Lust & Wonder (24 page)

As the session drew to a close, it was agreed that we would return, Dennis first, for a one-on-one.

Outside on the sidewalk, I said, “Well, at least she got to see me be a bully.”

And though it was small and sad, Dennis laughed for the first time in what seemed like years.

I knew he did not understand why I stuffed a bouquet of dynamite into the crevice that had opened between us, lit it, and watched it blow us completely apart. But I did contain hope within my chest that someday, he would understand. Perhaps we'd been not in a relationship together, after all, so much as crouching together in the same hiding space, a true limited liability partnership.

Maybe for a time, the fact that both of us wanted it to work made up for the fact that it really never did. With the relationship over, I wasn't sure if we would even be friends. It didn't seem likely we'd even be left with that.

Two years before, we'd bought a studio apartment in downtown New York City. The plan had been to fix it up like a hotel room so we could return to Manhattan whenever we wanted and not be trapped in the country, which is exactly what we were. But we'd never furnished it. In fact, it contained only a floor lamp and an air mattress, also on the floor. I would be staying in the New York apartment, and he would return to the house in Amherst.

It was awkward standing there on the sidewalk outside the therapist's brownstone, because we weren't accustomed to going in opposite directions. We nodded solemnly and agreed we'd be in touch before the next session. He asked me to gather any mail that came and send it on to him. He said if there was mail for me back in Amherst, he'd bring it with him to the next therapy appointment. Moments before, we had been confronting our most devastating, life-changing feelings and shredding the fabric of our decade together, and now he was scheduling mail delivery.

As I walked away, I felt a kind of speedy sadness, raw-nerved. My eyes felt like they must be ringed with red. At the same time, I felt an urgency in my chest, not like butterflies but rather more like crows were wrestling inside, beating their wings against my rib cage.

I was free.

And didn't this mean, wasn't it possible, I might have another chance? To find somebody I wouldn't have to change for, somebody who wasn't bothered so much by the many troublesome things about me or maybe even liked them?

When I had first started dating after meeting him and deeming him unacceptable, I believed I could find “somebody like Christopher,” but that was ridiculous. I didn't want somebody
like
Christopher. He was the only one like him. That's the one I wanted. What if I just went ahead and told him how I felt? How I'd felt all along? So what if he laughed in my face and then fired me as his client and had me blacklisted from publishing? At least I could tell myself that I'd seen the thing I wanted, and I'd chased after it.

Dennis had hurt me. He'd lied to me for so many years, shoplifting time that belonged to me. But as I crossed Broadway, another thought came into my mind. Each time I asked Dennis, “Are you happy with me?” what if I was really asking this of myself?

What if I had been the one lying?

What if the only person I could blame was myself?

I passed one of those ubiquitous Irish pubs with neon clovers in the windows and signs for Pabst on tap. I knew that if I walked into that pub, it would be dank and cool and dark and that I could slide onto a well-polished bar stool and order a tumbler of vodka or maybe a gin and tonic. I also knew, after two or three of these, all blame would recede from me as surely as an ocean tide. Nothing would be my fault.

The catch was I could never leave the bar.

I walked past it. Sober for yet another fucked-up, mistake-drenched day. But there was one hell of a wind blowing against my back, and it almost made walking as easy as one of those sliding airport walkways. In that moment, it kind of felt like a present from the universe.

*   *   *

Several days later, the doctor who referred us to the '70s patchouli therapist called. He'd received a message from the therapist saying she was unwilling to see me and Dennis again. That seemed a little unprofessional. Shouldn't she have contacted me herself? Surely such a roundabout message was in violation of something, and certainly she should be punished.

On the other hand, I appreciated the swift efficiency of her act. The brutal reality of it. Like a Joyce Carol Oates novel.

It reminded me of when I first started to go bald. I went in for a haircut, and my hairdresser sat me down as usual, poised the shears over my head, and then reconsidered and put them down. He grabbed the clippers.

“Why no scissors all of a sudden?” I'd asked, genuinely curious.

He leveled a gaze at me in the mirror and then glanced down at what was left of my hair. He wasn't mean about it, but he shrugged and said, “Not really much point anymore, you know? Clippers for you from now on.”

Looking at myself fresh through his eyes, I suddenly saw that what was actually on top of my head was not so much hair as the fuzzy remains of my own denial.
Motherfucker.

*   *   *

In my empty studio apartment, I thought about Dennis. I imagined he must have been so lonely to occupy the same house, the same life with somebody who couldn't have sex with him and who didn't even see how brutally unhappy he was.

He said to me once that he felt responsible for staying. He said that so many bad things had happened to me, he could not bear to be another one of them. So he stayed. I was the one who left. I was the one who tore apart our lives. But I did it for him as much as for me. I did it because I could, and he could not.

Molly told me, “Divorce is like a Polaroid picture. What truly happened will develop over time, and you will see.”

She was right about that.

To admit early on that we seemed incompatible, unable to communicate freely and easily and honestly, would have felt like an act of such savage destruction. We were making plans for our fine, good life together, and they would to have been thrown away. Which is exactly what happened, only much later and leaving behind a much larger debris field.

I know now: what
is
is all that matters. Not the thing you know is meant to be, not what could be, not what should be, not what ought to be, not what once was.

Only the
is
.

*   *   *

I bought furniture for the apartment, and after ten years of living with somebody, I was on my own again. I missed my dogs. Dennis offered to drive into the city with them and let me have them on weekends, but I found myself worrying about him being alone in the house we built, the one we used to share, if he didn't have the dogs, without something to worry about and take care of.

My instincts told me that no matter how hard it was for me to be without them, no matter how closely the physical ache I felt without them resembled impending heart failure, it would be worse for Dennis. After all, wasn't I the expert at losing things?

