Issue 15 - April 2008

Brian by J A Zecca

I thought of Brian just now, not quite sure why.  Walking along the fruit stands on Grand St., past so many hair-faced young studs glowing from sharing first apartments with girlfriends, maybe a familiar lust for the unattainable “them” set off a vision of adolescent, chest high barley fields and Brian planted firmly in front, all in black, the only tree in sight.  Behind him, smooth and rugged as an English cardigan, wide, verdant avalanches tumbled from the ridge of hills above my caravan site (trailer camp in American, though really just two trailers across the yard from a farmhouse), rippling down to sheer gray cliffs above the absurdly cold North Sea.

I was almost seventeen and doing archeology in North Yorkshire as my summer vacation, my first major trip alone.  The dig was an emergency to salvage remaining artifacts from the courtyard of Kilton Castle, which, after centuries of erosion, was listing off the narrow spur that had once made it impregnable. And, of course, it was haunted.  Lucia de Thweng (b. cir. 1279  - argent and fess gules between the popinjays vert) was still seen once a year, all in white, climbing the last curve of the first road she ever knew and into her family Hall. 

Inspired by community pride and romantic fantasy, half–a-dozen local teens had volunteered to join a professor from Leeds (glasses and very prematurely very bald) sliding through mud in yellow-trimmed Wellies, dodging nettles and kneeling all day in sodden jeans under dripping tarps to scrape away slightly drier mud in tiny increments. For a miniscule living allowance and a daily cold sandwich lunch, I was excited to join them.  What did I know?  I did quickly learn about nettles. I now realize my parents were as glad to be rid of me as I was to be free of them, but at the time my sails were taut with pride at navigating unknown country on my own. 

Brian’s mahogany eyes never seemed wary of locking on mine when he caught me checking him out across the mucky slope and its veins of gray stone gutters.

His scarred black motorcycle boots were so huge, and, when he knelt to scrape the dirt with his trowel, the curve of his thighs so pronounced that I was repeatedly distracted.  Frankly, I don’t think he had a clue, but in order to hang with him and find out, I had to decipher his molasses-thick Cleveland accent, trademark of the boys from Loftus.  This initially involved a lot of head bobbing on my part when I couldn’t fathom a word he was saying. He understood Americans perfectly, from film and TV I suppose, and seemed oblivious of the one-way mirror that separated us for nearly a week.

To my surprise, behind his rough boy-of-the-Yorkshire-moors image he was shy and awkward, genuinely kind, openly lonely and eager to make a new friend.  He was shocked at how much I was paying for an unheated, clammy trailer, reeking of mold (socks took 48 hours to dry), an outhouse far across the yard (medieval torture on rainy nights) and a cold-water shower stall by the barn, so he brought me home to stay with his family. His older brother, away somewhere on terms Brian was reluctant to discuss, had left an empty bed on the far side of their surprisingly large and dark attic bedroom.  I think Brian missed his brother very deeply, and we would talk late into the night the way I imagined the two of them had all of Brian’s life.

He was nearly a year older than me, big-boned and painfully skinny (except for his thighs!), with huge, crab-leg hands and the largest forearm veins I had ever seen. Though his beard was dense, it only seem interested in his upper lip and chin, looking more like coal dust than facial hair, but it proclaimed him as advanced in sexual maturity as I was delayed.  He had a round-faced, take-charge girlfriend with long straight hair whom he snuggled and nuzzled ceaselessly from behind in blatant gratitude for consummated teenage lust, and that made me want him even more. 

Though an icon of manliness to me, he was the least standardly handsome of his group of friends, enough for it to hobble his self esteem: high, almost Italian cheekbones, wild, black spiky hair, sagging overlarge blacker brows, and a triangular face so sad every smile, however slight, blushed with embarrassment and hope.  It was as if he already realized his only future could be in the nearby Skinningrove Iron Works, once he got his girlfriend (Peggy?) preggers and married her, and he was still just a teen.

Night after night, I tried everything I could think of to bring up the subject of sex, but I knew absolutely nothing about what straight boys saw when they looked at girls or how it felt to desire them.  And I had no juicy experiences to share with him that I could be sure would turn him on.  Still, some cool, wet nights, after a couple of pints in a very obliging pub with his 18-year-old mates already at Skinningrove (Oh, that tall shaggy blond with the long red sideburns who jumped at every silly excuse to show off his wooly chest!), I convinced myself we were both prolonging our increasingly personal bed-to-bed confessions, avoiding that last good-night, in the hope that something more would happen.

One typically gray and dreary English Sunday, our only day off, he gave me my first ride on a motorcycle, an antique, red and chrome Ariel “Cyclone” 650.  This vintage bike, like that of any rural Englishman, was both necessary transportation and a rite of passage, and he was as proud of its quality and pedigree as he was of having been the one to snag it from a farmer to whom it was just the old bike behind the barn.

Immune to his native climate, Brian dressed me for my baptism in his own too large spare helmet, Barbour jacket and matching pants.  I still can feel the weight and stiffness of those thick layers of wax pressed into heavy olive fabric, and it smelled as sticky as it was to touch.  But it was truly waterproof and far more affordable than leather.

Recklessly, a shy teenager doing the one thing he knew he did well, he charged up and down his favorite, and hazardously wet, country lanes.  These were the back roads of his private world, where he was never sized up or criticized, only cheered on by the rustling of the admiring barley as, riding the roar of his engine, he dove full-speed under a railway bridge or flew off the top of a hill like a ski-jumper.  Here he was a hero, a master, a champion, and he laughed out loud as he pulled off each amazing and thoroughly dangerous stunt.  He was obviously trusting me with the most private joy of his life short of making love, but he was also showing off his bike and his prowess as if I was a girl he was trying to impress.  I assumed he was doing the latter unconsciously, but I allowed myself to hope he had some goal in mind.

