by Paul Lisicky
I look out the window toward the brushy field, but I’m careful not to look too hard. Today David, a visual artist, is cutting a path. He looks as if he’s done this kind of work forever—see the tightness around his eyes and chin, his grip on the scythe. He is gay, and happily so. It isn’t even an issue with him. It goes without saying that the others expect us to find each other attractive. I think about the paint-spattered black sweatshirt he wears every day, his ponytail (all of two inches), the silver hoop in his right ear. I like his style. I would like to look like him, possess his effortless cool, but he is simply not my type. My type tends toward big, stumbling lugs who don’t have much truck with effortless cool. That’s probably true of his type, too, which might be why we make each other nervous. Our exchanges are full of awkwardness: halting sentences, strained cheerfulness, self-conscious silences. It’s always a relief to be joined by someone else whenever we are attempting to have a conversation in the dining room, or else one of us would have to run away.
I work on my story. For whatever reason, all my worries about gay content fall away. I stop thinking about how readers are going to hear it, whether they’re going to think I’m Red. The story moves along its own rugged spine, and oddly, it’s the plainest thing I’ve ever written. The descriptions aren’t as quirky as my usual descriptions, the tone doesn’t live in the slippery zone between the comic and the serious, and the breaks between sections seem to have disappeared. Everything is fused, written as if it happens at a single moment in time.
One night, late in the residency, I read my story at the group reading that happens once a week. The only way I can read the story is to pretend I’ve been reading and writing such work all my life. And I do that without stumbling or lowering my voice for emphasis even though that might have won me points. I pause after I’m finished. Outside, on the grass, a robin makes that strange song at dusk that sounds more like a death song than a greeting. And then I look up and make sure not to walk away from the podium too fast. For a while, everyone’s quiet; no one knows what to say, how to say it. And then they’re talking, talking too quickly, reaching out to grab my hand, hug me longer than is comfortable, hands on the back of my damp flannel shirt. The women love it in a way that makes me grateful but red hot in the face. David, to my surprise, says kind things, better than kind things. His eyes fill up as he says them. Then he dashes into the dark to his studio out back, where he’ll paint to the Smiths for the rest of the night. But the men, the two Roberts? They don’t say a word, but look at me as if all the doors will open for people like me—and not them. It doesn’t exactly help that the women won’t let me go. Oh, they won’t stop talking, these women, straight or gay, all the women the Roberts have been wanting to sneak off into bed with.
I make eye contact with the Roberts for the rest of the week. They appear to pretend that they’ve never heard any story from me; so be it. I expect so little from anyone that my feelings aren’t hurt.
2010 | We submit to our TV screens. In Hawaii, all the schools are closed for the day, all the malls, the banks, the office buildings. Soon the water discolors a bit. The green of it goes a little ashy around the point. We look at the phenomenon the way we once might have looked at the moon when we were children, as if through determined looking we’d see new life in it. But there isn’t anything new here. The water recedes some. And an hour later, the spectators on the hill in Hawaii seem to shrug all at once. They slide their phones in their pockets and purses. They get in their cars, not knowing what to do with their agitation, and drive back to their homes with it.
1988 | Denise holds her cup of coffee against her chin. Her eyes are open, but it’s her listening gaze; she’s never looking near me or at me. She’s looking at the space just above the bowl of limes on the dining room table. She’s waiting for adventure, revelation. A truck ticks on the cobblestones outside, engine off, cooling. She lights up a cigarette. I’m reading aloud from the new story, trying not to listen to myself, trying not to take in the fact that I’m not hearing her usual sounds of agreement or surprise. I’ve been thinking about this night ever since I’ve come home from the Berkshires, half with eagerness, half with dread. I do know that life cannot proceed without getting this message out. I am different in my bones and blood, as strange as that may seem, and perhaps the bodily necessity of that helps me on. I’m not as anxious as I would have expected to be. I’d be drowning tonight if I tried to pretend nothing had changed in that month away.
