William Van Wert
The Porch
I'min the eighth grade with Betty Jo. We're standing on her porch, the brownwooden porch, the size of a broom closet, with the uncovered yellow lightoverhead that makes us look like giant bees. There's barely enough room tostand. No room for a swing, a sofa. We can sit on the steps if we want, but ifwe're on the porch, we have to stand, and, if I shift my balance from one footto the other, sometimes I touch Betty Jo. Just a brief touch, by accident, andI am totally aroused. Betty Jo is wearing the first perfume of her life, somesort of flowered scent, roses or lilacs, I don't know. But it's summertime, ahot June night, and she's also sweating. I can smell just the faintest whiff ofbody odor from her underarms, and that's what arouses me, not the flowered scent.
Sheis Polish, dark and Polish, and her stern Polish father insists that the doorbe left open, at least ajar, so he can hear us if we make a sound, and so wecan hear him when he tells her to come in or me to go home, which he does in amonotone, neither seductive to her nor admonishing to me. Just a drone."Come in" or "Go home," the same flatness in his voice, asthough life held no more surprises for him, the television on, illuminatingthedarkness, where he sits in his undershirt with his warm can of beer.
I'vealways loved Polish women. I'm Dutch, myself, but I've spent a lifetime lovingPolish women, most of them dark-skinned American women of Polish descent, butsome of them in Europe, in France and Prague and Warsaw to be exact. Betty Jowas the first. Maybe that's why I'm on the porch with her in the eighth grade.
I'mforty-two years old, so I can't be on the porch in the eighth grade, but I am.It's a memory, then, a flashback. But it's so vivid that I don't care to callit a memory or a flashback or middle-age crisis or anything else. I'm justthere, the being-there both powerful, as it was then, and pivotal, I know itnow, to my sexuality. Something happens or doesn't happen on this porch, whichaffects me for the rest of my life, and that's why I'm here again, again andagain, no matter how many times her father tells me to go home.
Westand very close to each other, not kissing. I say it this way, because kissesweren't so automatic then. Today's eighth graders might be around the side ofthe house or in the dark backyard, half-way jimmied up a tree or on a blanketamong the fallen apples, touching, poking, fondling, I don't know, all thosethings that came later for me and Betty Jo, and with other people.
Ihave been in love with her since the second grade. We went to the same Catholicschool, and we had this conversation then, where I told her I liked hersecond-best of all the girls, when really she was third, and she told me sheliked me third-best of all the boys, and because I only came in third on herlist, I put her instantly at the top of my list and just loved her forever afterthat.
Butnow we're in the eighth grade and we have the changed bodies to prove it, shemore than me. She's got breasts and hips now, no tomboy left. I'm taller than Iknow what to do with, more tall than I am graceful, my voice has dropped and Ihave this big Adam's apple I sometimes self-consciously hide with my hand. I don'tknow what there is to see in boys for girls, except the changes, any changes,change for change sake, and maybe we're all they've got to be attracted to. Ican't believe it, I don't know why it's true, but I know it's true: Betty Jo isattracted to me. I think it's not my body at all, but the way I've grown surlyat school, the way I slouch in my chair with my long legs and sass the nuns.She likes my rebellion. I'm the closest thing she's got to a James Dean, eventhough I look more like Ichabod Crane.
Ilike Betty Jo and basketball, in that order. She doesn't have to be a certainway. In fact, she doesn't have to have a personality at all. She just has tolook like she does and stand outside on the porch with me, sweating under theyellow light, staying close enough that we can smell each other's breath, not kissing
It'snot all innocent. There are things you can do when you're not kissing. Herfather has just called her in for the umpteenth time, and each time he doesthis, she moves closer tome.
"Ithink I'm fat," she says.
"Ohno, you're not," I promise.
Shesmiles. She knows she can count on me to say the right thing.
"Likemy boobs?"
Wecalled them boobs then, both boys and girls. She hadn't had them long enough toown them or be private about them or use them to drive boys crazy, so we couldstill talk about them as though they were something in a store she might ormight not buy, depending on what I thought.
Likethem fine. Like to faint. Like to die when she asks me, because then we bothget to look at them, and I don't know what she's doing with her looking, butwith my looking I'm touching and tasting and nudging my nose in between andhibernating for many winters.
