The pairing, p.23
The Pairing, page 23
My phone buzzes with a text from Theo: a grainy, zoomed-in photo of the David’s cock and balls.
Nice, I reply. I send back a photo of Calumny of Apelles, a dramatic painting of hot people in billowing robes fighting one another in an ornate throne room. This is how I picture Númenor. Theo replies, nerd, and, <3, and then sends a photo of the David’s ass.
Finally, when the crowd thins out, I reverently approach The Birth of Venus.
As I take my first, long-awaited look at her windswept hair, that iconic, brassy shade of blond, I realize I’ve seen the color before. Three times, actually, on Sloane, Este, and Theo.
Venus is a Flowerday strawberry blond.
It feels strange to see something of Theo in a depiction of the divine feminine. I’ve never really seen any woman in Theo (here, Theo would say well, technically, and mention one of the times we brought a girl home together), but I have occasionally seen something else. Some eternal, ineffable quality present in this painting. I see Theo in the way Venus leans her weight to one side and juts her hip out in the contrapposto stance, Theo’s jaw and chin in Venus’s face, Theo’s subtle smirk in the shape of Venus’s mouth, Theo’s laughing vitality in the way Venus’s hair flies.
The longer I stare at her, though, the more I begin to see bits of myself too. Her gaze, the fluidity of her body, the way her fingers lay on her breast. If Theo were here, would they recognize me the way I recognize them? Would they wonder, the way I’m wondering, how it can be that we’ve met here in a Botticelli, curling out of the sea-foam?
I picture them a few streets away beneath David, that monument to masculine beauty, finding us in him like I’ve found us in Venus. Comparing their thighs to his thighs, my lips to his lips, their knees, their shoulders, my waist, our collarbones. I hope Theo looks at that lovingly honed marble and sees the places where their own body holds as much of the divine masculine as he does. I hope it makes them feel known.
I stay there with Venus until two minutes before aperitivo, unwilling to look away. She fills me with dreams of Theo and me on a beach strewn with petals, fills my mouth with the taste of sea salt and rose water and citrus blossoms. An idea for a pastry comes to me unprompted: a featherlight, shell-shaped madeleine infused with rose water and lightly salted, kissed with lemon crémeux and flecked with candied primrose. I write it down, though I don’t know what I’d ever use it for.
* * *
In France, we take an apéro before dinner. In my family, it was kir in a juice glass with a splash of Lillet Blanc. Crème de cassis, white wine, a hint of orange peel and honey. Maman said an apéritif should be sweet to ease you into your meal gently, though I suspected she just liked the taste of Lillet.
In Italy, an aperitivo should be bitter. Vermouth, Campari, Aperol. The philosophy is that bitter herbs prime the palate by shocking it into a blank slate for whatever flavors come next. This is what Fabrizio tells us outside a café near the Duomo, where we meet to sip bitter, orange-red Campari spritzes at flimsy café tables that wobble on the piazza’s stones.
Evening sun lights Theo from behind as they lean back in their chair. I watch them laugh at Dakota, who discovers that a spritz is the only way to get a full glass of ice in Italy and orders three more in rapid succession. They take notes on flavors, push their fingers through their hair, recline into their typical legs-akimbo Theo posture, take out a bandana and tie it around their neck. When I first moved to the US, I thought Theo might have been one of those cowboys from the American books my dad bought me.
Cowboys, flowers. David, Venus, Theo.
I don’t know how I didn’t guess it sooner. I certainly felt it long before Theo put a word to it. How could Theo not have always had everything I want? Everything I’m most attracted to, every aspect of masculine and feminine I like best. I don’t know if I love Theo because I’m queer or if I’m queer because I love Theo, but I know there’s nothing I need that Theo doesn’t have. If I’m a man in constant pursuit of decadence, Theo is the ultimate. The most of everything.
I wonder, if Theo had never been on their own, would they have ever discovered this? Or did safety and familiarity keep them smaller? Would there have always been a limit to how much they would know of themself, how much of them I would get to know?
What tragedy that would have been, a comfortable, diminishing love.
