The Man Who Folded Himself (12 page)

What I'm trying to get at is that it started almost accidentally.

Don rubbed himself abstractedly and then stretched and rolled over on his stomach. He reached over and grabbed a pillow above my head. “You want one?” I nodded. He fluffed it and shoved it under my head, then grabbed another one for himself. He didn't roll away; instead, he sighed and let his arm fall across my chest.

Absentmindedly I reached up and stroked his arm. In response,
he gave me a casual hug.

And then he was looking at me and our eyes were locked in another of those glances. He was mysterious. I was curious. His smile was bottomless. “What is it? I asked.

In answer, he slid himself upward and kissed me.

Just a kiss. Quick, affectionate—and loaded with desire.

He pulled back and looked at me, still smiling, watching my reaction.

I was confused. Because I had accepted it. I had let him kiss me as if it were a totally natural thing for him to do. I hadn't questioned it at all. His eyes were shining, and I studied them carefully. He lowered his face to mine again….

This time the kiss was longer. Much longer.

And he didn't just kiss me. He slid his arms around me and pulled me to him.

And I helped.

We stretched out side by side, facing each other on the water bed. We put our arms around each other. And we kissed.

I realized I liked it.

I liked it.

“Don,” I managed to gasp, “We shouldn't—”

He studied me. “But you want to, don't you?”

And I knew he was right.

“Yes, but—” His face was so open, his eyes were so deep. “But it's wron g—”

“Is it? Why is it?”

“Because it's not right—”

“Is it any worse than masturbation? You masturbated yesterday, Danny, I know. Because I did too. You were alone in the house, but you're never alone from yourself.”

“I—I—but masturbation isn't—I mean, that's—”

“Danny—” He silenced me with a finger across my lips. “I want to give you pleasure, I want to give you me. You have your arms around me. You have your hands on me. You like what you feel, I know you do.”

And he was right. I did like it. I did enjoy it.

He was so sure of himself.

“Just relax, Danny,” he whispered. “Just relax.” He kissed me again and I kissed him back.

I've done it twice now. I've been seduced and I've seduced myself. Or maybe I should say, after Don seduced me, I seduced Danny.

I'm filled with the joy of discovery. A sense of sharing. My relations with Don—with Dan—have taken on a new intensity. There is a lot more touching, a lot more laughter, a lot more . . . intimacy.

I look forward to tonight—and yet, I also hold myself back. The anticipation is delightful. Tonight, tonight . . . (I begin to understand emotion. Now I know why there are love songs. I touch the button on my belt. I fly to meet myself.)

So this is love.

The giving. The taking.

The abandonment of roles. The opening of the self.

And the resultant sensuality of it all. The delight. The laughing joy.

Were I to describe in clinical detail for some unknown reader those things that we have actually done, the intensity and pleasure would not come through. The joy would be filtered out. The written paragraphs would be grotesque. Perverse.

Because love cannot be discussed objectively.

It is a subjective thing. You must be immersed in it to understand it. The things that Danny and I (Don and I) have done, we've done them out of curiosity and delight and sharing. Not compulsion. Delight.

And joyous sexuality. We are discovering our bodies. We are discovering each other. We are children with a magnificent new toy. Yes, sex is a toy for grown-ups.

To describe the things we have been doing would deprive them of their special intimacy and magic. We do them because they feel good. We do them because in this way we make each other feel good. We do it out of love.

Is this love?

It must be. Why didn't I do this sooner?

And yet, I wonder what I am doing.

A vague sense of wrongness pervades my life. I find myself looking over my shoulder a lot—Who's watching me? Who's judging my days?

Is it wrong?

I don't know.

There is no one I can talk to about it, not even myself. Every Don I know—every Dan—is caught up in the same whirlpool. None of us is any closer to the truth. We are all confused.

I'm alone for the first time in days.

It makes no difference. I'm still talking to myself.

I wish some Don from the future would come back to advise me—but even that's a useless wish. Any Don who did come back would only be trying to shape me toward his goals, regardless of mine.

