Chapter 6: Simons Say
But man, you don't look old enough now to be trusted by our clients.
. . .
And all you can do is sigh?
No, it's not all I can do.
It's supposed to make me want to send you back in there?
Well, yeah. You know I can do the job.
I know John can do the job. Could do the job.
Can do the job. And you know I'm John.
I know you claim to be John. Should I just believe anyone who shows up with your badge now?
Well, you've always been right to trust me so far? To trust the mes so far, right?
"The mes"?
The mes you've met lately. You're not going to make me go through this again, are you?
Go through what again?
The proving to you that I'm John. Trust me, there will be more sighing involved. By both of us.
. . .
Yeah, just like that.
How did you get to be this guy, anyway?
"This guy"?
Yeah, isn't he--aren't you--awfully young . . .
Awfully young? Aren't I too young for . . . the old me? That's what you mean?
Well, you do look like a kid, too young to be a qualified social worker. Too young to be trusted. You could be mistaken for a client of ours, and one who hasn't had the easiest time.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
So, then, how did you get to be him? Or, how did this you, get to be you?
It was more of Mark's idea.
Mark?
Mark, the flight attendant. You've met him.
Yeah, I have. So, for one thing, you're not even taking responsibility anymore, if it was Mark's idea for you to . . . change bodies.
Well, I didn't exactly resist.
Yeah, I guess not.
And?
"And"?
You said "for one thing," makes me think at least one more thing is coming.
Very precise of you. I thought you and Mark weren't a couple, but just . . .
Yeah, just.
Just. . . but he's giving you . . you're taking from him? You go out and . . . choose likely bodies together?
No.
No? How so?
I said, it was more of his idea. He kept . .
"kept. . .?"
Kept making eye contact with me, the whole time he was kissing Simon.
Simon?
Simon. This guy. This former guy. The body you see before you. Simon's.
And we don't know where this Simon is now?
We've been through this before, too. "This Simon" is right here, now.
He's here, but he's you.
He's me. It's his body, my soul, my consciousness. I'm still John.
Still John, just taking on . . . the body your boyfriend wants you to be?
The body my . . fuckbuddy and I want me to be.
Oh, fuckbuddy?
Yeah. And I suppose . . .
You suppose . . .
Simon had something to do with it, too.
He went along with it?
He did.
He knew . . . this would happen to him. How?
We had told him. He seemed to believe us. He went to bed with Mark. Mark drew me in.
And you're telling me you're taking responsibility for this?
No, I'm . . . not acting terribly responsible.
And yet you want me to send you in there to be responsible for others, like our clients.
Yes, I guess I do.
What pitch can you make right now, that would convince me you can still act in our client's best interest?
I always have before. You've never found fault with any of my work before.
I never found fault with John's work. Weirdly, you're now younger than you were. I have less reason to trust you. Clients have less reason to trust you, or to believe you. You look like hell, but also you look about 22. What had this Simon kid been into, anyway?
Some kind of crazy shit.
Yeah, like what?
We met him at Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous.
And you took him home and bedded him?
Well, not right away, and it was more of Mark's idea.
Wouldn't he have been breaking his rules by sleeping with you guys?
Yeah, he would have been. He was. He told us he was.
So why'd he do it?
I guess two guys' fun is a third guy's relapse.
Two guys' fun . . . you mean . . .
Mean what?
You guys had a threesome?
Yeah. Well, it started out as one.
Started out? . . . yeah. I get it.
That seems to interest you.
. . .
Picturing gay men having three ways?
I guess.
Never been with a third?
No . . Should I remind you it's your boss you're talking to? While you're at work?
Hey, you were questioning me. Your face lit up when I mentioned the three way.
I supposed it did. You want one of these?
I'm good, thanks. Maybe one of those.
Okay.
So. Have I proven myself responsible enough? Have you heard enough gory details? Can you tell me one other way I could possibly prove to you I'm telling the truth? Why would someone this story up? If someone did, would they expect to get away with it?
. . .
You're not answering me.
I know I'm not. You . . .
Yeah?
You're . . . staying gay through all of this?
"Staying gay"?
You're not the man you were just a few weeks ago.
Yeah . . . ?
And you're still . . .
Still a gay man? You're assuming I can change that now, any more than I usually could?
Well, I mean. All you would have to do . . .
Yeah . . .?
Is sleep with the right person, and. . .
And I wouldn't be gay anymore?
Well, yeah.
Okay, for one thing.
Oh, now you're doing the multiple things.
Yeah, now I'm doing the multiple things. Do you want some of this, by the way?
No, I said I'm good. What, already, for your one thing?
For my one thing, who's the "right person" going to be? For another, why do you assume I'm going through this willingly, like I can graft myself with a plant or something and become the man-plant I want to be?
"man-plant"?
I think you know what I mean. The sexuality, the sexual identity part, or parts--it, they, always come along with me. It's always the part that doesn't change, with each new body, each host.
"host"?
Host, whatever we're going to call it, them, him, whatever. I've always been gay, and I always was gay as the original John, and whatever this is that's happening to me lately, it's not something I'm taking as a means of going straight, like, now that I have the chance or something.
But you do have the chance?
You don't even realize how that sounds, do you?
I suppose . . No, I don't. All of these guys you've slept with, since you've been . . them.
Yeah, since I've been becoming them. What about `em?
They've all been gay guys?
Well, yeah. Or bi guys. If they sleep with me as a gay guy, it's safe to assume.
Yeah, but what if one of them was straight?
Second time, Luke, I'll point out that you totally lit up at a weird topic and a strange time. Something about three gay guys getting it on tickled your fancy a minute ago. And you're clearly picturing me with a straight man now, without even.. .
