Salting the Wound
By Miriam Heddy
Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses-
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon-
Rationalists would wear sombreros.
Landscape VI
from "Six Significant Landscapes"
by Wallace Stevens
On his back, Charlie stared at the ceiling, noticing the way the once-crisp angles of the tin tiles were blurred by layers of paint. A crack ran the length of one tile, bisecting the floral pattern into something abstract and, to Charlie's eyes, more interesting. Peripherally, he could see Larry sitting up, propped against the headboard, watching him, a small frown on his face as he set down his book.
"A particularly vexing problem, Charles?"
"No. Yes. I'm not sure. I may be over-thinking it."
"You? Over-think? I hardly think that's likely."
Charlie rolled over onto his side. "Some problems just seemÉ too easy. Too obvious."
"I'll have to trust you on that."
Charlie shut his eyes, and persistence of vision outlined the pattern of curves and angles on the inside of his eyelids. "You know what I mean."
"If you say so."
"You don't cry."
It wasn't persistence of vision, but something close to it, that told him that Larry's eyes had widened and he was frowning now.
"Where did that come from?"
"You don't," Charlie said again, opening his eyes. As he'd surmised, Larry was frowning, his eyes wide, green, tearless.
"That's a very general statement, Charles."
"Right. Well, I've never seen you cry."
"Is that a problem? Is that—is that the problem? Because honestly, if you have nothing better to do, I'm sure I have some equations here somewhere."
He couldn't tell if Larry was annoyed or amused or, as was often the case, both.
"I don't need to be distracted, and no, it's not—I didn't say it was a problem. I just noticed."
"You noticed my not doing something? That'sÉ interesting."
"You must have noticed that I—I do." Charlie cleared his throat, looking up at the ceiling again, because this was a little embarrassing. Strange how it really was embarrassing, whereas everything else they did—things that he thought probably should be embarrassing—weren't.
"Is that what this is about? That you do, and IÉ"
"Don't," Charlie finished for him, trying not to make it sound like an accusation.
"That's not entirely accurate."
"Isn't it?"
"No—no, not entirely accurate. For instance, I am not, I'll admit, entirely immune to the effects of an onion."
Larry drew his legs up and rested his chin on his knees, and Charlie grabbed for the sheet before Larry could pull it off of him entirely.
"I'm just trying to understand," Charlie offered.
Larry nodded. "Because for some reason, some part of this bothers you. So, what bothers you—that I, apparently, don't cry when you believe I should? Or that you do? Because I suspect those are two very different problems, if they are, indeed, problems, and I'm not entirely sure that they are."
"Maybe not for you."
"Granted, yes. Of course. Though the nature of this relationship seems to bring with it the assumption that your problems are my problems. And to clarify, I suppose that yes, I don't—I haven't—in your presence, and I trust that you understand that I—I don't even know precisely what to say. Do we really have to talk about this?"
"No."
"By which you mean yes."
Charlie sighed. "I don't know what I mean."
"Fine. Then you talk, and I'll sit here, and maybe you'll figure it out."
Annoyed, Charlie decided. Amused, but definitely heading into annoyed. Larry was sticking out his lower lip just slightly, something he only did when he was frustrated.
"Do you think I should be in therapy or something?"
Larry rubbed the side of his face. "I suppose that's a loaded question."
"It's not. I want you to be honest."
"Then yes, honestly? I think you probably should be in therapy or something, yes, if it would mean I didn't have to talk about this. There. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
"That's not what I meant by honesty."
"Fine. Honestly, then, I have no idea. We should probably all be in therapy, no one more-so than I, as I suspect I'm suffering some very deep trauma as a result of this conversation."
"Larry."
"Charles. Please. Could we—this is just not something I'm entirely comfortable discussing while naked."
"You could get dressed."
"Or we could not talk about it, which has the advantage of my remaining naked."
"You're trying to distract me."
"Trying, and failing, I'm afraid, which says nothing good about my waning desirability. Y'know, I think—I think my feelings are now hurt."
"But you're not going to cry." And Charlie wasn't at all sure if he was joking.
"No, I prefer to sublimate my emotional trauma into carnal activity."
"Larry—"
"Y'know, there was a time when the offer of my willing body would be enough to—oh, well. I stand corrected."
