by Judith Frank
They were quiet, stunned that things had blown up so quickly, regretting being in such a public space, where people brushed against the backs of their chairs on the way to their tables and murmured, “Hey, how’s it going.” Matt didn’t even know what he wanted Daniel to say; he’d just hurtled forward, needing to slam against this wall to see if it would hold. Finally, Daniel leaned forward and burst out quietly, “What do you want me to say? That I’ll never think that we could have avoided this? Not even let it broach my thoughts for one millisecond? That I’ll feel fine about having to put safety precautions into place, and about the prospect of you slowly dying in our house?”
“No!” Matt lied. “How about that you’ll be really sad—and take care of me!”
Daniel sat back with an irritated sigh. “For Christ’s sake, doesn’t that go without saying?”
“No! It could use a little saying,” Matt said. “I’m the guy who got kicked out.”
Daniel shook his head wearily. He was willing to take his licks, he was; but Matt’s need for him to say it aloud was insulting. As if he was such a monster he’d let him die alone! He took his wallet out of his pocket, consulted the check, and tossed his credit card on the table.
How had it happened that Daniel was dismissing him? Matt reached into his pocket and withdrew a crumpled ten, which he lay on the bar and smoothed out with his hands.
“You don’t have to,” Daniel said.
Matt shrugged, sardonic.
They walked silently through the downtown, hands in their jacket pockets, past a lot of couples out on a warm night and a line at the movie theater. They passed a few places where each of them could have turned off to his own house, both of them wondering what would happen when they parted, and when they reached the last possible point, they stopped. Tell him you’d take care of him and cherish him to the end, Daniel thought, that’s what he wants to hear. But somehow, the words stuck in his craw. Instead, he said, “What’s next?”
“I don’t know,” Matt said.
“I love you,” Daniel said. “I didn’t want this to end with a fight.”
“Neither did I,” Matt said. He was tired, his mind gummed-up.
They said their good-byes quietly, and when Matt got home, he knew it was over. Luckily, he hadn’t let his hopes get too high. He dropped down on the couch with the dog and buried his face in her neck, and she snuffled and sighed, and he fell asleep there.
The doorbell sounded first in his dreams, and when he surfaced, chilled, his eyes searching out the light of the one lit lamp, he felt a spasm of primitive fear at the unexpected late-night phone call or knock at the door. He rose and went to the door, turned on the porch light, and peered out. Daniel stood there in his leather jacket.
When he opened the door for him, Daniel grabbed him by the belt and pulled him to him, slipped his hand between his legs, and cupped him hard. Matt let himself be led up to the bedroom and pushed onto the bed, let Daniel open his belt and fly, pull down his pants, kneel over him with his knee between Matt’s legs, and kiss him roughly. “Turn over,” he said, reaching for his own belt, and Matt obeyed, kicking his pants off his ankles. He heard Daniel pull his own pants down, then the rip of a condom wrapper and the small snap of his putting it on.
“In the drawer,” Matt said, and he heard it open and Daniel’s hand scurrying inside in search of the lube.
Daniel entered him awkwardly, rested there. He was still wearing his shirt and jacket and shoes. “Is this what you wanted?” he grunted.
Matt’s eyes were closed, his ass burning like hell. As Daniel fucked him, his mind groped for the oblivion he craved, but he couldn’t let go of the awareness that Daniel was playing a role. After all these years, he thought, it would take a prodigious act of imagination he probably wasn’t capable of to get into this rough-trade fantasy. That ship had so sailed! Where to get the pleasure from, then? From the sheer brutality of the thrust? From gratitude that Daniel was still trying? From the danger Daniel was half-facing? From the idea that Daniel was angry, and punishing him?
It felt okay, it just didn’t blow his mind. It wasn’t really what he wanted. He rested, his cheek pressed into the mattress, and waited for Daniel to finish. After he did, Daniel eased out of him, both of them wincing, and flopped down next to him, on his back. His face was flushed. It was a large bed on a low wood platform, with a wood headboard; its sheets, blanket, and bedspread were various lovely shades of white. They lay there breathing and sweating. “This is an awesome bed,” Daniel said.
