Becoming Real - 7. VII. Becoming Real

VII. Becoming Real

 

I.

Ever Upward

 

Their first time together was quite a dramatic affair.

While somewhere, through the city streets, Josh’s mother was driving to pick them up from Billy’s grimy apartment building, the two boys found one another. The next day was Thanksgiving, and Billy, after a moment’s consideration of his own prolonged family strain, had accepted Joshua’s holiday offer to spend the long weekend at his house.

Billy’s building had been a hotel, but even early in its course, the economic realities of its particular site had forced its remodeling. From then on, the grand Excelsior Fairgrounds Hotel became the humdrum Excelsior Residential Apartments. It had to, because the great exhibition for which it was built was over, and with the fading of that summer, the crowds wandered home. The consequences of the switch were grand public spaces for a non-existent public, and small rooms – the four hundred square foot standard of 1903 – made even smaller by the installation of the necessary kitchen and bathroom. These added functions were hidden behind a new wall, subdividing the neat cube of the hotel room into an apartment of moody rectangles, darkening a formerly pleasant space.

The lobby had high ceilings; the plaster – pristine white – maintained just the same freshness that had greeted fairgoers. From twenty feet in the air, cherubim pulled flower garlands in a kind of naked and innocent tug-of-war. They were in three-quarter relief, and heads and hair, lips and teeth, toes and toenail, vied with rose and poppies to cop the most invigorated pose. The gaiety ran through the scene as if the garland their little angelic hands clasped conveyed it like electricity. Standing below, the unpainted revelry was intact, and one could still see the hurriedness with which they all had been completed; the subtle trowel lines, little expressive sweeps in the hair could still suggest to the eyes of the viewer the mindset of the workmen in stucco: the crowds are coming.

That they retained their virgin candor was fortunate, but how they escaped molestation was pure luck. Not that generation after generation of managers christening a new era didn’t cast their eyes ever upwards and vow a ‘redo’ of the place from top to bottom, but money – or rather, the lack of it – saved them. For no painter ever consulted said he could paint them for a ‘reasonable’ price. “The scaffold alone”—generation after generation of painters explained—“would cost you a pretty penny.” So, the ‘re-dos’ excluded their heavenly frolics.

At least the lobby remained a lobby. The other grand spaces of the hotel were severed from their functions. The great dining room, where the giddy sightseers gathered for pre-fair breakfast, was partitioned into a dozen offices. A suspended ceiling installed in the 1940s hid the boarded-up stained glass skylight, and no one remembered what jeweled delight still reigned above their heads.

The ballroom, conforming to local belle époque taste of the time, was prominently placed on the top floor. In fact, it occupied the entire western wing of the hotel, the side overlooking Forest Park and the many palaces of the Fair that glinted with attached lights all through the night. On Sunday afternoons, the elite crowds tea danced the summer of 1904 into happy oblivion, and the ballroom soon became famous for its acoustics and the unexplainable pleasantness of its décor. Soon all the influential were trooping in to mingle with hoi-polloi yokels in a festive exchange of culture and dancing. So famous was it, that when the function of the hotel changed, the ballroom stayed a ballroom. It was rented by a Mr. Steuben for his School of Elocution, Manners & Grace through Dancing. For thirty years he admitted young lady bumpkins and graduated young lady debutants, all knowing exactly how to hold a dance card, and their fan, before their seventeenth birthday. For they had to be ready for their formal coming out into high society at the Veiled Prophet Ball in December. When Mr. Steuben died, the mid-1930s saw a dance hall craze, and the elocution school, with a redo, became one of the hippest places to swing in town. For the duration of World War 2, it was discreetly closed down, like all its competition, but after VJ Day, it was in full swing again, until the 1960s when even one last renovation couldn’t draw its intended users into this part of the city, which was falling quickly into disrepute. Since then, and an occasional private function, it had been kept locked up, not even suitable as a storeroom because of the seven flights of stairs. Neglect left it ever the ballroom from which it seemed the band had only just stepped away.

            

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The stair landing was dark and dusty. A window somewhere let a creaky shaft of light hit the top of Josh’s shoe as he kicked a mop. Its wooden pole crashed to the floor with a loud bang. Billy turned and gave Josh an angry hush-finger. Josh shrugged, and lifted the mop back into place. Billy, a few steps farther up, turned his gesture for silence into a coaxing wave.

The great double doors to the ballroom were padlocked, but Billy had brought his screwdriver, and like many times before, he deftly removed the screws holding one of the lock’s plates on to the door.

The great double doors to the ballroom were padlocked, but Billy had brought his screwdriver, and like many times before, he deftly removed the screws holding one of the lock’s plates on to the door.

From over his shoulder, Josh watched as the fasteners twisted themselves out of the wood and fell into Billy’s cupped hand. Finished with his task, Billy positioned himself squarely between the doors and Joshua, and flashed a grin that reminded Josh of a poorly behaved Protestant boy waiting for church to be over. Josh asked peevishly, “Aren’t we going in?”

Billy’s countenance flickered slyly, the same index finger came up to his lips to command silence.

Josh didn’t breathe a sound. The finger before him was stiffened and joined by the others as they reached out for Joshua. Soon he felt them cup the back of his neck right where it met his skull.

“Close your eyes,” Billy whispered. “And don’t open them till I say.”

Josh did as he was told, and soon felt the warmth from Billy’s other hand on his lower back guiding him forward. Josh walked over dusty sounding wooden floors. After several paces, he wondered just how big this room could be.

Billy had discovered this place soon after he moved into the building. It was a location he was sure nobody else would come to, and he often popped up here to write, away from the noisy third floor and his cloistered apartment.

