Orange You Glad We Kissed

Chapter 1Eli, Princess Grace, Alan, and Johnny Orange “Run away with me, Eli.” Ever since I was a little boy, my dream was to find one special man to love. “Yes,” I’d say. “Yes!” Someone sweet-natured and funny, adventurous yet stable, mature but silly, comforting and strong. “To be together for ever and ever.” Back in the late eighties, I’d play out my future with our housekeeper, Bette, and some dolls at the huge woodblock table in the Wentworth mansion’s kitchen. “Because I’ve never known a love like yours.” Bette loved soap opera dialogue. A statuesque blond with an hourglass figure and silvery highlights that might have been the start of some gray, she had the look to be the matriarch of one of the wealthiest families on The Young and the Restless, One Life to Live, or Another World. Bette and I watched all the soaps. She was the grand dame in my world, and the closest thing to a mother I had. “Oh, He-Man, I love you, too,” my African American Sunsational Malibu Ken Doll proclaimed in a deep, masculine voice that hadn’t yet naturally developed for me. “You’re my one and only.” “But what about me, Eli?” G.I. Joe asked from my other hand. I didn’t care how cheesy our made-up stories were as long Bette never told me Ken had to be with Barbie. Because I was spoiled, because my father and several generations before him were rich, I got just about anything I circled in the annual Sears Wishbook catalog, including the dolls. The Black Ken doll was Eli, because it looked most like me, except my hair was straight as a pin and not plastic. “Your beautiful skin is the perfect, richest shade of umber.” Whenever we drew self-portraits, Bette handed me that crayon. “And your eyes and hair are like shiny black pearls.” I asked Santa to bring Bette black pearl jewelry every Christmas and for every birthday after she told me that, so she would never forget me, even if she went away, like my real mother had. An elementary school assignment once gave me a rare excuse and even rarer pluck to enter my father’s inner sanctum unannounced. “Dad, where are our ancestors from?” “We’re originally from Morocco, Eli.” That was all I got, so I backed out of Father’s study and went back to Bette. “Do you think we’re related to Princess Grace?” That bubble was swiftly burst when Bette, far pluckier than I, marched right back to Dad’s study and returned with the M encyclopedia. “Morocco, by Eli Alan Wentworth,” I read from my report. “Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, not to be confused with Monaco, is in North Africa. Its capital is Rabat, its largest city Casablanca.” Bette suggested I not try to do my oral presentation as Humphrey Bogart for my teacher, but she smiled when I did for her. “The official and predominant religion in Morocco is Islam, and the official languages are Arabic and Berber. French is also widely spoken. Moroccan identity and culture is a mix of Berber, Arab, and European.” That paragraph and another page and a half earned me an A, and was pretty much all I learned about my heritage for quite a while. I did, however, make Malibu Ken Moroccan Ken. “Can a guy have two one and onlys?” I asked Bette as we played. “Why not?” she responded. “Awesome! Let’s kiss.” Three quick pecks from plastic lips to plastic cheeks, was that all there was to romance? “What does love feel like, Bette?” I was at an age by then advanced enough to realize not Santa, not my dad, but Bette was the one who put the gifts beneath the tree and filled my stocking. The odds were pretty good she even picked out her own gifts to open with us Christmas morning even if the tag did say From Mr. Wentworth. “Love is hard to describe, Eeyore.” Bette called me Eeyore because, in her words, I was adorable but mopey. “I’ll tell you this, though.” She made me wait while she got up to refill the plate of Oreos and also my milk glass. “When you feel it, you’ll know.” The rosy scent of her perfume tickled my nose when she hugged me to her breast. “Take my word on that.” “Does it feel like when I have to pee?” Bette backed away. “What?” “Sometimes, when Ken, G.I. Joe, and He-Man kiss, I feel something in my underpants.” “Oh, dear.” Bette grabbed a dishtowel to wipe her brow. “You’ll have to ask your father or pediatrician about anything to do with Mr. Happy, Eli. I just take care of your plumpy tummy.” She gave me another cookie. * * * * Within a few more years, thanks to the internet, not my father or pediatrician, I knew exactly why and how Mr. Happy grew bigger and hard. A naked plastic doll didn’t do it anymore, but a half-naked real-life guy could. More importantly, I knew Bette was right about love. It was the summer of my fifteenth year. A hot, stunning sun, a bright blue sky, a rippling lake, the moment I laid eyes on shirtless Johnny Orange at the Berkshire County summer camp for the hearing impaired, I saw only him. He stood over six feet tall, I guessed. Sweating under the late July rays, his shimmer put the lake’s to shame. Johnny’s hair was wavy and red on top, the dripping corkscrews down the nape of his neck almost umber, like my skin. His bare upper torso and legs had a sheen reminiscent of copper, the shine and the hue, with lots of darker freckles dotting his tummy, chest, and shoulders. Another Camp Quick Fingers camper identified him for me. “Hi, J-o-h-n-n-y,” she signed. I added the Orange myself as I watched him bounce a whole, unpeeled one off his forearm with a flick, then deftly catch it in his palm. I counted fifteen flicks and fifteen catches. Johnny Orange never missed. I kept on watching, even once he stopped to pull back the rind. When Johnny stuck a peeled section between his lips, sucked hard, and then tried to collect with his tongue every sugary stream that ran down his arm, I imagined my tongue licking him, and Mr. Happy