Chapter 7 #2
In class, we acted as if nothing had changed.
Tyler came and went as usual, silent and unobtrusive.
This Tyler in class, my student, become a separate person from the other Tyler, the one who showed up at my apartment late at night, wired with shiny eyes, the one whose musky sweetness leaked from my pillows and sheets.
Whose hair I would find in my shower, a light spark against white tile.
Two Tylers for a reality I cleaved in two.
I resigned myself to the strange habits of this second Tyler, who disappeared in the middle of a text exchange only to resume hours later like no time had passed.
While my head spun out with disbelief at the things we were doing, and that we were doing anything at all, Tyler seemed to enjoy the sex while it was happening and be completely untroubled at its completion.
If anything about what we were doing startled him, he gave no sign.
He would launch into a story as he cleaned himself off, sometimes requesting a glass of water or asking if I could check the internet because his phone was acting weird.
I puzzled over his nonreactions and did my best to rein in my spiraling thoughts, frantic with desire and fear.
At his age, I’d had sex just a handful of times; I would agree to disrobe only with every source of light extinguished, and even then I removed only the absolute necessities.
Tyler, meanwhile, displayed an athletic capacity for sex and, it seemed to me, no shame about any of it (including things I had only discovered well into adulthood, in the far reaches of the web).
I felt both compelled and threatened by his comfort in his body; he seemed alien and dangerous, and I was terrified he would discover my own total lack of self-possession.
Nights Tyler stayed over, I found something comforting in his rambling way of talking.
Topics would turn on a dime, with no clear thread connecting one to the other.
One night, telling a story about a cousin who’d gotten arrested breaking into a neighbor’s house on a dare, he interrupted his own monologue to ask—“Lausson. What kind of name is that?” I explained it was German-Jewish, or it used to be.
It had been Loewestein when my grandfather’s family came over, but it was changed at Ellis Island.
“Huh, weird,” he said, and moved on to something else.
I let his stories flow around me, a wash of names from high school and Sawyer and cousins and other family members I couldn’t possibly track.
And stories about Addison—a joke Addison made, a party that ended with Tyler locked in a closet.
I hated to admit the jealousy Addison sparked in me.
I pushed the feeling down as swiftly as it appeared but I could feel it calcifying, a stone lodged in the coil of my guts.
He sometimes asked about my research, saying, “Tell me another scary story about your murderers.” I’d share some finding I’d uncovered.
That Jeffrey Dahmer’s first teenage crush was a neighbor.
From the bedroom window of his childhood home, Dahmer would watch the boy biking around; later, in the same room, he’d kill a hitchhiker he picked up, his first victim.
Or Carl Panzram, who, confessing to twenty-one murders in 1928, proclaimed, “For all these things I am not the least bit sorry. I don’t believe in man, God, nor devil.
I hate the whole damned human race, including myself.
” Tyler would coo, asking for more until I begged off.
“I’m going to give myself nightmares,” I’d say.
Outside work, and my last name, Tyler seemed to have little curiosity about me.
And, in truth, I was fine with that; I worried if he started digging, he would realize there wasn’t much there.
So he surprised me one night when he asked, “Does Stephen know about me?”
We were in bed, his head on my stomach, my hand drawing loops around his bare chest. He raised his eyes to catch mine.
“No. Of course not.” I had never brought Stephen up. It proved an easy omission; I had been avoiding him since the night of the lecture. I wasn’t sure what to do about him, and I wasn’t ready to think about it. “I didn’t realize you knew about him.”
Tyler laughed. “Sawyer students know a lot more than you think.”
As much as Tyler could talk, there was plenty I still didn’t know about him, certainly nothing of his sex life apart from me.
I almost asked about Addison, if anything had gone on between them.
But I didn’t want to know and maybe that was why I never mentioned Stephen.
So I wouldn’t start a conversation I couldn’t get out of.
When time for sleep arrived, Tyler passed out cold in minutes, expanding across the mattress.
I’d listen to his muffled snores and fight to hold on to my far wedge of the bed.
He slept deeply and I would run my hand down the length of him—the fact that I could, a marvel.
And the nights he didn’t stay over, he took off immediately after we finished, mentioning an early practice or a class assignment.
There was never any negotiation and the decision to stay or leave was his alone.
I sat at my kitchen table, trying to catch up on grading for my Comp course—I had fallen monstrously behind, the stack of papers growing week by week—when my phone buzzed with a text.
I went to the counter and flipped it open—I had kept my old phone and given that number to Tyler.
It felt safer, quarantining our communication from the rest of my life.
And I liked it, too—this private thing just for us.
I had deleted all my old texts and contacts and now there was only him.
He was on campus, an evening film screening organized by a friend.
How is it? I asked.
Art films made by Sawyer undergrads. What do you think?
I laughed. You’re a good friend.
Ha I don’t know about that.… Can I come to yours when this is over?
I hesitated; we had seen each other the past two nights and the lack of sleep was undoing me. But his asking was all it took.
What time do you think?
I waited, but no reply. Had he sensed my hesitation?
I sat back down to work, unable to focus. An hour passed. Finally, the phone buzzed. I grabbed it.
