Mississippi Sissy (35 page)

He reached out to shake my hand and almost crushed it in his giant palm as I smiled at the pun I didn't say aloud but certainly thought as I stared at that “Dowsing rod” inside his jeans. “I know who you are,” I said. Frank Dowsing was a star at Mae's. In fact, he was a star all over the state of Mississippi and a much braver soul than any sissy eighteen-year-old hiding out in a gay bar on yet another Saturday night. He was not only the first African American to play football at Mississippi State, but the first African American to be chosen Mr. Mississippi State by the student body. He was an all-SEC defensive back who was also an all-American. I was still interested in sports and had read everything there was to read about him in the pages of the
Clarion-Ledger
and
Jackson Daily News.
I knew he had been drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles the year before but had decided to go to med school instead—he was an academic all-American as well—because he was dissatisfied with the round the Eagles drafted him in. He also still held the SEC record for the 100-yard dash with a time of 9.5 seconds. His marriage to his childhood sweetheart in the campus chapel at Mississippi State up in Starkville had been written
about in the papers. His recent divorce had not received as much coverage. And he was handsome, as handsome as anybody on
The Mod Squad.

He sat down across from me. Gloria Gaynor began to sing “Never Can Say Goodbye.” I smiled at him. “That's better,” he said. You're even sexier when you smile. You should smile more often.”

I offered him what was left of Jack's Bacardi. He declined the offer. “You sit down next to me more often, I'll smile more often,” I told him, putting the last bit of rum in my plastic cup. “My name is Kevin, by the way,” I kept flirting, kiddingly echoing his own introduction. “Kevin Sessums.”

“I know who you are, too,” he told me. “I've been watching you for a while. Not just this evening. But I was afraid to approach you. I just couldn't take you looking so sad tonight, though.” He slipped his huge black hand beneath the table—Gaynor still wasn't saying goodbye—and touched my leg, gently, briefly, before running a finger across my instantly hard cock. I wanted him to keep his hand there, but he just as quickly removed it. He was too much of a gentleman to feel me up in public. I looked over to where he had been sitting and noticed stares as well as whispers sweeping through that section of the place. Although up those rickety stairs Mae's was for all the gays and lesbians who wanted to congregate in Jackson, once inside we all self-segregated. The blacks had their tables on one side of the bar. The whites had ours on the other. Seldom did we mingle. But everybody, white and black alike, watched Frank when he came into the bar. There was no hotter gossip that year than his being a homosexual and so open about it. He was the kind of person one had to look at when he entered a room, not only because he was a sports celebrity but because he had that charismatic swagger with which sports celebrities are born. It's part of their DNA. Before they ever run back a touchdown or hit a home run or win a basketball game at the buzzer, they charismatically swagger those first few steps they ever
take toward their mother's outstretched hands, hoping their fathers are watching, their athletic prowess built on such physical trust, such hope for their father's eyes. Because Frank was already an object of rapt attention at Mae's, the Saturday-night regulars were extra vigilant not to miss what was going to happen between him and that aloof white boy who always sat alone over in the corner while downing Jack's rum and ruminating on his own loveliness. When the Hues Corporation began to sing “Rock the Boat,” Frank asked me to dance. A loud whoop, derisive and appreciative at the same time, went up from a table of over-the-top black queens who had been fawning over him earlier. From the white section: silent frowns. My response?
Fuck 'em all.
I forgot all about Pike brothers and my confusing heartbreak at not having a girlfriend as Frank and I began to dance and continued dancing right through Barry White's “Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe.” We both hated ABBA so when “Waterloo” came on we sat back down and talked till the bar closed.

Frank told me he had come out of the closet on his way to the Hula Bowl, a game played by a roster of collegiate all-stars, the year before, when he had a stopover in San Francisco where he had his first homosexual experience. At the Hula Bowl he discovered that four of his teammates were gay and were quite open about it. He decided during the second half of the game that he would come home and get a divorce and be exactly who he was. He also decided not to sign with the Eagles. “It really wasn't because of the draft round, that's just something I told the press,” he said. “I concluded it would be tougher being an out homosexual in the NFL than being an out homosexual in Jackson, Mississippi, and that's saying something.” For the first time that night, he too looked sad. It was my turn to reach under the table and touch his leg. We held hands. I thought we were going to have sex later but he told me he wanted to have a proper date. He asked me to go out for dinner the next Saturday night. I gladly accepted.

