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I was fully drunk and half asleep on Henry’s couch when he came in through the front door, rain water dripping from his long overcoat and down the long, black line of his umbrella to make little shining puddles on the hardwood floor. I stared at his looming form, muted and backlit by the soft yellow porch light through the open door behind him, without saying anything for quite a few moments. He stared back at me, expressionless. I knew he wasn’t going to be the first to speak. He never was.
“It’s raining?” Is all I could finally think to say, rather stupidly. Henry took his coat off and hung it and his umbrella on the hooks beside him. He shut the door. I saw tiny, pearly water droplets clinging to his glasses, spots of light stuck in each one.
“Marvelous intuition you have, Richard.”
He went into the kitchen and started banging around. The sound of the tap running. The tea kettle being set down. The gas range being flicked on. I closed my eyes. The next thing I knew he was standing before me with two steaming mugs, and I was taking one while he sat down beside me with the other. He crossed one large leg over the other, casual and calm, his mug balanced on his knee. I was looking at the way his wet hair clung to his forehead, almost transfixed by the dark, neat strands against pale, coarse skin. His glasses were clean now. His eyes were gray and sharp behind them. I took a sip of the tea. Peppermint. Oddly out of character for Henry. But it was my favorite. I watched him drink his own, staring away from me, out the window. The sky was velvet black, and the rain pounded the glass as if it wanted nothing more than to join us inside, to infect our warm, dry quarters with its cold fingers. I had no idea what time it was, but it must have been late. Early morning, even.
Henry cleared his throat and finally turned to look at me.
“What time did you get here?”
I tried to recount my evening. It was sort of a blur—disjointed images melding together; a party in a freshman’s dorm room; Judy Poovey throwing up on Commons lawn; a Bruce Springsteen song playing very loudly as I lay in the back of someone’s car. But for the life of me I couldn't remember how or why I’d ended up at Henry’s apartment. I told him as much. He looked at me steadily and drank some more of his tea.
“You should change your shirt. It’s covered in vomit.”
I hadn’t noticed.
—
He gave me one of his sweaters to wear. It was much too big for me, off-white and very, very warm. It smelled like him ( cigarettes and ink and sweat ). He took my ruined shirt and disappeared into his bedroom, the room I’d lived in for many months. All of a sudden I felt very sad that I didn’t anymore. It was an odd feeling. I hadn’t thought I’d missed it at all, our time as roommates. But then, I hadn’t been thinking about much at all the past few weeks, really. The days and nights had begun to blend and mix. This was the first moment I’d had in a long while where I didn’t feel perfectly out of touch with reality. Henry had always been able to ground me, that was the thing. It’s just that I hadn’t seen him in days, not outside of class. It was becoming clearer now why it was his apartment I’d stumbled to.
Henry was coming back to sit beside me when the phone rang. He answered, looking bored and unaffected by whoever it was, listening for quite a long time, saying nothing. Then, lowering the receiver and placing a large palm over the mouthpiece, he looked toward me.
“It’s Francis,” he said. “He wants to come over.”
I waited for him to go on, and then I realized, with a jolt ( of disbelief? affection? pleasure? ) that he was waiting for me to say yes or no. Waiting to see what I wanted. And without having to think about it I shook my head. He brought the receiver back to his ear.
“Sorry, Francis, I’m rather busy at the moment.” I could hear Francis’s voice now, tinny and muffled. “Yes, yes, tomorrow.” Henry found my eyes again, and I saw the barest of smiles slip over his lips. “No, I haven’t seen him. Sure, sure, ask Charles. Alright. Goodnight.”
He put down the receiver. I was still rather drunk, I realized, and I had no idea why I’d told him to say no. But I knew that I was glad I had.
He sat down beside me again. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears, loud and thrumming. My mouth was very dry. I picked up my mug from the coffee table and took a sip. The tea had gone cold, but I didn’t really care.
We didn’t speak. I looked everywhere but his eyes. His leg was very close to my own. If I’d wanted to I could have nudged his knee with mine. Then out of nowhere he put his hand on my thigh. It was hot through the fabric of my slacks. I sucked in a breath.
“Henry,” I said. My voice was quiet, a weak little thing in the presence of him, who was so powerful and purposeful and assured. His other hand was on my cheek, then. He was moving so slowly, (or was it so fast?) that it was like I couldn’t see the actual movement, only the fragmented images in between—snapshots in time: Henry’s face, close to my own, Henry’s eyes, so gray and sharp and fierce. He held my face in his big hand. I was trembling. I opened my mouth. No sound came out. His eyes jumped down to my lips, then climbed back up my face to stare into my own.
