III: PRESENCE

Lots of kids moved through our lives in those days. We seemed to attract countercultural vagrants; sometimes they needed shelter. Our digs, though modest, would often do for a time.

A gorgeous boy named Gabriel (speaking of angels, if one pained in the style of the day) once shared my flat at 8A Grange Avenue for longer than I might have hoped; he ate almost nothing but brown rice.

Two men, a woman and their dog did too, if briefly, all of us in one room. They were engaging, even the dog. None, not even Gabriel, was ever a sexual prospect.

This tale of Kevin, here on a wander first begun in Falmouth, Massachusetts, is from jottings dated Wednesday, December 22, 1971. But I had first made note of him months before, on August 25: "There is someone named Kevin. He is beautiful and in the long run probably a bad trip. Beauty is a thief. It steals my mind."

Apparently not. At least not right away -- despite his lean compact body, strong clear features framed in long straight hair (black, a leather thong often tied round it; he looked a young brave and could be as taciturn), his laconic sexiness, his deep voice calm with a whiff of Cape Cod.

All that -- and I didn't mention him again until this story. My first impressions, though, had been right. In part. His beauty was a thief. But it was not a bad trip.

Flav came to type and do other such things on Saturday night and brought with him Kevin (remember? of Falmouth?) and his very strung out friend Larry. It was a strange evening. Kevin was very quiet, very much putting on his presence, which he does well.

When it was time for them to leave there was some discussion about where they were to spend the night, so I said that one of them could stay here. Kevin chose to, which was doubly good: I didn't have to cope with Larry's standard hip anti-city shit, and Kevin is (at least physically) beautiful.

Flav said that Kev had been coming on pretty strong over the few earlier days he'd been around. He looked at me alot as we were getting ready for bed, but nothing more obvious than that. The mattresses were apart, his on the floor; we slept separately.

We had plans to get to Flav's fairly early the next morning. The alarm was set for 9:00. I woke up before it, shut it off, and stared at Kevin, trying to decide how to wake him up. He opened his eyes on his own and said, trying to buy more time for sleep, that Flav was probably still flaked out.

He had my coat thrown over him, on it the "libraries / books" pin [a Deco brooch, gift from Flav; I was working in a library] had fallen open. I got up, put on a record, and as I went back to the bed stepped over him. I stopped and pulled out the pin. "You're going to stab yourself."

He smiled.

I took the coat off him and sat lightly down on him, putting my hands on his chest. He held them. Looking down into his face I said, "You kept me awake alot last night."

He smiled again. "I've had girls tell me that, but never a guy."

"Have you ever slept with another guy?"

"Can't say that I have."

"Have you ever wanted to?"

A pause; I continued rubbing his chest. He squeezed my hands and finally said, "I'm intrigued by it all."

I looked at the clock. "Let's be late." I crawled under the covers with him. He already had an erection. It went very well. For someone who hadn't done it before, he seemed to know what to expect.

I said early on, "Are you afraid?"

"No." A bit later he laughed quietly.

I asked, just as quietly: "What are you laughing at?"

"The idea of being afraid."

I regret it now: I want to call back every detail -- of him, his body, his presence; exactly what we did at each moment -- and I can't. Or not enough of it. I must have sucked him; how could I not have? His cock smooth, shapely, eager; aimed firm from its black nest up his taut belly... that I remember.

And that he knew not only what to expect but what to do, sure in his moves. He got me onto my back, legs up: a testing probe, then a single thrust -- long, firm, steady -- and all of him was inside me. I felt my whole body flash: I hadn't been ready. I thought he'd need help.

He didn't. He set to a supple rhythm: deft muscle flexing the small of his back; trim butt pressing in, arching back; hips pivoting cock at a perfect angle. His moves were smooth, sure, powerful. He fucked with skill.

With knowingness.

And he came. I wish I could recall it exactly: the moment, the look on his face. I've lost it -- but for a tremor in him, the break of rhythm, the exhalation of him easing down over me. He wasn't one to make a lot of noise.

I've lost everything after that too. But that we must, finally, have made it to Flav's.

One memento of him I didn't lose: his leather headband. He'd left it. I hung it over the light fixture in my kitchen, a naked bulb on the wall. I kept it until I moved out in 1973. Maybe beyond; I don't remember for sure.

I do remember Kevin, those moments of him anyway. He was a messy boy -- or so it seems; exactly how or why I didn't record and can't recall. "But," I wrote in my last line about him, "sometimes, sometimes, he feels very together."

More than two decades later I'd find a boy, not yet born in 1971, whose presense was much like Kevin's: vagrant (again), from Newfoundland; messy in his own way; even more together. Decent, honourable, unafraid.

Maybe it's something about the water Down East.

Angel image: again, from Micheangelo's Sistine ceiling.

Next episode: IV: Virtue

Go back to: Preface

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Christmas Day, 2000 / Last revised: July 12, 2003
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