Punk Like Me (17 page)

In the cleared-out center, she’d laid out the blanket that I’d left on the sofa, arranged our plates and drinks, and all around the perimeter, she’d lit about a half dozen small candles, with one large one near the food. Next to it on one side was a brand-spankin’-new, not-available-in-the-States imported U2 video collection (and if you don’t know, U2

is, like, the super-band of almost all time. Really). On the other side lay a brand-new hard copy of a
Love and Rockets
graphic novel I’d been saving forever for.

It was beautiful.

• 112 •

PUNK LIKE ME

“Careful.” Kerry laughed softly. “You’ll catch ß ies like that.” She hesitated before she spoke again. “Surprise. Do you like it?” she asked softly and watched my face.

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered as I Þ nished the stairway. “I…I don’t know what to say.” I walked the blanket and pillow over to the sofa and put them down. That ticklish stomach had become a pounding kick, and it made my body thrum with an unrecognized need.

“I would have sent you to get another pillow or something or aspirins or something if you hadn’t volunteered already,” Kerry explained in a rush. “Do you really like it?” She bit her lip and watched my face.

I looked back at her and just couldn’t resist. I reached up and gently touched her face.

“Thank you,” I whispered, stroking the silky skin, while she just looked at me with big eyes. “Thank you.” I reached up with my other hand to comb her hair behind her ear. “Thank you.” And gently cradling her face, I drew her to me.

This kiss was not like the Þ rst one, so tentative, so unsure, and not like the last one, so desperate and tearing and painful. This kiss was just as sensual, although it had started out simply enough. Kerry wrapped her arms around me, and I did the same. Our hands began to roam, and as the kiss deepened and our lips and tongues quested, our bodies pressed together, instinctively knowing things we did not consciously.

Okay, maybe
I
didn’t know consciously.

“Whoa there, hold up a second.” Kerry, breathing hard, stopped us. “Before we burn your parents’ house down.” She smirked at me and I smirked back. “Let’s eat, okay?”

I took a shaky breath. That kick was now a roaring in my head, and my entire body buzzed and tingled like a live wire. I shook my head to clear it.

“Hey, if the food gets cold, your parents are, like, the only people in the world that don’t have a microwave,” Kerry joked lightly.

Somehow the light tone lifted the fog from my head, and the buzzing throughout my body reduced to an inside shaking of my heart.

I was okay for the moment. “Hey, we’re lucky we have cable TV here.

You’ve no idea how Nicky and I begged,” I joked back. “Oh, and speaking of burning my parents’ house down, what say we move some of these candles?” and I pointed to the ones on the ß oor. “We can put

• 113 •

them on the coffee table. Besides, we need to put the other blanket down somewhere for our picnic.” I smiled to take any possible sting out of that.

Kerry put her hands on her hips and surveyed the lit square of ß oor. “Okay, good idea,” she agreed, and we moved the candles until they were all on the coffee table except for four small ones and the big one from the center; those we placed on top of the TV. Don’t worry, they were in containers.

We put the videotape and the graphic novel (and again, that’s a collection of comics, or a complete comic story in book format, if you’re not taking notes) on the sofa cushion.

“I let Ringo out because I Þ gured he needed to go soon, and also, I Þ gured you didn’t want to Þ nd out whether or not he liked Chinese.

Plus, his tail is really ß ammable,” she informed me conversationally as we smoothed the blanket on the ß oor. “That’s, I mean, that was okay?” she asked a bit uncertainly, and there was a bit of discomfort.

“Oh yeah, good idea,” I assured her. “Ringo likes Chinese. Ringo likes Italian. Ringo likes anything he’s not supposed to eat. He thinks he’s a fuzzy people,” I told her with a grin, and the discomfort vanished when she smiled back at me.

I settled the pillows on the ß oor against the base of the sofa and brought the other blanket down between them, conveniently there if it was needed (hey, I was sick! Fever, remember?), out of the way if it wasn’t. “Okay.” I straightened up and dusted off my hands. “I think we’re all set here. You?” I placed my hands on my hips and surveyed the picnic area with a concentrated furrow of my brow.

“Houston, we have liftoff,” Kerry said, and handed me my plate.

