Chapter Twenty-Three Answers - Part Two

“Was there anyone else you didn’t just fuck?” I asked after the embrace, my curious nature taking over once again. I almost wished I hadn’t asked the question, because of the somber nature Gerard gave off as he whispered a faint, “yes.”

His name was Raymond and like with all lovers thus far, Gerard met him through his art. He was the curator at a museum which Gerard often went to for inspiration. The frizzy haired man was always sitting behind his desk as Gerard sauntered in every Saturday morning; one of the first people through the door. Gerard would spend his entire day there, sitting in a different area for over an hour, sketching what he saw (the people, never the art) or just looking at the pieces. Some people would walk by him as he sat in a corner, whisper questions to the person they came with and Gerard would eavesdrop and answer them, giving details and descriptions of each artists’ work. The people began to think that he worked there, and throughout the week, they would ask Raymond for ‘the dark haired tour guide who always had a sketch book’ to show them around. Raymond finally had to offer him a job one day, when his last full-time worker had just quit. He had not wanted to hire Gerard before, mainly because that would mean yet another person to pay, and if Gerard wanted to give out his knowledge for free, then he wasn’t about to shell out any money for it. He was also a little jealous of Gerard, though he wouldn’t admit it just yet.

“What did you say?” I asked, speaking about the job proposal.

“No, of course!” Gerard answered, his face alive with mischief.

He further explained to me that he didn’t want to work at the art museum, even if he loved art and was practically doing it already. He didn’t want to turn into Raymond, the old art school drop out, living behind someone else’s dreams, someone else’s paintings, and hating every minute of it. Raymond had wanted to become an artist himself once, when he was younger (he was only about three years older than Gerard), but had to give it up. He couldn’t take being poor and hungry all the time, and he was getting pressure from his friends and family to just get a ‘normal’ job. So he had succumbed early on, dropping out after only his first year and working his way up the food chain in the art gallery system. It had been surprisingly easy, what with the amount of museums opening, his solid work ethic, and his half-finished art degree. Raymond had taken a nine-to-five job that he hated, secretly painting in his spare time, but never even thinking that anything he did would amount to anything. He never showed anyone his paintings, but Gerard had found one of them on one of his Saturday trips.

He had grown weary of the unchanged art displays; the gallery was supposed to change its exhibits at least once a month, but Raymond’s staff had been dropping like flies and not giving a shit about the New Artist Gallery feature, so Gerard went out to find something he hadn’t seen before. He went snooping in the basement and came across this somewhat childish rendition of a fireplace with two kids sitting at it. Despite the roughness of the edges and the unevenness of the painting, he loved it. It represented childhood to him; the sloppy structure with the cliché use of colors, topped off by the children watching the whole display. Gerard interpreted it as if one of the kids watching the fire had drawn it, projecting this innocence he had not seen in a long time, living in New York and all. Gerard thought it was perfect, and when he saw the name signed at the bottom, he thought it was even more perfect. He smiled to himself that the lonely worker sitting behind the counter really was a budding artist, hidden under so many layers of stress that he could not be seen for what he really was.

Gerard had placed the painting back into its spot in the basement, but he did not forget about it. He grinned knowingly at Raymond every single time he entered the gallery, but didn’t say a word about finding the piece until much, much later on. Instead, on the day he refused the job and Raymond had asked why, Gerard informed him about finding the lost relic, and straight up told Raymond that he didn’t want to become like exactly him. He listed off Ray’s faults right in front of him, talking in a solid, even voice and not stopping until he was done. He wasn’t trying to insult the lonely curator; he was only trying to teach him. Gerard was a natural born teacher - even in art school, he had always taught himself the lesson before he went to class, and blew everyone away. That was just how Gerard was programmed. And he was fucking fantastic at it.

“What did Raymond say to you? What did he do?” I prodded, wondering if an older man took the deprecating rant as well as I had first taken it. When Gerard had critiqued my guitar playing, I had been crushed, and I had asked him to do it. Raymond hadn’t asked to be butchered – he had offered Gerard a job - but Gerard had done it anyway.

“He didn’t say too much at first. Just told me politely to leave,” Gerard replied, thinking hard. A smile spread across his face, his eyes lighting up. “The next day, he quit his job. And he appeared on my doorstep.”