"God,yes," I say, because we're just old enough to stop using God's name inprayer, using it now for emphasis, and this is emphasis. I can't say yes anystronger than to say, "God, yes."
"They'renot too big?"
"They'rejust right," I say, careful not to show my tongue or lick my lips orappear too much like a hungry puppy.
"Justright now, maybe, but I'm not done growing."
"Neitherare my hands," I say.
MaybeI'm not quick enough to say this the first time I'm on the porch, and maybethis is just about enough for one evening's worth of summer and smoke, but Icertainly have thought it and have said it on some subsequent return to theporch. It's important that I somehow answer and not just swallow sexual longinglike so much unchewed food.
Myhands, my Dutch hands, have grown up to the exact sizeand contour of herbreasts. Why can't she see this, now or at any other time?
Itoccurs to me, from the vantage point of an eighth grader's body on Betty Jo'sporch that three years ago, even two, we could have played a game of I'll showyou mine if you show me yours. She could have bent over with her unbuttonedblouse and let me look down her chest. I could have moved my shorts over halfan inch. That's all it would have taken. She might have slapped my hand, saying"Looksies, I said, but no feelsies."
Sheis ahead of me in so many ways. Not that she is smarter than I am. She says, infact, that I am so much smarter than she is. Even in the way I sass the Sistersat school, she says she can tell I know the right answers, and she respects mefor not "scoring points" as a "brain." We didn't have thewords like "nerd" or "dork" then. We just had"brain" and "book." I was neither, but Icould have been,according to Betty Jo, who often didn't know the answers, but never got calledon, because the Sisters had a habitof picking on the boys. Why they picked onthe boys was anybody's guess, but a right guess might range anywhere from"they were hung up sexually" to "they were recruiting for thepriesthood, and, if the boys cooperated and gave the right answers faithfully,meekly and mildly, they made good candidates for the brainwash that sent themoff to seminary."
BettyJo didn't want to keep me for herself, although she felt good knowing she hadmore power over me than the nuns had. She was already way ahead of me, thinkingabout all the boys she would date in high school. This standing on the porchwith me was hot for now, good practice for now. I was part of her rehearsal.
"God," she said, emphasizing whatshe was about to say, "I don't even know how to kiss, let aloneFrench."
"Me neither," I say, perhaps tooquickly, because I already know from somewhere that girls want to think theirboys are more experienced than they are and have something to teach.
So, one night on the porch we touch tongues.We both lean forward, she puts her tongue out, I put mine out and we touch tongues.I can tell she's been chewing mints or something, because her tongue is stickywith the taste of it.
"Haveyou been smoking?" she asks me.
I'mtwo years away from trying my first cigarette, so conscious am I to keep mybody growing for basketball, so sure am I that I can get to six-five or so if Idon't smoke.
"No.Why?"
"Yousmell like my father."
Herfather smokes a pipe. Cheap tobacco, aromatic, CherryBlend or something.I realize there's only me and her father she has kissed, as far as men go. Ifeel a little cheated, though, because we have bypassed the lips-to-lips stageto get to this French thing, and I would gladly backtrack, I would crush hermouth with my mouth. The word "crush" comes to mind. I'm sowobble-kneed I couldn't crush a mosquito, let alone her lips. Maybe the word "crush"comes to mind, because it's what I'm feeling instead of what I'm doing.
"Doyou think sex is overrated?" Betty Jo asks me, and I know by the way sheasks me that she thinks it is. It's amazing how freely we ask each other suchthings, questions we will never again feel so free to ask once we've actuallystarted having sex.
"Oh,I don't know," I say, like I was puzzling a math equation or somethingthat needed logic.
Atthis age we never admit to ignorance. We claim to know, we claim to haveexpertise, because we have to be cool. We make it up as we go along and hope toGod we're never caught, found out, confronted.
"I'm afraid it's going to hurt," she says with sudden candor, "and then I'll be stuck, having to do it for years and years, just to have kids and keep a marriage going."
She's way ahead of me, but I can't bear to think of her in pain.
"Not if it's done right," I say, as though I know anything about it.
"What's right?"
"I don't know. Slowly, tenderly. Maybe with lots of jellies or salves."
"Soundslike a drugstore prescription. Where'd you get that stuff?"
"Iread it in a book."
"Adirty book."
"Idon't remember."
