Switch Ch. 03

Someone—I don't even remember who—handed me a drink. Not a beer. Some kind of mixed drink. Women know better than to take open drinks from random people, but I didn't give it a second thought. And after that, I feel like the night skips ahead every fifteen or twenty minutes, like looking at photos at a party, where you can never know what brought any given person away from the keg and over to the pool, or away from the pool and over to the couch, or away from the couch and over to the dance floor. I remember Dario coming over to me and me feeling utterly elated, believing that he was going to say, fuck these people, let's kick them out and have some time to ourselves, or that he was going to say, Baby, no one will notice—lets sneak up to the rooftop even though it's a freakishly cold night. But all he did was tell me how amazing the set was, and tell me my voice sounded like Thom Yorke and Maynard James Keenan made a baby together twenty-six years earlier. Then he gave me an indecipherable smile and walked off to join a group of regulars, one of whom I know almost for sure he'd slept with a few times.

Next, Melissa, who I'd hooked up with the first time we'd played after Avalyn left me, came over with two of her friends, and she was pretty much throwing herself at me, to the point where I felt like her friends were a little embarrassed for her. Then I was by myself, watching all those clusters of people pulsing and scuttling over the floor of the loft like a hive of insects, chattering, giggling, chortling bugs. Then Melissa was flirting with me, her friends nowhere to be seen, her mascara darkening the skin under her eyes as if she'd slept as little as me the last seventy-two hours, her upper lip dotted with beads of sweat. Then I was alone again, watching Dario and that guy I knew he'd slept with huddled together in a dark corner whispering to each other intimately, their mouths almost brushing against each others' cheeks as they murmured their private thoughts. Then Jeff and Tom and Steve were next to me, and Jeff said, "Your boyfriend isn't cheating on you, is he?"

"What?" I wanted the next words out of Jeff's mouth to change into something else. To make that first question go away.

"Don't be shy, wallflower," Tom teased. "Just serenade him a little. He's such a fan, I bet that's all it would take."

I don't know what I said. Actually, I'm pretty sure I didn't say a fucking thing. That I just stared at them until they got uncomfortable or gave up on me as hopelessly drunk or addled, and wandered off.

Next, I was up on the roof terrace, making out with Melissa, her friends talking to some other guys. Then it was her friends talking to Steve and Jeff. I don't know where Tom had gone. Maybe home to Clara, who for once hadn't come to the loft that night. Next we were all dancing, me embarrassing myself, grinding on Melissa, putting on a moronic performance for Steve and Jeff but by then Melissa's friends and my friends were ignoring us, too wrapped up in their own efforts to hook up. Next, I had Melissa backed up against the exterior wall of the stairwell, my hand inside her dress, inside her bra, my tongue in her mouth, rubbing my limp dick against her groin through my pants and her dress. And then I don't know why—it had gotten louder or quieter, or I don't know but somehow the atmosphere changed in some unquantifiable way—I stopped making out with Melissa long enough to turn around and see what was going on, and there was a fresh cluster of people all bunched together a few feet away, murmuring quietly, maybe even philosophically in the fatigued, drunken, hungover wee hours when the sun was already getting ready to come up over the horizon, and there was Dario, staring at us the way I'd stared at Dario and that ex-lover, Dario and Sung, Dario and Joe Burke. Then Dario walked away from the group and disappeared into the stairwell.

Next I was dead sober. Or, not sober, but the night stopped skipping forward in ten-minute or half-hour increments. Time slowed down to near stillness, and I lived through every excruciating second like it was an hour in a jail cell, locked up with my doubts, my regrets, my self-loathing, my self-pity. I extracted myself from Melissa's groping hands, went to the edge of the roof, had the dark but comforting thought, not of jumping, but of maybe stumbling and falling to my death, and started throwing up. Jeff came over to check on me, and I told him I was fine, I just wanted to sit there in the fresh air a little longer. A little later Jeff came over and said they were going to leave, did I want any water? I said no, I just wanted to sit there and not move because I was afraid if I stood up I'd get sick again. He asked if I wanted a ride, or was I just going to crash there. I said I'd crash there. I didn't care what he thought that might mean, though in retrospect he obviously thought I was just going to pass out any second. Everyone else went downstairs, and I stayed on the roof. Not that much later, Dario came up with a big glass of water.

