Tin Man

by Sarah Winman

He tried not to think too much about things, out there in nature, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. When it didn’t, he cycled back thinking his life was far from how he had intended it to be.

It had been a standoff between excess and sobriety. But hadn’t the road always been a point of tension between east and west? Two ends of the spectrum, the haves and have-nots, whether it be faith or money or tolerance.

And Billy said what no one else ever said. He said, Terry told me your wife died? And the way he said it was gentle and direct and uninhibited, as if the death of love was normal.

Billy came out and saw him looking up with tears frozen before they could fall. And he wanted to say to Billy, I’m just trying to hold it all together, that’s all. He wanted to say that because he’d never been able to say that to anyone, and Billy might be a good person to say it to. But he couldn’t. So he walked past him without looking, walked past and ignored him just as his father would have done.

And he remembered thinking that his father could do anything and was afraid of nothing. And those large hands that liked to spar in the boxing ring were also capable of beautiful gestures, like splashing onto his cheeks and neck the sweet musky scent that completed him.

There you go, he said. Coffee. And he lifted the mug across the fence. And Ellis didn’t know what to say. He felt fucked up a bit from the pills and the sleep but it wasn’t that really, it was the gesture that unsettled him, the kindness that made the words catch in his throat and, eventually, he said, Thank you.

You’re so distant these days, she said. I’m an idiot. You are, she said, and laughed. What’s got into you? I’m stuck. Still? she said. All the things you were going to do, she said. I miss you. Come on, she said. You could still do them. This isn’t about me. You know that, right, Ellis? Ell? Where have you gone? I’m here, he said. You keep fading out. You’re really annoying these days. Sorry. I said, This isn’t about me. I know. Go find him, she said.

People say that, in all probability, he painted the Sunflowers as decoration for Gauguin’s room. Did lots of versions of them too, not just this. It’s a lovely thought, though, isn’t it? Some people say it’s not true but I like to think it is. Painting flowers as a sign of friendship and welcome. Men and boys should be capable of beautiful things. Never forget that, you two, she said, and she disappeared into the kitchen.

!!!

In Rose Hill chapel, Ellis sat at the front next to his father. The organ sounded much too loud and his mother’s coffin looked much too small. He smelled the same perfume he noticed on occasion at home, and when he turned round, sitting behind him was a woman with peroxide-blonde hair and a kind smile, and she leaned forward and whispered, Don’t forget, Ellis, your dad needs you: a declaration as shocking to him as his mother’s death. He stood up, an action so instinctive it caught him by surprise. And years later, he came to believe that the courage it took for him to walk out of church that afternoon, amidst the whispers and stares, used up his life’s quota.

The car journey home was oppressive and made in silence. The pain in his stomach grew and he felt so adrift in the care of this man. This man who didn’t really know him, this man who had just stalled in the middle of a junction, who was slumped over the steering wheel as horns blared, who kept saying, Fuck fuck, over and over. Ellis opened the car door and walked away.

He said, Let me tell you something. What you want to do and what you’re going to do are two very different things.

Mum wanted me to do my art, he said. You don’t need a canvas to do that, she said. I knew a tinny, once, who worked on those cars as if he’d sculpted them himself. Make peace with it, my boy. Make your peace.

Ellis stopped. He felt Michael’s presence next to him, could almost smell him, the pronounced vagaries of longing. And he wanted to talk to him about the years they were apart because he hadn’t during the months when he returned. Or those moments from youth, when they raced back to an empty room and nervously explored the other’s body in a pact of undefined togetherness that would later bring him equal shame, equal joy.

She asked him things women ask men, things he wasn’t able to talk about and he didn’t know how to explain, not his confusion nor his discomfort. But he remembered her eyes were soft and open to him and they said, you can tell me anything, and he could have, he knew that even then. But he didn’t.

And he did come back. Every weekend. Until Mabel died, and then he didn’t. He disappeared into the millions of others who walked those crowded London streets, and Ellis never knew why.

Without Michael’s energy and view of the world they became the settled married couple both had feared becoming. They made little demand of one another and conversation gave way to silence, albeit comfortable and familiar. Ellis withdrew, he knew he did. His hurt turned to anger, there when he woke up and before he slept. Life was not as fun without Michael. Life was not as colorful without him. Life was not life without him. If only Ellis could have told him that then maybe he would have returned.

In the space after the punch line and before laughter, a brief silence ensued, in which he made plans to go home, watch television, that kind of thing, but then laughter erupted, and amidst the laughter people repeated the punch line and he was saved from an early night.

