Guardians and Angels | Chapter One "Grapplers"

When I was in seventh grade, a new kid moved to town. He was a surfer and a jet skier who won all kinds of awards for kids our age in California.

I was infatuated.

He was my first crush. The kind where you know every indent of their lips and every speck in their eyes after seeing them once.

I think everyone meets a magnet at some point. And he was magnetic to me. Every day was a discovery with him. Everything was new even though I memorized everything I knew.

I was head over heels.

We both joined the wrestling team after a week into the school year, and that is where we really started to bond. He was much quicker than me and knew how to apply certain moves on me that would defeat me. I was irate. I was stronger, thicker, and faster. I didn’t lose often. He beat me three times in a row.

I didn’t talk to him for a few days. I’m like that. Always will be. Can’t help it. But he would just look over, devastatingly handsome, and give me a little wave and a smirk. Usually the sun would be hitting his highlights perfectly in the wind. I had no defenses to his charismatic onslaught.

Lunchtime.

He’s walking around looking at the tables. Sees me… walks over. Sits down. His lips are the same burgundy color as the school sweater he’s wearing…

“I didn’t realize you were so sensitive. I would’ve let you win”

“I’m not sensitive”

He laughed under his breath and looked downward like he was genuinely trying to hide it. When he looked up, I remember making true eye contact with him for the first time. That lock clicked. He saw into me and I saw into him. He smirked and said, “I won’t ever mention it again”

He showed me many of his moves as we trained and wrestled, and there were times I could beat him. We would wrestle hard, but I wouldn’t try to hurt him. With the other guys a hard armbar across the face felt normal. But he was different.

His father started showing up to our matches when the season started. Drove a huge truck, business owner, super confident and loud. He would really get into the matches and scream and shout. If my friend won, everyone knew. If my friend lost… well his dad was asked to leave a few times. My friend would just ignore it. Act like it wasn’t his dad. Just looked away.

After a month he started asking if I wanted to come over for a weekend. The autumn weeks were warm, and he still did waterskiing competitions and wanted me to come along. It would involve me spending the night. I said yes, and we worked everything out. I was excited and nervous. I would spend the night with friends all the time… but he was different

After our wrestling match that Friday, I was to ride home with him and his father. The plan was to spend the night, then go to the waterski competition the next morning.

I don’t remember if I won or lost, but he lost a close match and his father erupted. His father yelled at the official, the other team’s coaches, other parents. It was a scene. The father left and drove off… irate. Big truck revving, tires screeching. I remember looking over at my friend and he was staring into the stands across from us, as if he was looking for someone, his back to the commotion, like it wasn't happening.

We ended up getting a ride home from his mom. She showed up, really pretty and very sweet. She had a Cadillac Escalade with a 'booming system' in it and she turned up the music so we could hear the bass as we drove home. I remember the song was "You Got It All" by The Jets. A beautiful love song about someone who just showed up one day looking all perfect and having everything. I smiled inside as the lyrics struck me for the first time. She was me, singing to him. I wonder now if that song was a coincidence. The mom and him didn’t talk much about the dad. He mostly looked out the window. Looking in the distance. Just a few questions and a few grunts for answers.

The night went well, but I don’t remember much. It was a comfortable evening. He was a "rich kid" in my mind. They had really nice furniture and a walk-in snack closet. Marble everything. We ended up going to his room to fall asleep in his bed around midnight. A surfer boy's room. Fluffy blankets. Hot pinks and electric blue hues.

We talked for a while.

I remember my heart sounded like horses galloping in my ears. My mouth kept getting dry. I had a raging hard-on so I lay with my back to him. Answering his questions as they bounced off the window in front of me and filled my ears with his voice. He was so curious about me. He could get me to talk more to him than I had talked to anyone all year combined with just one inquiry.

At some point he dozed off and I was lying there thinking. Every time I would swallow it felt like I would wake the house up. He would make little clicking noises in his throat, his breath getting deeper. I was about to drift off myself when I heard him startle a bit, jump from his dream and roll over, his arm now around me, his leg over mine.

____________________________________________________

His flesh was soft upon my flesh. I don’t think any part of my body was capable of movement at that moment but my heart. My eyes dare not open, the butterflies in my stomach froze into statues in a garden, and my lungs stretched taut like a parachute full of air, knowing if I let go of my breath I would fall into the unknown.

Don’t breathe… he’ll know you are awake.

My lungs soon grew more red than my cheeks and I needed to exhale. Do I pretend I’m asleep? Do I act like I’m waking up?

Exhaaaaaaaale

Deep inhale

Act like you are sleeping, you don’t know yet, he is just really nice, don’t fuck this up, omg I can’t believe this is happening, I hope I’m not being weird, is it me or is it him, I don’t know what to do, is this how it happens, I don’t know if this is true, omg I’m so fucking scared, this feels so good, I never want to move

He breathed in deeply… and hugged me closer. A little moan somewhere far back inside him echoed from his throat as he exhaled and squeezed a bit.

