1. Josh
I met Josh when we were fourteen. He hadn't grown into his limbs yet and had thick medium brown hair that brushed the top of his shoulders. Like all boys whose bodies grew faster than their minds could grasp, he always apologetically slouched with his head hung low as he struggled to remain eye level with everyone else who became shorter by the day. Sometimes he hid behind those lush strands while at other times his long fingers raked through them when he was suspended in prolonged moments of hesitations or nervousness. Each subsequent Autumn I looked forward to seeing the tinsels of blond that glimmered atop Josh's head and signaled the expired summer.
I don't remember how we met or who introduced us, but we fell into the same social circles after a month or so of school. We never ended up in any classes together and he never participated in any extracurricular activities I did like band, sports, the school paper, or the literary magazine, nor did he attend any of the school formals that were the highlights of my teen years. We hadn't gone to elementary school together, so he wasn't like Alan whose return into my life was highly anticipated after being separated into different schools for the past three years. Josh was entirely new and quietly slid into the new rhythm that was high school. All I knew was that he was from the southside and that he had a layer of disdain for all that school had to offer, even after just a month. He had a kind of world weariness I registered as cool back then, rather than what it was: a sign of a life that had done everything to keep him down, even at a young age.
After a while of knowing each other, I finally hugged him long enough and often enough to figure out that his clothes were washed with Tide, a surprising sign of a middle-class upbringing for someone who hailed from "that side of town". I always had a keen nose and was so proud of myself when Josh affirmed my suspicion about his laundry detergent. We used Tide too despite it being too expensive for us. But my single mom always made sure that aspirational economic mobility seeped into every literal fiber of our being, clothing included. Our second-hand clothes were always washed in Tide detergent and dried with scented Bounce sheets at the coin laundromat, so we at least wouldn't smell poor. In the early days of knowing him, I secretly reveled in the fact that Josh and I had Tide detergent in common, if nothing else.
I wouldn't find out until we were well into our 20s that he had been displaced during much of our time in high school and that his clothes were washed at friends' houses whose parents could afford to use Tide and whose compassion meant that he didn't need to sleep at his own house where abuse and alcoholism awaited him. And that his minimalist and well-worn wardrobe was not an aesthetic choice, but a combination of his lack of money, a closet, and a home. Luckily his situation aligned with the thriftstore chic look that was in fashion, so no one knew of the truth.
Josh was quick to laugh. In hindsight, I suppose that laughing first meant that others were more likely to laugh with him instead of at him. He was as quick to shield himself behind those sonorous laughs as he was to hide behind his curtain of hair. His laughs were self-deprecating, but deep, loud, and full in timbre, though they rarely reached his hazel eyes. And sideway glances always accompanied them, checking to see whether others were laughing with or at him. His extreme ticklishness was made extra funny by not only his laughs, but also the way his exorbitant height, wide shoulders, and wayward long limbs would fold over to shield his body from enemy hands. I latched on to those fleeting glimpses of vulnerability and hoped that in them we had an unspoken bond.
Josh and I most likely met over a cigarette behind the school. I fixated on the journey of the cigarettes from the pack in his shirt pocket as it travelled into his perfectly beautifully large hands with their long fingers and then onto the pink and plush lips that he always licked before inserting the cigarette between them. I longed to be on his lips like the cigarettes. I wondered how soft his lips and tongue were and imagined nipping on his bottom lips so I could taste the cigarettes on him.
Josh was the first person whose scent I truly loved, not just the smoke that hung on his well-used flannel shirts and on the t-shirts that have been worn into softness, but his actual scent. He always smelled vaguely like smoke and something delicious. Josh's smell. All the scents that swirled together to make Josh. As often as I could and as was appropriate at school, I nestled myself into his chest, tightening my arms around his waist as much as I could. More often than not my satisfied hum elicited a choked laugh from him because he couldn't breathe in my tight grip. He never could understand why I was always inhaling the scent of him. When I tiptoed, I could brush my nose along his earlobe and the nape of his neck to drink him and his pheromones in.
Occasionally I had the pleasure of wrapping my entire body on his. Our school was built into a hill so that the back and one side of the building had a wall made from boulders that separated it from street. The vocational classrooms for auto shop, metal shop, and woodworking were built into the back hill and had no windows, betraying the sentiments our administrators and society at large had towards these classes and the students who took them. The windowless metal door that led into the vocational area was, unironically, the entry and exit into the ad hoc student smoking area behind the building. I often found Josh nonchalantly leaning against the wall with his back to the school with his elbows perched casually on one of the boulders, whether the stance was symbolic or just a matter of physics, I was never sure. But in any case, it was fitting.
I spotted his hair flittering lightly in the breeze in the same direction as the plume of smoke that marked the gathering of students there. I approached quietly, sat down behind him, and scooted the front of my body flushed against his back with my arms wrapped possessively around his torso. My legs dangled over the wall under his arms so that they served as armrests for his elbows. He startled the first time but after realizing it was me with a quick glance over this shoulder, he leaned back and settled his body in between my arms and legs. Depending on how my day was going, I either peered at the others from behind the protective wall of Josh or would rest my chin on his shoulder as he idly traced lines on my legs with the tips of his fingers, occasionally travelling beneath the hem of my pant leg to touch my ankles and spread shivers up and down my whole body. Now and again he offered me drags of his cigarette over his shoulder, from which I drew long inhales, relishing our shared space and the intimacy of having our lips touch the same cigarettes. Sometimes our hands tangled above the button of his pants with my thumb resting on the waistband for support, always potent with implication, but never lower and never below the shirt.
