A Winter in Rome

by Francis Gideon

  "Huh," Sybil said. "Well okay."

  "Yeah, I liked most of the others more."

  "I'm glad you stayed."

  I grinned, beaming. "That's good. I was thinking… that maybe… I can be your call."

  She paused, narrowing her eyes. The once-friendly demeanour was gone. "What do you mean?"

  "If you ever want to talk to someone."

  "I... uhh…You're not a crisis line."

  "Of course I'm not. But I could be there for you at three in the morning and you can't sleep."

  She eyed me carefully, more pointedly than before. I didn't blame her; she probably heard so many bad pickup lines all day, and heard horror stories of men at night. I let her examine me, her eyes taking me apart the same way Alan's did. Head to toe to mouth to hair. Alan had taken me apart for art, where Sybil took me apart for danger. I was relieved when, just like Alan, she put me back together.

  "Sure," she said, grabbing her phone to take down my number. She didn't offer me hers, and I didn't ask. "I'll call. Sometime."

  "Good."

  "But don't wait up."

  "Of course," I said. "I wouldn't want to."

  She smiled. We waited until the MC was finished speaking before she began to gather her things. I took that as my cue to leave and followed her out the door. Normally, we said goodbye in a professional and business-like manner. I'd thank her for the help and she'd thank me for the lattes. But now, we lingered outside the café door, our skin freezing in the April night-time air. I was about to lift my hand up to wave goodbye to her, when she stepped forward.

  "Hug?" she asked, and then my arms were around her. I didn't mind this goodbye, I thought. But she pulled away quickly and then walked fast down the other side of the street. Sybil waited for no one.

  *~*~*

  The next morning with Alan, I couldn't stop thinking of Sybil and the night before. I heard the steady sway of the poetry from the café and repeated the lines I could recall from Andrew's performance. Wrong body—no—wrong mind. I tried to tell myself it was just the poetry and the newness of the experience that got to me; it made me wonder why some people expressed their words in poetry vs. song. Patti Smith sometimes spoke her words rather than singing them, I realized, and this suddenly made a big difference to me. So instead of focusing on Sybil, I found Patti Smith's Radio Ethiopia CD she had put out after Horses, and skipped all the way to "Chiklets" as I moved into Alan's kitchen. I kept the volume low, because it was still early morning and Alan would be asleep for a while yet.

  After the first month we had been together, I realized that Alan never actually fell asleep when he came to bed with me at night. He'd try, he really did, but it just never worked, so he got up to sketch or write lectures. He preferred the night, and while I always thought myself a night person, Alan's dedication to the mid-morning hours was impressive. At first, I had been upset that falling asleep together had been an illusion; I thought it was what all couples were supposed to do. But I had learned to cherish the time I was given in the morning while he was still sleeping. I would usually do my homework, sometimes have breakfast, and maybe even lunch before he would wake up. If I got really lonely or bored, I would crawl back into bed with him and we'd doze until we were both ready to get up.

  After listening to Radio Ethiopia at least once all the way through, I headed back into his room. He had drawn the blinds so that the sunlight would stay out, and he turned away from the window, his face on my side and partly obscured by the pillow. I took off my shirt before I slid under the covers. He made small noises, and eventually pulled me closer to him as if I was part of the blankets. I murmured things in his ear, before kissing him, and caught a glimpse of his blinking eye before he moved to properly kiss me.

  "Morning," he murmured.

  "It's noon," I whispered.

  "Time is subjective."

  I kissed his mouth playfully. "Sometimes you want me to get you up when it's the afternoon."

  "Uh-huh. Just… a minute."

  I nodded and allowed my eyes to close as my head hit the pillow. I pulled his arm over my chest and held him there. For a while I forgot about Sybil and last night, until I heard the steady beat of music again. But it wasn't Andrew's poem in my head, and from what I could recall, I had shut off the Patti Smith CD from his living room. I lifted my head slightly, feeling crazy when I couldn't quite locate the sound or where it was coming from.

  Alan's palm touched my neck. "Shhh. It's just Reggie down the hall."

