by Mary South
So, I wasn't sure how to explain the semi naked man who now stood in the doorway. "What are you doing in here?" he asked, in a slightly hurt tone.
"You were totally hogging the bed, so I came in here for a little space."
"Oh, good!" Lars said. "I was afraid you woke up and thought, "'What am I doing with this fat, ugly man who smells bad?' "
"You don't smell bad," I responded with a smile.
"Ha-ha," he said. "Can I get in there with you for a few minutes before you get up and make us both coffee?"
We lay there and talked for a while. And one thing led to another again. This time, I didn't have the excuses of a little too much rosé, or the romantic spread of stars above, the cozy pop and hiss of a warm bonfire on a cool night to blame. I can't be more explicit about the sex: I'm modest by nature and saying this much already feels like I'm taking all my clothes off in front of you. (Ignore that little roll around my waist-three months of doing nothing but sitting and writing.
I'll lose it soon. Really. I will.) Let me just say that my physical relationship with Lars was excellent. We had chemistry. I was attracted to him, so I was attracted to his body. It seemed that simple and natural, despite the lack of precedent. After coffee, Lars had a boat to move and I had to meet Jay to paint. We were halfway through transforming a long room into a long limestone room. He was a genius at what he did, and I liked being his handmaid of hues, his sous-chef of semigloss.
Of course, I tell Jay everything, and it was fun to have someone to giggle with about Lars. I mean, that was my primary reaction: I thought it was funny that this had happened after twenty-some years. And what was even funnier was that it was. . .great. But I also absolutely, positively had no expectations or desire for anything else to come of this. . .interesting accident.
So I was surprised by the sweet message Lars left me that afternoon. "Hi, I'm at Sunset Beach, having a little calamari and rosé. I'd like to play pétanque, but I've got no one to play with. Well, okay. Talk to you later."
He called a few more times without leaving messages, and I felt pleased but also increasingly anxious, unsure of what was happening. At the end of the day, Lars dropped by my high-and-dry boat, which was still propped up in the yard while I finished painting it.
"Boy, are you pushy," I greeted him. "And look at me. . ." I waved a hand over myself. I had on a paint-spattered tennis shirt and dirty blue track pants, fresh (or not so fresh) from the jobsite. Not pretty.
"You look beautiful," he said.
"Well, it's awfully dark out here," I countered. But honestly, I couldn't believe how handsome he was. His eyes were such an extraordinary blue that they seemed lit up from behind. And he had great features-an aquiline nose that had once been broken, full lips, short brown hair that was dusted with silver. I later saw photos of him in his twenties when he'd been too good-looking, as pretty as a male model. He was 38 now and I liked the way time had roughened his smooth edges. His imperfections added to his appeal.
"I guess I just wanted to tell you that I really hope you don't regret what happened last night."
I told him that I absolutely did not regret it. I was glad it had happened. And that was true.
He continued. "Yesterday, the whole day, everything felt very fateful. I don't know how to explain it. . .it was just a great day, and then I met you. I hope you want to keep seeing me. . .and having sex. . ." he smiled, "but if you just want to be friends, that would be okay, too. I want us to hang out together, at least. I just like you. I think you're very cool and I feel strangely bonded to you"
This was a mouthful I hadn't been expecting. I had no idea what to say. I thought guys weren't emotive. I thought really handsome guys with girlfriends were especially unlikely to "bond" after one night with someone. It had been a fling. Just one of those things, as Cole Porter would say. Hadn't it?
I told him we would definitely be friends. I thought he was a great guy and last night had been amazing. But I had been gay for forty years and he had a girlfriend, so anything else seemed pretty unlikely.
Shows what I know.
CHAPTER NINE
No emotion, any more than a breaking wave, can long retain its own individual form.
-HENRY WARD BEECHER
A couple of evenings after our chat on the stern of the Bossanova, Lars and I planned to meet for a friendly dinner.
