December 9, 1995
If getting me wrapped up in The Bobcat Beat wasn’t enough, Mrs. Kane got both Eric and me to participate in Language Arts Field Day, something that was hosted, we were told, by the Riverside County Department of Education. We had to get up early on a cold Saturday morning, board a bus, drive an hour to Perris (which might as well have been in Paris, France, for all we knew), and spend the day competing in a variety of activities to test our middle-school mastery of the English language. Mrs. Kane told us Rancho Middle School, every year for the last five years, came home with no fewer than three trophies. She expected nothing less this year.
It was odd to Eric and me that despite this bus being 10 years newer than the bus we usually rode to school, it had no heat. Outside, at barely 8 a.m., the temperature had just cracked 35°F, and bone dry. Mrs. Kane told us all to bring blankets for the bus, plus snacks and whatever else to keep us entertained for the bus ride. Eric and I made sure to sit as far back on the bus as we could, because, naturally, Amanda was also participating today. I suppose it was cold comfort (literally) that she didn’t have a friend to come with her, so she sulked alone with a book. Good.
Amanda was competing in timed writing, where she had to write an essay in 30 minutes or something like that. Mrs. Kane had entered me in Proofreading and Editing, after she saw all the ordinary grammar corrections I had made to the newspaper prior to printing. I didn’t think it was anything special, but apparently she did. Eric was competing in Extemporaneous Speaking, and he was … well, to be charitable, he was terrified. He had no trouble speaking in front of groups — he did it in class all the time — but what he didn’t like is that he didn’t know the topic he would be assigned ahead of time. He knew generally that he’d get a prompt in the form of “Discuss (blank),” and he’d have a half hour to prepare, and five minutes to speak.
I tried to pep him up. “They’re not going to ask you to amortize a mortgage,” something my dad hopelessly tried to explain to me two nights before with the help of his Hewlett Packard 12C financial calculator. “It’s going to be about school, or, like, a phrase like do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” I said.
“Ugh, that’s almost worse,” Eric whined. “How do you summarize something like that into five minutes?” He waited a beat, and his hand found mine under the two blankets spread across our laps: His knit from his grandma, mine from Target.
“Get personal,” I suggested. “Tell a story, rather than try and summarize. Make it, like, a show-and-tell. Fool’s Gold!” I exclaimed, loudly enough to turn some heads. I still remember the iron pyrite story from last year in Mrs. Stinson’s class, after he had gone to a ghost town on his Arizona vacation. He told a tall tale that made it sound like he pried the rock from a dead guy’s hand, rather than bought it in a gift store. The class was on the edge of their seats.
Eric chuckled and lowered his voice. “Oh, so what I say is that my boyfriend and I take turns being on top. I give him the gift of orgasm, just as I expect the gift of orgasm from him.”
We had been calling each other boyfriends — to each other only — for just the last week. It started as a joke, but then it felt … right? Still, I made a face. “OK, can you just promise me you’ll never use the phrase ‘gift of orgasm’ again?”
“What do you mean? That was going to win me first place,” Eric joked.
I deinterlaced our fingers and started walking them across his thigh, and around the zipper of his corduroys. “Mmm?” I asked. “Knock knock?” I lightly tapped his fly. I started to pull his zipper down. Eric didn’t stop me, but instead leaned his head against the bus window, nodding, a little smile curling his lips as he tried to let the vibration of the bus settle his brain. It was kind of fun that I knew Eric’s pants. This one was the pair with the smooth zipper, the small teeth, and I could more easily snake my hand inside. The blanket was up around our shoulders. My hand circled his cock, thick, but not hard yet. I fondled him, feeling his balls, stroking him a little, freeing him from his underwear and out his fly.
“C’mon,” Eric said, smiling, pulling his hips back a little into the bus bench. “Not yet.”
“I’ll keep it clean,” I said, continuing to stroke, but lightly, backing off a little. “I have a Kleenex,” I said.
“No, it’s not that,” Eric said. “I — I want — I have an idea, because I want you with me during my speech,” he said.
“The speeches start at 1, I’m gonna be done with my stuff at 11. I’ll be in the audience, I —”
“No, that’s — I mean —” Eric sighed. “Listen, we’ll be there in 15 minutes. Follow my lead. Make like you have to go to the bathroom,” he said. Eric reached over and felt my bulge. “This … this … is what I want with me all day.”
The bus pulled into a line of yellow school buses in front of Perris High School, and there were kids all about our age filing out of them, heads on a swivel, unsure of what to expect of this oddball collection of 1960s-vintage tilt-up buildings. Home of the Panthers, apparently. Before the bus even came to a stop, Eric practically pulled me out of the bench seat, leaving our blankets behind, our backpacks in tow. “Mrs. Kane, Mrs. Kane,” Eric started down the aisle, as I followed him. “I really need to use the bathroom,” he said, passing right by Amanda, unconcerned.
