Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and all of that everyone. This is a rough world, and so many of us have stumbled through rough places and keep on stumbling, very often it feels like that last part of a run, or a swim where you can barely keep going. Whatever you are going through this season, whatever memories accumulate or losses you feel, I love you, you are not at all alone, and this right here is my gift to you, its all I really have.
EIGHT
DEER TRACKS
Fenn was in the living room when Tom shouted to him from the shower.
He came into the steaming bathroom and Tom opened the curtain, more heat and steam pouring out into the already jungle like room.
“Wanna get in here with me?”
“I showered an hour ago.”
“Get in,” Tom said.
Fenn could never resist him. Tom was still the quiet, handsome boy in soccer shorts he’d seen at the party nine years ago. What was more, that quiet handsome boy wanted him. Fenn was practical, though. He hung his clothes on a hook, something Tom never did.
Tom threw his arms around him and started lathering him. Tom washed him, and then said, “Turn around so I can get your back.”
Why repeat that you’d just done all of this an hour ago? And it felt good to have Tom wash his back and run a cloth over a body Fenn himself was not terribly amazed by, that Tom seemed to love so much.
“You’re so beautiful, you know that?” Tom said.
Don’t say anything silly. Or snarky.
“I’m so lucky to have you,” Tom told him, reverently running the cloth over his limbs.
“Baby, get my back now,” Tom said.
The water made that constant whishing sound, and Fenn ran the cloth over Tom’s shoulders, over his shoulder blades.
“Do you remember that house we saw?”
“You’ll have to be more specific,” Fenn said, washing the small of Tom’s back.
“You know. The little two story with the small porch. On Versailles Street.”
“Oh, yes! I like that house. I could see a lot happening there.”
“Ah!” Tom said as Fenn washed his ass and then began to scrub his thighs.
“Two little dark haired Houghton-Mesdas?” Tom said. “Running around in that house.”
“How would we get them?” Fenn said.
“All sorts of ways. They’re doing all sorts of things. We should start a family and live in a house and get out of this apartment.”
“I love this apartment.”
“You’d love our house too,” Tom said. “You wanna do it?”
Fenn came back up, running the cloth over Tom’s legs, over his ass, up his back. He kissed Tom on the back of his ear.
“The house on Versailles?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s do it.”
“It’s a beautiful house,” Adele said the first time she and Hoot came to see it.
“It’s not as big as ours,” Layla noted.
“Layla,” Hoot reprimanded her.
They were in the empty kitchen, and the floor needed a good sweeping. The window that looked out onto the driveway was dirty and uncurtained.
“I wasn’t trying to show off,” Layla said. “I was saying that our house is really big.”
“It’s in case you have a brother or a sister,” Hoot told her.
Layla looked at her father levelly and said, “I’m not going to have a brother or a sister.”
Then she went into the carpeted but empty living room.
“So how are you buying this?” Adele said.
“What the hell do you mean?” her brother said. “With money.”
“She meant,” Hoot said, “you and Tom aren’t married.”
“That’s not even possible.”
Hoot shrugged. “Some people think it will be in certain places. When rich gay couples buy things they go through enough paper work and everything that it’s like a marriage. So if anything splits up—”
“Hold on,” Fenn said. “Firstly, I’m not rich and second, who said anything about splitting up?”
Adele and Hoot looked at each other, and then Adele said, “We’ve talked about this.”
“Meaning you and your husband?”
“Yes,” Adele told Fenn. “And up until now you never had anything. And also, you weren’t almost thirty. This whole you all having the same bank account and you handing your money over to Tom all the time… It’s cute, but it needs to stop.”
“You make money,” Hoot said. “But the truth is Tom has always made more money than you.”
“If anything ever happens—” Adele began.
Fenn opened his mouth, but his sister continued, “If anything ever happens, you better make sure you don’t leave with nothing.”
“I’ll get the paperwork ready,” Hoot said. “By the time I finish it you’ll be Tom’s wife in everything but name.”
“His very protected and well paid wife?”
“Yes,” Hoot said, not knowing if Fenn was being facetious.
“He’ll never agree to it,” Fenn said.
“He will,” Adele differed. “He’ll do whatever you say.”
“I won’t say it,” Fenn told her. “I can’t.”
“Then I will,” decided his sister.
“And now I’m off,” Hoot said, kissing his wife on the cheek. “You all’ll just take Tom’s car back?”
