chapter eleven: SEX part one
“HOW LONG DO YOU THINK until it happens?” Mark said.
Rick’s forehead was pressed against Mark and he murmured under the comforter, “Until what happens?”
“Until they know. Until people know. Until...”
Mark Powers pushed himself up from the warmth of the bed with its thick comforter, with Rick Howard’s heat. He sat up in Rick’s room and looked down at the other man.
“All of my life I’ve never had any secrets, any real secrets from my friends, but I haven’t told them about us yet.”
Rick sat up on his side, his elbow in the pillow, his face propped in his hand.
“Do you want me to not tell?” Mark said. “To keep it a secret?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Rick said tracing Mark’s pillow with a finger.
“How couldn’t you have thought about it? You never thought about it?”
“I don’t have friends, remember?” Rick said. “I’ve spent my entire life not telling anyone anything. It never occurred to me to think about it. But... I assumed you had… No, that’s not true,” Rick shook his head. He looked like he was just waking up. “I didn’t think you’d told Joel or Sidney but... Do you want to?”
Mark looked thoughtful a moment. He lowered himself into the bed to lay on his side across from Rick. He put a finger on the hair of Rick’s chest.
“Eventually,” he said, pressing his forehead into Rick’s sternum. “Eventually, yes I do want to share everything. But not right now. You see,” he was still talking to Rick’s chest, his voice reverberating against the other man’s breast so that Rick could only see the dark, buzzed head of the psychiatrist. “I need to have something to myself, and you’re my treasure. I don’t want to share you with anyone.”
Rick touched Mark’s head. He ran his hands over his scalp and then he reached into the covers to tilt Mark’s face up and kiss him.
“I think I always knew,” Mark said. “I’m a psychiatrist. How could I not know. I think even back then I felt something for you. I remember you’d run the track at Saint Vitus. Your shirt was off, the sun would shine on you, and you had that thick hair.”
‘I still have thick hair,” Rick said grudgingly. “It’s a little greyer, but...”
“Shush,” Mark said, his eyes on the pillow. “Maybe I was in love with you back then. Only I didn’t think... I mean, I thought... I guess I didn’t even think it was a possibility.”
“I think if you had of come to me back then you would have saved me.” Rick said. “I don’t guess any of it’s possible. I mean everything was different, everything happened the way it’s supposed to. I believe that. But... I remember you.”
“You remember me?”
“Of course I do. You used to violate the uniform code. You needed a haircut. You said I had thick hair? We all had that seventies hair and you wore all those thread bracelets and sat on the porch. I used to think you were cute. You looked about twelve and innocent and everything. I mean, I didn’t spend lots of time looking at you, but a couple of times... I thought about you. wondered what it would be like to talk to you for a few minutes—”
“I was an underclassman.”
“Well, we’re both old now.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Rick laughed and said, “I’m not the one who had a back spasm last night.”
Mark jabbed him in the chest. “I’m not the one who woke up screaming with a Charley Horse.”
“You still have the most beautiful eyes,” Rick told him.
Mark was caught off guard.
“What?”
“People always say... Sidney said... that I have weird eyes. They’re too big and they just stare.
“No,” Rick shook his head. “Sidney’s right on a lot of accounts, but he’s wrong there. You have beautiful eyes.”
Matt crossed himself, turned to Chris, rubbed his hands together satisfactorily and rising, said, “That brings an end to my penance.”
Chris crossed himself too before standing up and walking out of the grotto. They went down the steps into the nave of the church and began walking out along the side aisle, passing the stations of the cross.
“So how do you feel?” Chris asked. “I mean—do you feel like things have changed?”
Matt pondered this.
“Well, Andy’s still dead, right? And so is Dave. And there’s a lot of stuff that happened and we can’t make it unhappen.”
Chris was about to say something, but then he felt like Matt was waiting to say something else. They went down the steps of the church onto York Street, which was busy in the late afternoon.
“I think we can’t, I can’t,” Matt said, “ever stop paying for what happened. but I think it’s bigger than me. I mean, I started out really concerned about myself, about how bad I had been. Me, me, me. It sounded holy and good, and maybe some of it was. But I sort of woke up after the last few days, and I feel like... I got the penance to be nice to someone everyday. But I could have been doing that. And if being mean to people tips them over the edge, maybe being nice to them, you know, just doing one nice thing,” Matt said as he slipped into the passenger’s seat of Hardesty’s car. “Can make the difference.
