Love the One You're With (35 page)

When I realized what it was, I harmonized the chorus with him: “
I
hope and pray that I will, but
to
-day I am still just a
bill
!”

And we laughed so hard we were in tears.

“That was the first song I ever learned how to play,” he revealed.

“Really? For most people it's ‘Chopsticks' or ‘Happy Birthday.'”

“After I saw that
Schoolhouse Rock
episode … it just stuck in my head. And I'd sit at the piano, trying to figure out the keys. After a week, I got it. I would sing it
every
day. It drove my family crazy.”

“It'd drive
me
crazy, too.”

“My mother started beggin' me to start playin' hymns again. I knew she'd had enough then. Hymns always rubbed her the wrong way.”

“Oh? Why?”

“She … isn't a religious person. She and my dad rejected the traditions of their families. Hers Baptist, his Catholic.”

“So they didn't bring you up to believe in God?”

“Of course. They just told me to create that relationship outside of structured conventions. Don't look for God in a church or a book some
say
He wrote; locate Him inside your heart. So we didn't go to church and we never listened to gospel or spiritual music around the house—until I started buying records by the Winans and Walter Hawkins.”

“She must've thought you were being converted.”

“
Brainwashed
was the word she used. More than anybody, I loved to imitate Sam, and some of his best work was with the Soul Stirrers. I didn't even know he fronted a gospel group. But I didn't sing them when she was around. They brought back … bad memories for her.”

“I'm sure she would've really flipped if you walked up in the house quoting Scripture.”

“More like lapsed into a coma. The only Bible allowed in our house was
Jet
. You know if Black folks don't read about it—whatever
it
is—in there, it ain't true.”

We cracked up.

“But she and my dad … they were told God
hated
them. And things haven't changed much since then. Folks still say that, but others try to temper their disdain for who you are with ‘God loves you, even though He is
mad
about what you do.'
Yeah, right
. If God is mad at you for being gay, does that mean He's
half
-mad at me for being bisexual? That don't make no sense, and persecuting folks because of who they are and how they love don't either.”

“Is there a particular hymn you enjoyed singing?”

He went right into “He Looked Beyond My Fault.” I joined him when he repeated the main verse a second time and we “battled” on the chorus, each trading licks and runs.

He surrendered when I hit a Minnie Riperton octave. “Now, see, we could
really
have some church up in here. But it's time to eat.”

After washing up, I returned to find a card table draped with a blue velvet cloth, situated in the center of the room. He was placing an ocean-blue vase filled with lilies and daisies between two thin lighted white candles. Two places were set, one beside the other. A bottle of red wine was opened. The room light was off; the ceiling fan above the futon lit (it had a variety of colored bulbs in its five sockets, creating a rainbowlike glow).

He stood by one of the pulled-out chairs. “Please sit.” I did.

He made our plates (the way smoke escaped from them, you'd think it was coming from a chimney). He sat them down.

He filled our glasses. He settled in his chair.

He clutched my left hand. He bowed his head; I followed suit.

“To the Most Honorable, Glorious, and Gracious of All. We bow our heads at this moment, giving thanks for this meal, this time”—he squeezed my hand—“this fellowship, this life. Ah-men.”

“Amen.”

He tapped the remote on the table and the stereo began to play all five of Anita Baker's CDs. The first song: “Caught Up in the Rapture.”

Dinner was … well, one of the best … no, the
fourth
-best meal I've ever had (the other three having been prepared by my grandmother, mother, and aunt Ruth, in that order). The meat just crumbled (it didn't fall) off the bone, the broccoli cream soup was stupendous, the succotash was even better than mine (I bet Pooquie and Junior would even give it a higher mark), and the corn bread actually tasted like bread dipped in corn batter. I couldn't conversate while eating this meal—any questions or statements he made were all answered with mumbles of
uh-huh, I agree, yes
, and
no
.

He soaked the dishes (I offered to help but he refused; after a feast like that, I'd do his dishes for a
month
) and we retired to the futon with slices of his Death by Chocolate cake. I've had it before in restaurants, but this actually tasted …
deadly
. Mouthwatering wouldn't even begin to describe it …

I was ready to pass out, but he had other ideas. He didn't bother to place the dessert dishes in the sink; he put them on top of the video/book crate.

“Mitch?”

“Yes?”

“Can I massage your feet?”

“Huh?”

“Can I massage your feet?”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“It's somethin' I love to do, remember? Like
father
… we've always had this thing for pretty feet.”

“You've never
seen
my feet; how would you know if they're pretty?”

“Because, I can tell.”

“How?”

“You ask a lot of questions, don'tcha?”

“Well … no one has ever asked if they could do that before.”

“No one knew
how
.” He reached down. “May I?”

I nodded yes.

He had me sit up diagonally so my feet were hanging off the futon. He took off my right boot. He hesitated with the sock—I guess he was preparing himself. He pulled it off
slowly
, prolonging the unveiling. And when he saw the foot … the eyes bugged, the tongue rolled out, and he let out a joyous sigh.

He cupped it with his left hand and analyzed it for a hot sixty seconds. He glanced up. “I'm
never
wrong.” His fingers walked across each piggy, from the smallest to the largest. “
And
, I'm a
sucker
for manicured toes.”

As he rubbed and ribbed, kneaded and knuckled, I gave up my life story (between the many
mmm
s and
aah
s). While the love affair with my gymnastics coach in high school was discussed in juicy detail,
the
love of my life wasn't (he didn't ask; I didn't offer).

I
did
disclose the reason we ran into each other in Manhattan last week.

“I know who
I'm
gonna be hittin' up for demo money,” he ribbed.

“I haven't gotten paid yet.”

