by David Leite
“Asthmatic Christians? What the hell is that?”
“Watch your mouth, mister,” she said. I looked at my father.
“Charismatic,” he corrected me, an edge in his voice. His tone told me a boundary had been drawn, a sign erected: “No Smartasses Beyond This Point. All Violators Will Be Spit-Roasted in Hell.”
She explained they were leaving St. John of God, in Somerset, where every Sunday since I was six we had sat in the second-to-last row on the left. Where every Saturday, we had taken confession. Where I had attended catechism, received Communion, been confirmed. They were trading up to the more passionate and demonstrative Calvary Temple Assembly of God, a Pentecostal denomination in Fall River. “It’s a Bible-teachin’, Gospel-preachin’ kind of place,” she added. This had to be a big deal: My mother dropped her G’s for no one.
I knew they’d grown restless with the monotone drone of Father Fraga, so their leaving wasn’t a surprise. Something had been changing for a while, but it was so slow and deep—slight, steady tectonic shifts in how they behaved—that I didn’t put it together, this drift toward a more athletic kind of worship. First, the nativity scene that was usually packed away after New Year’s now resided full-time on top of the bookcase. Christmas in June! My mother then banished “Jesus” and “Jesus Christ” as expletives; they could be used only as terms of supplication or ecclesiastical adoration. She applied a bumper sticker—“God’s last name isn’t dammit!”—to the back of her car, now so patchworked with religious slogans, I nicknamed it the God Squad Car. I said it would’ve been so much cooler if the bumper sticker read, “God’s last name isn’t dammit, Goddammit!” Suddenly, she didn’t find the humor in that. No chastising slap on the arm coupled with a private smirk of appreciation for the wit.
Later, there were nights I’d return from drama-club rehearsals and my parents, who had always been asleep in their La-Z-Boys by the time Jeopardy! started, wouldn’t be at home. When they’d return, my mother’s face would be flushed, her fingers fluttering as she spoke. Once, she explained they’d been at a service where people were slain in the spirit, falling back with the push of the pastor’s finger as if struck dead by lightning. Another night, in the most matter-of-fact way, she said some people had been talking in tongues, as if suddenly losing the flat, broad accent of the South Coast and sounding like weepy Albanian washerwomen were normal. Yet they believed. Me, I had my doubts.
In time, though, Calvary Temple did do something St. John of God and even St. Michael’s, in Fall River, never could: It made them better people. It’s as if the church polished them, bringing out the luster of their generosity, kindness, and compassion. But back then, standing in our living room, there was still plenty of Ellie Leite, B.C. (Before Conversion), to go around.
“Would you like to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”
And here we were once again. Hers wasn’t so much a question as a foregone conclusion. When she believed in something—whether Weight Watchers, S&H Green Stamps, or now the Holy Spirit—it was just assumed that I, and the rest of the population, would as well. If not now, eventually. And she could wait—for as long as you needed.
Although I’d been feeling mostly steady for about a year—and had even started going back to the movies (my first, Blazing Saddles)—I figured, Why not? It couldn’t hurt. But I had to negotiate, to make it seem like I had some choice in the matter. I made it clear I wasn’t going to Sunday service anymore. Those were my terms, take it or leave it. She took it. All three of us held hands as my mother, with an eloquence so extraordinary I pried open one eye to watch her, asked God to do whatever it is He’s supposed to do with fledgling Born Agains.
And that’s how, during the summer before my senior year, I eventually found myself at a youth meeting at St. Sebastian’s Fellowship, in Fall River, where I met Paul Estrela.
Paul was a popular, outgoing guy, one year younger than me, with a riot of brown curly hair, a formidable nose, and green eyes that crinkled into stars when he laughed, like one of those Hirschfeld drawings of celebrities. He had railroad tracks of braces crossing his easy, broad smile.
