I asked Austin to walk away from me. With the sun setting straight at us, I told him how far forward to push his shoulder and how far back to turn his head. “Chin down” and snap snap snap. Posing him tonight for the photograph I’d post tomorrow, when this 30-year-old turned 31. We were outside the Metropolitan Opera House, at Lincoln Center, where Austin’s silhouette proved just as upright and handsome as all those travertine fins fanning out before him. Light and shadow, flesh and stone. A pretty picture. Like Orpheus looking back at Eurydice, despite tickets for The Hours we had in hand. “Can we show a little decorum, boys?” I said to Austin, cocking my head in the direction of two guys across the lobby. Openly and luxuriantly, they were making out. God save the opera queens. Sipping champagne before taking our seats, I made the mistake of asking Austin if he’d been here before. Last year, I joined some friends from the museum to La bohème—having completely forgotten all the times Austin said he wanted to attend the opera together. “It’s funny because, earlier today, I was thinking—okay, what are all the times when Brian really wronged me?” He was, for the most part, just kidding. And while I tried to roll with the punch, laughing it off, I felt hurt for hurting him, and worse still for forgetting about it. And yet it was Austin who said, softly, “I’m sorry.” Whispering in that beautiful tenor of his, a voice that rings clear as a bell.
Watching as my own feelings began to etch themselves onto Austin’s face, his expression screwing into something sadder than I could bear, I assured him he had nothing to be sorry about. Trashing our plastic champagne flutes and entering the theater, I wanted us to have a good time. For this evening to be special and sweet and easy. That even if his memories of turning 31 prove mostly glum, he could at least recall this night at the opera as something good. Last month, Austin and I broke up. It wasn’t my idea, not completely, and it wasn’t really my intention either, but I was the one who started the conversation. Sitting across from each other in bed, surrounded by piles of clean laundry waiting to be folded, as happy sunshine and the yips of schoolchildren flooded in from the window, we unraveled. I’ve been feeling some ambivalence lately, I said to Austin. Telling him I was unsure if our relationship, my first, should also be my only. Little did I know, there was only one conclusion—one honest conclusion, at least—to a conversation like this. Because Austin would tell me, eventually, that he’s shared some of these same thoughts over the years. Sparing me sole responsibility. But not before saying that during my moments of jealousy, or self-consciousness, during my moments of cruelty, he’s thought to himself, “This is how someone who’s never been in an another relationship treats their boyfriend.” But first, there were only tears. Wrenching, crushing, shattered tears. Both of us just so sad. So interminably blue. His hair still wet from the shower, Austin was propped up against our pillows, his arms crossed over his bare belly, which heaved with every sob. He looked about 6 years old.
I’m so compatible with this, I thought to myself, halfway through The Hours, the second of two total operas I’ve ever seen in my life. The piece is in English but I still needed to consult the subtitles ticking away on the seatback in front of me, confirming that I really did just hear Renée Fleming yodel, “We need platters! For the salmon! And the deviled eggs!” Because if I heard such a thing in the general stylings of the modern musical, sung in that inescapable post-Rent mewl, I’d be less than moved. But as opera, I felt this laundry list of party-planning transcend the banal and greet the divine. And it was hysterical. Because, of course, it’s all so deadly serious, so grand, so highbrow. And also so fucking ridiculous. Austin and I, with utmost respect, were a laugh a minute. In on the joke, even. Because when all this sincerity is playing out on such a purposely over-the-top scale, why cringe? Rather: feel. In the final moments of The Hours, the three women, these characters who only ever orbited around each other, bound to their respective eras and heartaches, finally stand together. And as hot, stinging tears fell from my eyes, I listened to them sing, “Here is the world, and you live in it, and you are not alone.”
Standing over our kitchen trash can, not long now until the first guests would show up for Austin’s birthday party, I was peeling carrots for crudité. Almost four years in this apartment and we’d never thrown a party. Partly because all we had in our common area was a dinette table that sat four—in theory. Two of our four chairs would immediately buckle as soon as anyone took a seat. But, a couple weeks ago, Austin bought some furniture. Bringing life to the living room with a couch and a couple chairs. The pieces were delivered on a day I was at the museum and, unlike the bookshelves and desks and bed frames that have arrived over the years, all the things we’ve assembled as a pair, he put these together on his own. I was the one who always resisted bringing anything else into that living room, so insistent that rugs or loveseats would only get in the way of my keeping house. But it looks great. This home we’ve shared, furnished for a future we won’t. None of his party guests knew what happened with us. As far as everyone was concerned, we were still together. And the thing is, as far as we’re concerned, we are still together. Because up until I find a new place to live, we’ve decided we might as well just keep enjoying each other. Why forsake a good thing? That is the question.
