It was not that he didn’t love him; no, he adored Danny! He loved him the way most people love only those lovers they invent in their dreams. For when they had met., Danny was Walter’s dream. He was freedom itself. And Walter—well, Walter had tied himself for ten years to the stake of the law, he had learned discipline, he had taken steps to assure himself a moneyed safety for the rest of his life. Danny traveled around the country with his sister; he had gone to cities no business would ever bring Walter to, had stayed in communal houses instead of motel rooms. Walter loved the slightly flaky exoticism of that picaresque existence, and the curious, bewildered look that seemed to go with it, the unashamed voice, the eagerness for sex.
Danny held nothing back with Walter—no fantasy, no wish, no expression of pleasure. Other lovers Walter had had in college imposed strict rules—sex, yes, kissing, no—or they insisted on silence, there was a football player asleep across the thin wall; or they would call a passing stranger “That faggot!” almost as if the man were a different species. (“Well,” this particular young man had said, when Walter called him on it, “you and me, we’re different; we’re not like them. We’re normal guys who happen to like to have sex with other normal guys.”) That tempting armature of deception Walter had managed, after some struggle, to slash down with the machete of his will. When he met Danny, he determined to say anything he wanted, do anything he wanted; but he had to train himself; he had to practice, mouthing forbidden sex words in front of the mirror. Danny was alarmingly unreserved, which Walter attributed to his growing up in that state of grace, California. He cried out, kissed passionately, as if no one had ever taught him these things were shameful, these things were forbidden. As they walked along the streets together, gangs of tough New Haven boys called out, “Fucking queers.” Danny wouldn’t hear. And it was not as if he blocked it out but rather, as if he were a little deaf, as if he lacked the capacity to pick up the coarser, the uglier frequencies. His freedom, his easy, generous lust (not unbridled, for there had never been any bridling; Walter’s lust was unbridled)—these qualities had often moved Walter to tears in those early days. Hadn’t he imagined, after all, when they first met at that lesbian bar, that Danny had been sent by some guardian angel, sent: to save him, to carry him away from the law library in his gypsy caravan? Instead the caravan left—that collapsing van—and Danny stayed; rather than take Walter away, he had asked Walter to take him in like a foundling, fold him into his own ordered plans. And now, standing alone in his office, staring out at the lonely skyline of Wall Street at night, Walter wondered once again how it had come to happen that way, with him leading and Danny following and all the time Walter secretly wishing he were somewhere else, someone else.
Since their meeting in New Haven they had swum around in a series of fishtank apartments, and now they owned a fishtank of a house in the town where Walter had grown up. In the mornings they shaved together at twin sinks in the bathroom; they changed side by side into their gray suits and rode the commuter railway into Manhattan. On the train they sat opposite each other and read the newspaper. (Each had his own copy; they had reached that point in their relationship where it had become worth the extra thirty cents a day not to have to fight over the metropolitan section.) Just two ordinary suburban husbands, on their way to work, not particularly distinguishable from the hundreds of others who shared the train with them. Unless of course someone noticed the discreet good-bye kiss at the World Trade Center; but by then they were in the city, where such things were commonplace.
Each day they worked industriously, advancing, advancing, making more money. Hundreds of pressed white shirts later, hundreds of suits later, still swimming around. How wrong it all was! Walter sometimes thought. Danny should have been on some communal farm in California, he should have been playing Go at a health food restaurant, and when he wasn’t there, he should have been traveling, seeing the world with April! (Where had her last tour taken her? India? Beijing? Romania?) Or perhaps it was Walter who should have been traveling around, who should have been seeing the world. His favorite movie was The Razor’s Edge; he fancied himself Tyrone Power, seeking some large-capitaled truth in Paris, in the Himalayas, waving his arms, and speaking earnestly about the inarticulatable. Sometimes he suspected Danny liked this life they were leading more than he did, that he belonged here, in Walter’s hometown, in his business suit, more than Walter did himself. But he never asked Danny if that might be true. Such fundamental matter was the marrow of their lives; it was too tender to bear conversation.
Walter hadn’t told anyone yet, but he was preparing to quit his job. Quietly, quietly he was readying things for a departure on March Seventh—not a randomly chosen date, for on March Seventh, it would be exactly five years since the day Walter had joined the firm he was now associated with. And what would he do then? He hardly knew. But he would sell that fishtank of a house in Gresham; he would go somewhere, somewhere else. And he would find someone else—someone fresh and young, as Danny had once been, and, as Danny had not once been, willing to take Walter away, to Europe or the Himalayas or San Francisco. Another nice young man.
Was it his fault that Danny had asked Walter to keep him? Was it his fault that Danny seemed so much more comfortable in their comfortable house, so much more acclimated to this life they had chosen to lead, so much more contented? And yet, Walter reminded himself, if they hadn’t met that night, Danny probably wouldn’t have become a lawyer at all, he wouldn’t have become anything close to the person he was now. Whereas Walter, without Danny—he had to admit—would have been exactly who and what he was with Danny: the same firm, the same house, the same life. Only the lover would have been different, or (more likely) there would have been no lover at all.