  "What?"

  "Reggie's opera. Madame Butterfly." He groaned slightly, still waking up, as I strained my ears. I could hear familiar notes now—not because I knew the opera, but because I remembered this happening before. I had seen Reggie's name on the plate in the front foyer of the building, though I had never actually seen him.

  "Not his opera as in he wrote it, but he performed in it," Alan added, his voice clearer now. He blocked out what little sun there was with the back of his hand, his eyes closed, as he talked. "It's nice, actually—if not a little out of date, since it's about a man and his Japanese lover who turns out to also be a man."

  "Oh. Isn't that…"

  "Yes, it's out-dated. There are so many things wrong with the way the story is told—the gender assumptions, the orientalism. There's lot going on that's just plain bad."

  "So why keep it around?"

  "Well, I know the work because of what I do. Art is never apolitical, as much as people want to think. There are terrible things depicted in art, and the history of it, like any medium, is full of bloodshed, sexism, racism, all of that. But there is a reason we study terrible pieces, both ideologically and aesthetically—because they have changed the way we see art. If Madame Butterfly was produced now, I would roll my eyes because the time has passed. But it is a reflection of an era, from a perspective in that era, as flawed as it is." Alan turned around to press his ear to the wall. "And it still sounds nice, don't you think?"

  I nodded with a small grin. "That's not quite what I meant."

  Alan closed his eyes and pinched his nose. "Oh, God, I'm lecturing again. I'm sorry. I was preparing notes for class all of last night, writing abstracts and grant proposals. Responding to fifteen emails from Rebecca to write an article."

  His hands were shaking again, the way they did when he wanted to smoke. He had been trying to quit, on and off he had told me, since writing his dissertation. Sometimes he could go months without a cigarette, and he often didn't smoke around me. But when stress came into his life, and mixed with memories of Rebecca, he lit up again—or he shook as if the nicotine never really left his blood. I grabbed his hands and kissed his fingers several times before the shaking stopped.

  "Thank you," he said appreciatively. He glanced up and seemed to see my face for the first time that morning—really see it. He placed a hand on the back of my neck and kissed me stronger than before, now that he was fully awake. "Good morning. Or afternoon. Whatever."

  "Whatever."

  "How was last night?"

  "Good. Sybil helped me out, like always."

  He nodded. I had told him about Sybil from the first day I met her, and he was used to hearing her name more often now that things were friendlier. I wanted to tell him about what had happened the night before—the poetry, the way Sybil lit up, and what she was really like—but I failed to find the words. How do you tell someone you're with romantically that you've finally understood a new friend? There was no language to articulate what had happened between us. I also felt my stomach shift, desire bloom, and I wanted to quell it before it grew.

  Alan and I listened to the opera a little more, still lying in bed. He was naked from the waist up and had now shed the blanket down his body. I knew he wanted to get up, but we still lingered in this half-moment of sleep and dream. The opera itself felt that way; I didn't remember when it had started, and for a while, I couldn't recall anything but the fractured storyline I had heard in passing.

  "What did you mean, Craig?" he ask
ed, rubbing his eyes. "From before?"

  "Oh. Well, why does Reggie sing the opera if it's out-dated?"

  "He's not singing, actually. I mean he is—but it's recording of his voice."

  "Really?" I leaned in to hear the music and of course, I should have known. All the notes were the same, all the timing was perfect.

  "He's an old singer," Alan added. "He got throat cancer and had to have his larynx removed, so he listens to the songs when he misses singing. I wrote a paper on him, ages ago, for my dissertation."

  "You can write about people in your dissertation?"

  "Yeah, all artists are people."

  "I know that, but… You can write about random people you meet on the street?"

  "He's not so random. He's down the hall and had some fame years ago. After Madame Butterfly, he was part of Ball Culture. He told me he was in a back frame shot of Paris is Burning. And now, his life has a new ending, or pathway in it, and I was lucky to write about it."

