My Life On The Orange Merry-Go-Round

Part I: You Belong To Me

They claim that High School is when a person encounters the next plain of transformation: ascending from child to unsteady median to the fetal stages of adulthood. It's a melding of child and adult that we may never grow out of, considering that the maturity of many adults is questionable when under unbiased study. Sometimes I think children keep the secrets of the universe. Perhaps that movie 'Baby Genius' had a valid point or origin. As far as what I know for certain is that a youngling's seeming simplicity is a sequestered abundance of knowledge that we often lose with age. As a child we are a jar being slowly filled by life and experience and because of the rising liquid we are losing clarity of the most basic things. Unconditional love, for example. A child may pout and say 'I don't love you anymore' when denied something they desire but they never mean it and in a moment they will once again be the radiance wrapped in your arms. Like the lower animals a child loves without discrimination, without ulterior motive or logic. A child won't hate you for being dark-skinned, ugly, homosexual, or strange unless they are taught to. The young rely on instinct and reaction. A child will know 'like' and 'dislike' and never question choices of friend or taste.

I was never quite like the average Newark child. From the outside our home appeared a gloomy bit of housing tract bordered by abundant trees and an overgrown backyard. Yet if you were to step foot inside that perspective sent you tumbling down the rabbit hole and into something like a merging of the Munster's parlor and an alchemy shop. My household was somewhat the local Addams family in that many of the bored cookie-cutter housewives with their drunkard husbands and unruly children thought my mother possessed poor parenting skills and even worse interior decorating. I suppose gorging your toddling young on horror movies, designing a bleak interior reminiscent of Dracula's bedroom, and never inviting the locals for supper was a little less than ordinary. To a Jerseyan who has seen every cherry blossom ample times and never been interested in the arts there are five things to do in life: work a 9-5, shop, eat, drink, and fuck. Lather, rinse, repeat. They call us the land of the ordinary man (despite that there truly is very little to be called thus, at least if one is a native).

My Mama was a disillusioned Italian-American and my Papa of a lesser Welsh stock; apparently they confused one another for some romantic replication of dime-store novel protagonists and married when I four months after I was conceived. I was born near the fossils of Little Italy in Newark, which as all the natives know is possibly the worst part of Northern New Jersey to be yielded to. Due to my father's occupation as a Postal Worker the income of my family was small despite their best efforts. After some battle to find a suitable homestead we were inducted into the land of drive-by shootings and heroin-addicts where your neighbors had visions of Frank The Bunny in their bathtubs. Amidst the thick emerald leaves and abundant foliage of the Garden State lay corpses collected yearly from playgrounds and dumpsters. The ghetto of Newark was hardly a place to enjoy residency, much less a childhood. It was not wise to allow children free reign on even their own front lawn in our neighborhood, and in being so we cloistered a family within the dark rooms of our working-class home. As elementary children Sandy and I witnessed the drugs, domestic violence, and segregation of the reticent slums shape normal children into fledgling monsters and perhaps that was another factor in our homebody obsession. Jersey is beautiful, an unquestionable home, but there is no denying the squalor that is interspersed with the charm of my home-state. Dingy, bipolar, and thriving with a pulse of creativity that is often kept on a short leash. In the First Ward crime surged rampant amongst the raw talent and overcame many of the most promising prodigies.

My family made their own eccentricity. The neighbors avoided us and the sandbox was vacant whenever we thought to step into it. The fabulous Marcella Cantorinni, my wild card of a mother, was on the harebrained side of the spectrum and perpetually kept things interesting with her home-based projects (such as the memorable 'let's make our backyard into a cemetery!'). Perhaps our mother was possessive of her babies or maybe my brother and I were an abysmal pair of Mama's Boys. My Uncle Tito was an artist and began to tutor me as soon as I had the coordination to hold a paintbrush, though my sibling showed no interest and even less talent. In direct result of his teachings I ducked my head away from the other children's scrutiny and sought shelter in the Drama Club, Art classes, and beneath the gum-speckled tabletops of the library. Dillon Llewellyn was 'that weird artist kid...' by day and budding Michelangelo by night, watched over by a stout Italian man that spoke a language only I was able to understand. Papa was the odd one out made abnormal only by the fact that he never hit me when he discovered me playing dress-up in Mama's closet. Grandma lived with us in soft-spoken silence and my father's influence was dwarfed by the feminine energy that gave my brother and I a distinct 'alternative' vibe (prompting the reputation of being 'weird kids' that drew my peers fists). The large area of a young boy's mind usually devoted to sports was instead filled with cinema and literature and art.

