I Loved You More

by Tom Spanbauer

  One big deep breath jumps into my lungs when I realize where I am, where Hank is, how close we are. After a while and some real concentration, my breath goes back to something like normal. The light through the mirror from the window is snow bright and barely morning. I don’t try and move away, or act startled, or worry about Hank when he wakes up. That he’ll think I planned this, or that it’s my fault we’re lying this way.

  My God, so this is what it feels like to be touched. I must still be high, I think. So content. Natural comfort. Perfectly in the place I’ve always wanted to be.

  Hank moves his hand a little across my chest before he speaks. His voice is as if in a dream and so low I can barely hear him.

  “In the basement of the Strand Book Store,” Hank says. “My God, how long ago was that?”

  “All those months we didn’t talk,” I say. “What happened to you that night at the Spike?”

  Only our breath, the wind and the snow outside. I let my hand move on the skin of Hank’s shoulder.

  “We could’ve frozen to death last night,” Hank says.

  “It’s still last night,” I say. “I’m still so high. Are you still high?”

  “I’d better be,” Hank says. “I’ve never been this close to a guy’s nipple before.”

  “Three months we didn’t talk,” I say.

  “I’m not sure if I remember why,” Hank says.

  “Sure you do.”

  Hank’s ribs fill with air and stay full. When the air comes out his mouth, I expect bad breath, but Hank just smells like Hank.

  “It was getting fucked in the ass,” Hank says. “You said you liked it and it freaked me out. I’d been thinking about Kiss of the Spider Woman and how Raul Julia is a friend to William Hurt and so he fucks him and maybe that’s what you and I should do, only I couldn’t imagine it.”

  A gust of wind hits the house, everything shakes and rattles. A piece of tin on the roof makes a racket. Suddenly inside me the lightbulb in my chest. The flickering filament and I want out of there. Hank’s way too close and there is no breath. But I’m high and I’ve traveled far and learned too much. My thumb the day before, how it made the fear come and go away.

  So long ago, the day I’d cut my finger and my uncle Bob chased the Running Boy all over the farm.

  Lying there in bed with Hank that morning, it was a great big revelation that there had never been a place that was safe for me. And yet there I was. With a hard-on and finally safe. In the wedding ring bed in an old house in a snowstorm in the Sawtooths, embracing Hank. Whatever had got me to that place, I had to trust. Besides, really there was no place to go. Outside the bed I’d freeze to death.

  “How do you do that? I say. “Just go away like that?”

  “It’s something you learn,” Hank says.

  “What’s to learn?”

  “Never show fear.”

  “What’s the trick?” I ask.

  “You shut it all down,” Hank says. “Screw it down hard. Make it so nothing can touch you.”

  “How do you do that?” I ask.

  “You just do it,” Hank says.

  Through the triangular chinks at the ceiling, a swirl of snow high up across the room from one wall to the other. I look down and see there’s a dusting of snow on the quilt. I go to kick the snow off but don’t. I’m afraid to move. Afraid the embrace, the magic, will end.

  “Was this what the whole Idaho Book Tour was about?” Hank says. “Getting me into bed?”

  “You got in this bed all by yourself,” I say.

  “But say it,” Hank says. “You’ve been wanting this all along haven’t you – me,” Hank says, “sex with me.”

  “And now all my dreams have come true!” I say.

  “We’re not having sex,” Hank says.

  “We are to me.”

  “Then this is enough?”

  “I’ve had a fucking apparition after me since Pocatello,” I say.

  Hank’s hand moves across my heart and holds on to that side of my ribs. The Running Boy again, but I move my thumb and it’s all so ridiculous, it’s only an idea, something I’ve learned, to live my life in fear.

  “Fuck, you cried so hard in the car,” Hank says. “You and your sister. That’s some heavy shit.”

  “There was this drawing in the Baltimore Catechism,” I say, “of hell and there’s this guy in hell, at the very bottom. He’s naked and he doesn’t have a dick and his face is terrifying.”

  “When we were in the sweat lodge,” Hank says, “I saw my father.”

  “He tried to kill me,” Hank says. “My pops held me under the water and I really fucking believe he was trying to kill me.”

