illustration by Jameson Currier
by Jameson Currier
It was the day after Thanksgiving and I had walked across the paved brick courtyard which separates our two houses to see my friend Barry before I headed into town to do some grocery shopping. It was cold and windy outside and the snow which had fallen two days before was now solid and slippery, packed into a frosting of ice. I walked cautiously, the soles of the old sneakers I wore had long ago disappeared, and by the time I had reached his front door, Barry had seen my approach and unbolted the lock. Dressed in a purple and white stripped terry cotton bathrobe, or rather undressed and wearing a robe, he was poking apiece of kindling into the stone fireplace that heats the kitchen of his stone house when I closed the door. He turned and gave me a smile and I could tell he was surprised to see me but glad I had stopped by, his expression full of a thousand questions. Barry and I had been friends for eleven years, friends since we met each other in graduate school in New York City. Now, in the mountains of Pennsylvania, Barry was also my landlord; he and his lover, Mitchell, owned the cottage I was renting, their house next door they used as a weekend escape from the city.
Barry stamped his foot and wedged a twig under a smoking log. “I don’t know why my fires never work,” he said. “I do everything like you do.”
We both looked into the fire and I picked up a section of the Sunday Times which he kept in a wicker basket near the store and tore pages from the paper, crumpled them up, and slid them under the grate in the fireplace. Soon the paper had caught fire and we both stood back and watched the flames shoot upward into the neck of the fireplace, fade a bit, and the thin strips of fatwood kindling blacken and ignite.
“It looks real,” a voice behind me said and I felt a hand slide across my shoulder. I turned and said good morning to Stuart, Barry’s house guest for the holiday weekend, and watched his eyes, large amber circles, dart between the fire, Barry, and myself.
“The coffee’s ready,” Barry said and walked to a cupboard and retrieved a cup for Stuart.
“You’re up early,” Stuart said to me. He took a seat on a stool and leaned an arm on the counter. He was wearing a white T-shirt and old, faded jeans, shredded at the knees, and his long black hair, iced with streaks of gray, fell across his brow like a boy’s; and, though he shifted his body so that his legs straddled the stool, his eyes did not veer from me; I could feel the intensity of his examination even as I looked away from him.
Since I had met Stuart two days ago I felt that electrical spark which sometimes draws me toward a man I know nothing about. And I sensed Stuart felt the same way. But we were both in awkward positions. Stuart was one of Barry’s ex-boyfriends. And I had just begun seeing someone regularly, and I knew I was not the type of guy who could have sex with one man when he was sleeping with another, and certainly not the type of person who would trick with a friend’s ex-boyfriend. I leaned against the frame of the door, Stuart ran his hand through his hair and Barry poured the coffee, placing the mug on the counter beside Stuart.
“I always get up early,” I said to Stuart. “It’s a habit.”
“But you were up late,” Stuart noted, lifting the cup to his lips and blowing over the steam.
“Spying on the neighbors?” Barry laughed.
“I couldn’t help noticing the car population next door doubled in the middle of the night,” Stuart said.
“Ray stayed last night,” I answered, studying the chest hair which crept over the collar of Stuart’s T-shirt, a sight which I found unbelievable sexy.
“Is he the lawyer?” Barry asked.
“No, he’s the one with the moustache,” I answered.
“Did he leave already?” Stuart asked.
“He’s picking up his ex-lover at the airport,” I replied, knowing to give them the news they were waiting for instead of letting them interrogate me and put it out painfully in little pieces. There was an awkward moment of silence as we all shifted our positions.
“I’m warning you now, Jimmy,” Barry said. “You’re going to get burned.”
I looked at the floor, then at the fire. Stuart ran his hand through his hair again and then, out of Barry’s sight, placed it against my back, sliding it down to where it rested at the dip of my buttocks.
Months later Barry told me he knew that morning what would happen. I think I knew it then too. But I still had to give it a try with Ray. I still had to let it happen. And I let a chance with Stuart slip away, all because I’m a guy who can only go one way or the other.
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“One Way or Another” was written in 1990. The story was included in the author’s collection Until My Heart Stops (Chelsea Station Editions, 2015).
