Sex and Death in the American Novel (6 page)

“Really?” I was afraid he was humoring me, but I was desperate to believe him.

The afternoon after I returned from the island, Eric came by as planned to drop off a manuscript. Since we often agreed on books, he was a perfect reader for me. He was the reason I wrote romances for gay men, and he was
the reason I was successful at it. Several times in my last novel he had saved me from describing emotions and physical reactions incorrectly.

I flopped down on the couch when we got inside. “Man, am I glad to see your piercing blue eyes.”

He fluttered his eyelashes and lowered his voice. “Wuz up kitten?” He sat beside me, digging in the messenger bag he'd brought along and pulling out a much more worn copy of the manuscript I'd given him. He tossed it on to the coffee table.

“I swear, my mother and brother are the most depressing two people on the planet. He is starting over
again
.”

“This is like the fourth time right?”

I nodded. “I'm starting to think he won't ever finish.”

Eric went into the kitchen and fixed us each a drink. “Maybe that's the point.”

“I think so, only this time he seems more bummed out about it. Usually when he goes on about starting over, he has a great new plan. This time he just stopped talking about it.”

“Do you think he will give up writing?” Eric handed me the orange and vodka in one of my heavy glass tumblers.

I sipped my drink and shook my head. “No way. I do wish he would take a break though. I think he has been staring at that thing for five years now. He can't see out of it.”

Eric made a sound of assent while he sipped his drink, then we turned our attention to my manuscript. The third draft of my novel,
Anglers
, was about a group of fly fishermen who stumble upon a hidden collective of men in the woods, sort of a Western twist on the Amazon legend, replacing the big-boobed women with well-hung young men.

“So?” I asked after we sat staring at it.

“It's kind of creepy the way you have the guys in the forest converting the straight guys from the outside,” he began.

We discussed the different places he felt I was trying too hard to make a statement, or prove a point. “The story is supposed to be fun in the end right?”

“Uh. Huh.”

“Well, for a while it wasn't. It was like you were trying to convert me to being gay or something.”

We both laughed at that. Eric had told me he would rather sleep with men during our junior year of high school. We managed to lose our virginity, but he also decided the female body was not for him. Lucky for me we stayed friends. He inspired me to write about male relationships and was a constant source of diversion and support. In addition to the dance competitions
we entered together, several of which we won by the time we graduated high school, we also both loved books. I still had a lingering crush on him.

“What about the orgy scenes?”

“Those were great. I crossed out a couple words here and there. Mostly, you just have to speed things along. You spend too much time on people's eyes.”

We went on like that for a while. After we finished I wanted a diversion. “Let's have some people over. I just spent the last two days out on the island getting totally depressed. I want to have fun.”

We called a few people, then hit the market to buy Porterhouse steaks, mustard, salad greens and a few more bottles of wine. Vlad, a Russian who was also possibly the most gorgeous example of the male body I'd seen outside of a museum, came with a girl I didn't know. A couple from the investment banking office where Eric worked—unhappily, alongside his father—showed up as well. We ate, laughed, drank too much, then after that we all decided to hit Neighbours, a nightclub on Capitol Hill.

Barbara, a drag queen, was a staple there, and whenever she saw me, she made a big show of being one of my biggest fans. Sometimes when we showed up to one of her shows she would work my name into one of her performances. Vlad mentioned at dinner that she would be there and possibly bringing members of the Bolshoi Ballet, in town for the week. She liked to drag visiting celebrities into the club—once we had a movie actress from the 1980s watching us all dance from the second floor balcony. Another time, I got to meet a popular comedienne who was in town raising money for AIDS research. This night the prospect of lithe, straight men who knew how to shake their asses had me all aflutter, imagining the illicit possibilities.

People like to pretend we're not animals, but really we're more like dogs. Anyone who doesn't believe this should spend some time in a nightclub. Women at certain times already know what the urge feels like when everyone, whether short, tall, square shouldered or slight, looks like the tastiest piece of meat you've ever seen. Most men I've talked to will tell you that if left alone with a woman who is ready to go, they won't hesitate. Ever. The smart ones know how to keep themselves out of trouble.

