Miey and the Chicadee

Mikey broke away from me with apparent reluctance, canceled his alarm and then stood haphazardly on the bed in order to crank closed the window near the ceiling. "Damn, it's cold," he said. "This should not have been open all night."

The sight generated above me was magnificent; I looked away out of a strange new estimation, perhaps tied with our recent revision in intimate dealings.

He sat, throwing himself quickly back under the covers. A small separation between our bodies now made its return; I did not resent it, nor did I expressly welcome it back.

He kicked his left foot out once, toes skimming the side of my calf, adjusted his pillow and tilted his head toward me. "What's going on at work today?"

I closed my eyes briefly and said, "I have to confirm that I'm moving today. For my job."

"What? So soon?"

"Well, the move is only about three weeks away. They need to know so they can make all the arrangements. They're the ones paying for it, after all."

"I meant to ask-are they paying for your housing, too?"

"There's a stipend for that, but it's pretty small. They said they'd cover the moving costs, though."

"Okay," he said. He picked up his phone, fiddled back and forth between home screens and set it back down on his nightstand. "What happens if you change your mind after today?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "I know it would be very frowned upon. And then obviously I'm out of a job."

"Right. Gotta take care of yourself. Three weeks. Okay." He shifted his weight restlessly and seemed to puzzle through something, but said nothing else on the subject.

We chatted back and forth for the next few minutes about nothing in particular. Mikey offered for me to shower before him and I obliged. The bathtub, which I supposed to be original, sat proudly on stubby legs and was adorned with a green curtain that hung from an elongated chrome hoop, completing one full lap around its rim.

As I waited for him to finish showering, I flipped through the handful of drawings sitting atop his desk, an act which by now felt entirely permissible. He had sketched at least two more birds (sparrows, or something) and a mid-rise building, about a century old in appearance, which I did not recognize.

Once Mikey had rejoined me I asked him about it. "Where is that building? The one you drew, I mean."

He stood in front of his dresser, buttoning a white shirt over a tight cotton undershirt. "It's in downtown Seattle, right along the I-5," he said. "It kind of stood out to me on the drive, so I looked it up later."

"Oh. I see. It's a great drawing."

He smiled. "Breakfast?"

There wasn't much time left over, so we quickly downed some cereal and left the dishes in the sink. I grabbed my coat off the rack as he fastened the gleaming black buttons of his peacoat. Around his neck he cinched a checkered tie.

"You look handsome in that," I said.

"No compliments," he said. "You're fueling my ego."

Mikey seemed content to be by my side as we stepped down to the street, although we said little to each other during this time, a reticence that persisted as we waited together for the bus. I grappled with the raw facts this morning-to be clear: fact. Calculations based on my current trajectory would land me in Fern Hill at the beginning of next month. At some point I had come to understand that I would, with certainty, confirm my willingness to move. No longer did this register as a decision, nor, for that matter, any other sort of enigma with more than one possible outcome. Maybe I had always known that I would go. It was just that this day in March held, trivially, the moment in which it all became official.

To assert that I had thought it through would suggest that I knew what it was to do so. More accurately, I had thought about it until I did not recognize how to think anymore, and now no longer thought of it at all.

On the bus, Mikey said, "I don't know if moving was a hard decision for you to make, but either way, making it official is a pretty big moment. You can take this or leave it, but just know that what I said hasn't changed. I'm rooting for you."

I looked over at him and he looked back at me, adding, "You know that, right?"

"Honestly, that means more coming from you than from anyone else I know."

This statement seemed to satisfy him a great deal. He smiled broadly and looked all around him, surveying (with fondness, I imagined) the faces of other riders, and simply taking in the day, still in its youthful hour.

"What's going on at work for you?" I asked.

"For me? Fuck, who knows. I've got a video conference with the Boise people. I'm sure there will be a shit ton to do other than that. There always is. But I can't even think about what that entails right now."

"That's fair," I said. His voice had come stormlessly forth, convincing me that the small details truly did escape the outer limits of his headspace. After a time I said, "Thanks for talking to me about all of that last night. It really helps me to understand."

