Tales from the Bottom of My Sole

by David Kingston Yeh

  “Does Blonde Dawn know you’re meeting up with Carolina?” I asked.

  “No, not yet, but I’ll tell her. She knows how you and I hooked up with the Three Amigas, she knows all about that.”

  “What? Pat, I asked you not to tell her about that.”

  Pat waved his fork, speckling the tabletop with mole sauce. “Daniel, so what? You worry too much. Seriously, dude, you can’t go through life worrying all the time what other people think.” He put down his fork, stood upright and shouted: “Hey, everybody, my gay brother here had sex with a girl!”

  Heads briefly turned towards us, then everyone turned back to their own business.

  “See?” Pat said. “Nobody cares.” He sat back down. “In any case, it’s Blonde Dawn. She definitely doesn’t care. It’s no big deal.”

  I stared at Pat. I wondered if he’d care if I stuck my fork in his forehead. I wanted to say: “But I care. And if it was no big deal, then why’d you have to tell her at all?” But I kept my mouth shut. There was no use arguing with Pat. He’d always find some way to make it seem like he was right. But the drug-fuelled debauchery we’d shared was years in the past, and I wanted to keep it that way. Claw marks bloodied Bruce’s cheek and chest, but his fist was raised and his expression was one of arrogant resolve.

  “So Rod’s been to this Burning Man thing?”

  “It’s not a thing,” Pat said. “It’s a spiritual experience. People come from all over the world to Burning Man. Black Rock City, man, that’s mecca for the psychonaut. There’s like this whole temple they build every year. It’s brilliant. Liam’s lending me all his tenting gear. He’s going commando again this summer.”

  Since he was a kid, Liam’s passion had been the outdoors. For years, every summer, he’d disappear into the bush with a bivouac sack and a knife and be gone a week or longer. I was just surprised Liam actually trusted Pat with his gear.

  “Oh, holy bejesus, you gotta be kidding me. Oh shit. Aw, no way.” Pat rummaged through his paint-stained cargo shorts. “As if. I think I left my wallet at home.” He stared at me. “Daniel, I don’t suppose you could spot me breakfast, could you? I’ll pay you back, honest, I promise. Did you know that at Burning Man they don’t use any money at all? Everything’s like run on a gift economy, can you believe it? Whoa, hey, you know what I can do? I’ll bring you back a vial of playa dust, how about that?”

  Pat and I rarely spent one-on-one time together. He was always busy, tearing around with a dozen projects on the go. Pat and Blonde Dawn had taken over the lease on my old apartment, where Karen and I’d lived three years. Even now, it wasn’t entirely clear to me how he covered his portion of the rent. I knew he was certified as an ESL instructor. Did Pat just say he’d pay me back in dust? I sighed. “Sure, no problem. You have a good trip. Be safe. Tell Carolina I say hello.”

  After that, Pat had the rest of his breakfast put in a doggie bag and ordered another coffee to go. When we stepped out onto the sidewalk, he gave me a bear hug. “Happy Pride, man! You hitting the big circuit parties?”

  “What? No. It’s not really my thing.”

  “C’mon, really?” Pat crouched, moving his elbows in circular motions. “All those hot, sweaty, naked guys?”

  “Really,” I said. “David and I might check out the parade Sunday. What about you?”

  “We have front row seats to The Hip, Saturday down at Fort York.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “Blonde Dawn knows someone who knows someone and scored two VIP passes. It is going to rock. Oh shit, gotta run, late for class, thanks again for breakfast. I love you, big brother.”

  A busboy strolled out of the restaurant and held out a battered scrap of leather. “Excuse me, I think this is yours.”

  “Holy shit, dude, are you kidding me?”

  “It was on the floor.”

