Chapter Eighteen Problems
The next thing that happened was that Jack told Eddie he wanted me to dance in his movie, so I was distracted for the next while, training for my scene.
I was sloppy as fuck, and I had to work my ass off to get sharp and in shape.
That meant two hours a night every night on the tap board.
Eddie would sit and watch me practice. Sometimes he’d ask about my technique.
“You don’t move your hands much,” he said. “Like Fred Astaire.” He made circles in the air with his palms.
“That’s not my style,” I told him. “I’m a hoofer.”
“You’re a what now?”
“A rhythm tapper. I’m all about the sounds. The movements are secondary. Astaire used the Broadway style. I’ll show you some clips on YouTube so you can see the difference.”
“Why don’t you wear socks when you tap?”
“They get in the way of my flow. I need a pure connection. I don’t want anything between me and my taps.”
“You mean the way our clothes get between me and you?” he said.
He didn’t say it resentfully, but the way he looked at me, with sad eyes, it would have been easier to take if he had been angry.
“I’m not trying to push you,” he said. “It’s just that sometimes I wish we were more connected. I like your clothes, but I love touching you.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
I left to get a shower. When I got out, he was already in bed. I got under the covers, and he turned his back to me so I could spoon him, like I always did. He wasn’t arguing. He’d already let me win, and that killed me, seeing him like that.
That was why I did it.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Look at me, honey kid.”
He turned over, and I pulled off my T-shirt. I felt cold and exposed. He blinked and looked me over. Neither of us spoke. Then he touched me.
“Okay?” he said.
I nodded, because my throat was too tight to talk. He put his hand flat on my chest between my pecs and he moved it to my shoulder and then down to my boxers. The whole time I was trying not to pull away.
“You’re so fucking sexy,” he said. “You want me to take mine off too?”
“Okay?” I said, but I didn’t.
He yanked his shirt off, quick, like it was nothing, and tossed it over the end of the bed. Then he took my hand and pressed it against his belly.
“Okay?” he said.
It wasn’t okay. Touching him like that felt gross. When I shut my eyes, he felt huge beside me. I pulled back.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“It’s...a lot.” I was about to cry, so I pulled away and sat on the edge of the bed with my back to him. I grabbed my shirt and pulled it back on. It was inside out, but I didn’t care. I was shivering, and I wanted to put on more clothes.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s just too much.”
I felt him move on the bed, and I swore, if he touched me again, I’d elbow him in the face. I was that angry.
But he didn’t touch me. He said, “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
I heard him put his shirt back on, and I felt better.
“I’ve kissed you,” I said. “I’ve given you blow jobs, for fuck’s sake. But this feels wrong. It’s not you. I just can’t. It’s been months. You’ve been waiting for me to get my act together for months.”
“I don’t know how to help you, Craig. I don’t know what to do for you.”
“That’s two of us.” Then I started crying. I’d never done that in front of him before, and I felt pathetic.
“Hey,” he said. “Trish told me there’s a program at your lab for staff to get free therapy.”
“What about it?”
“Maybe a therapist could help figure out what’s wrong.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I could come with you.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“We’ll deal with that if it happens,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Good. Let’s get some sleep.”
I wiped my face with the back of my hand and climbed under the blankets on the far side of the bed.
I was so far over I was almost falling out, but I didn’t want there to be any chance I’d touch him.
I lay still, hardly breathing. As soon as it sounded like he’d fallen asleep, I slipped out of bed, went to the living room, and sat on the couch.
I didn’t want to be in the same room as him.
I felt detached, like I didn’t belong with him, like I was going to crawl out of my skin.
At six a.m., I called the office to make an appointment.
The woman on the other end of the line was so nice.
She said she’d get me in that morning to see someone, but I’d have to wait a couple hours.
I called in sick to work and left a message.
I wanted to leave for my appointment right away, but it was too early.
So I kept sitting there. After a while, I heard him moving around in the bedroom and then the bathroom, and then he came into the living room.
He looked at me. “You didn’t sleep.”
“Couldn’t. I called the therapist’s office. They can see me in an hour.”
“Have you had breakfast?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You have to eat.”
Him saying that to me was weird. He didn’t sound angry or frustrated, only concerned.
I heard him moving around the kitchen. He was cooking, which was a bad sign.
He was a terrible cook, but I guess he wanted to make me a hot breakfast, because he came back with a bowl of scrambled eggs and set it on the coffee table in front of me with a fork.
“Come on,” he said.
I guess it was good he hadn’t made toast, because I couldn’t have swallowed that, and he would have burned it. I got a few forkfuls of egg down, but I felt so sick I had to stop.
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I’ll come.”
I’d never had a supportive partner before. With my girlfriends, if I’d had a problem, it was my problem to fix, and I didn’t dare show any weakness in front of them.
We took an Uber to the therapist’s office and didn’t speak much on the way. When we got there, the doctor saw me right away. He wasn’t much older than me. Eddie had to wait outside.
I spent the first twenty minutes of the session bawling my eyes out because I couldn’t speak.
After I ran out of juice, I stared at the floor.
I thought he’d kick me out for being uncooperative, but he just waited.
Then I told him what it was. It took forever to get the words out, but he didn’t interrupt.
