The Swan of Tuonela - 10. "Memories light the corners of my mind..."

The next week, Mark managed to get a long weekend off to make up for the extra hours he’d worked over Thanksgiving. He wanted to watch some big football playoff game on Thursday, so he and Phillip grabbed an early dinner of Mexican food and a couple of six-packs on the way home.

They lay stretched out on the sofa with Mark watching the game. Phillip was reading a magazine, only looking up from time to time to see why Mark was yelling at the TV. When he finished the article, he dropped the magazine to the floor and since he had taken Friday off as well, he contemplated the entire long weekend together. He laid his chin on Mark’s shoulder and concentrated on the TV, managing to pick the game up enough to follow it and cheer appropriately at the end. After a few commercials, the nightly news started. Phillip reached around and slapped Mark on the stomach. Mark pushed his arms away.

“What are you doing? Stop it.”

“Get up,” Phillip said, pinching Mark on the nipple. “I need to take Siegfried out for his walk.”

Mark pulled Phillip’s fingers away. “OK, OK. I’ll go too. Just stop it. You know I don’t like that. Just wait a second.”

Mark pushed himself up from the sofa and reached around and pulled Phillip onto his feet.. Phillip picked up the red retractable leash from off the piano and clipped it onto Siegfried’s collar, who began prancing his way toward the door, pulling the leash out to its full length. Once the door was open, Siegfried dragged Phillip through the door, across the landing, by the flower arrangement in front of the oval window and half way down the stairs. They and descended to the front door with Siegfried scampering down the stairs, Phillip following him two steps at a time in his tennis shoes, and Mark bringing up the rear, clunking in his boots. As they regrouped at the bottom of the stair well, the door to the apartment on the right opened. A face straight out of a Mary Pickford movie peered at them.

“Oh, .Mrs. Armstrong, hi” Phillip said. “I’m sorry we’re making so much noise. I’m just taking Siegfried out for his last walk.” The eyes dropped down to the schnauzer sitting in anticipation in front of the open door. “This is my friend, Mark,” Phillip continued. “We were watching the football game. That’s why we’re getting out so late.”

The face turned to evaluate Mark.

“We’ll be sure to pull the door closed when we come back in,” Phillip offered. He had gotten many stern lectures for not closing the door to the stairwell behind him when he left. The face remained immobile. Then a shrunken, vein-lined hand appeared and petted Siegfried on the head. Siegfried gave the boney fingers a sniff and a gentle lick.

“OK, well you have a good night,” Phillip said as he pulled the front door open. The face disappeared and the apartment door quickly closed.

“Who was that?!” Mark asked as they walked down the front steps and onto the sidewalk.

“Norma Desmond.”

“Who? I though you said her name was Armstrong.”

Phillip stopped and looked sideways at Mark.

“Never mind,” he said, shaking his head.

“Did you see that makeup?” Mark continued. “She must have put it on with a trowel. And that lipstick?!”

“Yeah, I guess she’s forgotten how to color within the lines,” Phillip said and immediately felt guilty. “She’s very sweet really, just very lonely,” he said. “She takes care of those flowers in that vase up in the window,” he said. “And fumigates the stairwell with her perfume at the same time.”

They walked down the sidewalk, Siegfried running from bush to bush, sniffing and hiking his leg from time to time.

“So what’s her story?” Mark asked.

“She works at the lingerie counter at Neiman’s, downtown” Phillip said. “Other than that, I don’t know much about her. I don’t know if she has any family or anything. I’ve never seen anyone visiting her. She’s always yelling at me for going out the front door and not pulling it to behind me.”

They continued down the sidewalk and around the block, Siegfried straining ahead of them. As they turned onto the side street, Mark put his arm around Phillip. They stopped at the corner to let Siegfried do his business by a tree. And for Phillip to throw a bag of trash in the dumpster A passing car slowed and honked.

Phillip blinked away from the headlights. “See, that’s what I get for letting you out in public,” he said. “The people in that car were brazenly trying to pick up my boyfriend off the street. I need to chain you up and keep you inside as my love slave.”

They walked around the corner and back toward the front door.

