Mirrors of Narcissus (10 page)

“It was the times, I guess,” I ventured. “Maybe there were a lot of people in the same situation.”

“True.”

For a moment there seemed to be a lull in the conversation. Then, abruptly, Golden gathered his books together and picked up his tray. He’d already finished his food.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to earning a living. Sorry to have bothered you at your lunch.”

“Oh, not at all,” said Christine. “I found your talk quite fascinating.”

He smiled at her. “As I said, if you and Guy feel like dropping by for the gay studies group, you’re always welcome.” He looked at me and nodded to us both, then walked away. Christine and I watched him deposit his tray on the counter, say a few words to the boy at the grill, and head out the door.

“What a character,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “I can see why you find him so interesting.”

“You seemed rather drawn to him yourself.”

“Oh, I was. In fact, if I were a boy, I might even be making a play for him.”

“Even if you were straight?”

“Especially if I were. After what he’d just said, I might want to try to stretch my horizons, so to speak.”

“Well, he might be interested in girls who want to ‘stretch their horizons.’”

She looked at me mischievously, and the thought of her in Golden’s arms, for some reason, gave me a sudden, powerful erection. I crossed my legs under the table. “Looks like I’m too late, though.” She nodded up the street in the direction Golden had taken.

I looked and saw that he had stopped to chat with a boy. I thought I recognized him from the group of students who had gathered around Golden’s lectern at the end of class that day. After a few words, they began walking off together up the street. I felt strangely envious of the picture they presented.

4

Unlike most of the other boys on the floor, Scott wasn’t a party animal. There was a certain innocence about him which set him apart, for he seemed fundamentally different from the others. He dutifully went along when he was invited out to drinking parties, but it was easy to see his heart wasn’t in it. He seemed most comfortable with a single friend—me—in serious conversation. He told me he was perfectly content as long as he had a good book to keep him company, but sometimes I felt a little guilty when I went out to see Christine, knowing he was going to be all alone in his room. So I tried as much as possible to invite him along when I went.

Christine didn’t mind. The two of them had taken to each other from the moment I’d introduced them—something which would have been unthinkable with Jonesy—for they shared the same tastes in music and movies. Sometimes the three of us would go out together for the evening.

One of the reasons Scott didn’t quite fit in with the others in the dorm was that he had the late arrival’s complex—he was the new kid on the block. Even after he’d been my roommate for a while, he still felt like a newcomer. The guys were always talking about Jonesy, he said, and he felt uncomfortable whenever he heard them recollecting yet another “typical Jonesy stunt”…as if he’d been responsible for the eviction of a more popular tenant. (After Jonesy was expelled, most of us only brought up the fun times we’d had with him, and refrained, as if from a tacit understanding, from mentioning the terrible truth we’d learned about him.) Scott had never met Jonesy, yet the earlier boy’s shadow always hung over him, a ghost which lingered.

So he seemed very comfortable when it was just the three of us in Christine’s room. Sometimes Christine’s roommate would join us to make a foursome, but lately there was some bad blood between the girls, and Nancy had hinted more than once that she was ready to move out.

It was on an evening just after the finals and the three of us were relaxing in Christine’s room, drinking beers. The talk had turned to occult matters, and Christine seemed especially animated tonight as she began explaining a theory that dreams were sometimes like a “reverse memory.”

Even I had never heard of this one from her before. “Reverse memory? What the hell is that?”

“Didn’t you guys ever have dreams that predicted future events?” She turned to Scott.

“No, I can’t say that I have,” he said. He didn’t share Christine’s interest in the exotic byways of parapsychology but was willing to go along with her, for his intellectual curiosity made him open to many things which he really didn’t believe in. As if he felt that if
someone
believed in them, they must have some validity.

Christine put her beer down and shook her hair out of her eyes. “Well I have—many times. I’ve seen things clearly in my dreams: places I’ve never been, people I’ve never seen. Yet I meet them, five, ten years later. It’s the strangest thing, yet apparently quite a common phenomenon.”

“That would mean the future is already decided, instead of being merely a blank possibility.”

“That’s one way of putting it. Though I don’t think of myself as being a fatalist.”

“Do you believe in fortune-tellers?” he asked.

“Oh yes. Not all of them, because I’m sure there’s plenty of fakes out there. But there must be some who’ve managed to tap into the essence of time and be able to see future events.”

“By reading palms and things like that?”

“Palm-reading is a very ancient art which has a lot of validity. I think it’s very possible that a lot about ourselves is revealed in outward physical manifestations. After all, you know that DNA molecules contain the information which help to form our personalities. Well, those same DNA also contain the blueprint for the individual lines and creases found on our palms. There might be a connection there, you know, which the ancients might have accidentally discovered in the course of their studies. Have you ever had your palm read?”

“No.”

“Will you let me? I’ll bet I can tell a lot about you just by reading it.”

“Sure. What do I do?”

“Nothing. Just let me look.”

