Clay
a novel by Jim Chadwick
To Ed, for following me when I run and asking the tough questions
Author’s Note: This memoir is based on my experiences over a six-month period. *Names have been changed, characters combined, and events compressed. Certain episodes are imaginative re-creation, and those episodes are not intended to portray actual events *
Prologue
Copenhagen, December
Happy hour. Around five I leave the hostel alone. I find Studiestraede, Copenhagen’s main (only?) gayborhood, right away. I do a preliminary stroll down the length of it, stopping to take a picture of Sex Beats Records before descending the steps of the Jailhouse.
The Jailhouse is unlike any bar I’ve ever seen. It is small, dark, and simple with a long black bar, but there are tables along the walls cordoned off by cell blocks to create an intimate feel. And I of course mean intimate in the leather/bondage sense. That said, the clientele is “typical” urban gay.
I park myself at the bar and order a Carlsberg. I’m not a big fan of beer but it’s good, maybe even “the best damn beer in town” as the huge sign across from Radhuspladsen proudly proclaims. I slide my driver’s license to the bartender, a short blond man with an impish grin. “What’s this?” he asks, bemused.
“Oh, it’s my I.D.”
He scoffs and hands it back with a grin. “You don’t need that!”
We make small talk, I finish my beer, pocket “A Gay Guide to Copenhagen,” and head back to the hostel.
Some time later that night, I find myself staggering back to Studiestraede. I peer down into Jailhouse but it is fairly empty. I find an alley, look around, relieve myself, and continue to weave down the street.
A yellow sign bearing the word “Amigos” hangs over another alley. I look to the left down the alley. It is dirty, wet, and poorly lit. I am drunk, horny, and curious. I linger outside the door, check to make sure I am unseen, and enter.
An elaborate painting of naked bathing men, presumably Romans, greets me at the foot of the staircase in the entryway. I climb the stairs and press the buzzer. The door clicks and I open it.
A glass counter full of porn and dildos of every color, shape, and size dominates the center of the room. Its surface is lined with baskets of condoms. I note that they are packaged in rectangles, not squares, and initially mistake them for lube packets. Behind the counter stands an attractive blond man. I have just described virtually every man in Copenhagen, if not Scandinavia.
The man at the counter looks at me with a peculiar smile. Perhaps it’s my youth. Perhaps it’s my sloppy lack of coordination and balance. Or both.
“100 Kroner.” I fish out a bill from my wallet and hand it over in exchange for a towel and a locker key attached to a rubber band bracelet. I am unaware that I am about to enter the gay equivalent of a brothel. I am also unaware that I enter not only as a paying customer, but also as fair game, up for grabs.
The locker room is nothing out of the ordinary, one you could find in any gym in the States. I eagerly shed my clothes, don my towel and key, slipping a condom between the cotton and the flesh of my waist, stash my stuff, and turn the corner. A customer is in conversation with the man at the counter, completely naked. To the right of him a man surfs the Web, also nude. At least he’s not touching himself. Yet. Disgusted and fascinated. I continue my self-guided tour. Urinals line the walls, beyond them are showers and a sauna. I peer into the sauna and, seeing no one, sit for a few steamy minutes.
I want to take off my towel but decide against it. Immediately after making this decision, a man enters and sits on a bench perpendicular to me. We exchange probing glances, motionless. Another man enters, taking a seat beside the first. Young and attractive, I am on the point of coming onto this new stranger when he gets up, drops to his knees, and begins blowing his neighbor. He fellates with a lover’s zeal, bobbing up and down with vigor and enjoyment. Maybe it’s a drunk’s zeal, I’m not sure which. Drunk lover maybe? The older man spreads his legs wider and pushes the younger man’s head down, fucking his face. I am glued to my seat, stunned. This shit only happens in porn. I have a huge hard-on by this point and erotic as this is, I feel like I am intruding and am eager to see more. I exit and ascend the stairs.
I have entered the world’s shadiest, cruisiest labyrinth, a far cry from the bathhouse from Queer as Folk. Carpet cuts a rectangle around the black wooden cubicles. I pace once around the perimeter. On either side of me are rooms with cots in various arrangements and hand sanitizer dispensers mounted on the wall, except that they dispense lube instead of sanitizer. Clever, no? Some of these rooms have porn projected against the walls. So you don’t even have to focus on the stranger you’re fucking. How convenient. Some rooms are empty and some are occupied. Some occupants lie prostrate, waiting for partners. Others jerk off to the porn. Others copulate, sometimes with spectators. Sometimes the spectators participate.
I am so aroused as I continue my rounds. I get several lascivious glances but don’t stop until I’ve seen it all. I check out the top floor. More of the same, but the rooms are darker and seedier, with glory holes and what looks like a bunkroom through the obscure darkness. I go back to the second floor and slow my gait significantly, swiveling my hips deliberately, as though I’m on a catwalk.
The quietness of the place strikes me. Men exchange glances wordlessly and either enter a room or keep walking. Moans from porn stars, masking but not altogether drowning out authentic moans, are all that break the silence.
I lock eyes with a tall blond. He nods and opens a door. I follow him, my towel threatening to fall off.
He bends over, legs apart, hands against the wall. No words. This really is like porn. Except less glamorous and compensated. I drop my towel, roll on a condom and begin lubing myself. I pump more lube into my hand and walk slowly toward him. I finger him liberally, first with one, then two fingers. He gasps appreciatively and clenches around me. I grip his shoulder firmly with my left hand as my right hand guides my cock into him. His breathing becomes more ragged until a monumental sigh tells me that I am all the way in.
Everything is instinct now. No emotion, just raw, animal instinct. I grab his right shoulder and begin pumping him furiously. I lean into him, breathing onto his neck and stroking the length of his shaft.
I flip him onto his back and reenter him, the smell of sex overpowering the small room. I lean into kiss him then pull his legs over my shoulder as I explode into him. I pull out, discard the condom, and collapse on the bed, totally spent.
I wake up to a small sea of flesh. Two men are standing over me, eyeing me with what can only be called hunger. A third is on top of me. I look down and see a penis penetrating me. I don’t feel it, but I see it moving in and out of me against my will. Violating me. I hurl him off of me and run for the stairs, completely naked, a crowd of stunned Danes in my wake. Walk of shame has now become bare-ass run of shame.
I throw on my clothes, return my key, and emerge into the cold night air. I don’t know what has just happened, but now that the alcohol and orgasm have worn off, I feel considerably less sexy than before.
I keep coming back to Amigos out of very morbid curiosity until we relocate to a hostel thirty minutes outside the city. Each night is a gamble. Some nights the men are hot, other nights they aren’t. This unpredictability both unnerves and excites me. I want hot young European men all the time, which is impossible, but at the same time, not knowing what I will find heightens the thrill.
I feel entitled to find something as I fork over 100 Kroner (20 USD) each night to the attendant. It is always the same attendant and every night he fixes me with a knowing grin. Knowing what, exactly? I wonder. That I’m a sex fiend? A trashed American tourist? That I have unrealistic expectations and desires? Some or all of the above?
I end up fucking one guy a night on average, always with protection, which is fine with me. It’s sick that there’s a place that puts a price on human flesh, but I’m perpetuating it, and there are far worse sex trades around the world. I feel no passion, just that carnal animalism. Completely uninhibited, aggressive sex, fueled by porn stars on the screens overhead.
I stop my pacing in front of a group of men watching porn on a big screen. I lean seductively against the wall, dividing my attention carefully between the men copulating on the wall and the men watching them. My dick threatens to emerge from the fold in my towel.
The man seated closest to the wall reaches through the fold of my towel and starts stroking me without turning his eyes off of the porn. The towel finally falls to my ankles. He pulls me greedily into his mouth and sucks me like a starving man.
It’s as if an alarm has gone off somewhere in the bowels of this maze of sleaze. One by one spectators filter into the alcove to watch. The paid professionals on the wall fade into the background, unnoticed.
Something brushes up against my asscheeks. Whether it’s paunch or something else, it is unsolicited and I don’t like it. I slide my right hand discretely down my back, literally covering my ass, barring access. A sign around my neck – “You must be under 40 to ride. Sorry, no exceptions.” – would be more effective. I am at the point of no return and try to let my fellater know but he is still ravenously inhaling me. Too late. He seems untroubled by swallowing.
It’s over. I like the adventure of the place but the old men outnumber and overpower me. I’ll probably be one of them someday. There’s a thought that can flatten any erection.
How incredibly vain and arrogant of me, to go to a place like this and silently make conditions. But how necessary, as well. Do I send mixed messages? Definitely. Body language in a place like this is difficult to read and poses the same dangers of any language barrier; you can be one minute groping harmlessly and the next you’re fighting a begging, protesting stranger off of you (or out of you). I need to find some new Amigos.
Friday night began like all other nights in Copenhagen began: drunkenly rotating between Centralhjornet and Jailhouse, sizing up the crowds in both, and making a selection on that basis. Jailhouse won, as it usually did, more familiar than Centralhjornet if nothing else.
I know the drill now and yes, it has become a drill. Slink up to the bar, order a Carlsberg, pay, sit down, and eye up fellow patrons. The lighter (and thus less detectable) side of a developing alcoholism, but alcoholism all the same. But I digress. I’m killing the mood.
I nurse my beer with a certain amount of restraint. I don’t want inhibitions, but I also don’t want to pay for another beer. European life has taken a toll on my wallet. That’s where my fellow patrons come in. Or so I hope.
My “patience” pays off. The guy across the bar I’ve been watching intently leaves his stool, walks over, and sidles into the space between me and the guy next to me. His gusto is awe-inspiring. I wish that I had the balls to buy someone a drink.
“Can I get you another?” As if there’s more than one answer to such a question. His accent is thickly Danish; the “g” is very hard and he says “anothah” instead of “another,” a carryover from British English. I’m delighted.
I look up at him with a coy, sultry half-smile. “Please.”
“What are you drinking?” “Drinking” has two distinct, rhyming syllables: “dring, “king.” Adorable.
“Carlsberg.” I fear that to him, this is the Danish equivalent of ordering a Budweiser.
He flags down the mischievous barman, who comes our way cradling three frothy beers between his fingers. He deposits one, then whisks off to the other end of the bar.
“What’s your name?”
“Jim. And you.?”
“Henrik.”
“Nice to meet you, Henrik.”
“You as well. Won’t you come meet my friends?” He gestures to a group of people gathered over the sunken window.
I follow him over, still in belief that I have been picked up by a European. Hell, I’m still adjusting to the reality that I can drink openly in a bar, something I can’t do back home.
He introduces me to the crew, mostly friends from work. In my haze I forget their names, but we shoot the shit just fine anyway. I tell them about the UN conference and how wonderful the city has been. Many of them have never been to the U.S. and though I should expect this, I find myself in a slight culture shock. I am happy to answer their questions, objectively as my beer will allow.
Henrik hasn’t taken his eyes from me and mine only leave his to listen politely to each speaker. I near the bottom of my bottom of my beer as he leans in and asks:
“Would you like to go home with me tonight?” Timid doubt saturates his voice, as though he’s predicted my decline. His humility is tragically misplaced but charming nonetheless.
I try to channel Audrey Hepburn with something like “Oh, I’d be delighted.” Maybe even clasp both hands together. Ok, too much. I am pretty well gone so in all likelihood gave a simple “yeah,” unoriginal but definitely not without earnest. He takes me by the hand, leading me up the stairs and onto the snowy street.
“Shall I call a cab?”
“Is it too far to walk?”
“No, no, it’s just so cold.”
“I’m fine with walking.”
We turn onto Norregarde, one of the few streets I recognize because of the Metro and train stations.
“That’s Rosenborg Castle, the royal palace, where the Danish crown jewels are. They’re not as impressive as the British crown jewels, but they’re still quite nice,” he says dismissively, pointing ahead to our right. “God, it’s cold.”
It’s not as cold as December in Minnesota, but still cold, to be sure, and I take this as a cue to nestle into his right shoulder.
“This way.” We jaywalk across the normally bustling but now deserted Norregarde.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to a stately columned building crowned by a beautiful gold dome.
“Danish National Art Museum.”
“Oh, I’d love to see that.” This is completely genuine, no Audrey. “Is the collection more classical or contemporary?”
“Mostly classical but they have a bit of everything.” He fumbles for his keys and opens the door we’ve stopped before. “After you.”
I step into the warmth of the first-floor landing. Henrik closes the door behind him and starts up the stairs.
I follow him into the first door on the second-floor landing and take off my snow-caked shoes.
His apartment seems to take up the entire second floor, evoking at once awe and loneliness. To the left are a dining room – black teak table, four chairs, cream place settings and candlesticks – and den, burgundy walls dwarfed by an enormous plus sectional. To the right a kitchen – black and stainless steel appliances and wood countertops to match the hardwood floors, so authentic you can see the knots – a beautiful black bathroom, and the bedroom.
The whiteness of the down comforter shines in stark contrast to the shadow-bathed room. Across the bed Henrik’s nude silhouette is visible. I lift my shirt over my head. I slide off my pants, kick them into a heap with my shirt, and seat myself on the bed to peel off my socks. My back is to Henrik as I bend over but I feel his eyes combing my back.
I flip onto my side, head supported in hand, a live Manet male nude, beckoning. He crawls in to join me.
We kiss. We embrace. We make love. It’s cliché and I hate this phrase, but it’s a more apt description than frantic fucking, preoccupation with who gets to put what where and with what pace and so on and so forth. We are two strangers, naked together without reservations. He holds me, his arms wrapped around my navel, legs spooning mine. I crave this intimacy like oxygen, try to suck up every precious second of it. He is holding me and nothing else matters. I fall asleep.
My first cognition when I wake up is my nudity, not because I am embarrassed or rueful but because I am unaccustomed to sleeping nude. Henrik’s eyes are smiling. Mine smile back. I lean in to kiss him, a prolonged kiss in which I am now aware of my breath and collective hygiene.
I roll out of bed and into his exquisite, immaculate bathroom. Shiny black granite floors, sleek white sink and toilet bowl, and best of all a glass shower, all polished to a fine gleam. I close the glass shower door behind me. Even the shower knob is hip and modern. Or maybe it’s just Danish. I turn it to the right. Nothing. Left. Still nothing. I push and pull with all my strength, fearing I’ll break the damn thing but refusing to admit my incompetence.
I walk back into his room as he strips the bed. I panic. Was last night messy?
“Yes?” Not in answer to my paranoid thoughts, Thank God, but to why I am back so soon.
“Oh…um, I couldn’t figure out the shower.” I fidget like a child, hoping to play off my naïveté as innocence and cuteness. It works like magic.
“No one ever does,” he says, leading me back into the bathroom. “No one” as in he’s entertained a lot of one-night stands or “no one” as in it’s impossible to figure out? This suspicion is fleeting.
He does exactly to the knob what I did and, naturally, it works. I thank him and step in as he steps out.
I watch him relieve himself, wash his hands, then brush his teeth. This is strangely, intensely erotic. He is watching me through his mirror so I get to work lathering, lingering on my dick and ass.
A gay man’s ass is never clean enough. Ever. They sell anal douches on the Internet but I am skeptical of their efficacy at eliminating anxiety and self-consciousness surrounding anal sex.
I dry off and pull on my clothes, Henrik still naked. “When will I see you again?”
I’m taken a bit aback at this and very flattered. “Uh, I know we’re sightseeing today, but I should be free tonight.” I don’t have a European cell phone but remind myself that people did hook up before the invention of cell phones. “How about 9:00 across from St. Peter’s Church, near the university? It’s very near you,” he suggests.
“I’ll be there.”
I give him a last kiss then skip down the steps and out into the sunlit morning.
8:45 rolls around. I rummage through the tiny hostel room in a libidinous frenzy – deodorant, gum, peacoat, scarf, condom.
I arrive at the church at the stroke of nine. I kick my feet and scan the surroundings.
9:05. I run through the list of possible scenarios: he’s on his way, he can’t come (and tried to inform me of his absence through e-mail), he forgot, he’s in trouble, he’s standing me up. Each possibility is progressively worse than the last but I can’t help myself.
Then a wave of relief. His shadow approaches me, growing larger with each step. We embrace with a quick peck. He rubs his hands together, shivering, shoulders hunched.
“Where to?”
“Oh I don’t know, you tell me.”
