Today, Monday, I can finally report on my weekend in Chicago.
I got there Saturday, shortly past noon. By “there” I mean the Holiday Inn where I had my reservation. It was too early, though, for me to check in, so I drove around for a while, went to a Burger King for lunch, bought a pack of Camels and a pint of bourbon for later. I was feeling very jittery. After an hour or so, I was able to return to the motel and check in and have a quick drink and a smoke.
My room was at the back of the complex, ground floor, off a glassed-in hallway that felt as warm as a greenhouse with so much afternoon sunlight streaming through the rows and rows of windows. Down that hallway from my room, then off to the left, was a concrete-floored area with vending machines, ice machines, washers and dryers; then restrooms and a sauna; then a huge and echoey enclosure called the Holidome with arcades, miniature golf, a swimming pool, Jacuzzi, shuffleboard courts. Farther on was a coffee shop, a restaurant, then the lobby and the front entrance. I didn’t have long to dally. By three o’clock, I was back on the road and driving east on the Eisenhower expressway toward the UIC campus. I had thought, from the map, that my motel in a suburb called Oak Park would be close to the campus, maybe a fifteen-minute trip. But I was wrong. The expressway crawl was tedious and time-consuming, then lots of stop-and-go traffic on the city streets around the university itself. Finally, I parked in one of the multi-level garages near campus and walked the final few blocks to the pool, which is located in the Physical Education Building on Roosevelt Road.
I was expecting a crowd, but nothing like the bewildering swarm that I encountered when I got inside. This Junior Olympics was big-time stuff compared to a regular tournament in Monmouth or Sandburg. Not just swimmers and coaches and spectators, but also lots of reporters and photographers covering the action for newspapers across the state. Even a few camera crews from small-market TV stations, and one from WGN—channel nine—in Chicago. How was I going to locate Ryan in this confusing sea of bodies?
The only way, of course, was to plant myself on the bleachers and watch the swimmers and wait for Ryan to appear. He did, eventually, in his star-spangled Speedos with the red and white stripes across the butt. It was the 100-yard breaststroke, and he lost—or, maybe I should say, came in third. His teammates and his coach gave him sympathetic pats on the back and then wandered, all of them, toward the locker rooms. I discovered later that Ryan’s race was the last of the day for the Taft Swim Club girls and boys. Actually the last of the tournament. Their team had barely qualified in Friday’s preliminaries and performed dismally on Saturday, overmatched against the powerful squads from Evanston and St. Charles and Hinsdale, rich communities with a history of excellence in such preppy sports as swimming and tennis and volleyball.
I scrambled through the crowd and managed to catch Ryan’s eye. He half waved and kept going and left me there feeling awkward, not sure whether to stay put or return to my seat in the bleachers. I wandered out to the little snack bar (like a temporary cart) set up near the entrance. I bought an orange soda and thought about going outside to smoke a cigarette, but then returned to the pool, to the area outside the locker rooms. That’s when Ryan came out, dressed and carrying his gym bag, and when I realized that he was finished. We talked, and decided that he should come back to the Holiday Inn with me, stay the night, then attend a special tournament breakfast with his teammates on Sunday morning before we traveled together back to Sandburg. He wanted to know if I had his Top Gun video game, his birthday present, he just turned twelve last week. No, I told him, you can get it tomorrow, at my house, when we go home. He shrugged, like: That’s a stupid idea, but OK.
There was a lush purple-pink sunset in front of us as we drove west on the Eisenhower, back to the Holiday Inn. I mentioned it to Ryan, and he said, “It’s because the air is dirty, because of pollution.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you know that? It’s because of pollution.”
The sunset was flaring brighter as we talked, now red, now orange, a hot paintbox of colors. I asked Ryan all sorts of questions, including: What hotel is your team staying in? Have you been to Chicago before? Have you been to the museums? To the top of the Sears Tower? Are you hungry? Where should we eat? His answers were: the Sheraton, yes, no, no, yes, someplace good—though much wordier, of course, on and on about his hotel and about being in Chicago last year with his parents and going to the Brookfield Zoo and not having eaten since a snack at noon because you can’t have a big meal in the middle of a swimming meet, don’t you know that?
