Paranoia and worry set in again as self-debasement came so easily to me.
Julian pulled the old truck into an abandoned looking parking lot, paved with asphalt, but covered in a dusting of sand. The absence of other vehicles pointed to the fact that it was the middle of the week and most people had responsibilities to attend to. After shutting the engine off, Julian swiveled his hips on the bench seat and looked at me. I could feel his eyes boring into me and tried to decide what to do. I have avoided his glances during the entire trip, spending most of my time staring into the landscape of my material-covered thighs, but now he was pointedly looking at me and I knew he wanted to ask me something or tell me something, most likely to get my head out of my ass and get out of the freakin' truck.
"Jody?" he said quietly. "Do you not want to be here?"
Wow, what a loaded question. So much of me did want to be here...close to him, as close as I could get, but the rational, reasonable part of me kept the rest of the hormone train in check. "Uh..."
GOD, what a fucking dweeb he must think I am...I can't even get a sentence out around him.
"No, not really." When I'd said it, I suddenly realized that I'd just expressed that I didn't want to be there without meaning to. The look on Julian's face was staggering. The ever-present lightness that was his normal carriage and demeanor had been wiped away as if I had slapped him. "Oh, I mean, no I don't "NOT" want to be here." I stuttered out finally.
"Okay, then why do you look so unhappy? Is it something I did or said?"
My hands were resting in my lap and Julian reached out and laid his warm, tanned hand on top of mine. His touch made me wriggle in my skin. I know I shuddered visibly. He pulled back as if burned and I sought out his eyes...confusion riddled deep in the seas of amber and greenish brown where I could easily get lost. He slowly turned, pulled the keys from the ignition and opened the driver's door, stepping out onto the pavement and avoiding any more of a confrontation with me. I sat, unmoving for a moment, trying to think of a way not to screw this whole day up a million different ways, when a knocking shook me from my contemplation. Julian stood there, his chest bare and radiant in the morning sun, holding up a camera. He mouthed "You coming?" and with a feeling of certain dread, I extricated myself from his battered little truck.
***
All the way across town, I had become so immersed in thoughts of what Jody might look like in a pair of boardies or a Speedo that I almost missed the turn for the neighborhood he lived in. The feeling was short lived though because when I finally made it to his front door; he greeted me with a face that looked like a five year old who had just lost his new puppy. I had expected him to be shy and a little uneasy, demure and embarrassed, as he would no doubt look me up and down as he always did, but this...this I hadn't expected.
I tried to be cordial as I opened the door to the truck for him, asked him if he liked the CD and if the air was all right, but nothing I said made him look at me. Maybe the way he gazed at me in high school was not what I had always taken it for, lust or need, but simply teenaged curiosity or envy. I was always so sure of myself then, had to be to keep the rest of the high school dweebs from catching on, but my cockiness could have been the undoing of what I thought was going to be an easy hook-up now. It seemed as though Jody was always devouring me with his eyes in the locker room, back then. Of course, he only allowed himself the limited gaze, which lingered longingly on my cock if I was stripped, but what I had seen had always looked like desire.
When we got to Verona, I pulled into my favorite spot and turned to look at him. His eyes averted... his face screwed up into what seemed to me to be a scowl. This was definitely, not how I had planned for this to go. When he said that he didn't even want to be here, that's when I knew that I had been wrong about him and then when he flinched as I touched him, I was sure. Jody was straight and he couldn't even stand for me to touch him. Resigned to this new realization, I got out of the truck and proceeded to get into my gear. I couldn't just call the whole think off now and sulk home, he was here with me and I might as well get in a good session on the swell that looked wicked today. After pulling on my wetsuit and grabbing the camera out of a toolbox under the tarp in the bed of the truck, I rapped on the back window of the cab, Jody jumped and gathered himself together and got out.
"You ever use one of these before?" I asked him, trying to conceal my disappointment that we were not going to be hooking up any time soon.
"No," he said looking at me sheepishly.
I wondered why he looked so guilty or was it sad? Was it really that bad for him to be here with me? I know I was a pain sometimes, my old man had made it quite clear on many occasions lately, but I didn't think I was so much of a prick that even a straight guy couldn't hang with me. Jody finally made his way around the end of the truck and came up next to me where I showed him how to work the camera. There was no light adjustment, the camera was not that expensive, just something I used to mess around with, so it didn't take me long to show him the in's and out's of it. I told him to stow his backpack under the tarp and only bring what he needed.
Grabbing my board, I headed for the surf, kicking little bits of sand out of my way as I walked. If any of my surf friends had been with me, they would have automatically known I was bumming. I love the feel of sand between my toes, I relish it, the warmth of the tiny granules permeating my skin and leaving a residual strand of comfort shooting up my body. So the fact that I was pushing it out of my way this morning was more ominous than even I could know. Stopping short of the incoming tide, I bent to hook the leash of my board to my ankle. The rip could be strong on days like this, the surf was coming in offshore and the waves were hooking and curling in what we called a corduroy effect. It was slightly overcast out along the shore and I could see some sick waves out further beyond the break. That was further than I usually went, especially by myself, but I was feeling adventurous in the light of my now "straight" friend and figured I'd impress him with some air once I was out in the thick of the swells.
