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Theirs is a love written in clichés. When Bruno thinks about Pablo, he feels a pool in his heart start to overflow. He feels his body filled, consumed, set aflame, no matter the impossibility of those feelings existing together all at once. He loves with a passion that will see his soul unhinged. A passion that chants softly on his head, Pablo, Pablo, Pablo. He tries to put his love into words, and the only words he can think of are song lyrics.
Bruno's fingers brush aside the straight strands of Pablo's long, dark hair, and in his mind music plays. If he were a scholar of poetry he might think, I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. His lips brush against a cheek too rough, covered in stiff, short bristles, and he thinks again, I love you as the plant that never blooms, but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers. His tongue meets a tongue too aggressive, and into the heat of Pablo's mouth he pours the silent words, I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. His mouth moves downward, over a chest too hard and too flat, and every kiss he presses upon it is a word.
So I love you because I know no other way than this:
where I do not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. 1
In the depths of his heart, buried away for now, is a darkness. It sits alongside a piece of a thought that he might have heard once: the one who loves you will make you weep.
But theirs is a love written in clichés, and it begins with, "Once upon a time..."
Once upon a time, there was an aimless young man. He took as his lover a young woman studying to be an artist. They parted, and she took as her new lover a man who worked as a photographer. Green with envy, the aimless young man devised a plan to bring the artist back to his arms: he would seduce the photographer in order to tear the couple apart.
"If you think about it, it's not something a normal man would do."
There is a long pause after Ana speaks, saturated with the smoke and ambient noise of the space that surrounds them. The clinking of glasses as a waiter sets drinks down on a table. A loud "Salud!" standing out from the low chatter of neighboring tables. The music, sultry and slow, from a live band playing some mixture of jazz and nuevo tango. And through it all there is Ana, plain but cool in the hot summer air that settles on them like a blanket, her observations forever said in that simple, sure way that she has.
Bruno sits with his left arm stretched over the back of the booth, his forearm brushing against the back of Pablo's shirt. He moves to drink from his glass and his skin brushes against Pablo's hair. He moves to inhale from his cigarette and his fingers brush against Pablo's shoulder. His lips are a soft smile as he speaks. "How so?"
There is another pause, because their life is filled with them. This is their life as a movie. It is filled with caesurae, some heavy with meaning and intent, some simply existing. The camera frames them in long shot as they draw cigarettes to their mouths. It captures their bodies as they sit in relaxed poses beside each other. It lingers on the smiles that can't be suppressed, just from thinking of each other.
"Your so-called Plan B," Ana says. "Most men, wanting to get their ex-girlfriends back, don't set out to seduce their current boyfriends. The thought wouldn't occur to them."
Bruno's smile doesn't falter. He looks for a moment at Pablo, who looks back at him with with a small smile of his own.
"Wouldn't it?" Bruno asks.
"No, well, there was already something there, don't you think?" Ana gives a little shrug as she contemplates the trail of smoke drifting from the end of her own cigarette. "Maybe something that you didn't want to admit. You saw him at the park, at the gym. You found out he was once with another man. So you came up with an excuse."
"That was a lie," Pablo says, not sure why it matters. He leans forward, as though a stronger physical presence will put conviction behind his words. "That I had ever been with a man before Bruno."
A lie he made up, for what? To make himself seem more interesting? More metropolitan? No, it was because the story within the lie appealed to him in some way, but he doesn't explain that now.
"But he didn't know that," Ana says. "What I'm saying is, there was an attraction, and he used an excuse to act on it. There is no other explanation."
She lifts her chin up, partly defiant, and her eyes say that the conversation is over. It has reached its only logical conclusion, and they will be wise to move on. Pablo turns to Bruno, and there's yet another pause as they look at each other.
"But it worked out," says one, and the other agrees.
The band starts to play a more old-fashioned tango. A few couples come out to the dance floor and start to move, one as though they are professionals, one in clumsy, awkward steps that have nothing to do with the traditional dance, and all with life and love and joy. The trio watch for but a moment before Ana interrupts the scene.
"You two should go dance. I think it would be beautiful."
They both laugh. Bruno's is a loud, boisterous noise. Pablo's is a softer one, full of amusement.
"Here?" Bruno asks. He shakes his head. He doesn't know the dance past sometimes watching it done and doubts Pablo does as well, but it's not playing a fool with a dance that he doesn't know that concerns him. Instead, he thinks about the tango. . . he thinks about two men dancing the tango. "Now?"
"Why not?" To Ana, nothing is ever anything of importance. The world is one of small details meant to be sampled and enjoyed, like an a la carte menu of small dishes. Nothing is ever of greater importance than a plate of olives. "No one here will mind."
The statement is true enough. This little hole in the wall in Buenos Aires is cosmopolitan; it is unorthodox. There are people here from all walks of life, people from all cultures, all of them young and most likely open-minded.
"Did you know that the tango was made by men for men?" Ana asks.
Bruno's smile only grows. "Is that so?"
"Yes," Ana says, before her eyes do a sly little take-away as she goes on. "But always it was about women."
They watch the couples dance, and it is all too clear: the tango is a dance between a Man and a Woman. The man controls. The woman surrenders. The man protects. The woman defers. It is the nature of the dance and the way of relationships. Love is not a dance of equals, the tango says.
Bruno looks at Pablo. Pablo looks at Bruno. Their smiles are still there, but more because they haven't yet had an opportunity to disappear. It feels like there is something heavy and dull between them.
"But who would lead?" Pablo asks, as though the answer is one he genuinely needs to know.
When Pablo was young, it wasn't unheard of for boys to engage in a sort of experimentation. The adults might call it exploration, a part of growing up, but Pablo never participated in it. He was too afraid to do so. It wasn't until years later that he realized why: he was afraid a part of him might enjoy it in a way that he wasn't supposed to. He was afraid that he might enjoy it just a little too much.
