Becoming Real - 3. III. The Old Man

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III. The Old Man

 

On one side of the viaduct, behind the Jesuit university’s medical school, and hidden among low-aspiring warehouses, was a disco. It had no front door, in fact, offered no face to the world at all, and yet by 10:00 PM on one of those magical days Americans always speak of with deep desire – the weekend – wandering lights would one by one coalesce on the back lot, to find but a moment’s rest before sinking into darkness. Within these cars, the pilgrims fumbled with worries unseen: the keys; the seatbelt; the fear of losing themselves tonight; and deep down, as sunglasses were shut out of sight, the secret hope that love would find them and take them away from all this.

And so they arrived. The County preppies, blond and handsome with hair lusty in ‘product,’ and faces pink and clean. The Southtown boys with washed hands that still bespoke of axle grease or motor oil, unhanded heads of hair, and an ever-ready open-minded attitude to give or receive a gut-wrenching joke. To a lesser degree, Angles hosted young African Americans who sought diversity from the crowds that danced the night away at Magnolia’s. But mostly, the place floated with the free ones. The ones unconcerned by roles: the sometimes screeching over-effeminate fashion plates, who more often than not, when tested, prove greater ‘men’ than their more ‘butch’ rivals. With them came the women, the slightly well-hipped girls, the blonds, the brunettes – long hair; short hair – the straight ones who either felt safe here, or were titillated by the prospect of seducing some innocent lamb. These were the f*g-hags, the ones who were set free in the room like buoys, ignorant of the nature of the waves they glided over, hands in the air, clapping out the music, while they failed to understand the subtle subtext of cruising happening all around them, just below surface appearances.

The building shape was clear and simple: a rectangle with the front squared off into the dancefloor; the bar, a wooden horseshoe shouldered against one long wall; while on the other side, a three-stepped raised level hosted a dozen tables with chairs to the give the sitters a view of the dancers. The main door was to the side, behind this raised area. Another door, farther back – in fact through the storeroom – and un-ushered by a bouncer, proved the portal of choice for the under twenty-one set.

 

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The bartender smiled warmly at him. This man was in his late thirties and had short-cropped blondish hair that was being graced by encroaching gray. Josh ordered a drink, and returned a weak grin, with a muffled “Thanks.” Once the ice-cool glass was sweating in his hot hand, Joshua wandered over to where two sides of the dancefloor had been guarded off with a narrow lean-against bar. Tasting the drink, he set it down, then his elbow followed and he leaned himself over. From here he watched the DJ adjust some equipment, for he hadn’t even started the dance music yet. He remembered and smiled to himself how two weeks ago Gary had brought him here for the first time, and then danced like a man possessed. Josh mused on the boy, trying to expel the demons of complacency. He liked Gary; liked him a lot. When they parted ways at the end of the evening, Gary told him to use his friends, the ones he had introduced to Josh all evening, and that he wouldn’t be around. Josh had turned startled and sad eyes asking him what he meant, and he learned Gary was going to Florida, and to a new first year of college. A phone call on Wednesday was their last adieu filled with “You better call me,” and “Have fun with all those Mickey Mouse dicks they’ve got down there.”

Joshua glanced around. He hadn’t seen any of Gary’s friends, much less Sheila, his appointed f*g-hag, but he wanted to double-check. On the other side of the dancefloor, he saw a short Black guy glance away from him. Sitting at the bar, and pushed all the way against the wall where the horseshoe ended – the intimate corner – sat two men in their sixties. They bent heads together, one with his arm on the shoulder of his partner, and quietly discussed all they took in, but mostly, they only cared to take in each other’s company. Glancing away from them, a weird idea, wholly inappropriate for a shallow club-setting like this, intruded. He imagined all the crap these men must have endured to keep their relationship together and strong in the age of open hate, hostility, jail time and the easy three signatures by parents, doctors, or judges to ‘institutionalize’ adult Gay men. In places, like the State Hospital just down the road, these inmates would be electroshocked, aversion ‘treated’ with cigarette butts in stale coffee they would be forced to drink while looking at pictures of handsome men, and worst of all, lobotomized. Josh thought, ‘No, not long ago; not long ago at all.’ If he were brave, which he was not, he would go and congratulate them on their love, but instead, he stared at his drink, and mumbled, “Someday I will.”

