April - The Flood 1 страница

"I'll be father, I'll be your mother, I'll be your lover, I'll be yours."
Placebo, I'll Be Yours

Chapter One

Gerard was nervous to move. He had been doing it so much in the past year that I figured he would be used to it by now. We had never really unpacked much at Vivian's, knowing the inevitability of our departure. Our clothing was still haphazardly slotted into the bookshelf, most of my personal effects in a backpack, and our books in boxes. Not all the books, and most of the cardboard was now torn in the corners from weight or our hands tearing through to try and find this one about light or Jackson Pollock in the middle of the night, anyway. We were going to need to pack them all again. Gerard had been doing most of the packing and list-making, while Jasmine and I had taken care of a lot of the legal paperwork and bank statements for the new house. I had been spending most of my evenings at her place and while she pored over forms, which she would then read aloud and ask me questions about as I began to pack her heavier items. We realized that she was going to be pretty much inert when we moved in because of her pregnancy, so she took on the heady task of organizing and understanding the housing market and our new mortgage. I was her nervous soundboard and her packer, while Gerard was doing what little packing there was for us. He was a lot more tedious and arduous than I was; he was actually labelling boxes and keeping them arranged a certain way in the basement, in addition to the lists he had been making.

"Bear with me, Frank," he told me the first morning when I nearly tripped and knocked over his tall tower of cardboard. "I'm an old man and stuck in my ways. This is the easiest thing for me to do." Ever since getting the lecture job, he had begun to take copious amounts of notes. I had been so used to him free-styling the lectures he would give me, but I figured that when the option of going down on someone if you forgot your next point was removed, it was good to keep notes. Vivian had probably also swayed him in this direction, and this type of proficiency was spilling over to this task as well. Each night before he went to bed, he would write lists for the morning. He had begun to keep a notepad by the bed, with the date for the next day already on it and ready to go. It struck me as something so unlike him, but endearing. He really was getting old, though I rebutted that remark each time he made it. I told him he was beautiful, and then remembering his apprehension with Degas, that he was not a fraud in whatever he did.

"Thank you," was all he said every time, but he held me closer, in a way I was not prepared for.

"Thank you. This packing makes everything so much easier." The exhaustion was clearly present in my voice, and we both got back to work. Gerard with his new somewhat cryptic system, and me onto my next shift at work. On top of packing Jasmine's boxes, I also had to pack and unpack boxes for my last two shifts at the drug store.

I had ended up quitting, although Mel was sad to see me go. He did try to offer me a day position, but that just wasn't cutting it anymore. As soon as I realized I could leave anytime I wanted to, the walls began to look drab and dull, the people annoying and insulting, and everything else just depressing. I stopped thinking that I could help people who walked in by being kind and friendly and I didn't like being in the dark so much anymore. Switching to the daytime wouldn't change things, especially since our new house was even farther away than Vivian's was. When I had first applied, this drug store was ten minutes from the old apartment by foot. But now, by car from the new place it was twenty and that was just not good enough. It seemed that my new life was pushing me further away from where I had begun, and I needed to let it go.

It was going to be hard living in a new place, a big one like that, and with a mortgage rather than rent. It was a huge deal, and yet, it didn't feel like we alone owned the house. Jasmine and Gerard and I owned it - all of our names went on that lease and we were all responsible for that money. All of this made living with the two of them not feel too isolating or daunting. We each would have our own floor in that house, and then there would be a bottom floor, too for guests and a kitchen. We were living in a small apartment complex that we own, that was our own, that we could paint and put nails in the wall and do whatever we wanted. Without getting evicted, that was the key attribute, I told myself. We were safe from eviction here: the mortgage that we were paying, though it would be a long time before it would end, it would eventually end. We would be able to own this place in less than ten years if we really wanted to. I didn't want to move again ever in my life and I was becoming so overwhelmed with all the changes that were happening around me. As soon as I got in that house, I was never coming out again. I wanted to pay and see that my money actually went somewhere; I wanted to own something, something that I could really call my own, and have that be it. I hoped that the others felt that way as well. I could tell by Gerard's finicky behavior over the boxes that he wanted all of this to be over too. He was not meant to pack boxes - he was meant to do art. If he endeavoured into anything else, it made him feel like a fake. That was what his emotional response was directed at, that was where it came from. The anxieties about his age still plagued him once in awhile, but not enough to change his habits like I had been seeing. I was pretty sure, by the way he had thanked me, that he wanted to own something with me, too.

