I Loved You More

by Tom Spanbauer

  Another big, bright light, a night sky crack, and the earth is the color of the moon.

  On the nightstand, I try the lamp, no electricity. That’s when I hear it. A blast of Beethoven or something like him. Music real loud that all at once is all around me. Then just as fast the music winds down, a 45 record going to 33⅓. Then boom the loud music again.

  I go to the bathroom off the bedroom I stay in, turn on the lightswitch. No light. Strange how electricity and running water we just expect. I can see myself in the mirror. Mostly my white shorts. I put my fingers on the white tile around the sink. Position my feet firm on the floor. I take a deep breath. This shit’s been going on way too long.

  When I check in, my heart is fine, my breath is coming in and out. When I move my fingers, my fingers move. My toes wiggle. My shoulders, my arms, my legs. Still got my old pope. My mouth tastes like old cigarette. And my head is sore right in the middle above my eyes where it always gets sore when I drink and smoke.

  Reality. Still, something’s fucked up, even if it’s not me.

  It’s the world. The world is fucked up. Maybe it’s the end of the world. Outside, the heavens are flashing hallelujah and there’s weird Beethoven music blasting out then slowing down, blasting out, slowing down. The only thing I can figure is that Hank and Olga are downstairs fucking with the stereo hi-fi. The two of them doing some interpretive dance to the light show outside. I don’t even think there’s no electricity so how can there be a stereo hi-fi.

  Outside, through the bay window, it’s far more interesting than the mirror. If it’s the end of the world, I may as well witness it. Who knows how long I stand there. Make myself look close. If these are my last moments I’m a lucky guy. My eyes, these two round things inside my head that see, are delighted at the magic light show the gods are putting on. Then there’s a new sound. A tapping that gets louder.

  “Ben? Ben, are you in there? Are you awake?”

  I open my bedroom door and it’s Hank and Olga huddling around the flame of a candle. Olga’s hair is down and she’s just in her white slip. Hank’s white shorts are like mine. Stretched out in the crotch and legs.

  “Is that you guys down there,” I said, “making that weird music?”

  “No!” Hank and Olga say at the same time. “We thought it was you!”

  LOOK AT US, three children with a taper, so close together you’d think it’s one person walking through the dark house. It’s funny, so we’re laughing, but it’s not too funny. That music ain’t funny. Shoulder to shoulder to shoulder down the stairs. Bare feet against oak floors. Olga’s spicy perfume, what’s left of Hank’s Polo aftershave. Sweat. At the bottom of the stairs, the foyer in the dark is every kid’s nightmare of a haunted house. Right then, there’s a big silver flash of light and when the thunder hits, it shakes the chandelier. Olga screams, then I scream, then Hank farts. One of Hank’s famous farts. Then we’re laughing so hard we fucking can’t navigate.

  Delicate. We are so delicate. Look at us. Inching to the living room carrying a tiny fire. To the big weird Beethoven sound, loud and then slow and then loud and then slow, coming from the living room.

  THE BEETHOVEN MUSIC is coming from the Beethoven record that is the record on top of the pile I loaded up the stereo hi-fi with. Except I don’t remember putting a Beethoven record on there. And Hank didn’t put it on either, or Olga. But it’s there, the needle in the middle of the record, Beethoven’s Fifth. Hank reaches down and pulls the phonograph needle off the record. Outside, the storm keeps going. Blasts of light and thunder. But at least the music has stopped.

  The only rational explanation Hank and I can come up with is that the electricity in the air somehow was fucking with the stereo hi-fi.

  Olga has another opinion.

  “Music is the structure of the invisible,” she says.

  When we go back to bed, we go together, all of us into the same room, my room upstairs. When we get to the room, the bathroom light is on. Ten minutes later, the lightning storm has passed.

  In the bathroom, I brush my teeth while Hank takes a leak. He’s got a set of kidneys on him. I shut off the light. When I walk into the bedroom, Hank’s body, Olga’s body are dark silhouettes pressed against the bay window.

  “Look! Ben!” Olga says, “More mystery.”

  I press my palm against the glass. Once more, this weird lovely night shows its magic. Below us, on the ground, another light storm. Covering the lawn, beneath the cherry trees, and into the meadow. Fireflies. Millions of fireflies light up the earth. As far as we can see.