When Bruno was young, it wasn't unheard of for boys to engage in a sort of experimentation. The adults might call it exploration, a part of growing up. He would compare sizes with his friends. They would see who could get theirs fully hard the quickest; they would see who could get theirs to shoot the farthest. Sometimes they would even touch each other, partly because they were comparing in a more hands-on way, partly because it felt better when it was someone else's hand on you. But as fun as it was, he really only thought about girls. . . about their round curves, their soft skin, the way their hair smelled when it was freshly washed. Secure in the knowledge that it was only women he seemed to want, he never thought much about playing with boys.
"I couldn't do it," Victor says, not for the first time. "Being fucked like a woman."
Bruno and his closest friend sit in the living room of Victor's mother's home. The window is open to let in fresh air, and a fan is pointed to blow stale air out. It does little to help with the heat, but the ice cold beers they both grasp in their hands do a bit more. The topic of the day is sex.
"Women seem to like it," Bruno answers.
Victor laughs. "Of course. They are women. But if you and Pablo have sex, it's different, isn't it? You haven't yet, have you?"
"No." Bruno wonders as he lifts his bottle to his lips. A gulp of beer. A puff on his cigarette. "We've done other things."
Their mouths and their hands have both been put to heady use. Bruno is a cartographer who has explored the territory of Pablo's body, and the resulting maps are clear and comprehensive in his mind. But actual, penetrative sex. . . Bruno knows that men have it. He knows the gist of how it happens, has had that kind of sex with women. But that knowledge settles around him uncomfortably, like a jacket that is too small.
"We've talked about it."
They've talk about everything. They've talk about favorite childhood toys. They've talk about television shows. They've talk about whether or not they should kiss each other. Bruno still remembers that conversation, as clearly as if it happened yesterday. He remembers the bizarre excuse he made up (a commercial casting, and when had he been trying to be an actor?), he remembers Pablo's halting responses. He would, but he couldn't, and several exchanges like that back and forth. Bruno remembers how they both had to take gum out of their mouths, and he remembers the kiss, the way it consumed him so completely that he forgot how to breath.
"Maybe it won't be so bad," Victor says, "since he'll most likely be the woman."
Bruno wants to agree, if only to save his own ass, quite literally, but he asks anyway. "What makes you say that?"
Victor shrugs with more than just his shoulders. His head tilts and his lips pull into a contemplative frown, but then the expression leaves, and he speaks. "He's prettier than you are."
Bruno laughs around the neck of his bottle. When he pulls it away, he pretends to preen his little-groomed beard. "You don't think I'm pretty?"
"You look like a grizzly bear."
Bruno laughs again and looks at his reflection in a nearby mirror. His thick, curly hair is caught up in its usual ponytail and, as always, still manages to look messy in spite of it. "A pretty grizzly bear."
Victor holds his palms up in capitulation. "A pretty grizzly bear."
The first time Bruno gave Pablo a blow job, he had to prepare himself, to get in the right state of mind. He paced a few steps, jabbed the air, repeated. It was a dare, he told himself, he had done worse things on a dare. It was nothing. He was a man, he wasn't scared. On the bed Pablo waited, giving himself a few lazy strokes whenever he felt like he might be wilting. Finally Bruno was ready. He bounded to the bed and sunk his mouth around and over Pablo's cock before promptly gagging.
The first time Pablo gave Bruno a blow job, he had thought it over for quite a bit, and thought he was suitably prepared. But all the preparations he had done had seemed to turn into, as if by magic, a million butterflies that fluttered through his stomach. He felt a little queasy face to face with an actual cock. A cock that didn't belong to him. It was almost an alien thing, a little bit thicker than the one he was used to, colored a different shade, with balls that hung a little lower. It didn't seem like the point of no return, but it seemed so close. He swiped his tongue over the shaft of it even as he thought, 'I'm really going to do this.' The cock in front of him twitched and hit his nose. Startled, he moved back, then sighed and leaned forward to try again.
They lie next to each other in bed, dressed in nothing but their briefs. They spend a disproportionate amount of time in this state. On the ceiling above them, the broad blades of a fan spin and hum. They have no cigarettes at the moment, but they do have some joints in a drawer by the bedside, and one of them does nicely to keep them occupied. As they pass it between them their fingers linger, a brief caress every few inhalations.
Pablo brushes his leg against Bruno's leg. Their skin is sticky where it meets, and the contact serves to make a hot night hotter. Still, Bruno brushes back. Calf against calf, thigh against thigh, short hairs rubbing against one another. Pablo feels lazy and still, like the rocks on the bottom of a creek, his small world filtered through slow-moving ripples.
"Are you still sleeping with Laura?" Pablo asks, because suddenly he is curious. He asks with no judgment and no jealousy. He asks simply, and he doesn't have to turn to see the smile spread over Bruno's lips.
"Would it make you jealous if I were?"
And Bruno truly is the viewfinder toy that he once described himself as, forever requiring the rest of the world to see things through his eyes. Pablo only shrugs, knowing that Bruno will feel it against his shoulder.
"I'm not," Bruno answers, as simply as the question was asked. He moves. The mattress shifts underneath him, underneath Pablo, and then he is staring down at Pablo's face as he leans over him, his smile on the verge of spilling into laughter. "Why would you think that?"
Pablo shrugs again. He pushes Bruno back down onto the bed, body half over him, and takes the spiff from his fingers. He takes a drag, holds the taste of it in his mouth. "You slept with her even after you broke up with her. You slept with her even while she was seeing me."
They wind up side by side, once again, every now and then turning to stare at the other.
"That's different," Bruno says with a laugh. "I was single then."
"But Laura wasn't."
"Well, she wasn't engaged."
"Engaged? So, a boyfriend or a husband and it's okay, but a fiancé and you won't touch her?"
"Yes, well, if it's only a boyfriend it's not so serious yet. If it's a husband, their love has probably cooled. But if it's a fiancé, they're too in love to come between, don't you think?"
Pablo laughs and turns. They both do, and their legs move to entangle together. Hot, sticky skin, thighs, calves, moving against each other and mixing so it's hard to tell what limb belongs to which man. The joint is a glowing red ember between Pablo's lips. Bruno takes it and feels the heat between his fingers. A long breath and it is done, to be discarded in a plastic cup on the bedside table.
