Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Two
November- December 2025
Primary and Secondary, story by Lisa C Taylor.
He could irritate me just by unzipping his parka. He wasn’t content to take it off, he liked to zip and unzip it repeatedly, so it sounded like a swarm of bees congregating in the mudroom. That was another thing—the mudroom. It’s called a mudroom so I can put all my soiled clothes and shoes down there. It wasn’t uncommon to find Calvin’s paint-splattered coveralls hanging from the wooden pegs or several pairs of dirty sneakers and boots scattered on the floor.
We met at a party that my college roommate dragged me to, saying I didn’t go out enough. You’re never going to find anyone by staying in the apartment every weekend. I didn’t want to tell her that I wasn’t looking because it sounded as if I’d given up. The truth was a slightly different. I didn’t like sex and I didn’t like men. Calvin showed up on a bet. He’d spent every weekend in the lab and his housemates offered him $20 each if he went to a party and left with a woman.
We’ve had this deal for ten years now. I pretend we’re partners, and he tells his parents we decided not to get married because I come from a family of divorce and I’ve been traumatized. Truth is we’ll never be lovers because we’re gay. Yeah, I know that gay marriage is legal and this should be a non-issue in 2024 but he’s from the South and I’m a private person. It makes me squirm to think of my parents imagining my sex partners—men or women—makes no difference. They already call every other day and dropped in without asking when I lived locally. Getting the librarian job in Oregon solved that problem. It took them two years to get used to the fact that Oregon is three hours earlier than Maine. Calvin’s family lives in Florida so our ruse is successful. He brings me to weddings and an occasional family reunion but locally he doesn’t pretend even though we share a three-bedroom house.
“This is my friend, Bertie,” he tells a muscular man with a stud in his nose and spiked hair.
I don’t bring him most places because there are only a few places I want to go with Calvin. We both like flea markets and Indian food so we do that together. Some people are loners, my mother said last time I was home. She looked at me with the kind of look that translates to you need help but I just stared right back. I’ve perfected the art of staring.
“Roberta Marie, you need to drop a few pounds. You’d feel so much better about yourself.”
My mother is built like a jockey—a small-boned miniature person. No horse would want me on his back. Some of us make bigger footprints in the world. My last lover called it zoftig but my mother just calls me fat. Needless to say, I don’t go home often. I’m not obese or anything, just on the rounder side of average but in my family, that’s a felony.
“Aunt Marvella kept her figure even after her fifth child.”
Chain-smoking and drinking shot glasses of bourbon every night probably helped Aunt Marvella but it didn’t do a lot for my cousins, two of whom have been in rehab for as long as I can remember.
It’s true that parents compare kids and everyone else’s kids seem to turn out better. Doesn’t it ever occur to them that we’re all lying? That Phi Beta Kappa snorts coke every weekend, and Marvella’s youngest, the one who went to medical school? She’s anorexic and losing her teeth.
Claudine believes that secrets keep relationships alive. I met her at the Food Co-op eighteen months ago but she’s never been to the house. We meet at her condo or on the getaway weekends we try to do every few months. I tell Calvin I’m at a book club retreat. I’m not even in a fucking book club because I work at a library.
During the day, I sort books and recommend them to people who come to our beautiful coastal library. I plan author events and I never have a shortage of reading material. It pays enough for half the mortgage of the house we jointly own. I’m not sure what part of this is confusing but we get asked questions all the time.
“You own a house with a guy who isn’t a lover or relative? Just a friend?”
“Yeah. We met in college. Works out great most of the time.”
“What does he think when you…bring people home?”
“He’d be fine with it except we don’t.”
“So, you don’t like…go out…. or get involved with anyone?”
“Nope. Like my space. Calvin likes his.”
And then comes the line that gets thrown at me again and again.
“You just haven’t met the right person.”
“Actually, I have. We’re compatible mostly—just not that way.”
I don’t understand all that fuss over relationships. They are messy and complicated and if you’re a cis man or woman, there’s the possibility of pregnancy or disease. I like kids as well as the next person but I don’t need to replicate my defective genes and be responsible for another human for eighteen years. Calvin is a little more flexible on this one and we’ve talked about artificial insemination or adopting but decided a dog would be easier—and they don’t live as long.
