“He’s right, Lee,” Fenn said that night as Todd hit him over the head with a pillow and, pulling the blanket off of the couch said, “I’m going upstairs.”
“All right,” Fenn told him. “I’ll be up soon.”
“If he had said some bullshit about how you needed to stop moving around because you weren’t thirty anymore or… how you could write just as well settling here as you could traveling, then I couldn’t side with Tom. But he told you straight up, the one thing you can’t have if you keep rolling around is him. Or anyone else for that matter. And, I think Tom could make you very happy.”
“I haven’t met a lot of men—or a lot of anything—that I felt that way about,” Lee said. “Most people are pretty…”
“Not worth settling down for. Or worth getting to know. I know,” Fenn said. “You’re too like me. You’re too wild, and… alive. And most people…” Fenn shook his head.
“And Tom has the appearance of someone who might be a very dull, ordinary creature.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Lee said quickly.
Fenn looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
“That’s not what I see,” Lee said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well, it’s not what I see either. But, it’s what a lot of people saw. Why they didn’t understand it. Us, I mean. When we were together.”
“Fenn?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want me to be with Tom, or do you just want me to stay here? Or…?”
“Or what?”
“Or do you just want to mess up what he has with Brian?”
“He doesn’t have shit with Brian. Tom wants to know you. To try something with you.”
“He’s only met me twice. Three times at the most.”
“I could be mean and say that’s probably why he likes you so much, or I could be honest and say that people just know what they want. Or what they need.”
Lee sighed, and sat low on the sofa.
“You’re talking him up like he’s so good. But… You left him. He cheated on you. He and that Brian were screwing around behind your back. Hell, they’re screwing around now.”
Fenn shook his head, like he was trying to call himself back from a bit of intoxication. He nodded.
“Tom Mesda gave me ten years of his life. We gave each other that. And we were happy. He and Todd are the people not my blood who know me… better than blood. I’ve known him for almost twenty years, and he is good. I will always love Tom; you have to understand that, and I will always want what’s best for him. And what’s best for you too. And I think you all are best for each other. It’s just how I feel. Nothing can change my mind about that.”
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been a week since my last confession.”
“Brendan!” Dan pushed open the grille. “How goes it?”
“Great, Father. I mean, no. Not so great.”
“Oh,” Dan frowned and sighed. “Sorry?”
“Yeah. Thanks. First, I want to start out by confessing that I haven’t been confessing everything.”
“Do you wish to?”
“No. I don’t. I’m not ready for that, yet. There are things… That have been going on. Uh… never mind. We’ll get to that later. All right?”
“All right, Bren.”
“Father, I need advice.”
“Shoot.”
Brendan looked into the grille with a frown. Shoot was just too inappropriate at a time like this.
“Is it wrong to have sex with my girlfriend—?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t finished.”
“Yes, yes, the answer’s always yes, Brendan. You’re not married.”
“But we will be, one day.”
“You’re still kids. Brendan, sex is a huge responsibility for eighteen year olds. I think it’s too big. I think you and Dena aren’t ready.”
“Well, Dena didn’t say yes.”
“Good.”
“But, Father…”
“Yes?”
“What if my…” Brendan leaned in very close to the grille and hissed, “What if my having sex with Dena stops me from… bigger sins. Then is it okay?”
Dan sighed and blew out his cheeks.
“Brendan? Does this have anything to do with what we talked about before? About your feelings?”
“Maybe,” Brendan said. Then, “Yes. Maybe. Un huh.”
“Brendan, please listen to me, now.”
Brendan listened.
“Whatever you do with Dena, or anyone else, will not stop you from being... who you are.”
“I am NOT gay, Father Dan!”
“I didn’t say—”
“And it’s a sin. It’s a big sin.”
“So is fornication, Bren—”
“Father,” Brendan stood up in the confessional, his voice suddenly wild: “I have to go.”
“Brendan!” Dan stood up when Brendan threw the door open and ran out. Dan opened his door and hopped out only to be confronted by Barb Affren.
He looked at her.
She shrugged and pursed her lips. “Whatever just happened in there, it can’t be bigger than anything I’ve told you in the last five years.”
Loneliness hit hard when it was late at night. It seemed day would never come. He missed Noah in the bed beside him. He dismissed waking up Fenn to talk in the same moment he thought of it. Paul got up, got into the Land Rover and drove up to Birmingham to drop off the movies at Video Watch.
A young guy there blinked like he knew him, which was impossible, and Paul turned in the movies and exchanged a few simple words before looking for something good, or at least watchable. All the people here this late at night looked like there was something wrong with them, something haunted. But then that was him too, in a way, no matter that he said he was starting a new life, no matter how much he liked this play that opened next week. Look! There, in the back, behind the curtain, fat, hair mussed, eyes blurry, were the men looking for porn. He’d never thought of who was watching him. Or if he had, he’d hoped that it was maybe some sexy young kid. Not these. There were Pride parades and gay parties where you saw cute, young, albeit stupid homos applauding his work. But he had seen, on trips home, enough gay bookstores to realize that whatever people thought, it was just as many fat, gross, maladjusted sons of bitches, eyes blurry with porn, three inch penises stiff with the sex they could never have, who picked out his porn too. Was this one, shuffling out from behind the curtain, getting a movie with chicks with inflated tits rubbing their clits, or was he watching young mans fuck each other while he masturbated? For just a second he felt disoriented, taken out of himself, almost as if he could feel the caresses of the men who, in the dark, had checked out his movies and stroked themselves to his antics. For the first time ever what he did made him feel powerfully sick.
