It was the occasional sealed letter from Everett, infrequently given to me at school by Kevin or slipped into my locker, that both wound up my sense of hope and dashed it into despair. Passing me in the hall, Kevin’s brief shake ‘No’ meant there was no note or word from him, or that Kevin hadn’t even bothered to see him.
I was horny, and I could tell someone about Everett, about my love for him, about my fears for him, even to an apparently bisexual stud whom I’d never thought considered me as anything but another guy on his track team.
But my mouth would spend less time talking, and more time doing what Kevin wanted done to him, or more specifically, what one large, blood-engorged body part wanted done.
Afterward, he had complimented me for having a great deal more expertise and enthusiasm than most of the girls he dated.
Kevin would call, and I’d walk over to his house through the woods when his family was out, at least once a weekend night. He’d hint about sex, had even shown me a porn video, a straight one. His shorts would tent as his dick thickened, or, as with his pole vaulting, peeked out one way or another. What we did, or rather, what I did to him, left me feeling like less of a sexual partner and more of a human handkerchief.
It was disappointing to discover that sex without love, no matter how much better equipped that other partner was, could still be enjoyable, but not as much, not by a long shot.
Which was why, for reasons I didn’t need to explain to Kevin, after a few weeks I declined his subsequent invitations to “hang out.”
Somewhere in the midst of all this, during a pleading phone call to Holly that I be forgiven, even though I didn’t see any need to apologize, she reminded me that any diplomatic efforts toward her mother had fallen on rather unsympathetic ears. She also explained that Everett wasn’t in any position to defy her, either.
“So, ya got caught infragrante el delecto,” Kevin mused as he extracted a small bag of pot from his Camaro’s glove compartment.
I refrained from correcting Kevin’s terminology. I had also refrained from sucking on anything of his other than the joints he’d rolled over the past few weeks. My own refusal, despite Kevin’s large talents, puzzled him at first. Aspiring for monogamy seemed stranger than mere homosexuality. His reaction was similar to his casual attitude during our trysts. “Whatever.”
Kevin had invited me to join him for a drive and a smoke before the graduation ceremony. I’d excused myself from my parents’ company with the ruse of a small party beforehand, not revealing that the party consisted of Kevin, myself, and his stash.
Tightening the papers with a twist, Kevin grabbed his lighter, opened his car door, and nodded for me to join him outside to sit on the hood. He’d never smoked inside his “baby,” as he called the Camaro. He’d trained me in the intricacies of discreet pot-smoking, which included always bringing breath mints and eye drops.
As we shared hits, the late morning sun glinted off his car window. He’d parked on a small back road in a rural section of town less than a mile from the school. Our graduation gowns and caps lay in plastic bags on his car’s back seat.
“Great that you got that summer job,” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied, thinking of it as more of a scenic exile.
“I should come visit you, go camping. Ain’t been up there in years. Last time was with Cheryl.”
Cheryl was, Kevin confessed to me without much encouragement, my top competition for Most Talented in pleasing his desires for passive fellatio. I’d never met her. He’d showed me a wallet-sized yearbook portrait.
Despite our mutual closeness with Everett, I was using Kevin as much as he was using me. With him, I pretended to forget that the reason I succumbed to our casual sex was to try to forget Everett, the pain of being so close to him yet forbidden to see him.
Perhaps Kevin knew that. He proved it at that moment.
“So, you still ain’t been to see Evey?”
“No. I told you. Getting caught ‘molesting’ their son has made his parents a bit wary of me.”
“Yeah, well, she’s a bitch; always was. She just wants to keep him locked up in that house like, like…”
“Miss Havisham.”
It wasn’t an exact analogy, but since I knew every high school student had been required to read it, some image of the forlorn Dickensian woman might be familiar to Kevin.
“Who?”
“The old lady in the British book you probably didn’t read, with the dusty wedding cake.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s like her, but a guy.”
I nodded agreement, handed him back the joint. He sucked in the last of it, and in his smoky breath-held-in voice, said, “Shotgun,” nonchalantly aimed his puckered lips at me, and exhaled. I sucked it in, held it, and for the first time, as the smoke exuded slowly through my nose, Kevin kissed me.
He smiled, watching the last wisps of smoke escape.
“Man, you really hold that in.”
“Cross country training. Lung capacity.” I glanced at the noticeably increased bulge in Kevin’s pants.
“You wanna…?”
“We’re gonna be late,” I said.
Reaching for the bottle of eye drops as we sat back in the car, feeling that familiar rumbling in my bowels, I added, “Besides, I gotta see a drag queen.”