Checking out the other side of the room, and up to the raised area, he saw a white-shirt-clad boy sitting by himself. He sat in his chair like he was ready to spring up and out at any second, but this jocular stance was his ‘taking it easy’ pose. His forearms rested flat, side by side on the table. From the pivot of his elbows, his upper arms were tensed and expanding to the V of his broad shoulders. Josh assumed he must have played football in high school. He leaned his weight on his arms, causing his whole upper body to flex and release to maintain balance. His button-down shirt had the sleeves rolled up past the elbows and showed Josh the guy’s limbs were rich in light colored curly hair. His head was turned and Joshua got a good look at his profile: jawline sharp, going to his graceful chin, that line turning out to form his lower lip, pink and alive even from the distance Josh viewed him. His upper lip, like his jaw, was strong; the contrast between forward and receding elements made a perfect balance. His nose was again delicate, the nostrils bold; the corner of his eyelids tilted down, giving him a sweetly passionate, sad cast whenever his devilishly sparkly eyes smiled. His ashen hair fell back from the part to cover the top half of his ears. His neckline sank beneath the collar of his shirt with all the intrigue and beguiling mystery of the mass at Christmas midnight. His head started to turn. Quickly, Josh looked down at what he was drinking. Then he casually glanced back to the DJ.

His mind began to spin. ‘I can go up there, and say, Do you mind if I talk to you for a while?’

‘No; no,’ he corrected himself, thinking less seriously, ‘Hi, mind if I sit here? Then I can ask nonchalantly, Oh, I see your beer’s almost gone. Why don’t I get us some more. And then’—Josh glanced to his side—‘if he’s a nice guy, he’ll put up an argument, like how he doesn’t want to impose, bla, bla, bla.’ Josh peeked over again, and this time saw the white-shirt guy was regarding him. His heart thumped, his middle section began to ache vaguely, and this feeling brought him in contact with the last time he felt these pains. It slowly came back to him, remembering a dream he had the night before; he knew it was one of those strange falling kind he used to suffer so much from in puberty, but this one was definitely more sophisticated than the falling down stairs type. ‘I remember I was at a Christmas party.’ He thought it was at his friend’s apartment, although the floor plan was different and this friend didn’t actually appear in the dream. ‘Instead, I dreamt of a man with dark hair in a turtleneck sweater having a party in a sunlit living room on the second floor of an apartment building on West End Avenue in New York. What a shame I can’t remember detail.’ Josh laughed at himself, startled at how clear everything was coming back to him. ‘I recall these guys, all Asians, in sweaters, singing in divine harmony God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen. Their voices led me into the living room, where they seemed to be giving a concert, for all the guests were watching them as the vocalists stood in one corner. So I started listening to them too, thinking how good they were, while chitchatting with my turtleneck-bound host. When they finished, we all applauded, and as acknowledgment, they bowed.

‘Then suddenly we lurched forward; by we, I mean the building. “Oh, my God, it’s an earthquake,” I thought. Thought that for only a second, because in an earthquake, movement in one direction is sustained only so far, and then you go snapping back the other way. But we, and by we, I mean the whole room – singers, guests, furniture and all – continued forward. We just fell against the perimeter wall with the windows like ice cubes from a tray. However, somewhere along the line, this second story apartment had moved up to some place above the twentieth, because our descent took some time. Inside, there was relative calm. The initial ‘earthquake’ screams were quickly lost to each one’s thought of personal mortality. At first everyone fell forward to smack on the wall, which was now under us, but soon we started to float inside. Looking through the window beneath me, I could see West End Avenue rushing up, and just as we were about to hit, the host announced in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, but staring me straight in the eye, “If you want to live, jump!”’

Joshua had awoken nauseous and lightheaded. Then, as now, he wondered what exactly the last line meant. As if he were coming out of the dream for the first time, Josh’s eyes wandered around the room he was in. The first thing he saw was the Black guy coming on to him, then that dancers had arrived and the place was much busier than before. He casually glanced to where the white-shirt was sitting, then his heart sank. He saw that ashen-haired boy smile and joke with a man who had sat down across from him. So he watched the dancers dance and pondered ‘If you want to live, jump!’

          

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The evening wore on. More of every kind arrived, and the atmosphere grew rich in intrigue. The music pumped hearts into action. Women danced with women; men with men; and if it wasn’t so very simple, a long, complicated history-lesson answer it would take to explain why it was a big deal. But that’s only because it’s taken human history a long time to come back to human nature. So long, in fact, its reassertion has outraged a few people. But then again, any such belong to the blind-preferring and well-dead past.

“Hi . . . ” Josh said. A blond head turned and gave up a faint smile. “Hi,” it replied. Josh had been standing next to this guy, struggling to get the courage up, out of his throat and into some power. His mind was full of images of the white-shirt boy: how he laughed; how he grinned at the other guy; how sad when even his happy gestures moved across his face. He put out his hand. “My name’s Joshua.”