"It helps me, too," he said. "To understand, and to have someone else who understands."

I nodded. As we crossed over the water I motioned out the bus window and asked, "What do you think about ships?"

He looked at me quizzically. "I'm all for them," he said with a small laugh.

"Like, when you think about them-if you've ever really thought about them-what do they make you think about?"

He did not answer immediately. "That something so large can move around freely relative to the space around it-I am impressed by that. It seems impossible to me because movement in my daily life doesn't occur on that scale. Cars, pencils, thinks like that. Those I can imagine."

"And you can imagine those things and their movement being influenced by humans, too. I have trouble thinking about humans being in charge of how the ship moves. It's like it's its own creature, or something."

"Okay, I see where you're going with that. I honestly hadn't thought about it." He paused for a few seconds, looking ahead. "Tectonic plates," he said, turning back to me. "There's some truly massive movement. And in that case it's true. A human has no influence over it."

I smiled. "That's right."

Jennifer and I arrived at the office at the same time. As we rode the elevator to the sixth floor I asked, "Do you know how you're going to phrase your commitment email? Is it like a formal thing or just a basic line or two?"

"Wyatt," she said with a grin, "you're slacking. That's not like you."

"It's due today, right?"

"Well, yeah. But I mean, you could have done it any time. I sent mine last Friday. I just assumed you had already, too."

"I guess I didn't think about it that way."

She patted my shoulder. "Took you a while to make up your mind, huh?"

I was quiet for a few seconds. "Well, not completely. I guess somehow I thought I might still decide not to. I mean, that wasn't actually going to happen, but still."

She laughed. "I'm glad you decided to go. I don't know what I'd do without you up there." As we walked out toward our desks she said, "To answer your question, it's not a big deal. Literally just say you'll do it. Make sure your signature gets attached. Send. Think you can handle that?"

I rolled my eyes at her and sat down at my desk. In five minutes it was done.

At lunch I crossed over to the pho place where I instead ordered banh mi and walked with it to a nearby park, which occupied about two-thirds of a city block. I liked the park because of its proximity to work and because old-growth trees grew densely around most of its limits and throughout, affording it an impressive degree of seclusion for its location.

I found a bench near a decommissioned fountain at the park's center and sat. Few other people hung around, as the weather had fallen once again out of favor.

Here I experienced an effective silence in the sense that noise from the street, while still audible, was indistinct and hard to attach to any particular source. Under these qualifications I was able to block it out completely. The trees surrounding the small open square-mostly oaks and a few pines-took on an air of having been entombed, as status of which they seemed nearly aware, as they sagged dustily and did not rustle whenever a breeze picked up. To my mind, these were qualities not unlike sadness. The air nagged at my hands as I ate my sandwich, and when I had finished I gladly tightened up my scarf and stuffed them into my front coat pockets. A cluster of dry leaves kicked around in the basin of the empty fountain, overlooked by a timeworn statue of an angel with a blank spot where her face would otherwise have been. In the next moment, as I sat, nothing moved at all.

After work I stood on the bus out of downtown, clinging to one of many vinyl stitched handles suspended from the ceiling, designed for the very purpose of steadying oneself. I had mostly expected Mikey to be present because he was often on the 5:10, but instead I was alone and did not hear from him for the rest of the evening. That night at the gym I found myself overwhelmingly excited by the raw specter of men in various stages of toil and, because I opted not to change at home, undress. If tonight had instead been the night when that unnamed boy-of-a-man approached, I felt with some positivity that I would have gone to bed with him. I was thankful it didn't happen that way, and once back at home, took care of myself in solitude.

The next morning I slept in until ten, when my phone rattled across my nightstand and fell to the floor. Doubting I would actually need it, I had set an alarm just to be certain I wouldn't waste the day away in bed. As it turned out, setting it had been a good idea; I saw that Mikey had texted about ten minutes earlier.

"Was wondering if you wanted to walk the seawall with me today. It's still pretty cold but it looks like there will be plenty of sun. Let me know and I will come pick you up."

I told him not to go out of his way, that I would catch the northbound bus.

