A Room with a View (of the Brooklyn Navy Yard) - 5. v. A Hurt Heart

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v.

A Hurt Heart

An hour after their abrupt parting, Patrick’s in his hotel room. Not only is he physically alone, but he feels more alone than ever.

He also regrets his co-author drivel from earlier. He wonders what exactly he was trying to say.

‘I don’t know what Ted thought about it. Obviously, the playa got what I was laying down, but what was I thinking . . . ? Stupid; stupid; stupid. I don’t really give a fuck about Ted, do I?’

For an unknown reason, Patrick re-experiences the emotions of his run-in with Random, Reed and Sales’ corporate lawyer. He sees the evil man’s hollow eyes, staring him down. The way he tried to get back at Patrick’s non-interest with snake-in-the-garden comments on how much money Ted is making off of Patrick’s content.

‘Whether that’s true or not,’ reasons Patrick, ‘I really can’t stomach that Bray J. Gerhard any longer. If I write more for RR&S, it will be on the condition that Bray’s off the team.’

Providing but a moment’s distraction, the second his incensed consideration of the twisted straight man leaves him, Ted is back in his thoughts.

His sly, know-it-all grin; the dash of his dark-blond hair, parted along one side; his slightly marred cheeks and forehead, making his looks appear all the more perfect; the faded, faint sunspots on Ted’s nose . . . . The man’s body – at the gym, in the greenroom when he’s slipping on one of Patrick’s shirts before a reading, in the locker room, after . . . his shower—

‘Fuck,’ Patrick thinks. His waking erection, and the hurt in his heart brings him back to the question he’d asked himself earlier.

Fighting back a tear, he grabs his phone. He starts out believing he’s just going to pull up and join Fanaticsonly to look at Ted.

But then, he opens Boogle instead. A few taps later, he’s looking into the dead eyes that his church has posted of Monroe Newberry.

There it is in black and white. The great love of Ted Rector’s life is indeed back in Piedmont, Iowa, closeted, conformist and miserable.

This time, the tears do come. But oddly for Patrick, it makes the novelist feel closer to Ted than ever. There is such a great sorrow in the man that needs comforting, and it’s one Forsa can relate to without the aid of any conscious will.

‘Stupid. Stupid. Stupid!’

About to toss his phone aside in frustration, a new thought comes to him. It’s something that’s never occurred to him before.

He closes the web and opens a particular app on his phone. Curlicues, hearts and arrows appear.

A quick search turns up Ted’s Earnest Eros account with no fuss.

Here, in more black and white, is the man’s “real” profile.

As he reads, Patrick grows increasingly baffled. This ‘Ted,’ this person with his swagger down, why . . . he sounds like . . . Forsa’s perfect match.

He goes back to one section to read it again. On a third round, he starts reciting it aloud.

“ . . . Confidence is overrated as an aphrodisiac. For sheer sexiness, give me brains over brawn any day. I seek substance over style. Character over designer clothes, and a willingness to laugh at oneself over suave and sophisticated . . . . ”

Suddenly angry, Patrick cries out, “Well, he sure doesn’t act like it!”

He sets the phone face up on the pillow next to him.

Bafflement’s turned to ire, and Patrick launches into a fantasy of confronting Ted about his Earn Er account. About demanding an explanation.

Angry, Patrick pounded on Ted’s apartment door. This time, the tall blond had gone too far; a reckoning was at hand.

Ted, clad in only a bath towel knotted loosely around his waist – hair still wet from the shower – opened the door a tad. Seeing who it was on the other side, the Midwesterner couldn’t help but grin. He let him in.

Patrick brushed past the near-naked man, wordlessly, his resolve to see something happen stiffer than ever.

As Ted closed and latched the portal once more, his welcome intruder moved to stand in the center of the living space, phone tightly gripped in his lowered right hand.

Once the other joined him with the weak words of “What’s up,” Patrick raised his screen, holding it for Ted’s inspection right before his face.

“Explain this!” the visitor demanded. “This is your real dating profile – not your hook-up shit. This, Ted, says who your perfect mate is—” Suddenly deflated by his own words, Patrick himself looks at the screen. The eyes he returns to Ted are wistful. “It describes who you want to build a life with, Ted, and . . . and . . . goddamn it! It sounds like me.”

Ted, found out at last, debated a moment how to react. Should he play it cool – his usual modus operandi – or, should he laugh in an attempt to play it down? How should he play it—

Patrick grabbed him, latching onto the strong man’s upper arms. Locked eye to eye, the instigator of this tussle waited for his opponent’s next move.

Ted shoved him away, knowing it was the last thing he actually wanted to do.

Anger returned, Patrick shoved the man hard on the chest.

Ted lurched backwards, his towel failing and sending terrycloth to the carpet in a cascade.

Now, completely defenseless, Ted launched himself at Patrick, his hands raised to grab the New Yorker by both cheeks.

In an instant, the men were kissing. Mad, inflamed kissing. Relentless kissing, probing the other and joyfully finding perfect reciprocation at every turn.

The pair stumbled back, staggered by longing, still lip-locked, breathing heavily from one another’s mouth for life-giving air – Ted tripped and fell on the sofa, Patrick’s weight on top of him immediately following, their hands exploring naked skin and Patrick’s superfluous clothing, their erections meeting – Ted’s exposed manhood pressed against the heightened arousal of Patrick’s fabric.

Never had the act of creation, of men meeting as equals in their desires to be vulnerable, open individuals, caressed by their fellow man, met so perfectly in Patrick and Ted’s lovemaking.

One kiss married effortlessly into the following; one brush of tongue over lip; one caress of palate; one delicate touch of tooth to tooth; and all bathed in the increasingly dangerous, oxygen-deprived breath of a single lifeforce sustaining and impassioning two – these all met as Ted kissed Patrick; as Patrick kissed Ted.

‘Oh, shit,’ Forsa thinks. He looks down as a wild torrent of excitement builds. He’d been pleasuring himself, almost without knowing it, and now – now he lets himself finish.

“Oh, Ted,” he murmurs as he climaxes. “Fuck – I love you.”

At last he acknowledges what he feels for the man.

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