“You will soon.” He eyed me with concern. “That experience … that musta been hard to deal with.”

“It was.”

“You've probably heard it before, but you
did
do the right thing. The real question now is when are you going to return.”

“When am I going to return? To what?”

“To what you were placed on this earth to do.”

“What makes you think I'm not doing that now?”

“Because, you don't talk about teaching—or singing, which, by the way, you also do very well—with the same passion you do writing.”

I became a little defensive. “Teaching
is
something I always wanted to do.”

“Wanting to do something and being
called
to do something are two very different things.”

Yes, they are … “But I haven't stopped writing.”

“No, you haven't, but it isn't the same just freelancing. You don't receive the same kind of reward like you do working on a publication whose mission you believe in. Hell, you'll soon have a little seed money—you could start your own magazine.”

Damn. Now how did he … “You know … that's always been my ultimate goal.”

“Well, nothing says you can't do it.”

No, it doesn't.

When he finished fondling my feet, he pulled off his blue, cranberry-dye-lined sweater (leaving on a crisp white undershirt that fit his frame nicely) and his shoes but not his gray thermal socks (“Trust me,
I
don't have pretty feet”). I sat up on the sofa with my legs crossed as he lay across them, his back leaning on a pillow up against the armrest of the futon. I rested my hands on his chest, occasionally tapping or patting it. It was as if we had gotten into this position a million times before (well,
I
had—with Pooquie).

“How long have you known you're bisexual?”

His eyebrows rose. “How long have you known you
weren't
?”

“Uh … since I was six.”

“Ditto. Having those feelings for both sexes … I thought everybody felt like that. I still do.”

“You think we're all born bisexual?”

“I don't know if we're born
anything
. But I do feel that given how sexual human beings are, it's silly to think one has to be either gay or straight.”

Hmm … “Are you talking about identity, behavior, or both?”

“Is there a difference?”

“I think so. You may be oriented toward one sex, but because of societal pressure feel you have to be with the other. Just because a gay man sleeps with a woman and a lesbian sleeps with a man doesn't mean who they are on the inside changes.”

“Ah. But the fact that they can sleep with a person of the opposite sex … that tells me that even if they aren't bisexual on the
in
side, they are on the
out
side. If one is oriented toward one thing, that doesn't mean they can only express themselves sexually in one way. Sexual identity may be fixed, but sexual expression isn't.”

“And you like to express yourself sexually with both sexes …”

“Sexually, emotionally, spiritually. Hay, I like chicks and dicks—and sometimes chicks
with
dicks.”

“Chicks
with
dicks?”

“Yeah. Some brothers are more chicky than the females.” He chuckled.

“Do you normally refer to women as
chicks
?” He'd said it a few other times earlier in the day.

“Yeah. Why?”

“It just seems a bit … old-fashioned.”

“I'm an old-fashioned kinda guy.”

“Old-fashioned as in sexist.”

“What's so sexist about calling women chicks?”

“The term isn't exactly endearing.”

“It isn't?”

“No, it isn't.”

“I don't use it to slight women. If I wanna insult a woman, I'd use—”

I put my left thumb to his lips. “
Don't
say it.”

He puckered up; it made my fingers warm. “Why not say it? I heard your friends use it a hundred times last week. If there's any word that shouldn't be used as a term of endearment, it's that one.”

I've never used it in that manner, but … “Point well taken.”

“I think that's one of the reasons why I don't have many gay friends.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. All that
bitch
this and
girl
that and
Miss Thing
…”

“
All
gay men don't talk like that or address each other that way.”

“All of y'all don't, but a lot of y'all do.”

“What is a lot? Many? Most? The majority?”

“The majority of the ones I've been around.”

“Uh, I know you like to think of yourself as a
worldly
man, Mr. Simms, but you certainly haven't met or known enough of us to make that judgment. In fact, you never could.”

He nodded. “Okay. Point taken.”

“You said that's
one
of the reasons why you don't have many gay friends. What are the others?”

“No others. Just one. I've found too many gay men to be biphobic.”

“
Bi
phobic?”

“Yeah.”

I snickered. “Like there is such a thing …?”

“Yeah, there is. I don't know if I'd say gay men
hate
bisexual men, but quite a few sure don't like us.”

“And why do you think that is?”

“Because, according to many of the ones I've come in contact with, I am a confused brother who can't make up his mind.
Or
, a confused brother who is just denying his true feelings.”

“Those feelings being …?”

“That I'm actually gay and in denial about it.”

“Ah …”

“I'm sure there are folks out here who are gay calling themselves bi because they know that identifying as that will make them …”

“Seem less threatening?”

“Yeah. All of us aren't like that. But you let some of these gay folks tell it, we're all just perpetratin'. Gay folks complain all the time how straight folks won't respect who they are, yet turn around and treat
us
the same way straight folks treat
them
. I mean, we're always an afterthought—if we're thought of at all.”

I laughed.

“What's so funny?”

“Oh, I was just thinking about a line from a movie.”

“What movie?”

“
California Suite
. Maggie Smith plays this Oscar loser whose husband, Michael Caine, is bisexual. But in her eyes, he's more homosexual than bisexual, since he's not sleeping with her but is fooling around with men.”

“That's funny?”

“What's funny is what she says to him when they're discussing his sexuality: ‘If there's anything I hate it's a bisexual homosexual—'”

“‘Or is it the other way around?'” he asked, finishing the joke.

“You've seen the film?”

“No. But it's been said to me by gay men before.
Now
I know where it comes from. I guess the reverse was true for some of the gay brothers I've tried talkin' to: they wanted me to pledge that I wouldn't be attracted to women when I'm with them. I mean, how am I supposed to turn off that button?”