William Busch looked the same stark naked as he did fully dressed. Custom casual, fine-lined square patterned suits stripped away revealed a body firm from decades spent in specialized trades, later tuned up regularly by means of an active lifestyle––body hair, naturally robust, but trimmed precisely to even layers and sharp, square patterns on the chest and groin. This was a man who knew himself, vaulted his secrets, monetized his passion, and got what he wanted. He was refined.
***
In the early fall of 1997, at the age of twenty, I moved from no particular place––I’d been drifting around the states, malnourished, mostly in the Pacific Northwest, since dropping out of the tenth grade four years previously––to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. A distant step-uncle on my mother’s side, Dale, had invited me to Steamboat to build a few houses with him, in that mountain town where he’d settled with his wife and started a construction company in the late seventies. It struck me as odd that Dale didn’t have a full, established crew, but I wasn’t going to pass on the ten dollars an hour he offered me, or the chance to screw around in a new place, where I had yet to burn a single bridge.
I met William one night at a tavern where Dale would often take me to drink beer until we’d forgotten the day’s labor. Dale was a manageable man in the easiest of settings, say, if you didn’t know him and were merely charged with glancing at him pumping gas into his big diesel truck, from a distance, on a summer day. But up close, especially from my perspective, in any situation, he was a nightmare. On the job, he was always ferociously barking orders at me, or throwing scraps of lumber in the general direction in which he needed something done, in a way that only a tenured worker under his big, hairy fist would understand without incident. “Pick up that board,” he might yell. I couldn’t tell where his voice was coming from among all the machinery and passing traffic, or for that matter, if he was talking to me, or just cursing the universe. “Nathan!” his voice booming sonically now, coarse, frightening.
“I’m right here,” I’d say, my own voice straining from the gut but failing to match his tone.
“Pick up that fucking board!” The ground was practically carpeted in boards.
“Which one?” I’d say, my voice diminishing. “You’ve got to help me out here, Dale.”
“Four foot length of two-by-twelve at your fucking feet.”
Nights at Dale’s house––a fifteen-hundred square foot rickety A-frame, a winding thirty minute drive out of the municipality and further up a mountain––were fine enough at first. Having always stopped at the tavern long enough to make driving an egregious risk, sleeping was nearly the only activity which took place there. And week after week, as winter grew nearer, the tavern was my only hope for escape.
Though I couldn’t express myself, which would have meant shaving my face, shedding the two-ply denim coveralls, donning earrings, skewing my posture, and humming a tune (something by Madonna, or Cyndi Lauper), I could hide. Dale’s many gruff acquaintances were jolly and I could play to their lewd, sexist humor in the low-lit, rustic mountain saloon. Having come up in a similarly malignant rural setting I knew all the worst street jokes, and beer after beer, shot after shot, I made my way through those evenings. “What’s the difference between a brick and a blond?” I asked a circle of callused giants, over the raucous din.
“What?” said the ogres in a sloppy unison.
“A brick won’t follow you around for three days after you lay it.” I said, holding my bassy stage projection. But I would only banter as long as it took these men to sink into their own fables of youth before I would find my own corner at the bar where I could order drink after drink on Dale’s tab, and people-watch with the hope of finding anything that would satiate my void. Any curious woman between my age and about thirty-five would have been perfect. I wasn’t picky by any metric. But I did not expect William Busch.
When William approached me for the first time––he looked as though he might have owned the company that all these roughnecks worked for––I’d noticed him on many occasions. His attire fit the region but not the culture. The refinement of his clean, expensive wool coat and pants were punctuated by a mustache that seemed to groom itself to an immaculate rectangle, perpetually.
“I’ve seen you come in with Dale a few times,” he said in a sort of whisper that had a magic to it. “Do you work for him?” I was sitting at the bar then. Dale was blacking out across the room, and I looked over my shoulder to make sure he couldn’t see this stranger leaning in so close to me, smelling of a sort of trouble I had never been in before, gripping my interest.
“I’m Will,” he said, extending a well-manicured hand out from a tailored sleeve.
