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Tiny wasn’t feeling right that night. I knew before anyone else did. When he passed by me during soundcheck without as much as a wave I thought he was still upset with me. But the poor guy looked like hell. He barely spoke a word until he had to sing, and when he had to sing all that came out his mouth were coughs coated in phlegm. His skin almost had a yellow tint to it underneath his white powder makeup. I was waiting for someone to say something so that I wouldn’t have to, but nobody did. I wanted to - believe me, I wanted to, - but I didn’t want to take that chance. Tiny soldiered on, as he had throughout his entire life, and the concert went off without a hitch. That alone is all the proof I need of some kind of higher power. I fumbled a note at one point, but I just couldn’t stop staring at him. I wasn’t special, though - Tiny had always turned heads everywhere he went. He was a celebrity; I was just a pianist trying to make ends meet.
On the bus ride back to the hotel I tried sitting next to him. He didn’t want anything to do with me. He just sat in silence with his sullen face pressed against the window, his bouncy hair falling down his face like a mourning veil. I couldn’t believe how everyone was just ignoring what was right in front of them - that the man responsible for most of the money in their pockets was as sick as a dog. But you can’t blame folks for only caring about their share of the dough. They had families to feed and roofs to keep over their heads. I myself was clinging onto the shithole of an apartment I’d just bought in Brooklyn, but I was without anyone to share it with. I was an abnormality, not the norm.
The image of a sick Tiny sitting all alone stole my sleep from me that night, so I took it upon myself to check in on him. As soon as I cracked open the door to his suite, I was treated to the most disgusting sounds I’ve ever had the displeasure of hearing. Next thing I knew I was kneeling behind him on the porcelain tiles of the bathroom floor holding fistfuls of his hair in my hands as he excreted his insides into the toilet, basking in the yellow bathroom light that bared a stark resemblance to the spotlight he was glowing in onstage just a couple hours prior. When he was done, he pulled himself to his feet as if nothing had happened at all.
“You have to leave.”
“Tiny-“
He swatted my hand away as I reached for him. “Don’t touch me!”
“Don’t talk to me like that.” I said, standing up. Looking back on it, I feel sorry for how uncompromising I was in my demands for Tiny to stop cutting me out. I knew the hell his folks had put him through. It was different back then for people like him - for people like me, too. That being said, he was out of his mind if he thought I was going to let him treat me like a skeleton in his closet.
“There’s no show tomorrow. You’re sick.” I said, “Why don’t you stay in? I’ll get you everything you need.”
I didn’t mean to sound as desperate as I did while making my offer. If things weren’t going to go back to normal between us, then the best I could do was to make them formidable. It killed me, the way he treated me after what happened. Was he waiting for me to apologize? If he was, then bless his heart. He instigated it; I’d wait the rest of the tour for him to own up to it if I had to.
Tiny stared straight down at the floor and wrung his hands. “Well… okay.”
I swindled my way into the bed next to his by acting all hurt and sticking my bottom lip out like a kid who’d just scraped his knee on the playground. I spent all night staring at him, listening to his little snores. The last time I had slept in any proximity to someone was when I was still stuck out west with my wife, until I woke up in the middle of the night and left without a trace. She always snored while she was sleeping, too. Even then I held no inkling of wistfulness for that house. It was as if I never lived in it. There was only where I was then, and where I’d be at that time the next day.
—
By the time Tiny woke up I’d made a run to the drugstore a couple of blocks down to get some Pepto-Bismol and a thermometer. Then I walked further down to the grocery store for sunflower seeds and broth. I couldn’t get the honey that I knew he’d want - I’m too squeamish to cook a meal that gross. I had to trek the inhospitable middle ground of making him something that’d make him feel better while still staying in the confines of his diet. I was in the middle of heating up the broth on the stove when I heard him groan in the bedroom.
“Morning, sunshine!” I called
“…is that you, Mister [y/n]?”
“In the flesh.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Making you breakfast. You say I could take care of you last night, remember?”
