the days of september that rise

“You’re so disgustingly healthy. You’d have fit right in where I went to school — everyone had to have some kind of physical pastime or he wasn’t doing enough to improve himself. Don’t ask mine, I won’t tell you.”

Paul doesn’t know what to say to that. Julian’s father is a member there at the health club— of course he is, the man never met a repressive institution he didn’t like — but he never goes. They wouldn’t even know what he looked like here, and they don’t seem to give much of a damn about Julian bringing in a guest so long as that guest pays his own ten dollars. (Paul had grimaced and dug in his wallet and laid down his money — maybe Julian had expected him to hesitate.) He doesn’t like lingering in the water without doing anything, just kicking his legs idly or holding on to the chemical-smelling tile without any intention — when he’s in the water he needs to be in motion. He leaves Julian there behind him on the tiled ledge.

His body propels itself down the length of the pool, interrupted by the uneasy churning of his legs — twenty-five yards with no one to jostle you or knock your wristwatch into the water. Everything disappears when he’s in the water and in motion. Everything is clearer, everything is mechanistic.

When he surfaces, wiping the chlorine from his eyes, the walls are echoing with Julian’s laughter.

“Are you trying to impress me, Pablo?”

He looks so good resting there — half-wet and half-dry in dark blue swim trunks, with the cold water pebbling the skin of his legs. Paul feels his throat go tight. Julian slips into the water, displacing a little wave of it that laps against Paul’s chest — the refracted line of Julian’s body wavers for a moment and he looks almost whole.

They’re alone, for now. Paul thinks of the scars crossing Julian’s skin, the scars unseen beneath the surface, contracting into snarls of gristle, binding together tissues never meant to join. If he held him under the water, it would go quickly. He’d drown faster than other people — less lung capacity, sucking in water in weak jerky breaths until he chokes and dies. Just one hand against the wet nape of his neck.

It seems strange that every inch of him is familiar now, and that he possesses the kind of close knowledge Paul would never have let himself dream of before Julian, and yet what’s in his brain isn’t any closer to being understood. Sometimes it’s like they understand each other implicitly — two functioning halves of the same organism, with the same electrical current of awareness traveling back and forth between them — and sometimes it’s like he doesn’t understand Julian at all. Like Julian is a stranger to him, and he’s made up everything about him from a distance. Sometimes it’s when his back is turned and Paul can’t see his face, but sometimes it’s like this, when he’s looked him in the face for too long.

Julian knows he’s being looked at; his expression is coolly playful, underlaid with something else. “I love watching you swim. I love looking at you. You look so focused. You look strong.”

“It helps me think.”

Julian knows just how strong he can be, and that’s the problem. He comes in close and settles his hand against Paul’s chest, where his heart is beating, “Aren’t you glad nobody’s here? If I saw any of those flabby old men I think I’d be sick.”

The high-ceilinged room smells like mildew and everywhere it echoes. Julian’s leg slips between his thighs; the joints of their knees always knock together when they’re like this, cartilage on bone. Together they make one animal.

“I don’t care who sees us,” Paul says, out of impulse, and as it leaves his mouth he realizes the words are true.

He means I don’t care who sees us and he means I love you, I love you, I love you. Paul slides his hand up the back of Julian’s neck. Julian kisses him, and Paul doesn’t think about anything else for a while.

*

They dry off and put their clothes back on, all in silence. Paul watches Julian, and Julian watches him do it.

Exiting the shade of the club’s lobby (all phony leather and cut crystal) they pass into the full glare of the noonday light — like a pair of criminals, Paul thinks, like a couple of bank-robbers trotted out in handcuffs.

Julian’s hand bumps against his own as they walk, side by side — their fingers do not touch, only the smooth skins of the backs of their hands. Every small collision is like punctuation, underscoring exactly how close they might be to holding hands: almost, almost, almost.

The train station is only a short walk away, but they take their time: dawdling, stopping at the newspaper stand, watching the afternoon light coming in. On the street the pavements are dark. The two of them cut through one of the little fenced parks that interrupt the city, and Julian leads him through a dense square of dark green all arranged around a stone edifice, one of those ugly quasi-Victorian barnacles of architecture that used to house a public bathroom or something. From a distance, the stones are scratched with graffiti.

“You know, this was where I first got picked up by a guy,” Julian says, turning the corner, as if that’s a perfectly normal thing.

“What?”

“There were a bunch of high school boys crowding the museum lobby, and there was this guy giving me these meaningful looks. He followed me out here and asked if I had a cigarette, and I knew. I’m sure he wasn’t a very interesting person, but he was nice to me.”

“I didn’t know people did that kind of thing here,” Paul says, stupidly, but Julian is already moving away from him.

The shape of him recedes in the low light, and for a moment Paul thinks he’ll lose him there. A shadow makes a bar across the back of his neck, where Paul has pressed his cheek to the top knob of Julian’s spine and felt them breathing in sync together.

“They’re screwing over there right now,” Julian says simply.

There are figures lost in the greenery of the park, stained with shadows and bleached by sunlight until they’ve lost all individuality; some of them might even be women. There are people in the street, just walking right by. Paul’s stomach tightens.

“I don’t want to see this. Why did you tell me?”

Like he brought him here just to make Paul watch, walking down that little brick corridor like the master of ceremonies at an orgy. Paul reaches out for his arm, and Julian stops, and for a moment the line of his profile is illuminated by a shock of light.

“There are other people like us, Pablo. There really are.”

“There’s nobody like us.”

He presses him against the fence, and kisses him — the back of Julian’s head knocks against the bars, and Paul seizes at him fervently, as if he can hold him there. The metal is still faintly slick — it must have rained when they were inside — and it’s cold against his palm. Julian’s mouth is open to him; he can feel him flinching breathlessly against his body and then redoubling, as though unwilling to let Paul topple him.

Each of them is trying to prove a point. Of course, there were others before. Of course, it’s unreasonable to imagine otherwise — Julian is a light shining against a darkened wall. Other people have seen that too, but none of them has known him like Paul does. If he can’t convince himself, then he’ll make Julian believe it.

Paul sinks to his knees and feels the muscles of Julian’s knee jumping like a live wire — just a twitch under his hand. He’s rougher than he has to be, pulling apart the buttons of his jeans and pressing his face to the soft skin of Julian’s lower belly. The smell of chlorine is still on him, and the gentle salt smell of his bare skin.

“Paul, stop. You don’t have to do this to prove a point.”

Paul looks up at him from below, face set — a furious supplicant. “Maybe I want to.”

He wants to overwrite the record of it, to make his own imprint firmly enough to obliterate whatever mark came before. Paul lowers his head.