“Broken,” by Rabih Alameddine - The New Yorker

I fucked you only once, and it almost killed you. Do you remember?

You couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to do it again. Yes, I come on a bit strong. I seduced you, and you were so ready to be seduced, so willing. You wanted me so much, and that made my dick hard. I took you home and fucked you. But then you wouldn’t leave. You asked if you could spend the night. Sure, I said. Weed, vodka, and orgasms: we slept like the dead. In the morning light, you kept dropping hints, like candy along the forest floor, but I didn’t pick them up.

I no longer wanted you. You wanted to kill me for that. You thought I was a bastard as I made you breakfast.

San Francisco, summer of 1981. You were twenty-one, had been in the city for two weeks, about to begin graduate school. You were supposed to study finance or some shit like that, but you were auditing classes in the humanities. Your parents were paying for business school, and you intended to study anything but. So smart, so innocent, so opinionated, so clueless. You sat at the dinette pretending to like my scrambled eggs. You were about half my size. You fit in my small studio better than I did. You were nervous, wouldn’t shut up. You’d ask me a question, then interrupt my response to give your opinion of it. Waiting tables was an honorable profession, you said. No, twenty-three wasn’t too old to go back to school and make something of my life. You were shocked when I remarked that you spoke English well. Of course you did. You grew up speaking many languages. You were a boy of the world.

When I told you I was a poet, your jaw dropped. You wanted to be a poet. It was the only thing you’d ever wanted. Your father wouldn’t allow that, of course, so you had to bide your time. There were so many things you wanted for yourself that your father didn’t.

And then you proceeded to do the unforgivable. You lifted your butt off your chair, taking a folded piece of white paper out of your back pocket. If there was ever a chance that I would want to fuck you again—and there really wasn’t—it vanished the instant you asked me to read your poem.

I should tell you that asking someone to read your poem is like asking if the poem makes your ass look fat.

Worse, it was good.

You were whining, saying the poem was terrible. You were insecure, questioning everything.

It needed some work, but it was already better than anything I’d written. A simple poem about the various ways you planned to kill your father, brutality that belied tenderness, violence that belied love. And you had no clue how good it was.

I told you it wasn’t bad.

It took three years, maybe four, before I was able to tell you how good the poem was. Send it, you silly fuck, I said. They would love it. And the magazine published it before you could say how right I was.

You weren’t my type. I told you that. Usually, when I informed a guy that I had a type, that I couldn’t help whom I was or wasn’t attracted to, he moved on. Not you. You had the temerity to question my desire. We had good sex, you said, so, obviously, you weren’t not my type. I finally had to tell you that I didn’t want to fuck you anymore because you talked too much. You had moved your scrambled eggs toward the edge of the plate. You put your fork down in the middle, the tines pointing to ten o’clock, stood up, and left without saying another word. You assumed you’d never see me again.

But, less than a month later, you walked into the restaurant where I worked. The surprised look on your face was priceless. I asked if you were alone, and I could tell that hurt you. We both knew that I was asking if you were dining by yourself or expecting a friend, but you snapped that you were always alone. You were reading “Macbeth” and wouldn’t look up. I tried to smooth things over by mentioning that it was my favorite play, but you just harrumphed. You refused to thaw, at least outwardly. But you couldn’t really hide your sweetness, could you? Leaving a forty-per-cent tip?

Do you remember?

Not two months after that, we both showed up at a hopping housewarming party. Seven gay boys had moved into a huge Victorian. I knew one, you another, barely. As soon as you saw me, your eyes grew gibbous, and you turned away, hoping that I hadn’t noticed you notice me. You stood alone against a wall. Boys flirting, boys whispering, boys shrieking, boys disappearing into rooms in various constellations, twosomes, threesomes, foursomes, stars and moons that you could never reach. You looked so broken. I walked over, leaned against the wall next to you. I nudged you, shoulder to shoulder—well, forearm to shoulder, Shorty.

You giggled. Go away, you said.

No, I replied, and nudged you again. I want to be friends, I said.

I have friends, you said.

No, you don’t.

Fuck you.

That ain’t gonna happen.

You looked at me with those eyes of yours, and I wondered how you could walk around this world allowing people to see you.

Shrugging, you said, I hate this stupid party. I hated it, too.

Someone should tell that boy that the sixties are long gone. That one in orange looks like a traffic cone, for crying out loud. That one must have given her hairdresser a bad blow job. Stupid losers, all of them. Should we get drunk? Yes, yes, we should. How else can we bear that walking turtleneck?

You are the best thing that ever happened to me.♦

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