“Nathan,” I said, gladly smoothing my voice, though still clipping my breath, taking his hand and holding it just too long. "Yeah, he’s my mother’s husband’s brother,” I said, “I hate him.” I could tell somehow that his hair must have been still gently combed beneath his plaid earflapped hat. I would have left with him right then if he’d asked.
That night, blowing cigarette smoke out a cracked window in the highest loft of Dale’s house, where the slanted ceilings came to a point under which I could not fully stand, I thought of Will’s knuckles grazing my knee under the bar. I wondered about his age with a fierce curiosity. My parents, so young when I was born, were still only forty. Will, whose only physical features I’d seen were his face and hands, might have been fifty-five, at least.
I’d never had the breadth of perspective, much less the time and space to consider my sexual identity closely. Aside from touching body parts with the occasional neighborhood boy, befriending and feeling protective of the few clearly queer kids in middle and high school, most of my inchoate sexual behavior was outwardly straight.
My only romantic partner––off and on from the eighth grade until just a few months previous––was a girl a year older than I. She loved me for my feminine lean, and I cherished her for loving that about me. My taste in music and clothing told a deeper story. For the most part, by this time, I was resigned to feign appreciation for the aesthetics of whatever crowd benefited me––if there was a couch and a meal and a cigarette at the ready, I would bob my head to Metallica or Garth Brooks. As for attire, I was only prepared to wear what I owned, the lot of which served as a closet. Homophobic slurs directed at me, at others, or in the context of humor always hurt my feelings, as long as I could remember.
How William Busch singled me out, I don’t know. But how resourceful? Why take candy from a baby when you can take the whole baby? For my part, I must have thought, if only subconsciously, if this man builds me a bridge, I’ll swim right under it.
***
“Sixty-five,” Will said, with his silky voice, when I finally asked him his age. I wasn’t surprised by that point. We’d talked in the bar a few more times, and I’d seen his hair, smooth and black with only slivers of silver where his sideburns would start if he grew them, which he would never do. I’d told him a few details of my life. I told him I grew up poor. I told him that my verbally abusive stepdad was much worse than my physically abusive biological dad––that I hadn’t seen my real father a lot growing up, but that he’d become gentle and kind over time. I told him a few arousing lies about gay experiences I’d only dreamt of. I told him I’d graduated from high school––along with a few other embarrassing details, I lied to everyone about my education.
Sitting now in the front passenger seat of Will’s Mercedes-Benz G-Class, the first layers of snow accumulating on the road, all of my belongings in two duffels and a guitar case in the back, pulling away from Dale’s place, which I’d never see again, I found myself heading to the home of William Busch. I hadn’t asked Will if I could stay the night, much less for an extended period of time. But I knew I wasn’t going back to Dale’s place, that stick-built monstrosity, standing in a circle with twelve other unkempt dwellings, an affront to cul-de-sacs, broadly. Will may not have guessed that he could keep me, but he wouldn’t pass on the chance. Once in his home, he would begin to feed me details of his life; details to which I could, with pain and delight, compare my own. Once there he would begin to feed me regularly from his fully stocked kitchen and culinary skillset. Once there, he would feed me, and I would grow.
***
Pulling off the mountain road, halfway down to Steamboat from Dale’s place, the first thing I noticed was that the pavement changed, not to bumpy dirt like the turn-off to Dale’s, but to a smooth blacktop surface that sparkled in the frozen air. There was a single mailbox installed in a granite pillar at the turn, and stone monuments set just beyond the first row of trees, with a wrought iron gate spanning the driveway between them. Will stopped the car, told me to stay cozy, got out and entered a code into a box attached to the monument on the driver’s side of the gate. I grew nervous then. Viscerally irritated. Antsy. Agsty. I held no expectation. But before even seeing the place, these first features metastasized beyond my ability to imagine.
The single-lane driveway wound upward, insulated by pines and aspens I could touch if the window were down, but which never touched the car. Nothing else was in view. For a long twenty seconds, the car, with Will and I inside, the driveway like a track made just for that vehicle, and the trees, were the entire world. As the house came into view, I drew a blank. The main structure was a modern castle, polished concrete and glass, nearly in equal portions, angles both subtle and severe. The size was hard to calculate, not that I tried, but I could imagine it would take several minutes to walk around it. The surrounding landscape couldn’t be referred to as singular––lawns and patios of varying shapes and sizes cascaded away from the structure like thoughts from a central theme. It angered me. I hated money and I loathed the things it usually did and, moreover, the things it almost never did.
