Message of Love (6 page)

I shuddered. Everett hoisted himself up. “Hey, hey…” He rubbed my back, leaned in, grabbed his legs, shifting them a bit.

“I can’t be without you, without this, seeing people, their sweetness. It makes me feel… my stomach and my heart just… It’s like I see their innocence, and I worry and fear for them, and you, and at the same time I know you’ll be okay, but it’s like, I get all … squidly or something.”

“Squidly. I like that; a quivering jellyfish of emotion.”

I turned, wrapped myself around him, holding him tight. With my face crooked into his shoulder, I smelled the light salty odor of his sweat. His kisses started on my neck, and as I turned toward him, the night light gave his face an eerie glow, the quiet only disturbed by my snorting back a burst of emotion.

“Pick me up.”

“Do you wanna leave?” I asked.

“No, pick me up to standing.”

“What? How?”

“Just… like piggybacking, but in front.”

I crouched, held him as he wrapped his arms tightly around my neck. Then I rose and felt his legs drop down against mine. I swayed, nearly faltering to avoid spilling the beer cans. I felt how heavy and light he was at the same time.

Facing me, he said, “Just dance with me.”

He hummed a tune into my ear as I stepped cautiously, side to side, off the blanket and out into the open field. Then he softly sang, another one of his old-time tunes.

“You’re all the places that leave me breathless, and no wonder, you’re all the world to me.”

He felt so strong, holding on to me. I pressed my face against him, wiping tears into his hair, then pulled back to see him grinning wide.

“See? One less thing I can’t do, thanks to you.”

“Sweet.” I swayed with a bit more daring, swirling about.

“Would you do this with me at a wedding?” he asked.

“Whose wedding?”

“Let’s say my dad remarries.”

“If it’s okay with you,” I said.

“It’s okay with me,” he answered.

“Stick around, and I’ll dance with you anywhere.”

“It’s a deal, Squidly.”

Crickets, starlight, trees sleeping in the night; it was as if that thick summer night air held us up.

Chapter 8

August 1980

The van, parked in the driveway of my parents’ house, was once again in need of repair. But Everett and I weren’t concerned about it, and instead pondered Kevin Muir as he fiddled under the hood, his tight cut-off denim shorts pressing against his bent-over ass.

The van had conked out a few times, and Kevin provided a little in-home fix, shrugging off our muttered catcalls of “lemon” as I sat in a lawn chair with Everett beside me, basking in the sun like fans at a softball game. As Kevin bent over the engine, Everett changed the fruity chant to “melons.”

I chortled. The afternoon sun made Kevin’s thighs shine, and although Everett wore sunglasses, I knew that his eyes bore a lascivious glance, which I shared.

That was because we had both ‘shared’ Kevin, in a way. As a childhood neighbor over in Forrestville, he and Everett had ‘messed around’ a few times. And during his painful hospitalization after his accident, Everett had basically offered up Kevin as a form of amusement. That a few of our stoned evenings together had taken an occasional, if not one-sided, sexual turn left Kevin unfazed, even though he considered himself straight, with a series of girlfriends to prove it. I wondered how our lives might have changed if I’d known that my handsome high school track teammate was open to the occasional blow job.

“That should do it,” Kevin wiped his grease-stained hands on a rag as he turned to us with a confused glance. “What?”

“Nothing,” I shrugged.

“You two were checkin’ out my butt.”

“It was hard not to,” Everett argued.

“Hey, I know we have, you know, history. But I don’t go there.”

“Of course not,” Everett held his hands up.

“Yet,” I added.

“Well, if you can keep from molesting me, you’re welcome to swing by and party a bit before you head out. That is, if you’re not the old married couple you act like.”

Everett gasped. “We’re not old!”

The van up and running, we drove over later that day. Although his younger brother was also home, Kevin seemed to have the rule of his family’s house. Set down the street from the Forrester’s larger now-leased mansion, the Muir’s white neo-Colonial, with columns on the porch, remained one of the more prominent homes in the upper-crust neighborhood. The interior, however, displayed a modern style with abstract paintings and shag carpeting in some rooms.

