by Paul Lisicky
SAs
Noah has a need to embarrass me as a way to challenge me. Sometimes this involves grabbing my hand and holding it as we walk through the streets of Boston’s financial district, on a day trip. I want to hold his hand. I’m proud to be seen with him, connected to him, and I appreciate the way he pushes me out of my comfort zones, out of my frequent desire to recede, especially in a place like Boston, where queer couples should definitely be visible. We cannot forget our ACT UP principles, and besides, what living being, human or animal, is comfortable in the financial district of Boston, a city of liberal politics but conservative social mores? Queer, straight, black, brown, white. Dogs on the ends of leashes. Everyone walking around, wondering, Why am I outside myself, watching myself? Navigating through some pervasive cloud of fear, though no one calls it fear. In Town I’d gotten used to forgetting that particular fear, and now I’m dropped back to a former self, who cannot hide and must be accountable. It has the smell of a shirt I’ve forgotten to wash, and I simply want to wander away. Noah, on the other hand, appears to like fear; it is sex to him. It makes him animated and alert. It tells him he’s feeling brave when he rarely gets to feel brave anymore. What a relief it is not to be one of these people walking by us, letting their routines bump them through the day, allowing those routines to keep them from being aware of the pain in others, the pain in themselves.
In the end, are we even noticed? Not really. No hate or contorted faces are aimed in our direction, but it does turn what was meant to be a casual day into the prospect of a showdown, a political action.
Sometimes I wonder whether Noah would be more comfortable visibly attached to someone who’s more outrageous than he is. Today he’s wearing a long necklace of green glass beads and cable-knit, cream-colored sweater pants that happen to show off the outline of his big, floppy dick. One day we will say genderqueer, but today there is no word, and people don’t do so well with seeing when they don’t have a category to help them out. It’s like putting a frame around the world with a title and curator’s description off to the bottom right—oh, now I get it. And who could be surprised that Noah’s pet peeve is guys who call themselves straight-acting and -appearing, guys who think they’re more achieved than others? Guys who want it both ways: straight white male entitlement while sucking cock behind closed doors. He calls the straight-acting and -appearing guys SAs, pronounced “sass,” and speaks of them with such pain it’s impossible to get to the bottom of his hurt.
Safari Club
On a different trip to Boston, I park on a street by the Flower Exchange, which might be a sketchy neighborhood, or maybe not—you never know how Boston changes block by block. I’ve just dropped Noah off at South Station, where he is bound for a train to Montreal. “I might not be let back in,” he says, and by “in,” he means into the United States, which only prompts me to hug him harder, in panic. Now I’m being buzzed into a sex club, but only after I promise, in writing, that I’m not a journalist, someone out to expose the place. The club has been on the city’s radar, and there are multiple forces that want to shut it down, as those forces believe this is no era for a sex club, especially in the age of the Epidemic, but advocates of sex clubs state that people are most likely to have safer sex in controlled environments, where condoms are distributed freely. I can’t imagine this place lasting much longer: how could it be making enough money to heat these cold and vacant halls? No one here, no surprise as it’s the middle of the day, a frosty, low-lit afternoon when everyone is sitting at a desk in an office. But there’s one guy around, a young, battered blond guy, with tattoos vining his arms, legs, chest, and back before anyone else has tattoos like that. It’s a relief to stand in his minuscule room, to hold him in my arms from behind. For such a roughed-up guy, he’s surprisingly sweet, a total gentleman. What would Noah say if he knew I was here? My gut feeling is that he’d probably think of it as a quick stop at Star Market to pick up corn on the cob and tomatoes. If only I could make him jealous. It’s becoming clearer to the two of us that I care about sex more than he does. Sex for me is as essential as food, and he’d probably be relieved if I wasn’t at him all the time, pressing my boner against the bottom of his spine. The guy swallows my load, and afterward my body freezes up in awe and dread. I don’t even think I can walk. I’m not writing this as a confession.
Richard
At the gym, back in Provincetown, I’m always happy to see Hollis’s old friend Richard, who’s an appealing mixture of nihilistic, sweet, caustic, and very boyish. He likes to make me laugh. His is the most battered face I’ve ever seen, but he wears that batteredness beautifully, his earlier handsomeness still haunting his face. He comes from the East Village of Peter Hujar and David Wojnarowicz, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d once interacted with those guys. Maybe had sex with them? His eyes are clear and bright to the point of being colorless, the most alive eyes I’ve ever seen on a person, as if he’s spent years waiting for any human in his path to punch him. I don’t know if his batteredness comes from years of heroin addiction, or from all the AIDS drugs he’s had to take so far. It speaks from hidden pockets of air beside his back teeth. He has the aura of one of those people who would completely dismiss you if he didn’t like you, didn’t think you were worthy, so I’m always honored when he talks to me, which involves looking at me with the fullest attention, even though shyness crushes the words coming out of my mouth. Does he have a crush on me? Do I on him? Possibly—it’s hard to see around feelings with the virus standing between us like an actual person. One day Hollis calls to tell me that Richard is in Beth Israel—do I want to drive up to Boston with Polly? “He has a high fever,” Hollis says. “When are you leaving?” I say. “Oh, a half hour from now.” I don’t know why I don’t drop what I’m doing and say immediately, Yes. Let me throw on a sweater. It isn’t that I’m scared of seeing Richard die. I think our being there is only going to make something bad happen. It wouldn’t be what Richard, who can’t stand sentimentality, wants.
