Authors: Kelly Milner Halls
G.
Back at my little table, sipping another iced latte, for some reason I’m thinking of the ski lodge. Not one of my finest moments. I remember those stupid Team Kids. All their yak yakking about their ski trips and ski equipment and multiple orgasms and designer clothing labels. The endless gossiping and giggling. And all that campy lodge shit—the beach, the pool, the going out on the lake in a rowboat. The fucking mosquitos.
I just wanted to sit in the lounge unbothered, sucking up Cokes and cable TV. But I knew how important this retreat was to my parents. My dad had been getting a lot of pressure from old Charlie Jones, and he needed to score some brownie points in a big way—so I had to at least try to fit in and participate. That was back in the days when I still did try, occasionally.
Stephanie was a bundle of energy at that lodge. She did everything. She was into all that outdoor crap. Maybe she felt sorry for me and started spending time with me out of politeness.
The days of my impressing her with peeing tricks were long gone. So were the days of the playhouse and admiring her collection of washed-up beach debris. When we became teenagers, I started feeling self-conscious around her, kind of like I had to keep checking my fly to make sure it was zipped up.
But over the years I’d still had visions of kissing her. I liked looking at her when I saw her at school or family get-togethers. Occasionally I had a feeling she was looking at me, too.
At the lodge, we kept finding ourselves alone together. It just kept happening without much effort. It was hard for me to believe, but I felt like I was getting some definite vibes of encouragement from her.
I started thinking about making a move on her. I’d never done anything with a girl before, and I thought Stephanie and that lodge would be a good place to start. A little practice wouldn’t do either one of us any permanent damage, right?
We sat by the fire. She didn’t seem to mind sitting by me. I noticed she chewed on her lips a lot. She kept applying lip balm. I wanted to have a chew on her lips too.
We went for a hike one afternoon when all the other perfect kids were doing something extremely wholesome like playing volleyball or bragging about how many times they’d had sex in a hot tub. We followed a trail that led away from the beach and went up through dense forest. It was all uphill. After ten or fifteen minutes, we reached the top of the bluff. I felt like my gut was going to split, I’m huffing and puffing and sweating. Stephanie was hardly out of breath.
We found a small clearing surrounded by trees, sheltered from the wind from the ocean. It was peaceful and shady in there. The air was still. Totally private and secluded.
We sat down on the soft, dry grass, our backs resting against a log. We looked out through the trees at the ocean.
“What is this place?” I said. “A launchpad to Neptune?”
She looked at me and laughed. “Yeah, I like that.”
Then she said, “I’d like to come back here someday. I’d sit up here all night, by myself.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Well, during the day I’d sit here. I’d sit very still. First I’d get bored and restless, but pretty soon I’d start seeing things—an eagle, a deer, maybe even a bear. And then night would come. I’d be scared at first, and homesick and lonely. But then I’d sort of get swallowed up, lose myself in the darkness. Blend in with everything. The fear and loneliness would go away. The stars would come out. I’d hear things and see visions. I’d see myself. I’d see into myself.”
Wow. I just stared at her. Her eyes seemed so deep, and there was something in them, in her, I’d never seen before, but I didn’t know what it was. “I’d sign up for that,” I said in a quiet voice. And I meant it. Come up here and catch a glimpse of something inside myself.
It wasn’t until we were hiking back down to the lodge that I realized I’d missed the perfect chance to kiss her. The chance would never come again. Tomorrow we were packing up and leaving. I felt a kind of panic.
S.
The last night of the retreat, there was a banquet. You’d think, since we were at a ski lodge, we’d just have the banquet at the lodge’s own restaurant. But that was too mundane for Dad. His great scheme, which he thought was amusing, was to pay homage to his early days as a go-getting entrepreneur. He worked so many hours back then, that he’d never be home for dinner. Instead, he’d get cheap Chinese food delivered to his office. But actually serving cheap Chinese food to his employees would be déclassé. So he hired a master chef to cater this enormous, formal, multicourse banquet and decorate the whole lodge to look like a cheap Chinese restaurant. The red lamps, the bright gold dragons, the plastic, patterned dinnerware, and even the place mats, which
I recognized as a remarkably dumbed-down-for-white-devils look at Chinese astrology. The Team Kids had spent most of the banquet trying to get served alcohol, but the catering staff knew who was paying them and refused.
