Estelle hits me with a bomb. Psychiatrists can be filthy terrorists in their own little sick ways; any sane patient knows this. She tells me to say his name three times. Do it. Say it three times.
I do. Very fast.
Kyle. Kyle. Kyle.
And I begin to feel better, exposing more of my woe-me pain.
"I should leave, Cannon. You can have the apartment for yourself.”
“Where will you go?”
“My brother’s. He has an attic room I can use.”
“You need to stay here and we can work this out,” Cannon said.
“I’m not sure if I can do that yet. Maybe I need some time alone. I have to heal.”
“We can heal together, under the same roof.”
“It doesn’t work that way. I wished it could, but it won’t. We can’t even think that will begin to justify my sanity.”
It happened last summer—what an absurd cliché. The truth, though. The denial of it all. The acceptance on my part that may never happen at all. July. So hot and humid.
Sticky in Pittsburgh, even the bridges were sweating. When pretty boys like Kyle/Kyle/Kyle took off their shirts and exposed their strawberry-colored nipples and blond treasure trails, among other sinful body parts that men in their late forties became quite fond of. Married queer men who desired nothing less than to extend their slippery-naughty tongues and taste those pretty boys. And taste the sweet and refined blend of Kyle Kansas sugar: a steel-plated chest, beam-like shoulders, and comma-shaped navel. Both those men and boys shared grins-a-plenty, but for all the wrong reasons. Relentless sin in the city.
It happened along one of the city’s rivers. In the brokenness of summertime, all the rivers looked the same, even to the urbanites. The two men were running together, staying fit.
I didn’t know they were horny for each other. Who would have known in my position? I didn’t reek of jealousy. But maybe I should have reeked.
They took a sabbatical from their run. And then they crept into the bushes and found themselves against a birch tree, among the honeysuckle and next to a holly bush. A quickie was shared, because that’s what Cannon labeled the sexual event with Kyle/Kyle/Kyle. They were men who were unseen and unheard in Estarre Park, and communicated by tongue and touch, among other tools.
The details were explicit, which I cared not to know. XXX stuff that I couldn’t deem audible. Two bodies meshed together in the steeping-heat of a July evening. Exercising while exercising.
I shouldn’t have been writing, creating, toying with words, sentences, and paragraphs. I should have paid more attention to Cannon, and certainly to the other man. I could have become jealous. I shouldn’t have trusted either of them. My clarity was smudged, something I will never forgive myself for. I was a fool being foolish, of course, and maybe part of me deserved that pain.
They broke apart, unhinged from each other’s sexual skin. They went to Kyle’s place to shower. They showered together, or I told myself that they did. Silence followed that period of space between men who have nothing to say to each other, and men who have too much to say to each other without saying anything at all. A sense of awkwardness was discovered between them. The park-party in their lives had come to an end. Slippage occurred.
Cannon came home; he didn’t have to. He could have driven to his sister’s in Fox Chapel. He could have spent the night at his uncle’s Tudor in Brookline. He could have stayed at the Holiday Inn. But he came home. And he was quiet. Things could break inside the apartment and we were able to hear them break. A wedged soul within a man’s torso began to creak. Something was wrong with Cannon. Something had happened. He couldn’t hide from me. That wasn’t possible.
Then he started to cut himself.
Shrink Time.
Estelle asks if I purchase items so Cannon can hurt himself with.
Yes. I won’t lie. There’s no reason to lie. I’ve bought a number of tools for his labor of love: Ginsu knives, an ice pick, a few different types of saws, and pocket knives. I am perfectly fine with the man’s indulgence and longing that he has to mangle his own skin. It’s the little price he has to pay for screwing a guy behind my back.
Estelle mentions that I gift-wrapped a scalpel for my lover.
I don’t deny this. Why would I deny this? I tell her it was the perfect little pink present for him. I even added a bow and streamers to it. It was lovely and proved my pain regarding his sexual park-affair. I say to Estelle that I cannot hurt him. This is something he has to accomplish on his own. She gives me a look that says this is fucked up, a tragedy in the making. If I wasn’t paying her she would probably think I was to blame for Cannon’s affair.