“I’m Bob.” Bob’s hand came forward. His crisp dress shirt rustled beneath his unbuttoned vest. Josh took Bob’s hand and glanced at this bold fashion statement. The front panels were embroidered, and the design was subtlety like a Persian carpet, only the colors were mute and well diffused. The man’s palm was sweaty and cold, and only limply responded to Josh’s warm squeeze. Bob’s opinion was set.

Both men faced forward.

“So . . . do you live around here?” Josh was desperate to say something, and he realized immediately Bob would think it was a blatant come-on.

“No,” he said. “I live in West County.” Bob did not return the question.

“Oh, that’s where I go to school.”

At that moment, Bob’s boyfriend arrived, and Josh watched the two give each other a smile – that little one two lovers give when the night comes too close and words tire out the day’s ideas. Bob appeared very happy as he was dragged out on the dancefloor. Josh never spoke to Bob again, much to Bob’s relief, he was sure.

Into the newly vacated position, Josh noticed a man’s back appear wearing a designer brand running jacket, with matching pants – a tracksuit.

The back suddenly turned around. The owner grinned broadly, asking, “Like it?”

Josh could not hide his surprise. The man was a little taller than he, with short brown hair growing gray at the temples; in his early fifties, Josh guessed. “It’s nice,” he said helplessly, trying to ignore him by turning his attention back to the dancefloor. He hoped that would work – that he’d get the idea – but he didn’t.

“Do you want to dance?” he offered.

“No thanks,” Josh said bluntly.

‘Go away. Go away. Just go,’ he kept thinking to himself as he watched Bob and his boyfriend out on the dance floor.

“Would you like another drink?” he offered instead.

“No thanks,” Josh said. An idea occurred to him. “Do you like Bach?”

The man leaned down a little, and came in closer. “Do I like Bach, the composer?”

“Yeah; do you like Bach?”

“Yes, I like some of his work.”

“Like what?”

“His Magnificat in D major, some of his suites, the Brandenburgs, the violin concertos. How about yourself?” The man’s smile was oddly tender, like he had been somehow touched by Josh’s unaccountable behavior. “I assume you like him. What do you like?”

“I love the Saint Matthew’s Passion.”

The man swallowed hard, musing for a moment. “That’s a big work, but I think I get as much out of Sheep May Safely Graze as I do out of his big dramatic church music.”

Joshua was impressed. He impishly thought he’d be able to tell the guy to scram if he was not into what Josh was into, but lo and behold, something had conspired to link them.

The man continued, saying, “Yeah, I like Bach. But really the modern Russians are my preference; everybody from Tchaikovsky up.” He held Joshua’s gaze frankly. His eyes were sincere; too sincere for Josh to ignore. “They’re my favorites.”

Josh inspected his features. The man’s nose was prominent; his peepers, large and Bambi-brown. About his eyes played a series of lines. Laugh wrinkles, or frown lines, he couldn’t tell, but they offered the outward visuals that the man had feelings. His tanned skin seemed appropriate to be housed in an expensive tracksuit. Josh could sense the man’s muscles were firm running in his sleeves and down through his trouser legs. He seemed to have a smell too, a warm sort of something like gingerbread and molasses. He had never thought about a man’s scent in relation to how it made him feel, and it sort of tickled the region just below his beltline, right in front. But he wondered how old he was, exactly. ‘Old enough to be my father’ he felt for sure.

“My name’s Dick,” he said and held out his hand. “What’s yours?”

“Joshua.” And he took it. He was surprised; the grip was firm and warm and used just the same pressure Josh did.

“Nice to meet you, Josh.” Dick reluctantly let Josh’s hand go.

‘Definitely old enough to be my father,’ he thought.

“Do you want another drink?” he offered again.

Josh watched his drying ice cubes, but glancing up again – this time with a smile – he said, “Rum and Coke, please.”

“Okay, I’ll be right back.

Soon Dick elbowed his way back. Unable to get his old place by Josh’s side, he stood behind him, passing the drink forward. Once people realized they had some kind of connection, they made room for their reunion.

Joshua took the glass with thanks, and suggested a toast. “To happiness.”

“I’ll drink to that!” And tumbler and beer can met in the air.

“So, Dick, what do you do?”

“I’m an English teacher.”

“Yeah? Who do you teach?” Josh took a sip.

“Kids who want to learn about Shakespeare.”

Josh was standing to his side, so his shoulder rested in front of Dick’s chest, but now he turned all the way around with his back to the dancing spectacle. Josh asked, “You teach kids?” He wrinkled his eyebrows and pulled up the divot under his nose.

