"The Price of Admission"
by
Timothy Stillman
Paul was a series of interlocking luminous garden walls. He was calm seas and good sailing. He was the brightness of the first yellow sun scrawl of summer and all the friendly waving inviting colors there are. Sharp jeans creased to a stiletto edge. Always white shirts that billowed a bit and seemed like the kind of things gypsies would wear. A tan face lean with eyes that were always seeming to sparkle like champagne is supposed to. His fingers were long and his hands were like in paintings. His neck was tall and his black hair was razor cut and his ears were perfect little pink conch shells. He was the place we went when we needed succor. He was the place we went when we needed some moments to drift on.
Oddly enough, I hadn't thought of him for a long time. Not until last month. And then the thoughts returned, fact, fancy, the ending of things. What I thought of him then. What I think of him now. Intermingled. It's difficult to think of him as having ushered any door open to anything but beginnings. He looked, in high school, like a young man, not a boy. Though most boys I knew then did. He always seemed to exist in beginning spring when the weather starts looking out for summer, starts that murmur in a boy's heart that says the table is getting clearer and the slides of summer are being put in the place of textbooks and school and bad school lunches like not completely thawed fish sticks and cold cardboardy French fries. I loved Paul. Everyone did. You couldn't help it.
I can't remember that he ever had a detractor or an enemy or anyone who ever did not say a good thing about him. He was the school golden boy. He was on every committee there was. He was the star basketball player. He also played football. Won trophies for both. He was to be the school valedictorian. He was from a very well off family. And he was nice to me. Most kids were in those days, (nodded at me in the hall sometimes, this counted then as kindness) but Paul was different. When I would hide in the boys' room when lunch time rolled around because it scared me to be with the others without that classroom structure to hold things together a bit, he would on occasion come into the rest room, find me sitting on the old steam heater. Before I could get self conscious, he would sit beside me. He would reach into his shirt pocket and offer me a stick of Spearmint gum, which I would gladly, hungrily take. He would talk to me about tests upcoming that he was having problems preparing for. And of course it was a lie. He was smart as a whip. Ten to the highest power smarter than me. Look at my report cards to prove it, next to his.
He had a way of sitting that was just so fine. Even on that idiotic steam heater that never worked, in the school rest room. He would sit like he deserved to sit down, even there, like he owned that damned heater and it was the most normal thing to pass time on it, and if he sat by someone, that meant that person should ease up, relax, and know they had a right to be in this world too. We wouldn't talk much in those circumstances, he would just make my gooney hiding in the rest room seem less gooney. He would never call me to account about why I hung out by myself when I had a chance. Not that of course he ever noticed. We just talked, in the rest room or in study hall or home room when he touched on me and my life a bit, for an instant, before he turned to his real friends. And I carried the memories like my private stock of sunbeams the rest of the day and that night as well. Though he made everyone feel like a big shot. Like he gave a damn. And it was good being beside him. Though for some reason I couldn't wait to get away from him, and it wasn't solely because I didn't want to do anything dumb. I did everything dumb all the time. He never laughed at me. That counted for a lot.
Because that was Paul. He had a steady girlfriend through high school and later married her. They had two children. Paul was a moment, an entering into a peaceful place where the wallpaper is yellow like sunlight coming onto it on a fragrant flower bursting morning in the kitchen when you feel the world is warm again, more forgiving, is more solid underneath you than it would have been otherwise. Sometimes Paul would sit by me in class too, say something nice to me, right before beginning a world that didn't include me, or sometimes gentle me out of the rest room, into the lunch room to grab a bite before the next class, just because he was hungry and needed the company, forgetting me as soon as he sat with me at the table with the others. And he made you believe. Live for those brief moments. The girls all had crushes on him. The boys wanted to be his friend. The teachers were most fond of him. He was never arrogant. He was always graceful.
