An Easter Cantata: For Tenor / Countertenor, Bass, and Male Chorus
by Ian McDuff
Because Deb asked, long ago.
A sequel to A Christmas Oratorio.
Tenebræ
Half a year gone, now. Half a year gone, and Howie wondered if he now knew less of Lance than he had before.
In many ways, he knew immeasurably more: more fact. More reasons why. He knew now why Lance had never been able to be what all the world had expected him to be, namely, JC’s other half. He knew now why Lance had reinvented himself again and again, running from who he had been and never gaining ground in the race. He knew now why Lance had allowed himself to become the boyband Paris Hilton, the B-list presence at every open bar, the butt of jokes. He knew now why Lance had rejected intimacy, security, love – and the attendant vulnerability – in favor of disposable relationships, from bit actors to Ron Davis models.
He ought to know by now.
Group, lunches tête-à-tête, his own role as Lance’s sponsor, a fellow, older, and wiser survivor of male domestic abuse: he had every reason to know these things. He knew that Lance still saw the hurt, bruised, gangly adolescent in his mirror, and drove himself relentlessly to sculpt a new face; he knew that certain scents and sounds and certain chance resemblances, which were what had doomed any hope of his ever connecting with JC, still terrified Lance, even as Lance had trained himself unremittingly not to show the terror, never to show any weakness. He knew what Lance’s comfort foods were when he was shaken, and he knew why – DOMA, mainly, and the proposed FMA – Lance, a Southern, NRA-member Reagan Democrat, once a Bush Democrat, was now going to John Kerry fundraisers with Chris, or even on his own. He knew what Lance thought of the Designated Hitter in the American League, and why he had certain food phobias. He knew Lance’s dreams and fears and quirks. He knew more details about Lance than he knew about Nicky, even.
And he knew Lance less certainly and surely than ever before.
He knew, too, that he had to stop acting as Lance’s sponsor; because even if he no longer knew Lance, even if he knew Lance less and less with every new facet of Lance he learned, Howie at least still knew himself. And he knew in every fiber of his being that he was no longer a friend to Lance, no longer a fellow survivor, no longer even a man with a slight crush.
He was hopelessly and irretrievably in love, and he knew it.
Passus
There was sex, and there was love, and they had nothing to do with one another.
You could be fond. You could feel a remote, friendly affection. You could be indulgent. But that wasn’t love, which had to be kept in its compartment, away from the sex. Jess was for sex, and its comforts. But not for love. And he knew, had known going in, where that was going. And that was fine. All he asked was that he not be threatened, not be deceived, not be asked to open up, not be hurt. And you can’t be hurt if you grant no access. Jess had no access, except to his body, and that wasn’t really Lance, that wasn’t himself: it was just something he’d created as a device, a citadel and sometimes a playground, certainly, but nothing more.
And Jess was a barrier, too. A defense. If there were offers he wasn’t interested in, and there were always offers now, he could play the Jess Card. And if ever there were an offer he wanted to take up, well, Jess was on notice that he was on notice, always. Jess knew the rules. He would smile, a little sadly, but he would go, because that was what boys such as Jess did. Sometimes, if he didn’t stop himself in time, Lance suspected that perhaps Jess wanted more, wanted an intimacy that was not bargained for, wanted love instead of or in perilous addition to sex. And that would be sad, because Lance didn’t like to think of himself as using people, the way he had been used. That is why he was almost always successful in stopping himself before he thought about what Jess might really want, that hadn’t been in the terms of the bargain.
So Lance had thought.
So Lance still thought.
Jess knew that. He knew Lance. Not wholly: who did? But he knew him.
And he knew that Lance was reinventing himself, yet again.
And he? He was … last year’s model. An accessory for version 5.1. They had spent a long time fooling the public, dancing the dance of in and out, swinging the closet door. They had spent, Jess thought, without bitterness, with only sadness, a long time fooling one another. It was the way of the world. His world, at least, the half-world of illusion and canny lighting; the only world he knew, and fit in, and knew the rules of. And he certainly knew the rules.
They had fooled most of the people most of the time, and each other almost always. But Jess had never fooled himself.
He wondered if Lance had. Was, still.
He wondered if Howie was, because Jess wasn’t fooled in the least about that situation, even if Howie were still fooling himself. Even if Lance was, still.