“This is the place,” Will said, placing his right hand on my left shoulder, as if he’d just brought me home from an orphanage. But my attention was wavering. “I’ll help you with your things.”
***
Will let me sleep before taking in another detail. I don’t know if I took a nap and woke up while the sun was still above us or had set, or if I slept through the night. I don’t know where I slept. I had not developed the slightest understanding of the interior of Will’s home. I only know that that sleep marked an end to life before Will. I don’t have in mind a precise chronology of the afternoons and evenings I spent there with Will, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, but I scarcely remember a single morning, save for one.
Taking in the features of the inside of Will’s place cheered me up and drew my attention to the comfort and discomfort I would find there. The building materials were the same inside as out––the outer shell of the house was reversible without consequence. Vaulted ceilings, perhaps forty-five feet at their apex, were offset by lofts, some open and others enclosed, all adorned with elements of interior design that spoke deeply to me. Fine wood surfaces, textured wallpaper and tile embellished the primary materials. Then, as if placed by the wave of a wand, art, furniture and fabrics finalized Will’s domain. Looming framed black and white photographs of people and places from a distant past, hung huge everywhere they belonged; abstract paintings and metal sculptures depicting naked men; throw pillows thrown and blankets draped, all of the richest colors and textures, hemmed in the space and let it out in the same breath; beds, couches and oversized chairs, all begging to hug my bones. What I mentioned though, was what I didn’t see: “No taxidermy?”
“Oh, no,” Will said, extending both Os, “do you like those things?”
“No,” I said, mimicking, but not mocking his extended O.
“Dusty, dead animals?” he asked rhetorically, his shoulders nearly touching his ears.
“That’s all you see back in Montana,” I said.
“Much of all you see around here. But not in my home. No thank you,” Will said, smiling intensely. Will was noticeably a livelier animal here than he was at the tavern, freer.
Will took me to his cellar. We entered through a hatch in the floor on one side of a massive island bar that separated the main living space from the kitchen. Beneath the house was a hole dug just for provisions. Stepping lightly over rough-cut timber floor planks, I managed to keep my balance in the cave, which was virtually unfinished. Long wooden shelves were anchored to rocks left there since prehistory. The shelves, lighted only by Will’s flashlight, held dozens of cases of beer, hundreds of bottles of wine, and miscellaneous supplies I took little note of––I was thirsty.
Back above ground with enough beverages for a day or two, I took my first close look at the kitchen. Cannibalized in the top of the bar, made of dark, polished stone, were gas ranges and cutting boards, as well as insets for glasses and tools. Pots and pans of the finest sorts hung from a fixture over the bar which also threw light, though I could see no bulbs. The back of the kitchen was fitted with perhaps thirty feet of counter space with sinks and an array of other appliances, under which were a dozen or more black cabinet doors. A sleek tile backsplash rose a few feet over the counters, with nothing but window above. The view overlooked tiers of patios and lawns, all walled in by a treeline where dense forest resumed, some twenty yards from the main house. We were alone out here.
“There should be a bottle opener in that drawer right there,” Will said.
“This one?”
“No,” he said with that long O. We cracked a couple of Budweisers.
“Will, your home is amazing,” I said, beginning to curate my new tone.
“Thank you, Nathan,” he said, “I built it myself.”
“Are you serious? I mean––”
“No, it’s okay. The truth is, I designed it myself,” he said. We were sitting on large upholstered stools on the living room side of the bar, facing each other, our knees touching. “Would you like to see some photos?”
“Yes,” I said, and as he left the room, I drank my full beer, retrieved and drank a second from the refrigerator, and opened a third before he appeared back in the room with a large stack of photo albums. Sipping slowly now, I watched and tried to listen as Will showed me photos of the project of his home, starting with all the trees still standing, then a swath for the home removed, equipment and lumber brought in, and Will and his friends, all smiling obscenely, hugging and otherwise standing much closer than I’d known older men to do, celebrating the development of Will’s survival and fulfilment. “Were you a uh––” I didn’t know what I was asking.
