I wasn’t surprised. Kevin’s parents always went overboard when buying him gifts—I think to make up for all the unhappiness in the Corrigan household—and I felt a tinge of jealousy as I studied the car’s gleaming flank.
“I got my driver’s license back in August,” Kevin told me, “and now I have wheels. Want to take a spin?”
I couldn’t say no, of course. The thought of cruising around town in Kevin’s Mustang seemed irresistible. “Let me grab my wallet,” I said.
Minutes later, we rolled down Gulf Boulevard with the radio blaring “Good Lovin’” by the Young Rascals and the wind fluttering our hair as it rushed through the car. Sunlight hammered on the Mustang’s shiny hood while we passed hotels, gas stations, and restaurants. Traffic was light because the Northern tourists would not come to Florida until after the holidays ended.
“I saw your picture in the paper,” I told Kevin.
He nodded. “Our team did great: eight wins and two losses. I won the defensive MVP award at the end-of-the-season banquet.”
Of course, I thought.
When Kevin asked me about my high school and whether I liked it, I only shrugged. “It’s nothing special,” I said. “I don’t get involved with anything there, other than attending class.”
“Sounds boring,” Kevin said.
I didn’t reply to his observation; I only stared out the windshield while we idled at a stoplight.
“Done any surfing at the sandbar?” Kevin asked.
“Some,” I said, then told him about the wetsuit I’d received for Christmas.
“I have one too,” Kevin said. “Maybe sometime soon, I’ll bring my board to your place. We can catch some rides.”
After the light turned green, I stole a glance at Kevin while he accelerated, and it seemed to me that his facial features had grown even sharper since I’d last seen him, especially his cheekbones. Beneath his sweater, his shoulder and arm muscles bulged. If I hadn’t known better, I would have fantasized about touching Kevin, but now I did know better. I wasn’t going to let him hurt my feelings again, and I wouldn’t pretend everything between us was rosy either.
“So,” Kevin said, “besides surfing and going to school, what do you do with your time?”
“Not much,” I said while I drummed my fingers on the passenger door’s sill. “I watch TV, and I still have my yard-care business; it keeps me busy.”
Kevin grunted. Then he asked, “Are you dating anyone?”
I looked at him and made a face. “Do you mean like…going out with a chick?”
He nodded like I’d stated the obvious, and in response, I blew air out my nose while I shook my head.
“What’s wrong?” Kevin said.
“I’m gay. You know I don’t like girls.”
Kevin turned his gaze from me; he kneaded the Mustang’s steering wheel as we left Treasure Island and crossed over a bridge. We entered St. Pete Beach where a new multistoried condominium towered over the Intracoastal Waterway. On the radio, an advertising jingle for a motorcycle dealership blared; it grated on my nerves so badly I switched off the radio entirely.
Kevin kept his gaze on the road before us while he cleared his throat. Then he said, “I thought maybe you’d changed. I figured since you’re in high school now, you—”
“I haven’t changed,” I said, “but what do you care? You’ve got your new car and your football trophy, and I’m sure the girls are all after you, so why would you have any time for me?”
Kevin pursed his lips and shook his head. “You sound like a girl yourself; do you know that?”
Heat rose in my cheeks. I was so angry my vision blurred. “Oh, that’s right,” I said. “I’m like a girl and you’re not. But remember something: you’re the one who crawled into my bed the first time. You started things between us, or have you forgotten?”
Kevin’s face turned as red as a ripe tomato while he kept his gaze straight ahead. Right away, I could tell I’d gotten under his skin. His usual cocky attitude was wavering, and so I kept on.
“What’s the purpose of this visit today?” I said. “To show off your new car?”
Kevin’s breath whistled in his nostrils when he looked at me. His chest rose and fell when he answered. “I came to see you ’cause I’ve missed you, and that’s all. So why are you tossing shit in my face?”
I made a growling sound in my throat while I shook my head. “I haven’t heard from you in four months. And why, because you’re too busy to pick up the phone? Are you telling me you couldn’t have spent at least one weekend with me, not in all that time?”
