Sky and earth are balanced.  When one is moving, the other is still.

Anonymous

PART ONE: CHARLEVOIX

1966-1970

HIGH SCHOOL

(Valentine)

I hunched over a desk in Junior year Study Hall at Charlevoix High School, chin in hand, watching the snow drift outside like fog, on a Tuesday morning.  As the snow brushed against the high, old windows, it made a swishing sound.  Somebody sauntered by in the hall outside.  My index finger traced the old desk's edge.

Valentine sat a few rows ahead of me, her posture erect, reading a book.  Her blonde hair lay like a cape across her pink sweater.  She changed her position, leaning forward a bit.  I heard her sigh.  She flipped her hair back with a hand and rocked once.

Tom, a cousin of mine, looked over at me and waved.  I nodded.  A big semi-truck crashed through the gusts of snow up on Grant Highway, its engines rumbling.  I opened a book and closed it.  Yawning, I read a few paragraphs from David Copperfield.  My seventeenth birthday was coming up.  I wondered what my Mom had planned.

Mr. Kane, the study hall teacher, rose and wandered over to the entrance, peeked out, then returned to his desk.  I read a bit more of the book and got lost in it.  When I looked up, some time had passed.  Valentine swung around and looked at me.

Blood rushed to my face.  My eyes dropped.  I put my finger onto the book and pressed it down.  My breathing quickened.  When I raised my head, Valentine was reading her book again.

I glanced over at my cousin.  He had his eyes shut.  I shook my head.  I felt an urge to get up and walk around, but I knew I could not.  Snow rattled the windowpanes, and the radiators coughed softly.  I shrugged.

After the bell rang for the next class, everyone rose and clattered out of Study Hall.  Valentine walked slowly away.  I followed her and stood watching while she disappeared down the corridor.  As the final bell sounded, I found myself still standing there.  I hurried through the empty halls to my next class.

At the day’s end, I saw Valentine and some of her girlfriends stroll down the hall and out of the school.

Tom came around the corner and joined me as I walked down the street from the school.  We ambled along.  I started to speak a few times, but I did not know what to say.

Tom began telling me a long, complicated joke.  After a while, his voice trailed off.  I noticed he had not finished the joke.  When I twisted to examine him, he gazed into the distance, smiling.

I told him about Valentine in a hurry.  I added that I wanted to ask her out, but I had never been on a date with a girl.  Because I was so intent on speaking, I did not see a snowdrift at one corner and walked right into it, falling head-first.  Without a word, he helped me up.

My cousin listened sympathetically, nodding now and then.  He bent and scooped up some of the now-melting snow.  The sun was hot on us.  He made a snowball and shot it down the street.  Once, he began to interrupt me, but then he stopped himself.

I stopped speaking suddenly.  We found ourselves almost marching down the sidewalk.  We slowed down.  For a time, we walked along silently.  As cars raced past us, they shot up slush.

Tom said that he thought she liked me.  I did not reply, peered at him sharply and shook my head.  We both shut up and hiked faster, reaching my house.  He came in with me.

We lounged around my bedroom, listening to Between the Buttons.  Tom told me again to ask Valentine out.  This time, I nodded.  But I muttered that I still was not sure.  He grimaced and threw a glove at me, then changed the subject.  When I mentioned Valentine again, he threw the other glove at me.

I ran around the field next to the school track, kicking a soccer ball, early the next morning, in second period.  Puffs of white breath shot from me.  The sky was grey, the sun just coming up.  Snow still covered part of the field.  I blocked a kick, angled it away from another player, then kicked it back downfield.

A few girls trotted around the track, dressed in gym uniforms, cinders crunching under their feet. Giggles floated across to me.  I spotted Valentine racing around the far side.

The coach called a few players downfield.  I wandered over to the track, waving at Valentine as she passed.  She slowed down, then jogged over to me.  She wore a skimpy t-shirt and shorts.  Her blonde hair was in long braids.

We started to speak.  Valentine smiled, stepped forward and touched my arm.  She moved back, laughing awkwardly.

I found myself talking easily with Valentine.  She listened, her eyes on mine, and she replied quickly.  We spoke for a long while, shuffling around to keep warm.  I forgot the time.  She had to nudge me, whispering that the coach was yelling for me to return.

