A More Perfect Union

by J. Scott Coatsworth

  He was social enough. He made some acquaintances at work. The support department went out for drinks every Wednesday night after work, so he got to know his coworkers a bit better. But apart from work, he didn’t have much in common with them. And none of them were gay.

  There was a gay men’s group in town, so Jay went to one of their meetings. The men were nice—and some were pretty cute—but he didn’t immediately connect with anyone. In retrospect, perhaps his friends in college had been a little on the fringe. They’d introduced Jay to role-playing games, medieval banquets, fire dancing, skinny-dipping….

  He could imagine some of these guys skinny-dipping—and that was pleasant to think about—but they clearly wouldn’t have fit in with his friends back at UNH. He supposed it might be time to move on. After all, he wasn’t in college anymore. But that thought didn’t cheer him up at all.

  Then he saw the flyers on the table. They were largely flyers for other gay groups in New England, some too far away to appeal to him at present. But one intrigued him. It was a flyer for Gaynemede’s Crossing, a group for “gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, and trans pagans” in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jay wasn’t a very religious man, but he’d attended some Wiccan gatherings in college. The circles had been peaceful and beautiful experiences. He found the thought of dipping a toe back into that scene intriguing, especially as a contrast to the stressful, high-tech business environment he now worked in. And Cambridge was just north of Boston, about an hour’s drive away.

  HIS FIRST attempt at going to the group was a dismal failure. He’d never driven in the Boston area, and he wasn’t prepared for the chaos in and around the city. He drove an hour to get there, then spent another hour driving around hopelessly lost, until he finally found himself on a highway heading north, passing an abandoned car in the breakdown lane that was literally on fire. He said, “Fuck it!” and kept going until he hit the New Hampshire border. Then he went home, vowing never to try anything so foolish again.

  But one month later, he was back on the road. Jay wasn’t sure why he was so determined to go to this one group, but this time he was armed with better directions and a phone number.

  He got lost again. As the beginning time for the meeting came and went, he found himself at the ass end of Boston, surrounded by crumbling, mostly empty buildings and road construction. He had no idea where he was, though it resembled a portal to the underworld. Eventually Jay came across a Dunkin’ Donuts that had a pay phone. He dialed the number for the group, and a man answered.

  “Hello?” Wallace said, having no idea he was about to hear the voice of the man he was destined to marry.

  Frustrated, his nerves stretched to the breaking point, Jay skipped over romance and went straight for, “Where the hell are you? I’ve been driving around looking for you guys for forty-five minutes!”

  “Um… do you know who you’re calling?”

  Jay hesitated. Maybe he’d dialed the wrong number. “Sorry. Is this Gaynemede’s Crossing?”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  “I wanted to come tonight.”

  “The meeting’s almost over.”

  When Jay spoke again, he was embarrassed to hear a catch in his voice, as if he were on the edge of tears. “I drove all the way from New Hampshire….”

  “Well, where are you now?”

  Jay wasn’t sure. But he described the Dunkin’ Donuts and the bridge outside, and his suspicion that it led to one of the nether hells. To his surprise, the man recognized it.

  “Gods! How on earth did you end up all the way down there?”

  “I have no idea.”

  The man on the phone was silent for a long moment, and Jay waited for him to say “Sorry. Better luck next time.” Then Jay would have to find his way back home, having failed again. He braced himself for it.

  But instead the man said, “You’ll need to turn around and head back the way you came, until you cross the bridge into Cambridge.” Then he proceeded to give Jay directions and describe the neighborhood and what the storefront looked like.

  Jay had no idea what the man’s name was or what he looked like. But he knew he loved him.

  WALLACE HAD to help Adrastia clean up after the ritual. Not that the ritual itself had been particularly messy, but they had to make sure all the chairs were put back against the walls, all the snacks had been carted away, and all dirty paper plates and plastic cups were tossed in the trash. A quick sweep didn’t hurt either. Gaynemede’s Crossing was allowed to use the basement room of the store on the condition they not inconvenience the owner.

  The shop itself was a vaguely New Age occult shop selling herbs and paraphernalia for religions ranging from Wicca to Hinduism to Santeria. Wallace often bought candles and herbs there for his personal use, and they had a decent stock of occult books. Unfortunately it was well past closing, so no one was there to sell him the scrying mirror he’d had his eye on. He’d have to remember to grab it before the ritual next month, if it was still there.

  As Adrastia shooed everyone outside, Wallace took one last look around and then locked up with the key the owners had entrusted to him. It was past eight, but it was late June, so the sun was still in the sky and the air was deliciously warm. A few people from the group were still straggling by the front steps, knowing a quest for Vietnamese or Thai food was likely to be next on the agenda.

  A man approached them along the sidewalk, eyeing them with trepidation. Frankly, that wasn’t unusual. Outsiders often found the group a bit… eccentric. Adrastia towered over everyone, and her broad shoulders made it obvious she was trans to all but the most clueless. Others were dressed head to toe in black or purple, with pentacles and crescent moons and other pagan symbols adorning them—necklaces, earrings, tattoos, the whole nine yards. Wallace himself dressed blandly in jeans and a T-shirt. He didn’t wear jewelry and had no tattoos—not even in interesting places. His most unique feature was the pair of Coke-bottle glasses he despised.

