Rick Howard’s prom was his eighteenth birthday, and he remembered taking Marcia Ryan and kissing her politely, but feeling nothing when he dropped her off. For a very long time Rick had lived with the idea that a proper young man wasn’t supposed to feel lust for girls anyway, so this was a mark of his superiority. Only, he did feel lust. His mind did go in certain directions. He did have certain wonders. They’d started out idly enough, but lately they’d grown more and more. He tossed and turned and he really couldn’t name it. He knew there was a name for something like it, but he couldn’t have been it. Not quite. He was an athlete. He believed in God. He didn’t like musicals. He didn’t put on women’s clothing. He was just powerfully, passionate, inordinately curious, so curious his body bent into a question mark and his cock leapt in an exclamation point at the idea of being with a man.
Nobody really liked Jeffrey Kilborn. He was in all the theatrical productions at Saint Vitus. Everyone knew he was a fruit, and he was in Rick’s gym class. One day Jeffrey came out of the shower while Rick was already toweling off and the sight of Jeffrey aroused so much in Rick, and the so much caused so much guilt that the erection circumvented and became a severe headache, It throbbed. It was a body ache now. Jeffrey looked at him with something... wrong, that knew too much, and then he dropped the towel and let Rick look at him. Rick stood there and stammered and then let his towel go too.
There was an adjoining locker room, a nicer one for the swim team and Jeffrey opened the door to it and made a motion for Rick to follow. Half conscious, mouth open, erection hard, body hot, pain throbbing behind his right eye, Rick followed him and Jeffrey closed the door.
So Rick didn’t have a romantic experience. His first experience of his own sexuality was a desperate curiosity with someone he didn’t care for in a place where he hoped he wouldn’t get caught. Rick never considered that the same principle applied to him now would have been true even if he was straight. He identified his sexuality with his first sex and that was dirty and hidden, completely contradictory to his nature. He promised it would never happen again.
But in college it did. It happened a lot and Rick never knew when it would hit him. The curiosity and the lust and the loneliness would rise up so bad, and there was always someone he would never have talked to in a normal state who was willing to be with him. And then he just felt like hell. He just felt sick and angry with himself and the way he was.
But in the last few years Rick had steadily held out hope that maybe he could be happy this way, find someone, and he thought he had for a while. This first one he’d cared for so much nothing had ever happened before they broke up. He hadn’t needed it to.
And then Mark came, and he thought, he thought for that brief second that Mark was like him, and then he thought that maybe it
wouldn’t matter, but Rick knew it would.
The truth was, Rick, who was getting out of bed in the middle of the night and kneeling, like he did much of the time at the foot of his bed, didn’t really believe that happiness was possible. Certainly not for him.
He knelt for a very long time, not sure of what to say to God, and then he looked up at the crucifix over the bed, black against the grey white in the darkness, and said, “I don’t know why you made me like this...
“Sometimes I hate you.”
“See,” the brown haired man said, “the way I see it we are all just like fish in this cosmic ocean, and there is this net, this sacred net that dips in and pulls us all in, and so here we are, caught up in ths sacred net. And, I just want to touch the fibers of it. I just want to get in touch with it, and coming to this place is really touching the fiber,” Cody stopped talking. He was in his bare feet he walked to the sensei and touched him on his head.
“Big Mountain River, you are a cord in the great sacred net.”
Balliol said under his breath, “if Morning Revelation was optional, then why did we come?”
“Because we wanted to get the most out of this experience,” Savannah told him on the other side of the man called Adam.
“Savannah,” Big Mountain River said, “Would you like to speak?”
Mason turned to her smiling, and cleared his throat.
Her eyes flashed and she said:
“My name is Savannah.”
“Hi Savannah!” they all said.
“I would pay you money,” Balliol whispered to Mason, “if when they got to you you said, ‘And I’m an alcoholic.’”
Savannah was speaking.
“And I came here because...I came here because I have a really bad way with love. You know. I’m bad at it. I just go for the wrong people. I...” she looked around. They were all waiting for her to speak and Cody had talked about nets for about ten minutes before her.
“My problem,” Savannah said, “is that I keep waiting for the someone or the something that’s going to...”
“Save you?” Adam replied.