They go. I stay.
24
Vacation
We’ve decided not to dress like two queer guys from Provincetown—no funny hats and no neobutch lumberjack wear—and as I drive toward the Saint-Armand border checkpoint, the stakes of that become more immediate, less abstract. If the border patrol agent doesn’t like the way we look, he’ll take us aside, and who knows if Noah will ever be allowed back? Would I have to move to Canada and leave Provincetown? A dozen cars idle ahead of us. My hands are cold, in constant motion. To steady them I reach over for Noah’s hand, and he shakes me off, shakes his head like a disapproving teacher. That disapproval is related to his collared shirt, which manages to take away anything distinctive about his appearance. He’s a lawyer once again, but in weekend clothes. No one would ever be able to guess that back on Cape Cod he was a person who had a special place in his heart for rubber, latex, and leather.
When we answer the border patrol agent’s questions, we answer tersely, without any inflection or any eagerness to please. We’re performing what we believe he wants of men, especially two men sharing one car. We tell him—truthfully—that we’re here on vacation and fortunately he doesn’t peer in and say, Do you have any women hiding in there? His face is neutral. He hands back our passports without comment and we’re on our way.
And now the trip can really begin. Now that we’re into Quebec adrenaline hits my bloodstream and I’m reading the surfaces the way I’m used to reading the surfaces of Town—it is good to have some new material to think into. I can say that its flatlands look like the blueberry farms of South Jersey. I can say that the houses with the mansard roofs and crisscross windows resemble the “French Provincial” model homes in Huntshire, a subdivision near where I grew up, in Cherry Hill. Noah tells me he never even looked at those houses and finds my enthusiasms hilarious. He repeats the phrase “French Provincial,” and laughs again. Of course. I can tell he’s relaxing too. He slides lower in his seat and tells me all about the ol
d friends, a straight couple, we’re staying with in the city this week.
Over the course of the next five days, I am in vigilant mode, like a deer beside a highway. I meet so many old friends and former business associates, I can’t even remember their names. I want them to find me charming, winning, maybe because they’re trying to pull those qualities out of me. These friends have all known Noah as part of Noah and Henry and I’m trying to measure up to his ex without even knowing Henry, who seemed for all intents and purposes a daddy, someone older and responsible, another lawyer. No one wants Noah to be different from the Noah they knew, even though he’s left law and moved to Provincetown. I’d be so easy to blame if they found him judgmental or distant and didn’t like his jokes. Didn’t like the new person he was becoming.
I don’t even have enough mental space to consider whether I like his friends. Like me, they like to laugh, even though it doesn’t seem as if we have anything in common. None of them are in the arts, but I didn’t expect them to be. Yes, it’s a little lonely, but how could you be lonely when so many people are looking at you with benevolence, as if they’ll continue to regard you and ask after you for the rest of their lives?
Or maybe it’s just that I want Noah so much that the question of his friends isn’t even relevant to me. It’s made me a little blind, stupid to my needs, as happens when you might want someone who’s always out of reach.
It doesn’t help that I haven’t spoken French since college, even though I love French, the sound of it, its tricky vowels, which feel elusive to the construction of my mouth, frustrating when I want to sound like a native speaker. I spend the better part of each conversation grabbing on to a few recognizable nouns and verb phrases and holding on. I nod a lot, laughing when I’m surrounded by laughter, hoping not to get caught.
All of which sounds like I’m not having a terribly good time. But I am having a good time, the best. I love Montreal, its style and panache, its resemblance to Europe, throwing the dowdy brick cities of the northeastern US into shadow. Rue Ste.-Catherine. Diane Dufresne and her extravagant voice, her grandiose feathers. Pouding chômeur. Fries with mayonnaise. The hump of Mount Royal above the rooftops.
At night in his friends’ guest room bed, I sleep as deeply as I’ve slept in years. I press my nose into the back of Noah’s neck, holding on, possibly snoring. The work of pleasing is as hard as going back to law school, especially when I never imagined myself in front of a court.
On our final day we stop by Noah’s parents’ house. It’s in a neighborhood where all the street names point to England rather than to France: Douglas, Bedford, Barclay, Rockland, Fleet. Noah has always made it clear that he grew up in English Montreal, and I’m meant to find that significant, even though I never fully grasp it. I park at the curb; we hang back a bit and look up at the house, a brick two-story that appears to have been built in the 1950s, more classic and restrained than the formidable Tudor next door. The neighborhood is posh, but subtly. It’s a relief to know that I will be accepted, that Noah’s parents have met boyfriends before, and we won’t be met by incrimination and withholding.
