Boy Meets Boy

  "What's that like?" he asks.

  "I don't really have anything to compare it to," I say after a moment's thought. "This is all I know."

  Noah explains that his family has moved four times in the last ten years. This is meant to be the final stop--now his parents travel everywhere for business instead of making the family move to the nearest headquarter city.

  "I'm so dislocated," Noah confesses.

  "You're here now," I tell him.

  If my family were to move (honestly, I can't imagine it, but I'm stating it here for the sake of argument), I think it would take us about three years to unpack all of our boxes. Noah's family, however, has put everything in its place. We walk through the front door and I'm amazed at how immaculate everything is. The furniture has settled into its new home; the only thing the house lacks is clutter. We walk into the living room--and it's one of those living rooms that look like nobody ever lives in them.

  We head to the kitchen for a snack. Noah's sister is sitting alert at the corner table, like a parent waiting up late at night for a kid to come home.

  "You're late," she says. "You missed Mom's call."

  She must be in eighth grade -- maybe seventh. She's old enough to wear make-up, but she hasn't figured out yet how to wear it well.

  "Is she going to call back?" Noah asks.

  "Maybe." End of conversation.

  Noah reaches out for the mail on the table, sifting through the catalogs and bulk mail for something worthwhile.

  "Paul, this is my sister, Claudia," he says as he separates the recyclable from the nonrecyclable. "Claudia, this is Paul."

  "Nice to meet you," I say.

  "Nice to meet you, too. Don't hurt him like Pitt did, okay?"

  Noah's annoyed now. "Claudia, go to your room," he says, giving up on the mail.

  "You're not the boss of me."

  "I can't believe you just said that. What are you, six years old?"

  "Excuse me, but aren't you the one who just said 'Go to your room'? And by the way, Pitt wrecked you. Or have you forgotten?"

  It's clear Noah hasn't forgotten. And neither, to her credit, has Claudia.

  Satisfied by this turn of conversation, Claudia drops the subject.

  "I just made a smoothie pitcher," she tells us as she gets up from the table. "You can have some, but leave at least half."

  Once she's out of the room, Noah asks me if I have a little sister. I tell him I have an older brother, which isn't really the same thing.

  "Different methods of beating you up," Noah says.

  I nod.

  After drinking some of Claudia's mango-cherry-vanilla concoction, Noah leads me up the back stairs to his room.

  Before we reach his door, he says, "I hope you don't mind whimsy."

  In truth, I'd never given whimsy much thought before.

  Then I see his room and I know exactly what he means.

  I don't know where to begin, both in looking at it and describing it. The ceiling is a swirl of just about any color you'd care to imagine. But it doesn't seem like it was painted with different colors -- it looks like it appeared at once, as a whole. One wall is covered with Matchbox cars glued in different directions, with a town and roads drawn in the background.

  His music collection hangs on a swing from the ceiling; his stereo is elevated on a pedestal of postcards from absurd places -- Botswana, the Kansas City International Airport, an Elvis convention. His books are kept on freestanding shelves hung at different angles on a sea-green wall. They defy gravity, as good books should. His bed is in the middle of the room, but can be rolled effortlessly into any corner. His windowshades are made from old bubblegum wrappers, arranged into a design.

  "You did all this in two months?" I ask. It has taken me fifteen years to decorate my room, and it isn't nearly as intricate or . . . whimsical. I'd like it to be.

  Noah nods. "Since I don't know many people here, I guess I had time."

  He goes to the stereo and hits a few buttons. He smiles a little nervously.

  "This is very cool," I assure him. "It's a very cool room. Mine isn't nearly as cool."

  "I doubt that," he says.

  It's not that the weirdness of the moment doesn't strike me. I realize that the two of us don't really know each other. And at the same time, there's that comforting, unattributable vibe we're both feeling, which intuitively tells us that we should get to know each other. By showing me his room, he's giving me a glimpse of his soul. I am nervous about giving in return.

  In the middle of the book-angled wall is a very narrow door-- it can't be more than two feet wide. "This way," Noah says, guiding me toward it. He opens it up, revealing a guard of shirts. Then he disappears inside.

  I follow. The door closes behind me. There is no light.

  We push through the closet, which is unusually deep. Because it's so narrow, Noah's clothes are hung in layers. I push through the hangered row of his shirts and find myself folded between two dangling sweaters.

  "Are we going to Narnia?" I ask.

  I squeeze to a crawl to follow him through a vent-like passage. Then his legs stretch up--he's standing in a new passage, pulling himself up a rope ladder, up toward a trap door. By my reckoning, we're headed into a corner of the attic. But I can't be sure.

  As the trap door is raised, light streams down on us. I am surrounded by brick. I am in the middle of an old chimney.