(I did meet one once. I don't know if it was intentional or accidental. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, maybe older; there were tiny lines at the corners of his eyes. He was a little darker and a lot heavier than me. He said, “You look troubled, Danny. Would you like to talk about it?” I said yes, but when we sat down on the couch, he put his arm around my shoulders and tried to pull me close. I fled into yesterday—Is that my future? Am I condemning myself to a life of that?)

(Is condemning even the right word? There are times when I am lying in Danny's arms when I am so happy I want to shout. I want to run out in the middle of the street and scream as loud as I can with the overwhelming joy of how happy I am. There are times when I am with Don that I break down and cry with happiness. We both cry with happiness. The emotion is too much to contain. There are times when it is very good and I am happier than I have ever been in my life. Is that condemnation?)

(Must I list all those moments which I would never excise? The times we went nude swimming on a California beach centuries before the first man came to this continent. The night when six of us,
naked and giggling, discovered what an orgy really was. [I've been to that orgy four times now—does that mean I have to visit it twice more? I hope so.] I had not realized what pleasure could be—)

But when I think about it logically, I know that it's wrong. I mean, I think it's wrong. I'm not sure. I've never had to question it before.

Man is supposed to mate with woman. That's the order of life, isn't it?

But does that mean man must not mate with man? Is it possible there's more?

And always, there is this. No matter how many arguments I marshal against, I am still outvoted by one overwhelming argument for.

It's pleasurable. I like it.

So I rationalize. I tell myself that it's simply a complex form of masturbation, and masturbation is all right. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world enjoy masturbating, and the other five percent are liars.

But this isn't simply masturbation. I know it. This is something more. I respond to Dan as if he were another person, as if he were not myself. I am both husband and wife, and I like both roles.

Oh my God—what have I done to myself?

What have I done?

Rationalization cannot hide the truth. How can anything that has given me such happiness leave me so unhappy?

Please. Someone. Help.

I put the pages down and looked at Don. The mood of the moment had abruptly evaporated. “You've read this, haven't you?”

He wouldn't meet my gaze; he simply nodded.

I narrowed my eyes in sudden suspicion. “How far ahead of me are you?” I asked. “One day? Two days? A week? How much of my future do you know?”

He shook his head. “Not much. A little less than a day.”

“I'm your yesterday?”

He nodded.

“You know what we were about to do?” I held up the papers meaningfully.

He nodded again.

“We would have done it if he hadn't stopped us, wouldn't we?”

“Yes,” said Don. “In fact, I was just about to—” He stopped, refused to finish the sentence.

I thought about that for a moment. “Then you know if we are going to—I mean, you know if we did it.”

He said, “I know.” His voice was almost a whisper.

Something about the way he said it made me look at him. “We did—didn't we?”

“Yes.”

Abruptly, I was finding it hard to talk. He tried to look at me, but I wouldn't meet his gaze.

“Dan,” he said. “You don't understand. You won't understand until you're me.”

“We don't have to do it,” I said. “Both of us have free will. Either of us can change the future. I could say no. And you—even though you have your memory of doing it, you could still refuse to do it again. You could change the past. If you wanted to.

He stretched out a hand. “It's up to you. . . . ”

“No,” I shook my head. “You're the one who makes the decisions. I'm Danny, you're Don. Besides, you've already—you've already done it. You know what it's like. You know if it will . . . be good, or if we should . . . avoid it. I don't know, Don; that's why I have to trust you.” I looked at him. “Do we do it?”

Hesitation. He touched my arm. “You want to, don't you?”

After a moment I nodded. “Yes. I want to see what it's like. I—I love you.”

“I want to do it too.”

“Is it all right, though?” I held my voice low. “I mean, remember how troubled Don looked?”

“Danny, all I remember is how happy we were.”

I looked at him. There was a tear shining on his cheek.

It was enough. I pressed against him. And we both held on tight.