48 years ago today, a boy drove an old post office truck from
Atlanta to Baton Rouge across a hurricane-ravaged coastline to spend the day
with me. He brought two friends to share the driving. They arrived in our
temporary home, a two-bedroom apartment – a stop along the way to some other
place. My mother fed them and found room for them to sleep while she moved me
into her room along with my youngest brother to preserve my virtue. I remember
being glad my father wasn’t there to spoil it all. That night, he and I, with
my family and his friends, watched a man walk on the moon. After that wonder,
we made out in the back of the truck, so hot and so sweaty in the Louisiana
dark that we could hardly hold on to one another. He held up my long and heavy
hair and blew on the back of my neck to cool me off. I touched his face – high
cheekbones, straight nose, soft lips to memorize it forever. We were the only
two people in the world when men walked on the moon. In the morning, he and the
other boys drove away while I cried and my heart broke. Later, I lay on the
couch with my head in my mother’s lap while she stroked my hair and told me
there would be other boys. There were, but none like him.