“We’ll call it a Victor/Victoria,” I said, holding aloft the two very different bouquets I’d shoved into our one and only vase, a floral bounty that came in tow with Kevin, Austin’s oldest friend in attendance. Within an hour of the eight o’clock start time, with Heather the first to show and Pascalle the last, everyone was there and the games could begin. Starting off, naturally, with Austin Blake Mays Trivia. Each guest supplied with their own little notepad and marker, Snatch Game style, Austin kept score while I asked the questions.
“How many siblings does Austin have?”
“Austin’s favorite book has a three-word title. What’s the second word?”
“Lady Gaga’s seminal album, Born This Way, was released on May 23, 2011. On that day, Austin did what for the first time?”
(Five. Poisonwood. Came out and/or kissed a boy for the first time.)
Printing out all the materials earlier that week, he’d already quizzed me on all the questions, and the only answer I fudged was the number of books he read in the previous year. Numbers were never my strong suit. “What is Austin’s dad?” was another one. Obviously aware of the answer (“pastor”), I opted for an ironic, “Aries?” His jaw dropped. Rifling through his sheets of paper, Austin showed me the answer he’d already written for that exact question. “A pastor and/or an Aries.” Laughing, we shook our heads at each other, at this shared language of ours, as something woeful tugged at both our smiles.
A tiebreaker eventually crowned Jessica the winner. Her prize? A framed picture of Austin as a little boy. WASP-weary and Lisbon sister blond, Jessica is the rare 20something I’d confidently call a “wit.” Possessing this haughty, droll air that I usually fear was lost to the 20th century. And yet here she is, boys—a Dorothy Parker for the Zoomer ages. Cornering me in the kitchen, she said, “So, what’s this I hear? What did a little birdy tell me? That you think my ‘sense of humor is something no straight man could ever fully appreciate?’ How about something I don’t know.”
“My gifts! I almost forgot,” said Austin, spotting his pile of presents on the nightstand. After bidding adieu to his friends and cleaning up the living room with Kiera’s help, we’d retired to our bedroom. It was past midnight but, so long as there were gifts left to open, it was still his birthday. I was never any good at this. Growing up, I always struggled with what to get my parents or my sisters—on the off chance I got them anything at all. Many milestones coming and going without so much as a card from Bubby. I don’t know what I was thinking. But then, Austin. My first birthday together, our first Christmas and anniversary, I was so struck. Not just by the gifts he got for me, as perfect and specific as they were, but by the sentiment. He was paying attention to me. That’s really all it takes. With a specific order in mind, the small potatoes building toward the showstopper, I handed him his first present, wrapped in simple brown paper. It was an old issue of TV Guide with an Al Hirshfeld illustration of Sonny and Cher on the cover. And I tried to talk to him about it, to explain how I stumbled across it on eBay and already knew he’d like it before the serendipitous realization that this 1974 issue was dated June 1st. But I couldn’t make out the words.
Years ago, before a surgery that, thank God, worked wonders, my mom was dealing with this incredible back pain. I don’t remember why but I called her one morning, early enough that I was still in bed and she hadn’t left for work yet. And, listening to her, I heard that pain. She exists in my imagination, my mother, as perpetual youth, doubled over planting pansies or setting out on her six mile walk, schlepping a cooler out onto the beach. There’s no other way. Hearing my voice break that morning, so saddened by my sadness, my mom said to me, in an uncharacteristic whisper, “Oh, no. No. Don’t get upset, please. Please don’t cry.” There was the same exact teardrop in my throat, then and now. The very same inescapable sorrow. Because I tried so hard to smile, to keep smiling, to give Austin these gifts that came, as always, straight from my heart. And it was impossible.