She’s silent for a few seconds, perhaps hashes out my situation between her temples and calls my action a projection.
I tell her to explain it to me in layman terms. She defines the condition as Jungian psychology.
She directly stares at me and says that I’m blaming others for my own actions.
I tell her I wasn’t the one sucking cock in a park with someone outside my marriage. She doesn’t like my tone.
I don’t give a fuck what she likes and tell her that she really isn’t helping me. I still buy cutting devices for Cannon to use on his wrists. She hasn’t convinced me otherwise.
Estelle takes notes, listening to me ramble a list of all the tools I have gifted to my husband since the event in Estarre Park. Estelle stops me. She instructs me to say Kyle/Kyle/Kyle.
I do, without emotion. And now I decide that I am not healed and maybe I don’t need her at all. Survival of the fittest comes to mind. Can I pull this off by myself? Maybe I should give it a try.
"I can taste his cock in your mouth, Cannon. Do you know that?”
“You’re being a drama queen. That’s absurd.”
“I really can. His urine and semen. His saliva and blood. It’s all in there.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Crazy in love,” I said.
“Call it what you want.”
“And to think I’m the demon here, Cannon. To think I was the one who fucked around behind your back. To think I put our relationship in a topsy-turvy spin. Really…. Really?”
Kyle was Cannon’s student the semester before their shared intimacy. Cannon taught at Pitt: Romanticism, World Literature II, The Critical Approach, A Semester of J. C. Oates, Origins of the English Language. Kyle flirted with my partner. His glinting, hazel-blue eyes must have melted Cannon. The eyes are like that, aren’t they? So convincing, spell-concocting, and spoiling. They met for coffee once or twice; a fine line between professor and student was crossed at the Brew Emporium on Beechwood Boulevard. Did the two men—one who looked like a daddy and one who looked like his son—touch fingertips together across a four-person table near the back of the coffee shop? Were winks shared? Did they use the restroom together, pissing side by side and checking out each other’s junk?
Nothing ever stops when you want it to; life doesn’t function this way. Cannon continued to “see” the student. One short date after the next transpired: evening runs, coffee breaks, and meetings at Turn the Page Books. I was sure they kissed during those brief encounters, mixing lips and mannish body parts. Their conversations were challenging and most interesting; boredom was undiscovered territory.
Their “seeing” progressed into the naked, summertime rendezvous in Estarre Park. Actions I could not fathom, secrets compiled by the two men, filthiness that caused my mind to go numb, semi-paralyzed, and vomit to rise in the narrow passageway of my throat. Their “seeing” was the victorious dilapidation of my heart.
The cutting started after Cannon confessed his infidelity.
I only hoped he would cut out his tongue, saving me from his blunt honesty.
Shrink Time.
Estelle reminds me that I hunted Kyle/Kyle/Kyle down like an animal, hungry to—she looks at her notes on her lap to quote me—eat the home wrecker up and spit him out. She tells me that I followed Kyle for a week and stud
ied his sex-fun with my husband. She says, You wanted to hurt him.
No, I say, I wanted to kill him. A good choking needed to be accomplished, and I was the man to get the job done. He had death coming.
Estelle asks who?
And I scream the guy’s name three times at the top of my lungs. After my outburst, she reminds me that I didn’t kill Kyle. In fact, you didn’t even put a finger on him. I say it was Cannon who prevented me from murdering the once-student. Cannon started cutting himself, which saved me from being incarcerated. What can I say? Cannon had all my attention. No, let me correct that. His cutting had all of my attention, which prompted me to buy things/tools/devices/gadgets/instruments that he could hurt himself with—items I wanted him to own and use on his flesh, mind you. Hell, if I knew he would have used a chainsaw on himself, I would have picked one up at Home Depot or Lowe’s. Because deep down inside I wanted that jagged little fuck to cut all of his appendages off, one by one, starting with his dick, of course.
