Boys Like Kevin: A Coming of Age Novel
Author: Dj Ciccarello
Date: 2024-02-27T13:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Coming-of-age; LGBTQ+; Young Adult
Description: Returning to his hometown for a fresh start, a struggling teen must confront his past secrets and hidden desires for a second chance at love and happiness. Kevin Summers wants to be loved, but love is complicated. Beneath the teen’s façade lies a secret struggle. His secure and happy boyhood gives way to the challenges of adolescence and the pressures of young adulthood, leaving him on the brink of hopelessness. As Kevin picks up the pieces of his life, he reunites with former friends and meets new ones, facing a pivotal choice: Is he ready to confront his fears and secret desires for a second

Boys Like Kevin

A Coming-of-Age Novel

D.J. Ciccarello

BOYS LIKE KEVIN: A Coming-of-Age Novel

Copyright © 2024 by D.J. Ciccarello.

All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any other informational storage and retrieval systems, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author.

ISBN: 979-8-9898435-0-3 (E-Book)

ISBN: 979-8-9898435-1-0 (Paperback)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024900725

This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, businesses, organizations, events, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For more information contact: djciccarello.author@gmail.com

Editing by Kristin McTiernan

Cover design by Bookcoversonline.com

Formatting by The Nonsense-Free Editor

Printed in the United States of America.

First printing edition 2024.

First Edition: February 2024

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2

Content Warning

Boys Like Kevin is a coming-of-age story containing typical sexual situations that are consensual and realistic, serving to explore the characters’ growth and relationships. It also depicts a brief scene of sexual assault. No explicit language or graphic detail exists, but some individuals may still find the content inappropriate or triggering. Readers sensitive to these elements should take note.

To my mother, for her self-sacrifices and life-long encouragement.

"There is always one moment in childhood
when the door opens and lets the future in."

– Graham Green

1

Racing Toward the Past

P ulling the driver’s door closed, echoes of other doors resounded in Kevin's mind, slamming one after another in rapid succession. He turned the key, and the car idled, patiently awaiting his decision as he considered the dire consequences of moving forward. He had already come so far and had lost so much in such a short time. Kevin's young life was either wholly ruined or about to begin anew. Only his courage now would determine which. As Kevin sat and stared past the manicured lawn of his childhood home to the spot where the Ear Tree once lived, his memories of it were clear and comforting.

The car remained at its steady idle. Kevin visualized his parents, Bert and Carol Summers, still sitting on the sofa where he had delivered the news just minutes earlier. He was sure they were caught off guard seeing him back in town and stunned at his declaration. It was not his intent to break the news without warning or without staying to discuss it, but it was better to do it now than to wait and have them find out later from someone else. It needed to come directly from him, anyway. There would be time to go into details later, but Kevin was too tired and unsettled to discuss the particulars now. He needed time to transition from escape to refuge mode, and while he was confident of his parents' concern, he doubted it came as a surprise.

Only a few seconds passed as Kevin sat there. Seconds which felt like hours. He recalled the anguish of last night's fight with Maritza and the clarity of panic with this morning's decision. Once the choice became evident, though, it was go-time. The small car had little room, so his time there had been brief. It took just thirty minutes to pack a few belongings. There was an urgency in his moving quickly while everyone was at work and the house was empty. Maritza was gone, too, which suited him fine. The last thing Kevin needed was another scene with her, especially if it allowed time for the others to return home to derail his getaway.

The drive back to his hometown took exactly five hours. It included a ten-minute stop for gas and another twenty-minute break halfway between the two realities to reexamine what had just transpired and what he was about to do. Twenty minutes is a long time to be punched in the gut by a gang of emotions. The drive itself was four hours. He spent the remaining thirty minutes parked a few blocks away from his boyhood home, searching for the exact words to explain what had happened. He questioned his courage even to stop there. It had been almost six hours between his decision and his flight to freedom. Six hours is an eternity when blowing one’s entire world apart.

And then, with a sudden and deliberate motion, Kevin shifted the car into reverse and backed out of his parent's driveway, glancing one last time toward the ghost of the Ear Tree. As a boy, The Ear Tree represented perfection and freedom. From its void now, all Kevin sensed was failure and fear, and his emotional journey was only beginning.

2

Coffee and Clichés

T urning into the asphalt driveway, Kevin noticed his aunt's new Toyota parked under the carport. Alice was only ten years older than Kevin, and he viewed her more as an older sister than his aunt. She was the first and only phone call he made that morning, knowing she would give him refuge without question or judgment.

"Come on, honey, I got a place for you here," she told him without hesitation when they spoke.

Moving back under his parent's roof, even if temporarily, was not an option in his mind, and the little cash in his pocket left him with few other choices. Although Alice and his parents lived only ten blocks from one another, it was worlds away, and he felt he could breathe and retain what little dignity was left if he stayed with her. She was likely in for the night, so he parked behind the new car and blocked her in.

"It’s unlocked,” she yelled as soon as he began knocking. “Okay, talk later. Bye,” she said in a curt tone as he entered. “That was your mother, jeez Christ.”

“I was just there two minutes ago,” Kevin replied. “She’s on the phone with you already?”

“You know how she is. Come here and give your auntie a hug.” She approached with outstretched arms and a lit cigarette between her index and middle finger.

“What’s going on with you? You want some coffee?” she asked. Turning toward the kitchen without waiting for his response, she added, “Come in here and sit down while I make a fresh pot. You look like crap.”

“Well, thanks. It’s nice to see you too.”

For as long as Kevin could remember, Alice had a cigarette burning and a half-cup of coffee getting cold somewhere in the house. The caffeine never bothered her, though. She was usually asleep on the sofa by 9:30 PM, with the television’s volume turned up and its glow illuminating the otherwise dark living room. The woman could sleep through an earthquake if Florida were to have one.

“So quit stalling and tell me what happened. Remember, I’ve been married twice, so don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” Alice’s voice bellowed around the kitchen wall, making herself heard over the Mr. Coffee machine as it spit and spewed hot caffeinated water into the carafe. Kevin surveyed the living room furnishings to see what was new or changed and found nothing. Everything was as he remembered from his last visit two years ago, and the lack of change was comforting. As he descended into the corner of the sofa, Kevin heard her next instruction and stopped his body just short of landing on the cushion’s solace.

“Come in here and make your coffee. There’s half-and-half and sugar, but don’t expect any of that sweetener crap.”

Oh, the irony, he thought, avoiding cancer from Sweet’n’Low but still smoking.

“So, how long is this going to last?”

“I don’t know. How long are you going to keep smoking?” he replied.

“Hey, screw you, buddy,” she retorted, pointing her cigarette-holding fingers toward his face. “You’re in the door two seconds and already trying to change me,” she chuckled. “I need a man telling me what to do like a fish needs a bicycle.”

Alice loved her clichés. She had more of them than the best screenwriters and playwrights in Hollywood. Kevin had no idea where she got them all or how she so quickly summoned them to use during conversations. Those clichés, along with cigarettes and coffee, were the foundation of any meaningful discussion for his aunt.

“So, what did your mother have to say?” she asked, taking her seat as he took his across from her at the small dinette table pushed against the wall, separating the kitchen from the living room.

“Not much,” he replied. “I gave them the headlines and told them I was coming here. That’s it.”

“Them? So, your father was home? What did he have to say?”

“Not much. Only that he was sorry to hear about it and was sure everything would work out.”

Alice inhaled deeply before pursing her lips, sending a stream of smoke upward through the corner of her mouth and away from his face. “Well, that’s as useful as tits on a bull,” she replied. “And your mother? Tell me again what she said?”

“She started to ask questions and wanted to go into details, but I cut it short. I told them I wanted to get here before dark to get settled, and that I was tired.” Kevin wondered if his aunt would now take the role of interrogator instead of his mother. He speculated on how much detail he would need to go into. He hoped his hints would show he was not up to discussing details, at least not right now. All Kevin wanted to do was hide somewhere and lick his wounds. Still, the owner of the inn providing refuge from the storm deserves to have some questions answered by the wet and weary traveler, so Kevin sat there sipping his coffee while pushing his foot against the floor, his leg nervously bouncing up and down under the tablecloth.

“That’s alright,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll call tomorrow, trying to squeeze the story out of me. I’ll let you jump that fence when you get to it.”

“That’s fine,” Kevin replied. “Mom is just worried, like she worries about everything.”

Alice twisted and crushed the remains of her cigarette in the ashtray while exhaling the smoke. “Well, it’s good that you didn’t get her pregnant. Or did you?”

“Hell no!” he responded. “If Maritza is, it’s not by me.” Kevin couldn’t remember the last time they had real sex, at least with one another.

“Well, call me shocked then because I figured it was a shotgun wedding. It surprised the hell out of me when there was no bun popping out of the oven six months after the wedding.”

“Why would you say that?” he asked, his leg shaking faster and harder as the caffeine kicked in and the interrogation continued.

“Are you kidding me?” she said. “Well, let’s see. You meet the girl, and suddenly, your head is all up in her stuff. Don’t get me wrong, she’s pretty and all, but I mean, the lights are on, but there’s no one home, honey.” Without a cigarette, Alice was using her fingers to count her list of answers to Kevin’s previous question. “Then you quit school, up and move down there, and the next thing we know, you want to marry her. You hardly knew her. And we sure didn’t.”

Five fingers, by his count.

“Give me an F’ing break,” she continued. Alice often used ‘F’ing,’ emphasizing the capital ‘F’ instead of saying the word outright, as everyone else did.

Kevin stared at her like a dog smacked between the eyes with a rolled-up newspaper, expecting another whack but hoping it didn’t come. “I moved because I got promoted, okay? And yes, I admit I was lonely down there, but we got married because we ---.”

“Oh, come on, don’t blow smoke up my ass,” she interrupted. “You were barely eighteen, for Pete’s sake, and what was she, seventeen, if that? What do you know about love? You were just tired of driving back and forth every time your dick got hard. You got married too young, that’s all. You made a mistake, no big deal.” The truth usually stings, and Alice was never one to hold back opinions on any subject. Her courage and freedom to live as she pleased and with no one’s permission or endorsement were traits he admired and envied about her.

Kevin corrected her. “She had turned eighteen the month before. She wasn’t seventeen.”

“Seventeen. Eighteen. Who gives a shit? It’s all the same. Still a baby.”

“Okay, sure. You’re right, hindsight being perfect and all,” Kevin replied. His surrendered voice sounded like the rolled-up newspaper landing smack number two.

Alice stood and walked around the table, hugged him from behind the chair, and, in a consoling tone, said, “Don’t get your panties in a wad, okay? I’m only yanking your chain.” Walking back to Mr. Coffee and pouring herself another cup, she added, “You’ve always been too serious. You need to loosen up and relax, or you’ll end up like your mother, squeezing diamonds out of your ass from the internal pressure. Life isn’t perfect. It’s a bitch, okay? So get over it, figure yourself out, and move on. Get real!”

Get real, he thought. So easy to say. As Kevin moved from the dinette table to the living room, he asked, “Which side do you normally sit on?”

“The left is my side to watch TV. You can have that one. So, what happened?” Alice asked again.

Kevin paused for a few seconds, staring straight ahead at the silent and dark gray screen. It surprised him that the television was not on and playing in the background. The cushion was soft and comforting when he leaned back into it, staring up to study the ceiling while searching for the right words and appropriate level of detail. He pondered whether to start at the beginning and work his way forward or tell her what happened last night and work his way to the start of their issues.

“Here’s the abridged version,” Kevin finally said, fully acknowledging that he hated abridgments and lived wholly in the details. He told her about Maritza buying a new car with his American Express card despite not having a driver’s license yet. Kevin told Alice about her inability to get a job, their subsequent debt, and her parents following them down to South Florida to live. Rearranging himself in the sofa's corner and settling into a more comfortable position to face her, Kevin explained how they finally moved in with her parents.

“Yeah. Your mother told me they followed you guys down and that you all lived together.”

“Well, here’s the best part,” Kevin continued. “Her sister Gabriela moves down with them and brings her new boyfriend Jimmy along for their fresh new start, too.”

“Are you shitting me?” Alice asked, leaning forward to reach for a new cigarette and her lighter on the coffee table. “So now three couples are living together in the same house? Well, that’s a recipe for disaster.”

“Right,” he replied. The floodgates opened, and there was no stopping now, so Kevin continued. “Yep. It’s a family compound with two overbearing parents, two spoiled daughters, me, and a new boyfriend. Dysfunction at its finest.” Kevin then explained how he had to quit the job he moved down there for in the first place and about his subsequent jobs, each worse than the previous, all contributing to his poor credit and mounting debt.

“Can you believe it?” she added in long, drawn-out pronunciation of each word. “I mean, you can’t make this crap up!”

“Wait, it gets better,” he promised.

Alice just shook her head from side to side. “So, what happened yesterday to make you leave, besides having no job and living with your in-laws?” she asked.

It was time for the final can-you-believe-it round. Kevin recognized his blinking became rapid as he crossed his arms. He drew a deep breath, or a couple of them, steadying himself, trying to keep his emotions under control while pondering what to say or not to say next.

“So…,” he said, his lips beginning to quiver. Hold steady. Control it. He drew another deep breath and continued, “So. So, Maritza cheated on me.” The tears swelled as his vision blurred, and he thought the words themselves might choke him as they piled up in his throat like a high-speed automobile accident on the rain-soaked interstate during a sudden summer deluge.

“Well, ain’t that some shit,” Alice replied, slapping her hand to her thigh in a ‘there you go’ manner. “So, how did that happen?”

Kevin paused again, deciding what to say and how to say it. “A few weeks ago, she finally got a job and had to attend pre-employment training out of town. The truth was one of Jimmy’s old friends was staying at a nearby beach town, and they hooked up. There never was any job or training. The entire story unraveled when I kept pressing her for details. I couldn’t understand how they hired her, and she went to training but never started working. None of it made any sense.”

“So, this was weeks ago when that happened?” Alice asked. “Why this guy? How did she know him if this Jimmy guy moved down after all of you were already there?” Alice fired her questions rapidly, perplexed by the timeline and illogical associations.

“That’s the best part,” Kevin began to reply, suddenly unable to prevent the tears despite his best efforts to contain them. “They messed around here in Bayview before we got married. Before she even moved down.” Through his misery, Kevin could tell Alice was putting all the pieces together in her head.

“So, you were already engaged and about to get married, for F’ing sake. Not only did the bitch cheat and keep it a secret for two years, but she did it again with the same guy. Did her sister and the boyfriend know about her hook-up before the wedding? Did they keep it from you, too?”

“I don’t know. Gabriela and Jimmy claimed they didn’t know when it first happened, but who knows? I know I’m stupid for not knowing all this time and for believing all the bullshit about a new job and weekend training out of town,” Kevin replied, wiping the humiliation from his reddened eyes.

“So why stay if you knew about this a few weeks ago? Why this morning?”

“It just came to a head last night when we fought about it,” Kevin replied, but he couldn’t tell her everything that happened yesterday or the real reason he knew this morning that he had no choice but to leave. Kevin knew he would probably never tell her. It was likely he would tell no one. The emotional and physical pain of the rest of the story was still too fresh to divulge and discuss. Perhaps if he told her everything, it would make more sense. He couldn’t, however.

Alice’s newly lit cigarette burned in an ash column between her fingers as she shook her head from side to side in disbelief. Yes, Kevin had been stupid. He had made unbelievably poor decisions and was a total failure. That was what he believed.

“So,” he continued, drawing strength from another deep breath of humility and weakness. “If it’s okay with you, I need a place to stay until I figure out what to do next.” His voice quivered. “I sure as hell am not going back to that dysfunctional family.” Kevin was unaccustomed to asking other people for anything or relying on anyone for help. It was a tough swallow of pride to do it now when he had so little dignity left to swallow.

“So, you’re choosing your family's dysfunction over theirs? Good luck with that!” Alice replied, trying to add a little levity to their discussion. They glanced at one another with a half-grin-half-frown and a ‘what now’ expression. While relieved to get that off his chest, he had not told her everything.

“You know you can stay as long as you want. I need some help around here, anyway.”

Kevin looked around the room and over his shoulders, replying, “Well, that’s obvious.”

“Yeah, well, screw you too, buddy. You can have this room,” she said, tapping her knuckles on the wall directly behind the sofa where they sat. “You have to fix the toilet in there first, though. The water runs all the time.”

“Great. I’m in the door thirty minutes and already have chores. I thought you said you didn’t need a man around here?”

“I said I didn’t need a man telling me what to do, asshole. A man’s home may be his castle, but Honey, you’re living in my castle now, so just fix the damn toilet. I’m going to bed. You should, too.”

“Yes, mam,” he answered with a salute. Kevin was grateful for his aunt’s generosity and looked forward to his first peaceful night of sleep in a week.

Alice had always been Kevin’s Auntie Mame, or at least the 1958 movie version of her, starring Rosalind Russell. While not the Manhattan socialite or as flamboyant as Mame in the movie, Alice had as much spunk and determination, and as much influence on him as Mame had on her orphaned nephew, Patrick. He was now her unofficial ward, and Alice was his inspirational blueprint for freedom. Although they were sisters by the same mother, Alice was as carefree as his mother was anxious. Alice worked and relaxed at her own pace, without regard for or being influenced by the opinions of others. Like Auntie Mame, she projected fearlessness and independence.

It didn’t take long for Kevin to unpack his car and get settled. The room had a small closet to hang the few clothes he had brought and some space for his sleeping bag on the floor in one corner. He had grabbed an odd mix of items for his flight to freedom: a self-assembled half-wall bookshelf, a few books and sketch pads from high school, a radio, a soccer ball, a fishing pole and tackle box, a diver’s knife, and a few boxes of personal effects. They were trinkets and other items his parents and grandparents gifted him that carried special meaning. He collected them in haste that morning, and he was sure he had forgotten as many or more items of significance during the getaway. Kevin would have time to reconcile the gains and losses during the terms of surrender with Maritza in the days and weeks to come. For now, these few possessions were all he needed.

Kevin felt relieved to be back in the land of his boyhood when he laid his head on the borrowed pillow in the stillness of the room's calm and darkness. The smell of the house and the pressure in the air were familiar, and he stared at the ceiling as if it were a movie screen projecting flashes and images from his childhood. Kevin recalled bits of happy suburban boyhood in the 1960s, blessed with love and security. He remembered riding his bicycle, climbing trees with his friends, and playing ball in the front yard with blades of lush green grass cushioning his bare feet. Those childhood recollections flowed into the awkwardness and curiosity of adolescence, where the seeds of authenticity failed to take root. Adolescence is seldom ideal. Failure quickly stripped away the façade of who he thought he was supposed to be and exposed the vulnerabilities he had worked so hard to conceal over the years. His secret was a hungry beast. The more he fed it, the larger and more powerful it grew.

The quiet in the room was deafening, with the sounds of his heartbeat racing faster in conjunction with the memories as they advanced. The images on the ceiling were now just one day old. Kevin had not slept since that panicked and painful incident before returning home from work and his final confrontation with Maritza. Its physical and emotional marks were still fresh.

The images on the ceiling eventually slowed as exhaustion set in. Kevin was safe for now, but he knew he would need to confront the beast before it consumed him completely. He would have to tell the truth, but he would first need to determine what that truth was. The rest of his life depended on it.

Once the images slowed and Kevin’s heartbeat calmed, he fell into a long and deep sleep, and that was when he revisited the beginning.

3

The Swinging Sixties

T he 1960s was a turbulent and progressive time, playing host to the Space Race and Woodstock, countercultural and social revolutions, great hopes, and tragic assassinations. The decade saw human rights and social norms revolutions, including drugs, dress, sexuality, and music. It was also denounced as a decade of excess, flamboyance, and decaying social order. It was Kevin’s welcome into the world.

In the days immediately preceding Kevin’s birth, the U.S. launched its first test of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Beatles performed for the first time in Liverpool, and newly inaugurated John F. Kennedy established The Peace Corps. Within weeks of his birth, the Soviet Union launched the first manned spacecraft into space, extending its lead over the U.S. in the space race. The CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro failed and became public. Freedom Riders began interstate bus rides to test the new U.S. Supreme Court decision on integration. Alan Shepard became the first American in space aboard the Mercury Program’s Redstone-3 rocket. Three weeks later, President Kennedy announced before Congress his goal to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade with the Apollo Program. Construction of the Berlin Wall began and was completed in 18 days, separating Berlin and all of Europe into East and West.

Before Kevin’s first Christmas, the Vietnam War officially began as American helicopters arrived in Saigon carrying just 400 personnel. That number ultimately grew to half a million and resulted in the deaths of over 58,500 American soldiers. The Space Race, the Arms Race, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement were all in full motion.

When Bert Summers was discharged from the Army a few months after Kevin’s birth, he purchased their family’s first home, a newly constructed house in the modern new subdivision of East Park Estates. It was a modest home, a typical Florida ranch built of cinderblock with crank-style jalousie windows and no air conditioning. The four-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath house included appliances on a landscaped lot and was affordable with a Veteran’s Administration loan. Their furnishings were also modest in those early days, and the Early American theme reigned with wing-back chairs and sofas accented with walnut wood legs and complicated floral upholsteries. The white wrought iron frame and glass-topped dining table and chairs filled the dining area, while the period-required Dutch Boy painting and modern starburst style clock adorned the walls.

One of the fascinating interior features of the young family’s first home was the polished terrazzo floors–a standard flooring for Florida at the time–that helped keep the house cool in the summer and was easy to maintain. Originating with the ancient mosaics of Egypt and later refined by the Venetians of the eighteenth century, terrazzo was a fantastic flooring whose shine helped light the home’s interior. Its durability withstood the abuse of young children, and Kevin would put that durability to the test in years to come. Most people tiled or carpeted over the hard flooring in later decades, only to uncover and restore it as the fashion pendulum swung back to the sleek and straightforward. It was a shame people treated their floors like they treated their true identities, hiding the originality and authenticity underneath easy-to-lay facades of something less durable and inauthentic.

Looking back at black-and-white photographs of those early years, one had an undeniable observation that Kevin must have been a joyful child. Whether held in his mother’s arms, surrounded by toys in his playpen, or playing outside with the water hose, the grin on his face stretched from ear to ear. Those early photographs told a story of being privileged to have the foundational building blocks of a happy childhood. Bert and Carol provided a safe and healthy environment related to childcare, and as their firstborn, Kevin had attentive and loving interactions with friends and family. He had plenty of play and exploratory time for creative development, and being a carefree kid should have had a solid and positive impact on his life, whether on his achievements in school and career or on his physical and mental health as an adolescent and adult.

Carol captured Kevin’s largest smiles in those early photos on Christmas morning. Without regard to his family’s economic situation, Santa never failed to leave a trove of presents under the aluminum and tinsel tree, its silvery branches bathed in the reds, greens, blues, and ambers of the rotating and lighted color wheel. Whether it was a toy tractor one year or a tricycle the next, Kevin was all smiles as he rode his new gifts, still dressed in pajamas, with a cowboy hat on his head and trusty sidearms strapped around his waist. After Santa’s grand reveal had passed, and while sitting amongst piles of wrapping paper and opened boxes, Kevin posed with Bert for many of those precious memories. Through that Polaroid lens, he couldn’t have comprehended the significance of that confident, happy young cowboy smiling and waving at his complicated and disillusioned future self.

Before Kevin started his first school year, Bert and Carol gave birth to two daughters. The first, Patricia, was born the year a bomb exploded in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four African American girls as they attended Sunday morning services. Kevin’s second sister, Julie, was born two years later, the year of the Selma-to-Montgomery Bloody Sunday civil rights march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., ending at the Edmund Pettus Bridge with the nightstick and teargas attack on 600 marchers by police and state troopers. As the ground war escalated in Vietnam, the anti-war protest movement grew.

The Hippie and Flower Power movements were born a few years later, during the Summer of Love, embodying the rising counterculture of the time. The Age of Aquarius was dawning as hallucinogenic drugs, anti-war protests, free-love scenes, and meditative practices prevailed. Traditional theater also took part in the trends as Hair debuted off-Broadway with songs like “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” becoming anthems of the anti-war peace movement. Kevin listened to the soundtrack’s album as it repeatedly played on Saturday mornings while helping his mother clean the house. His favorite chore was vacuuming and raking the green shag carpet in the living room. Kevin loved how he could rake the tall-piled fibers into perfection, erasing the streaks left by the vacuum while discouraging others from walking on his perfected sea of green carpet strands. The Hair soundtrack was not the only progressive music pervading their suburban home each Saturday. The Bee Gees, Sonny and Cher, and even The Beatles began replacing Frankie Vallie and Engelbert Humperdinck on the stack of albums waiting to drop onto the turntable. Kevin sometimes wondered if his mother was turning into a hippie herself.

The year was not all love and music, however. It was also a summer filled with hate and violence domestically, as well as rising geopolitical tensions and wars internationally. As whites fought blacks and youth fought the establishment, Kevin was about to start his academic career in the first grade at a Catholic school across town. A public elementary school was just a few blocks from their home, but Bert and Carol thought a private education would better serve their firstborn. Neither parent was a practicing Catholic, but Carol worked a few blocks from the school, making it a convenient commute and a practical choice. Kevin spent his early school years there, benefitting from the advanced academics under the watchful eye and discipline of the nuns.

4

The Bee Hunts

T he Ear Tree was a giant one, its canopy spanning above half of Kevin’s house on one side into the Jacobson’s yard on the other. His parents called it an Ear Tree, named for the brown and ebony ear-shaped seed pods it began dropping each summer. A native of tropical regions and the national tree of Costa Rica, it had an expansive and spherical crown, valued for its ability to grow quickly in Florida’s sandy soil and hot temperatures. Its seed pods were as hard as stones and durable. By grasping the fallen pods with the thumb on top, index finger along the edge, and remaining three fingers underneath, they became formidable airborne weapons when thrown sidearmed. The hard spinning projectiles filled the suburban sky, silhouetted against the setting sun in the evenings, as they flew opposite directions across enemy lines during the skirmishes the neighborhood boys waged in their great pod wars.

The Ear Tree was more than a source of ammunition, however. Its massive trunk split in two directions about five feet off the ground, providing Kevin with a saddle and a sturdy horse's neck. With an old rope Kevin took from his father’s shed to use as reins, he rode the imaginary steed for hours, chasing, or being chased by, Indians on the open plains of the wild West. Spanning upward, his companion was a tree climber's dream. Its thick green foliage gave him a tall, camouflaged perch in the summer. From that vantage point high above the rest of the world, Kevin pretended to be a ship's lookout or a neighborhood sniper fighting in the war. The tree’s leaves transformed into billowing sails, powering the dreaded pirate ship Kevin captained when playing on the ground under the tree's cool shade. When turned upside down, Kevin’s bicycle became the ship's helm as he steered the mighty ship with the front tire as its captain. The chain-driven back wheel served as extra motor power, aided by a playing card clicking against each spoke as he hand-cranked the pedals faster and faster and faster until the bike bucked upward in revolt.

“We’re hit!” Kevin would announce to his imaginary crew. “Damage report!” he commanded. Sometimes, Kevin had to grab the wheel to turn the ship hard to port to avoid the rocky jetty ahead. At other times, the maneuver was hard to starboard to turn the ship into the wind to position themselves advantageously for the next round of broadside barrages against their attacking enemies. As the breeze shifted and filled their sails, the powerful vessel gained speed until the mighty ship either caught their adversaries and destroyed them or outran the blockade placed at the harbor’s mouth to entrap them. Either way, Kevin’s mighty tree ship and crew were always victorious. The Ear Tree was Kevin’s best friend as a child. He could do anything within and beneath its perfection.

When Kevin was not chasing Indians on the open plains or captaining his mighty sailing ship, he caught bees in the front yard. God, how Kevin loved the bee hunts. Each summer, when the grass was tall and the days long, patches of clover assaulted his front yard. The clover's white rounded flowers shot up from their leafed base, balanced atop their two-inch solid stems. They looked like small dandelions or miniature bursts of white fireworks above a forest of green grass, and they were a magnet to the bees collecting the clover’s nurturing pollen.

Bee hunting was its best during the late afternoon when the sun was large and dark orange and sat low on the horizon. Kevin moved from one patch of clover to another, systematically combing the front yard armed with a washed and de-labeled mayonnaise jar in one hand and its lid in the other, catching the bees by slowly bringing the jar and lid together. As the bee sat on top of the clover's flower, the lid severed the clover’s stem in half, with bees and flowers falling into the glass vessel. The jar had air holes, of course, which he had punched through the metal lid with his father's screwdriver borrowed from Bert’s toolbox without permission.

Occasionally, one of his prey would fly off of the clover as the two hands of entrapment closed, resulting in the angry bee landing on the back of Kevin’s hand to sting him. When it happened, Kevin shook his wounded hand wildly in the air like a rodeo bull trying to throw his rider while the jar fell to the ground, allowing the other captured bees to escape. Kevin would have let them all go eventually, but it was principle and not the sting that frustrated him. He had caught them; therefore, he should have control over their release. Kevin liked to be in control, even at this young age. But he was still a small boy and had not yet learned the complete meaning of control or the peril in its pursuit.

5

Lost in the Fog

K evin and his friends ran through their neighborhood streets, playing in the thick fog expelled by the mosquito spray trucks each time they passed. The trucks ran weekly and sometimes more often in the mosquito-prone summer months, and when the kids heard that unique sound of the truck’s fogger motor round the corner of their street, they dropped what they were doing to give chase to the cloud. It was like hearing the melodic chimes of the ice cream truck. Hear it, and you must come running. The children breathed the cloud in and allowed the mysterious chemical veil to engulf them, extending their arms like the walking dead and giggling, trying to find one another in the thick fog before it dissipated completely.

Running less frequently but with more dramatic impact were the old DC-3s that flew overhead, spraying the misty fog from their wingtips. When the children heard the unmistakable roar of their engines flying over nearby neighborhoods, they knew it was only a matter of minutes before the planes would fly their pattern directly over them. Kevin watched the plane bank and line up for their next run in the distance, preparing for the aerial assault that was about to occur. Flying only a few hundred feet above the rooftops and directly toward them, the DC-3 was an incredible sight and tremendous sound as it buzzed overhead. The playmates sometimes pretended to be sailors in the Pacific War, firing at the enemy bomber as it approached their ship. They imagined the fog flowing from their wings was smoke damage inflicted by their imaginary gunfire and direct hits. Naturally, the play fog contained the chemical DDT. The Environmental Protection Agency would eventually ban it because of its adverse environmental effects and potential human health risk as a probable carcinogen.

The summer of 1969 was eventful, beginning with the Stonewall Riots in New York City. It was a watershed moment in the gay liberation movement to fight a homophobic legal system. Gays had already supported blacks in the civil rights movement, women in the women’s rights movement, and hippies in the anti-war movement. Now, they established their own movement to fight for equal and fair assimilation into society. Within two years, gay pride marches were occurring in major cities worldwide.

Watching news coverage of those marches with his parents, Kevin had internal and unexpressed mixed emotions. He sympathized with people wanting equality, but at the same time, he was uncomfortable with the topic. News coverage tends to be based on sensationalism, and since newspapers need to sell papers and television stations need to attract viewers, they need to attract advertising dollars from corporate sponsors. Because of this, the news footage of those events usually stressed the most flamboyant of the marchers, highlighting boas and sissy-sashays with exaggerated movements of hips and shoulders. As a first-born, pro-establishment, Catholic-schooled future astronaut, Kevin wanted no affiliation with the behavior portrayed by the marchers on those newscasts.

What did attract Kevin’s attention was the U.S. space program. His interest in it grew with each mission. He became obsessed with space and space travel, consuming anything related to astronomy, spacecraft, space-themed books, television shows, and movies. Kevin built model kits of actual and fictitious spacecraft and later designed, built, and launched his own model rockets. Every bicycle he rode and every bedroom he occupied was at some point transformed into his own Apollo capsule, Starship Enterprise, or Jupiter 2 spacecraft, whisking him through space and time.

There was no television broadcast that year of greater significance than the Apollo 11 mission when the lunar module Eagle, piloted by Buzz Aldrin, landed in the Sea of Tranquility on the moon’s surface on July 20th. Less than five hours later, commander Neil Armstrong jumped off the Eagle’s ladder and became the first human to step on the lunar surface. They broadcast the event live worldwide as Armstrong described it as “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” They spent just twenty-one hours on the surface, taking photographs and collecting soil samples and rocks, before lifting off and rejoining the command module Columbia for their trip back to Earth. This event declared U.S. victory in the space race and fulfilled John F. Kennedy’s national goal, made one month after Kevin’s birth, to put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before the decade was out. Astronauts were the greatest heroes of that time, and Kevin, along with his neighborhood friends, emulated those astronauts by building cardboard command modules, flying through space on their swing sets, and hanging from tree limbs with ropes tied around their waists practicing their spacewalks in weightlessness. Kevin couldn’t have felt more normal. He was just a regular boy with a boy-like imagination, just the same as everyone else.

That moon landing was not the only event to help bring peace and hope to Kevin’s divided country that summer. For four days in August, on a rain-soaked and muddy dairy farm in New York, a music festival promoted as three days of peace & music became a pivotal moment in popular music. Attended by over 400,000 people, Woodstock picked up where 1967’s Summer of Love left off, becoming one of the largest music festivals ever. The free festival symbolized the counterculture of the 1960s and what became known as the Woodstock generation. But the country was transitioning from the Swinging Sixties into the Me Generation of the 1970s, and times were changing for everyone.

***

Just days after his birthday, Kevin joined the world in watching the launch of Apollo 13, the third mission to the moon. Two days after launch and nearly halfway to the moon, an oxygen tank exploded, depleting most of the spacecraft’s oxygen and causing a loss of water, electricity, and propulsion. The crew had to abandon the command module Odyssey and reconfigure the lunar module Aquarius as a lifeboat to sustain life. They rationed supplies and power. After careful manual calculations, they changed their flight plan for a swing around the moon and return to Earth. Kevin and his classmates gathered in the school’s cafeteria to watch news coverage of the event as it unfolded, and the world stopped and watched along with them, praying for the crew. Five days after the accident, the crew safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, and the mission became known as one of NASA’s most successful failures.

The pride of accomplishment in bringing the astronauts home safely was quickly overshadowed when students were shot and killed at Kent State University by America’s own National Guardsmen. Three weeks after oxygen tanks exploded on Apollo 13, rifles exploded with bullets from American troops into American citizens on American soil. Kevin watched on television as tear gas canisters shot into crowds of student protestors. Some students picked up those canisters and lobbed them back at the guardsmen. While most students stood and chanted or sat in peaceful protest, a few threw sticks and rocks at the guardsmen. In response, guardsmen opened fire for over 13 seconds, killing four and wounding another nine. The average distance between the students killed and the guardsmen who fired upon them was more than a football field length away. The guardsmen were hardly in danger, and the event marked the first time in U.S. history that a student was killed on a college campus during an anti-war gathering.

As a nine-year-old watching coverage of the military operations in Vietnam and the Kent State Shooting, Kevin remained firmly and naively sided with the Establishment. He was a cub scout, the son of a military veteran and civil servant firefighter, and a student in the disciplined Catholic school system. Kevin was a firstborn who buttoned his top button and was interested in military aircraft and space travel. He practiced being a cowboy lawman under the Ear Tree and played soldier general with plastic army men on his hard terrazzo floor. How could he ever side with savages who killed his country’s troops in the jungles of Vietnam or with hippie students who demonstrated and rioted at universities?

6

The Streak

W hen Bert and Carol decided his Catholic schooling was over, Kevin became part of the country’s desegregation effort and bussed across town to West Bayview Junior High. The bus stop for his new school was just around the corner and on the street behind his, a total distance of exactly four houses and sixty seconds if sauntered. Kevin tried to time his departure from home each day so that he arrived a couple of minutes before the bus pulled up, wanting to spend as little time waiting for the bus as possible. The blend of young teenagers and idle time often led to mischief Kevin wanted no part of. At a minimum, a kid could be that day’s target of bullying. At worst, some delinquent in the group with a small can of lighter fluid and a match might ignite an old tire found nearby, producing an impressive plume of thick black smoke. Kevin was confident the fire department knew the address of that bus stop by memory. The bus stop was the last on their drivers’ route in the morning, so empty seats were at a premium when it arrived. Kevin sat in the very back when it was available, finding it preferable to have unruly students in front of him, where he could see trouble brewing, rather than behind him, where he might be subject to a blind or sudden attack of spitballs or worse. His old Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared,” was always foremost in his mind.

Originally built as a high school, West Bayview was sizable in scale compared to the schools Kevin had experienced. The ceilings were tall, the hallways were wide, and the doors were large and solid with beveled glass inserts. Schools were designed and built to different scales depending upon their intended use as either elementary, middle, or senior high. Like riding the bus, Kevin tried to keep a low profile and stay on the right side of the rules to avoid the Dean’s office.

Aside from the bus ride's challenges and the school's scale, physical education class was the newest element of the school experience at West Bayview that year. The students dressed out for PE and wore short blue shorts and white tee shirts with the WBJH logo printed on the front. The course contained sports activities that changed every two weeks, rotating from basketball to football, archery to baseball, and kickball to tennis. It was old-school physical education with mandatory participation and sweat, followed by compulsory group showers before the next class period.

There was no experience like being a thirteen-year-old in a group shower with dozens of peers for the first time and the associated feelings of exposure, vulnerability, and curiosity. Kevin was careful not to let the other boys catch his glances at the Latin boy, the most mature in the class, although half of the other boys were doing the same. Jose had a better-defined body than anyone else’s in the class, with hairy legs and hair on his well-sculptured chest. He was at least a year older than the rest of them, possibly two, having entered school in a lower grade when he immigrated to the United States. That was the story told, anyway. Kevin was impressed each time he saw Jose’s athleticism on the field and his wet body in the showers, although he wasn’t attracted to Jose since boys don’t like other boys in that way. Kevin also didn’t want to be Jose, at least not in the way he would grow to crave the identity of other attractive boys in the years ahead. Kevin didn’t necessarily want to be Jose’s friend, either. He was just impressed with Jose, or maybe envious of what Jose already had that he didn’t. Those showers after PE class were like minefields where Kevin stood motionless in fear under the lukewarm running water, over-analyzing his surroundings and cautious of where he stepped next.

Jose was not the only Latin boy Kevin met that year. While he tried his best to avoid becoming the daily target of mockery by the rowdy kids on the daily school bus rides, Kevin met Miguel, who was doing the same thing. Miguel lived on the same street as the bus stop but at the opposite end and one block behind Kevin. The boys seemed similar, soft-spoken by nature, and carefully straddling the line between vigilance and curiosity. Miguel and his family immigrated from Cuba in the early 1960s and settled in Florida, like many others fleeing the Castro regime. When they could, the two boys sat together in the rear of that bus, seeking obscurity during those long rides to and from West Bayview.

When summer break finally arrived, the two continued their friendship, usually at Miguel’s house, since he had the place to himself while his parents worked. Miguel didn’t enjoy the outdoor heat, so he didn’t play ball in the street or ride his bike like Kevin and his friends did. Instead, Miguel preferred the coolness of the air conditioning inside the house. What Miguel lacked in athleticism, he more than made up for in humor, using it often as his primary coping mechanism. He had a charming smile and was very funny. Miguel was also skilled in pushing the envelope in suggestion and could quickly pull it back under the guise of a joke, often leaving his true intent challenging to determine.