We were bearing down on a spot the overtly studly professor from Leeds had pointed out when he took me to see the moors - an odd, abrupt and illogical hill under the road, perhaps ten feet high, in the middle of relatively flat fields.  A prehistoric barrow, he said, that the government had intentionally paved over so that it couldn’t be looted.  I heard the Cyclone’s engine drop and rev up again.  Brian was shifting gears to fly over it as fast as he could.

I was terrified.  Somewhere inside that barrow a dead Celtic chieftain grinned under his own helmet, and for the first time in my life I felt the presence of Death, strong as a stench and piercing as spray off the North Sea.  Fortunately, since the famously long seat of the Ariel had no backrest, Brian had advised me to lock my arms around his wide, flat chest rather than merely grab his waist.  I was delighted and made much of his offer ’til I realized it was the only way to lean with him when zooming around curves at gravity-defying angles and hang on through his daredevil tricks.

Brian’s huge black glove twisted the throttle to max, and we slammed into the hill so hard I thought we would come out the other side.  Instead we skied up the slope at such a steep angle I was standing on the footrests to keep from sliding back down the seat. I cringed as we reached the top but forced my eyes to stay open in case I had to think very fast.

Silence.  Time stopped as we escaped the hill in what seemed like the horizontal flight of a jet.  No arc, no engine, just still and quiet as we, dark armored, floated on a gleaming silver steed, the fields below and all around us like a blanket on a giant bed.

We were suspended for so long I began to feel relief. Then the bike suddenly dropped out from under me.  I flew nearly two feet off the seat, and, my arms as tight around Brian’s chest as I could manage, my back stretched out behind him like a lead cape.  I nearly yanked him off the bike and watched in misery as his arms snapped straight and he slid backwards, almost shaking me loose when he caught himself.

With the fabled luck of delinquent teens, our back wheel hit the road perfectly vertical without the front being too high above it.  Though we slammed down dangerously into our shocks, Brian kept his balance, and I landed back on the thickly padded seat, my feet raised as high and as far apart as I could manage.  I didn’t need to ask Brian to stop.  He was as rattled as I was, and, artfully easing on the brakes, pulled over by a low fieldstone wall.

I hopped off the bike as if it was on fire.  Not wanting to look like a sissy, I waited for Brian to speak first and set the tone.  He started to force a laugh, but when he saw my expression, remembered how new all this was for me.  Without a word, he removed his gloves and placed them on the seat.  Staring into my eyes, he removed his helmet.  As he began to realize just how scared I was, his thick black brows contracted into a frown, and he let the helmet drop onto the grass. 

He stepped over to me and, with his big, powerful hands, reached under my chin and undid the strap on my helmet.  I doubt he noticed, but he had finally touched me, skin to skin, and I inhaled, deeply and gratefully, the heat from his hands and the smell of his sweat and the inside of his gloves.  He dropped my helmet beside me and, without a word, took me into his arms.  He hugged me very hard, and I hugged him back, and for the first time in my life I felt the rush of being protected by a man larger, stronger and more experienced than me. And I knew I was in love.

He was tall enough that my face had landed against his neck and he tilted his head to press his cheek gently against mine.  In the silence and privacy of that moment, I selfishly chose to raise my lips and try to kiss him, not on the lips, but just there on his beautifully long smooth neck. 

The roar of an engine splashed over the hill like a wave, surfed by a dark blue Mini-Cooper.  Brian quickly dropped his arms and stepped away.  I took the hint and imitated him without hesitation, not because I cared about being seen, but because I knew it was what he wanted and expected.

As the car rumbled away, we each picked up our own gear and silently climbed back on the bike.  Gunning the engine several times to restore his testosterone, Brian turned his head and, without looking at me, asked, “Right?”  “You think so?” I needled, clamping my arms so tightly around his chest he made a show of exhaling in a burst.  We both cracked up in relief.  For the rest of the afternoon, we toured the countryside as peacefully as if we had been on a Vespa.

We never touched each other again or spoke about that moment in our ride.  I don’t think Brian was embarrassed about taking me in his arms.  He had certainly done as much with his brother all his life. But I do believe that, in a strange way, my feelings towards him had triggered emotions he was only used to feeling towards girls.  Though they hadn’t gone far enough to really bother him and had no negative effect on our friendship, I sensed it was a place in himself he didn’t wish to explore any further.  In less than a week, I was packing for my next dig, this time, for contrast, in downtown Oxford.

For the rest of my life, with exceptional clarity, I will always be able to relive our goodbye.  I stood on the steps of the blue and silver country bus looking out the open door.  He was, again, all in black, whether in defiance or resignation it was hard to tell, a silhouette against the vibrant and rippling green fields.  He looked up and said, with surprising candor and visible grief, “I guess I’ll never see you again.”  I replied, with equal honesty, ”No, I don’t think so.”  It’s how we both felt, which showed in our eyes and faces and neither of us hid, that convinces me to this day we really did love each other.

                                                        The End

J. A. Zecca is a journalist who has written for several New York LGBT nightlife publications.  He lives on an exceptionally quiet and shady backstreet in New York's notorious Chelsea district with far too many pets, which is a good thing since, after years of trashing around, he has matured into a compulsive recluse and has serious trouble going out without the company of genuine friends.  His short story "Cycles" was published in Forbidden Fruit issue 14 and is is available in our Archives.

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