  Everyone gazed at the stranger with mild interest, waiting for him to say something, but he seemed a little intimidated. At last Adrastia asked, “Can we help you?”

  “I called here about fifteen minutes ago,” he answered uncomfortably. “I was the one looking for the group….”

  “I’m afraid you’ve missed the evening ritual.”

  “I know—”

  “Hey!” Wallace interrupted, hurrying down the three slate steps to the sidewalk. “That was me on the phone. I’m Wallace.”

  The man looked relieved. “Hi. I’m Jay.”

  THAT WAS how they met. They even had dinner together at a nice Vietnamese restaurant, but there was no chance to talk privately—not with eight people at the table. Wallace thought Jay was kind of cute. A little skinny perhaps, but handsome, with dirty-blond hair and soft emerald eyes. And Jay thought Wallace was nice in an understated way. The glasses made it difficult to see his eyes, but he had a boyish face and sensual lips that Jay would have been tempted to kiss, if they ever found a moment alone together.

  But they didn’t.

  When dinner ended Jay said good night and drove back to New Hampshire. He thought about going to the group the next month, but by then he’d begun to make some friends in Keene. As he grew less lonely in his new hometown, the desire to reconnect with the Cambridge group faded. Considering how many people lived in the Boston area, it was unlikely Jay and Wallace would ever bump into each other again.

  But they did.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  1999

  DOUG HAD seemed terrific when Jay first met him. He was funny, attentive, good in bed, and Jay’s family thought he was great. At family gatherings, that is—not in bed. They were living together in short order.

  But after two years, things weren’t going so well. They’d moved to Dover, which allowed Jay to get back in touch with some of his college friends, but their relationship seemed to grow rockier by the day. They fought constantly, though Jay was never really sure what they were
fighting about. They just didn’t… fit anymore.

  But still he tried. Jay was nothing if not stubborn.

  His ties to the pagan/Wiccan world had long ago faded away, since Doug thought that stuff was weird and creepy. In fact, his ties to anything outside the tech industry had pretty much withered to nothing. He worked long hours, during which he thought about nothing but computers and switches and routers. It paid well, and raises were frequent, so he was caught up in the game his coworkers played—pushing for promotions or transfers every six months to a year in order to get salary increases. Like his coworkers, he had an E*TRADE account and spent time between support calls attempting to build a stock portfolio. He had the sense not to gamble the small amount of savings he had, but it was a fun game to play.

  But he was unsatisfied. He couldn’t quite put a finger on why until one Saturday, when he was sitting at Café on the Corner and his friend, Steve, happened by. Steve had been part of the medieval reenactment group Jay hung out with in college, and apparently he was still involved with them.

  “Michaelmas is coming up,” Steve pointed out, referring to one of the large feasts the group put on every year. “It’s going to be at the Unitarian Church. You should come.”

  Jay couldn’t see that happening. He no longer had any of his medieval “garb,” and Doug was likely to turn his nose up at the idea of hanging out with a bunch of reenactors all day.

  Jay said diplomatically, “I’ll think about it.”

  “Well, at least stop by the monthly Wiccan group. Julie’s usually there, and Mark. A whole bunch of the old crowd. That’s tomorrow. Same place.”

  It would be nice to see some of them. And Doug was working on Sunday. “That might be fun.”

  “Are you still writing?”

  He wasn’t. Jay had written a lot of science fiction stories in college, and he’d talked about getting published one day. But that, like everything else he’d enjoyed in those days, seemed like nothing more than a dream he’d once had, barely remembered.

  This conversation was getting depressing.

  “So,” he asked, trying to change the subject, “do you still sing?”

  Steve grinned with excitement. “Yeah, man! My band is putting together our second CD. It’s gonna be awesome!”

  The more he talked about his life, the more it became clear Steve was barely scraping by financially. But he was doing what he loved, and he seemed just as happy with his life as he’d been in college. Jay, on the other hand, had plenty of money. He had a career now, a boyfriend, a new car, and a nice apartment. He’d thought he was doing okay, but now he realized exactly why he’d been feeling so uneasy. His life had veered off course. In just five years, he’d lost touch with everything that had been fun and creative in himself. He was no longer Jay.

  And he missed himself.

  WALLACE ENDED up at the coffee chat by pure chance—though he would later think fate might have played a small part. Gaynemede’s Crossing had eventually drifted apart, and after moving to New Hampshire, he was feeling isolated. Fortunately Adrastia kept tabs on what was going on in the pagan community, and she’d told him about a group meeting in Portsmouth, less than an hour from his new house.

  He’d been going for about six months. This group wasn’t really into rituals—they just liked to hang out and socialize over coffee and cookies. They also weren’t specifically oriented toward the LGBTQ community, but they were very open and accepting. It was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. Wallace had begun supplying the coffee, since he had a large stainless steel coffee urn that could brew a hundred cups of coffee and keep it hot for the entire meeting. He’d picked it up from a restaurant supply house that was going out of business, along with enough white ceramic plates and coffee cups to start his own diner—not that he wanted to. He just liked to be prepared. He’d offered Julie the use of the coffee urn when he first started coming to the group, and she’d jumped at it. The coffee brewer the church had was so old it was impossible to get the stains and deposits off it.

