Anne Enright - The Green Road

‘A walk?’

‘Just in the woods.’

‘Right.’

They went down to the harbour for breakfast, and then walked far up the beach to find a quiet spot. Dan undressed under a little towel, he wriggled into his swimming trunks before he let the towel fall, and Billy thought this was the sweetest thing he had seen in a very long time. It was already hot. The sea was big and languid, dropping slow waves on the sand. They waded right in. Billy splashed about a bit and ran back up to the bags while Dan floated on the swell, watching his toes. Then he reached over into a lazy crawl. A bunch of guys ran out of a beachfront property, shedding flip-flops and shorts and they ploughed into the water, all brown backs and white glutes. Billy could feel their skinny-dipping pleasure as the sea swirled higher, and two of them turned to kiss in the waves. He watched them for a while, then squinted after Dan who was quite far out now, his silhouette made uncertain by sunlight on the water.

Minutes passed. Dan was so small in the distance that Billy could not tell if he was heading out or coming home. He sat there, suncream in hand, waiting for Dan to turn back in and, after a long while, it seemed that he had — definitely, Billy thought — Dan was definitely closer now. The figure switched from overarm to breaststroke; Billy could make out his pale features and his water-darkened hair. It was Dan, of course it was. He was right there, just beyond the breaking waves. He dived under, with a curving bob and scissor kick of his long white shins, then surfaced and lay on his back for a while. Each swell that lifted him set him down closer to shore until he turned to catch a breaking wave, scrabbling as he rode the surf, with his mouth pulled down. He ended up on his hands and knees on the sand and he considered this for a moment, before standing heavily to his full height and walking on to dry land.

Billy shifted on the stripy towel, trying to look indifferent.

‘What took you so long?’

Dan, when he sat down beside him, was wet, cold and very solid.

‘I was swimming home.’

‘Oh my.’

‘Just over there — see? Three thousand miles thattaway, that’s where I am from.’

‘You miss it,’ said Billy.

‘Fuck no.’

Dan eased his goose-bumped legs straight, then lay down carefully in the sun. His muscles jolted and relaxed and after a while he was still. The wind was warm. The waves arrived one by one on the shore. Dan picked himself up a little and set his heavy, wet head on Billy’s chest. Then he moved down to settle his ear in the soft arch beneath Billy’s ribs.

Billy lay there looking up at the blue of July. He wondered if he should put a hand on Dan’s drying hair and then decided against it. For some reason, he remembered a boy at high school — not good looking as Dan was good looking — a boy called Carl Medson.

‘I knew this guy once,’ he said. ‘Like when I was sixteen.’

‘And?’

Carl Medson’s sister was slick with lip gloss and his mother flirted with Billy in a truly disturbing manner. She was kind of mad. There was a paper seat on the toilet, and when you opened the refrigerator, everything in there was covered in Saran Wrap, even the cartons and jars. Carl Medson moped after Billy for, like, a year though they never did anything except sprawl around in his bedroom listening to music, until Billy couldn’t take the suspense any longer. One day he let his hand drift — joke! — on to Carl’s package and the next thing you know — pause, move, pause again — he had Carl Medson out of there and in his hand. And Carl has one of those dicks where the foreskin doesn’t roll back — Billy’s never seen it before — a little tight ring, like the mouth of a string bag, and tucked in, down there, a sad, locked-in dick. You know? Let me out!! Like you are supposed to stretch it, as a kid, but he had never touched himself, not ever. And Carl just turns away from him, and zips up, and they don’t really hang out after that. Married now, and moved to Phoenix.

‘So he must have got that much sorted out.’

‘Huh,’ said Dan.

A little bit later, Dan said, ‘I am going to get married,’ and he sat up, alert to the sea.

‘Oh?’ said Billy.

‘I am.’ Dan kicked the end of the towel and pulled it square on the sand.

‘Anyone in mind?’

‘Yep.’

He studied the horizon. ‘I love her,’ he said. ‘And I love the look of her and the shape of her, and I love the way her body is, and I just think it feels right. All of that. You know?’

‘Great.’

‘We have sex,’ said Dan.

‘I know,’ said Billy, who had a queue of sad bastard married men and did not need another one, though this, clearly, was what had washed up, one more time, at his door.

They went back to have lunch at the house, with the other housemates fresh off the ferry, and the friend-of-a-friend was just great; very upfront with them both about the bill. Dan did not say, ‘Oh, I don’t have to pay because I am not actually gay, you know.’ In fact, now they were agreed on the subject of his essential and future straightness, Dan chatted, drank wine and trailed after Billy to their room, where he spent a salty, sunny few hours on the bed with him, and in the shower, and in the chair, followed by a little, last eking out against the cedar-scented wall. He kissed Billy as though he loved him, all afternoon.

Dinner was a giddy occasion, with a couple of high performance housemates and their quiet host, who had carried steak and salad all the way from Chelsea. After which, they all washed and changed, downed a ritual martini in the living room and sailed off down the boardwalk. It was a big party weekend on Fire Island and temptation was everywhere but Billy and Dan danced only with each other; they laughed and even smooched a bit out there on the floor, and when Billy went off to queue for the toilet he came back with a couple of pills. He took one and let Dan lick out the other from the crease of his palm.

Bliss.

We can assume, of course, that Dan went back to his melancholy little apartment and his brave wife-to-be, and held all the beautiful men of Fire Island in great contempt for being helpless to their faggotry when his was so clearly under control. But tripping on Ecstasy under a July moon, he was the happiest queer in New York State. And of course we all knew he wasn’t really queer, he was just queer for Billy, because who wouldn’t be? It wasn’t like he wanted to go down on — I don’t know — Gore Vidal. Dan loved Billy because it was impossible not to love Billy, and so we sang that same old sad song, as they touched each other in the trees’ moon shadow; as they paused in the ineluctable presence of the other, and inhaled.

We met the brave little wife-to-be later, when she came back from Boston, where she had been doing some kind of MFA. She was nice. Skinny, as they often are. Slightly maverick and intense and above all ethical. She had long hair, a lovely accent, and she was writing a book, of course, about — we could never remember what the book was about — something very Irish. As beards went, she was a classic beard. A woman of rare quality — because it takes a quality woman to keep a guy like Dan straight — throwing her heart away.

Or not.

Who is to judge, meine Damen und Herrrren? At least she had a heart to throw.

This was Dan’s fifth year in New York City — he had only intended staying for one. He arrived in the summer of 1986, and moved in with Isabelle, who had been there since May. A friend got him some evening shifts in a bar over on Avenue A and he spent the days stacking and retrieving shoeboxes in a basement on Fifth. After a few months down in the dark, they allowed him up on to the shop floor and Dan pretended to be good at selling shoes in order to cover the fact that he was really very good at selling shoes. He was a beautiful young man with a cute accent and a terrific eye. By Christmastime, he was dashing over to photo shoots with emergency Manolos, he was bringing boxes to clients in their homes. Some of these clients tried to sleep with him. All of them were rich, and most of them were men.