Once on an early May Saturday morning, I was taking my walk, happened by not just happening to, pass by his house. He was outside in the drive, washing his dad's Plymouth. Paul was wearing brown shorts and no shirt, no socks but only tennis shoes. I stopped in reverence. I stopped, frozen in the heat, nailed by the sun, with the way a flood of emotions come to a person and you want to disappear and want never to have been there, and at the same time, you want to rush up to someone like Paul and stay close and chatter. Which is what I learned to do around him. Chatter. But again he never made me feel badly about it. He smiled at me from the driveway, the concrete wet with soap suds and water, the sun rising and red and gold sky, and he, in the vivid colors of a dream easily created and forgetfully dismissed, tossed me a chamois as I sort of stumbled up the drive when he motioned me with his hand, I had no other choice, and asked me to give him a hand with the car if I wasn't doing anything at the moment. I said somehow, no, ah, and he smiled and I smiled back. I have a terrible smile. But he made it seem better than it was.
His voice never had that southern accent like other kids' did. No, I take that back. Very few kids in the school then, here in the South, had a southern accent, very few of the teachers as well. It was like we were all transported from another place, a place where the accent was almost non existent, mid western, and we all of us respected words, how to say them, sentence structure and the rules--our voices did not uplift or surly down drag into a drawl or a strained cat gut bite whiny toad fever or get strangled in honey and molasses. So I joined him, he told me to take off my shirt, and so nonchalantly it would have made you laugh your butt off to see, I did and oh so casually tossed it to the soapy grass on the left side of the concrete. Paul was busy with the car and I got busy too. He never spat like the other boys. He wouldn't do a thing like that. He took an especial pride in his work, whether it was taking a test, diagramming a sentence on the blackboard, shooting free throws, or making a winning touchdown. He--concentrated. Worked to get the smudges off the windows. Worked around the chrome. He was attentive. He cared. His eyelids would lower a bit. His mouth would pucker just a tiny fraction. His fingers touched the grace of his work, his talent, and no thing, no game, no test, no person, no memory came back from his presence that was not the better for his having been there, I believed.
Because school was still in session, then, I was in my thin period, having to take P.E., not eating most days, the doughy months of summer still ahead, for TV watching, reading, and eating ice cream as much as I could hold and I could hold a lot. But this morning, we two so lean together, as he made the sun sparkle on the car, he washed and polished and I did the busy work on it that he made seem so impressive. I had never washed a car before, or assisted, but he told me how to do it without telling me how at all.
I guess at this point I should tell you I had a woody, though I didn't, even though I had a difficult crush on him. I wanted to. I tried. But no go. Because, though we were in P.E. together, and in the locker room at the same time, it was a time of great fear for me, as I dressed and undressed as quickly as I could, not looking at anyone, desperate they return the favor. Especially not looking at Paul. Who was so attractive. But my love for him was not at all a turn on for me, especially that car washing morning, in the drive beside his parents' ornate large ranch style home that I loved so much because Paul lived there--the sexuality was not for him at all. It crumpled within me. I never played my secret sex song imagining doing anything with him. It would have wrecked everything if he had been standing before me, if he had really looked at me, had really considered me. There are just people like that. If they are beside you for a time, or you see them at a distance in the corner of your eye, then you can dream clouds about them that excludes them totally. And you are always ready to run away from them, because you care so much.
At this time, the car washing incident was at the end of ninth grade, I had learned to dream without prospects, and sometimes I wondered if Paul knew what that was like. I never wanted to watch him do anything sexual, it would have not been something Paul would do, or so it seemed, but Paul was himself without the shell, he was what you saw, and from his friendly uncreased inviting open smile with one slight dimple on the left side of his mouth that turned upward at the end just a small way, it seemed it was okay for him to be human, but not for me to be. All contradictory.
I know more of what he looked like then from the pictures of him, a great many of them, of course, in the high school annuals, once removed from reality. Because he was the center around which all the swirling centrifugal force magnets went flying, and he would take care of you by just asking you to give him a hand with the car, while he did all the work. And it all made me horribly wretchedly uncomfortable and itchy. The smell of the car, the splash sound of the water, the aroma of the polish, the soft feel of the cloths, the day that was warm and nice and made me remember the baked rolls streaming with gold butter I had had before my walk had begun. There on the circular streets of Whirmantler Lane, where the people lived who owned much of the town and its environs.
