Design for Loving

by Doug Sanford

  Afterward I said, perhaps more hopefully than I should have, “She’s not so interested that she wanted you to stay?”

  “She’s interested, for sure. I could tell that, but she still can’t take my snoring and is as independent as ever—maybe more. It’s funny, but she’s almost as sexual as you are, Marc. She loves making out and having sex—until it’s over. Then she’s more like a guy, and I’m more like a woman. She has no interest in cuddling and wants her own side of the bed free and clear. I want to hold her and be held. I guess it’s hopeless.”

  “Well, maybe hopeless for you, but it sure gets you back to me.”

  “You honestly think I wouldn’t come back otherwise?” He’d turned slightly serious.

  “You already know the answer to that one.”

  “I think I do, but sometimes I can see something in your eyes or see your mouth tighten, and I think maybe you’re doubting me.”

  “Maybe I’m not doubting you; maybe I’m doubting me.”

  “Now you sound like an old queen worried about your age, as if our relationship was based on something like that. I thought we got that out of the way the first time we met.”

  “You’re right, kid. I forgot that you planned to be around to wheel me around the nursing home.” I smiled. “Seriously, Bart, I’m sorry. You deserve better.” I was a little embarrassed.

  “No more crap about this?”

  “No more crap. Rule number two. Come over here and go to sleep.”

  I stuck to it. Back to letting the bird fly.

  Chapter 26

  He and Leslie began to see more of each other, but that didn’t cause a problem for us. They were together every Saturday for a date and sex or for just sex or even, occasionally, for just a date. If he and I had something scheduled on a Saturday that we couldn’t get out of, he’d see her on Friday night or Sunday during the day because he usually had to get to bed early on Sunday night. He talked to her at least once or twice during the week.

  If I say he seemed happier since she’d come back into his life, that would imply that he’d been unhappy before, and that’s not true. But something positive had happened to him. He seemed more balanced?—more content?—I can’t quite explain it except to say that seeing her in some way made our relationship better as well.

  That was good, but it also fed what Bart would probably refer to as my anality.

  One evening about three months after the two of them reconnected, we were home alone as usual. Bart was lying on the sofa working on lines, and I was sitting at the other end looking over the multiple listing service updates. This was pre-internet, and it was still paper and pens then. As usual, Bart was in a T-shirt, old jeans, and barefoot, with his feet pushed up against my thigh.

  “How the hell did I get so lucky?” I said.

  “You find a good listing?” he asked, sitting up and sliding over to see what I was working on.

  “No,” I smiled. “I found you.”

  “Well, the obvious answer,” he replied, “is that you were a horny old man who made obscene phone calls to innocent young college students, and was lucky enough to find one who was too dumb not to hang up on you.”

  I punched his bicep, hard.

  “Ow, that hurts,” he said, rubbing his arm. “Keep that up and your luck may run out.”

  “Seriously, Bart.”

  “What brought all this up?”

  “Dunno. Sometimes it just amazes me. It’s so fucking great—the two of us. But why does it work? Why do you stay? You’re straight—except for what you do with me—and you’ve got a steady girl. Why do you see her on weekends and live with me?”

  “First of all, we said no labels. But more important, are you telling me you really don’t know the answer to that? You kidding me?”

  “Okay, I’ll put it another way. Sure, we developed this amazingly close friendship, and, even though you’re not gay—pardon the label—it turned into love. We ended up having sex. It worked for you. It still does. But then you met Leslie. You’ve gotten really close to her and though you never use the word, I think you love her. You have really good sex with her. What keeps you with me? Maybe it’s my own insecurity here, but it’s hard to figure out.”

  “Are you listening to yourself? You just answered your own question.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The close friendship that turned into love thing. The way you and I met was totally unique.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “No, seriously. You know what I mean. The things we talked about from the very first call were pretty intimate and personal. We really got to know each other. Couples on dates take a long time to finally discuss a lot of what we talked about from the very beginning. We’d never met, but we probably knew more about each other by the fourth phone call than Les and I know about each other now—and that’s after fucking for almost a year in Tucson and three months here.”

  “But now who’s counting? No, you’re right. It was pretty intense.”

  “Understatement. The bonding between us was something that a lot of people never experience, maybe because it took us so long to meet in person and even longer to get to sex.

  “The physical attraction thing with us has always been secondary—at least that’s what you told me that night at the snack bar—God, that seems centuries ago. You said I’d always know that you cared for me because of who I was, not what I looked like. Well, that’s true. And I’ve come to care for you in the same way—because of who you are and because of how well we got to know each other before we ever met.”

  “What about the way you feel about Leslie?”

  “I know I don’t talk about her that much, but you’re right. Even though I haven’t said the words, I think I’ve fallen in love with her.”

  “But,” he continued, “the way I met her and feel about her is different from you and me. She and I did the normal things couples have always done to get together: meeting, feeling a physical attraction, going on dates, having sex, discovering things in common, getting to know one another. It’s taken me a long time to get even close to the place with her that you and I got to so quickly.”

