Message of Love

by Jim Provenzano

  “Come here.” I reached for him, wrestled him to lie atop me. His face hovered above me as his body pressed against me. I shucked his shorts down, repositioned my erection between his legs, and we commenced a slow, rhythmic humping motion as we kissed. It didn’t take long for me to burst, and although our sweat and the lotion made a bit of a mess, I held onto him, holding him, enjoying the heat between us.

  With strategically-placed curtains, we could, with the lights off, see a glint of moonlight glimmering over the ivy plants along the fence in the backyard, leaving the window full of silvery green leaves.

  Our bed out of range to the top floor apartment beyond, we enjoyed feeling as if we were outdoors, but without the journey. Later that night, after the party across the fence finally died down, a rustling sound disturbed our naked knot on the bed.

  Looking up, I stepped to the window, expecting a shadow of someone, but then the ivy quivered, in a path.

  I didn’t want to ask Ms. Kukka, knowing she would shriek at the sight of them, and probably couldn’t even hear them from upstairs, but I knew; rats.

  Everett became concerned only after he spotted one of them in the kitchen a few days later. After that, he merely said, at my proposal, “Let’s go shopping.”

  The traps were good enough, but the trail of feed-poison seemed to have worked. What also helped was having a word with the building manager on the other side of the fence, who agreed to cover his trash bins more carefully.

  When he didn’t, Everett’s offhand comment admitting having seen a rat led to Mrs. Kukka making a phone call that led to a few strings being pulled, where afterward, “Some city inspector wagged his finger and took care of that,” as Mrs. Kukka said.

  I should have felt bad about it, destroying living things. But Everett described my efforts as “heroic.”

  Our minor pestilence abated, my boyfriend had another reason to be ebullient. The anti-discrimination bill which he’d helped lobby for had passed. There had been celebrations, and parties, including one where we met the mayor.

  But after all the celebrations, his work was done. He made a few phone calls about other summer office work, but nothing turned up, particularly when he mentioned accessibility.

  For a few days, the heat seemed to drag him down into a languid funk.

  So I offered to take him out to see a movie.

  “Which one?”

  “Your choice.”

  That time, I again dressed as Brad, and he Dr. Scott. But there wasn’t a contest, and most of Rocky Horror’s performing cast was out of town. We had fun, but just not as much as the first time, and nobody offered to go to a diner afterward.

  The next day, we lay out in the front yard on a blanket. Everett read from a small stack of books and magazines, his face shaded by one of Mrs. Kukka’s floppy hats. We had yet to return to school, but he was already diving into the next semester’s curriculum.

  I lazily grazed my fingers along his back as I lay beside him. Despite all my workdays outdoors, having to wear long pants had kept my legs pale. It felt good to be warmed by the sun. Off near the flowerbed, a pair of wrens hopped by, offered sideways glances, then flew off.

  “We should go out to a gay bar.”

  “Which one?”

  “Here. Take your pick.” He tossed me a copy of Au Courant. I leafed through the pages, which included articles on local entertainers, movie reviews, and a lengthy feature on the recently-renamed AIDS. I’d already read it, and didn’t want to dwell on the subject. Any mention of it got Everett talking about Wesley. I instead recited names of bars.

  “La Banana Noire.”

  “If we could go anywhere in the world for a vacation, where would you want to go?”

  “No place with rats,” I said. “Paris, maybe, since you speak French.” I glanced at an ad. “Lickety Split. It’s on South Street.”

  I smiled at Everett, sensing he already had some wild plan up his sleeve. But I didn’t try to second-guess him, and instead told him the truth. “The Amazon; the rain forest. Ever hear of buttress roots?”

  “No, but I like the sound of that. Although, I do think rain forests have rats. El r-r-r-ratto.”

  I chuckled. “Or Socotra Island. Ever hear of it?” I remembered one of my nature books that included photos of strangely-branched trees that resembled giant alien sponges. “It’s about two hundred miles off the coast of Yemen. It’s got hundreds of different species. There’s one called the dragon’s blood tree. It’s got red sap.”

