A Shattered Glass Slipper
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I gazed up at the mammoth moving truck that sat rumbling at the end of our short cul-de-sac. My BF was perched on his mother’s lap without restraint in the passenger seat of the towering cab – this still long before the days of seat belt laws. Our eyes locked onto one another’s through the rolled up glass, and as the transmission grinded into gear my heart started to race. You see it had been about five years, give or take a quarter, since our first day of Kindergarten. We had now fully doubled in age, wisdom, and shared life experience.
My would-be prince charming and I had spent the intervening years together doing what many other young boys did. We played endlessly with Tonka Trucks, Hot Wheels, and Legos. We had a raucous group of neighborhood friends who joined forces with us for hide and seek. We played in the sand and surf on a countless number of summer excursions to the beach. Our parents even took our families on trips together now and then. We went through the rite of First Holy Communion together at our local Catholic church. We huddled with one another in the confusing, dark aftermath of the 1971 San Fernando earthquake. Thanks to our neighbors with the in-ground swimming pool, we together mastered the art of the cannonball. And – as promised – there was the day that we found a pack of matches and set his backyard completely ablaze.
I know, it’s not exactly the burning of Atlanta, but I kinda sorta promised a fire, and the incident does present itself now as a fairly dramatic event that will help to segue my narrative into the more intimate details of our relationship.
A remote side section of my BF’s backyard was a narrow strip of land with a few scattered lemon trees surrounded by some low, dry brush. One day, he and I walked through the knee-high, dead weeds playing with a book of matches. As we strolled – me following dutifully just behind him – he struck a match and tossed it into the dead shrubbery.
“Watch it,” he said.
We took a few steps, and he struck another match and tossed it.
Again he warned, “Watch it.” A few more steps, and the pattern repeated: strike, toss, “Watch it.”
Apparently I was following too close behind, because I did not immediately notice when one of the discarded matches sparked the surrounding weeds. The flames quickly spread, beyond stompablity, across the combustible landscape, and my BF and I ran and hid across the street until the fire engines arrived. Eventually we emerged from our hiding place and looked innocently on as the firemen went to work and extinguished the flames. In the aftermath, the cause was determined by one of the firemen to be a spark plug that was found on the scorched ground under one of the lemon trees. It was a place where my BF’s older brother spent time working on his motorcycle.
So, the older sibling was wrongly blamed for the fire, and now BF and I were bound by a secret. Actually, I should say…another secret. Truth be told, by that time we had already become fairly skilled at keeping secrets. You see, in addition to all of our church, family, and neighborhood social commitments, BF and I also managed to carve out some quality alone time together. Secret meetings in dark rooms. Behind locked doors. Quiet and careful. Again, doing what many other young boys probably did: helping each other to explore our rapidly transforming physical selves, and sharing the baffling mysteries of our quickly developing bodies. Together. Just us two. In quiet, pre-pubescent awe. For me, however, those clandestine meetings became more than just physical exploration. I had, along the way, discovered something much more thrilling and profound; emotional intimacy. Eventually, it was those meetings that I looked forward to more than anything else. Way more than Hot Wheels and hide and seek. Way. And it knew that it was this closeness – this newfound right of whole communion – that I would miss most of all when he was gone.
Our neighbors waved goodbye as the massive tires on the moving truck slowly began to roll across the pavement. With my eyes still fixed on him, I watched once again, as I did on our first day of Kindergarten five years earlier, my BF cry and his mother try to comfort him. It was not a distorted, ugly face kind of a cry; just a gentle, sad, stream of tears. The truck began to move with purpose, and then off it rumbled down the street. So, with not quite one whole decade tucked under the belt that was holding up my slim fit, brown, wide wale corduroys, there I was; standing on the lonely pavement, in a cloud of diesel fumes, with a heart like a shattered glass slipper.
My BF grew into adulthood far away from me, but we did see each other a few times over the years – the last time was at his wedding. As I watched him standing in front of all those people making promises to his beautiful bride, I realized that what we shared so many years earlier was different for him than it was for me. For him, I’m guessing, it was nothing more than friendship and a completely natural search for physical understanding. 
For me, however, it was my first experience of love and loss. He and I never spoke of the complexities of our tender relationship, and it strikes me now – at this late hour – that my first real memories have been a secret too long kept. While I confess that it has been a secret kept in a shroud of youthful shame, I reveal it now with a certain retrospective pride, and, of course, a light-hearted, whimsical pluck.
For me, however, it was my first experience of love and loss. He and I never spoke of the complexities of our tender relationship, and it strikes me now – at this late hour – that my first real memories have been a secret too long kept. While I confess that it has been a secret kept in a shroud of youthful shame, I reveal it now with a certain retrospective pride, and, of course, a light-hearted, whimsical pluck.
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