Neither my older brother Sandy nor I could ever empathize with our age group. They liked Sesame Street and The Wizard Of Oz while we were fond of Freddy Kruger and Bella Lugosi. I much preferred the company of adults who could discuss sensible things and had thoughts in their skulls that didn't involve G.I. Joe and butterflies, and whatever I decided was precisely what Sandy thought also. I hovered beneath the boundless legs of adults and listened, stowing knowledge away in files to be opened once I was lying in bed with a snoring Sandy draped over my stomach. It was just Sandy-witch and I for many years, two mirror-image brothers perfecting a symbiotic bond that need not include a third party. He tagged along with me to the Graveyard on full moons, crouching in a small enclosure to watch the local Satanic Cult perform their rituals kept scribbled on worn pages of a lined notebook. It never occurred to either of us that I ought to have been the one following him for I was the occasional extrovert of our duo. Things changed with time but in the earliest stages we were a matched pair of Wednesday Addams' trying to frighten the kids in our classes. I was a bitter child that frightened many a pleasant person with my dark morbidity and Sandy was a sly shadow that never spoke in the presence of strangers.

After a crippling fear of death and three years of therapy I had the epiphany at age six that all creatures die. Instead of being hysterically terrified of death I became enthusiastically obsessed with it. Sandy, of course, chose to share my sentiments. My parents divorced when I was eleven, leaving Mama and Grandma to shuffle for a lifejacket. Uncle Tito never had more than a starving artist’s wages. Naturally, Papa paid his child support without fail yet it did not remedy the disrupted nature of our home. It kept the bellies of my brother and I full but did little else besides. Being the unhappy, reclusive individual that I was my mother introduced me to a new form of therapy. Divorce Counseling, a program specifically targeted toward a group of children who had been rocked by the separation of their parents. I hated it, considering that I strongly disliked being made to communicate with others my own age. Sandy, the well-adjusted brother, escaped its clutches.

The first session was an ungodly affair. I was the sort of child that had single-handedly laid foundations and built my own world. I resented the intrusion of bulldozing 'normal people'. Rebelliousness was exercised with lies and false impressions since few could see past the syrupy curve of the smile that I masked the truth with. Dillon Llewellyn refused to be beaten at his best talent (words) and I elected to send chills up the kindly teacher's spine in any way possible. When she asked me what I liked to do best I answered 'sacrificial experimentation' and proceeded to stare fixedly at the blond puff of hair on a teary-eyed girl opposite me. The session went on and each of my answers was odd and dispassionate, ranging from 'the divorce makes me want to inflict suffering on others' to 'my favorite food is beef, but only if it's rare'. Amidst the abject dislike wafting from the pores of every other kid in the room I repeatedly heard giggling, a misplaced amusement toward this personal game that mystified me. I kept searching for the source of the warm reception but could not find it. Whoever of these six-to-twelve-year-olds understood what I was doing had a superb poker face.

When I returned home to report on my first session I informed my mother that a faceless child had laughed in the face of creepiness. My mouth was generally taken for granted. She had smiled with a gleam in her eyes that spoke of hope and suggested that I make another challenge of drawing out my admirer. We might be friends, if this child took my doom-and-gloom for the black humor it was. The notion astonished me but was not unwelcome for I decided it was high time that I made a friend. Sandy, a blunt twelve years of age, proclaimed me insane and refused to speak to me for the rest of the day.

The following week brought a peculiar flame of hope with its group-therapy session and I was not quite as reluctant to attend. I had formed a repertoire of responses and insinuations over the past seven days and felt ready to weasel my fellow freak from among the sobbing and/or confused assemblage of single-parented children. My entrance was met with dread and I thought it all quite hilarious, if not a bit cruel of me. Again I played the nerves of the leader of the discussion with honed skill, her patience dwindling with each depressive word from my mouth. I vowed silently to make it up to the poor woman at some later date with something large and pleasant and perhaps pink (I do actually like pink; it is yellow that I have an aversion to). I really do not like to make other people upset but was just selfish enough in my young undeveloped mind to erect my own needs above hers. Frustration began to rise as the same taunting giggle rose and fell and did not identify its originator. I quelled my annoyance (for I might be bitter but I was never violent) and lay in wait as best I could. But no, the poker face continued as I narrowed the choices down to a five-body sector.

The whole ordeal was growing tiresome and I went home without a conquest or a new friend. I sat at the kitchen table with Uncle Tito and spoke of my woes, my round chin laid dejectedly on puberty-fattened arms. Uncle Tito, in his patient fervor, flashed the smile I had inherited as he concentrated on painting fallen angels on a vase he had made recently.

“Oh honny, you let the pangs of falling rule you too much. Have faith in your own legs. If you sit on the ground too long you'll develop a cramp and never be able to get up.”

Uncle Tito always spoke in this manner, as if each disclosure of his tongue was a page from some long-lost book of the bible. His casual phrases had given me immeasurable empathy and Sandy depthless wisdom (as well as quite an opinion on Gay Rights and Edger Allen Poe).

