you first."
"Johnnie knows it that I'm right, don't you,
Johnnie?"
"Why would I know?" I chuckled.
"You know everything about everything, and you
are a spy and hang out with Obama!" he teased.
"No I don't!"
"Yes you do! You play basketball and smoke
cigarettes together!" he laughed. "And you let him win."
"I most certainly do not! Pokey, can you believe this
guy?"
"No! I don't! Not one bit!" he laughed, as we pulled
away from the school and headed home. "This one is just a
big rascal, and he knows it!"
"I am so happy that you rescued me from the
school! We'll have a great time, just us three and two cats!"
Jannik said with glee. "I thought I was gonna have a boring
time at home, but not now."
"We always have a good time," I said. "And
besides, we miss you when you're not there."
PULLING UP TO THE HOUSE we were surprised to see
my car parked in the drive.
"Would you look at that?" I said, shocked to see my
ride back where it belonged. We had planned to pick it up
on Monday, but there it was.
"There is a letter on the window!" Jannik said,
hopping out of the car to retrieve it. I glanced at it and
smiled.
"Check this out, Pokes!" I said, passing the note to
Sander.
Stuplemann's
Auto Delivery Service
No Job Too Big!
"Wow! Is there a thing she will not do for us?"
Sander exclaimed. "How do she do it?"
"I stopped asking that two years ago," I replied.
"She must really love us."
"Is it Marge who do this?" Jannik asked.
"Yep. It's Marge," I said. "That wonderful gal. We
gotta do something for her sometime. Trouble is, she's not
very good at receiving favors, you know?"
"You shall find her a girl! That what we can do! She
need a love from a good woman!" Jannik offered. "There a
teacher at my school who is lesbisk, and the lady who cook
the food is too. So we hooking them up, yes?"
"Listen to the little matchmaker back there!" I joked.
"Next he'll be picking out the china."
"Hey, it's good idea and so I say it."
"We'll see," Sander added.
"I know what we'll see mean... It mean answer is
no. But I not am give up so very easy, you will see, Pokey
Mon!"
"Pokey Mon? What the hell?" Sander chuckled.
"It your Jamaica name! Good, yeah?"
"I thought you meant Pokémon, like your cards," I
said.
"He don't get a good joke when he hear it, do he?"
Jannik said to his brother. "I has to draw him a picture."
"Let's go inside, for helvede! Maybe we leave you
here!" Sander kidded, and then we walked to the house
and the inviting embrace of home.
Part Two
Chapter 13
he young man waited for the bus just outside of the
main hospital entrance. The news wasn't good, and
T they'd given him every possible option. It wasn't
that they hadn't tried their very best. They offered to find
him alternate care, they said they would coordinate
everything for him, but he just smiled and sincerely
thanked them for all they'd done. He'd also refused contact
with his parents. They didn't need the burden, and he was
a failure as a son anyway, he thought. It was best this way.
"HERE KITTIES! YOUR FAVORITE ONE IS in the house!
Klaus! Slinky! Come for kisses!" Jannik called. And
damned if those two feline reprobates didn't come trotting
in like a couple of trained show hounds. Slinky jumped
into his arms, and Klaus did figure eights around his legs.
"Makes me sick!" Sander laughed. "He must be
their crack dealer, is all I can think."
"True that, Pokes. Those little fuckers always hide
from me."
"What do you guys want for dinner? It's my night,"
Sander said. "You can have anything except for what you
like."
"Okay, I hate pizza! And I really hate hamburgers
with ketchup only! And you better not goddamn give me
any of those shitty awful pancakes!" Jannik protested with
a big smile. "Because I hate those too!"
"Fuck it, Pokes. You better not make your god
awful biksemad, either! I do not like that crap at all!" I
teased.
"Yes! I even makes better throwing up than your
butthole biksemad!" Jannik added for good measure.
"Okay then what did we decide?" Sander asked,
deadpan.
"Burgers?" I said.
"Pancakes?" from Jannik.
"Okay! Burgers and pancakes it shall be. Now fuck
off, the both of you."
I LOVE THE HOURS SPENT BETWEEN dinner and
bedtime. I'm on the sofa with Sander, he reads a novel that
he's been engrossed in for a week. Our knees touch; I lay
my head against the fluffy cushion, my eyes shut. Softly
the mp3 dialed on my phone fills the room with La
Bohème, that glorious Puccini opera that converts musical
signatures into pure magic. It was Jannik who selected it,
and as the arias each reach their crescendos, he is content
to create the cure for something with his Legos spread
around the oaken floor.