  The group tended to be mostly the same people every month, but on this particular Sunday, a new guy walked in. He was thin and blond, a bit conservative looking but definitely sexy. Wallace had the distinct feeling he’d seen the man before, but he couldn’t put a finger on it.

  “Jay!” Julie exclaimed the moment she saw him. “I haven’t seen you in ages!” Then she ran across the room to give him a hug. Again, the name sounded vaguely familiar to Wallace, but he couldn’t recall knowing a “Jay.”

  The newcomer was clearly friends with a lot of people in the group, and they all greeted him enthusiastically. Those who didn’t know him were introduced, including Wallace.

  Jay shook his hand and gazed at him with soft emerald eyes that seemed familiar. “Have we met?” Wallace asked.

  Jay seemed to look at him more closely for a moment. “I… don’t know. Did you go to UNH?”

  “No.”

  Jay shook his head. “I’m not sure.” Then he gave him a shy smile. “I think I’d remember you.”

  Wallace felt himself flush. Was Jay flirting with him? Wallace was a computer geek who’d learned his social skills by carefully observing those around him rather than picking them up by osmosis, as most people seemed to. There were times when he still misinterpreted signals—especially those kinds of signals. So he fell back on “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  Over the next couple of hours, as people drifted around the room, inserting themselves into whatever topics of conversation sounded interesting, Wallace noticed Jay kept finding his way back to his side. He found out Jay was in computers too, and they shared an interest in Norse mythology.

  “I’ve found an online course in Old Norse,” Wallace told him, “the language the Vikings spoke.”

  Jay laughed. “Seriously? That must be ridiculously hard.”

  “Not really. The verb inclinations and noun declinations are challenging to memorize, I guess, but the vocabulary is pretty easy. Most words are close to either modern English or modern German—sverdh became ‘sword,’ brodir became ‘brother,’ and so on.” Wallace realized he was rambling about a subject most people found boring, so he shut up. Gods! Why do I always do that? Jay was probably wondering how to extricate himself from the conversation now.

  At that moment someone over by the snack table said loudly, “Can we take up a collection to buy a real coffeemaker? This coffee tastes like shit!”

  Jay, of course, didn’t know Wallace was responsible for making the coffee, but Wallace still wanted to crawl under a chair now. He’d allowed himself to think the handsome guy standing in front of him might actually be interested in a geeky guy with glasses that made him look like a startled guppy, but any second now Jay was going to laugh and agree about how awful the coffee was. Then he’d wander away to find someone interesting to talk to.

  Jay glanced down at the cup in his hand. “It’s perfectly fine to me. I think it’s really good, actually.” He looked up again and grinned conspiratorially. “So how would a Viking say, ‘The next person who insults the coffee will die by my sword’?”

  JAY COULDN’T remember where he’d seen Wallace before, but there was a feeling of familiarity about him. Perhaps it was just the way they seemed to mesh. It was more than the shared interest in Norse stuff. Wallace was easy to talk to, and Jay felt comfortable with him in a way he hadn’t felt with anybody in a long time. Wallace made him feel like himself. He didn’t have to prove what a stud he was with computers or compare salaries or any of the shit that had made Jay’s life tedious in recent years.

  Wallace was cute too. An adorable boyish face framed by soft dark brown curls, and surprisingly sensual lips. True, the glasses weren’t very flattering, and Jay found himself wanting to remove them so he could see Wallace’s eyes better. But that was just one minor detail. It didn’t matter. Jay was definitely attracted to the quiet, understated computer programmer.

  But of course, he was in a relationship. And he wasn’t going
to hit on someone while he and Doug were still together, even if things were a little rocky. Every relationship had a few rough patches. There was no point in making things worse.

  Lunch wasn’t “cheating,” though, so when the meeting wound up, Jay asked Wallace, “Are you hungry? I was gonna hit the Brewery for a late lunch.”

  “Sure.”

  They continued their conversation over cheeseburgers, talking about random things—nothing in particular—and enjoying each other’s company until Jay realized how late it was getting.

  “I really should get home,” he said reluctantly. “My boyfriend will be home from work soon.”

  It was the first time he’d mentioned Doug, and he thought he detected a slight sagging of Wallace’s shoulders when he did, a subtle faltering of his smile. It was the first indication that Wallace had been interested in him. Jay felt awful now. He wanted to reach across the table and take Wallace’s hand and tell him, Don’t be hurt. I’d ask you out properly if I could.

  But it wouldn’t do any good to say that. It would probably just embarrass Wallace. So he kept it to himself.

  “Where are you parked?” Wallace asked.

  “Over on Vaughn Street.”

  “I can give you a ride to your car, if you like.”

  Wallace’s car was in the parking garage just around the corner, so they paid the check and walked there. Then Wallace gave Jay a ride in his old, beat-up Honda Civic across town to Vaughn Street.

  He pulled up alongside Jay’s new Nissan and said, “It was nice to meet you.”