Message of Love Read online

  Declining the coffee everyone else seemed to crave, “It’s two in the morning,” I muttered, I instead ordered food. And while no one repeated the callback line tossed to Brad Majors, after the cheerful congratulations on my participation, I could almost feel my awkward disconnect with the more festive characters.

  Gerard held court, spouting on about yet another club night, a new band, and a new vintage clothing store, while his friends replied in perky affected tones, as if always quoting some clever line or lyric whose significance eluded me.

  The other Magenta sat across from me. “You guys simply must come back.”

  Not if returning meant acting out a hump session with a drag queen alien, I thought. “Well, I don’t know if we can–”

  “It’s so perfect, Everett doing Doctor Everett Scott.” She glanced at him, charmed, of course.

  “Yeah, kind of a funny coincidence.”

  “And him being…”

  “A paraplegic.”

  “Sorry.” She hunched her shoulders, wincing. Her heavy mascara almost completely blacked out her eyes.

  “No need. He’s cool about it.” I glanced across the booth at Everett as he laughed at another of Gerard’s jokes.

  “So, you guys are…?” She wagged her finger in a motion that implied a connection.

  “Yeah.”

  “That must be…different,” she said softly.

  “Well, we kinda dated before his accident, before college.”

  “You went to high school together?”

  “No, actually–”

  Distracted by Gerard’s question about some bit of movie trivia, Magenta’s attention returned to the louder group chat. I ate.

  It was fun, for the first hour. But the others were not interested in geologic surveys or environmental issues, so I didn’t have much to say. Perhaps I should have brought up asexual plant reproduction. Instead, I listened, half-smiling and nodding. Everett ignored my repeated silent glances, so I dug into my omelet and hash browns, which were actually pretty tasty.

  Long after my empty plate sat un-bussed before me, and the others continued to nurse their coffees amid relentless chatter, Everett finally noticed my silent smiling stare.

  “We should get going, but this has been great,” he finally said.

  Outside, a fuss ensued over who among the two people with cars would have the honor of driving Everett home, until one of the Transylvanians said, “I can fit him and one more.”

  “Oh!” Gerard practically leapt forward.

  “But I’m going with Everett,” I said.

  “Oh, why?” Gerard asked.

  “Because. I’m his boyfriend.”

  “Well, I just thought you were going back to Temple.”

  “No. Thank you.”

  Visibly miffed, and his other potential ride already off in the other direction, he bid us an abrupt goodnight and left to chase them down.

  As our Transylvanian led us to her car, Everett muttered, “You didn’t have to be so–”

  “Apparently, I did; otherwise I’d be walking home.”

  “I hope you had fun, at least.”

  “Yes, but it’s four in the morning.”

  Squeezed into the back seat with his wheelchair beside me, as we rode toward Penn, I ignored Everett’s pleasantries up front with our Transylvanian, wondering how many more times I would have to declare my connection to Everett, and how to do it without being, well, an asshole.

  Chapter 11

  November 1980

  “Reagan isn’t going to change anything for the good,” declared Jacob. “It’s a lot of corny rhetoric.”

  “Corny rhetoric that sells,” Everett said as he flipped through a stack of note cards strewn around him on the carpeted floor of his dorm room.

  “Oh, right, like ‘It’s morning in America?’ That’s a breakfast sausage commercial, not a campaign slogan.”

  “Well, it worked.”

  Seated at his desk across his room, I looked down with an affectionate smile as my boyfriend and our new friend continued their seemingly endless conversational debate.

  Comfortable in his new digs, Everett enjoyed relaxing in various positions on the carpeted floor. With a pillow under his chest, up on his elbows, he scooted himself, his legs dragged along a bit. One of his socks was coming off, but I wasn’t going to interrupt him.

  Near him, our friend Jacob Isaac leaned seated against a wall and adjusted an overstuffed pillow on Everett’s bed. It was essentially one of our ‘date nights’ when I slept over, but it could wait. The fact that Jacob was on his bed might have unnerved me if he wasn’t such a nice guy; that and the fact that there wasn’t another chair.

