Foolish Fire Read online

  FOOLISH FIRE

  Guy Willard

  * * *Clam Press * * *

  SIDE ONE

  Pin-Ups

  It all began for me on the very first day of PE class in junior high school. For the first time, the boys had been separated from the girls for a class, and we felt very grown-up about it. Sitting on the bleachers in the school gymnasium, we answered to our names as the boys’ physical education teacher, Coach Kapp, called roll. He used only our last names.

  “Sims!”

  “Here!”

  “Talbot!”

  “Here!”

  “Willard!”

  “Here!” As usual, my name was the last one called.

  Coach Kapp put away his roll book and began to give his orientation talk.

  He was a short, well-built man with close-cropped hair and he wore a snug-fitting T-shirt and shorts. The tiny golden hairs on his legs were like honey-colored smoke floating softly over his tanned skin. His speech was crisp, curt, almost military. With the lights of the gym glinting off the lenses of his eyeglasses, and the whistle dangling from a string around his neck, he looked like a general barking out orders to his men.

  Seeing that many of us had come without the things we’d need, he began by introducing all the gear we would have to purchase. To do this, he borrowed one of the boys’ gym bags. As he dug out each item, he explained it: a gym shirt, gym shorts, sweat socks, tennis shoes, a towel, a washcloth, and something which caused a titter of nervous laughter to ripple among the boys when he held it up: an athletic supporter. A jock strap. Giggling with the others, I saw that, when worn, its cup fit snugly over the genitals, but the buttocks remained daringly exposed, framed diagonally by the elastic straps of the supporter.

  The coach continued his talk by discussing general health practices, the need to eat nutritious foods and get plenty of sleep every night. He also stressed the importance of cleanliness and told us we would be expected to comply with certain guidelines in his class.

  “Come on, I’ll show you the locker room.” His voice boomed and echoed high into the rafters of the gym.

  He led us back around the bleachers and through a door at the far end of the basketball court.

  The locker room turned out to be a dank, evil-smelling cement bunker. Kapp pointed out the lockers and the benches. “The showers are this way,” he said.

  We followed him around a projecting wall where a narrow passageway led to the shower room. When we’d all crowded into the small space, he gathered us around and said:

  “The first thing you have to learn is to get over any shyness you might feel about undressing in front of others. Now we’re all men here, so that shouldn’t be any problem, right? There’s nothing shameful about being seen in the buff by other guys.” He said this in a sarcastic tone of voice as if explaining something very simple to small children. “It’s something you’re going to have to get used to anyway, so we may as well start right now.”

  We stirred uneasily.

  “All right, I want everyone who’s brought their gym gear today to take a shower.”

  There was a groan of protest at this but Kapp raised both hands in the air. “Come on, we haven’t got much time.”

  So, with mixed feelings of discomfort and bravado, the boys who’d brought their gear began to comply. Those of us who hadn’t brought our gear waited in amusement by the entry to the showers and eyed each naked boy as he came from the locker room. A few nervous jokes wavered in the air as some of the nude boys half-hugged themselves, or pretended to scratch or rub some part of their body in an attempt to hide as much skin as possible. Everyone felt self-conscious.

  My mouth had gone dry at the prospect of having to undress in front of the others next time, but there was something else which usurped my attention as I watched the parade of naked boys. While most of their bodies were still child-like, baby-smooth and hairless, several of them, unknown to everyone else, had already matured.

  I noted a very attractive boy named Doug whose shoulders were manfully broad. His body was burnished a deep bronze from lying on the beach all summer, and a pale strip of skin outlined the shape of phantom swim trunks about his hips. A thick, curly patch of pubic hair almost hid the penis which poked out like a saucy pink tongue. His balls were large and egg-shaped.

  My eyes then went, of their own accord, to a boy named Ted. He was a quiet, likable boy who’d sat next to me in the fourth grade. Back then he’d been one of the smallest boys in class, but during the past summer he’d sprouted up like a beanpole and his arms and legs looked gawkily long. Dangling down incongruously huge and out of proportion to the rest of his boyish frame were man-sized genitals from which the boys in class could barely keep their eyes…much to Ted’s discomfort.