And Larry had pulled the sheet off of him and at that point, it was pretty obvious that Larry had no reason to feel unwanted. None at all.
They'd gotten dressed, and gotten coffee, and Charlie had even managed to not burn some eggs, and again, he broached the problem that maybe wasn't a problem.
"So you do cry, just not when I'm around."
Larry rolled his eyes. "Pardon me for saying so, but that's quite a leap to the paranoid."
"In what sense?"
"In the sense that you make it sound as if—you know in what sense. It's not a matter of—whatever you've decided it's a matter of." Larry was waving his hands around fast enough that they were blurs.
"It's not?"
"It's not. I urinate in front of you, so you can reasonably assume that, should I have the urge, I would cry in front of you, alright? And can we please leave it at that?"
"Fine."
"By which you again mean no, you're going to continue to mope until—"
"I'm not moping. I'm thinking."
"Charles, you're not thinking. You're feeling. And while there's nothing wrong with either mode of being, I suggest you not confuse the two."
Somehow, Larry had moved from not reading the paper to standing toe to toe with him. When he was angry, he moved pretty fast.
"Wow—you're—this is bothering you."
"I'm not bothered. I'm just—"
"Shouting?" Charlie said, quietly, and Larry seemed to suddenly notice where he was, and backed off, his voice coming down to a normal level again.
"Apparently. For which I apologize."
"Me too."
"You have nothing to apologize for. Clearly, this is something of a sensitive issue."
Charlie nodded, and Larry sat back down in the armchair, picking up the paper again and laying it across his lap.
"Because—I feel, Charles—and I don't feel this often. But right now, it seems as if you're demanding that we respond to the same stimuli in the same way."
"Stimuli?"
Charlie didn't entirely trust that his anger was abated. Larry was somewhat tricky that way. "If I had known I would be delving into such emotionally charged territory I would've brought my DSMV-IV instead of my—what did I bring with me today? Ah yes. The Feynman Lectures. Not entirely helpful in this instance, though he did observe that, 'You set up the circumstances, with the same conditions every time, and you cannot predict behind which hole you will see the electron.'"
"I'm not asking you to diagnose me, and in this instance Heisenberg is irrelevant."
"No," Larry shook his head. "No, you're asking me to diagnose myself, and Heisenberg is always relevant. Why don't I cry at the least provocation? Isn't that the question?"
"At the least provocation? Is that what you think of me?"
"No—Charles, no. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that the way it came out. That was entirely defensive and uncalled for."
Charlie remained silent, knowing that Larry probably did mean that. It wasn't that he didn't see it. Don hadn't ever really said anything, except when they were little and he'd fallen off his bike and Don told him to "just suck it up" and then looked at him and sighed and said, "Never-mind. C'mere" and put a bandaid on both of his knees. Don could look at the most horrible things—things that nobody should have to see, that shouldn't happen to anybody. And he didn't cry. His father—he couldn't remember his father crying, either, not even at Mom's funeral, though he must have. He couldn't remember that time very well. Maybe Larry was right, and he was the one with the problem.
"Alright, let's depersonalize this and see where that gets us. Charlie? Still with me here?"
Charlie nodded, though he wasn't at all sure how to depersonalize it. It felt very personal, and he was starting to wish he'd never brought it up.
"Now, much as it pains me to admit it, I'm quite a bit older than you."
"Really?"
"Shut up." Larry waved his hand in the air, a smile in his voice, though not yet on his face. "No—this is serious. Consider the implications of the age difference we're dealing with here."
"Okay. But you should know that I was only mediocre at ancient history." And joking about it helped, somewhat, because now he was no longer feeling choked up, which was, essentially, the problem, wasn't it?
"Ignoring that, filing it away to use against you later, and moving on. When I was in junior high, you—well, you weren't born yet, so you wouldn't remember what it was like when I was 13, which was—"
"1967."
"Yes, I suppose that's quite a long time ago, though not cosmologically speaking."
"Then you didn't actually see the Big Bang?"
"Sadly, no. Can I continue, or would you like me to just leave you alone to sulk in a corner?"
"Yes, do go on," Charlie waved his hand encouragingly, trying very hard not to sulk.
"Right, well, as I was saying, in 1967, I knew only a few things with absolute certainty. I knew I was eventually going to get taller (and I must admit, that was more optimism than certainty, as it turned out). I knew that we would one day visit the moon, which was not a speculation I shared with many people at the time, for reasons that would become obvious once we actually did visit the moon and—and this boggles the mind, Charles—people still think we didn't. How can they think that?"
