Message of Love (26 page)

I caressed the beard stubble on his face, with my other arm cushioned under his neck. His hand offered a few exploratory touches under my clothes. We kissed softly, slowly, but somewhere in the middle of it, our moves slowed and we fell asleep.

The next morning, I arose before Everett. Sunlight pressed through the tent, giving his sleeping face a warm orange glow. Despite being incredibly hungry, and needing to pee, I lay next to him, gazing at him for a long moment, and resisted the urge to caress his face. Instead I quietly rose and left the tent.

Stepping downhill from the campsite, I peed, and took in the sweeping panorama. Dawn mist crept through fingery treetops.

Over breakfast, we discussed our day’s plans. Jacob craved some rock-climbing, although the map didn’t seem to show any potential areas for that.

Jacob asked, “So what led you to this spot, Reid. You said some friend…?”

“I got some pointers from a former coworker’s friend. But what struck me was the name of the road we’re on.”

“Which is?” Sarah asked.

I unfolded the map and handed it to her.

“Dancing Bear Lane?”

Laughs all around, followed by, “And then it’s on to Hiney View?”

“Hyner View,” I corrected. “It’s the most amazing peak, and there’s off-road camping nearby, I think.”

“How about we just settle here and drive there for the day?” Jacob suggested as he pried at a stuck carabiner.

I shrugged. The camp was set up rather nicely. What I didn’t tell him, and what no one else noticed as we turned into the road, was the emergency phone box back up the road only a few yards.

“We could do that. There’s also a lake down on the other side, with herons. We could do that tomorrow or the next day.”

Jacob seemed preoccupied.

“Let me check something,” I said. “Half an hour.”

“What’s up?” His attention returned to me.

I said quietly, as if conspiring, “A little prepared romantic spontaneity.”

I checked the trail map, jogged uphill as long as I could imagine tugging Everett up it, until I found a clearing, with a sort of view, more than a dabble of sky, and raced back down.

“Wagons, ho!”

I tugged. He followed.

“I am so glad you brought this,” Everett said. “How utterly convenient.”

“I thought so,” I said over my shoulder as I pulled the plastic sled. Everett’s older sled, a gift from me, lay in a storage bin someplace on the outskirts of Greensburg, awaiting either of his parents to finally divvy up the loot. Instead I’d brought an older one from home.

“My Rosebud,” he lamented as I tugged him along the trail in the lost sled’s replica.

With a sleeping bag padding him below, Everett lay on the sled, his arms crossed behind his head. There were a few bumps, but since it was impassable in his chair, the sled served well. He let me lead, trusting that our efforts would be worth it.

After we agreed to stay camped at the site, Jacob and Sarah had gone off elsewhere. We each wanted to spend some private couples’ time, and I only hoped they wouldn’t end up in a poison oak thatch.

I figured a twenty-minute hike up, and perhaps beyond the ridge I’d found, there would be a magnificent view, an inspiration for us both. I had enough supplies in my backpack to last hours, or the night, along with a First Aid kit.

Sunlight spilled in small shafts between the trees, but most of the trail was shady. An occasional rock or root jostled him, but Everett treated it like a sort of bumper car ride.

Finally at our destination, I stopped.

“Wow.”

“Wow, indeed.”

Before us, a small field of wild grass opened out to sloping hillside and beyond it, an expanse of green hills and valleys. A few distant clouds trailed above, leaving parts of far off foliage in shadow. But mostly, the sun beamed, and multiple shades of greens and browns coated the land.

“Here, scoot up.”

Everett pressed himself up as I tugged the sleeping bag from under him, then placed it near the trunk of a small evergreen. Then I hoisted Everett out of the sled.

“Bend at the knees,” he scolded as he hugged me.

After unpacking a bag of salted cashews and two cans of beer I’d been hiding, I unlaced my boots, let my toes wiggle, sat beside him. We toasted, smooched, marveled at the view.

It was heaven. It was bliss. We might even make out, if I waited, or I would simply get naked down to my boots before him. Instead, we just peeled off our shirts and sat together, looking at the view, or dozing together as the breeze whispered through nearby trees.

But then he said it.

“Do you think he’s going to die?”

I sighed, waited, pulled my thoughts together. “What was it you said? If we live long enough, everyone becomes disabled?”

“Yes?”

“Well, after that, everyone dies.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do, and I’m sorry you want to talk about it now, but, yes.”

“So, what’ll you do with the photos he gave me?”

“Get them framed?” I grinned.