“So does that mean I can call in and quit my job tomorrow?” Mark teased after a few more paces down the sidewalk.

“Um, probably not, actually” Phillip said.

“Oh,” Mark sighed. “Well it was nice being a kept boy for a couple of minutes anyway,” he said and reached around and stuck his hand in Phillip’s back pocket.

They returned to the apartment and resettled on the sofa. There were no more sports events on, so Phillip flipped through the channels until he came across a movie, some western that he vaguely remembered.

“I’ve seen this before. I think this has something to do with some army unit getting massacred by the Cherokee or something.”

“Oh, great. That’s romantic,” Mark said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize romance was what you were looking for,” Phillip said, laughing.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

Mark reached around and slapped the back of Phillip’s head.

“Ow.”

They stayed on the sofa watching the movie and laughing about the stupid commercials. Phillip got a big tumbler of wine for himself and a Coke for Mark. They lay watching the movie. Finally, there was one long scene with the cavalry riding off into the sunset, out of the gates of the fort to their obvious deaths.

“Yeah, see, I remember seeing this movie now,” Phillip said. “The cute young bugler’s pet dog gets out of his leash and runs off to follow the troops. He arrives right after the massacre, just in time to search among the corpses and whine and lick the face of his master.” Philip took a swig of his wine. “I cried like a baby at that scene, as I recall.”

Sure enough, the next scene showed the little white terrier mutt with a big black spot chewing at his bindings until he freed himself. He tore off across the fort’s parade grounds, just making it out the gates before they were closed and barred. The camera panned out as he ran breathlessly through the scrub.

Phillip grabbed the remote. “I really don’t want to see that.” He cycled through the channels a couple of times before stopping. Even though the Taxi episode was one they had both seen, they watched it until the commercial break when some cheesy car salesman appeared.

“You know, you look kinda like Tony Danza,” Phillip said, looking at Mark sideways.

“No, I don’t. I don’t look anything like Tony Danza,” Mark protested.

“OK, I admit it. I just made that up,” Phillip said. “You’re right. Tony Danza is much cuter.”

Mark elbowed Phillip in the ribs. The show returned and they watched without speaking.

“So is that what west Texas is like?” Mark asked. “All those mesas and stuff. Like on that movie. Did you have coyotes?”

“As pets, you mean?” Phillip laughed. “No, I never saw or heard a coyote. And there were no buttes or anything like that. I lived up on the plains. It was flat. Very flat. Kansas flat,” Phillip said. “There are no trees, no hills, no streams, no nothing. The Spanish called it ‘llano estacado,’meaning ‘staked plain.’ The story is that when the Spanish conquistadors were exploring, the land was so flat and empty and featureless that they had to drive stakes into the ground to remember where they’d been and keep from getting lost. Kind of like leaving breadcrumbs I guess. Of course, now we have water towers and highway overpasses to mark territory.”

“It sounds like the “Wizard of Oz,” Mark shuddered. “At least the first part.”

“Oh, it was very black and white,” Phillip said. “Or at least very brown,” he continued. “Everything was brown. Mud brown. The houses were brown. The people were brown. The animals were brown. Even the leaves on the trees were brown,” Phillip said. “When there were trees…,” he added. “Our only trees were spindly things that had been hauled in from somewhere else. They don’t normally grow there, you know. There was a nursery in my hometown that supplied trees for landscaping. The owner grew them in a low area at the intersection of two highways. Of course, it just happened to be where the town sewer emptied - water and fertilizer, both free. But everyone said he had the best pecan trees in the county.”

Mark made a distasteful face.

“Yeah,” Phillip said, agreeing. “We never had one of his trees, so I never ate any of the pecans.

“I don’t think I’d like it out there. Not having a lot of trees. Where I grew up, there are big pine trees everywhere. You couldn’t get away from the smell of them. I used to go out in the country just because it was so quiet. The needles muffled your steps. You could hide from anyone out there.”