“Hey, Stephanie, what year were you born?” Christina, the oldest Team Kid, suddenly asked. I told her, and she screeched, “Oh, my God, that’s so funny! Look, everybody: Stephanie was born in the Year of the Cock!”
Next to the picture of the rooster on the place mat, I read “A pioneer in spirit, you are devoted to work and quest after knowledge. You are selfish and eccentric. Rabbits are trouble. Snakes and Oxen are fine.”
I knew it was just a cutesy place mat, designed to spark witty conversation at a restaurant, and I knew Christina wanted to embarrass me, but I actually liked the description. I definitely was devoted to work, and I quested after knowledge, too. We were so rich it was practically a given that I was selfish, and as for eccentric, well, yeah. I looked at the birth years listed for the other signs mentioned. Christina was a Rabbit. So was my dad. Gavin was an Ox.
“I was born then,” Gavin said. Why was he lying?
Christina looked at him with one eyebrow raised. “So, you’re big on cock, too, I take it?”
Gavin flushed, and I was furious. I was about to say something, I didn’t know what, when he said, “That’s right, I’ve got a big cock, and you can suck it. That is what you said, right?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer, just got up from the table and left. Christina was only fazed for a few seconds. She laughed a little laugh and said, “Well, I guess we know what he’s insecure about.”
I scowled, but I said nothing. Anything I said would get me into trouble. So I waited till the end of dinner to excuse myself.
I went back to my room and changed. I didn’t exactly set out to go looking for Gavin. It just so happened that the place he’d gone was where I ended up: the pool. We swam for a while. Then I was cold, so I moved to the hot tub. Back then, it seemed like I was always either too cold or too hot.
Gavin got in. I remember the splash sounded especially loud, and I wondered about echoes and water and tiled walls. After he got in, we were quiet. I wanted to say something about what a bitch Christina was, but instead I said, “You picked a good time to leave dinner—the dessert was even lamer than the rest of it.”
On the word it, Gavin kissed me.
Was I surprised? Yes, no.
Did I like it? Yes, no.
It was too much, somehow. I pushed him away, got out of the pool, went back to my room, not thinking anything coherent.
It was the last night of the retreat.
I saw him a few weeks later, but he ignored me.
I didn’t try talking to him again after that, and before long, I stopped seeing him around. I heard that he’d moved, but I didn’t know where, and I had no one to ask.
G.
I finish my second iced latte. No sign of Stephanie anywhere. I’d better take another leak before she gets here.
This time I use the urinal.
I wish I hadn’t started thinking about that damn ski lodge. It always makes me burn with shame. How many times have I wished I could go back and undo it?
I remember I was in the pool, still shaking from some stupid remark I’d made to one of the other girls, but Stephanie showed up and I stopped shaking in a hurry. She looked damn good in that bikini. Kind of flat-chested but nice legs, really nice butt, long sleek arms and neck. She seemed to keep on kind of swimming past me, near to me, like a fish, grazing me with her wake. When she got out of the pool and walked over to the hot tub, my blood was popping. Why did I grab her so suddenly? Why did I mash my face into her mouth, tasting lip balm and chlorine and fortune cookie? What could I possibly have been thinking? She’d been utterly astonished and dumbfounded and grossed out. So grossed out.
I should have told her that I cared about her or something. But all I could think about was pouncing on her and getting in some practice. At the time I didn’t even realize it: She’s the only girl I’ve ever cared about.
After that, I was so embarrassed and ashamed I couldn’t even be in the same room with her. My pride and confidence were gone—kaput.
But that’s not the worst moment of my life.
There was one more time after that. A few weeks later, a week before the start of eleventh grade. A balmy Sunday evening, my friend and I were riding our bikes around, just enjoying one of the last days of summer. And suddenly there was Stephanie, zipping by me in this hot-looking white convertible. She saw me, and I saw her. She pulled over to the curb up ahead, opened her door, faced me, waited for me to ride up to her on my bike. She was sitting there smiling awkwardly, her face red and flushed, and when I approached on my bike, I heard her clear her
throat and say, “Gavin, I haven’t seen you for a while and I just wanted to—”
I kept on riding past her. My friend said, “Hey, Gavin, that girl was trying to—” But I ignored him too, I just kept riding.