I was trying to manage my vague discomfort with the situation, and keeping it light and friendly seemed the way to go. I was later than I meant to be when I parked at the Coecles Harbor Marina on Shelter Island and walked across the yard, looking for the Friendship Sloop. I found its mast first and my eyes followed it down to the deck. And there was Lars-turning the pages of an open book that was spread against his knees, with a glass of rosé in his other hand and his whole profile lit up by the sunset behind him. It was a sight that made me smile involuntarily, and it was right about then that I thought, Oh my god, maybe this is going to be a date.
After a very quick tour of the small boat, we headed for the neighborhood restaurant that had become his haunt over the summer.
Sunset Beach is a little piece of St. Barth's transported to the Northeast. A groovy ground-floor bar space faces out at the beach. Above that are several levels of open patio areas, strung with festive paper lanterns and open to a great view of the sound. The staff is young and French. The music is always in a style I think of as international hip-very atmospheric but you'd be hard-pressed to hum a few bars. Heat lamps stand like vigilant sentinels, ready to turn away the chilly night breeze. Sunset Beach is always packed and the prices are obscene. But it is like a trip to the French Caribbean-dollar for dollar, if you don't order dessert-and worth every penny on a moonlit summer night when you want to have fun.
Oh, the fun we had. We had to wait at the bar until our table was ready, but it didn't feel like waiting. We picked up our conversation where we'd left off before, and by the time the host came for us, we'd forgotten all about eating. When I turned to pick my jacket off the stool I'd been sitting on, I found myself planting a light kiss on Lars. I didn't know where that urge had come from, but it just felt right.
"Hello," he said with a grin. "I guess this is going pretty well so far."
It was, I realized suddenly, not only a date but my first real date with a man. I couldn't count that guy in high school who came to our door in a coonskin cap with a shotgun. I know, you think I'm joking, but unfortunately I'm not. This was upstate New York, and he had been out "checking his traps." No wonder I was gay.
So how did I feel about sitting across the table from a funny, good-looking guy on my second date, a mere twenty-five years later? Absolutely normal. No different than if I had been sitting across from a funny, good-looking girl. And that was the only surprising thing about it: it just wasn't surprising at all. What if what I had said all those years ago really was true? What if I had always just happened to be attracted to women, and now I had finally met a man who fit my unique idea of lovable?
It was quizzical but I wasn't worried. What I was a little concerned about was his girlfriend situation. I know this may be hard to believe, coming as it does from a lesbian on a date with a man, but I'm fairly square. I don't like messiness, I don't like overlap. Love is complicated enough without deception. I had never cheated on anyone, and I wasn't sure I wanted to be a party to someone else's cheating either. But as I was soon to learn personally, love makes its compromises.
And so our surprising and aimless affair began. In the weeks that followed, I found some way to excuse myself from worrying about Adele, Lars's girlfriend who lived in Florida. At first I felt a guilty sense of sisterhood betrayed. But I rationalized that whatever deception was going on was between the two of them, and had nothing to do with me.
At the same time, I was no fool-I never fully let my guard down and forgot about Adele's existence. Lars and I were having more fun than seemed legal, but spoken romance was off-limits. It was as though we had agreed that that belonged, rightfully
to Adele. Still, it's hard to keep a lid on love. Every now and then, one or the other of us would slip up and let some deeper feeling spill over the edge of our self-containment.
The magic place that Lars and I seemed to inhabit together slowly worked its spell. It was a big world: we talked about books, music, our childhoods, places we'd been, places we wanted to go and, most of all, politics. We were kindred spirits in our liberalism, in our despair about American culture, in our outrage about Bush and the erosion of civil liberties. When we weren't working ourselves into a lather about the state of the world, we were laughing, drinking more than we should have and fooling around. Within a month, we figured we had almost made up for the previous four decades I had spent estranged from male anatomy.
A couple of weeks into all of this, we were at Sunset Beach on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon drinking rosé (again) and soaking in the sunshine.
"I do love you, you know." Lars said suddenly.
"I know you do. And I love you."
He looked me in the eyes and smiled, nodded his head and raised his eyebrows.
