Memorizing You (13 page)

She walked to the side of the pool where she’d tossed her bikini top. She slid it over her shoulders. I retied the back.

“Pull up a chair,” she said as we stepped out of the pool. “We’re going to talk.”

And that was the first day I acknowledged who I was. It felt…great!

CHAPTER TWELVE AND FOUR QUARTERS

I spent the better part of the afternoon in the company of my new friend, Judy. She wanted to know everything about me. And she was an endless source of questions. It turned out to be an amazing day, and I felt like I’d made a friend who liked me for everything I was. That was one for the books. And it excited me. The total acceptance excited me.

In my mind, it was as if I’d conquered some insurmountable obstacle. Was victorious in battle. Had stepped through the portal from darkness and light. Innocence makes our viewpoint so dramatic. But it was a milestone step in my own evolution. The ability to recognize and accredit myself for who I really was.

I couldn’t wait to tell Ryan. I ran with the mower down the center of the streets all the way home in the twilight. Mom and Dad had sat down to watch Walter Cronkite. She’d left a sandwich for me on the kitchen table knowing I’d grab it and run to Ryan’s house. I did just that, yelling, “Thanks” and “Bye” on the way out.

Ryan laughed all the way through my story. I told it in picturesque detail, down to the postage stamp swimsuit I’d been given to wear. He had tears in his eyes from laughter.

I then told him the proudest portion of the tale. My announcement. The acceptance. The friendship.

“That is a great story,” he said, placing a hand on my shoulder and squeezing it. “You were very lucky.”

He was at the weight bench and began loading plates on the bar. I was confused by his response. “Lucky?”

He tightened the plates on the bar. “Yes. Finding someone who accepts people who are gay is not an easy thing to do. There’s more people who disapprove than approve. Churches preach against it. Laws are written against. People get fired for it. Beaten up for it. Thrown off teams for it. Being gay is not like a boy scout badge you can wear and brag about.”

I felt like someone had let the air out of my balloon. “I know… I…uh…”

He still smiled at me. “I understand, David. You were able to admit to yourself…aloud. And that is a good thing. A great thing. I ain’t gonna take that away from you. It’s the biggest thing in being true to yourself.” He pointed to the weight. I helped him pick it up and place it across his neck. We would be doing squats. I stood beside him as he began.

“You know what’s the best part of your story for me though, don’t ya?” he asked.

“What?”

“I would have died to see you in that swimsuit.” He chuckled.

*

I had trouble sleeping that night. I’d opened both windows of my room trying to get a cross-current of fresh air blowing through. The wind was still. Thick.

Sitting on my bed, naked, legs crossed, I felt sadness where elation had once been. Where I’d experience a sense of freedom earlier, there was now a feeling of unfairness. In coming to terms with who I was and my sexuality, I realized no matter where my life went, or who I chose to be with, anyone who thought theyhey fesit wouldn’t be something I could freely share with others. I wouldn’t be able to kiss him in public, hold hands, or embrace them in the manner of the couples we saw do these simple things every day. If I loved someone, it would have to be in secret. Hidden. Unspoken.

That was unacceptable.

I didn’t realize that I’d been crying until the tears hit my bare legs. I wiped them away. The sadness sank in. Deep. Painful.

It was after midnight when I slipped into my shorts and made my way downstairs through the darkness to the kitchen. I searched the refrigerator for something to eat. I didn’t know what. My eyes roamed and roamed. And then I gave up and sat at the kitchen table. In the darkness.

I don’t know how long I was there, staring through the window at the street lamps. The bugs flitting about the yellow light. I barely heard my mom come in. She was in her slippers. They made her footfalls as silent as a cat’s. She had on her robe, a few pink curlers wound in her hair. She turned the light on over the stove. It wasn’t as bright as the overhead. Didn’t hurt the eyes as much.

“How about some hot Hershey’s cocoa and butter sandwiches?” she asked me quietly.

“Sounds good,” I said.

She went to the cabinet and pulled out the tin of powdered cocoa and sugar. I got out the bread, butter, and milk. It was one of my favorite things as a kid. Hot chocolate with a piece of white bread folded over with thick slabs of butter in between. You dipped it in the hot cup of chocolate. It was wonderful.