A Rick Derringer album played in the den as Everett and I sat in haze of pot smoke, pondering the remains of a pizza box.

While it was nice to talk about “old times,” even though it was only a year ago that we’d been in high school, it felt odd to return to the same room where I’d serviced Kevin.

Over the blare of the music, we let our host ramble on about his newfound interest in working at his father’s car dealership, usually selling, but occasionally getting his hands dirty with repairs. He also bragged about his new girlfriend.

“I think she’s the one,” Kevin said, nodding to convince himself. “It’s been, almost as long as you two’ve been together. Hey, you are somethin’ else, by the way.” He stood still, took us in with a glazed look of admiration. “You know, it’s too bad you can’t really get married. I could throw you a helluva bachelor party.”

“With you as the entertainment?” Everett teased.

Kevin shrugged, briefly thrust his hips as if it were a possibility, then more casually swayed to the music. “I definitely owe you. There was this guy, single, lookin’ over the compacts, but I kinda worked the charm a little,” –another suggestive thrust– “Then I did whadyou call it, the gay radar.”

“Gaydar,” Everett corrected.

Kevin pointed a finger in agreement. “Anywhose, I laid on the charm, got him to get behind a new Corvette; jet black.”

“Did you give him a test drive?” Everett leered.

Kevin hooted. “Damn near.”

Somewhere in my stoned haze, my befuddlement at the course of the conversation made me wonder if we should leave or start taking off our clothes. Were we supposed to admire his known cockteasing talents, and thereby admire him more directly?

“Say, how’s the job doing?” Kevin asked me as he offered another bong hit. I declined.

“Okay,” I said, a bit hazy. “Planting season’s mostly done. I helped a few folks put some small shrubs in; that and mulching, selling leaf blowers.”

My part time job at the Wolfe Nursery was providing some extra money for me to save up for school. But as late in the summer as it was, I spent more time piling up bags of wood chips and shelving pottery.

“You still visit Ev on the weekends, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” I smiled at Everett.

“Fun in the big city. Hey, I oughtta come with. You guys could show me around.”

“Sure!” Everett said, a bit too enthusiastically.

I considered a drive to Pittsburgh in Kevin’s Camaro, our odd relationship, and what might happen. Kevin’s offer seemed innocent enough, but I didn’t agree to any specific plans. Back in high school, being alone with Kevin led to our unbalanced sexual connection. With all this joking flirtation, I wasn’t quite sure that link had been broken.

“We only have two more weeks until we drive back to Philly, and I’m tryin’ to get as many hours as I can, so I’m not sure when …”

“Sure, whenever,” Kevin said, a bit dismissively, as he sauntered across the room, ending his macho dance.

Once we were comfortable enough to feign sobriety, Everett drove the van back to my house where he and I managed to dodge any parental interrogations. It was still early evening, but we retreated to my room, having called out to Mom that we’d already eaten.

“He seems happy,” Everett said as we undressed and got settled on my bed. I made sure my door was locked. The pot had made me a little amorous; that and Kevin’s company.

As if reading my mind, which became a more frequent occurrence with Everett, he broke our first embrace with a question.

“Would you have, if Kevin had wanted to?”

“What?”

“You know; a return engagement.”

“With him? That was just… I was miserable then. I thought you were gone for good.”

“No, I mean, if I were with you, and him.”

“What?” I pretended to be shocked, but actually the idea had occurred to me, if Kevin’s brother hadn’t been there. “I don’t…think so. Besides, he’s not… I mean, big dick and all, he’s not very good at it.”

“But if he was.”

“Are you–?”

“Forget it. Just horny stoned thoughts. Come ‘ere. I prefer your big dick anyway.”

Although he seemed to have dismissed it, as we fumbled about on my bed, quietly, with music playing more to cover our sounds than inspire us, I began to wonder if I wanted such a situation.

