Eric had lately taken to sleeping in the guest room in the bed with too many mattresses on it.
There was a reason they had piled the mattresses on top of one another, but this reason was lost to the young men's collective memory. All those springs made for a strange malaise of balance when one slept in this bed. Perhaps there was a greater sense of buoyancy, but also a bit of a threat. None of the mattresses were of particularly high quality, so there was a bit of a slope, a lean created. If one were not careful, one could be rolled right off the bed. Fortunately, the whole queer arrangement, this pancake stack of mattresses, was up against a wall. So when a body slept in the bed, it just subtly moved downhill and found its sleep against that wall. A wall can be a comforting sleep partner. If you are sleeping alone, it asserts its existence as a supportive other.
The bed was up against the wall with the single door to the small bedroom, the only practical ingress. There were two windows in other walls, but these were perpetually locked and shrouded with blankets. Eric was often a day sleeper. The dark woolen blankets Eric had hung over the tall windows damped sound as well as light. It gave the room a feeling of the nineteenth century during the day. Or so Eric thought, though he couldn't articulate exactly why. Friends who had seen the room had made the usual vampire jokes.
Andrew entered the darkness of the room where Eric slept, disturbing it with a sliver of light for a few seconds before he shut the door almost noiselessly behind him. He climbed into the bed with Eric and the contour of his body immediately matched and followed his lover's own sinuous form. It felt like a long ago familiarity to both bodies at once, though one body was awake and the other was asleep. Andrew knew the trick of balancing in the bed and he managed to fit himself to Eric without even disturbing the old cat who slept in a coiled green blanket shaped into a soft, impromptu basket at the foot of the bed.
No words were exchanged. But a hand found a hand, backwards, behind Eric's back.
Some blissful, watery, half-conscious moments passed this way between the men's bodies, alchemized themselves into unshapeable minutes that had glints of light and dark, waking and sleeping, tenderness and oblivion.
It was night but still early. Eric was due to wake soon. A clock tensed its digital muscles, the horrible thing. The awareness of it was somewhere in the room's blindness.
Eric's backward hand wandered over Andrew's muscular body in a gentle appreciation of his form. It was a shorthand of affection.
Then Eric, or maybe his body, felt too much stillness and silence in his lover and so he turned his body to face him in the darkness, blind with eyes open. He soon closed his eyes again. His fingers told him, by accident, that Andrew's eyes were also closed.
He didn't want to ask Andrew if he was feeling better. He wanted to savor the moments of this feeling. The wholeness of a moment in which their bodies felt like two pear halves. He kissed Andrew; it was the syrup to hold the pears in the moment. Andrew's lips, if they responded, if they shaped themselves at all to the moment, could only have moved to an immeasurable degree. If they moved at all. It seemed doubtful to Eric. Was he sick? Sicker?
Andrew's arm, the one not under his body, was now resting on Eric's buttocks. It was cool. It felt good, this minimal form of holding. This made Eric snuggle closer, full frontal affection.
"I wanted to tell you..." Eric began, but was interrupted by the most horrible sound as a river of vomitus struck him full in the face while Andrew pulled his body tightly against his own, almost as if it were prey.
Andrew held Eric this way, tightly, the disgusting mash of his emptied stomach between their bodies, dripping wherever it wanted. It was in his face but his arms were now trapped by Andrew's arms. Andrew didn't say a word and it was totally dark. Eric opened his eyes now, demanding in his alarm that they see, but they saw nothing. Andrew's body had gone rigid, so stiff it almost felt as if were undergoing some sort of seizure. And this body, its strong arms and even its muscled legs, continued to hold Eric prisoner.
"Baby, let me help. Let me...get up." Eric was doing his best to coo, to coddle his lover, but he was disgusted and even a little afraid.
"Towels..." he said.
Andrew said nothing.
"We'll just go to the shower."
Andrew said nothing and his grip didn't give a bit.
Then he heard Andrew snoring.
"You can't be asleep." Eric's head was spinning. "Andrew, I can't move. Wake up!"
Was it true snoring? Why did it sound wrong?