“Other people’s beds are always more comfortable than your own,” Matt said. “I don’t know why.” He lifted the covers and they got undressed and crawled under. Daniel turned away and scooted gently backward so that Matt was spooning him. They fell asleep that way, and Matt awoke a few hours later with his face mashed into Daniel’s hair. The windows were open and it was chilly on his bare shoulders, and he could hear the wind rustling in the tender new leaves of the trees. The only light came in from down the hall at the top of the stairs, and the room was dusky and soft. He lay there for a few minutes, taking in the smells of Daniel’s shampoo, his breath, lubricant, and semen, Daniel’s sweat or maybe his own. He was thirsty. He pulled away gently and wiped the tickle from his nose. Daniel stirred, then slipped around and was in his arms so quickly it shocked him. Daniel kissed his neck and face and mouth, Matt’s hair in his fists; he was moaning, making a sound so private and full of need it was almost hard to hear. Matt felt his tears on his face, heard him say his name, over and over.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Okay.” Until Daniel became still in his arms. Then Matt gently pushed him onto his back and kneeled over him, licking and sucking his nipples, his ribs, his stomach, his thighs, and his balls, and he had barely taken him into his mouth when Daniel came with a cry of surprise and pleasure. Matt straightened and wiped his mouth. “It’s like making love to a teenager!” he said, which made Daniel laugh—and it was, and that was hot, giving pleasure to someone who had forgotten that such pleasure was to be had, who came quickly and hard even when Matt tried to calm him down and draw it out.
He made love to him on and off, and they slept in between. Once, he reached for him and Daniel said, “Ow, enough. I can’t anymore,” but then he could and did, and they fell back on the bed, hot and sticky, and laughed.
As morning broke, Daniel dreamed about a hike he’d taken in the hills outside Jerusalem with some religious friends, one Shabbat his junior year abroad. They’d taken along the two small, indispensable books for religious hikers, an Old Testament and a botany pocket guide, picked figs from trees and wild grapes from the vine, and when they stopped to drink and rest, one of them had read verses from one of the Samuels, and showed how the events had probably happened right in that very place. A sense of peaceful joy had filled Daniel at the beauty of the rugged stony hills, the comfortable power of his body in vigorous exercise, the ease of giving himself over to his companions’ knowledge of where they were going, the feeling that there was no truer Israeli experience he could possibly have. The feeling of this being so much truer and purer than his stifling upbringing.
Later that afternoon they’d entered an Arab village, and an elderly man in a keffiye had greeted them as they passed his house, inviting them to stop and rest. They’d sat cross-legged with him on the stone patio in front of his house as his wife brought out a tray with warm pita, tomatoes, and tiny cups of harsh coffee, and while they hadn’t been able to understand each other very well, Daniel’s companions vigorously affirmed what the old man said as they stood to leave, in Arabic words that were close to the Hebrew: that Isaac and Ishmael were brothers.
It had been a beautiful, beautiful day, and he hadn’t thought about it for ages.
He awoke into the faint light to see Matt lying on his back, his head resting on his hands, elbows akimbo, his eyes open, thinking. “I had a dream,” Daniel told him. “More a memory, I can’t tell if I was awake or not.”
“What about?�
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Daniel told him about it, tears pressing painfully at his face but not breaking. “Why does it make me want to cry? I have no idea. When I think about it now, I have no idea where we were, on whose land, or what town we entered. It must have been right before the First Intifada. That encounter with the Arab man could never happen now.”
“Was Joel there?”
“No,” said Daniel, “and I was probably really happy that I was having a more authentic experience than he was right then.”
Matt smiled.
“I was such a different person,” Daniel said. “So naïve.” He paused, blinking up at the ceiling, then turned and looked at Matt. “Do I have to be all ironic about that experience now?”
Matt gazed at him and touched his face. “I’m afraid so, honey,” he said.
Daniel was quiet for a while, then asked, “Where does the beauty go?”
