“Tell me some ghetto horror stories.”
“Well, let’s see. Once I saw this drunk guy beating his wife in the street with a chain. My mother got robbed by a guy with a knife. Some guy pulled a gun on my father once. My father came upstairs and got a knife and went back after the guy. I thought he was going to get shot. I mean, what good is a knife against a gun?”
“Jesus, Givens. I’m glad I don’t live in Harlem.”
“Once I was over at my sister’s house at night. And the door started rattling and shaking like someone was trying to break in. My sister screamed — I’m telling you, T.J., you never heard fear in a person’s voice like this. It was pure human terror. But it was just my brother-in-law. He was drunk and he couldn’t find the lock.”
“Jesus.”
“Once my brother-in-law and I caught this Puerto Rican guy in his apartment. We opened the door, and this guy was right in the living room. My brother-in-law chased him down the fire escape, but he got away. Just imagine if it had been me and my sister instead. We’d both be dead, right?”
“Yeah. That guy would have definitely killed you. Jesus.” T. J. was lying upside down on his bed with his feet propped up against the wall.
“So now you’re an Oreo,” he said.
“What?”
“An Oreo cookie. White on the inside and black on the outside.”
“What color is my skin, T. J.?”
“Black … brown?”
“It’s black. That’s all there is to it. I’m black.”
“But on the inside you’re white. I think you’re whiter than I am.”
“Fuck you. Where did you get that expression from? Oreo cookie.”
“From your friend Keith Hanson. He was talking at lunch about Oreos — black traitors. He’s really radical.”
“That’s his opinion. He’s not exactly the head of the Black Panthers, you know.”
“I guess I’m pretty lucky to be rich. But we’re not really rich. We’re just comfortable. You know, secure.”
“What does your father do?”
“Fuck if I know. He works for a bank.” T.J. spun his legs around, got off his bed, and disappeared downstairs for a minute. He brought back two cold bottled Coca-Colas and sat cross-legged on his bed once more.
“Do you like it at Briarwood?” he asked me.
“Yeah. I like playing sports. The work isn’t that bad.”
“There’s no girls, though.”
“Yes. That’s a problem.” T.J. and I still towed the party line on girls, even though we’d implicitly agreed a long time ago that boys were more interesting.
“I’m not that happy at school.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, I have, you know, this reputation. Everybody thinks I’m an asshole. Everybody in the whole school, even the faculty.”
“That’s why we threw you into the pond.”
“I still haven’t gotten you back for that. But I will, don’t worry.” T. J. didn’t realize it, but I respected him for being able to provoke people into throwing him into a fish pond. I could never motivate a group of people like that.
“I’m thinking of transferring to another school, just starting all over again with a new identity. Make some new friends. I couldn’t even find my own roommate. It’s embarrassing when they have to assign you some jerk of a new boy for a roommate.”
“Why didn’t you room with Kent Mason again?”
“I got sick of him.”
“Last year he was telling people you were turning queer on him. He said you were getting queerer by the day.”
“Who cares what Kent Mason says? Nobody likes him. He’s a depressant.” T.J. took a long swallow of his Coke. “I thought you and I might make good roommates.”
“You should have asked me.”
“I did ask you, sort of.”
“When did you ask me?”
“Well, I didn’t exactly ask you, but I dropped a hint. You just didn’t get it.”
I remembered the day in the Common Room when T.J. asked who I’d be rooming with next year. At the time I thought he was just being curious. I frowned now at the opportunity I’d missed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“There he goes into fogland again. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you’re not the quickest guy in the brains department, Pete.”
“Tell me all about it, T.J.”
“No kidding. I’ve got you all figured out. Your brain is totally conditioned by tests. As long as somebody asks you a direct question, you can give them the answer. But if nobody asks you a question, your brain just sits there, like a blender or something, waiting for somebody to turn it on. So most of the time — like in life — your brain Just sits in neutral.”
“Thank you, Dr. Freud.”
“Anyway, I didn’t think you wanted a honky for a roommate.”
