I finished my beer, got up and tossed the can in our recycling bin. In the washroom, the toilet flushed. A moment later, Sean the DJ walked out.
He was naked and so was I, expect for my socks.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I replied.
“Romeo and Juliet.” He pointed back into the washroom. “You a fan of William Shakespeare?”
“No. That’s just my boyfriend’s print.”
“Is he an actor or something?”
“No, he’s not an actor. He’s a mechanic.”
“That’s hot.”
“Yeah.” I massaged the back of my neck. “I suppose it is.”
Sean was about David’s height but thinner, his body pale like cream, speckled with tiny brown moles, the bones of his wrists and hips standing out in sharp relief. Before Parker’s rooftop party, I hadn’t seen Sean in five years. The truth was we’d dated only briefly for about a month. When Sean showed up tonight, he’d wanted to bottom. But that was off limits. Instead, we took turns blowing each other on the couch. His uncut dick was bigger than David’s. It was different and strange having it in my mouth. The inside of his thighs smelled like cut grass. In the end, Sean had jerked me off. After that, he got himself off. As a courtesy, using spit for lube, I slipped my finger inside of him just as he was getting close. Then he made a kind of strained wailing sound, and almost shot himself in the eye. Later, I remarked on the cum on his cheek the way one might point out spinach in someone’s teeth. At no point did I invite him to the bedroom. That bed belonged to David and me.
“Here.” I handed him his underwear and put on my own. I considered offering him a second beer, but that would just mean more small talk. I sat on the arm of the couch, watching as he put on his clothes. Corduroy pants, a rose-patterned belt buckle. Electric blue tank-top. “Thanks for coming over.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, tying his shoes. Purple Vans. No socks. A leather bracelet with a Celtic medallion. “It was nice. I’m glad you texted.”
He still spoke with a faint Dublin accent. You’d think after twenty years in Canada he’d have lost it by now. I handed him his grey flat cap.
“Thanks.” Sean straightened and regarded me with his big seal pup eyes. “Your mechanic boyfriend, he’s back in a week?”
“In six days.”
“How long have you been together?”
“A little over three years now.”
He looked past me. “It’s a nice place you have here.”
“Thanks. It’s his.”
“He fixes bicycles?”
“He works in a bike shop. He just got promoted to assistant manager.”
“You two pretty serious?”
“Yeah, we are.”
“Well, Danny. Good for you. I’m glad for you.”
He picked up my T-shirt. “You know,” he said, “every time I have a gin and tonic, I still think of you. Do you remember, from our first date at the Poetry Jazz Café?”
“That was our second date.”
“I believe you’re right. You loved jazz.”
I didn’t love jazz. I was just in love with the idea of being in love. Sean of all people should’ve understood that.
His face was earnest, his lips parted. There was a time when I thought Sean was the most beautiful boy in the world.. He’d taken care of himself and he looked better than ever. But he was the one who’d ghosted me. I heard later he was a playboy who strung along half-a-dozen guys at any time.
“That,” I said, “was a long time ago.” I took my T-shirt back from him.
“That it was.” The wrinkles showed around his eyes. “I guess I better be going.”
“I guess so.”
“Okay, then.”
We hugged and I patted him on the back.
Gently, he bit my ear lobe. “Take care.”
“Yeah,” I said, pushing him away, without making it seem too obvious. “You too.”
“You should come by the Drake sometime.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll see you around.”
“Okay.”
I closed the door and locked it behind him. It wasn’t quite midnight yet. I could’ve asked him to stay for another beer. I rested my hand on the door knob, considering chasing after him, but I was still in my underwear. Then I thought to text him and call him back. But that would’ve just been pathetic. There’d been a time when I had the hugest crush on Sean. That was before I bumped into his jealous boyfriend. Karen and I had shared a tub of ice cream then too. I peered through the peephole but the hallway was empty.
