“Ignore the vain and silly bitches who are only thinking about where they’ll TA and why their boyfriend won’t call them back, or if they should have the abortion after all,” Fenn began as they walked through campus, toward the beach, “and concentrate on putting your feet in the water.”
“This isn’t like Notre Dame’s campus at all.”
“Or even De Paul’s,” Fenn noted.
It had been built into the city so that many of the dormitories were apartment buildings. In some ways much of Loyola resembled the upscale Chicago neighborhood it was in. They turned, went down a block, and were on the beach.
“You don’t wear shorts,” Fenn said.
“Neither do you.”
Tom was in jeans and a tee shirt, and Fenn was in baggy khakis, a Madras shirt and a fedora.
“No,” Fenn agreed. “But I already knew about me.”
They walked along the edge of the great lake, shoes in their hands, watching the blue waves roll in, clear and glass green to the sand. The blue stretched on without visible end, and when Tom looked to his right he could see the shore of Chicago coming in, the Sears Tower rising high, the John Hancock building a little less so. He looked again and saw the apartment buildings that made a concave stretch further north.
“Have you ever seen the ocean?” Tom asked.
“No,” Fenn told him.
“We’ll go,” Tom told him.
“I’ll hold you to it.”
They went up the sand some time till they were away from students, then away from most people, arriving at a long, old weathered pier, rising above them, its damp, green poles thrust down in the water. A dry yellow green stretch of sand grass with a rough stone walk cutting through it greeted them, and they took the walk, pebbles pressing into their feet. It stretched far north, and now the beach was wilder, sand giving way to little colored rocks.
They crossed the pebbly beach, heading into the water, and Tom yelped in joy, catching Fenn’s hands. “It’s sucking me in!”
Fenn reached down into the water and came up with a handful of pebbles. The water swirled around his long brown feet, Tom’s very white ones, his pearly toes. Under the clear water pebbles sparkled.
“Where did you grow up?” Tom said.
Fenn pointed his finger north, toward the apartment buildings.
“Evanston.”
“Then why didn’t we go there?”
“The beaches aren’t free.”
Tom chuckled and then he said, “Fenn… you’re very different.”
“But you like it, right?”
“Yes,” Tom decided. “I do.”
“I like you too,” Fenn said.
“Is that why you asked Trisha to find out all that stuff about me?”
Fenn blinked in surprise, and Tom smiled saying, “Yeah, I got some tricks up my sleeve too.”
“I see you do.”
“And next time we can go out to your old home. We can see Evanston.”
“I’ve decided,” Fenn told him, “when I get old, which is a long way off, I’m going to come back here. I don’t think this is a great place to be young in, but I want to be old here. There, I mean. So I’ve decided that when the time comes, that’s where I’m going to go.”
The sky went dark mid afternoon. While they were returning downtown on the El, and Tom was looking out of the window over the passing city, he said, “Why did you ask about me? Why were you so interested in me?”
“Because you remind me of my old boyfriend,” Fenn said frankly.
Tom blenched and looked around. Where he came from such things were not talked about, and he didn’t think they were in Chicago either. Not really. Things like that. People like that. A few stops ago, some of those people had gotten on. Skinny men, mincing men, undesirable sissified men flipping their hands up and down, some with wigs on or make up, many with tight shiny pants or purses. He wasn’t like them. He didn’t want to be like them.
And here was Fenn, Madras shirt and pants, fedora, care free, but somewhat sober looking saying, casually, out loud, that Tom reminded him of his boyfriend.
Rather than say that word again, Tom only said, “What happened to him?”
“He went off to be a priest,” Fenn said. “You can’t have me and Jesus. That’s one man too many, and neither of us likes to share.”
Tom chuckled over that and then said, “So it wasn’t like…” he waved his hand in the vague direction of the queens. “That?”
“Oh, nothing’s like that,” Fenn said. “Even that’s not like that, and things will change. The world loves separation. People do everything they can to separate from each other, but at the end of the day it’s like being on the beach and trying to cut the sand in two. It just gets wet. It all runs together. Better not to worry too much about calling yourself something. Better to just be you.”
“I like you Fenn.”
“I know you do.”
“What the hell kind of response is that?”
