An Infatuation

To Fred for everything over all these years, to everyone at Dreamspinner Press, and to anyone who has ever had an infatuation!

CHAPTER ONE/NOW

P
ASSION
. F
LAME
.
Cherished one. Infatuation. Words don’t measure up. How can I tell you how I feel about Mario?
Mario.
It’s as if the universe created one perfect person, and put him next to me with a
Keep Off
sign dangling from his neck. The universe can be sadistic like that. As I stand here in front of my great room fireplace, as always, I’m thinking of Mario.

“Hi, babe.”

Stuart’s home from work. Let’s can the Mario talk… for the moment. Stuart (tall, thin, blond) and I (short, stocky, ginger) have been together nineteen years.

“Nineteen and a half years, babe.”

“Thanks, Stuey.”

Stuart is having his 5:15 p.m. piece of fruit.

We met freshman year in the registration office at college. I was filling out my schedule the day before classes started. Stuart was making his schedule too… for his senior year. He invited me to his off-campus room for a special dinner. He had prepared and frozen it the week before in case he met someone. That night, after we made love (Stuart had ten packs of condoms in his night table, though it was his and my first sexual experience), we fell asleep in a pretzel position in each other’s arms. We have been cuddling in blissful and monogamous love ever since. True to the oldest child/youngest child theory, Stuart is a planner, and I’m a procrastinator. We make the perfect couple. He plans, and I put off. We fit together like a fundamentalist and an anti-gay discrimination bill.

My father is just like Stuart. When we’d go to an amusement park, my dad would give each of us a printed schedule with the time limit for each ride, time and location for snacks, and leave time and location. When I told my parents I was gay, my father disappeared into his office and returned with a timetable of when I should come out to the rest of the family, come out at school, have my first date, have my first kiss, marry, and adopt children. Maybe boys really do marry their fathers.

Sticking to Stuart’s schedule, like toilet paper to a shoe at a job interview, we rise at 7:00 a.m., do yoga and meditation, eat breakfast (organic), and get to work at 8:30 a.m. Dinner is at 6:30 p.m. and bed at 11:00 p.m. On Saturdays we clean, do laundry, and volunteer at the local LGBTQ Center. Saturday nights from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. we go out to dinner (organic) and to a movie with friends, careful to come home and go to bed at 11:00 p.m. Sunday we go to church (open and affirming), have brunch (organic), read the newspaper, watch PBS, call our parents, and go to bed directly at 11:00 p.m.

We live in a three-bedroom house with Hudson River views in upstate New York, complete with a double-story great room with a floor-to-ceiling limestone island fireplace, french doors, and interior balcony. The master bedroom, with a canopied four-poster, marble fireplace, sitting turret, and chaise lounge, is for us, as is the his-and-his spa bathroom. The second bedroom, with the wooden mantel, is currently Stuart’s study. The adjacent room is my study. The third bedroom, with a toy chest under the window seat, is decorated for our son. Except we don’t have a son. Now don’t get all
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
on me. It’s Stuart’s future planning. For now our nieces and nephews use it when visiting.

Stuart designed and prepared the layout and furniture for our house the day we met. Thanks to Stuart, we have two 401K plans, an IRA, life insurance, death insurance, medical insurance, car insurance, home insurance, health care proxies, living and dying wills. Over the years we were legally married in so many countries and states that I lost count.

After working all day at the office, Stuart has kissed me on the cheek, started dinner—from the menu for the month on the refrigerator—and picked up the mail from the kitchen island, whose shape, size, design, and granite and cherry wood finish Stuart planned when he was in eighth grade. He has gone upstairs to his study to research online and plan the itinerary of our summer vacation to Spain… three summers from now.

Okay, back to Mario. To tell you my story, we need to go back some years.

“Twenty years, babe. You have to be exact, or they won’t get all the facts.”

“Thanks, Stu,” I call upstairs.

