Memoirs of a 90s Girl Ch. 02

Memoirs of a 90s Girl Ch. 02: Calvin and Jon

I met Calvin and Jon, in that order, on a Thursday. It was a beautiful and warm summer day. The slight breeze rapidly cooled the sheen of sweat on my skin and had the wisps of hair tickling my forehead. I didn't have to be at work for another four hours, so I leaned back and surveyed my group of friends as they cajoled each other into fits of laughter. We were a motley crew, a hodgepodge of teens who communed over our disdain for society, our discontent with "the man", and our discomfort with ourselves.

Our little corner of the world was called Fountain Park. Its namesake was no more than six feet in diameter and sat in disrepair, having been turned off by the city ages ago. Now it seemed rooted there under duress. We used the rim as a bench and threw our bags, jackets, shoes, skateboards and whatever else we didn't want to carry on our person into the empty basin. As far as we could tell, no water had flowed through the fountain within our short lifetime. The park, if one could still call it that, was a trapezoidal patch of concrete between two high rises and the epitome of 1970s Brutalism architecture, all harsh lines and sharp angles. Fountain Park had a series of cement benches with planters on either end and various odd geometric shapes that were clearly meant to be decorative at the time they were installed. The concrete square planters no longer had flowers and were well in their second lives as ashtrays, the dirt surface strewn with discarded cigarette butts and miscellaneous trash. On one end of the park were cement stairs, probably intended as decoration or a performance area of some kind by an optimistic architect. The sharp edges of the park's features perfectly matched the scowls we gave passers-by who, much to our amusement, would flinch and clutch their belongings tighter as they approached on the pavement.

I sat on my usual spot on the basin rim, laughing along as my friends chased each other round. Adam had something sticky in his hand that he was attempting to throw at Kate. Missy huddled with another girl who I recognized but didn't know, sharing a hand-rolled cigarette. Malcolm had his head leaned back and eyes closed while Evelyn braided his hair into cornrows. A few more groups of kids sat around on the cement benches, some with headphones on, some sharing snacks, some with their bodies sunken into the basin, back leaned against the fountain center and legs dangling over the rim just basking in the summer breeze. A small circle of boys was engrossed in a raucous game of hacky-sack while another group was strumming on guitars.

Fountain Park was our happy place where everyone belonged and had a place in our chosen family. We all attended different schools and probably came from different backgrounds, but we wouldn't have known. The only clue to our lives outside the park were the buses on which we arrived and on which we departed. And even then, one could only guess the rest of the details. No one knew each other's last names, or real names for that matter. Even those who attended the same school could assume different personae all together here and their classmates allowed it. Everyone knew Fountain Park was a neutral, cease-fire zone. One girl introduced herself as Tulip and that was just what everyone called her. I later learned Tulip's real name was Amy when we found ourselves in the same science class, but never spoke of our time at Fountain Park. New arrivals were quickly integrated into the fold, acculturated into our community, usually being a friend of someone already there. Even the timid ones were immediately included in our conversations, offered a cigarette, passed a bottle or a joint, or goaded into a game of some kind.

Just as Kate squealed in mock horror at Adam, I noticed a group of three boys approaching the park from the street, having just gotten off the northbound E bus. Southsiders, I thought to myself. The two taller boys in the back shoved each other playfully while the boy in front -- their leader? -- strode on without a glance back. I had seen him before but had never spoken to him. I had been curious about him because he was oddly familiar, down to the way his sandy brown hair draped over one of his eyes, speckled with streaks of sun kissed blonde. His walk also triggered some memories I couldn't place. I felt his presence immediately from where I sat, which was surprising since he was barely taller than me and was slight of frame. His arms swung easily along his side as he crossed the street with purpose, only taking a cursory look for traffic, eyes scanning the park as if searching for something or someone. His eyes swept past me, returned, then stopped. He brushed his bangs aside and smirked at me with an upward nod. I quickly looked away and tried to laugh along with the scene in front of me, but it was useless. He adjusted his trajectory and was now heading my way as if he knew me.

I tried to ignore the shrinking distance between us, putting on what I hoped was an air of nonchalance.

