The First Five Years

Justin found the statistic pretty early, before he was even wearing hearing aids, back when the news he was going to be Deaf within a year still felt like some strange practical joke, because yeah, Justin missed some stuff if he wasn’t looking at you, yeah, he didn’t hear great at high frequencies, and yeah, sometimes he got this buzzing that was so loud he couldn’t hear what was right in front of him, but on a macro level or whatever the fuck, he was fine. So God knows what prompted Justin to look it up back then. He likes to plan and anticipate the worst case scenarios, that’s our Sunshine.

“Eighty-eight percent,” he said from his laptop.

I was putting on a shirt to go out, and I paused. “Eighty-eight?”

“Eighty-eight.”

“Christ, that’s bleak.” I came in and read over his shoulder. His hair smelled like lime and I was temporarily distracted.

“Brian.”

“This is all mixed couples?”

“Married couples, yeah.”

“Oh.” I went to the fridge and got out a bottle of water. “Then it’s just a bunch of straight people bringing down the average.”

“Deaf/hearing shotgun weddings?”

I shrugged.

“God.” Justin pushed back from the desk, rolling his chair back and forth. “And that’s just in the first five years.”

“Why do you care about married people?” I said. “We’re not married.” Yeah, yeah, famous last words.

He gave me a look that showed me how very un-married he was convinced we were, which gave me a bit of the heebie jeebies but was also, objectively, pretty fair at that point.

“You have enough to worry about without the success rate of our imaginary marriage,” I said.

“Can’t argue with that.”

I slapped him on the shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go out.”

He tilted his head back. “What?”

“Out.”

“Okay.”

**

Two months later, we were walking to the grocery store and he was almost plowed down by an SUV.

The driver looked up and slammed on the breaks at the last minute, and if he hadn't, that would have been it. Justin didn't hear it, and I was too far away to grab him.

“Jesus CHRIST!” I screamed at him, practically throwing him through the doorway and back into the safety of the loft. “You couldn’t FUCKING hear a goddamn car? You’re walking around pretending like you’re fucking fine when you can’t hear a goddamn car?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and I realized he was shaking, which made me want to yell at him more because goddamn him for being scared and vulnerable and for getting sick again, goddamn him being small and out of reach of me, how fucking dare he, but I forced myself to take a breath and speak softly.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re all right.”

A week later this a few of his endless medical bills came in, and I thought about what I was paying for his free market health insurance that still wasn’t covering all this shit and did some research and looked through Kinnetik’s paperwork and considered the fact that I couldn’t fucking relax when he was out of my sight and I gathered up all my evidence and sat down across from him and said, “So about that marriage thing.”

It wasn’t until months later, when we were driving back from Vermont and he was asleep and warm and looking like a fucking angel, that I thought about the eighty-eight percent.

**

We dealt with it by joking about it, like we did just about every aspect of Justin losing his hearing.

“I still can’t believe you got married without me,” Michael said at the diner one day, while Justin was refilling our waters.

“It's fine, we're almost definitely going to get divorced anyway,” I said. “Eighty-eight percent of mixed marriages divorce in the first five years. We just saved you a plane ride.”

Justin said,“What?”

“See?” I said. “See how annoying that is? I have no choice but to divorce him.” I was signing some while I spoke around then, even though my signing was still terrible, because there’s no way it was terrible as Justin’s hearing.

He said, “No, come on, what’d I miss?”

I turned in my seat so he could see my lips. “We’re discussing our dismal odds of marital success.”

“Oh, yeah, we’re screwed,” Justin said.

“Doesn’t that scare you?” Michael said.

“We’re terrified, I said, with all the sincerity I could possibly muster. “We are quaking in our boots.”

Justin did a little quaking dance.

“I don’t know how you can be blasé about this,” Michael said. “There’s, what, basically a one in ten chance you guys won’t be divorced in five years.”

“That’s not even a proper use of statistics,” Justin said.

I said, “Sunshine, can I get a piece of apple pie?”

“Yeah,” he said, but he just dropped onto my lap and kissed me instead. Fantastic service as always at the Liberty Diner.

Michael shook his head. “I don’t know how you two are making jokes about this.”

“We've never been much for math,” Justin said. “We're gay.”

