The Nonconformist
by Ken Cohen
Chapter 11
Work and Love
Danny sometimes wondered what future he might have in the homosexual world, because of the guilt and shame he associated with it. But he wanted such a life, craved it far more than a life with a woman.
He had Kenny, but for how long? He wondered if Kenny would find someone else sooner or later, thinking to himself, I'm far from the best looking guy around, and definitely not the happiest or easiest to know. So what does he see in me?
He wished he understood himself better. It seemed kind of odd, he thought: you can try to fit into both worlds, the hetero and the homo, and to some extent you probably can succeed. After Lois, he knew he could respond sexually to a woman and might even enjoy it. But could he be a homo and a normal at the same time?
No, he concluded, I'll only be accepted as a part of one or the other. As for me, if I'm a homo with one foot in each world, I'll only be a visitor in both. I might be tolerated but I'll always feel like an outsider, won't want to live in either one, won't belong. That's what I should learn from the summer in Greece, and from visiting Ronnie. If I deny my true nature and try to fit into the hetero world as one of the boys, I might end up on the outside of both worlds, alone and frustrated.
The grade 11 school year was approaching its end, final exams a week away.
On a warm Saturday afternoon, he was studying English lit in his bedroom. Just a week left of Miss Evanston. They surely wouldn't saddle him with that woman for English for a third year in a row. He had to admit, she was a pretty good teacher. But she lacked patience, always felt on edge, so the learning experience left something to be desired.
He sat at his desk re-reading King Lear, one of those astounding Shakespearean tragedies filled with violence and gripping drama. They watched the Lawrence Olivier film of the play at school. A good director, he thought, could turn the play into one hell of a modern war film, complete with up close battle scenes, lots of villains, and one of Shakespeare's most dramatic endings.
The window was open a crack, afternoon sunlight and a touch of warm air filtered past the edge of the partly closed shades. Minute dust particles danced in the light. Those particles, he thought, they exist in a world of their own, objects nearly invisible yet each contains tens of thousands of atoms, blown about by tiny air currents inconsequential to him. Some even carry invisible microbes. A microcosm of life on a different scale.
Someone must be playing baseball out there. A distant echo of bat on ball reminded him of the cricket bats in Portrait of the Artist…. The almost finished essay he was doing for her about the alliterative metre in Joyce's prose. Joyce's boyhood memory: From here and from there came the sounds of the cricket bats through the soft, grey air. They said: pick, pack, pock, puck, little drops of water in a fountain slowly falling in the brimming bowl.
Dear God, Joyce could write like no one else. Well, almost no one. There's always Shakespeare. And T.S. Eliot.
He pushed his chair away from the desk, walked out to the phone, dialed Kenny's number.
"Hello?"
"Hi. Whatcha doing?"
"Studying, what else? You?"
"Same, sort of. It's hard to keep my mind on it. Wish I could be outside today. Or inside with you. I love you, you know that."
"I know it well. I love you too, Danny boy."
"We'll go see Goldfinger tonight with Mike and Sally?"
"Yeah. My dad said I could take the car, they're staying home. I'll pick you up at seven, it's playing at Yorkdale. Mike said to meet them there, probably in the line."
"Okay, can't wait to see you."
Kenny picked him up. Danny got in the car, saw the coast was clear, leaned over and they kissed deeply, then he softly told Kenny, "Okay, driver, drive us to the theatre."
The movie had been playing for a few months and still drew crowds. There was quite a long line. They talked idly in the line for a few minutes, then Danny turned to the people behind them and said, "Hi, just so you know, two friends of ours are meeting us here so they'll be joining us in line when they show up."
As he turned back to Kenny, he saw the face coming toward him. He felt a touch faint, turned away facing toward the back of the line. Kenny looked at him.
"Something wrong?"
"The fat guy coming toward us, walking toward the back of the line."
Kenny looked up as a sour, disgruntled, fleshy young male face with beady eyes approached, passed and receded toward the back of the line, well behind himself and Danny. Danny saw him pass, then turned to face ahead.
Kenny said, "He's gone way down to the back. Who is he?"
