For all his money and business sense, Marty still regarded me as someone who might decide he'd had enough of him and his life. He saw the world through his perspective and experiences with other boys.

My perspective was entirely different from his. I was fascinated by him and his life and the man he'd become in spite of his situation that entitled him to anything he wanted. Up until now, he could afford to buy what he wanted.

He didn't believe he could buy me. He did think I could be wooed. The wooing had begun.

I wanted the experience of being part of what he did. I wasn't bored by him doing business in front of me, it excited me in a way a race car might not do at Watkins Glen.

I knew nothing about race cars. I had enough sense to understand the point of doing business with others. Marty was successful, and because he was successful, he was rich. Being successful fascinated me.

We flew to Rochester, New York. A small sports car was waiting for us when we were escorted off the commuter flight and guided to our transportation that would take us the rest of the way. It only had two seats, which meant there was no driver, except for Marty.

This was no ordinary car and as soon as we left the airport, we were winding our way to Watkins Glen, which was a bit off the beaten path. We went faster than I was accustomed to but not so fast that I felt I had to hold on for dear life.

Marty had never driven us anywhere. We'd always been met by a car and a driver. There was no room for a driver and the two of us, and so Marty drove the roads that turned and twisted into the distance. I never felt like I was in danger. Marty knew how to handle a sports car.

Andre never tested his skill as a driver. I never felt like we were going too fast. Driving was Andre's job. Testing his driving skills had no place in driving the man he was hired to drive. Marty never drove, but when he did drive, he wanted to make the most of the experience.

In Watkins Glen, we were met by a group of men in suits. Each took turns shaking Marty's hand and thanking him for coming there.

"This is my protégé, Joshua. He might want to drive, might not, but I want him to be able to ride with me."

This wasn't something I'd given a lot of thought to. He wanted to drive. He wanted me to drive if it's what I wanted, but he assumed because we did most things together, I'd want to do this.

I did.

Two cars were brought to where we sat in what I was told were the pits. It's where Formula One drivers got service on their cars. They filled the fuel tank and belt on four new Firestone tires in about ten seconds.

I'd been with people who filled their gas tank for a long drive, but it usually took about ten minutes to pump your gas and go in to pay for it.

In the pits, four men did the service they were trained to give fast enough to satisfy anyone in a hurry. It seems Formula One drivers were always in a hurry, and the service was done as quick as the car stopped.

They weren't racing today and pit crews were at rest.

There wasn't any racing until Marty told me to get in one of the two cars that were brought around.

"The Mercedes," Marty said, and the driver got out and Marty and I got in. The seatbelt criss crossed my chest and Marty showed me how to work the complicated gear.

"Pull your belt tight," Marty said.

"It's fine," I said, not wanting to deal with it.

"It isn't fine. Take the tail lying on your right thigh and pull it as snug as it will go."

I did what I was told and I immediately felt like someone was holding me back. In the next instant, Marty hit the gas, and I was pressed back in my seat and could not move. He'd shifted three gears before I was able to breathe.

Watkins Glen was a road course and Marty made a series of right and left turns. I'd seen a NASCAR race once, and they kept going around and around in a circle. This was a series of right and then left turns and I was sure we were moving as fast as we moved in Marty's Lear Jet.

After a second or third lap, it didn't feel like we were moving so fast. Marty kept the race car in its lane, and he made each turn with a skill that indicated it was not his first time on the track.

He did say he liked to come here when he came east and had the time. We'd spent a lot more time going west, and being on a yacht went way slower than we went at Watkins Glen.

As excitement went, this qualified and I took to leaning into the turns and straightening out before needing to lean again. As fast as we were going, the belts held me firmly in my seat.

When we drove back into the pits, going below a hundred miles an hour seemed slow to me. Marty eased into the pit where he started, and stopped the Mercedes race car. We'd driven ten laps.

"How much horsepower does a car like this have?" I asked.

Marty turned to the one man who stayed behind to wait for his return.

"Donald, how much horsepower does the Mercedes produce?"

"This has a bit more than a thousand horsepower," he said.

