Cross
Currents
By
Adam Phillips
Part
Three
11. Toes On the Nose
The
afternoon following my birthday party at the Country Club, I was in the
driveway shooting hoops after church when I saw Cole's van pull up. I walked
over and he rolled down his window. "Hey, stud," he said, greeting me
with a smile and a high-five. "I guess you think you're the shit, now,
huh?"
"It was awesome, Cole. Thanks for everything."
"No problem, freshman." He opened his door, got out, and went to the
back of his van. "Here. This is how you can thank me." He reached in
and grabbed a huge laundry bag filled with his clothes and the sheets from the
mattress in the van. He stuck his face to the bag, took a whiff, then wrinkled
his nose and threw it at me. "And my mom says you better pre-treat the
blood stains on the sheets."
I caught the bag and stared at him with horror. He grinned and said,
"Chill out, okay? I didn't tell her where it came from. I told her I
cut myself and got blood on the sheets, and I asked her how to get it
out."
As I recovered from that little scare, my thoughts began to drift back to the
previous night, waking my dick up in the process.
I forced my attention back into the present. "Okay, I'll have this stuff
done by later tonight. I can stop by your house with it," I said as I took
the laundry and set it by the garage door.
"Nah, I'll pick it up tomorrow after school," he said, and then
added, eyes narrowing, "Oh, and another
thing...You left your spunked-up condom in my van. Dude: You're welcome
to entertain your women in here from time to time, but next time fuckin' pick
up after yourself, okay? That was gross."
I looked for a crack in the driveway to crawl down into. "Did you throw it
away?"
"No, I licked it clean! Of course I threw it away, asswipe."
I was dying of embarrassment, and Cole wasn't finished: "I hope she was
worth it. You owe me, dude. I never touched somebody else's jizzed condom
before."
I groaned and hung my head. I'd have turned invisible if I'd known how.
"Shit. I'm really sorry, man. I didn't even realize I left it. I promise
it won't happen again."
He scowled at me for a moment. I just stood there, tongue-tied. As he stared me
down, I could feel the blood draining from my face. Say something, idiot,
I told myself, and just at the point where I was about to stutter another apology,
his expression broke into a sadistic grin and he started laughing.
"It's okay, Phillips. I'm not mad. Really. I just like messin' with your head a little bit.
Dude, you should see your face!"
I smiled back awkwardly, trying to recover my dignity. "Yeah, well,
anyway, thanks for everything. The booze and the van and the condoms--and
thanks for coming to my party."
"Everybody had a great time. Even the upperclassmen thought you did pretty
good for a freshman." He walked back toward his
van and got in. "I gotta go; be coo', foo'."
"Later."
"Yep."
As he pulled out of the driveway, I grimaced to myself and grabbed his laundry
bag. Real smooth, Andy.
---------------------
Stephanie and I dated for about two more months. The relationship was intense,
physically, but she started getting possessive of my time and crowding my
space, and I started getting resentful. On top of that, there were a lot of
girls out there, and I didn't want to be tied down. We broke up the week after
Homecoming. It was an ugly scene, with tears and recriminations, but I was
determined to make the break, and when I did it, I was probably something of a
bastard about it.
The relationship with Stephanie set the pattern for my relationships with girls
for the next couple of years. I would set my mind on getting a girl to go out
with me; after we'd been out a couple of times I'd push to get physically
intimate, almost making a game out of seeing how soon I could get her to give
it up for me. We'd have an intensely sexual relationship, then
I'd get bored or annoyed and end up dumping her. In the back of my mind I
wondered if I'd ever find a girl I didn't get tired of. Once in a while I
considered the possibility that I was defective when it came to love, but
mostly I was horny and on the prowl, and didn't spend much time philosophizing.
I wrestled with some guilt about pursuing sex so casually--I knew my parents
and my pastor wouldn't approve--but the urge was so strong, and my luck was
pretty good. The combination was irresistible. And in any case I excused myself
by noting that a lot of the jocks in my circle did exactly the same thing, and
those who didn't were working overtime to be able to. That kind of
rationalization isn't exactly taking the moral high road, but I never claimed
to be a saint.
Throughout the fall, football and soccer occupied a lot of my time and
attention. Soccer season began with the Dallas Classic League tournament in
August. The Classic League was the elite league in the metropolitan area, and
on the basis of that tournament, a limited number of teams were invited to
participate in the league for the season. The also-rans got slotted into
lower-tiered leagues.
I was nervous about Classic League tryouts because my soccer coach still had me
playing forward. That's the gunslinger position. It requires you to carry the
weight of the team's offensive burden on your shoulders. I never liked that
spot; for one thing, I never felt quite fast enough, and for another, midfield
was always home for me. I liked showing off the ball-handling skills a good
midfielder needs in order to move the ball from the backfield to the waiting
forwards. Not only that, midfielders get to take some longer-range shots on
goal, and when one of those makes it into the net it's a high-drama moment,
because the crowd isn't often expecting the midfield to score.
But we'd lost a starting forward the previous season. Four new players made our
team over the summer, and none of them seemed any more adept at filling the
empty slot than I was. So that season I ended up playing forward. We made it
into the Classic League, and I actually got to be a pretty decent forward,
although I'd have changed back in a heartbeat if Coach had offered.
I had to admit I was glad Matt had twisted my arm into going out for football.
I loved being on the football team. I felt a little like a fraud, though. I was
decent enough, but my heart and my best moves really belonged out on the soccer
field. For sheer love of the game, Saturday mornings at soccer put Friday night
football in the shade, as far as I was concerned. But my soccer teammates
weren't the tight group that the football team was. And only one of my soccer
teammates went to my high school. So although I loved soccer more than
football, I simply wasn't as close to the boys on that team as I was to my
football teammates. I dreamed soccer at night, but it was football that set my
social life.
As the time grew close for our first football game of the season, the freshman
Falcons were feeling confident. We were fit, we knew our plays, and there
seemed to be a lot of skill across the roster. It's all academic, of course,
until you face that first opponent. Our coach continued to be tough as nails on
us, but we could tell that he was feeling optimistic about our prospects for
the season, and that inspired a cockiness that was infectious.
We had all the elements that make any football team formidable. Ryan, our
running back, seemed to have radar for holes in the defensive line. Ruben, our
fullback, was near perfect in providing run-blocking for him and pass-blocking
for Matt. Matt, to no one's surprise, had a first-rate arm, and was on-the-nose
accurate. Justin, the wide receiver on the other end, was quick like the wind;
it would be tough for cornerbacks to stay with him, making him a great threat
for the long pass. Back on my end, what I lacked in speed I made up with my
ability to evade coverage, especially in short-to-medium range passing
situations. Part of that came from my years of experience in soccer, where you had
to keep a constant eye out for the big picture, and where evading defenders in
heavy traffic was a responsibility almost every time you touched the ball.
The other part was that Matt and I had been playing with a football together
since we were nine. Over the years he'd thrown me passes of every imaginable
kind, into every imaginable kind of coverage. And almost as often, I'd played
as his opponent, trying to anticipate his moves, stop his receivers. I knew his
game.
And on top of that, Matt was my best friend.
Sure. My best friend. That's what it was.
I knew his game. But more to the point, I knew his head. I knew his heart. And
he knew mine.
I would soon discover new depths to that knowledge, though.
By the end of September, it was clear that what we saw in the preseason was no
fluke. We were 5-0, against some formidable opponents. Because of our success,
we'd become the team to watch at school that fall; the varsity team was
struggling. Our games were starting to be as well attended as theirs.
The sixth game of the season was an "away" game against the
Hurricanes, our high school's perennial rival. My dad and my brother Danny had
driven up to watch us, and there was a good-sized crowd of supporters in the
visitors' stands, considering that it wasn't a home game.
We started the game cocky as usual, but it became clear early on that they'd
been studying us and had game-planned us really well. The run defense seemed to
have an answer for Ryan's every move. A hotshot Hurricane cornerback
named Jason McWhorter was too fast for Justin, our long threat; he was on him
all night. On top of that, the 'Canes had obviously figured out that the
connection between me and Matt in crucial short- and mid-yardage situations was
trouble and had to be neutralized. Early in the game they put two defenders on
me, and Matt was afraid to thread that needle. He was always hard on himself
about interceptions and was probably more cautious than he should have been
about throwing into coverage. The Hurricanes had apparently picked that up in
studying us, and that night from the very beginning they'd doubled up on me.
Then, since Matt wouldn't throw the ball to me, they could concentrate on
containing the running back and the other receivers. As I watched Justin and
Shane Moser, our tight end, drop balls and miss passes, I got more and more frustrated, and more and more angry at Matt for not having
the guts to send it my way. And by halftime, having neutralized our passing
game, the Hurricane defense pretty much gang-raped Ryan on run plays.
After the ass-reaming from Coach in the locker-room at halftime, we came out
determined but uncertain how to meet the challenge. We went into the second
half with a 7-7 tie, but as the third quarter went on, they were wearing us
down with possession time. We couldn't get an offense going, and ended up with
three-and-out over and over again. Our bend-but-don't-break defense was the
only bright spot of the night up to that point. They'd let the Hurricane
offense march down the field with first downs a good bit, but always got them
stopped short of scoring. Still, with the short possession time we were putting
in at offense, it was only a matter of time before our defense would tire out
and the Hurricanes would break open the score.
Midway through the third quarter we were at our own 40-yardline on a
third-and-six. One of the Hurricanes' defensive linemen was injured, so a
time-out was called. As they were getting him off the field and sending in a
substitute, Coach signaled for us to pass, and we huddled up.
I couldn't handle the frustration anymore. "Matt; throw me the fuckin'
ball. I can break the coverage."
"I don't know, man," he said, shaking his head. "We gotta
convert on this one. They're on you like flies on shit. I'm not throwin' into
traffic."
Ruben cut in. "Goddammit, Price, throw him the ball! They got answers for
everything else! Dude, if you get picked, you get picked. We won't let 'em take
it for yardage; anyway, the defense is gonna hold. They've been the only thing
keeping us in it all night. We gotta open up the passing game again. I can't
keep their whole fuckin' defense off Ryan the whole goddam night."
Everybody else mumbled his agreement.
Matt shook his head again and stared at the ground. Then he looked back up at
me, scowled, and said, "Okay. Phillips, you better be there and give me a
target."
It never occurred to me to doubt my ability to come through for Matt that
night. "This is why you talked me into it this season," I replied.
"Hand and glove, remember?"
Matt looked me in the face, smiled grimly, and nodded. I nodded back and said,
"Okay, then, let's fuckin' do it." We broke
huddle and lined up for the play.
I'd talked a good line, and I was confident enough for both of us, but
truthfully, I don't know how I caught that pass. Double coverage was with me
from the snap, and the defense was fast and agile. Competing hands were
everywhere. But my mind was focused on two things: watching Matt's eyes, and
squeezing out the tiniest window of advantage over my coverage.
