Easy

LaVieEnRose

You know as well as I do the tremendous about of baggage and bullshit I need to set aside in order for the following statement to be true, but get ready to be amazed, because here we are: I was not the first fucker on Liberty Avenue to get my little heart in a blender over our little Sunshine. That dubious honor goes to a young twink who shall remain nameless, because I have no idea what the fuck his name is.

Allow me to take us back on a journey through time. I'd just brought a client out to as chophouse a few blocks from Liberty, and when I gave my ticket to the valet, who was cruising me like a goddamn sea liner, I realized I'd seen him before, though I didn't think I'd ever fucked him. All jokes aside, those slight blonde things aren't normally my type, and he couldn't have been older than twenty, and God knows I'd learned my lesson at that point about giving any hope to a teenager. I'd known Justin for maybe two or three months at that point and was starting to give up the fantasy of shaking him any time soon.

The valet had a buddy coming over to take over his shift, and he came up to the stand while he was putting on his jacket. “You gonna see him tonight?” he asked the first kid.

“I hope so. He was there last night.”

“You talk to him?”

He grinned. “He bought me a drink. Told me I had nice eyes. He is blonder than you would believe.”

“And then bent you over in the back room...”

He shook his head. “He's not like that. He's just...he's kind. He looks at you when you're talking, and he asked me questions and he was really listening! And he has this smile...”

His buddy laughed. “You are so fucked. I'm gonna find you doodling your names together in your notebook.”

He sighed dramatically. “Mr. and Mrs. Justin Taylor.”

The other guy came back with my Jeep and I gave the twink a long look to give him something to jerk off to later and got behind the wheel.

“Huh,” I said to myself as I drove off, and I went home and changed and headed to Babylon.

Justin was there, dancing with a few guys who would have fucking split the kid in two given half a chance. I danced with Michael and drank with Emmett and at the end of the night collected the little foundling and hauled him back to the loft.

He was slowly working his way down to my cock when I said, “What's your last name?”

“Taylor,” he said, without lifting his lips away from my stomach. Figures.

I raked a hand through his hair. “Met a friend of yours today.”

“Mmm?”

“Said you bought him a drink. Told him he had nice eyes.”

“Dunno,” he said, working his tongue around my bellybutton.

Whatever. I closed my eyes as he got to my cock and concentrated on the really tremendous way he took all of me down his throat, the fucking savant, and the vague question of whether Taylor was with a Y or an I.

**

That's the way it is with Justin, has been for as long as I've known him. It happens over and over again; he meets these fuckers, and without even meaning to, they get the idea that they mean something to him. And fuck does he mean something to them. It's that face of his, inarguably, but there's more to it than that. Justin has a way of focusing on people, on making them feel like they're the only person in the world for however many minutes he's talking to them, and then Justin walks on and continues his life with no goddamn idea. And look, I'm not saying I don't have the ability to hang some fuckers up on me, but with me it's strategic, it's artful. Justin to this day does not believe me that he does that to people.

I've never worried that I'm just another one of his admirers, because, well, that's fucking ridiculous, but I'm also not under some delusion that that strange little charm of his didn't work on me; do you think I regularly tell the gym teacher story to tricks I bring home? Even so, I did at one point become a little concerned that this was some kind of mystique I'd made up about the kid and that that was perhaps a symptom of...something. But proof that this was not a quality in Justin I'd imagined came one day when Michael sat me down all furtive and urgent at the diner, a few weeks after he'd gotten serious with the professor, when I hadn't thought about that particular aspect of the Justin Taylor experience in a while, because I'd been a little busy with the new and exciting Justin Taylor experience of trying to get him not to have panic attacks in the middle of class and not to wake up screaming every single night.

So when Michael said, “Look, for both of our sakes, can you keep your boyfriend on a tighter leash?” my mind went somewhere in that neighborhood.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I said.

