The River in Winter

by Matt Dean

  From the entryway closet I fetched my parka and Luther's graffiti potion. The viscous, milky liquid, I knew, would make short work of "DIE FAGGOT."

  * * *

  Short work. Not quite. With a wire brush and the dregs of the jug, I scrubbed and scrubbed. When my nose and fingers and toes grew numb, I went into the house to warm myself. Once warm, I bundled up again and went back to work.

  At last only a trace of the paint remained. If I stood close, I could see faint white outlines and smudges in the crannies of the brick, but from the street I couldn't see a thing.

  I took a hot shower to warm myself. I put on the C-sharp minor quartet. I sat in the easy chair. I opened Beethoven in London. For weeks I'd been trying to get past the first chapter, but in nineteen-fifty-four McNamara's powers of obfuscation had apparently been at their apex. There were arcane details of boat construction, magnificently specific and precise descriptions of garments and conversation books and luggage, page-long conversations in untranslated French.

  After just a few words-a sentence or two toward the end of the first chapter, a description of Beethoven's cab ride from London Bridge Wharf to his lodgings in Saint John's Wood-I plunged into a dream. Dark, heaving, foam-beribboned water churned around me. Or perhaps it was not water-it seemed thicker, heavier, than water. I paddled to stay afloat. Fog or haze wafted and swirled around me, and I could not see the shore. Exhausted, chest heaving from exertion, I stopped paddling. I sank.

  As I descended, the water grew warmer, not colder. But it was dark, and growing darker. Around me I felt the movement of big slick fish, or perhaps of kelp floating in the black undercurrents. I looked up and saw light far above me, the sun breaking across the still, blue surface of the water.

  I woke. Beethoven in London had slipped from my fingers, had slid to the floor. A couple of pages had folded themselves over against my foot. Creasing the bent pages to straighten them, I closed the book and set it on the side table.

  Barefoot, naked, I padded to the bathroom. I switched on the light and squinted at myself in the mirror. I looked like utter garbage. My beard was long, curly, skewbald. My hair was wild, kinky, mangy.

  I understood, all at once, in a flash, why I had resisted trimming or shaving for so long. It was a disfigurement, this mess of orange hair. I'd decided-or, no, decided was the wrong word-. I'd allowed myself to look ugly, to show the ugliness I felt in me.

  More than that-I'd submerged myself in ugliness. I'd used this disfigurement as a screen, something to hide behind. How often had I seen passersby take notice of me-of my wild hair, my crazy beard-only to look away as if they'd just seen some kind of freak, some object of pity or disgust?

  But that was done with, over. I was clean, now. Forgiven. No longer ugly.

  On a glass shelf above the toilet tank lay an electric shaver. I stared at it. My eyes were open now, wide open, and I was old enough to know better. But here were my hands, switching on the shaver, lifting it to my forehead, raking its chattering teeth backward along the center of my scalp. Again. Again. Folding forward one ear, again. Reaching for the back, easing into the nape, again. Again, again.

  In a few upward strokes, I removed the beard, too. Whiskers fell onto the orange haystack in the sink.

  Only stubble remained, brilliant, shimmering like copper. Funny, how something so simple could change everything, how I could remake myself with a few passes of the clippers. I looked more intense, somehow, my eyes sunken, dark.

  In the top drawer of the vanity, a few disposable razors rattled their yellow plastic bodies among boxed soaps, loose cotton swabs, combs, and the remnants of a manicure kit. No shaving cream. I found a fresh razor and set it on the counter. Squatting, I poked through the mess beneath the sink. No shaving cream.

  Leaning toward the mirror, I ran water until I could barely stand its heat. In the soap dish on the wall there was half a bar of white soap. It slithered wetly between my fingers. From ear to ear, from forehead to nape, I spread the glistening lather.

  Slowly, almost reverently, I scraped the cheap blade backward along my scalp, downward along my cheek, upward along the curve of my neck. The stubble came away in rusty flakes.

  Head in the sink, I scooped water over my skin. With splayed fingers I hunted for hangers-on. A recalcitrant patch in the folds of skin behind my left ear: I lathered and scraped it away. A nearly single-file row at rear center: gone, without even soap to help the going.

  So. It was finished.

  No. Not quite. Down below, still, the rust remained.