Without even . . . ?
Thinking it through. You think I want to be straight, so you're wondering why I haven't . . . slept with a guy, to make me straighter, like his orientation could come along with his body, like he would consent to be with me, like I could get all of that through my conscience, like I could be responsible then, if you're telling me I'm not even being responsible now.
Responsible again, ha?
Yeah, it's your word. We haven't even touched on something here yet, either.
Yeah, what's that?
Why your mind went there. Why you would want me to be straight. Why you think I would want to be straight. Why you want me to be with a straight guy, so that being with him would somehow make me straighter. Why you seem to think I'm going through this body-changing, body-snatching business to become straighter, like it's a deliberate thing, and like gayness is the problem that needs fixing.
Whoa. Okay, it's your. . .
It's my boss I'm talking to? Is that where you're going to hide now, so you don't have to answer those questions?
I'm the one asking the questions. You're the one who needs to prove to me you can still do the job. You're the one who needs to prove to me you can still go into the next room and work with the next client and have them trust you, have them, and have me, deserve that trust.
Okay. Sighing once again. You're the one asking the questions, I'm the one answering them. I think it's fascinating you think of straightness as a default I need to get back to somehow, when I've never been straight. I think it's interesting I've been sharing all of this agony of walking up as a different person, and you think I'm making conscious progress toward being some alpha male straight dude. You seem to think, as long as I'm changing bodies, why not fix my sexuality while I'm at it?
You can't tell me it hasn't occurred to you.
Why can't I tell you that? Would you expect a black guy to seek out a white partner, so he wouldn't be black anymore? A handicapped guy to try to seduce somebody able bodied? Where is this going to end?
With the Asian guy who was in here several days ago?
Well, yeah, actually, the Asian-Caucasian thing was hard to go through. Asia Man and American Man, though, both were gay.
"Asia Man"?
Yeah, Asia man.
You mean you don't remember his name?
Jim. And I do remember my name, and when I was him, and when I'm someone who used to be Simon, I'm still John.
You're still John.
And John is gay. He will forever be gay.
And would . . .
And would, what?
Would John, if he did sleep with a straight man?
. . . Become as straight as the other guy? Make the other guy gay?
. . . well, yeah, would he?
Another fascinatingly revelatory question, boss. Why do you want to know?
Just . . . curiosity.
Yeah, straight men always have fascinating curiosity about what gay men do in bed, and you just gave me another reason why. You think sleeping with one of us, especially one that's going through what I'm going through, would make the gay guy straight. But it might also make you, as the straight guy, gay, right?
Well. . .
Well, what? It's only allowed to work in one, default direction?
Well, you're the one who's changing, you say, and you're a guy who's gay, so being with a straight man . .
Might make me straight, too? Might stop all of this from happening? Might be the reason all of this is happening?
Well, yeah, maybe. You don't know, right? You haven't slept, yet, with a straight guy.
No, true, I haven't. That also seems really important to you to point out. Wonder why that is.
. . .
". . . " is right, boss. Really, think about this now. You're recommending a guy who's gay should get together with a guy who's . . . straight, so that the first guy is . . . wait for it.
. . . is straight, then, too.
Is straight, right. So, a gay coupling with a straight guy would make . . . two gay guys? Two straight guys?
Two straight guys, because it wouldn't be a gay coupling.
It wouldn't be a gay coupling. Two guys getting together sexually, knowing they wanted to change the gay guy, not to be gay anymore, wouldn't be a gay coupling? Wouldn't be having gay sex . . . Because the straight guy would be . . . straightening him out, not. . .
Not . . .
Fucking him. Right?
Well, if it went to that. Yeah.
Yeah.
. . .
And why are you, of all straight guys, Luke . . .
Y-eah . . . ?
Why are you of all the straight guys I know, the one to propose that as a gay guy who wants to stay one person again instead of changing, all I need is a straight guy to stop me? In a way, you're saying, I can be straight, I just haven't met the right guy yet . . .
Can I remind you, for the third time. . .
That I'm talking to my boss?
Yes!
Okay, but can I remind you, too, you ask revelatory questions, Luke, and you always leave me thinking, why do you want to know?
. . .
Do I want to know what that look means?
No, probably not.
. . .
How about that sigh?
No, probably not, either.
Can I get back to work now?
Yeah, I suppose you can. I've been meaning to tell you . . .
Yeah?
Matt's up next. He's been in the next room. He might even have been able to hear us.
I could hear them. I couldn't see their facial expression. I didn't know what they were eating that they were offering one another. I hadn't even seen this guy who was about to walk in and claim he was the latest John. I was just about to get annoyed they always sent out someone different, who always claimed to be the same John, who always knew what the other Johns had known. I was reasoning to myself they might just as well admit it was someone else, and just admit they were keeping their records about snooping on me, and talking about me when I wasn't even there--when this John, the new John, walked in. Oh, wow.
He could have passed for late teens, early to mid twenties. No wonder the other guy was concerned about sending him out to talk to clients. A cute face remained understated behind unassuming glasses, a rounded nose, a glimmer of a smile that effortlessly assured. This guy could be your algebra tutor. Your freshman-year crush. A boy next door to every girl who would date him and nearby to every guy who would wish he could. I'm afraid the jaw fell open.
"Matt," he says, unintroduced, and I know that, yep, he was going to say he was John.
And a suave manner kicked in, heightened by the cute winsomeness of the grin and pupils that swam and intensified behind the lenses. I was being managed, and I was okay with that, but once again it came out this seemingly new counselor already knew everything about me--well, everything that I had told him--told them--told the office as a whole, before.
