Polar Vortex

by Shani Mootoo

  That night she slept in the guest room upstairs, and I in our bed on the ground floor. I listened as she moved about restlessly. I thought I heard her speaking, and imagined she’d called her sister in Florida looking for sympathy. I tried to hear and though I was sure she’d been speaking, after a couple minutes there was no more such sound, and I assumed it was crying I’d heard. I wanted to go upstairs and comfort her, ask her to come back down and sleep with me, but I didn’t. It was not a good sleep for either of us.

  An incident surfaces that I thought I’d put out of my mind for good: our last year of university. Why must I be reminded, now of all times? We were youngsters, him and me, just getting to know ourselves. Fiona had begun her thing with Stan, I was falling apart, and Prakash was trying to gather up and put together my broken pieces. A long weekend was approaching. Our classmates were all preparing to travel to their parents, or taking group trips here or there, and he and I were on our own, with no plans. Days before the holiday, he showed up with airplane tickets that would take us to his parents’ house on the Atlantic coast. As he described the various places we’d visit, the beaches and coves, the lighthouses, my spirits rose. An adventure was just the antidote I needed. I flew with him, lighter than I had been in weeks, to visit his parents on the coast.

  Our first evening there, they invited two other couples who lived in a nearby town to have dinner with us, older people who had travelled on the same plane with them from Uganda. Prakash’s mother had made samosas and pakoras, and the smells of the meal cooking in the kitchen reminded me of my parents’ home. Although they all, including Prakash, launched frequently into Gujarati, which I could not understand, the talking and excited shouting over each other, the slapping of their palms on their thighs when they burst into laughter, made me homesick. The guests fussed over Prakash, hailing him throughout the evening as a brilliant and talented young man. They wanted to hear about the university and about the students in his classes. They seemed genuinely impressed by him, and I felt they were eager to let me know how well they thought of him. He was delightedly embarrassed to be so cajoled in front of me. At the table, we ate an endless meal of curries and Indian breads that were different than Trinidad-style Indian foods. They ate Indian-style, and I didn’t mind being the brunt of teasing as one of the guests repeatedly tried to instruct me to use the tips of the fingers of one hand to corral my food and lift it to my mouth. We were from different cultures, different countries, and they spoke their language half the time — but how comfortable I felt with them.

  Then, later, after the guests had left and we were cleaning up, to my surprise and, at first, amusement, Prakash’s parents treated me like their future daughter-in-law. His mother kept hugging me, telling me how glad she was to finally meet this friend her son always spoke of. She wanted to know about my parents, how long their families had been in Trinidad, and was surprised and disappointed that I didn’t know exactly from where in India my ancestors had come. She sat me down at the dining table and showed me photographs of older family members in India and friends from their Uganda days, and his father kept looking at Prakash and me, nodding and grinning. I decided to play along and imagined that later Prakash and I would share a good laugh about it.

  That night, after his parents had gone to bed, he invited me to see his room. I had spent a great deal of time alone with him in my apartment, and being in his bedroom should not have felt any different, but it did. I imagined his parents, old-world people I recognized from my own background, would not have been pleased if they knew he and I — regardless of their hopes — were alone in his room, and so it felt as if we were children doing something we weren’t supposed to. No more than five minutes had passed when he became distracted, unlike the man I knew at university. He went over to his bed and lay on it, leaving me standing by his desk. I remember him calling me to sit on his bed. I felt unsure, but I went over. After some unpleasant fumbling on his part, I, appalled, left his room swiftly and went to the one in which his father had put my suitcase. I knew then that I had to tell him about my sexuality. The following morning, after a sleepless night, I rose early, dressed, and went out into the hallway of the house. No one seemed to be moving about. I tiptoed in the still, dark house to the door of his room and tapped. I could hear him rush from his bed to the door. He opened it, shirtless and half-hidden behind it, and held his hand out for mine. I backed away and said, “No. We need to talk.”

  He opened the door wider, beckoning me still to enter.

  “No, not here,” I said. “Let’s go somewhere. Let’s go for a drive. I’ll wait on the verandah for you.”

  I did not want to say what was on my mind while he was driving, and the silence between us in his father’s car was unpleasant. As we drove, no destination having been decided on, I kept wanting to say something, anything, to quell the tension between us. I thought to comment on how beautiful the early-morning light was. At university, to get around the town we tended to use public transportation or to walk, and I had never been driven by him before, so I thought to commend him on his good driving skills. Or to ask about birds of the region. But anything that came to mind seemed false, like a pretense.

