by Steve Kluger
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I’m beginning to feel ashamed that I’m the only kid in my class who doesn’t have a summer job. Just because I got into Harvard doesn’t mean I won’t have to work for a living like everybody else does, and suppose I come up short because I’ve never had any experience before? It’s really starting to worry me.
So here’s what I’m thinking. My best friend Travis (who’s the smartest kid in our class) is looking for a job too. But since his father’s wife won’t let him stay at their house on East 65th Street, they told Travis he could find a summer sublet by himself. Which is kind of scary when you’re not even 18 yet. So maybe you’d let me and Travis share an apartment so that we could keep an eye on each other and make sure neither one of us goofs off.
I’m sorry I won’t be able to spend the summer with you and Aunt Emmy at the house in Lake Charles, but we can always do that next year. And I really think it’s important that I learn how to earn my keep.
Love,
Craig
Dear Dad,
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I’m beginning to feel ashamed that I’m the only kid in my class who doesn’t have a summer job. Just because I got into USC doesn’t mean I won’t have to work for a living like everybody else does, and suppose I come up short because I’ve never had any experience before? It’s really starting to worry me.
So here’s what I’m thinking. My best friend Craig (who’s a shortstop just like your all-time favorite Bucky Dent) is looking for a job too. But since he lives in St. Louis and wants to stay in Manhattan, his mother told him he could find a summer sublet by himself. Which is kind of scary when you’re not even 181/2 yet. So maybe you’d let me and Craig share an apartment so that we could keep an eye on each other and make sure neither one of us goofs off.
I’m sorry I won’t be able to go on another Teen Tour, but you’ve sent me on six of them already and there’s not much left to see. (I also have a real problem with staying at a four-star hotel in Bangladesh. It’s just not right.) Besides, I really think it’s important that I learn how to earn my keep.
Love,
Travis
Parents are such pushovers. My father grudgingly conceded that he was proud of me, and Craig’s mom called from St. Louis in tears, claiming that her little boy had turned into a grown-up practically overnight. Meanwhile, Craig and I were both so horny we could have directed traffic with our dicks.
“They said yes,” he sighed, running his hand across the front of my T-shirt longingly. “Now can we practice?”
“Not so fast,” I warned him. “We still need to find gainful employment and a place to live.” We were sitting cross-legged on his bed, staring openly at each other’s primary erogenous zones and poring through the Village Voice.
“Dental hygienist.”
“No.”
“Drill press operator.”
“Nope.”
“Legal secretary.”
“Forget it.”
“Then I give up,” I whined. “What am I qualified for?”
“Modeling underpants,” he sighed wistfully. “As long as I get to watch.”
“Craig!”
The apartment issue was a lot simpler—all we really needed was a bed and a door that locked. And thanks to the Voice, we found exactly what we were looking for in an old brownstone on West 92nd Street, just off Riverside Drive: “Cozy remodeled studio, wood floors, charming neighborhood, available immediately.” Translation: “Renovated one-room rat-hole, no carpets, live-in drug dealer, nobody wants it.” The tenant was an atonal singing waiter named Barry Brush who, through an extraordinary stroke of luck (a hearing-impaired casting director), had booked a summer stock engagement at the Totem Pole Playhouse in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania. (Given the fact that he was barely 5-foot-3, I assumed he was playing Og in Finian’s Rainbow, but somehow it didn’t seem polite to ask.) At first he appeared to be a little reluctant to turn over his postage-stamp-with-furniture to a couple of kids—particularly when they kept eyeing the bed as though they’d never seen one before—but a cashier’s check for $286.20 changed his mind. (Craig’s mom wanted us to start off on the right foot.) We left with a set of keys and a promise that we could move in the day school let out—and as Barry led us to the door, Craig covertly put his hand on my ass. My carotid artery imploded on the spot.