I imagined myself telling David about what had just happened. If David ever hooked up with another guy, I’d want the truth, I’d want to know all the details. We weren’t jealous boyfriends. I decided I didn’t regret inviting Sean over. Up until that moment, I hadn’t been so sure. David and I had stayed monogamous more by accident than anything else. Now that I’d actually had sex with someone else, I didn’t feel any different. I didn’t feel subversive or delinquent or unfaithful. I still loved David as much as I ever did. Couples managed open relationships all the time, didn’t they? Most people just didn’t talk about it. Did this mean David and I were officially open now? We’d agreed there’d be no fucking and I’d stuck to that. When Sean came up to me at Parker’s party, he’d made a point of telling me he wasn’t seeing anyone. Although that was what he’d told me the first time we met. But people change, I figured.
The truth was, even after five years, every time I had a gin and tonic, I did still think of Sean.
But I’d never told that to anyone. Some things you just keep to yourself.
I went to wash my finger.
CHAPTER EIGHT
You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
On the day David was to fly back to Canada, I received an email from him. His mom had decided to extend her stay and wouldn’t accompany him home. Their three-day family reunion had included a seaside excursion, one marriage proposal, a mad truffle hunt, and an apparent heart attack that paramedics pronounced was heartburn. In the end, there’d been four generations in attendance, the youngest being ten days old, and the oldest eighty-three: David’s nonno Pasquale De Luca, the last surviving De Luca brother and patriarch of the family. There were also a handful of boyfriends and girlfriends, fiancés and fiancées. The neighbouring Sabatinis were considered honorary family. The farmhands’ families had also been invited. All in all, close to one-hundred-and-fifty guests passed through that weekend. Most of the food had been prepared outdoors in a wood-burning oven and on two barbecues. The weather had been magnificent, and the whole affair was a rousing success.
David ended by saying he was boarding his plane in five minutes, and that he was bringing back a surprise. He hadn’t mentioned Luke, and I had to wait another eighteen hours before I could ask him about it.
David was scheduled to arrive at Pearson Airport close to midnight Friday. Our neighbour Liz insisted I borrow her car to pick him up. Liz was a divorced, middle-aged hoarder with a tiny dog named Lucille.
“It’s so much nicer now that he has you living with him,” she said, when she dropped off her keys. “You know, David used to have all sorts of strange visitors, at all hours of the night. Honestly, I feel so much safer now that you’re here.”
Lucille crouched in her arms staring at me like a piranha. “Um, I’m glad you think so,” I said. “And thanks again for the car.”
“Oh, puh-shaw!” Liz flopped one hand, plastic bracelets jangling. “Think nothing of it. After you’re back, just slide the keys under my door. You two boys have a good time tonight. I’m sure you have a lot of catching up to do.” She poked me in the chest. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite!”
Liz’s car turned out to be a rusted, lime-green Volkswagen stick shift, that smelled like Pomeranian piss and pot smoke, with a potpourri of candy wrappers and scratch tickets littering the dashboard. An Elvis air freshener dangled from the rearview mirror, and the backseat was stuffed with easels and
shoeboxes of old oil paints and tarps.
I’d never taken the Gardiner Expressway to the airport, much less driven a stick shift before. I finally reached my destination in one piece, grinding the gears only about half-a-dozen times, just as David’s plane was touching down. It took me another half hour to find parking and make my way to the Arrivals level. Even at this hour, travellers with strollers, briefcases and luggage carts passed by in a never-ending ebb and flow.
I didn’t realize how much I’d missed David until I saw him. He emerged with his suitcase in tow, wearing a plain white V-neck and jeans. The Sicilian sun had baked him dark as a nut. His curling hair was tucked behind his ears, and he’d grown a short, untrimmed beard.
I waved until he saw me making my way through the crowd. In the last moments I broke into a jog. When we crashed together, I found myself hugging him as hard as I could. He’d only been gone two months, but his body felt leaner, harder. When I inhaled the smell of him, I imagined knotted wood smoke, fresh-baked olive bread, and rich caked earth. Eventually, it was David who broke away.