I’ve always agreed with the French that a meal should begin with sweetness, but I’m beginning to wonder if the Italians have it right—if, sometimes, discovery wants bitterness first.
* * *
“Theeee-oh, Theeee-oh, Theee-oh!”
It was the Calums that got the chant started, but our entire table has joined in, banging their fists until plates rattle. Theo stands, flushed but clearly pleased with the attention.
“Fine, I’ll do it!”
Fabrizio passes down three empty glasses, and Theo turns away while I pour a different red wine into each. When I’m finished, they sit back down, and everyone leans in to watch.
Theo picks up the first glass and swirls the wine.
“Oh, baby. Deep ruby in color, fading to a garnet rim. Brilliant in the light. Already thinking Sangiovese is the main grape here, and like, duh, Tuscany.” They bring the glass to their nose and take a whiff. “Whew. Okay, off the rip, lots of dark fruit. Black cherry for sure. Blackberry, maybe pomegranate. Hold on.” They tip the glass to their lips and close their eyes to taste. “Mm. She’s got a lot going on. Full-bodied and intense, and those fruits are preserved. Bit of balsamic, bit of oregano, bit of leather. A lot of tannins, but they’re gentle, like they’ve had a long time to think about it. Long finish. Sort of like making out with a sexy nun. Gotta be Brunello, Riserva. Around ten years. Slightly candied, actually, which makes it a warm vintage, and 2014 was a cooler year, so maybe 2015?”
“2016,” I read off the bottle, jaw slack in astonishment. “But yes, you got it.”
Montana gasps delightedly, and our table cheers. Ginger Calum puts his fingers in his mouth and whistles. Theo takes a silly little bow.
They taste the other two and correctly identify a Chianti Classico and a Carmignano, each time to riotous applause. A ridiculous balloon of pride swells in me. I spent so long wanting Theo to throw themself into something the way I knew they could, and here they are, being great.
I once read a line in Mrs. Dalloway that stuck with me because of how well it described Theo’s place in my life. Clarissa sees Sally in her pink dinner frock and, after listing every other visitor and activity in the house, thinks, All this was only a background for Sally. To me, Theo is the eternal foreground. I put them at the center of every room. It’s gratifying when the room agrees.
Trattoria Sostanza is ours for the night, booked out for an endless Italian dinner. The restaurant barely fits our entire tour group, but that only adds to the experience. Bottles of wine and water flow from hand to hand, plates of oil and herbs from table to table, baskets of bread passed around like the collection at Sunday mass. My back is pressed to Stig’s back like we’re two travelers from the north crammed into the same carriage on a Grand Tour. Fabrizio is leaning over to the next table, shouting to be heard as he explains the courses of an Italian meal. “That is the beauty, in Italy you do not have to choose pasta or meat! You have pasta for primi, meat for secondi!”
For primi, we have hand-pinched tortellini simmered in butter and rough-cut pasta in a perfectly simple meat sauce, and then comes secondi, when we truly feast. Fabrizio expounds on the subtleties of traditional Tuscan cookery that make a country dish like bistecca alla fiorentina taste so complex: how the charcoal embers must be stoked to the exact right temperature, hot enough to achieve a fragrant crust when the beef is laid close to it for a few short minutes, but not so hot that it cooks out the marbled, ruby-red center. Meanwhile, a skillet of breaded chicken fried in a centimeter of pure, golden butter requires no explanation—it’s just fucking delicious.
But as our plates are cleared for dolci, I think the dish that has surprised me most is the tortino di carciofi—eggs swirled in a pan around a cluster of fried artichokes to make a puffy, perfectly round omelet.
“Fabrizio,” I say, “do you know the story of Caravaggio and the artichokes?”
He doesn’t, so I tell him how Caravaggio, a hotheaded young bisexual street brawler and one of the most masterful Italian painters in history, went to dinner with friends at an osteria in Rome. The waiter brought him a dish of artichokes, some cooked in oil and some in butter, and when Caravaggio asked which was which, the waiter told him to sniff them and find out.
