Kevin Corrigan and Me

by Jere' M. Fishback

  “You boys are keeping the food bills down,” Mom told us at the table one night. “It’s a help and I appreciate it so much.”

  Kevin and I looked at each other and beamed. It felt good to know we were contributing something to our household that summer. Of course, we performed other chores as well: weeding our sand front yard and trimming the shrubs, washing my mom’s convertible, and helping her bring groceries in from the car. We kept our beds made and my room neat. Kevin pitched right in—he never once complained—and it was nice having his help with things. We made a good team, I thought.

  When I’d been younger, I always wondered what it might be like to have a brother, especially one older than me. Because my dad wasn’t a part of my life, I’d never had a male influence other than Kevin, and he, of course, had never lived with us until now. But having him in our home day-to-day gave me a feel for the companionship an older brother might offer, and I liked it very much. Already I dreaded the day when Kevin would pack up his things and return to Largo.

  How would I cope when he left me again?

  Chapter Six

  On the Fourth of July, my mom, my sister, Kevin, and I attended a neighborhood potluck dinner party, where Kevin and I feasted on grilled hot dogs, baked beans, potato salad, corn on the-cob, and layer cake, all washed down with icy bottles of 7 Up. Once dinner was over and the sky had darkened, everyone headed to the beach to watch the city’s fireworks display. The night was warm and breezy. Kevin and I wore our usual outfits: Bermuda shorts and T-shirts. Both of us were barefooted. By now the soles of our feet were as tough as leather; we almost never wore shoes of any kind.

  I carried an old bedsheet for Kevin and me to sit on.

  When we reached the shore, a sizeable crowd had gathered there. My mom and sister joined some of the folks we’d shared dinner with, but Kevin and I set out on our own. We found a sand dune blanketed with sea oats. The sea oats looked like a small wheat field, waving in the breeze. The dune had a sandy clearing in its center, sort of like a lagoon inside a coral atoll, and that was where we spread our sheet out. Once we sat on the sheet, no one could see us because we were surrounded by the sea oats, but we would still be able to see the fireworks when they ignited.

  Earlier that day, Kevin and I had purchased a pack of L&M filtered cigarettes at a convenience store, and now we both lit up. The tobacco burned my lungs, but not unpleasantly, and then we both blew sheaths of smoke that the sea breeze quickly carried away. After we stubbed out our spent cigarettes, we lay on our sheet and gazed at the onyx sky; it was filled with twinkling stars. We spotted the Orion constellation and the Big Dipper. We studied the three-quarter moon and speculated on whether or not NASA would actually put a man up there before the end of the decade, as our late President Kennedy had pledged.

  When the fireworks display began, we rose to sitting positions for a better view, and after a few rockets exploded, Kevin put his arm around my shoulders. His action took me by surprise; it was something he’d never done before. In fact he’d never shown any physical affection toward me outside of my bedroom, not beyond a hug or two. But now the weight of his arm and the warmth of his body made my heart thump.

  It’s almost like we’re on a date.

  In between fireworks, Kevin nuzzled my ear. I turned my face toward his, and then we kissed. Our tongues dueled while our lips smacked, and I grew so excited I thought I might piss in my shorts.

  Next thing I knew, we lay on our sheet again, doing things gay boys do to each other when they’re horny. Fireworks exploded; they bathed us in hues of green, red, blue, and gold. And then a white explosion lit up our dune like the glare from a lightning bolt. I felt as if we were performers in an exotic carnival act, only no one could see us inside our sea oat atoll. Our sex was intense and quick, and when it ended, we rested on our backs. Then we watched the fireworks go off, over and over.

  Hiss.

  Pop.

  Ka-boom, and then Ka-BOOM.

  Five weeks into Kevin’s stay, on a Saturday afternoon, my mom drove us to the nursing home where Kevin’s folks stayed. The home was a squatty cinder-block building with sparse landscaping and no trees to shade it from the relentless Florida sun. Heat shimmered off the asphalt pavement of the home’s parking lot when we exited our car.

