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Shawn and Cory’s first New York City apartment is a ground floor cold water walkup with a single light in the bathroom and a creaking, uneven floor that caused the neighbor living underneath them to knock violently on the ceiling whenever they tried to walk across the floor to get something out of the (miniature) refrigerator.
They come to the place with a few cardboard boxes and a pile of luggage, most of it from Cory’s suburban childhood bedroom. “Marshmallows!” Cory sighs, taking a deep breath and inhaling the odor of adulthood.
“Mouse pee,” says Shawn. He’d know. They go out and buy a bunch of traps, and then try to turn this way station into a home.
They have a pretty nice fire escape. Cory’s very proud of it; when his parents come over for Thanksgiving a year later, he very excitedly shows off everything they’ve managed to accomplish over the past few years.
“…And this is our toaster!” Cory said. He grinned, pointing at the appliance, as if he were revealing the grandest object in the world to his parents. “We…toast things in it.”
“Yeah, I understand that’s what they’re meant for,” said Mr. Matthews.
Vermin removal aside, they’ve managed to whitewash the walls and clean the floors between exhausting shifts at their day jobs. Shawn has found a small collective of photographers who work in the underground, and they’ve been happy to offer him extra advice. Meanwhile, Cory’s picking away at the credits he needs for a teaching certificate. He hasn’t picked between educational formats, though Shawn can see him easily leading a kindergarten class instead of pontificating about Shakespeare in some stuffy college lecture room.
The turkey was bought at the deli up the street. The stuffing comes out of boxes, the vegetables out of cans. But no one in the extended family complains. That is, until Eric ruins the entire evening by announcing that he’s going to leave his job in city governance to become a circus performer. Somehow, as the Matthews family complains and shouts, they feel like they're home forever.
At least when they hold each other tight, it makes the struggle worth while.
The apartment has an actual bathroom in it, instead of one they have to share with the neighbor next door as they had for a brief time while trying to find a better place in New York. “Wow, I don’t have to knock to go anymore,” Cory remarked.
In this place they grew house plants – a cactus and an aloe offshoot from one of Cory’s fellow teachers. They held the first afterparty for one of Shawn’s gallery showings here, too. A lot of good memories. A lot of growing, too.
Shawn was happy to finally have private dark room space. If he took the time to drain the tub, then he could develop pictures in the sink or in the tub. Cory was happy to have a place to bring his colleagues to eat wine and cheese and talk about their kids without worrying about having to pay lots of cash. The tub had little red titles next to it in hyper-organized lines of two, where Shawn would put his soda when he and Cory took baths together. The couch they dragged in from someone else’s curb, cursing and laughing the whole while, until they finally pushed it to the second floor and got it through their front door. They never quite got the smell of cigarette smoke out of it, and the scent of Cheetos and weed nearly superseded it. But they loved that couch and wouldn’t trade it for any other on the planet.
The seasons flew by. Cory got a better job, teaching at a public high school. And then Shawn got an offer from National Geographic to travel the planet delivering pictures straight from the field after working for two years for the New York Times.
There wasn’t much debate to be had about the topic, and Cory refused to contemplate the notion with a martyr’s cringing sense of weakness. They had to pull up stakes and follow Shawn’s job. Cory realized that it would be easier to follow Shawn’s yen to photograph the world than go long-distance, or try to keep his teaching position while his lover was a million miles away. He could, after all, teach anywhere – English, or general education to expats who yearned to hear the mother tongue.
So they sold the smelly couch and found homes for the plants. They sold the VCR, the DVD player, the stack of movies that they’d seen a million times to pay for their lodging. Cory said goodbye to his last class just as summer began to bake New York. They were on a plane to India the next morning.
The apartments they shared over the next ten years were varied as the countries in which they lived. A tiny, chic Paris abode with double doors that opened inward and kept smacking Cory in the face; the little Italian half-residence where they lived elbow-to-elbow with an elderly lady who thought they were only friends. A four-star suite in Namibia with robotic butler that served their every demand. There were thousands of places where they lived.
Cory told the poor and the rich, the young and the old, about books, about the English language, about love and about the glory of knowing exactly who they were when they were together.
No matter how many miles they traveled together, and no matter how many places they went – and when they finally, at last, got married hastily in London when marriage became legal – the routine held.
Shawn got a little better at cooking and he loved to feed Cory. Cory got better at picking out movies they both liked.
And at the end of the night they would hold each other, and talk about the day.
They moved back to Philadelphia when they were old and grey. By then they could afford their own house, and their own land. They got a couple of dogs and a couple of cats. They adopted a kid who reminded Shawn intensely of himself. Cory taught the same position, the same classes, that Mr. Feeney had. Shawn, his knee injured from covering life in a war zone which made going back out into the world to cover larger events a daunting prospect, took up portraiture, and still life.
Every year they’d have Thanksgiving at their place. The food got a little better every week. Their friends came by with their own families and sat out in the garden, played games with them, watched movies with them.
It was a rich life, and a full one.
Sometimes Cory thought of that old rundown apartment in New York that smelled like rat pee. He loved it at home in Philadelphia. But sometimes he wanted those old days back.
But that made him realize the only thing he wanted was to relive those youthful days with Shawn. Again and again.