"A thousand horsepower. Oh my god," I said.

Donald laughed.

"Would you like to take it for a spin?" Donald asked.

"No, I can ride in Marty's Lear Jet if I want a thrill," I said.

Marty laughed.

I'd never seen Marty take a risk before. It was obvious he liked speed. He managed the car without any hesitation. The power did not overpower him. He was in control and he stayed in control. Once I was accustomed to the speed we were doing, it didn't seem as fast, but when I watched out the window, I knew we were going faster than I'd ever gone in a vehicle that still had its wheels on the ground.

We got back into the sports car we came in and we bypassed Rochester to drive to Toronto. At the border they held us up for a few minutes while attempting to do a search of our vehicle. Besides the two seats, the engine and empty trunk, there was nothing to search. The border patrol guy stood with his hands on his hips, trying to figure out where someone would hide something if they were smuggling it in a tiny sports car. Not knowing where to look next, he excused us from further inspection, but he still watched us like we might give him a hint what we were smuggling and where it was in a too small car.

Marty laughed as we drove into Canada where their border guard smiled and waved us to go ahead.

"What were they looking for?" I asked.

"Anything they can find."

"Do they search everyone?"

"No. When there's no traffic, they search whoever drives up. If he'd asked me, 'What are you smuggling?" I'd have said, 'Sports cars.'"

"You would not," I objected.

"No, I wouldn't," he said.

He leaned to kiss my lips.

We went to Toronto for dinner at the top of one of the high rise buildings. The city was lit up like a Christmas tree. It was quite a lovely view, and we stayed at a very nice hotel. It was plush and magnificently decorated. We could go to the balcony to see the city lights again. I realized I now lived in another world.

There was a guy who bought all my time for the week he was in town the first month I worked for the hotel. When it was time to go, he gave me a thousand dollars and a kiss.

Up until now, that was the longest I'd been with anyone, since leaving Eagle Point. Marty and I were working on our third month. I didn't want Marty to give me a thousand dollars and fly back to where he came from. While the hotel wanted me making as much money as I could for them, Marty wasn't the kind of guy that kissed anyone goodbye.

While we'd gone to the studio, Pride Pix, one of the male actors came over to stand at our table as we ate lunch.

"Martin, is this your new boy?" the quite handsome fellow asked.

"Hello, Anderson. No, this is my protégé, Joshua. Joshua, Anderson. He was my boyfriend last year, weren't you Anderson?"

"That's my line. What's he got I haven't got, Martin?"

"Let's be kind to each other. You were a lot of fun, and I left you with work and even fans. Let's leave it at that."

"No, I want to know. He got a foot long dick?"

I laughed at the comment.

"No, what he's got isn't a big dick. You have all the dick anyone can ever do anything with. Joshua has something you can't see but it's bigger than a bread box," Marty said.

"I want to know. We had a good thing going."

"You had a good thing going. I was merely amusing myself. You should have no complaints. I left you quite well situated. If you must know, Anderson, Joshua has a brain. He knows what a brain is for. He's way smarter than he realizes, and that's the difference, Anderson."

"I've got a brain," the tall handsome hunk said.

"Yes, but Joshua knows how to use his brain."

Like most things about Marty, he was never predictable. He didn't have a mean bone in his body, and he was nice to everyone, but Anderson simply would not take no for an answer. I could see he didn't think he was stupid, but he couldn't figure out how he knew it for sure.

The director came over and saved us from Anderson.

When we crossed back into the US, the Canadian border guard waved us on through.

We were stopped again once we reached the American side.

The same guy was on duty at the border.

"Pull your car over there."

He pointed at the spot where we stopped before.

When we got out of the car, he squinted his eyes at us.

"You two. Get in your car. You can leave."

Marty was laughing all the way to Buffalo. We turned in the car at the airport, and Marty wanted it driven back to Rochester, where we picked it up. He used his gold debit card, because he paid cash for everything. Bills would never catch up with him and once he was home, he could go over the charges and the amounts to be sure he wasn't cheated. Marty wasn't a man who was easily cheated, and he had people who took care of his financial affairs, but he always checked the invoices to be sure they were correct.