I could barely think of anything else throughout the following week. I had never slept with either a sports celebrity or a black man, and I'm not sure which excited me more. I told the other Frank in my life all about it when we had dinner at Bleak House that week, and he was beside himself with excitement for me. Frank Hains was exclusively into black guys, but his interest tended mostly toward younger, lither, more ladylike boys. I'd met several of them and, though they were always quite sweet, they were just a little too sweet for my taste. At dinner that night, it was the first time I ever heard the expression, “Once you go black, you never go back,” when Frank Hains began to regale me with how such men tasted in an epidermal sense. “Maybe it's the chocolate connotation, but they are quite literally more delicious. I can't explain it,” he said. “Perhaps it's the musk in their melanin. Whatever it is, trust me, it's marvelous.
Marvelous.
You won't be disappointed. Your diet is about to change, dear boy. Thank God such lusciousness is not fattening or I'd be as big as Montserrat Caballe.”

But Frank Dowsing's allure for me was bigger than just his beauty. I had to admit to myself that sleeping with Frank Dowsing would be a way of doing penance for insulting Matty May so deeply with my use of the N-word that she left my grandparents' employ and, in turn, my life. If I truly were not bigoted—my whole life, since Matty walked away from me in Uncle Benny's cotton field, had been spent proving that point to myself—then I would suck Frank Dowsing's dick and anything else he wanted me to do. It would be more than a sexual act on my part; it would be a political one.

Saturday arrived. He picked me up in his Ford Torino, which I took as a good omen, as it was the same kind of car that Bobby Thompson drove in high school. We went to the T.G.I. Friday's that had just opened in Jackson. We had a hard time eating our meal because people kept recognizing him and asking for his autograph, especially football-loving fathers who were there with their sons. After
dinner we went back to Frank's apartment in the black section of town around Jackson State. I was expecting a butch place full of wooden furniture and trophy cases. Instead, there were overstuffed pillows and peacock feathers in vases and a poster of Diana Ross. He made me a Bacardi and Coke without asking what I wanted to drink, and put an album of duets between Ross and Marvin Gaye on his turntable. We slow-danced until we fell into bed together. His chiseled body broke my fall. We stripped each other's clothes off down to our white underwear. I went to slip his pair of underwear down his massive thighs but he stopped me and pulled me toward him. The first time his full lips found mine—we still had not kissed—I felt devoured. I've never wanted anyone as much as I wanted him in those first few moments of our making love. Frank Hains was right. He did taste slightly different than the white boys I had had sex with. More luscious. Yes, muskier. Then, suddenly, he wanted to fuck me. I had never been fucked before. I told him so, and that I didn't think I was ready for it, especially from a cock the size of his. He put a finger to my lips to quiet me then stuck it inside my mouth so I could suck on it. He took the wet finger from my mouth and ran it along my sphincter before sliding it inside me as far as I could take it. “Please,” I whispered. “No. I can't. I can't.” He pulled his finger free and licked it now himself. “That's okay,” he said. “Reach down under the bed.” I did as I was told and retrieved a bottle of Vaseline Intensive Care lotion and a perfectly folded white terry cloth hand towel. “Beat me off with that lotion,” he said. I poured the Vaseline Intensive Care into my palm and started masturbating him. He shot all over his stomach. “Want to lick it up?” he asked. I had never done that either. “Try it,” he said, pressing my head down toward his row of abdominal muscles. I tried licking it, but wiped most of it up with the towel. “You're sweet,” he said.

“You, too,” I told him. “Literally.”

We laughed and I lay next to him. We listened to Miss Ross, as he
kept calling her, and Marvin Gaye sing a couple of more songs. He got out of bed to clean up in the bathroom, then went to change the music on the turntable. “Who's that?” I asked when he climbed back into bed. “Dusty Springfield. This is her new album called
Cameo
. I love this song. I went to high school in Tupelo, you know,” he said as Dusty did her version of Van Morrison's “Tupelo Honey.” We lay in silence and listened to her sing. I kept touching his Afro.