From the snap, everything felt like it was moving in slow motion. My body
seemed to map out its moves in response to subtle signals Matt was sending.
I ran a short route and focused on him. As our eyes connected, it felt as
though he'd put me in radar lock. In that moment our bodies and minds
began communicating at a level almost naked in its intimacy. I became an
extension of him; there was never any question of failing.
As I saw Matt's arm go back, I noticed that one of the guys covering me was watching
me instead of Matt. Big mistake. Faking a
move, I got him to commit to the wrong direction, and ran past him.
Matt's eyes were fastened on me and as he released the ball, I set my focus on
getting in sync with his pass. I could practically feel the remaining defender
breathing on me, his coverage was so tight. He was hanging with the play and
was still in position to snag it from me, but my connection to Matt was not to
be denied. I saw the ball coming, put on a quick burst, moving just past my opponent
to where Matt had aimed it, and grabbed the ball out of the air. The cornerback
fell, and I took off downfield. I made it twenty yards, to their forty, before
they brought me down.
The crowd on our side of the stands went nuts. Matt came
running up, and reaching out a hand, pulled me off the ground. We
hugged, high-fived, banged helmets together. He backed off and looked at me for
just a second, eyes radiating wonder. I returned the look. Then we both broke
out laughing like crazy men.
We scored on that drive, and for the remaining quarter-and-a-half, Matt and I
made that difficult throw-and-catch into double coverage four more times. The
teamwork between us was a thing of beauty to watch, observers said later.
To some extent, this was standard operating procedure between us, a product of
years of experience playing football together.
But there was something else going on between us that night, something that
wasn't readily visible to the observer.
As I struggled that night both to clear out the defense and to read and respond
to Matt, it felt as though Matt was pouring himself into me and I was letting
him in. My whole being was reaching out and connecting with him. At times, in
the heat of battle, the rest of the stadium faded out of my awareness. All that
was left was the reality of Matt's body and mine, whispering dimly-comprehended
but deeply personal, perfectly spoken, words to each other. I could see in his
eyes that we each heard those words, and felt them; what they meant was a
question for some other time.
In any case, the result on the field was undeniable.
Given our success reactivating that short-yardage pass between us, the
Hurricanes' coach made a fatal mistake in his game-calling. He kept the double
coverage on me, even after it was clear that Matt and I had their number.
Because the coverage on me only thinned their defense at other key positions,
we were able to start taking advantage of that with a vengeance. Their run
defense broke down, so they began tightening up on Ryan. That left Matt free to
go to Justin or Shane, who had both suddenly developed hot hands. For the
remainder of the night, their defense had no answer for us. Everywhere we put
it, we came up with yardage. We ended up winning 34-14.
After showering and changing, we all got on the bus. Matt chose a window seat
in the back and as I got on, I saw him motion to me to sit next to him. The
whole team was in a mood to celebrate, and it was a noisy ride home. Matt was
quiet, though, which was uncharacteristic; he was usually the ringleader in the
after-game celebrations.
I was a little nervous. I'd have preferred to goof around and celebrate with my
other teammates, but Matt obviously wasn't having any of it; he wanted me in
the seat next to him.
I wasn't sure what was going on with him. We'd just won the hardest-fought game
of the season, and he and I by ourselves had succeeded in opening up our
offense. But the experience, as exhilarating as it was, had unnerved me a
little, and given my own state of mind, I wondered what he could be thinking. I
had an uneasy feeling that it wasn't directly about football.
We rode in silence for a while. Finally I couldn't stand it. "You're
pretty deep in thought for a dumb guy," I said, testing the waters.
Matt looked at me with that same wondering expression I'd seen after our first
completion of the night, then stared out the window. Finally he looked me in
the eye and said, "Did that seem kinda...I don't know,
kinda weird to you out there tonight?"
"What do you mean?"
"Dude, I don't know...it was almost like we were one person or something
out there. Five times we did that."
"I told you we'd do it."
"I know," he said. "But I felt...I felt..." He paused and
looked out the window again, then continued. "I don't know, man. It was
like there was this thing between us. It's almost like I never really
knew you before tonight. Or...shit, that's just stupid. I don't know what I
mean. But something was happening out there, man. What was it?"
"I don't know," I hedged, and fell silent. Here it was again. Only
this time it wasn't confined to the space inside my head; Matt had gotten
caught up in it too. What had happened on the field between us was just another
uncomfortable element in the swirling mix of emotions and realities that characterized
my feelings about Matt over the last month or so, and I didn't want to think
about that right now. I didn't know how to think about it. And there was
no way in hell I was going to talk about it with him. So I smiled a perfect lie
of a smile, and suggested, "I guess all that kamikaze football on the lawn
finally paid off."
He looked at me with an exasperated expression. He knew a deflection when it
slugged him in the face. I felt his eyes drill into mine again, and for some
crazy reason I thought of being caught on a railroad track as an oncoming
train, off in the distance, sped toward me. At one moment, as I stared back
into his eyes, I saw them grow suddenly wider, and I felt a flicker of mutual
recognition pass between us. Fear rose in me like the mercury in a thermometer
on a
But almost before I could register it mentally, his eyes lost that momentary
look of shock and understanding. He shook his head and laughed, a little
dismissively, and said, "Yeah, I guess. Anyway, I won't be afraid to throw
at you in coverage any more, that's for sure."
I closed my eyes and let the relief wash over me.
"Well, let's not make it an every-game thing, okay?"
"All depends on how the teams defend us, right? We know we can do
it."
"Yeah," I answered. "But it's a fuckin' risky move. We can't get
it right every time."
He looked at me without saying anything for a minute. Then he replied,
"I don't know about that," and with that cryptic remark he turned his
face toward the window again.
He was silent the rest of the way home. I laid my head against the back of the
seat and closed my eyes. It was pretty clear that neither of us was thinking
about football, and that neither of us had words for the topic the conversation
was really about.
Finally the bus pulled into the parking lot outside our high school gym. I saw
my brother Danny waiting outside with my dad. Dan was grinning from ear to ear.
Jesus, I thought; I'm gonna have to give him a play-by-play. That's all I need
tonight.
I stood up, looked at Matt, and mumbled, "Later." He gave me a
perfunctory slap on the shoulder and a half-hearted thumbs-up, and remained
silent.
On the way back to the house, stretched out in the back seat of our car, I kept
seeing Matt's eyes lock onto mine as he fired a pass into my waiting hands. I
replayed the feeling of wonder that arose in both of us as we executed an
impossible pass play five times. I thought about the bewilderment that spilled
out between us on the bus when we should have been clowning
it up and celebrating with the rest of our team. And I felt trapped by the
unnamed feelings that clearly gripped us both.
Danny interrupted my brooding. "Andy?"
"Yeah?"
"Dude, y'all were so awesome! What made y'all decide on passing in
tight coverage? Did your coach send that in? I wanna hear all about it."
In spite of my earlier irritation thinking about just this scenario, I was
grateful for the distraction, so I began to break down the game for him. As I
made my way through the recap, I realized I was actually enjoying my post-game
analysis of our play, and Danny was obviously entertained.
At the same time, a piece of my attention never quite let go of its sense of
dread.
Something massive was bearing down on me in the dark, and I couldn't get away
from it, and it was getting closer and more difficult to ignore.
I finished my commentary and sat quietly. Gradually, steadily, my unease began
to rise again.
In the distance a train whistle blew.
12.
Endless Summer
It was sort of like a magic act: "Ladies and gentlemen, for your
evening entertainment, Matt Price and Andy Phillips present The Vanishing
Interception!"
My connection with Matt on the football field continued to be a thing of
beauty: passes that should have been picks frequently ended up in my hands and
resulted in yardage. As time put some distance between me and that troubling
night we played the Hurricanes, our on-the-field connection became less a
source of turmoil for me and more an out-and-out entertainment. It made
us laugh; it frustrated our opponents. And quietly, inexorably, it bound
us more firmly to each other, as we continued and deepened this intimate
conversation between our bodies.
It was a conversation for silent partners only. After that lame and frustrating
dialogue on the bus, where Matt made a half-hearted attempt to understand and I
made a sincere effort to avoid, we didn't talk about it, didn't think any more
about it. We didn't really have the words. But something in me felt that it was
a good thing that we didn't. So, on the surface anyway, it was business as
usual between the two of us. To my relief, the wonder and dread of that Friday
night gradually faded.
During September the school always fired up the machinery to create that year's
Student Council. Elections were held the first Friday of October, the
week after our game against the Hurricanes. Prior to the voting that day, each
of the four classes got to listen to short campaign speeches from the various
candidates for Student Council. Freshman assembly was scheduled for
I was running for freshman representative. Each class sent its president and an
additional representative to Student Council. I had no interest in running
against Matt for the President position, but I did want to be on the Council.
Matt, for his part, was convinced I was fated to be on the Council with him.
Opposing me were Jared Jacobsen, the rich, arrogant kid Matt and I were
determined to neutralize, and Tricia Bailey, who'd been Student Council
president of her junior high.
Campaigning had started the first week in September. We'd gotten our friends
and teammates to help us campaign. Matt even went around to a lot of the other
cliques, clubs, and groups, introducing himself personally, talking a little
about why he wanted to be class president, and asking for support; then he'd
tell them he needed their help.
On a Saturday in mid-September he held a campaign workday at his house, and
invited a whole collection of different types to help out: brains, nerds,
athletes, cheerleaders, druggies, theater freaks, band and choir kids,
auto-shop thug types,and wood-shop rats.
I thought it was a brilliant plan. Coming from anybody else it would have been
cynical and manipulative. But Matt was almost militant about refusing to shun
or stereotype anyone; so the request for help and support, as far as I was
concerned, was genuine.
They painted signs, made flyers, planned campaign talks to their friends and
groups and organizations, and amazingly enough, began to get to know each other
without the labels, as human beings. Some unthinkable friendships were made
that day which lasted throughout high school, simply because it never occurred
to Matt that you couldn't mix druggies with math geeks.
And though I didn't know it at the time, all this was playing right into Matt's
grand design.
I was worried about Matt's speech, though. Matt was great at one-on-one, or
even at firing up a team, but I wondered if he had the verbal skills to match
those of his opponent. I had some uneasiness that Matt was going to come off as
a dumb jock and that Angie was going to slice him up with the sharpness of her
presentation. I tried to suggest nonchalantly once or twice that he let me help
him with his speech, but he declined each time. I wasn't happy about that, but
I knew better than to press it.
The day of the campaign assembly came. All the candidates were seated on the
stage at the front of the auditorium.
I had to go first. Along with almost every other candidate that day, I came up
with the usual blather about "representing you," "working for
you," "changing things for the better," "making your high
school experience the best it can be," nonsense like that.
The other two candidates gave their speeches and sat down; then it was time to
hear from the two candidates for class president.
