Ben Soul

Butter greeted him with a perplexed whine. It was time for their stroll, but went right to bed. He slept several hours, and woke with a headache. He had not drunk so much for years. He immediately swore off drinking ever again with women owned by demanding cats. However, he did not swear off eating cookies with them. Reform is all very well, if not overdone.

  Butter demanded he take her out, so he got her leash and they went for a walk in the misty moonlight on the beach. The air was still, an uncommon occurrence by the sea. The mist veiled the sky discreetly. Butter got her romp, and Ben cleared his head.

  Emma’s admonition that he should date Dickon stuck in his mind. He discovered he was excited at the idea. He diverted his thoughts to other matters, such as Vanna’s talk of llama cults, but they kept returning to a date with Dickon. But what to suggest? Dinner and a movie would require nearly an hour’s drive each way. Dinner at the Four Rosas was a possibility, but then everyone would know everything that happened. He wasn’t ready to show any romantic interest that openly until he knew he had some reason to expect a response in kind.

  “Butter, should I have a date with Dickon?” She wagged her tail vigorously, as she commonly did when he mentioned Dickon. He took it for a yes. “It should be a quiet evening, so we can explore each other without a lot of pressure from other people’s expectations. I could ask him to dinner with just the two of us.” Butter indicated enthusiasm with her tail. Ben wondered if “dinner,” or “Dickon” motivated her. He decided it was the latter, because he wanted her support.

  Next day he went to the post office, hoping to find Dickon there. He wasn’t; Harry Pitts told Ben Dickon had gone to Las Tumbas on business. The keenness of his disappointment surprised Ben.

  “He’ll be back tomorrow,” Harry said. “Want I should tell him you were asking for him?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll catch up to him when I see him.”

  He was going to wait until he encountered Dickon, to make the invitation seem casual, but when he said something to Butter about waiting, it suddenly seemed ludicrous to wait. He walked over to Dickon’s place and left a handwritten invitation tucked into the screen door. The next morning Dickon left a note on his way to the post office accepting Ben’s invitation.

  Ben served the meal family style. He made fusilli with white clam sauce, lamb chops seasoned with rosemary, a lettuce salad dressed with lime vinaigrette, and broccoli spears sautéed in extra virgin olive oil. For dessert, he brought in chocolate cake from Wong Brothers.

  Dickon brought a bottle of Johannesburg Riesling. “Everything smells good,” Dickon said. He grinned at Ben. “Including you,” he added.

  Ben nearly blushed. “Let’s hope it all tastes good, too,” he said. He brought their salads, individually made. He brought the vinaigrette in a salad dressing bottle. He shook it before he offered it to Dickon. “Don’t pay attention to the label,” he said. “It’s something I put together. It’s convenient to put it in a recycled bottle.”

  “Interesting,” Dickon said. He poured a generous amount over his bowl of mixed greens. “Do you do things like this often?”

  “What?”

  “Do you make your own salad dressings, that kind of thing?”

  “Yeah. I got the gay cooking gene, somehow or another.” Ben poured dressing on his salad.

  “That one passed me by,” Dickon said. “I can put out a passable meal, but nothing fancy. I’d probably be lost without a can opener.”

  “Good things can come in cans,” Ben said. “Beer does.”

  “Beer’s better in bottles.”

  “True.” They were quiet while they ate their salads. When he had finished his, Dickon said, “Excellent, my good man, excellent. A perfect start to a proper meal.”

  Ben went to the oven. He took the fusilli, clam sauce, and broccoli out of the oven where he had been keeping them warm. He put the fusilli in a bowl, then poured the clam sauce over it and stirred it around. He scattered a light dusting of grated asiago cheese over it. Then he put the broccoli in a bowl. He got serving spoons for each. He took these to the table. Then he went back to the stove and plated the lamb chops. Lastly he poured the wine.

  Dickon helped himself to fusilli and took some broccoli. Then he passed the dishes to Ben. “Scrumptious,” he said, around a mouthful of pasta. Then he ate a sliver of his lamb chop. He closed his eyes, and sighed in ecstasy. “Where did you learn to cook like this?”

  “Oh, just a little bit by little bit, over the years. I’ve got a limited repertoire, but there are a few things I can do well.”

