Give Me Some Truth

by Eric Gansworth

  “He’s fine,” I said, trying to sound dismissive. We wandered through the lunch atrium (littered with bored teacher chaperones) to get to the gym, where Booster Parents collected money. “I’m in one of the bands, but I’m paying for my brother here,” I said. We got our hands stamped and were told that if we left the building, we couldn’t reenter without a wristband that the door chaperones would give us, which you could only use once.

  The Wednesday before Thanksgiving was supposedly a big bar night, so the school held the second elimination round on this night to reduce high school drinking. Really, they were just giving kids a cover excuse to be out of the house and sneak to whatever bars didn’t check ID closely. Maybe I thought that way because Battle of the Bands was my cover excuse.

  I hadn’t told my family that Carson had been disqualified, which more or less disqualified us. I didn’t know how I’d explain to my brother afterward why we’d never stepped onstage. But that was a problem for another time. I’d grabbed my drums and bag anyway, and had planned ahead to spend my evening with Jim, locked in the privacy of the maintenance break room. I’d even lifted a few rubbers from Marie’s private stash, just in case. I used up one, practicing on one of our dad’s unripe bananas, so I’d seem like I knew what I was doing.

  The decoration committee had lit the gym to sort of resemble a music club. They’d set up banks of colored lights, balloons, giant cardboard stars, and streamers. The stage was halfway down, the back part walled off with curtains. Teacher chaperones guarded the divide so only band members would be allowed back. They didn’t even allow crew. Amps, drums, microphones, and keyboards were all “house,” so we didn’t have to bring any. Guitarists could bring plug-and-play effects pedals or pickup mics but that was about it. I had a pickup mic for my water drum, since I hadn’t been planning to use the house drum set.

  Awkward-looking parents and siblings filled the bleachers. You were partly judged on how loud the audience cheered for you, but I had no idea if anyone from the Rez was here.

  “Hey, man,” some guy said to Marvin, doing a complicated handshake. Marvin seemed happy to see a friend (Thank you, Pseudo-Cool Guy!). I slipped away, heading to a sleepy-looking teacher with a clipboard. I showed him my school ID, and he let me through after a cursory look into my bag. (I always kept a tampon box for things I didn’t want messed with—in this case, the rubbers I’d lifted from Marie.)

  Behind the curtain, the bands practiced without amplification, members watching each other to stay in time as they played. To do so onstage, though, was the mark of an amateur. Timekeeper was the drummer’s job to hold everyone in sync. For back here, each drummer tapped a small tom or a snare with a dampener pad on its skin.

  Big posterboard signs instructed us that we could use the near locker rooms and that our lockers were subject to random chaperone inspection. The far locker rooms, the ones closest to the pool, were locked and off-limits. The signs also noted that those exits were set for fire-alarm mode. If any were opened, alarms would go off. I was supposed to watch for Jim to stick his head in through the back gym doors. That meant the fire-alarm locks were off for ten minutes. I tried to look busy, but it was going to be clear soon that no other member of my band was there.

  Jim’s head popped in. He nodded slightly and disappeared. Trying for a casual saunter, I wandered to the girls’ locker room. My fingers and toes were ice cold, trembling. My tongue and lips felt tingly, like that feeling when your arm has been asleep. My mouth was super dry, and I wished I’d gotten a pop. Once inside, I transferred one rubber to the little horse-head pocket of my Jordaches so I wouldn’t have to dig if the right time came.

  “Maggi?” a girl’s voice called as I reached the door to one of the stalls. Startled, I dropped my bag, spilling its contents, including the tampon box. I quickly stuffed the shiny red Trojan square back in. “Sorry,” Susan Critcher said. “Didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just … didn’t anyone tell you? The band’s not going on.” She sighed. “It’s a mess. Something about Carson—”

  “What are you doing here?” I said. Harsh, but she was really messing up my plans.

  “When Carson canceled, I agreed to play in Artie’s band. I figured you guys might not even show. Did something happen?” I heard Jim give a quiet cough out in the hall, to let me know he was there and waiting.

  “No, no,” I said. “I just … I guess I just wanted to have that backstage feeling. Even if I wasn’t going on. Anyway, I want to splash a little water on my face and check my makeup.” I headed to a stall first, hoping she’d take the hint.

