The River in Winter

by Matt Dean

  "What did you promise him?"

  * * *

  "He told me to sit and listen to the still, small voice," I told Eliot. "He said, 'It's your voice.'"

  Eliot's reply was neither still nor small. Sitting on his hearth, he slapped his knee and guffawed. "Truly, things like this just make my day. People allow themselves the most insane and vapid rationalizations and delusions." He wiped a tear from each eye. "What did you say?" he asked me.

  "After that, things took a turn."

  He pulled a face. "A turn?"

  When, at length, after much cajoling on Martin's part, I'd described the vague deal I'd made with Thorstensen, Martin had been very cross with me. I wasn't sure we were still speaking. I told all this to Eliot.

  "You're free to find another job, aren't you?"

  After I'd begged Thorstensen to spare the OWT? After I'd risked-and suffered-Martin's disapproval to save my job? Never. To Eliot, I said, "Martin's hopeless without me, and I'm sure he'll forgive me in time. The money's decent. My resume is-. My resume has one thing on it. I can put up with a few minor frustrations."

  Nodding, he stood. He shook his hips to straighten the legs of his trousers. He moved to the chair on my right. "How has your journal been working out?"

  "It worked. Just as you said it would. That fantasy about Tory wanted to resume itself on the way home, but after I wrote it out, I just got tired of it."

  "Did you bring it with you?"

  I nodded. I had it in my jacket pocket. I drew it out-a tiny knot of paper, folded over itself many times-and handed it to him. He opened it. I'd used any sheet of paper I'd found at hand. Staff paper, spiral notebooks, legal pads. He sorted it all out, spread it across his lap. He read.

  "Are your fantasies often so fierce?"

  "The bondage? The spanking and stuff? It's entirely new." Not entirely new. Spike had spanked me. Spike and Jose had taken turns spanking me. I didn't say so to Eliot.

  "Why do you suppose it's coming up now?"

  "I don't know."

  Tipping his head back, he frowned at the ceiling. "As you sit here now"-he looked at me with widened eyes-"what distinguishes you from an object?"

  "From an object? I-. I'm-. I'm breathing, moving, talking."

  His mouth curved upward. It couldn't properly be called a smile. "And from an animal? Besides talking, what separates you from a dog or an orangutan?"

  "I-. I guess-. The way I think. I know about cause and effect. I can reason."

  He nodded. "And?"

  My turn, now, to examine the ceiling. Soot or shadow filled the innumerable shallows and depths of its craggy surface. "I have emotions and preferences." I looked at him. "I can make choices."

  "And if you were a-for lack of a better word-a slave? Tory's slave?"

  "All my choices would be made for me."

  He said, "And that's an attractive idea, suddenly?"

  Was it? Was that what all these fantasies had been about? Someone-Tory-making choices for me? "I-. I guess."

  "Why do you suppose that is?"

  My hands lay in my lap. I looked down at them. "I haven't given this a moment's thought till now," I said. "Off the top of my head, I'd say it'd have to be because I've been doing a rotten job of it." I frowned. I shook my head. "But that's insane. Shouldn't I want someone to force me to do the right thing, rather than the wrong thing?"

  He crossed his legs. "I'd like to meet the man who could get his jollies that way. Besides, in real life, in the situation that started all this-this particular fantasy, I mean-did you make the wrong choice?"

  I smiled. I couldn't help it. I smiled so broadly that it hurt. "I didn't, did I?"

  "Now you see why this journal is a good thing."

  He set aside the staff paper, turned to a sheet torn raggedly from my legal pad at work.

  He read it aloud.

  When I got back from lunch this afternoon I stopped in the restroom. A guy, a tall guy with short dark hair and a slender body, looking good in a tailored white shirt with monogrammed cuffs-JPG was the monogram-stood at the urinal next to mine. He pulled out a very big uncircumcised penis.

  Eliot looked at me. Blushing, I shrugged.

  He went on reading.

  I didn't mean to look, but it was the biggest thing in the room. I couldn't help but look at it. And then, without ever having peed, he started to stroke it, and it got bigger, until finally it stood straight out from his body. By then I was also fully erect.

