No Safeguards (22 page)

I feel like saying:
Who in hell do you think you are
? Instead I take a deep breath.

We're still standing inside the door of the apartment.

“Give me a hug, Jay. Tell me you're just as concerned about me as you were before we came to Canada and I went bonkers. It's important. Tell me you don't judge me.”

“Did you read
The Way of Life
?”

“At least five times. Thanks. Didn't I thank you in one of my letters? I meant to.”

“Well, you should know I try not to judge anybody. But I want to know if the RCMP or CSIS will be bugging — or has already bugged — our phone.” I put my hands on his shoulders and stare into his eyes. “Paul, I want to know that you are safe. That nothing's hanging over you. Is that different from how I was when we were in St. Vincent?”

“Yes and no. You're punishing, you're cold.”

“Sorry. Ma's death, my suspended studies, your absence, sleepless nights. I can't help it.”

“Forgive me, Jay. Forgive me. I'm clean enough. If anything was going to happen to me, it would have happened at the Guatemala airport or at Trudeau. I'm fine.” His eyes well up.

“Do you still smoke?”

“No. Let's go. We'll discuss all this in due time. First, let me recover.”

W
E'RE BACK HOME
and I'm lying in bed. The outing didn't go well. Neither Jonathan nor I had seen
CRAZY
while it was making a splash, and so we profited from its return at the Park Cinema to see it. When Jonathan met us in the foyer and saw Paul, his face became a frown. He nodded at Paul and gave me a mechanical hug. After seeing a film together, he and I would go off to a coffee shop and discuss it. We rarely agree about movies.We'd disagreed about
Broke-Back Mountain.
I defended Ennis' reticence and caution, arguing that that was how it had to be for most men who lived in places hostile to gays, not to mention bisexual men. For Jonathan there's no such thing as bisexuality: “so-called bisexuals” are homosexuals who won't accept their sexual orientation, or sexual tourists/adventurers sampling the forbidden. Usually he has so many opinions about what he's seen, he can never get them out in a single sitting. But today when we got to the café, he ordered his usual hot apple cider and sipped it quietly.

“How did you find
CRAZY
?” I eventually asked him.

“Okay.”

“I thought it was excellent.”

He didn't reply. Instead he encircled his cup with both hands as if warming them, and stared at the table with his head down.

Paul looked on, his eyes a glassy intensity, the redness from yesterday gone. Jonathan made brief eye contact with Paul and resumed staring at the table. Paul got up and headed to the bathroom.

In the interim Jonathan and I said nothing. When Paul returned, he put on his jacket. “I'll leave you two to yourselves. Jay, I need the keys to get in.”

Jonathan said: “Have mine.” He took them off his key ring and gave them to Paul.

As soon as Paul was out the door Jonathan asked: “How long are you going to carry that load?”

The question made me uncomfortable. “Not for long.”

“I hope so. Pardon me. I shouldn't be meddling in your family's business.”

“Jonathan, you are family: you're my brother in everything but biology. Did you like
CRAZY
?”

“Yes, but I don't feel like discussing
that
.”

“What do you
want
to discuss?”

“You
know
what I want to discuss.” He looked away and took a deep breath. Still looking away he said: “Last night, while you were asleep beside me, I remained awake a long time thinking about you. I wanted to be in your arms.”

I held my breath, surprised.

Jonathan swallowed hard, bit his lip, and his face began to contort. He lowered his head. I watched him trying to control his emotions. He took a deep breath, then asked: “Jay, do you have a secret life?”

Perplexed by the question, I shook my head.

A couple came to sit at a table to our immediate left. The café was almost full: students working on their laptops everywhere. Jonathan lowered his voice to a whisper. “Well, I am more puzzled.”

I breathed deeply. “Jonathan, you and I saw
Kinsey
and discussed it. Right? Remember what he said about how different everyone's sexuality is?”

Jonathan groaned. “Sorry I have to be so direct. Have you ever slept with anyone, Jay? I don't mean that girl you tried fooling the public with.” He grimaced.

“Yes. With you. Last night.”

“
Arrête de niaiser!
”

Where was this headed?
I wiped my sweating hands on my thighs.

“Why's it so hard to answer?”

“Because it is, Jonathan. It is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I've never had the courage to pursue anyone that far or to fall for anyone pursuing me. Not successfully at any rate.”

“Not even me!”

This was slippery terrain. I tried to find an innocuous answer. “Jonathan, I never thought you were interested in me that way. Why didn't you raise the subject before? Why only now?”