We flew from Buffalo to Denver, and there we rented another sports car and we went to get breakfast at Denny's before we tackled the Rockies.

Now, I'd never seen the Rockies, although Denny's was a bit of a step down from the places we usually ate. Of course Denny's was fine with me, and once he talked to the waitress, and the manager, we were brought coffee, and we waited for about fifteen minutes before the manager came to take us to our table.

The table faced the Rockies which towered over everything. I'd never been more impressed. Not by the Rockies, but with Marty.

How did Marty know that three tables in that Denny's had a view of those particular mountains?

I immediately suspected Andre had something to do with it.

I had difficulty taking my eyes off them. Denny's was right at street level, and those mountains went sky high. I kept expecting the surprises to taper off sooner or later, but they kept on coming. I figured these were things that pleased Marty.

He was introducing me to things he liked most of all.

The ride to the top of the mountains behind Denver was a comfortable drive in a two seat sports car. Marty had apparently satisfied his need for speed.

As we reached the highest point where the highway went, Martin stopped the car.

"Get out," he said.

"What does that sign say?" he asked and pointed.

"11,000 feet. It's twice as high as the mile high city?"

"You are over two miles high. Denver, The Mile High City, is sold as if it was really high. It's a catchy slogan. It's catchy, and yet an hour's drive away, you're two miles high. Makes Denver hardly worth mentioning, but everyone knows it is the Mile High City."

Marty had a way of giving me some idea of how his mind worked.

Sitting in Denny's and looking up at the Rockies, they looked high. I had no idea how high. There was no city where we were two miles high.

We went to Steamboat Springs where there was 'man made powder'. Marty skied and I rode the tram back and forth from the lodge to where Marty skied. I told him I'd try skiing next time.

I hadn't got up on my new surfboard yet, and I wanted to be able to surf before I took on any new sports, but Marty loved to ski. I loved sitting at the lodge in front of the fireplace eating hot broccoli soup and hot apple cider with English muffins on the side. The Damson preserves were to die for.

I'm going to be big as a house.

Marty is right, I hadn't lived until I met him. I was alive. I had a life, but I hadn't lived. There were times he didn't tell me where we were going, and I didn't ask, and we ended up at Steamboat Springs.

We stayed there for three days. We drove back to Denver and took a flight to John Wayne Airport before Andre picked us up to take us to his house in Brentwood. There was no view except for shrubs and trees that hid the house from the road. It was the first time we stayed at ground level. It was a place where we could walk in gardens or along paths that went nowhere.

We were still waited on hand and foot, and the food was as spectacular as any we ate. I heard that when Marty found a place with the best food he'd had in a while, the head cook would be working for him before the week was out.

Marty knew what he liked and he knew how to get what he wanted.

I didn't know how long we'd been gone or what day it was. When we got where we were going, I felt a little like I just got off of a merry-go-round. We'd been on the move for weeks, and for most of my life, I was rarely more than a few miles from wherever we lived.

When I left home, I was scared. I didn't know what I feared.

I didn't know where I was going or what I'd do.

I was doing fine.

The End of the story of a boy who was way way ahead of his time.

Author's Note:

We, as a people, Live in dangerous times.

Before the year 2000, in the age of HIV AIDS, we were queers and faggots. There was no LGBTQ+, no gay literature to speak of. We existed as the people it was easy to hate, because we were targeted for hate. We were dying in droves. Preachers and politicians enjoyed dancing on the graves of our dead.

It's traditional to hate us. We'd always been hated by the people who were the majority. It was fashionable to hate black folks, Indigenous people, and queers. The majority of people were without color, literally and figuratively. They hated anyone who were different.

In 1620 the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. Of the one hundred and three people who first settled Massachusetts,51 survived the first year. In 1621, the Wampanoag took pity on the unfortunate settlers. Rather than see them all starve to death in the next year, they fed them and taught them how to farm the land they'd landed on.

In 1619, the privateer White Lion brought 20 Africans from Angola to the colony of Jamestown in Virginia. The building of America had begun.