"And you?" Bruno asks.
"Am I sleeping with Laura?" Pablo asks back.
"With Laura. With anyone."
"No. Never."
Bruno reaches out. Moves his fingers, slow, over Pablo's bare shoulder. He speaks with seriousness. "And it's the same for me."
Bruno's fingers move over Pablo's chest, inch by inch, turning midway so the backs of them brush over a nipple, then back up again. They pull together. Their lips meet. Pablo still finds the feel of a beard against his own stubble to be strange, as is the hardness that presses against his thigh. Strange and still unfamiliar, but not unpleasant. With each touch or embrace, he finds himself becoming more and more used to it. He is hard himself, after all.
They move against each other, kissing and grinding their bodies together, so close that not a speck of air exists between them. It feels as though they are melting. Their cocks rub together; first through the thin fabric of their briefs, then with nothing to separate them at all, after their hands remove the offending cloth. Pablo can feel Bruno pulse and twitch against him and they are rutting, rutting, rutting, like two teenagers desperate to come together in any way they can. All Pablo knows is Bruno's skin and Bruno's heat. He is dizzy from it. And always he tries to get closer, he needs to get closer, to crawl into Bruno's skin and lose himself there.
The come just from thrusting together, just from rubbing their hips against each other, their hard cocks spilling between their bodies. Pablo can feel hot liquid splatter on his abdomen. They rest. They breath. They draw away, a mess of semen and sweat, to be partially remedied by convenient tissues on the bedside table. They breath some more, and as Pablo watches the rise and fall of Bruno's chest, he remembers.
He remembers the first time they did this. After he discovered Bruno's scheme. After he was left heartbroken. After Bruno came to tell him that he really did fall in love with him, despite it all, because of it all. They stumbled into the bedroom, pulling off each other's clothes along the way, and brought each other to orgasm in very much the same way they did now. But, afterwards, Pablo felt a wave of nausea that could only be regret. He thought about telling Bruno that they should just forget about what happened. That they should never speak of it again and go back to being friends. But when he turned, the words were lost in his throat as Bruno pulled him down into arms that he found he didn't want to leave.
But that was then and this is now. There may be a feeling of discomfort that settles on Pablo's chest, but it is a tiny thing, no bigger than a pea. He gets on his elbows and turns off the bedside lamp. There is enough moonlight leaking through the window that he can still see, if only in silhouettes and blunt shapes. He sees Bruno's fist, curled up around the pillow, loosen and open as Bruno starts to fall asleep. The world whispers unheard words around them.
And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.
Love, grief, labour, must sleep now.
Night revolves on invisible wheels
and joined to me you are pure as sleeping amber. 2
Pablo turns so that he is on his side facing Bruno. He moves a hand to fall inside Bruno's open one. Fingers tangle around his, and there is a sense of contentment that springs from knowing that they will be connected even as they sleep. It feels right, somehow. Secure in the knowledge that his dreams will be warm ones, Pablo lets his eyes close.
Pablo sits on the patio of a cheap neighborhood parilla, across from his good friend Verónica. The wine here is so bad that the waiter asks if they want to drink it with ice. They say yes, and also mixed with some cola, please. Verónica is, quite coincidentally, also friends with Bruno. Or maybe it is not such a coincidence. . . Pablo met Verónica through Laura, after all, so the four of them are all entwined. And while it might be a big city, it's a small world. In their even smaller section of it, there are bound to be many threads that connect them: Laura, the park where they first saw each other, the gym where they first met. Even their homes are not too far from one another; there's a shortcut along some rocky shoreline on the river that makes it a twenty minute walk.
"You look happy," Verónica says. "You look happy a lot lately."
"Do I?" Pablo smiles, but he is always smiling these days. He tries not to think too much of it.
"Does Laura know?" Verónica always does seem to like to cut to the chase.
"Do you think she knows?"
Verónica shrugs and sips from her wine glass. "I haven't asked her, and she hasn't said anything to me about it."
Pablo wonders. Does Laura know that her last two boyfriends are now together? Maybe she has heard rumors. Theirs is a small world, after all. "Maybe. We haven't told her."
"Maybe it's better if one of you tells her before she hears it from someone else." Strands of Verónica's long hair flutter in the breeze as she raises her glass to her lips. Her tone tends to be glib when dispensing advice, but her advice is always sound. Confidant, friend, she is someone that Pablo trusts above most others in this world.
And Pablo knows that Verónica has a point. He takes a sip from his wine glass, fumbles with the cigarettes in his pocket, watches children walking by. "How do you think she'll take it?"
"As well as can be expected. I can't imagine it would be easy, finding out that two of your lovers are now gay and dating each other."
Now gay, as though it's a sudden state of being. As though it's so easy to go from being one thing to being another. Pablo wonders. There are questions to be asked, questions about who he is and what he is, but he's afraid to ask them for knowing the answer. But he can't deny that the questions have always been there, ever since he was young and questioning feelings that the other boys didn't seem to have.
Now, though, Pablo is no longer a boy but an adult. He knows more of the world. He knows more about what he can be and feels more confident exploring it. But he thinks about his parents, about the way they talk about the gay characters they see on television, like they're a novelty or something less than men. What would they think of their now gay son? The question settles within him like bad wine at the end of the night.
But it's a question he can store away for some other time. He turns his thoughts back to the subject at hand.
"I'll tell her," Pablo says. Laura deserves to know. She deserves to hear it from one of them. "We'll tell her."
Verónica nods. "She's loves you both, you know, in her own way. She'll understand."
Bruno first met Laura at a party thrown by a mutual friend, a mutual friend neither of them kept in touch with afterward. He was momentarily unemployed and unsure of his future career path. She was all made up, styled, and as beautiful as he would ever see her. She overheard him telling a joke to his friend and laughed. She then fluttered away, her expensive scarf trailing behind her. Bruno turned to his friend, who proclaimed her out of Bruno's league. Bruno smiled.