The prolonged hugs continued on for a while until our customary greeting evolved to include me placing a soft kiss below his ear. The first time my lips touched his neck, he startled and pulled away, honey-hazel eyes full of questions and looking for answers with brows stitched together. I dropped down from my toes and shrugged noncommittally in answer, corners of my lips lifting to mirror the movement of my shoulders. My new greeting broke the unspoken truce between our bodies. When I attempted to go back into the warmth of his chest, he swung away from me instead. I refused to let go and grasped his flannel in my left fist in tight protest. Josh resigned to letting me cling and nuzzle into his right side and squeezed my shoulder as a small comfort.
One Friday, we were outside behind the school where the smokers and other misfits gathered. I caught him with a hug upon my arrival and he raised his neck to exhale the smoke away from me. A kind gesture, really, since I smoked too. With more of his neck exposed, I leaned in and gave him the customary open kiss on his neck. His body tensed at the gentle contact, still not quite accustomed to how I greeted him, but then he relaxed into my firm embrace with a soft sigh. With that sigh whatever stress held my body upright drained away and evaporated into the invisible world beyond Josh, along with the smoke from his mouth. I sunk into the embrace and rested my forehead on his sternum.
"Hey you." The words rumbled from his chest and reverberated straight into my body.
"Hey," I mumbled into his fading black t-shirt.
His hand travelled up my spine to cradle my head into his large right hand. His thumb softly stroked behind my ear while his fingers tangled themselves in my hair. We stayed encased in each other for a beat before I asked, "Come over after?"
"Yeah, ok." I felt his chin nodding above my head.
"Ok," I confirmed.
I lived on the edge of the school district on the Near West side on a street littered with apartment complexes. There was not a single house on the street, just anonymously uniformed buildings with faux brick facades that tried to appear classy. Our building was in the front and right on the corner, so we luckily never had to help people navigate through the forest of buildings to find our place. We lived on the right side of the border between three school districts. One more block west and I would have ended up in a different city's district and a few more blocks north and I would have ended up at a different school. It was as close as my mom could get to a good future for me and my sister within her limited budget.
I was so excited to move into this new apartment, our second place in the US. My sister and I were finally going to have separate beds and a bedroom that had a door. At our first place, she and I shared a double bed in a small room that had an accordion screen that would magnet shut against the wall. This new place was luxurious in comparison, with its window air conditioner unit in the living room and a designated dining area. We soon found out that we couldn't ever afford the electricity to run the air conditioning anyways, not even with after my sister got a job to help pay for expenses.
Josh and I took the G bus to my place after school. The reality of him coming over didn't hit me until we untangled ourselves to board the bus. Waves of anxiety and anticipation churned violently in my stomach. He had been over before but always with other people and as a part of a group and even then, only as a jumping pad to another activity or destination. This was the first time he was coming over just to come over. Somehow it felt different. The bus was packed as usual, it was rush hour after all. We squeezed ourselves into the middle of the bus as the driver commanded. Josh held on to the upper rails and I held on to him as we swayed our way through the traffic. Both of us stayed quiet for the entirety of the ride, rich with expectations and anxious with the unknown. Two adjacent seats finally freed when the bus rounded the corner onto my street. We mimed at each other to sit down and took our seats despite having only six stops left to go.
The lobby of the building, if it could be called that, was empty when we entered. In truth it was an open space where two sets of stairs hung down on either side from a mezzanine hallway that sat above where our mailboxes lined the wall. I led Josh to the right, under the suspended stairs and past the mailboxes towards my place, Unit 2C, and groped inside my backpack until I found the house keys to unlock the door. A heavy silence accompanied me into the apartment with Josh following closely behind. I toed my shoes off onto the shoe rack and threw my socks on them as Josh closed the door behind him.
"My mom wants me to keep that double locked when I'm here by myself," I tilted my chin towards the chain on the door.
"Oh. Ok."
The finality of the clicking bolt and chain jolted both of us.
"Shoes," I waved at the boots on his oversized feet.
"Oh, right. No problem," Josh sighed in defeat at his combat boots with their long laces that wrapped themselves around his ankles several times to tie in the front.
With that, I left Josh and made the short trip through our small galley kitchen to hurl my backpack onto the round dining table that sat at the other end. Josh didn't have a backpack. He never had a backpack. This was the first time I realized that there was no physical evidence of him attending a school besides the implication that stemmed from his youth. I shook that curious thought off to go turn on the computer.
Somewhere on the other side of the wall Josh was still working his way through the maze of his shoelaces. I had forgotten that he wasn't used to taking his shoes off and that his choice in footwear reflected that. After a while, I felt warm hands on my shoulders. His thumbs softly stroked the strip of exposed skin along the collar of my t-shirt.