That had been the day he and Raymond’s relationship had started. Raymond wasn’t gay, or at least that was what he had told Gerard when he stepped shakily into the man’s apartment. Gerard had kissed him anyway, never being one to back down from a challenge, and knowing that Ray had been lying to himself for most of his life. When Ray practically melted into him, Gerard knew his inkling had been right all along. Eventually, after a few months of careless blowjobs with no feeling, awkward and inept touches on Ray’s part, and dancing around the issue by painting over emotions, Raymond began to open up.

He, just like Gerard, had been beaten by his father when he was young because of his same-sex liking. Only Ray probably had it much worse. He was an only child, and since his parents had no siblings to focus their attention and wrath on, he got the brunt of it. His hair had been long when he was a teenager, but when they found out he had been taking art classes in secret and fooling around with his best friend, they did the worst anyone could have ever done.

They cut off his hair.

It was humiliating. He could take the beatings, the name calling, and the forbiddance of art, but shaving his head in front of the mirror so he had to watch the only part of himself he had control over fall away in front of him had been the final straw. It was then, Gerard said, that Raymond’s soul had been crushed. He gave up on men, found a nice girl to date that he had known since childhood, and started to settle down. He never grew out his hair long again. When Gerard had met him, his hair was almost nonexistent it was cut so short, and so curled to his thin skin scalp. He had been allowed to go to art school after building up trust from his parents again with an appearance of a girlfriend. He didn’t keep her long, especially after she found his stash of lewd, all-male magazines in the back of his closet and trunk of his car. After the girlfriend ditched him, art did too, and he was left behind a desk, living someone else’s dreams, not dating anyone, and being miserable.

Gerard told me that the day Raymond had finally confessed everything to him was the first day they had actually made art with their bodies. They had sex filled with passion, and he noticed that Ray was a lot gentler. The first time the two had sex, Gerard confided in me, Ray had been a horrible monster.

“He didn’t mean to be,” Gerard insisted, voice filling with sympathy for the man that had hurt him. “He had just never had sex before in a completely controlled and supporting atmosphere. He didn’t understand that sex didn’t have to be fast and rushed and something to feel guilty for. Our first time had been relatively soon, and I didn’t realize these things about him yet. He treated sex as some horrible object to be feared, but craved it as much as I did. In turn, when he had sex, he was constantly fighting a battle inside himself. A battle he ended up taking out on me that first day…”

Gerard’s voice trailed off, and it took some time for him to actually come up with sound details about that event, ones I could comprehend, and (unfortunately) picture. Gerard had been the one taking it that first time – something he rarely, rarely did. He preferred giving it first, he explained, because he wanted to set the standard of intimacy before anyone did anything to him. This new policy and rule probably stemmed from what had happened that night. Ray didn’t rape Gerard by any means – oh no, Gerard had consented, and Gerard even admitted that he pushed for sex, thinking it would help Raymond fight some kind of demon, and get him more in touch with his artistic side. It had started off fine, but once Raymond started to enter, there might as well have been only one person in the act, and only Raymond was giving consent. He went too fast, too hard, and too long without stopping that first night, and didn’t seem to be able to hear Gerard’s commands of ‘slow down’ or ‘hold on’. So eventually, Gerard stopped making them. He held onto part of the mattress and hoped it would be over soon.

“ Why did you let Ray stay after that?” I asked, my face twisted in a horrified gaze. I could see and tell from Gerard’s eyes as he went over that night in his mind that Ray had hurt him. Badly. I couldn’t imagine anyone being so rough and forceful in bed, let alone not stopping when someone said they wanted them to. How on earth could Gerard have let this man stay with him, if he acted like this so early on? Wouldn’t it only get worse? Gerard was a strong, confident, and independent person – he didn’t need to be in a relationship to be fulfilled. He could have kicked Ray to the curb and been much better off.

Gerard’s eyes, however, displayed something very different. I couldn’t pinpoint the emotion, but there was something there, something holding Gerard back from speaking the next part in its full context. “Because it wasn’t Raymond’s fault.”