“You don’t understand,” Kevin said. “Friday nights there’s football. Saturday nights we always have a dance in the gym at school. The girls from St. Mary’s come over; it’s a big deal.”
“A big deal to whom?”
Kevin fluttered a hand. “To everyone.”
I shook my head again. “So you’d rather spend time with girls from St. Mary’s than me?”
Kevin pounded the Mustang’s steering wheel with a fist. Then he yanked the wheel to his left. We screeched across two lanes of traffic and into the parking lot of a vacant restaurant. An oncoming car we’d nearly hit blared its horn in protest. When Kevin braked on the asphalt, his tires squealed. After he shifted to Park, he turned to me in his bucket seat. He got his face in mine, so close I smelled the corned beef sandwich he’d eaten for lunch.
“You’re in high school now,” he cried. “You have to grow up.”
Now I was hollering. “I don’t want to grow up; I want to be with you. I want you to spend the night with me so we can do the things we used to.”
“But I can’t. Don’t you see that?”
I crossed my arms at my chest while I turned my gaze to the windshield. “Why not?” I said before returning my gaze to Kevin. “What’s stopping you?”
Kevin lowered his gaze while he let out his breath. Then he looked into my face again. “If guys on the team knew I did that sort of thing, well…I’d probably get my teeth knocked out. You can’t be gay and play football. You have to date girls; it’s the way things work.”
I scowled at Kevin. “You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think you used me last summer, only ’cause it was convenient for you. I don’t think you cared about me one bit, even though I cared for you a whole lot. And what an idiot I was for thinking we were actually boyfriends.”
Kevin looked at me and blinked his eyes three or four times. “We were boyfriends, I guess. It’s just we can’t be any longer.”
“Why, because you’re too chickenshit to be who you really are?”
Kevin turned to face the windshield and slumped in his seat while he let out his breath again. We both sat there, listening to traffic pass on the boulevard.
Neither of us spoke for a minute or so until Kevin finally said, “What do you want from me, Jesse?”
“I already told you.”
“And I just told you I can’t.”
“But you could if you really cared.”
After Kevin drew a breath, he looked at his wristwatch. “I need to get back home; I’ll drop you off on my way.”
I flung the passenger door open. “Don’t bother,” I said while I left the car. “I’d rather walk.”
Chapter Nine
My tenth-grade school year ended before I knew it. My marks had been all As and Bs, and I was inducted into the National Honor Society on the last day of classes. But I still hadn’t made a single friend or joined any sort of student organization. I must’ve seemed a sphinx to my classmates as I walked the campus hallways alone, keeping my gaze lowered and my facial expression stoic.
My family had moved, back in April, to a larger home only a block from our old house. The new one had a screened front porch, a full-size garage, a fireplace, and larger bedrooms. Now I enjoyed a queen-size bed, a better stereo system, and a bigger closet to store the clothes and shoes I’d bought with my yard-care earnings.
&
nbsp; The day after classes ended, I canvassed our neighborhood, soliciting new customers. I owned a power mower, hedge clippers, and a power edger now, so I didn’t have to use my customers’ equipment any longer, which helped me get more business. After three days, my customer base had grown from four to twelve, and in the weeks ahead, I kept busy from eight in the morning till five in the afternoon, five days per week. I took weekends off to surf, fish, and sleep.
My workdays were brutal. By eleven a.m., the temperature hit ninety-two most every day, and the humidity was equally high. I drank water like a camel from garden hoses. I wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, a long-sleeved T-shirt, cut-off blue jeans, and work boots. By now, I was close to six feet tall, with long arms and legs and stringy muscles. I weighed 155 pounds.
Every weekday I came home exhausted, caked in a mixture of dirt and sweat, with grass clippings stuck to my calves and forearms. I was so filthy I’d wash up in our outdoor shower room before I even entered the house. But I didn’t care. The work kept me busy and the money rolled in. Even after buying gas for the mower and edger, I still cleared about seventy dollars a week, a lot of money for a fifteen-year-old kid to earn at the time.