He sighed, shook his head, then thought, “That’ll give the cleaning lady a scare. But, you know, they remind me…”

“Yes?”

“Of then, with him, but…”

“What, you want to save them to remember him?”

“No, to remember me.”

“Well, I could take better pictures of you.”

“No, of me then. I’m standing, Reid, my legs were–”

“Do you want to dwell on that? Fine, like I said, let’s frame them and you can look at them every–”

“I’m not gonna feel sorry for myself. I want to… I want to remember, and celebrate what I was, not–”

“It’s okay. Whatever you want to do. I… I like them, but we just have to be careful where we leave them. Okay?”

“Maybe a carefully hidden album.”

“Whatever. Now can we just enjoy this pretty picture?” I waved before us. The sun was turning half a mountainside from green to gold.

“Okay.” He scooted himself closer, we hugged, then settled, until he asked, “So…remember my little proposal of a trade?”

I offered a sly grin. “The camera’s in the backpack.”

“Better hurry. The light is perfect.”

I dug into the backpack and handed him the camera, then walked a few paces away, stood before him.

He snapped a few pictures, then said, “Take your shorts off.”

“What?”

“We had a deal.”

I shucked them off, adjusted my underpants. The heat of the sun and his admiring glance began to stir my arousal, and my shorts tented out. I bashfully covered my crotch.

“Come on. All the way.”

“I’ll get naked if you will.”

Everett set the camera aside and wriggled himself out of his pants. I thought to walk back to him, but he was naked before I could. He scooted up again, and repositioned his thin legs into a crossed position.

“There.”

“But where’ll we get these developed?” I asked. “We should have brought a Polaroid.”

“I’m sure Gerard can find us some art student who can sneak into a lab.” He retrieved the camera. “Now, turn sideways.”

As he directed me through a few more poses, I felt myself relax, and my penis stiffened, the breeze and sun grazing my skin.

“God, you’re so fuckin’ beautiful.” He snapped away, then stopped. “Come closer.”

I stepped toward him, my erection swaying. He set the camera down, waved me closer, until I hovered over him. He placed a hand on my hip, guiding me lower until his lips met my skin, and the familiar warmth of his mouth, and a sturdy tree trunk to lean on, connected us again.

Chapter 32

August 1982

When I’d started working as a ranger, my enthusiasm overcame the ensuing exhaustion. I saw Fairmount Park as a beautiful ideal made real. My hope to fulfill my aspirations of designing or at the least building ramps for more accessibility were left to the few people with years more seniority. Jessica, my supervisor, had yet to let me know if any such plans would progress. Even so, I’d kept a map of the park, now worn from repeated use, marking problematic paths and rough walkways. Now it just seemed like an endless terrain in constant need of attention.

“Horses, they had; dozens of them.”

Ralph was telling me about the old days. A burly fifty-four-year-old from South Philly, he frequently mentioned how long he’d been working at the park, “since I was your age.”

It pained me to imagine becoming as old as he was, still picking up brush and garbage with a pair of worn work gloves, as we did while he talked. How was it that bright sunlight in the woods had been so blissful on our camping trip, yet in the city’s park it beat down with a heavy weight?

“The Park Guards’d ride down the paths all regal-like, and people respected ‘em, know what I’m sayin?”

“I’d love to ride a horse,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. But my comments were ignored.

“They dint have no gangs back then, and even when ‘ey started up, people respected the park.”

After tossing another bundle onto the pile, I rubbed another scrape on my arm. A cluster of flies had decided to accompany us all day. I swatted them off with a futile gesture.

“Up further, in Cobbs Creek, they’d find bodies, little girls, dead for weeks. Terrible stuff. Then the racial incidents, and fuckin’ Rizzo.”

Ralph tossed another bundle of dead branches onto the small flatbed on wheels he’d rigged up to the back of one of the motorized carts we drove to tool around the park grounds.

“Fuckin’ Mayor Rizzo slashed the budget, and a bunch a other guys and gals got canned. Good people.”

One hundred-thirty acres; that was the revised estimate of how much of the park had been each worker’s responsibility. According to Ralph, only ten years before, with more employees, that ratio was a third. Despite appeals by my bosses to City Hall, the park’s budget had been leveled off for the past several years.

So I should have considered myself lucky, he seemed to hint. The pay was good, I got to spend every day outdoors, and stay in the city. I’d never been annoyed by Ralph’s complaints each workday, until he forced my card, the coming out card.

“You know, they even got a little name for the park where they do it, them … gay guys. You hear about that?”