“Why not? Where are you getting these expressions from?”
“I’m kidding. I know you wanted a single room so you could beat off in private.”
“Leave me alone. I’m going to sleep.”
“Now he’s going to tell me he doesn’t whack. I know you whack off, Givens. I heard you moaning in the closet on Bennett’s corridor.”
“Good night, Tommy.”
“Hey, Pete.”
“Good night. Tommy.”
“Pete!”
“What?”
“Tomorrow’s your lucky day.”
“What’s happening tomorrow?”
“Go to sleep.”
In the morning T. J. and I took the Volvo into town to shop for food. Then we stopped at the pharmacy. I waited outside while T.J. picked up his asthma medication and surveyed what I could see of the town.
In ancient history class, we’d learned about the Fertile Crescent, a strip of land in the Middle East accredited with the birth of civilization. I liked the sound and the idea of the Fertile Crescent; I’d appropriated the title as a nickname for Old Greenwich, which on a per capita basis had produced by far the highest number of Briarwood’s cutest boys. I couldn’t believe I was now actually standing on the modern Fertile Crescent. So many sexy boys come from this town, I thought to myself. Mark Fix, Billy Green, Tim Rainier. And of course, T. J. And boys I hadn’t yet met.
The town’s very small shopping area was deserted; it seemed ordinary, like any town, a pocket of middle-class familiarity that might mislead a misplaced traveller to think he was in an average American village, though I knew better. I inspected what I could see with affection for this fertile wellspring. From where I stood, the right angles of the nearest intersection appeared to shear into a distended X. To the east, the street vanished into rising sunlight. In the distance I could see a long grass hill spanning the horizon; beyond it, the Connecticut interstate. Miles off, the sun gleamed off the tops of automobiles floating rapidly across the view, in silence. I could hear only birds chirping their morning ritual song. Their call, sweet and precise, and emboldened by human absence, echoed in my eardrums as though its source were only inches away. To the south and behind me, to the west, about a hundred yards off, the street slipped into shadows under thick tree brush — a color scheme of dark greens and black — and disappeared around wooded corners into the privacy of wealth. I wondered about the boys who lived beyond those curves — their late-evening thoughts, the troubling secrets that might even make them cry at night.
T.J. came out of the drugstore smiling brightly, his tea-colored eyes absorbing light and firing it back (his special gift for ocular photosynthesis). “Let’s go, Pete.” We drove back to the house and cooked french toast and bacon for brunch.
T.J. gave me a pair of his shorts to wear, and we went swimming in the backyard pool. We made roast beef sandwiches for lunch, and watched a tennis match on TV while our bathing shorts dried. I was a little bored, but T.J. got up close to the screen and commented on the players’ tactics.
Later he showed me around the house,
pictures of his mom and dad and his older brother Jeff, a freshman at Harvard. T.J. had changed into blue jeans, unfastened and half-unzipped, that drooped an inch or two over his bare hips and hung too far over his heels, scuffing on the floor when he walked.
“All right, Givens. There’s one rule you have to follow in this house. No clothes after sundown.’’
“What?”
“No clothes. No pants. It’s warm enough in here.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m not kidding. Take your pants off.” He started to laugh.
“Wait a few minutes.” T.J.’s scuffing blue jeans had given me a hard-on.
“Not later. Now.” T.J. was giggling now, revving up to hysteria as I’d seen him do so often. He pushed me backwards a step, then started flipping the underside of my dick through my shorts with his fingertips.
“What’s this, Givens? A boner with no girls around? You’re not queer, are you?” T.J. was fully hysterical now: giggling and grabbing at me, skin flaring, breathing audibly and bobbing his head. A foot away from me, I could feel his body like a pot of boiling water, bubbling and popping, pouring off warm steam. He grabbed the band of my shorts and wrestled them down over my hips. My dick flopped out.
“You’re not the only guy in town with a boner on,” he said, reaching down into his crotch. He needed his full hand to tug his erection out of his pants. It fought back for a second, then snapped out of his jeans. I looked away.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s natural,” he said, kicking his way out of his jeans, the head of his dick cutting lively figure eights in the air. “You never worried about it before.” He frowned as if my dumbshow of surprise was too absurd even to be funny.