I twisted to go.  Then we both spoke, stopped and laughed.  Grinning, I stumbled back to the field.

I scurried around for the rest of the hour, kicking the soccer ball.  Because it was so cold, I cupped my hands and blew into them to keep warm.  I hopped from one foot to the other when I was not running around.  Occasionally, I glanced over at the track.  Once, as she loped by, Valentine turned and waved at me.  I waved back.

After school, I raced home and called my cousin Tom.  I chattered to him about Valentine.  He could not interrupt me.  When I wound down, I realized there was nobody on the other end of the line, so I yelled, summoning him back.  He said that he had put the phone down for a few minutes.  Laughing, he congratulated me.

I ate a hurried supper, wolfing my food down.  Hastily, I scanned the lines for You Can’t Take It with You, a play in which I had a role.  Valentine had a part, too.  Another rehearsal was scheduled that night.  After my Mom shot me a worried glance, I toasted her with my glass of milk.

At about 7 PM, through the falling snow, I galloped back to Charlevoix High School.  Other people entered the building, laughing, chatting.  I skipped up the steps and reached for the knob on one of the doors.  But I suddenly felt nervous, and my hand dropped.  I looked away, then spun around and shuffled back down the steps.  People pushed past me.

Eventually, slowly, I crept inside.  Two students stood onstage, already rehearsing.  I trudged down the slanting aisle and sat in a chair halfway down the row.  My head bowed, I studied my lines.  After a friend shouted to me, I peeked up and nodded.  I heard Valentine's voice, but I did not look up.

When Miss Gifford, the drama teacher, called me to the stage to deliver my lines, I stumbled forward.  I discovered myself standing next to Valentine and blushed.  She started to say something but, after I mumbled, she stopped.  The teacher prompted us with our lines.  Nervously, I repeated them.  She requested me to project my voice.

Valentine said her lines, sounding a bit strained.  I responded woodenly, unable to look at her.  Above us, the lights burned hot.  Sweat dotted my forehead.  My back hurt, so I kept shifting from foot to foot.  We finished our lines and left the stage.

I wandered over to the other side of the auditorium.  Valentine looked at me, her eyes narrowed.  Later, when I tried to speak to her, I stammered and retreated.  Then the rehearsal ended, and I escaped out a side exit.

The older girl tore my penis out of my jeans.  She plopped down on the pile of coats on the bed and curled her short, red skirt up to her hips.  Awkwardly, she twisted her blue panties off.  She waved me over and swallowed my penis, her mouth swelling.  Hurriedly, she pushed my hips away and flopped back. 

After I hoisted myself onto her and punched my penis into her slit, we began seesawing up and down.  She rubbed her cheek across my right shoulder.  “White Room” floated up from the party downstairs, muffling people talking and yelling.  I was drunk.

My friends and I hurried into the dark, crowded Charlevoix High School gymnasium.  Because the Squires, the band up front, played so badly, I held my hands over my ears.  We crowded into a corner.  I produced a bottle of apple wine from inside my coat, and already very drunk, we gulped more wine down.  My friend Joe urged me to ask a girl to dance.  I wandered past the low stage toward a knot of girls.  As I slowly edged over, they watched me. 

A blonde girl chuckled when I came up to them.  Muttering, I pointed towards the floor.  She turned away, laughing with the other girls, then shrugged.  We walked out while the band was still playing and swayed to “The Sultan”.  She gazed over my shoulder blankly.  Then the music cut off with a squawk of feedback.  The blonde looked at me and walked away, without a word, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the gymnasium floor.

A pretty, blonde Senior perched on my lap in the school bus.  She slipped her arm around my shoulders.  This happened when the bus was too full, and there were not enough seats.  Her friend sometimes sat on my lap, too.  It was the high point of my day, I confessed to her.  She smiled brightly.

At the cash register, Jones blushed roughly when she first spotted me. Her head sank, and her fingers froze on the keys.  She touched her short, brown hair as I spoke.  She nodded and laughed.  It was at Brown’s, the store at which she worked.

Later that day, casually, I walked down the sidewalk past Brown’s.  It was a warm spring day with a slight breeze.  I glanced up and caught Jones staring at me through the store window.

