Say My Name

"What's the name of this reckless young man I met last night?"

I looked at him to remind myself I was older than he.

"Let's see . . . . He's foreign. He's uninhibited like a foreigner. I think maybe he's Italian. Maybe . . . . I don't know . . . . Marco?"

"I like him. Very much. To me, you are Marco, always and forever."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"You should be someone, too."

"I am someone. I'm Timothy. I like hearing my name. I don't want to be someone else."

"I want to say a name no one else has ever said."

He smiled at that.

"I don't have the coloring for an Italian. I'm from Amsterdam, equally reckless and young. I'll be Rudolf, from Crusade in Dreams. You can call me Rudy."

I thought of the terrible movie of the same name. I forced him to choose again.

"Fine. I'm an expat. I left in 1986, over Reagan. I moved to Amsterdam and became a sex worker. I met you in Rome on vacation. I stayed in Rome because of you. I'm Michael."

"You chose my name."

"I chose your name."

That night, he called me Marco, and I called him Michael. As we had the night before, we bounced between furtive and languid.

I liked it most when his was on his back, his arms and legs spread wide, him calling Marco as I sucked him or me calling Michael as I fucked him. He liked it most when I was in his mouth, our eyes were locked, and I was saying his name.

He was verbal, but the words didn't sound base or inauthentic on his tongue. They sounded lyrical, dirty words like cock and cum and fuck that totally disarmed me when spoken urgently and in the throes by a blond haired boy I almost missed.

I woke up first the next morning. I was overwhelmed by it all. It felt like a convergence and a release, wrapped into one. Everything that had come before was specifically for this time. But, this time was washing all the rest away, taking from me all the things that had come before, including Eddie, the boyhood friend who had always prevailed over all the others.

You can't get lost as fast as I had. I was the adult, but I was without a map, wandering and wondering.

When he joined me in the waking, I told him not to fall in love with me.

"It's too late," he answered.

"No, it's too soon," I corrected.

"I'm optimistic and young," he corrected back. "I fall in love easily. I won't when I'm older and jaded. But I do now. Before you, I was in love with the thought of you."

I was wounded by "older and jaded." I wondered if he thought of me as old and jaded.

I was thrilled with the "Before you, I was in love with the thought of you." I wondered from where he'd come, his wisdom inconsistent with his flow and his youth.

"You're too young to know what love is," I asserted, hoping to ward him off.

"I'm not," he reassured. "It's this," he added, the palm of one of his large hands in the middle of my chest and the palm of the other in the middle of his. His face was serene, a sly smile revealing he knew I knew.

I placed my hands over his.

"Say my name," he said, with his eyes, without uttering a word.

"Michael," I said.

"Marco," he answered.

I forced fear to recede. "You're right," I said. "This is love. I love you. And you love me. And there's nothing else."

"And there's nothing else," he repeated, my words his again.

That night, we slept face to face, our noses touching. When I awoke in the night, which I often did, I kissed him. When he awoke in the night, which he rarely did, he kissed me.

When I got up to relieve myself, he came along. He was behind me, holding me as I voided, directing me into the bowl, making even the solitary act of urinating about the two of us.

I did what he had done. I kissed the moles on his back as he added his urine to mine, my hand guiding him.

We folded into one another. I became part of him, and he became part of me.

I hated leaving for work. I hated worse when I arrived home and he was not immediately at my door. I leaned against the wall, waiting for his feet. When they appeared, my heart jumped. I rushed to the door. We tore into each other. We couldn't — wouldn't — wait.

His parents were either indifferent or oblivious or both. They seemed not to care that their senior-to-be was basically living in the basement with a twenty-seven year old man.

We spent my remaining weeks in Chicago together. To be clear, but crass, we fucked our brains out, like teenagers who had just discovered sex. I wasn't old, but he made me younger than I'd ever be again.

"You're great in bed," I told him once, after he had sent me to the edge of the abyss.

"I'm good at everything," he answered, cockily, but not sounding so.

"Except Latin," I answered, reminding him.

"I'm good at Latin," he answered back. "I only pretended not to be. It was a ruse."

I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. He smiled back. It was a mischievous, sinister smile. It was his second smile I'd never forget.

"I've never gotten a B," he affirmed. "Not even in Latin."

"Oh my God," I said, stunned.

"You're in way over your head," he answered. "You have been since day one."

He was right. I was in way over my head.

I rewarded his guile and vaingloriousness with the best head I could give. Every time I moved my mouth on him, I urged "Don't forget me when I'm gone, don't forget me when I'm gone, don't forget me when I'm gone." I repeated it until the song from Glass Tiger echoed in my ears and I'd swallowed all he gave.

"I'll never forget you," he said, after I'd finished him, as if he could hear what I was thinking.

I told him I hated him not being there when I returned home. He promised he would be every day I had left.

