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So tell me, why do you think you’re here today?
When Foggy got married, he was a naïve little 20something who thought he could have control over his life. He wanted, more than anything, to prove that he could be normal. His mother called it lack of ambition, his best friend called it hasty. He had started at a disadvantage, though, growing up in the wrong sort of body, being the wrong sort of man. He wanted a wife, a house, and in a vague sense, he wanted children. He wanted to prove himself worthy of that kind of stability. He wanted to prove himself capable of it.
When Foggy divorced, he was a child in his 30s. He emerged out of his only ever significant romantic entanglement with nothing to show for it. He had fallen for her, fallen hard into a pit of soulless social climbing and expensive everything. He was unrecognizable to himself, and he had vowed very hard not to do that to himself ever again.
It’s a lifetime ago. The worst of it is that when he reflects on that relationship, he can’t pinpoint the moment it became sour. There was no turning point, and even when they separated, being able to muster enough passion to fight. The relationship died with a pathetic fizzle. The appropriate papers were signed, and then he was free.
He couldn’t help feeling, when the dust finally settled, that all relationships were pessimistic. The elation of tying yourself to someone til death do you part, the deflation of quitting on it when the excitement subsides.
The other option had been to believe that Foggy was the one in the wrong, the one who shouldn’t have bothered because he wasn’t made for relationships. Debbie, of course, was a perfectly fine woman when the pair had met. She was beautiful and full of love for him. She wasn’t shy with her admiration for his intelligence, his grace, his potential for more.
It never felt like a fault of hers that she also chided him when he started to gain weight, or when he left a negotiation a little worse for wear. She wasn’t afraid of him, and she never treated him like a child. If she had critique, it was because she trusted him to do better and at the time, it felt like an honor to have a wife who cared enough to help Foggy reach his full potential. And he wanted to be that for her. He wanted to be someone she could brag about, he wanted not to embarrass her.
(Perhaps hindsight ought to have given him some perspective. Debbie made Foggy anxious to be who he was. There are degrees to loving empowerment, and when one is made to feel shame for his being as is, perhaps it is a sign of dysfunction more than support. Beyond the horizon of feeding development is a toxic distaste for a present state of being.
Foggy Nelson was predisposed to toxicity, if one were to look at him holistically. His birth mother primed him for some level of self-policing, perhaps even for self-loathing.)
Inexorably, she cheated.
Is there any question as to why? For a partner so ambitious, so clever, so lovely, wasn’t it natural for her to be disappointed in Foggy, who was dull and dim and uncharming? He was almost more thankful that she had given him a chance than betrayed that she had acted unfaithfully. Faith is a finite resource, after all, which depletes with repeated failure.
And so they divorced.
(Years ago, Foggy celebrated his newly refreshed singledom with Matt. Foggy was still young and handsome, after all, backed with an impressive list of accomplishments and good humour. If Foggy wanted to find someone, Matt was confident about his prospects)
No subsequent relationship had been able to excite Foggy like his with Debbie. Glorianna was a dream; she was adoring and intelligent. It was easy for him to believe that she loved him. And yet, Foggy had been unable to throw himself at the arduous yet worthwhile task of loving her fully, as much as she deserved. She felt like someone who was easily loved, meant to be worshipped. She was wasted on the travesty of a man that Foggy had become since his separation.
And with Matt, he had been feeling too comfortable. Having known each other for so long, it almost felt like cheating at a game meant to be difficult. Forgiveness and affection were long-established before they shared their first kiss. It was mundane and its normalcy was guilt-inducing. Their love was one which broke the rules of wanton passion and intense obsession. He was discovering a secret that God had hidden away; that a love could be pure and easy for those already in the habit of loving each other.
The kind of love he and Debbie shared at their height was different. It was abrasive but refreshing. It was intense at times, and loving her was so difficult that it felt like an accomplishment. He never felt so validated as when he was loved by Debbie and he finds himself remembering the feeling, the pride of coaxing it out of her. He finds himself craving it.
(“Do you miss her more than you love me?” asks Matt, a little hurt.
“You can’t ask me to compare that, Matt. All love is real, isn’t it? She was my wife, and I can’t fool myself into believing that doesn’t mean anything. You’re the person I choose, and the person I keep choosing. I don’t love her anymore, and I don’t want her back, but when we were together, her love meant everything to me. Do you love me more than you loved Milla?”
He turns the question over in his mind. “Point taken,” he decides eventually.)
Isn’t it supposed to hurt when someone loves you? Isn’t it supposed to feel like every part of you is being broken down and reconstructed into a being worthy of it? If love is easy, isn’t it a sign of dysfunction and complacency?
