Equal Affections Read Online Free PDF

clear he wasn’t going to go home, Danny rented a small apartment and got a job serving falafel at a restaurant called Claire’s Cornercopia. In the evening, after he’d finished studying, Walter would pick him up at the restaurant, and then they’d go together to the twenty-four-hour grocery store and buy more chocolate chip cookies and Coca-Cola and take them back to the apartment. Danny enrolled as a special student at Yale; the next year his transfer from Berkeley was accepted. And then, Walter’s wonderful job offer; Danny’s stint as a paralegal; his own acceptance at NYU Law. It all seemed far away to them now, those early days, for as is common with lawyers, they quickly grew rich, and their lives—linked together by some inevitability they were never called upon to name—changed considerably. They lived an hour from Manhattan now, in Gresham, New Jersey, the town Walter had grown up in, in a house twenty-five percent of which they actually owned. Each Wednesday night they attended the Gay Homeowners’ Association meeting at the Unitarian church, and the pastor, Janice Ehrlich, asked, “Has anyone experiencedany homophobia this week?” and Mady Kroger—it was always Mady Kroger—raised her hand. “This lady looked at me in the supermarket,” she’d say, “and I knew she was thinking,’ What a dyke.’ ”
    Sometimes April wrote Danny letters. “Dearest Powderfoot: We are in Iowa City. I sip orange juice at the Six-Twenty and think of you, leading your lovely suburban life. Have written a new song about Winnie Mandela which I think is pretty good. I’ll be trying it out tomorrow. Remember, the tour hits the Big Apple in five weeks. Love to you—”
    She never signed these letters, just as, when she called, she never announced herself. As if he wouldn’t recognize, instantly, her breathy hello. She knew (and why shouldn’t she?) that even through two thousand miles of telephone wire, he’d always hear her calling him: “Danny! Danny! Come sing! Daddy wants to hear us sing!”
    ___________
    April wrote a song that she dedicated to Walter and Danny. It was called “Living Together,” and the lyrics went like this:
    After the years of the baths and the bars
And the one-night stands in the backseats of cars
And the nights we spent with so many different men
It feels so good to come home to you again.…
    I’m so happy living together with you,
There are apples on the table,
Yes, I’m happy living together with you,
And as long as I’m able,
I’ll take care of you.…
    Each Sunday morning through curtains of lace,
The sun shines and draws lines of light on your face,
We spread out the paper and lie in our bed
And there’s no place on earth I would go to instead.…
    Now the neighborhood ladies all whisper our names,
Two young men so handsome, it seems such a shame,
One has a daughter, another a niece,
You smile and say, “Won’t they give us some peace!”
    I bring you aspirin when you’ve got the flu
And you make good omelets and great oyster stew,
And while you’re a work in the city all day,
You know you’ll come home to someone who will say,
    I’m so happy living together with you,
All our friends join round the table,
I’m so happy living together with you,
And as long as I’m able,
I’ll take care of you.…
    The lace curtains were an invention; so was the oyster stew, and so were the neighborhood ladies, and so, for that matter, were the baths and the bars, neither Walter nor Danny having ever done more than dip his toes in the great, cold, clammy river of promiscuity. Still, when he listened to April singing that song on her live album, tears which went against his better judgment filled Danny’s eyes. “Sometimes I think the most political thing a gay man or woman can do is to live openly with another gay man or