I drew hundreds of pictures and they were all bad. I wasn’t good at drawing. It was also a little sad to draw so much because I could see everything that was inside me. I had drawn everything I could think of. All that was inside me was a bunch of toys, and TV shows, and my family. My life was boring. I only had one kiss, and it was with my gay cousin, Jamie.
One day, Jan came down to the basement. He saw all my little drawings. He didn’t say much. He picked them up and looked at them. He looked at every picture that was there. When he finished with each, he put it onto a neat pile.
He was tall and restrained, with clean, fading blond hair, combed back, with a slight wave in the front. He had a plain gold wedding band. As he looked at the pictures, I tried to imagine what he did for fun, but I couldn’t. He put the last picture down on the neat stack and looked at me.
“How is Mr. Moon?” he asked. In his accent his words came out short and clean. There was a hint of warmth, but it was contained.
“I found a few scratches today,” I said.
“Good,” he said, and left. I didn’t draw any more that day. I looked at the moon.
The next day I was back in the basement. It was almost lunchtime, and Jan came in.
“Come here,” he said, and turned and walked out. I followed him down the hall and outside. We crossed the parking lot, me following him. The surface of the blacktop was melting where they had put tar to fill in the cracks. There were no trees in the parking lot and the sun was pushing hard. I followed the back of Jan’s light yellow shirt and tan slacks over to his truck. It was an old, faded mustard-colored pickup that said TOYOTA in white on the back.
When I got to the truck, he was messing around with something in the stake bed. He put the back part that said TOYOTA down. On top of this, he laid out a big, black portfolio. He opened it and there were drawings inside.
“Look,” he said. He stepped back, and I looked. He said, “These are mine.”
They were good. They were mostly portraits. There were a bunch of portraits of a pretty woman’s face, all the same woman. He was a lot better than I was.
“That’s Greta, my wife,” he said. “She was not my wife then, when I made them. She became my wife.”
“She’s very beautiful,” I said. She was. Prettier than me.
“I did these when I was at school,” he said. “I wanted to be artist. But it was no good. It is no good to be artist. I practiced every day, eight hours a day. Then I could draw like Michelangelo. Then what? There is already Michelangelo. I realized there was nothing more to do. In science, there is always more to learn. Always more.”
I didn’t look at him; I looked at his pictures. I felt very lonely. I pictured him and his wife, alone at a long table, eating some bland Swedish food, not talking. The only sounds were from the utensils hitting the plates, and the squish of their gentle chewing.
“So,” he said. “You see.” He reached over me and shut the portfolio to punctuate the “You see,” but I didn’t know what to see. Then I looked at him. He stood there and looked at me. We were so awkward.
“Okay,” he said finally. “See you.”
“See you,” I said.
That summer, my only friend was my cousin Jamie. He was smart, and knew what he liked. He could be pretty mean behind people’s backs because people were so mean to his face.
Jamie invited me to a Fourth of July party, at this Menlo girl’s house, Katie Hesher. It was my first high school party. She lived on the other side of the San Francisquito Creek. It was woodsy over there. It was this big, one-story wooden house, like a fancy log cabin. We got there around nine. There were roomfuls of people. Everyone was drinking beer, mostly Keystone Light. I recognized a lot of people from my school, Paly, but I’d never seen them outside of school.
Jamie got me a beer; I opened it and held it. Jamie went off somewhere, and I sat on a couch in the living room. People came and sat on the couch, and talked, and left. I sat there for a long time. I didn’t know anyone from Menlo, and I didn’t know the people from my school. I sipped my beer. It was like thick, frothy urine.
I thought about Jan’s Fourth of July. I imagined him going to a movie. He was with his wife, Greta. They entered the theater with their arms around each other. They were smiling. Maybe they were going to see Schindler’s List. They sat in the movie and ate popcorn and enjoyed it and were serious about life.
After a while, I got up and went outside. There was a mist. I walked down the long driveway, under the large sycamore trees. The noise from the party got quieter the farther I walked. At the end of the driveway, I crossed the street. On the other side was the San Francisquito Creek bed. It was very deep and steep and I could barely see the water at the bottom. It was so dark.
I still had my beer. I couldn’t finish it. I took another sip, and then dumped the rest out into the dirt. The creek trickled in the black below, the bushes around me were still. I kept the can, and I walked back across the road and up the driveway. I saw a guy from my school, a water polo player named Zack Cuttle. He was standing behind one of the cars in the driveway. I was about to say hi, but then I realized that he was probably peeing. I tried to walk by discreetly. As I passed, I could see that his eyes were closed. I looked over, and I realized that he wasn’t peeing; he was getting a blow job from someone behind the car. I stood there for a second. Then I walked quickly before he saw me. I went up the stairs and back inside.
I couldn’t find my cousin Jamie. I sat back on the couch, right in the middle. There were lots of people around. Everyone was talking so loudly. After a few minutes, Zack Cuttle and Stephanie Jeffs walked inside. I looked at them, and then I looked down. They went into the kitchen, where a lot of people were.
Then this guy sat next to me. Ronny Feldman. He sat right next to me on the couch. He was a bad kid and he was handsome. He had gone to my school but had been kicked out.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“I came with my cousin.”
“But why are you here?”
“I don’t know,” I said. He laughed. Then he grabbed my beer can and shook it a little. He laughed again because it was empty. He put it on the table.
“Here,” he said, and gave me another Keystone Light. I was already feeling light-headed from the first beer.
“Thanks,” I said. He was wearing a white T-shirt that was thin from being washed so many times. The neck was wasting away. His arms were thin but muscular. They had all these old scars and bruises on them. He had short, straight blond hair and a cherubic face, with a perfect nose. He was so handsome, but also like a little boy and dangerous.
I didn’t know what to say, so I opened the beer and took a sip. Too big of a sip. I choked.
“Easy,” he said. He patted me on the back.
He kept patting me, even after I stopped choking. I didn’t stop him. He did it softly. One of his friends walked by, this black guy named Camper Williams. He had skinny arms and legs, but a fat belly. His face was like a pit bull’s.
“That’s fucked-up, Ronny,” said Camper.
“What?” said Ronny. He stopped patting me. Camper laughed and walked away.
We sat there, and then I said, “Why did you get kicked out of school?”
“Because I broke all the windows in this asshole’s car.”
“Why did you do that?”
“This motherfucker, Brian Simpson, threw some eggs at me.”
“Why?” I was very interested.
“Whatever. On the Sunday before, I was walking, and I saw this car drive by. Someone said something, and then I saw the car turn around . . .”