Every Time I Think of You

by Jim Provenzano

  “You have any plans?” he asked.

  “Sitting at home, thinking of you.”

  “Oh, that’s sad.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Maybe…” His face scrunched slightly, as if in a ruse of calculation.

  “Yes?”

  “You’ll definitely be home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Don’t hold your breath, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Just cross your fingers.”

  “Okay,” I said, intrigued.

  We kept the goodbyes short in his driveway, scribbled addresses and phone numbers. I didn’t get out of the car, but he did lean over to offer a clumsy hug-kiss.

  I watched him walk away and, as I’d hoped, or perhaps because he didn’t hear me pull away, he turned, smiled and waved.

  Having prepared an edited version of the odd and wonderful events from our little Pittsburgh adventure in my head on the drive home, I unfurled it for my parents without too much effusive detail. The minor fender dent was explained with relative truth, minus the motivation.

  “I’m glad you had a good time,” Mom said as she eyed the dormant Christmas tree. While we traditionally waited until New Year’s Day to strip and remove it, she seemed eager to bid it farewell. Most of the ornaments had been put back into the boxes on the floor.

  “You sure you’ll be okay tonight?”

  All alone, she could have added, but didn’t.

  “Yeah, sure,” I answered. I momentarily considered asking her if Everett could stop by. But since I had no idea if he would, I felt no need to do so.

  The television showed celebrations in Australia, Asia and Europe, and the crowds eagerly anticipated the countdown in Times Square. I lay on the sofa, distracted by my more abstract thoughts about the concept of time and its association with this ritual, even the concept of Gregorian calendar years based on Jesus’ birthday, which, according to some, hadn’t even occurred in December. I found it absurd for Jewish and Asian cultures to celebrate a day, which didn’t even exist on their calendars, with fireworks and paper horns.

  I hadn’t noticed that the sound of one of those horns wasn’t being tooted on TV, but on the other side of our porch door window. A soft tap on the glass made me turn with surprise to see him.

  Everett stood under the porch light, the horn curling and uncurling from his lips, a bottle of champagne in one hand.

  I stumbled off the sofa in my rush to let him in. Once again, his chilled skin met mine as I plucked the paper horn from his lips and kissed him.

  “Happy New Ear,” he joked.

  “Oh, it’s gonna be happy, alright,” I said as I let him in, dragged him to my bedroom, where I peeled off his parka with a bit of the fervor from our first time together. Everett glanced around my bedroom. It was then that he remarked, “I wanna hump every surface,” but then shut off the light. “I can’t stay long,” he said between our licks, tugs and hurried disrobing.

  In my hall-lit but otherwise darkened room, we tumbled to the floor. The cheers on the television echoed distantly from the living room, and a few random hoots down the block accompanied our passion. It was as if we were rushing through a menu of positions until, my sweatpants tangled around my ankles, he abruptly parted and lifted my legs. His tongue lapped around my balls, then down to my butt. I flinched at the odd sensation of his tongue slathering around, then in me. As I relented and gasped appreciatively, I kept thinking, where did he learn this?

  Approaching an all too soon overriding sensation of bliss, with just a few of his insistent tugs on my cock, he aimed his erection between my legs. But before he got more than a few insistent pokes inside me, I spurted up and onto myself. Easing my legs down, he shifted again to straddle my chest while frantically stroking himself, and aimed for my open mouth, nearly succeeding.

  Stunned by the abruptness of our lust, we collapsed and clung together, panting, until he laughed, pointing at the floor.

  “What?” I asked.

  “We didn’t even open the champagne bottle.”

  I clumsily stood, pulling up my sweatpants. “Let me get some glasses.”

  Shirtless, I headed toward the kitchen, where I foraged in the cupboard for a pair of what Mom called ‘the fancy glasses.’ I heard Everett running water in the bathroom.

  Half-dressed as well, he approached with the bottle in one hand.

  “Dude, you’re all pluvial!”

  “What?”

  He pointed to me, grabbed a paper towel, but before wiping, delicately licked my chest and stomach until his slurps led up my neck to my face and lips. We kissed in the bright kitchen light. I hoped some neighbor might see us through the window. I wanted the world to see us.

  Before I could utter a word of caution, fearing yet another explosion of fluid, Everett deftly uncorked the bottle without a drop of spillage and poured champagne into the glasses. We toasted.

  “To us,” he said.

  “To us.”

  After a few sips, he poured us each another glassful, then drank it down quickly, burping with a comic flair. “I really have to go.”

  “But my parents won’t be back for another hour.”

  “Yeah, but I totally snuck out and I’m already in trouble, no doubt.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It was worth it.”

