He goes to her bathroom, showers and rinses out his mouth, comes back and kisses her again. “I’ll text you,” he says, disgusted by how he has been reduced to a vocabulary consisting almost entirely of clichés. “Thank you for letting me come over.”
At home, he walks silently through the darkened apartment, and in the bedroom he takes off his clothes, gets into bed with a groan, rolls over and wraps his arms around Jude, who wakes and turns to him. “Willem,” he says, “you’re home,” and Willem kisses him to cover the guilt and sorrow he always feels when he hears the relief and happiness in Jude’s voice.
“Of course,” he says. He always comes home; he has never not. “I’m sorry it’s so late.”
It is a hot night, humid and still, and yet he presses against Jude as if he is trying to warm himself, threading their legs together. Tomorrow, he tells himself, he will end it with Claudine.
They have never discussed it, but he knows Jude knows he is having sex with other people. He has even given Willem his permission. This was after that terrible Thanksgiving, when after years of obfuscation, Jude was revealed to him completely, the shreds of cloud that had always obscured him from view abruptly wiped away. For many days, he hadn’t known what to do (other than run back into therapy himself; he had called his shrink the day after Jude had made his first appointment with Dr. Loehmann), and whenever he looked at Jude, scraps of his narrative would return to him, and he would study him covertly, wondering how he had gotten from where he had been to where he was, wondering how he had become the person he had when everything in his life had argued that he shouldn’t be. The awe he had felt for him, then, the despair and horror, was something one felt for idols, not for other humans, at least no other humans he knew.
“I know how you feel, Willem,” Andy had said in one of their secret conversations, “but he doesn’t want you to admire him; he wants you to see him as he is. He wants you to tell him that his life, as inconceivable as it is, is still a life.” He paused. “Do you know what I mean?”
“I do know,” he said.
In the first bleary days after Jude’s story, he could feel Jude being very quiet around him, as if he was trying not to call attention to himself, as if he didn’t want to remind Willem of what he now knew. One night a week or so later, they were eating a muted dinner at the apartment, and Jude had said, softly, “You can’t even look at me anymore.” He had looked up then and had seen his pale, frightened face, and had dragged his chair close to Jude’s and sat there, looking at him.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m afraid I’m going to say something stupid.”
“Willem,” Jude said, and was quiet. “I think I turned out pretty normal, all things considered, don’t you?” and Willem had heard the strain, and the hope, in his voice.
“No,” he said, and Jude winced. “I think you turned out extraordinary, all things considered or not,” and finally, Jude smiled.
That night, they had discussed what they were going to do. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me,” he began, and when he saw how relieved Jude was, he cursed himself for not making it clearer earlier that he was going to stay. Then he gathered himself and they talked about physical matters: how far he could go, what Jude didn’t want to do.
“We can do whatever you want, Willem,” Jude said.
“But you don’t like it,” he’d said.
“But I owe it to you,” Jude had said.
“No,” he told him. “It shouldn’t feel like something you owe me; and besides, you don’t owe it to me.” He stopped. “If it’s not arousing for you, it’s not for me, either,” he added, although, to his shame, he did still want to have sex with Jude. He wouldn’t, not anymore, not if Jude didn’t want to, but it didn’t mean he would be able to suddenly stop craving it.
“But you’ve sacrificed so much to be with me,” Jude said after a silence.
“Like what?” he asked, curious.
“Normalcy,” Jude said. “Social acceptability. Ease of life. Coffee, even. I can’t add sex to that list.”
They had talked and talked, and he had finally managed to convince him, had managed to get Jude to define what he actually liked. (It hadn’t been much.) “But what are you going to do?” Jude asked him.
“Oh, I’ll be fine,” he said, not really knowing himself.
“You know, Willem,” Jude had said, “you should obviously sleep with whomever you want. I just”—he fumbled—“I know this is selfish, but I just don’t want to hear about it.”
“It’s not selfish,” he said, reaching across the bed for him. “And I wouldn’t do that, not ever.”