Mike and Winston - 6. Chapter 6

Winston left early that morning. He might have said something before going, but Mike did not remember. When he did get up, he spent a few minutes searching his room to make sure Winston had not left his wedding ring again. He had not.

For the rest of the day, Mike occupied himself by dreading the two midterms he would be taking next Tuesday, both of which he had forgotten about until now. Marginal cost dogged him for most of the afternoon. It was only for brief moments that he thought of Winston—seeing a student with the same sort of blazer Winston wore, wondering what dinner might be that night, watching the couples on the lawn. They lounged in the sun and kissed, and Mike thought how far he was from them.

It was when he actually saw Dan that he remembered the rooming offer, and suddenly realized what it would mean.

“Hey,” Mike greeted, trying to sound more enthusiastic than he felt.

“Hey—”

Mike frowned. “What?”

Dan shook his head. There was an odd sort of look on his face. “Nothing,” he said, and pushed his chair across the room. “We’ve, uh, that survey for Hubbell to write.”

It was an hour later and in the bathroom mirror that Mike realized what the matter was. Fixed halfway up his neck was something he had overlooked that morning: a bright red hickey.

He clasped both hands over it and felt a blush burst over his face. He wondered who besides Dan had seen it: no one who had decided to comment, evidently. He left the mirror an agonizing moment later, wishing he had worn a collared shirt, and then, when he opened the office door and saw Professor Hubbell leaning against the desk, wishing desperately that he had stayed in the bathroom.

“Ah, Mike,” Professor Hubbell greeted, all smiles, “you’ve never made a psychology survey before, have you?”

Mike shook his head stiffly. “No, I haven’t.”

“It’s not very hard,” said Professor Hubbell. “All you have to do…” Mike nodded every so often during the next interminable quarter hour. He kept the right side of his neck turned to the wall. Once he covered it with his hand, pretending to scratch the back of his head, and caught Dan’s gaze, which had a rather knowing look about it. Mike looked down immediately and blushed.

“Everything clear?” Professor Hubbell said. “Good. I’ll expect to see something tonight.” He flashed a grandfatherly smile and left.

Dan wheeled the chair to the computer. “Yeah, uh, I’ll pull up a survey I made last term. We can use that as a template.”

Mike nodded and reluctantly lowered his hand. Dan just had to be on his right side. “Yeah. Yeah, sounds good.”

They squeezed out a few questions in the next half hour before trooping, still in what felt to Mike to be a rather mortifying silence, to the break room.

“So did you think about it?” Dan asked. Mike looked up, bemused. “Maybe moving to place, I mean.”

“Oh.” He smiled in relief. “Not really, no. I kind of—”

“Hey, no pressure,” Dan said, looking just as relieved. “Why don’t you come by for a visit after work? You know, get a feel for the place.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s a good idea,” Mike said. “Although I have—to be somewhere, after.” Winston, he thought.

“Sure. It won’t take long.”

Dan’s flat at Lincoln, situated on a third floor corner, had two separate bedrooms, a stove, a refrigerator, a microwave, and a widescreen TV that seemed to take up the entire wall.

“My parents got a new one at home,” Dan explained, grinning almost wryly.

Mike shook his head. He had somewhat guessed Dan’s financial situation from the brand-name clothes that fitted him as though he modeled them, but this was too much. “So what else is a hand-me-down?”

“This sofa, actually.”

“Christ,” Mike muttered.

The empty bedroom was smaller than his current room, but there was a window and a door. There was no lock, but Dan would be the sort to knock before entering, Mike was sure.

They were in the living room again.

“What do you think?” Dan said, fiddling with a pair of running shorts that were draped on the back of the couch.

Mike nodded. “Really, really cool.” There was a haphazard pile of magazines beside the couch, with Entertainment Weekly beaming from the top. Next to that stood an opened can of Budweiser. Mike suppressed a smile and looked up to find Dan giving him that odd look again.

“Brad—my ex-roommate—sometimes brought a girl over for the night.” He made a you-know gesture with his shoulders and blushed.