"From Greece. He's one of them."
"If he bothers you, we can go. We don't have to see the movie tonight, we can always come back another time."
"No, I don't want to run away. I just don't want any trouble. Why am I such a coward?"
"Not wanting to get in a fight in the middle of a crowd of film goers isn't cowardice, it's common sense. You showed good judgment, that's all. You don't need to see yourself that way. You're no coward, a coward would never do a book report on Fanny Hill!"
He had a big smile of his face, Danny saw it and laughed. "Thanks."
Then he whispered in Kenny's ear, "I love you." Kenny looked back at him with another big smile. A man in line behind them appeared indignant. Are we that visible? Danny wondered.
The line had begun to move. Mike and Sally arrived and joined them. They slowly shuffled toward the cash registers, went to an available teller, paid and entered the large theatre. Skipping the popcorn, they went inside and found aisle seats in the dark on the far side where the unwanted individual was unlikely to notice them.
"So who was that?" asked Ken.
"His name is Mac. He's a mean guy."
"Well, I see what his problem is. He's ugly. Could do to lose 30 pounds. And smile."
"I don't want anything to do with him."
They talked. Eventually the theatre was nearly full, the lights went down and the previews began. Then the film. It was spectacular, they all loved it.
"Even better than Dr. No and From Russia with Love," said Kenny as they watched the credits at the end. They stayed through most of the credits until the lights came up. Danny looked around and didn't see the guy named Mac anywhere. They all stood and left the theatre. In the parking lot, they said good-bye to Mike and Sally.
He and Kenny walked toward Kenny's car. They decided to go straight home.
"It still troubles you, doesn't it? Your fear runs so deep, Danny, I can't even imagine it."
"I know. It's almost irrational. I have nothing to feel guilty or embarrassed about. Or ashamed of. But I do. Just another thing I need to talk to doc about. I don't understand it, you know? It's two years since that summer and I'm still scared of running into anyone I met on that trip, but especially, any of those kids that hated me. I still don't understand why they hated me. That's the craziest thing about it. There was no reason for any of it. I was just sitting there quietly."
In mid-April, Ken's father found Ken a summer job with the railway company he worked for, at the rail freight and warehousing yards in downtown Toronto north of the waterfront.
Danny hadn't given much thought to working during the summer. He looked through the newspaper want ads. Newspaper boys needed for delivery routes; experienced truck drivers wanted; and "general labourers" for construction work. He had no interest in those, they'd be hard work for little money.
One day after dinner, he took Alex aside. "Dad, do you know anywhere I can find a summer job? Kenny will be working downtown for the railway. His dad got him a job. So I thought if I could find a decent job for the summer, among other things I could start saving money for university."
As it happened, Alex had a client, a great big man, a legend in his own time as they say, who owned a meat factory about a 45 minute journey from their house by bus and on foot. Alex's nickname for the client was Mr. Hotdog. He was pretty well known in Toronto and across Canada. His factory produced endless streams of hotdogs, salamis, bolognas and other deli meat products and shipped them all over the country.
In the summer months many of the factory workers took their paid vacation time that Ontario law allowed them. That way they got to spend some time with their families. Summer also happened to be one of the company's busiest times of the year because it was barbecue season. So the factory hired high school and university students to work for the summer to replace some of those workers while they were off.
Alex spoke to his client and gave Danny the phone number of the person to contact. He passed on a warning that any summer job would be at the company's meat factory and would require physically hard work of a kind Danny had not experienced before.
Danny contacted the man at the factory who was in charge of summer hiring and by early May he had a job that would start the first workday after the school year ended at the end of June. He was warned again that the work would be physically demanding. The company would mail him a form to fill out and bring on his first day along with his government issued social insurance card.
He didn't doubt he could do the work. When it came to work and the possibility of earning money, he brimmed with confidence. He felt he was in pretty good shape from football, basketball and long distance running.
Lois visited Toronto with her parents a few months after Danny's long weekend in Toledo. She wrote him to say she'd be in town. He wrote back that they could spend some time together. She should call him when she arrived.
