Savage (6 page)

"Burgers," Andrew said, his face a bit red, his voice winded.

"Yeah, burgers," I chimed in.

"How many?" Philip asked. I shrugged.

From the floor with my feet, I tried to trip Andrew, but he just stepped over me.

"Look," Andrew said, looking down at me. "I'll let you elbow drop me; it won't hurt one bit."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Go for it."

"It's a Mega Powerexperience
⁶
, yeah!"

6. In late 1987 WWF storylines, Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan had formed a hyperbolic union of ego, body and soul called the Mega Powers: Macho Madness and Hulkamania coming together to overcome all odds. Though I had partially outgrown my affection for wrestling, Randy Savage's mid-1988 WWF title win and highly enchanting interactions with Hulk Hogan set things up for a dive right into celluloid altitudes and sugary excitement, glancing at glossy photos of Hogan and Savage at the corner store while loading up on overprocessed supplies. One night Andrew carried his black-and-white television set over so we could watch the three-hour VHS of
Wrestlemania IV
which I had rented.

Andrew lay down, and I stood over him, raised my elbow and pointed to the imaginary crowd. "You sure?"

"Just do it."

I dropped down, my armpit landing across Andrew's neck, my elbow landing on the corner of Andrew's left shoulder.

"See, nothing. I told you. Even if you had the chance, you could never beat me."

Back in our cabin, Andrew laughed so hard he spilt cola over his white shirt.

"Shit." Noting my gaze on him, Andrew comically smiled and began to tango with a broom. He felt his face. "I probably need to shave soon." His skin felt soft and hot in the dark.

Our young bodies shadowed by night and quiet, blond and brown pubic patches. Softening eyes lowering over each other's skin, as mouths tingled with excitement, anticipating the slow familiar scent rise from our underwear. In the cabin, we were alone. "They're down at the beach." This was our distinct world.

That night at midnight we blasted Salt-n-Pepa's song "Push It" over and over again, rewinding it on the ghetto blaster we had in the cabin.

"Crank it!" Andrew shouted, dancing and laughing in the middle of the night.
Ah, push it Ah, push it Oooh, baby, baby Baby, baby Oooh, baby, baby Baby, baby
.

Andrew had suggested these secret acts two months earlier, in summer's heat camp, during video horror rentals when goalie-masked killer Jason Voorhees was stabbing camp counsellors in bikinis and tiny panties; Andrew stuck a knife in the pizza box, paused the movie on some breasts. He pawed at me, then returned to the film, the freeze-frame, slow-motion scope of Jason Voorhees breaking through a closet door with a machete. Un-paused. The terrified breasts were moving again, running for their lives.

Then another time a few days later, we had camped out in the backyard in a musty tent, drinking grape soda, tingling with acrid heat, taking turns with each other's erections, fumbling and tugging in the dark, the taste of candy, sweat and pre-cum.

The treasures of that night were spoken in code: "Grab a Kleenex."

Afterwards I coiled into sleep.

*

The morning sun lagged. Awake and fumbling and squeezing before the bright sphere rose, before it shot out of the earth's mouth bright and orange and electric, we groaned and jerked. Before the sun shot up into blue-denim sky, before either of us could be quarantined from our own self-love.

When the sun finally burst in, Andrew pulled the curtains together. He was changing. I closed the door. "Lock it." As it closed, I stepped forward into the cabin; the thick carpet muted the action. "Locked?"

"Yeah," I said meekly.

Andrew approached me from behind; I could feel his eyes on me, his hands lowering, pulling me from behind into his chest and leaning over.

"Grab it," he said.

Andrew was wearing his usual weekend-pervert jogging pants. "Push the beds together," he said, motioning with his shaggy blonde hair for me to start rearranging the cabin's interior.

Andrew began to talk about a girl's tits—a specific pair—from school. He approached me. "Did you see Sandra on the beach?" Andrew ran his hand across my back.

Masturbate
. Sometimes Andrew just said the word. I could hear it in my head, invisibly charging through the cabin, implying the activity was forthcoming. The word was so casual, as if it were a band's name, a flavour of drink or a simplistic ritual or gesture. Andrew was standing now, in his underwear and T-shirt.

"Look at her tits," Andrew said, cupping my balls, making certain I was on a hot page.

