A Visit to Remember
by
D. V. Zomba
Copyright 1991
Chapter One -- Friday evening Chapter Two -- Six years before Chapter Three -- The past June Chapter Four -- Friday night, later Chapter Five -- Saturday morning Chapter Six -- Sunday morning Chapter Seven -- Two hours later
Chapter One Friday evening
The pewter gray of the December sky seemed even more inhospitable as the light sleet swept furiously across the windshield of the car. The wipers flailed back and forth, like black death-wings, clearing the near-snow and forming double arcs. Through the water-streaked wind-screen could be glimpsed the bare bones of leafless trees and the haloed street lights that lined the quiet Indianapolis street. This merely underscored Bill Dweyer's depression--his gray, emotional void.
The last six months shrouded Bill's being like a chilling, life-sapping haze. A fog that seeped into his very core. Eating, drinking, working and sleeping, no highs, no lows--plodding from one required task to another, this had been his existence since June. He was moving through life as an automaton, an android whose every action was emotionless, yet contained seeds of frigid, frozen energy.
Without joy, without apprehension, without anxiety he had accepted Tom's invitation to spend the holidays with him. The times that they had shared in the past, seven-and-a-half years, both good and bad, took on a kind of unemotional neutrality. Yet, he thought, as he pulled into a vacant parking space in front of the 'yuppified' apartment building, "The holidays here would be a hellava less demanding than with my family." He couldn't have stood the looks from his family, the love-filled pity--the attempts to verbalize their empathy. His presence, their presence would have pushed forward memories with which he could not, would not deal. Besides, Tom had insisted. Insisted in a way that promised a kind of warm non-intervention, the promise of company, the continuance of a friendship that now seemed, if not important at the moment, at least, acceptable. Besides, he grudgingly decided that it would be better than spending it alone in the cold,
snow-shrouded confines of Minneapolis.
Minneapolis was a city that he had learned to love over the year-and-a-half that he had lived there. Its theaters, orchestras, museums, sports, fine restaurants, everything kept his mind, energies, and needs fulfilled--that is, until last June. Now it was merely a place to exist--from day-to-day.
"Ten o'clock," he noted to himself as he glanced at the car's digital clock. Nine hours he'd been driving, interminable hours. He adjusted his sweater, zipped up his wind-breaker against the moist, bone-chilling wind outside the car's warmth, turned off the ignition, reached into the back seat for his soft travel-bag and swung his long legs out of the car's confines. Instantly, the cold assaulted his face and even penetrated the thick cotton fabric of his well washed jeans; creating a none-too-pleasant sensation in his thighs. He raced up the apartment's steps two-at-a-time and into the the foyer.
It was warm, spacious and lighted by a beveled-pane chandelier. A large wreath hung over a larger, gilt-framed mirror. "Typical." He glanced at the innocuous wall-paper, again thinking, "Why do they have to put such nondescript crap in these places?"
He mounted the burgundy, carpeted stairs to the second floor, gingerly fingered the door bell at number 21, and shifted the suitcase to his left hand. He waited, then again rang the bell. He heard the shuffling of feet behind the thick door and and watched as the peephole blinked opaque. Almost instantly the door was flung open revealing Tom Wright's familiar, open, unrestricted smile. He was clothed in dripping beads of water and a towel wrapped around his waist--nothing else.
"Damn," Tom blurted out, "I hoped that after cleaning, I would have been finished with my shower before you got here. Get your butt in here!" He pulled Bill into the apartment and closed the door. "Your a sight for sore eyes," meaningfully exploded from his throat as he threw his arms around Bill in one of his familiar bear hugs.
"Yeah, it's good to be here," Bill answered without too much emotion. He tentatively returned Tom's exuberant hug automatically, swinging his right arm around his shoulders still clamping his suitcase in his left hand. The moist warmth of Tom's besprinkled back under his hand, along with his strong, encircling arms and the smell of shampoo from his closely cropped hair sent a small tinge of reaction through Bill. Warm thoughts of days past.
