THE PORCELAIN OF THEIR NEW, shiny bathtub was cold as it painfully dug into the protruding hills of his spine. Daan’s feet were cold as ice, nudging against his bony hip, despite the warm water surrounding them.

There was a cigarette in one of his hands, and in the other a nearly empty, red stained wine glass. The bath was smaller than the one they had owned in Cambridge, so they had to sit with their knees pointed up, out of the water and into the wintery air that streamed in from the open window not far above them. It was supposed to have a key, so it would remain properly closed, but they had moved in a week prior, and had not yet found it anywhere.

Adriaan’s arm was uncomfortably propped up on one of the bathtub’s sides, and he was certain that it would soon slip off and drop back down into the water, as it had done earlier in that night. Still, he was lucky to be sitting on the side of the tub without the tap.

“I forgot how cold it could get out here,” Daan sighed, taking a long drag from his cig and puffing the smoke out into the direction of the window. As if they had ever cared about smoking indoors. “But I think it’s only going to get worse.”

“I’m going to the stad soon,” Adriaan shrugged. How could someone forget the weather of their own country? It hadn’t even been that different in Cambridge. “I’m thinking of finding work there. I could buy some thick blankets and jackets. Maybe some new sweaters.”

For a second, he wondered if they would even be able to afford such things. He never really had to pay for his own clothes before in Nijmegen, for they spent most of their adulthood in Cambridge. He couldn't be certain that the old secondhand store his ma used to buy his clothes from still existed. And even in Cambridge, he barely shopped. His old clothes were baggy and properly made. Adriaan and Daan didn't grow much past the age of eighteen. In a way, they seemed to have shrunk. When they first left home, they were friendly boys with roundish cheeks — though only noticeable up close — and soft stomachs. Somewhere along the way, they turned into messes of collarbone and spine, stray muscles clinging to bones like shy children holding on to their mother’s flowy skirt. Nutritious food was hard to come by without dropping significant amounts of money. They, at the time, had other priorities.

Even so, Daan smiled at his offer. It was hard to tell if he had the same worries, or if he was genuinely expecting Adriaan to leave home soon and come back with all kinds of wintery goods. Daan leaned forward and took a painfully long drag from his cigarette, held it for a bit, and blew all of the smoke right into Adriaan’s face. His morbid way to express love. Or if not love, a gentle kind of gratitude.

Neither of them had anybody else they could rely on so strongly, after all.

And yet he couldn’t bring himself to appreciate the gesture. He quickly found himself spluttering and coughing in an attempt to rid himself of the disgusting taste of nicotine sticking to his tongue. Adriaan was never much of a smoker, except during social occasions — thought many of his “social occasions” only included himself and Daan.

In his desperate attempt to clean up his mouth, Adriaan stopped concentrating on his arm. Causing it to slowly slip from the wet bathtub side. In no time, his elbow struck the porcelain bottom of the tub with a dramatic splash and a harsh pain.

“Godverdomme!” He expelled the word like vomit, it felt exhilarating to finally curse in his native tongue again. The small flame of his cigarette slowly dimmed in the water, and he grieved the fact that he had ruined a perfectly good smoke for the second time that night. In the exact same way. He no longer felt like the bath water was comforting. Instead, it had become his enemy.

In a swift move, he brought the wineglass to his lips and finished off the few milliliters clinging to its sides. Then he placed the wet cigarette into it and placed the glass on the soapy tiles next to the bathtub. He threw Daan, who was letting out slow, sarcastic laughs, a dirty look before he got out of the water and shivered in the cold. The fun was over, and all he could think about was getting his clothes on and laying in their warm bed.

“I love you, Aad,” Daan chuckled. “I’ll be there soon, just let me finish this,” he held up his own wine glass, still half-full, and also his nearly burned away cigarette. He, of course, hadn’t managed to drink as much as Adriaan had. “Then we can snuggle up together.”

TO ADRIAAN, THE BEST FEELING was this: lying down in a freshly changed bed, with Daan by his side, underneath a thin blanket just warm enough to remind him of Summer. It almost felt like Heaven, and he wondered if that feeling was the closest he would ever get to that blessed place. More often than not, it felt like something that Adriaan didn’t really deserve.

They both preferred to bathe before bed, since it brought them a certain freshness. Clean skin pressed against clean sheets, wet hair spread wildly over a soft pillow. During the Winter months, a freezing cold clung to their skin, even when they were dressed in thick sweaters. The best way to combat that chill was to lay hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder together underneath a nice blanket.

“I missed this,” Daan sighed.

“We slept together yesterday,” Adriaan mumbled. “And eergister, and the years before that.”

