by Matt Dean
I was, it appeared, being sued for seven hundred and fifty dollars. The plaintiffs were Rose Lynn Hill and Gregory Thomas Hill, Senior. Tom's parents.
What? What the fuck?
In blue ink, in a quivery childish hand, one of them had filled out the statement of claim.
Jonah Murray, the defendant, entered into an immoral sexual relationship with our son, who since passed away. They lived together in a house they rented together. The defendant seduced our son away from his good moral upbringing and the immorality of this drove Tom to suicide by drink. He drank himself to death, literally. The least the defendant could do is give us back the deposit on the house so we can clear up the estate. We had called the defendant to demand this but he does not have an answering machine and he avoids our calls. We do not see we have any other choice but this.
What? What the fuck? True, I didn't own an answering machine, but if the phone rang, I answered it. I'd never avoided anyone's calls. Never.
An immoral sexual relationship? Drank himself to death?
What the fuck?
For a long time I sat in the easy chair. In one hand I held the summons. In the other hand I held the sheet of Bible verses. Where the nail had been, an aureole of rust had bled into the paper.
Tom had been in pain. His drinking, his thrashing about with the club folk, had made that clear. But I'd taken him at his word. I'd believed that he'd only regretted settling down too soon. All along I'd thought that if one of us had mustered the nerve to make a break, then he, at least, could have been happy.
Now I wasn't so sure. Perhaps his parents were right. Perhaps his very life had been the cause of his pain. It had never occurred to me before.
Hell, it had never occurred to me that, as Charlie had baldly put it, my own lifestyle-or my own life-had been causing me pain. Certainly it wasn't far off the mark to say that my life of late had afforded me little pleasure. An hour of pleasure here, a night there. The rest was, indeed, painful.
I remembered how my crazy night with Spike and Jose had passed in a blur of adrenaline and euphoria, how I had been wolfish and insatiable, how I had craved and had literally begged for more, and more, and more-and then how, in the morning, I had regretted it all. Now, weeks later, recalling that crazy night filled me with shame and remorse.
I doubted that I'd driven Tom to drink, much less to drink himself to death. But perhaps it was true that his dissatisfaction had had less to do with me than with some deep-seated shame. Perhaps he hadn't even realized the true problem. His parents were Christians-he'd complained bitterly and often of their piety-and he'd been raised in a church. Maybe he'd drunk himself to death because, as they claimed, he'd chosen wrongly-not the wrong partner, as I'd thought, but the wrong life.
Both of us. Perhaps we'd both chosen the wrong life.
* * *
The windows were dark. For hours I'd been sitting in the easy chair. At some point the pages had fallen from my hands to the floor. I picked them up, but in the room's twilight I could no longer read them.
I needed to piss. In the bathroom I switched on the light. As I passed the mirror I caught sight of my reflection. I stood at the sink and stared at myself.
God, I looked like shit. My beard was patchy, ragged, wiry. Whorls of orange whiskers filled the hollows of my cheeks. Beneath my lower lip there was a patch of pinkish-blond curls. A dark narrow streak marked one end of my mustache. My hair was wild, all split ends and frizz. With warm water from the sink I tried-and failed-to smooth it down. I switched off the light. I looked better as a silhouette, as the shadow of myself.
* * *
15 - The Hard-Won Decision
In the white pages, I found Eliot's office number. I dialed. An electronic chime, then his voice: "This is Eliot Moon, family counseling. Leave your name and number and I'll get back to you. Or, if this is an emergency, please page me."
He gave the pager number, and I wrote it down, but I couldn't bring myself to dial it. This was scarcely an emergency. Again I dialed his office and left a message.
"Eliot," I said, "this is-. Hello, this is Jonah Murray. I don't know if you remember me. I saw you twice, a few weeks ago. And-. And there was a-a thing with-with your group. Anyway, you know all that. You were there, and-." I took a breath. "Never mind, never mind. I called because I need your help. I'm ready. Now is the day."
Twenty minutes later, he called back. "I was very excited to hear your message," he said. "Are you free now?"
"Now? Right-right now?"