“Then I'll just sit and wait for a goat cart.” I pouted, kicking at the rungs of my chair (as I was yet too small to touch the ground when seated).

Uncle Tito’s merry amusement was enough to spur my determination.

The third session of Divorce Counseling followed much the same pattern with the exception of my striking one child from the list. She (Beth, apparently) sat in the sector of five but could not possibly be the culprit, for she began to sob when I mentioned the possibility of my family contracting gonorrhea from the low-income area we lived in. I do not suspect she knew what gonorrhea was at that time but was compassionate enough to weep for me. This, I decided, would simply not do and I withered in shame. Near the end of our hour-and-a-half session I began to cave and my image of ghoulishness began to deflate. I became eclipsed by the sullen but gentle person that I was in the privacy of my own home. Every time I attempted to capture Beth's eye and offer an apologetic smile she turned away as if I were disintegrating before her very eyes and the sight was too painful to bear.

'Are you going to grow up like that guy in the bad music?' one of my peers demanded when I expressed my disgust in gospel. I replied simply that if I was fortunate I would become a rock star.

“Like the Beatles?”

“No. Like Michael Graves.”

“We can be the next Misfits!” Exclaimed a voice I didn't recognize.

The giggle that followed was all too familiar. And it was coming from the tiniest, cutest little boy I had ever seen. His name was Rico according to the precise script on his name-tag and he could not have been more the five years old. I had never suspected that he, among the five in my little section of suspects, would be the imp that comprehended my humor... but apparently he was. He was so small that the plastic kiddie-seat nearly loomed above him and I thought perhaps he might never grow to be an average size, but the embracing warmth of his huge black eyes and the mischievous smile that curled over his pixie-face affirmed his identity instantly. He looked the part of a mini-alter-boy in his careworn but clean suit and the thatch of dark hair kept pristinely shaped above his adorable face. It took me a moment to form a smile for him, taken aback as I was, but soon we shared a look of mutual understanding while the leader resumed her discussion. I found myself eager to speak with him, an uncharacteristic desire on my part.

I chased after Rico the moment that I was released from my usual after-session scolding, determined not to allow this gem of a child (HE KNEW MY FAVORITE BAND!) escape as he had for the past two weeks. He was leisurely wending his way toward the parking lot without much attention to his surroundings and I suppose I might have startled him when I dashed over and shouted his name with the urgency reserved for 'fire!' and 'there's a bomb!'. But he recovered quickly from my abrupt swoop and smiled as he had in the session, all eyes and munchkin charm.

“Hi, Dillon. I think that's the happiest I've seen you.” He informed me without pause, hands in the pockets of his little dress pants.

My heart swelled with this sarcastic greeting and I desperately yearned to just hug this strange boy and tell him he was the most wizard kid I had ever met.

“What, when I shouted? I suppose it is. More like 'triumphant', actually, but near enough to happy.” I wheezed, slightly out of breath from both the sprint across the facility playground and the unusual volume I had employed.

“You've been trying to catch me. And you're happy that I said 'here I am!'.” He giggled, peering up the considerable distance between our heights with what I thought might be mocking.

“Yes, I have. I love you for laughing at my jokes. And knowing The Misfits.”

“Everyone should love The Misfits. It's the tenth deadly sin not to.”

“I don't believe in sin.” I muttered with disdain, wrinkling my nose.

“Yeah, I could tell that.”

The rosary dangling from his pocket strangled my reply for a moment until I began to stutter.

“Sorry. I've had nothing else to do but annoy the others.”

Would he scold me or advise me to do otherwise?

“Thanks. It really makes the whole thing better.”

Not precisely the anticipated answer… but a wholly satisfactory one. I giggled and petted his little head.

“Aww. You make these sessions worth enduring.”

Rico eyed me for a moment, searching, and then smiled all the wider with teeth so perfect they stung my eyes in the sunlight.

“Ha! I knew you weren't as dead as you pretend to be.”

Over the course of the next week Rico and I traded home information and agreed to find a playdate. At my age I was loathe to call it thus but I found out Rico was soon to be seven (he was a runt, apparently) and therefore not available for anything more mature. I hoped he was not fond of Army Men or any such game of over-exaggerated manliness. Thankfully he was not very manly at all. For a child of six-and-eight months he was advanced in many areas and I had little trouble sharing a wavelength with the tiny creature. He was odd in all the proper ways and had the budding promise of a future neighborhood weirdo despite a somewhat conservative background. The former Mrs. Ginocchio was the sort of woman that appeared sharp but well-endowed when it came to practical jokes and caring for her loved ones. She was a no-nonsense sort of person that would never be uncivil (not like my own mother, whom would curse like a sailor when angered) and had a gaze that picked the lock to ones closet in search of skeletons. His father was a good humored mechanic and surprisingly frivolous with his father-son excursions (part of the cause for Mr. and Mrs. Ginocchio’s divorce) although he too had a certain sharpness to him that I suspect is a prerequisite to being strongly Catholic. I was quite nearly interrogated when inquiring after visiting with Rico.

