Message of Love (5 page)

“Great!” Everett leaned in, and so did I, for a kiss. It all seemed like a wonderful idea. But it was his idea, and he knew I couldn’t turn it down. I had to relent. Besides, hauling bags of fertilizer for housewives would keep for a month.

As Everett wheeled back over to his desk for the application forms, which, it turned out, he’d already sent for, he casually added, “Oh, so, have you had your shots?”

“Shots?”

“You know, the usual; tetanus, measles.”

“Shots?”

“It’s kind of standard procedure.”

“Shots.”

“Just a quick poke.”

“You’re infuriating, you know that.”

“I love you, too.”

Chapter 6

June 1980

A crash of late morning light splayed over my bed through the window. We had the house to ourselves to make as much noise as we wanted. Instead, I merely gazed at my boyfriend’s sleeping face. Resisting the urge to kiss him to waking, I instead crept out of bed.

With the house quiet, I was surprised to see my mother in a light jacket and matching skirt, keys in her hand. I had forgotten how professional she looked when dressed for work, her dusty-blonde hair neatly pinned back.

“Oh! There you are.”

“Hi,” I smiled, still a bit groggy.

“Forgot my purse, again,” she smiled. “You boys sleep okay?”

I nodded, looked across the kitchen counter for a quick snack.

“There’s plenty of food for breakfast. Do you boys drink coffee now?”

“Not really.”

“Well, I’ll be back this afternoon. I’ll make one of my big fun dinners, how ‘bout it?”

“Great.”

She leaned in for a brief hug, her perfume surrounding me. “It’s so nice to have you back for a few days.”

“Yeah.”

After she left, I looked around at the quiet rooms, longing for my parents’ company, yet somewhat relieved by her departure. Our simple house had once made me feel ashamed compared to Everett’s wealthy home. But now, it made me happy, content to return.

After eating half a banana and a gulping down some orange juice, I returned to my room. Everett still slept in my bed, and I eased myself back under the slim sheet. He stirred and grabbed my arm over him, as if wrapping me around him like a blanket.

After visiting Everett in Pittsburgh for a few days, we’d been apart for most of the week. His drive back to Greensburg was delayed and he’d arrived at my parents’ house a bit later than expected.

My parents knew better than to call us to breakfast. Dad managed the account books at the Best Rite supermarket, and Mom was a paralegal at a small law firm downtown.

In between his or my visits between “the sbergs” Green- and Pitt-, we had still called each other almost every night. We muttered cryptic code words for entire adventures we had shared, like “
bidens aristosa
,” named for the afternoon in a scrubby northern section of Fairmount Park where we’d enjoyed an open plain of hills to the east, and even a few horses in a distant field full of (in English) tickseed sunflowers.

We’d merely kissed that day, but it was splendid. I didn’t want to offer a critique as to when he wanted to go further. He pretty much showed it.

Other times, in private, we would explore new positions, new ways of blending our love and lust with the new challenges brought on by what Everett called “my new body.” I learned how to enjoy the experience without needing a finish, without trying to push him toward an orgasm, which in itself was, well, more complicated for him.

Retrograde ejaculation; just one of the many awkward biological terms that had become a part of our life, was reduced to a mere joke when he called it “Back-Ejac.” I grew to understand his preference for spreading our sexual fun, not be so, as he put it, “goal-oriented,” since him even getting an erection often didn’t happen. I took my cues from him as he guided me toward other pleasures; caresses along his neck, his underarm, connected by deep long kisses.

Bare under the slat of sunlight, the sheets tossed aside, he awoke fully and tugged the sheet down, surveyed my body with a smile before reaching downward.

“Flip around,” he instructed.

Everett had almost mastered a two-pronged approach of taking my erection in his mouth as deep as possible, accented by an increasingly insistent finger wriggle to greet my prostate, which invariably led me to an overwhelming orgasm.