“Or remember last year when we went to Appalachia, to help those people out for the mission trip?”
“And you stole my trunks while I was in the watering hole.”
“You’re losing the point,” Matt brushed that aside. “Well, remember how good they felt, and how good we all felt?”
Because Chris apparently thought this was a rhetorical question, Matt asked it again.
“Yeah,” Chris said.
“You didn’t feel good?”
“Yes,” Chris said. “I said I did. I just didn’t think you expected me to answer.”
“Well, I think I felt better than you,” Matt said. “I might have felt better than anyone, because those people, and especially those kids were so grateful. No one had ever thought of me... like I was a good person.”
“You are a good person,” Matt said.
“Not all the time.”
“No one’s good all the time.”
“No,” Matt allowed. “But some people try to be. I could try to be. I could try to actually be a good person. And besides, I’ve never really felt like one. That was the first time I really felt... like I was good, like there was something good in me. That’s not the same thing as just doing good things. I really felt like I was good.”
“Are you telling me,” Chris said, as they turned onto Bancroft, “that you... don’t think you’re good?”
“Do you?” Matt said. “Think you’re good?”
“I never thought about it, really,” Chris said.
“But what if I am? Matt said. “what if I’m good and I can do good things and... be different? What if that’s the penance and maybe it can’t bring back people who are gone, or make things unhappen that already happened, but what if it can makes things better and stop other bad things from happening? What if we could do that?”
Chris was quiet until they approached the Saint Vitus parking lot and turned in.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you fired up,” he said at last. “You always sound like you don’t believe in anything.”
“Sarcastic?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I was. Maybe I didn’t want to believe in anything,” Matt said. “I don’t know.”
They sat in the car after Matt had turned the ignition off. “But I want to make a turn around. I want to start praying and being good and going to church. I want to do that.”
And then suddenly Chris discovered: “I do too.”
He said it with such force that Matt Mercurio looked at him warily and said, “You don’t have to make fun of me like that.”
“I’m not,” Chris said. “I... you know I used to try to be good.”
“Used to. You’re the one who listened to Dean Howard the first day of school when he told us to sit with someone. I’m the one that thought that was a joke. You did campus ministry every year. You were the one who talked me into that Appalachia trip. Chris, you’re the good guy. If you weren’t around I’d probably forget all about being good.”
“But I forgot all about being good,” Chris told him. “It hasn’t been important to me for a long while. I’ve just been doing my thing. Doing what I feel like. I need to get right with God. God, I sound like Tommy Dwyer.”
“Who?”
“The guy that hangs with Mason Darrow. Long hair.”
“Looks like he uses drugs?”
“No, that’s Addison.”
“Oh,” Matt said, sounding relieved. “I couldn’t imagine him being into Jesus. Oh, I know who you’re talking about. Yeah, him. Well, maybe he’s got a point. Except he’s like an Evangelical and I don’t want that. And... I think he’s a virgin.
“Chris, you know I lost mine over a year ago.”
“Not really,” Chris said. “We never talk about that.” He didn’t really want to talk about it now.
“It’s just,” Matt went on, not taking the hint, as he sank low in his seat. “It feels so good. They say it’s a sin, and they say stuff like its so good it’s got to be a sin, but the day Dave killed Andy—that was a sin. It didn’t feel good. The times I was mean to people—that didn’t feel good at all. When I see all the evil things that go on that can’t feel good.”
Matt looked at Chris earnestly. “Sex is like melting. It feels so good. You feel... totally safe. I mean, not guarded. You trust, and the other person trusts you and... I know you’re not supposed to do it until you’re married, and maybe by the time I get to the place where I can do that me and Suzie will be married. But I don’t think it is a sin. I think.” he went on while Chris tried to not imagine his best friend having sex, “that some things are wrong some times, but not all the time. And that’s what sex is like.
“But I’m going to get my life together,” Matt said again. A great light went on in Matt’s eyes and he turned to Chris, excitedly. “Maybe we could get it together... Together.”
And Chris thought that this would be a very good idea.
“I wish I was a writer,” Mason Darrow said, turning over lazily on his bed and looking at Lincoln Balliol who was sitting at the computer, surfing the web.
“Sully’s a writer,” Lincoln said.
“Yes, I realize that, but it doesn’t help me a great deal, does it? Since I’m not a writer.”
“Maybe you could become one,” Balliol said blandly.
Mason sat up and frowned, pulling his knees to his chest.