For once Matt's luck hadn't held and he'd been picked to speak first. When his
turn came, he stepped up to the podium confidently and, I noticed with horror,
without a written-out script. Oh, god, I thought, and, slumping
down in my chair, I waited for the coming disaster.
Matt cleared his throat. "Okay, a lot of you probably know me," and
at that point a little applause rippled through the audience.
He continued: "I'm Matt Price. I guess you've seen I can play some
football." A few more chimed in with the applause this time. "Angie's
gonna talk in a minute and I'll tell you this, she's smarter than I am and
she'd do a great job. Seriously,I may even vote for
her." The audience laughed.
Then Matt looked out at them and said, "Actually, though, I won't. Here's
why I want to do this.
"Some of you have gone to school with me since kindergarten and you know
the kids I've hung out with. I'm gonna say something we all know and nobody
says out loud when teachers are listening. Sometimes we're freakin' brutal to
each other and the popular kids can be the worst."
I looked around a little nervously and noticed several of my classmates doing
the same.
"Every school in the world has popular kids," he said, "and I
guess I've been in that group for a long time. I like it. Man, who
wouldn't? But it's like--I mean, it's just a game. I don't know why it happened
to me. I'm just a regular guy. I'll never do brain surgery.
And my life hasn't exactly been normal. I can play a little ball, I
guess. But I got nothin' really special about me. It's just luck,
really. I didn't do anything to get to be standing up here. It's
all just luck.
"I think about things sometimes, like other people and their luck.
It's like the dice rolls and you end up where you end up. Not everybody
at this school got a rich or smart mom or dad. Not everybody even has a
mom and a dad.
"Not everybody in this school lives in
"Some of you aren't gonna ever be football heroes because you're skinny
and clumsy and can't bench press five pounds.
"And some of you aren't good-looking, which really sucks because you have
to be good-looking to be popular. We have some really talented ugly kids who
are great people. But when kids talk about them, do they talk about what great
people they are? No way, they talk about how ugly they are.
"And some of you don't talk much when you're around other kids because
you're scared they'll laugh at you, so you end up with no friends.
"And some of you don't do well in class so the teachers treat you like
dirt, and you feel too ashamed to talk to them about it and get help, and you
don't have a buddy like Andy to help you out the way he helps me out when I
feel too stupid to ask a teacher for help."
I blanched at this point and stared at the floor.
"And some of you--well, man, the bad luck fairy sat on your face and you
got it all. You're ugly,and you can't play sports, and you're poor, and your
daddy ran off, and you make bad grades, and the teachers think you're worthless
and you don't have any friends 'cause you're scared to talk to people. And you
wonder just which day of which year you're gonna reach for the bottle and take
all the pills because it sucks too much to go on."
There was a deadly quiet in the auditorium. Several of the teachers looked
visibly uncomfortable.
"The reason I want to be on student council is simple," he
said. "I want every freshman in this high school to feel like he
belongs. I want the popular kids and the student leaders to treat everybody
right. I think with the right leaders we can make it the popular thing to do.
And if you give me a chance to make that happen, I'll do all the stuff that
student council members are supposed to do. I'll help plan the fundraisers and
the socials and I'll come to the meetings and I'll participate in the service
projects. But the main thing I'm gonna do is do my best to see that we treat
each other right.
"I've had some tough things in my life. I know what it's like when it
sucks. I know what it's like when it hurts and you can't let anybody know. You
make me freshman president and I don't care who you are; if you come to me I'll
be your friend. I'll never put you down and I'll never talk trash about you.
"I'm not saying I'll hang out with you. But I'll listen. And I'll do anything
I can to help you figure out how to deal. If a teacher's not being fair to you,
we'll figure out what to do. If another kid's giving you shi-- ...uh, giving
you a hard time, I'll pound his face in; I mean, I'll
help you work it out with him. If you're a druggie and you're scared about
what's happening to you, we'll figure out something. If you live in a trailer
park and you're ashamed of your clothes, you don't have to be afraid to talk to
me. You'll never get nothin' but acceptance from me. I want to be your friend,
and I want to do what I can to make this high school a place where good stuff
happens to you, not a place to make your life suck.
"And I'll tell you something else"--and here he paused for effect as
if he been doing this kind of thing for years--"I don't want to be your
stinkin' football hero if it makes you think I'm better than you. I want you to
feel good and not just be jealous of what somebody else is. If you make me
class president I'll do everything I can to make that happen.
"That's all I have to say. Oh,and another
thing--my buddy Andy's on the same page with me on all this, so if you vote for
me, vote for him too.
"Okay, that's it; I'm done."And with that, he smiled nervously and
sat down.
The auditorium was dead silent.
I was stunned at how polished, how sincere--how powerful--his
presentation was.
But why drag me into it? That part irritated me. I didn't need Matt's charity.
Jacobsen was glaring at me, and Tricia stared at her hands as they rested in
her lap. Mrs. Sullivan, the Student Council sponsor, leaned over to me
and scowled, saying, quietly, "He can't say that!"
"I had no idea he was gonna say it," I protested. "I don't like
it either."
She started to say something else, but by then the room had begun to react. I
couldn't hear her over all the applause, whistles, and foot-stomping coming
from the audience.
Total chaos ruled for two minutes.
Mrs. Sullivan got her composure back, and stood up and quieted the crowd. After
everything had died down she invited Angie to speak.
I'll give Angie this: she hung in there like a trooper and gave a great speech.
The election was already over, really. The whole freshman class had just been
delivered into Matt's hands. But she spoke as if she didn't know any of that. Her
speech had charm, and congeniality, and wit. I felt my heart go out to her a
little. I wanted Matt to win, but I felt bad for Angie. So when she finished
her speech I started in with the applause, maybe a little too early and a
little too enthusiastically. The rest of the stage and the rest of the
auditorium followed suit, though, and applauded politely, though with reserve
and little passion.
The assembly came to an end and everybody shook hands. Matt came up to me
afterwards, slapped me on the back and said, "I know I shoulda got you to
help me, but do you think it wasn't too bad?" The playful glint in his eye
made me a little angry as I remembered the embarrassment of having him try to
pull me in on his coattails.
"I didn't need your fuckin' help, Matt."
"No, maybe you didn't," he said unapologetically. "But I need
yours, and I'll do what I can to make sure I get it."
I snarled at him--but who could stay pissed at Matt for any length of time?
I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Well, I guess we'll see. But
don't count your chickens. Even about you. Angie gave a great
speech too."
"I know," he said, smiling. "Wasn't she awesome?
She's got the brains, no doubt about that. And, damn, she's beautiful
too. Just your type, right?"
I punched him in the shoulder. "Just worry about your own love life."
"Why should I worry?" he deadpanned.
Matt won, of course, probably by the most lopsided margin in the school's
history. I got elected,too, by a margin that was not
as large as his, but wide enough to stroke my ego.
And from Day One in his role as freshman class president--and on through his
years as sophomore,junior, and senior class president--Matt somehow managed to
do exactly what he'd promised in that first campaign speech. His commitment to
accepting people became contagious, just like he said it would. People who
wanted to claim Matt as a friend learned quickly that they couldn't disrespect
others just for the fun of it. During the years that Matt and I and our group
of friends were in official and unofficial leadership positions, no kid in our
class ever had to fear that the popular kids would humiliate or insult him in
public.
Our football season that first year ended impressively, with a 9-1 season
record. We finished first in the district, which was more than could be said
for the Varsity team, which went 4-6. "They need me up there,
Phillips," Matt said to me more times than I cared to hear. But I
understood his enthusiasm. I shared it. We ate, slept, and breathed sports. It
was a channel for our aggressions, a metaphor expressing our vitality and love
of life, a source of self-identity.
We were set. By October Matt and I had carved out a niche for ourselves in
school, both on and off the playing field, a niche which was to function as our
base of operations all throughout high school. It was the solstice of the
Endless Summer in our lives, a time that, while I now understand it as cruelly
brief and ephemeral, seemed during those days as if it stretched out ahead of
us forever.
---------------------------
In April, baseball season was in full swing, and I was playing on the freshman
team. One Saturday afternoon I was at the batting cages working on my
swing. Just as the pitching machine fired one past me, I heard a familiar
voice.
"Eye on the ball, freshman!"
Cole's sensuous, resonant baritone startled me and caused me to miss the next
pitch too. I moved out of the line of fire and turned around to face him.
"'Sup, Cole?"
"Up to no good, like always. You gonna tear it up in baseball bad
as y'all tore it up in football?"
I put down my bat and came out of the cage. "Shit, man, I don't know, but
I'm givin' it my best swing."
"Your mom said I'd find you here," he continued.
"Why were you looking for me?"
"A bunch of us are going down to the beach next weekend," he
answered, "and we wanted you and Price and Ruben to come with us. Y'all
were awesome last fall and we thought that was worth an invite into our little
group."
My eyes widened. "What group is that?"
"Well, it's kind of a tradition," he said. "The top
offensive players on the team, we have this little crew we call the Jock Posse.
It's no big deal but it's kinda fun. You know the guys
I hang out with? Well, that's the Jock Posse. The team captain chooses who gets
into the Posse at the end of the season. That's Jeff Blizzard this year, of
course. See, it's supposed to make the offense play harder during the season. Because if somebody's lookin' better than you in the next year,
they'll get in and you're out.
"Anyway, you get to be really close with the other guys in the group. And
Coach really relies on us for leadership, especially with the new players. It's
kind of a little leadership core. It makes the whole team better, really."
"Didn't work this year, did it?" I grinned.
"Look, smartass," he snarled, "Varsity football's a big step up
from the freshman team; you'll see. We had too many underclassmen havin'
to play this year. Next year we'll be better--and you'll be ridin' the
bench."
"Hey, I was just messin' withya," I said.
"Well, you better show some respect," he said. "No
freshmen have ever been invited into the Jock Posse before; y'all are the
first."
"No shit!"
He clapped me on the shoulder and smiled. "Nope, no shit. Anyway,
here's the drill. We provide leadership for the team, on and off the field. And
we have a lot of fun. And when the weather gets warm, we do trips to the beach.
You know, party a little, play some beach football,
bring some stuff to get a little happy, and cruise the ladies."
I started packing up my gear. "What beach?"
He shrugged. "
I sat down on the stands that faced the cages. "The others aren't that
close either. How many guys go?"
Cole grabbed a spot next to me and sat. "I don't know,
we usually take between 6 and 12 of us whenever we go. There's
four Posse members out of each class. Well, except for freshman, of course. You
guys don't get in. Until this year."
My mind began to wander a little. He was sitting close, and his words began to
take a back seat to the impact of his physical presence in my space. Cole's
wardrobe was almost as well known as he was, and today he was sporting a
perfectly coordinated Tommy ensemble. The day was warm, and the clean but
compelling scent of his skin, combined with his trademark cologne, was
distracting me.
Gradually the import of what he'd said registered with me. "Awesome. And
so now you're gonna start letting freshmen in?"
"This is a one-shot deal, bro. Just you three. No
promises about next year."