  “That sweat lodge was so fucking hot. I was in hell too,” I say. “Remember you reached out and grabbed my hand?”

  “Ever since my father,” Hank says, “that’s how I’ve treated men. That bullshit about male love being back to back is bullshit. The only way I really know how to treat a man is to kill him before he kills me.”

  “Was that the place you meant that you’d never been before?”

  “Yeah,” Hank says. “Before the sweat lodge, before yesterday and getting stoned on shrooms.”

  “Before you,” Hank says, “front to front with a man was death.”

  “God, that night at Ursula Crohn’s,” Hank says. “Your voice. I’d never heard anything so vulnerable and so clear.”

  “So maybe it’s been you along,” I say, “trying to get me in bed.”

  “Wish that was the case,” Hank says, “but it ain’t.”

  “But you’re hard,” I say. “I can feel your cock against my thigh.”

  “I’m hard every morning,” Hank says. “Besides, you’re cute.”

  “Every morning?” I say. “You ever not get hard when you wanted to be?”

  “Been times,” Hank says. “I’m no different from any other guy.”

  “That’s no different?” I say. “Erectile dysfunction is not different?”

  “Come on, man,” Hank says, “I’m a man, not a machine.”

  “I can’t let people touch me,” I say. “I’ve always had a terrible fear.”

  “But I’m touching you,” Hank says.

  “My mother and my sister did that,” I say. “If I got hard for sure my sis would find out. She always found out everything. Then she’d tell mom. She always told mom. So I could never let her find out. It was my secret and only I could know. Nobody else could know. Nobody. If they found out, they’d cut it off. Take Lorca out in the night and slit his throat.”

  “Lorca?”

  “Dead Lorca,” I say, “Portnoy’s Complaint. That’s what I call it.”

  “But you’re hard now,” Hank says.

  “Don’t I know it,” I say.

  “I promise I won’t tell your sister,” Hank says.

  Hank, fuck. No matter where we are, Hank can always make me laugh. Even here in the wedding ring bed talking about my hard-on I’m laughing. In fact, the two of us get to laughing so hard, we’re covering our mouths, trying not to snort. Two boys in bed, shits and giggles, trying to be quiet, mom and dad just outside the door.

  Hank’s voice is a fake whisper.

  “Let me see it!”

  I close my eyes and shake my head. This can’t fucking be happening.

  “Come on,” Hank says. “Show it to me. It’s important that you show it to me.”

  “I can’t move,” I say. “I’ll freeze to death.”

  “Just lift the covers,” Hank says.

  “Will you show me yours too?” I say.

  Hank and I turn into one big arms and legs two-headed laughing man. The way laughter hurts in our stomachs. How our laughter makes us move from our warm spot in bed. The freezing fucking sheets. Our little screams. Long moments, our mouths wide open when neither of us makes a sound. Then finally deep inhales of breath. Laughing. Fucking laughter, man.

  I reach my hand down, how easy it is to pull up the covers. Hank and I look down i
nside the cover tunnel. Down there it’s my shorts and my cock poking up in them. I’m so surprised I’m still hard and I start to think about being hard then stop thinking about it. My hand pulls back the elastic and boing. Just Hank looking at it makes it bigger.

  “What’s a madda you?” Hank says. “That’s a right fine Johnson you got poking up.”

  “It’s not very big,” I say.

  “From the bottom of the palm of your hand to the tip of your middle finger,” Hank says, “You’re for sure moving onto seven inches,” Hank says.

  “Here, look!”

  Then down in through the under the cover tunnel, Hank’s hand moves his shorts off his cock and up and out bounces full-of-blood Mussolini. Our cocks are leaning into one another, almost touching. It’s like they’re saying hello, how are you, been looking forward to meeting you for a long time now.

  “It’s so much bigger,” I say.

  “Eight inches,” Hank says. “Believe me, I’ve measured.”

  Hank unhooks his legs from mine and lies down flat. I pull down my shorts. Hank pulls down his. We hold up the covers. Hip to hip like that, lying parallel, our cocks stick up. If a man is a cock and the cock is the man, then Hank is Hercules and I’m the fair Adonis. Both of us tent poles.

  “Bigger around,” I say.