“Yeah,” Mike said, sure that his face was getting as red as Dan’s.

“I’m okay with it, just as long as it, doesn’t, you know. Wake the neighbors or anything.”

Mike nodded and wondered, beneath the sense of acute embarrassment, if Dan would be just as okay if he brought over a man old enough to be his father.

“So, d’you want a drink or something?”

“Actually, I really have to go,” Mike said, genuinely regretful.

“Oh, yeah. You had something you needed to go to.”

“Yeah,” Mike said, and hoped that the wordless gestures he was making with his shoulders was enough to convey the regret he was feeling. “Thanks for showing me around. This is a really great place.”

He left soon after. A widescreen television, a room with a view, and beer. It would be good to have a cool roommate and still have privacy. In the first months of the term, he could not remember having exchanged words with anyone besides the takeout cashier. And Dan was good to talk to. He was also good to watch. Mike wondered if Dan was the sort of person who wandered into the bathroom for showers with only a towel around his waist, and afterwards drifted about in a state of near-nakedness, confidently unbothered by the lack of clothing. Mike suppressed a groan and tried to will away the stirring in his groin.

When he got back, Winston was waiting at the door and talking on his cell phone to whom Mike realized had to be his wife.

“I know, honey, I know,” he soothed as they climbed the stairs. “No, I can’t stand that goody-goody two-shoes either. No, I know. Yes, she is annoying.”

Winston answered Mike’s stare by rolling his eyes and pointing his forefinger at his head as though it were a gun and firing it.

“Yes, I fed the fish, and I watered the begonias,” Winston said, sprawling on the bed and kicking off his shoes with a sigh. “Hm? Oh, come on, I was just sighing because I sat down, not because I’m impatient with you.”

Mike sniggered. Winston gave him an evil eye.

“No, hon, you didn’t get any phone calls from your mom. In fact, I don’t think you got any… phone calls at all.”

Winston had undone the top two buttons of his dress shirt, but was stuck on the third button. Mike smirked. The smirked faded when Winston sank back, spread his legs wide, and dropped a hand almost negligently over his crotch.

“Oh, just work—the usual, you know. I’ve, uh, been eating here and there. That Chinese place we found last month, and once at McDonald’s. Yeah, hon, I know it’s not healthy, but I worked it off at the gym…”

The movement of the thumb over the bulge was so slow that Mike wondered if it was not unconscious. He imagined pulling down the zipper, shifting aside the cloth. But the idea of doing it while Winston was on the phone with his wife was more than a bit discomfiting.

“Ouch! But didn’t you bring bug spray, hon? Did you take the indoor one or outdoor one? Well, see, honey, you should’ve brought the outdoor one…”

Fingers creeping lower. Sinking deeper into the mattress, the legs spread more. Definitely not unconscious. Mike stared for a moment, evaluating the thought, kneading it so that it no longer felt so strange. He got up.

“Yep, yep. What? Oh yeah, that. Well you could try something. I dunno, hon.”

Mike kept his hands on Winston’s hips, moving with the faint back-and-forth thrust. He felt, through the acceleration of his heart and the faint buzz of initial uncertainty, a surge of arousal.

“So tell me about the places you went to. Yeah I know, but come on, was it good, did you like it?”

Mike regarded the swollen head, stuck out his tongue, and lapped it.

“Oh, yeah, that’s—that’s cool. Yeah I remember the tree you could drive through. No, it wasn’t that one? Well, did the kids like it?” He made a chuckling sound. It sounded only slightly strained. “Listen, hon, I’ve, uh, I just got another call on my cell, I’ll talk to you later, all right? Right, love you.”

He hung up.

When Mike next had the opportunity to speak, he was naked, and panting from all the kissing.

“Do you do that a lot?” he murmured.

“What? Kiss?”

“No. Do stuff while talking to your wife on the phone.” Winston was playing a finger enticingly over his ass and nibbling the region next to his armpit at the same time, but he plowed on. “Stuff like this—like sex.”