"Dude. I love the beach," I said. "And you know I like
hanging with you and your friends."
He raised an eyebrow and, throwing me a wicked grin, said, "Yeah, it has
some advantages, doesn't it?" I knew he was talking about his
birthday present to me.
"So tell me some more," I said. "Like, how much does it cost and
what about food and gasoline and shit? And how long do you stay?"
He climbed off the stands, picked up my bat, and started swinging, sending
imaginary home-run balls into imaginary stands. "Usually everybody
gets packed up by Thursday night," he said. "That way we can
leave Friday right after school. We take a couple of cars, whoever has the
biggest ones. We split the gasoline bill. We make up a food list and
everybody has to bring something. We eat out once or twice, do fast food
sometimes, and cook out on the beach. Most of the time we stay all Saturday
and leave for home around
I took the bat and set it next to me. "How often do you go?"
"Most years we start on Spring Break," he said. "We're
just getting a late start this year. Then we go, like, once a month till
school's out, and once a month all summer, or maybe sometimes twice a
month."
"Where do you stay?"
"Usually right on the beach," he said, scooting closer to me
again. "There's public camping down there in spots, and we always
have a couple of vans or minivans, or big cars. We set up tents. Some people
sleep in the tents, some people sleep in the cars."
"Awesome," I said. "Do y'all ever bring girls?"
He laughed. "Shit, Phillips, you are the horniest freshman I ever
met." I felt myself blush a little as he went on.
"Sometimes girls come down. But that gets hard to pull off for a
whole weekend. Parents check around. So lotta times it's just the
guys."
"This damn city's too small," I said, shaking my head at the thought
of parents checking with each other and interfering with our sex lives.
"You got that right," Cole said, wistfully. "But it's okay
because there's always girls on the beach. There's places to meet 'em and spend time. Sometimes we
sneak into the pools at some of the condos. There's always
girls there. And kids from Port Aransas just hang out on the beach.
Those girls are wild too," he grinned.
"Anyway," he continued, "we're going next weekend for the first
time this year, and we voted to ask you three guys along in honor of your
kick-ass freshman season. So are y'all in?"
"Man, I don't know," I said. "It sounds awesome. But how does
everybody get permission to go? I mean, with no adults and everything?"
"Somebody always has an older brother or cousin in college or
something," he replied. "They come along to chaperone. A lot of
the parents know about this tradition. It's gone on for years and nobody's
gotten hurt or gotten into any kind of trouble. We don't let anybody go crazy
or get arrested or shit like that, otherwise that would be the end of the whole
thing anyway. But seems like there's always one or two whose parents won't let
'em. If they made the cut then sometimes just so they can go we'll get their
parents to chaperone once in awhile."
I considered that for a minute and asked, "What adult-type is going along
this time?"
Cole smiled. "My brother."
"Oh, brother," I said, rolling my eyes.
Cole cracked up. "Always the funny man, Phillips.
But Brad's got all the grownups fooled with 'what a fine young man' he
is," Cole said, imitating some clueless parent. "Really, dude, my
bro's
"Fuck you, dickhead." I hated being called a little kid, but I was
proud that Cole thought I looked good enough to catch the attention of the
girls.
He laughed, reached over, and ruffled my hair with his hand. "Hey, I only
speak the truth." Then, after a pause, he asked, "So what do ya say?
Will you boys be the first freshmen in history to join the Jock Posse?"
"Shit, yeah, I'm in," I said with enthusiasm, "I mean, I am if I can convince my parents. What about Matt and
Ruben?"
"That's Blizzard's job," he told me. "He's calling both of
them, 'cause Ruben's Varsity Bro isn't in the Jock Posse. Anyway, call me
tomorrow and let me know for sure."
I nodded. "Okay. I know I can work it out at home. Thanks, man."
"No hay de que, Little Bro," he said, smiling. "Y'all
earned it."
We shook and high-fived. Cole left and I picked up my stuff and started walking
home. I didn't much feel the sidewalk, though, because I was on Cloud Nine.
It didn't take much talking to convince my parents. My dad had already
heard of the Jock Posse. It had a good reputation with the parents who knew
anything about it. I'm sure some of them must have known that with a group of a
dozen jocks, there was a darker side to the camaraderie too. But apparently the
guys who'd come before us had kept their noses reasonably clean.
I called Cole the next night and told him I was a go.
"Excellent, Little Bro," he said. "Your bud can't go,
though."
I frowned. "Matt declined?"
"Just the weekend, not the membership. He already promised his mom he'd
help her do some spring cleaning and landscaping all weekend."
I was disappointed. Still, this wasn't the last time we'd be doing this.
"Oh, and something else," he added. "Ruben's
going."
"Yeah?" I didn't understand his point.
"Well," he said, "did you know his folks have a condo on
Mustang?"
"Shit, no!"
"Shit, yeah," he shot back." And he talked to them and they said
if we give 'em a little notice, we can stay at the condo if his older brother
Manny comes. Does that not kick ass?"
I was impressed. "That rocks! Do you think we can snag it the next time we
go?"
"We're gonna try, bro," he told me. "Man. Think of
it...the Jock Posse goes upscale!"
We finished our conversation; I hung up with a little sigh. Being on the
Gulf coastline was a mind-altering experience for me; I
couldn't really put it into words, but I was thrilled at the thought of getting
to go there a lot with my buds. My memory took me back to that night on
the beach with Staci, and I winced a little. That area was still a little raw
and tender. I thought about the moon shining on the waves at night, the
sun and the surf and the clear blue sky during the day. I thought about the
feel, the smell, the way it transformed my entire consciousness.
And, to my dismay, I thought about the way Cole would look bare-chested,
wearing a pair of board shorts.
13.
Golden Days
I
skipped most of school Friday. I'd gone to math class first period, because I
told my parents we'd be leaving after I got home from school. I hadn't told
them we wanted to make sure we made it to the beach in time to soak up a little
sun the first day. I figured that since I went to school for an hour,
technically I hadn't lied to anybody. And anyway, it was an hour more than the
rest of the Posse put in.
We'd be on the road seven and a half hours, so Cole had told me he'd be by at
nine. When I got home, I ran upstairs to grab my already-packed gear: Clothes,
stuff for shaving and showering, a couple of condoms for good luck. As I was
making my way down the stairs, I heard someone practically leaning on the
doorbell. Shit, I thought; he must be in some fuckin' hurry to get moving.
I opened the door and found myself face to face not with my Varsity Bro, but
with Brad, his older brother. He grinned, and reached for my hand.
"Damn...look at your ugly face. The Jock Posse's takin' in spares these
days."
"Spare chaperones, too," I shot back, grabbing his outstretched hand
and laying some skin on him. "Thanks for coming along."
"Haul your shit into the back of the van," he said. "I lost the
coin toss with Cole so I'm drivin' down. You can ride shotgun with me and we can
get to know each other better."
I was pleased at the thought of that. I'd never talked to many college guys.
Brad looked a lot like Cole, only a little older and little more muscular, and
his hair was dirty blonde like mine, instead of Cole's deep black.
Cole was stretched out in the back seat. I took the shotgun
position. Brad climbed in behind the wheel and we began the drive south.
As the miles went by, the conversation between us was smooth and easy. We
talked about the freshman football team's season. We talked about Cole being my
Varsity Bro. We talked about Brad's years playing high school football. We
talked about what he was doing in college. We talked about his girlfriend. We
talked about a few of the girls I'd dated that year. And we talked about my
birthday party. Cole had given him a play-by-play breakdown, right down to the
part about me leaving the used condom in the back of his van. From the first
mile to the last, the conversation never lagged. Now and then Cole would speak
up from the back seat, but he was mostly in his own little world with his
headphones and his GameBoy.
Talking to Brad was as easy as talking to his brother; warmth and a wicked good
humor came off both of them in waves. And I felt cool beyond words to be
getting serious attention from a real grown-up college guy.
We got to
Jeff Blizzard, our varsity quarterback, gathered us together and started going
over a few basics for the weekend. Nobody swims alone; nobody leaves the
general campsite area without letting somebody else know; nobody drives
anywhere drunk; everybody signs up to take a shift at meal prep times; nobody
does any substance stronger than weed. I raised an eyebrow at that one--did
somebody actually have that illegal shit along? We tossed coins to determine
who got to sleep in the tents and who was sleeping in the back of the vans. The
latter was actually preferable, if you left the doors open; sleeping in a tent
at the beach is a gritty proposition.
Brad and I both won our tosses, so we'd be sharing a mattress in the back of
Cole's van. When the arrangement fell that way, I wasn't sure if I'd won or
lost. The thought of sleeping next to that good-looking
college man unnerved me a little.
After Jeff finished covering the items on his list, I changed into some
beachwear and walked down to the surf.
I was feeling fine; the day was perfect. The late-afternoon sun gave a bronze
cast to the scenery.
Walking in to ankle-depth, I stopped and stood, facing the Gulf and staring out
across the waves toward forever.
Transfixed, I closed my eyes for a few moments, listening to the waves crash against the shore.
I flashed back to the night with Staci the previous summer and felt, distantly,
a stab of loss. So much had happened to me in a year's time. But this place was
still, and always, the same. Relentless. Overpowering. Sensual. I thought
back on the night that I put aside the innocence of my boyhood and entered a
girl's body for the first time. Mine was not the only conquest in the sand that
night; I'd been entered and claimed myself by this incredible place.
There was a difference, though; my passion for Staci was mixed in with my deep
feelings for her. But this place...its depths contained a whole world of life
that knew nothing of me, and it cared nothing for my little ecstasies and
confusions. It had been here for ages, and would be here when I was dust.
I liked that a whole lot.
But it was here for me now, at any rate, to flood my senses with its primordial
seductions, to overwhelm and capture me and take me for itself.
I shook off my reverie. Mindful of the agreement we'd made not to swim alone, I
walked back to the group and got Ruben and a senior, Danny Prescott, to come
out into the deep with me. Out there in the waves, with my buds next to me, the
ocean called to depths in me that I hardly knew existed.
We swam out until the water was several feet over our heads, then let the waves
bring us in a few dozen yards. Over and over we repeated the process, moving
closer to the shore with each cycle.
The turbulence pulled us away from each other, bit by bit. The energy of the
waves toward the shore was dampened a little by a crosscurrent carrying us
eastward. Danny and Ruben fought the push and counteracted it with some steady
westward exertion of their own. I'd been deep in my own thoughts and feelings
and hadn't noticed my drift.
They ended up on shore about where we'd first waded in, but the east-pushing
current had carried me off by myself. I hit the shore hundreds of feet to the
east and had to walk a pretty good distance to join up with everyone else. When
I got back to our campsite, Jeff laid into me a little about swimming alone. I
hadn't really meant to; I'd just gone where the current had taken me. I told
him I'd be more careful next time.