Keith, who was their age and lived a few blocks away in the same neighborhood, often joined Kevin and Miguel. Like Miguel, Keith was short and thin and had a good sense of humor, always laughing at something. He, too, was sometimes tormented by the tough kids in their suburban hood, probably because of his slight stature. Keith was a welcome addition, making the three an unlikely band of brothers that summer.

The three boys decided to go streaking one slow summer afternoon at Miguel’s house. Streaking was a new craze that had quickly become one of the biggest trends that year, and like goldfish eating in the 1930s and telephone booth stuffing in the 1950s, college students around the country began one-upping each other by stripping naked and running in public. The activity morphed into “Keep on Streakin” t-shirts, a hit song by Ray Stephens, and even a streaking incident during the 46th Academy Awards. The three decided they should take part, too, and hatched a simple plan. They would go into Miguel’s backyard and strip, do one quick lap around the house, return to the starting point, quickly put their clothes back on, and then run inside. They hoped the police wouldn’t show up to arrest and haul them downtown, necessitating a call to their parents to bail them out. Admittedly, it was a high-risk, low-return proposition with little to be gained by the effort. Still, they thought it would be cool to participate in the fad and that the story would add to their popularity going into the eighth grade at a new school in their neighborhood.

With their plan thoroughly considered down to the smallest detail, the boys headed outside to the tree that served as the starting and finishing point. Miguel opened the gates to the chain-link fence that enclosed the backyard on each side of the house to prepare for their run. The three then carefully walked the path, noting all potential viewing angles from which someone might see them. They mentally noted houses that might spot them and the street corner where cars traveling in one of four directions might catch a glimpse of them during the dash. Miguel lived in the second house from the street corner, with one of those two cross streets being a heavily traveled avenue. The highest chance of being seen would come from that corner. Making sure they cleared all obstacles from their path, they completed a test walkthrough and returned to the tree. Indeed, it was a simple plan with a high probability of success and would do nicely for a first streak attempt. In retrospect, Kevin was not sure why they felt the need to streak without being seen or caught since the whole point of streaking was to have people see you running naked. If a falling tree in the woods makes no sound when no one hears it, is a streak a streak if no one sees it? Not all summer follies by thirteen-year-old boys are founded in logic, however, and what could go wrong?

The three teens stood near the tree and took their shirts off, placing them within arm’s reach on the ground. There was nothing unusual about that. Few boys or teenagers even wore shirts during the summer in Florida, especially outside. Shirtless and halfway there, they slowly turned to survey the backyard to see if anyone in adjoining yards was visible. They carefully checked the windows of neighboring houses within sight through the trees. The coast was clear. The spectacle of three kids slowly turning in circles while standing next to one another was more suspicious than the fact that we were shirtless, but it was a precaution worth taking. Of course, they left their shoes on because Streakers wore their tennis shoes when streaking. The last thing they needed was to step on a sharp stick or accidentally stub a toe while running naked outside.

The last act of the strip was the most complicated option to reach a consensus on. The two-step approach would call for stripping off shorts first and then discarding underwear in a second and separate motion. Miguel and Keith both preferred that choice. Kevin, however, suggested the one-step option, grabbing the waistline of both shorts and underwear simultaneously and swiftly stripping them off together. The friends debated the merits of each option for some time, presenting points and counterpoints to one another until finally, the two-step option was selected, if only by majority vote. Kevin considered himself the bravest of the three for his willingness to go for it, but it was still two against one. They were also in Miguel’s yard, so Kevin conceded to do it their way on the count of three.

“One. Two. Three!” All three pairs of shorts came down, leaving them standing in their underwear next to a tree. They just needed one last survey of the neighboring windows and yards to ensure they were still undetected and thus ready for the streak. The coast was still clear, so one additional countdown and their streak around the house would be in the record books. Keith had led the last countdown, so Miguel did the honors on this one. Again, it was his backyard.

“One,” he said. “Two,” he called louder. “Three!”

Kevin’s underwear flew off first, and he was in the clear lead, heading for the first gate of passage on the side of the house. As the tallest and most athletic of the three, he reached it first and looked back to gauge how close behind his friends were. The boys never proposed the streak as a race, but it always becomes a race whenever three boys run together. When he looked back, however, Kevin saw Miguel standing in his starting spot, pulling his underwear back up. Keith was on the ground with his legs in the air and his underwear twisted around his ankles. As it turns out, Keith had begun running before his underwear entirely cleared his shoes and, like restraints on his ankles, was tripped up by them. When Kevin turned to look forward again, he was rounding the front corner of the house, now running full stride into the front yard. He might as well have run into the middle of a football field with a sold-out stadium, though there were no fans in the stands.

In the split second it took Kevin to process that he was running naked alone in someone else’s front yard, he had a decision to make. Should he continue the streak as planned or stop to double back, aborting it altogether? He thought it was quicker to maintain momentum and keep going, so he did that. Running across the entire length of the home’s front yard and down the other side, Kevin suddenly faced Miguel, who had run to the second gate through the backyard to latch it shut, uncontrollably giggling as he held the latch tight. Kevin considered scaling the four-foot-high chain-link fence, but feeling the open air on his exposed and vulnerable genitalia, he quickly dismissed the idea as a bad one.

Kevin knew he had to outrun Miguel back to the first gate before Miguel could close and lock it, too, so he reversed course and sprinted back across the front yard and let the adrenalin coursing through his veins do its work. As he passed through the open gate and returned to the start tree, Kevin noticed Miguel had not even tried to outrun him to it. Instead, Miguel ran toward his back door, cradling his shirt and shorts while giggling. Miguel assumed Kevin was coming after him for his treachery, so he left the crime scene as quickly as possible and headed indoors. Kevin was relieved to find his clothes still on the ground. Miguel could have taken those inside with him, but he either didn’t think of it in time or calculated it would have been one practical joke too many. In the meantime, Keith stood by the tree in his filthy underwear, still trying to brush the dirt off himself while pulling his shorts up. The plan was good, and while not executed with precision, at least Kevin could now claim he had streaked.

Kevin was not mad at Miguel but was now cautious of his cunning. He was not angry at Keith either since his short friend had at least tried to streak and was the one most embarrassed at the hands of his own clumsiness. Instead of anger, Kevin felt more emboldened when with the two. He had committed to the plan. He had unabashedly exposed his athleticism while executing the plan. Kevin had experienced the swift air across his bare, youthful skin and had won the undeclared race.

7

Boys in the Closet

K eith and Kevin were back at Miguel’s house a few days later. After making baloney and cheese sandwiches on soft white bread with mayonnaise, a delicacy they all enjoyed and for which there was always an ample supply of ingredients in the kitchen, they listened to a few new 45 RPM records Miguel had recently purchased. While “I Shot the Sheriff” and “Seasons in the Sun” were popular at Brian’s house next door, “Sunshine on My Shoulders” and “Annie’s Song” were hits played by the Jacobson sisters since they were in love with John Denver. Meanwhile, Carol’s new Saturday morning cleaning songs included “The Way We Were” by Barbara Streisand and “You Make Me Feel Brand New” by The Stylistics. When alone in his bedroom, Kevin listened to the radio, waiting for Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love,” Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets,” or David Essex’s “Rock On” to be played. But it was Miguel who had the good stuff. He had different stuff. Miguel had “Dancing Machine” by the Jackson 5 and Cool & the Gangs’ “Jungle Boogie” and “Hollywood Swinging.” Miguel had the music you could dance to, and dance he did.

When the music ended and Miguel finished dancing, it was time for his next performance. He suggested both Kevin and Keith hide in his bedroom closet and wait. He said he had a surprise for them, and all they had to do was be quiet and patiently watch through the louvered wood slats of his closet’s bifold doors. Kevin was apprehensive after the streaking incident, but Miguel pleaded with them to do it and insisted it would be worth it. Kevin and Keith agreed only after checking the closet doors to ensure no hidden locks or latches were there for Miguel to use as a prank on them. They took their places in the closet and jockeyed for the best viewing position, pushing aside shoes under their feet and sliding hangers of clothes on the rack to give themselves more room. Then they heard the front door open and close, followed by two muffled voices traveling down the hallway headed for the bedroom in the rear of the house where they were hiding.

Waiting silently in the closet, Kevin could hear his heart beating and sensed Keith fidgeting next to him in the darkness. Then they heard Miguel’s voice telling someone to go ahead and sit on the bed and get ready.

“I’ll be right back,” Miguel said.

Kevin’s heartbeat was now the pounding sound of blood pumping through his eardrums, and he felt Keith’s hand slapping the back of his bare leg, instructing Kevin without using words to ‘Look! Look! Look!’

Peering through the louvered slats, the two boys watched as the figure sat on the bed's edge and pulled off his shorts and underwear simultaneously. It was the same swift motion Kevin had suggested they all do as they prepared to streak a few days prior. It was the same motion Kevin had made before his sprint, leaving Keith and Miguel behind. The figure on the bed was Dennis, Miguel’s next-door neighbor. Dennis was around their age and a big boy, not fat, but not muscular. He was a big-boned, mid-western farm boy type of husky. They had never seen Dennis in school and didn’t know if he was even in the same grade as they were. Kevin and Keith only knew of him from what Miguel had told them in the past, that he was ‘slow’ and ‘simple.’

Kevin’s eyes widened as he leaned slightly closer to the slats in the door, adjusting his head up or down for the best possible view. Keith’s hand was now firmly gripping the side of Kevin’s shorts as if he was about to fall off a cliff and clutching a rope for balance. By the time Dennis’s butt came to rest on the edge of the bed, his shorts were around his ankles, much like Keith’s had been around his ankles a few days earlier. Dennis patiently sat and waited for Miguel to return, sporting the hugest hard-on Kevin had ever seen. It pointed straight up to the ceiling and was as thick and stiff as a baseball bat. Kevin had never seen an erection in real life, only pictures of them in dirty magazines that boys passed around in the back of the school bus once or twice in junior high.

As Kieth and Kevin stared at Dennis, sitting motionless and erect, they heard Miguel’s voice from his doorway just outside their view through the slats. “Do you still want to suck me?” Miguel asked.

“Yeah,” Dennis replied. “You said I could.”

Why would anyone want to suck someone’s dick in their mouth? Kevin thought to himself. Why would Miguel let him do that? Kevin was still quite naïve when it came to matters of sex. He had no idea that women or men engaged in such oral behaviors, let alone understand how someone could find it desirable or pleasurable. He was conflicted about witnessing whatever it was they were about to witness. Kevin sensed it was wrong or immoral, yet still, he was curious and wanted to see what was about to happen. Kevin was also beginning to feel embarrassed that two of his best friends seemed to know more about these matters than he did. Any powers of emboldening Kevin gained from streaking a few days earlier disappeared, negated now by his apparent sexual naivety.

Miguel returned to the room after about a minute, although it felt more like an hour, and gave Dennis some excuse as to why they couldn’t do what they had come into his bedroom to do. Dennis got dressed and was gone within a few minutes without complaint, taking his erection home with him. Kevin and Keith came out of the closet when they heard the front door close, and Kevin watched his friends have a good laugh at Dennis’s expense. He felt the same sadness for poor Dennis that he had felt for poor Peter, a sixth-grade classmate who ate his boogers and got paddled publicly in class for giving incorrect answers. Miguel explained Dennis was a ‘faggot’ and that he had offered to suck Miguel’s dick several times before. Miguel claimed to have never let him do it, though. Kevin played along, careful not to say too much or divulge the depth of his innocence. He feared he might become the next target of Miguel and Keith’s ridicule if he had.

Miguel’s goal was to amuse his friends by embarrassing Dennis. That was who Miguel was: a showman, an entertainer, and a grand suggester and coaxer. “No harm done,” in his words. But Kevin did sense the harm. He also felt guilty for hiding in the closet and voyeuristically watching Dennis stroke his penis while waiting for Miguel to return. The eager anticipation, surprise, and awe of the sight, curiosity, and guilt were a complex combination of emotions Kevin had not yet mastered. More was going on in that closet than a boyish prank, though Kevin didn’t yet know what it was. One thing he was sure of, however. If Dennis was a ‘faggot’, as Miguel had labeled him, Kevin was nothing like Dennis.

8

Hallway of Knowledge

S treaking and hiding in closets aside, Kevin took full advantage of summer break’s freedom by riding his bike around the neighborhood, playing catch in the front yard, and designing, building, and flying kites outside. When it was too hot or raining out, Kevin watched old movies inside that were broadcast on local television stations. Hitchcock’s The Birds was a favorite and appeared on television regularly every few weeks. Kevin played chess by and against himself, reading books to study and memorize the classic opening, mid-game, and late-game moves of great grandmasters like Boris Spassky and Bobby Fisher. Bert taught his son how to play, but Kevin took playing the board game to an obsessive level. He preferred to play white to give himself an opening move advantage, and he took his time playing since no opponents were objecting to long delays in his moves. Kevin sometimes agonizingly planned and strategized each move and occasionally took one back in a do-over after realizing there was a better move to make. He was assured of victory in each match, giving himself a false sense of confidence while promoting his internal struggles between the black and the white pieces, the right and the wrong choices, and the indecision in the pursuit of perfection. It was easy to win when he controlled the game.

Kevin also spent a lot of time reading the gold-bound annual editions of the World Topics Yearbook or the Illustrated How It Works Science and Invention encyclopedias that Bert and Carol purchased for their children. These were their informational sources of reference for homework assignments, and it may have been odd that Kevin read encyclopedias during summer vacation out of want rather than out of requirement. Still, they were a great source of illustrations and pictures for him to practice sketching, and they fueled his interest in science and the mechanics of how things worked. The encyclopedias were not the only books Kevin read, though.

When Patricia and Julie were playing with neighbors, and Kevin had the house to himself, he frequented the bookshelf at the end of the hallway, where Bert and Carol kept their books shelved. Amongst the various Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks and novels like The Godfather and Love Story, right below the weight loss and just above the self-help bestsellers, was the one book Kevin returned to time and time again. After ensuring he was alone in the house, Kevin sat on the cool terrazzo floor with his back against the hallway wall and carefully removed the object of his curiosity from its assigned place on the shelf. Then, after finding the page last read without the aid of a bookmark, he picked up where he last left off, consuming the material with the interest that only a teenage male can consume. When his reading sessions were complete, always conscious to never read too much material at once for risk of being caught, Kevin carefully placed his parent's copy of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) back in its sacred place on the shelf in the Hallway of Knowledge. The book opened a world Kevin didn’t know existed and answered some basic questions about a subject no one had explained or discussed with him.

The book was a revolutionary bestseller but possibly one of the least factual books ever written on sex. It touted the use of Coca-Cola as the best form of birth control and asserted that lesbians who become prostitutes did so to make money from the men they despise, infecting them with diseases. The chapter titled “Male Homosexuality” was exceptionally dreadful to Kevin as he read it. It contended that gay men were prone to anonymous hookups in public restrooms without feelings or sentiment, exchanging notes on toilet paper before going at it. They used glory holes, orgy rooms, and gay bathhouses. They were incapable of lovingly living together. It explained that the bitterest argument between husband and wife was a passionate love sonnet compared to the average conversation between a butch and his queen. It said those who combined homosexuality with sadistic and masochistic aberrations were among the cruelest people who walk the earth, filling the ranks of Hitler’s Gestapo and SS.

Kevin read how gays got pleasure from penetrating themselves with various foreign objects in their rectum, including pens, pencils, tennis balls, and enough fruit to stock a small grocery store. There was hope, however. According to the author, it was possible to cure gays of their homosexuality by visiting psychiatrists. Coincidently, in December of the book’s publishing year, the American Psychiatric Association declared homosexuality was not a mental illness ‘to be cured.’ Still, Kevin was not privileged to that bit of alternative information.

Parts of that book, matched with news coverage he had previously seen of flamboyant marchers wearing boas with sissy-sashays in parades, solidified Kevin’s belief that this was dangerous ground he should never traverse. Still, he knew the thrill of streaking in Miguel’s yard and the expectancy of watching Dennis’s erection on Miguel’s bed. Kevin also remembered playing truth or dare a few years earlier with Michael, the bad boy who lived down the street. It was the first time Kevin got a good look at another boy’s penis, and it could have been called Kevin’s first sexual encounter had there been anything sexual about it.

The Summers family owned a travel trailer they frequently used on camping trips and vacations, especially with the Jacobsons next door. The Starcraft was the ultimate in camping comfort, with an entire kitchen area, a shower, and a bathroom. To the right, it had a dining table that sat six and converted into a spacious bed that slept two adults at night, adequate for Bert and Carol. Past the kitchen on the left was the rear sleeping compartment with four bunk beds and various storage areas. Bert routinely pulled the Starcraft into the driveway to clean and supply it for their next trip. When parked in this position, the camper became Kevin’s imaginary starship and reading hideaway from his sisters. Occasionally, his parents allowed him to ask a friend for driveway campouts, and since he was getting a bit old for sleepovers, this was likely the last time Kevin would ask. Naturally, Kevin invited the neighborhood bad boy.

After the boys played cards at the dinette table and ate their fill of pop-tarts, they reclined in the lower bunk beds opposite one another in the back of the camper and talked for hours. Kevin considered telling Michael about what he had seen from Miguel’s closet but didn’t. The three boys had sworn an oath to keep the event a secret, plus Kevin didn’t want to risk Michael ridiculing him for what he had witnessed, even if he had not been an active part of it. The last thing Kevin wanted was for Michael to bully him or call him a faggot.

They told each other all the jokes they could remember and made fun of all the other kids they knew, giggling and horsing around as most boys do at that age when camping. The jokes and horseplay eventually led to Kevin bragging about having streaked before. Michael shrugged Kevin’s daring event off, downplaying the courage it took and stating he would have gladly taken part, and had he been there, he would have easily won the race and showed them all up, being older and faster and stronger than they were. But Michael was not there, and their debate led to a game of truth or dare, which naturally led to a dare of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” That dare preceded a challenge of “I bet mine is bigger than yours.” Most teen males spend excessive time inspecting their penis, covertly or overtly comparing themselves to other boys. Without a doubt, the overwhelming obsession or concern is always with size. Kevin was oblivious to both the science and the societal norms as he pushed the game forward, being cautious about leaving himself room for an out should Michael abruptly become upset or take offense at the nature of the game. Either Kevin was a convincing actor, or Michael was a willing participant, but in either case, the competition between the two continued.

In the days that followed the sleepover, Kevin had obsessed over two truths. First, he remembered he was the one who initiated the game. It was his idea. He was the aggressor, taking the risk of coercing the boy down the street into the dare. Second, his penis was bigger than Michael's, and there was an inner pride that he had now won something over the neighborhood boy. Michael may have been older, and his muscles may have been more developed, but Kevin had the longer and thicker of the two penises. Michael may have commanded more respect or fear amongst the neighborhood kids, but their little game of dare and comparison had revealed the power in size, and that semblance of supremacy felt good to Kevin. Its gratification was immediate. Kevin had won, and Michael knew it. He had beaten the bad boy without so much as a shove or a punch, even as they diminished the importance of the game’s results in the back of that dark camper on that summer evening. After all, it was just a meaningless dare and foolish fun that they both quickly dismissed and never discussed again.

From that point onward, Michael showed Kevin more respect whenever they crossed paths in a hallway or spent time together in a group. Kevin hoped Michael would never pick on him again, as older boys tended to do to younger ones. He hoped Michael would never steal his baseball glove out of his front yard again, as he had so brazenly done a few years before. Carol had spanked Kevin for carelessly leaving his toys out in the yard and for allowing a playmate to take his property without standing up for himself when it happened. It was a punishment that didn’t need repeating. It was a long time coming, but Kevin finally earned retribution for his stolen baseball glove and his mother’s punishment for leaving it unattended in the front yard.

The coyness of playing truth or dare with Michael, the nervousness in the group showers after physical education class, the nakedness of streaking in Miguel’s yard, and the unexplainable feelings while hiding in Miguel’s closet. All were taboo and intriguing, dangerous and intoxicating. It was difficult for Kevin to determine if secretly reading the source of sexual education in the hallway was more beneficial than harmful. Despite the book’s inaccuracies and absurdities, or perhaps because of them, Kevin’s inquisitiveness regarding anatomy and sex prevailed.

9

Great Expectations

K evin and his friends completed their year of desegregation bussing to junior high and were now free to attend their local school again. Although John Pierce Middle School was just two blocks from his home and on the opposite corner of the intersection from Miguel's residence, Kevin never shared a class with his friends and rarely saw Miguel or Keith on campus once the school year began. Their little band of merry men had unofficially disbanded as each found new friends and joined different cliques, separate and apart from the other.

Middle school years can be difficult for most boys as they enter their hormone-stupid years, and Kevin was no exception. Body hair and acne took root, while braces on his teeth elevated his self-consciousness to a new level. Kevin’s braces were the old-fashioned, heavy metal type, not the smooth and transparent braces available in later years. As a practice, Kevin tried to avoid any altercations or fights when he could, but when the unavoidable happened, he quickly learned that the most important thing to do in a scuffle was to smile. It was a far better outcome for opponents to cut their knuckles on his fighting smile than to have the inside of his mouth ripped apart on sharp metal edges. His first hormone-stupid fight at John Pierce had taught him that.

Until then, Kevin was taller and larger than most boys his age. His growth spurt came early in life. Whether being picked first when choosing sides for team sports or simply commanding a certain degree of respect, he enjoyed the social benefits of his height and size. That suddenly changed at John Pierce when Kevin found himself at a much larger school with boys who had caught up and, in some cases, surpassed him in height and strength. Many were now better at sports, apparently finding their athletic prowess during the summer break while he was streaking around Miguel’s house and hiding in his closet.

Kevin also found himself in classes where he was no longer the most intelligent student. The educational head start he gained in private schools had worn its worth and rendered Kevin only average now, on par with most other students. Size and intellect were not the only self-deficiencies Kevin struggled with. There were boys he deemed better looking or had better haircuts than he did. Some boys were more fashionably dressed or more sociable than he was. Suddenly, and without warning, Kevin had become the proverbial smaller fish in a larger pond and felt inadequate. True to a Dicken’s tale, his great expectations for middle school were rapidly waning. Until his semester in Mr. Nelson’s shop class, that is.

The new classmate introduced himself as Steve, turning away from the noise and power of the drill press long enough to shake Kevin’s hand with zest before returning his attention to his woodworking project. His full name was Steven James Mason. He was an inch taller than Kevin, with straight black hair parted from the side and a white smile any dentist would be proud of. Kevin watched his new shop partner drill holes into the triangle peg game that was the class project. As Steve drilled, he involuntarily held the tip of his tongue, slightly exposed between his lips, in total concentration as he focused through his plastic safety goggles on the precision of his work. Kevin followed his movement between machines, picking up pieces of wood and discarding others as they chatted and got to know one another. Steve’s lean length and movements, his carefree attitude, and frequent chuckles at everything and nothing gave him the initial impression of nerd-goofy yet adorable. Kevin took less than one class period that day to discover the meaning of being smitten with someone.

Steve and Kevin shared many common interests and forged an instant friendship. They both loved the game of chess and were equally matched against one another when they played. They were both science geeks and spent hours building the rockets Mr. Nelson taught them how to make, launching them in an open field near Steve’s house on a canal by the bay. Occasionally, one of the rockets, gently floating back toward the earth under its parachute and guided by the wind, made a watery splashdown in the canal, just as the Apollo capsules carrying the astronauts did when they returned to Earth. When an unplanned watery landing occurred, the teenagers ran toward the site, waiting on one of the two opposing canal walls until the current floated the rocket and parachute to them for retrieval.

They loved tennis and often hit together at either the public courts on the school grounds near Kevin’s home or the courts in the park near Steve’s house, where they launched rockets. As their tennis skills improved during those two years of middle school, they entered small city tournaments conducted at the community college, although they were not good enough to win any of them. Steve played with the same newer, more powerful racket Jimmy Connors played with. Kevin used an older racket Bert and Carol gave him as a Christmas gift. It was good enough for his skill level, and he would have been more grateful to have it had he not envied the racket that Jimmy Connors and Steve had.

Carol was the one who taught Kevin how to play tennis, and once he showed a real and lasting interest in the sport, she enrolled him in the Judy Alverez Tennis Camp. Alverez was a former professional tennis player of Cuban-Italian descent who grew up in the same Ybor City neighborhood and attended the same high school as Carol. Alverez’s mother worked in a Ybor City cigar factory, just as Carol’s parents and grandparents had done since immigrating to the United States themselves. Alverez made it to the round of sixteen at Wimbledon, the French, and the U.S. Championships, and after leaving the tour, opened her tennis academy not far from Kevin’s home. Kevin asked Carol if Steve could join him in tennis lessons, and after both mothers discussed and agreed, he and his new best friend were taking semi-private lessons with the former world player once a week.

When they weren’t playing tennis, especially during that summer between eighth and ninth grades, the two swam. Steve’s home was on a canal by the bay where he lived as an only child with his divorced mother, and it had a beautiful screened-in pool. Carol sometimes drove Kevin there since it was on her way to work. Kevin’s home also had a pool, just as many Florida homes did, but it was not as deep or screened-in as Steve’s was. Steve was a good swimmer, and his body length gave him a reach and speed that Kevin couldn’t match. In that upscale pool, Steve taught Kevin how to do racing turns underwater, or flip turns, at the wall without stopping, and they often had timed contests to see which of them could retrieve objects from the bottom of the pool faster or who could hold their breath the longest underwater. All that time spent in the water under the sun gave both their bodies a healthy and golden hue, with stark tan lines where their speedos had covered them.

Steve loved comedy albums and introduced Kevin to his collection one day after the two dried and changed from a long afternoon in the pool. He had a turntable in his bedroom and played skits and jokes by Bill Cosby, George Carlin, and Richard Pryor, all of whom were incredibly funny. One of Kevin’s favorite routines was by Richard Pryor, who told the story of two guys walking across the Golden Gate Bridge. As they reached the center of the bridge, they both peed over the edge, with one turning to the other to say, “Goddamn, this water is cold!” His friend responded, “Yeah, and it’s deep, too!” Kevin suspected that those comedy albums were, to some degree, responsible for Steve’s relaxed sense of humor. Kevin took his cues from Steve, laughing when Steve laughed at the bits that Steve thought were funny.

The longer Kevin watched Steve’s smile and listened to his laugh that day, laying on his carpeted bedroom floor as they occasionally and innocently brushed against one another, reaching for albums and thrashing around on the floor in amusement and laughter, the more Kevin pondered what it might be like to be Steve. It was not enough to be with him. Kevin had already spent nearly two years hanging around with him. That day, in that time and space, Kevin first became conscious that he wanted to be Steve. Kevin was aware of his idolization of Steve’s lovely house with its deep pool and perfectly manicured and thick lawn of St. Augustine grass. He was also aware of his envy of Steve’s tennis racket, bedroom record player, and his family’s apparent wealth. But in the blur of Pryor’s jokes and Steve’s laughter, Kevin subconsciously measured his friend’s good looks, natural athleticism, carefree demeanor, intelligence, and a seemingly endless supply of confidence. Kevin watched and wondered how everything came so effortlessly to someone his age. For the first time, Kevin wanted to be someone else and live their life. He wanted to be Steven James Mason. But that, of course, was not possible.

For as many times as the two were together in that hormone-stupid time of their middle adolescence, Kevin never recalled a time they ever talked about girls or boys or sex. It was undoubtedly on Kevin’s mind, but he had no idea if it was ever on Steve’s mind. The subject never came up. They had gone camping and slept together in tents, but there were never any games of comparison played or secrets shared like the ones Kevin had experienced in the past. The foundation of their friendship was mutual interests and sportsmanlike competition, and in the end, Kevin’s longing to be Steve. The attraction to and desire for his friend confused Kevin. He knew he couldn’t have or be Steve, but knowing that fact was of little comfort.

By the end of that summer and with their junior high years completed, Kevin was unceremoniously parted with Steve, just as he had been with Keith and Miguel two years earlier. Kevin was headed to Lakewood High in his neighborhood, while Steve was bound for Jackson High near his home. Kevin was confident that Steve would join his high school basketball team, swim team, and even the tennis team. He thought he might run into Steve at school events, given their schools’ rivalry against each other. Kevin also considered Steve destined for popularity and celebrity through academics and athletics. Conversely, Kevin knew he had much to ponder before charting his path through high school.

Kevin was sure of this: Steve was the shining example of perfection. He was tall, tan, and handsome. Kevin was almost as tall and just as tan. Steve was intelligent and at the top of his class academically. Kevin knew he was bright, too, and if he applied himself going into high school, he could match Steve’s grades. Steve was gifted athletically. He played team sports like basketball and was a good swimmer and tennis player. Kevin had never played basketball, but he could swim and play tennis almost as well as Steve. Finally, Steve was cheerful, lighthearted, funny, and a pleasure to be with. Steve was extroverted, and Kevin knew this would be his most difficult challenge. He knew he naturally leaned toward the serious side. He worried about things and was anxious like his mother was. Kevin also tended to be quiet and reserved, like his father. The ‘strong and silent type,’ Carol would say. Kevin could work on all these traits. Entering a new school with new people who did not know him was the perfect opportunity to do so. Kevin just needed to change.

What Kevin also knew was that he needed to stop wanting Steve. That sounded gay anyway, and Kevin knew he was no ‘faggot,’ like Miguel accused Dennis of being, nor was he like the marchers and performers he saw on the evening news. Most of all, Kevin was not a sexual deviant like the book in The Hallway of Knowledge detailed. He needed to suppress stupid yearnings he didn’t understand and dismiss what he saw from Miguel’s closet. Kevin needed to reject temptations to dares and immature games of comparisons. Moving forward, Kevin would make wise choices and be just like Steve.

The two friends would meet again in the future, and for one brief hour, when Kevin’s night was near its darkest, he would once again measure himself up against Steve.

10

Driver’s Education

I t was time to focus on high school, so Kevin put his childish toys and irrational desires behind him. He would be a sophomore now and had no time for model rockets, so he gave them all to a younger kid in the neighborhood who he barely knew. He did the same with all the model airplanes he had built that hung by fishing lines from his bedroom ceiling. Kevin was turning sixteen soon, which meant getting his learner’s permit to drive. It was time for him to be an adult and plan for his future success.

Kevin’s release of childhood hobbies was not his only change. The hours of playing tennis and swimming with Steve after school and during the summer were paying off for him physically. While he had been busy comparing himself to other boys his age, Kevin failed to notice how quickly his body changed.  Tennis gave him large calf and thigh muscles, which Carol pointed out one evening in the kitchen while he unintentionally stood in lighting that flattered his growing muscularity. Her additional comments embarrassed him further when she pointed out how full and firm his buttocks muscles had become. Kevin had also developed broad shoulders and a strong, V-shaped back from all his swimming. His proudest accomplishment, however, and sole point of self-focus was his chest and how much larger and better defined it had become. A muscular chest was something Kevin had wanted since childhood, the importance of which he gleaned from his faithful viewing of Tarzan reruns and wrestling matches on television each Saturday and Sunday morning. He knew a muscular chest was a requirement of manhood and of being respected by males and desired by females. Kevin wanted others to admire and envy him like he admired and envied more athletic boys with better genetics than he had. While his muscles grew, all the running and biking he did was toning the rest of his body, finally removing the last of his baby fat and sculpting him into a real teenager with an athletic frame he could be proud of.

In the weeks preceding his first day as a sophomore, as if planned perfectly on the calendar, Kevin’s braces were removed to reveal a mouth full of straight teeth. He could now smile without being self-conscious, and that new smile and maturing body gave Kevin the confidence he needed. He would be more sociable and outgoing, and high school would be nothing like the insecure middle school years had been for him.

Lakewood High School conducted double sessions because of the large student body. Sophomores and Juniors attended the afternoon session from 11:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., while Seniors attended the morning session from 6:30 AM until noon each day. Despite his newfound confidence, with twelve hundred students in his graduating class, Kevin sometimes felt like baitfish in a vast ocean of older and larger predators. There were guys two and three years older than he was with deep voices, large muscular frames, and hairy chests or mustaches and beards. Many owned muscle cars, driving them to school and taking dates out in them. The girls were just as mature, often smirking at or ignoring the smaller, younger sophomores entering the large school for the first time. They could make teenagers feel like little boys. It was intimidating and often overwhelming when Kevin allowed himself to feel insecure. The environment could also be a sea of opportunity when he felt confident. Unfortunately, Kevin couldn’t yet control his insecurities or confidence at will.

As a sophomore, Driver’s Education was a required course. They held it in a small portable building, or educational trailer, near the practice driving course and student parking lot. Kevin sat in the front row of the class, an unusual and uncomfortable place for him. He preferred the obscurity and safety of the back row, just as he had on the school bus rides in seventh grade. From the back of the class, he could watch his classmates and observe their behaviors, trying to assess their personalities and guess their stories. Kevin also enjoyed sitting with his back to the wall, vigilantly watching for signs of potential trouble from misbehaving students or being able to duck the view of the teachers surveying the class to solicit student answers. When Kevin had to sit in the middle or front of the class, he often sensed eyes on the back of his neck and could feel the judgment those stares might contain. Unfortunately, the seats in that class had been assigned based on who claimed them on the first day of that semester. Kevin had a long trek from his English class at the front of the school to the Driver’s Education trailer in the back, so he had to settle on one of the few vacant seats that first day.

Before the end of that first week in his new school, Kevin felt a light tap on his side as the girl sitting behind him covertly passed a tightly folded piece of paper to him. Carefully unfolding it under his desk, it said, “Let’s meet. Jennifer.” Kevin read the neat handwriting twice to ensure he correctly deciphered their intended meaning, even though it contained just three words. The note must have come from the girl who sat in the back of the class, one row over to his left. Kevin had heard her name during roll call earlier in the week and glanced her way occasionally while finding his seat. He had caught her grin on one or two of those glances, but was she now trying to say she wanted to meet him? Should I send a reply via a return note? Not a chance, he thought. If caught and read out loud by the instructor, his peers would taunt him the entire school year. If intercepted by the wrong student's hand instead, a similar fate was likely. Being risk averse, Kevin waited until the end of class, which meant sitting with his heart and brain racing and palms sweating while considering what he might say and how this might play out. As he typically did, Kevin put a lot of internal deliberation into something seemingly as simple as saying hello to a girl.

Kevin tried to remember what Jenny looked like without turning to look at her. She had long and straight, dark hair. Yes, he remembered that. She wore glasses. Yes, he remembered that, too. She also had a few freckles around her nose and cheeks. They were cute and flattering, not overbearing or distracting. That was an odd observance to remember from a glance or two in her direction over that first week. Still, Kevin had a particular affection for a light sprinkling of freckles on a young model’s face in magazine advertisements or on Steve’s wet shoulders and upper back when his tan deepened from hours of swimming. Yes, Jenny was cute, and he decided to talk to her after class. Now, what to say?

As Kevin developed a list of possible greetings, the chime over the intercom signaled their class change, leaving him surprised and panicked as the other students in his row quickly rose and filed past him. Standing, Kevin turned to see Jenny slowly collecting her books under her arm, apparently stalling while the classroom cleared.

“Hello, Kevin,” she said, smiling as she approached.

“Hi, Jenny.”

“Jennifer,” she corrected.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he replied, trying to ignore the heat of flushness creeping across his cheeks. Great job, Kevin, he thought. You’ve already blown it. “Jennifer. Got it,” he added.

“Oh, no, that’s okay,” she said, smiling as though trying to ease his discomfort.

“Thanks for the note. I’ve wanted to meet you.” That was a lie. What Kevin wanted was her seat in the back of the classroom.

She chuckled, probably seeing right through him with the glasses she wore. There was something familiar about her, but it was not until he looked into her eyes through those large glasses that it hit him. She looked just like Ali MacGraw in the 1970 film Love Story. Despite their physical similarities, Kevin couldn’t help but also note the coincidence that Ali’s character name in the movie was also Jennifer. Jennifer Cavalleri, to be exact. The Jennifer standing before him was undoubtedly as independent and confident as the Jennifer in the film since she passed him a note suggesting they meet and then approached him. Kevin pondered the parallels before becoming self-aware that he was still standing there while his mind waged this internal comparison assessment.

“Cool,” she said. “I’ve been waiting to meet you, too.”

After chatting for a few minutes, they exchanged numbers and began to speak on the phone every night. Driver’s Ed was the only class they had together, so they began meeting before and after school to talk or to pass notes to one another, complimenting their now nightly phone conversations. Soon afterward, she proclaimed the two were a couple and officially dating.

Jennifer became Kevin’s first real girlfriend, though he was not her first boyfriend. She was also not the only one passing notes to him in class. Kevin shared a geometry class with a boy named Allen, whom he soon discovered was Jennifer’s ex-boyfriend. Allen was not pleased that she had moved on to Kevin, so it didn’t take long for Allen to approach Kevin after class one day. Instead of saying hello as Jennifer had done, Allen got up into Kevin’s face and dead-stared him in the eyes. He whispered, “You’re dead,” through his clenched teeth before knocking Kevin’s shoulder on his way out of the classroom. Allen sometimes handed Kevin notes which read, “I’m going to kill you” or “See you after school.” Allen looked tough, but he wore braces just as Kevin had worn, so Kevin considered how he might use that to his advantage should the two of them ever get into an actual fight. Kevin occasionally saw Allen with his tough-looking friends, too, but Jennifer assured him that Allen was all talk and no bite. She reassured him Allen would never carry through with his threats. All the same, Kevin did his best to avoid the guy while trying not to appear as though he was cowering away or giving in to his intimidation.

Jennifer was a giver and the first girl to vie for Kevin’s attention in earnest. Other girls sent him notes or instructed their girlfriends to tell Kevin they liked him. He was on top of the world with the newfound attention he was receiving from the opposite sex. One girl, Kelly, wrote Kevin long notes daily to profess her attraction to him. She tried to swoon him with original poetry or song verses. Kelly used mutual friends to deliver most of her letters, and Kevin often caught a glimpse of her standing just outside the classroom or a safe distance down the hallway as she stared his way to ensure the delivery of her love sonnets and to catch a glimpse of his reaction each time they were. Kelly was an intelligent yet homely girl, and her infatuation made Kevin feel wanted, if not slightly uncomfortable. He collected a shoebox filled with her notes during those first two years of high school and regretted never having told her directly that he was just not interested in dating her.

Jennifer was different than the others, though. She was more mature. Jennifer didn’t hang out in girl packs as the other girls did and was unafraid to approach Kevin to introduce herself. Jennifer, like Ali MacGraw in Love Story, was her own woman. She knew what she wanted and was direct. Kevin admired her courage for that, just as he admired Alice for the same traits.

Kevin rode his ten-speed bike to Jennifer’s house that summer between their sophomore and junior years. She lived about five miles away, but it was an easy ride through back roads and neighborhood streets. Jennifer lived with her father and had no siblings, and it was there, in the air-conditioned refuge of the summer heat and with her father at work, that Jennifer taught Kevin about sex. She was a good kisser — a long and passionate kisser. Kevin had pecked girls on the lips before, but Jennifer was the first to probe deep into his mouth with her tongue, teaching him how to French kiss. Their long kissing sessions eventually led to touching and teenage petting. After a few weeks, as Kevin grew bolder and Jennifer grew impatient, they were unzipping shorts and unhooking bras to disrobe one another. Her skin was soft, and she was vocal, melting in long sighs of pleasure each time Kevin touched her. He rode his bike to her house almost every day that summer, like a drug addict racing to a daily fix.

