Cleanness

by Garth Greenwell

  R. was late, as always, and after half an hour I had begun to wonder whether he would come at all. He often canceled our plans, usually after I had rearranged my own schedule to accommodate his, however inconvenient it was; and sometimes he didn’t give any notice, just an apology hours after I had given up waiting. It was a popular restaurant, busy with the dinner rush, and I could feel myself becoming a spectacle, quiet in a convivial room, a bit of negative space. I had already fended off several approaches from the servers, saying I was waiting for a friend, he was on his way, gesturing to my lifeless phone as though I had heard from him, though in fact he hadn’t responded to the texts I sent. The waiters had become more insistent as the tables around me filled; soon I would have to order something or leave. Even inside we could hear the wind; it was a sound above our human voices, a sound beyond the scale of living things. I always forgave R. when he didn’t appear, I accepted any excuse he offered, whatever my annoyance I never complained. I wanted to think of this as patience, but really I knew it was fear; I would push him away if I demanded too much.

  I had been sitting too long now, I was steeling myself to go, when with a sudden increase of noise and a change of pressure, a slight disorder in the air, the door opened and R. came in. He was wearing a hat and scarf and a heavy winter coat, though it wasn’t very cold; but then he was from a warm country, it was his first real fall. He grew up in the Azores, and though his town seemed beautiful in the photos I had found online, orderly white houses brilliant against the sea, he would never go back there, he said; it was a small place, he hated small places. He saw me right away, and without waiting to be greeted by a server he began making his way over, pulling off his hat and scarf as he walked. I was struck again by his beauty, which was offhand and accidental, with his disheveled hair and ruffled clothes, a beauty stripped of self-regard. Even though it was familiar to me I felt it as a kind of physical force, not welcoming me but pushing me off, so that I was always astonished to find I could take him in my arms. This was what I did now, embracing him though I had intended to remain seated, to greet him coolly and punish him a little. We parted after a second or two, but not before I heard R. make a sound I had come to love, a little grunt of happiness, a homecoming sound, and all my irritation drained away.

  It’s crazy outside, he said as he sat down, gesturing to the window beside us, it’s totally crazy, I’ve never seen anything like it, have you—but he went on before I could answer. He was sorry he was late, he said, he was supposed to go to a party but had bowed out at the last minute, and then it had been hard to persuade his roommate to go on without him. I thought I wouldn’t be able to come, R. said, and I made a noncommittal sound, feeling my annoyance return. Oh, he said, are you mad, and he wore an expression of such openness and willingness to be in the wrong that it was impossible to stay angry. I told him it was all right, that he shouldn’t worry, it was nothing. No, he said, it isn’t nothing, I hate that I can’t see you when I want to, and he made a small gesture with his hand, extending it slightly toward mine. We couldn’t touch, of course, it would be imprudent, but he flexed his fingers in a way that I knew meant desire, that though he was touching the polished wood it was me he wanted to touch. This was clear in his expression, too, when I looked at his face and he said very softly, almost mouthing it, Skupi, one of the few words of Bulgarian he had learned. It means dear or of great price, which was what I had thought on our second or third meeting as he lay naked beside me and I ran my hand along his side. I had said the word almost without intending to, Skupi, and he asked me what it meant and then drew me to him and whispered it like an affirmation in my ear. It had become our private name for each other, and I think it was then, when we first uttered the word, that I realized I was caught by him, that however things turned out they would have consequence, and I was both frightened by this and gave myself over to it, I decided I would let whatever might happen between us happen.

  I remembered this when he spoke the word, and then, as if dispelling the atmosphere he had created, he turned his attention to the menu. The restaurant had an Italian name but that didn’t mean anything, nearly every restaurant in Sofia served pizza, and nearly all of them offered the same dozen or so Bulgarian dishes, meat and vegetables and eggs, or all of them I could afford. R. studied every page, and then he ordered what he always did, pointing to it mutely with a smile as he angled the menu toward the waitress: a salad of greens and strips of eggplant covered in a sweet dressing that he loved. We handed over our menus, and then R. turned his face to the glass beside us, watching the wind, which was visible both in the detritus it carried, papers and leaves and the little plastic cups coffee comes in here, and in the resistance of everything fastened down. Already the last of the light was fading, and as much as the world outside it was R.’s face I saw, which was pensive as he said again it was a crazy wind.

