Lust & Wonder (30 page)

There was a charcoal grill outside, and we loaded it with steaks and corn, unhusked.

There were three bedrooms at our rented villa, and we used them all. We took a great many naps, often in the middle of the day.

We drank lemonade from sweating glasses filled with ice. We swam naked in the pool. He lay on the inflatable yellow raft, and I steered him through the water.

Anytime I wanted to, I could lean right over and kiss him anywhere I chose. He always let me. He always loved it.

He hadn't shaved since we arrived on the island of Saint John four days ago, so each day he became a slightly different man. And each day I thought,
He's more handsome today than he was yesterday
.

When he finally shaved his face, I was hit with a sweet pang in the center of my chest, because I realized I had missed that face.

We drove to the beach and were dive-bombed by a seagull, and we wondered, “Is Tippi Hedren still alive?”

I thought,
This is how it feels inside the right decision.

We were more than halfway through our ten-day vacation when I turned to Christopher, who was gripping the wheel of the Jeep and driving along the winding, climbing road. Suddenly, I recognized him. How could I have not seen this before?

“Oh my fucking God. You're the Jeep Guy!” I shouted.

“What? What?” he said, checking his rearview mirror, shooting me a glance like,
Did I hit a goat or something?

Of course he was Jeep Guy. It was so blindingly obvious that I had missed it all along.

I said it again, half laughing and half shouting, manic from my epiphany. “
You
. You are totally him! I've had recurring dreams about you for years and years and years, and I only just
now
realized it, watching you drive.”

But this made zero sense to him, because he didn't know about my Jeep Guy dreams; I'd never mentioned them.

Plus, the moment I said the words
recurring dreams
, I could see that I'd lost him. Christopher has a zero-tolerance policy for the retelling of dreams.

“Oh no, please don't,” he said. Then he added, “I mean, I'm glad if my driving makes you happy, and you're perfect for me in every way, but the dream thing is just beyond my ability to comprehend.”

I smiled at him. My cheeks actually stung with the authenticity and size of my grin. But I barreled through and told him about Jeep Guy, anyway. “I mean, I never even liked or dated rugged blond guys, and yet I had these dreams, and now, here I am with you—and you're that guy!”

His water bottle was crammed between his legs, so I grabbed it and took a sip. I poked him on the shoulder. “Oh my fucking God.” Poke, poke, poke, poke, poke.

He gave me crazy-person side eye, but he didn't swat my hand away from his shoulder or take back his water bottle, and I realized I could do anything to him and he would never hate me. I could never drive him away, spoil things between us, or otherwise sour things in his eyes, because he already knew how horrible I could be, yet he loved me, anyway.

The truest thing was, I just plain worshipped his ass. I also knew that in my twenties if some guy had said, “I worship you,” I would have smiled politely, suddenly “remembered” a dental appointment, and then never fucking called him again. Yet when we arrived back at the villa with heavy shopping bags of steak, corn on the cob, and ice cream, I said exactly those words to him, and he smiled and then laughed, utterly pleased.

“I am so glad,” he said.

“But I really do,” I continued with some anxiety. I needed him to understand. “No … I mean, I actually worship you, just every aspect, every detail. The hair on your legs is like fireworks. I could stare at it for hours.” I wanted him to know how lower brain stem my attraction was, how deeply rooted and complete, how obsessive and terminal.

“I know you do,” he told me. “Can you hand me the butter?”

After grilled steaks, we stripped off our clothes and walked outside. The pool wasn't huge, but it was amazing, sitting on a deck that overlooked a couple of miles of palm trees and then nothing but the blue Caribbean beyond. When I next glanced at Christopher, he was already airborne, having ejected himself from the edge of the pool straight out in shockingly perfect form so that he seemed to hover in the air above the water before arching himself directly into it.

He was smiling when he surfaced for air at the other side of the pool. “You should come in. It feels great,” he said.

I was staring at him in open bewilderment. “So wait. How could I know you for like ten years and be
with
you for more than
one
year and yet not know you could do this?”

“Do what?” he asked, swiping his wet hair out of his eyes.

“Um, diving like that?”