  As I spread warm suds around it, my cock stretched suddenly to its full length. Holding it aside, I shaved away the orange whiskers. Gradually, while I took care to stretch tight and shave bare, my erection sank.

  But when I stepped into the shower, and the hot spray engulfed me, I remembered the Playgirl I'd found in Christa's closet, the muscular blond man on the cover. I remembered his tanned skin, the girdle of white around his middle. He wasn't my type-too blond, too plucked. Even so, I imagined him standing over me, imagined his strong hands around my throat.

  I remembered that old video of Spike's, Go Down On It. I remembered him kneeling in the circle of men. I imagined myself in his place, looking up, mouth open, receptive, waiting.

  In the tub I knelt. Eyes shut tight, tight grip.

  Tan line. Pale, curved ass. Chunky pink erection.

  Stroke. Tight grip.

  Spike. Hairy thighs, white chest, black whiskers. Hands around my neck.

  Stroke. Stroke. Tight grip. Stroke.

  Tory. Yes, Tory. That hug in the hospital. His body warm and solid against me.

  Tight grip.

  Those short shorts, those heavy, muscular thighs and thick calves shaped like upside-down hearts. His bare feet. The blue veins. I imagined myself crouching before him, before his long veined feet. My tongue darting.

  My erection thumped in my hand.

  The smell of him, the fresh smell of him as he'd hugged me. The fresh, juicy bite of apples. The cinnamon scent of pinesap. The clear water of a mossy brook.

  My breath came hard. Hot water poured down the bare skin of my scalp. I felt dizzy.

  If I could only-. If I could only have one kiss, one long kiss-. If I could touch him, kiss him-. If only-.

  Tory.

  * * *

  When I'd finished, the guilt swept me. Silently, thoughtlessly, senselessly, I dried myself, switched off the light, and felt my way through the dark to my bed. I pulled the covers up to my chin, tucked pillows around me.

  Tory? I thought. Where had that come from? Christa's fianc?, for God's sake. Tory.

  "Forgiven?" I whispered, hoping for the old sense of relief to flood my heart. It never came.

  * * *

  24 - Kiss Again

  The next morning, when I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, I did not quite regret my late-night barbering. It pleased me to see the shape of my head, the sudden smoothness of scalp and crotch, the strange and unexpected transformation. And yet, the intensity-.

  How it could be, I did not understand, but by removing my hair it was as if I had revealed not merely some additional square inches of skin, but all the dark places in myself. Without the frame of hair and beard, somehow, my eyes seemed deeper, darker, stranger.

  After the deep-water dream, after I'd shaved and had gone back to bed, I'd had no more dreams-or none that I could remember. But I looked as if I'd just awakened from a night of prophetic, fevered visions. I looked as if I'd spent the entire night dreaming the Book of Revelation.

  * * *

  Just before nine o'clock, Martin passed my desk on his way to his office. He gave no sign of having seen me, but then he called out to me through his open door.

  "Could you join me in here, Jonah?" As I fumbled for a legal pad and pencil, taking his question for a genuine request, he added the punch line. "My desk lamp has burned out, and I'm certain you'll fit the bill nicely until Central Stores can replace the bulb."

&
nbsp; Ha-freaking-ha, I thought, tossing my pad and pencil onto my desk.

  When Christa arrived, she looked at me, cocked her head, stared, grunted. Without a word, she went to her cubicle.

  I followed her. I stood before her desk. "You said to trim."

  With barely a second's glance at me, she tossed her purse into a drawer, slammed the drawer shut. "What does it matter?"

  "Beg pardon?"

  "There's not going to be any wedding."

  I knew there were things I should say, comforts I should offer, but I couldn't think what they might be-or rather, I could think of nothing but ridiculous bromides, corny as Kansas in August.

  "Tory's wretched preacher-. Preacher, reverend, minister, priest-whatever he calls himself. He won't marry us without six weeks of counseling. Six weeks! In six weeks, I'll be five months pregnant."

  "So you're calling it off?"

  She glared at me. "Of course not. What's wrong with you? We're postponing."

  My knees trembled. I steadied myself against her desk. "You just said-."

  "First he insists on getting married in this giant freaking church of his, and then it turns out-." She flung her hands in the air. "It doesn't matter. We'll figure something out. I'll figure something out."