“Café Oskar then. We’ll get a drink.”
He takes me downtown in the direction of Radhuspladsen, the heart of Copenhagen and ground zero for the UN COP15 demonstrations against climate change.
Café Oskar is a charming corner café, furnished with bright red divans, wing-backed barstools, and votive candles in the center of each table for two.
We take a table near the back wall which is plastered with pictures of pop, and more specifically, gay icons, Oscar Wilde front and center.
“What’ll it be?” An attractive young dark-haired waiter stops at our table, biceps bursting through his tight black shirt, over which “Oskar” is emblazoned across his perfect pecs. I wouldn’t mind ordering him. His eyes dart expectantly between us.
Henrik defers to me, ever the gentleman. “Umm…Irish coffee for me, please.”
“And I’ll take the same, thank you.” Even though the café is nearly to capacity, our drinks arrive within minutes. We make conversation and its light and pleasant and I am completely absorbed in my Danish experience. Savoring it like a robust burgundy. The warmth and sweetness of it, the slight burn as it descends my throat, its reflection of the candlelight in our liquid eyes. Even when I am left with nothing but residue clinging to the bottom of my glass, I retain the warmth. We bask in our lazy glow.
“Have you been to Tivoli?”
“No – I’d like to but it’s a bit expensive and it’s awfully cold for amusement rides these days.”
“You have to see it! Let’s go!”
And so we do.
Complete sensory overload – it is parts Times Square, parts Minnesota state fair, parts SixFlags, but smaller and classier, built around a large pond where paddleboats are available for rental. Halfway around the pond looms a giant ferris wheel, its colossal spokes stretching into the sky like blue and white beacons – urban excitement meets simpler, less hectic times.
“Over there they have weekly concerts. One summer they had the Rolling Stones play,” Henrik remarks, gesturing to a bandshell atop a lawn sloping down to the water’s edge.
“Do you want some glaag? It will complete your Danish experience.”
“If you say so,” I tease.
Pathetically, we’re both tired by this point. I follow him home, my glaag warming me all the way.
He shows me his film collection, prefacing it dismissively: “I don’t really have anything good.” This is completely untrue, although some of the Danish title translations are initially unrecognizable. Henrik settles my characteristic indecision by selecting Memoirs of a Geisha.
He dims the light and makes for the kitchen. I sink into the couch, amused by the copyright warnings in Danish and trying to translate them without any real expectation – fields of a’s, d’s, f’s, g’s, j’s, and k’s.
Henrik comes back, palming two champagne flutes in one hand and a corked bottle in the other. Is this guy for real? He seems to read my thoughts with a smile, handing me a flute and depositing the bottle into a waiting ice bucket. He reclines, resting his head in my lap.
I sip my wine, stroking his head and waiting for someone to pinch me. My eyelids grow heavy. I sense fatigue seeping over Henrik as well. His chest rises and falls more dramatically. My hand slides down his back and rests there a while.
Midnight comes and goes. Henrik shifts his weight, gets up, and crosses to the bedroom. I down my glass and follow suit.
I slide into bed and wait for Henrik to get ready for bed. He turns off the TV and dims the lights completely. The rustle of water in the bathroom can be heard as he brushes his teeth. The last light flickers off and I feel Henrik crawl next to me. He presses into my back, breathing heavily on my neck.
“How old are you?” Of all times to ask me this, he chooses now.
Silence. A moment’s hesitation. “Twenty.”
“Oh my God. I could be your dad.” And that’s why we are not discussing this, I think to myself, trying unsuccessfully not to wonder how old he is. Why ruin a perfectly good moment with a numbers game?
I turn my head slowly, kissing him fervently as I pull him closer to silence him. No more words, just the sounds of our bodies and our breathing. He explodes into me and I onto him. He bends over for a towel, cleans up, the falls asleep in my arms.
Sunday morning finds us both without much ambition. We cuddle until I have to get up to pee. I try the shower again, unsuccessfully, and again humble myself for his assistance. But this time instead of continuing on with his morning routine, he stays in the shower with me.
I watch him through curtains of water as he bends over, dispenses shampoo into his hands, and lathers it onto my head. I close my eyes and take a step closer to him. I let out a low moan of pleasure. The water washes over me and I am clean. I open my eyes, reach for the shampoo, and wash him.
“Are you hungry?”
“Yeah, a little bit.”
“What do you like?”
I defer. “Oh I don’t know. What’s good around here?”
“There’s a place around the corner that serves traditional breakfast.”
“Let’s do it.” He smiles at this informality and we dress, glide down the stairs and into the bright morning.
I’ve stepped back into America. Wooden tables, wooden floors, walls littered with Americana, Fleetwood Mac streaming through the speakers. I could easily be in Minnesota.
“Is this okay?”
“Oh, absolutely.” We take a window booth. I order the #5 combo: orange juice, a bottomless cup of coffee, bacon, eggs, sausage, hashbrowns, the works. So indulgent but so worth it.
Not at all surprisingly, Henrik orders the same, smiling. We make conversation about school and his work and Christmas plans. He’s going back to his hometown on the mainland and not looking forward to it. We joke about the global tie that is family drama.
He picks up the check against my flirtatious objections.
“Well? What would you like to see?”
I think “everything” but ask if he would recommend the art museum or Rosenborg Castle. He instantly chooses Rosenborg. Rosenborg it is.
We cross the street and pass through a wrought iron archway adjacent to a red brick fence. Statues and (snow-covered) gardens dot the campus. Two stone lions flank the castle façade patrolled by soldiers with rifles, no older than me.
We start in the basement in a dungeon-like room, full of dozens of medieval swords and battle axes. In each corner of the room are barrels of port the size of men.
“On Easter and Christmas, the royal family drinks from those barrels.” Henrik is cute in tour-guide mode. I wish I knew this much to share about my heritage. In this moment I become painfully aware and self-conscious of my American nationality, wish it were less prevalent than my British ancestry.
Next up is the crown jewels collection. To be fair, they aren’t as breathtaking as those of Britain, but Danish colonialism wasn’t as bloody either. None of this passes through my consciousness at the time – I am in a castle, the arm candy of a wonderful, sensitive man. How can I not feel like royalty?
Centuries-old staircases lead us to the throne room, around which all the other rooms are arranged. Mosaics, bookcases, vases, beds, armoires, instruments, and the thrones themselves, flanked by golden lions. Too much heritage to absorb and fully appreciate in a few short hours, but I am grateful for the glimpse.
“I’ve got to go downtown to some Christmas shopping – do you want to grab a cup of coffee first?”
“Sure.” We find ourselves back in Café Oskar in front of two coffees, non-alcoholic this time. The couple next to us engages us in coffee talk – one or both of them are American and the conversation turns to the superiority of Target over Walmart.
We reach the bottom of our cups. Henrik breaks the awkward silence, citing his need to shop then prepare for work the next day. What an ugly reality check! I rise from my chair and he meets me in an embrace. We bid goodbye.
Sunday night finds me back in the Jailhouse midway through another Carlsberg. I already miss the familiarity of Henrik, but the bar is full of eligible bachelors tonight. Men who either don’t have to wake up early tomorrow or have resigned themselves to reality and willing to imbibe anyway. One in particular captures my eye from the second I walk in. He’s wearing a cap and a black hoodie, but an angel face betrays tenderness beneath the alternative/skater ensemble. He catches me staring and nods. I turn back to my beer, hoping for some liquid courage. The only result is that I have to take a wicked piss.
I come back and he’s gone. How could this happen?! I desperately scan the bar before spotting him amongst a group against the wall. Against the wall…my fantasies run wild. There’s no way to properly lust after him from my barstool, but fortunately I don’t have to. He calls me over. I order another beer, just to be safe.
We introduce ourselves, I talk about the craziness of the UN climate change conference and the conversation hits a lull. Lars’ friend, Sammy, takes an interest in me, asking me about the GLBT-friendliest places in the U.S. For whatever reasons Provincetown slips my attention but I mention New York, San Francisco, and Miami.
Then I’m back to looking at Lars and he me. He is breathtakingly attractive. Short brown hair, brilliant blue eyes, a button-shaped mouth with a smile that could light up the Grand Canyon and an accent that could melt steel. Before long those enchanting lips are wrapped around mine.
I am beyond hooked. I pull his tiny ass into me, drawing him deeper. Flashes of light appear in my peripheral vision; his friends are photographing us. I wonder where these pictures will surface then secretly hope they will surface on Facebook or somewhere I can see them at my leisure. To his friends we’re just two drunk guys making out but it’s more. He likes it too – after I relinquish his tongue and drain my beer, he invites me home.
He hails a cab. It takes what the beer hasn’t taken of my restraint not to seize upon him right there. I content myself simply with looking into his eyes. He is hot, there’s no romantic, poetic way around that.
His apartment is about the same size as Henrik’s but farther from downtown and shared with two roommates, neither of whom I get the chance to meet. At the moment I’m far from bothered by their absence. Just as I’m sure they’re happy not to walk in on a naked stranger using their toilet.
His place is straight out of an IKEA spread – functional, modern, and, given the demographic, most likely cheap. Classy cheap though. I love it. He has floor to ceiling shelves full of books and movies, only a few of which I recognize. His bed is plush and warm and quite low to the ground.
I allow him to strip me to my boxers and do the same to him. I roll over to the side of the bed, then roll on top of him to generate warmth, sucking his lips and tongue and feeling him up.
“Can we have sex?”
In my inebriation I misunderstand him, thinking he’s denied me. I roll back to my side, feigning sleep. After a few minutes, he, being more lucid than me, figures out what has happened and, after clarifying the misunderstanding, pins me to the bed, kissing me furiously. I swallow his tongue and grab his ass, massaging and gripping its fleshy softness. I tell him to fuck me. He finds a condom and I guide him into me. He’s long but no wider than a couple of fingers so I can accommodate him better than most. I’d love to get really kinky with him, I’d take him in any position but I’m drunk, tired, and craving his contact, so we stay in missionary. I want to watch his face as he penetrates me. I kiss him. His eyes close and when they open they are beaming. I feel an orgasm coming and ride him harder. His face signifies his orgasm and he shudders to a halt inside of me, collapsing on top of me. We roll onto our sides. I pull him up against me and nestle under the comforter.
Nature calls in the middle of the night. I feel awful waking Lars, but better that than piss his bed.
A twinkling Christmas tree lights the way from the corner next to and industrial-looking table and chairs. Unlike Henrik’s, this one gets regular use, miscellaneous papers strewn everywhere. Time has suspended itself in my Danish fantasy world and I’ve forgotten that Christmas is later this week.
I find the toilet and as a bonus, successfully manage to flush it and wash my hands. I return to the bedroom and nuzzle next to Lars, absorbing his comforting warmth.
Morning comes far too soon and I don’t want to leave. I also don’t want to seem rude or needy, so after an amusing search for my underwear, I dress promptly. Lars gives me his email and bus directions back to the hostel. I think of him all the way back.
A twelve pack of cider, and the fact that it is my last night in Denmark, convinces me that it’s a really good idea to go to Jailhouse again. I peer down into the window into a dead bar, excepting two or three regulars gathered in the corner. I investigate more closely, hoping that Denmark doesn’t forbid its bars from serving already intoxicated patrons, as in the U.S.
I can’t believe my bleary eyes. Seated at the bar is none other than Lars. I mutter something about “stumbling upon him” and not actually looking for him. He laughs his musical laugh. I’d say anything to hear it again.
I ask him if, given the fact that I no longer have a hostel to stay in, he’d mind if I came back with my suitcases, explaining that my flight home leaves first thing in the morning. He laughs again and keeps my barstool warm.
I run back pell mell to the hostel, fly down the stairs, seize my bags, and find the wolfpack (of fellow Montblanc students) what I’m doing. They, themselves drunk, dismiss this as drunken rambling.
I run back to Jailhouse, my suitcase hopping madly over the cobblestones. I am immediately relieved to see that he is still there. I lamely stash my bags in one of the cells, out of the way, and order a Carlsberg. I am content with just watching him, drinking him in. He rests his hand on my leg; I rest mine on his. His friend wants to go to Masken Bar, so we polish off our drinks, thank the goofy bartender, and exit.
Once at Masken, Lars goes upstairs to order drinks, the friend and I wait in the basement. There are several good-looking guys down here and it’s really nice not feeling pressured to have to woo them, to feel content and wanted. I feel bad for Lars’ friend, a quasi-tacit third wheel. He’s nice to me but doesn’t seem to have the initiative to mingle on his own.
Lars breaks our awkward tension, carrying two rum and Cokes for us and beer for his friend. I suppress a laugh with a wry smile at his silly attempt to get me wasted. As if I don’t know, but more over, as if he needs to. He has me wrapped around his finger.
Monday evening’s musical selection is top-notch, featuring “Walk Like An Egyptian,” “Take on Me,” “Video Killed the Radio Star,” “That Don’t Impress Me Much,” “Holiday,” and, naturally, “Vogue.”
Lars knows every word of “Walk Like an Egyptian” and is clearly disappointed that I don’t share this memorization. I use my age as a cop-out. Ditto to “Take on Me” but I pull him onto the tiny dance floor and go for the high note at the end of the chorus. “I’ll be gone in a daaaaaaaay.” My epiphany at this truth is an unwelcome wave of sobriety. I will no longer be in Denmark tomorrow. I lament the injustice of this, taking generous swigs of my drink until I realize that it doesn’t get any better than this. Nothing could crown my Danish experience like this, not even a diamond-encrusted tiara from Rosenborg.
“Vogue” comes on. At last a song whose lyrics he doesn’t know either. We have basically failed as gays. English is his second language, what’s my excuse?! We sit and drink and laugh, vogueing at the chorus. There, his innocent eyes laughing through the ribbons of smoke, is where I fell in love with him.
Maybe love is too strong. Maybe it’s just lustful infatuation. Maybe it’s just loneliness swept under the rug by sex and alcohol. Maybe it’s an unwillingness to admit that I’ve fallen for someone so hard in so small a space of time. I don’t know which reality I prefer.
“Holiday” jolts me out of my reverie. I shake my ass to the beat like the drunken fool that I am, to the raucous cheer of Lars’ friend. “It would be/It would be so nice.”
Lars is painfully out of tune. I love him all the more for it.
“Holiday” is replaced by the twangy guitar and cowbell opening of “That Don’t Impress Me Much.” I start screaming like a schoolgirl at her first concert. Lars, and the bar at large, look at me as though I’ve lost my mind. “You don’t understand; I haven’t heard this song in ten years!” I shout. I grab an air mic for the second verse.
“I never knew a guy who had a mirror in his pocket
And a comb up his sleeve, just in case
And all that extra-hold gel in your in your hair oughta lock it
‘Cause heaven forbid it should fall out of place.
Oh, oh you think you’re special
Oh, oh you think you’re something else.
Okay, so you’re Brad Pitt.
That don’t impress me oh, oh, oh-oh
So you got the looks but have you got the tocuch?
Now don’t get me wrong oh yeah I think you’re alright
But that won’t keep me warm in the middle of the night.
Thomas kisses me amid fits of laughter, a funny vibrating sensation as his lips bounce and his breath comes in shallow bursts. He applauds me, more likely because I have shut up than for my impromptu karaoke prowess. The hours have grown more wee and I have to be at the luftnhavn to catch an eight o’clock flight home tomorrow morning. Or rather, later this morning.
We part ways with Lars’ friend at the door and pile into a cab. Lars gives his address, the driver plugs it into his GPS and accelerates. He begins biting at my neck, smothering its surface. He hovers over my chinline before diving into my ear. A jet of warm air floods my ear all the way through the canal and reemerging as my own ecstatic exhalation. My ass clenches in arousal and anticipation. The car stops. Thomas reaches forward to pay the fare and I crawl out after him up to his apartment.
I eagerly pull at his shirt and remove his pants in one downward tug. He undresses me with the same urgence. I grab his ass firmly, kneading it as I draw my lips around him. This time I close my eyes, storing every inch of the man in front of me deep in my memory. Our tongues dance around each other until we are breathless.
I thrust him onto the bed and straddle him. I run my tongue down his perfect alabaster chest while simultaneously sliding his boxer briefs to his ankles. With one breath I inhale him completely. He throbs wildly in my mouth. As I apply a vacuum I gaze up at him. His eyes are shut, breath emanating in faint moans from slightly parted lips. Mars in Botticelli’s Mars and Venus. I suck more vigorously. Never has giving head seemed less like a chore and more like giving a gift.
