George didn’t answer at all, as if even acknowledging the question was impossible since Joe’s password to their shared past had been removed and so denied. Then he simply looked around the dusty basement with the same nod of admiration he had shown to everything else all night.
“Yep,” he said. “Some place. Some place you’ve—”
“Look!” Joe said, and he didn’t care how loud he got—the basement was sound-proofed enough that they’d stuck an expensive drum set down there to divert Tad, which he used so rarely they soon donated it as nearly new to the high school‘s music department. “I’ve had just about enough of this! I know what you’re doing! Why don’t you just stop it and say what you really think! You hate all of this! You think it’s awful! It’s okay, this is me!” And he was surprised to discover that he had meant the last three words not to encourage intimacy with George but to establish that he and his environment were the same—or he would have done had Joe really said it instead of just imagining he said it, since he was now afraid to say anything of the kind to his old friend.
“Thanks,” was what he said instead, and even that was slurred by his intoxication. “Thanks, Gor,” and he couldn’t get out his whole first name intelligibly.
George shrugged, confusedly—why thank him? He should be thanking Joe—and then let out a long, refreshed and refreshing sigh.
“It’s just such a joy, I don’t mind telling you,” he said, “to know oneself—to be oneself. Finally, finally, like meeting someone I’ve always heard about and who everyone else was so sure that I would like. To be able to admit that I care nothing for respectable things—family, kids, career—that all I care about is my work, about—pretentious or not, call it what you want—creating beauty. And that I can say this out loud to you—it’s such a risk, to you of all people, my old pal—is so freeing, like saying, I don’t know, I’m gay, or something other people are so often ashamed of. It allows me not to mock anyone else anymore, and what they are and how they live, which I always did when I couldn’t say what I wanted out of life—what I loved, that’s really the word. And if it’s mawkish not to judge others anymore, to merely appreciate them because they don’t reflect on me or me on them—as if we’re from separate planets or in different galaxies or however far away we’d have to be not to reflect on each other—then it’s mawkish. I’ll accept any characterization of myself because I finally know who I am, so I don’t care when people say what I’m supposed to be and know that I’m not.”
George stopped talking then and suddenly burst into tears, his face hidden by his hands, his shoulders shaking in the showy style of actors in old or even silent films. Yet when he revealed himself again, he looked shocked and exposed and real water dripped off of him, as if from a snowball assault that leaves your face wet and red and secretly hurting much more than you let on when you’re little.
Joe—who was supposed to have been helped up the stairs by him—now offered his own hobbling assist to George, supporting him emotionally at least with a hand on his back until they emerged from underground. Then the two quickly and abashedly separated, George making for a nearby bathroom on the ground floor, Joe heading up to another on the second. He caught a quick glimpse in the kitchen of Michelle, who was already doing dishes like a hypnotized woman unable to alter her nightly routine of eating, cleaning up, and going to bed early. Tad was already in front of the TV, his mouth brutally set in an expression he only had when doing this: making menacing little movements with his thumbs against onscreen characters who fled from his bullets as if stuck in his dreams of aggression.
In the bathroom, which was unofficially his own, Joe thought about his guest. George had dug deeper and
“Yep,” he said. “Some place. Some place you’ve—”
“Look!” Joe said, and he didn’t care how loud he got—the basement was sound-proofed enough that they’d stuck an expensive drum set down there to divert Tad, which he used so rarely they soon donated it as nearly new to the high school‘s music department. “I’ve had just about enough of this! I know what you’re doing! Why don’t you just stop it and say what you really think! You hate all of this! You think it’s awful! It’s okay, this is me!” And he was surprised to discover that he had meant the last three words not to encourage intimacy with George but to establish that he and his environment were the same—or he would have done had Joe really said it instead of just imagining he said it, since he was now afraid to say anything of the kind to his old friend.
“Thanks,” was what he said instead, and even that was slurred by his intoxication. “Thanks, Gor,” and he couldn’t get out his whole first name intelligibly.
George shrugged, confusedly—why thank him? He should be thanking Joe—and then let out a long, refreshed and refreshing sigh.
“It’s just such a joy, I don’t mind telling you,” he said, “to know oneself—to be oneself. Finally, finally, like meeting someone I’ve always heard about and who everyone else was so sure that I would like. To be able to admit that I care nothing for respectable things—family, kids, career—that all I care about is my work, about—pretentious or not, call it what you want—creating beauty. And that I can say this out loud to you—it’s such a risk, to you of all people, my old pal—is so freeing, like saying, I don’t know, I’m gay, or something other people are so often ashamed of. It allows me not to mock anyone else anymore, and what they are and how they live, which I always did when I couldn’t say what I wanted out of life—what I loved, that’s really the word. And if it’s mawkish not to judge others anymore, to merely appreciate them because they don’t reflect on me or me on them—as if we’re from separate planets or in different galaxies or however far away we’d have to be not to reflect on each other—then it’s mawkish. I’ll accept any characterization of myself because I finally know who I am, so I don’t care when people say what I’m supposed to be and know that I’m not.”
George stopped talking then and suddenly burst into tears, his face hidden by his hands, his shoulders shaking in the showy style of actors in old or even silent films. Yet when he revealed himself again, he looked shocked and exposed and real water dripped off of him, as if from a snowball assault that leaves your face wet and red and secretly hurting much more than you let on when you’re little.
Joe—who was supposed to have been helped up the stairs by him—now offered his own hobbling assist to George, supporting him emotionally at least with a hand on his back until they emerged from underground. Then the two quickly and abashedly separated, George making for a nearby bathroom on the ground floor, Joe heading up to another on the second. He caught a quick glimpse in the kitchen of Michelle, who was already doing dishes like a hypnotized woman unable to alter her nightly routine of eating, cleaning up, and going to bed early. Tad was already in front of the TV, his mouth brutally set in an expression he only had when doing this: making menacing little movements with his thumbs against onscreen characters who fled from his bullets as if stuck in his dreams of aggression.
In the bathroom, which was unofficially his own, Joe thought about his guest. George had dug deeper and
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