“A developer? Yes. But mostly an architect. That’s what I studied for, and that’s what I love,” he said. Will was speaking to me in a fashion I’d never known, an uncanny blend of calm and fierce. I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t need to.
“But are you guys all––”
“Gay? Yes, Nathan. But we weren’t all together. Not always. Both John and Doug here,” Will said, pointing back to a photograph of the team, standing in front of Will’s nearly completed home, “were my partners at certain times. And they were a couple for some years too. But we are lifelong friends. They’re coming to see me soon. Maybe you can meet them.” I let that idea go straight through me as Will moved to another album. I could see that Will’s eyes and lips were glossy from a combination of beer and nostalgia, and I could sense that mine had a similar sheen. I wanted to be the same.
Album after album, beer after beer, Will played show and tell. He showed me his life in the eighties: He, Doug, John, and a host of other friends and lovers, all ten to fifteen years younger, donning the fashions, driving the cars, and developing the new neighborhoods of that era together––he wanted me to know. Then the seventies: photos of a different quality, the still younger men with bigger mustaches, longer hair, bigger collars, though less shirts generally; in more densely populated areas, standing further apart. The sixties: naked save for short shorts, building mansions on sunny beaches. The fifties…
Drunk and overwhelmed by then, my interest was flickering.
***
There was nothing between us but the sweet air in the room. Back in the kitchen, each of us spiraling in our ways, Will asked if I’d like to get cozy, and I’d said yes, and didn’t question what he meant by cozy this time. I sat on the edge of his bed, positioned still in the open floor plan, behind a double sided hearth.
He stood close, facing me. “Are you okay,” he asked, and I nodded. “Let’s get out of these clothes.”
I watched closely as each garment he removed revealed a stylistically similar area of his body beneath. His shoulders, chest, surprisingly flat tummy, his waist, legs and feet, even his penis––which I was happy if nervous to see––were all crisp like the articles that covered him a minute ago. I’d seen the naked bodies of older men before. But never in a context like this. What was this context? I was bare as quickly as he was, but I was strictly occupied with him. If I was comparing, I wasn’t comparing our age, but our neatness. Will was violently tidy––a trait I instantly came to envy. I was in shambles: skinny, wispy red and blonde hair everywhere. A mess. “Why don’t you lay back,” he said softly, not exactly like a question.
That first evening on Will’s bed––one of his beds––he went down on me. Beer, adrenaline, dopamine, youth, authentic queer becoming, countless other factors, all stirred into one traumatic event. I finished quickly, and pretended to sleep immediately. Before another conscious thought occurred, I slept.
***
In the days that followed, Will and I learned more about each other, though I’m sure I lied a lot. Maybe he lied some too. But in the photos from the fifties and early sixties, Will showed me his first family. Not that of his parents and siblings, but that of his wife and children. I was proud and fascinated, and Will was open to answering many questions. He told me––taught me, really––that marrying women and raising children was what American men did back then, whether it suited them or not. I asked how he became aroused for the making of children. He graciously explained that doing so was a matter of fulfilling obligations at any cost. Maybe he used his imagination during sex with his wife. Though he claimed to truly love her and his children alike. I don’t remember catching the story of Will leaving his wife, or whether his identity played the biggest role in that situation. I learned that his children were of ages that split the difference between mine and those of my parents.
I told Will, because he brought it up a lot, that I wanted to go to college, but that I wasn’t quite ready. He would daydream aloud about how I could go to the university in Missoula, Montana, in order to be close to my family, that he could rent an apartment where I could stay and he could visit comfortably. He wasn’t kidding, but I couldn’t believe him. His nerve. Besides, though I did wish I was anywhere near ready for university at the time, I wasn’t. It would be 25 years before I earned a high school equivalency degree.
