Between Men

by Richard Canning

  “Now!” I said. “Give it up. Cocksucker.”

  When Leon stuffed the cash back into his sock and stood up, I felt like someone’d swiped my cheat sheet. I was tall, but he was taller. Awfully thick.

  I hadn’t really thought it through this far. Follow him, and watch, and then what?

  “I know where you’ve been,” I sort of croaked.

  He snorted and said, “You don’t know shit.” Half of his mouth smiled, and the other half stayed mean. His braces looked made of razor wire.

  Laundry steam hovered like something consequential. I thought about bolting, but I couldn’t. “How does it feel?” I might have asked.

  He grabbed my arm, his thumb on the double O of SOON, and pressed like he was digging clear to China—to the opposite of wherever he lived now. I remembered that his father coached the basketball team at school, and his name wasn’t Leon, it was Darrell. Darrell was the youngest but the best varsity player. A power forward. All-city. Eyed by scouts.

  “I want,” he said—then paused long enough for me to wonder—“to hear it come out of your mouth.”

  “What?”

  “That you don’t know shit.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t. Let me go.”

  He tippy-toed nearer, his mouth up in my face. I saw a smear of Hershey’s on his teeth. His breath was like the Y locker room at closing time: bleach trying to hide a human stink. I made a guess about what he had swallowed.

  “Say what?” made a breeze that kissed my chin.

  “I don’t. Don’t know anything. C’mon.”

  The rage in his eyes was so fierce I almost heard it, the shick shick of steel being edged.

  “I’m not,” he said, still pressing, even stronger than before, “what you think I am, or what you maybe are. I’m gonna be huge. I’m gettin’ outta here. Is anyone gonna try and mess with that?”

  I could feel my flesh giving under the pressure of his thumb. What would I name the bruise’s hue?

  “No one,” I said.

  He knocked me to the ground.

  Friday: a few of us loafing on the stoop, tiddlywinking beer-bottle caps. Mom was there, bra cups stuffed with cash, painted smile. Alley drafts tickling our ears.

  “Thank God for the weekend,” said José. He cracked his knuckles.

  “Thank God there ain’t no God,” said Mom. “Otherwise I’d meet you shits in hell!”

  Laughter all around. High-five smacks.

  Damon and Pedro had some Bomb Squad mischief planned: a rooftop, a case of beer, some girls. I wanted time to shower, clean my teeth.

  Just when I stood up, I saw him leaving: flash of silver fang, scissor stride. Darrell, headband skewed, making tracks from Marge’s building. Darrell, both hands empty at his sides.

  “That one of Marge’s boys?” asked Mom.

  “Dud, I guess,” José said. “Where’s his chocolate?”

  Mom said how you never knew, it might be in his pocket. Boys hide lots of treasures in their pants.

  They chuckled, but I couldn’t. Already I was scrambling—into Marge’s building, up the stairs. The door was open. Fruity smells leaked out.

  I stepped inside. I blinked hard. Then I looked.

  It’s been twenty years, but I still see it. I see that scene more clearly than my high school graduation, the first diploma in my family. More clearly than the day I finished Rutgers. It’s sharper than my wedding, six years later, to Samantha, whose hair, when it’s damp, curls like Marge’s. Sometimes when we’re making love, I twist some on my finger, and Sam has no idea what I’m thinking. It’s clearer to me than this now, today.

  Shards of pink plastic bowl were scattered on the floor, half a dozen chocolates smeared around. Centered in the midst of it lay Marge: long blond ringlets free like sunlight in fast water, cotton robe bunched around his hips.

  His mouth, stretched past normal, was crammed with chocolate kisses. Two dozen? Three? Maybe more. Most still in their foil, some smushed out.

  I checked for breath and pulse. Nothing doing. Already his skin was going gray. Then I saw the thumbprints on his neck.

  On cop shows, they’re always saying not to move the body. Don’t touch a thing. Call 911.

  It’s not as if cops would have rushed for Marge.

  I straightened out the robe so his legs were mostly covered. I spread his ringlets nice around his face. Then, with my finger, I dug into his mouth to clear away the mushy, melting chocolate. At first it felt nasty—scooping giblets from a chicken—but then it felt OK, then almost good.

