Chapter 3
T HE WOMAN ’ S NAME is Claudine and she is a friend of a friend of an acquaintance, a jewelry designer, which is something of a deviation for him, as he usually only sleeps with people in the industry, who are more accustomed to, more forgiving of, temporary arrangements.
She is thirty-three, with long dark hair that lightens at its tips, and very small hands, hands like a child’s, on which she wears rings that she has made, dark with gold and glinting with stones; before they have sex, she takes them off last, as if these rings, not her underwear, are what conceal the most private parts of her.
They have been sleeping together—not seeing each other, because he sees no one—for almost two months, which again is a deviation for him, and he knows he will have to end it soon.
He had told her when they had begun that it was only sex, that he was in love with someone else, and that he couldn’t spend the night, not ever, and she had seemed fine with that; she had said she was fine with it, anyway, and that she was in love with someone else herself.
But he has seen no evidence of another man in her apartment, and whenever he texts, she is always available.
Another warning sign: he will have to end it.
Now he kisses her on her forehead, sits up. “I have to go,” he says.
“No,” she says. “Stay. Just a little longer.”
“I can’t,” he says.
“Five minutes,” she says.
“Five,” he agrees, and lies back down. But after five minutes he kisses her again on the side of the face. “I really do have to go,” he tells her, and she makes a noise, one of protest and resignation, and turns over onto her side.
He goes to her bathroom, showers and rinses out his mouth, comes back and kisses her again. “I’ll text you,” he says, disgusted by how he has been reduced to a vocabulary consisting almost entirely of clichés. “Thank you for letting me come over.”
At home, he walks silently through the darkened apartment, and in the bedroom he takes off his clothes, gets into bed with a groan, rolls over and wraps his arms around Jude, who wakes and turns to him.
“Willem,” he says, “you’re home,” and Willem kisses him to cover the guilt and sorrow he always feels when he hears the relief and happiness in Jude’s voice.
“Of course,” he says. He always comes home; he has never not. “I’m sorry it’s so late.”
It is a hot night, humid and still, and yet he presses against Jude as if he is trying to warm himself, threading their legs together. Tomorrow, he tells himself, he will end it with Claudine.
They have never discussed it, but he knows Jude knows he is having sex with other people.
He has even given Willem his permission.
This was after that terrible Thanksgiving, when after years of obfuscation, Jude was revealed to him completely, the shreds of cloud that had always obscured him from view abruptly wiped away.
For many days, he hadn’t known what to do (other than run back into therapy himself; he had called his shrink the day after Jude had made his first appointment with Dr. Loehmann), and whenever he looked at Jude, scraps of his narrative would return to him, and he would study him covertly, wondering how he had gotten from where he had been to where he was, wondering how he had become the person he had when everything in his life had argued that he shouldn’t be.
The awe he had felt for him, then, the despair and horror, was something one felt for idols, not for other humans, at least no other humans he knew.
“I know how you feel, Willem,” Andy had said in one of their secret conversations, “but he doesn’t want you to admire him; he wants you to see him as he is. He wants you to tell him that his life, as inconceivable as it is, is still a life.” He paused. “Do you know what I mean?”
“I do know,” he said.
In the first bleary days after Jude’s story, he could feel Jude being very quiet around him, as if he was trying not to call attention to himself, as if he didn’t want to remind Willem of what he now knew.
One night a week or so later, they were eating a muted dinner at the apartment, and Jude had said, softly, “You can’t even look at me anymore.
” He had looked up then and had seen his pale, frightened face, and had dragged his chair close to Jude’s and sat there, looking at him.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m afraid I’m going to say something stupid.”
“Willem,” Jude said, and was quiet. “I think I turned out pretty normal, all things considered, don’t you?” and Willem had heard the strain, and the hope, in his voice.
“No,” he said, and Jude winced. “I think you turned out extraordinary, all things considered or not,” and finally, Jude smiled.
That night, they had discussed what they were going to do.
“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me,” he began, and when he saw how relieved Jude was, he cursed himself for not making it clearer earlier that he was going to stay.
Then he gathered himself and they talked about physical matters: how far he could go, what Jude didn’t want to do.
“We can do whatever you want, Willem,” Jude said.
“But you don’t like it,” he’d said.
“But I owe it to you,” Jude had said.
“No,” he told him. “It shouldn’t feel like something you owe me; and besides, you don’t owe it to me.
” He stopped. “If it’s not arousing for you, it’s not for me, either,” he added, although, to his shame, he did still want to have sex with Jude.
He wouldn’t, not anymore, not if Jude didn’t want to, but it didn’t mean he would be able to suddenly stop craving it.
“But you’ve sacrificed so much to be with me,” Jude said after a silence.
“Like what?” he asked, curious.
“Normalcy,” Jude said. “Social acceptability. Ease of life. Coffee, even. I can’t add sex to that list.”
They had talked and talked, and he had finally managed to convince him, had managed to get Jude to define what he actually liked. (It hadn’t been much.) “But what are you going to do?” Jude asked him.
“Oh, I’ll be fine,” he said, not really knowing himself.
“You know, Willem,” Jude had said, “you should obviously sleep with whomever you want. I just”—he fumbled—“I know this is selfish, but I just don’t want to hear about it.”
“It’s not selfish,” he said, reaching across the bed for him. “And I wouldn’t do that, not ever.”
That was eight months ago, and in those eight months, things had gotten better: not, Willem thought, his former version of better, in which he pretended everything was fine and ignored all inconvenient evidence or suspicions that suggested otherwise, but actually better.
He could tell Jude really was more relaxed: he was less inhibited physically, he was more affectionate, and he was both of those things because he knew that Willem had released him from what he thought were his obligations.
He was cutting himself far less frequently.
Now he didn’t need Harold or Andy to confirm for him that Jude was better: now he knew it to be true.
The only difficulty was that he did still desire Jude, and at times he had to remind himself not to go any further, that he was getting close to the boundaries of what Jude could tolerate, and he would make himself stop.
In those moments he would be angry, not at Jude or even at himself—he had never felt guilty about wanting to have sex, and he didn’t feel guilty about wanting to have it now—but at life, at how it had conspired to make Jude afraid of something that he had always associated with nothing but pleasure.
He was careful about who he chose to sleep with: he picked people (women, really: they had almost all been women) who he either sensed or knew, from previous experience, were truly only interested in him for sex and were going to be discreet.
Often, they were confused, and he didn’t blame them.
“Aren’t you in a relationship with a man?
” they would ask, and he would tell them that he was, but that they had an open relationship.
“So are you not really gay?” they would ask, and he would say, “No, not fundamentally.” The younger women were more accepting of this: they’d had boyfriends (or had boyfriends) who had slept with other men as well; they had slept with other women.
“Oh,” they’d say, and that would usually be it—if they had other concerns, other questions, they didn’t ask.
These younger women—actresses, makeup assistants, costume assistants—also didn’t want a relationship with him; often, they didn’t want a relationship at all.
Sometimes the women asked him questions about Jude—how they had met, what he was like—and he answered them, and felt wistful, and missed him.
But he was vigilant about not letting this life intrude on his life at home.
Once there had been a blind item in a gossip column—forwarded to him by Kit—that was clearly about him, and after debating whether to say something to Jude or not, he had in the end decided not to; Jude would never see the story, and there was no reason to make what Jude knew was happening in theory something he was forced to confront in reality.
JB, however, had seen the item (he supposed other people he knew had seen it as well, but JB was the only one to actually mention it to him), and had asked him if it was true. “I didn’t know you guys had an open relationship,” he said, more curious than accusatory.
“Oh yeah,” he said, casually. “Right from the start.”