One of Those Nights

The rain had been pouring down all day in Washington.

Roy had a lot of errands that day, and a dental appointment. So, by three in the afternoon, his socks were squishy, and his pant cuffs were wet. The humidity was intense, and the temperature seemed kind of high for October.

It was ten to four when he sat down in his dentist's waiting room in the Commonwealth Building on K Street. He pulled out his cell phone to check his office messages.

10/07 3:35pm
MESSAGE from
Ken
where r u

Right off the bat, Roy was annoyed. Ken was doing this more often lately. He'd call two or three times in an afternoon -- never to actually talk about anything meaningful. Just to chat, it seemed. Sometimes about absolutely nothing - he'd just be on the end of the line not saying anything. Roy would just hear Ken moving papers around on his desk or typing on his keyboard, and Ken would even interrupt their non-coversation to talk with people who stopped by his office doorway. He imagined Ken looking up at the person there, phone held between his ear and shoulder, looking busy. It only left Roy wondering what was going on between them.

It was nice to be wanted and summoned, but after a few months of this, Roy could only wonder what role he was actually serving in Ken's life. Was Roy just a phone?

He caught the receptionist staring at him. It was one of those vague stares, perhaps from someone who was bored sitting at a reception desk. Good, he thought, she stares, he calls -- what is this?

But he couldn't help but think that this was the first time she was sitting at the reception desk since Roy got HIV. She wasn't there in August when he came in for the x-rays and disclosed his status. Of all the doctor offices to be HIV-positive in, it always seemed like dental offices had the most hostility. They fixed your teeth, that's all. And all that blood was dangerous to them, an unwanted danger. They dealt in the mouth -- which is supposed to be clean -- and didn't want to hear about what you did down at the opposite end, where everything was dirty.

They didn't want to know you had dirty butt-sex for fun, not in a place with pristine white porcelain spitting bowls and little bibs. If only the butt-sex was happening at all lately, Roy thought.

Ken was always a really difficult character to figure out. He had lots of issues -- it made him human after all. He hadn't been drinking that much since they started going out and that cleared a lot of his emotional acne up. No rages anymore, no see-sawing from kink to despair.

Lately it seemed that Ken just needed a warm body next to him, and someone to call several times a day, if only just to put the call through. Ever since they'd reached their fourth month together, Roy had begun to wonder whether it could be anyone that Ken had in his life, so long as they promised not to leave him. For he seemed to need so little, and was losing interest in giving almost anything at all back.

She was staring again.

Roy gripped his phone tightly, stifling a bit of anger himself. He wished everyone would stop looking at him. He opened up his phone and dialed Ken.

*****

Clancy lay sprawled across Kevin's lap on the floor of the living room.

Kevin was on a marathon conference call with a client in the Caribbean, and was writing notes on a yellow pad as he stroked Clancy's head.

The rain was starting to intensify outside, and the sound of it rattling against the metal trim of his terrace was getting louder. He would normally get up and move to his desk in the other room, but he was too tired, and he wanted to stay there on the floor with Clancy, who hadn't been eating lately and was spending more time than usual under the bed during the afternoon.

"What is that sound?" someone on the call said. It was one of the women, who annoy easily.

"I'm sorry, it's me, it's raining very hard here," Kevin said. "I'll mute myself."

And he did. It was kind of a relief, as he was better off listening as he prepared for this new program he'd be running for this client. He hadn't yet gone to the region and established his bona fides to the sprawling team he'd be working with, so chiming in wasn't a good idea anyway.

But what's more, it was Friday. It was raining one of those soaking rains outside. He was exhausted from the week. And he was pulling in his emotional oars.

His work was important to him -- and indeed, sometimes he was swinging between Brazil, Mexico, France, the U.S. and some island nation someplace in a single day on the phone and via email, but he knew he could do the work and still tend to the life he refused to put on the back-burner. He knew he could do it all -- all that he wanted to do.

Ever since he'd gotten off the crutches and returned to normal life from the leg injury, Kevin had a crystal clear picture of what he had, and what he didn't have -- what he wanted, and what he didn't want.