  Eliot looked up. "You had sex with this man? Why didn't you-?" He stopped. Somehow my facial expression must have made it clear.

  He read on.

  That's not what happened. In reality, he came in, he took his piss, he shook himself toward the bowl a couple of times, he left. I stood there pawing my erection for another ten minutes, or so it seemed.

  "You didn't finish telling the fantasy," Eliot said.

  "I got bored with it."

  "Tell me about it."

  "I don't remember most of it. It's the same old nonsense."

  "Let's go back. When you imagined him enticing you by touching himself, what else did you imagine? Did you picture a particular facial expression? Did you imagine a smell? Did he reach a hand into his shirt and play with his nipples?"

  "Yes, and no, and no."

  "What was the facial expression?"

  "He was smiling. An arrogant, self-satisfied kind of smile." The kind of smile Spike might wear.

  "Interesting. Did he say anything?"

  "Nothing."

  Just so, and yet my evanescent men's-room daydream turned into another thirty minutes by Eliot's hearth. After that, the journal offered up more men-butts, goatees, forearms, more of the things that had lured my attention as worms lure fish. Another men's-room peek at JPG and his uncircumcised monster. Another fantasy, another half an hour plumbing every nuance.

  * * *

  28 - Brothers in Christ

  On the last morning of March, I woke an hour before my alarm. A dozen times or more I rolled over and pounded my pillow and tried to sink back into the dreams I'd been having of rowing on bright water, of stalking through cool woods. But something kept me awake, some sense that this day would be too good to squander on sleep. For a time I lay face up with my eyes closed, watching my eyelids brighten, until my aching bladder at last broke my inertia.

  The sun filled the bathroom with diamond-sharp light. Too bright. I closed my eyes. Even as I peed, even as I fumbled among the bric-a-brac on the vanity, I kept my eyes closed. At last I had to open them to aim the toothpaste tube at my toothbrush. As I scrubbed my teeth, I paced the floor.

  I found myself in the kitchen. Its windows faced west, so that the room was a cool shadowy place of dimly glinting surfaces.

  Wait. What? There were marks of some kind on the windows. Lines, scratches.

  With my toothbrush hanging from my lips, I inched toward the windows. Each of the three bore a word in ragged, deeply cut letters. Together they formed a rudimentary sentence:

  FAG HAS AIDS

  Trembling, I touched the glass. Smooth. The etching must be on the outside. Of course, it was on the outside.

  I remembered the "GAF" written in soap on my windshield. Many months ago, that had been, time enough, it seemed, for my vandal to practice and to acquire the knack of writing backward. Leaning forward, I peered out the window. I could see my car, but a blue minivan, a Lumina, blocked my view. I couldn't see if my vandal had marked or harmed the Chevette in some way.

  Early sun glinted on the Lumina's windshield. That shadow, inside, on the driver's side, was that a person, sitting behind the wheel? Someone wearing black?

  And in the passenger's seat? Another figure, this one wearing blue-or was it gray?

  I returned to the bathroom and tossed my toothbrush-still foamy-into the sink. The bathroom window, too, had been etched:

  COCK

  I went to the bedroom and lifted the window shade. It, too, bore some carving:

  SUC
KER

  On the opposite side of the room, in the window to the right of the bed:

  PACKED

  "Packed"? Oh, yes: here on the bed's left was the rest:

  FUDGE

  Here the letters were tall, filling the window pane. On the outside the sashes bled white splinters.

  Numbly I pressed my fingers to the "E" of "FUDGE." What tool could gouge glass so deeply, so angrily, without poking through it or shattering it?

  I hated to see-but I had to see-what my vandal had done to the picture windows in the front of the house. I tugged the blinds, and they snapped open. The larger canvases had given him room for dependent clauses. The westward-facing window read:

  IF YOU LOVE GOD HATE EVIL

  And the southern-facing window read:

  IF YOU HATE EVIL KILL FAGS

  While I'd slept, this had happened. While I'd lain oblivious in my snug bed-perhaps not so long ago, perhaps even while I'd lain awake, relishing but postponing the promise of a spring day-my vandal had stood feet from my head, scouring my windows with some sharp implement. Perhaps some noise he'd made had awakened me.