“Cool,” I said, and settled down cross-legged, back against the pillow and sofa. The coffee table, with all those candles on it and the soda cups and the remotes, was to my left. Kerry, plate in hand, took her boots off by shoving them with her toes and nudged them off to the side. She settled in next to me on the right, and I reached up behind me to feel around for the U2 music video collection she’d brought.

“Forgot something,” I told her as my Þ ngers searched. I felt the cellophane and tugged. “The visual entertainment,” I explained as I held the recording before her.

“Oh yeah! Wait a sec!” Kerry put her plate down and stood up. “I brought a movie!” And she moved lightly across the ß oor back to the door where she’d left her army bag.

• 114 •

PUNK LIKE ME

I grabbed the remotes from the coffee table and popped the TV

on to—what else?—music videos. “Please tell me it’s not Disney and it’s not a slasher ß ick,” I asked as I heard her looking through her bag.

Disney isn’t bad, I just wasn’t in the mood at all, and I really, truly hate gory things. It’s just not necessary; there’s already too much of that in reality.

“Got it!” I heard her mutter to herself. “You mean you don’t want to watch
Bambi and the Chainsaw Dude
? Damn—that’s what I got!” She chuckled at her own joke and made her way back over with the movie. “Actually, it’s a bootleg of something you really like.” She sat down on my right again. “Here…” And she held it out for me.

I took it from her and looked at the slip case, but that was blank. I shook the case and let it slide out into my hand.

“Holy shit!
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
!” I was excited. This wasn’t just hard to get, it was almost impossible. Nicky and I had been looking for over a year everywhere we went. “Too cool!” I exclaimed, and leaned over to put it in the machine. “That is just way, way too cool! How did you Þ nd this?” I had a smile that reached ear to ear. I impulsively leaned over to hug her. “Hey, maybe I should get sick more often!” I grinned, letting her go.

Kerry smiled back at me and bit her lip. “Maybe you’ll ditch with me sometime,” she suggested in a half-joking tone. She pursed her lips and looked at me slyly.

I settled back into my spot and looked at her with a raised brow.

“Yeah, right,” I answered sarcastically, still smiling, though. This was an old, but good-natured, argument between us. Kerry really didn’t understand how hard, no, nearly impossible, it was to do that in my school.

We both looked at the screen as white noise Þ ltered across before the start of the movie.

“I knew you’d like that,” Kerry told me, indicating the machine with a nod of her chin, then turned back toward the set. She was quiet as she considered for a moment. “Hey, you sure you’re not contagious?

My stomach feels really weird.”

“Shh…movie’s starting!” I made an exaggerated shushing gesture with my Þ nger as a pair of giant lipstick-red lips appeared on the now-black screen.

“Oh yeah!” Kerry wiggled in place to settle herself more comfortably, and I did notice that her movement brought her a bit closer

• 115 •

to me.

We silently ate our food through the opening credits, interrupting only to pass soda to one another or to sing out the required responses to the lyrics. Eventually, the food was done, the plates and cups were empty and put on the coffee table. I waved out a few of the candles as the “Time Warp” started on screen and sat back down, and I noticed Kerry had put her hand on the ß oor, not far from where I was sitting.

I casually put mine down as well, close, but not too close, pretending not to notice.

Kerry turned her head to look at me. “Enjoying this?” she asked, leaning in a bit and bringing our hands closer together.

“Oh yeah,” I responded, leaning closer in turn. Our pinkies touched.

I felt that damn tension grow, and now my stomach was playing games with me again.

Oh, this was bullshit. We’d been all over each other just a little bit ago. We couldn’t be all that insecure; I couldn’t be all that insecure.

This couldn’t go on, not without someone spontaneously combusting, anyway, and then where would my parents’ house be? Burnt, that’s what. We were trying to avoid that.

Abruptly, I shifted position and twisted to pull out the second blanket that was behind us and began to spread it out over me. “Dude, I’m a little cold,” I explained, and that was true, really, I was, a little.

Fever! I had a fever! I was home sick, remember? VeriÞ ed by Mom with a thermometer and everything, too. Blanket draped over me as before (minus Þ ghting with Ringo and shufß ing) I held my arms out.

“Want to share and help keep me warm?” I grinned.

“Yeah, sure.” Kerry smiled at me and moved in.

