The Boy
Stephen Mosher
There was a boy. And there was me. And there was an affair. He was twenty-four and I was thirty-eight. The age difference between us was only one year greater than the age difference between seventeen-year-old me and the ballet dancer that had been my first cruel, punishing love.
The affair between me and the boy was cruel and punishing in a different way.
My husband and I do not believe in monogamy. It is not right for us. We have dated other men apart, and we have dated other men as a couple. The boy and I were a couple, but not way most people think of couples, and my husband supported it, and he loved the boy, and they were close friends. But the affair was between me and the boy. It lasted a few tumultuous, melodramatic, painful weeks. During those few tumultuous, melodramatic, painful, tear-filled weeks, I had the opportunity to go home to spend Thanksgiving with my kin. That Thanksgiving I was not what one might call good company - I spent the entire trip moping and sighing, stewing and mooning, and quietly crying into my pillow, my hankie, and my hands. Finally, one day, My Mam said to me:
“Stevie, I’ve never seen you like this. You’re so distracted and fuzzy-headed. Where are you? What’s the matter with you?”
I took a moment of thought to consider all that My Mother and I had been through together, all that we were to each other, all that we had shared.
I took a moment of thought to consider how to say it.
I took a breath.
“There is this boy.”
“Oh! NO! Oh, my god, NO!” Her volume lowered from her initial reaction to the next thing that she said. “Well, you’re going to end it. You going to end it right now. You are not doing this to Pat. He has been good to you, he has taken care of you, he has been there for you. And you belong with him. You belong to him. You end it, and you end it now.”
Juana was never, not ever, one for mincing words.
I did end the affair. I ended it peacefully and properly and the boy became, not my lover, but our best friend. He became one of us. He was like a younger brother to Pat and a soul mate to me, and we were a family and life was simple, and pleasant.
Time went by and Pat and I celebrated our lengthy relationship by getting married in every state in America where it was legal, at the time. One of our weddings was in Washington D.C. and Mama flew up from Texas to give the grooms to each other. A gang of us piled into a van and traveled from New York to D.C. and, by chance, Mama sat in the van next to the boy, Tom, and visited all the way down. The wedding was beautiful. The family was beautiful. The boy was beautiful, my husband was beautiful, my Mother was beautiful. There is no chance that I could ever forget how beautiful everyone and everything was.
Back in New York, I was seated at my desk working and Mama, who was staying with us, was standing in our office, looking at all the artwork and photos that adorn the walls of the room. There, next to the doorjamb, was a framed black and white portrait of Tom, who had been one of my great photographic muses. Mama pointed at the photo and said, “This is the one isn’t it? This is him. The one you were involved with.”
“Yes, that’s the one. That’s Tom,” I replied, clearly.
“I can see why it happened.”
I don’t know how or why she knew that that portrait of Tom was a portrait of the boy. I can only assume it is because Juana is, and always has been, all seeing and all knowing. But I am glad that they met, that they liked each other, and that she understood. It all put her in the picture of my life in exactly the way that our mothers should be in our lives.
I know people whose parents are not, fully, in their lives. Thank goodness that was not the destiny for me and my Mam and Pap. They know me, and I know them. What else is there?