“I missed home,” the other clarified. “Despite the cold. It’s strange that, years ago, we practically lived down the street from here.”

Adriaan tried to remember if he ever saw this exact apartment complex before, all those years prior. It stood ten minutes from his childhood home. From what he could gather, he hadn’t — but that could have been because he didn’t often venture into this part of Hatert. This quiet part away from the trouble. All the important locations from his youth — the stores, school, Daan’s home, his own place — were in the opposite direction. There was a playground nearby, and he was certain that he had never played there as a kid. There were so many buildings that looked the same, though, and they all might just have turned into an unimportant blur.

It struck him suddenly — the fact that he could run into his family any day. His mother had a friend that lived nearby, who probably hadn’t moved. It was quite a surprise that he hadn’t already seen any of them. A flow of panic in the shape of his sister, Madelief, crashed into his heart. She had been eight when they left, and he wondered if they would even be able to recognize each other. Maybe he had come across her at some point. Maybe she did play on that playground nearby. Surely, she would know of his existence, of her older brother somewhere in the world. But, by now he could have easily turned into an old photograph in a book, a stray picture his mother sometimes admired alone in her bedroom, a story hesitated to be told. If he ever saw her again, how could he explain why he left?

“I’m glad we’re back,” Daan whispered.

Adriaan nodded, his worry not yet gone. Ever since they returned, he had been afraid that a mistake had been made on his part. They had lived a comfortable life in Cambridge, even though their flat there wasn’t much of a looker, despite the fact that work was hard to come by. Both of them had their problems, and yet Cambridge had felt like a certain kind of freedom. They were young, and didn’t yet feel like citizens of the world, their whole life there — which was supposed to be permanent — had felt like a prolonged vacation.

They were outsiders in Cambridge, and nobody really cared when they walked down the street hand-in-hand. And when people did mind, they usually didn’t say anything. All they did was give, easily ignored, disapproving looks. Daan and Adriaan were nothing but tourists to them. Not family, or potential friends.

It had been Aadriaan’s idea to leave, though he never had a proper reason for it. He had no unfinished business, and he never felt very homesick. Just lonely, and a little lost. When he finally vocalized this to the other man, he suspected that he would have to pack his bags by himself and that that would be the end of things. He would have to leave and allow Daan to remain in their free life. Of course it didn’t play out like that — wherever Adriaan went, Daan followed.

THE WARM BED, IN A way, reminded Adriaan of one of the first lazy Summers he and Daan spent together.

They met in the late winter of 1980, before they were even ten years old. Life back then was simple, so Adriaan never bothered to recall much of it. It was a good kind of boring; the kind people looked back on with regret and jealousy. Those boring days should have been savoured more, but back then Adriaan had not yet realized that things would only get worse.

Their parents easily welcomed the newfound companionship between them, since Daan was new to Hatert and Adriaan never really had any friends in the neighbourhood to begin with. He did spend some time with the kids living in the surrounding area, but only for short bits of time before they got tired of him. Adriaan had never been an interesting child, and he hadn’t been very interested either. He, despite his attempts, had never understood the appeal in endless games of tag and hide-and-seek. The other children — sometimes even their parents — had found him quite dull.

Daan had been similarly reserved. In primary school during recess, they never sat at the desks of classmates to socialize.Instead, they spent most of the time at their own desks, reading books or drawing. When they got to play outside during recess, they would both find the spot farthest away from everybody else. It had been strange for Adriaan to meet someone with a rhythm similar to his own. Even though they hadn’t gone to the same primary school, he found comfort in the fact that, while he was sitting alone at his desk, Daan would be doing the same. It had made him feel less weird.

When they happened to stumble upon each other at the playground, which had been otherwise empty because of the cold weather, they quickly bonded. They enjoyed talking, not playing, and never minded the fact that they never really had much to talk about at all.

The first memory he has of a Summer together with Daan had taken place in the early weeks of a sweltering heat, somewhere in 1982. His Tante always came around to their house during that time, since the sun was shining nicely, but it wasn’t hot enough for sunburn to be almost unpreventable. Tante Lynn didn’t have her own garden, since she lived in a flat, so she always stayed for at least a week. The pool would be set up for her and Adriaan’s parents, but Adriaan himself wouldn’t be able to use it until she got home. Lynn didn’t enjoy sharing a pool with a rambunctious boy. Neither did his parents. He would have the pool entirely for himself after her leave, though.

The memory occurred shortly after Tante Lynn’s departure. The pool had been drained so his mama could clean it properly. It was still wet, causing leaves to stick to its vinyl sides. Dirt caked up around the corners. At the bottom, he and Daan laid together. His parents were only a few metres away, his ma was tending to the bushes while his pa cleaned up their plastic set of garden furniture.

