“Yeah. It kind of is,” Ian said.
Paul let it drop.
The next day he mentioned again how inconvenient the drive was, adding, “We should try to come up with a solution.”
Ian agreed, but Paul let it drop again.
The next day Paul added a new suggestion: “Why don’t you just come stay at my place?”
Ian agreed immediately.
It was the easiest “moving day” he’d ever been involved in. Paul arrived in the morning to find Ian already waiting outside, sitting on the stoop and smoking a cigarette. He was wearing his plaid slacks and matching jacket with a deer-stalker hat that would have made a middle-aged man look dowdy. O
n Ian, it was a fashion statement—hip and sexy in its utter goofiness. When an ordinary-looking person wears an ugly hat, you assume he is out of touch with fashion. When a young and beautiful person wears an ugly hat, you assume you’re the one who doesn’t get it. All of Ian’s important possessions fit into a worn green backpack he had slung over his right shoulder. In his right hand, Ian held the fly-eating plant. Paul was struck once again by how young Ian was, and how even younger he looked. To anyone watching, Paul might have appeared to be a dad picking up his high-school son for school.
The propulsion of their passion had carried him along so swiftly that it only now dawned on him what a huge step he was taking. Inviting Ian to move in with him was probably the biggest risk he’d taken in his life.
What am I doing? he wondered. Then Ian smiled, and the thought drifted away.
Ian’s clothes took up only one drawer. Sometimes Paul would peek at the foreign objects in Ian’s drawer, delighting in what their presence represented. He would pick up a pair of Ian’s jeans and wonder at the narrowness of the waist. He grinned at the unfamiliar rock-band logos on the well-worn T-shirts. They were a symbol of Ian’s youth—his “otherness.”
The extra shaving kit in the bathroom pleased him, too, but it didn’t intrigue him the way Sara’s toiletries had when they had first moved in together. She had all those mysterious feminine lotions and potions. They were a wonderful symbol of her “otherness”—“a woman lives here!” During the months when they were first married, he probably spent hours gazing at small bottles and tubes, contemplating their contents.
Ian never bothered to close the bathroom door. Whether he was cleaning his ears with cotton swabs, poking at a zit on his forehead, or sitting on the toilet, he was completely unselfconscious. It was the sort of thing Paul would normally consider to be a distasteful breech of etiquette. For some reason, with Ian, he didn’t mind. The difference in their attitudes about privacy simply fascinated Paul, who couldn’t even brush his teeth in front of anybody. Ian was, in the best way, shame-less, a physical being free from shame about his incarnation.
Their domestic life soon took on a comfortable routine. That was what Paul cherished the most—not the moments of excitement and sexual ecstasy, but the ordinary day-to-day stuff, the things that never make it into photo albums or journals. The monotonously recurring events were the very substance of life, and it was precious to Paul to be living them with his angel.
Paul would watch Ian bringing in the mail, add an item to the shopping list, or take out the trash. Paul did most of the cleaning, because Ian couldn’t be bothered. Ian put the dishes in the dishwasher, because he liked that, but he didn’t like putting them away. Paul did that. Ian liked throwing clothes in the laundry but not taking them out of the dryer and folding them. Ian never got near the toilet with a brush. He liked vacuuming, but the vacuum usually didn’t quite make it back into the closet when he’d finished. He seemed to have a general block about putting things away, and away was where Paul liked things to be.
But Ian had an unfair advantage. He could get out of just about any household task he didn’t want to do with a flirtatious glance or a pout. Paul could put up no resistance to that face, and God help him, Ian knew it. Paul was vaguely aware that he was setting a precedent he might regret when the initial infatuation wore off, but he was powerless to do anything about it. It was probably karma, anyway. When Paul married Sara, he left all of the household chores to her by default. She took them on without comment or complaint, and he never thought to question it.
Even though Paul disapproved of Ian’s smoking, he secretly enjoyed the cigarette smell—which permeated everything—and the saucers placed around the house to be used as ashtrays, even when they spilled and left gray ash on the tables and carpets. They were tangible, physical reminders of the presence of his lover and of how his life had changed.
Ian’s main job was household chef. While he cooked he would often listen to music through headphones and sing along. Paul didn’t know most of the songs, but he was fairly sure Ian sang them all off-key. It was an endearing flaw, like the small gap in his teeth. Ian liked to toss little scraps of meat into the fly-eating plant, which he kept on the kitchen windowsill.
He had an adventurous palate. He loved anything spicy and liked to experiment with flavors. If he ever encountered an unfamiliar fruit or vegetable at the store, he had to buy it to see how it tasted. Paul was the opposite. The only spices he liked were salt and pepper, and he didn’t have any interest in trying anything more foreign than French toast. Ian made it his mission to sneak a little variety into Paul’s diet.
“What is this?” Paul would say as he pushed something around on his plate with his fork.
“It’s couscous.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s fine. It’s wheat. Just try it.”
“What’s that on top if it?”
“They’re called vegetables.”
Paul picked the chick peas off with his fork and put them to one side of the plate.
“You’re not eating those?”
“I don’t like them.”
“Have you tried them?”
“I don’t know. Can I… make a peanut butter sandwich?”