It was a sweet moment, as natural, relaxed and easy as the warm sun on our faces.
Hey, maybe I'd been gay my whole life but even I knew that guys don't generally like to admit this kind of thing.
Then again, Lars was not your typical guy. He was a real man's man-there was nothing metrosexual about him. But he also genuinely loved strong, independent, interesting women. He loved sex but had not even a tiny, venal interest in the Paris Hiltons or Pamela Andersons of the world. He hated professional sports, with the exception of cycling (his passion in life) and occasional tennis. Boats had long ago become more of a livelihood than a love, though he was very accomplished and took pride in what he did. Lars liked pornography, but he also liked going to the opera. He loved both the Grateful Dead and waltz music. He liked five-star hotels and camping. He would push the limits of his body with triathlons and long road races, but he also liked, occasionally, to sit by the pool and drink all day. Lars was truly a free spirit, but I also sensed that his lifestyle sometimes made him feel lonely, that he needed connection to someone to give him a sense of place.
We had these (and many other) qualities in common, though probably in reverse proportions. I suspected that Lars believed that adventure was what happened to you alone, and that love, though he believed in it and needed it, was the natural enemy of adventure. I loved a life of adventure, but deep down, I still believed that life with the right person could be twice the thrill, the greatest adventure of all.
I had held to this stubborn belief like a cactus in the desert, despite my bad luck in love. It wasn't that I wasn't capable of happiness alone, because I'd certainly been alone, often and happily. But my parents' marriage had poisoned me with the belief that true love was what it was really all about.
After more than forty years, my parents still left little notes for each other around the house. One year my mother gathered some up and laminated them, then cut them into shapes that fit into the soles of my father's fishing boots, so he could take the notes with him without getting them wet. Another time, my mother was regaling us (as she is wont to do in excruciating detail-I once teased her that she was the reason I became an editor) about a dream she'd had. In the dream, she was wearing her grandmother's pearls when the string broke and they spilled all across the floor. My very down-to-earth father noticeably blanched. "What?" my mother asked him. "I dreamed I was on my hands and knees picking up pearls," he said.
I know-it's sickening. What's worse is that they were married while they were still in college. My earliest memories are of my father doing handstands on a skateboard in our Philadelphia apartment.
Of course, their relationship isn't perfect. I know they've had their fair share of ups and downs. The truth is, they're totally codependent, but it works for them, so who cares? For years, I wished for a relationship that was half as happily dysfunctional as theirs.
It took me a long time to see an accidental downside to my parents' lifelong love affair. It had created a small but intense emotional vacuum in the rest of the household. As much as they loved us kids and put a lot of thought and energy into educating us, there was a way in which my parents' love for each other felt unintentionally exclusionary. We were always on the outside, watching through the window as they danced to music we couldn't hear. Home was a great place, but we were subjects of that kingdom, not citizens. We moved so often-every two years, at least, throughout my entire childhood-that home for me was less about a place than about these loving and slightly eccentric people with whom I lived.
As a result, when I first left my family to go to Brazil (and for many years after), I felt lonely and deeply compelled to create my own family in some form.
Consequently, I've led a life of serial monogamy, otherwise known as one failed relationship after another, though-you know me by now! I prefer to think of it as a series of short successes. I wish the love of my life and I had met at 20 and stayed together. But it's not what fate had in store for me. I've looked long and hard at myself to discern a pattern, but I can't find one. To paraphrase Tolstoy, happy relationships are all alike: every unhappy relationship is unhappy in its own way.
This thing with Lars puzzled me at times. It was different, no doubt about it. It was comfortable, less intense-as though the innate differences between a man and a woman wedged a firm pillow between us. There was no merging going on, no blurring of identities that so often happens between women. I liked it. We were very similar in lots of ways, and we gave each other plenty of space. Most of all, it was fun.