At the pool party, Valentine and I lay out tanning.  Other teens splashed in the water.  The sun burned us.  It was early summer, and school had ended.  While we sprawled on the grass, without meaning to, briefly, for the first time, I brushed my hand against Valentine’s thin, brown arm and her long, blonde hair.  She turned shyly in my direction.

Each time I found myself hovering over the phone, I shuffled away.  A car stopped in front of my parents’ house, then passed on.  Outside, every so often, a few clouds darkened the sky.  No one else was home.

Shrugging, I hunched on the couch and reopened the telephone book, my finger underlining a number.  As I dialed, I cleared my throat.  When Valentine answered, I said hello.

She responded excitedly.  My voice a bit high, I asked her out on a date.  She laughed and replied that she had to check with her parents first.  After a minute, she returned and said that it was okay.  We made plans to go out to the park on my family’s tandem bicycle.  I hung up, my palms moist.

Valentine and I set off on the bicycle, rolling down Thomas Street, the following Saturday, a sunny day with blue skies.  We bicycled around town for a time, talking quietly.  While we peddled, it began to rain.  We took shelter in a nearby house, chatting with the people who lived there.  Valentine kept smiling at me.

Valentine flew back down in the swing, her skinny rear twisting from side to side, at Shadrach Bond Park.  Her mouth popped open, and her blonde hair fell away from her shoulders.  She giggled, then clamped her lips together.  Struggling, she dipped back, her petite chest pointed up under her t-shirt and her thin legs angled horizontally.  Her behind twisted again.  I grabbed her slim hips, beneath her bunched jeans her iliac bones hard and sharp, and pushed her up in the swing again.

Valentine and I perched on the wall around the Carmel city swimming pool, talking.  It was a warm summer night.  A hood of stars and a full moon hung above us.  Abruptly, we stopped speaking and stared at each other for a moment.  Then we kissed for the first time.

I sat in Senior year Study Hall that fall, at Charlevoix High School, reading The Scarlet Letter.  Colored leaves floated past the tall old windows.   For no reason at all, I felt myself getting a hard-on.  I squirmed, settling my hands over my lap.

When I glanced up, Valentine, a pom-pom girl, shifted her eyes to me and then away and smiled. She whirled and revolved her hips, her small behind and short maroon skirt swinging around. As she dropped to the gym floor, at the fall Homecoming rally, still smiling, she rocked her ass.

Valentine slipped her tongue in my mouth.  She jerked back and grinned at me.  We sat on a green blanket under an oak in her backyard on a hot, sunny day.  Her parents lived in the country south of Charlevoix.   

After I pulled Valentine down and kissed her, she flipped her leg over mine.  I touched her ass and then her left breast.  She dug her face into my shoulder, muttering that she liked kissing.  But she said that she was not sure touching was okay.  She explained that she went to church.

Her Mom drove Valentine and me on our date.  As we turned a corner, my father waved at us from another car.

Jones kept looking at me.  I saw her out of the corner of my eye.  Impulsively, she pitched forward and pecked me on the cheek.  She glanced around Brown’s hurriedly.

Valentine peered at me, and beneath her green blouse, her thin, little nipples hardened slowly.

She burped petitely and giggled, slapping my hand.

Valentine leant close to me in our teacher’s car.  It was evening.  We sped down the Kennedy Expressway into Chicago, heading to the play Romeo and Juliet at the Goodman Theater.  “Get Back” began playing on the radio.  Smiling, I chatted with her.  She put her hand on mine. 

When I was not watching, Valentine stole my Doors T-shirt to wear.

Valentine sat next to me in fourth-period German class.  I got to see her every day.  She kept touching her hair and licking her lips.

I explained the math problem to the new girl I was tutoring in math.  She had big breasts.  I stared at them.  She frowned at me and sighed.

I sketched Valentine quickly, then handed her the pencil portrait.  She gazed at it with curiosity.  Then she leant forward and pecked me on the cheek.

A warm fall breeze through the library’s open window lifted Valentine’s skirt and revealed her green panties, which briefly covered her lovely rump, then let it drop back down to hide them.

“My Girl” came on my transistor radio.  I said that I had always wanted to dance like the Temptations.  I added that I wanted a purple suit like they wore.  Her eyes shining, Valentine nodded.

