St. Christopher

Memoir

Everyone called him Chris except me. Always Christopher. Only Christopher.

That medal hung around my neck for years. I got it when I was twelve from a fourteen-year-old boy who lived next door to my mother.

We made out behind every door we could close, and the day I left, he took the patron saint of travelers, his namesake, off his own neck and put it around mine.

After I had gone home, he would ask my mother, “Where is my wife?” I wasn’t Catholic, but I prayed to that medal every night.

By the time I was allowed to visit my mother again, he had started seeing another girl. I was jealous, but not angry.

He spotted the chain and delicately pulled the medal out from under my shirt to look at it. I asked if he wanted it back, and he said he didn’t. “Keep it forever, and think of me.” As if he needed to tell me.

I saw him a few times after that, but my mom moved away, and we fell out of touch.

When I was twenty, a guy called Chris sold me weed and ecstasy. We became friends. I didn’t call him Chris. Always Christopher. Only Christopher. He liked that.

He asked about the medal around my neck. Said he was named after the saint. I told him the boy who gave it to me was, too.

Sometimes we hooked up, smoked blunts he rolled, and talked about our lives. Mostly he talked about his life before in New York, while I lay back on his pillow and blew cannabis clouds towards the window he left cracked at night to hear the ocean and to keep from hot boxing his room.

I held the medal in my hand and thought about the other Christopher. The first one. High as I was, I started to believe that a cosmic thread had brought him back to me in the new Christopher.

New Christopher didn’t date other girls, but he didn’t date me either. He was in love with a girl from back home, and was in a relationship with his business, but he was always tender with me. I didn’t pay for product anymore unless I was buying it for someone else. It was the one thing he could give me. His heart was not available, and I already had a medal.

When New Christopher was long gone from my life, and another man whose name did not begin with C had broken my heart again, I found myself single and working at a place frequented by contractors for materials.

Orange is not a good color on me, and yet I was wearing a bright orange apron when Original Christopher came through my line with carts full of lumber. His hired hands were dragging the carts up to my register, and we did not see each other until he walked up behind them to pay.

We both laughed and embraced immediately. Wrapped in the arms of the boy I loved with my purest and tenderest heart, my eyes overflowed with surprise and joy. We could not tarry long there, as there were people waiting behind him, but he gave me his business card, and I promised to call. His eyes held mine as he smiled and walked away. He was the same as ever. Always my Christopher.

I invited him to come over when I was alone one night. We talked about everything that had happened in our lives over the last decade. We had both been married, both had children. We smoked out of my bong and played like kids. He lay on the floor of my living room and lifted me into the air with his legs. I put my arms and legs out, balancing my pelvis on his feet until I teetered sideways and crashed to the carpet, both of us laughing.

While he still lay laughing on the floor, I got up and went to my room, coming back with the medal he had put around my neck when I was twelve. “Do you remember this?” I handed it to him.

His face radiated excitement and surprise as he sat up and took the chain from my hand, dangling the medal in front of his eyes. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you still have this!”

“I wore it for a long time,” I told him. “I thought of you a lot. You should take it back now.”

He was genuinely touched and pulled me in for a hug. But then, he slipped the chain over my head and pressed the medal gently against my chest.

“Keep it,” he said, “and think of me again sometime.”

We kissed and snuggled on the living room floor, chatting into the wee hours. I didn’t invite him to my bed, and he didn’t ask. Both of us were raw from recent break-ups, and maybe what we had was never meant to lead to sex.

He called me a few times afterward, but the man who broke my heart came back for thirds, and I stopped returning the calls.

About fifteen years ago, I lost the medal. It still bothers me that it’s gone. I still look for it sometimes.

Always Christopher. Only Christopher.