In sixth grade, my friend Hans calls me up and says, “B.J., I got a lump.”

“A lump?  What do you mean a lump?”

“Like in health class.  A lump on my ball.”

“Which one?”

“Uhhh…one sec…the right one.  Yeah, I can feel it right now; there’s a lump on my right ball.  It’s hard and about the size of an almond or something”

“Don’t describe it like that,” I say.  “It’s probably nothing.  No one our age gets that.”  

            “Can you take a gander?”

            “A what?”

            I am no doctor, but I say I’ll have a look (not a gander) if he really wants me to.  But he’ll owe me.  He understands this.  

            So it happens like this: we meet at my house, in my room, and he stands tentatively in the corner.  My bedroom, at that time, housed a Hootie and the Blowfish poster, and this was the backdrop to the first testicular exam I ever performed.

            “So what…drop your pants?”

            “I guess,” he shrugs, then unbuckles his belt, drops the shorts to the ground, stands nervous in his underwear.  I wait, and he waits, and we’re both certain my mom will barge in at any moment with a plate of freshly baked cookies and will undoubtedly assume a number of things: gay tendencies, sexual experimentation, that we are deviants with the door closed.  

“You know what?” he says, exhaling, reaching down for his shorts.  “Probably, it’s nothing.  It’s probably nothing.  Yeah.”

            Behind him, Hootie and his fish crouch on a stairwell, try to look hip and fashionable, seem to agree with his assessment.  

            “Okay,” I say, “if you’re sure you’re not dying or whatever.”

            “Naw,” he says, “I’m not.”  And I believe him.

*

            He’s not dying, and it’s a good thing, because the following year I call in the favor.  Once more, pants are dropped.  

            “Come on,” I whined, my own pants plastered with a fresh slide tackle worth of mud.  “Remember that time I almost looked at your ball?”  We were at recess, and just recently, I’d become the proud boyfriend of an eighth grader named Amanda.  It was one of those relationships you never remember later.  But we were in love, apparently, and in order to maintain a love of that magnitude, I needed a fresh pair of pants to impress her.

            After falling victim to the awkwardly placed slide tackle in the middle of a recess soccer game, I rose to find my pants coated, completely stained with mud smears, and I turned to Hans, terrified that Amanda might see my devolution back to pig-form and I said, “Okay Hans, I’m going to need your pants.”

            We walked to the downstairs bathroom, took off our pants, and just stood there for a moment in front of the bathroom mirror, terrified that the wayward teacher might walk in and assume the worst—yet another pair of deviants with the door closed—and give us detentions for the mature themes we were demonstrating in the bathroom.  But we managed to switch pants without suspicion, and when the transformation was complete, I was sporting freshly creased khakis, and he resembled Swamp Thing.  But because of his loyalty, because of his sacrifice, Amanda and I went on to maintain a healthy relationship until the following weekend, when she sat by somebody else at the movie theater, felt a foreign palm reach for hers, and received it

*

            Years later, the relationship that Hans and I had forged by way of pant-switching and testicular tests would solidify further, though maybe we were never quite as close as in the beginning, back when we exhibited the kind of trust that only one sixth grader can bestow upon another when asked to “take a gander” at a swollen ball.

            I don’t know for sure; though I do know that the last summer I saw him—before he left for Japan—was the summer when we rode bicycles to a distant restaurant, ordered pints of a fresh-brewed beer, and sucked them down and talked about the future.  

            Me, I talked about my stories.  I went on and on about all the stories I wanted to write and the things I wanted to describe for others.  Like carnivals at midnight.  Like ducks who wear toupees.  I tossed ideas to him—“What do you think about this?”—and I gauged the validity of my idea on a scale of lukewarm to warm responses.  

“Yeah, it sounds all right”—lukewarm.  

“Yeah man, sounds really good,”—warm.

For the second half of the beer, he’d talk about Japan—all the girls he would meet, all the culture he would absorb.  “You know they have used panty machines there?  They’re like vending machines, and you toss in a quarter or whatever, and you get a pair of used panties.”  I put the beer down, folded my hands, unsure of how to break it to him.

“Hans, I don’t know if that’s actually the extent of the culture to be found there,” I said tenuously.

“No, I know.  But I guess what I’m trying to say is…you want me to pick you up a pair?”

“No thanks.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Well if you change your mind…”  I shook my head no.

He shrugged and took a cool sip of beer.  “Suit yourself.”

And then he vanished.

He boarded a plane, and he left me here in this town, in our childhood town, where I’m tricked into driving past our ancient middle school, our high school, on a daily basis; a town where I’m required to enter the same McDonalds where once, Hans sprayed ketchup packets along the bathroom wall; a place where my bedroom walls still have the residue of a Hootie and the Blowfish poster.  All of my sins haunt me, though he just outran his.

I miss him, sure, but what I miss most, what scares me most, is the same fear that six-year-olds have for their friends: what if there is someone else?  What about the possibility that he’s made some other friend in Japan?  Some friend who, if called upon, would give the testicular test without hesitation.  Some friend who, when the situation occurs, will readily switch pants and never think twice.  What if, right now, he and this “friend” are inserting coins into the used panty machine, and they’re laughing at their prize, absorbing the culture entirely.  

I want to write him a letter, and I want it to say, “Once, we too were deviants.”  But I don’t want it to come out the wrong way.  And I’m not sure I want to give him my home address.  Because what if he has a few extra quarters?  And what if there is no replacement-friend?  In a show of loyalty, a show of faith, who knows what he might send back?