He sighed and leaned towards me. “Ben came home last night going on and on about the great conversation he'd had with Justin yesterday. How he's never met someone with that kind of recall for classic literature. That he has such interesting interpretations of fucking...poetry. Yeets.”

“Yeats.”

“Whatever. I just sat there nodding like a fucking idiot. Yes, Ben, I totally know what you're talking about, Ben. I felt like a goddamn moron.”

“So they talked about poetry.”

“First it's poetry!” Michael said. “But, God, you know Justin, he's got that...that thing, about him, he's got that fucking face, soon they're gonna start talking about Buddhism and then you're one step away from the fucking kama sutra and if you think I'm gonna fuck someone who's thinking about Justin...”

I was surprised, because I'd always figured the boys to be generally immune to Justin's charms. Ted, obviously, had a hot streak a mile long for the kid, probably still does, and Michael did a bit of mooning after the whole King of Babylon fiasco, but for the most part they all treated him like he was about twelve years old, especially since...well.

I sat there and tried to keep a straight face while Michael catastrophized Ben and Justin's literary bonding and made absolutely zero promises to keep a tighter watch on Justin and somehow managed to get Michael to leave satisfied anyway. I swear, I don't even have to try with him. It's very sad.

After he was gone and I was working not to smile into the file I was going over, Debbie came over and refilled my coffee. “Well,” she said. “Sounds like Stella's getting her groove back, huh?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said, but for a second I gave up on not smiling. Justin was talking.

**

So there was that boy at Daphne's party, and at least three little baby gays and one very sad girl at PIFA who found Justin's number and started calling—ones he didn't sleep with, he'd just given them advice on a project or instructions on how talk to a boy they liked or complimented their fucking shirt—while Justin desperately tried to let them down easy and also remember their names, and then, well, you know what came after that. Even if Ethan hadn't turned out to have some sort of adoring fan fetish, it wasn't any sort of surprise that he went all-in on Justin.

He was very easy to love, was what it came down to. It was the openness, the bravery, the kindness, and, like I said, the face didn't hurt. I remember once, a couple months after I met him, we were in the elevator and the woman who lived the floor below me, who never spoken a word to me in five years, turned to Justin and said she'd just gotten back from the vet because her dog was sick. Justin asked all the right questions, comforted her, assured her she was doing everything he could for the little mutt.

“Do you know her?” I asked Justin incredulously, when she got off.

He shrugged. “No. People just talk to me.”

That's what it was, really. He was smart, quick, and most of all, he was easy to talk to. And the thing is, even though it meant he had to break hearts over and over again, he liked that quality about him, probably because sure, he liked being desirable, but really because he liked talking to people. People get the impression they're the only person that exists for him because, in that moment, they are. He goes in deep right away, and he remembers things people tell him, and he looks like he listens because he is listening. Hell of a thing.

So yes, maybe you see where I'm going with this.

**

Regardless, I never understood what Justin saw in Ethan, of all people, though I did ask him once, years later. It was while he was in the process of losing his hearing, pretty far along. I think he was totally deaf in his left ear by that point and relying heavily on a hearing aid in his right, but we weren't signing much yet and he was missing a lot. It's when he was feeling really shitty, too, so we spent a lot of time smoking pot and lying around the loft, which is what we were doing when I was flipping through the paper and I came across a tiny blurb and a blurry photo of one Ethan Gold.

I balled up the sports section and threw it at Justin to get his attention. “Check this out,” I said. “Your ex is filling in at the Symphony Orchestra.”

“The what?” he said, coming over. We were doing a lot of that, too.

“Symphony Orchestra,” I said. “Look.”

He studied the article, “I see he's sticking with the soul patch,” he said eventually.

I wound my arm around his waist. “What was it like kissing someone with that thing?”

“Like licking a fuzzy postage stamp.”

I shuddered, and Justin chuckled and sat down on the couch with me and lit a cigarette and we roasted Ethan until my stomach hurt from laughing. I was lounging back against the armrest catching my breath and watching his limbs hang languidly as he smoked. And because I was stoned as shit and my filter was gone, I said, “I swear, I don't know what you saw in him. I've never understood it. Leaving here, fine, you and I were fucked. But I never got the him part of the occasion. Equation.”