  Pat clutched his wallet. “This is amazeballs. This is fucking awesome.” He stared at me. “This is an omen. This is the spirit of Burning Man manifesting, moving through this spot, right here right now. Yo, buddy, hold on, wait a second wait a second!” Pat pulled out all his bills, three crumpled fivers, and pressed them into the busboy’s hands, along with all the change in his pockets. A loonie fell and rolled over to my feet. I picked it up and handed it to Pat, who thrust it at the kid. “Here, cheers, take it take it. Thank you, can’t thank you enough. You are awesome. You are a sacred being.” Pat beamed at me. “Gotta keep the channels open, keep the spirit flowing. Karma, man, it’s all karma.”

  Later that night, I climbed the stairs to our bedroom. My feet ached and I wondered if it was time I invested in orthotics. I stepped over David’s half-packed suitcase at the foot of the bed.

  “So, look,” David said, sorting through travel documents, “Luke doesn’t do small talk and he’s allergic to shellfish. I doubt you’ll see him around much. He’s here to spend time with his girlfriend. If things work out between them, he might move back to Toronto.”

  “He uses an STP device, by the way.”

  “What?”

  I flopped down on our bed. “You asked me,” I said, “how your brother pees standing up. He uses a stand-to-pee device.”

  “He told you this?”

  “He didn’t have to. It’s obvious.” I didn’t mention how we’d recently covered a section on trans health at school. Nobody in our class knew what an STP packer was, and the guest instructor had to explain it to us like we were three-year-olds.

  “Okay, well. Good for him. Whatever it takes.”

  “David. Are you sure this is the best thing?”

  “What?”

  “That Luke doesn’t come with you.”

  “Yeah, this is the best thing. You don’t know my ma. She’s lost three husbands already. Here, check it out.” David’s new passport had just arrived in the mail. He handed it at me. “Do I look like a Mafioso or what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, do I look like some hardened criminal?”

  “No. What did you mean about your mom?”

  David frowned, breathing through his nose. He took back his passport. “Nothing,” he said.

  “Well, you meant something.”

  “Forget about it.”

  Between us, David was usually the bolder, more self-assured one. He’d let his close-cropped hair grow out and it had started to curl. He also hadn’t shaved in over a week. Somehow, it made him look wilder, more European. “You’re happy with me, right?”

  “Being with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Daniel, I love you. I’m in love with you. Yeah, I’m happy with you.”

  “Then I think you should tell her. Tell your mom now, before this big family reunion in Italy.”

  David’s face darkened. “Tell her what?”

  “Tell her that I’m your boyfriend.” I sat up. “Look, Luke can decide whatever he wants. But David, why don’t you tell her about us? We can tell her together.”

  David put down the Italian phrase book he’d been studying. By the dim light of the bed lamp, his features were still, his lips compressed. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been with girls.”

  “I know. Your mom thinks her son’s a womanizing Don Giovanni.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s always hoping you’ll fall in love and settle down.”

  “So she says.”

  “Don’t you think she’d want to know you are in love? Don’t you want to tell her that?”

  “You don’t know my ma.”

  “So enlighten me.”

  “She can be really stubborn. When she gets an idea into her head, there’s no discussion.”

  “Okay.”

  “Remember I told you how Lucy came back? Don’t correct me, Daniel. She was Lucy Moretti at the time, okay? My big sister, five months after she ran way, she came back. She came home on Christmas Day. It was late in the evening, she’d been drinking. She had this brand-new car and new clothes and presents for both of us. They w
ere big presents, shiny with huge bows. Except my ma wouldn’t accept any of them. I was thirteen years old, and I was begging my ma to just let her in the house. But she wouldn’t even listen to me. She’d already had the locks changed. They were arguing, shouting at each other. Then Ma, she shut the front door, right in her face. It was awful. It was humiliating. By the time I got outside, Lucy was gone. I ran three blocks after her, but she was gone. I wanted to run away myself. But I didn’t. How can any mother do that to her own child?”

  After a moment, I asked: “What were they arguing about?”

  “I don’t know, they were speaking Italian. If you ever want to get into a screaming match with someone, Italian’s the way to go. Look at me, reading this. It’s so fucking embarrassing.” David threw his phrase book across the bed. His eyes were wet. “Do you get it? Sure, everyone loves Isabella de Luca, famous Canadian art critic and philosopher, woohoo. But there’s another side to her. There’s this other side. I just don’t think Luke could take another door slammed in his face. I don’t think I ever could.”