"We'll see about that," he said.
Pablo first met Laura at a student art gallery. He was only passing by when the artwork inside caught his attention. He walked through, losing track of time, enjoying the strokes and colors that presented themselves to him. They weren't the most technically impressive works, but something about them resonated within him and stirred feelings in his heart. He paused in front of one painting, a little girl playing with a ball, caught in tones of blue and green.
"Do you like it?"
Pablo turned to see a young woman standing beside him. "Yes. There's something about all of these paintings that's. . . intriguing. Like there's a story behind each one, an entire life inside each canvas."
"It makes me happy to hear you say that," she said, "because I'm the one who painted them."
"So you're both gay now?"
Pablo and Bruno sit on a couch in Laura's studio apartment. Laura who had them both and now has neither. All around them is art: charcoal, watercolor, oil, color, captured life. Laura herself has on an apron, splattered with paint and stains collected over the years, and she moves a brush over canvas. She doesn't look at them. Her voice is even and unbetraying. If there is anger simmering below her surface, they do not know. They are both aware that there might be.
They turn to look at each other. Bruno turns back to look at Laura. He shrugs in an easy way, as though she just asked him to tell her if it was raining outside. "Yes. I guess so."
It's not really so simple, but now is not the time for complications and discussions about human behaviour. Laura doesn't say anything. The sound of wet bristles and paint moving over canvas seems to increase in both volume and frequency.
"Are you mad?" Pablo asks.
"No." The answer is too quick, even if it is as calm and still as all her other words so far. "I might have been, if I was single, but I'm with a new man now. An amazing man. So you see, I don't really care."
Pablo and Bruno turn to look at each other once again. Pablo bites his lip.
"Are you sure?" Bruno asks.
"Yes, yes, yes," Laura says, each 'yes' more rushed than the last. "Thank you for telling me. Now, if you please, I have an assignment to finish."
Bruno shrugs at Pablo before they both stand up and leave. Outside her apartment, they relax a little in the narrow, sun and plant-filled alleyway. Pablo's fingers ghost across the bicycle someone has leaned against the wall. Bruno reaches for a cigarette.
"I think she'll forgive us," Bruno says. "Eventually."
Pablo nods.
Pablo holds a business card in his hands. He turns it over. Over and over. On the back he has written a date and an address. He flips it and it's the standard contact information, all in precise script. He flips it again. A hand snatches it from his fingers, an arm drapes itself over his chest. He turns to see a lopsided smile and answers it with a smile of his own.
"What is it about this business card that has you so fascinated?" Bruno asks. He is pressed against Pablo's side as they lie, once again, in bed. They wear more clothes than they usually do: thin, white undershirts in addition to their briefs. Pablo's apartment, unlike Bruno's, has an air conditioner that actually works every now and then. "Not a new lover, I hope."
Pablo makes a sound like soft laughter, but his nerves flare up inside of him. He's almost grateful to them. He asks before they drain away and disappear or else he'll be left with nothing, nothing to help him say the words that he wants to say. "Do you want to go away with me for the weekend?"
It's a job. A friend of a friend wants a photographer for some artistic engagement photos and Pablo's name is mentioned. And so Pablo and Bruno find themselves getting on an old but charming train in Buenos Aires' Constitución Station, where they spend a few hours enjoying conversation and beautiful scenery that rushes by too quickly in their dust-covered window. There are other people in the train car, but they might as well not exist, for all that Bruno and Pablo notice them. They nap, Pablo's head on Bruno's shoulder, when the rhythm of the train conspires to tire them. They rub sleep out of their eyes when they wake up and laugh at each other's bad jokes about morning breath.
The inn on the edge of town that they stay at might as well be an ancient ruin. It is large and old, filled with antiques and decorations collected over decades, its shoddy walls overlooking meadows and forests. They check in and then decide to explore the grounds. The walk along shaded paths, Pablo's arm around Bruno's waist, Bruno's arm around Pablo's waist, and point out the birds that sing around them. They talk about how beautiful and quiet everything is here. They take a nap, side by side, under cover of a large Bristlecone, the leaves dancing patterns of light and shadow over their faces.
They have a rented car, and they take it to a local restaurant that the old woman running the inn recommends. They eat steak and drink more wine as their knees touch underneath the tablecloth. When they stumble back into their room, a cozy space with green wallpaper and a large, fluffy bed, they're more than a little bit dizzy. Bruno stumbles into the shower and Pablo follows. The water flattens Bruno's lion's mane into dripping ringlets. It runs rivulets down both their chests. They laugh as they help soap each other up, as they jostle for real estate beneath the standard-sized shower head. Pablo's arm against Bruno's chest. Bruno's hand against Pablo's neck. They move together, naked, cocks growing hard as Bruno ends up against the wall with Pablo pressed against him, water raining down Pablo's back. They kiss. The grind together.
Bruno moves a hand down the line of Pablo's back, over the curve of Pablo's ass, down in the dip between Pablo's cheeks. Before he can adequately explore the region, Pablo moves away, pushes down on his arm, gives an awkward laugh.
"Sorry," Bruno says, before Pablo says anything else, and he pulls Pablo back against him. But he thinks that, maybe, there is a connection they are missing. There is a sense that, without joining their bodies, something is incomplete.
Later on they lie in bed, curled up together, under the blanket. The air conditioning hums with an efficiency that neither is used to, and it forms a lullaby as they fall asleep.
The groom-to-be has an old, beat up motorcycle that he used to travel through South America when he was barely an adult. The bride-to-be has a sweet, tea-length dress that was worn by her grandmother. Pablo poses them on the side of a wide, dusty road. There are green, green soy fields to the side and blue, blue skies all around them. After Pablo takes a good number of shots, all three gather around the small screen of Pablo's digital camera to marvel at the photographs.
"They look like the photographs in a fashion magazine," the bride says, her eyes glowing. Because she is happy, her fiancé is happy, and he smiles and nods at the photos.
"You two are beautiful together," Pablo says, and they're not empty words. "You can tell just by looking how in love you are."
