Raising his chin, as if turning his face to a light above him, he drew his thumb and forefinger down the length of his nose.
"We'd never slept together," he said. He spoke into his hand. "We were waiting for the wedding night. I hadn't thought much about it, hadn't thought about it at all, really. Right there in the Marshall Field's, for the first time, I imagined what it would be like, and I realized that it wouldn't be the same at all as with a man." He looked at each man in the group, then at me. "The position wouldn't be the same. The feeling-the sensation and the emotion and the intensity-. It would all be entirely different. With two men, sex-when it's good-it's the collision of two equal and opposite forces. It's explosive."
I pictured him as he'd been in college, mean as shit, a young buck riding roughshod over some submissive young man he'd picked up.
Rob said, "But men and women are opposite forces. More so than two men."
Charlie shook his head. "Not sexually. Yes, of course, men and women represent opposites, and in every other arena, they can complement each other. They can enlarge each other, enrich each other, by contributing their different perspective on things. That's the whole plan God had in mind, right? That's the grand scheme." He cleared his throat.
Eliot frowned. "That's correct."
"But sexually, it's always on the woman's terms. A woman has a slower fuse, so a man, when he cares anything for a woman, he'll tone things down. I know this isn't always the way it is. There are women-. I'm talking about a good woman. With a good woman, a man will start easy and build slow. That's how it has to be. With two men, that's one way to go, but, well-speaking for myself-I liked to fuck like an animal."
Around the circle, everyone stiffened, sat up straighter.
Charlie blushed and cleared his throat. "Sorry," he said.
"What's going on with you tonight, Charlie?" Eliot said.
Charlie glared at Rob. "Every other week Rob claims he's found the woman of his dreams. I don't see it happening." He cocked his head. "I don't mean that. I mean to say that if he does-. If you do, Rob-. If any one of us finds a woman and tries to make a go of it, it can only be half a marriage. To some of you I'm sure it's even the better half."
Eliot clenched his fists. I scooted my chair back an inch or two. Eliot said, "Charlie-."
As always, Fred and Jeremy sat together on one end of the sofa. Charlie turned his head, looked at them, glowered at them. He said, "You two. You two concern me most of all. Here, in group, you rarely say anything, but at any kind of social function you cut up like-. Well. You snip and snipe like a couple of queens. You live together, for God's sake."
"In separate rooms," Fred said.
"On different floors," Jeremy added.
The two men had, if anything, drawn closer together. Fred lifted his arm as if to wrap it around Jeremy's waist.
"You were lovers for years," Charlie said. "How do we know-?"
"Charlie!" This was Eliot. He had stood. On the rack on the hearth, the poker and shovel and tongs clanged against each other. "This is not an appropriate-."
All at once Charlie seemed to sink into himself, to slacken, to go from a hulk of muscle to a puddle of muck. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry, everyone. It's just-."
Softer now, Eliot said, "What's going on, Charlie? What is this about?"
Red-eyed, Charlie looked at Rob. "I'm happy for you, Rob. I am. But for me-." He looked into his hands, open on his lap. "For me, it doesn't feel like it's ever going to happen." Again he looked up. "I hope it happens for you, for you and for-for Zoe."
"Chloe," Rob said.
"Chloe. Sorry."
I said, gently, "I think Charlie has a point." I looked around. On the sofa, in the chairs, the men held themselves quite still. They might have been characters in a slasher movie, waiting, waiting, waiting to hear whether some ominous sound turned out to be a tree limb brushing the side of the house or a serial killer with a machete. "I'm new here. I'm sorry if I'm getting this all wrong-. But-. But I was just reading Hope and Healing, and Stinson says some people are able to change, but most are not."
Everyone was nodding.
I looked at Rob. "If you're able to change, that's fantastic, but it's rare. And-and you have to be honest with yourself, and be really sure that it's a change, and not wishful thinking." I looked at Charlie. "And if you're not one of the ones who can't change, it-. It's nothing to be ashamed of, but-but it's not uncommon for-for people like us. It means-."