  “Okay. Okay. I get it.”

  “Can I tell you something else?”

  “Sure.”

  “This whole trans thing. That afternoon, on New Year’s Eve, when I opened our door and saw him standing there like that, her, Luke, it was like he did it on purpose. He could’ve phoned to warn me but he didn’t. It was planned, like it was a test. He said he wanted to surprise me. Yeah, right. What an asshole thing to do. What a fucking asshole thing to do, Daniel. And you know what the craziest part was? The honest truth was, I wasn’t even that surprised. I mean, the Boss is still the Boss, right? He hasn’t changed, whether he calls himself Lucy or Luke. He still acts and talks the same. He’s older now, maybe with more muscles and hair all over, but you look in his eyes and he’s still the same person.”

  “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “All I’m saying is, he could’ve told me sooner. But he kept it to himself, he kept it secret. Even after I told him I was gay.”

  “When did you tell him that?”

  “I dunno, three years ago. Someone he knew actually spotted me kissing some guy. Holy shit, Daniel, I think it was your brother Pat. Remember Pat and I made out once at a party?”

  “Sure. You’ve both told me this story.”

  “Okay. Well, we were just messing around, right? But someone must’ve seen us, and somehow word got back to Luke. He made a trip all the way back to Toronto just to ask me about that.”

  “And?”

  “He was cool. He said he didn’t care. He said I was his kid brother, and he’d always love me no matter what.”

  “David.”

  “Yeah?”

  “On New Year’s Eve, that night the two of you left the bar and went for a walk, what did you talk about?”

  “That night at Graffiti’s? Hell, we didn’t talk about anything. I mean, we talked about bikes and soccer; what the old neighbourhood gang was up to; you, I talked a lot about you; he told me how he and Ai Chang were still in love, even though they’d broken up because she’d moved to Toronto. You know the rest of that story. We just talked and walked. We were looking for a place where we could light a cigarette but it was blowing snow so hard it took us forever and our hands were freezing. We found some corner behind a dumpster and he got me to open my coat, but then he accidentally lit my scarf on fire. After that, well, everything seemed okay. Everything seemed right, after that.”

  I took David’s passport and opened it to his picture. He did look different. In real life he smiled easily, his mouth wide, his whole face alive and bright. He and Pat were alike in so many ways. Pat and Blonde Dawn seemed made for each other. If I’d been straight, Karen and I always figured we’d be together, maybe even married with kids and settled down like Melissa and Mike. I always thought Karen and Liam would marry one day, but now Karen was with Bob and his two daughters. Even Grandpa was seeing someone new, Betty from the nursing home. Apart from Karen and Anne and the Miltons, Betty was the probably the person who knew our family better than anyone in the world.

  “Everything is okay.” I closed David’s passport. “I’m sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “About asking you to come out to your mom, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” David bowed his head. “You know, she really likes you.”

  “Does she?”

  “She thinks you’re a good influence.”

  “She just likes that I’m in med school.”

  “And she likes you because you eat second servings of everything she puts in front of you.”

  “That’s easy, she’s an amazing cook.”

  “If she had her way, she’d have the both of us eating there every night.”

  That wasn’t so hard for me to imagine. So why was it for David? “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Your waistline would. You know I once caught her serving coffee for four? She had a setting out for each of her husbands. She was talking out loud and going through her old photo albums.”

  “I think your mom is a very special woman.”

  “Thanks for taking in Luke.”

  “He’s family, right?”

  “Yeah, he is.”

  “David, are we going to be okay?”

  “You and me?”

  “Yeah. I mean, you’re going to be away for two whole months.”

  “Of course we’re going to be okay. Time’s just going to fly by. Trust me, we’re good.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “I’m going to miss you.”

  “I’m going to miss you too.”