  "I'm sure it'll be fine."

  Spinning her chair, rolling it to the shelves at the back of her cube, she fetched the entire stack of phone books she kept there. She slammed the whole lot onto her blotter. She looked up at me. "Are you still here?"

  No, I wasn't-not for long. I fled to my own cubicle.

  Christa spent the entire day on the phone with chapels and churches, with frequent calls to Tory in between. I strained to hear. I gathered that he could not or would not consider the simplest, quickest option-a civil ceremony.

  * * *

  As the hour of my appointment with Eliot drew nearer, I grew anxious. Surely he would see my shaved head as something more than simple grooming, as a shave that was not just a shave.

  In Hope and Healing, in the chapter called "Temperance: Sanctity of Body," Stinson explained that the trappings of the gay lifestyle-body piercing, tattoos, leather clothing, dance music-often hindered the recovery process. For many, he wrote, it was difficult to change inward things-desires, emotions, thought processes-if the mirror continued to show the unchanging outward self.

  I had made a change. Of course. The mirror did not show my unchanging outward self. But maybe I'd gone too far. It might be narcissism, the shaving. Self-indulgence? Ostentation?

  I couldn't stop thinking I'd gone too far.

  * * *

  On my way to lunch in the cave, I stopped in the men's room to wash my hands. Buzzing fluorescent fixtures over the sink cast weak, discolored light. Always in this place, my skin looked pasty and jaundiced-and now there was just so much more of it, so much more skin. My head was an immense, bulbous globe of gleaming icterus. Maybe I hadn't made such a very big change after all. Perhaps I'd simply gone from one kind of freakish disfigurement to another.

  * * *

  I slunk through Eliot's door expecting a lecture of some kind, a sermon, a Biblical reading assignment, or at least a disapproving look. Instead, Eliot greeted me with a smile, and followed the smile with a hug. He waved me toward one of the armchairs.

  Dropping into the chair next to mine, he said, "How are you, Jonah?"

  "All right," I wanted to say, or, "Can't complain." But I forced myself to give the real answer. "I've never done anything so difficult."

  Crossing his legs, frowning, Eliot said, "Tell me about that."

  "There are days when I want every man I see." A Playgirl model, Spike, Charlie, Tory. Tory, Tory, Tory. I stared at the ceiling. "My fantasies can be-. These are fantasies I'm trying not to have. They just arrive in flashes of heat and light. Intense-. Sometimes kind of-kind of rough."

  "What do you do about them?"

  "I pray. I try to think about something else. I read the Bible. I spend a lot of time in Second Corinthians," I told him.

  He nodded. "'There was given to me a thorn in the flesh,'" he said.

  Had this been Paul's thorn-this constant unwanted wanting? Lizzie Weitzel had thought so. In the margin alongside Second Corinthians, chapter twelve, she had written in her usual fastidious way, "Probably an illicit sexual attraction, possibly homosexual. No cure. Only control."

  I had come to picture Lizzie. Whenever I read her Bible-my Bible now-I imagined she sat next to me, watching. She never wore makeup, not even mascara. She wore her hair in a long brown ponytail. Always she wore the same clothing-a pale gray cardigan buttoned high against her throat, a plaid skirt, Mary Janes, bobby socks with frilly lace cuffs.

  Suddenly I felt sleepy, heavy as granite. No cure. Only control. I sank into my chair.

  "Give me an example."

  "An example? An example of a fantasy? Isn't that counterproductive?"

  Eliot shook his head. "Not at all. By simply trying to ignore these fantasies and circumvent them, I think you're giving them more power than they deserve. If you face them, and understand them, and are fully conscious of them, you'll have the tools you need to explain them away. More than likely, they'll evaporate all on their own." He flattened his hands on his thighs, ran them down to cup his knees. Grime blackened the thumbnail of his left hand and the nail of his right index finger.

  He said, "Imagine someone accidentally and repeatedly stepping on your heels as you walk. If you ignore the person, you get angrier and angrier, and hate the person more and more. But he might not even know he's doing it. If you turn and face him, chances are he'll throw up his hands and back off." He picked at his thumbnail-the right one, the clean one. "See what I mean?"

  I nodded. Eventually, I would have to tell him about Tory-the fantasy I'd had about Tory. But I said, "Something from today?"