“But how can -” I started to argue, motioning strongly with my hands. Gerard reached forward and clasped them inside his own, trying to explain Ray’s mistake.

“He didn’t know what he was doing. After he was done, and he pulled out, Frank, you should have seen the look on his face. He was so disgusted with himself. He left the room immediately after. I went to the bathroom to fix myself up, and by the time I came back, he was already gone. He came back the next morning, but before I let him into my place, I told him to never do that to me again. If he did, he would be out of my life in a second.”

Gerard’s voice grew harder at the last words, and I could see his resilient side coming forward, fighting against the burdens he had not needed. He dropped my hands from his own carefully, my agitation cooled.

“What did Ray say? What did he do?”

“He started to cry…” Gerard trailed off, the pathetic quality in the action conveyed through his weak voice. He told me that Ray cried for most of the morning, apologizing profusely to Gerard for what he had done. He tried to make everything better – he offered to leave, to take Gerard to the doctor, to buy him new bed sheets – anything. Gerard declined every single offer, and merely hugged Ray instead. He hugged him and rocked him back and forth, trying to calm down the person who had almost raped him the night before. It was then that Ray’s childhood and fears of homosexuality came out through his thick lips and bitter tears. The stories of fear, anger, and repression, trying to lead a ‘normal’ life. When Gerard had confronted him in the museum that one day, he began to realize how abnormal he really was, or at least how fake he had become. He hated his job. He hated his life. And he hated himself for what he had done to Gerard who was just trying to help.

“Raymond had been holding so much guilt inside his body, it was bound to explode eventually. I just happened to be the catalyst behind it all,” Gerard explained calmly. He smiled, and laughed at his own dark humor. “I seem to have that effect on a lot of people.”

Ray didn’t open up entirely on that first day after that horrid night, but it was the start of something far better. His stories started to come out of him bit by bit, but it was his physical intimacy that had the most improvement during those first few weeks of the relationship. That night, Gerard had had sex with Ray, showing him what to do, and how to do it better. As much as some people (including me) would have wanted to inflict the same kind of pain on Ray for the acts he had done the night before, Gerard started with a clean slate. He pretended that event had never happened with his own actions, but kept them inside as a bitter reminder. He couldn’t be mad at Ray for what he had done to him the night before, because he hadn’t known any better. Gerard was going to teach him better, and gradually, the man learned.

The next time they had sex, which had to be a few days after to allow Gerard to heal, he had vastly improved. He listened to Gerard when he said to go slower, and even started to kiss during the action – another foreign concept to Ray at that point. The first time Gerard felt the man’s lips wander across his back was when he knew he had been doing something right.

Ray was always a little rougher around the edges during sex than Gerard, and sometimes slipped into his aggressive nature – especially closer to orgasm. It took all of his stories and fears coming forward to finally be able to trust the other man enough and, ultimately, himself too. That was the first night Gerard could ever remember calling the sex they had had gentle. Most of the time when they had sex, Gerard was always the one leading in the more passive behavior. But when Raymond started to match his nature, Gerard no longer strived to be the better one at it. He focused on matching Ray’s ability; not trying to beat it. He focused on the two of them being equal, and it started to develop into something Gerard had never known before.

Vivian had been – and still was – something special. She was a woman, though, not Gerard’s true calling. Gerard loved Vivian; they were friends and always would be. But with Ray, Gerard was in love. He never said anything along those lines – the word love (unless in lovers) was not even uttered when he was talking about Ray, but I could tell. Opening up changed everything.

Raymond had been living in his apartment prior to quitting his job, but when his savings officially vanished from not being able to get another job since the museum, Gerard offered up his place. They lived there for awhile, Raymond going around and doing nothing, trying to figure out what he wanted to be. Even when winter reared its ugly head and the cold cut through their small living quarters, the heat turning off from a missed payment, Gerard refused to let Ray go and get a normal job. He didn’t want him to end up in the same spot where he was before, only ten times as miserable. Raymond had to realize his purpose in life. If it wasn’t art, then he had to find something that he wanted to do. He didn’t have to do that as a job per se, but it would be better if he at least knew the reason he got up every morning.

They spent almost two years like this, trying to find themselves in each other in a dirty apartment in New York before Gerard’s mother died.