Justin blew smoke through his nose and didn't say anything for a while, and I wasn't really expecting him to. A lot of my regular questions went unanswered those days just from him not hearing me, so I figured something esoteric like this didn't have great odds of getting a response, and that was all right. Like I said, I was too stoned to care about much.

But finally he said, softly, “He let me talk about the bashing.”

I blinked, and Justin shrugged, a faint smile on his face like it was nothing.

“No one else let me talk about it,” he said. “He did.”

I sucked on my cigarette as he abruptly stamped his out.

“Let's go out,” he said. “I want to go out.”

I sat there and smoked while he went and got dressed and tried to imagine being easy to talk to. Imagined being easy to love.

**

It's been a long time since I took pride in being a difficult bastard, in watching the gears turn in Justin's head when he tries to figure out the thinnest of lines between what will get him a tender touch and what will get him frozen out, a long time since I felt vindicated when he failed, since I thought that meant something grand about me.

I just...I want you to know that.

I want you to know that at this point I'd be easier if I could choose.

Anyway. This story's not about me.

**

We went to Babylon that night, and Justin danced with his arms around my neck and his eyes closed. There aren't very many places in the world where you're allowed to just not be able to fucking hear, but clubs are a good one, and God, he was so uncomfortable with all of it back then. It's hard to really imagine now.

He wanted another drink, so I went to the bar with him. He was a lot clingier then, but fuck, so was I, and I think we both figured it was going to be like that forever. It's funny, because fuck if I'm tailing Justin and ordering his drinks for him nowadays. But back then, the thought of him going to work every day on his own, ordering around the building manager when we had a problem with our ceiling, fucking thriving just fine out there in the big bad world...I never thought we'd get here. I don't think he did either.

But that night, I ordered his drink for him, and he leaned back against the bar and watched people dancing, and a guy approached him on his bad side and gave him a slow once-over. “How's it going?” he said, and I nudged Justin in a way that hopefully seemed accidental and pointed to the guy with my chin. Justin shot me a grateful look before turning around so his good ear could get in on the action. He looked the guy up and down, shot him a sly smile.

“Buy you a drink?” the guy said.

Justin held up his glass. “How about I buy you one?”

“Seven and seven,” he said, and Justin hesitated and I knew he didn't get it, and the guy kind of did this small laugh and leaned in and said it in his ear, which wouldn't have worked even if he'd done it in Justin's good ear, because he really needed to see your lips, but especially in that left ear, you might as well have been talking into his foot.

God, it was rough. Nowadays he doesn't give a shit, is fine to watch hearing people squirm while they figure out how to communicate with him, but back then he was so embarrassed all the time, and it was a goddamn struggle for me to not swoop in and just fucking manage the situation.

His smile fell, and he said, “Uh, actually,” and touched his hearing aid self-consciously, and the guy sort of took a step back from him.

“Oh, man, sorry,” he said, talking loud and slow. “I'm just gonna...look, don't worry about it, okay? Maybe I'll catch up with you later, or...”

“Sure,” Justin said, and the guy practically sprinted away from the bar.

I sipped my drink and slipped my arm around Justin's waist and waited for him to look at me. It took him a while. “Asshole,” I said. “Like he was gonna use your ears anyway.”

“I used yours that first night,” Justin said.

“So you did.”

He sighed and threw back his drink. “I used to like talking to them.”

“I know.” I knew.

**

So now you see what I was getting at, right?

People, in case you didn't know, are ableist assholes.

People are uncomfortable, and impatient, and awkward, and judgmental.

And the sad, ugly truth of it is that people don't fall in love with Justin like they used to.

People, in case you didn't know, are cowards.