Rico and I spent hours on end building sandcastles in the park while hosting discussions of music and horror movies, the idiocy of those around us and the evils of 'rules', what sort of ungainly objects we might put inside a house of our own, and essentially every subject that crossed our minds. One playdate grew to two and to five and to eight, progressively more enthusiastic and less hesitant to form a friendship between a child and a pre-teen. There was nothing we could not share. We contemplated the color of the sky and spoke of licking an iceburg to determine whether our tongues would stick. In time we traded secrets that at the time seemed precious and dire (but were really quite silly a few years down the road). With each playdate it became more difficult to part and each session of counseling became much more amusing. I wondered if perhaps I could successfully kidnap Rico and keep him in my closet forever.

Sandy was livid when I informed him several months into my friendship that our bedroom was about to be invaded by a third person. It was only for one night, naturally, and was considered an experiment due to it being Rico's first sleepover. Yet my brother was a very passive-aggressive but altogether jealous person. He seemed to all but me to be this picture of apathy that felt very little. But I knew different. Sandy was deathly possessive of me and I of him. I hadn't thought of that until his face burned red and he stormed off. Keening at the door to our bedroom produced no reaction from my sibling aside from a powerful sneeze and in defeat I slunk away to await Rico's arrival. I was in a morose mood when my dear friend arrived with his Spiderman sleeping bag and great stuffed bear. He sensed my distress instantly and dropped his belongings to the doorstep, his tiny arms seizing my waist and hugging tight as a boa constrictor. My moodiness vanished and I recalled why I adored the tiny child with such fervor. Sandy crawled off from skulking in the hall without a word, pretending to have never been present at all.

After emotional visits to a bedridden Rico (bogged down by recurring bronchitis) and long talks in the dead of night my brother eventually forgave my best friend for being the harbinger of independence on my part. There was no one in the world Rico could not have charmed with his small sweet countenance and clever tongue. It only required coaxing. I continued to forcibly subject my sibling to the concept of my partial break-away from codependency and Rico pursued him doggedly. With time and careful welcomes we pulled Sandy into a triangle of comradeship. The world remained, however, split into the distinct realities of 'Dillon and Sandy' and 'Rico and Dillon'. They mixed but it was most often seldom and I balanced my time between the two as best I could. Sandy even found himself a friend of his own, much to my wonderment, whose name was Alejandro-The-Fuzzy.

Trouble in paradise was hot on our heels. Close to his eighth birthday my best friend was diagnosed with a severe case of Mononucleosis and admitted to the local hospital. I hadn't even known he was not feeling well because I had canceled our weekend plans in favor of a trip to New York with my family. My terror of loss and 'the end' reared and bucked like an epileptic horse and I entered a state of life-threatening neurosis. My own physician prescribed anti-anxiety medication and I spent all of my free time begging to visit my Rico. He would not die, they insisted. He just needed to be watched and given time to recover, they said. I could not trust these madmen that would keep me from someone deemed worth my own life. But his condition was contagious and my parents declined to expose me, forcing a prolonged separation even as he began to emerge from his downward spiral of fever and vomiting. I pined and wept and managed to keep my head through the artwork commissions that Rico sent me daily on yellow Post-It notes. The good humor in shaky handwriting turned on the sun for me in those horrible four months. When at last Rico was strong enough to walk free and no longer caged by the Epstein-Barr virus he found himself trapped instead by my arms. I wouldn't let go of him for three days despite how much school I missed.

Rico and I hit the first moment of rockiness between us when I reached thirteen. He was soon to be nine, still a child on several counts while I was now inducted into adolescence. The numbers loomed huge and the once-yearned-for age was now my enemy. I wished to be nine years old once more and allowed to attend Elementary School. On my birthday I sat with him on the Merry-Go-Round (we had relocated from the sandbox a year ago) and attempted to explain what this coming of age meant. He insisted that I was being absurd with this solemn talk of 'teenagehood' and my concern for what would become of our relationship. Nothing would change, he said, for it was just one more birthday like every other before it. To me, however, this was a serious matter. Rico was my dearest friend, my beloved companion, but there was this rift now that separated us with two digits. Ultimately my verbal fumbling failed and I watched in horrified misery as Rico ran off sobbing. I had painted it in neon shades that I had automatically become this entirely different thing and we were forbidden to associate between the races. It was a mistake that proved how much of a child I remained. Perhaps my perpetual doomsday prophecies had at last begun to eat at Rico's ever-optimistic enthusiasm. Thankfully, the issue was soon resolved with a firm talk from both our parents and we resumed our friendship as if nothing had happened. For nothing had. Not yet, anyhow.

