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The other kids dislike him, freeze him out. If I am outside their circle, Jackson is on the moon. They say it’s “cuz he ain’t like us.” Him asking me out on a date made me realize that he isn’t like them, and neither am I, but now I understand he is like me. They say he can’t be trusted because he is a PK, a preacher’s kid, and assumed to be a “narc,” spying for Christ, reporting, judging. And maybe that’s why Jackson likes me, sought me out—because he is different, as different as I am.
If I’m honest with myself, I have to admit I’ve noticed Jackson before. He is one of those masculine boys I admire. He can catch a baseball and dribble a basketball; he’s good at shop class, whether it’s building a birdhouse or a transistor radio or a small motor. He’s helped me a few times when I’ve struggled to complete whatever project we are assigned. He is singularly attractive in some indefinable but concrete way—but even inmy lonely state, it hadn’t seemed wise to spend too much time lusting over the son of Reverend Fire-and-Brimstone.
“So do you want to go out with me or not?” he asked, pulling me from my thoughts.
I remembered my first time with a boy—myonlytime, actually. It had been awkward and hurried. After, he’d seemed embarrassed, though when I asked if I could kiss him, Juan said yes. That kiss, more than the sex, is what convinced me, solidified the knowledge of who I am, that this was what I wanted. What I did not want was secrecy, to be forced to skulk about like a criminal, clinging to the shadows, unable to make or endure eye contact. Rio and I, I had decided, would love in the light.
Now here was this boy, a boy like me who liked me, offering to pull me into the light.
“Yes,” I said.
Saturday, April 3, 1976, Locust Hollow—Today, Jackson and I went on our first date. He drove me in his old bright-orange pickup truck up to the orchard for a picnic. His mother had packed him a wonderful lunch, no doubt expecting he was going to take some girl a-courting.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” I said, biting into a slice of watermelon; its juice ran down my chin. Jackson wiped the trailing juice away with his finger and placed his finger in his mouth, sucking off the juice. I was instantly aroused.
“Why would you,” he began, withdrawing his finger from his mouth, “like Rio? I mean, why would you like a boy who doesn’t like other boys?”
“I didn’t know there were other boys who liked other boys. I thought I was the only one.” Normally, I would have been embarrassed to admit something so naïve, but already with Jackson, I felt safe and able to express any thought I had. “I thought Rio might end up liking me because I am me, as I like him because he is he.”
Jackson cocked his head to the side and pulled a slice of watermelon out of an iced plastic bag. “You’re a strange bird,” he said. “You don’t think like—or even talk like, for that matter—anyone I’ve ever known, but I’m glad you like boys because Ireallylike you.”
I was getting warm, so I pulled my long-sleeved polo over my head. Noticing the series of tiny spots lighter than the rest of me and red in some places along my arms and around the fingers of my left hand, Jackson asked, “Do you have a rash?”
“Sort of,” I said, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “I have eczema. It’s on my legs too.”
“Does it hurt?” he asked, looking concerned.
“No, not really. It’s uncomfortable, and sometimes it gets really itchy.” I did not tell him that when I was younger, I used to run my hand and my arms under the hot water faucet in the bathroom, preferring the feeling of being burned to the ceaseless itching. I did not tell him the worst part of it had been the constant teasing, the echoing taunts…icky skin, icky skin…and my grandfather’s insistence, “There ain’t nothin’ wrong with you, boy. It’s all in your head.”
“Is there anything you can do for it?”
“Yeah, I use a steroidal cream when it flares up and Lubriderm lotion, which the apothecary orders special for me. I lotion…a lot. That helps. Doctor says I’ll outgrow it.” Which I found ridiculous because he made a skin condition sound like the pair of high-top white shoes a toddler might wear. Still feeling self-conscious, I reached for my polo shirt again.
“You don’t have to cover up from me,” Jackson said softly. He cocked his head. “Is that why you’re so shy? You know, it’s not so bad to look at, and besides, it makes you, you.”