My patience was wearing thin. “What the fuck do you expect us to do, Michael, divorce now to spare you the stress of holding your breath for five years? The kid needed health insurance.”

“Most marriages fail,” Justin said.

Michael put on his haughty face. “Not gay marriages.”

“Well, there you go!” Justin said, because he has never been able to resist fucking with Michael. “We’re saved.”

“Eighty-five percent of normal gay marriages last,” Michael said. “Twelve percent of yours do.”

Justin turned to me. “Nooooormal. Does that make us abnormal?”

“I think he’s talking about you,” I stage-whispered.

“No, come on, I didn't mean—”

“So offensive.” Justin stood up. “I’m gonna go cry in the bathroom now. In the handicapped stall where I belong, Michael, don't worry.”

“Get me my pie first!” I called, as Michael sunk his head down to the table.

Justin mentioned it to me later, though, lying in bed in the afterglow, the orange light reflecting off the downy hair on the small of his back that I couldn’t stop petting. “I don't think it means us,” he said. “The statistic.”

“Of course it doesn't,” I said, because...I mean, you've been around, you know the song as well as I do at this point; breaking up is the kind of petty, everyday shit that those noooormal people do, and Justin and I are a lot of shit but we are not petty, everyday, or normal.

Justin arched his back into my hand. “I just mean...it's for Deaf people who marry hearing people who don't know how to sign. And we're learning to sign together.” He wasn't better than me yet.

“Roll over,” I said, and I cleaned him up.

“And it's Deaf people who feel like hearing people can't understand, like...what they've been through. Who have baggage and stuff. But I don't have any of that. It's not like I was born Deaf.” He played with my fingers. “There was nothing of me before you.”

“Justin.”

He shivered. “I like when you say my name.”

**

You don't need a recap. Justin met Gregory, he got better at signing than I was, I had a little bit of a freakout.

This is how it fucking happens! I yelled at him, with my voice and with my hands. You find some whole other world and this whole fucking culture and I—

You are my culture, Justin said, kissing my face, my neck. You are my culture. There was nothing of me before you.

**

I already told you that last part, Justin already told you this one. We were in New York to find our apartment, I wanted to go uptown to see Yankee Stadium—I don't know, my uncle took me there once when I was a kid, it's a nice memory—and my cab got hit and I broke my foot.

And then I was sitting in my little half-room in the ER, whatever they call those curtained off things where Justin and I typically hang out when he needs a fluid IV or we're waiting for his neurologist to tell us his brain didn't explode on his last seizure, nice and hopped up on morphine. I was thinking, naively, that the hospital had actually fucking listened for once and called Michael—I was so fucking clear, here's my next of kin if you fucking kill me, here is the emergency contact, they are different people, if you won't give me my fucking phone call the one who can fucking hear you and he'll text Justin—and then I heard Justin's voice out in the ER lobby. God, you know this story. I have to tell this story?

All right, so. There are four instances of Justin's voice that haunt the shit out of me. Four times I would gladly, without an ounce of guilt or regret, wipe from my memory if I could.

The first is from the the night he woke up from his coma after he was bashed. They eased off the sedation and pulled the tube out, and his room was a crowded mess of doctors, nurses, his mom pushing through everyone to hold his hand. I was lingering by the door, halfway in and halfway out, fucking scared to death because at that point they didn't know what kind of brain damage he was going to have. They didn't know if he'd be able to draw, speak, walk, fucking be him anymore. They kept saying what a good sign it was that he was able to breathe on his own, and what the fuck, can you imagine trying to keep a fucking game face on when that is a good sign?

The first words Justin spoke weren't really words. He's tried to describe it to me, how he felt in those first few days after he woke up—that's the first thing he remembers outside of random flashes and feelings, nothing real concrete between asking me to prom and waking up in the hospital—but he can't really explain it and I can't really listen to it, but basically he was just extremely goddamn fucking confused, and nothing anything said to him was getting through to him correctly, like all the sounds were getting jumbled up, and everything was going way, way too fast, everyone asking him questions, saying hey, squeeze my hand, move your feet, sit up, open your mouth, blink your eyes, and he couldn't keep up.

So his first words were just sounds. Garbled, choked, miserable sounds.