"What did you take?"

"Nothing. I just had one drink after the set."

"What was it, a liter of absinthe?"

"I don't know. Someone gave it to me."

"Who?"

"I don't know. I don't remember."

"Can you stand up?"

"No."

"Try." He helped me to my feet, and holding my arm across my shoulders, he walked me in a loop around the roof a few times. When I told him I was feeling better we went down to the loft. Everyone else was gone.

"Could I crash on your couch?"

"You don't want to sleep upstairs with me?"

I thought my heart would break. But I joked, "So, my diabolical plan worked after all."

"Just don't puke in my bed, Romeo."

By the time I'd washed my face and brushed my teeth and taken a leak, Dario was breathing the deep, labored respiration of drunken sleep. Too ashamed of myself after my performance and not wanting to punish his unexpected hospitality by waking him up, I stretched out at the edge of the bed rather than curling up against him and putting my arm around him. I fell asleep right away, but woke up in the middle of the night, or the middle of the morning—impossible to tell up there in the nest with the heavy double curtains closed over the big windows, and the sound of him breathing next to me, the warmth of his body radiating out to me on the other side of the bed enveloped me in a cloud of terrible sadness, and terrible need. Whatever I'd gotten in my system with that mystery drink was still churning in my blood. By the dim glow of the little nightlight I could just make out the profile of his brow, his nose, his lips, his perfect jaw, the curve of a shoulder, the dark circle of a nipple, and before my gaze had strayed down the length of his arm to his hand my cock was hard and I felt like if I didn't fuck him I'd die. Not just of physical need, which was suddenly, brutally overwhelming me, but more than anything the terror that if we didn't make love right then, that night, we'd never be together again.

In my muddled state I convinced myself that it would be almost a penance to undo the damage I'd wreaked that night by pseudo-fucking Melissa on the rooftop before Dario's eyes. An offering up of something that was really for him. Opening the nightstand drawer didn't wake him. Fishing among the dildos, condoms and butt plugs didn't wake him. Lifting the leather cuffs with their metal chains didn't wake him. Even slipping one around his wrist and fumbling in the dark with the unfamiliar prongs and buckles didn't wake him, or the sound of the steel ring clicking into place around one of the iron rods of the headboard. What woke him was me trying to extract his other wrist, which was buried under the pillow his head was nestled into.

I don't think he knew who was there in the bed with him. He jerked his arm free of my fumbling grip and flailed around for a second, still tangled up in the stupor of sleep before he realized that his other arm was already chained to the headboard. Then he was up, sitting bolt upright, but I straddled his legs and pushed him back. He didn't say anything. He was just breathing terribly fast and hard and when I caught his free wrist in both of my hands he asked me in a terrible, terrified voice, "What are you doing?"

I'd already rehearsed it in my head ten or fifteen times, trying to remember the assertive, confident, irrefutable tone he'd used when he'd told me he was going to suck my cock and finger my ass. I said, "I'm going to tie you up. And then I'm going to fuck you until neither of us can move."

"Martin. Get the fuck off me." It was a clear, sharp order, with just a quavering hint of fear under it.

I swear to god I thought it was part of the game. The ritual. The victim pleading. Demanding. I didn't get off him. I held on to his wrist with all my strength with my right hand, and with my left I started to work the tongue of leather through the buckle. With sudden, surprising strength he jerked his arm free of my hands, swept me off of him and almost off the bed, and sat up.

"Do not fucking touch me again, Martin. If you come near me, I'm going to hit you. If you touch me, you're going to go home with something broken. Turn the fucking light on." His voice was shuddering with rage. Or fear. I went and turned on the light. He was fumbling with the restraint, trying to get his other arm free of the headboard. When he got it loose he jumped out of the bed as if it were seething with spiders, clawed at the pile of clothes on the floor and pulled on a pair of jeans.

"What the fuck, Martin?" God. He looked like he was going to cry. He looked like he was going to kill me right then, with his bare hands. "What the fuck?" he almost screamed, and it was like being in the room with someone I'd never met before. This wasn't Dario.

"I thought . . . I wanted to . . . "

"What did you want?" His words seethed out between clenched teeth.