Adele nodded, and then Hoot said, “I’ll draw up those papers, brother-in-law.”
“Layla!” he called. He went to say goodbye to his daughter.
Fenn stood looking at his sister.
“What?”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
Adele opened her mouth to say something. She closed it. Fenn continued:
“Well, all those fancy papers he’s talking about… I hope you got some of the same too.”
“I have a husband who is, for the first time, making a lot of money, and it seems like he’s going to keep making more. I have his child, I live in a large house that I couldn’t afford on my own, and I never see him. Throw in I’m aware of how good looking he is. Even if you don’t like him.”
“What’s your point, Sis?”
“My point is I’m telling you to get this taken care of by the law, because I took care of myself years ago.”
The door closed after Hoot, and Adele could hear Layla coming toward them.
“I don’t know if it will end one day, or when it will end. But I’m not going to be like Mama. I’m not going to be left high and dry and have to move back home.”
She looked at Fenn.
“And now neither will you.”
Tom stood before Bryant as the taller man stooped to finish knotting his tie.
“There you go,” Bryant said, giving it a final tug, and then organizing the wild tangles of Tom’s hair. “And now you do me, and we can look like professionals going back to work.”
Tom grinned, straightening Bryant’s tie, smoothing his shirt a little longer than he needed to, reaching up to pat down his hair.
“I want you to come to dinner tonight,” Tom said.
“What?”
“I would like you to come to dinner tonight. All of our friends will be there.”
“As in yours and Fenn’s friends?”
“Well, yes.”
“And Fenn?”
“Well, it is his apartment too. It’s our home. And I want you to come to it.”
“What are you—?” Bryant looked at Tom incredulously.
“You are so important to me,” Tom said. “I don’t want you hidden away.”
“But—”
“Please,” Tom said, putting his blazer back on and feeling in his trouser pocket for his keys.
“Uh… Alright,” Bryant was doubtful. What was going on in Tom’s mind? Where did he think they were going with this? But then, what was going on in Bryant’s mind?
Bryant locked the door behind them as they headed down the hall of his apartment building. It was so strange, so exciting. They were good friends and colleagues and it seemed like they were going off to lunch, but the moment the door closed behind them they became passionate lovers. And then here they were, just fresh from the hot sex, in dress pants and ties again, in good shoes, going back to their jobs in the music department at their Catholic college.
“Tom, what time should I come?”
“Seven thirty is good,” Tom told him.
In the end the only other guest was Dan Malloy. The dinner was simple. Burgers and fries, Dan made a salad. Fenn sat on his ass, but condescended to make the lemonade. Bryant wanted to find fault in Tom’s other half. He wanted to hate him, but Fenn was so solicitous. The house felt so right, and Tom kept touching Fenn so lovingly. What the hell? Why had he invited him here? And then Tom would turn the most loving looks on Bryant. They both would. This was how things seemed to work. Tom showered open affection on Fenn and tolerated Dan. Dan was obviously close friends—possibly more than close friends—with Fenn. Were he and Fenn…? No. He suddenly realized they weren’t. Dan was a priest, but that wasn’t why. Fenn wouldn’t allow it. Fenn was… His love for Tom wasn’t the same. There wasn’t that same passion or even affection. It was something very firm, Bryant noticed, like his grandmother had for his grandfather. It was serious and steady. In a way this made Fenn’s love more threatening, and Bryant felt more chastened.
“Enough of this,” Fenn said.
They had been listening to an oldies station, and Fenn and Dan had been singing:
Just walk away Renee, you won’t see me follow you back home!
Bryant knew the song. He knew the strains of the violin. They moved him, though he didn’t know the words. Fenn changed the station, and suddenly Bryant heard Wagner’s. Lohengrin.
“Something for those of more refined taste,” Fenn said, nodding to Bryant and Tom.
Tom gave a caw of a laugh.
“Look at me.”
As usual, when not working, Tom was in jeans with holes in them, barefoot and in a dirty tee shirt.
“Do I look refined?”
Bryant gestured to his chest. He was in shorts and a striped rugby shirt.
“You clean up well,” was all Fenn said.
And then there was the simple quality of Fenn. Very often Bryant had been a guest in the home of a bad host. Here Bryant felt hosted. Fenn saw to every comfort and included him totally in conversation and then, suddenly, a familiar strain of music began. Bryant wasn’t sure why it shocked him so. He knew it. But then he looked at Tom and saw that his face had gone green.
