Blue Boy Read online

  My mother has a phobia of other people administering medicine. One time, at Neha Singh’s house, I had a fever and wanted some Tylenol, but she advised me not to accept any from the Singhs because she said if something went wrong, the Singhs could get in big trouble if the medicine didn’t agree with me and I died on the premises. This was frightening enough because of the legal ramifications that she described, but it was all the more terrifying because it implied that I was going to expire.

  “I’m sure he’ll be just fine,” Beverly says. She takes a drag from her cigarette.

  A thumping of feet comes from the staircase, and Cody and Donny emerge. I wince: this is exactly the type of sight I wanted to avoid, me standing on the porch with my mother next to me while my two potential buddies look down upon us. I can already detect an air of judgment from Donny and Cody, who stop in their tracks once they see my mother. Spurred by their stares, I say, “Bye, Mom,” then step through the doorway, not looking back.

  “Bye, beta,” she says. “Give me a call in the morning. Thank you, Beverly.” The jingle of her bangles tells me that she has just put her hands together in a Namaste. Then she leaves, the keys jingling in her hand before Beverly shuts the door.

  “All right, boys,” she says. “I’m gonna watch my soaps, so try to keep it down.” Beverly tapes her soap operas every day since she works as a receptionist at a dentist’s office. She then settles down in front of the TV at night with a can of Diet Coke and a pack of cigarettes to catch up on her viewing. One time when Cody and I had finished looking at magazines upstairs, I went downstairs to get a glass of water and saw her sitting in the adjoining living room with her back turned to me. The lights were all turned off and the smoke was encircling her head in the TV-glowing room. She was sniffling, and at first my heart sank in seeing this woman weep at the sight of the beautiful men and women before her, but then she coughed so hard that I could hear the phlegm in her throat and realized her sniffles were not the result of crying but of her habit.

  “Come on, Keern,” Cody says to me, turning back up the stairs. Then he whispers, “Donny brought the goods.”

  I make as if to follow Cody, but Donny stays still, perplexed.

  “What does ‘beta’ mean?” he asks.

  “It’s Hindi,” I say.

  He looks at me blankly.

  “I mean, it’s Indian. It means…Well, it basically means ‘child.’”

  There is a pause, and then he says, “Huh. Cool.”

  He follows Cody, and I feel a small rush of Indian pride just hearing him voice this unexpected affirmation. Then I follow him to the porn.

  Hustler puts Penthouse to shame.

  Donny fans out the magazines on Cody’s bed, then holds up one with the cover of a blond, orange-skinned woman in white lingerie sucking on one of her fingers. “This one is fuckin’ awesome,” he says. The magazines give Donny a confidence that he has not otherwise exhibited, save for the way he smoothly lays a basketball into a hoop. He flicks the issue in his hand to Cody, who catches it and opens it up hungrily, sprawling himself out on the bed. Donny sits down in the chair in front of Cody’s never-used desk, picks up another issue, and chucks it at me. I fumble it, and the magazine lands on the carpet. It has opened up to a spread of another blond vixen, this one perched at the tip of a large penis. There is no professional artistry or glossiness in the photograph, the way there might be in a Penthouse shot. The photo seems as if some amateur took it with a second-rate camera in his home. The woman looks very cheap, and a thin film of chalky makeup half covers the few bumpy zits that cross her forehead and chin. I kneel down to the magazine instead of picking it up and then curl myself on the floor with it, turning the pages and revealing more and more images of naked blondes, all of them blondes, half of them smiling and the other half crumpled in frozen screams of ecstasy. In most of the pictures, the men appear not as men but as parts. In one shot, the same blonde from the issue that Donny held up and gave to Cody is sucking on her finger again, with a man’s hairy and thick hand cupping one of her breasts. In another shot, a woman is astride a man, with only the shaft of his penis inside her visible. In one way, it’s as if the men are being objectified more than the women. They are only their penises, their arms, the flexed, tough shanks of their legs bearing the weight of the women on top of them.

