Friday, November 28th, 1997 — Part 1: Roland Turner, age 16

     There was nothing at all remarkable about the weather that day; the day that Roland Turner first laid eyes on his future husband. It was a cool forty-something degrees (Fahrenheit that is); warm enough to wear a light jacket but too cold for a sane person to wear shorts. It was Roland’s birthday. Sweet, sweet sixteen. His friends, Jack, a coyote, and Denny, a kangaroo, presented him with a very large box that evening. Upon opening it, he found the box empty, save for a single birthday card sitting at the bottom. The card was also wrapped in wrapping paper. Roland unwrapped it, removed the card from its envelope, and read aloud: “What’s better than a beer on your birthday?” He opened up the card and continued reading.
     “Lots of beers with your buds! Happy… 21st Birthday?” Inside the card, was another, smaller card, again wrapped in paper. He opened that up, and saw his own face staring back at him. It was a driver’s license. A fake one. Jack and Dennis showed theirs off, too, once Roland realized what it was, and what it was intended for. Soon, the three teens were off to the local watering hole for their first official ‘legal’ night out on the town.
     Jackson Goldberg had been held back twice, so he was eighteen, ahead of his two friends in age. He was a veritable bad boy, at least for the small town setting they live in. He smoked pot, drank beer, and already had a two year old son named James with one of the cheerleaders who was a year younger than him. He wasn’t a very present father, as one could imagine. He had hardly given the kid anything more than a last name. 
     Jack drove a truck, a beat-up old F150. It was a dull red except for the hood, which was black, because he had to have it replaced after he drunkenly rear-ended a stop sign. The three hopped into the front bench seat with the smallest, Roland, in the middle. With a sputter, the truck started up and headed towards The Yak Shack. It was a dive bar, even in the realm of dive bars, owned by a smelly old yak and his smellier old wife. But the beer was cheap and the bartenders only really glanced at your ID if they thought you looked younger than twelve. Jack knew this well.
     When they walked in, Jack looked around for an empty booth. It was Black Friday, so not very many people were out drinking. If people were out at all, they were shopping, so there were plenty of open spaces. They decided to approach the bar; Jack took the lead. He acted casual, almost too casual, as he talked to the cheetah behind the counter. 
     The big cat who, as Roland would soon learn, was named Jericho, looked very out of place in the seedy hole-in-the-wall bar. He wore a neatly-ironed turquoise button-down shirt, adorned with a pink tie. This made many of the patrons in the rural town turn up their nose at the ‘queer’. He didn’t care, however. It was better than where he had come from, at least.
     “Three Coronas, and a round of tequila for us all. It’s Rolls here’s birthday, you know.” Jack gestured to Roland. “It’s gonna be his first legal drink.” 
     “Really? It’s your twenty-first birthday? Let me see your ID.”
     Roland carefully handed over his fake to the cat.
     “Says here that your birthday is August 2nd, 1975.”
     “…Yeah.”
     “By my calculations, that would mean you turned twenty-two. Almost four months ago.”
     “Well, I...”
     “He’s a late bloomer,” Jack butted in. “He just... We’re celebrating late. He didn’t want to drink, at first. But we finally got him to come around.” This much was true.
     “I wouldn’t buy that if it were on sale.”
     “Listen, lady, are you gonna get us our drinks or what?” Jack was getting impatient. And nervous. The cat sneered.
     “I could call the police on you right now.” Jack’s anxiety turned into horrified desperation.
     “For what? Ordering drinks?”
     “You three are clearly underage. This is one of the worst fakes I’ve seen in all my years bartending.”
     “Listen, I’d like to speak to a manager.”
     The cheetah sighed and headed towards the back, where he phoned Simon, the owner.
     “Dude, what are you doing?” Denny’s voice was a whispered shout. 
     “Fuck, I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”   
     “I thought you said this place was cool, Jack.”
     “It was. It used to be. That bartender is new. I’ve never seen her before.”
     “Her? That was a dude.”
     “It was a chick! Swear on my life! She had tits.” 
     “There were no tits on that cat, dude.”