"It's your thing," I said, barely audibly, because even though I didn't really understand exactly how, I knew I'd fucked up. Fucked up horribly. Irrevocably.

"My thing? What? Raping people in their sleep?"

"What?" I felt tears running down my face. A flood of tears that kept coming and coming.

He turned away from me and spat out an angry, "Fuck!" Then he practically ran out of the room and down the stairs.

I didn't know what to do, whether to leave him alone or go after him. Without making a decision either way I got dressed, because whatever was going to happen, I didn't want to be naked for it, and, more important, Dario didn't want me to be naked for it. I found my phone and my keys. That way when he told me to go, I could do what he wanted right away. Then I went downstairs.

He was sitting in the corner farthest from the stairs, all the way across the loft diagonally. Not sitting on one of the dozen sofas or chairs, but squatting down on his heels against the wall. He had to have heard me coming down the steps, but he didn't move, even to look up at me.

"I'm sorry," I said as quietly, as gently as I could without straying very far from the staircase because I didn't want him to think I was coming at him like a raping maniac. "I don't know what was wrong with me. My thinking. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do. I fucked up. I fucked up incredibly. I know that. I just want you to know that I wasn't trying to hurt you or take advantage of you. I was just being really stupid, and trying to do something I thought you'd like. Just, please know it was bad judgment, not . . . me being violent or wanting to hurt you."

"I believe you." He hadn't looked up, and I couldn't see his face. But by his voice I could tell he was crying. "But you need to go. If you're not safe to drive, I'll call you a cab."

I'd never felt more sober in my life. "I can drive," I said. And I left.

Late that afternoon I sent Dario a text telling him again that I was sorry, and telling him that I would drop out of the band if he didn't want me around the loft. He texted me back:

"Come to rehearsal. Not ready to talk yet, though."

Rehearsal was a three-hour torture session. Dario said the usual words, the words that had embodied our vaguely awkward distance for three years, then the fake distance that concealed our secret tryst, and that now resonated with the painful truth of the chasm I'd blown open between us. But all evening he was stiff and cool, not just with me, with all of us. He didn't say anything when Jeff and Tom lit up, but he didn't smoke with them, either. Instead of working while we rehearsed, he sat in his armchair and stared into space. Tuesday, it was the same. When Steve asked what was bothering him, Dario just said with a cold, remote dignity that I realized was the dark side of his easy affability, that he had some things on his mind. By Wednesday I expected him to cancel the events that weekend, but he didn't. I showed up to play our set on Saturday night, but left right after, and avoided the loft the rest of the weekend. On Sunday morning he texted me, saying he wanted to talk. He proposed we meet me at my place after rehearsal that night. My place. So, not a reconciliation.

I felt like I was dying. I know how to accept hurt, how to survive heartbreak. But the fact that I was going to lose what we'd had, lose the chance to at least keep him in my life as a friend because I'd done such a stupid thing was unbearable. I couldn't stop going back over that night, replaying over and over the moment I'd decided the way to make up for my pathetic display with Melissa was to initiate myself into Dario's mysterious world of bondage and domination, futilely wishing I could go back like the ghost of Christmas future and whisper in my own ear what a life-wrecking stupidity my little plan was. Asking myself why I'd been so freaked out by going a couple nights without sleeping together, driving myself so crazy I didn't sleep for three nights straight, why I'd been so stupidly jealous of Dario's interactions with the other guys at the events, why I'd been so embarrassed by Jeff's joke about Dario being my boyfriend, provoking me to use Melissa as proof that I wasn't infatuated with Dario when by now I knew that the truth was that I loved him.

When Dario buzzed my intercom that night after rehearsal, while I was waiting for him to climb the five flights of stairs, I was so on edge it felt like at the cells in my body were vibrating out of sync, like a reaction was building and building that was going to shake me to pieces at the atomic level until I disintegrated into nothing. I opened the door and made myself sit down on the couch, the least threatening way I could think of to greet him. I watched him step up onto the landing then pause for a second in the doorway, then step inside and shut the door. He came over to the couch, and for a few seconds he stood there looking down at me. Then he extended his arm. Like he wanted to shake hands or something. But when I put my hand out—not touching his but waiting for him to make the first contact—he gripped my hand and coaxed me to my feet. After a few more seconds of looking at each other, me trying not to vibrate apart into dust and him looking like he was trying not to cry, he took a step forward and hugged me. I was so stunned I think I barely even hugged him back at first. I just stood there, rigid and afraid to move the wrong way or touch him the wrong way while he went on holding me, and finally I put my arms around him and really hugged him back. It felt like the saddest good-bye of my life.

