Aiden looked up at Ian. “You want to see my toys?”
“Yeah, cool!” Ian said.
He went off with the children and sat down on the floor. Paul watched him from across the room as he played with Aiden’s toy trucks. Soon there were four other children on the floor with them. Ian made funny faces, and the children laughed.
“Ian! Ian!” Aiden called out to him as he threw a plastic airplane into the air. The kids loved him, and he was great with them.
Before his intellect had a chance to reflect on it, Paul was filled with a powerful longing. He wanted Ian to be the mother of his children. When his brain caught up with his emotions and reminded him of the biological impossibility, he felt a nagging sense of loss.
That Ian would not have children—that the genetic code for his beauty would die with him—seemed like another of God’s cruel jokes. It occurred to Paul that beauty calls out to our creative instincts. In a desperate fight against life’s inevitable decay, beauty demands that we make a copy. Lovers long for children with their beloved. The beautiful inspire artists to write poetry, to compose music, or to paint. Yet even the most moving symphony, the most inspired sculpture, the most elevating theatrical performance does not keep its original alive.
Within each encounter with beauty is the inevitability of loss. The beautiful bouquet of flowers turns brown in a day, the beautiful lover grows old and dies, even the sublime landscape of a mountain is constantly eroded. It will one day return to the flat earth and be nothing.
Paul thought about all of the new years that began with such hope and promise, the beauty of infinite possibility, that were now distant, set in stone, ancient history. Each year’s end was a beginning and each beginning was an end.
“That’s a nice necklace,” Julie said.
Paul’s focus came back to his part of the room. He picked up the gold cross and held it away from this chest to look at it.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “It was a Christmas gift.”
“I know,” Julie said. “I was with Ian when he bought it. Do you like it?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good. It seemed like kind of an odd gift.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just didn’t think men usually bought jewelry for each other.”
Paul was trying to decide how to answer when he was saved by the ringing door bell.
“Excuse me,” Julie said.
Paul stood near the hors d’oeuvre table, masking his social awkwardness with snacks. He would have liked to have had a glass of wine, but as long as Ian wasn’t drinking, Paul wasn’t going to either. Ian played with the kids for another hour. Then he got up off the floor and joined Paul near the food.
“You all right?” Ian asked.
“Good,” Paul said. “Are you having fun?”
“Yeah,” he said. “The kids are great.”
“You’re good with them.”
“They’re easy to please. You just pay attention to them and they like you.”
“It’s almost time!” someone shouted, and everyone headed into the living room to stare at the TV. Paul picked up two glasses and the bottle of sparking g
rape juice.
The urgency of the move to the living room amused Paul. New Year’s was a one-second holiday. If you weren’t glued to the TV at the precise moment, you missed it. It seemed like a complete misunderstanding of the true nature of time.
The countdown had begun: “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one! Happy New Year!”
The room was filled with the sound of noisemakers and popping corks. Paul opened the sparkling grape juice. Ian held out his glass, and Paul filled it.
“Auld Lang Syne” played through the TV speakers, and all around couples began to embrace. Julie was kissing her husband Jim. On the other side of the room, Emily kissed her boyfriend, Bob. Marlee was sitting on the couch kissing… who was that guy?