When I was in sixth grade, Ron McDermott and some other guys were in someone’s garage playing with matches and gasoline. Something about they were going to build the biggest most terrifying bonfire any man had ever seen! Then Ron went up in flames and according to some reports was ruined, destroyed, painful to look at, to see. He spent months in the hospital having skin grafts and physical therapy and still he was badly scarred.

  When Ron came back to school, he wore a flesh-colored bodysuit under his clothes and one half of his face was red and swollen. He did look a little lopsided. Mostly he looked sad. Other kids avoided him or stared when they thought he wasn’t looking, which made me mad, made me defensive.

  But something else.

  Part of me, an inside thing, like a spirit or an emotion, something eternal reached out to him, wanted to touch Ron, comfort him, and make him smile again. I recognized another tortured soul, I guess, another straggler, black sheep, leper.

  I approached him one day on the playground.

  “Want to play tetherball or something?”

  Ron McDermott looked at me. He wore a hat, I think to keep his scars out of the sun, which made me sorry because I loved the feel of the sun on my face.

  “I’m not supposed to,” he said. “Moving too much stretches my scars then they hurt or they might tear, then I’d have to get more grafts and that sucks.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. I felt stupid. “I’m really not into tetherball. I mean what’s the point?” I laughed, shaking my head, trying to make him feel comfortable, trying to relax. “What about jacks?”

  “Jacks?”

  “Yeah, with the ball and the jacks….”

  Ron raised one eyebrow. He had perfect eyebrows. They hadn’t been burned off. He also had beautiful eyes—very green.

  “Isn’t that like a girl’s game?” he said.

  I shrugged. “Is it?”

  Come to think of it, I’d only played jacks with girls, mostly Jill and Susanne, who didn’t drive me crazy saying, “I wish you weren’t gay, Brenner,” and “What a waste,” or “C’mon, Brent, kiss me. See what you think.”

  Why did I have to do that? So I’d be normal, okay?

  Ron smiled. “It’s totally a chick game.”

  I laughed. “Guess so.”

  After a moment Ron cracked a smile.

  We were together after that—a gruesome twosome. Inseparable, coconspirators, buddies. When teachers said our names out loud it was always “Brent and Ron” or “Ron and Brent,” but never just one or the other.

  One day Ron said, “I’m happy we’re friends.” Then he punched me in the shoulder.

  I rubbed my shoulder then punched him back. “Me too.”

  To tell the truth, he was my soul mate, my other half.

  And you can weather any storm like that. Face any demon.

  We hung out and listened to music. Ryan was constantly giving me old stuff, so Ron and I made mix tapes, odd compilations like “Why Me?” by Planet P followed by “Dreaming” by Blondie, then “Lola” by the Kinks, and then “New Moon on Monday” by Duran Duran, and then “Ballroom Blitz” by Sweet. I’d dance to that one, get goofy bouncing around and shaking and doing the robot, and Ron would sit on the floor near the cassette player and laugh.

  I loved his laugh; it was a musical kind of sexy laugh. It egged me on. I’d get goofier just to hear him.

  Sometimes Ron would drum a beat on his legs or shake his head so his bangs flopped. He couldn’t dance because he still had to watch what he did physically, and his movements were limited, like he couldn’t lift his arms too high because the bands of new skin they’d put on him were still tight. He said it felt like wearing a shirt that was too small. He said he felt like a retard because of his physical limitations, because he had to go to therapy with kids who were missing limbs and wore leg braces, and because every morning he had to strip down in front of his mother so she could rub lotion into his scars.

  “I feel like an ugly retard,” he told me one afternoon. We were in my room on the floor surrounded by tapes.

  “You’re not ugly.” I told him. Not to me he wasn’t. I pawed through the cassettes and found something new, the Goo Goo Dolls, and put it into the player.