“You really don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“You’re right; I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t want to.”
He dawdled into the kitchen wearing the cerulean robe that Goldie Hawn had given him. The one with the daisies sewn into the collar. She said she couldn’t find one with tulips on it, so the daisies would just have to do. I always liked how blue looked on him - really made his skin glow.
I placed the bowl on the counter in front of him. “This is all yours,” I said as I pulled out the thermometer, “as long as you let me take your temperature.”
“I don’t think that’s really necessary, Mister (y/n).”
“If you say so,” I picked up the bowl and began to saunter away, “It’d just be such a shame to see all this soup go to waste-“
Tiny grabbed onto my elbow. “I’ll do it!”
“Excellent choice. Now, open wide.”
I slipped the thermometer underneath his tongue and let it sit for a minute before I pulled it back out, reading out its results to him.
“101.2 degrees.” I put it back into my pocket. “Looks like you’re staying in today, Tiny.”
“Oh, dear…”
“Why don’t I set up a bath for you while you eat that?”
“Please!”
He stayed in the bathroom for so long it should’ve been considered a sin. Even when I heard him climb out of the tub he didn’t leave. Must’ve been all the shit that he scrubbed on his face holding him up. His obsession with his own cleanliness gave me plenty of time to make his suite look a little nicer. That way he could lie in bed all day without having to stare at misplaced sheet music and clothes scattered across the floor. As I folded a pair of his pants, I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the window; upright, strong, collected and welcoming. I almost saw my mother standing exactly where I was, cleaning up the disarray I’d left her after I’d gone to school. I wondered if Tiny’s mother had cleaned up after him so that he’d have a peaceful space to himself. There was nothing he hated more than mess.
There had been, for about as long as I’d know him, a profound maternal urge towards Tiny lodged deep inside of me. As I watched him gobble up the breakfast I had prepared for him earlier that morning out of the corner of my eye, a sense of pride streaked right through me. Watching him, either from feet away onstage or through a TV screen; observing how he’d push a stray clump of hair out of his face, how he’d wring his hands together and press them to his lips to blow kisses or to laugh, I knew that he was unlike anyone I’d ever met and that I’d never meet anyone like him again. It mystified me, how people were blind to the beauty sitting right in front of them, fiddling with his hair and rattling on about a singer from a bygone time that only he seemed to pay mind to. I wondered if he stayed awake into the late hours of the cell staring at the ceiling, terrorized by whether or not he, too, would eventually fade away.
“Mister [y/n].”
Tiny stood in front of the open bathroom door, steam rising from his skin, bare except for two towels wrapping his hair and body. When he smiled, I thought of my wife.
“Feel any better?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “Warmer, I suppose.”
“You want me to leave so you can change?”
“That would be nice.”
By the time Tiny beckoned me back inside the suite, he’d already settled back into his bed with a set of sheet music laid out in front of him, quietly singing along to its notes as he plucked them on his ukelele. I sat myself down beside him and just let him have at it. Even in sickness that man could still carry a tune as light as a feather. Talk couldn’t compare; you had to come down to a show and see him yourself.
Tiny wanted to die for music, wanted to nail himself to its cross. He was its greatest believer and most outspoken prophet. I’d never met someone so feverently committed to any craft as he was to song. I spent hours dangling from every word he spoke as he raved on about the songs and their singers who had captivated him since he was a boy, strumming out samples for me on his ukelele. He had the ability to replicate anyone’s singing style without flaw, from Bob Dylan to Rudy Vallée to Frankie Lymon. He could take a string-piece melody from the days when music and liquor flowed in equilibrium and transformed it into a song for our times and could execute the reverse just as effortlessly. Most musicians like myself honed their talent for years living off of the hope that they’d achieve what came to Tiny in a single night, when, suddenly, his voice could oscillate between a croony baritone and a breezy falsetto like a swing swaying back and forth in the breeze. I couldn’t bring myself to resent him for this feat, so I capitulated to loving him.