“Oh, that,” he laughed. “Yeah, I was a swimmer when I was a kid. I can't believe you didn't notice all the trophies in my old bedroom at my parents' house. Come on, get in,” he said, slapping the water.

I walked down the steps into the pool, trying to look cool as I checked for dead snakes lurking in the corners. I dived beneath the surface and opened my eyes underwater. I swam toward him and grabbed his dick as I broke the surface to find he was already laughing.

*   *   *

The fired-clay tile floors of our villa were cool underfoot, and the bed was carved wood with four posters, hung with white mosquito netting that looked like a billowing wedding veil. At some point before the sun went down, we'd have to climb into the Jeep and drive on the wrong side of the road into town to buy essentials for the evening: steaks, corn on the cob, avocado, and mineral water.

I was reading a book about the Hope Diamond. Christopher was reading
Billboard
. We were both wearing shorts and nothing else. When he stood up to walk to the freezer for more ice, I watched the way his heavy penis swayed in his shorts, and I got up and followed him.

When I wrapped my arms around him, he laughed.

“You used to moan when I came up behind you like this,” I told him. “Now, you just laugh.”

He turned around. When he opened his mouth to say something, I kissed him. He laughed again.

“Oh, okay,” I said. I could tell he was not in the mood. I felt slightly sad, but that's the way it was. I reminded him, “We used to have a lot more sex.”

He looked at me like,
Are you even real?
“We had sex three times today,” he told me. “That's more sex than most people have in a whole week. Some in a month.”

When he put it like that, it did seem like I couldn't complain even though I wanted to. I felt like if we were standing before a judge, there was no way on earth the judge would side with me.

A few months before, Christopher had done the math. We'd had a lifetime's worth of excellent sex in the first year we were a couple. We front-loaded. I'd already asked him this question many dozens of times, but I asked it again now, fresh. “Would you marry me right now?”

“Yes,” he said, laughing.

“But I'm serious. Would you?”

“Yes,” he said, repressing a laugh.

“Are you sick of me yet?” I pestered.

“No,” he laughed.

“Will you ever get sick of me?”

He cocked his head to the side in make-believe thought. “Well…”

*   *   *

When we returned from vacation, I was overwhelmed by all the daily life things that needed to be done: the apartment was filthy and needed to be cleaned, I had to write a bunch of checks, I needed to get back to my writing, I also had to make an appointment with the dentist because I was almost positive one of my crowns was cracked.

These were exactly the sorts of things that I used to run away from by drinking. Ordinary tasks have always overwhelmed me.

But I had no desire to drink now. There was nothing in my life I wanted to obliterate, not even the crappy stuff.

*   *   *

I was wearing a three-piece, pin-striped suit and trying not to scuff my black shoes as I shoved my way through the aggressively revolving glass door of the Marriott to meet Christopher's parents in the lobby.

When his parents stepped from the elevator, I saw them before they saw me in the crowded lobby. I wanted to call out, but I suddenly wasn't sure what to call them.
Mom
and
Dad
seemed somehow forced and awkward. Shouting out their first names also seemed weird, but then
Mr. and Mrs. Schelling
would be worse. I settled on “Hey!” while waving my arms in their direction.

“Oh, hey!” his dad said, smiling and giving me a hug. I kissed my mother-in-law on the cheek and told her she looked beautiful.

I led them outside, and we climbed into the back of a cab. “Fifty-Fourth and Eighth,” I told the driver. I was taking two septuagenarians to 54 Below, a Manhattan nightclub in the basement of the former Studio 54, where their son would be playing piano.

*   *   *

Here's another thing they do not tell you in rehab: if you are an alcoholic and you stop drinking alcohol, every drink you order in a restaurant for the rest of your life will arrive with a straw in it.

So there I was at a legendary disco-and-drug den, drinking Diet Coke, the single worst liquid ever invented. This was the closest I would ever get to that legend, and my drink had a straw.