We swam a lot that afternoon and evening. Some of the guys rented boards and
tried to surf, never an easy proposition on the
After we'd had enough water, we played football for a while. Then someone
suggested an impromptu wrestling tournament. Jeff drew some boundaries in the
sand and sketched out a "tournament schedule," and we went at it.
I did all right for a freshman, and ended up beating my classmate Ruben and a
couple of upper classmen. Eventually the schedule determined I would have to
wrestle Cole in order to advance.
The two of us took our places on the "mat" and got ready. Just before
the word "go," Cole looked at me, threw me a mock glare, and said,
"You know you're goin' down this time, don'tcha?"
I glared back at him. "Don't be talkin' it before you be walkin' it,
bro." But I couldn't keep my game face on; I broke out laughing.
Cole knew what he was talking about. He wasn't a huge guy, but damn, he was
strong. Fairly quickly he got me pinned. I probably could have broken the hold,
but as he began tightening it up, my face ended up under his left arm, just
below his shoulder.
Dazed by this close-up view of his armpit, I couldn't keep my head in the game.
The sparse dusting of hair there, its jet-black set off against Cole's pale
skin, distracted me. Recovering a little, I began struggling to break free, and
in response he tightened his hold. The adjustments left my nose pressed into
his armpit.
Instinctively, I inhaled deeply. Sweaty; but something under
that. Powerful and compelling. I didn't know
anything about pheromones back then, but I did know that it made me think about
tightly chiseled abs and muscular thighs.
And sex.
I also knew that, for a few eternal seconds, I was effectively paralyzed.
The distracted part of my brain was thinking, "Yeah, this is okay; I just
want to lie here like this."
The engaged part of my brain was aware of potential trouble, and on a couple of
fronts. That snapped me back into awareness.
I realized I was done for, so I tapped out, and Cole released his hold. But not
before he scowled at me and said, "Jesus, Phillips, you just rolled over
and let me have it. I was expecting more from you."
"No way." I stood up and dusted off, hoping
that I looked nothing like I felt. "You're just too much man for me,
bro," I deadpanned. Then, to add the finishing touch to the diversion, I
flashed him a big grin. Always kidding, right?
Cole laughed, pushed me out of the ring, and went on to his next opponent.
I wasn't happy over what had just gone down. What had just gone down,
anyway?
For the next few hours, the experience of having my face buried in Cole's
armpit played back over and over in my head. I didn't like it, mainly because I
did. You haven't been gettin' enough lately, I tried to reason
with myself. It's making me horny over random, weird shit.
Yeah. That's it.
Thinking about it in those terms settled me down some. There was a voice inside
struggling to talk back to that assessment, but I pushed it out of my awareness
and resolved to find me a new girlfriend when I got back home.
Cole ended up winning the tournament. He got lucky and pinned Jeff, the
presumptive favorite, to take the championship. Jeff recognized the
accomplishment by pouring a bottle of warm Gatorade in Cole's face while Danny
and Eric Wesson held him down.
I was relieved when evening fell. I'd been walking around with some half-assed
sense that everybody was looking at me because of how I'd reacted to Cole in
the wrestling match. I knew it wasn't true, but what I knew and what I felt
weren't interested in talking with each other. Watching the sun set, though,
allowed me to relax. We started a campfire and the "kitchen crew"
grilled some burgers and hot dogs. Brad pulled an ice chest out of the van and
set it down. It was full of beer and sodas. "You boys better handle your
suds, now, or I won't be lettin' y'all do this anymore."
Everybody cheered and started passing around the bottles. Soon the food was
ready. I had a couple of beers with my burgers and got a little buzzed.
We were all sitting around the campfire, enjoying the evening. As the stars
came out, Jeff went to his pickup and put an old Bob Marley CD on its stereo
system, and came back with a bong and bag of marijuana. Several
of the older guys laughed and high-fived. Jeff looked over at me and
Ruben and said, in a terrible attempt at a Jamaican accent, "Okay,
freshmen, time to feel de power of de weed, mon."
I'd never smoked marijuana before and I didn't know that I liked the idea of
blazing up out here in public. The beach wasn't too crowded, but just down the
way there was another group of teenagers hanging out. What if it was some
church group and they were downwind of our smoke? I looked over nervously at
Ruben. He looked back at me, shrugged, and mumbled, "What the fuck, let's
just do it."
So we watched everybody else and copied, taking our own hits on the bong.
For all my misgivings, the night began to feel smooth like glass, and given my
earlier state of mind, that was a good thing. I was already drunk, and now
superimposed on that, I got slowly baked. As I did, the uneasiness of the
previous couple of hours literally went up in smoke.
Some time later in the evening, a blonde and a brunette from the other group of
kids came over to us, introduced themselves as Suzanne and Alison, and asked if
we wanted to party with them. Their bikinis were so skimpy they might as well
have been naked, and all of a sudden twelve hard-ons were paying rapt
attention.
Jeff, as usual, spoke for all of us, lowballing the encounter at first:
"I don't know, Suzanne, what's y'all's deal?"
"No deal, guys," the blonde answered. "We're just townies from
Port A up the road. Drinking and smoking a little, playing
some music. Kickin' it at the beach. Y'all look
like jocks. Are you jocks?"
Jeff smiled. "Ladies, you are looking at the best of the best. We are
jocks. Football players. And in fact we are the
baddest, most extreme group of jocks on our team."
"Awesome. Where are y'all from?"
Cole had strolled up to get a piece of this little encounter, and answered for
Jeff. "
"Cool, we love Dallas Basically. And we love football players. Come party
with us."
Jeff frowned. "Yeah, your dudes will love that, if twelve boys show up and
start flirting with the local girls."
Suzanne said, "There are more girls than boys in our group; it'll be
fine."
By now the entire Posse had bunched up around Jeff. "Shit, yeah, let's go," was the prevailing sentiment.
Jeff turned back to Suzanne and Alison. "All right, girls, we're in."
So we all walked over to their campfire and the Jock Posse started zeroing in
on unattached females.
I think it's safe to say that our first night at the beach was a success. How
much closer to perfection can a teenage boy get than a little sport, a little
booze, a little smoke, and a little action? There was a cute blonde there named
Lori who didn't mind me being stoned and stupid; we walked off together toward
the dunes and spent some time talking and making out a little, but it was clear
that between my wasted head and Lori's amusement at it, I wasn't getting much
beyond some French kissing and a handful of tit. I saw a couple of our guys go
off into the dunes with blankets, so it looked like some of them had a little
better luck than I did. No matter. I was mellow and happy and horny all at the
same time.
Eventually Lori and I came back to the campfire and sat around for a while,
listening to one of their guys play the guitar and sing. He did a cover of
Seal's "Kiss From a Rose," and as I sat
there listening to him, I thought about the couple of times I'd listened to
Matt play during the previous months. Man, I wish he could be here to hear
this, I said to myself.
Around
"I don't want what you got anyway," I shot back, not-watching with
determined disinterest as Brad stripped out of his board shorts down to buck
naked. I was resolutely apathetic about the fact that his dick was as big as
his younger brother's. I also found it absolutely not worth noticing that my
dick was starting to get hard.
He put on a pair of boxers. I concentrated on cock-wilting thoughts and stepped
out of my wet board shorts and into a pair of boxers. He climbed into the van
and I stepped in a minute later. We left the back doors and the windows open;
there was a decent breeze and the mattress wasn't too crowded, all things
considered.
I thought about my previous experience in the back of Cole's van as I stretched
out, and I thought about the college guy lying next to me.
Brad said, "Damn, I'm tired. 'Night, Andy."
"Me, too," I said, yawning. "'Night,
Brad."
I lay awake for a long time, though. Brad had fallen asleep in record
time. As I listened to his steady breathing and watched his chest rise
and fall, the moon shone down on his sleeping form, and I wondered about
half-understood things I'd never have admitted to anyone.
---------------------
The rest of the weekend held more of the same for the Jock Posse. We cooked and
ate, smoked and drank. Swam. Surfed.
Played football. Tried to pick
up local girls.
Jock heaven, Cole called it.
Better yet, I could feel the group pulling me and Ruben into a brotherhood that
would shape my experience of life for the remainder of high school.
I was sad when it was time to pack up and go home, but I reminded myself that
we'd be doing more of this.
And the next time Matt would be able to come.
When I got home Sunday evening, I went over to his house. He was shooting hoops
in his driveway. I shot a few with him and then we sat on the lush grass of his
back lawn, talking and laughing, as I gave him the play-by-play of our trip. As
I talked about the hookups and near-hookups with local girls, Matt grimaced and
said, "Damn. All I did all weekend was clean out and rearrange the fuckin'
attic and wash all the windows."
"Dude, you gotta go next time," I said. "I wish you'd been
there. It wasn't the same without you."
He looked up at me, a question forming in his eyes and directing itself toward me. I felt my face flush, and added, "I
mean, you...I...you know what I mean; we needed more freshmen to
represent."
His expression held, and my uneasiness grew.
Finally he spoke. Slowly. "Oh. I
thought you..."
There was a long pause.
"Yeah, I'll be there next time. You know I'd have gone if I hadn't
promised Mom about the attic."
I nodded, mumbled a goodbye, and jogged home. White noise filled my brain,
blocking sights and sounds and thoughts. When I got inside I took the stairs
two at a time, shut my room door behind me, and immediately called Claire
Billings, a girl I'd been flirting with for a while. Pretty soon colors and
contours began to assert themselves again, and I was enjoying laughing and
kidding around with her. I asked her out on a movie date for the next weekend
and she accepted. It got late, so we hung up and chatted with each other on IM
for a while. I went to bed and slept and slept, untroubled.
---------------------
The rest of the year went by quickly. The freshman baseball team had a winning
season but not a stellar one. On my soccer team we'd gotten a hotshot new
forward, so I was able to go back to center midfield. We won first place in the
Classic League's spring season, and I was beginning to get some city-wide
notice as a reasonably talented midfielder. When school let out in May I got a
fast-food job. Between that and the ongoing lawn-care commitments Matt and I
had, my summer income looked like it would be okay. Life was good.
In June I took a Driver's Ed course and the day after my sixteenth birthday I
got my driver's license. My parents had told me years before that if I'd put
two grand in savings and leave it there, they'd spring for half of a car when I
turned sixteen and cover the additional insurance. I'd have to pay for the
other half, and I'd have to buy my own gas. So the next week my dad and I went
out and we bought me a 3-year-old silver Honda Civic. It wasn't exactly a
Porsche, but as far as I was concerned it might as well have been. I dated a
lot of girls the coming year and scored with a good number of those, but my car
was my only real love that year.
We went to the beach five times that summer, and for the rest of the summer we
got to do it in style: Ruben's parents came through and let us stay at their
condo. Matt made the rest of those trips with us. Sometimes the girls we hung
out with back home would manage to get a group to go along in separate
vehicles; sometimes we'd just try our luck with some of the local girls on the
beach. But regardless of who came along and what sort of good times I had in
their company, the beach always sang its strange and seductive song to
me. And with each visit I responded with awe, and ecstasy, and love.