We decided to take it easy our last night in the house. We had been able to get most of the paperwork done relatively fast and thing were sped along by Vivian. She was also taking on a huge role in the sale, so much that the realtor had been able to give us a really great starting rate for the payments. The beginning ones would be even less than our combined rents, and it would be split three ways. It sounded so perfect that I could not believe we had not done this sooner. Jasmine needed us to keep in mind that these payments would eventually go up, but that wasn't going to be for a while. In the meantime, it felt as if we were moving in with a bit of a nest-egg on top of the house, which was a relief because small things to do with moving added up quite fast: the initial phone line, the initial electricity deposit, along with a lot of other details. We were forgoing cable television for obvious reasons and even Jasmine said she'd try it out with no internet for awhile. She mostly needed it for work, and well, she could access it at work. I had a feeling we'd end up getting it by the time she gave birth, but I didn't want to think that far ahead. Occasionally, when I'd be at her place, she'd switch over from the legal and financial jargon and start to talk about the baby and the classes she was going to go to after we moved, the books that Lydia had given her, and the importance of having the baby in a pleasant environment. It would strike me over and over again that unless Jasmine wanted a water birth, she would be having that kid in our new house. I couldn't imagine how that would go about and the actual gory details of it I spared myself from thinking about, but I let my mind wander with legacy. That kid would live in the house it was born in. This was something that hadn't happened in generations. Jasmine and I had obviously been born in a hospital, in all of those positions that we were now both learning were unfit. I asked Gerard, and he had told me that he was born in a hospital, but that it was extremely rare, even then. Most people of his generations - my parents, I knew for sure - were born in their own homes. It felt really important, all of a sudden, to past that knowledge onto my child. To know that when they learned to walk, when they grew, when they learned to speak, I could tell them the story of their birth and actually show them where they had come out and entered the world. It was exciting; I had already begun to form the story in my mind. I kept my thoughts to myself, though. I merely packed boxes eagerly and awaited the rest of the night. Jasmine had gotten Vivian to stay at her place and help her out with things the last night before the move. Vivian felt like she had been spending far too much time with us and she needed a break.

"I love you both, but you are bundles of stress. I need to relax and I need some updates on them," Vivian said with a smile. She had been stumbling on the kid's pronouns a lot over the past few weeks, but she was finally mastering it. Anytime she did get it right, she seemed to grin a grin that said, "See? Here! I can be inclusive and liberal-minded, too." I told her to have fun and that Gerard and I could take care of ourselves for an evening. Cassandra had also decided to spend a night away from us, with none other than Noelle. I told her to have fun with a wink and she just shrugged. Apparently they were going to go out to eat and then to a movie before going back to her mom's place. I wasn't sure if Cassandra was despaired as she left because she didn't want to go to the dinner-and-a-movie scenario because of the romantic connotations, or she did and didn't know how to place her emotions. I told myself to stop speculating and enjoy the last night I had in Vivian's giant house, all alone, with Gerard.

Gerard had decided to cook that evening, to try and calm himself down. "This is an old meal; nothing fancy. Actually it is the opposite of fancy. Anything from a can and a bag cannot be placed in any standards," he teased me. He held up two cans of baked beans in tomato sauce and a loaf of bread. "It's an old meal I used to make all the time, so I'm quite familiar with how to make it. Eating this takes me all the way back to when I was in art school and quite, how shall we say, broke a majority of the time, or just plain lazy. I was honing my skills to be a true artist, after all and this would be a fast meal to keep me going. I'd often wake up at three in the afternoon, make this, and be able to paint all night. Perhaps we should have saved this for breakfast tomorrow, but I know that I'll be too nervous to eat."

