Page 72 of Like a Love Story
“I don’t know,” Stephen says, uncomfortable. He doesn’t talk about Judy to me.
“Okay,” I say. “Well, tell her that I still miss her.”
“I have,” Stephen says. “She will come around, you know. I just don’t know when. And I hope it’s before...” He takes a breath. “Let’s talk about something else. How are you and Reza doing? Did my sex tutorial help?”
I shake my head. “He’s too scared to do anything but kiss. And even that scares him sometimes. He bit his lip and he wouldn’t kiss me until it healed. Which was, like,three days. I couldn’t kiss him for three days. It was like torture.”
“His paranoia is normal,” Stephen says. “A lot of guys are scared. And remember that he just came out. He hasn’t had all the time you’ve had to accept all this.”
“But isn’t he supposed to wanna rip my clothes off? Isn’t he supposed to, you know, find me irresistible?”
“Oh, Art,” Stephen says, smiling. “I’m sure he does find you irresistible.”
“If his fear lets him resist me, then obviously I’m resistible,” I grumble.
I look ahead at Reza walking with Jimmy, arm in arm. He’s supposed to be mine, and yet he won’t give himself to me. Not fully.
“Sometimes I wonder whether I would choose to be from your generation or mine,” Stephen says thoughtfully. “I’d be alive if I were your age.”
“Stephen, you’re alive,” I say forcefully. “You’re here walking with me.”
“You know what I mean,” he says. “But if I were your age, I would never have had all those years of freedom without fear. I can’t imagine falling in love with José and not being able to be intimate with him, to make our bodies one. I wouldn’t trade those moments for anything, not even for more years.”
“Thanks for rubbing it in,” I say ruefully.
“Sorry,” Stephen says with a shrug.
“You think Reza will ever be ready?” I ask.
“I do,” Stephen says. “But I don’t know when.”
To recap: He thinks Judy will forgive me, but he doesn’t know when. He thinks Reza will sleep with me, but he doesn’t know when. And despite telling Reza I’m more patient than I seem, I’m as impatient as a human being gets. I look at Stephen and say, “I’m sorry I got all pissy earlier. I’m not a good person like you, but...”
“Art,” he says, “you’re a great person.”
Reza and Jimmy have stopped and are waiting for us to catch up. When we do, Jimmy says he’s tired and needs a nap before Judy arrives. We say our goodbyes, and then it’s just me and Reza. We walk for a bit. Sunday nights are hard. The absence of Judy cuts deeper on Sunday nights. I want to put all this energy I have somewhere.
“Hey,” I say to Reza. “How would you feel about coming to the darkroom with me?”
“Really?” he asks.
“Yeah, why not?”
“I just, I always thought, that it was... private, or you know, a sacred space for you.” God, he’s cute, stammering away like that about sacred spaces whenhe’smy sacred space.
“Follow me,” I say. “There’s no place I wouldn’t let you into.” I hope he caught the not-so-subtle hint there.
I lead him to the darkroom I use, which is on the ground floor of an Upper West Side office building. I pay a fee per month, the best money I’ve every stolen from my criminal of a father. For that fee, I get access to trays and tongs and chemicals, but that makes it sound so technical. It’s magic. You walk in with nothing, and youleave with an image.
Reza seems fascinated by it all, by the red lights, by the strong scent of the chemicals, and by the black-and-white photos I have hanging from clothespins above my workstation: Old Hollywood–style shots of Stephen and other activists. Jimmy with a gardenia in his hair. Those homophobe bankers at the New York Stock Exchange. And then I see Reza’s eye catch an image that’s almost covered up by another. It’s the photo I took of him at that first protest, the one he pretended not to be at. He’s part of a crowd, but it’s unmistakably him. He stares at the photo and smiles.
“It seems sad now,” he says.
“What?” I ask.
“That I lied to you about being at that protest,” he says.
“You’ve come a long way, baby,” I say.