I come up for air. He kisses me, tasting himself all over my lips before going down on me. I watch him the entire time, my breathing shallow. I caress his hair, careful not to push him deeper on me against his will. Even in this position his face is breathtaking. I am close to orgasm and gently pull him into a kiss.
I flip him tenderly onto his back, straddle him anew, fit him with a condom, and penetrate myself on his prick. I draw the comforter over my back to keep warm and he instinctively reaches for the lamp but my hand stops him midway. Tonight I have to see him.
I vary my speed until I am back to the verge of climax then let him take control. He places his hands on my waist and pumps, not furiously but passionately, legs flailing in pleasure. He expands and contracts inside of me, the movements mirrored on his face before he unloads with a loud moan. I moan without inhibition as he masturbates me, glazing his barren chest.
I fall against him, completely spent. He sets the alarm for 5:30, just a few short hours away. He turns to me and cradles me in his arms.
“Last night, when I asked you for sex, you looked so sad.” His voice his small.
“I didn’t understand…I thought you were saying something else...” I trail off, not knowing my own words, just the familiar empty feeling of loneliness this night has staved off. I kiss him in reassurance and feel his body loosen in relief. My bare legs graze his, back and forth, back and forth, until we are both asleep.
The alarm goes off, a rude awakening to reality. I don’t want to, can’t let him see how much I wish I could stay as I dress briskly and gather my luggage. I tell him that I will email him the next time I’m in Europe and that he should do the same if he finds himself in the States. We kiss goodbye. He is on my mind all the way through Copenhagen and all the way across the ocean.
Un
“Stop the car.” I do as I’m instructed. We are somewhere in suburban DC. I can sense that we are just minutes from our destination. “Where the fuck are we?” After 20 hours of driving together over the past week, my father has chosen this moment to flip out, unable to wait even an hour. I wouldn’t blink twice if my mom had said this. But this is out of character for Dad. Dad, always so composed, obnoxiously perky and chipper. Anything other than this perpetual positive energy is stunning and unnerving. I just want to grab my bags and get the hell out of the car.
I backtrack, take the correct exit out of the roundabout and then see it. Finally. American University, Tenley Campus. The light turns green and I join the throngs of out-of-state cars depositing their students into the driveway.
We pass under an arch of red, white, and blue balloons. Tacky, but a kind gesture, and I am so thrilled to be out of the damn car. I am greeted by a beaming, well-dressed RA. My gaydar is terrible but I instantly recognize him as one of my own. I take this as a sign of good things to come.
Four trips later the Honda is emptied. Dad lingers, but not too long. Against all odds, the seemingly endless hours in the car outweigh his desire to absorb every last second of time with me for at least four months. We manhug and he leaves.
I pass the next hour or so chatting up Evan, my new roommate. We bond over familiarity with central Illinois; I am astonished at how easy it is to talk to him and drawn to his Midwestern humility and lack of pretense.
Thursday is a marathon of orientation. Three hours of opening remarks – the dean is tragically unaware that he is losing his audience. People begin talking amongst themselves.
***
I enter the dining hall and survey the scene before me. Overnight, cliques have formed: the international students are most conspicuous because of their shared language and appearances, domestic students less so, their bonds based on geographic and dorm room proximity. A cute blond boy, sitting with three others, meets my gaze. I break it and sling my coat a chair at the nearest table.
Truthfully I am content with sitting alone and people-watching. Especially the blond boy. He is, in a word, precious. Suddenly he is pushing his chair away. Walking toward me. Oh. My. God. He takes the seat across from me.
“Hi. I’m Jacob. I go to the University of Arizona in Tucson. What’s your name?” We are back in kindergarten and I couldn’t be happier. His eyes are so innocent.
“Uh..Jim.”
“Cool.”
“Uh…my sister’s a freshman there.”
“Oh my gosh really? That’s SO cool. What’s her name?” His enthusiasm is adorable. 60,000 undergraduates and he still wants to know if he knows her.
“Helen. Yeah..my cousins live in Scottsdale..”
“Not uh! Me too. Which high school did they go to?” This is too much. I have stumbled upon a completely charming gay guy on my second night in DC. I wonder if he’s closeted. Who is he kidding? I can’t picture him having sex but hope he might someday…
“Hey…wanna come sit with us?” I have clearly finished eating but there is only one answer to this inquiry. I follow him back to his table where I meet several international students. I marvel at his excitement at meeting new people. It’s like an addiction for him. After meeting a hot French guy, becoming very self conscious about my French, and briefly pondering the possibility of whether he is a sexually liberated European or not, I remember that it is Thursday night. College night. I turn to Jacob.
“Do you want to go clubbing tonight?”
“Yeah that sounds like fun. I’ve never been to a gay bar. Give me a call in a couple of hours.” So innocent.
Two hours later I am outside his door. He looks darling in a blue oxford, khakis, and a brown jacket.
“Do you know where I can get a winter hat? I was thinking of getting one with the AU logo.” This lack of foresight with regard to winter weather only endears him further to me. I imagine that he is a hopeless romantic. I would let him take the lead, slowly, gently. We kiss. I run my fingers through his hair. I pull him tightly into an embrace. My hands traverse the canvas of his back, stopping at his bottom as I pull him closer. My head begins the descent down his torso. I am fairly certain that he has never been fellated. But I take him selflessly. I am at his disposal. If he wishes to enter me, he need only ask…
Deux
“Am I going to be the only straight guy at the club?” My mind comes to a screeching halt. I struggle to catch my breath, let alone form coherent sentences. In my lust-driven fantasies of College Night I neglected to remember that the Metro closes at midnight on Thursday morning. I’d feel even more awkward, but there’s part of me that is bitter that Jacob has waited so long to disclose his sexuality. He finds a bus home, I continue on to Foggy Bottom.
“Where are you?”
“GW. You know where the Watergate is?”
“Yeah.” I text this before realizing that I have no idea where the Watergate is. I have failed America. After about ten minutes or so, I confess my ignorance. My silence has all but confirmed it anyway.
“Just follow 22nd until you hit New Hampshire. Then follow that until you reach Virginia and 25th. I’m fine with hanging out tonight, but we’re not going to have sex.”
So I tramp through the snow, checking in with Nick every now and then for clarification. Nick and I have been conversing on the Internet for a few weeks. He’s a grad student at George Washington in some form of foreign policy or history. He’s fluent in Russian and I’ve asked him to teach me some. I don’t expect to actually learn it, but I’d like to if I had the time.
“I’m here.” The building is completely unremarkable but at least it is well labeled so that I know where I am. I wait five minutes or so and then deliberate between two unappealing hypothetical scenarios. One, I have the wrong address. Two, he’s stood me up. Three, the text didn’t go through. I grapple with assertiveness versus clinginess and decide to call him. He makes his way down, telling me that he didn’t receive the message that I made it.
Trois
Nick’s presence is a welcome respite from the cold. Nick is well-built, a touch shorter than me, with spiky blond hair and Russian-looking eyes. He ushers me inside. We are greeted in the lobby my one of Nick’s friends brandishing beer bottles over the balcony while a security guard appears from the left. I panic and drag Nick into the elevators. He hits the “8” button.
His room is the first on the left of the hall. It is everything a dorm should be. It is slightly untidy and sparsely decorated, but the decorations seem to have great significance. He has his own bathroom, cluttered but serving all its vital functions. His bedroom is very large; a single bed and sofa occupy one wall, a desk is pushed into one corner, and a TV is stationed across from the sofa.
“So yeah, you’re really cute, but…uh we’re not gonna have sex.” As if I had forgotten this.
“My friends are having a party – it should be pretty good.”
He grabs a bottle of vodka and we head for another room down the hall. The scent of cannabis greets our arrival. Six or seven students are seated on beds and chairs in a semi-circle. Most of them clutch bottles or are passing around a piece.
“Get him a drink.” I find a seat and am promptly brought a Sprite and vodka. I drink it greedily. Nick is well on his way to inebriation. The piece makes its way around the room and someone gets bright idea to start a game of catchphrase. Sloppy hilarity ensues. One girl is wearing Alpha Chi Omega letters, so I start up a conversation with her and excitedly discover that she is indeed in Mom’s sorority at Millikin University. “Small world,” I say. Mom would be so proud of my friend-making ability, I think with an internal laugh. Not her idea of a study group, but she’s not here! Nick comes over to me and starts caressing me. I’m drunk but not sure about how I feel about a full on PDA. Not in a position to call the shots, I wait until he leads me back to his room.
We have a bit more box wine but it is getting late. I remove his shirt, throw it on the floor, and push him onto the bed. I remove my own pants and shirt and approach him slowly. He reclines seductively, watching me as I come closer. I push my self on top of him. He is a fantastic kisser; he meets me halfway and more and enters more parts of my mouth with his tongue than ever before. It’s only a matter of time before we are both naked. I slide down on him, taking in his cock with its blond pubes. I take the entirely length of it, repressing a gag reflux. He really has a great dick. I lick the underside from the balls all the way up to the head. I focus some more attention on the head, swirling my tongue around it, before getting back down to business on the shaft.
I threw myself on top of him and began kissing him all over. I loved to play with his hair, to tongue his mouth and earholes, to bite them. We started out in missionary and applied lube to my dick and to Nick’s ass. I placed my hands on top of his shoulders.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.” He smiles like a child. “Just go slow.” I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end, so I always to. The head of my cock is up his hole. I play with his ears and nipples to distract the pain. I gaze down at him and he appears ready for me so I give another valiant thrust. Soon I am all the way in, thrusting away to my heart’s content. I decide to switch it up a bit. I pull him into a table top pose and start penetrating him from behind. In this way, I can see his ass and play with his nipples while I fuck him. We ultimately revert to a less rigid form of missionary.
This is so good. I continue thrusting into him. His eyes are full of an ecstatic light. I run my fingers through his hair and meet his lips with mine, furtively at first. Then I plunge my tongue into his in synchronicity with my dick filling him. He arches his back up from the bed.
“You close?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah. Let’s do it.”
I pump him eight or nine times and slow down to pre-orgasmic thrusts. My breathing is heavy, like breathing underwater. “Aaaaaah God!!!!!” I cry as he cries “Fuuuuuuck!”
We collapse together in a contented pile of postcoital bliss, unbothered by fluids and smells. I hold him closely, kissing him passionately, swallowing his tongue. My arms caress his naked back and I am so relieved to just be able to sleep next to him.
Nick has some buyer’s remorse the next morning. “I was sooooo drunk. Did we wear condoms?”
I glance downward looking at my feet. “…no.”
“Fuck. That was so stupid. Everyone in DC has HIV.”
“I’ll get checked this weekend.”
“That’d be great.”
This is essentially our parting, but I will let him know my status and he will let me know what he’s up to later tonight.
The nursing tech at the AU Health Center swabs my cheek, asks me about my recent sexual history, and tells me to wait twenty minutes. Twenty long minutes I fill absently flipping through Rolling Stone, learning about all the best albums of the 2000s that I should have. It actually is a fairly interesting article because of its subjectivity – there are some real gems and some absolute crap. My name is called.
“You’re HIV negative.” A wave of reliefs sweeps me as I grope for my phone to tell Nick the good news.
Quatre
I am standing contrapposto, as close to the bar as possible without attracting the attention of security. I already look sixteen, the glaring black X’s seem an unnecessary precaution.
“You look familiar.” I have never seen this guy in my life, and while decently attractive, I definitely get a creeper vibe. My response is mostly sarcastic, but I remember that I’m looking to go home with someone, so I decide not to be a total bitch.
“I’m not sure why that is…I just moved to the area a few days ago.”
“Online. I know you from the Internet.” He proceeds to tell me my chat site alias. Definitely creepy. “Wanna dance?”
I don’t, but I don’t feel that there is a tactful way to express this, so I allow myself to be led onto the dance floor. I am painfully aware of how early it still is and that I am not in any way drunk enough. I dance the way I imagine a limp fish might dance. I let him do all the work. When I switch positions I see three hot guys grinding together. I begrudge the guy in the middle and my own circumstance.
The middle guy leaves and I seize my opportunity. Unsurprisingly, my testosterone has overpowered my guilt for abandoning Mr. Creep. I make the usual small talk about my recent move to DC and how much I’m enjoying it. I feel them up and feel them out. One talks about his college days so I imagine him to be in grad school. They’re both dressed in tight shirts and tighter pants, just as all the other patrons of the club.
The guy in front of me leaned in for a kiss. As I met his tongue, the guy behind me reached around me to grab the ass of the guy in front of me. We all pull closer together. My advances are welcomed, but I can’t help but feel that I am interrupting something.
“Do you want to go home with us?” Again, another question with only one answer. I search my pockets for my coat check ticket. It is nowhere to be found. I describe my trenchcoat, gloves, and scarf to the coat check employee, but he says that he can’t check until all the items have been claimed for the night. I couldn’t wait.
Marc and Stuart (who introduce themselves in the car) wait for me outside. When I step into the light, I realize that they have grey hair. Silver foxes. This throws me for a loop, but not enough to prevent me from getting in the backseat of their black Audi.
The hotel has a nice semicircular colonnade but a pretty unremarkable interior. The elevators open on the sixth floor to a series of doors, one of which has a sign “Bear Den” affixed to it. I turn to Marc, hoping this is not our room. What the hell am I getting into? Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend, he explains.
In the hotel room we begin to disrobe. Stuart pushes me onto the bed and begins blowing me. Marc bends over and begins kissing me. His tongue probes my mouth and I probe back, hungrily searching. I pull him on top of me. They meet halfway on my body, eagerly lapping at my nipples. Stuart dons a condom, lifts my legs, and slowly enters me. His penetration is painless and lust is replaced in his eyes by great care. He pushes his heels against the wall and I loop my legs over his shoulders. I am in a heightened state of aroused intimacy. I pull him closer and he intensifies his thrusts. Meanwhile Marc plays with my nipples and my cock.
I watch his face warp into an O face as he unleashes. He and Marc switch positions. Marc takes me more dominantly. His thrusts are deeper and faster and I am getting tired. As soon as I see signs in his face that he is about to climax, I prepare to let myself go. We climax simultaneously. It is now some very wee hour of the morning and I have some form of class and or guest lecture in a few hours. We all fall asleep on a queen bed, three naked strangers. Or rather, two naked coupled gay men, sandwiched by a boyish stranger.
It takes a minute to remind myself that we are strangers. This is my first threeway, and this is my first threeway cuddling session. It becomes clear that Marc and Stuart are deeply committed to each other, but I appreciate the genuine attention they shower upon me. I press up against them and fall into my pillow.
I wake up some hours later. It is still dark and the room is sweltering. Our combined body heat is such that we all wake. Marc reaches for a nearby bottle of Gatorade and passes it around. Stuart and I get up and step into the night air. A refreshing breeze cools my body. I look around in disbelief, reflecting on my DC experience.
Cinq
I return from the bathroom to find my cell phone illuminated by the voicemail icon. Figuring it is one of my parents, I grudgingly pick it up. An unknown, deep, sultry voice greets me.
“Hey Jim. Uh...it’s Clay, from the Internet. We should..uh..hang out sometime. Call me.” It is a demand, not an afterthought. I dismiss the voicemail with bemusement, but the calls continue over the next few days, more insistently.
So I do call him. And then I find myself aboard the Metro, bound for Dupont Circle, the trendy epicenter of gay DC.
Dozens of cafes, corner stores, yoga lofts, and bars flank 17th Street. I could be in Greenwich Village. An incessant flood of nagging uncertainties bombards me. What if I have the wrong address? The wrong suite number? What if he is a total creep?
After much trepidation I do manage to master the intercom and am greeted by the same deep voice, albeit lost somewhat in the static, and granted access to the building.
The lobby is well-decorated and the hallway is long, its length magnified by its emptiness. The pounding of my heart reaches a climax as I stop before the door. Who’s to say what’s on the other side? Past experience in the worldwide wasteland has taught me that this is the most grating part of any hookup.