My ears were ringing. I don’t know if it was fear or excitement. I had felt the weight of his body a hundred times upon me in wrestling practice, roiling to remove it off mine, but this weight I hoped would never release; this soft embrace could hold me down, and I would never push back, I realized. Every gulp was a deafening sound.

Don’t swallow, don’t swallow

GULP!!

My heartbeats sounded like artillery falling a town away and getting ever closer. Steadily pounding. Growing. His breath was on my neck, sweet-smelling somehow. Faint whispers of watermelon gum and vanilla wafers… and something else. Something unique. An essence that was only him. A scent I imagine only a few people will know.

My leg was falling asleep underneath me and had grown numb. I could not lie motionless forever. Entropy arrived. Motion knocked. Do I roll over on my back and just lie there? Do I roll on my stomach and hide my boner

you know that’s the best and worst choice, so just do it... don’t do it... do it... don’t do it

I rolled toward him, meaning to roll onto my back, and as I did, like some choreographed wrestling move he never taught me, he rolled to his back and somehow pulled me toward him. Onto his chest my arm went, into his neck my face went, and for a moment I paused…. WTF was I doing? My leg swung up over his legs…

I cradled him in my arms in a way I don’t even think I knew how to do until that moment. My eyelids semi-shut, I was peeking through slits to see his chest in the moonlight. Neon-tinged light upon pecs reflecting the streetlights that told us when to come home a summer ago.

It must have been only a minute but it felt like an hour at least. I was suddenly aware of a ticking noise from his watch. Low, digital clicking. Its melodic cadence let me know time wasn’t frozen; in fact, it was running as fast as my thoughts were.

I heard him swallow

GULP!!

He was awake.

Okay, you are going to need to snap out of this right now, you are way outta control, you are literally hugging him and he can feel your boner if he shifts even the slightest, what the hell are you doing, what if he freaks out and what if he doesn’t want to be friends after and what if he tells everyone?

He shifted his hips and rolled a bit, his hip now on my boner.

CODE RED

It’s over, I’m a goner. Can’t hide it now

GULP!!

We were almost spooning but he wasn’t turned quite all the way away from me. I could tell he was also hard under his sweats as I quickly opened one eye. I slowly moved my hand down as I pretended to stretch a bit and shift, slid to the top of his underwear, my limit reached.

He put his hand on mine. Opened his eyes, moved it downward. I felt it. Hot like an anvil. Then he moved my hand away

“Maybe” he whispered into the night.

That Maybe (capital M) sat between us looking back and forth waiting for us for at least five minutes.

Maybe

In the distance, a low rumble approached. A huge truck with some kind of guitar solo trailing behind it.

His father was on his way home.

____________________________________________________

He heard the rumble of his father’s truck approaching before the vibrations reached my ears. He tensed tight, muscles contracting into coiled cables. Flesh turned from tan to armor under my fingertips. I felt him change like the temperature. For a second a part of me thought he was getting ready to hit me, a quick strike and a sting descending in nanoseconds was what flashed across my mind. Everyone knows that flicker, the knowing just before the pain…

He sat up in bed and looked toward the window. The streetlight hit his face, his brow furrowed. I pulled back quick. Waiting for the impact of his fists, the sting of his tongue.

No blow came.

He mumbled under his breath a bit and then got up and walked across the room. His silhouette revealed the bulges and curves of his body among his bedroom wall as he flickered by soundlessly to lock the door. He was bigger than I expected down there, and that somehow made things worse and better; my eyes flittered away from his shape and saw the locked door.

“What’s the matter?”

“He’s drunk”

“How do you know?”

“It’s Friday”

He slid back into the bed like a fist holding everything I wanted sliding into my pocket. I could feel his father’s truck approaching as much as I could hear it. Huffing toward us. Growling as it slowed down and turned onto the street. Lurching around the corner.

He was on his back looking at the ceiling. I could feel the frustration rising from his face. I turned toward him, on my side, not touching him.

“Is everything okay?”

“He won’t come up here”

“What?”

Long sigh. He grunted toward me in the darkness. My mouth suddenly dry.

“Just try to go to sleep. He goes away"

Pause

"Just don’t say anything," he whispered, almost a pleading.

Just don’t say anything? About me and you? To your crazy dad? Oh, don’t worry, buddy

He turned away from me and looked toward the wall. I stayed where I was, not moving… thinking I guess, listening to the father exiting his truck more than anything. The door slamming shut way too hard.

He looked over his shoulder at me and I heard that grin upon his voice even though I couldn’t see his lips,

“The door is locked,” he whispered and then he turned away again like he had said it to me a thousand times and I should know what to do.

I lay on my back motionless.

