You Can Say You Knew Me When (30 page)

He sheds his clothes. I stare unabashedly at his cock, which like the rest of him is compact and charismatic, a glistening head poking out from a tight foreskin. He follows me and we approach the giant totem together. We stand side by side within spitting distance of it. The water rushes forth, the ground damp with spray. I close my eyes and try to see it: my father at twenty, standing here—planting his flag, spilling his seed, taking care of his need—like Jed and I are now, exposed, aroused. “Do you feel it, Jed? There’s this chain of history, and we’re part of it. All the guys who’ve been in these woods and found this place, not just my father but all these drifters and fur trappers and sailors who jumped ship and Indian scouts who went too far, men who left behind their homes to explore, looking for who-knows-what, probably some of them as fucked up as us, and they found this place and felt it talking to them, just like we did. Think about how many of them had to whip it out just like us, ’cause that’s the way to pay tribute to this big motherfucking goddess. Go for it, Jed, get it rock hard for her, you’re part of that chain, little brother. Offer it up, yeah, that’s right, don’t hold back, show me how you make your cock feel good.” Hypnosis, pornography, scripture, at once unplanned and from deep within, I’m like a bell being struck. The notes could be on-pitch or off-key but all of them are already within me.

Slats of sunshine land on our sweaty skin, igniting the copper in my hair, the flames inked into his arms. His eyes stay closed, making some mental landscape from my words, but I stay alert, transfixed upon the spectacle of Jed adrift in sensation. He cups one palm beneath his furry balls, wraps the other around his shaft, the unsnipped hood sliding beneath his thumb’s pressure. I restrain myself from laying a hand upon him, though it’s all I want to do. I fear the delicacy of our equilibrium, the potential eruption of disaster, even as Jed merges more deeply into my fever-dream. And the more I urge him on the more his hands roam free across his skin, fingers tugging on the nipple ring, fingers between his lips, fingers disappearing between his thighs, slipping out of sight, probing.

Could be the drugs, could be desire, could be the collision of two fucked-up lives: When his eyes open and meet mine, I see in his expression—so concentrated, almost furious—a mirror of my own aggressive need. I see how this need is always there, how it makes me powerful and brings me low. This urgency boomerangs between us, our eyes unblinking. No more words. We are both shaking our heads in the universal sign for
no.
Why
no
when we are refusing nothing? I peer deep into that negative void, where I see desire like a primal ooze, sticky and inescapable as a tar pit. I feel the heat and the trap of it, and I hate that I can’t refuse it, and I hate that Jed is deep in it too, another trapped man. I see that being part of this sexualized chain of men means carrying this desire, this conflict, all the time, feeding off it even as it outflanks you. Hating and desiring Jed because I hate and desire something deep in myself. A feeling close to desperation seizes hold and I drop to my knees on the clay in front of him, I reach out and place my hand where his has been stroking and in that gesture I am five years old in the shower with my father, we are on vacation, a camping trip, saving water showering together, and as he soaps his penis I reach out to touch it, I let the heft of it register in my palm in the split second before Teddy grabs my wrist and thrusts me away, his voice an angry panic,
What’s wrong with you what are you thinking
, and when I open my eyes what I’m thinking is don’t hate me don’t hate me don’t hate me, but it’s Jed who has my wrist and is lifting me back to my feet asking,
What’s wrong what’s wrong why are you crying
?

I was a mess of tears. Jed kept asking, “What did I do?” and no matter how much I assured him it wasn’t his fault he remained visibly distressed, helpless in a way that reminded me how young and inexperienced he was. After a minute I couldn’t even be sure why I’d broken down; I had woken up still trembling from a nightmare whose matter was already forgotten.

He walked away and stayed out of sight long enough to leave me wondering if he’d come back at all. Our unfinished wank had been abandoned without comment—a relief. Jed no longer seemed like my soul brother, just a stranger with an unsettled sexuality. My crying jag had flushed clean my brain, and, newly sober, I couldn’t locate that mythical connection that had seemed so clear a half hour before. My deranged monologue still resonated in the air, embarrassingly, the way a cheesy porn soundtrack loops in your head long after you’ve shut off the set and stowed away the video. The rock formation didn’t even look like a vagina anymore. More like a giant walrus.