  Silently watching as he dressed, I escorted him to the porch door. To remove the evidence of our little private party, he took the bottle.

  We stood at either side of the open doorway, the winter breeze blasting into the room. With a final appreciative look, he mused, “My big studly giraffe.”

  “My little horny monkey.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “Me, too.”

  Trudging out across the snow-laden field, he turned back from a distance to hoist the bottle in salute.

  My arms tightly crossed, I shivered, swaying from the champagne buzz, refusing to close the door until he became a mere speck on the white plain.

  Something about New Year’s Day seemed to leave the entire town silent, as if it were experiencing a collective hangover. I didn’t mind. Inside, despite the weather, I felt as warm as summer.

  Mom was up a bit later than usual, preparing a large breakfast of eggs, bacon and fried potato slices. I’d already quietly helped myself to a bowl of cereal, but looked forward to digging in for more. Off in the bathroom, I heard my father singing off-key in the shower. They had returned home about an hour after Everett’s departure, giggling, slightly drunk and, from the quiet sounds I heard through the wall, in a very good mood.

  “So, Everett’s off to his school tomorrow?” Mom asked.

  “Yep.”

  “You’re going to miss him.”

  I blushed. Mothers have a way of seeing right into the very heart of their children, or at least mine did.

  “Yep.”

  I thought I’d skirted around revealing too much, and sauntered away, until Mom said, “Next time he visits, ask him to take off his boots first.”

  I froze, turned around, and followed my mother’s glance toward the living room carpet to see a few tracks of muddy footprints.

  “Right.”

  For once, the weather predictors were correct. After dinner, light flakes had begun to tumble down outside, bringing a late helping of Christmas-style beauty to the night. I felt the urge to pull on my boots and go for a walk, when the phone rang.

  “Reid? It’s your friend.”

  A goodbye chat, I thought; emotions disguised for the nearby eavesdropping family members.

  “Hello?”

  “The field; five minutes,” he said, and hung up.

  His figure advanced from far off. My path due south, each step, each soft crunch of snow underfoot, brought him closer to me. His cheeks already flush from the cold, we embraced, chilled skin on skin, and shared a kiss.

  “I love–”

  “Shh.” Another kiss.

  We stood close, hugging
silently, before he would kiss me again and walk away, backwards for a while, we two shivering, simply watching each other dissolve into darkness, living by the minute, by the snow flake.

  Chapter 11

  Winter, 1979

  His first letter arrived a week later, followed a few days later by a box. In it lay a sweatshirt from his school. He knew to send a worn one, no doubt his, instead of some stiff gift shop version.

  I never wore it outside of home, for so many reasons. What could I offer as an explanation? No, I didn’t go there, but the most gorgeous wonderful guy who I’m totally in love with sent it as a consolation prize.

  That first letter was simple, with remarkable penmanship, a somewhat arch description of his daily activities after returning to school.

  So happy that Everett had written to me, I didn’t know what do; write him back immediately? What to say?

  Under what I swiftly took as an understood rule that any expression of my longing should be discreet, I decided to do it in rhyme.

  Once did a lumberjack love a pine straighter

  Than poking’ for fun in the night.

  But he found a young poker

  Who, nights, was a stroker

  And yanked a few logs for the light.

  His next letter was entirely in French. I decided to check out a French 101 textbook from the school library to try to figure it out.

  I want to lick … root of desire … nights spending … for times of many … river of cream … sent to you … dream of me … my ass … grabbing your …

  Basically, it was obscene. I was relieved that I’d followed my instinct not to ask my Biology lab partner, Brenda Marsh, to translate it.

  Brenda was the only fellow student who had noticed my change in behavior. The previous semester, before I’d collided with Everett, I’d been pretty much the same quiet studious kid, the sandy-haired guy you sort of know in class who rarely speaks up, never stands out, who is easily ignored, but whose private world would astound.

  Brenda and I had been friends since grade school. Her long strands of blond hair usually covered most of her face, except in Biology, where she tied it back while poring over a microscope or when we dissected frogs. We had spent the first part of senior year sharing conspiratorial gossip about our classmates and teachers. Apparently her French teacher Madame Pinchon had begun to have a little bladder problem, and more often left her students to chat in small circles, babbling away in French conversation.

  “So, got a girlfriend?” she asked bluntly on a Tuesday after another of Everett’s letters had arrived. That one had been a series of scrawled cartoons done in a few colored markers. In it, he’d been taken hostage in a sub-basement of his school, only to be saved by ReidMan, a cartoon version of me. Everett had captured my dorky look a bit too clearly; my glasses, my jug ears and my shaggy hair. In the last panel, we were making out mid-air, with my magic cape fluttering just enough to keep the drawing from being too graphic.