The upside was that the show was phenomenal. Christopher was the musical director and accompanist for his friend Anne, an amazing singer and actress. There was a standing ovation, and for a moment, I was happier than I had ever been in my life. Christopher was wearing a black-and-white Versace jacket with black pants, and his mustache looked like a horseshoe, and he seemed famous but wasn't. All those years he'd been just my agent there had been hidden under his clothing a concert pianist, a diver, a World Series watcher, and a great body with numerous impressive attributes. In fact, each day, things were revealed to me casually and often by accident that seemed incredibly essential for me to know, things I should have already known. Like, he could sing. I didn't even know he was color blind until six months into the naked part of our relationship. I, who had written dangerously close to a dozen books about myself, simply could not conceive of a person who didn't just blurt it all out.

Christopher's mother leaned over and said, “Those music lessons were worth every penny.” She was beaming.

Christopher's dad looked like he may well explode in tears.

That was when I decided there was no reason they couldn't be my parents, too. I had been cursed with the worst parents in the world, and I'd suffered through them for decades. Now that I had found two of the very best, it seemed foolish to let them get away.

*   *   *

The dogs crowded us to the edges of the bed when we slept, even though it was a king-sized mattress and the dogs themselves were not huge. It seemed at night they grew to the size of a third, tall person with strong, pushy limbs.

So one morning, I suggested we add a second bed. “A twin, at the foot of the king.” I told him, “Remember in the 1970s? Maybe your mother didn't do this, but mine made a sofa out of a twin bed by using pillows and Indian bedspreads.”

Christopher paused in the bathroom doorway, holding his coffee cup. “Yeah,” he said, “if we're going to imitate one of our mothers, let's make sure it's yours. That's a really good idea.” His mom had been a schoolteacher in Ohio; mine was a mentally ill poet whose psychiatrist raised me in exchange for her child-support checks.

Christopher said, “Plus, if we get a twin bed, that's where I'd end up sleeping while you and the dogs hog the king.”

*   *   *

That night, I had a dream that Christopher was just a dick. He was a total asshole to me. I woke up in a foul mood.

“I can't believe you're mad at me for something I did to you
in a dream
,” Christopher protested.

His incredulous laugh was different from his normal laugh, and I suspected I might be the only one who got to see it.

“Don't even speak to me,” I said.

After five minutes, I said, “But I would marry you, even though you were just awful to me.”

*   *   *

On April 1, 2013, Christopher and I took the ferry to Staten Island and stood before a dignified and genuinely funny city hall clerk, while down in Washington the Supreme Court was considering two watershed cases. Gay marriage was seriously trending.

As we walked out the front door of city hall, Christopher turned to me and exclaimed, “You're my husband!”

I smiled, because this was true. I was his husband and he was my …

Christopher's smile faded, too. “Wait,” he said. “That makes me the wife.”

Since I had been thinking the same thought at that moment, this confirmed that I had married the right person. But what he said was true. I tried reversing the roles by calling Christopher “my husband.” And sure enough, in my mind's eye, I immediately became Tippi Hedren in
The Birds
: pea-green suit, blond chignon, heels.

I couldn't call Christopher my husband, because saying it made me feel like a cross-dresser. And believe me, I do not judge cross-dressers. But I lack the motivation to dress properly as a man, let alone an archetypal woman with layers of accessories. I have needed new sneakers for four months. How hard is it to go buy a pair of sneakers? Apparently, very.

Likewise, I don't have anything against wives, but surely I don't need to elaborate on the bullying of gay boys for being effeminate, forcing us into the caveman stance of “I ain't no damn wife.”

So on this gay day, when I experienced firsthand what I believe is a civil right, instead of feeling triumphant and proud, I felt tricked.

“Getting married took away one of our words,” I said.

We had previously referred to each other as
boyfriend
. Age inappropriate to some, but it did just fine.
Partner
sounds cloyingly, politically correct, or as if we work at a law firm. In
spouse
, I mostly hear “S.mouse,” the name of Chris Lilley's blackface teenage rapper in
Angry Boys
. And it's stiff and formal and a little heavy in the sibilant
S
department. The best suggestion came from Liz, one of our witnesses at the ceremony, a brilliant contraction of boyfriend and husband: boyband. We're all word people, so this made us laugh, yet there was an unavoidable whiff of “I married an old man who thinks he's in One Direction,” which is when I stopped laughing.