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Still no answer.
“You said I was playing with you,” Ian went on. “You’re the one playing with me. Tell me if it’s all in my head. Maybe I’m crazy. But last night, it didn’t sound like you were saying no…. Was I wrong?”
Paul did not look up.
“I’m not playing with you. I really… have feelings for you,” Ian went on. “You’re just… you’re not like anyone I’ve met before. I had an ugly life before I met you. The guys I was with, they didn’t care what happened to me. They didn’t see me at all. But you’re different. The way we talk for hours. You’re probably the smartest person I know. And you listen to me. And you were just there for me. No one’s ever done anything like that. And I feel like…. But if I’m reading it wrong, you have to tell me. Just tell me and I’ll put it out of my mind. I can do that.”
Paul looked at Ian, knowing he should say something, but he could not answer. He turned his gaze back to the carpet.
“You probably should have run away screaming by now,” Ian said. “I would understand if you did…. I know I’m not…. Maybe I’m just imagining things because I want them to be there. But I don’t think I’m crazy…. Yesterday I decided I had to find out. But I was so nervous. I thought I’d just have one little drink. I thought maybe I could do that. But I can’t. It was stupid. I know I fucked everything up…. I don’t know what I’m saying….”
Ian had taken every risk. He had trusted a stranger at his most vulnerable. He had made the first phone call. He had risked rejection and made the first move. Now he was standing before Paul emotionally naked.
For the first time, Paul truly understood that when Ian looked in the mirror in the morning, he didn’t see a beauty—he saw someone covered in scars. Paul was ashamed. He did not deserve Ian’s admiration. He’d been as blind as all of the others to anything but Ian’s beauty. He’d wanted to hang him on a gallery wall and look at him like a work of art, an object. Paul wanted everything in life to be pretty. He was so focused on outside images: Ian’s beauty, what people would think. What did any of that matter? Ian was brave, and Paul was a coward. He was denying a deep human connection and trying to make his own fear into a virtue.
“Help me, Paul,” Ian pleaded. “Can’t you say anything?”
Paul looked Ian straight in the eye. “You’re not crazy.”
Ian sat down on the futon, the same one that he had slept on the night Paul brought him home from jail. He was smiling. “I knew I wasn’t,” he said to himself. To Paul he said, “So, what are we going to do?”
Paul sat down beside him. He wanted to protect Ian, to erase all the wrong that had been done to him, and to keep it from ever happening again. A strand of hair had fallen across Ian’s face. Paul reached over and tucked it back behind his ear. Then, with his thumb, he traced the line of Ian’s cheekbone, and then the line of his lower lip.
“My angel,” he said.
He leaned in and allowed his lips to nearly brush Ian’s. He hesitated and leaned back enough to allow Ian’s face to come into focus. His eyes were full of expectation, his soft lips slightly parted. Paul leaned in again, and this time their lips touched, tentatively at first. Ian responded, gently teasing Paul’s lips with his own. An invitation and an answer. It was natural—the first time and yet not the first time—because this moment had been practiced so often in fantasy. Yet the fantasies were no preparation. Paul’s imagination hadn’t the talent to get it right. He’d focused on the lips and the tongue and the building sense of arousal. But he’d neglected to include all of the senses and all of the emotions. He’d failed to include the sense of smell, the musky, smoky scent of Ian. He’d failed to imagine the twinge of fear and anxiety and the open space it created inside when he let it go. He’d failed to fully include his sense of hearing, the small short breaths and long sighs so close to his ear. He’d focused too much on his mind and his thoughts, which he now released completely. They got lost in each other, lost in the dance. Paul ran his fingers through Ian’s hair. He felt Ian’s hands exploring his back and shoulders. For a moment, he seemed to disappear into pure sensation and emotion.
He was startled when he heard words; his intellect was hardly prepared. “Should we go to your room?” Ian asked. Without waiting for Paul’s answer, he stood up and put out his hand. “Come on,” he said.
Paul didn’t move.
“Don’t worry,” Ian said. “I promise I’ll remember it in the morning.”
Paul smiled. Then he stood up and took Ian’s hand.
After months of anticipation, Paul would have liked to have made love with a passionate fire or to have melted into Ian so fully that they did not know where one ended and the other began. The sex was clumsy, uncoordinated, and inelegant, but it didn’t matter. They touched each other, they embraced and they laughed, and it was one of the most intimate experiences either had had in a long time.
We
These days we tend to think of snowcapped mountains as a peaceful, spiritual place. The serene spot where the Earth meets Heaven, a fitting home for angels. In earlier times, though, sinister beings populated the high peaks. Trolls, flying dragons, and witches were all said to live in the mountains.
In 1555, a Swiss naturalist named Conrad Gesner sought to prove that there were no monsters. He climbed Mount Pilatus to confront the ghost of Pontius Pilate, which was said to haunt Lake Pilatus. Gesner and a friend tossed stones into the waters of the lake, a deliberate provocation. The earth did not tremble; the skies did not erupt with thunder and lightning; there was no cataclysm of any kind. After that, Westerners began to release their fears about monsters on the mountains.
Paul woke up first. He felt warm and relaxed as he watched Ian sleep. He was on his side, facing Paul, with the sheets down around his waist. All of the anxiety and worry were gone. He had made his choice, and there was no turning back. He reached out and gently touched Ian’s face, tracing a light path along his cheekbone. Ian twitched, as though a fly h
ad landed on him. His eyes opened. When he saw Paul looking back at him, Ian smiled.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi,” Paul whispered back. “Are you hungry? I have eggs, bacon, oatmeal. I might have some yogurt.”
“Do you have Lucky Charms?”
“Lucky Charms?”
“I like the little marshmallows.”
Paul laughed. Somehow he never imagined in his life he’d be in bed with a naked man talking about sugared cereal.