"So, you've read the file on me, again . . ." and I inflect the voice into a question, as if to ask him the name.
He sighs and even it's cute with this boyish facial factor. He goes through the routine of insisting he's John, repeating back the basics about me any counselor here would know, and then the details that supposedly only John would remember--screen names, this time, which surprise me, and what he'd been talking about online when I'd last--yeah, I'm blushing and can feel it--when I'd last IM'd, then attempted. This is either the guy, or someone who's really read--memorized the transcript. But, then, I'm thinking, the other guy, who I just heard talking to this guy, probably read it through, too.
"He's the one," I break in in the middle of his sentence, to say, momentarily throwing him off, "he's the one who shouldn't be seeing gay clients. Not you."
The eyes narrow a bit behind the lenses as he thinks about this one, decides he should humor me, but wonders if his resentment and anger at the other guy are that apparent. "He, Luke? Shouldn't be . . ." Yeah, he's telling himself: humor him, now. "Luke's a consummate professional. I've seen him help gay and straight before." Nervous fingertips sneak up to hairlines to smooth down unruly curls, but the fingertips seem to remind him of . . . something, at which he folds them down again.
"But he thinks we all want to be straight as soon as we have the chance." I'm practically quoting their conversation back at them, and now I've caught them at unprofessionalism, on top of resentment at Luke I can still see clouding charmingly cute little furrows in his forehead.
I've also talked in terms of us and them about his straight boss, and he--the other, earlier hes, if I'm believing him, them--he always ceases the gay conspiracies. They're bad to foster, he's said to me, too, just in case I come in sometime, and there's only one of "them," not any of "us," to talk to. But now it's us and them, we young and youngish gay guys and them, the misunderstanding straights; but it's also he, John, and them: changing people like John is somehow, he's telling me, "us," versus the rest of "them," who I guess I belong to, too, since I'm still the Matt I've always been.
He's probably telling himself right now he shouldn't have said all of this to a client, but how could he not, if the same John has been three separate guys just in the last few weeks? As he makes eye contact again, still suppressing fingertips that want to massage his hairline reassuringly, he's decided to take me back to basics in ways I'd skimmed right over: "So you were listening to us."
"A little bit," I concede. "I couldn't see what you were doing. I didn't know what you were eating." Some kind of salty residue, in fact, stuck to a cutely understated bottom lip. Pleasant curves there, I thought to myself, wondering how long it would take me to lick that saltiness even sweeter.
"I can handle your case and work with you now as well as I always can," he asserts, looking me straight in the eye. "And it's because I've been listening to you for months now"--another line he's fond of circling back to--"not because we're both queers. A guy like Luke, straight as he is," and, to help himself, he pauses, as if trying to convince himself of the truth of his own statement; "Luke can help you just as much and point you in the right direction, too." Something that rings a bit too much of the high-school guidance counselor has crept into his way of talking and amid the cheesiness he loses me.
"But he's assuming, right?," I persist, "you're trying to get yourself straight, one guy at a time." It's my turn to meet his look straight on: "one fuck-buddy at a time." An eyeball involuntary jumps and this tells me he's reevaluating how much I've heard, from how many conversations. I take advantage of his re-evaluatory pause: "You still want to work for him? I sure wouldn't want to."
He's tapping fingers, putting fingertip to fingertip, repressing aggravation, and deciding we're too far off-track, if we ever were on it. Two or three leading questions bring us back to me and my progress since last time. Roving eyes tell me he's scanning my arm for physical tracks, speaking of staying on them. It's my turn to sigh. "It doesn't look like I have any more control over my sitch than you have over yours," I say, with the sense I'm throwing him a bone, and using a word he's used, sitch, as one of his supposed credentials of cool. He realizes I mean the lack of control he has over Luke, over his job, and not over the supposed body-snatching routine he's been telling me about, and this is progress in his book, at least to some degree. Some query like, "and what part of your life do you most wish you had more control over?" gets yanked from the playbook, and I can tell he's finally concluding something clinical can be salvaged from this train wreck of an appointment, after all.
Let's really throw him a . . . bone. "I wish I had more control over my"--pausing for self-conscious emphasis--"sex life. And what it"--telling myself, don't overdo it now--"who it, reminds me of." Too late, the inner voice says back: I'd overdone it.
"Whom it reminds you of"--he starts to say, then catches himself. Another whom bomb. This could only be John. I'm smiling in spite of myself. He's catching himself, after he's caught himself: he stammers out something about not being able to choose partners, not being able to choose frequency of sex, wondering if I'm ready to have so much sex at my age, wondering if it's even appropriate to talk to a teen about fuckbuddies.
It's clear he's laying out alternatives so I`ll tell him where the rub is, or where it isn't, in this case. Glancing down at tracks in my arms, I open my mouth and spontaneously talk for the first time in the whole conversation. I'm still seeing multiple guys, my age and older, who want to have more and more sex, and while part of me wants to have that sex with them, part of me can't think of it as new sex with a new guy, but always sex from before, happening again, always recurring, whether I want it to or not, to the head as well as the hard-on, then, to the head and what should be the hard-on. And I'm a teen, still, and what am I doing without a hard-on when a boyfriend twice as old as me has one, and wants me to have one and--
Pupils behind glasses frames have me fixed. This is some kind of refracted thousand-yard stare. These eyes are the ones watching God. I'm unthinkingly spilling my guts about compulsive sex addiction and he's staring at me fixedly, accusingly, even. "It's like I want to have it, the sex, and don't want to have it, and yet can't stop having it," I'm saying.
He comes up with: "Like being stuck in a tube site's pornos, having to perform the same sex act, over again and again, every time someone clicks on you."