  When all of the kisses I could reach were emptied out, I saw his mouth had fallen to a smile. I tried to smile at him, but couldn’t. I faced a long lifetime of restraint. Backing away, stumbling, I sucked my messy finger. It’s still the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted.

  A Good Squeeze

  Vestal McIntyre

  I lay on the floor of my apartment rolled in a Persian rug. With every inhalation, I smelled my own hot exhalation mixed with the woody smell of rug fibers and a hint of feet—that very human stink of dirty socks. (I asked my few visitors to leave their shoes at the door and I myself was usually barefoot.) But to inhale that recent exhalation, that wet, oxygen-poor air, seemed to be the goal now.

  I waited quietly.

  It was comforting, this pressure from all sides—a firm embrace but without the complications of human emotion and response to emotion, that ping-pong game that set my jaw to clenching. Only the crown of my head and the tips of my toes were free. Which school of belief said spiritual energy flowed into one’s body through the top of one’s head? And which old mystic was it who said she could see the angels treading air in the space above her followers’ heads? And how many of our holy figures besides the obvious and her son, did not descend into the earth, but took the A train to Sugar Hill way up in heaven? Thin air above and below me, but the air that I kept resharing with myself was thick with wetness it picked up somewhere in climbing my respiratory tree. Comforting. And sometimes a little comfort was as much as one could ask of life. But other times one could ask a little more.

  The embrace weakened. The pressure lifted and I felt both relieved and disappointed. Belinda had stood up.

  Now I was rolled over, whump, and over, whump, and again, whump, and I could breathe freely and light struck my closed eyelids and illuminated those bubbling lava-lamp paisleys.

  “Rand, are you OK?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was getting worried. It had been a long time.”

  I sat up and held my knees and was dizzied by a head rush. More paisleys. “There was no reason to be worried,” I said and opened my eyes. “None. It was really lovely. Thank you.” I put my fist before my mouth and coughed.

  “You enjoyed it?”

  “Yes. And now we know that I can go longer next time.”

  “Right,” said Belinda. “Time’s almost up.”

  “Oh, really.” I looked at the clock in the kitchen. “I was in there longer than I thought.”

  “Almost forty minutes,” she said.

  “My. Well, yes, the time’s almost up. I think we’re done anyway.” I stood and made a motion of dusting myself off, although there was no dust on me, since my apartment was kept very clean.

  I went through the pockets of the jacket that hung by the door and found my wallet. Belinda nodded and accepted the folded bills without counting them. When I went to open the door, she stopped me.

  “Rand,” she said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Are you still practicing alone?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You shouldn’t, you know.”

  I nodded. Her concern amused me and tapped the enormous, unspoken affection I felt for her, and I couldn’t repress a smile.

  “But I’ve been thinking, if you must, you should at least have someone check up on you. There are cases where people have been trapped, alone, for days. You could die, Rand. It’s not funny.”

  “I know,” I sai
d. “That’s not what I’m smiling about. Go on.”

  “Give a friend keys to your apartment. Tell the person to come check on you if he or she goes for a day or two without hearing from you. I insist, Rand. This stuff has its risks.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “You won’t.”

  “I will, I promise. Thank you, Belinda, I know you’re right.”

  She smiled. “See you Tuesday?” she said.

  “Tuesday.”

  I didn’t mind obeying Belinda. The problem was, though, whom to ask. I had very few friends. Connie was the first who came to mind. She was orderly, responsible, aware of my practices, and nonjudgmental about them. She knew that I had hand restraints attached to either side of my bed, and that I had trouble sleeping without my hands safely enclosed in them. She knew sometimes I needed to gag myself or be gagged to feel at peace. I was sure she would be willing to be my “check-up person.” However, I usually only spoke to her once a week—a phone call on Sunday—and saw her about once a month. To make her my “check-up person” would have forced me into closer contact with her and, as much as I liked her, this was not my intent.

  As I went down my mental list of friends, again and again this was the case—it would have forced me to call them more than was my habit. All except Frank.

