I Loved You More

by Tom Spanbauer

  I lie down again, put my face into the headrest opening, take a deep breath.

  “Much better,” I say. “Thank you.”

  Then: “Mr. Grunewald? I mean Gruney?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m going to put a CD on my boombox here,” he says. “It’s my sex magic CD. I hope you like the music. I made it myself. If you don’t, we could put on some classical music or music you’d rather hear.”

  Through the headrest, Buster’s bare feet are still tanned in the pattern of his sandals.

  “I’m sure your music will be fine,” I say.

  “I’m going to pray a little,” Buster says. “And when I pray I make a sound with my lips, so don’t let that freak you out, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And I’m going to touch your head first,” Buster says. “I usually touch the ass first, but with you my spirits tell me to touch your head.”

  THE MUSIC IS a flute, soft. Something lonely. When Buster touches my head it’s like the soft music is in my head. Buster’s hands are hot like he’s got a fever. He works my muscles much harder than Ruth’s massages. He uses his elbows, his legs, his whole body. Really, I’m in some other dimension. At one point he’s sitting on my ass and pulling my arms straight back. The way his ass feels. Bare ass against bare ass. I remember as a child under the front steps I played a game called kissing bums with a boy named Kelly.

  “Hey, Gruney,” Buster whispers in my ear, “you can turn over now.”

  When I turn over, Buster takes the headrest off and stands at the head of the table. The flute music is in my body now and it ain’t the flute that’s lonely. My poor lonely body. I feel it welling up, the big lonely weep. But I’ve had enough fucking tears, what I want to do is come. Come the way Ruth came. That’s when Buster steps up closer, lays his balls, his dick onto my face.

  “I’m HIV,” I say.

  “Aren’t we all,” he says.

  My nose against Buster’s rusty ass, my mouth around his balls, my dick is, praise the fucking Buster Spirits, hard hard hard. The way I come is one huge breath breathed in with a fast slap. I’m breathing like a racehorse, crying like a baby. But Buster’s balls are in my mouth. In no time at all, I’m off the table and in a paisley heap with Buster. We’re laughing our asses off.

  BUSTER STAYS FOR dinner. Nothing fancy, he’s a vegan, so I boil up some carrots and potatoes, sautée some spinach. Pour some yeast seasoning and Bragg Liquid Aminos on the vegetables. Buster’s impressed that I know how to cook hippy. For my dinner, I add a piece of Ruth’s homemade meatloaf. Lots of ketchup.

  Buster and I are sitting at the kitchen table. We’ve got our clothes back on and Buster’s massage table is folded up. The paisley sheet inside his leather bag.

  I’m hoping Buster will stay a while. Buster’s just told me his spirits had just told him that I live too much in my head. That I need to get out and be in nature and breathe some mountain air.

  Big Ben is the guy who says it: “Maybe you could spend the night?” I say. “I could make a fire in the fireplace.”

  Buster is across the table from me. His smile. That missing tooth like Silvio’s.

  His hand, that warm hand that had touched me, that got me hard, that jerked me off, made me come, is lying next to his fork. My hand goes down as if in slow motion and I lay my hand on top of Buster’s hand.

  Buster’s face is a lot of things right then. His off-kilter blue eyes go a bit more south. Later on, he’ll tell me how he was perplexed. He never mixed business with pleasure and already he’d accepted my invitation to dinner. Another rule was he didn’t date the guys he did his sex work with. Then there was the fact that I was Ben Grunewald, his former writing teacher that he’d always had a crush on. Plus, I was kind of famous. A Gay Icon. Plus he hadn’t kissed me and he wanted to kiss me.

  “You’re not going to fall in love with me, are you?” Buster says. “Lots of guys fall in love with their sex worker.”

  I fold my hand into Buster’s. His hand is like a portable heater and my hands are always freezing.

  “I don’t think I have any falling in love left in me,” I say. “I’d just like the company.”

  “Would you read to me from your new novel?” Buster says.

  “Twist my arm,” I say.

  That’s when Buster takes what he wants. His blue eyes go a little wonky and he tilts his head. Before I know it, Buster Bangs is kissing the Gay Icon. Garlic big time on his breath. My tongue against his broken tooth.