"Well,I just wish we could go back to being kids again."
Iagree, but it's a lie. Now that she is a woman, or at least has all the womanlythings, I can't imagine her as a tomboy again, can't imagine her breastsdeflating to nothing. She is absolute sexual perfection to me, already themodel against whom all other girls pale, the one who lifts a room up by thefloor whenshe walks in, and I wouldn't give that up for anything in the world.
Itgets out of hand. I don't know when exactly the porch visits stop, but it'sduring the summer after eighth grade, after we've graduated from Catholicschool and before we enter public junior high. I don't know how they find her,but she is discovered by all the Protestant boys. She is the rage. There isalways someone standing on the porch with her, another waiting at the corner,still others talking about her at the tennis courts two blocks away. I can'tkeep her my private secret long enough. She begins to wear lipstick and eyeshadow, red tank tops and pink shorts, loud colors that stay loud against hertanned body. She begins to look, I don't know, whorish.
Herparents greet me at the door. She's not home. Of course, they will tell her Istopped by. I should stop by again, but maybe I should call first. She doesn'treturn my calls. She's evasive when I get her on the phone, late for doingsomething, in a hurry, has a headache, but yes, we'll talk soon.
Ibecome a frantic voyeur, spying on her and her house, especially the porch atnight. One boy seems to have gained an advantage over the others. His name isMike Driver. A name like that, I think he must be a golf club. He's taller thanI am, good-looking, a fancy dresser. He's a rich kid. His family belongs to thecountry club. They ski in Aspen. He is what we now would call a yuppie. Aheadof his time, a pre-Sixties yuppie boy. He makes her laugh. He doesn't shift hisweight from one foot to the other, like I did. He stands straight and doesn'tseem to sweat at all under the hot yellow light bulb. Betty Jo is the one wholooks awkward now. She brings brownies out to the porch and feeds him hand-to-mouth,her hand, his mouth. She never brought me food like that.
She is allowed to date a fullyear-and-a-half before my parents let me go out. I can't compete. Even if Icould, I couldn't. Rebellious is out, rich is in.
But rich is out before I know it.Just as I am settling into a good lifelong hatred of this boy, he's out,broken, disconsolate, sitting at the tennis courts, with other boys asking himin rushed, quick queries like hungry dogs, what happened? I recognize this brokennessand stay away. I do not sympathize with him.
She fed you brownies,hand-to-mouth, I think. What more do you want?
Before I have ever had a date, beenallowed to have a date, had the courage to ask for a date and the ego tosurvive someone saying no to a date, Betty Jo has already dated and now, yes,exercised her new power, the power to break up with someone.
Ned is the new boy on the porch. Iknow this boy, because he lives in my neighborhood. He has become a fixture onher porch, attached himself to her like glue. He is aggressive, obnoxiouslyaggressive. He knows what he wants, and what he wants is Betty Jo. Her parentsare rude to him. They say: Go home, don't call, don't come back. He ignoresthem. He comes back. Again and again. Nothing will keep him away. Not warningsor curfews or threats.
Betty Jo calls me. At first, Ithink this is good. We are in touch again. The estrangement created by herfirst betrayals is suddenly gone. She calls. But I find out she wants advice,not befriending, not boyfriending. She doesn't even stop to think I might stillhave feelings for her. She trusts my opinion. This is what she says. How can Iresist such a statement? And yet I am hurt.
"He'sworn me down," she says.
"Whatdoes that mean?" I ask, and I can hear an edge to my voice, even if shecan't.
"Ihated him at first. Such a cocky person. He took me golfing. He puts his armsaround me to show me how to hold the club. He says to hold it loosely, veryloosely, like a wounded sparrow. Can you beat that? He says that about theclub, but his arms around me, he's not holding me like any wounded sparrow. Andnow I like him. Every day I like him more, and I'm mad at myself for it,because I think my first reaction was correct, but what can I do? He's worn medown."
Ididn't know you could whittle a woman.
Inever would have thought to insinuate myself where I wasn't wanted.
Iam the loser for it.
BettyJo is a month away from entering the ninth grade, and she goes steady for thefirst time. She stops calling. Ned, who once played ball with me and was my friendand who used to talk tome about Betty Jo, as though I had no feelings in thematter, stops calling too. I have lost two people in one fell swoop.
Whatdoes that mean? Fell swoop?