Jed returned, saying, “Getting emotional is the first sign of dehydration. You need water.” But we had almost none left.

“I bet the stream is safe to drink,” I said, though Jed was worried about giardia. Take your pick: an intestinal parasite or drug-induced dehydration? I gulped until I felt bloated.

Teeth chattering, queasy and colder now in the dropping sun, I wanted only to get home. My mission, to whatever degree it still mattered to me, had been concluded. But Jed insisted that it was a short hike to where we’d find the railroad car, and that he could get us back to where we started, even after dark. We got dressed and went on, together.

With the sky beginning to blaze the colors of sunset, we came out of the woods. Different terrain again: a rolling grassy plane. A pasture. We picked up what seemed to be a tractor trail curving around a gentle slope. “This was probably where the railroad tracks were,” Jed said. “They had to have a way to get the cows to the ranch.”

We hopped a fence. Around another bend, Jed stopped short.

“That’s it,” Jed said.

“Where?”

“Dude, it’s right there. Do you need glasses?”

Toward the horizon was a smudge of darkness. “That’s not a railroad car.”

“Not anymore. Come on.” He broke into a jog.

As I approached, it came into focus: a dilapidated structure, three rotting walls supporting the remains of a roof. A partially exposed rectangular box, deep and narrow. Forty years ago, it could very well have been a freight car.

I stepped up onto a springy floor. “So this is it. This is where he slept.”

“He’s not the only one.”

My eyes adjusted to the dark interior: beer bottles, torn condom wrappers, a wad of dirty blankets.

Jed had my backpack opened and was groping around inside. “Where’s the flashlight?”

“I saw it this morning.” I stuck my hand in the bag. It wasn’t in there.

“Dude, we can’t get back without a flashlight.”

“You said you could make it in the dark.”

“Yeah—with a flashlight!” he yelled. “This is totally fucked!”

“Why am I not surprised,” I said, running my hands through my hair. I cursed my name out loud.

Jed looked at me askance. “Dude.”

“What?”

“Dude, what did you just say?”

“Enough with the
dude
already!” I protested, though I was pretty sure I knew what he was referring to.

“Who’s ‘Jamie’?”

That’s what I was afraid of. I was too depleted to do anything but cave in. “Jamie is me. That’s my name.”

“Your name is Teddy.”

“Teddy is my father’s name.”

“I don’t get it. You said—.”

“It’s an alias.” Trying to cover my tracks only made me irate. “We’ve got bigger problems. Don’t be a freak about it.”

“You were the one talking about our
connection
before. All that bullshit about the
chain of history
.”

“Yeah, it was bullshit,” I spat and turned away. The westward sky was all bruise-colored vapors stretched long and thin. “We have to get out of here,” I said, “while there’s still some light.”

“I seriously think we missed our window of opportunity.”

“You missed it,” I hissed. “I wanted to go home before.”

“Who lost the flashlight, huh? Look, if the moon comes out and it’s bright enough, we can do it. But for now…” His voice trailed off.

My body chemistry moved to its next phase: pangs of hunger, clawing like a rat trapped under my ribs. Worse than that, the creeping in of depression. A haunted paranoia.

It was the sex: what I’d said, what he’d done, who we’d been together. The elephant in the room. We were most likely going to spend the night out here, and it was going to be an awkward stretch of hours before we could sleep, if we could sleep at all. The temperature had fallen with the sun, the air was damp with incoming valley fog, and nature’s noise was constant and alive, conjuring images of slimy crawling things and prowling beasts with sharp teeth. Vibrant birdcalls had given way to an eerie chorus of frogs. Jed wouldn’t sit near me, and he didn’t want to hear about sleeping in the railway car, though it was moderately more sheltered. “It smells like cow butt in there.”

Everything he said was tinged with menace. I feared that he might assault me in my sleep or, more likely, steal away with my bag and the car keys. So I summoned what strength I could to cheer him up. “Look, it’s one night. We know we’re capable of lasting out here one night. My father did it, right here.”

“Who cares? It still sucks.”

“It’s just how you look at it. This is all supposed to be an adventure. That’s what my father was writing about in his diary—.”

“Dude, you ever think you’re a little obsessed? I mean, you fucking gave his name as yours.”

I scrambled for a comeback, but all I came up with was “Ouch.” I spoke so meekly it seemed to embolden him.

