Every Time I Think of You

by Jim Provenzano

  “Better be careful with that.”

  “Well, I have been trying to meet new people.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Greg’s the only hot prospect, but he keeps bragging about his cunnilingus skills.”

  “Gross.”

  “Oh, you’ll learn to appreciate his tips.”

  I snorted a laugh.

  “So, how are things in ‘Fill-dowf-ya?’”

  More funny accent barbs. I smirked. “Groovy.”

  “Getting any?”

  “Nope.”

  “Been saving yourself for me.”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s it? You told me you’re taking a PE course. Come on.”

  He had me. I quietly admitted to a few of my near encounters. He grinned, amused by my lurid tales, until I veered off course, saying, “but none of them were you.”

  He smiled, almost proud. “So, I told you I graduated from Pinecrest, finally.”

  “By mail.”

  “Yeah, they were pretty cool, considering they had to pay the insurance settlement. Well, their insurance company paid.”

  “So, are you thinking about college?” I asked.

  “You know, my parents want me to go to Carnegie Mellon.”

  “And?”

  “Reid, my boy,” he said, cocking his head just so, “when have I ever listened to my parents?”

  I smiled, refraining from mentioning my talk with Holly.

  “But I’m still gonna move in with Dad, and maybe his new girlfriend, if he ever marries her, which may not happen. His condo’s got a great view, doncha think?”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  “So, you were saying, about Temple. There’s a handicap dorm?”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “And you said you already met a few wheelies?”

  “But you’d probably be the only gay one.”

  “With a horny boyfriend eagerly awaiting my arrival.”

  “Yup.”

  “You’re never gonna give up on me, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good.”

  I must have had the dopiest grin on my face. Everett reached across the table in what I thought would be a gesture of affection. Instead, he aimed his fork at my dessert.

  “You gonna finish that?”

  “I’m just getting started.”

  As we ate, I glanced around the cafeteria to other patients, most of them sitting with physical therapists in hospital blouses. One nearby young man around our age struggled to feed himself, his arms in a tangled knot. Everett waved, and the boy spilled a spoonful of food as he waved back, then shrugged as his attendant helped him clean up.

  “Matthew; drunk driver victim. Sixteen. He’d just gotten his driver’s license.”

  “Damn.”

  “We’ll go hang out after lunch with him, if that’s cool.”

  “Sure.”

  “He can’t really talk very well.”

  “Oh. Um…”

  “You’re not freaked out or anything.”

  I couldn’t say that a few truly troubled patients didn’t make me want to turn away, or at least not stare.

  “You know,” Everett said, pushing his tray aside, “a few of my classmates came to visit, in the hospital, and here.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Yeah, but it was like …” His turned his gaze away, focusing on some memory. “They all visited like they were supposed to, once. Some of them, they couldn’t even look at me for long. They didn’t really talk to me. They… talked around me.” He returned to look at me, really see me. “Besides my family, you were the only one who kept coming back.”

  “That’s their problem, not yours.”

  “That time, when I was upset–”

  “Ev, you don’t have to–”

  “No, I do. You–”

  And then it was his turn to choke up.

  “The reason I …asked you back to visit… I had some really long talks with Greg, and he basically bitch-slapped some sense into me. He made me realize some things, about us. I think I sent you away because I thought I was holding you back. I didn’t want you to have to deal with all this while I’m still trying to do it myself.”

  “Right.”

  “But thinking about you made me want to keep going, stop whining, after that. I missed you so much. I just wanted to wait until I was okay with me.”

  “Thanks, Monkey.”

  “So, are we okay?”

  He knew I’d wait. He was everything to me. “After last night,” I blushed. “I think we’re more than okay.”

  Everett smirked. “Why? Because I shot a big load?”

  “What? No!”

  “No, really. I’m happy that I can, you know, function. But that’s not gonna happen much.”

  “I know. Well, I didn’t know, but that’s not... Ev, please.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not about that.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, it’s not just about that.”

  We smiled, held hands across the table, then toyed with the remains of our lunch, until Everett remarked, “That was a geyser, though, wasn’t it? Damn!”

  His volcanic self-impersonation left me stifling laughter until pretty much everyone in the cafeteria was staring at us.

  Chapter 34

  Along with the overwhelming first semester of class homework, another thing I learned at Temple was that every request had a form. Changing dormitories had a form, as did getting permission to move my spartan belongings in boxes from one room to another before the winter break. Hauling my stuff across the state twice would be a waste of time, so I persisted, trekking from one administrative office to another, keeping multiple colored, signed and stamped forms for those forms.

