Read Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle Online
Authors: Michael Thomas Ford
But all was not for naught. Legend has it that during his imprisonment prior to his martyrdom, Valentine fell in love with the blind daughter of his jailor, eventually using his divine powers to restore her sight. On the eve of his execution, he reportedly wrote a farewell message to the girl, signing it "from your Valentine." It is not recorded whether he also presented her with a box of sweets for her troubles, but for her sake we can only hope that he did, seeing as how the girl and her father were later executed for accepting Valentine's other gift, the redemptive love of Jesus Christ. When, in A.D. 496, it was decided by Pope Gelasius that it was time to once and for all stamp out the lingering pagan customs of the land, a replacement for Juno Februata and Lupercus was sought. Gelasius was wise enough to know that the Romans would more readily accept a substitution than an abolition, as they had when their winter solstice celebrations calling for the return of the sun and its light were retooled as the birth of the Christ child. He found a ready candidate in Valentine, with whose feast day he replaced those of the Roman deities. He also attempted to replace the drawing of girls' names with the drawing of the names of saints, whose lives the selectors were urged to emulate for the following year. This proved unpopular, however, and eventually Gelasius settled once more for the choosing of names, albeit omitting the sexual overtones of the celebration.
The rest, as they say far too casually, is history. Valentine the saint became valentine the missive. The slips drawn from the box soon became love letters, usually in verse, sent to young ladies by their admirers. The first known valentine, preserved today in the British Museum (where Thayer and I saw it on our tenth anniversary trip to London), was sent by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife, Bonne of Armangac, in 1415, while the duke was imprisoned in London's White Tower following the Battle of Agincourt. I would urge all those gentlemen who find purchasing a card for their true love a burden to consider the lengths to which poor Charles had to go to send his valentine, which ought to put a 10-minute trip to the drugstore in perspective.
Considering the Roman beginnings of the tradition, I like to think that Julius Caesar, once famously described by Curio as "every woman's man and every man's woman," received some small token of affection from his most well-known valentine, King Nicomedes of Bithynia. Sadly, the sending of valentines between men is a largely unexplored avenue of romantic history, so whether Caesar ever received one we will never know. My own experience with such things, I can recall with awful clarity, began with Valentine's Day of 1966.
I gave it, of course, to Jack. We had exchanged them before, but always they had been of the sort that had Mighty Mouse or Donald Duck on them, and they were given along with the others we brought for all of our third-and fourth-grade classmates, stuffing them into
tissue-paper-heart-decorated shoeboxes before being rewarded with pink-iced cupcakes. That year, however, I took great pains to make Jack a card. I'd looked for one at Woolworth's, but they all had verses clearly written with girls in mind, and reading them made me blush with embarrassment. Jack wasn't my sweetie or my honey. I didn't even have a word to describe what he was. All I knew was that I felt something for him and wanted to let him know.
I ended up making a card from red construction paper. Inspired by our one real childhood fight, I glued to it images of Superman and Batman cut from my collection of comics. I positioned the two superheros standing side by side on the moon, holding hands and looking at one another. Behind them I drew a galaxy, complete with stars and planets and a comet. Inside, I wrote "To my Superman. Happy Valentine's Day." I signed it "Bruce," as in Bruce Wayne, Batman's true identity.
I was sure that Jack would like the card. Although we had been playing our sexual games for almost six months and still hadn't given what we did a name, I knew he felt about me the way I felt about him. I saw the valentine as a way to finally put into words what was between us. I suppose what I really hoped was that it would encourage him to tell me what was in his heart. I gave him the card on the way to school, handing it to him when we reached our first corner and had to wait for a passing car before crossing. He looked at the cover, opened it, and then looked at me. "What the hell is this?" he asked, his voice angry.
"What do you mean?" I said, startled at his reaction.
"What do you think I am, a girl?"
I shook my head. I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.
He thrust the valentine at my chest, letting it go so that it fell to the ground, where the snow smeared the ink and stained the ground red. Then he turned and started to cross the street. I looked at the card, crumpled at my feet, then bent to pick it up. Jack was already on the other side of the street, walking quickly away from me. He turned and looked back. "Are you coming or not?" he called out. I tucked the valentine into my notebook and ran after him. Neither of us said another word as we finished the walk to school, and when we walked home that afternoon, Jack seemed to have forgotten all about the incident. Alone in my bedroom, I took the valentine out, tore it into as many pieces as I could, and deposited it in the wastepaper basket beside my desk. A minute later the phone rang. When I answered it, it was Jack, telling me that he had asked Mary Shaughnessy to go to the movies that night, and that I was taking her friend Bernice Kepelwicz. He would pick up some cards and candy for the girls. All I had to do was be ready to go at six. Defeated, I did as he told me. At the appointed time, I arrived at his house, where he handed me a red envelope and a small box tied with a pink ribbon. "You can give these to Bernice," he instructed me. He had slicked back his hair and applied aftershave. The smell, as it always did, reminded me of being next to him in bed. I felt my heart tremble, but was able to control myself as we walked downtown to the theater. It wasn't snowing, but the air was bitterly cold, mirroring the chill in my soul. Mary and Bernice were waiting for us in the theater lobby. Jack handed Mary her card and candy, accompanying it with a kiss on the cheek. Bernice looked at me expectantly, and so I did the same, adding, "Happy Valentine's Day." The girls looked at one another, exchanging smiles, while Jack scanned the marquee to see what was playing.
Jack rolled his eyes at me behind the girls' backs, but walked to the ticket window and plunked down two dollars for tickets for himself and Mary. I did the same, handing Bernice her ticket. Then Mary meaningfully suggested that popcorn and Cokes would be nice, so Jack and I waited in line at the concession stand while the girls went to find seats.
"Man, this movie is going to suck," Jack said.
