Who Wouldn’t Go?

By Jeff Baker

“Hey! Look at this!” Jim said, pulling the small plastic baggie out of the small cardboard box box from the closet.

“Let me see,” Kevin said.

He took the clear bag, one of those little sandwich bags that re-seals, that contained what looked like several small bars of soap. Some in colorful paper wrappers.

“Hotel soap, I bet.” Jim said.

“Wow!” Kevin said. “I haven’t seen these in years!” He pulled a bar out and showed Jim the wrapper.

“Sleepy Bear Motel, Albuquerque, New Mexico.” Jim read from the wrapper, which depicted a smiling bear in a nightshirt sleepwalking. Jim was smiling at the memories.

“We’ve got a bag full of soap, how come we never use any of it?” Kevin asked.

“We’re lazy.” Jim said. “We stuffed the boxful of junk in the back of the closet, remember? We were tidying up the house a few years ago? Yeah, there’s a closet joke in there somewhere?”

Kevin laughed. “I guess we didn’t want to use them up,” he said. He pulled out an unwrapped bar of soap and held it up. “Here’s one for you. From a few Christmases ago.”

The little bar of soap was cream colored with three words in red on the front:

HO!

HO!

HO!

“Oh, man!” Jim said. “Mom and Dad gave us this one.”

“That first Christmas after I moved in, remember?” Kevin said.

“I remember.” Jim said, breaking out into a broad grin. “You were so worried!”

“Oh, yeah.” Kevin said. “I was kind of paranoid.”

“Yeah. As soon as we were driving back home you started asking ‘Do they know? Do they know?’” Jim said, trying not to laugh.

“I had reason to be paranoid,” Kevin said.

“I can’t say I blame you.” Jim said. “I mean, we didn’t tell them the whole story of how we met.”

“Yeah,” Kevin said. “Just that we met in a bar and we hit it off. That worked.”

“Didn’t tell Mom and Dad that I’d been trashed out of my mind and I hit on you because the bartender told me you were…well…”

“Hustling.” Kevin said with another smile.

“Yeah, didn’t tell them that.” Jim said. They both laughed.

Jim sorted through the box some more.

“I’ll just consider myself lucky that I was always really careful.” Kevin said, as he pulled out an old razor from the box.

“Yes.” Jim said. He’d been worried when they’d gotten together.

“Oh, just imagine telling your folks; ‘Hey Mom, Dad. This is my hustler boyfriend Kevin. We met when I tried to hit on him when I was drunk at a bar and he drove me home in my car and I let him sack out in my bed and we just slept and he didn’t charge me.’” Kevin said.

They laughed again.

“And you didn’t have a place to stay and I didn’t have to work that next day so you stayed and we talked…” Jim said.

“And kissed a little.” Kevin said, smiling with the memory.

“And one thing left to another and you never left.” Jim said.

“And I got my first legitimate job in a while.” Kevin said. “Didn’t make as much but probably safer.”

Yeah.” Jim said. “You know, I’m betting Mom and Dad wouldn’t have been that shocked if they’d found out you’d been…”

“Ho, ho, hoing?” Kevin said with a wicked grin, holding up the soap.

“Right.” Jim said snickering.

“This was what? Thirty-six Christmases ago?” Kevin asked.

“Goin’ on forty.” Jim said, rubbing his bald spot, fringed with grey.

The two men shuffled stuff around in the box. A bunch of packets of bath soap that had been Jim’s Mom’s. Lipstick. Stuff they couldn’t identify.

“Hey, the cleanout is a good idea.” Kevin said. “What do you want to do with all this stuff?”

The two of them stared at each other for a moment.

“Finish it later,” they said together. Then they laughed.

“Finishing each other’s sentences,” Kevin said as they slid the box back into the corner of the hall closet.

“And putting off what we can do today ‘till next year.” Jim said. They helped each other up and shut the closet door.

Kevin held up the bag of soaps. “This is going in the bathroom cabinet,” he said. “We need to get some use out of them.”

Jim pulled out the Christmas soap. “And use this one first.”

The two of them stood there and kissed.

“Merry Christmas,” Kevin said as they walked towards the bathroom.

“It’s still June,” Jim said.

“Not according to the soap.” Kevin said.

—end—