Paul was always in my thoughts in such a confused, opaque way. I saw Paul turning around from me when he bent down, lengthening the shadow of me that fell on his bare left leg, legs that still only had some downy hair on it, and I would see the circumference of him bending over, the long bare spine knuckled back bent forward, the hips bent out, the long gangly legs strongly planted and firm, like a tree come to moveable life, which made my hand to my jeans zipper go just a moment or two and then I felt wrong, stupid, like it was something required that I didn't want to do, that hurt inside, and then I felt so sad, and my shame increased. It was like he was already a man, already far away in time, and this only a memory from many years ago, when it was still then happening.
Then he was standing back up, having gotten some damp towels and wrung them in the blue plastic water pail, and he handed one to me and we began our work again, me copying what he did, and he pretending he did not see me copy it, identically. I saw his mortality at that moment. I saw him put together so wonderfully and vibrantly, but I saw he could break like everyone breaks in time. I wanted to hold him, to rush to him, to protect him. Me. He was stronger and taller and better and could look after himself. But I wanted to hold him and cry on him and not let life happen any further. That's how it is with strong people, when that moment comes like the sun halved over the gray slate roof of his parents' sprawling house. You see forever in it. And you know no one, not even Paul, is up to forever. Do they ever know it themselves? Till it's too late?
And that started that day of Saturday dreamy for me, like a rainbow in my pocket, when we finished, and I walked away happy to dwell therein for at least a month, like I could just drift without troubles or worries along my weekend, because it was like a weekend then that was mine. We said so long. He didn't ask me inside. I didn't mind or believe he should have. We were both ringing wet when through with the car. He didn't seem exhausted. I did. I went home and slept peacefully for about an hour. We had hardly talked at all. Something in me missing though. Something exacted. I felt it, but did not know it. Paul never dominated. He was always quick with interest. But he was thoughtful in responding. I tried my best to feel something other than gratitude for him, but it was always deflected. I felt I should. But I didn't know how.
He wasn't apple cheeked. He wasn't comfortable farm boy. He was from a world that on a high school level was different than yours and mine, at least mine for sure. He went to parties. His parents were on the country club circuit. He played golf with his father and buddies on Sundays. Rolling fairways and Paul, hand in glove. I'm sure he excelled there too. It hurt to imagine him parking with his girlfriend. Seemed impossible. Like imagining your parents going at it. It made me want to cry sometimes. I tried alone as always making love to him. I gave that up soon. For it was not right to make the gatekeeper of the land he opened to me, perhaps, no, no perhaps about it, that he did not know he opened to me, and closed to me at the same time, as he walked down the mental links farther away each time. He was so fluid in his movements, so instantly and easefully graceful. The leaves were full and thick green on the trees overhanging the drive and shadowing the smudges that always seemed to be under his eyes as a harbinger of whatever was to come, might come, but of course surely would not. His arms were thin, as were his legs. He was a marionette of the time, of the summer coming straight ahead. His face seemed to always have tan make up on it, his long eyelashes seemed to have been some how been shined with mascara, though of course there was none of that on him. It made him look a faun. A puppet. And something else he would too soon become as well. The satin behind him would fit the picture perfectly. I can picture it eyes closed, exactly. There were other boys then I noticed, like Paul, though not many. And somehow I didn't notice Paul either, in that crazy cornered way, look but don't look, then feel good about it. But good about what?
Maybe nobody dared really notice him. Maybe especially not his girlfriend. For kids, I guess, in the days of this, love was a soft song on the car radio, and a trip after school to the A and W root beer stand. Love for some of us, or maybe for just me, was reserved for titles and writers of books, for TV shows and character actors and film directors and those little boxes of dreams they tossed our way while never knowing or caring how they captured our hearts. When I finally saw the even then-old movie "Rebel Without a Cause" at the Wednesday morning summer matinee for a dime, I fell in love with Plato, or what Plato represented, and though Paul had it all over James Dean, still I imagined in that popcorn crunching, kid shouting, Coke slurping theater that morning, that Paul and his girlfriend were like James Dean and Natalie Wood, and I could be like their kid, like Plato imagined it too, and we could live in a house that was our own, and I could be a part of something, be a part of their lives.
