by Willard, Guy
All was silent, no one was about. The only sound was the birds twittering. Reality and dream seemed to be mingling, as if remnants of sleep still clung to my eyes. My experience with Golden now seemed all the more wonderful, like a beautiful dream.
I reached Christine’s apartment building and went up the steps. But just as I was about to knock on her door, a curious premonition held me back. I leaned down to put my ear to the door, and as I did so, the doorknob turned. I quickly pulled back into the shadows behind the fire extinguisher cabinet and ducked down.
The door opened slowly and Scott stepped out. But instead of closing the door and walking away, he was standing in the doorway, turned back to speak to Christine in her room. They were speaking in whispers, and though I strained my ears, I couldn’t make out the gist of it. But the tone of Scott’s voice, every nuance of his movements, conveyed an unmistakable tenderness. I felt my body tense up, fearful of discovery, and wished I hadn’t decided on the spur of the moment to hide myself. I felt I was peeking at something I shouldn’t have seen. An exciting premonition filled me up, almost made me tremble in agitation.
In a moment, Scott had gently closed the door, turned toward the steps and walked down them, out of sight. Slowly I sank to the floor. Was it possible that Christine had betrayed me? The old-fashioned sound of the word “betray” thrilled me. The scenario I’d spun out in my fantasies had finally come true, the affair I’d engineered so carefully had reached fruition. I felt strangely excited. But mixed with this excitement was a sick, self-pitying emptiness in my stomach, the emptiness I’d felt as a child when I thought I’d been mistreated by my parents.
I got up and went to the door, knocked softly on it. In an instant it was flung open. Christine was standing in the doorway wearing a baggy sweatshirt and pajama bottoms. There was no make-up on her face and her hair looked just washed. Her initial expression of worry changed to relief when she saw it was me. “Guy! Where were you? I was worried sick!”
“You’re still up at this hour?”
“Didn’t you run into Scott? He just left here a moment ago.”
“So Scott was here?”
“Of course. He was here almost all night. He’s been going back and forth to the dorm all night to see if you’d returned. Where were you? We kept waiting for you to show up. He’s so worried about you. He said you’ve been depressed lately.”
She let me into her room and closed the door behind me. I looked over at her desk and saw a couple of glasses out, and some empty cans of beer. “Damn. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought you were having a party in here.”
“Stop evading the issue, Guy.” She looked straight at me. “Where were you tonight? Will you answer me straight? If Scott hadn’t called me tonight looking for you, I would have never known that you were out so late. You’re fooling around, aren’t you? I know it. There’s someone else. No, don’t lie. I can feel it.”
I didn’t try to deny it. My own infidelities took place in a world in which she had no existence. So foreign were they to anything she might imagine that they almost didn’t count as infidelities. Could she even begin to conceive what I’d been doing last night?
And what about her, and that scene I’d just witnessed at her door? The thought that Scott might have been kissing her just before I’d come, the thought that they might have even slept together, gave me the strength to overcome the feelings of guilt which were playing about the edge of my consciousness.
I sat down on her bed and tried not to wince. “What about you, Christine?”
“What do you mean?”
“You and Scott were acting awfully chummy for a pair who are concerned about a mutual friend. Or is it just an extension of going out to see movies together, to meet for dinner after an evening of study together? You two have so much in common, too….”
“Stop it, Guy. You were the one who asked me to go out with him.”
“What’s the matter? If you’re worried about me, don’t be. I’m not the jealous type. And I know I can trust Scott.”
She didn’t answer. When I looked at her, there were tears in her eyes and I felt a sudden panic.
“What’s wrong, Christine?”
She turned away from me. “I wish you wouldn’t do this to me.”
“Do what?”
“Why don’t you come right out and say it?”
I looked at her, flabbergasted. And then I heard her say in a small voice:
“It’s all over now, I suppose.”
The words I’d secretly longed for, yet dreaded, had finally been uttered. I hadn’t expected it to be like this—and surely hadn’t expected it at this moment. For a long time, I’d suspected that Christine might have known about my true feelings. But I still didn’t want it to break up our relationship. I wanted to make it all work somehow—with her and with Scott. It was as if my need for Scott were bound up inextricably with my relationship with Christine. In some obscure way which I felt unable to unravel, I needed her in order to have Scott.
“Not over, no,” I heard myself say. “But I think we should think things over. We’ve been going together for six months or so now. That’s a long time. Maybe we need to step back and look at what we’ve got. Let’s not rush too soon into doing something which we might regret later.”
“But you’re the one who’s making it impossible. Lately you don’t seem the same. Guy, you know I don’t like lying and hypocrisy, and—I thought our relationship was open. And good.”
“It was.” I realized too late I’d used the past tense. I felt my heart crushed under a great weight. I continued to look at her, and now she couldn’t meet my eyes.
I decided to chance it. “Did something happen tonight, Christine?”
She looked down at her hands. She’d never lied to me before and I knew she couldn’t lie now. It just wasn’t in her nature—she was constitutionally incapable of lying. The fact was, I myself was afraid to face the truth, but some perversity in me insisted on bringing it out of her now, even as I felt I was punishing her by doing so.
