Note: If you've read the chapter before this, the irony will soon be apparent. The last was four months coming: this one is two days since it. I wrote five pages -- my biggest installment yet -- in one short afternoon, and now I'm presenting it to all of you. Thanks to Marc, Bill, and Dave for writing to me with their thoughts: folks like you keep me going. I ranted last time (I assume), so now I'll just let you get down to the business of reading.
Blues of Summer Mustapha Mond VIII)
The sun sets and darkness rolls into the valley like a sleek tidal wave; before my mind even registers the passing of the last violet light atop the western peaks, the night swells full and black, voluptuous, slithering through the underbrush and into the cracks in the tree bark. We scramble about for firewood, flashlight beams cutting through the leaves and brambles. In the center of our clearing, Tad has one up and roaring frenzied in no time. The stars are more clear and defined through the canopy than I have ever seen them in my life: there are honestly thousands, each like a brilliant pinprick in the giant Camera Obscura of the Universe. For a moment, as some cool breeze strays off the creek and across my face, I wonder just Who might be on the other side, watching. And why is it that mountains always push our thoughts to the spiritual?
I look around and see the upturned eyes of my friends, something like quiet awe burning in them, and know their minds are occupied with similar thoughts. The night has quenched the day's energy as the temperature dips; though not cold, the air bears a hint of a chill, and I suspect my sleeping bag will come in handy. Somewhere in the valley a screech owl cries, his voice trilling downward, plaintive, like an otherworldly elegy.
"Buddha would have approved of this place," Shark proclaims suddenly in his deep voice. "Silent simplicity, a contemplative spirit in the trees, an unadorned life. If you could only find the strength to leave all that rubbish behind, and come out here..."
Tad smiles broadly, hearing his own feelings about nature echoed, though in slightly different terms. I'm a bit surprised myself; knowing Shark's character, Buddhism seems infinitely too placid and calm to ever keep his interest. However, it is neither of us but Dalton who leaps to respond:
"Dude, I appreciate your Buddhist kick and all, but I think you should give it some more time before you pack up for the monastery. I mean, only last year you practically got a star and crescent moon tattooed on your forehead. God help us, you'll probably be a Jehovah's Witness by Christmas."
"Hey now, don't mock my beliefs, fleeting though they may be," Shark replies with a grin. "After all, I don't make fun of your faith in...what...apathy, laziness, gluttony...and for your information, I decided tattoos look terrible on black folk, and I'm much better off with the big Buddha earrings."
I butt in. "As much as I love the wilds, sometimes I think you're better off in the heart of the biggest city you can find, listening to what people say, trying to find your meaning in..."
"For Your information," Dalton snaps back, pretending anger and clearly not having heard me, "I am a nihilist. I'm intelligent and young enough to not have kids or a pension yet, so I can afford to be. And the only difference between me and you is the funny orange robes."
Tad silently crawls over to my side of the fire and joins me on my log. Even two feet away, I can smell him -- dirty sweet, clean sour, like boys are supposed to smell -- and feel soft heat radiating off his hands. He's straight, I remind myself, and turn to him as a friend.
"Do you really feel that way about cities?" He asks me, his tone so low it seems almost conspiratorial. Across the way, Dalton and Shark continue bickering back and forth, dropping all pretense of having an intellectual discussion. I swear sometimes they're like a married couple.
"I'm not really sure," I say. "I just get that feeling sometimes, when I'm in Georgetown or Oldtown and it's really crowded; when people are flowing all around you and you become more than anonymous, you become an observer, and there laid out for you are the patterns of the cosmos, being traced in stiletto heels and loafers. Conversation like the whispers of angels."
Tad rocks back away from the fire and thinks for a moment, odd patches of shadow blocking out parts of his face. "I can see your point. But I've always felt like in cities, all that noise and confusion just block out whatever it is there might be to learn; you need to get as far away from civilization as possible before you can hear the voices within yourself speaking truth."
"I see that too," I say. "I guess it's just a question of seeking...what...God?...in yourself, or in seeking the same in the external world. They both seem just as valid to me."
Tad nods slowly, his features warm and light.
From the other two, one final eruption, "One more word and I'll beat the uppity out of you!" and then all is quiet again, leaving us in the crackle of fire and hot smoke, cool winds, and murmurs of night animals. Darkness plays the woods like a conductor, it seems. In particular, rising above the other voices, we hear the droning buzz of crickets, dozens, coming from all directions at once like the wood nymphs of yore. Shark suddenly starts to chuckle, hiding it behind his fist, but it grows and swells, and then the rest of us get it, and in moments the woods echo with our mad laughter, great booming peals of joy, and as it gradually dies down the animals are silent and tears streak like mercury down Dalton's face.
"That was the best," he says in a broken voice.