Matt thought for a few moments, then slid his arms around Daniel’s chest. “Right here,” he said, kissing his shoulder. “Right here,” he said, laying his palm on Daniel’s back. “Where I can feel your heart beating.”
Daniel buried his head in Matt’s chest, moved and shy. “And then we weren’t in Israel anymore, we were in Japan,” he said, his voice muffled. “And my mother was there.”
Matt laughed.
DANIEL SPENT THE NEXT four nights at Matt’s, taking advantage of his parents’ presence. The first night, he’d just slipped out and slipped back home at five A.M., and was in the shower before anybody woke up. But after that, he thought he ought to put someone in charge.
His father was asleep, but his mother was in the living room watching TV in her pajamas. She was nodding off, but her head snapped up when he sat down beside her. “Hi, honey,” she said. “I’ve taken a sleeping pill.” She took his cold hand in her two warm ones, and chafed it between them.
He perched beside her on the arm of the couch and watched the documentary for a few minutes. They were crazy little critters, meerkats; a laugh bubbled out of him when they rose on their hind legs to do sentry duty, the camera capturing their little heads popping up from behind sand dunes, their quick and alert little faces. They were led by a fierce and ruthless alpha female.
At the commercial, he stood. “Listen, Mom, I’m going over to Matt’s for the night. So if the kids wake up—tell them I’m visiting him. I guess.”
“Are you sure you won’t be getting their hopes up?” Lydia asked. “If you don’t end up getting back together, I mean?”
“Mom,” Daniel said.
“I know you think I’m saying that because I hope you don’t get back together,” she interrupted. “But I’m not.”
“Really?” he asked, with a penetrating look.
“I’m not an idiot, Daniel,” she said. “I can tell when you’re happy and when you’re not.”
“Oh,” he said. “In that case—” He gave her a smooch on the cheek. “I’ll have my cell phone on me.”
He straightened, and then she spoke again, quiet but steady, her head resting against the back of the sofa. “Your brother is looking down on you, Daniel. He’s so proud of you, and so grateful that you’re here to care for his children.”
He turned to look at her, surprised tears springing into his eyes.
THE NIGHTS HAD THE otherworldly feel of first-in-love. The moment Matt let him in the door, they were kissing. They had long, leisurely sex punctuated by surprises that made them laugh; they raided the kitchen, watched TV in bed with their bare legs entwined, eating a bowl of ice cream or drinking a scotch, had sex again. The old dog lay on the rug at the foot of the bed, snorting and farting, and the night deepened until day broke in soft shades of gray.
After Daniel left in the morning, unshaven and wearing the clothes he’d come in, Matt would get coffee brewing and get in the shower. He moved through his day languidly, his body airy and sated, finding himself jerking awake at the computer screen. He had no interest in food. At odd moments he’d find something unpleasant come over him, a flicker of rancor which, the moment he recognized it, was followed by despair, and he’d wonder for a second where it came from. Then he’d remember what Daniel had done, how he’d used Matt’s very queerness, and the tenuous status it gave him in the family and the house, against him. Maybe, he’d think, the Daniel who was coming nightly to his bed—open, avid, loving—was the real Daniel, and that other, closed-off, brutal one an aberration. But it was one thing to have broken up with Matt, and quite another to take advantage of his legal vulnerability as a queer partner, to be the type of person who would do that. He just didn’t know how to forgive that. He didn’t know whether Daniel even registered that he’d done it.
He quizzed Brent and Derrick about it, and they insisted that Daniel did realize what he’d done. But it wasn’t until the last night of Daniel’s parents’ visit, the last night they could carry on their affair in this strange, inviting house, that Daniel said something. They were in the kitchen, Matt making a sandwich because he’d hardly eaten that day, Daniel poking around in the fascinating cupboards of strangers and disapproving of the fact that the kitchen hadn’t been updated since the ’70s. It had pale green linoleum counters and a grubby wooden spice rack above the stove, crammed with spices bought at Asian specialty stores. “It’s the only part of the house that isn’t lovely,” he said.
“I know,” Matt said.
“How do you feel about moving back in and rejoining our family?” Daniel asked.
