T E N
“I’m more changed than you know.”
-James Lewis
“I hate this place.”
Dazed, Noah said, “I hate it too. My name’s Noah.”
“Well, I’m James Lewis. Can you show me what’s worth seeing in this place?”
“There is nothing worth seeing in Rummelsville,” Noah told him.
“You’re in my geometry class,” James said. “We’ll hang out. You can be my friend.”
“Just like that?” Noah said, trying to jest.
“Just like that,” said James. “There is no one else I’ve seen here I’d want to talk to. Or who would talk to me if we’re going to be real.”
They headed down the hall. “You seem like you’re not like everyone else.”
“I’m not like anyone else,” Noah said. And then he said, “And I’m not bragging when I say that. It’s just… I don’t really fit in here.”
“My father got a job at the university outside of Carmel, and now we’re here and… Is it just me or are we the only Black people in this town?”
Noah grinned and said, at last, “It’s not just you, James.
“I’ve never met a Black person,” he admitted as they headed toward the classroom they were both late in reaching.
“I never met someone who’d admit that. Hey,” James grabbed Noah by the shoulder. “I don’t want to go to geometry.”
“You wanna cut class?”
“I definitely want to cut class,” James said, a light in his eye.
It was then that Noah thought James was the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen, and so he said, “Alright.”
He slung his bag high over his shoulder.
“Let’s go!”
“BITCH, YOU’LL DO WHAT I tell you!”
He moved toward her with the baseball bat. Noah jumped in front of her, but Butch knocked him to the ground. Noah scrambled up, but the bat came in his direction and Noah dodged it, lifting his hand, the top of the bat slamming his fingertips.
“Get off her!”
And Naomi screamed out his name: “Noah!”
From the corner of his eye, as Noah rose up, he saw the door open. But he turned around heading for Butch again, and then Butch came at him, and Noah hoped he could catch the bat and not be hit in the groin, but just then Butch went down.
Noah turned around.
In his jeans and tee shirt James stood there gripping the crowbar, a crazy grin on his face.
“You miss me?”
“James, shut up,” Noah said, standing up to hug him.
Naomi was crying on the floor and James said, “Mrs. Riley, you have to stop that. Noah, help me get Butch the fuck out of here.”
“I gotta get the hell out of here,” Noah said. “I mean as soon as I turn eighteen. I don’t want to get killed.”
“No one’s gonna get killed. What are you talking about?”
“It happens. In a place like this. A few years ago there was this guy—track star—Kyle Norman. His mom ran off. His stepdad ended up raping him, killing him, chopping his head off.”
“Fucking hillbillies,” James swore.
“You think we’re all hillbillies, don’t you?”
“Pretty much,” James said. Then he said, “You can go to school with me.”
Noah shook his head.
“That’s not for me. I… I’m just going to go to California.”
“That is the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard.”
“James!”
“Well,” James shrugged. “Do whatever, Noah. But just get the hell out of Rummelsville.”
They sat quiet like that for a while. James’ hand was casually placed on Noah’s thigh and just then Noah gave into his wonder. He placed James’ hand between his legs.
“I’m sorry,” he said as his hand rested lightly on James’ after his friend started in surprise.
“It’s just… my whole life people have been touching me there when I didn’t want to be touched. And I just wanted to know how it would feel to be touched in a good way. When I wanted it. It feels good, James. Please don’t stop. I’m not ready for you to.
“You don’t… have to do anything. You don’t have to make me come or anything like that. Just… I just need to feel you touching me right there. Alright?”
James placed his head on Noah’s shoulder and nodded, and under the moon, Noah opened his legs and let down his pants and closed his eyes, feeling for the first time loved by another man.
Ron stuck his head in the door and said, “It’s that white dude you like to hang out with so much.”
James was working at his desk and looked up at his brother.
“Must you?”
Ron just said, “He’s in the living room.”
“You could have at least…” James stood up and left his room shoving Ron into the wall and then heading down the stairs.
“Noah. I thought you’d be gone.”
“No,” Noah shook his head. “Not till tomorrow. I wanted to see you. I didn’t know if you wanted to see me, but.”
“Did you drive?”
“Yeah,” Noah said.
“Let’s go… Somewhere.”
“Not the mall,” Noah said.
“No,” James agreed.
They drove through town and then through the country and stopped and had milkshakes at a little diner and then James said, “I don’t really care where we go, I just want to be with you.”
Noah stopped and looked at him, and James said, “What? What did I say?”