And that next day, when I finally told my parents that Austin and I broke up, through tears of her own, my mom said, “God, I haven’t felt this sad in a long time. I have such a lump in my throat.” Telling my Nana about it during our weekly phone call, our Thursday tradition, she said, “I’ve got that second bedroom, you come live here with me if you need to, okay?” And I let Jillian know. A couple years ago, she and Scott divorced. She was only 17 when they first got together. Their families, friends, cats, apartments, finances—all of it, for the longest time, totally enmeshed. Until my sister, at 35, was living on her own for the first time in her entire life. Telling me she was so sorry, and opening up her home to me too, Jillian said, “I know how hard this is.” And, of course, I had Shannon. She was the first to know, weeks and weeks before anyone else. I can’t keep anything from her. On his birthday, Shannon said to me, “I was nervous to text Austin, I didn’t want to say the wrong thing. I told him I love him. Brian. I never tell anyone that.”
Periodically looking over his shoulder to blow another playful farewell kiss, I watched from the landing as Austin walked downstairs and out of our building. His car to the airport was waiting. Off to North Carolina for the week, he was headed home to celebrate his younger sister’s high school graduation. I was supposed to go too. But a couple days after our breakup, settling into bed one night, Austin told me he was able to get a refund for my airfare. It was the right thing to do. And it hurt us both. “My heart was racing and there were tears in my eyes, canceling your ticket,” Austin said. He’d be telling his family while he was down there. His big, boisterous, southern family. I’ve known his youngest sister since she was 2 years old. I couldn’t bring myself to say her name, when I told Austin, “I don’t want to just…disappear from her life.” Nothing else made us cry as hard as we cried for her. My world is about to become much smaller.
Somehow, no sooner than we took our seats for dinner at a Williamsburg restaurant, our topic of conversation landed on breakups. I was with Ashleigh and Nick, but also Kyla and Sarah, the two of them visiting the city for the weekend. Initially, I would’ve missed out on this get together but nobody proved especially inquiring, let alone suspicious, when we hugged each other hello and I answered that perennial significant-othered question: “Where’s Austin?” That was a relief. This was the kind of news that would alter the course of the night and, even if we managed to eventually change the subject, I feared I’d still be the center of attention. Pitied and accommodated, like some bruised little bird. Alas—chirp chirp. “High school, then college, I just feel like we’re so conditioned to living our lives in these four year periods of time,” said Ashleigh, explaining her theory on breakups to the table. “And I’ve just seen so many couples who make it to four years and then—it’s over.” Nodding and smiling, I pretended to consult the menu. But then, perfectly intentioned, Sarah said, “Well, hello—five years over here. You’ve graduated!” I tried to keep the show on the road, cracking some stupid joke about being in “grad school” now, but then she asked how we’re doing. And with laughter, nervous and reflexive and totally out of my control, I said, “Well—we broke up!” A moment of silence. They were all completely shocked but it was Ashleigh who still appears most clearly to me. Across the table and at a slight diagonal, framed on either side by Kyla and Sarah, I said what I said and Ashleigh looked at me in such a way I’ve only seen in art. She was still as a portrait and not moving a muscle but, in her eyes, I saw eruptions. Something almost mystical in the disbelieving smirk just beginning to curl at her lips. It felt like I was looking an angel in the face. Or like the Mona Lisa had joined us for dinner, right here on Driggs Avenue.
And then, not two minutes later, the final member of our party joined us. As Ian took his seat, with hugs and kisses hello, acknowledging the years and years since he’d last seen Kyla or Sarah, I could tell I was being staked from the corner of everyone’s eye. That it was up to me how we’d proceed. Sans laughter this time, but only slightly less nervous, I said, “Ian, you’re joining us right in the midst of discussing the end of my five-year relationship.” As I recall, Ian said, “Oh, shit.” Cue everybody’s requisite questions and heartfelt assurances. That I’m loved, that they’re here for me, that I could come visit Somerville or New Orleans whenever I’d like. They were all so generous and I was so stingy. It was loud in there and our server was coming and going and I was trying to explain something to five people that I can barely accomplish one-on-one. Kyla, Sarah, Ian—they’ve never even met Austin. Hot in the face and losing patience, we broke off into smaller conversations just as I was about to ask for a changed subject. But leaning in, already understanding something I’d otherwise kept to myself, Sarah said to me, “B, the way you’ve been explaining yourself—it makes me think of your oral history with your parents. It reminds me of everything you told us about your mom. Of everything you learned about her life.” At a bar called Diane’s, during the respective moments we had to ourselves, Kyla and Ashleigh, separately, made that very same connection. They listened, these friends of mine, and they remembered, and then they read my mind. Heading out, Ian bent down to hug me goodbye and my half-finished beer fell to the ground. I don’t know who knocked it over, if it was him or me, but I was grateful either way. No one was waiting up for me but I wanted to go home.