“Why would I have heard about it?”

“I dunno. I just figured you heard.”

Ralph had offered a few lewd suggestions about women as a sort of conversational bait, which I never took. But he never came right out and asked. The frustration of the seemingly endless pruning, combined with the heat, sent me over the edge that day, or at least to a point of decision.

“Ralph,” I sighed. “I have a boyfriend. And we don’t have sex in the park, at least not this one.”

“Oh. Sorry.” He turned away.

“For what?”

“Whatever. Ain’t nothin.’”

He kept quiet after that. I didn’t ask him where the cruisy park was. I told myself I didn’t care.

As we finished for the day, Ralph’s usual cheerful farewell was curt. My train ride home, slower than usual, was made worse by my own sweaty work clothes. At least the other commuters gave me a considerable distance.

My grumpy attitude brightened when I arrived back at the house. Everett, busy in the kitchen, gestured proudly toward a large bowl.

“Primavera pasta!”

“Oh, thank goodness. I thought it was my turn.”

“With fusilli!”

I peered into the bowl. “Telephone wire spaghetti.”

“Fusilli, silly.”

After I took a well-needed shower, we ate. Everett’s attempt at conversation became more of a monologue with me grunting and nodding in between mouthfuls of pasta.

“You seem beat,” he said.

“I am.”

“Why don’t you go lay down. I’ll catch up.”

“But I should do the dishes.”

“Ah, ah.” He waved me off.

“You’re the best boyfriend ever.”

Some nights, Everett lovingly massaged my hands, my arms, and my back, as he did that warm night. He sat cross-legged beside me, rubbing his hands with lotion. I lay naked over a towel on the bed.

“How was your day?”

“Full of
Puereria lobata
.”

“
Que
?”

“Kudzu.”

“A plant, I take it.” He kneaded knots out of my shoulders as I winced in pleasurable pain.

“A vine, an evil, treacherous vine,” I mumbled into a pillow, then adjusted my head sideways.

“And you conquered it?”

“There’s no conquering it; we just cut it back. They grow a foot a day, like some alien species. It’s like, taken over half of the South.”

“Did you show me any when we went to the park?”

“It’s uptown, in this creepy acreage. You know, a few years ago, they used to find abandoned cars under mountains of kudzu.”

“Is it native?”

“No, some stupid horticulture expo guy showed it off back in the 1890s or something, and it spread, like a disease. The thing is, it’s kind of pretty. It just…it’s relentless.”

“Do you just cut it?”

“Down to the root, where we can, but the roots go down, like ten feet. One of the guys wanted to get a flamethrower.”

“Hold still.” He pressed harder, sending tingles through my body.

“What are the vines out back?”

I looked up, peered through the window into the dusk light. Beyond it, in one of the apartments, rock music played and a cluster of voices rose and fell with laughter. If it kept up, as it had on a few weekend nights, we wouldn’t get any sleep for hours.

“It’s probably just your basic
hedera helix
; English Ivy.”

“Which is a more proper plant,” he joked, taking on a snooty accent.

“Well, Mrs. Kukka would never plant kudzu. I think she said she planted the ivy because the berries attract birds.”

Everett’s hands kneaded my lower back, then playfully toyed with my glutes, and between my legs. But before he got too playful, I rolled over. My penis flopped over, then began to rise.

“I see you’re feeling better.”

“Come here.” I reached for him, wrestled him to lie atop me. His face hovered above me as his body pressed against me. I shucked his shorts down, repositioned my erection between his legs, and we commenced a slow, rhythmic humping motion as we kissed. It didn’t take long for me to burst, and although our sweat and the lotion made a bit of a mess, I held onto him, holding him, enjoying the heat between us.

With strategically-placed curtains, we could, with the lights off, see a glint of moonlight glimmering over the ivy plants along the fence in the backyard, leaving the window full of silvery green leaves.

Our bed out of range to the top floor apartment beyond, we enjoyed feeling as if we were outdoors, but without the journey. Later that night, after the party across the fence finally died down, a rustling sound disturbed our naked knot on the bed.

Looking up, I stepped to the window, expecting a shadow of someone, but then the ivy quivered, in a path.

I didn’t want to ask Ms. Kukka, knowing she would shriek at the sight of them, and probably couldn’t even hear them from upstairs, but I knew; rats.

Everett became concerned only after he spotted one of them in the kitchen a few days later. After that, he merely said, at my proposal, “Let’s go shopping.”

