The Pull of Yesterday

by Gabriella West

  I nodded, so we sat down across from each other at the table, me breathing heavily, Aaron seemingly quite calm, though I noticed how intense and almost black his eyes were when he looked at me.

  The food was amazing. I ate quickly and so did he, and even though there was a ton of food, it didn’t take us very long.

  Aaron stretched his neck back like a cat, eyeing me warmly. “I like these Tuesdays.”

  “I love them,” I answered. “Do you need to shower?”

  He shook his head. “Not if you don’t mind me funky.”

  I didn’t, at all. “Let’s go upstairs, then.”

  “Got something in mind?” Aaron said smiling.

  I just looked at him, and the look must have convinced him because he got up quickly, leaned over, and blew out the candles.

  ***

  Our lovemaking was hot and sweet in his darkened bedroom. I rocked inside him. He stared up at me, moving gently, his hands resting above his head in a strange posture as if he didn’t want to touch himself.

  “Shall I tie your hands?” I asked.

  “No,” he whispered. “But you can hold me down.”

  I did, putting my arms over his. Then he began to moan louder, our friction becoming more electric, the gasps he was making more pleading.

  Our bodies were silky with sweat and lube as I thrust harder, but I still held back. I wanted it to last. Forever, I thought, looking down at him. I want this to last forever.

  He was shaking now, eyes fluttering, making incoherent sounds as I took the last few deep strokes, hitting his prostate, I knew. And then we were both coming, him first then me, a slow, rippling release that I would have held off forever if I could.

  “Oh God, Aaron,” I said dreamily, moving on my back to stare at the ceiling, while he rested against my chest, his damp sweaty hair and hot face burrowed against me.

  “It’s fine, you know. About Janine,” he said quite clearly.

  “She’s with a cute guy called Guillermo,” I muttered.

  “Oh. Guillermo.” He laughed slowly. “Lucky her...”

  “You’d like to meet Guillermo? We can’t have that,” I joked.

  We were silent for a bit.

  “I’m really not jealous. You seem happy now, seeing her.” He sounded peaceful, his voice groggy and muffled by my chest. I stroked his hair.

  “Yeah, we go back a long way. I know that’s a cliché.”

  “You’re lucky, actually... I don’t have an ex like that. Men move on so fast, you know.”

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t really know.” But I knew about Matt, and I knew how I’d assumed he’d moved on. And perhaps he really had, now.

  Aaron switched the bedside light on and lay beside me, still looking flushed and happy.

  “Are you going to see her once a week?” he asked, his tone more businesslike.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know if she’ll want to, or maybe I won’t, but she does like routine, so we might.”

  “This isn’t just to make her new guy jealous, is it?” Aaron said in a low voice.

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t seem it. She’s a very good person, Janine. I think when she’s in love with someone, she likes spreading it around. Her heart’s really open then.”

  I was surprising myself at what I was telling him. He just nodded slowly.

  “I get it.”

  “If you’re ever uncomfortable with it, you get to say,” I said.

  He smiled. “Does it seem to you like I know what comfort is?”

  There was a bitter tone in his voice that jarred me. I said nothing, confused.

  “Look, for me this is kind of a turn-on. It’s not about comfort and staying safe.”

  “O-kay,” I said slowly. “Me screwing around is a turn-on.”

  He sighed, putting his arms around me for a moment. “I’ll rephrase that. Your honesty is hot.”

  I smiled because I had a hard time seeing my clumsy attempts at communication as hot.

  “Aaron, I suck at this.”

  He chuckled and now his face looked peaceful again. “Everyone does.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  He moved restlessly. “Dave, there’s something I never told you. Maybe now’s the time.”

  He switched off the bedside light so the room was in darkness. I didn’t say anything, dreading what was to come. It was still raining outside. The streetlights had come on and I could hear car tires moving on the slick streets.