We sat at the table, eating.

“Your hair’s getting long,” she commented. “Who you trying to be? John Lennon?”

It was the first time she’d said anything about my hair. I’d expected her to ask me to get it cut months ago.

“Cher,” I said. anyone who thought theyhey fes

I saw a small smile. “Your voice isn’t deep enough,” she joked.

It worked. I managed a laugh.

“David, I want you to know your dad and I will always be here for you. No matter what.”

Looking at her across the table, I could see the concern in her eyes.

“You can’t tell by looking at us now, but your dad and I were like you once. Young and impulsive; trying to figure out who we were. What we wanted to be. Where we wanted to go in life. There isn’t a young person who hasn’t gone through those trials. They’re all different. But they’re all the same. Because it’s trying to find the truth about yourself. Whatever it is.”

She rose and took the pan of hot chocolate and poured more in my cup. Then her own. She left the pan on the table resting on a pot holder. She sat back down across from me, looking at me tenderly. “Then you came along, and it was like all the answers to those questions fell in place. And I was okay with that, even if it wasn’t all the answers I thought I’d have.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember when I told you my mother warned me to stay away from your dad? She was afraid he was too wild; too dangerous with his motorbike and his leather jackets. She worried over me because she was afraid I might get hurt. She wanted to protect me. And because I didn’t want to see that, I fought with her and we didn’t speak for five years. We both should have handled it differently. We know that in hindsight. But hindsight doesn’t replace five long years of love lost between me and my mother.”

“That must have been tough?”

She bowed her head, staring into the cup. “When you came along, I understood my mother completely. I understood every word she’d said to me. I understood what she tried to do. Because when you’re a mother, you’ll do anything to protect your child from harm. You want to make certain every step they take is safe. You’d be a safety net for them every second of the day if you could.” Her eyes wandered back to mine. “But we ca said after a long pause.

“Why are you telling me this, Mom?”

“Because it’s always a good thing to know.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I began to see the world differently. I forced myself to. I’d ride my bike to the park alone as I used to. And instead of watching the handsome boys tossing a football or playing basketball on the courts, I began to notice the movements of the real world. The mothers wheeling their baby carriages along the pathways, talking to other mothers. Parents with their children, having a picnic under the trees. Guys with their gals, holding hands as they strolled through the park.

I walked through the malls and saw couples looking at rings together in the jewelry stores. Children with their parents in a candy store. A couple sharing a drink.

People like me were invisible. We didn’t exist in this world. You didn’t see a boy holding another boy’s hand; sharing a kiss. No tables of men on a date in a restaurant.

We were there. I knew we were there because I was. We just didn’t have the freedom to move about and disturb the pleasant conformity of the scenery. But there were signals within that silence. The boy who worked at the cookie counter who held your gaze a little longer than most would. The eye contact of the guy in the tight jeans in the record store who had moved from the aisle he was in to the one where you stood. The man who saw you sitting on a bench and took a seat next to you just to say hello.

Everything done like a clandestine plotwork of spies and secret agents. The great game of pretend.

It came at us in commercials and magazines anyone who thought they. y actually and billboards. There was only one acceptable form of relationship to aspire to. You had to wear this cologne to attract the girl of your dreams. You had to buy this type of dress to catch the eye of your beau. It was stamped on everything we saw like a gigantic certification of authenticity.

The more I examined the world around me, and how it brainwashed people to believe that we didn’t exist, the angrier I became. My one consolation was that, in spite of all the smoke and mirrors they used to make us disappear, all it took was a wave across a field for Ryan to find me. We could find our way through their obstacle course. In spite of them…we still…were.

I knew what my mom was trying to tell me. I didn’t have an easy life ahead of me because of who I was. That even if the world couldn’t find the will to accept me, she and my dad always would. It made me love them more. It made me feel like the luckiest guy on earth.