  But then there are the ads in back of the magazine. Unlike the ads in Penthouse, these ads show both men and women fully naked, playing with themselves. I don’t know if I’m supposed to look at these. I glance over at Cody and Donny, and they are flipping through the main sections of the magazine. I quickly flip back to the front of my issue, trying to conceal the naked men that I’ve been examining. If Cody and Donny caught me looking at naked men…I cannot even think about such a thing. The entire school would find out, and I would never, ever be able to show my face at school again. Nothing is more terrifying than knowing that one glance out of place could destroy my entire existence.

  “Look at this,” Donny says. Cody and I both look over at him. He holds an issue in both hands, spread like it’s an accordion. There, in plain view, is one woman on her back, with one man inside her and another in her mouth.

  “Awesome,” says Cody. His hunch makes him not unlike some delightfully perverted Igor.

  Until now, I have not felt the urge to tell Donny and Cody about the scene I witnessed in the park. It’s partially because voicing my delinquency from school frightens me. But I think it’s also because what happened there was so personal, so unique, that I don’t want to share it with anyone. However, I see from the way these boys look at those pictures that it is in my best interests to tell them what I’ve seen. It is a route to instant respect. And, I realize, this is my chance to go back and get my beloved recorder.

  “I’ve seen people do that before,” I say, trying my hardest not to quiver.

  “No shit,” says Cody. “I’ve seen it a million times before.”

  “No,” I reply. “I mean that I’ve seen people do that in person.”

  Donny and Cody laugh. I look down at the floor. They notice this and stop, realizing that I am being serious.

  “Wait—you’re fuckin’ with us,” Cody says. “When did you see that?”

  “Last week.” I look over to Donny, whose mouth is open, not in disbelief, but in awe.

  I tell them everything about my escape to the park—well, except for the ballet exercises—and try to convey every last detail about the threesome. I offer the words “tits” and “ass” and “dick” timidly at first, then can feel my speech strengthening as I continue, turning myself on as much as I am turning Donny and Cody on. They are clearly trying to conceal their boners, covering their crotches with the magazines as if their hands just happened to fall into their laps that way. When I tell them about the boys covering the girl in their cum, Donny and Cody both smile eerily, and now I start to feel a little ashamed for having told them these details, while at the same time I am bristling with excitement.

  “I don’t believe ya,” Cody says after I finish, but I can tell he doesn’t mean it. He knows that my delivery has been too thorough and heartfelt for the story to be untrue.

  “No,” Donny says. “I’ve heard stuff like that happens all the time in the park, ’specially at night. Jared Morgan says his brother goes there all the time to make out with girls.”

  “Wait,” Cody says. “Keern, ya said ya went there during school. What about if we go at night?”

  We fall silent.

  Thankfully, Cody and Donny are not foolish enough to attempt sneaking out of the house without a word to Beverly. That never works in the movies. The parent, after a cursory good night, always has some reason to come check on the kids more thoroughly and finds the pillows that they’ve rigged under their blankets to act as makeshift bodies. Then police and dogs and all that crap ensues, waking up neighbors and leaving someone like Beverly Ulrich smoking like a fiend on her front porch and amassing cigarette butts around herself like fallen
tears. No, it is better for us to take a different approach and get ourselves out of the house with her consent.

  We go downstairs quietly. Donny and I wait in the kitchen while Cody walks up to his mother, who is still watching her soaps. On the screen, a woman with dark brown hair pulled into a ponytail and a pearl choker around her neck is talking to herself. From this angle, with Beverly sitting in her plush throne, smoking a cigarette and nodding slightly, the woman on the screen looks like a henchwoman from some James Bond movie reporting to her mastermind boss. Cody looks like the doomed messenger who has to tell the boss that Bond, James Bond, just exploded her heat-seeking missile or made away with her five-hundred-carat ruby.

  “Mom, can we go to 7-Eleven?” Cody asks. “We wanna get slurpies.” The 7-Eleven is a mere ten-minute walk from the Ulrichs’ house, sitting right outside their subdivision like an old-time general store.

  I hear Beverly sigh as she picks up the remote. A big green PAUSE appears on the screen.

