St Louis & Royal

When I think about that day I remember thunderstorms in the distance, and thinking it was very warm for December. Which, I suppose, it was – but New Orleans is New Orleans, and it is what it is: hot and humid most of the year, punctuated by a few months in winter when it gets sort of warm and humid. Christmas vacation had just started and my parents had flown me down to spend ten days with, ostensibly, them. I'd flown from the upper midwest, Wisconsin, to be somewhat more precise, from a military school not far from Milwaukee. I was fifteen, not that my age made much difference to events as they unfolded.

My parents had a suite on the top floor of the Royal Orleans Hotel for the duration, and they had me warehoused in a little room by the service elevator two floors below. I remember the room because it had a nice view of the street below, of Royal Street, and the intersection with St Louis Street. When I arrived, on a florid-orange Braniff Boeing 720 from Chicago – by way of Kansas City, Oklahoma City and Dallas – it was late morning and I was dressed for snow. I was, you see, still in uniform and looked like a Marine, albeit a fifteen year old marine, in my dress blues and white hat. My father was supposed to meet me at the gate, which was kind of the thing you did back in 1965, but I had little confidence he'd actually show up.

And, true to form, he wasn't there.

I had one bag checked and made my way to the baggage claim and waited for my bag and, presumably, my father to arrive. Still, and again, this wasn't a total surprise, after a a few minutes I realized he was going to be a no-show again, so I started to look for the way out to a taxi stand – when I saw a girl standing beside me.

"Goose?" she asked, looking me in the eye.

Now I need to step back for a moment and reinforce the nature of the sudden dilemma I found myself in. Recall, if you will, the following: me, aka, the poor, stupid kid, was locked up in a military school. I was fifteen, therefore my mind was testosterone-addled and, basically, due to my age was little more than a moron. Finally, please consider the nature of the girl by my side. Blazing red hair, deepest brown eyes and skin so white you might have considered it blindingly white – were it not for the pale freckles that dappled her cheeks and nose. She reminded me of a teenaged Olivia de Havilland – you know, the doe-eyed Melanie from Gone With the Wind. She was, in other words, seriously good looking or, as my father would have said, easy on the eyes.

All of which does absolutely nothing to explain my response to her rather simple question.

Staring at her like, I assume, any moron might, I asked: "Are you married yet?"

She shook her head, startled, I think, by the absolute inanity of my reply, then tried again. "Goose? I can hardly recognize you – in that silly uniform."

"Goose. Yes. It's me." Let's just ignore I was acting just like one, too, for the time being, anyway. She was smiling – at me – which I considered a lovelier experience than anything in all my previous fifteen years – if only because I knew that smile so well, and I knew what was behind the smile.

"Goodness!" she said. "You're growing up fast! Your mom and dad are still at the country club, and he asked if I could swing by and pick you up."

"How nice of him," and I think I might have added, "to not abandon me at the airport."

And she laughed, then looked at my uniform and scowled. "I hope you brought something else to wear..."

"Yes, by golly, I think I did."

"A swimming suit, I hope?"

I shook my head, thinking of Christmas carols and mistletoe and the utter incongruity of the question. "Are you serious?"

That seemed to rattle her cage and her scowl deepened a bit more. "Well, maybe Rickie has a spare."

"Rickie?"

"You know – little brother? You do remember him, don't you? Or have you been hit in the head recently?"

"Yes, of course I remember him, but when did you start calling him Rickie?"

She shrugged. "He keeps talking about when you two built that model of the Titanic together."

"How appropriate," I said, and who knows, maybe I even smiled. "When was that, by the way?"

"Two summers ago!" she said, now acting exasperated. "Don't you remember anything?"

And yes, clearly I did, but by this point it was too much fun yanking her chain. Still, I remembered one day two summers before, in Mexico City; we'd all flown down for one of my cousin's wedding – and it was then that I'd seen Claire in a bathing suit for the first time. And yes, I seemed to recall building the Titanic too, and even that wedding, but the whole bathing suit thing had been, well, a primal moment.