When the dogs were with me, I was grateful. I didn't have an actual job, so I could spend all of every prized day on the bed with them both.

I shopped online for vintage jewelry to comfort myself. My grandmother had been one of those Southern ladies who dripped with jade bangles, diamond rings, emerald necklaces, and earrings of beaded rubies. Since I was a little boy, I have loved all things shiny and sparkly. Now, because I had no control or judgment or real-world knowledge, I was siphoning my 401(k) to buy them.

I scrolled through Web site images of jade rings. I climbed up off the bed to get treats for the sleeping bulldogs.

Add to cart, add to cart.

 

III

 

I sent Christopher an e-mail telling him how I felt. An e-mail seemed better than a phone call or a meeting in person, because he was accustomed to me dumping my words all over him. Plus, it was how I was most comfortable, and I couldn't screw it up.

Christopher,

Two things. First, did you ever hear back from the sub-rights agent about a sale for India?

The other thing is slightly out of the blue. I love you, is the thing. And I mean
love
love, not
love you, bro.
I mean, I am in love with you, and it's an eye-color kind of love, unchangeable and bright. I know this must be somewhat shocking (appalling?) to you, because you've never given any indication that you felt anything but professional agent friendliness for me, but I have felt much more for so long it's possibly caused me brain damage. Also, I am certain you love me, too. Or at least mostly certain. Or at least I hope.

What I want is for you to cab downtown right now so we can quickly go over to city hall and get married. I don't want us to be agent and client for one more moment. I want us to be together, permanently. I also need to know certain things about you. For example, I can't even remember your birthday. Also, I've never seen pictures of your childhood house, or better yet, heard you describe it. I don't even know if you had stuffed animals as a kid.

I want to know everything. Shoe size, dental history, allergies, favorite color, special abilities or skills, gluten tolerance level. I require complete knowledge and 100 percent access to all of you. I am like the fat girl at a buffet with three plates balanced on her arm like a waitress. “That bitch, did you see her? She just took all the Bac-Os.” My greed and hunger with respect to you are without limit.

You should know, I tried for many years not to be in love with you, but I failed. And I really did try very hard. But it was not possible, and it never has been, because I have actually loved you from very early in our relationship. Possibly as early as our first meeting.

A small part of me is aware that this might be somewhat blindsiding for you. I also know it's gross for the famous author to fall in love with his literary agent, but on the flip side? At least we're not twenty-four. That's what saves us from being entirely repulsive as a couple. In fact, it's almost romantic, isn't it? Like Charles and Camilla.

And no, I'm not drunk.

He wrote me back pretty quickly. “Well, that certainly qualifies as your most shocking piece of writing in my learned opinion. But as fascinating and flattering and strangely hallucinatory as I found it, it can't possibly be true. I am a crusty old sack of disease with holes blown through it, like a horror movie character that can't be killed. Which makes you, sir, crazy. So snap out of it,” he concluded. “This is just a phase.”

His reply was very much the words of a literary agent caught off guard, defusing his unstable writer.

I replied, “Will you at least consider trying to see me as more than just a client?”

He wrote back, “I have AIDS and cancer, and you're a Purell addict.”

“Plus short,” I reminded him. “Everything you said so far plus short.” I also told him that I'd never been as sure about anything else. I said, “I'd already lost one boyfriend to AIDS when I was in my twenties, and I decided never again. So when I met you, you were off-limits. I decided I couldn't love you. The problem was, I did. And ten years later, here we are. All those reasons I had for it being impossible between us, they're nothing. I'm not just in love with you. I'm insanely in love with you.”

He called me then so that I could hear his laughter in my actual fat ear and not read
LOL
on screen
.

I asked him if he would meet me in Hell's Kitchen for burgers.

“Be there in twenty,” he said.

We went to a sports bar near Worldwide Plaza on Forty-Ninth. As soon as we were seated, I knew. I could see it in his eyes as surely as their color: he loved me, too. He did. There was disbelief there, too, but there was no doubt.

“This is crazy,” he said.

I reached under the table while the Yankees got clobbered, and I traced my finger along his calf.

“You know what else it is?” I asked him, feeling the hairs through his pants. “It's happening.”

Christopher had never thought of me in romantic terms. He said this and even used that word
terms
, ever the commission-sucking agent. Whereas I had been thinking of him lustfully for an alarmingly long time. Yet, there over burgers, there was a transformation. His perspective did shift, and he was quite able to see me as more than just a client, partly because I was groping him under the table and partly because we were by now the best of friends, able to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

Near the end of the meal, I went to the bathroom to take a leak. I was shocked when I looked in the mirror and saw that a spot on the front of my pants was already wet, as though I'd pissed a little in them.

Maybe this was an actual nervous breakdown
, I thought.

When I returned to the table, his face was flushed. He looked at the crotch of my jeans, and he knew, exactly. When he stood up, I could see he was hard. We were way too old and worn out for this shit, but there it was, right in front of us.

*   *   *

Dennis, meanwhile, still did not understand what had happened with our relationship. He sent an e-mail referring to our “trial separation.”

I wrote back quickly. “This is not a separation.” (I refused to include “trial,” because it added a layer of hope and took a step away from truth.) “This is
the end
,” I told him decisively. Yet he still e-mailed about my “coming home” despite my already feeling Massachusetts was another life, as remote as another planet.

Another sensitive area was Christopher's friendship with Dennis. Since they were not the ones who had lived together and grown to loathe one another, they had a good time when they went out. Christopher is bighearted, and he genuinely liked Dennis. It was also tough, because Dennis needed a confidant, and he knew that Christopher knew my crazy better than anyone.