Lawn Boy(71)

“When did you know you were an artist?” he said. “C’mon, don’t think about it too hard.”

So I told Andrew the story of my mermaid and how vividly her form insinuated itself on the holly, and how that one stupid limb refuse to submit, and how eventually I had no choice but to embrace it, and how the hard-on was there all along, and all I did was liberate it.

“Truth,” he said.

And we both laughed, and when we finally stopped, I noticed his upper lip had snagged on his braces and was bleeding. Without even thinking about it, I leaned forward to dab off the blood with my thumb, and he leaned into me, a little unsurely, until I felt his breath on my face and his clean-shaven chin against mine, and that’s when I pressed my lips into his lips, blood and all.

After a moment, he pulled away.

“Are you sure?”

It was a fair question, and I’m grateful that he asked. And the truth is, no, I wasn’t sure, not exactly. I was conflicted about a great number of things at that moment, but the act of kissing him was pretty low on the list.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

And I pressed myself back into him without reservation.

And yeah, I guess that officially makes me a fag. Or maybe it doesn’t. I’m not big into labels at this point. All I know is that my life seemed to make a little more sense being with Andrew.

I won’t bore you with the particulars: how I staunched his bleeding lip with the pressure of my tongue, or how I cut my own lip on his braces, and how he stopped my bleeding lip, or the rest of that intimate stuff about our breath growing heavy and our hearts beating furiously and our man parts straining against our stout denim trousers. I’m not writing erotica here. I won’t give you any literary pretense, either. You don’t need to know about the aching ferocity of my tumescence or the cataract of guilt frothing weightlessly over the yawning precipice of my personal dawn, like that fucking even means anything. Yes, there was guilt, and there was ferocity. But all you need to know is that kissing Andrew made perfect sense at that moment. And I intended on kissing him as long as he’d let me, no matter how faggy that was.

“Why weren’t we doing this all along?” I said when we finally stopped for air.

“I wasn’t sure you wanted to,” he whispered.

Hours later, still flush from the action, still quickened and hyperalert from taking the leap, I sat in the kitchen of Andrew’s apartment and watched him make breakfast at two in the morning. Sitting there in my T-shirt and underwear, I tried to convince myself that I ought to be more anxious about the repercussions of what had just transpired, that I ought to just stop and reconsider my actions and save myself from . . . well, myself. Where was the ambiguity, the guilt, or the doubt in my decision? Why wasn’t I terrified? Part of the answer is that the stakes simply didn’t seem that high, which says a lot about my pitiful life up until that point. And I guess the rest of the answer is Andrew. Being with him on every level felt natural.

He scrambled free-range eggs wearing boxer shorts and an apron, and we drank Equal Exchange coffee and talked just as easily as ever about melting glaciers and privatized education, but mostly we talked about the future of T&M Landscaping and my renewed passion for topiary, and the prospect of a more abundant life, one that didn’t involve me living in a shed behind my mom’s house.

“Let’s make you a list,” he said.

And so we made me a list. Things to do: Get bonded.

Get licensed.

Move out.

And we made me another list. Places to go: New Zealand

Disneyland

Dentist

And we made more lists: books to read, skills to learn, tools to develop. And it seemed like the more lists we made, the bigger my life felt by extension and the more possibilities that seemed to be out there for old Mike Mu?oz, if he was only willing to think beyond the confines of his experience, if he could only summon the courage and the wherewithal to break the patterns that defined him, raze the walls that imprisoned him. If only he could believe in himself. And I was beginning to.





The Day After




When I awoke at dawn, Andrew was still fast asleep with his head on my shoulder, wheezing through chapped lips. Without moving a muscle, I stared at the ceiling and began to panic, harassed by doubt, hounded by guilt, tormented by my unknown future. My old life seemed irretrievable. What was I supposed to do now? Who would I be disappointing? Who would I be walking away from? Where was I going? Would I be with other men, or was this something specific to Andrew? What were the moral implications of changing my identity, of making my loved ones uncomfortable, of forcing them to accept me?

In the darkness of Andrew’s bedroom, I tortured myself with such considerations, inching away from him so that the bare skin of our shoulders was no longer touching. I was on the verge of extricating myself completely from the mattress when Andrew woke up. And no sooner did he stretch, yawning his alfalfa breath directly into my face, than my anxiety quickly dissipated.

“That was amazing,” he said.

We lingered in bed without talking for a few minutes. Lying there beside him, I felt at home. But I knew that back in Suquamish, things were about to get complicated. I’d never been much good at asking for things, and now I had to ask the people I loved to reimagine me as somebody else.

I didn’t go home that day. Long after Andrew left for work, I stayed in his apartment, lying in bed, flipping through books, and looking out the window. It wasn’t only that I was avoiding the world at large; it was also that I felt so comfortable at Andrew’s place. I could be whatever I wanted in that apartment. Everywhere I looked, something was daring me to be a more expansive and adventurous person. Whether it was Andrew’s lists, or his goading me to pursue every challenge and seize every opportunity, or the picket signs and stray protest fliers exalting me to make the world a better place, the expectation in that apartment was that Mike Mu?oz be a bigger and better person.