He assured Willem that if he missed having sex with women, he should, and that he wouldn’t mind. But “I don’t,” Willem said. “I want to have sex with you.” Another person would have been moved by this, and he was too, but he also despaired: When would this end? And then, inevitably: What if it never did? What if he was never allowed to stop? He was reminded of the years in the motel rooms, although even then he’d had a date to anticipate, however false: sixteen. When he turned sixteen, he would be able to stop. Now he was forty-five, and it was as if he was eleven once again, waiting for the day when someone—once Brother Luke, now (unfair, unfair) Willem—would tell him “That’s it. You’ve fulfilled your duty. No more.” He wished someone would tell him that he was still a full human being despite his feelings; that there was nothing wrong with who he was. Surely there was someone, someone in the world who felt as he did? Surely his hatred for the act was not a deficiency to be corrected but a simple matter of preference?

One night, he and Willem were lying in bed—both of them tired from their respective days—and Willem had begun talking, abruptly, of an old friend he’d had lunch with, a woman named Molly he’d met once or twice over the years, and who, Willem said, had been having a difficult time; now, after decades, she had finally told her mother that her father, who had died the year before, had sexually abused her.

“That’s terrible,” he said, automatically. “Poor Molly.”

“Yes,” said Willem, and there was a silence. “I just told her that she had nothing to be ashamed of, that she hadn’t done anything wrong.” He could feel himself getting hot. “You were right,” he said at last, and yawned, extravagantly. “Good night, Willem.”

For a minute or two, they were quiet. “Jude,” Willem said, gently. “Are you ever going to tell me about it?”

What could he say, he thought, as he held himself still. Why was Willem asking about this now? He thought he had been doing such a good job being normal—but maybe he hadn’t. He would have to try harder. He never had told Willem about what had happened to him with Brother Luke, but along with being unable to speak of it, part of him knew he didn’t need to: in the past two years, Willem had tried to approach the subject through various directions—through stories of friends and acquaintances, some named, some not (he had to assume some of these people were creations, as surely no one person could have such a vast collection of sexually abused friends), through stories about pedophilia he read in magazines, through various discourses on the nature of shame, and how it was often unearned. After each speech, Willem would stop, and wait, as if he were mentally extending a hand and asking him to dance. But he never took Willem’s hand. Each time, he would remain silent, or change the subject, or simply pretend Willem had never spoken at all. He didn’t know how Willem had come to learn this about him; he didn’t want to know. Obviously the person he thought he was presenting wasn’t the person Willem—or Harold—saw.

“Why are you asking me this?” he asked.

Willem shifted. “Because,” he said, and then stopped. “Because,” he continued, “I should’ve made you talk about this a long time ago.” He stopped again. “Certainly before we started having sex.”

He closed his eyes. “Am I not doing a good enough job?” he asked, quietly, and regretted the question as soon as he said it: it was something he would have asked Brother Luke, and Willem was not Brother Luke.

He could tell from Willem’s silence that he was taken aback by the question as well. “No,” he said. “I mean, yes. But Jude—I know something happened to you. I wish you’d tell me. I wish you’d let me help you.”

“It’s over, Willem,” he said at last. “It was a long time ago. I don’t need help.”

There was another silence. “Was Brother Luke the person who hurt you?” Willem asked, and then, when he was quiet, the seconds ticking past, “Do you like having sex, Jude?”

If he spoke, he would cry, and so he didn’t speak. The word no, so short, so easy to say, a child’s sound, a noise more than a word, a sharp exhalation of air: all he had to do was part his lips, and the word would come out, and—and what? Willem would leave, and take everything with him. I can endure this, he would think when they had sex, I can endure this. He could endure it for every morning he woke next to Willem, for every affection Willem gave him, for the comfort of his company. When Willem was watching television in the living room and he was walking by, Willem would reach out his hand and he would take it, and they would remain there, Willem watching the screen and sitting, he standing, their hands in each other’s, and finally he would let go and continue moving. He needed Willem’s presence; every day since Willem had moved back in with him, he had experienced that same feeling of calm he had when Willem had stayed with him before he left to shoot The Prince of Cinnamon. Willem was his ballast, and he clung to him, even though he was always aware of how selfish he was being. If he truly loved Willem, he knew, he would leave him. He would allow Willem—he would force him, if he had to—to find someone better to love, someone who would enjoy having sex with him, someone who actually desired him, someone with fewer problems, someone with greater charms. Willem was good for him, but he was bad for Willem.

“Do you like having sex with me?” he asked when he could finally speak.

“Yes,” said Willem, immediately. “I love it. But do you like it?”

He swallowed, counted to three. “Yes,” he said, quietly, furious at himself and relieved as well. He had won himself more time: of Willem’s presence, but also of sex. What, he wonders, if he had said no?

And so on they went. But in compensation for the sex, there is the cutting, which he has been doing more and more: to help ease the feelings of shame, and to rebuke himself for his feelings of resentment. For so long, he had been so disciplined: once a week, two cuts each time, no more. But in the past six months, he has broken his rules again and again, and now he is cutting himself as much as he had when he was with Caleb, as much as he had in the weeks before the adoption.

His accelerated cutting was the topic of their first truly awful fight, not only as a couple but ever, in their entire twenty-nine years of friendship. Sometimes the cutting has no place in their relationship. And sometimes it is their relationship, their every conversation, the thing they are discussing even when they’re not saying anything. He never knows when he’ll come to bed in his long-sleeved T-shirt and Willem will say nothing, or when Willem will begin interrogating him. He has explained to Willem so many times that he needs it, that it helps him, that he is unable to stop, but Willem cannot or will not comprehend him.

“Don’t you understand why this upsets me so much?” Willem asks him.

“No, Willem,” he says. “I know what I’m doing. You have to trust me.”

“I do trust you, Jude,” Willem says. “But trust is not the issue here. The issue is you hurting yourself.” And then the conversation deadends itself.

Or there is the conversation that leads to Willem saying, “Jude, how would you feel if I did this to myself?” and him saying, “It’s not the same thing, Willem,” and Willem saying, “Why?” and him saying, “Because, Willem—it’s you. You don’t deserve it,” and Willem saying, “And you do?” and him being unable to answer, or at least not able to provide an answer that Willem would find adequate.

About a month before the fight, they’d had a different fight. Willem had, of course, noticed that he was cutting himself more, but he hadn’t known why, only that he was, and one night, after he was certain Willem was asleep, he was creeping toward the bathroom, when suddenly, Willem had grabbed him hard around the wrist, and he had gasped from fright. “Jesus, Willem,” he’d said. “You scared me.”