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Chapter Three: Buddies

Old soldiers die hard, old habits die harder, and reveille was still oh six hundred hours.  Not that it meant anything anymore, but the beginning of George’s days, every one of them, was opening his eyes at six in the morning, looking at the alarm clock that never rang and throwing a mental raspberry at the little contraption.  Nope, not today I don’t, and going back to sleep. For thirty minutes or so, George genuinely enjoyed the early hours of the day.

This morning he had a bit of an objective. He wanted to see Jason, wanted to talk to the boy. For that to happen he had to be up and about where the boy could come to him. He wished Cathy could be present, she was part of this as well but this was a Saturday and  Cathy wouldn’t be back till Tuesday. Not unless he asked, he suddenly realized. He had her phone number, the book gave that she could come by twice a month on request. It was a service he’d never used. Later in the day, of course, she was young and this was the weekend. Maybe today would be a good day to burn one of those extra visits if it wouldn’t put her out of her day, of course, being as how he wasn’t the one who might really need her.

He rolled out of bed testing his joints. Not bad, not bad at all. Stiff as always, but not hurting. He headed for the shower wearing his habitual half smile. He had a mission, and there was a plan in place.

***   ***   ***

For all that Cathy was a child of the land she was a quite subtle and sophisticated girl in many regards, as witnessed by the different music her cell phone played to announce different callers. She put a bit of thought into her choices, each to it’s own the music echoed her opinion.

For example, caller unknown came from Halls of the Mountain King, the stomp of fate approaching her life. Any of the folk from campus were announced by Burt’s cheerful dance number in Mary Poppins, someone from that circuit usually called wanting her to kick her heels up and step in time to something or another. Herb Alpert’s sweet trumpet playing A Taste of Honey announced Lisa, the dashing Ukrainian exchange student who occasionally shared her bed? He was the guitar riff from Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower. Her boss, The Captain, was of course from Dvorjak’s New World Symphony, any of her dozen clients rang in as the chorus from the Beatles tune Help. Once you got to know Cathy they all made sense.

A swizzle frown took Cathy’s face when her phone interrupted brunch with the Beatles tune. Work calling, today of all days. Murphy’s law, chapter nine, section 13. It was bound to happen. Fifteen seconds into the conversation she caught Lisa’s eye, put her finger across her lips, and switched to speaker phone.

Lisa entered the conversation to hear George say “…we can write it up as an extra visit and get you paid, but it’s not really anything about the house. I was, well, I was hoping if you were here Jason would notice and come talk to us. I’m worried about the boy, Cathy, I really am but it’s not my place to try and go find him. I’ve just got a gut hunch he’s not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.”

“Oh, God no, he can’t possibly be out of the woods yet,” Cathy replied, suddenly and totally serious. “Just what we heard the other day has me heartsick about the whole sordid affair. Something needs to change, and for my money the quicker the better.”  

Without warning Lisa’s heart jumped into her throat, tears started into her eyes watching her beautiful woman armor up against the injustice being done a child’s life; it was so easy to see the fire flaring up in her heart to champion what was right. So beautiful, so powerful, and amazingly her lover. The proverbial had found her, suddenly it was so hard to believe such a truly beautiful creature wanted her by her side.

Cathy took note of what passed over Lisa’s face. “George, hang on half a sec, I’ll be right back.”  

With her phone muted she looked at Lisa. “You game to spend a couple of hours and ride with?” she asked.

Lisa reached forward to pat her hand as she answered. “Oh, yea, no prob. For you sweet woman I’ll wear chain mail and swear celibacy till the dragon’s dead.”

“Eh, you don’t need to get quite that extreme,” Cathy said, the tilt of her smile and the sparkle in her eye making it plain she was good with the chain mail thing, but celibacy? Nah, don’t think so. She restored her conversation with George in private, the phone to her ear.

“I, well, we are going to be out and about a bit later anyway, would it be good if we just swung by say two-ish?”  There was a pause, Cathy chuckled at George’s tone of voice. Dear George, your instincts are dead on, just for now you’ve got the polarity flipped. “No, not my boyfriend, just my buddy. I’ll introduce you guys when we get there, you’ll like her.” After another short pause Cathy smiled and said “Great. See you then,” and closed her phone.