“Huh?”
“Paris Talsis.”
“Who?”
After fast-walking with me to the school rest room, Kevin had said something that stuck in my mind throughout the ceremony, with all its speeches by faculty and valedictorians who hadn’t had to prove their valor by defending the good name of their crippled boyfriends.
Kevin had an idea. After getting stoned, his great ideas usually floated away with the haze of smoke. But this one stuck.
From the other side of the stall as he held my cap and gown, Kevin had said, “Ya gotta find a way to get him outta that house, man.”
“How? Kidnap him?”
“No, somethin’… somethin’ with a reason, like, one that’s far away from her.”
I should have thanked Wendell Graff. If not for our little altercation, and perhaps one-tenth percentage point more in my GPA, I would have been one of the capped and gowned students given the duty of making a speech at our graduation ceremony.
As I half-listened to amplified words about “our future,” “our achievements” and “our legacy,” as I offered a hazy smile to my parents, seated up in the bleachers of the gymnasium, to the moment later on where my entire row of alphabetically-seated fellow students rose to accept their diplomas, as those square tasseled caps were flung up in the air, before they came flopping down to the gym floor, I realized what I needed to do about my future, about Everett’s future, about our future.
Chapter 26
‘Autonomic Dysreflexia is usually caused when a painful stimulus occurs below the level of spinal cord injury. The stimulus is then mediated through the Central Nervous System (CNS) and the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS). The CNS is made up of the spinal cord and brain, which control voluntary acts and end organs via their respective nerves. The PNS is made up from 12 pairs of cranial nerves, spinal nerves and peripheral nerves. The PNS also is divided into the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is responsible for the signs and symptoms of autonomic dysreflexia. The autonomic nervous system normally maintains body homeostasis via its two branches, the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system (PANS) and the sympathetic autonomic nervous system (SANS). These branches have complementary roles through a negative-feedback system; that is, when one branch is stimulated, the other branch is suppressed.’
Despite distance, maternal barriers and even the possibility of life-threatening make-out sessions, I dedicated myself to somehow being in Everett’s life again.
I could not sleep with him each night, or any night, perhaps, even though my every night was full of thoughts about him. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t help him.
Being
raised by two parents who nurtured my sometimes obsessive studying habits, when I said, despite having just graduated from high school, that I was going to the public library, I expected and received no questions until my return.
“What were you studying?” my dad asked as I walked up the driveway. He was in the garage with the door open, toying with the wires attached to a pair of old speakers he’d bought at a garage sale. “Getting a jump on your summer job?”
“No, spinal injuries.” I extracted a thick pile of books from my backpack. I’d also taken notes from a few reference books and emptied a pocket full of nickels at the copy machine to save extensive medical charts.
Dad set a speaker down on his work table. “This is about Everett.”
“Well, yeah.”
Dad sort of sighed, as if he were rehearsing the words in his head. “I know you’re … you have feelings for your friend, and that’s fine. But, you have to consider what his family’s going through. Now, I don’t know if what his mother said was right or not–”
“That’s what I want to find out.”
“Fine. But the point is, I thought we agreed it’s pretty clear that it might be a good idea to give him some space; give it some time.”
“I just went to the library, Dad. I didn’t go to his house. I haven’t called him.”
“Okay, but–”
“I’m taking that park job, even though you know I want to stay here.”
“Yes, and we’re very happy for you. I think it’ll be a great opportunity.”
“So, we’re good. I’m behaving, right?”
“Reid.”
“I’ll be in my room.”
Despite the fact that it should have been clear to any alert parent that Kevin was more of a bad influence to any boy than I was, since Everett’s accident, he had regained visiting privileges to the Forrester home. Getting the information from Everett was easy enough, and sharing it with me a few hours later only furthered my resolve.
Satisfied with the spinal cord research I’d found, I shifted to an additional topic; poring over out-of-town phone books, state maps, medical journals, financial reports and periodicals. Research was my turf, and in that area, I was a hotshot.
Driving off with my mother’s car on another half-lie was the least of my problems.
My parents had saved enough to help pay for the non-scholarship-funded portion of my tuition, and I’d been presented with a card and a check for $500, for college expenses, Dad had clarified.
But when I expressed an interest in buying some camping equipment, they were confused.
“Aren’t you going to be living in a building?” Mom asked as we finished a non-whimsical stew. Mom had gotten a bit serious, worried. I did my best to recall some semblance of Everett’s charm over that special dinner those few months back.