  Despite there being a few vacancies among the dual resident handicapped dorm rooms, housing an able-bodied student who wasn’t “an assigned caregiver” was noted by a suspicious clerk as an “irregularity” that required even more forms.

  Devon had been helpful with hints about who to talk to at the various offices. As I’d scrawled notes and taken down names, he also mentioned how difficult winters would be on campus. “They plow the snow on the street, but forget to get the curbs,” he’d said. “It’s a bitch getting’ around sometimes.” On the side of the list of things I’d need for the next semester, I’d written, ‘Snow Shovel.’

  “What’s all that?” Eric asked after I’d returned to our dorm room and plopped a fresh pile of paperwork onto my desk.

  “My friend’s enrolling here next semester,” I said, gesturing toward my desk with a smile. Shortly after my visit with Everett, I’d bought some small cheap frames at the student bookstore and placed a few of Holly’s photos on my desk; the innocuous one of us sitting in her apartment, and another of Everett on the basketball court. Any explanation of our intimacy was upstaged by Eric’s fascination with the pure biomechanics of life with a wheelchair.

  Eric had been surprisingly sympathetic when I had revealed the purpose of my move. It was only weeks before the semester’s end that I’d waited to explain to him that Everett was more than a close friend. He wasn’t surprised.

  He even helped me pack and haul boxes across campus, during which he occasionally asked questions that had never come up, mostly to do with my being gay, Everett’s accident, and the intersection of the two. It was a bit awkward, but I had begun to learn how to be honest and not so secretive, since his curiosity seemed sincere.

  The informal party held in our common room the night of our last day of classes promised a bit of the beer-induced rowdiness that had spread across the university. Outside our window, streams of toilet paper fluttered in the breeze from a few trees. Random hoots and hollers echoed down the hallways. Parking lots and driveways had become clustered with cars being loaded with luggage and boxes by students eager to leave.

  The jovial atmosphere in our dorm, aided by a few other guys from nearby rooms who heard there
was beer, almost came to an abrupt halt when my only guest appeared at the open door.

  “Hey, glad you could make it!” I stood and greeted Devon, who rolled in cautiously.

  There was the slightest pause in the party as everyone’s attention shifted to his entrance. I hadn’t told any of them that I’d invited him. In fact, I had secretly decided to use the occasion to test them and see how nonchalant they could be.

  After some awkward introductions, as I’d anticipated, the entire conversation began to focus on Devon, who had to answer a series of innocuous and uninformed questions about his life, in particular, what he could and could not do. The semi-drunken queries turned to the expected topic.

  “How do you have sex?” Charlie, one of my soon-to-be-former roommates blurted.

  “How do you?” Devon smiled.

  “With a pillow,” his roommate Dennis joked. Charlie blushed and slinked off to get more beer.

  “Guys, come on,” I said.

  “It’s cool,” Devon assured me before replying to the others. “Actually, I get hit on by girls a lot. But you know, it’s more about pleasing them.” He made an amusingly crude mimed gesture of parting a pair of legs with his hands and licking. “And they get that.” He grinned.

  “What, they ride your chair?” another guy asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  Satisfied with his boasts, the guys finally warmed up to Devon. Eric tossed out a volley of questions more to do with biomechanics and technology, most of which left Devon befuddled.

  I pulled a chair close to him, dismissing the meandering conversation of the others, which descended to more base sexual topics.

  “Is it always like that?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “People asking you stupid questions.”

  “Depends on who I hang with. Isn’t it like that with your friend?”

  “I don’t know.” I considered how my bond with Everett would be tested. We had never been with people who weren’t either his or my family or other disabled people and staff at the rehab center. Outside the campus, the city had at first been bewildering to me. While I found myself taking mental notes at the sight of each ramped curb, I wondered if Everett would find it overwhelming.

  I considered the divide I would have to balance in public. Would my protective nature prove too defensive? I had felt a sliver of panic in the new dorm room, empty except for my boxes and duffle bags of clothes. Peering at the handicap-accessible fixtures, I wondered if I understood all of the responsibilities.

  Living with Everett would be a dream fulfilled. I hoped the pangs of longing would settle to a daily pleasure, a normalcy. But the ignorant remarks, the possible insults and curiosity of others – how would that fit into our new life?

