Vanilla Ride by Joe R. Lansdale Page A

together, write a book on courting. Look here, you’re not staying in any motel. You’ll park your happy ass on the couch tonight.”
    “Thanks, Hap.”
    “I’m just afraid you keep trying to hook up those motel Internet connections to your laptop you’ll put your eye out. So I want you here, safe and sound.”
    “Thanks, brother. Can I have the last cookie?”
    “No.”
    We sat there and looked at the cookie. I said, “You haven’t given up on John yet, have you?”
    “No. But I got a rule. If you’re ashamed of being gay, I’m ashamed of you. I say, Queer up. I take into account John’s getting some shit and was raised in such a way as to not think he’s on the right path, but I was raised that way myself. I got over it by the time there was hair on my balls. Actually, John shaves them for me, but you know what I mean.”
    “Too much information, partner. Besides, I think a man ought to have hair on his balls.”
    “Now that John won’t be doing that for me anymore, are you interested in doing the shaving?” Leonard said, and smiled.
    “I’d just cut them off, problem solved. Actually, several problems solved. Your relationships would be less strenuous and that pesky hair problem would be over with. You could just hang out with Bob and be happy.”
    Leonard sighed. “And if things aren’t bad enough, Bob died.”
    “Oh, man. Sorry.”
    Bob was Leonard’s pet armadillo. They had been close. Well, Leonard had been close to Bob. It was hard to tell how Bob felt. But he did hang around and would sniff Leonard’s hand and eat out of it. He lived in Leonard’s closet a lot of the time. Went outside to do his business, like a dog. Had a bowl with his name on it.
    “It was like his little clock ran down,” Leonard said. “I buried him out back near a little wallow he had made. You know how he liked to dig.”
    “He was an armadillo, Leonard. It’s what they do.”
    “I know. But he was kind of cool. I liked him.… Hell, Hap, I don’t know. Short time back, life was good, felt like I was fartin’ perfume and crappin’ chocolate candy. Now things suck the big ole donkey dick. John, the way he’s actin’, and now my ’dilla goin’ down. It sucks the oxygen right out of you.”
    I couldn’t tell if Leonard was more upset about John or Bob. I studied his face, decided it was a draw.
    “Sorry, man,” I said. “Really.”
    “Thanks. It don’t help worth a damn, but I’m glad you said it,” and his voice wavered a little. “Actually, I’m thinking of trying to write a soap opera, call it
Lives of the Homos.”
    “Leonard?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You can have the last cookie.”

14
    Leonard stayed with us about three days. After work we played chess, talked nasty, read books and discussed them; we talked about which was cooler, Marvel Comics or DC. Leonard thought Marvel. I thought DC. Brett liked Archie Comics. That immediately excluded her from the discussion and a bit of respect was lost. We listened to music. We rented movies and played Monopoly. Brett proved to be adamant about having the silver dog as her token, and she won a lot. I saw her steal some money from my pile once, but let it go. I called her on it when we went to bed and she made it up to me and the authorities were not called, though Archie Comics was not entirely forgiven.
    It was fun having Leonard around for a while, and we hated to see him go, but he finally rented a little apartment on the other side of town, said he was calling John daily, that they were talking and he was guardedly optimistic, hoping things would resolve quickly because the hair on his balls had grown back.
    I came home from work one day, sweaty and dirty and feeling like something the dogs had dragged under the porch and gnawed on, and there was a police car parked out front of the house at the curb. There was a big black guy with a cop’s uniform and a cowboy hat about the size of a life raft sitting in one of my lawn chairs smoking a cigar big as