The Boy Upstairs
A Short Story
Jon Rutherford
Copyright 2012 Jon Rutherford
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THE BOY UPSTAIRS
A Short Story
I'd been staring at a 3/4-blank screen for what seemed like days, but was probably only hours; and the stereo from upstairs was driving me crazy—again. It had driven me crazy at least three times by now, and you can only go crazy so many times without feeling altogether too commonplace, too much the average citizen, to accomplish anything meaningful and, for want of a better word, creative.
So, half against my better judgment, I decided to save the crappy story I was trying to write, put my laptop on “suspend,” walk up once again, knock on the kid’s door, and ask, politely as always (I refuse to do it any other way) if he would please turn his fucking music down.
The first time I’d gone up to speak to Michael, or Mike, as he had invited me to call him before apologizing for the noise and turning the stereo down till about five seconds after I returned downstairs, at which time it became louder than ever - that first time, he’d come to the door in blue jeans, barefoot, and wearing no shirt. Mike looked maybe 19, maybe even younger; and he had what I have always thought of (and believe me, I’d thought of it plenty in my forty or so years since puberty) as the Perfect Body, at least judging from the bare-breasted version of him that greeted me that day. Defined, but not too defined. Enough body hair to look invitingly nubile and cuddly, yet not too much. His face was—well, I must say I’ve only seen a few faces, all belonging to works of art, that came anywhere close.
The charm of the boy’s torso did not prevent my taking a thorough inventory of the rest of him either visible or suggested. Every inch met with my approval, and not a few with something like an internal “hallelujah.”
It had been a pity that his personality turned out not to keep step with his physical qualities. When the music went back up to a level that surely registered on the university’s seismometers, I knew that the young godlike creature was in fact nowhere near godlike in character and comportment. Or worse, maybe he was.
The second time I went to knock on the door of this creature of contradiction, he had come, after some delay, dressed only in boxer shorts. I bravely avoided averting my eyes. The boxers were, moreover, of the boxer-brief type, which allowed me to form a preliminary judgment of various other of the young man's features which had been only just hinted at on my first visit. This second time, I had thought, oh, my... What a pity he’s such an asshole. With the goodness he has to offer.
He was probably aware of his quasi-divine attributes and that may well have been at the root of his asshole-ishness.
Not that he was in any way rude face-to-face. He waited till the personal-encounter part was done with to turn rude by cranking up the music again after the second visit, as after the first. This I took as evidence of sociopathic behavior. And while dealing with sociopaths can sometimes be interesting, it is almost never fruitful.
The third visit, however, when he opened the door clad only in a crimson bikini brief, had been different. The music had remained at a decent level even after I got back to my work, and it stayed that way, in fact, if I heard it at all, till this day’s episode. Maybe there was hope, but it seemed a slow and unpredictable road to its realization. Oh well, at least there was the interim reward, frustrating as it might be in the long run, of seeing this perfect male in hardly any clothes.
As I mounted the shabbily carpeted stairs, I wondered idly (well, to be truthful not so very idly; rather eagerly in fact) what possible escalation, or should it be de-escalation? of dress would be possible this time. The obvious answer in terms of logical progression seemed 100% improbable.
But little did I know.
I knocked, loudly in order to make myself heard over the relentless din, which was actually shaking the ceiling light fixture outside his door in the hallway. No answer. After a reasonable interval I knocked again. I repeated the sequence of wait-knock-wait-knock no fewer than seven times before the door opened and Mike appeared, clad only in a bath towel. Actually it was a large hand towel -- the size between the washcloth and the bath towel in a matched set such as you might buy at Target or K-Mart. He had to hold it together at one side, as it only barely met at the top, over the hipbones, and had a gap of a good six inches further down on his exquisitely proportioned, firm-fleshed thigh. Water beaded up on that gorgeous torso, his jet black locks were sodden, clinging to his perfectly shaped head; a lone drop of water was suspended from the tip of his exquisite nose. He was obviously fresh out of the bath, and had grabbed the first thing at hand. I noted that those bottomless eyes were brown.