**

He met me at Nova a couple weeks after he'd decided to stop having sex with hearing guys. I'd just finished a passable session in the back room, while he'd been at this Deaf party he'd heard was going to be hot. Emily was dating this girl Samantha, and her brother was gay so Justin was trying to forge a friendship there, but frankly the gay seemed like kind of a pretentious asshole, which is really Justin's niche so I don't think he appreciated sharing. Anyway, he was the one who brought Justin to the party, where he'd been hopeful he was going to get to fuck someone besides me for the first time in a month.

I saw Justin looking for me by the bar, so I stuck my hand in the air until his eyes lit up. He sidled up to me and gave me an enthusiastic kiss.

Good party? I asked him.

Horrible party. He nuzzled my neck, grinding against me. I am frustrated.

By all means, be frustrated more often.

You're going to need to fuck me for a very long time.

If I must.

And then I'm going to hire you, he said. I need an ad campaign.

I kissed the hollow of his throat and felt him purr. Oh yeah?

Yeah. It's aimed at the Deaf community and the message is: Deaf men! It's okay to be sluts! And I'll be the face.

We can model it on those Uncle Sam recruitment posters, I said. You, staring down every Deaf fucker who dares to not be a slut.

I'm Justin Taylor, and I'm here to recruit you!

He was a little more serious about it later, back at the apartment. It's just hard, he said, getting a bottle of water out of the fridge. It's such a smaller pool, and a lot of them are coupled up and not open, or they're shy, and it's just...it's not like walking into a club, where everyone's there because they want to get fucked. It's just a random assortment of gay guys.

When I make my next million we'll open a Deaf club, I said. We'll have a picture of you on the door and people only get in if they're interested in fucking you.

See, now you're getting it.

You know, you were the hottest guy in Nova tonight, I said. I'm not kidding.

Sure, because I look healthy. He shrugged. There's privilege in that. Doesn't make it the reality. It's like passing for straight.

I gave an exaggerated shudder, and he rolled his eyes.

Deaf guys don't really want someone sick either, he said. They're not saints.

Well, Christ, what are you going around telling people you're sick for? Maybe you're the reason the party was a bust. Maybe it would have been a wild orgy but you killed the mood with stories about seizures.

Yeah, that's exactly what happened.

I kissed him. You could have gone in there and talked about ebola looking like this and they'd still all want to fuck you. They're just repressed.

I don't feel hot anymore, he said. Hearing guys avoid me and I avoid them, or if I say whatever and fuck one I'm anxious the whole time. And all the guys at this party were so goddamn respectable that I felt like a fucking hustler in comparison. Being hot's not worth much when no one will touch me.

I crowded all over him. No one, huh?

He smiled, tilting his head. You really think I was the hottest guy in there?

I nipped at his jaw. Let me prove it.

His arm started seizing when we were in bed a few minutes later: nothing major, but more than his usual hand twitches. I pulled back a little, my lips still barely an inch from his, and made eye contact.

“It's okay,” he said. “I'm here, keep going.”

You sure?

He nodded and tightened his legs around my waist, so I did, laying a hand on that arm to keep tabs on it, maybe comfort it a little, I don't know. When we were finished, panting, sticky, he lay with his head on my chest, more worn out than he usually is. I played with the scar above his ear.

“What am I supposed to do if that happens when I'm with someone else?” he said softly.

I lifted his chin so he could see me answer. Then you tell them whether or not you want them to keep going.

I'm going to freak them out. I freak everybody out.

Come on, I said.

I used to turn heads.

You still do, idiot.

Yeah, but then what? Whenever I'm with other people I feel...contagious, he said. Like I should apologize to them for having to touch me. And there's always the scars on a third of my body or the occasional panic attack if someone startles me if I need something else to feel self-conscious about.

Sunshine.

“I miss being touched,” he whispered. “I miss people.”