Estelle confirms that I left Kyle alone in hopes that Cannon would mutilate himself.
I reply that this is the truth, and the truth hurts, doesn’t it?
Estelle doesn’t argue with me, although I expect her to.
"You can’t see him anymore,” I said.
“I didn’t say I would.”
“You have to promise me to be faithful.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“How can I trust you?” I asked. “You’ve broken me…us. I see a shrink because of you.”
“You don’t love me.”
“I never said that. You’re putting words in my mouth, Cannon.”
“We can separate tonight. We’ll sleep in different rooms. For once…it will feel right for you. Don’t disagree with me, please.”
Cannon ended the affair with the other man. I remember the date as if it happened yesterday: December 12, 2011. A date I would never forget, for as long as we were together. He told me to my face that it was over, that he had no interest in Kyle Kansas any longer. He said he loved me, and would always love me, through good and bad. At first, I didn’t believe him. Lies upon lies had been built behind my back. Trust between us was untouchable. A fool would have believed him; I had outgrown that position with much skill and ardor. He said his relationship with his former student was severed, completely dissolved. Kyle’s telephone number was removed from Cannon’s cell phone. No longer was he a friend with Cannon on Facebook. They didn’t tweet each other. Even his e-mail address was deleted from our shared computer and laptop. To think that a delete button could erase the young man from our lives. That happened, though. So easily. So quickly. And I was left bemused because of it.
Cannon was still cutting himself, though. Almost daily. I found the bloody tools in the bathroom. Droplets of rose-red blood on a pair of gardening shears. Droplets of crimson-colored blood on a paring knife. Droplets of deep red blood on a pair of vintage nail clippers. He simply left his tools of manipulation behind. Maybe for me to find on purpose. Maybe not. I don’t think I’ll ever learn the answer to that mystery.
The bandages and accessories still decorated his wrists. He seemed depressed, lost in a world of his own. He was quiet and reserved, which told me that: Maybe he still loves Kyle. Maybe they are meant to be together. Maybe I’m in the way of things. I didn’t ignore him, although maybe I should have. Things need to be ignored sometimes. Maybe what he was going through was normal. Loss happened. Pain was discovered. I digested that without feeling, and watched him closely.
Six months passed and he was still in a state of depression. He didn’t see a therapist, although I had often wanted him to. Cannon kept teaching at Pitt, going to his classes, coming home, and simply dozed away his free time. The man became a vegetable on his own terms: self-blemished, expunged from life, and unremittingly hopeless. Of course I tried to cheer him up. In February, around Valentine’s Day, we rented a cabin in the woods for three days; it was freezing and I kept him warm with my bare skin. In April, we drove to Baltimore for a weekend of fun in Little Italy with two other gay couples. In May, we enjoyed Gay Days in downtown Pittsburgh.
The next horrendous episode of our lives happened in June, didn’t it, because it was summertime, and he wanted it to happen in June as a symbol of sorts, an underlying perception, encompassing the brokenness of our lives, a sweet summertime evening with purple-red clouds in the sky, a sticky wind, and hungry mosquitoes, the time of day when the city’s buildings finally have a shape to them because the sun is perfectly positioned in the sky, hovering.
In June we drove to West Virginia, spent the day gambling, won over two thousand dollars on a quarter machine, and ate at the buffet. That atrocious incident happened almost two hours after we were nestled back home. Smoke-covered from my time in the casino, I showered. What was Cannon doing? I didn’t know. He was probably dozing in the spare bedroom, checking his e-mail, or reading a mystery. Maybe I should have known his whereabouts, and then the incident wouldn’t have happened. You leave your eyes off the prize for just a second and…it falls away. You lose it. One snap outside the walls of reality and it’s fucking gone. Or almost gone. Trust me, I know.
