My mood plunged. How could this be? I’d spent nine uninterrupted hours with Dan and now he would
leave
me? Even worse, my sister would walk him outside; she would kiss him in the moonlight. All I got was a squeeze on the shoulder.
Loneliness engulfed me while my mother clattered dishes in the kitchen. I felt as though I’d stood next to a warm fireplace all day and now someone had doused the flames with a bucket of water, leaving me shivering in the cold. I fled to the bathroom and turned on the hot water. I stripped and climbed into the shower and wept like a five-year-old while I soaped my naked body.
The Saturday following New Year’s Day we gathered in my garage—Dan, me, and Gus. Dan had brought two pairs of boxing gloves. The garage wasn’t heated, but the temperature was reasonably warm. Dan stripped off his shirt. He told Gus to do the same. I’d never seen Gus bare-chested; I was shocked at how skinny he was. I could count his ribs. His arms were like licorice whips, and his shoulder blades stuck out like shark fins. One of his cheekbones was purple and scabby. Dan laced Gus’s gloves, then I did the same for Dan. I smelled his cologne and his cigarette breath.
We opened the garage door, for better light, and kids from the neighborhood gathered on the driveway to watch. Dan spoke to Gus like a teacher, describing jabs, hooks, and uppercuts; blows to the belly, feints, footwork. He demonstrated in slow motion. He discussed the importance of positioning hands and elbows to fend off an opponent’s punches. He talked about head movement, how to duck swings, how to avoid direct hits. “Always keep moving,” he told Gus. “Don’t give your opponent a stable target. Stay on the balls of your feet and dance. Keep your fists up front, a little below chin level…”
They sparred, Dan doing strictly defense. Each time Gus swung at Dan’s chin, Dan slapped the punch away. “Try a one-two combination. Surprise me.”
Gus circled, bouncing his heels. He kept his gloves high, his chin low. He swung for Dan’s head, over and over, not landing a single punch. “Faster,” Dan yelled, “speed it up. Don’t give me a clue what you’ll do next.”
Gus sweated in the cool afternoon air. His chest heaved. He kept dancing and his breath whistled in his nose. He threw a left jab. Then, just after Dan ducked the jab, Gus tagged Dan’s temple with his right glove, not a direct hit, but a glancing blow that jerked Dan’s head. The kids on the concrete cheered.
“That’s better,” Dan cried. “Keep coming at me, don’t let up.”
Gus threw another combination, a flurry of punches. None of them landed but Dan was in retreat, ducking his head and rocking his shoulders to avoid Gus’s gloves. Gus backed Dan up against a workbench, one scattered with tools, nearly toe-to-toe with him, and landed one on his ribs. Dan pinned Gus’s arms to his sides. “Whoa, now. Good one. Take a rest now, take it easy.”
One side of Gus’s damp face lay against Dan’s chest. Gus’s eyes had lost focus. His shoulders rose and fell and he breathed through his mouth. His dark hair gleamed, plastered to his forehead, a series of shiny commas. I drew a breath and shook my head, jealous of their moment of intimacy.
My mother won a raffle at work. The prize was a three-day vacation in Fort Lauderdale at a resort on the Atlantic with two swimming pools, a golf course, and a marina. The prize included two adjoining rooms with queen-sized beds, a daily breakfast buffet, and dinner for four each night in the facility’s chic dining room.
“Dan can come with us,” my mother told Patricia. “He can share a room with Curtis.”
Oh, boy
.
We arrived in Fort Lauderdale on a Thursday afternoon in late March. The sky was cloudless and sunlight reflected off turquoise seawater, off waves rolling onto a beach that looked like table sugar. Off Dan’s ID bracelet.
Our first-floor rooms overlooked the Intracoastal Waterway and the resort’s marina—an orgy of white fiberglass, chrome and stainless steel, and blue canvas. A liveried porter delivered our luggage to our rooms on a brass cart, and my mother tipped him a dollar. Straw baskets shrouded in cellophane held fresh fruit: oranges, apples, bananas, grapes, and papayas.