“Well, we did have some trees,” Phillip remarked. “When you’re out in the country, you can always tell where a farmhouse is because you can see it off in the distance surrounded by a clump of trees. Or with a row of trees running in a straight line out to the road. They plant them that way to make wind breaks. And believe me, there’s wind…” Phillip shook his head. “I’ve seen it so strong it can blow a car across the road. Flags fly straight out from the pole as if somehow held by a crossbar. Kind of like that flag they planted on the moon. And the dust,” he paused. “I’ve seen dust storms last for days. I’ve seen storms on Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Easter, Memorial Day, 4th of July, pretty much any day of the year – the sky the color of poupon mustard and the wind so gritty it would cake in the corners of your mouth and scour the enamel off your teeth if you smiled too for too long.” Phillip looked around at Mark, whose face was wide-eyed and somewhat horrified.

“Or that was the story, anyway,” Phillip grinned.

Mark relaxed.

“But it wasn’t all awful,” Phillip said. “There were the sunsets. They were gorgeous. Colors you don’t see here. Maybe all that dust in the air. And once the night came on, there were the stars. You just don’t see the stars here like you can out there. And then of course there were thunderstorms. They were pretty awesome. I remember one moving in once. I was out on the road, and it was blowing in from the southwest, as most thunderstorms do. I don’t know how many thousands of feet into the air the cloud rose, but it was big and black and green and looked like a bruise on the sky. And moving really fast. My mom always said that you didn’t have to worry about them until they started boiling. Anyway, it looked like the end of the world that day,” Phillip stopped and took a drink of wine. “But it turned out OK. We just got a lot of rain.” .

“Weren’t the winters pretty brutal, though?”

“No, not really. We rarely got snow. That’s generally more up to the north. But it can get cold,” Phillip said and slurped again from his tumbler. “Especially when blue northers blow through. We get a lot of those. You’d can see them off in the distance, to the north. The sky gets this really dark blue and then the front blows through. I’ve seen the temperature drop within minutes. One day I went to church; it was 85 when I went in and 38 when I came out an hour later.”

Mark shivered. “Is that when you get snow?”

“No, like I said, my area rarely gets snow,” he said and clicked through several TV channels. Finally settling on an Odd Couple rerun. “Although it can look like snow a lot during the late fall.”

“What do you mean, ‘look like snow’?”

“In the fall. During ginning time. Once all the farmers get their cotton crop in and to the gin. I remember driving home one year from college and thinking that there had been an ice storm that I hadn’t heard about. It was funny, because the road was obviously dry, but the trees and the telephone poles and the buildings were shimmering white. It took me a while before I realized it was lint from the cotton gins, sticking to everything.”

Mark nodded. “So what was it like growing up out there?”

“Well, there’s not much to tell. I had a pretty boring life. I don’t remember much truthfully, but mostly because there’s not much to remember.”

“What about your family. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

Phillip thought for a moment. “Well, there are two things I remember about my brother. We went to San Antonio once when we were kids. Saw the Alamo and all that stuff. Then we had to go on to Corpus Christi for something. A convention for my dad, I think. All I remember is driving forever in the car and seeing nothing.”

“I’ve never been to Corpus.”

“There’s not much to see as I recall. But I was a kid then, so what did I know. Anyway, my brother and I spent the whole weekend in the hotel swimming pool. Got excruciatingly sunburned. Someone told my mom that vinegar was a cure, so my salient memory from that trip is my brother and I sleeping in the same bed in the motel and smelling like a dill pickles.”

Mark smiled. “So did you get along with your brother?”

“As far as brothers do, I suppose. My only other memory is the time I threw the butcher knife at him.”

“You threw a knife at him?!”

“A butcher knife,” Phillip corrected. “Yes I did. And I had pretty good aim. If he hadn’t suddenly veered to head down the hall, I’d have gotten him, just next to the spine and right between the shoulder blades. As it was, it stuck in the wall, flexing from one side to the other. We had to tell my dad how it happened.” Phillip shook his head. “I’m sure I got a whipping.”

Mark didn’t say anything.

“Anyway, he deserved it I’m sure. He must have been taunting me or something.”

“I’ve got to go pee,” Mark said, getting up and heading off down the hall. Phillip tried to pick up the plot between Oscar and Felix. After the commercial, Mark returned and lay back down on the sofa.

“So what about your friends?” he asked.

“You’re being awfully nosy tonight. What’s up with that?”