I grew older. We grew together, shaped by one another and our adventures. From building a shrine to Marilyn Manson (which included copious amounts of black electric tape and poster paint) in my basement to stealing ‘Melancholy’ on vinyl from a record store, we became as inseparable as Sandy and I had once been. Yet he was always a step behind in certain subjects (namely those having to do with body chemistry) due to his age and I was forced to endure the discoveries of puberty alone. I cried many a time because I felt alone without my father (as Uncle Tito was a firm believer in ‘growth through suffering’) and no one but the little boys as fellow males. They did not understand why my voice was making odd wavers, not on a personal level. Nor did they know of the other less pleasant changes that startled me and made me want to shrink my clothes in the wash in an effort to make me smaller. I had always been quite petite but the spring of 1991 brought a sudden gain in height and I panicked, for now Rico did not fit in my arms quite the same and I was terrified that I would grow and grow and grow until I towered so far above him that we could not hear each other speak. He slapped my cheek when I had an attack of my (carefully medicated) neurosis and babbled out my fears. 'You're still my Dillon, stupid. You'll grow and then I'll grow, and soon enough we'll be back to the way we were. We're still in this together. I'm just a little behind.'. They were strong words for an almost-ten-year-old and I told him I loved him as I sniffled and wiped my nose on my shirtsleeve. He replied that he loved me also and if I ever spoke such nonsense again he'd do more than slap my cheek.

And Rico did indeed grow. He hit full-on puberty long before I had and by the age of eleven was experiencing the same changes I was still grappling with. The relief was a constant for many months of that year and I reveled in mocking his cracking voice (and other things). I found myself slightly envious of his calm acceptance and celebrated when he was whacked with his first growth spurt. As promised, he was now at a height that once more allowed his chin to fit just so in the gentle curve of my shoulder. He was not a teenager yet by all means... but it was satisfying to feel for once in our history nearly at the same plateau. That elation did not, however, last very long. Especially when I discovered hormones.

I had always known something was off about me. Something misplaced, misshapen, a cog that was not within even my own brother. Another commonality with Uncle Tito that I could not fuse to vocabulary which he refused to explain. My habits and manner of cognation had developed at a rapid and eclectic pace in and of themselves, yet still there blushed metaphorical birthmarks embedded in the skin of inner arms, my cheek, and directly over my heart that I had seen only in passing on others. My parents, I later learned, had known of my unambiguous fate's impending arrival all along. It was all a matter of time until the dress-up became public and our (for Sandy quite liked it also) raids of my mother's cosmetics became routine. I was a ticking time bomb aimed for someplace very few of my fellow boys were headed in. They had begun to explore this foreign concept called 'dating girls' and I... well, I thought that women were a fabulous species that I should never, ever want to touch sexually. Girls were, and always had been, an entirely separate entity to my impression of the world. Not in a manner that suggested I did not like them as a whole. No indeed, I rather empathized with the feminine rubric in my infinite 'sensitivity'. I agreed with Da Vinci: women were often smarter, more extraordinary, and stronger than men but they should be stationed as maternal figures, dear friends, and precious little daughters only. My disinterest in girls (or more specifically their anatomy) might not have been alarming if it were not for a secondary factor. It was not that my body was failing to react and notice the sexual appeal of others. It was that the only people I was reacting to were very much male and even more unavailable.

It took some time for me to come to terms with the most natural and terrifying of my developments. When whispered to my brother in the secret-guarding darkness of our shared bedroom he had remained silent only a moment before replying that he had always known it would happen. Predestined, they call it. I was aghast at such a statement but reflected that indeed, it felt so inevitable as to pass unnoticed for years. By the time I had reached sixteen years of age, I had begun to notice Rico. It was no longer purely the friend and artist within me that appreciated his beauty. With each month that passed, it seemed, I was jarringly reminded that this boy was bordering on the precarious edge of becoming stunning. And as my panic receded and I took my sour medicine in dutiful silence the monthly jolts of realization became altogether too frequent. Now each day, each instance in which he turned toward me and the light illuminated his features, I was positively sick with how elfin he was becoming. In my subconscious I had somehow built a conception of the perfect mate and it resembled him in every way, shape, and form. But I submitted like the audience of a wedding to the knowledge that not only was he twelve years of age but also that he would never be enamored with me as I was with him. I was just little and funny-looking, after all, and my feminine face was so at odds with my oddly assembled body that none could want (with exception, perhaps, of my brother whom was most certainly not going there) someone such as myself. The time to speak had passed long before it had become an opportunity, and forever would I hold my peace.

