Lying into the Future by Stephen Kessel

Simon and Hank are two men recovering from loss and betrayal when they meet in a mountain-climber’s hut on the slopes of the Matterhorn. An instant attraction leads to a brief, wild, and unexpected time together that evening, but early the next morning Simon’s party heads downhill while Hank’s heads for the Matterhorn’s summit. The meeting leaves a mark on both men though, and each departs with the sense of having found a special man in that brief meeting.

Months later they meet again in Sydney and it seems they are made for each other, but fear of being hurt results in lies being told. Lies that could keep them apart forever. Can fate and a dog show intervene to save them?

EXCERPT:

I had lied to Simon about my son booking this mountain-climbing trip for my birthday and then reneging because his wife was having a baby. My lover had booked the trip—and paid for it too—and then I had found him in bed with my driver. I had taken this trip for revenge. I had taken both tickets and boarded the flight the next morning, not because I had wanted to come here alone—I hadn’t been the one who wanted to come here at all—but simply to make Russ pay. He had lived off me in so many respects and for so long that I was determined to get a little back and to make him pay if he was going to cheat on me.

And I had continued to take my revenge. Russ had cheated on me, so I was doing everything I could in the way of payback. I had flaunted myself in front of all of the other men in our climbing party. The trip had been booked through a gay travel agency, so I wasn’t worried that the men might not be interested. And I had taken them on one after the other—sometimes two of them at once. I had saved the best for last—the blond giant I’d told Simon was from my home town. He wasn’t from my home town. He was some Scandinavian who, as far as I knew, could speak no more English than the phrase “I want to fuck you.”

That had shocked me. Not because he had said it; I had done everything I could to lead him to say he wanted sex. But I was shocked because I realized for the first time that this promiscuous giving of myself to other men—when I had always before been the taker—was a lie.

I had told Simon our tryst would have to be a short one, because this was the Scandinavian’s evening with me. I’d finally learned the Norwegian words for “OK, let’s fuck tonight.”

I have no firm idea why I lied to Simon about everything when we’d met. He was so nice and friendly and had been so open and honest with me. I think it might have been because he instantly reminded me of Russ—of the best parts of Russ that I could remember. And I was still so wounded by what Russ had done. But I also still ached for Russ. I went with Simon that evening, I think, because I still ached for Russ, no matter what he’d done to me. And I also lied to Simon, I believe, because I was ashamed for him to think I would do it with just anyone—although that’s exactly what the desire for revenge against Russ’s transgression had led me to on this trip.

And then, for the brief time I went with Simon, my world straightened out again. When him I was the taker. And before Russ had deceived me, that was my role as well. I think if I hadn’t couched the beginning of whatever Simon and I had in lies, I might have recovered my equilibrium at that point. I think that’s why whenever I thought of that Swiss interlude, it was Simon who I thought of—and who I wanted. If he only hadn’t told me that he was on the rebound from the loss of a lover . . . if only he hadn’t made me think of my own rebounding from my abandonment by Russ.

After I left Simon and found the blond giant and let him manhandle me on the squeaking bed in his room, until we were afraid the bed frame would fall through the floor to the room below, I tried to forget Simon—to push him out of my mind. But he was so much like the Russ I had first loved. My climbing party was half way up to the base camp hut the next day before I realized that I didn’t want to leave Simon that way—perhaps that I didn’t want to leave him at all. But then it was too late. I had let my present control my future.

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