  But he was bright-faced when he turned back to me and I shifted my gaze from his reflection to the real image. He asked me about my day, and I told him something funny, I don’t remember what, something at my own expense; he liked stories in which I was a little ridiculous, in which students got the best of me. It had the effect I wanted, which was his laugh, or less his laugh than the transformation his face underwent when he smiled. It isn’t true, what I said earlier, really I think I was caught from our first meeting, or even before our meeting, from the first photographs he sent me that showed his face. We had been chatting for several days by then, emailing back and forth on a dating site, though it wasn’t for dating so much as for sex, which at first was all we thought we wanted. And anyway he was twenty-one, too young to take seriously; it might be a bit of fun, I thought when I looked at his profile, a bit of fun but nothing more. His pictures didn’t show very much, mostly his torso, which was thick and unsculpted, a little heavy in a way I liked. In his second email he sent a link to a video that showed what most men must have wanted to see: he was naked, exposing himself, turning to give a full view before he jerked himself off. There was something dispiriting about it, the faceless body too starkly displayed, turning as if on a dais; it shamed me a little to enjoy it. He waited several days before he showed me more, and only after I had promised to be discreet; he wasn’t out, he told me, not even to his closest friends, and so it was a pledge of trust to send the photo in which finally I saw his face. He was at a club, there were other people behind him in the dark, but he was the only one looking at the camera. The glare of the flash was bright on his skin, and he seemed gripped by joy, there’s no other way to say it, his eyes were shut and his mouth stretched impossibly wide, revealing teeth that were large and imperfect, an upper one in front just slightly skewed. When I saw it I knew I wanted to be smiled at like that. I would never get tired of it, I thought in the restaurant, each time he smiled it filled me with a happiness I had never felt before, a happiness that was particularly his to give.

  He told me about his day then, which was less regimented than mine, the day of a student. He was in Sofia as part of a program that shuttled college students around the EU, an attempt to stitch up the union though in R.’s case it hadn’t worked; he hated Bulgaria, he said, almost as much as he hated his own country. He had come with M., a friend from his university in Lisbon. He had thought it would be good to know someone here but it wasn’t good, he felt watched, forced to compromise and deceive, stuck with the self he would have liked to leave behind; that was really what he hated, I thought, not the country he lived in but the life he had made there. He was studying physical therapy, though he had wanted to major in languages, he told me the first time we met, when we talked for hours in a café before he came home with me. His parents insisted that he study something practical, a trade, but nothing’s practical now, he had said, laughing bitterly, there aren’t any jobs for anybody in Portugal, I should have studied what I wanted. He had a talent for languages; his English was almost perfect, natural and easy, and when he learned I was a teacher, he said with something like pride that he had alwa
ys done well in his literature classes in high school, which were the only classes he enjoyed. When we got to my apartment that first time, before we moved into the bedroom, while we were still taking pleasure in delay, he recited a poem to me in his own language, a few lines of Pessoa he said everyone learned in school. It could have been anything, I didn’t understand a word of it, but it charmed me and allowed me to reach for him, to pull him close and press my mouth to his.

  In Bulgaria he was studying at the National Sports Academy, though that wasn’t the kind of therapy he wanted to do; he wanted to help people, he said, real people with real problems, not athletes with sore muscles. But today at least there had been a change of routine, he told me as we waited for our food; instead of practicing the techniques on each other, members of one of the teams had come in, they stripped to their briefs and laid themselves out on the tables. My guy was so beautiful, R. said, he wasn’t too big like some of the others, and I got to spend half an hour just touching him. I had to be careful, he went on, lowering his voice enough that I had to lean forward to hear him, I didn’t want anyone to see how much I liked him. I was so scared I would touch him wrong, I’m sure it was an awful massage. And he didn’t speak any English, so he couldn’t tell me how anything felt, I just kept asking him okay? okay? until the teacher told me to stop. It was kind of hot, he said, looking up at me, and something he saw made him smile. Are you jealous, he asked, and I denied it too quickly, though it wasn’t exactly jealousy I felt. It made me worry we had different ideas about the story we were living together; I would tell that to a friend, not a lover, and it was as though R. had heard this thought when he continued. I’ve never had anybody to talk to about this, he said, you’re the only one, and then he smiled again. But I like that you’re jealous, he said, it’s nice, nobody’s ever been jealous of me before, and again he made that gesture with his fingers that was like a caress, or the idea of a caress. But he snatched his hand back quickly, almost guiltily, as the waitress set down our food, saying first Zapovyadaite, here you are, and then, more extravagantly, da vi e sladko, may it be sweet to you, a kind of courtesy that was out of place in such a casual restaurant. I glanced up as I thanked her, and in the moment before she turned away I thought I caught a look on her face that was something more than politeness, a look that was kind, and I wondered whether she had seen R.’s gesture and read it rightly and given it, in this small way, a kind of blessing.