I watched the legs of a cricket twitch as it weighed its options, debating whether to burr or spring away. The lawn did not appear to be intriguing in the slightest and it was unfathomable to me that the cricket would be content to remain still. Its whippet legs flexed on the precariously balanced blades of grass, bowing beneath the meager weight like peasants before royalty. The color of the little creature's exoskeleton reminded me of my Papa’s eyes and a smile flirted with the corners of my mouth.

“Hi, little cricket.” I greeted it as it moved slightly closer to my reclining form.

Startled by the vibrations of my voice the insect bounded away amongst the grassy lawn.

“Fine. Be that way.” I muttered bitterly to the long-departed grass-dweller.

I never did have the patience to keep my mouth shut. Not like Rico, who could sit and watch and analyze with the obsidian shards that missed nothing. We were so different and so very much alike. Me the fire and he the gusting air that spread it.

“It's a blue day.” Rico commented, pointing upward with all the authority of a superhero striking a pose.

I rolled onto my back and directed my attention toward the distant limits of the troposphere also, assenting that it was indeed very vividly colored. They call that particular hue 'robins-egg blue', I think. Or so claimed my paint set. The clouds were a thin mist scattered throughout the impenetrable blue like an accidental puff of flour. I liked the sincere, inoffensive coloring of the sky and the cool, promising air that accompanied it. Perhaps it is because I was born just before Spring, but I adore the skew of days in which everything seems on the precipice of blooming in full, throbbing life. The air of Autumn is beautiful and crisp but it holds a scent of resignation, of drowsiness. This held a glimmer of excitement quivering just behind a veil of frost.

“Dillon? I asked you to sit up!” Rico demanded, prodding my belly with one scarlet-polished finger.

I yelped in protest of his touch to my midriff (an emotional sore spot) and complied with some effort. Goal number 1: return to former skinny-tiny state of physique.

“Sorry. I was just remembering why I love Spring.” I explained as my lengthy enjoyment of the weather retreated from the forefront of my mind.

He planted himself in my accommodatingly-circular lap and I wrapped my arms around the thin boy, noting that he might have grown slightly and perhaps he would soon be my size.

“And why is that?” Rico asked in his soothing voice.

“Because it feels fresh and new. Beginnings always feel so much better than endings.”

I never had been fond of endings. Every birth holds a tender hope but an end can be either gloriously fulfilled or utterly empty.

“It's like you.” Rico mused as his button nose brushed my cheekbone.

“Like me? How is Spring like me?” I scoffed, tugging at a lock of my flyaway honey-colored hair.

“You're like Spring because you're bright. And alive. But cold, too. Like... in between the heat of summer and the freezing of winter. You know?”

“Yes, I know.” I replied, nodding my head as the reticent words were absorbed.

Rico and I always seemed to share sentiments like these, an understanding of ill-appreciated things that never failed to delight me. I loved him for that.

“What would you be, then? You aren't like any season, as far as I can tell. Not as tired as Autumn or as pale as Spring, but not sullen like Summer or frigid like Winter.”

“I think I would be Indian Summer.” He replied, his cheek rubbing my own like a cat begging to be stroked.

My hands found his own and twined with them as I digested that one.

“Indian Summer. Isn't that, like, the few weeks of October that are similar to a dying burst of July?”

“Yep.”

And indeed, he was a perfect Indian Summer. The cool, rich settling of brilliant Autumn colors interrupted with an abrupt and brief boom of the previous fiery season. I smiled and watched the color of the sky reflect in the vast rings his amber iris'.

“You're staring again.” Rico informed me in a tone that betrayed nothing.

This was not unusual, as I tend to gaze quite a bit at others and have no concept of personal space. I claim an artists prerogative.

“Sorry.” I blushed, busying myself with the sky.

“It's okay. I always stare right back.” He reminded me, dropping his elfin jaw onto my shoulder.

I tried to suppress the swell of adrenaline that stirred in my stomach by picking at the grass near my knees. Oh, fickle hearted adolescence.

“Weirdo.” He decided, affectionately.

“Retard.” I returned with just as little venom.

Rico blew out air against my ear, sending a tickling thrill down my spine (which roused a giggle from my diaphragm). I squirmed as he repeated the teasing action, seeking shelter from his rape of my power to resist tickling.

“Stop it!” I commanded half-heartedly, my fingers slapping feather-light on the smooth surface of his mockingly curved cheek.

But I did not have the gall to dump my dearest friend from my lap. His posture felt contradictory against my chest. Leaning in with the desire to be protected and yet domineering in the strength that flexed inside the fibrous muscular structure of his body and personality.

“Hey, fags. What's up?” Called a smooth, condescending voice to my great relief.

Rico ceased to torment me and cast a lazy glance in the direction of the voice.

