What Binds Us (12 page)

At the end of August Matthew returned to Bennington with the intention of transferring to Penn in the spring of 1981. If he took extra courses and attended summer school, we could graduate together.

He wouldn’t let me go to the airport with him. “If I have to look back and see you, standing alone, I’ll never be able to get on that plane,” he explained.

I acquiesced to his wishes and walked him downstairs to his cab. He kissed me before he got in. The driver looked at us startled, then quickly looked away. “I’ll call you, when I get in.”

He called from the airport. “I forgot to ask you,” he started. “This—you and me, I mean—it’s forever, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Matthew. It had better be.”

“That’s what I thought. I just wanted to be sure.”

“Be sure.”

“Okay…listen, they just announced my flight. I’ll call you tonight.”

***

He flew down to visit me at school most weekends, taking a cab from the airport, or I’d pick him up in the Goldenhawk, which Dondi had left in my care.

One weekend the sound of alarms and the smell of smoke woke us. The sound of screaming coeds added to the general din, the shrill hysteria of panic.
Fire. Fire. Fire.
The sound of pounding fists on the wooden door. Wisps of smoke snaking under the door, forming a low-lying cloud of toxicity. He and I scrambled for clothes in the half-dark, feet and hands clumsy with fright. Then we were pounding down the metal fire stairs, Matthew behind me, pushing me forward through the smoke and panic.
Go. Go
.

Outside, Matthew caught my hand and his breath in the same moment. The air was clear, the wind relentless. The placement of three high-rises at the west end of campus had created a wind tunnel through which passed gusting winds strong enough to knock someone over—if not a man, then certainly a child. It had blown off-course its fair share of small dogs. Though we stood under the portico, leaning against a massive poured concrete column, we couldn’t escape the wind. Wearing only a tee shirt and a pair of his jeans, I started to tremble.

Matthew slipped off his jacket and handed it to me. He pulled me in front of him. I leaned against him. My back was to him as we stared at the scene of confusion before us. He shoved his hands into the front pockets of my jeans and leaned his chin in the hollow between my neck and shoulder. His warm breath tickled my neck. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Everyone is staring at us.”

I opened my eyes and confronted several dozen pairs of eyes: curious, hostile, shocked, indifferent. Someone winked. In the crowd my RA looked dazed. His eyes jerked around in his head, but he couldn’t keep himself from looking at us.

I felt Matthew tense.

“Relax,” I cautioned him. “They can’t hurt us.”

“You know we have to move,” Matthew said to me the next morning.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to live in a ghetto.”

“This is not a ghetto. It’s a college dormitory. And a perfectly nice one at that. The neighborhood isn’t that bad either. A lot of people affiliated with the university live around here—students and faculty.” I was, I knew, being a little too defensive.

“I don’t mean ghetto in that way,” he explained. “I mean in the sense that there are too many like people gathered here. Ghetto is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with economics. There are gay ghettos and Jewish ghettos. This is an academic ghetto. I need diversity,” he said. “You saw the way people reacted last night. All I was doing was holding the man I love. I don’t ever want to feel like that again.”

“You know what? You remind me of your father.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, Mr. Lawrence.”

“You should.”

He engaged a realtor and the following weekend, we began looking at properties. We finally settled on a vast high-rise apartment on Rittenhouse Square. The realtor, a transplanted Southerner who invited us to a breakfast of grits and fried fish, which we declined, asked who our mortgagor would be.

“No mortgage,” Matthew said casually, inspecting the crown molding. “We’re paying cash.”

Lawyers were consulted, a sheaf of papers appeared out of elephant-hide briefcases and a certified check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars changed hands.

In December Dondi called me from London. “John Lennon is dead,” he said. “Imagine” was playing very loud in the background. “He was shot outside the Dakota by a deranged fan.”

I remembered the pilgrimage we’d made to the Dakota freshman year.

Matthew and I spent Christmas—our first Christmas as a couple— in Willingboro with my parents. When we got there, my father was laying tinsel on the branches of a fat Blue Spruce, one strand at a time. He always put the tinsel on the tree this way. After Three Kings, the tree would go out in the trash, but not until he had removed the tinsel, one strand at a time, and placed it back in its package. There was comfort in his predictability.

