There is no romance without heartache, by definition.
Matthew stared at the screen. With Luc logged off it was dead now and empty, lifeless without Lucas. For months, he and Luc had covered it, by keyboard strokes, with letters, which made words, and words which became thought, and thought which created a visceral excitement deep inside his body.
Lucas had made a wireless connection to his cock, to his heart, to his rate of breathing. When Luc's real body, his real flesh, his actual touch were absent, during those secret moments when Matthew and Luc had to be separated and had to live in worlds apart, Luc's words, his sentences, his linguistic representations of himself, his iconic presence, virtual on the computer screen, in the chat box, filled Matthew's body and mind with what became the only life that mattered.
Lucas! Was that...it? Was he...gone? Had it...happened...again? How could that be? Loss! Always loss!
Once! Once! -- more than once! -- they had lain together, twain turned to one, their entwined hearts throbbing with the joy of discovery, the discovery of a companion soul, the joy of life amplified by joy, the precious lumination, a precious mystery. They had kissed and Matthew was glad at everything Luc did. Their eyes had met and they swallowed kisses like oysters and saliva like champagne. Their chests had touched and they experienced the searing delicacy of excited nipples when each teased the other's with his finger tips.
Matthew had trusted Luc and surrendered to him and was vulnerable, masculine, lean, muscular, and entirely vulnerable. His trust had been rewarded by a real love he could really feel. Powerful in his physique and strongly focused in his determinations, even stubborn, Luc had been soft and tender, as present and as devoted and as available to Matthew as Matthew had been to Luc.
But sometimes Matthew had surges of guilt, which ran along his arteries like sour currents of electricity, freezing his neurons. He panicked. He was afraid his wife would see something untrue inside him. Every conversation threatened to take him to the edge of a cliff. Every glance unsettled him. He was cheating Marie out of what he owed her. He hated that he owed her anything and he hated that he was betraying her. It made him feel broken inside. The pain that he imagined was hers hurt him.
Sometimes he wanted to go to her and love her so hard that he could squeeze all his essence into her and give himself to her so powerfully that she would dance with the grace of his caress burning in her limbs. He wanted to find himself in her.
But when he did approach her, something did not happen. He looked into her eyes but they shone with irony instead of desire, with difference rather than communion. When he embraced her, they laughed with anxiety instead of delight. He never got lost in her and discovered himself elsewhere but always was glad when it was over and he could retire into his privacy, another day completed without incident.
Need always comes between desire and its gratification. Need demands. What had been nature's mysterious, capricious donation, need transforms it into somebody else's obligation.
The love he had found with Luc made Matthew graceful. The intensity of bliss made him confident. Being far out in the eternal nowhere with Luc was just like being right at home. When he was not there, he missed it painfully, the way a frightened child longs for the tender caress of a loving mother.
For Christ's sake, Matthew, Lucas had said, if I want a relationship bound by obligation, I have my marriage.
Matthew's heart sank within him and words got stuck in his throat like cars in a traffic jam, when the air becomes foul with the exhaust of engines running while the vehicles are standing, blocked and blocking each other.
Good for you, Matthew said. I don't.
What do you mean? Lucas said.
The only obligation I have, the only obligation I want is the obligation I feel towards you, the obligation that binds me to you.
Lucas stopped and turned to him and there on the path overlooking the Sheep Meadow in Central Park, he stepped in front of Matthew and took him by the wrists and looked into his eyes.
That is not true. As much as you might wish it were. You have the same binding obligation that I have.
We don't have to, Matthew said.
Are you sure? Luc said.
Do you know what you are doing to me? Matthew said.
Do you know what you are doing to me? Luc responded. Do you know?
I am not like you, Matthew said. I cannot cut off when we are apart.
The words cut Luc and he felt the pain.
I don't want you to be like me, Luc said.
Then you have to deal with it, Matthew said.
Luc understood. He took Matthew in his arms, and looked at him with teary eyes.
This is ridiculous, he said.