“He was so good to me then,” Gerard recalled, his voice becoming poignant. I reached out and wrapped myself around his body more, not stopping his story, but bracing both of us for the outcome. “He held me so much, and was so gentle to me. It was like the first night in my apartment where Raymond had been crying – only our roles had been completely reversed. It was him rocking me to sleep again after I would get up at three in the morning just to walk around the apartment, crying, pulling out my hair from thinking about her. My mother’s death was so sudden; too sudden. She wasn’t that old, and she certainly never lived as recklessly as my father. He smoke, he drank; she never did any of that. She got emphysema from his secondhand smoke, and that was what had killed her. She didn’t deserve to die, and it reminded me of my grandmother too much. I told myself I was over her death. It had happened while I was in art school, years ago, and I thought I had grieved properly. I hadn’t. My mother dying proved that. It was bad; I was a mess.”

I tried to latch myself onto Gerard more. I could tell from his voice, the slowed movements of his hands, his whole essence around him that this was still hard for him. His grandmother had been the only one to truly nurse his art. She had been the only one to believe in him. In times when he was down on himself, doubting his craft, he thought of her. He got up again because of her. The mortality of the other people around him perpetually reminded him of his first fan. He was never going to forget her, and as much as it hurt him in that very moment, it was good at the same time.

Gerard kissed my forehead suddenly, whispering something into my ears that I couldn’t decipher after. I could have sworn he said ‘thank you’, but I was never too sure. He began to talk again, focusing his attention on Ray.

“When I was upset, so was he. He didn’t sleep and let me go insane, he got up too. He held me. He listened to me yell, scream, cry, and complain. It was the most he had ever done for me. It was the most anyone had ever done for me. Then I had to leave for the funeral the next morning, his smell still clinging to my shirt. I never took that shirt off the entire time I was there. I didn’t care if it wasn’t black and didn’t match the normal funeral attire and my brother was giving me weird looks. My grandmother wasn’t normal, and neither was my mother. They would have been okay with that.”

Gerard continued the heart-wrenching story, while I hung on his every word. I kissed his skin occasionally, just small pecks to let him know I was still there. He had a habit (I was never sure if it was good or bad) of losing himself completely in his memories, sometimes to the point where he was living them all over again and not even there. His words wavered at some points, but he never cried. He was a lot stronger than me and I could see that. I would have probably been bawling, being dissected like he was willingly doing to himself for me.

When doing art, you have to dissect yourself. Daily. Gerard had told me this before, during one of our painting sessions at the beginning, when its meaning had still been too complex for me to fathom. He had seen his insides lots of times before. He knew how ugly and pretty they were, he had already cried over them, and it was okay to be sharing now. He wanted to share now; I could see it in his eyes as he pressed on forward through the words, the waters getting deeper.

Ray was forced to stay back in New York while Gerard attended the funeral. Gerard’s father was not keen on having a gay son, but had stopped his beating episodes. Ever since Gerard had moved, things had gotten better between the family, even with Gerard’s alternate interest. Mikey, his brother, was still around and had the normal life his father craved. Despite some roughness around the edges and in his past, Mikey was the good brother and son. And that was fine with Gerard. What wasn’t fine with Gerard was when his brother suddenly cornered him, told him about getting married, his soon-to-be wife’s pregnancy, and begged him to move back. Gerard had always taken care of Mikey, no matter what, and even though they were both adults now, the protective urge inside of Gerard still reigned. He agreed to help Mikey, albeit begrudgingly, because he loved his brother. He moved back to Jersey, just when he was just establishing something he had always wanted with Raymond and Vivian in New York.

“It hurt so badly when I first got that news,” Gerard explained. He tugged on his hair as he talked and for the first time ever, I saw a nervous habit appear in him. He was almost never nervous when we were together. The only other time I had seen him like this was the morning after we had had sex. That was entirely different from this. He was concerned with me, not himself. His outer shell was always cool and composed, and even if he was scared, he still maintained himself. That morning, he had been concerned with me more than anything else, and after his faith in that was restored, so was he. Seeing him tug on his hair just then, made me feel ten times closer to him because it was about him this time. It was about his story and his pain, and he needed to twirl his hair to get through it. We were breaking past another layer of intimacy and I could feel the shell falling off around us.