He put the cigarette out. (He must stop smoking for his new life.) He sat down at his computer terminal, pressed some buttons, typed some codes. And now, in the dark office, messages came to him through the glowing diodes, greetings, welcomes:
Hot Leather: Rehi, Hunky Lawyer!
Teen Slave Master: Hey Hunky Lawyer!
don, 17: What’s hanging, teen slave master?
Bulging Strap: Did you hear Gary Grant died?
Teen Slave Master: You, 17, once i get you in my cellar.
NY Jock: Hunky lawyer!!!!!!!!!! How are those briefs??????
This endless conversation, to which he might always gain access, was the closest Walter came these days to actually cheating on Danny. He’d join in the dialogue, the circle of talk, and sometimes a message would appear, “Please talk with NY JOCk. To do so, enter /TALK 125.” Once it had gotten so frantic they had switched to the phone. Their voices caressed each other; they pretended their own hands were each other’s hands. Afterwards, half naked, spent, Walter slumped in his chair, looking out the window at the skyline, the neat squares of intermittent light. His shirt was unbuttoned; a distant neon sign pulsed in reflection on his chest. He didn’t give out his own number or his last name. What drew him to this game was the very fact of its anonymity, the fact that no one could pin him down, that he could say whatever he felt like saying, asking questions he’d never dare ask with his voice, and hear them answered. He had a strangely intimate rapport with these men whose faces he had never seen, whose voices he had never heard; he thought of them fondly during the day, hoped they’d be there when he turned on the computer in much the same way he’d gone to the local gay bar in college hoping one orlanother boy he liked would be there, drinking in the corner. Now, however, he didn’t want more than the screen’s veiled intimacy.
He was on a private channel now. A flow of letters announced the intimate presence of one “Sweatpants.”
>Hi
>What’s up tonight, sweatpants?
>The same. Where are you?
>NYC
>A Southern Boy, huh?
>So—you wearing
sweatpants?
<(grin)
>And under that?
>Sounds hot.
>oh yeah ...
>6’4, blond, blue eyes, 165 lbs. swimmer’s build 7”, cut
<6’1, dark hair, mustache, 160 lbs. here. 8½. tight hairy balls.
>22
<20 here.
And on it would go into the night, sometimes for hours, this describing and assessing, this ferreting out of fetishes, this mutual indulgence and regard. So much of it was lies.
(There was nothing blond about Walter. He had dark, curly hair. His body was slack from lack of exercise; he was turning into his father.)
For diversion he typed:
>What’s ur name?
>Cal
>What?
>Thaťs cool
>My name’s not really Cal. It’s Walter.
>Sexier. And I am really 5’9, 150 lbs., 33, in a black suit.
Again the question he didn’t want to answer. He said good-bye (“huggers” was the eompu-term), logged off quickly, leaving Ford alone, despondent, before his own terminal, before one of the hundreds of lit windows glowing all over town tonight. He put on his jacket, walked out into the hall. A black man was maneuvering a vast polisher over the marble floor near the elevator bank. Down and down, the whoosh of the elevator, which even now, after so many years, made his ears pop. It was a windy night; in the unnaturally illuminated plaza that separated the towers pieces of newspaper blew into the air, garbage hurried along the cement pathways as if on urgent errands, as if there were a whole life of objects, a life of old cookie fortunes and paper bags, inspirited by the wind with a sense of destiny or occupation.
He rode the PATH train to Hoboken, the mostly empty local through the string of suburbs to his own small station and the small, chilly car he had left there that morning. Down quiet streets he drove to this house that was his only according to some logic he failed to understand, this house he never would have noticed, never would have recognized, had it not been where he slept, where he ate, where on weekends he tended the garden.
Danny was in bed, reading, when Walter came in. Their dog, Betty, lay curled up next to him, but as soon as she heard the door, she jumped up to investigate. She really was Danny’s dog; she had no loyalty to Walter. She exploded into life as soon as he entered, bounded upon him, but it was only because he was a distraction, a new smell. Soon enough she was back in bed.
And a few moments later Walter was lying in bed himself, Danny across from him, breathing, breathing. New flannel sheets patterned with lambs. The house vacuumed, pristine, the dishwasher humming. Danny had aged better than Walter. He was still slim, his body had retained its natural boyish musculature. Whereas Walter was getting fat, had a lawyer’s paunch, cut himself while shaving. Sometimes at night like this he could look across the bed and see in Danny the same earnest-faced boy whose frank, unwavering smile had so entranced him that night, almost eight years ago, at that women’s bar. The magic, the perversity of that meeting thrilled him still on occasion, though they rarely talked about it.
“What did you do today?” Walter asked quietly.
“Got home from work about six. Chatted with your mother.”
“Anything else?”
“The dog groomer called again. He wants to have an affair with me.”
“Should I be worried?”
“I don’t think so.”
They lay there, unmoving. “I can’t sleep,” Danny said. “This stupid song keeps running through my head.”
“What song?”
“ ‘I gave my love a cherry that had no stone . . .’”
“Oh, that song ...”