It happened during one of those heavy petting sessions. As Kevin lay on top of her on the carpeted floor of her father’s living room, she stroked him with her hand through the elastic band of his soccer shorts. She was topless, and the more passionately Kevin kissed her, the more rapid his own breathing got. She moaned and sighed as her chest brushed against his, their bare skin acting as the conduit of the teenage energy building between them. As she continued her rhythmic stroking of his erection, the pressure in his groin increased until the sensation of urinating was unbearable. Kevin abruptly excused himself and ran to the bathroom. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t hold back the pulses of urination as he ran down the hallway. Kevin locked the door behind himself and slid his shorts down as fast as possible, but it was too late. Standing in shock over the toilet and looking down, Kevin stared at the milky white and brown discharge that covered his leg and the inside of his shorts. What was that? What just happened? He franticly wiped as much of the fluid out of his shorts as he could while pacing the bathroom floor, panicked and out of breath, trying to think of a way to get out of the house as he heard her voice from the living room calling his name.

“Kevin, are you okay?”

He didn’t remember what excuse he gave her for leaving so abruptly. It was all a blur. Kevin made his way to the safety of his home as fast as he could. He showered and threw the underwear and gym shorts away, burying them deep into the bottom of a garbage can outside. For the rest of that afternoon, Kevin spent hours combing over his only source of sexual information in the house, the familiar book from the hallway bookshelf. Kevin had just had his first orgasm that day, and it nearly killed him.

A few days later, Kevin was back at Jennifer’s house, armed with additional knowledge and a desire to redeem himself in her eyes. It was like returning to Miguel’s house a few days after the streaking attempt. This time, however, he had done his homework and knew what to expect next. Kevin experienced many more firsts with Jennifer that summer, including the joys of oral sex or, more specifically, receiving it. With her guidance, he learned how to please her, too. Now he understood why someone would want their dick sucked, the immense pleasure it would bring them, and why Miguel would want Dennis to suck his cock the day Kevin and Keith hid in the closet. It was now easy to believe that Miguel probably had let Dennis suck him off in the past, unlike what Miguel told them that day they made fun of the gay boy.

Kevin never had intercourse with Jennifer, though. He was sure she would have let him and was probably patiently waiting for him to try, but he never did. They came close to it once in her bedroom the last time he rode his bike to her house. He was attracted to Jennifer. He certainly was aroused by her. But Jennifer was faster and more experienced than Kevin, and there was no catching up. Sexually, she was in the driver’s seat, and Kevin was not in control. Kevin thought what they had done that summer was scary and satisfying enough for him. At least, that is what he told himself.

During that summer with Jennifer, Kevin didn’t give thought to Jose in the showers after PE class, Dennis sitting on Miguel’s bed with his baseball bat erection, or Steve in his swimsuit. Kevin felt normal with his first girlfriend, exactly how a typical sixteen-year-old teenager should feel.

As soon as the new school year started, they drifted apart. They had no classes together and rarely ran into each other on the school grounds. Jennifer had given Kevin more than he ever asked for and had bent backward to please him, but Kevin had lost interest. His telephone calls to her tapered off, and after a short time, he asked his sisters to tell her he wasn’t in when she called. It was odd to want something so badly until you have it, only to lose interest in it altogether.

11

Brave New World

K evin slowly lost interest in tennis, or at least in playing it. The greats he grew up watching, Smith, Roswell, Tanner, and Laver, were gradually replaced with a new generation of champions. Kevin now cheered for Connors and Borg while hoping to see players like Nastase and McEnroe, the bad boys of the game, lose. He didn’t like their on-court antics and temper flairs. Kevin practiced with the high school tennis team in the afternoons but decided not to join them officially, so he couldn’t play matches against other schools.

He was on the school’s newspaper staff, drawing illustrations and taking photographs for its articles. Photography was fast becoming his favorite interest, and he spent more and more time in the school’s darkroom developing film negatives and printing his photographs. There was comfort in the dark solitude and the creative process where he could be precise without concern over how long that precision took.

Bert had let Kevin use his Canon FT single-lens reflex camera in middle school, and by now, Kevin cherished it as his own and took it wherever he went. He cut grass, waxed cars, painted houses, and even babysat younger kids in the neighborhood after school to afford the film, processing chemicals, and darkroom supplies he needed. As with his seat preference in classrooms, Kevin preferred to be in the back, behind the lens, controlling the shot and capturing history, rather than be the subject in front of the lens making it.

Photography was not Kevin’s only new interest, though. After responding to a help-wanted ad in the classifieds, he got his first real job stocking shelves and bagging groceries at Grand Union, a northeastern grocery store chain expanding into the South for the first time. At $3.00 per hour, he earned $176.99 for that first week, working all the overtime he could. Kevin felt like a millionaire, but the job only lasted two weeks. The official reason for his termination was that he was too slow to stock the shelves. They said he didn’t use both hands, which was true. Kevin took too much time ensuring all the cans were straight and all the labels faced forward in perfect alignment. The truth behind his dismissal was likely that they intentionally over-hired to prepare for the store’s opening and intended to reduce the surge in staffing afterward. Still, he made $304.50 net pay in those two weeks and was now a proud tax-paying contributor to the mid-1970s economy.

While Kevin hated getting fired over his performance, it only took him a few weeks to land his second job, this time at Selmans Merchandise, a catalog showroom only half a mile from home. He would earn ten cents less per hour than he did at Grand Union, but his new job was about to change his life in ways he could never have imagined.

There were two worlds at his new place of employment. The front of the house contained the showroom, where nicely dressed and cheerful salespeople assisted customers in the jewelry, audio, small appliances, home goods, and sporting goods departments. They called this the ‘light side’ for its brightly lit and clean atmosphere filled with soft, piped-in music to create a calm and peaceful ambiance for the shopper's enjoyment. Lightsider employees, primarily women, completed the customer order forms and shot them to the back of the house through pneumatic tubes, much like those used by banks in their drive-through teller lanes. Minutes later, merchandise appeared on a long belt traveling through a square portal in the wall separating the two worlds, headed for the cashier’s station where the customer paid and took possession of their goods.

Kevin was a Darksider. Their world was tall shelves that reached into the roof rafters and blocked the artificial light from the fluorescent fixtures that still worked. It was an environment of dusty cardboard boxes, gritty concrete floors, muscle, heat, and sweat. On a lucky shift, Kevin might be assigned to the receiving dock to unload trucks as they came in. There, the only tools they used were two-wheeled hand trucks to stack the incoming merchandise inside the hot trailers, walking their balanced loads out of the trucks and onto the dock where they unstacked and restacked the goods for the receiving clerks to check in the inventory. Back and forth, stack and unstack. Back and forth, stack and restack. It was a coordinated dance of labor under the watchful eyes of the receiving clerks, the warehouse manager, and the store’s phone receptionist, who had a front-row seat to observe the sweat-drenched muscled youth through the large plate-glass window of her air-conditioned office.

With the truck unloading complete and the dock full, their efforts turned to stocking the merchandise on the warehouse's shelves. Once again, they loaded their hand trucks and ran the stacks of balanced boxes down the warehouse's aisles to their appropriate stacking shelves. They were no longer unloaders called Lumpers, but rather Runners now. Every trip down those warehouse aisles was a race of speed. When lucky enough to have the help of a coworker, they raced one another with sliding turns on the polished concrete floors, trying to keep their loads upright. Once they reached their shelved destinations, they unloaded and stacked the merchandise quickly, speeding back to the dock for the next load. Any time two boys cover the same distance simultaneously, it automatically becomes a contest, and being a Runner was no exception.

When Kevin and his coworkers were not Lumpers or Runners, they were Pullers. Someone always had to be a Puller. When store traffic was heavy and the pneumatic tubes backed up, the primary Puller called for assistance over the Darksider intercom. When the call for help sounded, everyone came to help. Pulling was the most enjoyable of all three jobs. Removing the order forms, Pullers sent the empty tubes back via the return tube, sucking the empty plastic cylinders right out of their hands as soon as they put them to the end of the pipe. Pullers then ran through the warehouse, pulling the merchandise and placing it on the belt, along with the order slip, for its travel through the portal into the Light Side.

As the shift got later and the store’s staff and customers waned, pulling also became more fun. They had contests to see how precariously they could stack the boxes of multiple-item orders, a Jenga stack of sorts, successfully traveling intact through the portal but collapsing into a pile or falling off the belt entirely when a cashier attempted to remove the merchandise from the belt on the other side. The customers saw the bundles of merchandise collapse as they waited at the registers to pay for their purchases. Occasionally, one of the Pullers placed a plastic-molded rat on top of a box and sent it through the portal, anticipating the sound of the cashier’s or customer’s shrieks. That prank was usually reserved for new cashiers and was only good for one or two attempts. After that, the cashier was initiated and knew the rat was not real. In rare circumstances, one boy would sit on the belt and travel through the portal into the Light Side, legs crossed while holding the merchandise like a yogi practicing meditation. That stunt was strictly reserved for use later in the evening when the most lenient of the three store managers were on duty and when the item was of an appropriate type for this personal delivery method. That suitable item was usually a handheld personal massager or a box of diapers ordered from the Health and Beauty Department.

The belt was one of two connection points between the world of Lightsiders and Darksiders. The second connection was the long walkway between the dock door entrance for employees where they clocked in, across the open docks, and through the warehouse to the door labeled ‘Employees Only’ at the back of the showroom. Whether a Lumper, Runner, or Puller, the Darksider crews got to watch every employee as they came and went. Sometimes, the Darksiders crudely judged how good fellow employees might be at sex, based upon their dress or walk, and called first dating dibs on the new hires. If a Darksider wanted to make a good first impression on a new hire Lightsider, this was the gauntlet connecting the two worlds where they strutted their stuff and made their moves.

Kevin used the earnings he saved from Grand Union and the steady stream of current income to purchase his first car. The 1969 Ford Bronco was beautiful with its deep and royal Caribbean blue exterior, white low-back seats, and white hardtop removable in the summer. It was well maintained, especially since Kevin was the one who religiously washed and waxed it as part of his weekly allowance. Bert and Carol had purchased the Bronco new, and it was the rugged-looking ride that Kevin loved to accompany his father on their errands to the hardware store, trips to the hobby centers, or family vacations camping and canoeing. He paid his parents $300.00 for the sporty truck–everything he had earned from his part-time job–and considered it a bargain.

Kevin’s new car and the new friendships he formed at work left him entirely uninterested in the final six months of his senior year at school. Mentally, he checked out well before graduation. He went through the motions of class, but when the dismissal bell rang for seniors at noon each day, he headed to work or to spend the rest of the afternoon at the beach with friends. Whenever possible, Kevin put himself on the schedule for as many hours and shifts as possible and traded the work hours he sought for the time off coworkers wanted. He loved his new life and the adventures he was experiencing. Kevin couldn’t wait to leave the mundanity of high school and most of the people in it behind. He preferred earning money to studying. Money meant success. Success brought respect. Both success and respect produced admiration from others.

***

January in Florida is relatively mild and can sometimes be downright warm, and this January was no exception. Highs were in the 70s and even low 80s on some days, making for perfect beach weather when school let out at noon. Kevin and his friends could usually drive to Clearwater Beach or Sand Key in thirty to forty-five minutes, and when not scheduled to work the evening shift, they sometimes spent the entire afternoon there and stayed to watch the sunset. Usually, though, one of them was on the schedule, so they often only had a few hours to lie on the fine white sand or to walk the long shoreline, vying for the attention of teenage girls at the beach who were there to do the same thing.

Kevin kept a soccer ball and frisbee in the back of the Bronco for those after-school beach trips. A wayward kick or throw in the right direction gave them a reason to approach and start conversations with girls by apologizing for the accidental disturbance. There were no crowds on the beach during the week like there tended to be on weekends. Those who were there during the week were typically older residents who lived in the condos along the Gulf shores. Still, there were sections of the beach, particularly the north side of the pier, that were the unofficial gathering spots for students and where they spent most of their time seeking girls to talk to.

“Hey, Ricky!” Kevin called to get his attention as he punched his time clock card. “You want to hit the beach tomorrow?”

“Yeah, if you’re driving. Let me check the schedule.”

“I already looked,” Kevin added. “We’re both off.”

“Cool, yeah, for sure. What time?”

“Right after school. I’ll pick you up at your place.”

“Then give me a ride home from school to change?” Ricky asked.

“Sure. Meet me in the parking lot after the bell.” Kevin rarely drove to school, but he would tomorrow. He was used to walking between school and home unless it was raining and didn’t want to risk vandalism by leaving his car in the student lot during class. He also considered the extra walking exercise beneficial. Kevin felt fortunate to have a car as a senior, even if it was his parents' ten-year-old hand-me-down. Still, the Bronco was no match visually for the Camaros, Trans Ams, and Mustang muscle cars many other students drove, and Kevin wished he had.

Ricky Esposito lived with his mom in a rented house less than a half-mile away. Although Kevin had been to the place they rented and their previous apartment when they were in junior high, he had never met Ricky’s mom. The two had known each other since seventh grade, and they hung out a few times with other kids at the local amusement park, playing video games, putt-putt golf, and racing go-karts. It was not until they both worked at Selmans that they became better friends and started doing things together. In all that time, Ricky had never mentioned his father. As far as Kevin knew, Ricky had no siblings, and with a mother who was absent most of the time, Ricky raised himself and seemed to do whatever he wanted.

It was about eighty degrees as the pair drove to the beach with the windows down and the wind blowing through Ricky’s shoulder-length dark hair, which was feathered and parted slightly off-center. “Let’s see what we have,” Ricky said as he ran his index finger down the neat rows of cassette tapes Kevin kept in the car. “Fleetwood Mac. The Cars. Billy Joel. Earth, Wind, and Fire. Aja by Steely Dan. A little Donna Summer here. James Taylor. Oh, you got yourself some Teddy Pendergrass, too,” he teased, caressing the case’s lid while rocking his shoulders in a slow and rhythmic motion. “Teddy must be your ‘baby, I’m a gonna do you slow’ romance tape.”

“Hey, don’t rip on Teddy,” Kevin replied, keeping his eyes on the road as they crossed the first bridge over the bay. “Or Barry White,” he added. “Stay away from Barry, too.”

“Queen. More Cars. The Police. More Billy Joel,” Ricky continued, taking 52nd Street out of the case and inserting it into the radio. “You’ve got quite the range, don’t you?”

“Anything but country,” Kevin replied. “I don’t do sad cowboys and dead horses.”

Few people were at the beach that afternoon as the boys watched the typical afternoon thunderstorms form over the warm Gulf waters. Leaving after just a few hours, they hoped to beat the traffic and the rain showers home, deciding to go out that night instead. The plan was to meet at Joni’s Pub around 9:00 p.m. so their friends could join them after their shift ended.

Although most were still seventeen, the boys were allowed to drink beer at Joni’s. Joey Hayward’s mother, Joni, the owner of the pub, preferred they drink there under her watchful eye rather than try drinking somewhere else, and she only allowed it with Joey and his closest friends, and only when she was there herself, which was all the time. Joni’s was a small neighborhood pub, and it was not unusual to see a blend of older regulars and young guys there. Joey usually went behind the bar to pour their pitchers, half of which were on the house, or to supply the group with quarters for the pool tables and jukebox out of the cash register. Joey was a Darksider who worked the docks and warehouse with Kevin, and the Darksiders nicknamed Joey ‘Yeti’ for his six-foot-three slumped-forward frame and lumbering walk. He wore squarish, wire-framed glasses he claimed made him look like John Lennon, which, of course, didn’t, since John Lennon always wore round spectacles. Joey’s square glasses only made him look like a Yeti with poor eyesight.

Joey Baker was another Darksider coworker who frequented Joni’s with them, and like Ricky, Kevin had known him throughout high school. They called him ‘Doughy’ since they needed to distinguish between the two Joeys. Doughy rhymed with Joey, plus it made for a cute pun, given his last name was Baker. Doughy was short and soft, with very white baby skin. While he was not necessarily fat, he had a sort of older man’s pooch belly of a thick and malleable consistency, just like dough. The Darksiders were expecting him to hit puberty any day now and to begin showing signs of facial or body hair, but he had not yet. Like Yeti and Ricky, Doughy smoked, probably to emanate the illusion of looking more than twelve years old. Doughy was also developing the annoying reputation of secretly befriending girls they had all previously dated, swooping in behind them for seconds, hoping to catch a girl on an emotional rebound. While Doughy never advertised or announced it, the boys knew it was happening behind their backs, breaking the friendship code for dating honored by most friends.

Ricky supplied Doughy with the most previously dated girls since he was the lady's man of the group. Ricky was suave and could talk any girl, even older women, out of their clothes within minutes. None of the other boys knew how Ricky had acquired such skills at a young age, but they loved watching him work his magic. They went so far as to single out girls in a crowd to challenge his abilities. Ricky was the only one of the group lucky enough to be a Lightsider, assigned to the sales floor with his pick of pretty customers and jewelry department employees to target. He was also one of only a few male employees on the showroom floor, which allowed him to dress nicely, wear cologne, and stay clean, unlike the rest of the dirty and sweaty goons toiling in the back warehouse.

The Darksiders had a nickname for Ricky, too. It was ‘Chachi.’ Ricky hated the nickname, so Kevin avoided using it. Ricky was, however, the spitting image of Scott Baio’s character on Happy Days, Chachi Arcola. His resemblance to Scott Baio probably accounted for half of his success in attracting the opposite sex. Kevin thought he had little in common with Ricky in those terms, so he happily played Ricky’s wingman when they went to the beach, the mall, or to high school football games. Their outings often resulted in Kevin conversing with the wing-woman of whichever pretty girl Ricky was already making out with in Kevin’s car or in the dressing room of the department store they were shopping in. Kevin wished some of Ricky’s technique would rub off on him, but it never did, so he concluded it was more of a gift bestowed upon a person at birth that couldn’t be acquired, much like height or eye color.

Daniel Whitmire was the youngest and newest member of the Darksiders. He was just a sophomore and shy, which made him especially susceptible to the customary new-hire initiation pranks. He was a good sport, though, and like a young puppy dog in a new household, the more the boys played jokes on him, the more Daniel idolized them. Daniel had a pug nose and a tall, slender build. He was a starter on Lakewood High’s swim team, quite an accomplishment for a sophomore. His laid-back demeanor and long, curly, disheveled head of hair affectionately earned him the nickname ‘Shaggy.’ For Kevin, he was a welcomed addition since it meant he was no longer the new kid in the group.

The ringleader of the Darksiders was Mike Edwards. Mike was two years older than the others and already in college, studying to be a teacher. Specifically, he wanted to be a physical education teacher since he was not fond of academics but did enjoy sports. Mike’s favorite line was, ‘Those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, teach PE.’ He had worked there the longest, mentoring each new employee when hired and anointing them with nicknames within their first day or two. In return, the Darksiders nicknamed him ‘Coach,’ which was not incredibly clever and certainly was not as offensive as Yeti, but he liked the sound of it, so it stuck.

Mike had a Hollywood double, just like Ricky did. He was the spitting image of Kurt Russell in Disney’s 1975 film The Strongest Man in the World. He had the same facial features, blond hair, and body type. Like Ricky’s uncanny resemblance to Scott Baio, Coach’s likeness to Kurt Russell was astonishing. He loved having fun and played harmless practical jokes, cutting up over everything. Coach was a constant eruption of positive and unconstrained energy, which could sometimes be a bit much. Still, he and Kevin complemented one another well and quickly developed a strong friendship.

Kevin couldn’t think of any movie or television star he resembled. The Darksiders never gave him a name, either. He was just Kevin: hard-working, well-liked, dependable Kevin.

Even though Coach was twenty-one years old, he still lived with his strict and religious parents, and whenever he wanted to join the group at Joni’s Pub, he told them he was going fishing with Kevin. They did fish often, but not as often as Coach told his parents they did. He kept his rod and tackle box in the trunk of his car, ready for any such excursion, whether real or fictional. Coach respected his parents but would have caught hell from them if they found out their son was carousing the streets at night drinking or had lied to them about his whereabouts. Kevin found it amusing that, as a seventeen-year-old senior in high school, he was often the chaperon or alibi for his adult coworker in college. On more than one occasion, Coach used Kevin’s house to change out of his fishing clothes and into his pub attire. Once or twice, they even stopped at a grocery store to buy small amounts of frozen shrimp to rub on Coach’s fishing clothes before returning home since his mother still did his laundry. The planning became intricate and detailed.

Despite Coach’s occasional parental deception, the two boys fished often. They sometimes went bass fishing in freshwater lakes around the area. Still, their favorite was saltwater fishing at night on the Courtney Campbell Causeway or off the Gandy Bridge connecting Bayview and St. Petersburg. Those trips were less about the fish they caught and more about the cooler of beer, the relaxing night breeze, and the freedom they enjoyed. When they fished from the bridge, they watched distant cars slowly make their way across the Causeway with white headlights and red taillights shimmering off the bay’s incoming or outgoing tidewaters. Sometimes, they drove out to the St. Pete Pier and fished from it in the Gulf waters, watching the lights from boats on the horizon and trying to guess whether they were tankers, fishing boats, or pleasure craft. They spent hours talking about people at work, school, or the classes they were taking and about the existence of UFOs and aliens and other scientific topics of interest to boys growing into young men.

12

The Green Flash

R icky and Kevin went to Joni’s for what was becoming a Friday night routine for the group. It was a slow night, with sparse attendance by the usual crowd. When the two boys finished playing darts and shooting pool, Ricky asked if he could crash at Kevin’s house for the night. Without asking why, Kevin agreed, offering to drive him home in the morning. Each took a couch in the living room but had trouble falling asleep, and after about thirty minutes, Kevin heard Ricky whisper, “You still awake?”

“Yeah,” Kevin replied.

“Let’s go to Daytona.”

“Sure,” he answered. “When?”

“Now!” he said, as if Kevin should have known Ricky had meant RIGHT NOW.

“What? Now?”

“Sure, why not?” Ricky continued. “Tomorrow is Saturday. We’re off. If we go now, we’ll be there for a good spot, spend part of the day on the beach, and then drive back. Let’s just do it.”

Kevin knew Ricky would get what he wanted, no matter how outlandish it sounded. Kevin might be the one who was taller and stronger, the one who was the better student, and the one with a car, but Ricky had the confidence to ask for what he wanted and usually got what he asked for. Kevin felt a little used, wondering if the girls that Ricky so often seduced felt the same way. While Carol slept in the back bedroom and Bert was on duty at the fire station, Kevin needed to think of something to tell her. He was a planner, and the impulsiveness of his friend’s suggestion tripped every internal safety fuse he had, but Kevin’s intuition didn’t matter since he knew Ricky would get what he wanted in the long run. Also, Kevin didn’t want to be labeled as scared by the other guys at work. He might as well make the adventure sound like a mutual decision, so he agreed and acted all in.

Already dressed in shorts and tee shirts to sleep, the boys put their sneakers back on and were ready to go. Kevin wrote a quick note to his mom to let her know he was up early, headed to the beach to photograph the sunrise, and would return later. He left the note on the kitchen counter where Carol would see it when she made the morning coffee to let her know he had returned safely after being out with friends that night. It was all very close to the truth. Kevin had been home, was headed to the beach, and would be home later that afternoon. She would never have been comfortable had she known he was driving three hours and 150 miles away to the opposite side of the state. But that was not relevant right now. Kevin would call her later in the morning to let her know he was okay, was with friends, and would arrive home later than planned late that afternoon. Telling the truth while not divulging every little detail was not a lie. If he didn’t lie, he was telling the truth.

Kevin let the clutch out and allowed the Bronco to roll backward down the driveway and into the street, pushing it past a few houses before starting it. It was a stealth getaway intended not to wake his mother. Carol was a light sleeper whenever Kevin was out at night and Bert was on duty. This trip would be the farthest from home he had ever driven and the first time out of town, besides frequent trips to the Clearwater and St. Pete beaches.

Without traffic, the drive was easy in the middle of the night. Daytona was a straight shot along I-4 and through Orlando. Once off the interstate, the main beach area was a quick jog up Hwy-1 and across the intercoastal waterway to A1A. During the drive, Ricky talked about how Daytona allowed cars on the compacted sand of the beach. He also talked about it being Spring Break, and he was confident they would meet some college girls and hook up. It sounded like an adventure that Kevin had no experience in, and he worked hard to keep his mounting trepidation in check. The farther he drove from his sleeping and unaware mother, the darker it got between cities on the interstate. If something unexpected were to happen, no one knew where they were or where they were going. More importantly, Kevin didn’t know where they were, who they might meet, or what would happen that day. How would two seventeen-year-olds protect themselves in the event of trouble? Fatigue was sure to set in since they had not slept that night. Kevin’s mind raced with apprehension while Ricky spoke about how great their day ahead would be, so he took deep breaths once he realized how shallow his breathing had become. Ricky was already planning hookups with college girls. At the same time, Kevin contemplated the horror and responsibility of his own death while officially still a virgin, just one month shy of his eighteenth birthday.

The boys arrived well before sunrise, giving them time to drive along the main strip to look for entrances to the beach. No cars were allowed on the beach before dawn, so they found a parking spot near an old stone archway leading onto the beach and parked there to wait. As they sat on the stone wall facing the ocean, the breeze from the Atlantic was cool and refreshing, especially after the overnight drive. They listened to the surf roll in, repeatedly, its waves higher and more mighty than on the Gulf side of the state. It was soothing until Kevin suddenly had a horrific realization. His camera was safe in its case in his bedroom back home. He had forgotten to bring half of his alibi with him. He knew his mother wouldn’t go into his bedroom, and even if Carol did, she wouldn’t have known where he kept it or whether the camera was there. Still, Kevin would have no pictures of the sunrise he said he ventured out to capture. Nor would he be able to document their day’s adventure. No photos of the girls they would meet. There would be no proof of their fun for the Darksiders back at work. It was too late now. Kevin would have to think of what to say to his parents if questioned about the sunrise photographs.

“Let’s see if we can catch the green flash,” Kevin suggested.

“The green flash? What’s that?”

“You know, the green flash at sunrise and sunset,” he replied, having to think for a second if it occurred only at sunrise or only at sunset, or both sunrise and sunset. “It’s a split-second flash of green light that appears on the horizon where the sun rises and sets.”

“Really?” Ricky asked in a questionable tone, wondering if it was true or if Kevin was pulling his leg, which would have been unusual for him to do.

“Yeah, it’s real. I saw it once at sunset off Clearwater Beach.”

“Why’s it green?”

“It’s an optical illusion. The sun’s light gets bent through the atmosphere just below the horizon. It’s the same reason the sun looks red or orange when it’s low on the horizon instead of bright white when it’s overhead.” Kevin wouldn’t have had to explain the green flash to Coach.

Kevin explained the phenomena further as he watched Ricky take long, slow tokes from his cigarette, wondering if he was contemplating the green flash as he stared at the horizon. Ricky had a peculiar way of holding his cigarette between his thumb and index finger with the lit end hidden in the palm of his hand, instead of between his index and middle finger with the lit end outward like most people held their cigarettes. Kevin had watched enough war movies to know this was how soldiers smoked in their foxholes. It helped prevent them from being spotted by enemy snipers who targeted the red glow. Maybe that was just Hollywood, though. Kevin didn’t let Ricky smoke in his car and didn’t care for the smell himself, but he understood the tough-guy machismo it was supposed to symbolize. Was that why Ricky smoked? Maybe not. Kevin remembered reading an article some time ago regarding the psychology behind how people held cigarettes. Yet, he couldn’t remember what the various methods were subconsciously supposed to have meant or represented.

After a few minutes and without taking his eyes off the horizon, Ricky added, “You’re going to miss it if you keep staring at me instead.” Kevin was staring. He was analyzing. He was also debating and trying to decide.

Neither of them witnessed the green flash that morning as the light of day replaced the darkness. When the entrance to the stone gates finally opened, they were allowed to drive onto the beach. Kevin had never seen such a vast expanse of compact sand and was amazed that they let the public drive and park on it wherever they wished. Then he thought again about forgetting to bring his camera and what he might say to his mother when he called her later to tell her he would be home later than expected.

What also surprised and startled Kevin was the number of motorcycles filling the beach as the morning progressed. They were everywhere, and they were loud. The two-way cruising lanes in the middle of the beach soon became defined by the long rows of parked cars and motorcycles on either side, both on the beach and street sides. Without an agenda, the boys slowly idled these long corridors between parked cars and bikes, alternating between driving in the cruise line southbound on the beach for a few miles, making the return drive northbound on the street, and then repeating the cycle. They sometimes parked and watched but spent most of their time in endless circles of cruising while listening to Billy Joel’s The Stranger or 52nd Street cassettes on the car’s stereo. Each time they made the two-mile circuit, more motorcycles surrounded them than had on the previous. It looked like a twenty-to-one ratio of loud Harley-Davidson Hogs to the sleeker, racing-style street bikes. Kevin and Ricky weren’t the only people in cars on the beach or street, but there were only a few. Many young girls were there too, most riding the back of bike seats with their arms wrapped around the large waists of the bearded and tattooed masses of biker manliness on the seat in front of them.

By Noon, they were both aware of Ricky’s calendar miscalculation and misinformation regarding the timing of Spring Break. They had driven half the night to land in the middle of Daytona’s annual Bike Week, along with a half-million bikers from around the country that also descended the beach town. Bike Week precedes Spring Break by about two weeks every year. Daytona’s many theme weeks were well known by its citizens, the hotel and hospitality trade, and fans of various interests who subscribed to magazines about those interests. The theme week schedule is not so well known to naïve seventeen-year-olds who live on the other side of the state.

Besides Kevin leaving his camera at home and driving to Daytona on the wrong week, their third significant error was having a total of five dollars in their combined pockets. Ricky assumed Kevin had some money with him, which he usually did. But this time, Kevin had spent most of it at Joni’s the night before, buying rounds of beer for the group, which he also regularly did. The day’s adventure was not exactly planned for either, having decided to leave the house well after midnight. Neither of them owned an ATM card, so they stretched the folded Lincoln as far as they could throughout the day. A little over $4.00 of it bought them a cold six-pack, while Ricky finagled two hot dogs from a promotional event hosted by Coppertone suntan lotion on the beach that afternoon.

When they decided it was time to call it a day, and after Ricky resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn’t score without a Hog to cruise around on, they headed home. The two were exhausted, grimy from the day's sweat, hungry and thirsty, and had a floorboard full of sand. With some quarters left in his pocket, Kevin was concerned they might not make it home without running out of gas, so he insisted they drive home with the windows rolled up to maximize fuel efficiency. By the time they reached the outskirts of Bayview, the Bronco was running on fumes. Kevin stopped and pumped those seventy-five cents into the beast to get Ricky to his house and him to his. It was the briefest gas stop and the most precise squeeze-control of a gas pump handle in Kevin’s short driving history, but it did the trick.

Bert and Carol were not home when he arrived, and by the time they returned from dinner, Kevin was showered and had fallen asleep on the sofa watching television. Although a bit sunburned, he told them what a great day he had had with Ricky at the beach while they told him what they had just eaten at their favorite Chinese restaurant. Kevin apologized to his mother for being gone all day without calling to check in, and she told him there were leftovers in the kitchen if he was hungry. After taking her up on her offer, Kevin spent a comfortable Saturday evening at home quietly contemplating the adventures of the past twenty-four hours and what he would tell the guys at work on Monday.

Kevin was tired and very glad to be home. The day had been an adventure of many firsts, but he felt guilty for having lied to his parents. Kevin was also relieved they had met no college girls and didn’t hook up. He couldn’t imagine how that might have worked with so many people around them. Kevin replayed the memory of staring as Ricky smoked and waited for the green flash to appear. Why was the flash so sudden and so brief? Why was it green and not a blue flash or a red flash? What does green symbolize? People can be green from a lack of experience. Sometimes, they can be green with envy. In nature, the springtime is awash in green, representing rebirth and growth, a renewal of sorts. Today, it didn’t matter what the flash’s color meant. Ricky never saw it, and Kevin missed it while studying Ricky and debating in his head why he was.

13

Feels Like the First Time

T wo weeks after their day trip to Daytona Beach, on a Friday night like most other Friday nights at Joni’s Pub, Kevin and Ricky still talked to coworkers about their adventure. They agreed to go again next spring with Coach, Yeti, and Doughy, eagerly volunteering to join them. Shaggy couldn’t go since he would still be under eighteen when the time came. They were also careful not to discuss the trip around Rachael, who often joined them at Joni’s. She was the receptionist behind the plate-glass window overlooking the warehouse dock area where they all worked. Bringing her along next year would be awkward.

Rachael smoked like Ricky but held her cigarette between her fingers with a bent wrist like a girl was supposed to. She smoked with her right hand and made wide, arching motions through the air between puffs. After each puff and arching motion, she would prop her smoking hand in a resting position high in the air and plant her elbow into her hip for support. Rachael was a straight shooter, both at the pool table and with her words, and her smoking and directness reminded Kevin a little of his aunt Alice.

Once Ricky and Kevin lost their game and gave up their run on the table to Coach and Doughy, Kevin announced, “That’s it, boys, I’m done. I work in the morning.” Turning to Ricky, who had ridden from work to the pub with him, Kevin asked if he was ready to go. It was still early, but Kevin didn’t want to make it a long night.

“I’m good. I’ll catch a ride home. You go.”

“Cool,” Kevin replied, reaching around Rachael to place his empty mug on the counter. She was sitting at the bar watching them play, just as she had done at work when she had studied them toiling on the dock from her office. With her barstool swiveled halfway toward the group, Kevin’s face came close to hers, and he shifted his focus from the empty mug he had just placed on the bar top to her stare.

“Give me a ride home?” she asked. It almost sounded like a statement.

“Yeah, sure,” Kevin replied tentatively. He was not objecting but instead caught off guard by the unexpected request. “Ricky’s staying. You didn’t drive?”

“No, I rode with Jeff from work.”

“Gotcha. Where do you live?”

“Not far. You’ll see,” Rachael answered, lifting herself from the barstool. She put her clutch purse under her arm and headed for the front door. She didn’t stop to say goodbye to the others, and as Kevin followed behind her, he motioned a peace sign to his friends at the pool table. This gesture was his signature greeting and farewell, a relic from the counterculture sixties that he had adopted and still used, even though there was nothing counterculture about him.

Rachael and Kevin chatted small talk as she directed him to turn here or to go straight there. He learned she had already been married and divorced and was twenty-four, six years older than him. She still lived with her parents or, instead, had moved back in with them after the divorce. Although she spoke openly and freely, Kevin didn’t want to probe for details. He was curious, however, and felt sorry for her having already divorced at such a young age and having to live at home with her parents. As he drove, they headed into a familiar neighborhood, and he recalled her saying ‘not far’ before leaving the pub.

Rachael cranked her window handle a turn or two and reached into her purse. Kevin considered whether to ask her not to smoke in his car or to allow it for the brief ride. Still, he couldn’t help himself from saying, “If you don’t mind. The smoke bothers me.”

“It didn’t bother you in the pub, did it?”

“Well, yeah, it did a little,” he replied, “but that’s a big space, and this is a small one.” He glanced over to discern her expression at his response and to determine whether or not he had offended her. Rachael continued to search the inside of her purse before pulling out a single house key, holding it upward between her fingers and in his direction as he drove.

“How about this?” she asked, pursing her lips and cocking her head to one side. “Does this bother you?”

Kevin felt embarrassed for assuming she would light a cigarette in his car without first asking if smoking was okay. “No, of course not. Sorry, I just thought ---”

“Turn right at the next street,” she instructed.

“That’s Ricky’s street. You and Ricky live on the same block?”

“Of course not, dork-head,” Rachael replied. Kevin couldn’t tell whether her words contained the tone of a chuckle or the tone of disbelief in his gullibility. “Park at Ricky’s house,” she directed, so he did.

Rachael was out of the Bronco and had turned the house key in the lock before Kevin unlocked his own car door. He got out and followed, still trying to establish why they were there. Once inside, she closed the door behind him and turned the deadbolt. Leading him by the hand, she paused in the hallway of the modest house, glancing first into the bedroom to the left and then into the second bedroom to the right. For all the times Kevin had picked him up and dropped him off there, he had never been inside Ricky’s house. All the questions pulsing through his brain jammed up in his mouth. He couldn’t properly form or speak simple words for all the questions he wanted to ask. Why did Rachael have a key? How did she know where Ricky lived? Where was his mother? And if Jeff had given her a lift from work to Joni’s, how did she get to work earlier that afternoon? Where was her car? Where did she really live? She looked left again, and that was where she led him.

Kevin was beginning to feel a slight buzz from the last beer. He always drank less than his friends, and beer sneaked up on him slowly and unexpectedly, unlike the few times he had tried liquor with its more immediate effect. In the dimly lit house and amongst the unfamiliar furnishings, time began moving slower. Suddenly and without warning, his mouth tasted like the cigarettes Rachael smoked. Kevin neither liked it nor was repulsed by it as she kissed him deeply and pulled his clothing toward hers.

Kevin wanted to stop to catch his breath, but her lips wouldn’t release him. His legs tingled as they did in the final hard sprint of a jog, weakening from the lack of oxygen flowing to them. When Rachael’s mouth finally released his, she drew in a deep gasp of air for herself, and Kevin’s lips instinctively fell to her breast that she had exposed to him. The room became hotter and continued to blur, and with all of their clothing discarded, his need to bear down upon her intensified. His mouth moved back to hers, and with awkward lunges, he found her wetness as she drew him into it. Rachael wrapped her legs around Kevin’s waist and dug her fingertips into his back. She pulled him in, and with each deep thrust, his pace intensified until reaching a frenzy. Kevin broke his lock on her lips and arched his back, and as he did, his body trembled and shuddered uncontrollably. Then it was over.

When Kevin’s head fell onto the pillow beside hers, he felt her damp hair against his own. His body was too heavy to lift itself. Rachael’s legs broke their lock around his waist and fell as well, sliding down his sweat-moistened hips and upper legs. Her fingertips and nails dug deeply into his back muscles, leaving impressions once she retracted them. Gliding down his spine, her hands stopped at his still-constricted butt muscles and held them tightly to prevent or postpone his withdrawal. Kevin continued to press his chest into hers while she tried to contain him, and he could feel his own breathing slow as his senses gradually returned. He could taste her sweat’s saltiness as he opened and focused his eyes on the unfamiliar comforter pattern they lay upon. He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his eardrums as it slowed. Finally, Kevin could smell the staleness of the bedroom. He could smell her cigarettes and the remnants of their sex. Rachael held him tighter when Kevin moved his arms and hands and began to press against the bed to pull away. He pushed harder until the bond of sweat and semen that joined them together broke, and he could finally remove himself from her.

Kevin used his shirt to remove the event from himself and quickly dressed his lower body. With the tossed shirt on the back seat floorboard, he drove Rachael back to Joni’s and saw her car in the parking lot where it had been all evening. Kevin couldn’t escape the smells that lingered in the Bronco, accentuated by the lit cigarette she was now smoking. When they arrived, he sat in the driver’s seat with the car idling and Rachael staring at him.

“You want to come in?” she finally asked, the first to break the silence.

Kevin gave her an uneasy grin and shrugged his shoulders. “No shirt, no service.”

Rachael unlatched her seatbelt and turned toward him, putting her right hand on his bare chest as she leaned in to kiss him. As she did, Kevin instinctively turned his head slightly to the right and hit her cheek with his lips instead, avoiding the taste of her cigarette. Once pecked, she quickly turned and released his chest, moving her touch to the door handle instead.

“See you at work then,” she stated.

As he drove away, Kevin watched her walk toward the pub door and enter, presumably to return Ricky’s key to him.

