Donovan Dennis
Pillow Talk
I’d decided early on that I would offer to cook him dinner, in my kitchen. There is a very nice song called Alegria, by the duo Elia y Elizabeth, and if you ask it to, Spotify can arrange an equally nice playlist based on this song, which I did, playing it over a little red speaker that I keep on the counter for exactly this kind of thing. The song is jazzy and bright and features breathy Spanish lyrics and big brass instruments blaring about, the perfect soundtrack for cooking after a day like the one we’d had together—the kind spent gallivanting from lake to lake in Berlin’s early summer sun.
He hovered in the doorway, twirling some rosé in a white wine glass while I sliced the green tops off the spring onions, one inch above the bulb, as instructed by Suzanne, the cookbook’s author. Then I knifed the onions lengthwise, into slices one-quarter-inch thick. In a large cast-iron skillet, I warmed two tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat and my hips shimmied in time as I swirled the oil, waiting for it to become fragrant. I was still wearing my bathing suit, which is red and somewhat skimpy, meant to attract attention like a bullfighter’s muleta. He watched the red fabric hugging my thighs and laughed and stepped over to where I was standing, just there at my counter, and he grazed my hips with his fingers, which he hadn’t done before, but which I liked, a lot. I turned around and kissed him, on my tip toes. His stubble scratched against my cheeks and lips. Then the oil was fragrant, so I turned back around to the stove. In the pan I carefully arranged the onion slices, one by one, using tongs.
They sizzled and the room filled with that intoxicating aroma that makes people say, mhhmm something smells good in here, when they enter a kitchen in use.
What can I do, he asked.
I told him he could just stand there looking cute like he was, and he said: I meant with dinner; and I said: Oh, ha, OK let me think; as if I hadn’t known what he’d meant before.
You can pound this avocado into the pesto, I said. Sounds posh, he said.
It’s not, I said.
But then I handed over all the necessary things and he looked at the avocado in the mortar and the harissa paste with its Imported from Tunisia label and the ceramic pestle which had a French brand name emblazoned on it and I hesitated, blushing, and said: OK, maybe it is a bit posh.
As he jabbed at the avocado, clanging and bashing about with the pestle, I sliced a zucchini and bopped my hips, but didn’t correct his procedure, because this was only our second date. And second dates are not for correcting procedures, even if he was dangerously close to cracking the mortar’s beautiful turquoise glaze.
When the onions were browned on that one side, I dolloped a slab of butter into a separate pan, then sprinkled in some herbs, then flipped the onions delicately, again with the tongs, trying to preserve the beautiful onion shape as Suzanne directed. Some of the onions fell apart, others did not. Things fall apart, I thought. C’est la vie, I thought. I like to think in French when I’m cooking even though my French is poor at best. I tipped the zucchini wedges into another hot pan and flipped them rapidly, to coat them in butter. Each of the slices took up the liquid differently, staining themselves with patterns as meaningless as Rorschach tests. The pan became dry, so I heaped in more butter. He finished with the pesto and touched the soft skin below my belly button. Then I leaned into him, and he kissed my neck, and I said: Can’t you see I have very serious business to attend to young man; and he said: You and your posh cooking; grinning like we’d done this before.
He was surprised when I handed him four plates—two deep ones for the pasta and two small crescents for the sides. The crescents were plain white and bone thin, like how good china should be, and each had a handwritten serial number glazed onto its underside listing it as 2/32, 5/32, and so on. Maybe I had become posh, I thought. In the living room where my table is (my flat only has two rooms), I set down the heavy pots and lifted their lids performatively as he clapped and rubbed his hands together. With a chest full of happiness, I plated his dinner, even though he waved me off, saying he could serve himself. But I wanted him to know that I cared about him. So I carefully arranged several glazed onions and tonged out the pesto-coated noodles with their thyme- butter-sage sauce and overtop a heaping scoop of zucchini I scattered bright red cherry tomatoes, sliced into halves. I did so on my own accord, without instruction from Suzanne, trusting that their innocuous sweetness would add something which wasn’t too much.
He waited for me to serve myself, then asked if we could say grace. Seeing my face, he burst out into a big British laugh and said he’d seen that in so many American TV shows and had always wanted to ask. I exhaled a nervous chuckle which relaxed into honest laughter and thought to myself: Lord give me strength for I am in deep, deep trouble with this boy. We ate, and I could see the butter shimmering on his lips. He said everything tasted delicious, and I said that’s only because he’d seen the effort required—which I do believe is true.
We eat with our eyes, you know, I said.
Later, when we were laying on my sofa, I spent what felt like hours kissing him back, until the sun in the bay window had passed well out of view. He held my head on his chest, and after, I held him and stroked his hair. I could taste my thyme on his lips as we kissed and laughed. I could tell he wanted more and I was confused as to why we weren’t. Then I remembered that he’s English. I’d learned from British TV and also my English ex that English men don’t tell you what they want. The boy was so tall, so I said maybe he’d be more comfortable on the bed, where he could stretch out. My sofa is just a normal three-seater, and I don’t have an ottoman or a coffee table for people to rest their legs on. He said: Yes, maybe that would be more comfortable. And so we laid in my bed, under my blanket. I could feel the heat radiating from our skin, trapped by the covers, and I smelled the sunscreen on his chest and the lake in his hair and I kissed him again and he kissed back with his eyes scrunched closed, and I felt things with my hand and asked: Is this OK? He said that actually he’d prefer to wait, and I said: Not a problem; and I meant it. But he kept going, even taking things a little further, except that his actions were always accented with this sighing, unwilled restraint. I was confused. Something about the way his chest fell and his eyes quivered and the quiet, breathless voice in which he’d asked me to wait told me that he was confused too.