  Buster and I have just leaned away from our embrace. I’ve let go his hand and am just standing to get him another helping of carrots and potatoes when Ruth walks in. Ruth doesn’t knock, she never knocks, why should she? She’s been walking in like that since the first day.

  Something about Ruth that is so left over from the New Year’s Eve party. The way her face sticks out from the hoodie, wet red hair smashed against her forehead. Her nerdy girl glasses are crooked. As soon as she sees that I am regarding her, that flush of red on her cheek. I’m sure my face is just as red.

  “Class ended early,” Ruth says.

  THAT THING BEHIND my eyes that fries, deep fries to a crisp. All I know what to feel is embarrassed and all I know what to do is try and cover it up. I guess what I feel is guilt. Sex with Buster. Old Catholic stuff but still, even though Ruth and I have never promised sexual fidelity, the way Ruth and I have been operating as one unit, it feels like an infidelity.

  But so much more is going on inside me. A fucking maelstrom, man. But I won’t feel it. It’s like that class with Jeske when he asked me to tell the scariest thing about myself. I knew what the scariest thing was. I mean looking back on it now I know I knew. But in that moment, at that point in my life, there was no way I could have accessed that kind of truth telling. It would take me twenty years to tell that kind of truth.

  Same way with that night in my kitchen with Buster and Ruth. Looking back on it now. All that I knew. But there was no way I was going there.

  It won’t be long, though, and it’s all going to explode.

  Ruth is surprised to see another body in the house. She stops, takes off her glasses, pulls the hoodie over her head, shakes out her hair. In the winter light, her thick red hair seems almost dark brown. The way the windows are steamed over, there’s no way Ruth has seen Buster and me kiss or that our hands were touching.

  Ruth wipes off the lenses with her sweatshirt. When Ruth puts her glasses back on, she recognizes the man in my kitchen is Buster. She drops her sweatshirt and opens up her arms to her old classmate.

  “Buster! Hi!” she says. “Weren’t you in Santa Fe?”

  “Ruth!” Buster says. “Wow! You’re looking awesome!”

  Ruth and Buster throw their arms around each other. She’s a head taller than him. My God all that red hair.

  “Zuni Mountain,” Buster says.

  “What are you doing here?” Ruth says.

  Buster’s rolling his shoulders, moving his arms. Always in movement this guy. His fingers move like he’s playing a piano.

  “I just gave Gruney a massage.”

  “Gruney?”

  “Mr. Grunewald,” Buster says. “Never run into shoulders that tight.”

  “Gruney,” Ruth says.

  Ruth’s look over at me is slow. I can’t tell you for sure how I react but I’m pretty sure all I do is smile. I know Ruth so well. She’s wondering about this massage and why I never told her about it. She’s wondering what kind of massage it was and what the massage meant. But Ruth sees me smile, so she puts it away for something that she and I will talk about later. Then Ruth does what she always does. She takes over. First, though, she gives me a smooch on the cheek, then starts cleaning up our dinner dishes. When Ruth kisses me, I look over at Buster. There’s no doubt about it. Buster’s haywire eyes are trying to figure out that kiss.

  I tell Ruth, no I can do that, you sit down. But Ruth helps me anyway. We clear the dishes and then she’s got the refrigerator open
and she’s got the canned peaches out, and the frozen blueberries, and the bananas, and the yogurt. She’s pouring warm water on the frozen blueberries. She’s popping the lid to the peaches. She’s peeling the bananas. She’s got bowls out for all of us. For me, it’s just plain yogurt. Ruth boils water and makes tea, Midnight in Missoula. All the while Ruth is talking talking. She and Buster are back and forth, a couple of busy bees, those two. They’re talking about Zuni Mountain and Wolf Creek and the Radical Færies and about magic and spells and how before anything you have to believe in magic before it will work. Really, I try a couple times to stop Ruth, to stop Buster. This pleasant back and forth, the way Ruth goes on and on, if Ruth knew it was post-handjob, and pre-coitus, this conversation would probably be a whole lot different. Buster’s clueless. The handjob isn’t an issue. That’s his job. Still, I can see him wonder how many former students of mine are kissing me.