Okay, let’s start at the beginning and go back twenty years. Isn’t time travel fun?

CHAPTER TWO/20 YEARS AGO

M
ARIO
AND
I first met when we were in high school. The start of senior year. I had seen him many times before, but on that clear autumn day at 1:32 p.m. in chemistry class, I finally got the nerve to introduce myself. Boy, did we have chemistry. Mario—five-nine with jet black hair, dark brown eyes, Roman nose, full red lips, and very muscular body (but who remembers?)—swaggered into class late wearing a tight aqua-blue T-shirt, jeans with button-down fly, and black work boots. After Ms. Hunsley had the nerve to scold Mario for being late, Ms. Hunsley (my new favorite teacher) assigned Mario a lab partner—
me
. Mario’s response was incredibly stimulating.

“Whatever,” he said, as he sat behind the counter on the stool next to me.

Not missing the opportunity to rub shoulders (literally) with the captain of the football team, I took in a deep breath and said confidently, “Hm… aghm… my… my… ah… chemistry.”

Unfazed, Mario rested his black work boots on the countertop, nearly knocking over a vial of sulfur, and placed his strong elbow on my quivering shoulder. “You do the experiments and write the reports. I trust you.” Mario winked at me, then asked Ms. Hunsley for a hall pass to “wring out a kidney.”

Isn’t he the best?
He was handsome, strong, intelligent, witty. Okay, two out of four, but he captured my seventeen-year-old heart. Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Jane Austen never knew such love. I changed my walking route at school, so instead of avoiding the gym as usual, I passed it as much as possible. I’d dawdle to talk to a teacher about my grades (which were all fine), ask a classmate when homework was due (which didn’t matter since I’d do it at 2:00 a.m. the night before anyway), or pretend to read the notices on the bulletin board about… whatever they said. I, who had no school spirit or interest in sports or clubs, joined the school band (tuba—don’t ask) and attended all the games, pep rallies, and award assemblies to cheer on my new lab partner.

Each assembly, when our principal, Mr. Ringwood, known to us as Mr. Ringworm, smiled and pontificated about our wonderful football team, I counted the minutes until Mario was introduced. When Mr. R. finally called out Mario’s name, the gymnasium erupted like a volcano with screaming and clapping for Mario, none louder than mine.

One Friday afternoon I
accidentally
ran into my hero in the boy’s locker room. I’d had enough of the big guys banging me into gym lockers, pushing me into cold showers, and hanging me from the gym ropes. So I was on my way to give Mr. Adoni a note from Dr. Dlorah excusing me from gym class for the remainder of the school year (due to my highly contagious disease being studied by my doctor in Guatemala, where he could not be reached for the next year).

The locker room smelled of an odd combination of soap, cologne, sweat, and desire. Mario was getting ready for football practice, standing at his gym locker, without a combination lock on it. Nobody would dare to break into it. (Except for me that one time I smelled his jock strap. Okay maybe it was a few times, but not more than ten.) Mario slid his T-shirt (red today) up and over his thick, black hair and threw it on the nearby bench. No longer harnessed by cotton, his arm, back, chest, and neck muscles swelled to full size. I was half-hidden behind the adjoining row of lockers, wearing my usual green and blue flannel shirt and brown corduroy pants. Mario, who wasn’t looking in my direction, said something really beautiful to me that I will never forget.

“Hi.”

“Did you just? Oh. Hi. Hello. Good afternoon. Nice to see you. I mean, change with you.” I looked down at the floor (but cheated a bit) as Mario kicked off his boots, slipped off his jeans, and then threw them in the lucky locker. His red underpants (briefs) revealed ample manhood.
This is better than the newspaper’s underwear ads.

“Good gym class today with Mr. Adonis, I mean, Mr. Adoni.”
Did I just say that?
“Harold High.”

“Hi.”

“High.”
How can I get my pulse down to 260?

“Hi.” Mario reached into his locker for his sweat clothes.