My sister and her best friend had both taken jobs as junior counselors at a summer camp for girls in the mountains of western North Carolina; Lisa wouldn’t return to Florida until mid-August. My mom, of course, kept busy with her full-time job at a bank, and with her volunteer work at the St. Petersburg children’s hospital. Outside of sharing our evening meal, Mom and I saw little of each other.
I suppose a lot of boys my age would have felt lonely in my situation, but I honestly never did. While I pushed my mower or edged someone’s sidewalk, I daydreamed about moving to California or maybe Hawaii one day, where I could test my surfing skills on waves larger than the sandbar’s. And often, of course, I thought about Kevin; I recalled the previous summer when we’d shared so many days and nights together.
Whenever I thought of my summer with Kevin, it occurred to me that I had been awfully needy when he moved in with us. When Kevin placed my hand between his legs that night at the drive-in theater, he set loose a beast within me, a sexual animal with a healthy appetite. Back then, I didn’t know how to control the beast, and when Kevin left for Largo, the beast drove me insane with a sense of loss. For months, I craved Kevin’s presence so badly my belly ached.
Now, nearly a year after Kevin’s departure, I’d grown wiser. I knew better than to open my heart to Kevin or anyone else, not without being careful. I kept to myself, and I assuaged the beast as best I could with a tube of jelly and my right hand.
One of my customers had a son, a slender guy about my age with a swish in his gait, a turned-up nose, pale skin, and a mop of auburn hair falling across his green eyes. More than once, I’d heard neighborhood people make derisive comments about how feminine he looked. Often while I mowed his parents’ lawn, he sat on their shaded back door stoop, smoking a cigarette and watching me work. One afternoon, while I sweated under a broiling sun, he offered me a cold bottle of Sprite and a Marlboro. We sat on his door stoop. He told me his name was Spencer, and after we shook hands, he looked right and left. Then he placed his hand on my thigh.
“My folks work in Tampa; they won’t be back for hours,” he said while his gaze drilled into mine. Then he jerked his head toward his back door. “Let’s have some fun in my bedroom.”
I felt shocked by his boldness and tempted by his offer. I hadn’t touched another guy since my last session with Kevin the previous summer, and the thought of touching Spencer had my pulse galloping. But then I thought, What will this lead to? I didn’t even know Spencer. Could I really trust him? What if he told a neighbor that we’d fooled around? Or what if I fell in love with him like I’d fallen for Kevin? What then? Did I really want my feelings hurt a second time?
I looked down at Spencer’s hand for a long moment. After I seized his wrist and lifted it from my leg, I looked into his eyes and shook my head. Then I swung my gaze to the yard while I took a drag off my Marlboro.
“Are you sure?” Spencer asked me.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m sure.”
On a Thursday afternoon in early August, our house shook every time another thunderclap sounded. Squall lines blew over Treasure Island from the Gulf, one after another. Rain drummed the roof and lightning flashed. Already, puddles had collected in our front yard and the gutters on the street carried a steady stream of water toward a storm-sewer opening on the corner.
I had come home for lunch, just before the storms began, and after rain started falling, I phoned my afternoon customers to tell them I couldn’t work on their yards when they were wet. I’d have to come on Saturday, I told them, after things dried out. I was rinsing my lunch dishes in the kitchen sink when I heard a sound in our driveway, one I instantly recognized: the rumble of a Ford Mustang’s muffler.
Right away, my stomach clenched.
What’s he doing here?
When I answered Kevin’s knock, he stood on our doorstep with a raindrop hanging off the tip of his nose. His hair was plastered to his skull and his clothing was soaked.
“Can I come in?” he asked in a croaky voice.
“Why?” I said. “What for?”
“I need to talk to you.”