“Not your I.Q. Points, obviously.” I responded to the crude greeting, seizing a grass clump and launching it at the slim culprit that was smirking at us from the sidewalk.

“Aww, I feel no love! Did I totally ruin your big gay sex moment?” He mocked, easily dodging my abysmal aim and watching the dirt clod roll onto the road.

“Up yours, Sandy-witch!” Rico yelled, grinning as our shit-mouthed compatriot made rude motions with his tongue.

“Looks more likely to be your ass, Rico-poo. You look real comfy sitting on Dillon's dick.”

“Sanders Llewellyn! Don't be crude! You'll corrupt little Rico's mind!” I whined as I covered Rico's ears with my hands.

“Come on, Dill Pickle. I'm just joking with you. I only do it 'cause you guys get pissed.” Sandy defended with a chuckle, flicking a half-spent cigarette at my tennis shoes.

“I may be pretty, but I’m not homosexual. That’s on your brother’s resume.” Rico recommenced defending himself, batting my hands away.

“What am I, like, on display as Queen Of The Year?” I demanded, shoving Rico from my thighs with a rare burst of aggression.

Rico peered at me with a scandalous grin from beneath his thick tumble of dark hair and my cheeks colored. I began to pick at a hole in the knee of my jeans out of discomfort.

“I saw that, Puerto-Rico.” Sandy announced, flopping into the grass beside me.

I rolled away from my leering companion and settled with one leg thrown over my sibling. Casually, Sandy kindled another cigarette and wriggled his left arm beneath my shoulders.

“Am I really, like, obvious?” I questioned of them both, referring to my alleged manifestly homosexuality.

“Not much. It’s more to the effect of alerting Gaydars worldwide that people are forewarned.” Rico explained.

I was not unwise to the sarcasm and I glared over my shoulder at his impish smugness. The flawless heart-shaped curve of his jaw, filled with the ripeness of a smile, attacked my heartbeat and I turned sharply back to sulking on my brother’s collarbone. Sandy snickered and I let my knee shift threateningly close to colliding with his groin.

“Oh, I give in. I’m a fag, you’re a fag, we’re all fags!” Rico exclaimed with fake despair, mimicking the clinging position I had claimed atop my brother on me.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Puerto-Rico.” Sandy drawled, his voice muffled by the ashen cylinder suspended in the corner of his mouth.

Sandy was curious about the male gender, but his curiosity was akin to that of a kitten poking at a lobster. In other words, his taste in the rare male love interest were big armored fellows that deserved to be boiled alive. I think I preferred my brother to remain largely heterosexual.

“At least you’re no longer in, like, denial about your gay identity.” I remarked sourly to Rico, not inclined to forgive instantly the mocking of my drag-queen tendencies.

He laid a chaste kiss to the exposed skin at the back of my neck and his scrawny arm pressed more firmly about my midriff in silent apology. I was well aware that the teasing was purely out of affection, yet still it stung for the underlying truth of such accusations. But how could I fault my brother and the love of my life? I allowed my muscles to relax and my eyelids to slide shut, basking in the warmth of the sun overhead and the two bodies curled around my own. Humans are truly pack animals, for nothing feels quite as secure as a pile of young pups cuddling on the lawn.

In the late Spring of my eighteenth year, Rico and I had developed a schedule due to conflicting sectors of the city and separate heights of academic standing. I was attending the coldly reputed Barringer High School on Park Avenue and he was still suffering on the opposite side of Branch Brook Park in a private Roman Catholic school called ‘St. Rose Of Lima’. I was in the Seventh Avenue sector and he in Roseville, two drastically different areas alike only in their large Puerto Rican populations. Despite our odd pairing, each of us was accepted equally among the neighborhood acquaintances of each side. Our measure of time was along the lines of a game of tag. On Fridays his mother transported Rico from their home on Gray St. to ours on Stone St. for the night. By this time Sandy and I had graduated to separate bedrooms, although my brother still joined us almost by default once the house had settled for the night. Saturday’s I spent in the company of the Ginocchio’s and their neighborhood-famous Mutt Mush (which was some obscure combination of Italian, Puerto Rican, and Portuguese food that the kith and kin had invented at a reunion). I had a glorious summation of three friends in the end of my junior year and Sunday was a free-for-all in which Rico, Sandy, and I took the Rail to central Newark to explore record releases and anything vaguely resembling a mall. Perhaps in this we were more standard examples of adolescence, although we garnered many a peculiar glance for our code of dress (Sandy with his choppy black hair and thick eyeliner, me in my battered black leather jacket and long lime-green locks, Rico with a red Mohawk and a jean jacket reading ‘The Ramones’ like a battle scar). On occasion our number also included Sandy’s friend Alejandro-The-Fuzzy, who was a misnamed African-American boy with the largest hair since afros went out of fashion. Alejandro was a bit GAP happy for my tastes… but my brother seemed fond of him in his standard ‘I-experience-no-emotion-whatsoever’ manner. I suspected that Alejandro was helplessly in love with my brother, but Sandy was mellow by nature and highly oblivious upon closer observation.