Soon after, he said he should probably get going. It was late, nearly midnight. He had a long ride home.
You’re welcome to stay the night you know, I said. No sex, just sleep.
He thought, briefly, and then in a neutral tone of voice replied: Thanks, but I think I’ll stay at my place.
In the living room we gathered a few of his things like his swimming towel which we’d laid out to dry and his damp, smelly T-shirt. I went to the kitchen to pack him some leftovers so he wouldn’t just forget me like all the other boys had. When I came back into the living room holding a pathetic Tupperware box, he was rubbing the top of his head, a very grave look on his face.
Can we talk for a minute, he asked.
Not this again, I thought. Let’s sit down, he said.
I used my good butter for nothing, I thought. But still I was polite, because this was a second date, and that’s what you do on second dates, you be polite. So I sat on my sofa glumly and he sat down too but on the opposite end and he laid his face in his hands and rubbed his forehead. Here we go, I thought. His voice faltered as he started, and re-started, several times.
Get on with it then, I thought.
I need to tell you that I’m HIV positive, he said.
Because several other things about the night then made sense, I knew I’d heard him correctly, even though the words themselves didn’t make any sense at all, be- cause we were born in the nineties, just twenty-somethings, and that was not a disease for twenty-somethings. In fact I’d never met anyone with that disease. That disease was a different generation’s disease, one from films and TV shows that occasionally won prizes, but which I always turned off before all the characters that looked and laughed and loved like me died a painful, drawn-out kind of death.
Oh, OK, I said.
He lifted his face from his hands to look at me, I think because my voice was flat and difficult to decipher.
Thank you for telling me, I said.
When I glanced over again, his cheeks were much redder than before, when all they had been were brushed by the sun. The seconds that followed were so very quiet. In his eyes, which still could not meet mine, lingered the broken hurt of a person injured by people like me who had left him alone with just the burden of their fear.
I said the first thing that came to my mind which was: It must be hard for you to tell people that. Maybe this was a dumb thing to say, dumber still because he’d already said as much using only his face. I wanted to tell him that those letters scare me, that I was scared, but that I would be OK. That I understood the science. And that he would be OK with me, and I with him. But it was only our second date. So instead I scooted up next to him and kissed him again, and he smiled, thinly. I leaned back, and with the same matter-of-fact tone of voice that I use in my day job I said: Well I’m on PrEP; and he said: Good, I recommend staying on it; and I said: I mean, makes sense if we’re gonna—
And then he interrupted me, which was the first rude thing he’d done all night, saying: I mean with everyone, you know, not just me.
It was in the sharp tone of voice in which he pronounced those words that I understood so many things he hadn’t said aloud but which made me feel his hurt, because I saw myself in a darkened room, with a man, in Vienna, I think, and the man said: Trust me, I’m clean, I’m on PrEP; and I said: Great; and I did trust him. And I saw myself in many rooms with many men, all of whom said: Trust me; but some of whom perhaps should not have been trusted. And I thought about the days I’d missed pills but didn’t hesitate because the men had said: Trust me, I’m clean; and how by sheer dumb luck, they all happened to be. The boy slipped his fingers between mine. Even though he was tall our hands were the same size and thus they folded together nicely. As we sat there, his hand in mine, this line popped into my head from a film I’d watched many times: Don’t have sex, because you will get pregnant, and die. I remembered how instead, at my high school, in Montana, kids changed the line to: Don’t have gay sex, because you will get AIDS, and die. These kids would use it as a response to other statements, such that one person would say something obvious, like: You know you shouldn’t take English with Rosales, she’s such a hard ass, you’ll never pass; and then another would reply, flatly: Right, I mean don’t have gay sex, because you’ll get AIDS, and die; which was to say: Of course—you’re right. And then everyone would laugh and get on with their day, believing this fabrication like some self-evident truth. There on my sofa next to this boy with my fingers tangled up in his and my heart and soul already wrapped into knots, I wondered how many times I’d said that line myself, how many times I had laughed at these lies.
When the boy left (not for the last time), he did so on his bike, and as he rode away with his rear light blinking, I sent him a text that ended with the words See you Tuesday :). I watched his phone screen light up where it was clipped to his handlebar and I knew he saw it because he slowed his pedaling and lowered his face to the screen so that his sunburnt skin glowed blue in the night. Such a cute nerd, I thought. I turned back toward my building smiling a truly dumb smile, and walked over to the door where I jammed my key in the lock rather absently, biting my lip as I finagled the mechanism. The metal pieces at last aligned and the door breezed open and I slipped into my flat where the soft jazz still tinkled along and the air still smelled deliciously of onions and herbs and I—forgetting myself—licked my lips, half expecting to taste him but instead tasting just butter, and thyme.