It took the Puritans until 1635 to realize Indigenous people were in the way. In the Pequot War, 1635-1636, the Puritans massacred the Pequot.

The Puritans weren't all that pure if you had something they wanted, and the Pequot were no more.

The Indian Wars had begun.

Two hundred and fifty-five years later, the final battle was fought at Wounded Knee. It wasn't much different than what the Puritans did to the Pequot. Six hundred men from the 7th cavalry surrounded a band of mostly elderly and children who had left the reservation to find food and a place where they weren't treated like animals.

The cavalry had been sent to round them up, and the three hundred Lakota had been surrounded. Freezing and starving, they gave up their hope for freedom. The cavalry on the high ground, and the Lakota below them, were in control, but a shot rang out, and then more and more shots came from above and killed most of the Lakota.

The Indian Wars were over.

After ten thousand years of freedom to roam and hunt, the Indigenous people who saved the Puritans from starvation, had no land to call their own.

Slaves, kidnapped, forced into involuntary servitude, began building America. It was black men, women, and children who built the White House.

Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to free the slaves in 1863.

In 1965, five hundred civil rights activists marched to the Edmund Pettus Bridge to cross from Selma to Montgomery to register to vote. They were met by State Troopers, some on horseback, who shot the demonstrators with tear gas and beat them with billy clubs to keep them from going to register to vote.

To be Indigenous or black means to be hated by people in the majority. Maybe it's because they remind the majority of the debt they owe. Maybe they resent letting the Wampanoag feed them. Perhaps they object to slaves building the economic engine that was to drive the country.

What does this have to do with you queers?

We are Indigenous, black, and every nationality. We live in every culture, fight in every war, and work beside the majority of people who have made it fashionable to hate us.

We don't march alone. Since the first European set foot on these shores, American shores, we are all people. We have the same human flaws, desires, and aspirations, whether or not that is a belief the majority accepts.

When you are in the majority, or when you are more powerful than anyone else, you can force your will on the minorities who inhabit your world.

Hating the original occupants of this country, the people who were the builders of America, or people who are capable of love, which is made a sin because they don't love that way, is all done because the majority of people make it that way.

Hatred doesn't come without cost.

Of the millions of Indigenous peoples here when the Europeans arrived, after Wounded Knee, there was about 250,000 Native Americans.

The buffalo didn't fair as well. Of the estimated 30,000,000 to 50,000,000 on the plains when western expansion began in the early 1800s, were all but gone by the 1880s. They numbered fewer than 25,000.

Who purposely slaughters a species to the verge of extinction?

Who hates the people who have taken care of the land for 10,000 years, or the people who built the most prosperous country on earth?

Who hates people for the sin of loving? Unfortunately, loving is always positioned with sex, and we all know how the Puritans viewed sex.

Men have always dominated women. Men are stronger. Don't play ball and they will happily beat the hell out of you.

Men are big and often strong, and the strongest will seize power and dare you to take it away. As a species, man leaves a lot to be desired.

We'd all like to live in peace and harmony, but the majority of people don't want the minorities to infect them with their kindness and loving ways. We'll have none of that love here. We hate, because we can, and because we can beat the hell out of anyone who objects.

Who wants to bet one of these powerful men in charge won't one day decide to nuke someone he hates enough to want to destroy them all. Never mind he'll set in motion forces that will destroy the planet.

Look around you at the world man has brought us. We could cooperate instead of compete. We could be kind instead of mean. We could be peaceful instead of being war like.

How did we create a world in so much trouble?

Queers?

We are here. We aren't as hated as we once were, but the haters are in charge again, and they don't ever intend to give up the power they've taken by hook or by crook.

It's the same old story.

They are the majority. What they say goes. Disagree at your peril.

Think about it.

Think about the Wampanoag.

Think about the 20 Angolans brought to Jamestown on the first slave ship.

Think about Lincoln.

Think about Sitting Bull.

Think about Jesus.

What would Jesus do?

Think?

Peace & Love,

Rick Beck



Send Rick an email at quillswritersrealm
@yahoo.com

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