Page 454 - A Little Life: A Novel

jerked himself away with such violence that he had cracked his head against
his nightstand. “I’m sorry,” they had apologized to each other, “I’m sorry.”
And that was the first moment that Willem, too, had felt a certain fear. All

along he had assumed that Jude was shy, profoundly so, but that eventually,
he would abandon some of his self-consciousness, that he would feel
comfortable enough to have sex. But in that moment, he realized that what
he had thought was a reluctance to have sex was actually a terror of it: that
Jude would perhaps never be comfortable, that if and when they did
eventually have sex, it would be because Jude decided he had to or Willem
decided he had to force him. Neither option appealed to him. People had

always given themselves to him; he had never had to wait, never had to try
to convince someone that he wasn’t dangerous, that he wasn’t going to hurt
them. What am I going to do? he asked himself. He wasn’t smart enough to
figure this out on his own—and yet there was no one else he could ask. And
then there was the fact that with every week, his desire grew sharper and
less ignorable, his determination greater. It had been a long time since he

had wanted to have sex with anyone so keenly, and the fact that it was
someone he loved made the waiting both more unbearable and more absurd.
As Jude slept that night, he watched him. Maybe I made a mistake, he
thought.
Aloud, he said, “I didn’t know it was going to be this complicated.” Next
to him, Jude breathed, ignorant of Willem’s treachery.
And then the morning arrived and he was reminded why he had decided

to pursue this relationship to begin with, his own naïveté and arrogance
aside. It was early, but he had woken anyway, and he watched as, through
the half-open closet door, Jude got dressed. This had been a recent
development, and Willem knew how difficult it was for him. He saw how
hard Jude tried; he saw how everything he and everyone he knew took for
granted—getting dressed in front of someone; getting undressed in front of

someone—were things Jude had to practice again and again: he saw how
determined he was, he saw how brave he was being. And this reminded him
that he, too, had to keep trying. Both of them were uncertain; both of them
were trying as much as they could; both of them would doubt themselves,
would progress and recede. But they would both keep trying, because they
trusted the other, and because the other person was the only other person
who would ever be worth such hardships, such difficulties, such insecurities

and exposure.