Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 07:48:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: M/M relationship no  sex "Let's Say It Never Happened"

		       "Let's Say It Never Happened"

				    by

			       Tim Stillman

"Let's say it never happened," Tony whispered as we stood on the terrace of
the home, away from the party inside.  He was nursing his third martini and
in memory of the good times we had had together, in spite of my baleful
outlook on things, like that campus in midnight moonlight starting and
ending with the yellow coating the lamps dazzled on parts of it heaping in
November glow as I shivered in my evening wear and Tony turned to me and
said, "I was wrong and you were too and if I need my karma back sometime I
think it might as well begin here."

I'd no earthly idea what he was talking about and that worried me for it
was the night of October fest and the university where I still worked and
he, a student when we met, a teacher now, he in Math, and I in English
literature; it had not been love at first sight; more like a comforting we
had not known before. We had met cute, but it was not our fault; I had
finished class in Twain that day and was sitting at my desk, eyes closed,
rubbing them, my glasses knocked off the table by Tony as he was walking to
the door to his next class, on this rainy day, getting his raincoat on,
knocking them straight onto the floor, breaking the left lens as he walked
on them before realizing it. He apologized so wonderfully, offered to pay
for them.  I said no matter, I carry a second pair, as I pulled them out of
my drawer, putting them on. He, worried, looked more beautiful than ever.

I am blind without them and have several things wrong with my eyes that
make them delicate. After explaining all of this over time later on he
finally told me to stop because after all, "it takes a few broken eyes to
make an eyelet." And we laughed at the table at the College Urn because
with our earnings we could afford only the reasonably low prices here as
one day at our favorite table, fourth one in the back, left of the curtain
with the university colors, I said, "Tony, we have to stop being cute; I
mean there is more in life than being cute--and I don't mean that--kind of
cute--you are adorable; but that is not the point." I had cut him off at
the pass at every cute joke I had opened the door for, and glad I had only
thought cutting him off---

"You are not complicated," he said to me then, as he said to me now at the
head master's party, as Tony and I stood on the terrace in the deep Falling
wind, and I said, "It's been fun," and I looked away from him for I thought
I might weep a little, I said, just a little.  He turned to me and put his
hand on my shoulder. I took his hand and kissed its palm.

"You mean it, don't you Tony? I mean," and here I shuddered, "because
everything is going right, because I see so much happiness now, I mean
really see it, you've developed a Yogi phase and will boot me out because,
not because I'm balding and pleasingly plump and giddy these days, or
because you are strong and athletic and craggy faced, it's because--my
world has spread--and you want knockers to do with it." I closed my eyes,
waited for a knockers joke, got one, then walked to the railing of the
terrace as he followed me.

"Paddy, look," Tony started, then finished his drink---

"You drink too much. Who will you have to drive you home from parties in
the late night hours or to them in the pink setting afternoon hours?"

Tony sat down the drink and angled off next to me, shooting his cuffs, like
men did in movies made in America in the forties, for we were both Bogie
and Robinson fans, and he said, "Look at it this way, love" and his amber
eyes broke my heart, that someone like me from the beer and skittles crowd
back in the day, could wind up with this thoroughly decent, completely
handsome, winsomely forgiving man, and he did then what he always did when
we were both scared, and we both were, we hugged each other, as he kissed
my bald spot, he being the taller of course, and he pulled back, as we
remembered we were guests at the party which was still going strong in the
red flocked living room with the silver glowy lit chandelier and the wine
and the songs and the teachers and students and professors, as he smiled at
me, as I turned from him. It was the first time I had done that on purpose
to him. It was how I acted when afraid of someone, from childhood onward.

He spoke softly and distinctly, wanting to get the words right.  He said,
and the wind got colder, "It's not that you take things so seriously; many
do and it's a good thing; and it's not that I take things not so seriously;
and many do and that too is a good thing." He stopped for a while and I
wondered if he was thinking of our first kiss that Spring night when he
came home with me and for the first time spent the night with me, how we
held each other and whispered we fancied one another and how deliciously
good life was then and holding someone who held you in return. I wondered
if he remembered the first time we made love, for it hadn't been that night
he spent with me first time, we had lain there naked and explored and
touched and told our most intimate most funny most childlike most silly
secrets to each other. And I wondered if he felt that was the best night of
love making above and beyond all the nights of us afterwards.