“Daniel,” he said, wrinkling his nose, “have you been smoking up?”
“What? No! Why on earth are you asking me that? Oh, I think it’s Liz’s car.”
“Who?”
“Liz, from across the hall. She loaned me her car. I think she uses it to hotbox. I drove here tonight.”
“You did? Okay. Wow, thanks for doing that. I’ve really missed you. It’s great to see you.”
“I’ve missed you too.”
David stepped aside.
“Look, Daniel, there’s someone I want you to meet.”
Startled, I noticed for the first time the individual hovering a few steps away.
He was a young, wide-eyed guy with thick eyebrows and lashes, and a camera dangling around his neck. He was sporting an Avril Lavigne concert T-shirt, and a prosthetic arm.
He was also wearing my Blue Jays cap.
David clapped him on the shoulder and drew him close.
“Hallo!” Antonio exclaimed, tucking my ball cap under one armpit. He thrust out his hand, grinning from ear to ear. “You are David’s boyfriend. I am Antonio Nicoli DiAngelo Badalamenti. It is so good to meet you.”
I’d assumed Antonio was going to be sleeping at our Kensington market loft, like Luke had for a month. But the arrangement was for him to stay at David’s mom’s house in Little Italy. David’s aunt Bianca was a midwife who had helped give birth to Antonio twenty-two years ago. Antonio’s own uncle had worked for David’s aunts even longer than that. Antonio also had a cousin in Bagheria who was childhood best-friends with David’s second cousin’s half-sister. Like the Sabatinis, it turned out, this guy apparently was practically family.
This was all explained to me enthusiastically during the drive back into the city, Antonio squeezed between me and David in the passenger seat with Elvis’ pineapple-scented crotch bobbing in his face. As we approached the city, he kept taking pictures of the Toronto skyline. At one point, he launched into an a cappella, hip-slapping rendition of “Hound Dog.” Then it was all I could do to keep one hand on the wheel and his butt from knocking my stick shift into reverse.
It was after 2 a.m. by the time we arrived at Mrs. Gallucci’s home. This was the house where David had grown up, a Victorian semi-detached with a curving paved walkway flanked by stone lions. David unlocked the stained-glass front door, deactivated the security system, and handed Antonio the keys. The house was in impeccable order, with a gleaming Steinway in the front parlour (where David and I had moved it three years ago), and a gold-framed portrait of Pope Benedict XVI over the china cabinet.
I remembered the first time I’d met Mrs. Gallucci, sitting on the settee while she served us coffee and biscotti. I was covered in fall leaves, having just cleaned out her gutters, and had a hole in my sock which I tried to hide by pinching it between my toes. Her narrowed eyes seemed to see right through me. Of course, I thought, she must know I was fucking her son. When she instructed both of us to stay for lunch, I was sure it was to interrogate me further. After dessert, she pulled out her sewing kit, unsheathed an evil-looking needle, confiscated my sock and stitched it up in two minutes flat.
“Antonio, you’ll sleep in the guest room,” David said. “That used to be my old bedroom. Here, c’mon, let me show you.”
Antonio was already halfway up the stairs like a puppy off its leash. David grabbed Antonio’s suitcase and winked at me, before chasing after him.
While David gave Antonio the upstairs tour, I waited self-consciously in the foyer, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock. With Mrs. Gallucci away, I felt like I was trespassing. I wondered if she had security cameras hidden in the chandeliers.
I observed the framed print of Michelangelo’s David in the hallway, his threatening expression and tensely muscled torso, his oddly small package.
Standing in this spot, Mrs. Gallucci once explained to me, with her thin arms folded, how the classical Greeks actually preferred small phalluses, how it was the idealized look for the civilized alpha male. Small phalluses were associated with moderation, a key virtue of masculinity. Only those who were undisciplined, vulgar, or grotesque had large penises: old men, drunkards, man-beasts. The Renaissance artists weren’t Greek, but their convention for male beauty was classically inspired. Did I know Michelangelo was only twenty-six when he began work on David? No, ma’am, I did not.
