“The next morning,” Evan finally continued, “I left for class as if nothing strange had happened and went about my life as a student. I remember I had a drawing workshop after lunch. It was a sunny winter day, perfect for sketching barren trees against a backdrop of brownstones, or frozen fountains, so we went to Washington Square. I wound up sketching a homeless guy stretched out on the snow beneath a tree, maybe dead, maybe still breathing. I didn’t care. I remember that I captured something in that drawing. A despair. My instructor said it was the best work I’d done. Go figure.”
Evan looked to me hoping for a Yoda moment. I shrugged pathetically as I realized how sterile my wisdom was.
“Somehow, Jonathon and I got back in a groove. Not that we ever spoke of what happened. That would have been too rational, too healthy. We simply persisted and things were forgotten. Probably a month later I was waiting in his apartment for him to get home. There was an outfit lying out on his bed, but I wasn’t in the mood to get pretty for him. He came in late and drunk with two of his friends. He was angry that I wasn’t gussied up for him. It was obvious what was on his mind. This time I wasn’t having it. We argued in front of his friends. I accused him of pimping me out. He slapped me. I broke something, I don’t remember what, and stormed out.
“Two days later, my student group met him at a gallery for a scheduled field trip. Everyone could feel the tension. When the class was over, Jonathon pulled me aside and told me I had humiliated him in front of his friends and that I was to gather my things from his apartment. It was not discreet, the way he berated me, and a classmate overheard the whole exchange. She told the others.
“I was bereft, but I kept my shit together as best I could. I couldn’t believe that love was so fragile, that it could be shredded so wantonly. I had been stupid enough to think that Jonathon actually loved me at all.
“Regardless, my broken heart wasn’t punishment enough. The story spread and I could hear people whispering wherever I went. I had convinced myself there was sophistication in having an affair with a professor. But the other students just thought it was pathetic. They saw me as a tool. No one tried to mask their judgment. My roommate just sneered and said I told you so. I was a slut, a pariah. I might as well have worn a scarlet letter CD.”
“CD?” I asked, befuddled.
“Cum dumpster. The others were thinking that.” Evan heaved a lamenting wheeze. “I saw it constantly in their stares.
“It culminated with one of my professors advising me to file a formal complaint. Jonathon had done this before, she said. I was just one in a long line and until one of us actually complained to the Administration it would happen again and again.”
“And you did, right?” My question had an accusatory ring.
Evan answered with an impenetrable silence and looked back to the window. When he spoke again it was in shame. “Can you imagine what a naive little fuck I was? I didn’t have a clue that I was just one in a series of pretty boys. I mean, shouldn’t his trove of lingerie been a dead giveaway? It was probably the only reason he was a lecturer at all. Easy pickings. How could I have been such a dumb fuck?
“It was all more than I could bear. I didn’t finish the semester. I left without so much as a goodbye and fled home in disgrace. My parents had no idea what had transpired. They only knew that I had failed. Again. Just as they expected.”
Absent-mindedly, he stroked Lucy’s sleek, black fur. She uttered her appreciation in guttural murmurings that rocked the lengthening stillness. Finally, Evan mused, “Have you ever seen that old classic film On the Waterfront?”
It took me a second to place it. “The one with Marlon Brando in it? Yeah. sure. Back in college.”
Evan set Lucy aside on the cushion as he rose. “Brando played this washed-up boxer and at one point he says …” his voice took on the squeaky rasp characteristic of Brando and his pursed, upturned fingers pleaded with the air. “…I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.” He dropped the impersonation and, in a disconsolate funk, walked from the room.
_________
Evan’s lasagna was indeed savory, but I could still feel its heft the next morning as I pounded out miles on the treadmill. I missed running the cart paths that meandered through the golf course. I missed sucking dewy, fresh air deep into my lungs. I needed my old ways yet reminded myself how much better I had it than my cloistered friend.
A shoulder and back workout, then three rounds of sparring with the heavy bag, and I was ready to hit the locker room shower. I had two client meetings scheduled that morning, so I donned a suit and surreptitiously strapped on my concealed Glock. When I got to the office building, my head was on a swivel as I made my way through the parking lot, ever vigilant for a psycho behind every bush.
It was early afternoon when I finally made it home. As I entered my condo from the garage, the sound of strange breathing sifted through the still air. I turned the corner and discovered Evan doing yoga on the living room floor in a tank top and lavender tights. His laptop played a video beside him as he listened through earbuds, oblivious to the world. On his hands and one knee, he extended a leg back and upward, from perpendicular to full extension, repeatedly and slowly, flexing the glute with carefully modulated breaths. His command of the movements required steady exertion combined with grace.
Evan was turned away. He couldn’t see me. His clothes clung to him tautly, lustrously, more revealing than bare skin. The quads and hamstrings were distinct and toned, the calf muscled and lean. The orb of his glute rippled with supple strength upon each contraction, activating separate sinews distinctly so that the muscle undulated and danced. Then he pulled the knee down, grazing the floor and tucking it to his chest, stretching, revealing the length of the muscle, before extending it again to its round, lithesome ideal.
As he repeated the movements with his other leg, his body was revealed to me in an unguarded display of elegance and grace. I felt every bit the naughty voyeur, but I was fascinated with the beauty of his form.
Suddenly he glimpsed me from the corner of his eye and crashed to the carpet in a heap. We were both embarrassed as he paused the video and shed the earbuds. He leaped to his feet with bashful chuckles.
I felt the heat of my blush as I stammered, “Sorry, Evan. I just turned the corner and there you were.”
“Caught in flagrante yoga. Sorry about that. I didn’t realize you’d be back so early. My bad.”
“It’s all good. So you do yoga every day?”
“Yeah. Gotta keep it tight, you know. Today is my glutes workout.”
“Well, it’s certainly working for you.”
“My grandmother was the only one in my family who ever accepted me. One Thanksgiving she proclaimed in the middle of the family dinner, ‘Forget the stomach, Evan Dear, the way to a man’s heart is through a tight tushie.’ That was her way of shaming them for their intolerance. Poor ol’ gal. They kept her locked in the attic after that.”