stand by us

Stevie MacIntyre lived in a one-story shack, damp and mildewed and covered with grey rotting shingles and an absentee mom and dad. or maybe i just never saw them. he had boxes and boxes of comic books that we'd pull out from under his bed and leaf through, lying side-by-side on the floor, up on elbows like praying mantises. Stevie was poor, at least compared to us. we lived in a big white three-story house with lots of land, a horse barn (without horses), a swimming pool, a vegetable garden and 'help', 2 tons of it as my dad used to say. 2 fat women and a rail thin old man. Stevie was my best friend and it was only much later that i noticed the contrast in our houses and the incomes of our dads. every afternoon after school, i'd walk over to his house though a path in the woods that stood between our properties. we'd hang out, run around the fields, show each other our 'things' under the umbrella branches of a weeping willow and throw rocks at the trains that ran behind our houses. i don't think we talked much, but we were inseparable. Stevie had mouse soft hair, cut close with an upturn at his widow's peak. he wore second-hand clothes and his fingernails were dirty but there was nothing insecure or apologetic about him. i think the favorite thing we did was pluck over ripe tomatos off the stems in our vegetable garden (which eventually died the slow death of neglect). we'd lick the skin, salt them down, bite into them with the juice and seeds squirting all over our faces as we'd smile that big smile of knowing that we both felt the same joy at the same time. it stayed like that, Stevie and Ricky until Richard Tebay moved into town. he was the new kid, spry, handsome and soon to replace Stevie as the person i wanted most to be with. maybe this was my earliest glimpse of homo-love although i wouldn't have called it that. it was also, in a way, my first infidelity, the first time i can remember moving away from one heart attachment to another. one afternoon my grandmother caught Richard and I pulling each other's pants off on my bed. Richard left in a hurry. after we moved to Philly, we wrote letters, quasi love letters to each other. when i think about it, Stevie and i were easier friends. we didn't share or require the love assault on our emotions. i'm not sure if he was hurt being upstaged by Richard or if he was i did nothing to quiet him or to repair our friendship. regardless, both boys played a part in my early life. Stevie by being the kid who, from the 'other side of the tracks' didn't have a phony bone in his body and Richard by being the accepting object of my affection. they continue to live in my heart to this day. don't they all.