“What did Ray say when you told him?” I inquired, preparing myself for the sad answer that never came.

“He didn’t say anything,” Gerard said, placing the hand that had been tugging at his hair by his chin. I could see a small smile spreading across his face. “He packed his bags.”

Eventually, Vivian made her way out to Jersey behind the two lovers, after she had gained very limited success in the art field, too. It was a good passion to pursue, just so hard to become famous with, Gerard explained. It wasn’t that all three of them wanted to be famous, they just needed to eat and have a roof to stay under, and sometimes they didn’t even get that. They needed to make a living, because they already had a life. Gerard was set, living off his grandmother’s and then parents inheritance when his father eventually died a year later (which he split evenly with his brother). Vivian moved up here and got a job at a pet store at first, then finally worked her way into a small teaching business for art students, while Raymond still struggled with almost everything. He painted with Gerard a lot of the time, but never seemed that eager to learn. He let his shy nature win a lot, acting like a lost puppy dog that had been kicked too many times. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, and that included both career and love interests. It seemed like the only aspect he was good at was being with Gerard, but that was never healthy, Gerard confessed.

“You can’t just live for someone else,” he told me, motioning strongly with his hands. I felt my chest tighten and stomach drop, but I remained quiet until he finished. “You can’t spend your life obsessed with another person, and watch their life unfold for the better. You have to have a life of your own, something else to get up for in the morning, because that person may not always be there when you do.”

I breathed deeply with Gerard, and I could tell from the way he spoke, and the way his hands finally relaxed in their motion that his relationship with Ray was going to be coming to an end very soon.

Ever since Gerard’s parents had passed away, Ray had been there for him. He’d wake up and find Ray wrapped around his waist, squeezing him hard because Gerard had been crying in his sleep again and not woken up from it. Gerard began to have these vivid nightmares, where he saw his grandmother’s, his parent’s (and other people, like his brother) death over and over again. Ray would always be there beside him anytime it happened, cradling the younger man in his arms. They continued to have sex (not as much as we did, Gerard assured me) and they continued to be together until something inevitably changed.

“Actually, it was because something didn’t change that caused it all to fall apart,” Gerard said sadly, shaking his head. His morose quality wasn’t towards himself, but directed at Raymond. Gerard began to speak again, the story behind the disparity coming out.

Ray had taken a nine-to-five job again. It was a few towns over, but he had it. It wasn’t even a nine-to-five job like Vivian’s, where she at least got to teach her art form or like the one he possessed before. At least when Ray had worked at the art gallery, he was still surrounded by art, even if it wasn’t his own. This new job was at a bank, sorting and shoveling out numbers again and again. Numbers held no creativity. Gerard had been so furious at him when it happened, and they ended up fighting the worse that they ever had.

“It was great, actually,” Gerard said, cutting the dark atmosphere in half with a light in his eyes.

“Great?” I probed, perturbed and confused.

When he talked about Ray, he sounded so happy, so in love, and that scared me. He sounded like he really cared for Ray and wanted him to still be around. And the fact that he wasn’t, made me ache inside a little. Perhaps if I had shown up that day in his apartment to clean paint brushes and another man had been here, with frizzy hair and a golden tan, then I wouldn’t have fallen for Gerard. I wouldn’t be in the situation I was in right then and it scared me. I couldn’t imagine not being in his arms. I felt my jealousy swell within me again, realizing that Ray had been almost the perfect mate for Gerard, at least from the way he was described. I wanted to know what had happened to make things change, even if that change had been better for me in the long run.

“Yes – fighting is fantastic,” Gerard oozed, the emotion and feeling just dripping from his words. “It’s another form of passion. You can’t have love without hate. They are such similar emotions, along with fear, and it is essential for them all to come together and explode into one thing. Fighting with someone shows that you sometimes disagree; that you aren’t perfect. It makes a relationship interesting. It’s just getting through the fight that’s the hard part. If you can get through it, then you know it’s meant to be.”

I nodded my head, the information sinking in. “And you and Ray? How did that end?”