Bythe time school starts Betty Jo and I are strangers. We nod formally when wepass each other in the hall. We never sit together in the cafeteria. We act asthough there is a hurt there between us, but I know I am the only one with thehurt. She is just chilly.
Wego through high school this way. I find girlfriends, play sports, attach myselfto a crowd. Ned's family moves away to California and he goes with them, butwith promises that he'll be back at graduation after twelfth grade to marryher. But she begins to go steady with Randy. She goes steady with him allthrough high school and marries him instead.
Igo to the church, even though I am not invited. I want to see it done. This iswhat I tell myself. I will see it done and then I will get on with my life. Shedoesn't look very happy at her wedding. She looks taken.
Igo off to college. I forget her some more. The Sixties, trips to Europe,exciting new people from other states and other countries, the Vietnam War,long hair and protests, my own marriage, I forget her some more. I want to saycompletely. But who can say such a thing?
Atour ten year high school reunion, we sit together near the punch bowl. There isloud music and dancing, but we don't dance, even though she loves to dance. Iam divorced, the father of three children. She too is divorced, the mother offive children. My divorce was gut-wrenching but complete, no aftershocks. Sheand Randy still fight bitterly over the custody of each child, one by one, allfive of them. I don't know who has had it worse.
Ithink to myself, I would console you if you would let me. She doesn't seem tohear me. She doesn't want to let me. There are all kinds of men in her life,all bastards. I listen to every single horror story and wonder how the highschool Homecoming Queen could have gotten so abused.
Ihave had enough experiences with women by now to know that women choose you,not the other way around. Maybe if by temperament you're like Ned and won'ttake no for an answer, maybe then you can wear a woman down, but I've never hadthe patience for that kind of pressuring. I still think it works the other wayaround. If the woman chooses you in her heart or head, then she can make youthink you're choosing her and things will happen between you. If not, nothinghappens. Nothing happens between Betty Jo and me. She's so happy to see meagain, tell me her stories, have me "in her life" again. None ofthese things speaks to the body.
"I'vegrown old and fat," she says, posing and pouting.
"Rubbish,"I say.
"Myboobs are sagging."
"You'vehad five kids. Besides, they look fine to me."
"Andyou don't think my ass is too fat?"
Liketo faint again. Let me count the ways.
"God,no."
Shesmiles. "You still talk like we did in school."
Thisis a shock. I've gone on for my Masters and a doctorate. She got marriedinstead and worked to put her ex-husband through school. But yes, here with herin her living room, I still talk like that, God for emphasis.
"Somany men want to screw me," she says.
Yes?Of course. And me too?
"Ifeel like a damn light bulb sometimes. Screw, screw."
She'stelling me this, because she thinks I am the exception. I have not laid handson her. She's looking for what? A man who doesn't want to screw? It breaks myheart. I realize she wouldn't be asking me about her boobs and ass if shethought I was "screwable material." She wants her ego stroked, thewhole widefield of her body scanned, her narcissism still intact to the point ofbeing rampant, and she knows I am good for it. I can be counted on. I will giveher compliments, without hitting on her. What she doesn't need from me is herbody penetrated, another talkless penetration of her body.
Partof me goes cold inside. I have been to Vietnam. I have this fantasy. I go tohave a whore. I pay for the evening. But the woman who comes is not Vietnameseat all. It's Betty Jo, and she does everything and anything, all positions, allholes, no questions asked. The first time I have this fantasy, it comes to meas a shock. I like it enough to save it and go back to it from time to time.
Weagree to keep in touch. I call her on her birthday and Mother's Day. She callsme on my birthday and Father's Day. And every five years we see each other atthe high school reunions, but we see each other every summer too when I take mysons to Michigan.
Ithink of us suddenly as Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn. We're in that movie.Same Time Next Year. Just like them, we see each other once a year, butwith a small difference. We don'tscrew.
Isthis because we've known each other since first grade? Because we're still tooCatholic in our heart of hearts to do otherwise? Because we know each other toowell to muster up the requisite passion? Because we're old enough now torealize that friends are harder to come by than lovers, and so we don't mess upa good friendship with risky chancey lovering? Who knows? I still feelincomplete and full of longing, longing that's way too old to be alive, crustedover with regrets and wisdom, lack of innuendo, lack of threat. She has"succumbed" to so many men, lesser men than I, I thinkself-righteously. Why not me? Why not us, even if just once, before we die?
