Almost Like Being in Love (20 page)

white pages, but none in St. Louis. I’m printing out all 192

phone numbers because you’re going to ask me for them anyway. Are you sure you want to do this?

2. The Missouri State Bar doesn’t have any record of a Craig McKenna, so I checkedMassachusetts too in case he liked their boys when he was in college and decided to stick around Boston. But he ain’t there either. T, you don’t know for sure that he went to law school. And if he did, maybe he changed his mind when he found out what kind of an asshole they were turning him into.

3. I talked to a hot little babe in the Harvard alumni office who wound up e-mailing me one of her yearbook photos. Yikes!

She’s not allowed to give out any info over the phone, but she says if I’m ever in Cambridge she’ll have dinner with me to discuss it.Don’t say I wouldn’t go to the mat for you.

4. We’re all out of paper towels, you left the refrigerator door open again, the Häagen-Dazs melted all over my spareribs, and your room’s beginning to smell worse than mine does.

You’re really scaring me, man.

.

G

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

UNIVERSITY PARK • LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007

Doheny Library

Faculty Research Request

DATE: May 25, 1998

FROM: Travis Puckett

DEPARTMENT: History

BUILDING/ROOM: VKC/223

MATERIALS NEEDED

SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS

Any information on an attorney named Craig McKenna. I don’t know where he practices, I don’t know where he lives, and I’m not even sure he’s a lawyer. Spare no expense. I’ll pay whatever it costs.

Julian, I’m sorry. You were right. The man I belong with is the boy I first kissed twenty years ago. Now all I’ve got to do is find him again.

What are you sorry for? Didn’t I say you were a Prince Charming?

I need everything you’ve got on this guy: birth date, physical description,
distinguishing characteristics, dick size (for my own catalog only). Don’t
worry. If Sleeping Beauty’s out there, we’ll find him.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

MESSAGE CENTER

TO
: Prof. Travis Puckett

FROM
: Andrea Fox

DATE
: May 25, 1998

STATUS
: URGENT

THERE’S A GRANT MEETING SCHEDULED FOR 10: 00 A.M. ON

WEDNESDAY. MARSHA HOLMES RALLIED THE ENTIRE HISTORY

DEPARTMENT BEHIND YOU, AS WELL AS TWO PROFESSORS FROM

THE SCHOOL OF PALEONTOLOGY (!).

SO IF YOU DON’T RESPOND TO AT LEAST ONE OF MY LAST EIGHT

MESSAGES, I’M GOING TO BREAK ALL TEN OF YOUR OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE FINGERS.

ANDREA

FROM THE JOURNAL OF

Travis Puckett

1. Craig McKenna: Clear Lake, Iowa Retired Marine Corps colonel 2. Craig McKenna: Lake Forest, Illinois 14 years old 3. Craig McKenna: Shreveport, Louisiana Out on parole 4. Craig McKenna: Hagerstown, Maryland Has seven grandchildren 5. Craig McKenna: Canton, Georgia Tried to sell me mail-order shoes

I’m disintegrating in front of my eyes. I haven’t shaved in three days. They’ll
bury me in a dirty T-shirt and unmatched socks. How’s that for irony? But it’s
my own fault. I had him and I let him go. We could have been the luckiest
people in the world. Oh, Christ. I’m quoting Barbra Streisand at 4:00 in the
morning. That’s one step away from turning into orma Desmond. I don’t
even know what I’m talking about any more. HOW MANY CRAIG

McKENNAS COULD THERE BE?! Sleep, Travis. Go to sleep. But don’t dream
about Craig again. Please?

June 1978. It was the longest two weeks of our lives. Once we’d realized that Cupid had shot us both in the ass at the same time, we were doomed. If we weren’t making plans for our next twenty years together, we were checking each other out in the showers. If we weren’t sneaking off into the woods to fool around, we were reapplying to colleges so we’d be closer together in the fall. And by the time we’d clocked our first four-minute kiss, our hormones had grown fissionable: all we had to do was lock eyes in the middle of English and it was like firing a U-235 bullet into a uranium core. Radiation alert! Radiation alert! But prep schools in 1978 weren’t exactly bastions of large-mindedness, and if they’d actually found two boys in bed together, the statue of Mrs. Beckley would have taken a copper crap right in the middle of the Quad.