Lisa cocked her head, a funny look on her face. “So now I’m your… buddy?” she asked, a bit incredulous at Cathy’s choice of words. The word seemed so trivial to her, and for some reason kind of slimy.

Cathy laughed, it was her turn to pat a hand. “Yea, as far as George is concerned  you’re my buddy. But don’t take it for an insult, it isn’t. Not the way a man like him knows the word.”

It took Lisa a bit, she wasn’t sure if her feelings were hurt or not. She could tell Cathy was watching her process, waiting for her to speak, and she wasn’t sure how she felt. She claimed the coffee cups, when she returned with them steaming full she still wasn’t sure so she took the bull by the proverbial horns. Being timid about her own feelings was not part of Lisa.

“Ok, so what’s different between how I and a man like George might know the word buddy?” she asked.

Cathy accepted her cup with a nod of gratitude, and watched an obviously agitated Lisa pace around the room opening blinds. She countered one question with another. “C’mon, I’d have to know how you mean the word to answer that. Where does that word show up in your world?”

Lisa snorted an answer instantly. “Well, buddy as in fuck buddy, of course.”

Cathy nodded, the beginnings of an understanding were to be heard when she spoke.  “Really? That’s it? Serious question. How many soldiers have you actually known? I mean deep known, not just name, rank and serial number?”

Lisa looked up shaking her head, searching her memory. “Not… many I guess, none really. The majority I’ve just bumped into here or there? The guys in the bar who make it a point to lead off saying they’re military this or military that? They,” and there she had to pause looking for words, “well, most of them felt unstable to me, came off as dangerously violent beneath the surface, that or total homophobic assholes. Often enough both. Sorry hon, but not my kind of people at all.”

“So none of the men folk in your family are veterans?”  

When Lisa shook her head in the negative she provided Lisa with a bit of sanctuary, albeit in a strange manner. “Calling Dr. Ranik, Dr. Lisa Ranik, line three please,” she said in her best public address system voice, and then sat up perky receptionist straight with a big smile.

Lisa laughed as she understood Cathy’s intentions. She was so different from the others, so delightfully different. The others either ignored her job, or tried to take advantage of it bartering submission for therapy. The latter set never stayed for breakfast.  She took herself to stand behind Cathy’s chair, bent over to put a soft kiss on her forehead as her hands slipped beneath the robe to set a caress across chest and shoulders, left her hands ride as she spoke still leaning over.

“Ok hon, but just understand, the doctor is either in or out, I can’t be both. What do you have for me on the subject of buddies?”

“What I learned from my grandfather,” Cathy began as Lisa stood back up. When Lisa was settled across the table from her in listening mode she continued. “Think about the men themselves, think about what they endure emotionally. Their  training has been evolving for centuries deliberately intended to break the weak, and later in battle when even the strong can break. Think about the difference between facing that alone, or with a, a companion, a counterbalance and confidant to help you support yourself by supporting them when you’re both damn near out of strength.”

“I have,” Lisa said, “I have. It’s a no brainer the only way they survive such hell is to support each other, to nurture each other. That’s why the homophobia just doesn’t make sense. I mean, homophobia at five times the rate of just run of the mill guys. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Cathy saw a clean shot, she took it. She set her cup down quite deliberately and stood, letting her robe fall open as she turned to face Lisa. She caught Lisa’s eye and walked forward lowering her head, holding her gaze, holding her focus.  When she stood before Lisa she cocked an eyebrow. “Then sweetheart, let me put a little light on the subject for you,” she said.

Lisa hardly noticed Cathy had untied her robe until her hands went under her arms to find the nerves just below shoulder blades. Cathy walked her hands across her lover, tiny fingernail caresses electric on every favorite spot she’d found. Well before her hands cleared the lower ribs Lisa’s nipples were throbbing, her breath suspended as things went molten below. She worked her hands down Lisa’s back putting fuel to the flame. She knew how she wanted her, she wanted things so hot Dr. Ranik would have to really work to think at all. The comparison had to be vivid to make things valid. She’d put the fire out later, but to make this happen for now Lisa had to be burning right on the edge of civil endurance.

