(no subject)
I left town the day I graduted high school. It had been a hard few weeks-- and I needed to be anywhere else. I couldn't handle another summer sitting in the park, chain smoking and talking about the same six people.
So I took a job up North. I was going to be a day nanny. I was staying with my aunt and cousins and had true independence for the first time in my life.
My Cousin kept bringing his friend over to the house. You. You were six months younger than me-- and I'd known you most of my life, but you were always just a weird kid who always hung out. But I started to notice you...
My second week in town-- My cousin threw a party. The kind of drunken debauchery i hadn't ever experienced. I'd been drunk. I'd been to parties. But this was different. This was small town drinking. You showed up and sat at the table with us and we played drinking games. A guy across the table kept sliding his unmarked bottle of pink booze to me, and I-- being innocent enough-- kept drinking it right out of the bottle. It was sweet, but it burned going down. I found out later that It was everclear and kool-aid.
It didn't take long for me to be sick and too drunk. But-- so was just about eveyone else, and all I wanted to do was throw up and go to sleep. I got up and wandered to the bathroom, stumbling. I threw up, I swished mouthwash and when I opened the door, you were there. You asked how I was. I was a mess. You took my hand and led me to the living room where it was relitively quiet and sat on the couch. I sat next to you and we watched cartoons. I didn't remember falling asleep, but when I woke up in the morning, you were sleeping siting up with my head on your knee.
I tried to get up quietly, but the leverage change of me lifting off your knee woke you up, and you smiled. I found out later that while I was in the bathroom, the guy with the pink bottle of booze announced to the whole table that he thought he could fuck me becuase I was hammered. You made sure I was safe.
You walked me back to my aunt's house (it was just up the street), and i hugged you goodbye.
As the days went by-- you were around, like always, but you would spend time talking wih me. You offered to pick me up from my nanny job, drive me home, and that's how it went the rest of the summer. We went on simple adventures. To go smoke cigarettes on the rocks at the breakwater, To play Atari and play records in your messy bedroom. Just driving your blue box mobile long into the night, through the country and singing along to the radio.
One night, while laying on the floor of your room, you whispered to me between sides of the record. "Will you go with me to see my son tomorrow?"
I didn't even know you had a son. You were too young to have a son.
But I went. And it was terrible. Your ex cursed me out for being there. But we got through it and we got in your car and drove. I didnt ask where we were going. I just watched you wipe tears off your cheeks with the back of your hand and let the silence swallow us up. We drove for a half hour and you pulled into the breakwater. We sat, facing the bay, bathed in the light of your dashboard, watching boat lights blink in the distance. Still and silent.
And after a few minutes, I reached out and put my hand on your knee. You didint say a word, you just turned to me and buried your face in my shouder and cried. I ran my hands over your long hair. and softly whispred, "Shhhh.. Shhh."
Eventually, you caught your breath and we sat on the grass in front of your car. You told me all of your secrets, and I told you mine. We whspered to each other until it was early-- and we found ourselves covered in the dampness of the dewey morning. The morning smelled tinny and mineral as the waves splashed up over the edge of the breakwater.
Sometimes-- now, the air smells that way after a light rain, or if I'm close enough to catch a lake breeze, and I miss you. You moved to Florida, with your mother, when the ex stopped returning your phonecalls, and stopped letting you visit your son. It hurt to much to be so close and for it to feel so impossible to be the man you wanted to be so badly.
I heard you're getting married and have another son. And All I can do is wish, hope that you found the peace and stability you were looking for. I know you think about the boy who now would be eleven. I think about how much you loved him and how much I loved you for that.
My time with you was brief and intense. You came to visit me a few times that fall in Milwaukee but It just wasn't realistic. We talked online for a while, but it wasn't the same as whispering secrets.
Sometimes I think about if I could have tried harder. What could have been? I learned so much about what it meant to wear your heart on your sleeve from you. You were never afraid to do the right thing, or show how you felt. You were vulnerable and honest and I think it may have ruined me a ittle bit. I get so wrapped up in vulnerability. So drunk on the emotion. I think you were the person I was most intellectually intimate with in my whole life. With you, It was okay to be Raw. Ripped open. But the safest place I had ever been.
I've been searching for something like you ever since.