Now and Yesterday (37 page)

“So you guys know each other from back in the day?” said Will.

“
So
long ago,” said Arnie.

“Before New York,” said Peter. “Ithaca.”

“Mrs. Beddoes's rooming house.”

“Oh my goodness, right!” Peter had forgotten the name, but remembered the third-floor room of the big white house just off campus, where he and Arnie had spent a whole day and night in Arnie's clanky metal bed, first getting to know each other. Arnie's hair was long and luxuriously black back then, scented with musk oil.

“And then you knew each other in New York, in the seventies?”

“Yup,” said Arnie.

“What was it like, back then? How were things different—I mean, for gay men? I try to get Peter to talk about this all the time, but he's so buttoned-up.”

Peter made a face in quizzical amusement, but remained silent. Was this an interviewer's tactic for drawing out a subject? An appeal to the obvious professorial side of Arnie, inviting him to lecture?

“Everything's changed and nothing's changed,” pronounced Arnie, with something between a smile and a sneer.

“There must have been this amazing moment right after liberation, but before AIDS,” said Will. “Not just for sex, but the whole idea of gay culture. I would love to know how it was—how it changed you.”

Peter and Arnie looked at each other, each expecting the other to make a comment. Then Peter spoke.

“Well, it may have changed people in different ways,” he said, the slight pause following this diplomatic statement allowing him to register the fact that here, unlike in Jonathan's much solider house, he could hear the rain pounding on the roof and the windows. It had been raining, too, he remembered, on that day in Ithaca when he and Arnie first got to know each other. Under a single umbrella—a broad, striped thing meant for golf, that Peter brought with him to college—they walked back to Arnie's house after a sculpture class. The pounding rain made the umbrella sound like a drum. Their sneakers got soaked and so did the bottoms of their jeans, but that was OK. Then, in Arnie's room, after some mint tea and talk of Rome and a song that Arnie had set to a poem of Auden's, which he rendered a cappella, they lay in bed for hours, naked, kissing and touching, being happy with just being close, because it felt so marvelous. And though the little romance didn't last more than a few weeks, it gave Peter a chance to be himself for the first time in his life and the faith that someone like Harold might be out there. And then, all of a sudden, there Harold was.

“Honestly,” said Arnie, “I would say that I was so elated by those first years in New York that what came afterward totally shell-shocked me.”

“Really?” said Will.

“It was like the revolution I had believed in failed, or was hijacked by AIDS,” continued Arnie. “And then, after we battled for AIDS awareness, the emotional response brought acceptance for gay men on completely different terms from the ones we formulated.”

“What terms did you want?” asked Will.

“Oh, you know,” said Arnie, looking at Peter, who smirked and nodded. “Against the patriarchy. Certainly not conventional marriage, condoned by church, state, and the IRS. We were looking toward some other bond among men, something truer.” He air-quoted “truer.”

“Ah,” said Will.

“Something more about brown rice and plaid flannel shirts,” said Peter.

More laughter.

“How long have you been here?” said Will.

“In Catskill? Since eighty-four,” said Arnie.

“May I ask why you left New York?”

“It's complicated,” said Arnie, who went on to decry the violence and filth of the city back in those days, and the fear of an unknown killer of gay men that added to the tension of city life. He said he wouldn't have admitted it then, but it was a kind of lack of stamina that caused him to leave New York. Living there and then was “too hard for an unambitious dreamer” who had grown up in modest circumstances in suburban Long Island.

“And I didn't love the kind of gay life I found in the city, either,” he said. “It was all about Broadway and Fire Island. And in serious musical circles, then, even if you were gay you had to be a real, quote-unquote, gentleman—preferably Episcopalian, possibly Presbyterian.”

“Really?” said Will.

“All that decorum crap,” said Arnie. “I have a bit of the Radical Faerie in me, Will. I'm Jewish, my parents were lower-middle class, I wasn't that cute—unlike the adorable creature you see before you now. I didn't fit into A-list circles or any other circles I could find. I knew a few people from college, but I never felt like they were
my crowd
. In fact, what I felt was that I couldn't keep up with the clothes, and the hair, and the accessories of the people who I thought were my crowd. . . .” He paused. “Everything was about conspicuous consumption. Just like now.”

“That's what America is,” said Peter.

“Is it?” said Arnie. “I didn't think it had to be.”

“Sounds like you don't miss New York, then,” said Will.

“Not really,” said Arnie. “I was priced out of it.”

“That place on Cornelia!” said Peter.

Arnie shuddered. “The tub in the kitchen!” he said. “The day I got up and found a dying mouse in my coffee cup, I knew I had to get out of there. And even
that
was expensive, for the time.”

“You wouldn't believe what they're charging for co-ops on Cornelia now,” said Peter. “A studio in that same building was like a million dollars! It's all renovated.”

“Of course it is,” said Arnie. “The whole island of Manhattan is.
Mazel tov
.”

“What about the music, the concerts?” said Will.

“We have concerts here,” said Arnie, expansively. “And though I still live in poverty, at least my poverty is genteel.”

Peter and Will demurred.

“No, I live like I want,” said Arnie, “even if it is on the edge of what passes for reality.”

“How so?” said Will.

“
The Real Housewives of Fire Island Pines,
or whatever they call it,” said Arnie.

Will laughed.

“The A-List,”
he said.

“That's reality,” said Arnie.