“Hold the soldiers in your thought, lock that thought,” she commanded speaking ever so softly, “and remember last night for me. Remember,” she said, and pulled Lisa’s hips forward, tipped her own hips to work against Lisa in a slow grinding roll that pulled and tugged on everything all the way back under to her tailbone. “remember me, remember how I was? How you were?”

When Lisa nodded, eyes wide and bright, she suddenly stopped moving and changed the texture of her thought, changed what would echo down to jump body to body across nerves already sensitized to the slightest change of nuance in the frequency of the other. With cool deliberation she detonated what she’d built to blow a hole through that wall across Lisa’s heart so a bit of genuine understanding could pass through the breach.

“If there’s anything between the guys that’s a tenth, a hundredth as powerful as what we shared last night? What that gets started usually gets you both killed. A lot of them are homophobic Lisa, and with damn good reason. It’s part of what’s called the survival instinct. If it’s ever once activated that doesn’t go away, it just works its way out of the survivors and into the culture.”

Lisa’s face melted, her eyes went from wide to sad, her head fell off to one side shaking in denial. Cathy was contradicting too much, she was contradicting everything she’d ever heard. There were no words needed to say what she thought, she was thinking ‘no, surely not, that, that just can’t be right…’

The recliner was closest, Cathy pulled Lisa by the robe the two steps needed and plopped into the chair bringing Lisa down to sit on her lap. A moment later she’d gathered her into a cuddle hug, lifting her feet off the floor.  When Lisa opened her mouth trying to find words Cathy held her silent with a finger across her lips and kept the stage.

“Look at us, you and me, right now,” she said. “You don’t believe me, I’m totally tossing what all the experts say and that doesn’t feel good for you. But I care about you, and what’s my instinct? To bring you close, shelter you with my body, bring you inside my shields. It’s that momma thing come down to us all the way from the primal. Even when we play sex to the point it’s agony and ecstasy all at once that instinct is still active between us. It’s what makes the tenderness we both crave. But it’s not like that for the guys, it can’t be.”

“Why not? Why can’t it be?” Lisa demanded.

“Because for them that instinct isn’t momma, for them it’s the silver-back thing that comes down to them from just as far back as the momma thing does for us. Someone they care about feels threatened? The primal instinct they carry is to push them back and jump in front of the threat, engage battle to keep whatever it is busy while the others organize to protect the troop behind them. They’ll do it even if it costs them their life. Look at nature. How many times do you see it happen? You couple that up with the survival instinct telling them if they want to survive that battle to stay clear of anything that might compromise their focus? After that’s steeped into every culture for say the last four or five thousand years what you get is what old Siggy Freud over there called homophobia.”

Lisa shivered. She was so turned on it was kind of hard to think, she had to admit Cathy had made her point on that front. But the circle was still open, there was still contradiction. She nibbled Cathy’s earlobe while rubbing just the right spot on the nape of her neck knowing full well what that did to her.

As she stood up she said “I love you, and I’m still tempted to prescribe a laxative. If the objective is a clear head then explain the whole buddy thing. Isn’t that the same thing, even more because it’s a nurture bond?”

Cathy rubbed her ear, and then her nipples, but she couldn’t say anything. She’d done it to Lisa first.  “Kinda sorta, but not really,” she said, getting to her feet and following Lisa back to the table where their coffee waited. “There’s one more factor in play. And it’s the tough one.”

“Oh, and what might that be,” Lisa parried. Good lord, she’d sat in many and a many a discussion group on campus that hadn’t gotten this far in two weeks.

“The evolution of the whole mating thing across the jump from troop to tribe. Easy enough to see that was so you could keep a group of strong males to back up the alpha when the problem was a hungry lioness, make sure they weren’t all used up fighting among themselves and leave the troop weak when the lioness came calling.”

“Oh? And so how does that figure into the buddy thing justifying homophobia?” Lisa was wishing she could take notes, or run a recorder, but both were out of reach.

“Tangled up in the instinct to be the alpha, to be the silver back, in the first place,” Cathy said, and then paused for a good long sip from her cup thinking all the while.

There was a sad tone creeping into Cathy’s voice as she continued. “It folds through more than three dimensions. As long as there’s no sex, no hint of anything resembling sexual attraction then your buddy is still part of the troop and it’s righteous to die defending a member of your troop, particularly when you’re trying to feel like the alpha instinct tells every man he should try to be so as to win himself a good mate or three.

