Sunday Best

by Edward O. Phillips

  “I think we understand one another.”

  “Well, Charles, as long as we seem to be laying our brass tacks on the table, let me ask another question. Are you and Douglas lovers, or have you been?” I am not generally so perfunctory, not to say tactless, but I had not brought the subject up. Charles did not seem in the least surprised by a question that, had it been directed at me, would probably have earned the response, “None of your damned business!”

  “No, nothing like that,” he replied, leaning forward. “Douglas is still locked in the closet – and that cloned mother of his has the key on a string around her neck. Doug is going to be a late bloomer. But it’s only a matter of time before he unties the apron, strings and puts on the apron himself. Up to now, whenever Doug catches cold Lois blows her nose. You must have seen how much she dislikes me. She hates the idea of her son having a gay friend. Guilt by association. I don’t know to what extent she realizes Doug is gay, or will be one day. But she is absolutely determined he will marry, Jennifer or someone else. Marriage will make him legitimate.”

  “Charles, that kind of thinking went out with corsets.” I felt uneasy at having my suspicions so roundly confirmed.

  “Which she probably still wears. And her dear late husband probably wore red ties, in a Windsor knot. Oi! As you can tell, Geoffry, I’m not too happy about Doug and Jennifer as mister and missis, even less so as I introduced them. Doug is one of my best friends, and I think Jennifer’s a terrific girl. But I don’t think they should get married.”

  “Have you and Douglas ever had what people of my generation use to call a little talk?”

  “We couldn’t. Doug’s pretty defensive about that side of his life. It’s strictly Keep Off the Grass, even when he’s smoking a joint. I don’t know how much he knows or suspects about himself, but if I went charging in it would only create bad feeling. I know they’ve been sleeping together. But they’re both pretty naive.”

  “You mean they are mistaking the novelty of sex for love?”

  “Exactly.” By now Charles had finished his gin and diet ginger ale, and I signalled the waitress to bring us both another. I remembered the night of the dinner party at Lois Fullerton’s house, and how I had been struck by the absence of real chemistry between Douglas and my niece.

  “Charles, I am genuinely curious. You are just about the same age as Douglas, twenty-five perhaps, yet you are years older in point of view.”

  He made a grimace, not quite a smile. “One of the advantages of being a disadvantaged child is having to grow up faster. I was not insulated by money from some of life’s more abrasive realities. These days being naive is a perishable commodity, like soft cheese. You need a controlled environment to keep it fresh.”

  “I guess. But even you will have to admit that many successful marriages have been built on friendship,” I suggested, temporizing. “Douglas and Jennifer may well forge a partnership that works for them.”

  Charles rubbed his short curly hair the wrong way; it sprang back into place of its own volition. “For a while, yes. But once they’ve put up the valance boxes and found throw cushions that match the wallpaper, once they’ve grown used to walk-in closets and quality paperbacks on the night table – happiness is two in a rowboat; this is your McLife – they’ll have to take a second look at one another.”

  “Don’t you think a baby or two might keep them off the streets?” I am convinced that nothing widens cracks in a marriage more quickly than children, but I wanted to hear what Charles had to say.

  “They both claim they want to postpone having a family. That’s a plus. It will make the divorce easier if there are no children involved.”

  I was beginning to feel the comforting effect of my albeit tiny scotches. Laughter welled up at the slick cynicism of this young man, no older than the prospective bridegroom. “Have you thought of talking to Jennifer?” I asked.

  “I don’t think I could do that. I don’t know her well enough. And what could I say? I don’t think you should marry Douglas because one day he will go gay? She would be sure to repeat the conversation to Doug. And he would get sore. Now, if you were to talk to Jennifer. You’re her uncle.”

