Free Carry Me Like Water by Benjamin Alire Sáenz Page B

he began wondering about himself. He didn’t think of himself as being good. He understood pain and he understood pleasure, and he had decided that his life, whatever else it was or meant, was dedicated to the avoidance of pain, and the pursuit of pleasure. But as he sat in his house staring at the couch where Joaquin had slept all night, he realized he loved this man, and his love was no longer the mere pursuit of pleasure. He sat there remembering, remembering everything. It was good to have a memory. “J, I want to go first. Let me be the first to go.”

    La Jolla, California. 1968
    Jacob walked through the door of the living room and hung up his red letter jacket in the entryway closet. He ran upstairs and dumped out his duffel bag, his dirty football jersey and cleats falling on the floor. He lay down on his bed. He focused on his body. He was proud of it; he’d worked hard to sculpt a body that was perfect, and sometimes he could hardly believe it belonged to him. He rubbed his chest with his palm and reached for one of the magazines he kept under his mattress. He was surprised when he felt nothing there. He jumped out of the bed and lifted up the mattress. “Not there! Oh, shit! Oh shit!”
    He lay shaking in his bed the rest of the afternoon until it was time for him to go down to dinner. He relaxed a little when he remembered his parents were having company. If his parents had found his magazines, they would not bring up the issue in front of guests. He would excuse himself, and go out for the evening—and think of what to say, what to say?—but what was there to be said? The magazines, full of pictures of nude men, said everything simply and plainly. Maybe Esperanza had found them when she changed the sheets to his bed, maybe she had thrown them away without mentioning it to his parents. Maybe it would be all right. But he knew Esperanza would not have touched anything that did not belong to her.
    He made sure he went downstairs after the guests had arrived. His mother and father acted the same way they always acted when they had guests—they pretended to be fun and interesting and kind people. The only time his mother and father touched each other was when they had guests in the house. When they were alone, they either did not acknowledge each other or they argued. He found it odd that they became such strong allies whenever he challenged either one of them. They always jumped to each other’s defense. Jacob had decided that being married was like being in a club—and that he was a threat to that club—or, at least, that was the way his parents treated him.
    He recognized the two couples who were his parents’ guests. He greeted them warmly. He smiled and glanced over at his parents. They smiled at him. “Where’s Jon-Jon?” he asked.
    “ Your brother’s sick,” his mother said. “They called me from school, so I sent the car. When he got home, the poor thing was burning up.”
    “ Maybe I should go up and see him,” Jacob said. He started toward the hallway. His mother stopped him.
    “ He’s sleeping, dear. He really needs to rest. Maybe you should wait until tomorrow.” She looked over at one of her friends. “He’s a very devoted brother.”
    “ Yes,” his father nodded.
    He didn’t like the tone in his parents’ voices.
    He was sorry Jon-Jon was not at dinner. Without him, the evening seemed endless. He tried to shut out the voices of the people who were sitting at the table. Something in the way they sat and ate and spoke betrayed the fact that they believed in only one thing: that the world belonged to them—that they were entitled to it, entitled to use it, to poison it, to dominate it. Their codes were easy to read. He knew he would not live his life like them, and as he sat there he was grateful he was gay—that separated him, set him apart, made him different from them. Their lives made him sick. Already he had inherited his parents’ contempt without even knowing it.
    As