“Sure,” I said, not meaning it. And here’s why. I know that I have eighteenth-century talents in a twenty-first-century world. The brain is so low-tech. Any boy with a Pentium chip can do what I do. I could, however, be a marvel at the Rite Aid, making change without a register.
“Daniel, do you have any male friends?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Brian upstairs.”
“It’s good for you to have a male friend. What do you two do?”
“Jog. You know, work out.”
This was, of course, a lie, but it was the kind of lie that could become true at any moment, as I potentially could work out or jog if I chose. I’m not sure if Clarissa had ever seen this masculine side of me before, which must have sent a chill through her. Then her focus was torn away from me by an internal alarm that she couldn’t ignore. She quickly checked her watch and wrapped things up with a few absentminded and irrelevant homilies that I took to heart, then forgot immediately. She collected her things and went out the door with a worried look, which I could tell was unrelated to our session.
The next morning I woke up to the sound of Philipa’s stereo. I can never make out actual songs; I can only hear a thumping bass line that is delivered through my pillows, which seem to act like speakers. I got up but stayed in my pajamas and swept the kitchen floor, when there was a knock on the door. It was Brian. Uh-oh. What does he know? Maybe Philipa broke down last night and confessed to our indiscretion and now he was going to bust me open. I sifted through a dozen bon mots that I could utter just before he punched me, hoping that someone nearby would hear one and deliciously repeat it to my posthumous biographer. But Brian surprised me: “Wanna go jogging?”
“Sure,” I said. “Around the block?” he said. “I can’t go off the block,” I added.
“Okle-dokle,” he said. “You change, I’ll be downstairs.”
I was stunned that after my lie to Clarissa about my passion for jogging, a redemption should materialize so suddenly and so soon. The moral imperative to turn this lie into a truth was so strong in me that I said yes even though I have never jogged, don’t get jogging, don’t want to jog, especially with The Brian. I might jog with a girl. But I saw this as a way to straighten things out in heaven with my therapist/social worker. I went to my bedroom and put on the only clothes I had that could approximate a jogging outfit. Brown leather loafers, khaki pants with a black belt, an old white dress shirt, and a baseball cap. When Brian saw me in this outfit his face turned into a momentary question mark, then he relaxed, deciding not to get into it. “To the beach and back,” he said. “Oh no, just around the block…” I said, trying to thwart him. How do I explain my conditions to him? This lug. “Okay, around the block,” he said and started off.
Brian, in jogging shorts, ventilated T-shirt, and headband, looked like an athlete. I looked like I was going off to my first day of high school. Brian was disappearing into the distance and I dutifully tried to follow, but instead stepped out of my left shoe. I continued to hop in place while I slipped it back on and began my initial, first ever, run around any block since graduation. Brian took it easy on me, though, and I was able to close the distance between us. I wished Elizabeth were finalizing a deal on the sidewalk as we whizzed past so heroically. We went around the block once, pausing only while a family unloaded kiddy transportation from a station wagon. Brian jogged in place; I breathed like a bellows. When we started up again Brian ran across the short end of the block and I followed. But Brian came to the corner and, instead of turning, dashed across the street. I couldn’t follow. I stayed on my block and ran parallel to him with the street between us. Brian seemed not to care that he was violating my aside to him, which obviously he had not understood to be binding. Brian seemed to think that this is what guys do; they jog parallel up the street. Then he suddenly dashed across the street again, joining me on my block, as if nothing had happened. The two jogging guys were together again. I sensed that Brian’s betrayal of our pact was done with the same thoughtless exuberance of a dolphin leaping out of the water: It was done for fun.
Even though Brian was moderating the pace for me, I still felt a euphoric wave of my favorite feeling: symmetry. Though he was yards ahead of me, we were step for step and stride for stride. My energy was coming from Brian by way of induction. I was swept along in his tailwind. I was an eagle, or at least a pigeon. But then I saw where Brian was going. He was heading straight, straight across the street. I already knew that Brian did not see my request to stay on one block as an edict; he saw it as a whim, a whim that could be un-whimmed in the heat of athletic enterprise. There before me was the curb, coming up on Brian and hence me. This time, though, I felt my pace slowing but oddly not my sense of elation. I saw Brian leap over the curb in a perfect arc. Oh yes, this made sense to me. The arc bridged this mini-hurdle. If I could arc, I could fly over it, too. The curb could be vanquished with one soaring leap. I was ten paces away and I started timing my steps. Six, five, four, three, two, and my right foot lifted off the ground and I sailed over the impossible, the illogical. The opposing curb timed out perfectly. I didn’t have to adjust my step in the street before I flew over it, too, and inertia propelled me into the grass, where I collapsed with exhaustion, gasping for air as if I were in a bell jar. Brian turned around, still jogging in place. “Had it? That’s enough for today. Good hustle. Good hustle.”
My legs were shaking uncontrollably and I was thankful that I was wearing ankle-length khaki pants where my limbs could vibrate in private. Even though I walked back the long way, across three sets of scooped-out driveways, I now knew that I could run across the street at the curb. I could jog over them, fly over them. Brian had liberated me, had shone a spotlight on the wherewithal that had always been inside me, but needed to be coaxed out by human contact.
The next morning I sprang out of bed and promptly fell over. Overnight my muscles had tightened around my bones like O-rings. I would have screamed in pain but it seemed inadequate. I lifted myself back into bed while my mind scanned the medicine cabinet. Nose drops. Tums. Aspirin… yes! I could legitimately take four. Off I went to the bathroom, which gave me the opportunity to take measure of exactly where I was hurting: everything below the beltline, every connective tissue, every lateral muscle. They hurt not only in use, but to the touch. Next to the aspirin was something in a blue jar called Mineral Ice. The bottle was so old it was a collectible. But it said analgesic on it and I had a vague recollection of using it in college. So I swallowed the aspirin and took the Mineral Ice back with me to the bed and began applying the menthol gel to my legs, my thighs, my buttocks. After a few moments it began to tingle, which I assumed was evidence of its pain-relieving properties.
But oily gels don’t stay where you apply them. They ooze. They creep like vines and spread themselves to places they’re not supposed to go. Like testicles. Mine had somehow come in contact with the stinging concoction, which was now migrating over the eyelid-thin skin of my genitals like flames consuming a field of bluegrass. And there is no washing this stuff off. In fact, the more soap and water are applied, the worse it gets. Soap seemed to act like an agent, enabling it to transpire deeper into every pore. All I could do was lie there and wait for it to peak. And peak it did. Alps. Matterhorn. I would have cursed the Virgin Mary but I knew it was not her fault, so I cursed Brian, whose fault it most directly was. Forty-five minutes later, the throbbing subsided, but there was still the suggestion of an icy breeze wafting around my testicles until way after lunch. Which reminds me that the taste of menthol somehow infected my tuna sandwich, even though I was careful not to handle it without the waxed paper.