  He sighed. “I made a mistake. OK, you know when I started yoga, last September or so? It was after you slept with Matt. I felt like I needed an outlet, something to do just by myself. You were cool with it and I loved you for that. I was serious about it, too. But sometime in the first week this guy, who didn’t look gay, by the way, hit on me after class. We ended up going to Progressive Grounds for coffee. You were working late that night. I think it was one of those evenings where you went to the De Young for that extra shift.”

  “The way we met,” I said. “Ironically.”

  I tried to keep my voice low, but I knew what he was going to tell me before he said it. And it was tough because my body had been so relaxed and warm, and now I felt myself cooling and stiffening, turning away from Aaron, though I really, really didn’t want to.

  “Yes.” His voice was serious, sad.

  “All right. What happened? Don’t draw it out.”

  “He lived nearby, just subletting for a month, he said. I went back to his place. I just thought, well... Dave had his fun; maybe I can too. Maybe it will be OK. But it wasn’t at all. It was horrible. I regretted it before we even got going. But I went through with it.”

  Aaron was quiet for a long time. “I won’t say it’s preyed on my mind. But I’ve felt guilty about it. And the thing is, every time I sleep with you I realize I don’t need anyone else. You’re a great lover, Dave, and I love you. I really love you. Probably more than you love me—”

  I put my hand over his mouth and held it there for a moment. My hand must have been icy. His mouth was warm.

  “You can’t do this, Aaron,” I said. I tried to keep my voice from cracking. “You can’t ever do this to me again.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know that now. And it’s OK. I don’t want to fuck anyone else, Dave. I learned that.”

  “So you’re letting me fool around out of guilt?”

  He shook his head. I could barely see in the dim light.

  “Because I love you,” he muttered.

  I had a choice, then, to get out of bed in a fury, stride to the door, leave. In another narrative, I could have hit him. I did feel anger but I was locking the door on it, pushing it away for another time.

  Now he would probably ask, “Do you hate me?” I thought. And I would have to say, no, I don’t hate you.

  “I wish I could be that generous,” I said instead. “It makes me sick to think of another man’s dick in you, Aaron. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I can’t see it any other way.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “It was just fucking, and there was nothing liberating or exciting about it. He used protection. He didn’t even want to see me again, probably because I just lay there and let him do it. And I got out of there so quickly.”

  “I wonder why you didn’t tell me.”

  “I thought I never would. I thought it would end us.”

  I laughed faintly. “And now? What else is there that you haven’t told me?”

  He put his lips near mine. “Nothing. I swear. There’s been no one else since, and I don’t see how there could be.”

  He kissed me gently, and I didn’t push him away, but I didn’t respond either.

  “No wonder you’ve been so understanding,” I said bleakly.

  “But for you it’s different,” Aaron said. “You’re bi. I think you need to have sex with women sometimes. And you’re still hung up on your ex. You’re more impulsive than me.”

  “I don’t think that gives me a pass,” I murmured.
“It shouldn’t.”

  “But it does,” Aaron insisted. “In this relationship, I want to give you that freedom, at least with Matt and Janine. Maybe nobody else. I’m not sure I’m that flexible.”

  I nodded. “So, I can sleep with my exes? There’s some kind of label for that, I’m sure.” Some humor had floated back into my voice.

  “You’re a strange one.” Aaron’s tone was more relaxed now. He was lying beside me and I moved to look down at him.

  “I forgive you, Aaron.” The words were sticking in my throat, but I went on. “It was some time ago that it happened, and I can put it behind us. I believe you won’t do it again. I don’t know why, but I do.”

  He clasped me, pulling me on top of him, and we embraced, nude, sticky.

  “You’re the only one for me, Dave.”

  I sighed, giving in, leaning to kiss him, our tongues tangling, his hands caressing my back. Sometimes it was nice to be with him like this, more innocently, though our movements soon grew passionate and frantic, our hands exploring and stroking each other intimately. I bit Aaron’s shoulder so as not to mark his neck. He writhed underneath me in a way that I found deliciously sexy, his hands cupping my ass, and I thrust, though loosely, not entering him, but driving to a climax anyway between his thighs.