“You can open your eyes now.” The tone of voice Joshua heard crooned directly into his ear was that which people in cathedrals tended to use. Josh, not knowing what to expect, opened them up. He saw himself. Stepping back, he realized the whole wall was comprised of mirrored panels bolted down with glass-daisy screws. He glanced around: at the farthest narrow end, a stage was raised about two and a half feet above the rest of the floor, on it, a few dusty chairs still sat where the last of the music makers had scooted them. From the front edge of the stage to the one hundred feet away to where Josh was standing, a dancefloor of wide planks reminded him of a basketball court. The color of this floor was not a permanent hue, but what a floor resembles after a dozen varnishing, one worn away after another, the dancers’ feet insisting on seeing the wood beneath.

The long eastern wall was blank, and was the one slathered in mirrors. The western and southern ends were marched along with tall French windows, while the narrow spaces between them were upholstered in three-foot squares of red vinyl. Turned forty-five degrees, point-to-point, they were quilted together at the seams with big white stitching. With padding underneath, the center of every square was tufted with a big brass button, sucking the center back towards the wall, and producing an effect not unlike a wavy wall of throw pillows that had been crucified together.

Above the tall windows, which retained all of their Edwardian grace, the ceiling of the great room was like an inside out wedding cake with each level and tier frosted in sheets of mirror. Outside, the sun was retreating to regions beyond the west and the sky flamed orange and pink. The ballroom did too, even more so for the air took the light from the windows and the mirrors infused it, after intensifying it, back into the air. Though November, the weather continued to be warm and unpleasant heat stifled the room a bit.

Billy moved to the center of the dancefloor, throwing his arms wide. Joshua followed him. “Here it is,” Billy exclaimed. “The place nobody knows about. The place I’ve never taken a soul to before. What do you think?” His hands came down with a plop, his gaze expecting affirmation of the find’s greatness from josh.

Josh however, did not need goading. “It’s great, man.” He shook his head. “I would have loved this place as a kid. It’s the kind of playground I always dreamt of having. Like I remember”—he stepped up to Billy’s side, his smile flashing—“when we first moved into our old house, I was two then, I took one look at the big staircase in the front hall and told my mom, ‘Great, now I can play castle!’ I had images of me in cape and costume running up and down, sword in hand, chasing all the imaginary hoods away.”

Billy scanned his face as Josh told his story.

Josh chuckled. “I know what you’re thinking, and yes – I was a weird child.”

“That’s not what I was thinking at all,” Billy insisted.

“What then?”

“I was thinking, what a great imagination you had. I mean, still have.”

Joshua barely recognized the depth of the expression Billy rained down on him at that moment. Instead, his attention was drawn to the greater details of the space. He rushed towards a window, his back flying away from his back in the mirror. As he sped away from Billy, he called back, “We can open the windows, right?”

“I think so,” Billy agreed, going over to check it out for himself.

Soon the two young men had thrown all the air into action. Long slender curtains that hadn’t moved in years, first stiffly bobbed on the currents like over-starched shorts on a clothesline, but quickly the stiffness shattered, and they became more like kids at play, flapping noisily about the room.

“This feels great!” Josh said, excitedly running to the center of the floor. The boys had magically restored the space to wide-open life again. Billy ran out to join him. The pair threw open their arms and began to circle each other, fingertips just barely touching in the center of their own personal radius. Josh laughed. “Excelsior – you know what that means, right?”

“Ever upward!” called back Billy.

“Whitman’s got a poem called that; something like:

 

“Who thinks the amplest thoughts?

Who has made hymns fit for the earth?

I have, for I am mad with ecstasy,

And I make joyous hymns of all things.”

 

The two collapsed to their knees facing and panting towards one another. Their minds still spun in unity, admiring each wall in the netherworld light of the day’s finish; the moving air of the late afternoon pushing past them on all sides.

“When I was a kid,” Josh said in spherical whispers, “all I ever wanted to play were games nobody had even thought up before. Like ‘birdie,’ where during recess, I’d pretend to be a bird and fly from the nest to get food for the hungry little ones. I used to play that with Annette. We also played ‘ice rink,’ because behind our school’s playground was a vegetable patch.” He held out his fingers and showed a rectangle in the air. “Because it was easy to see where the dirt of the field started and the grass of the play area ended – that was our rink. All lunch break we’d shuffle in the dirt, but we both knew we were really gliding over ice with our skates. I think it was after a couple of times of that game that Annette’s mom asked her teacher to try and keep her away from me.”

Billy asked in congenial tones, “Who was Annette?”

“You see, she was in the second grade when I was in the first, and she . . . . ” Joshua hesitated a long moment. He raised his head to see Billy’s encouraging warmth shine forth.

“Come on; tell me.”

“She was the first girl I ever kissed.”

“Why’d you kiss her?”

“‘Cause I loved her,” Josh explained matter-of-factly.

“You did?”

“As much and as purely as any six-year-old can. My mom kissed me all the time, in fact, my dad kissed me once a day after he helped me dress in the morning; they loved me, and I loved Annette; and I kissed her. I thought, this is the way you show somebody you love them, so one day in the playground, right by the shiny slide, I grabbed her and planted a big one right on her kisser. She blinked large eyes at me, saying, ‘Why’d you do that?’ ‘Cause I love you,’ I said. ‘Then oh, I love you too,’ and she kissed me back. For us, it was that simple, but our parents didn’t take it so calmly. My mom, the very inspirator of the act, scolded me to never do it again, while my dad only chuckled and proclaimed ‘That’s my boy!’ And for a year after that, he’d greet me every evening with ‘So, what’d you learn today, son? Kiss any new girls?’” Josh shook his head. “You know, it was all very confusing. All I was doing was showing my affection for another, and outside forces were turning it into something unseemly. My mother telling me to hide it, telling me it was wrong, instilling shame, and my father making it into a joke, like a voyeur peeping at other people’s emotions.” Josh shut up, feeling he’d been babbling.