“People can show love differently, you know? That doesn’t mean it’s not valid.” Foggy says, suddenly feeling defensive.
Matt sighs and slumps in his seat. “You have to come to terms with the fact that Rosalind doesn’t love you. You have to let go of this idea that love will be toxic.”
“And who is Rosalind?” asks the therapist, who scrawls a note on her page.
“My mother,” Foggy fills in. “My birth mother. I know she wasn’t the best to me when I was a kid, but she does love me. I’m her only kid, y’see.”
(Rosalind Sharpe was a mother who had no business being such. Her personality cannot be described simply. While she is intense and attention seeking, she is also immensely adept at understanding how she is perceived. She can be fully narcissistic, and while she was accepting of some aspects of Foggy, she doesn’t respect the son she raised. She constantly deprived him of food and praise, showing affection only inasmuch as it would benefit her. Ever since Foggy was a child, she has been molding him into an anxious mess with no concrete sense of self. Foggy chased approval which Rosalind was never inclined to give, and it left him seeking approval from everyone else regardless of whether or not they mattered in his life.)
“That isn’t fair!” Foggy interjects. “I know I’m not always the most rational when it comes to her, but she did her best. You gotta understand, she had her share of expectations to live up to and obstacles to break through. She did well for herself, and she just doesn’t want me to have to deal with failure, because she knows what it’s like to succeed. Being hard on me, it’s what she knows, and I think it’s her way of protecting me.”
“You can’t protect someone by shooting bullets in their direction, Foggy. You can’t help a kid become well-adjusted by breaking him. You have the right to be angry about it, and if you won’t do it, then I’m doing it on your behalf!”
“I don’t want to be angry about it!” Foggy cries. “I’m forty-five years old, Matt. I don’t have the energy to be angry like that anymore. She’s not in my life, and she’s not gonna chase after me. I’m hardly in her will. She sends me cards on Christmas. That’s all I get because that’s all you told me I should get.”
“You talk like you failed her, Fogs. You have to know it’s the other way around.”
The therapist raises her hand and coughs between the men. “If I may, gentlemen, I sense a lot of tension in the room. Why don’t we let Foggy speak his mind for a while, and we can let him take charge of his own narrative.”
“Thank you,” Foggy says. He wipes his sweaty hands on his lap and continues.
Foggy grew up between worlds. He was a child of a warm, loving home. He had a mother, a father, and a sweet little sister who took every opportunity to steal his candy and cry when he complained about it. His life was trying on his parent’s clothes and putting on little plays with his stuffed animals as props. He grew up on spaghetti and hot dogs and apple pie, just like the best of ‘em.
And every other weekend, he was the child of a cold, empty mansion owned by a bitter divorcée.
It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t have a lot of energy to be a mother. She was an accomplished lawyer, after all. She spent long nights at the office, coming home at odd hours, even on weekends, with the expectation that there would not be any mess in the kitchens and that Foggy would not make too much noise. He had been cared for by a nanny until he was sixteen, and at that point, Rosalind actually started noticing his presence in her house.
When he was a junior in high school, she sat him down and asked if he had any plans for the future, and he blurted out, without really having thought about it, that he wanted to become a lawyer since his mother was so accomplished and enviable. He saw her smile for the first time in his working memory. She nodded approvingly, and she promised to pay for his tutoring and study materials.
(It was nothing, at that point, to hear it from her. It should have been nothing. It should have been less than nothing with the years of emotional neglect he’d had to suffer through.)
There was never a moment in his life where Foggy ever doubted that he was loved. His father played catch with him and taught him how to ride a bike. His mother taught him how to cook soups and casseroles. Even his sister, who demanded attention, who had a wild and selfish streak for seventeen straight years of her life, still snuck into his room sometimes to hang out wordlessly, or to tie a bracelet to his wrist which she would loudly claim was too tacky and ugly to give to any of her real friends. He was loved, and he had always had a place where he belonged, where he fell into an easy domestic comfort with people whom he loved back. But with Rose, every instance of interest directed his way, every smile or congratulations she offered, felt earned .
He couldn’t deny that he loved it.
Now, what does your ideal form of love look like?
“Love takes many forms,” Foggy answers quickly. “They’re all valid, as far as I’m concerned.”
“But if you were to qualify it, if you were to receive a romantic love that best suits your emotional needs, what would that look like for you?” the therapist asks again. “Or, put another way, what are the aspects of your current romantic partnership that most fulfill you?”