"Ok," he replied.

I showered and ate a small breakfast. The 40A dropped me off just before eleven and I soon climbed the stairs to his apartment.

"Do you want me to wear my peacoat again?" He asked after greeting me at the door.

"If you feel like wearing it," I said, "I am unopposed."

We did not linger at his apartment. Once we had been driving for about ten minutes, Mikey asked, "How long have your parents known you were gay?"

"I came out to them when I was sixteen," I said. "I mean, I'm sure they knew before then, but if not then yeah, I guess they've known for about six years."

With some hesitation he said, "But you don't seem like someone who would've been very obvious about it, or whatever...based on how you act, I mean." He winced after saying this, which suggested to me that he hadn't liked the way the words materialized.

"I know what you mean. Honestly, their first clue was probably my internet search history."

"Oh," he said, laughing a little. "That would make sense."

"But actually, I know there were other things. My mom and I have talked about it. It's hard for her to explain, but she's said she could always just sort of...sense it."

"Okay."

"Like, it was just supposed to happen that way, I guess. Apparently she's always had a sense of that."

"And your dad? How did he handle it?"

"Pretty well, I think. It was weird with him, because after I told him, he didn't say or do much about it. We almost never talked about it. I always thought it was because it made him uncomfortable, but I found out later that he just cared so little about it that he didn't feel like there was much to discuss."

"Wow," Mikey said.

"Yeah, I always try to remember that I lucked out in that way. I never had to deal with any adversity at home."

"It's so incredibly cool that your parents are like that. So they just sort of switched over to asking about boyfriends instead of girlfriends, and all that?"

"Well, there never really was a switch. They always said things like 'the person you end up with' and other stuff like that. I don't think they ever had any big expectations either way."

After a pause he said, "That's really fucking cool of them."

We didn't say much else about it until we had reached the seawall, parked, and begun walking east toward downtown. In the distance, shimmering, silvery greens and blues of countless glass condominium towers rose up suddenly, like a single cliff, over narrow beaches lining the water. A photograph of the day would have belied the cold, and I noticed Mikey's words were accompanied by tiny puffs of rapidly condensing air.

"Another thing that amazes me is that you knew yourself that well at sixteen."

"The more I've thought about that," I said, "the more I've decided that people must know themselves in very different ways. It just wasn't hard for me to recognize it about myself. It got to a point where it just wasn't a question anymore. I was never going to be with a girl. Beyond that, I do think I have my parents to thank for their welcoming attitude. It's not like that was ever a barrier for me."

"Yeah," said Mikey. "I wish I knew myself better in that way. In the way you know yourself, I mean."

I looked over at him.

"That thing you said about your mom sensing it in you," he continued. "It makes me wonder if a lot of parents have that kind of sense. Like, what if my parents..." he trailed off for a moment and looked briefly out at the water. "I was pretty young when my dad first talked to me about it. I remember it being after he had picked me up at Davie School, so I couldn't have been older than eleven. He, like, pulled the car over to be all dramatic-he was like that sometimes-and made me look him right in the eyes. 'Ke' and 'tut'-those are some of the Thai words for it...and I knew what they meant already when he used them that day. To be like that was the most horrible thing. It was dishonorable and disgusting and everything else like that."

His expression had turned sour and he seemed to hold himself back momentarily from continuing, so I said, "It's not fair that you were treated like that."

"What fucking eleven-year-old even knows who he is? My dad had some good qualities, but sometimes it's hard for me to remember him in a positive way."

"I think that's okay," I said. "You don't have to forget about the bad side of him."

"Maybe it would be better if I did. Just so I could pretend that he never even felt that way."

I smiled a little. "Maybe."

"As I think about it, my life just starts to sound like a big cliche. Still seeking my dead father's approval and all that. Is that really all this is?"

I hesitated and then said, "I don't think anything is that simple, but it sounds like that could be a part of it."

Mikey scowled and kicked his shoe into the surface of the dirt path. "Anyway, I think it's something I can get over if I really try."

"I bet you can."