A strangely paradoxical thing about Ryan: He’s so fond of chatting and chattering, a very lively little conversationalist, yet he’s so surly and touchy and always so confrontational with other boys. Does he have friends at schoool? Friends on his swimming team? Is there a more sociable side to him that I’ve never seen before? He’s popular at school, I think, because he’s extremely cute and a fantastic athlete, but he doesn’t “play well with others,” as they say. He has poor social skills and genuine emotional problems and doesn’t, as far as I know, have any real friends. I might, in fact, be the best friend he has right now, which is a little sad.
Traffic was heavy on the expressway, and we didn’t get to the motel until after six o’clock, in full darkness. Ryan brought his gym bag inside with him. Like his stocking cap, the bag is orange and has a snarling tiger logo on it. When we were getting out of the car, I said, “Come on, tiger boy, let’s go.” He doesn’t seem to mind this new nickname I have for him. It’s a bit corny, I realize, very nineteen-fifties, very Father Knows Best, like, “Hey sport, hey champ, hey tiger.” But it truly does seem to fit him. When you look at him face-on, he has a wide and slightly downturned mouth with a highly curved, feline top lip; his upturned nose appears almost round; his blue eyes are wide-set and moist and have those same long-long lashes as Pepper’s (only blonder, of course). His eyes also have an unusual natural bruising beneath them, like a bluish-green eyeshadow, or like the bruised pouchiness that comes with fatigue and lack of sleep. Only on Ryan it’s there all the time. Anyway, my point is that there’s something feline about his face, and not just his face, but all of him, head to toe, something nimble and graceful and cat-like that makes “tiger” or “tiger boy” seem perfectly appropriate as a nickname.
My room was ideally situated for the two of us—in back, private, no way for management to see me coming and going with my non-paying and very young guest. Ryan waited at my right elbow as I opened the door, then pushed past me into the room and looked around and said, “The Sheraton is nicer than this.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I replied, adding a mock snarl for good measure. “Quit complaining, kid!” This was exciting stuff, being with Ryan Fox in a room at the Holiday Inn. Just the motel smell, by itself, was enough to make the evening feel like a wonderfully sneaky adventure. You know that smell, that motel smell of cigarette-smoky carpets and curtains and perfumy disinfectant. It’s the smell of road trips and illicit rendezvous, of childhood vacations and adult trysts, all those memories and associations mingling in that first sniff of stale, recirculated air as you step into the room.
Ryan used the bathroom while still wearing his parka, standing at the toilet with the coat unzipped and held open with one hand. I could see him from where I was waiting near the bed, around the corner from the bathroom, through a big mirror beside the television. Ryan didn’t realize this until he was finished peeing and turned away from the toilet. I waved at his startled reflection. That’s when I discovered, seeing the front of him with his pants open, that he was still wearing his American flag Speedos beneath his other clothing. He’d been too upset, he confessed, to shower and change at the pool, so just dried himself and dressed and got permission from his coach to meet me and leave. As he told me this, I noticed for the first time that his pants, gray cotton twill with blue side stripes, were blotchy with moisture around the thighs. I assumed a stern attitude and insisted, for his own comfort and welfare, that he remove the pants and the Speedos and take a shower.
The boy was watching me with that strange expression of his as I talked, his nostrils flared and his mouth turned down. OK, he said, OK—but first, before taking a shower or doing anything else, he wanted to inspect the Holidome. So off we went for a quick tour and ended up, spontaneously, at the restaurant across the way, near the lobby. It’s called the Chandelier Room, decorated in greens and yellows and browns, each table flickering in the light of its own little candle. Ryan had fried chicken; I had a gristly sirloin steak. Both of us had chocolate cream pie, much too sweet, for dessert. I wish we had gone to a better place for dinner, but Ryan impulsively demanded that we stop and eat as soon as he saw the Chandelier Room and smelled the food. Hungry boy. Impatient boy. He demanded, so I agreed. He seemed to enjoy his chicken, in any event.
Afterwards, back in our room, he undressed down to his Speedos and said that he wanted to test the pool. Well, stupid me, I forgot to bring my swimming trunks, never gave it a thought when I was packing, so I was forced to sit at poolside while Ryan had his fun. There were only a few other people around us: two young couples, a middle-aged fat guy, and a woman with two small children, a boy and a girl. Ryan was conspicuous in his Speedos. What red-blooded American male wears anything so skimpy and revealing these days? Even Ryan himself would have worn something longer and baggier if he’d had the choice. But, my oh my, what a pleasure to watch him, and to know that he’s mine (sort of).