When Matt first asked Foggy out on a date, Foggy thought he was joking. The timing had been unfortunate, between Matt being concussed and Foggy being loopy on twenty hours of caffeinated wakefulness. Foggy liked it that way, that they didn’t have to change themselves or their schedules to be together. The context of their relationship changed with a handful of words exchanged between them, negotiated over the course of several days, and they slipped into a relationship that somehow had felt like they’d been stepping around for the entire length of time that they’d known each other. A month later, once they had finally gotten around to scheduling a date in their busy lives (a single hour-long lunch date between meetings), they inaugurated their relationship with a kiss, and that was that.
Nothing much shifted in the way they acted towards each other at first. Their friendship was simultaneously their greatest asset and thickest barrier. It took immense effort to break out of their familiar routines with each other, to open up in new ways and break free from the ingrained boundaries they had long-since established. Romantic partnership required a degree more trust, more intimacy, more physicality.
The leap was rewarding, though. There was something so nice about being accepted throughout the process of becoming known. The hardest part had already been done, the cautious period, the awkward period. The rest could fall into place like their relationship was finally becoming what it was always meant to be.
So Foggy unfolded himself and simply let himself be loved, and there was nothing more to be done.
Foggy liked the comfort of their relationship, as if they were friends and partners first and lovers in addition; an afterthought to their already prioritizing each other. He liked that he felt like someone’s priority.
(“Do you think,” Matt thinks aloud. “If it were anyone else able to give you the same sort of love, you would find marrying them easier?”
“Yes,” Foggy says, honest and a little too quick for Matt’s comfort. “I think that the fact that we know each other so well already sometimes makes it hard for me to think of us as romantic partners. I feel like sometimes we’re just good friends helping each other feel less lonely, and I feel like if something better came along, you would take it.”
“And you don’t feel the urge to fight for me?”
“I would want you, Matt. I do want you. I just have a hard time categorizing us as romantic sometimes. What I felt for Debbie, or Glori, it felt like we were constantly butting heads about what I should be doing, how I should be feeling with myself, and sometimes it was magical. I don’t know if I would be able to survive without you, but I also feel like if we were missing this physical intimacy, if we never took the leap to a romantic partnership, that our relationship wouldn’t change much. Being your friend sustained me, and was sufficient emotional support even before any of this,” Foggy says, resting a heavy hand on Matt’s thigh. “It feels like how we were before, just more in a lot of ways, and in other ways, it’s a lot harder.”
“In a bad way?” asks Matt, twining their fingers together. He rubs a thumb along Foggy’s knuckle.
“In a hard way. It’s probably good for me, but it’s hard having you see me when I’m depressed or anxious or self-pitying. It’s hard having you touch me naked when you know I’m not physically impressive. When we were kids, I really liked that you thought of me as cool. It’s still difficult having you realize that’s not the case.”
“Why wouldn’t that be the case, Fog? You think I would think you’re less cool just because I got to know you better? You think I would be disappointed by knowing what your ass feels like?”
Foggy sighs, and it’s laced with affection. “You can cut the crap, Matt. I know you try to make me feel better about it, but I’ve seen your exes. There’s something they have in common that I don’t.”
“What, you think they’re hot?”
“Of course they’re hot. They’re all tall and slim and muscular. Frankly, it’s a waste that you’re with me,” he says darkly.
Matt scoffs. “You don’t know what kind of insecurities they had, and out of respect for them, I won’t air them out here. There’s nothing wrong with having insecurities, Fog. That just makes you human. If you think I have good taste, you’re just going to have to take it on faith that it’s no accident I ended up choosing you.”)
The thing that suffocated Foggy the most was the realization that Matt loved him. The relationship felt inescapable at that point. There would never be a way to claw themselves back to who they were together before they started seeing each other. It was a simple realization, on some quiet morning some short years ago. Foggy had been dozing on a lazy holiday morning, the cold air making the warmth of their bed so much more inviting. Matt had been petting Foggy’s hair absently, smiling to himself. Foggy watched as Matt realized slowly that he was awake. He watched Matt nestle closer, burying himself in Foggy’s chest, the chill of Matt’s nose resting on his sternum.
Foggy felt so big in that moment. Expansive and infinite and powerful as he wrapped his arms around Matt, taking in the way their bodies had somehow gained some equal and reactive polarity, being so strongly attracted to each other even passively. In the moment, it terrified him. They would grow in momentum towards each other, and meld inextricably together. He felt so happy, he felt impossible.
“And you were nervous?” the therapist asks gently. “Could you explain why you felt that way?”