“I don’t know. It’s time, I guess.”

“Well, I didn’t have many friends. I pretty much grew up alone.”

“No friends from school?”

“It was a rural school, so most of my friends lived out in the country and disappeared during the summer. And the kids who did live in town, my parents wouldn’t let us play with. They were ‘unsuitable’.”

“So what did you do?”

“Played the piano mostly. At least during the day while my parents were at work. They didn’t like me playing at night.”

“I want you to play sometime for me.”

Phillip watched Oscar and Felix engage in some heart to heart conversation that provided the point of the episode. He kissed Mark on the head. Then came another commercial.

“And I read a lot,” Phillip continued. “I remember going to the bookmobile. It came once a week on Thursday afternoon and parked in the lot of the First Baptist Church. That was the big church in town. My family was lowly Methodists. So there was this fat librarian with teased coal black dyed hair who chain smoked. AlfaDean was her name. She always wore a black shift and a necklace of big stones and turquoise. Anyway, she ran the thing and checked out the books to me. ‘Hon,’ she’d say. She always called everyone ‘hon.’ ‘Hon, that book will be due in two weeks,’ she’d say as she pressed the little dater down on the fly page on the back cover. I could still smell the smoke on those books two weeks later.”

The show ended and the late night news started.

“Let’s go to bed,” Phillip said.

                                                *  *  *  *

Phillip was laying on his back, looking through the short curtains hanging over the air conditioner in the window, staring at the spotlight on the building across the driveway. Mark was beside him with his arms around Phillip’s shoulders. Phillip knew that neither of them was asleep and anyway he didn’t want to sleep yet. He was thinking about Mark’s questions that evening.

“You don’t do chewing tobacco, do you?” he asked.

“No,” Mark laughed. “And where did that come from?”

“I don’t know. I just thought that growing up in east Texas and being a big football jock and everything, I just thought you might do chewing tobacco.”

“Well, I don’t,” Mark stated. “That’s stuff’s nasty.”

Phillip rolled over and got up and went to the bathroom. When he returned, he climbed back into bed. Mark was laying on his back. Phillip rolled up onto his side and looked down at him and reached over and pushed Mark’s bangs apart with his thumb and forefinger and then ran his finger over Mark’s smooth chin.

“Besides,” Mark said, looking at the ceiling. “I was never a big football jock.”

“Oh yes you were…,” Phillip teased. “Oh yes you were a big football jock. Big Mr. Football Jock Mark. So how many cheerleaders did you date?”

“None.”

“OK, maybe no dates. But how many cheerleaders did you have sex with? And don’t try and tell me none of them was interested. I know what goes on under those bleachers. So how many?”

“None.”

“What? None was interested? Or none that you had sex with?”

Mark’s jaw clinched. “No cheerleaders. Not one. No one else either. I had sex with no one. I couldn’t tell you whether anyone was interested. OK?” Mark look away at the wall. “Why are you asking me about this anyway?”

Phillip thought about Scott and what he had said about Mark’s privacy. Fuck, he thought. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tease you. And I didn’t mean to pry.” He waited to see if Mark would look at him. “But I told you all about me when I was young. I was just curious. I wondered what growing up in east Texas was like? We’re you good in school?”

Mark looked back from the wall. Phillip was relieved. Safe territory again.

“Not particularly.” Mark shrugged. “All my sisters were, though. But my parents didn’t expect me to be, so they didn’t hassle me about being mediocre.”

“Hmm.” Phillip was silent. “So what did you do other than play football?”

“Not much really. I kind of stayed off to myself mostly.”

“You must have had hobbies.”

“My dad tried to get me to go hunting, but I didn’t really like it. I didn’t like the noise and the smell, and I didn’t like the idea of killing things.”

“Well…, that’s good. That you didn’t like killing things, I mean.”

“I suppose. My dad didn’t think so. He thought I was a pussy.”

OK, you should probably drop this subject too, Phillip warned himself. “What about your mom? What did she do?”

“Church, mostly. We went three times a week.”

“I can’t imagine that. My family wasn’t particularly religious. My mother hated hypocrites.”

Mark shrugged. “It was OK, I guess. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time.”