My anxieties are promptly assuaged. Clay is tall, broad-shouldered, and impressive even in boxers and a tee-shirt, which throws me for an initial loop. I quickly recover from my shock at his forwardness. His hair falls in dark waves on top of his head, giving him the impression of Oscar Wilde in my naïve, testosterone-charged mind.
Though I have come to expect posh lofts of most single gay men in DC, Cliff’s still wows me. Marilyn Monroe gazes lustily down at me from above the bookcase next to the skinny couch. A small dividing wall conceals a kitchen, black granite, its refrigerator starkly devoid of contents. A clean but somewhat barren kitchen table stands in the corner, surrounded by four black chairs. A television rests against the other side of the dividing wall, to the left of a stone fireplace. A coffeetable dominates the room, strewn with books, coasters, and a laptop.
We greet each other awkwardly. We don’t even kiss. Or shake hands. We just stand around for an uncomfortable space of time exchanging furtive glances. At last he leads me to the bedroom.
Clay’s bedroom was less tidy than his living room, but still considerably more orderly than most rooms I inhabit. A light blue, light green, and dark blue-striped lampshade pulls the room together. More books, these ones on screenwriting, an abstract picture signed by a friend, and pictures of relatives. I hate it when guys have family members hanging above their beds; I feel like they’re watching us. I tease him about a lone porn DVD next to his bed, which he insists is his only one and that his imagination is entirely sufficient for fantasizing (mine unfortunately is not).
We embrace on the bed. Most people close their eyes when they kiss, but I like to watch the other guy caught in the moment. Clay opens his eyes. Deep brown, almost entirely black, eyes that work in perfect harmony with his lips to seduce me. Wry little smirks play across his face as his eyebrows raise and lower, raise and lower.
“Oh yeah? You like that? You’re a hungry little boy, aren’t you?” This is his favorite part of the seduction. His eyes form perfect O’s and I am putty in his hands. Always. Complete control – I say anything to indulge him. He takes off his shirt.
He reaches for my shirt. I instinctively draw in my stomach. He slides my pants off, then my boxers. They dangle awkwardly around my ankles a bit; I reach down to fling them off in a fluid motion, hoping that I am tantalizing him.
His dick is porn star huge. He is semi-erect and the size of a normal man but keeps going. I have my doubts but keep a blank face and try in vain to relax. I lithely swing my legs over his neck as he pulls on a Magnum and enters me. My mouth falls open and I moan entirely more than is necessary to suppress cries of pain. His face is locked in an expression of profound pleasure and determination as he increases his rhythm. I come shortly after he does and escape to the bathroom as gracefully as possible in such a situation.
His bathroom walls are papered with playbills and a retro poster of The Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman.” I notice a sizeable hole in the ceiling but don’t dare mention it for fear of offending him.
Clay serves me a cup of coffee in a Scrabble mug covered in “Q” words. I turn it over in my hands, trying out some of the more far-fetched words. Clay assures me that he has used several of them in games but simply can’t remember their meanings, so we make up sentences. He is a suave bastard, I give him that. I take full advantage of this opportunity to shamelessly flirt under the guise of academic curiosity. I thank him for the coffee and leave, satisfied but without ado.
I step outside to a brighter day. I’m glowing as I cross the crosswalk. For the first time since I’ve arrived in D.C., I’m not preoccupied with classes. But I don’t know what to make of what’s just happened. It wasn’t love at first sight, lust probably, but not quite love. Sex is sex, but…But what? But something. Something is missing. And it frustrates me because I don’t know what it is, but believe that if I see him again, I’ll be able to figure it out.
Today is the most insane Monday ever. Tonight I am going to a speaking engagement featuring Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. I am already starstruck and fantasizing about the night. But first, work.
Though my work is extremely mundane and I often feel awkward asking for more tasks to complete, it is not without perks. The most obvious of which is the dress code. Essentially it’s a night club dress code- as long as I’m not wearing shorts, flip-flops, tee-shirts, or tennis shoes, I’m golden. So while my classmates struggle with pantyhose and neckties, I strut out of my room in khakis, an oxford, my beloved trenchcoat, and my aviators, bag slung over shoulder.
Sept
Sleeping with Clay brings a contradictory mix of feelings. To be sure, I am proud of myself for capturing the interest of this handsome, successful, self-assured, Georgetown-educated man. My own vanity and egoism is a driving force in my (restrained) desire to brag about him to everyone. Yet I can’t shake the fact that he is nearly twice my age. Yes, there is part of me that enjoys this taboo and keeping it clandestine, yes, I will be leaving D.C. in only four months, and that, coupled with the age gap, will keep the relationship superficial, I tell myself. But consciously or not, I am ashamed. Maybe not of him, but of myself and the societal implications of our relationship. How would we appear in public? To either of our families? The truths of this mismatch, all the unlikelihoods, are unpleasant to confront, so I feed myself the lies as I wait by the phone. Any call I make feels like a gamble; I hope at all costs to avoid showing my level of interest, which unfortunately does not equate a casual sexual relationship. Every time my phone rings and it isn’t him, I resent the caller.
One night I finally talk him into dinner. I come over and this time we kiss at the door. Here again is my perpetual conflict of passion versus restraint; with kissing I always exercise restraint and he always meets me when I pull away. His tongue intoxicates me. He most likely has no idea of this. No. I am quite literally a piece of ass. His piece of ass. His unquestioning, unchallenging piece of ass.
He orders sushi for which I attempt to pay. He firmly denies me. We even take a hiatus from HGTV and the Food Network (his rather womanly interest in these programs, and his age, are the only topics about which I can safely tease him) to watch Superbad. I may have mentioned something about my life being one recurring episode of Superbad. He would have laughed about this as he pours the wine. I make him wait until the end of the movie before I put out, so for an hour he holds me against him on the couch. This is what I crave. It is one of two times that I remember him holding me and I cherish it, as much as one can cherish something so transient. The sex doesn’t hurt any less, but my pain is deadened by lust.
We leave the bedroom in a drunken haze, return to the couch, and finish the wine. I am elated. He reclines dramatically on his sofa, his eyes lascivious. I crawl on top of him, playing with his hair as he looks up at me.
The wine is making me sloppy. Everything I’ve wanted to say, everything I’ve wanted to ask, has bubbled to the surface of my consciousness, threatening to escape from my loose lips.
“So are you really Clay? Like legally? Or does it stand for something else..?” He’s reveling in my unabashed interest in him, even if my speech is something less than eloquent.
“Clayton,” he says with one of his trademark smiles, a subtle smirk that just perceptibly changes the lines of his face. I think about this for a minute. Clay is cute, maybe even vulnerable, but Clayton is infinitely more sophisticated. Clayton is hot, exotic. This new discovery rounds out the very short list of facts I know about Clay. He was born in Singapore. His parents live in Texas. He holds a foreign policy degree from Georgetown. He works from home for some kind of education-consulting firm/agency that I’ve never really understood. That’s about it – the rest I can only imagine. I want more. No, I need more. I take a breath and skate onto precariously thin ice.
“Clayton…” I emphasize the “t”, making it hard and British-sounding.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think we could go to the zoo on Valentine’s Day?”
He pauses, stunned by this uncharacteristic audacity. His face becomes serious, but the trace of a smile remains. “Valentine’s Day is a big step.”
Not a no, but certainly not a yes. I burrow myself somewhere in his chest while he thumbs through his collection of ‘80s music on his iPhone, eager to redirect the focus, before settling on the Human League. Here is yet another conundrum: The ‘80s are a decade whose music and culture in general I appreciate like an anthropologist, yet this is the framework for Clay’s young adolescence. He is an iceberg; there is so much of him that I do not know and want to discover. The wine emboldens be even more, but still I try to retain caution.
“Don’t you want me, baaaaybeee/ don’t you want me ohhhhhh?” We drunkenly stumbled our way through the rest of the lyrics, collapsing on the couch. Clay brings his laptop to bed with the intent of watching cartoons (yes, cartoons). I have an opportunity here to make fun of him and/or learn something about him. I sort of tease him but not with too much effort because the room was started to spin.
The next morning I dress and leave without remark. He is in no mood to cuddle this morning. Or much of last night for that matter. The Metro adds a whole new dimension to the walk of shame. Here I am, wearing day-old clothes, reeking of stale chardonnay, amidst a sea of harried working professionals.
That encounter with Clay was the best I had and in retrospect I regard it with both bitterness and gratefulness. This was the glaring exception to all the waiting and phone sex I submitted to, to all the times I should have moved on but didn’t.
Huit
My phone vibrates. Clay has been in New York for a week which I have spent next to the phone, trying in vain not to contact or think about him. It’s misery.
“Last train out. Just got in. Exhausted.” This is bullshit. We had planned to hangout tonight. He doesn’t even make an effort to reschedule. I am pissed and forgive him much too quickly. I should break it off. Of course I don’t.
Neuf
My parents are in town for the week I do my best to appear normal at dinner so they won’t worry about me. I dismiss myself to resume studying, all the while trying no to think of the look of guarded hopefulness on my mother’s face. I am mildly disturbed at the ease with which I can lie to my family, but it always seems for their protection.
Eight dollars and thirty minutes later I board the Metro armed with chocolate sauce and whipped cream. Clay opens the door, wearing his trademark smirk. After a moment he ventures, “What’s in the bag?”
“Dessert,” I reply, mirroring the smirk. Seduction is of utmost importance if he is indeed losing interest. From there things follow a logical progression, although the chocolate sauce and whipped cream remain untouched. I drop to my knees and start playing with his dick. I drop his boxers to the floor and he fills my mouth, pushing deep to the back of my throat. I look at him. His expression is a mixture of anticipation and appreciation. He pumps away. He won’t shoot, he’s not getting off this easily. A car pulls up in the alley behind the window and we both seem to enjoy the potential of an audience.
He guides me onto the bed and begins stripping off my clothes. I have other plans in mind and lead him to the shower. This is my first (and probably only) act of assertion with Clay. In the shower I pull him against me, kissing him under the showerhead, his mouth into mine. The upside down kiss scene from Spiderman comes to my mind. This is somehow more primal. My eyes remain open and I have to blink rapidly to keep the water out. I am careful not to touch his ass, even though this seems counterintuitive. Among the sexual rules of my relationship with Clay are that I cannot make contact with his ass and that he does not have to fellate me. The water makes it harder to see, but seems to heighten the sense of touch. I am play with his chest, his hair, his nipples, and then of course his junk, the latter of which really needs no attention to become ready. I suppress my two hesitations: lack of condom and lack of real lubricant (we ended up using conditioner or skin cream). I bend over, grabbing my ankles. He penetrates me all at once.
Not even a minute elapses before “Oh God, Jim that is so good. I’m going to come.” Clay’s eyes are closed against the water trickling down his chest and gathering in his navel before continuing its descent.
“Already?” I suppress a laugh, then, considering my relative discomfort, thrust myself back onto his shaft and swivel my head to take in his scene of pleasure. I sense appreciation on his part. I wait until he has come and then focus on my self, my cries of pleasure genuine.
I soap up for several minutes but can’t feel clean. Dry and clothed, we spoon on the bed. Despite our proximity, there is a lack of closeness. He is still glowing in the wake of sex. But that is enough for him. I give a sigh, he asks me why, and I shrug it off playfully. We spend too hours nestled together watching T.V., I in quiet (and what I hoped was) discrete admiration. During which I realize that despite his total macho top exterior, he’s as petty, bitchy, and effeminate as any gay man. I wonder if he represses anything or is uncomfortable with himself. I grow disinterested in the programs he chooses and turn from spooning to face him. I kiss him while I grope his bulge. It is certainly not dormant. I don’t know what I am getting myself into.
We go back into the bed room. He sodomizes me but too quickly. I lower my head against the pillow to muffle the screams. I wonder when he will finally come and then he falls out of me. I am guilty because I want him to finish, but my ass is so sore and I can’t entertain the notion of more sex. He decides that he’d like a blowjob. In the mood, I make the mistake of getting myself off first. I now have an eight-plus inch cock to take care of by which I am no longer aroused. I swallow him, then he pulls out and beats me on the side of my face with his dick. Finally he sprays all over my face and into my mouth. I pretend to like it.
There was no obvious point at which to leave his condo that night, which, in retrospect, seems to be a clear indication that I never should have been there. That was the last time I saw him. Of course, I didn’t know this at the time, but really, what difference would it have made?
Dix
I hoist myself out of the pool, somewhat against my will. These days, swimming is like sex – it does a body good but I have to savor it because I don’t know when I’m gonna get it next. I deposit my goggles and towel on the towel rack, navigate my way through the frolicking eight-year-olds fresh out of swim practice, and reach for my phone, buried in the folds of my jeans. No calls.
I turn back to the showers, picking the last stall and almost running headlong into one of the hyper suburban swim kids. I secretly hope that he falls and cracks his little skull. I pull my curtain behind me and peel off my trunks. The ones Clay demanded to see weeks ago. It seems like it’s been longer. Much longer.
Normally I would take this opportunity to play with myself but don’t for several reasons, the most obvious being the swarm of kids darting in and out of the stalls around me. Mood-killer. That and I don’t care how clean my ass is today. One less thing to worry about. I’m massaging my chest with lather, working my way down out of habit when I hear it.
“Jared’s gay.” It starts at age eight. A chorus of laughter reverberates off of the tiled floors and walls. My first instinct is to pull back the curtain, bare-ass naked, find this snotty little brat, and teach him a lesson he’ll never forget. My words would have no impact though; he would be too stunned by the suddenness of my naked rage. Then his dad would find me and tell me that his kid is too young for a lesson in GLBT political correctness. But apparently not too young for homophobic slurs.
I am eight years old, swinging next to Marco Antolini, the neighbor boy. “Do you know what gay means?” I lean in conspiratorially.
“Uh-uh.”
“Gay is when a guy likes guys instead of girls. Isn’t that weird?” Marco looks mystified. Just as I’m saying this, Gio, his father, steps onto the porch.
“This is an inappropriate conversation to be having for boys so young,” he says sternly, barely masking a shred of fear. A loyal Roman Catholic. Marco follows him inside. I hang my head and cross the dark lawn back inside, the pride of my new knowledge shattered, replaced by shame.
It doesn’t matter that there are dads present. I wouldn’t work up the nerve to stand up against homophobia anyway. Not even to a kid. Imagine, telling this pint-sized wise guy off, only to be called “gay” or “fag” by him. I towel off, seething at my silence.
I check my phone again out of habit before dressing. Nothing. What do I expect? It’s been ten minutes at most.
My hair freezes the moment I step outside but otherwise I am impervious to the cold. All along Nebraska Avenue I go back and forth about calling Clay. It’s Sunday, Valentine’s Day. What could he possibly be busy doing? Or who?
This thought mortifies me but due to my regular stalking of his Facebook page, seems pretty unlikely. He knows how I feel about today. I would take anything he’d give me.
But get nothing. And I am too proud to call him. Not that there’s any mystery anymore about how I feel about him. I delude myself. But at least I won’t be clingy or needy.
Low-hanging pine needles comb my scalp. This isn’t the worst Valentine’s Day I’ve endured; two years ago I was in a psych ward. But then my solitude was dictated by circumstances. Here, I have the power to do something but can’t find the pluck.
I think of the unopened handle of vodka waiting for me in my dorm. The vodka I was supposed to drink last night but couldn’t. I have to drink it. Today is different. I’m tired of waking up. I’m tired of eating. I’m tired of being packed into the morning like Metro, tired of an internship that no longer makes me feel like an important urban professional. I’m tired of lectures on topics in which I no longer have interest. Maybe I never had it in the first place. I’m tired of poring over legal books and documents and not remembering a damn word of them. No tangible proof of my efforts. I’m tired of watching my roommates’ endless pursuit of intoxication while I feel nothing. I’m tired of being tired.
This is all the convincing I need. I’m in a trance, watching myself from the outside. I feel my legs lift themselves up each step, feel my hand twist and pull each doorknob.
The dorm is empty. Never have I valued my privacy more. Kyle is at Bucknell visiting his girlfriend and Evan is out and about somewhere. I wonder briefly and bitterly if he is romancing his lady friend who is less than lover but more than friend.
I wrench open my second desk drawer and extract the bottle. I cradle it in my arms like the Holy Grail. Its contents are waterlike in appearance but so much more. Innocuous, but lethal. I feel like an alchemist with a precious, mysterious new substance. One that can be taken anywhere in water bottles. The substance that has for weeks been a faithful friend but is about to take a decidedly dark turn.