"You're scaring me. Did you have a...stroke or something? A seizure? Can you understand me?" There was a pleading quality now in Eric's voice. Of course there was.
He is a young man. It can't be a stroke, Eric promised himself. But what else? Eric's brain tried to reason in furious fast-forward.Andrew's illness had remained undiagnosed, a mystery. He had worried about his partner but remained duly optimistic as the doctors advised. No real threat had been pinpointed. But now Eric's emotions were skyrocketing as he realized the mystery illness had found a horrible new plateau. All those doctors had admitted their bafflement at Andrew's strange constellation of symptoms. But nobody had said to expect anything like this. Those doctors, those specialists, just kept sending his partner home. But now, pinned against Andrew's body in the darkness, it was clear something had been horribly missed. Something was seriously wrong with Andrew. The terror of this realization was as frightening as Andrew's death-grip in that moment, which had not relented one bit.
He began to fight against his lover's body. Andrew's body still continued to produce the weird snoring sound, but his grip tightened even more on his lover. The puke was disgusting. It was on his face. It rankled in his nose like brimstone. He didn't want to accidentally taste it. But then he didn't get his wish. It was acrid, horrible. He nearly vomited in gustatory reflex.
He fought against Andrew and then he began to believe that the snoring sound was fake. He felt that Andrew was, for some inexplicable reason, faking unconsciousness. He realized this was an insane idea, but this is what his brain told him.
Eric finally got one arm free, but his panic continued to swell. He contemplated slapping Andrew, but involuntarily he found himself pulling his lover's hair.
"Goddamn it, wake up!" he shouted now.
Andrew did seem to wake up then, but he was laughing.
"Why the fuck are you laughing?" Eric hated himself for sounding shrill. It must be genuine illness. He is sick. He must not be unkind.
"How the hell did I get in your bed?" Andrew asked. He sounded sincere.
"You threw up!" He hated that it sounded like an accusation. What sort of asshole judges an ill lover.
"No. I think you threw up. All over us. What's going on, anyway?"
He seemed innocently bewildered. It must have genuinely been some sort of altered state, Eric thought. Maybe Andrew was an epileptic. Even though more than one specialist had said he was not.
"What the fuck are you talking about, Andrew? Don't you know where you are? Don't you remember throwing up? Why do you think we're covered in this shit? Babe. We need to get up now. We'll talk while we're...oh Christ. Just try to keep it on the bed. Where's the fucking cat?"
The cat was not there. She must be hiding under the bed. Hands communicated this knowledge in darkness.
The digital clock screamed alive.
"I have to be at work in a half hour. This is a nightmare just beginning."
"I'm sorry," Andrew said. "I don't even understand what's happening. I'm sorry. For whatever I did."
"You're not warm." He had his hand on the other man's forehead even as they were climbing out of the unstable bed piled with mattresses.
"No. I feel fine. Please tell me this isn't puke."
"Of course, it's puke. I don't want to turn on the light. I really don't. Here goes."
The light came on and Eric felt that terrible urge to vomit again.
"My God, is that blood? What is that red stuff in your puke?"
"I don't know. It can't be. I must have eaten something..."
"For God's sake, what did you eat?"
"I must have had spaghetti, tomato soup, something..."
"Spaghetti was several days ago. That's not spaghetti sauce. Let me see your tongue."
And so they were off to the hospital after a call by Eric to his office.
Andrew held a stainless steel pot the men used for steaming clams on his lap. A bucket had not been located in time. It had gone missing. He was in the passenger seat. Eric insisted on driving even though Andrew curiously wanted to drive to the hospital. He insisted he could drive himself in his own car. They compromised by taking Andrew's car. But Eric drove.
Eric began putting together in his head a diatribe he would use against the first doctor he encountered in the emergency room. This had gone on so long now, with no answers. He began to seriously sense his own fear that this situation could result in total loss. The unimaginable was there in the interior of the car with them. It was going with them to the hospital. It would follow them now, Eric realized, wherever they went. He realized he was staring at his hands on the steering wheel obsessively as he drove Andrew to the hospital for what, the fourth time that month? He didn't understand why he had fixated on this image of his hands on the wheel. But then he did too.