Below us the banging on the door exploded through the house and I jumped. His mom’s voice joined his father’s and the ancient clash of divorcing parents and domestic violence began.

I was fearful at that moment. The mother was holding her ground and saying he couldn’t come inside. He sounded like a werewolf below us. Enraged. Spitting insults and throwing accusations that echoed through the neighborhood. I sat up and began to experience now what I realize was fight or flight; I think I was getting ready to go downstairs just in case, when he turned and said very sternly through his teeth, “No! Stay here!”

They argued for several minutes. I heard it all. He knew I heard it all. The accusations were intense. Cheating, drinking, gambling, the spending, the spending, the spending.

Back and forth they screamed.

A teeter-totter where your goal is to topple the other. The insults told their stories in four and five letter words over and over as we lay in the dark above them. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse I heard the father yelling,

“He’s not even my fucking son! You know it! Everyone knows it!”

Crashing sounds.

“HE KNOWS HE’S NOT MY SON!”

Some glass broke and I heard the truck door slam shut. The engine revved to life and in a few moments he was careening away from us.

Below us I could hear his mother on the phone to the police. Muffled crying. I felt if I moved I would make it ten times worse. I couldn’t just stay still though. For the second time that night I rolled toward him and put my arm around him. This time I felt him trembling from the silent sobs he had been holding in.

A bucket can be filled with tears and balance on a tightrope for only so long. The slightest nudge will tip it over. My arm across him nudged his bucket and he spilled open and overflowed as I held him tight.

____________________________________________________

Sunlight has a way of making everything from the night before feel like a dream. I wish it had been… but it was a regular night in America for us. When I woke up he was looking down at me, the biggest smile on his face, the gold highlights of his hair sparkling in the morning rays, laughing for some reason, his smirk sharply carved upon his cheeks.

“You make the craziest noises in your sleep”

“No I don’t”

He cocked his head like a dog trying to figure out a math question.

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Get all sensitive when I tell you the things I like about you”

I didn’t answer him. I don’t know if it was his compliment or his truthfulness that muted my response. Inside my adolescent mind he might as well had said he loved me. It felt both embarrassing and boisterous… the parts of me that were tucked away from the world because of shame began opening the curtains upon my life path that morning. He was probably the first person to look through and see the other side of me.

His mother made pancakes that morning and at one point in between syrup and smacking our lips she said, “I’m sorry you had to hear that last night”

I didn’t know what to say so I just looked down and kept eating. When I looked up at my friend he was staring out the window. Lost in more than his thoughts and my heart clenched quickly. A painful pulsating spasm right in the center of me.

He won all kinds of medals that day. Stole the show. They gave out huge trophies almost as tall as him for the competition. I remember us having to fit them in his mom’s Escalade and turning them sideways so we could shut the doors. People would walk by and shake his hand and congratulate him, tell him he was a talented boy, and his father would be proud of him.

“Your father would be proud of you”

“Made your daddy proud today”

“Reminds me of your dad out there”

“Where’s your father at? I knew I didn’t hear him cheering”

“Tell your dad I said 'Hi' when you see him”

Over and over and over again. Now I knew why he was so strong. People never stopped picking at his scabs. Relentless reminders tearing at him every weekend.

We didn’t talk much the next week. Parting ways and going home alone probably caused us to get inside our heads, I guess. We knew each other’s patterns with our eyes closed, so it wasn’t hard to find the spaces where we wouldn’t be. After a week it started getting weird. When I did see him there weren’t any smirks, no little waves. During wrestling practice he wrestled with everyone but me for a few days in a row.

Nobody else noticed but it was the end of my world. It was all I could think about.

He was a magnet and I was trapped in his pull. The funny thing about magnets is they know you can feel their pull but never realize you can feel their push even harder when they decide to repel you.

I found him alone before a Friday match in the locker room by chance. I had gone in to get something I needed and he was sitting alone with his headphones on, no music playing. A dragonfly caught in amber, motionless.

“Can we talk?”

My voice sounded “sensitive,” omg

“Sure”

“Did I do something wrong?”

He smiled. His face lightened.

It was as if the sun came out across the inside parts of him that he had kept cloaked. He turned a shade of beaming bronze and began shining in front of me. Daybreak.

“You?”

He giggled and looked away.

“No, you did everything perfect”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It was the last thing I expected and I think it knocked the breath out of me a bit. So I sat there for a while. I wasn’t ever going to bring up that “Maybe” between us.

“I’m sorry about your dad”

Pause.

“He’s not my dad, Christopher”

He said it as he looked at me and made eye contact with the sound of spears piercing. I began to cry and looked downward and was genuinely trying to hide it. When I looked up I remember making true eye contact with him for the second time in our lives. That lock clicked again and never unlocked. He saw into me and I saw into him. I smirked and said,

“I won’t ever mention it again”