  THERE’S ONE MORE thing about that night. Before the lightning storm, while I was passed out up in my bedroom, Hank and Olga fucked on Esther’s Chesterfield couch, and Hank’s splooge left a stain on the leather that wasn’t ever going to come out. Esther wasn’t too happy about the stain, but Esther is Esther and all she said was, “Well, at least it was the Maroni’s.”

  LAST SEPTEMBER, ESTHER turned eighty. Roy is failing. She’s sold her house and moved to Idaho. Sold that couch, too, at an open auction, along with most of the furniture. I’d give anything now to own that couch. To touch the stain Hank Christian left on a piece of red leather.

  So many times, I’ve looked back on that night, the three of us in Pennsylvania in Esther’s big old turreted, gabled house something out of Hawthorne. Lovely Olga like in a Matisse painting, in her white dress, a young beautiful maid picking flowers in a garden. That cop, when he saw Olga, didn’t know what hit him. How I spoke up about my feelings and my friend Hank heard me. The candles that made the table an altar. Hank’s dance, what it is to be alive, how he moved his hips like straight guys don’t. Haji Baba the cornflower turban on his head. Billie Holiday, “April in Paris,” her voice, all that is broken and doesn’t fit giving voice to hope.

  So many times, I’ve wondered at the lightning that night. Really, I’ve never experienced a storm like that since. So many times, usually a little stoned, I’ve told the story of the Beethoven record. It never fails, the way people laugh at that one. Then I have to tell the one about the fireflies.

  Why I believe this, I don’t know for sure. So many times I’ve thought it, was afraid to say it. Said it quiet but never out loud. Truth is, most of the time I’ve spent trying to forget it. But now, so many years later, I know in my heart it has to be true.

  Olga said it. Music is the structure of the invisible.

  The ghost that passed through me that night, passed through Olga too, and Hank. All of us. The magic of that night: how the invisible touched us. After that night, none of us were ever the same again.

  The first time death brushed up against us and left its print.

  Death, so theatrical when it first appears itself to youth.

  For years it was a pool of sweat on the bed, between my shoulders at night.

  Hell, these days death’s a pair of old shoes sitting by the door.

  Olga, her double mastectomy.

  Me, the hangover the next morning that lasted a week, my seroconversion to AIDS.

  Hank, the tumors that started on his cock, that went to behind his eye, then settled in his liver.

  Delicate. We are so delicate. So easily we die.

  7.

  The Spike

  THE SEXIEST THING MY EYES EVER SAW HAPPENED LATE October in a Manhattan bar. The Spike is a leather bar, heavy duty, and it was usually winter when I went there, during the holidays, always late at night, and I was always fucked up. Or it was hot, that New York heat. In August, what air conditioning and aftershave do to a man’s sweat. Winter or summer, each time it was the same. After the bouncer, I sucked my gut in, led with my shoulder, and made my slow way through the jam of men to the bar. It was a tough journey for my propinquity, but I was stoned, and sometimes I’d imagine I was a stowaway on steerage in a huge ocean liner, or third class traveling in a freight car in a Third World country. Usually the bar was three people deep. That meant more shouldering. When I finally made it to the counter of the bar,
when I finally got my beer, I turned around, kept my back to the bar, didn’t move from the bar for anybody, and watched.

  This time at the Spike, though, is different. It’s an afternoon, and I’m meeting a friend from my old days at Boise State, Sam Tyler. Sam’s in town on some kind of sabbatical. Poetry. Sam knows his way around New York, and especially his way around the Spike. Sometimes when he came to New York, Sam didn’t go anywhere but the Spike. On the West Side Highway, somewhere in the twenties. Infamous, this bar. In the window, its only advertisement, a red neon spike just on the small side of a raised forearm and fist.

