My boyfriend, Mike, was talking, just really going on like he was delivering a lecture in one of his economics classes. He’s twice my age, so he thinks that gives him the right.
Our friends call us Michael squared when they think they’re being cute, but we’re safe around Jaime and Amy since their names rhyme. Amy was my friend, and Jaime was Mike’s, and it was the two of them who’d introduced the two of us, though not with any intention that we’d begin dating. We were just two guests at the same party they’d been hosting. Sometimes I felt this, more than anything else, was what kept us all as a set. There was little else we really had in common. Mike and I only drink wine, but since Jaime and Amy brought the drinks, what we had was beer. The bottles we’d already emptied crowded the table under the light, and I was trying to decide if they were amber or just brown while Mike got himself worked up over the history of reincarnation. He’d made his way through literature and metaphysics and ended up in a cul-desac of science fiction. He doesn’t believe in anything he calls woo-woo or what anyone else would call spiritual, though there is a little Buddha nestled between a few books in the living room.
The apartment is Mike’s, and his furnishings are to die for. I don’t remember what we ate or drank the first time he invited me over, but I do remember the mid-century modern Danish chairs, futon, and cabinet, the tastefully minimalist, queer paintings, and the small statement sculptures on his shelves and the coffee table. His, I recognized in this first glimpse, was a life well-organized and not one spent on anyone else. He had constructed himself, too, in a way, through daily workouts and tight shirts, a neatly trimmed beard to deemphasize his age, and the gold-rimmed glasses he preferred over contacts. When we officialized our relationship by telling our friends and touching each other delicately in public the way couples do, he became my safety net, a personification of the concept of security. Already, I’d been thinking of him as something of a template for who I’d like to become. I’d decided, not so explicitly at first, though certainly it was a decision, once I reach his age, once he’s passed and I have my own apartment overlooking the water and a boyfriend half my age, I will shorten my name to Mike and carry on his legacy of good taste.
“Hey, who do you think you were in a past life?” Jaime asked.
It took all of Jaime’s burly force to interrupt Mike. Jaime was built like a Tolkienesque dwarf, looking as though nobody would ever be able to push him over. He’d transitioned only recently. Sometimes I guiltily felt that talking to him was a pronoun minefield, though on the couple occasions I slipped up, he said nothing. For a
