March - Like Lions 2 страница

Her fortune cookie cracked, and she peered at the red writing on the small piece of paper and then laughed at what it read: All these moments in life lead toward one overwhelming conclusion. Your favorite numbers are 21, 9, 17, and 4.

The memory came back to me and I suddenly felt more ready than I had before. Everything, always in hindsight, began to make sense. All moments in life did lead to one conclusion, and it just depended on how I chose to interpret them that determined how useful they became. The hours and hours and hours of conversations that Jasmine and I had back in school had gone out into the atmosphere, and now they were assembling themselves again, all around me, creating something new.

All of this recollection happened in less than a second, and I jumped into the conversation with enough time to answer Cassandra's comment.

"Let's refer to it, the baby, as they or them from now own. They makes things seem a lot better, you know? Less like an object, and more like a person."

Jasmine looked at me, surprised with my response. I touched her leg again under the table, and she went on from here: "I agree. They has always sounded much better to me. There is a person growing inside of me, and though legally I know they is not a person yet, I would much rather think of them as such. It makes me feel more like myself. I'm just sort of holding them until they is ready to leave."

Vivian squinted her eyes. "They as a singular pronoun is odd."

"Yes, and possibly inaccurate. You could be having twins!" Cassandra joked, but this time, people ignored her.

"Why?" Gerard cut in. "Shakespeare did it. It makes perfect sense to me."

Jasmine smiled and took a deep breath. She felt safe again. She was able to voice her opinions, keep her own body, and be safe in this environment. "Thanks. It just makes more sense to me. I know that if I do end up keeping them, I need to do things differently. I can't just follow a normal run-of-the-mill pregnancy book, because they will just tell me to do things counter to what I believe in, and I can't do that."

Vivian asked. "So this means you'll stay vegan for this?"

Jasmine nodded, and Vivian asked again: "What about raising the kid? Will they be vegan too?"

Vivian this time brought her attention to me, and, to my surprise, so did Jasmine. I had no idea what to say, especially with two sets of eyes on me. At this point, I was used to letting Jasmine make her own decisions because she was going to do it anyway and it was her body. It took me awhile to shake off the ownership mentality, and it was still especially hard knowing that she was keeping the kid. That kid was mine - they was mine - but they weren't in my body. I couldn't say we were pregnant like every single sitcom did, like every single parenting book did, because I wasn't pregnant. My genetic material was there, but Gerard had already lectured me about the dangers of biological determinism. Each and every time I found myself saying or wanting to say something about my baby, I tried to remember that it wasn't mine yet. It wasn't something that I could own or possess, because then I could just as easily devour it. It was a hard frame of mind to shift to, but, like Jasmine referring to them as a person and not a baby, it helped her. It helped us both to achieve our own autonomy.

But it was exhausting. Already these questions were being fired at us, and we were still working on our own thinking. I was barely just into my affair with vegetarian, let alone vegan, cooking. There was already a huge mentality shift that I was undergoing. Adding how the child, when they actually became a child, was going to eat all seemed too much to consider just then.

Vivian seemed to sense the panic and the exhaustion on both of our faces, and tried to move on.

"Okay, okay, I know you both don't need another lecture. There are lots of things for you guys to consider, and it sounds like you're not taking the easy way with any of this," she smiled and looked at both of us with her coy countenance. "I'm proud of you both, you know. This isn't going to be easy, but you're trying to do it with as much of your personalities as you can. It's great."

"Isn't that what you strove for when you had Cassandra?" Jasmine asked.

"Yes, although I was going in as a single mom right from the start. I knew I would have to make everything up as I went along because, at the time, there were no single parent handbooks around. Let alone single parent artist handbooks, with a side appearance from the gay friend for help." She gestured her arms towards Gerard, highlighting the special gay friend.

"It seems so ridiculous now," Gerard began speaking, his eyes getting that nostalgic twinge to them. "We had no idea what to call one another then, and people kept saying I was the father and she was the mother, no matter how much we told them otherwise. I had no name, then, and Vivian wanted to be double, to be both father and mother. But forms wouldn't allow it. Do you both have that creativity now? Can you pick what you want to be?"

Gerard's question struck us. We were, by standard definition, the mother and father. We were straight - and that was even more terrifying to me. If we stepped outside with our baby in the future, and people saw us walking down the street, they wouldn't see our history. They wouldn't see our pasts and though we had had the discussion now that the baby was a person and they were a they, other people wouldn't see that. They would assume we were the couple from the parenting books, especially with Jasmine's blond hair and blue eyes. It scared me. It made me fear for the first time since I first found out the news; it was the fear of complacency, of normality, of losing who we both were in a sea of white picket fences and straight white USA. I didn't want that. And I knew Jasmine wouldn't either. We couldn't be mother and father, it was just so normal for us, so we needed to keep things as strange and irrevocably us as possible.