He was intensely aware, every moment, of my eyes upon him, I could tell. He kept showing off his dives, and showing off his different strokes, turning somersaults and doing dolphin-like spins and flips, always glancing in my direction, making sure that his one-man audience was watching his performance. He emerged three or four times to parade himself along the concrete deck, adjusting the elastic of his Speedos as he strutted, water streaming from his hair and arms and legs, his bare feet plish-ploshing with each soggy step. I don’t think, to be fair, that he was strutting in an arrogant “everybody look at me” way, or in any kind of teasing or coquettish way. Only in my own mind, in my own head, was there something provocative or titillating about Ryan’s poolside strolls. Everyone else saw an ordinary boy—cute, but just a boy—having fun at the pool, emerging from the water, walking around, catching his breath. Only I saw a succulent twelve-year-old, nearly naked, striding like some sea-drenched boynymph. Only I had an erection as he passed by, and as he glanced at me, and as he licked the beads of chlorinated water from his top lip.
Before we could return to the room, Ryan also had to sample the Jacuzzi, which was just a few steps from the pool. Again I sat by enviously as the boy enjoyed himself, sprawled in the bubbling, foamy water. I asked him, from my white metal deck chair, “Is it warm? Is it comfortable?”
“Duh, yes, it’s warm and it’s comfortable! You should try it.”
“I wish I could.”
“How could you forget your trunks? It’s so stupid!”
“Gosh, thanks, you’re making me feel much better.”
“Well god, it’s true,” Ryan said, his voice raised above the noise of the churning Jacuzzi, his arms outspread on the ledge behind him. He was grinning at me, pretty little brat, with his gappy teeth and reddened eyes. I said, just kidding, “Too bad you can’t take off your trunks and soak nude. Wouldn’t that feel good?”
“Why?”
“Because,” I said, glancing around to make certain that no one was standing or sitting nearby, listening, “no trunks, bare skin, bubbling water, you know, it would be excellent.”
“Not in public,” the boy replied. A very practical response. I laughed and said, “True, true, you can’t go nude in public, you’re right.”
When he’d finally had enough, I handed him a big green-and-white Holiday Inn towel and headed with him back to our room, stopping at the vending machines for some bags of chips and cans of pop. Nervous, so nervous, as I walked down that hallway to that room of ours, always afraid that someone might see us or stop us or. . . what? Impossible to predict. Who knows? So many ways that disaster can spring lethally from the shadows. But the hallway stayed empty and nothing happened, no one stopped me as I unlocked the door and led Ryan into the room, just like father and son, easy as a dream.
I dead-bolted the door and made extra sure that the curtains were securely shut—just in case. Ryan was standing at the TV, using the remote to flip through the channels. He had the Holiday Inn towel draped over his head like an Arab’s burnoose. I moved behind him and put my hands on his hips, on the cool spandex of his Speedo briefs. He looked at me quickly over his shoulder, just an “oh, it’s you” glance, then went back to perusing the TV. “They only have one movie channel here,” he said. “The Sheraton has two.”
“Aw, that’s a shame.”
“I’m serious.”
“Look,” I said, “Independence Day is on. That’s good, right?”
“I’ve seen it already.”
“Anyway, you should take that shower now,” I told the boy. “Get all that chlorine washed off.” Ryan nodded vaguely beneath his green-and-white burnoose, staring at an explosion on the TV screen. I patted his hips and even gave the Speedos a little tug. Ryan took the tug as a hint to get undressed for his shower and mumbled “OK, OK” like a kid responding to a naggy parent. He pulled down at the waistband with his thumb, not very effectively, so I lent a helpful hand and quickly had the red-and-white-and-blue Speedos down to his feet and then off as he stepped out of them. He stayed where he was, not willing to leave just yet, more interested in the cities getting blown up on TV than standing there naked in front of me. It’s no big deal to him, being naked. He’s a locker-room veteran, not at all bashful about his own body.
I replaced my hands on his hips and then cautiously slipped them up and forward, across his belly and onto his chest, then down again, then up slowly, very slowly, then down to his hips and up again to his nipples. Ryan was leaning back against me. The tight elastic of his Speedos had left a band of red around his entire waist, an angry circle of scarlet imprinted on the delicate white of his skin. I took two steps backward with my arms still around him until I could feel the bed behind me, then sat myself and Ryan onto the end of the mattress. The boy said “hey” and then “what?” in slightly irritated surprise as the two of us dropped to the bed with him seated suddenly between my legs, almost on my lap. I laughed as if the clumsy back-flop had been an accident, a stumble, funny, really funny.