He was a blank slate. He lived all the way over in Dartmouth, so I knew nothing of his past, but I sensed something. Not in his manner or speech, but some familiar shadow, even though he didn’t look furtively at other boys like I did. And wasn’t remotely interested in even one of the Trinity of Proof we used back then to tell if a guy was gay: art, theater, and fashion. He did have a rapturous love of disco and hair care, though. He was constantly dragging a purple collapsible brush through his mop. Yet that was back in the late seventies, and just about every guy had a brush bulging in a back pocket of his bell-bottom jeans. His interest in disco, on the other hand, gave me pause. And hope. Everyone loved Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, and KC and the Sunshine Band, but he was particularly ecstatic about them, and his favorite song was “Best of My Love,” by the Emotions. I bought the single and blared it over and over again, lifting the needle every few seconds so that I could transcribe the lyrics.
“Will you knock that bleddy racket off!” my mother shouted, throwing open my bedroom door. “Jeesh! You’re going to drive me to Taunton State with that thing.”
“I’m trying to figure out the words.”
“Why?”
“I . . . I . . . just want to be able to sing along with it.” I scrambled to cover the real reason: I wanted Paul to notice me. I wanted to stand out among all the fawners and sycophants.
I was no longer a virgin by definition, human or mechanical. I’d had a bumbling encounter with Greg Martin on his front porch one summer night, which had ended with me pulling splinters out of my ass and us nearly getting caught streaking across a neighbor’s yard, as well as a regrettable and painful liaison with our vacuum cleaner. Yet I couldn’t exactly consider myself befittingly initiated, and that suited me. I could hide from the inevitable a while longer in those ambiguous last days of adolescence. But it was becoming harder to prop up the fantasy that every boy felt this way. All the guys I had grown up with were now off with girlfriends, coming in late, breaking curfews, bragging about their sexual conquests by using ridiculous and confusing sports metaphors. What “boobs and bushes” had to do with baseball was, like the game itself, a mystery. I’d been damn successful at keeping my life separate and contained in—to use a metaphor that made sense—a jewelry box. School, here. Family, there. Boys locked away in a hidden compartment underneath it all. That is, until Paul.
Our coming together wasn’t linear, direct. Instead, we furled into each other, obliquely, first from afar, then nearer, and nearer still, until there was nothing between us but warm cinnamon Tic Tac breath. It began with a wall of people around him, buffering him from me. Occasionally he’d throw a glance my way, over heads, calculated. Fishing, that’s what he was doing. Not enough for me to accuse; just enough for me to betray myself. At restaurants, a bunch of us from the fellowship would command a long table. He never sat next to me, but always close enough to lean into our conversation, the others offering safety, proof I was no different from them, before he loped out. I wouldn’t hear anything as I strained to listen for the liquid murmur of his voice turned toward the other end of the table, and then the inevitable mushrooming laughter of his audience. Over time, his looks lingered, bore through me, until he, too, betrayed himself, and he chose me. Me.
Even alone, we were tentative at first. Just innocent gestures during our Friday-night sleepovers. We’d lie on his floor listening to music, and he’d keep time by tapping my sneaker with his foot, or he’d turn on his side to face me and talk, tucking his hands beneath his head. I might remove a nonexistent eyelash from his cheek. In arguing about who was stronger, we’d strip off our shirts and measure our biceps, me pressing my chest against his back, our arms flexed and straining.
At bedtime, we used the summer heat as an excuse to shed our underwear. Lying there side by side, clearly excited, we still couldn’t muster the courage. One nig
ht he got an idea.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, as he tugged on his jeans and tiptoed out of the room. I covered myself with the sheet and rose up on my elbows, waiting for him to return. He slipped back into the room, laughing softly, his eyes two great stars. He stepped out of his pants and slid into bed.
“Okay,” he said, holding up a glass dispenser with a gold cap. “Rub this on any part of your body you want me to . . .”—here he paused, trying to find the right word—“. . . explore.”
“What the hell is that?”
“My sister’s lip gloss.” Lana, who was home from college, had a purse full of flavored gloss—watermelon, vanilla, cherry, strawberry.
“That’s wicked gross.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll wash it off when we’re done.” I hesitated, then grabbed the gloss and ran the roller-ball applicator all over my nether regions.
