When Joel saw the beard he burst out laughing and so Mark shrugged and got rid of it. It was agreed that if Joel thought it was stupid it was stupid because Joel was attractive. He was vain about his hair back then. Dukes of Hazzard hair was still in. And he was serious, a student over at Cartimandua College who worked full time. Girls loved serious and sexy.
But Joel was worried that day. He had just turned twenty, and Sidney had just turned sixteen and finally it was Sidney who asked what was wrong because Mark
wasn’t going to. Mark was always good at waiting for someone else to ask what was wrong and so it was ironic that, in the end, he became the psychiatrist.
“What makes sex sex?” Joel finally said, playing with his fingers, an odd grimace on his face.
“Is this Zen?” Sidney asked. “Like, what did your face look like before you were born? What’s the color of—?”
“Stop clowning,” Joel said, a little irritated. “I mean... is oral sex sex? Really?”
“What?” Mark’s eyes popped out of his head.
Sidney was shocked, but, really, what was it with white people? Mark was four years older than him. Even holed in Notre Dame, this couldn’t have been too much of a shock.
“Why?” Sidney said. “Did you have it?”
“You don’t have to look so excited.” Joel sounded even more irritated.
“And you don’t have to sound so gloomy,” said Sidney. “So you did? With that Carla?”
“With my girlfriend Carla,” Joel said, sounding truly grieved. “If you’re not going to be a little sensitive, I mean, really.” Then he said, just to be unkind. “Sometimes I forget you’re still just a kid.”
Mark said nothing.
When no one said anything, Sidney figured it really was up to him to speak.
He said, “Well, maybe I am a kid, but since Mark’s not going to ask any questions, you’re stuck with me.”
“Maybe I don’t want to talk about it.”
“If you didn’t want to talk about it you wouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Sidney—” Mark began, but Sidney shushed him up.
“I’m just saying,” Sidney said, “and maybe this is because you’re Catholic, I don’t know. But you two are always going on about sex, and then when you have it, you act like this terrible thing happened to you—”
“Firstly, it wasn’t sex.”
“It was oral sex. It was sexual.”
“Secondly I’m not acting like it’s the end of the world. I’m just,” Joel said. “I don’t know. Yesterday I was definitely, definitely a virgin. And... I just want to do things right. I try to be good. And... That’s sort of gone. There are things I know. I mean...”
“Did you like it?” Sidney cut to the chase.
Joel turned red and flustered, then said, “Yes. I mean, of course. It was... I never felt like that before. I... I can’t talk about it. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just I don’t know how to, and.. I just wanted you all to know. And now you do.”
And then a thought occurred to Joel.
“Have you, Sidney…? You know... done that?”
“No,” Sidney sounded a little affronted. “I mean, not yet. None of it. I’m as innocent as... the day.”
“Yeah, Judgment Day,” Mark commented.
But it hadn’t been Sidney that “did it.” In the end it was Mark. They had caught him in the act that same year and then, taking his cues from Mark, Sidney “did it.” That was another story. But all of that figured into this particular Sunday morning.
Sidney scowled over the unmade bed as he picked up his things and began to pack. He thought about that day a lot, when Joel had come in confused and irked, a little overwhelmed from his first sexual experience. Sidney hadn’t even had a sexual experience with himself, so how could he have any real sympathy. But after experiencing Mark’s first love and then his own and then his marriage, and then now, he understood.
There were some things that left you feeling solidly good, and some that were solidly bad. Some things just left you confused. Keisha left him confused. He was so used to being alone now that whenever she showed up and he felt himself longing again, whenever they were in bed together again, it was always odd. He could put it out of his mind while they were making love or fucking or whatever. But in the morning, when it was over all Sidney could do was look around the room and whistle a lot.
“Hello!” Sid shouted when he entered the house. “Hello!”
There was a note on the counter.
Dear Dad,
gone to church with Tommy and Balliol.
Will be back,
Love,
Mason
Who the hell was Balliol?
“Oh, well,” Sidney shrugged. He decided to make a pot of coffee and find his cigarettes. The hotel barred smoking and Sidney wasn’t such an addict that he’d smoke outside.
“It’s not sophisticated,” he said to himself as he went to his bedroom, pulling out dresser drawers, not quite sure where he’d put the new carton of Maverick’s.
While he was still looking he heard the door open. He heard scuffling. He assumed it was Mason, and when he returned with a pack of cigarettes, he found Joel and Mark sitting at the kitchen table with cups of coffee in hand and a third one across from them, presumably for himself.
“You’ve heard of knocking?” he said.
“Knocking?” Joel turned to Mark. “What’s that about?”
“I think it’s this,” Mark said, and whistled.
“No, no, that’s whistling.” Joel told him.
“Oh,” Mark looked pleasantly vapid. “What is this knocking?”
Sidney rapped them both on the foreheads and said. “That.”
“Now you owe me a cigarette,” Joel held out his hand. Sidney cashed the pack, opened it, lit two in his mouth and gave one to his friend.