Unable to speak for a moment, all the processing power of my brain diverted to the sense of sight, I finally stammered out my request: “Mike, uh, hi. Do you think that maybe you might, you know, er, turn down your music just a little, maybe?”
“Oh, gosh, I am sorry about that. Sure. Just a minute...”
This time, he left the door open as he trotted across the polished hardwood floor (he had apparently spent so much on the complex and powerful stereo system that he couldn’t afford a simple, sound-muffling rug), reached the cabinet containing the integrated amplifier, a CD deck, a DVD player, and several other pieces of equipment I didn’t even recognize; and turned the music, not only down, but off.
I was taken aback, and even a little alarmed. This was unexpected. Did it mean something?
It turned out it did.
“Hey, uh ... sorry, but I don’t think I know your name?”
“Robert,” I said, wondering what was going on.
“Robert, could you come in here and look at my bathtub? Something’s wrong and I can’t figure out what it is.”
I immediately had a vision of being overpowered in the bathroom and my head held under the bathwater till I no longer posed a threat. After that, he could play his music as loud as he wanted, forever, without these annoying interruptions from his fellow tenant. I happened to know that the apartment adjacent to his (there was only one, as he his was on the end), as well as the double-bedroom one across the hall, were empty and had been for ages. Perhaps whenever they were shown, Mike was home enjoying his music and the prospective tenants acted as any sane people would, and went to look somewhere else.
Never the less, I’d made the possibly fatal mistake of stealing another peripheral glance at the gap in the clutched towel, that expanse of bare exposed hip...and I thought it would only be the neighborly thing to do, to accede to Mike’s request. Even though I knew my reasoning was as flimsy as the covering Mike had obviously grabbed off the towel rack when he heard the seventh series of knocks on his door, during a relatively quiet passage in the music, when it had for three or four seconds subsided to a mere 90 decibels or so.
A couple of little puddles of water were collecting where he stood. Beyond, where he'd crossed to the stereo, were damp footprints, the textbook arch dry, the little perfect, graceful toes and the rest of the soles’ imprints still visible. I stepped into the apartment, and Mike shut the door.
Then he dropped the towel.
I caught my breath—pretty audibly, I’m afraid.
“Oh, shit,” he said, bending to retrieve the towel. “I’m sorry.” Instead of wrapping the scanty thing around him again, he just stood there holding it, three-quarters turned away from me. “This has been a rough day.”
I don’t think I was blushing. I had seen many, many naked young men in my half century; though, granted, none anywhere near the perfection of this one—verifiable now in nigh every last indelible detail—and it really wasn’t hard, even under these trying circumstances, to pretend to keep my composure, and to do a pretty damn good job of it, too.
On the other hand, I wasn’t sure if he’d dropped the thing on purpose or not. If he had, what reaction was he aiming to provoke? And for what reason?
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, and marveled at the composure that had permitted formulating such a perfect response. My heart was racing and I was experiencing other physiological effects of the sudden exposure to Mike’s buck nakedness, but hell, those things are autonomic; no use worrying about them. I was wearing, by great good fortune, loose-fitting trousers, a thrift-store purchase from years back.
“What’s this about your bathtub, Mike?”
The odd thing is, he made no attempt to cover himself again. In fact, he now tossed the towel carelessly into the nearest corner of the living room. Still, I did not object. It would have been rude.
“Here,” he said, grabbing my arm, not roughly, but almost timidly, if you can imagine a timid grab. He led me into the small bathroom at the end of a tiny hallway. I made careful note of the movement of his bare buttocks, his thighs, his feet, but especially the buttocks, during the brief journey. He’d had his back more or less toward me since before letting the towel fall (there was no doubt now that it had been on purpose), so I really couldn’t quite judge everything, but even from the rear I noted the announcement of coming attractions (as they used to say on movie screens), glimpsed swaying between those perfect thighs, as he walked. It wasn’t more than five or six paces, but it seemed like crossing the Sahara. One of those moments when time stands still.