I closed my eyes and tried to let his words wash away the years of misery, the teasing.
We talked of other things after that—I don’t remember what. But I remember never having felt so at ease with someone before.
Saturday, May 1, 1976, Locust Hollow—It’s been a month since Jackson told me he liked me.We’ve become friends. I definitely like him back. When I’m with him, I have a sense of contentment that I haven’t felt since we moved to the farm. So, I was disappointed today when he told me we couldn’t meet up because his father wanted him to plant a garden in front of the church. I couldn’t imagine this because the ground in front of the church is all concrete slabs, hot as hell in the summer and slippery as an iceberg in winter. Curious, wanting to see him, I hopped on my bike and rode to the church.
The road was rutted, dry, and cracked and kicked up so much dust I ended up walking the bike mostly. I saw Jackson, shirtless in the midday sun, covered in sweat and slamming a pickaxe against the unyielding ground. I’d never seen him shirtless before. He was much more muscular than I would have imagined. Black hair curled out from under his arms andacross his chest; his nipples rose like succulents from the wild grasses of his dark chest hair. Farther down, where his hair thinned into a narrow trail leading to his waist, the mound of his protuberant navel, like a scoop of ice cream or a sand dune on his flat stomach, peeked through his hair. Under the worn dungarees he wore, I could just make out the curve of his penis, more prominent and bigger than my own. A surge of desire for him rose up so suddenly and strongly, I thought I might swoon. Steeling myself, moving my bike into position to hide my erection, I called to him, looking just above his head so as not to stare at his nipples or what lay just below his waist.
It seemed to me Reverend Jack had sentenced him to hard labor for some imagined sin, most likely related to me. I mean, who plants a garden in concrete in October? I said as much as I called to him. Jackson shrugged, dropping the pickaxe. “If that’s the price of being with you, I’m fine with it,” he said. He smiled. That smile warmed me more than the midday sun.
I wasn’t strong enough to help him break up the concrete and he only had one pickaxe anyway, so I retrieved the pieces he broke, put them in the wheelbarrow, and dumped them in the weed-choked lot next to the church. As we worked, we talked, sharing our histories easily, eager to learn about each other. Sometimes we fell into a companionable silence.
We spent most of the time talking, though—about everything and nothing. I felt as if the more we learned about each other, the deeper in love we fell, quite as if Cupid, sitting in the trees above us, was, hourly, shooting arrows into the hearts of my sweet young would-be lover and me. It was a heady feeling, and for the first time, I felt the sting of my parents’ absence, my loneliness, and the weight of my grandfather’s enmity begin to ease.
The sun began its descent, though being so close to Jackson, I felt no cooler.
“We both need to get home to dinner,” he said, throwing down his pickaxe and shaking out his corded muscles. He pulled on his T-shirt, and to my disappointment, his succulent nipples and swollen navel disappeared. Growing up, I’d had crushes on, and wet dreams about, Robert Conrad fromThe Wild Wild Westand later on Greg Morris fromMission Impossible, and of course Rio. But this,Jackson, was something else entirely.
Sunday, May 23, 1976, Locust Hollow—Being too old for Sunday children’s Bible study, and while the young ones’ indoctrination fully occupies his parents’ attention, Jackson and I have gotten used to being free to spend time together after service. Usually, we go out to the quarry or poke about the ruins of downtown or go to the old Bijou theatre in the next county where they show old movies all day Sunday for a one-dollar admission fee.
Today, though, we went to his house after service.Once we arrived, he invited me to see his room. I was really nervous. This seems silly to write, but it’s true: I was nervous. I’d never been in a boy’s bedroom before. Anyway, his room is surprisingly neat and organized. He has a little desk and even the papers on it are in neat stacks and neatly labelled. I looked around curiously and was surprised to see he had a number of clocks, none of which seemed to be working. “What’s with the clocks?” I asked, mostly to cover my nervousness but also out of curiosity.
