Footy

SORROWS (23)

When Sean got to the airport, he discovered that because his ticket had been paid for using frequent flyer points, it wasn’t valid except for the flight he was booked on, which was on Thursday, two days away.

“But I have to go home today,” he said. His despair and consternation must have shown in his face, for the woman behind the counter took pity on him.

“I can do you an upgrade,” she said, “for just a hundred dollars.” She was genuinely trying to help. For Sean, though, this was a large amount. Yet he felt he couldn’t stay a minute longer in Sydney. He wanted to get home, even though ‘home’ was a flat above a garage, and the place where he’d been happy with Will. His mind shied away from that memory. He was Sean MacDonald. He was tough. He was a survivor. Somehow none of these mantras comforted him.

He smiled at her, trying not to let his heartbreak show. If he could just maintain the pretence that everything was OK, then it would be OK.

She smiled back uncertainly. His expression was so troubled she was tempted to abandon professional etiquette and ask him what was wrong. It didn’t hurt that she found him attractive. Sean, however, didn’t even see her. His mind was elsewhere, and his mind’s eye was re-observing, reliving everything that had happened, but especially that morning, that disastrous impulse that had made him answer Will’s mobile. Well, he thought bitterly, grief and anger struggling for dominance, so much for that!

On the flight home, his countenance discouraged questions and comments. People met his eye then quickly looked away. No one wants to become involved in the grief of a stranger. One may weep in public with impunity. While anger or boisterous hilarity or abuse will soon draw intervention, grief is respected. And if a man cries (unless it’s on a sports field), then the foundations of life are threatened, which is an even better reason for pretending that nothing untoward is happening.

So Sean stared out of the window at the passing clouds and the brown late autumn landscape far below, unapproached and unapproachable, and refused to admit that if he’d been alone, he’d be bawling. Inside himself he felt a black hole, where once there had been happiness and joy, a hollow too horrible to look into.

Will had driven him to the airport, so he had to take the bus into the city, and catch a tram from Southern Cross Station to Toorak. His drawn face stopped people talking to him, and if he’d been aware of it, he’d have been glad.

He walked with leaden footsteps from the tram stop to the Suttons. Unused to public transport, he had gotten off the tram one stop too far, and had to walk back, the sports bag with his clothes in a welcome burden.

He went into his flat as quietly as he could. He did not want to have to deal with either the shrewd kindness of the General, or the heartless indifference of his wife. Once in his flat, too tired, too sad, too depressed to do anything, he lay down on the bed and stared blindly at the ceiling. He didn’t bother to unpack his bag.

To his surprise, he fell asleep, a drugged slumber that brought him no relief from his grief or his lassitude. Sean MacDonald had never been in love before. Losing Will was worse than the loss of a first love, though. With him, Sean had felt that he was part of the broad congregation of humanity. It hadn’t mattered that his mother’d been a druggie and his father a brutal alcoholic failure. It didn’t matter that he had an unimportant job that everyone looked down on. He’d been alive, and the light of love had cast the shadows away.

After he woke, he once again lay motionless on his bed. His eyes moved from one corner to the next, noting absently that there was a spider web here, and small damp stain there, that the center light threw displeasing shadows in the corners. Yet nothing registered. The flick of his eyes around the room, from one side to the other, had no purpose.

There seemed to be nothing that would ease the pain. A few months ago, before Jasper and Will, he might have watched Katy Submits, and smoked a few joints. He might have drunk the bottle of vodka that he kept in the cupboard underneath the hotplate and the kettle. But he knew for a certainty that none of these things would make it hurt any less. And he was not going to turn into either of his parents. Whatever happened, he would survive. Inside him, an insistent quiet voice spoke. No, it said. You’ve failed. You’re just like your hopeless loser parents. And you’re a homo. And where the fuck did that get you? Loser. Failure. Spaz.

*****

Will’s reflections were no better. Was it a help or a burden that he simply had to keep going? He had two more days of client meetings. He had to smile when his heart was breaking; he had to pretend interest in his clients’ lives, when all that mattered was the horror of his own; he had to be up and optimistic and entertain. And he was, and he did. He had never despised himself more.