I rummage for my shotglass. “Time is Running Out” blares from my laptop.
“You will be/the death of me”
I pour the first shot.
“Bury it/won’t let you murder it”
I raise the glass to my lips and throw my head back. Unadulterated it is so bitterly awful. How do I drink this shit on a regular basis? I take a swig of Sprite to chase it, lessening the aftertaste marginally but not the burn. I’ve reached the turning point, the moment of no return. I should stop now and call Dr. Lundeen. I really should. I’ve only taken one shot. No harm done.
I pour the second shot. As bad, if not worse, than the first. I gasp, inhaling Sprite.
Focus. Soon it will be over.
Shot number three. I can smell it a foot from my face, making me cringe and gag. I swallow most of it in one motion, resenting the small residual amount at the bottom.
I put the glass down after the tenth shot. I gaze at the bottle. It looks impossibly full. Was it enough? I had originally planned on twenty shots but I used a doubleshot glass, so ten will do it, right? This uncertainty tastes worse than the liquor.
I clamber up the ladder and slide between the sheets and the towel I have laid down for when my bowels fail when I die. Stupor, coma, death. Fairly straightforward. I close my eyes and wait.
Douze
Thus begins the final chapter of the Clayton saga. I lost track of how many days had elapsed since my last contact with Clayton. He was in Texas visiting his parents. I had devoted this Sunday entirely to leisure, which is atypical for me. I am plagued by what I should be doing when relaxing. Somehow we start a text message conversation that comes to a halt when he writes “I think you should find someone at school to date.” I don’t know how (or why) I continued the conversation, but I felt it to be necessary.
“Do you still find me attractive?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
“What?”
“Well if you were no longer attracted to me, this would be simple.” We exchanged strange flatteries after I accused him of being vain and smug. He wanted to call, but I needed time to process so I left him for the pool.
I ruminate for the entirety of my swim. I think about things I could have said and done, then about how a future encounter would unfold. I would indulge him, of course, but it would be aggressive and on my terms. Then I would give him the ultimatum of committing or breaking it off. All of this with perfect emotional composure, of course.
From the pool I walk to the National Portrait Gallery. He calls as I peruse portraits of Revolutionary War heroes. Our conversation is strained and mostly meaningless, which is to be expected.
“I’m gonna fuck you when I get back.” And with those words he has reclaimed me entirely. I am back to putty. Pathetic. Resume the waiting game. Once again he is vague and evasive. But this time, I allow myself to become angry. I give him a voicemail version of the ultimatum:
“It’s me. I really need to know if laying low is time off or laying low is breaking it off. Call me.” There is nothing timid or careful about this and I love it. I don’t give a shit if he doesn’t like it. Then, the next day, the response.
“I think we should stop seeing each other.” The words I had both longed for daily and dreaded. Maybe Clay, like me, was attracted to and ideal rather than the actual (man).
Douze
“Hey Jim, it’s Marc. Stuart and I are in D.C. for the night. What are you up to?” I am listlessly typing away at work and these words punctuate my workday like wind to a brushfire.
There’s no need to show any restraint in my response. Marc and Stuart love me. Or at least they don’t judge. I haven’t really made up my mind, but I know that I will be seeing them. I step out of the office and set up a rendezvous at the Helix Hotel.
I get off at Dupont Circle. All I ever do at Dupont Circle is get off. Double entendre intended. The escalator takes me up into a torrential downpour. My umbrella flails helplessly in the wind, failing to keep me dry. A hot British tourist asks me for directions; it’s the second time in two days that I’ve been asked for directions and I actually feel like Washington is part of my identity, for better or worse.
I have spoken too soon, for a few minutes later I find myself going the wrong way down Massachusetts Avenue. I right myself and carry on, driven by my desire to get dry and get laid.
I make another wrong turn off of Logan Circle and then finally find the elusive Helix Hotel. Stepping inside is like stepping into South Beach. Everything is bright, neon, and Andy Warhol. I step inside to the lobby bathroom to freshen up before ascending the elevator.
I knock on the door and wait, ever plagued by the fear that I have the wrong door. Marc opens the door with a smile. Stuart is seated on the far bed, also smiling. I step in and remove my shoes.
“I see you found your coat,” Marc says, his smile becoming more flirtatious. I laugh, overcoming a bit of my nervousness. That’s the difference between Marc and Stu and other guys. Even that little effort, that little interest, sets them apart from most gay guys I’ve fucked.
Marc comes closer to me and begins kneading my shoulders. As if on cue, Stuart rises from the bed and approaches me. He takes me by the waist and begins kissing me. I let him do most of the work, as usual, but then realize that I can abandon my restraint. I make little jabs in his mouth with my tongue, then I am sucking it, creating a vacuum. He does the same to me. Our mouths open for air and I wrap my lips around his bottom lip and suck. I love the feel of his hair.
Meanwhile Marc is fast at work with my pants. He lowers them to the ground. Discontented with my partial nudity, he slides my shirt over my head. I have a raging hard-on by this point, so really, my boxers are superfluous. They, too, are discarded. Once again I am standing naked in front of two older men, silver foxes, immersed in the most exquisite sexual pleasure of my life. Stuart is blowing me like a starving man and Marc is rimming me with fervor; my ass is his peach and he’s determined to get to the pit. Outside the rain falls harder than ever.
Marc comes up for air. The thought that his tongue has just been up my ass never registers with me as he comes in for a kiss. He pauses for air and then asks “So where do you want to do it?”
I walk across the room and survey the shower critically, all seriousness before announcing that the shower is preferable for another ménage à trois. Blame it on Clay. Blame it on easier penetration and less sex smell in the shower. Whatever it is, we are all naked and turning on the hot water.
We take turns tugging on each other, playing with each other and exploring each other. It feels so good, the wetness and the warmth and the enclosure. Marc fingers me for a while and then enters me. My breathing becomes more shallow but his finger has opened me up. He is at a height that I can easily crane my neck and he can bend over to meet me for a kiss. He holds the sides of my thighs and pumps, pumps and moans. I open my eyes and let the water run off my eyelids. Stephen jams his cock into my mouth and I begin devouring it, its slickness sliding in and out of my mouth. I make it good for him but he won’t release. Not yet.
Marc is going to come. I consider this and start wanking more feverishly. He slows his rhythm, augments his moans, and with a shudder busts his load in me. I hurry to finish with his cock still in me. I edge, reach the point of no return and try to come back a little too late. A small orgasm ensues, but before I get disappointed a second and a third break forth. My toes lift off the shower floor and I feel an incredible lightness, like I’ve seen the sky for the first time.
Treize
“Based on your recent behavior, we’ve decided that we can’t allow you to travel to Europe. Would you like to talk about how you’re feeling right now?” I hear the words but they don’t register. I steel myself, trying to maintain composure as I look into the dean’s kindly, well-meaning but naïve face. I can tell that he wants to put his UPenn Doctorate of Education to work.
“No. No, I’d like to go please.” I won’t let him see me cry. I walk briskly out of the office, cross the quad and enter the spiritual function for yet another lecture on international law. I am unable to feign interest today. I’ve always wished that I were a better actor. Maybe life would be easier with an impassive mask for a face. I start to sit down next to Marisol and Kit, inform them that I will not be joining them in Europe, and lose composure. I am crying for perhaps two minutes before once again, Kit convinces me that I don’t have to endure this lecture. I exit the building wordlessly, tears streaming down my face.
Though I am still technically enrolled at American, I am no longer a student. I have lost identity. All the hours I have spent poring over International Law, Norms, Actors and Processes and tedious tomes on the death penalty, while my roommates get stoned and smashed, have been invalidated. This is not the first time I have withdrawn from college. Reaffirmations that I will never graduate from college, much less secure a fulfilling career, flood my head.
I am conscious of my shame as I walk down Nebraska Avenue. My vanity is in battle with my deep, deep disappointment, and disappointment wins out. I wipe my eyes half-heartedly, lower my head to avoid eye contact with passers-by, unable to stop crying. I climb the four flights of stairs to room 420, relieved to find the room vacant. This midday retreat has become uncomfortably familiar.
I am taking a train home tomorrow so that I can make a court appearance for a DUI charge. I have just spoken with my mother, but again, don’t register her words. I eat something in the cafeteria, most likely salad. I am back in 420, playing West Side Story but disengaged. I must leave. Now.
I take roughly twenty steps in the direction of Howard Taft Bridge before I realize that I am unable to will myself to jump off of it. This frustrates me to no end. I need to alter my mind. I return to the dorm.
I covertly snatch my bottle of Ativan, elope into the bathroom, and lock the stall. I take fifty of them without thinking. Peculiarly, I crawl back to my room, up the ladder to my bed, and fall asleep without incident. Even more peculiarly, I get up the next morning, grab my bags, take the Metro to Union Station, board the train, and meet my mother in Philadelphia. About an hour later I am home. I remember none of this.
The meeting with my probation officer is similarly fuzzy. She meets none of my preconceived notions of probation officers. She is not tough. Rather, she is maternal, and seems more interested in my mental state and alcohol consumption than the fact that I broke the law. I begin to tell her something about how much I hate academia and something about Clay and am promptly cut short. She dives headlong into the saga of her gay nephew in med school at George Washington and what a great boyfriend he has. Clearly she cannot understand why I am so troubled. I contain my vomit and leave.
Douze
Saturday comes with a flurry of hope. Mom and Craig are off to a romantic overnight in Philly. I seize my opportunity. I walk down Church Street to the library, pick up the second season of Six Feet Under, and return home. I leave again, this time for Akroyd Hardware. I put on my best normal person face and ask the man behind the counter for the strongest rope he carries. He gives me the entire coil, gloriously ignorant of its intended purpose. I head back along New Street with a glimmer of hope. Never mind that I can’t figure out how to tie a slipknot.
The rope deposited safely in my ski bag in the attic, I leave the house for the third (and hopefully) last time. I glance longingly into the Lehigh River from the Fahy Bridge, but not too longingly. I can’t allow myself to appear as though I might jump.
At CVS I locate a bottle of 500 two hundred milligram Ibuprofen tablets. I approach the counter. Again the normal person face. Again the blissfully ignorant salesperson. I leave without comment.
I am back home, armed with the Ibuprofen, two bottles of juice, a pen, and a Post-It note. I shake out five Ibuprofen from the bottle. The house seems suddenly colossal. Only Shilo, my dog, could betray my intentions, but of course, she is wordless. I turn on the radio in an effort to not actually think about what I’m doing. I take a gulp of diluted cranberry juice and swallow the first five pills.
Time stands still. This is the moment of truth. I think of Dr. Lundeen. I wonder what he’s doing at this very moment. I think about him, enjoying his weekend, free of patients and their petty concerns. My first instinct is to call him, but when I think longer about it, I really don’t want to.
I tally the five Ibuprofen on the Post-It. I try not to think about the 195 more that I’m about to swallow. Some go down easily, others leave me shuddering and gagging.
Eventually it’s over. I’ve done it. According to Wikipedia, that ever-reliable source, I have consumed enough Ibuprofen for a fatal overdose. There is a nagging part of my brain which refuses to believe that this really will kill me. I push it aside, ascend the stairs, recline on the couch, and turn on Six Feet Under. I will die (relatively) happy, as happy a death as I can realistically fathom. I wait to fade out of consciousness.
I wait in vain. If I fell asleep, it was forgettable and I am awake with a massive stomachache. Then I am bent over my parent’s toilet bowl. Cascades of gelatinous orange vomit shower from my mouth. I am relieved that I made my target and inspect it with bewilderment. It is neither liquid nor solid, but curiously gelatinous. What the hell is it? Internal organs? It resembles the juices I drank in color but not consistency. I flush the toilet, carry the wastebin to the side of the couch, and rejoin the engrossing world of the Fishers in Six Feet Under. I fall asleep, the hope that I won’t wake up present but diminished by doubt.
The next two days drag on. My parents return, refreshed from their mini-vacation. At dinner, I tell them that I think I have the flu and probably can’t stomach any food. An initial pang of guilt takes over me, but it is quickly dismissed. They are stressed enough as is. Now is not the time for the truth. At night I gaze out my window, hoping that I won’t have to face the morning.
Treize
Monday finds me with a shred of optimism. Craig leaves the house for work before I wake up. My mother has an early appointment with her therapist. I am once again alone.
I leave a note on my desk, something to the effect of “gone for a walk – back in an hour.” What a terrible suicide note. Not that I think there’s a good suicide note. It’s always going to be selfish. There are no words to justify it. Words aren’t adequate. But I could have given them something more than that.
I pop three Ativan and give Araceli, the cleaning lady, a salutary smile on the way out the door. I think about her life. She wakes up at four every morning to clean after predominantly overprivileged white kids. Without resentment. What the hell is wrong with me that I can’t be so giving?
I am a mix of anxiety and excitement as I reach the intersection, avoiding eye contact with any pedestrians or drivers. And then I hear my name. The excitement vanishes. It’s Isabella. She’s been in France for the past semester and I haven’t seen her in months.
She crosses the street to embrace me. I am aware that I look like shit. She reconfirms this awareness.
“I was just on my way over to Lehigh to get this book that Montblanc doesn’t have. Wanna come with me?”
My heart breaks. I am a bastard and a terrible friend. I think of our times last spring, exploring Lehigh’s gorgeous Gothic library and sitting in Adirondack chairs on the quad, sipping iced coffee and pretending to be Lehigh students. The time we snuck out of the stuffy Lehigh dance to get wasted and then danced accordingly in front of faculty and administrators. The time we played drunk MarioKart with the Japanese exchange students and finally got them to talk about sex. The time she got called Diesel at the bar by the crazy brother of a friend and I got served underage. All the ways we tried to covertly communicate to each other in English during French. The time…
I decline. Her face falls, but she forces a slight smile. “Well, I hope to see you soon. See ya!” We cross the street together, but as she continues across the Fahy Bridge, I take the stairs down to the river.
This will be her last memory of me. She will undoubtedly replay it over and over again, agonizing over how she could have come down to the river with me. She will assume blame for something that is completely and entirely my fault. And it will haunt her for the rest of her life.
This is what I’m thinking as I trudge through the snow. But it doesn’t seem like I had an option. I am pulled to the river. I check for people along the towpath and, seeing none, tramp into the trees, and down the path to the water’s edge.
I glance back up the bank. I am out of sight from the path. I remove my shoes and my socks, then my jacket, shirt, and pants until I am standing in the February air in my boxers. I am primal. I glance up at the bridge, scanning it for Isabella, hoping to God she can’t see me. That no one can see me. That no can intervene.
This time there is less deliberation. A moment’s hesitation, then my feet are submerged. The water’s coldness enters my conscious, but the pain is minimal and transitory. I push on, up to my knees, remembering Lars to distract myself. Lars, not Clay. Not only is Lars European and thus ultimately more exotic than Cliff, but we only spent two nights together and thus the possibilities for fantasy are infinitely more endless. Lars can be anything I want him to be, but most of all he is kind, handsome, nonjudgmental, his accent melting the snow through which I tromp madly. His words are carefully selected; it’s not a language barrier but a humane shyness and cautiousness. And formality. Pah-lease. The request is two syllables and the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.
Body heat is lost quickly from the head, so I dunk my head briefly underwater. I resurface and turn around, looking back at the bridge. I am careful to keep just my head above water and think of Thoreau in Walden Pond. I am only slightly more batshit than Thoreau.
I have entered a new realm of consciousness. Everything around me is both more real and surreal at the same time. Water rushes past me and I can see each stone at the bottom of the river. They are not all smooth, but none cut me. They are pleasant to my feet. I am part of the river. My eyes follow the trunks of the naked trees, naked but no longer the dead trees of winter. They have potential and even in their grayness they are brighter and more exciting. So, too, is the abandoned steel mill. The blast furnaces tower over me, and they cease to be a tragic relic of past prosperity but a symbol of strength and raw labor. A limitless sky stretches above me; it too has lost its grayness and has joined the world of the hyperreal. I feel something that borders on happiness. Euphoria is probably the correct term, and I realize with joy that hypothermia is beginning. And what a way to go!
Time has been altered in this world, too. It passes slowly, not allowing me to forget my physical pain, but it has lost the gravity it normally carries. It is merely a detail.