“I’ve never seen you in a photo with other people,” said Ethan, responding to a picture from that weekend of me, Kyla, and Nick. As per usual with his cutting remarks, I knew he was saying this in good humor. And while I love this about him and can, at times, even keep up, my volleyed response wasn’t barbed so much as pitiful. Telling him, “If you thought I was a lonesome person already, just imagine how TRULY lonely I’ll be now that me and Austin broke up!!!” Ethan, immediately, called me. And I was amazed. Obviously, he’s a thinking and feeling person who understands when and how to be gentle. It’s not like I thought he was incapable of such a thing. I’ve just never witnessed it. But with silent consideration, without ever once interrupting, Ethan let me talk. At least until a certain moment in the conversation, a moment almost singularly designed for Ethan’s reaction, when I explained to him the emotional breakthrough I felt while watching none other than Barbra Streisand’s Yentl. After a beat, Ethan said to me, “Okay, you’re treading dangerous waters here, Brian Burns. Explain.”
On Barbra Streisand’s birthday, back on April 24th, Austin and I watched Yentl. It was my idea. Telling him, weeks in advance, that that’s how we should mark the occasion. Neither of us had seen it before, though I had come close. A couple years ago, dog sitting for the weekend, I texted Austin that I’d just, at random, put on Yentl. And he insisted I shut it off. Telling me it’s a film he’d always wanted to see, and that he wanted to watch it together, and with any luck in a theater. I listened to him. Thank G-d. Because it wasn’t a moment too soon that, at last, I watched Yentl. This sumptuous and strange movie musical that sings the praises of both religious study and the nude male form, with perfect pitch. It’s no surprise we loved it. But I had no way of knowing just how clearly it would speak to me. Pretending to be a boy so she could study the Talmud, Yentl finally reveals her truth by revealing her breasts to Avigdor, the man she’s secretly loved all along. His initial outrage stews into affection, and soon enough he suggests they elope, that they move to a new town where nobody knows them and find a new yeshiva—but only for him. And the light goes out in Yentl’s eyes. She loved this man, she still loves him, this good and thoughtful mensch who’s even willing to compromise, telling her she could study at night once he gets home, and that no one has to know. It’s everything and it’s not enough. “What more could you want?” asks Avigdor. “More,” says Yentl. And it was then, I think, that my heart broke wide open.
“Have you been telling people about the Barbra component?” asked Austin, the two of us eating dinner together on his first night back in town. I have. We both have. Because by the time I heard Yentl’s pivotal desire for “more,” I’d long been living in Barbra Streisand’s world. After spending much of the preceding month with her memoir’s audiobook, My Name Is Barbra no longer felt like some chronicle of her life so much as the Pentateuch itself. Every last minute of those 48 hours had me riveted and reverent. And questioning. Coming to understand that for Barbra, this consummate Taurus woman, pleasure is a life force. Devoting countless words to the foods she ate, the shots she filmed, the houses she decorated—and the men she loved. Or, rather, the men who loved her. At times to her bemusement, at times to her chagrin. And once or twice, to her total satisfaction. Men who, no matter what, were universally obsessed with her. I’m no Barbra Streisand. I know that. And I have no precedent for this. Never needing to batten down any hatches against some ceaseless tide of admirers. But as I listened to her memories of Jon and Pierre and Richard, to a whole chapter devoted to Marlon Brando, and then another to James Brolin, the whispers in my head got louder. Until finally—“more.” But now, when I think about all those loves of her life, the only specific story I can remember is about her very first. “I wasn’t particularly attracted to Elliott, until one day when I saw the back of his neck…and that did it. I’m not sure why. It was just a bit of exposed flesh, and I wanted to touch it. Suddenly he became more than a friend.” Don’t I know it.
Anyway, as Austin’s been saying, “It’s the gayest breakup ever.”