"And what about you?" Her voice is teasing, a light and simple sound. "You have the look of someone in love as well. Will you be married soon?"
Pablo laughs, because the notion strikes him as ridiculous. "No. No, me and him. . ."
He freezes a little, caught in the truth, until the bride-to-be nudges his arm with her elbow.
"We don't mind," she says, "We're not the kind to judge what others do."
While Pablo's lips are slow to spread back into a smile, they do eventually do so. He turns to look at the smiling bride-to-be. "I guess that's true."
"So will you marry him?" she goes on.
Pablo laughs again. Shakes his head. "Who will be the groom and who will be the bride?"
"Does it matter?"
Pablo thinks about old-fashioned traditions. Traditions based on having one groom and one bride. Not that those would necessarily apply to him and Bruno, but a rather comical image still comes unbidden to his mind. "Who would wear the dress and who would wear the suit?"
"But that's the beauty of it," she says. "That you can do it whatever way you want."
Pablo shakes his head and laughs some more and directs them back to the shoot. After they finish they put the bike in the back of the groom's pick-up truck. Pablo sits beside it as they drive him into town, toward an address that Bruno texted to him shortly before. The wind whips his hair around his face, against his cheeks and jaw, and he watches as the vibrant blue and green of the scenery fly past. An ambivalence arises within him. There's a warmth when he thinks of himself and Bruno in front of a judge with their immediate family members and close friends, at a restaurant afterward eating. But there is something dark and boundless as well. What he has with Bruno is so different than anything he has had with anyone else. Part of him still doesn't want to be attracted to a man, to be in love with a man. It scares him that it's so easy. He turns the feelings over in his head, in his heart, and wonders how they will sift out.
Bruno sits at a café table alone. In between his lips is the ubiquitous cigarette. When he is with Pablo, he is happy. When he is apart from Pablo, all he can do is think of Pablo. He sips on a fernet con cola, his second of the evening, and ponders his fate in life. He loves him, he loves him, he loves him, but there's that one last step Bruno feels they have to take before they truly belong to each other. Because it's a staple of any relationship, isn't it? It's just something that couples do. Bruno is sure of it. And yet, they hesitate. They circle around it and avoid it. Bruno understands it. It makes him ill to think that of himself, being penetrated like a woman, and he suspects it is the same for Pablo. But if they love each other, maybe it's okay to try, maybe it's okay to make that sacrifice.
Pablo appears at the door of the café. He looks around, unsure, before he catches sight of Bruno and a smile blossoms on his face. Pablo makes his way between tables to where Bruno sits at the side. Bruno stands up. The hug and kiss and sit down, and Bruno asks about Pablo's shoot. Photos are shown. Not just of the couple, but of the scene from the back of the groom's truck, a spread-out countryside never fully in focus.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Pablo asks, and it's unclear whether he refers to the couple or the photographs.
"Only because you make them so," Bruno answers.
Bruno shows Pablo a rasti set he found in an old thrift shop in town. Pablo laughs and builds a little spaceship on the table. They exchange stories about their day and laugh and drink and eat, as they are fond of doing. It is dark when they make their way back to their inn, the windows of their rented fiat open, the radio playing some Uruguayan pop song that hasn't been popular for years. Bruno is driving while Pablo slumps down in the passenger's seat.
"I think we should have sex," Bruno says, out of nowhere, as though he just said, 'Oh, look, there's a deer.'
Pablo looks at Bruno, looks away with a nervous, little laugh. "Isn't that what we've been doing?"
"No. Real sex."
"So do you think what we've doing has been fake?"
"No," Bruno says, a calm protest. "You know what I mean. Actual sex, where we become one, where we finally join our bodies together."
Pablo stares out into the night sky, into the black trees along the road. He brushes his hair out of his face. His jaw is a little tighter than usual and for some moments he's not sure what to say. "You want to have sex, and you want me to lie there and take it."
"No." Bruno leans his head against his hand, elbow resting on the car window sill. His fingers are buried in thick hair and he massages his scalp, just a little bit. "We can take turns, it's only fair. I don't mind starting."
There is a certain type of surprise in the way Pablo's head jerks toward Bruno.
"But if you don't want to," Bruno says, "then you don't want to. I won't ask again."
Pablo is silent. He sinks back down into his seat and stares out the window until they get back to the inn. They brush their teeth, wash up, and fall asleep without touching. The next day, they go back to Buenos Aires.
Bruno and Pablo sit on Bruno's bed. There are no less than three empty bottles around them, and Pablo struggles to remember how full they were when they started. Bruno is smoking from a joint, long drags with his head leaned back against the headboard. He laughs, a noise slow and calm, and hands the joint to Pablo. The smoke drifts up between them, particles suspended in the usual heat. Bruno is dressed in briefs. Pablo is dressed in briefs and a thin white t-shirt. Bruno laughs some more as his fingers run over the soft cotton of the shirt, pressing against Pablo's side. They twist slightly at the hem and pull.
"I'd like to fuck you like this," Bruno says. "With just a t-shirt on."
Pablo goes a little rigid through the haze of alcohol and marijuana he finds himself in. He pushes Bruno's hand away with a laugh of his own, one that's more nervous than anything else. "That's not what we agreed on."
"Okay, okay." Bruno's voice is an easy type of good-natured cheer. His palms flatten on the mattress as he pushes himself off of it. It squeaks, re-settles, and Bruno grabs a plastic tube that sits on the nightstand as he walks to the bathroom. "I'll go get ready."
Pablo takes a deep toke. Uses a hand to smooth out wrinkles in the bed sheet, crosses and uncrosses his ankles. He tries not to think about what Bruno is doing, tries not to think about what they're going to do when he's finished. This is the point of no return, he thinks, and his heart starts to race. He's grateful for the haze that covers his mind and stifles his thoughts, even as he wishes it was more effective.
Bruno comes back. He is completely naked. Pablo fumbles with the joint in his fingers. Bruno takes a seat on the bed, and they both stare forward.
"So. . ." Bruno fidgets a little bit, making himself comfortable on the bed. "How should we do this?"