“What happened to her?”

“The summer between my first and second grades, her family moved to Arizona – no goodbyes, no have a nice life, no write to me, or we’ll always be friends – just that wave from the last day of school as the bus whisked her away. One last ‘I love you,’ and she was gone.”

Billy watched Joshua end his note of remembrance, getting perhaps more out of the story than Josh was aware. Of how the reaction to the kiss is like society’s reaction to his queerness, but now he wondered if he really cared if this young man was going to be able to return Billy’s love, for he was sure he loved Josh. The night they met, alone at a vista point before a graveyard, Billy had had to separate himself from Josh. As he hung on to the cemetery gate, this resurfacing of the hope for love staggered him again, as it did every rare time it resurfaced. The sweet, sad face before him then had known many of his own personal pains, and with that knowledge, some kind of hope grew from that minute on; some faded and half-worn-out notion that perfect matches are possible. A concept that some people looking for it will be able to discover what love truly means by loving a specific individual. Yet, he held back. Held his heart in check in case belief fooled him again, for that dream was nearly threadbare, and he couldn’t stand to see it torn to shreds.

“Sorry, was I rambling?”

“Let’s play birdie.” Billy was surprised to hear himself say it too.

“What?”

“Well, I would start, but it’s your game and I don’t know how, so let’s go. We have plenty of room here!” He stood and swept his hands over the expanse. “What do we do first?”

Josh rose, grinning, warming to the idea, not least because Billy’s face was electric in its gaiety. No part of him wanted to resist, while several parts fought for him to come out and say he was in love. He inspected the room for a moment. “We need a nest.” His eyebrows raised on a corner piled with seat cushions. “We have to start by getting a home for the chicks, then we run out – I mean, fly out – and collect one piece of food at a time, putting it between our beaks, and flying back. The winner is the one who brings the most food before recess ends.”

“Let’s put the nest over there.” Billy pointed to the corner Josh had already spied.

“Okay.” Josh grabbed Billy’s wrist and ran over to the nest. “Sit down,” he said, sitting and pulling Billy with him. “When you’re in the nest, keep your wings folded like this.” He put his right hand into his right armpit, then left to the left, flapping his newly folded wings in demonstration. Billy did the same. “Ready to start?”

“Ready!” Billy confirmed.

The boys leaped to their feet, Josh extending his arms out full to indicate flight and Billy followed the lead. Now, the point of the game was to find and bring back ‘food,’ and that was a bit complicated by the sparsity of the environment.

Joshua flew up on the stage and grabbed a sheet music clip with his teeth, one that was hanging loose off a music stand. His eyes sparkled with delight and roamed around for what Billy was up to. He found him checking the backstage area. He hurried over to the nest and dropped his find.

‘Where to next?’ Josh wondered, and shot off to where Billy had been. He passed him, and in Billy’s mouth was an upside down martini glass, his teeth gripping the glass’ foot. They ran past each other at arms’ length.

Object after object appeared in the nest: three tablecloths, half-a-dozen silver-plated pearl onion forks, aperitif glasses for aperitifs unremembered even sixty years ago, napkins of linen and cotton with the varying names this ballroom had been referred by, and when they got around to counting, they even found three dozen dainty footprints made by Mr. Steuben for his pupils to waltz into.

All the items were sorted and the nest cleared. Neither cared who won as they stood panting and glowing in a light sweat. Facing each other, with hands locked on knees in a stooped position for air intake, the darkening room glinted the sun about to take its leave for the night.

“Wow, that was fun,” Josh said as he plopped himself into the cushioned nest. Billy eased himself down by Josh’s side while the fulsome curtains blew into the room, trying to fan the boys at play’s end.

Billy’s hand brushed against Josh. Joshua gazed at it a moment next to his, then up into Billy’s hazel eyes. He wanted to see there what was in his own heart, and he did, though both were too scared to voice it, lest it be too weak to survive in the open air. Josh picked up Billy’s hand, and the moment was not like before; each knew no more than the other had seen it too, seen that the other loved him. Their palms lifted to their chests, fingers intertwined, and Billy’s other hand went to the top of Joshua’s thigh. The soft touch of the denim could not deceive what potential softness of skin it covered.

The young men kissed, and passion followed without break. Shirts could not be taken off fast enough, chest and abdomen met counterpoint, arms enwrapped arms, exploring muscles, the dimensions of biceps, the hollows of armpits, the curves of chests, the alertness of nipples. Soon hands found ways between jeans and flesh and sank below waistbands, first to feel the hardness of backs, then lower to the more giving flesh of backsides. Soon came off the shoes in great kicking motions, followed by methodical and slow extractions of the socks by eager lovers. Belts were loosened, pants unclasped, and again, slow and longing hands pulled down the denim from the belovèd’s legs. A brief reaffirming by kissing, and Josh slid in between Billy’s legs to remove the last bindings.

A tender notion pervaded Josh’s senses, for the scent of Billy was something like a musky rose, and it too was inviting and as mystical as any union ever promised. As he kneeled there, with Billy stretched out before him, the other young man sat up, kissed his chest and drew down Josh’s own last scrap of hindering clothes. The shorts freed, the kissing progressed to a higher order, with both toppling into the nest to explore, and feel, and be, with each other.