"Just think of that, or Sandra's swimsuit."

The word felt like a utensil that Andrew put into my mouth and made me chew on, hard and cold at first. He was standing right behind me now, his hand clasping my neck.

"Did you see her nipples poking out?" My hockey jersey was full of heat; the routine pressure of his touch was becoming a necessity inside my heart which I pawed at regularly.

"I guess."

Our clothes landed together in a heap, and I imagined their zippers fought like chain mail and swords, metallic teeth briefly grazing each other's fibers.

Andrew hovered around: the faint scent of gum and fountain pop. He pulled and twisted my head and neck into his—this was our skin together.

Andrew leaned down on me, his weight too much on my shoulders.

Our aromas only. Andrew exhaled—touched it. The elastic of my briefs pulled up, fresh air all over.

"Take it out."

I trailed off, wondering what Philip and Sandra were doing in the cottage: maybe waiting for a VHS rental to rewind, considering popcorn, considering turning off the lights and having sex, making hot chocolate, collecting wood for a fire.

Perhaps they would discuss dinner options. What would the boys like? The video rewound. Someone going, "What else did we rent? What are they doing out there?"

Andrew's blue eyes were now checked and wet with a reflective glaze from the heat.

"Now me," he said, his heavy wet breath spreading across my meek biceps.

My name stenciled in my clothing was illegible from this distance. Erections in swimwear liner. As the touching continued, I clenched my eyes and saw a reel of our collective experience: hockey sticks dragged and scrapped against the cement in my driveway.

The parked car hung like a polished cavity along the stony road, slick and jewelled in the brief rain from last night, surrounded by green and reddening leaves.

A rinse of sunlight through the pale curtains.

*

On Sunday morning we dressed and rushed to the breakfast table; I ate some cereal.

Andrew was rummaging for something in the hallway, moving around on the deck outside. "Where are you going?"

No answer. I followed him. He turned around, and as he rotated his body towards me, it revealed he was now holding a gun.

"Oh my God!" I shouted.

"What?" Andrew said. "It's an air rifle, pellet gun."

"Where'd ya get that?"

"From the shed," Andrew said, blowing across the top of it. "We've had it for years."

Andrew was up for another mêlée in the living room. I lunged forward, trying to escape him through the left, then the right, eyeing a nearby chair I could grab, wedge between us. Andrew was a wall moving forward. To him it was a game; he put his head hand on my head, made car noises, now adjusting his grip to my ears.

We finished another bowl of cereal and went outside with the gun. "Let's climb up there, on the roof and check it out." We climbed a large steel antenna that grew from the ground beside the cottage.

He helped me off the antenna and onto the roof.

"Up here, right at the top, it's the best view. We can see birds or squirrels."

Andrew pointed the worn pellet gun at my face.

"Don't point that gun at me."

Andrew took a few shots through the snug trees. "Let's get down. I can't see anything."

We climbed down and moved through the forest that surrounded our cabin, walking deeper into the green.

"Close your eyes."

"Why?"

"Just do it."

Andrew got on the cottage's roof as I walked up the sandy hill. Andrew was careful, climbing a steel antenna pole, pulling himself up on the shingles. The pellet gun was on a strap across his chest.

"A great big surprise!" Andrew shouted. "Turn around."

I heard a noise and felt a prick on my ass—a piercing prick on my left cheek.

Then, a laugh.

Tears were in my eyes. "For fuck's sake!" I rubbed my ass to see if the thing was lodged in there. "I can't believe you shot me!" I pulled my pants down to reveal the red welt across a cheek. "Let's see," Andrew said. He began to laugh, then held it in.

"You fuckin' jerk!" I screamed in a wimpy high-toned sound. I couldn't help it. Andrew and I walked back to the cottage.

The setting sun turned the beige hues grey like ash. Andrew charged at me, twisting my wrist into an arm bar. We were wrestling again. I tried to reverse it; he pushed his chin into the back of my spine, upper neck, his mouth moved towards my left ear, "Swing low, sweet cherry isle..." he boomed, as if trying to change the subject.

Back in the cabin, archives of
Playboy
memories churned in our skulls, a thousand watts of pink and dark pink lighting up our veins and skin as we lay our heads down on clean pillowcases, the sheets snaking with greedy showgirls in tired lingerie.