  “By a sheer accident of nature. I am a far cry from that kindly avuncular figure you used to find in a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover. I scarcely know the girl. A girl to me, a young woman to the rest of the world. And that’s the crux of the matter. She is an adult, in charge of her own life. One of the things I have come to learn, the hard way, is that to interfere in somebody else’s life is a serious matter. Jennifer would listen to me because I am older and she is well brought up. Our very lack of closeness would make me just that much more plausible. Think of how potentially devastating it could be for her, for anyone, to have a remote, respected figure warn ominously against the marriage for which invitations are being addressed as we speak.” I paused to add a little soda to my drink.

  “Charles, I know what you are trying to do. From the best and kindest of motives you would like to prevent their making what you consider a mistake. But maybe it’s not a mistake. Maybe this marriage is a necessary step on their – you must pardon the metaphor – journey to self-discovery. We have all done foolish things, made right choices that led to dreadfully wrong results. How else can we move towards – I falter – wisdom, maybe? Enlightenment? Salvation, perhaps? Jennifer and Douglas have a right to their mistakes, lapses in judgement, whatever. And the best thing you and I can do is to suck in our guts, fasten those striped trousers, tug on the tailcoat, and see them through, with a smile on our lips and a song in our hearts. And, not to overlook the bottom line, they will be practising safe sex.” I spread my hands open, palms upward. “You have equal time.”

  Charles opened his eyes wide in mock astonishment. “Mr. Chadwick, you are totally awesome.”

  “Totally tiresome is more like it. However, on a lighter note, I am beginning to think-seriously about dinner. Are you free to join me, on my plastic?”

  “And how. But I’ll have to make a call.”

  “Good. You make your call and I’ll take my briefcase up to the room. I’ll meet you in the lobby in seven and one-half minutes.”

  Charles fished around in his trouser pocket. “Could I scrounge a quarter for the phone?”

  “I can see you’re not a cheap date.”

  He laughed. “On the contrary, I’m as cheap as they come.” In my room I took the opportunity to change from the suit I had worn all day into a jacket and slacks. Without turning myself into Joe College, I wanted to appear less at variance with Charles in his crew-necked sweater and chinos under the down-filled parka: out of L.L. Bean by Eddie Bauer.

  “Yo, Geoffry,” he called as I stepped off the elevator. “You changed.”

  “My clothes, not my point of view. These are my older- man-not-wanting-to-look-like-sugar-daddy duds.”

  A doorman costumed as though he were the Grand Duke of Ruritania flagged down a taxi, a two-dollar bill discreetly changed hands, and we were off, into the magic and mystery of an Ontario night.

  At Charles’s suggestion we ended up in a crowded, fun restaurant with natural brick walls, tiled floors, menus written in chalk on large blackboards. The overall decorating motif was noise, fluid, enveloping, self-renewing, so pervasive as to be a presence, a third, uninvited guest at our table. With the heedless energy of youth, Charles happily shouted over the din. I knew if I tried to compete with the uproar, my larynx wouldn’t last past the Melba toast; instead I pitched my voice low, projecting the tone like a stage whisper. Judging from the amount of waving back and forth and table hopping, the restaurant had to be a popular hangout of the under-forty set. I felt a bit like a chaperone.

  Across a few more drinks and immense portions of wholesome food, we managed to communicate. We did not converse; that gentle art does not flourish in decibels like those of a rock concert. Charles seemed quite ready to chatter away in a quiet scream, and I was more than content to listen, an activity that inc
luded reading his lips from time to time in order to double check the message.

  Still, a picture began to emerge of a young man, comfortably self-centered, as young men of his age generally are, but not without a set of what my own mother would have called principles. Orphaned young and raised by an aunt and uncle, who sounded like the worst kind of Bible-thumping Christers, he had still absorbed a value system that, if mostly rejected, remained a measure of conduct to be followed or ignored. He had intelligence more than intellect, and did not allow a formal education to short-circuit his common sense. I also came to realize, with relief I have to confess, that his slightly camp flippancy was more in his mouth than in his conduct. And, astonishing as it might seem, we managed to negotiate the entire meal without mentioning AIDS.