"I think I should be the father and you should be the mother, Frank," Jasmine teased and then sighed. "But what should we call one another? What should we call everyone here?"

Vivian groaned. "That kid will think I'm its grandmother. I am not allowed to be a grandmother."

"I will never make you one," Cassandra boasted proudly. "I don't engage in that kind of activity."

I figured Cassandra's mother knew about her proclivities, but now she was as out as ever. It made me proud, almost, seeing her be so strong and open about her identity. Vivian also seemed happy too, at least for not being made a grandmother anytime soon.

Gerard laughed, and also sympathized with that need. He would be definitely mistaken as the baby's grandfather, when that wasn't true at all. There was too much distance behind the label of grandfather and Jasmine and I both wanted him closer than that. He was closer than that. If Gerard and I walked down the street with the baby together, what would people think? They wouldn't mistake us for a gay couple. Even at the art show, even when I was painted half-naked and on a canvas in front of everyone, and we were all over each other, people didn't see that because they didn't want to see that. People saw age difference instead, and therefore, I was his son. I didn't want people to think he was the grandfather of the child because he was one of the reasons they was going to be born. Jasmine and I had not been sure before, but the beauty of Gerard, and the proof that there were good people in this world, that was what truly they to stay. But how could we even begin to convey that? We needed to find names for what our relationships were because it was becoming clear to us that this had ever been done before.

The table was quiet for a bit. We had been eating scones, on and off, the past little while and our appetites had definitely settled down. I offered more to Jasmine and she had batted my hand away telling me that she didn't need me to supervise her eating habits. If she wanted one, she could take one. She didn't need me to treat her any different than before. Yes, she needed to eat more now, but it was presumptuous if either Vivian or I thought we knew better. So I backed off, and when Cassandra got up to make tea, she waited until Jasmine said she'd like one before she got out her favorite kind. Cassandra, though young and bent on not having kids, was synchronised with what this new type of pregnancy and family life required. She plugged in the kettle, and as she waited for it to boil, offered her own advice.

"You know, at first, I walked over here to make tea because you were all driving me up the wall with your absolute need to be one big happy family. I thought we were close to breaking into kumbaya. Not that I don't appreciate you all, but I figured there was a limit to my reason. I also thought this was all ludicrous, but then I began to remember what my history teacher told us last year," she began, steeping the individual tea bags methodically as she spoke. "We were learning about the Cree and Ojibwa nations and how their societies were structured. As far as family went, there was less of a distinction in terms of biology than what we have here. There is less hierarchization, too. Everyone is related. Your grandmother's sisters are still your grandmother. Your best friends are your siblings. Everything and everyone you know is family. Granted, that becomes difficult when you want to marry someone and have to prove that you're not actually blood relatives, but until that point, it's nice. I guess that's sort of like what's going on here."

We all considered this. Jasmine spoke up, first. "I know what you're saying, but it still feels different for us. We're not the same as them, nor should we try to be. To call us a tribe wouldn't be fair to the history of tribes. But I do know what you're saying, Cassandra. And I like it. I just don't think there is a name for what we're doing."

"Does there need to be?" Cassandra questioned. "I used the Cree before as examples for something different. I'm not saying we use their terms or structure. That wouldn't be very creative. " She raised an eyebrow and slowly snuck her gaze towards Gerard, to see if he agreed with her. But his eyes were on Jasmine.

"No, I guess we don't need to decide on everything right now. There will be lots of time for that," Jasmine finally conceded.

I nodded after her. In a way, we had already organized our structure like this naturally. Things had just fallen into place. Mikey was my brother as much as he was Gerard's, and Cassandra was my sister, too. Jasmine and I were together, but so were Gerard and I. She and Gerard, I was noticing, were making a lot of eye contact the entire time during the meal, and I knew that in time they would sort out their relationship with one another, what to call each other, and eventually, what the child would call him. The fact that they would get to call him something, that he would be a part of their life, made that lightning bolt hit me again.

Jasmine continued, "You can all pick your own names. Just tell us what they is to call you when it happens, and we'll figure it out from there."

We all nodded and considered this. What would I want more? Was father really okay for me, or would it remind me too much of the past?

"That birth certificate is going to be filled with names," Cassandra teased as she finished up with steeping. She brought the mugs over to the table and sat back down.

"No legal stuff right now," Jasmine insisted. "No thinking too far ahead."

