Chapter 25/Epilogue
As I write these words, it's the end of the year 2000. It's been three decades since I lost my boyhood innocence in the late 1960s.
I made it through my sophomore year at Tampa Central. The swim team had a pretty good season, and we made it all the way to the finals at the state championship, but wound up losing out to Dade High School, in Miami. I became pretty good friends with Mark and Barry from the swim team, but we never had any more shower sessions, like we'd had the year before. I got the feeling they thought that stuff was "too homo," judging by some of their passing remarks. On the plus side, by the end of the season, the three of us wound up having the best overall bodies on the team, thanks to our regular workouts at the school gym.
After tenth grade, I decided to try for my GED over the summer. It took me two attempts, but I eventually passed and was able to exempt 11th and 12th grade. I went to Hillsborough Community College in 1970, when I turned 15. Ginny stuck by me the whole time, and we remained friends and continued to hang out occasionally. A year later, I decided to transfer to the University of Texas at Austin, which is where Rick and Ronnie were going. Once a month, I'd stay with them over at Uncle Bob's place in Canyon Lake, just a few miles southwest of Austin, and I spent a couple of summers out on the ranch as well. As time went on, the Lannigans and I kind of drifted apart, but we still kept in touch with each other when we could.
Ginny went to journalism school in Austin, as well. We continued leaning on each other for a couple of years. Ginny was there for me when I got dumped by a guy I met at school. And I was there for her when she had to get an abortion during her sophomore year. Next to Sky, Pete, and Ronnie, I think she's the best friend I ever had.
The beach property that Pete left me in his will turned out to be a bit of a goldmine. I held onto it for about six years, using it during the summer so I could see my folks on holidays and on school breaks. When I turned 21 in the summer of 1976, I could legally sell it. I had an attorney approach Holiday Inn, and we eventually hammered out a deal where they agreed to put up $800,000 for the property -- double what it was actually worth. I did it in such a way that gave all the money to charity -- half for a scholarship in Pete's name, to the Julliard School of Music in New York, and half for a football scholarship in Sky's name, to Florida State University. Their lawyers were surprised by our offer, but they finally agreed to do it, if only because of the good publicity and the tax breaks.
Much to everybody's surprise, Ronnie turned into a big, strapping athlete. Even though I dropped out of swimming after I left high school in 1970, Ron dove into it with a vengeance. He managed to qualify for the 1976 Summer Olympic games in Montreal, and wound up winning the bronze for Butterfly, which is more than I ever could've done. Me, Rick, RJ and Uncle Bob were all there when Ronnie stood on the platform and held his arms up, and it was one of the proudest moments of my life.
After Ron had a brief stint as a swim coach for the University of Austin for two years, Rick and RJ dragged him back into the family business. Partly because of my prodding, he got them into data and communications in the late 1970s. Since the early 1990s, Ron's been CEO of Lannigan Communications, which actually now makes a lot more money than their Uncle's original oil and natural gas business ever did.
Around the time Ronnie got involved with swimming, I decided to transfer out to UCLA in California. I majored in Philosophy, minored in business, and got my Master's degree. Naturally, I wound up staying in LA and doing something that didn't require either skill -- I became a movie editor, cutting some minor independent and art films. After a few years, I got lucky and wound up editing three of the biggest blockbusters of the 1980s, and made enough money that I could afford to buy a million-dollar beach house in Malibu -- modest by Hollywood standards, but more than enough for me.
I have a good life today. I still see Rick and Ronnie on occasion. Rick is married, has about a half dozen crazy little red-haired kids, and runs Lannigan Industries out in Dallas with his cousin RJ. RJ got married, too; he told me at Christmas a few years ago, "you and me got a God-given responsibility to keep these big limbs of ours growin' in the family tree." He encouraged me to do the same, but I'm still thinking about it.
Unlike his brother Rick, Ron never married. He and I remained friends, but we each wound up living with other people. In the early 1980s, I met an entertainment lawyer from Canada, and one thing lead to another. Even though he's nine years my senior, we've been very happy together for almost 20 years now. He makes enough money that I can pick and choose my film projects without having to worry about keeping food on the table. I love him with all my heart.
Ronnie comes out and stays with us whenever he's in LA, which is usually at least once every couple of months. He's almost unrecognizable from the curly-headed, red-haired geek I used to know. Now, he's a whirling business dynamo, barking orders into cell phones and driving his assistants crazy. Sometimes he brings along one of his Calvin Klein underwear models to the house, showing off his latest "himbo," but most of the time, he visits alone.
Late at night, on those occasions when me and my partner and Ron sit by the fireplace at the house, I still see that familiar look in Ronnie's eyes. I know that inside, he's still the same lovable little klutz I've always known -- even if he is worth a few billion dollars. Ron keeps offering to buy us a bigger house or give me a job working for his company, but that's not for me. I kind of like the way things are.
Ronnie did do one thing for which I'll always be grateful. After he hit it big around 1994, he expanded the scholarship funds I'd started to $2,000,000 each. One night as we were sipping wine at the beach house with my partner, watching the sun set over the Pacific, Ron told me that if he could find a way to start a third scholarship just for gay kids at Tampa Central, he'd do it. I laughed, and told him I hoped he'd let me in on the selection process on that one.
