Covers and Kisses

He was twenty eight when he realized it. Cuddled close against Isaac, a man he was devoted to, he realized it. Isaac had never pushed, had never asked, and had never strayed, and suddenly Jude realized that he would never bend, would never acquiesce, and would never recover if Isaac left him over this. Isaac’s body was warm against his, warmer because of the chill of the apartment around them and the pathetic cloth couch they lay on. It wasn’t Isaac’s fault. Jude felt that maybe it wasn’t even his own fault, it was the world’s fault, it was God’s fault, it was Brian’s fault, and in the end it was just how it was.

He loved Isaac, but every sweep of his lips across Jude’s was repulsive. Every reaching hand under a shirt to grasp a hipbone or knee pulled higher to better cradle the other’s body—every bit of it—was against everything Jude wanted. To be fair, it felt a great deal better than kissing Sarah. Kissing Sarah had been stomach-churning misery for three months until Jude had finally broken it off like a man, telling her that someday she would find someone worthy of her love and time. His mother had been proud of him right up until he’d fallen in love with Isaac. Isaac had been sudden, they’d met at a coffeeshop a year ago, bumped hips as they each doctored their coffee to their preference. Isaac’s black eyes, liquid like ink, had bored into Jude’s soul as they both turned to apologize. 

Jude started going to a counselor, Doctor Paula, after he met Isaac—to work out issues from childhood, his issues from Brian. After half a session, she said he should continue coming to see her. To build Jude’s trust in a physical relationship. In a heterosexual physical relationship, she reminded him, because he couldn’t let the abuse control his life. Jude wasn’t ever sure if it was actually abuse, but Doctor Paula said it was. It fit the criteria, she said. She said Jude sought the company of men because he was trying to control a past encounter. Jude stopped going to see her after Isaac asked him to stay the night once. He was barely able to stand sleeping naked next to his boyfriend, but Jude endured. Isaac was better company than Doctor Paula, anyway.

Isaac’s hand is on his cheek, pulling him in for a kiss, and Jude closes his eyes. It was nearly a lifetime ago, he desperately tells himself as he kisses Isaac. He turns a blind eye towards the lie he is about to live, if it is a lie at all—his parents would say it was a lie, everyone besides perhaps Isaac and Doctor Paula would say it was a lie, and only Isaac would tell him there was nothing wrong with him for it.

The awful revulsion he felt wasn’t real, he told himself. It was just because of all the religious brainwashing he’d had as a child, he would eventually get used to the feeling of skin against his own, of kissing Isaac as deeply as Isaac was meant to be kissed. Jude decides it isn’t real. It can’t be or everything in his entire life is a lie, a falsehood, and an evil and he cannot and refuses to try to bear it.

Only, sometimes when Isaac leans over Jude’s body in the morning to turn off the alarm, Jude remembers. He remembers the hot, wet, questing lips, searching for his face, the big, heavy body forcing his own deeper into the bed, the once-thick-now-oh-so-thin comforter caught and pressed between two people, the light from the hall and the darkness of the bedroom his parents had left him in. The hands, the crumpled bedding, the warm damp breath, and the soft kiss on his stomach in the darkness just before the other body left the bed. Jude remembers, and, as he readjusts himself a little next to Isaac, he tries to cover it up, bury it once again. Deeper this time, deep enough to forget it forever.

Maybe.