“We've just watched
CRAZY
, haven't we?” His eyes brilliantly blue, his face flushed, he looked away. “Your mother's dead, Paul's been found, and you've just celebrated your 27
th
birthday. I know there'll be radical changes in your life.” He stopped talking, looked down at the table, then fixed me with a shy smile. “Frankly, I'm being selfish. Not to put too fine a point on it, I don't want to be left out.”

“Of course, you'll be included. Unless you choose not to. You'll remain my closest friend.”

Jonathan groaned. “Why are you so damn naïve?” He clenched his teeth, hissed. “Remember what Paul said when he saw us sitting on the sofa? . . . For years, Jay — years — I've been hoping that you'd see I desire you as more than a friend . . . and would reciprocate. The nights I've spent fantasizing about the sort of life we could have together!” He shook his head slowly. “I've been in love with you since we met in CEGEP. Remember when I told you Mama thought you were my boyfriend? That wasn't the whole story. I'd told her that I
wanted
you to be my boyfriend, but you weren't taking any of my hints. You understand, Jay? Do you? I want you — more than anything else, more than my PhD even.”

I was stumped. I thought of sex with Jonathan and felt my skin constricting. “Jonathan, when I complete my doctorate I'd like to teach on the African continent, and eventually I would like to resettle in the Caribbean. It's a deep need I feel. I have to experience Africa. It's vital for my psyche. Don't ask me why because I don't know why. Apart from South Africa, there's nowhere in Africa where you and I could be together as a couple. Have you seen or read the news lately about Nigeria's antigay legislation, and about the havoc Anglican bishops from Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania are causing in the Anglican Church worldwide over the gay issue? In the North of Nigeria, we'd certainly face death by stoning. All African countries, except South Africa — all, Jonathan, all — are busy expanding their anti-gay laws. Speaking about the Caribbean — and it's there that I may well have to work, do you know about the Caribbean songs advocating death for gays? When I was home for my mother's funeral, those were the songs playing on the buses and in people's homes. Even the politicians have been using them against their rivals in their campaigns, because, for Africans and West Indians, to be gay is to be subhuman. A minister in the government of St. Vincent, my birthplace, said at a conference recently that he'd like to set all gays on fire. I read in a Vincentian online newspaper that in his final rally just before voting day last year, the prime minister hurled homophobic abuse at the opposition's campaign manager, believed to be gay, and then played T.O.K.'s ‘Burn Chi-Chi Man-dem,' to great applause. You know what West Indians and Africans call homosexuality? The white man's disease. Do you know how many West Indians are murdered each year just because they're gay? Do you know how many of the murderers are arrested and charged? None. The police look the other way. Sometimes they lead the assault. It's ten years in prison, Jonathan — ten years — that's the penalty for committing same-sex acts in all the countries of the English-speaking Caribbean — if the person survives it to trial. And you know what's just as awful: they think their treatment of gays makes them morally superior to Europeans and Canadians, and righteous in God's sight. Their model for dealing with gays is the Sodom and Gomorrah story.”

His knuckles went white from the force with which he held onto the edge of the table.

“The summer just before I left Havre to come here, the townspeople almost killed two gay fellows. They surrounded their house, stood three-four at every window, broke down the door, entered, and boxed, kicked and stomped the fellow and his partner. You know what the police said when they came: ‘Serve the bullers right. The laws must change so we can clean the vermin out.' No charges were ever laid. I heard a woman telling my grandmother that if she'd been there she'd have doused them with kerosene and set them on fire: ‘Set them on fire same way God rain down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah.' A few days later someone burned their house down.”

For a long time Jonathan stared through the glass into the lighted street, his worry lines deep. “And you want to return there!” He shook his head with incredulity. “How could you want to return to such a place?” He pleated his lips and pressed them together, and stared with squinting eyes into mine.

“Because it's my home, Jonathan.”

“Some home.”

“There's another thing, Jonathan. I want to be a father and have a home with my children and their mother.”

His face turned grey. He looked away. I felt guilty lying to him.

Did I take Jonathan for granted? He had latched on to me the way I imagine parents take to their adopted children, and he'd got all the help he needed from his parents.

