“I can imagine. It’s also a weird time to be here. In America.”
“You don’t say.” I laugh.
“But we need people like you. We need art like yours. Art as resistance.”
“I was not aware I was resisting anything.”
“For some, simply existing is resistance.”
I do not have the heart to tell him that simply existing has become exhausting. At least not this early into the date. Is this a date?
His arms are crossed before his chest, and there is something both at ease and cocky in his posture. His forearms golden. His hands, capable. His thick fingers. Oh, his fingers.
He is not wearing a wedding band. Had he been wearing one at the Hammer opening? Had I missed that detail?
A waitress comes by then to deposit two glasses of ice water on the table. I am pretty certain I’m going to need something stronger.
“You look great, Ceece.”
Ceece. Jesus fuck, are we there already?
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable at the opening, but you looked incredible. You haven’t aged.”
“I have. And that’s okay.”
He smiles at that, nods. “Well, the only other option is to die, right?”
“The only other option is to die.” I return the smile. And then, “They’re a little obsessed here with the not-aging thing.”
“You’ve noticed?”
“Hard not to. It’s an interesting dichotomy: the laid-back attitude and the rigorous battle to stop time.”
“Yes,” he says. “Los Angeles is a curious place.”
For a moment, he takes me in. A wry smile on his face. And I wonder what it is he is seeing, thinking. His own face has changed. A distinct furrow between his brows. A delicate spray of age spots marring his left cheek. His hair, notably thinner, less grabbable. “Oral sex hair,” I used to call it. Once thick, wavy, soft. Hair that demanded to be pulled on during marathon sessions of cunnilingus. Would that I could shake the memory.
That time in the summer of ’95, when he’d taken me to Black Rock Forest, a picturesque corner of the Hudson Highlands in Cornwall, New York. The area was maintained in part by Columbia University, and as a member of the hiking club, Lorry had somehow finagled permission to spend a night at Stone House, one of the few structures on the near-four-thousand-acre property. A rustic farmhouse from the early nineteenth century, there was no electricity, no running water, no other guests. But we set up camp in our sleeping bag and spent a memorable night playing our version ofLittle House on the Prairie.
Earlier in the day, we’d hiked two hours to a spot called Eagle Cliff, a bald rock atop a precipice at some fourteen hundred feet, looking out over Orange and Putnam counties and points south. The views were breathtaking. The Hudson twisting lazily through rolling hills of green. Manhattan a speck in the distance. We’d set aside our backpacks to rest and in no time I was fully undressed. His head between my legs, his very grabbable hair, his mouth. Warm and wild and knowing. That sucking thing he did. The way I came. Again and again and again. My pleasure heightened by the splendor of the Hudson Valley. The way he stripped off his Knicks T-shirt and khaki shorts. Undaunted by the possibility of encountering another hiker. His body, young, and long, and golden. His soccer-player legs. His firm ass. His beautiful, beautiful dick.
Afterward, when we had collapsed in a pool of sweat and sunscreen, and I’d marveled at how good it was, how goodhewas—every. single. time.—he’d lifted his head from the crook of my neck and said, “Do you hear that?”
“What? Is someone coming?”
“No. The bird. That’s a warbler.” He’d smiled, bright. “A black-throated blue warbler. I think. I could be wrong.…”
I’d stared at him in awe for a second. His face in profile, his thick, dark lashes, his eyes searching the trees.
“Is there anything you can’t do, Lorry Kenter?”
He’d thought about it, shrugged, then rose to fetch his boxers. “I can’t fly a plane,” he’d said.
I’d laughed at that.
That moment, the two of us, exposed, in love, seemingly on top of the world. I had wanted to hold on to it.