  There were a few others whose bodies still looked chubby and soft with baby-fat, but who sported a soft, downy, shadow-like fuzz at their groins which was a promise of approaching maturity. The race for manhood had begun and these boys were leading the pack. I didn’t have any pubic hair yet, and the sight of these developing bodies made me feel more than ever like a piping-voiced child.

  “All right, into the showers, guys, all of you.”

  Coach Kapp herded all of us into the showers and explained how the hot and cold water worked. Then he led the clothed boys out toward the bleachers outside. Behind us steam had begun to roll out along the cement floor, and yells and cries could be heard above the hiss of water as horseplay commenced.

  For the rest of the day I walked about school in a daze, numb with disbelief. I felt I was seeing double: whenever I looked at a classmate, I saw him not only in his clothes, but his naked body as I’d seen it in the showers that morning. It was as if I’d been endowed with super-vision, or was wearing those X-ray spectacles advertised so often in the back pages of comic books.

  *

  That Saturday, Jack and I went out to the old swimming hole across the tracks, out toward the airport. Though it was September, the weather was still warm enough for a swim.

  Jack was my best friend. We’d grown up together, and he’d always been the leader in our childhood games. Maybe it was because he was so big for his age, but he somehow seemed much older and more mature than me, though we were the same age.

  For one thing, his voice was already a burry tenor, his tiny Adam’s apple bobbing up and down whenever he talked. The voices of our classmates represented every pitch from a sweet boy soprano to a deep manly growl. Some boys were caught between changes, their voices sounding a little hoarse, as if they’d caught a cold. Their in-between status was treacherously betrayed by sudden jolting soprano yelps which caused everyone to jump in surprise and laugh afterwards at the red-faced boy.

  The swimming hole, as we called it, was actually an old abandoned reservoir created by damming a stream that ran through the scrubland west of town. A sign posted there declared it off-limits, but all the kids used it when the warm weather came. On one shore was a group of huge boulders which came down to the very edge of the water. One rock jutted out over the water, its flat projection forming a smooth ledge. This was our diving platform.

  Jack had worn his usual cut-off shorts instead of swim trunks. I watched the white strings from their frayed edges play about his thighs as he stretched his arms up to peel off his T-shirt. He tossed down his T-shirt and looked at me.

  “Come on, Guy, what are you waiting for?”

  Standing up on the flat ledge, I began stripping off my clothes. I had worn my bathing trunks under them. I rolled my jeans and T-shirt into a bundle and stuffed them into the shade.

  Suddenly Jack grabbed me by the wrists and pushed me to the edge of the rock.

  “What are you doing, Jack?”

  He shoved me over the edge and I went down into
the water, yelling and kicking my legs. As soon as I was in the water, he plunged in right after me with a loud splash, surfacing almost immediately to let out a long, exhilarated whoop.

  We swam lazily about, splashing water onto each other, dunking each other’s heads. I would dive down, then come up, pulling at his legs from underwater. Our cries were lost in the vast, cloudless sky. When we got tired of playing, we pulled ourselves up, dripping, onto the ledge. The sun had baked it and it burned our feet.

  Gingerly, we limped pigeon-toed toward our towels, shivering, hugging ourselves, our bodies slick and wet, our hair dripping. As we dried ourselves off, Jack flicked his wet hair at me, then rolled his towel under his arm. With my help, he sought toeholds on the rock behind us, scrambling up its steep side. From its flat top he called down for his suntan lotion, which I tossed up to him. I saw him begin to unroll his towel.

  Left to myself, I sat in the shade dangling my legs over the side, gazing out over the flat landscape. The gully through which the stream ran could barely be seen as a slight crease in the terrain. Not a cloud marred the expanse of sky.

  The faint smell of my own sweat made me conscious of a little breeze.

