Brian said it first. Nothing ever happened. That’s what he said. Brian was two years older than me, but not old enough to get a real summer job that paid money and stuff. Him and me, we hung out together all summer doing not much of anything but looking busy whenever one of our moms wanted to give us a chore. Mostly we watched TV. There were shows about spies or kids discovering bodies and solving murders or finding out that the old guy living next door had superpowers or something. When we weren’t watching TV, then mostly we played in a fort that took up the whole of Brian’s basement. We were commandos and we crawled around in the dark on our bellies and fired BB guns at each other’s legs. Sometimes it hurt and our moms told us not to do it cuz somebody could lose an eye, but we did it anyways. Brian and I both still have both our eyes, so I guess it was okay. We went the whole summer and never once caught a spy or found a body or met anyone with superpowers. Brian was the first to say what we both were thinking: nothing ever happened. It was one boring day after the next until school started up again in September.
That’s not quite true. There was one thing that happened once a week. My mom had signed me up for a summer course at the Royal Conservatory of Music. It was boring crap about the history of music and I was supposed to take it cuz of the piano lessons I took during the regular year. Mom said it would improve me. So once a week I took the subway downtown and learned about how Schumann went crazy with syphilis and about how Brahms had the hots for Schumann’s wife and about how Tchaikovsky was gay so the people in charge made him drink poison. I’m not sure the course improved me the way my mom thought it would, but I learned lots of interesting stuff.
There was this one day when I was walking to the subway station when a taxicab pulled up beside me and this old dude called out the open window wondering where I was headed. I told him I was headed to the subway station. He said he was headed that way too and asked if I wanted a lift. I told him I didn’t have money for a cab. He said that’s not what he meant; it was just a courtesy ride cuz we were going the same way. I said okay and went for the back seat but he told me to get in the front beside him so people wouldn’t think he had a fare. Whatever, and I threw my knapsack onto the floor of the passenger side and got into the taxicab.
There was the briefest moment when I heard my mom’s voice inside my head, in that annoying lecture voice of hers, telling me not to take rides from strangers. But the voice went away. With the window down, there was a nice breeze, and the feel of it across my cheeks made me wonder why grownups worry so much.
When I say the cabbie was an old dude, I mean he was my dad’s age—a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old. He was older than my brain could comprehend. Almost as old as Schumann or Tchaikovsky. He was an immigrant but spoke pretty good English, a little clipped, like he might have come from Germany or Russia or some place like that. He had a bushy moustache that looked as if it had nose hairs worked into it.
— You goin’ downtown? he asked.
— Yeah, I said.
— Not just to hang out, I hope.
— Naw, I’m takin’ a music course.
— So you’re a good kid, no?
— Yeah, I guess.
— You look like a good kid.
— Thanks, I guess.
— Stay out of trouble?
— That’s me.
The cabbie took me around the back entrance to the subway where there isn’t so much traffic. He reached across me as if he was gonna pop open the door for me, but once he set his hand on the door, he held it there like he’d been hit with a trance.
— Before you go, I want you to do something for me.
He turned in to me. Way too close.
— What? I whispered.
— Give me a kiss.
— What?
— A kiss. Give me a kiss.
Driving along with the window down, the air had felt clean and cool, but now that we were parked, the air was still and it felt close. The man’s breath was warm on my face and I smelled a trace of aftershave on the skin.
— A kiss and you’ll let me go?
— Of course. Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you.
I wanted to yell but I was afraid of what he might do. My heart thudded. All I could hear was Beethoven. I closed my eyes and gave him a peck on the cheek, hardly enough time to register the feel of stubble against my lips. When I opened my eyes, the cabbie was frowning.
— No, he said. On the lips.
— What?
— A proper kiss
I did what he asked. It was wet and it was gross and he put his tongue in my mouth. When I stumbled out of the car, I spat on the ground and then went around to the front of the subway station where there’s a hotdog stand and I bought a bottle of Coke and I swished some Coke around inside my mouth like it was mouthwash and I spat it onto the pavement and took another swig and kept doing this until the gross taste was gone.
I went to the class like I usually did, but I couldn’t think straight and didn’t hear anything the teacher said. Come to think of it, I skipped the next couple classes and ended up flunking the course, which was odd for me, seeing as I was pretty good at that kind of thing. Mom got all mad and wondered why she bothered wasting money on me like that. In the fall, when I started back with the piano lessons, my teacher tried to get me to learn a Haydn sonata, but something about it didn’t click. Not just the sonata, but the whole music thing. It’s like the whole idea of music went limp inside my body.
I haven’t thought about this stuff for years. Don’t know why it’s come up now. My therapist says maybe it has to do with a whole spate of news reports these past weeks. Men coming forward to talk about things the coach did years ago in the locker room; the youth group leader in the parking lot; the Sunday school teacher in the storage room.
I snort at my therapist’s suggestion. What happened between the cabbie and me, that wasn’t at all like what you hear in the news. I mean, really, nothing ever happened.