It's too intense, too weird. Yes, it is like that, but how does he know this? Clicks on me?
A narrowing of the staring eyes tells me he knows he should back off, but he pauses and tries a different tact. "And you've never told me, Matt," he says, then amends, "you've never told John or the other `Johns,' what sex you keep thinking of from the past, or what partner keeps occurring to you."
It's true, I never have. I've just said it's hard not to think of Dad when I'm with my boyfriend, with multiple boyfriends, now. I know they've had their suspicions, but I've never given them enough to investigate. I'm not sure I ever will.
There have been several beats of silence as we've both evaded one another's glances. After so much direct staring at one another, ceilings and walls are suddenly getting a great deal of attention.
"Someone who. . " I say, deep breathing "whom, I was with, probably at too young an age."
"Probably before you were ready for it?"
"Yeah."
"And maybe before you knew."
"Yeah, before I knew. Though they always say. . ."
"That our kind always knows." Eye-contact, reestablished, mutely explains what he means by "our kind," he and I, or the hes and I, in some kind of homo league together.
"Was this forced upon you?" He asks. The question hangs there. The fingertips busy themselves.
"Was this"--and the eyes fix me again--"a family member?"
And he's trying not to say the word incestuous, and he's trying not to directly accuse my dad, and I'm trying to get this conversation over with. The men that attract me, I say in an internal monologue, remind me of my dad and I don't know why. It has to be subtle because it squicks me out if it's too obvious that they look like him. But they do look like him and act like him and I've got the same issues with authority--attraction, repulsion, respect, hatred--that I have toward him, hating him but needing him, wanting his approval yet knowing I can never, finally get it. And I don't actually know why and I don't know when it started and I don't know if we ever did anything or if we did, if it was what he intended or just what a little, overexcited boy's brain misinterpreted. And you try making an actual, legal accusation out of that muddle of memories, sexual or not, perverted or not, daddy-complexed or not. But now I'm mentally daring someone else to accuse a third boogie man, when really, I'm still just talking to myself. He, the latest John, is still sitting there, waiting. Let's mess with his head, instead.
"It was someone, John, a lot like you."
I wonder what on earth he means by that, as I also make the mental note, I've now licked all of the pretzel salt off of my lips, and they now they're left tasting sweet. It's almost enough, not quite enough, to distract me. I've almost adjusted to heavy, clunky glasses, which fit Simon's face, but that John with his, with my, ticks and fumbles has yet to adjust to. Matt has clearly been messing with me the whole time, but somewhere in there, as his eyes trace the tracks on his arm, as he looks back at me, then guiltily looks away, I've got to have made progress with him, somehow.
He's talking to me, even though I'm not really me, the John he knows, and even though I now, as Simon, don't look that much older than he is. He doesn't seem to know or to care that Luke is still in the adjoining room and listening, and if I know Luke--though I've been keeping myself from giving him away by looking in through the threshold at him--Luke has just been dying to intervene.
"A lot like me?" I inflect the pronoun as I stretch the thumbs around an imaginary picture frame. I try to indicate Simon as me, to ask if he means me, John, or me, this new . . . John.
It takes a moment for him to catch on. His look is calculating for a kid, and it looks like the whole brain beneath the chestnut crown is at work. Simon would probably conclude that much of a look from a relative stranger was a cruise. Matt's eyes seem to tell me he's admitting as much to himself, but he shakes his head as he finally looks away.
"Someone like John. The John you say you still are. The John I talked to before." It's even hard for him to say it back to me, and all I want to do is prompt him to keep talking.
"So someone older than you," I say as he nods. "Someone"--and I pause, looking for gentle ways to delineate older from older still, and potentially, innocent from a lot more creepy: "someone fatherly?" Even I wince at the word, quickly substitute fraternal, avuncular, mere kinfolk alternatives.
He starts rambling about proximity of bodies, repetitiveness of motions, assuming of blame, cutting of tracks and I've got to admit I'm half listening. Chestnut crown is letting it out and the eyes around his pupils go bloodshot red and I realize what I've been taking as cunning play and sarcastic jibe has masked a boy a few words away from crying the entire time. He's still stammering, babbling and something is breaking in those eyes and professionally I want him to go on talking and personally I want to walk up and hug him and romantically (yeah, romantically) some kid is going to unlock this boy someday, and after there is hell to pay, this will be that someone's most passionate boyfriend ever.
And I start asking myself, even as he's tearfully rambling, and which John, who is Simon now, or who was John long ago, listens to Matt talking-crying, but also to Luke, possibly spell-breaking and entering? And with which mode, professional, personal, romantic, is John listening? And is it the soul of the John inside, old enough to be Matt's parent, hearing and empathizing in the body, or is it the body of the John inside Simon, who is Matt's own age and subject to Romeo and Juliet laws--Romeo and Romeo ones in this case? And am I hearing him as his professional or his peer, and would I intervene, if I were to intervene, as John, as an adult, or as Simon, possibly just as lost as he?
And whose transference is John seeing in Matt's eyes as he talks--transference from whoever touched Matt when he didn't want to be touched, to whomever he wanted to touch when he was in bed with him, to whomever he saw, John or Simon, openly, empathetically listening before him? And which me, which I, personally, existentially, schizophrenically, was doing that empathetic listening to the point that would stop, would cease that transference, as any good therapist should? Visions of selves blur as I, as all of us, listen, and as visions of Matt as the speaker blend, into chestnut haired boy, into disclosing client, into somebody's erstwhile too-young, still unwilling partner boy.
