Tango (7 page)

 

 

NOW THAT I WAS NO LONGER ALLOWED TO GO into the Hunters' house or call Michael on the phone, the only way we could get together was if one of us saw the other riding his bike outside the window at home. I'm sure both of us had very good calf muscles from riding around and around, trying to get the other's attention. As soon as one of us would see the other out of our living room window we'd raise our hand to signify that we'd be in the tree house in five or ten minutes.

By the time we were in eighth grade we were both maturing physically and had been lovers for
nearly two years. In the summertime that rubber-lined tree house could get really hot and sticky. Even though we had a window and a door, we didn't have much ventilation. The smell of the warm rubber could be overwhelming, but we got used to it. Usually we would make out first, and most of our sex consisted of frottage, blow jobs, and the occasional hand job. One time when we were in the tree house Michael was on top of me and grabbed me by the throat very roughly. He looked into my eyes and said, “I could kill you if I wanted to.”

Our cocks were hard against each other and a layer of salty sweat had formed between our bodies. The woods around us were silent and still. His rough hand was beginning to choke me and I looked back at him, staring directly into his eyes. Feeling his grip tighten around my larynx, I rasped, “I know you could, but you won't.” We both knew why. What we were doing felt too good to give up. He let go and kissed me hard on the mouth, and we ground each other's bodies until we came.

On one particularly humid summer day, we
were both drenched in sweat and we got the idea to see if his penis would fit in my butt. We didn't know it was fucking; we just wanted to see if it would work. It did. I lost my virginity at the age of thirteen in a rubber-lined tree house to a boy who was one month older than me and who I hated beyond words.

 

 

IN ACTUALITY, WE DIDN'T ALWAYS KNOW WHAT we were doing, or at least I didn't. I didn't know I had lost my virginity because I didn't know we were fucking. I knew the desire and the feelings inside me were at times overpowering, but even as I was drawn to him, I was repulsed by his aggressive kissing, the way he thrust his tongue into my mouth and mashed his teeth against mine. He smelled of gasoline and mown grass. I was repulsed by the desire and fear I saw in his eyes, his insistence on rimming me, something I would never do, or so I thought at the time. I thought he was foul, a pig. When we were at school I'd hear him say things to girls like, “Why don't you sit on my face?” I thought he was so
disgusting. And I knew that girls hated him too, which made me feel better. It also made me feel like I was in a secret sisterhood, but what the girls didn't know was that I was willing to do all the things he suggested in spite of myself, and I liked it, which made me hate him even more.

He filled me, at times, with repulsion for myself. Often I would go directly from the tree house to the shower, and arrive at the dinner table freshly bathed, flushed and ashamed, making small talk with my family who thought I was being rebellious if I used my fingers to eat directly from the serving bowl instead of spooning the Tater Tots onto my plate first.

Other times we would lie in each other's arms with a tremendous amount of tenderness, and sometimes our kisses were very sweet. I could never really tell if he was actually kissing me or if he was kissing some fantasy that he had made up in his mind in order to make what we were doing more justifiable in his own head. True tenderness or love were two things I couldn't allow myself to recognize at the time. It was part of the deal, part of making it acceptable. Having been
told how wrong what we were doing was, we thought there was no other option but to cling to our shame. Part of that shame required tacit disgust with each other. There was no way that we could possibly be friends or be seen as having any sort of affection toward each other, so our hatred remained as strong as our lust. Until that equation changed, nothing else would.

 

 

AFTER ABOUT A YEAR OF RUNNING AROUND town with great big crosses strung around my neck, and having discovered that I really didn't like being called a Jesus freak any more than I liked being called a fag, I decided to try a different tactic and became more of a class clown. I hooked up with some loudmouthed trashy girls and started honing my skills at sarcasm and rebelliousness toward authority, which came much easier to me than being a goody-goody. I became a “disciplinary problem.” When I wasn't at school or in the tree house, I spent most of my time sequestered in Lesley's bedroom, as far away from the world as I could possibly get.

