Message of Love (28 page)

“Okay, just so you’re being careful.”

Careful? In between volleyball coaches, gymnasts and paramedics, yes we were.

“So. Other than that, it’s mostly good. He just… I don’t know. He seems impatient.”

“For what?”

“Everything. To graduate, to make things happen. I’m… he says I’m too protective, and he’s really strong, you know? But he acts totally different when we’re alone.”

“Well, enjoy that, and let him grow. You boys have been together for, well, actually longer than it took for your father and I to get married. I’m just sorry you can’t do that, too.”

“Really?”

“Well, you never know. And I’m sure he’ll love a cake like this one.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, and by the way. Your father will probably want to break the news himself, later, but Best Rite’s been sold to some company in Minnesota.”

“What? So–”

“Well, we’re not moving to Minnesota, that’s for damn sure. The house is paid for, I have my job, and he’s getting a passable severance deal. It’s just too bad we spent so much on Hawaii, but it was worth it.”

A few of the photos had been framed and put on the mantle in the living room. In them, my parents were sunburned, then tanned and beaming with smiles. It was the first time I’d seen my dad shirtless in years. During our visit, Everett had perused the images and called him ‘studly.’

“So, Dad got fired?”

“They prefer other more vague phrases, but yes.”

“Wow.”

“Yes, ‘Wow.’”

“Well, I should help pay for my tuition.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

I scraped the bowl as the last of the batter filled the tin.

“The fees are going up again. I can start working sooner than summer if I ask at the park. Or I’ll go to another park. I’ll work in a store, anything.”

“Reid, please.”

“No, Everett’s… See, this is something else. I’m pretty far ahead in my studies. I only need to take a few more classes the next few semesters. I could go part-time, and go back to the Parks Department for the spring and summer, and–”

“I thought you didn’t want to do that.”

“Well, what Dad says. ‘That’s why they call it work.’”

“We have money for your school. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.”

I delicately placed the tin into the oven. “What about the icing?”

“There’s a can in the cabinet.”

“But–”

“Believe me, they’ll say it’s delicious,” she said. “Just add a little water. I’ll tell them you made it.”

But then her sardonic edge dropped, and as I was wiping my hands on a dish towel, she wrapped me in her arms in a surprise hug.

As we pulled apart, she wiped her eyes. “That boy is so lucky to have you.” She sniffed. “You’re so much like your father, so earnest, so…”

“So; icing?”

We laughed, and I felt lucky to have learned a few more of her secrets.

Chapter 33

September 1982

Everett is part of a men’s fashion show, except it’s on a plastic platform in the middle of an outdoor pool, and all of it glimmers in bright sunlight, including a strange all-plastic chair, with him sitting on it, showing off his fuzzy legs while wearing only shiny orange shorts and a pair of sandals. The other models stand near him as the photographer floats around the platform on a pontoon. The other guys in swimsuits get closer to him, and I find myself slipping from the edge of the pool into the water, where he sees me and is then near me, then under me, floating without breathing, smirking as he aims for my bobbing penis, but I have to pee and know since I had drunk gallons of pineapple juice, everyone will see the underwater jets of yellow if I let go I’ll…

His mouth clamped around my erection, I almost knocked Everett’s head off me, until I half-woke, realized it was him, then thrust my hips up to meet his face. The shock of his connection, the insistent need to pee and ejaculate, combined with my anger at his presumption of having begun sex before I even woke up, inspired an almost violent need.

He choked, withdrew, and gasped as a string of drool connected from the tip of my erection to his chin.

“Jeez, Ev!”

“What? You don’t like it?”

Still a bit disheveled from sleep, his face was as gorgeous as ever. A glimmer of that abrupt insistence from our first encounter flashed in my mind. I grabbed the back of his head and pushed him back onto my dick. Was this what the gay sex book had called ‘S&M?’ Did he want it rough? Was this the kind of sex Wesley Swiegard had forced upon him?

After finally bursting into his mouth, he seemed satisfied, if not surprised. Yet for me, the tingles were more like the insistent itch of a bout of poison oak, and I had to pee.

Standing naked at our bedroom door, I peered outside to make sure Mrs. Kukka wasn’t downstairs, so I could sneak across the hall to the bathroom.

“I couldn’t resist. It was making a damn tent pole under the sheets,” he joked.

I turned back. “Just wake me up next time.”

“Okay. Sorry,” he offered a bashful smile.

“You were like, like a succubine.”

