8

Never, since

childhood, had anyone brought me to such a pass. Bad allergy, I’d said. Me

too, he replied. We probably have the same one. Again I shrugged my

shoulders. He picked up my old teddy bear in one hand, turned its face

toward him, and whispered something into its ear. Then, turning the teddy’s

face to me and altering his voice, asked, “What’s wrong? You’re upset.” By

then he must have noticed the bathing suit I was wearing. Was I wearing it

lower than was decent? “Want to go for a swim?” he asked. “Later, maybe,”

I said, echoing his word but also trying to say as little as possible before

he’d spot I was out of breath. “Let’s go now.” He extended his hand to help

me get up. I grabbed it and, turning on my side facing the wall away from

him to prevent him from seeing me, I asked, “Must we?” This was the

closest I would ever come to saying, Stay. Just stay with me. Let your hand

travel wherever it wishes, take my suit off, take me, I won’t make a noise,

won’t tell a soul, I’m hard and you know it, and if you won’t, I’ll take that

hand of yours and slip it into my suit now and let you put as many fingers

as you want inside me.

He wouldn’t have picked up on any of this?

He said he was going to change and walked out of my room. “I’ll meet

you downstairs.” When I looked at my crotch, to my complete dismay I saw

it was damp. Had he seen it? Surely he must have. That’s why he wanted us

to go to the beach. That’s why he walked out of my room. I hit my head with my fist. How could I have been so careless, so thoughtless, so totally

stupid? Of course he’d seen.

I should have learned to do what he’d have done. Shrugged my

shoulders—and been okay with pre-come. But that wasn’t me. It would

never have occurred to me to say, So what if he saw? Now he knows.

What never crossed my mind was that someone else who lived under

our roof, who played cards with my mother, ate breakfast and supper at our

table, recited the Hebrew blessing on Fridays for the sheer fun of it, slept in

one of our beds, used our towels, shared our friends, watched TV with us on

rainy days when we sat in the living room with a blanket around us because

it got cold and we felt so snug being all together as we listened to the rain

patter against the windows—that someone else in my immediate world

might like what I liked, want what I wanted, be who I was. It would never

have entered my mind because I was still under the illusion that, barring

what I’d read in books, inferred from rumors, and overheard in bawdy talk

all over, no one my age had ever wanted to be both man and woman—with

men and women. I had wanted other men my age before and had slept with

women. But before he’d stepped out of the cab and walked into our home, it

would never have seemed remotely possible that someone so thoroughly

okay with himself might want me to share his body as much as I ached to

yield up mine.

And yet, about two weeks after his arrival, all I wanted every night was

for him to leave his room, not via its front door, but through the French

windows on our balcony. I wanted to hear his window open, hear his

espadrilles on the balcony, and then the sound of my own window, which

was never locked, being pushed open as he’d step into my room after

everyone had gone to bed, slip under my covers, undress me without

asking, and after making me want him more than I thought I could ever

want another living soul, gently, softly, and, with the kindness one Jew

extends to another, work his way into my body, gently and softly, after

heeding the words I’d been rehearsing for days now, Please, don’t hurt me,

which meant, Hurt me all you want.

I seldom stayed in my room during the day. Instead, for the past few

summers I had appropriated a round table with an umbrella in the back

garden by the pool. Pavel, our previous summer resident, had liked working

in his room, occasionally stepping out onto the balcony to get a glimpse of

the sea or smoke a cigarette. Maynard, before him, had also worked in his

room. Oliver needed company. He began by sharing my table but eventually

grew to like throwing a large sheet on the grass and lying on it, flanked by

loose pages of his manuscript and what he liked to call his “things”:

lemonade, suntan lotion, books, espadrilles, sunglasses, colored pens, and

music, which he listened to with headphones, so that it was impossible to

speak to him unless he was speaking to you first. Sometimes, when I came

downstairs with my scorebook or other books in the morning, he was

already sprawled in the sun wearing his red or yellow bathing suit and

sweating. We’d go jogging or swimming, and return to find breakfast

waiting for us. Then he got in the habit of leaving his “things” on the grass

and lying right on the tiled edge of the pool—called “heaven,” short for

“This is heaven,” as he often said after lunch, “I’m going to heaven now,”

adding, as an inside joke among Latinists, “to apricate.” We would tease

him about the countless hours he would spend soaking in suntan lotion as

he lay on the same exact spot along the pool. “How long were you in

heaven this morning?” my mother would ask. “Two straight hours. But I

plan to return early this afternoon for a much longer aprication.” Going to

the orle of paradise also meant lying on his back along the edge of the pool

with one leg dangling in the water, wearing his headphones and his straw

hat flat on his face.

to be continued

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