  In between a change of songs, I heard a cough. Not loud—and if I hadn't known about the man's history, I probably would have let it pass by. I thought of this man and what Ball Culture had been and I felt my mind open the same way it had the night before at the poetry slam with Andrew. "I'd like to read your dissertation."

  Alan closed his eyes, crinkling his nose. "Oh, no, no, you do not."

  "For Sybil, then. I think she's toying with the idea of grad school. Maybe it will help if she sees what it's like. Even if it's a different area."

  "What's she studying?"

  "Counselling, domestic violence. Stuff that makes me want to weep for humanity." I paused, hearing another crescendo down the hallway. I wondered if he had a Wikipedia page and if I could find him singing on YouTube before cancer took his voice. I realized then that Alan was still dealing with stuff that made me want to weep, but on another level. "I think the two of you would get along, actually."

  Alan smiled. "I think so, too."

  *~*~*

  When Sybil finally called me, it was a Sunday night. I grabbed my phone and was surprised by the unknown number. I almost debating not answering, then I remembered our discussion.

  "Hello?"

  "Hi. It's Sybil."

  I let out a sigh of relief. The introductions were quick after that; she was originally supposed to go into the crisis centre tonight, but they didn't need her.

  "And since this is one of the most depressing days of the week, I wanted to give you a call."

  "Sunday is depressing?"

  "Come on, even Garfield hates Mondays, and Sunday's the prelude to it." She laughed. "And there's a song by Billie Holiday called 'Gloomy Sunday' that radio stations actually can't play anymore because it caused too many suicides."

  "Really?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "It's so odd how music can uplift people, and then crush them so entirely," I mused. I listened on the other end as Sybil continued to tell me more facts she had learned from her job. I could tell she was moving around as she talked. When I heard the shuffle of CD cases and then the low hum of music, I had to stop her in the middle of what she was saying.

  "Wait. What are you listening to now?"

  "The Horses album by Patti Smith."

  "I love her! Good choice," I said, before launching into conversation about Just Kids and everything I had learned from Alan. I talked for only five minutes or so before I let his name slip in.

  "Okay, new cast of characters. Who's Alan?"

  "Alan Winters, sorry. He's at the school."

  "Ah, right. I think I've seen the name. Art professor, right? Friends with Rebecca Black?"

  "You know Rebecca Black?"

  "Not really. She spoke in one of my Women's Studies classes in the fall semester because she was a heavy hitter in the early nineties."

  "Huh. Neat."

  "So you know Alan, though? Can I call him that if I don't know him?"

  "Yes and yes, I think," I said, feeling my chest tighten a little bit. Alan had been in the school newsletter recently because of Rebecca Black's art exhibit. One of Alan's students from an upper year course had won some prize, and Rebecca had mentioned Alan's name a million times in the interview. I knew all of this, mostly because I had put a Google Alert on his name, so I could tell him when the world was talking about him, in case he didn't already know. Sybil's voice didn't seem judgemental or anything when she talked about Alan or Rebecca, so I decided that it was okay to keep going and tell her a little more. "I was in his class."

  "You're not now?"

  I shook my head, then said "No," on the phone.

  "Why not?"

  "It's… complicated."

  "I can be your phone line, too, Craig. Tell me why it's complicated."

  With a sigh, I took her up on her offer. I told her how I had dropped out of his class because I couldn't draw worth a damn, and also because Alan and I had started seeing one another. I hated calling it "seeing one another" though, because it sounded so inconsequential. Boyfriend sounded too odd and clunky in my mouth. I realized then that I had told no one about Alan as my anything, and how good it was to hear her understand on the other end.

  "That's common."

  "What? Professors dating students? Because it wasn't like that. That's why I dropped the class. I didn't want to deal with those weird, thorny power relations."

  "No, actually. I was going to say age differences in the gay community. So much of it is hushed and silenced, but we need words in order to communicate. So as soon as someone realizes they are gay, then they have no place to go… until they find someone who is older and who can lead them through it all. It's very common."

  She was so methodical about it all that I almost didn't realize she had said 'we' when referring to the gay community. "What do you mean 'we'?"

