The Anatomy of Perception

by AJ Rose

  “Sabrina is a doctor, a healer. She cares about people, befriends them, puts them at ease,” I argued. Okay, maybe not that last thing. She did it for patients, but mostly she pushed people’s buttons. “She may like to gossip some, but in the last two months she’s been beside me through some of the hardest times I’ve seen.” Did ya fuck Holly yet, you sissy? my dad sneered in my memory. Okay, maybe not the hardest time I’d ever seen, not that Craig needed to know. “She was the one to whom I could admit I was scared when I scrubbed in for my first surgery. She told only me that she threw up after she scrubbed in for the first time. She’s human, not perfect, not even that nice sometimes. But she’s my friend. I don’t have a lot of those, so I’m not inclined to throw one away.”

  Craig finished his drink and stood, tossing more money on the table for our part of the bill. “Let’s talk about this at home. Not here.”

  “What is your problem?” I yanked on his elbow to keep him from walking out. I did, however, keep my voice low to appease him. There was no need to cause a scene. He jerked out of my grip and turned on his heel, and I had no choice but to follow him. When we got on the crowded train back to Queens, I leaned in and asked again.

  His eyes flashed. “She has a thing for you, Dane. You told her you’re gay, introduced her to your boyfriend, and suddenly her eyes lit up. You’re not her friend; you’re her plaything. Am I mistaken that she grabbed your ass while I took that photo?”

  Heat rose to my cheeks. “That was to wind me up, make me uncomfortable, and to see if she could get away with it in front of you. She was testing where the line was drawn. Draw it sternly if you don’t want her pulling that shit.”

  He crossed his arms and leaned in to speak into my ear. “I shouldn’t have to draw it. You should. You. Are. Gay.”

  “Exactly,” I growled back. “She could strip naked and do the splits in front of me and I wouldn’t give three shits. Are you worried I want something more than friendship from her?”

  Clearly calculating his words, Craig blew a frustrated breath. “Am I worried you’ll cheat on me with her? No. Not really. Am I worried you’ll give her enough rope to hang you with? Absolutely. She is a collector. You’re a trophy. She wouldn’t give a damn about you if you were straight. How does it feel to be someone’s fetish?”

  I poked his chest. “Now that’s not true. I told her you were a guy only a few hours ago, and she’s been my friend for the last two months and thought I had a serious girlfriend. My orientation changed nothing for her. Besides, I know for a fact you and your work-wife flirt like crazy because it’s safe and easy and kind of fun to get your ego stroked, and you know it’s never going anywhere. You don’t see me getting all pissed off and calling Karen names.” Karen Stiller was Craig’s partner animator at his company, and they worked on projects together more often than not, oftentimes spending evenings brainstorming for inspiration. She adored him, and me by extension. We’d been invited to dinners at the apartment she shared with her husband. I found her warm and caring and had no problem with their slightly raunchy jokes, which they told in front of both me and Mr. Stiller. It was just their thing.

  “That’s different. She’s respectful and stays out of my business. It’s superficial. There’s a line we never ever cross. Sabrina crossed it about fifty times in an hour and a half, not to mention blatantly nosing in with her questions about our sex life. Who tops and bottoms? For real?”

  We exited the train and I pulled him to the street, flagging a passing cab. I didn’t feel like walking. I was getting used to not counting every single penny now that I had a decent salary, and at times like this, I was grateful for that. Once in the car, we fell silent, not wanting the cabbie to overhear.

  When we reached the loft, he headed for the stairs to go up to our bedroom, but I grabbed his hand and pulled him to me, hooking my hands at his waist. “You’re right. I should be the one drawing the lines. I will tell her not to touch me anymore. I’ve gotten really good at evading her questions, so what does it matter if she asks them? I’m not giving her personal information. And you were the one who said I would feel better if someone at work knew about me. You can’t deny that. So what is the deal here? Seriously, I want to understand, not fight.”