I was about to say that Charlie was one of the chosen few, with a life of hard-won, well-earned holiness to look forward to. But I glanced at Rob, and I saw that his face had fallen. The corners of his mouth drooped. His gelled and pomaded hairline seemed to have slumped halfway down his forehead. Somehow even his nose seemed to have lowered itself a fraction of an inch. My mention of "wishful thinking" had been too accurate for his comfort, perhaps. I thought awhile, choosing my words carefully.
How had Stinson put it?
Again I turned to Charlie. "You have to continually do your best to subjugate your carnal nature."
Eliot smiled at me. "Exactly," he said. He resumed his seat on the hearth.
Charlie stared at the floor, at a point somewhere beyond his feet. He rubbed the nape of his neck. "I apologize, everyone. Long day. Meetings all day. I'm sorry." He turned to me. Almost in a whisper, he said, "Sorry." Again, as if I-more than all the others-desired, deserved, or had demanded an apology, he said, "Sorry."
* * *
After the prayer, the men pounced like famished dogs on the leftover coffee and cookies. I stayed where I was, next to Charlie. We sat a while in silence.
At last I said, quite softly, "I've heard there's a restroom at Dayton's, on the second floor-."
Eyes wide, he looked at me. He shook his head. "It's in the basement. Behind the shoe repair."
"What happened?" I asked him.
With one hand he kneaded the knuckles of the other. "Nothing," he said, looking at me sidelong. "Essentially nothing. But it was-. A boy offered, and I got as close to him as I am to you now. He was-. He was?ttractive." He exhaled, as though he'd been holding his breath for hours or for days. "Very attractive, and everything out there for the taking. His pants down around-."
He stopped. He drew himself up. I looked over at the knot of men gathered at the opposite end of the coffee table. Rob stared at Charlie.
"Never mind that," Charlie said. "I had my hands almost on him. After all these years. I was this close." A wave of his hand took the measure of the distance between us. He shook his head. "I've been trying to figure out how I could have such a false ideal of my own tenacity of purpose."
"Didn't you tell me that the desires never go away?" I looked up at him. He nodded. "Didn't you tell me that you almost have to distract yourself to avoid them?" Again he nodded. "And don't we all recognize that we can't do this alone?"
"You're right," he said. "Of course, you're right." He opened his mouth to speak further, but I interrupted him.
"Maybe you've depended too much on your distractions and not enough on your-." I glanced up. Eliot was watching us. I dropped my voice. "That is to say, not enough on God."
Stung, he looked at me. "Maybe you're right." Turning to me, he said, "After Rob went on like he did, and everyone piled on, congratulating him on his success-."
"Today was a bad day for it. You had a bad day, that's all. Like Eliot said-." A spasm in my shoulder. I kneaded the muscle. "Like Eliot said-. I'm paraphrasing, but he said that the past is fixed. The present is all about external circumstances. You have to do what you know is right, and in the future you'll look back and know-. You'll know you behaved correctly, and you'll be proud and happy."
Again, Charlie stared at the floor.
I said, "Last week you said we all choose this, but that's not what Stinson says. That is to say, I may have read it wrong, but in Hope and Healing, I thought it said the circumstances that-that cause us to have these desires-. Those are beyond our con
trol, early in life. The choosing is all in how you handle them-whether you act on them or not. You did what you were supposed to do. You were tempted-you can't help being tempted-but you walked away."
Charlie looked up. He looked at Eliot, but Eliot was talking to Jeremy and didn't notice. Charlie said, "I'll make an appointment with Eliot. I haven't seen him privately in a long time. I'll start seeing him every couple of weeks." He looked at me, smiled wanly. "I'll get through this. I've been through worse."
Stroking his beard, he stared into the fire. I looked at him, followed his hand with my eyes as it ruffled his whiskers. I longed to hold him, to feel his thick arms around me, to touch the slabs of stony muscle on his back. I forced myself to look away.
* * *
20 - Turn the Page
In Martin's office, above a bamboo fountain and a tiny sand garden, next to the white board, a poster of Ravi Shankar hung in a cheap plastic frame. Always it had fascinated me. Shankar bowed over his sitar with a look of perfect concentration, pure whole-hearted joy. But it was not all joy, I was sure. There must be supplication as well, subservience to his gift, obeisance to his Muse, or to whatever analogue his culture recognized.