I should be crying, but I am not crying.
I take a sip of water. It helps that the story also feels less like me than ever. The reading at the artist colony helped me to take it one step further from myself, and now it’s already another step further. Me? This story isn’t about me. Perhaps that’s why I can read it at Denise’s long dining room table, in the new town house near the Art Museum, knowing that she’s thinking about Red and Clem and the empty model homes they’re walking by at dusk, the acres ahead of browning fields, unfinished streets.
“Is that you?” Denise says.
The brightness of the lamp on her face. She says it casually, though she mustn’t be feeling so casual inside. I must nod or shrug.
“Well, that was a good way to do it,” she says, friendly.
She smiles. She goes on to talk about what she loves about the story, as she’s always done, taking special pains to treat it as if it’s just any story of mine but better, truer. The lamp is still here, the tree outside the window is still here. The limes on the table, the truck. The heating system kicks on with a mathematical hush, but I feel as if I’ve just finished moving an entire household, a box at a time, up five flights of stairs. Then carried the whole household right back down again.
Can I lie down now? My head hurts, but it would confuse her to let that be known. I should be relieved, but I already know it’s not so simple.
Then we talk about all the usual things, her parents, my parents, the student of hers who’s demanding an A over an A minus. The terrible cover they’re using for her novel. We know the new cover, with its acidic palette, is more likely to attract attention, is livelier than the single sad trumpet of the previous version, but we must convince ourselves we like it every time one of us holds it at some distance across the room. We’re afraid to say it’s not working, afraid to say it’s going to sink the book before it even gets the chance to float, because that just feels like doomsaying and there’s so much to be hopeful for.
A thought must also run through our minds at some point that evening. Why had I waited so long to tell her? What did I lose by keeping myself closed for so long? The costs of bandaging, mummying myself: how long will those costs go on? They couldn’t have been good for us, those costs. They will play out for years, we know it, in ways we’ll never be able to predict. Of course we are already in the new house, the stronger, brighter, more modern house. It’s the house everyone wants to live in. It’s expensive, spacious; light cleans its rooms. But I’m already wondering about the lost house, the eerie permissions of its clutter. The rooms you could never quite make out because it was dark there. You always liked the dark.
Why can’t we ever have two houses at once? Openness, hiddenness, then back again?
But at least this time is better than the last time: my mother’s hysteria, my father’s silence, fuming silence. And the newspaper article left for me at breakfast one morning: GAY CANCER KILLS 100. To sit there, eating my shredded wheat casually, as if the headline, folded in half with such care, were meant to be read by a stranger and not by me, someone who thought he was known and trusted by them.
I wouldn’t want to live through that ever again. I won’t have to live through that ever again. Denise and I will sit around the table. We will talk more about the new cover of the novel and try to get used to it. A piece of hair falls over her eyes, and then a shadow. I never wanted to be closed to the ones I loved. I wanted to be generous, transparent, available. I fear that I’ve failed her, but there’s also been a beginning. In
a little while, it will take a little less work to walk across the room, to hold up that book cover when she asks to see it one more time.
2010 | Grief is over. By which I mean that tendency to see endings written in the things themselves: plants, houses, animals, trees, faces. That capacity to think of any face and imagine the stages of its aging, the rings beneath the eyes, the sag above and to the side. Not just its aging, but its absence. A shock in the chest every time any face is conjured up, the little girl playing with a garden hose outside the farm market, the horse running around the track, eyes alert, in the prime of his form. It wasn’t exactly awful, that place. Perhaps it was beautiful to think of the loss of the body, any body, ten times an hour. Though we certainly couldn’t live in that place month after month. We would exhaust ourselves, the brain turning to pencil shavings, or worse.
