Memorizing You (2 page)

I dropped my eyes from his and stared at the pages of the book open on my desk. I don’t remember what book it was at all. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. All I could do at that moment…was feel. And the feelings were overwhelming…and out of control. I trembled, and it confused me. When I had trembled before, I’d been scared. Something else had made me shake. I wanted to look back up at him. I couldn’t. That did scare me. It scared me because it made me feel weak. But I couldn’t get him out of my thoughts. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I saw my shirt moving under the thunderous thumping of my heart. I put my hand over it. This is what going crazy must feel like, I thought.

He didn’t know it muscular y fes, but I followed him on his way home. He lived just around the corner from me behind the lot of the Catholic Church. I don’t remember the name of the church, but I remember his house distinctly. A duplex on the corner. 394 Osage Street. It was the only house that didn’t have trees in front of it. I watched him unlock the door, disappear inside.

I was half a block away, behind an oak tree. I stood there forever, staring at his house, wondering what had come over me. I’m sure people passed me on the sidewalks and cars drove by. The passersby probably all looked and wondered what was wrong with the gangly, blond boy standing behind a tree, staring into space, soaked by the early summer heat. I didn’t care.

What I was aware of was that I now understood that I was feeling what all the others felt when they talked about their girlfriends. But that I felt them for a boy. And that actually terrified me because I’d never seen or heard of that happening. But there it was, and I had no control or choice in the matter. I was helpless under its possession.

I haven’t given you his name because this is true. I’ll call him Greg. That isn’t his name. But it will do.

I’ve heard so many people refer to this as “puppy love” or your “first crush.” For me it was so much more than that. It was the single event that would forever change my life.

That night, the boy that lay in my bed, the boy who used to fantasize about building secret underground cave hideouts and super powerful spaceships that could take him to different planets, lay there visualizing the face, the hand…and the body of a boy named Greg. I fantasized what it would be like to be him. To be able to hang out with him. To have him as my friend. And so much more…

We were two completely different youths. He was naturally athletic. I was not. He was boyishly muscular. I was thin. He was outgoing; I was introverted. There was a lot I didn’t know back then, and you can only imagine my confusion when I woke the next morning with my underwear and pajamas stuck to me. The body knew of what the mind had no knowledge.

Here is what is odd to me in my retrospection. The rest of that entire school semester I cannot tell you the name of anyone else in the class other than my teacher. I cannot remember any other faces of my classmates. I can’t tell you what I studied, what I was good at, or what I was not. But I can place me in my desk and I can place him in his. I can tell you what he wore every day; what he looked like when he got a haircut and when he got his first pair of glasses—which I thought only made him more hand in comparison aupsome.

I remember wanting a pair of glasses after that, even though my eyes were fine. But that was what was happening to me. I wanted jeans like him, a pair of black Converse ball shoes like his, the striped pullovers he was fond of wearing. I wanted to emulate him in every way.

The one memory that stands most vivid was during a gym class softball game. I always dreaded these things because I was so poor at sports; anything athletic. But I can still picture Greg standing at the plate with his bat, swinging it back and forth like he knew what he was doing.

Confident. Determined. He wore the white tee and short white shorts that were typical of that time long ago. I was on the bench, hoping the bell would ring before it was my turn, gazing at him. His curly blond hair dangled over his ears. The naturally tanned skin that I am sure only glows because of the biased shade of my recollection. His legs were lithe. Golden. Everything about him boasted strength. I don’t know how I could have admired anyone more.

Before that school year ended, I experienced one more thing that announced another significant change in myself. By this time, I was dressing as much as I could as my hero, Greg. The shoes, the shirts, and the jeans. Our family couldn’t afford the Chuck Wagon lunch boxes he carried, or the back packs, or the Timex watch he was inclined to wear on the underside of his wrist. But I was as close an imitation as a skinny boy can be.

