Between Men

by Richard Canning

  “Are you like this, Rand? Do you want to marry some man and have little gay babies?”

  “No, definitely not,” I said. “The impossibility of procreation has always been one of my favorite aspects of gay sex.”

  “Yes,” said Jean, and raised his wavering glass in salute. “And do you talk out of both sides of your head? Or do you talk out of your ass, as you should? As I do?”

  We were both drunk—I for the first time in years. Usually I am satisfied by a little cognac or some scotch, but tonight I had drunk untold amounts of god-knows-what, as the host merrily wandered his party with pitcher after pitcher of fruity concoctions.

  Jean continued. “Maybe we Quebecois are old-fashioned, but you see we still have our gay village where we laugh at everything. It’s always been the same neighborhood; the straights are not interested in coming here. It’s not like New York where the straights chase the gays from this to that part of town until they all give up and, what is the word ... integrate?”

  “Hm,” I said, “there goes Nori.” A man had led him by the hand into a side room.

  “How old do you think I am, Rand? Guess.”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “Thank you, angel. Forty-eight. Surprised? Yes, I’m very well-preserved. You are, maybe, twenty-nine?”

  He had guessed it exactly.

  “When I was your age, my lover and I, with six of our friends, had a bridge club. We met the first and third Wednesday of every month. There were penalties for missing a game, penalties for conversation at the table, big penalties for cheating, although that was very rare. With the fines we would buy sherry and cheese for the next game. No gambling, of course. We were like little old ladies. Naturally, it was funny, but when we were on the phone planning the event, then together playing the game, we were very serious about it. It was like we were practicing. But, for what? Were we paying tribute to the little old ladies or making war on them? All those men but one—Andy, he is here, maybe you met him?—all those men but me and Andy are dead now. My lover, too, in 1990. It is sad, but it happens. Little old ladies die. But I tell you this, my friends did not die for the right to go to Disney World. They didn’t die for anything. Their deaths were completely, utterly pointless. That’s the only way to be at peace with it. Accept it as complete pointlessness. That’s what I’m saying about the Americans—they’re trying to change their destiny, to have a point. The destiny of gays is pointlessness, just as the destiny of straights is ugliness. Don’t try to jump the track. It is better to be pointless and laugh. That is our job, I think. Like they say in blues songs, laughing just to keep from crying.”

  During this Jean had wandered, but now he seemed to remember to whom he was speaking. “So you will promise me, handsome Rand, that you and Nori will not go to Provincetown and get married.”

  “Out of the question,” I said. “Besides, I think Nori is already married. He has a lover in Japan he called his husband.”

  “Ah, so you are the other woman, so to speak.” Jean ran his fingers along the underside of mine, lifting them, and sang the Nina Simone song: “‘The other woman finds time to manicure her nails. / The other woman is perfect where her rival fails ...’ Do you like the party?”

  I put my hands to his hips, then slid them under his shirt and up his back to feel the ribs under his shoulder blades. “Yes, it’s quite a party.” I looked over his shoulder and past the trees. Men in twos and threes were kissing, fondling, shedding clothing.

  “Where is Nori?” asked Jean.

  “He was lured into a bedroom earlier,” I said.

  “That’s a pity. I’m sure he’s nothing but a pile of bones now. We’re a bunch of cannibals, you know.”

  “And old ladies,” I added.

  “Yes, old lady cannibals.” He kissed me, then pulled back and, in a wicked-witch voice, said, “Delicious.”

  I woke up sore and naked, having cast off the blankets in the night. I went to the bathroom and vomited sour fruit juice, alcohol, acid—last night’s party gone rancid. I wiped the lip of the toilet bowl with a starchy hotel towel and washed my face. When I returned to the bedroom I saw that Nori was sleeping on the floor. Sometime during the night he had made a bed by folding the extra comforter into a pallet under the window, and now he lay stiffly on his back, wrapped in a sheet, with lines of trouble in his brow. Or was he squinting to keep out the sun? I stepped over him and closed the curtains, then knelt down.