Now that I found myself once again at Martin's conference table, in the chair that faced the poster, I could not move my eyes from it. Absently I rubbed my hands along the smooth curved edge of the wooden tabletop. The placidity, the quiescence, of Shankar's pose moved me. For a couple of hours, maybe-thirty minutes here, fifteen minutes there-I had felt what I saw in Shankar's enraptured expression-the joy, the gratitude. The sense of being small, inadequate, flawed-but cared for, protected, loved.
Sometimes, when I had a sheet of staff paper in front of me and a pencil in my hand, and ideas seemed to come faster than I could write them down-sometimes, when it was all going perfectly-I felt as if the music wrote itself, or rather as if it came from some source outside of myself, or perhaps from some part of my brain that could not be touched by logic or speech. There was nothing to do, then, but listen, obey, transcribe. I hadn't experienced that rarefied state of inspiration in months-not since Tom had died.
Christa sat across from me. She nudged my shin with the neb of her shoe. Impaling my eyes with hers, she said to Martin, "Jonah and I were talking about that just this morning. He made a very good point. The phrase has become a kind of joke."
Which phrase? What the hell had we been talking about? The last minutes were a blur.
Martin stood at the white board. He held a Dry-Erase marker, wiggled it, beat it against the palm of the opposite hand. We'd started early. Cramped and cryptic green lists joined the rainbow cicatrices of last week's lists and the lists of a month before.
Martin said, "We're off the subject. The forum starts in less than two hours. Thorstensen will be there, watching like a hawk."
Christa rolled her eyes. "Gasbag." Quickly she added, "Thorstensen, not you, Martin."
"We're not just the political correctness police. This has so little to do with political correctness, and yet everyone thinks that's what we're all about. How do we get this across?"
I said, "What about the idea that we're trying to prevent all sorts of discrimination, including discrimination against people who hate political correctness? Did you mention that to Thorstensen?"
Looking down, Martin capped and uncapped the marker. "It has seemed impolitic to approach the subject directly. If I had to conjecture based on his behavior, I'd have to say that that approach would go far. Or maybe we're off his radar entirely, now. It's hard to say. His attitude has been as-well, as hail-fellow-as ever."
Christa had slouched in her chair. I looked down. She cradled her belly in her hands as if she were months along instead of weeks, as if her belly had swollen enormously. But for four weeks I'd watched her carefully, and she'd gained no weight that I could see.
Hauling herself upright, Christa turned toward Martin. "'Hail-fellow'?" she said. "I never heard that."
"Cordial," he said. "Congenial. Friendly in a man's-man sort of way." Looking at me, Martin said, "I mean 'man's man' in the hetero sense, of course." He watched his fingers fidget with the marker. "There's always the chance he's being disingenuous. I'm not the judge of character I aspire to be."
One of his infamous silences followed. Christa poked me again with her shoe. I popped my eyes at her; I had no more idea than she where these jaunts of Martin's took him.
I said, "We'll know more at the end of the forum, I suppose. Until then it's all conjecture."
* * *
Christa and I left Martin to copy his green ciphers onto index cards. In the outer office, I filled my tote bag with books and journals. Leaning against the edge of my desk, Christa scrutinized her fingernails. Occasionally, randomly, she handed me a book. I set aside the tote bag and flopped into my chair.
"It's not even remotely time for lunch, and already it seems like it's been a long day."
"True," she said. Her tone suggested that she had no idea what she'd just agreed to.
The phone rang. Christa went back to her cube. I answered the phone.
Eliot. "I owe you an apology," he said.
"What on earth for?"
"I still haven't done something for you that I promised a couple of weeks ago. I promised to clear an evening appointment for you."
"You did?"
"For most people the group sessions are only supplemental. Most of my clients, in fact-the majority-don't even participate in group. Group sessions provide extra support to help keep on track. Private sessions keep group from focusing on just one of us. Do you want Tigger's slot?"
An unfortunate choice of words, I thought. "Tigger's, um, slot? What about Tigger? Doesn't he need his slot?" Barbara would have chortled at all this, had she been there to hear.