"Put your coat in the closet," Tom said, "and let me take that," quickly grabbing the suitcase from Bill's hand.
"Thanks," Bill murmured and hung up his coat. He glanced from the small entry hall into a generous living room. Two large, comfortable-looking chairs, facing each other with a glass and chrome coffee table between them, underscored by a crisp colored Persian rug. These sat in front of sliding glass doors, and to the left a small sofa. Behind the sofa a desk-table with a brass lamp, some journals and a Bacarat ash tray--the far wall was almost totally dominated by a black, space-age-looking stereo with its blinking lights. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto was softly filling the room. A number of varying-sized prints hung on the wall--a Goltzius Apollo, three Japanese wood-cuts, a large tricolored abstract and a number of small etchings. "Nice, tasteful," he thought, "but that's Tom."
As he turned back, Tom flung his free arm around his shoulder, guiding him out of the little hall-way and through the living-room. All the exuberant action of the past few seconds had loosened the towel around Tom's waist and it unceremoniously slipped to the floor.
"Darn!" releasing his arm from Bill's shoulder he picked up the errant towel. Then, nonchalantly flung it over his shoulder and with a nervous little laugh said, "Follow me." He led the way across a new oriental area rug, down a narrow hall, past a small, open, well stocked and functional kitchen to the the 'guest bed-room.'
Bill couldn't help but notice how the opalescent beads of water clung to the untouched surface of his smooth, virtually hairless, brown body. "Funny, as tall and muscular as he is now, how little body hair he has," Bill mused as his eyes slowly passed over Tom's body from his well formed head with its dark, short-clipped, tight curled hair, over the shoulders, narrow waist, solid looking, undulating buttocks, muscular thighs and strong tapering calves.
"Jeeze, I'm glad you're here," Tom said over his shoulder as he opened the door and stepped into the small room. "Voila!" he added, turning and arcing his free hand in a pseudo-grandiose gesture. "Well it ain't the Ritz . . . " he admitted.
Understated, in beiges, rusts and accented with blue green, the room was eminently comfortable. The room held a double bed covered in a bold patterned comforter-spread, a number of plump pillows, a side table, a narrow chrome and wood dresser and an upholstered side-chair. Over the bed was a bold, dominating painting--mostly white, but with wide slashes of red, yellow and brown, "Almost, decoratorish," he thought. Nonetheless, it offered little to disperse Bill's depression. Small, yes, but comfortable.
Dropping the suitcase Tom added with real concern, ". . . It comes with good food, booze . . . and friendship."
Tom stood facing Bill, the concerned look on his face coupled with the towel draped over his left shoulder, partially obscuring his muscular chest, but strangely accentuating his penis and scrotum, caused a laugh, the first real, but maybe an inappropriate laugh to erupt from Bill's throat in months.
Tom's brows arched in puzzlement, "What the heck's the matter?" he asked.
"If you only knew what a damned, crazy looking bell-boy you make, standing there with your dong hanging out and a towel over your shoulders!" The first real expression of emotions in months, this was.
"Well, excuussse me!" Tom responded, drawing out 'excuse me' in mock sarcasm. "I didn't know that the sight of a guy's dick was offensive to you." With deliberate and slow movement he slipped the towel from his shoulder and carefully re-wrapped his loins and adjusted the towel with exaggerated care--all the time looking into Bill's bemused eyes. "Y'know, if I thought that the sight of my nakedness would bring out this kind of response in you, I'd of done it months ago."
It was a well-meaning reply, but the mere mention of 'months ago' brought memories reeling back into his mind. The cloud again passed over Bill's eyes and he glanced with haphazard attention around the room, as he was again, easily sucked into the maelstrom of the gray void.
He saw the cloud descend, "Sorry, guy," Tom said with a mixture of hurt and concern in his voice. He passed by Bill, briefly clasping his shoulder as if signaling a repeat of 'sorry.'