  “Wow. You’re really into it.”

  “It’s just so unusual; that or Australia. It’s got marsupials and all kinds of strange stuff.”

  “Including some of the Australians.” Everett extracted something from his notebook.

  “Oh, not another brochure,” I leaned up on an elbow. “What is it this time, building wheelchairs out of bamboo in Cambodia?”

  “Actually, I was thinking something more pedestrian like …Illinois.”

  “Okay. Why?”

  “I wanna compete in the Olympics for wheelchair jocks.”

  “And it’s in Illinois?”

  “Urbana-Champaign. The University of Illinois. I know it’s not exotic or anything. There wouldn’t be any bleeding dragon trees.”

  “Ev. Wherever you wanna go, I’ll go with you if I can. When is it?”

  “Summer nineteen-eighty-four. Different cities have been hosting them for a long time in England, I think since, like the sixties, and they really have their act together with the disability scene.”

  “Would your team play basketball?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t start up again until November. I’m not sure if we’re good enough, or will be, or if the guys can even afford to go. Maybe I’ll just do some individual sport; a race or some track and field events. I took an archery class at Pinecrest. It’s just the idea of going, you know? Being with a whole herd of other people. It’ll be like Up With Cripples!”

  I snorted, had to turn away.

  “What? Don’t laugh!”

  “It’s just, you’re so…Yes.” I wiped away a tear from the giggles. “That’d be pretty cool.”

  “Would you go with me?”

  “Sure! I could save up. Illinois can’t be as expensive as Paris.”

  “No, it would be my gift to you.”

  “Ev, you shouldn’t–”

  “Hold on. You wouldn’t get off so easily, so to speak.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He hesitated, offered a sheepish grin. “I was hoping you could train with me.”

  “Sure. We did pretty good at the Runfest, and we already go to the gym and the pool.”

  “Yeah, but this would be more, more focused.”

  “Well, if it fits around school. Hopefully, we’ll have graduated by then, right?”

  “Spera fontes aeterna!”

  “Gesundheit.”

  As my dream of seeing those exotic Yemenese trees faded, I instead imagined Everett tossing a javelin to a cheering crowd, and considered it a worthy trade.

  Those trees could bleed on their own.

  As late summer dragged on, the Philadelphia heat made our house stuffy. We didn’t have an air conditioner, another home improvement Mrs. Kukka steadfastly refused, and the garbage collectors’ strike didn’t help. The old-fashioned mini-screens fit into opened windows, but flies got in. We made a sport of swatting them.

  But in certain areas, the city stank. Residents were basically allowed to just dump trash on curbs in whatever bags they chose. More than a few times Everett’s wheels thumped over scattered debris, including a strewn pile of ketchup packets that splattered under his chair, which he had to later wash off.

  The night we decided to go bar-hopping, the Center City streets that Saturday were filled with people eager to be outside in the ghost of a breeze that pushed away some of the odors.

  Most of the discos were up a flight of stairs, so we passed on those. “Let’s have fun. I’m not in activist mode,” Everet
t said.

  We started at Woody’s, a bar on Thirteenth Street. I helped Everett up the few steps, and after we endured the expected roomful of stares, I got us beers. The bar’s counter and even the tables were set at a level for standing, so we instead found a spot near a wall. A Human League song played loudly, and cigarette smoke curled up around us.

  “Why are we here again?” I shouted as I leaned down.

  “Anthropological study; gay tribal observance!” Everett replied. “Besides, we might make a few friends.”

  “Oh, like we did in Fort Lauderdale?”

  “Just friends,” Everett scowled.

  “I don’t see anyone looking friendly,” I said before taking a large gulp of beer. I hoped that the sooner I finished it, the more quickly our ‘experiment’ would end. The roomful of men continued chatting among themselves, while other men, mostly older, stood alone, sipping their drinks in a pose of nonchalance.