  At first, the thought of entrusting Frank with my well-being made me laugh. But then again, why not? He lived out in Queens, but found an excuse to come into Manhattan nearly every day. He had nothing better to do with his time, I supposed, than come over and make sure I wasn’t dead. He was irresponsible, but in this he might be trustworthy.

  In many ways I considered Frank a special case. He drunkenly stumbled through life from boyfriend to boyfriend, still depending on the youthful charm and good looks that the alcohol was slowly ruining. He had been in a minor car accident some years earlier and had swindled his way into living on disability ever since. He was obviously well, but he kept up the act, even with friends like me, occasionally remembering to wince and put his hand to his lower back when he rose from a chair. But he had a good heart, and that is what bought my patience and made him a special case.

  So I invited Frank over for takeout and a chat. When he arrived at my door, the rose in his cheek and the blur in his eye told me that he had already had a drink or two. “Happy May Day!” Frank said, holding out a neon blue bunch of Gerber daisies, the variety available at the corner deli.

  “Is it May Day?” I said. “I didn’t realize. Come in.”

  Frank would be embarrassing if he was capable of feeling embarrassment himself. If he ever apologized for showing up to my house drunk at five in the afternoon with a three-dollar bouquet, I wouldn’t be able to forgive him. But he would never apologize.

  I put the flowers in a vase, where the dye immediately began to seep down the stalk into the water. “Lovely,” I said, which wasn’t completely tongue in cheek, as the swirls of blue in the water were as beautiful as the flowers were ugly. “Before we order food, there’s a favor I want to ask.”

  “Anything,” said Frank, plopping onto the couch.

  “Belinda says I need a check-up person.” As I began to explain, Frank laughed as if I were making a joke, although he knows I don’t make that kind of joke. Then, like a child that slowly realizes the gravity of the subject, he reassigned the expression of his mouth into a determined frown and his eyes into a concerned squint. “I’m certain you’ll never have to use these, but all the same ...” I placed the two linked key rings into his cupped palm, and he took them, fingering the keys—again, as a child would. “This set is for the door here, I’ve marked them with a red marker, and this set is for downstairs. I rarely do these things down there, but you never know.” (Years ago, I had bought the floor beneath mine, telling my parents it was an investment and that the rent I could charge a tenant would cover the mortgage, all the while knowing I would leave it empty, as a barrier. Now I stored a few pieces of furniture down there, nothing else.)

  Frank knit his eyebrows and nodded, then he rose and placed the keys carefully into the pocket of his backpack, which was hanging by the door.

  “You’ll never have to use them, Frank. It’s just a precaution. Now then, what to order for lunch?”

  “Oh,” said Frank, “I’ll have to owe you one. I’m kind of short on cash at the moment.”

  The lunches that Frank owes me at this point must number in the thousands.

  Sometimes I wonder if I would be attracted to men if I hadn’t attended boarding school. I’ll call it Tenderwood Boys’ Academy. Despite girlfriends at home, real or invented, everyone there was gay.

  The first hint of this penetrated my terrified thirteen-year-old brain during the tour, when the admissions officer nonchalantly pushed a bathroom door, letting it swing wide as we passed by, “. . . there are two bathrooms on every hall ...” and, there being no barrier (why, in the boys’ bathroom in a boys’ dormitory in a boys’ school, would there be?), I saw an alleyway lined on either side with stalls that led to a shower room glowing with golden tiles and seven? eight? showerheads pointing impudently toward a central drain hole.

  Gang showers! I silently gasped.

  And gang showers they were.

  How many svelte young asses endured the sting of a towel-whip here? How many shy boys turned toward the corner to hide a boner, and how many brazen faces turned proudly toward the central drain hole to expose one? How many times did a boy glance at the source of echoing laughter to find that one thread of the hot stream was not water, but the yellow arc of his neighbor’s piss? In short, how many adult fantasies, nightmares, obsessions, and neuroses were born in this shower room?

  The door swung closed on gently sighing hydraulics and the admissions officer continued: “The boys live two to a room, and often find their roommate to become their first and best friend.”