At the door, Tom turned, "You'll probably want to take a hot shower. Towel's on the bed. Bathroom's down the hall. I'm all done in there, so it's yours." Then, remembering, he added, "Hey, I've also got a drink for you."
"Good, thanks," was all Bill could answer as the door gently closed.
He walked over to the bed and dropped down onto its firm surface. His eyes gazed into the non-existent distance of the small room as he began to slide deeper into the gray mist that had been his mental environment these long months. Yet, now, there was a chink. He had laughed--a real laugh. When was the last time he had really laughed he tried to remember? The recurrent memory of Tom standing there in his exuberance and nakedness brought a wrinkle of a smile to his otherwise passive face. That, too, was a first--as of late.
Tom, after closing Bill's door, passed by the bath, whipped of his cloth shield and quickly wiped down the shower with his towel and 'tidied-up' a bit. He picked his shorts off the floor and deposited them along with his mischievous towel into the hamper behind the door. Quickly, he padded down the hall to his room. Thinking all the time of the past few minutes, he dressed in light weight lounging pants, a soft sweater and slipped into loafers. Glancing into the mirror as he left his room, he noticed the soft outline of his unrestricted manhood, but decided that the dark fabric ostensibly camouflaged it. Besides, he needed to clean up a few things in the small kitchen and make Bill's favorite drink--a Manhattan--before he finished his shower.
Later, Bill's door opened and Tom glanced up when he heard it. He watched Bill take the few steps to the bathroom. As his eyes followed him to the bath, towel wrapped around his neck and white briefs encasing his buttocks, a warmth infused Tom's being. "Poor guy," he thought, "what a bunch of hell he's been through."
The shower was turned on, but Tom did not hear the exuberant, off-tune, unrhythmic, disjointed singing that he had remembered from his collegiate days. All the sound that emanated from the bath was the soft strumming of the water coupled with the controlled noises as he worked in the kitchen.
Within a few minutes the shower noise ceased, a little later the door opened and Bill padded back to his room, towel-wrapped, hair tousled and clutching his briefs. "Hurry up, and get in here," Tom shouted, "or your drink will get warm."
"Okay," echoed from the guest room, "gimme a minute."
"I'm counting."
"Shit," Bill thought to himself, "I hope that my coming here wasn't a mistake." His thoughts were not of himself, but of how his state might effect Tom. "I've got to try--can't ruin his holidays."
It wasn't a minute--more like three minutes when Bill entered the small kitchen. He had changed--bare foot and wearing a blue, fleeced lined cotton jogging suit. "I even picked up my clothes," he said as he valiantly attempted to instate the rapid-fire, humorous repartee that they had been part of their past.
"Do I get to check you out?" came Tom's wry reply as he completed the cocktail.
"Yeah, but not too personal," came his retort. "That's not too hard," he thought.
Tom turned, smiling and held out a healthy sized glass half filled with the dark amber liquid of a Manhattan and a few ice cubes, "Here ya are."
Looking at the glass, "Don't I get a cherry?" Bill asked, again consciously attempting to shift away from what he knew had been his rather glum demeanor.
"Depends on what kind of cherry ya want," Tom quipped with a laugh.
"What kind ya got?" Bill quickly threw back with a smirk, surprised at the apparent easy renaissance of his humor.
Tom momentarily studied him, a smile turned the corners of his full, sculptured lips and he retorted, "I don't think I've got any," then, as a twinkle came into his eyes, "do you?"
"None that you'd notice," was the answer.
"Oh? Are you sure," was the laughing reply.