Tiny’s impromptu performance was cut off by a a coughing fit that began as soon as he attempted to sing in his falsetto. He was thrashing so viciously that I had to hold him by the shoulders to make sure he didn’t hack up a lung. After it had passed I expected him to trudge on, as he always had when his shows didn’t go according to plan, but instead he gracefully sunk into his mattress and pillow. His face had the same sag to it as those of old men who are about to be free of it all, or those of my friends an ocean away from me slaughtering their brothers like prey and doing the lowest to their sisters.
I sprawled myself out next to him. “You want some water?” I asked. “Or Pepto-Bismol?”
“I feel so awful, Mister (y/n)….” Tiny groaned, clutching his stomach.
“Maybe it’s all that wheat germ and honey you’ve been eating.”
“Wheat germ and honey is a perfectly nutritious meal that’s cleansing to the soul and the mind.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, man.” I sprawled out onto my stomach, “What song was that?”
“Vera Lynn’s The White Cliffs of Dover. Now, Miss Lynn was incredibly popular in World War Two, performing for both troops and citizens alike to raise morale in Britain. Her real claim to fame is the song We’ll Meet Again, written in 1937 by Hughie Charles and Ross Parker.” He sighed. “I like to add more World War Two songs to my repertoire, but I only have the records from World War One.”
“You get the music from the library, right?” I asked him, “Maybe we can go together sometime. I’m sure we can find something.”
“You’d really do that with me?”
“Of course I would. I need another excuse to hang around you after this tour’s over.”
“Oh, Mister [y/n]!”
I had never been so surprised with myself. When had I suddenly become so brave and so coy with such a high-strung man? We weren’t on speaking terms the night before and now we were chatting with each other like we’d been friends since we were in diapers. I was completely familiar with the grave danger of pushing my luck with Tiny, yet I did it anyway just to watch him tick.
“You must forgive me for how I’ve treated you as of late,” he said, “I’ve only felt this way about another man once before.”
“Who?”
“An old neighbor of mine, Bobby Gonslavs,” he scratched his head, “I met him in ‘56, and immediately I knew that something was terribly wrong. No matter how hard I’d try to keep myself away from him, I just kept coming back. And he’d always roughhouse with me. That and the massages were bringing the devil right to my door.”
“I don’t think it’s a sin to like somebody.”
“I suppose not. But playing with the Lord’s will, that’s the closest anyone can get to hell.” He stared down at his hands, clasped in his lap, “I remember one night, during one of the massages, he fell asleep in my bedroom. My father found us. He got mad, but not how my mother did when she came in and saw Bobby and I together.” He coughed into his fist. “It was awful, Mister [y/n]. We’ve never fought before the way we did that night. She pushed me into the wall, and I just bounced off so easily.” He grinned like he was telling a private joke only he and himself knew. “I’m still not sure if she’s very strong or if I’m very weak.”
I was at a loss for words. Here he was, confiding in me about the beatings his mother gave him with the same cadence a well-to-do man would summarize a day he spent at the casino. Of course we were all subjected to the switch or paddle at some point back then, but our muscles still tightened at the memory of it. Tiny didn’t show as much as a twitch of his eye as he recounted the episode to me. Yet, underneath my horror and sorrow was a sense of kinship, the depths of which I’d never felt before. Was the rejecting hand of a mother really so dissimilar to the lash of a father’s belt? I would’ve taken a hundred of those hands in exchange for the promise that Tiny would never endure their blows again.
“That’s horrible, Tiny,” I said, “I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.”
“It was bound to happen sometime.” He sniffled and scratched his cheek, “It was the first step towards expelling such sin from my life, which I was finally able to do in ‘61 after Bobby got married. When I discovered him on my doorstep, I banished him once and for all.”
“Is that what you’re gonna do to me? Get rid of me because you like me and you’re too much of a Jesus freak to say so?”
