by Andy Mozina
This prompts me to ask about T.R.’s most recent attic crasher: “How’s Max? I haven’t seen him for a while.”
“Max is in Galveston,” T.R. says matter-of-factly, and I can’t tell whether this is good or bad, so I decide not to press it.
Innuendo flies between Charles and Cynthia. She keeps using the expression “jump his bones” to refer to what Charles might do to a man who catches his eye, while I ask T.R. sober questions about his garden, his real estate, his philanthropy (he’s active in all kinds of neighborhood initiatives throughout the city). Cynthia slaps her thigh and says, “Charles, stop it, you’ve become outrageous,” as if she’s imitating some character from a bad sitcom. I wince, but maybe Cynthia deserves to cut loose after what she’s been through this week.
T.R. says, “This is actually quite good. What is it?”
“The meat?” I ask, drunk and stilted. “Skirt steak, I think.”
“Skirt steak—what the hell is that?” Charles asks. “That’s an oxymoron, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” I say, not sure it’s up to me to defend the cut of meat.
“But it kind of describes Cynthia, doesn’t it?” Charles continues. “Skirt steak. Something girly with a manly edge.”
“Come on, Charles,” I say.
“Yeah, come on, Charles,” Cynthia says teasingly, though not entirely displeased.
I try to catch her eye, but it’s not quite catchable. I end up staring, feeling a bit lost, until Cynthia finally turns to me and smiles clownishly, with raised eyebrows, like a face you might see in a cartoon or a nightmare—she is quite drunk.
Then she abruptly turns away. “Time for dessert!” she says, getting up.
“Hear, hear!” I exclaim, and I rise as well.
“I’ve got it, sweetheart,” Cynthia says. She gathers up the plates—I’m as proud as my mother would be that everyone has eaten every last bit—and heads down the stairs.
Charles turns to me and asks, “Did you just say ‘Hear, hear’?”
My laugh turns into a full-body spasm that takes me beyond humor or any kind of pleasure. It feels strange to laugh so hard and then to regret laughing so quickly.
“T.R., what are we to do with him?”
“It does seem hopeless,” T.R. muses, smiling warmly at me.
Cynthia brings her creation to the top of the stairs on a huge wooden cake server. It’s just as Martha intended: A dowel painted white rises from the center of the cake. Eight green and yellow satin ribbons run from the top of this maypole, fasten to the edge of the platter, and dangle and flutter beyond that.
“These are the dancers,” Cynthia says, smiling a crinkly-eyed smile, pointing her chin at the eight overflowing cupcakes encircling the cake. The dancers are capped with sprinkles and a flower—jellied citrus petals with a gumdrop in the center. Cynthia puts a small stack of plates on the edge of the table and then, with one straining arm, sets the platter in the center.
“Very nice,” T.R. says.
“A perfect example of what straight people think is gay,” Charles adds as he scratches his neck.
“Charles!” Cynthia says, as if she’s really offended.
“Oh, stop,” Charles says in a conciliatory voice. “It’s perfectly hideous and I love it like a butch sister.” He stands and holds out his hands. “Shall we?”
I look toward Cynthia and she smiles, and without another word, we rise and hold hands, though we can’t quite close the circle. I’m holding T.R.’s big soft fingers, and he’s holding Cynthia’s hand, and she’s holding Charles’s hand, but there’s a space between me and Charles, where, for an instant, I imagine Milena and Audrey standing. Charles leads us in a clockwise dance, skipping and laughing—and nearly tripping over chair legs.
“Maypole, maypole!” Cynthia cries.
“Phallic symbol, phallic symbol!” Charles mocks in return.
I’m sort of embarrassed, but I’m always sort of embarrassed. It seems like we’re having a lot of fun.
Then we change direction and move counterclockwise, which sends me toward Charles, who lags enough to grab my hand, breaking his connection with Cynthia and putting himself at the head of the line again. I catch Cynthia’s eye for a second—she is so pleased—but my eye can’t hold her as she laughs. Finally, Charles says, “Fuck this. Let’s eat.” Peals of Cynthia’s laughter ring out over the rooftops of Humboldt Park.
