The questions my mother asked focused around Everett’s family life. I felt almost jealous that his story was told for all of us, information he had yet to share with me.
“My family, as you know, has a long history with Forrestville.”
“They are Forrestville,” Dad added, a joke that fell flat.
“Yes, in a way,” Everett acknowledged, immune to my father’s comment. “My father left us a few years ago. My mom’s busy with some charity work, League of Women Voters, that sort of thing.”
“Oh.” Mom perked up at the mention of any sort of political or feminist sensibility. Such women were rare in our town.
Everett affectionately told of his sister, Holly, the big city dweller, and his infrequent visits to see her. I sensed a game being played, as if the mention of Pittsburgh was a key he’d just inserted, and the lock was clicking open.
As I chewed my food, mostly in silence, I realized the purpose of Everett’s affable behavior. He intended not only to assure them that my time with this new friend would be safe, but also informative, educational and even a bit of a status boost.
My parents were being played.
A flush of embarrassment overcame me as I found myself gazing at Everett as he spoke, smiled and nodded to me. His throat, sprinkled with the slightest of stubble, his strong chin and flat nose, made him appear mature beyond his years. His comportment confused me, as if I were having a secret affair with an adult. It didn’t make my self-restraint any easier when, since we’d been seated next to each other, Everett had removed one of his loafers (which he’d worn on his walk under rubber galoshes) to graze his socked foot along my shin.
“What’s so funny, son?” Dad asked.
“Oh, nothing,” I blurted. Instead of shoving Everett’s socked toes away, I spread my legs wide under the table, giving him more access.
I decided to take Everett’s boldness a step further. While part of me wanted to bluntly state what should have been obvious, that we were more than friends, I could hardly say that we were dating. We had yet to seal the plan of what I’d hoped would be our first date. I tossed the dare back to our guest. “I was thinking of a story Everett told me the other day.”
At that moment, I clumsily attempted his game, the art of the innocuous fib. “The one about lacrosse.” I openly nudged him, saw the sly twinkle in his dark eyes, acknowledging that I was beginning to play along.
Of course Everett would have a lacrosse story. With a graceful wipe of his napkin, Everett told a succinct tale about one of his teammates hurling the ball into the stands and into the lap of the school dean’s wife. It was innocuous, and our laughter was the perfect cue that dinner was concluded.
As we retreated into the living room, my mother stoically refusing bussing assistance, Everett made himself comfortable on our sofa, I at the other end, and my father in his usual recliner chair. I almost expected him to offer Everett a cigar and a snifter of brandy.
As a family, we generally eschewed the drone of the television, and instead listened to some of my father’s jazz or classical LPs. Dad chose a Stan Getz album. Mom’s preference ran toward older pop favorites; The Mammas and The Pappas, Doris Day, Dean Martin. Off to the side, my few rock albums filled the rack.
Everett, after dropping a few names like Coltrane and Gillespie, again doffed one loafer, tucked one leg under his other knee, and settled further back on the couch near me.
It took some reserve not to simply lay my head in his lap, I was that happy. My parents might have been initially miffed, surprised or even put off, more by any open display of affection than by it being between two boys, one of them their son. Learning by Everett’s example, I realized that perhaps joy contained might have more longevity.
Dad asked Everett about his college plans, to which he replied, “Pre-Law, maybe, or Public Policy, with perhaps a minor in Classics. I thought of International Studies, but my French is a bit rusty. I’m still undecided.”
“Well, isn’t it great, not having homework for a while?” Dad added.
“Actually,” Everett countered, “your brainiac son was telling me how much he’s itching to see that new exhibit at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.”
Did I reveal any surprise or embarrassment? Was I even by that night mastering the craft of social artifice?
“Are you sure it’ll be open on New Year’s Eve day?”
“Yes!” I chimed in, perhaps too quickly. I would have to call the museum to be sure.
“Well, why don’t you boys take Anne’s car?” My dad said. “I’ll be home with my car in case she needs to go anywhere.”
“We could take the train,” I offered.
“No, it’s fine.”
Being handed the opportunity for what I’d hoped would be an entire day with Everett, my stomach performed a small flip-flop. No, it would be a day and night with Everett, preceded by a perfunctory trek to gaze at ancient plants under glass, and ending with a romantic night in his sister’s most probably lavish guest room. This all whirled through my imagination until I felt a pang of shame at having witnessed my parents so easily become complete suckers.
Everett’s conspiratorial wink told me it didn’t matter. The sale had been made.
Having almost succeeded in mentioning with a casual air that I’d walk Everett home, “for part of the way,” my mother warned me, “Don’t go running at night. I don’t want you tripping in some snow bank.”
She knew I had a propensity for off-season jaunts rarely preceded by a proper warm-up, and sometimes without proper clothing or my glasses. I promised to keep myself to a pedestrian pace.