Josh had never climaxed with another person. He had had a few sexual experiences, and relished the pleasure he could give his partner, but he’d never felt safe enough with them to allow himself to come. But, as Billy’s lips explored over and over the outlines of his mouth, and the young man’s ardent and gentle touch on his cock – over and over again – handled him in loving repetition, he thought he was about to die. He grabbed Billy and tried to match his motion, touch for touch. Soon he felt Billy’s breaths come sharper and more erratic on his cheek, on his nose, on his mouth pressed tightly against Joshua’s, and his mind sort of closed its eyes. A density in the back of his head seemed to glide like mercury down his spine and linger in the small of his back, right where Billy’s free hand gripped him. A flash of Gary’s face – Gary, a mentor he met his first time out – told him to wait until he had sex with someone he really cared for, and Joshua in some ways had done that by not climaxing with anyone before.

Josh opened his eyes. He pushed Billy away just far enough to see his own emotions reflected there. A pained and almost disbelieving rhythm spread over the visage as reciprocal hands began to slow down and intensify. All those other times, Joshua considered, those times he had brought himself to climax, the good, the bad, the indifferent; all those endless string of images, fantasies of real or imagined people – none of the total combined impact of those orgasms could touch a ten-foot pole of comparison climaxing with open eyes on Billy’s pained smile. Like a rock to a volcano, one barely represents the power of the other. And as Joshua finally let go, he felt his own hand become blessed by Billy’s love, and with it, another piece of him fell into place.

In the moments after, Billy’s bicep made a pillow for Joshua, who lay with his cheek against Billy’s side. Throwing his arm over Billy’s chest, he felt he was in perfect repose. “Oh, shit!” He suddenly noticed his watch and the time it said. “My mom’s gonna be here any minute. We’ve got to get ready.” He jumped up, scrambling around for his shorts; Billy as before, followed his actions.

Their jeans slipped on, Billy said hurriedly, “We’ve got to close the windows.”

They went to opposite corners, and still bare of foot and chest, they fought the rejuvenated drapes one by one, closing the line of windows. They met in the center, turning aside a single curtain in its wild motions to find the other standing there, blue-gray and unearthly beautiful in the deepening golden hour before twilight. Slowly they joined; hands first, left then right, fingers laced through familiar yet different counterparts. They drew together, the hug of bare chests making a sensual sound; hands freed, wrapped around shoulders. Together they stepped in a slow dance beat, swaying from side to side, bare foot occasionally brushing bare foot. Joshua couldn’t stand it anymore. Though – through his own pounding heartbeat – he couldn’t be sure Billy heard what he hadn’t told anyone since Annette. “I love you” seemed to escape his lips into the side of Billy’s strong neck.

Billy’s hand came down, slapping Josh hard on the butt. “Let’s wrap this up. Your mom’s probably waiting already.” He broke the embrace and pushed him back a little with his shoulder. Joshua watched him close the last window and jog off for his shirt. “Come on; come on.” He urged Josh by tossing the young man’s clothes to him.

Josh slipped the polo shirt over his head, and paused before moving it down. He watched Billy sitting on the floor pulling on his socks. He realized he’d never made love before today; sex, yes, but not with someone he wanted to love him back. He tugged his shirt down and started tucking it, wondering if he had been saved or damned by the low tone of his confession.

 

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In a typical suburban house, the corridor plays the most important function in imposing and maintaining the concept of togetherness. It is here that one family member is most likely to run into another family member when one is needed: this is where mother and sister run out, backs unzipped, seeking a helping hand.

It was here Joshua had bumped into his mother and quickly asked if he could have a friend stay over Thanksgiving weekend. She agreed, hurrying off into the bathroom. At that time, just for a moment, Josh watch her fleeting figure, wanting to tell her he was Gay. The idea scared him, not the saying of it, that held its own fear, but he was amazed and frightened that the notion had come to him so casually and sincerely. Standing in the corridor, he realized why; another piece of himself had congealed. He thought of Billy, knowing he was the cause. Some greater piece of him wanted to live out in the bright light of the truth, beyond the price of admittance to the self through denial of other kinds of love. At that moment he thought of his mother not as the person he had hated for years, only because he hated himself, silent with his ‘vile secret,’ but, as he now began to love himself through Billy, he saw her in a new light of love too.

The Wednesday evening Billy and Joshua had made love for the first time, seven stories up in a gloriously dilapidated ballroom, she was waiting down below in the car. The introductions were brief, gear got stowed in the trunk, Josh in the front seat, Billy in the back, and the car started rolling. This separation was hard for the young men; they wanted to hold hands.

Wednesday’s dinner was pleasant. Josh’s father was on his best behavior, cordially asking what Billy did, if he liked it, if he had a girlfriend. Billy joked, “No, I have so many.” Josh’s dad laughed, glancing over to his son. Josh saw on the man’s face a wish that his son was more like Billy. He understood it, it was part of his own wishes for himself, but he hated his father for thinking it. It was none of his old man’s business, and wasn’t he good enough as he was? Some parents would be more than proud to have raised him.

Billy set his fork down and dabbed his mouth with a napkin point. “Josh tells me he remembers your brother well.”

There was an instant stiffness in the room. Josh’s dad leaned forward with open arms and glowered at Billy. “Did he now?”

“Yes, how much he liked visiting with him, and his . . . his—”

Billy was cut off by Josh’s father striking the table. The sound of the glassware jumping rode like a wave from one end of it to the other. “We don’t talk about my brother Clarence lightly in this house.” Then his mood changed sadly as he sat back in his chair. “My kid brother. He deserved a better lot in life.”

Billy apologized. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean – to suggest – anything.”

“Excuse me.” And Joshua’s father rose from the table. The three remaining watched him walk out to the garage, the door closing hard behind him.

“I’m sorry,” Joshua’s mother said. “You just . . . don’t know how he feels. Don’t know how much he loved his brother and felt sorry Clarence had to go through all that he did. Now, who wants dessert?”

 

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In Josh’s room, the sleeping bag was spread on the floor, and the bed was turned down for the night. Between the bed and the wall with two large windows, Joshua’s stereo and speakers sat on a low chest.