One winter afternoon, grey and rainy, I wandered around Valentine’s room.  Dreamily, I explored her jewelry boxes, her books, her stuffed toys.  In her desk, I found a paper upon which she had written my name over and over.

I pressed the flat of my hand on the round of her breast.

As we sat on her porch swing, Valentine whispered to me that maybe we could do something.  I asked her what that meant.  She responded that we could fool around or something.  She ducked her head, turning scarlet.

When I thrust my tongue into Valentine's vagina for the very first time, her hand half-rose to her mouth, and she blinked delicately.  After a moment, her hands slid onto her belly.  She fanned her fingers across her modest navel.

I licked the right lip and then the left lip.  As I sucked hard, they squeezed into my mouth.  It was early spring; the smell of the roses below Valentine’s window filled the room.  My fingers settled onto her oval thighs.  I flicked my tongue against her clit, pushing it around for a time.  Her hair shone now with the juice.  I slid my tongue deep within her.

Valentine rocked her head from side to side, lips pursed, eyes half-closed.  She placed her hands on my shoulders and bent forward.  After I thrust my tongue inside again, I rippled her musky vagina.  I ground at her, my face wet.  She moaned and closed her thighs against my cheeks.  I heard someone come into her parents’ house downstairs.

I bounced my tongue within Valentine.  Quickly, I massaged with it. Then her hips jerked up and down suddenly several times.    She slumped back and listed sideways on her creamy bedspread.  When her hands left my shoulders, she began flushing.  She smiled weakly, long blonde hair strewn across the pillow, small buttocks flattened out.  On her slight, vulnerable breasts her nipples were hard like needles.  She put her teeth jagged against her lower lip.

Valentine leant against me, cooing baby talk, as I drove her around for the first time in my red ’62 Pontiac.  Her head rested on my shoulder.  We rode north up Route 23, the car’s tires hissing on the wet pavement.  Lightning wrinkled across the spring sky.  I mentioned that I was applying to colleges.

Valentine’s pink cotton shirt.  Small white buttons.  Her breasts not large but well-shaped.  Arms slightly muscled and elegant.  Firm and the flesh pale with goosebumps.  Ribs rippling faintly, and a neat line between them, where they divided.  The skin tanned with downy hair.  Her stomach rounded, though only gently.  Her navel a tiny, simple slit.

Valentine’s jeans.  The zip.  Coin slot of cunt. Her belly between narrow, slightly boyish hips.  Ending in long, coltish legs. Her small, soft buttocks.   Ragged tennis shoes.  Long, slender toes.

I pushed my arms under Valentine and carried her, blankets and all, to the bedroom.  Her breath smelled beery.  In the rest of the house, people were drinking and dancing.  She clasped her arms around my neck, struggling slightly.  After I lay down beside her, she propped herself up on her elbows and threw the blanket over me.  Valentine circled my waist with her arms, giggling, her hot breath coming and going, and yanked me closer.  She mumbled that she had never been drunk before.  She yelled that I was a bad boy for getting her drunk.

One Sunday afternoon, I picked at my food, eating dinner with Valentine’s family.  Her Dad kept kidding us.  Her Mom tried to hush him up.  Each time Valentine rubbed her shoulder against mine.  After the meal, her mother herded us out into the sunroom and left us alone.  Grass waved in the meadows below.  She and I held hands self-consciously.  When I tried to talk about Travels with Charley, a wonderful book I had discovered, she shrugged and yawned.  She pulled her hand from mine and said that she really did not like reading, except for the Bible.

Valentine dashed up to me, grinning, in front of Charlevoix High School, that fall.  She had, it appeared, gotten shiny, brand-new braces.  Her thin, pink tongue rested against them, lifted and fell.

In my dream, Valentine’s eyes were just about closed.  In her open hand, she held a dewy yellow hyacinth.

Valentine’s behind was boyish compared to other girls.  Each cheek was small and distinct from the other.  They touched only in the middle and hung in circles over her thighs.  In her back pocket was tucked a big, blue comb.  Her spine curved up from it.  Her perineum emphasized her hips.  Her old jeans were tight.  A red patch held up part of one cheek.

Valentine and I sat on a huge log, our legs dangling, on a hill above the Sycamore River.  I glanced around.  We were alone.  It was cloudy and cool: spring weather.  Daisies flowered around us.

