Kevin Corrigan and Me Read online

  “Sometimes at night, my friend and I sneak over there; we hide between the cars. Then, when the valets aren’t around, we’ll switch the tickets on different cars’ windshields. We do it to six or eight cars, and then we come back over here to watch the fun. It’s total chaos.”

  Kevin chuckled while I jerked a thumb toward the restaurant. “Want to give it a try when we’re finished here?”

  I figured Kevin would jump at the chance. It seemed exactly the sort of prank he might have cooked up back in our Jungle days. But right after he struck his ball with his putter, he looked up at me and shook his head.

  “Why cause trouble for people?” he said. “I mean, what’s it accomplishing?”

  My jaw dropped at his response. What had happened to the rascally Kevin I’d known three years before?

  Chapter Four

  On a Friday night, my mom took my sister, Kevin, and me to a drive-in movie theater to watch an Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton film, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a movie I neither understood nor cared to. To me, Taylor and Burton came across as a couple of drunks who detested each other and their shitty marriage. Kevin and I sat in the car’s shadowy backseat, which was a fairly tight squeeze for two long-legged teenage boys, and because I was bored, I bounced my knees and cracked my knuckles. I drummed my fingers on the windowsill beside me until my mom turned and told me to quiet down, that I was disturbing her concentration on the movie.

  I rolled my eyes and rocked my head against my seat back. I stared at the car’s fabric roof while I crossed my arms at my chest. Would the movie never end? Why would anyone pay money to watch such drivel?

  I can’t wait to—

  Kevin’s knee touched mine. We both wore shorts, and I felt the warmth of his skin. Right away, my pulse accelerated. When I looked at Kevin from the corner of my eye, his gaze was fixed on the movie screen. His expression was impassive. We shared a box of buttered popcorn, and when he passed the box to me, seconds later, I placed it in my lap. I ate a few handfuls while I savored the feel of Kevin’s skin against mine.

  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the situation in the backseat. Was Kevin making a pass at me, or was he simply trying to relax his leg? I decided to take a chance, to make a subtle move, so I rubbed my knee up and down against Kevin’s knee; I did this three times. Then I stopped and held my breath.

  Seconds passed. Then Kevin rubbed me back: once, twice, three times. By the third rub, my heart hammered against my ribs and my breathing had quickened. I stole another glance at Kevin, but his gaze remained fixed on the movie screen as before. I returned my gaze to the movie as well, feeling totally confused. What was going on? Was my imagination running away with me?

  It wasn’t.

  Kevin seized my wrist. He lifted my hand and brought it to his crotch, where something warm and rigid bulged beneath the flimsy fabric of his shorts. My eyes bugged; I swallowed noisily and trembled like a kid in a spook house. I’m sure Kevin felt the trembling because my knee chattered against his and my hand shook between his thighs.

  I turned my head to look at Kevin, and this time he swung his gaze to meet mine. He gave me a wink, ever so subtly and placed his hand on mine that rested between his legs. He gave my hand a squeeze. Then he turned his gaze back to the movie. We sat like that for the duration of the film, probably forty-five minutes, and Kevin remained stiff the entire time. Of course I was stiff as well, so rigid I feared I might bust the zipper out of my shorts. But then the film ended, and after Kevin withdrew his hand from mine, I removed my hand from Kevin’s crotch before my sister or mom could see what we were up to in the backseat.

  My thoughts raced during the ride home. What had it all meant? Did Kevin want me the same way I wanted him? And what, if anything, would happen next?

  Back at home an hour dragged by before my mom and sister decided they would turn in. Mom extinguished lights in the living room while Kevin and I headed to my room. After I closed and locked the door, we both undressed without saying a word to each other. I tried to imagine what sort of thoughts dwelled in Kevin’s head as he slid beneath his bedcovers. I switched off the floor lamp that stood between our beds, then crawled into my bed. I lay on my back with my fingers interlaced behind my head and my elbows jutting. I listened to waves smack the nearby shore. I heard the breeze stir needles of an Australian pine outside my bedroom window. Tires hissed on asphalt when a car passed on Gulf Boulevard. After my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I turned my head to look at Kevin. He also lay on his back. One of his knees was raised beneath his covers and he rocked the knee from side to side.