In the corridor, the ‘good nights’ were said. Josh’s dad apparently had his feeling of warmth for Billy restored, as he wished him a fond ‘sleep tight.’

The door to their room slowly closed. Joshua turned the latch so it wouldn’t make a sound. He stepped around Billy, who stood in the center of the clear space like he was waiting in line for something, and went to the windows. He drew the blinds and then turned to Billy, spreading his arm out as invitation while he fell on the bed. Billy slowly climbed on top of him, and they started kissing. Billy’s sleeping bag was lonely that night, but it was the only one.

Again, shoes were kicked off, and each took his time in undressing the other: socks, jeans, shirts and all. Now the kissing wandered over the far plains of shoulders and tummies and down below too, and reciprocal excitement grew. Josh turned Billy over, having him stretch out on his stomach, and forced the young man’s arms over Billy’s head. He kissed the back of his neck, and roved with baited breath down the boy’s back, all the time relishing the stifled cries of delight his touch raised from Billy. Half-turning, Billy forced Josh down and worked on his front in loving abandon, then after a while, a wistful look accompanied by a longing whisper arose. “You have a condom?”

Joshua nodded, and reached over to between the speakers and the stereo. He pulled out a short sting of packaged and bright colored Trojans. He would love to feel Billy, but now he realized Billy wanted him to experience what Joshua had not.

With Billy’s guidance, the lovemaking proceeded in earnest. As Joshua felt the rhythm increase, the comfort level of what he was doing did too, and the now-familiar scent of the boy grew like soft poppies in his brain. Billy made it clear that he was exactly where he wanted to be, and with whom. By magic degrees, Josh began to understand what love felt like, transferring sensations from Billy to him, and from him to Billy. They were linked; his eyes locked on to Billy’s rolling and pleasure-wrought face. He could feel Billy’s love in an utterly tangible, awe-inspiring way. As it progressed, Billy’s free hand grabbed on and encouraged him to go farther, guiding him now with a strong touch on the small of Josh’s back. All his senses merged atop the moaning boy beneath him, and reemerged out through his pounding heartbeat. Sweat beaded his brow: he felt Billy’s sensual touch; tasted his sensual lips; felt giddy with Billy’s hand on his back. He tried to focus as best they could, but Josh felt Billy all around him, diffused within him, and right there, as a gripping embrace, in the most intimate way they could be joined together.

Billy’s breaths became labored, working himself to a climax with Joshua in position, and then he orgasmed with opened eyes locked on Josh.

Joshua felt the rhythmic contractions of the one he loved through every fiber of his being. The freshness of the thrill conveyed itself through the spot where the two were joined, and out to the tip of every finger, and toe, and hair follicle. Suddenly he couldn’t support himself on his hands anymore, and as he collapsed, he simultaneously felt his climax and the tender arms of Billy enfold him in a loving embrace. They kissed as Josh still pulsed time after time, and while they were still joined – one to the other – another piece of Joshua fell into place.

 

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Josh and Billy lay in bed whispering secret and sleepy words to one another until the early hours of the morning.

“What were you like as a child?” Billy asked.

The other said drowsily, “Lonely.”

Billy lay on his side. His left arm served as pillow for Josh’s head, while his right hand occasionally scooted Joshua’s torso closer to his. He kept this hand draped on the boy’s waist, and secretly swooned when Josh lifted his leg on top of Billy’s. He felt the curly hair on Josh’s leg mingle with his own, and felt enwrapped, somehow secure in the pressured force of Josh’s weight on him. After a long pause, Billy went on, “What kind of lonely?”

“Lonely because I didn’t have any friends, and I felt like there was nobody on Earth like me. When did you know you were Gay? Not when did you admit it to yourself, but when you first had, you know, those feelings?”

Billy slightly shifted in the linen covers. He rolled on to his back away from Josh. “I don’t want to tell you that.”

Josh was startled out of his stupor. He pulled himself a little tighter into Billy’s frame, hoping the motion would offer a bit of reinforcement – as if an inch more could show Billy he loved him. “What happened?”

“What about you,” Billy replied without expression, sidestepping Josh’s question.

Josh waited a moment, weighing whether or not Billy really wanted to hear it. He started tentatively. “I . . . I remember Mr. Griffin, our seventh grade teacher, kept his subscription to Sports Illustrated in our classroom—”

Billy was fighting a strong urge to laugh. How ridiculous. He pictured a junior-high kid thumbing through the annual football review, a little tubby growing in his pants. Something was turning mean and angry in Billy. ‘Too soon,’ he thought. ‘It’s all too soon.’ He shifted again in the covers, feeling Josh’s weight was getting to be oppressive.

“—And while all the other boys went into moody silences about girls, I’d go through the pages not knowing why, not knowing what it was I saw there, or even what I wanted to see.” Joshua’s voice became choked. “There was this one fluff piece on a handsome Olympian living it up in retirement. They had pictures of him at home, and on the golf course, and one on his sailboat. He was in the bow of the boat, shirtless, just in his trunks, and he had a foot up on the bulwarks and both hands on ropes leaning forward. I never saw a smile like that one. It made me want to go to him. Why, I don’t know. It made me feel that with him, somehow things would be all right.”

Billy stopped holding Josh. His hands went up behind his head, and his mouth stiffened into a tight slit.

“I thought I’d die from the confusion. I was a boy. I wasn’t supposed to like other boys like that. So I had to shut my thinking down. I snatched Mr. Griffin’s magazine, article, smile and all. I cut out that picture, admiring the image of the perfect man. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I kept it zipped up in a little camera case I had, taking it out at night to look at him. He wasn’t real to me. I forced myself to believe that what I felt for him wasn’t real either. I looked at him with urgings as ill-defined as the concept a kid has of why adults can lie but kids can’t. The more I told myself that him and my feelings weren’t real, the less real I became too. But, just like my desires, he was something I sometimes took out and examined; but we weren’t real.” Josh was quiet for a moment. Billy said nothing in response to his tale. He tried once again. “Won’t you tell me about your first inkling?”