  “Huh?” I gave Brenda a falsely quizzical return glance.

  “You’re like, I dunno, brighter.”

  “Was I dark before?”

  “No, but it’s like you were just filling time. Now you’re diving into class. You’ve been raising your hand a lot, answering questions. You never used to do that.”

  “Well, I got a few nice surprises over the holidays,” I replied, offering a hint, but no more.

  “So, you did get some action.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Your skin’s cleared up, for one thing.”

  Inspired by Brenda’s having intuited my post-virginal glow, I struggled to share even a coded explanation of my affection for Everett. Words couldn’t match the quiet pride I felt from knowing that he thought of me.

  Our distance fed my longing. I didn’t want to settle for the innuendo in our obscured lustful scribblings. Everett had hinted in a previous letter about a need for caution, that his roommate, whom he’d mentioned a few times as being nosy, might “accidentally” read his letters.

  Instead of writing again, I trekked into the woods, searched out that sacrosanct area under the evergreens, yanked up a few small tufts of still green grass, scooped up some tiny pine cones and put them in my coat pocket. Once home, I nestled the wintry souvenirs in with one of my worn T-shirts and placed it in a box. I waited for a Saturday when my mom needed a few errands done, then, in between, stopped off at the post office and sent it to him.

  About a week later, a small box arrived in return. Fortunately, my parents respected my privacy and hadn’t opened it. Inside a large plastic bag was one of his jock straps.

  Unable to top his gift, at least in its intimate audacity, I sent him a note with a newspaper clipping, an announcement of an open half-marathon that our school would be hosting in mid-May. Lots of people competed, some for fun, but I knew many of my cross country opponents from others schools, plus my own teammates, would think of it as a competition. I wrote, “I’m having my 18th birthday party that weekend. Hope you can be here for it.”

  Only a few days later, he called.

  I should explain the communications barrier, the situation that led to our letters and increasingly unique packages.

  Everett had told me there were no phones in the dorm rooms. A bank of old telephone booths in a main hall next to their cafeteria had been updated to a somewhat antiquated system where each student could enter his own room number and have calls charged to his bill, meaning his parents’ bill.

  I never got the impression that Everett wanted to hide me from his mother; quite the contrary. At some point, I realized that Everett planned to use our relationship to defy his mother, in the same way his sister had done, only without the trip to France and the subsequent aborted “tadpole.”

  So I was a bit surprised to be awakened one Saturday morning in late February to my dad’s knock on the door.

  “It’s your friend Everett on the phone.”

  Still groggy and in my usual sweatpants and T-shirt, I tried to rouse myself to absorb the pleasure of hearing his voice for the first time in weeks.

  “Hello?”

  “Happy birthday to you,” he sang, continuing in a way that made each note sound risqué. Then, “Reid, my man, you’re becoming …”

  “… a man?”

  “Legal for several illicit activities. We’ll both be eighteen.”

  “What? When is yours?”

  “Oh, last week.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I wanted to share so much; that I’d visited our little meeting place in the woods at least twice a week, that I was growing out my sideburns as he’d suggested, and yet he hadn’t even bothered to tell me about his birthday.

  “It was no big deal. Some of the guys threw me a little party. My mom sent me some clothes. Dad just sent money and a tie.”

  I felt stung, left out.

  “I’m gonna try my best to get down there for your big day. There’s no bus, so I might hitch a ride with one of the other guys who live nearby. But I am not whining back home for any kind of limo service, so sorry if I’m late but–”

  “Dude, dude, dude; I’ll pick you up wherever. Yes, that’d be great. I wanna …”

  “What?”

  “I wanna see you soon, you know?”

  “I don’t know when, but yes, we will,” Everett said. “Hey, before that; what are you doing … wait, March twenty-something, third Saturday, I think?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “My mom’s head of the committee for the country club’s annual shindig.”

  “Shindig?”

  The Forrestville Country Club was an exclusive yet small estate set just across the county road from the wealthy neighborhood. Behind it, the sprawling expanse of the private golf course was opened to non-members for winter sledding.

  “Yeah, the Spring Fling,” Everett continued. “It’s this corny benefit they throw every year, sort of a parent-kid party, like American Bandstand meets The Lawrence Welk Show. The old fo
lks party with the kids. Mom turned it into this fancy fundraiser kid’s charity, like, before I was born. You don’t have to bring a date, like a girl, or anything.”

  “I would hope you’d be my date.”

  “That’s the plan. You can help me celebrate my eighteenth, a little late.”

  “Okay. But, wait; do my parents get invited?”

  “Uh, they don’t have to. Do you want them there?”