“I’m sorry, Aaron,” I whispered.
Tears came to my eyes.
It was over. Both Aaron and Matt were sure of what they wanted, but I wasn’t sure, and that was the very worst position to be in.
10.
That Saturday at the end of January Aaron made his way down Union Street. It was an area of the city that he almost never ventured to, a prosperous shopping area with boutiques, delis, and old family stores. He glanced in the window of Fredricksen’s Hardware, thinking about how his mother would have loved this well-stocked store. She’d loved cooking and everything involved with it. He still used her utensils, like her mixing bowls. Tessa had inherited some too, but Tessa wasn’t as sentimental as he was.
And therapists. The street was full of therapists, practicing in old Victorian buildings. It amused him that there was a therapists’ district, a place where they congregated. He’d chosen Marc almost at random. Marc had a nice face in the About Me page on his website and a light manner with his description, not too heavy and psychoanalytically oriented. He didn’t overpromise his results, Aaron thought with a slight smile.
He wasn’t really sure why he was doing this as he clambered painfully up the stairs, once Marc had buzzed him in. Dave was over. He could tell Dave would leave, probably in the next month. It was a way he had of predicting things. Actually, he’d thought from the beginning that Dave would be temporary. He’d let himself in for it, knowing that nothing about him or the house would be enough to hold Dave, because Dave really needed something else.
Aaron sat in a small waiting room waiting for Marc to come out. There were no magazines, just a bubbling stone fountain. He looked at it carefully. It was supposed to make him feel peaceful, he knew that. Inside, he felt the beginnings of tears.
“Aaron?” Marc was a stocky man in his thirties with curly hair and a pleasant, warm appearance.
“Yes.”
Aaron got to his feet, stumbling slightly.
“Did you have trouble parking today?” Marc enquired.
“Oh no, I don’t drive. I took the bus, actually.”
Marc glanced at him—to make sure he was walking properly, Aaron thought—and then gestured to his nearby office.
“Come in, please. Have a seat. I’m going to take some notes since this is our first time.”
Marc busied himself with pen and paper while Aaron glanced around the room, which looked out onto the street but was pleasantly quiet. A cocoon, he thought, mouth quirking. If only life was this safe.
He glanced at Marc covertly, knowing that he had picked his “type” to talk to. No doubt Marc was a straight guy, but it was fun having a straight guy’s attention, his caring—or ostensible caring. It was all a professional facade or role, of course. Marc didn’t really care about him, though he would try to persuade him he did. That would make the therapy go better, or whatever “healing” there would be. He doubted there would be any, though.
“So, what brings you here today?” Marc asked, looking at him with clear eyes.
“Well, I looked at your website,” Aaron said haltingly. “I noticed that you specialize in PTSD and stuff like that.”
Marc nodded. He smiled encouragingly.
“The main thing—the main thing that brings me in is a relationship that kind of seems to be at its end.”
Marc scribbled something on his pad.
“Tell me more about that situation,” Marc said. “And your partner.”
Aaron paused. Although Dave had been cool with the therapy, he knew that what he was about to say was somewhat of a betrayal. Telling a stranger.
He shrugged. “All right. Well, I’m 24. I’m gay. I’ve been in a relationship with a man called Dave for about six months. It’s my first real live-in relationship, I suppose you could say. Dave moved into my house. And the thing is, when we met last summer he was in a relationship with a woman. It happened very fast. His girlfriend threw him out after we’d spent one night together. I wanted him to move in, though.” Aaron realized he was talking very fast, almost gabbling, but Marc seemed transfixed, listening attentively, making notes.
“OK,” Marc said, his tone even more gentle now. “So you’ve been together about six months, and how has it been?”
“It was great at first.” Aaron paused, thinking back to the beginning. “The sex was amazing. But I always felt... I always felt he didn’t have enough experience. That maybe he was infatuated with me, but it would end. And as it turns out, the guy that he slept with in college, his one gay experience before me, found him again.”
“What’s this other man’s name?” Marc said.
