Mike

If you ever happen to venture up into northern Ontario you will find that the topography looks very much like Finland.  It also evokes other parts of Europe and Scandinavia.  Lots of birch forest and scrub and rolling hills make up the landscape.  I am myself half Finnish by blood, but carry an Estonian name.  It's not an uncommon mix.  Finnish is recognised as an official language in Sweden, where my grandfather worked in the merchant marine.  My grandmother's maiden name was German after that famous director of Metropolis, although she spoke Finnish and some broken English.  My father spoke Finnish too, but I do not.  Such is the plight of the third generation.

My middle school and high school were packed with Finns, who seemed to make the south end of my city the spot where a lot of them decided to settle.  My middle school was just a block of classrooms, so once a week on Fridays we were bussed to the local high school to take advantage of the expanded facilities.  It was there that I happened to see Mike.  I was 15, but he seemed to me fully a man, although really only a few years older.  He had a lot of dark stubble and wore a moustache in that 70s style, close cropped on his full lips, like one of Touko Laaksonen's men.  Being as hirsute as he was is somewhat unusual for a Finn.  They are not an especially hairy race, but I do recall a basketball game where he scored with scant time to spare and threw up his arms.  I marvelled at his hairy armpits.  I was a 15 year old voyeur.

The end of school Fridays were lines of students and rows of yellow buses, swinging in, picking up, and rolling out of the parking lot.  I was standing behind this tall, seemingly self-confident fellow, exactly where I wanted to be.  There is something about being tall and mature in high school that young men wear as a badge, and know it is an advantage, as fleeting as it is.  I do recall making a point of standing behind him in line.  It was early spring and we were in shorts.  His legs were beefy, tanned and hairy and I recall being shamelessly mesmerised by them.  There was a ripple in the line.  He stepped back.  Our legs touched, and I could feel the curly hair on his thigh slide against my own.  It was an evanescent thrill, split second, like the bristles of a brush, but I have never forgotten it.

My brother played drums in a band and Mike was a best friend to the singer, so he made a point of coming around to the farmhouse to listen as they practised.  I started to see him regularly and we became friends, more out of simple periphery than direct contact.  I remember that he seemed without guile.  He was also sweet-natured, exploding the myth I had in my own head that he would ever want to be on friendly terms with me, an awkward 15-year-old.  Unlike most older boys in high school, who used their advantages of age or strength against me, he was a gentle fellow and quite innocent in his own way. He liked beer and Rock, and had a shaggy head of hair.  I found later that he took a mechanic's certificate, at a college up in Timmins.  It's an occupation that, if you knew him, seems perfectly fitted to his personality.

Once I was in high school I saw more of him, at school and at practise in the basement of the farmhouse.  We had become easy friends, but I did not seek him out.  I knew I would see him around, and I did.  Then in the winter he invited me to a party.  I don't remember how I heard, whether I spoke to him on the phone about it or not.  I also don't recall how I made it to his house.  His parents were gone for the weekend.  I didn't have a license so I have no memory at all of how I came to be there.  I also remember the party ended up being just he and I.  There was a snowstorm that must have partly put a stop to things.  We listened to music and drank some beer.  His family had just purchased a Yamaha stereo system, and I do recall we looked it over and discussed its merits.  What otherwise from beer to music those hours were filled with aside from talk, I can barely recall.  The storm meant I was there to stay for the night, "It's no use heading back home," he said.

Then all of a sudden it was time for bed.  Although there were at least two or three beds in the house we slept together in his.  It was cold.  Finally, I was in my underwear and I threw myself on the bed.  My head was on a pillow and my arms were up, both hands holding the back of my head.  He jumped up onto the foot of the bed, his legs were just outside of mine as he stood over me in his t-shirt and underwear.  Then he crossed his hands to either side of his waist and peeled off his shirt.  There stood above me almost naked, the object of my secret affection.  That image of him, now bent by memory, was of fine limbs leading to a hairy belly and chest, and a flop of curly hair and stubble.  It was completely erotic and suggestive.  He was showing me his body, those tanned limbs I had lusted over.  He stood for a few seconds, let me take him in, then dove under the covers laughing and shivering.  He knew what I knew but dared not say.

Or so it seemed.  We chatted for a bit in bed, like a married couple.  Then he switched off the light.  I could have touched him in the dark .. or could I?  I wanted to.  How had this come to be?  Was I being set up?  He made it happen, surely?  All I had to do was touch him, lay my arm over him in the dark.  Something.  But I did nothing.  I was afraid.  I wasn't ready.

The next morning I woke up and he was making us breakfast.  We discussed this and that, and I asked to borrow a porn magazine he had shown me the night before, straight porn.  I rolled it up and took it.  I don't know how I got home, but I have a feeling he may have driven me back to the farm.

Months later in the spring I saw him for the last time.  He had finished high school and was going away to work, or maybe to college.  He had come to a practise and came upstairs into the farmhouse to use the bathroom.  I was at the landing as he climbed, and then suddenly he looked up at me.  His face was covered in bandages.  Possibly drinking, he had smashed his car.  His head had hit the windscreen upon impact.  He looked a little bit like the Invisible Man.  He sheepishly said hello and explained as I swore to Christ.  'That handsome face!' was all I could think to myself.  From then on I heard that he wore a beard most of the time, to hide the scars.