With a slurp and a grin, he released my penis from his mouth. It plopped onto my thigh with a splat.

“How do you do that?”

“Practice.”

I wiped his cheek and lips of a shine of milky saliva, brought it to my mouth and licked my fingers.

“You are getting the best lunch ever.”

“Sounds good,” he patted my belly.

Later, barely dressed in shorts, having eaten a pair of immense sandwiches, we lounged on the sofa that afternoon. He squealed with delight at my younger pictures in family photo albums.

“You were adorable.”

All I saw was a gangly Dumbo with black-rimmed glasses. But his amusement spread to me.

“You know you’re handsome, don’t you?” he said.

“I never thought about it until you, we…”

“Oh, Giraffe,” he sighed. “You should know by now that I have impeccable taste.”

As he closed the album, I asked him if he had any family photos.

“I think my mother has most of those. I have my yearbooks. I’ll bring them when we head back to Philly.”

“That’d be nice.”

“It’s nothing like that staircase is; was.”

His family photos, hung in ascending order up the mansion’s two-tiered staircase, had beguiled me on my first visit. I wondered where they’d all gone, now that the Forrester’s, truly split, had leased their semi-furnished home to a German businessman who had plans to open a new economy department store on the outside of town.

Unable to break with the source of their family traditions  –Everett’s grandfather had the house built to his exact specifications decades before– his father had managed to hold off on selling their house.

I had returned, at least near it, on my first spring break after the Forresters had all moved to various new homes. Sitting at the corner of the lawn, until a few cars drove by too slowly to ignore, the mansion seemed to loom. The Forresters’ lives had moved to the city and glistening new buildings.

“Do you miss it?” I asked.

Everett shrugged. “Sort of. But the last few years, with just me and Mom and Helen, were kind of vacant.” Helen, his mother’s housekeeper, had found work with another family in Forrestville.

“I mean, she filled up her days with, I dunno, those women’s groups, and the country club and all,” he continued. “But really. All those rooms, all that maintenance.”

“But do you wanna go see it?”

“Have you gone back?”

“Once.”

While hoping to find the nerve to retrace each step in and around his former home, out of some kind of instinctual trail sniff, I’d merely stood at the curb for a few minutes.

“I do, and I don’t,” he said. “I mean, we were already falling apart. It’s just a natural…”

“Shedding.”

Everett huffed, pretending insult. “Well! If you want to get all botanical about it.”

Feeling that I should keep him entertained during his visit, and having run out of things to distract him, I suggested we go for a visit to one of the nearby parks out of town. He rolled his eyes, taking it as a hint of some probable outdoor lechery.

“Aren’t your parents coming home soon?” he asked.

“Well, yeah, but we don’t have to–”

“I need to get cleaned up. We reek of sex and I need a shave.”

He’d already begun hoisting himself off the sofa and into his chair, and rolled down towards the bathroom when I jokingly called out, “But I like you fuzzy!”

“Plenty of time for fuzzy at the camp next month!”

I understood, though. Despite any casual situation, Everett’s life had been one of protocols and dress codes. As familiar as we had become, he still addressed my parents as Mr. or Mrs. Conniff, and gave them a respectful attitude.

“Can you get my shaving kit?” he called out from the bathroom.

Foraging through his backpack in my bedroom, I found the smaller pouch with a few toiletries. I noticed a few prescription bottles as well, something I’d never noticed during all those months at the Temple dorm. Why had he hidden them?

“Here you go.” I handed him the pouch, hung out in the doorway as he ran some hot water over a disposable razor.

“Does your dad have–”

“Here.” I opened the cabinet, found a canister of shaving cream.

“Thanks.”

“So, what are those medications you take?”

He stopped. “Why?”

“Well, since we’re going to be at the camp, I just thought I should–”

“You should what?”

“Ev, I just… In case something happens.’