He picked up the can opener and began to take off the tops of the cans. I poked my head in the fridge, got cheese and butter for the bread, and put some of it in the toaster as he placed the beans into a pot and began cooking.

"What are you nervous about?" I asked him. "You saw the place before I did, and with Jasmine. Did you like it?"

"Of course I liked it. I love it. It's perfect. Even though it's brand new, it feels like I know it in some way. And I'm happy to move out of here, as much as I love that woman. It's just different. Change makes us nervous, it makes us doubt, but that doesn't mean we don't want it."

I nodded, agreeing with him. If I was honest, I felt the same way about everything, too. I was just trying to focus more on the positive elements. Anytime I found myself becoming really nervous or agitated, I would do one of two things: imagine myself in Gerard's new room, which reminded us both of Paris, and envision watching the sunrise day after day after day. Or I would look at the picture of the ultrasound and try to figure out how my body had helped to make that. I had been carrying that photo around in my pocket pretty much since the first day I got it. I had shown Vivian, Cassandra, and even Alexa when I saw her at a grocery store one time, but it occurred to me that I had not shown Gerard yet. I figured since he had been spending time with Jasmine, she must have shown him. I took the picture, now very crumpled, out of my pocket and came up behind Gerard at the stove and touched his back.

"Hey," I said in his ear. "Have I ever shown you this?"

He turned slightly, away from his slightly simmering pot and his gaze fell on the photo. He tried to figure out what it was for a minute or two, and then when he did, his eyes looked up at mine, and then back down. He asked if he could hold it and handed it over to him. We switched places at the burner for the stove and I took to stirring as his eyes gazed at the blurry black and white blob. He was seeing something, perhaps even more, than I had ever seen the first time around.

"I haven't been around one of these in years, not since Cassandra. I thought I would be used to seeing them. Vivian had them plastered up over everything. She carried one in her car and taped it on the glove box. I've seen them so many times. They are very familiar to me, too. But this is... so different now," he said, sitting down at the table. The beans were nearly warmed all the way through, so I left them on a lower heat and began to bring other things to the table. Gerard stayed where he was, looking at the photo. It made my heart leap into my throat, his strong visceral reaction like this. It was different now, different than Vivian's daughter, whom he had thought of as his own for a long time. Now this was more his own than before, and this new change, as far as I could tell, was positive.

"I thought Jasmine would have shown you by now, but I guess you guys have been busy with the house and drawing. I'm glad you like them. I'm sure they will like you," I said touching his hand. He looked up at me and then grabbed my arm. He pulled me closer to him. He held onto the photo with one hand and me with the other, leaning me into his lap. He began to ask me a few technical doctor questions about details of the birth, and I told him anything that Jasmine had told me. The baby was due in September, Jasmine had a midwife, and was going to take a class, but still keeping things very much to herself.

"Good for her," Gerard commented. "This is all hers right now. I'm just grateful she's sharing what she has with us." Gerard placed the photo at the end of the table and let me go and get the rest of our food. As we dished it out and then eventually began to eat, the picture stayed at the end of the table, as if taking up a space in our lives until we could really meet them. It wasn't the fanciest dinner in the entire world for our last night, but it sufficed. There were better things to be thinking about.