"Oh yes," I finally said, but I was suddenly thinking about her brother. He had been trying on girl's shoes at the reception, walking around in them, then had asked my mother to put lipstick on his lips. As uncomfortable as the memory was, I remembered most of all going into a bathroom and finding him with a pair of woman's panties stuffed under his nose, masturbating furiously – and yet I had no absolutely idea what he was up to – seriously, I kid you not. I was twelve, if I remembered correctly, and I was, therefore, clueless about such things. Hell, I still was. Military school is not the place to send your kid if you want them to become sexually aware creatures. Military school is about repression and control, not expanding self-awareness, and I was, need I repeat myself, a moron when it came to human intuition. And yet, I suddenly wanted, more than anything else in the world, to NOT wear that kid's swimming suit. Maybe he was contagious...

"He's really looking forward to seeing you again," she said, smiling beatifically. "He's been looking forward to your coming for weeks."

"Ah," I think I might have said, if a bit noncommittally – an image of him in heels floating in my mind's eye...

"So...you only have one bag?"

I smiled, nodded in the affirmative. "Yup. I pack efficiently." For the life of me, I have no idea why I said that.

"Well then," she said, looking at me almost cross-eyed, "let's go."

Claire was then – almost – seventeen years old – going on twenty-five, if you know what I mean – and she had the type of body seen in renaissance paintings of the Madonna, which is to say that by today's standards she was, well, plump. By 1960s standards, however, she was seriously cute, smooth curves in all the right places, and her legs reflected a potent athleticism all her own. She was New Orleans royalty, too, needless to say, and dressed like it in a white dress with big green and white magnolia blossoms printed all over the thing, white tights and little white flats – so her coppery hair literally blazed in fiery contrast.

Can you tell I was smitten? I mean – totally off the charts smitten? Of course I'm not sure it takes a whole lot to get a fifteen year old boy worked up, but she had done it, and had been doing it for years. Hell, she'd been driving me crazy all my life.

But could you even call it love – at fifteen? I thought so, but then again, I had been locked away in a military school for a year and a half – with zero contact between members of the opposite sex allowed – so that might have had something to do with the cascade of emotion I experienced walking beside her out to her car. Her car! – at sixteen, driving a silver Corvette Stingray – yet that car only made her seem more remote just then, even more inaccessible – and even more desirable.

I didn't know the whole story back then, only bits and pieces, but her father had flown with mine during the war, and they'd come home best friends. As war receded from their lives they remained, for some reason, as close – if not closer – than ever, and as a result we traveled to New Orleans several times a year. Still, there's was a friendship from afar, and as close as we were we only saw them a couple of times a year. Always lots of emotion, especially when we reunited, so as kids we had been primed to be close to one another.

And the Collins family owned several restaurants around New Orleans, all of them Very Big Deals, all very famous, their chefs celebrated as the best in New Orleans, so I grew up around that sort of thing – both at home and when we visited. I say at home because my mother was very impressed by all that nonsense, and she tried to incorporate an appreciation of fine dining into our lives at home – perhaps because she had grown up, barefoot I think, on a farm in dust bowl Oklahoma. She had finally made it into the big leagues, I guess, and wanted everyone to know it by the table she set. We were a military family, by the way, yet we didn't move often. I'd spent the first few years of my life near Cape Hatteras, then we moved to California, just north of San Diego, so in my mind I was a California kid.

Ah, yes. Have you ever ridden in a seriously hot car with a gorgeous girl behind the wheel? Windows down, her skirt wafting in the slipstream, thighs so smooth and white you forgot where you were? I swear I'd never seen legs as gorgeous, and just looking at them I could feel my heart racing, my hands starting to shake. I know, it's that whole fifteen thing, testosterone poisoning and all that, but seriously...those few moments are as vivid now as they were on that faraway day. She talked about Christmas, about the tree set up in their living room and the millions of presents all around it, and about her parents and mine playing golf out in Metairie. She asked me about school, wanted to know what it was like being locked up with several hundred boys and marching around like toy soldiers, then told me she was taking me to the hotel, and I was supposed to change clothes there – then she'd take me out to the country club.

