A maroon minivan, with thousands of trips to school, competitions, and church functions etched into its chipped and peeling exterior, arrived with Michael in the driver's seat. He was already in white-shirt-and-tie uniform, and the overhead light illuminated his welcoming smile. He opened the passenger-side door. Despite the early hour, the uncertainty ahead, I brimmed a smile in kind.
"Sorry to get you up so early," Michael said as I slid into the seat and buckled my belt.
"It's fine, uh, don't worry about it," I said, even though sleep hung heavy in my head, vision blurred, eyelids sticky.
"People stare," he started. I looked at him. He gripped the wheel. A smile lingered with practiced ease. "When you don't wear certain things at my church."
Who was this guy? At swim, he never spoke, scarcely looked at me, anyone. Was this his church face? The face he gave at the prospect of fresh meat?
I reached toward the door handle. An impulse to escape crackled through my nerves, to jump and roll onto the asphalt and pavement. I recoiled, and swallowed.
"Lots of, uh, not-Mormon people come?" I asked, to occupy my mind.
"Not really; well, every once in a while, especially for baby blessings and such."
My gaze wandered around the car. I searched for something, anything, about which to inquire.
"I, uh, ok, uh, how long does your church last?"
"The whole thing is three hours," he answered.
My eyes widened.
He giggled. "But we're only staying for the first fifty minutes, for sacrament meeting."
"Sacrament?"
"Oh, I, um, think it's called Eucharist in other churches."
"Oh," I feigned understanding, unfamiliar with both words.
"Don't worry, you don't have to do anything. Just pass the tray along when it gets to you."
Sounded like I did actually have to do something, and his words did anything but assuage my concerns. An excuse, any excuse.
My head spun.
I could tell him I wasn't feeling well. Just tell him you don't want to go. He'll understand, but he looks so excited and happy to have me along. How bad could it actually be? Based on purely what I'd heard about church services, they were either soul-chaffingly boring or more like a rock concert. If I had to judge just based on Michael, it'd be a snooze.
At his home, he opened his front door for me. What a gentleman. I teemed with thoughts of him lifting, and carrying me over some fairytale threshold, bridged creek, awakening me with a chaste, soft kiss.
I followed him, floating down a hall to his bedroom. There was a dress shirt, navy-blue pants, matching belt and shoes, and a navy blue and green paisley tie draped over the edge of his bed. The opposite wall had an unmade bed of the same size.
"Whose--?" I pointed at the bed.
"DJ, my older brother."
"Where's he--?"
"Church already," Michael answered.
"You go to separate churches?"
Michael turned toward the door and reached for the handle. "Same church, separate buildings, and people."
"Hey, wait, uh, can you, uh, stay and help?" I shot out my lower lip and shortened my neck, eyebrows high.
He paused, mouth open, wordless.
"Sorry, I'm, uh, just nervous, and there's, uh, so many, uh, many buttons."
Handling the buttons would be a pain, but manageable. The tie was outside my experience, but I could get totally dressed before I needed help with that. I didn't want him to leave.
Lips together, Michael's edges of his mouth arched up. He squinted. "Sure."
"Thanks."
I discarded my shirt, removed sandals, and pulled off my shorts in about three seconds. Tighty-whities covered my sleeping dick, forming a mound, ostentatious.
Michael's eyes were enormous, though he'd seen it. Maybe it was the setting, the intimacy with me this way, nearly naked, alone together in his room.
"Here." Michael broke the silence. "Um, I'll get the shirt ready."
I smiled and nodded.
Pants up, belt looped, I inserted the tongue to buckle it.
"Wait, before you buckle," Michael said, interrupting. I looked up. "Let's get your shirt on before you buckle so your shirt will tuck in easier."
Eyes affixed on him, I turned my head.
"Just try to keep the pants up--spread your legs a little."
I hold back a smirk and say nothing, despite the impulse to be flirtatious.
"Let's try not to wrinkle the shirt--I just ironed it last night."
He'd buttoned the lowest four buttons and scrunched the bottom to the collar, ringed it around my neck and helped me get my arms through each hole.
Up over my smooth bare chest, he inched with every button. Our eyes met when he fastened the last one over my Adam's apple; he blushed and looked away.
"Your tie." He looked at it, then me, then it, at me again. "Have you--"
"No," I answered, shaking my head.
He flipped the collar up, wrapped the tie behind my neck, and pulled both ends from side to side. His eyes squinted, tongue tip looped over a lip. The tug of his hands, pulling me forward, the zipping and sliding of polyester in my ears, forces me to nearly lose my balance; our faces less than two inches apart. His eyes studied the knot while I soak up his cologne, and a closeup of his walnut brown, combed hair tapering into a distinct widow's peak, with lighter bristles over his eyes, faint freckles dotting his forehead, and burnt orange irises. I wanted to pull him in, press him against me. My limbs wouldn't move. I was a statue, an observer.
"Ok, finally, I think I got it."
He patted both my pecs and looked me over. He swallowed hard, then smiled.
"Only ever tied my own tie, never someone else's." Michael hesitated. "You clean up well." Then he cleared his throat.
His gaze descended and lingered below my belt. "Nothing to be done about that, I guess." His face flushed, "I'm sorry I meant no--"
"It's fine." I said. And it was. He could look as long as he liked, he could do about anything he liked.
***
When we entered the chapel, it hits me how much I expected and yet didn't see. No crosses. No stained glass windows, scarcely windows at all. There's someone playing the organ, but no pipes in sight. Three lines of pews give way to an elevated area where the organ, piano and a podium rest; three mid-aged men sitting to its right.
Michael grabbed the extended hand of an elderly woman garbed in a styleless brown patterned dress with short spiral gray hair and thick bifocal glasses. "Good Morning, Sister Burch."
"G'morning, Michael," she greeted, a low trill in her voice, but stared at me.
She extended her slight, purple-veined fingers to me as well. "Who is your friend?"
"This is Bret, he's visiting."
"Oh, from what ward?" she asked.
"I, uh, I don't, um, I'm not--"
"He's not a member," Michael answered.
She smiled. "Wonderful. I'm Sister Burch. Are you meeting with the missionaries?"