Lars, Larss, Larsss I whisper to myself. I see him at the bar. Our stolen glances. My quasi-feigned American-in-Europe naivete. His smile intoxicating me more than the rum and coke. Our public displays of affection. The camera flashbulbs and laughter of his friends as they watch us. I only see his beautiful, beautiful face. He takes me home and we sleep together. I am comfortable in my nudity next to him and cherish his. I explore every inch of his body and hold him closely to me. I close my eyes, savoring this moment the way an infant savors its mother’s breast, knowing that this moment can’t last forever but needing it to.
I remember how I lugged my suitcase all the way to the damn bar to find him. His laughter at my painful karaoke attempts. Our innocent charades: how I acted drunker than I was, how he kept bring me liquor, pretending he wasn’t trying to get in my pants. As if I might not come home with him. As if I might not be all over all the way home from the bar and well into the next morning. There is nothing in the world quite like falling asleep in the arms of someone you love.
Fifteen minutes have elapsed. I start to shiver. Through the translucent rushing water, my blanched skin is devoid of color. It looks alien to me. I touch my fingers together. I see them make contact but feel nothing, just as I see the rocks beneath my feet but not the variations in the river floor. I see the stubborn folds in my stomach and convince myself that they will shrink when I stand up. But they have too have lost their malleability, frozen into place. On hands and knees, I crawl along the river bottom back to the bank. The river has carried me several dozen feet from where my clothes lay skewed.
Out of the river, I lie underneath a tree on the river bank and wait for the shivering to stop (this is allegedly sign of fatal hypothermia). My whole body is wracked by the cold. I begin to think what a pathetic sight I am. I think of the Search and Rescue team that will discover my body. Will they be able to determine the correct cause of death right away? Will they come at all? This last is a most troubling hypothetical inquiry. The thought of my mother unable to locate my dead body is unbearable.
I imagine that my own discomfort played some role in my decision to leave the bank, but ultimately it came down to the fact that the hypothermia wasn’t progressing as planned and thus probably not fatal after all. I clamber through the trees barefoot, clawing at branches like Sasquatch. If I looked a mess earlier, that was just the beginning. With any luck I am unidentifiable. I dress hastily and climb back up the hill and up the stairs onto the road.
Araceli’s car is still parked in the driveway. This could be awkward. We pass each other wordlessly in the entryway. I keep my face emotionless and impassive. I denude and take a warm shower, but continue to shiver. My fingers remain inflamed and I’ve lost feeling in most of them. This is worrisome. Not as worrisome as the fact that I have now failed twice at attempting suicide in the space of four days. My self-esteem sinks a bit lower.
Karma’s a real bitch. It is now Tuesday and I am in the backseat of Mom’s Camry en route to therapy. I sit stoically in the backseat, devoid of emotion. Perhaps a twinge of resentment.
I face Dr. London. Under other circumstances
Quatorze
I am roused from bed at 7 AM for an HIV screening. Aside from the earliness of the day, I am unbothered. The reality that I haven’t the least bit of concern that I may test positive is at once freeing and frightening to me. A tourniquet is tied around my forearm, the phlebotomist taps and disinfects my arm. The smell of alcohol awakens me slightly. I watch the needle penetrate my forearm, transfixed. A few years ago I would have winced, averting my gaze. Not now. I am fascinated as the needle probes for my vein and then the vials suck hungrily at my blood.
“We’re really pleased with the progress you’ve made, and I know that you mentioned it earlier this week, so we’ve decided to raise your level.” Dr. Corbin looks at me hungrily. My face, a stone wall behind which I hide, even and especially from mental health professionals, brightens almost imperceptibly. This is critical. I now have permission to walk about the hospital grounds unaccompanied, but it is imperative that I not show too much eagerness about this. I must not arouse any suspicion.
I am mentally absent the rest of the day. I make a point of taking several short walks, just to demonstrate that I am trustworthy. All through dinner I am watching the clock. Discretely, of course. It’s not that I’m waiting for a specific time, just a window. The greatest error would be to act too soon.
I can wait no longer. I return to my room, power off my computer, distractedly rearrange my room, and leave.
One of the rules of going out on grounds is that you must sign out, sign back in, and inform a staff member of your departure. I have considered this carefully and have decided that I will tell Dan. Dan, short, kindly, cheerful with out being inauthentic or overly so, the textbook grandfather figure. I’d much rather just leave unnoticed.
“Ok, Jim. Have fun!” His unquestioning face fills me with guilt but is not a sufficient deterrent. It had to be him. Out of the staff on duty, he was both trusting and most likely to forget that I had left in the first place.
I am out the door. I resist the urge to fly down the stairs. Control and restraint are of utmost importance.
At the gatehouse I pause, stopped once again by a call of conscience. I am in awe that now is the time that I deliberate between right and wrong when I have been rehearsing and fantasizing about this for weeks.
I break into a brisk jog and everything is okay. This is just my daily exercise. With cars whizzing by at fifty miles an hour. I wonder if they’re traveling fast enough to kill a pedestrian. I keep running. The worst part is the stoplights. Charles Road was clearly not designed with pedestrians in mind. Fortunately the part of my brain that is preoccupied with what strangers think is dormant. Or at least more dormant than usual.
No. The worst part of this is having no real indication of what the exact time is. I have no watch and I have left my cell phone behind for fear that I might be tempted to make or receive a call.
I keep running. I am escaping life and it is the best feeling imaginable. Complete relief. I am certain that I have been running for at least half an hour. My head is swimming and I smile. I won’t have to think about what I must do.
I reach the overpass. The cars below pass both two quickly and not quickly enough. The sky refuses to lose its light. This is all going horribly wrong.
I peer through the chain link fence. I have somehow started caring a smidge more that I look crazy. Each second brings the possibility that this plan will be blown to shit and that someone will intervene.
When night finally falls I cross into the construction site. This is where I was supposed to jump from. I am equally paranoid over here, so seeing that this is not a viable alternative to the other side of the road, I head back. The overpass is built into a hill, so I crouch there, obscured from passing cars.
There I sit and there I wait. I wait for each red light. But they’re never long enough. There are too many cars that might intervene. Part of me wonders that if a real intervention got going if that would be the motivation I would need to get out on the ledge. I’m afraid of heights. I might not die. I might seriously injure a driver. I counter these thoughts with everything in my arsenal, mostly Clay and feeling like a failure academically. Whereas in the river I was chanting “Lars” to battle coldness and hypothermia, now I am chanting “Clay” to work up the nerve to jump.
I sit and sit and sit, waiting for each successive red light. At some terrible moment, I realize that it is not going to happen. I am not going to jump. This realization is a shock to me and I need a few minutes to absorb it. Now the task has become getting back to Sheppard Pratt in a reasonable amount of time to minimize negative consequences.
Somehow I have the energy to begin the run back to Sheppard Pratt. It is propelled by screaming. Shrill, anguished, unnatural screaming. I am at rock bottom. I had planned this for weeks and now it has blown to shit, just like the other before it. I scream and scream and scream, my face contorted like that of a baby’s. Tears overflow my eyes and I am aware now of how I look to passersby. I am also aware that not a one stops. This is just my ego talking and I’m not sure that I even wanted help, but I looked pained. I ran and screamed for about 15 or 20 minutes before coming hoarse. I wasn’t terribly concerned about consequences. I had just hoped and hoped and hoped that this would work and it didn’t. I can’t fathom the possibility of a future, so I scream some more. This is as close as I can come with words to describing how I felt. I envision the art studio and think of glass mosaics. A large, intricate glass bowl, thrown full force against the pavement. I feel the shards, sharp, useless, disjoined. Broken.
Back inside the Sheppard Pratt grounds, I fight to regain composure. My gait has slowed to a brisk walk. Time has resumed again and disoriented, I am eager to know specifically what time it is. It can’t be that late or staff would have sent out a search crew. Right?
I ring the intercom hoping that my fear of retribution isn’t apparent. The door opens and the hallway is vacant. I slip into the kitchen to find a clock. 8:45. It feels like I’ve been gone longer, but also not that long at all. My room is all the way at the end of the hallway and my luck has surely run out when I run into Dan.
Dan’s face is virtually identical to how I left it. I am stunned but recover quickly.
“Oh hey Jim. I thought I saw you running out by Towsontown Boulevard. Did you see me?” Holy shit.
“Oh…no…I didn’t, I got really lost.” I hold my breath as if waiting for a blow. Something.
“Oh ok. Well just so you know, technically you’re not allowed to go off grounds.” He is not angry. I nod in assent emphatically.
“Ok. Good to have you back.”
I am almost to my door when Kaitlyn, the nurse on duty, stops me and asks me if I’m okay. I start to say yes, then no, then escape to my room, turn on the showerhead, and slip into the shower. I can’t sort out my emotions right now; I am in a sort of cerebral, or at least cognitive, paralysis. My respiration and heart rate slowly decrease.
I am convinced that the part of my brain responsible for long-term planning is severely deficient if not extinct altogether. Ditto to my decision-maker. I have dodged a bullet with my flimsy alibi. But I am plagued by what I have failed to do, conscious of the possibility (or probability) that I will be transferred to an inpatient unit if I come clean.
I am too distraught to do anything. I find Kaitlyn and take my medications. She is not buying my attempts at normalcy. Her body language speaks louder than her silence. So I spill. I tell her everything that has transpired over the past two hours. This is out of character for me.
“Well all I can say is, thank God that you’re alright.” My deadpan face prompts her to add, “You may not feel it now, but someday you will.” I’m too tired to argue. She, along with many others, is convinced that the reason I ran back was because I decided that I didn’t want to commit suicide, that I somehow had this personal revelation about how great life is and how I wanted to live. The truth is that I had a reality check. No matter how long I waited at that damn bridge and no matter how much I wanted to, I was too scared to jump. So instead, I tearfully resigned myself to the reality and came back to try to play by the rules.
I am on staff 1:1. Mac, a mental health worker, pulls a chair into my doorway and faces me. I meet his gaze and keep holding it. A long and probably inspirational anecdote unwinds from his mouth. Something about some younger relative of his who had persevered through Iraq or Afghanistan or some other military snafu and was now flourishing. Bottom line, success through great suffering. Greater than mine. I don’t even have enough energy to glower at him. I just stare at him in the darkness until I fell asleep.
Quinze
A lamp flicks on. Dr. Corbin’s figure is illuminated in the doorway. More voices are audible outside the doorway. This is not a dream because I seldom remember my dreams on Ambien.
Next thing I know I am wheeled down the hallway on a stretcher. Down the elevator, out the first-floor corridor, and hoisted into a waiting ambulance. This scene is not unfamiliar to me and normally inspires fury within me, a quiet fury visible only on my face. I have no such energy tonight and blindly accept my fate. I hold a tiny shred of hope that the ambulance will crash and I will be its sole victim. The irony of such an occurrence would be wickedly perverse. Like raging fires in locked psychiatric wards. An emergency situation in which suicidal people become frantic to escape a lethal situation.
The ambulance, of course, does no such thing. It makes its course to God knows where, Ellicott City, as it happens. Within minutes I am asleep. A reprieve from reality, however brief.
Fear grips me as I’m wheeled into the unit. A motherly-looking nurse conducts the intake, the concern on her face thrown into dramatic shadows between. It’s a long intake; she is not merely satisfied with a recounting of my voyage to the overpass and back.
She leads me down the hallway to my room. Outside the nurse’s station hangs a whiteboard with all the names of the inpatients next to room numbers and things like “SO,” “SE,” “BO15,” “BO30.” Do doctors really pride themselves in these cryptic abbreviations?
My room is dark and I’m careful not to wake Rob, my new roommate. I’ve come to expect the worst, but in sleep he looks peaceful. I huddle into the fetal position and drift away.
Firm knocking on the door awakens me at an ungodly hour. “James, Rob. It’s time for breakfast.” I am paralyzed. “James!”
I line up with the rest and reality sinks in. Like sheep we are led to the cafeteria. I begin to sit down at a small table near the window..
“No, James. You aren’t allowed to sit at that table. You can only sit in these four tables.” Unfazed, I relocate. It takes me all of about five minutes to finish my milk and cereal and we can’t leave for another twenty-five minutes. So I people-watch. I am amazed at the volume of food that my fellow inpatients are devouring. It is revolting and captivating. “You gonna eat that? Give it here!” Do they not know about the weight they are gaining? Or do they just not care? Obesity in America has been made real.
Again the line forms to return to the unit. I haven’t been led to places in lines since sixth grade nine years ago and at that time most of the rules seemed arbitrary as well. I find myself thankful that at least we get to leave the unit at all.
As if in response to my silent protests against authority and order, we are made to gather in a group and discuss our goals for the day. Additionally, we are each to give a rule of the unit, but if we don’t know any, the “veterans” will fill us in.
My name is called and I fall upon my default inpatient goal of “go to groups.” I fall back into a disengaged stupor.
A large woman somewhere to my right pipes up. Perhaps piping up is the wrong terminology. She has a husky, masculine voice. I don’t remember her goal. Or any of the other goals. Maybe I’m not goal-oriented.
“Ya might as well go to groups because if ya don’t, staff’ll knock on your door to wake ya up and if ya still don’t go, they’ll lock your door. So either way, you’ll be goin’.” She enjoys a belly laugh that is shared by no one. Her boobs are huge and down to her navel and she just looks bossy. A hen, clucking at her brood of apathetic chicks. Except really, we aren’t her chicks because she has no more authority than us.
I meet with Dr. Chan, a short and impeccably dressed young doctor with a goatee. He looks more like a movie star than a doctor and this is somewhat refreshing. I don’t need any more aging windbags.
He conducts a more detailed intake and throws me a few curveballs. “Would you say that you’re current state is like how you are all the time – in other words, are you depressed more often than not?” I think truthfully and objectively and determine that no, I’m not depressed all the time.
“How many times have you tried to kill yourself?” I feel like asking “what exactly constitutes a suicide attempt” but decide better against it. He watches me intently while I start to count on my fingers, struggling with memory. I come up with somewhere between six and eight so settle on seven for balance, but wonder if perhaps six would give lend greater credibility to my sanity. These questions are important. The doctor holds the key to my release.
Seize
Somehow in my Ambien-induced fogs I have once again betrayed my emotions to Clay. I don’t know the specifics of the text messages I sent him, just that I sent them and that they have elicited his uncharacteristic concern. Is it concern? Or is it an unclean conscience masquerading as concern?
I pace the art room frantically, phone in hand. This is a terrible feeling but one which will not be relieved until I call him. The longer I wait, the worse it will be. I highlight his name and punch the green call button.
I pray that I’ll get voicemail but he picks up on the third ring. Why wouldn’t he? He just told me that he’s free to talk now. Still, there’s a needless note of question in his voice as to the identity of the caller.
“Hello?” It’s the first time I’ve heard that silky voice in two months. A tangible element of reality that lives outside my head, and I am once again putty in his hands.
“Heyyy.” Why am I already talking as though nothing’s happened? How have you been?”
“Oh fine. Really tired from work. How about you?”
“Pretty good. What have you been up to?” For the first time I’m really glad that he can’t see my face, see it completely fail to assume a façade. I am determined to keep the conversation off of myself.
Nothing much, he says. He either had or has business in New York. I can picture him on his couch, feet on the coffee table, glass in hand, computer in his lap, HGTV on in the background, Marilyn keeping a protective vigil over him from the wall, his Holy Mother. “What have you been up to?”
Pause. I am verbally paralyzed as this pause stretches beyond the parameters of normal conversation and into oblivion. I want to break it but am powerless to do so. It slips through me like grains of sand.
“I’m in treatment.” These three words puncture the already tense air, rendering it even uglier. Still, they sound better than “psych ward” or “hospital” and, given his texts of “sober up” and “drunk texting is dangerous,” my perceived and real alcoholism is plausible.
“Why?” Concern? Curiosity? Normal conventions of polite conversation? What motivates this painfully intrusive query?
“Have my HIV results come back?” I feel hungry with anticipation. There’s a long pause. Dr. Corbin is having trouble with his normal face, which is the emotionless, or to be more euphemistic, objectionable, mask of those in his profession. I take sick pleasure in this role reversal.