On the way home, Kevin rolled the windows down and let the incoming rush of night air cleanse the car's interior. The night air cooled his bare torso and helped dry the beads of sweat that still lingered on it. Then he reached behind his seat and grabbed his soiled shirt, tossing it out the passenger window on a stretch of road that was dark and isolated. He was about to reach the safety of his own home before his Friday night curfew and his upcoming eighteenth birthday in two days.

14

The Graduate

K evin walked across the stage in his red cap and gown in June while Bert and Carol watched from somewhere in the large auditorium. Many of his friends wore the white of the National Honor Society, but he was an inconspicuous speck in the bright red pool on the convention center floor. Without ever studying for a test or truly applying himself in earnest, Kevin earned a 3.1 GPA and was satisfied. For his developing forms of perfectionism and his growing judgment of non-achievers, he was an academic antonym of his own actions. Throughout his senior year and after his SAT score results, Kevin applied to just two colleges under the pressure of teachers, parents, and some classmates to start the application process to go somewhere. Both Cornell and Stanford sent him conditional acceptance letters despite his mediocre GPA and because of his high SAT scores and well-written essays. Kevin knew little about the schools, however. What he was sure of was that he would never pursue going to either. Applying had been to appease those who knew he should. Kevin knew he couldn’t afford to go to either and lacked the courage to leave the security of his home, job, and newfound friends at work to move away for college. At least Kevin was self-aware of that.

That first Monday following graduation night, Kevin was offered a full-time position at work and accepted without hesitation. Promoted to the position of Receiver, Kevin would spend more time unloading trucks and stocking shelves and less time pulling orders and sending merchandise down the belt to cashiers and customers. The promotion also meant he would spend more time on the dock in front of Rachael’s window, which he had mixed emotions about. A large part of him enjoyed being the object of her attention and affection, and they continued to have casual sex when it was convenient. Kevin enjoyed it, but he also knew she wanted much more than he was willing to give. Kevin knew Rachael wanted a serious and exclusive relationship without her having spoken the words. What they both understood was that he had just turned eighteen and was only now beginning to experience his independence. Kevin wouldn’t commit more of himself, at least not to her. Even if he were ready for a committed relationship, he knew it wouldn’t be with the divorced receptionist behind the plate-glass window who still lived with her parents. Kevin felt guilt and uneasiness for that, especially under her steely gaze as he performed his new role in front of her window. Yet, despite that guilt, they continued to have sex while pretending to be content with the arrangement.

Sex aside, Rachael and Kevin rarely did things people usually do when dating. They didn’t go to the movies. He never took her out to romantic dinners. They didn’t have picnics in the park. He never invited her to join him or their group on their trips to the beach. The two never had those hours-long phone chats about nothing like young lovers do. The nature of their relationship was precise, at least to Kevin. Their relationship centered on sharing pitchers of beer at Joni’s with the guys and occasional romps in the sack. If she was at the pub and the hour grew late, provided they had no other plans and were both in the mood, they borrowed Ricky’s house key or had sex in the back of the Bronco with the seats folded down. Kevin rented a hotel room in advance a few times, knowing that he would take her there only after an evening out with friends. Those planned connections and hotel room use were over as soon as they completed the act. There were no afterglow chats, overnight sleepovers, or lazy late mornings under the covers. Kevin knew Rachael enjoyed being with him, especially as he became more experienced with the sexual practice that their rendezvous offered him. Still, he didn’t consider or concern himself with feelings of what she wanted, what she enjoyed, or what she needed.

As the months passed, every time Kevin spent time with Rachael, the less he wanted to do it again in the future. He was ready to dress and leave as soon as they finished. On one such occasion, Kevin told Rachael he was tired and was going home to turn in. He had to be at work early the next day. She walked into the pub an hour later to see him back with his friends. When Rachael called him out for this deception in front of their coworkers and his friends, he ruled it as overstepping their causal relationship's boundaries. Everything she said was true. Her hurt was justified, and Kevin’s act was insensitive, but simultaneously, he felt he was doing her a favor when they were together. She may have been in control that first time before his eighteenth birthday, but that quickly changed, as her affection and desire for him was now his to abuse. He treated her feelings as dispensable and not his responsibility, and that was the last time Kevin gave Rachael any of his time or affection. It was immature behavior and cruel on his part. It was also similar to how his relationship with Jennifer had progressed, as his interest in being with her waned. Jennifer was Kevin’s first kiss, girlfriend, and blowjob. Rachael was Kevin’s first fuck. They both gave Kevin the confidence to move beyond them. He was their graduate, and he was ready for more.

15

Girl in the Red Dress

O nce Kevin was of legal drinking age and had extra pocket money, he went out with Ricky and Coach more often, but rarely with the two together. He developed both friendships in parallel but along very different paths. He played sports and went fishing with Coach. They often drove to SeaWorld or Disney World in Orlando for day outings, riding the park’s rides and looking for girls to talk to. They wore O’Neill tee shirts and Oakley sunglasses, spinning tales of being performers on SeaWorld’s water ski team to impress the girls they met. Coach and Kevin wore jeans and went to pubs to throw darts or play billiards, often going to the student recreation center at USF, where Coach was a student. They frequented 42nd Street Station near USF’s campus during the bar’s sink-or-swim night, where a five-dollar cover charge provided unlimited pitchers of beer the entire night. Coach loved classic 60s and 70s rock and detested disco music.

In contrast, Ricky didn’t play sports. When Kevin went out with him, they dressed in slacks and silk shirts to socialize and pick up girls. They drank mixed drinks, specifically seven-and-sevens, and went to upscale clubs like The Cypress Club for its lighted cubes on the dance floor, like in the movie Saturday Night Fever. They sometimes went to The Flight Room at Bayview’s Airport, an upscale lounge between the airport’s concourses and its Marriott Hotel, looking for flight attendants or traveling women who might have long layovers or overnight rooms at the hotel. Colored strobe lights pointed down onto the small club’s wooden parquet-tiled dance floor as the disco music played and they sipped their overpriced cocktails. What the Flight Room never had, however, were attractive and available women searching for eighteen-year-old boys dressed up pretending to be suave and debonair.

Without being aware it happened, Kevin had replaced watching the world on television with living in it through tennis and swimming with Steve. Morning sessions at high school and afternoon sessions at the beach or part-time jobs replaced morning and afternoon talk shows. Even his fascination with technology, spacecraft, and space travel transitioned to the real-life technology and functionality of cars and teenage freedom. He once watched moral stories and life lessons portrayed in sitcoms and made-for-television programming, but now saw movies on the big screen and listened to the lyrics in music to find life’s messages.

Kevin had a habit of mentally searching for a movie screen image or actor for each person he knew or met, but he had yet to find one for himself. He now turned to music and lyrics to connect with his moods and emotions as the tapes in his car’s cassette case grew in number. When he was with Ricky, they listened to “Off the Wall” by Michael Jackson or “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge. When he was with Coach, they listened to “Candy-O” by the Cars, “Breakfast in America” by Supertramp, or Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” When Kevin was alone, washing or waxing the Bronco under the Ear Tree, atop the green grass and white clover of his childhood bee hunting grounds, he slowed it down and played music for himself. Songs like “On and On” by Stephen Bishop, Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do for Love,” and Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” and “Minstrel Gigolo” surrounded and filled him. He played the tracks repeatedly in search of the meaning embedded within the lyrics. A set of song titles represented every one of Kevin’s friendships, and they were usually in stark contrast to those he suspected represented himself.

***

Kevin and some of the Darksiders kept their promise to go to Daytona as a group. After their return and a weekend of rest, they were back at work telling their Spring Break stories to the others. That is when she walked through the employee entrance and made her way to the time clock. Kevin and Coach cut the shipping bands from tall stacks of boxes, breaking the loads down from their pallets into smaller stacks for transport down the aisles to their storage racks. That was when they saw her. Their movements slowed to watch her walk across the dock, keeping themselves partially concealed behind the stacks while trying to avoid blatantly staring at her. She was beautiful. They watched her index finger glide across the tops of each card in the rack until she found the one with her name on it. Kevin noted her silky dark hair flowing just past her waist to rest atop the upper curve of her hips. Her dress exposed long legs and shapely calves, and her olive skin glowed in the dimly lit chamber of the dock area. Her dress was cherry red, a shade lighter than scarlet but classier than candy apple, and it wrapped her figure like the fitted gown of an actress in a James Bond movie. As a young adolescent, Kevin had discovered a rolled-up poster hidden in the back of his father’s closet one dull summer afternoon when he had nothing better to do and felt unusually emboldened. It was an image of Cher, taken early in her career, wearing only tightly wrapped cellophane in a provocative pose. He was reminded of that poster as he watched her punch the timecard. Behind the beauty in cherry red at the time clock, Rachael stood in her office, peering at him, eyes cold in judgment, through that large plate-glass window that sometimes acted as his conscience.

“Who is that?” Kevin whispered to Coach.

“Don’t bother,” interjected Yeti. He stood behind them with his empty handcart, waiting for them to unstack boxes for his next trip to the shelves. “She started last week while you guys were shit-faced in Daytona. She works in Jewelry.”

Naturally, Kevin thought. Where else would someone who dresses like that work?

“She won’t talk to any of us,” Yeti continued.

“What’s her name?” asked Coach.

“Maritza.”

“Why won’t she talk to anyone?”

Yeti snickered and replied, “Are you stupid? Look at her. Rodney and Kenny have tried already, so forget it.”

“Tried as in ---”

Yeti cut Kevin off and answered, “Asked her out. She shot them both down.”

Wise woman, Kevin remarked to himself. She saw right through those characters. Rodney and Kenny were best friends and real players. They were Darksiders, too, but a couple of years older and in an arrogant clique duo. They would be considered popular yet dumb jocks if they were still in high school. Rodney was more handsome than any one person deserved to be, with a muscular, ripped body from playing semi-pro soccer. He was not quite good enough to make the big league, but he was more than adequate to keep his Adonis-like body in shape. Kenny was not as good-looking and didn’t have Rodney’s naturally defined body, making him Rodney’s perfect wingman. They did, however, share the same machismo-like overconfidence and attitude, believing they were God’s gift to women. Their Latin bravado was always on and dialed far past the point of annoyance, at least as far as Coach and Kevin were concerned. They approached women for sport, and it didn’t surprise Kevin that they had already tried to peacock their masculinity to the beautiful new employee. He tried to imagine what cheesy lines they had likely used and how, even at a young age, she had probably heard it all before. No doubt she found it easy to peg them as simply two more guys who wanted to undress and bang her, he thought with certainty.

“Does she have a boyfriend?” Coach asked.

“Dude, she just started last week. You think she’s had long conversations with me?” Yeti replied. Their eyes followed her as she walked down the long corridor through their dimly lit world, making her way to the brightness of the front showroom. Kevin tried to think of a movie star she resembled but couldn’t think of one that did justice to the new girl in the red dress.

Kevin watched Maritza come and go many times over the next few weeks, traversing the dock where they worked between the employee door and the time clock. He sometimes couriered small packages he had received to the Jewelry Department but, by policy, had to deliver them to the department manager. It would be too convenient if he were allowed to leave them with any of the sales associates. Each time Kevin noticed her, he glanced her way but quickly looked away and smiled if she were to catch him looking. He wanted her to know he existed but didn’t want her to think he would be the next fool to approach her. Kevin didn’t want her to believe he was just another guy who thought she was sexy and wanted to sleep with her. Kevin wanted her to wonder when, if ever, he would walk up to her and say hello. He wanted her to anticipate his approach but was unsure if she would.

When Kevin discussed the new girl with Coach and Ricky, he asked if they intended to ask her out. Without hesitation, Coach was out. He had no intention of risking rejection and humiliation, especially after knowing she had already turned Rodney down. Coach contended that if she were not interested in Rodney, she wouldn’t be interested in them. Besides, Ricky had better odds of success working in the showroom and possessing the gift of effortless conversation with girls. Ricky’s approach was never tacky, and he enjoyed that envious combination of confidence and charm. Although younger, shorter, and not as athletic as Rodney, Kevin’s money was on Ricky to be the first to find the right combination to open the cherry red safe.

When Ricky confessed he had, in fact, already asked her out, it surprised them all. It happened three days earlier, and she politely turned him down. Kevin imagined Ricky himself must have been surprised, considering he kept the rejection quiet and had told none of them about the attempt. As Ricky described the details of his conversation with her, Kevin conceded his own chance of success was slim, yet the titillation of the challenge itself swelled within. Kevin felt as if he was in the center of a Las Vegas casino, standing naked in front of the one-million-dollar payoff slot machine and holding a single quarter in his hand. Should he drop the quarter and pull the lever, or should he cover his loin and run for cover? He decided that a quarter has little value outside the casino, and someone will eventually win the jackpot, so why not?

While Kevin continued his eye-contact coyness with Maritza each time they were near one another, he began noticing the same in return from her. She, too, began to glance back and then downward, smiling as if reciprocating in approval. Was she signaling permission for me to approach her? Kevin was still not sure and didn’t want to seem like a creep, misreading something as simple as a glance or a smile from across the distance for something it was not. She likely had a boyfriend or was interested in another guy anyway. Maybe Maritza was being polite and had no interest in any of them? She had already rejected not only Rodney and Kenny but Ricky, too. Kevin also knew that playing coy was an art that required a delicate balance between acting interested and behaving like you are not. It was intriguing to some, but it had a short shelf-life. You need to either move forward or retreat at just the right point. Kevin’s moment was expiring soon, or at least was about to go stale. He was genuinely interested in meeting her, despite her obvious good looks and sexiness, but not solely because of them. He decided the jackpot was worth exposing himself, and dropping that last quarter to pull the lever of luck was worth the risk. It was a bold and uncharacteristic decision for him indeed.

Kevin’s approach had to be thoughtful, and neither the Coach nor any other Darksider could lend advice or know his intentions. He suspected Rodney had failed with arrogance and corny pickup lines. Kenny had undoubtedly failed with insincerity following Rodney. Ricky’s failure was more challenging to decipher, given what a suave ladies’ man he was. Was he too short or not muscular enough for her? Ultimately, Kevin speculated that Ricky’s fault was probably in going straight for the date, but that was still pure conjecture. It was not an algebraic formula that had one true and sure answer. Kevin’s plan of approach had to be different. He needed to begin an enjoyable conversation with her without trying to pick her up or ask for anything she would have to commit to. As in soccer, he would play the long game by making short gains on the field when he could. He would avoid the mistake of trying to score too early. Keeping control of the ball was what mattered. Maritza had already noticed him, but now he needed to make a good first impression. Kevin needed to keep it casual and relaxed, suggesting to her he was comfortable in his own skin. Unlike most adolescent males, he didn’t want to appear needy, intense, or desperate. No chess or soccer match is won without strategy and planning. Kevin knew this.

16

American Gigolo

K evin entered the showroom through the front door an hour before closing on an evening when he was not working but knew she was on the schedule. There were fewer shoppers and employees then, along with minimum coverage by management. He chose Thursday because that was when Mr. Hanley was the manager on duty, and he knew Hanley would likely be in his office and inattentive until closing time. Kevin also surmised that Thursday was the day people typically anticipate the weekend and start making their plans, which could serve him well as a conversational topic if his initial meeting with her went well.

Walking down the center aisle of the showroom, Kevin turned left and made his way to the farthest corner of the jewelry department, which also happened to be the most distant point from where Maritza was working. That gave him time to slowly browse the brightly lit cases, surveying the merchandise and occasionally glancing upward to observe her location and actions as she finished a transaction with a customer. Kevin was careful not to touch the glass with his fingers and instead used the metal edges of the case for balance, conscious not to leave fingerprints on the glass. Kevin knew they would have to spray and clean the cases at closing and didn’t want to create extra work for her. She might notice his thoughtfulness and appreciate it, after all. As he completed his run down the length of the first of three rows of cases, Kevin again glanced up just in time to see Maritza do the same. She was alone now and held eye contact with him long enough to smile and look away. Kevin thought she was better at this game than he was but was admittedly encouraged by her smile.

Rounding the corner and strolling toward the center row of cases, Kevin continued studying the shiny items under the lighted glass until he heard the feminine voice. “Hi, may I help you?”

Kevin looked up, then smiled, showing her the straight white teeth he had earned with two painful years of braces. He stood up straight, exposing a confident posture and showing her his height. “Hi, how are you? I’m Kevin. I work in the back,” he said, gesturing to the back of the building with a half-turn of his shoulder and a slightly raised hand.

“I know. I’ve noticed you back there. You clean up well.”

Kevin chuckled at her comment while his mind raced to process each word she spoke and the body language she signaled. Maritza said she had ‘noticed’ him in the back instead of saying she had ‘seen’ him there. He thought the word ‘noticed’ inferred that she was paying attention to him rather than simply seeing him. She also said he ‘cleaned up well.’ Did that mean she approved of what he was wearing? Part of his strategy for making a great first impression was to do it during his time off, allowing him to dress nicely. She had already seen his dirty and sweaty version in jeans and a sweat-clad tee shirt. Tonight was the opportunity to meet the clean and smartly dressed version of himself.

“I’m Maritza,” she added, accepting his extended hand with a light touch and feminine half-shake.

“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Maritza. How are you enjoying your new job here?”

“I love it,” she replied. “What’s not to love about being surrounded by diamonds, gold, and pretty jewelry?”

“Fair point. It beats the dirty boxes and dusty shelves surrounding me most of the time.” Kevin continued to exude confidence through his smile and eye contact, however uncomfortable and unnatural it felt. He knew he had to stay focused on that critical element of conversation. Eye contact, smile, exude confidence, he repeated to himself. Her eyes were a deep and transparent green, like polished emerald jewels contrasted against her ruby lips and the satin sheen of her dark hair.

She chuckled and replied, “That’s very true, but at least it keeps you in great shape, right?”

Did she just give me another compliment? he wondered. “Now you’re just trying to make me blush, and I can’t hide that under these bright lights.”

She chuckled again and then smiled in silence, as if pausing momentarily to see if he would blush. Parsing his lips and grinning, Kevin lowered his head slightly and rolled his eyes as if embarrassed, which he was. The heat in his cheeks rose, as did his intrigue with her.

“Oh, stop it,” she said lightheartedly, reaching across the glass countertop to land the light and playful tap across his bicep. “I know you’re not embarrassed,” she added.

Glancing around, Kevin noticed no one was watching. There were no other customers in the jewelry department, and Betty was the only other associate behind the counter. She was an older lady on the far side of the department by the registers, preparing for the evening’s close as she gave the two space to continue their chat. He didn’t want to interfere with other customers receiving proper service or overextend his initial meeting with Maritza.

“We’re fine,” she said, sensing his quick survey of the surroundings. “So, what are we looking for tonight?”

She said ‘we,’ he noted. Was that just an expression, or was that intentional and designed to let him know she was joining him in his search for a gift? Perhaps it was a signal that she was ending their nice chat, and it was now time to get on with business instead. Was he over-analyzing every word she uttered? Maybe the question had nothing to do with merchandise or shopping but was an invitation or suggestion for something more after the store closed. Stay on script and stick to the plan, Kevin reminded himself.

“A gift for your girlfriend, maybe?” Her head tilted, delicately tucking a few strands of flowing hair behind her ear as she softly spoke. Maritza looked at him with those emerald eyes and smirked, awaiting his reply.

“Oh, no. No girlfriend at the moment. I’m looking for a gift for my grandmother’s birthday. She loves jewelry but already has so much of it, so I’m sort of at a loss here.” Bravo, he thought to himself.

Maritza smiled and told Kevin how sweet he was to want to give his grandmother a lovely gift like jewelry. He read in her face that the thought touched her as if he had rescued a cute little puppy from the highway's center lane or donated his last dollar to help feed hungry families at the homeless shelter. How could that be viewed as anything but thoughtful and kind, winning her attention and admiration? It was true, though. Kevin loved his grandmother and enjoyed buying her small gifts he thought would bring her pleasure.

As they walked around the jewelry cases, Maritza showed Kevin a few items that might make an appropriate gift. She modeled a bracelet to show him how it looked being worn, extending her wrist toward him so that he could get a closer look. Maritza invited him to touch it, to feel the tiny pearls and gold charms as she explained its construction. She held some earrings up to her ears, again tucking strands of her silky hair behind them, helping to give him ideas. They talked about their grandmothers as they moved to the necklaces and selected a few of them as potential purchases. She held each one up against the skin of her lower neck as if wearing them, showing him the difference between the shades of gold contrasted against the tone of her skin. Maritza showed Kevin a variety of gemstone pendants, and he noticed how the ruby matched her lips, how the sapphire complemented her dress, how the amber flattered her golden skin, and how the emerald was an extension of her seductive eyes.

Kevin learned a great deal about jewelry and a fair amount about Maritza. Her parents fled Venezuela with her and her sister in the late 1960s, settling first in Baton Rouge and most recently in Bayview. She was seventeen and still a junior in high school, caught in an unusual lag in school grade by her move to Bayview and the date of her birthday. She attended the same Jackson High School that his friend Steve had graduated from, and when asked if she knew him, she told him she didn’t. This was her first job, and he let her know that, in his humble opinion, she was brilliant at it. The conversation flowed easily between the two, and Kevin forgot about his strategy and what he planned to say or how he planned to say it. They were both surprised when the announcement to make final purchases was broadcast over the intercom system, not realizing nearly an hour had passed.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to monopolize your time. I hope I didn’t get you into any trouble.”

“Don’t be silly,” she replied. “You’re one of the only customers we’ve seen in the past hour. I should be thanking you.”

“Well then, you’re welcome.” Kevin smiled and suppressed all the other responses he wanted to say. He wanted to ask Maritza out, or at least ask for her phone number. Kevin wanted to ask if she wanted to chat again but didn’t. He even considered offering her a ride home since she had revealed earlier that she didn’t yet have a car or a driver’s license. However, he didn’t know if one of her parents or older sister was already on the way. It would have been too forward of him to offer a ride so soon after meeting her. No, Kevin needed to stick to the plan and keep it light. He wanted Maritza to think about him, their meeting tonight, and their conversation. What Kevin desired most was to leave her wanting more, the same way she was leaving him wanting more.

“Seriously though,” he added, “it was great to meet you finally, and I appreciate your help. You’ve given me a lot of wonderful ideas that I’m going to sleep on tonight.” Kevin didn’t realize how unscripted and unintentionally superb that statement was until after he uttered the words, and as he made that long walk to the front door, he turned to look back and smile just once as she watched him leave.

Kevin and Maritza ran into each other several times over the next two weeks. Sometimes, it was at the time clock when she came to or left work. At other times, it was upstairs in the breakroom when they happened to take breaks at the same time. Each time they met, they talked and smiled, both sensing the coyness and flirtation between them. Kevin never planned or forced a moment to run into or see her. When it did happen, it was by chance. He also never told the Darksiders about his meeting and conversation with her that Thursday evening, although he badly wanted to.

The Darksiders did, however, notice the glances and smiles that Maritza and Kevin exchanged. They observed the occasional undertone chats between the two and tried to convince Kevin that she was flirting or teasing him. They taunted Kevin, alleging he had a crush on her, but he dismissed each implication of something between them. The last thing Kevin wanted was interference or any unintended consequences of his friend's meddling. He encouraged nothing that might get back to her and negatively influence her still forming perception of him. No, Kevin was playing the patient game and exercising restraint, partly by design, to let the tensions between him and Maritza build and partly out of fear. Kevin had already made it farther than any of his coworkers, and he didn’t want to join the list of the rejected.

After a few weeks, Kevin knew it was time to take the lead and ask Maritza out. He appreciated her not being as forward as Jennifer or Rachael had been in his past. Maritza was almost two years younger, and he wanted to court her like a masculine man should court a subtle and feminine young lady. Kevin would be the hunter and protector this time. Maritza would be his treasure to hug, squeeze, and care for in his arms. He would make her feel special. They would fall in love. But first, Kevin needed to ask Maritza out, and when he saw the new schedule posted in the breakroom when they were up there alone, he seized the opportunity.

“Would you like to see a movie next Saturday,” he asked, “and maybe grab a pizza afterward?”

“Sure. Who with?”

Kevin grinned and courageously dove straight into her emerald eyes. “With me, of course.”

“Oh.” She hesitated. “Oh,” she repeated, as if surprised he would ask her to a movie and assume it was with him.

Kevin smiled and held steadfast, undeterred by her apparent hesitation. She had already said yes to a movie, and he knew she was off the schedule that day, so if she didn’t want to go out with him, she would have to speak the words.

“What would we see?”

“I was thinking of The Empire Strikes Back. It’s got something for everyone. There’s science fiction, action, aliens, good guys, bad guys.” A lesser man would have suggested they could see anything she wanted, but he was leading this dance and determined to be decisive.

“Do you have to have seen Star Wars first?” she asked.

“It would likely help,” he replied. “Have you seen Star Wars?”

“Yes, didn’t you?”

“I did. Did you like it?”

“Oh yes,” she answered. “I loved it! What about pizza?” she added.

Grinning, Kevin explained pizza was that round and doughy Italian food with various toppings on top and served warm. He added that people bought pizza in a grocery store or ordered it at a restaurant. Sometimes, they even had it delivered to their homes.

“How would we get there?” she asked. Kevin was catching on to her game of stretching it out to see him sweat under pressure. He had no intention of faltering and answered every silly question she tossed his way with an even more clever answer.

“I thought I would pick you up in my X-wing Starfighter so we could fly to the theater.”

“Oh, that sounds exciting!” she exclaimed. “Would I have to ride in the back like R2D2?”

“So, you know about R2D2?”

“Of course. Doesn’t everyone?” Maritza replied.

“Well, no. You wouldn’t need to ride in the back. That would be unsafe. It’s better if you ride in the cockpit with me.”

“Oh,” she responded, looking down and pausing again as in deep contemplation. Kevin thought Maritza was either testing his playfulness or his patience, but again, he had no intention of wavering or asking her twice. Maritza burst out laughing and reached across the table to grasp his forearm with both hands, saying, “I would love to go to the movies with you.” She held her grip on Kevin’s forearm after her laugh had subsided and gazed into his eyes before glancing downward. He could see her smile, and the delicate fragrance of her perfume was delicious. Kevin wanted to lean forward, gently lift her chin, and softly kiss her lips. But he resisted the temptation and let the opportunity pass. Always leave them wanting more, he thought.

The two saw the movie that Saturday night and went for pizza afterward. They had a great time, and Kevin met her parents, Diego and Dolores, along with her older sister, Gabriela, when he picked her up. He allowed enough time before the movie to go to the front door and chat with them inside so they knew who their youngest daughter was going to the movies with. That was what a gentleman did.

Kevin and Maritza saw other movies over the next month. He took her to Blue Lagoon, and they discussed what it might be like to be shipwrecked on a deserted island together. They saw Urban Cowboy at the drive-in and agreed the country scene was not for them, promising each other they would never ride a mechanical bull in a country bar. Their next drive-in movie was American Gigolo, and they admired Richard Gere’s wardrobe and his Mercedes Benz 450 SL convertible. Maritza confessed she thought his shirtless scenes were alluring, while Kevin failed to admit Richard’s seductive squint of his eyes also captivated him. Neither of them expected the full-frontal nudity scene in the movie.

As Richard Gere’s character leaned against the window frame and gazed outside, the filtered sunlight cast seductive shadows around his bare and slim body. The scene showed him unconsciously caressing his chest and abdominal muscles as he spoke. Maritza sat beside Kevin and made the same slow, caressive motions with her fingertips across his knee. After a few minutes, Kevin gently took her hand and slowly guided it from his knee up his thigh. Her fingertips maintained their soft pressure as she continued the caressive motions, occasionally pausing to add a tiny squeeze before continuing. Their eyes stayed affixed to the screen, and when Richard’s seductive on-screen scene ended, her rubbing and caressing continued. Kevin released his guiding hand from hers and shifted it to hold onto her seat’s headrest instead. His posture was open now, allowing her to decide the path of her soft touch. She leaned in and kissed his ear, softly exhaling into it as the tip of her tongue traced its outer edges. Kevin’s body instinctively pushed deeper into the driver’s seat. Her tender kisses and licks continued, alternating between his ears and neck, and when she gently bit his earlobe, Kevin’s back pushed deeper into the seat. He couldn’t prevent his feet from pressing against the car’s floorboard, nor could he control his hips from instinctively rising upward, just as he couldn’t stop her hand from unzipping his jeans to release the hardness she created with her fingertips against the outside of his jeans. With each stroke of Maritza’s hand, Kevin’s feet pushed harder against the floorboard. His hips rocked faster within her firm grip. With his eyes closed and the fragrance of her perfume titillating his sense of smell, Maritza whispered into Kevin’s ear to tell him what she wanted, and that is when Kevin finally released the last bit of control he maintained, and it all belonged to her now.

It soon became evident to friends and family that the two were now dating, and while they were careful not to display their affection at work, they didn’t try to hide the courtship. Maritza and Kevin dated into the summer, often seeing movies or visiting the beaches or parks. As a couple, they emulated the adults they saw in movies, picnicking with blankets and sweet Riesling wine with gouda cheese and crackers. They fed grapes to one another, pulling each ball of sweetness from its stem as the flavor of young love gushed into their mouths. They softly kissed the fingers that fed them. It was all very romantic, and the more time Kevin spent with his new girlfriend, the less he had to spend with his other friends. He now watched television at Maritza’s house instead of drinking beer and shooting billiards at the pub. Friday nights became standing date nights with her instead of regular midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show showings with Coach. Kevin enjoyed the stability and certainty of it all, and their little band of Darksiders began to dissolve.

Daniel’s father forced him to quit his part-time job because of his poor sophomore-year grades and the need to focus on summer school. Ricky decided to focus on his future with a two-year enlistment in the Coast Guard. Kevin was about to receive a new focus of his own. His company built a second location on the northeast side of town and asked him to work there as a temporary assignment to help establish the warehouse before the store’s grand opening. Over five weeks, he helped unload and set up warehouse racking, installed equipment, and received merchandise to stock the shelves. During that time, they all worked twelve to fourteen hours per day for six and sometimes seven days a week, racing against the rapidly advancing deadline to ready the store. Like a trooper, Kevin devoted everything he had to the project to please his managers, allowing little time for his girlfriend or anything else.

Just before the grand opening, the company’s Director of Operations overseeing the store’s buildout called Kevin into his office. Being summoned to the meeting felt unnervingly similar to his experience at Grand Union a few years earlier when he readied a newly constructed store for them. This time was different, however. Instead of firing him, they offered Kevin a promotion and asked him to be the Warehouse Manager of their newly acquired location in Ft. Lauderdale. Despite his young age, they were pleased with his work and dedication and were confident he could do the job. The opportunity also meant leapfrogging the experience that time spent in an assistant manager’s role would have given him. It was a salaried management role and meant no longer punching a time clock, plus their offer of sixteen thousand dollars per year sounded like a fortune to Kevin. That was more than twice what he was making on an hourly basis. The offer was unexpected, and they asked him to give them his answer immediately. In appreciation of their confidence and with a desire not to disappoint his manager, Kevin immediately accepted.

After accepting, they informed Kevin he needed to begin his new role within two weeks. He was oblivious to the logistics of that timeframe and had no time to consider how he would inform his friends, family, and, most importantly, Maritza. The flattery of their desire for him and the promise of doubling his income overwhelmed Kevin. His career was rapidly advancing, and he was eager to inform everyone. Kevin was confident they would be proud of his success, and there would be plenty of time for him to debate on the drive home later that evening whether his hasty decision was wise.

17

What a Fool Believes

W hen Kevin accepted the promotion, the new decade had already seen its share of anguish. Washington State’s Mount St. Helens eruption created avalanches, explosions, large ash clouds, and mudslides that killed scores of people. Americans were still being held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and race riots that resembled those of the 1960s took place in Miami’s Liberty City area. A severe heatwave in the South killed eleven hundred people during the summer, while hurricane Allen ripped through the Caribbean, Texas, and Mexico to kill almost three hundred more. As Kevin hastily prepared for his move to Ft. Lauderdale, Iraq invaded Western Iran in what was to become an eight-year war between the two countries and cost a million people their lives.

Kevin was oblivious to it all. These natural disasters and crimes against humanity didn’t impact his promising young life. The 1960s radical and countercultural movements had no direct influence on his childhood. The Watergate scandal, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the economic crises of the 1970s had no immediate effect on his teen years. Inflation, foreign policy turmoil, and rising crime were not his burden to bear, nor his responsibility to solve. Kevin had a new girlfriend and was about to start a new job. His income doubled as he prepared to leave home for the first time and start a new life on South Florida’s desirable Gold Coast. If leading a successful life meant being in a relationship, being in good health and physically fit, having a job, and embracing new experiences, then, by all accounts, Kevin was already successful. He didn’t view himself as lucky or entitled. Kevin had worked hard and made good decisions to get where he was. He earned his good fortune. Kevin had been a good son, a decent student, and a great employee. He was deserving of everything now coming his way. Kevin was also incredibly naïve.

The news surprised Bert and Carol. As parents, they were anxious about their firstborn’s plan to move away from home to a new city. Still, they were supportive. They probably knew it would happen with or without their endorsement. Most of their concern was with Kevin postponing his college education once again, given this was the third time he would withdraw from classes.

Kevin had attended community college to study the basics and earn his Associate’s Degree with plans to transfer to the University of South Florida after choosing a major. He was already working full-time, so he had only enrolled in two classes earlier in the spring semester. Those two classes were eye-opening experiences for Kevin. Unlike how he drifted through high school without effort, college demanded a new level of discipline and commitment. Kevin had prioritized work and spring break over his first semester, so he failed Freshman English and barely passed General Psychology. He fared no better during the summer semester, letting his courtship with Maritza take priority over his sociology class and reattempting Freshman English. Those both resulted in withdrawals to prevent failing again. A new level of determination fueled the fall semester, and with his renewed resolve, he enrolled in Psychology II, Western Civilization, and Freshman English for the third time. However, this unexpected career move to Ft. Lauderdale would also require withdrawals from these classes. While he preferred not to, he justified the withdrawals with his intent to enroll in a new school in South Florida once settled. He considered the cost-benefit and was confident the tradeoff would be worth it.

Informing Maritza of his promotion and all-to-soon move was more complicated than telling his parents had been. She was as surprised as Bert and Carol were but understood he needed to do it. He had no choice now. He had already accepted their offer. Happy with how their new relationship was developing, the two had no desire to break up and agreed to give a long-distance relationship a chance. Maritza had just started her senior year at Jackson High, and Kevin knew how busy he would be in the new job, so they committed to focusing on those two things for now. The two planned to remain committed to one another and talk on the phone often. Kevin intended to make the 250-mile drive back to Bayview frequently on weekends. It was a tall order for two teenagers who had known each other for only six months, but that was their plan.

By Friday, only a week left before starting his new role, Kevin’s hunt for an apartment began. The plan was to start the day early, make the four-hour drive down, scan the classifieds, and view a few apartments before returning home that evening. He could stay overnight in a motel and use Saturday, if necessary, but he preferred not to.

Kevin met the apartment manager on site for the very first listing that he had circled in the newspaper and, with a cash deposit, signed his very first lease. It was a simple one-bedroom apartment in a two-floor building overlooking a courtyard. While it needed cleaning, it was not far from his new job. More importantly, it was affordable. It seemed perfect for someone who had no furniture and would likely work long hours and rarely spend the weekends there. The following weekend, Kevin returned with clothes and a kitchen starter kit with cleaning supplies, utensils, and food that Carol put together for the first of her children to leave the nest. Once he arrived in Ft. Lauderdale, he met the manager again and handed him the cash balance owed in exchange for the key and possession of his very first apartment.

Despite being enthusiastic about his new life as a self-supporting and responsible adult, Kevin's first few days alone in a new city were tough. No matter how hard he scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom, they remained impossibly nasty. The apartment’s only air conditioner, a window unit, sat on the bedroom floor in disrepair. Its metal housing, a rectangular gap that exposed the room to the outside elements and insects, was framed in the wall. The manager promised the unit’s repair and reinstallation before he arrived, but it never got done. Only his air mattress and sleeping bag separated Kevin from the dirty carpet and the roaches that roamed the apartment freely at night. The building itself was impossibly noisy. The grassy courtyard, or what little grass was left, was filled with cars and rowdy partygoers most evenings until the early morning hours of the next.

Kevin learned valuable lessons about Ft. Lauderdale and apartment hunting that week. Ft. Lauderdale had few zoning laws or restrictions and thus didn’t have clearly defined ‘good’ and ‘bad’ neighborhoods. Within a few blocks of each other, he found beautifully maintained residential areas with expensive houses, commercial businesses and warehouses, and low-income properties with high crime. The city was a hodge-podge of poorly designed infrastructure and differed significantly from the world he was used to. He also realized that viewing a potential residence during weekdays and working hours was a poor choice. He should have seen properties when residents were home or, at a minimum, driven by the area more than once. He also should have waited until after starting his new job to ask for input from his new coworkers regarding the city and its neighborhoods. Fortune may favor the bold, but it does not indulge the naïve. Between the evening festivities in the courtyard and the frequent sirens throughout the night, Kevin got no sleep that first evening. The next night, he only got a few hours. During those first two nights, a few of the car alarms that kept him awake were from his own Bronco.

Kevin knew his new living situation was untenable two weeks into his year-long lease. With the broken air conditioner still lying on the bedroom floor and the large hole in the wall where it belonged, he first pleaded and then negotiated with the building manager for his release from the contract. It cost Kevin his first month’s rent and his security deposit. His poor judgment was a quick gain for the apartment manager and a painful lesson for him.

Fortunately, Maritza had an aunt and uncle who lived in West Palm Beach. It was forty-five miles north of his new job in Ft. Lauderdale and meant a one-hour commute in heavy traffic along I-95. The couple was older and spoke little English, but they were pleasant, and Kevin found a way to communicate the basics with them. They temporarily allowed him to stay in their guestroom at Maritza's request while he searched for another apartment. The Spanish-style house had old metal sunshades from the 1950s that overhung the windows to keep it cool, and while modest, it was a five-star resort compared to what he had experienced the prior two weeks. Kevin was grateful for their hospitality and an actual bed to sleep in.

Kevin spent a month with them in that small stucco home, using the old wall phone in the kitchen to talk with Maritza each evening. Their conversations usually lasted hours despite the long-distance phone charges adding up. In the moments when they ran out of something new to say, they were content to sit in silence and listen to one another’s breathing until one of them mentioned again how much they missed the other.

Each Friday evening, Kevin drove back to Bayview to see Maritza as he promised to do, returning the following Sunday evening in time to make it to work on Monday morning. He progressively delayed his departure from her on Sundays, with neither wanting to say goodbye. By the fourth weekend, Kevin was driving the long, dark road back in the middle of the night. On one such occasion, he ran off the road in a moment of drowsiness and was fortunate to have a broad and open shoulder of the highway that both protected and shook him awake. Sitting in the remote darkness, stunned and jolted back into consciousness, Kevin knew how fortunate he was not to have been seriously hurt or killed, or even worse, to have killed someone else in an automobile accident that he had caused. Like his living conditions in the nasty apartment he just moved from, the separation from his girlfriend and the long drives each weekend were becoming untenable.

While Kevin struggled with his living situation and separation from Maritza, his new job was even more difficult. He had walked into a small and old store managed by two older gentlemen who spent more time sitting in their offices managing their personal investments than they spent managing the store itself. The store’s warehouse was in disarray. Over time, its employees had taken control of it and supervised themselves. Their autonomist dysfunction had little need or tolerance for a teenage newcomer outside of their independent world. Kevin had no formal training or informal experience managing employees and had not yet learned the difference between managing and leading. He had never experienced direct defiance or insubordination. He had never considered the possibility that the authoritative role in the workplace didn’t automatically command respect and cooperation from employees. An Army veteran and Fire Department Captain raised Kevin. He attended a Catholic school where nuns and teachers commanded the utmost respect and discipline. Disobedience, misconduct, and rebellion were not in his vocabulary, and he was ill-prepared to try managing or reforming them. After a few short weeks, the new job that Kevin had moved so far away from his comfortable and familiar life for was also becoming untenable.