Grief is over; I tell myself that. It is over. I’m even tempted to say it aloud, as a charm, a dare, even if I know I might be bringing about disaster by doing such a thing. Six months after the loss of my friend, and life is a ruthless, acid thing. It can never get enough. It can never fill its mouth, its gullet. And just when you think all is balance and equipoise (see my straight posture, my neutral face? There I am, halfway across the balance beam), a hand from nowhere pushes against your back. You think you’ve already endured your test, just when it might only be beginning.
From “The Kitchen Table: An Honest Orgy,” Denise Gess (2007)
We examined [the table] again. It was pockmarked and scratched, and initials had been carved into it. Who were “D.H.” and “C.A.”? What boldness or recklessness had led them to make their marks here rather than on the trunk of a tree? As I ran my hand along its surface, I was delighted to discover a smooth depression in the left corner; the palm of my hand slipped snugly into that worn section, where, I decided, many other hands must have rested, gripped, slammed, and pounded the surface while negotiating the everyday struggles of family life. Surely it would serve us as well, humble us with its simplicity, and provide the setting for forming connections. This would be the table at which I could keep an eye on my daughter and stay in touch with her and her friends. This would be the table where B (who claimed to need and love and miss sitting in the kitchen) would linger with me in the mornings before going off to work, and where we’d find each other again late at night to talk. And, given its general appearance and long history, I had faith that any human accident—spilled juice, a hot dish that might leave a mark, a harsh word spoken carelessly—would be forgiven here.
1988 | I am sitting around the table on the fourth floor of EPB, the English Philosophy Building, where I am a student in T. C. Boyle’s workshop. I have been in Iowa City for all of two weeks. The voices around me dart and shatter. Perhaps I’m too busy shaping what I’m trying to say—it’s never more than ten words at a time—to take in any of it. When I do find the courage to speak, I feel the pressure building inside me, the faces turning toward me. They’re not used to hearing my voice, not in workshop, at least, so when I do talk, it seems to count for more than it should. After I have spoken, I’m dizzy and a little sick. I have completed my self-assignment. And then I can take in the words around me: this ending is skirting manipulation, this story would benefit from a more expert attention to pacing. Such intensity around me, in me, even when no one’s talking about my work. Sometimes I wonder whether the brains beside me are going to catch on fire. The words are wielded as if by a soldering iron, both hurting and fixing the story in front of us, even though the words are often kinder, more enthusiastic than anyone would have expected.
I wonder if Denise would think that. I wonder if she would have put her application to the program in the mail, ten years back, if she’d had any glimmer of its atmosphere. In order to be in this program, I’ve had to forget how much she’d wanted it once. I’ve had to tell myself my being here does not mean her not being here. That is true, of course, but I’m not sure whether she thinks that sometimes. How do I know? Just a tone in the voice, a snag in the sentence. It hurts me to hear it, but I never let that in until long after I hang up the phone. And I never talk to her about it. I think it would tear open a chasm, and I’m afraid the words would never stop coming. The words would be too hot to hear, searing me with too much wanting, the kind of wanting that could only do damage.
Is Denise getting more and more competitive with me? It’s funny that I still don’t allow myself to think of that word, as if it’s beneath us, the dirtiest word in our lexicon. I need to hold on to the belief that our love for each other comes first.
In spite of these worries, I do feel curiously awake and alive, not quite a thousand miles west of home, west of the ocean. Sometimes I convince myself I actually like the grain silos, the strip malls in town, the clouds growing gray on a humid day, the treacherous ice storms. Sometimes I feel so alive that I must lie down on the blue wall-to-wall carpet of my apartment and stare up at the granulated spray ceiling until I can feel the heat coming back into my toes and forehead. In an hour I will be driving with my friend Katrina to the Amana Colonies, where we will eat fried chicken, rolls, cole slaw—or more likely, Katrina will watch me eating. It seems to us that there are about ten places to visit within fifty miles of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, and we’ve gone to every single one of them twice within our first few weeks.