"If not now, when? You said yourself, now is the day."
"I didn't mean-. That wasn't-. I had just been reading this-this thing-." I took a breath, held it, exhaled. "That's very kind of you, but I already chewed up one of your Mondays," I said. Something occurred to me. My face flushed. "I didn't even-. I never even paid you for those earlier-."
For a long moment, he was silent. "That's true," he said slowly. More quickly he said, "We can talk about that when you get here. Come on over."
"I can wait until you have an opening."
He paused. I heard paper rustling. "That's not until late next week. You're not getting cold feet, are you?"
"Not at all," I said.
"Come over, then."
"Now?" I said again. I was beginning to feel mentally inert. "It's Saturday, isn't it?" Perhaps I'd lost track of the days. No, no, it had to be Saturday. "I can't take up your Saturday, what's left of it. You must have better things-."
"I'm at home. You remember the way?"
"Sure," I said, and then, "That is to say-. No, I don't."
Speaking slowly and with great care, he gave me directions.
* * *
It was all as I remembered-the concrete stair, the stringy frozen grasses, the bare trees, the off-center porch. I climbed the stairs, followed the path to the front door. Snow began to fall. Great white gusts blew across the lawn. Crusts of grimy old slush lay in the corners of the flower beds.
I lifted the iron knocker and let it fall. Wind thrashed the trees and shrubs along the front of the house. I shivered. The muscles of my chest twitched and knotted. As I stood staring at the indistinct black lettering of the welcome mat, I wondered if I'd been hasty-calling Eliot, coming here-if I'd rushed into a course of action that I would come to regret. Certainly my last visit here had ended badly. On the other hand, perhaps my earlier escape had been the reckless course of action, and now I had at last come to my senses.
Eliot answered the door. He wore a pink Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows. His collar was open. Patchy stubble darkened his cheeks and neck. He grinned and hugged me.
"Welcome back," he said. "I'm so happy for you."
I wrapped my arms around him, touched the lean, supple musculature of his back. His body was warm and hard against mine. Patting my shoulder, he stepped away.
"Are you ready to start? Come in."
He took my jacket and hung it on a hook in the entryway. I stepped out of my boots and set them beside a pair of thick-soled Nubuck work boots. A pool of snowmelt had dried to beige dust on the parquet floor.
In the living room, a fire burned in the grate. Eliot motioned me onto the sofa. I sat. He lowered himself into the nearest armchair. He slid it an inch or two closer.
"Before we do anything else, I think I owe you an apology for the misunderstanding at group."
"Charlie explained all that. He said you were thinking one thing, and he was assuming another."
"I'm afraid there was a lot of assuming all around."
"I was laboring under an assumption of my own," I said. "I thought that you and Charlie were-well, together." I looked around at the evidence I had so wrongly interpreted-the mismatched furniture, the practical but unlovely armchairs, the ornate side tables, the folksy Redlin print in its stark walnut frame.
Sinking back into his chair, Eliot crossed his legs. Gravely, he nodded. "I'm sorry to hear that. I've been working at this for a long time. I'd hoped that I wasn't sti
ll .?? giving off the vibe, so to speak."
"So you're-. You're going through this as well?"
"Of course. If I hadn't been through this myself I wouldn't feel comfortable leading others through it." Looking at the fire, he rubbed his nose. "I lived in New York for four years. I did my undergraduate work there. I hit the bars far more often than I hit the books. The bars, and worse-subway men's rooms, adult bookstores, the Ramble in Central Park. I always felt guilty afterwards. Six or eight men in a night. More, maybe-nights where I lost count. While it was happening, it all seemed so exciting. It was like I was drunk. It would all just happen in a blur. Afterward I always felt so small, so worthless."
I leaned forward. "I know just what you mean." I tucked my hands under my thighs. Another pair of gloves had gone missing-who knew where or when-and my fingers were sore with cold.
"Every night as I walked back or took the subway back to my apartment, I'd pray. I'd fall back on my convenient God, and promise that I'd be good, that I'd never sink so low again. And then the next night, I'd go lower."
