By my truckbuddy Tim from England, via Spain:
As promised last week, this concluding half of my tale contains images of Cam Gigandet, so as we say goodbye to Steve, let’s welcome young Cam.
We finished Part 1 with Wayne and me leaving school in 1970, never to meet again. So join me as I fast forward far too many years, to 2005. Newly resident in Spain with my partner, who by the way, was one of those good friends from the 60’s, we attend our first ‘Community Meeting’ for all the owners of the properties on the small estate where we live. The meeting is very noisy and quite argumentative, very Spanish in fact, and a bit of a culture shock to us more reserved Brits. One of the most vociferous is a young ‘caballero’ called Jose. This is where Mr Gigandet comes in, because Jose, if he looks like anyone, it’s Cam Gigandet. The resemblance is quite uncanny, and what can I say, he’s to die for! He has short, dark blond hair, a light-skinned body with good definition, enhanced by the white wife-beater he’s wearing, blue-green eyes under his reflective sunglasses, red jogging pants and trainers. Typical ‘Spanish’ dress for a young man, but certainly not the usual Latin colouring. A Spanish lady friend who is with us eyes him up and down and sighs “Macho, muy, muy, muy macho”. I couldn’t have put it better myself!
After the meeting, many of the residents were discussing the argumentative young man, and not in an appreciative way. “How does he get to own a house? He’s too young, it must be drugs money. He’s on drugs, have you seen his motorbike? He drives too fast, His dog is dangerous, it should be put down. Does he ever work?” As for me, well ‘I could eat him up’ was all I was thinking, so I declined to add to the comments. That cliché, ‘The arrogance of youth’, is often used by those really masking their jealousy. Whatever their opinions, that old feeling was coming back to me, that familiar sense of wanting to merge with another person, to become one, and I determined to learn more about this Jose. Something instinctive told me that these gossips were way off track; perhaps it was that half-smile he flashed at me? The one that made my stomach turn a somersault and my heart beat a little faster. Lust? Yes (hey I’m gay now, it’s allowed), but something more, an affinity of some kind, was there. And those old investigative instincts, now retired, but honed by a career as a systems analyst came into play once again.
Continued after the jump . . .