Shouldn’t people be doing that for you?
“Oh, my last name is High. Like a kite.”
How can I stop my arms from waving like an airport flagger on speed?

“Mario Ginetti. Like nothin’ else imaginable.” Mario smiled, revealing a row of perfectly white teeth, and held the sweat clothes in his hands as if he was a mere mortal.

“I know. I watch your body play.”
Why can’t I stop talking?
“I mean, I watch you play… football… on the field… in your football outfit.”
I feel like Michelangelo with his David.

As Mario put on his sweats, I continued to sweat.

“I’m voting for your body… I mean I’m voting for
you
for president of your… our…
the
student body.”
I need my jaw wired shut.
“I’m your lab partner in chemistry class. Ms. Hungry’s class… I mean, Ms. Hunsley’s class.

His olive-colored face glistened as he registered recognition—
of me
. “I thought I knew you from somewheres. Hey, thanks for doing the lab reports.”

“It’s my honor… I mean my pleasure. It’s fine. If you need help putting up posters for your campaign, I can….”

Having just tied the laces of his sneakers, Mario stood absolutely still. He looked at me as if he was staring into my heart and somehow knew what I was feeling. “I gotta take a wicked piss.”

Can I watch?

“Thanks for helping me out, buddy.” He slammed the locker door and left.

He called me buddy.
Mario held my heart in the palm of his hand like his soap on a rope.

The next day I was eating lunch, alone, in the cafeteria when Mario, wearing a tight jade T-shirt, put his foot on the empty seat next to mine and leaned toward me. I unobtrusively spit my tuna into my napkin and sat on it to hide it.

“Harold….”

He knows my name.

“…I’m worried about my grade.”

“The 97 we got in chemistry, right? I’ll try harder next quarter, Mario.”

“No, the 97 was great. It’s my advanced algebra.” Mario sat next to me.

Sweat dripped down my back onto my napkin. “What did you get on the last quiz?”

Mario rubbed a thick thumb on his smooth forehead. “A two.”

“How did you get a two?”

“How the hell should I know? Harold, if I fail that class, Coach will throw me off the team, my father will belt me, my old lady will cry, and my grandma will pull out my hair—including my pubes. I’m not doing much better in my other classes either. Will you help me?”

I wasn’t sure if it was the nauseating smell from the sweaty tuna fish or Mario’s request for
me
to help
him
, but I saw tiny white dots in front of my face, and I started to keel over.

Mario put his arm around me. “I need you, buddy.”

He called me buddy again.
We are Jonathan and David.

After Mario’s friends teased him for sitting with me at lunch, he followed them to the gym, but not before giving me a secret thumbs up.
We are Hercules and Hylas.

As he requested, I happily came to Mario’s academic rescue. Our first tutoring session was in my bedroom after school. I sat at my desk as Mario did pushups on the rug below me. When I first got home, I had tried on five different shirts, but ended up wearing my usual green and blue flannel shirt with jeans. Mario wore his regular attire of a tight T-shirt (baby blue today), jeans with button-up fly, black work boots, and leather jacket—resting comfortably on my bed.

As we began, I sounded like a nervous grade school teacher on his first day of school. “Mario, which subject would you like to tackle first?”
Or can I just tackle you?

With each push-up, his biceps looked like ripe melons on display.

“I don’t got no preference,” Mario said, not missing a push or an up.

“Let start with spelling, grammar, and punctuation,” I said, opening our grammar textbook.

“I already know about them things.”

“It might be good to review.” I turned to the first chapter.

“Mr. Tyler don’t do grammar no more.”

“I have the feeling he will start up again soon.”

“I don’t need to speak the King’s English.”

No worry there.

“I just need to pass, Harold.”

Then I’ll just sit here and watch your biceps bulge with each push-up.
“Tell me if this sentence is correct? ‘Mario don’t go to football practice no more to be with them people.’”