“The word is succubus.”

“Whatever.”

“And actually, that’s the female form. You’re thinking of an incubus.”

He sat up in bed, his hair a mess, his smile almost smug.

“What. Ever.”

After returning from the bathroom, where I peed and took a shower, I returned to our room. As Everett ambled around me and into his chair, I got dressed and surveyed what had pretty obviously inspired my strange dream.

Before leaving Pittsburgh, Holly had given Everett a box full of clothes she had tailored to his changed body. His thinner legs and more muscled shoulders and chest had made pants too baggy and shirts too tight.

Once back at our apartment in Philly, Everett had given me a little fashion show, trying on various outfits, but he had yet to put them in the closet or drawers. Along with the clothes, Holly had given us both a stack of men’s fashion magazines full of impossibly handsome models, which we had leafed through with amused admiration.

And only days before classes had begun, on one of our first free afternoons, we had taken advantage of the campus pool being nearly empty. A bit of playful aquatic roughhousing included Everett’s grabbing for my crotch, which responded accordingly. Everett had laughed, despite the lifeguard’s glare, and I had to swim away until my penis had calmed down.

After making breakfast, slowly timing it for Everett’s completed bathroom routine, I sat across the kitchen table, looking at him, his damp hair and beaming face almost innocent-looking, as if our abrupt sex had never happened. He chomped on the toast and scrambled eggs I’d prepared, and offered a pleased grunt and a nod.

“Do you ever dream about me?”

“What? Why?” he asked.

“I just…wondered.”

He chewed more, swallowed. “Mostly when we’re apart.”

“Do you still… Are you, you know, walking?”

“I used to. That’s funny you ask, because, sometimes we’re flying, or we’re in the woods. The bad ones are us being separated, like, I can’t find you in the woods, and then I’m back in the hospital, tied up in a bed. And then that other freaky one a while back.”

There had been a few more nights when he sleep-mumbled, tousling under the covers, until I reached over and held him. I wasn’t sure if he remembered those moments. I had grown used to the fuzzy half-sleeping state of feeling his body next to mine, the desire to never let go. Was it our skin touching that connected us even in sleep?

“So!” He pushed his empty plate aside, as if tabling the nocturnal topic. “What say I do the dishes, and then we stop by our respective bookstores and get this semester’s overpriced textbooks before the teeming hordes arrive?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.”

“Mister Incubus.”

The profusion of colors in the trees combined with the musty scent of early autumn’s decay, and a last burst of warmth in the air, had inspired us to spend a Saturday in Fairmount Park. We had each been apart every weekday since returning to our separate classes. I wanted to show Everett a few of my favorite areas that he had yet to see, where I had helped trim and nurture foliage through the previous summer.

“Now this is beautiful.”

“I know, right?”

“Come on. I want to show you something.”

My steps increased. I trod a circle around him, then took off, daring him to catch up.

Alongside the Schuylkill River’s banks, numerous statues stood in graceful silence. The expansive Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial Terrace, on the north end, included a large two-man statue of dark brown bronze, which always drew me to admire it whenever I would pass by it on my own.

Called
Welcoming to Freedom
, Maurice Sterne’s 1939 sculpture evoked the WPA era, but had been commissioned separately by a local wealthy benefactor.

To the left, a solemn male figure stood looking away toward the river. Clad in a skimpy loincloth of some kind, his muscled frame loomed over the base, his arms upraised in a plaintive gesture of victory or surrender, I wasn’t sure which.

The lower male figure to the right was posed sitting down, his arms in a half-crossed pose, one knee raised, the other leg lowered.

Everett had caught up to me, and as I turned back to him, his look of awe let me know he understood.

On trips back and forth from the northern section of the park, I often felt compelled to admire the statues. It wasn’t until after the fourth or fifth visit, and my janitorial obsession with removing the small puddles and stray leaves, that I realized what the duo reminded me of, and he saw it.

“It’s like us,” he realized.

“Sort of, if we were eight feet tall and made of bronze.”

“And went to the gym every day.”

“Here, I’ve got a secret.”

“What?”

“Get closer. Let me lift you up.”

Confused, he gave me a wary glance, but let me hoist him up to the statue’s base.

“Oh. My. God.” As I had done a few times, he instinctively reached for it.

Nestled inside that bent leg, the seated figure’s groin formed a little pool of brackish water. Everett giggled as he gripped it.

“That is the most enormous cock I’ve ever touched.”