Pablo flushes. He looks to his side, toward Bruno. "I. . . I don't know. Am I supposed to decide?"
"Maybe we need more alcohol."
"Any more alcohol, and we'll pass out here and now," Pablo says, and then he laughs. Bruno laughs with him, and then they somehow kiss, and they still don't know what they're doing but it feels like a little bit of the edge is off. "On your hands and knees, maybe?"
As Bruno shifts, Pablo moves to turn off the lights. It seems better that way, somehow, easier. There's a square foil packet on the dresser. He grabs it and opens it, gives his cock several strokes to get it completely hard and slips the latex over it. He gets into position and runs a hand down Bruno's spine. He can feel his heart in his throat. One of his hands rests on Bruno's hip; the other wraps around the base of his cock. He swallows. "Are you ready?"
Bruno squirms a little bit in front of him. "Yes. Sure. I'm ready."
"Okay." Still, there's a good moment where Pablo doesn't move. He feels like his heart will fall out of his mouth. But then he aims, shifts his hips, and pushes forward.
Pablo bites down a gasp. Bruno moves forward, instinctually, as though moving away. Pablo falls forward with him. Not two inches in, maybe, and it feels amazing. It makes Pablo's head spin, it feels so good. But Bruno's hand is reaching back and pushing against his hip now.
"Wait," Bruno says, "pull out."
Pablo tries to move backward but finds the motion harder than he would think. Bruno is not as relaxed now, is tightening around him, squeezing him, keeping him from pulling out easily. "I. . . I can't."
"What do you mean you can't? Just pull out."
There's a sense of urgency in Bruno's voice. He's squeezing even more and Pablo can feel it so acutely, he has to stifle a moan from the sensation. There's pleasure and there's fear and he tries to pull away as Bruno moves forward, but somehow he manages to fall instead. He falls down onto Bruno's back and manages to sink in even deeper. Not all the way, but enough. He can feel contractions around his dick, can feel the skin of Bruno's neck against his cheek, can smell Bruno's scent on his nose, and it's just Bruno, Bruno, Bruno. Without meaning to, vision white and hot behind his closed eyes, Pablo comes.
The world goes out of focus for a moment, and then back in, and Bruno's commands to pull out register once again. Pablo pulls away, finds he is finally able to do so, and sits back on his knees as Bruno turns around. They both look down at Pablo's cock, which is slick with semen and missing the condom that had been on it before.
"Oh, God," Pablo says, holding a hand to his mouth.
"It's fine." Bruno's voice holds a confidence that he can't possibly be feeling right now. "I just have to dig it out."
Pablo looks away as Bruno's hand ghosts down past a limp cock and around to his backside. He feels Bruno squirm beside him on the bed. When he looks back, he sees a slip of flimsy latex, wet with lube and glimmer of something that might be red. Pablo's head spins as he leans back against the headboard. He feels like throwing up. He's only vaguely aware as Bruno moves around him, throwing away the used condom and washing up a little bit at the kitchen sink. The mattress sinks as Bruno comes back to Pablo's side and takes a seat beside him. There's silence, then a sigh, and through it all Pablo just feels sick.
"It's fine." A solid hand on Pablo's shoulder. "It didn't go so well, but it's fine now."
Pablo shakes his head. "I can't do this." He didn't want to do it to begin with, wouldn't have if it hadn't been for Bruno's machinations. Always because of Bruno's machinations. Even when Pablo is given the controlling role, he doesn't feel in control. Pablo sits up and starts to pull on his briefs. He looks for his jeans. His mind is swirling and his stomach is twisting like a towel being squeezed dry.
"We don't have to do it again. We can go back to what we were doing before."
Pablo shakes his head again. "No. I can't do this. . . everything. . . this relationship that we pretend at."
It can't work, he sees that now, this thing between two men. He tries to leave before he can change his mind, but then two arms shoot out around him, pinning him to the wall. He looks to the side, at a chipped coffee mug on the nightstand, because he can't bear to see what expression Bruno would be wearing. Anger? Hurt? Hurt would be worse, Pablo thinks, along with the knowledge that he was responsible for it.
"What are you talking about?" Bruno's voice is forceful, hurt and angry.
Pablo swallows. By contrast, his voice is a bit shaky. "How can you be so sure of this? How can this be so easy for you?"
"Because I love you. Because there's nothing else. Why isn't it the same for you?"
Bruno is so close Pablo can feel his body heat. Bruno's every muscle is tense, like an animal about to pounce, and Pablo almost shrinks into himself before he realizes it and stops.
The man controls. The woman surrenders.
It's a tango, and he doesn't want to dance in the role he feels himself cast in. Pablo looks Bruno in the eyes and pretends he doesn't understand all the emotions written within them.
"I think we should go back to being friends," Pablo says.
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.
3
The first time Pablo saw Bruno, it was a sunny day with pleasant weather, the temperature just a little bit more hot than cold but with a breeze that made everything very nearly perfect. He didn't know who Bruno was at the time, of course. He was blissfully ignorant of Bruno's existence. He was at the park to meet his girlfriend after spending the morning taking photographs of cityscapes for a project he was working on. They walked around the pond and talked and ate lunch, and then they kissed and said goodbye, her heels carrying her off to finish some art project of her own.
But Pablo lingered. He couldn't help but notice a man sitting on a bench nearby. In the man's hands was a kitten, and the man looked so content as the kitten climbed around his shoulders and pawed at his face. The man's eyes closed as he nuzzled a cheek against the cat's fur, his expression one of childlike happiness, and Pablo couldn't help but smile and remember how such tiny things could make you so happy when you were young. Before he knew it, he had snapped a photograph. It was a moment of pure joy immortalized in the circuitry of his digital camera.
The second time Pablo saw Bruno was at the gym. He was surprised at first to see this man who had caught his attention at the park days before. And he was embarrassed, because, after all, he had taken a photograph of him in an unguarded moment without his permission. He couldn't help but stare. He would look toward the man, would look away as the man looked toward him, and there would be a moment where they both looked at each other before both turning away. And it was different, this time, he wasn't interested just for the fondness of an image that he found joyful. There was something in the situation that made Pablo uncomfortable. . . and yet he couldn't stop looking over.