Kevin had quickly painted himself into a corner. Still, he needed to find a way to make it all work. He was already looking for a new apartment in the evenings and shifted his search to West Palm Beach, which seemed smaller, quieter, and prettier than Ft. Lauderdale. Maritza already had family living there, and although he would have to contend with a long drive to and from work each day, Palm Beach felt safer. If worse came to worst and he had to look for another job, he preferred to look for one in West Palm or even back in Bayview than to be stuck in another lease living in Ft. Lauderdale.

He soon found a good apartment in a new complex in Palm Springs, a small but growing area of West Palm Beach. It was another one-bedroom, only larger and brand new, in a large complex of three-story buildings surrounding spacious common grounds and a clubhouse and pool. Kevin would be the first tenant for the Canadian owners who had purchased it as an investment property. With the lease signed, Kevin moved in at the beginning of the month.

Despite the prospect of improved living conditions, Kevin was still terribly lonely. He had no friends in South Florida and was miserable at work. He could barely communicate with Maritza’s aunt and uncle. The uncle drank heavily after work, usually resulting in either a fight between the couple or his passing out in his recliner watching television. Kevin tried to avoid it all, staying in their guest room most evenings with the door locked until a blanket of quiet covered the household. Only then would he slip into the kitchen to call Maritza. Their discussions were patterned. Maritza told Kevin how much she hated school, and he responded by telling her how much he hated work. They both wished they were together. Kevin was not used to such isolation, surrounded by unrelatable strangers. He was not used to spending time alone. He had never even seen a movie at the theater by himself. When locked in the guest room late at night, after the arguing had stopped and the receiver of the wall phone hung silently in its cradle, Kevin focused on the dull dial tone in his mind, worrying that he was becoming the greatest of all unrelatable strangers to himself.

During their phone call the following evening, while each expressed their loneliness and desire to be together, Kevin proposed to Maritza. It came from nowhere, unplanned and unrehearsed, and she immediately accepted. It was not the romantic proposal seen in movies, but they justified it as practical, almost necessary. Relief immediately swept over them both. With a single phone call, Kevin had ended his loneliness, and Maritza had secured her escape from living under her parents’ house and rules. Aware of their meeting only seven months prior, their weekday separation and happy reunions during the weekends served to prove their love. Isn’t love all a young couple needs? Now engaged, Kevin could focus on the ritual of asking her father for her hand in marriage and the details of a ring. Maritza could now focus on a dress and planning the ceremony. They had so much to do and look forward to. It would all begin earnestly during his next weekend visit, and the young couple were excited about ending their loneliness and what would soon come.

Wedding planning went into overdrive, driven mainly by Maritza and Dolores. Just six weeks later, on Thanksgiving Day, they were married. Rafael, another of Maritza’s uncles who lived in West Palm Beach, had a large and lovely backyard and allowed them to use his patio for the small ceremony. Her family’s close and distant relatives and friends living in greater South Florida primarily attended it. Bert and Carol also attended, as did his aunt Alice, who officiated the event as a public notary. With the vows repeated and the rice thrown, Kevin and his new bride headed to the Breaker’s Hotel for a one-night honeymoon that her uncle Rafael arranged as his gift. The newlyweds were too exhausted to make love as husband and wife that night, and the next day, they checked out and headed to their new apartment, still void of furniture but excited to begin their happily-ever-after life together.

18

Give Her Credit

T he first few months were lean for the young newlyweds as they began to furnish their new apartment. They started with a sectional sofa and some bedroom furniture purchased from a small furniture store in Bayview on a buy-here-pay-here credit plan. Kevin hated beginning the marriage in debt, but they needed some basics, and Dolores knew the store’s owner and happily arranged the purchases. She said it was common for young couples to start their life together with some debt, and the payment plan purchase was nothing unusual. Kevin went along with it, confident they would be okay financially as soon as Maritza made her final move from Bayview and found a job. While he was working at the job he hated in Ft. Lauderdale, Maritza was shopping for furniture in Bayview with her mother.

Kevin and Maritza traveled between their former and new cities a few times after the wedding and during the holidays. On their last trip for Christmas, he left Maritza in Bayview so she could withdraw from Jackson High and take her GED exam. Kevin planned to return to Bayview the following weekend to pick her up. That would be her final shuttle between the two cities, and after a very hectic couple of months, they looked forward to settling into their new apartment and new life together. When they last spoke over the phone, once again separated by the miles, Kevin told her how much he looked forward to seeing her in a few days. Maritza told him she had a surprise.

After returning home from work Thursday evening, Kevin rummaged through the nearly empty refrigerator and kitchen cabinets. He planned to return to Bayview the next day to pick Maritza up, and as he tried to decide what to eat for dinner, he heard a recognizable sound from the front of the room. It sounded like a key inserted into the deadbolt, followed by the turning of the lock. It was unexpected, and he stopped dead in his tracks. Kevin’s first thought was that a neighbor had gone to the wrong door and was trying to open his by mistake. It was a reasonable explanation. He had done that himself with cars resembling his own and parked in the vicinity where he remembered parking. Turning his head toward the sound and peering below the overhead cabinets separating the kitchen from the nearly bare living room, he wondered if the Canadian couple was using their owner’s key to enter his rental unit. He had paid the rent and signed the lease, so there was no reason for this unannounced intrusion. With that logic, Kevin’s thought shifted instead to intrusion. Was someone trying to break in, just as they had tried to break into his car in Ft. Lauderdale? His instinct was to grab a kitchen knife. Carol had given him one when she so considerately packed his first move-away-from-home-starter-kitchen care package a few months earlier. Where was the knife? Which drawer did I put it in? Kevin had no time to decide as the front door opened with two figures silhouetted in the entryway.

“Hay!” the familiar voice announced as she walked through the door.

“Hello, darling,” the second female figure followed. The two words were long and drawn out in a thick and heavy accent. A third shadow entered the doorway, shorter and broader than the first two. Kevin recognized it as a suitcase as Dolores rolled it behind her through the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” he replied, still stunned and standing behind the bank of overhead cabinets.

“Surprised?” Maritza said.

“Well, yeah,” he replied, moving toward them to offer a welcoming hug.

“Well, we have another surprise for you, darling!” Dolores anxiously interjected before Maritza could. She had a way of drawing out many of her words as she spoke, demanding attention from the room when she said them. It reminded Kevin of Eva Gabor’s portrayal of Mrs. Douglas's character in the 1960s comedy Green Acres, and he found it particularly irritating.

Kevin looked at them both. Dolores looked like she would explode, unable to contain whatever the second surprise was beyond standing in front of him in person. No, he thought. Oh, please, no! As Dolores grabbed Kevin’s hand, his first instinct was to pull it back sharply. He didn’t want her placing his palm on Maritza’s stomach, and just as he sensed his brain send the nerve signals to his arm to jerk away from her grasp, Dolores turned toward the door and led him outside. She pulled him into the outdoor breezeway to the third-floor railing. Then she motioned toward the parking lot with her free hand and pointed downward. Kevin could see the excitement in their faces but didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking at.

“Right there, Darling. The yellow one. See it?” Dolores explained.

During Maritza’s week in Bayview, they had gone car shopping and purchased a new Pontiac Sunbird from the General Motors dealership where Diego worked. They were proud of the discount he obtained as an employee despite Maritza not having a driver’s license yet. Dolores had driven them down, delivering both daughter and daughter’s new car to Kevin.

Kevin turned to Maritza, still startled by the apartment intrusion and more startled now by their second surprise. “You bought a new car?

It made perfect sense to the mother-and-daughter team. Maritza needed a car to enable her to search for a job. Without a car, how could she find a job? Kevin was less convinced that purchasing a new car was the wisest choice. The U.S. economy was in a deep recession. Unemployment, already high by historical standards, continued to rise. Kevin was also disappointed she would make such a large purchase without at least consulting him, but he muted his initial reaction and concerns in front of Dolores. He sensed they expected him to be grateful. After all, as parents, they had helped their daughter find and purchase the car at a discount, thus enabling her job search without relying on him for rides to and from her non-existent place of employment. Kevin’s feelings on the matter were different. As parents, he thought they should have put effort into teaching Maritza how to drive and ensure she had a license. Diego should have used his connections to find her a less expensive and reliable used car. But Kevin knew all of this before they married, and it wouldn’t have been fair to express his opinion on the matter now. Instead, he avoided confrontation and joined in their enthusiasm. Kevin thanked Dolores for saving him a trip to Bayview and expressed gratitude for bringing Maritza home.

As the three descended the stairwell to view her new car, other questions filled Kevin’s head. When was Dolores leaving, and how was she getting back to Bayview? Did he now need to teach his new bride how to drive, and where would they need to go for her driver’s test? How was the car insured? Better yet, how was the car financed, given she had no credit or income? Kevin assumed Dolores and Diego had purchased it for her, and now they needed to arrange a repayment plan with them. Maybe they cosigned an auto loan with her? Either way, Kevin was not thrilled. The last thing he wanted was to be financially indentured to his new in-laws.

The reality of the financing question was much worse than paying back a loan to her parents. Maritza had used Kevin’s American Express card to purchase the car. The account was only a few months old, and Kevin was proud to have qualified for it. Having an American Express card was another validation of his success. Until now, he only had a few credit cards, all individual company cards. His first was a JCPenney card Carol helped him open in the store’s customer service office by cosigning with him. His second and third cards were from Montgomery Ward and Shell Oil, and after making a few small purchases and promptly paying them off, he applied and got a Sears card, the hardest of all to qualify for. But now Kevin had an American Express card. He felt privileged to have it. Kevin had added Maritza to the new account after the wedding, and without consulting him, she wasted no time using it. From her first swipe as an authorized user, Kevin now owed over half a year’s gross annual salary, all due and payable on next month’s statement. It was challenging to remain calm, and he would need to explain to Maritza what a problem this was, but he deferred the detailed conversation until after her mother’s flight back to Bayview the following day.

19

Family Affair

M aritza had more surprises for Kevin a few weeks later as she explained how Dolores and Diego had just decided to move to West Palm Beach. Not only had they listed their home for sale, but they had already received and accepted an offer and were under contract. She explained how visiting West Palm for the wedding had reminded them of their long-term plan to move there. They wanted to be closer to their relatives, and since their daughters were out of high school, they no longer needed to stay in Bayview. They wanted to be part of a larger Hispanic community, and Dolores felt her real estate career could flourish in the fast-growing South Florida market. Diego had already spoken to a local dealership and quickly landed a job offer over the phone. The transition to their new life was moving as fast as Kevin's transition had a few months prior, and he now knew how surprising his news must have been to his parents.

While Dolores stayed in Bayview to pack and finalize the house closing, Diego moved in with Kevin and Maritza to begin his new job. He needed to start as quickly as Kevin had to start his a few months before. It was an awkward arrangement for Kevin, having his new father-in-law sleep on their newly purchased sofa in the living room while he slept in the bedroom with his new bride, Diego’s daughter. Although an intrusion soon after their wedding, Kevin felt obligated to support his new family, just as Maritza’s aunt and uncle had helped him with his sudden need for housing after the Ft. Lauderdale apartment fiasco. Diego also gave his youngest daughter’s hand in marriage to him, so Kevin had to accept the temporary living situation. It was just another annoyance, like the pressures and difficulties at work and the mounting financial pressures of falling behind in payments for new furniture, a better apartment, a new car, and a wife who was home all day and had not yet found employment for herself. All of these things were temporary and would soon correct themselves.

Dolores quickly found a house for them to buy in Lake Worth, just a few miles south of their apartment. She would be moving down to join Diego when their house closed in Bayview, so Kevin’s uncomfortable father-in-law’s stay would end soon. Maritza had just one more surprise for him before it did.

Gabriela was also going to move down from Bayview and planned to move in with her parents to share the expenses. Gabriela, a college student, still lived with Dolores and Diego in Bayview and saw no reason to live there alone now. Her parents and sister had already discussed it with Maritza and suggested that Kevin and Maritza move in with them, making it a cozy family of five.

“No. Absolutely not,” Kevin told her.

“But we would all share in the expenses and save money. It would be a temporary arrangement, and we would have a bigger place.”

“Maritza, you couldn’t wait to move out from under their roof. Now, you want us to move in with them?”

“I know,” she replied. “But you know how my mother and father are.”

Did he? Kevin told Maritza he appreciated the offer but didn’t like the suggestion. Every bit of intuition told him it was a bad idea. He was genuinely fond of her family and knew Latinos tended to have close family relationships. Kevin also knew that moving in with in-laws was a terrible idea under normal circumstances. It was an exceedingly awful idea for newlyweds. Still, Kevin grew more concerned about their mounting debt as Maritza’s unemployment continued.

Each new day was more difficult at work than the previous one. Kevin was getting no support from the store’s management and no cooperation from the employees he was supposed to manage. He hated the situation he was in and now regretted having accepted the role. Still, Kevin tried to make it work until a heated public argument with one of his staff. The employee lunged toward Kevin and threatened him with a physical attack. Kevin took it to the store managers and advocated for the associates firing. His store managers refused, downplaying the incident to avoid further conflict, so Kevin resigned and walked out. He was tired of the long daily drive back and forth in heavy traffic. Kevin was tired of his ineffectiveness in the role. He was tired of the intimidation, the physical threat, and the lack of support.

Kevin’s action, or reaction, ensured the acceleration of his financial problems. Without employment prospects for Maritza, the couple had no choice but to reach for a lifeline and agree to move in with Dolores, Diego, and Gabriela. It meant breaking the lease on their new rental, his second broken lease in under a year. The failures were adding up for Kevin: two apartment misfires, three semesters of college class withdrawals, mounting debt, a faltering credit score with a worsening credit history, and now unemployment. Kevin’s confidence in himself was in freefall.

20

Fast Cars

K evin was fortunate to find another job after just a few weeks of unemployment. Responding to an advertisement in the classifieds, they hired him on the spot at the end of the interview. The position was the night manager at a Shell gas station, a glorified title with only one other employee working nights with him, and the $4.60 per hour was considerably less than what he had been making. Still, given the worsening recession and growing unemployment rate, he was relieved and accepted it. He told himself that starting at 1:00 p.m. each day would give him the freedom to return to school in the mornings once he was back on his feet. When he was honest with himself, however, he knew he was overly optimistic and that it was unlikely to happen. Kevin had no experience working in retail or at a gas station. Still, Mr. Jackson, the station's franchise owner, liked that Kevin had some college and management experience, and he gave him the opportunity.

The new job differed from anything Kevin had done, yet he enjoyed it. Although the full-service station was small, with only four pumps on two islands, it had three service bays and two mechanics on a busy street corner. As an attendant, Kevin’s primary job was to pump gas, wash windshields, and check tire pressures and fluids when the customers requested it. When the station was slow, and they had free time, Kevin and the other attendants helped the mechanics with small services like repairing flat tires or doing simple oil changes. They also kept the station spotless, pressure washing the pump islands and repainting the bumper guards once a month. It was bustling work, but Kevin enjoyed the various activities and spending most of the day outdoors.

Kevin’s duties also included closing each night and securing the cash and credit card receipts in the floor safe before locking the station. Mr. Jackson tried to keep two attendants on duty at night, but that was not always possible, and Kevin sometimes thought about how he might react if robbed while closing. He ran different scenarios in his head, each with different outcomes subject to multiple variables. Mr. Jackson instructed them never to fight back but to hand over the cash without resistance. Kevin was not sure a robbery would play out like that, though. He knew the world was cruel and people were greedy, and on principle alone, he would probably resist and fight back during any late-night holdup. His Christian schooling supported the morals he would uphold. His leadership experience in Boy Scouting and as a Safety Patrol Captain in fifth grade would help his command of the situation. His childhood roleplay at cowboys and Indians, as pirates and navy sailors, and as soldiers during the Ear Tree pod wars would support his courage during a battle. Fortunately, the station never got robbed, and his childhood play skills never got called to a test.

When few cars visited the pumps in the afternoons, and there were no tire repairs, Kevin sometimes visited Mrs. Jackson in the station’s office while she ordered fuel or tallied the daily receipts. Kevin also spent time in the service bays with the mechanics, asking questions about undercarriage parts when the cars were up on the lift with their underbellies exposed. They taught him how to look up parts in the catalogs and order them for quick delivery. The whole station ran like an orchestra, with musicians playing different instruments so that, as a group, they served their patrons and made money. Kevin found it fascinating and considered whether he should study auto mechanics to have the same good-paying, secure career that the mechanics had. He thought about what it might take to one day own his own franchised business to enable the type of life Mr. and Mrs. Jackson had. Each time he finished analyzing the pros and cons of becoming a mechanic or a service station owner, reality washed over him and cleansed him of any daydreams of success. Then Kevin returned to his station in life as a second-shift gas attendant living over his means, in debt, and with his in-laws.

***

At home, Kevin’s new family of five became six when Gabriela’s boyfriend moved down from Bayview to join the household. Jimmy was eager to begin his new life in South Florida like the rest of them. Kevin had heard Jimmy’s name mentioned before, but they had never met since he and Gabriela began dating after Kevin moved from Bayview. Kevin had once met someone Gabriela was dating, but it was before Jimmy when Dolores and Diego were out of town, and their daughters invited boyfriends to spend the night with them at the house. Kevin met the boy in the kitchen the following morning, and they briefly chatted. He was a French exchange student and her college classmate. The French boy was thin, intelligent, and articulate. Kevin imagined Jimmy was probably something like that attractive French boy.

The household was about to grow to contain three couples consisting of six adults and various parent-child, husband-wife, and boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. It was about to feel like a commune, raising Kevin’s concerns and anxiety over their shared living arrangement. On the other hand, having another male in the house who was his age and not blood-related might be a positive. Tensions between sisters, parents, and daughters, or husbands and wives, could sometimes get strained. Jimmy might prove to be the friend and ally that Kevin sometimes needed.

When he arrived, Jimmy looked nothing like the French student and nothing like Kevin had imagined. Jimmy was an inch shorter than Kevin and had a slightly smaller frame, but his muscles were cut and ripped from long hours of manual labor. Kevin had slowly built a body from a base of poor genetics and a lot of tennis, swimming, and a little weightlifting in his parent’s backyard. Jimmy’s body, however, was built by hard work, sweat, and rough times. Kevin thought of Matt Dillon as soon as he met Jimmy. If Matt had shorter hair and a dragon tattoo on the back of one shoulder like Jimmy, the two would pass as twins. Jimmy also smoked like Matt Dillon did in the movies and like Ricky did in real life. When Jimmy arrived at the house driving his early 1970s Dodge Challenger, Kevin imagined him as the perfect cast for one of the characters in the novel The Outsiders he remembered reading in high school.

Jimmy explained how he used to be a roofer, a painter, and a carpenter. He had done other types of construction work, too. He grew up on the outskirts of Bayview on the wrong side of the tracks. Kevin had heard of the area and its reputation as a rough place. Jimmy said he had been dirt poor most of his life, scraping and sometimes stealing to survive. He had dropped out of high school. Working as a laborer was the only thing Jimmy knew, but he was ready to better himself and enthusiastic about a fresh start. As Kevin watched him talk about his background, he wondered how Jimmy and Gabriela could have met and how she could have been attracted to two such different people. The intelligent French student and the rugged, impoverished laborer couldn’t have been more different. Then again, Kevin had become a stark contrast to the person he was six months prior.

The two boys got along well, and Kevin expected the new living arrangement to be an even more significant adjustment for Jimmy than for him. While Kevin thought Dolores and Diego might not be happy with their daughter’s choice, they accepted Jimmy into their compound. To his credit, Jimmy quickly found a job with a construction company down in Delray Beach, joining the rest of the household wage-earners and leaving Maritza the only person in the household still unemployed.

As much as Kevin enjoyed the work at Jackson’s Shell, he couldn’t fool himself into believing it was more than just a job pumping gas. He was never going to commit to becoming a mechanic, and he was never going to become a station owner. Working nights until closing and on most weekends caused him to miss most family dinners and other activities everyone else enjoyed. His work schedule helped solidify his feelings as an outsider, and while Jimmy made inroads with the others, Kevin’s relationships with them strained. Kevin knew he needed to earn more money, and without Maritza working, they couldn’t fully contribute their portion of the household expenses. With that, Kevin searched for another job, and just six months after being hired by Mr. Jackson, he resigned.

Evergreen Distributors was a small wholesaler that distributed tools and materials to the auto body industry. Kevin’s role was to assist the office personnel in taking phone orders in the morning and then pulling those orders for shipment in the warehouse each afternoon. He also received inbound deliveries when they came in and stocked the merchandise on the shelves. Kevin enjoyed everything about the job apart from Connie, the general manager. Her stony look and stern demeanor could turn fire into ice and chill the air that separated everyone who worked there. Nothing Kevin did satisfied Connie, and while the other employees told him not to worry about it, it was still bothersome. They explained she was an unpleasable and miserable person at heart, which solidified his belief that unpleasable women now surrounded him. Kevin, too, was becoming miserable at heart.

Connie assigned the unpleasant tasks that no one else wanted to do to Kevin, and since he was the new kid on the block, he understood and accepted them. He thought it was perfectly normal. He was also living with three domineering women at home, all wanting control and trying to claim authority over the other. Dolores claimed authority as the mother in the household. Gabriela claimed authority as the older sister. Maritza claimed authority as his wife. While Diego stayed quiet and neutral by spending most of his time outside washing his car or waxing and polishing it in the garage, Kevin and Jimmy searched for their place in the family food chain, usually finding it at the bottom. Escaping occasional family dynamics and drama, they went fishing or visited arcades to play video games and air hockey. That became the only recognizable activity from Kevin’s previous friendships and life in Bayview. At times, they visited used car lots in search of cars to admire and dream of owning one day. It was on one of those drives that Kevin fell in love again.

She was a black 1968 Mustang GT Fastback with black leather bucket seats and a high-performance 289 V-8 engine. The car had thick chrome side pipes running down each side between her wide, racing tires. The Mustang looked fast just sitting there. Kevin had always wanted to own a muscle car from the 1960s and 1970s and envied the Camaros, Corvettes, and Mustangs that other students drove in high school. This car was masculine and represented strength. This car was exactly what Kevin thought he needed, and with a bit of encouragement and borrowed cash from Jimmy, he traded his family’s well-maintained Bronco for the object of his desire right there on the spot.

Kevin’s regret over the impulsive decision came within weeks. He couldn’t drive the Mustang more than a few miles without it overheating. It was as fast as it looked and could lay down rubber under smoking tires in second gear, but its overheating problem limited how far he could drive it. He and Jimmy spent the next few weekends rebuilding the engine and its cooling system. It looked great when they finished, but the restoration didn’t correct the overheating issue they could never solve.

Kevin had made another of what seemed to be an endless string of poor decisions by purchasing the car. He had given up the reliable Bronco that Bert purchased new, and he rode home from the dealership on the night they bought it. The Bronco was the car he and his friends put so much work into restoring and updating. It was the car that drove them to beaches after school and to Daytona for Spring Breaks. Kevin drove the Bronco to the loss of his virginity with Rachael and on his dates with Maritza. It was Kevin’s first car, reliable and paid for, and it was now gone. He had replaced the Bronco with something that looked tough on the outside but couldn’t function and had no soul. The Mustang began to feel appropriate and deserving to Kevin, far from how it had felt when he started his relationship with it.

21

A House Dividing

K evin had high hopes he could turn things around. Every aspect of his life seemed off-balance since his move to South Florida. Kevin needed to correct his recent mistakes with a new resolve to get his life back on track.

The Mustang was the most pressing issue to address. Kevin needed reliable transportation again, and while he loved the idea of the muscle car and the masculinity it represented, he regretted his impulsiveness in buying it. When he listed it for sale in the Auto Trader, it sold quickly, even with his full disclosure of the cooling issues. Kevin used the proceeds to pay Jimmy back, and the little cash left over went toward a down payment on a new car at the General Motors dealership where Diego worked. The small, four-door subcompact had a hatchback and was light brown. There was no debating that it was ugly, but it would serve as basic transportation and was economical to drive and maintain. While Kevin was fully aware he was doing the same thing he criticized Maritza for having done, he felt little choice given his credit issues and low income. Diego cosigned the loan, leaving Kevin feeling disparaged and deflated, but the purchase gave him a new car warranty and increased stability, which was more important than how he felt.

Next on Kevin’s list to address was his debt and credit score. The payments on the new little car were affordable and, over time, would help him reestablish his credit rating after having filed for bankruptcy the year before. The filing had been a poor decision, made under the suggestion of Dolores and executed by a second-rate attorney more interested in collecting fees than providing sound counsel to a young client in debt. Fortunately, the judge in the bankruptcy hearing gave Kevin some good advice and allowed him to withdraw the petition. While the thirty-five hundred dollars he owed on credit cards and to the furniture shop was a fortune to him at the time, discharging that small of an amount through the bankruptcy process would have ruined his credit for the next decade. The courts officially dismissed the petition a few months later.

Most importantly, Maritza and Kevin needed to move out on their own. They needed to restart their life as newlyweds, but that wouldn’t be possible until she found a job and they resolved their debt situation. At least for now, they had no choice but to continue living with her family. Dolores and Diego’s ideal of a close-knit family compound continued while Kevin secretly hated the continuous dependency on them. He resented the grip they maintained on his relationship with Maritza. It was impossible to feel like Maritza’s husband when his wife was still living with her parents. Jimmy felt the same way, and the two boys often commiserated over it together, but Kevin had more time to build resentment over it than Jimmy had.

***

When Maritza was unsuccessful in finding employment, she pursued a real estate license to join the new office her mother had just launched. Although it would mean even more ties and reliance on Dolores, it was better than the alternative of continued unemployment. Kevin agreed to take the real estate training courses with Maritza to support her. It was an opportunity to do something together, in partnership, that might help the couple repair some of the divides that had been forming between them. Kevin also had a vested interest in seeing her succeed in getting her license and starting to work. He helped Maritza study for the four-hour professional licensing exam, and they took it together. It was an all-out effort on Kevin’s part to support her. When they received the results in the mail, Kevin passed the exam while Maritza didn’t, adding another layer of strain to their relationship.

Maritza continued studying to retake the exam, and Kevin put his new license to work by joining her mother’s agency as a part-time associate. While it was a help to Dolores for him to staff the office during the weekends, answering phone calls and placing listings in the local papers, he had no genuine interest in selling real estate. The country was still in a deep recession, and home mortgage interest rates were at sixteen percent, an all-time high. It was a tough market for a young and inexperienced new associate to break into. Still, Kevin worked part-time on the weekends, but when summer began, it had to become much more than that.

Kevin’s struggles with Connie at Evergreen continued to grow, as did his despise of going to work there each day. Compounded with increasing financial and marital pressures at home, it took a mental and physical toll on him. One morning, Kevin couldn’t get out of bed. He had never experienced a weight or pressure so great as to leave him immobile and unable to cope with the simplest tasks. He called in sick that day and spent the entire day in bed. The same thing happened the next day, and Kevin didn’t leave the bedroom or shelter of the sheets for those two days. He couldn’t eat, and as the family worried about his hiding behind closed doors, he, too, wondered what was wrong with him.

Kevin had never experienced this debilitating behavior, and while it was illogical, he was unable to do anything about it. He told everyone he was feeling under the weather but knew it was much more than that. On the evening of the third day of his irrational and uncharacteristic behavior, Connie called the house to ask when Kevin planned to return to work. Kevin suspected she already knew that he wouldn’t return. He knew he couldn’t return. He knew he was past the point of return. With a single phone call, Connie made the decision Kevin couldn’t make for himself after languishing in depression and self-loathing for three whole days. With a single phone call, Kevin was once again unemployed. The continued deterioration of every aspect of his life appeared assured.

The relief of not having to return to Connie’s oppression was enough to get Kevin out of bed and back into the world of sunlight and the living. He needed to start a new job search, but in the meantime, he worked as a realtor. He earned a few small commissions from rentals and co-listings, but it was not enough. Without Maritza working, they continued their downward spiral into debt. Kevin even called his mother once and asked for a four-hundred-dollar loan, fabricating a story that he needed to pay for some dentist visits. That was a lie. To Kevin, it felt only a step short of stealing money from her. He hated himself for asking and lying, yet he couldn’t bring himself to tell his parents about his hardships. Kevin couldn’t admit his mistakes. He had always been close to them and eager to share his accomplishments. Kevin needed their continued approval, but how could they approve of what he had become? Kevin’s life now consisted of only stumbles and setbacks, and his self-imposed shame over his failures created a self-imposed distance in his relationship with Bert and Carol. They couldn’t have known what their son was going through since Kevin refused to share his life honestly with them.

When Kevin received Carol’s check in the mail a few days later, he held it and felt a sense of relief, if only momentarily. After cashing it, he handed the cash to Dolores to help repay a small portion of the household expenses he and Maritza were behind on. Just as quickly as his mother’s gift came, it was gone, and they were still seriously behind in reimbursing the others for their portion of the household's living expenses. Each time Kevin got a foothold in climbing out of his financial hole, the earth gave way beneath him, and he fell deeper into the darkness of the chasm. The fall always felt like a solitary one.

While Kevin struggled, Jimmy’s new self-employment thrived. He transitioned from being an employee of a construction company to starting his own small business. Jimmy now worked for them as a subcontractor, bidding on jobs and being responsible for his profit and loss. He sold his Challenger and bought two trucks, a Toyota Tacoma pickup truck for small jobs and a larger flatbed truck to haul larger loads of material. Jimmy made decisions that made sense with an eye on future job growth and income. Gabriela kept the books while he labored under the hot sun of summer. With each completed job, Jimmy brought the check home and dutifully handed it over to Gabriela, just as Diego handed his paycheck to Dolores. Gabriela paid the bills and doled out Jimmy’s allowance for the next week to him, just as Dolores did with Diego. Gabriela was their firstborn, her mother’s daughter, and her father’s favorite. Meanwhile, Maritza and Kevin sank lower in the domestic pecking order of productive and compliant family couples.

Jimmy’s business was quickly growing, and he needed help. Kevin needed to earn some money. When Jimmy suggested Kevin help him on a part-time and as-needed basis, Kevin immediately accepted the offer. It was the same quick acceptance as his job offer to move to South Florida. It was the same quick acceptance as Maritza’s response to Kevin’s marriage proposal over the phone. It was the same quick acceptance as the used car dealer’s offer to trade their fast and classic Mustang for Kevin’s reliable Bronco.

Jimmy taught Kevin many aspects of basic construction: how to shingle a house roof, framing and drywalling, window and door installation, and welding. He taught Kevin the technicalities of the fencing business, which they did a lot of, and he became Jimmy’s dutiful apprentice, working together on both small residential and larger commercial projects. They installed wood and chain-link fences, handling light four-foot chain-link for residential applications and heavy eight- and twelve-foot fencing for commercial jobs. Cutting his hands and arms while installing barbed or razor wire didn’t bother him. Working outside in the elements again was freeing, just as it had felt at the gas station.

The work was hard. The boys manually dug most fence post holes with post-hole diggers, often in the hard shell-like soil of the state's southeastern tip. They laid asphalt tiles on hot roofs and toiled inside buildings under construction that were not yet air-conditioned. It felt good to be sore for days after a tough job. They worked and were constantly wet, either from their body’s sweat working under the summer sun, its rays beating down upon their bare shoulders, or from the rain showers that soaked them daily in the tropical climate. Although demanding, Kevin enjoyed the manual labor. He hoped it would harden his muscles and restore the fitness lost over the previous two years. Kevin had become soft and weak without going to the gym or playing tennis, soccer, or swimming. He knew working with Jimmy was what he needed to help regain his strength and sense of self-worth.

As much as Kevin enjoyed the work, he knew it was because it was new and different. He also knew it couldn’t last. Kevin couldn’t make a career of such demanding manual labor and knew it was not the path to success. Like the real estate business, it could never be a long-term career. Kevin was more intelligent than that. He couldn’t settle for being a simple laborer and had seen what years of construction work did to a man’s body. It leathered their skin and ruined their joints. It aged them before their time. Kevin needed something that would challenge his full potential and allow him to make a difference in the world. He wanted something more prestigious. He needed something to provide some financial stability to his wife and, eventually, their children. They needed medical benefits and the path to a secure retirement later in life. Kevin needed to do what his father Bert had done.

22

Heat of the Moment

T he subcontracting business was feast or famine, like most construction work that undulates between excessive demand and extreme boredom. Jimmy and Kevin would work long hours on a single day, or sometimes for a few days in a row, trying to finish projects. They had days when jobs were small and only took a few hours. Sometimes, there was no work when they were between projects or when the weather was poor. During those slow times, Kevin applied for jobs that might provide a career path with good benefits and security. He applied for a job as a Trooper with the Florida Highway Patrol, but his poor credit history was an issue. Kevin applied for a job with the Palm Beach Fire Department, confident his father’s impressive career as a paramedic and fire station chief would give him an advantage over other applicants. Given the economy, openings were rare, and he never got called for an interview.

Kevin applied as a police officer recruit at several local municipalities and easily passed the written exams and physical ability tests for endurance and strength. He even made it through to the final interview stage for the Riviera Beach Police Department. As the interview’s conclusion drew near, Kevin’s hope that he had impressed them grew, and he hoped for an offer. The panel had just one final hypothetical question for him to answer.

“If your wife ever demanded that you quit,” they asked, “would you choose your career as a police officer or your marriage?” It was a delicate subject, if not a deliberate trick question. Kevin understood the reason for it. He grew up in a household where his father was a firefighter and was gone every third day. He understood the stress these professions have on a marriage and a family. Kevin knew officer attrition rates were high, especially in small-town departments. He was also aware of the tensions lingering in South Florida after the Liberty City race riots. Kevin contemplated the question for a couple of seconds, then answered.

“I could be devoted to both, honestly. But if pressed to choose only one, I would choose my marriage.” Kevin knew that had to be the logical and correct response to the question. Saying he would willingly end his marriage for a job sounded disingenuous. He was confident they were looking for a candidate who answered honestly rather than one telling them what a candidate might typically think they wanted to hear. He was sure they would appreciate his devotion to his wife and, by extension, be just as devoted to them and his career in law enforcement. Kevin’s answer was wrong, and they told him as much when the interview concluded. They required complete commitment and devotion and were unwilling to settle for anything less. The irony would be foretelling.

The rejection was disappointing, but Kevin was getting accustomed to rejection and disappointment in increasing doses. Sex with Maritza waned soon after marriage and then diminished further after they moved in with her parents and sister. Now, lovemaking was nonexistent, and as the physical pleasures of their marriage faded, the intimacy with one another vanished. There was always an excuse: something else to do, something more important to tend to, some other family drama or dynamic in the house foiling intimacy. Their relationship didn’t seem normal for a young couple married less than two years, or at least not to Kevin. From what he observed, the importance of sex was devalued by all three women in the house once they felt secure and in control of their relationship. Maritza had been so different when they dated. For so long, Kevin tried to be patient and understanding, attributing her sexual disinterest to the stress of living under her parent’s roof again. Maybe it was her unemployment or failure at her real estate licensing test. Perhaps it was attributable to her slow and steady weight gain. Whatever the cause or symptom, she had become something far different from the sexy girl in the red dress with a happy demeanor and bright smile. Like Kevin himself, she had changed.

Kevin was frustrated but retained a tiny sliver of hope that things would improve, and they soon did. When Maritza’s job offer for an office secretary role came, he was proud of her for finally landing work. After a three-day training session in nearby Jupiter Beach, she would begin her new position the following Monday. As they spoke on the phone the two nights she was away, Kevin was reminded of their original separation from different cities when they talked for hours at night, expressing their longing to be together. Her employment was the critical break they had been waiting so long for.

Kevin left for work with Jimmy early that morning, kissing his wife on the forehead and wishing her luck on her first day. After a long day, he came home and couldn’t wait to hear how Maritza’s first day on the job had gone. But there had been no first day. When pressed for an explanation, Maritza said the training had not gone well, and she didn’t get the job after all. That made no sense to Kevin. They had already hired her. She had already spent a weekend in training. What could have happened in training for them to rescind their job offer? Kevin was tired from their physically challenging day in the field, but it didn’t compare to the exhaustion of hope once again slipping through his hands. The hope felt like thin twine flying through his tightly clenched and scarred palms. Like Santiago in Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, trying to land the great marlin after an extended run of bad luck and no catches, desperately clenching that rope of hope as it burns and cuts through the flesh of his palms. The harder Kevin pushed for answers, the more agitated Maritza became, pacing around the bedroom until finally breaking into tears.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, reaching out to touch her arms, trying to stop her nervous tempo and comfort her. Suddenly, Kevin felt guilty for pressuring her, believing she was discouraged and upset over the false hiring. Maritza didn’t want to be comforted, however. She pulled away from him each time he tried. Kevin was about to feel the irony of his answers to the police department’s interview panel and their subsequent rejection of him.

“I’m sorry,” she replied, her eyes reddening as the tears began to flow.

“Hey, it’s all right. Don’t cry. You’ll find another job soon.”

“It’s not the fucking job!” she yelled, again backing away from Kevin’s comforting gesture. “There never was a job!”

Maritza didn’t want comfort. She wanted forgiveness.

Kevin took a few steps back and watched her. She was sobbing now but continued to pace the room in nervous frustration.

“What do you mean there never was a job? What are you talking about?”

Maritza admitted there was no job offer and no weekend training. She said she had spent the weekend in Jupiter Beach but at a small beach motel rather than a business training center. Maritza claimed the pressure to find a job after being unemployed for so long was overwhelming and fabricated the job offer out of desperation. She knew the story would fall apart when she didn’t start at an actual job, but she was willing to pay the price for the lie in exchange for the few days of isolation the lie bought her. She asserted she needed to get away, to have some time alone to think, and to rejuvenate her spirit.

As Kevin listened, he wondered what exactly she needed to rejuvenate from. It was her employment status that needed revitalization. It was her figure that needed restoring. It was her interest in intimacy that needed reviving. None of this made sense, and his intuition told him there was more that she was not revealing.

Hemmingway’s Santiago eventually landed the great marlin, lashing it to his tiny boat, only to have it ripped apart and stolen by sharks. He was left feeling drained, emotionless, and exhausted. The entire plot of The Old Man and the Sea revolves around a man’s attempt to win a battle against nature.

“You lied to everyone and took a weekend vacation at the beach? Are you crazy? Don’t you realize how strapped we are for money? That’s the most selfish and irresponsible thing I’ve ever heard.” Kevin found it hard to stand still and began shadowing Maritza in her nervous pacing, turning to follow her each time she turned to avoid eye contact with him. Kevin could feel his chest tighten. His concern with consoling her faded, replaced instead with frustration. “I’d like to take a fucking beach vacation, too,” he added, “but I’m too busy working two part-time jobs to do that.”

Internally, Kevin urged himself to calm down and relax, but a long list of disappointments filled his mind instead. He recalled his surprise at the car purchase without input and her charging it to his credit card without consultation or permission. Kevin thought about her real estate exam failure despite all the work he put into helping her with classwork and studying. The rage within him grew over her laziness, inability to find a job, the resulting pressure on him to pay the bills, and the indebtedness to so many people it had all caused.