And I stepped backwards out that door so goddamn fast and I didn't see him awake again until he appeared in Woody's like a ghost. So, a great time for Justin, a crowning moment of heartwarming bravery from me...yeah. That shit'll stay with you.

Christ. I know now that he knew the whole time I was there every night, but still, sometimes it really just hits me that he forgave me for that shit and it makes me want to scream at him for letting someone treat him like that, and isn't that just...well, we all know what it is, we know my bullshit at this point.

Anyway, The third one you know about already—the way he screamed in the hospital when the cold air hit his burns for the first time—and the fourth we'll get to someday, keep your shirt on. We're here to talk about the second, when I was lying there with a broken foot and I heard Justin hysterical at the check-in desk.

People kept talking to him, and he doesn't lipread well, and he has panic attacks in hospitals, and, if you were paying attention back there, some bad memories associated with not being able to understand people in hospitals.

And he thought I was dead.

God, it was...it was literal fucking torture. If someone were fucking designing a torture for me, that would be it, strapped down and unable to move and fucking knowing everything is okay while I listen to Justin lose his goddamn mind over some bastard he never, ever should have been asked to give a shit about.

He was crying, telling them all this fucking information about me like he was trying to prove that he deserved to see me, God, God.

There was an orderly across the hall in the next patient's room, so I yelled until I got his attention and said, “Do you see that guy at the front desk, blond guy, young guy, go get him, get him and bring him here.”

The orderly came hesitantly out in the hall and said, “Uh, hey...”

“No, you have to...fuck, you have to go get him,” I said. “He's looking for me, he doesn't...”

Look, why I didn't go right out and say, that is a Deaf person, go get him, I don't fucking know. I don't think I was trying to protect Justin's privacy or his ego or anything. I think I just wasn't goddamn thinking clearly, because he was crying and I just...it's not even that he was crying, you have to understand that, because Justin's not that rare a crier, especially not that winter, Jesus, so I've seen that, I can handle that, it's that all he needed in the world was me, not even for me to fucking do anything, just to put his eyes on me and he would be fine, and I couldn't do anything. I could have fixed him in a literal fraction of a second, even I could not fuck this one up, but I couldn't fucking get to him, and if you haven't figured out by now that I maybe have a little bit of baggage about not being able to get to Justin when something's wrong with him...well, I want some of whatever drugs you're on.

We have plenty of systems in place for making our life work easily for us. Stuff like the layout of the furniture in the apartment, to keep sight lines as clear as possible, we picked a place that had the open concept kitchen and living room they're always losing their shit over on House Hunters. We also picked a place with floors that conduct vibration well so he can feel if I stomp and had light switches installed right by the doorway so I can flick them and let Justin know when I'm home. And there's the basic stuff, of course, like lights for the doorbell and the alarm system. Even with all of that, there's not really a magic solution for a situation where I want Justin's attention and he's facing away from me, so back when he was still losing his hearing we came up with a very sophisticated system; I throw a lot of shit. Sometimes I throw it at him, if it's something soft or he's annoying me, but a lot of the time he's kind of far away and look, I've never claimed to be an incredible athlete outside of the occasional game of racquetball and various bedroom gymnastics, so often it's less “throw something at Justin” and more “create some kind of movement in his field of vision.”

So that's why I started throwing everything I could reach, from the blankets to my shoes to the lamp to the fucking bedpan, out into the hallway, while the orderly yelled at me to cut it the fuck out. That all was strategic. It didn't work, but it was strategic.

When I could still hear Justin screaming and I knew he hadn't seen anything and I just started yelling his name, that was maybe less strategic. But he still had a little bit of hearing left back then, and I thought, you know, maybe...

I don't know. There was nothing else to throw.

And then I heard him running down the hall, and of course I know how his feet sound, and I just stared at the doorway, come on come on come on, and then he was there, this goddamn crying worn out mess, and I signed fine fine fine fine, because that was all he needed right then, because...

Christ. You know why. We all know why. But I think that even though I am so far past the delusion that I would be okay if something happened—see, I can't even say the words, I just say something happened--to Justin, there have been times when I could convince myself that Justin would be okay without me. That he would be able to pick himself up and continue. I have to believe that whenever I can or else I just...God, I goddamn hate myself for doing this to him. And right then I couldn't pretend, and nowadays I rarely can.