  “But look at your head,” Hank says. “Way bigger than mine. And the way you’ve been cut. That’s an Italian cut, man. Great for the backstroke.

  “No doubt about it,” Hank says. “That’s a gun a man could be proud of. All these years you’ve just had it on safety.”

  Hank’s black eyes, I look up into them. He is still high and because he’s high the way he keeps his eyes sometimes shuttered, they’re not shuttered, they’re wide open, generous, full of innocence. Then it’s as if that love in him jumps over, an electrical arch, a big blue buzz into my eyes straight to my root and I’m seeing myself as he sees me. My cock gets even harder.

  What Hank says next, I don’t see it coming.

  “Ben?” Hank says, “can I ask you something?”

  That moment. Fuck. Right there. That moment.

  “Are you freaked out about AIDS?”

  Slugged in the heart. That’s how I jump. My whole body slammed by a blow of grief. In the wedding ring bed, George Washington on his cloud staring us down, two pilgrims.

  Sex. We are all shy. We’re all worried. Sex. We’re not quite sure what’s going to happen next. But it’s the most catastrophic, enthralling thing that could possibly happen. Every deep unspoken part of us is coming up and out, becoming aware, and longs to merge. The risk of being hurt. We are so fucking delicate. The cookie cutter is so delicate. We bring our mayhem, our despair, our hopes. Who we believe we are, who we aren’t. What we know as true, what we don’t know. All our infernal lying. How much all this is like death.

  Hank holds me and I weep. Sometimes I can’t get my breath.

  On the other side of the wine-red velvet curtains, Reuben is up, and Sal, the fire is lit, and Gary’s grinding coffee beans. Somehow there’s sun in the room. Something like sun in the mirror. But it could be that Hank and I are just that bright. My face in the crook of Hank’s neck, trying to hide, snot and tears, fuck. Then in a moment. The tears go and the racking of my chest, the heaving, and my body stops. In Alturas Bar, the rock falls over the edge, a splash into the deep blue-green. It’s only then I realize. The sobs, the snorts, the gasps for breath, haven’t stopped at all.

  Hank is weeping, too.

  Book Two

  Ben & Ruth

  12.

  The real world

  MANHATTAN, OCTOBER 1988. A LATE SUNDAY MORNING, hungover from Saturday night beers on the stoop. Outside, it’s hot, bright, gray, and humid. Garbage all over the sidewalks. Inside, Little Ben is sitting in front of the Darth Vader fan. Way too much coffee. Sweat dripping in my eyes, down my neck, under my arms. The Sunday Times is all there is.

  Fucking Sundays, man. Sisyphus Sundays – in the morning it’s the hangover from Saturday night and the afternoon’s spent tripping on all you have to do Monday morning.

  The deep longing for someplace green and wild and soft. I don’t go to Central Park because Central Park ain’t Atlanta Hot Springs. Designer Nature only makes my desire for wilderness worse. Manhattan will never be the same after the Atlanta magic. Nothing will be the same, because I’m not the same. Before I didn’t know what I was missing. All those years the fear my body remembered, now my body also remembers the sunlight on the water in the porcelain pans, the falling rock at Alturas Bar, the mushrooms, my thumb and what it taught me, Hank’s Hercules, my fair Adonis – all these things are now a place in me, too. A place where I’m hard and healthy and there’s hope. A place I won’t forget.

  But I’ll forget. You can count on it.

  We are so fragile.

  What’s coming up – destiny, fate, fucking fortune – whatever it is that’s in store for me, no fucking way I could’ve had any idea.

  All I know is it’s a Sisyphus Sunday and I’m hungover and I miss Hank and Atlanta. Maybe there’s a movie somewhere. A movie about someplace green and wild and soft.

  My apartment is clean, I’ve washed the dishes, I’ve taken a long shower. Side one of George Michael’s Faith. Side two to shave. In the bathroom fluorescence in the mirror, my Idaho tan is gone. I tie the white towel around my waist and sit down in front of the computer. But I start to cough and the cough goes on so long I have to stand up and lean against the kitchen sink.