He was. Sometimes, he'd be cooking. Sometimes, he'd be cleaning. Often, he'd be napping, waiting for me to slide in next to him, so we could cuddle, make love, and then cuddle some more.

"I'll never forget you," he said again, as we drove west from Chicago to Reno, where I'd be clerking 1992-93. We hadn't discussed it. It was just a given that we'd finish our affair with a road trip through the Black Hills, through Montana and the Pacific Northwest, down the coast of Oregon and Northern California, and then back to Nevada. Once I was settled in Reno, he'd fly back to Chicago.

I waited with him at the gate as he prepared to leave my life. When they called his flight, neither of us moved. We couldn't.

When they paged him, I pinned him against the wall, and I claimed his mouth as my own. Even in a crowded airport, it was just the two of us. I felt his body go slack against mine. With all that I had and all that I offered, I gave him a "don't forget me when I'm gone" kiss.

"Something to remember me by, Michael" I whispered, once I had pulled my lips from his.

"I'll remember it all, Marco" he answered, stealing my thunder.

*****

"What do you remember best?" I asked, during the last telephone call we shared over the 1,900 miles that now separated us.

"When I answered the door. The first time. You had rung the doorbell but then turned your back to it. When I opened the door, I saw the back of you. I couldn't wait to see the front of you. I knew. I just knew. When you turned around, smiling, it was like lightning hit me. 'It's you,' I thought to myself. It was as if I had been waiting for you. I knew, right then and there, that's what I'd been doing. Waiting for you."

"Oh my God," I thought, as I fell apart inside. I couldn't speak. I could barely breathe.

It was his turn to ask me. I knew he wouldn't, so I volunteered.

"I remember the hours. Between getting your note and you knocking on my door. They were the longest hours of my life. I could hear the minutes click by on my clock radio, one after the other, click click click. They echoed throughout my apartment. In all the time I'd had that clock, I'd never heard them before, even when my head was next to it. I heard every single one of them that evening. I stood at the window, waiting for your feet, listening to minute after minute click by, click click click, wondering if you'd had a second thought. I wanted to come upstairs, to find out what was taking so long, but, you know, I couldn't really do that. So I waited. Click click click."

I heard him laugh on the other end of the line. We were sharing the same thought, as we increasingly did.

"I mean," I confirmed, "I couldn't rightly say 'I'm here for Timothy. We're starting our affair tonight. I'm tired of waiting for the start to start. Let him know I'm ready for him'."

"It started before that," he said, "at least for me."

He was right. It had started before that. For him, it had started on the porch. When I turned around.

For me, it had started on the tour, when I thought I wanted a puppy. He turned out not to be one, but that didn't matter. By the time I realized that, I wanted him more than I'd ever wanted anyone or anything.

"I wish you hadn't forced me to wait so long," he added, blaming me for lost time.

"It was perfect the way we did it, Michael," I corrected.

"You're right, Marco," he agreed. "It was perfect the way we did it," my words again his, my name still his.

*****

I spent the first half of my year in Reno aching for "Michael." I felt incomplete with him gone, like half of me was missing and unfindable.

He didn't help. After what would be our last call, I received a crate. He had taken pains to anonymize it, to hide from me what it was or who it was from.

I opened it to find the painting on which he'd been working the only night I'd been able to deny him. Or myself.

It was complete and daunting. The eyes raged within a beautiful, placid face. It robbed me of my breath.

I put it back in the crate and in my shabby apartment's only closet. I didn't want — couldn't have — a daily reminder of him. I could not allow myself to get trapped by or in him.

I spent the second half with Caroline, my Reno running mate. We had met the first day of my clerkship and had hit it off. We were Will and Grace before there was Will and Grace.

She was engaged to Andy, a musician in Los Angeles. I told her about Timothy.

About three months after I received the painting I showed it to her. When I held it up, I noticed for the first time an envelope taped to the back of the canvas. Inside, there was a note:

"You are wrong about the eyes. They're filled with lust, not rage. I painted them thinking of you. I will always think of you. Always."

Roe held me while I sobbed over it all. The loss. The note. The fact I had not found the note and how my silence must have wounded him. I was sure that's why I hadn't heard from him.

I called him that night after Roe had left. It was late, but I had to apologize as soon as I could.

His mother asked who was calling. When I told her it was I, she asked how I was and apologized for not being able to call her Timothy, my Michael, to the telephone. "He told me, if you called, to tell you he can't speak to you again," she said. "He told me to tell that and to add 'he just can't.' I'm sorry, Michael. I don't think he means it, but I have to be able to tell him I told you. You know how he is."

I did. And, I was sure he meant it. I wrote him a note of my own.

"There are no words to describe the painting or the fact you gave it to me. There are no words to describe how sorry I am I didn't find your note until today. There are no words to describe how much I miss you, how cleaved I am by your absence, how pointless the days now seem. I know you know, there are no words."

He didn't answer. I knew he wouldn't. It was done, not because he was angry or hurt, but because it had to be. It just had to be.