28: Toot-toot. Beep-beep.

Originally emailed on Sept. 15, 1999

The boys came back from their western vacation with their dad and Michael tired, tan, and happy. Both are now horse nuts after spending a week at a dude ranch in Montana--they feel like cowboys because they went on a two-night horseback camping trip which only they were young and flexible enough to enjoy. Sam and Michael bailed out of riding after a couple of shorter day trips left them saddle-sore ("and not, you know, in a good way," as Michael said with a wink). The grown men spent the rest of the visit enjoying massages, mineral baths, and candlelight dinners in the Authentic Reproduction Fontier-Era Western-Style Lodge while the boys went on every possible trail ride, hung around the stables, and even took lessons in horse grooming.

I hadn't realized before they left that they would be there during Family Week At The Only All-Gay Authentic Working Horse Ranch In The United States. Apparently, the place was crawling with the children of gay men, which Sammy absolutely loved and which even Mark admitted was, "OK, in that it made me feel ever so slightly less freakish." Sammy doesn't have many friends his own age at home, so I was happy to hear that he made many friends at the dude ranch. He is now keeping in touch with some of them by e-mail. I am curious to know what eight-year-olds say to each other via the internet. In school, Sammy has trouble constructing sentences of more than three words, but he's on-line every afternoon writing and receiving long missives.

The boys each bought a complete cowboy outfit at the ranch. Mark chose the John Wayne model, pre-weathered for the authentic cowboy look, in seven shades of brown from his cowboy hat through his leather vest and chaps to his only moderately pointy-toed cowboy boots with minimal heel. Sammy, on the other hand, went right for the Village People/Singing Cowboy section of the store: purple satin Roy Rogers shirt with frogging and gold fringe, black jeans, highly-tooled and highly-heeled red boots.

I have a picture of the two of them in their cowboy outfits on my desk at work, and I often look at it and reflect that it is worth at least a thousand words in terms of explaining the kind of boys Mark and Sammy are. Mark, at ten, is the quintessential classic boy's boy in the Huck Finn/Tom Sawyer/Papa Hemingway mode. He runs with a pack of about ten boys his age, all named Justin so far as I can tell. Every afternoon they split into sub-packs of 3-5 boys and play video games at various homes. On Saturdays, some parent with a mini-van is recruited to take them all to Lazer Tag or to the multiplex to see something with the full allowance of PG-13 violence and action. In the absence of money or a mini-van, they all gather in a backyard or a local park (backyard pros: convenient to kitchen; park pros: inconvenient for parental supervision) and play Capture the Flag or their own full-contact hybrid of rugby, football, soccer and lacrosse. The claims of TV commercials to the contrary, it is not possible to get Mark's clothing completely clean in the ordinary home laundry room.

Sammy at eight, on the other hand, is the stereotypic sissy boy about whom many troubled letters are written to Ann Landers. He comes home with Ed after school and writes e-mail or watches TV while he waits for me to get back from work. He meets me when I arrive, follows me upstairs and waits outside my door while I change out of my work clothes, and hangs out in the kitchen while I cook dinner. Once in awhile he has a play date after school, usually with a girl, and they usually go to her room and play House. The girl's mother always tells me that Sammy was polite, quiet, and no trouble at all, and that he "encouraged Diane to put her toys away when they were done. She never does that on her own!" My laundry tribulation with Sammy is that he folds everything and puts it away when he takes it off, so that I can't tell what's been worn and what hasn't.

After me, Sammy's best friend is Harriet's little brother Ron. I have my reservations about a sixteen-year-old with tattoos and a nipple ring who hangs out in gay bars and flirts with older men serving as a role model for my im pressionable son, but Ron is willing to spend a surprising number of his Saturday afternoons with Sammy, and they both always seem to have a great time. For now, I have decided that it is just good for Sammy to be with someone who likes him a whole lot, even if that someone does call him "girlfriend."

Last Saturday, Ron baby-sat while I went to a matinee with Harriet. Ed was at a conference for the day, the Ecumenical Conference on Rainforest Preservation, or Colloquium on the Christian Response to the Current Head-Lice Epidemic, I can't remember which. He was with Pastor Bob, of course. I came home to find Ron, Sammy, and Michael of all people, in the living room dancing to the "Greatest Hits of 1979" CD Ed and I ordered from an 800 number one very late night when we'd been sitting up watching old movies and drinking way too much root beer--Barq's, the kind with "bite."

"Where's Mark?" I asked.

"At Justin's," Ron replied.

"Which one?" I asked.

"There's more than one?" Ron asked innocently.

I shrugged. "I suppose he'll turn up eventually. What are you doing here?" I asked Michael.

"Sam is working," he said. "I thought I'd come visit the boys."