  It’s so French and so cool to smoke. The pack of Gauloises in the ashtray I grab with my fist and crush and throw into the garbage can under the sink. The white towel falls from around my waist. I look down at my body. That’s the moment Big Ben decides it’s time. To cowboy up and go get tested.

  ON THE DAY of the test, I take the number six train up to 86th and Lex. The train is hot and Little Ben is hungover again. You can get HIV tests for free at clinics all over town, but Big Ben won’t have it. I call up my editor and ask her for the name of a good doctor. With a proper doctor, Big Ben decides, I’ll have a better chance.

  The doctor’s office is a well-appointed brownstone. Maple trees turning yellow and red-orange. Dappled shade on the set of broad granite steps that curve up from the street to the first floor door. The day of the test I don’t meet the doctor. I sit for only moments in the waiting room on a large taupe-colored couch. All the room done in earth tones. On the spotless glass of the Noguchi coffee table, along with the regular magazines, my choices of reading material are the New York Review of Books, The Economist, and Granta. A Persian carpet the same design as the carpet in Ursula Crohn’s apartment. For a moment, I stand in the place on the carpet where the stool was on Ursula Crohn’s. Memory is a drunk old man in a Hemingway story. My green glittered toe and my smelly feet.

  Hank’s been busy with graduate schools. Looks like he’s got a gig at the University of Florida. The past month, since we’ve been back from the Idaho Book Tour, Hank’s been more in Florida than Manhattan. I want to tell Hank about the HIV test, but every time I talk to him on the phone, he’s so jacked about studying with Barry Hannah I don’t want to bring him down.

  In the bright cubicle, a nurse with a name tag Y-Vette, sticks the needle in my arm. My blood so red, the skin of her hands so black. Everything else in the room is white.

  A MONTH LATER, I’m on the number six train again. During that month I’ve tried to quit smoking but smoke twice as much. I’ve quit drinking, though, for the whole month, except for the Saturday night before the Monday of the appointment to get my test results. A real binge that ends up Little Ben at the Spike. Hank’s got into Florida. His letters, his phone calls are all Barry Hannah this and Barry Hannah that. Fucking Barry Hannah, man. Big Ben gets all my hair cut off, a Fifties fucking buzzcut. Mornings I sweep the street, pick up dog shit, hose off the sidewalks. It’s November and New Yorkers are back in town, so there’s toilets to unplug, windows to putty, locks to fix.

/>   Silvio, the waiter at Hank’s and my restaurant on Columbus is dead. Randy Goldblatt, David, Gary, and Lester from Columbia are dead. Sam Tyler, my friend from Boise State is dead. Rock Hudson is dead. At St. Vincent’s, I visit Dick, the guy who fucked me the night of the hash brownie. Pneumocystis. As I walk through the hospital hallway, room after room after room, young men who look like old men with oxygen masks and IVs, tubes coming out of every orifice. Urine, ammonia, floor wax, recycled air. Computer screens that blip green lines or yellow. When the lines are red you’re dead.

  When I go to walk into Dick’s room something happens to my body. The man who lies on the bed ain’t Dick at all, he’s a skeleton. How the lips stretch back into a wide smile when the body is that wasted. It’s not fear, it’s the hand of God that stops me from going in. Because my body cannot move, because I am a pillar of salt.

  Outside St. Vincent’s, sitting on the curb, a young man holds his head and weeps. I stand for a long time on the sidewalk, only a couple feet away from him. I’m trying to breathe but the air is only bus exhaust. Really, I want to console the guy, maybe offer him a cigarette. The way he weeps, though, I can’t stop weeping.

  The lightbulb in the middle of my chest, the filament flickering. I look down at my thumb, move my thumb to the no fear place. But there’s no fucking way.

  THE DAY OF my appointment, the night before Little Ben doesn’t sleep. I call up Hank but get his answering machine. You know what to do. I don’t know what to do, so I hang up. I polish my black wing tips, put on my vintage blue linen suit, a white shirt, and a clip-on bow tie. I can feel my heartbeat in the tight collar, so I take off the tie, undo the top button. The lightbulb and the flickering filament has moved from the middle of my chest to low in my gut. My heart is an echo chamber in my ears. How my arms shake, in my hands, my fingers, the flickering, how it gets stuck in the knuckles.