  “C’mon,” Ron said. “You see how people look at me—like I’m Frankenstein. No girl is ever going to touch me. All I’m ever going to get is my mom rubbing lotion on me.” He put his face in his hands. “No girl is ever going to touch me.” He started to sob—a hoarse wretched sound that twisted my gut and broke my heart. “I’ll be like that guy in Mask,” he choked. “He’s so ugly his mother has to buy him a hooker.”

  What did I say? It’s not true. You’re not ugly. Forget girls.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  “Do what?” Ron lifted his face. Tears and snot glistened across his red scars.

  “I’d touch you. I mean, you know, rub lotion on you.”

  He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “What?”

  “I’d do it if you want.”

  Ron stared at me. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

  “No,” I said.

  We went quiet, listening to the tape.

  We had a sleepover once. I stayed the night at his house. We stayed up until three watching MTV then The Sixth Sense on video and then getting freaked out by the movie and talking about whether it would be possible to talk to the dead. We also made plans to go to the same college. Ron wanted to become a plastic surgeon and help other kids who were burned. I wanted to be a writer and write love poems.

  The next morning, Ron’s mother called him downstairs so she could rub lotion on him. He looked at me. I nodded like, okay, go. After a while, I couldn’t help it. I wandered from his room down the hallway, down the stairs and then around the house until I found the door to the room open. Spare bedroom, I guessed. Ron lay on a bed. Nothing but a sheet on a mattress.

  He was naked on his stomach with his head turned toward the wall, maybe staring at the swirls of paint and seeing pictures— maybe himself not burned. I sucked in my breath. He was nearly skeletal, so thin, and his skin was a twist of stark white and purple, like a candy cane. His mother sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over him, working lotion into his scars: Across his shoulders, down each arm, and then to the slope of his back. His ass was white and round. I felt the forceful stir of my erection. His mother concentrated on what she was doing, tending her wounded boy. I knew then I wanted to tend him too: I’d do anything. Ron turned his head and saw me. My heart waved. After a moment he barely lifted a hand and wriggled his fingers at me. I nodded then backed out of the door.

  It was the summer after eighth grade when Ron told me, “I was so fucking glad when I was conscious enough in that dumb hospital to look down and see my dick was there. It wasn’t burned off.”

  He sighed and looked truly relieved.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  I began to wonder about Ron’s dick. Short and fat; long and curved? Average length? Ethereal? Did hair grow around his balls? What did his balls smell like? Would his come taste like rice pudding?

  “There was a nurse that really turned me on there.”

  “What?” I’d been lost in a daydream.

  “A nurse,” Ron repeated. “A couple times I beat off in my hospital bed, under the sheets, thinking about her tits.”

  We were in Ron’s room. The window was open. A cool breeze drifted in and tickled my skin. From the cassette player Melissa Etheridge sang, I’m the only one to walk across a fire for you.

  “Really?” I’d beat off plenty of times thinking about Ron. “Guess you don’t think about chicks,” Ron said.

  “Umm, no…” I laughed. Dorky nervous laughter.

  “What do you think about then?”

  Another laugh. “I don’t know.”

  “Is it a particular guy or something?”

  “Why?” My heart had begun to beat faster. Maybe he wanted me to say I thought about him when I beat off.

  “Tell me,” Ron said.

  “Okay.” But then I didn’t say anything.

  “C’mon. What’s the matter?”

  I finally came up with something. “Circle jerks.”

  “What’s a circle jerk?” Ron laughed.

  “Guys jerking off in front of each other.” I started to laugh again, really nervous. Really hopeful.

  “No shit.” Ron seemed to think about it. “You ever do it?” “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Never met any guys who wanted to?”

  “I guess.” I could feel my armpits sweating, my arms shaking, and my dick had started to move. I ran my hand through my hair, trying to think about something else—the rain in

  Spain, something.

  “Want to?” Ron asked.

  “What?” Had my voice changed an octave?

  “Jerk off.”

  I looked at him. “You want to jerk off in front of me?”