Did I need sex with an able-bodied guy? I’d grown used to the difference, helping Everett move his legs as we adjusted our bodies, focusing on his chest, on kissing and caressing the more toned muscles in his shoulders and back, and letting him explore my body with increasing ease.

Once again Everett kept the sex fairly one-sided, him eventually pleasing me, and unable or uninterested in getting an erection or reaching an orgasm, or even a ‘back-ejac,’ as he enthusiastically persisted in giving his attentions to me.

He must have thought he wanted to share an opportunity, something that could possibly strengthen our connection. But it instead left me with a lingering doubt.

Halting his insistent clutch to my hips, I rearranged myself and did the same to him, for a long time, stroking him to a rigidity that surprised him. I shifted upward to face him, plant our lips together as I humped him, groin to leg, thrusting between his legs, occasionally poking behind and into him, until I finally got a few spasming bucks of relief out of him and myself. But I kept kissing him, licking and caressing under his arm, longing to cover every inch of his skin with my own, until he shivered and begged me to stop.

After cleaning ourselves up and cuddling close for the night, I slept well, having convinced myself, having proven that I was enough for him, that we were enough for each other.

Chapter 9

September 1980

“Did you know…?”

“Not another ‘Did You Know.’”

As Everett sat at his desk, I lay on the carpeted floor, stretching, since I’d decided to jog across town after taking the Broad Street line from Temple to Center City. Despite the jostling of the books in my backpack, I enjoyed the brisk fall weather. I would take the usual bus and train back, but wanted to enjoy an excuse for a workout, and Everett told me he liked me a bit sweaty.

Ware College House embodied all the gothic style and historic charm expected of the University of Pennsylvania, at least on the outside. The halls and rooms had been renovated and divided up into small white-walled near-cubicles, one of few with a private bathroom and other adjustments for ‘the handicapped,’ a phrase Everett disliked.

His room’s front window next to a desk let in afternoon light. A second window, set back under an angled ceiling arch, faced the historic quad with other ornate brick dormitories squared off to resemble what I joked as the set for some PBS mini-series. Despite its inconvenience, Everett had asked to have the bed scooted to be underneath the window.

The small Persian rug Everett brought had proven to be a great addition to his almost overstuffed décor. Despite the cautious drive, with wobbling boxes spilling in the back of the van, it had been worth it. A few days before classes began, we’d managed to cram a lot of items from his family’s storage garage in Greensburg into the van, then up and into his new dorm room. A few other guys helped out. Despite our new separation, I had to admit that Everett’s mother had been right about his transfer to Penn.

“Yes, another ‘Did You Know,’” Everett stated over the quiet classical piano music playing on his radio.

The phrase had become our sort of running joke, a lead-in when a long passage of reading and note-taking had to be broken with an outpouring of the cluster of information we’d just absorbed. My own homework, a chapter on common parasites among deciduous trees, had yet to reveal anything worth sharing.

“Until recently,” he read, “the seventies, actually, some states had what were called ‘ugly laws.”

“Ugly laws?”

“Pennsylvania had them from the 1890s. Chicago passed one in 1911. Get this; ‘No person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object or improper person shall be allowed in or on the public ways or other public places in this city.’”

“Fut the wuck?”

“The fine was ‘not less than one dollar and nor more than fifty dollars for each offense.’ Can you imagine?”

“Wow.”

“Just think; if I’d been born fifty years ago, and been paralyzed, I could be fined for simply going outside.”

“That’s sick.”

He tapped his textbook. “Even a few years ago, if my parents weren’t wealthy, I’d be locked up in an institution.”

“Damn.”

“Historically speaking, I’m now a double minority,” he said with a slightly confused tone of astonishment.

“Well, I would think,” I strained a bit as I stood, stretching my legs before approaching him at his desk with a hovering hug, “that even some old-timey version of you, as cute as you are, should be fined for not displaying yourself.”