“No,” he said laughingly. “By kids I mean college kids. People about your age. By the way”—his Bambi-eyes grew serious—“how old are you?”

Joshua’s glance stole down into his glass. One palm held it fast; he smiled at it; a devilish impulse made him run his index finger along the rim. He thought he could hear it ringing while he replied “Young enough to be one of your kids.”

Dick acted startled. “What do you mean?”

“We’ll have to be careful now, or we may find out I’m enrolled in your class next semester. So very careful, which school do you teach at?”

Dick used the acronym for brevity of effect: “MoPro.”

“Wheeew!” released Josh.

“Obviously not where you go, is it?”

“No, but close. I go to Duchesne – just down the road from Missouri Protestant University. I think the properties even touch; or, maybe not.”

Dick smiled a little as he watched this boy’s face contort in speech. He thought how handsome Josh was right then. “So”—Dick paused while searching for a subject—“do you like Shakespeare at all?”

“I don’t really know very much of his stuff, but what I do know, I like.” Josh’s face suddenly relaxed for the first time while talking to Dick. “I should say I don’t know much of his work yet, but I will.”

“Oh.” Dick puzzled over that response. Was this young man posing as something of an intellectual? How, though? “Why’d you ask me about Bach before?” Dick watched a startled edge creep across Josh’s face. He instantly regretted doubting this boy’s veracity. For some unbidden reason, an image of Michael, Dick’s boyfriend of a year ago, flashed before his sight. He had to focus to hear Josh’s reply . . . how were these two young men related in Dick’s mind?

“I just wanted to see if I wanted to talk to you or not. Anyway, why did you want to talk to me in the first place?”

Dick felt a pang of hesitation. Would honesty do? And yet somehow that doubt wavered in the limpid blues Josh beat on him. “I thought – because . . . you look different.”

“Different?” Josh wanted to know “Like how?”

“I don’t know. Just, you always seem like you’re thinking, and”—he paused again, not knowing how he’d sound—“I don’t know, you give off a ‘sweet’ vibe.”

Josh didn’t know it consciously, but he bit his lip. He liked the always thinking part of the compliment, but then felt uneasy about the ‘sweet’ stuff.

To Joshua’s profoundly innocent appearance, Dick smiled and felt there was no age difference in their spirits. He added, “You look like the kind who would, out of the blue, ask me if I liked Johann Sebastian Bach without any strain of discomfort.”

Again, Josh bit his lip, while to his working and overloaded mind, a comforting presence wafted. It was something he didn’t have to weigh or consider – a warm presence of gingerbread and molasses. He peered around the room half-heartedly. Where was Shelia when he needed her?

“Look.” Dick leaned in close. “It’s getting kind of noisy in here. Why don’t we go get a bite to eat – or I could make you something – I mean, if you’re hungry.”

Joshua’s attention again returned to his glass, his fingertip rode the moistened edge, and to the tone he thought he heard, a sweet line of recorders shuddered an open-ended melody; a chorus of calmly reassuring voices joining them with the promise that Sheep May Safely Graze, when the Shepherd watches me. He tried to hold Dick’s eyes, but couldn’t as he nodded yes.

       

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Inside the club, the music continued to drive people to dance, while outside, vagrant lights meandered around the side lots, searching for a place of admittance. Here, these speed demons and road hogs of the day became subservient to the higher order of the night.

Josh drove his car, a small secondhand number, and as arranged, followed the red Toyota coupe Dick had jumped into. The man’s frame stuck out, both in size and demeanor. A minivan, Josh thought, would suit him better. Dick seemed more the family-man type.

Turn after turn Josh followed: onto 40 West to only get off again at the second exit, and then through the park, empty and lovely without the busybodies of the day. Finally coming to Union, and there, at the first tall building overlooking the park, Dick turned and pulled into a parking slot. Joshua parked next to him feeling self-conscious, and when they were standing side by side asked, “Is it all right that I parked here?”

Dick’s face lit up a little. “Don’t worry.” He was charmed by Josh’s seeming innocence.

How innocent, he hadn’t realize, nor did he know how nervous Joshua really was. They walked across the lot heading for the building. Dick was unaware this was the first time the young man at his side had ever gone home with anybody; didn’t know he’d only been to the warehouse disco once before, that evening ending with Josh alone and isolated within himself. On the first floor was a famous restaurant, their large plate glass windows covering three sides, and now Josh felt as if everyone in it were enjoying his discomfort, as well as their chili-infused kiwi nitrogen balls.