     “Tiny ones, but they were there. You saw ‘em, right Rolls?” They turned to the horse.
     “No, I uh... I wasn’t really payin’ attention.”
     “No wonder you can’t get laid. You don’t even know when a chick’s right in front of you. You can’t even tell from her scent?”
     Just then, Jericho returned from his phone call and tossed the identification card haphazardly at the three teenagers. He silently began pouring three shots of the lowest-grade tequila, and placed three bottles of beer on the counter. The three kids looked at each other, and Jack nodded at his friends with a sly grin on his muzzle. 
     “Okay, who’s driving?” the cat finally spoke as he pushed the drinks over to them. Roland and Denny both turned to Jack, who raised his hand cautiously.
      “Alright, listen. The owner told me not to turn down any paying customers for any reason whatsoever. But I’m not going to be privy to these shenanigans. And you,” here, he pointed at the coyote with a sharpened retractable claw sticking out. Jackson was clearly the oldest and thus presumably the instigator. “You are going to have no more than three drinks. I’m keeping my fucking eye on you three. One wrong move and I swear to God—”
     “Okay, okay. We won’t do anything. We’re just here to chill out. We won’t be an issue, I promise.” 
     The kids hurriedly gathered their drinks and took up a booth in the corner. As they walked away, Jericho watched the horse’s tail swishing between his legs. Roland was wearing a pair of jeans that had been ripped above the knee to create jorts, despite the brisk temperature. They were tight around his ass (which was, back then, well-toned from working out,) and ended just above his equally muscular calves. His shirt was baggy and ragged; a hole had begun to form beneath his left armpit. The front, which he had stained with sweat and various food products over the years, advertised a band that hadn’t been relevant for almost a decade. His deep, black mane was pulled back in two loose ponytails, but was surprisingly kempt considering his outfit. Rollie was clearly the cutest of the bunch, at least in Jericho’s eyes. 
     Jack took the middle seat and stared out over the bar. His friends joined him on either side and observed their fellow patrons. There was a rhino sitting at the bar, casually chatting with the cheetah. A group of wolves sat around a table with two pitchers of beer between them, loudly laughing and slapping each other’s backs. Behind them, a couple of burly bears sipped whiskey with a diligence uncharacteristic of the scene. 
     Redford Parker and his wife Cynthia occupied the corner booth opposite the teens. Red dragged on and on about his day at work and the numerous traffic violations from which he had protected society, all while Cynthia playfully slipped in and out of consciousness. A near-empty pill bottle rattled in her purse as she fiddled with it in her lap. The pain medication was prescribed to her upon her last visit to the hospital, the cause of which was a lacerated liver from a ‘biking accident’. She swirled her wine, which was a dark burgundy, redder than blood, and used it to down another pill while her husband continued talking ceaselessly.
     “So, dude. Rolls Royce, king of the highway,” Jackson whispered to his friend, after they had all taken their shots. “You’ve got your pick of the ladies. Which one will you take?”
     Roland looked around curiously, trying to determine exactly which ladies Jackson was talking about.
     “I see one chick in here, and she’s clearly married,” he said, pointing to Cynthia.
     “The bartender, man.”
     “That’s a guy, I’m telling you.”
     “Shut up. What do you think, Denny boy?”
     Dennis looked at the two. He was also convinced that Jericho was a male and didn’t see what the argument was about. He relayed this information with confidence.
     “Well, if you say so,” Jack chuckled. “But, still. That’s the only person here without a date. Unless you’re into rhinos, I guess you’ll have to settle for a dude.” 
     “Okay, sure, haha, very funny. But he clearly already hates us. What makes you think he’d want to fuck me, even if I was gay?”
     “You would know if you had seen the way that cheetah looked at your ass.”
     “What?!” Roland blushed while his friends laughed at him.
     “I’m not even kidding, dude. She was checking you out. I bet if you go up and talk to her, she’ll bite. I think it was me she had something against, not you.” Jack refused to accept the fact that Jericho was a man.
