This is a bit of a deviation for me. Rather than a longer, slower developing story, this is a series of three short(er) stories. They involve three different men at three different stages of the narrator's life: at 18, at 36, and at 54. As always, I enjoy receiving feedback and suggestions from readers, so please post comments or email me your thoughts on how to improve and/or your reactions to these chance encounters.
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Chance Encounter 1: Billy Hurley
I have never been cool. No matter how or what I tried, I just could not pull it off.
I've always wanted to be. I've just never been able to be.
I always look like I'm trying a little too hard to do whatever it is I'm doing. I don't appear natural at anything. Even when I'm lounging in sweats and listening to the next big thing, I look like I'm trying to lounge in sweats and listen to the next big thing. When I'm comfortable, it looks like I'm trying to appear comfortable, not like I actually am comfortable. No matter how languid I am, I appear pensive. At my most relaxed, I still come across like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
My pensiveness translated into dorkiness, and my dorkiness translated into studiousness. In our school, everyone got slotted into a clique. I was not a big man on campus, was not an athlete, was not a clown, and was not a freak. So, I was a brain. It was the only slot left.
And, once I started getting positive feedback in school, I became addicted to it. I wanted, no, I needed, to be at the smartest, and to be told I was the smartest. It didn't matter that I set the curve; I was disappointed if I didn't get a perfect score.
By the time I was a Senior, I was ranked second in my class of 300, I sat in the front row of desks in almost every subject, and I spent my weekend nights reading ahead or studying, not drinking creme de menthe or Strawberry Hill with the "in" kids. I had a small group of National Honor Society friends who were similarly erudite, but we were not the kind of friends who did social things together. Outside our tiny circle of shared classes, we were barely known.
In light of all that, I was shocked to be invited to Jimmy Hanson's graduation party. Jimmy was our Class President and the undisputed BMOC. He had quarterbacked our state runner-up football team, had point-guarded our woeful basketball team, and had pitched our baseball team to a Regional title. I didn't even know he knew I existed. We had no classes together. We didn't say hello to each other in the hallways. As we passed, we didn't even subject each other to the slight head nod or raised eyebrows that signaled a hint of recognition.
Will Hurley - Billy to me - certainly knew who I was. Billy was currently Jimmy's best friend, but he had been mine until the summer before high school started. At that point, our paths diverged. Billy was a decidedly average student, so we didn't share any classes. He was an athlete, so we didn't share any interests.
In fact, I heard through the grapevine that Billy had been the hero of the Regional title game. With two outs in the bottom of the seventh, our team trailed 1-0 and was hitless. Our rival's starting pitcher was likely to be drafted while still in high school.
Other than the pitcher, the other team's star player was its shortstop, also likely to be drafted while still in high school, but, unlike the pitcher, an extreme hot dog. When he fielded a ground ball, he stared down the runner before unleashing a canon throw to first. Jimmy batted third, and he was our team's last chance. He grounded weakly to short. The shortstop fielded the ball cleanly. The other team started to celebrate. The shortstop hot dogged too long. His hurried throw pulled the first baseman off the bag.
Billy followed Jimmy in the lineup. With an accidental chance, hit the first pitch he saw halfway up the light pole beyond the fence in left center. The left fielder didn't even turn around. It was like that homerun Pujols hit off Brad Lidge in 2005.
The next morning, I left Billy a note in his locker. "Billy, I heard about your heroics. Before you get the big head, remember . . . I've wiped your ass. Danny."
The summer after sixth grade, Billy and I had built a tree house. We were not craftsman, and it was a time when parents didn't micro-manage such things. The first time we sought refuge in it, it collapsed. In the fall, Billy broke both of his wrists. While casted, he couldn't shit by himself, and he was too embarrassed to let anyone but his brother or me help him. So, I'd wait until he embarrassingly called out "I'm done," then go in and clean him while he reached for his toes.
The next day, I found a note in my locker. "You liked it. You know it."
We hadn't stop being friends when high school started. We had just stopped being the kind of friends that little boys are.
It was probably for the best. In middle school, Billy had become a bit of an obsession for me. He had always been decent looking, but puberty had transformed him. While his voice deepened and his curly blond hair darkened, his baby fat disappeared, his cheeks chiseled, and he grew to a lean 6 feet. As his waist slimmed, his shoulders broadened. His face remained boyish, but his body rippled. Years later when I saw "Closet Monster," Connor Jessup reminded me of post-pubescent Billy. He was a combination of innocence and violence. He appeared both harmless and lethal.