  Actually, I was afraid. Being together every day would change everything. Despite what had happened to him, or partly because of it, I expected Everett would draw admirers of all kinds. Would I become jealous? Too protective? Too possessive?

  Unsure how to share all this with Devon, I simply said, “Everett can handle himself.”

  I hoped I was right.

  Chapter 35

  Winter, 1980

  As much as my parents at first dreaded the idea of spending a New Year’s Day lunch at the home of the Forresters, at least it offered an excuse to shorten our traditional family visit to Scranton. For that, my mother was thrilled.

  That morning, I’d taken a walk before either of them had awakened. When I returned, the smell of brewing coffee filled the kitchen.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Secret mission.”

  Mom didn’t request an explanation.

  After our breakfast at home, where we each withheld our different kinds of apprehension, we changed into dressy holiday-colored clothes. My father put on a tie and jacket. I donned a dark green sweater, which I wore only at Christmas, since it itched.

  My mother’s outfit was quite impressive. She kept Dad and I waiting, but with her hair and make-up complete, a traditional skirt and blouse of green and red, she was stunning. Perhaps Dad didn’t see how expertly she managed to resemble one of those old magazine ad housewives. To her, it was all a fun joke.

  The short drive was filled with mild jests about curtailing our sarcastic comments or remarks about the visible wealth of our hosts.

  “Their house isn’t that big,” I lied.

  “As long as they don’t start talking politics,” Dad sighed. He and my mother had been more than disappointed by Ronald Reagan’s election.

  My dad parked in the driveway behind Holly’s car. Next to it was a blue Chevy van. I wasn’t sure who else had been invited, but it didn’t look like it belonged to anyone I knew.

  Diana Forrester welcomed us at the door with a combination of falsified affection and graceful formality.

  Everett sat in his chair by the fireplace, as comfortably as anyone else, a satisfied grin on his face. After a round of greetings, hugs and handshakes, I ended up parking myself at the only free spot, on the end of a sofa at the opposite end of the room.

  Visibly miffed at the arrangement, in the middle of his mother’s request for a toast, and a pronouncement about this possibly being their last Christmas together before selling their house, Everett upstaged her and scooted himself across the room to be beside me.

  Over eggnog and coffee, tree cookies and pie on tiny plates set upon laps, the conversation flitted like a butterfly over the truth, but I didn’t mind. Diana and Carl expertly imitated affection and remained cordial.

  Everett and I stole flirtatious glances, quietly satisfied. The guise that he and I were merely roommates-to-be held ground, despite everyone’s knowledge.

  Diana Forrester refused to openly admit the truth, and that was just fine. The gathering had been requested –probably demanded– by Everett, but his mother made it seem as though it was all her doing.

  The night before, I’d been allowed to accompany Everett at Mrs. Forrester’s New Year’s Eve party as a second pseudo-servant/guest, with the assurance that we keep our displays of affection at least behind closed doors. She wouldn’t know that he and I had reached a calming balance, that merely being together, and knowing that we would soon be together almost every day, was enough, pro tempore.

  By New Year’s Day, a sort of truce had been established between his mother and me, I realized. Mrs. Forrester refused to consent to my victory, that I had taken him away from her, in a way. She kept her head held high, acknowledged Everett’s tremendous progress, not thanking me, just sharing her pride in her son.

  “It just makes more sense for us, for Everett, to have more functional homes for him to visit,” Mrs. Forrester said. “The estimates we got for stair ramps and converting bathrooms was just astronomical.”

  Holly kept her eye-rolling disdain to a minimum, and took a few informal photos of us, calmly, so she could get the warm lighting of the room without using a flash.

  Being of legal age, we each indulged in the mildly spiked eggnog until our shared burps brought giggles from Holly.

  “Didja see the wheels?” he said.

  “You got a new chair?”

  “No, brainiac; the van.”

  “Oh, yeah. Whose is that?”

  “Now that I got my driver’s license, mine.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve heard about Everett’s little present, I take it.” Everett’s father had sidled up beside us. “His friend Kevin told me his father was looking to sell a used van with handicap adjustments. They gave us quite a deal; practically gave it to us.”

  “Wow. So, you can drive it?”

  Everett beamed with pride. “Who do you think’s taking us to Philly next week?”

  “Damn. And all I got you was a sled.”

  Everett laughed it off, but actually, I felt rather trumped. His gift to me, while impractical, was charmingly sentimental; a small stuffed toy giraffe.