And the idea of having it all vs. doing it all was going to be resolved.

He hired a maid for the first time in his life, finally. Lulu badgered him into it as he lay on his bed in September, completely desperate and unable to do everything himself as he'd always done his whole life. Just looking around the apartment from floor level, with a debate over advertising specs raging in his ear, and the sound of the rain and the light twitches from the sleeping dog on his lap, he could see that the spotlessness of the room brightened everything, and made it all beautiful...accomplished...more certain.

And a week or so earlier, it was one of those nights. He'd run out of ways to procrastinate about talking to Dane about his feelings. All through the leg ordeal, Dane was wonderful as always in being attentive to Kevin's needs. There was more than enough food in the house, and Clancy was being well cared for at Dane's house in Arlington. On the rare evening that Dane was free from work, he'd always offer to come over and spend some time. And he was there on the weekends. Always asking, what do you need? And always going overboard to provide it.

And that's where Kevin reached the water's edge. Little known to Dane was this ongoing debate in Kevin's head that dated back years, maybe decades. What was it that Kevin needed?

The easy, Oprah-ish answer would be "love." It was easy to answer, and to feel, that one needed a man and needed to be loved and needed to have this, this and this in a relationship. Indeed, when Dane and Kevin first started dating, and their romance began, there was a hint of anxiety from Dane over whether Kevin was needy -- whether he'd push Dane to move in together or something. It was an odd anxiety, as Kevin was never more happy to live alone than at this time in his life. And after so many relationships with men, three of which resulted in live-in situations that blew up, Kevin had the philosophy that if he and another man were destined to be together forever, then they had plenty of time to get to that issue later.

It pushed Kevin to confront this earlier contention in his mind, from his more neurotic twenties, that he "needed" things. Indeed, when Kevin moved into his new apartment in 2002, he decided that he didn't want to need anything or anyone. Thus began the journey to discovering what he wanted.

There's a difference, he reminded Dane many times. And what Kevin wanted became clear, simple to describe, and --frankly-- reasonable to ask for...in terms of relationships with men, with clients, with colleagues, with family and with friends.

So that night that was one of those nights was the night that Kevin and Dane broke up. It was sad, and it was clear. But it was coming, they both knew it. And it was amicable, and tender as it always should be. That's what Kevin wanted.

Now he had to deal with a sad dog, one that was attached to life at Dane's house quite obviously, and intensely attached to Dane personally. He was a dog Kevin had rescued six years earlier, who'd in turn rescued him from an abusive, murderous owner as a puppy. Clancy was, by such account, a privileged dog surrounded by more that he could possibly need. But even a dog has the right to want as well. And as Kevin stroked Clancy's head and watched him sleep, he knew it would be no trouble at all keeping him and Dane together as closely as they were before.

*****

Elaine was out of cigarettes now. She was smoking the last one in the pack, and as per the deal she'd made with herself, that would be the last one at all.

She stood in her kitchen, looking out at Rock Creek Park from the window across the way. It seemed like the rain was never going to stop.

The cigarette was already half gone. It meant she'd have to do something next. It would have to be big, if it was going to rouse her to some direction away from the cigarette issue.

She took another puff. No more trips, not today anyway. It was raining. She had no clean clothes. She was tired.

So what then? What did Elaine want now?

She finished it off, quite casually. Ran the butt under the water in the sink and dropped it down the disposal behind the match she'd tossed down there minutes earlier.

I'll go to the gym, she thought. I'll go have a nice workout or something. Maybe sit in the steam.

She leaned forward and looked at the rain. She felt cold and tired. Traffic was backed up on the parkway, and she could hear sirens.

[Posted: October 8, 2005] FEEDBACK PERMALINK

Silence Tells Me All I Need to Know

Ken was staring at the mirror again, like he did every morning.

Roy, in turn, stared at Ken from the shower. Like he did every time Ken stared at the mirror.

Neither of them would ever say anything during all this anymore. They used to have chatty conversations in the bathroom, whether they were at Ken's place in the Mondrian or at Roy's more comfortable digs in Penn Quarter --- where Ken rarely wanted to stay.