As he got into his BMW at Melbourne airport, he wondered whether he would give it all up, just to have Sean back. If he left Emma, she would take half his assets, maybe all, for he was the high earner in their marriage. That was the least of it, though. He loved Emma. He had always loved her, almost from that first moment when he’d seen her across the room at a party he’d gone to on the spur of the moment. She was one of the centers of his life. He drove home, barely aware of the other cars on the Tullamarine freeway, of the bustling vigorous life of a great city, his mind far away. A blaring hooter brought him back to reality. He’d let his vehicle drift sideways, nearly colliding with a lorry in the adjacent lane. He jerked the car back into its proper space.

He was almost home. For the first time ever, he hoped Emma wasn’t there. Like him, she’d been away since Monday, but she had gotten back that afternoon from New Zealand. She might still be at the office, though. She would have still had a few hours to sort stuff out after the flight landed.

She was in the kitchen, making tea, when he came in through the front door. He went through to her and hugged her close. He didn’t speak, just held her against himself, breathing in her familiar scent, glad of the comfort of her arms round him.

“Bad week?” she asked.

He nodded. “The pits.”

“How’s your cold?”

For a moment, Will forgot what she was referring to, before he recalled what he told her when he’d phoned from the motel after Sean had left.

“Much better, thanks. Perhaps it was just hay fever.” The dissimulation added to his guilt and despair.

“At this time of the year?”

“You know Sydney. Always so warm and damp.”

“Would you like to go out to dinner or stay home?”

“Out.” He smiled at her. A tête-à-tête in a restaurant would be infinitely preferable to one at home. There would be distractions – the waiter taking orders, discussions about what to order, other diners to inspect and talk about. “Just let me get changed.”

He took his bags upstairs and unpacked them. As he was taking out the dirty clothes from the pouch inside the lid of the suitcase, he found Sean’s boxer. It must have been bundled up with all the clothes they’d thrown on the floor when they’d made love. When he’d packed, he’d just grabbed everything and shoved it in his bag. It was blue with a pattern of little birds, and he remembered them laughing about it. He brought it up to his nose, and smelled Sean. All at once he was weeping. This would never do. Angrily he threw the clothes in a pile on the floor. He took off his own clothes to shower. When he came out of the shower cubicle, he retrieved Sean’s undies from the pile of soiled clothing before he dumped the rest in the dirty linen basket. He put the shorts at the back of his boxer drawer. It was the only thing of Sean’s he had left.

Dinner was bearable. He felt Emma’s eyes on him often. He knew she loved him, and that only made what he did worse, more wrong, more hurtful. She knew something was wrong, and trusted him to tell her when he was ready. He put on his Mr Jolly face, told some jokes he’d heard on the trip, and listened to her complain about the new office manager. He even laughed a few times. He tried to bury his grief and loss inside a hard-shelled core of indifference.

In bed, he could tell that Emma wanted to make love, but he wasn’t able to. He could only think of the hard knot of sorrow inside himself, and then, with a shock of terror, that he’d had unprotected sex with Sean. Surely, Sean was safe? He would have to go for the test soon. Until then, he couldn’t make love. His shame burned. Long after Emma’s breathing had become soft and even, he lay staring at the wall, watching the numbers on the bedside clock measure off the dark infinity till morning.

*****

Sean was still on leave that Saturday. His first engagement with the Suttons was for Sunday afternoon. He hadn’t left the flat for three days, except to buy junk food from the 7-11. For the first time since he’d got back from Sydney, he felt the need for a more substantial meal. It was cold, but the sun was shining and the air still. He pulled on a jersey and his leather jacket, and headed for Brunswick Street. He ordered a caffè latte with his meal, scowling to himself as he thought of the first time he’d drunk one. When he’d eaten, he went into the second-hand bookshop across the road from the café. After an hour wandering between the high, tightly-packed shelves, without finding anything he wanted to buy, he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to spend the whole day without more substantial distractions.

