I didn’t call him the next week or the two weeks after. The first day I walked to class after what had happened, I felt as if I must look different. That something about my appearance must have changed and people might guess from just looking at me what was going on. It made me feel haunted, like people might start throwing stones and bottles at me any second.
I started doing some discreet research into the legal and social status of homosexual men in Maine. Which – on top of what I already knew from merely having listened to and observed the people around me all my life – didn’t make me feel better. If one was relatively independent in choosing where to live and work, one could probably move to a thinly populated area and hope to live in relative quiet. As a lawyer, Chris wouldn’t have that option. He would have to stay close to where the clients and the courts were, in the cities … pretty much under the public’s eye.
I had meant what I had said to Chris, I didn’t want to live two lives, having a wife and kids on one side and a secret relationship with him on the other. Though that seemed to be what most men in this sort of situation did, judging from an article I found in a magazine’s special edition on the civil rights movement of the African-American community, featuring also pieces on the demands of women and homosexuals for equality and anti-discrimination laws.
The law declared relations between men as “detestable” and “abominable”. An “act against nature”. There were reports of arrests. There were stories I had heard over the years and more I came across now of “men like that” getting harassed and beaten, of not getting a decent place to rent, of not getting a job...
It took me several days to overcome the nausea. Some days, I could barely get out of bed, staring endlessly at shadows moving on my wall, my heart aching. When one or two of my friends asked what was wrong, I mumbled something about headaches. Which wasn’t entirely a lie.
I wrote and rewrote two short stories for my creative writing class and even considered submitting them to our campus magazine. Sorrow makes for a willing muse, I guess.
I didn’t want to lose him. But I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone and call him.
At night I had dreams about him though. Mostly of him drowning again, a dream I had not had in a while and that now seemed to have returned with a vengeance. Sometimes – more often than I care to admit – I dreamed of the kiss. Of his hands on me and of losing myself in the sensations. From both dreams I woke bathed in sweat, yet with utterly different feelings coursing through my body.
After a month had come and gone, I found him standing on my doorstep. I stared at him for ten whole seconds before my brain processed his haggard look. He hadn’t shaved for a few days.
I wordlessly opened the door a little wider to let him in. Robert, the aspiring journalist I shared the two bedroom flat with, was gone for a couple of days, so I led the way to the kitchen and started clearing the small table of the books and notes I had abandoned there.
“Please, sit. You want anything? Coffee? Water?” It felt like I was playing host to a complete stranger but my heart was thumping hard against my ribcage.
Chris had remained in the doorway, watching me rummage. “Gordie, cut the crap.”
I stopped in my tracks. He walked over to me and took the books from my hands, putting them back on the kitchen table. Before I could protest, he maneuvered me into one of the chairs and took the seat opposite.
“Listen to me. You are my best friend. Words cannot begin to describe what your friendship means to me even if I was a writer like you and brilliant with words. And I won’t lose it. Not even if it breaks my fucking heart.” The last words were forceful and he punctuated them with a shake of his head. “Please forgive me for overstepping that line. I wish I could take it back.”
I stared at my hands on the table in front of me, my mind struggling to process what he had said. I had had dozens of conversations with him in my head over the last few weeks. Yet, reality has the unfortunate habit of turning out completely different from how it played out in your mind.
“I don’t want that.” My voice sounded steadier than I felt. I heard him take a breath like he was about to say something but I went on: “I don’t want your heart to break.” I couldn’t bring myself to say that, in particular, I did not want to be the one to break it. And that mine would break, too. “And I don’t want you to take it back. But … I don’t want to see you go under.”
I raised my eyes to his, seeing the confused look there. Words suddenly felt frustratingly inadequate to express what I wanted to say. I struggled on. “You have worked so hard to get out of Castle Rock. To make a life beyond anything people expected from you. You worked for getting the opportunities nobody would offer you voluntarily. You’re studying law, for God’s sake, Chris. Law! How many opportunities do you think you’ll get if anyone finds out you’re …” I trailed off. For years we had so easily used the word ‘fag’ as an insult. We had been raised to view it as an insult, and being one as something shameful. Just thinking of it turned my stomach.
“Don’t you think I know that?” Chris asked exasperated. “But actually, I was more concerned for you than myself. You’ve taken enough shit because of me and I don’t want to make your life difficult. Which is why I made that unfortunate comment you took so hard.”
“The one about me marrying and having kids?”
“That’s the one.” Chris shuffled his feet. “For a moment, I had that foolish hope that we could have both. A normal life in society, and … this,” he waved his hand between me and himself. “But I see now that that was naïve of me. And I don’t want to lose you over my mistake.”