Nothing made that particular memory exciting at all. He had found the furniture to be blocky and an ugly shade of gray, and his mother messing around in the garden was nothing new. Daan barely spoke to him. Yet he decided to remember that day and scratch the details of it into his brain. It couldn’t have spanned more than a few minutes in reality, and yet it had felt like they laid there together for days, years even. They laid there for so long that the other’s body twisted around his own, and became almost as familiar.

Whenever he thought about that day, he could vividly picture the redness of Daan’s skin, the way his light eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks. The boy’s eyes were clenched shut and twitched periodically, his chest was a shade of pink that could have been found in a baby girl’s nursery. A leaf had attached itself to Daan’s calf, but he made no move to remove it.

Was it the sheer proximity that caused him to keep the vivid picture in mind for over a decade? Surely not, they had always laid together like that; shoulder to shoulder, nearly every inch connected. It wasn’t that important, in the grand scheme of things.

The mystic feeling of it all had been broken quickly, though, when his mother shouted his name. The sheer volume of it forced Daan to open his eyes, and when they made eye contact, Adriaan could do nothing but look away in shame.

“I want to start cleaning the pool, boys,” his mam stated. “Go upstairs and wash all that dirt away before dinner time comes.”

Daan stood first, and for a split second Adriaan allowed himself to watch the other’s pale, glistening back. It was a rare sensation, but he had found himself to be undeniably curious at the sight of it.

HIS MAMA USED TO HAVE a habit of staying up hours after everyone else in the house went to bed. Even though she had to wake up at six — way earlier than their father — to get herself and her children ready.

Adriaan knew that whatever she was doing was private. She chose to sit in the living room whilst everyone else was asleep for a reason. His mother did not wish to be disturbed, and to do so anyways would be like committing a major sin. He hadn’t understood her as a child, but he did grow up to somewhat admire her. It must have been difficult, with his father, for her to set a boundary and to catch a moment for herself every day. When her habit began, his pa stood his ground and forced her up the stairs with him — he wanted, after all, to fall asleep with his wife next to him — where there was no television or any form of entertainment. But his ma kept pushing, and pushing until she was given, finally, what she had wanted.

When he was eleven, he found himself stumbling downstairs one night. It was Summer, and to fall asleep back then was almost impossible upstairs. He had gone downstairs for a wet washcloth and one of the cold bottles of water in the freezer. All of this he needed before he could even think about sleeping. He had not gone downstairs to disturb his mother, he did not have the intention of looking into the livingroom to see his mam in her most vulnerable state. These facts meant a great deal to him back then.

Even so, he did end up at the living room door. He hadn’t been able to help himself when he saw that it was slightly open. That night wasn’t, as far as he knew, any different from the other nights that had played out before it. His mother did what she always did while everyone was gone; she sat in front of the television, her favourite reality show playing on an almost silent volume. All the lights had been turned off, except for the small lamp that stood beside the television. It hadn’t been the scene itself that had phased him, of course, it had been his mother’s face.

At first he couldn’t see her properly, so — knowing that he shouldn’t — he pushed the door open further, causing it to let out a low creaking sound. He startled at the noise, but could not bring himself to look away from his mama. He saw her thin eyebrows, her lips that formed a slight smile. His mam looked like she had just finished a satisfying meal. Adriaan had, somehow, never seen his own mama so relaxed before.

For once, she did not look like a mother. If he had seen her like that, walking down the street, he wouldn’t have guessed that she had a moody eleven year old and a baby on her hands at home. She didn’t even look like she had a husband. His mam looked like a happy woman, someone with nothing but a cat and a steady job that she enjoyed more than anything else. Someone who drank wine and ate cheese with her friends and never worried about getting too drunk or too fat.

His mother had, of course, heard the door. It had hurt him a bit, to be faced with the fact that she might have been happier if she had never married his papa and birthed him and his sister. When she turned around and saw him, her lips returned to their natural scowl. She looked like a lioness, focusing on her prey. Adriaan could do nothing but stand there, ashamed that he had been caught breaking one of the most important rules in their home.

She just looked at him for a moment before she turned back around, as if bored by his simple presence. Then she spoke: “Get back upstairs.”

He had never before noticed the dissatisfaction his mother must have managed to hide all his life. But he knew that she must have felt it whenever she saw him, or his pa, perhaps even Madelief.