He rode through to the Nova Cinema on Lygon Street. Brokeback Mountain was showing. He and Will had discussed it over dinner in Sydney, but Will had not suggested they go and see it together. Now Sean grasped why. As he watched the final scene, where Ennis finds the old shirt that Jack took, hanging in Jack’s cupboard, his own grief, and the sorrow of the story portrayed in the film broke the ice inside him, and he began to cry quietly. As the lights came up, he saw a few gay couples round him, and a few single men, and some of them were weeping too. Knuckling his tears away, half blind, he stumbled outside to his bike, his eyes on the ground.

He didn’t see who it was he bumped into. Strong arms steadied him.

“Sorry, mate,” said a gruff, familiar voice.

It was Jasper.

Sean stared at him, unable for a moment to come to grips with what was happening.

Jasper took in the tear-stained face, the roadmap eyes, the despair. “Jesus, Sean, you OK?” Only after he’d spoken did he realize that the name was still in his head, even though he’d tried to bury the memory of their fuck deep in his subconscious. “C’mon, dude.” Jasper liked to affect American jock slang, especially when he felt threatened by macho men, like Sean. For a moment, he contemplated just walking away. Then he recalled his promise to Adam and Fiona to be more caring. And despite everything that made him want to cast Sean in the role of villain, he knew that Sean had opened his heart to him that evening when his mother had thrown him out of home, that their fuck was about much more than just sex. He couldn’t just leave Sean in this state. He took his arm in a tight grip. “C’mon,” he said again, and dragged him over Ti Amo, the coffee shop across the way from the cinema.

He ordered coffee for both of them, and, after a moment’s consideration, brandy. It was lunchtime, after all. His errand would have to wait.

“OK. What’s happened?”

Sean shook his head mutely, shame fiery in his veins. That it should be Jasper! His humiliation was complete.

“Tell me, Sean.” Without conscious decision, Jasper turned on the charm. He lowered his voice, leaned a bit closer to Sean. “What’s wrong, budd?” His voice was warm and intimate and compelling.

Sean avoided Jasper’s concerned gaze, wiping his eyes with the table napkin.

“Sean, you helped me. I’m going to help you.”

Sean remembered how this whole thing had begun. A surge of anger helped him speak. “It’s all your fault! If it hadn’t been for you... ”

“Mine? What?” But Jasper’s mind had also gone back to their tryst in the garage flat.

After a few minutes of silence, while Sean stared fiercely in any direction but Jasper’s, he muttered, “I fell in love.” Jasper’s alarmed reaction was so comical that Sean smiled involuntarily. “Not with you!” Then, his voice wavering, he said, “I gave him my heart. Oh God, Jas, I gave him my fuckin’ heart.” He felt a great relief. He’d finally admitted the truth to himself.

The silence continued, stretched. Jasper wondered how it was that an apparently straight man had fallen in love with another man. Sex – as pitcher – was one thing. But love? Meanwhile, Sean was lost in his own thoughts. His mind was far away, going over all that had happened, and returning again and again to that last scene in the motel. Eventually, Sean forced himself to look into Jasper’s face. The contempt or disdain he expected to see there wasn’t in evidence. Instead there was a compassion that surprised him. For no real reason, he’d expected Jasper to be as heartless as his mother, whom he so resembled physically. Touched, he turned sideways, scrubbing angrily at his eyes. “The fucker’s married.”

“I’m sorry.” Somehow, the way Jasper spoke showed that he understood completely.

The coffee and brandy arrived. Jasper was wrestling with himself. He wanted Sean to meet the others from the Carlton house. He felt that it would be safer if Sean was his friend in the context of the household, of his relationship with Mark and Fiona, but he was afraid that Sean would let slip what had happened between them, afraid that he would lose the happiness he had. All at once he knew he would have to tell Mark – and Fiona – about his and Sean’s making love. But not yet. Not now.

He sipped his coffee. He didn’t feel like the brandy. He’d only ordered some so that Sean wouldn’t have to drink alone. “Drink your coffee,” he ordered. Mutely, Sean sipped. He stared at the brandy glass as if he hadn’t the faintest notion what it was.