My mother came out of the kitchen, pulling off a pair of Playtex gloves. “Merry Christmas, boys. I’m sorry.
Men
. You’re men now.” She kissed us each. “Go and put your things in your room.”

When I opened the door to my room I stopped in my tracks, causing Matthew, who was right behind me, to bump into me.

“What?” he asked, looking over my shoulder.

My parents had exchanged the twin beds from my childhood for a single double bed.

“Well,” Matthew said, pushing me into the room, “it looks like I’m really a part of the family.”

***

Matthew transferred to Penn and in January of 1981 we moved into our new apartment. “We need furniture,” Matthew said, looking around the vast empty space on New Year’s Day.

That weekend we visited the antiques stores on Pine Street, east of Broad. In the first shop we went into we fell in love with an ornate mahogany bed carved with cavorting angels and copulating cherubs. While Matthew wrote out the check, I thought of the occasional Saturdays, only a few years before, when my mother and I had wandered down the same street, going into the same stores. We had been awed by the rarefied dusty interiors, where lot numbers took the place of prices, although the occasional staggering price tag would appear, making my mother gasp. She would grab my hand and pull me out of the store after her as if even looking was too expensive.

We went to an auction house on Walnut Street and visited art galleries. Matthew’s taste was fine and sure. He made decisions quickly but was never afraid to change his mind. I was shocked to discover that he was a perfectionist; he had the dining room painted five times in seven days. Before midterms he had managed to make a home for us.

Delaying graduation by a year gave us both a chance to catch up academically. We spent a fair amount of time with my parents so they could get to know Matthew, could get to know
us
as a couple.

***

Eventually, when graduation approached, the subject of work came up in the form of finding gainful employment for me. Matthew dismissed the whole issue casually. “Why do you want to work?”

“I have to support myself, don’t I?”

“Don’t be asinine,” he said. “I can support us both. You
know
that. Look,” he continued trying to dissuade me. “You want to write, right? What does a writer need?” He answered his own question. “A writer needs experience and the time to write.”

“I still can’t expect you to support me.”

“If you were a woman—”

“Wait! Why do I get to be the woman?”

“You know why.” He grinned lasciviously. “But, okay. For argument’s sake: if
one
of us was a woman, what would we do?”

“Get married?” It had not yet occurred to either of us that we could, in fact, do just that, legality and the holy Catholic Church be damned.

“Exactly. We would get married. You would become my responsibility, and no one would bat an eye at my supporting you.”

“So?”

“So, let’s pretend we’re married.”

***

Dondi returned from Europe in April 1982 in time for our graduation in May. He’d been gone nearly two years. “Darlings,” he said when we picked him up from the airport, “I am so tired. I have been everywhere. Done everything. Slept with everyone. Someone told me once that one should move to San Francisco only after one has had every man on the East Coast. Where, I wonder, does one move after one has slept with every man on the
continent
?”

“You look like shit,” Matthew said, hugging him.

I concurred. “If the bags under your eyes said Gucci, you’d be worth millions.”

“Darling, I
am
worth millions.”

“Oh. Well then, those bags under your eyes are a vulgar display of your wealth.”

“Fuck you both.”

Two weeks later Dondi fell suddenly and mysteriously ill. He complained of nausea and chills. His temperature soared so suddenly and so steeply one night that Matthew and I, panicked, wrapped him in a blanket and rushed him to the emergency room. By the time we arrived he was covered with an angry rash from neck to ankles. He was admitted to the hospital. Nine days later, the fever and rash vanished as mysteriously as they’d appeared. His doctor was as baffled as we were.

We chalked the illness up to some sort of allergic reaction and forgot about it. He sat proud beside my parents as Matthew and I marched down the aisle of the Civic Center to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance.”

1985. It was the age of AIDS.

In July Rock Hudson issued a press releasing admitting he had AIDS, giving a very public face to that which has been hidden, whispered about but seldom addressed in the mainstream press. President Ronald Reagan declared AIDS “a top priority.” A story about the disease—the first—appeared on the cover of
Time
magazine.

It was hard to believe that just three years earlier, Larry Speakes, Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, when asked if the president or anyone in the White House knew anything about AIDS had replied, “No, I don’t think so.”