  At the top of the rope ladder is a white room. There is one window, one cabinet, and two speakers. An easel stands in the middle of the room, with a blank square of waiting paper.

  "This is where I paint," Noah says as he sets up a second easel. Nobody else is allowed up here. My parents promised me that when we moved. You're really the first person to see it."

  The floor is paint-splattered--trails of color, spots of shape.

  Even the white walls have hints of vermilion, azure, and gold. Noah doesn't seem to mind.

  I am a little worried, since the last time I painted there were numbers on the paper telling me which colors to use. I am an ace doodler, but -other than that my artistic repertoire is quite limited.

  "Jesus died for our sins," Noah says solemnly.

  "What?!?" I reply, choking back my thoughts.

  "I was just seeing if you were listening. Your face went far away for a second."

  "Well, I'm back now."

  "Good." He hands me a vase of brushes and an ice-cube tray of paints. "Now we can start."

  "Wait!" I protest. "I don't know what to do."

  He smiles. "Just listen to the music and paint. Follow the sound. Don't think about rules.

  Don't worry about getting it perfect. Just let the song carry you."

  "But what about instructions?"

  "There are no other instructions."

  He walks over to the speakers and plugs them into the wall. The music begins, drifting into the room like a perfumed scent. A piano tinkles in jazz cadences. A trumpet chimes in. And then the voice-- this wonderful voice--begins to croon.

  "There's a somebody I'm longing to see. . . ."

  "Who is this?" I ask.

  "Chet Baker."

  He's marvelous.

  "Don't get lost in the words," Noah says, ready to paint. "Follow the sounds."

  At first I don't know what this means. I dip my brush into a velvety purple. I raise it to the canvas and listen to the music. Chet Baker's voice is sinuous, floaty. I touch the brush to the paper and try to make it soar in time with the song. I swoop it down, then up again. I am not painting a shape. I am painting the tune.

  The song continues. I wash my brush and try different colors. The sunflower yellow settles in patches, while the tomato red flirts over the lines of purple. Another song begins. I reach for a blue the color of oceans.

  ". . . I'm so lucky to be the one you run to see. .. ."

  I close my eyes and add the blue to my painting. When I open my eyes, I look over to Noah and see he's been glancing at me. I think he knows I understand.


  Another song. I am now able to see things in my painting--the hint of a wing, the undertow of a tide.

  Noah surprises me by speaking.

  "Have you always known?" he asks. I know immediately what he's talking about.

  "Pretty much so, yeah," I answer. "You?"

  He nods, eyes still on the canvas, his brush a mark of blue.

  "Has it been easy for you?"

  "Yes," I tell him, because it's the truth.

  "It hasn't always been easy for me," he says, then says no more.

  I stop painting and watch him for a moment. He is concentrating on the music now, moving his brush in an arc. He is completely in tune with the trumpet that solos above the beat. His mood reflects indigo. Is it heartbreak that makes him sad (I remember his sister's comment in the kitchen), or is it something else?

  He senses my stillness and turns to me. There is something in his expression the moment before he speaks -- I cannot tell whether H s vulnerability or doubt. Is he unsure about himself or unsure about me?

  "Let me see what you've done," he says.

  I shake my head. "Not 'til the song is over."

  But when the song is over, I'm still not satisfied.

  "It doesn't look right," I tell him as the next song begins.

  "Let's see," he says. Part of me wants to block his view, blot out what I've created. But I let him see anyway.

  He stands next to me, looking at the music I've painted. When he speaks, Chet Baker's horn highlights his words.

  "This is splendid," he says.

  He is so close to me. All I can feel is his presence. It is in the air surrounding us, the music surrounding us, and all my thoughts.

  I am still holding the paintbrush. He reaches for my hand and lifts it gently.

  "Here," he whispers, guiding me across the paper, leaving an auburn trail.

  "It's only twilight, I watch 'til the star breaks through. . . ."

  The brush covers its distance. We both know when it ends. Our hands lower together, still holding on.

  We do not let go.

  We stand there looking. His hand over mine. Our breathing.

  We leave everything unsaid.

  The song ends. Another begins. This one is a blast of upbeat.

  "Let's get lost. . . ."

  Our hands separate. I turn to him. He smiles and walks back to his easel, taking up his brush.

  I follow him to peek over his shoulder.

  I am floored.

  His painting is not an abstraction. He has only used one color, a near-black green. The woman in the painting is dancing with her eyes closed. She is all that he's drawn, but all you need is her figure to know what is going on. She is on a dance floor, and she is dancing alone.

  "Wow," I murmur.

  He bashfully turns away. "Let's finish," he says.

  So I head back to my own easel, stepping on the marks of paint I have already left on the floor. We lose ourselves to the songs once more. At one point, he briefly sings along. I do not stop to listen, but instead work it into my canvas. My flights of color are meeting his dancer somewhere in the middle of the room. We do not need to speak to be aware of each other's presence.