  “I think I’ll take a walk around,” I called up to Jack. “Wanna come?”

  “Nah. You go ahead.”

  I picked up my shoes, leaned over the edge away from the water and felt them drop away from my hands like live birds. Two distant-sounding plops echoed up, seemingly unrelated to the shoes’ hitting the ground. I began climbing down the far corner of the ledge. It was much easier to gain toeholds on the rock with my bare feet.

  “Hey!” I called up from the ground.

  No answer.

  I put on my shoes and began walking around. Just beyond the group of boulders beside the reservoir was a low wooded hill which overlooked the whole scene. I made my way up a steep embankment and entered the shade of the trees.

  It was cool in here; I kicked my way through the undergrowth, slicing through the dappled shade, feeling the slap of twigs and low branches against my bare chest. I stopped to examine a colony of grotesquely enlarged toadstools nestled near the foot of a vine-smothered tree. The sound of crying insects was almost deafening. I felt a trickle of sweat creep down my back, then another. I wiped my brow and shivered at the woods’ coolness.

  The grass rustled nearby. I turned my head quickly but saw nothing. The weeds shook again. Perhaps it was a small animal. I pushed ahead, carefully thrusting aside low branches and vines. A rank, fungoid odor hung in the cool, close air. Above me, beyond the interlacing web of branches, was the sky, pure and blue like the hint of a distant ocean.

  I stopped.

  I’d reached the huge spreading oak which crowned the top of the hill. With its gnarly bark and the myriad woody vines embedded in its surface, it reminded me of an illustration I’d seen in a book of ancient fairy tales.

  I found a handhold and easily climbed up the length of the main trunk, then swung higher and higher into the swaying branches, glimpsing vaster prospects as the surrounding countryside opened up to my eyes. We were far enough away from the city for me to imagine that we were all alone on a desert island.

  I stopped to catch my breath. My chest was red from rubbing against the bark, tiny bits of which clung to my damp skin. I wiped my brow again and glanced downward.

  I was virtually suspended over the boulders far below. If I lost my grip I knew I would plunge down to my death…I tightened my hold on the branch. For a moment my head swam and I had to shut my eyes.

  When I opened them again I saw, like a vision so close it seemed I could just reach out and touch him, Jack lying upon his beach towel sunbathing. He was flat upon his stomach so that the sun could bronze his shoulders and back. His head was turned aside, pillowed upon his hands, and his eyes were closed. He was completely unaware of my presence just above him, hidden in the dense foliage.

  I gazed at his strong, broad shoulders…at the smooth back which rose and fell evenly with his breathing. Just as I’d suspected, he was much better built than any of the boys in my PE class. He had the body of a boy much older than us, the body of a grown-up.

  Suddenly he was twisting around, turning his head so he could look straight up at me. Thinking I’d been heard, I made ready with a jest or yell to cover up for my long silent contemplation. My muscles tensed up…. But apparently he’d only turned onto his back so that his front side could be exposed to the sun. I was still safe.

  I continued to watch as he brought his arms up and crossed his hands over his face to shield his eyes from the sun’s glare. That was when I saw, nestled snugly within each armpit, a dark patch of curly hairs. It was like coming across a cache of hidden treasure. I had never suspected their presence, and this sudden revelation transformed my childhood friend into a strange, exalted being. He now looked like a young god reclining on a mountainside.

  I felt dizzy. I knew that if I were spotted now in my secret perch, I’d have no excuse for remaining silent for so long. And the slightest movement on my part was bound to be noticed now that he was facing upward. I had no choice but to remain as I was. Feeling wretched, I continued to gaze down at the smooth stomach which undulated with his shallow breathing, making the dark concavity of his navel shiver and dance.

  I prayed for a diversion, some noise that would distract his attention long enough for me to slip away. The urge to escape was overpowering….