"Hey." I started at the casual greeting from the complete stranger.

"Hey," I replied, slowly turning to face him. Realizing that he was much too close, I scooted back to create a gap between our bodies.

"I've seen you here before," he observed casually and sat himself down right next to me, our arms touching. His voice even seemed familiar. Where do I know him from?

"Yeah. I've seen you around too, but I don't think we go to the same school," I replied in what I hoped to be an unaffected way before scooting away from him again while keeping my eyes forward, still not daring to meet this gaze. His confidence and arrogance unnerved me. But my thumping heart told me that I found it exciting too. Who was this boy?

He chuckled and slid towards me so that our arms were touching again. I had no reply to that, so I stayed silent. "I'm Calvin," he added and then motioned with his chin to the two taller boys who were play fighting nearby. "Those two idiots are Jon and Mikie." He reached up to gently play with my ponytail, causing me to jump at such a familiar gesture.

"Easy there. You nervous or something?" I could hear the smile and chuckle in his voice. "I'm not scary, I promise."

"Whatever...." I replied flatly, dragging my voice until it trailed off. I didn't know where this so-called conversation was going, much less how or why it started at all.

"How old are you?" he asked pointedly, all the while tracing the tip of his fingers on my exposed skin along the straps of my top. I tried not to react to the light casual touches, but I jumped at every brush of his surprisingly soft fingertips and was helpless to hide how my skin pebbled in the wake of this touch. The sun suddenly felt very warm. I worried my teeth against my lower lip in fear that Calvin would notice how my body was reacting to him.

"Why," I asked, turning to him. My eyes immediately went to where his fingers were now stroking my arm, up to where his tongue was wetting his lips, then to his eyes that crinkled in smug amusement. This close, I could see the golden specks in the hazel rings around his dark pupils. I could tell he was daring me to stop what he was doing. I didn't.

"I like you," he said nonchalantly. "How old are you?"

"What difference does it make? What about you?" I shot back, trying to control the shake in my voice.

"Yeah, ok. I guess it doesn't matter," he shrugged, before asking another question.

"You're Amy, right?"

"Yeah, Ami with an I, it's short for Amethyst," My answer shot out of me before I could stop it. The regret was instantaneous. Who gives a complete stranger their real name, especially a stranger who thought it normal to casually stroke another stranger's arm? I should have lied, but I was so used to having to explain my name that I didn't think and it was too late now.

I could have sworn there was a moment of recognition, but that was impossible. I had never spoken to him before, even if he did seem familiar somehow. "So you go to same school as Adam and them," he observed as if he already knew the answer. His chin motioned towards Adam and Kate, still chasing each other. Had no time passed at all since Calvin came to sit with me? It felt like ages since we locked eyes from across the street.

"Yeah. What about you?"

Calvin shrugged, motioning one hand vaguely at the park, and replied noncommittally, "I'm around." Then he pivoted to fully face me so that he was now straddling the lip of the fountain basin, legs spread wide with one foot inside and one foot outside. I continued to look forward, intent on ignoring his gaze, despite feeling it dragging down my body all the same. I straightened my back and pretended that warmth was not spreading across my skin.

"Around?" I wondered out loud, more to myself than as a question for him.

"Yeah. I'm around and I will definitely see you around, Ami with an I," he concluded. Calvin then pivoted my chin towards him with his index finger. I had no time to react before his lips landed on mine and he was kissing me. I quivered under his searing kiss which was deepening. I couldn't convince myself to stop him and half-heartedly tried to pull away but was met with one hand that cradled my neck to hold me in place while the other hand grasped my upper arm. A small whimper that escaped when he lightly thumbed at my nipple emboldened Calvin to pull me closer between his legs. Everything was escalating very quickly, so sudden and heated that my brain had not caught up to what my body was experiencing.

His hand dug into my hair at the base of my neck and his fist tightened, stilling my squirming. The hand on my arm moved up to slip underneath the strap of my top promisingly. His warm wet tongue swept over mine and a sigh escaped me. My body warred with itself, not sure whether to fight off the stranger or lean further into his touch. Somewhere in the background noise of my brain, I heard Calvin growl against my lips. Within minutes I had gone from not knowing this boy to melting in his arms. What was he doing to me? The scariest part was that I didn't want him to stop. And even if I did, I wouldn't know how. I was helpless to fight against the fire sweeping over me.