But Jess had never fooled himself. It was the only hard and fast rule in his world. A rule the consequences of violating which were fatal. You fooled yourself, you were going to be made a fool of. And it was a cold world, just outside the klieg lights’s margins: cold and dark and perilous. And youth was the currency of that world, the means of buying the light and the warmth and the temporary safety of refuge: and like fairy gold, it evanesced all too quickly. You couldn’t live in the cold and the dark without that currency, without something banked.
The time was at hand. It was better to leave, on good terms, with goodwill banked, than to be pushed. Not pushed unkindly, not cruelly, but simply edged out of the light as the light refocused elsewhere.
It was better that he make the move than wait for Lance to stop fooling himself and make it for them.
Crucifixus
Nick, Howie reflected, was to him what JC was to Lance: the soul-mate who somehow never caught fire. They had tried, God knew, and they still loved each other in a way and on a level that perhaps no one else could reach or ever would; but they had failed, even if they had managed, against all odds, to come out of it with their friendship not only intact, but strengthened.
But with Nick’s increasing maturity, it was Nick who realized that he was not the person Howie needed to talk to about this.
AJ was.
‘Except that I don’t hate him – I never could – it’s, God, Aidge, straight out of Catullus.
‘Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
‘It tortures me.’
AJ looked at him, kindly, if a little exasperated. ‘Howard? I have enough fuckin’ trouble with English, ’mano.’
Howie blushed. ‘It’s…. “I hate and I love. Why do I do this to myself, you may ask. I don’t know; I just feel it and it tortures me.” Um. Because, it’s how I feel, Aidge. I can’t not feel for him, and I know it’s not going to happen, I don’t know him at all, really, and it’s … it really is torture.’
‘You can’t fuckin’ do this to yourself, Howie.’
‘I can’t stop.’
‘Why not?’
‘Um.’
‘Figure that the fuck out, Sweetness, and maybe you can fuckin’ get a grip on this.’
Descendit ad Inferos
‘Who is he?’
‘No, Lance, it’s not like that –’
‘Who? This guy with the better offer.’
‘There is no guy. There is no better offer.’
‘Because I am not going to bid for you, okay? Just so you know. I’m not your john or your sugar daddy.’
‘I know that. I never thought you were. And whether you want to believe it or not, I’m not a whore.’
‘Then what are you, Jess?’
‘The guy who’s holding you back. See, Lance, that’s the deal. You’re growing, evolving. You’re … you’re leaving me behind, even if you don’t see it yet. You’ve outgrown me, Lance. You said it yourself: this isn’t a romance. I’m not a hustler, Lance, but I’m not your true love, either, and what we have – what you wanted – isn’t love, okay? Not like that, it isn’t. And you’re … I dunno, everyday, you’re a little more distant, a little more, shit, far away, maybe? You’re moving on, whether you see it or not. To places I can’t go, places I can’t go to with you, not without me being more to you than you want me to be.
‘I just want it to end while we’re still friends.’
And they had left it like that. ‘Left’ being the operative word. Jess looked in the rearview mirror before he pulled out of the driveway for the last time ever, into the street. His vision was a little blurred, but he could see. He could see Lance still slumped against the door jamb, his face carefully blank, but his posture, betraying him, hunched as if warding off a blow.
The street was clear. Jess pulled out, turning on the radio, and snorted through what could have been the start of a sob as the FM playlist taunted him. It was too damned perfect. ‘Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road.’ Fucking irony.
Resurrexit
On the list of stupid things he had done, and done knowing them to be stupid, but doing which he had been powerless to resist, this had to be number one with a bullet. But Lance’s voice, on the phone, was so studied in its neutrality that Howie knew there was a crisis of monumental proportions. And when it came to the crux of things, he simply didn’t have it in him to protect himself by not responding to Lance’s plea for help.
When he arrived, Lance was in the kitchen. Apparently, Lance had already won one small but significant victory. There was a fifth of bourbon on the counter, still sealed, unopened. Beside it was a box of tea bags, opened, and two mugs, and as Howie entered the kitchen, the kettle whistled.
‘Jess left me,’ Lance said, simply, handing Howie a mug of tea. ‘I didn’t think it would hurt like this.’
‘Did – did he say why?’
Lance nodded, and stared into his mug. After a long silence, he answered. ‘He said I was moving on, whether I knew it or not. Outgrowing him. He wanted to, hell, cut his losses, I reckon. Whatever.’
Howie shoved the honey in Lance’s direction. ‘Take some. This once, okay? You need it.’
Mechanically, Lance obeyed. ‘I need sweetening?’
‘No. You just like to pretend you’re not, already.’