  “Is this what single guys do every weekend?”

  “That or the bath houses.”

  The ads in Au Courant, along with porno shops, had intrigued me with their images.

  “Are we going there next?” I joked.

  Everett shook his head, smirked, and finished his beer. “Let’s try that other one, with the numbers.”

  Expecting cowboys, since its ad depicted a cartoon gunslinger, 247 was instead filled with men in shorts or jeans, sporty T-shirts and a lot of mustaches. After navigating more steps, and the dark entryway where a pair of young guys shoved past us, the cluster of men at the bar didn’t stare as much as glare. Whatever jubilation we had felt about being part of the Pride march in June was nowhere to be seen.

  As Everett wheeled away from the main area, I got in line at the bar.

  “That your friend?” a man standing near me asked. Although shorter than me, his stocky frame and assured stance intimidated me.

  “Um, yeah, my boyfriend, actually.” It came out almost defensively.

  “You guys play around?”

  “I’m just getting us beers.”

  “You know this is a cruise bar.”

  “Um, okay?”

  “Well, don’t get all huffy if someone gets friendly.”

  “Thanks for the tip.” I turned away, eager to catch a bartender’s eye.

  By the time I got back to Everett, a beer in each hand, he was chatting away with another older man who, after a brief introduction, excused himself.

  “That guy was telling me about the cruisy park.”

  “Really?”

  “I can’t believe you never heard about Judy Garland Park,” Everett scolded me, determined to try it out.

  So that’s what Ralph was talking about.

  Did Everett want some ghost of those early days together, arboreal embraces we had shared on our camping trip?

  “You’re not having fun,” he scoffed.

  “You’re very perceptive.”

  The music shifted from one unfamiliar disco song to another; Donna Summer, I thought.

  A few guys did approach us, or rather Everett, and he endured the predictable questions, and explained about his accident with a politeness, interspersed with a few jokes brought on by the beers.

  After they left us, I finished the beer I’d been nursing, set the glass down, and asked, “So, is our little expedition complete?”

  “One more stop.”

  What we found, when we parked near the allegedly cruisy strip of woods along the river, were a few furtive men loitering in various semi-dark paths, who scattered at the sight of Everett’s chair.

  “Shall we make a go?” Slightly drunk, his naughty grin confused me.

  “Here?”

  “Why not?”

  “You want to have sex here.” In the distance, the city’s skyline glowed.

  He shrugged.

  I shook my head. “This,” I unzipped, “is about all you get.”

  Everett made a hokey lunge for my groin as I turned away to pee against a tree trunk. It was not going to happen, despite our blurry desires.

  We returned home, me driving slowly. Inspired, or perhaps in spite of the night’s events, we attempted a few of the more unusual sex acts described in the Joy of Gay Sex book, with underwhelming results.

  After our drunken foray in the bathroom, I left him to fumble with his catheter. He wheeled to the bed and promptly konked out.

  I was half asleep when a loud siren wailed down the street.

  Then I felt a vibration. He spasmed, or his leg did. He stirred, a frantic jolt. Still asleep, he blurted a high-pitched howl, a keening. I grabbed his arm as it flung out, almost hitting me, and held him.

  “What?”

  “Reid?”

  “I’m here, baby. It was a dream.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Tell me.”

  He jostled, pulled away, wiped his eyes, sat up, groggy, then lay back. “I was alone, riding, wheeling myself across campus, and suddenly, it was empty.”

  “And?”

  “And it was just so empty, and this dog, this hound, English Shepherd or something, was up on its hind legs digging in a trash can, shook itself free and became this woman, this, this banshee. That woman. Remember?”

  I nodded.

  “She had white hair, like the dog, but these eyes, just pools of emptiness. I was so fuckin’ scared to be alone.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “My wheels were frozen, and the entire campus was empty. No people. And I screamed myself awake.”

  I held him. It scared me, but I put aside any Freudian analysis. He was in my arms.