The bathtub was half full, but didn’t look out of the ordinary. Soap suds, ordinary tap water, nothing remarkable. That odd, heavy yet not unpleasant, smell of a wet young male lingered in the stuffy little room.
“I can’t get it to empty,” said Mike. He stood at the other end of it and now was turned toward me, with no shame; not that he had anything to be ashamed of, as far as I was concerned. Far from it. Everything was as glorious as all the rest of him. It did seem odd, though, that this young man would present himself completely nude and dripping wet to a man who was by any practical standard, a stranger. A stranger who lived beneath him, yes, but still not really even an acquaintance. For that matter, it would have seemed unusual, I felt sure, to go around nude even with long-time acquaintances, especially if they were still fully clothed.
“I imagine the linkage from the control to the stopper is broken or stuck,” I said, feeling like an aeronautical engineer at the very least and hoping it impressed Mike. I really wanted to impress him, for some reason.
“Oh. Do you think that will be hard to fix? Or expensive?”
We had stopped getting regular maintenance years ago, and we tenants were resigned to paying for most repairs out of our own pockets. This state of affairs might be susceptible to remedy in a court of law, of course; but all of us, it seemed, preferred to bite the bullet of personal expense rather than risk expulsion on some flimsy but ultimately legally sound pretext, as revenge for having sued for relief.
I had an idea. It’s well known that nude people feel more vulnerable in a situation where the others are clothed. They are both physically and psychologically more exposed, and at a decided disadvantage. I determined on the spot to play this fact for all it was worth.
“Hmm,” I said, pretending to be in deep thought. “I might be able to fix it myself. But there would be a condition.”
“Gosh, if you could... What would I have to do?”
“You must agree to keep your music down to a reasonable level, to be determined not by you, but by me.”
Mike looked downcast. He was still dripping, but not as much.
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” he said, in a not unfriendly way. “I thought you weren’t home today. I’ve been playing it really low since the last time you came up, and I bet you haven’t even heard it most of the time.”
I was startled by this revelation -- if it was a revelation, and not a bald-faced lie. It was true I had not heard anything even moderately loud since the last time I’d marched upstairs, a couple of weeks ago. I had assumed he wasn’t home most of the time. I hadn’t even heard footsteps. But if he made a habit of going around as he was now, that was understandable.
“Mike,” I said, “that’s great -- I guess. But listen, you know there are other tenants here, and I’m sure when the music’s as loud as it was today, and those other times, it must bother them, too.”
“None of them has come to com-- I mean to ask me to turn it down.” He still sounded friendly, maybe a bit puzzled, but definitely non-combative. Was I seeing another side to him? Was I getting a glimpse of the real Mike, and he wasn’t really an asshole after all? I certainly preferred to believe that. I decided to give him benefit of the doubt.
“Well, Mike, they probably are afraid to.” (Why? I asked myself, but hoped he wouldn’t notice the incongruity of the remark.)
“Oh.” He looked embarrassed for the first time, not by his nudity, but rather by not having thought of what must be obvious, even if he didn’t understand it.
“You see,” I lied, “I know you’re a good-hearted young man who wants to be cooperative and get along with your fellow tenants. They probably just haven’t thought of that themselves!”
He smiled shyly and it lit up the room. Rays of sunshine bounced off the merry waves in the stopped-up bathtub. Birds sang happily. I thought I could hear violins faintly in the distance.
“Mike, to be honest I’m getting a whole new impression of you.” I hoped he wouldn’t read too much into this, but what the hell. I was starting to feel powerful and reckless.
“I may be able to fix this even today. I guess you’ve already bathed?”
“Yes, I was just finishing when I heard you knock, and when I pulled on the handle nothing happened, but it did feel like maybe something broke. A kind of snapping feeling.”