If someone designed a torture specifically for me, it would be knowing that someone as goddamn luminescent as Justin has pinned his life to an asshole like me.

Imagine having to live with that. Imagine waking up every morning and forgiving yourself for making Justin Taylor—we are talking about Justin Taylor here, who I have removed from the world, who I have limited, questioned, broken, ruined—cry because he was worried about you.

It's an inhuman thing to ask.

Christ, this thing that the two of us do to each other, it's fucking unnatural.This is why I can never get on board with people who think that what Justin and I have is sweet and romantic, because...are you fucking kidding me? I look at how other little couples are and I feel...you know, bored out of my mind and vaguely nauseated, but I can't pretend a bit of me doesn't think, damn, that would be fucking nice, right, not to worry about your partner goddamn fucking trying to die on you all the time? Imagine getting to goddamn relax for a fucking second?

I'm the last person in this world to say the shit that Justin and I have is healthy; how could it be? It's barely survivable. You can barely breathe. It's just having your goddamn heart outside of your body.

You would have to be a goddamn idiot to want the shit that Justin and I have. I get that it's fun to look at, it's fun to imagine, but this is a fucking nightmare, caring this much, having absolutely zero delusions that you'll be able to function if something happens to him, that he'll be able to go on without you. You think that's cute? Try not being able to sleep because you're staring at the ceiling fucking paralyzed by the fact that one of you is inevitably going to die before the other one and you are such goddamn trash for a twenty-seven-year-old chronically ill twink that you can't goddamn imagine it. People were not made to feel all this shit. God knows I wasn't, at least. And you're telling me I'm supposed to do this shit and not be jealous of every fucker out there who's never loved anyone? You're telling me not to feel some nostalgia for that?

Now before you start panicking that this story ends with me running screaming into the night, everybody calm the fuck down and remember why we're all gathered here today, all right? I've felt the skin getting ripped off my body over how much he fucking ruins me, and I've felt the twenty-nine years of voided numbness without him, and I'm waking up every day and choosing the ruin, for some mysterious goddamn reason that has a lot to do with his mouth and his ass and the way he makes me laugh and the feeling in my stomach when I look at him like I'm being twisted up inside but I kind of like it, whatever it is, I keep fucking doing it. I'm not trying to keep you in suspense here with our little thesis statement, so let's go ahead and take care of any worry; this is a story about the twelve percent, you know it is, we aaaall goddamn know it, so relax. The last scene of this story's going to be me and Justin on our fifth anniversary, okay? I promise. Just hang in there through some shit first, because God knows I have.

Anyway, so in the meantime, I did a bad job of calming him down, despite signing fine, as strongly as I could, despite signing it on his chest because Justin calm down baby you are fine, because I was crying like a little bitch from the drugs and his shaking and his goddamn voice.

The doctor came in after a while to talk to us, while Justin was clinging to me like some kind of marsupial, and I asked why the fuck people hadn't listened when I said who to call and why Justin wasn't immediately led to my room. He, of course, knew nothing about it, wasn't involved, was so sorry.

And it occurred to me that I had been scared, I had been torn apart, I had, as discussed, had my organs regularly ripped out of my body by this kid, but I had never been kept in the dark the way Justin was, and is, and will be. People don't ignore me like they'll ignore him.

There are things I won't ever understand.

**

We hit a bit of a snag our second spring in New York. I have no explanation for why it wasn't a problem our first spring living next to the park, but all of a sudden here it was. Just Justin keeping me on my toes, I guess. Because this year, for the first time in the ten—ten!—years I'd known him, Justin started snoring.

Now, I should clarify, because here you're thinking, hang on, I thought the kid had hay fever from hell, and yes, you are right, of course this was not literally the first time he was snoring. He's always done it when his allergies are acting up or when he's got a cold, but it's usually kind of a quiet little snuffling thing and is not altogether unpleasant. Maybe even kind of cute.

This, and I say this with all previously-established affection in the world for the dear boy, was not fucking cute.

The first night I jerked awake and stared at him. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

He sounded like a truck. He sounded like a toilet flushing. I cannot overstate the vast amount of noise that was coming from such a small person.

