Foolish Fire (16 page)

It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.

Suddenly a flashlight was shining in my face, blinding me. Shielding my eyes, I made out the silhouette of a policeman detaching himself from the darkness. A cop—the ultimate symbol of law and order in our society….

I felt a stab of panic—as if my thoughts had been monitored.

“Hold it right there, son. Where are you going?”

“I’m just taking a walk,” I muttered, shielding my face, my privacy, my human dignity from the eyeball-stabbing light.

“Do you have any ID on you?”

“Why? What did I do?”

“Listen, kid, I don’t want any backtalk. Just get your ID.
Now
.”

I reached into my back pocket, staggered by the authority and power in that voice. I handed over my driver’s license. The light flashed down upon the license in his hand, then up to my face again.

“What are you doing in the park alone at night?”

I felt as if I’d stumbled onto a movie set…this just didn’t happen in real life. As far as I knew there was no law against walking alone in the park at night. What was this, an elaborate prank?

“I’m coming home from my girlfriend’s house.”

“Girlfriend, huh. Girlfriend. Did you hear that, Trent?” he asked sneeringly, over his shoulder.

There was a snort from the shadows to the left. So there were more of them. I was scared now. That tone of disbelief and contempt…could police read people’s minds now?

“According to this, you live at 421 Maple. Do you still live there?”

“Yeah…uh, yes sir.”

“That’s the other way if I remember correctly.”

“I know. I—”

“Here.” He handed back the driver’s license. “Go on home. And don’t get lost this time.”

I pocketed my wallet and glanced at him. At that moment, the look of contempt in his small piggy eyes revealed for me the brutal animal nature instinctive to the whole human race.

I turned and walked back to my car. On this spring night the whole world seemed to be coming apart, society’s fabric ripping at the seams, its stitches popping off with an ugly farting sound.

*

I saw Jack in the hallway between classes the next day and walked up quietly behind him. He was busy at his locker and hadn’t noticed my approach. Before he knew what was up I gripped him by the neck and tried to bring him down to his knees but he twisted out of my hold.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked, shoving me back playfully. He was chewing gum.

“Well,” I said. “Guess what?”

“What?”

I smiled.

“What?” he repeated.

“I went out with Vanessa last night.”

“And?”

I just continued to smile. And then, as he realized the implications of my gloating expression, he looked as if he’d just been punched in the stomach. “You mean you—”

I nodded with a conspiratorial grin. I expected him to pound me on the back with glee after all the encouragement he’d given me, but he merely turned away without a word. A little disappointed at his lack of enthusiasm, I casually passed my finger under his nose a couple of times.

“Well?” I taunted.

“What’s that all about?”

“I haven’t washed that finger since last night.”

His eyes got big and he grabbed me by the wrist and yanked my finger forcefully up to his nose again. With an intent look on his face and a manic glint in his eyes, he sniffed hard at it. It was comic in a way, but at the same time, pathetic…. I felt as if I’d stabbed him or crushed something forever inside him. I tried to shake myself loose.

“You lucky bastard,” he said. He didn’t let go of my hand, though.

There was a faraway look on his face. I tried to pull my hand away again but he still wouldn’t let go. When he spoke next, his voice was barely above a whisper; in the softest tones I’d ever heard him utter, he said:

“You lucky bastard. You lucky, lucky bastard….”

Technically A Virgin

It was summer again and I was sunbathing at Echo Lake in my bikini, a skimpy blue pair which was the merest wisp of cloth, a kiss away from nudity. There was a lazy, relaxed feeling all along the shore, with the scent of sandalwood floating in the air, mixed with the tang of marijuana. Families had brought picnic lunches, and teenagers were tossing Frisbees back and forth.

I uncapped my coconut-scented suntan lotion and sniffed it before squeezing some into my palm and rubbing it onto my skin in smooth, sensual motions. Sunbathers here made no secret of the way they loved to caress their own bodies.

When my whole body was glistening from the lotion, I lay back on my towel and let my mind drift in a silver haze of bliss. As the sun slowly warmed me up, I became almost totally mindless, as if all my senses were concentrated and limited to the surface of my skin.

The sun was my secret lover and I let my body be teased and licked by him. The drowsiness which gradually overcame me resembled the euphoria of a sexy daydream, or the lazy anticipation of a summer afternoon’s masturbation.

I knew I was pulling the fawning glances of both men and girls toward me like a magnet. It flattered me to know that their eyes were on me, even as I lay on my towel with my eyes shut. Sometimes, just to make sure they were watching, I blinked my eyes open, or peered furtively through my lashes to ensure that at least one of the watchers was still there, and the verification was like a soothing relief.

