When you make it back up, I’ll propose a three-way with him by e-mail. That’s the day’s news. Another houseguest tomorrow, and city errands. Will be much distracted, but will be thinking about eating and drinking you.

  Kevin

  Blade

  Jay Neal

  My friend Paul was waving his hand in front of my face. “I said, don’t you think maybe he’s a little too young for you?” “What? Why? Who’s too young?” We had just finished a taxing afternoon of shopping, and we were sitting in the food court enjoying our much-deserved refreshment. Paul had been saying something characteristically clever when I glanced toward a rowdy group of high-school kids walking past the escalator. Unexpectedly time stopped, silence arrived, and then I saw him. Or he saw me. Actually, we looked simultaneously. Looked a lot, apparently.

  “That rather fierce-looking young thing over there that you were staring at as he entertained his barely pubescent friends with his adolescent antics.”

  “I was not staring and I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” Of course I did, but I wasn’t going to give Paul that kind of ammunition. But it’s been a long, long time since my heart rate actually responded to the sight of another man. Boy. Young man. Whatever.

  “Oh, please. You’re too old, you’re too fat, and you have too little hair on your head and too much on the rest of you to be making come-hither eyes at some young thing who’s barely legal. Although he does look far from inexperienced.”

  “I was not making eyes. I was simply looking distractedly in that direction and I hardly even noticed him and I’m only forty-five and besides, body hair is almost fashionable and he started it anyway.” At least, I think he did. I’m pretty sure he did.

  “Quite aside from his advanced state of youth, I don’t think he’s really your type, do you? I’m sure you remember what my mother said about men with tattoos. Personally, I’ve always thought that barbed wire around the arm looked a little creepy. He’s probably into heavy-duty S/M, and you know you’re just too vanilla for that. I don’t really like his hair cut that short, either. Do you think maybe he’s a neo- Nazi skinhead white supremacist?”

  “No, I think he’s just some kid who wants to shock his parents by looking like everyone else his age.” His skin was so tanned that his tattoos almost glowed. I could count three. There was the barbed wire around his left biceps, one above his left ankle, and one on his neck at the top of his spine. No, make that four: There was another one I couldn’t make out just below his left collarbone.

  “Well, all these kids look alike with their short, post–Gen X hair and requisite Vandykes. And how do they keep those baggy jeans from sliding off their butts? Aren’t his legs a little short? I think long legs are sexier, myself. He really shouldn’t wear athletic shirts since he’s a little on the fleshy side. Maybe he just hasn’t lost his puppy fat yet and would firm up if he went to a gym regularly.”

  Myself, I liked the way the ribbed T-shirt curved so intimately over his chest and outlined the soft bulges of his torso. I was a bit disappointed that his pants were so baggy and hid what had to be husky legs to match the rest of him.

  But they did emphasize his admittedly voluptuous ass. His youthful beard and short, dark hair punctuated his face and made it poetry.

  “I think he’s cute.” I didn’t realize I said that aloud until it was too late.

  “Cute! Whatever. He may be cute, but he certainly doesn’t display even a modicum of good taste. I mean, that T-shirt leaves little to the imagination, does it? Did you notice how you could see his nipples…”

  Oh yes, I’d noticed.

  “…and, as I’m sure you remember, in our day we didn’t even wear earrings in public, let alone publicly flaunt a pierced nipple.”

  But it wasn’t the nipple ring, or the tattoos, or even his tanned skin that kept me awake most of that night. It was his glance, the intensity in his eyes. I kicked myself to keep from obsessing over some street-smart kid who’s probably barely nineteen years old, but I didn’t kick hard enough. Every time I closed my eyes all I saw was him, looking at me. But why?

  Finally, around four o’clock in the morning, I reached the stunning conclusion that he definitely was looking at me and I definitely was looking at him and none of it made any sense but if I didn’t see him again and find out what was going on I would be very frustrated and probably never get to sleep ever again. Ever.

  I couldn’t quite picture myself with this cub on my arm, going about my usual social life. What if he escorted me to Susan’s wedding that spring? Would they point at me and whisper about the cradle robber? I could just imagine the scandal if we decided to dance. Shit, would we even have known the same dances? And my mother’s seventieth birthday was coming up in a few months. No doubt she would be happy to see me dating someone fifty years younger than she is.

  I felt pretty ragged the next morning, and looking at myself in the mirror didn’t cheer me up. When had my hair gotten so gray, and when did all those white patches show up in my beard? I couldn’t seem to find a way to trim my beard so that it didn’t look too wild. And I didn’t have any clothes to wear that would cover all the lumps in my body. I looked like an old fart.

  At the office I kept forgetting the things I was supposed to be doing. There was one point where I saw him again in my imagination—for about the hundredth time—only this time he walked toward me, almost close enough for me to see the tattoo below his collarbone, and he started to say something. That was the time I left the customer on hold for seventeen minutes.