“Here’s to the right to consort with known criminals!” she exclaims.
All in all, it’s a pretty happy-go-lucky scene on T.R.’s deck. What’s better than drunken friends and lovers, talking and dancing, sharing fine food and, now, huge slices of cake on a just-warm-enough May evening?
I fork up some cake and find myself thinking of Milena sinking into the arms of Steve, of him entering her with his no doubt large and firm husband-penis—and I almost lose my grip on my fork and the world.
But Cynthia is happy, and who can I be but hers in this little gathering?
—
Stuffed, we grow quiet, each of us taking a turn at gazing toward the horizon where the sun is disappearing. Charles has sated himself with two post-dinner cigarettes. Now the air is near chilly, and T.R. proposes that we go inside his apartment.
We settle in the living room, which is full of soft couches and chairs covered with afghans and pillows. There’s a large-screen TV against the wall and a teen-style pleasure pit of cushions in front of it. On another wall there’s an enormous square painting of what looks like Sigmund Freud sitting in a lawn chair on a beach near the water’s edge.
Charles sits next to me and puts a space-invading arm on the back of the couch behind my head. I can smell cigarette smoke on him. The sun seems to have gone down the instant we left the deck. A few small lamps burn on end tables littered with magazines and books.
“Where’d you get that painting, T.R.?” I say into the air, though I don’t see him in the room. No one answers. There are other paintings, I realize, including a possible real live Paul Klee on a wall I’m facing.
T.R. and Cynthia enter the living room, chatting with each other, and eventually I do get to ask T.R. about the painting, and, for the first time during the night, T.R. really takes the floor and talks about the Chicago art scene in the seventies (artists I’d never heard of called the Imagists), his days on LaSalle Street, and his nights in Boystown. He talks about how he hid his sexual orientation while he navigated a career in several testosterone-mad brokerages. He had to work hard and make the firm extra money and be discreet with the other closeted financial men he screwed. Charles pitches in a story of when T.R. was outed and had to leave a job.
We fall into silence as we absorb all this. Hoping to give things a more optimistic turn, I ask him how the same-sex marriage bill is progressing.
“Referred to the Rules Committee again,” he says with a sigh. “Not looking good.”
Cynthia sits quietly, her expression taking a turn for the morose. Possibly her wine buzz is wearing off; possibly the talk of homophobia and office politics is a downer. Suddenly, she sits forward. “The brandy!” she says. “I forgot about the brandy. I’ll go down and get it. T.R., I don’t think we have the right glasses. Do you have some?”
“Let me see what I have,” he says. He sways to his feet and sets off unsteadily behind Cynthia, leaving Charles and me sitting together on the couch.
“No passing out, old man,” Charles calls after T.R.
I’m also drunk and sleepy, and the burden of making small talk with Charles seems insurmountable. There’s just the sound of music on the stereo—an old Eurythmics CD.
Charles slouches deeply in the soft cushions. Without turning to me, he says, “Cynthia says you play music for dying people. What’s that like?”
His tone is quiet now, all sarcastic pretense suspended.
“I think I like it, but probably for the wrong reasons.”
“Really?”
“It’s depressing but it also makes me glad to be alive, s
ort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Well, it’s stupid, really. I’m not sure I feel the right things when I’m there.”
Charles doesn’t make any comment, and I find myself plunging on:
“Actually, it’s affecting my audition prep. I’ve been imagining the dying people listening to me practice.”
“Interesting. I’m starting to see a Lifetime movie here.” He laughs.
“I’m playing a little differently—my tone is softening, maybe, or I’m more likely to bend a note.” It occurs to me that I can say this sort of thing to Charles, but I would never think of saying it to Milena. I could say it to Cynthia, I bet; I just haven’t. “One time I took a master class with this big-cheese harpist. Someone asked her how she decides what sound she goes for. And she talked about what the piece demands and predictable stuff like that, but she also said that at bottom every musician’s sound is just an expression of her or his personality—and that absolutely scared the shit out of me.”