Peter felt a kind of pride when it dawned on him that it was Will who was driving the conversation. Whether Will was acting the reporter out of awkwardness or a genuine interest in history, it was nice to see him taking part in this visit between old friends as a peer. And it was nice to see Arnie, for his part, according Will the respect due a friend of Peter's, even a boyfriend. Arnie might well assume they were boyfriends, Peter thought, and if the subject came up and Will felt like going into detail, well, that might prove amusing.

But the subject didn't come up. The three chatted on for almost two hours, about this and that, and then, when Arnie offered to switch from tea to wine, Peter suggested it was time to get going.

“I wanted to know if he had a boyfriend,” said Peter, when they were back in the van, heading toward the Thruway.

“I know—me too!” said Will. “I didn't know how to ask!”

“We're such pussies.”

“I could live that way, though. It looks comfortable enough. Quiet. Maybe fewer
things
.”

“Right? Underheated rooms, broken-in furniture . . .”

“Floors you have to sweep twice a day, because you keep your boots on inside the house . . .”

“Well, maybe not that rustic.”

Will laughed.

“I'd need a mudroom,” he said.

“And better china,” said Peter. “I don't know what to make of a teapot shaped like a kitty with its paw up.”

“But seriously, I'm glad we stopped.”

“Good.”

“He's an interesting guy. Remember, for you, queer theory is the residue of something you lived through. For me, it's a college course that I always felt should mean more to me than it did. Until today. I mean, it was like meeting someone from Pompeii who could tell you about the volcano.”

“Ouch,” said Peter.

“You know what I mean.”

The rain continued, heavy at times. Night came and took away all views but that of the highway. Traffic was thick and moved slowly—in front of them, a trail of glaring red and, to the left, a surge of piercing white, snapping into focus for a second through the windshield, as the wipers swept across, then instantly blurry. The occasional
thwunk
of spray from a passing truck, hitting the van broadside, punctuated the chorus of
shhsss
from everybody's tires.

The texture of reality felt different, too—and how could it not feel so, at the end of such a weekend? Things were palpably more intimate between Peter and Will, not just because of the specific experiences they had had together, but because they had agreed, tacitly, again and again, to have so many experiences together in so short a time. They had made the Pact of Frequent Reconnection and passed through the Portal of Constant Company, and were now in a dimension that only partly resembled the one they'd left on Friday. They were a
thing
now. The weekend had revealed this.

Now and then, Will fiddled with his iPod and the radio, but couldn't find anything they wanted to hear. Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Massenet, and world news all seemed wrong. Highway noise made listening difficult, anyway. Sporadically, they talked about things like Oscar nominations and tourism in space, but then were silent for long stretches, and Peter liked those stretches. There were plenty of things to say, about work, and summer plans, maybe even Will's therapy, but they would all be said in time, now that they were a
thing
. Silence was good—a new
construction
between them that itself provided a kind of communication.

As he drove, and Will began to doze, Peter fantasized that he and Will were boyfriends.

Here I am returning to the city after a weekend in the country with my boyfriend—my boyfriend who is asleep in the other seat. My tall and handsome boyfriend, with the gray-blue eyes and the amazing calves . . .

The fantasy was as delicious as a comic book yarn. Will's legs were stretched in front of him and his hands were kind of tucked between them.

He's so cute, the way he sleeps. Still so neatly put together! This is precious cargo I'm carrying—my boyfriend. So I have to drive that much more safely. I am responsible for his life, and that's an amazing responsibility to have, all of a sudden!

It was such a different feeling from all the mooning and obsessing Peter had been doing over Will.

What would his family say if we were in an accident and I was responsible for Will's death or something? They don't know who the hell I am. “Who is this guy?” they'd wonder. “What was Will doing with him?”

He was the new boyfriend! They were a
thing
.

Mile after mile, traffic grew heavier. Civilization became denser and traffic signs more frequent—as legible in the bad weather as they were designed to be, those lovely, helpful poems in a typeface Peter knew was called Clearview, floating in reflective fields of Strong Green, also known as RGB #0, 153, 0.

Will woke when Peter took the van onto the shoulder, in a small detour around roadwork. Glare from the banks of work lights outside, as well as from traffic in both directions, now squeezed closer for the detour, lit up the inside of the van.

“Where are we?” said Will, adjusting himself in his seat. Their heads glowed theatrically in the harsh light.

“Yonkers,” said Peter.

“Cool.”

It was around nine.

“I thought we'd swing over to Astoria and drop you, then I can go on to Brooklyn.”

“And return the van tomorrow?”

“Seems easier.”

“OK. I don't even know if they do Sunday returns this late. It's not like a car rental.”

“I can drop it off on the way to work.”

“You're a champion.”

Where would they be in a year? Peter wondered. With some lovely memories of their first Thanksgiving and Christmas together, to cherish for years to come? He was glad now that they hadn't hopped into bed together automatically, months before. That would have been too ordinary a beginning for a relationship so monstrously excellent. In the coming months, there would be plenty of opportunities to get beyond all the scripts and tricks, as they said they wanted to do. And yet Peter might also be able to find some satisfaction with a plain, old-fashioned, Damon and Pythias–level friendship, if the romance didn't want to come true—if, say, Will, in therapy, didn't uncover the ability and fortify the desire to love an older man as easily as a younger one.

Might be able . . .

Will tried again with the radio and found a good jazz station, so they listened to Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald as they navigated through the mess of city arteries, toward Queens.