He and Lois spent Saturday afternoon and evening together on the July 1 "Dominion Day" holiday weekend. It was the weekend before Danny was to begin his first summer job.
Danny felt relaxed and comfortable with her. She was just a friend, and he found he liked her. She was sweet, kind and talkative. He took her for dinner, to a movie, then back to her hotel where she was staying with her parents. They talked about all kinds of things. The fact she was a beautiful young woman didn't interest him. It was her friendship and company that he enjoyed.
Around 11:00 p.m. they were standing alone in the dimly lit carpeted hallway outside the door of the hotel room. He assumed, after the fun afternoon and evening they enjoyed together, that he would see her back to the hotel room, say goodbye and return home.
But Lois initiated a simple good night kiss. Then she placed her arms around his shoulders, pulled his face down and began to kiss him passionately. He instinctively responded, their lips parted, tongues wrestled, it was all he could do to breathe as his heart pounded in his chest. It went on and on, she was warm and strong, full of life, smelled good, radiated energy. He felt her hand on his hardness, she ground her hips against his rhythmically and desperately. He loved it but couldn't relax into it, and so after a few minutes he shot in his pants.
Even as that happened, some subconscious feeling of shame flitted through his brain. Barely was it over when he turned away, beset by guilt. His only words to her before hurrying away were "I'm sorry, I can't do this."
The magic moments had come and gone. He'd revealed himself to a woman as an imperfect sexual being. Every element of that seemed, what? illicit?
Yet, he remained stunned, astonished. Lois readily demonstrated raw sexual desire, for him. It was a revelation—the opposite of what he expected from young women, and something he had no inkling might be about to happen. He'd never imagined women might be that way. Nor had he dreamed he would respond so intensely to a woman.
In fact, he'd previously understood that sexual intercourse with a woman would occur only in the marital bed, in an exciting but mechanical way. There could be little in a relationship with a woman beyond that and the basics of compatible friendship. Henry Miller wrote only wild fantasies, such things didn't really happen.
He knew he would not hear from her again.
As he walked quickly down the stairs to the main floor of the hotel and out the front door and across the parking lot toward his car, he knew something he always doubted he would ever know. He could readily respond sexually to girls. Girls were filled with desire, just as he was. And it was desire for him. Mixed with his guilt was a sense of wonder, amazement. He was thrilled.
He understood for the first time that he could make love to both men and women. There was nothing to stop him except his fear.
But even after that, in years to come whenever the memory would cross his mind, he wondered whether Ron had put her up to it, to see what would happen. What had she thought of him that night? What had she told Ron?
He remained lost in a swamp of feelings and inhibitions that kind of half-blinded him to the possibilities. At least he could respond to girls. But he remained overwhelmed by inhibitions. And he still felt sexual attraction only for boys.
He would definitely have to talk to Kenny about this!
On the first Monday of the summer break, a day and a half after his date with Lois, he went to work for the first time in his life.
Awake at 5 a.m., he did his bathroom routine and ate a quick breakfast. He remembered to bring his government social insurance card with the number on it, and the form they'd mailed to him. He walked to the bus stop, soon a bus pulled up, he boarded it a few minutes after 6 a.m. He had to be at work by 7.
There was only Danny and the bus driver that early, so he took a seat at the front, right behind the driver. At the next stop, a regular rider, a middle-aged man, boarded and greeted the driver by name. The man sat across from the driver, they began talking. The driver told him, "Hey, I missed you on Friday."
"Yeah, I slept late, I was a bit late for work."
"Had a nice piece of tail first thing in the morning, huh?"
The passenger noticed Danny and told the driver, "you shouldn't talk so loud, this young fellow here doesn't know what we're talking about, you might corrupt him."
"Oh, give him a couple more years and he'll know."
Danny figured it out. Piece of tail. He said to the passenger with a grin and too much protest, "I know what you're talking about, you can talk about that all you like."
He could comfortably play this little male bonding game in his anonymous role. But he also had a special secret of his own that he could never share.
Eventually the bus, by then almost full, reached the long road that ran off the bus route and down to the factory. Danny and many other passengers alighted. They had a 15 minute walk down the road.