Gerard pursed his lips slightly and drew his head down. I swallowed hard and probed more. “Badly?”

“Nothing ends badly,” Gerard corrected me, his voice becoming despondent. “They just end.”

Ray had left Gerard that night. He took what little things he had (most of what they owned was Gerard’s) and left. Just left. Gerard confessed they hadn’t even said goodbye. They had been fighting – yelling and screaming at each other when suddenly, Ray had gone silent. He left the room and packed some clothing, and without a word, he was gone. Gerard had been getting into the fight, and was at a loss for words when it was over so abruptly. He stood and watched Ray leave from the bay window of his apartment, but never said a word. Ray didn’t come back until a week later, where he told Gerard that he had been cheating on him for the past month with a woman from the bank he now worked at.

“He wasn’t cheating,” Gerard stated bluntly, bitterness seeping into his illogical statement. “You can’t cheat in relationships like the one we had together.”

“What did you have?”

“Dependency,” he told me, his fingers tapping on his jaw lightly. “You can’t cheat on dependency. You only switch sources.”

When Ray came back that week, he and Gerard had fucked one last time. Ray hadn’t wanted to, and even Gerard had been hesitant to let Ray inside his bedroom to collect some possessions, just because he knew it would happen again. Ray had told Gerard all of the news in the kitchen, both of them standing and looking at each other as opposed to sitting and getting comfortable. There was no reason to be comfortable anymore. They weren’t allowed to be, at least in Raymond’s mind. Gerard still didn’t know the exact reasoning why Ray just suddenly felt the need to leave for something he had once hated. He had always thought the life they created together was so much better than the one Ray had nearly drowned in before, but he figured he had been wrong. He thought he had taught Ray everything he needed to know, and really, maybe he had. That was why Ray had to leave. He just wasn’t heading in the right direction, at least in Gerard’s mind.

When they veered into the bedroom under Ray’s small request, Gerard knew that maybe one lesson had sunk into Ray’s mind. Things were different here. The moment he sat on the bed, Gerard was next to him, and within seconds, their hands were all over each other; they were kissing, then naked, and finally fucking. And it had gone back to just fucking. There was no caring in it. They both wanted to care – Gerard can remember looking at Ray just before he came and seeing the utter despair and hurt locked in there. All his life, Ray had just wanted to be loved, but was afraid of it at the same time. Gerard had only wanted love and intimacy too, but never feared a Goddamn thing. They were perfect for each other, complemented each other so well, but they were too stubborn to admit it. Ray left after, giving Gerard one final kiss, landing too hard on his lips and cutting him with his bottom teeth. There were no goodbyes.

“I kept picking the scab his cut had left on my lip for weeks after,” Gerard confessed, his hands going up to touch the phantom marking.

“Why?”

“I wanted the pain to remember,” he answered solemnly, biting his lip to bring it all back. “I needed to remember Raymond.”

He continued to pick and gnaw on himself, harming himself beyond the point of recognition. One day he saw himself in the mirror and realized the hurt he was inflicting was merely a form of distraction from other pain, and not one to remember what he had possessed with Ray. The next day, he stopped touching his lip, and let Ray go.

Gerard said their relationship was all about dependency, but as I listened, I could never tell who was dependent on whom. I didn’t think Gerard knew that answer either, and it was supposed to stay that way.

“Did you ever see him again?” I asked, breaking the silence we had had for a few moments.

“Yes, a few times. I saw him at his bank once. He had grown a beard. It was honestly the stupidest thing I had ever seen, and I told him. I never liked kissing him until after he shaved, and I said that, too.” Gerard paused, frowning. “He nearly kicked me out of the bank after I said that. His wife was working in the next till. She was pregnant at the time.”

“Wow…” was all I could say.

Gerard’s stories were so spellbinding and engrossing, I felt like I was fucking there. I could see this tall man, with thick thighs and golden-brown hair, curling around his face, working in a bank with his trophy wife standing next to him. It was all so real – and really, it was. I may have been calling what Gerard was telling me a story in my mind, but it was like ripping the pages of an autobiography from his mind and displaying them before my eyes. This was real. This was fascinating.