  Sitting down, I carefully undid my top’s buttons. I’d lifted a matching set of frilly sexy red bra and panties (tags still on) from Marie. Without asking, Ghost Marvin said. Typical Maggi. I did plan on returning them. Maybe. (Like Carson’s tote, her lowest dresser drawer had a fake bottom where she hid her specialty Ben-Yaw-Mean foundation garments.) They felt so delicate, I was afraid that they might tear before I’d get a chance to reveal them to Jim. I sat and breathed quietly, but I hadn’t heard Susan leave.

  “Maggi?” she said finally, just a few yards away. I knew she’d been lurking!

  “Could I have some privacy, please?”

  “I just wanted to make sure—”

  “I’m fine, Susan. Don’t you have a band to get ready with?” Damn it! I was trying to keep annoyance out of my voice.

  She still hadn’t gone. “Look, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to soften. “You’re going to go up there. Enjoy. Maybe after, you’ll tell me everything over some fries.”

  “No fries. Some pizza place is at the table Custard’s Last Stand usually has.”

  “Pizza, whatever. Please? I want to be alone.”

  “Okay, but when you’re done? Come hang with us backstage? Tami’s supposed to be there. Artie put her on the list and gave her a tambourine and maracas to get her past the chaperones. The guys are calling her Davy Jones, like the Monkees?”

  “Got it. Okay, maybe, but please? Privacy?” As soon as the door back to the gym shut, I flew out and stepped to the far-side doors that opened into the hall. Jim waited, grinning, his shirt unbuttoned and his Jordaches straining in front.

  “Jeez, I didn’t think that girl was ever gonna shut up,” he whispered, laughing. “I wanted to barge in and tell her to get the hell out. Who was that?” He reset the locks and went to hug me.

  “Not here?” I asked. I walked us to the break room, at the terminal end of the brightly lit plate-glass hallway.

  “Don’t worry, baby,” he said, touching my collarbone and gently turning me around. My lips tingled again, and my tongue felt thick. He’d never called me that before. It felt thrilling and terrifying. My fingers trembled. It was hard to swallow. “Told you. I’m the only maintenance tonight. Only one with keys.” He patted the jangling ring at his hip.

  Outside the windows, it was full dark. Meadows and woods stretched out unseen behind the school, sports fields, and bleachers. Anyone out there could see us, our bodies inches from touching. One thrust forward and we’d connect.

  Jim leaned a little, to release his keys, and his hip touched mine. That scent, O Savage? was coming off of him, and the skin on his chest and his ears was getting red. He licked his lips, and his hands shook a little as he unlocked the door. I didn’t know whether to shift away or shift closer. I wanted this to be perfect and, as long as we were out in the hall, it wouldn’t be.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, grabbing my hand. I did, and he led me into the break room.

  Once inside, I immediately noticed a new scent in the room, something sweet. “Stand here. Keep ’em closed,” he said, touching my eyebrows. He let go and I heard him strike a lighter, and I got the tiniest zap of lighter fluid scent in my nose. “I got some of those scented candles,” he said, taking my hand again. “Okay, open them.”

  Though I cleaned it every day, I didn’t recognize the room in front of me. He must have worked for hours as soon as day crew had punched out. All the work o
rders were stacked neatly on the desk, pens in a little cup. At the table, the chairs were pushed in. The table itself was covered in a cloth. It was otherwise bare except for a dozen roses, two cans of nuts, one “Fancy Mixed” and one “Party Peanuts,” a box of assorted chocolates, long-stemmed candles, a bucket with several short bottles of wine coolers, and two glasses.

  “I put the candles out when I left, just in case. Don’t want to burn the house down … except with you.” He grinned. The couch had a soft cover over it, and a couple new pillows. The cover was plush and suddenly all I could think of was Major West and his velour space cowboy outfit.

  “What’s so funny?” Jim asked, a slight gruffness creeping in suddenly.

  “Nothing. Nothing,” I assured him. “I was just thinking of something my brother said earlier. This is amazing. I would have never believed our crappy break room could be gorgeous.”