“A bit. Why?”

Mike shrugged and let the other man turn him onto his stomach. “Just curious.” He grunted at the intrusion of fingers. Winston was anxious, almost rough. Mike propped himself on the pillow, listened to the break of the condom wrapper. He had barely braced himself to the feel of the other man’s member at his entrance when Winston thrust forward. Mike yelped.

“You all right?”

Mike’s whole body was clenched with pain. “It hurts,” he muttered.

“Shall I stop?”

­“Just—give me a moment.” He took a deep breath, and another. It had not hurt this badly since Petch. Finally he nodded. “Go on,” he whispered.

Winston inched forward. Mike dropped his head and lifted it again, aware of a high keening sound that he knew must be coming from him. The sound broke into a cry when Winston pushed forward in an inexorable thrust.

Winston froze. “Shall I pull out?” he said quietly, more a statement than a question. He shifted backwards, slowly, but Mike clutched Winston’s side with both hands.

“Don’t,” Mike muttered. “Just give me a moment.”

“I went too fast,” Winston said in a low, regretful voice. Mike gritted his teeth; there was pain, too, in the eased-out withdrawal. He felt Winston’s hands on his back, stroking down to his buttocks in slow movements. “Hey,” he said, and repeated, voice sounding more concerned, “Hey, you all right?”

Mike didn’t answer. He pushed Winston on his back, crouched on top, and reached behind him position the sheathed cock at his hole. Winston’s eyes glittered. Mike scrunched up his face and felt his whole body tense as he was penetrated again. A hand’s width, more, wordlessly, until the bush of Winston’s pubic hair was resting against his scrotum.

Mike arched forward and fixed Winston’s eyes with his own. “Fuck me,” he rasped. "Fuck me, Winston."

It was as though his body were filled with a shivering roar. He fell forward and listened to his own incoherent cries, Winston’s noises of pleasure. They slammed into the wall as Winston rose to straddle his hips; damn the neighbors, Mike thought ecstatically.

When they at last collapsed on the bed, Mike’s head was resting in the crook of Winston’s elbow, and he was nursing his bruised elbow, which had bumped into something.

“Let’s do that again,” Winston murmured breathlessly. “Later,” he added, the grin in his voice clearly audible.

Mike grunted. He felt more worn out than the last time. Maybe it was that he had not slept too well last night. Maybe it was the things he thought he could forget. He put his hands over his eyes and sighed; things were always easier in darkness.

“Yeah. I think you should tell your wife.”

He felt Winston stir. “What?” It was not the please-repeat sort of what. This was a flat downbeat, reminding Mike of their second meeting, when he had wanted to brush the whole thing off. A small tendril of thought, grousing at the back of his mind, muttered that that might been better after all.

“Tell her that you’re gay.”

Winston snorted. “Yeah.” His voice was neutral, inscrutable. “Of course.”

“Oh, stop it,” Mike muttered in exasperation, taking his hands off his eyes. “I know it’d be hard, but I think you should do it.”

“What brought this on? Our lovemaking?”

Mike frowned. The dip on the last word was definitely there, but it was not sharp enough to be cruel. “You said—no relationships.”

“Is this a relationship?”

“Is it? What is it? Are we just—” He threw up his hands. “Fuck buddies? I don’t want us to be fuck buddies,” he added, before Winston could say anything. He quickly regretted it.

Winston stirred beside him.

“We don’t have to be.”

They were silent for a moment. Mike closed his eyes and opened them, trying to keep his mind as calm and clear as he could, hoping that he could somehow see, after everything had settled, what he actually wanted, what he should be wanting.

“Have you done this before? Had a boyfriend while you were married.” He almost didn’t expect Winston to answer.

“Yes.”

Mike waited.

Winston sighed. “There was this one guy,” he said at last. “Everything else was just… Anyway. It was three, maybe four, years ago.” There was a pause. “Michelle and I had been married for two years. The guy was someone I’d met in college. We lasted six months.”

“What was his name?”