Paul was clearly far more experienced than Greg. In a matter of minutes, it was over.
“Now me,” he whispered, flopping on his back and grabbing the lip gloss. He was more in tune with his body than I was, because I chased a trail of saccharine-sweet watermelon into creases and crevices I’d never realized were erogenous. It seemed to never end. Just as soon as I was convinced he was clean, he’d gently move my head, and I’d pick up another tributary of sweetness up the middle of his stomach to his nipples, the hollow of his throat, the soft flesh of his ears, the back of his neck, the knuckles of his spine.
He grabbed a pillow, covered his face, and muffled a long, guttural scream as his body tightened and twitched. He pulled off the pillow and dropped it to the floor. There was a goofy look on his face, like he was high. It had never occurred to me to scream, and my mentor, Russell Cantor the Masturbator, had never mentioned anything about it.
“What’s the matter?” he asked when he saw me looking at him.
“Nothing. I just . . . does it help . . .”
“What?”
“. . . screaming like that?”
“Are you kidding?”
I shook my head.
“Yes, dipshit!”
That was how our weekends went for most of the summer. As soon as I finished work at The Spectator, a local newspaper where I did a little bit of everything, including writing, I’d pick up Paul in my car, and we’d hang out or catch a movie. Sometimes we headed over to Macray’s in Westport for fried clams.
If Paul and I got there early enough, we could find a spot, the car’s tires crunching on broken clamshells as we rolled into the parking lot. We’d order, his face splitting open with a sly, metallic smile as he insisted we get fried clams and clam cakes and french fries. Fine, I’d say. Like a kid, he’d hurry back to the car with a cardboard box filled with red-and-white pint containers. Even with the windows open, the greasy aroma of fried foods and the sour slap of malt vinegar filled the car.
Fried clams are a New England specialty that are almost impossible to make sound enticing to outsiders. The clams—big steamers, never littlenecks, cherrystones, or hacked-up quahogs—are tossed in flour and fried until golden and crisp. What made Macray’s clams so special, besides the secret flour mix, was their big, profane bellies, which dangled like little beggar’s purses and exploded with juicy brininess when you took a bite. They were sweet, salty, with just the slightest pleasant sting of iodine.
Boxes between us on the seat. The slanting light painting the inside of the car orange. On the radio, “Best of My Love”; Alice Cooper’s “You and Me”; “I Just Want to Be Your Everything” by Andy Gibb. Us singing along, smiling, suddenly embarrassed by the words, because they now had meaning. I ached to slide over to him, dunk a clam into sharp, creamy tartar sauce and pop it into his mouth, but I couldn’t. It was unspoken, but we both knew that there could be no public affection between us.
Sometimes after eating we’d head to Lincoln Park, the amusement park across the highway. And when we returned to his house, stuffed and exhausted, he’d rifle through Lana’s purse on the way to his room.
“Do you think your sister’s wondering why she’s going through lip gloss so fast?” I asked, tugging at my shirt and tripping out of my pants and underwear.
“Who gives a shit?” he said, tackling me onto the bed, laughing.
One morning in mid-July, Lana burst into Paul’s room while we were getting dressed.
“Are you two having sex?” she whispered, looking back toward the door to make sure their parents and grandparents were out of earshot.
“Are you crazy?” Paul said, while I toed the shag rug.
“Then how do you explain this?” She held up one of her tubes of lip gloss. I blanched.
Ever cool, Paul replied, “And?”
“Look close.” We both leaned in. And there it was: a huge, dark pubic hair suspended in liquid, like some alien specimen.
“Are you doing something kinky with your lip gloss, Lan?” he teased.
“Don’t be an idiot. This isn’t yours?” He shook his head.
She thrust it at me. “Is this yours, then?”
“No. I never saw it in my life.”
Doubt clouded her face. “Well, I don’t understand how . . .” She looked at the two of us again, then let out a frustrated groan and stomped from the room.