“But if the guys are lovers then the other isn’t part of the troop anymore, he’s now a barren surrogate mate who doesn’t have any more invested in the babies than you do. If the relationship is anything resembling balanced then he’s thinking alpha as well which gets you to a co-alpha situation, and that’s a lethal serious contradiction in terms.

“You of all people should know how tangled those relationships get when you load ‘em against limits. The conflicts and confusion coming out of that are more dangerous to staying alive than anything else. The whole homophobia thing is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

It was Lisa’s turn to wear a swizzle frown. “And you want me to believe the guys understand this? C’mon. Average straight would piss his pants just to hear it said.”

“Yea, well, you don’t have to understand an instinct to have it influence your life. Contrary to what the gays say the straights aren’t scared of them, the gays aren’t shit compared to the lion. They’re instinctively scared of getting into something that will get them killed doing what instinct says they should to keep the cat away from the babies.”

Cathy looked down into her coffee cup focusing on the reflection of the ceiling. After a bit she added “Like I said, it just sort of seeps out of the survivors and into the culture, usually more by way of their sons than they themselves.” The shift in Cathy was soft and subtle, Lisa missed the clues, she really couldn’t see how far away her eyes went.

“And… you learned all of this from your grandfather?” Lisa asked. She’d made a rational argument in a place where most arguments were just that, overheated emotions and overheated air. Cathy’s reasoning didn’t cover the full spectrum but seemed a solid viable approach. Her grandfather must have been quite a thinker, in places where she really had a bit of trouble believing any man would ever venture, to have taught her that.

“Yea,” Cathy said, lifting her head to look Lisa in the eye. “Across a six week drunk that ended up killing him.  En vino veritas, remember? He survived losing Grandma in fine form, said his goodbyes to a woman he’d loved for forty five years and healed. But when he heard his buddy had died of old age before he’d gotten the chance to go visit again like he’d promised? Broke his heart so bad he didn’t want to live anymore.”

The cry Cathy wouldn’t let into her voice echoed from Lisa’s mouth. “Oh my god sweetheart…” she said, extending her hands across the table. Cathy couldn’t do anything about the tear on her cheek, but she brought her face back to the present wearing gratitude for Lisa’s empathy as she reached out to clasp hands.

 “Yea. Took me two years to sort out what he was trying to say while he was crying and way to drunk to walk. They survived Iwo together, you know?”

 “I… don’t know that name,” Lisa said softly, watching the ghosts fly across Cathy’s face. No wonder sometimes she felt so much older than she was.

“There’s a lot of people who don’t,” Cathy said. “The island of Iwo Jima, just south of Japan. The Japanese defense was suicidal fierce, literally, to the last man. There were places on that island they measured the ground in bodies per yard. A lot of historians say it was the most brutal battle of the whole war and Grandpa had to relive it to mourn his friend. Frankly Lisa? I think he survived the first time, but he couldn’t a second time knowing he was alone.

There was no thought, none at all, it was that instinct Cathy had been talking about that moved Lisa around the table to bring her close. “You loved him so much,” she said, wrapping a soft hug around her lover, kissing the top of her head, “and now George reminds you of him so much it hurts.” A lot of things suddenly made so much sense.

Cathy nodded an agreement, Lisa was right. She allowed herself the comfort offered, for a moment, leaning over to pillow flesh on flesh before kissing Lisa’s tummy and leaning away to look her in the eye looking up.

“And you know what the biggest pisser of the whole deal is?”

“No, I don’t. What?” In the moment there was a stereotype shredding realization in Lisa’s heart: the point on a unicorn’s horn is tempered in her tears.

“If the world wasn’t so damn degenerate that… disgusting… gay fuck buddy thing is what most people think of when they hear the word? His friend wouldn’t have had to be dead, and him dead drunk, before he could admit how much he loved the man.

“Nobody needs to talk to me about homophobia, not coming, not going,” she said as Lisa took back her chair. “If he could have ever said it to him just once, said it to anyone, even just to his sober self just once he would have lived a lot longer. The mourning wouldn’t have killed him.”