Ryan, despite my interference, was still trying to watch the explosions and fireballs on TV. I pulled the towel from his head and kissed the damp blond mop of his hair and the red tips of his ears, first the left one, then the right. I continued feeling him from behind, both hands on his chest, then ventured lower, onto his hard stomach, then lower still, onto the lean muscle of his thighs. My chin was on his left shoulder. I was staring down at his penis, my thumbs on either side of it, nearly touching it.
You know, in almost thirty years of fondling and caressing naked boys, I’ve never known one—not one—to stop me and say something like, “Whoa, hold it, knock it off, get away!” Never. No matter where we are, no matter what the scene or the setting or the situation when their clothes come off and my hands start exploring them—whether at my house or their house, whether inside or outside, whether in a car or at the park or, like now, at a motel—the boys are always willing to be touched and petted, often more than willing, as if being touched by a man who likes them is something to be expected, something—could it be?—natural.
Ryan’s shoulders were hunched slightly forward and he had his hands fisted against the mattress on either side of my legs. My chin, as I said, was on his shoulder, and I was staring down at his penis, which was reddened like his ears and eyelids and the bridge of his nose, but still limp, still soft. I happened, just then, to glance up and realize that the two of us were seated not only in front of the TV but also in front of the big mirror beside it, and that Ryan was watching not only Independence Day but also the reflection of himself sitting there naked with my hands squeezing at his thighs. “Oh, hello,” I said. Ryan actually waved at the mirror and said “hi” to my reflection smiling behind him. I laughed and gave the top of his head another kiss.
The movie had finally shifted to a quieter scene, no more explosions, and I could feel Ryan leaning forward to get up and take his shower, if I would let him. So we stood up together—but I kept holding him, my hands on his shoulders now, making him pose in front of the mirror just a moment longer. “Look at that boy,” I told him. “So handsome!”
“Oh wow, sure, handsome,” Ryan mumbled, rolling his eyes. I ran my hands down his arms and then back up his ribs and said, “You must have about zero percent body fat, Ryan. You’re amazing. Such great muscle tone. Really amazing.”
“I could get better.”
“No way,” I said, letting my hands travel down his body one more time, wanting his eyes to follow, to see the beauty of himself, to see the beauty and the sexiness of that naked figure in the mirror, letting my hands meet between his legs where I cupped his penis and testicles in my fingers and held them like jewels on a cushion, showing Ryan his own genitals. “The perfect boy,” I said. “Just look at yourself, how perfect.”
Ryan made a “psss” noise and finally stepped away and informed me, in a very Ryanish way, that “guys are ugly, don’t you know that?” I watched the lively flex of his bare butt as he walked to the bathroom, around the corner.
I fixed myself a drink of Seven-Up and bourbon. Not too strong. I wanted to relax and loosen up, but I didn’t want to get drunk. After only a few minutes, Ryan yelled to me from the shower, asking for shampoo. I found a little bottle of Head & Shoulders in my dop kit and took it to the bathroom and handed it to him behind the frosted-glass door. I asked if he wanted or needed anything else, “maybe somebody to wash your back?” Ryan shook his head and closed the door.
While waiting, I stripped down to my boxers and T-shirt, smoked a Camel, smoked another, finished my drink and fixed a second. Ryan came out, finally, with a fresh Holiday Inn towel draped over his head. He walked tiptoed across the carpet with his pink wiener jiggling. Too bad I didn’t bring the camcorder, I suddenly thought. Ryan went to his gym bag and rummaged for a comb, a long-handled black comb that he took to the mirror by the television. He removed the towel and started combing his hair, carefully smoothing it and straightening it, primping, preening, fussing with his perfect bangs. He stood there with his back slightly arched, a swaybacked posture that gave him—from the side where I was seated, watching him—a firm little potbelly.
I finished my Seven-Up and bourbon, then got up to fix one more—only three altogether, plus one earlier in the day, so no risk of ending up drunk. I gave Ryan a pat on the ass when I passed behind him. He moved forward a step, thinking I needed more room. He was still fussing with his hair, checking his left profile, then his right, then giving his yellow bangs another swipe or two with the long-handled comb. I splashed a shot of bourbon into my plastic cup, filled the rest with Seven-Up and chips of ice, took a sip, then spent a moment gathering Ryan’s clothing (his gray trousers, his shirt, his undershirt and socks) and putting everything in one of the chairs near the window. I also took his wet Speedos from the floor and hung them on the nozzle of the shower to dry overnight. His underpants were still in his gym bag because, remember, he’d worn his Speedos from the tournament under his trousers.