He might be bragging but no one will dispute his right to. The previous Fall, though not even a senior yet, he had conceived of a prank to surpass all others, and acting secretly, telling no one, he carried it out. One the day of Freshmen orientation, when all 500 wide-eyed ninth graders are herded into the Auditorium to hear "inspiring" rhetoric about the school and speeches on punctuality and scholarship by the administration and faculty, Dalton snuck into the back of the room and open two medium-sized boxes. Within minutes, 2000 live crickets had blanketed the entire room and everything -- and everyone -- in it. I was in gym class at the time, out in the field on the far side of campus, and even I heard the screeching cacophony as 500 kids screamed simultaneously. School was shut down for a week, and though no one could actually prove Dalton was responsible, on suspicion alone they suspended him for two months. He served his punishment happily -- a school legend in his own time.
In the memory of that most sublime act, we all sink down a little further; our eyes grow thicker. I am cool from behind and warm from in front; the firelight dances like a hypnotist's parlor tricks. Even on the raw ground, my head resting on a gnarled root, I could be asleep in moments.
And then the moon rises, over some distant peak -- which I don't know: in the dark I have no sense of direction. As it crests, as its blue-gold radiance suddenly beams over the black valley, I have to choke back a cry; this moon is not my moon, that shriveled raisin cloaked by suburban smog; this is Diana's moon -- this is the moon that inspires men to hew blocks of stone for great temples, striking and shimmering like the sun's fairer brother -- lily white and pure at its height, soft like the skin of a lonely teenage boy.
Tad stands straight up, seized by majesty. Dalton rocks back on his heels and howls like a wolf pup having made its first kill. Shark beams, spreading his hands far to his sides and breathing in deep breaths. And I -- all I can do is sit and shiver.
"Whoooooo!" Screams Dalton, changing his pitch to more human registers. "Would you look at this? It's like a cloudy day but at midnight!"
He's right. The woods are glowing, as though pixie dust is seeping out of the trees. I can make out every detail of the forest around me. Not far off, Tad has moved to a large tree and is peering his head around it at the moon, as though scared it might attack.
"I was about two blinks short of oblivion," I say, "and now I'm wide awake and ready to go."
"That's it," Shark yells, himself up and rhythmically jumping in place. "Us. Creek. Skinny Dipping. Now."
Without so much as a moments hesitation the four of us are racing heedlessly toward the creek, not even bothering to put shoes on, just barreling through the underbrush like mad boars on the rampage. Luck is with us, for we are deposited in the exact perfect place: the base of a tall, slender waterfall, cascading down flat sheets of rock, forming a deep pool at the bottom. We hoot and holler, tearing our clothes off, and just as I am fumbling with the button on my fly a wave of fear sweeps over me with such force I nearly fall down.
There, in various stages of undress, are three of my best friends in the world, whom I have certainly never seen as I am about to. And here, me, the gay one. I taste stomach acid in the back of my throat. I always hear about the traumatic experiences other kids have in locker rooms across the country, but in our county, homophobia and public schools conspire to create an atmosphere where anyone nude in the locker room would instantly be ostracized -- needless to say, no mandatory showers. I have not been naked in public since the last time my mother had to change my diapers in the ladies room.
I look again and Tad, Dalton, and Shark are all stepping out of their underwear; though they are in front of me and facing forward toward the water, I have a perfect view and take in (willing or not) every nuance of their backsides, from their heels to the tips of their hair, Tad and Dalton's pale white skin, Shark's so dark it seems almost to radiate color. They all race to the water and leap in with sloppy cannonballs, then scream as they discover how cold water from mountain springs can be. They surface, splash for a moment, then realize I am not with them. I am still frozen on the shore, hands on my zipper.
"What are you waiting for?" Dalton cries. "We're not going to bite, I swear!"
"Yeah," Shark says. "And don't worry if you've got a small one. Dalton is hung like a cashew nut ("HEY!") -- you couldn't possibly be worse off."
I laugh nervously but still can't seem to move. The eyes of all three are on me, and though their smiles look innocent, I interpret them as crocodiles, waiting to feast on my weakness.
"Don't worry," Tad echoes in his soft voice. "The water isn't all that cold. It's deep but not too deep. There's nothing to worry about."
I stare at Tad for a second and he stares back into my eyes. Then he grins showing all his teeth and waves me to come on. Like that, the spell is broken. He knows, and yet he invites me anyway; there is nothing to worry about.
Later, we're huddled around the campfire, our teeth chattering, waiting to be dry enough to put on some clothes. "If only I brought a towel," laments Shark, a feeling I definitely share. What an odd sight we must be. Four teenage boys, naked as the day they were born, rocking on their heels and trying to get warm. Though still energetic, we are all clearly exhausted at the same time -- we're yawning in rounds. As soon as we feel comfortable doing so, we jump into boxers for sleeping (what an odd thought to me, putting On clothes to go to bed), though this does not help with the chill in the air much.