Eric and I first started going to Neighbours in college. Sometimes I would bring kids from my classes to dance the '80s theme nights or watch drag shows. Eric and I still liked to show off by reviving our competition routines to some club anthem like
Insomnia
or
Sandstorm
. I would spend all night dancing and hanging on Eric and then go home with some other guy I had just met. I was young—amusement came easily then.

In my later twenties, Neighbours, with its colorful crowd, free atmosphere, and familiar vibe, was my favorite place to go to work off frustrations, check out the local scene, keep up on who was doing who, and get lost in hedonistic excess in a relatively safe environment. It didn't hurt my storytelling abilities either. There was nothing like watching two beautiful men first lock eyes, then cruise around each other, then finally sink into the shadows and slam each other up against one of the black painted walls of the club while the crowd danced on. While I danced on.

I still loved to dance. I loved the attention, I loved getting lost in the thumping beat of the music and the flashing of the strobe lights—I felt like I could just take off spinning, catching the energies around me, twirling higher and higher with the music. I always expected to open my eyes and find myself floating near the smoky ceiling, lost to everyone. There was a thrill to get up on one of the stages around the dance floor and look down on the writhing bodies and occasionally lock eyes with an interesting guy or girl. On nights when the music was really good, and I was really feeling it, I felt like a goddess. I was powerful, above it all, untouchable, unless of course I wanted to be touched.

This night I felt a need to put everything away: my brother, my father, the comparisons I constantly made between their work and my own. No matter how many times I tried to focus on my success, I always looped back around to the fact that I was still disappointing my father, even in death. Tristan's mood had me worried that I had done too well; maybe my success had more to do with his feelings of failure than I had imagined.

I danced until my slinky clothes stuck to my skin. Eric came to take me home, and as I hopped down from the stage I felt like I had just woken from a long sleep, though my heart raced and my senses were on full alert.

We met Vlad outside at the alley, and as we were saying our goodbyes, a man about Eric's height, wearing filthy clothes and hauling a canvas bag over his shoulder walked by, eying first Eric, then Vlad, and settling his sticky yellow eyes on me. His hair hung in grimy streaks around his face. His skin was oily and stubbled. “Sweet little cunt you are. How about I show you what a real man can do?”

I had my hand around Eric's torso. I felt the muscles of his arms and back go rigid. “What did you say?” he demanded.

“He called me a cunt. How very creative,” I said, fielding a mix of emotions: part outrage, part amusement at the lack of creativity, and part disgust. I stepped forward on shaky legs, afraid, but ready to take my shoes off and use them on the guy if necessary.

“You heard me,” the guy said. “Faggot.”

Before I knew what had happened, Eric was grabbing the guy's collar and hauling him up the side of the wall; a street light threw both of their faces into harsh relief.

Vlad was beside me. “Wait,” he said, taking my arm and holding me back.

“Say you're sorry,” Eric breathed.

“Fuck you,” he said and spit in his face.

Eric wiped away the spit with the hand that was not holding the man to the wall, then stepped sideways when the man kicked out at him. I had never seen Eric so angry. Once or twice when we'd been out together and we were harassed, a dark look was enough to get the offending drunk to walk away, or at least back off mumbling under his breath.

My voice was shakier than it should have been. “I don't want him to get in trouble.”

“He won't. Don't worry,” Vlad said, coming closer.

Just then the guy struck out with one fist and Eric punched him and he slid to the ground. The events happened in less than twenty seconds, but felt like they took forever. I moved toward Eric, took his hand and pressed it to my cheek. Vlad looked from Eric to the guy before he hunched down and with barely contained disgust, reached out and moved the guy's face from one side to the other.

“He'll be fine,” he said before turning back toward the door to the club.

I was more worried about Eric. When I met his eyes I saw a complicated mix of confusion and fear. When he saw me watching him he smiled and said, “He disrespected my bitch. What was I supposed to do?”

