A New Thing for the Not Exactly Normal

Tim was never exactly what you'd call normal, and neither were the folks around him. Tim was hard. Ever since he had been real, real young he had trained himself to be hard. His brother Curly had followed suit, and so had his sister Angela. It was the Shepard way.

In fact, Tim kind of thought himself to be the shepherd of the Greasers. His crook was a switchblade, and he didn't even need that to gain respect. Yeah, Tim lived a pretty unique life. Not everyone could be a leader of a gang. Even the guy he considered one of his best pals wasn't a leader of a gang.

Now, that pal, his name was Dallas Winston. He'd been born in Dallas, Texas, but he'd been so many places it'd make your head spin hearing about it. It had made Tim's head spin, at least. He'd never been anywhere, much.

But despite everywhere Dally had been, despite everything he had seen, despite how cold he usually acted, he still wasn't as tough as Tim. That's why Tim let him stick around—almost as tough, but not close enough to pose a threat. Not close enough to ever beat him in that regard.

When you got right down to it, Dallas Joseph Winston was a tow-headed hick who had no one to live for. Tim knew if you had no one to live for you wasted strength, and you got a little crazy, got sucked in by temptation and passion in a way someone who had something to actually live for didn't. Like the self-controlled oldest Curtis boy, the leader, Tim had two siblings to look out for and a gang besides. What did Dally have, besides some wide-eyed tagalong, a dead woman, and a couple of horses? It didn't add up to much, did it?

Dally rode real good in the rodeo; he'd give him that. And he was glad that, when Dally DJed at the Slash J, singing wasn't part of the job description, because he had to be one of the most tone-deaf people Tim ever met, and normally it bugged the shit out of him when people did things they weren't good at and knew it and did it anyway, but when they were alone in a car or in a room with the radio going, it was somehow . . . not an issue.

Tim liked a few things about Dally. He liked the passion he sang with, even though half the notes were garishly wrong, and he liked that God-awful face only a mother would love 'cause it gave him a little ego boost. Tim may have had a twice-broken nose and a real long scar from that tramp, but at least he had a pretty face beneath it all. He also respected that, even though Dally was ugly, he still got more broads than Tim anyway. It was the passion, he thought. Dallas was a firecracker if there ever was one. Tim didn't mind the attention Dal got because he wasn't into broads quite as much as him (or all the other guys he knew), and that was more or less okay because he had a lot on his plate.

Truth was, he didn't like sex. Oh, he liked masturbation just fine. He'd thought the naughtiest things of a lot of broads, seen movies, magazines. But when it came to the real deal, he always left feeling vaguely disgusted and not much else but tired.

He liked Dally's stories about sex. Dally was a real good storyteller, and it helped that his hick-accented voice got real husky when he told those particular ones. Sometimes he'd even close his eyes like he was there. Tim envied that he loved sex so damn much.

Tim first met Dallas at the rodeo. Tim hadn't been interested in going, but he'd gone with Curly to keep an eye on him, since he was grounded. Then he saw that arrogant little fool ride, and had been waiting for the moment he'd be thrown to the ground by the bronco. That moment had come a lot later than he'd have liked.

He'd found him afterward, telling Curly to shut up about getting home for the moment. "You're new in town, huh?" It wasn't really a question. "I was wondering if you'd like to join my gang." He almost didn't know why he'd said it, until he realized he liked the guy's demeanor.

"Yeah, I'm new." He hooked his thumbs in his pockets, "But I ain't interested."

"We'll see. Maybe you will be after a drink. My treat."

They stared each other down for a little while before Dally said, "Couldn't hurt, I suppose."

It wasn't long after that the Tulsa cops had a new hood to watch out for, with a record a mile long. Someone with no ties was dangerous, unrefined, like a gun firing off without being aimed right. No one could fully trust Dally, so his stint in the Shepard gang wasn't a real long one.

Dally met a lady named Delia Curtis. She respected and understood him, and he did the same for her. Dally told Tim jokingly to never help someone's old lady carry her groceries home. Tim had scoffed and truthfully replied that he never would have done that anyway.

See, Dally was a little of this and a little of that, but never both at once. He'd jump an old man for a ring, or jump a little kid just for fun, even slash his best friend's tires, but he did little good deeds too, provided no one got wind. Mrs. Delia Curtis wasn't tellin' nobody. What she did do, however, was invite him to dinner, which he declined at first, but after he popped in a couple times unannounced, she insisted.

Dally was really crushed when she'd died in a car accident. He'd cried at the funeral and everything. He'd genuinely liked her, like she was his own ma, a good one. After that, he tried not to genuinely like anybody.

So, Dally had no one to live for but himself, so he'd been to jail many, many more times than Tim. He was part of a gang by the time she died—her son's gang, the Curtis gang. One of the boys in it was this pathetic, abused little thing who felt some weird attraction to Dally, and Dally took care of him just as well as the rest of the gang did, maybe better.

So Tim knew the secret to Dally (and it wasn't hard to figure out): you cut the shit and act like you like him, and he'd open up to you quite a bit, given time.

Tim could have a lot of fun with that stupid Winston. They'd drank, pissed off a bridge, banged a girl together (Dally had a decidedly sloppy way of doing even that, but he'd made her cum at least, while Tim hadn't cared to), slept out under the stars, and Dally had even taught him how to ride a horse. So, it was kind of weird when their relationship shifted.