"That whole internet history thing. Can you believe I've never even thought of that? I'm sure they found stuff once I got a little older. Porn, teen health forums, stuff like that. Fuck, I'm sure they knew. We never talked about it."

I paused. "Did you watch gay porn back then?"

"Well...yeah."

"Do you watch it now?"

He laughed. "Slow the fuck down, Sherlock. Yeah, I do. But I've only recently been able to acknowledge that I do. I'm a mess, I know."

"You're not a mess, Mikey."

"I know what it says about me. What it means-I know that now." He took another few steps and then gave my shoulder a tiny shove. "It's just, having you around...you're giving me a lot of reasons to want to acknowledge it. And to be okay with it."

"I'm really happy to hear that," I told him.

"I've heard that for some people it's like, others call you gay before you even realize it about yourself. Well, no one has ever called me that. Not in a serious way."

"I know what you're saying. It makes it easier to...I don't know..."

"You can say it. It makes it easier to hide. Totally. I played a lot of sports in high school. Most of my friends were guys. People judge others based on the stuff they like to do, who they hang around, all that. I never gave anyone a reason to think I wasn't, you know, completely straight."

I nodded. "I don't know how much you've heard about it, but a lot of people do think of sexuality as a spectrum."

"I'm guess so. That stuff makes sense to me. It's funny though, because I wouldn't have the first idea about where to put myself."

I thought for a moment and then said, "Maybe you're, like, definitely on the heterosexual side, but not all the way at the end."

"I don't know. I guess."

"Sorry," I said. "I don't mean to make any assumptions about you."

"It's fine." He stopped, walked to the edge of the wall and leaned up against the green metal railing.

I stood next to him and pointed out at a squat, wide boat lumbering across the water toward a distant cluster of tall buildings. "You ever take the Seabus?"

"Not in a long time," he said. "I don't do a lot of business north of the water."

"Oh."

"I was just thinking about how it was with Alice," he said. "Honestly, it's kind of hard for me to remember."

"I've wondered about her sometimes," I confessed. "I mean, that's how you would know you're attracted to women. It was good with her for a while, right?"

He shuffled his hands around in his coat pockets. "For quite a while, yeah, I would say that it was good with her. Part of how we got together in the first place was our conversations. We had the most amazing conversations." He interrupted himself to say, "Okay, just so we're both clear on this, I'll be candid with you. For me, the sexual stuff was not exactly...well, undesirable. We even had intercourse sometimes, and I enjoyed it."

"If you're attracted to women then that would make sense," I said, grinning.

"Right. I guess it would. Damn. I feel like there's something here I'm having some trouble getting at."

"Is it different with me?" I offered after a pause.

"Yes," he said. "Transcendently."

"Oh, fuck. There's a ten-dollar word."

"Yes," he said. "There it is."

I cleared my throat. "That seems...well...notable."

"Yeah. It is notable. And I keep thinking back to that first night, at your apartment, when I said I preferred girls. You asked me, and I gave you that answer, but now I'm feeling some kind of accountability-to you, I mean-to make sure I'm being honest about that."

We stepped along the now-brick pathway in silence as I thought about how to respond. "Mikey, you can take your time and figure that out for yourself if you want, but don't think you have to answer to me. I don't really give a fuck about the preference thing. You're a person and I'm a person, and something's working here, between us-whatever it might be. If you can agree with that, I think we're good."

"Okay," he said. "Yes, I can agree with that."

We had lunch together at a seafood restaurant on the water, an indulgence for which Mikey insisted on paying; such an arrangement had never come up before, and he was adamant.

"We both work hard," he said as we walked back toward his car. It was after a period of vague distraction on his part, during which I could tell he had thought it over. "Our compensation is different in a way that feels arbitrary to me, and also unfair."

"Okay, I understand. I guess it's good that most of the things we like to do together are free."

When we arrived back at his apartment, Mikey fell onto the couch in a way that would indicate exhaustion. However, he seemed anything but, drumming his palms on his chest and singing something from Belle & Sebastian.

I sat on the floor below him, back against the couch and said, "Write About Love," as the track title came to me.