He took the bait, returned my hug, turned away from his desk and offered a smooch, actually our first that night. It didn’t promise anything, but I was hopeful. I rubbed his chest, brought my hand up to guide his face back to me for a more forward kiss.

“Am I staying over tonight?” I asked.

“Do you want to?”

“Of course I want to. I just need to know if you want me to, before they roll up the sidewalks.”

While I made light of it, I didn’t want to take a late train back to Temple. The student newspaper had reported a few muggings at different stations.

His tiny dorm room had become homey, due to the older buildings’ more historic design. My own new single dorm in the bland modern high-rise at Temple felt bare, and not just because it lacked his presence. There hadn’t been much room for my own stuff after we’d packed the van with boxes of his books, pillows and that cumbersome rug, so my room remained sparsely decorated. My poster of the Amazon rainforest adorned one wall. On a shelf sat the forlorn small stuffed giraffe Everett had given me the previous Christmas. I had also had a few of the drawings from summer camp framed, including one of Kenny’s ‘amazing!’ trees.

My nights alone were warmed by calls to or from him, and I did find a few things to fill up my room, but mostly it felt cold and functional.

So Everett’s room at Penn became our default scene for weekend trysts, only occasionally added by a midweek phone call that sometimes became an impromptu invitation. I quickly learned the quickest train and bus routes, and admitted that I liked his campus more. The autumn leaves and old buildings were quite pretty.

That night hadn’t been a romantic invitation, but a mere, “Come on over,” command. While gauging his interest, I thanked the lulling tones of the music and the warmth of his room.

“Did you remember to bring a change of clothes?”

“Uh…”

“Because I’m tired of you stealing my clean socks. You got big feet; they stretch mine out!”

“I’ll bring a whole bundle next time. Now, may I romantically pick your ‘ugly’ self up and bring you to the bed?”

“I appreciate the offer,” he shifted away from me and toward his chair. “But I’m going to ‘the library’ for a bit first. See you in the bed.”

The ‘library’ being his tiny yet accessible bathroom, with an added reading stack for his somewhat time-consuming toilet details, I undressed and settled into his bed.

Back when we shared the room at Temple, when I’d asked him why he spent so long in the bathroom, Everett had mentioned the more unpleasant details of his various techniques for basically forcing himself to poop.

At his request, I sometimes left the small confines of our dorm room so I wouldn’t overhear the various sounds of his sometimes-needed douche, the repeated toilet flushing and running sink water. It was one thing he really disliked, but just stoically dealt with, accompanied by a slight obsession with cleanliness. It also became something else I realized I took for granted, that basic human bodily function. He’d offered a concise description as being “like scooping out frozen ice cream with a plastic spoon, behind your back.”

The radio music continued, and he hummed along from behind the closed door, then emerged, declaring himself “Fresh as a daisy!”

After hoisting himself over to the bed, he stopped. “Oh, the light.”

“Can we… just leave the music and the lights on? I want to see you.”

“Aw. Ain’t you roman-ical.” We embraced and his hand trailed quickly to my groin. “Jeez! You are in a good mood.”

“I haven’t wanked all week.”

He switched back to a cartoon voice. “You really know how to impress a guy.”

I chuckled as I shifted closer. Under the covers, I tried to adjust his legs with my own, but fumbled. He sighed, shifted up and shucked off his shirt, then scooted his butt sideways to tug his sweatpants down.

Rubbing his chest with my palm, I marveled at the definition of his muscles, the rounded curves of his shoulders. I kissed and licked around his neck, and around the small necklace he wore, a gift from me. I then trailed lower as he lay back. Although he couldn’t feel it, he liked to watch as I caressed his legs, tugged his penis to a slight hardening, then grazed over the darker fuzz of his legs.

When we had first begun sleeping together, after his accident, he at first shied away from my touches to his lower body. But I had begun to be more persistent, and he allowed me to caress all of him. I delicately lifted his leg, held it, then nestled my face between his legs as he rubbed the top of my head.