  “But you think you’re there now?” I asked, with a queasiness in my stomach.

  “Calm down, old man,” he said—almost as though he could see the queasiness I felt. How did he do it? “We’re fine. But yeah, I think I am beginning to feel about her in the same way I feel about you. But that’s not a threat to us. That’s like an addition. I’d sooner lose my right arm than lose you, Marc, but I think I’d sooner lose my left arm than lose Les.”

  “I guess it would be indelicate of me to bring up the fact that though you’re right-handed, you masturbate with your left hand,” I said with a smile.

  “Leave it to you to bring it back to sex, old man. You have the dirtiest mind I’ve ever run into—but the most romantic as well.”

  “I’m just full of contradictions. Maybe that’s what keeps you interested.”

  “Maybe, but does all that crap I’ve been saying help to explain why I’m still with you? Does it make you feel any less insecure?”

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  “I notice that you didn’t follow that yeah with rule number two.”

  “You bastard.”

  “Seriously, Marc, you’re gonna have to take some things on faith.”

  I pulled him over, kissed him, and that’s how we left it. It was another of those times when he was more adult than I was. It would be almost five months before I was finally able to accept it, deep down, and that was really because of something Leslie said.

  * * * *

  Christmas was approaching, and Leslie asked Bart to a party at her parents’ house on Christmas Eve and also said she wanted to spend New Year’s Eve with him.

  “I want to do one of those with her if that’s okay with you, Marc. Which one do you want?”

  “Kid, we’ve had a lot of Christmas Eves and New Year’s Eves together. Do both of them with her—a
s long as you’re back before your parents get up on Christmas morning so we can all open presents together. We never do anything on New Year’s Eve except watch a movie and drink eggnog anyhow. I can handle that with them.”

  “You serious?”

  “Rule number two. You owe it to her, and actually, I think I owe it to her. She’s been really good for you these last few months. Go for it.”

  “I love you, Marc with a c.”

  We kissed, and it really was fine with me—much to my own surprise.

  “One condition though.”

  “Here you go. Now you’re going to get anal on me?”

  “Damn right. Stay with her all night New Year’s Eve. Don’t drive back until the sun comes up and the drunks are mostly off the road. I don’t care how much she hates your snoring. Sleep on the couch if you have to. But don’t drive. Agreed?”

  “You’re so funny, old man. Agreed.”

  When Jack and Ada arrived and we mentioned the slight change in our usual plans, I saw Ada frown at Jack when she thought I wasn’t looking. They got Bart alone outside later that day while they were checking to see what we’d done to the yard. They asked him, very gently, he said—because they tried really hard to stay neutral on matters of our relationship—if he didn’t think that he should be home with me those nights.

  “Mom, Dad—Marc and I have been all through this. It’s fine with him. Marc,” he called to me. “Can you come out a second?”

  “What’s up?” I said. I had a fairly good idea of what was up and had a grin on my face.

  “Tell them it’s okay with you if I spend those nights with Les.”

  “Guys, it’s really fine. I had a feeling you’d be upset, but Leslie isn’t a threat.” I put my arm around Bart’s shoulder. “I have him most of the time. I can spare him for a couple of nights.”

  They still felt I was being noble and they didn’t understand it, but we knew we couldn’t convince them, so we let it go and so did they.

  Bart even got them to agree to another lunch with Leslie which went better than the first time they met even if it did produce an unexpected result.

  Bart, reluctantly, still hadn’t been honest with Leslie about me. He told her we were rooming together to save money, and somehow she thought that meant the two of us had separated after Bart left Tucson and had recently reconnected in LA. He didn’t disabuse her of that idea.

  During lunch, Ada said something that implied that the two of us had been living together continuously since we met during Bart’s first year at school.

  “She raised her eyebrows at that,” Bart said when he told me about it. “I was sitting across from her and had a feeling I was in for it. But all she said was that she thought that you and I had just recently gotten back in contact with one another.

  “Of course, Mom realized what she’d done and thankfully didn’t say any more. Sometimes she knows when to be quiet. I kind of glossed over the whole thing, saying that we’d actually come to LA at different times and only started rooming together sometime after that and that mom probably forgot about it. Mom said something like, ‘Yes, I guess I did’ and I changed the subject. Frankly, it didn’t make a lot of sense, but Les didn’t push it.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked him. He hated lying in general, but I knew he’d be especially upset about deceiving Leslie.

  “Not really. I don’t like hiding us from her, Marc, but I’m still not sure I could tell her the whole story without losing her again, and I don’t want to risk it.”

  We got through the holidays more easily than I thought we would. He was home Christmas morning at his usual time so we could all open presents together.

  He kept his promise about not driving New Year’s Eve, but he made it home in time for breakfast. Afterward, he complained that they had been up so late, he had to take a nap, and buddy that I was, I joined him. They said nothing and watched the Rose Parade with the volume up just a bit higher than normal.

  Luckily, they were back in Champaign and weren’t around to complain about what happened a few weeks later.