  He had been unfaithful to me. But I put it away because I sensed he had told me everything, and he was sorry. And I had been unfaithful too, months before, and I was clearly not monogamous, though I heartily wished I was. The strangeness of it hit me: to find the great love of one’s life and not be monogamous with them, after all, to find out it was more complicated than that. I would never understand why it had to be this way, but nothing in me at that moment concluded that Aaron was the wrong guy for me. My body and mind had decided otherwise, and I had no surer guideposts than those.

  4.

  The next few days sped fast, the way things go when you have something intense going on in your personal life. In your head. And I did now.

  I’d come to a certain level of comfort with the Museum. I actually liked the job and wanted to keep it. I wouldn’t say I was good at it, but I showed up on time, kept my eyes open, and didn’t cause problems. I was able to keep a neutral demeanor, and if I sometimes snuck glances at attractive museum-goers, I was very subtle about it. You got tired as the day went on, so it wasn’t a sexy job, but there were long moments when I got to stand and think about my personal business, zone out, so to speak.

  For some reason, Aaron’s words about me being a great lover were obsessing me. I felt he had meant it. He wasn’t playing me. But it was so far from the way I’d previously viewed myself in my life. I’d thought of myself as no great shakes in bed, not a good catch, not a particularly sharp or witty guy.

  Aaron’s passion moved me. I barely thought about his infidelity because it truly seemed like something that would never happen again. Something he’d tried out that hadn’t worked. I’d said I’d forgiven him, and I’d meant it. This was a conversation deeper and more intimate than I’d ever had with anyone else.

  He means the world to me, I thought. He loves me.

  It was warming. It was comforting. But I craved something more outside the relationship. I really tried, in those dreary January days, safe inside the Museum, to analyze what I wanted. I was probably overthinking it, sure. Was it just my ego, I wondered. Did Janine’s compliment about my looks make me want to go to bed with her? It seemed more than that, though her warmth certainly had unlocked something in me. And Matt? The dream was odd because Matt seemed to be claiming me, yet in real life he had become a shadow. He hadn’t responded. No message had come from him; there had been no hint of activity on his Facebook page when I checked. Nothing.

  January was a quiet time at the Museum. Only a few visitors trickled in to the exhibit I was patrolling; it was Flemish artists of the early Renaissance. The artists had strange, unfamiliar names and the paintings were odd, too. Images of hands. A lot of anatomy. It was as if they were sketching out themes that would get fully expressed later, a hundred years later, say. This wasn’t my original thought: the docent, Jill, a plump, middle-aged woman with a soothing voice, was the one who voiced it to the small group of people she herded around daily at 2pm, just as I came on shift.

  I loved the quiet brightness and warmth in the wood-paneled rooms. I’d started to feel comfortable at the Museum now that Mike had gotten off my back. As comfortable as I ever could in a workplace. I always smiled at the docent before she began her shift. We’d even joked briefly about how glad I was that she was doing it rather than me. The docents were good about introducing themselves to us guards. They didn’t act haughty.

  I grew to love the images surrounding me as Jill’s words educated me. Each painting was never separate from the culture around it, I learned. It was never separate from things like money and class. There were patrons to please. Every age had its own tastes and fads, but the great patron for hundreds of years was the Church.

  And I found that odd, growing up in Boston, where the Church seemed anti-art, negative about everything sensual and vibrant, including the body.

  My own body was restless, though. I’d started to fantasize a lot. I was still friendly with Vic, the Filipino guy, and Elena, his girlfriend who worked in HR. I sometimes had dirty thoughts about Elena as she moved in front of me in the corridors. She wore tight skirts and high heels, her dark, slick-backed hair giving her an oddly stern appearance. I could even smell her spicy perfume sometimes when she came over to say something to Vic and I was in the same room as them. Her blouse was always tight. Like Janine, she was full-breasted. She never seemed to notice my glances and always treated me with professional friendliness. I had to wonder, though, whether she and Vic snuck off sometimes to a secret hiding-place in the Museum to make love. I chided myself for my thoughts. Even if they did, it wasn’t my business! I knew it, but couldn’t help the images from coming sometimes.