“What was King Lear’s tragic flaw?”

“He had a boyfriend named Travis with a cute butt who he wanted to get naked with in private but couldn’t.”

“Craig! You’re not making this easier!”

“Sorry.”

Actually, there was no real point to cramming, because our final exams were going to be based on whatever we’d learned before we’d tumbled headfirst into each other’s lives. After that, if it wasn’t about Craig’s Arms 101 or Intermediate Travis, it wasn’t worth knowing. That included the collected works of William Shakespeare, three thousand years of world history, all four sides of a parallelogram, and 218 genuses of ferns. As for the ten million French verbs we were supposed to have mastered, there was only one that we really wanted to conjugate.

“J’ai le béguin pour toi.”

“‘I have a crush on you.’ Nous pouvons vivre d’amour et d’eau fraîche.”

“‘We can live on love alone.’ Je te mange avec mes yeux.”

“‘I consume you with my eyes.’”

Clearly, we were reaching critical mass; as we’d both come to learn, nothing’s more persuasive than a teenage heart that’s calling all the shots—even if we hadn’t figured out what to do about it yet. It was Craigy who inadvertently came up with the idea while we were passing notes back and forth during study hall.

Would you still love me if you found out I once stole a box of York Peppermint Patties?

Would you still love me if you found out I once snuck into Gypsy without a ticket?

Would you still love me if you found out I once fucked a bagel?

Would you still love me if you found out I once fucked one too?

Would you still love me if I kidnapped you and took you to Harvard with me in September?

Would you still love me if I knocked you unconscious and wouldn’t let you go back to St. Louis this summer?

Would you love me even more if I told you I’d figured out a way for us to be together for the next three months?

Does that mean alone together?

Absolutely.

I’ll do it.

You haven’t even heard the battle plan yet!

It doesn’t matter!

(Grin.) Hand me some paper.

Dear Mom,

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I’m beginning to feel ashamed that I’m the only kid in my class who doesn’t have a summer job. Just because I got into Harvard doesn’t mean I won’t have to work for a living like everybody else does, and suppose I come up short because I’ve never had any experience before? It’s really starting to worry me.

So here’s what I’m thinking. My best friend Travis 'who’s the smartest kid in our class) is looking for a job too. But since his father’s wife won’t let him stay at their house on East 65th Street, they told Travis he could find a summer sublet by himself. Which is kind of scary when you’re not even 18 yet. So maybe you’d let me and Travis share an apartment so that we could keep an eye on each other and make sure neither one of us goofs off.

I’m sorry I won’t be able to spend the summer with you and Aunt Emmy at the house in Lake Charles, but we can always do that next year.

And I really think it’s important that I learn how to earn my keep.

Love,

Craig

Dear Dad,

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I’m beginning to feel ashamed that I’m the only kid in my class who doesn’t have a summer job. Just because I got into USC doesn’t mean I won’t have to work for a living like everybody else does, and suppose I come up short because I’ve never had any experience before? It’s really starting to worry me.

So here’s what I’m thinking. My best friend Craig 'who’s a shortstop just like your all-time favorite Bucky Dent) is looking for a job too. But since he lives in St. Louis and wants to stay in Manhattan, his mother told him he could find a summer sublet by himself. Which is kind of scary when you’re not even 181/2 yet. So maybe you’d let me and Craig share an apartment so that we could keep an eye on each other and make sure neither one of us goofs off.

I’m sorry I won’t be able to go on another Teen Tour, but you’ve sent me on six of them already and there’s not much left to see. (I also have a real problem with staying at a four-star hotel in Bangladesh. It’s just not right.( Besides, I really think it’s important that I learn how to earn my keep.

Love,

Travis

Parents are such pushovers. My father grudgingly conceded that he was proud of me, and Craig’s mom called from St. Louis in tears, claiming that her little boy had turned into a grown-up practically overnight. Meanwhile, Craig and I were both so horny we could have directed traffic with our dicks.

“They said yes,” he sighed, running his hand across the front of my Tshirt longingly. “ Now can we practice?”

“Not so fast,” I warned him. “We still need to find gainful employment and a place to live.” We were sitting cross-legged on his bed, staring openly at each other’s primary erogenous zones and poring through the Village Voice.

“Dental hygienist.”