You have to do better with people. I’ll do better. It’s no fun being your friend. Jesus.

And when light fell, the constellations flickered, and Ellis sat in the pool with a wooden boat rocking by his foot. The boat capsized when Annie and Michael got into the water. I don’t ever want to settle, said Ellis, looking from one to the other. I won’t let you settle, said Annie. And I won’t let you settle, and Michael handed him a mug of champagne.

And Ellis remembered thinking he would never meet anyone like him again, and in that acknowledgment, he knew, was love.

He could see his mother concentrating on Michael’s words, how enraptured she was. And when he stopped, she bent down and kissed him on the head and said, Thank you. Because everything she held on to and everything she believed in came together in that unexpected moment. The simple belief that men and boys were capable of beautiful things.

That was the world he inhabited between the time of it happening and the time of him knowing. A brief window, not yet shattered, when music still stirred, when beer still tasted good, when dreams could still be hatched at the sight of a plane careering across a perfect summer sky. The doorbell rang and he thought it was them, but it couldn’t have been them, could it? Because they each had a key. He opened the door and the policemen seemed too young to bring bad news, but they did. They walked him into the front room, where time evaporated. He thought he’d blacked out, but he hadn’t. It was life as he knew it shutting down.

He scattered Michael’s ashes down by his favorite stretch of river, as per instructions. He was alone. The wind bit hard across the meadow. It was the end of summer.

From the bottom of the box, he took out a handful of books and instantly recognized them. They were his sketchbooks, the ones from childhood. And he couldn’t believe he was looking at them again because he often threw them out when the pages were full, because nothing felt good enough, or so he thought then. Only one person thought they were good enough and he’d fucking saved them. Michael had saved them. He’d gone to those bins and pulled them out and kept them across the years.

It wasn’t a diary, it looked more random than that—thoughts, ideas, doodles. November 1989, it began, the time they were apart. He began to read. There was a momentary flutter of the page, maybe the breeze or a tremor from his hand. A young man’s voice traveled across the fence. Ellis? he said. Ell? But Ellis didn’t hear. “November 1989,” he read. “I don’t know the day, the days have become irrelevant.”

I’ve had really good lovers—inventive, exciting—but I was never one myself. I was a 7 max. I was the fantasy that rarely delivered. The slight hint of melancholy as they zipped up their trousers. I think I was a bit selfish. Or lazy. A 7, max. That was me.

I can’t do deadlines when everyone is dying. I actually wrote that on my resignation letter. How grand was I? I thought it captured the mood of the day, a mix of the political, the desperate, the personal. Eventually, I put down the wineglass and redrafted. Said something simple like, Time to move on and maybe write? and my publishers understood without asking me more.

He made me feel who I’d been all those years ago with Ellis—who am I kidding? He reminded me of Ellis and not just in looks but how intense he was, how hidden, and I became the boy I’d once been, living out the fantasy of a long-gone youth.

paint-splattered bed in the corner and me making martinis naked, as G painted an abstract aberration of light across a field. It was everything Ellis and I had once planned. It was beautiful and, occasionally, it hurt.

I’ve got it, he said. It: the shorthand we all understood.

Many contemplate suicide and refuse to eat. They’re not force-fed, but are allowed to drift off slowly to that sought-after end. Our dead are placed in body bags, as any blood-borne virus would be, and are whisked off pretty sharpish to the morgue, where a sympathetic funeral director comes by and looks on with unprejudiced care. Many of the nurses are male and many are gay. They’ve volunteered to work this ward specifically. I can’t imagine what they must be thinking, the young ones especially.

Today, though, we have made better progress and when the sadness overwhelms him, I put down the pen, and begin to rub his feet. Reflexology is the new sex, I say. He looks at me incredulously. Humor me, I say. His feet are cold and he smiles as I touch him. Does this mean we’re going steady? he says, and I say, Oh, yes, you’re all mine, and his smile leads to a not-so-distant boyhood, which completely disarms me.

I wasn’t promiscuous, he declares. I stop. Ambushed by his quiet defense against the disease, the bigots, the press, the Church.

go to G’s room and need him to comfort me, but he’s asleep and dying. I’m fucked up. I leave.

try hard to be liked, I always have. I try hard to lessen people’s pain. I try hard because I can’t face my own.

I said to him that just because you can’t remember doesn’t mean the past isn’t out there. All those precious moments are still there somewhere.