“I don’t want to think about it.” Billy’s voice was hard, impenetrable. “Some things are better left unsaid.” He was fighting the urge to get up, get dressed, and call a cab.

Josh pushed it too far. “Why won’t you tell me?”

Billy shifted away from Josh. He inhaled deeply, and his words came out in breathy slowness. “When I was twelve”—his voice sounded like a person giving testimony in a trial; detached—“I was sleeping downstairs with my brother and his friends. They had come over for a ‘camp out’ and let me join in, but the rain forced us inside. When we went to sleep, me and John – one of my brother’s friends – had to share a bed. He was sixteen at the time, and I, I asked him to hold me, and he did. I wanted to feel him, and I did, and he guided himself within me, and I wished he’d hold me every night. Just like that, using me.” He threw the covers off of him in anger, pushing Josh away as he went. “You don’t know pain. You don’t talk to me about ‘confusion!’”

Josh propped himself up on his hands. His startled eyes sought out the figure of Billy in the dark room. In the faint light of the streetlight sliced by the blinds, Billy glowed red.

“This is going too fast; going too fast.” Billy paced back and forth, becoming insistent, desperate and sad; his demeanor seemed more and more like a caged animal seeking a way to escape.

Josh stepped out of bed on the side by the door. His feet sounded like running water on the nylon sleeping bag.

“This is going too fast . . . . ”

“Billy,” Josh whispered, “keep your voice down – you’ll wake up my folks.” He stepped over to Billy’s side; he wanted to comfort him in his restless movements, the ones he could see, and those he could not. “That doesn’t matter. None of the past matters anymore – not to me.” He said desperately, “Not to me, don’t you see . . . ?” He reached out to stop Billy by the shoulder. Billy stepped around his reach. Joshua said with stronger conviction, “It doesn’t matter, because . . . because, I love you.”

Billy stopped moving.

In the dark, Josh could just make out Billy’s eyes darting over his face, his mouth slightly open. Joshua fell into a hug on Billy’s shoulders. Suddenly, violently, Billy shoved him away. Josh stumbled back in shock and disbelief, but a turn of Billy’s head showed him how hard the other had become.

Billy announced coldly, “I don’t want to hear it.”

Josh was destroyed. Had all the years of not loving himself, of belief that he could never receive it from another, come to this? His sight dropped, groping around the features of the scene as if all he saw were not solid things but merely two-dimensional props. The familiar and hated feeling of not having an honest existence rose as a chill from his lower extremities into his brain. He touched his dresser: it felt like paper. Glancing at the hand, it too appeared flat and plastic. Images of the ballroom drapery stiffly moving into a freedom with the circling air currents, struck him as bitter. To be locked in rigidity, then freed and callously stymied again seemed about the cruelest possible fate. Billy didn’t love him – what did that mean to his tentative concept of himself?

“You can stay here,” Josh said as if to the dresser. “I’ll go sleep on the couch.”

Sightlessly, his hands collected a blanket and pillow. He moved to the door and paused. In his mind’s eye, he saw that on the other side of the door was dark adulthood, beaten and tired of the world and its ways, those horrible ‘sensible’ notions of right and wrong, decent and destructive. Just in the corridor laid the antithesis of the ideals of youth, of hopeful optimism, and of the longing that things could be all right if two people made them so. Beyond this barrier was resignation and cynicism – to be hurt, it said, was the average lot in life; no escape was possible.

Joshua stood there, as yet in neither world, his head down and with which in one direction he could see Billy’s legs, and the other, the doorknob.

His hand rose, one pull and he’d be gone, forever gone into a maturity as hopeless and meaningless as his oppressed adolescence.

Josh’s mind had divided, and he couldn’t reconcile them. One half urged him to give up. It reached for the door, but the other half screamed at Billy to, for God’s sake, stop him.

He glanced over to the boy; Billy’s face was unmoved. The screaming ended, it too seemed to give up. There on Billy’s visage, the answer was clear. Now he knew it, he turned the knob, turned it to the right, and when it could go no farther, he pulled the door open, ending his sight of Billy.

Like all the years of blind innocence, the pain was too near for contemplation; just forget that day dies to day, month to year, life to death, and not any human thing done in this world could affect the truth of it. The only constant certainty was that day forgets itself for day, year for year, life for life, and it all loomed in the dark corridor he was about to step into like an abyss.

Josh felt Billy’s warm hand touch his still on the knob. Billy pushed, and the door slowly closed. Josh could hear Billy’s whisper choke with emotion, saying, “No, stay.”

Josh turned around, and Billy said, “I love you too.”

 

II.

Loomings

 

As Thanksgiving morning saw the boys drive to Queeny Park to walk around the lake. Finally the weather had turned. The extra-long, hot and dry summer had broken into cool crispness. As they walked, hands thrust into jacket pockets, Joshua called to mind that night in Forest Park and his first time ‘out.’ Then the ceaseless noise from crickets and cicadas all wanted something desperately, and it was a noise that perfectly matched his own unease and restless mind. Here, in the sharp quiet, around the lake with teals and ducks swimming over it without effort, he felt the autumn equally well represented him now – centered, thrilled with the change working within him – and somehow, against the odds, he was happy.

