Page 27 of He
Inevitably, my sober, sensible preacher’s kid would pull me back inside and close the sunroof while MJ and I hissed and booed and called him a spoilsport. “I love you,” he’d respond in his reasonable way. “I need to keep you safe because I couldn’t bear to lose you. Who would love me if you weren’t here?” he would go on to ask. I would surrender myself to the intoxicating effects of alcohol and Jackson’s love. I’d reach for his hand over the seat as MJ watched us in the rearview mirror. I’d wake to him carrying me in the front door of our apartment. “I love you,” I’d mumble.
“I know you do,” he’d respond, nuzzling my neck as he struggled to juggle my weight while inserting his key in the lock.
Once MJ’s car had disappeared from sight, we hugged Claude and Octavio.
“We hope you guys will still come to Sunday dinner. Jackson, you can finally join us playing Scrabble,” Claude said, practically yelling to be heard over Octavio’s sobbing.
“Yes,” Jackson replied with badly feigned enthusiasm.
On the Sunday once a month when the three of us went to their house for dinner, we four played Scrabble before dinner while Jackson busied himself fixing a dripping faucet here or unclogging a sink there or clearing the gutters—all things Octavio assured him they could hire someone to do, exhorting him to “Sit down. Relax. Have a beer.”
Saturday, August 1, 1981, University City—Jackson and I packed our belongings into the back of his truck and looked up at the Victorian rowhouse with its elaborate trim with its crackling paint that has been our home since we moved to University City. We spent the last four years in a world of scholarships, student loan applications, and bright promise. Today, we are trading that world in for one that repays those student loans, justifies the scholarships, and delivers on that bright promise. I’ll have Jackson with me, but I will and already do miss MJ. Long-distance calls are expensive, reserved for deaths and birthdays and Christmas. We promised to write each other weekly, long missives detailing every aspect of our lives that would replace our daily conversations and keep our closeness from diminishing.
“You ready?” Jackson asked, adjusting the rope that held the painting that he had given me as a graduation present, wrapped in brown paper. It was a rendering of the house we have lived in for the last four years. Except for a dagger of late-afternoon sunlight illuminating the wide stoop and the crumbling trim, delicate as fretwork above the broad front door, the painting was dark, brooding as a Rembrandt. In the foreground looking up at the house, Jackson and I stand side by side. You can almost see the hope in our postures.
Jackson and I had grown up separately watchingI Dream of JeannieandBewitched; those worlds they showed had been foreign to us, our world being one without joy or magic—until the day Jackson had found me, sitting alone in the bleachers watching Rio playing basketball, and our most fervent wish had been granted.
The resident advisor from campus housing had taken the original photo as he waited for us to come look at the apartment.After we’d signed the lease, he gave us the framed photo as a housewarming present. Jackson had one of the art students turn the photo into a painting. I loved it.
“I’m ready,” I said, surprised to see him walk around to the passenger door.
“I’m driving?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said as I slipped behind the wheel. He is so proud of teaching me to drive.
I’m looking forward to our move and starting my new job as a communications specialist with a consulting firm. Jackson will be starting a new plumbing job on a new high-rise office building currently under construction as he continues his apprenticeship. He will be replacing a former colleague who showed up for work three days in a row, as Jackson put it, “higher than a giraffe’s ass.”
Book Two:
2014–2019
Black (2014)
Saturday, March 15, 2014, Center City—Ever since I sold my communications consulting firm last year, Jackson and I have been looking at houses outside the city. We feel like we’ve outgrown our condo, and certainly the city no longer holds the allure, the promise it once did. Perhaps we’ve simply “aged out”; the noise, the unfettered youth running through the streets at the weekends has grown tiring. When I proposed leaving the city, Jackson smiled benevolently and, quoting Ruth to Naomi, said, “Wither thou goest, I will go.”
I thought of this today as we looked up atthe house. Built in the late-nineteenth century, it is designed in the French Second Empire Mansard style. It is all cheerful redbrick and cut stone without and black walnut and quarter-sawn oak within. With its decorative slate mansard roof, it exudes a sense of permanence. It is an elaborate wedding cake of a house.
Three stories tall, it is L-shaped with a central tower and a second tower placed at the front of the wing built at a ninety-degree angle to the main wing, which contains the entrance. At the front, granite steps lead up to a deeply shaded wraparound porch. The entrance itself is guarded by tall wrought iron gates. Where the two wings meet at the back of the house, some wild wag added a gothic conservatory with glass walls and a peaked glass roof, accessible from the narrow picture gallery and the black walnut paneled library.
The oldest house in the development, it is perhaps a tad self-conscious of its dated pretention, but in its defense, it lacks theself-satisfaction of the rather pedestrian split levels—themselves ignorant of the fact they were simply the unfortunate spawn ofThe Brady Bunch—that are its neighbors.
The house, for all its majesty, is deceptive, though: the roof that slopes over the house, the wing, and the two towers all conspire to hide the fact that it is only one room deep.
“What do you think?” the realtor asked.
Jackson gazed at the black-walnut-coffered ceiling soaring eleven feet above our heads and, glancing at my enraptured expression, said, “I think we’d like to make an offer.”
Friday, April 25, 2014, Janus—We moved into our new house this afternoon. By dinner, we had been visited by Kitt, a warrior princess in braids, with bangled earrings, a nose ring, and a chip on her shoulder. She was dressed completely in black: black clingy pants with flared legs and a charcoal T-shirt with “We were NOT all Kung Fu fighting” emblazoned in a lighter gray across her chest. Kitt introduced herself as the sole board member of the Homeowner Association. “So, I’m essentially a dictator,” she explained blithely. “You can call me Queen K.”
I was charmed. Jackson, irritated, clearly was not. She strutted about our new living room as if she owned it. Wheeling around, she said, “I take it you’re a couple?”
I nodded; Jackson ignored her.
“Good. It’s nice to havefamilyin the neighborhood.”
Her peculiar emphasis on the word “family” was odd until I caught her drift. Our warrior princess is a lesbian. Also, we learned, without asking, vegan, in recovery, and mad at the world.
“Y’all are cute,” she pronounced looking at us as if we were curiosities in a notions shop, or maybe a special exhibit at the local zoo. “How long have you been together?”
