“I had promise, once,” Kevin said.
They had moved from the floor to the bed.
“I had the wife, the kid. The respect. A nice little house. I had it.”
And then you got caught having sex with me, and that was the end of it. No wonder you hate me.
“Now I can’t even see my own daughter.”
This wasn’t exactly true. Kevin had never expressed much of a desire to see Dena.
Kevin was beautiful naked. It was the way Todd had felt the first time they’d had sex, when he was fourteen and confused and the only thing he could know for certain was how manly, how perfect, Kevin looked. He still exercised. His arms and thighs and stomach were defined, like a runner’s. Hair went gently up and down his legs. Todd placed a hand on his thigh. Kevin removed it.
Darkly amused, Todd thought of all the men like Kevin he had been with since Kevin.
“You are a socially awkward person,” Todd said.
“What?” Kevin looked at him, as if he were just seeing him.
“You are doomed to spend your whole life alone. You can’t touch. You can’t be touched. You can only fuck and be fucked. That’s all you can do.”
Kevin looked like he didn’t know what to say.
Todd, who was still naked, and lay on his side on the bed laughed.
He was the opposite. He opened and was easily opened. For the first time he was a little proud of that. He had just been opened and pounded, his face was still red from rug burn, his ass sore from being fucked, his shoulders and back a little bruised.
While Kevin was still looking at him, Todd got up and began to dress.
“I need to leave,” he said.
Kevin’s mouth had touched him. Kevin’s cock had penetrated him. But Kevin wasn’t in him. Not yet. He needed to go before the misery that followed Kevin Reardon wherever he went was inside of him too, before he began to hate himself.
“I don’t hate myself,” Todd murmured. “But I hate picturing myself with him.”
He didn’t want to think about it. For the first time in… ever, it was clear. It had never been clear to him. He saw himself being brutalized by Kevin. He saw the kid on the floor. He shuddered. He stopped at McDonalds for a shake and some fries and then got back on the road. For the first time he saw everything. It wasn’t the sex. It wasn’t the quantity of it, but rather the quality. Since he was fourteen, Kevin had been coming into his room, bringing him into the library, taking him on camping trips and fellating him, being fellated by him, fucking him and teaching him how to fuck. Kevin was, if not a total child molester, then someone who liked to have sex with young men he overpowered, and Todd had always been overpowered by him. Even as an adult, he’d always felt like a child. What was more and what he didn’t want to face—
“But you have to face it,” he muttered, pulling on the shake. “Or you’ll never get your shit together.”
What was more; he liked it. He liked it while he hated it. He needed it while it made him sick. Shame was always there. It always had to be. Fear as well. Fear of hell then, when that had gone, fear of being caught. At last, fear that Kevin, who hated him, might kill him and leave his body somewhere. But that was all part of it. And he sought it out all the time. He sought it putting ads in papers and driving to strange places. He sought it going down to Potato Creek or Lake Monon in the middle of the night, getting down on his hands and knees and letting hillbillies fuck him on the dock. He courted death and danger. He had longed for it. He had lusted for shame. Especially in the last year, especially when he thought he might not have a mother.
And now it was gone. Just like that. There had been a little part of him that had despaired of being free. Most of him had thrown up his hands long ago. Now it was over. Now he was saved. This was the altar call. So this is what it felt like! Only those holy rolling assholes were fake. They’d be back doing the same thing the next week. He was done with it. He knew. Not the sex. No, not that. He wanted to fuck the whole world. He wanted to have sex with everyone, ball all night. But he wanted affection, touching, true giving, true release, mercy and actual heat. All the things he’d never felt.
“I may have never done it before. Never had real sex,” Todd murmured.
But suddenly he had to stop the car.
The moon was bright tonight, and he saw the silvered antlers of a stag on the road. The stag was looking straight at him, like the God of the Forest. They had those funny faces that looked like they were frowning a little. In the headlights, he blinked, and then he crossed the road followed by a few friends.