I often remembered how it used to be without the touching, before the strange unification of our naked bodies entered into a system of familiarity and alchemy.

Toboggan runs, secret midnight firecracker sessions, Commodore 64 marathons, bicycle-grease errands. And the hobbies: comic book conventions, remote-control cars, and how Andrew came over to help build his hobby car from the set I bought with him just after my birthday and how we picked the car out together:
Striker
. I left the side door open for Andrew, who built the car in my bedroom one night when my family and I went out for dinner. Then the two of us built a miniature racing course in the church's backyard and raced our cars while drinking up the hot pornographic lakes of our imagination. We tried jerking off in the pews inside the church once, but it was too strange with all the ghastly stain-glass. We laughed about that for a while.

*

It was nearing noon on Sunday. The sun grew higher and hotter. A day full of teen-toothed gum chewing, paddles in the water and cereal remnants in my molars.

Steam rose from the paddle.

"Let's go out further," Andrew said. The canoe carved through the lake for hours, the heat crashed down to our cores and hunger grew in our expanding stomachs.

"Get in the water." Andrew said sharply, pointing his paddle at my nose.

"Why?"

"Just do it."

I got in the water. Andrew followed, sliding into the water with me.

"Take off your trunks." Andrew said. I balked, looking into Andrew's eyes, this time not squinting at all. I was about ten months younger than Andrew, but in the same grade. Andrew started school a year late. His mother died of an aneurysm when he was five. I knew everything about Andrew, or so I thought.

"Might as well do it. I guess they can't see us." I said.

"I'll do it," Andrew said, and submerged, squeezing me and taking my trunks down. He began to tug on my dick. His mouth took it in. He broke through the water.

"How does that feel?" Andrew asked, eyes closed.

"OK I guess." I spat water out. I was surprised by the confidence in his voice, how natural it felt. This was what we did now.

Andrew pulled me in; his hands were like mad fish on bait, glistening under water. I took a deep breath rising up; his head disappeared under water until I felt his mouth envelope my dick. Less than a minute later, he broke through the water, gasping, eyes closed and wet, catching the tail end of a body spasm.

"Are you done?"

I finished moaning.

"Now you do me." Andrew said, mouth half full of water.

The sun continued its indiscriminate pursuit of our bodies, moles, crevices and lines to be. The red boat hit shallow water and Andrew dragged it across the damp sand.

We drank dull lemonade and showered.

After it was over, I packed up my things and went to the cottage for breakfast. We were leaving today, at some point. Returning to the city. The sun-sprayed cabin was vacated, beds once pushed together now separated, the evidence rearranged, curtains tied, door locked again.

"What time are we leaving?" I asked Andrew through the screen door of the cottage.

"Not sure."

Today would be another scorcher of pooled youth resources
⁷
.

7. The summer of 1988 was now a month-old memory, slow to evaporate, and as the Mega Powers, we really had done it all: bike rides, play fighting as a team with local kids our age, sailing, fireworks, go-karts, shopping in Yorkville, swimming at the neighbours' pool complete with its perverted jet, and “reading” the finest pages of pornography, including the off-season classic,
Playboy Girls of Winter
, which featured girls in cabins with beams of winter sunlight telling time in between and across their legs, on their backsides and swathed across their breasts. Video games too—loads of them,
Summer Games, Winter Games, Ghosts 'n Goblins, California Games
, and some wrestling game where you could either be the white-trunk-clad Ricky's Fighters or the black-trunked Strong & Bad. The dropkicks were especially funny, with the player suddenly in a horizontal position, heading towards their opponent with plenty of time to take a look at the crowd. Andrew would often imitate the experience of waiting to execute the dropkick, putting his feet up in the air, leaning back in his chair and leisurely waving to the crowd.

4 )
Round & Round

August–September 1989

W
hen Mom was very small, living in Kew Beach in East Toronto, some neighbourhood kids stole her skipping rope. It was a ruse, a conspiracy which in turn became a legendary set-up I replayed over and over again in my head. As a child, the story was told to me only once, but it had a huge impact on me in understanding anything about the woman who my friends said "floated" in her giant pink tea cozy of a housecoat and had a haircut in the shape of Darth Vader's iconic black helmet
⁸
.