Moonlight

 

Moonlight

Noel Laflin

8-6-21

 

I quietly kick off my shoes and silently begin to undress shortly after John closes the door to his own room across the hall.

 

Ray looks up from the bed and seems a little surprised to see what I am doing here. But then his face relaxes, and smiles as I pull back the covers and slip in beside him.

 

He is warm. He is naked. He is also someone I barely even know before this evening. But because we have shared something important with one another tonight, we figure we are but damaged kindred spirits of sorts; and despite a slow, but persistent, wasting away of his once much healthier frame, he is still beautiful, just in a bit more sad, fragile and undeniably worn-down way.

 

But tonight is not the night for such thoughts.

 

We are in Patrick's bedroom, Patrick's bed - but he is four hundred miles away in San Francisco for the weekend. He won't be home till late tomorrow. And as neither Ray nor I are in any shape to drive to our own homes after a night of drinking and dancing at a favorite local dive on a warm summer night, John tells us to stay over. Ray can have Patrick's bed and I will take the couch.

 

I fully intend to do just that, heading to the living room after John tosses me a blanket and mumbles goodnight, ready to sleep off his own boozy intake from our evening together on the town.

 

But I am suddenly thinking lusty thoughts. I figure Ray might just be thinking likewise.  This is how I now come to be in Patrick's room instead of on the couch.  And why Ray does not object to my being here.

 

"We'll change the sheets in the morning," I say, reading his thoughts.

 

"Are you sure you want to be with me?" he blushes, wondering how this is going to play out. I like the sudden color blossoming across his cheeks.

 

"I'm not as pretty as I used to be," he adds, head down, talking more to the pillow than to me.

 

"First off, I don't have anything to worry about - there isn't anything you can give me that I don't already have. Secondly, and more importantly, I don't want to be anywhere else right now," I answer quietly, pressing up against him, taking in his warmth.

 

He relaxes, and lets me gently do all the things that will really make him smile.  

 

Later, as moonlight sneaks into the room, Ray takes my hand and says he guesses the Percocet he'd taken before crawling into bed is finally kicking in. He yawns, but tries to hide it.

 

I snuggle closer and lay my palm on his chest, feeling his slowing heartbeat, listening to the breaths reaching out in search of dreams.

 

"You know," he whispers, eyes opening slightly, tracing my face with his fingers like he means to memorize it, "until tonight, no one other than my doctor - and he doesn't count - no one has touched me in so many intimate places in such a very long time. Thank you."

 

And with that, he kisses me and falls asleep.

 

Ray, a lad I barely knew before this night, will be dead from complications due to AIDS within the year. John shares the news with me by phone one day.

 

I will go on to live long beyond him. It's been - God help me - a quarter century, to be precise.

 

And I don't know how, or why I am still here - albeit older, greyer, softer around the belly, wiser ... I don't know about that last word; I probably should delete it.

 

But that doesn't matter right now as I remember a blissful night, and two grateful younger men who fell asleep in one another's arms on a warm summer evening long ago. And while the dreams lingered, neither worried about a long-term future. Or the distinct possibility of a much shorter one.