“Hey!”

“Well, in non-human form.”

“Okay, then.”

“Except for Kevin.”

I mock-gasped. But he was right. While positioned as flaccid and proportional, the statue’s genitals were large and thick. But a tiny pool of rainwater pooled between the legs. Everett wiped his hand on his pants, then clutched his pants. “I think I’m getting a chubby.”

“From fondling a statue.”

“Whatever works!”

I chuckled, but had to admit they were a handsome pair.

“You brought the camera?”

“You betcha.”

“Let’s grab the next jogger and pose.”

“You read my mind.”

“I have a tendency to do that.”

And so we added another goofy posed shot to our collection, along with the pictures from our little adventure in Intercourse. Gerard had found one of his design classmates who agreed to develop our more risqué camping photos, which were hidden away along with Everett’s Polaroids.

That day, the hapless lady we’d sidetracked into taking the pictures seemed amused as well as we posed at the statue’s base. Everett kneeled on the ground, each of us striking imitative poses before the solemn work of art that inspired a few giggles as we moved on.

Continuing on north through the park, we slowed our pace, took in the colorful foliage, until Everett impulsively took off, and I followed and we raced pretty much all the way up to Forbidden Drive and found ourselves at the Valley Green Inn. The historic restaurant appeared to have than the usual amount of visitors.

On the lawn at the riverbank across the road from the inn, rows of white folding chairs sat dormant, facing a white canopy awning where a wedding had taken place.

“Sweet,” Everett said. I noticed some autumnal foliage in the decorations that gave the awning an earthy flair.

“Think we can go in?”

“I think it’s a private party or something. There’s a really cool ramp,” I said.

“You’ve been here before.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, let’s crash a wedding.”

We entered the restaurant, but the party guests seemed a bit put off, perhaps more because of our sweatpants. We were put off by the accordion player. We got drinks to go and exited politely.

Sitting outside the inn, a brush of wind fanned over the trees across the river. It felt like a perfect day, me sharing another corner of my refuge, until he spoke.

After a few solid gulps, Everett said, “So, I called Wesley.”

“How is he?”

“Not good. He was in the hospital again.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t want to talk about it.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“He said he’s fine, but he didn’t sound like it.”

“Do you want to visit him again?” Please say no.

“He said he didn’t want me to. Besides, it’s… I don’t know.”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t want to.”

“No, I don’t. But I would.”

“We can’t blame him.”

“I don’t. I just… Even though he’s sick, I just don’t like him, what he did to you.”

“I think it’s time you forgave him, because I already did.”

I nodded, looked around. Dying leaves are always so beautiful.

The statistical probability of either of us contracting whatever it was that was out there, in the bigger cities, mostly, was explained to me by my father, of all people.

We had established a long-distance bond ever since he had divulged to me his plans to surprise Mom with the trip to Hawaii. He’d been saving for years, along with paying half my tuition. I had thanked him repeatedly, even as the bills continued. He never complained after his job became someone else’s, elsewhere. He’d been so stoic, I realized, and more open to me, as we discussed money, and life, and current events.

“You haven’t been sick, either of you?”

“No, Dad.” Everett had endured a small pressure sore, but it had healed, and we’d both shared a cold a month before. But no, nothing serious had happened.

“Reid, you’ve had relations with a few…people, and so has Everett, from what you said. But if you remain monogamous, and I think you ought to both get physicals, just get checked out.”

It seemed reasonable. Everett was getting his health checked every month at Magee, and with a few medical students observing on occasion, he told me. “This hot Indian nursing student could not keep his eyes off me,” Everett bragged.

And so we each got some blood work, reflex tests, and I got a gloved finger up my butt from a not-so-hot campus doctoral student.

And then, one night, after our failed attempt to be turned on under the glare of the porn video, Everett shut it off, rolled himself over to me and my prone body and said, “Look. If we gave it to each other, we already did, but I don’t think we did.”

“I think we’re okay, too.”

We kissed, like an old couple. I shut out the lights, and Everett, timed well enough to leave me laughing in the dark, added, “Unless Nick pops into town.”

“I think we can make an exception with him. He is a medic.”

“A trained professional,” he smirked, then mimicked a moment from our shared romp with Nick. That led to a surprisingly heated session of sexual exploration. I just had to stare and marvel at him in the dark after a while, tingling beyond coming, the thrill of watching Everett do so well what he did to me. We weren’t gonna let this weird disease stop us.