Memorizing You (28 page)

And he did like to gossip. First guy I ever met who just loved to tell everything he knew about everyone else. We weren’t a week into it, and I already knew who every jock was seeing, who got to first base or home plate, how many homers each one of them hit, who had the biggest dick, who had the smallest. Who was the Romeo, who was the premature ejaculator. Not that I was interested in any one of those things.

I learned that Connor discovered sex when he was ten by spying on his twenty-year-old brother. He’d watched the whole thing through a keyhole. Still talked about it like his was his favorite picture at the cinema. He had to give up every gruesome detail of the gooey event. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Especially after I watched him shift the front of his shorts.

He revealed his first experience with sex was in his early teens with a neighborhood girl who wouldn’t let him stick it in, so he just did it between her anyone who thought they

I don’t think he talked about this for any particular reason. He just talked. Didn’t really expect me to answer. Maybe it made him feel easier to let me know what he thought important about himself.

And he loved to work out to music. I had to bring my phonograph to the basement so he could play his LPs while we lifted. Stones and Zeppelin. His tastes were far different from my own. Louder. The noise energized him like a drug. Mom and Dad took to watching the television in their room on the second floor when we were working out just to escape the decibel levels emanating from the basement.

That sound level included him screaming like an army drill sergeant. Lots of testosterone. “C’mon, three more! Two more! Gimme that last rep!”

It made for one hell of a workout. But your ears rang afterward.

If it sounds like I’m complaining, I’m not. These were the best workouts I’d ever had. They superseded anything I’d ever done with Ryan. Connor knew how to push my buttons to make me try harder; to not feel like a wimp by giving in to fatigue limitations determined by a mindset. He wanted to get better, and the only way he could do that was to make sure I got better. In just a few weeks I was lifting weights I’d never dreamed of lifting. I saw my body grow faster than I could believe. Look like something I had never imagined. Like a real athlete. My arms got huge. My chest stood out from my shirt. My back was broader. My waist got small and my abs looked like you could grate cheese on them. My legs were already twice their size. I was no longer, the gangly, knobby-kneed boy that still haunted my dreams. I looked like something I wanted to show off.

We set up my dresser mirror by our workout station so we could watch ourselves. I knew how vain it looked, but when you could watch what you were doing, it made you crazy to do more. And of course we primped and posed, amateurishly. We not only tested ourselves against each other, but it was a challenge to ourselves. Watching your own muscles strain and fill with blood, bloat and grow was as arousing as sex. Felt like it was a part of sex. Like a full body erection when you made everything as hard as a rock.

Connor started buying bodybuilder magazines so we could learn new techniques and movements. We’d look at their pictures, compare ourselves to these behemoths. I was turning into that Samson my dad used to joke about.

Connor kep$. I myt reading articles that said if we wanted to get bigger we had to keep adding calories. I already felt like I was eating all the time. Going to the bathroom all the time because of it. In a month I’d gone from one hundred and fifty pounds to one hundred and seventy-eight. Connor was already tipping past two hundred pounds but he was a skosh over six feet tall. His biceps looked like small hams. His thighs look like large hams. We were both straining our old clothes. Sitting for dinner one evening, the whole back of my jeans ripped to a table-round of amused laughter.

The downside to all of this was that trying to buy clothes for our odd-sized bodies was difficult. The only jeans or pants that would fit our legs had too large a waist. It was impossible to find button-down shirts that fit our neck, chest, and arm sizes. Everything had to be a stretch-pullover. It was a wonderful downside. We were re-creating ourselves.

Ryan loved every inch of it. But at the same time, I could sense he was intimidated by the changes because they were something that was happening without his participation. Still he liked to explore the newness outlining every muscle groove in my back with his index finger in the dark. He performed the same art on my thighs with his tongue. The wet tip found a furrow and traced it to its source.