“Aha,” said I. “A sure tip-off. The Finsternis linkage probably collided with the Jacobsen relief valve and, being old and worn, it finally snapped. That’s exactly what it feels like—what you just described.”
After a suitable pause, during which Mike looked genuinely worried, I added, “I can fix it. Yes, I can.”
“Can you? Oh, that would be great. But it sounds expensive. How much would you want for doing it?”
I didn’t dare say what first came into my mind. “Not a cent, buddy,” I said. “Only your pledge to keep the music down. Is that fair enough?”
“I’ll say! To be honest, I’m pretty low on funds right now. I was afraid it would be really expensive. You’ve taken a load off my mind.”
“Glad to help, friend,” I said. “Let me run down and fetch the appropriate tools. I’ll be right back, and it shouldn’t take more than half an hour or so before you’re good as new.”
Then the most amazing thing happened. Mike took the two steps separating us, hugged me, and planted a big leisurely kiss on my cheek. What the...!? I said to myself. His breath was sweet and pure; his skin smelled like...clover or something. The touch of his hands was positively a healer’s touch. He stepped back, flushed but smiling. “Sorry. I just feel so ... grateful, I guess.”
What did he think he was accomplishing, besides making me even more glad I was wearing those thrift-store pants.
“Uh...O-kay,” I said, emphasizing the “kay” with a rising inflection. “Mike, I think maybe I had you judged all wrong. I’m sorry if I did. You seem like a really, uh, nice guy after all.” I was proud of the on-the-spot euphemism.
“I’m sorry about the other times. And today, of course,” said Mike. It was only then that I noticed he now had an erection. God almighty, I thought. What’s going on here?
***
Back downstairs, I tried to compose myself but gave up; there wasn’t time. I wanted to give Mike just enough space to lose his hard-on—if he chose to; but not enough to change his mind about the repair, or his promise.
As I gathered tools I didn’t need (for I knew perfectly well what was wrong, and it was not the Finsternis-Jacobsen Effect at all, but a simple stuck linkage that would probably yield to a gentle tap with a hammer), I tried to figure out what on earth the boy was hoping to achieve by his displays. The kiss had felt genuine; that was the most disturbing aspect. Boners can be initiated by so many things that it’s useless to speculate. Only prudes and pervy zealots assume that they mean sex-on-the-mind every time. Still, it had been during or right after the kiss that it had occurred. I knew because I had been keeping an eye on his crotch with my excellent peripheral vision all during our conversation beside the faulty bathtub.
Well, another well-known fact was that some young men, quite a few in fact, are mysteriously drawn to older men, some to very much older ones indeed. It probably had to do with poor fathering or absent fathers, things like that, in childhood and adolescence. I had no reason, since I didn’t really know Michael at all, to assume this was the case with him, though. What else could be at play? He didn’t seem like the type to plot murder or entrapment for some sinister goal. I was willing to bet on that. I was puzzled.
After a decent interval of, say, two minutes, I headed back upstairs with my tools. I had grabbed a deli cheesecake still unopened in its plastic container, peeled off the price tag, and tossed it into my toolbox as well.
Mike was waiting for me—still unclothed. That confirmed my impression that something was really strange here. Still, he didn’t seem overtly abnormal in any way. Except for entertaining strangers (well, almost) in the nude. I hoped the question mark over my head wasn’t too shiny and noticeable.
“Here, Mike,” I said, holding out the cheesecake. “Why don’t you make yourself useful while I perform the repair. I think we could each use a half of that, don’t you?”
“Yum, I love cheesecake,” said the boy. “Thanks! I’m almost glad now about the loud music, because I got to meet you!”
The funny thing is, he sounded absolutely sincere. No sociopath could be that subtle and convincing, I thought.
“You know, Mike, I’m beginning to feel the same way. You’re okay,” I said approvingly. I still needed to ask about the nudity, but the perfect moment had not yet arrived. Hell, there's plenty of time, I told myself.
