A Scarcity of Condors Page 6

  He didn’t reveal the lube’s provenance to Feño—the guy had enough mommy issues as it was.

  “Come on, let’s practice,” Jude said.

  One careful, patient encounter at a time, he figured things out. It worked best when he was on top and controlling the pace. It worked even better when they were both on the edge of coming before he let Feño inside him. He learned to go as slow as possible, then go slower. To use as much lube as he thought he needed, then use more. If he positioned himself this way, he could go a tiny bit faster. If he angled that way, he could go a hair deeper. He experimented, calling the shots, and kept Feño’s trust by always stopping if it hurt.

  It got better. Then it got good. Then one night, it got something damn close to perfect. It clicked. It went. It worked. It did. It was amazing.

  “I love this,” Feño said, holding Jude’s brow against his. “I love your body. I love how you feel around me. Jesus Christ, I can’t take it.”

  “I can,” Jude said, sinking down on Feño’s hips, letting the pressure build in his belly and groin. Floating on the quiet intensity of being so in love, he was out of words.

  “Am I hurting you?”

  “No.” His body was utterly relaxed. No pain. Only an intense, tickling, buzzing pressure deep within.

  “I don’t understand,” Feño said. “I fucked girls and it was like brushing my teeth. With you… I don’t know why I’m like this. Is it guys, or is it you?”

  “Me.”

  “It scares me so bad, man.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I don’t want to be gay. I just want you.”

  In later years, Jude blamed himself for not reading what Feño painted on the wall in five-foot high letters.

  I don’t want to be gay. I just want you.

  What was obvious to an enlightened adult was sweet music to a horny, dramatic teen’s ears. Instead of heeding the warning, Jude ate it up and begged for more.

  “Say you want me,” he whispered.

  “Want you so bad.”

  “Say it again.”

  “I want you all the time. It’s all I think about. Walking around acting like I’m one thing when in my head, you’re the only thing. I want you all to myself. All day long, all I want is to get you alone. Put my head on your shoulder and get inside you so I can feel like me.”

  “You are a greedy fuck.”

  “I am,” Feño said. “So give me more.”

  “We had no business making love like that,” Jude said to Phil.

  It was Monday morning and Jude’s most extreme emotions were up bright and early.

  “I was fucking seventeen. Who communicates on a sexual level like that at seventeen? Jesus Christ, I was bottoming from the top. I didn’t even know what that meant until I was in my twenties.”

  Phil nodded. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before, but he always listened as if taking it in fresh.

  “How did it work?” Jude said. “Why did it work? How did we not, in our cluelessness, hurt each other?”

  “Hurt each other physically or emotionally?”

  “Both,” Jude cried, affronted by the world. He took a breath to calm down and be reasonable. “Put the physical stuff aside. With enough patience and lube you can always figure that shit out.”

  “Don’t dismiss what was a genuine affinity for each other,” Phil said. “Seventeen or not, you had something special and it let you communicate well about sex.”

  “Which brings me to my point. Where was the miscommunication? Where were the stupid misunderstandings, the arguments, the drama and angst?”

  “You were in hiding,” Phil said. “Maybe if you’d been free to be lovers in a normal, accepting environment, you would’ve been free to…”

  “Free to what?”

  “To fight? To… No, that makes no sense. Put a pin in that idea, we’ll circle back.”

  Jude never admired Phil more than when he lost his train of thought or struggled to articulate something. It kept Jude coming back to the couch, no matter how painful what was unpacked there. He and Phil were collaborators, panning the muck for nuggets of truth, often throwing back buckets of unused, unfinished thoughts.

  “I feel so fucking sad, man,” Jude said, slumping against the cushions. “It’s like grief.”

  “Because it is grief. Let’s have Captain Obvious weigh in. You went back to the place you were viciously attacked and bullied and discriminated against. That alone is haunting. You don’t shake that off overnight. But let’s say Vancouver had none of those traumatic ghosts. You still went back to your estranged lover’s funeral. I think that would leave the most enlightened saint reliving memories and regrets and feeling unspeakably sad. Feño was thirty-six years old, he left a wife and two kids and a secret side of him unresolved. It’s a tragedy.”

  “We were so young,” Jude said. “How the hell did we operate on such a plane of affinity when we were fucking babies? And how…”

  Phil’s eyebrows raised, as they always did when Jude was getting to the issue truly bothering him.

  “How can it still feel like last night? How is sex from nearly two decades ago more vivid than sex I had two, six, I don’t remember how many months ago?”

  “What do you think the answer is?”

  “I know what the answer is. We’ve unpacked this a hundred times. It’s vivid and memorable because I was in love with him. Because I let him so close to me. Because I was fearless and trusting. And the subsequent question isn’t ‘Will I ever feel like that again?’ but ‘Will I ever let myself feel like that by letting someone close to me again?’ I know this, Phil. I know the choices I made after I left Vancouver.”

  Jude spent his senior year of high school in heartbroken, traumatized celibacy. As a freshman at the University of the Pacific, he eased back into the game by presenting as bisexual, but only having intercourse with girls. It was almost comically dishonest and it felt like brushing his teeth, but that was fine. Even preferable.