Matt’s head whipped around. “Talk about your non sequiturs!” he said.
“I couldn’t figure out how to work my way toward it more gradually.”
Matt put his knife down and turned toward him, studied his face. They’d been so intertwined for the past week, pulling back and looking at each other felt solemn and intimate. Daniel was tense, his blinking deliberate, his teeth gnawing at the inside of his lip.
“I—” Matt said, and cleared his throat. “The thing is, it’s hard for me to let go of what you did to me. The whole thing about my having no legal rights.”
Daniel nodded. “I know,” he said. “I wish I hadn’t done it. I could have done it so differently.”
He studied Daniel, wondering if that admission was enough for him. Finally, he said, “How can I be sure you won’t do it again?”
Daniel scratched his cheek in mock ponder. “If only there were an institution designed to support couples who have vowed to stay together, and to legally protect them,” he said.
Matt laughed, taken aback. “Seriously?”
Daniel shrugged, his eyes growing playful and warm. “It’s going to be legal in Massachusetts in”—he looked at his watch—“three weeks.”
“Okay, I really don’t know how to think about that,” Matt said with a small laugh. He turned back around and stared at the turkey and cheese sandwich he’d made, picked it up and took an enormous bite out of it. Then he hiked himself up on the counter and chewed.
“Well, give it some thought,” Daniel said. “I know we haven’t been very keen on the idea of marriage, but it’s a way—it’s my way—of helping you feel protected.”
Matt took another bite, contemplated Daniel as he chewed. “What a lame proposal,” he said.
“I know,” Daniel said with a laugh that was more air than noise. “But I mean it. I want you to come back, and I want you to feel safe in our family.”
“Okay,” Matt said.
“Is that one of those robotic, compliant Gal okays?”
Matt scratched his chin. “I sort of understand now what she means by it!” he said. “It’s like, ‘Okay, I hear you and I get what you mean, but I have to go sit in my room by myself for a while now.’ ”
“I want you to be happy,” Daniel said, coming up to the counter and standing between Matt’s knees, resting his hands on Matt’s thighs. “I want you to be psyched.” His face crinkled into a mischievousness so rare and enchanting, Matt almost died of love right on the spot. “When Daddy comes home, it’s a happy sound,”
Daniel sang, his voice husky. “Daddy!”
Matt laughed and touched Daniel’s cheek. “I am psyched,” he said. “I am. Let me just think about it.”
MATT SAT IN THE car outside the Jackson Street School, waiting for the kids to start coming out. In the front of the low, long brick building stood a line of idling school buses, but Gal had been told to look for his car instead. It was a mild day, and he had the driver’s-side window open and his sunglasses on. The trees still sent their bare spindles into the sky, but in front and side yards the forsythia was in bloom, the bushes that only days ago had looked like messy, snarled balls of wire now bursting with yellow flowers.
It had taken a week for Matt to even take seriously the idea of marriage. It felt like such a cliché!—as though Daniel was a cheating husband who’d gone out and bought him a fur coat or a Lamborghini so he’d forgive him. He’d just never aspired to marriage; the very idea seemed like a turnoff, like joining a church or moving to the Midwest. And he’d always worried, since the push for gay marriage in Massachusetts began, that the right to marry would become the expectation to marry, which would create two classes of gay people: the good ones who were normal and committed and monogamous, and the queers and deviants.
One day, he ran into his lawyer on the street, who told him that as far as he was concerned, the best thing about gay marriage was going to be gay divorce. “Meaning?” Matt said.
“Meaning that before, gays and lesbians in Massachusetts could screw each other financially, or in terms of custody, when we broke up. And believe me, we did! But now we’re going to be subject to the same divorce laws as straight people.”
“Right,” Matt said, and that made an impression, especially the vision of legions of Massachusetts queers being screwed just as he had been. He had no illusions that gay people were more ethical in love than straight people, but thinking of his attorney routinely going to court on behalf of stay-at-home partners bilked out of alimony, or non-bio-moms having their kids taken away, gave him a slightly different vision of queer Northampton than he’d had, and bolstered the ironic stance he took toward the married state.