  Go on: say something.

  “You awake?” I whispered.

  Kevin turned his head to look at me. “Yeah, of course,” he said. “I’m not really sleepy at all.”

  “I’m not either.”

  Kevin pulled aside his covers. He swung his feet to the floor, and his knees crackled when he rose. His erection tented the pouch of his white briefs. He came to my bed and sat on the edge of the mattress, close to my chest. Already I smelled his piney scent. He stroked my cheek with a fingertip a time or two. Then he ran his fingers through my hair while my heart chugged like a locomotive climbing a hill. After Kevin reached for the edge of my covers, he lifted them.

  “Can I?” he whispered.

  My voice croaked when I answered. “Hop in,” I said.

  What transpired during the next hour was nothing short of magical, at least for me. When our briefs came off and our bodies intertwined, I felt the heat of Kevin’s flesh, the firmness of his muscles, the softness of his lips, and the wetness of his tongue. We did things I’d never thought of doing with boys, intimate acts that felt entirely natural and right. Toward the end, when Kevin thrust inside me and his warm breath blew into my ear, I shivered with an excitement so intense I nearly screamed. And when it was over, I lay on my sweat-soaked sheet, staring up at the tongue-in-groove ceiling while Kevin snored in the other bed. Even today, whenever I smell the coconut scent of a certain skin lotion we used that night, I’ll remember my first time with Kevin as clearly as though the moment happened yesterday.

  We didn’t say more than two dozen words to each other during our sex. Mostly Kevin spoke, telling me what to do or how to do it or what he planned to do to me next. But I’d never felt closer to anyone. I thought back to that summer morning in the Corrigans’ garage, when I’d first discovered my desire for Kevin’s flesh, and I could not believe how events had led Kevin and me to this. My limbs felt like jelly. I ran my fingers through my damp hair while I marveled at the memory of Kevin’s techniques, his tenderness, and also his creativity. Who knew that Kevin’s tongue twirling in my ear could make my heart sing?

  And now I knew something else: a place in the world existed where I belonged. My need for another male’s touch might be deemed wrong in most quarters—I’d have to be careful who I shared those feelings with—but at least I knew I wasn’t alone.

  The Surf Motel was only a few blocks from our house, and the night after our first sexual encounter, right after we’d finished doing the dinner dishes, Kevin and I strolled down Sunshine Lane, a graveled alley leading to the motel, where we’d play pinball. We passed beneath the glow from streetlamps, both of us wearing Bermuda shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops. The evening breeze tossed Kevin’s wavy hair about while it blew my bangs into my eyes.

  We had risen that morning around eight. Kevin woke first, and his stirrings in the room woke me. When I turned onto my side to watch Kevin pull his swim trunks up his legs, his gaze met mine and gave me a wink like he had in the car the night before. The wink meant something, of course. It signaled me that our sex the previous night had not been a one-time thing. It also meant that now we shared a secret and a new bond between us.

  As always, we had spent several hours surfing at the sandbar. By now our days on the water had left my skin as dark as alligator hide and my normally brown hair sun-bleached to a golden hue. Kevin’s hair was almost white. His usually fa
ir skin was now the color of creamed coffee, and his shoulders were as freckled as a robin’s egg. Neither of us had paid for a haircut since May. We looked like two boys from the movie Lord of the Flies.

  There on Sunshine Lane, we both walked with our hands in our pockets, listening to traffic pass on Gulf Boulevard. Neither of us had mentioned our sex a single time that day, and I began to suspect that the taboos we’d shattered the previous night were something we would never discuss outside of my bedroom.

  Maybe, I thought, guys never talk about that sort of thing. The sex just happens, but it’s not discussed.

  That was when Kevin asked me a question that seemed to come out of nowhere, something having nothing to do with sex. He said, “Has your mom told you what’s wrong with my mom?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s what they call cervical cancer,” he said, then pointed to his groin area. “It’s in her private parts.”

  I crinkled my forehead. “Is it serious?”

  Kevin nodded while he kept his gaze on the gravel before him. “She might make it, or she might not. The doctors don’t know.”