“It was so new. I thought I had been in love before, and I thought I felt loved before, but there was something about the magnitude of us, of Matt and Foggy finally giving it the old college try. Like I couldn’t live up to the title of us-but-together. It was always Nelson and Murdock. It’s like,” he struggles to find the wording, the perfect string of words to explain. “It’s like in that book, the Giver , that everyone was forced to read in middle school. When the guy sees colour for the first time and he realizes that there’s a whole new dimension of experience he’d been missing out on. The size and shape of the apple don’t change, but suddenly you have the concept of red blaring in your mind but you don’t have a word for it. You feel almost dirty for thinking it, you feel like everything you’ve ever thought about love has been wrong.”
“And what about it made you feel wrong?” the therapist nudges.
“It feels too good for someone like me,” Foggy answers after a long pause. “I guess I feel undeserving? That this sort of love came so easy , that all this time I could have just asked for it and I could have just taken it. It goes against everything I learned as a kid. As a fat kid, as a short, fat, ugly loser growing up amongst the wealthiest and most elite kids in the city, I had to work hard to show everyone I was worth investing time into. And then Matt, who could have had his place among any of them if he had the right luck in life, apropos of nothing, he gives me this kind of attention, even loves me without me having to fight for it. Isn’t that cheating? Isn’t it cheap? I keep thinking I ought to, I don’t know, buy him more gifts, cook for him some more, but he doesn’t need any of that to stay. He does it because he wants to. How am I supposed to reconcile that without thinking that I tricked him somehow? That he thinks I’m something bigger than I am, and when the shoe finally drops and he sees me for the fraud that I am, he feels disgusted with himself and I realize that the only person kind enough to give me that sort of benefit of the doubt has finally left? How am I supposed to grieve a loss like that?”
“So if I were to reiterate, would you say you feel as though your increased intimacy is a hurdle because you fear that you will reveal something monstrous in you that Matt doesn’t already know, and that it will lead to the dissolution of your relationship, romantic or otherwise?”
Foggy nods, and swallowing a lump in his throat, he wipes his face.
“And so you think the best way to keep Matt around is to keep him at arm’s length?”
Another nod.
“Would you accept my saying, then, that you feel a sort of imposter’s syndrome with regards to your relationship with Matt?”
Foggy lets out a laugh. “Yeah,” he agrees finally. “I suppose that’s one way of putting it.”
“Is there anything you feel Matt could do to make you disgusted with him? Anything he could do to make you feel so betrayed that you would question your entire relationship?”
He chortles, nearly choking himself in genuine humour. “We’ve been through it, actually. Twice, though it was far before we became entangled. And I think what happened after was sort of the best case scenario.”
“Then I think it’s rather uncharitable to think Matt wouldn’t do the same for you, don’t you?”
He looks over at Matt, and it’s the same face he’d been looking at for the last two and a half decades of his life. The same striking jaw, the same long nose, the same wispy ginger eyebrows that always make him look a little mischievous even when he doesn’t mean to. It’s Matt, and despite every instinct that has guarded Foggy, he’s the guy who broke through all of the walls Foggy had built, who’d let Foggy do the same for him. Maybe they were already feeling the magnetism even back then, all those years ago, before romance was even an inkling of a serious thought.
The therapist speaks again. “Matt, is there anything you would like to say? How do you feel about your relationship with Foggy thus far?”
(Ten years ago, Matt had been overcome with the realization that Foggy was the love of his life. This was a capstone relationship, being so different from any romance he had experienced before. It wasn’t earth-shattering beyond the first few days. He and Foggy still ate their lunches together in the break room, and Matt still laughed at all his jokes, and it felt more normal than anything else had before. It was as if some final note had started to play in an otherwise cacophonous chord, which now resonated something complex and beautiful.
It wasn’t that anything changed between them, but something settled in Matt when he realized that what he had felt for Foggy was a love long past feverish passion or urgency. He loved Foggy so much and it suited him to love Foggy.
It took two years to let him know. He had been compromised, concussed and out of his wits. It slipped his mind that Foggy didn’t know. It felt like such a natural fact of life that it felt like he was stating the obvious in telling Foggy how beautiful he was, how much Matt appreciated him sticking around, how much he would like to kiss him.
He emerged from the fugue in Foggy’s bed, the object of his affection snoring softly beside him. They’d done so a hundred times before, but there was a weight to it now. He didn’t remember much from the preceding days, but he had a dreadful feeling that some line had been crossed between the pair of them.
Foggy shifted closer to him, and blearily, he told Matt to wait for him, and Matt felt a burst of devotion he never had before.
Their relationship began slow and steady, already on a strong foundation of affection and friendly intimacy.