“ ‘I gave my love a chicken that had no bone . . .’”
“I remember that song. I always thought it was so strange—a chicken that had no bone. Like a monstrosity born after an atomic bomb.”
“But what comes next?” Danny said. “Da-da-da-da-da-da-da? What’s the next line?”
Walter was silent for a moment. “I gave my love a cornbread that had no pone.”
Danny let out a snort of laughter.
“I gave my love a test tube that had no clone.”
“Sorry—I gave my love a Castro that had no clone.”
“I gave my love a problem that had no known.”
“I gave my love a brass band with no trombone.”
“I gave my love a heating that had no zone.”
Their laughter rising up like bubbles in a fishtank.
Chapter 10
The first time Walter and Danny saw a pornographic movie was in New Haven, a few weeks after their first meeting. It was called—after Jerry Lewis, Danny supposed—Sinderfella, and it was awful, forgettable, nothing like the sleek videotaped productions of their present lives. Even so they had walked, giddy and thrilled, through the ruined streets of New Haven, grateful to be able to indulge such a forbidden curiosity with each other rather than alone. The shoulders of their coats brushed against one another; every few steps Danny slipped on the ice, and Walter caught him before he fell. The theater was called the New Regency, and its elaborate marquee and foyer suggested it had seen better days. The old-fashioned ticket booth in front was boarded up and empty. Inside, an Indian woman with a black dot on her forehead collected the money at what must have been once the candy counter. Then they went through another door; they stumbled blindly for seats; they sat there in the dark and watched it. Danny didn’t remember much about the film itself, except that it was done in a cheap and grainy eight millimeter that gave the bodies of the young men in it a strange, whitish cast, as if they were composed not of flesh but of light itself. The evil stepmother and the fairy godfather were both played by a shrill-voiced, bald, fat man in a muu-muu, and in the end, when the prince went off to find Sinderfella, he knew which one he was because, of all the young men in the town, only Sinderfella could take the prince’s “gargantuan manhood.” It was the sort of movie where people used phrases like “gargantuan manhood.” The heads of the few other patrons sporadically punctuated the vast glimmer of the theater, as did the shadowy figures of men moving about the perimeter. Danny and Walter held hands, grateful for love and each other in such a strange, cold place.
It was February—and yet that might be wrong; Danny tended to remember his years in New Haven as a perpetual drizzling February, though he knew there had to have been glorious spring mornings as well, and stifling August afternoons—“February in New Haven,” Walter used to say, “when the city’s boring, your classes are boring, but most of all, you’re boring.” They were still new to each other then; everything that was stale and depressing for each of them alone seemed to be, for the two of them together, a discovery, a journey, a revelation.
Now they lived through machines, they were addicted to machines. They owned two nineteen-inch color television sets; two wireless remote-control VCRs; a Japanese stereo system with separate graphic equalizer and compact disc player; many compact discs (luminous arcs that still amazed Danny to look at); two sleek computers, each with a modem and printer; many kinds of software; a telephone that answered itself and redirected calls to other numbers; three air conditioners; a Cuisinart; a microwave oven; a can opener hinged to the bottom of the cabinet; a fancy German toaster; a coffeemaker that knew how to turn itself on at a prearranged time; a water pick; a garage door opener. And in the basement, in the backs of cabinets, rarely in use, other things, mostly gifts from Walter’s father or mother: a machine on which hot dogs might be i
mpaled and electrocuted; a yogurt maker; several kinds of ice-cream makers; a hamburger cooker for griddling a single patty at a time; a candlemaker; a plastic bag sealer; an electric toothbrush; a pasta roller; a gun that punctured red tape with capital letters; a card shuffler; a fondue melter; three hot pots; an electric knife; a pressure cooker.
There were not enough plugs. The outlets were stuffed with extenders; the extenders were stuffed with extension cords; wires tangled like matted hair under desks, cabinets, beneath the sofa. Electricity hummed through the house even when everything was turned off, wires connected to other wires, other machines, and on and on across the dark landscape of middle-of-the-night Gresham, New Jersey.
They had a piece of furniture—it was just invented, it didn’t have a name yet—to house their collection of videotapes. Walter was an expert, a collector. He had mostly thirties comedies and pornography. One of each was usually the order of the night, like some peculiar rehashing of the old double-bill tradition. He had friends with whom he talked about the pornographic tapes the way other men talked about bottles of wine or racing cars. Gone were the days when pornography was something secret, something to be ashamed of; those funny black boxes with their spools of shiny celluloid were just part of the furniture now, as respectable as classical music. Walter even knew people who knew some of the greater stars of that strange pornographic universe. They were proud of what they did these days, his friend Dennis said; they even had their own little Academy Awards ceremony every year, with prizes given for acting, directing, costumes. (“Costumes?” Danny asked.) The stars wore jockstraps. Medals closely resembling those given at the Olympics were hung round their necks. And after that, presumably, more filming at poolside locales in Southern California. The voices of these films were background music to Walter and Danny’s lives, a barely intelligible dialogue, dismembered by Valley Boy accents.
Equal Affections Page 9