  I licked my lips while I tried to process the information Kevin had just shared with me. Mrs. Corrigan has cancer? Mrs. Corrigan might die? The ideas seemed preposterous. She’d been such a large a part of my life in my early years, and she wasn’t that old, maybe forty at most.

  I cleared by throat. Then I said, “What happens if…?”

  We kept on walking while Kevin talked.

  “My dad couldn’t take care of me on his own,” Kevin said, “and I couldn’t take care of him either. He’d go to a nursing home, I guess. I have an aunt in Boston—she’s my mom’s sister—and probably I’d go up there to live with her.”

  A weekly television series aired at that time, a cop show that took place in Boston. I’d watched a few episodes, and all I could remember was how cold things seemed up there. People wore overcoats and scarves, and the men wore wool fedora hats. Everyone spoke with those curious accents where they said “cah” instead of “car” and “bah” instead of “bar,” and nobody, it seemed, had a yard in Boston. They lived in row houses with aluminum siding or in red brick apartment buildings with nary a shrub or architectural feature. I tried to imagine Kevin living in such a place, and I couldn’t. He loved the outdoors; he was made for a warm-weather climate. Up in the frozen North, he’d probably wither like a corn stalk after harvest. And if Kevin moved to Boston, I’d probably never see him again, would I?

  I tried to imagine myself in Kevin’s position.

  He’s probably scared as hell, and who wouldn’t be?

  Chapter Five

  A full moon cast a silver rhombus onto my bedroom floor while I lay with my cheek resting on Kevin’s chest. I listened to his heartbeat, to his soft breathing. Our sex had been a sweaty affair and my hair was damp. Kevin wrapped a few wet strands around his finger while he answered the question I’d just asked him.

  “There’s a guy in my neighborhood; he’s a little older than me, a high school senior. Sometimes we do this when his folks aren’t home. He taught me everything I know.”

  I rearranged my legs, but I kept my head on Kevin’s chest. “Are you gay?” I asked.

  He cleared his throat, then said, “I don’t know, but maybe.”

  “Do you think I’m gay?”

  Kevin chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” I said.

  Kevin rubbed his knuckle against the crown of my head. “You enjoy this; I can tell. It’s like surfing: something you were meant to do.”

  Long after Kevin returned to his bed, I lay in mine, staring at the ceiling and thinking about what Kevin had told me: that our sex was something I was meant to do. I knew he was right, of course, but how would my peculiar needs affect my future?

  Two weeks had passed since Kevin’s arrival, and already we’d fallen into a routine of sorts. Surfing, of course, consumed much of our daylight hours. Whenever we wore out our arm and shoulder muscles, we returned to my house, where we rinsed off in our outdoor shower room before changing into dry clothes.

  Most nights, after doing the dinner dishes, we took a long walk on the deserted beach. The breeze would ruffle our hair while our bare feet squeaked in the wet sand. Phosphorous in the Gulf’s water glowed whenever a wave broke on the shore. We talked about school or Kevin’s PAL baseball performances that spring. Or sometimes Kevin spoke of his father’s declining health; it seemed the Colonel spent more time at the VA hospital than he did at home.

  One particular night, we walked toward the Sea Castle Motel for an evening pool swim. We talked about the mischief we’d gotten into as kids in the Jungle, and I reminded Kevin of the dog turds he’d ignited on someone’s doorstep.

  “It was funny as hell,” I said, “but you seem different now than you were back then. What’s happened?”

  Kevin grimaced while he rocked his head to one side. “Last year, I got into major trouble at school, once for fighting, another time for ice-picking a teacher’s tire. My principal said I had to get counseling or he’d expel me, so now I see this lady. We talk about stuff: my family and all.”

  “Do you like it?”

  Kevin shrugged. “It’s all right, I guess. The lady thinks I suffer from what she calls ‘low self-esteem.’ It makes me angry, she says, and then I take it out on people around me. So I’m trying to work on that.”

  I nodded because what he’d just said didn’t surprise me at all. “Do you have any friends?” I asked.

  Kevin shook his head. “You know me; I’ve always been a loner. In fact, you’re the only real friend I’ve ever had.”