“Do you like going to the movies?” he asked me when Dusty was finished singing about his hometown. “We should go to one next Saturday. How about
Uptown Saturday Night?
I've been looking forward to that one. Or the picture that was filmed here last year by Robert Altman. I've been reading about it a lot.”

“Thieves Like Us,”
I told him, keeping it to myself that I had been picked up by a man working with Altman at Poet's, a restaurant where local hipsters hung out. I had had a brief affair with the man, even going to watch the dailies with him a few times and listening to Altman hold court, once viewing a scene not used in the movie of a naked Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall jumping up and down on a bed, wanting Carradine's bouncing cock a lot more than I wanted the crew member's.
“Uptown Saturday Night's
fine,” I said.

“What's your favorite movie you've ever seen?” Frank asked me as he kept gently touching my sphincter, my legs slowly parting for him as he continued to massage me there, the same way I had begun to massage myself back in that bathroom stall at the Town Theater during the last unseen part of
Wait Until Dark.

Although anything Audrey Whatshername starred in was in the running, and I had gone back to see
Cabaret
three times at the Capri Theatre close to Millsaps the year before, I came up with another answer.
“The Last Picture Show”
I said.

“But that's in black-and-white,” he said, sounding like Mrs. Fikes complaining about
Who's Afraid ofVirginiaWoolf?

“So? Look at us,” I told him.

“You've always got a funny answer for everything, don't you,” he said, laughing before pulling me to him so we could kiss some more. “No. Really now. Why did you choose that movie?” he asked when he took his tongue back from where I tried to keep it inside my mouth.

When I was fifteen I had convinced Mom and Pop to let me take our Plymouth to Jackson to see
The Last Picture Show
with Bobby Thompson. When he said he could go, I had been as excited about the approaching day as I had been about having dinner with Frank Dowsing. I pretended I was having a real date with Bobby. When we got to the Paramount Theatre and the movie started, our elbows touched on the shared armrest between us as Cloris Leachman's face grew sadder and sadder in close-up and Timothy Bottoms cried at the death of a street urchin and Cybill Shepherd, like Bobby, allowed her beauty to be admired. Afterward, I often dreamt of seeing
The Last Picture Show,
but in my dream the street urchin lived and Cloris Leachman laughed and I held Bobby's hand. “It reminds me of Forest like that Dusty Springfield song reminds you of Tupelo,” I told Frank. “What's your favorite movie?” I asked.

“They call me
Mister
Tibbs!' ” he robustly exclaimed, using a totally different yet familiar voice. “Do you know what that's from? That's from my all-time favorite movie.” He said it again: “ ‘They call me
Mister
Tibbs!' ”

“In the Heat of the Night,”
I said. “That's Sidney Poitier. You sound almost just like him. Do you like Sidney Poitier?”

“I worship Sidney Poitier even more than I worship Miss Ross,” he said. “If Sidney Poitier made albums, I'd be playing them right now. The same year I saw
In the Heat of the Night,
I saw
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
and
To Sir, With Love.
I was sixteen and had just enrolled at Tupelo's white high school under the freedom-of-choice program. I was in that first small group of Negro kids who integrated the place and was one of only three Negro players in all the white public school system to be playing football in the whole fucking state. I was
scared shitless, man, but every time I saw Sidney Poitier on screen I was less scared. He's got more dignity in his little finger than most white folks—no offense—have in their whole bodies. Someday I hope to be half the man that Sidney Poitier is. He got me through some pretty dark times. He still does. That's why I want to see
Uptown Saturday Night
next weekend. He directed it. Sidney Poitier is
the man.
He's my inspiration.”

I sat up and straddled him. I put his hard dick along the crack of my ass and told him all about Matty May and how much she loved Sidney Poitier, too. I told him how I had offended her on the morning after the Academy Awards, when I was in second grade, by calling him a nigger. I told him how I had slipped up and used the word again in her presence. I told him about the day picking cotton at Uncle Benny's farm. I told him, in a way, that being in bed with him was a way of making up to her. Frank Dowsing said nothing as he lay beneath me and I told him all of that. He then pushed me off his crotch where his cock, becoming softer and softer, still lay inside my crack. He sat on the edge of the bed. I massaged his massive shoulders. I kissed his neck. “Don't,” he said. “Don't.”