From the restaurant, Josh scanned up the height of this sturdy structure of 1920s affluence. His head tilted back to allow his eyes the full view, and in that position, he turned to the right and to Dick, asking, “You don’t happen to live on the second floor, do you?”

“Sixth floor. Why?”

“Just wondering . . . . ” was Josh’s only reply.

          

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The door opened, and in rushed Dick. Simultaneously with the room coming into light, he said, “Well, here we are.”

Joshua came through the white doorframe and into the light. The entry room was also the living room, so Josh went all the way in and closed the door behind him. The room was a spacious rectangle, about twice as long as wide. On the other narrow end, a pair of windows looked over the park’s treetops. Against the long wall to the right was a sofa with a large glass top coffee table before it. Three neat stacks of books served as decoration for this table: large format art book, ascending in strict order of size, smallest on top. Josh got the impression that Dick’s mind, and his way of thinking, was probably arranged in such a fashion too. He wondered what was on top of Dick’s internal stack. Otherwise, everything in the room was blah – beige upholstery, beige walls, neutral throw pillows, and an oatmeal rug over the hardwood floor. Even the 1920s character – the panel moldings, the picture railing, and the crown molding – had been coated in the same characterless semi-gloss.

Josh noticed that various pieces of tourist-trade art – like majolica plates – were carefully arranged here and there. To his immediate right was a hall, at the end of which stood the open door of the bathroom. Between him and where the hall started, a bookcase seemed singled out for special honors. Hands in his pockets, he bent at the hips and scanned the titles: the far left started with King Henry VI, Part One; in the middle, Much Ado About Nothing; and to the far right, King Henry the VIII. He stepped back, righted himself and saw that on the shelf below was a small bust of the author of the above.

Joshua turned to Dick, smiling. “And there he is now, the Old Man of Words himself.” He pointed to Shakespeare.

Dick smiled faintly as he crossed in front of Josh and into the hall. In a moment, a light switch went on from a room to the left of the bathroom. Dick’s voice called out friendly to him, “Make yourself at home.” And the door and light squeaked close.

Josh ventured towards the dark void opposite the couch. A six-foot-wide opening led to a room beyond. In this darkened space, floor to ceiling bookcases filled two walls; the narrow wall again with two windows faced the park. In front of the windows was a baby grand piano. Walking into the dim area, a glance to his left showed Josh a desk, clean and modern, stacked with papers and more books arrayed around a centerpiece typewriter of the manual variety. The door out of the library brought Josh to the kitchen. He found the light switch. This room was small, one counter separating the work area from a round table with four chairs in front of a single window.

“Want me to make you something?” Dick came from behind, startling Josh back to reality.

Joshua said, with a half-crooked smile, “You don’t have to feed me, you know.”

Dick insisted. “It’s no trouble at all.”

“I don’t want to be any bother.”

“Well, then”—Dick slapped Josh with a fatherly hand on the shoulder, which caused Josh to jump—“an omelet it is.” Dick tried to suppress a bad feeling. Why was this young man so needlessly ill at ease? “Why don’t you go relax in the living room – I’ll call you when it’s done.”

Josh shrugged. “Okay.”

He went back through the dark library, around the piano and into the pale-white living room. Josh was drawn to the window and the trees just beyond. On a small table, he picked up a framed photo of Dick and some light-haired, sunglass-wearing man in his early twenties. The spot was a brilliantly lit beach; the sand almost white in the intense sunlight. They leaned against a faded and peeling fishing boat dragged from its livelihood to loiter here as a tourist prop. Josh examined the young man in front of Dick. His legs were brown, all the more so in contrast with his white shorts. The man in the kitchen now, stood below the magical sun behind the youth. He seemed like a teenager on a Saturday night; his grin broad; his hand around the boy’s waist. Behind them rose the town white and cool, and Josh wondered what the young man looked like behind his glasses.

He set it down and instead picked up a formal picture of a girl about his age. She wasn’t pretty: big teeth; fleshy nose; but she wasn’t bad. He put it back and went to the kitchen.

“Can I help?”

“Nope, just putting on the finishing touches.”

“Because you know,” Josh informed him, “I love to cook.”

“Oh, yeah? What?”

“I cook Italian pretty well.”

“Well, you’ll have to cook for me sometime.”

Josh had wandered over to the wine rack. “I see you have some vintage Krug. It’s twenty-five years old!” For there on the bottom, dusty and looking untouched for a long time was the unmistakable label with a year printed on it. “You know,” he went on, “this is probably worth a lot of money – not too many around anymore.”

