After a few turns, we stumbled on an abandoned junior high tucked between two small mountains. A team of Hispanic gardeners in bright orange vests was at work in the hills—the guardian angels of the San Fernando Valley’s natural world. They looked after its ecosystem, contained biological rebelliousness, removed leaves, bark, and moles. We used a faded RESERVED WHEELCHAIR ACCESS sign that was screwed into the parking-lot fence as a foothold and hopped over.
Tall grass sprouted from the courtyard and through the cracked cement of the basketball courts. The gardeners up in the hills weren’t paid to keep this nature at bay. Nobody noticed or cared about the weeds that grew outside the boarded-up classrooms or the ivy that crept along the rusted fences. A sign in one of the abandoned buildings read PROHIBIDO ENTRAR. Perhaps the people of Woodland Hills thought the only ones interested in trespassing at an abandoned junior high were Latinos. We walked around the ghost school’s echoing hallways. Arash pushed his shoulder against the wooden door of a sealed classroom, but it wouldn’t open. We found a discarded shopping cart and rammed it against the door a few times until it busted open. Shafts of light illuminated dust particles that shimmered over piled-up desks. A blackboard still hung on the wall. Someone had tagged “NWA” on it.
We sat on a bed of dry leaves on the classroom floor. Arash leaned back against the wall and lit a cigarette. He spat on the ground beside me, then looked me in the eyes.
“It’s kind of cozy here,” he said, smiling.
“Why do you spit so much?” I asked.
“I dunno. Habit, I guess. Plus I don’t want to have my mouth all full when I kiss you.”
“When you what?”
He leaned over and kissed me, bumping my head on the wall. I kissed him back. I didn’t expect it to be good, but it was. His lips were soft and I liked how big and sweet his tongue felt. I kept my eyes closed and undid his jeans, sniffing the aroma of the softener his mother used for his flannel underwear. It smelled better than his lips.
He had a dark, compact cock—an adult penis, more mature than the person behind it. I wrapped my lips around it and tasted the bittersweet drops at the tip. Arash’s head fell back and hit the wall. His fingers began to tremble on the side of my ears, attempting to caress my temples. I opened my mouth wider and sucked mechanically—rubber suit intact. He rolled his eyes in disbelief.
“You mean just like that? I don’t even have to work on it or nothin’?”
I looked up and smiled. “Just like that.”
I pulled him closer to me from his hips. He was breathing hard, more from stupefaction than from pleasure. I felt liquid moving up and so I pushed him farther down my throat. I let him come inside my mouth and swallowed because I was embarrassed to spit and didn’t want to add to his pile on the floor.
Afterward we sat hugging each other on the dusty floor, listening to the hypnotic hum of chain saws in the hills, a distant bark, birds twittering. The gardeners did their job, vacuuming gravel and chopping trees, doing what they did in their orange vests. They were the only ones who knew how fast the grass grew, how far elm branches reached. They were paid—very little—to bind and limit the explosiveness of the city’s macrocosm, to get rid of the beautiful trees with loose, flimsy leaves that lined the hillcrests. They had to intervene when white people planted weeping willows where they weren’t supposed to—their deep roots digging for moisture, breaking pipes and clogging water systems. As I lay there I imagined the men in orange vests shaking their heads, speaking to trees and plants, apologizing for all the times they had to cut them down for stupid reasons.
I rested my head on Arash’s shoulders.
“Want me to go down on you?” he asked politely.
“No, I’m fine. Thanks for coming here with me.”
He shifted in his seat and held me closer.
“All you Persian guys in class call each other kuni all the time, but then you’re always grinding each other and grabbing each other’s dicks…Don’t you think there’s something homoerotic between all of you or something?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Probably. What do you mean homoerotic?”
“Gay.”
“Fuck that. I’m not fucking gay. Did I seem gay to you when I busted a nut in your mouth just now?” he snapped defensively.
“No. I don’t know. Never mind.”
“Hey, Greece, you think too much. Give me a kiss.”
He leaned over and kissed me again.
“I’m fucking Italian, you idiot.”
I was happy to be with him.
“You taste like jizz,” he said.
—