"I have no idea. And the third thing?"
"Hmm?"
"The third thing you knew, in 1967."
"Oh. UmÉ taller, moon, yes. The third thing I knew was that I was different."
"I knew I was different when I was three," Charlie said, though he couldnÕt really remember it. But his Dad had said that, even then, he didn't really know how to play with the other kids at the playground, and they'd sometimes just find him sitting there, staring at the playground equipment instead of using it, and Dad said they knew he was calculating, measuring, something none of the other kids could understand—and something he probably didn't understand himself.
"Yes, I realize that. But not that kind of different. No. I don't just mean—I wasn't a genius, as you are. Well, I suppose I was, statistically speaking, but not a prodigy by any means."
"I bet you were cute, though."
"I was darling, Charles—about this high, with hair out to here." Larry held up his hand at the level of the arm of the sofa, and Charlie laughed. "Well, perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but nevertheless, I was small for my age, and that was, as you are well aware, a difficult thing to overcome. Difficult, but not impossible, of course."
"So what did you do?"
"Do? Well, IÉ what did I do? I suppose I ignored it, as much as was humanly possible. I tried to be as helpful to as many people as possible, though not to the point of violating academic standards of integrity, though there was one time when I suspect I might have crossed at least one technicality in the name of self-preservation. I, um, occasionally made some very large boys laugh, though whether it was with me or at me still remains an open question at this point. And I let on to absolutely no one that I was, as we would come to call it, a fag."
Charlie blinked at the word. Larry said it softly, but it was still a very hard word. "You—you knew back then? That you were—"
"Knew? Given what most 13 year olds knew about sex back then—and this was, you understand, well before you could ask Google if your adolescent pornographic fantasies were normal—I suppose I didn't know very much. But I knew just enough to know that I was in very real danger of having my ass kicked on the playground at more regular intervals than were already occurring."
"You—you got beat up? Wow—my mom would've killed someone. No—actually, my dad would've killed someone, and my mom would've sued, and then Don would've killed someone."
"Well, I won't say that your family was over-protective or that my own was under-protective, but attitudes were somewhat different. Boys would be boys, just as long as they weren't girls."
Charlie couldn't imagine.
"Girls cry, Charles. I'm not saying that's fair, or reasonable, or even true. But prevailing wisdomÉ."
"So you're saying I'm a girl."
"No—not at all. I'm saying that you wouldn't have survived my childhood and still come to be the man you are today, and I would feel that loss, greatly. And I can't imagine myself if I'd been born two decades later, though arguably, you might find it easier to live with me if we were a bit moreÉ alike—divided by fewer decades. Not to mention the intriguing idea that I'd have more hair today. Now, please, please tell me we're done with this topic? And did I happen to mention that Amita called? Go ahead, ask me what she said, because it was unusually interesting."
Charlie ignored him, at least for the moment. "So you don't—do you feel like crying and then don't? Is it some sort of repression?" And now Larry was now looking at him as if this—rather than his mathematics thing—made him a freak, but really, this was important. Because if there was a technique involved, he could master it. It couldn't be any harder than golf. After all, he already knew a thing or two about repression.
Larry, being Larry, appeared to consider his question before sighing and shaking his head. "No, I don't really think that's how it works. It's not something you turn off. It's justÉ not there."
"You don't feel anything?"
"Yes, Charles. I'm entirely without feelings, and thank you for that."
"That's not what I meant."
"What did you mean? Perhaps the problem is that you haven't defined the problem more precisely. Surely this vagueness on your part isn't a case of national security? Wait—is this about—"
"YesterdayÉ you looked at the body. You saw it."
Larry nodded but looked away from him and at the window, and Charlie suddenly felt horrible, because of course Larry felt something. Of course he did.
"Charles, people die, and they sometimes die horrible, horrible deaths—and honestly, if it weren't for you and thisÉ arrangement you have with Don, I don't suppose I would see as much of it as I have recently."
"I'm sorry."
"No—no, don't
apologize. It's been a very enlightening experience, and one I've entered into
with my eyes open."
"Enlightening?"