“Because you’re an uptight nerd and you don’t want to sound like one?”
“Yeah. And something’s sort of shifting now, but I don’t know if it’s my personality, or if I’m just in a different mood because of everything that’s going on.”
“So who do you play for at the hospice?” He shifts on the couch as he says this. We’ve been sitting side by side all this time, talking to the room in front of us, but now he’s facing me, and I turn slightly to face him.
“One of them died,” I say. “I never knew her, really—but now I’ve got two regulars plus some random people. One guy, a rich old guy—he’s got something wrong with his lungs. COPD.And then, this other guy—” And I almost get completely hung up on how to say it, which of course Charles notices. “He’s got AIDS,” I finally say, and I try to look at Charles, but I can’t quite connect with his eyes. “He’s gay,” I add, foolishly.
“Is that how you think of him?” Charles says. “As the gay AIDS man?”
I watched myself walk into this but I don’t know how to step out of it. I look down at the couch and see a sliver of Charles’s hairy ankle between his dark sock and the cuff of his jeans.
“What happened to him? Didn’t he have access to the drugs?”
I don’t know how much I can say. “It didn’t work for him.”
“Hmm,” Charles says. “What’s his name?”
“I don’t think I can tell you. There’s this patient confidentiality thing.”
“Oh, you’ve got such integrity,” he says facetiously. “What’s his first name?”
“Michael.”
“Oh, I know him! He’s the gay one, with AIDS!” He laughs to himself. Then he sighs. “I’ve always wanted a man with integrity, just once, for the hell of it.” He turns to put his back against the couch and leans toward me. “Preferably repressed.” He flashes his eyes at me, scooches over, hooks his arm under mine and snuggles against me, resting his head on my shoulder. “You should put me in your audience sometime,” he says in a quiet voice. “Serenade me. Haven’t you always wanted to do that?”
He looks up at me from my own shoulder. Then his face rises up and over me, like a sun, and slowly sets toward mine. He kisses me and I sort of kiss him back, maybe just reflexively, my kissing instinct motion-activated by his face looming close, or just to avoid offending him. Or maybe my second face is finally asserting itself in this drunken instant because with the exception of Milena, I’ve barely functioned in bed with women; because after twenty-five years of dealing with the assumption my harp playing has created, I’ve never kissed a man—not even my father when I was a kid—and maybe I should, just to see. It would be worth everything to feel as if I were seeing my real self for the first time, to just feel right, unidiotic, to fit with the harp like a male harpist should and to acknowledge and complete my break with the average world, as if a kiss could reveal everything true, like in a fairy tale.
And it’s not unpleasant to kiss him. Though his stubble scratches, his smoky breath is alcohol-clean. But his tongue gets too adventuresome, and I wonder if I do that to women. He moves his hand to my thigh and then onto my crotch, and I think of him, Charles, and his body and what he’s like, and my will sets off with a message, swimming up to the surface of my face—I break the kiss and say, “Sorry, Charles. I can’t do this.”
“You are doing it,” he says.
He grabs my hand and puts it on his jeans zipper, beneath which I can feel his hardness, and that’s when I finally stand up.
Charles looks at me from under his eyebrows, smirking, maybe pretending to be mad. “That’s okay, sweetheart,” he says. “It would have been fun, but you’d have just been a tourist. Honestly, I never thought you were gay.” He puts just enough into the “I” that I wonder where Cynthia is.
I turn and walk through T.R.’s apartment, past the bedroom where I glimpse T.R.’s black sock-clad foot hanging off his bed. I stumble down the back stairs and into my apartment, which is completely dark.
“Cynthia?” I say. I see her silhouette in a front window. She’s sitting on the edge of Audrey’s bed. “What are you doing down here?”
“Resting,” she says. Her shoulders are slumped in the exaggerated unconscious way kids sometimes let their shoulders slump.