As I walked into the surf a few feet, I gazed out to the open ocean and admired its beauty for a while before dropping my board on the surface. This board was dinged and pitted from years of use, but it wasn't my competition one, so I just used it whenever I was "zoning" for myself. As I paddled out to the rim of the first set of waves, I looked back to see Jody covering his nose with the white creaminess of zinc oxide and pulling on a hat that reminded me of something a gardener would wear. His glasses didn't seem to want to stay in place now and I could see him constantly pushing them up his nose.
I caught the first swell, grabbing the rails of my board and pushing myself up, trying my best to concentrate on the wave and not on Jody. It was a decent ride and I caught the end of the barrel and rode it into the soup (the white water, after the wave breaks for all you non-surf types). If this had been a weekend, the line up would have been harsh, people dropping in on other people's rides and just all out chaos, but today the water was empty, but for a few people down the shore a bit and I was able to carve out some really heavy rides. After a while of just "zoning" for me, riding everything that came by, a particularly knarly swell caught me and I got locked in and hit the impact zone really hard. It shook me up a bit and I just swam around for a few minutes trying to bring my board up to where I could slide on again.
Once I'd recovered a bit and against my instinct and better judgment, I paddled out a little further. The tubes on these waves were huge and heavy for this part of the country. We didn't get serious ones here like in Australia, Indonesia or the Pipeline in Hawaii for gods' sake, but these waves were pretty sick for this part of the country. Usually a group of about six of us surfed these monsters together, staying a good distance apart but still snaking around the same wave. This was dangerous and taboo in the outside surfing world, but it was something we learned growing up together and so it was nothing out of the ordinary for any of us. I saw the perfect swell and paddled out to it. As I caught the curl, deep in the heart of the barrel, I hit a healthy slash and sprayed white surf behind me. I was completely stoked, this stuff was awesome, and I could ride all day. Suddenly I wished that Keith had been here with me to appreciate my work, he would never believe the wicked ride I was taking. Just as I was anticipating the curl to break in front of me, my back foot slipped and I was off balance, I had been preoccupied and hadn't waxed my board this morning. After I righted myself with the balance in my arms, I tried a cutback and ended up being worked over by the wave instead. The force of the rip tide was strong and I felt myself being pulled further and further along by the leash linking my right foot to my board. I knew that if I didn't do something soon I could drown and even though I was bummed about this whole thing with Jody and my life pretty much sucked ass at home, I didn't think I wanted to die.
***
How many pictures could I take on this thing, I wondered. Julian was in the surf before I even knew what I was doing. The sunscreen on my nose kept making an imprint on the back of the camera as I tried to focus in on him and my glasses were incessantly slipping up and down my nose. As I fiddled with the camera, getting used to it, I found the button for it to zoom and watched, more than shot photos as Julian rode the waves with precision and flair. I did take a few pictures of him, once while he was in the middle of a wave I snapped several shots in a row. Julian was so gorgeous, so masculine, so graceful out there, perfect in every way, so why if he was so perfect couldn't I just allow myself to think about him in that way. It was mostly self-preservation. I knew if I allowed myself to dwell on the feelings I'd had for Julian for so long, that I'd drown in them, which would eventually lead to me outing myself to my family; not something that I was ready to do, not even something that I was convinced of myself. Was I really gay? Did my attraction to this blondish surfer hunk betray my inner self? The more I thought about it and the more I watched him out there in the water, the more I felt the doom of certainty circling my conscience.
Coming back out of my reverie, I noticed Julian go head over heels off his board into a giant, crashing wave. I waited for a moment, looking for him in the pounding white foam of the surf, but all I could see was wave after wave of green-blue water, cascading onto itself from miles of more incoming waves. I dropped the camera and headed for the water. I wasn't the world's greatest swimmer, but if he was hurt, I had to do something. As my feet hit the incoming tide, I realized I was still fully dressed. I toed out of my shoes and socks, pulled off my hat, shirt and glasses and tossed them a ways away from the shoreline. I hurried out into the water. It was cold, not what I expected and as I tried to walk through it, I felt as though I was weighted down. I couldn't move as fast as I wanted to and as I looked around to see if there was anyone else on the beach who could help me, I saw Julian's surfboard bob up and down in the surf to my right.
"Oh my god, Julian," I screamed out to the mostly deserted coastline.
What am I going to do?
I shuffled over with the water up to my chest and began to swim towards the board. When I reached it, I pulled on it and swam as close to shore as I could. Looking behind me finally, I saw that he was also bobbing in the surf, motionless, lifeless. Tears sprang from my eyes and mixed with the salt water on my skin. I stood up and went over to his body. All I could think of was what am I going to do without him? The thought occurred to me finally though that there was a possibility that he was not dead. I bent down and put my hand on his neck, trying to locate the staccato of his heartbeat beneath his skin. I felt something, not sure of what I was feeling, but at least it was something and that was a good sign.