  The night before David was to catch his flight out to Europe, we had sex. I was on my back and he was straddling me, and I was gripping his thighs, and I was moving inside of him. We took our time, sharing an unspoken agreement to make it last as long as we could. He arched back, hands braced against my knees. His teeth were parted, his brow furrowed. The tendons and muscles of his neck stood out in sharp relief. A single line of sweat ran from the hollow of his throat down his chest and stomach. Once David had shared a fantasy with me, imagining himself a Roman legionary and prisoner of war, and me a Celtic chieftain. At another time he’d described us as David and Jonathan, from the Bible. I hadn’t known what he meant, and he told me the story of how Jonathan son of King Saul of Israel, had fallen in love with David who had slain Goliath. The Israelites were at war with the invading Philistines. David had been considered too young to go into battle at the time. When presented at the royal court, he still carried Goliath’s severed head in his hands. Prince Jonathan, standing at his father’s side, was so awestruck, he stripped off his robes, his armour and his weapons, and gave them to David. After that, the two youths pledged their devotion to each other and became lovers. But the bloody war continued, and shortly after their pledge, Jonathan and his brothers were killed on a mountainside, and King Saul, pierced with many arrows, took his own life.

  David’s fantasies were always dark, violent and tragic. A framed poster of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet hung in our bathroom over the claw-foot tub. More than once he’d cheerfully recited Mercutio’s dying speech to me. David bent forward, lifted my head in the palm of his hand and pressed his lips against mine. “I love you, Daniel Garneau,” he whispered.

  I didn’t have David’s vivid imagination. But I had learned long ago to stay present in the moment, to breathe and to keep my eyes open. When David straightened, I poured more lube into my hand and took him in my fist, and he quickened the muscular motion of his hips. I timed it so that, in the end, we came together. After that, he collapsed on top on me and we breathed in unison until I thought he might have fallen asleep. Then I drew myself out of him and gently pushed him off. I showered quickly and returned to bed where he still lay curled on one side. I’d brought a hot face towel which I used to wipe him clean. We’d both been tested and had stopped wearing condoms months ago. Some part of me remained inside of him.

/>   After that, I spooned him from behind and pulled the thin sheet over us. It was a warm night, and his skin was hot, damp and salty to the taste. I held his thick wrist and pressed my cheek against the side of his head, breathing in the familiar smell of his hair and the back of his neck. I roused enough to kiss the base of his skull. Then I reminded myself I was no longer in love with Marcus Wittenbrink Jr., but I was in love entirely with this man I held in my arms, David Gallucci son of Isabella de Luca. And in that numinous, liminal space, halfway between wakefulness and sleep, halfway between sense and imagination, it wasn’t hard to convince myself at all that this was the truth.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Spirit of Radio

  Marcus was on CBC radio.

  He was being interviewed by Sook-Yin Lee on her show, Definitely Not the Opera. I’d been lying in bed masturbating, when my clock radio alarm went off. I listened in shock to the sound of my ex-boyfriend talking right next to my head. It occurred to me he had the perfect radio announcer’s voice: a resonant bari-tenor, thoughtful and modulated, authoritative yet playful. There was also the tiniest hint of a European accent which I happened to know was utterly affected. Marcus was, after all, the third generation son of white-bread lawyers from Burlington, Ontario. He was describing Tuvan throat singing, providing instructions on technique and encouraging Sook-Yin to give it a whirl, which the radio host was more than game to do. The two were clearly flirting. When she commented on the prevalence of nudity in his multimedia art projects, he reminded her (and their millions of listeners) of her last day as a MuchMusic VJ, when she and her co-host had mooned the Canadian audience on live television.

  After a few minutes, I realized the theme of this DNTO episode was “The Art of Noise,” inspiring a rambling discussion ranging from Tanya Tagaq to beatboxing to Glenn Gould’s experimentations with musique concrète. It was like listening to a friendly tennis exhibition match, as each player made witty, entertaining points with increasingly acrobatic aplomb. Inevitably, the reflections turned to noise as metaphor: the works of Jean-Paul Riopelle, graffiti in the urban landscape, the state of media technologies. “But tell me,” Marcus said, “what’s the one signal our human sensorium tunes into, listens for, desperate to receive, more than anything else?”