  He was quiet. Then he said, “Well yeah. I mean I’m not queer. We’re just friends, and I trust you.”

  Maybe he just didn’t think he was queer.

  I stared at him until my eyes watered. After a while Ron unzipped but didn’t pull his dick out. Mine was already hard. I couldn’t see his. Was he hard?

  I unzipped. I had a nice dick, average length and all. I wanted Ron to look at it, want it. He looked for a minute then pulled his dick out. It was hard and as sweet as I’d seen in my dreams, average length but thick; his pubes were dark, and his balls looked heavy. I wished I could inhale his balls, lick them. Oh god. I began to jerk off. We jerked in unison. I’d never done this with anyone. I felt exposed and wished we were closer together. If I moved a little…there, our knees touched. I leaned back, pulling on my dick, teasing the head with my thumb. I pressed my knee against his. Ron looked at me.

  “Oh god,” I said. “Shit.” I was going to come.

  “Go,” he said. “Shoot.”

  It was almost invisible to the naked eye, the eighth color of the rainbow, actually. Our come in the air together.

  “Curtis Winters,” I told him one afternoon that same summer. “Peewee baseball. I never saw a guy move like that. Looking at him gave me a stomachache.”

  Ron nodded. “April Reynolds. Before I got burned. She had long hair and this awesome smile. I wanted to feel her up.”

  He looked defeated, thinking about April Whoever, thinking about girls. I figured it was my duty to make him feel better since I was secretly madly in love with him. “Lie back,” I said.

  Ron lay back. I lay next to him, heart beating.

  “Close your eyes. I’ll close mine.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Think of April, what’s her name?”

  “Reynolds.”

  “Yeah, think of her.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s she doing?” The bitch.

  “Sitting in the desk across me in Ms. Morgan’s class.”

  “And you’re checking her out?”

  “Well, yeah. Always.”

  “Imagine she wants to kiss you.” Maybe I didn’t sound enthusiastic enough. “She wants to suck your face off.” I could smell Ron’s hair, his shampoo, the lotion his mother rubbed in his skin. “Imagine soft lips and a warm tongue,” I whispered. Ron turned his head toward me. We were close enough to share breath. When he blinked I could have sworn I felt the soft flap of his eyelashes. I heard when he unzipped his pants, and then he grabbed my head and pulled me toward him.

  I hesitated. “You really want to?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m not queer,” he said, “I just want you to do it.”

  God, oh god, at last. I opened my mouth then my throat and then eased my mouth down his shaft and felt the ridges and veins against my tongue and tasted his salty skin.

  I sucked and licked and slobbered.

  Ron lifted his hips off the bed, fucking me in the mouth.

  I stopped and looked at him. “Ron?” I wiped the saliva off my chin.

  He leaned back on his elbows, breathing heavy. Pre-come bubbled on the head of his dick. “What, what is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said at last. I took hold of his cock again and then pushed my face to his balls and breathed him.

  He put his hand on my head. “It’s okay,” he said.

  I hadn’t realized I was crying a little.

  By high school, you could barely tell Ron had been burned. He had a few scars on his face, more on his back and arms, but they weren’t as red or angry looking anymore, not swollen. He stood taller in the hallways and met people’s eyes. Once in the lunchroom he slapped some guy a high five. “Who was that?” I asked.

  Ron shrugged. “Some guy in my geology class.”

  “The walls in the john have been newly decorated,” I said. “Have you seen it?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so. What is it?”

  “Brent Johnson is a flaming fucking faggot.”

  Ron shook his head.

  “Careful, I might be contagious,” I said, nudging him in the side.

  He smiled. “Yeah, whatever. Just ignore that shit.”

  Girls looked at him. I saw them looking at him. They finally saw what I saw. Ron-beautiful-Ron with his thick dark hair and green eyes. His beauty gave me a stomachache sometimes. I’d call him on the phone just to hear his voice. I asked him all the time about college.

  One afternoon I said, “What about CU in Boulder?”