  He shook his head, his shoulders drooping in resignation, but his hands landed on my biceps and he squeezed affectionately. “It’s just another way to objectify you. Us. Our relationship. There are outright bigots, who won’t accept we’re real people with real feelings, and who believe we don’t deserve the rights they have. We can lose jobs and apartments for being gay, and to them, that’s right. We can’t donate blood, and they don’t think we should. Then there’s the other extreme, those who are so interested in gay people, we become caricatures to be studied. We’re objects to them, too, and the only feelings we have are the physical ones in our dicks, because it makes them hot. Then there are those in the middle, the straight allies, who see us as people and think it’s a travesty we have to go to court to fight for our right to marry, or struggle against things like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. They’re the true friends, the ones without whom we wouldn’t win equality. But there are extremes. You already protect yourself against the bigots out of instinct. You need to learn how to protect yourself from the other kind.”

  “Where is this cynicism coming from?” I asked, stroking his cheekbone. This wasn’t the Craig who loved everyone.

  “Let’s just say I’ve been collected before. They tend to like the campy ones, because we make the best ‘gay friends’ they can trot out to prove they’re open-minded, and we’ve been stereotyped as the ‘girls’ of the relationship, so they feel kinship with us.”

  I bristled. “That’s awful.”

  “That’s Sabrina, or will be if you don’t keep her in line. I don’t want her to do to you what Biancunt did to me.”

  “Biancunt?”

  He cleared his throat. “Remember backpacking across Europe? Biancunt is the reason I had to come home six months early. We were inseparable from the minute we’d met in Grand Canaria and hopped from there to Barcelona. She found out I was gay when she realized I was in Maspalomas for Pride Week, and from that point on, she was my wingman, she said. When she found Andreas for me in France, it made sense to stay a little longer. The French countryside was beautiful, and there was so much possibility there. I was looking into apprenticeships in all of the major art centers. If I got one, I stayed for a few weeks or months to learn what I could before going on to the next destination. I’d planned to go to Paris last and stay as long as a year. In the first week, Bianca had found Andreas and practically giftwrapped him for me. We’d been having a good time, both of us hooking up in pretty much every city we stopped in. Lots of times, my hookup had a straight brother or roommate, and we’d end up in the same flat, then leave the next morning to compare notes. It became a challenge. Every time I pulled, she had to, and vice versa. There were other times when we’d pick for each other.”

  I’d known of Craig’s backpacking days, so none of this was news to me, except for the Bianca angle. He’d never spoken of her before. Realizing this story had to unfold in its own time, I led him upstairs and settled with him on top of the bed. He automatically moved to put his head on my shoulder and snuggled into my side. We both kicked off our shoes, the thuds of them hitting the floor punctuating the pause in his story.

  “Go on,” I urged.

  “Andreas was a free spirit, beautiful and fun, knowledgeable about art and connected in a way that could help me find an apprenticeship quicker than I ever had before. That he loved fucking was just a bonus. Bianca introduced us after running into him in a coffee shop while I was off exploring the museums. She swore up and down he was perfect for me. I thought she was right. In fact, after a month, I was turning over the idea of moving to France permanently, getting a job in a museum, and trying to get myself into the right circles. Andreas let me tumble headlong down the rabbit hole, talking about the apartment we could find with skyligh
ts, and a place on the south coast, maybe in Nice. I fell hard.

  “Bianca got restless. She wanted to move on. I told her she could go on without me. It’s not like we couldn’t keep in touch or meet up a weekend here or there somewhere in the middle of where she landed and where I was beginning to put down roots. I had just caught the eye of an artisan who’d worked in the Louvre for years as a restoration specialist. He had a lot to teach me about technique and style, even though he’d never painted an original work in his life. He knew everything there was to know about the Masters, and he taught me more tricks than I could possibly learn on my own in a year, or five or ten. Not just about the use of color and layering for dimensionality, but perspectives many people found controversial of the Masters and their lives as well. It was the business side of selling art. I was in my element, in what I thought was love, and had made good friends. Sure, I missed the States, but Mom and Dad had assured me they’d send me a ticket any time I wanted to come home to visit. It was ideal.