"He just wouldn't stop," he's saying tearfully in the here and now, "even though I know he knows I want him to. And I can't make him," and the forehead's flushed and the expression's agonized and the blood vessels swell in the tracks in his arms--"And I can't make it stop in my head now when I want it to stop, and when--when the man I'm with wants it to stop."
And I've asked "who" again, mid-sentence and mid-stream, and I'm sensing the signs that usually mean it's a breakthrough moment, and he's going to tell me and it's not me, not John he means as the victimizer or the object of transference or the fatherly, avuncular one he's now attracted to. And we both hear foot falls from behind me and both realize with a sudden ceasing of our speech that Luke has walked into the room. He's broken the spell of the moment. He doesn't know he's ruining a breakthrough. He seems to throw a tearful Matt back into his messing-with-us mood.
"I forgot to tell you, John," he says, consciously cutting Luke out of our conversation just as he comes standing with us. "I saw you the other day. I saw, actually," and it's difficult, again and actually, to say, "Another you. Another guy you said you were." And he's making eye-contact again, listening to himself say to me, "Another guy you say you've been."
Luke and I both interrupt what we were going to say and stare at him, agape. "Who?"
We'd said it together and we're looking at one another as we're reading each other's thoughts, more than Matt's. We're catching each other's looks of skepticism even as we encourage him. We read his expression to gauge if he's sincere, shitting us, or sincerely shitting us. Luke probably wants to rebuke me about what he's been hearing me say to Matt, but he's too interested to hear what Matt says next. I'm duly deferential to a boss I'd put down ten minutes earlier, but also aware something had crept into my tone that hadn't been professional, hadn't been fatherly, hadn't been--let's say it: hadn't been entirely appropriate.
Let's say, "flannel shirt, butch expression," because it's what Matt's saying now. He is looking back and forth between us, his eyes still bloodshot but a trembling in his lips that tells me he's trying to control his expression and emotions. He's trying to describe a jutting, masculine jaw and a cover model expression. He's too young to know, or care, who Tom of Finland was.
"The lumberjack," Luke's saying. Is it a touch of disappointment I hear in his voice?
"Pete," I say. My tone's more surprised. I mentally grope for implications.
An eyebrow shoots up questioningly. "He said he was John," Matt begins.
"He--I," I stammer. "Yeah."
Boss Luke stumbles through the same attempt, with even less success. They've all been Johns because they've all been me, even when the I in question was lumberjack Pete. I'm remembering Bryan describing him in the bathhouse. I'm recalling his arm going down my shirt in the dance club. With a quick inhale, Simon's clear, youthful lungs trigger a visceral memory of lumberjack Pete's heavy, coughing breath. There's even a sympathetic bicep twinge as my muscles remember Pete's workouts. These bodies, I'm realizing, are accumulating somewhere inside, even when I think I'm moving on to some new John. If I can't see them or see as them anymore, I still, in a way, can feel them. Luke, without understanding any of this, is still trying to tell Matt that Pete was John--is John, just not this John.
"Not this John, who's"--they both train their eyes on me--"Simon, you said."
The "you" in this case is Luke, who's only now realizing his mistake, and who tries to same lame tactic I'd tried: "So you were listening," he says back to Matt.
Matt won't go on the defensive about his eavesdropping. He's getting too much mileage out of playing the confusion card. "Whoever," he finally says, shaking his head as if to end the question. "I saw him out--saw you out," he says to me, then shakes this off again.
Rather than revisit the who-question in all its existential glory, I hit upon a better, conversation-stopping interrogative. "Where, Matt? As you say, whoever he is, where exactly did you see him?"
Matt couldn't or wouldn't get any more specific than "out." He'd seen Pete, Pete-as-Pete-again, Pete-no-longer-as-John out somewhere on the town, somewhere in the gay district. And while he, John, now as Simon, still, sighed at that lack of information, he'd still been ecstatic. Maybe not all of the former hims had been banished. Maybe he could find Pete again, find out what had happened since he'd been John, find out from Pete how to be sure there were no more other Johns, find out, even, why this had happened, and if it was happening to others. Maybe he and Mark could cover the gay district together that night and find him, find lumberjack Pete, and this all would be over, once current-John met former-John's eyes.
Not so fast. Looking took forever, as Simon was twink enough to catch everyone's eyes at every bar they ventured into, Mark's appearance called forth "hey, sweetie!" around every corner, followed fast by, from the same voice, "Wait, where's John?" And of course, they didn't all mean the same John.
John, or rather the set of collective, former Johns, refused to appear as they scouted the joint for young, college-dudes: a barstool for each of the colors of the Pride rainbow, a nearly naked and clearly bored go-go boy wanting a tip from Simon, and a bartender whose look strongly suggested they weren't getting information about recent patrons unless they drank liberally and tipped handsomely. Here, or they were nowhere to be seen across the street, at the slightly-older but also more mixed dance place, already hopping with the sun still setting, mixed-sex couples boogieing next to gay men picking one another up, next to a foursome for whom no one had any idea what those four had in store. John hadn't appeared, but a guy Mark had first come out with had, in the shadowy corridor where John-Pete had plunged his hand into John-Trent's tee shirt, and as either luck or a very short soundtrack would have it, the same song had played over both events. A martini each of catching up stalled their progress, as a lager kept John-Simon from rolling his eyes,
None of the Johns johned at the almost-all-gay burger joint that adjoined two clubs, that was populated almost entirely by people with ongoing club disease, and that dismayingly showed Mark Simon could put away so much meat, he wondered how Simon had stayed as slim as Simon, even before Simon had become John. Scents of sizzling patties, just going from well-done to charred, permeated the atmosphere of the place--one wanted to spread steak sauce on the air one breathed.
