Free The Ask by Sam Lipsyte Page B

betrayed all your gay friends by having a baby.”
    “Most of my gay friends have babies now.”
    “You call them your gay friends. That’s homophobic right there.”
    “You’ve really lost me,” said Maura.
    “I don’t like animation. I like live action.”
    “Let me have a little time with that one.”
    “I don’t care what people do behind closed doors, or open doors, or out in the street or in a coffee shop. I don’t care what you do. Suck cock in Starbucks all day. Just don’t be happy. And don’t call me a depressive pansy behind my back.”
    Maura stared.
    “I’m just kidding,” I said.
    Maura did not move.
    “Really,” I said. “Please, I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
    “No, you don’t,” she said.
    She looked beautiful there near the window in moonlight. I moved to her, tried to kiss her, let my hand fall to the strap of her dress, but she shoved me, gently, away.
    “I’m sorry, Milo. I’m just … I’m just all touched out.”
    “Touched out?”
    “I know you understand.”
    “Do I? Does Paul know that?”
    “What?”
    “You heard me.”
    “Don’t be paranoid, Milo.”
    “Don’t make me paranoid. Especially to avoid guilt.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Paul’s really kind of an idiot actually.”
    “I’m an idiot, too!” I shouted. “Don’t you fucking see it, Maura! I’m an idiot, too!”
    Maura’s eyes got beady. Bernie’s wail, low at first, gathered up for the sonic cascade.
    “Yes, Milo,” whispered Maura. “I do see that now.”
    *
    Bernie soon returned to sleep, but in that moment we probably both recalled the all-nighters of those first few years, Maura always the one to rise and slip into Bernie’s room. Once in a while I’d pretend to be about to get up, even pull the sheets off my legs, but Maura would push me back down in disgust. She’d lost years of slumber. A point came where Bernie had suckled for too long to start a bottle, but I could have intervened, insisted I live my share of nightly hell. But I didn’t. I liked the sleep. I still felt guilty about it, but I was not about to let the feeling devour me. I had learned long ago how to refine the raw guilt into a sweet, granulated resentment.
    There was, for instance, the lullaby question. Maura sang the boy “Silent Night” almost every night. Operation Foreskin Rescue was one thing, but did she have to fill Bernie’s brain with Christian death chants? Someday I thought I might go in there with an X-Acto blade, Jew-cut the little crumb right back into my tribe, my half-tribe.
    T.C.B., Abraham-style.
    Wonder if it’s legal. Be good to do a little time.
    It wasn’t society’s fault, really.
    I dozed off worried I had truly unhooked myself from the apparatus of okay. Or maybe it was the Malbec.
    I woke in silence. Light from the hallway fell on Maura and I watched her sleep, a lattice of saliva fluttering on her lips. I rose to fetch a glass of water, peeked into Bernie’s room.
    They were all lovely in sleep, but none so lovely as Bernie. Here in my humble outer-borough home a godlet took his rest, a miniature deity in need of protection until he was strong enough to fend for himself and, eventually, deliver humankind from fatal folly.
    This not really working thing wasn’t really working.

Ten
    Purdy put off our meeting another few days. He’d flown out to Vail for an ideas festival, had gotten worked up over some of the ideas. He was holed up in a suite with a gorgeous renewable-energy guru. He would call when he got back, hoped I could forgive him.
    “Of course,” I said.
    “You must have a lot going on back there anyway.”
    “Oh, yes, absolutely,” I said.
    “You should come out here, though. It’s really something. I mean, these people, you read their books, their newsletters, see them on TV, but to hear them in person, chat with them. Very impressive. Do you realize that someday we will be heating our houses with trout?”
    “Is that one of the