“Nothing’s going to happen. They’re just antibiotics and an antidepressant, which I haven’t been taking because it kills my sex drive, and I’m perfectly happy, and you should be too.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. I just never saw them before.”

“And now you have. Do you want to watch me shave now, too?”

“Um, yes?”

“Get in the shower,” he commanded as he lathered his face. “You stink, and you might as well entertain me, too, nosy.”

Chapter 7

July 1980

Everett surveyed our tiny cabin with a wary look. “Well, this is … rustic.”

I walked past him, shrugged a duffel bag off my shoulder and to the wooden floor. “It’s ours, alone. We’re lucky.”

Because most of the counselors were women, and two of the other men were married to others, we were able to finagle our own cabin. Being the only wheelchair-using counselor must have helped us get a little bit of special treatment. I still wasn’t sure that Alice, our lead counselor and default boss, completely understood our relationship, or cared. To Everett, it seemed unimportant.

The cabin’s windows were small, with dingy drapes that hid the sunlight. The room’s paneled walls didn’t seem mildewy, but the room felt stuffy.

“Let’s get some air in here.” I opened each of the windows.

“You want the top bunk?” Everett joked as he wheeled toward the two stacked beds. They were as small as twin beds, so it was going to be a tighter fit when we slept. After sharing our larger dorm bed for so many months, the idea of merely sleeping near or above Everett was unthinkable. Going to sleep and waking up by his side had become one of the joyous constants of our new life together. Even so, the bed looked small.

Our first day involved a lot of introductions with the other counselors in the main hall of the camp, poring over mimeographed sheets of instructions, schedules, safety guides and a list of the students’ names and various disabilities.

Barbara, the other lead counselor, seemed to repeatedly eye me, and speak in a somewhat careful tone, as if I might not understand the seriousness of our duties. I got a feeling that she thought I was just along for the ride, that Everett, by being disabled, didn’t need instruction. Not sure who had figured out our relationship, or if any such revelation would be appropriate, I just busied myself by taking notes.

We would be expected to be on call most of the next day when the parents and their kids arrived. We also received short-sleeved shirts with the camp name printed on them.

“Our first night together in the wild,” Everett said as we finally settled into our bed. The single lamp gave the cabin a dim yet unintentionally romantic light.

“Hardly the wild,” I said. “The town’s two miles away.”

“Shh. Was that a coyote?” he joked.

He shifted closer, we smooched, and his hand reached down toward my thickening penis. We lay side by side, kissing, caught up in the new feeling of being together in a strange place. Surprisingly, Everett had removed his catheter and let me touch his dick, which was showing signs of excitement. He must have taken care of it in the tiny yet adapted bathroom.

Clumsily, at first, we negotiated the small bed’s confines. I bumped my head on the bed above, then, in a moment of creative gymnastics, Everett reached up to grip the above bed’s frame and hoisted himself up to sitting, then a higher pull-up position. His penis bobbed close to my face.

“Oh, yes!” He gasped in mocking tone. “We should get bunk beds at home!”

I continued licking and kissing his torso, which tasted of a day’s sweat. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I guided him back to sitting, almost hovering over me. I wanted to just devote my attention to him for a change. His arms flexed, suspended, he snorted out breaths. I caressed his chest, cradled his limp legs into a position around me, and kissed his belly, then lower.

As the familiar erratic spasms made his body shake, my lips clasped around him, tugging, fondling. I took my time as he pulled himself up, then lowered down. I took a hungry pleasure in knowing I might soon bring him to an orgasm, a rare instance. Perhaps it was the new setting that aroused us so quickly.

He let one arm drop, grabbed my head to pull me away, but I insistently clamped my lips around him until I felt, then tasted, a fluid burst in my throat. I felt his weight drop onto my lap as he grabbed my shoulder. I caught him, held him.

Straddling him, I quivered as he dug down and toyed with my penis, which jutted up against his thigh. He squeezed it out of me, pressing my cock against his skin, until it burst with that satisfying abrupt tingle.