Sex was refreshed again in my new body. I took a more dominant role without realization. Probably because of the aggression in the workouts. Ryan didn’t mind at all. It made us explore things we’d set aside before. Now he seemed more pliable. More adventurous. It took our pleasure to a new ground. In our heads, we’d evolved. Full nights went without sleep. I’d slide out of his bed, dog-tired, heading to a run with Connor, and then a full day of work. Exhausted, drained, but content.

The magazines became our guide and goal. I was squatting and curling more than I weighed. As my musculature increased, my body fat lowered, and my face changed dramatically. I had delineated cheekbones and jawline. The same thing happened to Connor, but on a six foot scale. He reminded me of a gladiator. On the football field, he’d be intimidating. As an opposing force, a brick wall.

We joked about how many pairs of shorts we’d end up ripping in a week. It got us looking to the magazines for workout clothing. The prices were outrageous. We began working out in our underwear. And that was what gave me the idea. I knew someone who could design some workout clothes for us. Judy. I called her house and got Philippe. He was happy to hear from me. I hadn’t talked to them since the month after Woodstock. It took them all a month to recover from it. He said Judy was now in Europe and would be back in a week. I gave him my message.

I woke up the Monday morning after a weekend of taking a workout b$ made Imyreak to make myself a protein shake and start the coffee. Connor had said he was sore and fatigued. Needed the break. I didn’t argue.

Mom, dressed in her blue cotton robe and slippers, came into the kitchen saying she’d smelled the coffee. I poured a cup and handed it to her.

“What’s your friend doing standing outside?” she asked as she sat.

“Who?”

“Connor. He’s standing outside. I saw him out there when I was looking for the paper.”

Puzzled, I made my way to the door, glanced to the sidewalk. There he was, sitting on the curb in the light of a streetlamp. His head was down. I went outside, walked to him.

“You didn’t want some coffee?”

His head stayed down. He stared at his folded hands. “No. Thanks.” His voice was somber. Devoid of fire-in-the-belly tone.

I waited a few seconds before I asked him if he was all right. Most guys think that’s a prying type of question. It’s usually met with indignation. Mine was met with more silence. I didn’t know what else to do. I sat down next to him and listened to the crickets chirp.

After a few moments he asked, “Do you and Ryan ever fight?”

It was such an out-of-left-field question I had to think for a bit. “Not really. When Ryan gets ticked off, he just gets kinda quiet and walks away. When he comes back, he’s better. I’ve got more of a temper, but he’s never really done anything to make me get riled.”

It was then I heard something you don’t hear from guys. Low sobbing. It startled me. to the panties. aup

“What’s going on?”

He grabbed his eyes, sniffing. “Monica broke up with me.”

That revelation was more astonishing. I’d believed that if anyone had Connor under control for the first time it was Monica.

When he started to cry again, I made him follow me to the back porch. I sat him there, walked inside, and brought us back each a cup of coffee. I told him to tell me what happened. I thought if he got it out of his system, he’d get himself back under control.

“What did she say? What was the reason?”

His eyes were puffy. Red. His head weaved back and forth. “She had a whole list. I don’t know. Everything. Anything. There is nothing she liked about me anymore. What the hell is with women? What do they want?”

He looked to me for an answer.

“Hell, I don’t know. I’m the guy who looks at the prince in the cartoon fairy-tales.” It was my weak attempt at levity. It fell on deaf ears.

“That’s what it is to them, isn’t it? A fairytale? They all want to be Cinderella, or Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty. And we’re supposed to be some imaginary perfect knight in shining armor that’s supposed to make all their dreams come true. And if we don’t, we’re just toads.”

“We all want to believe in forever,” I said. “You and me too. It’s not just women. We all have the same fantasies. It’s not the fantasy of love that makes us all the same, though. It’s the need for it. The problem is, I think, we’re all so busy looking for the faults to the fantasy that we miss all the good stuff about the real things. When we miss the real stuff is when we lose it too.”

“That’s all I ever do is lose,” he groaned. “I don’t understand why this keep$ made Imys happening to me. What am I doing wrong?”

The sun rose. It shone on the dewy grass. Leaked in between the leaves, glinted in our coffee cups.

“Have you ever got to know someone first?” I inquired.