My locker was around the corner of a corridor from his. I remember the floors as if they were cork. You barely heard footfalls on them. It was the end of the school day. I walked from my locker with my books and was first cognizant of the scent of one of those perfumes I’d smelled walking past the women’s counter in the Katz drugstore in Maplewood. It carried on the light breeze from an open window at the end of the hall. It wasn’t an expensive perfume. It was one of those that catered to teenaged girls who wanted to be thought of as more “mature.” I know it had a silly name, but I can’t remember it. I can remember turning the corner and finding its source: the girl who was standing in front of Greg’s locker, holding his hands. They stood close. He smiled at her. He rubbed his thumbs over the tops of her hands. I was polarized by the sight of that hand on hers.

Light and air were choked from the corridor. I had no breath in my lungs. My heart missed beats. My legs were unsteady. I leaned against the wall with my books clutched to my chest. My head filled with searing hurt. My eyes stung sharply, and I realized I was blinking through a salty waterfall.

How I got out of the building is a recollection burned away by that moment. But I found Time Warner Entertainment, L.P.I my myself in the small park between the school and the apartment I lived in with my folks. I cried uncontrollably into my jacket. I felt violated. And it was all beyond the scope of my understanding. It was only inside that inconsolable pain that I finally realized what it was that I’d wanted, and what it was that I’d just lost. And it slammed me as hard as a fist. I doubled over with that assault and cried until my eyes were dry, my face was gritty.

The despair consumed me. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him anymore during the last few weeks of the school year. On the last day, I packed up my belongings from the locker and strolled past him with my head down. I walked out the door feeling like my life had ended.

That would have been the end of that tale if the summer hadn’t turned everything upside down on me again. I’d already forgotten all the nameless, faceless people of my class, and I’d pushed Greg as far out of my mind as I could. Our family couldn’t afford to take a vacation, so I had to amuse myself by myself as best I could.

We lived in the upper story of a two story brick flat in Saint Louis. Twelve feet of front yard with houses pressed in tight to each other. The backyards were larger lots that ended with an alleyway lined with trashcans, carports, and one-car garages.

Luckily, that summer, I discovered a hobby that comforted me. My dad gave me an old push-mower and some clippers, and put me in charge of taking care of the apartment’s yards. On first glance, it seemed like something that would be outside of my personality. But before long, it became something that brought peace to my thoughts. I learned techniques of mowing the lawn that made it look like a carpet: mowing it, first one way, then the other in tight, even rows. I trimmed the edges so they were all perfectly square; meticulously pulled every weed and cleaned the cracks in the walkway. I watered it regularly, and before long, we had the best lawn on the block. For five dollars, I did the same thing for neighbors and it wasn’t long before I had worked my way into a self-employed summer job that pulled in thirty dollars or more a week. And I loved doing it. I liked being alone.

In my free time, I’d grab my red Schwinn and ride through the neighborhood. I usually ended up at Marquette Park. It was a nice big park with lots of trees and bike paths, and it had the one community pool within ten miles. I’d go there and sit beneath the trees and watch the jocks toss a football to each other. I’d watch them run, then I’d sit near the fence at the pool and watch them parade around in their swim trunks. I was fascinated by men. To see just one specimen that looked like a Greek god was worth a whole day of watching. I wished that I looked like them. I acknowledged my own average appearance. There’d be no one waiting on the sidelines to see me stride poolside in a pair of trunks. Not with my skinny legs, knobby knees, small chest, and boney arms. But my curiosity expanded every day. Particularly when the new lifeguard took a. I slipped back into my socks and shoes. aup chair at the pool. I figured he was about my age; maybe a year older. He was tall and walked like some sleek animal on long legs. He was broad shouldered, perfectly sculpted. He had natural platinum hair that was long like most of the guys imitating the British rock groups of that time. He wore short, red trunks that seemed strained against his rounded butt. But I couldn’t take my eyes off how he absolutely filled the front of those trunks. In fact, none of the girls at the pool missed it either. They all gathered in giggling clumps around him. He was just that spectacular. I’d find myself sitting on the bench watching him and wondering what it would be like to see him slip out of those trunks and move with his gazelle grace into a shower. My consciousness of what appealed to me about guys also made me aware of my own deficiencies. One afternoon, after bathing, I stared at myself in the mirror as though I was taking inventory of the parts I would need to be like them; the one’s I liked. I needed them all. And they couldn’t be bought and added on.