And just as I was about to completely surrender to him, Calvin seemed to have had his fill and pulled away, thumb moving up to stroke my bottom lip tha glistened from our kiss. His eyes trained on it before he whispered absently, "Yeah, I get it now." He gave me one last surprisingly chaste kiss on the cheek, released me, stood up, and then he was walking away. The rest of the world came back into focus and my body slumped slightly now that I wasn't being held in place. My eyelids fluttered and when they were done, I found my surroundings just as I had left them. Adam, Kate, Missy, Evelyn, and Malcolm were in their exact same spots. My own body was in the same place where I had sat down except my chest was heaving, my lips were wet and flushed, my heart was dancing, and my brain was full of fog.

Whatever just happenned escaped everyone else's notice. Though I was convinced that everyone must have been staring, no one was looking my way or was even facing my direction. I blinked a few times; my mind trying to recall and process the sudden storm that was Calvin. If someone had come up to me in that moment to ask what had happened, I wouldn't have had a clue how to answer them. I would've thought that I imagined the whole thing too, except that I saw Calvin making his way across the small park with his two buddies in tow. Before disappearing around the corner, he turned around to face me with a smirk and a wink and made sure I saw him adjusting himself in his pants.

Suddenly my brain slotted everything in place, its gears having sorted themselves out with Calvin's departure. I tried to put everything in sequence. I saw him. We locked eyes. Calvin came over. Calvin kissed me and I kissed him back. Wait, at the end he acted like he finally understood something. What did that mean? Why does Calvin seem so familiar? But by the time my mind had been afforded the time to wonder and had recalibrated enough to formulate these questions, Calvin had long disappeared.

Just as he promised, I saw him around. Calvin and I orbited each other in the days that followed. He caught me staring at him now and again, giving me a look that was always accompanied by what I eventually came to know as his signature smirk. But we never spoke again. He never as much as walked towards me. I couldn't help the creeping sense of rejection that came from our lack of interaction after the searing kiss. Was I not a good kisser? Did my mouth taste weird? I didn't dare to examine why I cared so much about the attention of a stranger who, by all definitions, was predatory. I did end up speaking to his tall friend Jon quite a bit. As for the other boy Mikie, I never saw him again. Jon suddenly became a constant presence physically just as suddenly as Calvin had popped in to occupy my waking thoughts. Jon fell in easily with my immediate group of friends and was a seamless addition to our circle, fun yet unobtrusive to have in the group. Everyone liked him. By our second afternoon together, Jon and Adam were already jokingly conspiring against the girls. It was easy being around Jon.

When the next Monday came, the clouds had rolled in to block the sun for the first time in weeks. The air was thick with unreleased moisture that left my skin tacky. I assumed my regular spot on the rim of the fountain basin to watch my friends frolic, happy to be a spectator to their shenanigans. The usual suspects were doing the usual things. A handful of kids hunched together over a joint. Nearby, another group were in a circle for a game of hacky-sack. Some moped about with cigarettes hanging loosely from their lips. There was plenty of daylight left, but the dark storm clouds made it seem much later than it really was. I had nowhere to be tonight because the family diner was closed on Mondays, so I closed my eyes and basked in a rare chance to be unhurried and free. I lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and exhaled all the air out from my lungs. Moments later, Jon sidled up next to me and playfully bumped his shoulder against mine. When he grabbed the cigarette from my mouth to put into his, I opened one eye to look at him in response.

"Sup?" he asked as he pulled a breath through the filter, eyes fixed on me with part curiosity and part concern. Of the short time I had spent with him, it was obvious that silence and stillness made Jon uneasy. He often filled the amicable silence amongst my friends with some such stories of Calvin and his adventures like that one time Calvin and his older brother Josh got shit-faced drunk after they stole some booze from their alcoholic dad and woke up at a nearby warehouse the next day all wearing clothes that still had tags on them. All the stories ended with the same refrain, "Can you believe he did that?", followed by fits of laughter. His stories affirmed my suspicions that Calvin was trouble and that much of the mischief they got up to was a direct result of his scheming. They were so different, I couldn't understand why or how they were even friends.