In my usual bid to avoid the parents dropping off their children at the preschool downstairs, I do laundry first thing in the morning. Committed enough to this 7:00 a.m. routine that certain faces in the neighborhood have become familiar. And it’s during my walk home from putting in the wash, one leg almost down with two still to go, that I always see this particular father and daughter. Balding and brace-faced, middle-aged and teenaged, every morning, he walks her to school. Or at least that’s the story I’ve assigned to them. Breaking from the usual mold of Brownstone Brooklyn Fatherhood, he’s not stylish or arty or hot. He’s just a dad. And his daughter adores him. Because each and every week, walking down Gates Avenue, they’re always talking. Always so much to say and always enjoying each other so much. That Sunday was Father’s Day and I was at work, covering for Billie so she could be home with her family. Finding him in our break room kitchen, I asked Jarod how he was doing and it took him a moment to understand what I really meant. When Jarod was 19, one day after Father’s Day, his dad died. We got to talking about it. I listened to him tell me about those final days, and their last conversation, and how all recollection of those following weeks is totally lost to him. Later that day, with his phone at the ready, Jarod asked me to repeat something I’d said to him. “The life’s work of the child isn’t to change their parents but to understand them.” If he was typing that up to send to a friend, or tweet to his followers, or keep just for himself, I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask.
Sitting out on Broome Street, on a bench in the sun, I called my father. They were on their way to Lake Winnipesaukee for the afternoon and he was in a great mood. Buoyant and bright. I’ve heard from him more this month than I usually do. Every couple days, via text, he’s been checking in on me. Asking how my day’s going, how I’m faring in the hot weather, what I think of the frame he got for the black-and-white film photo of Rufus, our long deceased Welsh Corgi. But not once has he mentioned anything about the breakup. Not even once. I know my father. I know his heart. Anytime I’ve cried in front of him, about anything, he’s cried too. He’s not being callous, he’s being careful. Loving me the best way he knows how. And I’m trying to understand that.
It was 3:30 in the morning and, laying in bed, I watched Austin move around our bedroom in the dark. He was just getting home. An old friend of his was visiting New York and he met up with her at a Greek restaurant in the Lower East Side for dinner. In the morning, he’d tell me all about it, and what kept them out so late but, until then, I didn’t know. Pretending to be asleep, I looked at him, his body dappled by the street light through the trees, and I wondered. What did they do? Where’d they go? Did he run into anyone he knows? Was it fun? Did he laugh a lot? Does any part of him wish it was already a couple months from now? When he could come home from a late night out and get right in bed without taking a shower? Is he happy? And how long will it take until I’m ready to wish all these things for him?
“‘I feel like she’s breaking up with me over the color of my sweatshirt.’” That’s what Billie’s sister’s boyfriend said, after that sister decided to end her mostly perfect relationship of seven years with him. My beloved French 40something mother-of-two coworker, Billie remains one of the few people at work who I’ve told. Not only does everyone know I’m in a relationship, most of the Educators know Austin by name. And then some. I’ll allude to his youngest sister in a story only for Cara or Estefania to interrupt me and say, “Wren, right?” It’s not professionalism that’s kept this a secret, it’s the opposite. But I needed some people to know. Taking advantage of a rare moment alone, I shared the news with Billie and she immediately took me in her arms, drawing her hand up and down my back, embracing me, like a mother. She listened so intently, her eyes never once breaking from mine, at least not until she started recalling loves lost, massaging the bridge of her nose and lamenting how all her early relationships came to such tumultuous ends. “I wish there was a way it could happen slowly,” said Billie. “You spend all this time with someone only for it to just end. I wish there could be a period of time, where a couple could come to terms with everything, and end on a good note. That there could always be a period of adjustment.” Never lost in translation, a denouement is a denouement.
I got two free tickets for an upcoming sail around the New York Harbor on an 1885 schooner called the Pioneer. Knowing time was of the essence, I immediately agreed to the offer, thanking Grace, a fellow Educator, for the hook up—even though Austin and I already had plans. A couple days earlier, he told me we’d been invited to a Pride party at a friend’s apartment in Manhattan. And when I let him know about the sail, and that it’s happening on the same Sunday afternoon as that party, it was clear where Austin really hoped to be. Not that I was making myself clear. Playing it cool, I acted like I didn’t care either way, that—sailboat or house party—I’d be fine. After all, he doesn’t owe me his time, not anymore. It’s just that there’s not much time left. He’s spending all of July with his family down in North Carolina. As of next month, we’re not just broken up, we’ll be living single. This weekend, for all we know, is our last. But if it’ll be the Pioneer’s whipping sails or the keening brakes of the C train, tourists on a teak deck or gay guys on the dancefloor, I still don’t know. It’s not Sunday yet. But we’ll be together, somewhere in New York, a city that I don’t know without him. I do not know New York without Austin. I can only wonder what will happen.