"Educational sounds cold, doesn't it? But yes. It's been and continues to be educational. And as for the sad partsÉ I suppose I justÉ zig when you zag."
"That's very scientific, Larry. Can I quote you on that? Because—"
"You're an ass, sometimes, you know that?" But Larry was laughing, refusing to notice any of the bitterness Charlie felt at the back of his throat. "I never claimed any proficiency in the soft sciences. And no—that didn't come out quite right either, did it? I don't mean to suggest that you're soft. You're actually quiteÉ this is just going right in the gutter. Can I stop talking now?"
"So—" And now Charlie was laughing too. "So you're saying if I put on some tearjerker—"
"I would not be jerked, no. Oh, that—that was—entirely unintentionally suggestive. Though I do like the suggestion." And Larry wiped at his eyes, and Charlie was startled to see tears there.
"Interesting."
"Don't say that—don't say that like you're honestly considering an experiment, because I have to make myself clear, now. I will not be your emotional lab rat."
"Really?" Charlie asked, grinning. "Because my dad has a copy of Terms of Endearment here somewhere."
"And if you touch the DVD player I promise you that you will never see me naked again. Though perhaps that's the wrong threat to use, all things considered."
"I like seeing you naked, Larry."
"Say that again and promise me that this conversation is finally over." Larry was smiling, almost shyly, and Charlie went to him, pulling him up from the chair and putting his hands on Larry's shoulders.
"I like seeing you naked, Larry." He leaned in and kissed him. Charlie suddenly flashed on the first time they'd kissed, and how he'd been worried it wouldn't work—that it would be like kissing a relative—when it turned out to be like nothing he'd ever done before—entirely redefining the experience of kissing. Larry kissed with all the intensity he usually reserved for research, and it was fascinating to watch. Charlie liked to keep his eyes open.
"Ah ah ah. First condition met. As for the secondÉ." Larry was unbuttoning his shirt, and Charlie pushed his hands aside and helped. "I may actually be too horny to hold you to two conditions."
"I'm satisfied, Larry, and the conversation is over. As long as you promise me something."
"Anything within reason, Charles."
"You don't think I'm weak." He forced Larry to look at him when he answered, holding Larry's face in his hands. Larry's face was smooth, closely shaved, and there was a small cut on the edge of his jaw where Charlie had startled him by sneaking up behind him that morning.
"No. Never. I think—"
"What?"
"It doesn't matter what I think."
"It matters to me."
"Then I think you think too much. And you can quote me on that."
"Wow—nobody has ever said that to me before."
"Not to your face, no. I imagine not. Let me help you with those jeans and see what a hard man you are."
Charlie watched as Larry unzipped both their jeans and it was somewhere between hot and very undignified, standing there in their underwear with their pants around their ankles.
He kicked off his jeans and Larry got his own off, and he pulled Larry's shirt off and Larry walked him backwards onto the sofa, straddling his lap.
"Would it disturb you if I told you that you're actually very attractive when you cry?" Larry asked, and Charlie frowned, because honestly? That was a little disturbing, bordering on the sadistic. But Larry wasn't waiting for an answer, kissing him deeply again, running his hands through Charlie's hair until they got tangled there.
"Yes," he said, when Larry finally let go of him. "That's a little weird."
"Oh, well, never-mind. Forget I mentioned it."
"I'm not going to be able to just for—Oh, what were we talking about?"
Larry's grip on his cock tightened as Larry stroked him, perfectly, perfectly, so that he wanted to get closer, get more, and he realized with a shock that there was no more—he was right on the edge and already over it, already coming, and dammit, he was crying.
He turned his face away, but Larry was offering him his crumpled-up shirt and dabbing at his face with it, looking entirely too calm. And it was the shirt with the spheres that looked like stuffed olives on cocktail toothpicks, which looked just as bad now as it did when it was on. And something about the shirt—that particular shirt—which Charlie'd been trying to ignore all day, ever since Larry found it in his closet where he'd hidden it so Larry would stop wearing it—that shirt becoming a tissue, was just too—too Larry.
"I'm such a girl," he said, finally, when he could breathe again, and used the tear-stained shirt to wipe off the come splattered on his chest and Larry's.
"You missed a spot. There." And Larry helped wipe the last of the come off his belly, seemingly unconcerned about the shirt. "You're justÉ you're not a bit feminine, Charles. You're justÉ uninhibited. Expressive."