  I don’t know when I decided to go back to the mall, but the thought had been at the back of my mind since I woke up. That moment, his eyes, the look, all kept playing over and over in my mind. If I didn’t go back, I knew that I’d never see him again, and that clearly was the wrong path to choose.

  What I would do when I got there I didn’t know. I had to drive there, go in, see him again, and something would happen. Maybe I could talk to him this time. But what would I say? “Nice weather we’re having,” or “Hey, those are really cool sneakers.” They’re not even called sneakers anymore, so that would make me sound real cool. Nobody says “cool” anymore, either.

  Could I date someone with a barbed-wire tattoo? I couldn’t even remember how to date. Whatever. We had to be together. That much was clear.

  When I parked at the mall I really started feeling self-conscious. I was yet another old bear making a fool of himself over a cute young cub. It took over half an hour, but finally I convinced myself that nobody except me would know. To everyone else, I’d look like all the other husbands sitting on a bench watching the people go by, waiting for their wives to finish.

  Inside, I went back to the food court and found an empty bench to sit at. From there I could survey a large space, including the spot where he had been the day before, when it happened. Whatever “it” was. If it was magic, then by working the same spell over again, by going there and sitting in that same spot, maybe it would work again.

  It worked. Without warning, surely by magic, he appeared at the other end of my bench. Being careful not to look in my direction. Trying to seem casual. He sat on the edge of the bench, chin in hands and elbows on knees. But his right foot tapping with nervous energy undercut the look.

  He sat silently, staring straight, pointedly ignoring my stare. Clearly, for whatever reasons of his own, we were going to pretend to be strangers sharing the bench. We would be exchanging information like spies might do, afraid of surveillance. So I looked away and stared into the distance in front of me.

  Finally he broke his belligerent silence. “So, like, are you a dirty old man or something?”

  Are you a dirty young man or something?

  Irony was definitely the wrong approach, but I didn’t know what I was going to say to get my point across. I didn’t even know what my point was. Certainly I don’t usually…what? Usually, I don’t even notice someone his age.

  I started, “I don’t usually….”

  “Hey man, I don’t neither, OK?”

  His foot stopped twitching but he seemed more tense than before. However, despite his refusing to look at me, it was clear that whatever it was that aroused the strong emotions between us was reasserting itself.

  “My name’s Jack.”

  “Blade.”

  Blade! I hoped my face didn’t reveal my terror at the thought of being stabbed in a dark alley somewhere. Stay calm.

  “So, what would your father say if he knew you were picking up old men in the mall?”

  “Fuck that shit. I don’t have a dad. And my mom’s dead, OK?”

  I felt worse than an adolescent trying to make his first date. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted out of this conversation, but this wasn’t it. This was obviously way beyond my experience. Blade must live a harder life than I could even imagine. What to say? Oh, sorry about your mom and dad, must be rough. I’m sure that patronizing tone would make just the right impression on him.

  He was starting to look restless. Maybe his young friends were coming within range, giving off radar signals that I couldn’t detect but he could. No doubt it would mean social death for him to be caught talking to me.

  This was getting on my nerves. Not being able to say the right thing, not knowing what I was doing, feeling way too far into the deep end and forgetting how to swim. “You know, I didn’t choose for this to happen.”

  “Neither did I.” Abruptly, he turned and looked unblinking into my eyes. His sapphire-blue eyes held that same burning look, and seized my gaze for several seconds.

  “You are so fucking hot,” he said to me. Just like that. And then he was gone. Like magic again.

  The sudden feeling of loss was surprising. I felt like I’d really missed a chance for something important, something valuable. It’s not as if I’d invested that much already in this kid: We’d seen each other twice, spoken for all of two or three minutes. But there was something there, I was sure of it, and it had just withered.

  I must have looked a pretty sight sitting on that bench, not knowing how or why to move, feeling the emotional knot in my chest and an increasing threat of tears in my eyes. Thinking all the time that there was nothing there to ruin, I still kept wondering where I had fucked up. I’m sure I could have stayed like that all evening if a young mother and her baby hadn’t intruded on my grief by sitting on the bench.

  I left the mall, walking out into early evening sunlight that surprised me by being there. I started toward my car when I saw that my long shadow had been joined by another. Every curve in its shape looked so familiar that I didn’t need to see the tattoos to know who it was. Suddenly the air itself became lighter and easier to breath.

  I felt the rhetorical need to ask, “And just what do you think you’re doing now?”

  “Going home with you. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  We reached the car. “Yes. No. I mean, sure, but not like this. Well, I mean, not like this could be, but it isn’t….”

  He stopped with his hand reaching to open the door. “Fuck, man, what is your problem?”

