Monday, August 18, 2008

two boys on bikes, reprised

two boys on bikes, mexico city

J and R rode bikes. BMX big fat nubby tire bikes, the eventual progenitors of the mountain bike. But this was long before mountain bikes were on the market and I knew only that the bikes they rode were boy bikes -- and that I wanted one.

So much more solid than my old yellow ten-speed. So much more right for the scree scattered streets of South Angelina Ave in Suquamish, a res-town in sight of Banbridge Island’s Agate Pass, a rock’s toss down the beach from Old Man House where Chief Seattle and his tribe staged potlatches that blazed into the night sky.

Sealth’s longhouse -- once the largest in the Pacific Northwest -- was gone by the time we got there; the beach bulwarked with rotting old growth timber that broke loose from its kin on the watery ride to the mill, opting to be flotsam instead of floorboards, settling finally into the lonely sands that once teamed with trade.

J and R were inseparable then, riding their bikes or trawling the beach that served as a highway between our homes when the tide was out. From far away I’d see J’s black lab Dizzy lumbering my way with a stick in his jaws, or, having just dived into the Puget Sound after it, shaking his sandy salty self dry, and I knew they were near. Was always glad to watch them come closer.

Years later, having moved away long since, I swung back by for a visit and found they weren’t so inseparable anymore. R ballooned into a football player and was headed off to play on scholarship at a university I can’t recall. J was still slight of build with a shy slouch and a tumble of blonde curls whose smile carried the heartbreak of a poet.

I was in love with J, of course, but I never told him as much.

I knew it for sure when he let me ride on the seat of his nubby tired bike while he stood and pumped it, carrying us both at high speeds down Angelina Ave and then off the road through rough trails, under mossy limbs, and over creek beds; knew there was something unsettling about being that close to his body working that hard to propel us down the trail; knew something was firing but didn’t understand what it was.

This was junior high, and I was still unclear about how these things worked. In the time we lived on that beach, our houses side by side, J and I passed through that strange place called adolescence where easy games of tackle football with my brothers and the neighbor kids morphed into chase-and-tackle games of “smear the queer” (I didn’t know it was homophobic. I just like the way it rhymed.) that were all heat and speed and contact. The chance to tackle and be tackled.

We lived in J’s old house -- his family built a larger one next door and rented the old one to us. Dizzy never got used to the fact that he didn’t live there anymore, and he spent most of his summer days hanging out on our porch, sweeping clean the patch on his tail where the fur was all worn through from wagging against the floorboards.

I slept in J’s old room, and he told me the secret of the gap at the top of the unfinished closet that looked into the room next door. It was his parent’s room when he had it, and he’d sneak up there and watch TV when they thought he was asleep. It was my brothers' room now, and I wasn’t interested in watching them play with their baseball cards, but I was intrigued to find the ragged pages of Cosmo that J had wedged into the closet wall. Large bare breasted women in bikini bottoms, the color worn from the page where it had been folded and unfolded countless times.

I left it where I found it.

I’ve tried to separate out that day in the woods from the other days we walked home together from where the bus dropped us off and we cut across the familiar trail, into the soft arms of the forest that smelled of mushrooms and mulch.

But that day blends into the others with their patter and laughter and performances of Blondie tunes (his. he memorized the proto-rap in Rapture and played it back for me, stopping and restarting until he got it right).

I remember only that J was agitated, and then I remember nothing else until he barked at me for a blow job.

They were new words to us both, courtesy of Penthouse Forum, copies of which we each found in unique caches and talked about glancingly before.

I laughed, because it didn’t make sense, and he insisted. I said no. He grabbed my shoulders and pushed me to my knees.

His face was strange and full of fear. His hands on my shoulders, holding me firm. I said no again, fiercer, louder, rose to my feet, breathing hard, and headed home.

I think we walked the distance together, J a few feet behind me. I don’t remember that we said much. It was awkward after that, while we negotiated that uneasy aphasia where complicated things like desire and power aren’t spoken of.

Over time we eased our way back, and eventually had conversations where we talked about other things. Uneasily we worked our way back to our easy friendship.

Even writing about it here I feel I’ve broken the pact. I thought maybe I’d just write about the heat and speed of that bike ride; just mention the times we played sardines and found a tight place to hide together, our bodies squeezed into the dark and stillness and silence.

But that moment in the woods, the negotiation and slow passage that came from it, were as much a part of it as the rest.

7 comments:

patrick said...

Amazing, isn't it, how a simple, unrelated photograph can open the spigot of memory?

(And I will never believe that writing isn't your true calling.)

Lolabola* said...

yes I believe the same as patrick's parentheses.

memory is a very interesting thing

suttonhoo said...

thanks for listening to my stories, friends -- your comments give me courage to post stuff like this. (it's not easy to write about blow jobs when you know family might stop by.)

p.s. as I rounded the corner of my block this morning, after posting this, two neighbor boys rode by on their bikes. it was perfect.

anniemcq said...

You're a writer, but more than that, an artist.

Yow this is good.

fuquinay said...

I wrote about blow jobs last week, but it was someone else's kids giving them, so it was OK. Love the story and reminds me of my own childhood. A little.

I, Rodius said...

Wow. Beautiful, hazy, nostaglic, then POW! You've definitely got punch. Perfect.

Parenthetically, your comment that you didn't think about what "smear the queer" reminded me of "peeferkay." When we played football in front yards and parks, we often substituted a throw for a punt because we could throw straighter and farther, especially with a Nerf. But we always prefaced it with a hearty yell of "Peeferkay!" I thought it was a beautiful, magical word, and I was a little saddened when years later, it occurred to me that it meant "pass for kick." And the magic was gone.

Anonymous said...

wow. powerful stuff, Dayna. And, superbly written, as usual! Wow.

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