Valentine smiled nervously, then settled her hand on my crotch.  Blushing, she ducked her head.  After she unzipped my jeans, she pulled out my soft cock.  She smiled again and looked away.  For a moment, she squeezed my penis hard.

Valentine began pumping my cock gently.  Murmuring, her eyes half-closed, she rested her head on my thigh.  For a long time, she continued to move her hand up and down.  Then she glanced at me.

Valentine licked the tip of my cock with her warm tongue, then retreated.  I pulled her hand away, replaced it with mine and began jerking my penis.  She yanked my jeans down and lapped at my balls, giggling.  When her hair got in the way, she straightened and tied it back.  I asked her to unbutton her blouse, and she did.  She was not wearing a brassiere.

Valentine pushed my hand aside, slipped her mouth over the tip of my penis and bobbed her head up and down awkwardly.  Then she slid off the log and stood in front of me.  Blushing again, she folded her hands over her eyes.  She dropped her hands and lapped against the tip of my penis.  When I seized my now stiff cock and began stroking it, she bent forward and sucked on it.  Then she leant back.

I came suddenly on Valentine’s slight breasts.  She flinched, closed her eyes and squealed.  She waved both hands.  After a minute, I handed her a handkerchief.  She wiped her chest off hurriedly.  I pulled my jeans up and zipped them.

After a time, I slipped off the huge log.  I squeezed Valentine’s slight breasts, the hard nipples pushing into my palms.  I stroked her stomach, for a minute.  As I tickled her armpits, she giggled.  Over and over, my hands slid over her belly and whisked across the inside of her thighs.  She whined huskily.  My hands slid onto her small buttocks and squeezed tightly. 

I spun Valentine around and propped her up against the log.  Gently, I massaged the small of her back.  Then I unbuckled her jeans and dragged them down.  Between her splayed legs, under her rose-colored panties, around her wet vagina and its hair, my fingers moved in circles.  I slid them up and down the hard, unfolded lips, again and again, and inside eventually.  Wonderingly, I reached up and touched her engorged clit.  She quivered, stretched tight and quivered again. 

Valentine rose on her tiptoes and flung her hands out to steady herself on the log.  She squealed and hopped up and down on my fingers.  I laughed softly.  As I manipulated the lips of her vagina, she panted.  She pushed back against me suddenly, then turned and crowded into my arms, sobbing.  I held her for a time, gazing out onto the Sycamore River.

After a few minutes, Valentine pulled her jeans and panties back up.  We sank down onto the grass, leaning against the log.  She nestled beside me, her head on my shoulder.  Then she dug a piece of gum out of her pocket, popped it in her mouth and began chewing. 

After a time, Valentine grinned and spat the gum into her hand.  She unzipped my jeans and replaced the gum with my soft penis.  Her cheeks wavering, she sucked on my cock, then pumped her mouth up and down slowly.  Finally, she sat up and popped the gum back in her mouth. 

Chomping on the gum noisily, her lips smacking, Valentine gulped my hardening penis back in.  She bounced her mouth up and down.  Giggling, she ejected me and buried her face between my thighs.  When she peeked up at me with one eye, she spied the wad of pink gum stuck to my rolling, half-erect penis.  Blushing, she flicked the gum back in her mouth with her pink tongue.  She smiled at me hugely.

I woke early in the morning to discover she had left me a present.  I opened the walnut box on my table and, beneath some sprays of bush-clover, found a set of children's paints in gorgeous, primary colors.

Valentine lay curled in the crook of my arm, sleeping.  Her warm, steamy breath tickled my neck.  With amazement, I read “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”.  I woke her to tell her about the story.  She peered at me grumpily and shook her head.  She muttered that she had told me that she did not like to read. 

I kissed her.  It was morning.  Her mouth needed cleaning.

In English class, Valentine darted her small foot against mine.  She smiled, her china-blue eyes dropping down.  I smiled back.  Grinning, she said something to someone else.  She bumped her foot into mine again.

Valentine blushed at the mere sight of my penis, though she had seen it before.  She got very red.  Laughing, she covered her face with both hands.  Her rounded eyes peered through her fingers.  She bent her fingers and placed the tips of them over her mouth.