“Have you been sleeping at all, Richard?”
I was taken aback by the question. It was not what I’d thought he would say. I shook my head against his palm, feeling stupid and young and chastised by his tone.
“Only a little. Here and there.”
He sighed.
“What am I going to do with you?”
The way he said it made my stomach flip. As if I were his to worry over. As if, in a way I couldn’t fathom or explain or comprehend, I belonged solely and wholly to him. Realization dawned on me slowly, then, and for what felt like hours (though it was actually mere seconds) I stared drunkenly at his stoic face and came to understand what had happened—that somehow, sometime in the past few months, without my explicit knowledge or agreement or request, I had come to be his. That somewhere along the way he had taken hold of my well-being and become sole proprietor. And the strangest thing was that I wasn’t even that shocked. Who else? I thought. How could it have been anyone but him?
I knew that he knew I’d figured it out. He looked almost pleased. I must have appeared insane, glassy eyed and almost hypnotized.
“Smart boy,” he said, and then he drew his thumb along my cheek. I almost whimpered. “I didn’t even have to spell it out for you.”
“Henry — ” it seemed his name was all I could say. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed. There was just him, and me, and the sound of the rain. “Oh, Henry.”
He kissed me very deeply. I’d never been kissed like that before, so suddenly and so wholly; like he wanted to devour my very soul. I tried to grab onto his arms, to steady myself, but it was futile because he was moving me, dragging me bodily in one swift motion which left me dizzy and disoriented, until I was on his lap and he could wrap his arms around my entire frame. I was breathless and giddy by this display of his strength, and I kissed him back greedily, winding my arms around his neck and running my hands through the hair at the back of his head.
His hands slipped underneath my sweater— his sweater— to cup my waist. I moaned into his mouth. I felt electrified by his touch. His lips curled against my own. I could taste his smirk. He tasted divine. His glasses bumped against my face, pointy and sharp, but I didn’t give a damn. I widened my knees and sank down against him further, and when I felt the hardness of him pressing against my stomach I flushed, head to toe, hot and sweating in an instant. I must have stuttered in my movement the barest bit, because Henry caught my face in one large hand and soothed me gently.
“Now, now,” he whispered against my lips. “Don’t be scared, little lamb. I’m going to take care of you.”
I nearly fainted. My chest fluttered, my heart squeezed, and everything after that was a timeless, formless blur of beautiful, terrifying ecstasy.
—
I woke up in Henry’s bed. The window was wide open, and the curtains flapped noisily in the wind. I shivered. I was completely naked underneath the twisted, crumpled bed sheets, and so was Henry. He was laying on his back, propped up against his pillow, smoking a cigarette and reading a French translation of Plato’s Symposium , a well-worn copy I’d seen him reading a thousand times before, with writing in every margin and dog-ears on every other page. I gazed at him, followed the hard, steady lines of him, focused on the soft, almost childlike way he crinkled his brow in concentration as his eyes flickered over line after line, and felt, not for the first time, a tenderness for him and his contradictions—for his cold, hard beauty and his rough, warm passion. It was a tenderness that ached, something deep inside my chest seeming to claw and howl and reach blindly for him. And now (and this was the most beautiful thing), now I could.
I saw the moment he noticed me watching him, out of the corner of his eye. He dropped his book against his chest and brought his cigarette to his lips, taking three long drags very rapidly, blowing out blue-gray smoke to swirl above his head.
I crawled over to him and lay against his chest, pressing my face beside the Symposium . After a moment his hand found its way into my hair and he stroked through it softly. I closed my eyes and listened to him breathe. Our legs tangled together. He put his cigarette to my mouth. I smoked. He took it when I was done and put it out. I kissed his chest, ran my hand down the long, firm expanse of his side, back up and over his shoulder, then down his arm until I grasped his free hand. Our fingers twined together. I looked at them for a long time, almost transfixed by their differences—where his was large, mine was rather slim and bony. Where his nails were neat, mine were bitten and raw. His poised, defined, well-honed strength against my animal-like restlessness. And then, finally, I looked towards his face and saw him staring right back at me. He was frowning. My stomach dipped.
“Don’t let me hurt you,” he said. He was dead serious. He cupped my face in one big hand. I stopped breathing and stared. Gray eyes—sharp and cold. The steel of a dagger. The trigger of a gun. On me. For me.
I smiled.
“I know,” I said.