The unit I shared with Dan seemed utterly decadent. Our bath towels were thick as doormats, soft as velvet, brilliantly white. My shoes sank into cut-pile carpet. Our queen-sized bed was equipped with a velour duvet and six over-sized pillows. The drapes were velour as well. A console color TV (a twenty-five-inch RCA with a remote control unit) sat in one corner, and a radio with double speakers rested on a nightstand. Two brass lamps with fluted shades hung on the wall above our bed. A leather-upholstered recliner hulked in another corner, next to a floor lamp and a side table with an ashtray the size of a dinner plate.
Dan unpacked carefully. He placed his hanging clothes in the closet, his folding clothes in our dresser. I sat in the recliner and studied the room service menu: a buck for a cup of coffee, three for a hamburger.
Ridiculous
!
“Look at this,” Dan said, emerging from our bathroom with two fluffy robes, terry-cloth jobs, blue and white striped with the resort’s name stitched over the breast pockets. He tossed one to me. “Let’s try them on.” He stripped to his jockey shorts, taking his time folding his clothes before donning his robe, while I sprang a boner. Muscles rolled under his smooth skin. I longed to touch his chest, his belly, the bulge between his legs. I had to wait five minutes before I undressed so my erection could subside. The robe was soft like velvet, heavy as a blanket, and I felt like a prince, wandering about the room barefoot, munching a Red Delicious apple. Dan flopped onto his back on the bed and interlaced his fingers behind his neck. His head rested on a stack of pillows. He stared at the ceiling and told me, “I could live in this place forever.” I looked at the golden hair on Dan’s legs and thought to myself,
So could I
.
We spent our first afternoon pool side, slathered in suntan oil, relaxing on cushioned chaises. The pool was as big as a basketball court, clear and sparkly. Clumps of coconut palms and hibiscus shrubs with red and yellow blossoms banked the pool deck. Guests sunned themselves, floating on canvas rafts in the pool, lounging beneath umbrellas, sipping iced cocktails delivered by an aproned waiter.
My mother had purchased new swimsuits for all of us, and I thought I looked pretty smart in mine. It wasn’t real tight fitting, but when it got wet it clung to me in all the right places. Two girls my age stared and whispered.
Dan’s suit was made of an elastic material and was anything but modest. Even when dry, it revealed the outline of his genitals and the crack of his butt. I noticed several women, and even a couple of men, eyeing him stretched out on his chaise, the hot sunshine reflecting off his oiled skin. He wore Ray-Bans and I couldn’t tell what he was looking at, so I tried to be discreet as I stole glances at him.
My sister had brought her portable radio and she tuned it to a local station playing more ads than music. I found the noise irritating and, after a while, decided to explore. I followed a concrete sidewalk that wound through a junglelike garden with exotic shrubs and trees, varieties I’d never seen. The sun bathed my shoulders and the top of my head, warming the concrete beneath my bare feet and relaxing me. I was far from home and school and the banalities of my life.
I came to the resort’s golf course, to the eighth hole. The putting green was emerald and flat as a coffee table. No one was about and I stepped onto the green. The stubbly turf pricked the soles of my bare feet, not unpleasantly, and I wiggled my toes, grinning. I was suited for luxury, wasn’t I?
Our evening meal did not go smoothly. Dan and my sister quarreled beforehand, about what I didn’t know, and both of them sulked throughout dinner. My mother drank two Manhattans and got tipsy, telling jokes no one laughed at. Then I spilled a glass of cherry cola on the linen tablecloth and a few drops hit my sister’s new dress. She called me a blockhead, said I was worse than ants at a picnic, while a waiter brought club soda for my mother to dab onto the stain. My cheeks flamed. Then the waiter got our orders wrong, and I ended up with baked snapper (
yuck
) instead of prime rib. My mother stumbled and nearly fell on the way back to our rooms, and my sister retired without even saying goodnight to Dan or me.
