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Before I could ask what it was he wanted me to let him do, he’d unbuttoned my shirt and pulled one of my nipples into his mouth while pinching the other between his thumb and forefinger. I thought for a minute I might pass out from the mix of pain and pleasure. Next, he undid my belt and tugged down my dungarees and jockey shorts. Almost before I realized where this was heading, he had me in his mouth doing to me what I’d spent most of that picking season doing to him.
He pulled away abruptly. “Don’t,” he admonished, “come in my mouth.”
I nodded weakly, astonished and confused. How had we come to change places? My hands found their way into his tumultuous hair; I’d never left anything so luxurious, except maybe his mouth enveloping me…
“Stop,” I shouted pushing him away. He rocked back on the balls of his feet as my come shot onto my chest and shoulder and chin.
“Holy crap,” he said. “Don’t ever fuck a woman. You’ll get her pregnant for sure!”
Happy sixteenth birthday to me.
Sunday, November 23, 1975, Locust Hollow—In church today, Reverend Jack told us as our Thanksgiving Fellowship dinner is fast approaching, we should reflect on what we are most grateful for. I think I’m most grateful for Juan, who I miss. Though, of course, I cannot say this out loud to anyone, let alone at the Fellowship dinner table.
If Rio first introduced me to myself, it was Juan who confirmed my suspicions and expanded my world view; it isn’t just Rio I want but a boy in general. I’d thought my love, mylustfor Rio was unique and special and limited to just he and I. I thought Michel de Montaigne, one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, had expressed my and Rio’s situation perfectly; when asked why he loved his deceased friend Etienne de La Boétie so much, he’d simply replied, “Parce que c’était lui; parce que c’était moi”—Because it was he; because it was I. It turns out to be something more diffuse, a more generalized proclivity. Something I don’t even have a word for.
But whereas with Rio, I dream of a future, a life together, my relationship with Juan, brief as it was, seemed temporary, transactional, and once he got off, the brief exchange of affection, if not altogether forgotten, was diminished, pushed aside, a youthful indulgence driven by hormones and accessibility.
Perhaps because I’m only sixteen, or maybe just because I’m so lonely, I’ve attached too much romantic significance to my encounters with Juan, for if there’s sex and a bit of affection in his touch, it must be love, right?
I wonder if it would be different with Rio.
Orange (1976)
Friday, March 26, 1976, Locust Hollow—I was sitting in the bleachers in the gym watching Rio and the other boys play basketball. I’m a bad player—disinterested in the sport, not competitive—so no one ever wants me on their team. Mr. Gold usually excuses me and sends me to sit in the bleachers. I’m always there alone, so I was surprised when he walked up and slid across the bench until he was a couple of feet from me—not so close that he’d have to scamper away if I rejected his advance but not so far that he had to shout.
“Can I ask you a question?”
Sure,” I said. No one really talks to me, so I was curious.
“Why are you always staring at Rio? What do you see in him?”
“He’s so…handsome.” Realizing I’d probably said the wrong thing, I quickly added, “I wish I looked like him.” I knew that wasn’t true. It was more than that. It was simpler than that, but it was also more than I could tell this strange boy.
“Yeah, he is. And he has a great body. But he knows it. It makes him arrogant. But you’re really cute…”
“Me?” I asked, literally pointing at my freckled, speckled self and my jug-handle ears.
“Yeah, you. You’re cute, but you don’t seem to know it. And you’re sweet and kind, even though people aren’t kind to you. That, to me, makes you far more handsome than Rio, so I don’t know why you’d wish to look like him.”
When I said nothing, he seemed to grow exasperated. “Look,” he said, “you’ve clearly not noticed, being so obsessed with Rio and all, but I’ve liked you since sophomore year.” Still, I said nothing, and he continued in a rush, “I mean I like you—like I’m supposed to like girls.”
His words made me feel unmoored, light-headed.This is what it must feel like to be intoxicated, I thought. How had my parents stood it?
When I still said nothing, he hesitated, then, less sure, continued, “You like guys, right?”
I thought of Rio, how that day last January, he walked into our homeroom and changed everything. I thought of Juan, the only boy I’d ever kissed and had sex with. I’ve been bereft and alone ever since he left, but he left me entirely sure of who andwhatI am.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Would you like to hang out sometime?”
“Hang out?” I repeated stupidly.
“Yeah,” he said. “Like go on a date. We could go on a picnic or maybe go swimming in the quarry. I just want to hang out with you. OK?”
I recognized him, of course. His name is Jackson. He is Reverend Jack’s son. “My name is Jackson,” he always says whenever some new person calls him Jack. “Jackson, not Jack. Jack is my father. Please don’t ever call me Jack.” I know him from school and from church, where people are always praying over us, which feels like bludgeoning, the New Testament their cudgel. I hadn’t understood why until Rio. These prayers are led by Reverend Jack, who is like a Nordic wind: cold, relentless.His voice, though, is all heat: hellfire and damnation. Even his comfort, offered grudgingly to his flock and under extreme duress and filled with resentment, is cold. There is no shelter in his Bible. Reverend Jack is terrifying.
I looked at Jackson more closely. We are roughly the same height and build, but where he is muscular, I am slender. I look like my mother; if she had been a boy, she would have looked like me. He gives off a heady masculinity that is absent from me. I find it enticing, dizzy making, like smelling strong perfume or drinking pop too fast. His eyes are melancholy, his mood blue. He is square jawed; even at just seventeen, his face is craggy, pitted with the memory of pubescent acne. He looks like he was hacked from flint. Jackson looks like a thug, but there is nothing of the thug in his manner or demeanor. He’s handsome. I’m not, even if he says I am. His manner is as rough as his hands. I tried to remember what I know about him.
