A tree branch waves in front of the living room window, blocking the sun, and Robert’s face goes out like a lamp. ‘That’s not a vice.’
He gets up and brushes past Simon to the sink, where he pours himself a glass of water from the tap.
‘Hey, man,’ says Simon. ‘You’re the one who likes to keep this shit quiet.’
In class, Robert still warms up alone. Once, Beau saw Robert and Simon leaving the bathroom and whistled with both pinkies in his mouth, but when he asked Simon about it, Simon feigned innocence. He senses that Robert would disapprove of any disclosure, and his moments with Robert – Robert’s low, murmured laughter, his palms on Simon’s face – are too good to give up.
Now Robert leans against the sink. ‘Just because I don’t talk about it doesn’t mean I keep it quiet.’
‘What’s the difference?’ Simon puts his index fingers through Robert’s belt loops. He never dreamed he’d have the confidence to do such a thing, but San Francisco is a drug. Though he’s only been here five months, it feels like he’s aged by a decade.
‘When I’m at the studio,’ says Robert, ‘I’m at work. I stay quiet out of respect – for the workplace, and for you.’
Simon pulls him close, until their hips are pressed together. He puts his mouth to Robert’s ear. ‘Disrespect me.’
Robert laughs. ‘You don’t want that.’
‘I do.’ Simon unfastens Robert’s jeans and shoves his hand inside. He grabs Robert’s cock and pumps. They still haven’t had sex.
Robert steps back. ‘Come on, man. Don’t be like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Cheap.’
‘Fun,’ Simon says, correcting him. ‘You’re hard.’
‘So?’
‘So?’ repeats Simon. So everything, he wants to say. So please. But what comes out is different. ‘So fuck me like an animal.’
It’s something the Chronicle reporter once said to Simon. Robert looks as though he might laugh again, but then his mouth twists.
‘What we’re doing here, you and me?’ he says. ‘Ain’t nothing wrong with it. Nothing.’
Simon’s neck grows hot. ‘Yeah, I know that.’
Robert grabs his jacket from the back of the turquoise chair and slips it on. ‘Do you? Sometimes I really don’t know.’
‘Hey,’ says Simon, panicked. ‘I’m not ashamed, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
Robert pauses by the door. ‘Good,’ he says. Then he pulls the door shut behind him and disappears down the stairwell.
When Harvey Milk is shot, Simon is in the dressing room at Purp, waiting for a staff meeting to begin. It’s eleven thirty in the morning, a Monday, and the men are resentful of coming in during their off-hours, even more resentful that Benny is late. They have the TV on while they wait. Lady lies on a bench with cold tea bags on her eyes; Simon is missing men’s class at Academy. The mood is somber, done in: one week before, Jim Jones led a thousand followers to death in Guyana.
When Dianne Feinstein’s face fills the TV, her voice wavering – ‘It’s my duty to make this announcement: Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed’ – Richie cries out so loudly that Simon jumps up from his chair. Colin and Lance are silent with shock, but Adrian and Lady are crying thick tears, and when Benny arrives – harried, pale; traffic is stopped for blocks around Civic Center – his eyes are swollen pink. They close Purp for the day, hanging a black scarf of Lady’s across the front door, and that night, they join the rest of the Castro to march.
It’s late November, but the streets are warm with bodies. The crowd is so large that Simon has to take a back route to Cliff’s to buy candles. The clerk gives him twelve for the price of two, and paper cups to cut the wind. Within hours, fifty thousand people have joined them. The march to City Hall is led by the sound of a single drum, and those who weep do so quietly. Simon’s cheeks are slick. It is Harvey, but it is more than Harvey. This mass, grieving like fatherless children, makes Simon think of his parents, both gone from him now. When the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sings a hymn by Mendelssohn – Thou, Lord, Hast Been Our Refuge – Simon hangs his head.
Who is his Lord, his refuge? Simon doesn’t think he believes in God, but then again, he’s never thought God believed in him. According to the Book of Leviticus, he’s an abomination. What kind of God would create a person of which He so disapproved? Simon can only think of two explanations: either there’s no God at all, or Simon was a mistake, a fuck-up. He’s never been sure which option scares him more.
By the time he wipes his cheeks, the other Purp dancers have been carried along in the swell. Simon scans the crowd and snags on a familiar face: warm, dark eyes; a glint of silver in one earlobe, bobbing above a bright white candle. Robert.
They’ve barely spoken since that October evening in Simon’s apartment, but now they push against the crowd, reaching for each other, and meet somewhere in the middle of that sea.
Robert’s studio is nestled in the steep, winding streets by Randall Park. By the time he unlocks the door and they stumble into the hallway, they’re pulling at each other’s shirts and fumbling with belt buckles. On a double bed beside the window, Simon fucks Robert, and Robert fucks him. Soon, though, it doesn’t feel like fucking; once the initial frenzy gives way, Robert is tender and attentive, pushing into Simon with such emotion – emotion for whom? For Simon? For Harvey? – that Simon feels unusually shy. Robert takes Simon’s cock in his mouth and sucks. When the pressure inside Simon builds to the point of bursting, Robert looks up from below, and their eyes meet with such startling intensity that Simon keels forward to cradle Robert’s head as he comes.
Afterward, Robert turns on a bedside lamp. His apartment is not spartan, as Simon expected, but curated with objects Robert found during Corps’s first international tour: painted Russian bowls, two strands of Japanese cranes. A wooden shelf across from the bed is filled with books – Sula; The Football Man – and the galley kitchen is hung with an assortment of pans. A cardboard cutout guards the entrance to the bedroom, the life-sized image of a football player mid-catch.
They sit propped up against pillows to smoke.
‘I met him once,’ Robert says.
‘Who? Milk?’
Robert nods. ‘It was after he lost his second campaign –’75? I saw him at a bar down the street from the camera shop. He was being propped up in the air by all these guys, and he was laughing, and I thought: That’s the kind of person we need. Someone who doesn’t stay down. Not a bitter old man, like me.’
‘Harvey was older than you.’ Simon smiles, though he stops when he realizes he’s used the past tense.
‘Yeah, he was. He didn’t act like it, though.’ Robert shrugs. ‘Look, I don’t go to the parades. I don’t go to the clubs. I sure as hell don’t go to the bathhouses.’
‘Why not?’
Robert eyes him. ‘How many people do you see around here that look like me?’