“Wow,” I sighed as I licked a spurt from his shoulder.

“So, we really like the new digs,” he grinned.

“Well, it’s been a while.”

I didn’t want to harp on how our distance during the preceding weeks had limited our time together.

“Don’t you jack off when I’m not around?”

I shook my head. “I like saving it up for you.”

“Apparently!”

Relieved that I was able to do for him what he so easily did for me, I eased him down to laying, hoisted myself off of him, searched around in our pile of unsorted clothes for a beach towel, wiped us off, then retreated to the bathroom.

Even though it was warm in the room, and we only lay under a sheet, I pulled on a worn pair of favorite shorts. Everett tugged up a thin pair of track pants, and we nestled close before falling asleep.

Early the next morning, what sounded like a riot of birds woke me. I needed to pee, but having slept against the wall, I would have to gently crawl over Everett to leave the bed.

I pressed a hand on the mattress for support, and felt moisture. I pulled back the sheet and saw Everett’s soaked track pants clinging to his legs. My movements roused him and he gave me a sweet look that switched to shock as he saw the stains.

“Fuck!” He pressed himself up to near-sitting.

“It’s okay, just–”

“No, it’s not okay!”

“Just calm down–”

“Get out of the bed.”

“I was trying to.”

“Dammit, Reid. Why didn’t you remind me about my catheter? How are you supposed to take care of a camp full of kids when you can’t even help me?”

“What? How is this my fault?” I hurtled myself over him, stood awkwardly by the bed. “Just take them off, and get out–”

We had forgotten to lay down a bed pad, and Everett had usually been fastidious with his catheter and tube. But the mattress was soaked.

Everett scooted himself to the lower part of the bed, started pulling down his pants, then fumbled and nearly fell over. “This is so fucking embarrassing.”

“Wait,” I said, impulsively rooting on the floor for the beach towel. I set it in front of me, stood on it and tried to relax as my erection subsided, and the tent in my shorts slowly became wet.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I sighed. Urine dribbled down my leg, until I clenched, stopping the flow. I’d made my point. “Now we’re even. We’re both embarrassed.”

Everett’s scowl brightened to a sardonic smirk. “I think you liked doing that, you perv.”

I shrugged, bent over to mop up with the beach towel. “It did kinda tickle.”

Crisis averted, as he cleaned up in the bathroom, I tugged the mattress to the floor, then switched it with the one above, reminding myself to visit the kitchen and find some Lysol for the mattress.

Whatever trepidation I had about being a camp counselor dissipated by the end of the first few days.

Whether they stuttered or spasmed or didn’t move much at all, each of the kids had their spark, even the sullen ones who feared being left without their parents for a week or two. Some of the kids stayed for shorter lengths of time than others, depending on their parents’ schedules and budgets.

Everett’s immediate popularity with the kids didn’t surprise me. They had someone like them to inspire them, particularly with his more physically adept maneuvers.

Certainly I was liked, or I hoped I was, but Everett and the kids seemed to share a common language and understanding. I found myself crouching a lot, since they were smaller.

But it only took one game of balloon toss, a bit safer than any heavy ball, to define it all for me. One of the girls just bluntly said, as we paired off into two groups, “I wanna be on Everett’s team!” I let her roll away from me, blushing with an embarrassment that only his silent smile could soften.

My favorite had to be Kenny, who steered his motorized chair with his nub of an arm, and whose favorite phrase was, “This is amazing!” Since we both wore black-framed glasses, he took to me as a sort of role model, scooting himself wherever I went, until another counselor would corral him back.

After our group dinners, some nights Everett would lead the kids in sing-alongs. The kids weren’t the only ones who smiled at the sound of his voice.

On quiet afternoons, the crafts cabin would be nearly still except for the scratching sounds of crayons on paper. Over the next few weeks, the blank walls of our cabin became decorated with pinned-up drawings by the kids. I had never thought of myself as a teacher or even artistic, but given the context of nature, something opened up in me as the kids opened up as well.

