The Order of Nature

by Josh Scheinert

  “I’m so happy we’re here.”

  “Me too.”

  If they were headed to Sierra Leone’s beaches for quiet and seclusion, their night in Freetown made up for all the nights out in public that Gambia had deprived them from enjoying together. They planned to explore the slew of seaside bars popular with foreigners and locals alike and dressed up for the occasion. Andrew had never seen much of Thomas’s wardrobe – his hotel uniform, beach clothes, and what little he wore around the house. But tonight, for Andrew, Thomas picked an outfit. He brought his best brown leather shoes that he polished before they left. He wore a pair of white jeans that hugged his thighs and butt just enough to make Andrew turn his head as he got dressed. He took out a yellow button-down shirt and put it on, leaving the bottom and top two buttons open. It fit him perfectly. At the bottom, where his shirt split apart, his belt buckle reflected in the light. While putting on a silver wristwatch he looked up at Andrew and smiled. He looked amazing.

  The night was everything they wanted: an ordinary experience experienced extraordinarily. They arrived at a restaurant on the beach’s edge and got a table for four on a patio under an umbrella. In the distance through the moonlight, you could see the surf crashing into the shore much more ferociously than it did in Gambia. The wind too was stronger and it gave the night a heightened sense of energy. The sky above was starlit. Colorful Christmas lights hung from the railings around connecting patio lanterns. The bar blasted last year’s top 40.

  They ordered beer, lobster, crab, and fresh snapper. And french fries.

  “Cheers,” Alex said, raising his beer to the middle of the table.

  “Cheers,” everyone followed.

  It was the first time Andrew and Thomas had eaten together in public. At times during the meal they’d look at each other in acknowledgment. Neither had to say anything.

  After dinner they made their way to an open air bar up the beach overflowing with patrons. Liv bought a round of drinks while the others went to stake out a table.

  “What is it?” Thomas asked as she handed it to him.

  “Just drink and enjoy,” she said over the music, and then raised her glass up to him waiting for a clink. He obliged.

  Andrew went to get another round as they sat at the table talking no differently than people seated at other tables. By the time Alex came back with the third round, they ditched the table and found themselves on a dance floor, teeming with an enthusiastic crowd of young, well-groomed dancers. There were couples and big groups of all nationalities and ethnicities. Everyone seemed to blend into one. It was perfect.

  They walked towards the dance floor as a group of four. For the first part of the night they danced mostly together. But there were also times when it was clear, at least to Alex and Liv, that Andrew and Thomas were dancing only with each other. Andrew wasn’t a very good dancer. His body seemed incapable of moving on its own volition and he was overly reliant on waving one arm up and down while bending slightly at the knees. Thomas, however, was an excellent dancer, moving rhythmically in sync with each beat. The way he bent his knees, swayed his hips, and rolled his upper body – each separately or all together – gave the impression of someone perfectly comfortable and secure. Because his clothes were so fitted, you could see how his body curved and moved in perfect unison.

  While Andrew struggled to keep up, he found himself fixated by Thomas. He’d never seen him that way, that loose. Alex and Liv also noticed. There was something in how he was moving, a satisfaction. It was more than just dancing. Normally restrained and subtle in his movement, he was now without any inhibition. He displayed a sense of pride they had never seen him display so fiercely. From the way he commanded their small portion of the dance floor they could see he knew it too. He alternated between looking at them with penetrating eye contact and a bright smile, and closing his eyes with a look of contentment, smiling seductively, at himself or at Andrew.

  Under the clear night sky, Thomas moved in and out of the shadows amid the weak light from the patio lanterns that gently illuminated the dance floor. As the night wore on and the music enveloped him, and his shirt bonded more closely to his wet skin, he refused to grow tired. He kept dancing as each song brought a new opportunity for self-affirmation. Over time his regard for the others around him began to recede. He was overcome. By the music. By the place. By the experience. Each time he opened his eyes he saw Andrew, with Alex and Liv, dancing around him. Sometimes he saw their mouths move. But he could only hear the music. Somewhere else, transported by a feeling or a purpose that only he knew, he was a dancing silhouette. He stayed that way the whole night.

  It was nearly three in the morning when they got back to the guesthouse. Through the darkness, they raced through Freetown’s cracked and empty streets in a semi-functional taxi – a temperamental clutch, dashboard wiring system on full display, and missing side panels. Alex was in the front. Andrew sat in the back between Thomas and Liv. There wasn’t much speaking and Thomas spent most of the ride looking out of the window as they drove along the coast and up into the deserted city center. At one point he looked over at Andrew and pushed his leg up against his, before turning back to face outside.