That’s the worst moment of my life.
If I could go back, I’d go to that place in the woods, that clearing at the top of the bluff where she told me she’d stay up all night.
I wonder if she ever did that? I wonder if she heard things and saw visions?
My life went steadily downhill after that hot-tub incident. My mom and dad had been going deep in debt, trying to keep up with the Charlie and Dolly Jones lifestyle. But Dad never did score enough brownie points, and old Charlie fired him just after Christmas. My folks were bankrupt. We sold our house and moved to a cheap apartment way out in the boonies, and I started a new school in the spring of my junior year. By then I had stopped trying altogether—trying to be a good son, good student, good whatever. I chased after new visions with the help of various chemicals, got in some trouble during my senior year, got busted a couple times for stupid things, but somehow managed to eventually graduate. Meanwhile my dad couldn’t find a decent job anywhere in the Northwest, so one day my mom and dad and little sister decided to move to Texas, a brand-new life in a new city with a new opportunity. I decided not to go with them. What would be the point? I was on probation with a suspended sentence—still am, actually. I moved back to Seattle, got a job, rented a cheap room.
Some skinny guy is leaning against the sink staring into the mirror. He’s got a lame attempt going at a beard and mustache. I didn’t notice him come into the restroom.
He’s looking into the mirror, not at himself, but at me.
There’s something in his cheekbones and in his eyes that causes a little prickly feeling in the center of my chest.
“Hey, Gavin,” he says cautiously.
I step away from the urinal with my fly gaping.
I open my mouth, about to say something like Do I know you?
“It’s good to see you,” the guy says, half facing me.
I’m frozen for another moment. Then I walk past him, out the door into the crowded coffee shop. I stop and lean my forehead against the wall. My knees are shaky. I notice my fly is still open.
This is a nightmare. I’m having trouble breathing. My forehead is stuck to the wall. I should have said something—but what? How about “hello”? Or “hey, long time, no see … fella”? Christ, it’s like a repeat of that last time I was on my bike. You gutless piece of shit. I can’t go back in that restroom. And he doesn’t seem to be coming out. Or she.
I am a coward, but that’s okay, I’ll live with it, I won’t go back in that restroom with him in there. Or her. Too weird. She had hair—
on her face!
An attempt at a beard and mustache. I was not imagining that. Maybe it’s a joke? Did she decide to dress up in a costume and surprise me in the men’s room? Why is she still in there? Is she waiting for me? Does she just stand at sinks waiting for people so she can shock the hell out of them? I can’t go in there. I would look really stupid if I walked back in there. Why did you walk out? You gutless … okay. Okay, I’ll go back in. Jesus.
This is so typical. The one girl I ever cared about does not appear to be a girl anymore.
S.
Of course he was in the men’s room, the room I still have to psych myself up to walk into, every single time.
And now he won’t come back.
Sometimes I found myself thinking that when Gavin poked that stick in my eye, it went all the way into my brain and shoved everything off-kilter. I used to read books where the hero would talk about feeling different, but it always turned out to be such a bullshit kind of different. You know, like everyone expects him to be a football player but really he wants to wear black and write political songs. Oh, cry me a goddamn river. I gave up reading novels after one too many of those stories where the guy dis-covers his True Self with the help of his Sensitive Art Teacher, or his mom’s No-Nonsense New Husband, or That Girl He Always Thought Was Weird. I decided I’d only read things that were true.
When I took my driver’s test, there was a point when I was supposed to make a left turn, but I misjudged the timing. So I got caught between lanes, with the car at an awkward angle. Everyone around me was honking. I knew I was blocking traffic, but there was no room for me to move.
I sat, panicked, clutching the steering wheel, waiting for the light to change, waiting for someone to make a space for me, and suddenly I started laughing, with a crazy edge, because the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was so familiar. There was nothing at all new to me about being trapped.