We sat down on the edge of his bed. T. J. snapped the head of my dick with his fingers like he was shooting marbles. Then his, then mine again. “It’s fun, right?”
“Why do I have to take my clothes off?”
“Are you complaining?”
“No, just wondering.”
“Because I’m going to fuck you, that’s why.”
I didn’t know what he meant.
T. J. shunted back against the wall behind his bed. “Don’t you know about the new sex? You shove your dick up the other person’s ass. It doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a guy.”
“You’re crazy. It couldn’t fit.”
“It goes in if you push hard enough.”
“I don’t think I want to try that.”
“Just keep thinking about it,” he mused, as if speaking from experience.
T.J. ran his fingers up and down my dick. “Let your fingers do the walking…” He slapped his penis back and forth against his belly, then lightly drummed his fingers on my testicles.
“What if I took your nuts and twisted them around like this?”
“Your mother would find your dead body when she comes back, that’s what.”
“You don’t know anything about sex, do you?” he asked smartly. “You never been laid, you don’t give ass. I bet you don’t even know what a blowjob is.”
“I know what a blowjob is.”
“I really like black lips. They’re so thick and smooth.” T.J. put his arm around my shoulder. I started to feel nervous and dizzy, as though my mind were dissolving. My eyes kept blinking shut involuntarily. I knew what T.J. wanted. I had never thought of actually doing something like this. But I felt it was fraudulent and disrespectful to T. J. to resist him, since I’d enjoyed the sight of his naked body so many times. I felt I should repay him for all the visual pleasure he’d given me.
“I wonder how it would feel if I put my dick in your mouth,” he said. I was shivering now. I sat very still and looked ahead.
“Come on, Peter. Can I do it?”
Without waiting for an answer, T.J. jumped up on the mattress and straddled my face, poking me in the nose with his boner. He pushed my head against the wall with his pelvis, then slipped his fingers behind my head to keep me from bumping against the wall. He slipped his dick in and out of my mouth. The head tasted smooth, like a marshmallow, but the shaft was thick, meaty, like cow’s tongue. As he pumped in and out, he said the same syllables over and over, as though reciting practiced lines: “Ooooh. Ssssss. Ahhh. Ssssss. Oooh. Sssss. Ahhh. Ssssss.”
I felt as if there was a warm light behind my eyes, as if I were talking a warm shower. T. J.’s stomach felt like a glassine bag filled with hot water. I sniffed, then deeply inhaled the aroma of his fresh pubic hair. I scrubbed my nose in the bristles and plugged my nostrils with the head of his dick. T.J. stopped pushing his pelvis forward. He stood still, moaning softly, his head pressed sideways against the wall, his legs bowed like a buddha’s. I was now sucking happily. I felt in a surreal place, lost in a wonderland of wetness and heat. This was so new. Nothing had ever been so new as the marshmallow sweetness of T.J.’s dick, or the furry, sagging weight of his balls, now giant boulders blocking my view, bouncing off my face and dragging across my eyelashes as T.J. pulled out and lost his balance for a second. He fell forward, stepped on my thigh by accident, and apologized. Then he flopped down next to me and started nuzzling around my neck.
“You want to try that ass thing?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s okay. That blowjob was enough. You can really suck dick, Pete. You’re a natural.’’
“Now I know why they call it meat. I felt like I was eating a hero sandwich.”
“It’s a good thing you had lunch first. I’d better remember to feed you before I fuck your mouth again.”
We sat quietly for a while. I rested my head on T.J.’s shoulder and fell asleep for a moment, then snapped back awake. T.J. had one hand tucked behind me, near my ass, and was teasing out my pubic hair with the other hand.
“You’re getting sleepy, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Just rest. You deserve it.” I lay my head back for several minutes while T.J. continued to play with my dick and comb out my hair.
“Do you want me to blow you?” he asked.