     “Alright, okay, sure. But what if we hit it off, he takes me home, and we get almost all the way, and it turns out he is a dude?”
     “Then you let him suck your dick. Afterwards, punch him in the face and act like you didn’t know.”
     Jackson and Dennis laughed and high-fived each other. Roland didn’t even smile. He solemnly stared at the cheetah, who was smiling and still talking with the rhinoceros. Jericho looked Roland directly in the eyes, without so much as halting his conversation. Rollie put his head down and stared at the beer in his hands.
     “Oh, my God. I think he just winked at me.”
     “Who? The bartender?”
     “Yeah.”
     “Go up there, dude! Get yourself another drink. Chat her up. Hit her with the classic Clydesdale charm. I’ll give you twenty bucks if you get her number. Fifty if you fuck her.”
     “But I haven’t even started my beer—”
     Jack rectified this by grabbing Rollie’s beer out of his hands and downing it within ten seconds. Jericho didn’t notice. It seemed he wasn’t keeping his fucking eye on them that closely after all. Jack slammed the bottle down in front of his friend.
     “I’m doing you a favor, man. Trust me.” Jackson reached into his wallet and pulled out a five dollar bill. “This one’s on me. And it comes out of your twenty if you do get her number.”
     Roland snatched the bill from the coyote’s paw and walked anxiously up to the bar. He sat down at the far end, opposite the rhino. He turned the crumpled bill over and over in his hands, inspecting its minutiae, reading every word attentively as if it were a bestselling novel. Jericho put the freshly-made rum and Coke down in front of the rhino, and walked gaily over to the horse.
     “What can I get you, kid?”
     “Um... What... what’s your name?”
     The cat blinked a few times. He wasn’t sure what to think.
     “What?”
     “Oh, I, uh, I was just curious. What your name was, that is.” Roland didn’t look up, and instead kept staring down at his dollar.
     “It’s Jericho,” said Jericho. He was slightly unnerved, wondering what Rollie was trying to do. Was the kid... hitting on him? Is that what this was supposed to be?
     “Jericho,” Roland contemplated the name aloud. He finally looked up at the cheetah and made eye contact. “Jericho. I’ve never heard a name like that before. It’s a cool name.”
     “Thank you,” Jericho said. It almost sounded like a question; the cat was still unsure if what was happening right now was some kind of attempt at flirting. “I picked it out myself.” The joke went right over the kid’s head.
     “Can I… call you Jeri?”
     “No.”
     The quick and definite response took Roland by surprise. All he could muster was a surprised: “Oh.”
     Back at their table, the teenaged spectators shook their heads. 
     “He’s fuckin’ blowing it,” Denny stated the obvious.
     There was a moment of silence up at the bar before Jericho repeated his initial inquiry.
     “So... what can I get you?”
     “Do you... wanna do a shot with me?”
     Jericho broke his serious demeanor to let out a genuine, hearty laugh. Jack slapped his forehead with his palm. He could tell that this laugh wasn’t in response to a joke. When the horse looked down in embarrassment, the cheetah suddenly realized that the kid was being serious.
     “I’m working, kid. I can’t—” he remembered that he had just served a bunch of teenagers alcohol. It’s not like the owner really gave a fuck about anything, that much was clear. He considered his options, then sighed. The kid was cute enough. And he had balls, too. Hitting on a grown man in a sketchy place like this, in a town that was predominantly conservative and didn’t take kindly to people of that orientation. 
     “You know what?” Jericho continued. “Fuck it. Let’s do a shot, kid. What’s your poison?” 
     “Um, well...” he had only just had his first ever shot, and it was disgusting, so he didn’t really have much of a reference point. “What’s your favorite?”
     Jericho wordlessly poured them each a double shot of watermelon vodka. He pushed one over towards Roland and held a finger up when the kid reached for it. 
     “Hold on,” he demanded. “First, what’s your name, again? I assume it’s not actually Studley McMuffin, as your ID suggested.”
     “Roland. Roland Turner. My friends call me Rollie, or… Rolls for short.”
     “Well then, Roland,” he leaned over the counter, looming above the hardly five-foot-tall horse. “Is today really your birthday?”