  “Nori, why are you sleeping on the floor?” I whispered.

  He frowned and turned away from me.

  “Come back to bed.” I put my hand to his shoulder, but he jerked away. I was startled. “Nori, what is it? Why are you down here?”

  He leveled an angry, bloodshot gaze at me. “You don’t remember?” My thoughts struggled through the mire of the previous night. Had we had sex? I barely remembered returning to the hotel room. We had had sex in separate groups at the party. Was that what upset him? No, now I remembered holding each other, chuckling conspiratorially in the elevator, and then we had collapsed onto the bed . . . right?

  “No,” I said. “I don’t remember. What happened?”

  “You hit me in the night.”

  “What?”

  “We went to sleep and then I woke up. You were hitting me.”

  “Oh, God,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut. “Nori, I apologize.”

  “I didn’t understand. I thought you were dreaming so I said your name to wake you up. But you kept hitting. You were awake. You were angry.”

  “No, Nori. I . . . it has nothing to do with you. I have trouble sleeping. Or . . . trouble while I’m asleep. It’s kind of like sleepwalking.”

  He looked at me with fear and disbelief.

  “Nori, please forgive me. I would never hurt you intentionally. I think you’re fantastic. It’s just me. I’ve always been like this.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder and he softened, just slightly.

  “I thought maybe you were asleep,” he conceded. “I thought you were mad that I had sex at the party, or you were jealous about Hitoshi, and maybe since you were asleep it . . . came out. I was scared.”

  “But I wasn’t angry! It would have happened whether or not you were here. You see, I’m used to sleeping restrained. It’s very complicated.”

  He didn’t understand. “How do you know you weren’t angry if you can’t remember?”

  For a moment I was speechless. “Because I’m not angry now. I have no reason to be angry with you, Nori, I like you very much.”

  “Maybe you are not angry when you are awake,” he replied, sitting up, “because you don’t have a reason. But when you are dreaming, things happen without reason. When you’re dreaming, you’re angry.”

  “Nori, I’m so sorry.” I put my arms around him and drew him up to stand. Then the room rocked and he supported me. We were both naked, and there was something vaguely delightful about the sickness and his body next to mine. “If it’s true and I’m angry in my sleep,” I said, “it’s not at you. I promise. It started years and years ago.”

  His gaze shifted and he turned to sit on the corner of the bed. He probably thought I was insane, and in that, he was certainly not the first.

  I stretched out onto the bed, my mind limping to catch up to where my body had taken me: How were we so intimate here? How had I come to beg and how had he become so stony?

  There was nothing more to say. I thumbed the flesh of his buttock with my big toe. He lay down, but with his head at the opposite end of the bed from mine. I propped my head against his ankle to gaze up the foreshortened and shifting landscape of his body until it rolled, dizzyingly, away, and he said, “It’s late. We’ve got to drive.”

  And so, with my heart broken, just a little, I drove. We got into the city late, and I woke Nori to direct me to his building.

  “Did you have a good time?” I asked dejectedly when we arrived.

  “Yes, I did,” he said. His brightness had returned. “Thank you.”
r />   “Again, I’m really sorry. ...”

  “Please, it’s OK. Don’t worry. I had a good time.”

  “Well, I hope I can see you again. Maybe . . . we could get together with Frank sometime. The three of us.”

  The silence that followed allowed me to consider what this offer, which had spontaneously leaped from my mouth, meant. The best hope for Nori and me now was to relate on that level—friends.

  “Frank is your good friend?” asked Nori.

  “Yes. We’re very close,” I responded.

  I wondered if he was about to tell me about their relationship. If so, I would stop him. At this point, it was so unnecessary. But he started in a different vein: “Rand, the apartment under yours—no one lives there.”

  “Right.”

  “But it is yours.”

  “Yes, why do you ask?”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t say so, but Frank is not a very good friend to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you let Frank use that apartment?”