But now they weren’t leaving. Suddenly the road was filling up with deer. Thirty, forty, fifty? Then at least a hundred. A regular conference under the white moon. All of them were silver white, their antlers silver grey.
He reached into the back of Nell’s car, and rummaged through it until he pulled up the camera. It was not hard to turn it on. He set it on the dashboard, mildly fascinated by the little red light, then sticking his eye to it, he watched the deer. He watched them standing there, some watching him. And then they crossed the road and in time they were gone, and Todd was left with the white moon, the blue night and the grey road.
He sighed. He left the camera on a little longer before turning it off.
That was Todd Meradan’s first film.
When Todd reached Fenn’s apartment, he only knocked on the door and waited. Fenn answered and stood there, looking up at him. He was about to say, “Where have you been?” or “Your family has been worried about you,” but instead he said, “Oh, God.”
The boy with the diamond studs in his ears looked like “Oh God,” had happened to him. There was no describing it. Fenn took Todd’s hand and brought him into the living room.
“Sit down. What do you want to drink?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll get you tea.”
Fenn was gone a few minutes, and when he came back it was with a great mug of steaming tea.
“It’s hot, and it’s got lemon in it,” he said.
“You’re something else,” Todd told him. He almost smiled, but not quite.
“If you need me to go to my room and leave you here in peace I can do that,” Fenn said.
Todd looked at him.
“When I can’t get through a whole smile, or a whole sentence it usually means I’m about to cry.”
Todd opened his mouth again, but he couldn’t speak and Fenn nodded, touching his arm and walking out for a while.
He came back a little while later, and Todd’s face was redder than it had been when he’d come into the house.
“Do you know where I was tonight?” Todd said.
“You told your sister you were coming here.”
“And I even thought I was,” Todd said. “But that’s not what happened.”
Fenn waited.
“This is hard,” Todd said. His voice seemed almost as if it was going to break again, and he turned his head away.
“I can say it because I know it’s never going to happen again. I know it. Not the way people say it when they want it to be true. But when… it is.”
Fenn waited patiently, and Todd continued, “I went to see Kevin.”
“Kevin Reardon?” Fenn looked incredulous.
Todd nodded.
“I’ve been seeing him for years. I never stopped.”
Fenn held his tongue determined to say nothing.
“He’s what I knew. He got me when I was a kid. Every man I’ve ever been with. It’s like being with him. I feel like I’m always looking for him.”
Todd stopped talking a while and then he said, “It’s not right. But it’s over. And that’s why I’m here.”
“Do you want to stay here tonight?” Fenn said.
Todd nodded.
“Fenn?”
“Yes?”
“Where is Tom?”
“He went somewhere with Bryant,” Fenn said. “I think he’ll be back in the morning.”
For the first time Todd looked hard. He looked like he was about to say something, and then he said, “I’m glad I can stay tonight.”
“Todd, you can stay any night. You know that.”
Suddenly he added, “Please don’t go back to that man.”
“I won’t,” Todd told him, “And now that I’ve told you, I can’t.
“Before it was private. Nobody knew, and there was no one I could tell. But I knew I could tell you. I always knew that.”
Fenn nodded.
“Do you know what I did?” Todd’s voice changed, sounding somewhat childlike.
“No,” Fenn said, not sure if he wanted the truth.
“Oh… nothing terrible,” Todd told him. “Nothing else terrible.
“I saw these deer. I don’t know where they were. A whole herd of deer in the road. I just sat and watched them, and they just stood on the road. So beautiful. I can’t talk about it. But I filmed it. It was like a gift. There’s so much in the world, you know? I’d love to film it. I hadn’t thought of that before, not seriously. What it would be like to film things. Not stupid movies, but life, real people.
“People are so beautiful. Life is so beautiful.”
Todd stopped talking.
“What is it?” Fenn said.
“Nothing,” said Todd. “I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”
“I’m alright? But I thought we were making sure you were.”
Todd didn’t want to say what was on his mind. He loved Fenn too much, and Fenn had given him tea. He only said:
“Well, let’s make sure we’re both alright.”