Noah, his face half hidden under his baseball cap, said, “No one’s really ever said that to me.”
He sounded very sad when he spoke.
“I wish I’d met you before. I wish… you’re going to college. Your family’s leaving. It all… it doesn’t matter. I wish for so much,” Noah said.
“You could go to college.”
“I don’t want to do that.”
“You want to go to California. I think that’s really stupid.”
“Thanks!”
“That’s the plan for the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath.”
“We’re not all smart like you, James. And perfect,” Noah turned to him.
“You’re plenty smart,’ James reprimanded. He turned away from Noah.
“I think you’re perfect.”
“What?”
“I can hardly stop looking at you,” James said, not looking at him. “You’re so perfect to me. You’re so perfect. Why don’t you understand that?”
Noah didn’t say anything right away. He said, “I think you’re perfect too.”
“I know you do,” James said. “I can’t really understand that.”
“Can we go home?” Noah said, touching Jame’s hand. “Can we go to my house. No one’s there. Butch is definitely gone. Can we go?”
James looked at him. Slowly, he pushed Noah’s ballcap from his head and placed his hand in his soft, springy curls.
“So many bad things happened in that house,’ Noah said. “One good thing.”
“Let’s go,” James said.
They didn’t talk while they drove, and then quietly walked up the lane to the door. Noah opened the door and when they closed it behind them, Noah looked around to make sure the room was empty before he reached up and kissed James.
“Never been with a guy like this before,” Noah murmured. “I never thought I’d be able. I…” he kissed James again. James pushed him a little against the door and they kissed like that before James led Noah to his bedroom and, even before they’d closed the door or lowered the blinds, they were naked, clinging and kissing they came to the bed. James’s face was in Noah’s hair, his lips, kissing his throat. His eyes closed like he was praying, then opened quickly. The love lasted all the afternoon and when they were done, they lay together, naked, Noah’s face pressed to Jame’s chest.
“Stay with me tonight?”
“Yes,” James said.
They made love twice that night, and showered together. Naomi had showed up late and gone directly to bed drunk, and James drove Noah to the bus station.
“You’re right to leave,” he told Noah. “There’s nothing for you here.”
“Do you think you can find me again one day?” Noah said.
“Maybe we can find each other.”
Noah nodded, not looking at him.
When the Greyhound pulled away, Noah waved at him bravely, but it was when the bus arrived in Rossford an hour later that the memory of last night ached through him, of undressing James, of wrapping his limbs with James and kissing him deeply, of being entered and finally, of James having him enter him, and suddenly the city before him blurred and he pushed his face into his hands grateful that the woman sleeping next to him couldn’t see him cry.
He never liked to think about those first days in California. He never liked to think about how soon he’d ended up in bathroom stalls with lips and hands on his body. When he’d made love to James and the two of them had been together, he felt loved. He felt special. Now he couldn’t believe he’d ever felt like that. He pushed those men out of his mind. It was coming to Guy and leaving that world behind that changed him. At Eagle Studios, the men who touched him treated him like a young god, and when he was with Johnny, fucking, snorting cocaine, drinking, or simply eating pizza, he felt like an Olympian in the company of Zeus.
“And the best part,” Guy proclaimed, as they were all watching the newly dubbed Casey move about the stage, “is that he’s got work already. Little work, but soon, with the Internet, folks with little work’ll be posting it up, and then everyone’s gonna be a star.”
“That really gonna happen?” Noah said.
“Don’t worry, kid,” Guy said. “It’s not gonna happen today. But yeah, Casey’s old boyfriend taped him in some stuff. In fact,” he said, while the blond young man was smiling nervously and laughing at someone one of the other model’s said, “I remember that the guy he was with wanted to make a lot of money off of him, not for me, but for Back Door.”
“How do they know who’s gonna be a star?” Noah said. “I mean, we’re all just getting fucked. And no one here is really a star. I mean, no one is taking home a Golden Globe or anything.”
“None of us is a star,” Paul said. “But all of us can be porn stars.”
“But how do you know?” Noah said. “Who’s a porn star and who’s just… doing porn?”
“Well, Meryl Streep is a star. Laurence Olivier was a star. We’re in porn, Noah. We’re all just doing it.”
Later that day Paul and Noah shot a movie. Noah always felt loved by Paul and wondered if he wasn’t even a little in love.
“If we could only shoot with each other,” he once said, “or if you could only love everyone you shot with.”