‘Then….’
Howie waited. And waited. Finally, he prompted Lance. ‘Then, what?’
‘Then why? I gave him everything. Why wasn’t that enough? Why am I never enough, Howie?’
Howie looked him in the eye, uncompromisingly. ‘Lance, if you want to lie to me, that’s fine. You could have done it better over the phone, but if you felt you needed to drag me over here to lie to me in person, I’m not complaining. But don’t lie to yourself.’
‘“Lying?” What the hell, D? How am I lying?’
‘Lance….’
‘I gave him everything! Everything, do you hear me? I gave that ungrateful little whore everyth–’
‘JAMES LANCE BASS, don’t you dare!’ Howie stood up from the table, shoving his chair back violently and almost upsetting his tea. He had never looked taller, Lance thought, staring in shock: taller or more like an avenging angel.
‘You gave him nothing that meant squat, Lance!’ Howie caught his breath, and fell back into his chair, his fire abruptly extinguished. When he spoke again, his voice was leaden, dull. ‘You gave him nothing worth. Because you gave him everything except yourself, your trust, your love. And without that, what is anything worth, Lance?’
Lance averted his eyes, absorbing himself in the slow swirl of his tea in the mug.
‘I wanted,’ he said, miserably, ‘I just wanted … I wanted not to get hurt again. I thought, if I didn’t put myself out there, if I kept it light, kept my distance…. I guess the joke’s on me, huh?’
Howie slid his hand across the table and laid it lightly on Lance’s. ‘Lance. This is life, okay? Other people have free will. You can’t ever guarantee that someone else won’t hurt you, except, I guess, by never dealing with anyone else at all ever again. But you can stop hurting yourself. You can stop bringing your own pain on yourself.’
‘I. Well, shit.’ Lance sniffled. ‘I was. Um. If, if you hadn’t come over? I wouldn’t be drinking tea. You are why I put on the kettle, when you said you’d come over. I’m glad you came, Howie. I needed a friend.’
AJ had told Howie, the other day, ‘Look, Sweet. You’re both the walking fuckin’ wounded, you and Bass. It’s like that old Chinese story about the birds with one wing each. Maybe, together, you can fly?’
Howie closed his eyes and gently withdrew his hand from Lance’s grasp. He swallowed down the lump in his throat, prayed that AJ had been right, and refocused his gaze on Lance. ‘Yeah,’ he said, softly. ‘About that. Lance … well, okay, here’s the deal. I, um. I don’t exactly want to keep being that, a friend to you and a mentor.’
Lance looked at him, stricken, speechless, going suddenly pale beneath his careful Hollywood tan.
‘No – hear me out, Lance. Please. I want to be more. I … well, the fact is, Lance, I’ve, um, fallen … okay, I can do this: Lance, I am in love with you.’
Lance’s mouth worked, but no sound came out.
‘Sorry,’ Howie added, blushing furiously. ‘I’ll go now.’
At that point, Lance found his tongue. ‘Holy shit,’ he breathed.
‘Just don’t be mad,’ Howie said, as he stood to leave.
‘I will be if you take another step,’ Lance said.
‘Lance?’
‘Do – do you mean this? You actually love me?’
‘Oh, God, Lance. I can’t begin to tell you.’
Lance stood up, slowly, swaying a little on his feet, and walked around the table to where Howie stood waiting. Tentatively, he reached out a trembling hand, and touched Howie’s ear, feather-light. ‘So don’t tell me,’ he said, huskily. ‘Show me.’
Ascendit ad Cælos
They broke their kiss only when suffocation threatened. Both had a glazed look in their eyes.
‘I’m scared,’ Lance confessed, hiding his face in the crook of Howie’s shoulder.
‘So am I,’ Howie admitted. His voice was soft, tender. ‘But I’m thinking, maybe, just maybe, because we know what hurting is like, maybe we’ll be good to one another? Maybe we’ll be, you know, extra-sensitive, and not hurt each other at all because we know what it’s like.
‘And even if. I mean. I’m afraid, a little, but I love more than I fear. I think, in you, I have found, finally, someone I love enough that I will stay even if we hurt each other once in a while, and do stupid things. I’d like to see if that’s so.’
Lance drew back so he could gaze into Howie’s eyes. ‘Um, yeah,’ he said at last. ‘We … we could try, right?’
‘Verdad,’ Howie said. ‘That is all we can do in this world, any of us. We can try.’
Ite. Missa est. Alleluia.