Roy was getting a little irritated by the silence. He didn't mind that Ken was quiet. It was nice. Peaceful sometimes. But lately, it was more a silence than a quiet. Something was going on behind those eyes for sure; Roy could tell. There was the heat of the motors turning. It showed.

And in the little void of it, Roy was better these days at not allowing bad shit fill up. Roy had been expert all his life in allowing all sorts of polluted, sewage-strewn waters fill the little pot holes and ravines in his mind. Ironically, it all seemed to finally get under control when something truly polluted, something truly awful, spilled into his bloodstream.

It was a strange sort of awakening. What mattered and what didn't became much clearer. And opening his eyes to the good things made it easier -- tidier -- in dealing with the actual bad stuff.

But still...that neutral din of silence. Roy never quite could handle it so well.

Too ambiguous.

And only once --a few nights earlier -- had Roy ever felt a pang of jealousy...hmm, maybe anger was a better word...about the HIV thing between them. Ken was running all over town towards the end, getting fucked by all sorts of creepy characters and doing all sorts of drugs, never using condoms, and he ended up negative last spring, and again in September.

But Roy's single morning of stupidity in Paris left him with an incurable infection that would be a feature in his life forever.

Only for a flash did Roy think that. They were at Thai Tanic, waiting for their take-out. Ken was looking in the mirrored glass behind the bar, sort of staring off into space really. He had on a new Banana Republic jacket, and reached up to scratch his cheek. Roy always liked Ken's cheeks. They were sort of chippy and dimply. It made him look younger than his age. And Roy instantly remembered running into Paul Kurowski a week earlier in the street. Paul had been sitting at a table, alone, at Trio's on 17th Street, babbling into his cell phone about something or another. He'd been HIV positive since the eighties probably, an old timer. Lots of those in D.C. still. But Roy hadn't seen him probably in two years or more.

And Paul's cheeks were very sunken. It was that face-wasting thing that happens when you're on the meds for a while. Roy had seen some print ad in the Blade for cheek implants or something, too. It seemed so awful to contemplate. He wasn't all that old, but it would seem that his own cheeks would lose their youth long before Ken's if they stayed together. Long before Kevin's boyish face also finally surrendered to age (probably gracefully, too, like his mother). Long before Sean lost his childlike smile and began to look more like an older man. Long before the parties were all over.

And as he stood in the shower, looking at Ken as he seemed so far away, almost like he was in some other life, looking into that mirror, Roy slowly ran his soapy hand over his stomach. His skin was smooth. The little hairs trailing below his belly button were soft and thin and whispy. He could feel them.

He could choose to live in the moment if he wanted to.

Roy just couldn't figure out where Ken was living.

*****

"So Ken is coming with Roy, hmmm?" Madison asked as she poured the Veuve Clicquot into her orange juice.

"Yes, they both said yes to my face," Kevin said, cutting a bagel.

"Well, this is going to be interesting," Sean said as he assembled another batch of bacon for the microwave.

It was Sunday morning, and Kevin was having them over for brunch. It had been so long since they'd all just hung out. It had been so long since they'd all been in Washington on the same Sunday afternoon.

What's more, Kevin was determined not to slip into some state of depression over the break up with Dane. He wanted to go immediately back to the life he always liked the most -- the social whirl, on a small scale, with his best friends. Indeed, he'd never allowed for enough time with everyone when he would date someone. People like David and Sasha and Elaine and Ran & Jeff, not to mention his best friends, Sean and Roy, would get short shrift. And he'd never get the chance to know new people like Madison.

Kevin thrived on close relationships. With everyone, not just one man.

So -- off came the champagne corks. It was Sunday.

"Is Elaine coming?" Madison asked.

"No, she's jogging today, if you can believe it."

"Are you kidding me?" Sean said, laughing.

"I'm serious, she said she quit smoking and she's flushing her system out." (Kevin)

"Wow, good for her," Madison said, smiling. "You know, I do prefer to hear about the healthy things our friends are doing. I know it won't leave us much to talk about but..."