There wasn’t anything about Foggy that shocked Matt, really. They were both secretive people, but over the years, they had grown secretive together. They confided in each other, and while the more embarrassing and vulnerable secrets took some time to reveal themselves, eventually Matt found that talking to Foggy about the things that he had once been afraid to divulge felt better than keeping those things to himself, as if he was unloading a burden and Foggy was always willing to take some from him.
It hadn’t always been idyllic, of course, and they were both prone to bouts of stubbornness and depression, but even those things were traits they had in common, a flame they shared. Even when they were at their most petty and passive aggressive with each other, there was a feeling of comfort even in being able to reveal the nasty and desperate things they held within themselves. Matt felt unmasked. He felt naked but free.
The autumn of their newly-Christened relationship passed into winter in the slow blink of external monotony. The days were largely the same, and there was no devastating trauma that they were forced to endure. The days simply went, and while Matt’s life was still full of its highs and lows, he had also come to realize that there was a new baseline of happiness that never seemed to dip too low now that Foggy was there to receive him in every fathomable way. Mundane and cataclysmic all at once. Foggy was beside him, near him, inside him, and around him. It was nice, too, to know that Foggy was as invested in Matt. The ecstasy of mutual obsession.)
If you had to change something about your relationship with Foggy, what would it be?
(Foggy sometimes spends minutes in their bedroom, staring at his own reflection. He would pinch and poke at his own body, standing with different postures, feeling at the skin of his face. Sometimes he would be naked, and sometimes, he wouldn’t be. Sometimes he would call to Matt as he reads a book or watches videos on his laptop in a focused sort of voice, asking if his body is aging, if his skin is sagging more, if his stomach is any rounder.
Matt wishes he wouldn’t be so hung up on the components of his body that upset him. Matt knows that he’s only parroting the sort of self-critical bullshit that was fed to him over the years, and that sort of thought is what haunts Matt. It’s not exactly pity, but he is sorry for all the times Foggy had been made to feel inferior, as if round and short was a bad way to be.)
The concept of self-love had always been elusive to Foggy. He had been taught not to pander to himself, that self-kindness only breeds a lack of discipline. He was under no illusion about what he was. He cut such a mediocre figure next to Matt, not only with his doughy physique, but in his moral character and charisma. Sometimes, he would picture himself in a lineup of Matt’s exes. Compared to the intimidating group of the strong and beautiful, Foggy was cowardly, frail, weak-willed, unspectacular-
"You know you aren't any of those things, though, right?" Matt interjects. "You're absolutely brave and strong, and you’re beautiful. You’re not them and you don’t have to be.”
(Foggy turns away. Minutely, but he does. “You don’t have to validate me about this. I know you try to be nice, but let’s be objective about this.”
“So everyone who likes you is biased and everyone who doesn’t is objective? That hardly seems balanced,” Matt questions derisively. “Those opinions are as subjective as mine, but you think one’s more objective because that’s what you agree with.”)
Foggy grips the couch with leaden hands. “Like you have nothing to improve on, Matt? Like you’re completely happy with yourself? You think you’re finished growing as a person? That’s fucking insane!”
"Don't call me insane," Matt snapped.
Oh?
Matt has (not been diagnosed with) a mood disorder. He is prone to bouts of this intense inspiration and euphoria followed by moods where he is suicidal as one of the lesser symptoms.
When accounting for the various moods of Matthew M. Murdock, one must start at the beginning. Shortly after he was born, it soon became evident that he did not process the risks of any given situation as others might. He thought robotically (pragmatically) in terms of action and consequence and in no place did his bodily safety enter into consideration. By luck, he lasted fourteen years until the real trouble began; at fourteen, upon seeing a massive truck and an elderly man in its way, he ran towards the scene rather than far and fast in the other direction.
(He acted before thinking sometimes, and Matt had long since made peace with that aspect of him.
He was) not (fine.)
Matthew M. Murdock is a bleeding heart and a reckless beast.
“I don’t appreciate you using ad hominem attacks on me when we’re supposed to be discussing your fear of commitment issues,” Matt huffs. “I’ve made my peace with my mental health and I’ve been coping.”
“And there’s nothing that noggin of yours that you want dissected?”
“Absolutely none,” he says, more forceful. “None at all.”
“Not even your survivor’s guilt? What about your need to incessantly do things for other people? Half the shit you do, am I expected to think you do it because it makes you happy? You run yourself ragged, Matt. You can’t pretend you’re exempt from being scrutinized here.”
“It’s besides the point! You’re deflecting!”
“Hm,” the therapist interjects. “Is this something you deal with often, Matthew? Do you often feel obligated to help people?”