  No matter what, I can’t get a word in edgewise. At one point, I scream bloody murder, but it’s only after, when nobody’s heard me scream, that I realize I haven’t opened my mouth. Really, we spend the rest of the evening that way. Two or three hours at least, the two votive candles lit on the table, the blue one and the green one, the tall beeswax candle left over from Cannon Beach, the drips down onto its tin holder, onto the table, those two talking like they were best friends and hadn’t seen each other in months. Ruth tells Buster about her new class, ten students, all women. How much she already loves these women. Buster is real interested in Ruth’s class, so Ruth gets a piece of paper and a pen and she writes down her phone number and address and the date of the class and the time. They’re both excited that he’ll be the only man.

  Ten-thirty or eleven, Buster pats the top of my hand with his. The flames of the candles move. It all happens in a moment.

  Buster says, “I’d better be going.”

  I say, “Can’t you stay?”

  My hand goes for his hand, but it’s already gone.

  Ruth says, “You’re not biking in this weather are you?”

  Buster says, “No, I got a car now.”

  Ruth says, “What kind?’

  Buster says, “An old Datsun.”

  Ruth says, “I saw it parked out there, red right?”

  Buster says, “Yeah, red.”

  I say, “Buster.”

  His right eye’s fine. It’s Buster’s left eye that looks like he’s looking at something behind you. In the candlelight, it takes me a moment to get that I’m the one in Buster’s gaze.

  Buster says, “Sorry, Mr. Grunewald, it’s late.”

  To Ruth he says, “I’ll see you in class on Wednesday.”

  Ruth says, “Can’t wait!”

  Then Buster’s putting on his orange windbreaker. The way he moves about so quick. His beaded bag is over his shoulder. He and Ruth bear hug like old war buddies. When Buster steps toward me, he kisses me on the cheek. Then the other cheek, like in Europe. When he smiles, his crooked tooth.

  “I’ll twist your arm another night,” he says.

  RUTH AND ME alone in the kitchen. Rain against the window. The votive candles, the blue one and the green one, thin lines of smoke. The Cannon Beach candle is a low flame in a pool of wax. How the low flame jumps. Ruth is sitting across from me, her long arm, her elbow, on the table. The candlelight on her arm. She is a statue, a dark statue in shadow, some long-suffering female Catholic saint. Women who wait.

  On the chair where Buster sat, the darkest shadow.

  Talking. All that stuff that happens in me just before I tell the truth is happening. The antidepressant buzz in my ears is two octaves higher, I’m sweating, my heart is beating fast and I’m trying to speak but I can’t speak because there’s no breath. The desire to move, get out, run. When I finally speak I’m not looking at Ruth, I’m looking down at my hand.

  “Tonight,” I say. “Buster’s massage.”

  My thumb moves to the knuckle, to the no-fear place.

  “I got hard,” I say. “And he jerked me off and I came.”

  My thumb presses down hard. When I make myself look up, Ruth has moved her face into the light. She’s got that smile. Big Nurse or maybe the principal.

  “I suppose you’re going to do it again,” she says.

  Suddenly I’m in a battle of life and death and I really want to hurt her. When I speak again, the rage surprises me.

  “He was going to spend the night,” I say. “But then you bust in and fill up the room.”

  Ruth’s fist slams down onto the table. The dishes jump. The Cannon Beach candle goes all the way out. Ruth gets up from the table and switches on the fluorescence of the overhead kitchen light. Just like that she’s in my face.

  “You mean this whole time you two were.” Ruth stops.

  “Yes,” I say. “We were.”

  “And you don’t tell me this very important detail earlier in the evening,” Ruth says, “because I’m a larger than life loudmouth bitch?”

  “Something like that,” I say.

  The flush of red on her neck, up the side of her face. Eyes as blue as ice. Her fist comes in a round house that I grab with my fist and stop. For a long moment Ruth and I are grunts and groans, Hank Christian and Barry Hannah armwrestling.

  No doubt about it, she could kick my ass. Maybe I should let her. I’m the asshole man and I deserve it. But still my fist stays around her wrist.

  Everything above is bright bright and on the floor black shadows suck up and stick onto the underneath of things. Ruth’s hair ain’t red, it’s pink cotton candy. Her face, the skin of her arms and hands, as if the red blood inside her has turned to lemonade. A black shadow sucked up and stuck under her chin.