Christine had never manifested an interest in palm-reading before, so I knew she was probably just kidding around. She took his palm into her hand and bent over it, seemingly concentrating upon the whorls and lines there. With her index finger she lightly traced a pattern on his open palm and closely examined the minuscule ridges at the base of his thumb before announcing:

“You’re creative…sensitive…and romantic. But your leadership line is very weak. You prefer to follow where led.”

I was a little disappointed by the mundane nature of her analysis, but Scott seemed intrigued.

“What else?”

“Am I right?” she asked, quickly looking up.

“Well…yeah. I guess I never was much of a leader in things. And I was always a loner…preferred to do things on my own.”

“What were you like as a boy, Scott?” I asked.

“Very quiet. Not very adventurous, I’m afraid.”

“Quite the opposite of Guy here,” said Christine.

“Adventure?” I said, putting on a mock-worldly air. “Let me tell you, I’ve done it all; I’ve tried everything—sex, drugs, you name it. Maybe I was crazy, but I don’t regret it.”

Scott looked at me seriously, and a little sadly. “You know, Guy, I was thinking that if we’d met in high school, you’d have probably thought I was pretty dull.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I just never hung out with the kids that did the wild things.”

I laughed. “I was exaggerating, Scott. Heck, probably the wildest thing me and my friends did was hyperventilate.”

“Hyperventilate? What’s that?”

“It’s a weird thing we used to do at parties, or even during school. Come here, I’ll show you.”

A little reluctantly, he came over to where I was. I turned him around to face Christine and stood right behind him, slipping my arms in front of him, clasping him so that both my forearms rested on his abdomen. I explained:

“You take about ten very deep breaths, as deeply as possible. Then, when you take your tenth breath, you hold it in while I squeeze your abdomen as hard as possible.”

“What happens?”

“You pass out. I think it cuts off the oxygen supply to the brain or something. But you’re out for only a few seconds.”

“What if I fall down and hit my head on something?”

“Don’t worry, I’m right behind you the whole time to catch you and lower you onto the sofa.”

“So what’s the point of it?”

“When you come to again, you experience the most fantastic feeling. It can’t be described; you have to experience it. It’s like an orgasm in a way, a sort of high—maybe caused by the rush of oxygen to the brain to bring consciousness back.”

“It sounds a little dangerous to me.”

“Well, the teachers and parents always discouraged it, but of course that only made us want to do it more. You wanna try it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Come on.”

“I’ll try it,” said Christine quickly. She’d been listening all this time with a growing sense of excitement. I knew it was just the sort of thing to perk her interest.

“Watch this,” I said to Scott, seeing the sudden interest in his eyes as Christine got ready to try it.

I positioned her so that we were standing just in front of the sofa. I put both my arms around her from behind, in a hold just below her ribcage. She began taking very deep breaths as Scott counted them off. Just as she finished taking her tenth, I gave an abrupt squeeze to her belly and felt her go suddenly limp in my arms. Gently, I lowered her onto the sofa and sat back on the floor to watch her return to consciousness. In a matter of seconds she came to with a wondering look on her face which made Scott and me laugh.

“What was it like?” asked Scott eagerly.

“It’s…like bliss.” She was smiling, with a slightly silly expression. “I really can’t put it into words. It’s more like a drug high than an orgasm.”

“Come on, Scott, now it’s your turn.” I knew he was still a little reluctant to try it, yet I felt a perverse urge to push him to it. The thought of bringing him that quasi-sexual pleasure made me excited. In a way, it was also a test to see how much he would trust me. “You won’t feel any pain, I promise you.”

I pulled him over to me and steered him toward the sofa.

“Now breathe, very, very deeply.” In my arms he became quite submissive. I felt his back expanding against my chest with every breath he took. Christine was looking on with delight, anticipating what he would be going through. After the tenth breath I squeezed. He slumped heavily in my arms and I let him down onto the sofa, then sat next to him, supporting him against me. He was out for about five seconds before coming to, blinking his eyes and looking around the room as if seeing it for the first time.

“Well?” I asked. “How was it?”

He didn’t say a word, just sat there with a beatific expression on his face.

“Weird, isn’t it?” said Christine.

“Yeah.” He still wasn’t sure what had happened. “What a rush.”

As Christine and I laughed at his wonder, I felt that Scott and I had shared something a little illicit; something elusive and precious had passed between us. In my heart I whispered my gratitude.

Now Christine looked at me. “Your turn, Guy. Scott, you do the squeezing.”

He got behind me and I began taking deep breaths, feeling his arms pressed against my belly. Just being like this, with his body so close to mine, was enough to make me happy. I lost count of the breaths as I felt my head getting light. Somewhere off in the corner of my vision was Christine, smiling, looking benevolently on. I thought, momentarily, that I still had something important left to say—and then I was gone.

In no time at all I was coming to from somewhere; I felt as if I were stepping into a brand new morning, the air fresh and pure. It was heavenly; I wanted it to last forever. This was a memory from out of my dreams, the glorious childhood feeling of endless possibilities.

The echo of a song was on the edge of my consciousness, a song I’d learned in the fifth grade, so pure and beautiful that I always imagined it sung by an angels’ choir of boy sopranos. It was about the delights of wandering the mountain trails with a knapsack on my back…the trails of a fabulous land to which I wanted to return…always.