“No,” Savannah said. “Well, maybe. I’m waiting for the one who will shake my world up. I don’t want to be saved. I just want to be shaken. I want to be reminded that I’m alive, and I keep wanting someone to do it. Like my current boyfriend. He’s a failure, really. But he couldn’t be anything but a failure because he can’t do what I want him to do. Bring me to life.”
“Well only you can do that,” Adam said. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”
“What?” said Savannah.
“The rule is we let everyone talk and don’t offer answers.”
“Well can I say something?” Savannah said in her white robe. “That’s a stupid rule. Because let me tell you, I could use some answers. I would really, really appreciate some answers.”
She turned to Adam again
“What?”
“Answers!” she demanded.
“But I just told you, only you can bring yourself to life.”
“How?”
Adam looked around the room, but now, even Big Mountain River was waiting for him to say something.
“In things like this, by looking for the answers. Look,” said Adam, “maybe it’s not the best thing in the world to keep dating people hoping they’ll give you answers, but at least you’re looking for the answers. At least you want something. Some people don’t want anything. They just sort of drift along from thing to thing. You care. We all care. That’s why we’re here, right?”
Mason opened his mouth and Balliol said, “I know, this thing might turn out to be not so stupid after all.”
“But the tofu does suck,” Mason said over breakfast.
“The tofu is shit,” Adam said. “Do you all mind if I sit here?”
“No,” Savannah pulled out a chair.
“We’re not supposed to be talking, I don’t think,” Adam told them.
Savannah shrugged.
“My sentiments exactly,” he whispered.
Some woman rolled her eyes at them, very incensed.
“I don’t think she’ll be finding enlightenment today,” Balliol said.
“Probably not,” agreed Adam. “Where are you guys from?”
“Cartimandua, Ohio.”
“The last stand of the Industrial Revolution? Skyline full of smoke stacks.”
“You know Cartimandua?”
“I am Cartimandua,” Adam said. “Well, actually, I’m just a librarian in Cartimandua.”
“So that’s what you guys do,” Savannah said. “I always wondered. I always thought it would be exotic to be a librarian.”
Adam raised an eyebrow, “Did you really?”
“Well, yeah,” Savannah told him. “You’re surrounded by all those books and music. You know where everything is. A world is at your fingertips.”
“The computer helps.”
“You’re demystifying it for me.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right,” he told her. “It’s all magic.”
“I thought as much.”
There was a knock on Mason’s door at the retreat center and, since knocking was not allowed, Mason assumed it must have been Savannah, or maybe Balliol. But it was:
“Addison! Seth?”
“It was imperative,” Seth said, “that Addison see you.”
For the most part Seth looked serious and Addison looked miserable.
“Can I sit?”
Mason gestured to his unmade bed.
“Is your mother dead?” he said. Then: “Is my mother dead?”
But Addison didn’t look in a joking mood. He just looked really sad and shaken. He said:
“This is going to sound really stupid, but I really needed to see you, and now I realize that you’ll be coming home tonight anyway.”
“Well, what it is, Addison?” Mason handed him and then Seth a cigarette.
“Can we smoke?” Seth said.
“If you close the door and open the window,” Mason gestured to the door and Seth shut it.
“Last night Rebecca just said it was over,” Addison said. “She told me it was all a mistake and that... she didn’t even like being with me.”
“Maybe she was...” Mason began.
“No,” Addison said. “She said it was over. That she didn’t love me at all and she hadn’t for a long time. I thought it was so good. I really thought... Every time we did it I felt something, but she said it was nothing. Mason, she said she actually hated having sex with me. Who would say that? I can’t—” Addison stopped.
“I feel so fucking bad,” he said.
Mason didn’t know what to say. Anything he said would be stupid.
There was another knock at the door, and Mason got up to answer it.
Balliol said, “Addison! Seth, what the hell—?” and Mason steered him out of the room to explain the situation.
For the brief second they were gone Seth said, “Addison. You know Bonnie Metzger?”
“Yeah?”
“I think you should fuck her.”
Addison looked at him as close to shocked as Addison Cromptley could look.
“I mean, it’ll take your mind off of Becky. She’s the only... you’ve ever had. Bonnie likes you and she’ll do whatever. She talks about you.”
“Aren’t you fucking her?”
“Sometimes.” Seth shrugged. “When I feel like it. It’s no big deal. She’ll do whatever you want her to. You know what she did to me two weeks ago—”
The door opened again and Balliol headed for Addison. He threw an arm over him and said, “Oh, fuck fuck fuck you poor fucker!”