He taught me how to operate his home, to run it like a superyacht lodged high in the Rocky Mountains. The cleaning went bit by bit every day––dusting and washing certain sections, but always cleaning up after any messes we made together or alone. He taught me how to cook a few meals in his kitchen, though he did most of that on his own while I drank and chatted and looked on. He taught me his firewood routine. Cutting the wood together, he felt that we were spending quality time, and perhaps that he was training his new spouse. I was, well, cutting firewood. The more time that passed, the more I see now that he had splintered objectives: Will wanted to experience young love, have a young lover while at his age, and raise a queer person in the modern era. On the surface, I wanted to empty the cellar stash at a faster pace, only to have it refill on its own. I wanted Will to hire a maid to do the cleaning. I wasn’t clever enough to wish that Will would will the place to me––I had no plan to outlive him. I wished instead that he would take a long trip so that I could throw a series of parties and merely pretend it was all mine for a spell. Deeper down, I wanted him to make it all real, show me what love really is and to prove his love to me. Keep me. Show me how to live and love and be myself without constant fear and anguish. I wouldn’t have to run away from Will. So long as I kept running from myself, he could never keep up.
I played my guitar and sang a few Beatles songs for Will––I didn’t know any showtunes––and he would ask me to do this frequently. He claimed to love my songs, and I would play them for anyone, especially in such luxury. I began to feel like a princess.
We went down on each other most nights. Three times he penetrated me. The pain was exquisite. As far as the sex factor of my queerness, Will showed me what I liked, and I never looked back.
By the time Will’s friends arrived, I’d been in his home for maybe two weeks without leaving.
“My friends are coming tomorrow evening,” he sang, coming out of the pantry, arms full of ingredients for something. “I thought you might want to shave, and I could measure you and collect a few garments when I go into town in the morning,” he said.
Will had made regular trips into Steamboat, but had left me behind each time. He didn’t say why, and I didn’t ask. I don’t think either one of us wanted to be seen together, or discuss the matter for our individual purposes. But Will was eager to show me off, if he could just clean me up a bit first. Though frustrated under the surface, I was game for all of this. I wanted to be his little preppy for his old friends.
The clothes weren’t what I would have chosen, but I couldn't have expected them to be. Clean shaven, hair slicked back, I felt crisp in a collared flannel shirt and slate-grey slacks. The combo reminded me of some back-to-school catalog from the late 80s. When Will came home with his friends from the airport, I felt absurd and aroused.
“Nathan,” Will sang, entering through the kitchen with three much larger men behind him, “we’re here!” I approached from the front of the house as the men entered Will’s home. “Doug, John, Stephen, I would like you to meet Nathan. Nathan, these are my dearest friends.” We all said our hellos and shook hands as Will gathered a spread of drinks and snacks and placed them all on the bar.
“Nathan,” Stephen said, “William tells us you're a musician.”
“Well,” I tried to respond.
“Oh, Nathan, do fetch your guitar, please,” Will said, not really asking. I gladly did so and sang a number of cover tunes and originals as we all drank into the late hours.
Watching and listening to Will with his friends made me jealous of their ancient love for each other––I thought, I’ll never have this with anyone. There was no doubt they’d been close since long before my birth, and their friendships were inspiring. The more alcohol we consumed, the more I caught their glances at me and back to Will. No one said anything off-color or funny about my age, but I was witnessing everyone’s enjoyment of the matter. I didn’t feel purchased––Will expected too much of me for that to be the case. He wanted me to expect more from myself.
Now I wonder if they all had young lovers, or to what degree my situation was special. Now I wonder how they all beat AIDS––if they did. They were all in good health, as far as I could tell. Had they kept their love between them, never risking the dangers of expanding their little group? It’s far more likely that they just lucked out.
***
Will’s friends were only visiting for a couple of days––an annual trip the group had made since the construction of Will’s home––and the feature event was an evening at Strawberry Park Hot Springs. We took a long drive through the mountains, in a rental that was not as fancy, but somehow bigger than Will’s Mercedes. It was great to be away from the house for the first time, and I felt safe surrounded by old, rich, gay men, until we arrived at the hot springs. Once there, after dark, I began to feel uneasy, as if we might be found out––perhaps assaulted, or arrested, though I wasn’t sure under what circumstances.