It occurred to me, at that point, that the rest of Ryan’s stuff—extra clothing, toothbrush, whatever—must still be at the Sheraton, in the room he’d been sharing with teammates. I asked him about it, but he said it was OK, he would get his other things tomorrow when we returned to the Sheraton for the tournament breakfast, which was being held in the hotel’s banquet room. “Too bad about tonight, though,” I told him. “You don’t have any shorts, nothing to wear.”
Ryan didn’t say anything. He finished with his hair and crossed the room to his orange gym bag—on the chair with his clothing—to put away his comb. I was standing near the bed with my drink, still watching him, always watching him. He glanced at me with that odd flared-nostril expression of his (agitated? expectant? what?), then plucked his underpants—ta da!—from his bag. “I’ll wear these,” he said, as if announcing an ingenious solution.
“Sure, sure, that’s fine,” I said. “But first, hey, how about a nice massage?”
“My mom gives me massages,” Ryan said. “Her massages are better than yours.”
“That’s not fair. You’ve never had one of mine. How about it?”
Ryan, still clutching his white Jockey briefs, said OK and climbed onto the bed on his hands and knees and then flopped and sprawled with his head on the pillow, his eyes shut. I put aside my drink and rubbed my hands to warm them. “A nice, slow massage,” I said to the boy as I knelt next to him on the mattress. “You’ll enjoy this for sure.”
And so I began, the same massage I’ve given to innumerable boys over the years, that thrill of your hands on his naked body for the first time, on your special boy’s naked body, free to explore every bit of him while he quietly revels in your touch. I’d already had a chance to pet and feel Ryan, of course, earlier that night—but a massage is different, more than just a few moments of touchy-feely. It’s the main course, the real meat and potatoes; it’s carte blanche to put your hands everywhere, to touch everything, to fondle, to linger.
I started on his shoulders, his back, then worked slowly down onto his white butt cheeks and down his legs, then up again to those fleshy-firm white cheeks. Up and down, up and down the naked length of him, always returning to the luscious centerpiece of his ass until I was rubbing and squeezing only his ass and nothing else. Every bit of pressure left red fingerprints on the delicate white of his skin, red fingerprints that quickly faded and were then replaced by new ones as I moved my hands from place to place on those cheeks. I had already managed to spread his legs when I was working on them and massaging them, a subtle nudge here and a subtle nudge there, getting him to spread-eagle so that now I could slip my hand easily between his thighs and feel under and around his balls, all under and around and over his tight balls. His hips lifted and I again brought both hands onto his ass and used my thumbs to spread the cheeks and look at the rosy-pink hole of his anus, then used my thumbs to open the hole wider, stretching it, looking into it, actually massaging around and onto and into the hole of his butt with the tips of my two thumbs. Ryan twisted and tensed his hips and told me, in a mumbly voice, to “quit tickling.”
Fine, I said, no problem, no problem—so how about turning over now anyway and we’ll do your front. Ryan rolled and flipped so quickly that he actually bounced when he hit his back. He crossed his arms over his face, over his eyes, with the white undies still clutched like a security blankie in his left hand. Wow, was he hard! I said, “Hey, that’s an excellent boner you’ve got there, Mr. Fox,” and he took a hasty glance at it for himself from beneath his crossed arms, then made that same slightly embarrassed “psss” sound and covered his eyes once more.
That erection of his, I’d say, is four inches or maybe a fraction longer, a skinny thing that not only curves to the left (common enough, so does Pepper’s) but also twists to the left. It’s difficult to describe, very unusual, a boner twisted sideways so that its leftward curve actually becomes a stiff downward curve. But that’s Ryan’s erection, and it gets as red as sunburn when it’s hard like that, and so do his balls—almost shockingly red against the stark whiteness of his tummy and thighs.