Sex was fraught with danger. Deadly disease crouched like a mugger in back alleys and shadowed valleys, ready to pounce, steal your life, poisoning your blood and the blood of those who loved you.

The nation for which Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” had been a dance anthem was now a dying nation.

The reign of the Queen was over; the Snap Divas had folded their hands and gone quietly to the gym, replacing gestures with muscle.

My hair was shorter, the red darkening to brown. Matthew, too, had matured. He’d grown his hair long and it fell to his shoulders in protein-enriched profusion. When he laughed now, the skin around his eyes crinkled.

Dondi seemed increasingly anachronistic with his theatrics and exaggerated flamboyance.

***

I was thinking about all of this when the phone rang. By rights I shouldn’t have answered. I was supposed to be writing, but the words just wouldn’t link up, the plot had gotten lost sometime before, the characters spitting out wooden dialogue like buckshot. I was depressed. I was truly free. I had no classes to attend, no job. All I had to do was
write
. And I couldn’t even do that. I stared at the damnable white paper in my typewriter. It stared back.

So when the phone rang I snatched it like a drowning man, a life preserver. “Hello,” I said, already relieved to have left my characters to cast adrift, the lousy plot to sink like a stone.

“Darling,” Dondi cried breathlessly, “I’ve found him!”

“How nice for you,” I purred, easily matching his tone. “I didn’t know anyone was missing.”

“Well, I didn’t either. That is until I met Leonardo—and
then
I realized that heaven must be missing an angel.”

“Darling, you sound like a bad musical. Who is Leonardo?”

“If you’ll stop interrupting I’ll tell you.” Satisfied with my chastised silence, he continued. “I was out last night—this morning, actually—around two. I was simply ambling up the street. The bars in this city are so
tired
. I was fortuitously alone when I noticed the beauty. Ass for
days
. So naturally, I followed him. He was window shopping—”

“What kind of a person window-shops at two in the morning?”

“Will you shut up? Anyway, I caught up with him in front of Bonwit’s window and we talked. I took him out for coffee.”

“And you took him home. Period. Paragraph. End of another romantic interlude.”

“No, I did not take him home. I walked him back to his place and left him at his door.”

“Well, that’s a first.”

“Please, don’t be bitchy. Anyway, it’s not that I didn’t
want
to take him home and fuck him silly.”

“Ah! Our Dondi returns.”

Silence.

“So why didn’t you take him home?”

“I wasn’t sure he would go.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” he blurted, “I’m not sure he’s gay.”

“You don’t think he’s gay? What kind of a straight man would let
you
pick him up at two o’clock in the morning and buy him coffee?”

“T. Please.”

“Sorry. Did you tell him
you
were gay?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, he asked if I was married and did I have any kids. I said no on both counts, as I was gay and that tended to preclude both wife and children. ‘Hell,’ I told him, ‘I don’t even have a pet.’ Then I took the plunge. ‘What about you?’ I asked. He said, ‘No, I don’t have any pets either.’”

I laughed. “Perhaps you’re being too subtle,” I said. “How unlike you.”

“What should I have said? ‘I think you’re very handsome. Have you considered modeling? Anal sex?’”

“Dondi!”

“Well, I have to do something. I’ve invited him for drinks tonight.”

“And he’s coming? Unchaperoned, I presume?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, no. I told him you and Matthew would be here.”

“Dondi! You didn’t!”

“I did. You
will
come, won’t you?”

“I don’t know. You know how your brother is when it comes to your boyfriends.”

“Please.”

***

“Leonardo,” Dondi intoned with almost absurd formality, “This is my brother, Matthew, and my best friend—his lover—Thomas-Edward Lawrence. Matthew, T, this is Leonardo Winklevoss.”

He was slender, finely made with a small waist and broad shoulders. He wore his glossy black hair in a severe ponytail, which showed his high sloping cheekbones and finely drawn mouth to great advantage. Olive-skinned, he favored black; he was as emphatic as an exclamation point. Unable to pass for white, he claimed Indian blood; if he couldn’t be mainstream, he would be exotic.

