Orange You Glad We Kissed

Chapter 2-2

“Umm…”

Mr. Mumford offered me some advice then to file away with Bette’s “If it was meant to be, someday it will,” and Rosianne’s “Fate said don’t settle, Eli. Hold out for the orange.”

“The next boy you have s*x with, Eli,” he suggested, “either here or at college in the fall, you might want to ask his name beforehand, just in case it’s good.”

* * * *

I likely could have gotten into any Ivy League university in the country just by virtue of my father’s bank account and connections. My academic record, extra-curricular activities such as band, chorus, drama, swimming, rowing, tennis, and baseball, plus community service and my jobs at Camp Quick Fingers, and picking and packing oranges two winters and two summers made me feel as if I was getting in on my own merits, though.

The home of the Tigers in New Jersey appealed to me—Princeton—the orange and black. I carried along with my luggage and bedding a short list of names I’d collected throughout the rest of my days in high school, a bunch of guys with whom I’d messed around there or at the club.

“I’ve never been with a Black guy.” If I heard that once, I heard it ten times. “Is it true what they say?”

My own research was still pending.

“Latin guys are good in the sack.”

I got that one, too. Whether or not I lived up to anyone’s stereotypes or hopes concerning their assumptions about my ethnicity, of that I wasn’t certain. The words “I’m Moroccan” never passed my lips, though, mostly because anything I did with those lips didn’t seem meaningful enough to merit my true self being present, even as one of my greatest regrets in life was leaving “Johnny” to remember me, if he was, as “Alan Smith.”

* * * *

The first of my two Princeton dorm mates entered the room on orientation day like a hurricane. Cooke, Khatri, Wentworth; our names were written on strips of white paper affixed to the wall outside the door. I knew which one I was.

“Dude! We’re in college!” When Cooke or Khatri picked me up off the floor and spun me around in a circle, something in his pocket crinkled.

“Put me down!” I giggled and didn’t fight too hard.

The guy looked a little bit like Leonardo DiCaprio’s Romeo with wilder hair. Sitting through the flick a few months earlier, when Leo kissed Claire Danes, I closed my eyes and envisioned him smooching Harold Perinneau. Tall, lean, but obviously strong, with blond, bouncy curls that boinged in every direction, my Leo lookalike offered up the Shaka sign as his very first greeting to our third dorm mate, Jatin Khatri, who entered moments after my feet returned to dorm room tile.

“Hi. I’m Jatin.” He identified himself with a slight bow and a handshake. I’d figured the blond guy was Cooke, even though last names, like mine, didn’t always spell out one’s heritage and origins.

Jatin was a quiet one. Cooke, not at all. His smile was huge, all pearly whites and orange lips.

“What ya been eating?” Cheetos, Doritos, something with orange powdered cheese that came in a crinkly package would explain the sound when we’d embraced. I had to know.

“What’s that, bro?”

“Orange.” I couldn’t stop looking. “On your face and your fingers.” I noticed the residue on the left hand, leading me to wonder if Cooke might be a southpaw.

“These fingers?” He was suddenly beside me, and his fingers were right in my face. “Guess.” He put them up to my nose. “Detective Westworth.”

“Wentworth.” I corrected him, backed up just a little, and took a deep sniff. “I’m not getting spicy.”

“Wanna taste?” When Cooke swiped his thumb across my lips, I almost got a hard-on. “Lick your lips.” He was close again. “Lick mine, if ya want.” I kind of did want.

“First, tell me your name.” I’d forgotten since reading it in my Princeton room assignment paperwork.

“Casey. And you are?” Casey must have forgotten mine, too.

“Eli. And it’s definitely Cheetos.”

“You’re correct, Eli, which is a real bummer, because now, I guess you don’t need to kiss me.” Casey was quite bold, quite forward. “Puffs or crunchy?” And still quite close.

“That’s a case for another day.”

I backed away again, figuring Casey was just a goof, or maybe even some kind of bully. “Smell my fingers” was something a bully would say, and “Lick my lips” could result in a beatdown if he who said it wasn’t serious, and he to whom it was said licked. On the other hand, if I ever did put my lips to Casey Cooke’s, at least I knew his name, in case he ran off afterward.

* * * *

As our first couple of hours together passed, Casey didn’t seem like a bully. He watched The Young and the Restless with me, and I gave him a crash course in Genoa City citizenry.

“Who’s that?”

“David Kimball.”

“Who’s that?”

“Neil Winters.”

“Who’s that?”

“Miguel Rodriguez.”

Casey only asked about the men. “Nice.”

He downed two more individual bags of Cheetos—crunchy—proclaiming an addiction. Casey willingly shared them, though, and flashed his winning smile and an orange fingered “hang loose” gesture at least twenty more times at people who passed by our open dorm room door. Mostly to the guys.

Jatin remained Casey’s polar opposite. I’d noticed him praying almost immediately upon his arrival, and later, toward evening, he invited me to join him as he readied to pray again.

“I’m not Indian.” It was a rather awkward response, I knew. “I mean, what religion?”

“Hinduism,” Jatin told me. “Are you Islamic?” he asked.

“I’m nothing, really.”

“Eli, you are something. Even if you do not practice a religion, you can be a kind soul and a blessing to this Earth.”