At the business end of the bathtub was a small port concealed by a board held in place by four screws, set into the hallway wall. This allowed access to the hot and cold water pipes as well as the linkage for the stopper mechanism. While Mike presumably was slicing and putting the cheesecake on plates for us to enjoy, I deftly removed the screws with a no. 2 Philips screwdriver, and within thirty seconds, not thirty minutes as I’d fibbed, I had the jammed linkage free, the stopper lifted, and the water draining smoothly from the ancient porcelain tub that stood on the tile floor (the familiar pattern of individual hexagonal tiles that would cost a fortune today) on its claw feet. Soon the tub was almost empty. Mike had not yet reappeared from, I supposed, his kitchen.
Then all the water had drained, yet Mike had still not shown up with the dessert. I decided to see what the delay was, and to report on my victory over the imaginary Finsternis linkage vs. Jacobsen valve. I’d screwed the little door back in place and Mike need never know that the mechanism was in fact much simpler than I’d let on.
In the kitchen I found him perched on a bar stool at a breakfast bar in one corner, weeping. His elbow rested on the bar and he was supporting his forehead with that fist. He was sobbing quietly but audibly and I noticed tears on the Formica.
I put my toolbox down and went over to him. I put my hand gently on his shoulder. “Mike. What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry.” (Sniff.) “I was mean the first time about the music. I turned it up as soon as I was pretty sure you were back downstairs.” That had been a couple of months ago, and though I hadn’t forgotten it, I was touched that he hadn’t either, and moreover repented of what he'd done.
“Hey, buddy, that’s OK. Nothing to shed tears over. You’ve been really nice today and I’ve already accepted your apology. Please don’t think about it any more. We’ll be friends now, okay? By the way, I fixed the bathtub.” I gave his shoulder a little man-to-man friendly shake.
He sniffed and wiped his eyes with the back of his beautiful hand. Still seated, he swiveled toward me on the bar stool, and put his arms around my midriff. His cheek pressed into my shirt front. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t deserve all your...your goodness. You ought to kick me instead.”
I began to think I was dealing with a nutcase. A gorgeous, almost unbelievably physically perfect, but mentally hopeless nutcase. He didn’t seem dangerous, certainly, but he sure didn’t seem anything resembling normal, either.
“Now, Mike,” I said, caressing the back of his neck and hoping to talk a little sense into him, “stop talking like that. Frankly, you’re not making a lot of sense.” I felt it was time to acknowledge that.
“I guess I’m not,” he said. He was no longer crying, but he was still clinging to me like a little boy. I didn’t push him away, but I felt increasingly uncomfortable because I couldn’t imagine what the hell was going on.
“Here,” I said, pulling a fresh, snowy white handkerchief out of one of my pants pockets. “Blow your nose on this. You’ll feel better.”
He took it and followed my suggestion, started to hand it back, thought better of it, and held onto the sopping handkerchief. He looked up at me with a pitiful puppy-dog kind of look. “You’re really kind, Robert,” he said. “I’m glad I have you for a neighbor.”
“And a friend,” I reminded him. “As long as you’re good about the noise, that is.” I thought making a little light of the thing might help.
He looked away, still smiling. “Yeah,” he said. “And I will be. I promise.”
“Well, like I said, I fixed the bathtub. The only charge is—a piece of cheesecake!”
“Oh, thanks, I almost forgot. It’s over there on the counter.”
He’d divided the cake into two pieces, one almost twice as big as the other, and placed each piece on a shiny little blue plate. There was a folded paper napkin lying beside each, and a stainless-steel fork on top of each napkin. I noticed he had started a pot of coffee going, too. It was just then making that exasperated noise coffeemakers make when they’re giving up on dripping and the coffee’s about ready.
“Do you have some cups?” I said.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot. Well, actually I started crying and didn’t get them down. I’ll get them.”