He found his way and walked through the front door of the sprawling single storey factory building into a small undecorated reception area with a few chairs, where an older woman sat behind a desk with files piled up along one side. Behind her was a closed door.
It was 6:55 a.m. He was nervous, he didn't want to be late. The woman was talking loudly to someone on the phone so he stood there looking at her. He looked at his watch. A minute ticked by. He noticed a clock on the wall that was two minutes behind his watch. When would the woman get off the phone?
He must have looked kind of impatient. She eventually peered up at him even as she continued talking. Finally with some irritation she said into the phone, "Look, I have to go, some kid is standing here waiting for me. I'll talk to you later." She hung up and looked up at him. "Yes, what is it?"
"Umm, hi, my name is Danny Stavros, I'm supposed to start work this morning."
"You a student?"
"Yes."
She picked up the phone and called someone. "There's a young man named Sammy something here who's supposed to be starting work this morning. One of the summer students, I think. Yeah, that's it. Okay, I'll send him."
She looked up at him. "Sammy. This is not the factory entrance. Workers enter at the side door. Go out the front door. Turn right. Walk around the side. Keep walking. You will see the sign. It says 'employees only.' Enter that door. Wait inside. Mr. Delvecchio will come for you. Wait until he arrives. He will take you to your work area. Do you understand?"
"Okay, thank you." Sammy? What's with her?
He found his way. A handsome, well built middle-aged man a couple inches shorter than Danny stood waiting inside the door.
"Hello, are you Mr. Delvecchio?"
The man looked Danny in the eye. "Hi, it's Danny right? Please call me Joe."
He reached out to shake the boy's hand. Danny shook his hand firmly while looking at him. "Hello, sir." Without quite realizing it, he recognized that this was a serious man who was treating him like a man, not a boy.
He pulled the form and cards from his pocket. "I brought these with."
Joe took them and replied, "Thanks, someone from personnel will return your card to you before the end of the day. Right now, come with me, I'll show you around and explain your job to you."
Joe didn't waste time. He was giving Danny his full attention and expected him to listen.
They walked toward the packaging section where he was to work. Joe pointed out what was going on around them.
"Here's where you'll start Danny. Roughly 2,400 hotdogs at a time almost ready for packaging are mounted on the framework of this big contraption you see here, which we call a truck. These trucks have no motors, seats or bodies, they're just large steel frameworks on small wheels about 8 feet long that we can roll from the production area to the packaging section and back.
"The hotdogs themselves are 100% beef. The meat per the recipe we use for the hotdogs is prepared in bulk, then encased by a machine in a plant-based material, clear non-edible peelable cellulose which looks like clear plastic wrap. Cellulose is a main component of most plant leaves.
"Once the casing is done, we have a very long narrow strand of tightly packaged meat. That strand is then twisted into links, smoked and cooked in huge ovens. The strands of cooked hotdogs are then transferred to trucks and stored for at least eight hours in this giant refrigeration area over here. That plus the cooking 'sets' the meat so that it's firm—like a hotdog.
"From there it's taken to the packaging area. That's where you come in. Come with me."
They walked a little further and entered a large room, the refrigerator, probably almost 60 feet square in the centre of the building. About half of the room was occupied by enormous beef carcasses. "These over here are the gutted, deboned and otherwise prepared carcasses of cattle. They are ready to be turned into chopped meat in large machines. That meat will be mixed with salt, spices and a couple other ingredients."
They walked a little further inside the refrigeration room. "And these over here are the prepared hotdogs on their trucks awaiting packaging. Once they're lined up outside this room, you will roll these trucks one at a time to the packaging area. One truck holds about 40 long strands, each containing 60 hotdogs encased in cellulose. Each strand is loosely wound horizontally around a removable metal bar and mounted on the truck. A fully loaded truck typically holding 40 strands weighs almost 700 pounds.
"You won't have to enter this refrigeration room very often. When trucks are ready for packaging, you'll find them lined up outside here where we're going to now. You will very carefully roll each fully loaded truck from the production section across the factory floor to the packaging section. Doing that requires you to push, pull, turn, maneuver and halt the truck alone.
