One (July 2001 and June 2004)
It’s hard to pick a place to start. Sometimes I think it all began when I was maybe nine and Kevin Stonechild invited me over for the night. We were only passing friends. Star Stonechild was my mother’s friend; apparently their shared adolescence was legendary. My father, who only heard the stories second hand from my uncles, liked to tease her with them over dinner. My older brothers and sister must have been particularly attentive to the stories, because these stories became convenient riposete in the verbal fencing over their own dubious behaviour. Kevin and I were therefore obligatory friends as it were, thrust together by our mothers. We got along well enough. The dancing was Kevin’s idea.
We had been shuffled off to Kevin’s room in some vain parental hope that closer proximity to beds would result in sleep. By ten thirty, two pillow fights and a wrestling match had been quelled and we were at loose ends exchanging views on the starting line for the St. George Warriors. Kevin’s younger brother Spencer peered at us from his top bunk. He would echo Kevin’s remarks while we ignored his presence. Our knowledge of the local junior hockey team was just sufficient to confirm our male credentials. While we talked, Kevin toyed with a lavender scarf. He ran it through his fingers and veiled his face. This last gesture caught my imagination and I suggested he looked like a belly dancer.
Kevin giggled at the suggestion, but it prompted him to rummage through a few drawers. I watched as he produced an assortment of costume jewellery. Kevin draped chains of pearls around his neck and twined tarnished links around his wrists. He produced heavy rings. He looked something like a rap artist going through a bad bling phase. The rapper effect vanished when Kevin dropped his blue cotton pyjama bottoms. I remember watching with a growing excitement as Kevin turned his black briefs into a thong slung low on his hips. When he pulled his pyjamas up, he rolled the elastic waist down so that it hugged his hips and rested on the small mound of his crotch. I remember absorbing the jewelled neck and the curved back ending in two prominent cheeks exposed above the fabric as Kevin turned his back to select a song. When the music began, Kevin began a provocative scarf dance in the heat of his bedroom. I admit I was an appreciative audience. Kevin and I laughed together as he boldly experimented with vaguely lewd poses. Spencer watched for a while before slipping out the door unnoticed.
The exhibition ended abruptly. Kevin and Spencer’s father poked his head in the door, John Stonechild took in his eldest son’s gyrations and quietly called his son out of the room. I can recall the sense of guilt I felt. While Kevin was away, I turned the music off and slipped into the sleeping bag on the floor. Spencer came back first and climbed up to his bunk without comment. A subdued Kevin returned stripped of his costume. He also slipped into his bed silently. His father checked to see if we were settled and then left the room. Kevin and I never spoke about the incident again. I was left with two indelible memories: the oppressive guilt following our exposure, and the unfamiliar excitement that coursed through my belly as I watched Kevin’s jewelled body dance for my pleasure. Opening section of For Your Eyes Only (unpublished)
My mother is in her late eighties now. My father pushed for a computer but it was mom who really made the effort to include it in her life. She banks and emails. She has a Facebook account and I added Skype hoping to increase the intimacy of our communications. She tried gamely, but a series of small strokes has left her foggy now and very frustrated with her failing faculties. She has been avoiding her computer. I visited her last night and she asked me to help her weed out her inbox. We came across a reference to the death of a childhood acquaintance of mine, the son of a missionary friends. I looked at his picture in the obituary and it suddenly came to me that I was looking at Kevin. I have not given him more that a passing thought since my last encounter with him at the age of eleven or twelve when he invited me to feel his buzz cut as we watched Saturday morning cartoons. Only our parents felt any compunction to stay in touch. The only thing I noted in his brief biography was that he never married.
There was seriously nothing between us. The authentic memory of that humid night in Asia when he danced for me is largely conveyed in the passage above. I never think I am writing about myself in my rambling stories but I think I do. Certainly I write about my feelings most of the time. The almost complete absence of laughter in my stories has to reflect my own emotional journey through the landscape of my sexuality. We write what we know. I have not always done that. The scenarios I create can be somewhat unreal at times (I hope... people have a penchant for bringing their fantasies to life). Even so, who I am is woven into them. Tell me a story and you tell me about yourself.
I'm a writer using stories to express myself and explore myself (and entertain others as I have entertained myself I hope). Our shared moment has significance to me now. I have no idea if he would have recalled it at all.