“An honest one,” said Fenn.
Thunder rumbled overhead and Fenn said, “I never like that. I am not a fan of thunder and lightning when we’re whizzing along in the air.”
“We’ll be soaked,” Tom said.
“Hardly,” Fenn told him. “They’ve got tunnels and then all the shops have awnings. We’ll be near Wabash. We won’t get wet at all.”
“Do I really remind you of your old boyfriend?”
“He was sweet and kind. And good looking. Only you’re a lot better looking.”
Tom’s face reddened a little over this. He looked pleased.
On the train home, while it chugged under Chicago and then lifted them up over the Southside Fenn despised so much, Tom felt free to be louder because the train was emptier.
“So what did you all do?”
“Who?”
“You and your boyfriend?”
“What do you mean what did we all do?”
Tom’s faced reddened. He was squirming in his seat, and suddenly Fenn realized that Tom was trying to cozy up to him. He realized that Tom might have actually been a virgin.
“Tom?”
“Yes?”
“Are you…?” Fenn lowered his voice. “Are you asking about sex?”
Tom didn’t answer. He went from red to white.
“There’s no need to be embarrassed,” Fenn said. “I mean, how would you know? What’s there to show you? Are you trying to ask if Dan and I had sex?”
It took Tom a while to form the word “Yes.”
“Well we did it like Chicago voting,” Fenn said. “Early and often. And before him there was someone else. Are you…?”
“I’ve never been with a guy, but I’ve thought about it,” Tom said.
“Well are you thinking about being with me? Let’s just be bald about it.”
“Look,” Tom said, sitting up very straight. “I just don’t want to go out and do it. I want to do it with my boyfriend. And until this afternoon I didn’t even think it was possible to have a boyfriend. So….”
Tom seemed at a definite loss. Fenn knew he couldn’t wait for Tom to come up with what to do, so he said, “Thomas, would you like to be my boyfriend?”
“No! I mean, yes. I mean yes.”
Fenn looked at him.
Tom lowered his voice.
“I mean, we can’t have sex. I’m not ready for that.”
“Number one, I didn’t ask you that, and number two, I think you’re more ready than you know.”
Tom nodded, looking like he felt really stupid. Then he said, “I mean I want us to date. And… when it’s time it’ll be time. Okay?”
“When it’s time I think I’ll tell you what I’m about to tell you now.”
“Yeah?” said Tom. “And what’s that?”
“That I have a headache.”
When Dan called later that week, Fenn said, “How sure are you about the priesthood?”
“What kind of question is that?” Dan began. And then he added, “Especially to begin a conversation with?”
“It’s a great question if I realize I haven’t moved on and neither have you,” Fenn said. “The truth is you just decided this last year, and last time you were here we were still together. I need to know that if you come to visit we won’t be like we were before.”
“Lovers?”
“I was trying to be discreet.”
“You don’t have to be discreet,” Dan said over the phone.
“Look,” Dan continued, “some of these guys at seminary are great and some of them aren’t, and a lot of them are hiding a lot of stuff. But you have to know something: I’m not ashamed of anything we’ve done. I don’t believe it was a sin.”
“But the point is it might very well be a sin if you came back for summer and we slept together again.”
“I hadn’t even thought about it.”
Fenn’s only response to this was silence. He could wait Dan’s thoughts out.
“Alright,” Dan confessed. “Okay. I still have a serious libido. Even though it’s come down to us sleeping together once a year. And I’ll tell you what: when I think about you you’re my best friend, but of course in the back of my head is us. Together.”
“Well, here’s the thing,” Fenn said after a bit. “Jesus might not mind a little bit of me on the side. In fact, I’m not sure what being a priest and being celibate have to do with each other. But a real flesh and blood man would mind me sleeping with you, and before I go into something new, I need to know that we are over.”
“Oh,” Dan sounded like he hadn’t expected that.
“You found someone.”
“You think it’s fair for you to go into the priesthood and me to just be someone you come home to when you’re on break?”
“No, Fenn,” Dan said, slowly. “Not at all.”
“And besides, right now you’re not even in a real seminary. But next year, and then after that… and then when you’re really ordained.”
“Right, right,” Dan was saying. It was like he was coming to terms with his decision.
