Page 471 - A Little Life: A Novel

must mistake for zeal. And then he would hear Brother Luke’s triumphant
declaration in his head—I could hear you enjoying yourself—and cringe. I
don’t, he had always wanted to say, and he wanted to say it now: I don’t.

But he didn’t dare. They were in a relationship. People in relationships had
sex. If he wanted to keep Willem, he had to fulfill his side of the bargain,
and his dislike for his duties didn’t change this.
Still, he didn’t give up. He promised himself he would work on repairing
himself, for Willem’s sake if not his own. He bought—surreptitiously, his
face prickling as he placed the order—three self-help books on sex and read
them while Willem was on one of his publicity tours, and when Willem

returned, he tried to use what he had learned, but the results had been the
same. He bought magazines meant for women with articles about being
better in bed, and studied them carefully. He even ordered a book about
how victims of sexual abuse—a term he hated and didn’t apply to himself—
dealt with sex, which he read furtively one night, locking his study door so
Willem wouldn’t discover him. But after about a year, he decided to alter

his ambitions: he might not ever be able to enjoy sex, but that didn’t mean
he couldn’t make it more enjoyable for Willem, both as an expression of
gratitude and, more selfishly, a way to keep him close. So he fought past his
feelings of shame; he concentrated on Willem.
Now that he was having sex again, he realized how much he had been
surrounded by it all these years, and how completely he had managed to
banish thoughts of it from his waking life. For decades, he had shied from

discussions of sex, but now he listened to them wherever he encountered
them: he eavesdropped on his colleagues, on women in restaurants, on men
walking past him on the street, all talking about sex, about when they were
having it, about how they wanted it more (no one wanted it less, it seemed).
It was as if he was back in college, his peers once again his unwitting
teachers: always, he was alert for information, for lessons on how to be. He

watched talk shows on television, many of which seemed to be about how
couples eventually stop having sex; the guests were married people who
hadn’t had sex in months, occasionally in years. He would study these
shows, but none of them ever gave him the information he wanted: How
long into the relationship did the sex last? How much longer would he have
to wait until this happened to him and Willem, too? He looked at the
couples: Were they happy? (Obviously not; they were on talk shows telling

strangers about their sex lives and asking for help.) But they seemed happy,