And then sighed.
“Balliol,” Seth told him. “For you that’s really, really sensitive.”
Balliol sighed again and said, “Few people ever notice my softer side.”
As Balliol was packing there was a knock at the door and he said, “Come in.”
Mason walked in, sat on the bed and said nothing.
“Yes, Mason?”
“Balliol, we’re friends, right?”
“You ask me while I stand her in a white robe in some crazy house waiting for Enlightenment because you asked me to come.”
Mason cracked a smile and said, “Well then you’ll tell me what’s up?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been sort of down this morning.”
“You’ve got me confused with Addison. He’s the one who lost his girlfriend and looks like he’s about to burst into tears. Can you imagine? She told him he sucked in bed.” Balliol shook his head, reflecting on this. “You don’t say that. Heartless bitch!”
“We’re getting off the subject,” Mason said.
Balliol looked at him in amazement.
“Beneath your frivolous exterior, you’ve got a will like a fucking bulldog, don’t you?”
“Yes. Now what’s up?”
“Are you going to make me be all emotional and talk about my feelings? You know I’m British. British and Black.”
Mason cocked his head.
“All right, already!” Balliol slammed the bag shut. “All right, goddamnit. I’ll talk. But don’t expect me to start crying.”
“I would never expect that.”
“Don’t be surprised, Mason Darrow. I’ve shed a tear now and again. By myself. Even the Queen cries.”
“Queen of England?”
“That’s what I meant.”
“Oh, I thought you were making some sort of homosexual reference.”
“Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re joking or serious.”
Mason shrugged. “Sometimes I can’t tell either. Now out with it.”
Balliol sighed. “It’s just... It’s just I thought of how Addison came to you, because you’re his best friend and you all have been best friends for years and...We’re friends, yes, the best of friends. But I still think about Sullivan. I miss him. I got to feeling really bad about him not being around. I used to be there for him and.… He was there for me too. When no one was. I don’t even know if he’s okay or not. I just miss him a lot sometimes.”
“I’ve told you to call him.”
“And I’ve told you that shit’s not happening. That bird has flown. Just like the Beatles song.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking abut.”
“Oh, isn’t it good,” Balliol sang. “Norwegian wood.”
I still don’t know what you’re talking about. And that’s not a critique on your musical ability.”
Balliol blew out his breath, exasperated. “Nevermind.”
“You know what I think?” Mason said after a while. “I think that you all just needed space and stuff and... I think that you all will be friends again. I think he misses you just as much as you miss him.”
“I doubt it,” Balliol shook his head and opened the bag back up, remembered to keep on packing. “He’s got Chris Powers. What does he need me for?”
Chris arrived home in time to shower and dress for church. He was odd, Mark thought, and he considered asking his son later on what was wrong with him. With Chris you had to find the right time to ask, or else he would just say, “Nothing, Dad,” and smile.
The way I do Mark realized.
Chris wore nice khakis and an oxford blue shirt, a plaid tie. He looked nice, but... something. Something was going on with him. Mark worried about Chris more and more. The better the boy’s life appeared, the more things seemed together and in their proper place the more Mark worried. And then, in the last few months, Chris had started to hang out with Sully, and this morning Sullivan didn’t come back to the house with them, and Chris looked troubled so maybe they’d fought. He wanted to ask. He couldn’t ask.
“You look distracted,” Mark said to his son.
“Oh, huh,” Chris turned to him. “What’s that, Dad?”
“Nothing,” Mark said.
Chris smiled politely and they kept driving.
Saint Patrick’s was crowded for High Mass, but everyone was more or less in their usual seats so it wasn’t hard to find Joel. Seth, of course, was not there. Mark was pretty sure Seth didn’t even believe in God. When Mass began Mark tried to pay attention, tried to be reverent, tried to lose himself in the service. He’d always been serious about church even if, in his own mind, he wasn’t the greatest Catholic. And he needed to be serious right now. He needed to pray.
But even when he prayed he observed. He observed the various looks on the people’s faces. He watched for who was missing, who was here, why Mrs. Swank’s daughter was here when she ought to have been at college. Was she here for Thanksgiving? It was next week and everything.
And when it was Communion, Mark realized that Joel didn’t get up. Maybe Joel had just forgotten to go to Confession yesterday. He was a real stickler about things like that. He didn’t ask because Joel wouldn’t want to answer.