"Are you having fun?" I asked.

"Yeah," Sammy said. "We're playing Disco Divas."

"But the pickin's are mighty slim on this K-Tel CD of yours," Michael said. "We've got Cheap Trick here, we've got Billy Joel's 'Big Shot,' we've got the Electric Light Orchestra, but very little actual disco diva action."

I said, "There are a couple of Bee Gees tunes."

Ron looked at me pityingly. "The Bee Gees, though they may have some camp value, are not divas."

I said, "Well, all the good stuff is in the basement. Follow me." They obediently trooped after me into the semi-finished basement rec room, where lives my old stereo from college and, in a cabinet which I opened with a flourish, my album collection.

"Wow," Michael said. "Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, Dionne Warwick, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, Disco Duck--I can't believe you have so many disco albums."

"I can't believe you have albums," Ron piped in. "You didn't seem that old to me." I ignored him.

"Most people disposed of their disco years ago, in secret midnight rituals," I told Michael. "But I always knew disco would be back. Let's start with Gloria Gaynor."

An hour later, the rec room was littered with album covers. Michael was wearing a puce bridesmaid dress we'd dug out of the ancient ugly formal clothing closet near the washer and dryer; Sammy was wearing my prom dress, circa 1982, heavily modified by safety pins; and Ron was wearing my wedding dress, a cocktail-length champagne-colored silk concoction which would have been quite lovely and tasteful except for a butt-bow the size of Rhode Island and matching elbow-length gloves intricately worked with fake seed pearls. I was wearing my best black semi-formal from my non-ugly clothes closet upstairs. My ancient turntable, complete with penny taped to the needle arm for skip abatement, was churning out a slightly scratchy version of "Bad Girls," to which Ron had worked out a complicated choreography which he was attempting to teach us.

It was at this moment that Ed arrived home from Christian Rock Music: Joyful Sound Unto the Lord or Satanic Verses? He brought Pastor Bob into the house with him to say Hello. Ed is attempting to alleviate my mistrust of his relationship with Bob and, by extension, with organized religion, by repeatedly forcing Bob and me into brief awkward conversations in doorways. I went upstairs in response to Ed's call. "Do we have a date?" he asked when he saw me in the dress.

"Oh, no," I said. "We're just playing Disco Divas in the basement."

"Is that Donna Summer?" Bob asked. "I haven't heard her in ages. Mind if we join you?" He headed for the basement door.

"Sammy, Ron, and Michael are down there," I told Ed worriedly. "In my prom dress, my wedding dress, and a bridesmaid dress."

Ed grinned. "Is there anything left in Bob's size?"

We followed Bob to the basement, to find him perusing the albums. "Off the Wall!" he exclaimed. "Michael Jackson! 1979! I was at an all-male Bible College! We used to sneak off-campus and drive an hour to Urbana-Champaign and crash the dances at University of Illinois! Oh, the girls!" He pulled Donna Summer off the turn table, replaced it with the Michael Jackson, and, with the practiced hand of a man who'd spent many afternoons in the early Seventies lying on the living room floor listening to the Who on his parents' stereo, put the needle to "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough." "Watch this!" he said. And then he moonwalked.

The rest of the evening is a blur. Pizza was ordered, delivered, and eaten. Many snack foods were purchased from a nearby convenience store. "The Hustle" was taught, both line and couple versions, by Ed and Pastor Bob, who looked quite fetching together. Ron's choreography for "Bad Girls" was practiced by all.

The party broke up when Mark called for a ride around 8:30. Michael offered Ron a ride home, to which Ron replied, "Home? Get real. Let's go find some action." I am determined to consider Michael, first, incapable of infidelity, and second, too principled to do anything stupid with a boy who claims to be twenty-one but is obviously five years younger, and therefore am not worried at all about the two of them going off together on a Saturday night.

Bob thanked me as he left. "I don't know when I've had so much fun," he said. "You have a wonderful family." He kissed me on the cheek.

While Ed went to pick up Mark--"You're sure you know which Justin's house to go to?" I asked--Sammy and I put records back into their covers, hung up dresses, and generally tidied.

"Did you have a good time?" I asked him.

"Totally," he said.

"You like Ron, huh?" I said.

"Totally," he said.

"Look at his," I said, pizza box poised over garbage bag. "One slice of pizza left. Should we bother keeping it, or just dump it?"

"We should save it for Mark," he said. "Maybe he didn't get any pizza at Justin's today. I can go put it on a plate."

"OK," I said. I collected the rest of the trash, and headed upstairs after Sammy. I could hear Ed's car pulling into the driveway. "You bad girl, you sad girl, you such a dirty bad girl, uh-huh," I hummed.

Toot-toot. Beep-beep.

28: Toot-toot. Beep-beep.

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