  I flew to the bedroom. Yesterday's clothes-.

  No, I could spare an extra minute to find something new. Denim and flannel came first on the rack. So be it. During the legislative session there was a dress code-business casual, no jeans. Fuck the dress code. Fuck the legislative session.

  I pulled boxers, undershirt, and socks from the dresser drawers, left the drawers hanging open. Jeans on but unbuttoned, I stepped into a pair of running shoes. I had neither worn them nor put them away, it seemed, in months.

  On the way to the front door, I tucked my T-shirt into my jeans and buttoned them. I slid my arms into the flannel shirt. Wallet. Keys. Leather jacket. Out.

  Outside there were dewy lawns, budding trees, singing birds. The sunlight was bright and warm on my face. The street was empty of people. I dashed for my car, as though snipers crouched on nearby roofs, training their rifles on me.

  The minivan had gone. The Chevette stood at the curb. It looked lonely, somehow, and exposed.

  As I'd feared, the vandal had scratched my windshield. This was no "GAF." Sitting behind the wheel, I read with perfect clarity, "DIE FAGGOT."

  As I neared the State Office Building, my heartbeat calmed. What could touch me within the marble walls of the capitol complex?

  In the comforting bland smallness of my cubicle, I reached immediately for my phone. The green light blinked. Voice mail.

  The dial tone stuttered. I dialed. Eight new messages. A fuzzy whisper. "Shit-eating cocksucker," one said. I deleted the message.

  The voice rasped, "You die tonight, faggot." I deleted the message.

  Another: "There's no place in this world for people like you. You are corrupt and evil. God turns his back-."

  I deleted the message. I deleted the rest of the messages without listening to them. Anyone who had left an authentic voice mail, I thought, would call again, eventually.

  The voice had sounded familiar. Deep, thick. Spike? No, not Spike. I'd never given him my work number. I'd told him I worked for the legislature, though, hadn't I? My office number was a matter of public record. He could have tracked me down. But why? Why, after so much time? Why, indeed, at all?

  No, the voice must belong to Bobby. The plosives of "cocksucker"-the sound of a padlock snapping shut-were his. The vowels of "faggot"-the stretch of a yawn on a velvet night-were his. And I had given Tigger my work number. It must be Bobby.

  My stomach turned. I placed my hand on my belly, as if by pressing on it I could settle its roiling.

  I dialed Eliot. I got his answering machine.

  "Eliot," I said. "Jonah. Something's-. A number of things have happened, none of them good. Could you give me a call when you get this? Thanks. I-. I hope to speak to you soon."

  Almost as I set the handset in the cradle, the phone rang. Trembling, I lifted the handset to my ear.

  "You can't have forgotten me." My mother, in her best radio voice. "I've been too good to you."

  "Barbara-." Funny, how alien it sounded now, to call her Barbara. "Mother," I said, though that didn't sound right, either. "I'm kind of-. That is to say-."

  All at once her voice slumped. "We haven't talked in three months."

  Three months. Had it really been that long? I counted on my fingers. No. Two months, not three. It had been two months since we'd spoken. She'd called me in January, a few hours after Clinton's inauguration. She'd told me she wished she'd taped it. She'd said it would make a great drinking game. To play the game, I remembered, you would take a shot every time one of the pundits made a reference to John Kennedy.

  Thinking of this again now, I remembered that Tom had made the same joke in the first days of the Gulf War. In Tom's drinking game, though, the trigger word had been "sortie."

  I'd distracted myself. I hadn't spoken in some few seconds.

  Barbara was saying, "And I know session is on, but-."

  I said, "You called me in-." I shook my head to clear it. I'd fallen behind a topic. I said, "Session is-. As a matter of fact, I do have some things right now that-."

  "Nothing could be more important than this conversation." Her diction was precise, a little stiff. She paused. While I searched for a reply, she said, "Are you angry with me?"

  Weeks had passed since we'd talked about Barbara in group. "Her course of action almost guaranteed you'd turn out homosexual," Eliot had said. "She led you so far from the path you started out on that you didn't even know how to talk to God," he'd told me.