If I'd known about the sexual attraction, would I have befriended him with the same openness? At the time he disclosed his sexuality, our friendship was three years old. He'd already become like a brother, and his sexuality mattered only insofar as he was or wasn't comfortable with it. Our friendship would have probably ended if he'd told me the full story. I'd have felt that his kindness was motivated by his desire. Took him seven years to tell me that he's been in love with me. And why hadn't I suspected? On the trip back to Montreal that December I'd felt that he was merely sharing his pain. He talked of his classmates' cruelty in high school. They'd replaced his name with
tapette
and
fiffy
. Having seen
CRAZY
, I understand now what he'd borne. He told me he'd chosen to attend an English CEGEP to avoid meeting his high school classmates.

Two summers after that first visit to Lac Sept-Îles, I went back, this time for a week. Then we were both MA students at Concordia. That was when I told him about my own sexual ambivalence, and it was then that Jonathan said that his mother had thought he and I were lovers. He was feeling me out — I see that now — and I chose not to notice.

That week. On the Tuesday we sprayed the exposed parts of their bodies with musk oil to keep away the mosquitoes and black flies, got into the family's powerboat
,
meandered among the numerous Sea-Doos blasting our eardrums and churning the water, traversed the lake, headed under a bridge, and continued upstream into the smaller Lac-aux-chiens, where the only sounds were birdcalls, mostly loons and crows, and the play of the breeze in the birches, pines, and poplars. Once we left the boat Jonathan got very agitated. We were sitting on a flat stone at the water's edge. I had taken off my sneakers and my feet were dangling in the water. Jonathan kept looking at me, his cheeks a deep pink, a guilty look in his eyes, as if he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't have been doing, and I could hear his breathing. Then he got up and walked a few metres away from the water's edge and into the forest; he returned and stood with his back turned to me before walking off again along the shoreline. Eventually I asked him if he was alright. He said yes. God, I'm daft!

I liked being with his family. One New Year's Day I was there and an LP by
Les Bottines souriantes
was on the turntable. I was fascinated; I'd never heard that sort of music before. In the evening, after supper and the washing up of the dishes, Raymond got out his accordion, Cecile two spoons, and Jeanne sang. Jonathan groaned and said to me: “Every year they do this. The neighbours must think we're just a bunch of hicks.” But eventually he joined in, clapping. I clapped along with him. Jeanne, her voice faraway, wistful, sang what I later learned was “
le Rossignol sauvage
.” That year, when my birthday came around, Jonathan gave me a Bottines souriantes LP. I've since replaced it with the CD.

Eventually I took them things Caribbean: Jamaican patties, coconut fudge, guava jelly (from packages Grama sent us); but what they most enjoyed was Anna's black cake.

Anna never met them. Cecile wanted to meet her, but Anna kept putting it off, and eventually the interest waned. Once too I had suggested bringing Paul to Lac-sept-Îles. Paul had complained that I never took him along. Jonathan did not answer.

***

Paul raps and enters.

“Sorry.”

“It's alright.”

He half-sits on the edge of the dressing table across from the bed. “Jonathan's in love with you, Jay.”

“You've said so many times before.”

“Now I'm saying it for real. He used to blush whenever I caught him looking at you. That's why I always teased you about him. Even Ma saw how besotted he was by you. ‘I can't understand why Jay doesn't take you along with him and Jonathan. I just don't understand what those two have in common.' That was a lot of criticism for her to make of her golden boy.”

“And you believed there was something between us?”

“I said it as a putdown. No more than that. I knew there couldn't be anything between you two. You'd have felt you needed Ma's approval first. Sorry. Just kidding.” He claps his thighs and guffaws and then his face gets serious. “You're her firstborn. You took up all the space in Ma's heart, Jay. None left for me. What can I say?” He shrugs his shoulders.

“Paul, don't say that. Your rejection of Ma drove her into a depression.”

“Her guilt you mean. You loved her too much to see her faults. I was angry with her. I had to let her know. I'm not saying she wasn't dutiful and all that, but I felt like a foster child.”

“You never gave her much of a chance to be affectionate to you. I remember a caring mother, who left my father after he gave her one beating too many.” I tell him about Anna before she left our father.

“Why you never told me this before.”

“You never allowed me to.”

“You didn't try hard enough.”

I sigh in frustration.

“You and she bonded. Deep. Wow. After coming such a long way, like why did Ma like go back to those beliefs?” He becomes reflective, nods a couple of times. “I understand. I can see why she wouldn't want to see the cruelty you suffered begin all over again with me. I could never say she was a cruel woman. In my mind I see her comforting you after Daddy flogged you. That sort of thing creates strong attachments and powerful painful memories. I remember all the guys who were cruel to me in school; my skin gets cold when I think about it. I don't forgive easily. People hurt me, and I stay hurt and become their enemy.”