Cult Classic(49)

Now here was Howard again. Had I thought about this man? I didn’t think I had. Did I miss Howard or compare Boots to him or associate him with a feature of the world? I didn’t think so. In fact, if I’d assumed anything about Howard, it was that I’d never see him again. The only remnant of Howard in my possession was a postcard he’d once given me for his sister’s art show. On the back, he’d written, “please cum?” which he quite sincerely meant as slang for “attend?”

Not the most cunning of linguists, our Howard.

Howard was talking animatedly into his phone. He looked as if he was in a hurry. This gratified me as, during the months we dated, he was always blinkered by insecurity, jockeying to be needed, creating micro-situations in which I might depend on him, such as safekeeping our tickets or not telling me the letter of our row, even as we searched for it. Or withholding the address of a party so that I’d have to rely on him for navigation. I’m on it, Lola, don’t you worry. I wasn’t worried, I was annoyed. Perhaps Howard no longer needed to do this. Perhaps he was dealing with real problems, eliminating the desire to manufacture his own. Departmental drama. Arguing with a wife. Scheduling a surgery. Whatever the source of the animation, I was glad for it.

I hung back and watched, as if from the inside of one of his sister’s masks, trying to put as much distance between us as possible without losing him. I didn’t feel the need to interfere with Howard’s evening. I waited for him to hail a cab and for the cab to disappear over the Manhattan Bridge.

I was en route to report this sighting to the Golconda, defenses down, quota met, when I ran into Cooper, exiting the subway. Cooper came at me like a dart, cutting through space in that Brancusiesque way he had, the photonegative of a sashay. Cooper was deep in the closet when we were together. His father was the first Black reverend at a Baptist Church in Alabama, and his mother managed a Walmart. She wouldn’t speak to him for six months after learning he’d applied for financial aid at a college “up north” (UVA). I very much doubted the topic of premarital sex was on the table in that house, never mind with whom. For a while, I told myself that just because these were the kind of parents who might not rejoice in the sexual orientation of their only child, that didn’t mean there was anything for him to reveal. Maybe whatever elements of himself Cooper was concealing were more aspects than elements. More curiosities than elements. Maybe he hid himself when he went home because he didn’t want to seem too permeated by the northeast, not because he didn’t want to seem too gay.

But Cooper only wanted to have sex with the lights out, from behind, with me lying perfectly still. It felt clinical. Or as if we were role-playing a bank heist during which my sole job was to avoid being detected by lasers. In theory, this should’ve been a flag, but I’d dated Cooper right after Dave and, more important, after I’d spent a lifetime absorbing the idea that women wound up sublimating their sexual needs for men. It was therefore refreshing, relatable even, to be with two men in a row who needed something more narrative than friction to get off, whose sexuality slid like an abacus. This did not last long.

A magnificent knot of contradictions, Cooper had United Colors of Benetton ads framed in his bathroom, a catalog of musical soundtracks in his living room, and a vanity full of specialized products. He also owned a black leather couch, never had any food in the house, and worked in the merchandising department of the NBA. One day, I asked him: Why this sport and not all other sports? And with the straightest of faces, he told me that in other sports, at least the ones with leagues and federations, you couldn’t see the exertion of the players’ bodies. You couldn’t see the way their muscles shifted from the back to the biceps, from the thigh to the knee.

There was really no bouncing back from that one.

Cooper didn’t flinch when he saw me. I was a memory for him, enough for the power of suggestion to get him here, but I was not a life event. Not compared with everything that came after me. I was excited to talk to him, as there was no risk of entanglement. I was not going to cry in front of, slap, or grope Cooper.

But Cooper only grinned, pivoted his phone away from his face, and pecked me on the cheek.

“Cute,” he mouthed, gesturing at my outfit.

He was gone before I uttered a word.

I didn’t think either of these men was significant enough to write home about. But their presence provided the news that they thought about me, however minimally. Their surfaces could be scratched. Perhaps, I thought, closure was not achieved by exhausting oneself with analysis, but via carrot, through the ego’s feeble need for confirmation. There is a membrane of pride that surrounds the heart and I found that when that area got damaged, it was hard to figure out what took the hit. Sometimes it was the heart; often it was only the cellophane.

Seeing these people was a reminder that I had not been through all this by myself. This was a frequently employed tactic among men I knew, to knock you down and then ask what you’re doing on the floor. The adult iteration of Why Are You Hitting Yourself? Except most of them sincerely wanted to know. Causation was Greek to them. But I was starting to sense that some of them had grasped the truth of what had happened all along. Some of their hands had been extending down this whole time or vice versa as we wiped the dirt from our butts and waited for the nerves to stop throbbing.

Think you’ll live? Good. Then back into the game you go.