After dinner, we went downstairs and tried to relax. There was no more packing that we could have done then. The bed and all other things related to us sleeping would have to wait until morning and then we'd shove them into something in a hurry and get going. For now, all we could do was wait. Gerard groaned as we walked down the stairs, complaining of knee pain, and then groaned even more when he saw the boxes. It had been raining on and off the past few days and he had been trying to blame that for his knees, but now he let out the real reason: "I am getting too old for this shit, Frank. Too old to move. Everything hurts. I have a feeling that tomorrow Jasmine and I will be taking small bags up and down the stairs and then sitting around and watching how hard everyone else is working. I just... Ugh." He stared at the boxes again and I grabbed his face gently and pulled him to look at me. I tried to have a repeat performance of our initial tender moment, but when that was failing, I just kissed him. I thought back to our last move and how all of those stairs for the apartment nearly killed him. They had been hard for me, too, but I wasn't thirty years older and losing weight. Although he ate heartily when he was around me, and seemed to have snacks and packs of crackers littering the art room, Gerard was still as skinny as he was when we got back from Paris. I didn't think he was trying to work at being the hunger artist; I was pretty sure he had left that behind. He seemed despaired when his pants didn't fit him, because he didn't want to go out and buy more. He had made several notches on his new belt, but thankfully, was not reaching for a cord again. I thought of how frail he had suddenly turned, and I told him not to worry.

"Your character is strong, and you can keep us all amused as we move things in. I'm sure Jasmine will feel awful about not helping as well. It's probably good you're with her," I informed him.

He nodded, but he still didn't seem satisfied. I kissed him again and then told him to come with me to the bed. To relax and enjoy the last night we had together. He followed me, but was reluctant. I began to take off my clothing and he cut in, "I probably... can't tonight," he said, hoping I got his inflection. I nodded. I had originally been hoping we'd have sex - it seemed like the right thing to do to leave the place - but we didn't have to. He knew that as well as I knew it.

"I don't care," I told him. I was sitting on the bed shirtless and had just started to undo my pants. I extended my arms and tried to usher him over to me. "I just want you here."
He came then, and let me unbutton his shirt. He helped me with his pants (where I noticed another belt notch) and they came down to the floor. We kicked our clothing together into the same pile, planning on wearing it tomorrow to save from digging through boxes since we didn't also want to pack PJs. We were just going to sleep naked tonight. So we began to get ready for bed with no intention of sleeping right yet. Gerard seemed a bit nervous with me undressing him, though it had been awhile since he was nervous because of his inability to get and maintain an erection. I wondered if it was because his ribcage was now more prominent, or because his skin was getting looser, but either way I tried to ease his discomfort. I touched him everywhere and tried to maintain eye contact. I wanted to tell him he was beautiful, but I expected him to say that beauty is subjective or something similar to that, so I held off. I tried to show him with my hands instead.

I was still sitting on the bed with my pants halfway down when Gerard became fully naked. I touched him, but it was clear that there was going to be no action there tonight. I wanted to convey that I was touching him just to touch him. He let me awhile, before getting down on his knees and helping me take off my pants. I was getting hard and my cock sat like an awkward weight between us both. Gerard began to grasp it and then put his mouth over me, but I didn't let him go on long. It felt good, but it was also a bit awkward. I didn't want him to think that just because he couldn't get off that he had to make it "fair" to me or anything like that. I eventually told him to stop, that I wanted him to kiss my mouth instead.

We lay down on the bed and lazily made out for a while. I shifted suddenly and placed myself in between his legs, but instead of doing what he expected, I began to rub his knees. "Does this help at all? Does this make them feel better?"

Although surprised at first by what I was doing, he eventually conceded that yes, it felt good. "Any touch of the skin is good now. I'm anxious and anytime you touch me, I feel it going away."

I nodded and continued on his knees for a bit and then told him to turn over. I sat down over his back gently and then began to massage him at the shoulders. It was weird, feeling his bones under his skin from a different position, but he made grunting and low guttural noises that were signs of approval. I went from his shoulders down to his waist, lingered a bit on his butt and upper thighs, and then began to make the journey back up towards his shoulder blades. These bones stuck through his skin so much and his arms were so delicately pinned at his sides that, coupled with his white skin, they almost reminded me of a dove.