Years later, shortly after he moved away to Arnhem at eighteen, he realized that his mother could finally start pretending that he had never existed at all. Finally, she could have only one child — one burden less — when people asked. Luckily, the one that remained was the one she had always liked more. In Arnhem he wondered if she would even do such a thing, but then he finished school and moved to Cambridge. There he came to his senses; his mother was brought one step closer to the freedom she could, for years, only feel at night. Why would she not pretend?

THE FIRST FEW MONTHS AFTER they moved to Cambridge, they lived with an old college friend of Daan’s. She had been in the same class, though she switched schools during their first year and eventually dropped out altogether when she decided she did not need a degree to become a musician. Adriaan had never gotten the chance to meet her because of this.

Cleo was originally from Cambridge, and her father had funded her return. Even though they stopped going to school together, she and Daan continued their friendship. Daan had always loved music, more so than Adriaan, and particularly enjoyed playing the guitar. Adriaan never really had friends outside of Daan, but he never really felt jealous whenever the other did find someone. He knew that what they had couldn’t compare to anything else.

When she moved away, they mainly communicated through letters and the occasional phone calls. Adriaan could never understand how that was enough to form such a strong bond.

Cleo had been glad to hear about their planned move to Cambridge, and offered up her guest bedroom for a bit until they found steady work and a nice place for themselves. Adriaan was able to call her once, shortly before he and Daan left for England. She seemed nice enough, but he got the sense that she was quite lonely — living in a big flat, working a boring job even though her pa had enough money to secure her for most of her life. He hadn’t liked the idea of living with a stranger, especially a rich stranger, and yet he ended up agreeing. It would do Daan good to be with someone he knew, and it would benefit them both in the long run. Because of her financial situation, he and Daan were expected to pay less rent. Nowhere else could they find the low price she had offered.

When he first met Cleo, three weeks after their conversation, he had been quite surprised. He caught glimpses of her with long, ginger hair and hazel eyes in photos that Daan showed him — images of trips to the city centre that Adriaan hadn’t even known about. When she opened her door for them, the large tattoo on her forearm stood out to him first. It was a long dagger, and the ink was still a stark black and showed no sign of ageing yet. Her hair was short, cut close to her ears — Daan had longer hair than her — and she had dyed it a dark brown. Adriaan could immediately tell that she was, if not a good musician, a good performer. She carried herself with a certain confidence; shoulders high, back straight, her voice loud and clear. He almost felt inferior to her, jealous that he would probably never love himself as much as she seemed to love herself.

She smiled kindly when she showed them the guest bedroom, decorated with a one-person bed and a small dresser. There were papers hanging on the walls, pencil sketches of both the male and female form. Their first night there, Daan told him that she was like them.

“Like what?” Adriaan had wanted to ask. Not because he had no idea, but because he wanted to make the other, for once, say the word gay or homosexual. Which Daan often avoided doing, as if he still thought that the concept was dirty.

Still, it intrigued him. He had never met a lesbian before, or any other gay person outside of Daan. And he wasn’t even sure if Daan was truly a homosexual — he never came out like Adriaan had, and they never made their relationship official. For all he could know, the other was just waiting for someone better to come along. Maybe Daan was just lonely, and Adriaan the closest thing to love he could get. He never really minded this, but in their short time in Cleo’s flat he began thinking it over more, and slowly he began to feel like, for the first time, someone had finally managed to slip in between him and his friend.

“IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE we’ve been together,” Adriaan sighed.

“What do you mean?” Daan scoffed. “I see you every single day, we sleep in the same bed, you’re with me right now.”

“I mean — are you into Cleo or something?” he asked frantically, having thought about it too much the past few weeks. “You spend most of your time with her, playing music, even when you’re with me you constantly talk about her. I don’t mind it, really, but when we’re kissing I think I have the right to know.”

“She’s my best friend, Aad, and I haven’t seen her in ages.”

“So I’m not your best friend? We’ve known each other for years.”

It had been an exhausting day of work for Adriaan — again, he was a server and had not yet managed to find use for his education in IT —, and when he came home he couldn’t wait for a hot bath. Daan, for some reason, joined him in the bathroom without getting into the water himself.

The other looked at Adriaan as if he had just been reminded that they had truly managed to remain friends for so long. He put the guitar that had been carefully balanced on his legs the whole night on the floor, not caring that the tiles were slightly wet.

Daan hadn’t found work yet, and it made Adriaan wonder if he wanted to follow Cleo and become a musician.

Just the other night they had embraced in bed together and shared a short moment of tenderness. They never went farther than kissing, and they only tried actual sex once to no avail. Adriaan got aroused often, just like Daan and others their age, but the second that sex became involved he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He, in theory, enjoyed the idea of being so close to Daan, of kissing his chest and using his hands, but in practice it disgusted him. As they came of age, they both encountered porn, but he never actually managed to find the images appealing. He hated penises and vaginas, and preferred not to see or feel either of them. He, unlike Daan, had never been able to touch his own body in any explicit manner.