“I, uh, I’m fine,” I said, but followed Eric nevertheless.
“Go and be quick,” Mrs. Kane said. “Find us as fast as you can!” she said, knowing that there was no way she could tell us where we were supposed to be — this school was as foreign to her as it was to us. The driver stopped and yanked the handle to pull the doors open, and Eric sprinted out the doors, and I struggled to keep up, my backpack falling everywhere.
“Eric, wait,” I yelled uselessly, as Eric cut a path between two buildings, straight into deepest Perris High School. He found a pair of double doors, and they happened to be unlocked, and that’s when he stopped.
“Jackpot,” he said, holding the door open for me. There were no students, but it was a two-story building full of old classrooms. “Upstairs,” he said. None of the buildings at our school had a second level. He found the stairs and climbed them two at a time, and I followed as fast as I could. He found a boys’ bathroom at the top of the staircase, and flung the door open. The lights were off inside, and he found the old, heavy switch to click them on. The room flooded with green fluorescent light.
Eric dragged me into an end stall and shut the door. My heart was pounding from running and the stairs, and Eric looked me deep in the eye and pressed my body against the tile of the bathroom. He kissed me in a way that I’d never been kissed before: His breath heavy, his hands suddenly everywhere. Eric was electric with energy, one million percent turned on.
“What,” was all I could manage, but Eric’s hands plunged down behind my waistband and found my cock, softened from running, but now — hello! — quickly returning to attention. I was half hard when Eric unbuttoned his pants, letting them fall to his knees, then unbuttoned mine, pushing them down. He was grinding against me, and he reached up the leg of my boxer briefs to find my cock, and threaded it up the leg of his briefs. We met anew inside Eric’s underwear as his tongue wrestled with mine.
I grabbed handfuls of Eric’s butt and pulled them toward me, and Eric grunted with pleasure. My breathing started gettng deep, and I knew I wasn’t going to last long with us pressed this close. We couldn’t last long, we had no time. I shivered, and felt I was getting past the point of no return. My cock throbbed, suddenly more slippery with my hot cum. Eric grunted, his chest spasming as he came too, filling his underwear. Pleasure spread through my body, but was quickly extinguished by the fact that we needed to hurry, and were in a public bathroom.
Eric looked deep in my eyes and smiled. I dislodged my still-hard penis from his underwear, and wiped it clean with some toilet paper. I could see the wet spot spread in Eric’s underwear as he pulled his dark trousers up, zipped and buttoned them. I did the same, and flushed the paper. We gave each other a good luck up and down, and Eric gave me a little swish off my shoulder. “Good?” he asked.
“Great,” I said. We calmly washed our hands, and quickly clicked off the light, exited the bathroom and foreign school building, and found Mrs. Kane with the rest of our group in the quad.
My event — Proofreading and Editing — was a written exam. I received 10 stapled pages of passages with various problems that I had to mark up and suggest corrections, along with a red pen. I didn’t think it was particularly difficult at first, but the problems started being less about grammar and more about style: Should it be “20 miles” or “20 mi.”? “CA” or “Calif.”? The test booklet didn’t say. I picked one to keep it consistent, at least. The instructions did mention to only mark spelling and grammar changes, but I found some glaring factual errors too: “koalas have no thumbs” and “floppy disks can hold up to 10 mega bytes” (closing up “megabytes” of course) being two of the worst. I marked those with a note to “fact check.”
I was finished with about 10 minutes to spare, so I went back and did another quick pass, found more vague style problems, and decided to leave them alone. My test booklet was bleeding already with red ink.
I went and found Mrs. Kane in the cafeteria, where lunch was being served. “How do you think you did?” she asked. I explained the style problems and the factual errors, and she tsked. “But you followed the directions exactly, right?”
“I did circle the part about koalas having no thumbs,” I said. “How couldn’t I?”
She shook her head. “You have to follow the directions exactly. They’ll take points off because they didn’t want fact checks.” She sighed. “You did the right thing though. Go get some lunch.”
Disappointing as that was — and I did get my graded test back at the end of the day featuring a B-minus score of 80 — at least I had Eric’s speech to look forward to. All of us that had finished our written events found seats in the big high school auditorium.
Extemporaneous Speaking was high-pressure — way more pressure than editing some paragraphs. The competitors were put on the spot, and it was sink or swim. Some were OK, some were terrible. The “take us through a day of your life” guy bombed. He rattled it off like a list, and was way under his five minutes. No description, no color. That’s what he came up with after a half hour? I thought. Scattered applause. Mrs. Kane made a face and gave us a subtle thumbs-down. On the other hand, the girl who got “explain the phrase ‘a stitch in time saves nine’” gave a one-woman show about how she felt a pain in her ankle one day, begged to see the school nurse that afternoon, and how that avoided a “serious” ankle sprain. More sustained applause that time, and Mrs. Kane gave a subtle not bad nod to us.