For years, when I saw that film and how nice James Dean is to Sal Mineo, it made me cry, but it didn't remind me specifically of Paul. Till last month. And then I watched the film again, kept remembering, kept wanting to do something, to have said something to Paul when he kind of baby sat me in the school restroom because I was scared and trembling, or when he let me help with the car washing; this jerk kid that was me could have helped, could have said something, but what?, what and even now I can think of nothing that would have worked. Sal Mineo died so beautifully in "Rebel, " so noble, so romantic, and James Dean screamed out for him and knelt over him and wept for him, and all the roles were reversed for me at that point. Kids who seem to be brave may be the most scared of the lot. Or maybe just the most hollow. And if there was love to be had, it should have come from me, instead of Paul helping me along like he helped everyone else along. I guess no one ever said thank you. I guess we never do, cause it would mean too much.
In our PE class we played basketball alot. And of course Paul was the greatest. He was all over that court, and the basketball was his for life if he wanted it, he would leap and run and dribble and pass and toss himself up to that basket like gravity had forgotten that he had to be pulled to earth too, as he slam dunked over and again. Way up to the rafters he seemed to go while the rest of us cheered him on even if our cheers were our wide eyes and wide open mouths that emitted not a sound, as sadly we became used to him. As sadly he became one of us because he either didn't mind being or didn't mind letting us think he was. And yet, this too should be said, he exacted a certain price from me and from the others who were allowed to be in his presence, without being his friends, like we longed to, and like I for one was frightened to even try, though I tried all the time.
Paul's interlocking walls of beautiful gardens were reserved right at the outset from the rest of us, for his friends who were not as friendly to us as was he, and for his girlfriend, his steady who would walk down the hall with him, their arms interlocked, she so much shorter than he, her head against his arm, looking up at him adoringly, almost so that it was an angry making thing, but no one got angry with Paul. He knew about how to use without doing so. He knew about friendliness, not a back slapping used car salesman kind of friendliness either. But an easy smile way deep inside you, that totally disarms you, and makes you grateful for really nothing, or really everything, or a smile way deep inside me at least, when he would say my first name, and wave at me in the hall way or after school when I was getting my bike, to go home, while he was going to his parents expensive car, to be either picked up by someone, or when he was old enough, to drive his own, new, expensive, well scrubbed, beautifully tended car. He was one for keeping a person in their place. It came with the territory.
Maybe he didn't mean it to be that way. And maybe my feeling of impotence around him, maybe my inability to fantasize about him was of my own doing, my own problem, I certainly couldn't ask anyone else about that, and of course it's my own business too for that matter. Also no one would have cared. My summer friend, Jimmy, who I also loved, till he cracked it all apart, I also could not feel warmth toward, awe, yes, and the magic of being with him, yes, but like with Paul I was always beneath him, and he never let me forget it either. Much as Paul did, but Paul was nicer about it. Not like a smug star signing an autograph for a fan, not that at all, but the class system was in place for both of them, and it went down deep inside me, that said you can't even dream about me because you would feel badly and you would destroy whatever holds you together the most. So when I read the paper last January, and when I had been filled in about the intervening years by a friend from those days I hadn't talked to for a while, I found myself sitting on my sofa, and weeping, the paper crumpled in my lap.