“Too bad you kicked the habit,” Sidney told Mark.
“Lung cancer is the leading cause of death in the state of Ohio.”
“Actually second hand smoke is the leading cause of cancer in Ohio,” Joel ashed into the glass tray Sidney passed him. “I’m worried about you, buddy. If you took it up again it wouldn’t be second hand.”
Mark gave a small smile and said, “I’m glad to know you’re looking out for me.”
Joel smiled lazily, and blew smoke out of his nostrils.
“And now the big question,” Joel said to Sidney.
“What big question?”
Joel and Mark looked at each other, and then they looked at Sidney innocently.
“What?”
They just smiled at him. No. They were leering.
“Oh, God!” Sidney said. “We’re not teenagers. You can’t be serious.”
They just kept smiling at him.
“Yes,” Sidney said, blowing out smoke. “Yes. I did. Last night. All night. Are you pleased?”
Mark shrugged and, pushing up his glasses, said, “I’m just glad to know someone did last night. All night.”
Smirking, Joel turned to Mark and said, “I’d like to think that one day I will one night, all night. But,” he sighed. “Not very likely.”
“What about with that Bella, or Stella?” said Sidney.
“Good, because her name is Shelley,” Joel told him.
“Well,” Sidney shrugged. “There’s always her. Did you kiss her, at least? And don’t you dare blush after asking me if I slept alone last night.”
Joel did blush though, but he also answered.
“I did, in fact, kiss and get kissed. And that’s all I’m saying. Because a gentleman—”
“You didn’t mind asking me.”
“Well, you’re still married, Sidney. Besides. You’re no gentleman.”
Becky Angstrom’s tan van rolled down Morrison, and stopped at one corner of the white, asphalt street.
“This neighborhood is so barren—” she began. But Addison leaned forward and kissed her. He kissed her two or three times.
“I love you,” he told her.
“You better get home.”
“I wish you could come in with me.”
“Addison, if I parked this van in front of your parents’ house and we walked in together that would be the beginning of a lot of questions.”
“I don’t care,” he said softly.
“Get that goofy look off your face. And you would too care... If you didn’t still have a hard on.”
Addison crawled out of the van, kissing her again, and standing on the sidewalk in front of the house of a family he didn’t know. That was the great thing about this neighborhood. No one knew anyone, so no one could tell your business.
Becky did a U-turn and then with a honk of her horn drove away. Addison watched until the van had made it to the corner of Morning Street. And then it was gone.
The day was already getting old. The fresh morning smell was gone, but he felt like everything was new. As he walked home he wished he didn’t have to report to his parents, tell them he was safe. He wished he could just go and see his friends because after last night home was just no place to be.
Mason was first into the house, and he greeted Joel, Mark and his father with the usual, “Hey, all.”
They weren’t in the kitchen, but in the living room all piled onto the couch watching football, which Sidney hated, but tolerated for Mark and Joel.
Tommy had gone into the kitchen to help himself to sodas and Mason said, “Dad, this is Lincoln Balliol.”
Sidney’s eyebrow was raised from the moment the other Black boy walked in. There weren’t that many Black people in Eastforth and only a handful of Mason’s friends had ever been the same color he was.
“Hello, sir,” Balliol said leaning forward. The boy had class. He shook all of their hands,
Mark said, in a curious tone, “Lincoln Balliol?”
God, dad, I hate Lincoln Balliol! He’s.... he’s evil is what he is.
“Yes, sir,” said Balliol taking his hand away.
“Mark Powers.”
“But everyone calls him Dr. Powers,” Sidney said leaning forward and ruffling his friend’s head.
No one else saw it, but Mason saw it. The flicker between Mark Powers and Lincoln Balliol.
Balliol turned to Mason for all of a second, and then he grinned and covered himself.
“Oh, Chris Powers is your son.”
Mason realized most sixteen year olds would have flipped it, would have said, “You’re Chris Power’s dad...”
“Yes.”
Balliol said, neutrally. “I think he’ll take us to a championship.”
“He’s a good player.”
Balliol nodded.
Mason wanted this to end. He knew that Chris must have said something about Balliol, and Balliol must have known that Mark knew who he was.
Something was about to happen.
Balliol smiled at Mark.
And Mark smiled back.
A lot had happened in five seconds, and Balliol had managed it well.
“Dad, do you know what this is?” Mason handed him the photograph that had been in his book bag.
“This?”
“Oh, yeah, the picture,” Tommy said, handing Mason a soda and giving one to Balliol who clicked cans with him.
Mason put his hand to his mouth and started chuckling.
“Oh, my God...” he murmured. “Oh, my God!”
“Look!”
Sidney handed the picture of the little brown boy between the two white kids in their blue pants and their sky blue shirts, with their thick hair.
“It’s you all,” Balliol realized looking from the little boys to Mark and Joel and Sidney. “It’s you.”
“Yes,” Mark said with a smile at Balliol. “It is.
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT EDITION WHICH WILL BE POSTED ON SATURDAY MORNING.