"A Summer Idyll"
by
Timothy Stillman
Jack clipped Chip on the chin and threw his arm around the broad shoulders of his best friend. Chip responded Chip-like and cuffed his buddy on the cheek. It was the end of school term. Everybody was rushing out of the hallways toward summer and freedom. Jack and Chip though, they took it easier. Ambled out. Peacefully.
Jack was gay. Chip wasn't but they went to bed together anyway because they were friends and that was all needed for sex these days. Of course Jack, who was smaller than Chip, and who wore thick lenses in his glasses, compared to Chip's noble face with its smooth walk and its smooth talk and his eyes that looked right at you and didn't make you feel you were looking at the football star he was and always would be, had not thought of that.
The school smelled dirty and dusky from all those days and months of the use of it this year. It seemed to groan under the weight of all those bodies no longer being in it. It seemed that Jack and Chip were forever and forever was not till Monday of next week. Their friendship could be trusted as a courtly thing, something sweet and long and silent a lot of the time, for they loved silence in each other. They loved it in lying on the banks of their hill outside of town, all grass growy green, and the skies of maple wood it seemed, that came to both of them.
The lounged by the school door and watched the ants rushing here and there, darting to bikes, their cars and their parents', boarding the same dumb old school bus for the same dump old scene never more, not until next September, when the woods came off the bottles and the sun came out of the sea and you had to drink in another year of boredom and grade fear and rushing to senior year and then the world if there was such a place to run to.
They walked in the already hot blast of summer afternoon, though summer was officially three weeks away. They talked the way friends talk. They believed in Chip. Jack believed in nobody but Chip. They liked the way they walked together. They liked being in each other's company. But Jack knew forever would never last forever, and he tried to protect his friend from that knowledge.
It was last summer, clocked around the first or second of July, that they had made love. Chip never had before, and surely Jack never did. Jack with his black hair and his soul serious eyes. Chip with eyes that becalmed what he saw and stopped the rages flourishing in Jack. Jack was a homely guy. He never knew why Chip had selected him. Had said "hi" to him at the lunch table and later on, "here sit by me" when Jack had to sit by the football players and was pretty nervous about the whole thing, but did so anyway, shocked, waiting for the joke. People saw him as a joke.
But Chip didn't. And Chip was of golden hair and knew all the old Simon and Garfunkle songs and never laughed at him, and took him seriously, and believed in the world and helped Jack fake believing in the world too.
They had been in Jack's attic, which was Jack's bedroom, and it had been hot, there were Aurora models on the shelves around the stair well, mostly of movie monsters that Jack has pieced and glued together by himself in long summer afternoons when even the shadows weren't good company anymore, and no longer summer by himself to make him happy, as happy as Jack could ever be, but he longed for a friend. And Chip had gloriously moment by moment became one. His idol and his lover.
They had been looked through Jack's Playboy magazines--his parents were progressive and let him buy each issue--and even bought him buff brown Playboy magazine binders with the silver rabbit head on the front. Jack was envied by other kids who had to sneak them in. But for Jack to, proudly so...sigh.
And Chip had asked Jack what did he really see in girls. Like the ones they were looking at in the new issue. The were seated side by side on the floor leaning back on the dusty musty old love seat that looked more like a torture chamber covered in cloth, how could anyone love in that thing, with each person faced away from the other? And Jack said he really just liked looking at them. And the curious thing, the really wavy extraordinary thing was that Chip, girl magnet, Chip who was not gay at any step of the way, put his hand, his square heavy hand with the thick veins, on Jack's leg, and Jack drew back.
"What's going on?" Jack asked, pulling the magazine from between them, and closing the cover, ashamed, blushing.
"Nothing, at all, Jack," Chip said. And he smiled and looked right into the rabbit, not bunny like at all, eyes of Jack and Chip's eyes said it was okay, and that he understood. And Jack thought fear and he thought this was another joke and he thought there was no where to hide anymore, and he thought I love you, and he turned away like he was in the back seat of that love sofa behind them, and he wanted to run away, felt his muscles itching and straining and bunching to do just that.