“No.”

“Drill press operator.”

“Nope.”

“Legal secretary.”

“Forget it.”

“Then I give up,” I whined. “What am I qualified for?”

“Modeling underpants,” he sighed wistfully. “As long as I get to watch.”

“Craig!”

The apartment issue was a lot simpler—all we really needed was a bed and a door that locked. And thanks to the Voice, we found exactly what we were looking for in an old brownstone on West 92nd Street, just off Riverside Drive: “Cozy remodeled studio, wood floors, charming neighborhood, available immediately.” Translation: “Renovated one-room rat-hole, no carpets, live-in drug dealer, nobody wants it.” The tenant was an atonal singing waiter named Barry Brush who, through an extraordinary stroke of luck (a hearing-impaired casting director), had booked a summer stock engagement at the Totem Pole Playhouse in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania. (Given the fact that he was barely 5-foot-3, I assumed he was playing Og in Finian’s Rainbow, but somehow it didn’t seem polite to ask.) At first he appeared to be a little reluctant to turn over his postage-stamp-with-furniture to a couple of kids—particularly when they kept eyeing the bed as though they’d never seen one before—but a cashier’s check for $286.20 changed his mind. 'Craig’s mom wanted us to start off on the right foot.) We left with a set of keys and a promise that we could move in the day school let out—and as Barry led us to the door, Craig covertly put his hand on my ass. My carotid artery imploded on the spot.

The jobs fell into our laps completely by accident. On our way back to Grand Central, we stopped in front of Colony Records at 49th and Broadway because there was an Ethel Merman album display in the window, and naturally I needed to make sure they were all present and accounted for: Gypsy. Annie Get Your Gun. Anything Goes. Summer Help Wanted. Happy Hunting. Call Me Madam. Something for the—

Summer Help Wanted?! In an Ethel Merman store?! For a brief but electric moment, I understood the whole Buddhist concept of karma.

“Oh my God,” I breathed, instantly fogging up the glass in front of Panama Hattie. “It’s Kismet. It’s destiny. It’s divine intervention.” Craig wasn’t nearly as sanguine.

“Like hell it is,” he groaned. “If we have to work for that old bag, forget it.” The truth turned out to be a shade less glamorous—they just needed a couple of stock boys until September. Of course, the pay was shit, but Craig’s mom had already sent us a check for $500 just in case 'the right-foot thing again). During a tour of “the plant”—as it was referred to by way-too-serious manager Douglas, a middle-aged former hoofer from Queens who’d inexplicably acquired a European accent—our responsibilities as “directors of inventory” were laid out in explicit detail: (a) hang around the basement and (b) move some boxes. Together. Alone.

For eight hours
. Shit! There go the hormones again!

“I hope you guys are friends,” he chuckled almost apologetically, pointing to the narrow aisles and the cozy cardboard hiding places.

“Because you’re not going to have anybody else to talk to.” Craigy and I agreed that we got along pretty well and didn’t anticipate a problem.

Then, as soon as Doug’s back was turned, we kissed each other. When life decides to work, it’s
perfect
.

The last four days of school passed in a blur. I remember absolutely nothing about final exams except that my octagons somehow came out with nine sides, and Craig said that Othello was too much of a moron to have a tragic flaw—unless stupidity counts.

“You didn’t lose the keys to our apartment, did you?” he nudged me three times a day.

“Stop asking me that!”

Commencement was our last hurdle. As soon as we’d taken our seats in the packed auditorium dripping with streamers of black and gray—

Beckley’s traditionally funereal colors—we knew we were sunk. Scheduled to last between one and two hours (depending on how many creaky old alumni they’d blackmailed into saying a few words), the ceremonies were generally interminable under the best of circumstances. But when you’ve had the same erection for ten days, it’s worse.
Much
worse.

“Ow.”

“Me too,” hissed Craig. “Shhh.”

Across the aisle, a couple of halfbacks grinned at him dopily in that fraternal bond that people with jockstraps like to show off, waiting hopefully for a similar smirk in return. (They had a pretty good reason, too: ever since Craig and I had begun hanging out together on an average of every minute of our lives, they were no longer exactly sure which team he was playing for—and if they’d actually suspected what was going through his head at that particular moment, they never would have peed in a locker room urinal again.)