Paul put a hand to his head and he thought, “But I’m Paul Anderson.”
Johnny Mellow had done those movies. And he remembered Fenn talking about how he had seen one of his movies.
Turned on. Everybody gets turned on when they see them, but nobody really asks why. You… the way you looked, like you were in this zone. In this other place. Like when religious people go into ecstasy. It was like you and the other person didn’t care who else was there. You all were so into each other. So into the moment. And it was scary. The way I felt. The way you looked, like you were on the edge of something. Something you might not come back from. Something I had to watch at two in the morning while my boyfriend slept because it was secret, it didn’t belong to he ordinary world.
He wondered if there were hundreds of thousands of people like Fenn, watching his work in reverence. No, that was pretty unbelievable. They were jizzing to his own jizzing. He felt suddenly cold, and a little naked, and couldn’t remember why he’d done those films. Then he remembered it was late at night and he wanted to get some movies. Oddly enough he felt exposed and suddenly unsafe, like the best thing to do was get some movies and then get out, get in the Land Rover and get back to Versailles Street quickly.
There was a movie bin of cheap pre-watched videos and DVDs, five for five dollars, and Paul decided these would be a better bet than renting something. He picked out old movies, Gone With the Wind, Spartacus, and The Lion in Winter. Then he got Gandhi and The Color Purple.He had wanted to be someone like Spartacus or Gandhi. Once he had wanted to be somebody. He wondered if it was too late for that now. He wondered why he was so scared.
At the counter, the boy who looked at him with vague recognition finally said in what Paul realized he would have called a faggoty voice in high school, that voice you were always afraid you had, “You look like someone? In a movie.”
“Really?” Paul said, forking over the money.
“You look like… and actor I’ve seen,” the boy went on in a coy voice.
He was a cute boy, a little plump like the ones who were destined to be gay from an early age, who would never have that grace period of thinking about it, living somewhat normally while beginning a secret life.
For reasons he didn’t know, suddenly Paul said, “Johnny Mellow from Pizza Slut?”
The boy’s eyes went wide.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll tell you a secret,” Paul told him, grinning. All the fear was gone from him now, and all of the disorientation fell away wit the pronouncement.
“I am Johnny Mellow.”
And then he winked, took his plastic bag full of movies, and strode out.
Adele came onto the back porch where Lee was sitting on the wicker sofa, typing on his laptop and said, “You’ve got a friend. He wants to know if you can come out and play.”
“Tom Mesda,” Lee looked up over his glasses at the man who had emerged.
“I was just out and about and wondered if you wanted to be out and about too.”
“You’ve got on jogging pants.”
“I was jogging.”
“Oh.”
“Would you like to jog?”
At this Adele burst out laughing, and turning around went back into the house.
“Let’s see,” said Lee. “I smoke. I drink… I fornicate. I eat too much. I… no. I don’t jog.”
“Well...” Tom did a little jogging dance, “Let’s do something.”
“I’m writing.”
“Can’t you write later?”
Lee frowned.
“I thought,” he said, “that you were one of those intensely brooding serious types who was dedicated to their work.”
“I am,” Tom said with a grin.
“Who understood that I am dedicated to mine.”
“Well, I don’t want to be brooding today. I want to go out. Let’s go out.”
Lee pushed up his glasses, pushed up a finger, and resituated his laptop.
“As soon as I finish this page we’ll go. Now go in the house and play with Adele or something.”
“Brendan, what are you doing tonight?”
“Uh. Oh, I was going to be hanging out with Dena,” he told Kenny.
“You’ve been with Dena every night this week.”
“Well, she is my girlfriend. You know?”
“Yeah. But you don’t have to spend every waking hour with her. We used to do stuff.”
“I know that,” Brendan said. “But look...”
And then Brendan said nothing while he totaled the woman’s groceries and went onto the next person’s order.
“Look, what?”
“Look,” Brendan said. “We’ve probably been spending too much time together anyway.”
“Really?” said Kenny. “Is that the way you feel?”
“Well, yeah, Kenny.”
“I invite you into my house, into my family, and then you just up and say that’s enough Kenny. I’m going to spend all my time with Dena.”
“Look,” Brendan said, under his breath, hoping no one paid Kenny any attention. “I’m just saying we should cool it. Cool it for good.”
“Wha?” Then Kenny said, “Well, you know what? Fuck you, Brendan Miller.”
“Kenny!” Brendan hissed.
A little louder, Kenny said, “Fuck you.”
And then he went up three aisles to his register.