"I still remember the old apartment," he told me suddenly. He had been quiet except for small approvals the entire time. But now that I was nearing the end of his body, he wanted to speak. "I still remember exactly where everything went and where it should go. I know where my paint is, where the darkroom is, and where the plates and spare light bulbs are. I still remember each wall, each glob of paint. Like it was yesterday. Even in Paris, I was remembering that apartment. Sometimes when I woke up, I would wonder why I couldn't find so and so, then realize that it was back in New Jersey. Same thing happens here, too. And same thing will happen in the new place."

He sighed and I rubbed my hands on his back gently to try and soothe him. "I still think about the apartment a lot too. Even though I like this place and I want to move, I think about what we're going to do to the rooms and I realize that I'm recreating the apartment." I got off his back and lay down next to him on my side. He turned to his opposite side, our exposed underbellies facing each other.

"It was a good apartment. As much as I want to recreate it, as easy as that would be, maybe it's not the best thing for us to do. Only one person lived in that apartment, and others visited. We lived there awhile, but that apartment had changed. Now it's not just one or even two. It's three and soon to be four. Wow," he stated running his hands through his hair. "That's a lot of people."

I nodded. It was a lot of people, and that was one of the issues that I had been worried about. We would have our own floors, but would we ever really be alone again? Would I ever be able to sort out and organize my thoughts the way I had been able to do at Gerard's apartment, the way we were doing right then, when it was just the two of us. Gerard and I conversed differently than Jasmine and I conversed. It wasn't any better or worse, it was just different, and I wondered how that dynamic would change, if it would change.

"It's normal to fear change," I told Gerard, reminding him of his own words earlier and trying to calm myself down.

"Of course, I understand that. I've always understood that, and this is how I have rationalized my fear. But this is also why we should paint the walls different colors and try to map out our lives in different ways. Forget the dove," he told me suddenly, catching me off guard. "Well, maybe not forget it, but realize that the dove is there, but it's not anymore. Think of something new, something that's us again."

I thought for a second, and my mind catapulted me into Gerard's art show and the Van Gogh and Gauguin pieces. "Sunflowers?" I suggested.

"Yes, those sunflowers. I remember those very well, too. But that is still just us, my dove," he smirked, then moved on. "We need something that is us and Jasmine too. And the baby, when they are born, and Vivian and Alexa and Mikey and those millions of children that they have that I can't remember the names of." he laughed again, running his hands through his hair. "Oh, Frank. That's a lot of people."

I nodded and laughed with him. I thought and thought, but I didn't come up with anything. It was just this wild group of people, this wild group of animals that we all were. It was a zoo, quite literally, only maybe without the captivity. I was sure Jasmine wouldn't like that aspect.

"Hey," I said, shifting the conversation slightly. "Have you been able to draw Jasmine? Is this study working with clothes better than Mikey's piece?"

Gerard exhaled loudly and then waved his hands in the air in defeat. "We haven't had time. We were going to the night Vivian showed us the house, but then, well she showed us the house and afterwards Jasmine wanted to see how her finances were. So we decided to do it later, but made no time."

"I think living together will help with that," I said, and then began to wonder how their relationship would change now that they would be in closer quarters. I had only been concerned with how my relationship between the two of them would alter. I worried about the conversations that I had with Jasmine and then Gerard, and how they would mesh together now that it would be the three of us. I was used to living my relationship between the two of them; sleeping in separate spaces and travelling small distances to be with either one. They were together in my mind, but usually separate in their spaces and their own bodies. They had been seeing one another more and they had always known about one another; it was still a very new and recent aspect that they had begun to know one another. Their first extended meeting had convinced Jasmine that having a baby could be a good thing, so long as Gerard was involved (even with that deduction, I knew I was simplifying the scenario, because right then, it became clear that their relationship was transforming into something far more complex that I could grasp yet). I wasn't quite sure exactly how it was getting complex. They were working together on an art project, one that so far as I knew she would be keeping her clothing on for. But we were all living together soon; tomorrow. They were aligning themselves with far more interests than I ever thought possible, and they had more in common the more they met with one another. It was a different way than he acted with Vivian, though. I knew that. And Gerard mostly liked men. He was fluid, though, as much as I was fluid. I was used to being the person that stood in the middle of them both. I had had sex with both, and by sheer default they had had sex with one another. They knew what I felt like and what I tasted like and I had tasted them. They had had sex by sheer proximity. Even in the house I was in the middle; Jasmine had taken the bedroom on the second floor, I was the third, and Gerard was the top. I was always mediating, at least, until a few months ago. Now that physical landscape was being closed even more, I wondered how their relationship - and ours as a whole - would continue to grow.

