“Indeed,” said Eric, “I can’t be sure. And yet I must decide.”
“What must you decide?”
Eric lit a cigarette, drew one foot up, and hugged one knee. “I mean, I think you’ve got to be truthful about the life you have. Otherwise, there’s no possibility of achieving the life you want.” He paused. “Or think you want.”
“Or,” said Vivaldo, after a moment, “the life you think you should want.”
“The life you think you should want,” said Eric, “is always the life that looks safest.” He looked toward the window. The one light in the room, coming from behind Vivaldo, played on his face like firelight. “When I’m with Cass, it’s fun, you know, and sometimes it’s, well, really quite fantastic. And it makes me feel kind of restful and protected — and strong — there are some things which only a woman can give you,” He walked to the window, peering down through the slats in the Venetian blinds as though he were awaiting the moment when the men in their opposing camps would leave their tents and meet in the shadow of the trees. “And yet, in a way, it’s all a kind of superior calisthenics. It’s a great challenge, a great test, a great game. But I don’t really feel that—terror—and that anguish and that joy I’ve sometimes felt with — a few men. Not enough of myself is invested; it’s almost as though I’m doing something — for Cass.” He turned and looked at Vivaldo. “Does that make sense to you?”
“I think it does,” said Vivaldo. “I think it does.”
But he was thinking of some nights in bed with Jane, when she had become drunk enough to be insatiable; he was thinking of her breath and her slippery body, and the eerie impersonality of her cries. Once, he had had a terrible stomachache, but Jane had given him no rest, and finally, in order to avoid shoving his fist down her throat, he had thrown himself on her, hoping, desperately, to exhaust her so that he could get some sleep. And he knew that this was not what Eric was talking about.
“Perhaps,” said Vivaldo, haltingly, thinking of the night on the roof with Harold, and Harold’s hands, “it’s something like the way I might feel if I went to bed with a man only because I—liked him — and he wanted me to.”
Eric smiled, grimly. “I’m not sure that there is a comparison, Vivaldo. Sex is too private. But if you went to bed with a guy just because he wanted you to, you wouldn’t have to take any responsibility for it; you wouldn’t be doing any of the work. He’d do all the work. And the idea of being passive is very attractive to many men, maybe to most men.”
“It is?” He put his feet on the floor and took a long swallow of his drink. He looked over at Eric and sighed and smiled. “You make the whole deal sound pretty rough, old buddy.”
“Well, that’s the way it looks from where I’m sitting.” Eric grimaced, threw back his head, and sipped his whiskey. “Maybe I’m crying because I wanted to believe that, somewhere, for some people, life and love are easier — than they are for me, than they are. Maybe it was easier to call myself a faggot and blame my sorrow on that.”
Then silence filled the room, like a chill. Eric and Vivaldo stared at each other with an oddly belligerent intensity. There was a great question in Eric’s eyes and Vivaldo turned away as though he were turning from a mirror and walked to the kitchen door. “You really think it makes no difference?”
“I don’t know. Does the difference make any difference?”
“Well,” said Vivaldo, tapping with his thumbnail against the hinges of the door, “I certainly think that the real ball game is between men and women. And it’s physically easier.” He looked quickly at Eric. “Isn’t it? And then,” he added, “there are children.” And he looked quickly at Eric again.
Eric laughed. “I never heard of two cats who wanted to make it failing because they were the wrong size. Love always finds a way, dad. I don’t know anything about baseball, so I don’t know if life’s a baseball game or not. Maybe it is for you. It isn’t for me. And if its children you’re after, well, you can do that in five minutes and you haven’t got to love anybody to do it. If all the children who get here every year were brought here by love, wow! baby, what a bright world this would be!”
And now Vivaldo felt, at the very bottom of his heart, a certain reluctant hatred rising, against which he struggled as he would have struggled against vomiting. “I can’t decide,” he said, “whether you want to make everybody as miserable as you are, or whether everybody is as miserable as you are.”
“Well, don’t put it that way, baby. How happy are you? That’s got nothing to do with me, nothing to do with how I live, or what I think, or how miserable I am — how are you making it?”
The question hung in the room, like the smoke which wavered between Eric and Vivaldo. The question was as thick as the silence in which Vivaldo looked down, away from Eric, searching his heart for an answer. He was frightened; he looked up at Eric; Eric was frightened, too. They watched each other. “I’m in love with Ida,” Vivaldo said. Then, “And sometimes we make it, beautifully, beautifully. And sometimes we don’t. And it’s hideous.”
And he remained where he was, in the doorway, still.
“I, too, am in love,” said Eric, “his name is Yves; he’s coming to New York very soon. I got a letter from him today.”
He stood up and walked to his desk, picked up the play and opened it and took out an airmail envelope. Vivaldo watched his face, which had become, in an instant, weary and transfigured. Eric opened the letter and read it again. He looked at Vivaldo. “Sometimes we make it, too, and it’s beautiful. And when we don’t, it’s hideous.” He sat down again. “When I was talking before about accepting or deciding, I was thinking about him.” He paused, and threw his letter on the bed. There was a very long silence, which Vivaldo did not dare to break.
“I,” said Eric, “must understand that if I dreamed of escape, and I did—when this thing with Cass began, I thought that perhaps here was my opportunity to change, and I was glad—well, Yves, who is much younger than I, will also dream of escape. I must be prepared to let him go. He will go. And I think”—he looked up at Vivaldo—“that he must go, probably, in order to become a man.”
“You mean,” said Vivaldo, “in order to become himself.”
“Yes,” said Eric. And silence came again.
“All I can do,” said Eric, at last, “is love him. But this means — doesn’t it? — that I can’t delude myself about loving someone else. I can’t make any promise greater than this promise I’ve made already — not now, not now, and maybe I’ll never make any greater promise. I can’t be safe and sorry, too. I can’t act as though I’m free when I know I’m not. I’ve got to live with that, I’ve got to learn to live with that. Does that make sense? or am I mad?” There were tears in his eyes. He walked to the kitchen door and stared at Vivaldo. Then he turned away. “You’re right. You’re right. There’s nothing here to decide. There’s everything to accept.”
Vivaldo moved from the door, and threw himself face down on the bed, his long arms dangling to the floor. “Does Cass know about Yves?”