Whatever specific things he'd done-I wasn't sure I wanted to know, and he didn't seem inclined to say-I was sure I knew how he'd felt. "It's like you watch yourself from a distance, watch yourself being-being used, being shoved down. And it feels wrong, but you can't get enough."
He nodded. "Exactly. Exactly. Finally, I decided I had to live up to all my promises. I couldn't string God along forever."
"All that guilt-. You were brought up to believe that being gay was-was-is wrong?"
"Absolutely. My parents were very devout. There was that, but also I felt that it couldn't be right. It just couldn't. The way I craved it so much, the way I couldn't stop myself-. You can just feel when you're doing something that's not right, something that's bad for you, you know?"
"And so-. And so you just decided to swear off-?"
"In a way. I knew what the Bible said about it. I remember hearing a sermon in church, when I was a kid. A guest preacher. This young guy, one of our own, a seminary student back for a visit. He said that homosexuals would be the first into the lake of fire. So I knew it was wrong, Biblically speaking, what I was doing, what I was. But at that age, I thought I knew everything. I thought that, whatever the Bible said, the problem wasn't that I was with men, but just that I was with so many men. I stopped for a while-somehow I made myself stop-and I tried to find a boyfriend I could spend my life with. I thought if I could find a Christian man to spend my life with, then it would be all right." All at once his eyes reddened. "That didn't work out." By sheer force of will, it seemed, he made himself smile. "But we're not here to talk about me."
My forehead felt hot. Maybe I was coming down with the flu. Maybe it was the heat of the fire. I scooted forward, so that I sat on the edge of the sofa.
"I'm utterly clear on the point that the Bible takes a dim view of gay sex," I said. I thought of the Bible verses nailed to my front door. Abomination, one of them had said. Abomination-not an equivocal word, by any means. "But there's sex and then there's the-. There's the act of having sex with men, but that's not the same thing as the state of being gay. And maybe it's like you said, maybe it's the anonymous stuff-the casual stuff-that's bad. Maybe if I could be with one guy. Like a marriage. Like with Tom. I was happy with Tom."
"For a while."
I stared into the fire. "For a while. It was shitty at the end. But maybe-."
"In my experience they all end badly, gay relationships. It's not like a marriage. It's a more animal thing. Lust is the thing that holds you together, not love. When the newness wears off-."
"But maybe I just picked the wrong guy. Maybe with someone else-."
"You know that's not true."
I leaned back against the cushions of the couch. I closed my eyes. "Yes. I know. With Tom or anyone-." I choked down a knot in my throat. "I feel like I've picked the wrong life." I looked at him. "And since Tom died, it's like you said before, I've been trying to fill a spiritual gap with physical things."
"A lot of people do. I did."
"But at the same time, you know, the bare legal pronouncement-. The Biblical thing-. 'Abomination.' I'm not an 'abomination.'" Leaping to my feet, I barely avoided knocking my shin against the corner of the coffee table. I went and stood in front of the Redlin print. I stared at it, at its twilit, shadowed snow drifts, blue-white as china, gold where the light of a campfire touched them.
"Most men who go through this resist what they feel-what they know-to be true, simply because it's difficult to give up the physical pleasure and the thrill of the chase and all of the rest of it. That was a big block for me. The adrenaline rush of conquest." He coughed. His voice grew huskier. "That's exactly why it's so important to go through with this."
I turned, looked at him. "It's important to go through with this because I don't want to?"
"We often spend the most energy avoiding the things we most need, or desperately clinging to the worst of our bad habits, even knowing how bad they are."
"True," I said. "True."
Covering his mouth, he coughed again. "Sorry," he said. "I'm fighting a cold, and I think it's winning. I'd better get some water. Do you want anything? I could make some coffee or tea. Or some soda? I think I have some soda."
I shook my head. He disappeared into the kitchen and returned sipping from a tumbler of ice water. Again he sat in the armchair. He patted the couch. Obediently, I sat.
He said, "Think of it this way. You want to be happy, right? That's what all this is about?"
I shrugged. "Everyone wants to be happy."