Ginny lives up in Oregon now. After I left for UCLA in 1973, she transferred to Columbia University and got her BA in Journalism. She later went to work as a newspaper reporter in New York. Ginny spent most of the late 1980s and early 1990s as the editor of one of those tacky "Entertainment Week" magazines, then got tired of the whole rat-race and moved to Portland, where she had some relatives. She got married and divorced twice, and has two boys of her own. Ginny named one of them after me, and one of them after Sky. For the last few years, the three of them have stayed with us over the summer in Malibu, living out in the guest house.
Scott Michaels played football for Florida State for a year or two, but then kind of dropped out of sight. Some friend of Rick Lannigan's told me he'd heard Scott was doing minor-league football somewhere in the Midwest, but I never found out where. I was told that Cynthia married Scott sometime in the early 1970s, but they divorced a few years later.
Chuck lost a little weight and started wrestling in his junior year at Tampa Central. Ginny told me he eventually managed to parlay that into a career, and is still with the World Wrestling Federation, working under another name. I don't know what happened to Tim McMannis or Ben Kingston, or most of the other people I knew at school.
As for me, I still don't know what lies ahead in the future. I just try to take things a day at a time. Maybe Pete will be right -- maybe I'm going to be cursed with a long life. I think of that line from Wizard of Oz, the one where the witch says, "the last to go will see the first three die before her!" Maybe that's how it'll be for me. Or maybe it'll be slow and gradual, and I'll get more mellow and comfortable in my old age. Either way, I'm glad I'm not alone.
I had a dream the other night. It was the first time I could remember what either Sky or Pete looked like without having to see a photograph, after all these years. The three of us were all teenagers again, together in a hot shower at school, and the steam was as dense as fog. Each of us was naked, soaking wet, and rubbing soap on our bodies. And we were smiling at each other.
Afterword
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I want to sincerely thank those of you who took the time to send in accolades and criticisms via E-mail -- over 200 comments just four weeks after the story was originally posted in early April of 2001, and virtually all of them overwhelmingly positive. Given that this was the very first bit of fiction I've ever attempted, it's been quite a roller-coaster ride. Many people have asked me how much of this story is true. Let's just say that more than half of it was based on things that really happened to me, perhaps cranked up and exaggerated just a bit. The rest were dramatizations of what could have happened, if things had gone just a little differently. The main characters were combinations of real people I actually knew, and most of the places described -- save for the fictional Tampa Central High School and the Clearwater Beach Marriott Hotel -- really existed in that era. Some of the individuals' names were real, but they've been attached to characters that had nothing to do with them. Nobody died in my real-life experience, nor were there any other violent incidents similar to those depicted in the story. And Wil got a lot more sex than I ever did, dammit. I want to dedicate the story to my real-life partner for the last 19 years, Roddy. I never could've made it without you, babe. Maybe someday, in another life, we can come back as Wil and Sky, for real. I'd like to thank several of the many writers who have contributed to the ASSGM and Nifty sites and fiction newsgroups over the years: Savoir-Faire, Comicality, JTMichcock, Mikey Mark, David Lemmaire, Dewey2K, Awrt96, Exmon, VT Kid, and Ricardo Cabeza, who have all done some terrific work and inspired me to try my hand at doing the same thing. Thanks for many hours of entertainment, guys. Thanks also to Greywolf the Wanderer, Ole, AC, Gep2, and CouCou for giving me some important feedback that helped me open my eyes and solve some minor story issues and fix some errors for this revised version. I also want to acknowledge the creators behind the Showtime TV series Queer As Folk, which is one of the most remarkable shows I've seen in a very long time. It made me think a lot about my own life over the last few years, and gave me some of the impetus to knock out this story. Sincere thanks to Ron Cowen, Daniel Lipman, Tony Jonas, and Russell Davies, for doing an amazing job, week after week. Finally, I want to also mention a few real people who were important to me during my life, who aren't around to read this story today: Richard "Great Rich" Small, Rick Chace, Andy Cleland, and Fred Chriss. I miss each of you and think of you often. (No, none of their names or characters are in this story. Not this time, anyway.) Thanks much for reading, and please keep the E-mails coming. |
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The author gratefully acknowledges the following publishers and songwriters
of the songs and lyrics mentioned or performed in this novel:
"Groovy Kind of Love" music & lyrics by Toni Wine and Carole Bayer Sager
"Mony Mony" words & music by Tommy James, Bobby Bloom, Ritchie Cordell, and Bo Gentry
"My Girl" words & music by William "Smokey" Robinson & Ronald White
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" music and lyrics by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher
"Ticket to Ride" music and lyrics by John Lennon & Paul McCartney
"Hello, I Love You" music and lyrics by Bobby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, Jim Morrison, and John Densmore
"Hello Goodbye" music & lyrics by John Lennon & Paul McCartney
"The Ballad of John & Yoko" music and lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
"He Said, She Said" music and lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
"Revolution" music & lyrics by John Lennon & Paul McCartney
"Dizzy" music & lyrics by Tommy Roe and Freddy Weller
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| © 2001, John Francis |