---------------------
Summer faded and gave way to our next year of high school. Matt and I moved up
from the freshman teams to the Varsity teams. Boiled down, this basically meant
that Matt and I rode the bench. A lot. In
every sport we played, there was good depth in the upperclassmen, so we didn't
get near as much playing time as we were used to.
I don't think Matt had ever had to play backup quarterback in his life. It was
a year where we had to sit and watch a lot, and that ratcheted up our
restlessness. We went 6-4, and of course Matt was convinced we'd have been 8-2
if they'd have let him start.
He and I got a lot accomplished, in school and personally. I'd gotten bored
with Student Council and wasn't particularly interested in running for
sophomore representative. Matt was pretty much okay with that; he'd managed to
make his mark on school leadership and didn't need me as his wing man quite as
much. He went to a national student council convention in New Orleans over
Christmas break. When he came back, inspired by one of the convention
workshops, he laid the groundwork for establishing a school mediation team that
helped students who were having problems with teachers or other students.
I was sick of my dad cramming Great Books down my throat. Just to spread the
misery around more than anything else, I went to Mrs. Maynard, my sophomore
English teacher, and asked her if I could charter a student Great Books club
that met once a month to shoot the breeze about Dead White Authors. She was
pretty enthusiastic, and pretty impressed; what she didn't realize was that it
was a move of desperation. I mean, come on--misery loves company. And,
surprisingly enough, I got about twenty kids involved. A fair number were the
theater freaks who always considered themselves intellectuals anyway; then
there were the overachievers who figured it would look good on college
applications; then there were a few who just wanted to say they hung out with
me. Matt was right; if you were popular among your peers, you could tell them
to roll in the mud and make noises like a pig and they'd do it, if you were
there with them.
He ought to know, I reasoned. He was arguably the most popular guy in the whole
high school, and he was only a sophomore.
Matt never abused his popularity, though. It was incredible. He wasn't some
arrogant jock who made fun of all the lesser beings. And he wasn't some
ass-kissing politician who sucked up to people just so he could have their
vote. He genuinely liked people, and could always see something in every person
that was worth appreciating. He made good on his old campaign promise to reach
out to kids at the margins, and to everybody else, and as a result, most of the
student body literally adored him. I was proud to be his best friend.
It was also kind of infuriating. Being in the presence of that much constant
kindness bugged me a little. Matt never seemed to get pissed at anybody, never
got impatient with anyone, never got annoyed by the
losers and geeks who always circulated just outside our perimeter, waiting for
a brief moment of benediction from us. In my own mind, I didn't come off well
by comparison; I had a little bit of a temper, and on occasion I lost patience
with people. The competitor in me didn't like it that Matt had me bested in the
"people" department. From time to time I'd let my irritation loose on
him with a roll of the eyes or an unkind crack. That never seemed to faze him,
though. He knew me. And I'm sure he knew damn well that I struggled to be as
generous of spirit as he was. He never gave me too much shit about it when on
occasion I lost it and launched into someone for no good purpose.
At noon one Monday in September I walked into the lunchroom to eat. I scanned
the hall and saw a high school cliché unfolding, like something you'd see on
those old John Hughes flicks.
Matt was at the far end of the lunchroom. Seated at the table next to where he
was standing were several of the other guys we hung with, athletes all of them.
They were already seriously into lunch and were more or less oblivious to the
drama being played out right next to them.
Matt was leaning into the physical space of Aaron Spencer. Standing a few steps
back, in clear distress, was a nerdy-looking little freshman named Mark
Tollefson.
Aaron was a first-class asshole, a thief and thug who got his enjoyment in life
out of terrorizing younger and smaller kids. He'd been shaking down Mark for
his lunch money since school had started, and the week before, Matt had gotten
wind of it.
The three of them hadn't attracted a whole lot of attention, and I was still
too far away to hear what was being said, but it wasn't hard to pick up the
essentials of the transaction.
Aaron's typical tough-guy bearing was in full play, but as I made my way to the
jock's tables, I saw a remarkable transformation.
The closer I got, the more Aaron's body language made him look smaller. About
the time I reached Matt's table, Aaron backed completely away from Matt, turned
around, and began slinking off to another section of the lunchroom. As I sat
down, Matt traded daps with Mark and said, "It's all good, bro. Aaron's
decided you prolly ought to keep your money. And dude, I got your back, so
don't worry about him." Mark mumbled out a "Thanks, Matt," and
started to walk away, but Matt said, "Hey, I save your lunch money and
you're not even gonna eat with me?"
Mark looked in disbelief at Matt, then at the rest of the jocks dominating the
area. "You want me to eat with y'all?"
"Sure, why not?" came the reply, as if it were the most natural
scenario in the world. "You can meet my crew and hang with us at lunch;
it's cool. And not just today; any time. Okay?"
I watched the kid's eyes light up with hero-worship, and smiled to myself. Damn;
he's doing it again. Matt introduced Mark to the guys, and following Matt's
lead, they treated Mark just fine. For the rest of the year, he showed up once
a month or so at the jocks' tables in the lunchroom. He got to be friends with
most of the athletes; we all ended up taking Mark under our collective wing.
With our encouragement, he got on as a team manager for the varsity football,
basketball, and baseball teams. All of which, of course, increased his cred
with his friends.
And all because Matt didn't want to see a nerdy, skinny kid made miserable by a
two-bit thug.
That kind of stuff came as naturally to Matt as throwing a football. If he had
a dark side to him, I had yet to discover it.
The months rolled. That year for Christmas I got an electronic keyboard, which
made my music reasonably portable for the first time; so in the following
months Matt and I began jamming together every once in a while. Matt had some
pretty decent guitar licks down, and while I'd never done much pop stuff in
piano lessons, having an electronic keyboard gave me a chance to play around
with some different kinds of sounds and different styles of playing. We never
spent a lot of time with it, but occasionally if I spent a night over at his
place or he spent one over at mine, we'd do some musical stuff together.
He'd gotten brave during that year and started singing a few tunes along with
his playing. I was stunned to discover what an incredible singing voice he had.
It was rich and masculine, but not particularly low. Matt's speaking voice was
a solid baritone, but he had an incredible upper register singing, and probably
sounded most in his element in the lower tenor range.
I asked him once what made him try singing.
"Pussy," he said, smiling. "Makes the ladies
all wet and ready."
I understood why it worked. Any edge you could come up with to get them just a
little starry-eyed and off-balance emotionally. And it struck me more than once
as I listened to him sing, touched in some hidden place I didn't know how to
acknowledge, that in that state I'd do anything he asked of me, however
unreasonable, immoral, or foolish. When it occurred to me to wonder about that,
I told myself I was proud of his growing musical talent and touched that my
best friend, who struggled with academics, really had some aptitude in music.
Sophomore year played itself out and segued into the summer seamlessly. The
Posse beach trips started up again in late March.
Cole and Jeff graduated that spring. Cole was headed off to the University of
Texas to study architecture, and Jeff got a football scholarship to a Division
2 school in the Midwest. We spent our final months together hanging out with
them on and off all through the summer, on the playing fields and in the gym,
at the beach, in their homes. And Matt and I spent a fair amount of time
listening to them tell us how to take their places as team leaders after they'd
graduated.
It struck me how much I was going to miss Cole. He'd taken me in and shown me
the ropes. I didn't like thinking about being in school without having him
around. It was the first chill wind of reality that injected itself into the
sunshine of my teenage years, and unlike Matt, until then I'd only had relatively
minor encounters with loss and impermanence. The days where I'd been haunted by
the vision of Matt's brother being murdered were long past. Life lately had
been one perfect wave after another, one sunny day followed by the next. There
was the occasional subterranean murmur from some odd current in my sexuality,
but I was effective in shouting that down. And I was so busy soaking up the
rays of youth, doing my high school thing, that it had never particularly
registered that time goes by and that boyhood friends eventually go their
separate ways. As I spent that summer hanging with the seniors and finding my
own ways of getting closure with them, I glimpsed in those long goodbyes the
end of my own high school road, and the magnitude of
my impending loss began to weigh in for the first time.
Not that those thoughts ever occupied much attention; there were still miles to
go before then. That fall Matt and I became upperclassmen. At his request, I
ran for student council representative again, and got elected. Just as Jeff had
been, Matt got picked as starting quarterback his junior year, since there
wasn't a senior competitive for the spot. Each of us was given a new freshman
for whom we were to be Varsity Bros. I got a slightly geeky wide receiver named
Jackson Parsons. Matt mentored the freshman quarterback, Brad Dennison. Life
was smooth and easy and good, even though fall football season could have been
better. We went 4-6. Matt played well; he and I still had the old magic on the
field, and the rest of the receiving core was capable. But our lines, offensive
and defensive, just weren't big enough; we couldn't stop anyone. As a result,
Matt got intimately acquainted with turf. Still, it was football, and as far as
I was concerned, win or lose, sport was a thing of beauty.
We stayed up with our studies; did our bit for school pride; made nice with the
student body; hung with our boys. And there were always plenty of girls willing
to pay us some attention. I made a game of seeing how quickly I could score with
girls I'd dated. I had a couple of steady girlfriends, but mostly I was
enjoying the variety.
And that spring brought with it the return of the Jock Posse beach trips.
I smoked a good bit of weed and drank my share of beer on those trips, but no drug
could match the combination of sea, salt air, and beautiful bodies that
surrounded me. Occasionally in my stoned shoreline reveries, I could almost
hear the sea whisper promises to me about my life. Promises of endless
summer days and nights; promises of perfect waves and smooth sailing;
promises that if I gave life everything I had, in return life would support me,
lift me high, give me a ride to remember and a golden sun to wrap me in its
warmth.
Concerning rip tides, undertows, and crosscurrents, the sea was mute. And
hearing only the call to ride the wave full-throttle, I was clueless about the
treachery hiding in that silence.
So I rode the wave. Full-throttle.
---------------------
A few weeks before finals time in early May, I was feeling a little uptight. I
hadn't been as diligent studying in the spring as I should have been. Even
though we were finishing out our junior year, I had a premature case of
senioritis, and I was dreading exams this year.
Matt and I were up in my room studying one afternoon. I was at my desk and Matt
was sitting on my bed. I was wrestling with some Pre-Cal. Pre-Cal was winning.
Exasperated, I broke my pencil in half, threw it against the wall, and growled,
"Goddammit."
Matt looked up from his book and said, "Jesus, Phillips, don't have a
fuckin' stroke."
"This is driving me batshit," I said.
"You need to chill," he smiled. "Wanna hit the bong?" He'd
inherited Jeff Blizzard's bong before Jeff graduated, and we'd used it on
occasion.
"Yeah, right," I scowled. "That'll just make it worse, moron. I
gotta get this shit down."
"Well, you're not gonna get anything done all stressed out," he said.
"Anyway, I know what your real problem is, and it's not finals."