I took Eric's good hand and dragged him to the street. We looked back once to make sure the guy stayed down.

Chapter 3

We met in the spring for Tristan's birthday. I took a few days off work to stay out at the island and spend time with him. Looking through the notes he left me, I was reminded of how he had at least been distracted by teaching, when he did it—and he was good at it. I resolved to make my case when I saw him, citing all the lovingly placed notes containing advice that he left in my books. How could he waste this talent? He had to go out and encourage other writers as well. In that, he would recover his lost spark, I was sure of it. Mom took us to the pub in Coupeville that overlooked the water and the incoming sailboats.

“So what's the big announcement? Have you finished, are you submitting, what?” my mother asked, fiddling with her wine glass.

Tristan leveled a gaze at both of us and said, “I
am
done. I mean, I gave it up. What a relief too. I didn't know it was possible to feel this bad.”

My mother and I stared at each other. Finally she said, “What do you mean you gave it up? Not your work…you don't give up your work.”

“That's what I thought, but it turns out, it's easy. I boxed up everything I had and stuck it in the closet. I cleaned off my desk and there it is. I have started packing to move out. That should make you happy,” my brother said, frowning.

“I don't get it,” I said.

“I don't either,” my mother interjected, bumping her wine glass as she leaned toward him, sloshing some of the contents onto the table top. “I never said anything about you living in the basement. What will I do without you? Who will help me prune the trees, burn the trash, what about the rose bushes…”

“Where will you go? Are you getting a job?” I asked.

“I think the next step will be to figure out where I belong.”

“So you are going to teach!” I clasped my hands. My mother looked confused. I plowed on; she could catch up. “Here or in Seattle? Or maybe you could look for a position in some cool location, oh, like how about some fancy European boarding school! You could call it a vacation! I would come visit you, even help you move.” I felt relief and excitement at the possibilities available for him.

I turned to my mother whose expression was still skeptical, but she was going along. “Or what about The University of Montana? They would love to have you back.”

Tristan's expression did not match my growing excitement. “I'm not going back to teaching. I'm going to have Uncle Curtis send me a chunk from the trust for a down payment. Probably get a small place in the city, maybe near you, Slug.”

“That would be cool…you could crash on my couch while you look for a place…but why don't you want to go back to teaching, or is it because you're going back to music?” I said this last bit hopefully, but his face didn't change. It was sinking in that he meant giving up more than writing—he was giving up everything that made him creative or even useful. I flashed to an image of him sipping out of a paper-wrapped bottle under a grimy overpass, his beard and hair tangled and clotted with bits of detritus. “How can you just quit? A break maybe…not giving it up.”

“You're dipping into your trust again?” Mother was displeased.

“Last week I felt really good, it was like I was channeling the universe and everything that worked was there. It was so easy, Slug, you wouldn't believe it, then I woke up this morning and was reading it all over again, twenty-five brand-new pages, and I saw it so clearly, it's all shit, nothing has changed. This is just like song writing. The problem is still me.”

“Are you high?” I asked, joking but watching his eyes as he responded.

He laughed and then grew serious. “There is no more color in the world. It's all fake, like the whole world went gray, or worse, it always was and someone came back and tried to put color on top of everything so it would look right but now I can see that it's just…” he moved his hands in front of his face like a magician would, opening and closing his fingers, “an illusion.”

I turned to my mother. “He's high.” How could I deal with this level of disconnection? My vision of working him toward a reimagined teaching career seemed incredibly lame next to the way he looked now; disconnected, very wrong, too peaceful, too accepting, too easy.

“I am not high…not yet.” He gave me small grin. “I'm thirty-six now. I am just finally seeing everything the way it really is and something has to change.”

I woke up the next morning with a jolt, out of a vague dream about my college dorm and this crazy girl I'd met right before I graduated. I was in my mother's guest room, surrounded by objects from my childhood bedroom. My heart was beating as fast as that time I tried meth. I looked around and listened, but nothing seemed off.