  “No,” I said. With a wave of sickness, I realized what Nori was telling me.

  “But Frank has a key,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “The night we met, he took me there. We had sex there. I’m sorry. He didn’t tell me it was your place. He pretended it was his. He said we had to be very quiet, not to wake up the neighbors. But it was you he didn’t want to wake up.” He fiddled nervously with his keys, which he had already taken out. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said. But, you know, maybe I should.”

  “I’ve dealt with Frank’s problems before,” I said. “It’s good you told me.”

  Nori reached for his backpack in the backseat and set it in his lap.

  “Thank you, Rand. I had fun in Montreal.”

  “And maybe,” I said, “we should just leave it at that?”

  “Maybe.” He leaned over, kissed me, and left.

  Shaking my head, I pulled back into traffic. Something made me laugh. As I wondered what it was, I remembered Jean’s theory about gay men, that it is our job to laugh.

  Exhausted from the trip, I went home and got in bed, but then lay awake for hours. I imagined going downstairs and finding that Frank had moved in—that I opened the door and it was his apartment in Queens, only now it was here. I finally fell asleep as the sun was rising and slept late into the morning. On the way out to return the rental car I peeked into the apartment and, of course, everything was as I had left it.

  Later, while unpacking my bag, I noticed on the answering machine’s blinking display that I had eleven messages. I didn’t even know that it could hold that many! I pressed play, and what unrolled was as comical as it was grotesque:

  Hey Rand, it’s Frank. Haven’t talked to you for a couple days. Doing the old check-up. Give me a ring.

  Rand, it’s Frank, give me a call.

  Frank again. Call me.

  Look, Rand, give me a call. Is everything all right? Don’t make me come over there. Bye.

  On and on it went, like a bad radio play. The pitch of his voice increased with tension, like a violin string whose key is being turned and turned.

  Rand, it’s Frank. Did you go out of town? Call me.

  I had forgotten to tell Frank that I was leaving town. Had he come to check on me and found the apartment empty? Wouldn’t he have left a note?

  Then it struck me: he knew I was going to call Nori, and that Nori might end up here, and that Nori might tell me. The cowardly whine of Frank’s voice, which was still being played by the machine, nauseated me. Years ago I had removed the possibility of a friend betraying me. I never asked anything of anyone. How had this happened? I felt sick and profoundly unsafe.

  I would have all the locks changed. I would do it today. But first, I had to calm myself.

  I went to my closet and found the racquetball on the top shelf. In the kitchen I wrapped the ball with cellophane and pushed it into place in my mouth. A length of cellophane around the back of my head secured the ball in place. Then I went back to the closet and pushed the clothing to either side, creating a snug space for myself. I stepped in and bound my ankles and knees with old shirts. I drew the doors carefully closed, put my hands above the rod, and coiled a light cotton shirt around my wrists, then attempted to tie it. It was clumsy, but it would do. Slowly, I relaxed the muscles of my legs until I was hanging by my wrists, my body supported on either side by soft cushions of clothing. After a few moments I was sure that the knot at my wrists would not give. A warm pain began to spread from my armpits down my back, and I found a little stillness.

  To put it simply, I sought simplicity, which is to say, a complete form of complexity, unified and elusive. I had realized years earlier that the layout of my apartment was the layout of my mind, and that it was cluttered. I had gotten rid of everything I didn’t need—which was most of what I had owned—by giving it away or putting it downstairs. I felt calmed. There was room for sunlight to flood in.

  I didn’t waste words or time. I ordered in, and I usually ate alone. All of this aided in my search for something that I couldn’t name, something inside me. I believed I’d recognize it when I found it.

  I think this search began with something I misheard my father say over the phone, many years before. Late in the series of arguments we had had over my refusal to go to Dartmouth, my father decided to make it personal. He accused me of sending my mother into a nervous breakdown with my decision.

  “Rand,” he said, “how can you be so coal-hearted?”