As it turned out, the evening of our visit, the place was almost empty––only a couple of groups of other older men were speckled throughout the wide span of connected pools. Was it gay night? Still, as we soaked under the stars, and the men caught up on gossip, I felt more estranged by the moment. I was getting antsy. I knew my time with Will was limited, or at least closer to expiration than the potential life together I’d come to understand he was envisioning. I wondered off and on what that may have been like, had I contained the patience and the spirit to find out. At the same time, I had nowhere to go.
When Will’s friends left, after another day and a night had passed, they told me to take care of him.
***
The next morning, I woke to hear Will talking on the phone: “Oh, I’m very fond of Nathan. Yes… oh, indeed… Uh huh––” he was talking to my mother. My whole body ran hot. How did they connect? Who called whom?
“Hi, Mom,” I said when Will finally handed me the receiver. She’d been talking to Dale, who’d gathered––from a bird?––that I was with Will. She loudly impersonated Will through the phone:
“So fond of Nathan? Is he gay? How old is he?” she asked. I was sweating. Could he hear her? I was angry with her, yet embarrassed. I felt horrible for Will, though I was angry with him too. I felt the worst for myself. My careless, selfish self.
Will was gracious when I hung up the phone: “Maybe you need some air?” he asked.
“I think so,” I said. I couldn’t see straight. I loved my mother almost strictly biologically by then. I knew, somehow, that she wasn’t homophobic, but I hadn’t thought it through. I’d thought hard for a few years about the loud bigot she married when I was fourteen. I’d begged her not to marry him, pleaded with her. It was her husband's constant sexism, racism, and exaggerated homophobia that sent me out of the house before I was ready. I still loved my mother, but I couldn’t trust her. Now, to my hysterical chagrin, she’d had a delightful chat with Will and––at least in the moment––ruined him for me too.
It was 10 a.m. when Will dropped me off on the main strip in Steamboat, where he agreed to pick me up again at 5 p.m.
Right away I was on edge about running into Dale, his family, or anyone I’d become acquainted with while living with him. Walking up and down the frozen streets, I kept looking over my shoulder between long stretches of pointing my nose at the ground. I was blank again.
Around 1 p.m., I came across a job fair for the local ski hill. Hundreds of young people raced around investigating dozens of tables, each offering positions in an array of fields. I applied for a few bar and restaurant positions, jobs I had plenty of experience in. But I was hired on the spot for a warehousing gig. The job involved receiving and stocking goods in a basecamp warehouse, and distributing those goods on snowcats and snowmobiles to destinations all over the mountain. Taking the position meant receiving a signing bonus, and residence in a dormitory style employee housing unit.
***
My last few nights at Will’s house were strained but also pleasant. I consciously wanted to love him. And I did, in a way, but I was drifting.
“I’d like to come see your apartment,” he said. We were drinking red wine, as if I was all grown up.
“I think I have roommates,” I said.
“I hope they’re cute,” he said.
We slept together, but we didn’t have sex again.
I woke on the day of my departure having moved from Will’s bed to a sofa, or another bed. He was visibly displeased when I came to the kitchen, avoiding eye contact for the first time since we met.
Will dropped me off on the ski hill with my duffels and guitar.
“I hope you’ll call,” he said.
I never called.
***
My first weeks on the hill were delightfully frustrating. Steamboat Springs was a snow globe with a thousand bars. I made friends I could lie to with a new take on everything. Gracing strangers over blaring hip-hop in a ski bar: “Yeah, I studied architecture at Yale, but I dropped out… I just want to ski now.”
The job was fun and interesting, but none of this took my mind off of Will. I felt I’d spent eternity with him, and then woke suddenly with a snowboard strapped to my feet. I wasn’t much of a skier, but getting out there, cruising the groomers, gave me a chance to breathe and get used to my changed self. I didn’t look at anything the same anymore. Especially boys. Sweet, sweet, cruel boys.
***
I’ve thought about Will through myriad settings over the course of my life. He baptised the queerness in me, which is still blossoming. Always expanding. He didn’t put it in me. He brought it out. He showed it to me, and he showed me how to wear it.
I can’t find Will. I’ve tried. Nothing turns up on social media, or in obituaries.
I miss him in an oscillating way.