  In bed that night, it was like Thomas kept dancing. Whatever was unleashed within him kept churning within his body, pushing it in ways he and Andrew hadn’t experienced. Thomas let it overtake him, and could see and feel that Andrew did the same as they fell into one another, gliding off each other’s sweat, moved to make sounds they made every effort to keep suppressed. Thomas was in complete control. With confidence and vigor he pushed Andrew away from him and pulled him back into him. His hands channeled all his strength, moving Andrew easily around on the bed, turning him from front to back. With each thrust and gyration, Thomas’s muscles flexed more and more, bulging from beneath his skin. Each deep breath he took sucked up more of the room’s warm, stale air. His sweat became thicker, falling in slow drips onto Andrew, who lay on his back. Thomas stood over him at the edge of the bed. His face turned up towards the ceiling as he closed his eyes. The intensity of his movements forced his eyes to close tighter and tighter, sending wrinkles across the side of his face from his eyes and up his brow as his nose inhaled whatever oxygen it could find.

  His movements were so deliberate and hurried that they began to propel themselves on their own. He found himself moving without a sense of place, losing himself in the moment, and for the second time that night he had gone elsewhere. But this time there was no music, no full night sky or friendly breeze to uplift him. In the emptiness and silence of their room, it wasn’t the same liberating release he experienced on the dance floor. It was a sad, embittered one. Life hadn’t been fair to him and he wasn’t going to take it anymore. Transported against his will, he saw scenes of his life and everyone and everything that should have prevented him from reaching this point. As each tableau flashed through his mind, visions of rejection and looks of revulsion, he grew more and more determined, ready and wanting the confrontation he’d always been too afraid to have. It was the confrontation where he proclaimed, I am here, and this is who I am. He wanted it more and more. He wanted it so badly that there, fucking his boyfriend in that unfamiliar hotel room in that unfamiliar country, for the first time in his life, he became defiant.

  Andrew looked up at Thomas as he felt his hands digging into his hips in ways he’d not known. His body moved swiftly and intently, but his head was still. Andrew saw from Thomas’s tightly scrunched face that he was concentrating forcefully on something else. He wasn’t bothered. Andrew had sensed it was a night of conflicting emotions for Thomas. But as he lay on his back wanting to know what was going through his boyfriend’s mind, he thought Thomas’s eyes seemed moist, and he wasn’t sure if the sweat streaming down his face was in fact sweat.

  Thomas kept going, and the harder he went the more he looked to be fighting an urge to let his tears flow. But he wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t. He was fighting with himself against his past. Th
e moment he stopped, the past would win. And he was resolute in his determination not to let that happen. Not any longer. Andrew reached up from his back to his hips where Thomas’s hands were, as if to let him know that whatever it was, it was okay. He took Thomas’s hands firmly in his and squeezed, forcing Thomas to loosen his grip as he acknowledged him and looked down. When Thomas opened his eyes and saw Andrew looking up at him he smiled the way one does when crying, acknowledging the contradiction. And it was in that moment, as Thomas smiled at the person he loved, and as that person looked back up into him with an expression that said, it’s okay, that Thomas let go and was finally released.

  When they woke up the next morning the weight of the night had lifted. Looking at each other, vision still fuzzy from sleep, they inched their heads closer together until their foreheads touched. They lay like that for a few minutes not saying anything, not needing to say anything, as the sunlight poked through the edges of the curtains and each took in the day’s softer, fresher air.

  20

  There were several beaches only a short drive from Freetown. All looked idyllic from the pictures. And with the dry season approaching its end, the number of tourists would be low. Their first stop was a beach called River Number 2. They hired a 4x4 to drive them from Freetown. The drive, on a road largely under construction and with potholes you could confuse for trenches, was, putting it mildly, unpleasant. The jeep lacked air conditioning and it was too hot to keep the windows up but too dusty to keep them down. Driving out from Freetown’s hodgepodge of concrete, the land quickly gave way to the familiar contrast of reddish West-African earth and lush, deep green growing from within it. To their right they caught glimpses of the sea. To the left the earth rose up into the same hills and mountains they first saw from the ferry. When the jeep finally slowed and turned off into a flat dirt parking lot, there were no other vehicles.

  “It’s so empty,” said Liv, hearing nothing but the wind and the sea.

  “Not many tourists now. Most foreigners who work only come on weekends,” said their driver. “No problem finding places to stay.”

  It was their own private paradise, and they couldn’t believe their eyes. They walked from the car through a narrow path until it ended. Water of shifting shades of blue before them, delicate white sand to the left and right as far as the eye could see, and at their backs stood the tall palm trees keeping watch, the rolling green hills and mountains behind them.

  They spent the next four days carefree – playing cards and frisbee, trying not to toss the frisbee too far into the sea, and collecting wood to build a fire at night. Everything else was taken care of for them. Their guesthouse even had its own lobster traps set up, and they all watched as Thomas repeatedly abandoned his fork to pry the meat out with his fingers. The first night the owner of the guesthouse insisted they all try the local palm wine, which they did. Alex said it tasted like something that would be illegal in the U.S. The guesthouse owner laughed at them the following morning as they sat nursing headaches from drinking too much of it.

  Andrew and Thomas acted without any of the worries that hung over them each minute they spent on Gambia’s beaches. They explored the beach, discovering its lagoon, swam, and just lay on the sand doing nothing. It was fun being unsupervised.

  “Look at Thomas,” Liv said to Alex and Andrew on their second day.