  “You like?” he asked. He rubbed my shoulders from behind, resting his chin on my collarbone and pressing against me. I could feel everything, the room, the lighting, the way he smelled and felt, the sheer presence of him so close and private. I was startled to discover that, after all this time of wondering what this particular set of events would feel like, I itched with anticipation and something weirder, some uncertainty I didn’t recognize (maybe premonition regret). Those feelings were all puckered tight together, like one of Marie’s clumsy velvet hearts. He stepped to the table and twisted the caps off the wine coolers, filling the glasses. The only wine I’d ever had was some nasty stuff that Carson called Mad Dog, which tasted like grape juice mixed with nail polish remover. I’d enjoyed the buzz, but I was sick to my stomach the whole next day.

  This fizzy wine Jim gave me didn’t taste like either of those things. It was sweet and tart and made my tongue want to curl up at first. It was weirdly warm and tingly going down, even though it had been chilled in my mouth. “Oooh, that feels … like someone just gently slid an electric blanket down my throat,” I said, and felt a slight change already. Jim’s eyes bugged out. “No, in a good way,” I said, then laughed, realizing how stupid that sounded.

  “Just take a few more sips. That weird feeling’ll go away,” he said, filling my glass back up. It fizzed and settled, and my brain did the same thing. He resumed his position, pressing a little harder for a few seconds. “I got this too,” he said, pulling away again, lifting an album from the desk. He quickly adjusted the front of his pants. I felt a little shiver. I’d seen pictures of a naked man in a magazine before (in Liz’s locker, of all places). It wasn’t like I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t know how (what word should I use here? They all sound dumb and obvious) determined and insistent this would feel when he leaned against me. It was like there was Jim and then there was this pushy friend he’d brought along who was dying for some attention. (Was this the wine cooler talking? Or Jim’s assertive thing?)

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to, um, meet Jim’s “friend” for the first time, here. Then what are you doing here, alone, with this man in a locked room? Ghost Marvin chimed in helpfully. I wanted this memory to be special, to last a lifetime. And now that I was here, velour covering or not, I couldn’t see losing my virginity on my school’s maintenance crew break room couch. Who wants a lame memory?

  “Probably not gonna be able to hear once the bands start, but we could put it on now.” He held an album cover in his hand. “Came out last week. I wanted to surprise you. That’s mine, but there’s one in the Bandit for you, sealed. Every time you hear it, you can think of our first time.”

  “Double Fantasy,” I read. He handed it over. It was a new album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, with a front cover close-up of them kissing. Her face was clearer than his, taking up more of the cover, but they were unmistakable. His hair looked like it had around Rubber Soul and Revolver.

  “They take turns,” Jim said. “The first song’s Lennon’s; then the second one is hers. Then his, then hers. Kind of weird. Their styles aren’t even close. He’s sounding like, I don’t know, a little like the oldies he played on that last album, and she’s sounding like … did you see that punk band with the big beehive hairdos on Saturday Night Live last winter?”

  “The B-52’s? Yeah, they were awesome!” That was a show Marvin and I both loved.

  “If you say so. You’ll probably like her songs, then. They sound kind of like that.”

  “She has a name, you know. Right here.” I pointed to the album cover. “Yoko,” I said, dragging out each syllable, like someone trying to teach kids a new word.

  “Very funny. Clearly you weren’t listening to the Beatles when they broke up.” Ugh, that tired old oo(t)-gweh-rheh again. He took the album from me and put it on a portable record player with a built-in speaker from the AV room. The magic of Jim’s big key ring. He blew dust from the vinyl and put it on. I’d been expecting the single I’d been hearing on the radio a lot, but I didn’t recognize the first song.

  “Side Two,” he said. “This is called ‘Watching the Wheels.’” The gorgeous melody was soft, the piano warm, and the vocals, even double-tracked, so unmistakable. Maybe because they were double-tracked. I’d read that John Lennon was uneasy in his vocals and insisted that producers “treat them” in some way. One of the most amazing vocalists ever, and he almost always refused to allow listeners to hear his voice stripped away, naked down to its essence.