“Jonathan,” said Winston.

Mike rolled it in his mouth. Jonathan. It was only a name, but there was a phantom standing behind that one word, almost as powerfully as it did behind “Michelle.”

“He moved away,” said Winston. “And he was going to have a kid, so he didn’t want… you know.”

“Yeah.”

“Michelle and I wanted kids right away, actually,” Winston went on, “But Michelle had some fertility problems. She’s fine now. Had hormone therapy and all.”

There was an unspoken “but” at the end of it.

It was as though his head had cleared. Mike could suddenly see Winston’s life as a series of startlingly-clear images: a younger Winston, anxious and eager to marry, proposing to a thin girl with a nondescript face; an older Winston, not much different from the younger one, now hesitating, doubting, procrastinating with a parade of appeasements and condoms with double-checked expiration dates, and now.

“She really wants a kid.” He stopped.

Mike turned his head. “You do too?”

“I like kids. I’ve an older sister. Her daughter’s such a brat, but…” He chuckled. “You know. Or maybe you don’t.”

“No, I do, I think.” He paused. “It’d be a lot harder to tell her after having kids.”

Winston gave a noncommittal response. “Yeah.”

Mike frowned, traced his gaze over the upwards-staring profile of the other man. “Do you love her?”

Winston barked with laughter. “You like tough questions, don’t you?” He eased off the bed and padded to the refrigerator. “There’re many kinds of love in the world. Do you have any more beer?” A moment later, he took out the last bottle.

They considered it.

“You want it?” Winston said.

Mike shook his head. “You have it.” He laid back and watched the other man fiddle with the Swiss knife, feeling both somewhat resigned and anxious, and perhaps a little bit sad.

Maybe it was because of the numerous conversations they had during the day. Maybe it resulted from thoughts that had been brewing in his mind. His mother. Michelle. His father; Steve; Dan. In any case, it was that night that he suggested it, while they worked through a bottle of red wine Winston had insisted on buying.

“We could come out at the same time,” Mike said. “Then we’d have each other to make sure we do it if we don’t chicken out. And it’s easier when there’s someone else.” He shrugged when Winston said nothing. “We could make it an agreement. A pact.”

“A pact?” Winston looked amused. “Like what? A pinky deal?”

“Word of honor,” Mike said, smiling and hoping Winston would smile as well.

“I don’t see why it’s bothering you so much.”

Mike shrugged. He watched Winston take put the wine bottle to his lips, tilt his head back, and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. You’re bothered too, Mike thought, but there was no way he could say it.

The images he had of Winston’s life suddenly sprouted another dimension, like paper descending legs and scuttling before his eyes. Mike could see it, but he could not understand. Or perhaps he could understand without believing it was real. The facts stayed, it seemed, within a certain boundary, demarked by his own skin. And it was only skin he understood. Had he even tried to understand Petch? Had he even been wary enough with Petch to set his mind at work, snatching at tendrils of an inscrutable future? Odd that he thought of Petch now.

All of Thursday was shadowed by their imminent parting. To Mike, it had just begun to feel like a not uncomfortable routine—going to class, coming home, doing his homework until Winston arrived, sex, eating dinner, more sex. They talked, too, during dinner and sex, and in between each round, and the images Mike had in his mind grew deeper, expanded, touched finally and perhaps on more than the warmth of another body lying next to his.

He was not prepared, though, for the question that Winston asked on Thursday evening, the last night they had together.

“If,” said Winston, “I tell my wife that I’m gay, it would be rather unrealistic to ask her to be discrete about it, would you say?”

Mike nodded hesitantly.

“And considering that the majority of the people that she and I know are conservative and well-married themselves…” Winston paused. “You’re planning to tell your parents?”

Mike paused, taken aback. “Yeah.”

“How do you think they’d would react?”

“They’d… I don’t know.” He fell silent. The question dug under his skin. “My mom’s pretty conservative about this sort of thing. My dad’s hardly around, so…”

Mike shrugged.

