Michael Cunningham - A Home at the End of the World

“You were there,” he said in a tone of hushed amazement. “You went.”

“And my life has been one disappointment after another ever since. Bobby, people make way too much of it. It was a concert. It was dirty and crowded. I left before it was half over, and I married a perfect asshole three months later.”

I finished brushing green polish onto my big toe. Then I looked over at Bobby, and saw the change. His eyes were bright and a little damp. He sat with his neck craned forward avidly, watching me.

I thought I recognized the expression. It was the way men had sometimes looked at me when I was younger; when I was pretty and exotic instead of just colorful. It was simple, straightforward desire. Right there, on the face of a man not yet thirty.

We didn’t sleep together that night. It took us another week. But from that night on, the possibility of sex edged its way onto relations that had been merely cordial and benign. We’d been friends and now we were something else. We bristled a little, grew shyer together. When we ran out of things to say, we seemed to notice the silence.

Still, he wouldn’t have initiated anything. He was too uncertain. He was too accustomed to our pattern of sister-instructing-younger-brother. I had never met anyone so unmarked by the world. Men in the Middle Ages might have been like this: intricately considerate, terrified of touching a woman’s sleeve. If it was going to happen, I’d have to take charge of it myself.

I did it on a Tuesday night. I hadn’t timed it to my cycle. I wasn’t as calculating as that. I liked Bobby too much. My attraction to his person was easier to act on than my more complicated interest in his genes. That, I figured, could come later.

We’d been to see Providence at the St. Marks, which nearly changed my mind about the whole enterprise. Bobby had talked during the movie. He’d asked me if the wolfman was real. He’d wanted to know if Elaine Stritch was Dirk Bogarde’s mother or his girlfriend.

I answered his questions, thinking, Oh, Jonathan. Why aren’t you straight?

But once we were outside again, walking home, I regained my interest. Bobby was half child, an innocent. He couldn’t really be blamed for what he lacked. New York presented no shortage of people to go to movies with. Other qualities were harder to find.

When we got home I put an old Stones tape on. I lit up a joint, and asked Bobby if he’d care to dance. Jonathan was out with his boyfriend that night.

“Dance?” Bobby said. I passed him the joint. He toked on it, standing in the middle of the living room in jeans and a black T-shirt and a cowboy belt with a steer-head buckle. This was a difficult seduction to accomplish straight-faced. It was hard not to feel like a floozy, in eyeliner and a girdle, playing a scratchy record to try and coax a farm boy out of his overalls.

“Bobby,” I said, “I’m going to ask you a direct question. Do you mind?”

“No. I don’t mind.” He passed the joint back to me.

“Answer truthfully, now. What do you like about me?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t make me repeat the question. It’s too embarrassing.”

“What do I like about you?”

“Are you, well, interested in me?”

“Um, sure. Sure I am.” I returned the joint and he took a long, deep hit.

“Bobby, have you ever slept with a woman?”

“Oh. Well, no. Actually, I haven’t.”

“Do you ever think you might like to?”

He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. The stones sang “Ruby Tuesday.” I said, “Come here. Put that marijuana down now and just dance with me a little, all right?”

Obediently, he took one more hit and put the joint in an ashtray. I opened my arms to him. He walked in. I tried not to feel like a spider; a ravenous old creature who preys on the reluctant flesh of not-quite-bright young men. I skated over the feeling as best I could.

We swayed in a loose circle. He was a fine dancer, which helped. He wasn’t awkward or uncertain; his body didn’t appeal to mine to show him the rhythm or the next move. Dancing, a little stoned, in one another’s arms, we were neither relaxed nor excited. As we danced we could have been a brother and sister practicing for romances of the future but also attracted to one another, attracted and guilt-ridden and slightly mournful over the hopelessness of this ordinary but charged and subtly dangerous contact. Brother and sister, practicing.

He smelled clean and woody, like fresh pencil shavings. His back was solid as an opera singer’s. He said, “When you went to the concert, did you stay long enough to see Hendrix?”

“Hmm?”

“At Woodstock. Did you see Jimi Hendrix?”

“Sure I saw Jimi. We got to be very good friends. You come here with me, now. I can tell there’s not going to be any smooth or sophisticated way to do this.”

I stopped dancing and led him to my bedroom. He didn’t quite participate but didn’t resist either. I left the light off. I closed the door and said, “Are you nervous?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t be. This is just for fun. This is just because I like you. There’s nothing in this world for you to be nervous about.” I unbuttoned his shirt, and helped him slide it off his shoulders. His shoulders were damp and ticklish with hair.

“I’m not, you know, in very good shape,” he said, though by then I’d seen his bare chest a hundred times.

“I think you’re lovely,” I said. I took off my blouse and dropped it on the floor. I never wore a bra. I put his hand on my left breast.

“These are below par, to tell you the truth,” I said. “You’ll be with other women who have a lot more going on here.”

“I don’t think about other women,” he said.

“You’re too much, you know that?”

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing. Not a thing. Come on now, get undressed. Old Clare’s going to show you a few tricks.”

We took the rest of our clothes off quickly, as if the real tenants might get home at any moment and find us using their apartment. When we were naked I took him in my arms again and kissed him, with more concern than passion. His breath was hot and a little strong but not foul. It was carnivore’s breath.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “This is the most natural thing in the world. You might even like it.”

“I do like it,” he said. “I think I do.”

I guided him to the bed, and had him lie down. I’d never before been so completely in charge. If this was part of the aging process, I didn’t mind it. There was something agreeably frightening about running a fuck.

Bobby lay naked across my bed. His cock slumped softly against his thigh—a purplish one, circumcised, large but not enormous. He had a surprisingly sparse little muddle of pubic hair. I could hear the sound of his breathing.

“Everything’s okay, sweetheart,” I said. “Just relax, I’ll take care of everything.”

I knelt on the mattress beside him, and massaged his chest and belly. He looked up at me uncertainly. “Shh,” I said. “Don’t do anything, don’t think about anything. Your big sister’s gonna manage fine, just close your eyes.”

He closed his eyes. I bent over and flicked at his nipples with my tongue. I’d never done anything like this before. He was so big and inert. My sexual career had generally involved forceful people who wanted me, who went after me with obscure imperatives of their own. I did what I could to feign an older woman’s serene competence. As subtly as possible, I checked his cock for signs of arousal.

“Clare,” he said. “Clare, I don’t know if—”

“Shh. Hush. I’ll tell you when it’s time to speak.”

I kissed my way down his stomach, took his limp cock in my hand. It was like a rubber toy. I had to stay mindful of its sensitive humanness. I put it in my mouth and worked it around slowly, lapping the underside with my tongue. I took plenty of time. I tickled and stroked with my fingertips, ran my tongue around his scrotum, and nipped gently at his thighs. I forced myself not to hurry. Other men had had wishes, ways they liked things done. Helene had instructed me on every move. No one had ever abandoned himself to my care like this before. I mouthed his cock and thought of myself as a whore in a movie. A smart triumphant whore who always puts on a good show. I pulled at his pubic hair with my teeth, licked the violet tip of his cock. And finally it began to stiffen.