“Yes!” Fenn leapt up from the coach, over Dan, and turned it up. He stood by the radio waiting and whispered: “I woke up to this a few days ago. This is the most beautiful piece of music in the world. More beautiful than the Carmina Barana or Diana Ross and the Supremes for that matter—
Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder….
Fenn sat on the floor by the radio like a child, and as the piece went on, rising and falling with more volume than that day when they had lain in bed together, Tom and Bryant looked at each other, and then away. Yes, Tom remembered. How could he forget? This was why he had cried with poignancy over it, knew it so well. This was Fenn’s piece.
When the strains were dying Fenn said, “That’s always a nice surprise. Now, something from Die Walkure. That’s what we need. In fact,” Fenn said, “Tom, you should get us something.”
Tom just looked at him and Fenn said, “Dearest, why are you staring at me like you’re in idiot?”
Tom shook his head.
“Sometimes I think you don’t pay attention… Or that I’m this joke to you.”
Fenn was surprised that Tom would say this in front of other people.
“I always thought I was this silly guy who listened to classical music and you…”
Tom shook his head and stood up.
“Yes,” Tom said. “Of course I’ll get Die Walkure. I’ll be right back.”
“Now,” Fenn told Bryant, grasping his wrist in his fervency, “when you listen to Bach—even the organ stuff, and I’m not so big on that—you have to imagine that even though you’ve heard that a thousand times, even though you’ve heard that huge choir in a great auditorium, he did not. It all came out of the head of this church organist. Can you imagine not just hearing it for the first time, but making it, conceiving it? And then there it is. In reality. All of these voices creating the beauty that was first in your imagination. See, that’s the wonder of Bach. That’s the wonder of any artist.”
Fenn looked down and said, “I’m afraid I’m grasping your hand too tightly.”
He let it go.
Fenn had, in fact, grabbed his wrist so tight it throbbed a little, but Bryant shook it and said, “It’s no matter.”
“Eureka!”
Out came Tom with a large LP.
“Part one of Die Walkure.”
He looked around the apartment.
“Where’s the record player? We don’t use it that often, anymore.”
“In a few years we won’t be using it at all,” Dan said.
Tom frowned at this as he went to the turn table.
“That’s ridiculous, Father Dan. What do you think? The whole world’s just going to keep using those dinky cassettes?”
While Tom fiddled with the phonograph, Dan murmured, “That’s not exactly what I meant.”
Fenn was half asleep when Tom came into the bedroom taking his shirt and his pants off, taking off his underwear and then changing into sweat pants.
“Just remember,” Fenn spoke, drowsily, “the last person in bed is the last to turn off the light.”
“Aye aye, Captain!” Tom said, cheerfully. He went out, and in a moment later, Fenn could hear the faucet turn on, then Tom brushing his teeth. Now Tom was gargling. A few moments later he came back into the bedroom. Fenn opened his eyes to see him, thick hair tousled, bare chested. Tom flicked off the light and climbed into bed beside him. Tom’s arms went around him, and he pressed his face into Fenn’s back.
“That was fun tonight,” Tom said. “And you’re always a great host.”
“I like seeing you have friends,” Fenn said. “Bryant’s nice for you.”
Somewhere in Tom’s mind he fantasized that Fenn would understand everything eventually.
“He is,” Tom said. “It is nice to have a friend who’s just mine. Sometimes I feel like I just moved into your world, and now I take up space there as a supporting cast member.”
Fenn turned around.
“I am sorry. I never meant to make you feel that way.”
“You don’t.” Tom sat up. “You never have. It’s me. It’s all in my head.”
“Next time we move it will be around your family.”
“I don’t really want to live around my family,” Tom admitted. “Besides, we’re signing for the house in a few days. And Adele already made me sign those silly papers. Like I needed to sign papers to say I’d be loyal to you!”
“Bryant’s a very handsome man,” Fenn said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means what I said. He’s very handsome. He reminds me of you in a way.”
They settled back into bed and Fenn said, “I wouldn’t mind you having a little crush on him.”
“Have you?”
“Have I had a crush on Bryant? No.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I meant, have you ever had a crush on another man?”
“Oh, sure,” Fenn said. “Only a crush though.”
“Is it Dan Malloy?”
Fenn smacked his pillow and murmured, “When will you get over Dan Malloy? No, Thomas. It isn’t Dan Malloy.”
“Who then?”
“Good night, Tom,” said Fenn.