  Indeed.

  I loved Michael Prescott, my first roommate freshman year, who would creep from his corner to mine where we would cuddle and rub under the down comforter my mother had bought me after being shocked during that same tour by the solemnity of the folded and tucked woolen blankets.

  Hunched and acne faced, Michael was almost as tall as I and a much better student. We traveled in different packs, and didn’t talk much even when we were back in our warm den, each wearing his earphones and studying under the lamp that lit his own opposite corner. But often, after the lights went out at ten, sometimes even hours later, after I had fallen asleep, Michael would make that dark journey, and I would never turn him away. Sometimes he would even fall asleep with me in my narrow bed. We would arrange ourselves in the bed to make the most efficient use of space—his feet by my head, my feet by his—while still enjoying each other’s warmth. He never complained about the very restless sleep that had plagued me since early childhood. (It wasn’t uncommon for me to find, upon waking, knotted sheets I had cast on the floor, or scratch marks on my face.) If I tossed and turned too much, he would simply wake me, I would calm myself, and we would both return to sleep.

  Then, only a quarter into the school year, tragedy struck. Michael’s father, age fifty-one, dropped dead from a massive heart attack at his desk in a Manhattan law firm. Michael went home for two weeks, and when he returned he had changed. Now he wanted to sleep in my bed with me every night. Sex took secondary importance to sobbing quietly while I held him. Again, I never turned him away, but quietly asked the administration to assign me a new roommate at semester.

  Later, I loved Chris Medici, the slender, girlish asthmatic whom, in leaving my bed to take a piss, I discovered taking a midnight shower. As I washed my hands and lingered in front of the mirror, his shower sputtered and ceased, and he began shyly toweling off in the shower room.

  “What’s with the late-night shower, Medici?” I asked in a perfectly offhanded, abusive tone. (I assumed that it had to do with his being too shy to jack off within earshot of his roommate.)

  “They let me,” he said. “It helps my wh
eezing.” As proof, he emitted a high-pitched, gravelly cough.

  The next night I stayed awake, then, just before midnight, put on my bathrobe, grabbed my towel, and headed to the bathroom, reasoning that if I was caught in this minor infraction I would claim asthma. I had a feeling Chris Medici would know to meet me.

  I was minutes into a nice hot shower when, sure enough, here came Chris. He hung his towel on a hook, then his bathrobe and, avoiding my gaze, charged up a showerhead on the opposite wall. Keeping his back turned, he touched the stream, adjusted, touched, then stepped under. I ended my pantomime of scrubbing and stood gazing at Chris as he heaved deep breaths of steam, his narrow back swelling, his tucked-under buttocks tucking further under. He glanced over his shoulder and, seeing me, blushed and went immediately back to his breathing. Then he dared to look back, dared to look down, dared to turn toward me. I walked across the room, shared his shower, and touched him.

  We turned off our showers and ran, naked, into one of the stalls where, for the first time, I saw up close how some scrotums, when shivering wet and shrunken, are not pink like my own, but a lovely shade of brown.

  To this day I have a habit I picked up in grammar school when a volunteer instructor came to my class every Wednesday for two months to teach us some basic sign language. Lesson one: the alphabet. Our little voices sang and our right hands raised in a strangely shifting pledge: fist to fan to cup to point, OK, pinkie, two, L, fist, fist . . . Now my hands, which were already delinquents scrambling for something to do, could spell. F-U-C-K Y-O-U they giggled to my practice partner when the volunteer looked away, G-O T-O S-L-E-E-P they told me from under the covers, I H-A-T-E Y-O-U they repeated under the dinner table, and, as I walked alone on the beach that summer in Newport, repeating in unison just for the comforting fists the word made deep in my jacket pockets, S-T-E-A-M, S-T-E-A-M.

  Now, walking through Washington Square Park, past the dry fountain that served as an amphitheater for the overeager sunbathers (early May, sixty-five degrees and cloudy), my hands did a simple A-Q-A-Q in my pockets and my mind said, knit, knit, knit, then, purl, purl, purl: I was practicing on the way to my first knitting class.