"Why are you pretending to like Mary?" I asked him, suddenly angry.
"What do you mean?" he said. "I like Mary all right."
"Since when?" I demanded to know. "You just invited her this afternoon."
"So?" said Jack defensively. "Maybe I didn't think of it until then."
I bit my lip to keep from accusing him of anything else. I knew full well why he had suddenly decided to arrange Valentine's dates for us. He knew, too. But neither of us would say it, not in a crowded theater. Maybe, I thought, not ever.
We got our popcorn and sodas and joined the girls, who had artfully arranged themselves so that they were seated together and Jack and I had to sit on opposite sides, as far from one another as possible. Mercifully, the lights dimmed soon after, and we settled into silence as the movie began. It was, as Jack predicted, monumentally dull, despite the catchiness of the hit song on which it was based. Only Agnes Moorehead, who I recognized from my Thursday-night viewings of Bewitched , provided any amusement in her role as a cranky nun.
When, halfway through, I felt Bernice lean against me in an invitation of affection, I dutifully obliged. Upon placing my arm around her shoulders, I found my fingers come into contact with Jack's, who had his own arm around Mary. To my surprise, he left his hand where it was, even going so far as to hook one finger around mine, linking us together across the barrier of the girls. We remained like that through the rest of the film, none of which I can remember.
Afterward we said good night to the girls, who thanked us with actual kisses on the mouth. Bernice's lips tasted of salt and Coke, and I was relieved when we parted after a short time. I don't think I was her idea of a perfect Valentine's Day date, which was just as well. I had no intention of taking my performance any further, and was not looking forward to days or weeks of having to feign excitement at her presence.
Mary appeared more content with her experience, kissing Jack several times before being led away by Bernice. He and I then walked home through the cold, our hands stuffed deep into the pockets of our coats. When we reached his house, he stopped.
"That was one bad movie," he said.
"It sure was," I agreed.
"The girls had a good time, though."
"Sure," I said.
He ran up the steps to his house, the door shutting loudly behind him in the still night. I ran my tongue over my lips, trying to taste him, but all that remained was the lingering syrupy sweetness of Coca-Cola. I couldn't tell if it was from Bernice's kiss or Jack's, but I savored it until it grew faint. Then I walked up my own steps and into the house.
Many years later, I would discover that the real singing nun, Jeanine Deckers, left the convent after the success of her song "Dominique" and in 1985 committed suicide along with the woman believed to have been her lover for over a decade. But that night in 1966 all I knew was that, like her, my heart was singing.
There are few things more defiant in the face of almost certain failure than a romance between young people. Despite the fact that a relationship begun when one is 14, 15, or 16 is highly unlikely to last the length of a school year, much less forever, millions of boys and girls blissfully ignore the statistical probability and pair up. When the inevitable breakup comes, they act surprised, as if the possibility had never occurred to them. And perhaps it didn't. The future, after all, is not something the young often consider, believing as they do that time is an endless commodity. They live in the moment, oblivious to the danger of heartache, even when it is all around them.
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. We have all at one time or another met the couple who came together in high school, only to marry and thrive. Secretly, we hate these couples because they have managed to escape what most of us go through at least half a dozen times on the road to emotional maturity. We tell ourselves that avoiding this maturation is how they've managed to do it, and pity them their simplemindedness, much as we pity the former cheerleaders and quarterbacks who remember high school as the best times of their lives.
For the rest of us, high school dating was practice for later life. By dating, we were allowed to act out the dramas and comedies that are part of being creatures who love. We tried and failed, won and lost, and hopefully learned a thing or two before the stakes were raised. As the only real consequence at the time was pregnancy, we had free rein to do as we liked, or at least as far as we dared. At least as long as we were heterosexual. Those among us who leaned in another direction were, with almost no exceptions, left to figure it out on our own. I maintain that this is why so many of us had—and continue to have—trouble when we finally did begin dating. We hadn't had the years of practice that our straight brothers and sisters had. We weren't given the opportunity to find out what we liked, and what we had to offer. As a result, we had to do it on the fly, all the while feeling that we really ought to know what we were doing.
I envy a bit the young queers of today, with their gay-straight alliances, their centers, and their freedoms. I'm sure it's every bit as difficult being outside the norm as it was when Jack and I were 15, but at least they have access to information. At least they, most of them, know that they are not alone in the world. For myself and Jack, it was like waking up and finding everyone else gone. We had no idea who or what we were, and had to find our way on our own.
We didn't call ourselves gay. We didn't call ourselves anything. We were just two boys who loved one another. We didn't have Elton John, Harvey Fierstein, or Rupert Everett to show us what we could be. We didn't haveWill & Grace or Queer as Folk to reflect our lives (however one-sided those portrayals may be). We didn't have Falcon Video or Honcho to show us what men did with one another in bed. We had only one another.
The sex part we muddled through as best we could. Boys are nothing if not resourceful beasts, and we figured out quickly what felt good and did it often. Stroking turned to licking, and then to sucking. Hesitant at first, we quickly overcame our inhibitions about taking one another in our mouths. Because our lovemaking was done mostly late at night, with our parents asleep a room or two away, we were restrained in displaying our excitement, muffling our groans in pillows and coming with silent exaltation. We turned 16 in August, spent our second summer on Treasure Island (where Jack was inducted into the Order of the Arrow and we celebrated by jacking off on top of the observation tower at Yoder's Lookout), and a month later returned to school as sophomores. Understanding that camouflaging ourselves was a necessary course of action, we continued to date girls. This was more important for Jack than it was for me, as his popularity had grown exponentially and he was now, among other things, captain of the football team and vice-president of the student body. While I was far from being on the lowest rung of high school society, my positions as newspaper editor and first trumpet in the band were not in the same league as Jack's.