The air is alight for a moment, and then the tension dissipates, an oobleck sort of feeling. Matt sighs. “Honestly, doc, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m doing it because I feel like I have to or because I want to do something about it. How do you tell the difference, really? I’m a lawyer, but I barely take paying clients. I’m soft-hearted, I suppose, though I probably have anger issues. Isn’t it just human, though? I don’t like seeing other folks suffer.”
“And would you describe yourself as a charitable person?”
“Maybe,” shrugs Matt. “I don’t like hearing that people are left behind or hurt. If that’s charity, then I guess I’m a philanthropist.”
"Then what am I?" Foggy asks quietly. “One of your charity cases?"
Matt groans, frustration no longer something he can deny. “If anything, you’ve pitied me . You’re saying you’ve never felt sorry that I was some poor, blind orphan? Are you telling me you’ve never looked down on me for growing up how I did and having to go to college on scholarships? You tell me, Foggy, which one of us was surprised that the other could even feed himself?”
(Their relationship was not necessarily one solely built on easy friendship and communication. In fact, Matt is often a horrible communicator. He has kept secrets from Foggy for long bouts during their acquaintanceship, about the extent to which he was able to do certain things. Matt was an acrobat, a martial artist, and a good cook. None of it negated the fact that he has been blind for the majority of his life. When their friendship began, Matt used it as a shield. If Foggy were to find out, would he be the sort of person to question Matt’s disability? Would he be the type of asshole who would ask Matt to prove it?
And even worse, having been endeared to each other, would Foggy feel betrayed to know about the extent of Matt’s talents?
It was a daunting potential, to think that Foggy had only wanted Matt in his life for charity’s sake, to prove to himself that he wasn’t the awful sort to turn down the friendship of the less fortunate.)
Eventually, when everything came to light, when Matt took on Foggy’s preconceptions in an actual argument, there was nothing that couldn’t be rectified with some conversation. The driving force of Foggy’s attachment to Matt hadn’t been pity for his state of being, but admiration for his character.
“This is just what I mean, though,” Matt interjects. “You admire me for overcoming hardship, for the fact that I was able to use my strengths for good. It’s like I just exist for you to showcase. It wasn’t that long ago you were astonished that I could take care of myself like a damn adult. You magnify everything I do. Would you be nearly as impressed with me if I were sighted?”
“Oh, Matt,” Foggy says. “I admire you for your convictions, not that you’re an inspirational story. There’s more to you than your disability or upbringing. You’re brave, you know? I thought you knew that. I mean that in a very real sense, by the way. It’s not just anyone who can take his neighbourhood by the balls and really try to clean it up, you know? It takes chutzpah to believe in yourself that much, and I know you don’t always get it right, but it’s better than folks like me who stay immobile left to our own devices. I’m sorry I gave you that impression, and I know I came into this with my own biases, but you should know by now that I see you, right?
“I know there are just some things I can’t really make you believe, but it goes both ways, you know? You saved me from being bullied in school. You helped me out of holes that I dug myself into. You’ve made the odd joke or two about my weight, and, well, at least you’ve never had to wonder if I ever saw you as a total loser.”
“Jesus, Fog.”
(When the pair met on that first week of college, Matt was still on the far cusp of seventeen. He hadn’t known that Foggy had failed to enter college right out of high school. He had taken a year in community college to bring his grades up, and another to make some money in an effort to liberate himself from the financial dependency of his birth mother. Matt wouldn’t find this out until long after they had both graduated. It seemed so trivial when they were young. Foggy was just twenty. Matt was seventeen. He hadn’t known then that each year would bring with it drastic changes and personal growth, and he hadn’t known that Foggy would have ever felt inadequate in comparing the two years he had spent in academic limbo with Matt’s seemingly speedy rise to the top of their classes together. After all, they had both ended up in the same Ivy League school, hadn’t they?
There was little that Matt gained from comparison. He knew vaguely from his brother that he was the subject of comparison more often than he cared to admit, but it always seemed selfish to him to be envious of the successes of others, and yet, perhaps that was a privileged stance to take.
“A loser? Why would I ever have thought of you as a loser?” asks Matt, finally taking off his glasses and setting them in his breast pocket. He turns his face to Foggy, and frowns.
“Because I was. Maybe I still am. There’s nothing I’ve done that’s particularly special or inventive. I keep following in your shadow, Matt, and it’s like you don’t even realize. I have nothing of that spark that you have, and would be some soulless corporate lawyer making six figures were I to have shied away from loving you. Be honest, Matt. You think I have what it takes to be mayor? To be a hero? To speak up on TV about issues that we all know exist but that could get you killed for talking about out loud? You think I would be able to flub a case just to make it to the Federal Supreme Court? Every achievement with my name on it, it’s your name right beside it, Matt. Nelson only takes precedence because you were dumb enough to ever suggest my name sounded better coming first.”