  “Carter’s being blamed for the oil crisis, even if he didn’t cause it,” Everett countered.

  “But his policies were sound,” Jacob said, “and the Arab embargo–”

  Everett cut him off. “The public is resistant to energy-saving measures, no matter how many statistics tell us that turning off a light bulb is going to do anything.”

  “Citation, please,” Jacob scolded.

  Although Everett encouraged me to accept invitations from friends to events that aren’t accessible to him, more often I declined. I never wanted to have any intentional reason to not be with him. But any invitation to meet up was welcome, even being the odd man out in their study session.

  His first semester focused on Classics, then Public Policy classes took over. After auditing a few classes, he decided that he had no patience for Pre-Law.

  While I enjoyed watching him at a few preliminary student debates, I at first shied away from accompanying him to out of town tournaments.

  Everett caustically joked that he loved to watch his opponents squirm while “fighting with a cripple.” Besides, I’d endured enough of his superior argumentative skills the previous semester over amusingly petty topics like the arrangement of shirts in our dresser drawers.

  The truth was, Everett’s real major was becoming a hybrid of arguing for disability rights and perfecting his innate charm.

  People seemed to adhere to him, flirt with him, as if defying the prejudice of not considering him approachable would gain them some sort of status. I didn’t know what to make of it, usually ignored it or endured it when it was done in front of me without being acknowledged. Declaring us boyfriends seemed arrogant, defensive, in front of his new friends.

  Jacob Isaac, however, was different.

  The first time we met him, we were naked. Actually, we’d been swimming at the Penn pool. After letting himself be photographed for the Daily Pennsylvanian newspaper in the pool’s fancy handicap hoist, Everett got an unlimited guest pass when I accompanied him. Apparently the device had come at great cost, and Penn’s public relations department wanted to show off their ‘commitment to accessibility.’

  Nevertheless, he refused to use the hoist afterward, preferring to wrangle himself out of his chair, to the pool’s edge and into the water on his own, diving in if the lifeguard wasn’t looking.

  It was then that Everett told me of his glimmer of understanding about his mother’s pact with the school. We’d claimed a corner of the wider lane, circling each other. “Your boyfriend is a poster boy,” he’d said simply.

  We’d been casually paddling back and forth, swimming around in lazy circles along with a bit of mild horseplay that no one else realized was our own form of foreplay. The combination of being wet and nearly naked together usually led us to return to his dorm for a different sort of exercise.

  One swimmer adjusting his goggles between laps, then gave us more than the usual curious stare. It seemed one of recognition.

  We had been joking about the continuance of horseplay of a different sort at our lockers when Everett made a playful grab for my crotch. A giggle, a cautious glance between us, and there stood the curious swimmer, toweling off, his light brown curls damp and glistening.

  I stole a brief glance at his wiry muscled body, his smaller lean frame and the fascinat
ing fan pattern of his chest hair, along with the perky, almost friendly way his penis bobbed as he rubbed his back with his towel.

  “I’m right behind you,” he said apologetically. Everett made a move to back his chair away, but it bumped into the wooden bench that ran between the rows of lockers.

  “It’s okay,” Jacob had said, as he hopped up around us and opened his nearby locker.

  As we dressed, he introduced himself, quickly revealing his knowledge of who Everett was.

  “You won state in forensics last year. Pinecrest, right?”

  “That I did,” Everett smiled as he dug in his locker for his clothes. Jacob introduced himself to Everett, reminding him of some prep school debate where Everett had trounced Jacob’s team at some other private school in Western Pennsylvania.

  I dressed quickly, so I could make myself available for any assistance. But when I leaned in to help him, Everett returned my gesture with a scowl. In public, he preferred to perform such basic tasks on his own. I’d forgotten again.

  “Thinkin’ about joining the debate team?” Jacob asked as he shucked on a pair of boxer shorts.

  “I don’t know. I’ve got a big course load,” Everett said.