Who’s that? he asks. Ellis, I say. Were you together? I think so, I say. We were then. Where was it taken? In France, in the South. You look cool. We do, don’t we? Was he your first love? Yes. Only one, probably. Is he dead? Oh God no. (Oh God no, not everyone dies, I want to say to him.) Where’s he now? In Oxford. He has a wife. Annie. Do you still see him? No, I say. He looks at me. Why? Because . . . (And I realize I don’t know how to answer this.) Because we lost contact. I lost contact. You could get back in contact. Yes. I could. Don’t you want him to know about this? Are you ashamed? No! Not that, I say. No. It’s complicated. But it isn’t, though, is it? Life isn’t anymore, you told me that. All this makes life simple.

We had each other and neither wanted more.

I’d never felt more myself. Or more in tune to what I was and what I was capable of. A moment of authenticity when fate and blueprint collide and everything is not only possible, but within arm’s reach. And I fell in love. Madly, intoxicatingly so. I think he may have, too. Just for a moment. But I never really knew.

I moved away from the window and pulled on a pair of swimming shorts. I knelt by the bed and thought, he’ll wake up soon and he’ll wonder what happened last night. And he’ll wonder what it means he’s become. And he’ll feel shame and the creeping shadow of his father. I know this because I know him. But I won’t let him.

And for the four remaining days—the ninety-six remaining hours—we mapped out a future away from everything we knew. When the walls of the map were breached, we gave one another courage to build them again. And we imagined our home an old stone barn filled with junk and wine and paintings, surrounded by fields of wildflowers and bees.

An airplane cast out a vivid orange wake that ripped across the violet wash. And I remember thinking, how cruel it was that our plans were out there somewhere. Another version of our future, out there somewhere, in perpetual orbit.

I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I’d no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross.

G died on 1 December 1989. I haven’t cried. But sometimes I feel as if my veins are leaking, as if my body is overwhelmed, as if I’m drowning from the inside.

And Ellis said, What’s a muse? And you said, A rare force, personified as a woman, who inspires creative artists. Just like that, you said it. As if you’d memorized it. I remember it word for word. No pause. No thought. Personified as a woman. That’s what you said. Why I remember all this now, I don’t know. Why am I scribbling to you, my dear dead long-gone friend, I do not know. Maybe, at least, to say you are my muse, Dora. I’m here because of you.

I said, They live underground for most of their lives in a kind of larval stage, drinking sap from roots. Then, after about three years, they emerge into the heat of midsummer, climb out onto a nearby plant and shed their skin. That’s when the transformation begins, I said. And it’s only during the last three weeks of their lives that they live above ground and the males call out their song. And sometimes it’s for mating and sometimes protest. So what d’you think? I said. Think about what? he said. The story. It sounds familiar, right? Oh God, he said. This isn’t an analogy for gay men, is it? Think about it, I said. We all had to come out of the dark to sing.

And now, I’m nervous. Naked in front of the mirror, I scour every inch of my body, searching for those telltale purple smudges that have afflicted others. I find nothing.

said that Ellis and I talked of things in the moment. I said we just existed in each other’s presence, because that’s how it felt. Often in silence. And to a child it was a good silence, because nothing felt misconstrued. There was a safety to our friendship, I said. We just fit, I remember saying.

There’s something about first love, isn’t there? she said. It’s untouchable to those who played no part in it. But it’s the measure of all that follows, she said.

Look! The stage was heaving with gyrating bodies. Leather queens in a dance-off with punks, and among them, suburban kids living a long-contested fantasy. I handed Annie a beer. The music was too loud for conversation so we drank fast and a change of record propelled us back onto the floor. “Dance Little Lady Dance.” And oh we did! The light show flared off satin shorts and glistening shoulders and I felt overdressed and I took off my T-shirt, Annie laughing at me. I can’t hear you, I shouted. Her hand on her chest. I. Love. This. And on the large screen behind her, Busby Berkeley dance routines played on a loop. The air was flecked with sweat and stank of poppers, and leather boys danced hard. The light show dared itself, and strobes caught the delight on Annie’s face, her hair plastered to her forehead. A mustachioed man danced next to us, white vest and gloves. He stuck a small bottle under her nose and I watched her gasp. You OK? I mouthed. She nodded, stunned. Fuck, she mouthed. Smiled. Black light drenched the room and her teeth glowed brilliant white. Her bra too, visible at the deep V of her shirt. I pointed. The gloved hands were raised above us, fingers flickering like feathers. Look, Annie! Doves flying! I shouted. I gasp. A hand down the back of my jeans has found my crack. A blast of poppers hits my nose and my heart thumps to the bass notes of desire.