None of us says a word. We don't have to. The
leaving of the sun, soon to light the eastern seaboard states
of my home country, has caused the room to turn a
calming shade of blue that will change only when Sander
decides to stoke a fire in the potbelly wood stove. The
fading of the day is good for the soul. It's like a handshake
agreement between you and the universe. You made it
through another day, friend. Now this day has passed,
never to return. Well done. We'll see you in the morning.
"Somebody comes," Jannik announced. The knock
came immediately. "I'm getting it!" and before either of us
could say anything, he'd arrived at the front door. "Hello,"
he said in Danish to the visitor standing on the cobblestone
pathway outside the door. "Did you need something?"
"Is Sander here?" the young man softly asked.
"He's my brother. I'll go get him." But before Jannik
had a chance to go after him, Sander stood behind,
shocked to see the one standing before him.
"Hi, Sander," the young man said. "How's it going?"
"Fine. Uh. Really okay. What about with you?"
Sander asked. Jannik glanced between the guy at the door,
and his brother. Nothing was wrong, actually. But
something wasn't right. I was still on the couch, and
looking at the door I only saw Sander and Jannik.
Everything seemed fine.
"Can I please talk with you? Please?"
"What about?" Sander asked, no hint of anything
other than general curiosity in his voice.
"Who is he, Pokey?" Jannik wondered. Sander just
absent mindedly stroked his little brother's hair a little,
then snapped out of the blank stare he'd fallen into.
"Yes. Of course. Come in," Sander said. "Jannik, will
you push the comfy chair to the sofa?
" The boy ran to the
den to retrieve the chair. I saw them enter the room, both
Sander and the young man standing opposite me.
"This is Johnnie Allen. He's my man; soon we are
married," Sander said softly. "Uhmm, Johnnie? This is..."
"Here comes the chair! Coming in for a big fat
landing!" Jannik joked, pushing and arranging the large
chair. "I know, Johnnie, I don't scratch the floor!"
"...And of course, this is my little brother, Jannik.
You remember him?" Sander asked.
"Yes. Hello, Jannik." The boy shot him a quick wave
and sat down next to me. The room was thick, and I knew
something was odd. But I couldn't have guessed what it
was in a thousand years.
"Johnnie, this is Torben Petersen." What my face
must have looked like. I immediately became short of
breath, a bit lightheaded even. "Torben is—was..."
"I know who Torben is," I said as calmly and evenly
as I possibly could. Torben was a schoolmate of Sander's
who had been his lover for over a year back when they
were thirteen or fourteen years old. Sander
had
worshipped the ground he walked on, and Torben repaid
him by un-ceremoniously and hatefully outing him at
school, which drove Sander to attempt suicide. If Jannik
be dead.
Dead.
No other way to sugarcoat it.
"Can I please talk with you?" Torben began. I
offered to take Jannik and go to another part of the
house, but Sander quickly shook his head no. This was
his problem and he was going to deal with it, and there
was no way he would keep anything from me, or even
Jannik. His brother had just as much skin in the game as
Sander did, having suffered the trauma of seeing Sander
struggling with a belt around his neck.
"Jannik brought you a chair, Torben. Have a seat.
Can we get you something to drink?"
"A glass of water, please?" And before he could be
asked, Jannik popped up and grabbed a bottled water
from the fridge. He handed it off to Torben and sat down,
cheekily adding, "Don't worry. I didn't poison it."
"So what brings you way out here?" Sander began.
"It's not an easy place to get to without a car."
"I took the bus into Gelsted and walked the rest of
the way. I didn't know if you'd even be here. I saw what
happened on the news, and I thought maybe I could come
and talk with you."
"What about? I mean, I thought we'd said all there
is. I told you I forgave you, and I really did, Torben. So
why are you here?"
He slumped a bit, his head held low. Defeated,
perhaps? I didn't know anything about him other than
what I'd heard, but he didn't look too good, whatever the
case.
"You know what they say about karma? What a
fucking bitch she is?" Torben answered. "Well, you'll be
happy to know that my karma for what I did to you has
finally arrived in crates."
"Why will that make me happy?" Sander asked. "I
don't wish anything bad for you. I never did, Torben. I
think maybe you forget how much I loved you back then.
Enough to... Enough to—"
"You don't have to say it, Pokey. He knows what he
did to you," I said. "And so does that little guy right there,
Torben. See him?"
Torben slowly nodded and that's when the water
works flowed.
"I know that you're sorry, okay? But I don't know
what you want from us. You're not playing fair right now,"
Sander said.
"Did he ever?" came the short reply from Jannik.
"Sander, I left my family when I left our old
school. I was living near Copenhagen and nobody knew
me there. I was the big man out on my own, and I did
some really stupid stuff," Torben said. Sander looked at
him, confused.
"What? Bank robbery? Drugs? What the fuck,
Torben?"