  “We could really use you.”

  Jacob offered his phone number, scribbled on a notepad which Everett always kept handy in his backpack. As an afterthought, before leaving, he also introduced himself to me.

  “You interested?” I asked after we’d left the locker room.

  “I’m not sure. I’d have to look up what the topic is this year.” College debate teams followed a national schedule, choosing pro and con sides according to some obscure regulations whose rules eluded me, despite Everett’s explanation.

  “He’s pretty cute,” Everett said.

  “You think?”

  “I saw you checkin’ him out.”

  “Well, he was kind of showing off.”

  “You think we were being hit on?” he feigned shock.

  “I think you were being hit on.”

  It turned out we were both wrong. Jacob, while okay with us being gay, and a couple, had not been hitting on us, despite being naked when we’d met.

  Now, more than a month later, their informal debate continued in Everett’s room. I glanced up from my chapter section on monocotyledon and dicotyledon plants. Leaf veins, flower petals and other parts had subtle differences. I noted an amusing ‘Did You Know,’ that banana trees were actually large grass plants and not trees at all.

  Jacob shifted forward to grab a cookie from a bag on the floor. He joked about having narrowly escaped one of many group activities in his dorm, Stouffer Hall.

  Jacob’s rapid speech, his talkative nature about everything from his Jewish family heritage to local cuisine, combined with what he called, “our mutual cultural history of oppression,” made him one of our few shared friends at Penn. He never asked questions about Everett’s disability, but listened if the topic was brought up. His studies in social justice paralleled both our interests.

  So when he and Everett spent an evening in his dorm room at least once a week discussing politics, even while veering off course from their topic and what Everett called his Notes and Quotes card box, I enjoyed listening in while doing my own work.

  “What do you think, Reid?” Jacob crumpled the bag of cookies, tossed it into the trash can, and licked off a coating of crumbs from his fingers.

  “Me?” I’d been poring over a half-assed chart on plant cell walls, coloring in a mimeographed drawing to differentiate the cellulose from the hemicellulose.

  “You’re obviously into the environment,” said Jacob. “What’s your solution to the energy crisis?”

  I glanced at Everett for assistance, but he merely offered a coy grin, his chin resting on his palm.

  “Uh, well, solar and wind power, for starters.”

  “Okay, but what about fuel?” Jacob asked. “Diesel, petroleum?”

  “Well, we need to cut off dependence on foreign oil, of course.”

  “Catch phrase,” Everett muttered.

  “Hey, I’m just answering his question,” I shot back.

  “And I’m critiquing the argument structure, not the emotion of the presenter,” Everett tossed off his reply.

  “Okay, purely for the sake of argument,” I aimed that last word at Everett before going on full attack. “We cut off OPEC, halt all logging, subsidize hemp for fiber and paper production, offer tax incentives for all new housing that includes solar and wind upgrades, and, and fine polluting industries into extinction, before we’re extinct.”

  Everett sighed as he rolled himself over onto his side, then yanked one leg up a bit, pulling it into a forced stretch. “And there you have it. The liberal approach taken to its extreme is isolationist, anti-business and totalitarian in its basic ideology.”

  I shook my head as if stunned. “Well, he asked for my opinion,” I muttered before returning to my stupid little cell cartoon.

  “You’re lucky you’re just his boyfriend and not his debate opponent,” Jacob joked as he stood. “We’ll have to solve the entire world’s problems some other night.” He gathered his notes and books.

  Everett rolled over. “Hey, we were thinking about going to movie night at the quad tomorrow night; Escape From New York. Wanna come with?”

  “Actually, I have a date. Marcy; freshman and very blonde.”

  “Girlfriend material?”

  Jacob stuffed his papers in his backpack. “More like a hot shiksa who’s slumming before getting her emarress degree.”

  “Her what?” I asked.

  “M. R. S. Missus. You know, girls who aren’t really getting a degree, just husband-hunting, and I don’t think I qualify, or want to.”