Paul covered my mouth with his hand and shot me a glance that said, If you make a sound, I’ll kill you.
After we composed ourselves, he opened the door and shouted, “Mom, we’re heading out,” as we practically tumbled down the stairs. Only when we were in the safety of my car with the radio blaring did we bust out laughing.
“Aren’t you worried she’ll say something to your parents?”
“Nah. My parents would never believe her over me, and she’d look like an idiot bringing a pubic hair to them.” I could just imagine the ultra-religious Mr. and Mrs. Estrela putting on glasses and squinting to see a black crinkle in her lip gloss, their smiles dropping from their faces and eyes widening as they figured out what it was.
As long as Paul didn’t care, I didn’t, either. I didn’t know if it was love, but what I knew to be true was the tug toward him was more powerful than anything I’d ever felt. Everything I loathed about myself seemed so inconsequential when I was with him. He was a tonic. I wanted to drain me out of my body and fill it with him, so I mimicked everything he did. I used the same phrases. I copied the modulations of his voice. I wore the same kind of clothes, but I could never quite pull it off, being heavier than him. I felt unfettered and free about my sexuality for the first time in my life, and I wasn’t going to let one of our DNA samples ruin it.
By August, though, Paul had changed. Maybe it had something to do with Lana finding us out, or the start of the school year—senior for me, junior for him—which had a way of deflating us. We were in my car in his driveway when he turned to me and made his announcement.
“I want to start dating.”
I laughed. “Why? We already see each other all the time.”
“Not you.” There was a meanness in his voice I’d never heard before. “A girl.” When I didn’t respond, he blurted, “Don’t you get it?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I’m not that way.”
“What way?”
He hesitated. “Like . . . you.”
Something in my belly slithered over itself and constricted into a knot. I didn’t understand. Not like me? He had taught me everything I knew. He had approached me. He had kept pushing the envelope, wanting to have sex everywhere: his house, our house, my car, in the backyard on moonless nights. I had this impulse to claw at him, to gather him up and press him into me so he’d never leave.
“I gotta go.” He slammed the car door and went inside.
I moped in my room for I don’t know how long, playing “Best of My Love” endlessly. I felt as desperate and nervous as I had years ago, but there was one crucial difference: I knew what was upsetting me. I could identify the source, and even though I was shredded by anxie
ty, the knowledge steadied me. And I found I liked it, because I could wade in the pain—proof that I did love Paul.
Proof. That’s what was missing now. Without Paul, the only witness to my feelings, it had all vanished. We had disappeared, we had never happened. Around me for years were initials scrawled on lockers, rings exchanged, bodies pressed together in hallway corners, announcements of going steady that were met with hugs and claps on the back. Evidence, confirmation, validation. But not for me. Alone, proofless, I had no choice but to accept that my feelings were sick, lesser than, other, and I had better grow out of this, and soon; otherwise there was no future, except what I began calling the Goode Way, in honor of our pervert neighbor. The irony was that Paul gave in and accepted the limitation imposed upon us by a world that didn’t know we as a couple had even existed.
I halfheartedly cast about for a girlfriend, fingering through a mental Rolodex of classmates, but none was right. The only possible contender was Suzanne Fortier, a petite girl with short-cropped hair, intelligent brown eyes, and the ricocheting energy of a hummingbird. She was one of my closest friends, and we spent hours lying on her bed talking; working on The Chief, our school yearbook; and, my favorite, baking chocolate chip cookies. She never once lifted her face to me expectantly while creaming butter, or while goofing off over a shared plate of clam strips at Howard Johnson’s restaurant. Maybe she suspected, but if she did she never said anything.
No, I needed fresh blood, a girl who knew nothing about me, and I found her in a McDonald’s cashier. She was a pretty brunette with everything a guy my age was supposed to find attractive: slim waist, nice-size breasts, revoltingly flirtatious manner.
Our dates, if they can be called that, consisted of my dropping by during her break and chatting over a burger. Once, when we were in one of the back booths, she looked up from her shake with a smile that I recognized as sexy and playful.