“And so Caravaggio—”
A hand slides into my lap, and my thoughts skid to a halt.
Beside me, Theo innocently sips their wine, as if their other hand isn’t on the inseam of my shorts under the tablecloth.
“Go on,” Fabrizio says, “what does Caravaggio do?”
“Yeah, Kit,” Theo says, smiling. Their hand slips higher. “Go on.”
I shoot Theo a pleading look, undermined by the way my legs reflexively spread under the table.
“So Caravaggio’s furious, and he grabs the artichokes, and hhh—” The word evaporates as Theo fully palms me through my shorts. I play it off as a cough, reach for my glass. “He throws the whole dish at the waiter’s face.”
“No!” Fabrizio gasps.
“Hits him right in the mustache.”
“Not the mustache,” Theo says.
“Non i baffi!” Fabrizio agrees. “And then?”
“And then—” Theo gives me a maddeningly brief squeeze before taking their hand away, leaving me wanting. I forget the end of the story. “And then he jumps up, steals a sword off the guy at the next table, and tries to attack the waiter, and that’s when he gets arrested.”
Fabrizio, delighted, thanks me for a new story to use in Rome. As soon as he’s pulled into another conversation, I lean in to Theo’s ear.
“What are you doing?”
Theo smiles angelically. “Telling you my plans for the night.”
“Oh.” I nod. “Good to know.”
After that, I expect us to sneak off when dinner ends, but we each get the arm of a Calum flung over our shoulders, and before we can protest, we’re whisked into the streets of Florence. Stig is with us too, and Fabrizio, and Montana and Dakota and a few more of the younger people from the tour group. We wind up in a small, dark bar with glittering glass mosaics and red leather booths and a swordfish on the wall. Fabrizio has Theo order for us, and the bartender uncorks two bottles of young Brunello.
After so many days together, conversation flows easily. Theo and Stig compare notes on backpacking through the Rockies versus Jotunheim. Fabrizio and the Calums discuss their favorite New Zealand beaches. I prop my elbows on the bar and beg Dakota and Montana to tell me more about their work trip to Tokyo, where they dropped acid with a Moroccan prince. Theo insists on buying two more bottles for the group, this time a softer, fruitier Morellino di Scansano.
By round three, Stig and Fabrizio are shouting about the last World Cup, and Dakota and Montana are bending their heads together at one end of the bar, whispering behind their hands. At the other end, the Calums unconvincingly pretend to study the cocktail menu instead of eavesdropping. I watch Theo accept a glass from a handsome bartender who eyes them with interest, but they’re already turning their body toward mine, bumping our knees together.
“I have a question,” I say.
Theo raises their eyebrows as they drink. Go on.
“Is our competition still on?”
They swallow. “Yeah, why? You want to call it before you lose?”
“No, I was just wondering how you’ll find time to maintain your lead if you’re hooking up with me.”
A moment goes by. Fabrizio continues talking shit about the Portuguese national team. Dakota makes a move toward the Calums.
“Yeah, about that,” Theo says. “I have a confession. My numbers may be … slightly inflated.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t hook up with the fruit-stand girl in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.”
“But—” I can still see the intent in their gaze when they told me how well they could get Juliette off, feel the hot twist in my gut. “I saw you kissing her.”
“Yeah, we kissed, but then—I kind of got curved. I didn’t want to tell you because I was a little jealous of you and Paloma. So, it’s not six to four, it’s five to four.”
I shake my head.
“Five to three.”
It’s Theo’s turn to frown. “What?”
“I didn’t sleep with Paloma either.”
Theo puts their glass down with force.
“What? You left with her!”
But it’s true. As soon as she broke the kiss, she patted me on the cheek like a lost dog and said, “I think I would rather be your friend.” And then she invited me over out of charity, and I sat in her kitchen and told her about my job and asked how she knew she didn’t want to do what I do.
“Yes,” I say. “We made crepes and talked about culinary school. That was all.”
I may have also tearfully confided in her how much I still love Theo while Great-Uncle Mikel made me a cup of tea.