  Elena had lightened up over the months since I first met her, and she now treated me like a gay buddy. I tried to keep it light and friendly, not wanting Vic to ever get worried about me hitting on his girl. He didn’t seem worried. But then, I wasn’t sure how great their relationship was. There seemed something empty about it.

  Vic smiled a lot. He was an odd contrast to the serious Elena. He’d even smiled and winked when I asked him about Wendy, whether it was really OK for me to be taking these walks with her during work hours. We were standing out in the courtyard at the time, what the higher-ups at the Museum liked to call the Court of Honor, though I found it very pretentious.

  “No problem,” he’d said cheerfully, but I noticed he lowered his voice. “Back in the day, I used to go on walks with her too sometimes.”

  “Oh. And nothing bad ever happened?”

  “Well, it depends what you call bad,” he said mysteriously.

  “But Mike never got angry at you about it?”

  “Oh no. Mike’s perfectly fine with us hanging out with his wife. It’s sort of part of the job, if you want to look at it that way.”

  “OK, cool,” I answered. I was still uneasy. What bothered me was the unpredictability of it, how she’d show up sometime in the afternoon, not every week but most weeks. Always on a weekday. It was true that I was glad to see her, but there was a weird feeling about leaving the Museum with her, like we were sneaking away. But I told myself that I was making things complicated and that it was just a type of networking I was doing. I was just bad at it because I’d never worked in an office, had always been behind a bar, and there wasn’t a hierarchy there. Besides Seamus Flannery, I’d never felt like I had a boss. Certainly there’d never been a boss’s wife to contend with.

  Vic moved around a lot during the day, supervising things. I’d started to realize that he wasn’t really a good friend, that I could never pin him down about anything. But I didn’t feel he disliked me. That was just the way it was, I thought philosophically.

  I felt included now. And yet there was
a nagging feeling that I was still out of the loop, that there was a whole lot going on behind the scenes. Perhaps it was familiar to me too from my past relationship with Janine and my growing-up years. I never expected to be in control of it all, to be fully clued in.

  But somehow that was OK. There was a fear I had about seeing the big picture. Life was hard. If you saw everything, how could you go on? How could you bear it? The little glimpses I’d had of reality were hard enough. Aaron’s infidelity. The fact that my boss had screwed Janine, something that I still held against him. I couldn’t forget it. So I was nice to Wendy and part of it was because I felt sorry for her, this intelligent, still pretty woman with a creep for a husband and clearly not enough meaningful shit to do with her life.

  ***

  Friday, Wendy appeared. I watched her come toward me, her figure oddly androgynous despite her soft, dark, well-fitting clothing. That was the week that she climbed into my car for the first time and smoked a cigarette with me. We laughed. Her dark eyes were alight with humor and pleasure. She said she couldn’t smoke in the Prius because Mike would smell it and get angry with her.

  “You know what I really love? Clove cigarettes! Let’s go get some,” she said.

  We ended up buying some and driving to a scenic viewpoint somewhere deep in the Presidio. She guided me along the winding road. I hadn’t been there much and guessed that I would have difficulty finding it again. The big eucalyptus trees shook in the wind.

  It was raining. We sat and listened to the rain and I mentioned that we should probably go back.

  “I know,” Wendy said. She had been telling me about the early years of her marriage, when she and Mike had had a great social life in Marin with other couples. They had sometimes experimented and gone to swing clubs. She put it out there so casually. Her hand was on my knee.

  I could have started the car at any time, but I was mesmerized by the rain and by what she was telling me. The couples they had sex with. And then how she and Mike had both taken separate lovers over the years.

  “I know about Janine. Your ex,” Wendy said, her eyes sharp. “I know she had sex with Mike last year. But you had nothing to do with it, Dave.”