Lesley was my only confidant, the only person who knew what was going on. Somehow she had a level of detachment that allowed her to be both amused and empathetic to the whole situation. It irked me that she actually liked Michael.

Lesley was going through her own dramas with an abusive father. Her home life was unstable and frightening to her, but unlike me she wasn't able to find escape by going away from her home. She did her best to disappear into it and she, too, felt safer when I was there. When we weren't reading or listening to music, we were plotting how the hell we would get out of town. We both found the real world to be tremendously exhausting.

When Lesley's family moved into the neighborhood they started a library promotionals company out of their basement. Her father was a very striking man with a beard and stood over six feet tall. He was an intimidating and articulate person who would regale us at the dinner table with tales of his youth in the mountains of Virginia, while we ate the delicious southern cooking Lesley's mother was famous for. Helen Pearman
was prematurely gray, also from West Virginia, and in her way, the backbone of the family. The Pearmans had lived on a farm near Richmond before they moved to Hagerstown, so Lesley, her younger brother Jed, and her older sister Nancy spent most of their childhood in the backwoods and had very strong Southern accents, which I found to be incredibly appealing. It was a difficult adjustment for Lesley to go from the relative freedom of having space and nature to the confines of a suburban split-level ranch house. She was shy and withdrawn, but I was able to make her laugh. Even then I had an irreverent sense of humor and so did she. Her family was not religious so when I first met her I spent a lot of time trying to bring her to Jesus, which I think she enjoyed because she took it as a joke. The philosophical discussions we got into were exotic and new to me.

Nancy, her older sister (I say sister even though she was actually her adopted cousin who lived with the family), had terrible fights with Lesley's father, which often resulted in physical violence. Evidently Nancy's mother had been
pretty wild and Mr. Pearman was determined that Nancy would not end up like her. He was brutally strict with both her and Lesley. I rarely saw the full extent of his temper being unleashed on them, but I heard about it and was terribly aware of the skittishness and moodiness that it brought out in Lesley.

This was the early '70s when there were lots of TV movies and books about girls who were mentally unstable. To this day, one of my favorite genres of movie is solitary-girl-in-mental-institution with flashback narrative-catharsis-slow recovery to freedom. I loved books like
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
and
Sarah T: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic
which was made into a movie starring Linda Blair of
Exorcist
fame. One of my favorite TV movies of that era starred Sally Field as a troubled teenage drug addict in Los Angeles who hid a shoe box filled with multicolored pills under her bed, and who dove into a pool during one of her parents' cocktail parties, nearly drowned, and ended up in rehab.

Lesley, too, had a shoe box full of pills under her bed. Although I was very impressed by it, I
never took it seriously. As far as I was concerned, we were both inhabiting our own individual narratives along with our joint one within the four walls of her bedroom, a fantasia of stuffed animals and books, furnished with a yellow French Provincial bedroom suite. I don't think Lesley would have picked it for herself and if her bedroom didn't suit
her
personality, mine was an abomination. One weekend I went to stay with my mom's parents out on their farm and when I got home, my mother had redecorated my room in a colonial style, with a navy blue rag rug and curtains with cowboys and Indians on them. On the walls were James McNeill Whistler prints of cavalry soldiers and American Indians on horses with guns and bows and arrows. There was a toy box with rough ropes as handles. I took one look at my new room and burst into tears. My mother, who seemed quite proud of her handiwork, was shocked by my reaction. Who was this room for? Certainly not me. Never in my life had I ever expressed admiration for cowboys or Indians. I had been on a pony ride or two in my life and enjoyed books about horses, like
National Velvet
,
Black Beauty
, and
Misty of Chicoteague
, the story of a wild pony who swam from Chicoteague Island to the mainland to be tamed by a loving family. But none of these books were based on ideas of manifest destiny. Looking back on it, I can see how that philosophy was being played out in our home as my parents attempted to push my spirit deeper and deeper into that toy box.