"At the packaging section you'll transfer the strands of hotdogs one at a time onto supports next to each stripping machine, to await their turn for the hotdogs to be stripped from their cellulose casings. You'll deposit a number of these strands on their metal poles at each machine, until you've deposited all of the them and the truck is empty. You then roll the empty truck back to the refrigeration room where more loaded trucks will be waiting.
"Each machine operator will be using the stripping machines to rapidly strip the cellulose casings and spit the hotdogs out at a rate of about two to three per second onto the conveyor belt, ready for packaging. We process and package tens of thousands of hotdogs this way every day.
"The conveyor belt collects the hot dogs and takes them directly to packaging machines that vacuum pack them eight or ten or twelve to a package depending on the product, or in bulk in cardboard boxes, before those are packed in big shipping cartons and shipped to warehouses, restaurants, supermarkets and other customers all over Canada.
"All day long, you'll be rolling the trucks fully laden in one direction, removing and positioning the strands of hotdogs for the machine operators, and then rolling the empty truck back to the refrigeration room. You will also substitute at lunch for workers who operate the stripping machines. And you'll do whatever other odd jobs I might ask you to do during the day.
"You'll be one of two men who perform this job all day long, every working day, with a half hour lunch break and two 15 minute coffee breaks. I'll introduce you to Nico in a few minutes. We begin work every day at 7 a.m. and finish at 4 p.m. There will probably also be work available for you on an overtime basis which pays 1.5 times the regular hourly rate. Overtime is voluntary.
"There will also be occasional times when machinery breaks down or needs to be paused for other reasons."
It was explained that if Danny didn't work fast enough, machine operators would be waiting for strands of hotdogs and that was wasted time and lost production, so he would be at it nonstop almost all day long.
That's how Danny Stavros, first string split end on the school's winning football team who also played lots of pickup basketball, lifted weights at the Y three times a week, did three mile runs five times a week, and believed he was in pretty good shape, ended up physically and mentally exhausted after the first morning of non-stop work on the first day he worked a real job. It wasn't rushed, he wasn't pushed. He was told what to do, shown and watched for the first half hour, then left on his own to do the job. He wanted to quit after the first morning. Every muscle in his body ached and begged him to give up. His brain also urged him to quit.
He mustn't do that, he kept telling himself.
But it was more than just the physical work wearing him down. As if the job wasn't hard enough, it was monotonous. That was to weigh on him more and more as the hours slowly passed and the days dragged on.
But he couldn't quit. To motivate himself, he thought. First about money: he was making $1.50 an hour. The minimum wage of $1.00 per hour was paid at most summer jobs. Over the summer, let's see, $1.50 per hour, 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, 10 weeks—$600 in the bank by the end of the summer. Plus overtime. So, say, $700 for a 16-year-old boy. A small fortune in 1966. And no tax or pension deductions, he was too young for that. It was a first step on the road to freedom.
It wasn't just money that motivated him. He hoped he'd earn the respect of people who had no reason to respect him. He was just another kid to his co-workers, a teenager with plenty to prove first. He had to prove he could do the work. Prove it to his co-workers. To his parents. To his boss Joe who treated him with respect the way he would any new man on the job. And to himself.
He assumed Joe regarded students as kids he couldn't rely on. He already respected Joe. He needed to show Joe he was not one of those ordinary kids, but someone willing to work hard. Why? he wondered. The dignified, respectful way Joe talked to him, like he was a man and not a boy? Or maybe, how he was raised?
There were also his co-workers, many of them immigrants. He was surrounded by hard-working people who set an example for him. They worked to stay alive and make a life for themselves. He needed their respect.
It was a real life lesson in the value of a good education, and a reminder to Danny of his good fortune in life. He was born at a time and a place where an education and a good life in a land at peace was available. In the course of human history, only a small proportion of people not born into wealth and position have ever had such opportunities.
Regarded this way, his sexuality was not such a terrible thing. He was actually an extraordinarily lucky boy, if only he could see it that way.