He looks at me seriously. “Jim, you’re HIV positive.” I think he’s expecting something. Which he should. But I don’t have much to offer. My acting skills are not such that I can cry on command. Perhaps a blank look of shock would suffice. I know that a smile will not do, but I can’t help from smiling a bit. I have been handed a death sentence, like a gift. I am mildly aware of how wrong this is, of the millions and millions who suffer and perish from the disease who would give anything to not have HIV or AIDS. But it’s how I feel all the same, and isn’t that the point of therapy? To embrace your emotions, regardless of their rationality or motivation?
“Do you want me to call your partners?” I know this is protocol, but the thought is to me laughable. Clay, who hasn’t heard my voice in two months and has no idea where I am, gets a call from Dr. Corbin. Right. Stuart and Marc, the only two other possible men I could have contracted the disease from, would be torn. Clearly these are not conversations for a neutral third party to conduct. I wonder if he has to be present during these conversations. Charting away on me.
What an awkward conversation to have, particularly with people you barely know yet with whom you are so intimately involved. I call Marc. I’ve never asked, but always assumed that he is the top in the relationship. Maybe they flipfuck. It’s hard to know for sure because they seem to have an equal commitment and vulnerability in the relationship. At any rate, he has a J.D., is the couple’s contact point, and will probably me more rational and thus easier to talk to than Stuart. I wish I could see them, but I remind myself that I’m in a psychiatric hospital and that I’m damaged goods. Funnily, they’ve always seemed disproportionately interested in my personal life and I begin to wonder about theirs. How long have they been together? Are they really happy? Ultimately, what is a day in the life? I will probably never know.
I get voicemail. Thank God. Imagine if I left that bombshell in a message. Instead, I tell them that I have something I need to tell them and to call me back at their earliest convenience. I have in essence just told them the news. What else would I be calling about?
Clay is a different story. I feel like a cat who has cornered a hopeless trapped mouse. One that I will play with before mauling and eating. I have never been the cat and I am so fucking tired of being the mouse. He will not get off with a voicemail or text message. Not even “I have HIV might wanna look into that ok bye.” I deserve this.
Maybe I never do figure out where I contracted it. Do I deserve to know? Moreover, what real difference does it make, besides helping to prevent further spread? It doesn’t change my status. There’s no real closure. I think of all the AIDS orphans, alone and outcast without any idea of why they are ill or pariahs. I think of all the truths and limits of knowledge, awareness, and reality.
Clay picks up. I can see him on his couch. HGTV is probably on behind his laptop. He may or may not have a glass of wine. Otherwise I know nothing. Horny Clay and Tired Clay and Repressed-Annoyance-Bordering-On-Angry Clay all sound about the same. If Sad Clay, Afraid Clay, and for that matter Elated Clay exist, I have no idea what they are like. Maybe the same. Maybe his outward emotional range is really that limited. Maybe that suits him just fine; maybe it’s an enviable condition. He says he’s “mostly a happy guy” – let’s see if there are any limits to that happiness.
“Hello?”
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How are you?”
“Oh fine. Just working a lot. I have to be in New York next week. How are you?”
I can’t find words. There aren’t any. There are no words that can remedy this situation. No apologies. Only “what-ifs.” Which are useless.
“Jim?”
“I’m still here.” Fantastic. I feel pressed for time and he is undoubtedly losing interest. I inhale and drop the bomb, just let it fall, unadorned.
“I just tested positive for HIV.”
A more pregnant silence than before hangs between us before Cliff breaks it.
“What? Are you kidding?”
This is the final straw. Now that I really am as dirty as he claimed all along, there’s no use in restraint. I am free to offend.
“What kind of sick joke do you think that is? No, of course I’m not joking. Jesus. How can you be so unaffected?”
“Well you’re such a whore, so I guess it was only a matter of time. Who gave it to you?”
“I don’t know. Hence why I’m calling you.”
Silence again. Then I think I hear it. Imperceptible, but there. Fear.
“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?” What a cop-out. Of course not. Even Cher can’t turn back time.
“Oh I don’t know, maybe wear a condom the next time you decide to fuck someone half your age! Rather than on an as-it’s-convenient-for-you basis. I’m sure it must be really embarrassing buying Magnum condoms.”
“What are you talking about? Where is this coming from?”
“This is coming from someone who has walked on eggshells for the past two months, obsessing over each of his words and actions in hopes that they might not scare you off. And what the hell good did that do?”
“Tell me how this is my fault. I never promised you anything. I didn’t force you to come over here.” He’s right and he knows it. I know. And I hate it. I’m the goddamn cat this time, not him.”
“You should have known better, that’s why. What the fuck did you think was going to happen? I know what I thought. I thought we would be fuck buddies for four months and then go our own ways. But I fell in love with you. I didn’t want to. I don’t want to be in love with you, but I am.” I’m trembling like a leaf and try to silence myself out of habit. What good does masking emotion do at this point? This is a puzzle with no solution. I am some kind of weird gay hybrid of widower, divorcée, and pregnant single mother. The child is my love for him. I can’t put it up for adoption. Do I abort it?
“I’m really not sure what to say….”
“When are you ever?” I interject and hang up. This is the best possible way I can end such a conversation. Perhaps I have won it, but what are my spoils? He won’t call back. I can’t decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
Dix-Sept
I get off the treadmill. It occurs to me that this is the last time I will sweat. The last time I will hear music. Why have I not cultivated an appreciation for classical music?
I disrobe. I look down at my left arm. A skeleton’s arm. But still I see the fat. My chest and face are crimson. Every rib is visible through my skin. If I look carefully there is slight definition in my abdominal muscles. Never enough. My penis hangs feebly, useless in a forest of hair.
My breathing comes in shallow bursts and I feel a needle burrowing somewhere in my heart, a sharp but tolerable pain intensifying with each beat. I hope that Kara, the anorexic girl from inpatient, is right, that this is a heart attack.
I take my Ambien and lie in bed. Ambien, the drug that allows me to escape consciousness but at the counterproductive cost of piquing my appetite. I will never again feel happy. I will never again feel sad. I try in vain not to think of family and friends. As I drift out of consciousness, I wonder if there is an afterlife and if there is, I hope that I will not think of Clay.
Part Deux (The Funny Farm)
I am pacing around my room frenetically. Dad will be here to pick me up in five minutes. My shit is contained on my bed but overflowing from my bag. I want to pace. I want to run. I want to gouge or sculpt or paint or draw or blast Nirvana. But none of these are options – I just have to grin and bear this. I try Beau’s deep breathing techniques.
Dad arrives and I hastily throw my things together. The harder I try to leave, the more people shower me with attention. This is hard enough and the longer I stay, the worse it will be. I instant regret the open invitation to dinner. We need to leave.
It feels so weird to be walking away from Shepherd Pratt. 80s music is a welcome distraction on the car radio. Dad and I cluelessly navigate Towson looking for the mall for a restaurant. He opens the map and there it is. DC. Clay. Bastard. I am still puzzled about everyone’s preoccupation with food – what difference does it make where we eat if all I’ll order is salad and a glass of water?
Our directionless wandering continues through the mall, even in the parking garage, but I suppose this is us at our truest. It is so weird being in a mall. The last time I was in one was four months ago in early December with Gabrielle. I look at the storefronts blankly – “I half to have it.” Is this clever? Why does this work? Why do people buy into this like sheep? What is need? Does anyone ever even consider that?
We stop first in Eddie Bauer in search of a duffel bag to contain my belongings. Dad is unwilling to pay the listed price, saying something about being on a budget and I am newly aware of the $2,000/day cost of my treatment. How can I not feel terrible? I begin to ponder the value of a duffel bag, then ponder its value ten, twenty, thirty years ago. This is the extent of my interest in economics.
Our next stop is Macy’s to try to locate the restaurant. I am embarrassed to ask for directions and watch as Dad, completely unembarrassed, approaches a Chanel cosmetologist with a perfect Coco bob. He mutters something about roundabout directions as we leave the store and I steal a glance at his eyes. They are shrouded by deep circles and I find myself wondering about how much sleep he is getting, followed by how much he is worrying about me. More guilt. I wish he would stop worrying. Most of all I wish unrelated medical personnel and the like would stop worrying. Who are they to worry about me?
TGI Friday’s bombards us with happy hour specials. This is another aspect of society with which I have not had to contend for quite some time. I am a fish out of water, flailing and gasping. I can’t look away from the drink specials and am similarly overwhelmed by the menu choices. Salads are all the way in the back. Way to go, America. I end up ordering a flavorful low-fat chicken dish, encouraged by the waitress to order more. I politely decline. Maybe I should start wearing a sign: “Do Not Feed: Eating Disorder.” Dad says something about upselling. I mention the economy and gesture to the all but vacant dining room.
I excuse myself to the bathroom to text Kim, not wanting to text during dinner. I start in the direction of the bar but a sign, “No Persons Under 21 Admitted In the Bar Area,” compels me to turn around. Three more weeks and I will no longer fall in that category, though I will undoubtedly be carded every time.
As I retake my seat at the booth, I note that a gay couple has occupied the booth across from us. I burn with resentment and longing. I recall the time Matthew and I went to Chili’s and we were both served margaritas without question. Then we hooked up in the back of Dad’s truck. And Mallory saw the whole thing. How had I forgotten about that?
“Are they gay?” a man asks his girlfriend from behind Dad. I don’t believe my ears at first. My bitter lust evaporates, replaced by indignant rage. How dare he? I want to walk over and bitch him out. He could beat the shit out of me. But I don’t care. He has no right.
I am halfway through a bite of chicken when I begin weeping silently. I am still able to force a smile and chew my food. Dad encourages me to let it out and I bury my head in my hands. I am, as Alanis Morisette would say, “unabashedly bawling my eyes out.” I’m in public and plainly visible but I don’t care.
Then I pull myself together as if nothing happened. Our chipper waitress tries to seduce us with dessert. We both decline. Dad looks at me a bit as though my ordering dessert would have justified his and makes another comment about upselling. When the bill comes I feel obligation to try to pay it but sit idly.
On our way back through the mall, I explain my paranoia about my computer crashing, taking forty-some pages of journaling with it. Irreplaceable journaling, in my eyes. We pick up a flash drive. Then back through Macy’s for a duffel. I am quite flustered to be asking directions again. The associate points us to the right, I head for the left. I’m still thinking about Clay and don’t know why. Other than that I love him. But I don’t why I love him either.
Dad is disproportionately enthusiastic about the duffel. I meet him halfway. The fatigued-looking cashier warns that the bag’s color doesn’t match the picture – Dad enters a brief panic, but I assure them both that it doesn’t batter. Because it doesn’t. At all. Why would it?
After losing ourselves in the parking lot, we are on the road, only to stop at the grocery store. I need Metamucil. And this actually seems like an authentic need. I need to be able to shit. At will. Any time something caloric enters my body. But I don’t want to be in this grocery store. I have to pee and the bathroom looks like the scene of a rape. Or murder. Or both. Maybe it is.
I am engrossed with tabloids in checkout. Again, why? Why are these people of the slightest interest? I guess it’s their pitfalls that make them so alluring.
The drive to the hotel is the background for one of the most interesting conversations I’ve ever had with Dad. Unsolicited, he launches into his past romantic history. I am parts shocked and eager and play the role of therapist, probing him with questions. An exit for Ellicott City floods me with inpatient memories. And the perverse and far-fetched hope that our car will be struck, killing me but sparing Dad.
“The Jim and Dad Show,” I say as we pass under a sign for Baltimore and Washington. “Back on the Beltway.” For him this is a probably happy memory of time spent together in January. For me it is a flashback to ‘Nam. The beginning of a disaster. Clay. Clay is the elephant in the car, the hugely-endowed elephant that was not invited and will not leave. I want to tell him about Clay so badly and don’t at the same time. It is suffocating me. So I ask him leading questions. God, I’ve spent too much time in therapy.
“Have you ever been manipulated in a relationship purely for the other person’s physical benefit?” “Have you ever been strung along because the other person was too afraid or unwilling to dump you, fully aware of a lack of potential in the relationship?” I almost ask him about the biggest age gap he’s encountered in dating but stop, figuring that this is way too revealing and that the answer is Polly (eight years).
He likes where this is going. I don’t. He takes the exit for the hotel. “It’s really cool – you’re going to love it. It’s very modern and fun and Art Deco.” I instantly think of Marc and Stuart with a pang of loneliness. “Art Deco” is the exact phrase I would use to describe the Helix in DC.
And sure enough, the “Aloft” is a dead ringer of the Helix. Pulsating club music bathes the entryway. Modern art for sale adorns the walls and bar is backlit and lined with strangely shaped glasses. All of the couches are unusually shaped. He is thrilled with himself and I try my best to share in his enjoyment.
We get to the room and all I can think of is sex. I could totally find a guy to fuck in this hotel, breaking my two-month dry spell, but that is an impossibility. I pop my Ambien and write about Marc and Stuart. I don’t even have the energy to head to the bathroom to jerk off. The shower isn’t as suitable for sex. I am trapped in my own narcissism as I lament that I have no one to appreciate my nudity and thinner body. But above all, no one to hold me.
Four AM the next morning comes very quickly. I shower in a daze. We almost miss our terminal. I fall in and out of sleep on the plane that leaves me more tired than before. Dad announces that we have plenty of time for our layover. I don’t even want to know what that means.
The first things I see off the jetway are bags of Combos. Naturally I think of cats’ assholes. And Kim. Then I see gay men everywhere. Yes, this is Massachusetts and gay marriage is legal here, but it seems disproportionate. A cute enough guy in a Dartmouth sweatshirt sits behind us, absorbed in reading, and I think about propositioning him in the bathroom à la Senator Craig, Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport’s lone claim to fame. A middle-aged gay couple wait at our gate and I find myself bending over unnecessarily and trying to catch their glances. What the hell do I think is going to happen?
Dad insists on coffee and breakfast. I grudgingly eat an English muffin but gulp my coffee, hoping for poop later.
We walk onto the tarmac to see the smallest plane I’ve ever flown in, no more than twenty feet in length. I am thrilled! I think of Casablanca and bygone eras of early flight. The ground fades into the distance – I look for Harvard but have no sense of direction and settle instead on the skyline. My escape into fantasy is short-lived. Soon I am overcome with impulses to jump. I hope that we will crash into a mountain, but miraculously I will be the only fatality. I talk to Dad to keep from dwelling on these thoughts. But they’re still there.
Mom arrives at the airport, characteristically late. I shouldn’t hold this against her today – I have no desire to go to Spring Lake Ranch. I concentrate closely on the path we take to get there with the faint hope of escaping, where to I have no idea. Pat, whom I have conveyed (thinly veiled) false interest to via the telephone, greets us in the parking lot. She looks like Jane Goodall but I am not won over so easily. We begin the tour. Mom, and to a lesser degree, Dad, interject comments of praise throughout.
I have fallen into a hippie commune. I’d like to think I have nothing wrong with hippies, and at least they’re liberal, but they seem intent on converting me to their isolated, nature-loving ways and I am not having it. And who ever heard of sober hippies? They were rare in the 1960s and they’re sure as hell rare in Colorado.
I embrace Dad in the parking lot. Mom embraces me tightly, whispering things like “I love you so, so much.” I hold her as limply as possible and remind her that I have no fucking option. I suppose I am being “verbally abusive” again; it’s probably better that I just repress resentment. I am looking for a fight, which is not at all like me.
I am assigned to the maple tree work group. I am determined not to bitch about labor because I’m sure they expect this. I let my anger show though. It is an internal force that is overwhelming me and it cannot be contained. For the first time in my life I am homicidal and have no one to tell about it. Je veux tuer Clay, pleurer a son corps mort, et me tuer. Je veux aussi tuer Mom.
Everyone here looks like a peer, but most of them are staff. They have no distinguishing badges or signs from the patients. I ask Kelly, a staff member, about this, and she asks me if I think they should have badges. All the staff say things like “they used to be here.” So I can believe that they were once “troubled adolescents” and are thus relatable? I am in a sick masquerade where nothing is what it seems, everyone looks like a peer, and I have to ask outright to discern the difference.