"Ok, kids," I say, pointing at the utterly neglected tent. "No wind, or under the stars?"
"No wind," Shark and Dalton say simultaneously.
Tad shifts uncomfortably, and I notice little goosebumps on his mostly hairless chest. "I'd actually kinda like to sleep outside, but I guess if you guys want to go in the tent..."
"I'll stay out here with you," I say, only catching the double entendre too late. But Tad just smiles gratefully. "I hate to break up the party, but I think we've done a lot together already -- a tad more than usual, in fact."
"More room for us, bro," Dalton emotes emphatically. "But don't you even think of breaking in once we've sealed that puppy up -- the cold air would probably wreck my fragile constitution."
"The princess and I will be fine," Sharks says, heartily slapping Dalton on the back. "But if anyone wakes me up before noon, you'll have an angry black man on your hands, and out here no one would ever find your corpse."
They walk away toward the tent (far from the fire for safety reasons), and the last thing I hear is Dalton's smarmy voice saying, "With your father a banker and your mother a lawyer, I Bet you got a lot of black anger..."
Then it is just Tad and I, alone for the first time since our discussion earlier. He's busy clearing himself a place for his sleeping bag, and I watch him in silence. I don't really have an ideal body type, but I know enough to know he's it for Most gay men: boyish, wiry thin frame, smooth, faint muscles from nature, not from a gym. In the firelight his skin is a perfect expanse of tiger-orange, dancing to red, swept by color. I see in profile his small nipples, erect from the cold; the way his boxers hug him when he bends over.
"Aren't you tired?" He asks suddenly. If he noticed me staring he doesn't say anything. "Don't you need to get your sleeping bag ready?"
"Um..." I mumble.
"Actually," he says, then pauses. He slowly swivels his head like a pendulum, thinking. "Actually, I'm still pretty cold, see?" He presents his soft underarms to me, with their forest of goosebumps and goosedown hair. "So if you wouldn't mind, I'd really love if you just shared mine with me. It's kind of a tight fit probably, but..."
"Wait," I say. "You do remember that I'm...um..."
"Gay," he says with no hesitation. "Yes, I remember. I also remember that you're my best friend. Just because you're gay doesn't mean I feel any differently about going swimming nude, or sharing a bed with you if we're cold. Does it bother you to share a sleeping bag with me?"
"No," I say, stammering, not quite believing this conversation. "It's just that..."
"What?"
"I just..."
"Derrick," he says, moving up to me and grasping my upper arms, one in each hand. "I told you before and I'll tell you again. You have nothing to worry about with me, not now, not ever. Got it?"
He pulls me into a bear hug, or as much as a small guy like him can. My head is on his shoulder and with a shock I realize the moisture trickling down my cheeks is, in fact tears. I'm crying. I begin to cry harder, and Tad pulls me harder against him, saying, "It's ok, it's ok, you're my best friend, it's ok." Finally I am done, and blurry eyed but not embarrassed, I pull away a bit, Tad squeezing my hands in his.
"Are you still worried?" He asks with a smile.
"Well," I say through the sniffles, grinning, "just don't hate me if I pop a boner in the middle of the night."
Holy Christ, did I just say that? But Tad only laughs, taking this as a sign of my recovery. "Don't worry, Derrick. It happens to all of us. Promise You won't hate me if I get one tonight."
"Hey now. This is my problem, remember? I'm the one who's attracted to boys."
"That's true," Tad says, "but sometimes they just happen when you're happy being wherever -- or with whoever -- you're with, regardless of gender, age, relation to you, species. Heck, sometimes they just happen when you're on a bumpy schoolbus."
I'm speechless. I had no idea Tad could have such insight into the human condition; I think of him as so remote, so removed from interactions. Just when you think you know someone, and they go and surprise you.
And with that, not too far from the fireplace, we climb into the sleeping bag one at a time, two boys in boxers, and with Tad's arms wrapped tightly around my middle, we fall asleep.
Final Note: So that's that. Boy o boy, do I have some nifty plot stuff worked out for the future -- I think I even know how to end this bad boy. That's Waaay in the future, though, so don't hold your breath. If there happen to be more than three people reading BOS right now, I'd love to hear from the rest of you, too -- XfragmentofanangelX@hotmail.com, and you win a cookie if you know what the X's signify. We'll see when the next one comes along, but I don't think it should be too long. Loneliness and boredom are a good combination for production.
Also, if you haven't yet, you should check out Jaden's Never Too Far Away, which he just finished (the first book, anyway). It's got everything BOS doesn't: a storyline, drama, humor, tragedy, sex, and it's about 20 times longer. That's at http://gayclub.utdallas.edu/jadededge/NeverTooFarAway.html.
Good Christ, I need a boyfriend.