As Billy shot a wicked sparkle his way, the only thing more that Josh could ask for in the world would have been to walk with this boy, here, holding hands. ‘What the hell?’ He sidled up to Billy and inserted his right hand into Billy’s left-handed pocket. A dusky rose scent came from the partially unzipped opening of Billy’s jacket. In the warm and cozy pocket interior, Billy’s hand took his, and Josh’s heart sang in completeness.

When they returned about noon, Josh’s dad’s truck was gone. They turned smiling eyes on each other, for they knew his mom would be gone till three. The house was theirs.

What to do first; the possibilities were endless. Josh closed the front door, and as the smell of roasting turkey encircled them, Billy pushed him into a kiss against the door’s whiteness. They knew exactly what was on the other’s mind; what was behind that rascally grin they each saw like a mirror. Exclaiming jointly, they said, “Let’s eat!”

The glasses sweated quietly on the kitchen table, Josh and Billy sitting next to them, ate two big sandwiches that Josh had made. Both young men eyed the pumpkin pie done to golden-brown crowning the center of the countertop in front of them. They loved one another, the only thing missing was the saying of it in words, and perhaps both knew; knew it was the only thing that could screw it up.

After lunch, as Josh was putting the plates in the sink, Billy came up behind him, placing his hands and arms around his waist, and kissed the side of his neck. That was all. Then Billy let go and strolled into the living room. For Josh, perhaps this tiny gesture – this insignificant moment – was the greatest in his young life, because it was one he very recently thought he’d never have. It was more than enough.

When Josh came to the doorway, he saw Billy examining family snapshots on the mantelpiece. Billy reached for and took up a frame with a grinning three-year-old face peeking out. “Is this you?”

“Of course it’s me.” Josh quipped, “You think my mom is in the habit of framing the neighbors’ baby pictures?”

Billy pinched the frame by the edges and bobbed it up and down before Joshua. “So cute!”

“How ‘bout now?”

Billy smiled. “Even cuter.”

“Let’s listen to some music.” Josh waved his hand and went down the corridor. The door to his room stood open; the light coming through the open blinds invited him in. Going to his stereo, soon Paul Simon was coolly and mystically singing about the edge of perceiving the important. Billy’s form blocked the doorframe, and Josh waved him in. “This is a new song, called Loomings. I think it’s inspired by Melville.”

Billy lay on the bed and opened his arms for Josh to settle into. Billy asked, “What does ‘loomings’ mean?”

“Apparently at sea, it’s when you see something on the horizon not directly, but as reflected in the sky or water.” Paul sang:

 

Memory looms larger with time

What was on the verge, now is seen

More than a rhyme, higher to climb

On the horizon, still and serene.

 

They clasped hands.

 

Everyone chases their own whale –

For some it’s fortune, or it’s fame,

And all of us will hoist our sail

To singe our wings against some flame.

 

In the quiet night I say it –

The word barely escapes my breath,

But the truth is you know it,

‘Love’ is hard to state unto death.

 

Their lips occasionally found, and gently touched, one another.

 

In our loomings are latent dreams –

The love in us becoming clear,

As things to represent the sheens

Of a calm light hidden so near.

 

Memory looms larger with time

What was on the verge, now is seen . . .

 

Suddenly Josh’s father was in the room; nightmare or hallucination, Josh didn’t have time to ascertain. His voice was speaking a sentence whose subject Josh momentarily understood was the garage, but that sentence never got finished, it faded away to a silent death.

 

. . . More than a rhyme, higher to climb

On the horizon, still and serene . . .

 

Josh jumped up and stumbled, hitting his speakers and rustling the blinds. Gaining his balance, he forced on himself as quick and as casual an air as possible; no time for shock, at least not from the boy. His eyes never left his father, and he feebly asked, “What were you saying about the garage—” but the only thing the man did was glance at Billy, then his son. Joshua stopped, was stopped dead in his approach by his father’s look. Anger he could have expected, rage enough to tear down the house seemed natural, disgust he could have dealt with, being called a pervert, he was ready for that too, having already absolved himself of any taint of sin. But, those blocks of himself that he had built up one by one were not tall enough to shield him from everything. So against the earth-shattering disappointment he saw in his dad, he had no weapons; no defense.

.

. . . And all of us will hoist our sail

To singe our wings against some flame.

 

His father appeared irrevocably, unspeakably crushed. Another glance at Billy, who was now standing, and he departed: as mysteriously as he had appeared, he turned and was gone.

The two boys in the aftermath of what had exploded so quickly could not break the ensuing silence. They just stood, eyes asking what the other thought they should do; what they could do.

“I think”—Josh whispered at last—“I’d better take you home. I believe that would be . . . better.”

Billy nodded. “Whatever you think is best.” He slowly, still in a daze, started to collect his stuff. Joshua helped him, and when the last sock was zipped up in his rucksack, he put his hand on Billy’s arm, heading him for the door and the sense of freedom now seemed to lay beyond it.

Josh’s father had returned to the garage, his mind running over all the things he could have done, should have done. Images of Josh as a small boy fought against what he had just seen; his son and another boy ‘cuddling,’ the very word infuriated him. Unexpectedly, he wasn’t in his garage any longer. He remembered the cold winter day his parents and he took his kid brother to the gates of the state hospital. They had in their hopes a ‘cure,’ that’s all – none of them could understand the truth of the fear that spread across Clarence’s face – not until months later, when he was released and so altered, he didn’t know him. He dropped his brother off, and later collected the shell of the man he used to be at the other end of an ordeal he would have not let himself tolerate, if he had only known. He loved Clarence, but not enough to truly help him by leaving him alone. That empty day, he saw this kid brother’s eyes drift behind him. A young man was standing apart, the same man identified as the ‘problem.’ How he hated the sight of him, how he would have gone over there and beaten the goddamned queer if his folks were not with him. Befuddled fury rose up in him – ‘How, how does this happen!’