“Oh, Mister [y/n], I would never!” He cried, grabbing my shoulders, “You’re a good man, an honest man. There’s nothing wrong with a profound companionship between two men, as long as it’s not of a deviant nature.”
“In that case, I think how I feel about you is of a deviant nature.” I stood up and pinched the bridge of my nose, “And I think that I just ruined the best thing I had going for me.”
I went for the door, but Tiny squeezed my wrist. When I snapped my head to look down at him, I saw a desperation brimming in his eyes that I was all too familiar with. I knew it as well as one knew their lover, which is to say that I knew it as well as I knew him.
“Are you gonna call me a sinner?” I spat, “A heathen? An abomination? Well go right ahead - I can take it.”
“You said you were gonna stay in here to take care of me.”
It was my turn to throw up. At least, that’s what I felt like doing as I took back my seat next to him on his bed. I couldn’t believe that even for a second I thought that such a precious man would be capable of the same cruelty I had inside of me. He was so, so much better than me. So much better than anything music or life could give me. At that point I could’ve settled for just having him around; as long as I kept him in my life, I would wake up each morning with something to look forward to.
Then I felt a familiar part of arms wrap around my stomach and the shape of a cheekbone against my back. The touch was so soft I could’ve started crying for it, just throw it all down and weep in the embrace. It occurred to me that I couldn’t recall the last time someone had held me. Must’ve been before I ran off - had to have been my wife. Was it in the kitchen while she was cooking scrambled eggs just the way I liked them? In the living room, where we could dance to Lesley Gore and The Beatles until we dropped? In the bedroom as a so long to the finished day and a prayer for the one that knocking on our door? I couldn’t remember then - I sure as hell can’t now. I’m not even sure if I even liked my eggs scrambled back then.
“I’m very sorry,” Tiny said, “Please stay. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Don’t apologize, man,” I squirmed out of his arms, “Hey, finish that song for me, would you?”
“Of course.”
So he did, plucked it out note by note for me. When he serenaded you, it was like a whole other world had just opened up its gates for you. In this one I was falling apart but pretending I had a handle on my life; in the one Tiny revived with only his voice and ukulele, I was just waiting to die on the outskirts of some No Man’s Land in France at the end of the world, topped off with bombshells and gunfire. I was a dead man walking, but I was valiant, fearless, and all my folks back home were proud of me. I was deserving of the bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover if it didn’t end up in the dirt before enough was enough. But, at this point, eternal rest didn’t sound all that bad.
With a flourish of his thumb across each string he finished the song.
“That was beautiful, Tiny.” I told him.
“Oh, thank you, Mister [y/n].”
“How would you feel about moving in with me?”
He gasped. “I could never!”
“Why couldn’t you?” I slithered close to him, “You aren’t gonna move back in with your folks after this is all over, are you?”
“Well, where else would I go?” Tiny asked. “I like it on the road, Mister [y/n]! It gives me such a thrill each night, going up on stage and seeing all those lovely faces looking back at me. When I was first starting out, I was the one they looked down upon. The moment I went onstage and opened my mouth to sing they would all sneer and throw whatever they had at me. But now I’m the one they all want to meet.”
“But don’t you want somewhere to rest? Someplace that you can come back to each night with somebody who loves you waiting for you? Somewhere you can call home and mean it?”
I took him under my arm and waved my hand in the air as if I was illustrating a picture of what I was imagining for the two of us. “Once a week we’ll go grocery-shopping for as long as you want and you can pick out whatever. When you’re out doing a show I’ll make your bed and clean up your room for you. That way you can doze off without saying a word to me when you get home. And if you don’t want to doze off then that’s fine, too. You can keep me up all night practicing and I won’t mind at all. Now how’s that sound?”
Tiny had that twinkle in his eyes you could only notice while he was performing. “A-and I can play my Rudy Vallée and Russ Columbo records whenever I like, right?”
“Of course you can.”
“Oh, Mister [y/n!] He yanked me into an embrace, “That sounds just delightful!”