When he got home that night, Pablo scanned through the images on his camera until he got to the ones he had snapped of the man. He really was handsome, in a messy, rugged way. Pablo's eyes drew over his brow, his cheeks, his jaw, committing every line to memory, not really wanting to look away. This man had been staring at him, Pablo thought. Looking at him with an intensity that made him flush to think about. He remembered growing up in his small hometown, remembered brushing his hand against the hand of his childhood friend Sergio, remembered the heat that stirred within him before he stifled it under other things. But maybe, now, this time. . . Pablo shook his head and shut down his camera, but in his mind he still saw the picture of the man so clearly.
The third time Pablo saw Bruno was, again, at the gym. His heart beat quickly as the man took a seat next to him in the locker room, but he wasn't surprised. The man started talking about the television show advertised on Pablo's t-shirt, they bonded over a shared love of the material, and then the man complained about a broken television. Pablo could barely hear his voice over his heart, and it took all his courage to be so forward, but he managed to ask the man if he wanted to come over to his apartment to watch the show. It was okay, he told himself, for them to be friends. There wasn't anything wrong with that.
The fourth time Pablo saw Bruno, they ended up watching the series finale of their television show on Pablo's bed, sitting side by side, comfortable and warm as the conversation flowed between them. They laughed and commiserated over little things, and Pablo almost wondered at how easy it was. Later, after Bruno was out of his room, Pablo busied himself transferring photos to his computer to print out. As Bruno's face appeared on his computer's screen, he paused. After staring for several moments but before he could think about what he was doing, his hand moved the cursor to the print button. His printer hummed and produced a small photograph, and he looked at it and folded it neatly before hiding it deep in his wallet, a smile on his lips.
Bruno is, simply put, depressed. He slumps down over the bar like a common drunk as Victor pats his back. Other patrons bustle around them, ignoring them, uncaring.
"It's fine," Victor says. "There a plenty of fish in the sea. We'll find you a new. . . man? You're a fag now, right? You're not interested in women anymore?"
Bruno shakes his head and makes himself dizzy for the effort. He can't bring himself to care about other men or other women right now. He doesn't know what happened. He doesn't know why it ended. His phone calls go unanswered, his text messages unreturned. For one of the few times in his life, he's at a loss over what he should do.
"Okay. Another whiskey, then, seems to be what you need."
Pablo dates. There is Sophia, who works as a catalog model but dreams of runways in Milan, despite the fact that she is only 167 centimeters tall. There is Karen, who works hard to one day take over her family's restaurant. There is Tamara, a graduate student in mathematics who nonetheless prefers hiking and camping to equations and studying. They are all sweet and kind, and he thinks that he can build a happy life with any of them, but he knows that such happiness would only be a shell of something greater. All the women he dates fall by the wayside. His friends and family wonder why a man who has only ever been in long-term relationship(s) now seems to go through women so quickly.
Bruno finds himself at a bar. It's just like any bar in Buenos Aires, only it has a largely disproportionate number of men to women. He finishes his third cigarette, snubs it out in the little tray the bartender has moved there just for him. He gestures for another drink and pulls another cigarette out from the carton in his back pocket. Someone slides into the seat next to him. He looks over and perks up at the sight of longish, dark hair and slender features. Not Pablo, but if he squints. . .
"You've been sitting alone for a good hour," the stranger says, voice loud as he leans in close, trying to be heard over the pulsing bassline of the playing music. "(t)Turning away anyone who tries to talk to you. Let me guess. . . trying to get over a bad break-up?"
Bruno laughs. Smirks. He remembers the divorcée Victor set him up with and marvels that they lasted the few months that they did. "Not such a bad break-up. I was with her, but I was never really interested in her."
The stranger returns the smirk, lowers his eyelashes, and leans in closer. Nothing like Pablo, not really, save for a passing physical resemblance. "You're a cruel one, aren't you?"
"Maybe. Or maybe not. She felt the same about me." Maybe they were both just looking for comfort.
"You say her and she, but you do know that you're in a gay bar, don't you?"
"I guess that makes me bisexual," Bruno says. It was easy enough to reconcile with himself, after the initial dismay and confusion. Easy to reconcile because he had Pablo, and that made all the difference.
"Do you want to leave?" the stranger asks.
"With you?" Bruno asks back.
"Why not?"
Bruno looks over the stranger. Not Pablo. Bruno's stomach twists at the thought. Not Pablo, but maybe for tonight he's close enough. Bruno snubs out his half-finished cigarette and starts to get up. "Why not?"
Pablo has a job with a local catalog. He is on his lunch break and sits alone at a small table, eating a large sandwich. Pieces of conversations drift through his head as he flips through a magazine. He scarcely pays attention to them, the words and voices at the periphery of his senses.
Mother's against my academic plans, but it's what I enjoy studying, so why not?
Oh, I agree, you should go into whatever field you want. People told me that art doesn't pay the bills, but I'm happy, and now I have a decent job as a curator.
I completely forgot! How is that going?
It couldn't be better. We're doing an exhibition of Luciana Abait's work, and I've always admired-
Pablo's head lifts from his magazine. The name filters through his mind and then the voice does too, and he turns to look at the table at his back. "Laura?"
She turns. It is, indeed, Laura. "Pablo. What a coincidence."
They exchange greetings. Laura insists that he join them at their table. Pablo is about to inquire as to the name of Laura's companion, a young woman with long, curly hair, when the woman interrupts.
"So this is Pablo." She looks him over, studying and analyzing in a way that makes Pablo shift in his chair. "You're a photographer?"
"Yes," Pablo says, and before he can say more she is going on with the purpose of a much older woman. A woman who knows what she wants and doesn't waste time getting it.
"I need a photographer for my wedding on July 8th. Would you be willing to do the job?"
