Palouse - 35. Chapter 35

Chapter 35

Still Gay – December 1995

A Month Later

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

– William Shakespeare

David and Micah were sitting at David’s apartment table after a drive in the country followed by them playing duets for a couple of hours. David once again had pulled dinner out of the freezer and heated it in the microwave. They had finished eating the hot enchiladas with some fresh salsa from the refrigerator and were on their second beers. The conversation had lapsed, particularly because of an overly quiet Micah, but neither man felt any real discomfort.

“You told me you were still gay,” Micah said, breaking the silence.

“I said I was not still gay; I’ve been gay since as long as I can remember. Okay?” There was a tinge of annoyance in David’s voice.

“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant something else.” Micah was quiet and hesitant as he swallowed nervously, his Adam’s apple rising and falling.

David smiled across the table “Sorry to be so short with you. Yes, I’m still gay. I haven’t changed, and I haven’t wanted to change. I’ve been out since I was fourteen, and I knew I was gay before then.”

“I’m a 3.”

“A three?” David asked.

“On the Kinsey Scale.”

“Oh.”

“But if I work on it I could be a 4.”

“Micah, it’s not like do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do. You don’t practice that way. It’s what you are.”

“I can love a guy as well as a woman.” Micah’s mind flashed to the last few weeks with Casey at Idanha. “I…I want to be gay.”

That admission slowed David down. “No, Micah. Loving a guy doesn’t mean you are gay. You don’t want to be gay. The life of a gay boy and a gay man is so much more difficult than the life of a family with a wife and 2.1 kids. You don’t want to be gay just to be gay.”

“I…I want to love you – all the way – and if that means being gay, then I want to be gay.” Micah’s dark eyes glistened in the low light. His hand reached across the table and covered David’s.

David was at a loss for words. This is what he had fantasized about since his crush on Micah when Micah stayed in his south-side Spokane home and he first saw Micah playing solo in the Spokane Youth Symphony concert. He had worshiped Micah then and even excused the growing number of tirades that came seemingly with his stardom.

Then, he had seen Micah at the lowest, and as he had extended his hand to the boy-man on the streets of Walla Walla, he had also extended his heart. But David’s mind was reluctant to bow too much to his heart. He was afraid Micah’s relationship to him might be partly worship for pulling him out of his life-lethargy. Worship can be a thin shell, broken from the down periods of everyday life.

David was conflicted. Now, what he wanted was in his reach, but now he was having cold feet; the timing of Micah’s statement – of the next step in their relationship – caught him almost unawares despite the night of the Boccherini dance. Until this moment, the dream of Micah had been a fantasy, but now in real life, he was taken aback. He wanted time to process what Micah had said; he wanted to believe Micah; but he wanted to be sure Micah was saying this from a mature perception of love, not because he felt he was beholden to David, not because of hormones. David’s body, of course, was trying to throw caution to the wind and go the hormone direction, and he had to adjust his pants.

“I mean it,” Micah said. “I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me, sure. I’m grateful that my life has turned around, and I’m playing again. But none of these would make me want to be gay. I want to be gay because I want you in my life, every day for the rest of my life – every morning when I wake up, every night when I pull the blankets up around me. I want to do the little things, like clean the shaving cream from your lips with my thumbnail, like pour your orange juice. I want to ask you questions and answer yours. I want to observe the world for you, and I want you to observe it for me. I want you mind-to-mind, note-to-note, but I also want you physically, body-to-body. These are the reasons that I want to be gay. I can’t have all of you without being gay, so I want to be gay.” Micah’s hand clasped David’s harder. David raised his free palm to Micah, and Micah raised his to David’s hand, and they intertwined their fingers.

David put his other hand up on the table and lifted his palm. Micah put his other palm against David’s, and they interlaced fingers with both hands. Both sets of eyes were locked as well. David leaned across the table and placed his lips on Micah’s. The tears from their eyes intertwined on each other’s cheeks as if some rite stronger than that for blood brothers would bind them to each other.

“Can we leave it at this for tonight?” David asked. “In the morning, this all may look different.”

“It won’t,” Micah said, forcefully. “I might not be a 6 like you, but I’m going on a 4. And to set your mind at rest, this isn’t something that happened tonight, or yesterday. I’ve been feeling this for a long time, and it keeps getting stronger. I finally had to say something. It isn’t going away, David.”

David laughed. “I’ll run you back to your dorm.” Neither of them moved, though, and Micah this time leaned over to kiss David. And the kisses started soft – mere pecks and light brushes – but they became long and sensuous. No words were spoken for the next half hour; the communication was elemental and joyful. The kisses were enough.

The drive to Micah’s dorm took ten awkward minutes. The step that Micah and David had taken was a giant one. For Micah, it meant a reorientation of his life. For David, it meant the fulfillment of his formerly obtainable life fantasy – assuming he could believe that what Micah said would be durable.

Except for the shifting of the Civic’s gears, their hands stayed joined for the short trip as if this energy connecting them could thus be solidified into deeper bonds, and unanswered questions could be addressed. David feared, though, that Micah’s desire to enter into a gay relationship might be a fleeting one that wouldn’t survive the next sunrise. He wanted Micah to sleep on his decision – alone – and to let what they had talked about be digested. He wanted Micah badly, but he wanted Micah permanently, as an equal, and as a committed gay man. He believed Micah was still fragile at this moment, but he also knew how strong Micah could be.

They kissed one last time across the front seat as they arrived at Micah’s dorm. Micah opened the door, hopped out and walked slowly to the dorm, looking back to make sure that his chosen David was still there. He reached the door just as a number of other students were exiting. He wanted to blow David a kiss, but could he do it? As he propped the door open with his foot to let the others leave, he turned, put his hand to his lips and blew a soft kiss to David. David recognized the courage of that gesture. He didn’t know that the exiting students could not see inside the car, and they had assumed that Micah had just left a girlfriend.

Micah went to his room, turned the key in the lock. He stripped down to his boxers, opened the window and lay down on his bed, his hands behind his head as he stared at the ceiling, a smile of peace on his face. He knew he had taken a large step, but he felt no regrets; he had no second thoughts, and he fell asleep with the satisfaction that he had made a life-changing decision. He felt no differently the next morning. Well, he did get an erection from thinking about David, and he took care of it in his own, personal way.

What changed most in the relationship between Micah and David in the next few weeks was the growing sense of equality between them. David could sense his protégé growing out from under his protection and guidance, and he welcomed the loss.

It was a partnership expressed physically as well as mentally, though the physical part was, for the time being, contained only in kisses and touches. The kisses, though, became longer and more sensuous over the weeks before Christmas; the touches slowly followed the path of the kisses. It was clear from the tenting in their pants that soon they would step in a new and more fulfilling direction.