S p  I1 g   (from preceding page)

car and head out to Kathy's parents’ old
farmhouse. We get out some maple syrup
and start heating it up. Of course, it's just
past sugaring season, so there's nothing in
the evaporator; it's not like real sugaring
off, but close enough for someone who's
never seen it. We're sitting around drinking
beer, and we get the syrup hot, and we run
out and get some snow and bring it inside
and drizzle the syrup onto it, so that's the
works, some dill pickles, the maple candy,
lots of beer, and we've even got some
homemade doughnuts, although you're
supposed to cook them in the boiling sap in
the evaporator, but we don't have that.

"Well, everybody's having a good
time, I guess, but this kid David seems to be
kind of down, a little bit out of it, preoccu-
pied with something. I can't remember this
girl's name, but she's supposed to be his
date, she's real nice, but he doesn't seem to
be that interested, he seems sort of out of it.
Well, honey, it didn't take me too long to
recognize those symptoms.

"Remember, I was only eighteen at
this time, and I'd only come out a couple of
years before. It's not easy, in a small town
like that, when you don't want everybody to
know. And everybody does know if anyone
does. And I still had to live with my Dad, so
I couldn't be too obvious. It was a lot easier
the next year, when I moved on campus and
didn't try to go home all the time.

"We all drank a lot of beer and fooled
around with the maple syrup, and then we
decided it was getting late, and all the stores
were closed, so if we're going to have
enough to drink, we're going to have to go
up to Canada to get some ale, because they
stay open late up there... This is the kind of
crazy-assed thing we did those days.

"So we all pile into Evan's car and we
start driving up to Canada. It's about a 45-
minute drive from the farm to the border,
and it seems like Evan wants to make it in
half an hour. It's about midnight, and foggy
in the low spots where there's water, and
Evan's driving like a bat out of hell on this
winding two-lane road, so I break out the
last of the beer and say what the hell.

"We went flying up across the border
and found a kind of roadhouse where we
stopped and occupied a table, where we
proceeded to get even more drunk.

"Just going up there was enough, so
after a couple of bottles of Labatts, we got
back into the car and wound our way back
down home. By now it's pretty late, and we
drop off the girls, and then we go getmy car,
and I say I'll take David home.

"By now the moon is out, a big full
moon, lighting up the valleys, lighting up
the snow in the woods and in patches on the
fields, the rolls of fog bright in the hollows,
and we drive around for awhile, talking
some dreamy talk. Finally I stopped by the
side of the road by a water-
fall, where the water's

in Childhood

Support/Therapy Group for
Women Sexually Molested

really gushing from the
spring nmoff.

"We get out of the car
and sit on a stone wall by
the waterfall, and the kid

5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

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Hollie Hurewitz, MACP, CCMHC and
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Some insurance accepted.

suddenly starts crying, and
I put my arm around him,

January 1991

and ask him what's wrong, and he says
nothing, it's just so beautiful. And it is: the
rushing water in the moonlight, the clear,
cold, liquid air, it's all incredibly beautiful.
And he's beautiful too, so I wrap my arms
around him, hold him close, and he
snuggles down in my arms and puts his face
against my neck, and when he stops crying
he just breathes next to me."

Jim turned to look at me. "And then
you know what happened."

"No, what?" I let him go on.

"Then I threw him in the back seat of
the car, and tore off his pants, and sucked
him off right there by the side of the road."

He stopped. I waited.

"Actually, I started feeling all big
brotherly and comforting. I knew just what
he's feeling. Sol just held him, and com-
forted him, and we stayed there for a little
while, and then I drove him back to his hotel
and dropped him off. The next day he and
his family left."

"And you never saw him again, I sup-
pose," I said.

"Oh, I saw him again all right. That
summer he came back, and I took him onan
overnight trip to the shore, just the two of
us, and we fucked, sucked, and marnboed
the whole weekend, believe me."

"I thought you said he was just coming
out."

"Yeah, well."

Sol heard the part I didn't want to hear,
after all. I could have done without the
rhyming details. He doesn'ttalkto me much
about this part of his life. I don't ask much.

There was a scratching noise: the cat
was at the window, wanting tocome in. Jim
went to the side door and let her in. A cold
draft swept into the room. That cold, liquid
air full of the smell of melting snow.

 

Susan Franz, M.A.
Kate O'Brien, M.S.
Psychotherapists

Indlvldual
Couples
Famlly
Group

15 Pincecrest Drive Essex Junction, VT 05452 802/878-4399

 
 

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