She opened her mouth to speak and something in me wanted to stop her before she confessed—to keep the grubby little secret out of sight for a little while longer so I wouldn’t have to face the consequences.
“He was sick with worrying about what might have happened to you. Usually you tell him where you’re going. And we couldn’t imagine where you’d be at that time of night.”
“What did you do?”
“We talked. Had a few drinks. He consoled me. We calmed each other down.”
“And? Did anything else happen?”
She whirled on me with a look almost of hatred on her face and I felt sickened. “What do you mean by ‘anything else?’ I don’t like—” And then suddenly she looked very tired. She sighed:
“Yes.”
She lowered her eyes and blinked rapidly a few times, then looked up at me with a look which chilled me, and said in the tones of a lifeless zombie:
“For your information, Scott is no longer a virgin. I suppose you’re happy now.”
I was unable to say a word. I thought of how her face usually looked during sex, and imagined Scott seeing it at firsthand. An atavistic joy filled my soul. Through the channel of Christine’s body, Scott and I were now one, linked by the most basic bonds vouchsafed to unrelated strangers. My skin, in nakedness, had touched Christine’s, and her skin, in nakedness had touched his. Blood brotherhood was nothing compared to the ritual which had been enacted.
She was speaking so softly that I almost didn’t catch her next words.
“I don’t know how it happened. One thing led to another. I hadn’t intended it at all.” She looked so unhappy that I wanted to stop her, but felt unable to. “It was what you wanted, Guy, wasn’t it?”
The answer died on my lips.
I thought of the past couple of months, which now seemed like years. It had given me a delicious feeling of power to watch the two people I loved most coming together bec
ause of me, in spite of me, in secret from me, but with my blessing. I’d felt as if I were engineering their romance, their infidelity. In this, I was motivated by my devotion to Christine as much as my love for Scott. For if I couldn’t have him, then Christine should; for she was the girl he cared most for…cared for in a way I never could. They should be happy together. Their happiness would make mine complete.
She went on tonelessly, as if she were speaking to her innermost self, probably not even caring whether I listened or not, and I felt helpless to do anything but listen.
“I guess our little jealousy games finally came true. We were pushing it to the edge, and this time we went too far to come back. Do you remember that time you jokingly asked about a three-way relationship with Scott—to do him the favor of taking his virginity? In truth, I wasn’t ready to go that far. I mean, I know we’ve been very open to sexual experiences, even to the point of kinkiness. But this was beyond what I wanted. It might have turned you on, but it wasn’t for me. I guess I was old-fashioned. But once the suggestion was made, it lodged in my mind and I began thinking about it. It went on and on in my mind and there was nothing I could do after a while to stop it. It got to the point where I didn’t want to stop it. It was like I had your tacit permission to—to do what I really, in my heart, wanted. Because I knew that you would never have said such a thing unless deep in your heart you really wished it. It was your way of letting me go, pushing me off onto someone else. And who better than your best friend?”
“No, Christine, no. It wasn’t like that.”
“It’s all right. You see, I’d been so afraid. For the longest time I was unsure about my feelings. I liked Scott as a friend because he was your best friend. But when you asked me to sleep with him, I was scared. Because I was really beginning to feel something for him, even back then, and it was like temptation. You were pushing me where you thought it was still safe, but it was dangerous ground. Very dangerous.”
There was a sinking feeling in my stomach.
“And so—it happened. It happened.” She raised her hands helplessly and let them drop.
“Happened,” I repeated foolishly. The word sounded silly. It had no meaning, it was a ridiculous word which could be applied to anything: matchsticks, curtain rails, toy locomotives. “Was tonight the first time? I mean, has it happened before?”
She looked at me with a helpless expression and raised her hands, shaking her head slightly, which could have meant anything—no, or her helplessness in the face of fate. “When you asked me to do it, you knew in your heart I could never betray you. So I was tortured by your asking me to do it. I didn’t think you really wanted it to happen; I was waiting for you to take it back, to apologize, to—I don’t know. It bothered me for a long, long time.”
“And Scott?” Even as I felt my whole world coming to pieces, I realized I was dying to find out what had happened in her room tonight. To my shame, I wanted to know all the dirty little details. “What was it like for him?”
The look on her face was bitter. “Guy….Scott is in love with me.”
“I know.”
“I mean, he really loves me. He had tears in his eyes. I felt as if I’d betrayed him, betrayed his love. Because I didn’t feel the same way about him as he felt about me.”
“How did you feel about him?”
“I was killing all my feelings. Can’t you understand?”
There was a long silence during which I felt with my skin that I’d done her a wrong, both her and Scott. And yet. She went on:
“No, it’s not true that I felt nothing for Scott. But I don’t want to go into that.”
I knew it was all over. Not just my relationship with Christine, and the happiness I’d felt, but a whole period of my life was ending. I had pushed into territory which should have been left unexplored, and there was no going back now. My whole present, just an instant ago, had turned into the past—a distant past which was receding from me now at the speed of light.
A sob broke from my throat.