And it kept goddamn happening. We tried a different antihistamine, we tried one of those fucking tea pots you stick up your nose, we tried those strips you stick to your face. Every-fucking-thing.

Justin was remarkably unsympathetic.

You've snored every night since I've met you, he said.

Yes, I know.

From your deviated septum.

And yet the person I sleep with doesn't seem to mind.

Which one?

I glared at him.

I never complained even when I was hearing, Justin said. I'm very understanding.

I don't snore like this, I said. Trust me.

Justin made a dubious noise.

I don't understand the fucking vibration of it doesn't wake you up, I said.

I'm a mystery, he said, still acting like this whole thing was a fucking joke, and look, I realize that not all of us have seizures when we don't sleep, but I still have a fucking company to run and a million cars to not be hit by on the way to work and that was becoming a challenge at this point because I couldn't goddamn sleep.

I got frustrated that night and flipped him over a little roughly, and he woke up startled and disoriented.

What the fuck? he said, turning on the light.

You're doing it again.

You scared the shit out of me, Brian. I should know better than to be rough with him when he's sleeping, because he doesn't sleep calmly, can't sleep calmly, but God, I was fucking short on sensitivity that night.

I don't know what the fuck you expect me to do! I said. I can't fucking sleep!

It's just snoring! God, get the fuck over it!

Not everyone in this house is fucking Deaf, Justin!

He got up and snatched his pillow off the bed. Maybe they should be.

Very mature, asshole! I signed at his back as he stomped off to sleep on the pull-out.

He apologized the next morning and made an allergist appointment, and I went out and bought earplugs, and we made it work for a few nights. Three days later he had a brutal asthma attack while he was at work, so he took it a lot more seriously after that. We fucked around with his meds, started him on allergy shots like he'd had when he was a kid, and he breathed and I slept.

I remembered that maybe they should be longer than I wanted to.

**

A couple months later I came home late and found him on his laptop in the office. He smiled brightly and then blew me, so, not a bad way to start my evening, then said, Oh, shit, I forgot I was making plans. Emily and Derek want to go to this concert on Friday, do you want to come?

Where?

Madison Square Garden.

Jesus. Who's playing?

Iron Maiden.

I raised an eyebrow at him. You know I hate to say it—

We can feel the beat, Brian.

What? Did he seriously think I didn't know that? That I was going to ask why they were going to a concert? Jesus Christ. I was going to ask if you'd checked about strobe lights.

Oh, shit. Yeah, I'll call.

He called the interpreting service and had them put them through to the venue, and after that song and dance finally hung up with his answer. No strobe lights. You want to come?

Yeah, sounds fun.

And it was fun, at first. Emily and I left together from work and met Derek and Justin and a couple other friends of Derek's—all Deaf, I'm their only hearing friend, besides Daph, who works way too many hours for concerts—at the Penn Station subway stop. The seats were awful, way up in the nosebleeds, but they'd chosen them strategically to be as close to the giant speakers as possible. So, you know, fantastic for them, and yeah, I got a kick out of watching Justin put his hands on the speaker and move around like he used to, but Christ, I am too old and too hearing for this shit. My ears were still ringing when we all crowded at a diner afterwards, sitting at a long table.

So, a little background here: this was the summer after I turned thirty-nine, Justin twenty-seven, and if you've got a good memory for numbers you'll remember we started learning to sign, granted languidly at first, when I was thirty-five and Justin was twenty-three. We'd been in New York for about a year and a half at that point, and we'd been friends with Derek and Emily for most of that, so it's not as if I was only signing with Justin; the vast majority of my non-sexual socializing, such as it may be, was in sign language. And now Emily had been working for me for months, so I was signing at work too.

All this to say, by this point I was a strong signer. I know this is something I'm going to be working on and improving until I die, but at that point I would have been comfortable calling myself fluent. I wasn't as quick or as beautiful as Justin or his friends, but I could say everything I want to say and understand what was said to me.

So you understand what I mean when I say that night at the diner was fucking impossible. I could barely see the people at the ends of the table, and everyone was a little drunk and signing on top of each other and there were five different conversations happening at once, and everyone hitting the table and tossing napkins at each other to get people's attention, and somehow I was the only one who was lost. Justin was a fucking social butterfly in the middle of it all, always is, trading inside jokes with Emily and signing dirty shit to me and getting to know Derek's friends we hadn't met. I wished that Daph was there so I wouldn't be the only lost hearing asshole.