When Calvin brought Teddy home, it defied everything we’d agreed upon. Teddy cooked us a chicken dinner, made a batch of strawberry daiquiris and guacamole while dinner was cooking. He even cleaned up after and served a chocolate flan. I just knew he was trying to weasel his way into our sweet set-up.
“But Bertie, we have an extra room. He could help with expenses.”
“It’s hard enough to live with you, Calvin. I don’t want to get used to a whole other person.”
Pretty soon, Teddy was staying over on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Some nights Calvin didn’t come home. When he posted his relationship on Facebook and Instagram, I figured things were changing faster than I expected.
“My life, Bertie. People change. I didn’t know what I was missing and now that I do, I’m not going back.”
Then I saw the ad on Craigslist.
For Sale: three-bedroom bungalow on the east side of town. Two baths, mudroom, deck.
The photo was undeniably our house. I printed the ad and slipped it under Calvin’s door with a big ? on it. When I returned from work the next day, there was a hand-painted sign on the little patch of lawn we have: For Sale by Owner.
“What the fuck? I own this house too!”
“I’m the primary and you’re the secondary. I don’t have to ask you to put it on the market. I want to live with Teddy now.”
Although I was trying not to lose it, it seemed more and more likely I was going to hurt someone or break something. Fucking Teddy with the perfectly done roasted fucking chicken and the melt-in-your-mouth flan. That’s when I thought to Google him. Ted (maybe Theodore) Gutkowski. There he was on Facebook and Instagram as well as all kinds of hook-up sites. Described as self-made man whatever that is, works at a local community college as a counselor. I’ll bet he’s effective. Divorced, two kids. I print six pages about Teddy and leave them on Calvin’s unmade bed. On the way out, I add my phone number to the For Sale sign on the front lawn.
I hate mudrooms. The very name suggests dirt. What ever happened to garages or just leaving your muddy shoes outside the door? My next house is going to be two-bedroom and I’ll use the other one as an office. Wallpaper borders and ceiling fans and maybe an entertainment center. I look on Zillow, see at least four possible properties, all of them closer to my job. That’s when Calvin bursts in my room without knocking.
“That was low, even for you, Bertie. Snooping on my boyfriend.”
“Googling someone isn’t snooping. That information is out there for anyone to find. Your precious Teddy has kids,” I say.
“You think I didn’t know that?” he says in a tone of voice that makes me certain he didn’t.
“Yup. Kids, Cal. Different game.”
Calvin sits on my bed. Excuse me. My bed is off limits.
“Get off. I didn’t say you could sit there,” but he’s crying so I let it go.
“I fucked up. I really like Teddy. What do I do now?”
“For starters, take down that Craigslist ad, change your relationship status on Facebook, and get that fucking sign off of our lawn.”
Calvin is still sitting on my bed, sniffling into his hand.
“I’m still going to see him, you know.”
“I don’t care what you do when you’re not at home.”
That’s how we decided to turn the mudroom into an entertainment center with a wallpaper border and a huge television. We left a little square by the door with pegs for hanging up coats and a rack for dirty shoes. Next week we’re going to the animal rescue to look at dogs. I see no reason to tell him about Claudine. What I do in my free time is my own business.
© Lisa C Taylor
Lisa C. Taylor is the author of the 2025 novel, The Shape of What Remains, three poetry collections and two short story collections, most recently Impossibly Small Spaces (2018). Her honors include the Hugo House New Works Fiction Award, Pushcart nominations in fiction and poetry and Best-of-the Net nominations in both categories. Her poetry collaboration with Irish writer Geraldine Mills, The Other Side of Longing received the Elizabeth Shanley Gerson Honor at University of Connecticut. Lisa holds an MFA in Creative Writing, and she is the co-director of the Mesa Verde Writers Conference and Literary Festival. Lisa has received writing residencies from Vermont Studio Center, Willowtail Springs, and Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. Lisa was a spotlight feature on the AWP website and a two-time mentor for the AWP writer-to-writer program. Lisa edited the anthology Four Corners Voices in 2025, and it recently received the Colorado Book Award.