Thank God for Katrina. Since the first day of the workshop we’ve been inseparable. She is piercingly intelligent, funny, a graduate of Harvard, a brilliant poet. We go to Econofoods together, we go to the downtown ped mall together. With her dramatic mane of thick hair, half blond, half dark, she is a lioness. She is the kind of young woman that the camera would linger on in a party scene in Fellini’s 8 1/2. She has a beauty mark. All the men are crazy about her; a few of the women are, too. She knows about my sexuality from the get-go, and thus the whole drama of disclosure and hiddenness does not cloud who we are for each other. We can concentrate on what we really need to do, which is to fret about the lack of sexy men in town and dance at the 620, the gay bar on the other side of the railroad tracks, every Saturday night. We are practically married in all ways but one, which is likely confusing to those outside our unit. We even have our own names for each other: I call her Helen, she calls me Troy. She’s even written a poem, a great poem, about an imaginary baby, “Troy’s Baby.”
Is this the beginning of the end of my attachment to Denise? It is a fiery question. When I tell her about workshop parties on the phone, I probably take on the voice of an insider, of someone who’s no longer in awe of this strange new world he’s found himself in. When I talk about this visiting writer, my voice might take on the bored detachment of my most skeptical peers, who look up at the ceiling each time a well-established middle-aged writer takes to the stage to read from his latest volume of middle-aged work. Who knows what Denise thinks when she puts the phone down? Does the content of our conversations keep her up at night? Does she hear the name Katrina one more time than she can bear? Is she too jealous to let it out? Maybe she calls DyAnne or Lisa or any one of her friends, and they shake their heads and talk about the fact that I used to be a decent fellow—the old story, another person corroded by ambition, by his proximity to an in-crowd. Years later, Denise will actually say that I was impossible then, and it will scorch me. I want to say, do you know what it was like to be under such scrutiny? Do you know what it was like to feel the earth shifting beneath your feet, week by week, depending on the story you put up? It was so stressful. Don’t simplify me! I’m more complicated than that! You, me—we’re both more complicated. Where is your dignity? But instead I steer the conversation right over that seam in the sidewalk, and once again we are talking about the person we’ve been talking about, some writer whose desperate urge to be seen and known might be eating up her soul, leading her to do things she probably really doesn’t want to do.
It seems odd that Denise and I might be coming apart just as I’ve allowed myself to be closer to her. I am certain this is not my d
oing, even as I am certain that Katrina is beginning to take Denise’s place in my imagination. The shock is that the shift has happened in months. So quick, so clean. And yet I must feel awful for leaving behind the friend who once meant everything. The feeling is so deep in me that I can’t even look at it, talk about it. If guilt had a form, it would be as thick as sludge: cold, white, spoiled, like the guts of an animal.
One day I’m inside the town bookstore with Katrina and my buddy, Chris. I watch Chris pick up Denise’s book from the display. It must have arrived just now; I certainly hadn’t seen it when we were in the store a few hours ago.
“Look at this,” Chris says, with a little sass in his grin.
He opens the book. He gestures to the inner sleeve, the description that talks about Emily and Lizzie and the playwright who’s come to live with them, their tenant. He points out the playwright’s name. “Eugene Lisicky,” Chris says, as if I’ve been keeping a secret all along. And maybe I have been keeping a secret, even though it’s not the kind of thing you’d tell people. My friend used my last name for a character’s name: for some reason, I am feeling a little embarrassed. Maybe I should have talked Denise out of that. It’s distracting; already Chris is distracted. It’s not fair to the book, which deserves not to be tied down to the names of actual people.
But maybe I’m so used to hearing judgment these days that I’m missing the awe and delight in Chris’s voice. The blush goes up from my neck, my gaze falls. I smile a little. I lift my head again. A flash of pride warms my ears, my face. Then we talk about Tuesday’s workshop, as Chris holds the book, shifting its weight from left hand to right. He puts it under his arm, then puts it back down on the table when it’s time for him to get a bite to eat.