  I pondered Kevin’s last remark, then asked him a question that had dogged me for the past three years. “How come you never called or came to see me after you moved to Largo?”

  Kevin took a few moments before he answered.

  “I hated not seeing you, but what could I do about it? I figured we’d both be better off if we didn’t stay in touch; it only would have made things worse if we had. But now that I’m here…”

  “What?”

  He stopped walking and so did I. Kevin worked his jaw from side to side while he looked at me. “I wish I could stay at your house forever,” he said. “It’s a real home, not like the place I live. There’s no yelling and no sickness, plus spending time with you feels just right.”

  A sense of astonishment washed over me. Kevin, I then believed, had just told me in his own way that he loved me; that he always had, and that our separation had pained him just as much as it had me. Kevin’s revelation was what I’d always hoped to hear from him but never expected, and now that he’d said it I was pretty sure a major barrier between us had fallen. I wanted to take Kevin into my arms, right there in the moonlight, so I could tell him I loved him too. And I might have done just that, but then Kevin pointed toward the Sea Castle Motel.

  “Come on,” he said. “That pool is waiting for us.”

  My mom took Kevin and me to visit Mrs. Corrigan in the city’s Catholic hospital, where many of the nurses were also nuns, and I even saw a Franciscan priest in his brown habit with a rope for a belt, and leather sandals. The hospital’s hallways smelled of disinfectant, and I remember the whole place seeming very…quiet. People spoke in whispers.

  Mrs. Corrigan looked pale and gaunt; her jowls sagged and her lips seemed thinner than ever before. But she smiled when she saw Kevin and me, and we both gave her a hug. She lay in a bed with her upper body raised and her lower body covered by a sheet and a thin blanket. She shared her room with another patient, a gray-haired woman with a cannula stuck in her nose who slept the entire time we were there. A water pitcher, a drinking glass, a Bible, and a rosary rested on Mrs. Corrigan’s Formica-topped nightstand.

  When Mrs. Corrigan talked, her voice sounded reedy. “The doctors say my operation was a success,” she told my mom. “They removed the entire tumor—it wasn’t that large—and it doesn’t seem to have spread elsewhere.”

&nb
sp; My mom patted Mrs. Corrigan’s wrist. “That’s wonderful,” she said.

  “Is Kevin behaving?” his mom asked.

  My mother nodded. “He’s no trouble at all,” she said. “In fact, he and Jesse are having a good time together.” She looked at me and Kevin. “Isn’t that right, boys?”

  We both nodded, and then Kevin talked about the sandbar and all the surfing we’d done. “Jesse picked it up real quick,” he said. I talked about the Velzy board I’d bought. Then we both talked about pool-hopping and walking the beach at night. In fact, we talked about everything we’d done so far, except for one very private and frequent activity.

  “I’ll be transferred to a nursing home four days from now,” Kevin’s mom told mine. “It’s the same one where Frank is staying, so we can keep each other company. It’ll be about eight weeks before I can finally come home and care for Frank again.”

  I looked at Mrs. Corrigan and wondered if she’d have the strength to do things like getting the Colonel out of bed or bathing the Colonel or getting him dressed. At the moment, she didn’t look like she could do those things for herself, even. But then she’d just had major surgery, and maybe her present condition was only temporary. Maybe she’d rebound, but who knew?

  Summer rocked along. For a period of one week, we couldn’t surf the sandbar because it was only above water during nighttime. So we took to fishing at the John’s Pass Bridge, a structure only a ten-minute walk from my home. We bought live shrimp from a bait shop there, and we usually fished at night when the temperature was cooler. The place was a popular spot for anglers, and one guy or another always had a Coleman lantern burning so we could see what we were doing.

  We caught a variety of fish at the bridge: red drum, flounder, pompano, red snapper, and speckled sea trout. We filleted our catches at a cleaning table with a fresh water faucet the City of Treasure Island provided, then brought the fillets home in a bucket. As mentioned before, my mom was a good cook, and she usually battered and fried our catches, which made for tasty meals when the fillets were combined with french fries, coleslaw, and tartar sauce.