And maybe for a change his parents would even be proud of him.
But if he quit now, his parents would know for sure he was a loser.
So he was motivated. Without that, he realized he would probably quit. The relentless stress of the job's monotony and physical pain all had that effect on him. But no matter how hard it got, he wouldn't let himself quit.
There was another aspect. This was his chance to prove that even though he was what some considered nothing but a useless fairy, he was in fact a 16 year old boy who could pull his weight like a man. To hell with his mother and her ilk with their predictable ideas about people like himself. He would prove she and they were wrong.
One middle-aged woman working at the plant, a machine operator named Olga, came to Toronto from communist Yugoslavia with her husband ten years earlier, seeking freedom and a future for her children. Danny became acquainted with her and talked to her at length when they had the chance.
She told him a bit about her life. She learned English well enough to function in Canada. She and her husband worked hard to earn a living. When they were young, they sneaked out of communist Yugoslavia together with some gold jewellery hidden in their clothing to sell for money to pay their way to Canada. The husband had family in Toronto, an uncle who moved there after World War II. The uncle sponsored Olga and her husband as immigrants, brought them to Montreal and then Toronto by ship and rail. Olga's husband was a skilled carpenter who found work in construction while she worked in factories. She took off a few years from work to raise two young children. Now those children were in school and she was back at work. They even managed to buy their own small home.
A Toronto newspaper that was an establishment mouthpiece ran an editorial around this time which struck Danny as pretty cool toward immigrants. Annoyed, he found the time one evening to write a letter to the editor telling them that they were wrong about immigrants. As with most of his letters, they published it.
His experience with Olga and the other new Canadians he met at that summer job was nothing but positive. The old establishment, the wealthy classes that ran Canada at the time, wanted nothing to change, but change was happening all around them. The future of the country wasn't only with their offspring, but also in the hands of people coming to Canada looking for a better life. Immigrants worked hard, saved, built new businesses and generally prospered. They were the country's future.
At the end of the first day of work, though, Danny felt ready to collapse. He was very tired. He managed to get home, eat dinner, take two aspirin and go straight to bed. He slept until his alarm inevitably buzzed him awake. Out of bed at 5 a.m. the next morning, still aching all over, he needed all the will power he could muster to begin another day.
And this was just the start of the second day. He had four more full days to complete until the weekend. Each day was boring drudgery and pain that he had to keep inside himself and under control. Every morning, walking down the long road from the bus stop to the factory, he dreaded the day ahead, but learned to shut the emotions down and stoically go to work, one step at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time. Slowly the summer moved on.
Every second Friday he received a pay cheque. That helped motivate him. What didn't help was that the handful of large Canadian banks that controlled the country's banking system in the 1960s were at the height of their opulent arrogance, open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day, the same banker hours they had stuck to for decades. Fridays they did the public a big favour and stayed open until 6 p.m. because that was payday for most people.
Most factory workers finished work at 4 p.m. or later and on paydays rushed to the bank with their cheques before closing time. There were no automated teller machines, no weekend hours. As long as you got inside the bank doors before closing time, they had to serve you. So he stood patiently in a long line awaiting his turn for a teller to accept his deposit slip, watch him endorse his cheque and enter the deposit in his little bank book. That was the Canadian banking system, much the same as it had been for a very long time.
He didn't get to the gym much that summer, but usually continued to run on weekends.
Summer was barbecue season, the busy season for meat sales. This meant that they sometimes voluntarily worked Saturdays and even statutory holidays. Most of the regular workers, and Danny with them, were happy to volunteer because they got time and a half for overtime.
Working every day taught him the value not only of hard work and money but also of time. He didn't realize it yet, but knowing the value of time and money would help him in many ways for the rest of his life.
Toronto has an extensive, interconnected system of ravines carved by glaciers 15,000 years earlier, with rivers flowing through them that all eventually flow into Lake Ontario. Under Ontario law these ravines are managed as conservation areas, publicly owned land that cannot be sold or developed. So the ravines in most cases provide homes for a variety of plant and animal life and areas for public recreation, often, as with Toronto, right in the heart of cities.