The people who frequented the lakeside in summer could be divided roughly into two groups: the watchers and the watched. And the relationship between them was symbiotic. The young, attractive boys and girls who basked so narcissistically in the bright sunshine were actually dependent upon their counterparts to achieve their fullest pleasure; the knowledge that we represented the unattainable dream ideal for someone gave a sort of legitimacy to our preening, made of it almost an art.

My audience was the older men who’d come out for a bit of sun with their families, and the young girls who were dreaming of finding a boyfriend here. I learned little tricks with which to court their looks, for I grew to need their glances. Each admiring look was like a long-distance kiss whose caress I felt on my skin where it fell.

Sometimes I actually became sexually aroused, and lay there with a hard-on under my bikini, my forearm pressed against my eyes not only to shield the sun, but to let the voyeurs have their eyeful without fear of their gaze being interrupted.

I never felt guilty about my narcissism because I knew that any young person who had an attractive body liked to show it off. It was natural. That was why activities like skinny-dipping were so popular.

These parties where boys and girls swim together in the nude had become a sort of fad at Freedom High. Last week, two friends named Al and Tom had invited me, along with three girls from another school. We’d gone to a secluded riverbank far out in the country.

The girls hadn’t seemed shy at all about taking their clothes off in front of us. Though there was a casualness about the whole situation, I sensed that it was an act, a pose to emphasize the extent of our daring, for a certain tension lurked in the very way our glances never went below waist-level. It became increasingly obvious that, even as we talked of other things and clowned around, we all took an intense interest in each other’s bodies.

But we weren’t allowed to let this interest show. It was important to maintain a sense of decorum, to be cool. When the tension became too unbearable for Al, he lost it by getting hard, and the girls shrieked with laughter. Tom and I dowsed his passion by splashing cold water on it, while Al himself looked shamefaced and contrite at his inability to maintain.

I imagined now how a voyeur with a pair of binoculars would have seen us. Al didn’t have such a bad body, though Tom was a little too thin to be considered attractive. I was definitely the best-looking one there. I pictured the voyeur focusing his binoculars on me, my skin tanned the deep brown of a deliciously exotic island boy with a saucy white anti-tan hugging my hips like a phantom bikini.

“Hi, Guy. How’s it going?”

I opened my eyes and saw Mark Warren standing over me. I sat up.

He was shading his eyes as he sat down next to me, squinting to keep out the glare of the sun. “You here all alone?”

“Yeah.” I generally liked to come to the lake by myself. Whenever I came with a friend, I quickly grew irritated at the way he openly and embarrassingly admired the pretty girls there, pointing with his finger and commenting aloud. Besides, I found I drew more looks from girls (and men) when I sunbathed alone.

“I hear you broke up with Vanessa.”

“We were never going together.”

“Oh. Well, my friends and I were wondering if you’d care to join us.”

“Friends?”

He pointed over to a spot where I saw three girls. One of them waved.

“I don’t know….”

“You don’t find them to your taste?”

“It’s not that.”

“That’s all right. I’m trying to shake them anyway.” He leaned closer. “Listen. I just got a shipment of something good at home, but there’s not enough to go around for the whole group. What do you say to just you and me going to my house and trying it out? I won’t tell the others.”

“Just me and you?”

“Sure. The two of us. Alone.” A tension had crept into his voice and I automatically went on my guard. He sensed my uneasiness; I heard him ask with the barest hint of insinuation: “What’s the matter? Scared?”

I stared at the sarcastic smile on his face. “Why should I be scared?”

“Maybe because you think I’m one of these.” He dangled his wrist weakly and made a gesture as if he were pawing the air.

“Cut it out,” I said, looking around. “You know I don’t like those kinds of jokes.”

“I was just kidding. Can’t you take a little joke?”

“With you, I never know whether you’re serious or not.”

“Okay, then I’m seriously asking you now: would you like to come or not?”

“All right. Just give me a chance to change into my clothes.”

His glance flicked down at my bikini. “Why? I like you the way you are.”

“Knock it off, will you?”

I was glad I hadn’t gotten hard.

*

In his room Mark had an elaborate roll-top desk which he said his father had bought him in Singapore. Now he opened the bottom drawer of it and pulled out a sandwich bag filled with a green leafy-looking substance. He held it up to his cheek.

“Wanna try some of this?” he asked.

I knew right away what it was, but tried not to let my excitement show. There was nothing more uncool in our school than someone who hadn’t smoked pot before.

“Sure.”

He pulled out a record album and poured a small pile of the marijuana onto it, then pinched some between his thumb and middle finger, crushing it up. With his other hand he slipped out a rolling paper from a pack of them, and began skillfully rolling a joint. The facility with which he did it showed that he’d had quite a bit of practice.

He held out the rolled joint toward me. “Go ahead. Take the first hit.”

He flicked his lighter on and I put the joint into my mouth, leaned down toward the flame. I took a deep drag as I knew I was supposed to do; a harshness filled my throat and I coughed.

He grinned. “First time?”