  Not too soon, we came upon a provincial park. A sign pointed to a viewpoint on a protrusion overlooking a picturesque bay. He pulled into a parking space, and we got out. From the top there seemed to be a straight drop to the water, but closer to the edge a path came into view, and once we were on it, what had seemed like a cliff turned out to be a slope of wide, well-groomed switchbacks that led down to a bay and a beach. I took the lead almost at a canter, and he kept pace, but a little behind. There was no one else on the beach, and as the sun rose, the seawater turned from sharp braiding threads of gold to glistening silver, the cold wind settled down, and the air warmed. We headed to the lone picnic table. I sat on the bench so I faced the water, and he took the opposite one, the table between us. I could not look at him. Staring out to the horizon, I felt his eyes on me. I had never before told anyone I was gay. I was trembling. I wanted to go to his side of the table, sit next to him and rest my head on his shoulder, hold on to him and cry. I wanted to tell him how much I loved Fiona, and how much I cherished his friendship. I felt fatigued as my entire future flashed before me and I decided I should simply curl my body into his and give myself over to him. I looked from the distant horizon to his eyes, to his lips, and I imagined his mouth on mine, and then in my mind I saw Fiona’s face, her lips, her grey-blue eyes, and it was this that broke me — or perhaps strengthened me. As if taking a running plunge into the cold waves ahead, I blurted out in a shaking voice, “I am not interested in being with a man.”

  “I know,” he said.

  Had he already suspected? How, when I thought I’d been so careful, did he know, and if so, then why had he tried to be intimate with me the night before?

  He answered my unspoken questions when he said, with sudden confidence, “In time. Don’t worry about it. I should have let you come to me first.”

  I stopped him and said, “No, you don’t understand. I mean, I don’t want to be with a man. Any man. Ever. It’s not just you. It’s not just at this time.”

  He stared blankly at me. I could read nothing on his face nor in his posture.

  “I am gay,” I whispered.

  After some prickly moments of nothing but the sound of waves crashing and wind rolling into the trees on shore, he shook his head and asked, “How do you know?”

  I felt my face flush. “What do you mean? I know myself.”

  “But have you ever been with a man?” he asked hesitantly.

  I knew if I answered that I hadn’t, I’d subject myself to a certain line of logic and reasoning, but I was too flustered to respond otherwise. I said, “No. But that’s because I don’t want to. Look, I have always known.”

  “But if you haven’t tried being with a man, then how would you know?”

  I wanted to co
me right out with the unequivocal words Because I have been with a woman. But I couldn’t bring myself to draw his mind to Fiona and me, especially since it could be said that she had “tried” me — and had in fact given me up. “Prakash, you have to accept what I’m telling you. I am quite sure I’ll never be interested in a man, at least not as a lover.”

  He sat immobile for long, cruel minutes. I wondered how much more I should tell him, and just as I was about to confess about Fiona and me, he lifted his legs over the bench and turned his back to me. He stood slowly and said, “We better get back, my mother is making roti for you.” He led the way to the car, and on the path I had to stop myself several times from turning and running down to the beach again to escape the embarrassment that bore down on me like a wet coat. We did not talk on the return trip to the house, and the rest of the weekend seemed like an eternity in purgatory.

  Once we’d gotten back to Ontario, he argued with me about it, as if my sexuality were something he understood better than I, something about which, under the right circumstances, my mind could be changed. When he asked me, as if it were the most reasonable request, if I could just please “try” him and “see,” an experiment at least, I told him it was best we part ways. As if at gunpoint, he at once put a stop to his persistence. He said my friendship was more important to him than anything else, and he would end any romantic interest in me.

  · · ·

  * * *

  I’d decided to say to Alex that Prakash had invited himself. But no sooner, I thought it would be better to say nothing to her and simply wait until a day or two before his visit and then write and tell him something unexpected had happened, something to do with her sister in Florida, perhaps, and that we had to fly there immediately, or she had to come here, or some such thing.

  But even as I foresaw the possibility of a rift between her and me, as the days wore on, I realized how much I wanted him to come, and it startled me.

  · · ·

  * * *

  Surging in me is this urgency to explain myself to Prakash. And lately, I’ve been experiencing a certain feeling of nobility in grabbing this opportunity to explain why, so late in our friendship, I needed to cut ties with him, to explain all the pushing and pulling of the past. During the decades when our friendship ebbed and flowed in the natural, uncontrived way that it did, I’d not really bothered myself too much about the whys and whereofs of it. But in the last few years, after the intentionality of the distancing, whenever he’d come to mind, something welled up, making me a little ill, remorseful. I noticed at some point that I have a tendency to hum a single note whenever I think of him. It is not exactly a pleasant sound but more like a sound meant to hide a groan. This strange, sudden, and involuntary emission is a chord made up of the notes of regret, remorse, and guilt. So perhaps my need to get on with a visit with him is not really out of the blue. What is out of the blue is the recognition of this pending visit as a chance to clean up an aspect of my life — a chance to scrub karma, or something like that.

  The days following that initially unmeant invitation and its at first terrifying acceptance, I experienced convincing moments of confidence that, because Alex and I are solid, a breach between us could be easily overcome. I felt strong and virtuous, and there was comfort in such certainty. I was convinced in those moments that I could juggle three balls in the air: my desire to see Prakash, my relationship with Alex, and Prakash’s presence in our house.

  I went back and forth between experiencing such confidence and the fear of what might happen between him and me, between her and me. So for several days I did not tell her, or ask, or whatever it was I was supposed to do.