     “...Y—yes.”
     “And how old are you turning?”
     When Roland didn’t answer, Jericho reassured him.
     “Look, I already served you the alcohol. It’s me who would be getting in trouble. I’m not going to kick you out now; especially not while you three still have a tab open.”
     “...I’m sixteen.”
     “See? That wasn’t so hard.”
     “...Wh—what about you?” Roland was having trouble maintaining eye contact. The cat was intimidating, tall, and handsome. Handsome. Why did he think that? He wasn’t gay. Handsome? Rollie still fussed with the five-dollar bill in his hands, looking at anything but the cat’s face.
     “I’m twenty-eight. And don’t worry, I’ve been drinking—among other things—since I was twelve. So I won’t judge.”
     “Cool.”
     Jericho scoffed and raised his shot glass. 
     “Here’s to being sixteen,” he said. Roland downed the shot without saying anything or even clinking their glasses. Jericho frowned at him, then drank his as well. There was a silence between them before Roland spoke again.
     “So, I gotta ask you a question, and I really don’t mean to be rude about it, but... you... you’re a guy, right?”
     The feline smirked and leaned forward on his elbows. His chin rested gracefully atop his interlocking fingers. Jericho knew that this was a common topic of conversation amongst the patrons, especially those adamant heterosexuals who thought he was an alluring woman and were contemplating fucking him raw in the back alley. Or even worse, those that thought he was a dyke and that their penis was the magical penis that could cure Jeri of his lesbianism. 
     “What do you think?”
     Roland looked the cheetah in the eyes for the first time in quite a few minutes. He widened his eyes and blinked. The cat’s smile reached out with invisible arms and wrapped around Roland in a loving embrace, pulling him forward with impossible force.
     “Me and Denny think you’re a guy. But my friend Jack over there thinks you’re a girl.”
     “And they wanted you to come over here to check?”
     “Well...”
     “To satisfy their curiosity?” The cat’s alluring stare turned into a scowl.
     “—No, I—“
     “To invade my privacy?” The cat’s seductive voice turned into a growl.
     “No! They—They wanted me to—get your number. Or something.”
     Jericho’s anger faded. He loosened his aggressive stance and slowly returned to his uptight composure. Interesting, he thought. They were trying to get him... laid?
     “They wanted you to come over here and get a grown man’s phone number?”
     “Well, it was Jack’s idea, cause he thinks you’re a girl, and—”
     “Have you ever been with a man?”
     “No, I’ve never been with any—I’m not gay, I—”
     “But you came over here to hit on me, even though you knew I was a man?”
     “It’s just something about you, I don’t—”
     Roland was even more surprised at his own frankness than Jericho was.
     “...Something about me?”
     “No!—I—Yeah, I mean—I don’t know what I mean. But... yeah.”
     The kid was incomprehensible. Jericho had known that feeling, long ago. Telling himself he couldn’t be a man—he couldn’t be with a man. He had tried to think of any other words to say besides love and man. These thoughts echoed in the voices of his parents.
      “They want you to get my number, huh? Well I’ll do you one up. Here’s the address of where I’m staying. Bar closes at two, I’m done by two-thirty, and back by three.”
     “In the morning?”
     Jericho took a plain white napkin and used a bar-issued ballpoint pen to scrawl the name and address of a motel just down the street. Beneath that, he wrote his name in illegible cursive and accented it with a heart.
     “Hey, wait—”
     Jericho had already turned away and gone to serve a wolf who had approached the bar in search of another pitcher. Roland looked down at the napkin in front of him. Motel 12, 1157 Lincoln St., Room 307, Jeri.
     Jeri? Roland folded the napkin and stuck it in his pocket. He turned around to look at his friends, who watched him attentively. He returned to the booth and sat down, unsure of what to say.
     “Well?” Jack impatiently badgered. 
     “He gave me his address,” Roland sighed, handing the napkin over. “And told me to come over after the bar closes.”
     “What? Like, to fuck?”
     “I… don’t know.”