  “I’ll have to try some of the others.”

  “We’ll arrange it.” Ben looked up just as Dickon looked up. Electricity sparked between Ben’s gray eyes and Dickon’s green ones. They both laughed softly, over no discernible joke.

  Over the rest of the dinner, they talked only a little and that mostly about the weather. Afterward, Dickon helped Ben clear the table, and Ben served dessert. Then he offered Dickon an after-dinner cordial. Dickon declined that, and asked for a cup of tea instead. Ben went to put the kettle on.

  Dickon seemed relaxed and mellow until Ben mentioned Vanna had strongly urged him to move out. Dickon’s face twisted with pain when Ben’s spoke her name.

  “That woman!” he said bitterly.

  Ben asked him, “How did you ever come to marry her?”

  “Clergy need wives. Also, I earnestly believed a man’s primary purpose in life was to marry and beget children. That shows I had absorbed the attitudes of my upbringing.”

  “You think something else is a man’s primary purpose?”

  “Yes. To be one, whatever that means for any individual.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “I can only describe it in the context of my own life. God, if God is, didn’t make me to be a married man. I just don’t have the hardwiring to screw women.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Almost ten miserable years.”

  “How did you get through it? I can’t imagine working myself up for sex with a woman.”

  “A lot of fantasizing she was a guy. Younger men, at least the younger me, could turn on mechanically well enough to get by. As I got more familiar with the process, it got more difficult to pretend. I was working against who I am. In those days, I was much more religious, and kept bargaining with God that if He made me heterosexual, I’d be His ever more faithful servant. I’ve gotten a little wiser since then.”

  “Wiser?”

  “If God is, I don’t expect Him to yank the universe around to suit my perceived needs. The first spiritual lesson, I guess, is to accept what is as what’s so.” Ben looked puzzled, so Dickon said it another way. “I mean, instead of wasting time wishing things were different, or trying to find somebody to blame for the way things are, accept that whatever situation and condition one is in, that’s where you start off from now. Don’t change the past, it’s hopeless. Start off from now to find the future.”

  Ben had a different question. “You keep saying ‘If God is.’ What do you mean by that?”

  “One can’t prove God is. One can’t prove God isn’t. One can only believe one way or the other, or admit one doesn’t know what to believe. Once upon a time, I believed God is. Now I know I don’t know.”

  “That must make it awkward to be a preacher.”

  “Yes, it would. I suspect it’s a problem a lot of modern clergy wrestle with, the ones with honest minds, anyway.”

  “What’s the second spiritual lesson?”

  “That ‘Why?’ has no absolute answer.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Questions like, ‘Why do bad things happen to me?’ and ‘Why do people suffer?’ have only relative answers. If I have smoked all my adult life, and contract lung cancer, the relative answer is smoking causes cancer. However, I may never have smoked, and still may contract lung cancer. The relati
ve answer then will be something very different, pollution, or genetics, or the like. That’s not the absolute answer that the ‘Why?’ really asks, which is, ‘Why me?’”

  “The third spiritual lesson,” Dickon went on, “is that life has no purpose except to be. Any purpose to my being, or your being, is a construct we fashion to justify ourselves to ourselves. If God is, God only ‘cares’ that we are.”

  Ben shook his head. “It sounds like you’re saying we just happen, and then we die.”

  “Yes. But what goes on between can be endlessly fascinating. That’s the fourth spiritual lesson. Be interested always, and enjoy.”

  “Even dark things, like people you love dying?”

  “Yes, if you can. Enjoy that you’re still alive to mourn the dead.”

  “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “If you want to, do. It’s just the way I see things tonight.”

  Butter put her head on Dickon’s knee, looking at him with that canine longing that moves mountains. He invited her up into his lap, even though she was large for a lap dog.

  “Ah, Butter,” he said, “Ben didn’t invite me here to philosophize. I think he had something else in mind, don’t you?” She wagged her tail with enthusiasm, thumping Dickon’s lap. Dickon raised his green eyes to look right into Ben’s gray eyes.

  “Ben, I think you’re half turned on to me. I’m half turned on to you. Am I right?”

  Ben blinked; such plain speech was unfashionable among the couples he and Len moved in. He plunged. “Yes,