One ravine began a few miles north of where the Stavros family lived and extended south into the city for many miles. The ravine area around their neighbourhood had a fair amount of recreational activity going on over the summer. But if you meandered just a couple miles north, the ravines became empty of human activity and a home mostly for wildlife.
On Saturday morning after his first week of work, a tired Danny slept late. When he awoke, he felt good. He finally had a weekend. He had come through the first week, and was coping with the job.
So he phoned Kenny, who was working in his dad's office at the railway company for the summer.
They talked about getting together that afternoon. They wanted some privacy but there wouldn't be any available at their homes.
Kenny had an idea. He asked Danny to come to his place by bike and bring a knapsack with a blanket they could use outdoors, and a canteen with water. He said Danny should tell his parents, if they asked, that they were going hiking in the woods a couple miles north of where they lived.
After lunch, Danny assembled everything and rode his bike to Ken's place. Leaving his bike at the side of the house, he went inside and to Kenny's bedroom. Ken's parents were home so he closed the door. They sat on the edge of the bed.
Danny talked quietly. "My job is a lot harder than I expected. But the money is good, I got my first pay cheque yesterday. I thought I was in good shape before I began, but my muscles are sore like you wouldn't believe."
"I don't envy you, Danny. But here's what I thought we could do today, to help get your mind off that for a while.
"Last summer, I explored alone in the ravine north of here. I rode my bike. A hidden trail runs into the ravine and along the river that runs through there. There were clearings next to the stream, and a small pond of still water. There's even a grove of old apple trees someone must have planted a long time ago.
"I saw deer with fawns, lots of squirrels, rabbits, foxes, once what might have been a coyote. I sometimes spent a whole afternoon exploring it.
"I began going and taking books with me. I would take my clothes off and for a couple of hours would read, lying on a blanket in the sun. It was quiet and private. I never saw a single other person. If anyone approached on foot, you could easily have heard them in the underbrush.
"It's a huge ravine, there are only a couple of these trails that I found, but you can walk off them into the forest for a very long way and never see a soul. We could go down there, hide our bikes, hike until we find a quiet place where we can be alone."
"That sounds good to me."
They biked north a few miles, then made their way off the main road into the forested area above the ravine. Eventually they left the bikes hidden in some brush and carefully made their way down the side of a rather steep, long, heavily wooded hillside covered in a variety of standing trees, decaying fallen tree trunks, native shrubs, high grasses, wildflowers. They saw bees, butterflies, garter snakes, mice, voles, lots of squirrels and a couple raccoons. The underbrush was full of roots and branches, and that side of the ravine was steep enough, that they could have easily lost their footing.
It took about 15 minutes to get to the bottom. They carefully made their way through the woods toward the small river they could barely hear and not yet see. It turned out to be a few hundred yards from the hillside. As they approached the stream, the trees, shrubs and undergrowth gradually disappeared and they found an open area completely enclosed and sheltered by surrounding trees and other vegetation, roughly 100 feet long by 20 feet deep, beside the river.
The stream itself at this point looked to be about 15 feet wide and only a couple feet deep. The water was moving along gently. It wasn't surprising it was calm because there hadn't been any rain in over a week.
The afternoon felt lazy: warm, quiet, peaceful amid a background of buzzing insects. It was a perfect summer day. They took off all their clothes. They kept one blanket and their clothes nearby in case they were needed if strangers happened by, and set the other blanket on the ground a few feet from the water. They sat together on the blanket facing the river, feeling time passing amid rising afternoon heat. Soon enough they lay down and kissed, softly, with rising passion, embracing, tonguing, licking. Kenny lowered his head to Danny's ear and whispered "I want you, I want you so bad." Danny looked at him. Kenny whispered again, "I want you inside me. I want to try it and see what it's like. I prepped myself, I think I'm clean and ready for this." Danny looked at him and softly said, "I know we talked about it, but we've never done that before, I don't know how it will go. I want to do it right but I don't want to hurt you. I don't understand how it can't hurt. I just can't hurt you. I love you so deeply. You're everything to me."