Seven or eight years ago, some impulse had made him break down in tears at the dinner table and confess to his mother that he was gay. The impulse, he remembered, had been guilt. But he could not recall what had caused the guilt had built up until it was like a heavy ring around his neck.

“I’m a bad son,” Mike had sobbed. “I’m s-sorry.”

His mother, clearing away dinner leftovers, had asked him repeatedly what the matter was, but he could not answer while Steve was still there. When at last Steve had sidled away, he had said it.

“I think—I’m gay.”

The memory was very disconnected in his mind. How old had he been, twelve? Thirteen? The number felt somehow larger than he had felt. Sometimes there was no difference between being seven and thirteen.

“Gay?” He did not remember his mother’s face. “What do you mean, gay?”

“Gay—like, homosexual. Queer,” he had added. There was a very long silence, which Mike broke by looking up, face flushed, and muttering between his teeth, “Tong xin lian, Mom.”

“Mom,” Steve had said, entering the room with a few pieces of paper in his hand. “Can you sign my field trip form?”

His mom had taken the forms, gotten up, made an inscrutable sound somewhere close to a snort of disbelief, and left. Mike remembered sitting there for another minute or so at the dinner table, the pale kitchen light almost antiseptic to his swollen eyes. Presently he had gotten up too, passed where his mother was writing his brother a check, and went to his own room down the unlit hallway.

It was half an hour later, after his mother had washed the dishes and put them away to dry, but before she had had her nightly tea, that she had come to his room, still in the gray and grease-stained apron his father had bought her years ago.

“Mike, is someone at school harassing you?”

He had scowled. “No! Mom!” He remembered wishing that she would close the door. “Of course not!”

“If someone’s been harassing you, you have to tell me.”

“No one’s been harassing me, Mom!”

“But why would you think that—” A pause. “Do you need to see a counselor?”

He had not thought it would be like this. But he had not actually formed any expectations. Thinking back, he realized how simple it had seemed: he was gay, that was a bad thing, and he needed to tell his mother like a misbehaving child. But she had not believed him. For the first time, he had realized that there were edges and corners to his life that his mother could not grasp, much less run a hand over in understanding.

“Mom, can you not tell Dad?”

“But you’re been harassed—”

“I’m not being harassed! How many times do I have to tell you, Mom? Nothing’s wrong! It’s just—”

He must have backpedaled, said something about it being a phase, a confusion that he had read teenage boys went through. And, he thought, he might even have believed it at the time.

“It’s silly,” he had said. “I’ll tell Dad if I have to. I promise.”

“Yes, it’s silly,” his mother had said, making a noise that could only be disbelieving laughter. “It’s absurd!” She snorted. “You’re not like that, do you understand?”

He had made a noise of assent through his nose. “Don’t tell Dad.”

The weeks afterwards had been agonizing. He thought had convinced his mother that it was nothing, but would she speak anyway? And Steve, had he heard? It would be unbearable if he jabbered about it to everyone. When his father returned at the end of the month, Mike had been nearly sick with worry. But nothing had come of it, and the memory of that visit was hazier than those of other visits.

“Well,” said Winston, “at least your mom sort of knows.”

“She doesn’t believe it.” Mike reached over the edge of the bed for the Spanish white wine they had bought for that night. “So… you’re thinking of telling her?”

Winston nodded, a small, almost jerky motion of his head.

“All right,” said Mike. He put his mouth to the bottle, tossed back his head, winced, and swallowed a rather burning mouthful. Winston’s lips, he noticed, were quirked in an amused, almost long-suffering smile. “So we’ve a pact?”

Winston held out his right hand and extended his pinky.

“Fuck yeah,” Mike said. He was grinning, and he knew it was partly due to the jolt of nervousness was already beginning to gnaw a path up his stomach. “So, when will we do it?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, my dad comes back this weekend.”

“Isn’t that a bit soon?”

Mike crossed his arms, stuck out his foot, and slowly traced down Winston’s stomach with his big toe. “Procrastination, eh?”