Dick hurried a plate to Josh at the table. “Eat it while it’s still hot.” And then as he made for the door. “I’ll never sell that. It was given to me by someone special, and will be opened on a special occasion.”

“Which?”

“I’ll know it when I come to it.” Dick blinked. “By the way, when were you born again?”

“Twenty years ago.”

“Don’t tell an old man that. Eat; eat; eat.” His hands flew. “I’m going to put on some music.”

Joshua was glad his host had left the room so he could eat by himself. He ate hurriedly; it was good, but he smugly thought he knew how to make it better.

He finished up and went into the living room. He sat on the couch, pushing pillows aside to be comfortable. Dick was at the stereo. Soon Air on the G String gently filled the room, and Dick sat down next to him.

“Who’s that?” He pointed to the seaside photo.

Dick’s head jerked back over his right shoulder. His eyes returned to Joshua masked. “That’s Michael, my former lover.”

“Where’d you meet him?”

“Actually, we met in London. I was there on sabbatical and he was ‘doing the Europe thing’ with a rail pass, and we met one night at a club, and found out we had attended the same Twelfth Night earlier that evening. Then we started discussing how the production was—”

“But that picture isn’t England, is it?”

Dick spoke in a calm tempo. “No. After that, we traveled around together, to Italy, and that’s in Greece, on the Aegean Sea.”

“Oh, that’s how you came to have so much Mediterranean bric-a-brac.” Josh scooted up to the edge of his seat and wrestled a large book from the base of its pyramid. He turned excited breaths as he held the book’s title towards Dick. “Pompeii! Did you go there?” Josh thumbed through it without really looking.

“Yeah.”

“And Herculaneum?”

“Yes.”

“How about – did you get to go to the House of the Marble Atrium?”

“Why, yes.” Dick was surprised by such a specific question. Inextricable notions of the ‘special’ bottle of Krug and an image of Michael and he roaming the garden of the house just mentioned met in the fore of his mind. ‘That’s right,’ he thought. ‘I was thinking of opening it when we got back from there.’ That day, the still of the afternoon, the isolation of the garden with its fountain and the pull of the house’s dining room with a wide terrace which once ran along the seafront, called him to bring his mind around to the accepting of his happiness; happiness with Michael. In his mind, it had already been permanent.

Josh sighed as he closed the book. “Someday I’ll get there.” He saw Dick’s faraway expression and suspected the subject. “So, where is Michael now?”

Dick snapped to. A little bit of him hated Joshua at that moment. “That’s a good question. He sent me a Christmas card from Florida last year, but I don’t know.”

“What happened?” Josh ventured to ask. “I mean, to you guys?”

Dick didn’t want to lose his buzz. His prospects for the evening were dissolving before his eyes. He tried to answer as plainly as he could. “I don’t know. Josh, when you get into a relationship, do me the favor of remembering this piece of advice: communicate. Don’t let things go on and fester in you without letting your partner know something’s wrong. With Michael, he just announced one day about a year ago that he couldn’t live with me anymore. By that afternoon, he was gone.”

“How long were you together?”

“Three years.”

Josh had watched his host explain, saw his eyes grow drawn and waste their muscle tone, but he had to know, “Did you love him?”

Dick instituted controlled thought, as if he were regulating his breathing. Into Joshua’s intense blue eyes, he laid out the truth of it. “Yes, more than anybody else; yes.”

“I’m sorry he treated you the way he did.”

Dick thought for a moment he was going to get angry, or cry. Instead, he focused on the nuts and bolts of the aftermath. “It’s taken me a long time to get over him. It was almost six months before I went out again.”

Josh was surprised. “But you still keep his picture out.”

Half-laughing, he told his visitor, “Josh, you are young. You may know a lot about a lot: music; cooking; champagne; but that database is no match for experience. That bottle you advise me to sell, for example, was given to me by my first – my first guy; the man who initiated me as a fellow Gay man. As far as Michael is concerned, one day soon, I hope you come to understand . . . love just doesn’t die.”

“And did he love you?”

“I think so. I have to think so, at least in the beginning, or else it would mean our whole time together was nothing but a lie.”

“Can I ask,” he said, pointing, “who is that girl?”

“That’s my daughter. You’re twenty?”

“That’s right.”

“So that makes her five years older than you.”

The music changed. The tone was dark.

“Can I ask you a rather personal question?”

Dick thought, ‘Nothing’s stopped you so far,’ but he said, “You can ask me anything, but don’t expect me to answer everything. But, you can ask.”

“Did you know, you know”— Josh jerked his head to the side like an inquisitive puppy—“before you got married?”