Gerard told me that Raymond had a few more kids after the first one, but he had to find it out through the grapevine. Ray had cut off all contact from Gerard and Vivian, only talking briefly, or acknowledging eye contact if they happened to be in the same area. Surprisingly, Gerard wasn’t hurt. He had let go of Ray. He didn’t need to see him constantly, talk to him, or meet his wife and kids. He knew that Ray was happy, or at least pretended to be. Raymond was a fag, just like himself; Gerard knew that deep down inside. But Ray was having a family now - something he had always wanted.

“I wasn’t going to get in the way of that,” Gerard admitted. For the first time in awhile, he looked genuinely sad. His free hand found a part of the sheet with loose fibers on them and began to tear them off after fingering them. Gerard had a lot of nervous habits, I noted. My tongue felt thick in my mouth, but I still wanted to speak.

“Maybe you could call up Ray again? See how he’s doing?” I suggested, even though I knew that it was a dumb idea. If he were to call Raymond up and they hooked up again (because it would just happen with them, according to Gerard), where would that leave me? Gerard said you couldn’t cheat on dependency, but what did we have? Was it cheatable?

“I can’t,” Gerard said firmly, flicking away the sheet and clenching his hand.

“Why not?”

“He died.”

I felt my mouth drop open. My voice came out all dry and scratchy as I uttered a strained, “ How?”

Ray was only three years older than Gerard. He couldn’t have been any more than fifty when he died, and he was probably younger than that. That was too early, too young, I found myself thinking, even though I was in the same bed with a forty-seven-year-old who I constantly thought was old. Suddenly, his age seemed so fragile in my mind with the death of his past lover in my ears, and I clung onto him tighter. He hugged me back, sensing, and perhaps feeling, my fear as well.

“It was about two years or so ago,” he started slowly, trying to get the details sorted out in his head. “It was a car crash. The streets were too icy and his car flipped off the road into a ditch. He had been drinking a little too, or so I heard. It was an accident. Just a bad accident. I knew Raymond; no matter how unhappy he was, would never do a thing like that on purpose. He had kids and a wife. I bet he was so mad when he died.”

Gerard laughed a little, adding some dark humor to the situation. “I bet when he got to heaven, or wherever the hell he believed he was going to go, he was pissed right the fuck off. He was probably worrying about inventory he had to do at the bank, or some other meaningless job he needed to get done. He was always like that -- worrying about the little things while the bigger things over-showered him, eventually knocking him off that road.”

Gerard’s laughter died off, and it was quiet again. Too quiet.

“He sounds like an awesome person,” I commented, just to say something.

“He was.”

“How long did you two date for?”

“We didn’t date,” Gerard corrected me again. “But we were together for almost seven years.”

“Oh, wow,” I uttered.

I knew the few weeks I had been with Gerard weren’t the longest amount of time in the world, but they felt that way to me, especially given the intensity of our relationship. I knew the year or two he said he had been with Vivian was a long time. But fuck, seven years? That was a lifetime to me, and really was for some people.

Gerard had gone to Ray’s funeral, but felt out of place the entire time. He and Vivian had gone together, crying in each other’s arms the whole time. Vivian didn’t know Ray as well as Gerard had (no one knew Ray that well, not even his own wife and kids) but Vivian was an emotional person, crying over anything remotely sad. After the funeral, they had gone out for coffee, and started discussing life.

“We asked each other if we were happy,” Gerard stated bluntly, almost as blunt as the two best friends had been in the smoky café that rainy Saturday afternoon.

Gerard always thought it was fitting that Ray’s funeral had been on a Saturday. It was a Saturday that Gerard had met the man, so many years ago in a museum. Gerard was also convinced that wherever Ray was at that moment in his infinite death was at a museum, a giant one in the sky where all his paintings were laid out from end to end. Ray had never found his purpose, or at least admitted it to anyone, but Gerard was pretty sure it was painting. Either that, or children.