And Chip put his arms around his friend. "You know me, right, Jack?" Jack played like he was the woman pulling away from the Phantom of the Opera, an Aurora model of the phantom, not incidentally, sitting on his ledge of models around the stair well, in this hot dusty attic, with a little fan that did no good, with all the tall windows open for the hot breeze to blast in, and the floor covered with throw rugs, the closets to each side of the boys. And Jack felt cheap.
God, can you believe it? He thought later? I felt cheap. I felt like Gloria Graham in "In a Lonely Place" and I feel cheap. He started to get up, but Chip pulled back at him, gently, like he was saving his friend from diving into the deep end of a swimming pool, and Jack not being able to swim a stroke. But the danger was with Chip. Chip was the deep end of the pool and Jack would drown in his friend if he didn't get away.
And Chip kissed him with his golden kiss, right on the thin pale lips. And Jack put his arms around Chip, his small thin arms around that strong protective chest and they lay like that for a time and the sunlight of afternoon was beginning to turn on a circle and leave them some darkness of green Pledge ink to hold onto for a little while. It was a ridiculously romantic scene, and Chip raised his own knit white short sleeve shirt and took it off and put Jack's head on Chip's chest and Jack began to weep just a bit.
The sounds outside included: two lawn mowers, a lawn sprinkler, the old lady down the street clipping her hedges, some cars shushing by, in a longer distance the bells for the good humor man. And Jack and Chip lay down, Chip's back on the floor, and they touched, and it was good together, and it was nice to feel Chip's hand in Jack's hair. Nice for the both of them. They felt enfolded, elastic, perfect for each other. Jack lost in the dream. Chip lost in the reality and that was where the fatal flaw started, splintering. The beginning of such dreamsicle delight. And the saddest ending of heart banished from home forever more.
And Chip put his hand down on the crotch of Jack's jeans. And Jack looked at Chip up close and touched Chip's chest and knew what all the prettiest girls saw in him and knew how lonely feeling the not so pretty girls felt when he did not give them a tumble. But this was not a tumble. This was false and straight and true, the wrong mask was on the wrong person and life was sweet that summer. Jack's mom gone to work during the day. Jack and Chip in the attic playing. Or outside as Chip taught Jack how to shoot better than rim shots at the basketball goal at the top of the garage, something that his mom had placed there years ago, hoping it would teach mopey alone Jack how to be a man.
And it worked now. Being a man. Who wanted to be a child forever. Who wanted to be a child for always who always wanted to be a man, in a wistful foreboding, foretelling way that Jack would never understand. the basketball goal. And the Goal of Chip. And Chip was easy and Chip was kind and Chip waited and Chip hurried and Chip never found anything about Jack's wasted little body funny or foolish or average. He praised him like he meant it.
But Chip wanted to be Jack's friend. And this is how he could be Jack's friend. Never once did he doubt that he was heterosexual. When he had sensed Jack wasn't and that Jack was lonely--it wasn't a mercy thing. It wasn't an endeavor to help Chip reach out to a little person of little worth and help him out. It was what it was. And Jack would never understand that barbed injurious phrase. Which may have been a bad thing or may have been a good thing.
And over that first summer in the dust and the smell of mildew and the smell of wild onions and the perspiration that poured over them, this was Jack's room, and this was where they made love, on the floor, on Jack's bed that was really too narrow for them. And they taught each other and they held and they believed in today and the next day was summer too and the next as well. And they were naked with each other and examined and pretended and did and asked carefully delicate as a stein of china, safe now and legs entangled and happy to see what miracles the bodies of the other could do, and always new things, always imagination, always the first feel, the first moment, the first time ever for Jack not alone.
And summer turned to September and they still made love occasionally, not as much time, studying, football practice, piano practice for Jack, mom home more because her work shift had changed. So they made love on the hill last summer, often, kicky doing it outside, and they made love at night sometimes in the back yard of one or the other of the boys, kicky that as well.