“Let me spell it out, dude. You’re a liar, and I don’t trust you. You’re probably just waiting for me to fall asleep so you can rape me.”

“Jed, that’s absurd.”

“You try anything,” he threatened, “and I’ll fuck you up.” I heard his footsteps moving away. When they stopped, all visual trace of him had disappeared.

Time passed, unmeasured.

Two coyotes howled. One, then the other. They didn’t sound far.

“Jed, are you still out there?”

“Yeah.” His voice was nearer than I expected. All at once he was back in the car with me. “It’s a good sign,” he insisted. “The coyotes would stay away if mountain lions were hanging out here.”

“What if they come over here for a sniff? Check out the new meat?”

“They eat rabbits and gophers and shit,” his voice mocked. “They don’t eat full-grown men.”

“Uh-oh,” I joked, “what are
you
gonna do?”

“Fuck off.”

“Why don’t you just smoke more pot and quit tripping on me?”

He sat down, close enough that I could sense his mass alongside me. After a long pause, he said, “I don’t know why I’m so tense. It’s not like I have anything waiting for me.”

“Where are you going after this?” I asked, digging a cigarette out of my bag; I’d been rationing, but now was the time to put one into action. In the lighter’s flare I saw his face for the first time in hours. The paranoid harshness was gone. He appeared simply unhappy. Even before he answered my question, I sensed that I was at last going to get something real from Jed.

Jeffrey Edward Howland was nineteen years old. He was indeed a college dropout, but he’d lasted less than a semester and moved back home. He had sneaked out of the house—his mother and stepfather’s, in San Jose—late at night two weeks ago. He’d only been working at Casa Adios for a handful of days before I’d turned up, before he’d been fired. That pay-phone call to his mother had been his first since leaving. Those calls he’d made at the Sea Foam had been to friends, not clients.

“So why’d you run away?”

“I’m not a fucking runaway, dude. I’m nineteen, I can do whatever I want.”

“And that is?”

“I gotta fly free.”

I suppressed a smile: In the short time I’d known him, he’d never seemed so tethered to the world.

“My mom claims if I go back to school, they’ll buy me a car. It’s fucking blackmail, but I could use the wheels.”

“If you don’t go home, what will you do?”

“Maybe what I’ve been doing.” He shook his head, dragged deeply on the cigarette. “You know, hanging in motels. With guys like you.”

“Guys who buy drugs from you?” I asked, pretty sure that wasn’t what he meant.

“Actually, I kind of overstated the dealing aspect. Someone gave me that E.” He sighed deeply, letting loose a confessional rush. “Most of them are older than you. Usually businessmen. Married, middle-aged guys who’ll cough up fifty bucks to smoke my pole.”

I suppose I wasn’t surprised by this. Jed had a hustler’s personality, whether or not he was actually getting paid for sex. But I felt bad just the same, and not only for him. I didn’t like the idea of being the latest in a string of freeway johns. I didn’t like the company.

“Look, I can drive you home. First thing tomorrow.” I needed to do this, not just to clear my throbbing conscience but for his own good. Counsel him back to the nest, set him on course for a college degree, a new car, a stocked fridge, central heating. Get him away from
guys like me
.

“I don’t know about going home,” he replied. “I need some time to think.”

“Time we’ve got a lot of.”

“Teddy? Or Jamie—what am I supposed to call you?”

“How about Obi Wan Kenobi?”

“How about Jar Jar?”

“How about Ass Kicker?”

“How about Fudge Packer?”

At least we were trying to have fun again.

He asked, “Does your girlfriend know about you?”

Here goes.
“There is no girlfriend, Jed. There’s a boyfriend.”

“Really?”

“Maybe an ex-boyfriend by now.”

A long, absorbent pause. “You know something, dude? I can’t figure you out.”

“Neither can he,” I said. “Neither can I.”

The fog came in high, stripping the charcoal sky of stars and eventually dropping to claim our hilltop. Banks of moisture wrapped around us like cold smoke. This was the absolute absence of light. You couldn’t see your own hand gesturing. We were out of cigarettes, desperately thirsty, and both complaining of headaches. My mouth was gummy and sour. I thought about trying to kiss him, less from desire than as a tactic to work up some spit.