Phillip rolled onto his back. They were both laying side by side again. Siegfried was curled up at the foot of the bed. Phillip could smell the air through the open window at the head of the bed.

“So when did you figure out you were gay?” Phillip asked. He expected no answer, so he was surprised when Mark responded.

“Sometime in junior high, I guess,” he said. “Willy Vasquez...” he chuckled. “He was the first guy on our team who had any chest hair.” Mark paused. “And of course I thought all the coaches were sexy,” he said. “At least I now know that I thought that. I certainly didn’t know the word for what I thought then.”

Phillip turned his head. Mark’s eyes were bright and he was smiling.

“There was this one coach,” Mark said. “He used to shower after we practiced. I would hang around in the locker room pretending to have not gotten all my stuff together so I would have a reason to still be there. I used to watch him in the shower. It made me so, I don’t know, happy, watching him.”

Phillip moaned lasciviously.

Mark punched him in the shoulder. “Stop it! It wasn’t like that. I was just a kid. There was just some attraction. I don’t know what it was.”

“Right,” Phillip said. “Just an attraction…”

“It was,” Mark said. “Just an attraction. Now Willy Vazquez…that was more than just an attraction. It was more like an obsession. It’s not like I wanted to have sex with him or anything, I’m not even sure I had any idea what ‘sex’ meant then. I was just obsessively curious about him. His likes. His dislikes. What clothes he wore. What food he ate. What he did at night. What he did on the weekend.” Mark paused. “And I guess I wondered how he felt as well. I mean what he felt like.” Mark stopped, confused. “I guess I mean, what it would be like to touch him.” He paused again. “What it would be like to see him jerk off.”

Phillip looked away from Mark’s face. .

“So what about you?” Mark asked. “Who was your first crush?”

Phillip thought. “I guess my seventh-grade science teacher. He had really blond hair and blue eyes. And these cute little dimples when he grinned. God, I think I was in love with him. I saw him once in a department store on a Saturday afternoon, buying ties. Away from school, I was afraid of him and thought he was somehow threatening. But he saw me in the store and so I felt I should go up to him and speak. It took me forever to think of what to say to him, but when I did, he just asked me which tie I thought he should buy. I don’t remember what the ties looked like or which one I recommended, although I don’t think he ever wore it to class.” Phillip paused. “Anyway, he only taught one year and then left and I never saw him again.”

“Awww…’When I kissed the tea-cher...’” Mark sang into Phillip’s ear.

Phillip reached over and punched Mark’s upper arm. “Stop being so mean. I was very fragile then…and don’t you dare quote ABBA lyrics to me.”

“OK, I’m sorry,” Mark said and laughed. “You know Scott is a seventh-grade English teacher.”

“Yeah, I know. He told me. Some kids get all the luck,” Phillip groused. “My seventh-grade English teacher was eighty years old, had more wrinkles than a Shar Pei and coal black dyed hair,” Phillip paused. “There’s no justice in the world.”

They both lay on the bed, each in his own thoughts. Mark rolled up on his elbow and looked at Phillip. He touched the end of Phillip’s nose with the tip of his finger. When Phillip turned his head away, Mark ran his hand through Phillip’s hair.

“I’ll bet you were cute when you were in the seventh grade.”

“As opposed to now, I suppose…?”

“In addition to now. Don’t be so defensive, silly.” Mark pulled his hand up and ran it through the hair on Phillip’s chest.

“So…” Phillip thought, deciding whether to begin. “So tell me about Ken.” There it was, it’s out now. He waited.

Mark lay back down and looked at the ceiling. “How do you know about Ken?”

Phillip paused. “Scott told me.”

“Scott has a big mouth.”

“Scott cares about you. I asked him to tell me all the things I shouldn’t do.”

Mark looked at the ceiling. “It’s not possible for you to do to me what Ken did. So let’s just drop it.”

Phillip waited to see if Mark would continue. “OK,” he said finally when Mark didn’t say anything. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry he hurt you. And don’t try and tell me he didn’t”

“Oh, he hurt me all right,” Mark said. “I won’t deny that. But let’s just say that Ken taught me a lot about life in a very short period of time. I needed to grow up fast and he saw to that.”