No John showed himself at the oldest gay establishment in this part of the State, originally a speakeasy and still just as subterranean, and also the most diverse, trademark, bar on the block. Leatherboys shot pool with decked out drag queens, daddies chased ostentatiously oblivious boys, men dark as midnight flirted across just as many racial barriers as tax brackets--but still no John, just lots of men willing to be johns for Simon, and a few willing to be johns for Mark. Before they were ready to move on from the former speakeasy, Mark just has to sit down.
Really they were humoring the kid, Matt, they reasoned over the noise of the crowd, chasing around the queer part of town, as though they believed him that Pete, or the Pete who had been John, would show up. John more or less admitted Matt had been messing with him. And yet he's said it so sincerely, had held it back so long, had so sincerely wanted to tell him this good news, they had invested the evening--Mark's last before climbing aboard the red-eye at dawn--in chasing the ghost of one of John's former johns, a self (Pete) that John had been, whom a potential self was trying to make himself resist being (Matt), who had told the current John (Simon) he, Matt, had seen. They, John and Mark, had actually wasted five minutes in the parking lot outside of the first place, getting all of that straight and saying to one another, got that?
Well, no, Mark had thought but not said; I don't have that. It doesn't make any sense. It's not enough to go on. But he had gone on, for hours of driving to the town's bars, looking amid the pool halls, checking out the cruise at-your-own-risk johns, for the johns and the Johns, and trying to duck the questions, asked by voices and just by quizzical expressions, who in hell they were looking for? For, it wasn't clear they could answer, who or whom they were looking for, based on Matt's word, with no indication of location but "out," and with no idea, even, if Pete was the man, was the former John, Matt had meant, sincerely, insincerely, or sincerely trying to mess with them. That didn't, even this John had to admit, sound like a plan.
So, without a plan, early evening had become midnight. Mild fatigue morphed to exhaustion. Bars became clubs, became the bathhouse they went to together this time, retracing as John and Mark the steps the former John had followed, the night Asian Jim had become Pete's boyfriend Bryan. Annoyings were in abundance on clearly an off-night and Simon kept getting pulled into enclaves off of mazes, grabbed by hands protruding from glory holes, talked into rooms Mark had already traipsed obliviously by, the same Motown diva as the last time, belting out a disappointed melody that seemed to last their entire stay. A troll old enough to be Simon's granddad had had an arresting stare that halted them, making Mark wonder, indeed, how someone who looked as young as John currently looked as Simon had possibly gotten into such an adult establishment. Just to check, Mark actually returned at that point to the check-in desk, merely to see the man behind the desk hadn't become Simon, in turn. John had gotten in by some other means, indeed, and Mark, sputtered, silenced, was left unable to explain to the man at the desk what he'd wanted to know.
Which got them talking, once he had caught up with John-Simon, again, about how that change, John to Simon, had come about, and what it had looked like, that time, from Mark's perspective. Tracing the bathhouse's crowded corridors, scaling its metal stairways, Mark had tried to say to John, Simon, when the former John, porn-boy, had disappeared, but couldn't. It had been in a moment of decided passion, of losing one's self, when they had, in fact, lost precisely one self: porn boy was no longer rolling along with them in orgasmic ecstasy, no longer shouting out in their three-way chorus of shouting such shouts as how near he was to coming, no longer panting his way through lowering his heart rate along with their own elevated rates.
They turned a corner and greeted a friend whom Mark knew, but who clearly was embarrassed to be in the bathhouse, his redness apparent in the shadows, his chagrin noticeable, even when the noticer, obviously, was there in the bathhouse, too. Mark said he's sat up in bed, still panting and gasping for breath, made eye contact with the only man of the former threesome still in bed with him, and seen Simon's, not John's or pornboy's eyes, looking back at him. They descended a stairway and passed a maze of glory holes, where a man clearly recognized Simon from somewhere and expressed an amazement matching Mark's at seeing someone like Simon here. Mark had said, and John as Simon had stopped the conversation with Simon's acquaintance to look at him the bathhouse hallway, as Mark described looking into his eyes, post-coital with Simon. Alarm, but also recognition had resided there, as both men's pupils had sorted out for themselves, and conveyed to one another, pornboy's disappearance--demise--absorption, they didn't know what, but apparently, whatever it was, into Simon. And of course--in the bed before, not in the bathhouse hallway now--they had kissed. They had reaffirmed with puckers and tongues, he still kissed as John, and he kissed as John kissing Mark, despite all of the men that had come between one another, now in many more ways than one. It all seemed oddly to fit their current setting, too, looking for proxies for themselves around them, when at least one of them, John as Simon, did not even currently feel like himself. Fun house mirrors fooled with you less than this, and yet here they were, each of them no being able to help feeling fooled.
Surveying the dungeons and looking at the faces in each of the slings, they had more or less admitted it to one another: they were now the kind of guys who lured thirds into their web as a couple, knowing full well they would take advantage of those thirds guiltily, and would eventually, through sexual but misunderstood agency, make those thirds disappear. John was the kind of guy who could jump into bed with a man and emerge from the same bed alone, and the sort who could transform a threesome into a pair, not exactly at will, but clearly in a way that was his fault. They had taken on predatory dimensions together, though they could clearly help themselves if they chose to--and cherubic, twinkie Simon, was, tellingly, whom they chose. They were the kind of gay men who illustrated stereotypes, preying on others for their kicks, even when the preyed-upon disappeared after the preying, and even when the place to look for them was the sleaziest spot in the town, the shadowy, raucous bathhouse, on an off-off night. Both men had more than the usual sort of self-recognition scenes bathhouse patrons tended to have, wondering, what kind of a monster am I, John--or what kind of a monster was I, John, last time I was really John? And: how can I, Mark, live with myself, knowing it won't be this John I'll be living with much longer, if the John inside of all of them stays true to form?