At that, they all heard the theme from "S.W.A.T." begin to emanate from Madison's clutch purse.

"Oh my, I'll have to take this one outside..." (Madison)

She reached into her purse and took out her cell phone, and excused herself out to Kevin's terrace. It was a sunny day, with a perfect blue sky.

"Hello?"

"Madison."

"Anthony?"

"Yeah, hey, how's it going?"

"Well, it's going fine. No complaints. How are you?"

"I'm good. I'm in the car right now..."

"Oh yeah?"

"...I'm heading out to Harrisburg at the moment and I was thinking about you as I was looking out at the open road, and just decided it was time to call."

"Well, that's very sweet. It's great to hear from you."

"So, what is a lovely lady doing on such a lovely day?"

"Oh well...." (smiling, blushing, looking down seven stories as she leaned against the rail)

"Are you at home?"

"Actually, no, I'm at a friend's place across the street. We're having a little brunch, that's all. Just relaxing..."

"Oh, am I interrupting?"

"No, no, it's okay, we're just really casual, and we're still cooking and all. Not all the guests have arrived yet."

"Great..."

"But that's what I'm doing today."

"Ah, I see..." (and he made another one of those little laughs, much like he did on the plane. Those sexy little laughs)

"What are you doing out in Harrisburg? Visiting?"

"Yeah, I have a regional meeting tomorrow morning out there I have to attend, so I thought I'd go early, since the meeting starts at 7."

"On a Monday?"

"Well, the police are always at work, you know..."

"That's brutal, though. Even the vice squad needs a break now and then."

"Well, you are right there. In fact, I was thinking of doing just that this evening..."

"Oh, you were...."

Madison looked all the way down to the piazza behind Kevin's building. A good, long, seven story plunge into concrete and metal. Much like what she imagined a night with Anthony would be that evening.

"In Harrisburg?" (Madison)

"Um, no actually, in Washington..."

(silence)

"In Washington?"

"Yeah, I was hoping you'd let me take you out to a really nice place for dinner and continue our conversation."

Madison took another breath, and looked out at the blue sky. She'd rather be looking up from now on in life, not down.

"Oh Anthony, that just might be the most perfect way to end this beautiful day..."

She could hear his sigh a little bit.

"But..."

"Oh, no..."

"I, um...."

(silence)

"I think it's obvious that I find you very attractive....and what's more, I also find you really interesting. To be honest, if there was a guy anywhere you was truly my type, I think you're the only man I've ever met who has come close," she said.

"Okay...." (he had this sort of adolescent tone in his voice, like he hadn't been disappointed since he was a teenager)

"But....I just got divorced not too long ago. I just moved across the country."

She looked around, fishing for the clarity of mind not to relent.

"...and I just don't want to get involved with a married man, Anthony. I just can't. I won't."

At that, it seemed like yet another little bit of the past seeped out of Madison, up there in the clouds above the streets of her new hometown, and floated away. For her to cast aside a date with a man she couldn't stop thinking about, whom she met under the most fantastical of circumstances, and whose touch and look and smell she'd never forget -- it was one of the bigger moments of her life.

"Don't be hurt, please?" she said.

"Oh...I'm not. Honestly, Madison (pause) I didn't think I'd ever have the courage to call you."

"Why?"

"Well, you can imagine from our conversation that it's not the first time for me..."

"I guess so."

"And believe me, it's easier than you think for me to pick up the phone and call some girl someplace. One of these girls I tend to meet who want what I want, no complications, and are just as easy to cast aside as they are to call."

"Mm hmmm.."

"But you're different."

"How?"

"Because there's a lot more to you. And there was a lot more to us."

"I know..." (this was getting difficult)

"And I hope there always will be, even if we never talk again."

Madison sighed. It indeed would be easier to always love that perfect man she met on the plane home from Los Angeles if she never spoke to him again.

Better to keep looking up, and looking ahead.

 

[Posted: October 18, 2005] FEEDBACK PERMALINK