Following my shower, having nothing more than a Martha Stewart towel wrapped around my middle, I looked for him in the apartment: the kitchen, the living room, our bedroom, the spare bedroom. He wasn’t anywhere to be found. Did I start to panic? Did something settle underneath my skin that caused me to feel disturbed, lost, confused, and selfless for the first time in my life? Where did Cannon go? What was he up to? Why hadn’t he told me he was leaving?
(Kyle/Kyle/Kyle)
The Commander was parked out front, sitting on the street—a mere thirty feet from the apartment building’s front door. Maybe Cannon was doing something under its engine. Checking its oil. Writing down its mileage. Looking for its owner’s manual. I wasn’t sure but wanted to find out. I buzzed through the apartment and looked onto Padilla Street. The car was there, and so was Cannon, slumped over its steering wheel. His neck was arched forward and his forehead was pressed against the black wheel. I called out to him but he didn’t answer. I called out a second time, but nothing happened.
The remaining moments of that endeavor were a blur for me for the longest time: slipping into a pair of Rufskin shorts; bolting down the stairs and over the front sidewalk; panting heavily; heart wildly beating within the fold of my chest; pain skiing from one temple to the other temple; yanking the Commander’s driver door open; finding Cannon passed out inside the vehicle; the accessories missing from his wrists; both narrow wrists sliced open with the scalpel I gave him as a gift; blood pooling into the Commander’s foot well; the scalpel sitting on the passenger seat; the bittersweet stench of thick blood coagulating; the sight of his pallid-white-almost-yellow skin and…
That was his gift to me, I knew. The honesty of his affair, the bridge that would heal our dilapidated relationship. The growth of our togetherness. Simple love found by the attempted act of scalpel-suicide. A magnum deed that would only bring the two of us closer together. He had finally pleased me. I was happy to see him that way. I was thrilled and in love with him again.
All was forgiven, honestly.
Shrink Time.
Estelle says Cannon wasn’t dead, although he should have been. He didn’t kill himself. You called 911 and the paramedics arrived in time.
I say I didn’t plan it that way. He deserved to die. We pay for our sins, don’t you think? She chooses not to answer me.
Pause. Quiet for the first time since we met. Insanity.
She finally says you saved Cannon’s life. You could have left him die, but didn’t. You know that. You will always know that. It was the power you had over him. The control. He could have died and you prevented that from happening. It was your means of survival, your devotion to heal because of his affair with Kyle.
I stop listening to her.
She says my name.
I look at her.
Estelle
says it’s okay to admit that you love him. Your hardship is over. Both of you have survived this. Even the tools are gone. You gave them all away. Anything he could use to cut himself. Everything like that is gone. If you didn’t love Cannon you would have kept them. You know this. You can’t lie to yourself. This is reality. Kyle is gone. And she tells me to say this three times.
Kyle is gone/Kyle is gone/Kyle is gone.
And I feel better, alive, and a part of Cannon again.
"Are you asleep, Cannon?”
“I was.”
“Do you want to sleep?”
“Not anymore. What did you have in mind?”
“Sex, of course,” I said.
“The rough and tough stuff?”
“I think I’d like that.”
“You’re demented,” he said.
“And you love that about me.”
Lacuna
Matthew Cheney
Even now, decades after the events, I cannot describe his actions without bringing myself to tears and raising aching memories across my skin.
I heard this story from an acquaintance of mine a few years ago, and he claimed to have heard it from his grandfather, who heard it from the daughter of the man whose story it was. I have filled in gaps with my own best guesses for how certain events might have happened; as an amateur historian of 19th-century New York City, I was able to draw on a significant amount of information accumulated over a lifetime of study. Nonetheless, I am painfully aware of how unlikely it is that everything happened as I tell it here.
I tried many times to write this story in as straightforward and objective a manner as possible, but repeatedly failed. There are too many lacunae. Therefore, I am taking the liberty of writing this story from the point of view of the person who is its main character. I have never written fiction before—its conventions are anathema to me—but I hope readers will forgive any awkwardness, for I do believe this is the only way I could accurately preserve what is, I hope you’ll agree, a most remarkable history.
Wilde Stories 2014 Page 14