“I thought it might make you feel better.” Jasper apologized.

Sean just shook his head. “My father drank. He used to beat me up.”

Jasper stared at him in horrified immobility. Until this precise moment, he hadn’t really seen Sean as a person. True, Sean had fucked him, been kind to him, comforted him. But Sean was working class. Under the democratic façade Jasper presented to the world, to himself, he realised to his profound shame that Sean hadn’t truly counted, any more than Adam had. He felt a surge of self-disgust. He felt worthless, loathsome. Only now, after all his revelations, had Sean become a person, someone who grieved, whose father was a bully and a drunkard, who was in love, who was hurting. He made his mind up to set things right, if he could, to try harder. “Tell me about it,” he urged, struggling to fill his voice warm with genuine concern and kindness.

So Sean did, and when he’d finished, Jasper stood up, and moved round the table to Sean, and hugged him, holding Sean’s head against his stomach. He didn’t care what others thought. That was another thing he was consigning to the past.

“C’mon, Sean. Come and meet my friends.” They left the brandy snifters with their burnished amber contents at the table. A street-kid who happened to pass just then, took a quick look round for waiters, and then, unable to believe his luck, grabbed the goblets and gulped the contents. Coughing, his eyes watering, he watched the two walk away, Jasper’s arm around Sean’s shoulders. I wish someone cared about me like that, he thought wistfully, seeing only the comfort and friendliness.

Sean was as submissive as a small child worn out by weeping.

“Where’s your bike?” asked Jasper, softly.

Sean motioned towards the Honda, a few yards up the road.

“Unlock the seat,” Jasper ordered. “I need the spare helmet.”

He mounted the bike behind Sean. At first he didn’t want to put his arms round Sean’s lean torso, because it seemed altogether too intimate. He remembered that he’d ridden pressed up against Sean when Sean had taken him home, back to Mark’s flat. He held onto the bars next to the seat. But after the first corner, where he’d felt how the bike didn’t handle well because he wasn’t leaning properly, he gave in, and put his arms round Sean. The most disturbing thing was how pleasant it was. Unbidden, into his mind came the memory of Sean’s surprised acceptance of his kisses, of the sudden flames of desire that had burned in his eyes. He tightened his arms around the body in front of him.

When they reached the house, Jasper gathered his courage into both hands. “C’mon, Sean, budd. Come and meet the guys.”

Sean stared at him dubiously. “Why?” he asked, suddenly rebellious.

Jasper looked at him, and his smile was a promise of companionship and an end to loneliness. “They’re good people. And they’ll like you.”

“They won’t want to talk to me.” I don’t want to talk to them.

“Just try. Just for a little while,” Jasper coaxed, oozing charm. “You can always leave if you want to.”

Ducking his head, Sean gave a tiny nod. They went in.

There was conversation coming from the kitchen. It sounded as if all four of the others were there. Jasper led Sean through to the back of the house.

“Ten minutes, huh? And you didn’t even buy any!” It was a pretty woman with curly chestnut hair and hazel eyes.

“Sorry. I was held up. Guys, this is my friend, Sean. Maybe he could join us for lunch?” There was something tentative and uncertain in the offer, which made Sean feel uncomfortable. But the reaction was so warm and immediate that he had no time to turn it down.

“I’ve made lentil and almond casserole. There’s enough for everyone,” said a extraordinarily handsome man, who was vaguely familiar to Sean. The man held out his hand. “I’m Tom. Jasper’s hopeless at intros. And this is my better half, Adam.” The way he said this suggested that it was still a new enough situation that he wanted to brag. Sean hadn’t thought that you might boast of a gay lover, and suddenly it struck him how good that was. Uncurling inside him, he felt a growing need to get in touch with Will. Every time he thought about him, it was as if his arm had been torn off. But, surely, if they could just talk, they could set things right?