I became aware that it was unusually quiet upstairs. I ascended the lower landing and was just about to call out when David’s head appeared over the bannister.
“Hey, Daniel,” he said, “Antonio wants to celebrate. Can you open a bottle of wine?”
“Where do I find that?”
“Just grab one from the kitchen. And three glasses.”
I took off my sneakers. Hesitantly, I ventured down the shadowy hallway. No Doberman Pinscher rounded the corner, nails clicking on the hardwood parquet. No poison darts came shooting out of the wainscoting. When I flicked on the kitchen lights, everything glared at me, polished and spotless, from the copper pots and pans to the wall-mounted knives. I retrieved a bottle of wine from a small rack on the counter, a corkscrew and three glasses.
When I turned around, David was standing in the doorway with Antonio’s prosthetic arm in his hands.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Look, I need to find a screwdriver and tighten something up for him,” David said, setting the arm on the table (where it sat like some post-apocalyptic steampunk artifact). “I’ll meet you guys in two minutes.” He started rummaging in the kitchen drawers.
I stood dumbly for a moment, debating whether this was the right time to ask about Luke, or at least crack some lame Edward Scissorhands joke. I didn’t think it was. I headed upstairs.
When I arrived at the top landing, I discovered Antonio in his undershirt peeing into the toilet with the washroom door wide open.
“Daniel, Daniel!” he called out, compelling me to pause outside. “All three of us, we will go out tomorrow Saturday night. We will go meet Canadian girls, yes?” He was still pissing vigorously, his dick in his hand. I tried not to stare at the stump of his left arm. I glanced down, just for a second, I couldn’t help it. The guy was huge.
“Canadian girls? Um, yeah, definitely.”
Antonio bent his knees and shouted: “Avril Lavigne!”
“Avril Lavigne,” I said, taken aback.
He shivered, swinging his snake around, shaking off the final drops, before stuffing the monstrosity back in his boxers. “Alanis Morissette!”
“Alanis Morissette,” I said.
He flung out his arm. “Celine Dion!”
“Celine!” I said. “Yay, Celine!”
He flushed the toilet. “My heart will go on!”
“I’m sure it will,” I said.
“David (pronounced ‘Dah-vee-day’) says Canadian girls are very beautiful. Daniel, is this true?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “Yes it is. It’s
very true.”
“You know, some Canadian girls are Italian girls.”
“We come from all over.”
“Italian women,” he said, gesturing emphatically, “are the most beautiful women in the world.”
“I’m sure they are.”
“Do you have a girlfriend, Daniel?”
“Do I have a girlfriend?” I blinked, confused. “No, I don’t have a girlfriend. I’m with David.”
“Yes, you are with David. You are together.”
“That’s right.”
“But do you have a girlfriend to show your momma and papa?”
“My parents died, a long time ago.”
“Ah! I am so sorry to hear.” He rested his urine-stained hand on my shoulder and peered earnestly into my face. “But you have family, yes?”
“I have two brothers and my grandpa who raised us.”
“Do you have a girlfriend to bring home to your two brothers and your grandpa?”
“What? No. No, I don’t. They’ve met David, lots of times. They know he’s my boyfriend. I’m out to my whole family.”
“Your whole family,” Antonio said in a hushed tone, “they know you are omosessuale?”
“Yes. My whole family, they know.” I opened my arms. “I’m a homosexual. That’s me.”
“And they are at peace with this?”
“Yep.”
Antonio’s brow furrowed. “David, he is not at peace with this. He has not told his family.”
“Well.” I drew a breath and studied the gleaming ceramic tiles. The floor was immaculate. A person could eat off that floor. It was strange to think that someone like David had grown up in a home like this. “We’ve talked about him coming out to his family.”
“Not to his momma or to his brother.”
“His brother?”
“His brother. You know his brother?”
Tales from the Bottom of My Sole Page 13