got hard. Though that had luckily gone unnoticed, my Johnny fixation did not. “Take a picture, Shorty, why don’t you?” Camp Quick Fingers’ head counselor was taller than I. All the counselors were. Many of the campers rose above me, too. Even the younger ones. I was the best signer, though. American Sign Language was one of those life skills I’d learned because I was a dilettante, a dabbler, a bored only child with an aloof single parent with whom I’d never be close. “I want to learn sign language, Father,” I’d declared at age eight. “Go tell Bette.” “I’d like to join the marching band.” “Go tell Bette.” My learner’s permit, running lines for Oliver, a zit on my nose, eventually, I knew the drill. “The school I went to for ASL sent a letter saying a camp in Massachusetts is looking for junior counselors.” I’d put the pamphlet on the kitchen counter. “I think I’d like to apply, Bette.” “I’ll arrange it,” she said. Then she gave me a hug and a cookie. I watched Johnny intently for days at that camp, watched him from afar. Since I mostly worked with the younger day campers, Johnny hadn’t been assigned to any of my groups. Often alone, likely assuming also unseen, he’d sign the same thing over and over, a poem of sorts he was possibly trying to memorize. “F-A-T-E. Fate. Follow always toward eventuality. The Universe guides me. What will be will be.” Johnny recited it in sign, only to the sky and the trees, but it stuck in my mind as well, since I studied him. A bit of a chubby, hairy pubescent coward, for three whole weeks, I could never summon the courage to introduce myself. Our last few looming hours together, my chances were running out. “Hello.” The sign was akin to a salute. “I’m Alan.” Happy to leave my fifteen-year-old prep school persona behind, that summer I was Alan instead of Eli. “I’m—” My moving fingers silenced his. “You’re Johnny Orange.” “Johnny Orange?” “Because every time I see you, you have one.” This time was no exception. “And your hair and eyebrows are orange, too.” Johnny stared at me. “Well, maybe not orange. More…” Imagining my Crayola box from days gone by brought me to, “Rust. Except Johnny Rust sounds more like a folk singer. You’re Johnny Orange, rock star!” Unintentionally, I signed applause with jazz hands, yet another musical genre. It worked, though. Johnny smiled, and I wanted to kiss him. “So, it’s okay if I call you that?” “Lunch!” someone shouted, and a single green lightbulb flashed on and off on the front of several buildings. Green meant mealtime. Yellow meant curfew, time to head to your cabin. Red was saved for emergencies, which also brought us all to the mess hall, so far only as drills. “Get your butt behind the serving counter.” Head Counselor Brandon Something or Other liked to bark orders. “In a minute.” In addition to reading in sign to little ones, I was also often on kitchen and cabin cleaning duty. “Now, dork!” Brandon was old. Like, over twenty, which seemed forbidden and way too grown up back then, in numbers if not decorum and maturity. He was tall and muscular, and his noogies were painful. “Ow!” Needless to say, my big moment with Johnny Orange was cut short. A new assignment later that afternoon, though, had me thinking of one of Johnny’s most oft signed words. Fate. “Yo, Smith.” Eli to Alan, Wentworth to Smith, proper I.D. was never requested in those simpler times known as the nineties. “What?” Stretched out on my cot on one side of the counselors’ cabin, I’d been studying my ASL dictionary. “I don’t feel like moving.” Big Boss Brandon was flat out on his bunk with his hand down his shorts. “Problem is, I’m supposed to have a lesson with Johnny Orange.” I sat up, “Yeah?” excited and also proud my nickname for Johnny had caught on in just a day. “Go do it for me. See if you can make him talk.” Though Brandon supposedly had more training than the rest of us, he was also rather lazy. One of his jobs was to encourage the campers who could speak to do so, and to coax those who never had to give it a try. “Really?” I figured Brandon was joking. “Really.” Until he rolled over toward the wall. “Go!” With dusk less than an hour off, the sun was still at its hottest. Partnering with a thicket of tall trees, it created alternating bright and dark stripes on the gravelly path where I caught up to my crush. “Hi, Johnny Orange.” In just a pair of jeans shorts, I presumed him on his way to the lake again for a dip. “Hello.” Johnny seemed surprised to see me. He smiled—sort of—and signed my name, “Alan.” “Brandon said I can tutor you today.” Most of the other campers and counselors were lined up in front of the mess hall for “Free for all,” the last day of camp smorgasbord when every morsel of remaining food was set out to be devoured rather than chucked. Johnny was headed in the other direction, away from the biggest cabin and eight identical smaller ones. “Is it true, Johnny…what Brandon said?” According to Brandon, Johnny, deaf since birth, had never uttered a word. “That you’ve never spoken?” Johnny shrugged. He was older—eighteen to my fifteen—way taller, with enough reddish fuzz above his upper lip and below his belly button to make him look manly. A self-conscious troll, due to my lack of height and early sprouts of jet black furry patches in seemingly random places, I refused to walk around shirtless. “We could chow down…if you want. Do you, Johnny?” I liked signing his name, drawing the J in the air with my pinky, making a doughnut with my thumb and all four fingers for the O. My index and middle finger, one atop the other pointing, formed the H, and those same two fingers over my thumb with my ring finger and pinky curled under was the N. I had to make that twice. Finally, “hang loose” finished things off as a Y. The name just rolled off my tongue—off my fingers. “Are you hungry, J-o-h-n-n-y?”