And in me there was a curious disdain that came after the tears. And a certain anger that was still underground while I watched "Rebel" one last time, that night in Paul's honor. I doubt I shall watch it again. In those days, I kept my feelings to myself without any trouble, without thinking of time or patience or justice or courage or loyalty or experience. I would, as I called it then, called it to who?, rub my penis with images of boys from movies and TV shows I cared for. My first friend was Tommy Rettig, a boy on a television program, "Lassie," this was early grade school, and I pretended I talked with him before I went to sleep and that he slept with me, and that sometimes when sexuality began to burgeon in me, we could hold each other and just feel what it was all like. Tommy Rettig was closer to me than Paul. Closer to me than Jimmy. And he was just on TV and in some movies, but I felt such a warmth for him, such a caring, and when my hand dared not stop its rubbing out of fear the feeling of closeness and goodness and warmth would have a terrible hurtful ending, I then relaxed and sighed and closed my eyes and held love next to me. Tommy would tell me it was all right. That he had these feelings too That he would know what to do. And I could imagine enveloping myself in him for as long as I wanted and as much as I wanted. I joyed in imagining taking his clothes off. In swimming with him. In taking a bath with him. In sharing all those sexual dreams and lusts I had that no one back then would believe a good boy such as I could possibly conjure up. I loved him as I loved my sex to distraction in those early masturbation days. I could tell him the soft things, the silly things, and his smile would not be a shadow at the side of my eye, but directly on me, and he would kiss me, and would be joyed when I rubbed myself. Tommy was a boy. Like me. Seeming lonely and given to melancholy as was I. He wouldn't have had to stoop down to find me there, like Paul and Jimmy would have, if they ever did, and they did not.
Tommy Rettig died a few years ago. Paul (not his real name) died last month. I wept for both, but I wept for Tommy more because just his playing characters that weren't real but in a dream to me, he was in my deepest presence. Not that Paul wasn't real. Not that he wasn't considerate. But I wanted to run the fields of Jeff Miller's television farm with Tommy. I wanted to lie in the fields and put my hands to his hair and bring his face to mine in all those imagined aromas of jonquils and soft mown hay and hot blazing summer sun and itchy tall summer grass, I wanted to hold him and for him to hold me. For his beautiful collie dog to run and play with us. I was so eager for Tommy to see me naked and to tell me stories of how he learned to jack off, and to put his legs together with mine, and not really do anything but just to be with him, to be a part of him. I felt if I could somehow get to him, it might work out. But somehow in the intervening years between grade school and through out high school, Paul had stolen my right to at least imagine that. Made it muffled. From a distance.
It would be stupid to accuse him of that on purpose, but in totality, it encompassed that as well. To be grateful for this makes me somewhat ashamed too. Paul got to be wanted, to be loved, to be admired, to be adored by his girlfriend and all those other girls. And the last time, that final night, I saw "Rebel" after reading of Paul's death in an obituary column of my home town paper that got all this distance to me about a week late, and for the first time, I found James Dean to be too mannered, too swaggering, too obviously in love with himself, and treating Plato like a kid, like someone he felt sorry for and that was the extent of it. Mineo's character still broke me. It is just so good, so luminous in the true way, it was just a performance, but it was me somehow in spite of the differences. Paul never swaggered like James Dean did, never seemed to be in love with himself, seemed to love his girl with all his heart, but after a time, I finally got the point. And I had to go away from those interlocking brightly colored warm breezes of him to get my bearings again.
After I saw the film that night, I phoned that old friend from my high school days who filled me in on Paul--he had had a successful life, to a point, had married, had children, had attained a successful position at a hometown business, but then something went haywire. There were certain addictions. Certain things thefts to provide money for himself. He spent some time in prison. He died of cirrhosis of the liver. He died alone in a hospital. Over a time of long agony. His funeral was poorly attended, save for some of his relatives, and for two women from his graduating class whose job it was to go to funerals of classmates, or to other events involving the old gang, the happy ones, like weddings and christenings, the sad ones, like the deaths of parents, the death of one of us, the death of forgiveness, the death of what happens when the clock runs down, and high school golden boys were too long ago for people to really remember.
I wish I could change the ending of this. I wish to god I could change it in real life. But it's true and I can't. I miss Paul even though I hadn't known I had missed him for a lot of years. But I feel churlish in saying, in knowing, that there was a high price of admission, so unknown and so subtle for so long a time, to being let in for a moment to his world, and I resent this, the cost, and the finally being aware of it. I'm sorry about him. I'm sorry about Tommy Rettig. I'm sorry I can't be more generous, but these days it's as close as I can get. I didn't know what else to do about it, so I'm writing down what I should have written down long before now.
the end