I nodded vigorously in agreement. It was too scary to keep extrapolating on all of those little tiny details. I wanted to stay in this room forever, with these people and with this food, and try to make our reality understood to myself. There was no language for what we were doing anymore, or if there was, it was a harder way of thinking and we would need time to decipher. We all needed time right then, to think, to grow, and to fully understand the burden and the delight that we carried with us. The passion, I thought, this suffering and this ecstasy. The only thing I had right then was images, colors, and smells. That room was the only thing I knew for sure.

Vivian raised her glass. It was water, Gerard and I had coffee, and everyone else had tea. "To them. Whoever they may end up being, and to us, whoever we may end up becoming."

It felt so corny, but so right. We needed to reinvent the toast to not make it so typical and mainstream as well as reinvent our lives. But, one step at a time. We all clinked our glasses and said hello to the night. Just as I was taking my drink, I realized that in nine months, there would be another person here with us. Another seat in this very room.

We were going to need a bigger table.

After cleaning up, Jasmine went off to talk with Cassandra, and Vivian went to bed early, leaving Gerard and I, together and undistracted for the first time since I got the news. It was a relief having Jasmine here with us. The snow had begun to melt during the day, but it would ice over at night. She had driven here, but it would be too dangerous to drive at night with the risk of black ice. Jasmine was getting tired earlier in the day as well, and didn't want the effort of driving. She and Cassandra began talking over tea as we all did the dishes, and I was surprised when I saw the two of them go off to the teenager's bedroom. She would be sleeping in Cassandra's room tonight. It was odd, but I didn't let it get to me. Once Vivian had clocked off as well, I was left with Gerard and it felt so right. I sat down at the kitchen table and let out a huge sigh of relief. Gerard came up behind me and touched the back of my neck and ran his hands through my hair.

"It's been a long night," he told me. "You're handling it all very well."

I snickered. "You should have seen me before. I was terrified. When Jasmine and I finally decided, we kept sobbing. Our freedom, gone."

"You don't really believe that, do you?" Gerard asked. He pulled the chair next to me closer and sat down.

I peeked out from under my arms and considered his question. "Isn't that what all parents say?"

"When will you learn that your parents are not always right," he teased. "You can do things differently. You don't have to give up freedom, and I think you know that, or neither one of you would have never agreed to this."

I wanted to tell Gerard that the reason we agreed to it was because of him, and his life, and how he could infuse art into anything and make people feel safe. I supposed that was what he meant, that I already knew that I wouldn't be giving up freedom for this, because we would still strive to keep art everywhere and in our lives. I remained quiet, though, still unsure about all the dynamics that had been thrown at me. I reached forward instead and wanted to touch him, to pull him closer to me, to take him inside of me. He put his arm on my back and whispered in my ear. "Let's go downstairs. It's been a lot, and I think it's probably bedtime."

I agreed and we walked down the stairs. It felt strange, odd. So much had changed since I had last been here, and though Jasmine was in the house with us, she wasn't with me. I didn't find myself missing her the way I usually did. Maybe because I knew she was here, that we were always together, and irrevocably linked. Gerard began to disrobe and he got into his peculiar matching PJs; I took my pants off and put on a different t-shirt and got in. Gerard took up the side close to the wall, and I was on the outer edge.

"You look so normal in those pajamas," I teased him.

He snickered. "And this coming from someone who just got Jasmine pregnant?"

I laughed too, but not as strongly. It was so normal. I didn't want to think about it. I curled up closer to Gerard and touched the skin visible between the buttons on his PJs. He kissed my forehead and then our mouths met, and the kiss took me over. All I felt was him and I bridged the gap between us with my body. I felt him all over with my hands and kissed his neck; I wanted to consume him. He began to help me take off the PJs that he had just put on and we were naked in bed in no time. The ferocity of our kiss and movements began to slow, and I became obsessed with just touching him, with seeing him. We had not turned off the lamp on the table near us and it cast an uncanny orange-ish light on our bed as we moved together and just explored one another's bodies. I touched his neck and ran my tongue along his Adam's apple right down to the middle of his chest where his ribs were. I touched his hair, his nipples, and his hips, which didn't dip in like a woman's. I touched his stomach and abdomen, which would never hold an infant and his cock, which would only provide one side for the equation.