“You’re my partner,” Matt says weakly. “I don’t bring you on because I think you need a win. I bring you on because I can’t do half of what I do without you. I thought you knew that.”
Foggy lets out a bitter laugh. “How would I have known when you keep reminding me I’m inferior?”
“What?”
“All the little jokes you make about me, about my body. About how I should exercise more, eat less. Don’t tell me that doesn’t mean anything. My mother used to do the same thing, and now it’s all about how I don’t have discipline, how I’m lazy and unaccomplished.”
“When have I ever-”
“Don’t try that with me, Matt,” Foggy hisses. “You and I both know you’ve made comments about my body. What I want to know is how I’m supposed to take it. How am I supposed to believe you think I’m desirable when you say shit like that?”
Matt’s cheeks heat, indignant bewilderment in his eyes. He opens his mouth, and yet no sound comes out.
“So which is it, Matt? How can you tell me you don’t pity me when you’ve always known I’m less desirable than you? You can have your pick of partner, Matt. You know I’m lucky just to stand next to you. Tell me how that’s not charity.”
“Let’s keep this civil,” the therapist says softly. “Remember, you’re here for each other, to air out your feelings in a constructive way, not to accuse each other, nor to speak on each other’s motives.”
“Okay,” Foggy breathes. “Why do you keep teasing me about my body?”
(When they first met, Matt had been a stupid teenager, unexposed to the world in many ways. He grew up in a gym full of hard-muscled men who would tease each other about their bodies regularly and in good humour. Sweaty men in a room, poking at each other and commenting that they needed to work on their lats, their delts, their glutes. It seemed natural to say these things to each other because the men that Matt learned to socialize from taught him to view his body as a project.
For a long time, before his father would entertain the idea that Matt might want to exercise, he was just Skinny Matty who needed meat on his bones. When he started training with them, he got a lot of well-meaning excited advice on how to build himself up and how to most effectively exercise.
For the majority of his life he was surrounded by men who were unshy about matters of the body, whose bodies were tools and weapons, rather than anything to fixate emotionally on, and it certainly was not an indicator of one’s character.
So, with all this lack of experience, Matt was forced upon Foggy, with his simmering insecurities from years of emotional turbulence which were fed by his mother and the bullies around him who had noticed that he was a little different from the rest of them.
“When I was seventeen, I hadn’t fully realized that people could even be self conscious about their bodies like that, Fogs. I was insensitive, and I’m sorry. I thought when you mentioned it, it just meant you wanted to start changing up your lifestyle. I thought I was helping.”
“And the subsequent times? You were saying this shit to me just before I got my cancer diagnosis.”
Matt shrugs. “I’m sorry,” is all his mouth allowed. “I guess I got into the habit of it. I didn’t know you were so self conscious. It didn’t register in my mind that this would be something you would be so down on yourself about. I always found you beautiful, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t come into this with my own gaps in knowledge. It’s not like I never took any friendly ribbing from before I started working out. I meant to stop earlier than I did, but I guess habit got the better of me.”
“So what caused you to stop?” the therapist asks.
“I figured after he lost all that weight from cancer, he wouldn’t want to be skinny again. And I,” Matt swallows, remembering a time in his life where he was consumed by an eldritch grief. “I figured you wouldn’t want to be like that again. I didn’t want you to be thin again. It was scary, Foggy. You were losing so much so fast, it felt like you were just gonna throw up your soul and die any one of those days. I like it when you eat. It means you’ve healed.”
Foggy sobs quietly. He breathes in shallow and short, and he does it almost silently if you don’t know how to keep track of his breathing. “So you’ve never thought of this body as monstrous? As lesser than yours? You have to be honest here.”
Matt swallows. “Honestly? At first I did think of it as a moral failing. I had to smell your junk food for days in that cramped little dorm. I thought you could lose some if you were more strict with your own habits. I resented you a little for indulging in snacks when I lived off canned goods and boxed snacks and frozen vegetables my entire life and yeah, maybe I always went to sleep a little hungry. Maybe I thought a little deprivation would help. I’m sorry for thinking it now, Fogs. I really am. It was before I knew anything about you. I thought you were just some privileged kid like my dad used to warn me about. I never doubted you were a good person if you tried to be, but I thought there were things you just wouldn’t understand. I was wrong, Foggy. What more can I say on it?”)
Foggy reaches out and carefully takes Matt’s hand, laces their fingers together. “Would you have preferred that I had a different body back then?”