I was lazily stroking and kneading all up and down the front of his body as I stared at him and tried to memorize the shape and size and color of those hairless boygoodies between his legs. I used my knuckles at first to touch him there, to skim across his testicles and along the underside of his penis. Then my fingertips, making him dick-twitchy and trembly and eager for jerking off, which I started to do, now, in the ring of my forefinger and thumb, giving the little mushroom knob plenty of friction, fast and light friction across the velveteen meat. Ryan, little tiger, kept sneaking peeks at himself from beneath his crossed arms to see what was being done to him, as if puzzled by it—something so strange and new happening to him, he needed to witness it, but only timidly, with quick peeks, like someone spying on forbidden ritual.
His balls were getting tighter and tighter. His legs (reminding me of Frankie) were shaking and shivering. Even his stomach was shaky, shivery. Another minute, maybe two, and I could see his balls clench, and I could feel his boner stretch and strain and go spasmy and then squeeze out a little drop of kiddie-jizz—just one, just one drop—glistening at the very tip of his dick like a clear bead of aloe. I used my thumb to smear it, then kept stroking until Ryan, ultra-sensitive, could stand it no longer and hunched himself and grabbed between his own legs with the underpants as if to cover and compress a wound or an injury. He started babbling in a mumbly way, saying, “Uh oh, uh oh, OK, OK, that’s all, OK,” as he sat up on the edge of the bed and kept the underpants clutched to his dick, flustered and disoriented, confused by the intensity of his orgasm into believing that he’d somehow been hurt or injured or that some kind of pee or blood was leaking from him. Poor sweetheart. I told him over and over as he sat there that everything was OK—my hand on his back, petting him, reassuring him—nothing to worry about, that’s what happens when you rub your dick, even when you’re only twelve years old and you don’t have pubic hair yet, sometimes that’ll happen and stuff will come out and it’s all perfectly good and normal and OK, nothing to worry about, nothing at all.
One thing for sure: That was Ryan’s first little ejaculation, if you can call it that, and I’m the person who made it happen. I’m the lucky guy.
The boy quickly put on his underpants after that and played the “nothing unusual happened” game for the rest of the night. I did ask him how he liked his “super-duper deluxe” massage, and he flared his nostrils and looked at me sort of defiantly and said it was good—or, to be perfectly accurate, he said, “I think you did a pretty good job but I needed to pee, that’s all.” I’m still not sure exactly what he meant; maybe a reference to the pee-like release and moisture of the prepubescent seminal fluid; maybe not.
Whatever was on his mind, he said nothing more about it as he sat on the bed and ate chips and drank pop and watched TV, nothing odd about his attitude or behavior, bratty as usual, same old Ryan. We slept side by side that night, both of us in our underwear, my tension slightly relieved from having masturbated in the bathroom around ten o’clock. Slightly, but not much.
Next morning, we drove to the Sheraton in Chicago for Ryan’s big breakfast. I had expected to hang around in the lobby or maybe at a nearby Denny’s or IHOP, but Ryan had a plan of his own. He took me by the sleeve of my coat when we arrived at the hotel and dragged me inside with him, informing me that “you’re my guest, don’t you know that!”
No, I didn’t know that—but Ryan was right, I was his guest, all totally proper, and I ended up eating breakfast beside him at one of the large and very crowded round tables in the banquet room—Ryan on one side of me, some boy named Robert and Robert’s parents on the other. We all ate scrambled eggs and bacon and pancakes, toast and jelly, English muffins, juice. Ryan, I discovered, eats bacon the same way he eats french fries, munching daintily at each strip with his side teeth, Bugs Bunny-style. It’s also worth mentioning that he behaved quite cheerfully and amicably with the other youngsters at the table, allowing me a glimpse of him as a regular-guy teammate and, well, just an ordinary twelve-year-old kid. I wondered, as I watched him, why he’s so much grouchier with the boys he encounters at my house, and I came to this conclusion: Those boys are rivals for my affection; they incite his competitive spirit; he’s jealous of them.
Not much else to report. Our trip back to Sandburg was long and monotonous. We stopped twice at rest areas on Interstate 80 to use the bathroom and to buy snacks, and then Ryan napped for a while, his chin bouncing and bumping against his chest in sync to the bounces and bumps of the road. At home, I finally gave him his Top Gun video game. We agreed to talk soon about next week’s state finals tournament, and then we had to say goodbye. I kissed him, and he actually kissed me back—not the kind of sloppy tongue-kisses I get from Pepper but still a nice kiss right on the lips from Ryan Fox, the super-jock of Butler Middle School, the Golden Boy himself.