And at one point while we were driving along she looked at me – and I guess I was still focused on those creamy white thighs – because when I looked up at her – she was looking at me with this odd expression on her face. And the look we exchanged just then? Oh...the feeling in the air between us! We had, literally, known each other all our lives, and in a way I'd considered her something almost like family – until that moment, anyway. Something changed between us just then, in that one split second. Some fundamental alteration of our orbits, some vital understanding of ourselves – a bit of knowledge you might call eternal, almost primal – had changed. She knew it, and so did I – and the next few minutes passed in silence – as we tried to come to terms with this unsteady new terrain.

She already had the key to my room and led me there after she parked on the street, then she opened the door – and put the key in her purse – as I carried my bag inside the room.

"Why don't you take a shower now," I remember her saying at one point, but I consciously unpacked my bag and put everything in drawers and closets – and she watched me as I did all that, never saying a word but staring at me like I had gone mad. Then, when I was finished she said: "I don't think I've ever seen anyone so obsessively neat and organized in all my life. Have you always been like this?"

"You ever been to military school?"

She shook her head, looked at me while biting her lower lip – a little coquettishly. "You going to take a shower?" she said an eternity later – though she was still grinning.

"Yup." I took some clothes into the bathroom and shut the door, turned on the water, the cold water I feel sure, and cleaned up. After I dressed I went out, saw her standing by the room's lone window looking down the street.

"Look," she said, "you can see the restaurant from here." That place was our touchstone, where our lives had first come together, where her life was grounded, I assumed.

I went and stood next to her – and I swear I felt like spontaneous combustion was a distinct possibility as I looked out that window with her by my side – then she turned to me.

"You get cuter every year," she whispered – and the pressure in my head grew so intense I thought my eyes were about to pop out of my head.

"Do I?"

She nodded, bit her lip again.

"You should see you the way I see you," I whispered.

"Oh? How do you see me?"

"I'll never love anyone the way I love you right now."

She turned serious, nodded her head. "I think I've loved you since I was three years old. Your mother taught me how to diaper a baby – with you."

And now look, I know...this is not how your usual romantic conversation usually starts, but we weren't your typical star-crossed teenagers, either. We were, really, anything but. We were, rather, like the Titanic – steaming through the night unawares...and her brother had helped me build the damn thing!

I may have sighed, but she stepped close and kissed me before I could say anything else.

And she kissed me just once, though very softly, on the lips.

And then she turned back to the window, looked at all the people on the sidewalks below. Then she took my hand and leaned into me. We stood there for a while, looking at St Louis and Royal below, looking at the world passing us by – wondering, perhaps, when it was going to be our turn – but I turned then and kissed the top of her head. Affectionately, I think, is the word– perhaps brotherly, but that was the wrong note and she turned into me forcefully, and we looked at one another deeply for a while, and time stopped when we kissed that next time – and her kiss was not tentative, or sisterly. She broke away a few minutes later and I remember the look in her eyes: feral, animal-like, at once predator and pray, and I was at once mesmerized – and very nearly terrified. I'd never seen anything so powerful in my life, and I knew all that energy was directed at me. No, into me. I felt powerless as I floated within those eyes, dreaming impossible things, trying to breathe – and finding it harder and harder to do.

"We'd better go," she said, and I nodded.

"Right," I think I said, but in truth I'm not sure I was capable of speech yet.

Then the phone rang. I went and picked it up, her that voice.

"Dad?" I said to the voice on the other end of my line.

"Goose? How the Hell are you? Have a good flight? Golly, it's sure good to hear your voice!"

"No, sir, no problems. How was the course?"

"Good. Grass is a little dry, but other than that, pretty decent. Say, we're at the house now, so come on out when you can."

He rang off and I turned to Claire.

She was still looking at me, her breathing very deep now, her eyes barely focused.

"I don't want to leave yet," she said.

"Okay." I went back to her, into her arms, and I kissed an ear, felt glued to her.

"Have you done it yet?" she whispered, and I could tell she was shaking.

I shook my head, and maybe I was trembling a little myself.

"Good." She walked over and sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me, then she flipped her shoes off, still looking at me as I came to her.

