Lust & Wonder (6 page)

I continued. “The third affair happened because I couldn't tell after either of the first two whether this was a control issue I was dealing with or maybe the need to be degraded. I just didn't know. So I picked a guy who was just plain ugly, and we went back to his place in Brooklyn. Everything about him was tacky, including his apartment. I mean, he was really nobody's type.”

“And?” Dr. Schwartz asked, leaning forward with what I thought might perhaps be an extra degree of interest.

“And I couldn't really get it up at first. Only when I pretended I was a hustler, then I could. That's when I knew it wasn't about being degraded. It was about control. But control of what?”

He shook his head like he just didn't know.

“Exactly,” I said. “That's why the fourth affair had to happen. I had to find out what it was I was trying to control.”

“So, what was this fourth affair?” he asked.

I leaned back against the brown leather and looked at him with importance. “It was the fourth affair that told me everything,” I said.

Dr. Schwartz leaned so far forward he was in real danger of tipping his chair off balance and tumbling onto the carpet. “And why is that?”

“Because the fourth affair was with George,” I admitted.

“Who's George?” Dr. Schwartz asked, puzzled. He began riffling through his notes. “I don't recall that name. Have you mentioned him?”

I sighed and looked down at the arm of the chair. “No, I don't think I've mentioned George yet. But probably, I should have,” I said.

*   *   *

George had been one of the first people I met after moving to Manhattan in 1989. He was an investment banker, and on our first date, I learned two stunning things about him. First, his office was directly across the street from my Battery Park City apartment. In fact, from his desk, he would be able to peer out the window and look directly into my bedroom. The other thing I learned was that he had a “roommate,” which made no sense to me because he was an investment banker and thus shouldn't need a roommate.

This was actually the last thing he told me on our date after he handed me his phone number: “And if somebody else answers, don't worry; it's just my roommate.”

As I walked away, I actually considered tossing the number into the trash because,
roommate, my ass
. But then? It spooked me that he could see my apartment from his office. Because nobody lived downtown in my neighborhood. It was originally created from the landfill generated during the construction of the Twin Towers, so New Yorkers jeered at the neighborhood. It was considered the New Jersey of Manhattan. The fact that George could see my unmade bed from his desk drenched our meeting in destiny.

As I sat in the windowsill of my apartment overlooking the West Side Highway, I held the scrawled number in my hand. Somehow I knew that to call it would alter my life.

Of course, I had been right. There had never been a roommate, only a lover of almost seven years who was dying of AIDS. The lover had contracted the virus by having an affair. George remained HIV negative.

I fell in love with him. And one of the things I loved most about him was that he wouldn't leave his boyfriend for me. They'd been out of love for several years, but George couldn't abandon him. This made him mythic in my mind. Heroic.

I was absolutely obsessed with him. Because I couldn't see him constantly and we had to meet downtown at my apartment during lunch or at night when he was walking his dog, I redecorated my apartment to look like his.

Then his boyfriend became seriously sick and was hospitalized. There was a great deal of bleeding, and George couldn't bring himself to wear gloves. Several months later, the boyfriend was dead, and George tested positive himself.

And suddenly, he was mine. Everything I wanted, I had. Except I knew I couldn't really have it.

He'd been HIV positive now for five years. And all this time, I'd been trying my hardest to fall out of love with him.

*   *   *

“I don't understand,” Dr. Schwartz interjected. “Why have you spent so much time trying not to be in love with George?”

I just looked at him as though he were a madman. “Because George is dying,” I said. “I mean, he wasn't dying at first, but I knew he would eventually, and now he is. And why on earth would I want to be with somebody who was only going to abandon me?”

Now Dr. Schwartz leaned back in his chair and resumed the more traditional posture of a psychotherapist. “I see,” he said.

“So I've been pulling away from him, you know? Especially over the last two years, I've really pulled back. And he's become sicker and sicker. Over the past six months, I've hardly seen him at all. And when I have, it's been shocking.”

An image of George waiting for me on a bench outside a coffee place on Hudson Street came to mind. He was so skinny. He had a walking cane leaning against his knee.

I went on. “I just felt like if I could make him fade away instead of just suddenly vanishing right in the middle of love, that would be easier, you know?”

To my enormous surprise, my eyes flooded with tears.

“Has it worked?” Dr. Schwartz asked.

Well, that's not fair
, I thought.
You can't ask that question
after
you see the tears
.

“No,” I said. “I mean, yes,” I corrected myself. “It has worked. In a way. I mean, I'm not in love with him anymore. I'm in love with Mitch instead.”

He nodded but didn't say anything, so I went on.

“It's just that, well, I wondered something. I wondered if I could still have sex with George, after all this time. It's been almost a year. And sex with him was the best sex I ever had. It always had been.”

“Is that right?” Dr. Schwartz asked.

He looked sad, and I wondered if he was just so tired of hearing people's problems all day. I wondered if he'd rather be home watching game shows and eating takeout lasagna from Zabar's.

“So I called him up, and he was totally shocked to hear from me, but he was also really happy. I asked if I could come over, and he said, ‘Yes, right away, come now.'”

Dr. Schwartz leaned over and plucked a tissue from the iris-printed box, and I expected him to hand it to me and was about to thank him, but he kept it for himself. He just held on to it, resting his hands on top of my computer printouts in his lap.

A strange feeling of loss began to creep over me as I kept talking. “So I went over to George's apartment and had sex with him. Even though he's wasted away to nothing and was hooked up to an IV line and even though it was the most awful, sickening scene in some horrible way? It was also the best sex I've ever had. Even though the only thing that happened was he rubbed my dick through my jeans. He didn't even rub it, he just put his hand on top of my lap as we sat side by side on the edge of his bed, and I came instantly, harder than I've ever come in my life.”