Time was ironing this edge and snipping at that. We changed as all children must with style and phase, passing fads and ridiculous epiphanies. I rubbed face paint into my skin every morning to bring it to a sickly white glow and rimmed my eyes in smudged black pencil, which was a startling eyesore in contrast to the unnatural neon hue of my hair. And Sandy was ever so vampiric, intimidating, with the flawless structure of black and white that made up his presentation. Alejandro toddled along (pretending not to be the tallest and most wide although this reality was quite obvious) like the castoff cousin of Napolean Dynamite that did not and yet somehow fit in. And Rico, beautifully cooler-than-thou punk rock king, took all of the attention and rolled it into a rebellious red carpet. Progressively, our bedrooms altered to reflect our tastes that seemed to be withdrawing farther and farther into themselves. Rico was deeply interested in spray paint and public demonstrations while I was more a moody hermit with an unfortunate hair-dye addiction. I plastered my black walls with The Smiths and Thursday while Rico stitched ‘The Casualties’ patches on the back pockets of his frayed plaid pants and was frequented by wet dreams involving Brody Dalle. I was losing the confidence of childhood at a rapid pace while Rico’s self-esteem was impelled upward by what I privately concluded must be a cult he kept under his bed. Still, we thrived on a mutual bond that I thought to be insuperable.

“Give me Mos Eisely.”

“Dude, no way! I almost had a Monopoly on all the Tatooine properties!” I protested, clutching the flimsy cardboard cards to my chest like an over-protective mother.

Rico’s blunt nails (currently royal-purple) drummed on the slick gameboard as he awaited my capitulation. I would have none of it. My undying Achilles' heel was becoming a greedy Realtor that bargained for properties not because of Mortgage value but rather for aesthetic appeal. Having long been convinced that I was a predecessor of the Jedi Order, I was a bit obsessive about commanding the trios of both Tatooine and Endor in Star Wars Monopoly. Rico, however, was a clever fiend and understood Real Estate from a business vantage. Repetitively our two manners of game play sparred.

“Dillon. This is a game of logic and finance, not sentimental value.” Rico reasoned gently.

“I don’t care. How am I supposed to establish a new Jedi Academy if I have no land to do it on?”

“A Jedi Academy wouldn’t be on a desert planet in the Outer Rim.”

“It’s the birthplace of the Skywalkers! The air must produce, like, high medichlorian concentration. Or something.” I contested, seizing my Luke game-piece and thrusting the splinter-sized lightsaber in the direction of my best friend.

“That’s ludicrous. You can’t build a Jedi Academy on Tatooine, especially in Monopoly.” Rico huffed, impudently flicking one of my little TIE fighter pieces aside.

“I can too! And I won’t let you attend if you take Mos Eisely!” I replied hotly, hiding the card beneath Hoth Echo Base.

“Dillon. Stop. Just play the game by the rules.” Rico soothed, urging Luke to retreat back to his spot on the board.

“Come on, pleeease leave Mos Eisely for me?” I pleaded, my lower lip protruding most unbecomingly.

Rico met my eyes with a bland but persuasive expression set in his dark elfin features, and his fingers moved to curl over my own.

As I continued to hold tight to the cards his soft fingers began to rub over the veins and knuckles that jutted from the pale surface of my skin. The motion was slow at first, barely ghosting over my hand. Then it began to press harder and more rapidly. I swallowed as my good friend adrenaline began to curdle inside my belly and my teeth began to saw at the inside of my lower lip. I wanted to tell Rico to stop and have mercy on my hypersensitive nerves, but as his touch on my hand became increasingly sensual both my breath and my cognation halted. I was a mouse mesmerized by the luminescent eyes of the cat, my little heart beating a thousand thumps a minute. His forefinger traced the half-moon of flesh that webbed between my thumb and first finger and I thought I was on the verge of falling right over like a domino. It was such an innocent touch by the standards of human contact, yet the most significantly sexual thing I had ever experienced. Then, without warning, three fingers slid in the little circle that my fisted hand made and I gasped, scattering Real Estate near the edge of the board. Our eyes flicked quickly to Hoth Echo Base lying on top of Mos Eisely and all at once the world caught up to me and motion resumed at a breakneck pace. I was no longer in a state of being bound to a metronome and Rico was picking up his desired card with a wavering hand that looked as if it were recovering from vertigo.

I suddenly felt like crying, but played out that it was due to the loss of my Monopoly.

17