  In a curious kind of way I was enjoying myself. At this point in my life I do not meet many people Charles’s age, at least not for extended periods. I got rather turned off youth by those foolish, unkempt, self-indulgent flower children of the sixties, while the so-called yuppies are just like me, only younger. Listening to Charles in this den of din, I felt almost like a sociologist, or an anthropologist, studying behaviour patterns different from my own. Perhaps the only difference between an anthropologist and a private investigator, both of whom report on the sex lives of others, is that the anthropologist gets paid by the government.

  To leave the restaurant and step into quiet brought a rush of exhausted relief, not unlike that I felt as a child when I could finally go home from a birthday party: musical chairs, and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, and blind man’s bluff, and cross adults, and kids throwing up, and fighting over favours in the birthday cake. The best favour of all was being able to leave.

  The evening had reached the point when, had I been Charles’s age, I would probably have gone out on the town, in a search for the adult version of the child’s party with sex as the favour in the cake. I told Charles that I was old enough to find my way home alone, if he had plans for the shank of the evening. Announcing that he was totally at liberty, he insisted on buying me a brandy or a nightcap. The offer seemed genuine, and since I was on a kind of mini-vacation, I accepted.

  By mutual consent we walked for a while, both to allow that home-style cooking to settle itself and to clear our heads of sound. Talk was inconsequential, of restaurants, movies, clothing, in which Charles had an interest far exceeding his budget. We skirted problems: acid rain, fluorocarbons, nuclear reactors, whale hunts, free trade, and taxes. Earnest conversation about the lamentable condition of the Niagara River does not clean it up. After a particularly bleak and windswept stretch of avenue we found ourselves approaching a large hotel whose porte-cochere beckoned invitingly.

  The bar stood almost empty, a welcome change from the son et lumières through which I had eaten my calves’ liver and home-fried onions.

  “Geoffry,” began Charles, leaning forward, both feet flat on the floor, hands squarely on the arms of the chair, “may I ask you a personal question?”

  “You may. I don’t promise to answer, but ask away.”

  “Do you live alone, I mean really alone?”

  “You mean, do I have a lover? No, I don’t.”

  He made a gesture with his entire body that made me think of a dog shaking itself after a swim. “Would you be willing to accept an offer for the job? Say, a young man who can cook, clean, and perform a variety of services, public and private?”

  The combination of alcohol, fresh air, and digestion had lulled me into a comfortable stupor. “Some Filipino pal of yours wants to hire himself out as a houseboy, with maybe a little modelling on the side?”

  “No way. I am not applying by proxy. I want the job myself.”

  My comfortable lethargy fell away like a wet raincoat. “Hold on a minute. Are you suggesting what I think you are suggesting?”

  He grinned his enormously appealing grin. “That’s right.”

  “You mean, you are asking for my hand in – dalliance, not to mention et ceteras?”

  “And how. For you I’d even do windows.”

  I laughed, albeit uncomfortably. “Wait a minute, Charles, aren’t you running the movie backwards? Shouldn’t it be the older man who buys the dinner and puts on the make?”

  I was playing it light as I played for time. Usually I know enough to swim with my head above water. I am too old to lie to myself, but not even subconsciously had I harboured designs on Charles. Aside from liking him, I confess I found him attractive, in a brash and bouncy way. With all that verve and energy, I am sure he would be wonderful value in bed. But at my age sex begins in the brain, not the crotch; and my brain had not been programmed to put the make on a man at least thirty years my junior and who was to be best man at my niece’s wedding.

  And yet, goddammit! I am not dead. How could my vanity fail to respond to being courted by a man half my age? More than one middle-aged man or woman has fantasized about finding himself in just such a situation, against all probable odds. Poor Eve, that much maligned woman, drawn irresistibly towards an action that her better judgement told her to avoid. What is temptation but the pull of passion over reason?

  All this flashed onto my mindscreen in seconds, far less linear than I make it sound.