Finally I managed to jump into a conversation Justin was having with Emily and one of Derek's friends. Kevin is Deaf royalty, Emily was saying. Fourth generation. His mom brought him to DPN when he was 2 years old.

Picket sign in one hand, stroller in the other, Kevin said.

DPN? Justin said, so I didn't have to. Not that I would have. I mostly just fake like I understand shit, with the Deaf kids.

Probably because they act like it's a federal offense when you don't get your references. Holy shit, oh my God, you little baby Deafie, Emily said, grabbing Justin's face. He batted her off. Deaf President Now, she said. 1988 at Gallaudet. Protest to finally get a Deaf President.

Did it work? I asked.

Sure did, Derek said.

I think it's my mom's sign that pushed it over the edge, Kevin said.

It was big, Derek said. Gallaudet in the headlines, Marlee Matlin on Ted Koppel. I do love Marlee Matlin.

You've got to take a Deaf studies class or something! one of Derek's other friends said to Justin. This is your history, you need to know your history.

Justin kind of slumped in his seat, and I glanced at him and said, It's not his history.

Emily slapped my hands. Come on, what? she said.

I mean it's great and all, but it's not like there's any reason he should know it really. He was a five-year-old hearing kid in 1988.

Justin looked at me.

You weren't born Deaf? Kevin said.

Thanks a lot, Justin said to me.

What?

Derek said, So what, the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, those aren't my history?

No, of course they are, I said. But that's different, that's genetic, that's your literal family and shit.

Derek said, Brian, are you saying all Black people are related? and I hit him with my menu.

There's studies on shit like that, Emily said. She signed something I didn't understand, past but with G-handshapes, then trauma.

I looked at Justin, who quickly fingerspelled Generational.

Thanks.

But Justin's disease is genetic, Derek said. It's literally generational.

Justin sipped his water and didn't say anything.

It's not his history, I said.

Emily rolled her eyes. Of course it's his history, and then she turned to Derek and signed something too fast for me to follow, and I picked at Justin's fries and wondered when my ears were going to stop hurting.

Justin was short with me the rest of the night, and I knew shit was going to boil over, and by the time we got home and he still hadn't said anything and God, I was sick to fucking death of waiting for it. I got undressed while he sat on the bed and played with his shoelaces.

Get your shoes off the bed, I said.

He slid them to the floor. You know, you made me feel really stupid tonight.

I gave a good reason why you shouldn't have to know something you didn't know. I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of making you feel stupid.

So you're telling me how I feel?

Christ, seriously? I'm not doing this sitcom shit with you, Sunshine.

How can you say that Deaf history isn't my history? Do you honestly believe that?

I shrugged and hung up my shirt.

And you're just fucking telling people we just met that I wasn't born Deaf?

So you're ashamed of that now?

I'm not ashamed, I just...don't want to sit around with a bunch of people discussing whether or not I'm Deaf enough for them.

Don't be ridiculous.

They couldn't tell from my signing that I wasn't born Deaf. Do you know how fucking exciting that is? And you ruined it. And why?

Stuff that happened with Deaf people in 1988 had nothing to do with you. How is this a conversation?

So, Stonewall. That's not my history?

Jesus, this kid. Of course that's your history.

How the fuck is that different?

Because if you'd been alive during Stonewall you would have been alive and fucking gay. You were alive during DPN and what were you?

I was Deaf, he said. I just didn't know it yet.

I laughed. I couldn't help it. Yeah, I don't think you need my help to make you feel stupid.

Fuck you! he said, standing up. If you're saying I was born to be gay, I was born to be Deaf too! I didn't know I was gay until I was twelve, I didn't know I was Deaf until I was twenty-three. It's not different.

Yes it fucking is.

Why?

Because...because your entire fucking life would have been different if you were born Deaf. You're here talking about culture and not wanting them to know you were a regular fucking privileged hearing asshole for twenty-three years? You think you can just sweep that under the fucking rug and I'm going to let you?