“I don’t think that’s how it’s done,” he said. “I think you have to have the gift, and I’m pretty sure having the gift is more than just wishing you had the gift.”
Balliol turned from the computer, his school uniform still immaculate, tie knotted with absolute skill.
“Maybe if you wanted to badly enough then you could.”
Mason tilted his head lazily. “See, that’s just it. I don’t think I want to badly enough. I wanted to be an artist badly. I wanted to paint badly I wanted to sculpt badly. That’s how I know I have to do something... It’s a bit like a lust, probably. I don’t feel that way about writing, though. It’s just a wish.”
“What made you wish it?”
Mason looked at the bed and his fingers traced the comforter.
“Aren’t you glad February is over? Isn’t Black History Month the worst month for television?”
“Now that,” Balliol said, “is something I never thought I’d hear a Black person say.”
“Well, why not?” Mason said. “Story after story of put upon, chained up Black people, stacked like sardines on slave ships, mouths filled with bits, beaten, confused, raped, lynched, sold and divided, treated like shit only for it to culminate in Martin Luther King talking about peace and getting shot in the head for all his fucking trouble.
“It’s not right,” Mason said. “That’s not right, and I’ll tell you something else, Bailey,” he had used the nickname Sully had for him. “It’s not true. It’s not true and everyone knows it.
“Do you ever see Malcolm X on Black History Month? Or hear about John Brown and Harper’s Ferry? Or the Haitian slave revolt? No, you only hear, for four hundred years white people acted a damn fool, treated Black people badly and then came freedom and then came the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King marched on Washington while a bunch of Black people held hands and sang free at last, and now it’s all good. The End.”
Mason went on.
“No Black Panthers. No mention of Nation of Islam, or Black separatists. No mention of... rage. Just acceptance, just sweet, kind, docile, acceptance of all the evil. A lie.”
They were both quiet and then Mason said, “I know why you are the way you are.”
“What?” Balliol raised an eyebrow.
“Offensive.”
“Am I?”
Mason looked at Balliol and cracked a smile.
“Yes,” he said. “You are. You’re the most offensive person I know. Accept maybe Addison. And I know why now.”
“Because I’m Black?”
“Because it’s really the only way not to play the game,” Mason said.
He laid back and sighed. He said, “My shit, the game. The game, Balliol! I think the whole world wants to think that we forgot everything that happened, that we don’t live in it, but after a month of being treated to seeing slave ships and plantations and peoples backs laced with scars I think... no wonder we are what we are. Yeah, we’ve done some great things, I don’t think there’s a group of people in this country who have done more, especially with less. But look at us. Drive over to Rainer Heights, look at us at school.”
“I used to think,” said Balliol, “That I was outside of it all, and maybe you thought so too. Because... Mathers and Tairique and... all of those, they were on the teams, everyone thought they were so... cool. But you don’t see them, do you? When they get off of the football field or the basketball court they go back to remedial math. They go back to the dregs. They don’t get it, they don’t know what’s going on. They get... made tools of… And don’t even know it. I think....” Balliol frowned. “I think sometimes that we are a crippled people. Yes,” he added. “I know that I’m Black, even if everyone else seems apt to forget it. Crippled, on the sidelines only meant to be cool, to be stereotypes to... not quite be taken seriously.”
“Do you know aside from you and me, I think maybe Corey and Charles actually have a chance of going to a good school?”
“Do you know that Corey probably doesn’t?” Balliol said. “Because everyone thinks that if you hang around white people all the time and talk like a white person that makes you smart. And he’s on swim team, so that makes him at least semi white... But here, here, he’s got a C grade point average and I think it’s sinking. he’s not very clever.
“And,” Balliol added, “did you know that Charles wants to be white.”
“You shouldn’t say that,” Mason said. “People say it about us.”
“But it’s not true about us,” Balliol said, “And I don’t like white people well enough to be like them. We don’t have to be charitable, we can stand for being true. Charles... He doesn’t know he wants it, but he does. I’m in English class with him. He always gravitates toward me and says... well, stupid things.”
“Stupid things?”
“I won’t go into it now, but the long and short of it is that he is convinced that he is dumber than everyone else in the room and he’ll never quite measure up to them. And I hate to say this, but I think, beneath it all that’s how ninety-five percent of the... Well, ninety-eight percent of the Black people at our school feel like we are forever in this shadow, and forever second best.”
“That’s why they hate you,” Mason said simply.
“And they hate you too, a little.”
“Yes,” Mason allowed.