Calvin, if my one experience with him was any indication, was forceful, aggressive, and controlling. His confident personality was the complete opposite of his slight frame and delicate features. I suspected that it was in compensation for it. Hazel eyes that could have been warm were hardened and piercing. Had I not known the warmth of his body, I would have assumed he was bristly and cold. Everything about Calvin made it seem like he was a precise and efficient weapon, ready to engage at a moment's notice. He certainly didn't waste any time taking what he wanted when he met me. In the days we orbited each other, I noticed that the other boys in Fountain Park maintained a healthy distance when he passed, weary of getting sucked into his riptide of aggression. As for the girls, they usually fluttered in his radius to flirt. Jon, on the other hand, was very kind and soft around the edges despite his intimidating stature. Jon was well over six feet tall with a wide build that he hadn't completely filled out yet. His torso, arms, and legs were lean and athletic, betraying his life outside of the park. His overtly affectionate personality made his large and strong frame seemingly designed for hugs.

Another bump against my shoulder, along with the return of the stolen cigarette in front of my face, snapped me out of my thoughts. I accepted the cigarette and asked in answer, "Where's Calvin?"

Jon slumped in his seat and shrugged, "He'll turn up." He then curled in on himself and slid down into the fountain basin, his wide back pressed against the center with his long legs left to dangle over the rim. "He always does," Jon mumbled under his breath.

"Suppose he will," I said more to myself than to him and handed the cigarette back. I followed suit and slid down into the basin too. I leaned my head on his shoulder on a sigh, which caused Jon to lean into me in return. In the past week, the two of us had quickly fallen into an easy rhythm and comfortable familiarity, compatible in our proneness to physical affections. It was possible we were both touch starved, but we didn't have the vocabulary to call it as such then. We sat there, passing the cigarette back and forth, and took in the scene before us, .

"What do you like about him anyways?" Jon wondered out loud after a few drags of the cigarette.

"Who?" I exhaled in a cloud of smoke, feigning innocence.

"Calvin."

"Who says I like him?" my mouth replied, but my body shrugged and that was an answer in itself. Jon's question did make me wonder. Why am I thinking of Calvin at all? Was it the kiss? He wasn't the first person I kissed and wasn't going to be the last, so what was it about him? Maybe it was the weird nigging feeling that he was somehow so familiar. Maybe it was the intensity of our first meeting. My mind ran circles but offered no answers. There was no doubt that his domineering ways were a glimpse of danger that every teenage girl craved whether we admitted it to ourselves or not. The way he confidently took whatever he wanted was exhilarating to watch and experience first-hand. One couldn't help but be drawn to him. Not to mention his attractiveness, which was obvious and undeniable, even to the most discerning eye. All of his features worked beautifully together in perfect place and proportion. Watching him from afar these past few days, I found myself desperately wainting to trace the sharp lines along his brow, nose, high cheekbones, plush lips and angular jaw, down to his utterly kissable throat. Maybe in another and better life, he could have been called handsome.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that some people in the park had begun moving and grabbing their things out the fountain basin, sensing the coming storm and not wanting to get wet. But a few were still milling about across the park on the concrete steps, on the planters, or on the benches. Jon and I were the only ones tucked into the fountain basin today.

I took a deep breath and sighed, trying not to fixate on Calvin. Jon wrapped an arm around me and took a deep breath against the crown of my head. Just then a fat drop of water splatted on my arm. One or a few must have landed on Jon too because he suddenly tossed the still burning cigarette and quickly jumped up onto his feet to offer his two hands to me.

"Oh shit, the storm. Come on!" he exclaimed as he hoisted me up and out of the basin. Overhead, storm sirens rang through the air in warning. The storm was apparently bad enough to warrent their use. "Come on! Let's go take shelter!" I barely had the time to gather my things before being dragged away from the park, across the street, and down an alley towards one of the nearby parking ramps with a designated storm shelter in its basement.