  My arms were growing tired from hanging on; the muscles in my right thigh were beginning to cramp. I cursed myself for coming up here in the first place, and then for not letting him know where I was. An edge of panic crept into my mind, agitating my breathing. And still I continued to gaze down at the boy whose body I was seeing for the first time as though it were a complete stranger’s….

  The sound of crying insects drummed into my ears…became a wailing…became a screeching.

  *

  Like most of my friends, I kept a secret collection of girly magazines hidden in my closet. I don’t know why I started it—probably only because all the others did. We would look at these magazines together after school, and trade them off when we got tired of them.

  The truth was that I felt a little silly whenever I looked at pictures of nude women. I couldn’t understand the smirking interest boys showed in them—it was all so childish. I never got as excited as they did.

  The flawless, perfect women in the magazines looked so air-brushed and plastic, with their pure white teeth and every hair in place. Their breasts tended to be oversized to unsightly proportions, while below, their tiny smudges of pubic hair always gave me the feeling of something missing. For me, a woman’s body represented only the idea of “otherness.” Nothing could be more different from how I and my friends looked naked. I secretly suspected that it was this “otherness” alone which excited the boys so much.

  I really had to keep from laughing every time I looked at a certain centerfold pin-up—the favorite one, by consensus, among my friends. She was blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and baby-faced. And her breasts were enormous; it was upon them that all my friends were fixated. They loved breasts, the bigger the better, and this simple-minded equation summed up the imbecilic geometry of their desire.

  This woman’s breasts looked simply cartoon-like, so ridiculously huge that her slender torso below them seemed barely able to support such a heavy mass. The nipples on them stared out like a pair of pink idiot eyes.

  In contrast with the rest of her tanned body, the breasts were pale, their whiteness making them look as if they were balloons being blown up—the color of the balloons fading as they stretched and stretched, growing bigger and bigger, threatening to pop at any second.

  To me it seemed as if the desirability of women and girls was inflamed by the furtiveness of the boys’ talk, as though the talk itself were the aphrodisiac. Maybe the idea of doing something illicit was what gave them their biggest thrill. But all their talk couldn’t hide the emptiness which lay behind it all. />
  Perhaps my jaded attitude stemmed from the fact that pictures of nude women were nothing new to me: I’d been sneaking peeks at my mother’s art books ever since I was ten.

  On the top row of the bookcase in the living room was a set of books my mother had bought when she was in college. She had majored in art, and most of the books were collections of the work of her favorite artists: Gauguin, Renoir, and Cezanne. Paintings of nude women were quite common in them. But one day as I was browsing through her collection, I discovered something a little more intriguing.

  It was a volume called The French Neo-Classicists and Romantics, containing works by David, Ingres, Delacroix, and Fragonard, whose names meant nothing to me. When I opened it up at random however, I discovered a fabulous world of lush tints and dynamic action. The color plates were unbelievably detailed, and glowing with a vibrant life. Many of the paintings had themes from Greek mythology, with gods and goddesses completely nude, or with their genitals just barely covered by a stray piece of cloth.

  It was the men who riveted my attention. The color of a man’s flesh—so much darker and more alive than a woman’s—seemed to set off something inside me I’d never before experienced. As I gazed at pictures of scantily clad or nude men frozen in action poses with their glowing, sinewy torsos bursting with life, I felt my interest was somehow sinful. I dreaded being caught looking at these pictures. Yet, strangely enough, this dread actually increased the pleasure I got.

  One picture showed several men bathing in a river or lake, their genitals unblushingly exposed. I couldn’t believe that such things could be shown so openly. The mixture of shame and pleasure I felt gave me such a unique, oddly visceral thrill that I went through all the books in my mother’s collection to seek out similar pictures.

  In time I became more familiar with the world of classical art and sculpture. My interest had turned into a craving, a hunger, almost. I sought out more and more art books to satisfy it, knowing somehow that my obsession would be considered unhealthy by others. Yet I didn’t care. In fact, I suspected that if it hadn’t been for the forbidden nature of it, I might not have spent so much time in my pursuit. I might not have done it at all.