For Noah there was a difference between love and desire, but when he was with someone he was into, the difference didn’t matter. He could go so far as to say there was no difference, not when he wasn’t holding anything back.
He parked in front of the old beige stucco apartment and went around the back to walk up the iron steps, but midway up, the hairs on the back of Noah’s neck rose. Someone was here. Someone was definitely here, and when he got to the top his heart went into his throat and his skin went clammy.
“Oh, my God!” he half whispered. “James!”
“You look like you’re not happy to see me.”
“I’m surprised to see you,” Noah said. “I’m… I thought I’d never see you again.”
James cocked his head.
“Thought. Or hoped?”
“No!” Noah looked surprised. “How could you say that? How could you think it.”
“You just look… Completely fucked up,” James said. “I imagined you looking happier.”
“No,” Noah shook his head. Then he said, “Would you like something to drink?”
James shook his head.
“It’s just… It’s like seeing a ghost. Only I’m the ghost.”
“You don’t look like a ghost. You actually look fantastic. You’ve been lifting weights and all. You look like yourself,” James told him, “only shinier.”
“I feel like a ghost,” Noah said. “I sort of killed my old life. I’ve done a lot to distance myself from East Carmel. I honestly think you wouldn’t know me.”
“How couldn’t I know you?” James said. “Of course I’d know you. You aren’t that changed.”
“I’m more changed than you know,” Noah said. Then he said, “The truth is I don’t know what to do with you. Or what you’d do with me. If you knew about me.”
“I found you,’ James said. “I found you and where you are. How wouldn’t I know about you? I think I know what you’re talking about. I know. Okay.”
Noah felt distinctly uncomfortable, and James said, “Maybe I will take that drink.”
Noah cleared his throat.
“Great,” he said, shoving his ball cap down tighter. “Come with me and see my kitchen.”
They sat on the beach eating tacos, and Noah said, “How did you find me? Not through… seeing me? You know?”
“No,” James shook his head. “Not like that. I asked your mom if she had heard from you, and she said a couple of times.”
“I don’t write a lot.”
“And then after a while she told me about what you were doing.”
“Porn?”
“Yes,” James said.
“We might as well just say it,” Noah said.
James shrugged.
“So I looked for Eagle Studios. And I found you. I took the semester off college.”
“That’s right,” Noah said. “You’re in school.”
“I’m going back.”
Noah folded up the taco wrapper and said, “But why did you take a semester off?”
“I just told you,” James said. “To find you.”
Noah looked at him mystified.
“Was I wrong to do it?” James asked him.
“You were… who would do that? No one’s done that. Not for me.”
They didn’t speak for a while and Noah watched the tangerine colored waves rolling very slowly onto the sand while the evening sun looked on them,
“And now that you’ve found me,” Noah said, “how do you feel about what you found?”
“You’re my Noah,” James said.
“I am really, really changed.”
“I know really changed people,” James said with certainty. “You don’t seem that changed.”
“The last time I was with you we spent the night together,” Noah said. “And now I’ve spent the night with so many people.”
“You have.”
“Metaphorically. James, I’ve… I have sex for money. I do it on camera.”
“I am well aware of that.”
“Then I guess I don’t know what you want from me?” Noah said. “I mean, I don’t know what I can be to you.”
Then Noah said, “That’s not what I mean. I’m saying it badly.”
“Okay,” James nodded. “Then take some time and find a way to say it to me the right way. But I think you don’t get me at all. I’m your friend. No matter what. I was your best friend. And you were mine. And I came to find my friend. Do you understand now?”
But Noah did not answer right away. Finally he said:
“I’ve been a bad friend.”
“You haven’t been anything. I’m sure you’ve been through a lot.”
“A lot that I don’t want to talk about.”
“I understand.”
“You always understand,” Noah said. “But I put you out of my mind. If I had thought about you it would have been impossible to do anything I’ve done in the last two years. That’s why I was so surprised when I saw you.”
“Do you want me to go away, then?”
“Absolutely not,” Noah said. “I just… You think I’m not happy to see you. I act like you’re a ghost. I must… I must be so disappointing to you.”
“No,” James said, placid as ever. “No. I didn’t know what to expect. I was afraid, honestly. But I had to find you. That’s all.”
“Do you mind if we stay here and just be quiet?” Noah asked him. “Can we just sit and watch the sunset? I feel like I haven’t done that in a really long time.”
“You never watch the sunset over the ocean? And you’ve been in California for two years?”
“The sunset wasn’t why I came,” Noah said.