The jobs fell into our laps completely by accident. On our way back to Grand Central, we stopped in front of Colony Records at 49th and Broadway because there was an Ethel Merman album display in the window, and naturally I needed to make sure they were all present and accounted for: Gypsy. Annie Get Your Gun. Anything Goes. Summer Help Wanted. Happy Hunting. Call Me Madam. Something for the— Summer Help Wanted?! In an Ethel Merman store?! For a brief but electric moment, I understood the whole Buddhist concept of karma.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, instantly fogging up the glass in front of Panama Hattie. “It’s Kismet. It’s destiny. It’s divine intervention.” Craig wasn’t nearly as sanguine.
“Like hell it is,” he groaned. “If we have to work for that old bag, forget it.” The truth turned out to be a shade less glamorous—they just needed a couple of stock boys until September. Of course, the pay was shit, but Craig’s mom had already sent us a check for $500 just in case (the right-foot thing again). During a tour of “the plant”—as it was referred to by way-too-serious manager Douglas, a middle-aged former hoofer from Queens who’d inexplicably acquired a European accent—our responsibilities as “directors of inventory” were laid out in explicit detail: (a) hang around the basement and (b) move some boxes. Together. Alone. For eight hours. Shit! There go the hormones again!
“I hope you guys are friends,” he chuckled almost apologetically, pointing to the narrow aisles and the cozy cardboard hiding places. “Because you’re not going to have anybody else to talk to.” Craigy and I agreed that we got along pretty well and didn’t anticipate a problem. Then, as soon as Doug’s back was turned, we kissed each other. When life decides to work, it’s perfect.
The last four days of school passed in a blur. I remember absolutely nothing about final exams except that my octagons somehow came out with nine sides, and Craig said that Othello was too much of a moron to have a tragic flaw—unless stupidity counts.
“You didn’t lose the keys to our apartment, did you?” he nudged me three times a day.
“Stop asking me that!”
Commencement was our last hurdle. As soon as we’d taken our seats in the packed auditorium dripping with streamers of black and gray—Beckley’s traditionally funereal colors—we knew we were sunk. Scheduled to last between one and two hours (depending on how many creaky old alumni they’d blackmailed into saying a few words), the ceremonies were generally interminable under the best of circumstances. But when you’ve had the same erection for ten days, it’s worse. Much worse.
“Ow.”
“Me too,” hissed Craig. “Shhh.”
Across the aisle, a couple of halfbacks grinned at him dopily in that fraternal bond that people with jockstraps like to show off, waiting hopefully for a similar smirk in return. (They had a pretty good reason, too: ever since Craig and I had begun hanging out together on an average of every minute of our lives, they were no longer exactly sure which team he was playing for—and if they’d actually suspected what was going through his head at that particular moment, they never would have peed in a locker room urinal again.)
Happily, the headmaster gave Craig his Victory Cup before intermission, and our diplomas followed shortly thereafter. By the time Reverend Sheedy stood up to bless the departing seniors and introduce some handpicked fossil from the Class of 1910, there were two empty seats in the fifth row. We probably should have stuck around until the end, but when you’re ninety minutes away from learning all the secrets of your best friend’s body, nostalgia over four years of preparatory education tends to be reduced to as few syllables as possible: Bye. See ya.
O
h, yeah. We both got A’s in French. J’ai le béguin pour toi, Craigy.
“You nervous?”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Then me neither.” We were undressing each other slowly in the living room-bedroom-kitchen-dining room-den of our new apartment. (Barry had left us some flowers and a pair of comps to Finian’s Rainbow, just in case we happened to be in Fayetteville over the weekend.) Though the train ride down the Hudson had been playfully erotic by Travis-Craig standards, that all changed as soon as we turned onto West 92nd Street. In fact, once we’d unlocked our front door for the first time and stepped into a room that belonged to just us, our smiles faded swiftly—along with our self-confidence, our swagger, and (impossibly) our hard-ons. There’s a word for this kind of thing: panic. Oh my God. Who are we kidding? I’ve never made love to anybody in my life and Craigy’s only fooled around with a couple of girls. What if we don’t know what to do? What if we hate it? What if this was a mistake? What if he leaves and I never see him again? Why is he kissing my shoulder? What happened to my shirt? Boy, that feels good. Maybe I should take his off too. Why are there so many buttons?!