He inspected the tools spread out before him on the workbench. ‘Cuddling,’ ‘cuddling,’ ‘cuddling’ drove itself through his brain. He had to do something: not again could he let another lead a family member astray. He picked up a wrench, turning to go back into the house. He paused at the screen door, through it, through the kitchen, he had an unobstructed view. Billy came out of Josh’s room hugging his backpack to his chest. The old man’s heart sank into his stomach as pure uncontainable rage.

Tearing open the screen door, he started yelling. “Get the hell out of my house, you God-Damned f*gg*t!” The sound echoed behind Billy, and bounced off the hall’s far wall. The screen door fell closed behind him, and the man’s footsteps boomed through the floorboards of the house. “You heard me – Get out! And don’t ever think of coming here again. Do you even have a job, for Christ’s sake! You’re probably one of those welfare stealers. If you think there’s money for you to bleed out of us, you’re . . . . ”

Josh was in his room, fumbling with the clothes in his closet to grab a jacket. When he heard his father’s anger, his initial response was to find a place to hide; to do exactly what he had done so many times before when he was a kid. His sad glance considered the patch of closet floor where he’d cower and wait until he heard the front door slam, then he’d know it was safe to go and help his mother with her tears. For a moment he held onto the closet door, right hand still extended, clutching the windbreaker, afraid. His hand slipped, and the nylon ran like burning silk through his fingers. He heard the brutal questions, and Billy’s polite replies sounding just as courteous and respectful as he did at the dinner table, and that voice, calm in the face of threat, brought him more than courage. The fear, the self-hate of his whole life, was transformed at that very instant into something greater than himself; expression of love was not it, it was love sure of absolution. He slammed the closet door shut.

In the two paces it took him to get to his room’s doorway, his anger rose, swelling up like he’d never allowed himself to feel. His love was under attack, unjustly under attack. His fury burned like white-hot honor.

“Leave him alone!” Joshua’s voice reverberated throughout the house, penetrating the soul of his dad. Josh came into the corridor and gently guided Billy out of harm’s way. He stood squarely in front of his father. “This has nothing to do with him. If you’re mad at me, take it out on me, but leave him alone!”

In the face of his son, the father had to swallow hard. When a boy, he always thought this kid was too soft, so he’d ‘teach’ him with teasing face slaps, always trying to provoke this kind of response; but to his fatherly disappointment, the boy never defended himself. So now he was split: this Josh was not the Josh he knew; it was in some ways the one he wanted – but then the sight of the young man standing behind his son refreshed his ire. His mind tossed the emotions against one another. One was a desire for his boy to be five again, while the other wanted to use the wrench on him. A medium was struck. His tone screeched. “Don’t tell me what to do. I can have you locked up, buddy-boy.” He bit the ‘buddy-boy’ off, spitting it like venom. “And don’t think I won’t!”

Josh scoffed. “Like your ‘kid brother?’ You’d do that to me too?”

There was no reply.

“Just leave us alone. I’ll never bother you again.” Josh started to turn, but his father’s hand stopped him. Josh heard a imploring timbre crack his old man’s voice.

“Is that what you want? To be a, a . . . . ” He searched within himself for what he thought his brother and son were. He found it. “ . . . A God-Damned Queer!”

Josh violently struck his father’s grip away. “No,” Josh shouted back. “But I’m Gay, and no amount of wishing otherwise can change that. Nothing can make it go away, except God, so if you think God only made me this way to damn me, then there’s nothing to say, except I’m a ‘God-Damned Queer!’”

The wrench raised up. “Don’t act all proud! What’s wrong with you?!”

“Dad, in case you never understand one more thing in your life, know this: I am proud, because it’s what I’m meant to be.”

The wrench was frozen in the air. One blow, and it’d be over. The man was full of anger, an anger born of wrath against the pitiless spite of fate, and as such, it was well beyond his control. One blow. But, the Josh in his memory giggled while the weapon trembled in the air above them. The laugh the boy would sing out while he threw him up in the air, a moment later sailing safely back into his arms. The Joshua who would bring him snails like little treasures from the garden cupped in his gentle little hands. The boy’s protection of them was shaky because he was afraid he’d hurt them, but excited to show his father. So gentle. That little boy’s smile, the boy he thought he’d die for, smiled back at him over the years. In the face of the grown Josh now before him, he saw his brother, and it killed him.

The wrench slipped from his hand. He pleaded with his son. “Think of your mother . . . she—”

But Josh ignored that. He said as if speaking to the paint on the wall, “I’m taking him home now.”

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

He let Billy out on the curb in front of his building, and the drive home was a hard one for Josh. He was alone, only the radio pretended to know he existed. His worries were what his dad would say to his mom, and her reaction.

‘I caught them having sex! In his bed!’ ran one scenario. ‘They were hugging and kissing!’ ran another. His plan of action was simple. Quickly go to his room, get some of his things together and stay with Billy.

The house was quiet. The smells of food now somehow seemed sour to Josh as he closed the front door and walked through the living room. He stopped at the beginning of the corridor, checking both ways, and the path was clear. He set off down the hall, seeing the rectangle of light that came from his room. Suddenly it disappeared. He started; his mother was standing there. She came out, while he stumbled with words. “I . . . I just came here to pick up some—”

“Joshua”—she stopped him—“I just want you to know, no matter what your father says, he still loves you, and I want you to know I do too.” Her voice was unchoked with emotion. “This is your home, and for as long as you want it, you’ll always be welcome here.”

Josh held her gaze, and though beyond the age he could still tell her, he felt love for them too. He hugged her, and she understood. In that embrace Josh felt the last piece of himself come together. He squeezed her harder, quietly exuberant, because at last he knew he was real.

                    

~

 

 

 

     

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