Miss Gifford directed a girl to cross the stage.  I had laid down on the stage, for my role in The Lottery, the spring school play.  The girl objected, however, because she had to step over me, and she was wearing a skirt.  So, I flipped over.  I heard her chuckle.  As she stepped over me, her foot grazed my ass.

In one hand, I held a brush.  I flipped around to examine my portrait of Valentine more closely.  Oil paint sprayed all over her breasts.  She yipped.

Since she had her period, she gave off a vivid smell.

Ann, a friend, came up to me at my school locker.  She asked me to wear a black armband because of the war.  It was May Day.  Nervously, I said that I did not want to.  She nodded, smiled brightly, touched me on the shoulder and walked away.

After I told a dirty joke, Valentine froze.  She avoided my eyes, got beet-red and turned away.

I leafed through the Life magazine article about Peter Max.  I adored his paintings.  Jones had handed me the issue, appearing hopeful.

Valentine slurped at my penis.  She popped up and laughed outright at how it throbbed.

After I grabbed Valentine, she hugged me, snaking her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist.  She stroked my shaggy hair.  Then, child-like, she kissed me on the tip of the nose.  Her lips parted, and her braces appeared.

Valentine said that she was not comfortable with me.  When I replied that I did not know what that meant, she shrugged and turned away.  She muttered that she did not want to talk about it.

I asked Valentine what made her uncomfortable.  She said that she did not know.  Something about me.  After I said that would not help me, she shrugged again and responded that she was sorry.

Then Valentine murmured that I was a bad influence.  That I drank, and that I touched her.  That it was against what her church taught her.

I said that I did not know what to do.

Jones smiled abruptly, uncontrollably, leaning next to me on the counter at Brown’s.  She grabbed the hem of her cotton jacket and wove it back and forth.  When her shoulders and hips flared back, her pencil-tipped breasts arched forward.  She shoved her hands in her back pockets and jerked her chest from side to side self-consciously.  Her lips opened and closed, twitching. She touched her short, dark hair.  As she went on thrusting her breasts out, I shook my head.  I stepped away from her.

In my Pontiac, Valentine bent down and dabbed at penis with her tongue.  A light up on her parents’ porch flicked on.  Her head lifted.  No one appeared on the porch.  After her head dropped back down, she sucked my cock in slowly.

Nervously, I left the group of boys lounging against the wall.  It was the end-of-the-year dance.  We had just graduated.  The Breakers, the High School band up on the stand, broke into “Standing in the Shadows of Love”.  Dancers milled around, a few taking a step or two.  I watched the girls, then tried to get over to them.  One of them eyed me.  The crowd closed, though, and prevented me.  For a minute, I wandered around, then returned to my friends.

Valentine crouched on the bed, her long, blonde hair pulled back, her knees pressed against her small chest, reading the Sunday Tribune comics, nibbling on an index finger, in her parents’ home.  I had brought her some hyacinths.  She ignored me.  I picked up the paper and studied the color of the Prince Valiant strip.  Outside, summer rain pelted the windows.  I put my hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.

The morning Jones’ family was scheduled to move, I walked over to her house to say goodbye.  I found her sitting outside on the steps.  She rose when I approached and greeted me, her eyes moist.  I stooped down and plucked out a few blades of grass.  The grass was wet with early morning dew.  As I straightened up, Jones, red-faced, slapped me.

I kept putting my feet in Valentine’s lap in her living room, but she kept shoving them off, making faces and nasty comments.  She yelled at me to stop.

The girl in the St. Peter’s choir began singing in a soft, hesitant alto.  She stopped, however, reddened and bowed her head, her thin, white shoulders caving in.

I sat in Valentine’s living room with her and her parents, trying to make conversation.  Now and then, one of us glanced out of the farmhouse window and over the rolling hills beyond.  It was early summer.  The blue sky held a few clouds.  Her mother grimaced and tried to be pleasant.  Valentine remained silent.  She scowled, then stormed out of the room.

On Tuesday, I drove over to Valentine’s home to say goodbye.  I was off to attend Northern Illinois University.  When she came out of her house, I said that I wanted to stay in touch.  She shook her head.  Looking sad, she muttered that she did not want to.  She said goodbye.