That wouldn’t happen with my mother and father, I think, with a pang of resentment, hurt. Maybe it’s my fault—possibly I have been a bad gay by not finding boyfriends to take home to meet them. I have kept my gay life out of their sight when I should have been throwing boyfriends in their faces until they got used to them, until they got numb to them, cried, Enough already!
Noah’s father welcomes us and ushers us inside. We sit on the sofa, where coffee is offered and poured by Noah’s stepmother. As a unit everyone is cordial enough, but distractible too—the house operates through a culture of distraction and maybe that’s why I don’t take in faces, gestures, the pattern of the rugs, the view out the back window, or the style of furniture. Is it what we used to call colonial, a lot of maple? Do I not take anyone in because I’m reluctant to have an opinion, and to have an opinion is to judge? They’re speaking English, but talking about a family matter I can’t find my way into. I feel a little bit on the outside but it’s a relief to be a spectator after I’ve been pulled close by his friends for days. I don’t think I could say anything that would matter at all. I feel a little bit like I’m floating, nothing tethering me to the world of life and death. It’s probably time to get back to my desk and pin myself to the earth with words. One more day now.
Noah needs to get something upstairs in his old room and I follow him up the steps. It’s amazing to be in his childhood bedroom, and here I can feel the past of him, through the light falling through the window, falling on his dresser, the way a twin bed almost fills the snug space to capacity. I sit on the bed, pick up a polished black stone from the nightstand. And then his stepmother stands at the door. She isn’t looking at Noah, or at any other object in the room, but at me. She does this out of Noah’s sight. Instantly I know I have crossed a line that was never drawn, and never will be, just by sitting on his bed, just by suggesting—what? The fact that we share one, give each other blow jobs, and occasionally fuck? Her expression isn’t theatrical, but it’s scared and steady, as if she knows it isn’t in her purview to tell me to stand up. I might as well have spilled bacteria in her house. I don’t stand up, nor do I say, Is something the matter? The whole visit is sucked into the moment, into the scared look on her face. The quiet of it is so breathtaking I don’t even discuss it with Noah now, or once we’re driving south, away from Montreal.
It isn’t until we’ve reached the checkpoint in Highgate Springs that we realize we’ve forgotten our preparations. We’ve forgotten to put on our blandest outfits, neglected to review the anticipated questions. Our reward? A border patrol agent who’s on the young side, with a prow-like brow, whose face goes instantly hard the second he looks into the car. There’s no doubt he’d offer us a different face if there were a woman in Noah’s seat and a couple of kids coloring within the lines in the back.
I also suspect the name Provincetown, which shows up on my driver’s license, must mean something to him.
He spends an obsessively long time scrutinizing our documents. When it seems he’s done with mine he starts all over again, as if the printing on them has been altered or rubbed away. Cars keep moving through the stalls to the right and left of us. He asks us what we do for a living. “Lawyer,” Noah says. “Clothing store associate,” I say, cringing at the way it sounds. A few weeks ago Noah counseled me never to describe myself as a writer to border patrol because they always hate writers, think they’re subversive. And that would only lead to more questions and his detainment at the border.
He also said border patrol can stop you if you avoid looking at the agent, or if you pay too much attention to him. The problem is I’ve taken this in so deeply that I squint and do a funny thing with my mouth and must stand out like an imbecile.
“What would a lawyer be doing with a store clerk?” As if he can’t see we are boyfriends. He knows we are boyfriends, my God. He thinks he’s giving the two of us a free pass, but he’ll not give us that pass without pissing on us first.
We don’t answer his question, but it’s clear we were never expected to. He gives us back our passports and turns his head away.
“Can you believe that?” I say again and again over the next ten miles. “Welcome to America. I can’t believe that motherfucker talked to us like that.”
“Paul.”
“I don’t think I even want to live here anymore.” And then I slam my fist down over my right knee for effect.
“Stop,” he says, as if he’s had enough and it’s time for me to move on. The woods of Vermont are thick with birch and ash, and what is it I’ve lost?
There’s a hill up ahead and I swerve into the climbing lane.
Violence doesn’t always present itself in the form of a gun.
25
The New Yorker
Matt stands in the middle of the Work Center’s parking lot one day, hungry to talk. He might be waving a piece of paper i
n the air. Even if he isn’t, he’s giving off the feeling that might summon that up: news of shock, news of heartbreaking happiness, news of life-about-to-change. He calls Elizabeth and me, the only people around, to tell us the New Yorker took one of his stories, a story he’d sent in the mail. It’s a time when the New Yorker rarely publishes unsolicited fiction, and Elizabeth and I are so proud and thrilled, I almost forget I would have wanted that for myself once, not so long ago.