“I’m sorry. I had no right to bring it up.”

“Actually, it’s good that you did. I haven’t thought about Ken in a long time. It might be good for me to remember.”

Phillip slid his arm under Mark’s neck. He thought about the western movie with the bugler and his dog. He pulled Mark’s head close.

                                                *  * ** **

The next morning, as the light streamed in through the windows, Phillip finally decided to give up the charade that he was asleep. He had been lying with his eyes closed and his head on Mark’s chest, but now he groaned loudly and stretched.

“Hey, good morning Sleepy,” Mark said.

“And who does that make you? Dopey?” Phillip said as he strained and pulled his fists up to his head. Mark ran his hands over Phillip’s arms, at first softly, but then pulling them back until Phillip yelped.

“OK, OK, OK, I give up.”

Mark released Phillip, who rolled over, got out of bed and pulled a pair of gym shorts on.

“I’m going to go get the paper and put the coffee on.”

Phillip walked into the kitchen and filled the machine with water and coffee. He slipped on a tank top hung over the back of a dining table chair and went downstairs. He picked up the day’s paper and scanned the front page as he climbed the stairs and returned to the kitchen to check on the coffee. There was just enough for a cup, which Phillip poured and drank while he laid spread the paper out on the counter and read the front page Mark came into the kitchen and put his arms around Phillip’s waist and hung his head over Phillip’s shoulder. “Let’s go back to bed,” he said. They walked through the living room, Phillip with the coffee cup in one hand and Mark’s hand in the other, Mark picking up the newspaper on the way.

When they got back to the bedroom, Phillip sat the cup on the bedside table, and they both climbed back into bed. “Give me the sports page,” Mark said. Phillip leafed through the sheaves of paper, handed Mark the section he wanted, and dropped the classified ads on the floor. He sat up against the wall, drinking his coffee and reading the front page with Mark’s head lying in his lap. He finished off the front page, the editorials, and letters, and tossed the section aside. He stopped and stared at Siegfried, curled up in the gap between Mark’s legs. He frowned.

“Mark?”

“Yes…?” Mark said absently, still reading stats.

“I think there’s something we need to talk about.”

“OK,” Mark said, turning his head and looking up at Phillip. “What?”

“I’m not really sure I’m happy with the fact that Siegfried prefers sleeping next to you instead of me.”

Mark groaned. He reached under the cover and gave Phillip’s leg a shake and began reading the paper again. “Can I help it if you’re a bad father?”

“Hey, that has nothing to do with it. Schnauzers are fickle. They’ll love anyone who’ll fill up their dish.”

“I think I’ll pass on that one.”

Phillip kissed Mark on the forehead and started reading the paper again. Mark lay back and looked at the books in the shelves in the wall.

“What happened to him?” he asked.

“Who?” Phillip said still reading the newspaper.

“Him. What happened to his nose?” Mark pointed to the stuffed bear sitting on a shelf in the corner.

“Oh, you mean Parsifal,” Phillip said looking at where Mark was pointing. “A friend of mine at work gave him to me for a birthday present. I used to set him up on the pillows when I made the bed each morning. And then one day when I came home, he was lying on the floor with his nose all ripped up like that. I guess Siegfried got jealous or something.” He looked at the bear. The dark brown threads that made his nose had been partially ripped, and a few hung down the side of his muzzle. “Poor guy, he does look like snot’s coming out of his nose.”

Mark laughed. “So why didn’t you buy a new one.”

“I don’t know. I just never did.”

Phillip went back to the business section. Mark picked up the sports again. They read in silence.

“And I’m not a bad father,” Phillip said, turning the page.

They spent the rest of the morning reading and dozing. Once Phillip was done with the

newspaper, Mark picked it up and looked through the entertainment section.

“You want to go to a movie today?”

“Sure. See anything that you’d be interested in?” Phillip asked as Mark flipped the pages, looking at the ads and grunting. “OK, see anything that I’d be interested in?” Phillip said and finished off his coffee.

“Yes I do, but we’re not going to go see ‘Risky Business’ just so you can watch Tom Cruise dance around in his underwear.” Phillip looked at Mark and pouted.