  Ron looked at me and then said, “Let’s get the hell out of here,” and I said, “All right,” and we walked out of the school building to a lone willow tree that grew past the parking lot. I had him all to myself now and stared at the sky and said, “It’s gorgeous.”

  The willow tree wept branches near a chain-link fence that encircled a field of cattails and wildflowers behind us. Ron shook two cigarettes from a pack of Marlboro Reds. “Here.” He offered me one.

  I sniffed the end, bittersweet.

  Ron held out a lighter, a little unsteady, the flame flickering, and we met eyes over the fire. I wanted to say, “I love you, man.” I love you. But I inhaled instead, and the butt of my cigarette gave way to ember, and I coughed.

  Ron looked away, lighting his smoke. He turned his eyes to the willow then leaned back, his hair falling into his eyes. With one hand, I touched his elbow. He crossed his arms over his chest, didn’t say anything, and didn’t look at me either.

  The sun has come up. But the air feels cold on my skin, biting, because I’m naked and hurt and here alone. It hurts to shiver. It hurts to think and remember. I can’t move voluntarily. Just shiver. I stare through the tree at the sky and then stare at the leaves on the tree and try to focus and wish for the leaves to fall and coat me.

  The natural process of breathing is agony. Was he like that, really, Ron groping a girl? When I turn my head, I see my clothes lying on the grass beside me. Ten hours ago, I was driving. I drove Mom’s car off an interstate and onto this winding path of asphalt with road signs warning Narrow Road and No Passing. I had a map beside me, but the map had been handwritten and then photocopied, and things were scratched out and written over. I couldn’t exactly read it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to a party anyway. Senior Bash! Graduation! I surveyed the road ahead of me and thought how it was the sort of road where if I were trapped in a horror movie, I would happen upon a hitchhiker with an axe, or someone possessed by a demon speeding up to run me over.

  A few miles later, I pulled over and sat at the wheel and took a deep breath. Was I ready to see him? What would I see? These past three months, we hadn’t talked much. He had excuses not to get together. I got out of the car and started walking. I stuffed my hands in my pockets. Was he going to break my heart?

  A white glow floated ahead and became a sign through the trees. Trespassers Will Get A Foot Up Your Ass. The red letters were scrawled over white paint peeling away to reveal blond wood. I stopped, looking at it, and thought about turning back, getting in my car, going home. Mom and I could do something—get ice cream, watch a movie, play cards. Big deal, I was graduating high school.

  Maybe I should call Ryan and ask for advice. How to get over a man? No, better: How to make him love me.

  The no trespassing sign was hung on a barbed wire fence. I pulled the wire apart and then stuck one leg through, twisting my body beneath it then through it. I heard music and tracked the thump across the meadow to another border of trees. When I came out past the trees, I stared into the smoky heat from a bonfire and wondered if Ron was right there standing close to the flame?

  Jill rushed up and hugged me then gave me a beer. She was with another girl. I didn’t see Ron. Jill talked. “We thought we’d stay here awhile then head back to town and go to that bar, remember?”

  I nodded.

  “You drove, right?”

  I nodded again.

  “Where’s your car?”

  I jerked my head toward the orchard.

  “You came the back way?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Jill says they don’t card at this bar,” the other girl said.

  I saw him. Ron with a chick. He had his arm around her. She had one hand in his back pocket, squeezing his ass.

  Sometimes, I could still taste his come in my mouth.

  Jill nudged me. I pretended to focus on finishing my beer.

  “Brent,” she said. “Brenner?”

  “Think I could get another beer?” I asked.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” she said before heading off.

  I headed in Ron’s direction. “Hey,” I said when I reached him.

  Ron smiled and then looked at the girl and said, “This is Brent.”

  She smiled, a little.

  “Can I talk to you?” I asked him, ignoring her.

  “Yeah, what about?” He had a blank face, no expression.

  “Alone. Over there.” I nodded over my shoulder.

 

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