Eric was next, having taken his 30 minutes of prep backstage. I could see he was a little jumpy, but then he saw us in the audience. I gave him a little wave. He smiled, walked to the microphone, and said “Eric Watanabe, eighth grade, Rancho Middle School,” just like all the other speakers had done.
“Hi Eric,” the teacher at the table facing the stage said into her microphone. “Your prompt is: Consider friendship as a work of art.”
Eric took a deep breath, and collected his thoughts for a few seconds. He locked eyes with me for the briefest of moments, smiled, and raised his head to speak.
Ladies and gentlemen, today I want to talk about friendship. Not just any friendship, but friendship as a work of art. A masterpiece that we create over time, with every conversation, every laugh, every tear, every fight, and every hug. A painting that is unique to each of us, yet universal in its beauty and complexity.
Let’s start with the colors of trust. Trust is the foundation of any good friendship. It’s the primary color that sets the tone for the entire painting. Without trust, the other colors won’t blend well, the composition won’t be balanced, and the overall picture won’t be harmonious. Trust is the base that allows us to share our deepest thoughts, our darkest fears, our brightest dreams, and our most intimate secrets. It’s the glue that holds the friendship together, no matter how far apart we may be.
Next, let’s talk about the textures of support. Support is the texture that gives depth and dimension to our friendship. It’s the roughness of a shoulder to cry on, the softness of a comforting hug, the warmth of a listening ear, and the strength of a reassuring word. Support is what makes us feel safe, secure, and loved. It’s what reminds us that we are not alone, that we have someone who cares for us, who believes in us, and who will stand by us no matter what.
Now, let’s discuss the brushstrokes of shared memories. Shared memories give our friendship its character, its personality, and its uniqueness. They are the experiences we’ve had, the laughter we’ve enjoyed, and the tears we’ve cried together. They are the strokes that make our friendship a masterpiece, a work of art that is both personal and universal. They are the strokes that remind us of who we are, where we come from, and where we’re going. They are the strokes that make our friendship a beautiful journey, a journey that we’ve taken together, hand in hand, heart to heart.
In conclusion, friendship is a work of art. It’s a masterpiece that we create with every conversation, every laugh, every tear, every fight, and every hug. It’s a painting that is unique to each of us, yet universal in its beauty and complexity. It’s a canvas that we paint with the colors of trust, the textures of support, and the brushstrokes of shared memories. So, let’s cherish our friendships, let’s nurture them, let’s celebrate them, and let’s remember that they are the most precious works of art we will ever create.
Thank you.
If Mrs. Kane’s eyebrows could have shot through the ceiling, they would have. She started applauding loudly, and the crowd followed suit. I was blown away — no flubs, no stutters, “brushstrokes of shared memories” would have taken me at least three tries to get right, and he said it perfectly — twice! The applause died down and the next student came on stage as Eric stepped down to join us in the audience.
He sat down next to Mrs. Kane at the end of our row in the seat she had saved, and I bent forward to look over at him and gave him a thumbs up. He grinned at me, pointed subtly to his lap, and gave me a thumbs-up in return.
The speeches finished, and it was followed by the awards presentation. I got “Honorable Mention” in my event, which was more than I was expecting — I guess doing the right thing still counts for something. Surprising to nobody, Eric won first place for his speech. Angela got third place for her essay. Mrs. Kane got her three trophies, barely.
On the bus ride home, we waited until we were on the freeway (and the engine noise could give us some privacy to speak) before I turned to Eric and said “your speech was really good. How did you come up with that so quickly?”
“I don’t know,” Eric said. “I was … like I felt I had three main points about friendship: trust, support and the things we do together. And then I picked, like three random things about art — I don’t even remember what they were. Colors, textures, and … ?”
“Brushstrokes, I think,” I said.
Eric chuckled. “Brushstrokes are even a kind of texture! I just … I guess I would start a sentence and finish it. I tried not to ramble,” he said.
“You didn’t ramble, you were amazing,” I said, grabbing his hand and holding it between our thighs.
“You did good too! Honorable mention,” he said, even though my trophy was a foot shorter than his.
“Thanks,” I said, repeating what Mrs. Kane told me. “I feel like I did it right, even if I didn’t follow their instructions exactly.” I waited a beat. “Did … did it help?” I asked. “You know, the bathroom stuff.”
“There was a point at the beginning where I said, I think ‘every fight and every hug,’ and all I could think about was hour our fights aren’t really fights and turn into hugs all the time,” he said with a chuckle. “I think that’s the point in the speech when I thought about … you, with me, there on stage.”
He waited a beat, and squeezed my hand. “That’s when I knew I was going to get through it,” he said.