“You wanted this,” Fenn reminded him.
“I know. I just…. ”
Dan’s voice changed.
“I’ve been one foot in and one foot out. I honestly thought I could go and do this and then take a break, and we could be together a couple of times a year. I wasn’t really thinking about you at all. Men are selfish and priest are men. I wasn’t even thinking about what you’d be doing the rest of the year. And… I wasn’t taking my vocation seriously.”
“Dan, you can always change your mind.”
“Would you give up this other person for me?”
“Dan, if it wasn’t a serious thing with him I wouldn’t have called you. But if you left the priesthood then it would change things.”
When Dan didn’t say anything, Fenn said, “You need time. I’ll give you time. But not too much, alright? Because there’s a crazy guy who loves me living next door.”
“That’s a shame. I like Dan,” Tara said.
“Well, he’s not dead,” Fenn told her. “In fact, he’s not even gone.”
And then he said, “Don’t you like Tom?”
“I don’t know Tom,” Tara told him, frankly. “I’m sure I will like him in time, but right now Dan’s the one I know. And he’s cute, too.”
“I told him to let me know when he decides, but to decide soon.”
“And did you tell Tom?”
“Are you crazy?”
Fenn put down his cigarette, got up and crossed Tara’s dorm room. He shut the door as if spies might be waiting on the other side. He knelt beside Tara and whispered:
“Tom is a virgin. He’s never even been kissed.”
“By a man or by woman?”
“I’m guessing by a man, but probably both. He said he needs time, and I figure the time he needs is the time Dan needs to shit or get off the pot.”
“So you’re not going to tell Tom about Dan?”
“Absolutely not.”
“But…”
When she said nothing right away, Fenn gave Tara a long suffering glance.
“Yes?”
“What if Dan leaves the priesthood for you? Then you’ve got to leave Tom.”
“You don’t even know him,” Fenn said. “Don’t start feeling sorry for him now. I’ve got two men sitting on the fence about me. Whichever acts first gets the prize. That’s how all bids work. Now, I’m not entirely comfortable with comparing myself to someone on an auction block, but there you go!”
Anne had given him forty dollars to buy a good shirt a few years ago, and Fenn had bought a very good one for about fifteen. It was thin, which was usually a good thing, but today he would have appreciated something a little warmer. The weather was going cool again, and the heat wasn’t on in the dormitory.
It was in that shirt, and in that coolness that Fenn received the phone call.
“Are you there?” Dan said.
“Of course I’m here. I’m talking to you.”
“I need you to be serious,” Dan cautioned. He sounded terrible. He sounded woebegone.
“Dan, is there something wrong? You sound like you’ve…” Fenn didn’t want to call his friend out. He didn’t want to say “You sound like you’ve been crying.”
“I wrote you a letter,” Dan said, “because I had to get everything out. But I want to read it to you. I can’t send it to you.”
Fenn loved Dan. Dan was what they called a sensitive and passionate soul. He worked in soup kitchens and then cried when he left. It was this sensitivity that made their relationship so passionate and so deep but why, if Fenn was honest, he was alright only sleeping with him a couple of times a year.
“Well, then you should read it.”
Dan took a lugubrious sigh and then began reading:
“Dear Fenn Lawrence—” Dan had explained a long time ago that Fenn’s name was so short that when he wanted to get serious he had to use his middle name too, “this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write, because you are my best friend, and I love you—”
“And you also hate writing letters.”
“Fenn,” Dan scolded in a deeply sorrowful voice.
“I’m sorry,” Fenn said. “Continue.”
“It was right for you to let me know that you had met someone else, and you deserve someone who can love you completely. I hope he is it. See, I do care for you, so much. You have no idea, and it breaks my heart to think I’m going to lose you, but I know this is what God wants for me. I know that God wants me to be his priest. I can’t leave it. It’s killing me to tell you that you should be free.”
The more Dan read, the slower the reading became, for he had stopped for gulps of air and broken into gasps broken by crying. After every sentence he would say, “Wait a minute.” And then start over.
“But that’s what I’m telling you. Be free and pray for me as I go on to be a priest and finish what I started.”