What are you, my fucking parole officer? How is it any of your business—

How is it my fucking business that you were hearing? I don't know, Sunshine, are you walking under that streetlight if you can't hear? Am I, what, learning sign language for my fucking one night stand? You're going to tell me it's none of my fucking business?

“Brian...” he said.

Don't Brian me! You don't get to fucking stand there and tell me that hearing shit didn't happen, it happened, and I don't have to feel like a fucking asshole because I wouldn't have started this shit up with you if you were Deaf, how was I supposed to know—

Nobody's saying that.

And you...fuck, you realize your life would look pretty goddamn different if you'd decided not to fuck hearing guys when you were seventeen, or did that not—

There was pity in his eyes, fucking condescending bullshit. I don't regret anything and you know that. But that doesn't mean that this isn't who I was meant to be.

I snorted.

Don't, he said. It's in my genes, and even if it weren't, even if I'd gone Deaf from, I don't know, being bashed in the head, this is...it's part of me. This is my culture.

You said I was your culture, you remember that?

You have to be happy for me that I'm not alone in this, even if you're not with me! he burst out. I do everything I can to include you but I can't not be Deaf because it leaves you behind!

Leaves me behind.

You're fucking crazy, I said.

No, that's what this is, he said. This can't be my history because it's not your history. Because you feel left out, so you have to tell yourself and fucking tell me that it's not important because your fucking ego can't handle me having a history you're not a part of.

Fuck you.

You! And don't give me that fucking face, there is no goddamn other reason why this can't be my history but...but I don't know, but Stonewall and the AIDS crisis are.

What's funny is that, of course, he was completely on the money, that I was absolutely feeling threatened and left out and altogether hearing as shit, but as soon as he said that it all of a sudden wasn't what it was about anymore.

And I laughed right in his fucking face. The AIDS crisis? You're telling me the AIDS crisis is your history?

What the fuck? You just said—

Sure I had, but remember, I had fucking switched gears completely at this point. I crowded right the fuck into him. How the fuck old are you? What fucking year were you born? You're going to tell me about the AIDS crisis, Sunshine?

If you think I am going to be outgrown by a fucking twenty-seven year old, you are fucked in the goddamn head.

He narrowed his eyes.

You're a fucking fetus, I said to him. You don't know goddamn shit, and this fucking proves it. You think you can teach me something?

Brian, what are you talking about?

You want to claim some new history and you don't even fucking know where you came from, I said. You think you can go around picking shit up that you want to claim like like this is some kind of fucking buffet.

You're an asshole, he said, and he was starting to cry at this point.

What the fuck is it you want? I yelled. You want to feel persecuted? You want to feel like you were dealing with shit when you were walking around in some fucking hearing, post-crisis golden age?

I want to feel connected to something! he said.

You're connected to me! I said. Stupid fucking hands.

It's not enough!

I paced back and forth. Fuck. Fuck. This is how it happens, you know. This is what it is.

No it's not.

You fucking decide you just want a Deaf world and I don't—

That's not what's happening, Justin said, desperately. Please don't walk away—

I'm not. I stopped pacing. I'm not.

He nodded, breathing fast, and I put my hands on him without really meaning to and rubbed up and down his shoulders.

Calm down, I said.

Yeah.

You do everything you can to include me in this, I said. Fuck, like I'm some goddamn Make a Wish kid who wants to hang out at the Deaf table.

That's not what I meant, come on. They're your friends too.

There's always going to be this wall, I said. You guys complain about hearing people like I'm not a fucking hearing person.

When we complain about straight people, we don't mean Cynthia and Derek and Daphne, Justin said. It's the same thing.

I didn't understand Emily tonight, I said. She was too fast.

I don't always understand Emily. Fucking Derek doesn't understand Emily all the time. She signs too fast.

I said, It used to be we were just... I shook my head. Everything that was going to come at you, I'd done it before. I knew how to handle it.

I know.

You're supposed to just be a smaller and better version of me.

He laughed a little and put his hand on my waist, and I pulled him into me.

I'm scared, I signed between us.

“I'm bringing you with me,” he said. “No matter where I go, I'm bringing you, you know that.”

I'm not supposed to be brought. I said. I do the bringing.

He looked up at me, his eyes big and clear like rain. “Tough shit,” he said.

I'm scared, I said again.