"What?"
"You're not gettin' any."
I was in between girlfriends, and hadn't been on a date in about six weeks. I'd
been out with a lot of girls, and I decided I needed a break from the emotional
roller-coaster-ride that girls always seemed to be on.
"I don't need the freakin' distraction right now," I muttered.
"Seems like you're pretty distracted already," he said. "And
anyway, you're growing hair on your palms."
"Such a funny man," I said. I picked up a racquetball lying on my
desk and threw it at him, pegging him on the shoulder. It was one of my favorite
moves with Danny, my little brother, and I'd gotten to be a pretty accurate
shot. He fell back, miming a gunshot victim, and lay on his back on my bed.
"No, really, dude," he said, staring at the ceiling, "You're
turning into a fuckin' hermit." He stood up, walked over to the other
chair in the room, and sat down on it. "Why don't you ask somebody
out?"
"Who? Some o' your sloppy seconds?"
"Naw, man, I keep telling you, bro, you need to ask out Angie.
Y'all are fuckin' made for each other."
The thought intrigued me. Angie was a cheerleader, but she was brilliant. Blond hair and blue eyes that flashed fire. Always said what
was on her mind. Passionate but
always sensible. And she wasn't afraid to try anything.
I liked her. But she'd always been a little standoffish toward me, and I'd been
used to long periods of not having to work that hard.
Still...that might make things more interesting.
I reached down below my desk and grabbed the phone book. "I'll bet she
needs a study break."
"I'll be she could teach you a thing or two about Pre-Cal," he
cracked.
"Fuck that," I replied, dialing her number. "I'm talking a study
break, and I'm fuckin' gettin' her in radar lock."
"Awright then," Matt said. He got up and high-fived me, then went back to his history notes.
I waited, listening to her phone ringing, and I decided I'd make hooking up
with Angie my special project for the remainder for May. I made a commitment to
myself that I'd seal the deal by the end of the month.
I had no clue that pre-Cal was going to be easy by comparison.
14.
Falling
Up
until the moment she picked up the phone, I wasn't sure whether I was going
through with it or not.
I was nervous. Me. Nervous about calling a girl.
So nervous I decided to use Pre-Cal as an excuse, in spite of what I'd said to
Matt. I couldn't believe the butterflies in my stomach. Ridiculous.
Angie ran with the crowd I ran with. She was probably the only girl in that
group I hadn't ever dated. Not because of her looks, though; she was every bit
as beautiful as any of the girls I'd been with.
I'd known her since third grade, but for many years, from my perspective, she
was just the "smart girl" in my classes. The first time I'd ever
really opened up my eyes and seen her was during that Student Council assembly
our freshman year, where Matt stole the show. It was clear to everybody that
the election was over before anybody cast a vote, and that she didn't have a
chance to get elected. But when her turn came to speak, she hung in there
like a trooper. Her delivery was smart and even funny, and I thought she
sparkled.
Come to think of it, that was the very day that Matt started bugging me about
asking her out.
So why hadn't I asked her out?
It was simple. Looking at her made me weak in the knees. It wasn't just sex
drive; the total package unnerved me. I loved watching her in class. I
loved listening to her answer questions. I loved the way she put everything she
had into those stupid cheers. I loved the way she spoke her mind, the way she
always made it clear that while she genuinely liked everybody, she wasn't going
to be led around by anybody.
My crew all liked her visuals, and she was easy enough to talk to. But she
didn't walk around hero-worshipping the jocks. And while she never had
any trouble getting dates, I couldn't remember that she'd been in many serious
relationships. I'd heard that she wasn't a virgin, but nobody knew the details,
and nobody I knew who'd ever tried to get past first base with her had reported
any success beyond a make-out session.
So it wasn't that I hadn't noticed her. God, no. She
made my dick hard, just like the available girls I ran with. But being around
Angie also brought other parts of me to attention. I was afraid of that. I was
afraid of feeling too much. She made my head spin. She made my steps uncertain.
I wasn't sure how to finesse her. And after my crash-and-burn "first
love" melodrama, I'd vowed never to be that vulnerable again. Angie
stirred up some of those same feelings as Staci had, so I avoided her. Never
much gave her a second thought; worked hard at not giving her a second thought.
Matt, on the other hand, apparently gave her considerable thought. "She's
perfect for you," he was always telling me, at least once a day lately. It
was starting to piss me off.
He'd been out with her, twice. He liked her a lot, but though they were
friends, they'd never really clicked. "She needs a smart guy in her
life," he'd said, as if that explained all that needed explaining.
I'd been successful in ignoring Matt's opinion so far. But he kept raving. He
"thought we'd make an ideal couple." Gradually he must have beaten
down my resolve, because now I began to warm to the idea.
I don't think my own ideas ran parallel to Matt's, though. He seemed
enthusiastic at the thought of finding "true love" for me. Typical Matt. For a tough guy who played the ladies, he was
a little bit of a departure: he was always falling in love. Every girl he ever
asked out was the "love of his life."
As far as I was concerned, though, that's not what this was about. I'd decided
to deal with all that turbulence Angie churned up inside me by mastering it;
hell, by mastering her. She'll just be the latest girl in the long
string of girls I've hooked up with, I told myself.
Liar.
That afternoon, Matt's one-note tune about calling her finally put me over the
top. More to shut him up than anything, I decided to do it right then. I dialed
the number and pumped myself up for the game as I listened to the phone ring.
Immediately I started having second thoughts, and for an instant I considered
hanging up, when I heard a voice on the other end of the line:
"Hello?"
"Hey, Angie, it's Andy."
"Andy?"
"Andy Phillips."
"Oh. Hey, Andy, what's up?"
"Listen, I'm over here studying Pre-Cal with Matt..."
"Boy, there's a visual," she said.
"What?" I wasn't following her.
"Matt studying Pre-Cal."
Wow. What brought that on?
I frowned. "I didn't say he was studying Pre-Cal, I'm saying we're
up here studying and I'm the one working on the Pre-Cal--"
"...and he's studying the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue."
Wow.
"Hey, that's pretty cold," I said, as I turned to look at Matt.
"He's studying history."
"I was just kidding," she assured me. "I like Matt a lot."
"Me too."
"I know," she said.
The response struck me as odd, but I shook it off and continued.
"Anyway, I just needed a study break and I just thought, well, we're in
the same Pre-Cal class and you might be willing to go grab a Coke at McDonald's
or something and just chill, and, you know, kind of see if we can help each
other at our weak spots."
"Ooh, smooth move," she said.
Wow.
While I was trying to figure out what to say that would reverse the power
differential on this transaction before it went completely to hell, she started
laughing, and said, "I'm sorry; I was just messin' with you a little.
Yeah, sure, I'd be happy to go on your cheap-ass date."
"What kind of apology is that?"
"One that's not gonna bullshit ya." She
laughed a little more. God, her laugh was infectious; irresistible. Still, I
wasn't sure I liked this. You're fumblin' the fuckin' ball, I told myself; I
needed to regain the upper hand.
I took a moment for a quick mental run-through, then
said, "It's not a cheap-ass date because it's not a damn date, okay? It's
a freakin' study break. I just figured you could probably use a change of
scenery. And I figured if you want to talk about Pre-Cal, that's cool too.
Maybe I know some stuff from class you don't. Maybe you know some stuff I
don't. We could bring our work and find out."
"That might be good," she said. "The last two weeks I've been
struggling."
"Me too, but maybe we're dumb in different places," I suggested.
She laughed again. "So I guess if it's not a date, you're not gonna pick
up the tab for me or Matt."
"Matt's not coming," I said.
"Really?"
"Really."
"So this is a date."
I sighed. "Just tell me if you wanna go; I'm dyin' here and you're doin' a
number on my ego, pretty girl."
"Sure," she said.
"'Sure' what?"
"Sure, I'll meet you at McDonald's for a study break. Or a study session. Or whatever it is you're calling this
date."
I had to smile to myself: Shit, she's good. "Awesome," I replied.
"Hey, I'll even buy."
"Even better," she said. After the initial resistance, she seemed to
be enjoying talking to me. All right, boy, I thought. You're in.
Yeah, I am so smooth.
"One thing, though," she said. "Stop playing the game on me,
okay? It's kind of insulting, and it sure doesn't make you very
attractive."
I froze.
Busted.
"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," I shot back,
wincing at the brazenness of this lie.
"Oh, really."
"Really."
"Okay, then," she began; "If that's true--"
"It's true," I interrupted. "Passionate sincerity mode" was
always my best weapon in the game. The sincerity was optional, as long as the
passion was convincing.
"Okay, if it's true, then be true about this: What did you and Matt say to
each other the last five minutes before you made this phone call?"
Silence.
"Look," I protested, as my brain stumbled around for a path through
this minefield.
"No, you look, Andy. I like you. I think there's something real
about you. Don't bring a bunch of lines, though. You do that with girls a lot.
Just bring the real Andy, okay?"
"You have me all wrong," I began again, recognizing that I was going
to have to play it wounded-and-sincere. "I'm a better person than all
that."
"Are you willing to prove it?"
"Yeah, I am," I said.
"Then tell me what you said to Matt before you called."
Shit.
"Andy?"
"What?"
"Before you called, is it possible that you bragged to Matt about being
able to snag-and-bag me?"
Silence.
"Answer the question."
I sighed. I could tell this was going to require moving into uncharted
territory.
"Okay. Yeah, I did. I'm sorry. It was just dumb guy talk, like
we always do; I didn't mean anything by it."
I didn't think that would be good enough for her. I expected to hear the
receiver click down, and I was thinking about how to save face with Matt.
Instead, she spoke. "I know that's true...mostly. But save your dumb guy
talk for dumb guys, because I'm not one. I'm also not standing in the line, you
know what I mean?"
I hesitated, staring at the phone.
"Andy."
"What?" I said it with more force that I wanted. I
felt like a deer in headlights. I had to think of something fast: "Okay! I
just...I know you're not..." I trailed off, tongue-tied, then took a deep
breath and plunged in again.
"Okay. Here it is, bottom line. I like you. We've
never been out in all these years and I like you. Is that a crime?"
"No," she said, "it's not. And I like you too. I have for a long
time. You're smart. And you've always been nice to me. And you and Matt have
done some good things at school. And Matt, well, mainly he's just a real sweet guy . But I don't need to tell you that."
There it was again. What the hell?
Before my thoughts had a chance to drift off-course, she continued.
"The thing is, I know about you. Both of you.
Boys aren't the only ones who talk. And I don't always like what I hear. You
guys go through girls pretty fast. That's why I've never thrown myself at your
feet the way you like it."
This girl was actually making me feel ashamed. Who the fuck did she think she
was, talking to me like this? Nobody talks to me like this. This is my reward
for asking her out?
But I couldn't help it: I found myself wanting more of this. Of
her.