He stood up, crossed the small room, and got two blue china cups from a cupboard above the counter. I thought idly, he's the kind of guy the jock strap was invented for.
“Shall we go into the living room?” he said. “The bigger piece is for you.”
He was certainly turning out to be completely different from the impression I’d had not an hour earlier, when I first came up the stairs, which were shaking from the stereo in his room. If only he were both different and normal, it would be wonderful, I thought. I had no idea what to make of the boy’s behavior.
We took the cake and coffee into the living room. A coffee table stood in front of a low sofa. He patted a cushion of the sofa, looking at me, as an invitation to sit beside him. I sat, though I didn’t feel entirely comfortable about it under the circumstances. Then Mike, still nude, sat down beside me with his cake. Our coffees were steaming on the table and the vapor smelled wonderful. He had music playing again, but it was soft and enjoyable, something classical that I didn’t recognize. Possibly Brahms, a trio, I thought.
For a while we sat there eating our cheesecake and sipping coffee, while the music played, and didn’t say anything. Now and then I caught Mike looking at me with a shy smile. He didn’t really seem to be up to anything, I had to admit; the only odd thing was his lack of clothing, and his emotional displays in the bath and kitchen. But that had felt perfectly genuine, too. I was more baffled than ever. Something was wrong, obviously—but what? The situation was so entirely unusual that it was hard to ascribe any conventional properties to it, let alone figure it out.
He’d given me the larger portion of cheesecake and I hadn’t objected; I feel it’s rude to do the conventional thing of “Oh, you shouldn’t have” and so on, at least most of the time. If a host, and Mike was the host here, wants to be nice to you, why object? Accept it. That seems more graceful to me.
I’d finished my portion and put the empty dish and my fork down on the coffee table along with the paper napkin. Mike still had a couple of nibbles left on his plate, but he set his down, too. “That is so good!” he said. “Thank you. Where did you find it?” I told him the name of the deli, which was located in a large supermarket not far away.
“I want to to go there next time I get paid,” he said. Then he added, “Would you like to come along, too?”
I couldn’t think of any reason to say “no,” so I said, “Why not. Just let me know when you want to go. My schedule is flexible. I’m a writer. As long as I get my five or six hours in every day, my conscience is pure and the rest of my time is my own.”
“Great,” said Mike with a big smile. He put his arm around me. Oh, no, I thought, not again. Not that it was unpleasant, far from it—the boy was beautiful, he was turning out to be kind and thoughtful; I’ve always liked physical contact—but he was pretty obviously unbalanced in some possibly serious, though I hoped not dangerous, way. I didn’t shy away, though. In fact after a moment’s hesitation I put my arm around him, too.
We sat that way, embraced side by side, for what seemed like ten minutes, just hearing the music, which was lovely, a really inspired performance, I could tell, though I still hadn’t figured out what the piece was for sure. I was almost certain by now it was Brahms, though.
He played trash music at volumes dangerous to the structural integrity of the building, and yet he also had Brahms' chamber music in his collection? What was going on? I asked myself for about the thirtieth time that afternoon.
Finally, without removing his arm from my shoulders, he said, a little hesitatingly, “Robert...wouldn’t you feel more comfortable if you took your clothes off, too? It feels, well, kind of weird being the only one without clothes on.”
Good grief. What the fuck had I got myself into? My first thought was to jump up and flee, and maybe Google nearby mental hospitals in case I had to offer him advice any time soon. I was fifty years old, and though not a pitiful wreck by any means, I would look grotesquely out of place beside this Greek, or Roman, god.
“Mike,” I said, removing my arm and as tactfully as I could, lifting his away from my own back, “I like you, you seem like a truly nice boy, but do you know you’re behaving oddly? I mean, like, very oddly?”
He looked uncertain as if he perhaps had not understood what I’d said.
“I mean,” I went on, “do you think it’s really ... uh ... normal, acceptable, to greet guests, especially if they’re practically strangers, in the buff? I mean, come on, do you really ...”