  R. had already turned his attention to his food, salting it and then rotating his plate until its arrangement pleased him. I loved to watch him eat, which he did with a kind of joyful absorption, and I left my pizza untouched as I watched him lift the first bite to his mouth and close his eyes with pleasure, only then returning his attention to me. After class it was a boring day, he said, M. and I went back to our room and slept, but then the Polish girl woke us up, the annoying one, remember, I told you about her. I did remember, though I had forgotten her name; she had pursued R. since they arrived, more and more aggressively, until one night shortly after he and I met he let her take him back to her room. They had been dancing at one of the clubs in Studentski grad, a part of the city named for the many schools and dormitories there, though it was the least studious quarter in Sofia, full of discotheques and casinos and bars; it was where my own students spent their weekends. R. told me this story at our second meeting, while we were lying in bed together, an intimacy I was surprised to find I wanted; usually after sex I was eager to be alone. I was drunk, he said, but that wasn’t why I went, I wanted to know if I liked it, I’ve only ever been with guys but I thought maybe I like girls too, I wanted to try. They had kissed and taken off their clothes and lain down together, he told me, and he didn’t respond at all; it was awful, he said, even when she gave me a blowjob I couldn’t get hard, it was like I was dead down there. She told me not to worry, I was just too drunk, but that’s not true, I can get hard when I’m drunk, I can always get hard. I guess this really is what I am, he said. We had been lying next to each other while he spoke, both on our backs, not touching, but after he said this he rolled toward me and put his hand on my chest, and then he laid his head on top of his hand.

  She had stopped by today to remind them of the plans they had made, a whole group was headed to dinner and then out to the clubs; she wanted to talk to me, R. went on, but I said M. was sleeping, I practically closed the door in her face. I don’t want to be mean, he said to me, but what does she want, she won’t leave me alone. She wants you, I said, trying to laugh, I sympathize; I had intended to be charming, but R. didn’t smile. He seemed uneasy, shifting in his seat, he pushed his food around but wasn’t eating now. Maybe it was the wind; each time it struck the glass he leaned away from it, and again I thought I had been wrong to sit there, a table in the middle of the room would have been better, we would have been less exposed. And then M. got up, R. said, and when I told him I didn’t want to go, that I was tired and would stay home, he started saying he would stay in too, he would study instead. I thought I would lose my mind, R. said, his English turning colloquial as it always did when he was agitated, using phrases he had learned from American sitcoms, I mean Jesus, I’m not his mother, we’re not married, he can do things on his own. M. was always his excuse for our missed dates, and I grew increasingly annoyed as he went on; so much of what he complained about seemed of his own doing, and so easy to change. Portugal was a modern country, it wasn’t like Bulgaria, men like us could live openly there, could even marry; surely he only needed a little courage to claim the freedom he said he wanted.

  You could just tell him, I said, cutting into R.’s monologue, and though I had said versions of this before he looked up at me blankly. About us, I mean, you could tell him about us, and then you wouldn’t have to lie. He made an exasperated sound at this, a dismissive sound that made me angry, or not angry, quite, but annoyed. Listen, I said, wouldn’t it be better, isn’t it what you want? I knew I should probably stop but I went on, I want you to be happy, I said, really happy, and you can’t be happy when you have to lie so much. I fell silent then, as did everyone else in the restaurant, an instant of shock at a gust of wind that smacked angrily at the building, an even stronger gust than the others. It was like being besieged, I thought, as conversations picked up and the room filled again with noise, a little tentative now, as if we were all embarrassed at having been frightened. R. began to speak but I had more I wanted to say, I spoke over him, Wait, I said, let me just, and then I paused again, at a loss. You’re happy when you’re with me, right, I said, and he made his noise of exasperation again, a glottal exhalation. You know I am, he said, and it was true, it was something we had already begun to say to each other, that we made each other happy. This was true for me from the very first evening, after I had drawn him to me and kissed him and we fell into bed together, when I looked up at him in the dark and saw his smile. Sex had never been joyful for me before, or almost never, it had always been fraught with shame and anxiety and fear, all of which vanished at the sight of his smile, simply vanished, it poured a kind of cleanness over everything we did. He had given me so much, I thought, for all that he couldn’t give, and I was ashamed of the tone I had taken. I do know, I said, speaking more gently now, and you know I’m happy too, and maybe the best thing this could do, I meant our friendship, relationship, I didn’t know what word to use, is show you what it would be like if you were open, if you let yourself live in a fuller way. I could see that my speech wasn’t having the effect I wanted, that R.’s mood was turning darker; he wasn’t looking at me anymore but at the window, at his reflection or the world beyond it. I should have stopped talking but I couldn’t stop, I want you to be able to live, I said, really live, I don’t want you to just wait for things to happen to you, I want you to be happy. And what are you afraid of, I asked, do you really think your friends won’t accept you, your parents? His family wasn’t religious, I knew, he was from a small place but not a particularly conservative one. I think you should trust them more, I s
aid, I think you should trust that they love you.