“Matt. So they got together... they got together before Matt’s wedding. And it happened that I saw them that day. I work for Twitter, you see, and I was at a hotel downtown. It was a horrible coincidence.”
“It was hard to see them together,” Marc said, nodding.
“Awful. They looked so close. And then I realized—there’s no way Dave will stay with me. Dave wants someone like that, but he doesn’t really admit it or know it yet.”
“Someone like...?” Marc enquired.
Aaron looked down. This was what therapists always did. They questioned your assumptions. It was all to make you feel better, he knew that, but it was so obvious, the reframing that they did. Constant reframing, he thought.
He looked up and met Marc’s eyes.
“Matt’s quite masculine compared to me,” he said, flushing. “I also think—well, I hope it’s OK to say this, but I think he’s dominant in bed, and I’m not.”
Marc scribbled something down. He thought for a moment. It was so rare, Aaron thought, watching, to have this much eye contact with another man that you weren’t intimately involved with. He swallowed, but could feel some of the weight of the last weeks drain off him.
“You said Matt was getting married,” Marc said patiently. “To a woman?”
“Yes, he got married last year, and so I know Dave thought that would be it. And he decided not to see Matt again. It would just be too hard. But I knew... I knew he was thinking about him.” Aaron began to twist his hands. “I could tell he was. For months.”
“And then?” Marc prompted.
“Well, then Dave started to say stuff about opening up the relationship. This all just started about a month ago. We had a good Christmas and New Year’s; we seemed tight. But Dave wanted to see his ex, Janine, again, for example. So I said, fine. I didn’t mind if he got together with his ex. I really didn’t.”
Marc nodded.
“So that happened. And then Matt wrote to him on Facebook, but Dave did something to initiate it, I’m guessing. He didn’t really tell me until he had a date set with Matt. A dinner. But just by the way he told me... I freaked out. I got really scared.”
“Why didn’t you tell Dave you didn’t want him to meet up with Matt?”
“I was scared to. I thought I had to go along with it. But it just...” Aaron stopped. “One thing that happened too was that Dave stopped sleeping in my bed. He went back to his own room. That’s been the hardest thing of all, the thing that makes me feel the most...”
He stopped.
“Rejected?” Marc said gently.
“Yeah, rejected. I have trouble sleeping on my own.”
“A lot of my patients say that,” reported Marc. He scribbled something else down and enquired, “Would you say you feel depressed? Anxious?”
Aaron stared at the thick-paned window. “I don’t want meds. I’m not here for that,” he said in a low voice. “But of course, yes, all my life.”
“All your life,” Marc repeated. His voice sounded slightly shocked.
“Well, since I was ten anyway.”
“What happened when you were ten, Aaron?”
Here it was. He gulped.
“My father died,” he said in a low voice.
Marc didn’t immediately respond and Aaron raised his head slowly. He guessed Marc would be looking at him with pity. And he was. Those big
brown eyes were luminous.
Aaron just breathed for a moment in the quiet room. His hands were still. He smiled at Marc; it was a strange response, he knew, and Marc just looked at him steadily, taking it all in, evaluating him, perhaps.
“That’s so young,” Marc said finally. “I’ll share this with you... I also lost a parent in my teens.”
“I lost both parents,” Aaron blurted out. It was strange the way he needed to override Marc’s confession, or perhaps up the ante a little. He wasn’t sure.
“My mom died when I was sixteen, of cancer,” he added. Marc scribbled something on the pad. He looked concerned, almost upset. He paused, thinking.
“You had someone to look after you?” he asked.
“My older sister, Tessa,” Aaron said promptly. He couldn’t help smiling when he said her name. “Tessa lives in LA. We grew up in Carlsbad, CA. Near there.”
“What brought you up here?” Marc asked. His voice was more informal now, Aaron noted. Less professionally courteous, more curious.
“Twitter hired me out of college and paid my moving expenses, though it wasn’t much. I didn’t even finish my degree. I wanted out of SoCal; I’d had enough.”