Our coats on, my parents properly thanked and bid goodnight by Everett, we were soon out in the field, half-heartedly attempting to retrace our footprints from the other direction. All the houses along our street had kitchen windows facing south toward the field. The buffered light afforded an eerie yet safe glow across the field, making night sledding a pastime for younger children.
Fortunately, no one was playing that night. Everett took his gloved hand in mine. Unsatisfied by our lack of direct contact, he rushed a quick peck to my lips.
“That was great,” he marveled.
“You’re quite the diplomat.”
“You think they like me? Hey, are you being sarcastic?”
“Yes, they did. And I mean you’re very charming. My parents don’t easily take to new people. I think they’re happy I finally have a friend who isn’t a mouth-breather.”
Everett broke away, trotting ahead, his arms spread out in a sort of off-kilter waltz.
“Have you ever gotten stoned?”
“Duh!” I blurted with a bit too much assertiveness.
I had smoked pot on three occasions, each of them while en route to rock concerts at Three Rivers Stadium with fellow teammates and a few older boys. Despite my quiet nature, I wasn’t a complete stick in the mud.
“Good. When we get to the city, we can score some weed with one of her friends.”
“What?”
“My sister.”
“Your sister.”
“Yup. Oh, don’t worry. I’ll pay.”
“Um. Okay.”
“We should just say we’re sleeping over. My sis’ll call your mom. She’ll be cool.”
“Cool, like a friend of a drug dealer, or cool like you?”
“What?” Everett whirled about, stopped, rushed to me. “I don’t get to do this at school. There’s no one like you. It’s like…”
“Like a private school?”
“Yes. This–” He shoved himself close to me, forcing a kiss, another cold one. I was beginning to develop a preference for visible exhalations and frozen snot. As our lips parted, he kept his arms around me, cocking his head back to gaze at my face with a jaunty admiration. “I want to have adventures with you. I want more.”
“Okay.” I hesitated, but refrained from glancing around warily. In the middle of the field and the safety of its darkness, I embraced him again fully, kissed h
im open-mouthed, both of us humming with pleasure, satisfaction and anticipation.
“Besides,” he added, as we finally pulled apart to merely hold gloved hands. “Stoned sex is so fuckin’ amazing!”
He darted away, then turned back toward me in a playful tackle that led to us rolling around in the snow, which was fun until he shoved a handful of it down the back of my pants. As much as I suddenly adored him, laughing, I had to say goodnight and excuse myself, since I was almost literally freezing my ass off.
Chapter 6
I had hoped our drive to Pittsburgh would provide an opportunity for some lengthy intimate conversation that would bond us, and it did. I had also hoped we might even pull over at a rest stop and take advantage of some mythical erotic playground in the woods nearby. That distant possibility had hatched in my mind through some vague innate instinct, and the recent spate of public indecency arrests that had been documented in our local newspaper. It was probably for the better that nothing like that happened.
After a call from Everett’s sister Holly about our accommodations, and the promise of an alcohol-free environment, my mother seemed relaxed about our overnight road trip.
My father expressed some doubts about potential “funny business,” but nevertheless gave me twenty dollars for gas. My mother handed me another twenty, which I discretely palmed, “For food or whatever.” I was also given a stern warning about not drinking, at least while driving. They knew I’d indulged a few times, but remained only mildly concerned, since I’d failed to return home from those few teenage parties completely drunk, and never while driving.
My journey began with picking Everett up at his home. I had hoped to ring the doorbell and be welcomed in like a reputable suitor, in a meager imitation of his previous dinner performance at our house three nights earlier.
Before I had even put the car into park, Everett came dashing out of the front door and down the driveway, wearing a parka with a small duffel bag over his shoulder. He tossed it onto the back seat as he hopped in, slammed the door, and impatiently drummed the dashboard, hooting, “Let’s roll, my man!”
We instantly agreed to shift the meager car stereo away from my mother’s preset stations of public radio and classical music to a few nearby rock stations. Everett’s futile attempts to hone in on a distant university station that he said played jazz (it seemed he actually liked it) resulted in more static than saxophones.
My hints at physical affection, my hand on Everett’s thigh, and my repeated longing glances toward him as I drove, were at first met with a calm acceptance. The purpose of the trip was being together, so why was he so aloof?
I knew quite well which directions to take to get to the highway and which probable exit to take once we approached the city; I-76 to I-376 west, or just I-376 west. My dad said it was more scenic, but my mom said he took the route to avoid the toll roads.
Busying himself with a map from the glove compartment, Everett insisted on playing the role of navigator.
I twice asked Everett to give me his sister’s address.
“She’s in Squirrel Hill. Don’t worry. Just drive,” he said with a steely calm. I was silenced in the matter.