  “Hey, are we planning anything for Valentine’s Day? There’s nothing on the calendar, and we haven’t gone out then since the first one. Suits and ties, remember?”

  “How could I forget? We went to that French restaurant, and I’d never seen you dressed up like that before. Man, I thought to myself, he sure cleans up nice.” I smiled.

  “Les wants to do something.”

  “Fine with me, kid. Rule number two—before you ask. You’re right, we don’t usually celebrate it. But I’m surprised an independent woman like Leslie feels she needs a date on Valentine’s Day. She doesn’t seem the type.”

  “She’s not. It’s her birthday.”

  “No kidding? Odd to have a birthday on Valentine’s Day, but I guess a lot of people do. It’s fine. Go for it.”

  Right before Easter, in the middle of April, the show went on hiatus for a week. They spent the two previous weeks recording the six shows they’d need for the break week and the Monday return. Bart said it almost wasn’t worth doing since by the time the break rolled around, almost everyone seemed too exhausted to enjoy it.

  We had planned a trip to see Ada and Jack and go to Chicago. We’d fly to Champaign-Urbana Friday night, spend the weekend at their place, and then all drive to Chicago for most of the week, come back to Champaign, and fly home.

  It turned out to be better than we’d expected. Bart had fun showing me the town where he’d grown up. He even tried to locate Mrs. Bloom, but she, and her red pen, presumably, had retired and moved to Ohio to be with a daughter and son-in-law.

  Ada and Jack had a barbeque for us on Sunday. Bart had apparently become something of a minor local celebrity—at least among his parents’ friends. I was surprised at how many people watched soaps, especially in a university community, and it was very strange seeing him sign autographs and have to answer questions about Mt. Sinai Hospital as though it were a real place.

  I got to meet the infamous Bryan and Ryan, and they turned out to be intelligent and a lot of fun—if a bit campy. We got very involved in a discussion of Sondheim’s Passion which had opened the year before. They’d gone to New York to see it.

  “I’m jealous as hell,” I told them. “I have the recording, but that’s not the same thing. I heard they did a video of it for PBS, but it hasn’t been shown yet.”

  “Don’t miss it when they broadcast it,” Bryan said. “The young man who plays Georgio is to die for, and he’s totally naked in the opening scene. You can see everything. He’s a real hunk.”

  Bryan’s speech was laced with italics all the time.

  As I would later find out, the televised version showed him only from the waist up in that scene. But we did watch it in the fall when it finally was broadcast.

  The Chicago part of the trip gave me a chance to show Bart where I’d taught and lived, and we even drove past the Cabrini-Green projects which had deteriorated a lot more since the last time I’d seen it. We did the museums, the Shedd Aquarium, and of course, the Art Institute. Though I’d seen it before, I really wanted to show him the George Seurat Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

  “Wow. It’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be,” he said.

  “I know,” I replied. “I’d seen pictures of it in my art history class in college, but it wasn’t until I saw it in person for the first time that I ever had an idea of the scale of the painting. We’re going to have to get hold of the video of Sunday in the Park with George when we get back.”

  “Anal,” said Bart, but at least he smiled when he said it.

  On Friday and Saturday back in Champaign, we had some time to relax, and we left for LA on Sunday. Because we had an early flight, we were home a bit after noon. Bart called Leslie as soon as we got in and went right back out. It was fine with me. I was tired, and I figured it would give me a chance to nap before he got home and woke me up.

  Chapter 27

  The nex
t evening over dinner, Bart said the four words that no one in a relationship ever wants to hear: “We need to talk.”

  “Talk,” I said, my throat tightening up.

  “I want to bring Les over—for dinner—with both of us.”

  That was unexpected but much better than what I was afraid he might say.

  “That’s serious.”

  “I said we needed to talk.”

  “So, you think she’s the one?”

  “Don’t think. Know. She’s the one.” There was no doubt in his voice.

  “Are you ready? “

  “To tell her everything? Don’t quite know how I’m going to do it, but I will. I’ve got to.”

  “You think she’s up to it?”

  “If she isn’t, Marc, I’ve really misjudged her.”

  “Why now? What changed?”

  “I really missed her this past week. You and I had a great time, and I loved it, but remember how that first Christmas when I went back to Champaign, I missed you so much? This time I was with you, and I missed her the same way. And yesterday it was really hard telling her all about the trip without mentioning you. I was ashamed of myself. I don’t like keeping who I am and what we are secret from her. It’s dishonest.”

  “Then it’s definitely time. When?”

  “How about this Saturday?”

  “You’ll talk to her before then?”

  “Right.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  I’d known for years that some version of this day had to come, and strangely enough, I was pretty calm about it—at least as calm as a man can be who knows his future is about to be decided by events over which he has no control at all.

  Chapter 28

  On Friday evening he and Leslie had dinner at her place. That was his time for full disclosure.

  I awoke at about three to find him undressing by the side of the bed.

  “Hey,” I said sleepily.

  “Hey yourself. It went fine. Better than I expected.”