  She laughed, and soon, both of our stories were all laid out. Sybil was born in Montreal, then she moved to Ottawa with her parents, became buried in snow and domestic violence, and then moved once more to Kitchener to go to high school. Now she was in Toronto and sometimes lingered around York University because she was pretty sure her ex-girlfriend from high school now went there. But she had gone to the Ontario College of Arts and Design, Rebecca and Alan's school, because she had seen a Riot Grrrl poster that same girlfriend had made tacked up on the café's board.

  "And that had seemed like some grand sign that I should follow my heart here, and then, even if she had broken my heart, maybe I could repair it," she said, somewhat mocking her own plight. "Or something like that."

  "Wow," I said. "That's quite a story."

  "Yours was, too," she said. "Though you were mostly telling me about Alan's life and times. Not really much about yours."

  "I'm boring compared to you," I insisted, but told her anyway. I was a kid born in a suburb outside of Toronto, who loved Toronto from afar, because that's where all the good concerts were. I had moved here on a scholarship, which I had lost by the second semester, because it turned out that while I was smart in high school, I was average here. But I had taken some neat courses and fallen in love with an art teacher. "So far, Alan, and now you, have been the most exciting things to happen to me."

  "But your life's not over yet," she reminded me. "I always tell people that on the phone. Things seem really bad right now, but if you live through it, you can look back on it. Our lives, even the messy bits, start to make more sense when we look back."

  "Well," I said, struck by her words. I knew all of this logically. I knew every last "it gets better" slogan derivative from high school guidance counsellors. I had never really been suicidal, but I had, I realized until I met Alan, been depressed in some way. No one around me understood what I meant when I talked, so I didn't talk. I listened and watched, and it was only within the past six months that I began to form words. I wondered how Sybil, who was two years younger, had gotten here before me. She was so ahead of the curve, while I felt covered in dust.

  "Well," I repeated. "I feel so much better now. Rea
lly. I'm not being facetious."

  She laughed. "Good. Because you should feel better. I like you."

  "Your affection like gives me life, Sybil."

  She sighed once the teasing tone of my voice had returned. "Just remember Patti Smith, Craig. Don't wait until you're almost thirty to get what you want."

  We were quiet on the phone. The music had ended and I was left with only her breathing. "What if I want you?" I asked.

  "That's a more complicated question. It depends on how your love will bend."

  "Love bends?"

  "Well, I don't think love breaks. I don't think we can really ever fall out of love with someone whom we once decided we did love. Even if they're terrible people."

  "How can you say that, given the people you talk to on the phone?"

  "I didn't say you shouldn't leave someone you love. Only that love isn't some resource that needs to be revoked if the person misuses it. You can still love terrible people—they just shouldn't be in your life."

  I was quiet. I thought of the way in which my single mom had shuffled around from guy to guy, falling in love, and then severing all contact if they did something wrong, and they usually did. I was used to men being all or nothing in her eyes—me included. I had to always be good or else I was just like my dad, just like my stepdad, just like all that was wrong with the world. That was how, I thought, I knew how to act around Sybil. But she was telling me now that even if someone was terrible, they could still be loved.

  "I don't understand."

  "Think of everyone as holding a ball of string," she began. "As we walk, we trail it around, turn it around, and get otherwise tangled. You can't walk out your door without bumping into someone and getting tangled with them. When we love someone, we voluntarily get tangled. Sometimes we get so tangled that we form a knot. The knot, as most counsellors at the centre say, is love. The knot can be good, or it can be painful. And when you realize that something is painful and you want to get rid of it, you don't cut all of the strings. Because when you do that, you sever your own cord. You hurt yourself. Instead, you untangle it. It may take a long, long time—hence why it's good to have therapy and talk it all out. But you have to untangle the knot, bit by bit, or else you only damage yourself. Granted, sometimes you can't get it all untangled, and that's fine. So long as you can move freely again and become entwined with someone else." She paused. "Does that make sense? Sometimes they tell us things during the training for the crisis centre and I just roll my eyes it's so stupid, but this metaphor I liked. I tell it a lot. I hope I'm…"