And now they were walking home, arms round each other (nobody made fun of them, Chip the key to that) and the streets seemed blue with the hot yellow sun casting shadows and patinas under trees and round cars, that it shouldn't have cast. Jack thinking, now, summer, and mom back on her regular shift, and no football practice for a while, and ease and Chip had not had a girlfriend this whole year, that Jack knew of, or that he pretended he did not know of.
It had become fairy tale like--the smell of greenness, the taste of the air, the promise of the creek they could skinny dip in by the hill that was always to be theirs, and Chip always near by so Jack would not drown though it was such a shallow creek. And Chip and Jack were silent, and they thought of looking through Jack's legally bought Playboy collection, and Jack was wanting to make love now, as soon as he and Chip got to their home, for it was their home after all, and Mom had thought it great that Jack had been befriended by such a great boy who has his picture in the paper often, touchdown after touchdown.
And they were now older. And they were now more than what they had been a year ago, as well as less. Chip was a bit broader in the waist because he had developed more a love of eating than he had before, and Jack was a bit taller and a bit less gawky and had filled out himself some. Oh hold me. Oh hold me. And work was done that was not work, but friendship, and friendship did not just stand up one fine day and say see you around, nice working out with you, but a girl's coming by my house later and I should be there soon now so I can't come by your house today, but I'll see you this weekend, maybe, Saturday morning good for you?
And then thunderstruck. This was not completely a voice in Jack's always worried always frightened insecure brain. This was what Chip had actually said. And Jack stopped full in his tracks. And cars buzzed past them to the root beer stand a block or two away, the town's main hangout, where even the mugs, real glass mugs, who would dream otherwise?, were frosty themselves, and the root beer stunningly cold and ice in it to make it colder. It was the greatest. Chip would drive Jack there, and would meet people, and tell them this is my true friend Jack, great guy, maybe you would like to get to know him. And Jack pushing away. Jack smiling unbearably and hurtfully, don't pawn me off, Chip, don't you dare.
And now the words. Now Chip stopped and came a foot or two back to his suddenly mannequin friend. The words you don't say to a friend. The worlds you don't say to someone you have been having sex with FOR GODS SAKE. You don't just sex around and then its off and running to the next game. And who the hell are you Chip Marren? What the hell do you think you'll be like later on in life, make the team be the star on the college team too no doubt, but what about later on when your belly starts its beer gut, its a law with former high school athletes, especially football players, and your hair won't be as thick and golden, nature takes care of that, and you won't have a pretty face and you won't be popular with the girls because you are not Adonis anymore, and you'll get married to some hausenfrau and have some brats and you'll work as a pitchman/salesman at some used car lot--it's in "Rabbit Run" by John Updike, he knows what's ahead for you even if your are too much of a stupe.
Jack saying the words he just thought he was thinking silently. Chip put his hand on Jack's arm. Jack shoved it away. A red Volkswagen passed by with screaming kids in it.
"Fuck you!!!" Jack shouted at the departing car. Chip's hand tightened on Jack's trembling shoulder, of his shuddering body. Jack turned his attention back to his ex friend.
"Doing me a favor." Jack said, and took off his back pack, empty now for the most part, sign of the season, and threw it on the cement that was hot as hell, and he was hot as hell and Chip was too and this was hell, so the hell with it. "Doing the fag kid a favor."
Chip pushed backward and turned around. "No. You got it wrong. You never asked me if I was gay." He was so hurt. There was hurt in his voice. There never had been before. There had always been calm and never anger or hurt. But Jack felt anger and hurt all the time, all his life before Chip and after and he sometimes unloaded on his only friend in the world and Chip would hold him tightly and they would feel each other against themselves and the delights that brought each of them.