"Anyway," I heard her say, "I can meet you at McDonald's in
fifteen minutes, and we'll see how it goes. I can probably get away from this
crap for an hour, or at least take it somewhere else. It might clear my head to
work through it with you."
"Great," I said. "I'll see you there in fifteen minutes. We'll
call it a study date, since you're making me get all honest with you."
"All right; sounds like a plan," she said. "One more
thing..."
"What?"
"Bring lots of money. I'm ordering a big Coke."
I was laughing too much to get a clear "goodbye" out, but I hung up
anyway.
Matt had been paying attention to my end of the dialogue; when I cracked up and
hung up, he said, "What?"
"Oh, man," I answered. "She may be better at this thing than
me."
His smirk told me he'd enjoyed watching me squirm a little. "My work is
done here," he quipped, and he began packing up his stuff.
I grabbed my books and walked with him down the stairs. When we got to his van
he slapped me on the shoulder and wished me luck as he climbed in.
"Hey, I got it all under control," I said.
"Yeah, right," he grinned, as he backed out of the driveway.
I got into my car and headed toward McDonald's, trying to figure out what the
fuck had just happened. Boy, had I gotten thrown off my game.
Thrown off? Shit, the game got thrown out! Or at least it would
if she had her way.
Although I didn't yet realize it, I was the one who was
snagged-and-bagged.
----------------------
Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting in a booth at McDonald's.
We talked for an hour; we never even got around to Pre-Cal.
She laughed at my jokes; I laughed at hers. She was a huge sports fan, and even
knew more stats than I did. She shared my political views, and had plenty of
her own. We talked about our upcoming senior year, and beyond that, college and
the future. She had it all figured out: from college she wanted to go to
medical school.
We talked about the people we'd dated last. We talked about our friends. It was
relaxed and easy, and oddly for me, it was genuine. When it was all done, I
realized that from the very beginning, I'd lost control of the game. I ended up
being myself--and it didn't kill me. As a matter of fact, it made things
better.
Too soon, she looked at her watch and said, "I gotta go." I couldn't
believe an hour had gone by. It felt like five minutes. "
Okay," I told her. "But would you go to a movie with me this
weekend?"
"Well, it depends. What movie?"
I frowned. "What difference does it make?"
"Well, I know you're not used to this on a date, but at the movies I
actually watch the movie. So it makes a difference."
I had to laugh. "Okay. Let me see what's on where and it'll give me an
excuse to call you."
"All right," she said. "You did all right today, by the
way."
"Well, I'm glad I passed the test."
She ignored the sarcasm. "I meant it. I liked talking to you."
"Yeah, I hear what you're saying," I grinned. "And you can think
what you want, but I like you too--a lot. For real; no game, no lines..."
I hesitated for effect, then smiled and continued. "But I'm still gonna
get what I want. How's that for no bullshit?"
"Impressive," she said, reaching for her Coke. "Announcing your
evil intent; that's a gutsy move. How about if I return the favor? I'm gonna
get what I want, too, before you ever do. Because if I don't,
you won't either."
She looked into my eyes. "Anyway," she said, growing serious,
"why does it have to be all about that? Why can't it just be about what
it's about?"
I wasn't sure what she meant, but I was enchanted. She was so self-possessed.
I stood up with her and watched as she walked away. As a parting shot, she
turned back to me and said, "So...I'll hear from you when I hear from you.
Your move, Andy. Okay?"
"You'll hear from me later tonight," I told her.
"I'd like that." And with that she was out the door.
I drove home, pulled the car into our driveway and sat there for a moment.
I'd heard Mom say a million times that relationships can only happen when
people drop the armor and open up to each other.
Who wants that, though?
"Yeah, I wonder who," I said out loud. The sound of my own voice
startled me. Damn. I was in bad shape: she had me talking to myself.
I shook my head and laughed a little. It wasn't an amused laugh. If this thing
flew, in a real sense I was going to be the one "giving it up."
Talk about your reversals.
---------------------------
I took her to see "Austin Powers." Not an obvious choice for a first
date, but I had friends who were already throwing around quotes from the movie,
and I'd been wanting to see it. If she wants the
"real" Andy, I figured, she'll have to get used to my warped sense of
humor.
And just as she'd said she would, she watched the movie. She loved it. I loved
that she loved it. And--God help me--I loved her.
Already.
There was a field party going on later that night at the north end of the city.
A field party is a huge suburban teenage hormone-fest. It gets held late at
night on a weekend, on the sly, in an open field or some not-yet-used piece of
real estate in suburbia. Kids bring their music, and their bodies, and their
drugs of choice, and just let the collective teen id run wild. It goes without
saying that these gatherings are not particularly safe; too many kids have gone
over the edge at field parties and dropped off, at least temporarily--too much
booze, too much weed, too much Ecstasy, too much heroin, too much cocaine, even
too much sex; or some combination thereof. But if your head's on straight and
you don't get stupid, even the smart kids find them to be excellent vehicles
for venting some of the pressures of life in an achievement-oriented suburban
pressure cooker. And nobody harasses anybody to indulge in any of the more
dangerous stuff that's plentiful there; you're free just to enjoy the vibe if
that's all you want.
After the movie, we stopped by the party to see who was there. Everybody was.
Well, everybody but the Jesus kids. Stoners, jocks, and cheerleaders, the
industrial crew, the smart kids; everybody was up to something. We bumped into
Alex Burleson, a senior wide receiver, who greeted us and motioned us toward
his pickup. He had an ice chest full of soft drinks, beer, and several fifths
of vodka and rum. I grabbed a couple of Cokes and cups. I raised a questioning
eyebrow at Angie and pointed to the rum; she nodded, and I poured some rum into
the cups, threw in some ice, and filled them with the Coke.
We walked through the thick of the crowd, greeting the people we knew. Several
of my buds looked at me with raised eyebrows, as if to say, "Good luck,
buddy, you're gonna need it." My red-haired football teammate Ethan, drunk
on his ass, saw us together and started in with the thumbs-up sign, leering and
shouting, "You go, Phillips; shell that clam and you will definitely be Da
Man."
"Shut up, asshole," I shouted at him. I cringed and turned to look at
Angie. She just laughed and said, "If I were you I'd tell him not to put
any money on it."
We made our way back to Alex's pickup, intending to shoot the shit with him a
little. When we got there, he was in the cab with his girlfriend, Jessica
Vinson. Jessica was a cheerleader and a good friend of Angie's. It was pretty
clear that Alex and Jess were more interested in making out than in talking to
us, so we took our drinks and sat on the bed of the pickup, talking,
occasionally staring up at the stars.
As the evening went on, I found myself reflecting upon the fact that in two
dates' time, I'd fallen hard.
Angie made me feel alive. Things felt easy and natural between the two of us.
It made me want to risk. It made me want to open up.
As we talked, I took her hand gently, and held it; she looked at me and smiled.
We talked, sipped our drinks, and enjoyed the atmosphere.
In the middle of one of my tall tales she leaned toward me and kissed me. It
was easy, gentle, almost like a feather brushing my lips. I scooted in closer
and returned the kiss; this one was a little longer, a little more insistent.
She responded in kind.
I lifted her off the bed of the pickup and onto the ground. We stood facing
each other. She looked into my eyes and smiled; I stroked her beautiful blond
hair and closed my eyes, then put my arms around her and pulled her closer to
me. We began kissing again, and I urged the action forward by placing my open
mouth on hers. She responded by opening her mouth, and soon our tongues were in
the act.
As the passion and the sexual tension rose, she pulled me tight against her,
grinding our crotches together. Shocked, I pulled back a little and looked at
her in disbelief.
This was the girl who wasn't putting out?
She grinned and said, "What? You gonna tell me you don't know what it's
like to use someone's body?"
"Well, I...you said...you said that you weren't--"
I couldn't finish the sentence because she put her mouth back on mine, and just
like that we were back at it again.
When we came up for air, she said, "I'm happy, Andy. It's fun to be with
you. And you didn't even bring any of that fake crap. I think you're sexy when
you're real. When you're not being an asshole, you have a lot to offer."
I decided to go with an "asshole" reply. "You have no
idea," I said, grinning wickedly.
She didn't even blink. "Oh, I have a pretty good idea," she shot
back. "I told you before, boys aren't the only
ones who talk. And anyway, after what we've just been doing, I think I know
pretty much first-hand."
Okay; she's not shockable, either. Damn. I put a hand to my face, covering it,
and shook my head a few times.
She pulled my hands away from my face and looked straight into my eyes.
"What I was gonna say is--well, that part's easy. You can have that any
time you want with all kinds of girls. But I'm not one of 'em. I want more from
you. I like your brain. And I like your personality, when you decide to bring
your real one."
I started to say something in my defense, but, to my credit, I kept my mouth
shut.
"Oh, I like the rest, too," she added with a wicked smile as she put
her hand on my crotch and squeezed. While I tried to put my eyes back into
their sockets, she added, "But we're gonna take this a day at a time, and
we're not going there unless it's right, and both of
us know it's right. Can you live with that?"
Could I live with it? Hell, I'd have fuckin' laid on a bed of nine-inch nails
for it! She had me right where she wanted me. And in two dates!
I pulled her close to me and kissed her. "I get what you're saying and
it's cool with me," I told her. "Just being with you...getting to
know you better...that's awesome, and it's all I
want."
I paused, then raised my eyebrows and added, "For now."
She just laughed, and patted my ass. "We'll see."
-------------------------------
The Jock Posse trips to the beach started the weekend before school let out
that year. We'd gone three times by the end of June. By that point in the
summer, Angie and I had been going out for eight weeks.
We were still going strong. I saw her almost every day. And it was always easy,
always smooth, always right for both of us. I gave
myself more and more to her--genuinely, effortlessly, unconcerned about where
it was taking me.
And although I continued to press, she continued to hold me off on the matter
of sex. She wouldn't even give me a little head.
Somehow it didn't matter. Before, if a girl hadn't put out by the fifth date,
I'd have moved on down the road. The most Angie would ever do was grope me
outside my jeans, and let me grope her from the outside; maybe feel a breast.
But I didn't care. I didn't just want into her pants; I wanted her in my world.
I thought about her all the time when I was away from her. I couldn't keep my
mind off her.
She never went along on a Posse beach trip. She had a job as an assistant camp
director for a summer YMCA day camp and couldn't get away. I had a more
flexible schedule. My grandfather had a successful landscaping business
in the area. Over the last couple of summers, he helped me build up my
lawn-maintenance gigs into a profitable lawn care/landscaping venture of my
own. I operated under his banner, but the interface with the clientele
was all my own. I had several ongoing commercial contracts, and lots of
residential work. Sometimes Danny helped, sometimes Matt helped, and my
grandfather gave lots of assistance and advice with landscaping issues. He was
lots of help on the marketing and business ends too.
The best thing about the work was that within reason, I could set my own hours,
and could take a few days off here and there for fun and games. It was an ideal
arrangement for dropping everything to soak up sun and surf with my crew.<