"Are you worried, at all, about living with Jasmine?" I asked Gerard curiously. He had been quiet for some time and I wondered if it was one of his nervous interludes. He did look nervous, but as soon as I mentioned her name, he brightened up.

"Absolutely not. And you?"

"No, not at all."

We went our own ways after that. There was too much energy between us to keep talking without sending one of us into a panic attack. There were no plans for sleep right away for us, lest risking nightmares. Gerard went to his sketch book and brought it over to the bed. He propped it up on his knee and began to draw, his clothing still off. Mine were off as well, but I was reading. The mention of Jasmine reminded me that she had sent me some of the books that Lydia had given her on their last visit. They had been meeting informally at the back of the tea shop until the second trimester Lamaze class starting would provide them with a more solid structure. As Lydia's mother attended to the front of the store, they discussed their plans about the baby and other personal matters over tea and beneath that new map of the world. Lydia knew the type of family arrangement we were planning on, and had given Jasmine these books about parenting to help guide her. I had been so skeptical when Jasmine said this - hadn't she been adamant about avoiding the stereotypes? - but then she handed me the books. They were all on evolutionary biology, text books, or anthropology by Jane Goodall and Charles Darwin. It was all about the animal kingdom, and one in particular, was about the difference in pregnancy and birth between animals, and how all of them decided to raise their young. These books were not from the mainstream, popular perspective that she was avoiding, but from the position of scientists, anthropologists, and from people who were just interested in observation.

"You can't trust what the public produces about pregnancy," Jasmine had told me. "There are too many hidden agendas in the words, and as Lydia pointed out, humans are just as diverse as any other animal species. And animals don't have agendas. All families are different. Look and see what we can find."

I thought this was a bit weird at first, but the explanation behind it made so much sense. How often was I going to see a book that mentioned biological mother and father's role and then the thirty year older artist who made life worthwhile and how he fit into the baby's changing schedule? About disowning the biological aspect of one's own family, for the most part, and trying to do this on your own? Humans were diverse and different. If there was anything that I learned from working at the drug store, that sure as hell was it. Mel used to always say that it was foolish to give everyone who was sick the same medicine, so hence, the drug store with its multitudes of reasoning and responses. Well, by that logic, it must have been easily as foolish to give everyone who was pregnant the same prescriptivist measures on how that child should be raised, especially when we knew so strongly what we wanted to do, but not always sure how to articulate it.

I took the books over to the corner where the orange couch was, and sitting down with a glass of water, tried to keep an open mind as I went through these pages and pages of technical Latin terms for these variety of animals. At first, a lot of the pregnancy stuff made me depressed; far too many cubs didn't make it to adulthood. As far as pandas went, the mother usually abandoned at least one infant in favour of the other, though no one knew how she made that choice. As I turned towards bison and buffalo, I began to pay attention. Not only did they travel in herds and raise their children in that herd, but most bison also engaged in homosexual behavior, having non-reproductive sex regularly. It was mostly the males that did it, and it had been studied as a part of homosocial bonding or initiation into adulthood. This captivated me. I looked through these pages and pages on the buffalo, finally getting what Lydia and Jasmine meant. The forbidden element of homosexuality in this culture was a fiction created to control certain people. It wasn't anymore natural than reproductive sex. The sex that I had had with Gerard, at least in the animal kingdom, was just as valid as the sex I had with Jasmine to produce this child growing inside of her. Finally getting it, I kept reading, and tried to find all the animals that we could all identify with.

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