“You—but you said—”
“I never technically said I slept with her,” I point out. “I just didn’t contradict you.”
“So, to be clear,” Theo says, laying their hands flat on the bar, “neither of us got laid in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Damn.” They sit back, laughing in disbelief. “Well, this is embarrassing for us both.”
“Is it?” I ask, smiling. “Maybe the only thing better than sex is having friends on the Côte d’Argent.”
“A wholesome sentiment from the Sex God of École Desjardins.”
The—quoi?
“The what?”
“Oh, don’t be coy.” They roll their eyes. “Maxine told me all about it.”
Oh, no. That could mean anything.
“What exactly did Maxine tell you?”
Theo shrugs. “Essentially, that you sucked and fucked your way through pastry school, and everyone was in love with you.”
“In love with me?” I repeat, stunned. “Theo, did—did you ever think my best friend might have been exaggerating to make me look good to my ex?”
“Well—” Theo blinks. “I thought she was your girlfriend at the time.”
“Oh, God. Oh, Theo, no.” I rub a hand across my face. We can’t keep doing this. “Do you want the honest truth?”
Theo hesitates for only a second.
“Yes.”
“It’s true that in pâtisserie school I had … a lot of sex,” I say. Theo’s mouth forms a thin line, as if I’m just showing off. “And I’m sure some of them had feelings for me, because I—I was kind of raw for a while. Kind of pouring out a lot of love in a lot of directions, trying to, I don’t know, get it all out of me. Because you were gone so fast and so completely, and I couldn’t shut it off.”
Theo’s gaze drops from my face to a cocktail napkin, their mouth softening.
“But, while that may be an excellent way to get someone into bed, it’s a terrible way to get them to stay,” I go on. “I was a mess. No one could put up with me for more than a week. I had to learn to be better at picking people up so I wouldn’t have to sleep alone in the apartment that was supposed to be ours. That’s all. Maxine is a saint, but she’s also protective to a fault. She would’ve told you anything to make it sound better for me.”
A pause, only the bar noise around us. Theo seems to be chewing on this information. I thumb the base of my glass, hoping they don’t find it too pathetic.
Finally, their voice almost too low to be heard, they ask, “So, it was hard for you? When I…?”
It shouldn’t shock me to learn Theo thought their exit from my life was easy for me. As long as we’ve known each other, Theo’s great misconception has been that people don’t miss them. It’s hard for them to believe that they have so much to offer, that people want them around and think of them fondly when they’re gone. They don’t expect anyone to care if they leave. It’s affected us before, and often—when I moved to New York, when they dropped out of school, when we’d have a tense conversation and they’d avoid me for days. Under pressure, they would vanish, and they loved themself so little they were surprised when it hurt me.
In my memory, I see a small Theo outside my old house in the Valley, dropped off by the family driver with an overstuffed suitcase.
Adult-sized Theo continues: “I kind of figured you didn’t think of me once you got to Paris. I thought you found better things to care about, and I was, you know. Backstory.”
We’ve come so far from who we were when we met, but some things hold out.
“Theo, you could never be backstory,” I say. “I thought about you every single day. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, and you had disappeared. And it seemed so … clean. Like you didn’t even hesitate. And that killed me.”
After a pause, Theo says, “For what it’s worth, it killed me too.”
As much as it hurts to think of Theo in pain, it is worth something. It helps, in some strange, sad way, to know they were as fucked up as me. That I was alone with it not because they didn’t feel it, but because they never told me.
“Can I ask why you did it, then?” I say. “I know why we broke up, and I know you thought I left you, but I still don’t understand why you didn’t just call me when you got home.”
I wait for them to harden, to answer with You didn’t call either, but they rest their fingertips on the stem of their glass and look thoughtful.
“I think I was always waiting for you to outgrow me,” they say. “And it seemed like you finally had. I was humiliated, and angry—I was so angry—and part of me just needed a win. Cutting you off felt like doing something, like—like taking control of what was happening to me. But, Kit, it wasn’t easy for me either. It never could be.”
