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come, forever destroying the hope Anthony had introduced into my world; our world, a world where I had once believed I would always be alone.
On one visit, he was standing barefoot in his uniform, looking perfect as ever. It was a uniform left over from cadets who had passed through his Catholic school years earlier. The blue service uniform with red cording on the trousers, hung on him as if it had been tailored perfectly to his frame. His name plate was pinned just below the school crest. He looked different with it on…more mature, proper, and so handsome. As he released the brass buckle and removed the belt, he bemoaned the choice he had made to attend a school that he felt was less a choice and more an expectation; a life of inhibition and missed chances, perhaps, but also a bearable life, a life that to some extent we both had chosen and continued to choose. As he removed his uniform, I now saw the boy who I had fallen for, the boy who welcomed me, welcomed who I was, and who I was to him. He was not effeminate in any way, but he was far more beautiful without the uniform on. He wasn’t timid when declaring how he had always hated that uniform and what it represented, proclaiming that it was a denunciation of who he really was. The uniform, which hung prominently in the sunroom, was always a source of consternation for him.
He would become philosophical, at times, sounding more mature than the boy who lay naked beside me, warm and tender. Our secrets define us, he would say, but we become the face that we show the world. Always a lie, a uniform, that isn’t who we truly are. We do it for them. We do it for us; just to be able to live in their world. It’s not right. It’s not fair. But, for me, I had loved the idea of having something as wonderful as this that I need not share with anyone, ever. Not that I could.
When I was expected, Anthony would greet me at the door. He would see me coming as he gazed out the sunroom windows. On very few occasions, his grandmother would be standing in the dim light of the threshold of her living room and foyer. Always in a black cotton dress, sweater on her shoulders, no adornments beyond a black rosary wrapped in her hands and a silver cross