The work really isn’t bad at all. It’s the fact that I am here. There is no dignity in being here. I have no desire whatever for visitors. I have arrived at Camp Green Lake in Louis Sachar’s Holes. Maybe, like Stanley Yelnats, I am waiting to unearth my treasure. I can identify to a lesser extent with Augusten Burroughs’ abandonment at Dr. Finch’s house, thrown into madness. Maybe there’s an unstable pedophile here. A new Clay. I would welcome him. Once again I am helplessly watching myself from the outside. I have lost my identity. This makes inpatient units look like paradise. Facades are everything.
Je pense à combien je veux tuer Clay et Mom. Tim, who I discover is a staff member, interrupts me mid-thought and I am speechless. After a few minutes (maybe, I have no way to keep track of time), I start weeping. Again, without embarrassment. Jonas, who is handsome, leaves. Kelly calls after him but he ignores her. After a few moments, she follows him. Maybe there’s a reason why people try to escape. We are pulled away from the maple trees because the purifier isn’t working and without it the maple syrup won’t taste the same. Apparently this is a life-or-death situation. So instead we sweep rocks of the path. I am asked if I’d like to be shown the recycling and respond that I will do anything as long as it’s not menial. I catch myself and say I will do anything. Anything. I will pretty much eat cow manure.
“Are you gay?” I’m caught off guard.
“Uh…yeah.”
“Me too.” No shit. Her hood is pulled over her head, her voice is deeper than mine, and her pants are around her ass.
“How could you tell?” I look almost as butch as her today.
“I just could. My uncle’s gay. Like half my family’s gay.”
I laugh. “Maybe it’s genetic. Then we can prove it and tell the haters to fuck off.”
“I already told these people to fuck off.” I’m trying to leave but I have nowhere to go.
I smile. Libby interrupts.
“I only have two options: either leaving here or killing myself.” And with that she leaves, Kelly in tow.
“Welcome to Hell.” I am immediately reminded of Dwayne in Little Miss Sunshine.
“Thank you, I really appreciate that.” I say that with the most energy I have said anything today.
I can’t stop talking to her.
“Why the fuck are you here?” she asks.
“Nowhere else to go. I couldn’t afford to stay in treatment any longer. Rehab’s expensive. Why the fuck are you here?” Why on earth am I pressing this girl?
“It was this or prison. I got a rich grandma who’s 93. I wish the old bag would die already.”
“You’re my new hero.” There is some level of sincerity in this statement. Then, before I can stop myself, “What did you do?”
“Shot up a cop’s house. He was hassling me and just finished his house, so I put six holes in the new siding.” Awestruck silence.
“Are you in a gang?” I ask.
“I was. Bunch of pussies.” This girl is so badass.
“There’s a room in the lodge where you can watch porn if you’ve got a laptop.”
“I haven’t watched porn in…God, four months.”
“Yeah, they give you condoms here.”
“Are any of the guys here gay?”
“No.”
“Guess I won’t be using those then.”
I go back to work. Finally it is four o’clock. I talk to Jane Goodall. She’s still smiling. Always. I don’t know the crazy rules here. If I can leave the lodge and go for a damn run. I’ve been fantasizing about this all day, like sex or cocaine.
I start running up the hill toward the maples and am surprised at how shallow my breath is. Is it altitude? I keep running and hit a dead end.
On the way down I am worried about losing my footing on the large loose rocks. I decide to run down the drive. It is a mix of restraint and disinhibition; the hill is steep and I want to slow my descent, but at the same time I need to burn every calorie possible, push myself as hard as I will go. I want to escape so badly but know there is nowhere to go. I think about art. I really don’t have any inspiration. One of my roommates has a painting more beautiful than mine and my self-esteem is shot. I think about drawing or painting murders or rape victims. Or my DUI. I should pull articles from the headlines from Iraq or Afghanistan. The hippies would like that. Maybe sex workers in Europe or Thailand. Several ideas for Echo, the sculptor. Yes, Echo. I would gladly take up the role of Narcissus and drown myself.
I start back up the hill and it feels like a straight ascent. I think about Hitler. How depressed he must have been to have dehumanized and killed so many people. I fortunately have no target of genocide, except maybe hippies. I think of eternal condemnation. I don’t know if this is sufficient deterrent any more.
I am interrupted again mid-thought by barking. No, not barking madness. A collie approaches me. I stop running. I greet it and wondering if it will bite me, slowly extend my hand. Its master comes running after. “He barks at everyone.” Really? It’s a good thing I like dogs.
“’Sup Shorty?” I reach the lodge sooner than I expected.
“Hey. You get back from a jog?”
“Yeah. I ran.”
“Fuck that shit.” It was only a half hour run. I still have half an hour until dinner. More running. I start up the maple trail again before remembering the rocks. I pull off to the side of path. I look down at the land below and start screaming. My scream is stifled and strangled because my breath is short. I am shocked at how far it carries. I climb higher and scream again. Anguish, hatred, despair, call it what you will.
I start walking back down when I run into Wesley, one of the cute guys from lunch.
“Hey Jim. Going for a run?”
“Uh sure.
“Great. Did I tell you I’m on your team?” I stop for a minute jumping at the double entendre.
“Uhh.. no.”
“Oh ok, Leslie and I will be on your treatment team.
We start jogging, the conversation sparse. He’s from Columbia, South Carolina, relocated to Colorado and met Kate, and now is living here.
“Kelly like Kelly…” I jerk my thumb back toward the lodge.
“Yeah.” He says, beaming. This is just too perfect. Camp romance. Part of me is bitter that he’s not really on my team. Another part entertains the idea of going after him anyway. I mean really, what are they going to do, kick me out?
He starts talking about altitude running in Colorado with Kate and trying to beat her because of his machismo. We talk about spirituality, he wears a cross, and how prevalent Christianity is in the South. We pass the maples on level terrain until we reach beautiful pastures. These have a romantic quality which I’d like to race him across and capture on canvas.
On the way down we are talking about fluency in French and Spanish and how I can “get it back.” As if it’s lost. He launches on an anecdote: “You have to inform staff if you want to go for a run for yourself because we had this one guy with like endless energy and he was pretty bad with directions so he ended up out on the road trying to climb a bridge. Not that that’s anything you would do” he adds in haste. You clearly haven’t read my chart. Or have you? I don’t think anything I’ve done would scare these people. Maybe I need to try harder.
I eat dinner with Wesley and Caroline, a political science sophomore from Bucknell. I ask if she knows Kyle Corleone but she doesn’t. I begin to feel intellectually inferior until she talks about how hard it is to read and Wesley concurs. She is also surprised that I know where Greenwich is. I hope to God they don’t chart here. If they do, I’m sure it’s all flowers and sunshine. I’m turning the tables and charting everyone. Suck on that. My hands are cold and lifeless after running. They are a brownish and I can see blue blood vessels. My heart hurts as well. Hoping for a crisis.
I feel like I will never be loved. Never be held. I doubt I will here. I doubt anyone I met who knew about this could love me. I will have to be content with sex and masturbation.
Shorty’s back, full of horror stories. She looks over at Running With Scissors and asks me if it’s good. I say that it is, to which she says “everyone in prison was fighting for it.” Sweet. So the first anecdote is of a boy whose father tied him to a tree by his testicles. Then there was the father who gave his girl a swirly anytime she misbehaved. And then there’s Shorty. Shorty is not the victim. Oh no. Shorty is the aggressor. Shorty threw her mom out a window. Her big mom, she adds proudly. Think about that,Mom. And Craig.
I vaguely recall that 9:45 is med time. It’s about 9:50 and I would have imagined I would have been called. The last thing they want is a bunch of mom-throwers loose, unmedicated. But they don’t do rounds. So I went to the “nurse’s station,” where I was asked how my evening was. “Ok.” What else can I say? “It was beyond awful and I want to kill you all? Does that qualify me to leave?” He wasn’t even sure what he was giving me. He didn’t know if I had Ambien ordered. He didn’t know what it looked like. He used the matching technique to match my meds. It is clear that his degree is substandard. If he had suffered through higher education I might have an iota of respect.
My first night in Cuttingsville. Je ne veux pas me couper avant ca, mais maintenant, je veux coupe toute le monde. I hope to survive at least three weeks.
And now starts the guitar next door.
***
We’re in the camp car, peas in a pod, on the way home from Narcotics Anonymous, my first meeting. I’m in a daze, reeling to process everything. Ninety minutes without being able to record anything for later is torture.
“I should really start working from the Lodge phone. They’d have no idea. I made $4,000 last month.” Libby prattles on – she is more or less having a conversation with herself, yet everyone in the car is listening raptly. I’m pretty sure I know where this is going but afraid to ask. My suspicions are about to be confirmed.
“Well, I have to alter my voice, depending on if they want a dominatrix or someone submissive. I always feel bad as dominatrix because I have to say things like ‘I’m going to pound your ass’ and ‘you’re going to take it like a bitch and like it.’ It was hard at first but they trained us not to apologize or say things like ‘I’m gonna bite your dick off.’ I’m the youngest so I get most of the calls, but I refuse to play transgender. That’s just weird.” She whips her head around. “Cody, you could make a lot of money as a gay phone sex operator.” He laughs uncomfortably. She rolls on. “The thing is to make your voice sound like a twelve-year-old. Mostly it’s creepy old men that call.”
Several thoughts vie for my attention simultaneously. First, I am mildly outraged by the transgender comment. My outrage is replaced by guilt as I realize that the only thing keeping me from speaking out is that the whole car will probably think I have a vagina if I do. Why should I care? Why should that stop me? Social acceptability and normative behavior can suck it.
I am tempted to press the gay sex operator discussion, but again remain silent, not ready for my sexuality to be common knowledge. An even worse, more perversely sinister idea enters my head and I can’t kick it out. Gay phone sex is a perfect calling for someone H.I.V. positive. Calling is the wrong word of course. But it’s income and it’s (sort of) a sexual release. It’s demeaning. It’s degrading. But status disclosure is not requisite in fantasy. Maybe it’s the best I can do in such a superficial world. I default to thinking about Clay, how I in essence was his personal phone sex operator and now crave compensation.
“You’re my hungry little boy, aren’t you?”
Given that it’s been over a week since I’ve been “fed,” I’m more emaciated/famished than anything.
“Mm-hm.”
“You want it bad.” This is a command, not a question.
“Oh yeah.”
“You wet?” Of course not – the asshole doesn’t physiologically get wet on its own. Au contraire, I am bone dry from lack of use. I marvel at how he can be so stupid and yet at the same time seem so smart.
“Getting there.”
“Finger yourself.” I begin breathing heavily and moaning. No porn star would be convinced but it’s enough for Cliff.
“Yeah. You’re my dirty little whore, aren’t you?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Have you been a naughty boy?”
Not sure how to answer this, I break script. “No.”
“Why not?” Puzzlement, but still amusement.
I break the hanging silence in the worst possible way. It seriously would have been better if I had just belched or ripped ass or something. “Because I only want you.”
Shit shit shit! I have completely broken character, the truth hangs nakedly on the line, no longer my only leverage. He doesn’t miss a beat, but I wonder what he’s really thinking now more than ever.
“That’s right. You like it when I talk dirty to you.”
“Uh-huh.” False.
“Play with your cock.” As if he can actually see me, I obediently stick my hand down my pants.
“I’m gonna fuck you in your tight little hole.” I think “When?” but say “Oh yeah?”
“Yep. Where do you want me to come?” I really couldn’t care less but this is not the answer he’s looking for. I deflect smartly. “Where do you want to come?”
“First I’m gonna come in your hole, then I’m gonna bust in your mouth.”
“Mm.”
“You’ll swallow all of me.”
“Mm-hm.” Cliff has been beating off furiously this entire time and lets forth a mighty, authentic orgasm with a gasp.
“Oh fuck. That was good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Can’t wait to fuck you when I get home.” Which will be…?I think but dare not ask.
“I gotta run.”
“Ok bye.”
“Bye.” Click.
I am burning with questions about the potential financial value of such exchanges. How long was that conversation? How many of those did I put up with? Does sexting count? Would it be ok, or more ok, to be spoken to like that if the person on the other end were faceless? Is it possible to completely block or turn off emotion? Am I just too sensitive? I turn to Libby and enter the fray.
“Does it ever bother you that they talk to you like that?”
She pauses, considering this for a moment, then brightly responds that no, it doesn’t.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.” Eighteen. Jesus. I’m not quite three years removed but from my own eighteen-year-old self but feel a lifetime removed. Jamie. My gay awakening. I think of how I wanted to fuck everything with balls at eighteen and wonder if I could have done phone sex then. Maybe I’d be too shocked. But then, I did a helluva lot of webcamming.
“How did you get started?”
“Have you had many boyfriends?” I’m entering the line of questioning I use when I don’t want to talk about Clay but want to talk about him in code.
“Yeah…I went out with my last boyfriend for like three years.”
“Wow!” I interject. I wonder what that is in gay years. Multiply by seven?
“Yeah I was kind of a whore when I was younger.” I can only imagine.
“Just be careful.” I am relieved that she hasn’t returned any of my questions.
***
I flip through the Spring Lake Ranch rules of conduct frenetically, looking for more specifics on curfew and medications. Can I refuse any medications? What happens if I break ten o’clock curfew? Do I get grounded? I shudder at what a Spring Lake grounding might look like.
A knock interrupts my search. Kelly. “They’re looking for you down at the Lodge for meds, Jim.”
“I’m on my way. Thanks.” I’m telling her the truth.
Jackie gives me my cup of meds and plants herself firmly at my side. Shit. I have never cheeked my meds before and now is probably not a great time to start. I guzzle them one by one and leave.
I am back in my room for maybe forty-five seconds before hunger sets in. Four minutes later I am back in the Lodge, mindlessly devouring bowl after bowl of Shredded Wheats. I’m kind of okay with this – at least the milk is nonfat and loaded with protein. That and the fact that this is my last meal.
I grab a banana and leave, pitching the peel into the creek. There is probably a rule against this somewhere. It’s not written down. Maybe it is one of the hippie laws of nature that I tacitly consent to by my very presence here at the Ranch.
I take out my shoestring for more practice. It makes a beautiful little noose and I am surprised at the amount of accomplishment I feel in mastering this small task in a few hours. Somehow I doubt this is what they meant in the website about “developing new skills.” I tighten and expand it, then tie it to the dresser for a stress test. I consider putting my toothbrush in it. How did I get so fucked up?
Before I know it I’m out the door. I cross the creek and spy the badminton net across the lawn. I begin my approach as the lodge door opens. I freeze, searching for somewhere to hide, forgetting that it is pitch dark and I am wearing black.
The voices recede but all of the shadows become people. I need to get the hell out of here. I tug on the right end of the net but it won’t budge. I keep tugging until the whole damn thing falls over. I walk away as though nothing has happened.
I am beginning to feel the effects of the Ambien. I tear my sheets off of my bed and tie a slipknot. I throw my jacket over the bundle for concealment and step into the little hut outside my house, dorm, cell, whatever.
I tie the ends of the sheet to the rafters, praying that the not is tight enough. I slip my head into the noose and kick the crate out from under me.
My feet hit the ground. I was afraid this might happen; the hut’s roof is a foot taller than my head if that, so I have nowhere to dangle.
I am thwarted but not defeated. I grab the bundle and make for the lodge. I get to the cookout pavilion and start to tie the noose to the rafters before realizing that I have left the crate behind. Cursing my absentmindedness, I race back to the hut, grab the crate, and race back. I resume tying. The glint of an eye catches mine, stopping me from my work.
Someone is peering out the lodge window. Silently. A shadow. But as I look harder, the shadow moves. I crane my head and the shadow returns to its original position. Horrified, I drop the noose. I creep over to the window as I would to a deer, slowly and cautiously. It is merely the silhouette of a tree, but it continues to possess human qualities. It watches me as I step back under the pavilion.
Feverishly I tie the knot and wrap the noose around my head. I kick the crate with the toe of my boot.
Once again I am on the floor. The knot gave out. This isn’t rocket science; people do this all the time. I think of Alexander McQueen, the late fashion icon; reading about his suicide planted the hanging seed, a small seed but one with room for growth under the right conditions. I wonder what he wore when he did it, if anything at all. Was there a statement besides grief? My only statement is one of complete frustration, but overshadowing my irritation is a grim satisfaction. When I share this news tomorrow, I will be given a very unceremonious, unclean boot. My suicide note is eloquent in its brevity, concisely laying out all my postmortem wishes.