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he whispered nervously, holding me close. “I mean, we don’t have to.”
“How much time do I get to answer?” I mumbled back tentatively, touching his cheek and shaking like a 4.7 temblor two miles beneath Marin County. Then he pulled away and one-dimple-grinned me—the same damned smile I’d first fallen in love with—and everything exploded at once. We have liftoff! With a yelp, I pushed him backward onto our pocketsized mattress, yanked off his shirt (fuck the buttons), and dove. There’s a word for this too: Banzai!
Round One lasted sixteen hours. Then we slept for another nine and started all over again. They say that biology limits what two guys can do together, but you sure as hell couldn’t prove it by us.
“Oh God,” he groaned, coming up for air. “What do you call that?”
“Improvisation,” I gasped in reply.
“Do I get to improvise too?”
“If you think you can measure up to—Yikes!” For the next three days, we never saw sunlight. There was something so right about being naked together in the dark—about eating potato chips off of each other’s stomachs while we watched Dobie Gillis at 3:00 in the morning, about reaching for each other’s bodies when we were still hungry, about exploring our different parts and learning how to make one another sigh, giggle, and especially squirm. We were a perfect fit—back-to-front, head-to-toe, top-to-bottom—and when we stumbled out into the blue-and-gold nimbus enveloping West 92nd Street on our first day of work, we discovered that the whole world had changed while we were in bed.
“This is a great peach.”
“This is a great plum.”
“This is a great subway.”
“This is a terrific sidewalk.” And we meant every word.
Remembering the rest of that summer is like peering through a kaleidoscope: the night games at Yankee Stadium, the hot dogs in Battery Park, pretending we were Lucy and Fred on the Staten Island Ferry, walking through Central Park in the rain just so we could watch one another get wet, chasing each other across the boys-only section of Jones Beach and falling into the sand together like a couple of horny puppies, making out at the top of the Empire State Building and educating a stupefied couple from Davenport, Iowa, while we were doing it, and discovering that our boss at the record store wasn’t such a stuffed shirt after all—once he’d realized we were boyfriends.
“Dougie, can we sneak out early? It’s our anniversary.”
“Oh, bullshit. You just had one last week!” There’s nothing quite as intoxicating as two boys throwing out all the rules and discovering freedom together for the first time. And when the same two boys happen to be head-over-toes in love with each other—well, think Field of Dreams squared.
One memory stands out above all the rest: June 24, 1978—my eighteenth birthday. It wasn’t so much the breakfast in bed that Craig had insisted on (Hostess cupcakes and Swiss Miss), or the surprise carriage ride around Central Park with his head on my shoulder, or the unbelievably out-of-print copy of Henry, Sweet Henry that Doug had helped him pick out and wrap, or the candlelit dinner at Beefsteak Charlie’s (we brought our own candles), or the mezzanine seats that had cost him most of a paycheck just so he could watch my face light up when Liza Minnelli tore apart the Majestic in The Act, or even the fact that he stayed awake though the whole thing just for me. What I remember most is later on, in the shower, when he sang “Almost Like Being in Love” to me while we were standing under the spray together and letting our noses play with each other. And the way he dried me off gently, took my hand, and led me to bed—where we spent three hours proving that every lyric was absolutely true.
“Travis?” he murmured in a sleepy whisper, holding me tight. “You’re the only one. No matter what happens, you’re the only one. Happy birthday.” Then he drifted off blissfully before I could reply—so I smiled into his chest and squeezed his hand instead. It was the only time he ever made me cry.
I hope he meant it. Because one way or another, I’m going to find out.