  Mid-afternoon, there isn’t a bouncer. A couple of guys at the bar, but the place is empty. Surprising, the way the bar looks. Like hell might look during the day. A big room, twenty-foot ceilings, dark gray-blue walls, long, sloping, oak floorboards, low waves through the room, salt on the floorboards. Sunlight through the chips in the windows spray-painted black. A line of whitewashed pillars rubbed to bare wood between a man’s shoulder and his ass. The oval bar in the middle of the room, what at night the universe of cruising men circle, like a roller rink, or in the Forties the way a dance floor looked with couples going round and around. Like any ordinary closed-in bar where people seriously drink and smoke, the smell, except for the poppers, the lube, and the sex. Napalm. It’s what I imagine napalm to smell like.

  Sam’s a big guy, big cock too, or so I’d heard. I don’t know from where. Those kinds of things in the gay world just get around – if you’re large or if you’re small. It’s just information, something your ears hear. First name: Sam. Surname: Tyler. Cock size: ten inches tumescent.

  Thick black hair and a black graying beard. Tall, real tall, a big-chested guy. Big, deep voice and intelligent brown eyes. For me, Sam’s brown eyes, intelligent, what makes him sexy. Not that we ever had sex. That night we tried but couldn’t get past my Dead Lorca. Plus the size thing. The cock-obsessed gay world, size is something very important about you. And if what is important is wrong, when you’re lying next to ten inches of hard cock, it’s difficult not to launch into an obsessive Woody Allen.

  Portnoy ain’t got nothing to complain about.

  Actually, Sam has no trouble with my cock, even with the fact it doesn’t get hard. Some of us are just shy, he says.

  Guys with big cocks always say things like that. Because they can. They’re like the rich: they’re different from us.

  Hugging Sam that afternoon at the Spike was like hugging a big bear. We order beers, sit on two high stools by the cigarette machine close to the front door, watch the bar, go through all the small talk you have to go through at first.

  Outside, on the other side of the red neon spike, I can see a white delivery van pull up across the avenue. It does a smart piece of Doris Day parking. A stocky guy, wearing a dark brown khaki uniform and boots, no cap, long brown curly hair, steps out of the van – one of those tall square things with no windows. The guy looks a lot like Hank. He’s wearing a jacket with a company’s logo on it. The guy looks up the avenue and down, takes his jacket off, throws it in his van and locks it. Nothing I can see is written on the van. Sam says something to me just then, I don’t know what, in fact, the whole following conversation with Sam is lost on me. Moments later, the guy from the van walks into the Spike, makes a beeline to the bar and orders a beer. Tom on his shirt pocket. He slumps his body over onto the bar, stares into his beer. Thick legs and a big, strong ass. Every once in a while he looks up, takes a quick look around. The Spike is definitely new territory.

  Not long after, another guy walks in. This guy’s a big guy. Big as Sam. Crew cut. Carries himself like he’s important. Takes his time and checks it all out as he walks. Clint Eastwood, make my day. Levi’s and a brown leather belt. A blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His cowboy boots, long strides, creaks in the oak floor. The smash in his short hair where he’s worn a hard hat. Sam checks him out, too. Isn’t long, neither of us are talking. All we can do is watch.

  The big guy walks up to the bar right next to Tom but doesn’t touch him. Tom stands up fast. The big guy’s a head taller. The two of them look each other in the eyes. The kind of look where everything else goes away. Tom’s doing his best not to fall over. The big guy has it all down. But you can tell. He’s stepped into some deep shit. They’re straight men, or men in the world living as straight. The big guy more than likely has done this before, but it’s for sure this is Tom’s first time. And something else that’s clear. Both of them have been waiting a long time for this moment.

  Each of them takes a step forward, and since there’s only one step between them, when they meet it’s a collision. Tom has his chin raised, his head back, and the big guy leans down. The way their lips meet. You can hear the kiss all the way across the room.

  Count Vronsky and Anna Karenina at the train station. Tom’s big hands press against his lover’s head, the big guy’s big arms around Tom’s waist, Tom’s tiptoes at times barely touching the floorboards. Faces and lips smash together, each one trying to crawl inside, they kiss and kiss as long as they can until they come up for air.

  Romance such a strange emotion in a leather bar.

  The big guy goes for his beer. They look around for a moment, but not for long. New York City, the city where nobody stares, and everybody is staring. Trying not to look like it. The big guy whispers something into Tom’s ear. Tom looks down, sees the name on his shirt, unbuttons his shirt, takes it off, stuffs his shirt into his back pocket. Tom, down to his white T-shirt. We’re all wondering what else he might take off.