He reached up and kissed me, and I held onto his neck.

“Let's go to bed,” he said.

We fucked, my hands in his hair, and I held him really hard that night. He was gone when I woke up, but I could hear him shuffling around in the living room, and I was kind of disappointed when he came to the doorway and he didn't have breakfast.

I want to go somewhere, he said.

I sat up. Somewhere in particular?

Yeah. Get dressed.

We took the 1 down to Times Square, transferred to the N, then changed to the L—and look, nobody takes the fucking L, I forget the L exists—two stops east. We got off at 1st Avenue and 14th Street, in the East Village. I'd come here alone—by cab, like a civilized person—a couple months after we'd moved here but hadn't been able to find what I was looking for. Justin was clearly on a mission, but I thought it must be something different, had to be, until he were standing in front of that same red building with the crumbling fire escapes, some scaffolding in front that didn't used to be there, new shutters on the windows, but that same fucking red building with the same crumbling fire escapes, here it was.

I asked Debbie for the address this morning, Justin said.

I wasn't sure she'd still have it.

Neither was I.

So we stood there and looked up the building, and we wandered the block, and the next one, and the next one, and I told Justin stories. About when I was sixteen, seventeen, maybe, 1987, '88, and I couldn't fucking breathe in my house for one more second and I'd run away up here. Not a lot of time. Three or four, if that. Vic would swing open his door and there I'd be, a fucking panting Pittsburgh runaway, and he'd sigh and step back and I'd crash on his hideous couch while they—always they—hung posters or made Western omelets or fucked too loudly or laughed, God, so much fucking laughing.

His building was full of lecherous old queens who seemed glamorous as fuck to me then and fucking terrifying in retrospect, back when you had to beg them to use condoms and sometimes it was just too much damn work, and some feeling I could never articulate put me off bottoming until this little savant crash-landed into my life. There was a bathhouse down the block where Vic would never let me go—it was a bank now, we paused in front of it and kept walking—but the bar where I had my first bathroom blow job was still standing, so Justin and I went in and got a beer at eleven in the morning.

Everybody around here knew him, said. Everywhere he went, it was Vic, Vic, Vic.

Sounds familiar, Justin said.

I shrugged. Anyone can conquer Liberty Avenue.

It was different then. There was hope, color, but the fear of it...God, it was everywhere. I don't know when Vic got it, but he didn't know until I was in college, and that first time I came to visit then, when he was alone and the bath house was boarded shut, and the lecherous old queens in his building had aged thirty years with weight loss and CMV and terror...I didn't come again after that.

Why did you bring me here? I asked him.

He shrugged with a small smile. I wanted to know where I came from.

I played with his fingers.

You had a life before me, he said. There are things I'm never going to get. I'm as gay as you are—

No one's as gay as I am.

—but that doesn't even matter. It's still a different experience.

But I'm not as Deaf as you are, I said. And this isn't about you having a past. It's about your fucking...now. Your future.

Life isn't linear, Justin said.

Aren't you sick of me calling you out for stupid shit?

Shut up. He took a sip of my beer. Fuck, that's good. Okay. It's not linear. That stuff affects who you are now. The stuff I'm going through...yeah, it makes shit from the past look different. It goes back and gives me history. It's not linear.

I sighed and tapped my fingers on the table. He took them in his.

You don't have to feel threatened if you don't want to, he said. You can just decide that you're not.

That's fucking stupid.

Maybe, he said. But what if it's not? He smiled a little. There's like a twelve percent chance, right?

Finish this for me, I said, pushing the beer towards him. And I'll take you to see Stonewall.

He grinned.

**

So, see? We're fine. We're going to be fine.

Oh, I promised you our fifth anniversary, right?

We were in Sevilla, southern Spain, for—

No, that was our sixth.

It wasn't Amsterdam, I remember telling some guy that that was our eighth.

Hong Kong? 2016, so that would have been our ninth.

Right, our fifth was just in New York, doing fucking nothing, like we usually do. We went to Nova and I fucked in him the back room and got a nice blow job from the new bartender, and then we went to a diner and had breakfast at two AM, and we didn't get divorced.

We've never been much for math, me and him, but we're gonna die at exactly the same goddamn minute someday. And I don't care what the odds are on that.

Why would I.