Gerard had seen Ray one day in the park, interacting with his daughter, Mina, and his heart was blown away. Ray had a smile plastered on his lips the entire time, even when Mina threw a tantrum and kicked dirt in his face. Ray just brushed himself off, and picked the little girl up, giving her a piggy back ride all the way home. Ray loved his children, and Gerard was content knowing that at least he had that as his purpose in life. He had two little beings to wake up for every morning, and even if you weren’t supposed to live for another person in Gerard’s mind, these two people were enough to be the exception to that rule. Ray’s death had been way too premature, but at least he hadn’t lived it completely in vain. Gerard had gone to Ray’s grave site a few times, mostly on the anniversary of the day Ray had left him. That day, out of all of them, was appropriate; it was when Raymond finally found what he had wanted: kids.

Each time Gerard went, he always saw fake red roses on the site, stick figure cards that his kids had drawn with the words ‘daddy’ written in childlike handwriting. Gerard admitted openly that he had cried when hearing of Ray’s death, and at the funeral, but what helped him stop crying and feeling so remorseful about everything, was visiting the gravesite and seeing the new cards the kids had written to their dead father each time. Gerard even added a card himself, a few weeks after seeing the first one. It was then, he said, that he was finally able to let go of Ray for the second time.

“What did you and Vivian say?” I asked, reminding him of his and Vivian’s conversation on happiness, before we had gone off in a tangent about Ray again.

“We both said no,” Gerard answered honestly, his hand on his chin thoughtfully. “We had always thought we were happy, or at least content with our lives. But his death gave us a chance to look over things, evaluating details we may have missed the first time around.”

“And what did you come up with?”

“That we were happy doing art. With each other.”

Gerard looked down at me after the statement, catching the surprised look in my eye. He nodded to me, confirming what I had been thinking. He and Vivian were happy with each other, being lovers and having sex. They walked out of the café after they reached the same conclusion in their mind, and straight to Gerard’s place where they picked up their old life again. Or at least gave it a second shot.

“We tried,” Gerard explained, his voice no longer just out there and hitting the air, but coming right into my ear. He was reaching the end of his timeline of love, and was almost up to my point. He felt the need to talk to me now, instead of talking around me. “But we couldn’t do it. I love Vivian with all my heart. I love drawing and seeing her naked. But together…that way…it just didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. I didn’t want to have sex with her. We weren’t in art school anymore. We were adults with our own lives, and I think once we realized that, we were okay.”

“Realized what, exactly?” My mind had been reeling since Vivian had come back into the picture, and I thought I missed something.

“That we were in control of our happiness. We could do anything we wanted to make ourselves happy. And that, in turn, made us so.” Gerard smiled, his stained teeth poking out from fleshy lips as he looked down at me. “And that brings me to you.”

He leaned down towards me, and I, unwilling to wait, brought my head up to his, our lips meeting and tongues entering mouths right away. I wrapped my hands around his neck, pulling him towards me, and diving my tongue in deeper. I couldn’t tell exactly from the way he told his stories, but I wanted to believe that I was the best relationship that he had had up to date. Raymond and Vivian were close behind, however, so close, I could feel them nipping at my heels.

“Do you ever regret anything?” I asked, after calming down, letting Gerard have his lips back. We had been silent for awhile, letting it wrap us in a comfortable familiarity and my question seemed to catch him off guard. He looked down at me and cocked an eyebrow.

“Like, with Ray or anyone else?” I continued, adding detail.

“Regret is one of those emotions that we have in existence only so we fight harder to wish it away,” he stated, very vague and open-minded. I still looked up at him, waiting for him to actually answer me. “But no, I don’t regret anything I do. I learn from everything, and I have made mistakes; I admit that. The whole human existence is made up of mistakes. We wouldn’t have anything we have now if not for someone screwing up. That’s why I never want to take any of my mistakes back. Without them, I would not be where I am today.” He paused, squeezing my hand. “And I like this place.”

I blinked a few times, my insides warming from the tips of my toes to my head.

“And I especially do not regret anything about Raymond,” he added, motioning with his hand to emphasize his point.

“Why?”

“Raymond got what he wanted in the end. It doesn’t matter that we were both hurt in the process, he had a family and that’s all that mattered.” His voice dipped down to that somber level that we had managed to avoid for so long then. I felt my stomach skip and curiosity beckon once again, on a different yet similar subject.

“Did you get what you wanted?” I questioned meekly.

He looked down at me and smiled. “I think so.”

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14