  Stop, he said. He was still looking at the window, not at his own reflection but at something in the far distance, though there wasn’t a far distance, there was just the garden wall invisible in the dark. Just stop, he said, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and when he turned his gaze to mine I could see he was angry. You’re talking to me like a child, he said, I’m not a child, you can’t talk to me like that. I’m sorry, I said quickly, meaning it, I didn’t want you to feel that, really, I’m sorry. He was silent then, he turned back to the window, as though there were something to see there, and I thought I could see him let go of his anger, all at once, his shoulders slumped a little as it went. The wind continued its assault, its constant charge against the glass, but R. wasn’t flinching from it anymore, he seemed almost to be leaning toward the window as he gazed through it, or maybe he was just leaning away from me.

  It’s not just that I’m afraid, he said, though I am afraid, you can say whatever you want but it’s scary, I don’t want people to change how they think of me. I know, I started to say, I didn’t mean, but he motioned with his hand to cut me off. It isn’t that, he said after a pause, I mean that’s not the main reason. He paused again, and the noise of the restaurant rose around us. I hadn’t been aware of it for some time, but now I heard the voices at the other tables, heard without understanding; they were jumbled, overlapping and indistinct, punctuated suddenly by an eruption of laughter in a far corner. When I was little, R. began, speaking more slowly than I had ever heard him speak, and almost with a different voice, muted and inward, a voice that though it addressed me didn’t welcome my company. When I was living in the Azores, he said, it was terrible, there was nothing to do, there were more cows around than people. I had maybe two friends, he said, and we lived so far away from everything I didn’t even get to see them very much, I only saw them at school. There were my sisters, but they were older, they didn’t want anything to do with me, and my parents—I don’t know, they were fine, I know you say I care too much about what they think but we’ve never been close, I’m not really sure they think about me all that much. All I did was watch TV, stupid cartoons or American shows, it was the only thing to do. There was only one person I was close to, and he wasn’t my friend, he was older, a friend of my father’s. We had known him forever, we called him uncle but he wasn’t our uncle, he was just my father’s friend. He was always nice, he would talk to me and ask me things and listen to me, he was the only person who made me feel like I was interesting. He was at our house a lot, he’d come over for dinner, and I was always happy to see him, more than happy, excited; I guess I had a crush on him, I don’t know, I didn’t think of it like that. When I was older, twelve or thirteen, we would go on walks while my mother was making dinner. It sounds weird now but it didn’t feel weird, my parents thought it was good for me, and it was for a while, I think, R. said, I mean I was happy. There was a place we used to go, near the American base, a field with a big concrete shell of a building. I don’t know what it was exactly, it was like a mall, there were three floors but only the skeleton, nothing else; it was something they started to build a long time ago and didn’t finish. It was a place to walk, and to do other things; there were always bottles and cans and cigarettes, people hung out there, I guess, there was nowhere else to go. Guys went there too, R. said; I didn’t know it then, we were only there in the daytime, but at night it was a cruising place, and when I got older it was where I went too, even though I hated it. It was always the same three or four married assholes, but whatever, it was something. We’d go walking there, just talking to each other, and then one day he stopped and pointed at something on the ground. It was a condom somebody had dropped by one of the walls, stretched out and dry, it was disgusting. He pointed at it with his shoe and asked me if I knew what it was for. And that’s how he started it, R. said, he put his arm around me and led me behind one of the walls where no one would see us. I didn’t want it but I let him do it, I guess, I mean I didn’t fight him and I never said anything, I let it happen. R. looked at me then, finally turning away from the glass, he looked at me where I sat immobile as he spoke, my fork still in my hand. I never said anything, he repeated, I’ve never said anything until now. Oh, I said, the single syllable, not a word but a sound, oh, and I set my fork down beside the plate I had hardly touched, that was past touching now. Skupi, I said, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but at this his anger snapped back, a fierce anger as he said See, almost snarling it, you see me differently now, I don’t want you to be sorry for me, I don’t want to be some hurt little boy, I don’t want it. On his face there was an expression I had never seen before, on his face or any other, it was a desperate, frightened face, though frightened of what I wasn’t sure. Okay, I said, leaning back, I was frightened too, okay.