“I thought you were getting the brandy,” I say, and I sit next to her on the bed.
“I thought so, too.” She looks away from me, out the window. The streetlight makes a sort of stage out of the far sidewalk, but no one is out there.
“Charles just made a pass at me.”
“How’d it go?” she asks with a small smile.
She’s not looking at me, but I can’t help but watch her. I try to feel again the excitement and happiness from early in our relationship, when the sex, while not good, existed. I really want to love her but I don’t know exactly how to be with her. My throat hurts with the perversity of this.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she bursts out, glancing over. “You’re always checking my face, or staring, or something—it’s very creepy.” This startles me so much that I keep looking at her, no doubt with a stupid and wounded look on my face. She turns away, exasperated. “You’re the most unnatural person I’ve ever met!”
“I’m just paying attention,” I say, though I know it’s more than this.
“Well, don’t. It’s too much.”
So I look ahead, to the space near the front door, where the stairs to the second floor used to start, and say what’s been blooming in my mind: “Charles said something that made me think you put him up to it.”
“It’s just sex, Matt.”
“What does that mean?”
“So you made out with a gay man, or you didn’t, who cares? It doesn’t affect us, it doesn’t affect anything.”
“Of course it does,” I say.
She grinds a fist against her knee.
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Cynthia,” I say.
“I don’t love you,” she says, twisting away. “I don’t love you, Matt!”
My throat and my eyes close at the same time. This reaction is perfectly natural.
“Please, Cynthia,” I manage to say. “I know how it’s been. I don’t blame you.”
“Stop with that bullshit. It’s not about you and your dick, for God’s sake. Who cares? This just isn’t working, isn’t that obvious?”
“It’s Anna, from law school?” I say. “You’re still in love with Anna?”
“It’s not Anna, you fucking idiot!” she says with bitter disgust. And then she starts crying, bringing her two small fists to her forehead in total anguish.
I’ve actually taken a huge breath to yell back at her, but her weeping stops me cold. The Barbie adventure van heads for the futon couch. Cynthia’s chest heaves with sobs, and I feel as if I am also crying, though I’m not.
“Oh shit, Matt,” she says, standing up. “I’m sorry.”
She nearly trips over the van, catches herself on the harp column for
an instant, then weaves her way out of my apartment.
22
VIKRAM DOES NOT chastise me for being twenty-two minutes late; in fact, he doesn’t speak at all. I unfurl my whole sarcastic repertoire, and I’m sure the brunchers would cheer boisterously if they weren’t so busy biting strawberries from their stems or slathering their waffles with whipped butter.
I think of how Cynthia and I met as I play “Tiny Bubbles” and “The Girl from Ipanema.” I stir the embers of pain with speculations: Is she just a closeted lesbian looking for a beard? Possibly. More likely she’s bi, or she’s unoriented, or she’s straight, just sad and anxious. Is my erectile dysfunction with her just a response to her ambivalence? I wish. Maybe I was drawn to her anxiety, to her sense of being out of step with the world; maybe I’m just in love with anxiety. I believe her when she says she doesn’t love me—that’s all I really know.
“You’re pushing your luck,” Vikram says sternly at brunch’s end, as I wheel my harp to the door.
“Sorry, Vikram,” I say. “Have a good week.”
In the afternoon, I force myself to practice excerpts, and after dinner I spiral into post-breakup grief, which keeps me awake and staring into the early morning until my thoughts turn to Milena.
I can’t believe she really loves Steve. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have cried on the phone on Mother’s Day. And maybe I have to admit to myself, once and for all, that I can’t function with a woman as intellectual and complicated as Cynthia, whatever that implies about me. There’s really been only one woman I’ve been comfortable with.
Monday morning I call Milena at her office and say, “I really need to see you.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to,” I say. “I’m only going to do this once,” I add.
The air on the phone is perfectly still for about twenty seconds.
“I can’t see you,” she says quietly. “I’m engaged.”
“Okay, but then can we talk for a second?”
Her only answer is not hanging up.