Tiny fit so completely into my arms, it was as if our bodies were made with one another in mind. The way he curved his face in the crook between my neck and shoulder reminded me of my wife when she did the same, how her hair held the pungent smell of cinnamon during the wintertime. I wondered how she’d feel and what she’d do if she saw me now, holding a creature that was half-man, half-angel, half-angel, half-alien, crossing into a being the scientists didn’t have a name for yet. She wouldn’t understand, but she didn’t need to. For all she knew I was dead. The moment that letter came in the mail I knew what I had to do. Disappearing is easier than it sounds, as easy as pulling a trigger. Perhaps I could’ve covered my tracks better; could’ve wrecked my truck or left a note explaining away a suicide that hadn’t happened. Choosing life was the simplest decision I had ever made, and in making that decision I strangled the man I once was and received the opportunity to be reborn. There was only one flaw in my newfound existence; the best damn wife I could possibly have wasn’t a woman at all.
Tiny lurched forward, retching over my shoulder as he held a clenched fist to his mouth. He did it again, and again, and again before he leaped up and ran to the bathroom with me on his heels. There we were, two men on their knees in a bathroom at their lowest, one holding bundles of the other’s hair as he disposed of the breakfast his confidant had taken the time out of his day to prepare for him. The sound of his insides piling into the toilet made me want to lean over the bowl and join him. Even so, there wasn’t a place in the world that I’d rather be than there on the floor with him. His body rattled with every gag as I whispered sweet things into his ear as softly as I could in case an unsolicited visitor were to join us without warning. I wished that I was able to trade places with him, absorb all his sickness, and in that way transform into him. How free I would feel, gazing at this war-torn world that I inhabited through eyes that were blind to everything except for romance, good music, and the tulips. How sweet life would be with a beating heart that was as golden and liberated as his was.
When Tiny’s body decided that it had put him through enough, he pulled himself up and wiped the remnants of scum off his lips. He looked up at me, I looked at him. We both knew what had to be done.
The first time I kissed Tiny in a bathroom, the mint on his tongue was so sharp it burnt my gums. Now he tasted like rotten milk. I think I preferred his kisses that way; the foulness of his mouth made them easier to remember. His hands were clamped around the nape of my neck, almost as if he was about to choke me. But he wouldn’t hurt a fly, so what was the worst he could do to me? The kiss was too short to explore all the parts of him I wanted to feel. His hair, his chest, his stomach, the area between his legs, where I could give him the most pleasure. Fortunately, nothing could amount to the pleasure of being absolutely sure that I had him right where I wanted him.
When we broke apart we lingered with our foreheads pressed together. He was staring at me like I had two heads, and I knew that I must’ve been looking back at him the same way. Eventually one of us would have to say something to consummate the liaison or toss it out altogether. But we were past that point. If one of us was to jump up and dash out of the suite now it would only prolong the inevitable happy ending or extend the great divide.
“I think you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,” I said.
“You flatter me so.”
“I’ve known it since the moment I looked at you.”
It was the truth. When I wound up in Brooklyn with only the clothes on my back, a wad of bills to my name, and my old man’s last truck, I saw a job posting for a touring pianist with his face on it and knew I had seen it all. I met him on the first day of rehearsals. I was practicing some of the material I was given when he approached me, ukulele and sheet music in hand, and asked if I would accompany him as he attempted to perfect his rendition of I Got You Babe. Soon he was coming over to me before every show to try out a song he was contemplating adding to his repertoire. Eventually he just made himself right at home besides me on my bench. We’d talk for hours about anything we had on our minds that particular day. At some point I realized I was telling him things that I’d intended on taking to the grave with me, and I think that he was doing the same. He understood me so intimately and embraced all that I loathed about myself. Whenever he’d give me a hug I prayed for God to take me right there so the last thing I’d know of this cruel world was love.