“I don’t know, Foggy. You gave me all sorts of crises. I thought I knew who I was before I met you. I thought I was going to law school to take on people like you, and you showed me time and time again that people are capable of change. You’ve changed my approach to people in general. I thought a lot of wrong things when I met you. Maybe I had my shitty biases, but God, didn’t we both? Would you ever have kissed me back when you thought I was a helpless little cripple?”
“Point taken,” says Foggy, finally.
“We’ve both changed for the better, and I think you’re the sexiest man on the planet now. Isn’t that enough? If I can forgive that you once thought of me as lesser, can you forgive the same of me?” He takes their hands and places Foggy’s hand over his chest. “Feel this, Foggy. I’m being as honest as I can be. There is no one on earth I think of more highly than you. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have been emboldened to pursue our little practice together. I would never have met any of the people who I’ve loved since meeting you. I am infinitely thankful that you’re on this journey with me, and I hope to God that you keep me.”
Moments go by in near silence as Foggy hiccups his way back to steady breathing. The clock ticks, and Matt’s focussed too hard on keeping his grasp on Foggy’s hand to count the seconds going by. Finally, the therapist speaks up. “And Foggy, is there anything you would like Matthew to know?”
He shakes his head. “He knows too much already,” he says, laughing through the tears. “But of course he makes me a better person. I know I haven’t been perfect in the past. I’m glad he was there to broaden my worldview. I’m happy that I turned out how I did, even though we’re dirt poor. I’m thankful he supported me through my divorce.”
(Matt kisses Foggy’s hand.)
“So,” the therapist says. “I think that’s our time. I don’t know how much you really needed me here today, but I think you have something many others who come here lack, and that’s gratitude. If you would like some homework, I would like you guys to practice connecting to each other on that level. Reflect on the ways you’ve changed, the ways you’ve helped each other change for the better, and maybe for the worse. You guys have a strong foundation, and it will only help to remind yourselves why you’re committed to each other.”
-
Lighter than they’ve felt in a long time, they spend hours walking into little shops they had never visited before, trying out gelato samples, greeting store cats, buying each other little tchotchkes that remind them of each other. Their city is constantly changing, and its beauty is in its ephemera.
It’s a different city from the one in which Foggy was first married. Debbie had wanted to let Foggy take wanton control of it and it compromised him. It’s also different from the city in which Matt was first married. Milla had enabled Matt too much in the other direction, letting him take that control and beat it into submission to the detriment of its denizens.
In growing, they had realized that some things were simply not theirs to control. A mutually loving relationship was one based on growth and support. It seems so simple in hindsight.
On this particular autumn day, Matt and Foggy take in the new energy of the city, full of little projects that they had helped in one way or another. There, a community garden they once helped fund through a little plastic box in their office. A boutique shop named in loving tribute to an old client of theirs. Free books in little stands that they fought for in city council at the bequest of a librarian friend of theirs who envied their skills in persuasion. The city has been growing with them. It is the city with evidence of their history together. It is the city that enables them to love each other.
They find themselves in a café, sitting in a booth together, side by side, as if they would die if they were to break contact with each other. Foggy’s left hand in Matt’s right, they sip from their drinks and feed each other bites of their bagels and cake. They bury kisses into each other’s shoulders.
“Okay,” Foggy says once their snacks are all gone.
“Yeah?” Matt says, not understanding his train of thought but grinning anyways.
“Yeah. I will marry you.” He says it firmly, as if the notion would evaporate if it weren’t put into words. “I don’t think I’m able to love anyone more than I love you, and I want tax benefits again.”
“It’s as good a reason as any,” Matt smiles wider, feeling giddy and silly and surreal. “For the tax benefits.”
“And I love you. In case you missed that part.”
“And you love me,” Matt repeats, trying to will his mouth into a more presentable shape and failing.
“You’re ridiculous.” Foggy rolls his eyes, Matt can hear it in his voice, but under the routine exasperation, there’s enough affection that could intoxicate him. “If I marry you, you’re going to have to be normal about it. Remember, it’s about the taxes. Most normal thing there is.”
“And you love me,” Matt keeps saying because he can’t stop repeating it in his mind. He refuses to let it go now that he has it for certain.
“And you love me.” Foggy says it like a fact and it is. It is the only thing Matt knows anymore, the unequivocal truth that they converged in exactly the right ways at exactly the right times to have loved each other to the point of blurring madness, where there is nothing that can be said more true than that they love each other. Matt could burst with it.
Instead, he kisses Foggy right on the mouth in that little booth in that new-ish café. And words fail them for the first time in their disputatious lives.