“How did you pay for it?” he asked.

“I charged it,” she replied, shaking and pacing and sobbing.

Now Kevin knew she was lying. He continued pressing her for details, asking her to produce the receipt and questioning everything she said. He dug deeper into the root of the infectious lie she was weaving, aware that his voice was growing louder as hers grew more panicked and avoiding. When Gabriela lightly knocked to ask if everything was okay, Kevin shouted at the closed door. “Leave us alone!”  He stood between Maritza and the bedroom’s exit. No one was entering or exiting until he had the truth. Kevin was weary of her laziness, her selfishness, and her irresponsibility. He wanted the truth. Kevin deserved the truth. He demanded the truth. Kevin continued to press her with his questions, like an attorney pressing a hostile witness on the stand.

“I wasn’t alone,” she finally shouted back. “I was with a guy, okay? Please, Kevin, please,” she begged, “Please stop.”

Then, Maritza confessed she had spent the weekend with someone else. The job training lie was an insult to his intelligence, but the deceit was a stab into his heart. As she wept and reached out to him for forgiveness, Kevin stepped backward in anguish and disgust.

Kevin was Santiago. Success and Love were the Marlin. Maritza was the shark.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he shouted, again stepping backward and putting his open hand up into the air that separated them, instructing her to keep her distance. Maritza stopped, and Kevin stared at her in contemptuous silence. She had disrespected him, giving someone else the affection he desperately wanted and patiently waited for. That was the attention that he earned and deserved. Kevin’s frustration, born as concern and for console, now tasted like disgust as he maintained his distance, silence, and stare.

The room fell silent, the air heavy. Like two gladiators in the lull of battle, burdened by the weight of their armor, both weary and wounded, their breathing labored by the swings and strikes of their verbal barrages upon the other, the young husband and wife stared at one another as enemies, waiting for the next round of oral attacks to begin.

Maritza’s crying subsided, and she slowly regained her composure. She told her husband about meeting one of Jimmy’s friends when she, Gabriela, and Jimmy were out. It had been right before their marriage, while she was still in Bayview and he was already in West Palm. They had sex then and somehow kept in touch and now reconnected. She claimed it had no meaning, that she had no feelings for him, and that it was only physical. She claimed her unemployment and depression made her feel like a failure, and she craved attention from someone outside of those closest to her weaknesses. She said she had made a mistake and realized it now. She promised it would never happen again.

She cheated on me before our wedding, for fuck’s sake? Kevin wanted to lash out at her for her betrayal. He yearned to demand an explanation of how she could sleep with someone else while denying him. He also wanted to hug and comfort her, to appreciate her confession, to hope she would keep her new promise and that he could forgive her. But again, hope is the last thing lost. Kevin could do none of those things. Instead, he slammed the bedroom door behind him as he left the house, blinded with anger and dying from sadness.

After a long walk, Kevin stopped at the subdivision’s lake, where he and Jimmy sometimes fished. He wanted to be alone with his pain, his guilt, and his regret. Kevin sat quietly on the bank until the sun fell below the horizon across the water's still surface, disturbed only by the quick zigzag skimming movements of the water bugs, and he thought about what he wanted.

In the past, pleasing his parents and earning their approval was most important. Kevin knew Bert and Carol were proud of him, but he couldn’t help but focus on the times he thought he had disappointed them. During his elementary school years, for instance, his father enrolled him in Little League in West Bayview. The neighborhood was known for developing excellent baseball players, many of whom played professional ball in minor and major leagues, but not Kevin, who only participated in one season and was an awful player. He couldn’t bat the ball, even when it sat stationary on a tee. Kevin couldn’t catch the ball either, even in the outfield. When someone did hit a ball in his direction, it usually caught him off-guard as he studied his shoelaces or the blades of grass where he stood, despite dozens of players and parents yelling at him to get his attention. Kevin was fortunate that a fly ball descending upon his inattentiveness never knocked him unconscious. He was just as bad at choosing a wife and being a husband as he had been playing baseball.

When it was clear that baseball wouldn’t work, Bert took him to the West Bayview Boys Club next, but Kevin’s trepidation over being left there alone sent a clear message of fear and disinterest. Boy Scouting was the only activity that held his interest and that he enjoyed. It was also the only group activity Kevin stuck with. After a handful of years, though, he lost interest in that too, falling short of achieving scouting’s highest rank of Eagle Scout. Kevin also tried guitar and piano lessons, but his lack of natural musical talent and apathy toward practicing ended those activities before wasting too much of his parent’s money. Kevin had been just as poor at maintaining childhood and teenage friendships as he had been at sticking to organized group activities. It takes effort, especially when it does not come naturally. He had not seen or spoken to Ricky, Yeti, Doughy, Shaggy, or Coach for two years. It had been even longer for Steve, Miguel, or Keith. Jennifer and Rachael were distant memories. Since moving to South Florida, he had not communicated with his true family, grandparents, sisters, and aunts. Because of his laziness then, he had no one to turn to now.

Once in school, earning his teacher’s approval had become Kevin’s top focus. Whether volunteering as a Safety Patrol in elementary school, working as an office assistant in junior high, or being a teacher’s assistant to his eleventh-grade English teacher, Kevin wanted to be the student who could be trusted and counted upon to fulfill his responsibilities. Kevin wanted to be helpful, and he wanted to be recognized. In many ways, his relationship with teachers was more important than with his fellow students, just as his quest for parental approval took priority over allegiance to his siblings. Kevin had become a college dropout, unable to pay his bills, and helpful to no one. His only recognition now was depending on others for the food on the table and the roof over his head.

Kevin’s need for approval from parents and teachers changed when he began working. It transitioned to a pursuit of peer approval from friends and coworkers instead. Ricky, Yeti, Doughy, Shaggy, and Coach all influenced his actions, or more accurately, his desire to please them motivated his behavior. Kevin was always happy to drive, eager to pick up the next round of drinks, and willing to go to whatever movies, bars, or events everyone else wanted. He considered himself a great friend because he was the great enabler, making everything they did easier and, in some cases, possible. What about what Kevin wanted? Was all that approval he had sought over the years worth the cost of understanding what he truly wanted and who he genuinely was? It had always been about pleasing others, but who was pleased now?

The sun fell entirely, and the darkness came fully. Kevin wanted to be gone for a long time, long enough for Maritza to suffer in contemplation over her deception. He wanted her to miss him and to wonder if he would ever return. Kevin wanted her own family to chastise and punish her, something he had not dared to do himself. Kevin felt like pleasing no one as he sat on the bank of the lake in the dark, hearing only nature’s collective sounds of anger, fear, and despair.

Several weeks passed, and a quiet tension prevailed over the household. Dolores and Diego learned about their daughter’s lie over the job and training, but not about her infidelity. Gabriela and Jimmy had known about Maritza’s original affair with his friend but not about the recent rendezvous between the two. That is what they claimed, anyway. It hurt Kevin that they had kept it from him all this time but acknowledged their defense that it was not their business or place to tell him. Everyone felt slighted by everyone else over one or another element of the betrayal. They all coexisted out of necessity while keeping an extra distance from one another. No one openly discussed what had happened, and perhaps they all feared disclosing one fact or another unknown by the rest. Multiple secrets and untold truths are difficult to keep track of over time. Maybe they were all feeling guilty as either the sinner or the accomplice. Everyone waited for the tension to disappear quietly, living together in a house full of victims and absent of wrongdoers.

23

All Mixed Up

K evin continued working with Jimmy to finish several large jobs in Miami. He welcomed the hard work and the long hours, wanting to spend as little time as possible at home. He also needed the money. During those long commutes to and from job sites each day, the two discussed the dynamics at home and how they were equally frustrated in their relationships with the sisters. Sex had become rare, if not nonexistent, and they commiserated over how drastically their lives had changed since starting the relationships. They agreed that moving in with the girl's parents had been a colossal mistake, and something needed to change.

During one of these long commutes, Jimmy apologized for what had happened between Maritza and his former friend, explaining that the four had gone out to dinner and had a few drinks. Jimmy had just met Maritza that evening and didn’t know she was engaged and would soon marry me. He also claimed he knew nothing about their hook-up that evening and only found out after the fact when his friend bragged to him about it. A large part of Jimmy’s move from Bayview, beyond wanting to be with Gabriela, was to leave his past behind and start fresh in a new city. He told Kevin he had not spoken with the guy since. Jimmy also claimed he had no idea about Maritza’s fictitious job or that the weekend training trip was to reconnect with the guy. Without proof, Kevin had no choice but to believe what his friend told him. Jimmy was his only ally now. He was essentially the only one in the house Kevin could talk to beyond curt replies to basic questions. The two were very different people from different backgrounds, but now shared a common reality. They had each other’s back. Deep inside, they knew they would always be outsiders within the sister’s family.

It was warmer than usual as Jimmy and Kevin finished a large project early that week in October. By mid-morning, they returned unused materials to the shop, and Jimmy collected payment for the job. With the rest of the day to themselves, the two agreed they deserved a break. Instead of driving home, they bought two six-packs of beer and went to a remote pond off a U.S. Forestry Service dirt road used as a firebreak. Jimmy found the site by accident months ago and recalled the pond had crystal clear and deep greenish water, probably filtered by the surrounding limestone rock it was dug out of. He didn’t know who owned the land but suspected it was a government tract and knew it was isolated. He said it would be the perfect spot to relax and spend the day drinking and swimming without being hassled or driven off the property. The idea was appealing. As he drove, Kevin thought about his former coworkers in Bayview and all the times they had gone to Joni’s Pub after work to drink beer, shoot billiards, and throw darts. He thought about Coach and how they used to go fishing from canoes in lakes or off the Gandy Bridge at night, watching the car lights move along distant bridges as they debated the existence of UFOs. Finally, Kevin thought about Steve and the long hours of swimming and competition they used to enjoy together.

When Jimmy pulled off the dirt road, the thick forest opened up. Pulling into a clearing by the pond, they parked under the large canopy of an expanding oak tree. The tree reminded Kevin of the Ear Tree at home and the childhood spent climbing it to sit atop its high branches and observe the world below. The peacefulness and freedom of the site reminded him of that simple world not so long ago, and he looked forward to spending the rest of the afternoon there in its tranquility.

“This place is awesome,” Kevin said as he handed Jimmy a cold bottle. The boys had iced the beer in the small cooler Jimmy kept behind the pickup's bench seat.

“It is cool,” he replied. “Too bad we don’t have our fishing gear.”

“True. Here’s to a well-deserved breather,” Kevin added. They clinked the necks of their bottles and guzzled that first beer without stopping. Kevin doubted any bass or large fish were in the pond anyway since it was an artificial retention pond with no canal feeding it. Not that it didn’t contain turtles, water moccasins, or alligators. With the windows rolled down, they let the cool breeze flow through the cab as they sat and enjoyed the view over a second beer.

Staring through the windshield at the pond’s calm surface, Jimmy was the first to break the moment's calm. “Sorry about what Maritza did to you. That was shitty.”

“Thanks.” Kevin analyzed Jimmy’s statement and what he might have meant by it. Did he think I blamed him for what she did? Kevin wondered. Was he looking for exoneration from me because it was his friend she hooked up with? Kevin considered asking questions about the guy. How old was he, and more importantly, what did he look like? Was the guy good-looking? Kevin withheld asking questions, though, knowing it would only make him feel worse if he began obsessing over the details or comparing himself to the mystery home-wrecker. He didn’t need to know who was better, what she saw in him, or why she did it. It didn’t matter. Her betrayal was hers to own.

“What are you going to do?” Jimmy asked.

It was a good question, one Kevin had no answer for. What could he do besides continue giving Maritza the cold shoulder and silent treatment? He avoided being in the same room whenever possible and deeply resented her for the multiple indiscretions. Kevin wondered if there had been others and thought there might have been. He questioned why he should believe she had ever been faithful to him about anything. Had she cheated on him at their first apartment before her parents moved down, during the daytime, when Kevin worked long hours in Ft. Lauderdale? What about when he worked nights at the gas station?

“Well, if it were me, I’d want to kill her,” Jimmy added.

Kevin pulled the door handle and got out of the truck, sliding his half of the bench seat forward to retrieve the cooler from behind the seat. “Come on,” he said, and as Jimmy climbed out of the cab and around the front of the pickup, Kevin handed him another cold bottle and challenged him to see who could chug it down the fastest. “No choking or spitting any of it out or shooting out your nose.” Jimmy chuckled and grabbed the bottle, sounding off a three-two-one countdown as Miguel had done before streaking naked across his yard when they were in junior high. The boys threw their empties to the ground simultaneously, each declaring themselves the winner.

“I won, and you know it,” Kevin said. “Let’s go in.”

“Don’t have suits.”

“We don’t need fucking swimsuits,” Kevin replied, grabbing the bottom of his tee shirt cross-armed and pulling it up and over his head. The motion was a purposeful imitation of the fit model pealing his shirt off in the famous Body by Soloflex advertisements.

“What if someone sees us?”

“Who the fuck is going to see us?” Kevin exclaimed, unlacing his boots to kick them off. “Look around. We’re in the middle of the fucking woods.” Kevin raised his hand to his eyebrows and made a 360-degree sweep of the woods and pond as if looking through binoculars to mock Jimmy. Continuing to strip, he shoved his socks inside the boots, laid them on the hood, and threw his shorts on them. “Swim in your underwear if you’re a pussy, then.”

Jimmy grabbed the back of his shirt behind his neck and pulled it forward over his head one-handed in a single swift motion, still holding his lit cigarette with the other. “Nah, that’s all right. You go in if you want.”

Pulling out two more beers and handing Kevin one, Jimmy put one foot on his bumper and lifted himself up and backward, landing in a sitting position on the Toyota’s hood. His knees poked through the two worn slits in his jeans. They were his work jeans, straight-legged and tight-fitting, worn and faded in both legs above the knees. He reached back with one hand, placing it on the hood behind him to brace himself as he leaned back and filled his mouth with the remaining contents of the amber bottle. This position exposed every cut and separation in his abdominal muscles and chest. As the fluid flowed into his lips that embraced the bottle’s long neck, the bicep of his drinking arm constricted into an orange-sized ball of hard, rounded muscle. Kevin quickly looked away when he realized his fixation on Jimmy. Jimmy let out a massive belch from deep within, and Kevin looked back at him to see him drop his spent cigarette into the empty bottle, laughing with amusement at the vulgarity of the sound he had just released.

“Fucking pig!” Kevin exclaimed, letting out the same type of amused chuckle.

“Hey,” Jimmy replied, lifting both arms into the air, “Who the fuck is going to hear us? Look around. We’re in the middle of the fucking woods, remember?”

“Smartass,” Kevin answered, finishing his fourth beer while trying to conjure a deep belch of his own but unable to. They finished them both and opened a fifth, continuing to try to out-burp one another like two school kids on the playground during recess.

“Why are they such bitches?” Jimmy asked. His words began taking on a slight but noticeable slur. “We never have sex. Fuck’n girl is frigid. I work like a dog all day in the heat, and she says she’s tired when I come home. Fuck that!”

Kevin pulled the last two bottles out of the cooler and screwed the top off their final round. “Here, drown your sorrows, Romeo.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Anything for the Big Boss Man,” Kevin replied.

“Oh yeah. Anything?”

Kevin thought carefully before answering, focusing on what to say without crossing a line. “Well, yeah. You’re my sugar daddy boss-man, right?” He said it with as serious of a face as he could muster before bursting into laughter.

Jimmy laughed back and said, “Good! Wash this dirty piece of shit when we get home.”

“Are you talking about the pickup or your dick?” Kevin snapped back, pointing to both while still in a rolling chuckle. It was the type of rolling chuckle after a gut-wrenching laugh that was hard to stop. “Maybe that’s why she don’t have sex with you anymore,” Kevin continued, still laughing.

“You prick!” Jimmy yelled as he slid off the engine hood and lunged for Kevin, tripping and falling to the ground as soon as his feet hit the dirt and grass. Kevin immediately remembered what Keith looked like in Miguel’s yard when he tripped himself with his own underwear wrapped around his ankles. He couldn’t stop laughing, and as soon as Jimmy got his feet back under himself, he rushed toward Kevin. Kevin backed up and ran around the open truck door on his side, using it as a shield between them, and then dove headfirst into the truck to scramble across the seat to the driver’s side of the cab. It felt like they were kids playing tag, and Kevin’s ribs were hurting from all the laughing.

Jimmy chased him into the truck, and when his chest hit Kevin’s backside, Kevin went down onto the bench seat and got pressed into it, his legs still dangling out the truck door. The impact knocked what little breath Kevin had left from the laughing out of him. Both hands flailed, grasping for anything he could grab as leverage inside the cab, but as he did, Jimmy snatched Kevin’s right wrist and twisted it around his back. Jimmy held Kevin in an armlock from behind, like a wrestler pinning his opponent or a cop about to cuff a suspect he had just chased and brought down to the ground. Kevin struggled to breathe as he half laughed and tried to say ‘uncle.’ He tried to tell Jimmy he gave up, but there was no referee to hear Kevin concede or see him tapping out.

“Stop fighting me,” Jimmy demanded, sounding like he was gritting his teeth through the command. All Kevin could see was the gritty and worn cloth material of the truck’s seat as his head pressed into it. It smelled like old work sweat, and Kevin could taste all the beer he had been drinking in his throat.

“What, now you’re done playing around? Who’s the pussy now, bitch?” Jimmy kept his weight on top of Kevin while keeping his wrist restrained. Kevin’s left arm was useless, pinned down in the crevasse between the bench seat and the backrest. He had no leverage, while Jimmy had it all with his feet firmly planted on the ground.

When Jimmy lifted his chest off Kevin’s back, Kevin thought Jimmy would ease up and that the horseplay was over. It was not, and Kevin immediately felt Jimmy increase the upward pressure on the wrist hold, using the same hand to push harder into the center of Kevin’s back. It drove Kevin deeper into the seat, and his arm numbed as he struggled to catch his breath, still half-laughing while trying to tell Jimmy to stop. The rough play was going too far, and Jimmy had already won the game of power.

“Jimmy! Stop it!” Kevin’s laughter had ended.

Instead of stopping, Kevin felt Jimmy’s grip on the waistband of his underwear as Jimmy yanked it down with his free hand. He heard Jimmy spit, and then unexpectedly and abruptly, Kevin felt the pain.

“Be still!” Jimmy yelled, and Kevin stopped struggling.

Jimmy grunted, urging himself on, and the rest of what he said was incoherent. Kevin didn’t know whether Jimmy was proving his dominance in retribution for Kevin’s jeering and laughing at him or indirectly showing his frustration toward his overbearing girlfriend for not satisfying Jimmy when he wanted to be satisfied.

“Please,” Kevin implored, unsure if Jimmy even heard his plea. Probably not. Kevin saw only darkness with his eyelids shut as tightly as he could squeeze them closed. He heard only Jimmy’s rhythmic and rapid panting and gasping. Kevin tasted the sweat of his own tears rolling down his nose and across his lips, wetting the dirty cloth seat as the side of his face pressed into it. Kevin felt the pause and then the shudder behind and within him, and as quickly and fiercely as it started, it was over.

When Jimmy released Kevin’s wrist, the numb arm fell limply to the floorboard of the cab. He lay still for a moment, his face soaked in hushed tears and his back drenched in Jimmy’s forceful sweat. Kevin laid still and felt stone-cold sober, trying to calm his breathing and compose himself. He was unsure what to do when he finally raised himself off the seat, turning his head to see Jimmy for the first time since running away from him in the playful chase. The gaze was but for a second before Kevin looked away, out toward the greenish-blue surface of the small pond. That is when Kevin heard Jimmy’s satisfied and dispassionate voice.

“Okay, Dude?”

Kevin nodded in silence, finally moving his arms and bringing his hands to his face to wipe the tears and fear away. As he slowly backed himself out of the truck and regained his footing on the ground, Kevin could smell Jimmy’s cigarette and once again heard his voice.

“You’re not going to weird out now, are you?”

“No, I’m good,” Kevin replied, his voice void of all emotion. He ran his fingers through his hair as if having just woken up from a bad dream and rotated his sore shoulders, trying to work the stiffness of confinement out of his chest, back, and arms.

“Cool. Let’s go, Dude.” Jimmy said ‘dude’ as if he didn’t know who Kevin was. It sounded impersonal. It probably was.

After wiping himself clean with his briefs, Kevin balled them in his fist and threw them as far into the brush as possible. He recalled throwing his tee shirt out the window of his Bronco after dropping Rachael off at the pub. There was something about first encounters of the sexual kind; you could toss away the evidence, but the event will always be with you.  The semen-stained fabric would decay and disintegrate, disappearing over time like everything else in life. Confidence. Lust. Love. Relationships. Hope itself. Yes, hope is the last thing lost.

The long ride home was a silent one. Jimmy drove with his window down and his left arm resting on the driver’s side door, cigarette in hand, occasionally flicking the spent ashes out the window with his thumb. Kevin stared out his window as flashes of blurred objects flew past. Cars, roadways, trees, memories; they all flew past. The outside air blew around the cab to erase the scent of the afternoon’s transgression. The swirling, cleansing air felt familiar to Kevin as he sat with his arms crossed, his side pressed against the passenger door, and his head back against the cab’s corner. He let the wind blow against his face and through his hair, hoping it would cleanse him of his sins.

Kevin thought about Sandy, the youngest girl of the Fernandez family who lived across the street from him when he was a child. Sandy was a stout little girl, built like a Sherman tank, who took pleasure in taunting Kevin. When they played together at her house, she usually sent Kevin running across the street in tears to the refuge of his own home. The same would happen even when playing on his home turf, sending him fleeing down the road to escape her cruelty. Beaten up regularly by a little girl was by no means an ego booster for a little lad wearing a cowboy hat and six-shooters on each hip, and Kevin’s lack of fortitude in standing up to her must have surely disappointed Bert, a normally patient man.

The day finally came, however, when Kevin took his father's advice and stood up to Sandy. As the two youngsters squared off outside the Fernandez family’s front door, both parents stood behind their child and tried to de-escalate some she-said-he-said spat between them. Sandy’s chubby cheeks puffed as she shouted awful little lies in Kevin’s direction, pointing her chubby little finger straight-armed into his face and nearly poking his eye out. That was the point when Kevin snapped, and in front of parents and God himself, he lunged forward to shove the little bully as hard as he could, driving both of his hands into her chest. Sandy rocked backward, stumbling over her own two chubby feet as if stepping on a banana peel. Her arms flailed on either side of her round torso as she tried to catch her balance. It was like a slow-motion scene from an action movie, and the entire world stopped silently for the few seconds it took for her bottom to hit the ground. When it did, it produced a thunderous sound, jolting the world to regular speed again. The fallen child thug then released a hideous cry as tears of surprise and frustration shot from her eyes like the water sprinklers that watered the suburban lawns in the sizzling summer afternoons. The giant had fallen as all four parents stood stunned, watching Sandy flounder like a turtle on its back while Kevin strutted home with his head held high like a real cowboy. Kevin was confident he would never be tormented and bullied by anyone again. It was one of life’s first valuable lessons presenting itself to Kevin. He needed to stand up for himself, and it was better to do it sooner than later to avoid unnecessary grief and humiliation in life’s sometimes cruel world. But today, Kevin had not stood up for himself. Not hard enough, at least.

In Kevin’s mind, what had just happened was his fault. He must have encouraged it or, at the very least, allowed it to happen. In one swift and unexpected event, Jimmy, too, imposed and solidified his dominance over Kevin. It was like the Bee Hunts from childhood and the fallacy of being in control.

24

Boiling the Frog

I t was well after sunrise, and Kevin was still awake. He had listened to every household member ready themselves and leave for work. Even Maritza, who had no work to leave for, was gone. He lay motionless in bed, listening to them each move through their morning routines as he silently tried to decide what to do. Jimmy was the first to leave, early before dawn, without informing Kevin the night before whether he would need him for the new project they were supposed to start. It was just as well. Kevin didn’t want to see or talk to any of them, so he waited, motionless. He had nowhere to be and no one to be with. He was still in the same position he had been in all night, his eyes wide open, staring out the bedroom window towards the driveway where only his car now sat.

Maritza and Kevin had fought the previous evening after he and Jimmy returned home from their time at the pond, breaking their weeks-long silence toward one another. She was critical of his desire to shower when he got home and went to bed early without dinner. Maritza accused him of slipping into the same type of depression he was in months prior when he lost his job over it. She said he was acting too much like Jimmy now that he was working with him. After their long silence toward one another, Kevin was unsure why Maritza had chosen last night to speak to him and pick another fight. He was unsure why she should care. After weeks of silence and avoidance, she selected that moment to stop being the defendant and start being the plaintiff again. If she only knew what had happened and how much he was not like Jimmy. Kevin almost chuckled, thinking about it as he continued staring through the bedroom window at his lone car in the driveway.

Their argument had led to disputes over her employment status and parallels between their fatigue with one another and her disinterest in sex. The subject of her infidelity, their money issues, the living situation with her family, and whose fault it belonged to coalesced into one marathon argument. Every unspoken loathing for one another flowed unfiltered from their mouths and souls. This time, there was no taking any of it back. Attacked for the second time on the same day, Kevin fought back. Maritza stormed out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind her; it was her turn for the dramatic exit. Kevin locked it and sought refuge under the sheets. He didn’t know where in the house she slept that night, but it was not next to him.

Kevin was physically and psychologically exhausted yet couldn’t fall asleep. He thought instead about his psychology class in college. It was the one course Kevin had not withdrawn from and passed. He thought about the Boiling Frog Syndrome they studied, which held that a live frog dropped into a pot of boiling water will sense the danger and jump out without hesitation to save itself. Alternatively, if you immerse the frog into a pot of cold water and slowly increase the temperature one degree at a time, the frog will gradually adjust to the water’s rising temperature. When the water reaches a boiling point, the frog can no longer modify its temperature and is no longer strong enough to get out of the pot. It has already spent all its energy adjusting to the water’s increasing temperature. As a result, the frog dies from boiling with no chance to save itself.

Like the frog, Kevin realized he had spent the past few years living for others and adapting to situations and relationships as he encountered them. He had allowed himself to get stuck in those deteriorating circumstances and didn’t think about it. Little by little and without realizing it, the heat kept rising, and his life kept spiraling out of control. Kevin now found himself at a miserable dead end. He had become a victim of his adaptation to harmful situations, silently disconnecting and abandoning his needs, desires, and emotions. It was passive submission and consistent resignation to fear, low self-esteem, and uncertainty.

Kevin also remembered what happened in second grade when he had to go to the restroom. He raised his hand and patiently waited for permission from his teacher to do what was necessary and inevitable. He sat in agony, waiting and hoping, until finally peeing his pants as his classmates watched in horror and made fun of him. Kevin suffered the unimaginable while having the power to avoid it all along. He should have listened to his internal voice of reason. In second grade, he failed to do what he needed to and, as a result, suffered the consequences and the anxiety that it might someday happen again.

Today was the last chance for Kevin to save himself, and he had to move quickly now that everyone had left for work and the house was empty. Maritza didn’t have a job but was also gone, which suited him fine. The last thing he needed was a repeat of last night’s clash with her, especially if it allowed time for others to return home and derail his escape. There was little room in the small car, so he grabbed his clothes and what small personal possessions meant the most to him and filled the space, making the last moments at the house brief.

Kevin’s final act before leaving was to grab the largest pot in the kitchen and symbolically leave it half-filled with cold water on an unlit stovetop burner. He doubted any of them would understand its meaning or his message, but he understood, and that was all that mattered.

25

The Radio’s Light

M aritza and Kevin spoke only once by phone during those few months after he left. There was no need for apologies or explanations. There would be no reconciliation. There was no need for blame and no room for more pain. She only needed his address for the county sheriff to serve the divorce papers soon. Kevin believed it gave her a sense of control to be the party to file, and he was okay with that. The fact was, he preferred it. It meant she had to work to find, hire, and pay for an attorney. She would be the one to appear before a judge and pay the court for the filing and proceeding. Kevin had endured the same humiliation during his bankruptcy filing the year before, primarily because of her irresponsible spending and her mother’s irresponsible urging. It was her turn this time.

Maritza also needed Kevin’s address so her father could pick up the car he cosigned for. Without a job or the means to pay for it, Kevin agreed to release the car to him. Diego planned to sell it back to his dealership, thus freeing them both from the loan obligation. That was fair, and Kevin appreciated him doing it. While Kevin regretted that two of them would need to drive to Bayview and then back to West Palm to return the car, he could do little about it. Kevin had no intention of making another long drive to West Palm himself. He knew he would never return there.

Once they made arrangements for the pickup, Kevin left the keys to the car outside the house for them. He planned to be gone the entire day to avoid facing or talking to whoever made the trip. When he returned home later that evening, the car was gone. Sitting in its place on the carport by the front door were a few more of his possessions: his high school yearbook, a few books, a few articles of clothing, and a few pictures of him taken during their short life together. They had balled the items up inside his high school graduation gown, its corners tied into a knot, like a red bag of garbage left on the concrete floor by the front door. It was her pot of cold water left for him.

Aunt Alice arranged for Kevin to buy a used car from her dealership’s lot, and although it was a dog of a car like most American-made cars made in the mid-seventies, it was in good condition and came with payment terms he couldn’t refuse. Likewise, he would have no roof over his head or money in his pocket without Alice’s help and charity. It came near Kevin’s darkest hour. He could have returned to his childhood home, as many young adults do after college or hard times, but the optics of failure on that level were not an option for him. Bert and Carol would, of course, have welcomed their firstborn back. They probably would have done it with little judgment and had room in their house to accommodate him, but what little pride Kevin had left wouldn’t allow it.

Despite their relationship as aunt and nephew, Alice and Kevin made good roommates. Their differences complemented one another without the burdens and insecurities of marriage, which both had now failed at. Aunt and nephew quickly settled into a mutually beneficial partnership those first few months after his arrival. Without obligation, Alice left Kevin some spending cash on the dinette table each week, a crucial bridge to get by on until he could find a job. It gave him the means to pay for car insurance, gas, food, and necessities.

In return for her generosity, Kevin did minor repairs around the house. He repaired and resurfaced her asphalt driveway, did some small remodeling in her bathroom, cleaned up the outdoor landscaping, and did some needed repainting. Kevin also helped Alice with the activities she hated doing herself. He developed a household budget, opened the tall stacks of mail piled in stacks on the dining table, wrote checks for the bills, and maintained her checkbook. Alice was the classic example of the village cobbler’s children going barefoot. While excellent at managing the accounting office at a large car dealership, she despised and avoided paperwork at home. It was not long before Alice handed her paycheck to Kevin each week to manage. He opened her mail, paid her bills, and allocated a weekly allowance for spending cash and mad money. Kevin couldn’t control what he didn’t have, but Alice was willing to allow him to control what she had. Without intention and by however small the measure, she was giving Kevin the space and means to rebuild his self-confidence slowly. He could at least feel like the man of the house.

Kevin began searching for jobs when he arrived back in town but was not having much luck. Unemployment rose steadily throughout the year, and by December, it peaked near eleven percent, a historic post-World War II high. The country and the developed world were in a severe economic recession. The Iranian Revolution caused an energy crisis in 1979, pushing interest rates to new double-digit highs. Economists called it stagflation, a triple-play situation of high interest rates, slow economic growth, and high unemployment. Stagflation was also an appropriate definition of Kevin’s personal life. There was a particular irony that stagflation began in 1979 and was now peaking. Kevin thought he had smartly averted the country’s economic hardship with his full-time job after high school, his promotion to Ft. Lauderdale, and his marriage to his girlfriend. He couldn’t have been more wrong. The end of the year was a slow time for hiring under the best conditions, but stagflation was holding his success at finding a new job hostage.

Thanksgiving and Christmas passed without much fanfare, and Kevin spent New Year’s Eve alone at home. Alice was out celebrating with friends, and he was not in the mood to ring in the New Year at his parent’s house with relatives. Kevin had not yet tried to reconnect with any of his former friends from work, unsure of how to explain the events of the past couple of years. He was too ashamed to try. Kevin thought it best to get resettled before attempting to socialize with people again, whether with former friends, family members, or anyone new he might meet. He didn’t have the energy to explain the past two lost years to the people he knew, nor did he have the energy or desire to begin any new relationships, even if it came without obligations to explain his failures and current situation.

By eleven o’clock, Kevin was in bed. The room was dark, illuminated only by the rectangular display on the tuner dial of his stereo receiver. That was one of the few possessions he packed in the car during those frantic minutes before fleeing. Staring at the dial across the room, he listened to the live broadcast from one of the local nightclubs hosting a special event to celebrate the evening. It sounded like the excitement and gala were in the room with him, but they were not. Except for the radio, the room was dark and quiet.

It was chilly and drizzling that evening, and a dense fog obscured the moon outside. Kevin felt the dampness of the exterior air seeping into the interior wall that formed the corner of the room where his air mattress and sleeping bag lay on the floor. As midnight approached, the occasional firecracker or bottle rocket outside became more frequent. It sounded as though the entire world was celebrating except for him. Although by choice that night, Kevin felt alone and isolated from the rest of the world, tethered to it only by the radio’s light. Tradition said New Year’s Eve was a time to reflect upon that year’s accomplishments, but reflection was the last thing Kevin wanted to do. As far as his accomplishments, there had been none.

New Year’s resolutions. It occurred to Kevin that he had made none, and it humored him how silly that tradition was, anyway. Still, everyone should have resolutions, or at least goals, for the New Year ahead. It was the one time during the year that people could forget everything they wanted to forget and to make promises to right everything wrong in their lives. New Year’s Eve was the annual chance to reinvent oneself, and Kevin didn’t want midnight to pass without his chance. Reaching for the notebook and pen on the makeshift shelf of empty cardboard boxes and wood boards beside him, he sat up against the damp wall and rested the notebook atop his bent knees. He stared for several minutes at the blank page, dimly lit by the radio’s light, but couldn’t think of any fitting resolutions. Instead, Kevin could only hear the celebration of the world inside the dial’s glow and those outside under the moon’s fog-obscured shine. He listened and waited for inspiration. There were clear resolutions for next year that made sense, but there would be plenty of time tomorrow to focus on the practical. For now, Kevin just let his hand write on the notebook’s blank page:

It's eleven o'clock as I lie on the floor,
alone in my room and behind the locked door.

The radio's light illuminates the dark room,
as I contemplate life inside my sealed tomb.

Kevin thought about Maritza, and what had happened between them a few months before, and what had happened in the two-and-a-half years since their first meeting. Was she celebrating tonight, and if so, with whom? What had gone so wrong between them, and if a thousand insignificant events had never happened, would they have ever been together in the first place? Of course not. This moment would be very different if any of those thousand events played out differently. Did she feel the same sense of failure and shame he now felt? Kevin wondered if she had already displaced the entire experience in her mind, convincing herself it had never happened. What were her resolutions tonight? He continued to write:

It's eleven-fifteen, the whole world has fun,
my silent walls ask me what I have done.

Where are my family and my friends now,

I know where I am, but I still wonder how.

Kevin glanced at the radio’s light again, wondering if he knew anyone in the noisy crowd at the nightclub broadcasting the program. Any other year, he might have been there. What was different now? It was New Year’s Eve, and he was the only person home alone.

It's eleven-thirty as the radio plays on,
all that I once loved is now somehow gone.

My loneliness surrounds me like the cold darkness of night,
while the pain in my heart I cannot fight.

The fireworks were louder now and more frequent, interrupted only by the high-pitched whistling of the bottle rockets soaring upward into the low-hanging, damp fog. As they burst, a colorful yet muted glow flashed into the room, casting shadows of reds, greens, and bright yellows that danced across the dark walls. Kevin continued to write:

It's eleven forty-five as the fireworks are heard,
thoughts seem to flood me, yet I can't speak a word.

What cruel punishment has been inflicted upon me,
while the rest of the world celebrates with such glee.

The magic hour struck, and the year was new. Sounds of bells and cheers and whistles came from the radio. Everyone was excited and happy. There was the hope and promise that always accompanied the first minute of every year’s beginning. Kevin fixated on the radio’s glow and imagined the crowds of people wearing hats and blowing horns while confetti and balloons fell from the ceiling to surround them. He still felt the same, however. Glancing down at the notebook for the last time that evening, and with blurred vision, he wrote,

It's twelve o'clock as the magic hour tolls,
from eighty-two to eighty-three, the calendar rolls.

With tears in my eyes, I succumb to the night,
turning off the radio and bidding farewell to its light.

Kevin was a ship that had struck a reef and was taking on water below the surface, slowly sinking miles from shore on a dark, damp night. The radio’s light shone dimly across the room, like a distant lighthouse through the fog. Kevin could hear the rest of humanity on the shoreline, but he was separated and stranded, not seen by any of them. Kevin was alone again, lost in the fog. This time, however, he used that solitude to consider whether he should use that distant and dim light to navigate his life.

26

Holiday Spirit

H olidays were a time that most people look forward to, but for Kevin, the past three months had been challenging and emotionally exhausting. Soon after he arrived at Alice’s house, he wore a phony smile and handed out candy to cheerful little trick-or-treaters each time the doorbell rang. Kevin recalled the annual excitement of his costumes as a child: a firefighter, a cowboy, an astronaut, a mummy, a hippy. Streets filled with neighborhood kids escorted by their parents as he and his sisters moved from house to house, their bags filled with candy. They later emptied them into piles on the floor, trading each other for their favorites. Candy Corn, Milky Way or Almond Joy bars, and most flavors of powdery Pixy Sticks were worth bargaining for, and Kevin was willing to give up any hard candy or chewy-gummy treat prone to sticking to his teeth to get them.

There was a house on Kevin’s street growing up, a half-dozen doors down from his, where the cranky older man lived. On Halloween night, he kept his lights on and the door open as he sat and watched television in the living room. He sat on the sofa, straight in front of and not eight feet away from the screen door that separated him from the traveling bands of costumed kids. Each year, Kevin and his sisters walked up to that screen door and knocked, and each year, he yelled at them to go away and leave him alone. Kevin never understood why he didn’t close the front door or turn his porch light off if he didn’t want to be bothered. He also never understood why they kept going back, year after year, hoping for a different response from the man or deposits of candy into their bags. Kevin didn’t want to be a newer version of that grouch, so each time Alice’s doorbell rang that Halloween of his return, he opened the door and acted surprised or fearful or whatever the appropriate response to the kid’s costume called for, cheerfully dropped handfuls of candy into their trick or treat bags.

The following month was Thanksgiving dinner with his parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, and grandparents at his childhood home. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Kevin was grateful for everything they had done for him over his lifetime, but he found it difficult to be thankful for what had transpired over the past couple of years. It was impossible to discuss all the events with them, his various jobs, or the places and people he had lived with. Discussing why he was now back in his hometown was especially difficult. Time constraints and his pain threshold necessitated glossing over it all, so instead, Kevin expressed appreciation for being back home and the opportunity to spend more time with everyone again.

Christmas followed, the most commercial and cheerfully phony holiday of them all. It was the time of year for the stresses of writing and sending cards, making gift lists for people who don’t need or want them, crowds of shoppers at stores spending money they couldn’t afford or went into debt to buy, expectations of decorating Christmas trees inside and hanging Christmas lights outside, and planning or preparing or attending huge Christmas dinners or attending Midnight Mass as a symbolic once-a-year religious event. It was all overwhelming and impossible without a job or money. But Kevin went through the motions and did many of them, expressing his apologies and regret over not being able to give gifts this year and cheerfully showing his appreciation for their gifts to him. While Kevin knew they were all well-intended, each time a relative pulled him aside to ask questions regarding what had happened or if he was okay, feelings of grief, loss, and failure were re-triggered within him. Christmas was incredibly challenging and part of his reasoning for spending New Year’s Eve at home alone.