I began to wonder about reproduction, human reproduction, and how cruel it was. Why was it that only two different sexes could have babies? Why couldn't Gerard and I reproduce if we wanted to? I used to think it was fantastic that we would never have a pregnancy scare, we would never have to worry about having kids or doing anything with them. But I was in the middle of the worry now, and it wasn't so bad. It was scary and terrifying, but so were the things in life that mattered the most. Now that I had had that pregnancy scare and I realized I wanted that fear, how come I couldn't have it with him? How come we couldn't just rub our bodies together in the same way we always had, and create something new between us? Emotion overwhelmed me, and I mourned the loss of all our children in a single blink. No one would have our eyes, no one would have our hands and our legs, our height and weight, and no one would ever have our intelligence or skill. Would anyone ever be able to have anything of Gerard's? He was too brilliant for there not be more of him, somewhere, anywhere. I wanted him and me to mix, to blend together, like primary colors, into something new.

My exploration of his body came to a stop as the weight of our imperfect reality came down. Why make sexualities so divergent, if only one combination was able to produce offspring? I knew that the purpose of sex wasn't solely for reproduction, that it was a pleasurable act, but the option of reproducing was in itself a pleasurable one. It was a source of pride. It was taken away from us before it could even be given.

"Are you okay?" Gerard asked me. I had laid my head down on his chest, just above his belly button, and hadn't really moved.

"I'm fine, I guess," I looked up at him. There was a sadness in his eyes that I thought I saw. I wondered if he had been thinking the same thing, if he had ever wanted to have kids. I asked him again in the bed, and he told me what he had always told me: that he had helped raise Cassandra when he was around, that he had been there for Mikey's kids, at least Isaac and Rachel, in the beginning.

"No, your kids. Have you ever wondered what would happen with your genes?"

He started to talk about biological determinism and the old debate we had had. And I grew exasperated. "But us. Me and you. Did you ever wonder if that were possible, what our kid would look like? What our kid would be like?"

I found myself growing sadder and sadder as if the kid had always existed, but we lost them in a freak accident, instead of this reality not even being an option. Gerard seemed a bit subdued as well, but not nearly as much as I was.

"Of course I wonder, but there is no use in wondering about something like that, something that can never happen the way we want it to. Mourn it, for sure, but then find the ways that you can do what you need to do," Gerard stated. "And I think that you have."

He was right. I had found a way to have my own child, one that did exist because of him, that was true and evident, but I had not done the other side of the equation: mourn the loss of what was not and could never be. Gerard and I couldn't have a baby. That was as much of a death as anything. It was a failure to thrive before ever even trying.

"I know you know about Frida Kahlo," Gerard started, "but did you know about her accident?"

I shook my head and Gerard went on. "It was a bus accident, and utterly terrible. A railing went right through her back and came out of her vagina. She kept her organs, but she was never able to have children. There were too many difficulties when she did conceive and the pregnancies always ended before term. The accident also left her in pain a lot of the time and she spent at least ten years of her life, at least up to her death, in bed. She had many surgeries to try and fix the damage, and also lost limbs in this process from gangrene."

"Oh god," I said, shocked at all this pain and misery that surrounded someone who I had admired so much. A lot of her paintings began to make more sense now given these added details, the other side of the half-truth about art. Her work had always been so full of pain, and now it had a directed origin. Gerard went on.

"My point here is that even though she never died and was alive after the accident, she had to mourn a lot of things. She had lost a life. She could no longer have children, and even if she had been spared the mourning of the ones that she could not bring to term, there would have been the mourning of that life path. She also had to mourn the loss of her leg when it was gone. She was alive, but something that used to be there was not. Something that could have been there was not. That deserves a grieving period. So many parts of our lives deserve grieving periods, but it seems that unless someone actually produces a dead body, nobody takes your pain seriously."

I nodded, and I felt a lot better with the pain that I was experiences. The pain of not reproducing with Gerard was nothing compared to Frida; it felt extremely insignificant, intangible, and a biological fact. Of course Gerard and I could not have babies. Of course we would never be able to see what we could produce together, and new life could spring out from between us. But we had had our paintings, we had had our love together, we had each other, in that bed, right then. He kissed my forehead and we pulled our bodies close together again.

"I mourned not having my own children a long time ago. I never thought I would meet someone I would want to have them with, anyway, and even if I did meet them, biology was not on our side. Biology has never seemed to be on my side."

"But there are other options for children," I told him. I bit my lip, nervous for what he would say and how he would react. I was basing my whole new life around it.

"I know there are other options, and believe me, Frank, I have thought about those long and hard as well. I'm glad you were able to find what you have with Jasmine. A child, contrary to popular belief, does not cut off all freedom. You have to live life in order to produce art from it. A child is a very good example of that," he stated. His voice had lost the personal quality from before; he was speaking in abstract terms again. I placed my hands on his neck and looked at him. I kissed him, and then asked, "What do you want to be called? By this person, the child? By us?"

