Crying at Christmas

"And – I can't wait to get to college.  We are going to have a great time," he was referring to our planned matriculation at university, one-thousand nine-hundred fifty-eight miles, and an ice age away from High School.

"And – when we get there, will you be my boyfriend openly?"

In retrospect I saw that he hesitated before speaking, but I was not listening attentively then.  I was listening for something to sweep me away from this moment.

"Yeah, sure – whatever it takes," he reached out his right hand to receive my left.  I responded and lifted it into place.

We sat quietly for several moments.  I looked forward to holding his hand in public, to kissing him goodbye after meeting for lunch in the dining hall, to sharing a dorm room, and to no longer having to furtively sneak away to have sex.  We would be liberated, out, college students, radical and daring, pushing the envelope of what it meant to be gay.  "I can't wait either," I leaned over and kissed him.

The rising sun warmed us both – radiation so intense it redlined it ninety-three million miles straight to earth, and then careened in a hyper-oxygenated atmospheric rush, hunkering around the surface in an attempt to reach the dark side of the flip-floppy planet that had cold-shouldered it the evening before, but in cool regret was now inquisitively squirming forward to see what was coming around the bend.  This seemed to be an inaugural day, the first of our summer.  It seemed that it might be prelude to my growing up.

"Whose car is that?" Justin asked while pulling his hand away from mine.  Beyond some trees, which leaves and branches obscured our view, a car had entered the cemetery grounds.  The vehicle disappeared behind a rise thick with stelae, then reappeared closer and clearly, undisguised by trees, hills, or gravestones.

"It's Clint," I said.  "Do you think he will dare to stop and talk to us?"

"It's Clint – of course he will."  The car neared.

Clint turned the corner onto the road leading toward and then past our location.  He drove up and stopped parallel to us, shifted seats, leaned out the open passenger-side window, and grinned in a half figured-out kind of way, "What are you guys doing here?"

"What are any two guys doing in a cemetery this early in the morning?" I goaded him.

"Getting drunk?" he answered in a rhetorically obvious way.

"Do you see any beer?" I gave him that 'look for yourself' body motion.

He shook his head, 'No.'

"And what are you doing in a cemetery this early in the morning – alone – looking for a date, or looking to get rid of one?"

"Hunh?" he had figured out the first part, and was slowly working on figuring out the second part of the question.

"What's in the trunk, Clint?" Justin asked.

Clint squeaked in his best geek fashion, "Hah – you guys are funny.  There is a girl in the trunk," more laughter came out his nose.  "I came here to get her a date."

We all laughed; funny was funny.

"It looks like…" I looked down at the sarcophagus cover on which we sat, at the name engraved into the top of it, "…Samuel here is available.  He is single…" his was the only name on the slab, "…no kids…still fresh – he died only three years ago…but here is a problem.  He is a bit older."  I calculated his age at the time of death, "He is 93…or 96 depending on how you figure his age.  What do you think – interested?"

Clint snorfed some more, "I'll check."  He turned his head into the car.  "Hey, Paula!  Did you hear that?" he waited.  "Knock once for yes," then turned to us after silence leached from the confines.  "I guess not."

"Well maybe you are enough for her?" I suggested.

"Or maybe she will find what she is looking for down the hill – over there somewhere," Justin waved him off.

It was awkward for a second while Clint compared the semiotics of this sentence with sentences that he had heard in the past.  Eventually he aligned the two sound signatures.  "Yeah…maybe," he dispiritedly agreed – again getting the lay of the land.

But he did not drive away.

"Yes?" I asked.

He stared at me.  A squeak, a premonition of Clint-speak, originated in the back of his throat and piped out of his nose into the dead space between us, "Why are you Justin's friend?"

"What?" this was peculiar.  Perhaps graduation had loosened tumblers in that inaccessible, strange thought box of his; something had fallen into place; and we were witnessing the release of sense and sensibility.  Perhaps Clint, who had never been considered 'normal,' had become extraordinarily normal, unlike the 'normal' people who, in actuality, all seemed to have stuck order and logic into a cornerstone for others to find in some distant future after they were dead and gone.

"Why are you Justin's friend after what he did to you?"

I did not know what was about to strike me, but my heart accelerated, readied to leave me cold.  "What…" I let out my own involuntary eeking, "…do you mean?"

He looked more confused than usual, as though this were a great unspoken truth between us to which I needed to own up.  "I have wondered why you are Justin's friend after he and Geoffrey attacked you in the woods that day in tenth grade?  You are no longer close friends with Geoffrey, but he is not the one who put the stick up your…" he left off, not willing to put it to me again, or maybe fearful of the attacker sitting by my side.

"Clint, you had better shut the fuck up before I come over there and knock the shit out of you," Justin slipped menacingly off the slab.

Clint could not figure out what to do.  He had worked up the nerve to ask about our taboo event of two-and-a-half years ago and he thought that gave him some right to his inquisitiveness, but Justin threatened him otherwise.  "But I do not understand – unless you liked it…" he stopped; less willing to independently confirm rumored, socially-condemned things of which he had vague notions.

Justin stepped toward Clint, electrifying the air between them to a crackling state.  "This is your last chance, Clint.  Shut up now, and shut up tomorrow, and shut up forever.  If I find out that you have been talking about this, I will come to your house and break your legs," Justin took three more steps and stopped close enough to Clint to underscore the menace and yet limit this to naked intimidation.

"Okay, Justin.  I will keep still.  I know that you can beat me up and break my legs.  I won't say anything.  But I still wonder…"

"Clint."  Justin put a stop to it all.

"Justin," I said jumping off the slab, approaching him, and holding him back by his upper arm.

"I won't say anything," Clint repeated, looked at me still in wonder that I tolerated Justin, returned to the driver’s seat, and then put the car into gear and drove away.

"Justin," I repeated.

Justin ripped his arm away from my hand, "Don't touch me."

"Justin, it is all right.  He is gone," I reached for him again.

"I said, do not touch me!"