Ithas nothing to do with reality, of course. I'm happy in my life and work, fullof my children and friends and work. I have a lover who satisfies me. But I amalso obsessed with the past, and the lingering memories of summer nights on theporch still haunt, still pull at me. I've always felt in her company that Icould get hard at any minute. One word, a hint, a wink, a certain word, a way ofsaying that word, a half-bared breast, and I'm hard. But no, I'm restrained,because I have to be. Difficult, I think, to have maintained thatin-betweenness for so many years.
We'rein our mid-forties now, both of us. We're beyond the child-bearing years. We'reprobably beyond remarrying, although she still talks as though she'd like to.We sit old and comfortable, not unlike her parents must have sat indoors, whileI was out on the porch with her. We're like an old married couple, all theplatonic comforts, but without ever having tasted the fire.
Herdaughters look like her, just like she used to look, and yet her daughters donot tempt me. They seem like cute facsimiles of her, the more unreal for alltheir resemblance. And Betty Jo still looks the same as she did in high school.How can this be? I have gray hairs, failing eyesight, a paunch, more moles thanI can count, wrinkles when I smile. How can she look the same? I know she "colors"her hair to keep out any gray, and she stays meticulously in shape, liftingweights and running. Her hair is shorter, tighter to the sides, and her eyesare somehow harder, as though they had lost some of the soft skin around them.But for all she looks the same. Is this only a way of saying I still see herthe same?
Sheexpects my yearly visits in July. Her kids expect my yearly visits. My sonsdon't understand what kind of relationship we have, but even they expect thevisits, although there's nothing in it for them, except to go downstairs andwatch television, waiting for us to have our talk upstairs.
"Ithink sex is highly overrated," she says on one of my visits.
Thistime, she speaks from experience. It's not my experience. For me, sex is thehighest form of humanity, what forestalls death and keeps us from barbarianismand world wars. Suddenly, I think, she's too old to argue with. She deserved better.I have always gotten better. There is a chasm between the two that I can't seeever bridging.
"I'djust like to find a man and dote on him. Cater to his every need. Cook up astorm. You know what I mean?"
Idon't. It sounds so suffocating. We don't have very much in common, exceptforty-some years of habit and survival. She respects what I have done with mylife. She respects what I am to my children. She gives me every complimentunder the sky, which is still a way of keeping me at arm's distance. Or more. Iam one of life's heroes to her, a man who is not a bastard. It's not enough.
Onesummer I decide not to see her. She knows I am around or thinks it's the timefor me to be there or "senses" I am there. Anyway, she calls andcomes to visit. She comes to visit me for the first time ever. I cook dinnerfor her. We take a long walk. She's warm and friendly all over, even giving mehugs from time to time. I am chilly, stiff, unsure of myself, which is to say,unsure of her.
Whenit's time to say goodbye, I start to speak for no good reason.
"Youknow, on my list of loves, I'd have to say you're third-best."
Shelaughs. Memory floods her face.
"Andin my book, you're what? At least, second."
Theredoesn't seem to be anything more to say.
Sheopens her car door but doesn't get in. She holds the door and looks at me longand hard.
"I'vedebated for a long time whether to tell you this or not. It probably won't meanmuch to you anyway, so I decided to tell you. My daughter asked me the night ofher prom who was the first man I ever loved, and I said you. And she asked mehow I knew I was in love. And I told her I just knew, because when we used tostand on the porch at my parents' house, I was hot to the point of being crazyinside. Crazy in my blood. And I knew even then, don't laugh, that I wasn'tgoing to feel any hotter later on when I was older and making love. It's funnyabout the first one you love too. Being first means coming too soon, so itnever works out, but, on the other hand, the first one gets, I don't know, aroom in your heart that's always his and nobody else ever gets to come in that room.It's locked away forever. Pretty dumb, huh? I thought I'd tell youanyway."
So,there it was. I'd been waiting forty-some years for my turn to come, and I'dbeen first all along. That was why it never sparked between us later on. I hadthat room in her heart and it was locked, even to me now.
Finally,I could be a friend to her. I said as much. I said, I will be your friend andyou can call me whenever.
Sofar, she hasn't called. I didn't expect she would.
h