Their moment together ended as soon as it began once Cleo got home and Daan felt inclined to speak about her. About the songs they made together and the concerts they wanted to see in April. Blur, in Amsterdam, though Cleo would only be going because Slowdive would be there as well. It seemed like whenever they got intimate together, it couldn’t last. Daan was doing all kinds of exciting things with Cleo — things he would usually do with Adriaan.

He never minded it too much, the other was seemingly falling in love with someone for once in his life, but he hated that it was a lesbian. Cleo wouldn’t — couldn’t — ever give Daan any of the things Adriaan was giving. He didn’t want his friend to get hurt, and he certainly didn’t want him to turn into the kind of man to fall so in love with lesbian a woman that it would border on harassment. A fag hag, almost, but more dangerous.

“She’s gay,” Adriaan asserted. “If you’re in love with her, you best leave it alone. Imagine how strange it would be if a girl tried to get with me.”

To that, Daan let out a short chuckle. “No self respecting woman would get with you, whether she knew you were gay or not,” his brows furrowed. “Also, aren’t we like a thing already? Please don’t say you consider me a cheater.”

“Are you serious? You’re not even gay,” Adriaan laughed, though it sounded exceptionally idiotic. Of course Daan was serious — they had never been taught the proper words for it, but he had to be something similar to a homosexual. He moved countries with Adriaan, though this action had felt like a friendly given, not like some greater profession of love. When they were growing up, Adriaan found himself suspecting that Daan had crushes on a few girls, something he himself had never experienced. But the other boy never told him about them — perhaps, they never even existed.

Adriaan knew that there had to be something in between his own sexuality and the sexuality of, for example, his papa, but he never thought of finding Daan there. “I was, of course, aware that there’s something with you, but I would have never called it —”

“We’ve kissed, I've seen you naked,” the other chuckled. “I remember when you told me about yourself, and I could never quite forgive myself for forcing you into telling it to your family as well. Homosexuality, it’s a beautiful thing. And you introduced me to it.”

“You never told me.”

“I thought it would be obvious, especially for you. When you told me, it was like a clarity, a realization that there’s more for me than some girl. I think that when I was younger — before we even met — I already knew that I was searching for something else.”

“I’m an oblivious fool, aren’t I?”

Adriaan spoke as he pulled the plug out of the bathtub, and for a second — just so he could continue to gather his thoughts — he watched the soapy water swirl away and seep into the drain, out of sight. He remembered when Daan told him that he should speak to his mama and papa, about himself, about his desire to stay with the boy. Maybe not for their whole life, but at least for a little while. He truly was oblivious. To him, that ‘little while’ would end after the other found a nice woman. Adriaan never thought he would be more than a person to be left behind one day.

How could he have possibly believed that Daan would ever turn away from him?

“A beautiful fool. It was such a clarity, I just needed to tell my mom,” Daan stopped speaking and glanced at Adriaan for a split second, who began to find himself feeling more and more exposed by the second, before returning his gaze to the tiled wall in front of him. “I knew she would tell your pap, so I thought that it would be better if you spoke as well. And I’m sorry for that — it was obvious that they would never accept it. And I’m sorry that I never managed to tell my mam, and you, too. But you have to understand that she wasn’t much better than your mama.”

Adriaan grabbed the man’s bony hand, his mind repeating the confession, and began rubbing circles into dry skin. It felt like a truck of knowledge had crashed into him. Now that he had the knowledge, he couldn’t remember ever not having it. It had all been so obvious, even to him. He had just assumed that Daan would have told him, never once realizing that they were both in various ways told to never speak up about the love in their heart. Adriaan had learned to do so anyway, but the other hadn’t. He no longer wanted to discuss the topic — in fact, he felt quite silly about it — he just wanted to leave the cold bedroom and return to their warm bed.

“I have a lot of things that I need to work on,” Daan mumbled. “Not everyone will accept me, and that’s difficult to grasp. But, we’re somewhere new, and we should make the most of it! We’ve already found someone like us, and together — no matter what we are — we can find others.”

Cleo, he’d just gotten way too far into his own head about her. “I think I have things to work on, as well,” Adriaan admitted. “I think it’s the environment, it’s all too new, and I’m not very used to you having friends.”

“Shut up, man,” Daan pushed against his shoulder. “Get dressed, you’re ugly naked.”

“I love you,” he said. “As whatever we are, and as whatever we will become.”

“As whatever we are,” Daan repeated. “See, it’s not that difficult.”