Free Message of Love by Jim Provenzano

at a softball game. As Kevin bent over the engine, Everett changed the fruity chant to “melons.”
    I chortled. The afternoon sun made Kevin’s thighs shine, and although Everett wore sunglasses, I knew that his eyes bore a lascivious glance, which I shared.
    That was because we had both ‘shared’ Kevin, in a way. As a childhood neighbor over in Forrestville, he and Everett had ‘messed around’ a few times. And during his painful hospitalization after his accident, Everett had basically offered up Kevin as a form of amusement. That a few of our stoned evenings together had taken an occasional, if not one-sided, sexual turn left Kevin unfazed, even though he considered himself straight, with a series of girlfriends to prove it. I wondered how our lives might have changed if I’d known that my handsome high school track teammate was open to the occasional blow job.
    “That should do it,” Kevin wiped his grease-stained hands on a rag as he turned to us with a confused glance. “What?”
    “Nothing,” I shrugged.
    “You two were checkin’ out my butt.”
    “It was hard not to,” Everett argued.
    “Hey, I know we have, you know, history. But I don’t go there.”
    “Of course not,” Everett held his hands up.
    “Yet,” I added.
    “Well, if you can keep from molesting me, you’re welcome to swing by and party a bit before you head out. That is, if you’re not the old married couple you act like.”
    Everett gasped. “We’re not old!”
    The van up and running, we drove over later that day. Although his younger brother was also home, Kevin seemed to have the rule of his family’s house. Set down the street from the Forrester’s larger now-leased mansion, the Muir’s white neo-Colonial, with columns on the porch, remained one of the more prominent homes in the upper-crust neighborhood. The interior, however, displayed a modern style with abstract paintings and shag carpeting in some rooms.
    A Rick Derringer album played in the den as Everett and I sat in haze of pot smoke, pondering the remains of a pizza box.
    While it was nice to talk about “old times,” even though it was only a year ago that we’d been in high school, it felt odd to return to the same room where I’d serviced Kevin.
    Over the blare of the music, we let our host ramble on about his newfound interest in working at his father’s car dealership, usually selling, but occasionally getting his hands dirty with repairs. He also bragged about his new girlfriend.
    “I think she’s the one,” Kevin said, nodding to convince himself. “It’s been, almost as long as you two’ve been together. Hey, you are somethin’ else, by the way.” He stood still, took us in with a glazed look of admiration. “You know, it’s too bad you can’t really get married. I could throw you a helluva bachelor party.”
    “With you as the entertainment?” Everett teased.
    Kevin shrugged, briefly thrust his hips as if it were a possibility, then more casually swayed to the music. “I definitely owe you. There was this guy, single, lookin’ over the compacts, but I kinda worked the charm a little,” –another suggestive thrust– “Then I did whadyou call it, the gay radar.”
    “Gaydar,” Everett corrected.
    Kevin pointed a finger in agreement. “Anywhose, I laid on the charm, got him to get behind a new Corvette; jet black.”
    “Did you give him a test drive?” Everett leered.
    Kevin hooted. “Damn near.”
    Somewhere in my stoned haze, my befuddlement at the course of the conversation made me wonder if we should leave or start taking off our clothes. Were we supposed to admire his known cockteasing talents, and thereby admire him more directly?
    “Say, how’s the job doing?” Kevin asked me as he offered another bong hit. I declined.
    “Okay,” I said, a bit hazy. “Planting season’s mostly done. I helped a few folks put some small shrubs in; that and mulching, selling leaf blowers.”
    My part time job at the Wolfe Nursery