  Inside, old folks in wheelchairs occupied the hallways. They stared into space as if they didn’t know where they were. The whole place stank of urine and farts. Aides wearing scrubs and weary expressions lolled about a counter we passed. They seemed half-asleep.

  The Corrigans shared a room with twin beds, a linoleum floor, and a single window offering a view of the nursing home’s dumpster. The Colonel looked like he’d lost all the weight in his arms and legs; his limbs looked like toothpicks. Mrs. Corrigan didn’t look too great herself. She was still haggard and she moved very slowly.

  After we said hi to the Corrigans, my mom and I left Kevin with his folks so the three could chat privately. We found a sitting area with a vinyl sofa and a Formica coffee table littered with six-month-old copies of Reader’s Digest. As soon as we sat, I asked my mom a question.

  “What if Kevin’s parents aren’t able to care for him any longer?”

  Mom looked at me and gathered her eyebrows. "I don’t know,” she said. “Why are you asking me?”

  “I was thinking maybe Kevin could live with us, I mean…permanently.”

  Mom lowered her gaze; she rubbed her lips together.

  I shifted my weight on the sofa while I pitched my idea. “It’s not like he’s a lot of trouble,” I said. “In fact, he’s a help. He and I could keep on sharing my room, and I’ll bet his folks would give you money every month for his food and all.”

  Mom cocked her head to one side. “It’s one thing for Kevin to stay with us for the summer, but once fall arrives, things might get complicated. How would he get to classes?”

  “He could switch to our high school. We’d ride the bus together.”

  Mom shook her head. “You don’t understand: the Corrigans are Catholic; they expect Kevin to attend a Catholic school. It’s how things are with their religion. And besides, I don’t think Kevin’s parents will live in this nursing home much longer, maybe another five weeks or so, and then they’ll go home. They’ll want Kevin with them when they do.”

  “But what if they can’t go home? What then?”

  Mom gazed out a window where an ambulance idled in the parking lot.

  She didn’t answer my question.

  On a Friday afternoon in mid-August, Kevin and I sat next to each other in the balcony of the State Theater in downtown St. Petersburg. We had ridden the bus from Treasure Island to see a spaghetti Western called The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, starring Clint Eastwood. It was the kind of film appealing to boys our age, with Eastwood as antihero and plenty of gratuitous violence. Less than a dozen patrons viewed the film that day, so Kevin and I had the balcony to ourselves, and this allowed us to hold hands in the darkness.

  We had reached a point in our relationship where we’d lost any hesitation about showing affection to each other whenever we had a modicum of privacy. We weren’t just two boys fooling around anymore, at least not in my mind. We were bona fide lovers, an inseparable couple, but would that soon change?

  Each time our telephone rang, I feared the caller might be Kevin’s mom, informing us it was time for Kevin to leave my house. School would start in two weeks, for both me and Kevin, and something had to give. But so far, we’d heard nothing from the Corrigans.

  Twice I’d again raised the subject of Kevin remaining with us, in talks with my mom, but both times she only said, “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  So we waited, and as each day passed, my hopes grew that Kevin wasn’t going anywhere, that he’d continue living under our roof and our personal relationship would live on. We had come so far, Kevin and I, since the end of our three-year separation. And now that we’d re-established the bond between us, how could life possibly pull us apart aga
in?

  Chapter Seven

  The news came on August twenty-second, a rainy Monday.

  Low tide that day was at six a.m. Kevin and I had hit the water at seven, as soon as daylight appeared. We paddled out to the sandbar while rain stippled the Gulf’s surface and thunder rumbled in the distance. Then we surfed until our arms were noodles.

  We returned to my home just after nine, where we rinsed ourselves off in our outdoor shower room, and then we changed into dry shorts. Inside the house, my sister sat at the dining table, using her portable sewing machine to stitch a skirt she planned to wear to school that fall.

  When she saw us, she paused from her work and told Kevin, “Your mom wants you to call her at the nursing home.”

  Kevin looked at me and I looked at him. Then Kevin asked my sister, “What for?”

  My sister only shrugged. “She didn’t say.”