“That’s a very nice way to look at the world, Jatin.” I filled in my family history, as much as I knew. “Islam is the main religion in Morocco, from what I’ve read, but that’s all I have to go on. I’ve never practiced.”

“You are always welcome to pray with me.” Jatin had an easy, friendly smile.

“Even if I’m not Hindu?”

“I think it would be fine.” He explained to me how he was taught to pray several times per day. “The act of praying is called puja. We give thanks and show reverence by making an offering to our deities, most often flowers or fruit.”

“Fruit?”

According to Jatin, it was a way to show sacrifice and self-control. “It helps build strength of mind and character, and also, giving something sweet will make your heart as sweet as that you offer.”

“I like that.”

So, I prayed with Jatin, offering an orange and gratitude for all I had. At the same time, I threw in a little request. Perhaps selfishly, I asked for several things: a good year at Princeton; help and prosperity, health, safety, hope, and comfort for all the citrus workers for whom picking and packing was necessary for survival, not just a whim; and then I asked to be reunited with Johnny, a rather large ask for my very first time praying, I knew.

* * * *

In the days ahead, while Jatin grounded himself in his religion, Casey was ready to get down another way.

“We have to throw a party this weekend. A welcome party.”

Apparently smart as f**k, Casey told me he’d been admitted to Princeton on a full academic scholarship. But there was more to college than academia every collegiate knew, and Casey Cooke had something on his mind other than Cheetos and hitting the books.

“We’re freshman, Casey,” I told him. “No one will come to one of our parties.”

* * * *

My prediction was as wrong as half the answers on my initial biology exam. People came to Casey’s party, many drawn in by his soon to become infamous invitations with single letters and images cut from magazines to spell out the theme and planned activities in a Rebus puzzle design. The first flyer Casey printed off and posted all over campus featured a picture of raw hamburger, an ampersand, then gr, a plus sign, and a photo of a hot shirtless dude going down on a hot dog. The rest of the message possibly spoke to one of his fetishes or maybe just something he thought would make a good ice breaker. There was a librarian type making the finger to lip “Shh” plus the letter O. Then came a Y and a Princeton rower clipped from a brochure with a big red circle around his oar. The last image was two feet, which made the whole puzzle read Meet and Greet! Show Your Feet! With the addition of Give us stuff to drink and eat! in Casey’s handwriting, a chant was born that rang out often during the first of many rowdy college shindigs.

* * * *

About an hour into our fifth, a Halloween toga party, Casey initiated a game near and dear to my heart. “Let’s play Pass the Orange!”

Everything he said was rewarded with ear-splitting cheers, maybe because of his enthusiasm, or maybe because he wasn’t wearing anything under his bedsheet and also not particularly careful about how he moved.

“Your ass is showing.” I got cheered for pointing that out and jeered when Casey covered it.

Supplying oranges and orange juice at our bashes was all on me. Being college, everyone else brought the vodka. As Casey opened the bag, my mind and heart went back to Camp Quick Fingers, nearly three years gone by now. My toga was orange, because that was the color of all the sheets I’d brought to Princeton. School pride my classmates assumed. Any efforts to track Johnny down, which were admittedly limited, since hiring a PI seemed a little over the top, had failed miserably. Still, I doubted I would ever forget him. If I was going to play Pass the Orange with anyone, it was Johnny’s lips I wanted close to mine as I tried to grab the orange with my chin snugly held against his throat.

“Eli…” Casey pulled me to his side. “What’s that thing you’re always doing with your fingers?”

I didn’t think anyone noticed. “ASL.”

“What’s ASL?”

“American Sign Language. I started learning it as a kid and don’t want to lose it, ya know, by not using it. I practice with a poem I learned when I was fifteen from Johnny. F-A-T-E. Fate. Follow Always Toward Eventuality. The universe guides me. What will be will be.” I signed it as many as fifty times a day. How could people not notice?

“Who’s Johnny?” Casey asked.

“A tall, red-haired poet,” I said wistfully.

“Cool. How do you say my name in ASL?”

I spelled it out with my fingers. “C-a-s-e-y.”

“Show me how.”

I took Casey’s hand and manipulated his fingers to form each letter. “C-a-s-e-y. Most letters look like they do in print, the way the hand and fingers make them.” I showed him again as the party continued around us.

“The Y looks like ‘Hang loose,’” he said.

I smiled. “It does.”

“Do us together.”

“C-a-s-e-y,” I both said and signed, “and E-l-i.” Technically, I said “Casey plus Eli,” since the word “and” was somewhat controversial in ASL, oft considered overused and unnecessary.

“Rad. Hang loose, E…l…i.” It took Casey a while. “Eli.”

“Excellent.” My voice might have picked up a little of Casey’s Wayne and Garth dialect.

“Or did I say letter Y, Eli?”

“I think people would get what you’re going for.”

“Cool. You’re a man of many talents, E-l-i.” Casey was quicker the second time. “Eli…”

“Or at least one.”

“Did you know your eyes are like an oil slick?”

“Huh?” The change in direction had me stymied.

“Your eyes…”

I’d heard the words, even over twenty raucous frat boys slurping, chattering, and barking with laughter. “Are like an oil slick?”