  “Geoffry, since you have retreated into the eighteenth century with your talk of dalliance, let me say I don’t care a fig for your script. I am making you an honestly disreputable offer. Do you want references?”

  I smiled, at once amused and dismayed. “But you’re located in Toronto.”

  “Not permanently. I have been thinking seriously about moving to Montreal, even before I met you. For anyone in the food business it’s a much more interesting city than Toronto.”

  “But, Charles, have you really thought of the implications? I am more than twice your age.” I could see him about to interrupt so I made a stronger, more forceful gesture and continued. “You are still living in an endless present. So did I at your age. It goes with the territory. Supposing, just supposing, we took up together. In ten years you will be thirty- five, just hitting your stride, the best years still ahead. I will be sixty-five and thinking of retirement. At forty, when you will be in your prime, like Miss Jean Brodie, I will be seventy and about to embark on old age.”

  This time he would not be quelled. “But you’re throwing up barriers we might face at some point in the future. What about now?”

  “Now is the easy part. How very easy and agreeable it would be to fall into bed and turn on. But you are not someone I met casually in a bar, someone whose knee brushed mine in a movie theatre. We did not strike up a conversation in a record store, or meet at a laid-back party. Grim though that dinner party at Lois’s may have been, there was decorum. I met you with protocol, as fellow member of the wedding party, as a friend of my niece. Age aside, we can’t just jump into bed and hope things will work out. Which is to say we could, but it wouldn’t be wise.”

  “You know something, Geoffry? I never suspected you were so stuffy.”

  “How long have you known me, and how well? We would have to start from before scratch. How could you possibly fit in with my patterns, at your age? Believe me, Charles, it is not through lack of good will. I like you, very much, very much indeed. I listened to you over dinner, and I listened between the lines. To begin with, I’m fully prepared to believe you don’t want to play games with handcuffs and enemas. I believe you put cucumbers in salad. I also believe you are going to be one hell of a forty-year-old. I only wish you were that age now. You began by asking if I live alone. I do, with all that entails. I have habits, patterns, priorities, and I know they would not suit you. Take a recent example: you were right at home in that restaurant tonight. I watched you, a fish in water. I felt as though I were being brainwashed by noise. I was the oldest person there. That is not meant as a reproach, but an observation. One thing I do know: the man I used to be at twenty-five could not possibly live with the man I am now.”

  Charles put down his glass with determinatio
n. “Now you just listen to me. You have been making a great many speeches this evening, and it’s my turn. You keep harping on age. Can’t you see that is one of the main reasons I think you’re, well, great? Ever since that night at Mother Lois’s, when you had another drink and stopped her dead in her tracks, you became my hero. And the cheesecake! That was cool. You have to be at least fifty to pull off a stunt like that. You have so much more experience than I have. You could teach me so much.”

  I smiled inside myself. The charming egotism of youth. I was almost tempted to suggest I was not a one-man cram school, or charm school for that matter, but I decided to hear him out.

  “You know and I know it’s a jungle out there. Everyone my age with a three-figure IQ – who’s gay, that is – dreams of meeting someone who’s prepared to play it straight, who won’t be tricking around on those nights you have to work late. Imagine being able to have sex, the old-fashioned unsafe kind, without condoms and rubber gloves and pieces of latex and water soluble lubricants and spermicides and the rest of that shit.”

  He paused, overheated. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not just looking for a safe partner; they can be had. I’m looking for” – in spite of himself he laughed – “what the Classified Ads call a serious relationship. And I’ve found the person I want to have it with. I’d like to say more, but you know what I mean.”

  We sat, not looking at one another, as silence grew dense.

  “Look, Geoffry, I know I’ve been coming on pretty strong. I don’t want to move in and take over your life. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. All I want is for us to give it a try. If it doesn’t work out, no hard feelings.”

  “If it didn’t sound so vulgar I’d be tempted to suggest you wanted to try me on for size.”

  Charles gave a reluctant laugh. “I don’t understand what you mean. I’m just laughing to be a good sport.”