Answers weren't forthcoming as men's arms started to extend from thresholds and draw Simon into private rooms. Imponderables continued as Mark rounded corners without him, found friends of his own, despaired of ever getting out of there with Simon. And yet they did finally find the lockers, take the final showers, say sheepish goodbyes to the men they'd seen, with whom they would steadfastly deny that seeing, the next time they saw them outside the club. And yet there was the sense all was not lost, that they could really believe Matt, even if he was messing with them, that former Johns were in the offing, were alive and well somewhere, were just vanishing briefly and not permanently, and were, thereby, nothing to be guilty about. Existing guilt colored that hopeful revelation, as if both men looked desperately for signs of their sexual innocence, signals of their former selves' survivals, obvious explanations for what had been their existential, sexual angst.
As John was driving around jerkily and ineptly with what looked to Mark like the non-dominant hand, Mark just sighed and tried to help him keep his eyes on the road. As John scanned strange neighborhoods, peering through, then taking off and cleaning Simon's clunky glasses, Mark thought about the red eye flight he now just had a few hours to catch. As he looked into bedroom mirror after bedroom mirror, his confused companion pondered what stories rumpled but empty counterpanes would tell him, if they could.
As one `seventies wood-paneled place made Mark strain to imagine what kind of retro dude would live here, why he would invest so heavily in skylights, which must look much more impressive by day, he had to admit--John had seemed especially disappointed, browbeaten, down-trodden in finding the seventies décor unoccupied.
But suddenly, just as inexplicably, Mark saw John's eyes light up, his expression completely change, unbridled joy find its way unaccustomed onto Simon's always cute but always curious brow. Mark looked around to see what had brought the change about, and saw nothing but heard something, and it only made him wonder: someone loudly and nasally snoring from some other room.
I, Mark, wondered how someone could snore through the landing of an eight-hour flight. I wondered if we were ever going to get the whole groggy stupor passengers off of the plane, then wondered if "stupor" was the proper word for a collection of passengers, like a murder of crows, a bureaucracy of insurance salesmen, a stupor of red-eye flight passengers. I shut off the self-criticism: one has to learn to entertain one's self mentally with so many trips in the air. One has to have the conversations one can have with others, when some of those others are spending eight-hour flights snoring fit to wake the dead.
The yammer and babble in this airport was all umlauts and harsh r's, strings of words all ending in "en" and none of them landing in a consciousness that still wanted to speak English. The cultureshock never really adjusted for me, even after the jet lag lapsed and the caffeine needs reset themselves, dimly aware I'd lost a night somewhere to red-eyes and connecting flights. The Atlantic churned passively beneath us no matter which way we crossed it and the babble, really, was the same on both sides as well, just different syllables of yammer, ground that stayed rock steady for a change, then either a layover or a connecting flight of hundreds of other brats. Bavarian thighs on a sunburned wench blocked the aisle as she repeatedly protested, "I just don't understand." One hesitated to just say, look lady, there's nothing to understand. The suitcase doesn't fit in the overhead bin and I'd already tried my best hoch deutsch to tell her that. So I mutely mimicked trying to slam the bin door on the woman's unlikely portmanteau and hunched my shoulders in the universal gesture of the resigned shrug. Two men in the row in front of Bavarian thighs chatted in something throatily eastern European and looked to be a couple, but I'd long since decided my gaydar wasn't to be trusted, as soon as I tried to cross cultural or language barriers. The Hanses, as I'd decided to call them, chatted on obliviously anyway, and got onto the second consecutive flight with me, Europe pockmarking itself with destinations eastward, toward the rising sun and away--I had to admit to myself for the first time the whole eight-hour flight--away from John.
Unpacking in an Austrian crashpad for pilots and flight attendants, I'd thought about how delighted Simon as John had looked at the sound of someone snoring. How long it had taken to dawn on me why the snore was a good sign. How he'd crossed the corridor in that seventies-styled paneled house and entered the other bedroom. How someone I hadn't known--probably someone I hadn't met because I'd been at flight the whole time John had met him, the whole time John had been him--had blinked at him in semi-darkness, just as I was realizing I had a uniform to change into and a plane to catch, and I'd spent that whole evening and late into the night chasing a phantom he'd apparently finally found, in the form of a John, a former John, a former self for him, but a former John I hadn't ever known as him. A rueful chuckle to myself marked my thoughts about trying to explain this to anyone around me, setting aside the language barrier and just gearing up for the insanity of life with John. Life with the Johns, plural. Life with--I briefly wondered if it were time to unwind and nap, to fuel up and caffeinate, or to split the difference between the two--John when I wasn't abroad, as I was now. But being with John, though I'd said I loved him, wasn't life at home, either. The chuckle turned to a sigh.
The sigh sounded German, gruff and guttural, a different pitch of unarticulated sarcasm than that with which I would have sighed in America. Unpacking effects and hanging uniforms up so as not to have to iron after the nap, I was amazed I'd made it the whole flight without thinking of John during the lulls of boredom, the pauses as one taxis down tarmacs, the necessary distractions from the Annoyings, the tribe of which one didn't just encounter in bath houses. John, the Johns, kept life interesting--kept our lives interesting, with his multiple lives. How did I know the man who'd been snoring in the bedroom wouldn't kick us out or have us arrested for breaking and entering? How did I know he was a former beau or host or whatever he'd been of John's, John shaking a snoring man awake in his own bedroom, the way I just not been able to shake awake a loud, nasal snorer on the plane? When I'd asked, what was it about the snoring that had given the man away to John in the first place, he'd smirked through Simon's lips at me. He'd said, "I've been telling you all along it's been about sleeping as someone, right? You should, dear," he said, dinging me, "have known."