"It's spread," I turned to him. "My gloomy Gus has spread and you want
out," to which he told me, as he touched my hands and held them in his Tony
hands, "I never knew the gloomy Gus of you, I knew the sweet Paddy and I
knew the greens where we had our picnics and I saw you as you."  He cut off
the word and said, "Look, let's just go back to the party, they are seeing
us out here in the cold gesticulating around and must think us utter fools.
Never happened. We'll be together till the end."

He smiled and his eyes danced that Tony dance and I said, "I love you." And
he was as good as his word, and we went back to the party and it was as if
the discussion never happened. Till months later, I happened to find his
diary, not looking for it, not knowing he had ever kept one, and feeling on
odds and ends that brisk March Sunday when Tony was away at meetings and I
was using the empty hours tidying up our flat I happened to it shoved
between books on his shelves--right between The Beastly Beatitudes of
Balthazar B. and City of Night, to be specific, and I know I should have
put it back, but I sat down and turned almost immediately to the part
written about the October fest and our strange conversation on the terrace
that windy cold night that left me in shivers for some time, not only from
the weather, but it took us both a bit to build up our relationship to
where it was again and I thought it was good.  And Tony in his diary before
and after then always said he loved me and it was good.

BUT...

Well, here's what he wrote after that party weekend, at ll:45 p.m. the
night of the first day when it was back to classes as usual and I was
asleep beside him:

"There's no one to say it to--I can't say it to Paddy, for it will break
his kind compassionate heart and I would rather do myself in than that. So
I will try it out on myself alone instead. I have never read that a person
who is so serious is the shallowest of the lot. It's easy to be too
serious, it's easy to be melancholy; god knows the world gives us
infinities of reasons. It takes courage to not be sad, to in spite of
things feel the world is right, if not some of the people in it, that the
sun does come up in the morning whether or not you've been beating yourself
all night on the heath or considering drowning yourself in a fjord. The sun
does not care and people don't care how you conduct your lives.

"I love the telly and funny movies and sitcoms and I love to be at the
University Urn making the same stale jokes of whose ashes are in the urn
and has anyone seen it then ever anyway, with my Paddy and our friends and
some students sometimes, lifting glasses of ale on high, and Paddy loves it
too; he always used to be morose and things, he says, and now he sees it
all with a lighter air, it costs the same--nothing--and you feel better at
it the light way.  You never hear anyone say damn this bloke is so comical
and so laugh a minute and seems to me he's too damned complex for me, too
seriously being happy and he's plunging the depths doing that and is
leagues wiser and profound than I am so let's leave him be and try to find
someone who's so serious, he's an absolute windbag of a gasser, a bluebird
in the sky singing sparkly songs of Freud and Jung, just tickles our
fancies, that. It's a prejudice in a kind of way, you know. And I guess I'm
just sounding off a mite because it bothers me. It just does."

I put the blue bound diary in my lap. It had gotten late without my
realizing it as I lay my head back against the chair antimacassar and
drifted off for a time to sleep, the wind whistling spring come soon at the
windows and walls and doors.  I don't know how long it had been when I felt
my hands being moved; I was still half asleep when he kissed my forehead; I
opened my eyes and Tony said, "Hi, love," and he smiled and he helped me up
and we went to the kitchen for a cuppa tea and as we sat at our little
table, across from each other, he talked about his day and said to remember
to meet him at the Student Center for lunch tomorrow. And in time we
finished. I put the cups and saucer and biscuit plate in the sink. We went
to bed and made love and slept and woke in the morning peacefully in each
other's arms.

The sun was buttery up high as we walked cross the quad to our classes. It
was quite nice, all of it, actually. Quite nice indeed.