“No. It’s just been so long since I’ve had some that I have to get used to it again. That’s all.”

He didn’t say anything, though I knew he must have seen through my lie. I was grateful to him for not exposing me.

“Good stuff,” I said.

I handed the joint back to him and he took a deep hit. As he held in his breath, a little smoke leaked from his nostrils.

He returned it to me and I took another hit. We passed the joint back and forth for a little while. I didn’t know what to expect, and tried to act as much at my ease as possible. All I could feel was a slight headache beginning to spread from my temples.

There was something inherently seductive in the act of smoking a joint with a friend…the way we kept our voices down as if engaged in a secret mission…sucking on the same joint passed from hand to hand…the world outside seemed a thousand miles away.

Suddenly he looked straight at me and giggled. I giggled along with him, though I found nothing funny.

“You like it, huh?” he said.

“Love it.”

A delicious giddiness was slowly spreading through me. I felt a beatific satisfaction with the world at large…with the armchair I was sitting in, with the greenish way the sky in the west was tinged, with the achingly beautiful way the wispy clouds were etched. They seemed to be tensed for the coming sunset…for the orange ball of the sun to pierce them with radiance.

The window of Mark’s bedroom faced a park across the street, and beyond it a residential hillside. The park’s sprinkler system had come on and the air was filled with a fine spray shooting out from invisible sprayers. Iridescent rainbow fragments hovered like wraiths over the bright green carpet of grass.

We finished the joint and Mark got up and walked to the window to look outside. I leaned back in the chair gazing lazily at him.

He was wearing a red and white striped T-shirt and low-slung hip-huggers, or yachting pants, which came down to mid-shin. He stood for a long time looking out the window, almost as if deliberately giving me time to admire the firm plumpness of his buttocks. His pants were so tight that I could see he had no underwear on underneath. I quickly shifted my eyes away when he turned around.

A crystalline clear thought emerged from the myriad images swirling in my mind: this boy is almost certainly gay. In the silence I listened to the chug-chugging sound of the sprinklers in the park as they turned like tiny robot sentinels beneath the hissing spray.

Suddenly, as if guessing my thoughts, Mark said: “Hey, Guy, what do you think that faggot Mr. Brown said to me the other day?”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Why not? Because that’s exactly what he is.”

“There’s no proof of that.”

“Oh no? Not even when he walks like this?”

He put his hand on his hip and did a passable imitation of the teacher’s walk, taking pert little steps which made his buttocks wiggle seductively. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed, delicately crossing his legs one over the other, girl-style, before folding his hands and settling them on his knee.

I laughed, although a part of me felt distinctly uncomfortable. Whenever boys told fag jokes, I always felt a twinge of shame and angry helplessness. In some inexplicable way, I felt that such talk was a secret stab at me, even when it was obviously gossip about someone else.

“Come on, Mark, cut it out. Brownie’s not a bad guy. He gave me an ‘A’ in English last year.”

“Yeah, because he thinks you’re cute.”

“Cut it out.” I felt a little guilty because it was true: I’d courted the teacher’s favors by staying after class and talking with him, knowing he probably fancied me.

“Hey Guy, do you know how you can tell queers from normal guys?”

“No, how?”

“The second knuckles on their fingers are hairy. Hah! Caught you looking!”

He was right: I had instinctively checked my knuckles without thinking. At his laughter I burned with shame, somehow feeling guilty.

“Oh, come on. It’s only a joke.” He seemed surprised at how embarrassed I was, and no doubt that brought out his cruel streak—he loved to see people squirm under his barbs. He eagerly pursued the topic: “Here’s another joke. Do you know the motto of the Greek army?”

“No, what’s the motto of the Greek army?”

“‘Never leave your buddies behind.’ Get it? ‘Never leave your buddy’s behind.’”

“I get it, I get it.” I couldn’t help laughing along with him, much as I wished he’d change the subject.

“Tell me,” he went on, “what did one queer say to the other?”

“What?”

“‘Let’s get one thing straight between us.’ Get it? One thing—straight.” He wrapped his palm around an imaginary penis.

I let out an exasperated groan.

He leaned his head back laughed throatily, in a warm tenor which sent a shiver down my spine.

“Come on,” I said, to change the topic, “let’s smoke some more.”

“All right.”

Outside, the sky had faded to an empty silver color, and in its heartless vastness, a few gem-like pinpricks were sprinkled, the evening’s first stars.

We sat in the growing dark looking out the window at the sky. A soft opalescent glow of lights came from beyond the trees in the park. I raised myself up on my elbows and saw the lights in the houses opposite like a string of jewels against a background of dark velvet.

*

The second joint didn’t taste so harsh. In fact, I became aware of a seductive sweetness which seemed to pierce through to the deepest part of me. I felt grateful to Mark for inviting me here and introducing me to the joys of this drug.