,
There was a reason they had piled the mattresses on top of one another, but this reason was lost to the young men's collective memory. All those springs made for a strange malaise of balance when one slept in this bed. Perhaps there was a greater sense of buoyancy, but also a bit of a threat. None of the mattresses were of particularly high quality, so there was a bit of a slope, a lean created. If one were not careful, one could be rolled right off the bed. Fortunately, the whole queer arrangement, this pancake stack of mattresses, was up against a wall. So when a body slept in the bed, it just subtly moved downhill and found its sleep against that wall. A wall can be a comforting sleep partner. If you are sleeping alone, it asserts its existence as a supportive other.
The bed was up against the wall with the single door to the small bedroom, the only practical ingress. There were two windows in other walls, but these were perpetually locked and shrouded with blankets. Eric was often a day sleeper. The dark woolen blankets Eric had hung over the tall windows damped sound as well as light. It gave the room a feeling of the nineteenth century during the day. Or so Eric thought, though he couldn't articulate exactly why. Friends who had seen the room had made the usual vampire jokes.
Andrew entered the darkness of the room where Eric slept, disturbing it with a sliver of light for a few seconds before he shut the door almost noiselessly behind him. He climbed into the bed with Eric and the contour of his body immediately matched and followed his lover's own sinuous form. It felt like a long ago familiarity to both bodies at once, though one body was awake and the other was asleep. Andrew knew the trick of balancing in the bed and he managed to fit himself to Eric without even disturbing the old cat who slept in a coiled green blanket shaped into a soft, impromptu basket at the foot of the bed.
No words were exchanged. But a hand found a hand, backwards, behind Eric's back.
Some blissful, watery, half-conscious moments passed this way between the men's bodies, alchemized themselves into unshapeable minutes that had glints of light and dark, waking and sleeping, tenderness and oblivion.
It was night but still early. Eric was due to wake soon. A clock tensed its digital muscles, the horrible thing. The awareness of it was somewhere in the room's blindness.
Eric's backward hand wandered over Andrew's muscular body in a gentle appreciation of his form. It was a shorthand of affection.
Then Eric, or maybe his body, felt too much stillness and silence in his lover and so he turned his body to face him in the darkness, blind with eyes open. He soon closed his eyes again. His fingers told him, by accident, that Andrew's eyes were also closed.
He didn't want to ask Andrew if he was feeling better. He wanted to savor the moments of this feeling. The wholeness of a moment in which their bodies felt like two pear halves. He kissed Andrew; it was the syrup to hold the pears in the moment. Andrew's lips, if they responded, if they shaped themselves at all to the moment, could only have moved to an immeasurable degree. If they moved at all. It seemed doubtful to Eric. Was he sick? Sicker?
Andrew's arm, the one not under his body, was now resting on Eric's buttocks. It was cool. It felt good, this minimal form of holding. This made Eric snuggle closer, full frontal affection.
"I wanted to tell you..." Eric began, but was interrupted by the most horrible sound as a river of vomitus struck him full in the face while Andrew pulled his body tightly against his own, almost as if it were prey.
Andrew held Eric this way, tightly, the disgusting mash of his emptied stomach between their bodies, dripping wherever it wanted. It was in his face but his arms were now trapped by Andrew's arms. Andrew didn't say a word and it was totally dark. Eric opened his eyes now, demanding in his alarm that they see, but they saw nothing. Andrew's body had gone rigid, so stiff it almost felt as if were undergoing some sort of seizure. And this body, its strong arms and even its muscled legs, continued to hold Eric prisoner.
"Baby, let me help. Let me...get up." Eric was doing his best to coo, to coddle his lover, but he was disgusted and even a little afraid.
"Towels..." he said.
Andrew said nothing.
"We'll just go to the shower."
Andrew said nothing and his grip didn't give a bit.
Then he heard Andrew snoring.
"You can't be asleep." Eric's head was spinning. "Andrew, I can't move. Wake up!"
Was it true snoring? Why did it sound wrong?
"You're scaring me. Did you have a...stroke or something? A seizure? Can you understand me?" There was a pleading quality now in Eric's voice. Of course there was.