Back in our unit, Dan closed the drapes. He undressed and put on his robe. I did the same. We watched television lying side by side on the bed with our heads propped against our pillows and our legs crossed at the ankles. Then Dan rose, fetched his cigarettes, and held the pack toward me. “Want one?”
I scooted to the edge of the bed. “Sure.”
Dan stuck two cigarettes between his lips. Lighting them both with his Zippo, he handed one to me. I took a deep drag and blew a plume of smoke. (
Ahh, tobacco
.) Dan remained standing, and he paced back and forth in the room, one hand in a pocket of his robe. “Your sister can be a bitch sometimes, you know that?”
I nodded. “You ought to try living with her. When she gets in a bad mood, she makes sure everyone’s as miserable as her.”
Dan drew on his cigarette. Tapping it against the plate-sized ashtray, he looked at me and said, “You ever dated?”
I shook my head.
He puckered one side of his face. “Sometimes it’s good, but sometimes it’s not.”
I shifted my weight on the bed. “Do you and Patricia…do stuff?”
Dan squinted at me. “Like what?”
“Do you touch her private places? Does she touch yours?”
Dan dropped his gaze and nodded.
“What’s it like?”
Dan looked at me and flickered his eyebrows. “It’s nice,” he said. “You’ll see.”
I drew on my cigarette and didn’t say anything.
We brushed our teeth, hung up our robes, and got into bed in our underwear. We switched off the wall lamps. The drapes were cracked and enough light entered the room from the marina that I could make out shapes in the room. I lay on my back, under the covers, staring at the popcorn ceiling.
Dan was on his side, facing me, and I could smell his toothpaste. His eyes were closed but he wasn’t asleep. He scratched his nose and coughed. Then he turned onto his back and his leg came to rest against mine. He extended an arm onto my pillow and his wrist touched my hair. He left it there. A minute later, Dan’s leg pressed more firmly against mine, his leg hairs tickling my skin.
I applied pressure back, nudging his knee, then I rubbed my scalp against Dan’s wrist.
Dan lowered his fingers and sifted them through my hair. He turned toward me, raised his leg, and crossed it over mine. He lowered our duvet and sheet, placing his warm hand on my chest while he nuzzled my ear with the tip of his nose.
My dick turned into a peg inside my jockey shorts. My heart galloped in my chest and my breathing accelerated.
It’s happening…
Dan touched my nipple, tweaking it twice. Then his hand traveled south, slipping inside my underwear and squeezing my erection. With his free hand, Dan took one of mine and placed it between his legs. He was stiff too. Hallelujah
.
My sister and Dan broke up not long after the Fort Lauderdale excursion, for a reason I wasn’t told, and Dan didn’t stay in touch with me. By the time I reached high school, Dan had already graduated. I figured he’d been drafted and sent to Vietnam. Who knew?
I didn’t see Dan again till I was an adult.
I visited the mall one afternoon. He was just twenty feet from me. We were both in our thirties. He’d lost most of the hair on top of his head, and he’d thickened in the middle. He was with a woman his age and he pushed a stroller holding a toddler. A little girl—a blonde pixie with Dan’s features—tagged along behind.
I didn’t speak to him, of course; I didn’t even look at him for long.
I preferred to remember Dan as he was at seventeen, when he opened life’s doors for Gus Andriakas and me. When he let me ride his motorcycle.
MERCUTIO’S ROMEO
Anthony McDonald
D
avid was a newcomer once again, adrift in a strange town for the third time in five months: Manchester. He was nervous of course, but not, this time, because he was starting his career as a chorus boy in pantomime, but because he wasn’t. It was only his third job since leaving drama school and—he still hardly dared to believe it—he was Romeo. Romeo, with all the expectations that that entailed, with all the weight of the great performances of the past upon his twenty-three-year-old shoulders.