I don't know that I can go on like this, Matthew said, aching for you the way I do.
The moon was a crescent in the October sky as Luc approached Matthew standing in a trench coat pulling on a cigarette, standing on 57th Street in front of Carnegie Hall.
He tossed the cigarette into the gutter and walked quickly towards Luc.
I was afraid you would not make it.
I'm here.
They walked in silence.
I wish it could be different, Matthew, Luc said. I wish we could go on forever the way we were.
But?
But we can't. I can't. We can't keep doing this. I don't need to be torn apart this way. And neither do you.
Why can't it just work?
One, because we are both married. Two, because we have been through too much together. Romance thrives on mystery and mystery thrives on passion and passion thrives on^Å
Syllogisms.
What?
I'm talking about love and you're constructing syllogisms!
Once it's broken, Matthew, romance can never be fixed. That's how it's different from marriage. Marriage survives with all the cracks and dents and missing pieces. It ages and even becomes decrepit, but you live in it, like your body. But a romance like ours, a love affair^Å
He said nothing more but just shook his head.
Luc took a cab to 89th Street and West End Avenue and bought a dozen white roses at the Korean grocery store on the corner and a bottle of chilled champagne next door to it.
What is this for? Florence said when he gave her the roses.
Because you are beautiful, he said.
He put the champagne bottle on the side table in the foyer next to the vase beside which Florence had laid the roses, and still in his trench coat, he took her in his arms and kissed her as he had when they had been undergraduates at Brown.
Welcome home, lover, she whispered.
Matthew called up Ryan in Park Slope and asked if he could spend the night there.
Marie was not surprised when he called to say he was not coming home.
You think I don't know what's going on? she said.
It's not like that, Matthew said.
It's not like what? she said.
His room faced a brick wall. Marie would never have tolerated it.
Just like you, she would have said. An air shaft for a view. An air shaft! That's all I was ever going to get from you an air shaft, first the air and then the shaft.
He cringed. Even when she was not there, he could hear her. She occupied a zone in his head and haunted him.
You weigh on me, she had said. You weigh me down, you and your neediness. Love me, love me. You don't need a wife you need a mother.
It was true. It was not true. He could not tell. It did not matter.
It was dark.
(How can you tell? Marie would have said. It's always dark in here, like a cave. The room doesn't get any light.)
He lay in bed and pulled the sheet over him and slowly stretched his legs, first bent at the knees, out the length of the bed. He held his flaccid penis and gummy ball sac in the palm of his left hand and let his right palm rest glued upon his chest.
But he could not relax, or rest, or fall asleep. His head beat with a relentless ache, but he was nowhere near crying. There was only an incalculable emptiness, a negative zone he had no notion how to negotiate.
The clock ticked. The building made, to his ears, its unaccustomed noises. Every now and then he heard the sound of the elevator.
Getting out of bed and getting dressed was not easy. He thought himself through the act several times until he really did it.
He stood naked feeling his body like an alien thing he carried.
There was a shower down the hall, not in the room. He wrapped a towel around himself and took his kit with soap and toothbrush and razor and shampoo, and he stowed his room key in it, and went barefoot over the worn carpet to the shower room.
It was empty, and he stood under the water, and as it beat on him, he began to breathe.
At least I can do this, he said, soaping himself. And he began to feel better.
Back in his room, he saw that it was twenty after eleven, and he realized that he was hungry.
There was an all night sushi place on St. Marks Place.
He pulled on a pair of faded jeans torn above the knee, an old black tee shirt, suede moccasin loafers, strapped his watch on his wrist, stuck his wallet and a handkerchief in his pockets, looked at himself in the mirror and combed his hair and took the steps rather than wait for the elevator.
The night was warm and the streets were full.
This is what it meant to be free.
Mind if I join you?
Please, Matthew said.
How come you're by yourself?
Probably the same reason as you.
Doing anything after this?
Got any ideas? Matthew said.
Plenty, the young man said.
My name is Harry, he said, extending his hand.
Matthew, Matthew said, taking it.
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