It seemed like I was asking a lot, as if the whole onslaught of questions were a road paving the way, and my voice was so intense. I didn't know if Gerard wanted to be there with us. He was happy for us, but was it happy from a distance? Would he be the gay friend making occasional appearances like with Vivian, or would he want to be more than that?

"I am still thinking about that, Frank. It all depends on how this will be arranged."

I thought for a bit, and then told him what I had wanted to all night. "You're as much the father, or whatever, as I am. You're as much a reason the person is here as I am. Jasmine... and I... we want the kid to know you. We want you to be around. I don't know what that will actually mean, in terms of names and how close you want to be, but... you and I can have a baby, if you want us to. The baby is as much yours as it is mine and Jasmine's. They... they..."

Gerard grabbed my cheek and kissed me. He said, "shhhhh" and then we just held each other. I was getting a bit worked up and my breathing was quick and shaky. He was nervous too, but his nerves made him appear stoic and calm.

"I wish we could see what we could make together, too, Frank," he began again. "But we've already seen that. We paint wonderfully together, and we work well alongside one another. Our love has been art, and we have made our baby through that and it has its own life. This person, though, that's a part of you, a part of her, and... Yes. Yes," he said it again, gaining conviction, and nodded. "Yes. I want to be there too. If that's what you two want, then yes, yes, of course, of course. It's not even a question."

After such an impending feeling of grief, euphoria overtook us both. His repetitions were something I was not used to; he was usually more straight forward and lucid than that. But his mind had seemed to exploded, his revelations and realization about his own life converging into a preset path. He knew he was never going to have kids, and then, just as suddenly as I was one, he was a father too. We were all going to have a baby, every single one of us. Like Cassandra had said, everything is family. We were everything.

He kissed me and we smiled through it. He laughed as if I had tickled him, and I laughed as well. I couldn't believe it. It made no sense. It was this strange formation of our bodies and our language, things we were creating right from scratch, right from the path of death and mourning, and back onto the future and with life.

We continued to kiss and began to refocus our nervous energy into exploring one another's bodies again. I kissed his neck and his legs spread apart, letting me through, and then wrapping around my waist. We rocked our hips together in a slow rhythm. We had calmed from our explosion and refocused our energy into one another, for one another. I ran my tongue along his neck, to his ears, and breathed slowly into them. I moved one of my hands away from supporting me, and began to touch his cock, balls, and then down to the skin in between. He dug his fingers down my back and played with the notches in my spin, dipping in and out. I teased my finger to his skin and opening, and then we eventually shifted and moved so we could get what we needed. I used my fingers before I went inside, but we were just using lube this time, no condoms. I went into him with no barriers and it was the first time we had done this in years; not since those first few nights. I ignored all the voices in my head that warned about disease. Gerard had said he was clean, Jasmine's blood tests had come up clean, and by default, I figured, so was I. Gerard must have added that together as well, because when he realized I was not putting on a condom, he didn't stop me, but pulled me closer. I rocked tentatively in and out at first, gently easing him into the sensation. He squeezed my shoulder when he was ready and then lifted his leg up to push me in further. I ran my fingers down his body and back and kissed whatever skin I could find as he moaned and adjusted. His breathing quickened and he pushed his head back on the pillow. My hips went slow at first, but we reached a peak and he began to moan, and I let myself go. I pretended that we were conceiving of something far greater than ourselves, that we could create and repopulate the world if we needed to, and for the moment that I lost control as I came, I believed it.

I took over from what his hand had been doing, using mine, and then eventually I pulled out of him slowly and used my mouth until he came. I felt this wave of fear and sadness wash over the relief. I wanted to believe that there was more life in between us than death, that there was new youth instead of old age, and there were all the colors instead of the orangey light of the basement room. I stared at him and kissed him and in spite of all the joy we had managed to sustain, I felt myself crying inside. There would be no baby from this act. Even though I had been in him and he had been in me, and we had not used protection, the mess that I was cleaning up was just that - a mess. A sticky residue that would smell, but die in a matter of hours. Our bodies could do so many wonderful things together, but we could not do that. It could not bond, we could not mate.

And now I had to mourn. I had to mourn because we had really tried that time. I had almost believed it that time. I thought things would be different, that maybe things could change. So I sobbed. It came out suddenly, erupted from me, and echoed through my body. I was sitting up and suddenly curled into the fetal position. Gerard sat up as well and twisted his body into mine. He rubbed my back, and though he said he had mourned the death of his children in the past, he had not mourned the death of our children.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14