  Another kiss. Body to body, hungry lips eating it all up. My God, these guys are going to fuck. The kiss, the kiss, the kiss, the kiss, forever and ever the kiss. They pull away again, breath trying to come in and go out, their chests bellows of air, Tom’s lips sliding up the big guy’s face, Tom pulling himself all the way up to the big guy’s ear.

  They go on that way at least an hour. Sam is there and we’re talking, but I am someplace else. Kiss and kiss and kiss then come up for air, those two. Lost lovers in the only place that will have them. Nowhere else to go. There’s the back room where they can fuck, but I don’t think they know that. Or if they do, their fucking is just for them.

  When they leave they leave together, nobody seems to notice. Maybe Sam notices because of how much I’ve noticed. My heart feels so happy for them. One way or another they’re going to solve their problem. Outside, across the avenue, on the other side of the red neon, Tom opens the back door of his white van. The big guy looks around then gets in first. Then Tom gets in. The way that van starts bouncing it’s all I can do to stay sitting in my chair.

  “THE WAY THAT van started bouncing,” I say, “it was all I could do to sit in my chair.”

  It’s Wednesday night, after teaching at the Y. Sometime around Thanksgiving. Hank and I are at our table, at our restaurant, eating cheeseburgers, fries, drinking Cokes. Hank has a mouthful of cheeseburger. When he stops chewing, Hank looks up at me, those black eyes of his straight into mine.

  “Would you take me with you sometime?” Hank says.

  “Where?” I say.

  “The Spike.”

  It’s my turn to spit cheeseburger across the table. I mean, I don’t spit cheeseburger, but if I had a mouthful, I would’ve.

  “Why would you want to go there?”

  Hank is bringing his shoulders down, starting to pump up his chest.

  “Because you go there,” he says. “And everything you’ve said about it, sounds like a pretty interesting place.”

  “Hank,” I say, “it’s a heavy-duty leather bar – a gay leather bar.”

  “I’m quoting,” Hank says. “Napalm. You said the bar smells like napalm. Social conventions distilled down to a single purpose to fuck or get fucked.

  “But that’s not the real reason you go there.” Hank says, “I like why you go there and I’d like to go with you.”

  “Why do I go there?” I say.

  “You’re cur
ious about human nature, especially men,” Hank says. “When you go to the Spike, it’s like getting in a satellite to orbit Pluto.”

  “I’d like to see Pluto too,” Hank says. “And I’d be in good hands because I trust you.”

  CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS, THAT night before Hank comes over, I feel I’m some kind of lascivious despot corrupting an innocent child. Hank Christian, an innocent child. Fuck, we’re all so homophobic.

  When I open my apartment door, I can’t believe my eyes. Hank’s dressed in clean jeans, a black belt, white tennis shoes, and a button-down, long-sleeved blue Oxford shirt tucked in his pants. A shiny green winter parka. His hair washed and shiny. Standing there in the hallway of my building, he looks like he was going out on a date. A heterosexual date.

  “What?” Hank says.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Don’t I look enough like a gay?” Hank says.

  “Come in and sit down,” I say. “I’ll get us a beer.”

  Hank unzips his parka, lifts his right arm up, smells his pit. Then his left arm.

  “See! No pits. And it’s hot in the subway,” Hank says. “Mennen Stick. Always works good.”

  I step back, let Hank walk in, then close and lock the door. That place right there, one of the only two places in the apartment big enough for two to stand, for a moment we stand. Mint breath. Mennen stick. A quick touch of hands. Not the way guys usually touch, but this is Hank. His eyes, always takes me a while to look right into Hank’s eyes.

  That night, after my deep breath, when I look, Hank is scrubbed and shiny as a new silver dollar. Light coming out of him as if light was what he’s made of.

  I’ve cleared away the papers on my writing desk, pulled up my other chair, so we can sit. Hank takes off his shiny green winter parka. I get us two Buds out of the fridge, find the opener in the drawer, sit down next to Hank.

  “You don’t go to Pluto looking like Jupiter,” I say.