“Are you disappointed?” he said, still seeming puzzled. “I know maybe I’m not real good-looking, but I thought you’d like to see me naked.”
I expected him to say more, but he didn’t. He was waiting for a reply.
“Well,” I said, as nearly completely flustered as I’d ever felt in my long, generally unsatisfactory life, “if you want the truth, I think you’re anything but not-good-looking. Michael, you are far and away the most gorgeous being I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen my fair share. More than my fair share, in fact.”
He still didn’t say anything. He looked more puzzled than ever.
“Good God, Mike, if I’d met somebody like you when I was your age or thereabout -- I’d have shouted my joy in the streets. I mean in terms of ... physical beauty. Well, hell, the other kind too. You seem genuinely sweet. You seem to be nuts, but...sweet and good all the same. I don’t know quite how to put it.” I felt maybe I’d said too much, but also maybe not enough.
“Well, then,” said Mike, “I don’t see what the problem is. I’m sorry, I don’t want to be difficult, but ... can you explain what I'm doing wrong, then? Apart from seeming nuts, that is?” I could tell he hadn’t taken offense. He really truly didn’t see the problem.
And, truth be told, I was beginning to wonder what the problem was, myself. Had I met some kind of bizarre, beautiful guru bent on enlightening me by a kind of Zen shock-treatment method? Was Mike just plain out of his head? Was I, for that matter? Maybe all this was a hallucination. It hadn’t felt like it though: The touch of his hand, that kiss by the bathtub; or when he buried his head in my shirt in the kitchen; or, yes, just his gentle, sweet, if awfully singular, manner. All that seemed real enough, but incomprehensible.
“Mike, maybe it’s me that needs an explanation. I mean... Well, what on earth's going on here? You’re one hell of a beautiful guy, sitting nude beside me here with your leftover cheesecake; you kissed me in the bathroom; you went to pieces in the kitchen and then held onto me for comfort like some little kid... What am i supposed to think? I don’t think you’re trying to...seduce me. I mean...I almost wish you were, but... Dammit, what's going on? What the everlasting hell is happening here, Michael! Tell me! I won’t be able to sleep tonight if I don’t start to understand something, at least!” It was me that was nearly in tears now.
“Robert,” he said, placing one of his lovely hands with its slender, graceful fingers on my knee. “Robert. In the first place, you ought to sleep here tonight, not downstairs. Don’t you ever get lonely? I know you live alone. I never hear any voices down there except when you get mad and yell at your computer—that’s what it sounds like. I know I’m awfully young in your eyes, I’m only nineteen, but...sometimes I feel old in my own eyes; I’m lonely too.
"You think I’m good-looking. I don’t know about that. I never thought so. But even if I am, that doesn’t mean I automatically have lots of friends and stuff because of it. I work a shit job—pardon me, I don’t use decent language when I’m ...emotional... sometimes. Anyway, I work a dumb, stupid, low-paying job in the printing plant, you know, the big one over on Gower Avenue. And it’s about doomed with all the changes in publishing, and it’s going to go out of business before long, probably, and then I’ll have to look for another shit job, and...and I’ve made you mad, and now you’ll probably go downstairs again and I’ll never get to see you anymore—”
He seemed on the verge of tears again. He was looking straight ahead, avoiding looking at me. He hadn’t smiled since all this dialog began.
I put my arm around him again, and this time I drew him close to me and held him there.
“Mike,” I said, stroking his head, “calm down. It’s going to be all right. Calm down, don't worry, I’m not mad, and I’m not going to leave you. I’m not going to leave you till you calm down and we figure this thing out. I’m just baffled by it all. I never expected all this when I came up to pound on your door.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I dropped the towel on purpose. I didn’t know who was at the door, but I suspected—I hoped—it would be you. In fact that’s why I turned my music up. I thought you were out, but in case you were home, I wanted you to come see me again.
“I planned it.”
I found myself experiencing the very odd feeling of starting to understand something while simultaneously losing what little grip I already thought I had on it.