He brought his attention back to his surroundings. Adam was clearly the woman’s brother. They looked as if they might be twins. Sean had never met another gay man socially, before, let alone a couple. He was momentarily embarrassed. “Hi,” he replied, shaking Tom’s hand. This man was gay? Then Adam was shaking his hand. “Nice to meet ya,” mumbled Sean.

“This is Mark, my lover.” Jasper hadn’t been going to introduce Mark that way, but after Tom’s outspokenness, he felt it he had to, that it might look strange to the others if he didn’t. He wasn’t able to meet Sean’s eyes, as he said it, but at least he’d made it clear. He could feel Sean’s gaze on him. He went on resolutely, “And this is Mark’s lover Fiona.” Relieved, he found he could look again at Sean, at the others.

Sean was speaking, his heartbreak making him tactless. “Mark is with both of you... ? He... shit! Sorry, none of my fuckin’ business. It’s just... ” And then his voice broke, and his eyes brimmed.

There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence. Then they all spoke simultaneously. “Hey, man... ” “It’s OK.” “C’mon, dude.” “Come sit over here.”

To his intense embarrassment, Sean found himself seated on the sofa, with Fiona on one side, and Tom on the other.

“What’s happened?” Fiona’s tone was exactly right – concerned, professional, dispassionate.

So for the second time that day, Sean told his story. It was easier this time.

When he’d finished, the others looked at each other. Mark tilted his head a little towards Fiona. She nodded. He looked at Jasper. “Why not?” said Jasper, smiling a little.

So Mark said, “I was unfaithful to Jasper. We weren’t married, technically, but we were lovers. It’s the same. Don’t let anybody tell you different. When you take someone else’s heart into your hands, you have no right to make them suffer.” His tone was fierce. “I met Fiona. And I fell in love with her. So I loved two people. And ended up hurting both of them.”

“Yeah, you bastard.” But Jasper was smiling, the kind of smile one makes in private to oneself or to someone you love dearly.

Mark looked at Jasper, and his face was filled with affection. “Hey! My parents were married!”

“And it was Ads – Adam – who made us see that we all needed each other. That it wasn’t either/or, but both/and.” Fiona’s smile was a little wry. But the way she looked at both men told Sean all he needed that was vital to their relationship. “You need to talk to Will,” she urged, looking directly at Sean. “He loves you, doesn’t he?”

Sean nodded, treacherous hope swelling abruptly in his heart. He felt shy and exposed in the face of such disinterested kindness.

Over lunch they talked of generalities, carefully including Sean in the conversation, without making him feel it was an effort for them. They laughed a lot and teased each other constantly. That they all loved each other in one degree or another was abundantly apparent. Sean felt that this was what a real family was like or should be like, even though they weren’t blood relations to each other. He compared it with the dysfunctional disaster of his own family, and wished all at once that he was part of it. He envied them their mutual affection and support. He hadn’t realised just how lonely he was. Especially now.

When he got up to leave, they all came with him to the front door. The chorus of ‘please come agains’ and ‘nice meeting yous’ seemed sincere. Sean felt better than he had at any time since that horrible morning in Sydney. Was it only four days ago?

As he left, Jasper pulled him into a close hug.

The door closed behind Sean, and they heard Sean’s motor-bike roar away. Jasper turned around. Mark and Fiona were looking at him speculatively. Fiona’s eyes were hard. “What?” he said, angrily, and stomped off to the kitchen to make tea. He knew he was merely postponing the inevitable.

****

Will’s house was only a few blocks away. Will and Emma’s house. The thought almost made Sean give up, but he knew he had to do this. He drew on the toughness and inner strength that had allowed him to survive.

He parked the bike on the pavement and, heart pounding so hard he felt sick, knocked at the door.

*****

For Will, the worst was that he had to maintain a front, a façade of normality and contentment. His grieving was secret and solitary and unrecognized. He could talk to Emma about almost everything in his life, except this. There was no one else. He had no close friends – many acquaintances, but he was intimate with no one, except Emma and Sean. He could tell she knew that something was wrong, and that made it worse.