  "Why would I be angry?"

  She sighed-with effort, it seemed. "You'd have to tell me that in order for me to know, don't you think?"

  "Mother, there are things-."

  She cut me off. "Good Christ, you've done it, haven't you?"

  I lifted my hand to run it through my hair and instead found only three days' stubble. My scalp itched. "Done what, Mother?"

  "You've gone Christian."

  "I've-. That is to say-." From the back of my head, I peeled away a scab from my last shave. I looked at my hand. Brown blood stained my fingernail. Instantly, as if at the sight of my own dried blood, I boiled with rage. "I've gone quite Christian. Enormously pious and hypocritical. I read my Bible by candlelight into the wee hours of every morning. I've stopped believing in protons, DNA, and the existence of orangutans. I'm thinking of changing my name to Zacharias. Oh, and I think gun control is a sin. And-."

  But by then I was speaking to a dial tone.

  Just as well, for now Christa's phone was ringing. I picked it up. Martin, calling from home. Unusually bristly, even for him, he said, "Conference me with the house session number." I checked my watch. Could the house be in session already? It was just now eight o'clock. "Quick," he said.

  With jumpy fingers I put him on hold. I pressed the speed dial button marked "House." Instantly, without a single ring, I connected. The chief clerk's Klaxon voice startled me. "-in accordance with the recommendation and report of the Conference Committee. Said Senate File-"

  But I'd forgotten what buttons to press for a conference call. I thought about it for a moment, twirling my fingers above the phone's keypad. Flash. Line one. "Martin?"

  "Conference committee report on Senate file number twenty-two-seventy-six. A bill for an act relating to the financing of state government."

  "I'm here," Martin said.

  "It's the appropriations bill."

  "It's an appropriations bill, not the appropriations bill. Hush."

  The Chief Clerk had finished, and now Thorstensen said, "-since the good people of Minnesota haven't yet seen fit to place an IR majority in either house. Along with most of my colleagues on this side of the aisle I have become accustomed to seeing things much changed once that venereal body, the Senate, has finished with them." After a moment's pause and a word growled out of his microphone's reach he said, "Pardon me, ladies and gentlemen, I meant to say venerable body."r />
  "Martin, what is this? What's going on?"

  "In its sense," Thorstensen said, "this bill makes minor adjustments to certain expenditures related to the legislature. We're proposing a few changes, a few cuts. Nothing to contend to about that."

  "Martin," I said. "What's going on?"

  Martin said, "What is it Christa used to say? Weigh enough."

  Thorstensen was saying, "The contention centers around a provision that somehow slipped in regarding the Office on Workplace Tolerance."

  "You see," Martin said.

  Thorstensen said, "The affect"-by stretching the a, he made it brutally clear that he intended to say affect-"of the Senate amendments was to commission a policy prohibiting"-he rattled papers-"certain forms of harassment. As most of you know, I and my colleagues on this side of the aisle never approved of the creation of the OWT, and my personal displeasure with it has grown ever more strident. Especially when I saw this." There was a great thump.

  I jumped. My chair rolled back a few inches. "What the hell?" I said.

  "This is a book that purposes to describe new and modern standards for gender-free language. Ladies and gentlemen of the House, this book recommends-and I am not joking-the replacement of 'men' with 'fem.' Yes, you heard right. Anywhere in the English language where the letters M-E-N occur, this book recommends replacing them with F-E-M. I, for one, do not relish the notion of taking up 'ay-fem-femts' on the floor of this distinguishable body."

  "Hush up and listen," Martin said, for I had begun cursing.

  "But what book is he talking about? I've never-."

  "Hush up and listen," Martin said again.

  Thorstensen cleared his throat. "Now, to all of you who have worked with me during this long session-."

  Something now muffled Thorstensen's voice; he must have dislodged his microphone. A triangular button on my phone raised his voice and the hiss of static surrounding it. "-And pay for them we must," he was saying.

  "What are we paying for?" I said. "I didn't catch it."

  "For the LCC to do a study," Martin said.

  Thorstensen said, "So we propose to move the work of the OWT to the Legislative Coordinating Commission as well and pay for the new position there by eliminating OWT altogether."