My Best Friend's Dad

The first man I ever fell in love with was my

best friend’s dad. Mikey didn’t know it, of course, and neither did

Mr. Pierce.

The dad was nothing like the son. I’d known

Mikey since kindergarten, when he pushed me off the swing set on

the school playground and had to sit in time-out for the rest of

recess. When the teacher made him apologize, he stared at his

sneakers and mumbled, “Sorry.” It was only later, when we were

leaving for the day, that he approached me at the coat rack and

sounded a little more sincere when he added in a breathless rush,

“I’m sorry I pushed you off the swing. That was rude of me.”

I had looked up, surprised, but someone

behind Mikey caught my eye and my gaze continued to travel past the

kid to the imposing man who stood behind him. Mr. Pierce wore a

dingy wifebeater beneath a half-buttoned, dark blue work shirt. His

belt buckle seemed to be twice the size of Mikey’s head, and the

hem of his undershirt was caught in the fly of his dark pants.

I saw that little gleam of white peeking out

from between the silver teeth of the zipper and fell for him, right

then and there. At six years old, I was in love.

Without looking away from those stern, black

eyes, I whispered, “It’s okay. Thanks.”

Mikey knuckle-punched me in the shoulder and

laughed. “Smell you later!”

The next day he pulled his sleeping mat over

beside mine at naptime and we were friends ever since.

Over the years, Mr. Pierce never seemed to

change. Throughout elementary school and junior high, he was an

imposing figure on the edge of Mikey’s life. He knew my name, of

course; he hadto—I was Mikey’s best friend growing up. But

whenever I visited Mikey’s house, his dad always referred to us as

simply, “You boys.” It was, “You boys turn that TV down” when we

watched cartoons on Saturday mornings while Mr. Pierce tried to

sleep in, or “You boys stop running through the house” when we

chased each other with light sabers, or “You boys get to bed up

there!” when I spent the night and he heard Mikey snicker at my

latest dirty joke.

Mr. Pierce had a hard voice, rough, burned

out from too many late evenings with his friends huddled around the

dining room table, cigarette smoke stinging their throats and

watering their eyes as they played hand after hand of poker. If I

stayed over one of those nights, Mikey and I were confined to his

room upstairs, out of the way, though not out of earshot. The men’s

raucous laughter and coarse language made us envious. To be old

enough to join in with the adults! How I longed to have Mr. Pierce

call me a dirty bastard one second, then clap me on the back and

roar with approval at something I’d said the next.

On those nights, long after Mikey fell

asleep, I would lie awake in the darkness and listen to the game

wind down, imagining myself among them as a friend. The dining room

table was a thick slab framed on either side by weathered benches

and I could see myself so clearly seated on the bench beside Mr.

Pierce, sitting so close that his knee pressed into my thigh. In my

mind’s eye, I thought it wouldn’t take much to get one of those

large, calloused hands to drop from his cards onto my hip. I’d

wiggle a bit, scoot in closer, and sooner or later, Mr. Pierce’s

hand would be in my lap, doing delicious things that mirrored what

my own hand did beneath the blankets in my makeshift bed on Mikey’s

bedroom floor.

* * * *

Mr. Pierce was nothing like my own father,

who went to work in a starched shirt and tie. My father worked in

an office all day, pushing papers from one side of the desk to the

other, and wouldn’t last two hours in the plant where Mr. Pierce

worked as an electrician. When something broke around our house,

the extent of my father’s handyman knowledge was to know who to

call to fix it. Once Mikey and I became friends, he took to calling

Mr. Pierce, no matter what the problem. Mikey’s dad could fix

anything.

Whenever Mr. Pierce came over, he looked so

out of place in my home, so incongruous with everything else in my

life, that I couldn’t stop staring at him. I hovered in his shadow

as he tinkered under the sink or fiddled in the fuse box down in

our basement. I was the first thing he saw when he glanced back,

reaching for his tools. My persistence paid off, usually with a

gruff hand tousling my hair or a half-smile that only drew up one

corner of his mouth. “Hey, kid,” he’d say…maybe he didn’t

know my name, but I didn’t care. When he asked for a tool just out

of reach, I scrambled to retrieve it for him, and if he wanted a

glass of water, I rushed upstairs to pour one.