His look at me was uncertain. “I don’t get what you mean?”

“Have you ever really taken the time to get to know someone when you start dating? Or, do you get physical first, then get to know them later?”

He sat back at that. You could see the cogs and gears whirling behind his eyes. “I don’t know. I never thought about that.”

“When you start dating someone, how long is it before you have sex with them?”

A frown appeared. “Like right after. I mean soon. If they don’t put out, I move on. That’s what happened with me and Rosemary.”

“That might be it. You’re thinking with your dick. Not your head. You’re loving a body rather than the person. By the time you get to know the person everyone realizes you’re not compatible in some way. You’re going at it backward.”

I could see I had him thinking. “How long was it before you and Ryan…you know…?”

I had to smile at that indelicate question. But I still answered it. “A long, long time. We’d been friends a good while before there was even a kiss.”

“Didn’t that drive you nuts?”

I thought about that. Searched my feelings. Recollections. “I think it just kept making me like him more, want to know him better,” I finally answered.$. I my

Afterward, we sat there on the porch, quietly. He’d given me as much to think about as I had him.

In time, Connor recovered. Wounds healed. We got back to normal. The workouts took precedence again.

Ryan’s tutoring began in the mornings. I had to leave early, before she arrived. I saw the college brochures tucked in his drawer beneath his underwear. They were all out of state. It gave me a sting of panic, but I said nothing. To say anything would have been to give voice to my fears. If Ryan wasn’t saying anything, he was having the same difficulty. We all faced the crisis of loss at the mercy of time and change. No one could escape the nature of our very existence. That even if we, by accident, discovered all the great things we needed and wanted, that we belonged to nothing, to no one forever. We just clung to each precious remnant of our hopes like an anchor that could hold us in place a while longer.

When Judy returned from her European sojourn, I got my invitation back to her house. Philippe greeted me at the door as usual. And as usual set to work on my hair. Evidently he’d done the same for our hostess. She now hard a short, red bob. Wore lipstick to match. White linen dress with rose patterns.

They were both marveling over my new look. The bigger, more muscular body. I’d given her both my and Connor’s measurements. She made sketches in a tablet while Philippe snipped away at me.

“I’ve always wanted to do something for men,” she said, pencil scratching away on the paper. “This might be an idea. The gyms are getting more popular and no one’s done anything about updating fashion. I’ve seen the same white gym shorts on guys since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”

“Something that shows more package and produce, hopefully!” Philippe said as his contribution to the notion.

“Absolutely. If you guys are going to make stuff we want to see, by George, we’re going to show it off.” Judy agreed, black lead lines rapidly filling up the pad of white. “Something that has some cling to it, but still gives with the size and shape of the muscle. I can probably use some of our swimsuit material.”

She did her kiss-kiss thing as I left with my Z"> aupnew, shorter hairstyle.

The new shorts and tanks were delivered a week later, on the weekend, by Phillppe. Mom invited him right in and invited him for lunch. He stayed until dinner and occupied himself by giving new hairstyles to her, Rosemary, and Connor. Had my dad been there, he probably wouldn’t have escaped. We modeled our new fitness-wear for them. They did fit a bit snug, but we could bend and move in every conceivable position and they stretched with us. But they left little to the imagination. Typical Judy-wear. My mom’s face actually tinted. Rosemary bit at the twist in her lips. Philippe just went, “My, my, my!”

There were five different styles of suits. All in solid colors. All interchangeable. We spent over an hour trying each of them on and posing in front of the dresser mirror in the basement. There was no doubt of one thing. They did show off our hard work.

“Look at you!” Connor joked as I took my turn in front of the mirror admiring myself. “You be lovin’ on yourself a little bit, I think!”

“Look who’s talking!”

He did a double bicep curl and a twirl to show me both sides.

We couldn’t wait to take ourselves out and show off the stuff. A noonday run right through the heart of the Maplewood business district. Busiest time of day while everyone was out and about for lunch. We would, naturally, have to slow down our pace so we could hear the reactions of our audience.