  “Whaddya want slurpies at eleven o’clock for? We’ve got Puddin’ Pops in the freezer.”

  You do? I think. I love Pudding Pops.

  “I don’t want Puddin’ Pops,” Cody says. “I told Donny and Keern about this really good flavor of slurpie and now they’re gonna be mad if we don’t get to try it.”

  It sounds like the stupidest reason ever.

  “Well, babe, yer just gonna have to have it later because it’s too late.”

  “Mom! Come on. I’ll do the dishes for a week.”

  “Whoa!” Beverly says, turning to face Cody for the first time. “Ya really want those slurpies, huh?”

  I’m not sure why Beverly thinks this is such a feat, considering that the Ulrichs eat pizza almost every day of the week and use paper plates each time. But Donny and I stir with anticipation anyway, sensing that the tide may be turning our way.

  “Please, Mom! Pleeeeease!” Cody falls to his knees in mock-desperation, wailing like a little girl and making Beverly lough (laugh + cough).

  “Okay, okay,” she says, picking up the remote again. “Go, but you better be back in a half hour. Now git; I’m missing my soaps.”

  Cody leaps up and comes back to us. We all run back up the stairs, stumbling over them in the process. Donny slaps me on the back at one point, but instead of hurting, it makes me smile even more. Once again, he has acknowledged my particular genius.

  Cody pulls a jean jacket out of his closet while Donny and I both put on our own jackets. Donny’s is a big, black nylon jacket with a hood and a thin, linty white flannel lining. Mine is the usual neon madness.

  “Okay, we got four bikes. Donny, you can take my dad’s, but ya have to careful. He’ll be pissed if anything happens to it. Keern, ya can take my mom’s bike.”

  “I have to take a girly bike?” I ask. I feign frustration but deep down am excited because I’ve always wanted a bike with a basket and pom-poms on its handlebars. My own bike at home, which I rarely use, is a red Schwinn with handles like bare bones.

  “No, my mom’s is just a regular blue bike. I don’t even know why she has one. She hasn’t ridden it in years.”

  When we get to the garage, though, it turns out that Beverly’s bike has pretty much disintegrated from neglect. The frame is rusty and the tires flat. So I “have” to take Becca’s bike. Becca is Cody’s older sister, who is at her own sleepover tonight. Although her bike does not have a basket or pom-poms, it is pink, and though I whine and frown dramatically, I feel like I have just won a raffle.

  The garage door opens with a creaky trumpeting, and the three of us push down the driveway. Donny and Cody take the lead side by side while I follow behind. And then, emboldened by the thought of the recorder being back at my lips, I push between them and say, “Last one there’s a rotten egg.”

  The park is definitely a different place at night. It’s startling how dark it is. Where the trees were individual skeletons in the daylight, they now coalesce into one impenetrable fortress, the tips of their branches like spikes atop a castle rampart. The moon hides behind thick clouds, and the sparse light does little to light our way. I am no longer in the lead, my tiny legs nothing compared to Donny and Cody’s sturdy, basketball-honed limbs.

  “We have to look out for park rangers,” I say, thinking back to Rodney—although I realize that he would have to have the most unforgiving boss ever to have a shift that lasts the whole school day into the night. Still, there must be someone on duty right now, especially given the situation that Donny has told us about. “We should leave our bikes over here and stick to the perimeter of the trees.”

  “What’s the ‘perimeter’?” Donny asks. I explain what it is to him, baffled at how he could already have forgotten what it is, when we learned about perimeters last year. Once I’ve explained it to him, we proceed to creep around it, getting pricked here and there by an errant branch or a waist-high crackle of underbrush. At one point, Cody warns us to look out for poison ivy, prompting us all to realize that it’s way too dark for us to differentiate it from any other plant in this darkness. I already begin to itch, remembering the time that my dad got it and spent a week grunting on the couch with his legs looking like something a Doberman pinscher had gnawed on. Cody notices me scratching and begins to mutter “sissy” under his breath like a spiteful mantra.