In fact, he hadn't known, and that was the latest thing, the next big twist in John's ongoing, mind-boggling adventure. He'd lain there blinking at the two men in his house who evidently weren't there to hurt him or rob him or steal from him--but why the fuck were they there, then, and why was one of them, me, begging the other to leave the second we'd woken him, as I'd moved on to worrying about missing my flight? Utter cluelessness had spread across the poor man's face over the course of John's explanations. Total blankness had filled his expressions as John as Simon has attempted to get the man to recognize him. Disbelief, then frustration, had colored the sleepy man's features as John's story continued, as explanations were offered, as I tried to back John up--really, I did.
But the trick that usually worked with me, that I'd seen him work on others, hadn't worked. The man had no recollection of meeting an earlier John in a bathhouse. He'd never shared the house we were in with a lumberjack type named Pete. He'd never gone to the bathhouse where we'd just gone to see if Pete were there, and met an Asian boy, Jim, looking for him--Pete, John, Pete-as-John--too. And that's where the chuckles and sighs were coming from, for John at the man's house, for me in the Austrian crash pad: none of it made sense. All of it buggered belief. The man then had just blinked at us. I'd gone "oh," a couple of times, recognizing the man who must, then, be Bryan, among John's stories of who had become whom, which man he had been, before and after the other men he'd managed to be. John had kept trying, dredging up more and more details from Bryan, Jim who'd been John before John had been Bryan, some kid in a video in a tube site, whom John was now saying he'd been after he'd been the John who'd been this man, Bryan. The story was getting weirder, the details were never clicking, John was ultimately saying he only knew where this house was, where the paneled, seventies abode had been, from tricking with Pete there, waking up the next morning as Pete, hearing snoring, then, he'd recognized as Bryan's snoring, then, and that he'd heard on one other occasion and at one other place--the baths at which this, wholly uncooperative Bryan, refused ever to admit he went to. Did I have all of that right?
I channel-surfed French- and German speaking tv stations and heated up some of the collective dinner from leftovers at the crashpad. We'd spent my last eight hours on the ground chasing after former Johns, from the kid's, Matt's, mentioning a different one--Pete, in fact, the one that preceded, that had dated, in fact, the one they'd eventually found, Bryan. Only Bryan remembered none of it, professed never to have seen John before, and was right in one sense: John was Simon now, and wasn't the John whom Bryan had known, whom Bryan had been, what was then several weeks back.
John had glanced back at me, I'd gestured toward the watch on my wrist, he'd looked annoyed I'd had other concerns. But it was my job I had to get to or risk losing it, and I'd been a loyal enough friend, partner, fuckbuddy chasing around with him all night, and just had to go. The tricks of intimate knowledge hadn't worked in reminding this trick, Bryan, of the time he'd tricked with a different John, and John, then, was starting to doubt that trick would continue to work with me much longer, either: it was true, Simon's lips tried, but didn't quite, kiss as the old John had kissed, and maybe he was losing that former self forever, and maybe the man, the John, I'd first been Mark and John with, would never return among the many men, the many Johns, he'd been since then. And now it appeared they could resurface, could reappear after they'd been John, or after John had been them--had been they. Only they, or at least, only this one, didn't remember it and didn't want to hear it, or become the former selves John said they had been, or whom he had been.
So where were they, then? Believing Matt, that former Johns did show up? Or believing the truths of their own eyes, that here--so says Simon as John--was a used-to-be John, only that John didn't remember having once been John, and didn't recognize, of course, the current John, trying to tell him the whole cockamamie story? I didn't blame him, I'd said as we'd driven to John's, then to the airport. The story was too weird to be true, and who were we, after all, to Bryan, but two guys, in his house, with some ridiculous story to tell?
The yammer in German on the television, meanwhile, subsided, and I checked messages on the cell. The multiple digits of international calls stretched across screens and yet the combos sparked memories and grins. I redialed, tentatively helloed to someone would was probably not expecting to speak in English when he answered the phone, said where the crash pad was, and surprised--I had to admit--myself. Myself was joined by another Hans, sputtering his way through endearing multisyllabics, in one of the bunks: embodied meat-and-potatoes, a solidity only a German could acquire, a body that felt nothing like John in any of the bodies, any of the johns I had known him in. At least this Hans was always the same Hans, with whom I could never get tongue tied, as we spoke with different native tongues. John had been a different John each time I'd seen him lately, and one of those Johns, Simon, had been a beau I had offered up to him, sacrificing the poor, original Simon--we thought--to our weirdly kinky, existential love. But Hans' kisses put a stop to those thoughts, got me thinking, it's nice to return to the same man overseas, to be reminded something proverbial about the same old ports in storms. John couldn't stay the same John, and it wasn't John's fault, and he was working on finding former selves, stopping the process, consulting the Tonys, finding himself--as corney as it sounded--all over again. Hans, snoring post-coitally now, never had to regain himself. He was always the same Hans. His arms, wrapped around me, always felt the same. He succeeded in making me forget the Annoyings of the last flight, the proximity of the next departure, the body's jet lagged torpor. He even reminded me, the smell of those meat and potatoes wafting off from snoring, blissful physique, that I could put in a request for a transfer of my home base--even an international transfer, for that matter--anytime that I wanted. On that thought, or soon after, two snorers snored in the same language, sleepy torpor, and momentarily if placidly, slept on in the same shared bunk.