I found Ryan picking raspberries in his garden. He’d filled a bowl with them. His fingers were stained red, as were his lips. Evidently it was hard to pick and not eat. The sun wove in and out of the leaves of the trees to find him. He was in tattered shorts and a white T-shirt finger-painted with raspberry stains.

In the paper bag I carried, I had a present for him. It was the first I’d ever bought for someone that didn’t constitute as obligatory. I held the bag out to him as a greeting.

“This is for you,” I said, demurely.

His brow wriggled, quizzically. “What’s this?”

“Nothing much. I was just out shopping and saw this…and I thought of you,” I explained.

He opened the bag. It was a wooden birdhouse I saw in a craft’s shop at the end of the mall. It’d been painted red, the color of the hummingbird feeders he’d strung through the trees throughout his garden.

His face brightened. “Oh, this is perfect. I love it. Thank you, David.” He lost no time in hammering it securely to a limb of the largest oak. He stood back and admired it. anyone who thought they silenceou

“Hope that attracts some bluebirds,” he remarked. “I’d love to see some bluebirds in the garden just once.”

I observed three hummingbirds. One at each feeder. They looked like mythical creatures to me, hovering above their sugar water treats, their wings, a blur to the eye.

“I’m sorry I was a little rough on you the other night,” he said.

“Just truthful. I can deal with it.”

I was still mesmerized by the hummingbirds when I sensed the weight of his gaze.

“Sometimes the realization of a truth can make you lose perspective.” His hands roamed for his pockets and found them. He seemed nervous. “ It can make you do things before you think. And that can bring trouble sometimes.”

I agreed with him. I went back to bird-watching. They were marvelous creatures.

“The minute I understood who and what I was, I knew I’d have to be careful and think everything through to keep myself safe; to keep from getting hurt.”

“My mom pretty much said the same thing to me.”

“I’ve always played it safe. I’ve had to. My family wouldn’t be as agreeable as yours, I’m afraid.”

“Better to be safe.” I’d seen enough to know that to be the case.

“I love you.”

I stared at the hummingbirds. For a second it was almost as if I could see their wings. They fluttered in slow motion as its little beak dipped into the sugar water dispenser. Dappled light found him too. The colors were amazing. The greens, the p anyone who thought they silenceouurple, the red collar. Wind rustled through the leaves. It smelled of earth and fresh raspberries.

I had a funny feeling in my stomach. I was counting seconds as they ticked by. I wanted to know the number.

“I love you too.” I had known I would always say that.

It was twenty-four. Twenty, if the words hadn’t been there. But they were there. Suspended forever.

I didn’t have to have senses to be conscious that he’d moved behind me. His arms wove under my own and locked on my waist. His head rested in the center of my back. I counted his breaths. Thirty-two.

“I wanted to say that from the night we slept in the tent.”

A small noise escaped him I’d never heard before. It was a cross between a sigh and a cry. Relief?

I was thinking, trying to pin down when I knew. I couldn’t. “I felt like it was always there,” I finally said. The truth is always more perplexing.

His arms tightened around me. They were big. You could feel the muscles of his biceps when he wrapped you inside them. There couldn’t be any light between us.

“The only time that feels wrong is when you’re not here.” His voice seemed barely above the sound of the breeze. The words hard to hear, but I felt them more.

“Every time you’re here, there’s meaning. When you leave”—He pressed his head into my shoulders, harder—”I just want you back.”

My hands covered his. His were so much larger than my own. I’d never noticed it before.

He chuckled. But the laughter was still caught in that zone that sounded as if $4Fas the threatening tears. “I don’t even like romance movies. I like John Wayne and Charlton Heston. And here I am sounding like the biggest sap I’ve ever heard.”

“Why do we cry when we’re happy?” I asked. “It’s one of those things. I don’t think it makes us less one way, or more the other. I think it just is. I don’t think emotions have a gender preference.”

He spun me round. I quickly had nothing but his face in my vision. That glorious face. The smell of fruit on his breath. The blue eyes. The raspberry-stained lips. There was darkness under his eyes from the drain of tears. His gaze pinned me. Penetrated me. He forced himself inside me with that hypnotizing blue. I was breathless beneath the spell as they tore away my layers.