Somehow, Dr. Schwartz seemed to know in advance what I was going to say, because he already had the most sorrowful expression on his face.

I told him the rest. And that's when I understood why the sex has been so fucked up with Mitch.

Dr. Schwartz blinked, and it was one of those blinks where your eyes don't open back up right away. And when he finally did open them, it was like there was something new and awful there in his glance. Not a judgment, really, but more like a reflection.

“We didn't say anything. We just sat there on the sofa, and I understood everything. The problem is, I really am monogamous. You know? I've spent the last two years trying not to love somebody who's dying, but it didn't work. I just didn't know that until … until I did know. And now I can't
not
know it. And when George walked me to the door, it took five minutes because he can barely stand now. When I hugged him good-bye, I felt like I had come home. Only there had been a fire, so everything I was hugging was crumbling in my arms because home was almost not there anymore. I was too late.”

The leather squeaked as he uncrossed his legs and placed the papers on the floor at his feet. He propped his elbows on his knees and asked me, “What were you too late for, Augusten?”

I looked into his eyes, and then my gaze shifted to the clock behind his head. It was now almost nine forty-five. But he hadn't even noticed.

I'm the one who said, “I think we ran over.”

When your psychiatrist forgets to look at the clock and is hanging on your every word, that's when you know, out of all his patients, you are the sickest.

He ignored my remark and said it again. “What were you too late for, Augusten?”

And I said, “I was too late for everything.”

“What's everything?” he asked me.

I said, “Everything is George. He's everything. He's the only thing. He's always been the only thing. I've tried to make him smaller, but it didn't work. And if you could have seen him, oh my God, you would know. There isn't any time left at all.”

He sat up straight and said, “That's where you're wrong, my friend.”

I liked that he called me
friend
.

“You have more time than you realize. And I'm afraid, very soon, you may see this for yourself.”

*   *   *

The cab ride home was exhilarating and also like being in a coffin. It seemed the headlights were suddenly turned on, just in time to see the approaching cliff.

I had to confess all that I had done to Mitch. The relationship was over; this would kill it. It was dying, but this would shoot it in the head and put it out of its misery. My first thought was to stand outside his building so that when he got home from work at seven, he'd see me.

Then I realized I should just tell him on the phone. That way, he could hang up on me and be done with me sooner. It would make me look like a coward, but given what I did and how insanely unforgivable it all was, it seemed worth it to be a coward when it spared him from having to walk out of a restaurant or tell me to leave and then slam the door behind me.

So I called him.

But his machine answered, so I hung up. I called again a half hour later. And then I kept calling every fifteen minutes.

At this point, I kind of freaked myself out, because I was calling and calling and calling and calling and calling, leaving all these hang-ups on his machine, all so I could tell him, “Hey, so, I've been stalking you on AOL, and I know you've been trying to hook up with other guys, because I've been posing as those other guys. I also cheated on you four times, but that doesn't really count, because it was self-help.”

By ten, I'd stopped trying to reach him, because where the fuck was he? The cyclone of madness in my head had spun all the way around, and now, at this late hour, everything seemed to be entirely his fault.

I even toyed with the idea of not telling him I'd been stalking him or that I'd cheated. I could make plans to meet him—under a false AOL identity—at a certain time and place. Then I, as myself, would happen to walk by and see him waiting, where I would “suddenly” put two and two together—“You're cheating on me, oh my God!”—and break up with him on the spot, saving face.

But he called me at eleven. I'd totally forgotten he was going to a party with Famous Author Friend, even though he'd been talking about it all week. He sounded pretty shit faced, but he wanted to come over, anyway.

“I don't think that's such a good idea,” I said.

“Well, why not?” he asked worriedly.

It didn't seem like anywhere near the right time to tell him. On the other hand, maybe the alcohol would act as an anesthetic. Combined with being told over the phone, I felt like I was doing all I could to provide five-point seat belts and an airbag.

That's when I realized this was the perfect time. “So, I've been involved in a research project,” I began. “And it's time for you to know about it.”

*   *   *

Mitch didn't hang up on me like I expected. He adopted an eerie monotone and said, “I just don't know what's best for me. I need some time to think.”

I suppose it's fair to say he was aghast at what I'd done. But I also had the impression that he was flattered I'd gone to so much trouble, and he even seemed impressed with how I'd located his other secret online name.

He did say, “Obviously, we're over as a couple. But maybe we can be friends. I don't know.”

I felt a helium lift. I hadn't even considered a friendship. I wasn't sure I actually knew what a friendship was. To me, friends were people your boyfriend knew that you went to dinner with sometimes.

We hung up.

I stared at the scuff-marked wall for a minute, thinking about how things with Mitch had been doomed from the start. I had already been in love with somebody who was dying, and soon the day would arrive when the payment would be due. I had believed I could evenly distribute the weight of my loss. Instead, what was going to happen was it would crash into me in one lump sum.

There was nothing I could do except say things to myself like “Whatever's meant to happen will happen.” But that didn't change the fact that I may very well have altered the way things were supposed to turn out.

*   *   *

I was on Eighth Avenue at Fourteenth Street, bending over to tie my shoe when a lengthy shadow appeared directly over my hands and the knot I was trying to tie.

There were now white sneakers, jeans, and a pair of legs beside me.

“Who bends over in the middle of the gayest sidewalk in the world and sticks his ass in the air like a baboon?”

It was Mitch, backlit by the sun. He had a mass of shoulder-length hair that the wind was whipping madly around his face.

I was stunned, because how could his short, choppy, reddish-brown sitcom hair grow that long and in just a month or two?