  We stay this way until twilight colors the window and the hour calls me home.

  Chuck Waggin

  "So did you kiss him?" Joni asks first thing. It never takes her very long to get to the point.

  She's going to ask all the questions about Noah that I'm not going to ask about Chuck. Now, I am not one to kiss and tell, but Joni's heard about every single boy I've ever kissed.

  Sometimes I've told her two minutes after the fact; other times it's come up years later, as my way of proving she doesn't know everything about me. From my first spin-the-bottle kiss with Cody to the final, conflicted kiss-off kiss with Kyle, Joni's been the one I've shared the stories with. So it comes as no surprise to have her question me now, on the phone, fifteen minutes after I've ;come home from Noah's.

  "That's none of your business," I say.

  "Is that a 'none of your business' yes, or a 'none of your business' no?"

  "I don't want to tell you."

  "So its no."

  I don't know how to explain it to her. It's not that I didn't want to kiss Noah. And I think he wanted to kiss me. But we left the moment to silence instead. The promise of a kiss will carry us forward.

  Since I don't say anything more, Joni lets the subject drop. Much to my surprise, she picks up the subject of Kyle instead.

  "Has Kyle spoken to you?" she asks, in a way that makes it clear that Kyle has spoken to her.

  "Does saying hi in the halls count?"

  "Well, it's a step."

  Joni always liked Kyle. She liked his confusion, his woundedness, his bafflement. . . the same things I liked about him, as well as his natural charm and his sincerity. When these things turned against me, I think Joni was almost as hurt as I was. She'd trusted him with me. He let both of us down.

  The thing is, Joni got over it easier than I did. I guess hurt is essentially a firsthand emotion.

  When Kyle started talking the straight-and-narrow, she was willing to believe him. Sure, he'd started dating girls--but those relationships rarely lasted longer than a PSAT prep course.

  After they broke up, they never stayed friends.

  "I think he wants to talk to you. I know he wants to talk to you."

  "What could he possibly want to talk about?"

  "I think he feels bad," Joni tells me.

  I wonder what feeling bad means in this particular situation. I can't imagine it's the same feeling bad as when you lend your boyfriend your favorite ultra-comfortable sweater and then find him wearing it as he says that the only feeling he can muster toward you is annoyance, and then wearing it again a week later as he walks past you in the halls, pretending you don't exist as he flirts with the one girl who had been after him the whole time you'd been going out. It can't be the same feeling bad as knowing that the sweater-- the sweater you looked best in, the sweater you felt best in, the sweater you now fear he'll be wearing when you see him in between classes -- is sitting at the bottom of a closet, where he doesn't give a damn about it, or has been given away to some other person he's pretended to love.

  Perhaps I need to polish my vindictive streak, but I don't want him to feel that bad. Because I've seen him -- I've seen the loneliness behind his eyes, the way he'll stop in the halls unsure of where to make the next step.

  Since he made me feel invisible, I spent months wishing he'd disappear. Now it feels like I've gotten half my wish. His spirit has gone. His body remains.

  "How's he doing?" I ask Joni, despite my better instincts.

  "I don't know if he's happy. But he's got a cat."

  "A cat?" As far as I know, Kyle hates animals.

  "He took in a stray."

  "How ironic," I say, even though I know Kyle is one of the few people in our school who doesn't do irony on a breathing basis.

  "Chuck has a cat, too," Joni volunteers.

  Which is, of course, her way of saying she wants to talk about Chuck.

  I brace myself.

  "He's really not that bad," she says.

  "Who? Kyle?" I'm not going to make this easy. That's my right as her best friend.

  "No, Chuck. I really like him."

  "I'm sure if I spent more time with him, I'd get to know him better," I say, choosing my words very carefully.

  "And I'm sure I'll like Noah," Joni replies.

  I freeze for a moment, afraid she'll propose a double date. Instead she says that she, Chuck, and I should head out to lunch together tomorrow.

  Because she's my best friend, I say yes.

  Only seniors are allowed to leave campus for lunch, but that doesn't stop the rest of us from going out anyway. Our principal's wife owns the sub shop down the street, and I think she'd be out of business in a second without the support of cafeteria-fleeing sophomores and juniors. The seniors can manage to drive somewhere b
etter, but the underclassmen basically have two walking-distance choices.

  Whenever I go out, I skip the sub shop and head to the Veggie D's on the other side of the street. The Veggie D's used to be your usual processed-slaughterhouse fast-food joint, but a few years ago a bunch of vegetarians launched a boycott and soon the chain lost its link. A local food co-op took over the building, keeping all the fixtures intact. They even made the workers keep the uniforms, only with a leaf pinned where the corporate logo used to be.