  “You’re hurting my wrist,” she says.

  “Then stop trying to hit me,” I say.

  Ruth steps back, I let go, Ruth holds her wrist with her other hand. Under her brows, her eyes are black round bruises.

  “Ben,” she says, “Fucking Ben Grunewald. How humiliating.”

  I have to cover my eyes. The kitchen is small and with the table the only place to stand is between the sink and the table right next to Ruth. I don’t know what to do. Maybe try and touch her, but I don’t want to touch her. I end up just standing in a bright room with my hands over my eyes. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry is what’s going round in my head. But Big Ben ain’t sorry. He loved getting hard and he loved coming. What’s there to be sorry for. And he’s pissed that he even has to explain.

  Stomping. It’s easy to stomp in my house because it’s old and there’s no insulation and the fir flooring sets right on the floor joists. And Ruth is a big girl and she’s stomping. Shakes the whole house. She stomps into the dining room and turns on the overhead light. Then into the living room. Ruth turns on the overhead light in there. Then the bedroom, and the bathroom. Stomping. It ain’t long and all the bright overhead lights in the whole house are on.

  Fucking bright overhead lights, man. Queen Lowlighta in a meltdown.

  “You need to bring some light into this fucking place,” Ruth says. “Maybe you could see something.”

  Before I know it, Ruth’s grabbed her hoodie and she’s out the kitchen door. The slam that rattles the dishes. Outside, Ruth turns on the bright porch light. I open the kitchen door, follow Ruth out the door, into the rain. Through the gate, out into the street, I stand by her Honda Civic as she starts the car. Her door is locked. I’m knocking on the window.

  “Please, Ruth,” I say.

  For a moment, Ruth looks up from behind her window. The lights of the dashboard gold and amber onto her face. Terrifying, really, how beautiful she is. I think maybe she will stop. She will roll down the window and we’ll. I don’t know. But just then the music goes loud inside the car. “Rock Lobster.” Ruth lets up on the emergency brake. Leaves a patch of rubber just inches from my toes. Ruth’s silver Honda Civic is a roar down the street, then red brake lights, a turn signal, and she’s gone.

  My house, every light’s on in the place,
and through the rain and fog, my house looks haunted.

  It is haunted.

  My wet socks on the wet asphalt. My clothes are soaked through. The wet feels good on my hot skin. I could lay down right there and never get up.

  And that’s just what I do. Lie down in the fucking street.

  It ain’t five minutes and Ruth’s Honda Civic screeches back around the corner. Headlights straight for me. I think maybe she’s going to run me down like a dog. But she doesn’t. Really, I’m disappointed.

  Pretty soon it’s Ruth’s body lying next to me on the asphalt. Close but not touching. On the shiny black pavement of SE Morrison. Rain coming down in buckets. Like we’re in a shower stall, the way the rain comes down. Hard rain on our faces, pounding our chests, our legs, smashing our clothes onto our skin. Fuck it. What’s a little rain when you’re half-dead and you haven’t slept a decent night’s sleep since forever.

  Fucking rain, man.

  When the squall has passed and the rain is coming down light, when I finally have stopped crying, Ruth lays her head on my arm and clears her throat.

  “So tell me,” Ruth says, “isn’t Gruney what Hank Christian used to call you?”

  THAT NIGHT WE stay up, Ruth and me, sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, under the bright overhead kitchen light. In the house, all the overhead lights on bright. Midnight in Missoula talking talking.

  I don’t know what to tell Ruth. All I can say is I’m sorry, Ruth. Shit, I sound like every other guy in the world trying to explain why he can’t keep his dick in his pants.

  Later on, on the couch in front of the fireplace, I’m sitting up and Ruth’s lying down with her head in my lap. I’m staring into the fire and it comes to me.

  “It’s like in your favorite movie, Living Out Loud,” I say. “The part where Holly Hunter tells Danny DeVito that she loves him but not like he loves her.”

  In no time at all, Ruth’s up from the couch and she’s got her coat.

  “What?” I say.

  “I’m Danny DeVito?” she says.

  Ruth starts crying so hard she gets the hiccups. When Ruth slams the kitchen door this time, she slams the door so hard, a water glass falls out of the drying rack and breaks on the floor.