of all the ways I’ve ever felt with Bubba. The way his arms fit perfectly around me as we snuggled before sleep. The way my heart slammed harder when he’d walk into the bedroom wearing only his boxers, every single night.
I got scared, so I ran back home to Dunsberry and hid in my childhood home, letting Momma dote on me, telling me everything was going to be okay, because I was the sweetest man she knew. She didn’t know too many men, but she said it like she meant it, and that was enough for me. I worked the farm with Pete and Barrett, but my heart kept hurting for Bubba. Pete figured I was back to stay, but I don’t think I ever really planned on being gone long. I just needed a moment to breathe. A second to sort out my feelings.