  * * *

  It’s possible, at least in the very grand scheme of things, that thoughts are more material than they are ephemeral, like radio or energy waves, and must necessarily leave our brains, and when they do they float out into the universe. If so, then a googolplexian of thoughts — oh, way more than that, a googolplexian times a googolplexian of one-word thoughts, novel-length thoughts, unfinished thoughts, all, this minute, are criss-crossing the universe, each carried in a microscopic elastic bubble of something like an invisible gas or whatever medium might surround and preserve it. The bubbles are so small, smaller than a proton, that no invented microscope could see them as they slam into each other, and although they do so, no bubble is ever punctured because the gas or oil that preserves them is also slippery. They float bump slip slide float and bump again until they arrive at the head of the person or persons to whom they pertain. Perhaps they buzz — without an actual buzz sound, of course, perhaps more like a vibration — waiting for their intended receptor to tune in, to undo the latch, open the mind, and catch them. I should probably get up and out of this room right away, but I want to finish this thought. Whenever I dream of someone, particularly someone I have not seen or been in touch with in many years, I wonder if that person has also just dreamt of me, or if not “just,” then if that person dreams occasionally of me.

  Surely we’re lurking in the darkened auditoriums of each other’s consciousness, and when — according to the whims of the universe — it matters, a spotlight snaps on, and there we are, appearing in each other’s dreams simultaneously. I have dreamt — no, I dream, occasionally — of past lovers with whom I am no longer in touch. The be all and end all of our actions in those dreams is lovemaking, thwarted sometimes, successfully accomplished at others, that leaves me, when I awaken, spent and as breathless and aching as if it were real and true. I surprise myself sometimes, too, by dreaming of sweet, intense intimacies with people with whom I have had no such interactions, nor for which I have consciously wished. Surely this happens — whatever the case, and with whomsoever — because I am merely responding to their dreams of me. Or, haggling over the possible chicken-or-egg nature of the situation, one could say they had caught my subconscious dreams of them and were reciprocating. Surely.

  And if so, a similar logic might well pertain now: either Prakash’s reappearance in my life is at the whim of the universe or unconsciously I’ve been calling to him. Perhaps this is one and the same. We are supposedly microcosms of the universe. By the same token, it could be that I opened a Twitter account because it was Prakash who was, intentionally or unconsciously, calling out.

  · · ·

  * * *

  It was early one morning and Alex was, as usual, up before me and at work in her office upstairs. I didn’t want to disturb her when I awoke, so, rather than going to her, from the bottom of the stairs I called to let her know I was up and heading to the studio. She called back that she’d soon be down. My task in the studio that morning was to gesso two canvases. As the gesso needed to dry before another coat was applied, I wanted to get that out of the way before attending to business on the computer. Alex shouted from the kitchen to ask if I wanted a cup of coffee. I suggested we have our coffees in the studio. I finished the gessoing, washed up, went to the computer, and switched it on. Just as I typed in my password on the keyboard, Alex appeared with our coffees. I stood for our usual hug and little snuggly kisses. I rested my mug on the desk to better engage in this tender­ness, during which I shifted us both so I could glimpse the screen over her shoulder. My mailbox was open, and in the lineup of bolded names, there was Prakash’s. I felt a jolt in my heart, and as careful as I was not to react in an obvious way, Alex pulled back, looked me in my eyes, and asked if I was all right. I said yes, just a kink in my neck from gessoing the canvasses, that’s all. She moved in toward me again, cupped my neck with both hands, and began to massage.

  The time, since then, has flown too fast, and it has, too, been an eternity.

  · · ·

  * * *

  The universe — or whatever — being or not being in control, the fact is, Prakash, for some reason or other, has gotten in touch. I, for some reason or other, invited him here. He, for some reason, is on his way here this very minute. And all we can do is trust in the wisdom of th
e bloody chaos and patterns and symmetries of — of what? Well, might as well be the universe.

  Look, it’s not as if we’ve never run into any of Alex’s past lovers. Take the one at a restaurant in Little Italy on College Street in Toronto. I could have made comments after, asked questions, wondered why on earth, et cetera, had silly insecurities for a few hours, but I didn’t. And that other one we ran into while walking on Queen Street. I knew of her, but we’d never before met. Alex introduced us — she did not introduce me as her partner, I noticed, but that made sense: why rub it in? And at first it all seemed fine. I stood there as they chatted about this mutual friend and that one and the dog they once shared. It was still alive but on medication for arthritis. I remember being happy there didn’t seem to be any animosity between her and Alex. This spoke well of Alex, I thought. I could see I was being inspected.

  But then, out there on Queen Street, after talk of the dog, it was clear that the strain of an old torn-up intimacy had crept in between them. There was something unresolved. I wasn’t upset. I was with Alex and she with me. There was nothing to fret about. Somebody had to do something, and it looked as if I were the only grown-up on the pavement. I glanced across the street and pretended to be suddenly interested in something over there, then excused myself with great lightness and, ignoring their protests, leapt in between the slowed traffic, shouting back to them that I’d just be a couple minutes. Alex came across to meet me after about fifteen minutes. She was broody and distracted for a good half-hour after. Did I get all bent out of shape about their very visible unfinished business? Did I ask all kinds of questions and make a fuss about her being so shaken? No, I just hugged her. She let me. I knew and felt secure that she was with me, and not with that person.