Todd waited until the next day. When he went home the girls were in the kitchen and Nell was making breakfast for her mother.
“You’re home,” Nadine said. “Fenn and Tom put you up for the night?”
“Almost,” Todd said, meaning more than he said by that almost. “Tom was gone. And that’s what I want to talk about.”
“Girls,” Nadine addressed the children.
Layla and Dena looked up at her.
“Could you all go play in the library?”
“It must be something bad,” Dena told her friend, sagely. “Com’on, Layla.”
The two girls left.
When the sound of their footfalls indicated they were in the library, Nell stood beside her mother and they both waited for Todd to speak.
“I think it’s great to have friends and everything,” Todd told them, “and I think it’s wonderful that Fenn trusts Tom so much.”
“But you think he’s cheating,” Nell said. “Don’t you?”
“He was gone the whole night. And then you said when they went to Chicago, Fenn and Tom didn’t stay together. Didn’t you say Tom went back to Rossford and Fenn and Tara stayed up north? I don’t want to think it,” Todd said. “But I can’t not.”
Friday night before the move, Tom said there was a school function around eight.
“Do you want to go?” he asked Fenn. “I thought you’d just rather stay home.”
“I’ve got school functions all day,” Fenn said. “This Masters is no joke.”
“And the radio station,” Tom sympathized.
“Very well,” said Tom, “I can go alone. Don’t worry about that.”
So Fenn made dinner for Todd and Tara and Adele, and Nell came over. The girls brought Brendan over and Tara said, “This will be so much better tomorrow when you have a house.”
“If you all think that once I get my house, you’re just going to be popping in unannounced and hanging out...” Fenn let it hang there.
“We’ll let that simmer,” Fenn murmured over the stew, and sat back at the table before the small pile of bills. Fenn liked to turn in things as soon as possible, never the day of.
“Here’s something funny,” he said, looking at the credit card statement.
“What?” said Adele, but Fenn turned to Tara.
“We didn’t stay downtown.”
“Downtown when?”
“When we went to Chicago.”
“No. We never do. We were up in Evanston. You know that.”
“And.... here it says Evanston. So this is our room, but...”
Fenn furrowed his brow and handed the bill over to Adele.
“Fenn,” Adele turned to him. “When you all went to the hotel, did you take the card with you?”
“No,” Tara said. “Fenn said he knew the people and they had his card already. Our room was paid for ahead of time.”
“Tom had your card,” Adele said, flatly.
“Well, yes,” Fenn said.
“Fenn,” Adele said. “You’re looking at a room at the Essex, and do you know what isn’t on here?”
Fenn waited for her to continue.
“The tickets to Symphony Hall.”
Fenn said nothing.
“Tom never went to the opera. So neither did Bryant. They went to a hotel for the day. To be exact, they went to the Essex.”
“He’s cheating on you!” Todd burst out.
Fenn looked at him, and Todd continued, “Everybody sees it, or everybody suspects it. He’s cheating on you!”
For a while Fenn said nothing, and then he heard the pot bubbling over, and rose to take it off the eye. The world was grey and dead now. Something grey and dead had been crawling around, a dull leech at the edges of things. Now he could see it clearly, and its appearing was almost a relief.
“Is it true?” Fenn said, quietly. “Does everybody see this but me?”
They all looked up at him. Adele and Nell had forgotten the children were in the room. Brendan looked up at him with sad wide eyes.
“How stupid could I be?” Fenn said. And then before anyone could answer he said, “How stupid will I not be from now on! Tom’s got the car. Somebody give me some keys.”
“Fenn, you can’t drive like this,” Adele said.
“He won’t have to,” Todd said. “Com’on,” he pulled his keys out of his pocket, jangling them.
“Can I go?” Dena demanded.
Todd and her mother looked at her, and she didn’t even need to think of asking again.
Todd was pulling his jacket on, and he held Fenn’s out to him.
“Com’ on,” he said hotly. “Let’s go.”