“Because we can’t be second best? We can’t live in a ghetto.
“Mason?”
“Yes?”
“If you could write, what would you write?”
“I have thought,” Mason said, at last, “about... being Black. I... I would not want to live in a world with nothing but Black people. I like white people. I guess I’d better or I’d pretty much be out of friends. I think I would like to write a book that takes place on a plantation.”
“With slaves?”
“Yes, and masters. It would tell the whole story. I wouldn’t leave out any of the grizzly things. But there would be no good Abraham Lincoln to save the day, there would be no happy darkies dancing and singing and voting. There would be.... no forgiveness.”
“What would happen?”
“Before General Sherman could get there the slaves would destroy the place. The first scene of the book would be the masters, the white people. They would all be beautiful and graceful and fun, even innocent, and in the background you would see slaves. And then, gradually, the slaves would come in and in the end, the slaves would erupt. They would destroy everyone and everything.”
“Everyone?”
“Yes,” Mason decided.
“Even the women?”
“And their pretty dresses.”
“And the babies.”
“Yes. It would be disturbing, and gross, but people would be satisfied by this ending.”
“Would you be satisfied by it?”
“Yes,” Mason said.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it is just,” Mason said. “And because it is true. Because if you load the gun in scene one it must go off before the story is over. And is there any more loaded gun than how we got here? There has to be… a cure... a violent one.”
“I think...” Balliol discovered, “that you’re right.”
Then he added, “My father’s white.”
“What?” Mason said.
Well, of course Balliol’s father was white, he’d never thought about it, but the Balliols were an old, wealthy steel family and if they had been Black, that would have been something Mason would have known. He’d never thought of it.
Mason said, “My mother’s father is white. I have a white uncle.”
“But still,” Balliol continued, looking at his caramel hand. “Justice is justice. Maybe half the wars and murders are just.”
Neither one of them said anything for a very long time and then Mason said, “Balliol, maybe there are times for very very violent justice, especially in a story. Maybe occasionally in history, but I think that if we went by justice all the time then the world would be red with blood and no people would be left. That’s probably why mercy is so important.”
EDGARALLANPOET: How long have you been gay?
CHICAGOFAST: About four years. All of my life, I guess. But I’ve known it four years.
EDGAR: Do you have a boyfriend?
CHICAGO: No. Not now.
ED: Then in the past?
CHI: not really then, either.
ED: Then how do you know?
CHI: You know, how do you not know? How long have you been gay?
ED: I’m not sure that I am?
CHI: Whaddo you mean?
ED: I mean what I said.
CHI: But Edgar, no one comes onto a gay chat line unless they’re sure that they’re gay. Or they’re trying to play a joke.
ED: I’m not trying to play any joke.
CHI: I know that.
ED: But I’m just not sure yet... if I’m gay....
Hello....?
CHI: I was just thinking.
ED: About?
CHI: Maybe you’re not ready to be gay? What makes you think you might be gay?...
Hello, Ed?
Are you still there?
ED: Yes. I was just thinking.
CHI: Do you talk like you write?
Whaddo you mean?”
You write whole sentences. You don’t do the whole abbreviation thing.
I think it’s stupid.
Me too. What were you thinking...? When you were just thinking.
I was thinking how the reason I think I’m gay is because I have a boyfriend.... That makes me pretty gay, doesn’t it?
It’s not the end of the world. I like it.
No offence, but I’m not sure I do. I don’t have the whole gay pride thing down, and I’m not sure he does, either.
How long have you guys been together?
Since about fall.
Is he your first relationship with a guy?
He’s my first relationship period.
Maybe you’re bi. Maybe it’s a phase. You don’t seem too gay.
I don’t know if that’s a compliment or an insult when I’m on a gay chat line.
I think it’s just what it is (ha ha!) You’re a nice guy. You could be bisexual.
But right now I don’t feel bisexual. I feel really in love with my boyfriend. But I don’t think he likes it when I call him that.
Hello?
I was just thinking this time.
About?
You’re a good person. I know that. I can tell it, you shouldn’t worry so much about anything else. I think everything will work out.
Thanks. I needed to hear that... read it. LOL.
You just typed LOL.
I swear I’ll never do it again!
LOL
Now you’re doing it!
Well, you are laugh out loud.
Believe it or not, no one else has ever said that about me.
CHICAGOFAST: have to sign off. Wait a minute. Before I go, you don’t know my name. My real name is Robert.
EDGARALLANPOET: My name is Sully.