His hand guided me back up after a while, and he rolled himself over. I grazed a few fingers over the scar on his lower back as he leaned over to grab the little bag where he kept a few small bottles of lubricant.

“Can we…?” I almost stuttered.

“What?”

“I just want to…” Although I kept a hand between his legs, I brought his face to mine. “I just want to kiss you, see your face.”

“Okay.” He seemed resigned, perhaps disappointed. I hadn’t clearly explained my discomfort with fucking, how my concern over hurting his desensitized areas prevented what had a few times become a series of too lustful thrusts.

We settled side by side, then I rolled atop him, happy to have a night with him.

“Missed you.”

“Since Tuesday?”

I nibbled his ear, nuzzled his neck, then probed my tongue deep into his mouth as our hums of pleasure mingled. My humping on his lower belly led to him reaching down to clutch my erection, until his push at my hips signaled his desire to take me in his mouth.

When I winced at his forceful tugging, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Your hands; they’re getting callused.”

“Sorry. Pushing my wheels bare-handed. I promise I’ll wear gloves more often.”

“Okay,” I stroked myself for a while.

“Don’t spill all over me,” he instructed, and I followed, quivering at the sight of his handsome face and lips distended by my thrusts as I straddled him. I scooted the pillow closer behind his head, pushed further in, and he grunted consent, his hunger and insistence making me once again nearly lose control.

My reach back behind for his penis was allowed, but eventually his hand took my wrist and led it back to his chest. I knew to twist a nipple, tickle his armpit, anywhere he could feel it. His hands then clutched my butt, explored between my legs, then inside me, and I spilled into his mouth as he offered a volley of pleased grunts.

He made a familiar joke of slurping his lips after I withdrew and collapsed by his side. Determined to offer the same, I leaned down, licked and tugged on his penis, which he allowed for a while, until it seemed he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, find his way to an erection. His leg twitched a bit, a minor spasm, which sometimes happened. He sat up, rubbed his leg until I took over, and the jiggling motions subsided and he guided me back to lying beside him.

“It’s okay. Just–”

“But I want you to–”

“Next time.”

He cradled an arm over me, made an amused forced burp, and muttered, “I noticed you followed my dietary suggestion.”

“Pineapple juice. Two quarts this week.”

“Dee-licious and nutritious!” he almost sang.

“There wasn’t any on campus. I had to go to three grocery stores before I found some.”

I pulled the covers up, nestled close to him, until he reminded me to turn out the light and turn off his stereo, which I did, then resettled back into his bed. “I wanna do whatever you want.”

“We do,” he assured me. “It’s okay. It’s more than okay.”

I offered a sheepish smile and a goodnight kiss.

In the dark, always one to have the last word, he muttered, “Besides, you could stick that big thing in my ear and I’d be happy.”

As considerate as Everett was at night, by morning, he could be brusque to the point of rudeness. He basically shoved me out of bed before his alarm clock went off. Those years at Pinecrest must have instilled a need for order.

At the same time, I was reassured by his previous comment on his private school years; “I haven’t had a room to myself since I was a kid. I mean, I love you and all, but this is great.”

And it was great, for one person, with the low ceiling and small space, great for one person who never stood up. His small shower stall, adjusted for accessibility, had only room for the plastic and aluminum seat, so I had to bathe either seated or while standing at an odd angle.

By the time I re-entered, clad only in a wet towel, he’d already made his bed, laid out his clothes, the pants rolled up for easy entry.

“Friday,” he stated as I dressed, acknowledging that we would spend that night together. But also, I sensed an air of dismissal. Only two days away, and yet I knew his intent. I had to let go of him until then, allow him get on with his busy life without me.

Dressed, my backpack slung over my shoulders, I stopped him from wriggling out of his sweatpants before his shower, then leaned in for a smooch. “See ya, Monkey.”

He smiled, waited until I was nearly out the door before shouting out, “More pineapple juice!”