A few moments later, they were grinding against each other on the bed. Mike fumbled with a condom package, his hands shaking as a moan worked up his throat.

“Fuck,” he muttered; his hands were too slippery. Mike pulled away and finally ripped open the package. Winston held still and watched the shiny latex roll over his cock. Eventually they were ready, and Mike cried hard into the pillow as they both tried to forget something that had not yet happened.

“Say it,” Winston hissed, staring into Mike’s eyes with a face made wild. “Say it!”

Say what? Mike thought as he pulled his legs around the other man’s back, clutched his stretched-open hands the other man’s shoulders. Another thrust, and he gasped, “Winston!” Mike felt his gaze swimming away, but he forced himself to focus at the next bruising thrust and the breath at his ear.

“Mike,” Winston whispered. “Mike.”

Later, while lying next to the warm body, Mike reminded himself to find and dispose of all the used condoms on the floor. It would be bad form to have them discovered, even though no one else ever came.

The patterns made by the blinds seemed to have spelled a code to keep his mind restless. He could not sleep. They had mentioned only once the fact that it was their last night. The weekend lay ahead, awful, yawning. He was already regretting his decision. It was not necessary; he could wait, bide his time until he felt safer, more confident.

But that time, he knew, might never come. He had moved out already; he was in college. His parents, though disapproving, would not torture him with leather belts and skillets as he had read in some Internet stories. He shifted, pulling the covers gently so as not to wake his companion, and stared up at the patterns on the ceiling of cracks and shadows.

“You still awake?”

Mike shut his eyes and nodded, feeling so acutely grateful he almost replied. Instead, he let Winston curl arms around his chest, bringing their bodies against each other. It would be appropriate now to speak, Mike thought. Now was the time to say something that would last them the night, the weekend, and the long thereafter. But he could come up with nothing. If Winston was thinking the same, Mike could not tell. His right leg felt pinched, but he kept still, not wanting to disturb Winston, or maybe the thing between Winston and him that was just beginning to form. Whatever it was, he fell asleep before he knew, and woke to the sound of Winston getting dressed.

“Good morning,” said Winston.

“Hey,” Mike muttered. He blinked the sleep from his eyes and wondered if Winston had been planning to leave without saying goodbye.

“It’s eight thirty,” said Winston, smiling. “Time to rise and shine.”

The morning itself was bright, clear. The patterns of lights that had stretched across the ceiling last night now flung themselves in new directions. Mike felt a moment of peace before the dread came rushing back, hitting him like a sack of bricks.

“So you’ll do it this weekend?”

The other man finished pulling on his socks and reached for his dress shirt, heaped with their other clothes on the floor. “I’ll tell her tomorrow,” said Winston. He glanced back.

Mike nodded. “I’ll do it, too. My dad’ll be back.” And he would also be seeing Dan today, Mike thought. He would tell Dan in order to explain why he had to refuse the offer.

“We should do it on Sunday,” Winston muttered, turning down the collar of his dress shirt. He had mustered a grin, but Mike could see right through it. “So we can have sex at the next lunch break and pretend the whole thing never happened.”

Mike snorted. “You’ll be in marriage counseling by then.”

The other man froze. “Yeah. Huh.”

“Sorry.” Mike buried his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes. “Fuck, I shouldn’t have said that.” He was not feeling nervous yet, but it was there at the edge of his mind, like a shadow he could only half see.

“Nah, you’re probably right. But you’ll be fine,” Winston said brightly. “You only have your own parents to tell. I have to tell my wife, my parents, and my parents-in-law.”

“Yeah. Don’t forget to send me an email after you do it.” Mike got up and, surprising himself as he did so, wrapped his arms around Winston’s shoulders.

“Hey, no worries.”

“Yeah,” Mike muttered as he pulled away. “Yeah. You’ll be great.”

“I’ll email you, or something.”

Mike nodded. He stepped to the side as Winston opened the door. “I’ll see you, then. Good luck.”

“Yeah. You too.”

He would need it, Mike thought, as the door swung shut like a last goodbye.