  “Until six months in, when I came back to Andreas’s flat after my workshop one afternoon to find he’d cleared the place out. There was a note on the counter in the kitchen. He and Bianca had decided to continue her European tour. They were going to get married, the note said, because unbeknownst to me, Andreas was fucking us both, since he was bi, not gay. He saw a future with her that didn’t include discrimination and snide looks if he held her hand while walking down the street. He chose the path of least resistance, even as he assured me he loved me with his heart and soul.”

  I grunted. “Coward.”

  “The thing that stung the most was she was pregnant, and they really needed money, so he’d taken my paintings and sold them. Everything I’d done while tutoring under Monsieur Naillon. Things I hadn’t perfected and still wanted to study, improve upon. When I said I came home to find the place cleared out, I mean it was gutted. There wasn’t a grocery bag left, and Bianca had taken my credit cards from the dresser. They’d sold everything and taken off. I was too late to stop her from taking a two-thousand-dollar advance on one of my cards, but I did get the rest canceled before more damage could be done. My parents had to wire me money to get me home, and I slept on a hardwood floor that night, in a puddle of my own tears, with only the clothes on my back and the equivalent of fifty bucks in my wallet.”

  “That’s horrible,” I said, running my fingers through his hair as we stared at the ceiling together. “But what does it have to do with Sabrina?”

  He lifted his face and rested his chin on the back of his hand, his palm over my heart. “She reminds me of Bianca. Not in looks, though they are both equally pretty. It’s her attitude. She thinks she’s entitled to be noticed, and she’s nosy, like information is her favorite currency. She’s pushy with you the way Bianca was pushy with Andreas. And she knows your trade. She knows the ins and outs of how to get ahead at the hospital.”

  I digested that for a while, saying nothing. When my reply wasn’t forthcoming, he resituated his cheek on my chest and fiddled idly with the buttons on my shirt, content to just be.

  As I mulled over his story and looked at my situation, I could only conclude he was paranoid. I, of all people, was distrustful of everyone except Holly and Craig. Even Braden and Neil, though they’d never given me reason, sometimes rubbed me the wrong way. I had always found a way to land on my feet, even after having been hospitalized with a concussion thanks to my own father.

  “I don’t understand how Bianca stealing your boyfriend and your stuff makes her a collector. If she was what you say, that she wanted to be around you because you’re gay, why would she take off like that?”

  Craig’s voice rumbled through my chest. “Because she’d found someone better than me. Someone willing to let her into his bed along with any guy they ran across. I’d never allowed her in to the point where she wanted to be. Never let her watch or participate in my hookups. So she lived vicariously through me for as long as was practical for her, and when she found a better deal, she carried on, taking what she felt she could and not giving a damn about the hurt she caused.”

  Knowing I was walking an edge with the information I wanted to give, that he didn’t have to worry because I’d faced worse than this gay collector thing, I spoke carefully. “Sabrina isn’t that invested, Craig. She doesn’t give a rat’s ass if she and I keep talking. She’s made it clear she’s there to learn surgeries, not make friends.”

  Craig sighed. “I hope you’re right, because if she’s even partly as calculating as Bianca, she has your career to ruin, Dane.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her.” I left unsaid that I thought he was going overboard. If it made him feel better to give me warnings, I wouldn’t begrudge him that. Not to mention, caution was never a bad thing.

  “That’s all I ask,” he muttered, pulling me tighter and throwing his leg over mine. Suddenly, work colleagues were the last thing on my mind.

  “So, I have a date with your boyfriend and some acrylic paint tomorrow,” Sabrina said with a cheeky grin when I walked up to the nurse’s desk to return a chart. I immediately bristled, trying to gauge if anyone was close enough to overhear. No one blinked if they had.

  “Would you please keep your voice down?” I hissed, yanking her by the elbow into a supply closet. “I told you about Craig so I could have one person at work to confide in for things at home, so if I have a work shift I need to trade for an anniversary, or if he gets sick, I don’t have to pretend to everyone in this building. You are the person I picked. Are you going to make me regret that?”