“I see,” Marc said. He thought for a moment.
“Well, Aaron, I can see you’ve had a number of life challenges. Serious challenges. Did I notice that you had something wrong with your leg too?”
Aaron laughed outright this time. He couldn’t help it. “Yeah, all that and the leg as well,” he joked. Marc waited patiently. “I tore a ligament when I was fifteen, skateboarding. Mom didn’t have a lot of money at that point so I probably didn’t get the best care. It’s hard to remember any of this.” He didn’t know why he added that, and blushed. “I mean, I was doped up a lot after the accident.”
Marc nodded. “Were you using drugs before the accident? I mean, in general?”
Now, this was getting a little delicate. “All through my teens,” he said. “Different things. I tried most things. My dad died of a heroin overdose. Well, there are a lot of drugs in Southern California. You know...” He was babbling. “I mean, that wasn’t uncommon in my peer group or anything. It was sort of expected.”
He had Marc’s full attention. “Are you clean now?”
“Well, mostly. I take some prescription meds like Xanax. Muscle relaxants. I have some physical pain, so there’s a real need for it as well. Sometimes I’ll take a Vicodin for that, but I don’t overdo it.”
“And alcohol?” Marc asked calmly.
“I do drink,” Aaron said. “Wine, mostly. I don’t consider myself a heavy user, but it’s been a problem with Dave and me. He gets very upset when I use drugs. I suppose because I check out a bit. But I feel it helps me to check out sometimes. You know?”
He was saying that more, he noticed.
Marc looked understanding. “You grew up with your father using drugs, then. And your mother?”
“No, she didn’t,” Aaron said, looking down. “She just drank wine sometimes, but all her friends did. She was really pretty stable. She was an artist. Which doesn’t usually go together,” he added.
Marc gave a faint smile. “I paint, too, in my spare time. It’s very therapeutic.”
“My mom had a gallery and everything. She was considered a good artist. But that was all a bit over my head, growing up.”
“You were close to your mother,” Marc stated.
He nodded. “Sure. Very close. And to Tessa as well, especially after Mom died.”
“But not to Dad?”
Aaron gave a big sigh. “I don’t think he was close to anyone.”
He was shocked that he had said this, and began twisting nervously in his seat.
“Even your mother...” Marc’s voice was gentle, suggestive, pulling him along.
“Even to her. She loved him, there was no doubt about that. I once, you know, I once saw him in bed with... but I was too young to understand what they were doing.” Aaron laughed nervously.
Marc waited.
“A young man. They were pressed close together, naked, and I watched them for a moment and then Dad said, ‘Aaron, why don’t you go off and play?’ So I did. I was only about five. Dad hung around with musicians because he wrote about them; he was a music journalist. This guy was one of them.”
Marc nodded slowly. “Have you ever told anyone that?”
“No, I thought about it just now!” Aaron tried to lower his voice. This was crazy, he was blurting out too much. What did it matter whom his father slept with anyway? he thought.
“So your father,” Marc said slowly, “was bisexual.”
“Yeah, I never realized that, growing up. It was never spoken of between my parents, and they seemed loving sometimes, although I guess they didn’t do normal things like go to the movies together. My dad was always working on some article—he wrote these really long articles for magazines. It was just Mom and me and Tessa going out and doing stuff, mostly. Mom drove us places, hung out with us, and Dad just wasn’t there most of the time.”
He didn’t realize how sad his voice sounded until he caught Marc’s gaze. Then he squirmed.
“His sudden death must have been a terrible shock to you, and the family,” Marc said.
“Dad’s death? Yeah. I don’t even think there was a funeral. Mom just carried on. Dad was cremated and we had the urn in our house. Mom put seashells around it.” Aaron smiled, but to his horror he found his eyes filling with tears. “I’m glad I don’t have to look at it, anyway. Tessa has it.”
“Have you cried for your father?” Marc asked, handing him a tissue.
