Less Is Lost (Arthur Less #2)

by Andrew Sean Greer

He thinks each day will be better than the next; he is wrong. He awakens the next morning and thinks it again; he is wrong. He thinks we are free to become our true selves, that we are free to love as we choose. A mindset so UnitedStatesian, you could serve it with ketchup. But, friends, you cannot live on ketchup.

When he moved to New York after college, in the eighties, Arthur Less tried his hardest to be a good gay. He joined a gym that turned out to be a sex dungeon. He joined a political party that turned out to believe a conspiracy theory about government health clinics. He joined a German-language society that turned out to be a sex dungeon. He joined a book group that turned out to be only for a political party. He joined a role-playing game club that turned out to be a sex dungeon. He joined a sex dungeon that turned out to be a government health clinic. It was all so confusing.

I want to talk with you about you and Federico. I want to talk about love. I have been with my wife, Federico’s great-aunt, for a long time. I want to tell you it isn’t something you celebrate every ten years. Or every five years. It’s every day. You understand me? I believe in a Supreme Being. I don’t know who God is, I don’t know anything about God, but I know Maria is here because of God. The problem in the world is that we aren’t kind to one another. It’s kindness and human spirit that drives us. We have one another. That’s all we have. We must celebrate them. Remember that. I don’t care who you love, but if you love someone…if you love someone, you have to love them every day. You have to choose them every day.”

“I’m working on a backstory and I want to feel what it was like.” “Being gay?” Thomas smiles. “Being in Delaware.” “Delaware!” Less says, utterly perplexed. He can think of nothing to say about Delaware. It is like trying to describe an airplane meal you had half a century ago.

Arthur Less breaks down in racking sobs that are equal parts relived sorrow and musical-theater joy, and show me the homosexual who could sift out which is which.

“Does that mean your anxiety’s better?” She says, “My doctor doesn’t know. Nobody knows. I’m a curiosity. I think my anxiety has reached middle age. I think it’s going to age right along with me.”

But I can say: I have never seen America. But I need to, perhaps to understand my partner—his love of colonial-era ketchup and Prohibition-era “root beer,” the Mont Blanc of ice in every sip of water, his terror of talking about race, his fascination with the island of Great Britain and indifference to the continent of Africa, his defense of the Democratic Party, his defense of the Fahrenheit scale, his belief, despite centuries of evidence to the contrary, that we are free to become our true selves, that we are free to love as we choose, that happiness is within our grasp if we reach for it. Perhaps. But also—to understand myself. What if you had to wake up every day with someone promising a miracle, and every day you believed it, and every day it didn’t happen? Don’t we all look at our beloveds sometimes and think, Why do I stay? Why do we stay? There is something vital in staying.