  I take the lead soon enough, trying to find the trail that leads to the creek of sin. After a ten-minute period of walking back and forth and getting annoyed sighs from both Cody and Donny, I finally find it. Just before we try to follow it, however, we hear the distant roar of an engine and snap our heads to the front entrance, where, across the expanse of a field, we can see a park ranger’s white jeep approaching. I dart onto the trail, looking behind me to make sure Donny and Cody are following, but they stay where they are, gesticulating toward each other nervously. I stop and whisper to them as loudly as I can to come along. They finally get a move on, running up to me. Like I did on my last trip here, I abandon the path and push my way into the tall grass and gnarled branches lining it. The other two follow, practically stomping me into the ground in their haste.

  Slowly, our pace lets up and we stop in a huddled triangle. The jeep is distant again, and its beams barely light up our sneakers now.

  “That was close,” Cody says.

  “You guys almost trampled me,” I say. “Let’s not forget whose idea this was in the first place.”

  “Well, excuuuse me,” Cody says. “We haven’t even seen nothin’ yet. Where are all the people, Keern?”

  I open my mouth to remind Cody that Donny was the one who told us about coming here in the night in the first place, but then I think better of it. I don’t want to say anything negative about Donny.

  “Come this way,” I say. I proceed farther through the brambles, smacking away branches strongly like the boys did before, now propelled forward by the fear that I’ve led the boys astray. It hadn’t really occurred to me that I could fail. True, Donny was the one who told us that people come here at night, but it was my original story about the woods that brought us to that subject in the first place. If I don’t show them something truly sex-ridden tonight, they will not only neglect me the way they did before but will discredit my story about the woods entirely. As my sneakers thresh further through the tangled mess, I have the terrifying fear that these boys will spurn me as publicly as Sarah and Melissa did. And it will be worse in this case because I will have been spurned by my own kind. Just as these thin switches of wood are smacking me in the face now, even more sissy comments than usual will be hurled at me.

  Then, about ten feet in front of me, I see the deep ridge where I spied on the threesome. I hear the small tinkle of the creek, which sounds so creepy in this darkness that it makes me shake a little. But there is the promise of someone being down there, so I turn around and put my finger to my lips. “Shhhh. This is where I saw them.”

  The guys tiptoe behind me as I move toward the edge. It’s still so dark, but I can slowly make
out the water below. I guess all those carrots that my mother has always made me eat have helped my eyes because I can even make out the tiny pebbles at the bottom of the creek. Unfortunately, I can’t make out any canoodling teenagers. Because there aren’t any canoodling teenagers.

  I can feel Donny and Cody’s disappointment, and I swear that I can even see with eyes in the back of my head the look of collective exasperation that they give each other. I am about to push past them back into the underbrush, but then we all hear it: the far-off sound of older voices moving somewhere nearby.

  Instinctively, the three of us kneel down on the ground, no longer caring about poison ivy but caring only for what we might witness. The voices we hear are mixed, some deep, some girly, and I know that all three of us are fantasizing about a wild orgy.

  After about a minute of the three of us trying to breathe as lightly as we can, we see the people pass by. They are walking parallel to the creek, not toward it, and they are on our side, so that for a second I think they may find us. But their conversation is more brazen than ours; they do not whisper but chat as if they are moving down a high school hallway, laughing here and there with raspy voices. Their voices are probably like that due to the cigarettes they are smoking. The tiny fires of the cigarettes look spectral, like some devious fairies moving through the trees. The smoke surrounds them like the small clouds of their breath in the night chill. As they pass where we are kneeling, I can see that there are three guys and two girls. All of them have long hair. Even the guys have earrings, and I can make out a mustache on one of them. I can’t hear what they’re saying, even though one of them, the shortest guy, seems to be making quite a ruckus, jumping up and down in his jean jacket.

  The group starts to move toward the creek, although they have now passed out of our range of hearing. They start down a decline toward the creek that I hadn’t noticed even in the daylight, and for a second, they disappear from view. Once Donny, Cody, and I have all turned ourselves back in the direction of the creek, I can make them out. One of the guys throws his cigarette into the water, then begins kneeling down and arranging something. I hear the things he is setting up making a tiny clinking noise.