That was the happiest I could ever remember being -- because I’d been sure Ross was falling in love with me. But the next week he’d announced his engagement to Anne Cassidy. I read it in the Theater section of the New York Times. Anne was an entertainment columnist for the Daily News.
Ross apologized for that, and said he had planned to tell me himself, but Anne had got a little overexcited about the upcoming nuptials. I told Ross that if he broke it off with me I’d go the papers too. He’d laughed, but he’d kept seeing me -- though not as frequently.
Their formal engagement party, a month later, received quite a bit of coverage in the local papers. I was still reading about it when Ross called and asked if I was free for the evening. I told him I wasn’t free, and that if he didn’t want me to tell his fiancé he was queerer than a postmodern production of Not about Nightingales, he would have to pay me a hundred dollars a week. He had been less amused but he’d given the money and he’d kept sleeping with me, and the wedding plans sailed smoothly along.
A month ago I’d told Ross that if he didn’t get me a part in his new play, God’s Geography, I’d go to the papers. He’d given into that too -- granted, a very minor role -- although he didn’t sleep with me for two weeks after that escalation of hostilities.
He’d finally called me late one night, sounding faintly sloshed. I’d insisted that he come to my place, for once, and he actually had. He’d actually shown up at my battered apartment door with a bottle of Napoleon Brandy, and fucked me long and hard in my blue and white striped Sears sheets while we listened to my next-door neighbors quarrel with each other to the musical accompaniment of their kid wailing in the background.
“I even want you now,” he'd said, when he had rolled off me. It wasn’t a compliment.
So as I stared at him in the shadowy firelight, I said, “I know. You never made any secret about it.”
He said -- not looking at me, “I wasn’t going to dump you. You must know that. I didn’t intend to stop seeing you.”
“Is that supposed to make it better?”
His eyes widened at my anger. “I didn’t mean to…tried not to…take advantage of you. Of your…youth, your generosity.” The words seemed difficult for him. “Did you feel used? Is that why?”
The playwright always wanting the loose ends neatly tied up. Living in fear of the critics, apparently.
I said, “I don’t think you used me. I think you fell in love with me.”
He was silent for a long time. I thought my heart would shatter into pieces like an asteroid waiting for him to say something. In the end all he said was, “And for that --?”
I stood up, hugging myself against the cold, although between the brandy and the fireplace, the room was warm enough. “And I fell in love with you,” I said. I wanted to sound strong and convincing, but I just sounded pained. “The second morning at the Mansfield, the first time you let me fuck you. I made some stupid joke, and you laughed, and you kissed my nose. I’ve never wanted anyone or anything as much as I want you. I would give anything --”
He looked away at the fire and a muscle moved in his jaw.
“And I couldn’t stand there and watch you marry Anne Cassidy. It’s not right. It’s not fair to any of us. Not even to her.”
He said impatiently, “Anne knows exactly what she wants. And so do I.”
“Then why are you settling for companionship and respect when you could have all that and love and passion as well?”
“Because you’re twenty-three years old and queer -- and what the hell does that make me?”
“Older and queer!”
He put his head in his hands.
I stared at him. “Well, that’s that,” I said. “Anyway, you’ll be okay. It’s New York. It’ll be a nine days wonder and then no one will even remember.”
He looked at me with something close to dislike. “You don’t think so?”
“Hell, I don’t know.” I rubbed my face. “I’m sorry. Sorry to hurt you, but not sorry to have stopped it.” I added, “If it is stopped.”
“Oh, it’s stopped.” He sounded sour.
And that really was that. All at once I was out of ideas -- and energy. I said, “I can’t keep saying I’m sorry. I guess…you know where to find me.”
I started for the door and he said harshly, “Adam, if you thought you were in love with me, why didn’t you say so?”
At that, I had to smile. “I did Ross. I said it in every way I knew. If I’d actually said the words, you’d have broken it off. You didn’t want to know.”
“You think I do now?”
I shook my head. “No. You’d still prefer to think it was just sex.”
Ross said slowly, “But you came here anyway. Drove all the way up here on the chance that this is where I would come.”
“Yeah.”
“Knowing how I would feel about you after this.”
I admitted, “I couldn’t stay away.”
Neither of us said anything. The fire popped sending sparks showering.
His voice was very low as he said, “I could have hurt you very badly; you know that.”
“You could have killed me,” I said, “And it wouldn’t have hurt as much as watching you marry someone you don’t love just because it fits your image or whatever the hell it is with you.”
It wouldn’t hurt as much as watching him marry anyone who wasn’t me.
“You’re so sure it’s you I love?”
“I am, yeah.” I said it with a sturdy confidence I was a long way from feeling -- but that’s what acting is all about. “I think that’s why you kept giving into my demands, because you didn’t want to break it off either. I don’t think you’re that afraid of me.”
“I wasn’t, no.” Astonishingly, there was a thread of humor in his voice. “But then I didn’t fully grasp what you were capable of.”
To my surprise he held out a hand. I took it, and he drew me down onto the sofa. For a moment he sat there, absently playing with the fingers of my ring hand. My fingers looked thin and brown and callused next to own manicured ones. When I didn’t have a paying acting gig -- which was usually -- I worked as a bicycle messenger for a courier service. Yeah, safe to say eHarmony probably wouldn’t have set us up as the perfect match.
He said, “Has it occurred to you that if I did love you, you destroyed it with your actions?”
I swallowed painfully. Nodded.
“And you still don’t regret it?”
“Maybe I will.” I met his eyes and tried to smile. “Right now I’m sort of numb.”
“That’s two of us.” He leaned forward, finding my mouth, kissing me. I slid back into the cushions, surrendering to whatever he wanted. He kissed me softly, and then harder. His mouth bruised mine, a punishing grind of lips and teeth, but I opened to it, opened to him, and almost immediately he gentled. His hands moved under my sweater, pushing it up.