I ran my hands up and down his body, firmly, and then I fucked him again, because what the hell else could I do, but it's not as if I was lying here wondering why that wasn't enough for him, or I was going to give some fucking lecture about who cares what other people thought, he had me. Christ. If Justin were the only guy in the world who wanted to have sex with me, I'd probably take a swan dive off our balcony. We're not straight people, or his respectable little friends. We're Brian and Justin, and we're here to recruit you.

We'll do your ad campaign. I'll find you some Deaf sluts, I promised him, mid-thrust. Just absolutely filthy Deaf guys. You want some epileptic sluts? You can have those too.

“Okay,” he said, his face tucked into my neck.

I would have done anything, but there just wasn't much I could do but make him feel hot and wanted and sated, so I did that for a long time.

**

We went back to Pittsburgh the week after that for Vic's birthday, which Deb still liked to celebrate and we usually try to make it. It was Justin's first time seeing the baby, and he loves kids so he was pretty amped. One we got there, though, he cooed over her and pinched her cheeks but demurred out of holding her every time someone tried to hand her off. He was casual about it, so I don't think anyone else really noticed, and it even took me seeing him suddenly have to check his phone or get someone a drink a couple times before I put it together.

Hold her, I signed to him, subtle, leaning in. I'll stay close.

He cast me a glance, and I tried to look encouraging, and he nodded a little and accepted Ivy next time someone tried to hand her over. I wasn't really worried—though I can't say a bit of me wasn't picturing what he did to that laptop—but I hovered for Justin's sake, making like I just wanted to poke at the baby.

Hunter was there with his new girlfriend, Alexandra—imagine trying to explain that one, hey, let's go meet my trainwreck extended family for my dead great-uncle's birthday—which was obviously exciting for Michael and Ben, but for Justin too. Hunter didn't sign much, since he was practically out of Pittsburgh when Justin was diagnosed, but the two of them had started texting back and forth pretty frequently. It was fucking weird whenever I remembered that Hunter was only three years younger than him. Now that Hunter had grown up some it was fine, but God, when he first popped into our lives he and Justin might as well have been in different generations. I don't think Justin had been that young since he was in diapers.

Justin was more interested in the girlfriend than he had any right caring about a straight person. Are you looking for a wife? I asked him, pouring myself a drink while he sat on the counter, swinging his legs. Because I think she's taken.

She knows he's positive, Justin said. I asked.

I would imagine you want to make sure all your personal shit is already out in the open before you introduce someone to Debbie, I said.

It's just nice, I think. That she'll see past it. Not a lot of people will do that.

I'm glad you haven't given up the dream that someone someday might love you, I said, feeding him a sip of my drink.

Thank you. I'm a beacon of hope. We were showing off, signing as fast as we physically could, which we always do when we're in front of the Pittsburgh people. I like to remind them how far they have to go, and it's good for the ego to see them gawk at us and our little world like they used to, sue me. Plus, look, if I can remind Justin that sign language is fucking cool and people think it's fucking cool that he knows it, so much the better.

Which didn't mean I didn't get a little prickly when Alexandra came over and said, “I think sign language is so amazing,” to Justin, because, okay, yes, it's cool, but at the same time, there's a difference between recognizing it as an interesting language and looking at it like a novelty instead of just literally what Justin uses to communicate every single day, and it's subtle. Still, I interpreted it when Justin looked at me, and Justin beamed at her in that sunshiney fashion and got to work teaching her a few signs, like he always does on the odd occasion he meets a hearing person who's not too intimidated to talk to him. I drifted back to the living room and arranged some of Deb's tchotchkes into more interesting formations, nursing my drink. Blake came over to me after a while and made small talk about Kinnetik, and the developments at Vic Grassi House, and the success of Justin's last art show, and eventually just about Justin. And when the topic settled on him, Blake switched to signing, even though he wasn't great, and...well. I appreciated that.

So he decided against the surgery? Blake said.

Yeah.

He nodded. It was risky.

Yeah, but that wasn't the whole reason. I shrugged. He's sick of changing.

Probably very sick of changing for other people.

I raised an eyebrow. That a dig?