  Our phone sat on a desk in the living room, and after Kevin found the number for the nursing home’s reception desk, he dialed while I slumped on my mom’s easy chair. I kept my gaze fixed on Kevin while he asked the receptionist to transfer his call to his folks’ room.

  A few seconds passed, then Kevin said, “Hi, Mom, what’s going on?”

  Kevin stood there, listening to Mrs. Corrigan while twirling the phone’s spirally cord around his finger, the way he sometimes did with strands of my hair after we’d had sex.

  My sister ran her sewing machine, seemingly disinterested in Kevin’s conversation, but I couldn’t move a muscle. In fact, I could barely breathe. Kevin glanced at me for a moment, and when he did, I saw a vertical crease between his eyebrows that wasn’t normally there.

  Uh-oh.

  A minute or so passed. Then Kevin said, “What time?” And a few seconds later, he told his mom, “Okay, I’ll be ready.”

  By the time Kevin hung up, my blood had turned to ice. Already I knew, without Kevin even saying so, that he would leave us. I felt like I was sinking in quicksand. Kevin stood there at the desk, looking at me and working his jaw, and when he finally spoke, his voice sounded funny, like something was stuck in his throat.

  “I’m moving back home today,” he said. “My mom will be here at three.”

  My spirits sank like a stone cast into a pond. Three p.m.? With my sister in the house, that wouldn’t even give us a chance to share a farewell screw. What could be worse? I cleared my throat and tried to keep my voice from trembling when I spoke.

  “Can’t you at least stay a few more days?” I asked.

  Kevin shook his head. “I wish I could, but my folks are leaving the nursing home today; they want me back home with them. Plus I have to register for school. I need to buy uniforms and books: all that stuff. My mom says it can’t wait; I have to leave this afternoon.”

  My eyes filled with tears when I rose from the easy chair. I didn’t say another word; I just walked into my bedroom and closed the door behind me. Then I lay face down on my bed and wept while trying not to wail so my sister wouldn’t hear my sobs. After a couple of minutes, Kevin opened the door and entered. After he closed the door and engaged the lock, he sat on the edge of my bed. He placed a hand on my shoulder.

  “Jesse, you know I’d like to stay, but I can’t.”

  I sniffled. “You could’ve at least asked for an extra day or two, but you didn’t even do that.”

  Kevin ran his fingers through my hair while I sniffled some more. “You don’t understand. My mom isn’t back to normal—not yet anyway—and she’s counting on me to help her with my dad. I need to be there.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I get that, but when will I see you again?”

  Kevin’s voice sounded guarded when he answered. “It’s hard to say. Even spending a weekend here is not going to happen anytime soon, not till my mom’s stronger, and that could be a month or two; I just don’t know.”

  “Then why don’t I spend a weekend with you in Largo?”

  Kevin hissed. “My home’s not like yours. It wouldn’t be the same as here. And my folks are always around; we’d have no chance to…you know.”

  After I flipped onto my back, I wiped snot from my upper lip with the back of my wrist, then interlaced my fingers behind my neck. But I still wouldn’t look Kevin in the eye. My sorrow was quickly turning to anger.

  “So,” I said, “I guess this is it. And it’ll be just like before, won’t it? You’ll never call or come to see me.”

  Kevin sat there, working his jaw.

  “I’ll try,” he said, “but I’m not going to make any promises.”

  Hours after Kevin departed in the Rambler wagon, with his surfboard sticking out of the wagon’s rear window like a poked-out tongue, I sat amidst the sea oats in the dune where Kevin and I had watched Fourth of July fireworks, so many weeks before. I smoked one of the last L&M cigarettes from the pack we’d purchased that day. Visions of Kevin and me, doing all the things we’d enjoyed that summer, kept appearing in my mind’s eye: surfing, pool-hopping, bridge-fishing, and of course, sex.

  It’s all over, I told myself.

  I was pretty sure Kevin wouldn’t call; he wasn’t the type to do so, and he probably wouldn’t visit either. He’d get busy with school and football and never have time for me.

