Two today.
In the morning a man in the Lido buffet. I brushed up against his belly while we were in line for breakfast, and then he brushed up against me before he sat down. We went up two more times and both times it happened — my hand drifting across him I could feel how hard it was even through the pants and even just with my knuckles. He stayed behind after his wife went away and after Muz and Puz went to the salon. I went into the bathroom it was the good kind — just one toilet and a lock on the door. Mostly he just wanted to stand there and Wilson and by the time I finally convinced him to Coolidge it wasn’t even a minute before he popped. He wouldn’t look at me afterward but he asked me my name.
Later on but before lunch in the gym. I lifted for a little while and then I went in the back. There was nobody in the sauna but one guy was sitting in the steam room he looked up at me when I came in and I could tell right away though he didn’t move until the steam came on. Then his hand came out of the cloud and settled on my chest. He said I was a big boy but I said I was just inflated from the bench press it goes away in a half hour and then I’m just another skinny puppy. Bush again and a little bit of Bush Jr. It got too hot and we had to finish in the shower.
Matt and Gavin. They’re nice names. I used to say my name was Matt, sometimes. What’s your name? They never really want to know. They’re just being polite I think I like it better when they don’t ask and I don’t ask either. Once somebody called out my real name while we were doing it and I couldn’t even finish I was so mad. I knocked his face against the floor I was hoping so bad that I would knock his teeth right up into his nose but then he made this noise it was very sad and I had to stop everything. I didn’t know why I was so mad it seemed a little extreme but later I figured it out. My name is for you. It’s for you to say. You say it in every one except number 20 and 15 and 40.
They were by the pool I sat down between them it didn’t take very long. Sometimes I am lucky but not usually this lucky there is something special about this boat. Matt smelled like coconuts Gavin smelled like gum. What do you like to do they asked me I said everything. I got to be in the middle of the Coolidge.
“It’s not breakfast material,” Frank said, when his wife paused in her reading to give him a look that invited some kind of commentary.
“What does that mean? It’s not cereal? It’s not yogurt? You can’t eat it?”
“It’s too sad, to read it in the beginning of the day. Let’s have something else. Where’s The Tattle Bear? Or how about something made up entirely?”
Connie shook her head. “That’s exactly your problem.”
“It is? What is?”
“This, exactly this. You want to avoid the problem, and bury your face in the paper. Listen, the problem is more important than The Tattle Bear, and more important than breakfast, and more important than any of that fancy pornography you’ve been watching.”
“But I haven’t been… what are you talking about?”
“And how like you,” she said, surprising him with an expression he had not seen since before the old world passed away — she wrinkled her nose and pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. To anyone else it would have looked like she was just concentrating very hard and like she smelled something very peculiar, but to Frank it announced her loathing disappointment. As suddenly as she put it on, she took the expression off, and then her face was merely ugly and sad, and she was crying.
“What?” he asked. “Good God, what is it?”
“How can you not know,” she said between little sobs, “when I’m talking about our daughter?”
“Ah,” he said, and he didn’t need for her to say, If he is doing this, then what is she doing? Or if a boy can be so sad, than can’t a girl? It was exactly the sort of ridiculous thing she would obsess over, but he didn’t say so, too sad himself at the way she was crying, and at the way this old difference had crept back into their life, and at the way they were fighting again. To see her like this again, so angry and crazy and sad, was as surprising as seeing a mountain thrust up out of the sea. And yet it had a quality, too, of fateful recognition. Of course she was still like this, and of course the earth had not utterly passed away.
“Don’t you sigh at me!” she shrieked. He didn’t answer, or even heave a more expansive sigh, but said, “I’m sorry.” He reached over the table and took the book and started to read from where she had left off.
A girl today, finally. Not a girl — a lady, older than you, even. And her husband, too, but he mostly just watched. She said his name — Scott! Scott! — at the end of our Reagan it was very traditional. The Reagan, that is. Not even a Nancy, just a Ronald, just me on top and him getting closer and closer until he was touching me but no Coolidge though I called out for it I might have said please. He called back to her, too, reaching past me to touch her I could feel him pressed up against my back and he sprayed all over me without hardly any incentive at all. Then they both held me I did a very simple Harrison until I popped and they both put their hands in it and put their hands in their mouths it was like watching Pooh eating honey.
I keep wondering what was going on between them, during. They weren’t even touching, even at the end he was just reaching for her and he ran his hands over her without touching her. I was close and I could see it, always an inch or a half inch or just a breath of space between them. It was like they had called me out of some place to put me between them but I wasn’t there, either. I can’t explain it but it was very definite this is a very strange boat every day I discover it more. I mean I knew what it was like while it was happening but now I am grabbing at it it’s like smoke but I know I’ll think about it while I’m asleep. I kept looking back at him and looking at her and looking back at him I wanted eyes in the back of my head to see them both at the same time. They must be very much in love.
Nothing today, except you. I did three Harrison’s just by myself and it was numbers twenty-two, fourteen, nineteen, fifty-three, and seventy — seventy all alone by itself for twenty minutes between coming back on board and going to dinner I finished just in time. We are in Aruba but all these places seem the same to me, the market squares and the white beaches. Everywhere we go Puz buys a bottle of rum and Muz buys a big tube of Retin-A at the drug store now she has three. She stopped me in the middle of the square this afternoon Puz was walking ahead and she stopped in the middle of making fun of him. She put her hand on my arm and held on to her hat like it might blow away from the questions she was about to ask and said, Are you all right? Are you having a good time?
Oh yes I said. Very good very very good.
There were opportunities today a man on the beach and a lady with a dog and a note from Matt and Aaron slipped under my door but I just wanted to be alone with you now it is almost midnight and somebody is standing a little ways down the deck staring out just like me I could walk by him and touch him as I passed and then it would happen I can already see it. But let him go let them all go I just want to be here with you.