"There are three ways of looking at happiness. There's the present, the past, the future. Present happiness is the immediate sensation of joy and euphoria. Past happiness is the satisfaction of a life well-spent. Future happiness is optimism for the course your life is taking."
"Okay."
"Most people focus on the present. The instant gratification. What feels good now."
"Okay."
"The thing is, the present moment is all about external circumstances, about what's going on around you. In the present moment, it's not really happiness, it more like-. It's all about pleasure or avoiding pain."
"Okay."
"Every moment of your life, a set of circumstances is set in front of you. You can react to those circumstances in various ways. Usually there's a way of reacting that will feel better in the moment, but will seem unwise in retrospect."
"Okay."
"Example. You just woke up. You could make a bowl of oatmeal and wait a few minutes for the water to boil, or you could eat the cold pizza that's in the refrigerator and wash it down with some beer. Cold pizza and beer would take less time and probably tastes better, but the oatmeal is by far better for you." He looked at me. "I've completely lost you. It would help if you said something besides 'okay.'"
"All right," I said. He gave me a stern look. I said, "I think I get it. Sacrifice immediate gratification for a sense of purity later."
"If you spend every moment trying to maximize your pleasure or minimize your pain, you're no better than an animal. That's what dogs do, what deer do, what ants and mice and lemurs do. Happiness-real happiness-is knowing that over time you've had a habit of doing the right thing-knowing that whatever life hands you, whatever you're facing right now, you'll act in good conscience-knowing that what you do right now, however difficult it seems, will make you proud of yourself later on, when you look back on it."
"I'm not so sure, at this point, that I can just accept the whole package, the changing or curing or whatever," I said. "I don't see myself-. For now, I think-I think I can accept that, for a while-maybe forever-maybe being celibate is the right decision. But I don't think I'm going to wake up one day and want a wife and kids."
He looked at the fire. He coughed. He sipped his water. Slowly, as if with reluctance, he turned his head, looking from the fire to me. "I think that's perfectly fine," he said softly. "One step at a time."
"When
we met-. That day we met-. God, that awful day-." I felt myself flush. I rubbed my hairy cheek. "That day, you helped me a lot. I felt I could trust you."
"You can trust me."
"I-. I think I can." His hand on my shoulder, the way he'd hugged me, the way he'd seemed to understand-. "But what I wanted to say was-. I-. I felt betrayed after what happened at group."
His face fell. "I'm so sorry-."
"That wasn't right-. I didn't mean-. I was telling someone about it, and he made me feel-. I'm saying this all wrong. All I mean to say is, I understand about what happened. It was just a misunderstanding. I feel I can trust you, and what you're saying makes sense, but for right now-. I want to do this. I need to do this. But-. But I need to go at my own pace."
He nodded, visibly relieved. "I understand," he said. "One step at a time."
"I can accept that I've been-. I've been a little crazy lately. I've let some things happen that I shouldn't. I've thrown myself into some things that I shouldn't have. But I just can't get my head around the idea that what I am is wrong. That part-. That part, I just can't-."
"There are things we can understand, things we can't. We are small. God is big." His voice had grown rough. He gulped water. "Sometimes when something doesn't make any sense, you have to put your faith in God, in the fact that it does make sense, but in a way you can't understand." He hugged himself. "Does it seem cold in here to you?"
Rising, he went to the fire. Taking a brass poker from a rack on the hearth, he prodded the burning logs. "Sometimes," he said, "sometimes you do have to make a choice to believe things that seem counter to reason. Noah's ark, for example. If you think about it too hard, it makes no sense. Two of every species on earth, on one boat? Ridiculous. But you can just choose to believe it, even if it seems ridiculous."
"Es muss sein," I said.
"S-moose what?"
"This thing Beethoven wrote," I told him, "a string quartet. On his manuscript he wrote-in German, of course-'Must it be?' And then, 'It must be.' I always thought it had something to do with his fear and acceptance of death, but it turns out it's about some financial squabble. Maybe I get to decide, after all, despite all the evidence, it had to do with his fear and acceptance of death."
For a long moment he stared at me. "Maybe I'm not making any sense." He laughed. "I took some NyQuil before you got here. I think it's kicking in."