  “Maybe you’d dance with me,” Jim said, taking both of my hands in his and drawing me close to him. We didn’t go into the formal positions I’d learned in that stupid Ballroom Dancing class I’d taken to get out of regular gym. Instead, he spread his legs so my feet were framed by his. His hands met, somewhere around the small of my back, and mine reached up from his sides to touch his shoulder blades. With my ear against his chest, I could hear how fast his heart was beating, even though we weren’t dancing hard.

  We rocked slowly on the small break room floor, and when the song ended, we continued rocking in the silence before the next one began. It was a Yoko song, arranged to sound like old cabaret music, with audience noise and musicians tuning up mixed in. Jim slid his hands into my back pockets, squeezed gently and pulled me closer so our bodies met. He pressed himself firmly to me, eased off for a second, and then pushed forward again. He stepped away, his breath uneven. “Whew. Don’t want to rush things.”

  “We don’t have to rush things,” I said. “Whenever the right time comes, we’ll know.”

  “What?” He looked straight at me, like his question was pounding on my forehead. “I just meant that I didn’t want to … well, if a guy’s too excited … things can happen, things you don’t want to happen can … too fast.” With an arm around my shoulder, he led me to sit on the couch with him. My head rested on his chest, my arm on the cushion between his spread thighs.

  “I want our first time to be …” He looked at the ceiling, like you do when you can’t remember a pop quiz answer. “Special.” He smiled, relieved that he’d found the right word.

  Jeez, that was a big challenge! Ghost Marvin said.

  Go join your real self in the gym and get out of my skull, I scolded.

  “That’s why I wanted you,” Jim said, pressing against me again, “to hear this next song the first time we do something real. It’s called ‘Woman.’ It’s about how special a woman is to a man.” He shifted so that, suddenly, we were eye to eye, my legs somehow now on top of his right leg. I didn’t even know how that had happened. “The way you see me, Magpie. No one sees me that way. To everyone else, I’m just the ripped guy who does all the tough jobs around here.”

  “Jim, I have to tell you something,” I said softly. “And I don’t want you to get mad.” Yoko was still singing about being John’s angel. When we hit that song Jim was waiting for, I felt like he was going to expect something I wasn’t maybe prepared to give him after all. “I’m still a virgin. I’ve never done this before. Or anything, really.”

  “Are you serious?” he said, swallowing hard. “Are you just s
aying that to get me going even hotter? I haven’t been with a virgin in, like … well probably forever.”

  “Not even in high school?”

  “Football players had certain perks,” he said, grinning, as if I hadn’t shared some incredibly personal information. “These cheerleaders we called the Stress Relief Squad helped you anytime you needed to let off steam. They weren’t virgins.” He wanted me to meet his grin. Excitement and upheaval fought each other inside of me. What had those girls felt like after helping a teenaged Jim let off steam?

  “Are you really? Like, really one? These girls around here sure ain’t virgins, getting felt up at their lockers.” I almost pointed out that it was guys doing the feeling, but I kept silent. He laughed. “Except the dogs, maybe. Those woofers are virgins ’cause they don’t have any choice. What’s a hot, beautiful girl like you doing, being a virgin? You saving it for the right guy and it’s turned out to be me?”

  Jim reached down and arranged himself again, looking at me, then at my hand, trying to silently suggest that he’d love it if I helped him. I wanted both to look and look away. He let out a deep sigh and leaned back on the couch, closing his eyes. His hips raised for a couple seconds, and he made a funny little grunt. A minute later, he opened his eyes and leaned in hard to kiss me. The song he wanted me to hear played, and he gently worked his tongue into my mouth. I let him. He rubbed my thighs, stopping an inch from the place where Marie’s fancy panties ran a ribbon of lace. As his hands jumped to my ribs, he buried his mouth in the curve of my neck.

  “You sure you still want to do this?” I asked, sliding my legs off his lap and sitting up.

  “You kidding? Of course.”

  What answer were you expecting? Ghost Marvin asked, laughing a long series of pffft!

  “Even if it is …” I said, knowing I sounded like a total narc. “You know, illegal.”

  “Like I said. Only illegal if you tell someone. I’m not telling anyone. You don’t? Problem solved.” He smiled, gently touching the area of my ring finger where nothing lay.