There were times in the past when their repartee, their quick wit, often times ribald and liberally laced with double entendre, became a mental fencing matches. Good humored, at least on the surface. Skirting, thrusting, parrying, circling often around sexual matters, matters of the inner heart, matters of the very being, but never drawing blood. There were times when Bill would have liked to have known, there were things that piqued his interest about Tom, but their friendship had left untouched certain wells of knowledge. Likewise, he knew that there were times that he would have liked to unburden himself to Tom, lay bare his emotions, but he could not. This was an unwritten commitment. This unspoken commitment was not one which would have augured well for an all-accepting, non-judgmental friendship, but then there were certain things that one did not reveal--or at least that was their unexpressed rule. It was a half-friendship of men--a 'guarded-friendship', a friendship that had a wall, strong and well fortified around the inner core of their being.
Within each respective upbringing, and not with malice--because that was the way their parents were raised--there were certain things that one did not talk about, especially a man. These things that were unacceptable, unmentionable in 'polite society,' often times these 'things' raised unwanted barriers, poisoning, or at the very least, stunting a full and open friendship. Creating artificial barriers--some velvet in their softness, but nonetheless undeniably strong and impermeable, others as razor wire where any contact lacerates and cuts to the very quick--which subdue, stunt and in many cases deny an open relationship between two people. It makes no difference the sex or even the sexual preference, all have been imprinted to some degree or another.
Theirs was not a half-friendship. But, it did began and grew into a close 'guarded-friendship.' It grew because they were roommates, thrust together by fate or some computer when they were freshmen. Oh, oddly enough, they had a number of things in common--sports, not the rah-rah team sports that usually infect collegiate males, but tennis, swimming, biking and the like; both loved to read, especially history although it was not their major; both loved good food (Tom preferred French and Bill preferred Northern Italian); both liked good wine, at least the best that a college student could afford; both loved big band jazz, particularly, Dave Brubeck; and both came from substantial middle class families. Tom's father was a small town, small college professor and Bill's was a small town lawyer.
They had their differences too--Bill preferred to dress in a manner that Tom felt at times too casual; Bill tended not to be too concerned with clutter, whereas Tom was not quite compulsive about cleanliness and order, but neat; and Bill tended to be a bit lazy, academically, while Tom was a more conscientious student. But, from the very beginning, they 'hit it off.'
Bill remembered when he walked into his dorm room that September day seven and a half years ago and saw Tom Wright hanging up his clothes, thinking, "What a good looking guy." His look, his demeanor brought to Bills mind images of an elegant Benin bronze or a majestic Maasai. Six foot-one, a hundred and fifty-five pounds, dark-mahogany, colored skin and tightly curled, closely cropped hair, that was Tom Wright. His black, thick eyebrows arched over dancing brown eyes that were bracketed and emphasized by their clear whites. At the base of his straight flaring nose was a flimsy attempt at a moustache. It was a loosing battle with fullness. His smooth cheeks and the merest indication of a beard belied a defeat. His full lips with their chiseled edges drew back into a wide open smile as he introduced himself. He wore white jeans, a gray and green broad stripped polo shirt, and white deck shoes. That Bill remembered. He later came to know Tom as a sensitive, and at times emotional--controlled emotional--person.
The well-worn, well washed blue jeans that Bill Dweyer wore at their first meeting was topped by an equally worn T-shirt with "Member of the Nude Volleyball Team" emblazoned across the chest. Tom observed that Bill was approximately the same height and weight as he. The shock of light brown hair tried to cover Bill's expressive eyebrows--they seemed to exist in harmony with his dark, dark brown eyes. His thin nose, with a slight arch from brow to tip, complemented his full lower lipped-mouth. His cleanly shaven face reflected the tan that covered most of the rest of his body. That Tom remembered. He, too became aware of Bill's sensitivity--masked as it was--and his warm emotions--also masked, at times.
They were both chemistry majors, but the fact that they were assigned the same room was not because of some omniscient computer's genius--it was purely accidental, or maybe incidental. Their dorm applications were received at the same time. That's all! They became friends, collegiate friends, 'guarded-friends.'
They were often in the same classes. They often went to the same sports events. They often visited each other's family and were equally accepted by both. So, as luck or fate would have it, they became close 'guarded-friends.'