  That summer, I had fallen completely for Kevin; there was no doubt about that. But only after he left me did I realize just how much I loved him and how badly I craved his presence. There in the dune, I felt like someone had cut out my heart and fed it to a dog. My stomach ached and my head hurt.

  I’d heard of people who killed themselves after breakups—they jumped off a bridge or whatever—and now I understood why those suicides happened. Now that Kevin was gone, I saw very little in the world that made me want to keep on going. Kevin had added a new dimension to my life that summer; he had helped me discover the real Jesse. He had validated my existence by making me feel desirable and special, but now he was back in Largo and I felt a lot like that teacher’s tire Kevin had ice-picked at Bishop Keating High: deflated and useless.

  Would my life ever feel meaningful again?

  Chapter Eight

  In 1966, students in Pinellas County attended three years of high school, and right after Labor Day, I started tenth grade at a school in south St. Petersburg, a prisonlike structure where two thousand students studied. Classrooms were crowded, as were the hallways and the cafeteria. In the boys’ locker room, where we had to shower at the end of each PE class, muscular seniors snapped the tenth graders’ butts with wet towels. They hurled insulting names at us like “punk” or “faggot” or “pussy.”

  I was still numb from losing Kevin and sort of sleepwalked through my days. I made no attempt to involve myself in campus activities. Who cared about service clubs or singing in the mixed chorus or joining the thespian society? I had already tasted the best life had to offer, courtesy of Kevin, and now my fellow students didn’t interest me in the least.

  Weekends, I surfed at the sandbar alone. I didn’t enjoy the surfing all that much now that Kevin wasn’t there to share the experience with me, but at least I was out there on the rolling water. I felt the sea breeze on my cheeks and the sun on my shoulders. Plus I could brood while I sat astride my Velzy and waited for a wave to ride.

  I saw Kevin only once that fall, and it wasn’t in person. One Saturday morning, I opened the sports page of the St. Petersburg Times to study our county’s high school football scores, and there was a photo of Kevin in his uniform, racing across a goal line with a football under his arm and two opponents chasing him. Kevin, according to the game’s summary, had intercepted a pass, then returned it forty yards for a touchdown. He was the first Bishop Keating safety to do so in many years, his coach said.

  I studied the photograph for the longest time while rubbing my chin with a knuckle. I wondered whether Kevin had thought of me even once since the day of his departure from Treasure Island.

  Why would he if he’s getting this sort of attention from the world at large?

  C
hristmas break came. Despite my morose attitude toward life, I had worked hard at my fall studies and made honor roll the first two grading periods. My mom rewarded me with a Body Glove wetsuit as a Christmas gift so I could surf in the Gulf’s chilly winter water whenever I chose to.

  One weekday afternoon during the break, I had just showered after a two-hour surfing session. My dripping wetsuit hung on the clothesline in our courtyard. I had grown my hair out—it almost reached my shoulders now—and I decided to let my hair dry in the sunshine as well. The day was cool, but the sky was cloudless, the humidity low. I wore blue jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and sneakers. I sat in our front yard on an Adirondack chair with my eyes closed; I savored the sun’s rays on my face, then heard the rumble of a car’s motor.

  I opened my eyes to see Kevin behind the wheel of a shiny Ford Mustang fastback, a metallic blue number with two white racing stripes running from the tip of the hood all the way to the rear bumper. After parking in our driveway, Kevin leapt from the car like Robin exiting the Batmobile on TV. When Kevin did so, I let my gaze travel over his sleek frame, and like always, his beauty sent a shiver through my limbs. He wore corduroy Levi’s, a V-neck sweater, and penny loafers that shone like mirrors. Sunlight reflected on his big teeth when he looked at me and smiled.

  I didn’t even get up from my chair. Despite Kevin’s sexiness, I wasn’t too happy about his surprise visit. After all, he had ignored me for nearly four months, so why should I make a big deal over the fact he’d finally decided to drop by? I raised a hand but didn’t smile.

  Then I said, “Nice car. Whose is it?”

  Kevin walked up to me and mussed my damp hair. “Mine, stupid; it’s a Christmas present from my folks.”