The traps were good enough, but the trail of feed-poison seemed to have worked. What also helped was having a word with the building manager on the other side of the fence, who agreed to cover his trash bins more carefully.

When he didn’t, Everett’s offhand comment admitting having seen a rat led to Mrs. Kukka making a phone call that led to a few strings being pulled, where afterward, “Some city inspector wagged his finger and took care of that,” as Mrs. Kukka said.

I should have felt bad about it, destroying living things. But Everett described my efforts as “heroic.”

Our minor pestilence abated, my boyfriend had another reason to be ebullient. The anti-discrimination bill which he’d helped lobby for had passed. There had been celebrations, and parties, including one where we met the mayor.

But after all the celebrations, his work was done. He made a few phone calls about other summer office work, but nothing turned up, particularly when he mentioned accessibility.

For a few days, the heat seemed to drag him down into a languid funk.

So I offered to take him out to see a movie.

“Which one?”

“Your choice.”

That time, I again dressed as Brad, and he Dr. Scott. But there wasn’t a contest, and most of
Rocky Horror
’s performing cast was out of town. We had fun, but just not as much as the first time, and nobody offered to go to a diner afterward.

The next day, we lay out in the front yard on a blanket. Everett read from a small stack of books and magazines, his face shaded by one of Mrs. Kukka’s floppy hats. We had yet to return to school, but he was already diving into the next semester’s curriculum.

I lazily grazed my fingers along his back as I lay beside him. Despite all my workdays outdoors, having to wear long pants had kept my legs pale. It felt good to be warmed by the sun. Off near the flowerbed, a pair of wrens hopped by, offered sideways glances, then flew off.

“We should go out to a gay bar.”

“Which one?”

“Here. Take your pick.” He tossed me a copy of
Au Courant
. I leafed through the pages, which included articles on local entertainers, movie reviews, and a lengthy feature on the recently-renamed AIDS. I’d already read it, and didn’t want to dwell on the subject. Any mention of it got Everett talking about Wesley. I instead recited names of bars.

“La Banana Noire.”

“If we could go anywhere in the world for a vacation, where would you want to go?”

“No place with rats,” I said. “Paris, maybe, since you speak French.” I glanced at an ad. “Lickety Split. It’s on South Street.”

I smiled at Everett, sensing he already had some wild plan up his sleeve. But I didn’t try to second-guess him, and instead told him the truth. “The Amazon; the rain forest. Ever hear of buttress roots?”

“No, but I like the sound of that. Although, I do think rain forests have rats. El r-r-r-ratto.”

I chuckled. “Or Socotra Island. Ever hear of it?” I remembered one of my nature books that included photos of strangely-branched trees that resembled giant alien sponges. “It’s about two hundred miles off the coast of Yemen. It’s got hundreds of different species. There’s one called the dragon’s blood tree. It’s got red sap.”

“Wow. You’re really into it.”

“It’s just so unusual; that or Australia. It’s got marsupials and all kinds of strange stuff.”

“Including some of the Australians.” Everett extracted something from his notebook.

“Oh, not another brochure,” I leaned up on an elbow. “What is it this time, building wheelchairs out of bamboo in Cambodia?”

“Actually, I was thinking something more pedestrian like …Illinois.”

“Okay. Why?”

“I wanna compete in the Olympics for wheelchair jocks.”

“And it’s in Illinois?”

“Urbana-Champaign. The University of Illinois. I know it’s not exotic or anything. There wouldn’t be any bleeding dragon trees.”

“Ev. Wherever you wanna go, I’ll go with you if I can. When is it?”

“Summer nineteen-eighty-four. Different cities have been hosting them for a long time in England, I think since, like the sixties, and they really have their act together with the disability scene.”

“Would your team play basketball?”

“I don’t know. We don’t start up again until November. I’m not sure if we’re good enough, or will be, or if the guys can even afford to go. Maybe I’ll just do some individual sport; a race or some track and field events. I took an archery class at Pinecrest. It’s just the idea of going, you know? Being with a whole herd of other people. It’ll be like Up With Cripples!”

I snorted, had to turn away.

“What? Don’t laugh!”

“It’s just, you’re so…Yes.” I wiped away a tear from the giggles. “That’d be pretty cool.”

“Would you go with me?”

“Sure! I could save up. Illinois can’t be as expensive as Paris.”

“No, it would be my gift to you.”

“Ev, you shouldn’t–”

“Hold on. You wouldn’t get off so easily, so to speak.”

“What do you mean?”

He hesitated, offered a sheepish grin. “I was hoping you could train with me.”