He was taking too long in the bathroom after a show. That in itself was unusual; he’d make a 45-minute walk back to his hotel room to avoid stepping foot in a public restroom. I discovered him bent over one of the sinks with his hair hanging over his face, mumbling some prayer to himself. When I called his name, he flinched and turned away.
“What happened?” I asked.
“There’s something wrong with me, Mister (y/n).”
I chuckled. “I think there’s something wrong with everybody these days.”
“It’s worse than that.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t talk about.”
He seemed to imprison himself far away from me then. I got a glimpse of his face; his white powder makeup ruined by streams of tears and gigantic eyes with an intricate knowledge of the suffering that went on behind them. It was the first time I’d seen another man cry since my mother’s funeral. I couldn’t have been older than eighteen. I thought someone had said something to him; I was gonna ask him who had said what so I could knock their teeth in.
“Oh, Tiny…”
I took him in my arms. When our eyes met it was the first time - but not the last - that I realized how much he and my wife were alike. Not in appearance, but rather in the mud and ways they got me through my life. He was my only chance at being somebody, at writing a story that I could enchant my children and their children with someday.
I had never noticed his lips were so big until he kissed me. They were crushing, almost oppressive. Yet in that moment I was as light as air, practically flying underneath his affection. The moment was cut off so quickly that I forgot to cherish it. He pushed me off of him and ran out of the bathroom sobbing before I could tell him that I was just as scared as he was. My destiny had come undone just as it was in my grasp.
That’s what I thought at the time. Yet there we were, lying side by side on the twin-size bed with our arms outstretched. There was nothing to say, but I ran my fat mouth anyway.
“Tiny, I wish you were a girl.”
“Sometimes I do, too.”
“Actually,” I rolled over on my side to face him, “I wish that I was born a girl. That way you’d give me one of those trophies of yours.”
“Oh, Mister (y/n)!” He giggled incredulously, “You know that I don’t give out trophies to other men.”
“You can’t give one to the best friend you had this year?”
“You’re not gonna make me, are you?”
“I sure as hell am!”
I prodded him in the ribs and stomach just enough for it to tickle; I didn’t want to play rough with him like that Bobby guy had. He cackled, squirming into the mattress and kicking his feet out from underneath me. Sinking my fingers into his skin to get a rise out of him brought me back to my old business of using my hands to make love. Flesh was sweeter to hold than the steel of a gun and much warmer, too. I had the rosy heart of humanity at my fingertips and all her blessings. After all these years I’d never thought I would return to her.
“Okay, okay!” He giggled, “I’ll get you one! I promise!”
“That’s more like it.”
I laid off him, and it was silent for a while. Over the years I’ve found that a lot of people take silence and quiet as one in the same. You can get quiet anywhere and anytime; if it gets too loud, you can just slip into your room and it’s keeping the bed warm for you. You can’t seek out silence - it discovers you when you least expect it. It sneaks into your room in the middle of the night and, like your woman, leaves you before you can comprehend the magnitude of what you have. Whether you’re on cloud 9 or at rock bottom, if silence comes to your doorstep, you’re doing something right with your life.
At some point Tiny had tucked himself underneath my arm with the stealth of a less notable man. When I noticed that the sky outside our window had transformed from robin’s egg blue into a pale pink, I instinctively tried to jump out of the bed. Tiny tugged on the breast pocket of my shirt, trapping me between a rock and a hard place.
“We gotta get up soon,” I told him, “The bus can’t leave without you.”
“I know. That’s why I want to keep you here.”
I laughed. “Tiny, you’re a man after my own heart.”
That’s how he reeled you in. Not with any tricks up his sleeve or smoke and mirrors, but by being himself. He was the best thing I ever had. He was all that I had. Hanging around him was like sleeping underneath the shade of a tree in the cool of a spring afternoon. I promised him a home with a warm bed, food on the table, and all the love I had left in me. But he was so completely untamed, too excitable to stay in one place and too illusory to hold in your arms for too long. Life goes on, the girls keep coming. I still think of him often, though. When I close my eyes at night, all I can hear is the applause.