  "Recent, but not necessarily today. Is there something in particular you're thinking about? Something you don't want to tell me?" He gave a wry smile. "Because that's the very one I want to hear."

  My shoulders slumped forward. I nodded. In a halting rush, I told him about the previous day. Tory and Christa's engagement, the graffiti, the dream, the shaving, the shower.

  Saying nothing, he sat, his left elbow resting on the arm of the chair, his chin resting on the heel of his left hand. At last he nodded. "This Tory fellow, he's a good friend?"

  I gave it some thought. "My best friend. My best male friend."

  "You see a lot of each other?"

  "Not a lot, no."

  "But you enjoy his company."

  "Very much," I said. "We have a lot in common. We can talk about-. About music, Beethoven, poetry."

  "Poetry?"

  "He's a poet. Writes poetry. Loves Whitman."

  "Walt Whitman?"

  Was there another Whitman? "Do you think it's dangerous?"

  "Not entirely dangerous," he said, but he said it with a deep frown. "He's getting married, after all."

  On my right hand, the chapped skin of my palm had started to flake away at the base of the middle finger. I picked at it. "It's true. He's entirely taken with Christa. I'm just a friend."

  "Do you love him?"

  Tears welled at the corners of my eyes. I did love him. I loved Tory-inaccessible, spoken-for, heterosexual Tory. Tory the wearer of a letterman jacket. Tory the know-it-all. Tory the maker of frittatas of inconsistent quality. How had this happened?

  "I think it's a peculiar part of our sickness that we seem to confuse the thrill of every illicit attraction with love."

  "I can see that happening. That is to say, I've felt so swamped by someone that I thought I might be falling for him." Eliot knew about Spike. If I uttered that single syllable-Spike-Eliot would know what I meant. But I couldn't bring myself to say Spike's name.

  "Moving forward, what's your strategy for dealing with these temptations?"

  I shrugged. "I don't think I can do much more than I'm already doing." I reached up to run my fingers through m
y hair. To feel stubble instead surprised me. A small thrill passed through me. "I can pray and wait it out. That's about all."

  "Do something else for me," Eliot said. "Get yourself a small notebook. Just a little spiral notebook, something you can carry around with you, nothing fancy. Whenever you're attracted to someone-a man, I mean-or whenever you have a fantasy, write it down. Just enough information so that when you go back to it, you'll remember what you saw and what you thought."

  I frowned. "If I go back and read it again, won't that be inviting the temptation to return?"

  "I think you'll find that it won't. First of all, when you recall these incidents at some distance, you'll likely see how unjustified the attractions were. In the case of Tory, for example. Don't you already feel foolish about fantasizing about Tory?"

  It was true, I did. I nodded.

  "Second, before you look at them again, you'll pray and get yourself into a reverent mood. You'll read them aloud as the confessional part of your prayer. When you're done, you'll write 'forgiven' crosswise on the page, over and over, until you feel that it's true."

  Forgiven. I looked down at my hands. How empty-how ordinary-that word, forgiven, had become. Once it had filled me with joy. I remembered feeling like a wisp of smoke, a current of air. That word, forgiven, had lightened me that much. Now it had all the force of any other word-white or short or redhead. "Are there sins so horrible that they can't be forgiven?"

  Eliot put his hand on my arm. Through my sleeve his skin was cold. "What could you have done that would be so heinous?"

  I shrugged, shook my head. "Not any one thing, I guess." Taking his hand in both of mine, I rubbed his chilly skin.

  Eliot chuckled. "I don't think it's possible to lose your right to forgiveness, or to lose your salvation."

  "Not even if you renounce it? Not even if you turn into a worshipper of Satan?"

  "Were you thinking of doing either of those things?" He chuckled. "If so, I'll have to ask for my hand back."

  Laughing, I let go of his hand. I scratched above my left ear. A fringe of whiskers had hidden in a divot in my scalp, and I'd missed them when I'd shaved. "I guess I just like to know where the boundaries are."

  "I'm not God," Eliot said, smiling. "I'm not fit to judge. I suppose if you entirely turned your back on God, he might be"-here he paused, staring at the ceiling-"a little less friendly. Anyone who doesn't love God loves Satan. We are either with God or against him."