"I'm gay, yeah?"
"Yeah, I know that more than anybody. So you're
gay. I'm gay. Johnnie's gay. Big fucking deal, every-
fucking-body's gay. So what? Now you figure it out and
you want me to bless you? Okay! Bless fucking you! You're
gay." Sander exclaimed. "Glad you finally know you're
gay!"
"I fucked up, Sander. Real bad. And I don't know
anybody else to go to," Torben said.
"Okay. So what'd you do that's so fucked up that
you come to me after four years with all this?"
"Every night I went to the clubs, I went to the park,
I went to the toilets at the train station, I went to the
baths..."
"No protection?" I asked. He nodded.
"I didn't get tested until I got really sick. I mean
fucking sick all the time. So when I did, they said I'd
already... They told me I had a really aggressive cancer
probably related to AIDS, and they helped me, but I'd
waited too long and this was a really aggressive strain. So
I'm finished. I'm done, Sander."
Silence enveloped the room, and the bluish light
had passed to near darkness. I asked Jannik to switch on a
couple of lamps while Sander and I processed what
Torben had told us.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Sander said. "I'm so sorry,
Torben. What does your family say?"
"They're not in the picture," he said. "You know my
all the time. And I don't want my mom to know I have the
plague. I thought I'd tell her I have cancer or something at
the last minute," Torben explained.
"Do you really think that's fair?" Sander asked him.
"They love you and will want to be with you."
"No they don't. And they won't. They don't know
how to run their own lives; how are they gonna be any use
in this situation? Anyway, I wanted to tell you," Torben
said.
"Why did you come here tonight, Torben?" Sander
asked. "Go ahead. Tell us. We take the truth better than
most, I think. And I know you well enough to know that
you're not just here to give us the bad news."
"No, it's okay. I don't know what I was thinking. I
should probably go anyway."
"He wants to stay here." It was Jannik who
acknowledged the elephant in the room. "He knows that
you're the only one who would ever help him."
Moments passed. Torben looked at Sander and
nodded. "He's right. I apologize. I don't know what I
was thinking."
"Yes you do. I just told you," Jannik said. "You
think my brother is soft in the head. But he's
not stupid."
"It's okay, cowboy. Thanks for having my back,"
Sander smiled. Then Torben sobbed, clearly knowing—as
he'd already put it—how badly he'd fucked up, beginning
with what he'd done to Pokey.
Sander turned to me and took my hand. "Johnnie?"
It's all he had to say. I knew where this was going.
"It's totally your call, Pokes. I'll back you, whatever
you decide."
"One thing's for sure, Torben. You're at least
staying here tonight because there's no buses back to
Odense, and where would you go anyway? So welcome.
Have you eaten anything?"
"Not since this morning," he replied.
"Chef Jannik! A couple of burgers for Torben? Hold
the poison?" Sander joked. Jannik headed off to the kitchen
and fired up the microwave.
I was completely floored by what I'd just seen.
Many times in these writings I have related how amazed I
am by Sander Lars Hansen. His spirit, his empathy, the
love he leaves everywhere he goes. As uncomfortable as I
still felt by sheltering the person who, through his cruelty,
had nearly cost me the love of my life, I couldn't help but
focus on the unselfish act of kindness and true forgiveness
my man had shown him. For better or for worse, I was all
in.
"ARE YOU REALLY OKAY with Torben being here?"
Sander asked me, his head lying on my chest, his
shoulders curled within my left arm. "I only told him he
could stay for--"
"He stays as long as you want him to stay. And I
have absolutely no problem with it as long as you're okay
with it," I told him. "I don't know how Cracker Jack feels
about it, and I don't think I'd mention it to your mom quite
yet, but I promise it's okay with me."
He kissed my chest and snuggled up a little closer.
The rain had returned and the radio said we were in for
three days of downpours. But it never bothered me
because harsh weather just meant I'd have an excuse to
cuddle up to him even closer.
"I will ask Jannik if he is bothered if Torben stays,
and of course I don't know for how long a time he needs to
be here. But, anyway, one day each day, yeah?" Sander
sighed.
"I think you mean one day at a time."
"It's what I say, grammy Nazi."
"Uhmm. Grammar Nazi."
"Fuck you."
"Okay. Fuck me."
"Serious?" Sander smiled. "Because I do it! You
don't should start what you don't finish!" He laughed.
"Hey, I'm not starting anything. I'm just laying here
minding my own business, when the cute, sexy, horny
Dane jumps into my bed and takes advantage of me!"
"You get one thing right about that! Roll over and I
will teach that cute ass one big lesson!" Sander joked. "And
when I finish you will beg for more, Johnnie Allen! You