“I thought you’d like to see me naked,” he went on. “It’s as simple as that. I apologize if you didn’t.”
He started to sniffle again, and it all seemed perfectly on the up-and-up, however awfully strange and unconventional it was. A tear rolled slowly down his left cheek.
I squeezed him to me, his head on my shoulder, both arms encircling him. “Mike, sweetheart, don’t cry. I ... I love seeing you without your clothes. God knows I do. But, big guy, you just don’t do things like that. It’s not normal, and I’m tempted to say it’s not right, either.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, tears now streaming down his face and into my shirt. “What’s wrong with making you happy for a little while?”
I had to admit I didn’t know what was wrong with it. It just wasn’t done, I guess. On the other hand, it was obviously done, by him. And the sight of him, even now, sitting there naked in my arms, was wonderful. And it did make me happy, there was no denying that. Still, I was now the one confused, even more than Mike, it seemed.
“But why, goddamn it, why did you want to do that for me of all people? You didn’t even know me. You still don’t, not really.”
“I just like you. No, I didn’t know you, but I thought that would be a good way to get to know you, and to make you happy at the same time. I guess I was wrong.”
“No, Mike, you weren’t wrong exactly. I mean...” I was at a loss to proceed.
“Well, I can go get dressed if that’s what you really want, but it seems so silly to me. I think it would be loads better if you took your clothes off too, and we got to know each other some more, and you slept up here tonight and weren’t lonely, even if only for one night. And I wouldn’t be so lonely, either. You’re not the only lonely one, you know, Robert.”
How could I deny the logic of what he was saying?
But crazy people can be frighteningly logical. That’s a big part of some craziness, for that matter. And yet... I felt like I was in a whirlpool of contradictions and paradoxes and it was spinning faster and faster, carrying me down to—where, I didn’t know.
He pulled away and sat up and took both my hands in his, looking me straight in the eye now.
“I think you think I’m going to try something with you. No, no, no! When I say why don’t you sleep up here, I mean I think it would be great just to hold each other and talk and enjoy each other's company till we get sleepy and then actually sleep in each other's arms, I don’t mean sex or anything sneaky, I just mean not being lonely. For one night at least. Then if you like that—I know already I would—we can do it a lot more times if you want to. What’s wrong with that?”
I couldn’t think of a single thing wrong with it. It was outlandish, it just wasn’t done, and yet it made utter, entire sense. Here was a terribly attractive boy who was proving to be sweet and caring as well as heartbreakingly beautiful, and who seemed to be aching just to be with somebody, and he had picked somebody he was pretty sure was lonely like him, he'd picked me, and decided to execute a nutty kind of offbeat, well, seduction I guess you could call it, but was it really? It seemed more like something utterly sui generis, a one-off as the British would say, a unique tactic, a brilliant, wacky experiment that for all its absurdity made sense.
He was in effect short-circuiting every social convention And if I wanted to be honest with myself, I finally had to admit that it just might work.
Good grief. Here goes, then. “Okay, Mike, you asked for it,” I said.
I stood up and started undressing.
***
That was seven years ago this very week. It’s our anniversary, and we’re quietly celebrating tonight.
I still write five hours a day most days. Mike still works at his shit job in the printing plant. Neither of us is real, real happy about his work. I wish more of my submissions got accepted, but what writer doesn’t? His employer at least hasn’t gone out of business yet, and even avoided bankruptcy three or four years ago. That's something. It could be worse. A lot worse.
We shop at the supermarket and people wonder why we giggle or wink at each other sometimes when we get to the deli.
And we still talk ourselves to sleep together every night. Sometimes we wake up in each other's arms. We go around stark naked in his apartment. I moved in with him because his place was in better shape than mine. I have to say we haven’t regretted it for one moment. Not one single moment in seven years. How rare is that?
Here he comes with the cheesecake.
God, he’s still so beautiful.
—THE END—