  Everett chuckled. “That’s something we don’t have to worry about.”

  “No, what with you two already being practically married,” Jacob joked. He offered a low-five as Everett shifted to sitting on the floor, folding his legs in front of himself. “Don’t get up on my account.”

  Everett laughed. Jacob offered a quick hug as I led him to the door. “Stick to your guns, Reid. We’ll save the world from these dirty imperialists one day.”

  I watched him trot down the hallway before closing the door, almost afraid to be alone with Everett. Jacob seemed to provide a buffer between us, and now he was gone for the night.

  After closing the door, I returned to his desk. “You didn’t have to skewer me in front of him,” I muttered.

  “Reid.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Giraffe.”

  “Yes?”

  “Debate is the attempt at objective argument. It’s not about personal feelings.”

  “Fine.” I closed my books as if I might leave. He knew I wouldn’t.

  “Come ‘ere.”

  I hesitated, then relented, walking across his small room, his little universe, then settled down on the floor next to him. He wrapped an arm around me, offered a light kiss to my forehead.

  “Nobody else knows how much you love the planet, and trees in particular.” He grinned, knowing that remark spoke volumes, not just about my hopes, but our own intimate past.

  “I know,” I whispered. “It’s just … you get so …cold when you argue.”

  “It’s not cold. It’s practical.”

  “So, you’re like your parents. You’re a Republican.”

  “No. I’m not defining myself by them.”

  “But you’re conservative.”

  “Not in the way you think.”

  Everett held me closer, but then gestured with his arm, waving above us. “The argument is outside us. That’s how it works. The emotion,” he pressed his hand to my chest, “stays inside. It’s fragile.”

  I kissed him. He tasted of the cookies we’d been eating. I shifted my mouth across his jaw. His beard stubble sent a surge of desire through me. We adjusted the pillow, but I could sense his discomfort as I moved to lay atop him.

  “You wann
a move up to the bed?”

  “No, let’s do it here,” he grinned. “Just get a few more pillows.”

  I stood, tossed a few from the bed toward him, which he caught. “And a towel.” I walked to the bathroom.

  “And some lube!” he called out.

  “Anything else? Dessert? Coffee?”

  “Your butt.”

  “Coming right up,” I replied, as I stripped off my clothes, and helped him yank down his sweatpants.

  As we jostled and repositioned ourselves, kissing and licking, we gradually ended up in one of Everett’s other preferred positions; me straddling his chest, teasing him by flapping my erection toward his mouth, his eager tongue darting toward it, then me finally succumbing to his grunting moans of pleasure as I plunged in and out. It seemed strange, feeling a surge of lust at the sight of my own body distorting his cheeks, that perfect face.

  His reach upward toward my own face confused me.

  “Your ears turn so red when you get excited.”

  He held them like handles, pulled me downward for a kiss, until I leaned back up. Behind and under me, he stealthily lubed up a few fingers and gently, then insistently, probed up inside me.

  “Ow, jeez.”

  “Hello.”

  As he found that tingle-inducing spot, as I gave myself to him, letting him have his way again, I became overwhelmed, not by the familiarity, and not by his expertise.

  What brought me to an almost tearful explosion was the shock that, after all this time, I still barely knew who he was.

  Chapter 12

  December, 1980

  Mountains parted for us, rivers conjoined with us, tiny towns approached and were forgotten through our drive across Pennsylvania, with Everett at the helm. With only one break, despite my repeated offers to take the wheel for part of the way, for most of the trip we were silent or sang along to Beatles songs on the radio.

  Our anticipation of holiday joy had been overshadowed by John Lennon’s death. Back on campus, the night of his murder, candle-holding students had appeared from all over, a spontaneous memorial on both campuses, I learned when Everett called me in tears. I had rushed across town to be with him, and through my journey, it was as if the entire city were lulled to a somber tone. It was such a strange day, how quiet everything was, until strains of “Imagine” and other songs echoed from windows. It wasn’t the first time we had shed tears together, but it was altogether different.