"In His Room" from the novel The Other Men
by Allen Smith
If Taylor thought it was weird I'd followed him up to his room, he didn't let on, but just simply made an inviting gesture outside his door and, once inside, smiled, saying simply, "My room," plopping down on the floor cross-legged.
I wandered over to a bookshelf and found some old college yearbooks, pulling them out, flipping through to each of the pages I knew I could find Dash on. On page 37, he was president of the College Bowl. He transformed into the preppie jock on page 55, smiling on the back row of the lacrosse team. On the facing page, there was a shot of him carrying a ball in his lacrosse stick running up the field. My eyes ran up and down the one bare leg of his that wasn't blocked by his teammates a few times before I flipped to the next page—then I flipped back for one bonus look.
"You ever hear from Dash?" I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
"Who?" Taylor responded, opening his eyes and coming over to look at the yearbook picture of Dash. "Oh, him," Taylor said, collapsing beside me, his knee nudging mine slightly. Was Taylor flirting with me?
"So, what's he up to?" I asked rapid-fire before I lost the nerve.
"I think he's in graduate school of some kind. Law? Or maybe it was an MBA. I'm not really sure," Taylor said. I was in awe of his superhuman power of not caring what Dash did. Few others in our college had that skill.
That's when I leaned over and kissed Taylor on the mouth.
"What was that?" He blurted, standing up and looking uncomfortable, while I sat with the yearbook still open to Dash and wondered the same thing.
"Sorry," I stammered, standing up too, as he took a step back while I reshelved the yearbooks. It was amazing how long it took to find exactly where on the shelves I'd retrieved them just a few moments before—much harder than still remembering which pages Dash was pictured on, years since I'd last looked at the awful publications.
"I'd rather be alone, Steve. I'm trying to keep things really simple now," Taylor said, and I looked at him and nodded, wanting to kiss him again. The fact was, he was handsome, sober, and grave.
"Sure, Taylor. I don't know why I did that. I'm really sorry," I said, even though I really was not. My lips still radiated from the impact with his. I wondered if Kirchner had painted anything like that.
"No, it's okay," he said, coming back across the room and reaching out to shake my hand. "No biggie, just no more kisses, all right?"
"Okay," I said, feeling his soft hand linger in mine as we shook and imagining the exact proportions of his biggie.
"You don't have to run away," he said, sitting back down and resuming his cross-legged position.
"No, I know. I should probably visit some more with Mom though. I leave tomorrow morning, and I've barely had a chance to."
"Instead, you had to come over and visit us. That's fucked!" Taylor said, making a face. I think he was trying to look unassuming, but the way he was cringing just drew my attention back to his lips. Plus, he said fuck. Maybe that meant he wanted to.
Why won't he let me kiss him again, I wondered, my mouth still tingling. I wondered if he and Dash ever kissed. That would be as close as I'd ever come to kissing Dash. I had the urge to ask Taylor whether he had.
"Listen, I hope you don't think I'm homophobic, Steve, because I'm not," Taylor said.
"I don't think that," I said, wishing he'd come across the room and put a hand on my face to apologize. Maybe, I considered, I should have acted insulted and insisted on that as a condition of accepting his apology.
Which reminded me of how Dash once did exactly that. I was in the student union, going over to the café to get a bagel and he was just zipping through, but stopped when he saw me. We stood there and shot the breeze about the most recent Woody Allen picture he'd seen. He loved it. Then, as if recreating a scene from some romantic picture, he brushed one of my cheeks with the back of his hand.
Shaking myself out of the flashback that was giving me hot flashes, I saw that Taylor had shut his eyes and was rubbing the tips of his fingers, as if each one was some loved one's cheek. Part of me wished he was a homophobe. Then he wouldn't have that blank expression that couldn't have made it any clearer that he'd already forgotten my lips. He didn't really seem that much aware I was still in his room or, when I left it, that the room had changed in any way.
I sulked back downstairs and peeked in the living room, but Mom and Mrs. Fussell weren't there. I checked in the den too, but the television was mute and Dad and Mr. Fussell were nowhere to be found, an alarming site. Had someone died?
The empty chairs before the TV were nearly as sinister as the sound of Dad laughing top notch down beneath me. Was that the sound of him from hell? I listened harder and fumbled my way past a couple of doors and figured out which one led to the basement.
"What's going on down there?" I asked, neurotically wondering if one of them had cracked the door of Taylor's room open just as I kissed him and they were having some kind of powwow about it.
"I miss having a freezer," I heard Mom say in the exact same voice I may have used to describe the way I felt about no longer seeing Dash. Dad, Mr. and Mrs. Fussell were giving her sympathetic looks, like she'd just announced that I had died. Dad was rubbing the gleaming freezer's exterior lasciviously, like it was some anorexic bathing beauty's belly.
"I don't see how you did it, giving up a freezer. I never could. I think I'd have given up George first," Mrs. Fussell said, giving her husband a sock in the stomach and an ear-piercing laugh. I might start turning the volume to basketball games up full blast to not hear that, I considered.
"This is a nice one," Dad said sullenly. The evening was almost over and Mr. Fussell had won again.
"It's really nice," Mom agreed, giving Dad a defeated look. I felt sorry for them, spending their anniversary in some other couple's basement while their so-called friends paraded their newest appliance.
"I'm not feeling so well," I said at the top of the stairs. It was true. I had barely slept the whole week, and it had finally caught up with me. "You wouldn't have a spare bed I could lie down on, would you?"
Dad gave me ashamed look, like he couldn't believe I couldn't buck up for just one night. Mr. Fussell looked triumphant. Maybe his son was living at home with them, but he wasn't a complete flake. Mrs. Fussell swung around suddenly with a frighteningly chipper smile.
"I know just the cure!" she said, charging up the stairs toward me, as if trampling me was it.
Running past me into the kitchen, Mrs. Fussell whipped a crème de menthe pie out of the fridge and cut me an obscenely huge slice. There was no denying that it was delicious. But as she served the others, I didn't join the chorus of compliments. It made me feel a little nauseous just listening to it.
"This is the best pie I've ever tasted," Mom declared in the voice of someone newly converted to the faith of desserts, while Dad nodded sanctimoniously. I was amazed he wasn't watching the TV screen. Instead, he was giving Mom a wry grin.
"Well, I have you to thank," Mrs. Fussell said, winking at Mom, even though I'd never tasted the pie in my life. That's when Taylor wandered back downstairs, came over to the couch and French-kissed me, right there in front of everyone, long and slow. Maybe he liked the pie too, but was too lazy to get it anyplace but off my tongue. "I just wanted you to know love is the answer, and you know that for sure," he announced. "And your son has got a lot of answers," he told them all before plopping down on the couch beside me and wrapping an arm around me.
I squirmed a little. He held me tighter. Everyone stopped eating. "Well, Steve, maybe I'm not feeling so well myself," Mom said in a tight voice, as Mrs. Fussell lifted a knife.
"Anyone want more pie?" She asked, while Dad looked at Mr. Fussell triumphantly.
Allen Smith lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his partner of more than a decade along with a sage poochy and some very pretty and very territorial goldfinches on some nearby black-eyed susans. His poems have appeared in various literary magazines, including Off the Rocks, Zygote in My Coffee and the Urban Hiker. Aside from pushing The Anthropology of Turquoise on unsuspecting relations, he enjoys figure skating, playing tennis, swimming, cycling and whining about publishers not being interested in his novels.
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