Boyhood, Manhood, Fatherhood, Death (Part 3)

***

We were eleven, and it was summer. It had not rained in weeks. The air in the forest was heavy and stifling, and as we walked my forehead became glazed with sweat. Soon beads of water were pouring down my neck, staining my shirt. I could feel the budding hairs under my arms prickling. The dry branches and leaves crackled as we made our way deeper into the desolate woods.

Soon we reached the large oak tree. We sat down on either side of its gnarled truck, our breathing heavy. I heard Vince struggling out of his T-shirt and saw his bare, sun-browned arm reach up and hang it on a branch.

— You should take your T-shirt off too.

— The flies’ll get you.

— There aren’t any flies here. We’re too far from the stream.

My T-shirt hung uncomfortably on my shoulders in the heat. I was tempted for a moment to take it off. But then, just because he had taken his off first, because he recommended I do the same, I did not move.

We sat there quietly for a while. All I could think of was the unbearable heat, sticky sweat erupting on different parts of my body. I was about to propose we head back home for a popsicle, but Vince spoke first. He had been thinking.

— Do you ever touch yourself.

I knew exactly what he meant from the serious, deep voice he had used.

— What do you mean?

— You know. Not touch yourself. I mean, do you ever... play with it?

I almost said: Play with what? But I checked myself. I didn’t want to sound stupid.

— Sometimes.

I was shocked that he would bring this up, but also desperately curious. I continued.

— At night...

He receded back into a thoughtful silence. After a moment, his serious voice broke the hot forest buzzing again.

— Have you ever... spermed?

— You mean ejaculate?

I remembered the term from a forty-five minute session on sexuality we’d had at school. They had talked about periods and condoms and given us deodorant sticks.

— Yeah.

I said it assuredly, but I wasn’t entirely certain I had.

— You?

He was following his own train of thought, oblivious to my own questions.

— Can you do it now?

I was confused for a moment. I wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted me to do.

— I can do it at the same time.

I still didn’t answer.

— I won’t look.

— Okay.

I waited to hear the whispers of shifting fabric from the other side of the tree before unbuttoning by own shorts. I pushed my boxers down awkwardly until my penis poked out of the fly. I rested my back firmly against the tree-trunk, feeling the hard ridges push through my T-shirt. I closed my eyes and immediately the picture of a blond woman with huge, drooping breasts, flashed in my mind. She was lying on a red sports car. It was a picture one our friends at school had printed off the internet and showed all the other boys in a corner of the schoolyard during recess the week before. We had all gawked and whistled in appreciation.

I concentrated on the mental image and I felt a tickling in my groin that slowly crept up to the tip of my penis. I moved the blond woman in my mind. She took different poses, turned around and showed me her butt. Soon she was crawling toward me, her breasts dangling down. I touched them, they were soft and offered a slight firmness. They reminded me of large water balloons.

When I opened my eyes I noticed with satisfaction that my penis had elongated and risen slightly. I couldn’t hear anything from behind me. I closed my eyes again and the blonde was there again.

She started licking my penis, very slowly.

My right hand edged itself closer to my crotch.

Her tongue was pink and glistening against the silky paleness of my penis.

My fingers wrapped themselves against my hard penis.

She took it all in her mouth and starting bobbing her head up and down.

I clenched my penis harder and rubbed my fingers up and down along the shaft.

I thought of the enormous breasts again and opened my eyes. I could hear the same rubbing sound I was making coming from the other side of the tree, now. It felt odd and exciting. It was thrilling, to know we were doing this together, at the same time, while we were in two entirely different solitudes.

Up and down up and down up and down up and down.

The tip of my penis became dry and very red.

Then came the liquid heat. It was born in the pit of my gut, just a pinprick of sensation. It grew into a steady wave that crashed into my groin, shivering down my thighs. My anus tightened and my hole body jerked forward off the trunk as a spoonful of sperm shot out onto my shorts.

I closed my eyes and leaned back against the tree. Vince called out from behind the tree again.

— Are you done?

— Yeah.

I pulled up my underwear and shorts and got up again. I plucked a leaf from the forest floor and used it to wipe the sperm off my shorts. There remained a dark stain, right on my crotch. It looked like I had peed in my pants.

Vince must have noticed the wet patch on my shorts, but he didn’t say anything. We walked back toward the edge of the forest in silence. By the time we made it to my house the stain had dried, as if it had never been there.

***

I spent the evening reading aloud in the hospital room. I got pretty far into Céline, until Princhard’s speech about war and the common people and death, of course, which looms over the first section of the novel. The terrible fear of death. At the end of the chapter the narrator describes the houses outside, neatly detached before night falls and takes them, muddles everything. I found the passage very beautiful.

Bardamu also says that he saw Princhard for the last time that evening, before he “disappeared,” that it was better that way. I found it quite a lie, to speak of death as a disappearance. Céline knew that, of course. He was right in saying it would be better to just disappear, though. To vanish into the night. Maybe it was better for my father to die suddenly, like this, than to suffer for long years. Maybe disappearance was the right word, after all. You just fall through a hole, out of the world, and never come back. One moment you’re there; then, you’re not.

Fatigue had set it. I closed the book and returned to my hotel. I fell into a sudden, dreamless sleep, and woke up the next morning with the impression I had closed my eyes only for a moment, except golden daylight was flowing into my hotel room, so I had clearly slept all night. I felt rested, in control.

My sister wasn’t at the hospital. I went back down to the lobby to check my cell phone. I had a missed call from the night before. It was my wife. I called her back on her cell phone and I said I was sorry I hadn’t called her the day before. I told her about how I had spent the night at the hospital and crashed after that.

— I met a guy I used to know when I was a kid, too.

— Ryan?

— No, not Ryan. Older than that. We were best friends when I lived here. In Montreal.

— Oh, that must have been quite a surprise.

— Yeah. We spotted each other at Starbucks.

— That’s nice. I’m surprised you recognized each other!

— He hasn’t really changed. I guess I haven’t really changed either, he recognized me first. He’s a lawyer now.

— What’s his name?

— ...

— Hello?

— I’m there. His name is Vincent.

— Oh.

She laughed quietly into the phone. A warm, sparkling laugh.

— How come you never told me about him?

— I don’t know.

— ...

— How are the kids?

— Okay, I guess. They miss you, but they’re kind of nervous about the hospital and everything.

— That’s normal I guess.

— I warned them it probably wouldn’t be like last time.

— It isn’t. It won’t be.

— We’ll drive down Saturday. We’ll be there in the evening.

— Okay.

— Are we going to stay at Sarah’s place?

— I don’t know yet. I have to talk to her about it. I’m at the hotel right now. I’m not sure it would be the best thing for the kids. Yeah, it’s probably better if we stay over at Sarah’s. The kids can play around, and we can both help out. And we’ll have the car, we won’t be too much in the way.

— Okay, I’ll see you Saturday.

— I’ll call you tomorrow.

— I love you.

— I love you too.

After that I called my sister. She had passed by the hospital earlier this morning. She would visit with her husband and children in the evening, she said. I hung up. I had forgotten to tell her I was going out with Vince that evening.

Planning on her calling her later, I went back up to my father’s room to read more of Céline to him. I hoped the same nurse would come in again. She would see that I was consistent, at least, even if reading to my father did not do anything. A nurse came by, eventually, but it wasn’t the same one.