“That I was Gay?”

“Yes.”

“You have to understand, Josh, when I was your age there were absolutely no positive images of Gays. In fact, in school we were shown films on the ‘dangers of queers,’ how it meant madness, crime, and social decay. You can’t imagine what that sort of hate-based propaganda does to a psyche. Thank God, and thank the queens at Stonewall, that you didn’t have to grow up like that. So much has changed, so quickly. So – in answer to your question – I knew I had strong attractions to other males, but I thought I could suppress them. It was what was expected of every red-blooded, patriotic American f*gg*t.”

Josh thought of the two men tonight snuggled together in intimate isolation at the end of the bar. He should have spoken to them. He told Dick, “My uncle Clarence – my father’s younger brother – was forcibly institutionalized. Those were the day of ‘three easy signatures’ – that was all that was needed to send a grown man to the nut house for being queer – his mother, his father, and his brother, my dad – three easy, homophobic signatures. The bastard ‘doctors’ electro-shocked, pumped him with dope, and made him look at naked sluts till he vowed to love only women. But you know what, his partner is the one who picked him up from Arsenal Street; his partner’s the one who nursed him back, and even though they tried to break them up, in the most brutal of all ways imaginable, they got the last laugh by simply living a happy life together – three decades worth. So, in that light, can you answer me another question?”

Dick shrugged his shoulders, considering maybe putting his arms around Josh.

“Did you love her?”

“When I married her, yes, but think about it. I loved her as a woman that I could never be fully in love with. To me, she was sacred, to be protected and made content, like a sister or an aunt.”

“Does your ex-wife know you’re Gay now?”

“She knows.” Dick was now mad at the directness of the near-stranger’s inquiries. He wished he’d stop. They were grilling him much like the Fugue in d minor that was now playing the same notes over and over again and threatening to collapse the old world, but having no promise of hope for a new one.

“I have to tell you something.” Josh waited a moment, then sighed through his nose before being able to admit, “I’ve never been with a man before.” He watched Dick’s startled face flush from angry cheeks to ashen eyes. As he rethought what he had just said, an involuntary half-smile raised one side of his mouth. Josh couldn’t resist adding, “Nor woman neither.”

“Really?” was all that Dick could get out.

Joshua re-asked, suddenly feeling very lost-at-sea, “Why did you talk to me tonight?”

“I told you – because you’re so handsome, and always look so far away, lost in your own thoughts.”

Josh wondered where the ‘sweet’ part of the compliment had gone. He said, “Thinking leads to awkward lines of thoughts; questions. Is that the only reason you talked to me?”

Dick honestly considered it in the deepest part of his soul. Why indeed? Was it to bed him? Was it more – was there something in Josh that was totally like Michael, not in appearance, not in attitude or confidence, but in something intangible and something related to the soul he was now searching? “No, like I said, you look different; you’ve got a one in a million glow, not to be missed. I don’t know how else to express it, but different.”

Every part of Josh’s brain longed for itself to shut down, and for Dick’s hand to simply take hold of him. He was so tired in his mind, and needed rest in the physicality of his body. But Dick did not take his hand, and this moment so long waited for seemed to stretch out of reach into limbo, forever before his grasp. He turned to Dick, his voice a hushed pleading, “Do you think I’m handsome?”

Dick didn’t answer. His old-world eyes grew narrow and direct. “If you want to touch me, why don’t you go ahead?” As he said it, his own heart started pounding in anticipation.

But Josh was paralyzed. In all the seemingly endless years of waiting for this moment to come, he never once pictured that he himself would have to take the lead.

“Because,” explained Dick, “I’m not into seducing. If you want to touch me, I’d like you to very much; but it’s up to you.”

Josh felt his stomach ache in that particular way which convinced all the ancients that it, and not the heart, was the seat of the soul. He thought that he was a fool to not heed Gary’s advice and wait; wait for someone with whom he could kindle mutual and deep feelings. He didn’t know what Dick was feeling at all. Joshua felt like going home. In fact, he even managed to stand up, but excused it by going to the bathroom. There he washed his face – the coolness more refreshing than the water. Raising his head, he looked at it in the mirror. He hated it. The weak lines, the eruptive pores, the un-sunned color of it; hated it as something fumbling and undesirable. A horse whisper came out, “If you want to live . . . . ” An aching chuckle cut off the end.

He sank back down on the couch and put his hand on Dick’s thigh; Dick put his hand around the nape of Josh’s neck and softly massaged it. When the time was right, Dick turned Joshua’s head and kissed the waiting boy. Josh rose, walked to where the hall entered the living room and held out his hand.