I think we left to drive out to her parent's place two hours later, and we were very different people than we had been just a few hours earlier.

+++++

Her brother Rickie was, oh, how do I say this? Different than the last time I'd seen him.

He was very feminine now. Can I say that and just leave you hanging there?

Hell, when I saw him I thought a new sister had just popped-up in their family, and no one was making the even the slightest effort to editorialize his appearance. He was almost a girl now, and I found the whole thing shocking, disconcerting, and to my fifteen year old self I felt way out of my depth, not to mention being – suddenly – very confused. I'd always known Richard, or Rickie, was a little different, but we'd thrown the football for days on end, talking football all the while, and we'd spent hours and hours together building all kinds of models – from Spitfires and Messerschmitts to, yes, our very own Titanic. We were the same age so there had always been this expectation we would, and should, spend time together – so we had – and over the years we had spent enough time together to know one another well enough. In truth I thought I knew him well enough to understand some pretty important things about his life, yet I'd never seen this coming.

Or hadn't I?

The fascination with girls? Not them, but their things? The panties in the bathroom? His mother doting all over him, his father always ignoring him.

And now he was wearing clothes that seemed almost androgynous. Not quite male, yet somehow not quite female – and this at a time in my life when I had no idea there were such variations in human sexual identity. By that I simply mean I had not a clue there was such a thing as homosexuality, let alone all the other labels we now throw around so carelessly. Rickie had, therefore, gone from the realm of the comfortably known deep into a place I knew nothing about. I saw the kid I threw the football with in my mind's eye, then with open eyes saw someone completely different.

And Claire looked at me looking at him, measuring me, I think, sizing me up. Wondering what I was going to do, perhaps, or say.

"Hey, Richard," I said as I came into the living room. "How're you doing, Amigo?" We'd started calling each other 'Amigo' down in Mexico City, and when I said that he brightened, ran into my arms and hugged me. I put my arms around him and hugged him too, and a collective sigh seemed to drift from our extended family into the evening. I went over and hugged Claire's mother, Sarah Collins, then shook hands with her father, Dean, then went over and to hug my parents.

"Uh, we're getting a little too old for that stuff now, Goose," my father said as I walked up. He held out his right hand and I took it.

"Yessir," I said, feeling almost compelled to salute.

"Goose, if you shake my hand," my mother said, "I'll just cry!" – and everyone laughed. Everyone, that is, but Rickie. I looked at him a moment later and he was looking at my father, and I could see he trying very hard not to cry.

+++++

We went to dinner at their restaurant at St Louis and Royal later that evening, and I sat between Claire and Rickie, my parents across from me, and their was a familiarity about the arrangement that was at once comfortable – yet surreal. The old dining room with it's dark oak walls and deep red accents, the waiters I'd known since I was old enough to walk, even the aromas wafting about all seemed steeped in fond memory, at once latent and manifest, memory that had accompanied me all my life. Yet now I felt trapped, felt there was nowhere to go, no place to hide as contradictory impulses hovered all around me. Claire was there, as she had for a dozen Christmas Eve dinners, yet so too was Rickie, but who was he now? His proximity was unnerving, unsettling, and instead of warm and comfortable I felt on edge.

Run, I thought, or wait and see what developed. Flight or flight...it's always the same.

Yet everywhere around me I felt Claire's lingering presence. As she had just a few hours before – we were together now. We were the same, yet different. And I realized that's how my world felt now: the same, yet different. Very different.

I was in love. And something was wrong with Rickie.

I was in love with Claire. And she was in love with me. Not the make-believe, pretend bullshit we talked about in the dorm back at school in the middle of the night. No, to me this felt like real love, the forever kind of love that hits hard, more like an instinctual drive at fifteen. I was gripped by this thing, and yet I knew I was the one who couldn't let go. What the Hell was this all about?

And Rickie sat beside me, as close as he dared, trying to get a sense of what had happened between Claire and I. I think he was as unsettled by our appearance as my father was, but it was Dean Collins that interested me most. He stared at Claire from time to time, and I could tell he was lost in contradiction, and his appetite was off.