I nodded slowly. Something inside me did not agree at all, but I was unable to voice it. All words seemed to die in my throat before they could make their way all the way up and out of my mouth.
“So are we good?” he asked.
The lump in my throat made my voice crack. “Yeah. We’re good.”
“Gimme some skin.” He held out his hand, giving me his trade-mark half-smile. Though it did not quite reach his eyes.
I gave him some skin. Feeling oddly bereft, as if I had just signed away something invaluable.
---
It took me some time to find my way back to acting more or less normal around him. But there was no more radio silence. I drove to Portland to see him or he came to Orono from time to time and we fell back into a seemingly relaxed companionship. Sometimes I caught myself watching him when he was studying and I was supposed to be reading. His brow slightly furrowed in concentration while he took notes, his fingers resting on one of the books strewn about him. And time and again, I had dreams about him. The ones that started with the kiss and developed into something else. But in those dreams, he now always turned to smoke and was carried off by the wind like he had never even been there. When I woke up from one of those, I felt utterly alone.
One Sunday morning, after I had left him to his studying the night before and went to sleep, I found him passed out on his ramshackle sofa, bathed in the dirty grey morning light. His hand was still clutching the last book he had worked on before his eyes had fallen shut. His fingers had marked the page when he had closed it and had remained there during his sleep.
It brought back a memory of him next to me in my bed in Castle Rock, one night after his old man had given him another hiding and he had needed a safe place to stay. His hand had been tangled in a bit of blanket, just inches away from me. As if he had needed an anchor, had unconsciously reached out and not quite gotten hold of me. Strangely fascinated, I had watched him in his sleep as I watched him now.
Back then it had made me feel at peace, seeing the tiny crease of worries between his eyebrows eased away. Now, looking at him left me with anything but peace.
The memory of the kiss was a constant presence in my mind, like a song being played on repeat on a radio you cannot switch off. Or like a scar on an exposed bit of skin that you cannot help but look at all the time. On its edges was the longing - the kind you might have for the home of your childhood you know to have long been demolished and replaced with an office building. The worst thing was: it seemed that I had been the one who tore it down. But in the center of the scar was the desire. That unbearable ache that had taken root in every fiber of my being ever since that day.
It suddenly felt like the air in the room was pressing into my skin and I had to turn away. I left the flat, telling myself I wanted to get the Sunday newspaper. It was early and a little too cold to be out without a jacket, but I didn’t want to turn back, even though I felt the hairs on my arms rise against the cold. Most shops were closed but I headed for one nearby I knew to be open Sundays.
When I was about to pay for the paper, my eyes fell on a stack of Pez. Cherry-flavor. I picked one up and threw it in without a second thought.
I popped one into my mouth and let the taste unfold while walking down the street, making a wide circle back to the flat. It was a welcome distraction, bringing back memories of easier times - of the clubhouse and playing cards, listening to the boss hits on WLAM.
I missed Vern and Teddy. The Vern and Teddy of that summer, before we had drifted apart. Vern was gone, resting on Castle Rock cemetery. Sometimes, I imagined him in heaven, lying on the grass in the sun, sucking on some cherry-flavored Pez with his jar of pennies beside him.
Teddy was still around, still living in Castle Rock and as far as I had heard still trying to get into the army to fight in Vietnam. But even though he was still around, he could as well have been in Vietnam. The boy of that summer of 1959 was gone and had been replaced by a man crippled by his disappointments like his ears had been disfigured by his old man's bout of madness. I was pretty sure I wasn’t a welcome sight to him, remembering the bitter twist of Teddy's mouth the last time we had spoken. ‘You got out of here, Lucky Chambers and Smart-Ass Lachance.’ His words still rung in my ears.
I had thrown myself so fully into saving Chris, I had let my other friends drown. And Teddy resented me for it. Probably Vern had, too, before he died. And if I was being honest with myself, I had avoided all those years to take a step back and look at my reasons for doing what I did for Chris. For choosing him. Yes, there had been the potential I could see in him and the sharp mind. There had been pity and admiration for his situation and how he handled it. But when I added up all of that, it still fell short. There was something missing in the equation and at least now, I understood full well what accounted for it. I was just too chicken to admit it. In front of my mind's eye, I could almost picture Chris folding his arms with a disgusted look on his face, hissing "Pussy!"
I couldn't very well disagree. But I wasn't just scared for me. I was afraid for him.
When I returned to the flat, Chris was awake and had made coffee, hovering over one of his law books at the kitchen table. He briefly looked up and smiled. The crease between his eyebrows was back.
No, it filled me with anything but peace to look at him. It hurt.