JOY

“And the signs along the highway all said
Caution: Kids at Play.”
--Meatloaf

Whenever I hear "Objects in the Rearview Mirror May Appear Closer than they Are," I think of my best friend David during the first verse and no one during the second verse because my father wasn't abusive. But the last verse. . .Ah, during the last verse, I always think of Joy.

Always.

Joy used to park her VW bug up near Cowles Mountain and, before long, we would both in the passenger seat, going at it while the radio played some quiet FM station and a perfectly round, full moon watched over us in a sky devoid of clouds. She did this thing where she whispered to me while she bit my earlobe. It drove me crazy. Curved slightly on the right side of her mouth, her lips gave her a look as if she were always slightly amused. I wanted to touch her every time she smiled, put my hands on her body just to feel connected.

We met as cast members of a play at a local community theater play, and we started seeing each other even before the play's run was over. I was sixteen; she was eighteen. She was smarter than I was, more experienced, and I still benefit, thirty years later, from the things she taught me. Often while we were driving together, Joy would stop at a red light, and then—with a look of raw lust in her eyes--reach over and squeeze me on the knee. I realized over time that Joy’s every movement was intended so that I would learn.

During a pause, Joy would turn her body to avoid the gearshift, her lips would graze my flesh (they felt like fire on my cheek), and she'd moan a little in the back of her throat in a way that stopped my breath. I would place my fingers at the back of her neck, feel the soft intersection where her hair met her skin, and grow drunk on how her throat smelled of perfume. I would inhale her scent, and then I pulled toward her me.

Her skin on my skin was like a medicine, healing me.

Those first nights in her car, while we were parked on the mountainside, staring up at a moon that was bright, but offered no answers or insight, were long before the sky above us fell, long before I knew what was down the road, long before Joy pulled her car over to the side of the street not far from where we first made out just to tell me that there would be no more parking, that his name was Michael, and that, eventually, I would get over it.