Becoming Andy Hunsinger
By Jere' M. Fishback
Genre: Historical romance, LGBT, Historical, Edgy Young Adult
Publisher: Prizm Books
Date of Publication: December 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61040-858-5
ASIN: B00RN6L8HS
Number of pages: 208
Word Count: 65,800
Cover Artist: Fiona Jayde
Available at Amazon Prizm Books
Book Description:
It's 1976, and Anita Bryant's homophobic "Save Our Children" crusade rages through Florida. When Andy Hunsinger, a closeted gay college student, joins in a demonstration protesting Bryant's appearance in Tallahassee, his straight boy image is shattered when he's "outed" by a TV news reporter.
In the months following, Andy discovers just what it means to be openly gay in a society that condemns love between two men.
Can Andy's friendship with Travis, a devout Christian who's fighting his own sexual urges, develop into something deeper?
CHAPTER ONE
On my seventh birthday, my parents gave me a Dr. Seuss book, The Cat in the Hat.
I still have the book; it rests on the shelf above my desk, along with other Seuss works I’ve collected. Inside The Cat in the Hat’s cover, my mother wrote an inscription, using
her precise penmanship.
“Happy Birthday, Andy. As you grow older, you’ll realize many truths dwell within these pages. Much love, Mom and Dad.”
Mom was right, of course. She most always is.
My favorite line in The Cat in the Hat is this one: “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
***
Loretta McPhail was a notorious Tallahassee slumlord. On a steamy afternoon, in August 1976, she spoke to me in her North Florida drawl: part magnolia, part crosscut saw.
“The rent’s one-twenty-five. I’ll need first, last, and a security deposit, no exceptions.”
McPhail wore a short-sleeved shirtwaist dress, spectator pumps, and a straw hat with a green plastic windowpane sewn into the brim. Her skin was as pale as cake flour. A
gray moustache grew on her winkled upper lip, and age spots peppered the backs of her hands. Her eyeglasses had lenses so thick her gaze looked buggy.
I’d heard McPhail held title to more than fifty properties in town, all of them cited multiple times for violation of local building codes. She owned rooming houses, single family
homes, and small apartment buildings, mostly in neighborhoods surrounding Florida State University’s campus. Like me, her tenants sought cheap rent; they didn’t
care if the roof leaked or the furnace didn’t work.
The Franklin Street apartment I viewed with McPhail wasn’t much: a living room and kitchen, divided by a three-quarter wall; a bedroom with windows looking into the rear and side yards; a bathroom with a wall-mounted sink, a shower stall, and a toilet with a broken seat. In each room, the plaster ceilings bore water marks. The carpet was a leopard skin of suspicious-looking stains, and the whole place stank of mildew and cat pee.
McPhail’s building was a two-storied, red brick fourplex with casement windows that opened like book covers, a Panhandle style of architecture popular in the 1950s.
Shingles on the pitched roof curled at their edges. Live oaks and longleaf pines shaded the crabgrass lawn, and skeletal azaleas clung to the building’s exterior.
In the kitchen, I peeked inside a rust-pitted Frigidaire. The previous tenant had left gifts: a half-empty ketchup bottle, another of pickle relish. A carton of orange juice with an expiration date three months past sat beside a tub of margarine.
Out in the stairwell, piano music tinkled -- a jazzy number I didn’t recognize.
McPhail clucked her tongue and shook her head. “I’ve told Fergal -- and I mean several times -- to close his door when he plays, but he never does. I’m not sure why I put up with that boy.”
McPhail pulled a pack of Marlboros from a pocket in the skirt of her dress. After tapping out two cigarettes, she jammed both between her lips. She lit the Marlboros with a
brushed-chrome Zippo, and then she gave me one cigarette.
I puffed and tapped a toe, letting my gaze travel about the kitchen. I studied the chipped porcelain sink, scratched Formica countertops, and drippy faucet. Blackened food caked the range’s burner pans. The linoleum floor’s confetti motif had long ago disappeared in high-traffic areas. Okay, the place was a dump. But the rent was cheap, and campus was less than a mile away. I could ride my bike to classes, and to my part-time job as caddy at the Capital City Country Club.
Still, I hesitated.
The past two years, I’d lived in my fraternity house with forty brothers. I took my meals there, too. If I rented McPhail’s apartment, I’d have to cook for myself. What would I eat? Where would I shop for food? Other questions flooded my brain. Where would I wash my clothes? And how did a guy open a utilities account? The apartment wasn’t furnished. Where would I purchase a bed? What about a dinette and living room furniture? And how much did such things cost? It all seemed so complicated.
Still...
Lack of privacy at the fraternity house would pose a problem for me this year. Over summer break -- back home in Pensacola -- I’d experienced my first sexual encounter
with another male, a lanky serviceman named Jeff Dellinger, age twenty-four. Jeff was a Second Lieutenant from Eglin Air Force Base. I met him at a sand volleyball game behind a Pensacola Beach hotel, and he seemed friendly. I liked his dark hair, slim physique, and ready smile, but wasn’t expecting anything personal to happen between us.
After all, I was a “straight boy”, right?
We bought each other beers at the tiki bar, and then Jeff invited me up to his hotel
room. Once we reached the room, Jeff prepared two vodka tonics. My drink struck like snake venom, and then my brain fuzzed. Jeff opened a bureau drawer; he produced a lethal-looking pistol fashioned from black metal. The pistol had a matte finish and a checked grip.
“Ever seen one of these?” Jeff asked.
I shook my head.
“It’s an M1911 -- official Air Force issue. I’ve fired it dozens of times.” Jeff raised the gun to shoulder height. He closed one eye, focused his other on the pistol’s barrel sight. “Shooting’s almost... sensual,” he said. Then he looked at me. “It’s like sex, if you know what I mean.”
I shrugged, not knowing what to say.
Jeff handed the pistol to me. It weighed more than I’d expected, between two and three pounds. I turned the pistol here and there, admiring its sleek contours. The grip felt
cold against my palm and a shiver ran through me. I’d never fired a handgun, never thought to.
“Is it loaded?” I asked.
Jeff bobbed his chin. “One bullet’s in the firing chamber, seven more in the magazine; it’s a semi-automatic.”
After I handed Jeff the gun, he returned it to his bureau’s drawer while I sipped from my drink, feeling woozier by the minute. Jeff sat next to me, on the room’s double bed. His knee nudged mine, our shoulders touched, and I smelled his coconut-scented sunscreen. Jeff laid a hand on my thigh. Then he squeezed. “You don’t mind, do you?”
I looked down at his hand while my heart thumped. Goon, chickenshit. He wants you. I looked into Jeff’s dark eyes. “It’s fine,” I said.
Moments later my swim trunks lay in a corner and Jeff knelt before me, slurping away. Currents of pleasure crept through my limbs, and then I felt a buzzing between my
legs. When I came, I thought I’d pass out. I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. Then I watched fireworks explode inside my head.
Jesus, this feels good. Why haven’t I done this before?
Jere' M. Fishback is a former news editor and trial lawyer. He writes Young Adult novels, short fiction, and memoirs. A Florida native, he lives on a barrier island on the Gulf of Mexico, west of Tampa/St. Petersburg. When he's not writing, Jere' enjoys cycling, surfing, lap-swimming, and watching sunsets with a glass of wine in hand.
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