In the middle of one of the few rainy afternoons, the activities shifted as the other counselors helped me bring out paper, crayons and magic markers. I decided to offer a primer on different kinds of trees.

Kenny declared that he would make autumn leaves, because they were “amazing!” even though it was summer, which led to another kid asking why leaves turned color and if they died. I fumbled through a kid version of carotene, anthocyanin, and the photosynthetic pigment depletion, until Alice saved me with a simpler comparison to animals shedding fur.

As I was helping Jennifer, one of the cerebral palsy kids, pick out colors for her leaf drawing, she bluntly asked me, “Are you disabled, too?”

I looked at her curious wide eyes and smiled. “You know my buddy Everett?”

“Yeah. Ebredd sings priddy.”

“Yes, he does. And my disability is, if I’m too far away from him, I can’t breathe.”

She gasped. “Really?”

“No, not really. It just feels like that sometimes.”

“Are you brothers?”

“Something like that.”

“You don’t look like brothers.”

I leaned close to her, “Can you keep a secret?” and whispered, “That’s because we’re in disguise. We’re twin unicorns from a distant galaxy.”

Her volley of giggles took on an almost goose-like honk. A few of the other kids just caught on, laughing for no reason, or at her laughter, until Alice suggested “we should all calm down,” followed by a stern glare toward me.

“
Dodecatheon
.”

“Stars; shooting stars,” I answered.

Everett and I lay on a blanket in a small clearing at the edge of the campground. It wasn’t late, after nine. We had missed the nightly ghostlike firefly dance over the fields. But the kids were in bed, the other teachers and supervisors relaxing in their own cabins. We’d found a path that he could wheel over, settled down with a few beers I’d hidden in a cooler after a shopping trip in town. They were warm, but we didn’t complain. The air was also warm, a thick verdant texture we could almost taste.

“The stars are pretty,” Everett said.

“The stars are always pretty.”

“Even the dead ones.”

“That’s a morbid perspective,” I said.

I rolled over on my side, gazing at Everett’s face in the night as he looked upward, then returned my gaze.

“It’s a sad fact,” he said, softly. “Those stars, sending out that light, millions of years after their passing. You know one of the boys isn’t well. Kenny?”

“He’s ‘amazing’!”

Everett tried a grin, but failed. “He’s got some congenital thing; his bones won’t grow right. And his kidney’s fucked up. People with disabilities, we ... sometimes we don’t last as long, Reid.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s… It happens. It’s a health thing. We get sick. Our bodies don’t process things right. Urinary tract infections, respiratory problems…”

“Stop it.” I bolted up to sitting.

“I just want you to know, to face facts.” I felt his hand on my lower back, touching me where his own injury had occurred.

“I want you to know what you’re in for.”

“I know. But you don’t have be so…”

“What?”

“It’s like… you’re always trying to give me a way out. You’re so sweet, and you challenge me, and you made all these changes to be with me, and you’re patient with me about everything. But then you just point a little finger like, ‘By the way, here’s the emergency exit.’”

“Hey, you were the one who fell for my mom’s plan before I even heard about it. That was not my–”

“I know, I know. It’s all my fault you’re transferring.”

“I just want you to–”

“Don’t.”

We stopped, sat without moving. The sounds of the woods were much more reasonable.

“You’ve made my life so different,” I said, after a while. “All these trees. A few years ago, I’d be just seeing them, not the people.”

“The studious botanist.”

“These kids. They just…” I fought back a surge of tears. “You know Madeline, the little blonde?”

“She’s great. So sweet.”

“I was sitting with her at lunch today. I think you were out on the playground somewhere. She just started humming this little song, so off-key, but so perfect. And it sounded so familiar. And then I realized it was that song you taught them last week, one of the tunes you sang to me from the radio in the van. I just…”