"Tigger's giving up."
I stopped cold. "Giving up?"
"He called me a while ago. He and his ex-lover are moving in together."
"That's horrible." Wasn't it? Mostly I thought so, but another part of me-I was still new to all this, after all-envied Tigger. In my mind's eye, I saw him in a summery loft in downtown Minneapolis, sharing a futon with another twenty-something in jeans and Doc Marten boots. In my mind's eye, they looked happy. Hard-fought, well-earned holiness be damned-they looked happy.
"Monday at six o'clock. That was his standing appointment."
"That's fine. In general, that's fine, but I'm not sure I can make it tonight. My boss and I have a meeting. It might run late."
Eliot cleared his throat. "I'll wait until six-fifteen. If you can't make it by then, I'll count on you for next week. Well, for Thursday and then for next week."
Almost the second I rang off, Christa appeared. "What's so horrible?"
"Nothing. An acquaintance has decided to ruin his life."
"Any thoughts on lunch?"
"You're eating now?"
"Like a horse." Her hands smoothed the shimmery bronze fabric of her blouse over her belly, framed it as if it bulged hugely. "Everything except for milk. Cheese is okay, oddly enough, but the very idea of milk turns my stomach." She grimaced.
I spun in my chair so that I faced her. "Nothing ambitious, please. I don't feel like driving, and I'm certainly not riding with you."
She clucked. "You're just being difficult. I've never had an accident or a ticket in my life."
"I'm sure you haven't," I said. Rising, I took her by the elbow. "Not since you faked your own death and changed identities."
In the hallway, she tugged on her skirt, an ankle-length sheath of tawny suede. "Does it show that I had the surgery?"
"The Oslo surgery?" I closed the door behind us. "When you go to the gym, don't do any more shrugs. Those shoulder caps betray your deepest secret, my brother."
She sighed. "I'm tired of that game now. Are we going to DOT?"
I shook my head. I was weary of the Department of Transportation's cafeteria, and of the crowds of beleaguered motorists and would-be motorists who took refuge
there after a long morning's confrontation with the state bureaucracy. "Let's do the cave."
It was her name for the cafeteria in the nethermost vaults of the Capitol. To reach it we walked through passages of glossy ceramic tile and gray concrete. It was early. We had the cafeteria nearly to ourselves. Near the door, under a groined vault, we crowded our Reuben sandwiches and Diet Cokes onto a square oak table.
"So tell me about this mysterious acquaintance," she said. "Is he ruining his life by sleeping with you or by swearing off sleeping with you?"
I swallowed. "Nothing like that. I barely know him."
"What is it, then? Drinking? Drugs? Green stamps?"
"Green stamps?"
"Lottery tickets? Obsessive chess playing? Kleptomania? Dipsomania? Beatlemania?"
"Like I said, I barely know him." I swigged my Diet Coke. "Let it run."
Chewing, she looked around. A few people occupied nearby tables. Everyone wore a suit. A woman guffawed.
Shifting in her seat, Christa said, "We have to talk about something harmless. Talk about rowing. That always absorbs time."
I sighed. "I miss my boat." Three quarters of my sandwich remained, but my appetite had gone. I shoved my plate aside. Flexing my shoulders, I said, "I feel all slack and soft lately."
She grunted, nodded. "I see what you mean. Maybe you should have the Oslo surgery. Man up a bit." She blotted her mouth with a paper napkin. "You wouldn't be rowing now anyway, though. Isn't the river frozen over already? What about a gym?"
"I had a membership. I had to cancel it. Tom was paying half the rent, and now-you know-he's not."
Crinkling her nose, she said something I didn't catch. Thorstensen had walked by. Through an open doorway I could see him standing in the food line. He was in shirtsleeves and a vest of puckered gold silk-why could he never buy his clothing in the correct size? Tray in hand, he elbowed the ribs of a chum. They threw their heads back in laughter.
"He can't see us as anything but a bunch of nosy, bossy liberals butting into everyone's private beliefs," I said. "He won't stop until we're abolished." That had been the message he'd delivered with a thud, all those weeks ago when he'd dropped Onslaught onto his desk.