Halfway Home by Paul Monette

Author:Paul Monette [Monette, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Gay
ISBN: 9780758201898
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 1991-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

SUSAN REFUSED, CATEGORICALLY.

I heard them arguing deep into the night. Even through the double bathroom door, and with the rain growing steadier by the hour, I could pick out certain phrases as she railed at him. The very idea of counseling! How dare it even be suggested—as if she disdained the whole field of the talking cure as gibberish, another sort of witchcraft. And that I should have been the one to propose it, invert and blasphemer that I was. I couldn't actually make out the specific words of my damnation, but got the picture.

I can't stay here, she told him again and again. Or else what? She'd go mad. No, worse: her very soul was threatened now.

I don't know if she told him about seeing Gray and me on the beach. I dozed in and out, curled as I was in the arms of my fellow blasphemer. I didn't care anymore, so far was she from being able to hurt us. And all her shrewing and lashing out didn't compromise for a moment the lulling safety of the rain, or keep me from the deepest fathom of that first night with Gray. Nor the morning after, surfacing into passion, loving before we were fully conscious. The drone of Susan and Brian through the walls, raw and numb with misery—had it gone on all night?—was no more than distant gunfire, a civil war in another country.

We came belly to belly, Gray on top of me, his sweet heaviness like an anchor in the harbor. This was the oldest act of love, our two dicks rubbing as we kissed, innocent as boys at camp. Reaching the top, I groaned with a near roar of delight, which surely carried into Cora's room. Gray was as silent as I was noisy, gulping in air as he let go, then strangling out a soft delicious whimper. We lay still for several minutes, catching our breath, no words, all lost time accounted for at last.

Then I watched as he got up and fetched a towel to clean us off, darting in and out of the bathroom, not wanting to encounter the heteros. But the squalling had stopped in Cora's room. Doubtless my little crow of ecstasy had hustled them down to breakfast. Gray smiled as he tenderly wiped my belly, then moved to the chaise to pull on his yesterday's clothes. I couldn't stop studying his tough and lanky body, still so new to me. No extra fat, and the sleek form of an ocean swimmer. His being fifty had no downside; he was simply a full-grown man. And lying there lazily under the comforter, I took the most wanton joy in being the younger one.

"Doesn't sound like she's crazy about the idea," Gray declared as he shrugged on his workshirt. It was the first I realized he'd heard the din from the other room. I always thought WASPs had an extra sleep gene that helped them ignore such things entirely.

"I'll talk to her," I said, but as if I didn't stand a chance.

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