"Like your shirt—" But Charlie couldn't talk, because he was laughing too hard again, and very likely hysterical.
"Hmm? Oh. Oh! What was I thinking? It's silk. At least I think it's silk. It's probably ruined now."
"Larry—it was—oh, it was ruined before you put it on. It's just—"
"I like this shirt. The salesclerk insisted it was very flattering. Of course, I think that was at least fifteen years ago, but she insisted then that it was a classic."
"Buyer beware, Larry. Buyer beware. I hope it was cheap. It looked cheap." The laughter was cathartic, moreso than any tears had ever been.
"You really are an ass, Charles, you know that? I have no idea at all why Amita thinks you're sensitive. And honestly? If ever I felt like crying, the death of this shirt seems like a very good reason. Call me sentimental, but I bought it the day Hubble was launched."
"I will buy you a new shirt, Larry."
"You certainly will. You certainly will. I'll hold you to that, though it won't be the same."
And Larry tossed the shirt onto the floor, looking genuinely sorry to see it go.
And Charlie realized that sometimes, Larry knew a lot more than he let on about catharsis, and holding on, and finally letting go.
The End.
Beta: Thanks again to Kate, who commented on just about every line, and let me into her head as she read this.
Author's Notes (Why I wrote this, and what questions I still have about it, for those interested in such things):
Given the social prohibitions against men crying in front of other men for all but extraordinary reasons, it's always intrigued me that we should so often see male tears on television. Part of this is, probably, simply the writers' desire, always, for more drama, a heightening of tension and an escalation of everything (blood, sweat, and tears being the emotional effluence to escape censorship, though without the censors, I suppose we'd see come as well). Part of it may also be that male actors, trained to value emotion as part of their craft, are far more likely to express sadness onscreen than they might ever do in their lives outside of work. In the absence of interiority, visible tears tell us that a man is sad, and television and film are, inherently, visual mediums, which puts TV men somewhat at odds with RL men, who are, for the most part, able to evade the spotlight and the objectifying lens. In RL, given that men are so often discouraged, early on, from crying, women are encouraged to become better readers of subtler emotions in men. The old joke is always that the woman asks the man to talk about his emotions, which he resists, until finally, at last, the woman can offer him the comfort he has been seeking all along (comfort which defines her role as caretaker in the relationship, meaning that she has a strong investment in identifying the man's feelings in the first place in order to "make herself useful."). Thus it's always interesting how easy television men are to understand, and in some ways, how little they need women. It takes very little work to see how they're feeling, and perhaps that's why female viewers find them so very attractive.
Playing with all of these theories and speculations (borrowed willy-nilly from people like psychologist Dr. Carol Gilligan and inspired by people like photographer Sam Taylor-Wood, who took a series of photographs of famous male actors crying), I started to think about how a gay male relationship would complicate the question of male tears, and how scientists like Larry and Charlie would make rational sense of something that is, at its core, completely irrational—the result of cultural prohibitions coming into conflict with human emotions.
To be even more specific to Numb3rs, I was intrigued by Charlie's crying at the end of "Uncertainty Principle," when he talks to his father about the three months he spent in the garage, avoiding his mother's illness. Though Larry and Don found him in the garage, once again hiding out to avoid dealing with his fear (that Don could have died) and sadness (that others had) and sense of failure, Larry was clearly worried, but unable to confront Charlie directly about his retreating to the garage, suggesting only that Charlie had professional obligations to teach, and then leaving Charlie to Don, in favor of "contemplating the Koi pond." I think Larry cares deeply for Charlie, but in many ways, his response was conditioned by the rules of masculinity, and he doesn't seem to know how to deal with the messiness of those emotions beyond recognizing that they are messy. Don did little better, getting angry and frustrated. Even Alan couldn't, in the end, admit that he understood Charlie's emotions, though he did offer Charlie absolution in the form of telling Charlie that his mom had understood him. How three such otherwise competent men should utterly fail to do for Charlie what a dead woman could seemed symptomatic of the problem I was still trying to figure out in this story. If a woman's not there to help men, how do they negotiate their feelings?
And of course, being a woman writer writing this, I recognize that the answer is still very much out of my reach, so I welcome any thoughts you all have on this story or on the more general question of Charlie's tears and Larry's role as his friend.