  I had been cleaning my fingernails as I argued, but now I put down the nail file. I was struck by that image: instead of a shiny, red heart pumping away in my chest, I had a dull lump of black coal, like one a bad child got in his Christmas stocking. For the first and only time, my father gave me pause.

  Of course it was a mistake. My father had used the hackneyed description “cold-hearted,” and I came up with a boring defense he would understand: it was my life, my decision, my money, etc.

  After the call I toyed with the idea, imagining myself a bad boy’s Christmas stocking. Who, then, if not my parents, those very accusers, dropped into my empty body that lump of coal that would be my heart (denying, as we must, the existence of Santa)? And if I had a coal heart, how much pressure exerted equally from all sides would it take to squeeze it into a diamond, the world’s hardest and most beautiful rock?

  Now, years later, I wondered something similar: if I gathered all the evidence of life’s beauty (which, I’d found, I could only begin to do if I am surrounded by emptiness), and gave it a good squeeze, embossing my heart with all those memories and sensations, was there a moment (or eternity) of transcendence, when I touched the beautiful truth of life? When I was comforted? When I held up to my face and was illuminated by that tiny jewel, the hope of whose existence compelled us—all of us—not to hang ourselves with extension cords from light fixtures?

  A crack, light, the knot at my wrists gave, and I was out onto the floor.

  “Oh my God!” screamed Frank. He knelt over me and cradled my head. “Rand,” he wailed, “are you OK? How long have you been in there? I’m so sorry!”

  I blinked my eyes, trying to focus. Then I saw Frank’s frantic expression and laughter began to bubble up from my chest, but my mouth was still gagged so it must have sounded like I was suffocating.

  “Shit! Fuck!” muttered Frank, as he tore at the cellophane, scratching my cheek. He plucked out the racquetball, sending saliva flying, and I burst into a deep, cleansing laughter.

  “Are you OK? How long have you been in there?”

  “As long as I can remember,” I howled as I pushed him away and rose to my feet. I laughed and laughed at the fear on his face. Finally I settled down and told him I had only been in there an hour. He was quiet and bewildered, and I almost pitied him. “Let’s get takeout,” I said.

  After Frank left I called the locksmith.

  The more salt one adds to water, the greater a submerged body’s bu
oyancy in that water. And the greater pressure experienced by a body forcibly submerged.

  Facedown, I wore an oxygen mask attached to a pliable plastic hose, which was taped loosely to the tiled wall. This was an apparatus of my own invention created from supplies found on Canal Street, and based on the design of a snorkel.

  The water was tepid, and I could taste the saltiness. Belinda flattened black industrial-strength garbage bags against my back and the backs of my legs. She gently lowered bubble-wrapped twenty-five-pound weights between my shoulder blades, into the dip of my lower back, onto the backs of my thighs, into the cradle of my loosely bound ankles. She placed a Ziploc bag of ball bearings onto the back of my neck.

  She was done, and I was quiet.

  It was somewhat bothersome that my hands were unrestrained. Belinda had insisted that I keep the index finger and thumb of both hands pressed together in OK signs. If the hands relaxed and the fingers parted, she’d assume I’d lost consciousness and immediately end the experiment. I had assured her I’d be fine, but she had insisted, and, of course, I appreciated her concern.

  It usually started when I ceased to think of what I saw as darkness but, rather, a shade of neutrality.

  I felt a wonderful displacement: which way was I facing? In which direction was my head pointing? The mental map of my surroundings became a maze; I lost the layout of my apartment. Which way was which? I let it go.

  The bubbling lava-lamp paisleys came and I lost myself in them for a while, then they divided and revealed a great open expanse. I entered it and, softly, so as not to break the stillness, said, “Yes?”

  Diary of a Quack

  Wayne Koestenbaum

  My Name Is Siegfried Kracauer

  Everything I do is legal. My accountability rating is high.

  I see patients for a form of “talk therapy” that includes touching. Licensed, I charge $80 an hour. Rents are cheap in Variety Springs.