“He’s a good guy, Christine. Maybe the best I’ve ever met.”
She was silent for a long time. Then: “Guy? You’re in love with Scott, aren’t you?”
I couldn’t say a thing.
“I should have guessed. For the longest time I thought it was just the feeling of friendship between two buddies, the usual male bonding thing which women aren’t allowed to understand. I had my suspicions, but kept them down, tried not to look the truth in the face. When you suggested the three-way thing, I knew that was a fantasy often indulged in by men who want to sleep with other men. But I guess I closed my eyes to it. I thought your feelings for me were genuine.”
“Oh they were, Christine. I loved you, Christine. I really did. But later I wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t so sure about a lot of things. But I know you well enough to know that you’d probably understand if I—”
“I still love you, Guy, that’s the most pathetic part of it. I love you, knowing you might be in love with Scott. So in a way, my sleeping with Scott was done out of love for you. Can you understand the paradoxical position I was in? Betraying you out of love. But my feelings for Scott are still too confused for me to figure out. The truth is, my feelings for him might be much deeper than I just admitted to you. I’ve been hiding it from you and that put a lot of pressure on me. I was going crazy from not knowing where I stood, with myself, with you, with Scott. And I was afraid of being found out, too. At least now it’s all out in the open. Which might be a good thing, in a way.”
“Now that you know how things really stand, do you think the three of us could continue on as we are? But in an open fashion, at least among us? Stranger things have happened.”
She shook her head. “There’s too much emotion involved. I love you, and I’m jealous of your love for Scott. Scott loves me and would be jealous of my love for you. While you love Scott who can never love you. The ultimate love triangle. Doesn’t it form an exquisitely perfect, and yet futile, mathematical equation?”
“I don’t know. I flunked chemistry, and I’m not so hot at math, either.” After a long pause, I said softly, “Christine, do you want to know where I was all night? I was at Professor Golden’s house, getting fucked by him, giving up my virginity to him. Who knows? I might have lost it at about the same time Scott lost his. How’s that for poetic justice?”
There was another long pause before she asked in a tired voice: “So what happens now?”
“I don’t know.” And then it hit me—I really didn’t know. Suddenly I wanted to laugh. It seemed so ridiculous that we were discussing everything so calmly, so reasonably. “In the movies, this is the part where someone starts ranting and raving.”
“I never saw a movie like this, Guy.”
“Neither have I. So I don’t know what happens next.”
“Will you be all right?”
“Sure. I’ll survive. I always do.”
“That’s good.” She looked at me with something like pity in her eyes.
I cleared my throat. “Maybe we should call it a night, huh?”
She nodded, but didn’t move.
“Okay, I’m going now.”
“Sure.”
I got up and left.
4
Outside, the sky had brightened into a clear, unclouded day. The wonderland I’d walked through on my way to Christine’s apartment had disappeared. Here and there early morning joggers in brightly colored sweat suits were gliding among the trees beside the bicycle path. Meeting them as they came onto the path, I felt somewhat like a late reveler confronting early-morning commuters.
In the clear morning air, what had just taken place in Christine’s apartment didn’t seem real anymore. It was impossible to accept that everything was over. In my heart, I just knew there was still a chance to save everything, to make it all go back to what it had been before. And to do that, I had to see Scott before he saw Christine again.
The dorm was still quiet; most of the guys were fa
st asleep. When I opened the door to my room, I heard the shower on. Scott was in. I went over to the shower room and opened its door, stepped inside. Beyond the translucent shower partition, I could make out his flesh-colored form. He was leaning his head back, letting the jets of water hit him straight in the face. I pushed open the partition and stuck my head in. As he turned around to face me, jets of warm water glanced off his shoulders, into my face.
“I’m back,” I said.
The shower stall was filled with steam and I could barely see a thing. He shut off the water and turned to face me. His hair was dripping wet; he ran his hand through it, pushing it straight back from his forehead. I made sure I was looking him straight in the face, but in my peripheral vision, I noted pearly drops of water quivering in his pubic bush.
“Wait,” he said. “I’ll be right out.”
I went out to his bed and sat down. In a moment he was coming out, wiping himself off, toweling his hair dry. I pretended to be uninterested in the sight of his nude body, and idly flipped through the pages of a literature textbook I’d found lying by his pillow. Wrapping the towel around his middle, he sat down on the bed. His chest and shoulders were dry, but still steaming from the hot shower. The mingled essences of soap, after-shave, and toothpaste came off him.
“Guy, where have you been? I called Christine last night when you still hadn’t come back by one. You never stay out that late without telling me first. What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“Oh?” He looked at me hard, and in that look, I sensed that something had come between us. He wasn’t the Scott I’d known. He seemed so much more confident than I’d ever known him to be, and I realized it must be the effect of losing his virginity. That experience had profoundly changed him. He was someone else now, someone much stronger, more cunning. I’d changed the thing I’d loved, out of love for it. A part of me felt sadness, a sense of loss. Yet the bigger part of me felt delighted: I’d created this more confident Scott, this healthy, strong heterosexual boy. His new-found adulthood made him that much more desirable in my eyes.