  Finally his sexuality asked if he’d had enough of this nonsense, and he had. He also had new and extremely set ideas about sex, the first one being his identity as a top. A total top. No versatility, no negotiations. He had zero desire to recreate how he’d been with Feño. Even less desire to ever let anyone that close to him, let alone inside him.

  Maybe someday, he conceded. But not today.

  After a few years, his inherent nature asked if he’d had enough of that nonsense as well. He was older now, a little wiser, with a significantly shrunken head that made swallowing hard truths palatable: he was no more a total top than he was heterosexual. He could still have set, constructed ideas about sex, but it was stupid not to be himself within their walls.

  The UP campus was inclusive and tolerant, minds were open, male bodies were hot and out and there for the uninhibited taking. Jude ought to have turned into a cold-hearted, hot-blooded dog, out to fuck anything that would hold still.

  But that wasn’t Jude’s way. Still shaken by the attack, he opted to be out-ish. He kept his closet door open, but the law of the land within was Tell Only If Asked. He picked his partners carefully, avoiding the dogs. Though his heart was averse to love, his body would always need and equate some kind of emotional connection with intimacy. He was wired to think of sex as something beautiful and profound. Horizontal ballet. A symphony of body and mind.

  He was often disappointed nobody shared this philosophy.

  “It’s not a philosophy, it’s a Catch-22,” Phil said. “You don’t want love, but you don’t want casual sex either. You don’t want lovers to abandon you in the morning, but you won’t let them get close to you at night. You want sex to mean something, but you keep the parameters impossibly narrow and can’t communicate what they actually are. It’s not nothing, it’s not everything. It’s this immeasurable unit of something.”

&nbs
p; Fucking Phil. He never lost his train of thought when he was right.

  In adulthood, Jude was the worst kind of serial monogamist, getting into dozens of relationships as a means to justify the constant physical intimacy he craved. He didn’t like the concept of fuck buddies, so he invited far too many men to live with him, far too soon after meeting. None stayed long. Most of them left because Jude didn’t know what the hell he wanted.

  “Love isn’t a bed and breakfast,” fucking Phil said.

  The longest of these beneficial friendships was with Christian Largo, a percussionist with PNWB’s orchestra. They were together two years and to the outward eye, they were a relationship goal. They clicked on an intellectual level. Music was practically a third body in their bed. Chris had endured some vicious bullying in school and knew what it was like to step outside the front door and brace yourself. To constantly and subconsciously be on your guard.

  Maybe that was the problem: each was so careful not to upset the other, that neither particularly inspired the other. Jude and Chris were faithful. They were even devoted. But Jude couldn’t honestly say they were in love.

  His best friend Hewan Bourjini ended up saying it best: “You’re sort of two dogs who own and feed and walk each other.”

  They owned each other, it was true. Identical granted was taken. They were equally complicit in the complacency, but at least they didn’t fight about it. It was company. Another body in the house. Guaranteed sex. Someone to fetch a roll of toilet paper if you were caught short. A warm tush in bed.

  When Chris took a job in Amsterdam, Jude didn’t mourn. A week of outraged pissiness and a few sulking, tush-less nights, and he was over it.

  “You put your relationship to sleep,” Hewan said.

  At thirty-six, Jude was still out-ish, letting his left shin bone dictate his identity. Telling if asked but not flying his rainbow colors. He volunteered with Seattle Pride, but always in the back office. He worked tirelessly to organize the yearly parade in Capitol Hill but didn’t march. He gravitated toward guys who were smaller than him. Less confident than him. Softer and shyer than him.

  “Guys you can boss around,” Hewan said.

  “I don’t boss them.”

  “You do like to call the shots.”

  “I don’t like aggressive men,” Jude said. “Being the victim of a hate crime will do that to a person.”

  “It’s important to you to feel in control,” Phil said now. “It’s not a character flaw. Neither is gravitating toward a certain personality type.”

  “I know.”

  “Believe me, man, I know it can be a blessing and a curse to have a first love that was so beautiful.”

  “Was yours?”

  Phil smiled as his eyes circled the ceiling. “Took forever to get over the standard she set.”

  “Feño set a fucking impossible standard. I want to feel that way again, yet I do so much to keep from feeling that way.”

  “It’s hard to pursue something you keep off limits.”

  An interval of silence, prickly with overlapping thoughts that snagged Jude’s mind this way and that. Somewhere in this tangled briar patch was the thing bothering him. He sat still and waited.

  “Remember my freshman year of college,” he finally said, “when I had to come home and make an emergency appointment with you, because I was freaked out from a gay porn movie I watched?”

  “I remember. You were shook up.”

  “Bad. It was worse than a horror movie lingering around. The imagery literally made me sick. Offended me in a way that was visceral. I had to physically get away from it, my dorm room, the campus, the entire state of California.”

  “You fled from it.”

  “Yeah. It was under my skin and in my bones.” He raised one forearm. “Look at the hair sticking up. Even talking about it now is disturbing.”

  “Why? What upset you?”

  “We already went through—”

  Phil held up a hand. “You brought it up, which means it’s bothering you. So pretend we didn’t go through it.”