“Go see it on your own time,” Mark said absently and held the page up close to his face to read the timings. “Scott said that ‘Sophie’s Choice’ was very good.”

“Yeah, but very depressing. I don’t need to see a movie where they all kill themselves in the end.”

“OK, if you don’t want something sad, let’s see….what about “ET?”

“Well, that’s sad too I’ve heard, but it’s got a John Williams soundtrack so it’s has to have great music. I just hope I don’t embarrass you.”

“Why would you embarrass me?”

“When the cute alien leaves at the end, and I start blubbering.”

“Well, so much for that movie. Thanks for telling me the ending. I guess I’ll keep looking.”

“You do that. I’m getting up.” Phillip rolled off the bed and walked into the bathroom. He ran his hand over the stubble and then filled the sink and splashed some water on his face. He grabbed the can of shaving cream and covered his chin and neck. As he picked up the razor from the shallow dish next to the faucet, he looked into the mirror. Mark was leaning in the doorway.

“What?” Phillip asked as he wet the razor and positioned it perpendicular to his ear. “What are you looking at?” He glanced over at Mark and then looked back in the mirror and began to pull the razor down his cheek. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter. Just watching you shave. Is that all right. ”

“I guess,” Phillip said dubiously, swishing the razor in the sink to clean it. He looked at Mark and then positioned the razor against his face and started scraping it against his cheek again.

“I like to watch you shave,” Mark said.

Phillip glanced over again. Mark was leaning with his head against the door frame, looking very serious. His hands were crossed across his chest.

“I suppose,” Phillip said, looking back in the mirror. “Personally, I can’t imagine a more boring thing to watch, myself.”

“That’s because you get to see it everyday.”

Phillip smiled. He took three short strokes to shave around his chin and then started pulling the razor quickly down his neck. “Well anyway, just because you can go three days without shaving, it’s not fair that I have to …shit!” He stopped and grabbed a washrag. “See, you made me cut myself.”

“I didn’t make you do anything,” Mark laughed.

“I told you I don’t like audiences,” Phillip said. “I don’t play piano well in front of them…”

“And evidently don’t shave well either.”

Phillip grumbled and used the washcloth to wipe the blood off his neck. Mark continued to stand in the doorway watching, but let Phillip finish shaving in peace. Phillip noticed the smirk on Mark’s face but chose to ignore it. He looked around for aftershave and winced when as he splashed it on his neck and face.

“Why are you squinting?” Mark asked.

“I don’t have my contacts in. I always put them in last,” Phillip said, wiping his face one last time. Here, rookie,” he said, tossing the washrag to Mark. “Go put that in the dirty clothes hamper.”

“And what’s the magic word…?”

“Please,” Phillip said petulantly, stretching the word to three syllables.

Mark left. Phillip turned on the tap and looked for his toothbrush. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. Mark’s stuff was all over the place as it always was when he stayed over. He squinted and searched, holding his face close to the counter. Screw it, he thought. He squinted once more and grabbed a turquoise toothbrush sticking out of the short glass in front of the mirror. He squeezed toothpaste onto the bristles, ran it under the water and brought it up to his mouth.

“What are you doing?!” Mark said, grabbing Phillip’s hand and pulling it away from his mouth. “That’s my toothbrush!”

Phillip looked up into the mirror. “Jeez, sorry. I can’t see OK? I just grabbed the first toothbrush I saw.”

Mark took it from Phillip’s hand.

“So, is there some kind of a problem?” Phillip asked.

Mark rinsed the toothbrush out and placed it down at the far end of the counter. “No, I…I just don’t like people using my stuff.”

“OK…” Phillip paused. “Thanks for telling me. I’ll be sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Phillip picked up a different brush and began brushing his teeth again. He stared at the mirror, not looking at Mark.

“Look, it’s just a quirk of mine,” Mark said. “I’m possessive about my stuff, I guess.” He came up behind Phillip and hugged him and put his chin on Phillip’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. But you have to promise me to not do it again.”

Phillip spit into the sink. “OK, no toothbrush. What about your comb?” he teased. “So does this mean we can’t wear each others’ clothes either?” he asked. “Not that mine would fit you,