“Well, yes, but there’ll be camping trips, and I’ll have time off and want to explore. And that old sleeping bag is kind of moldy. You don’t want me to be unprotected out there, do you?”
That clinched it. After claiming my intent to take the train into the city, despite the inevitable cumbersome packages of equipment, I was allowed to drive to Pittsburgh, which, I assured them, was the location of the best-equipped sporting goods store in the area.
What I didn’t tell them was that it was also less than a mile from the home of Everett’s father.
Chapter 27
Its emptiness puzzled me, but entering Mr. Forrester’s nearly bare condominium in the downtown section of Pittsburgh proved once again that I should have put aside any expectations about Everett’s disconnected family.
I didn’t want to get Holly involved, so I didn’t even tell her I’d be visiting. The possibility of both of us ganging up on her father didn’t feel right. I would tell her later and knew she would eventually understand.
After a short awkward phone conversation telling him I would be in town for only that afternoon, Mr. Forrester agreed to meet with me and gave me his home address.
Inviting me in, he gave me a soda and himself a beer, which I declined, then sat near me in a chair as I set myself on a long black leather couch. The floor-length windows displayed an expansive view of the city.
On one nearly bare shelf I noticed a few framed photos of a smiling Mr. Forrester with younger versions of Everett and Holly, and another few of him with a different woman; younger, blond and definitely not his ex-wife.
There being so little to look at, I faced him when he said, “So, you’re Everett’s … boyfriend.”
He didn’t seem to have a problem with that prospect, and already knew, but was learning a new term, at least with respect to his son.
His perplexed demeanor matched my own. I hadn’t really got a close look at Everett’s father at the Spring Fling, at least in daylight. Before me sat a taller, older nearly identical version of Everett. I would have thought that this would be how Everett would look in a few decades, were he able-bodied. And yet, there was something missing. That spark, the mirthful light I’d seen in Everett’s eyes, was absent.
Boyfriend? I raced through my few months since meeting Everett. We’d never actually had what could be called a normal date. But there I was, hoping to save his life. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“You know, you don’t have to apologize for the, uh, incident at the club,” he smirked. “Matter of fact, I thought it was kinda funny.”
“Right. Well, his mother, your, uh, ex–”
“Diana is very protective of Everett.”
“You never said anything about seeing us–”
“No.”
“Well, it got out.” Maybe Everett wasn’t lying that time.
“Why would I?” his father asked. “I know Everett. I knew since he was little. He …”
“He what?”
“He announced at dinner one night that he wanted to marry his friend.”
“Kevin?”
“I think that’s the one.”
“Everett said Kevin gave him a BB gun for Christmas, and–”
“Oh, jeez, I almost forgot about that. Yeah, she wasn’t upset about the gun. That wasn’t it at all.”
“Oh, okay.”
“That was just one of so many reasons we divorced. I … I was upset and sad about Everett, and the way she treated Holly, and lots of other things you don’t need to know about. But then, I just let it go. It took her a long time to get over it. Maybe she never did. No, I don’t think she ever will.”
“But your … Diana just blew a gasket.”
“She still thinks of Everett as a boy. Now, Holly; well, she’s her own woman now, but–”
“Yeah, we’ve hung out. I like her a lot.”
“Oh?”
I explained our visit, my subsequent stays at her apartment, omitting the drug deal, museum sex, and my night spent in the arms of his son, realizing he’d probably figured out the last part on his own.
“I wanted to talk about your ex, his mom’s protective–”
“Hovering–”
“Yes.”
“She won’t let you see him.”
“Pretty much.”
“You know, the way she went on about you, after this last time you got caught, I had some funny thoughts about you.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“I was joking.”
“Okay.” I extracted a large envelope from my backpack. “I didn’t see any way to bring this up with her, because of all that. Mr. Forrester–”
“Call me Carl.”
“Carl.” It didn’t feel right. “What she said, about autonomic dysreflexia …”
“About what?” he asked.
“It’s a condition spinal cord injuries, people with them, sometimes suffer when they get, uh, over-stimulated.”
“Oh, that. I forgot what she called it.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t. Scientific terms stick in my head until I figure them out. And, you know where Everett’s injury is?”
“I paid for the X-rays.”
“So you know it’s low on his spine, the lumbar region.”
“L-four, they kept saying.”
“Right, well, while dysreflexia can often occur in thoracic spinal cord injuries, it’s not as common for lumbar injuries.”
“So, you’re bringing a case for the right to … make out with my son with scientific evidence?”
Every Time I Think of You Page 14