“I didn’t cry back then, no. Not really. Then I was kind of a hard little preteen, kind of numb. A difficult teenager. No, I can’t remember if I ever broke down and cried about it. I cried when Mom died. A lot. It seemed so incredibly unfair. She was a great person.”
He blew his nose.
Marc sighed. “Aaron, you’ve told me a lot today and I can see that you’re dealing with a lot of grief from the past.”
He looked at Marc. “Am I?” he said wildly. Then he laughed. “God, this is weird. I didn’t think I was dealing with grief, exactly.”
“Why does that surprise you?” Marc murmured.
“Grief. It sounds so heavy. So unchangeable. Like a rock.”
“The drugs are a crutch to help with the powerful emotions you don’t want to face, Aaron. Has that never occurred to you?”
He thought. “Well... yeah. I just know they always made me feel better. So in some ways, they’ve helped.”
“A crutch,” Marc repeated. “But I hear you about not wanting to go on meds for depression and anxiety. That’s your choice, and there are things that work for a lot of my patients that are more holistic.”
“I’ve probably used sex as a crutch too,” Aaron mused.
Marc smiled. “Well, that’s a biggie,” he said. “Those are the two things most people use, you know. You’re not alone in that.”
“I feel alone.”
Silence. He could tell Marc wanted to come over and give him a hug, but he restrained himself.
“So, I’d like to make another appointment with you for next week,” Marc said, looking down. “You’re going through a breakup, and you must feel very isolated. I’d like to help, if you will let me.”
He sounded formal again.
“Sure.” Aaron was all practicality. “Oh, I brought a check.” He reached over and handed it to Marc, who took it. Their hands brushed together.
“Thanks. Oh, by the way,” Marc said. “It doesn’t say this on the website, and I should change that, but I work with a lot of gay and bisexual men. It’s an area of interest. So you don’t need to be shy about that part of your life.”
“Have I seemed shy?” Aaron enquired. His smile was met with a warm smile from Marc in return.
“Not exactly, but I sense you held back some things, which is perfectly normal for a first visit. Our time is up today, Aaron.”
Aar
on stood up, holding on to the arm of the chair. “That’s odd,” he said.
“What is?”
“My leg doesn’t hurt at all. Usually it would be really stiff.”
“Grief is stored in the body,” Marc said. He stood up too. Again, Aaron had the odd feeling that he was holding himself back from an embrace.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine, Marc,” Aaron said.
Marc bit his lip. “You’ve said that a lot in your life, haven’t you, Aaron?”
Aaron nodded slowly.
“Let’s try to get you a little better than whatever your current perception of ‘fine’ is.”
The guy smiled at him again. It was hard to leave his warm, safe room. Aaron just nodded and said something like “till next time.” He hadn’t tried to be inappropriate, he thought, as he made his way carefully down the stairs. It was just obvious that Marc liked him. In the past, a few times, he’d taken advantage of that with men who were in a professional capacity with him. It had been a heady turn-on, but he was past that now. Marc would behave, and probably never let on how attracted he was. Because Marc was a good guy.
He reached the street. The city noises—traffic, chatter—enveloped him. He limped slowly along to the bus stop on Van Ness. His chest felt odd, warm, kind of melty. He’d cried today. It had been just a few tears, he thought. He’d vowed never to cry for his dad when he was a little kid. And he’d never told anybody about the vow.
He had to release things. First, he had to release Dave. And that was already in process. Perhaps in letting his lover go, he could remake his life, or perhaps it would all be too hard and he would let go into the darkness. But none of this was Dave’s fault, he reflected.
He would see Marc again next week. For some reason, he almost looked forward to telling him about the thing that happened when he was twelve. But now he knew something else: his dad’s death had set everything in motion. It wasn’t his own careless, stupid behavior when he was a young kid that had messed up his life.
I am going to have to forgive you, he thought as he stood at the bus stop along with a small group of people who looked poor, shabby, disabled. His fucked-up knee made him one of them, somehow. His eyes must be red-rimmed. He didn’t care.
The Pull of Yesterday Page 9