7. Craig McKenna: Flemingsburg, Kentucky Doesn’t speak English
8. Craig McKenna: Weslaco, Texas White supremacist
9. Craig McKenna: Manchester, New Hampshire
10. Craig McKenna: Sacaton, Arizona
11. Craig McKenna: Johnstown, Pennsylvania
12. Craig McKenna: Antigo, Wisconsin
FROM THE DESK OF
Gordon Duboise
T:
The people at Vidiots are ready to put a hit on you if you don’t return I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Brigadoon. They wouldn’t even let me rent Tina Swallows the Leader until I paid your late charges. $34!
If you play that fucking song one more time, all of your CDs are going into the toaster oven. And Barbra Streisand burns first.
Remember in high school when they gave us Great Expectations and there was this crazy old bat who locked herself in a bedroom for thirty years with a wedding dress and a bride-and-groom cake covered with ants? Keep it up. You’re getting there.
G
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
UNIVERSITY PARK • LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
Doheny Library
Faculty Research Request
DATE: May 27, 1998
FROM: Travis Puckett
DEPARTMENT: History
BUILDING/ROOM: VKC/223
MATERIALS NEEDED
SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS
I’ve got to break into the Harvard alumni database. This is urgent. Do we have any computer hackers on staff? I’ll indemnify the university in case any federal subpoenas start showing up.
I’m on it. Odds are that their backdoor password is “FUCK-YALE.” (We do the same thing here with UCLA. Nothing like airtight security.)
While I was checking out a short list of possibilities, I wound up on the phone with a Craig McKenna from San Diego. For two hours. He’s a year older than I am, he’s a landscape architect, and he has a 29-inch waist. Travis, if it turns out you’ve domesticated me, I’ll kick your ass.
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
UNIVERSITY PARK • LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
TO: Travis Puckett
FROM: Andrea Fox
DATE: May 27, 1998
RE We got it!
* * *
The $30,000 grant is yours. You owe Marsha Holmes your life. At the last minute she pulled in a couple of Poli-Sci section heads who brought charts and graphs and parabolas to prove you had a point. Dean Koutrelakos didn’t know what the hell they were talking about (and neither did anybody else), so he threw in the towel.
Congratulations. Now will you call me?
Andrea
FROM THE JOURNAL OF
Travis Puckett
73. Craig McKenna: La Jolla, California Voted for Barry Goldwater
74. Craig McKenna:
Grand Junction, Colorado Homophobic ski instructor
There are only four possibilities:
He has an unlisted number.
He lives outside the country.
The phone is in his boyfriend’s name.
Something happened to him. (Don’t go there. He’s alive and he’s okay.)
So I lost the first round. Big deal. There’s still the 118 McKennas in St. Louis plus the 1,732 McKennas in the forty-eight contiguous states and the two floating ones. If I have to call every one of them, I’ll find him. Okay, maybe he doesn’t need a psychopathic history professor showing up from the Twilight Zone, and maybe he won’t even like me any more. But he still has my heart—and if he’s not using it, I want it back. Otherwise I’m going to go on loving him for the rest of my life. And there’s not a damned thing either one of us can do about it.
Somehow I never got around to telling him that.
September 14, 1978. The TWA terminal at JFK. No matter how hard we’d tried, we couldn’t make the summer last beyond August. Labor Day showed up and Barry Brush came back from Pennsylvania, so Craig and I hailed a cab to the airport. It was the last adventure we shared together.
We sat in the terminal for three hours unable to speak, staring at each other’s faces so we’d never forget the details. What could we possibly say that would fit into words?
Finally, they called my flight to Los Angeles, but neither one of us moved. This was all so obviously a bad dream we were going to wake up from any minute—the alarm clock would go off, we’d tumble into the shower together, we’d start fooling around, and Doug would give us hell for being fifteen minutes late to work. But then they announced final boarding, and it was all over. Craig reached for my hand.