  My verbal paralysis was returning. “Middle-aged neuroses.”

  He accompanied an exasperated sigh with rolling of the eyes, but he opened the car door. “Well, I want to. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

  Obviously we’d have to smooth out a few wrinkles before I could take him to meet my mother. I have never felt more distant from a younger generation than I did right then, driving home with this fascinating and adorable cub in my car. I didn’t have anything in common with someone too young to remember Reagan, who wouldn’t know who Judy Garland was. For him the Vietnam War was as much forgotten history as the Civil War. He might remember his first CD; I could remember the first compact disc. I didn’t know what we would find to talk about, presuming that he even wanted conversation.

  “Let’s grab a burger, I’m starving.” OK, so his thoughts were moving along different lines right then.

  We stopped. I’ll admit that stopping felt like an intrusion, delaying our arrival home so that I could discover what was going to happen. But it also was a bit of a relief that I didn’t have to face that quite so soon. We ordered, we sat. I nibbled my fried-chicken nuggets and watched while Blade devoured upward of three-quarters of a pound of fast-food hamburgers. I was fascinated looking at his hands with their tanned, stubby fingers and the delicate patch of hair just below his wrists. I tried not to stare, only to find my eyes drifting toward the outline of his nipple ring where his shirt pulled tight across his chest, idly thinking how I could flick it up and down with my tongue.

  That would never do! Already I was convinced that other people in the place were staring, trying to figure out why my son didn’t look more like me, wondering what sort of loose woman my wife might be. Tsk, tsk, so sad. But I could surely forget all their sympathy if they noticed my tongue wiggling while I thought obsessively about my presumed son’s nipple piercing.

  Blade finished eating. “Let’s blow.”

  At first I imagined he was proposing that we have sex right there, an idea I found more tantalizing than shocking. It was easy to fall into a daydream that had us kissing across the booth, then tearing off bits of each other’s clothing and making out right there on the table. Now I’d admitted it: I wanted to have sex with Blade, a young cub less than half my age.

  Back in the car, I thought to ease the tension—my tension at least—by turning on the radio.

  “Do you like jazz?”

  “Don’t really know, but I like Ryce.”

  I hate to admit that I actually giggled a bit. “Jazz isn’t a food. It’s a type of music, actually.”

  “I knew that. Ryce is a music group…actually.”

  Shit. I was turning into such a patronizing asshole it surprised me that Blade hadn’t demanded that I stop the car so that he could get out. But, sneaking a peek at his face, I saw that he was smiling a bit, all the while studiously looking out the window and pretending indifference.

  This was even more confusing. I couldn’t imagine how I might be making a favorable impression, nor why it was so important to me. It wasn’t just because I hadn’t taken anyone home, hadn’t had sex in fact, for longer than I cared to admit. My biggest fear was coming true: I was beginning to care more about Blade than I had realized. Actually, I hadn’t realized that I was even thinking “relationship.” Great! Even more to worry about.

  I was so tense by then that I hadn’t even noticed we’d arrived home. We must have been stopped in the driveway long enough for Blade to wonder what was wrong with me. His voice jerked me back into awesome reality.

  “Let it go and chill some, man,” he said. Then he opened the car door and got out, acting as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Not that it was. Well, of course I felt that it was out of the ordinary but I kept wishing that I could stop feeling that.

  I opened the door. We walked into the front hall where Blade dropped his backpack, looked around, and said, “Nice place.”

  “Why don’t you sit down,” I said, gesturing toward the couch, “while I get us something to drink. What would you like?”

  “Scotch.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. I would have been hard-pressed to think of something he might have said that could have surprised me more. It must have shown.

  “Single malt, if you have it,” he added.

  From the kitchen I called out, “Why not put on some music?”

  I thought he was joking when he called back, “Aren’t you afraid that I’ll steal your stuff?”

  “No, should I be?”

  “Most of the dudes I end up with are uptight closet cases who think I’m a punk thief. So they fuck me, give me twenty dollars, and get me gone as fast as they can.”

  I was finding this new information rather disturbing, so when I returned with our Scotch, it took me a moment to realize what music he’d put on.

  “Ella Fitzgerald?” So there. He’d done it: He’d made me smile. He reached for his Scotch and raised his eyebrow at a spot on the couch next to him. I may be an uptight old fart but I still know an invitation when I see one, so I sat next to him, reclining insouciantly into the corner.

  “That’s appalling. Why in the world should anyone think that? I’m no closet case, but if I am a bit uptight it’s just because you’re….”

  “Because I’m a street-smart, no-good punk hustler—”

  I clamped my hand over his mouth and looked directly into his daring eyes.

  “Because you’re someone I could fall in love with very easily.”

  That got his attention. I was delighted to see his eyes open wide with surprise. I kept my hand over his mouth.

 

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