He had thought to model for a while but discovered he did not possess the energy to sustain a constantly changing look. Often during a photo shoot, he would forget what image he was to project, frequently he was unable to remember the product he’d been hired to sell, and as a result had once inadvertently insulted the designer of the very clothes he’d been hired to model. Sometimes he would wake up unsure of who, exactly, he was. Still, he was rightly proud of himself, for he had come out of nowhere and, trading on his looks and a certain implied promise, had gotten to here.

All of this he confided to me in the first fifteen minutes of our acquaintance while Matthew and Dondi were in the kitchen mixing cocktails. He informed me he was now considering a career in music, although he wasn’t particularly musically inclined, didn’t play an instrument and had no vocal abilities outside of speech. He did, however, “have a look.”

“What do you do?” he asked me.

“I write.”

“Oh, really,” he enthused. “I simply adore creative people. They’re so rare. You have no idea how many people can’t even put together an outfit.”

Matthew and Dondi appeared with our drinks just then, precluding the need for a response. Matthew handed me a martini, kept a beer in the bottle for himself and sat on the floor in front of me. I hooked my legs over his shoulders and his free hand closed around my ankle.

Dondi offered a glass to Leonardo and sat on the sofa next to him, chastely distant. He brought a tumbler of green liquid to his lips.

“What is that you’re drinking?” Leonardo asked.

“A Universe?it’s vodka, Midori and pineapple juice. Would you like to try one?”

“No! Thank you. It looks like Scope.”

“Darling,” Dondi drawled in his best imitation of himself, “I can assure you I am not in the habit of swilling mouthwash.”

“When I was in high school, I knew a bunch of kids who used to have Scope parties.”

“What’s a Scope party?”

“Well…it’s like any party, only instead of liquor you drink a whole lot of Scope. It’s cheaper and supposed to get you high.”

“
Where
did you grow up?” Matthew asked, horrified.

“Palm Beach. My mother lives in a small town in the Arizona desert now.”

***

We were getting ready for bed—that was our usual time to talk, to share the details of our day, to bring forth minor annoyances. I was in the bathroom, performing my pre-bed toilette.

Matthew was sprawled on the bed, partially naked, unable to decide whether or not he should shower before turning in. “
Where
did Dondi find that one?”

“I told you,” I shouted over running water, “in Bonwit Teller’s window.”

“You mean, he was a mannequin?”

“Matthew.”

“Do you think he’s gay?”

“Good God, yes! He was wearing Romeo Gigli!”

“I’m afraid I don’t like him very much.”

“I gathered.”

“He’s so…so…so…”

“Affected?”

“No. Dondi is affected—”

“That’s a great part of his charm.”

“True. But Leonardo—God, that name! Leonardo Winklevoss. Do you suppose he made it up?”

“I’ve no doubt.” I had by now, joined him on the bed. “I think he made
himself
up.”

“He’s so…”

“Pretentious?”

He laughed. “Well, yes. He is rather, isn’t he?”

“Please! He asked me who my favorite designer was.”

Matthew propped himself up on an elbow; my complete lack of fashion sense is legendary. If Matthew didn’t buy my clothes, I would probably wander about in mismatched rags.

“I told him Levi-Strauss.”

“What’d he say to that?”

“He said, ‘Oh, is he one of the new German designers?’ Like, who hasn’t heard of Levi’s?”

“He’s so
unnatural.
I don’t see how that ponytail doesn’t give him a headache.”

“Actually, it does.”

“Then why does he wear it?”

“Because he says it makes him look conservative. He thinks people want him to be more reserved.”

“I’m afraid I don’t like him very much.”

“You already said that.”

“You, however,” he accused, leaning over my prone body, “seemed fascinated.”

I leaned up and stole a kiss. “I was not fascinated,” I said airily. “I was merely trying to hold up my end of the conversation, since you were doing your impression of a deaf-mute and your brother was as tongue-tied as a virgin schoolboy and could only stare all agog.”

“Not true,” Matthew contradicted. “He drooled occasionally. And you were, too, fascinated.”

“I was not! I was just—”

“You were playing with him like a cat plays with a ball of string.”

“Darling…may I have a present?”

“What would you like? Texas?”

“No, I want everyone to shut up. Just shut up about Eve.”

He leaned down and kissed me.

Neither of us took a shower that night.