     “There’s absolutely no other reason a woman would give you her the address to her motel room like that except to fuck.” Dennis added.
     “Well, you didn’t get her phone number, so I’m keeping my twenty.”
     “He’s a guy.”
     There was a moment of silence and, as usual, Jack was the one to eventually break it.
     “Let me tell you something, Rolls. This nose? It never lies. I won’t believe that’s a guy until you tell me what his dick tastes like.”
     “That’s disgusting, Jack.”
     “So?” Dennis butted in. “Are you… gonna go?”
     “No! Of course not, I can’t, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t get there, I—”
     “I’ll drive you,” Jack offered.
     “No, I can’t, my mom, I—”
     “You’re sleeping over at my house anyway. She doesn’t expect you back ’til tomorrow.”
     Roland said nothing, so Jack continued: “You do want to go, don’t you?”
     “…Yes.”
     “It’s settled then.”
   The rest of the evening played out normally. Nothing exciting. Jericho and Roland didn’t even exchange another word except a ‘goodnight’ when the kids went up to pay their tab around midnight.
     The three returned to Jackson’s house for a while. Jack and Denny smoked a joint or three on the deck while Roland was passed out in the passenger seat of Jack’s truck. They didn’t bother waking him. A drunk horse is quite difficult to wake up, anyway.
     When the clock struck three, Jackson and Dennis carefully climbed into the truck, and Jack drove them all to the Motel 12 on Lincoln Street. When they arrived, Jack slammed on the horn in an attempt to wake Rollie up.
     “Dude, people are sleeping!” Dennis whispered loudly in protest. 
     “It’s fuckin’ Saturday, man. Who cares?”
     The two looked over at Rollie, who hadn’t stirred. Dennis reached a foot over and kicked Roland’s shin. Still nothing. 
     “Yo! Rollie! We’re here! Time to get that pussy!” Jack shouted, then laughed at his own joke.
     Dennis reached his hand over to Rollie’s face and smacked him a few times. He then stuck a finger between the horse’s jowls and—
     “What the fuck? Where are we?” Rollie sputtered and wiped the drool from his chin while Dennis and Jack both laughed.
     “We’re here! It’s time.”
     Rollie looked at the dashboard clock. It read 3:12 AM.
     “You know, it’s late, I’m… getting exhausted. I… I think I’m just gonna call it a night, guys.”
     “No. Absolutely not. I drove you all the way back here, now you’re going in there and getting laid. Or else.”
     “Or else what?”
     “Or else I’m going to go knock on her door myself.”
     “No, come on, Jack, I’m serious. I want to go home.”
     “Get out of the car, Roland.”
     “Jack, please—”
     “Dennis, open the door for him.”
     Dennis hesitated. Squished between the coyote and the horse in the bench seat of Jack’s truck, he couldn’t really reach the door handle even if he wanted to.
     “Listen, I’m staying out of this.”
     Jack looked at Dennis and sighed.
     “Alright, fine. I’ll settle this myself.”
     Jack unbuckled his seat belt and exited the truck, empty beer bottles spilling out into the motel parking lot with him. 
     “Wait, Jack!” Roland called after him as Jack walked towards the motel. It was fairly large; three stories with twelve rooms on each story. 
     “Yo, dude. He’s really serious right now,” Dennis whispered.
     “Fuck. Fuck.” 
     Roland darted out of the car and started chasing after Jack. Jack, however, was already halfway up the first flight of stairs, and increased his speed when he saw that Roland was following. He raced to the room that said 307, and stopped in front of the locked green metal door. As Roland rounded the corner and set foot on the final floor, Jack rapped heavily on the door. He then continued casually down the walkway, heading for the stairs at the other side. Rollie froze, knowing that any second Jericho would be emerging from his door. He wondered what he’d be wearing. His work clothes still? Surely not. Pajamas? Underwear and a tank top? Boxers… or briefs? Rollie’s panic turned to desperation as he heard the rattle of the doorknob. It was too late. There he stood, a horse in the headlights, watching Jackson’s tail flick around the corner as the door creaked open.