Five Tuesdays in Winter(38)

But he said, “I do owe you an apology.” And I sat, to wait for it.

We moved to a booth for dinner. We didn’t switch to wine. He stayed with his single malts on the rocks, and I moved to flavored martinis. Neither of us had been very committed drinkers in college so the steady rate of his drink orders surprised me, as did my own insistence on keeping up with him. I had the sense that we were hurrying somewhere, having to get in our last meal and our last drink before we went, though for the longest time, idiot that I was, I didn’t know where we were going.

We desulterated through the appetizers, horrible crab clusters covered in some sort of bark and fried to black. They inspired thoughts on food in New England—he lived in Cincinnati now—and between the two of us we recalled nearly every dish at the Boston College dining hall: the Welsh rarebit, the American chop suey, the pink sponge cake.

The waiter brought the entrees: osso buco, grilled salmon. I was full, buzzed, tired. My initial nervousness had collapsed into a heavy fatigue, laced with fear. I couldn’t understand the fear, though I knew it had to do with the change in him. But I was used to changes. One of my brothers had recently lost over two hundred pounds, two close friends had had sex changes, and my mother, after my father’s death, returned to college and became a large animal veterinarian. On her website she was listed as a stud service specialist. All Paul had done was become beefier and disillusioned—who hadn’t?

“After you called that time, and told me, you know, what you told me,” he said, and I didn’t correct him about who had called whom, which was hard for me because I like people to tell stories accurately, “I must have spent a year just sifting through every memory I had of us. Shit, we went camping. We shared that foldout couch at my mom’s apartment, showers, bathrooms. You had girlfriends! That little Carla or Carlie who was so in love with you. And that other one, began with a b. And didn’t you have something going with Anna at my wedding? God, when I told Gail she was like, ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ but I tell you, I never saw it. You are one good performance artist.”

“I wasn’t acting. It took me a long time to put the pieces together.”

“Oh, come on. That’s bullshit. Everyone knows. You know it when you’re six years old. You know if you’re thinking I want to fuck her or I want to fuck him.”

“You thought about fucking when you were six years old?”

“Damn straight. Miss Carlyle. Tight brown skirt.”

“You knew what fucking was when you were six years old?”

“I knew Miss Carlyle and my penis had something going on. I knew that.”

“Well, my penis didn’t have anything going on with anyone until I was twenty-three.”

“That is just not true. You had girlfriends.”

“They were friends I made out with.”

“You never slept with any of them?”

“No. And I never pretended to.”

“I just assumed.”

“I wasn’t like you.”

And now I figure out why I’m scared. I’m scared he’s going to ask me if I wanted to sleep with him back then. And I know I won’t lie. And I know that will truly be the end for us.

“And now you sleep only with men?”

“Yes. One man at a time.”

“You never had a ménage?”

Why do straight men love to ask this? “Not really.”

“Not really?”

“Well, Steve and I once invited this guy up. We really thought we were going to do it with him, but then he took off his pants and he had this really flabby bum. He was a pretty slender guy with this white jelly bum and Steve and I could not stop laughing and he got mad—understandably— and left.” Steve called it the big flabby fanny fiasco. We still could get laughing until our stomachs ached about it.

If Steve were here he could tell the story of that night so well no one would be able to breathe. But Paul didn’t think my version was funny. “Is it better, sex with men?”

I laughed. “It is for me.”

“I mean, sex is kind of athletic. I’m just wondering. I’ve kind of been thinking about this for a while. I mean. Women are always complaining about getting hurt, you know?”

“You mean emotionally?”

“No, physically. I mean sex hurts them.”

“Really?”

“I mean, just when you get really into it they tell you it hurts.”

“Really?” I didn’t think there was much about any kind of sex that I didn’t know about by now, but this news surprised me.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had sex with Gail without her saying ouch like fifty times. I just wonder if with men it’s different.”

“Maybe it is. Some people are rougher than others.”

“Are you rough?”

I realized he was leaning halfway across the table; his knuckles were touching my plate and his eyes, his watery, drunk green eyes, were all over me.

“Yes, kind of.” It was the martinis talking.

“I already know what your penis looks like.”

“And I yours,” I said, trying for lightness and missing. The penis he’d mentioned was suddenly rock hard.

“I want to.”

“Paul,” I said.