Page 28 of Torn
“Remember what we saw there?”
“Oh God!” Boutros grabbed my arm, and we both collapsed into giggles, loud enough to cause some of our fellow travelers to turn in their seats and stare.
It was around sunset, and we’d seen a lovely young couple emerge from the greenery around the Abbey, holding hands and looking oh-so-romantic. An accurate portrait ofafterglow.
The warm and fuzzy image was marred by the fact that the back of her skirt had been hastily, and mistakenly, tucked into her panties.
We’d laughed then too and debated whether we should let her know. After all, she was walking down one of Bath’s main streets in a most embarrassing fashion, pun intended.
Bless her heart.
In the end, we decided not to. To warn her would be to ruin the story she and her beau might later tell their grandchildren when they grew old enough to understand outdoor sex in public places. Who knew? Maybe the forbear of one of those very grandchildren had just been conceived in the shadow of Bath Abbey.
We’d laughed until tears came as we’d waited for this very train on the platform. Boutros had found an issue of the British humor magazineVizin one of the bookstores. The two of us, with our in-common sick senses of humor, guffawed until we were almost breathless at the comic-strip antics of the Fat Slags, most of which usually revolved around one or the other of them caught “’avin’ a shit” at the most inopportune time. Back in Chicago, these gals were the type Boutros and I liked to pal around with.
There was also an extended description of the kinky sex taking place inside a pet store, among the animals. The article had as its capper, “And then I shat in his beak.” The line nearly made us both pee our pants.
I looked over at Boutros now. He’d fallen asleep, and his mouth was open, a small line of drool escaping onto his goatee. Instead of being repulsed, as I usually was when looking at him, I was oddly charmed, like a mother looking at her sleeping babe—if that babe smoked cigarettes and offered up his bum for the licking to any number of lusty innkeepers.
Snickering, I relaxed, easing back into the seat and letting my limbs go soft under the gentle rocking motion of the train.
I thought of Walt and imagined him on a Boston street. I’d never been to Boston, so I brought to mind the image of a cobblestone street, bordered by trees and brownstone apartment houses, at the end of which would be a line of blue—the Atlantic Ocean.
Would we see each other once we’d returned to America, or was that only wishful thinking?
The lingering disappointment over that realistically not happening had little to do with Walt and more to do with me.
I was now in my midthirties and could honestly say I’d never really been in love. Not truly. Oh sure, there’d been men (and a woman!) I’d cared deeply about and harbored hopes for long-term coupling with, but the actual feeling ofbeing in loveremained a mystery. I wondered if the capacity for romantic love was simply out of my reach, if I’d been born without the gene for it.
I had once despaired over this with the woman with whom I’d shared most everything because she seemed to care more than anyone else in the world about my happiness—my mom. She’d told me, when I asked her what true love felt like, “I don’t know that I can put the feeling into words, Ricky. I don’t know that I’d want to. It’s kind of good it being something you can’t really describe, like that peculiar feeling you get in your gut when someone really attractive walks by.” She’d snorted with laughter. “I certainly felt it with your dad, even though he was, and still is, a self-centered son of a bitch who was all wrong for me. If I’d wanted a logically happy life, I should have gone for his brother, Ray.”
“But then I wouldn’t exist.”
“But then you wouldn’t exist,” she conceded. “But love doesn’t work with logic. There has to be a spark.” Her eyes looked a little faraway. It was at that moment, I think, that I realized my parents had a life before I was born, that their hopes and dreams were something entirely separate from being my mom or my dad. She looked at me and hastened to add, “But oh, how I love my boy!” And then she, as Sicilian mothers are wont to do, pinched my cheek.
I realized suddenly that the two people I loved most in the world, her and the man snoring softly beside me, had more in common than I would have first credited them with. Both seemed to know me better than I knew myself.
It was also interesting that there was zero erotic component to the two relationships I held most dear. And I wondered why someone like me, who’d lost count of the number of sexual partners I’d had, loved most the people for whom anything sexual was completely out of the question.
Would I ever be able to unite sex and love? Isn’t that the path most people followed?
Sorry, Boutros, sweetie, my heart, but it’s true—the notion of sex with you has all the appeal of having sex with dear old Mom.
If Walt and I did see each other on American shores, I wondered if something could possibly come of the relationship apart from fantastic orgasms that would become less and less fantastic the more of them we shared. Yes, folks, that’s the way my sex life worked. I suspected this was the sad truth for most of my brothers and sisters on this fine planet we called home. The sex always decreased in pleasure and excitement. And yet I always seemed to be looking for that initial thrill, over and over. Drug addicts called the phenomenon “chasing the dragon.” I chased it but seemed doomed to chase it with a different dragon almost every time.
I closed my eyes with the thought that, despite my cynicism in matters related to true love, I was still young enough, eager enough, and naïve enough to believe it could happen.
And it could happen to me.
And Walt.
But the real question was—would it happen to us both at the same time?
Chapter 10
WE WEREback in London, and strangely, it felt like home. The winding streets of Westminster with its closely spaced buildings, the stately watch of Big Ben, the green of St. James’s Park, the hustle and bustle of it all as yet another generation of Londoners hurried home to their tea or to the pub or simply to stroll along the Thames.
I felt almost like one of them as Boutros and I made our way to Trevor’s flat, dragging our suitcases behind us. Boutros had the keys in his pocket as Trevor had left the country for Spain on his own holiday. Most likely I would never see our kind host again.