I felt like I was making too big a deal out of it. Other people had it worse.
When I was done, he asked if I thought I might hurt myself. I told him I would never do that. Then he wrote me a prescription for sleeping pills and told me to come back the next day. He handed me the prescription, and I thanked him and left his office.
Eddie was there waiting for me. The therapist made the appointment for me with the receptionist and handed me a reminder card. Then Eddie and I left.
Once we were outside, he said, “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you when we get home.” Because I did not want to start crying in public.
He went with me to the pharmacy, and we sat there waiting, and he was careful not to touch me or say anything that might upset me. All the stuff that had come out in the therapist’s office was settling like flakes in a snow globe, and I was seeing things a lot more clearly.
After I got the pills, he called an Uber to take us home.
We didn’t talk the whole way there. When we got home, I sat on the couch.
I didn’t have the energy to take my coat off, and I didn’t want to tell him what the problem was, because I knew he’d look at me differently if he knew, and maybe he’d leave, and I couldn’t take that because I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone, but there were too many hard, complicated things between us for me to love him the way he deserved.
“Don’t you have work to go to?” I said.
“It can wait. What happened in there, Craig?”
“Get me some water?” I was stalling.
He came back with a glass of water from the kitchen, and I drank it, but it wouldn’t go down properly. He waited for me to talk.
So I did. “I remembered some shit that happened when I was a kid.” I stared at the coffee table because I couldn’t look him in the eyes. “I started to remember last night when you were touching me. That’s what set this off.”
“What kind of shit?”
“You can probably guess what.”
He didn’t speak.
“I was five years old when it started,” I said. “It was my uncle.”
“You don’t have to—”
“He took all my clothes off, and he took all his clothes off, and he touched me, and he made me touch him. He didn’t actually fuck me, but he got off.
And the reason it’s never been an issue with me till now is because I’ve only ever been with women before you, and women look different naked.
You may have noticed. So being naked with a woman didn’t trigger me.
Even with you, I felt protected as long as my clothes were on.
He never touched me like that when I had my clothes on.
But then you wanted me to take them off, just like he did.
He did it for years until I guess I got too old for him. Then he stopped.”
“Fuck.” He sounded like I’d punched him.
I felt him sit on the couch beside me.
“So, as you can see, I’m the guy who has problems getting naked with his boyfriend.”
“God, I’m sorry, Craig.”
“You didn’t do it to me. You’re not the one who should be sorry.”
I was the one who felt sorry. For dumping my issues on him. For letting him think I could be a real boyfriend he could fuck properly.
I didn’t know where we went from here, but I wouldn’t blame him for leaving and never coming back.
I opened the paper bag from the pharmacy and stared at the pill bottle. “I’m supposed to take this with food.”
“I’ll get you something.” He went to the kitchen. I didn’t move. He came out a few minutes later with a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of milk and set them on the coffee table in front of me.
I took a bite, popped one of the pills and had to drink the whole glass of milk to get it down because it stuck in my throat. I sat there with him beside me. Suddenly, I felt a hundred pounds heavier.
“Fuck these pills. He said they’d knock me out.” Sitting up was too much, so I lay on the couch.
“You want to go to bed?” he said.
“I’m not gonna make it to bed. I can’t get up.”
“I can help you, if you want.”
“Okay.”
He was smaller than I was, and he struggled to hold me up.
I tried to help, but I was falling asleep on my feet, and it was mostly him and the wall keeping me upright.
When we got to the bedroom, I fell face-first onto the bed.
He rolled me onto my side. My coat and boots were still on, and I didn’t even try to get them off because bang, lights out.
I woke up feeling weird and groggy. Then I remembered. Little pieces and then chunks. The light was on, and he was lying beside me reading his script. He’d gotten my boots and coat off while I was asleep.
I got up to use the bathroom. The floor felt like it was tilting. When I came back, he’d brought me a bowl of something hot with noodles.
“Figured you’d be hungry,” he said, “so I made something.”
It didn’t look like it came out of a can. Like I said, it was bad news when he cooked.
“How is it?” he said.
I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but... “This pasta sauce is kinda thin.”
“It’s soup.”
“Oh. Thanks.” I made myself eat it. “What day is it?”
“Thursday.”
“Still?”
“You’ve been asleep for eight hours.”
I finished the soup and got out of bed to take the bowl to the kitchen. He came with me.
“I can order a pizza,” he said. “If you’re still hungry.”
“Are you hungry?”
“A little.” He picked up the phone.
I sat on the couch, feeling wiped out. I was in no shape to practice tap. Or do anything.
He finished ordering the pizza and put the phone down. That was something. We both liked the same toppings. He sat beside me.
“Thanks for not leaving,” I said.
“They didn’t need me on set today.”
“I meant for not moving out.”
“You thought I’d leave because of this?”
“Well, yeah. None of my girlfriends would have stayed.”
“Craig, I’m not gonna leave.”
“But I can’t give you what you want.”
“You already have.”
“I haven’t, Eddie. You’ve asked me for things I can’t give you. And I don’t know if I ever can.”
He put his arm around me. “This okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, because I could tell he wasn’t being sexual.
“What I want is for you to stop running yourself down. Can you do that for me?”
“I’ll try.”