  “Let’s go home for a while,” I suggested.

  “We are home.”

  “No, I mean my home, and the woods; Greensburg. It’s safe. We can go visit your folks.”

  “Nobody’s home.”

  “Well, then you can stay with me. My dad’s birthday’s next week. We can throw him a little party. You can debate politics all night.”

  “What about your park job?”

  “Screw it. We’re going back to school in two weeks. I’ll just quit early.”

  I would stand to lose a few hundred dollars, but it didn’t matter. I had saved up enough money to at least even out my expenses with him for the upcoming semester.

  “I thought you liked the park.”

  “I did, at first. But if I have to pick up one more beer can…” I shook my head. All my labors seemed to amount to nothing. At Allegheny National Forest, trash pick-ups were part of the job, but nothing like that summer’s duties. Working at Fairmount Park was almost ruining nature for me.

  “Okay.”

  The next morning, we told Mrs. Kukka our plans, and I called my parents. We cleaned out the fridge, shut everything off, and drove across Pennsylvania.

  We arrived in Greensburg just after sunset. Exhausted from the drive, we nevertheless ate some leftovers Mom had prepared, then escaped to my bedroom and slept all night.

  The next day, Everett left a phone message for his father. Holly was still working at the summer theatre in upstate New York, and his mother was either in Boston or on Martha’s Vineyard.

  “Looks like you’re stuck with me for a while,” he shrugged as he hung up the kitchen wall phone.

  “Come ‘ere.” I leaned down, took his face in my hands, and peppered his face with kisses. Then I got an idea.

  “Come with me,” I waved him to follow as I opened the garage door. He followed down the wooden ramp Dad and I had made, then watched as I foraged through boxes and Mom’s gardening tools, until I found it.

  When he saw it, he clapped his hands. “How many of these do you have?”

  “One can never have too many sleds.”

  By the time I saddled him up again and began trudging across the open field, he knew my destination; our tree, the one I’d planted, the gift I’d given him just after his accident.

  By then a few inches taller than me, we each gave the still young evergreen’s soft bristled branches a few affect
ionate touches. Nearby trees still loomed over it, but he understood my point. We didn’t make out. We didn’t need to. But I needed to show him what mattered.

  “Do I just mix the baking powder in the flour?”

  I had decided I wanted to make Dad a cake for his forty-fifth birthday, more as practice for baking something for Everett, but I didn’t let on.

  Mom said I should just order one from the supermarket, but I told her I wanted to do it myself. The three of us had conspired to get Dad out of the house by having Everett accompany him to shop for a new lawn mower.

  “I ought to figure it out. It’s just chemistry.”

  She guided me through the baking, insisted I use some canned icing she took from a cabinet.

  “It’s just too much bother. Oh, I should get out my decorating kit.”

  Mom had tubes and little aluminum caps that squirted out cheese dip and butter cream roses.

  “You don’t have to do that.” I figured I could squiggle out some words with a straw or something. But she dug in a lower cabinet and found them.

  As I fumbled with the little metal cones, our conversation shifted when she asked about Everett.

  “He’s fine.”

  Everett had said he wanted to cut out a lot of things outside of school, and seemed like he just wanted to finish off the last year as easily as possible.

  “How are things?” Mom asked, watching patiently as I mixed ingredients.

  “What ‘things’?”

  “You know, between you two.”

  “Good.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “Are you being …careful?”

  “What do you mean?”

  After an eye roll and a sigh, she said, “You know what I mean.”

  Although she didn’t say it, I knew what she meant. In the living room, for days, a Newsweek magazine on the coffee table just happened to be left open to a page with an article about AIDS.

  “We’re fine, Mom.”

  My New York trip with Everett had been discussed, but in a heavily edited version, one of many things I couldn’t share with her. I felt the growing distance between us.

  “Actually, I’m just… You and Dad. You guys dated for a few years, right?”

  “He was in college and I was working, yes.”