No, not at all. This is something a lot of people I've met in situations like Justin's have to go through. Understanding that it's not them and their bodies that are the issue, that it's other people and their refusal to adapt.

Social model of disability, I said.

Ah, I see you've read up.

I hadn't. Justin told me about it.

That's something I've really always admired about Justin, Blake said, and fuck, was he blushing? Ever since I've known him I noticed it.. He has a really strong ability to see what he needs to change, where he's the one who needs to adapt, and when it's somebody else's problem and he needs to stand strong. It's very impressive.

Okay, I thought to myself, sipping my drink, after Blake had gone back to his husband. So it took a little bit longer than it used to, but this fucker was definitely in love with Justin. All right, okay, good to know.

Justin wandered over and tucked himself under my arm.

Made a friend? I asked, with a nod towards Alexandra.

She was still watching Justin, with a look in her eyes I'd seen before.

I think maybe, he said.

**

A bunch of us ended up heading out to Woody's after the party: Melanie, Michael, Hunter and Alexandra, Emmett and Drew, me and Justin. I was trying to pace myself because I'd already had a few at the party and because Justin was sitting there drinking ginger ale, but Melanie and Michael were enjoying a night of freedom from the kids and getting fucking plastered, which was pretty amusing. Before too long the two of them were up by the pool tables dancing to no music. This is the straightest thing to ever happen in Woody's, Justin said. We need to take blackmail pictures.

Drew and Emmett were watching the football game playing and having a heated discussion about the performance of one of the players, I don't know. I scratched the back of Justin's head and scanned the bar, automatically checking out my options even though I wasn't really planning on acting on anything, and my eyes fell on a kid by himself at the end of the bar, cute, dark-haired, maybe twenty-five, with a hearing aid in one ear.

Sunshine, I said.

“Hmm?”

Look.

His eyes lit up and he set his drink on the bar. If you'll excuse me, he said, and he was over there in a flash, doing his sexy lean against the bar, talking to the guy first with his voice, then a little signing. This kid definitely wasn't a fluent signer, but he knew some, and fuck, he was hanging on Justin's every word.

Justin was talking.

“Look at that,” I said softly, to no one in particular.

Drew clearly thought it was for him. “I will never get you two.”

“No, you won't.” It was funny, though, because I did sort of knew what he meant, because at the moment it struck me that the two of us were sort of opposites, in a way, not that I thought Drew was perceptive enough to pick up on what I meant, but whatever, this story's not about him.

Look, on paper, I'm a catch, we all know that, let's not bullshit. I'm fucking gorgeous, I have money, I bring straight men to their knees. And, three-balls-short-of-a-walk aside, I've got a perfectly functional body without a lot of grounds for discrimination. I look great, from a distance. It's when you get close and see the fucking stack of neuroses and baggage and hang-ups that I become...well, I would have said impossible, but we'll just go with damn near close to.

And then we have Justin, who people are writing off immediately because he's Deaf, because he's sick, because on paper he sounds like he's difficult. But underneath that...God. You have never met someone so open, honest, so goddamn able to give himself. You never will. And maybe there are fewer people nowadays who are going to take the time to see through that, maybe he's not for everyone the way he used to be, maybe it's about how deeply people love him nowadays instead of still broadly, but...God, it's easy.

“Who would have thought you two would be the most healthy couple I know,” Hunter said into his beer, and I watched Justin usher the hard of hearing kid off somewhere and concentrated all my energy on not pumping my fist in victory. The kid watched Justin go off first, his eyes tracking his ass. He was toast.

Because here's the thing. Justin hasn't lost anything. The world has.

People are going to be too goddamn stupid to notice it nowadays, and I'm not feeding you some line of bullshit about how that doesn't suck. All I'm saying is...just because they don't take the time to see it anymore doesn't mean anything's changed. He may not be as easy for strangers to fall head over heels for anymore, but take it from someone who knows, you bastards: he is still very easy to love.