Too often, it takes a crisis to appreciate what one has, and Kevin used New Year’s Day to do just that. Despite his missteps and failures, he was incredibly privileged and had much to appreciate. His fitness may have slipped over the past two years, but he was healthy and had not experienced tragic accidents or lifelong disabilities. His marriage may have ended, but it was a blessing they had not had children. No one Kevin truly loved had died. He may have failed a few college classes, but he was only twenty and could return to school as soon as he was able. An ex-father-in-law he would never see or speak to again may have repossessed his car, but a suitable replacement had fallen into his lap. The economy and seasonality may have worked against his finding a job, but those things were cyclical, and he knew optimism would bring success. Kevin resurrected his confidence that he would soon be employed again. He may have filed for bankruptcy, but he had the good sense to withdraw the petition so that it wouldn’t be a permanent mark against his credit history. Kevin’s credit score was poor, but that would improve over time. It was all a matter of perspective, and by all optimistic accounts, Kevin knew he had just landed on his feet.

Kevin had just spent New Year’s Eve alone and despondent. Last night was a time to flounder in his failure and to consider the past two years of decisions that had driven him to undesirable outcomes. Today, though, was literally and figuratively a new year. It was time to have hope again and to move forward. Kevin had escaped most of his poor decisions and felt he might be in control of his life again. For the first time in a long time, Kevin was confident that he could mold a new reality. He had just one lingering uncertainty to reconcile.

27

False Start

A fter Alice left for work each day, Kevin sat at the kitchen table and scanned the classifieds for job openings. He sometimes took the newspaper with him to review the ads in the car before or after interviews. During one of those car reviews, he read a lengthy article regarding the homosexual lifestyle in major Florida cities, namely Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, and Bayview. The article discussed gay hotlines, the people who staffed the lines as counselors, and those who called into them. It referenced several of Bayview’s gay clubs, most in the Ybor City area or outside the downtown district.

The newspapers also contained daily articles reporting on a new epidemic called AIDS and patients who had weakened immune systems. It predominately affected gay men in major cities like San Francisco and New York but was rapidly spreading around the country. As reported, it mainly affected gays with multiple sex partners, although people who injected drugs and hemophiliacs were also at high risk. They called it a gay disease with horrifying symptoms and a very short life expectancy for those diagnosed with it. It was a frightful time to assess one’s sexual orientation, and it was one more reason for Kevin to be who he was supposed to be and act the way he was supposed to.

Before reading about the AIDS epidemic, Kevin couldn’t recall having ever read about gays altogether. He had never seen a gay magazine or a movie with gays in it, and his only exposure to what gay meant came from the occasional news broadcast spotlighting a gay march or rally somewhere in the country. All too often, the news coverage left him with the impression that these were outspoken radicals, often dressed in black leather chaps and chest-exposing leather vests. Those not looking like slim bikers often dressed and acted like flamboyant women. Kevin didn’t know where the gays lived or what they did for a living outside of performing as drag queens. Gays most likely were abused by their parents or other family members and didn’t have a strong father figure growing up. They were often middle-aged, heavyset, balding men who couldn’t otherwise secure a girlfriend or wife to have normal sex with. Gays were sexual deviants. Kevin’s secret hallway reading of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex as a thirteen-year-old told him all of this about gays. To him, this understanding was proof enough that he was not gay. Kevin appreciated the masculine beauty of the male form, much like the Romans and the Greeks did, but this only self-validated the notion of his sophistication. Kevin also had accepting opinions toward people who expressed their feelings for one another through sexual expression, no matter their gender, supporting his self-notion of open-mindedness and progressiveness. All of that was rubbish, of course.

The article about the homosexual lifestyle in Florida painted a different picture of the hotline’s counselors and callers, separate from his previous media exposure. It humanized the suffering of AIDS patients, and he thought portraying these gay patients as ordinary people was good. Kevin was also interested in the gay clubs mentioned in the article. He knew of the general location of these bars, but he had never been in those neighborhoods before and didn’t know precisely where the clubs were. The gay disease he read about frightened Kevin, and his Catholic upbringing morally denounced the lifestyle. He was nonetheless intrigued.

Kevin didn’t know what compelled his interest or what he was searching for. He was not sure if he was searching for anything. Kevin felt curious, scared, and driven all at the same time. Because of and despite those reasons, it was very out of character for him to drive down to and walk into one of those clubs. When he went to bars in the past, it was usually with a friend or group of friends, but there were no friends to ask for help with this. No, he would have to go alone if he were ever going to walk into one.

Kevin headed downtown around ten o’clock in the evening. About halfway there, he stopped and filled his car with gas since he didn’t want to run out in an unfamiliar part of town. While paying for the half-tank purchase, Kevin placed some chewing gum and a roll of breath mints on the counter. Was it possible the attendant knew where he was going? Of course not. No one knew.

He drove around for a while and looked for street names to turn into numbers. Kevin passed the city’s central police department. The area had no shortage of liquor stores and bail bond agencies. What if I broke down? Who would I call? What would I say my reason for being in this area on a Tuesday night was?

South on Palm Street. He deduced the streets ran in one direction and avenues in another, so he continued driving straight. After a few minutes, Palm intersected with Third Avenue. Bingo! After four more blocks, he found himself at the traffic light on Palm and Seventh. Right or left? Right or left? He turned right, which had always been Kevin’s instinct, just like he always chose heads over tails when flipping a coin. Kevin wondered if he were a girl instead of a boy, or a college graduate instead of a drop-out, or a Democrat instead of a Republican, or from a low-income family instead of a working middle-class one, would the choices be instinctively different? Would they have been left, or tails, or down?

Kevin drove as slowly as the sparse traffic behind him allowed, looking from side to side to admire the turn-of-the-century Spanish and French architecture. The black wrought iron and overhead balconies looked like pictures of New Orleans, with some buildings used as warehouses and cheap apartments. He passed old clothing and drug stores. Some storefronts appeared refurbished and used as modern offices. They were probably urban pioneers attempting to revitalize the area. Those storefronts were rare, though, as many were boarded up and plastered with playbills. A few people walked the dimly lit sidewalks. Not many people, but a few. One or two every block or so, ambling without an apparent destination. Thinly sprinkled between the vacant buildings were bars and clubs with names like El Goya and The Eagle. Kevin didn’t see anyone enter or exit as he slowly drove past, but the absence of open parking spots on the street told him they had patrons inside. This must be it, he thought.

Circling the block, Kevin made a second drive-by, this time more slowly. He felt like he was being watched, like a sucker about to be entrapped in a sting operation while cruising the streets looking to score drugs in an episode of Hill Street Blues. What if someone he knew saw him? What if he had an accident or got robbed, and his father had to come downtown to get him? How would Kevin explain his presence here? Countless combinations of tragic events leading to his discovery filled his head. Kevin was a young, regular guy, for Christ’s sake, not any of those deviants and perverts described in the book that taught him about sex. Kevin panicked and kept driving until he reached the safety of his suburban driveway, just as he had panicked and run across the street to his home’s safety every time Sandy bullied him as a five-year-old.

28

The Midnight Swim

K evin knew what the envelope contained when it arrived from the Circuit Court of the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit. The judge had signed the final Judgment of Dissolution of Marriage, and the Court had officially recorded it on February 14th. His first marriage had ended formally on Valentine’s Day, five days earlier. The day dedicated to lovers had come and passed like any other Monday, without cards, roses, a dinner date, or a romantic evening. It had been an ordinary Monday for him, like any other Monday. And just like that, Kevin was a divorced man. He would never have to speak to Maritza or deal with her family again.

Later that evening, after Kevin told Alice about receiving the signed paperwork, she nestled into her favorite corner of the sofa to watch television. After a brief chat, Kevin took a short drive to the causeway. It was quiet there, and he parked his car on the water’s edge with a view southward toward the Howard Franklin and Gandy bridges, the same bridges where he and Coach used to fish at night. It was very odd watching the slow-moving headlights across the Bay, staring at the same bridges where they used to sit just a few years before, looking northward toward the causeway where he was now parked. That Kevin was now looking toward the spot where he used to be didn’t escape him; the view was a complete reversal of where he now was. That was likely why Kevin liked that spot so much, using it whenever he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Looking at the past was easy. Deciding which direction the future lay was considerably more challenging.

Kevin stopped for gas on the way home, and after paying for it inside, he scanned the convenience store shelves. He didn’t know what he wanted but knew that he craved something. As his eyes scanned the racks, looking at each bag and carton for a fraction of a second, Kevin glimpsed a head on the opposite side of the rack. It was moving in unison with him down the length of the other aisle. Kevin focused on the swath of wavy black hair that fell casually across the familiar forehead and froze in stunned delight.

“Daniel?” he asked enthusiastically. “I don’t believe it.”

The figure looked up at Kevin and stared for a second. Then, with that lazy, half-cocked smile that Kevin remembered so well, he replied in a deep and raspy tone, “Hey, bud!”

Kevin walked around the endcap and looked at him while extending his hand. Yep, that’s Daniel, he thought. Daniel looked the same as the last time Kevin saw him: casual and carefree. He wore sandals, and his hair looked like he had just fallen out of bed. His shirt was only half buttoned and hung untucked below his waist. It wasn’t that he was dirty or sloppy. Daniel was a product of the anti-preppy deadhead group he hung around with in school.

“So, what’s new?” Kevin asked, shaking Daniel’s hand with his right while patting the top of Daniel’s shoulder with his left.

Daniel shrugged as he drove his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “Not much. You know, same old stuff.”

“So, what have you been doing? You’re not in school, are you?” Kevin knew with fair certainty that Daniel was content graduating high school and had no intentions of continuing to college.

“No. Hell no! You know how much I loved school,” he said facetiously. “I’m working at my dad’s restaurant. I got married, too.”

“No shit! Married to who?”

“You remember the girl I was dating, Stacy? We got married last year. We have an apartment a few blocks away.”

Kevin nodded in acknowledgment, although he had no recollection of Stacy or any other girl Daniel had dated. Kevin suspected Daniel began seeing her after his father made him quit work for summer school or after Kevin’s promotion to Ft. Lauderdale.

“Well, congratulations,” Kevin said. What he wanted to say was something entirely different. Daniel had barely graduated from high school and was already married and working at his father’s restaurant, living in some Drew Park dump. The relaxed and carefree Daniel was the last person Kevin thought would shoulder the responsibility of marriage, but he was in no position to judge. At least Daniel had a job and was still with his wife. Kevin was unsure if his internal reaction was judgment, empathy, or envy.

“Thanks, man, but she’s a bitch,” Daniel replied, drawing his eyebrows together in a reflective frown. “Big mistake,” he continued, “we fight all the fucking time. That’s why I’m here now. Just taking a little chill for a while.” The thought of killing time at a convenience store because of drama at home sounded sad and pathetic. It also sounded all too familiar.

“Sorry,” Kevin said apologetically, not sure how to respond. He could have said a lot more. Kevin could have empathized with Daniel, saying he understood and knew what Daniel was going through and how it felt. He could have warned him it would likely not end well. He wanted to put his arm around Daniel to play the big brother role he used to play a few years ago when Daniel was a naïve sophomore working with him in the warehouse. Kevin wanted to be there for Daniel now like Daniel was there for him the morning after the big pool party at his parent’s house when they both rushed to clean the house before Bert and Carol returned from their vacation. He wanted to confide in Daniel about his own similar situation. Kevin didn’t, however. He stopped short of doing any of that as the memory of his recent commiseration session with Jimmy regarding their similar relationship issues with the sisters flooded his thoughts and raised his defenses.

“Listen,” Kevin added, “I was just grabbing some chips or something to bring home to Alice while we watch a movie. She’s my aunt, remember her? She’s the one who stopped by at the pool party and told us to shut it down. I’m staying at her place, and we’re cool roommates. Want to chill with us for a couple of hours?”

Kevin could see the consideration, or perhaps uncertainty, on Daniel’s face. When the genesis of a smile formed in the corner of Daniel’s mouth, he replied, “Sure, why not? Got anything to drink there? Want me to buy some cold brewskies, dude?”

“Yeah, sure, get something for yourself. I’m good.” Kevin hated California ‘dude’ speak but looked forward to catching up with Daniel. While he chose some snacks, Daniel bought himself a six-pack before meeting in the parking lot. “It’s not far from here. A few blocks from my parent’s house.”

“Yeah, cool. I’ll follow,” Daniel replied.

Kevin turned the key and entered the living room slowly. The silvery-gray shadows bounced off the dark walls. Daniel followed behind, greeted by the sound of the television to his right and Alice snoring to his left. She was lying on the sofa in a fetal position, her hands under her head and the rest of her body under the throw blanket she had knitted herself during one of her hobby phases. Motioning Daniel to follow, Kevin quietly laid the bag of chips on top of the coffee table and walked toward the kitchen.

“She’s out for the count,” Kevin said. “A nuclear bomb couldn’t wake her now. I swear, the woman sleeps with two alarm clocks and still does not hear them in the morning. I usually go into her bedroom to shake her by her feet while one alarm is ringing and the other is blaring music. If I’m not home, I call her so she isn’t late for work.”

“No kidding,” Daniel replied, leaning back against the kitchen counter. “Guess she wasn’t in the mood for company after all,” he said, chuckling. “You going to leave her there all night?”

“That’s where she sleeps half the time. We can still watch TV if you want to. We’re not going to bother her.”

“Is she going to snore like that the whole time?”

Kevin grinned and answered, “If we’re lucky, it won’t get louder.”

“I’ll pass, man,” Daniel replied, walking to the sliding glass doors and onto the patio. “How’s the water?”

“Still pretty warm. Here, feel.” Even though it was early February, daytime temperatures were still in the low eighties, and with no trees in the yard to block the sunlight, the pool’s water stayed warm enough to be comfortable.

“That’s the one thing I miss from high school.”

“You want to go in?” Kevin asked.

“Yeah! Let’s get smashed and see who can do the best jack-knife.”

“Well, that would be a no,” Kevin replied. “First, I’m not getting smashed, and second, we both know who would win since only one of us was on the swim team. I’m not stupid.” Kevin could tell through his loose-fitting tee that Daniel still had his lean build and low body fat, allowing his skin to wrap tightly around his taut muscles and broad shoulders. His height gave Daniel the perfect swimmer's physique, allowing him to twist and turn effortlessly during dive routines.

“You’re no fun, old man,” said the nineteen-year-old to the near twenty-one-year-old.

“That’s right, dive boy.” Kevin pointed toward the sliding glass door and said, “My room is back through the kitchen and on the right. Swim trunks are on the shelf in the closet. Go change while I grab some towels.”

Warning signals flashed again in Kevin’s brain as he remembered what happened when he and Jimmy almost went swimming just a few months prior and what seemed like another world away. This time, he was not about to get smashed drinking beer, nor was he going to suggest they go skinny dipping, especially in Alice’s backyard.

While Daniel changed, Kevin grabbed a large Tupperware bowl for the beer and dumped some ice over the bottles. He got two towels from the laundry room, tucked them under his arm, and grabbed the tub. Outside, Kevin dropped the towels on a chair and set the beer on the pool's edge at the shallow end. He was already wearing soccer shorts, so Kevin removed his tennis shoes and tee shirt and slid into the water feet first. As Daniel turned back toward the door, he slid it closed and ran toward Kevin, leaping over his head and entering the water in a horizontal, head-first dive. When he surfaced, Daniel jolted his head violently to the right, sending streams of water flying from the ends of his shaggy, wet hair.

“Wow, that feels fantastic!”

“Daniel, didn’t your mother ever warn you about diving into the shallow end of the pool?”

“My mother warned me about many things,” he replied, “but whoever listens to their mother? So, where’s my beer, Dude?”

“She probably warned you about drinking and swimming, too,” Kevin said, handing Daniel the tall neck after twisting the cap off. Kevin considered what he had just said about Daniel’s mother and remembered that his parents were divorced, and his father raised him. He wondered if mentioning her was a mistake, but Daniel didn’t appear bothered by the comment. Kevin was overthinking words, expressions, and reactions. He knew that he needed to stop doing it and relax.

“So, one minute you’re creeping around the convenience store, and the next you're diving into someone’s pool and drinking beer,” Kevin said. “Do you need to check in with the little lady?”

“Hell no!” he replied. “Besides, I doubt she’s even home. Probably at her mother’s house complaining about what a bastard I am.” Floating backward now and trying to balance the beer bottle on his flat stomach without tipping it over like a sea otter eating a meal, Daniel added, “I’m fine right here, Dude.”

“What possessed you to get married?” Kevin asked. He then realized Daniel might not even know he had been married or had moved away. Daniel’s father forced him to quit work for summer school to ensure he would pass his sophomore year, and that was when Kevin started dating Maritza. It was also before Kevin received the promotion requiring the move later that Fall.

“Beats me,” Daniel answered. “She was the one hot on the idea.” He opened his second beer and wrapped his lips around it as he submerged himself under the water’s surface. That was a neat little trick of his that no one else could figure out how to do without choking or drowning themselves. Daniel would go under and sit on the bottom of the pool to drink an entire bottle of beer, replacing the liquid in the bottle with his own air that he exhaled into the bottle as he swallowed. When it was empty, he released it, and the bottle shot back up to the surface like a missile launched from a submarine.

Kevin sensed from Daniel’s tone that he didn’t want to discuss it. He couldn’t blame Daniel since he felt the same way. Kevin’s failure with Maritza had already consumed too much time and energy. Perhaps Daniel had gotten her pregnant, and they had to get married, Kevin thought. Daniel said nothing about a kid, though, and in the convenience store he said they married last year. If she had been pregnant before they married, they would have had the kid by now. Unless there was a problem with the pregnancy, or maybe she was pregnant and was forced to marry but then aborted the pregnancy. If that were the case, though, why even get married in the first place if you intend to have an abortion? After silently deliberating all of this, Kevin concluded they must not have married because they were pregnant. Maybe Daniel thought that marriage was what he was supposed to do next in life. He finished high school, was not going to college, and had taken the easy path by working in his father’s restaurant. He had to hate it, though, considering how he used to complain about his father and how he hated working on weekends as a young teenager washing dishes and cleaning restrooms. It was a safe bet Daniel wasn’t working with his dad out of an interest in the restaurant trade, hoping to open a restaurant someday or run his father’s place. Again, Kevin overthought it all. He didn’t want to ask Daniel probing questions, but he felt the need to analyze Daniel’s situation and understand it just as he was examining his situation and motives.

“Dude, let’s see who’s got the best dive,” Daniel yelled, challenging Kevin from the opposite end of the pool.

For the next hour, the two horsed around, Daniel finishing his beer and Kevin drinking a few rum and cokes during their dive challenges. They raced laps with various strokes and argued about who had the best underwater turns. They had contests to see who could retrieve a quarter the fastest from the pool's deep end. These were all the pool contests that Kevin enjoyed with Steve in junior high. Exhausted yet relaxed, they converged back at the shallow end and rested the back of their necks against the bullnose tile edging. Stretching their arms out wide and to their sides, they allowed their bodies to float, and side by side, Kevin and Daniel stared upward into the night sky above.

Daniel broke the silence first. “I’m so fucked up.” His voice sounded tired.

“You shouldn’t drink so much, then. Remember what your mother told you.” Damn, Kevin thought, realizing his words slipped again by mentioning Daniel’s mother.

“Not the beer, man. My life. My life is fucked up.”

“Your life isn’t fucked up, Daniel.” Kevin imagined responding differently by telling his friend how fucked up his life was, but he didn’t. Kevin felt lightheaded but knew he had not drunk enough to be inebriated. Not even close to drunkenness. “You’re still a baby, for Christ’s sake,” Kevin said instead.

“Yea, I know,” Daniel continued, “but it’s still fucked up.”

“So, what’s so fucked up about it?”

“Everything. I hate my job. I wish I had never gotten married. I already feel like I’m at a dead end. I feel trapped and bored. I should have done what you did and gone to college. You never make mistakes, dude. You’re always perfect at everything.”

Kevin lightly chuckled out loud while roaring with irony internally. “Oh, I make plenty of mistakes, all right. I just don’t let other people find out about them.” Kevin turned to face Daniel as he spoke, holding onto the pool’s edge with his left hand. The warm water swirled around him, and he kneeled low enough to bring the waterline up to his neck while bouncing up and down on his toes on the pool’s bottom. Kevin was concealing himself beneath the dark water, just as he was concealing his true self from the world, whatever that true self was. Kevin revealed only enough of himself above the surface to breathe and to speak. Nothing more.

Daniel continued looking up at the stars, his outstretched body floating and held in place by his head resting on the pool’s edge. Kevin scanned Daniel’s body as it slowly bobbed up and down on the water’s surface. He studied the muscles in Daniel’s abdomen and chest as they moved each time he slowly stroked the water’s surface in snow angel motions with his arms and hands to keep himself stationary. Daniel’s frame was not bulky but relatively slim and muscular, defined by a lifetime of swimming. They were just as Kevin remembered them from before. Kevin examined the length of his friend’s long legs, focusing on the black Speedo Daniel had chosen from the stack of bathing suits in Kevin’s closet. It was snug and clearly defined him. The wet mound of material rose above the rest of his prone body as it bobbed above and below the surface. Kevin watched it, his eyes tracing the outline strained against the fabric. He wondered how often Daniel had sex with his wife and what type of lovers they were. Kevin pondered who was more dominant, who pleased whom, and how they pleased each other.

Kevin often saw Daniel in a Speedo in his parents’ pool and at the beach. He had seen Daniel at the school’s pool during swim meets. Kevin couldn’t recall ever having seen what Daniel looked like without the Speedo, though. He didn’t remember Daniel’s bulge being that pronounced. Not like it was now. He had never noticed it or focused on it before. Kevin was focusing on it now, though, as it pressed against the wet suit, hung to the right side, and pointed towards him.

Then, it occurred to Kevin how long he had been staring at Daniel or how long it felt. Kevin was relaxed and had let his guard down as those past but familiar feelings, thoughts, and questions re-triggered. They flooded back unexpectedly. In that instant of awareness, a panic signaled internally, and Kevin quickly glanced at Daniel’s face, relieved to see him still looking toward the night sky. Daniel’s eyes were closed now, thank goodness, and Kevin assumed Daniel was oblivious to his momentary loss of control. Kevin drew in a deep breath and recentered his focus.

“You know, Daniel, you can change anything you’re unhappy with.”

“Yeah, I know,” he replied. He sounded as if awakened from a deep and peaceful rest. “I just don’t know what to change or how. All I know is that life is shitty, buddy.”

Kevin raised one leg off the bottom of the pool and playfully kicked Daniel’s butt under the water. “Listen to you. Where’s mister carefree, happy-go-lucky? When did you turn so glum and depressing?” Daniel’s eyes remained closed while Kevin watched his lips slowly ease into a grin.

“People make mistakes,” Kevin continued. “That’s what life is about. It’s called learning. You know, live and learn. Try things, experiment, fail, and succeed, all that stuff.” As he spoke, Kevin wondered which one of them he was consoling. It was likely both.

“Well, that’s true,” Daniel replied, his grin turning into a full smile. “Hey, can I tell you something?”

“Yeah, of course. What?”

“If I tell you, do you promise you won’t think I’m a freak?” Daniel’s brown eyes were open again, still staring upward into the night sky.

“I promise. Besides, I already think you're a freak. What’s the big secret?”

“Last year, before we got married, one of the waiters at the restaurant came on to me.”

“Came on to you? As in propositioned you?” Kevin asked for clarification.

“Yep. One of the older guys there. Well, not old. Just older than me, in his twenties probably,” he replied. “He’s not there anymore.”

“Well fuck, in his twenties. That’s ancient.” Kevin didn’t know why Daniel told him this, but he was intrigued and wanted to know everything about the incident. “So, what happened?”

“Nothing happened,” he said, turning to look at Kevin. “I just said ‘no thanks,’ that’s all. I told him I was engaged. I was nervous as hell, too. I remember that. I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest.”

“What did the guy say when you told him that?”

“Not much. The dude was apologetic, and it never happened again.”

“No,” Kevin said, “I meant, what did he say to proposition you?”

“Oh, I don’t remember exactly.”

Kevin suspected he did remember. After all, it isn’t every day that one guy propositions another, especially at work, or so he assumed. “Did you tell your dad?”

“Hell no! Are you kidding? The old man would have shot us both.”

“So, why does this bother you now?” Kevin asked, wanting Daniel to put all the pieces together while he mentally did the same.

“I don’t know,” Daniel replied. “I just wonder why I didn’t get mad when it happened. Why didn’t I hit the guy? I wasn’t mad at all, just nervous. And why did I say no because I was engaged? Why didn’t I just say no because I’m straight?”

He guessed Daniel had been thinking about this incident for a while, analyzing it from every angle and with every word, much like Kevin tended to do himself.

“So, if you weren’t mad, did you maybe want to have sex with him?”

“No. I didn’t want to have sex with him.”

Kevin immediately picked up on how Daniel emphasized the word ‘him.’ Did he really mean it that way? Would he have sex with some other guy, just not that specific guy? Perhaps Daniel was not trying to admit anything, but the alcohol and peaceful floating had relaxed him and allowed his sub-conscience to speak openly. Kevin was likely reading too much into his words again.

They both turned and let their crossed arms support themselves on the pool's edge, resting their chins atop their wrists as their bodies hung relaxed and limp under the water’s surface. Closer to one another now, their elbows touched briefly as they both stared through the glass door at the flashing reflection of the television against the dark living room walls. They spoke softly as if afraid someone might overhear their words.

“So, have you ever thought about being with another guy?” Kevin asked.

“I don’t know. I mean, I’ve wondered. You know, not wanted to, or tried to, or anything. But yeah, I’ve wondered what it would be like. You think that’s creepy?”

“Of course not,” Kevin replied. “I think everybody has at least thought about that. It’s a normal part of growing up. Besides, I don’t think humans are any different from other species. No one is one hundred percent straight or gay. We all fall somewhere on the continuum, like with other traits. Anyone who says they have never thought about it is lying.”

Daniel turned his body to look at Kevin and smugly grinned, looking half-pleased with himself. “So, you’ve thought about having sex with a guy?”

“Wait a minute. Are you trying to entangle me in my logic?”

“Well, you said everyone, didn’t you?”

“Sure,” Kevin answered. “If you must know, I’ve thought about it. Yeah, sure I have.” Finally, there was a slight flare of truth and honesty. Like Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969, one small truth from his mouth, one giant leap for his authenticity.

“With anyone in particular?” Daniel asked.

“No, not really. Just in general.”

Kevin was lying, of course. He had thought about it with many of the guys he had seen or known. Those thoughts started innocently in junior high with envy over certain boys for their hair, bodies, athleticism, or popularity. As he grew older, the desire to be like them occasionally manifested into a desire to be them. As Kevin grew older, sometimes the desire was to be with them physically. When Kevin allowed himself, he imagined what it might be like for the girlfriends of his desire, holding their hands or kissing them. Kevin imagined kissing his sophomore-year lab partner, Adam. He had wanted to see his friend Ricky naked. On the few occasions when he was allowed to spend the night at Steve’s house, Kevin imagined what it would be like to crawl into the other twin bed, the one his friend was sleeping in, and lay against Steve’s body, spooning him under the covers with his arm wrapped around his warm body. Had Kevin felt any indication that Steve felt the same way or had the same desires, and if Kevin had known what to do if Steve had, he undoubtedly would have acted upon those urges. Kevin dared not tell Daniel any of this, though.

“Did you ever, I mean, for real?” Daniel asked.

“No. But if I had been with a guy, I wouldn’t have felt bad about it. At least, I don’t think I would.”

Kevin was less than honest about that, too. He had been with another boy but didn’t consider what happened between him and Jimmy as having had sex. Kevin didn’t think of it as abuse, either. Kevin had not even seen Jimmy naked. How could he, pinned down from behind with his face pushed against the truck's seat while Jimmy did what he did? It was all so sudden and quick. That was not sex. It was not rape, either. As Kevin understood, men cannot be raped. He didn’t know how to label what had happened. It was horseplay gone too far. Perhaps it was nothing worse than what happens in college hazing. Whatever it was, Kevin felt more responsible than victimized for what happened. Had he not suggested he and Jimmy go skinny dipping, or had he not teased Jimmy about being afraid to, or had he not stripped down to his underwear or participated in the drinking, none of it would have happened. Jimmy would never have initiated intimacy with another male, so it had to be Kevin’s fault. Jimmy was too rugged and manly for that. Yes, Kevin was sure he was the one responsible. His only solace was to believe it was just innocent horseplay that went too far. Guys do that. It only lasted a few minutes anyway, so no harm was done, right? Kevin had already put it out of his mind. Until now, that is.

“Why not?” Daniel continued.

“Why not, what?” Kevin asked, having momentarily lost track of what they were discussing.

“Why wouldn’t you feel bad about it if you had?” Daniel repeated.

“I don’t know. I guess because I generally believe that if a person wants to do something that doesn’t hurt anyone else, then it should be okay. It should be okay for two people with feelings for one another to express them, whether they are guys or girls. Americans are conditioned to be too hung-up on this macho image of always having to act tough and not showing emotion.” Kevin felt like he was back in psychology and sociology class again.

“Yepper, that’s a big affirmative,” Daniel replied, speaking in his worst John Wayne imitation like he often did when acting cute.

“Besides,” Kevin continued, “sex is sex, and sex is fun, right? What’s the big deal?”

Kevin didn’t believe his own rationale. He was definitely not living his own life by it. Kevin was too uptight to think he could act upon whatever urges he had or live his life as freely as he proposed, provided it didn’t hurt anyone else. After all, Kevin was a good boy. He patiently waited his turn in line because that was what you were supposed to do. He put money in the parking meter, even on weekends, because he didn’t want to risk receiving a ticket. Kevin had never cheated on tests because cheating was not what a person should do. He knew he would have been caught in the act and his life ruined forever if he tried to do anything improper. But it was in ruins now anyway, despite a life lived as the straight-and-narrow boy scout, the responsible first-born son, a safety patrol captain, and a teacher’s assistant.

Regardless of who he was with, expressing his genuine emotions was not natural to Kevin. He had been in several relationships with girlfriends, aside from his marriage to Maritza, and while they were intimate, none of them were incredibly emotional for him. Even during intimacy, it was less of an emotional expression or connection than a motion or movement for Kevin. The intercourse was mechanical. Kevin did what he was supposed to do when and for as long as he was supposed to do it. If Kevin asked his girlfriends out on a date, it was because it was Friday or Saturday night, and a guy was supposed to go out on dates with girls on Friday and Saturday nights. He opened doors, pulled chairs, paid for dinners, and did every other perfect thing that an ideal boy does in the textbook courtship of a girl, just as television shows, movies, and books taught him. Perhaps it was because of those gestures that Kevin was now saying what he was saying to Daniel. He wanted to live more spontaneously and less by rules and norms. But did Kevin really want to express his emotions truthfully and in a less uptight and scripted way? Was Kevin giving Daniel the very advice he most needed to hear himself?

“Yeah,” Daniel said, “I guess I can go along with that. So, you think you ever will?”

“Will what?”

“D-U-D-E! Stay on the planet,” Daniel replied.

“What, have sex with a guy? I don’t know. Sure. Maybe. I don’t know.” Kevin paused and turned his head away from Daniel, resting it on his crossed forearms again. He gazed into the darkness of the yard’s corner, where the pool lights didn’t shine. Kevin didn’t want Daniel to see his vulnerability as he added, “If I did, it would have to be with someone I know, someone I could trust and feel comfortable with. Like I said, if two people have feelings for one another, they should be able to express those feelings physically if that’s what they want to do. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not sure I could duck into a dark alley or a bathroom stall with a guy I didn’t know to have sex and get off. That’s a completely different thing.”

There was a long pause between them, and while the water was warm, Kevin shivered inside. His stomach was empty, and it had been a long time since he nourished himself. Then Kevin heard Daniel’s words but couldn’t see his expression.

“So, do you have feelings for me?”

Kevin raised his head and turned back toward his friend. “Why, Daniel! Are you propositioning me?” he asked in his worst impersonation of a Southerner.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Do you want to be propositioned?”

Kevin couldn’t help but wonder if Daniel was baiting him. They were apparently now playing the cat-and-mouse game, and Kevin remembered how he and Maritza had once played it and how that eventually ended. Kevin sensed no one wanted to admit anything first or tip their hand too far for fear of being unable to recover their dignity by pretending to have been kidding or teasing. In that instant, Kevin thought of all his other moments of hesitation when he withheld from being bold or free. This time, Kevin decided to take a chance and be the first to step over the line. “Yes,” he said, “I like you and consider you a friend. I’ve always enjoyed your company, and I’m glad as fuck we ran into each other tonight.”

“Thanks,” he replied, “but that’s not what I asked you, is it?” Daniel looked into Kevin’s eyes and gave him that dumb, submissive grin.

“You want me to say it? Yes, then. I would have sex with you. Why not?” Kevin tried to sound very matter-of-factly and carefree by the tone of his words. If Daniel had been toying with Kevin, trying to catch him only to turn and ridicule him, Kevin still had an out. Neither of them was overtly propositioning the other. If Daniel didn’t want to play the game any longer, or if Daniel said he would never have sex with Kevin, then Kevin wouldn’t feel bad or rejected because the whole thing was only hypothetical questioning. Kevin then surprised even himself by upping the ante in the high-stakes game they were playing.

“In fact, I think we should,” Kevin added, changing his tone from carefree to one of confidence. There, he said it. The horse was out of the barn, and Kevin was relieved. He was relieved not only for what he finally said but also for being the one to say it first. Yes, Kevin was now out on a limb and vulnerable, but he was taking control of his desire and taking a chance. What if Daniel turned on him now and said he didn’t want to? Or that he had just been teasing? It didn’t matter. The boys no longer worked together or had the same circle of friends. Their lives were unentwined. Daniel would have nothing to gain by the retreat, and Kevin would have nothing to lose if Daniel made a big deal out of the matter. Besides, Daniel seemed as relaxed as he was, so Kevin’s newfound boldness was low risk. This time, however, Kevin was not doing any risk-reward calculations with his actions. This conversation didn’t feel competitive, like his truth-or-dare comparison with Michael or his streaking adventure with Miguel and Keith. What Kevin found himself doing now felt honest and genuine, yet every bit as exhilarating as the wind felt against his naked body while running around Miguel’s house. It was as close to touching and tasting authenticity as Kevin could remember.

“So, you really want to?” Daniel asked.

“Sure,” Kevin replied. “Why not? We’re both curious and alone and relaxed. We’re friends. I feel comfortable with you and can trust you. I can trust it would stay between us, and no one else would ever know, right?”

Daniel grinned again and replied, “You can trust me. And yeah, why not? I want to.”

Kevin dissected the words into individual letters and concentrated on the meaning. Daniel said ‘wanted to.’ Beyond the concepts of ‘sure’ or ‘would.’ He said ‘wanted.’

Kevin’s anxiety over possible ensnarement over his words spoken eased with Daniel’s admission. Anticipation replaced anxiety. Kevin’s pulse slowed with a deep breath and inner sigh of relief, and the tunnel vision that had momentarily formed from the intensity of focusing on Daniel’s reactions as they spoke subsided. Kevin began to sense his surroundings again. They had both committed to the suggestion now, admitting their wants and leaving neither at an inescapable disadvantage.

The night air was still warm, like the current of water that gently swirled around them. The pool’s underwater light that illuminated their legs, swimsuits, and chests added to the warmth of the space separating them.

“Hold on a second,” Kevin said as he lifted himself out of the water and walked toward the house. He reached one arm through the sliding glass door and around the corner of the wall, glancing toward the living room to see Alice still asleep on the sofa. Kevin’s hand felt the switch, and the pool water and backyard fell entirely dark when it clicked.

“There, that’s better,” Kevin said as he lowered himself back into the water. The moonlight had a glistening effect on the tiny ripples caused by his reentry. They had been in the water a long time, and deep wrinkles cut into their toes and fingers, but it still felt relaxing, and Kevin wanted to stay in a bit longer. Daniel leaned back against the pool wall with his feet planted firmly on the pool’s bottom. Kevin faced him squarely, placing his hands against the tiled edge on either side of Daniel’s shoulders. It was dark, late, and quiet. Kevin knew they had privacy.

“Don’t freak out on me now,” Kevin whispered above his racing heartbeat. As soon as he said it, he realized those were the words Jimmy had uttered several months prior. This was different, though. Was it? It had to be. Jimmy spoke those words after the fact, after doing what he did. Jimmy’s words had been a command. Kevin was asking Daniel before doing anything. It is not the same. Kevin had to believe that.

Kevin leaned forward, and Daniel had enough time to agree before their lips met. It was a soft and quick kiss, and Kevin backed up a few inches to gauge Daniel’s reaction. His lips tasted like pool water. Kevin’s lips also tasted like an intense longing. Daniel smirked and closed his eyes again, submitting to the advance. Kevin took this as an invitation to continue and leaned forward again, their lips meeting and embracing for longer. When Kevin took his hands off the pool's edge, he ran them down Daniel’s back and rested them on Daniel’s hips to draw him closer. It was enough to let Daniel know that the pool’s wall no longer embraced him, that Kevin did now. Taking Kevin’s lead, Daniel rested his arms over Kevin’s shoulders, and together, they sank into the cover of the warm, dark water. Kevin kneeled with his knees extended out in front as if sitting in an invisible chair at the pool's shallow end. Daniel followed, sitting atop Kevin’s knees and wrapping his legs around Kevin’s waist as they continued to kiss. In this position, their abdominal and chest muscles pressed together under the water, and Kevin could feel the yearning between them grow.

“Are we going to do this here?” Daniel asked, the quivering apparent in his voice. Kevin was just as nervous. His legs shook under the water when they first kissed, and now he felt a chill he shouldn’t be feeling in the water’s warmth. It was dark, and Kevin knew they were alone, yet he felt uneasy about being out in the open, as exposed as they were, just like he had been with Jimmy at the lake.

“Let’s go inside,” Kevin responded.

The water splashed onto the concrete deck as they lifted themselves out of the water and walked toward the chairs. Throwing a towel to Daniel, Kevin dried himself and watched his friend bend over to dry the water from his legs. The towel moved upward, across his chest and back, and then over his head to dry the youthful face and messy dark hair. Finally, he patted the back and front of the black Speedo dry, dimly illuminated by the reflection of the television against the dark walls that shone through the glass doors. That was the moment either of them could stop, but neither did.

They wrapped the damp towels around their waists, and Kevin motioned to Daniel to follow him, leading him past the sleeping figure on the sofa and into his bedroom. Once in the room, Kevin locked the door. The house was on the corner lot, and his bedroom was on the front corner of the house. Again, Daniel’s body was illuminated, this time by the streetlamp that broke the room's darkness through the open blinds. He stood in the middle of the room, having not yet turned around since entering, and surveyed Kevin’s meager furnishings: a waist-high bookcase, an old student’s desk and chair, and an air mattress and sleeping bag lying on the floor.

“Well, it’s not the Ritz, buddy,” he said as he turned to look at Kevin. Daniel’s hair looked tousled. The light that shone through the window and had highlighted his back now hit his chest and abdominals, casting sensuous shadows into the firm crevasses that defined his hairless torso. Kevin took a few steps toward him, wanting to touch him and rub his fingertips across Daniel’s bare chest, but he withheld. He was unsure of what Daniel’s reaction might be if he touched him now that they were in the locked privacy of the bedroom. Their bold and cavalier talk in the pool might become a reality, and Kevin was unsure what to do. He sensed Daniel’s apprehension as well. But they were together now, and Kevin wouldn’t back away from what he had thought about for so long unless Daniel wanted him to.