After a few minutes of that silence, Everett must have realized I was upset. “Buh furs, wheeze gun don ton.”
“What?”
“We’s goin’ downtown? Piss-barr-geeze!” he grinned.
I then understood. Many of the locals in Greensburg, but in particular people in parts of the entire state, had a certain twangy accent that we fortunately lacked. Even in his attempt to cheer me, Everett did it at someone else’s expense. I shook my head, grinning nonetheless.
Was this what having a relationship would be like, backing down to keep the peace, enduring bad jokes? I had no such example from my parents. As long as I could remember, they had never argued. They did tell quite a few bad jokes, though.
The mood in the car eased as we began sharing stories of self-discovery, early crushes on other boys.
Then Everett stated with a kind of blunt pride, “So, I’m your first guy, right?”
I offered a bashful grin. “Yes.”
“Have you dated girls?”
“Sort of.” I’d asked a handful of girls out when formal dances required such ruses on a seasonal basis, but none of them more than twice.
“What about the guys on your team?”
“What? Oh, hell, no. They’re … they’re too much like me; loners, kind of. There is one guy, really popular, a pole vaulter. He lives near you, I think.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. Kevin Muir. Drove a bunch of us to a few rock concerts. You know him?”
He hesitated. “Oh, yeah. His dad owns the car dealership.”
“Right.”
“Yeah, I knew him when we were little. Bit of a jerk.”
“Really? You think so?”
“All of us rich brats are jerks in one way or another.” Seemingly determined to change topics, he said, “So, nobody on your team ever…?”
“Oh, no.”
My cross country teammates were vaguely divided into two categories, stoners and nerds, with one lone devout Christian who thankfully limited his preaching to outside practices or tournaments. They never expressed doubts about my sexuality. I never got a hint of flirtation from any of them, possibly because I didn’t offer it myself, and wouldn’t have known how. None were close friends, and I was far from a star athlete, so they didn’t seem to care what I did or didn’t do.
But I wanted Everett to care. I wanted to care about him, and find a common ground that would settle my freshly unleashed affection toward him.
“What about you?” I asked. “You’re more…”
“What? Slutty?” He fake-punched me.
“No, just experienced.”
“There was an older guy at school. He graduated.” I caught a faraway look in his eyes, wanted to ask more.
“Any, uh, ‘townies’?”
“Ha. Perhaps. But you wouldn’t want me telling other guys about you, would you?”
I shrugged agreement, but wasn’t so sure. Something in me wanted to share this giddy feeling, but I knew it was too soon.
Everett shifted to telling tales of family conflicts and dramas, and the peer pressure and scholastic competition at his pricey school.
“If I don’t keep a four-point-oh, if I don’t get into a ‘top-notch’ school,” his mother’s term, he revealed, “like Carnegie Mellon, I’m sunk. I’d have to go to some state school –no offense– plus, it’s bad enough that neither my sis or me are destined to marry or breed, so we’re basically the end of the family tree, which disappoints them even more.”
“The Forrester tree,” I joked.
He barely smirked in reply. “Which is why,” he scooted closer, turning on the charm, “I do so enjoy a little R and R with my new studly skinny dude.”
“Hey, I’m not skinny.”
He smiled, rubbing his hand on my thigh as he furled his eyebrows with a sort of Groucho Marx innuendo. “I bet you wanna pull over now, doncha?”
“I bet I do,” I replied, slowing the car down, signaling as I pulled to the right lane in between the sparse weekend traffic. The roads were clear of snow, but coated in a crust of road salt.
Everett reached for the radio dial, turned down the volume, and suddenly blasted in a bright a cappella, “Anticipation! An-ti-ci-pay-yay-shun, is makin’ you wait.”
While the Carly Simon song was memorable, it still brought to my mind the ketchup commercial. Like the song, I waited.
For the rest of the drive, I let Everett tell stories that were less serious, laughed at his jokes, asked more questions, fascinated by him as I stole glances at his handsome face. While he continued acting relaxed, I would notice him fidgeting or repeatedly tapping his legs to the beat of the music. Perhaps he was as nervous as I was.
As we approached the city, after a half-serious argument over directions, Everett relented to my preference. Route 30 wa
s the easy side way in, but for the big impact, I cut across one of the bridges, back around through Mount Washington, then drove through the Fort Pitt tunnel. He saw the reason for my determination. We cheered at the fantastic view of the skyline from the front with the three rivers’ convergence into an actual point.
“We’re almost there.”
“Whoo-hoo!” he shouted.
“Sing another song.”
“I don’t have anything memorized.”
“What, no choir trophies to go with all those others?” I taunted.
“We don’t have a choir at my school.”
“Well, pick something off the radio.”
Every Time I Think of You Page 3