Sorry got distracted. 10?
I brushed my teeth and ran some water through my hair.
I looked at myself: the dark slashes of my heavy brows, the tilt of my crooked nose.
What did Tyler see when he looked at me?
I thought perhaps I caught it for a moment—the lines of my face interesting, handsome even—then the light wavered in the silvered surface of the mirror and it was gone.
I wandered my apartment, unsure how to pass the time.
I poured a whiskey to settle my nerves. I thought about Tyler every moment we were apart, a rumble beneath whatever else I was doing.
And when we were together, I felt rattled by disbelief.
I almost couldn’t bear to be beside him; the fact of his presence was too much.
I thought this unease would dull against its own rubbing but it hadn’t yet.
I poured another drink. Ten o’clock came and went.
Then eleven. I turned on the TV, a movie about something or other.
I kept my phone in view on the coffee table.
If Tyler didn’t reach out by twelve, I would go to bed.
When midnight arrived, some degree of relief softened the edges of disappointment: I was released from the turmoil of waiting.
I was submerged in a cavernous sleep when a pounding at the front door woke me.
I checked the bedside clock. After two. When I opened the door, Tyler spilled into my apartment, liquid.
His glossy face shone, hair sweaty and damp.
He mumbled a greeting and laughed, boozy breath soaking the air.
He pulled at his jacket but was tangled in it somehow.
I recognized the jacket, with its racing stripes.
It was Addison’s. It was enormous on Tyler.
He yanked an arm out and wriggled free. The jacket fell in a pile to the floor.
“You know the door to your building doesn’t lock,” he said, laughing.
“I know.” I kept meaning to get on the landlord about it. “It’s really late.”
“Did I wake you up?”
I led him to the couch. He dropped into the cushions with a spongy thud. I sat beside him.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m great. Fantastic.” His pupils sank beneath heavy lids.
“I should get you some water.”
I started to stand but Tyler seized my arm. “You don’t have to be so serious all the time. Serious Professor Lausson.” He laughed and leaned into me, mouth open, licking at my face.
I pulled back. “Seems like you had a big night.”
“It was fine—it’s hot in here.” He struggled out of his shirt and tossed it over the couch, slumping back.
“I don’t know. Sawyer kids are pretty annoying, but I guess I had fun.
” He made no mention of being four hours late and shut his eyes.
I thought he had passed out, but then he sat straight up, grabbing the bottle of whiskey I’d left on the coffee table. “Can I have some of this?”
“Are you sure you don’t want some water?”
“Just a sip. Have a drink with me, Professor Lausson.”
“Come on, Tyler. Don’t call me that.”
He picked up the empty glass and poured.
The contents splashed over the side, pooling on the table.
He pushed the glass toward me and knocked the bottle against it.
“Cheers. Mark.” He jerked the bottle to his mouth and took a deep swig.
He closed his eyes, leaning back into the couch and then suddenly jumped to his feet. He wobbled and careened above me.
“I think I need to go to bed.”
I pried the bottle from him and set it aside, following him as he wove his way into the other room. At the foot of the bed, he flung himself forward, facedown, feet dangling from the mattress edge. I waited but he didn’t move. He moaned softly, his breathing slowed.
I untied his laces and loosened each sneaker, slipping them free.
They looked brand-new: bright fluorescent white, impeccably clean.
I remember when I put this together, when I was a TA for undergrad classes at NYU—the way rich kids dressed like slobs, and poor kids maintained the cleanest, most meticulous appearance.
“Tyler?” No response. He was out. I turned him over and held still, not wanting to wake him.
I timed my breathing to his own. Carefully, slowly, I unbuttoned his jeans.
I bent over him and placed a hand under the small of his back, arcing him so I could slide the jeans over the mounds of his ass and off.
I folded them neatly and laid them on the chair.
I peeled off one sock and then the other, tucking them into his shoes. I placed them against the wall.
I turned back to the bed. For months now, every time we’d been near, I had strangled my compulsion to stare.
Even when I fucked Tyler on his back, his legs laced over my shoulders as I hovered above, I couldn’t look directly at him.
Now, safe from his scrutiny, I took all of him in.
Prone, at a funny angle, he looked even younger.
His mouth hung open, red tongue visible with each inhale.
His calves and thighs were thick on his thin legs, built up from years of soccer.
He had on the same black underwear he always wore, something synthetic that glistened.
My hand moved across the space between us, appearing in the low light of the room as if it were not attached to me.
Like it might be someone else’s hand. This hand floated down toward Tyler and tugged at the elastic of his briefs, the slightest pull.
Just enough to reveal the line of dark hair.
I watched the fingers of this hand move down, drawing small loops along the inside of his thigh, then up, across the front of the briefs and their soft flesh, and down again the other leg.
My dick hardened and I pulled it out, stroking it slowly, up and down as my eyes followed this other hand tracing this body, unaware.
I cleaned myself up in the bathroom and climbed into bed. I pulled the blanket around us, slowly and carefully. But he stirred and rolled against me, face mashed into my arm.
“Mark?”
I froze, his breath steaming my skin. “What is it?”
I listened and waited but that was it.