Fenn received all of this as someone outside of it. It was as if there was so much emotion on Dan’s part, it could scarcely fit him in. When Dan was overcome by emotion, it always did this to him.
“I’m so sorry,” Dan said, and Fenn wondered if this was in the letter or if he’d just tacked it on.
“That’s… alright,” Fenn said.
“I hope you don’t hate me,” Dan continued, “but I get it if you do.”
“Dan, you’d already said you were going into the priesthood over a year ago, and you were thinking about it when we met.”
Suddenly, on the other end of the phone, Dan bawled again and said, “But it wasn’t REAL like it is now.”
“You mean you hadn’t lost me.”
Dan didn’t say anything, but on the other end came a terrible moan.
He was about to say, “You haven’t lost me,” but, of course, in a very real way Dan had. Tom was going to be it now.
“Danny,” Fenn said tenderly, “you never had to make a choice before, and now you have.”
He imagined Dan was probably nodding his head, while he sniffled on the other end of the line.
“It’s not supposed to be easy,” Fenn said. “Alright? It’s supposed to be hard. You went and I supported you. You were going to try it out and now you know you’re going to do it.”
Certainly, while Dan was off being celibate, Fenn was not. Not completely. There were others and now there was Tom. But being in Dan’s presence, in the light of his smile and in his warmth was like melting, and their relationship innocently grew from kneeling side by side in Mass, into quiet conversations, to laying in bed playing footsie, touching more and more and then waking up in each other’s arms. It was an innocent love that gave Fenn an erection meditating on it. Now it was gone. That was what Dan was mourning too.
“Are you going to come and visit me still?” Dan said, plaintively.
“Of course I am.” Fenn added, “Dummy. It just won’t be the same.”
“How do we draw the line?” Dan wondered. “I don’t know where the line is with us. I’m so used to us.”
He wished he could touch Dan. He wished he could hold his gentle friend. But then, if he could who knows where that would end up? Only… he did know.
“We’ll find a way,” Fenn assured him.
“It had to happen though,” Adele said. “I mean, you couldn’t always carry a torch for a priest.”
“I think it’s hitting him harder than it is me.”
“Of course it is,” Adele said. “You’ve got a hot boyfriend. All he has is Jesus.”
“And Jesus might be nice,” Tara added, “but he won’t fuck you in the middle of the night.”
Adele just looked at her.
“Well, he won’t,” Tara insisted.
One morning at the end of that week, there was a knock on his door and then Tom Mesda pushed it open and entered. Tom closed the door behind him. Tom was not very tall, but extremely handsome and he was in a suit and tie. It was in that moment that Fenn realized he had indeed been obsessed with Dan, and that the obsession was ended. Here was Tom and Tom was sort of slow, but he loved him. Slow in the way of love, slow in knowing what to do, but here he was, the man who had caught his eye, and Dan was gone.
“What’s your night look like?” Tom asked him, trying to give him a suave and piercing looking, and then turning away.
“How do you need it took?”
Fenn was sitting cross legged on the bed, and now he swung his legs over.
“We need to talk,” Tom told him. “We need to talk about us seriously. If you’re ready for that?”
Tom knew nothing about Dan and the last few days. Fenn had forgotten this. He said, “I was always ready.”
“Great,” Tom nodded. “Then dinner tonight?”
“Sure,” Fenn started, and then said, “I mean, yes. Absolutely.”
“And my treat, of course.”
“You’re treating me to McDonalds?”
Tom looked at him strangely and then said, “No, Fenn. I just said we’re going to dinner.
“You’re my boyfriend,” Tom said. “I’m an adult. This isn’t a burger and fries. I’m taking you on our first date.”
Fenn was amazed once again by Tom Mesda. Tom turned to him, his face earnest, but dark eyes twinkling.
“So be ready at six, a’right?”
Tom left. The smell of his cologne remained. On the hardwood floors of the dormitory, Fenn could hear the sound of his dress shoes. This was his man. This was his future. He had never seriously had a man before. He closed his door and put his ear to the wall, listening to Tom sing as he moved about his room, then hung up his clothes. All hesitations, all reservation, any thoughts that he had been wrong to let Dan go faded more and more with each sound of Tom moving about on the other side of the wall until, at last, all doubts were gone.