Dick took it and allowed the younger man to lead him to the bedroom.

        

˚˚˚˚˚

 

When Josh got to this room, he paused in wonder. Though plain, in his eyes, Dick’s bedroom was the most beautiful room imaginable. The outside corner walls were windows; all windows, side-by-side, like the bridge of a ship over a sea of parkland. The blinds were up, and every open sash allowed the late summer breeze to float the light curtains in a rhythmic ballet, while beyond them, the call of the crickets and cicadas revealed just how near to nature they really were. To Josh, it was like he was about to begin a magic carpet ride; the bed, the vehicle; his senses still grappling with scents of gingerbread and molasses to shut his brain down.

Standing by the side of this transport device, their lovemaking proceeded. Dick took Josh’s clothes off, and Josh took Dick’s cock in his mouth, and the older man loved it. Reciprocation followed, and then Dick stuck a finger up the boy’s ass and jacked him off. But Josh didn’t come, so Dick pressed their two organs together and came with loud and excruciating pants in Josh’s ear. Josh felt his abdomen drenched in hot semen as Dick’s member throbbed again and again, tightly pressed between them.

During the height of it, the skies opened up and a thunderstorm poured a breathtaking rain on them, washing all slates clean. Soon Dick fell asleep, and Josh lay in his arms listening to the rain, thinking quiet, tremendous thoughts. To the roll of thunder he felt himself falling, as if in a dream, and there seemed to be no bottom to where he was landing; no soft spot, no waking point. To the relentless metal-smell of the straight-falling shower, a softly glowing hum of a tone, like recorders, introduced over and over in his mind a chorus of unsure voices wanting desperately to believe that Sheep May Safely Graze, when the Shepherd watches over me.

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

At daylight, Dick awoke and pulled Josh closer to him. His breath was sour as Josh heard him ask, “You didn’t come last night, is that all right?”

Josh paused and considered it, so long in fact, Dick began snoozing again. To his sleeping frame Josh suggested, “I suppose all things in their rightful time and place.”

In the morning, Dick made breakfast. As he forked his ham he debated if he should state his doubts; he did. “You know, the way you went down on me last night”—a leering grin lifted his mouth on one side—“I don’t think you’re as virginal as you pretended – but, I don’t mind – it was great.”

Josh couldn’t eat any more. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to be with any man who returned some affection, some respect, and maybe a prospect of love. Yeah, I went down on your cock like one who wanted it for a lifetime. Believe me if you want, or don’t want – you know the truth.”

To the depth of sorrow that Dick saw on Josh’s face he realized this young man was no substitute for Michael; and yet, he regretted his doubts. “You know, I remember my first time. I guess we all do. Years later, you’ll remember me, and I want your thoughts to be happy ones. What can I do to make sure they are?”

Josh wanted to go. How could he know what he wanted? He thought some dry choking tears were about to erupt. “No,” he said, “you’ve played your part well. Isn’t it the Old Man of Words who says we are all but actors upon the stage, and every man must play many parts in his time.”

Dick was hurt. So, he decided in a wicked moment to hurt back. “You know, sometimes I have these flashes some would call psychic insights. They’re usually about people; where they’re going in the future, what they’ll accomplish. Funny though, with you, I get nothing.”

An image of Joshua’s old man telling him he’d never amount to anything fought its way forward. If Dick had wanted to hurt him, there was no more a profound way he could have done it.

  

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

At the front door, Dick took Josh by the arm and said softly, “I don’t think you and I can be lovers.”

Josh pulled away slightly. “Of course,” he said. Then after an exchange of numbers, Joshua left.

Alone in the silence, Dick, wearing his bathrobe and standing where Josh had left him, began to have disjointed thoughts. Images of Michael’s smile overlaid with the far-away sadness of the boy just gone; the sound of Michael’s confident laugh with the overly distrusting lilt of Josh’s voice. He saw in his mind’s eye the dusty bottle in his kitchen. ‘Maybe. Maybe I should have opened it for him. Maybe, this was the special occasion.’

Dick turned his head, and made for the bookcase. He searched the titles with his finger, following a strange impulse; maybe he did have an insight after all. He removed Troilus and Cressida and fumbled through the pages searching for something. Dick stopped at the fifth scene of the fourth act, then scanned paragraph by paragraph until he found Ulysses saying:

 

“My prophecy is but half his journey yet;

For yonder walls, that pertly front your town –

Yond towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds –

Must kiss their own feet,” and “so to him we leave it.”

 

                    

~      

 

 

 

 

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