As summer drew to a close, Lars talked of going to Maine to shingle his barn. We had already agreed that he would help me with the last, short leg between Sag Harbor and Maine that I needed to make aboard the Bossanova. Now, though, I looked beyond those next few months. I needed a plan. Where should I go next? The Bahamas seemed appealing, but as I already knew, it was a long journey and I would need crew. So I made Lars a proposition: What if I stayed and worked with him for several weeks on his barn in return for his help taking the Bossanova south? It was a deal that was beneficial to us both, and he quickly agreed.
Lars went to Maine a few weeks before me to get started on some projects. One day as we talked on the phone he said, "You know, I don't want you to think this is just a business deal-that it's all about you coming up here to be my barn slave. Yeah, that'll be great, but I've been thinking about how much I want you to meet friends I've had a long time, meet my mother, hang out at my house. You know what I mean?" Of course I did.
WE SAID GOOD - BYE TO Sag Harbor on a Wednesday fternoon and hello to midcoast Maine about thirty-two hours later. The weather was perfect and we timed the trip to have the current with us. We took turns standing watch, passed through the Cape Cod Canal and ran all night. At around 1600 hours we arrived and tied the Bossanova up at a local marina that had already emptied for the fall.
The first place we went was Lars's house. The Block Cottage, as it is known, is perched dramatically on a shelf of rocks, with almost 360-degree water views. It's an old-fashioned shingled summer cottage. One year when he was away at school, Lars's grandmother had misguidedly renovated the downstairs, to his everlasting chagrin. Except for the stunning ocean views from every window, and an old fashioned, homey kitchen that was left untouched, the downstairs had been drywalled and redone in a modestly formal way that would have been at home in any good suburb. On the other hand, that's like saying except for the big nose, Jimmy Durante was handsome. The views were staggering. Upstairs, the house retained its original charm and was wonderfully unpretentious: painted floorboards and bare wood walls, wallpaper with sailboats printed in primary colors and an old claw-foot tub in the dormer-style bathroom. This was the rustic dream of summertime that Ralph Lauren painted with gloss and sold to people who didn't know that imperfections were signs
of taste that money can't buy.
Lars's mother rented the house out in the summers an
d had built a sweet apartment above the barn where she could perch. In the winter, she went to Camden, but for the first few weeks of our stay, she was in the apartment each night. She was a terrific cook and spoiled us rotten. We gathered in the Block Cottage kitchen each evening after a full day of hard work. Lars and I were clearing out his barn, then building a floor and, finally, shingling; Lars's mother was involved in the painstaking labor of varnishing a boat. We'd listen to NPR, drink wine, cook, debate and sometimes even dance. In the weeks leading up to the election, we also ganged up on Lars's mother in a relentless effort to convince her to change her vote. She was a good sport about it, but living with Lars, you'd have to have developed excellent sportsmanship skills from way back.
Lars was very funny and he loved to tease. I grew up in a family where teasing was a comfortable way of expressing love, but I noticed that out in the larger world, many people were offended by teasing or sarcasm. Lars and I spoke the same language.
I remember one day when we were shingling, I was in a rare bad mood, quieter than usual.
"What's the matter with you today?" Lars asked. "You're not your usual fun self." I told him it was nothing, I was just premenstrual.
He dropped his hammer dramatically. "Uh-oh. You know what we have to do, don't you? We're going to have to use the old Indian remedy. They'd send a woman out into the woods alone for a few days and tell her not to come back until it was over. Do I have to do that, too? Because I will. I don't want any mopeyness around me. I'll just send you out into the woods like a squaw."
He wasn't always funny, but he always made me laugh. Freud be damned, one day I realized that Lars reminded me a little of my father. They had the same sadistic but hilarious sense of humor-they were both tough but sensitive and intelligent. And all of the physical work we did each day no doubt reminded me of my youth. I loved to help Dad with chores: splitting wood, painting a barn, dragging things to the dump-anything I could do alongside him was fun. Now, being outdoors each day as the Maine fall trotted toward winter, I realized that it had been a long time since I'd enjoyed such hard work. It was exhausting but satisfying, and Lars was always good company.