Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

Other times, he would feel not curiosity, but awe: he was so much more damaged than Willem had comprehended. How could I have not known this? he would ask himself. How could I not have seen this?

And then there was the matter of sex. He knew Andy had warned him about sex, but Jude’s fear of and antipathy toward it disturbed and occasionally frightened him. One night toward the end of November, after they’d been together six months, he had reached his hands down Jude’s underwear and Jude had made a strange, strangled noise, the kind of noise an animal makes when it’s being caught in another animal’s jaws, and had jerked himself away with such violence that he had cracked his head against his nightstand. “I’m sorry,” they had apologized to each other, “I’m sorry.” And that was the first moment that Willem, too, had felt a certain fear. All along he had assumed that Jude was shy, profoundly so, but that eventually, he would abandon some of his self-consciousness, that he would feel comfortable enough to have sex. But in that moment, he realized that what he had thought was a reluctance to have sex was actually a terror of it: that Jude would perhaps never be comfortable, that if and when they did eventually have sex, it would be because Jude decided he had to or Willem decided he had to force him. Neither option appealed to him. People had always given themselves to him; he had never had to wait, never had to try to convince someone that he wasn’t dangerous, that he wasn’t going to hurt them. What am I going to do? he asked himself. He wasn’t smart enough to figure this out on his own — and yet there was no one else he could ask. And then there was the fact that with every week, his desire grew sharper and less ignorable, his determination greater. It had been a long time since he had wanted to have sex with anyone so keenly, and the fact that it was someone he loved made the waiting both more unbearable and more absurd.

As Jude slept that night, he watched him. Maybe I made a mistake, he thought.

Aloud, he said, “I didn’t know it was going to be this complicated.” Next to him, Jude breathed, ignorant of Willem’s treachery.

And then the morning arrived and he was reminded why he had decided to pursue this relationship to begin with, his own naïveté and arrogance aside. It was early, but he had woken anyway, and he watched as, through the half-open closet door, Jude got dressed. This had been a recent development, and Willem knew how difficult it was for him. He saw how hard Jude tried; he saw how everything he and everyone he knew took for granted — getting dressed in front of someone; getting undressed in front of someone — were things Jude had to practice again and again: he saw how determined he was, he saw how brave he was being. And this reminded him that he, too, had to keep trying. Both of them were uncertain; both of them were trying as much as they could; both of them would doubt themselves, would progress and recede. But they would both keep trying, because they trusted the other, and because the other person was the only other person who would ever be worth such hardships, such difficulties, such insecurities and exposure.

When he opened his eyes again, Jude was sitting on the edge of the bed and smiling at him, and he was filled with affection for him: for how beautiful he was, for how dear he was, for how easy it was to love him. “Don’t go,” he said.

“I have to,” Jude said.

“Five minutes,” he said.

“Five,” Jude said, and slid beneath the covers, and Willem wrapped his arms around him, careful not to wrinkle his suit, and closed his eyes. And this too he loved: he loved knowing that in those moments, he was making Jude happy, loved knowing that Jude wanted affection and that he was the person who was allowed to provide it. Was this arrogance? Was this pride? Was this self-congratulation? He didn’t think so; he didn’t care. That night, he told Jude that he thought they should tell Harold and Julia that they were together when they went up for Thanksgiving that week. “Are you sure, Willem?” Jude had asked him, looking worried, and he knew that Jude was really asking if he was sure about the relationship itself: he was always holding the door open for him, letting him know he could leave. “I want you to really think about this, especially before we tell them.” He didn’t need to say it, but Willem knew, once again, what the consequences would be if they told Harold and Julia and, later, he changed his mind: they would forgive him, but things would never be the same. They would always, always pick Jude over him. He knew this: it was the way it should be.

“I’m positive,” he’d said, and so they had.

He thought of this conversation as he poured Kit a glass of water and carried the plate of sandwiches to the table. “What is this?” Kit asked, looking suspiciously at the sandwiches.

“Grilled peasant bread with Vermont cheddar and figs,” he said. “And escarole salad with pears and jamón.”

Kit sighed. “You know I’m trying not to eat bread, Willem,” he said, although he didn’t know. Kit bit into a sandwich. “Good,” he said, reluctantly. “Okay,” he continued, putting it down, “tell me.”

And so he did, and added that while he wasn’t planning on announcing the relationship, he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise about it, either, and Kit groaned. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck. I thought it might be this. I don’t know why, I just did. Fuck, Willem.” He put his forehead down on the table. “I need a minute,” Kit said to the table. “Have you told Emil?”

“Yeah,” he said. Emil was Willem’s manager. Kit and Emil worked with each other best when they were united against Willem. When they agreed, they liked each other. When they didn’t, they didn’t.

“And what did he say?”

“He said, ‘God, Willem, I’m so happy that you’ve finally committed to someone you truly love and feel comfortable around, and I couldn’t be happier for you as your friend and longtime supporter.’ ” (What Emil had actually said was, “Christ, Willem. Are you sure ? Did you talk to Kit yet? What did he say?”)

Kit lifted his head and glared at him (he didn’t have much of a sense of humor). “Willem, I am happy for you,” he said. “I care about you. But have you thought about what’s going to happen to your career? Have you thought about how you’re going to be typecast? You don’t know what it’s like being a gay actor in this business.”

“I don’t really think of myself as gay, though,” he began, and Kit rolled his eyes. “Don’t be so naïve, Willem,” he said. “Once you’ve touched a dick, you’re gay.”

“Said with subtlety and grace, as always.”

“Whatever, Willem; you can’t afford to be cavalier about this.”

“I’m not, Kit,” he said. “But I’m not a leading man.”

“You keep saying that! But you are, whether you like it or not. You’re just acting like your career is going to keep going on the same trajectory it’s been on — do you not remember what happened to Carl?” Carl was a client of a colleague of Kit’s, and one of the biggest movie stars of the previous decade. Then he had been forced out of the closet, and his career had faded. Ironically, it was Carl’s obsolescence, his sudden unpopularity, that had encouraged the rise of Willem’s own career — at least two roles that Willem had gotten were ones that would once have gone, reflexively, to Carl. “Now, look: you’re far more talented than Carl, and more diversified as well. And it’s a different climate now than when Carl came out — domestically, at least. But I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t tell you to prepare for a certain chill. You’re private as it is: Can’t you just keep this under wraps?”