I didn't know why (I was only thirteen), but I found myself lower than low when he was not around and higher than high when he was. I was thrilled when my mother announced "Danny? It's Billy" after answering the telephone. I was just as dejected when his message was "The 'rents said I can't come over" or "I'm grounded."
I also found myself getting tingly when we wrestled and unable to sleep during our sleepovers. I'd just lie there, watching his bare chest falling and rising in the light that filtered into my room or his. I wanted to touch him, to run the tip of my finger down his side to find out if he was as soft as he appeared. But, I didn't dare. I was not a risk taker, and that would have been a huge risk in that day and time.
Labor Day weekend of our eighth grade year, we pitched a tent in Billy's forested backyard and "camped out" in the way urban kids camp out. We spent the day eating and watching television in the house and then the night in the tent. The first night, we did what fourteen year old boys do, farting, making fart jokes, and talking through the night about things about which only teenaged boys can talk through the night.
The second night, it was unseasonably chilly. I awoke with my teeth chattering, and so did Billy. I climbed into his sleeping bag and pulled mine over us. As fourteen year olds are wont to do, we immediately turned our backs to each other. I heard Billy's breathing change, signaling to me he was back asleep.
I couldn't sleep. I couldn't think of anything other than the warmth of his back against mine. As cold as we were, I still can't figure out why we didn't put shirts on.
At some point, I dozed off. When I awoke, I was behind Billy, my chest pressed to his back and my right arm under his. When I tried to pull my arm away, he trapped it with his.
"Can you do me a favor?" he asked.
"Sure."
"Will you tickle me? Not hard. Soft like."
"Of course."
I stayed behind him and tickled his chest, stomach, and side. Every once in awhile, he quivered.
"My older brother and I used to trade this," he said. "I love being tickled."
"Why'd you guys stop?" I asked.
"He said we were too old."
"I didn't know you could get too old to be tickled."
"Me, either."
I kept tickling him. When he raised his arm, I went up and down his side and into his armpit. He was starting to get hair there. I was not.
Tickling became our new normal. Whenever I stayed with him or he stayed with me, we tickled each other's backs and stomachs, both before going to sleep and after waking up. Billy was developmentally ahead of me. When he arched his back as I tickled his stomach, I could see the soft blond hair trailing from his navel into his briefs. I remained a little boy, bald in all the places little boys are bald but maturing boys are not.
The summer after eighth grade, Billy visited his father, a dentist in Seattle. When he returned home, he was a totally different person. We did not pick up where we left off. He stayed with me the Friday before high school started, but he slept on the floor beside my bed, not in my bed like he always had before. I was sleeplessly sad that he did. There was no tickling. It had been replaced by a formality that was alien to me. As I tossed and turned, I knew we were no longer best friends.
The following Monday, high school started, our paths diverged, and our friendship evanesced, as I described. I was sure I missed him more than he missed me.
By Senior year, Billy was a man. He had grown taller and leaner. His shoulders had widened more, and his torso was now a triangle.
Billy had also blossomed as an athlete. But for Jimmy Hanson, he'd have been our BMOC. Instead, he took Jimmy's handoffs, grabbed Jimmy's rebounds, and caught Jimmy's pitches. They were a constant one-two punch. They were inseparable the way Billy and I had once been.
They also dated competing girls. In a historic upset, Billy had the Prom Queen, and Jimmy had the only other blond in the Court.
Rumors of Will/Debbie and Jimmy/Katie ran rampant. They were rumored to be doing sexual things before anyone else was. They were also rumored to have engaged in swapping and quads, two rumors that sensationalized our small school in our small town. Eighteen year olds were not supposed to be as fast as they were rumored to be.
Billy and Jimmy did not confirm the rumors. But, they also did nothing to tamp them down. I think they liked the wonder that filled the school about them.
I knew Billy would be at the graduation party. In fact, I suspected he had forced Jimmy to invite me. Even though our friendship had evanesced, Billy and I still acknowledged each other in the hallways. Every once in a while, we had brief telephone conversations to check up on the other. I always felt tinges of hope and regret when those calls occurred. Hope that things were retreating to how they were. Regret that we had let them fall so far.
The hope was always dashed. The regret remained, at least for me.
I was happy to arrive to a teeming party. I could hide more easily in a crowded house. It's hard to hide in plain sight. I preferred the anonymity of a large crowd.
