First, thank you to all of you who reached out to me about the saga that was/is John and Mace. Second, so many of you have lived with the characters and questioned their motivations that I felt compelled to try to answer your questions. So, this is the story of how Juan agreed to allow John back and how Juan and Mace emerged from the other side. I hope you like it. I enjoyed writing it, and I had no idea where it would go when I typed the first quote from Brokeback Mountain. I am going to miss John, Juan, and Mace, but it time for me and them to move on.
*****
"I wish I knew how to quit you."
That is what Jack said to Ennis in and on Brokeback Mountain, lakeside, after admitting he needed something he hardly ever got.
And, that is what I felt toward John, my Josie, even after I had chosen a life with Juan. I could plead otherwise, but I knew I had chosen Juan only because John could not or would not give me what I needed. I needed to live in the light. I could not love only in the dark. I was not a fungus. I would not thrive under leaves and rocks.
If John had offered me what Juan offered, I'd have chosen John. I know that sounds terribly unfair to Juan, but it is the truth, and the truth can be unfair. I knew the truth. Juan also knew the truth.
Like animals, John and I had imprinted each other.
The print would not wash off. Or erode.
Of course, I loved Juan, but differently than I loved John. My love for John was irrational and uncontrollable. It was a drug, and I was addicted to it. I could go months without thinking of him and years without talking to him, but he was still there, ethereal and tempting me.
My love for Juan was rational and controlled. It was reliable and stable. It suited me. I was uncomfortable when I was exposed and vulnerable to another. It's not that Juan couldn't hurt me, it's that he couldn't devastate me the way John had.
Except with his smile. It was the smile of all smiles, toothsome and wide, his large, white teeth contrasting with his thick, red lips. When it graced his face, his oily eyes glistened. When directed toward me, it melted my heart.
He always smiled at me while we were making love. When he was above me, his smile was lustful and ravenous. When he was beneath me, his smile was contented and knowing.
He always smiled at me when we were finished. We'd roll onto our sides, face to face. I'd put my hand in his chest hair, and he'd put his hand on my face and slowly stroke my cheek with his thumb. Then, he'd smile widely until I admitted that I loved him, and he'd smile even wider to signal he loved me, too.
Juan's ethos was well-known. Before us, he actively disparaged gay couples who sought the heteronormative idyll of marriage and monogamy. He insisted they were unnatural states that oppressed and ruined people.
Against all that, we started with the ambition of fidelity and monogamy and the promise that Juan had abandoned all that he believed and professed. I knew or should have known it was not true, just as I knew or should have known that John's claim of "it's just you" was not true. I was not transformative. I could not and did not turn a straight boy gay. And I could not and did not turn a libertine chaste.
And Juan was, in his core, a libertine. He never pretended otherwise.
I do not know when Juan first stepped out. I suspect it was sooner than I suspected. Avery and I wondered about Christian and Juan. We knew their history and their chemistry and their rank sexuality, and they remained thick as thieves. I had learned with Freddie that an intimate friendship sometimes turns sexual because it has nowhere else to go.
Separately, I wondered about Avery and Juan. They had spent a long time as each other's booty call, and I wondered whether, when Juan was feeling base and needy or in the mood for something different, he called for Mandigo and Malabar.
We were five years into us before I knew, for certain, that Juan was doing what I had long suspected he was doing. I noted a rhythm to his life. He would, for no known reason, become the perfect husband and father, even more attentive and better than he normally was. He'd want to make love in the morning. He'd want to cocoon the family in the evening.
At first, I was hurt that I was not enough for him. I'd deflect Juan's attempt at morning love and resent his need that night for family time with our sons. I knew he was compensating.
After awhile, I learned to love those mornings. Even knowing it was inspired by guilt, I embraced the mornings of love-making that Juan's guilt produced. He'd yield to whatever I wanted to do or try.
I also learned to love those nights. We'd slow down, snuggle up, and decompress. Even as the boys aged, they were inseparable from each other, and they were happy to cuddle between us on the sofa under a blanket, watching a movie or listening to Juan tell them long, twisting stores about Colombia and how spectuatular their home country was. We were a commercial, before commercials with gay fathers and gay families were a thing.
After a year or so of pretending not to know what I knew, I decided to accept what I had long thought would be unacceptable. I had no other choice, really. If I had insisted on a return to the idyll I had forced onto him, then he'd have agreed. But, he wouldn't have followed through, at least not for long. It just was not in his nature.
I told Juan what I knew. He didn't try to dispute it, but instead insisted - as I knew he would - that sex could be meaningful or meaningless, depending on who was involved, and he had not had meaningful sex with anyone but me since our first time together. He also promised he had tried to do things my way as hard as he could, but he had hated it. Monogamy made him unhappy. It made him feel like a caged bird.
We set up some ground rules. He had to be safe. He had to be discreet. He could not repeat with anyone. It could never be in our house. It could not be anyone we knew. If Avery or Christian had been options before, they were now eliminated.
The same rules applied to me, but I did not take advantage of them. I was not as sexual as Juan, and our lovemaking was more than sufficient for me. I also did not crave the hunt or the thrill of a first time, as Juan did.
Instead, I was sated by the fantasy of "what if." In my mind, I lived another life, one where John had simply said "of course." I cried inside as I watched "Get Real," seeing myself in Steven and John in, well, John. I cried inside as I read "Call Me By Your Name," seeing myself in Elio and John in Oliver. I cried inside as I listened to Adele's "Someone Like You" over and over and over.
I regularly imagined John showing up, hat in hand, and offering a life in the light. I was a father and a husband, so I knew I would never accept the offer. But, the possibility of it, and the fantasy of us fleeing, careless and carefree, all obligation and responsibility forsaken, titillated me. In my fantasy, I didn't even pack. I just took John's hand and walked away from all that I had built.
John and I rarely spoke. I did not want to be distracted by him, and I suspect he did not want to be tempted by me.
Our paths finally crossed in 2003, ten years after Freddie's wedding. I was going to Denver for my firm for on campus interviews. I made plans to see John for lunch. I told Juan. He told me John qualified as someone we knew and so was off limits. I laughed at him. I did not think the opportunity would arise.
It did not. We met for lunch. After lunch, he showed me his house, a beautiful colonial he shared with his wife, Susan, and his son, John C. Frederick IV, Chet for short.
We shared a fraught moment on the stairs. I thought he might kiss me. I could see in his eyes that he wanted to. If I had given the slightest hint of possibility, I think he would have. I didn't and he didn't.
Five years later, I was in Denver for work, and our Denver office was in the same building as his law firm. I emailed him about meeting for a drink, and we met at the Brown Palace, where I was staying. He was a little thicker and a little grayer, but he was otherwise the same John that had walked through the Cave's library 18 years before.
I noticed he was not wearing a wedding ring. I inquired, and he responded "That is over."
"What happened?"