After I motioned him inside, he asked for a towel and a change of clothes. In my room, he peeled off his wet clothing, even his briefs, and right away, my mouth grew sticky at the sight of his naked flesh. His muscles rippled; he looked like a Greek statue I’d once seen in a National Geographic magazine.
While he toweled himself, I asked him, “How come you’re all wet?”
“I went to your old house; I kept banging on the front door then the back one, until a neighbor with an umbrella came over; she said you’d moved here. By that point, I was drenched.”
I nodded while he dried his hair, and when he’d finished doing that, he stepped into a clean pair of briefs I’d given him. Then he sat on the edge of my bed. His gaze traveled around the room before he returned it to me.
“You’re working today?” he asked.
“I was, but with all the rain, I had to quit.”
Kevin lowered his gaze. He cleared his throat a time or two and looked into my face. “I came to tell you something.”
“What?”
“My dad died yesterday, at the VA hospital. He had a stroke caused by a blood clot; it traveled to his brain.”
I winced while I sat on a bedside chair that creaked under my weight. I recalled the last time I’d seen the Colonel in the nursing home where he and Kevin’s mom had lived for a spell, and I recalled how unhealthy he looked. Despite the fact he’d been a cantankerous guy, he had always been kind to me, and now I felt a twinge of sadness when I realized I’d never see him again. I wouldn’t hear his barking at Kevin, nor would I smell the smoke from his Hav-A-Tampa cigars.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know he was tough to live with, but still…he was your dad.”
Kevin lowered his gaze and nodded.
“How’s your mom doing?” I asked.
“She’s sad, of course—they were married twenty-two years—but in a way, it’s a blessing he died. These past few years, Mom spent half her life toting him back and forth to the VA. And it got to where he couldn’t go anywhere or do anything. He watched TV and that was about it.”
I asked about the funeral.
“It’ll be next week—on Saturday, I think. Can you make it?”
I nodded.
Kevin made no attempt to put on the clothes I’d loaned him. He just sat there in my briefs while staring at the floor and looking like someone had knocked the wind out of him on the playing field.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He looked at me and shook his head while his eyes glistened. His voice had a shake to it when he answered. “It’s hard, you know, losing someone you’ve known all your life; it’s very hard. And there’s no one I can talk to about it but you.”
My knees crackled when I rose from my chair. I sat down on the bed next to Kevin and put my arm across his shoulders. Right away, he hung his head and wept. His body shook and tears fell onto his sinewy thighs. Outside, another thunderclap sounded. Rain drummed the roof and wind gusts rattled the windows.
I waited a few minutes to speak, until Kevin’s sobs ceased. “It’ll be okay,” I told him while he wiped away tears with a wrist and sniffled.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Now it’s just Mom and me, and she’s not all that well either. What if something happens to her? What then?”
I considered telling Kevin that maybe he could live with us, but I wasn’t all that crazy about the idea, not after all I’d gone through since the last time he stayed at our house. I was still very angry and hurt about the way he’d ignored me after moving back to Largo. But it was hard to be mad at Kevin when he was so distraught.
“Your mom will be fine,” I said. “She’ll always be there for you.”
He looked at me with his red and swollen eyes. “What about you?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Will you still be here for me?”
I didn’t know what to say. In a sense, I thought it was pretty damned nervy of Kevin to ask me a question like that, considering the way he’d treated me. But then I thought of him standing in the rain at our old house, banging on the doors while the storm soaked him, and remembered something Kevin had once told me:
“You’re the only real friend I’ve ever had.”
I knew it was true. He had no one else to turn to but me at such a difficult moment, and I’d be a total shit if I didn’t honor our friendship, as strained as it was by Kevin’s selfish neglect of my needs.
So I squeezed his shoulders with my arm and said, “Of course I’ll always be here for you. We’ve been friends forever; why would that change?”
Kevin sniffled. Then he rubbed the tip of his nose with a knuckle. “The last time I saw you, when we took that ride in my car, I thought I might not ever see you again. You were mad at me, and I guess you had a right to be.”
Kevin Corrigan and Me Page 5