As soon as his embrace softened I let go, even though I ached to keep holding him. Even though I wanted to ask him, beg him to put his arms back around me. He sat down on the sofa, so I sat down too.

Meeting my eyes he said, "I believe you that what happened the other night was . . . an error in judgment." Suddenly I had the idea that maybe—almost certainly not, but maybe—he was going to give me another chance. That tiny bit of improbable hope changed my pained resignation into excruciating anticipation. Like I was awaiting a verdict. "And I think that unfortunately someone slipped you something without you knowing it. A couple other people have mentioned something similar happening. Including your friend Melissa. Which I acknowledge lessens your culpability for that error in judgment."

The words sounded so promising. But his tone sounded like a death sentence.

"But I'm still really freaked out. I'm not trying to punish you. But I don't feel safe with you."

God, that hurt. But I said, "I understand," because I wanted him to know I didn't blame him for whatever he was feeling.

"I'm not asking you to leave the band or find another rehearsal space. You're always welcome to come to the loft with the band, for the weekend events. But I can't see you romantically anymore. Not for a while, at least. Maybe never."

"Okay."

"Okay."

He got up. I felt like he'd meant to say more, and changed his mind, but I let him go without saying anything.

I felt destroyed. We'd had a week-long secret affair, and the ending of it was the first time I'd ever really felt like my life was over. I forced myself to get up each morning and go to work. I started going to the gym every day instead of a few times a week, because I couldn't stand socializing and I couldn't stand being alone with my thoughts. During our rehearsals, I went through the motions. Actually, suddenly, it felt like that's all any of us were doing. No one really cared about the music, about virtuosity. Everyone seemed to be doing it just because there was nothing better to do. Maybe I wasn't genuinely suicidal, but for the first time in my life I felt like I understood why people kill themselves.

The one and only good thing during those weeks was that it was incredibly fruitful for my songwriting. I wrote every night, from the minute I got home from rehearsal or the gym, until I couldn't stay awake anymore. Half the time I woke up in the middle of the night and, tortured by my miserable thoughts I couldn't fall back asleep, so I wrote. I wasn't just prolific. The music I wrote during that period was the best I'd ever produced. The compositions, and the lyrics.

Three weeks and five days after Dario had broken things off, he texted me saying he had a professional proposal to discuss, did I want to come by after work? The other band wouldn't be rehearsing there that night. For the first time in a month life didn't feel pointless, like a burden I was dragging around against my will. Feeling that much better and knowing it rode on one innocuous text from Dario scared the hell out of me.

Of course I went. He was nervous, but warmer than he'd been since we'd said good-bye at my apartment. I turned down the offer of a beer, so we both had water.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm alright," I lied, and I could see in his face that he knew it was a lie. "How are you doing?"

"About as good as you, I suppose." He gave me a sad smile, and in that moment I recalled the dozens of melancholy smiles he'd given me during our brief interlude, and had the uncanny feeling that he'd known from the start that we were both going to end up terribly hurt. "I have something I want you to consider," he said. "Do a solo show."

"What? A whole set, just me?"

His indulgent grin. Such a poignant, bittersweet thing to see. "Yes, that's what solo means. Or, if it sounds like too much work to get ready for just one show, we could plan on two or three. One night over however many consecutive weekends."

"I'm not ready for anything like that."

"You mean you don't have enough material?"

Only then did I get how serendipitous his offer was. "No. I mean, actually, yes. I have enough material. I have enough material for a ten-hour rock opera if you want to convert the loft into a mass torture chamber. Heartache is a phenomenal catalyst for creative output." I regretted it the moment I'd said it, but he gave me one of his deep, earnest looks and an empathetic smile. So I wouldn't throw my arms around him and tell him again how sorry I was, I said, "I mean I'm not ready as a performer. I'd feel too . . . vulnerable or something, up there by myself."