Adjusting myself and the pillows a bit, because I’d reached over and stolen Kerry’s, I sat with my back now wedged between the arm of the sofa and the coffee table so I could turn my head to the left and watch the movie, with one leg stretched out along the length of the sofa, the other bent up a bit, which formed an armrest for Kerry, who had snuggled up the center and was somewhat on her side, head up on my shoulder. I settled the blanket around us, and with a few more wiggles from both parties, we were settled, comfortable, and warm.

Frank-N-furter was building a man (and I told you before, I’m not telling you more. Go see it for yourself if you really, truly want to know, and take a friend with you) and somehow, that led me to an insight I had to share with Kerry. I don’t know how or why I made this connection;

• 116 •

PUNK LIKE ME

my brain just works in weird ways.

“Hey, Kerr?”

“Yeah, Nina?” She looked up at me.

“Did you know everyone is naked under all of their clothes?”

“Duh!” She sat up to push me playfully, then settled in again. A few more seconds passed.

“Kerry?”

“Nina?” She looked up at me.

“Do you remember, when we were talking yesterday? About the whole, you know, uptown midtown downtown thing, I mean?” She waited, drew in a breath, then answered slowly, “Yes?”

“Well, it just hit me, like, now. You know how, like, all healthy adults, um,” and my face got a little warmer, but we had discussed this before, so I went on, “they, um, do the masturbation thing?” Kerry pulled away a bit, probably for a better angle to give me the

“uh-huh, now what?” look I was getting. “Yeah?” she drawled, eyebrow lifted. I wasn’t too sure, but I think she did blush a little.

“Well, if you can masturbate, then it wouldn’t be really such a hard thing to, like, touch another guy if you’re a guy, or another girl if you’re a girl, right? ’Cuz you’d already done it before, touch a guy or a girl,” I explained. “Technically, I mean.” Kerry sat up and looked at me wide-eyed. “Hey, you’re right!

I never thought of it like that before!” She focused on the blanket beneath us, brow knit in concentration. “So, what you’re saying is that, in effect,” she paused, “that makes it totally…” She trailed off and idly traced her Þ nger along the blanket on the ground. “…like, normal or…” Her voice faded.

“Natural,” I Þ nished and nodded my head in agreement. “Yeah. If you do one, you can do the other, and since the Þ rst is, like, a healthy thing to do anyway, then it’s just a matter of whether or not you want to, I mean, I guess…”

Kerry was still sitting a bit away, and I started to feel uneasy.

Maybe I’d said too much, pushed too far. I mean, Kerry did stop our kiss earlier. Maybe she thought I was nuts. Of course, that possibility had always existed. Not that I meant that I wanted to do anything, really (hey—I mean that!). It’s just that I was being honest. I’d said yesterday that I wouldn’t, you know, do the downtown thing, and now I knew that I already had, sort of, in a way, so downtown with someone else, well, so what? It wasn’t like I didn’t know the territory well. And

• 117 •

Kerry deserved to know that she was snuggling with someone who was possibly capable of doing that. In case she wanted to move or do something. Like run away screaming.

Kerry surprised me by looking up at me with a knowing grin.

“Hey there, Hopeful, you’re fucking brilliant!” She moved in closer to me and snuggled back in, so I put my arms around her again and resettled the blanket.

“That’s my Hopey,” she said, “solving the important mysteries of life, and the most important mysteries of all—the ones about sex.” And she settled her head back under my chin.

We both turned our attention back to the TV where the “ingénue” was singing “Touch Me” (no, dammit! I’m telling you enough about the movie as is!), and Kerry, who had started to paint little circles on my arm with her Þ ngertips, was now massaging my arm, while I drew my own little circles on her back. My stomach was kicking me again.

Kerry shifted again and now lay with her back against my chest, still drawing circles on my arms, and my hands naturally fell to her waist and loosely held her.

I decided to lightly massage her ribs, I don’t know why. It just seemed like a good idea, and Kerry didn’t seem to mind, so I continued to lightly press my Þ ngertips down and up. Suddenly, I realized where I’d been headed; I was right below her bra strap.

Kerry shifted, then sat up. She reached behind her, under the plain black T-shirt she’d been wearing. “You know, this thing is really bugging me,” she said in an annoyed tone, shrugging one arm into a sleeve and back out of her shirt and then the other, which reappeared with something in her hand that she tossed onto the sofa.