“It may not be much, but it’s comfortable,” Kevin replied, extending his open hand to the corner of the room. Daniel turned towards the makeshift bed and bent slightly forward without saying a word. His hands slid down his sides, peeling the towel and swimsuit from his body in one slow, fluid, and seductive motion. He stepped out of them and towards the bed when they came to rest on the floor.

Kevin stood frozen in the center of the room, watching Daniel’s rear muscles move as he walked. They were two firm white mounds of muscle that took turns tightening and relaxing, each firm buttock framed by a solid tan line. Kneeling forward, Daniel laid himself flat on his stomach and stretched his arms above him, wrapping them around the pillow to form a ball to tuck under his head. Kevin continued standing there, studying the nude figure lying on his bed. He was unsure of what Daniel was expecting as he watched his friend lay motionless and quiet. Kevin thought he might be content to watch him lie there all night, but he wanted more than simple contentment.

29

Human Nature

A week passed, and then two, as the daily anticipation of Daniel calling or stopping by waned. Anticipation eventually grew into disappointment. Although Kevin considered stopping by his dad’s restaurant to see Daniel, he knew it was probably not a good idea, so he didn’t. He thought a lot about Daniel and what happened between them in the very spot where he slept each night. Kevin wondered where Daniel was and if he felt differently toward his wife after they had been together following their swim. Kevin wondered if Daniel had already dismissed or negated the entire experience in his mind, convincing himself it never happened. After all, Kevin had done the same thing himself with people and events he didn’t want to remember when the pleasure and pain of the event were over. Had it meant anything at all to Daniel?

Kevin also thought about the way Daniel confided in him when in the pool, expressing his troubles with his wife and regretting having married her. He had exposed and owned his mistakes with truth and authenticity, while Kevin didn’t have the courage to do the same. Kevin had never offered his truth about dropping out of school, his failed marriage to Maritza, and his current state of unemployment. Daniel probably assumed he was still enjoying the same success he had back when they worked together, and Kevin allowed him to believe it. He failed to share with Daniel how his life had spiraled out of control because of his poor decisions. Kevin had the perfect opportunity to empathize with him when Daniel confided in him, but he didn’t. Kevin could have made actual progress if he had allowed himself to be as vulnerable with his truth as Daniel was with his, but he chose not to. Maybe their relationship would be different now had Kevin been honest and open with Daniel then. Maybe.

Each time he thought of that midnight swim with Daniel, echoes of their last minutes together resounded in Kevin’s mind. He recalled walking back into his bedroom from the adjoining bathroom to see Daniel quickly dressing himself.

“I got to go, man. It’s late.”

“You can stay if you want. That is if you don’t want to go home tonight.” Kevin suddenly felt foolish, standing in front of Daniel naked while his friend was now fully dressed.

“Thanks, but I really got to go,” he replied. Daniel didn’t make eye contact, and as Kevin observed Daniel’s behavior, he realized Daniel had not made eye contact with him since removing his wet towel and swimsuit and lying face down on the sleeping bag.

“Hey, are you okay?” Kevin asked, putting his hands on Daniel’s hips and positioning himself between Daniel and the bedroom door.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “It’s just late.”

“Okay, that’s cool,” Kevin replied. He leaned forward to kiss Daniel, but as he did, Daniel looked down and turned away, walking toward the door. Unlocking it, he looked back at Kevin and nervously smiled.

“Listen, I’ll call you later, okay?” Daniel slowly opened the door and peered into the living room. Alice was still snoring when he turned back and whispered, “See ya, dude.”

“See ya,” Kevin whispered, watching the bedroom door slowly close and then hearing the front door do the same. As Kevin picked up the wet towels and swimsuits, he heard Daniel’s car start and then back out of the driveway outside his bedroom on the corner of the house on the corner lot of the street. Kevin stood there naked and alone again, naturally.

Although Kevin had not told Daniel about his failures, what he did do was reveal himself in another way, a physical and emotional way. He had not been honest with Daniel about his past, but he had been open and vulnerable about his current self. Kevin knew what he touched, tasted, heard, and felt was raw and genuine. It was unfiltered by upbringing, social norms, or fear. Kevin knew he wanted Daniel when they were together that night, and part of him desired Daniel now, or at least the feeling of wanting him. Kevin could no longer deny that desire. That knowledge simultaneously added to and stripped away another layer of complexity in Kevin’s already complicated situation.

30

Hello Old Friend

I t was a Tuesday, so the nightclub was slow that night. It was Kevin’s first venture into a bar since his return four months earlier, or at least the first time he entered one instead of driving past it. Usually, his frequent night drives to be alone with his thoughts took him to quiet spots overlooking the bay. Kevin wanted a drink and to be amongst people tonight, although not necessarily with them. It was a large straight club with three levels, one he had been to once with some of the Darksiders after his eighteenth birthday. From the sanctuary of the third level, Kevin leaned against the railing and looked down between the openness of the second and third floors onto the dance floor that filled the center of the ground level below. From what he remembered, the dance club was popular with young people on the weekends but sparsely attended tonight.

Kevin thought about Daniel again: their swim, the physical intimacy, Daniel’s abrupt leaving, and the emotional aftermath. Alone with his drink in that dark nightclub, absent of all but a few people, with the low thump of blurred music in the background simulating his heartbeat in a way only he could feel, Kevin knew the truth.

“Hey!”

The sound was barely loud enough to break Kevin’s focus on the dance floor below and thoughts of Daniel within.

“Kevin?”

The voice was more distinct this time, from behind and familiar. As Kevin turned, the wisps of recent memory he intently focused on vanished like mirages of bliss sometimes do. It took several seconds for Kevin’s eyes to adjust to the tall figure standing behind him, a darker space than the brightly lit dance floor and pulsating lights he had just fixated on. As Kevin’s eyes adjusted, the vision's familiarity matched the voice that just spoke his name. The figure was Kevin’s age and had the advantage of an inch or so in height. His dark hair, parted to the side and neatly combed, predating the shaggy style or long blow-dry bouffant style of the seventies and the now high-top fades and flat tops of the eighties. The persona behind the voice was a clean-cut Polo advertisement of an all-American midwestern boy.

“Steve?”

“Hey, buddy,” he said enthusiastically through the straight white teeth and a wide-mouthed smile that Kevin had so enviously wished he had during those tough junior high school years when he wore braces and so fearfully avoided fights because of it. When Steve’s outstretched arms reached toward him for a hug, it looked as though Kevin leaned away from the greeting, but it was only to place his drink on the small round table that was part of his perch overlooking the dance floor. During the hug, they patted one another on the back, a jointly simultaneous and unconscious signal to end their enthusiastic embrace. Shaking hands, they agreed on the surprise of running into each other in a bar neither frequented, let alone on a weekday night, in the south part of town where neither lived.

“Fancy meeting you here, mate,” Kevin replied. “It’s been forever. What, five or six years? Jeez.”

“I know. We were kids with learner’s permits!” Steve’s laugh had not changed.  It was loud and unabashed. Sometimes when he laughed and sucked in the air simultaneously, he made snorting sounds through his nose. It was a confident and fearless laugh.

“What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are,” Steve replied. “To get drunk and pick up women, of course.”

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

“No, seriously,” Steve continued. “Was down visiting my mom and just needed a little fresh air, if you know what I mean.”

Kevin knew exactly what that meant. “Down from where?”

“Oh, Florida State. I have one more semester left. What about you?”

“Wow, Tallahassee,” Kevin replied without stopping to answer Steve’s question. Steve was finishing college after what, only three years? “And after graduation?”

“Law school. I'm not sure where yet. I’ve applied to a few schools. Maybe Penn State. Maybe Northwestern. I might just stay right there at Florida State. They have a good law school, too. We’ll see. What about you, man?”

“USF,” Kevin replied. It was the first thing that came to mind. It was simple, and he intended to go there, maybe, so it was not exactly a lie. Kevin would need to get settled with a job and an apartment first. He would also have to go back to community college to retake all the classes he failed or withdrew from and, of course, bring his GPA up to a satisfactory minimum level even to be considered for entry into the University of South Florida.

“Ah, cool,” Steve replied, “so you stayed here in town?”

“Well, not exactly. I spent some time in South Florida. Just moved back.”

Kevin’s initial excitement with running into his old best friend quickly turned into anxiety over the topics he didn’t want to discuss or answer questions about. College, work, and relationships were all subjects better left off the table. Kevin focused instead on rapid-fire questions aimed at Steve related to remembering what they used to do as inseparable young teenagers. “Hey, do you remember when….?” Swimming, tennis, flying model rockets, camping, and listening to comedy albums. All activities deemed essential to Kevin’s cherished memories as a happy teenager, only half of which Steve recalled with any vividness.

As Steve talked about his girlfriend back in Tallahassee and other girls he dated in high school or had eyes for now, it was becoming painfully apparent that they, two former best friends, had taken very different paths in life. Steve had taken the challenging route and moved away for college. He had waited for the spoils of earning money to lay a solid foundation of a college degree to support a stable career. He knew what he wanted to do with his life. Steve had a girlfriend but steered clear of commitments. He focused on himself and priorities that made sense. Steve was home visiting because he wanted to.

In contrast, Kevin had already lived a lifetime of work, love, marriage, deceit, unemployment, and divorce. He had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. Kevin had no idea what he could do. He was back home because he had no other choice.

Steve’s words slowly faded into the background and blended with the distant beat of the music playing on a different level. At the same time, Kevin’s memory was busy recalling and summarizing the events that had transpired since they were last together. High school drama, drudgery, part-time jobs, first cars, and dating. The yearning for sex and then having it in all of its degrees, or at least the degrees Kevin was aware of at this point. Kevin assumed Steve wouldn’t know about or understand a few of those degrees. Then there was the marriage. The in-laws. The failures. Failures in every shape and form. And finally, when Kevin tried to focus on Steve’s voice again, the fond memories of his desire and puppy love for his best friend so many years ago seemed as distant and untouchable as the green flash that he and Ricky waited to see on that pre-dawn morning on Daytona Beach. Kevin no longer longed to be Steven James Mason because he knew he couldn’t be.

After about an hour of chatting, the two young men, who had known each other as young teenagers and junior high students, shook hands and wished each other luck. They promised to keep in touch, although neither exchanged numbers. Steve left the club that night to be a lawyer. Kevin left the club that night to be himself.

31

Dark Worlds, White Knights

K evin allowed himself a few weeks to feel remorse over letting his fears control him that first time he drove around the gay bars. Then he ran into Daniel and learned that old friendships can be much more. Only days ago, Kevin realized old friendships could mean something much less when he ran into Steve. Fear, desire, intimacy, expectations, and disappointment were strange bedfellows.

By Saturday night, he was ready to try again. This time, Kevin did his homework by calling the local gay hotline from the article he read and asking them where he should go. No leather bars or cowboy hangouts, please. Dark, seedy bars with older men on the prowl for naïve college-age guys were also out. A dance club would be okay, especially if young, ordinary people like him were there. It would be even better if the club were in a decent area, not downtown, and also nowhere near the part of town where he lived. The volunteer who took Kevin’s call was friendly and informative, thanking ‘Jack’ for calling them and wishing him a pleasant stay while visiting the city on a work trip. Kevin’s anonymity was intact, even if not very convincingly.

This time, Kevin set out for Rene’s on Kennedy Boulevard in a half-residential, half-commercial district outside of downtown. The parking lot was well-lit and full of cars, and Kevin was lucky enough to find an empty parking spot in front of the building. It was far enough from the street to avoid detection by passing cars. It also avoided having to park around back where it was darker and probably, at least in Kevin’s mind, infested with hookers, muggers, and undercover cops. As he locked the car door and walked toward the establishment’s entrance, the thumping beat of the music’s bass permeated through the concrete walls at a rhythm different from his pounding heart. It felt like opposing punches of shock waves from the club’s interior and Kevin’s inner chest would shake him apart. Both were loud, and both were uncontrollable.

Once inside, Kevin found the closest spot of a wall that didn’t already have an occupant and attached his back to it, leaning into its comfort while a curious relief set in. He was through the parking lot and the front door, now surrounded by the anonymity of the darkness, with relatively little pain. No bouncer was present to read his driver’s license and his real name while standing in the entrance lighting for everyone to witness.

Guys walked past Kevin - lots of guys moving in both directions. Once his eyes adjusted, he could see most of the club’s interior and several rooms from his vantage point against the wall’s safety. His room occupied almost half of the building and had a large bar in its center. The back section had some pool tables, elevated a few steps above the front portion he was in. Between the bar in the center and the billiard room in the back, there were tables where patrons sat. Through several doorways, Kevin could see into the other half of the building, which contained a stage and dance floor, the source of the dance music he had heard from outside.

Once Kevin surveyed the layout, he got an appreciation of how crowded the club was. The dance floor in the other room was crowded, as was the room he was in that contained tables and stools at the bar. Faces, bodies, and clothes became detailed as he focused on the club's occupants instead of the building’s layout and architecture. There were a few women, but the club was overwhelmingly male. Kevin guessed some were younger than him, but most were between twenty and thirty.

Some older men in their forties or fifties sat at the bar. Kevin’s focus continued narrowing as he watched droves of guys moving in either direction before him. He was in a hallway, but it had only one wall. Guys lined up on either side of him with their backs against the brick wall, like protectors of the wall, as a constant stream paraded past them. Everyone watched everyone else. Those walking eyed the people they passed as well as the wall guardians. Those on the wall watched those that passed, shifting their focus from face to face and exchanging quick smiles or glances away and occasional winks. The rate at which eyes could scan different faces and bodies as they approached and passed was remarkable - processing information, lots of information, all in a glance that lasted a quarter-second at best. Occasionally, a wall sentinel grabbed a walking streamer and pulled them out of the flow, or a streamer stopped to converse with a wall sentinel, blocking traffic flow and compressing the already tight space between them all. It was a complicated dance in a beehive of activity between queens and drones and workers following their own naturally programmed tasks within the larger community with purpose.

After five or ten minutes, Kevin relinquished his spot on the wall to another and moved to an opening at the bar. He needed something in his hands to hold, so he bought a beer and walked around the bar, heading toward the source of the music and the colored lights that strobed into the darker room he had just exited from. Kevin leaned against the doorway and watched guys dance on the crowded floor. The paranoia that had walked in with him was easing, replaced with curiosity and intrigue at sights he had never seen, like men dancing together or embraced in deep kisses. He walked the room's perimeter and tried to become more comfortable in the unfamiliar surroundings. It surprised Kevin that most of the guys in the club looked quite normal. He saw no leather chaps or vests or drag queens he had expected to see. No protests or marches were forming. It was busy and loud and, by all accounts, perfectly normal aside from the same-sex representation of the crowd.

“Want to dance?” the voice asked from behind. The question startled Kevin, partly because it came from within a few inches of his left ear and was louder than the surrounding music and bar noise and also because he was not expecting it. Turning and standing up straight, Kevin heard himself respond with, “Oh, no thanks,” before even focusing on who had made the invitation. Kevin’s response was automatic and immediate.

“I’m sorry,” he said, lightly squeezing Kevin’s bicep with his hand as the stranger leaned into Kevin so that he could hear. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Oh, no, that’s fine. I mean, you didn’t.”

“So, no dance then?” the stranger asked, gesturing toward the dance floor. He was as tall as Kevin and a little older, in his upper twenties, with dark hair and a mustache. Mustaches always make men look more mature. Kevin thought about what Daniel had said in the pool about the older waiter who made a pass at him at his father’s restaurant.

“Thanks, but I just got here. I’m sort of taking it all in right now.”

“Maybe later then,” he said as he turned away. Kevin’s defenses shifted into high gear as he watched the man walk away. He didn’t know why he suddenly felt so uncomfortable, only that he did. The stranger was polite and non-threatening. He had only asked Kevin to dance, after all. Even so, as soon as the man faded into the crowd, Kevin turned and retreated into the sanctuary of the first room, finding an empty barstool and ordering a vodka and tonic.

Sipping on the cocktail, Kevin waited for his adrenaline-driven anxiety to subside while studying his surroundings again. Like any other busy bar, the room was heavy with a blend of smoke and liquor. The thumping bass of the dance music and the sound of a hundred different conversations permeated the crowd. Some guys were handsome. They were attractive despite their aloofness, and he wondered what drove these handsome men to be gay. They could indeed have their pick of beautiful women if they wanted to. Maybe some of them did and came here after dropping their girlfriends off at home for the night. How perfectly deceptive that might be for them, taking their girlfriends to a movie or dinner to fulfill the illusion, only to hit a gay bar later in the night to satisfy the secret and persistent desires that lived within them. It was all speculation and projection, of course.

Some guys sat around the bar or stood in darker corners, wearing sweatshirts, tennis shoes, and baseball caps. They were casual, drinking beer by holding their bottles by the neck. Some stared at the floor, contemplating their shoelaces while looking shy. What was their story? Were they ashamed of being here? Probably not. If so, why come into this club? Maybe they fought with their girlfriends, boyfriends, or someone else. A conversation with one of these guys was a possibility. Unlike the aggressive man who boldly asked Kevin to dance earlier, they seemed harmless. He would reserve that decision for later. Of course, as shy as they looked, the first move would have to be from Kevin, which was very unlikely.

Other guys inside the bar looked more aggressive. They sported tight tee shirts or tank tops and wore wide black belts as they cruised around the bar or hung out by the restroom in hallways. Many had their hands on their hips or leaned against the wall with a ready-for-action look. They undoubtedly all knew one another and were there for one thing and one thing only. Too fast and tough-looking for me, Kevin thought. Thanks, but no thanks.

Some boys appeared flamboyant, each looking for their own stage or spotlight. Most smoked and had too much motion in their wrists and hips as they bounced between conversations with a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail in the other. These guys knew everyone. It's too feminine for me. Thanks, but no, again.

A few men looked like they had been there too long or had started too early. Some slumped against the bar or cigarette machine, alone and sometimes conversing with themselves. Others stumbled through the crowd, the focus and quick eye movement necessary to be a successful streamer gone. No, these guys had passed the point of cruising and were now trying to stay afloat. No conversations with sloppy drunks for me tonight. Thanks, but no thanks once again.

Many of the guys appeared to be just like Kevin, however. They were clean-cut with a lucid and strait-laced presence about themselves. His group was young and normal looking, some attractive, but without the snobbish behavior. They looked somewhat like the casual sweatshirt types, only dressed better and not as shy. Kevin thought they were likely better lovers than the fast and rough types. His mother had always told him, ‘Still water runs deep.’ This group didn’t smoke or seem to know everyone in the bar like the flamboyant types, and he thought it could be a blessing for him to be the new face in an all too familiar crowd. A pretty good group to be associated with, he believed. Then he realized he was social class-projecting everyone into groups based on appearance, dress, and mannerisms. Kevin had also already chosen the most appropriate group for himself. Was he not there specifically because people don’t neatly fit into stereotypes, and even when you think you know someone, do you really know them? Isn’t judgment one byproduct of naivety and fear? Why was he there?

Some guys looked Kevin’s way or even stared at him, trying to make eye contact that could be misconstrued as an invitation to come over and start talking to him. He didn’t dare look back. Whenever Kevin noticed it happening, he turned the other way and looked preoccupied, as if his friends would return from the bathroom or the dance floor at any moment. Kevin thought he wanted to meet someone he could talk to and see movies with or pal around with. He wanted to meet someone handsome, athletic, and even sexy. Kevin thought he might even want to have sex with someone. But that was impossible, given what he had read in the newspapers about the new gay disease. What had happened with Daniel was different. He had known Daniel. Daniel was straight and posed no threat. Sex with a stranger would be something entirely different and a risk much too hazardous to take.

Kevin was most afraid of discovery. He was terrified of disappointing his parents. He feared getting rolled during a one-night stand or, worse, being blackmailed for it afterward. Kevin sat and endlessly analyzed the possibilities, churning his inner emotions until his stomach felt like the paper napkin he was nervously rolling and shredding in his hands. The paranoia grew like an evil green genie released from its bottle, filling the surrounding air in gigantic proportions. He suddenly felt every eye in the bar watching him, knowing his name and true identity. They all knew this was his first time in a place like this. They all knew he knew nothing about who he was, why he was there, or what he was doing. They all understood more about Kevin than he did himself. Kevin could feel himself basting in his own sweat as the walls closed in and the oxygen left the room.

When Kevin shoved the exit door open, the rejuvenating night air hit him like a wall of fresh and spacious comfort. He could breathe again. The pounding of the dance music faded, and he could hear the tiny pebbles of asphalt rolling against one another under the weight of his shoes, making crushing noises as he hastily walked toward his car.

“Leaving already?”

Kevin paused momentarily before turning, the asphalt stones grinding beneath his heel as he pivoted. He was Kevin’s age, with blond hair that shined under the parking lot lights,  neatly combed and parted from the side. The young man wore a white tee shirt under an untucked button-down, straight-cut jeans, and light hiking boots. He had a cute-faced and collegian Gap store look about him but could also pass for a simple, hard-working farm boy had he been chewing on a single stem of golden straw or country hay matching the color of his hair.

“I saw you inside,” taking a few cautious steps closer. “Are you sure you’re on your way out?”

Kevin shrugged his shoulders and was conscious of his head momentarily dropping before rising again. Kevin looked him in his blue eyes and replied, “Don’t have to, no.” Kevin’s hands shot nervously into his front pockets as he moved a few small steps closer to the conversation.

“Good. I’m Josh.”

Kevin took the stranger’s extended hand and shook it. “Kevin,” he replied.

“No, I’m Josh,” he repeated, pointing towards his chest and grinning.

“Oh, yeah, I know. I was saying my name is Kevin. Sorry,” he clarified. It then dawned on Kevin that Josh likely sensed his nervousness, being cute with his response about names and obviously trying to break the ice and ease his apprehension. Josh chuckled when he said that, and his honest laugh helped smooth Kevin’s anxiety.

“Want to go back inside for a while?” Josh asked.

Kevin wanted to. Josh appeared charming and wholesome. He looked safe. Kevin had a hundred questions he wanted to ask Josh. Kevin wanted to know his story, why he was here, and what he was looking for. Had he been here before? What about this specific place brought him here tonight, and what were the other bars in town like? Was he gay or straight or some combination of both or neither? Kevin was especially curious why Josh followed him out and chose him to stop and talk to. Why was he asking Kevin back in? Was it to chat, dance, or make out like some others were doing inside?

“Josh, thanks, but I think I’ve had my fill of smoke and loud music tonight. Thanks, though.”

“I know what you mean,” he replied. “It is hard to hear in there, and the smoke bothers me, too. How about a cup of coffee instead? There’s a twenty-four-hour diner down the street.”

The offer was tempting. Kevin could ask Josh all the questions he had for him, and they could sit quietly and chat without crowds of guys watching or bumping into them. They might get to know one another and become friends. An actual connection might even spark between them. Getting coffee in a public place sounded innocent and safe, but it could also be a huge mistake. Kevin considered the possibility of someone recognizing him sitting at a table chatting flirtatiously with a same-sex stranger late on a Saturday night. How would Kevin explain that? Worse, if Josh answered Kevin's questions, Kevin would be expected to reciprocate and answer the same questions about himself. What was he going to tell Josh? Would Kevin be honest and tell Josh he was already divorced from a woman? Would he tell Josh he was unemployed and crashing at his aunt’s house, sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag? How about failing most of his classes and dropping out of college? Did Kevin want to tell Josh his first and only positive sexual experience with another guy was with a friend who ran out after it was over? Did Kevin want to tell Josh about his first sexual experience with another guy, the one before Daniel? It all felt terribly messy and pathetic. Kevin was not willing to start another relationship with lies and unspoken truths, even if it was simply over a cup of coffee with someone he might find to have nothing in common with or ever see again. Kevin wouldn’t do it.

Before Kevin could respond, Josh added, “It’s just a cup of coffee.”

“I really appreciate the offer, and I do love coffee,” Kevin said, “but I’m going to call it a night. I hope you aren’t offended.”

Josh smiled and looked straight at Kevin with his bright blue eyes. He stepped closer and extended his right hand, gently placing his left on Kevin’s forearm. “I’m not offended at all,” he replied, adding, “I understand, and I’m tired myself.” His tone was kind, and Kevin knew Josh said that so he wouldn’t feel bad or guilty for not taking him up on his offer. “I’m this way,” Josh said, still smiling and pointing behind Kevin in the same general direction where Kevin was parked.

The two walked a couple of rows through the parking lot until they came to Kevin’s car first. He thought about changing his mind and asking Josh to follow him, just as he had asked Daniel to do when they ran into one another at the convenience store. Kevin wanted to, but he didn’t. He knew he shouldn’t. Instead, Kevin opened his car door and grabbed the ballpoint pen from the center console. Reaching for Josh’s hand, Kevin turned Josh’s palm upward and wrote his phone number on the inside surface of Josh’s smooth forearm. Kevin was sure he had seen that in a movie once. He must have, choosing Josh’s forearm to prevent the ink from accidentally rubbing off had he written it on the palm instead. Tossing the pen back into the car, Kevin slowly extended his arms and invited Josh into an innocent and friendly embrace. Kevin hugged Josh with one arm across his upper back and the other around his waist, holding Josh firmly while he whispered, “Call me” through the silky golden hair that cradled the white knight’s ear.

“Call me.” It was the title song by Blonde playing in American Gigolo at the drive-in as Maritza whispered into Kevin’s ears and made his will hers. It was also what Daniel had promised to do after making Kevin’s desires his. This time, however, it was Kevin whispering the words into Josh’s ear, and he said it without fear and meant it with authenticity.

32

Both Sides Now

L ife gave Kevin a do-over, and the rest was ahead of him. The family fabric, torn and separated a few years prior, was slowly and naturally mending itself now that Kevin was back. He visited his mother several times a week in the evenings, sometimes with Alice and at other times alone, to sit and chat over freshly brewed coffee and a slice of cake or pie. The three of them sometimes met for happy hour at a local TGI Fridays, where the sisters introduced Kevin to sangria and silly flavored drinks like Fuzzy Navels and Sex on the Beach.

Kevin was also reconnecting with his father. Bert began teaching Kevin how to play golf. He had taken his son golfing with him when Kevin was a kid, taking him to driving ranges or a short nine-hole executive course near their home. Bert’s clubs had been in the closet for the past decade, but when Kevin asked his father to teach him to play, Bert did so gladly. Before long, Kevin had become fair enough at playing to join Bert and his golfing buddies on Saturday or Sunday morning golf outings. They never talked about anything meaningful when they were together. They certainly didn’t talk about anything deep or emotional. He reserved those feelings-related discussions for happy hours or coffee breaks with Carol and Alice. No, Bert and Kevin discussed their golf swing, each other’s last shot, how many yards to the hole, and what club to use next. They rarely had substantive conversations, but there was little reason to. When it came to who Kevin was or was not, he felt his father couldn’t be ashamed of what he didn’t know. Still, Kevin wondered about everything else. He knew his father loved him and assumed their silence was how father-and-son relationships worked.

Kevin also stayed busy helping Bert build an addition to his parent’s home. It was a new family room with lots of windows built over the piece of yard on the side of the house where the Ear Tree once stood. The whole project was bittersweet. Kevin missed the tree’s massive presence and canopy of shade. At times, when they worked on finishing the structure, Kevin felt what they were doing on that sacred patch of his boyhood freedom was an insult to the tree’s once-mighty dignity. When Kevin left town, the tree was still standing. When he returned, the tree was already gone. Kevin understood the logic of the tree’s age and why it needed removal. He also appreciated how functional the new room would be. Still, he didn’t like it.

The Ear Tree had been Kevin’s best friend as a child, and as it grew tall, so did he. As it grew older and expanded its branches, so did Kevin. As he failed and returned to his roots, so had it. The Ear Tree, as Kevin had known it, would never return. It was time to move on. It was time to repurpose its place for something else. For something beneficial. For the future. It was time to let go of childhood, pretending and climbing branches too quickly or choosing weak branches for support. Kevin could no longer hide in the camouflage of the tree’s foliage. It was time to stand tall on firm and true ground. The home was his parent’s home, and they had a right to repurpose the spot. Kevin had to accept the difference between what was and what is. The change would benefit them well for years to come. Kevin’s time with being a boy and The Ear Tree was over. It was time for Kevin to plant his authenticity.

***

Kevin got a call two days after writing his phone number on a stranger’s forearm. They had a pleasant chat, and Kevin told him about recently enrolling in the upcoming summer session. Josh expressed how much he enjoyed meeting Kevin, as brief as it was, while Kevin explained how he had just moved back to town and was getting resettled. He didn’t go into details over the phone, but he did mention that someone once told him about a twenty-four-hour diner that was pretty good, suggesting they grab a cup of coffee sometime.

When they met, the two boys shared a booth and talked, starting with breakfast and continuing through lunch five hours later. They had much to discuss, and the conversation flowed easily with honesty and without an agenda. Kevin told Josh everything: his girlfriends, his marriage and divorce, his choices, decisions, and their consequences. It was uncharacteristic for Kevin to be so open, especially with a stranger, yet talking to Josh now seemed effortless. Kevin told Josh about his failures and his sexual encounter with Jimmy at the pond. He explained his shame over provoking the event and his helplessness in stopping it. That was when Josh walked around the booth the first time to sit beside Kevin, putting his arm around him and telling him it was called assault and was not his fault.

Likewise, Josh discussed his life with Kevin. He talked about always knowing he was gay and said he had never kissed a girl and had always dated guys. Josh came out to his parents when he was fourteen, and they believed him by the time he was seventeen. Josh was unapologetically out and open, comfortable with his sexuality, without guilt or regret. Still, he was quiet, and his dates up to that point had been simply dates. Josh had never been in a serious relationship. He had searched for something more than casual and had fallen short of anything close to meaningful. Josh was waiting for sincerity and genuineness and was unwilling to settle for less, even if it meant being alone and sometimes uncomfortable with his authenticity. Kevin took every word in as he watched Josh speak and felt new and different feelings churn within himself, feelings he didn’t recognize and had not yet known.

The two sat and talked for so long that they eventually ordered lunch, not wanting their dialog of questions, answers, opinions, thoughts, and feelings to end. They were from different worlds, yet oddly, in the same place. When they finished eating their second meal together, Kevin told Josh about recently running into Daniel and their midnight swim that night. Then Kevin explained how the situation he had fantasized about for so long finally happened and how simultaneously arousing and frightening it was. It left him cycling through emotions of desire, fear, excitement, anxiety, and satisfaction, followed by rejection and disappointment. That was when Josh walked around the booth for the second time, hugging Kevin and telling him it was called living and was not anyone’s fault.

As they finished their meals and began their friendship, Kevin and Josh walked out of the diner into the daylight’s openness, secrets revealed, toward each of their truths and second chances.

33

Love and Happiness

(6 months later)

L aughter mingled with the sizzle of garlic hitting the hot pan as the upbeat tunes of his favorite playlist filled the apartment. Just as Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” hit its catchy chorus, a series of firm knocks at the door cut through the melody to signal the arrival of their eagerly awaited third guest.

“You mind getting that?”

“Yeah, of course,” he replied.

“Well, hello there, honey,” Alice said, surprised but pleased as her outstretched arms reached out to hug Josh. “So you beat me here? Good to see you again.”

Josh relieved Alice of the dessert in her hands and hugged her. “Only by a few minutes. Come in, come in. Fresh baked?”

“Yeah, fresh from the grocery store!” she mockingly replied. “Where’s the kid?”

“I’m here in the kitchen,” Kevin yelled from around the corner.

“Well, good, I’m starving. Say, this place is pretty nice.”

Kevin chuckled. “Thanks. Better than that last dump I was in.”

“Watch it, buster,” she shot back. “It was better than sleeping on the street, don’t ya think? You landed at my door looking like you were ‘rode hard and put away wet’! You’re lucky I took you in.”

“Well, I suppose that’s half true,” Kevin replied, attentive to his dinner preparation as his two guests chatted beside him.

“Anything we can do to help?” Josh asked as he patted Kevin on the back, passing behind him to get the chilled bottle out of the refrigerator.

“No, I think we’re good, thanks. Just open the wine, please.”

“None for me,” Alice shouted from the living room. “I’ll just have coffee later.”

Kevin glanced at his aunt roaming the room, inspecting his simple but functional furnishings. It was an open, clean, inviting space and reflected Kevin’s newfound spirit of freedom and self-expression. It didn’t have the traditional feel of the home he grew up in, nor the heavy and oppressive weight of the furnishings chosen by his former wife and her mother. No, Kevin’s new home reflected minimalism and the breaking down of old conventions.

“It’s called Scandinavian,” he shouted back. “I’m bringing the 60s back.”

“Yeah, well, good for you. It looks better than my shit. Maybe I’ll come live with you for a while. Smells good. What are we having?”

“Chicken scallopini with mushrooms and oven-roasted asparagus with parmesan,” Kevin replied, “and I’m not taking any boarders in at this time, thank you.”

“Well, so much for gratitude,” Alice replied as she walked back into the kitchen and looked at Josh. “After all I’ve done. No appreciation, right?”

Josh shrugged his shoulders, and they chuckled. “Well,” he responded, “he has been selfish with his time lately and-”

“Not selfish,” Kevin interjected, “just focused on work and school, that’s all.”

During dinner, Kevin updated Alice on how he was enjoying his job, relieved to have a steady schedule that allowed him to attend college at night. He had already passed three CLEP exams to earn credits and bypass those courses. Kevin was enrolled in two other classes each Tuesday and Thursday evening and attended a third full-day class each Saturday. He was focused and determined to finish this time. It was never too late to reset, and what happened in the past was simply a lesson that did not need repeating.

“So, anyone special these days,” Alice asked, eager to light a cigarette but knowing better than to do it inside.

“Of course,” Kevin replied. He glanced at Josh sitting to his right and gave him a hint of a smirk before his eyes shifted back to Alice. “The two of you are special: my special aunt and my special best friend. I honestly do not know where I would be without the two of you. I’m very grateful and appreciative of you both. I am.”

“I’m just glad you had the courage to give me your phone number that night,” Josh said.

Kevin looked at him and responded, “Well, I’m just glad you called me before the ink washed off your forearm.”

“Yeah, okay,” Alice responded. “Let’s not turn this into a lovefest here.” She turned to Josh. “How about you, honey?”

Josh glanced at Kevin to his left and returned his hint of a smirk before his eyes shifted back to Alice. “There’s a few possibilities in the works,” he answered. “We’ll see.”

“Fuck you both,” Alice exclaimed as she rose out of her chair. “I’m going outside to smoke a cigarette before it gets so deep in here that I suffocate from all the bullshit. Put some coffee on, would ya?”

Kevin looked at Josh and commented, “Can you believe she is fully pronouncing her cuss words now?”

“F’ing jerks,” she snickered, her back turned to them, walking through the living room and out onto the balcony. “Just make my damn coffee, please. Jeez!”

“Okay, but there’s none of that Sweet’n’Low crap,” Kevin countered.

“Love ya too!”

As Josh cleared the table, Kevin started the coffee and thought about that first night back in Bayview at Alice’s house. She had told him to relax, that he had just made a mistake, and that life wasn’t perfect. She told him to get over it, to figure himself out, and to move on. Within an hour of arriving, his aunt had been right about everything. Kevin had spent most of the past year doing just as she had so casually suggested.

Kevin knew he had made mistakes. He should have gone straight to college like most friends did but instead missed out on the college campus experience. Kevin would have likely made many new friends during those four years, some of which might have become life-long friendships. He would be close to graduating by now, looking forward to starting a professional career or perhaps continuing to earn his Masters. Instead, Kevin chose the short game and accepted a promotion he wasn’t ready for in a city he wasn’t prepared to live in. Then he made the biggest mistake of all, marrying someone he barely knew because he was lonely. But all of that was in the past and irreversible. What mattered now was that Kevin was back in school and doing well, creating a home environment where he could be comfortable getting to know himself. He was alone, but he was not lonely.

“Is that coffee done yet?” Alice yelled into the room as she lit her second cigarette and chatted with Josh on the balcony. The coffee bubbled up through the clear glass bulb in the lid of the stainless-steel percolator. It was the same coffee maker his parents used when he was a kid, and the nostalgic feeling it gave him was comforting. The percolator had a lifetime of brewed memories, both good and bad. It was original, authentic, and had weathered life’s challenges. Kevin watched and listened to the liquid popping and swirling inside the bulb, reminiscent of the turbulent waters of his own identity churning within him. It could be bitter, sweet, or both. He now accepted the nuances and knew identity was fluid and multifaceted.

When Alice had told Kevin to get over it, figure himself out, and move on, he thought she was talking about his failures and unemployment. He now knew it had meant much more.

“All right, boys. Pour that coffee. Let’s get this show on the road. Jeez!”

The path ahead required patience, introspection, courage, and unyielding hope. Kevin knew it was a journey he needed to take on his own, at least at first. He would grow to love himself, just like another would love him. And then, with freedom and truth, Kevin would love him back.

END

Thank You!

I appreciate you reading my debut book and hope you enjoyed the story! You are making a difference in my journey as a writer.

Please consider leaving your honest feedback on Amazon. It helps me and other potential readers. You can still leave reviews on Amazon even if you obtained the book elsewhere. If you are a member of Goodreads, you can leave feedback there too. Reader feedback does wonders for a book, and I genuinely want to hear about your reading experience. Just scan the QR code below to leave a review on Amazon:

Thank You Again!

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my beta readers: Michael Casisi, Nancy Cimino, Megan Middleton, Juan Delgado, and David Singleton. Thank you for the long hours spent reading those early drafts and your invaluable feedback.

Completing this novel wouldn’t have been possible without the support and nurturing of my best friend, David Singleton. A lifelong reader, library system administrator, and book collector extraordinaire, David never faltered in his encouragement to continue putting words on the page while enjoying the process.

I am deeply indebted to my partner and husband, Juan Delgado, for his expert proofreading and patience as I searched for and debated that exact word to make the sentence perfect.

I cannot begin to express my thanks to Kristin McTiernan of The Nonsense-Free Editor for her partnership in guiding me through the editing, production, and publishing processes. Your reviews and critiques helped me make my voice and tone consistent and my story structure sound. You coordinated excellent cover design, file formatting, and publishing services. Your professionalism, friendliness, skills, and experience made the enormous undertaking of getting my story to market possible with limited anxiety and heartache.

What’s Next?

Please look for my second novel, The Lucky Chip, in late 2024.

When Jack Harper finds an old poker chip in his Las Vegas hotel room, he is confident it means his troubled past is behind him. The chip, however, has a dark past of its own.

All Jack wants is to regain his wife’s trust and respect. Emily might even love him again one day. The past few years have not been easy, strained by Jack’s unemployment, excessive drinking, and subsequent bouts of depression. But that’s behind him now, and the surprise weekend gift to Las Vegas to celebrate their anniversary will surely earn her admiration. With his newfound luck secretly in his possession, Jack knows he can’t lose. But Emily knows Jack all too well. Neither knows the chip’s dark past is rooted deeply in old Vegas when greed, betrayal, and revenge were the best odds in the house.

The Lucky Chip is a paranormal thriller. It is not the first time trust has been gambled away and relationships saved or ruined. Time often connects itself to objects, and fortune seldom favors the bold.

Subscribe to get exclusive updates, discounts, and offers.