So Kenny said, "I talked to my doctor. He looked it up and then thought about it. He explained to me things to do the first few times to make it hurt less. He said to go very slowly and gently and be patient and the pain should disappear. So I think I know what to do and I'll kind of coach you."
"Okay, lead the way. But it mustn't hurt, I don't want to hurt you."
Ken was on top of Danny at this point. He rolled off, sat, told Danny to sit. Danny was aroused and a little nervous, looking around. "You sure no one will see us here?"
"No one will. We're prepared. I never saw anyone all the times I was here last summer. And we haven't seen or heard anyone today."
Kenny was naked, sleek in the sunlight. They were on their sides embracing, anticipating what was to follow. Kenny stopped, reached out to his pants and extracted a small tube labelled "K Y Jelly" from a pocket. "My doctor gave me this, it's something new, a sample from one of his suppliers. He says to use as much as we need and go real slow."
Danny sat. Kenny faced him, squatted and lowered himself slowly. It went real slow their first time. Kenny's doctor gave him good advice about the slow, patient process of first time intercourse by men, and they followed the advice carefully, with unexpected good results.
Afterward they lay together in the warm afternoon sun. Funny little flies were flitting and floating around them, as though they were a beautiful pair of young naked gods for the wee things to worship. An old jazz song went through Danny's head and he began humming.
Strange dear, but true dear,
When I'm close to you, dear,
The stars fill the sky,
So in love with you am I.
"What are you humming?" Ken murmured.
"An old Cole Porter song. So in Love."
"I think I know it. I understand why it would come to mind. I feel the same way. He was like us, you know, maybe it's why I like his music so much."
Ken was on his back next to him. Danny leaned over to kiss him on the mouth. Ken's arms went around him. He whispered in Danny's ear, "I love you and I always will. I'm yours forever, no matter what may come. I mean it. I love you." They lay there holding each other and kissing sweetly as the minutes trickled by.
"I know I'll love you forever, Kenny. I don't ever want us to end."
The summer passed slowly like that. They worked all week. On any weekend when time and weather allowed, they would bike to the ravine and make love watched by the fauna and flora.
John and his family spent a couple of weeks mid-summer on the ocean beach at Ogunquit, Maine.
Mike worked as a counsellor-in-training at a summer camp in central Ontario.
Gray worked as an orderly in a hospital.
Most of their other friends had summer jobs, too.
Life moved on. Slowly they were all growing up.
Grade 12 beckoned.
Danny was at Kenny's place for dinner one evening in mid-August. Before dinner, Ken told him, "My parents want to take us for a holiday. So we're going to Vancouver next week. On an airplane! They need some time away, and thought this would be a good city to visit. It's situated just off the Pacific Ocean, with the mountains behind it on the other side. I'll miss you, but don't worry, we'll be back on time for school."
Danny looked at him. Kenny just shrugged. "This is what they told me, so this is what I have to do."
So, near the end of August, Kenny, his mom, dad and brother boarded a jet plane and flew to Vancouver for a family vacation. Danny was at their house to say goodbye.
"I'm gonna miss you, Kenny".
"It's only a week, we'll be home a week today."
The taxi arrived, a station wagon taxi large enough to hold all their bags. A few minutes later they were gone.
Right on schedule they came home a week later, Labour Day. School began the next day and life went on like always.
On his last day of work, Danny hugged a lot of people goodbye. Joe thanked him for his hard work. He promised Joe he would be back the next summer.
September arrived. Grade 12. Danny turned 17. He'd had a driver's licence since June. Occasionally he could borrow the family's Chev sedan.
School began, and with it, football practices.
After the first practice, Danny and Mike were in the change room walking to the showers when Mike asked, "Danny, you've been working out? Where'd you get all those muscles?"
"Must be the job did that. I told you how hard it was."
"Well, you weren't exaggerating."
"Nope. It was a hell of a summer, the hardest work I think I'll ever do, at least physically. But it was a good thing, looking back. I learned a lot working there. And met some amazing people I don't think I'll ever forget."
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