He said to Matt, calmly, while Matt was now nervous, “Matthew, I am gay. I am not happy gay. I am sad gay. I had such dreams when I was your age. There was a boy at my university, we were both freshmen, and I loved him—I dwelled on him all the time. I never told him, of course. I knew how he felt about homosexuals. But I believed in miracles then. I believed in lost causes. Who is the patron saint of lost causes?”
“St. Jude” Matt said, remembering a St. Jude Hospital telethon on TV once, the children’s hospital, devoted to fighting the worst of childhood illnesses, the hopeless ones, being named after The Patron Saint of Lost Causes by the singer Danny Thomas.
“Yes. St. Jude. Thanks, Matthew.”
“He hurt me and he got rid of me and he told you. How can you be so wrong about a person?”
“Matt, he didn’t mean to hurt you. Alton is a nice boy. He has to grow some more. You’ve grown already—so long before him. He got to have an easier road than you did. He got to laugh and be with friends and be ‘normal’—he didn’t have to guard every word he said, and re-think every half-sentence before he said it.” He drank his coffee. Matt finished his Coke and then started on his now mildly warm coffee, as he took a butter cookie too, and offered one to Maples who shook his head “no.”
“Matt, I’m an old man in your lexicon. I still have feelings. I still masturbate.” Maples smiled and said, “Yes, we do it too.” And Matthew pulled back a bit. “I know. But I do. I’m not coming onto you. Don’t worry. I don’t know how to come on to anyone. I asked that boy I was in love with back there if we could talk about sex, just in general sometime, just a word, just a gesture, just a—I had no idea what really—something that I could mentally hang on to—I don’t know what I thought—other than I was dying inside—and I wanted—something I could pretend about and imagine about…and he couldn’t stop laughing. It took such incredible courage to say that. I worked my way up to it for weeks. I sweated it out in such fear. I almost said it to him a million times. Then finally I blurted it out so fast he didn’t hear me. He had to ask me to repeat it. So I did in a loud trumpeting voice, at least it seemed to me, to him it must have been shaky and high and hilariously desperate. I had my eyes closed. I thought he would hit me. But all he did was laugh at me. And I ran away from him. And later apologized. He would have nothing to do with me. And apologized again. No go. And I still apologize. In the mirror when I shave. When I go to bed. When I wake up. When I masturbate…”
Then he paused for a while. And continued:
“That was a highly difficult thing Alton did, you know?”
“Yeah, cause Alton has such a supremely massive heart.”
“Yes, Matthew. You were both drunk—outside, with other people, I would have to say inebriated—keep my image intact—I sacrifice bits of myself so I can live another day, and I don’t know why I want to live another day. Matt,” he said as he stood up with some unease, and came to sit the couch with Matthew, who did not like the way this was shaping up at the moment, “I won’t tell you anything other than Alton is going through a species of hell—hear me out,” Maples said as Matt started to object with anger, “Wait, listen,” Maples said in a stronger voice than Matt had heard before from him. “He did see you were horribly broken, he did see you really loved him. For Alton, that’s a really tough thing, a really difficult situation to be in, but…..” Matt stood and said he had to be going and thanks for the coffee and stuff.
Maples stood and walked to him. Matt stood with his back to Maples, and was at the front door, ready to open it.
“He did it because it was you. He was curious, yes. He was still a little drunk, yes. But he jacked off with you because you were his friend. Do you have any idea in the world what I would have given to have had my love do that for me? To just do something like that, and he could pass it off in the morning, by saying we were just drunk. This is so horribly common, Matt. He was stunned you are gay and that you told him what you did. You were getting ready to leave, after your revelation, and he stopped you and you both jacked off together. How lucky you were. How very fortunate. You didn’t have to say, let me just be around you, let me pretend you love me while I know you don’t. Let me just be a shadow and not cause troubles. Let me just pretend. You didn’t have to say that. He did it for you. He did it because he cares about you. Still and all.”
And Matt was shattered as his own words of begging coming back to him, the words Matt had not had to say. He trembled. He started to open the door onto the night and travel on to his cheerless loveless cousin’s house to spend a cheerless loveless Christmas.
Maples said, “Just a minute, Matthew,” and walked away, coming back a moment, and holding out to Matt a present gift-wrapped, “I had thought of giving this to Alton for Christmas, but I may have another gift for him. I’d like you to accept this present for a Merry Christmas.” Matt took the gift. And Maples smiled briefly. Matthew nodded and said, “We all come to the Puzzle Palace, and the puzzles we never can put together are ourselves.” He smiled for real this time.
Then, taking a breath, “This boy you loved..The one who laughed at you when you told him…what you felt…does the hurt go away..ever?”
“No, Matthew. I’m afraid not.”
Matthew turned, dejectedly, to the door, opened it and the glass door, as Maples turned on the porch light again. Matthew had walked down the precisely laid out stairs and onto the ruler straight sidewalk, as he crunched through the snow, the package held in one hand. The only one he would get this Christmas.
“Matthew,” Maples shouted in a long heavy voice. Matthew stopped, his hand ready to open the picket fence gate, “The hurt doesn’t ever go away. But the love never goes away either.”
“Which is worse?” Matt asked softly as he opened the gate and latched it closed.
“You have to decide. And if you work it just right, each takes care of the other. Each balances the other out when one gets more hurtful than the other.” As Matt got in the car, tossing the present on the seat beside him, and turned on the motor.
“You can love, Matt,” Maples said to himself as he watched Matt drive off. “You are young and you can love and be loved.” He shivered as he watched the car drive off.
Then he walked out of the chill, back to the warm living room, remembered every second of Matt, and of Alton, separate, and together, turned on the revolving light for the Christmas tree, unzipped and knelt by the tree now orange, now red, now blue, now green, as he had when he was a child and alone at Christmas, and masturbated onto a Kleenex he had taken from his shirt pocket. It had always been a lonely time for him, and this made especially now less lonely. When he came, he felt foolish and sad and so envious. For what Alton and Matthew had done. Maples had not, had not even, ever, done a single sexual thing with another human being. How incredibly lucky Alton and Matt were and would be, regardless of how it turned out. They would be in the world. They would experience life. There would be friendships and romances and broken hearts and heart’s delight. And they would be noticed. They would be loved. They already were.
And Maples hung his head shamefully, as he continued cumming a bit. And said a name, to himself. Nobody else ever heard. Except for the person whose name it was. Maples was to never say that name again. Not after the laughter.
Leave a Reply