"Sure." He doesn't have a job that day, but he could always use one. "But you're so young-"
The woman cuts him off with a wave of her hand. "When you know, you know."
She's quick to agree to a price and they exchange contact information, but then she excuses herself to go, saying that she's very busy. She kisses Laura goodbye and is off, leaving Laura to stare at Pablo over her cigarette.
"You know," Laura says, "that was Bruno's sister."
Pablo's fingers clench around the napkin where she scribbled her first name and telephone number. It pulls tight, on the edge of tearing. He looks up at Laura. "Bruno's? Does she. . . does she know. . ."
"Who you are? Of course. Bruno keeps no secrets from his sister. If the two of you had kept dating, you would have met his whole family soon enough." Laura takes a puff from her cigarette, holds the breath for just a moment, then lets the smoke flow from her mouth in a long exhale. "You know, when I was with you, I often thought it would be nice if I could combine you and Bruno into one person. If I could have Bruno in bed and you outside of it. One person with his confident prowess and your considerate sensitivity. How nice, I thought, if I could date you both. . . and then you two started seeing each other."
"I'm sorry," Pablo says, in case that's what she wants to hear.
Laura shrugs. "To tell you the truth, I was happy when I heard you two broke up. Not anymore, though. Not after seeing how miserable the both of you are."
More than hearing that he himself looks awful, Pablo is surprised to hear her say the same about Bruno. "Bruno does?"
"Why do you think his sister was so quick to invite you to her wedding? She just wants to see her dear brother happy again." Laura grabs her bag and leaves some money on the table. "I have to go. Come to the wedding, Pablo. Talk to him."
Pablo stands up when Laura does and they kiss goodbye, and then she leaves him to a half-eaten sandwich and all the questions in the world.
He'll go. He won't go. He doesn't know what to do.
He calls Bruno's sister, who sees through his excuses and insists that he comes. He calls Verónica, who says she's sick of listening to both of them mope about and hangs up on him. He runs into Ana, who slips that Bruno might be seeing someone else now. Pablo feels his insides twist with the casual admittance. Ana keeps talking, but she sounds far away, and Pablo just wants her to finish so that he can say goodbye and leave.
So Bruno's not so miserable after all.
The morning of the wedding, Pablo sits on the edge of his bed. He is dressed in a suit. His face is clean shaven. The large, black case of his camera equipment is on the floor by his feet. He is thinking of ways out, of excuses, and wonders if perhaps Bruno's sister already has another photographer lined up. She asked him so late, after all, and only as an obvious excuse to get him to the wedding. Still, in the end he can't just ignore an obligation.
He goes to the wedding, which is in a rich uncle's house just outside of the city. He tries to ignore his shaking fingers and his heaving stomach, especially when he catches sight of Bruno's shocked expression. It's awkward taking family photos because he can feel Bruno watching him, but then it's time for the ceremony to start and Bruno is caught up doing other things.
Pablo takes pictures throughout dinner and dancing. He talks to Laura, who is there with her new beau, who seems to be a good man. He talks to Ana, who always has funny little stories to tell him. At midnight he gets a break to eat his own dinner, and then he is back to taking pictures. Laura's boyfriend drinks shots with him and Ana makes him dance with her. And through it all he is always, always aware of where Bruno is. He stays in Bruno's orbit but constantly teeters on spiralling away, close enough to see(,) but too far away to do anything else.
At six they serve breakfast and whiskey. It's quiet now, the dance music gone, replaced by the conversation of the drunk and the tired. Pablo takes some last photographs and retreats out of a back door. There, among the hedges and plants of what seems to be an English-style garden, the noises of the party are a dull hum in the background. The sun is starting to rise and dew from the grass clings to the bottoms of his suit legs. Pablo sits down on a stone bench and starts to look through the photographs on the screen of his digital camera.
Looking through, he sees Bruno, on the periphery of so many photographs. In the center of others. Here, in the background drinking from a glass. Here, eating a slice of cake. Here, spinning his sister on the dance floor. Bruno looks well; he doesn't look miserable, as Laura implied. He looks well. Maybe Ana was right. Maybe Bruno has moved on. Pablo wipes at his eyes and tells himself some dust must have fluttered into them. He tries to ignore how much they sting, how much the stinging doesn't want to stop. He feels a hand on his shoulder.
"I've been trying to get near you all night," says the familiar voice.
And Pablo could laugh if he wasn't on the verge of crying. He gathers his strength and puts it into his voice, so that it doesn't crumble and fall when he speaks. "I've made such a mistake."
Bruno says nothing, at first. He stands there, his hand warm on Pablo's shoulder. Then he moves. Slides to sit beside Pablo, hand shifting from shoulder to arm to finally hand, where their fingers clasp together. They watch the sun rising for several moments as the stinging in Pablo's eyes recedes.
"Is it a mistake easily fixed?" Bruno asks.
"I guess that depends on you." Pablo gathers the courage to turn and face Bruno. The man is as he remembers: every plane, every curve, every line a perfect replica of memory. "Would you be mad if I said that I still love you?"
The smile that bursts on Bruno's face is beatific. Bruno laughs, pulls Pablo hand to his lips so that he can press a kiss to the back of it.
"Let's go back inside," Bruno says.
They stay hand in hand as they make their way back into the ballroom. A last tango is playing; Bruno's sister pulls them out onto the floor. The dance together, neither leading, both leading, clumsy and cumbersome but they're laughing and they're together. Here, on the dance floor, Pablo realizes that nothing else but that matters. It seems so simple now: life with Bruno and life without. He feels a fool for ever thinking the second might be superior to the first.
Like this I want you, love,
love, Like this I love you,
as you dress
and how your hair lifts up
and how your mouth smiles,
light as the water
of the spring upon the pure stones,
Like this I love you, beloved. 4
Theirs is a love written in clichés. It begins with "Once Upon a Time," and it ends with "Happily Ever After."
1 Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda.
2 Sonnet LXXXI by Pablo Neruda.
3 Your Laughter by Pablo Neruda.
4 And Because Love Battles by Pablo Neruda.