He is a young man. It can't be a stroke, Eric promised himself. But what else? Eric's brain tried to reason in furious fast-forward.Andrew's illness had remained undiagnosed, a mystery. He had worried about his partner but remained duly optimistic as the doctors advised. No real threat had been pinpointed. But now Eric's emotions were skyrocketing as he realized the mystery illness had found a horrible new plateau. All those doctors had admitted their bafflement at Andrew's strange constellation of symptoms. But nobody had said to expect anything like this. Those doctors, those specialists, just kept sending his partner home. But now, pinned against Andrew's body in the darkness, it was clear something had been horribly missed. Something was seriously wrong with Andrew. The terror of this realization was as frightening as Andrew's death-grip in that moment, which had not relented one bit.
He began to fight against his lover's body. Andrew's body still continued to produce the weird snoring sound, but his grip tightened even more on his lover. The puke was disgusting. It was on his face. It rankled in his nose like brimstone. He didn't want to accidentally taste it. But then he didn't get his wish. It was acrid, horrible. He nearly vomited in gustatory reflex.
He fought against Andrew and then he began to believe that the snoring sound was fake. He felt that Andrew was, for some inexplicable reason, faking unconsciousness. He realized this was an insane idea, but this is what his brain told him.
Eric finally got one arm free, but his panic continued to swell. He contemplated slapping Andrew, but involuntarily he found himself pulling his lover's hair.
"Goddamn it, wake up!" he shouted now.
Andrew did seem to wake up then, but he was laughing.
"Why the fuck are you laughing?" Eric hated himself for sounding shrill. It must be genuine illness. He is sick. He must not be unkind.
"How the hell did I get in your bed?" Andrew asked. He sounded sincere.
"You threw up!" He hated that it sounded like an accusation. What sort of asshole judges an ill lover.
"No. I think you threw up. All over us. What's going on, anyway?"
He seemed innocently bewildered. It must have genuinely been some sort of altered state, Eric thought. Maybe Andrew was an epileptic. Even though more than one specialist had said he was not.
"What the fuck are you talking about, Andrew? Don't you know where you are? Don't you remember throwing up? Why do you think we're covered in this shit? Babe. We need to get up now. We'll talk while we're...oh Christ. Just try to keep it on the bed. Where's the fucking cat?"
The cat was not there. She must be hiding under the bed. Hands communicated this knowledge in darkness.
The digital clock screamed alive.
"I have to be at work in a half hour. This is a nightmare just beginning."
"I'm sorry," Andrew said. "I don't even understand what's happening. I'm sorry. For whatever I did."
"You're not warm." He had his hand on the other man's forehead even as they were climbing out of the unstable bed piled with mattresses.
"No. I feel fine. Please tell me this isn't puke."
"Of course, it's puke. I don't want to turn on the light. I really don't. Here goes."
The light came on and Eric felt that terrible urge to vomit again.
"My God, is that blood? What is that red stuff in your puke?"
"I don't know. It can't be. I must have eaten something..."
"For God's sake, what did you eat?"
"I must have had spaghetti, tomato soup, something..."
"Spaghetti was several days ago. That's not spaghetti sauce. Let me see your tongue."
And so they were off to the hospital after a call by Eric to his office.
Andrew held a stainless steel pot the men used for steaming clams on his lap. A bucket had not been located in time. It had gone missing. He was in the passenger seat. Eric insisted on driving even though Andrew curiously wanted to drive to the hospital. He insisted he could drive himself in his own car. They compromised by taking Andrew's car. But Eric drove.
Eric began putting together in his head a diatribe he would use against the first doctor he encountered in the emergency room. This had gone on so long now, with no answers. He began to seriously sense his own fear that this situation could result in total loss. The unimaginable was there in the interior of the car with them. It was going with them to the hospital. It would follow them now, Eric realized, wherever they went. He realized he was staring at his hands on the steering wheel obsessively as he drove Andrew to the hospital for what, the fourth time that month? He didn't understand why he had fixated on this image of his hands on the wheel. But then he did too.
,
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