On Friday morning, he looked out over the dealing floor at the office, and was all at once filled with a loathing for them all, with their hateful straight-guy confidence, their ability to fit in, their normality. Not one of them would understand or sympathize, no, not even a little. For a while the anger and contempt bore him up, but then he turned them against himself. Unfaithful, repeatedly, to his wife. Too cowardly to make a choice. A liar, a failure, a traitor. No wonder he had no friends. He wasn’t worthy of any. And then, grief grabbed him in its jaws and ground him between its teeth till there was nothing left but the black hollow of Sean, Oh God I love you. I can’t go on. I want to die. Oh God, let me die.

The internet was helpful. Lethal doses of paracetamol (acetaminophen). Aetiology of severe liver failure. Number of Panadol tablets needed to kill. Adolescent Suicide using codeine and acetaminophen pain-killers. The Journal of Clinical Medicine. The Sociological Review. Lancet. Journal of Pharmacology. It was all there. All the information he needed. He wanted to do it right. He didn’t want to be rescued at the last minute.

He went down to the chemist on the ground floor of their building, bought a packet of Panadeine and put it in his briefcase. He went to another chemist two blocks away, and repeated the process. When he had more than a hundred tablets, he went back to the office. He sat at his desk, and took phone calls, signed documents, listened to the analyst for banks discuss the house’s preferred banking stock. He behaved with perfect normality. Afterwards they would say, how could we have known? No one would have guessed. No one. The unstated text was, it’s not my fault.

Emma lunched with her mother on Saturday afternoon, and was going shopping with her afterwards. Sure that she would be away long enough, he waited till the sewing-machine purr of Emma’s BMW had been swallowed up in the general traffic noise of the city. He took out the writing pad from the escritoire that he and Emma had chosen together from the antique shop in Toorak.

            My darling,

I wanted to tell you how much I love you.

He had to stop, he was crying so hard. He couldn’t see the paper.

He waited until the storm had passed, then continued.

This isn’t your fault, my dearest love. It’s mine. Please, my darling Em, don’t blame yourself. I fell in love with a man. I let him believe I wasn’t married, and when he found out, he left me. I can’t go on like this. You will find someone worthy of your love, I know. A real man, not someone like me.

I love you so much. But I can’t live without him, or without you.

Your Will.

For a long time he sat there, staring at the letter.

Then he went to kitchen and poured himself a gin and tonic. A full glass, without much tonic. He put his favorite CD in the player. He selected You belong to me and Hallelujah, and pressed the repeat button. To Rufus Wainwright’s sandpaper voice, the serene beauty of the guitar and piano arpeggios, he sipped his drink, and started taking the tablets, one by one, one after the other, without stopping except to swallow some more of the barely diluted gin in the tumbler.

After a ten or fifteen minutes, he began to feel relaxed and sleepy. He took another few mouthfuls of his drink.

See the pyramids along the Nile
Watch the sun rise from a tropic isle
Just remember darling all the while
You belong to me

See the market place in old Algiers
Send me photographs and souvenirs
Just remember when a dream appears
You belong to me

And I'll be so alone without you
Maybe you'll be lonesome too

Fly the ocean in a silver plane
See the jungle when it's wet with rain
Just remember till you're home again
You belong to me

Oh I'll be so alone without you
Maybe you'll be lonesome too

Fly the ocean in a silver plane
See the jungle when it's wet with rain
Just remember till you're home again
You belong to me

So sleepy. So tired. Will closed his eyes. Sean stood before him, his extraordinary smile wide, his normally hard, shuttered eyes warm and loving. I love you, words he’d never said when they’d been together. Will felt a surge of happiness. He wanted to say, I love you too, Seanie, but he found he couldn’t speak. Instead he smiled. Sean reached out his hand, but Will found he couldn’t touch it. Panic filled his heart. Sean! Sean! I can’t...

The almost empty glass dropped from nerveless fingers. Inexorably, the CD-player played on, and on, uncaring, indifferent, remorselessly efficient, a triumph of modern technology.

<<Chapter 22

© 2009 Nigel Puerasch. All rights reserved.
Romantic m2m novels and short stories