I began doing all the things I didn’t care for. Jogging, push-ups, squats. A whole exercise regimen. I wasn’t about to take off my shirt and expose myself to the world to get a tan. But I was, as my uncle used to say, as white as unpissed snow. So my solution was to wait for my parents to go to work and then go to their bedroom which had wide eastern windows, throw open the curtains and lay in my underwear on the floor to get a few minutes of tanning time. I learned quickly to not expose myself to too much at once. The first sunburn was a lulu and I peeled like a banana.

However, after a couple of weeks I had a nice color and noticed that it was lightening my normally dull brown, average hair. I needed more weight on my five-foot-nine-inch frame to really add muscle, but I was never a big eater, and with all the physical exertion of my lawn care chores for the neighbors and my exercise routine, I was burning off everything as I ate it. So I knew it was going to take time for someone like me who wasn’t born with genetic advantages. Even though I had broad shoulders they only accentuated that I was underweight. Without much facial or body hair I was, more or less, androgynous. Nothing like what I admired in others.

It was in the middle of June, one of the hottest days imaginable. Heat rose off the brick streets of our neighborhood. Birds seemed silenced in the humid oppression. I’d finished my one lawn chore of the day and decided to head to the park to check out the scenery at the pool where I knew everyone would be headed. In spite of the heat, I still wore a pair of long shorts and a white tee. I would get a cold soda at Bailey’s corner confectionery on the way.

I’d just walked out of Baileys with my bottle of Coke when I heard, “Hey. How’s it going?”

I had to squint through the white light to find the face. The one with bright brown eyes. Greg. He straddled his bike, staring at me. His face was speckled with sweat, a few straggling blond curls pasted to his forehead. His white, ribbed tank clung to his torso, a ribbon of wet down its center. He was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans.

My body lost capacity to breathe.

“You’re David, right? You’re in my class?”

I stared at his mouth as he smiled. At the white teeth, two gently overlapping. The blood-rose lips. My heart beat as though it sought an escape route. Finding no voice, I nodded.

He introduced himself as if he were a complete stranger to me. The first words acknowledging my existence in his world. All sensation of reality flew away from me.

“Could I get a sip of that from ya?” he asked, pointing at my soda.

I handed it to him, wordlessly, and watched him drink, then wipe his lips with the back of that beautiful hand. I have heard and read people use the term that “time stood still”, and they had seemed liked words a poet would conjure up for an imagined moment, for something that had no context with reality. But then, and now so many years later in the replayed moments…time stood still. That moment he sipped from my cold bottle of Coke in the shock of white sunlight is frozen. The time between now and then has no distance in my heart.

When I sipped from the bottle afterward it was like my first kiss. I could taste his mouth.

A soft wind blew between us. The first I ‘d felt the whole day. It cooled the sweat on my face, and I held the bottle out for him again. He thanked me with a smile. Between the two of us we finished the bottle in four sips.

“D’ya wanna ride around?”

It’s funny how after living for some fifty-odd years that retrospection makes your life seem like a string of scenes; some you forget quite easily in their mundanity, such as washing a car, and others quite memorable like learning to drive a car. Some we push away because of the pain like the death of someone close. But there are very few we visit with regularity because of their special quality; their meaning to our heart. I have visited that day every week of every month of every year of my life since it occurred. It. I slipped back into my socks and shoes. aup couldn’t be more familiar to me than if it were a painting on my wall that I woke to see every morning.

When I close my eyes, I’m there again, starting the adventure from the corner of Keokuk and California in front of Bailey’s. Riding up the hill behind him in the middle of the street, our bikes bouncing beneath us on the brick streets. I can smell the freshly mowed lawns, rose bushes, and backyard barbeques. I can see each small avenue lined with sycamores and oaks. But most of all…I can see him.