"We did--we did all--and you aren't---" And Jack was turning around in circles almost he was so damned mad. "You faked it. Or, yeah, you didn't fake it, you're a bigger fag than I am, the girls are just a disguise. YOU FAG. YOU FUCKIN FAG." And Jack's face was red and his voice was boiling and when he started shouting and did not stop, thinking he was going to pass out, Chip hit him in the face, the first time he had ever inflicted pain on his friend, and Jack fell to the ground, his upper lip bleeding, the breath knocked out of him, and Chip standing over him blotting out the hateful endless mocking sun, and Jack's back hurt like hell. And Chip held a hand to him, and Jack scurried away like a beetle that had landed on its back and could not turn over, all those little legs trying to bicycle the sun to get on its front again, and failing and failing.
"God, what's wrong with you, man?" Chip was whispering. And Jack looked round at the houses on either side. He shuddered. He was embarrassed. He did not want to hurt his friend, or embarrass him or Chip's family which was quite well to do in this town, so he let Chip help him up.
"Football's no good for being a queer." Chip said and walked onward alone. It was okay for Jack to say fag, not okay for Chip to say queer. It just felt that way. He watched his friend walking the golden path of the sun. Go with him. Why? He's got a girl coming over. I can see him a little time on Saturday morning. He probably has a date that afternoon, to see the new horror films down town, and he will make a little time for me here and there, and get out of this, you idiot, he was playing you for a fool, he was laughing at you, even when he stuck up for you in a fight at school and fought the guy himself, even then he was.....
....no, he wasn't, you don't be that close to someone and they just one day kill you inside and never think a thing about it and have something missing in their consciences, friends, Jack thought, with total eleventh grade innocence, believed that with all his heart. It would take a while for the world to explain it otherwise, and he still refused to believe it, as long as he could, without being an idiot about it.
Chip walked. Cliché name for a football star. Not his real name. But cliché anyway. He watched those flanks that hand had caressed so many times, he watched the back of his friend and knew what his body was like under those clothes, and Chip was straight and tall as ever, especially the straight part. Let him go. Let him go. You don't need some future used car salesman with a beer gut and ache in the head for all the glories that will never happen to him again, and the baby's mewling and her diaper's needing arranging, and I leave that to you my fellow former lover, I leave the whole superior ball of wax to you. Chip turned around. He looked at the pavement, could not look at his friend.
"It wasn't that way, Jack." Simple. Honest. True. In other words, Chip, like always.
People in their yards were pretending not to notice them, because people in small towns do that, save it up for the nightly gossip, but not at the time the whatever juicy stuff was happening. They listened and observed, the women under their bonnets, the children playing catch, the men sitting on the porch reading the local rag, and missed out on not a thing occurring in the street drama. Ears attentive. Eyes narrowed and watching the boys, the FBI and the CIA operatives could not have done a better job, reporting their information back to their superiors.
Then Jack walked slowly to his friend. Chip, smarter than Jack, wanted to tell him how it was, wanted to explain as best as both of them could understand it. Jack would never kneel naked down at Chip. And Chip would never hold his friend's head again. And they would never be again. Not ever in the whole long history of everything forever and ever amen.
Jack wanted to cry. Chip did too. Chip walked all the way, eternity, back to Jack, and they both knew they were about to have their hearts broken, that the worm in the apple when they first started, last summer, with the Playboy magazines, Jack gradually replacing the pictures for Chip who had no longer need of them, had come into view. The beginning so sweet, the ending so painful. They would try to work it out. They had to. They worked too well together. It was just the sex stuff was over and that would be tough for both of them. Even Chip, truly.
But Chip put his arm around Jack's shoulder, and they began to walk, amble, and in time, Jack put his arm around Chip's shoulder and everything was going to kinda be all right.
Hopefully.
After they did some talking.
"The girl," Chip said--Jack's heart froze--"can wait."
And then, Jack thought, I'll be the one doing the waiting.
An idea, with this warm sweet boy beside him, arms around each other, I'll have to get used to. As the town and the day went on, and they cuffed at each other, goofily walked into each other now and then, they being still young enough to do that and get away with it, as Jack smiled for Chip and Chip smiled for Jack as best they could.
Timothy Stillman B Keeper silvershimmer@earthlink.net