Bobby's Tale

Thinking I'd witnessed a man's death throes up close and personal, in crimson technicolor, did a real number on my head; and I know it did on the other's as well. Ridiculous as it was, I felt partly responsible. If I hadn't been there, or at least if I hadn't let Kevin manipulate me into sex, none of this would have happened. But then I realized something like this would probably have happened sooner or later; and it certainly wasn't in any way my fault Kevin stabbed his brother.

I tried to comprehend, at least a little, life for this family that was so foreign to me, how there could be so much anger and violence and yet be bonded with some kind of love. I pitied them their little culture of closeted love, yet I admired some things about them at the same time.

And of course, there were my numerous and life altering revelations before the fight. I had only a vague and fleeting sense that night of how irretrievably I was swept into a tide that would ultimately wash me clean and then let me get dirty again on my own terms. That night replayed itself occasionally in quiet moments for the rest of my days.

Darius was the obvious hero of the night. He convinced the Harris County Sheriff's it was an accident, and that their parents weren't home. They had been called to the house on numerous enough occasions to not be surprised at anything they found. Their parents never woke up, even with the sirens and paramedics banging the stretcher down the hallway and back. Fucking amazing.

When everyone was gone, Darius instructed that none of us would tell anyone what had happened that night, including what had brought this fight on. Kevin rode with Stan in the ambulance, so he and Billy were told the next day about the pact. I know everyone was more than happy to comply.

I was so grateful to Darius for both saving the day and handing my life back to me relatively intact, I fell in love with him-- in a way... I mean, I knew better, but I've always been drawn to strong men. So I worshipped him from afar for awhile. He was actually nicer and paid more attention to me after that night, and that made me admire him even more.

Let's see... Before meeting his future wife in '78, Matt and I got together a few times after that night and had awesome, memorable sex that I still think of as 'making love'. And we both went all the way with each other, me taking his cherry about the third time we were together. He was a really special guy. He was tender and sensual and sexy and sweet, and I came this close to falling deeply in love with him.

But he made it very clear that he was: "Bi, but more straight. I just can't fall in love with a guy, ok? I enjoy what we do, but I don't feel 'that kind' of love for you, like relationship love, know what I mean? But I really do like you a lot and, well... I do love you in some real and meaningful way, just not in a 'mate' way." And I accepted that. I appreciated him for being the beautiful person he was and is. We lost contact with each other years ago, but I still think of him fairly often and get a warm glow in my heart, and yes, a stirring in my groin as well.

Matt told me Billy was really freaked out about that whole night, and talked for hours with him about it one time. But he never spoke to me about it. He didn't speak much to me anyway after that. He wasn't hostile or anything; he just avoided me, and that was fine with me.

I never even spoke to Kevin again. He hardly ever came to Kelly's Cue after that night. When we did see each other, we just acted like we didn't really know each other. And the few times I did see him, he looked like a changed man, quieter, kinda mellow. He went to work in the refineries along the ship channel as a pipefitter.

I'm glad I didn't hate or even resent him, and I always felt somehow that if circumstances had been different that night-- in other words, alone-- we could have had a mutually satisfying sexual relationship that summer. Is it pathetic to think that way? Who's to say?

From what Darius told me, Stan didn't retaliate for the stabbing and told people it was an accident. He said Stan told him he had a 'near death experience' on the way to the hospital-- tunnel with white light and all-- and looked at life differently from then on. He got married in '79, to a girl none of us knew, and seemed to really take to the whole family life thing. He, his wife and four year old girl were all killed in a car wreck in '83, up by Austin on Labor Day, so they became a holiday statistic. Kevin moved out to California right after Stan and his family died. It seems like no one's heard from him since.

I guess none of the citizens of Kelly's Cue, which is long since closed, has any desire to ever go by their house to ask his folks how Kevin is doing, and none of us knew their other brothers well enough to go by and see any of them. I did hear that Peter went to New York and achieved some notoriety for his artwork, and someone said he came out as gay; but the source was a ditzy girl, so I don't know for sure.

As I said, that night changed my life. And I honestly don't regret it at all. Sure, I'd like for things to have gone differently, but I grew up a lot in those few eventful hours. By the next day, I knew my life had changed forever. One very significant thing I noticed, gradually, was that after that night, something in my personality changed: I no longer seemed to irritate people. I couldn't tell you what the difference was... I just found it easy to make friends and people seemed to like me.

In the fall of that year, I enrolled at the University of Houston and moved to the Montrose, where I rapidly immersed myself in the gay community and had a few blissful years as a sex pig slut. In the middle of that period, I met an amazing and wonderful man named Dennis, and we fell madly in love in 1980. We were both into the leather scene and into just about any and everything you can think of-- you name it, we tried it, more than once. I told him about that night and we debated whether that event caused me to become the sex pig I became, or whether I was born to be that way. It didn't really matter.

By 1987, ten years after my night of the long swords, I had already watched Dennis, the love of my life, die of AIDS, along with most of our friends; and I was full-blown as well. I dedicated the rest of my life to fighting for PWA care and funding, and safe sex education.

Author's Epilogue:

Bobby told me his story and I've tried to relay it in his words, with his thoughts and his emotions as much as I could. It was hard to watch his deterioration happen before my eyes over the months at the end. He was bedridden by the time he told me this story, and I got a few of the details from Matt a couple of years later.

Robert Alvin Wheaton died of AIDS complications in 1990, two weeks before his 31st birthday, as his mother and several of his closest remaining friends and I sat in vigil. He was a brave, kind and generous man, full of love and life, poignantly displaying himself as a brutal reminder of why we should all have safe sex. I count myself lucky to have known him, to have been his friend. I really miss him.