Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son by Jennings Kevin

Author:Jennings, Kevin [Jennings, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9780807097267
Goodreads: 7852746
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2006-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Going Back In

My job as a proctor in the Harvard summer school program provided room and board for the summer after graduation. I didn’t need much money, so I didn’t get a steady job but instead did odd jobs occasionally through Harvard Student Agencies to pick up some cash. I spent most of my time hanging out and working out, having taken up weightlifting during senior year determined that, if I couldn’t be a jock, at least I would look like one. In other words, it was a pretty lazy summer, the biggest event of which was meeting Bob, another openly gay member of the Harvard class of 1985, who I had somehow never managed to run into during our undergraduate years—rather an amazing feat since the number of openly gay guys in my class of sixteen hundred could be counted on one’s fingers and toes. I got tricked into my first date with him. My senior-year roommate Jim worked with Bob, and Jim had told me Bob thought I was cute. I knew I was moving to Providence and had no desire to get involved with anyone, so I said thanks but no thanks to his offer to set us up. A few days later I dropped by the office where they worked giving Harvard tours, and Jim said, “Hey, Kevin, what are you doing tomorrow? Want to see a movie?”

“Sure,” I replied, upon which Jim turned to Bob and said, “How about you?”

“Sure,” Bob answered, and I knew I’d been duped. We made our plans and I turned to leave, when Jim added insult to injury: “Oh, shoot, I just remembered I have something else to do. But you guys go ahead without me.”

Annoyed, I was deliberately an hour late, knowing the movie would have started and thinking Bob would have given up and left. But he hadn’t. We headed over to Chi-Chi’s, known for its cheap margaritas and free chips, and soon were engrossed in conversation. Bob was a preppy, sweet, cute, all-American guy, who had graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in history and literature. His smile lit up his entire face, and I found myself getting lost in his blue eyes as the evening wore on. He even had blond hair, which turned brown when both the summer and his highlights faded but, by then, I was already in love.

Our second date was a trip down to the beach in Rhode Island. Bob had a car, a distinctly unsexy family station wagon he’d gotten from his parents, but the trip seemed hot enough to me. He’d pretty much been loafing a lot that summer, too, so that between his beach trips and his outdoor tours of the campus he had acquired a killer tan that made his teeth seem almost glow-in-the-dark white and his eyes seem bluer than the ocean we swam in. I kept looking in those eyes the whole day, wondering how I had gotten so lucky. That night we went back to his parents’ house in Grafton, a small town in central Massachusetts.

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