  Jude rubbed his arms, trying to settle down. “It was ugly. It was nothing I identified with. It was so full of hostility. I thought I’d be watching two guys make love, but they weren’t even being nice to each other. It was like they were fighting with their bodies and their words. Trying to touch without being touched. Each blaming the other for making them like this. Fuck you for making me want to fuck you. I’m going to fuck the desire to fuck you right out of you.”

  “It’s porn. Porn is never reality. It’s rarely nice and even more rarely about making love.”

  “But it’s all I had,” Jude said. “I had nothing else to go on. No books, no movies, no love stories, no openly gay celebrity role models. No mainstream litmus test of what two gay men who loved each other did together.”

  “Extremely fair point,” Phil said. “You’re right.”

  “All I had was my experience with Feño and this repulsive movie. Polar opposite depictions of intimacy and I’m stuck in between, nineteen years old with not a whole lot of nuance. I thought, These are my choices. Intense beautiful lovemaking that ends in heartbreak and bone-break, or two gay men pissed about being gay and fight-fucking it out of their systems.”

  “No wonder you went running from it. To the safest place you knew.”

  “God, I came home despairing at what my options were. I went back to school and tried to date, but aggressive come-ons with all the crass language turned me the hell off. Bunch of buddies started calling me Jude the Prude. Which wasn’t accurate. I wasn’t prudish about sex. I just didn’t like when guys were over-the-top and provocative. It only reminded me of the porn images still under my skin.”

  “And the less aggressive come-ons?” Phil asked. “With kinder, gentler guys?”

  Jude sighed. “Those encounters reminded me of different things under my skin.” He exhaled long, took off his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “I fight off everything I want so bad.”

  “Mm.”

  “I want someone.”

  Phil’s hand turned over in the air.

  “I want someone the way Feño was a someone.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say it so simply and honestly.”

  “Maybe because I’m done. All this nostalgia and sadness for Feño. The residual fear of being targeted. The conflict of inviting people to knock on a bolted door. It’s old. It’s boring. I’m tired of it.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Too much effort,” he said, remembering what Brenda Ronco said at Feño’s funeral. “I could take all this passion and build a house instead.”

  Phil’s eyebrows raised.

  “Maybe that’s it,” Jude said slowly. “Maybe I’m ready to let my house be a home.”

  Phil mimed a mic drop. “That,” he said, “is a tremendous statement.”

  Jude’s heart thumped hard, filled again with warm, coiling optimism. “Thank you.”

  “But as we know, talk is cheap.”

  “I know. Walking is also involved.”

  “And risk, pain, trust. Are you ready to be vulnerable?”

  “I feel ready for something. I’m done with this narrative. Once upon a time, I was the victim of a hate crime. My family was targeted, the community turned against us, we fled the country. I unpacked all that shit with you. The betrayal and the abandonment and the trauma and the anger. I survived to be a functioning adult. My everyday life is rich but my love life is a third-world country.

  “I was driving back from Vancouver this weekend, thinking about everything. And for the first time I realized I don’t like the ending of this story. I mean, I don’t like it ending here. I survived to be a functioning adult. True. And. Dot-dot-dot. Who do I want to be now?”

  Phil smiled. “Of all the great Tholet Fami
ly Mottoes, that’s got to be one of the greatest. True. And. Dot-dot-dot. Who do I want to be now?”

  “It’s the antidote to revolting developments.”

  “You look right on the edge of something big, my friend.”

  “I feel it. I feel excited. For real, I’m like buzzing with it.”

  The session was over and Jude had a foot out the door when Phil called to him.

  “Listen, if the sadness comes back to visit later on, or even an hour from now? Don’t beat yourself up. It’s not a setback. It’s being human.”

  “I don’t think it will,” Jude said. “But thanks.”

  Naturally, fucking Phil was right.

  And naturally, Jude lay awake another night with Feño’s ghost. Remembering. Regretting. And beating himself up.

  Like most children of the Chilean exiles, Feño Paloma was a damaged soul, the circuits of his young brain scrambled with terror and uncertainty. He had trouble eating, slept poorly, was afraid of the dark, afraid of the police and afraid of change. He had two traumatized older brothers and often found himself in the crossfire of their mood swings. But it was his mother’s volatile emotions he feared most. He did everything in his young power to assuage her fears. To be her golden boy and personal savior. A vessel of goodness and innocence and hope. A sign the world could be redeemed. Even beautiful.

  It was an exhausting job for a child, and he found the bulk of his respite in the Tholets’ house on Ormidale Street, often falling asleep on Jude’s shoulder as they watched TV.

  Had Jude thought more of Feño’s tactile nature during those tender years? He couldn’t remember. Feño liking to lean on him was a natural law of the universe. Him liking it was another immutable law.

  Their paths diverted in middle school, when sports intensified and drew lines through the social ranks. Jude had no interest in athletics but Feño found security, freedom and recognition on the soccer field and the baseball diamond. His coaches became his father figures, his teammates his dependable brothers. He bloomed and thrived, regaining his appetite and his rest and discovering a goodness that made his mother beam with pride.