Tom led his friend to the comfortable chairs in the living room.
"Thanks for the drink. I'm kinda pooped after that damned drive."
"Want something to eat?"
"No . . . no, I don't think so." Bill sat towards the front edge of the chair seat, leaned back, collapsing his torso and stretched his legs in front of him, as was his habit. Elbows supported by the chair's arms, he studied his drink suspended before his eyes, took a deep swallow and rubbed the glass' soothing coolness across his brow. He took another large gulp, closed his eyes and let his head drop back into the soft padding of the chair back.
With eyes searching his friend's troubled face and movements, Tom mentally fought to find the right thing to say. He knew Bill's pain was real, but he didn't know how to deal with it. He didn't know how to help his friend relieve it. Setting down his untouched drink, he did the only thing that he could think of in this situation. Standing, he took the nearly empty glass from Bill, "Here, let be fill that up."
At least the kitchen separated him from Bill's pain and presence. But, he knew that that wasn't enough. His whole being ached due to his inability, due to his lack of knowledge, due to his inexperience in dealing with his friend's pain, or anyone's pain for that matter.
Oh, sure, if it was physical pain, there could be jokes to take his mind off of it. Like the time he had broken his leg that winter, slipping down those damned icy steps. He remembered how in the hospital Bill had kept him in fits of laughter, forgetting his pain. He had brought him a gross of Trojans to the hospital (in case he needed them!). And, then he decorated his full-leg cast with obscene drawings. He remembered how Bill had obtained those long plastic tubes from the dry-cleaner to protect his cast so he could take a shower--referring to it as a condom and wondering if he could tell the difference between that sheathed leg and the other. How, when carrying his food tray to the table or retrieving some thing that the immobile cast made it virtually impossible to reach, Bill had murmured, without malice and with a tinkle in his eye, "Anything else, Massah?"
But, this was different and Tom fought to figure out what he could do to help, to relieve the pressure. He watched Bill from the kitchen--his legs stretched out, hands clasped behind his head, eyes boring into some meaningless spot on the ceiling, his chest lifting and releasing the blue jogging top as he breathed.
"Damn, I've got to do something--He's got to open up and let go," he shouted to himself as he returned with the refill.
"Thanks," Bill murmured.
"Hey, Bill, I've got something great to tell you," he started to say. Then, as Bill downed half his drink, he blurted out in sharp interruption," Damn, Bill, take it easy!"
"Why? What for?" he snapped back, a staccato edge to his voice.
Suddenly out of control, without considering, without thinking, but with real feeling, the words tumbled from Tom's lips, "Dammit, you're not the only one that this has happened to!" The reference was understood. "You can't blame yourself for Karen's death! You can't keep on whipping yourself like this, shutting out everybody, your friends--those who love you!"
The uncharacteristic vehemence of his words lased through Bill. His eyes snapped-locked to Tom's.
Tom, surprised at what he had said, knowing his friend's pain, feeling he had gone too far, wishing that he could have retracted those words, sucked in his breath as his eyes brimmed with tears and leaned towards his friend.
The charge, the current that suddenly oscillated back and forth between their eyes--anger, hurt, questioning--filled the room with unbearable energy, painful, excruciatingly painful. The words had been said--they were true--deep inside, somewhere, both knew this. The words had been said--they became a key--it was turned in the lock and a gate began to open, just a crack, but open it did.
Without consciousness, without realizing what was happening, and deep, deep from the very bowels of his being, frightening, primal cry issued from Bill's throat, "Oh, God. . . .God, God, God!" And, instantly sobs violently wracked his body. He pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, dropped his face into their hollow and rocked and cried. Unrestrained sobs punctuated his rocking, his fetal rocking.
This was the second time, but now Tom sat stunned, immobile. The first time was understandable, this time Tom didn't know how to deal with it, consciously. Bill's agony entered his being and swelled, causing emotional reactions that were foreign.
The gate protecting their 'guarded-friendship' started to open.