Chapter 1 #10
He swallowed; he wanted to cry. But he could understand it; he felt exactly as Caleb did. “I can,” he said.
And yet improbably, they had continued after all.
He is astonished, still, by the speed and thoroughness with which Caleb insinuated himself into his life.
It was like something out of a fairy tale: a woman living on the edge of a dark forest hears a knock and opens the door of her cottage.
And although it is just for a moment, and although she sees no one, in those seconds, dozens of demons and wraiths have slipped past her and into her house, and she will never be able to rid herself of them, ever.
Sometimes this was how it felt. Was this the way it was for other people?
He doesn’t know; he is too afraid to ask.
He finds himself replaying old conversations he has had or overheard with people talking about their relationships, trying to gauge the normalcy of his against theirs, looking for clues about how he should conduct himself.
And then there is the sex, which is worse than he had imagined: he had forgotten just how painful it was, how debasing, how repulsive, how much he disliked it.
He hates the postures, the positions it demands, each of them degrading because they leave him so helpless and weak; he hates the tastes of it and the smells of it.
But mostly, he hates the sounds of it: the meaty smack of flesh hitting flesh, the wounded-animal moans and grunts, the things said to him that were perhaps meant to be arousing but he can only interpret as diminishing.
Part of him, he realizes, had always thought it would be better as an adult, as if somehow the mere fact of age would transform the experience into something glorious and enjoyable.
In college, in his twenties, in his thirties, he would listen to people talk about it with such pleasure, such delight, and he would think: That’s what you’re so excited about?
Really? That’s not how I remember it at all.
And yet he cannot be the one who’s correct, and everyone else—millennia of people—wrong.
So clearly there is something he doesn’t understand about sex.
Clearly he is doing something incorrectly.
That first night they had come upstairs, he had known what Caleb had expected. “We have to go slowly,” he told him. “It’s been a long time.”
Caleb looked at him in the dark; he hadn’t turned on the light. “How long?” he asked.
“Long,” was all he could say.
And for a while, Caleb was patient. But then he wasn’t.
There came a night in which Caleb tried to remove his clothes, and he had pulled out of his grasp.
“I can’t,” he said. “Caleb—I can’t. I don’t want you to see what I look like.
” It had taken everything he had to say this, and he was so scared he was cold.
“Why?” Caleb had asked.
“I have scars,” he said. “On my back and legs, and on my arms. They’re bad; I don’t want you to see them.”
He hadn’t known, really, what Caleb would say. Would he say: I’m sure they’re not so bad? And then would he have to take his clothes off after all? Or would he say: Let’s see, and then he would take his clothes off, and Caleb would get up and leave? He saw Caleb hesitate.
“You won’t like them,” he added. “They’re disgusting.”
And that had seemed to decide something for Caleb.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t need to see all of your body, right?
Just the relevant parts.” And for that night, he had lain there, half dressed and half not, waiting for it to be over and more humiliated than if Caleb had demanded he take his clothes off after all.
But despite these disappointments, things have also not been horrible with Caleb, either.
He likes Caleb’s slow, thoughtful way of speaking, the way he talks about the designers he’s worked with, his understanding of color and his appreciation of art.
He likes that he can discuss his work—about Malpractice and Bastard—and that Caleb will not only understand the challenges his cases present for him but will find them interesting as well.
He likes how closely Caleb listens to his stories, and how his questions show how closely he’s been paying attention.
He likes how Caleb admires Willem’s and Richard’s and Malcolm’s work, and lets him talk about them as much as he wants.
He likes how, when he is leaving, Caleb will put his hands on either side of his face and hold them there for a moment in a sort of silent blessing.
He likes Caleb’s solidity, his physical strength: he likes watching him move, likes how, like Willem, he is so easy in his own body.
He likes how Caleb will sometimes in sleep sling an arm possessively across his chest. He likes waking with Caleb next to him.
He likes how Caleb is slightly strange, how he carries a faint threat of danger: he is different from the people he has sought out his entire adult life, people he has determined will never hurt him, people defined by their kindnesses.
When he is with Caleb, he feels simultaneously more and less human.
The first time Caleb hit him, he was both surprised and not.
This was at the end of July, and he had gone over to Caleb’s at midnight, after leaving the office.
He had used his wheelchair that day—lately, something had been going wrong with his feet; he didn’t know what it was, but he could barely feel them, and had the dislocating sense that he would topple over if he tried to walk—but at Caleb’s, he had left the chair in the car and had instead walked very slowly to the front door, lifting each foot unnaturally high as he went so he wouldn’t trip.
He knew from the moment he entered the apartment that he shouldn’t have come—he could see that Caleb was in a terrible mood and could feel how the very air was hot and stagnant with his anger.
Caleb had finally moved into a building in the Flower District, but he hadn’t unpacked much, and he was edgy and tense, his teeth squeaking against themselves as he tightened his jaw.
But he had brought food, and he moved his way slowly over to the counter to set it down, talking brightly to try to distract Caleb from his gait, trying, desperately, to make things better.
“Why are you walking like that?” Caleb interrupted him.
He hated admitting to Caleb that something else was wrong with him; he couldn’t bring himself to do it once again. “ Am I walking strangely?” he asked.
“Yeah—you look like Frankenstein’s monster.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. Leave , said the voice inside him. Leave now . “I wasn’t aware of it.”
“Well, stop it. It looks ridiculous.”
“All right,” he said, quietly, and spooned some curry into a bowl for Caleb. “Here,” he said, but as he was heading toward Caleb, trying to walk normally, he tripped, his right foot over his left, and dropped the bowl, the green curry splattering against the carpet.
Later, he will remember how Caleb didn’t say anything, just whirled around and struck him with the back of his hand, and he had fallen back, his head bouncing against the carpeted floor.
“Just get out of here, Jude,” he heard Caleb say, not even yelling, even before his vision returned.
“Get out; I can’t look at you right now.
” And so he had, bringing himself to his feet and walking his ridiculous monster’s walk out of the apartment, leaving Caleb to clean up the mess he had made.
The next day his face began to turn colors, the area around his left eye shading into improbably lovely tones: violets and ambers and bottle greens.
By the end of the week, when he went uptown for his appointment with Andy, his cheek was the color of moss, and his eye was swollen nearly shut, the upper lid a puffed, tender, shiny red.
“Jesus Christ, Jude,” said Andy, when he saw him. “What the fuck happened to you?”
“Wheelchair tennis,” he said, and even grinned, a grin he had practiced in the mirror the night before, his cheek twitching with pain.
He had researched everything: where the matches were played, and how frequently, and how many people were in the club.
He had made up a story, recited it to himself and to people at the office until it sounded natural, even comic: a forehand from the opposing player, who had played in college, he not turning quickly enough, the thwack the ball had made when it hit his face.
He told all this to Andy as Andy listened, shaking his head. “Well,” he said. “I’m glad you’re trying something new. But Christ, Jude. Is this such a good idea?”
“You’re the one who’s always telling me to stay off my feet,” he reminded Andy.
“I know, I know,” said Andy. “But you have the pool; isn’t that enough? And at any rate, you should’ve come to me after this happened.”
“It’s just a bruise, Andy,” he said.
“It’s a pretty fucking bad bruise, Jude. I mean, Jesus.”
“Well, anyway,” he said, trying to sound unconcerned, even a little defiant. “I need to talk to you about my feet.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s such a strange sensation; they feel like they’re encased in cement coffins. I can’t feel where they are in space—I can’t control them. I lift one leg up and when I put it back down, I can feel in my calf that I’ve placed the foot, but I can’t feel it in the foot itself.”