 

 

I DIDN'T TAKE LESLEY'S BOX OF PILLS VERY SERIOUSLY, I guess, because we were both free to explore any narrative we desired and place ourselves as the main character in any story we wanted to write for ourselves. I prayed every night that I would wake up the next day and be a woman, and in Lesley's room I was allowed to be one. But I also knew that when I left the room I would still be seen in whatever way the adults around me chose to see me. Although I got angry and frustrated by that, I accepted it as something I was powerless to change. I didn't realize that Lesley was in actuality more desperate than I was.

One day I called to see if she was awake so I could go over and see her, as I did every day. Her mother told me Lesley was ill, but she could talk to me for a minute. When Lesley got on the phone she told me that she had just gotten back from the hospital because the night before she had taken all the pills in her shoe box in an attempt to kill herself. She had to have her stomach pumped. I froze.

“I'll be right there,” I said, and slammed down the phone. It took me a few minutes to get dressed and collect myself. I was absolutely shocked and horrified at the idea that I could have lost my best friend. I didn't know what I would do without her, and I didn't know what to say, but I made my way quickly to her house, walked in the door and down the steps to the family room where she was sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket. I was in such a state that I was shaking. All I could manage to get out was, “If you ever, EVER do that to me again, I'll fucking kill you myself!” I was so angry at her. Even though I saw the sadness and tears in her eyes, I couldn't control myself. I didn't know what to
do. I turned back around and ran out the door. We didn't discuss it again until much later, when I told her how terrible I felt for being so cruel and insensitive during such a horrible time for her, but she told me that my reaction had been so bold and heartfelt, and the expression on my face had been so brokenhearted and full of pain that, in fact, it had been the best possible thing I could have done. It let her know how deeply I loved her, and that her life was valued. It gave her courage to go on. It wasn't the end of her problems, though. In a short time, she was sent away to live with her aunt and uncle in Ohio, and I didn't see her again for quite some time.

 

 

WHILE SHE WAS AWAY, I HAULED ALL OF HER stuffed animals—a huge bear, a giraffe, and a tiger, along with dozens of others, some of which were at least three feet tall—to my house. I thought that somehow by bringing her energy into my room I would be able to recreate our sanctuary in my own home and somehow get by without her. It didn't work. No matter what I put in there
I never felt comfortable. Before she'd gone away to the hospital, we had decided we were going to run away from home and stay with her sister, who had by now graduated from high school and gotten out of town. But Lesley couldn't wait and I was left to my own devices.

One afternoon, I went to a pool party held by one of my mom's coworkers for the ladies and their kids. I loved swimming and was always very impressed by anyone who had a pool. In fact, Michael Hunter's mother said that I was “using Michael” and pretending he was my friend so that I could swim in their pool. Of course at the time she didn't know that while I was using him, I was sometimes submerged in the water, sucking his dick. Parents have no idea about the deals kids make with each other, and how wrong they can actually be.

During the pool party at Ms. Nestor's house, I heard one of the “girls from work” mention to my mother that she had seen in the newspaper that the local community theater group, the Potomac Playmakers, was holding auditions for
The Sound of Music
and was looking for kids
to play the Von Trapp children. I immediately started pleading with my mother to let me audition. I was afraid she would say no, just as she had said no to ballet and piano lessons, but to my surprise she said yes. Before I knew it I was at the Women's Club on Prospect Street singing “Who Will Buy” from
Oliver
. I was cast as Kurt, the youngest Von Trapp.

I immediately developed a kinship with the other actors playing the Von Trapp children, who were from other parts of the county. I knew I was good at what I was doing. One of the girls who was playing Marta, a girl named Carrie Whitely, and I developed a crush on each other, which all the other brothers and sisters thought was funny. My older brother in the show, who later turned out to be gay as well, dared me to kiss Carrie for five seconds, and said that if I did he would give me a dollar. Since kissing her was something I wanted to do anyway, I said I would.