  The two of them turned up from their card game. Thomas was running into the heavy surf head on, diving into its crescendo, floating up on his back to let the waves carry him to shore, and then doing it all again. Each time he hit the sand he did so with an excited expression on his face.

  They all giggled each time he came crashing in with the waves. As his focus shifted from the waves, Thomas saw they were watching him. He wiped the salt and sand from his face before exclaiming. “You should all come and try it. There are no waves in Gambia where you can do this.” He looked back out to the sea as another wave crashed at his feet before looking back at the three of them to re-emphasize his point, only to dart back into the water.

  “You’ll miss him,” Liv said as Andrew sat and stared out, admiring.

  “Huh,” he remarked, snapping out of his stare.

  “I said you’ll miss him when you leave.”

  “I know,” he said, before adding quickly, “but I think I might come back after the summer for another year.”

  “Really?” asked Alex.

  “Yeah.”

  Andrew explained how he’d begun to appreciate the life he’d carved out for himself in Gambia. Just as he had spoken about it with his sister, he explained how comfortable he’d gotten with his job and the positive feedback he was getting from Mr. Jalloh. He said he could always reapply to teacher’s college, and now with his experiences abroad, he wasn’t worried about getting in. He also liked not having to think about coming out to his family and friends back home.

  “It’s not that I’m afraid to do it like I was before. It’s more that I’m now comfortable being able to be who I am, and I don’t feel like rushing back to have to confront and deal with that all over again,” he shared.

  But the real reason, he told them, was Thomas. “We love each other. And I don’t want to leave him now. At least not yet.”

  “Have you told him?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah. It didn’t go like I planned, though.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s nervous for me. For us. That it’s starting to get a bit more uncertain with the whole situation. The newspaper report and arrest really threw him off.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing? You can’t ignore what’s been going on,” Liv declared. “They arrested someone.”

  “You don’t think I should stay?”

  “I think you have to be very careful you don’t become too comfortable.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he pressed her.

  “It’s not for me to answer. First off,” she said, turning towards Alex and changing to a mocking tone, “my boyfriend’s not staying, is he? Second, I’m not going to tell you what to do. But I will say that if you did stay, I would be concerned for your safety. It’s becoming unpredictable. Is it really worth the risk?”

  Andrew hated that question. He didn’t think it had a right answer.

  Liv spoke with such certainty. Andrew looked over to Alex. He wanted Alex to tell him that Liv was being her usual self, overly cautious and worried. But instead, and to his surprise, Alex let Andrew know he thought Liv was being sensible.

  “Think of what could happen,” he said.

  “What could happen?” Thomas asked, standing over them, dripping wet, panting from his long fight with the ocean.

  They all looked up at him with blank faces before Alex saved them.

  “I told Liv I wanted to learn how they climb the palm trees to get the palm wine and she thought I was serious.”

  Thomas laughed and told Alex he wouldn’t be able to climb five feet off the ground.

  “And you would?” Alex challenged Thomas.

  “It was never my idea.”

  Since most of their time was spent as a group or as couples, Andrew never did have a chance to finish his conversation with Alex and Liv. But he valued their opinions the most, probably even more than Thomas’s on something like this. What bothered him was that they might be right. Thomas too. And his sister. All of them might be right. He still refused to concede it, but he couldn’t ignore that everyone he trusted was skeptical. But for the rest of the trip, he tried to block it out of his mind.

  The trip became one of those experiences that forever conjures up nostalgia. During their second night, it was discovered Thomas had never been buried in the sand, which Alex said was a rite of passage for any child who’d ever played on a beach. Thomas convinced them to hold off on doing it at that moment, but shortly after breakfast on day three, he obliged and lay down on the beach as the three of them took pleasure in covering him from neck to toe. When he was sufficiently covered and Alex found leaves to place
on his private area, the three of them sat on top of him while the guesthouse owner took a picture. In the photo, everyone is laughing hysterically because as soon as they were all sitting Thomas said he needed to pee.

  During the evenings, after they emerged from a short nap, they sat around sand-stained white plastic tables with bottles of Star, Sierra Leone’s ubiquitous beer. Alex had brought speakers so they could listen to music, but they’d all become so enamored with the country’s home grown music, a blend of R&B and hip hop constantly playing from the guesthouse kitchen, that the speakers never left his room. They spoke and drank late into the night and after dinner moved to the sand where they built a fire. Leaning back on their hands, faces illuminated by the crackling flames, they alternated between making fun of each other, telling random stories, or sitting silently, looking out or up. There was nothing amazing about any of it. They were just four people, three Westerners and one Gambian. No one saw anything wrong with it.

  And so proceeded four days. Early on there was the idea of moving at some point to another beach, even more secluded and only reachable by a small dingy boat, but, contently lethargic, they all opted to stay put.

  On the last morning, Andrew and Thomas took a walk together. They had to leave for Freetown after lunch to catch the ferry for the airport. Their steps had a lightness to them, infused with the placidity of their time away. But you could also mistake it for tiptoeing. As the minutes advanced, knowing their bags were packed and waiting to be whisked off to the airport, the apprehension started creeping back. The deserted beach before them was a natural facilitator for introspection, and each walked quietly.