  Sabrina’s eyes were enormous, her hands patting the air to placate me. “Sheesh, okay! What the hell?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose to stave off a threatening headache. “Ugh. I’m sorry, just paranoid. No one can know about him, okay? I’m not comfortable waving a pride flag at work.”

  “Okay, I get it.” She straightened her lab coat. “Things okay between you? He didn’t give you a bunch of shit about me goosing you for that photo, did he?” For an instant, she looked regretful, but there was too much wicked gleam in her eye to believe she hadn’t meant it.

  “To be frank, yes, he did give me a bunch of shit, and if you’re meeting him tomorrow, I would make sure you’re on your best behavior. He didn’t take to having you pry into our sex life so much.”

  “Are you serious?” The smile fell from her face as she realized I meant every word. “Then why is he asking to paint me?”

  I shrugged. “He can separate work from personal life. To him, you’re work. He’ll be nice, make you feel good about how you look, paint you in a flattering way, and move on. He doesn’t have to like you for that.”

  She bit her lip and crossed her arms over her chest. “Wow, he’s a real peach. And you love this winner?”

  I held up my hands. “Don’t bite my head off. I’m just the one stuck in the middle of my friend and my boyfriend. You made him really uncomfortable the other night, so yeah, he’s got you at arm’s length and then some. You want to be his friend, you’ll have to prove his first impression is inaccurate.”

  “What makes you think I want to be his friend if he’s such an asshole?” Her eyes were flinty.

  “Okay, see? This isn’t the Sabrina who didn’t bat an eye at me coming out.” I pointed to her defensive stance and her tightly pursed lips. “This isn’t the girl who made my first day tolerable by admitting she was scared, too. She’s the one I wanted to tell about Craig, not the leering, bullying, ‘I’m just here to cut’ surgeon in front of me right now. I mean, c’mon, you asked him within five minutes if he’s ever been fisted. What the hell do you expect, Sabrina?” Okay, so maybe I was taking Craig’s advice more seriously than I’d let on with him.

  She laughed, tinkling and unapologetic. “That was a funny expression on his face.”

  “If you make people the butt of your jokes, you can’t wonder about it when they don’t like you.”

  “Or, you make them the butt of your jokes and they lau
gh, and you know you’ve got someone with a sense of humor, Silver.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Just please be quieter about him here, and when you sit for him to paint you, be nice. Like you would to your grandmother.”

  “My grandmother is a bitch,” she deadpanned. “I hate that woman.”

  “Okay, then act like it’s Chief Noble painting you.”

  She dropped her chin, and when she looked up at me a few seconds later, she was smiling. “Sure. For you, Dane. Because he makes you happy.” To my dismay, she pinched my cheek, then kissed the other one, leaving a red smear from her lipstick. “I’ll be Mary friggin’ Poppins, and maybe he’ll decide I’m not so bad.” As I followed her out of the supply closet, she primped her hair to tousle it. “Dane, that was fabulous.”

  I rolled my eyes, mouthing “unbelievable” at the ceiling. Some days I found her funny. Not this day.

  Her shift ended six hours later, and I was on for another thirty-six, so by the time I got home, she’d modeled for Craig and had texted me how much fun it had been. I was curious to see what it would look like when I arrived at home. Would there be a new masterpiece? Or carnage?

  When I got off the subway, I decided to stop in for Thai takeout, knowing if Craig had been painting all day, he’d have lost track of time, and there would be a mess to clean up. Better to take dinner to him than wait around to scavenge when he surfaced from wherever his muse lived.

  “Craig? I’m home!” I called, setting the food on the counter and looking automatically into the living room by where he normally painted. There was nothing to indicate he’d spent the day creating. Maybe he’d had better luck at the bedroom easel, though the idea of Sabrina close to our bedroom made nasty things happen in my gut. He was the one who said she was too nosy about our private life, so it didn’t seem right he’d let her into our sanctuary.