“Sure.” T.J. got up on one knee and sucked me tenderly. This more familiar sensation also felt wonderful, though not as good as when I was sucking T.J. T.J. was straddled awkwardly across my leg, and I bent my knee upwards and caressed the crack of his ass with my kneecap. He turned more awkwardly so that my knee fit more snugly, now practically crawling over me like a crab, still sucking and jerking himself off until he splashed come on my belly.
A look of disorientation flashed across his face. He sat down next to me against the wall, one hand on his thigh and the other on the sheet. I leaned towards him, twisted against his chest, and pressed my face against his nipple. We sat like this for a while. T.J. didn’t speak for several minutes. Then he moved in front of me on the bed and sat facing me.
“If you were a girl, would you let me fuck you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. I thought he’d read my dreams.
“I’d let you fuck me if I was a girl.”
“Did you ever fuck a girl?”
“Yeah. They make a lot of noise. I fuck this girl in town. She’s hot for my nuts. She’s been hot for my nuts ever since I was in Day School. Her name is Dolly. Her pussy is a mess. All mush and slop. It feels like hot water on my dick. She wants me to eat it, but I won’t. I’d throw up if I ate pussy.’’ He paused. “I like you better than her.”
“It’s too bad I don’t have a cunt.”
“Think about that new sex. Then it won’t matter.”
T. J. let me have the window seat on our trip back to school (a critical issue to adolescent boys). I rested my head against the glass and studied the woods and rails as the train rocked slowly northwards to Hartford.
It was late Sunday afternoon and the sun was setting below the tops of the trees. I imagined the sun and the forest were fencers; the plants had the advantage and parried the majority of solar thrusts. An occasional lancing score of gleaming orange broke through the tr
ees, blinding me temporarily and radiating the inside of the railroad car. I wondered what adventure I might find if I could change the vector of my motion and explore pathways right-angled to the railroad tracks deep into the shadowy, tangled green, which seemed now more like Nigerian jungle than New England wood.
I felt exhausted and permanently altered, as if I’d received fatal news from the hospital. The world was different now. I’d crossed the line into gay sex, and though my boyfriend (my husband) was wonderful, I still felt drained and anxious. T. J. pressed his knee against mine and left it there. My body was his now; he could do what he wanted. He smiled and I misplaced my anxiety. I reminded myself I couldn’t rest my head against his shoulder in public (I accepted this, though it made no sense to me). T. J. talked all the way from New Haven to Hartford. My head was buzzing, though, and I heard only half of what he said.
We got back to school around eight o’clock and checked in with Dean Press. As we walked towards our dormitory, I thanked T.J. for inviting me to his house. “My pleasure, Pete,” he said.
Later that spring, the school held a Seminar Day, and one of the seminars dealt with black culture. T.J. picked that seminar, and came dressed like a real Fairfield County prep, wearing his white tennis jersey, blue jeans, and loafers with no socks. He asked silly questions: “Is there really that much difference between soul food and regular food?” He wanted to know about black people and black America. Nothing could have made me want him more. That night I offered my brown, honey ass to him. He fucked me like a wild pony and coated my soft, black rectum with his preppy seed.
As fond as I was of T.J., I was not infatuated with him. My first infatuation at Briarwood was with a boy in the Fifth Form named Cady Donaldson, who played with me on the JV football team. We played our first game against the Gunnery School, whose school color was red. As we did our jumping jacks before the game, we shouted in rhythm that we were going to “Eat Red Meat.” It was a murky, windy fall afternoon. Midway through the second period, Coach Craig sent a substitute into the game to play beside me on the line. The reed-thin boy, teetering beneath his shoulder pads, tapped me on my shoulder and asked in a pinging, nasal voice where he was supposed to play. From inside his football helmet, Cady’s gray-blue eyes sparkled at me and seized my breath. His eyelashes were long, and his narrow, black eyebrows stood out in stark contrast to some unspecified point of reference. I fell in love instantly with his eyes, which shined like silver laser beams.
The Color of Trees Page 7