I looked in wonder at Christine and Scott, feeling as if I’d been away a long, long time. A hollow ache in my chest told me that a part of me was still wandering those mountain trails.

They were giggling at my look of baffled loss, but the whisper of a truth, desperately suppressed from the very start, now emerged within me, blossoming forth like a tropical flower in fast-motion: I was in love with Scott.

5

In my explorations of the secret homosexual underground on campus, I had come upon what looked like the most frequented spot: the cement bunker-like outdoor restroom by the football field, near the changing rooms. The graffiti in there was the most explicit I’d yet seen.

I recalled many times, late at night, going back to the dorm from the library and seeing dark shadows slinking in and out of it, and the orange cigarette glows hovering like lurid fireflies in the heavy gloom beyond. Now as I realized the true significance of those shadows, I became intrigued. In the daytime, the place was innocuous enough, but surely it must assume another aspect after dark.

I decided to go there and see at firsthand just what went on.

It was past eleven o’clock when I stepped out of the dorm and turned toward the football field. The autumn night was cool, and the stars were pinpoints of cold fire. Just beside the football field was a grassy hillock where music students during the day could often be seen practicing on their instruments. But at this hour it was empty. Here and there, like lonely beacons amid the trees behind the bleachers, were the dimly-lit yellow rape prevention phone boxes. There was a ghostly air to the whole scene and I began to wonder if I should continue.

I followed the paved bicycle path which I often took during the day to go to my classes. It looked deserted and forbidding. The campus now wore a completely different guise from the one I always saw in the daytime.

I was nearing the football field, but my destination was on the opposite side, and I didn’t dare cross the vast expanse of the brightly-lit playing field. An oblique approach suited me better. Just past the football field, the path took a sharp bend to the left, curving down towards the arts building. Here, a tiny wooden bridge spanned the stream which meandered across the campus. A slight breeze made the trees beside it stir, and I listened for a moment to the rustling murmur they made.

Then I crossed the bridge, peering among the trees to the left under the eave of the arts building. There seemed to be no one about. I stepped off the path into the shade of the trees, suddenly plunging into greater darkness. Crickets fell silent at my approach. There were the usual sounds of night—a far-off siren downtown and the wind soughing in the trees.

Pressing myself among the shrubs lining the stream, I proceeded back toward the football field, approaching it from the rear. Some instinct within me was alerted to invisible emanations coming from among the trees, and I could feel a skin-tingling prickle of other presences unseen in the dark, hidden and watchful.

And then my heart almost stopped as I spotted a figure ahead of me, standing off to one side of the bicycle path, peering intently into the night. After a long moment of immobility, it stepped away from the shadows to reveal itself to me, then stepped back. The orange glow of a cigarette, man high, brightened and faded, then spun like a roman candle, scattering sparks along the ground.

I had an eerie dreamlike feeling of familiarity, as if I’d been here before.

Cautiously, I moved away from the bicycle path, farther into the cloaking shade of the bushes. I felt safer taking this more circuitous route to the football field. My immediate goal was a slight rise which gave me a vantage point from which I could observe the restroom and the area around it without being seen. As I approached it I knelt beside a bush and peered all around. Only after I’d reassured myself that no one else was about did I proceed. I made my way up the slope and found a suitably hidden hollow, bounded on one side by a huge rock. There was a clear view of the restroom below. I took up my post and waited.

For a while, nothing happened, and I began to wonder if I’d been imagining things earlier. And then I saw two men suddenly come out of the darkness, slipping past the shrubbery into the shadow of the trees beyond the restroom.

I was wondering whether I should follow them when I heard a faint noise coming from under the trees to my right, behind the bleachers. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see in their shadows a man standing flush against a tree trunk. He appeared to be gazing in the direction of the restroom, but I could see no one down there.

All around me was silence. I could hear shouts from far off—a dorm party or people returning from the late movie at the Parkside. The man seemed to be waiting for something to happen. What?

And then I heard a rustling. About fifty feet away, down among the bushes to the left was a furtive movement. I strained my eyes and made out the man I’d seen earlier standing next to the bicycle path. He was walking up the shallow slope toward the bleachers beyond the rise. He stopped a moment and seemed to be looking around, then continued on.

Crossing a treeless open space, he walked straight to where the other man was. I couldn’t see if they were talking, but they were constantly looking around. Then they both slipped away. It was all so silent, like the elaborate choreography of a strange, music-less ballet. There was something inhuman and cold about it all.

Mustering my courage, I began stealthily moving down the slope in their direction, keeping to the cover of the shrubs. I couldn’t see where they’d gone, but sensed they’d withdrawn a little further into the shadows under the bleachers. My heart was racing; this felt like the combat games I used to play as a boy. I hadn’t done this in a long time.

As I approached the bleachers from the rear, I suddenly saw them again. One of them was leaning with his back against a bleacher support and the other was standing right next to him. Both of them were peering about so busily that, for several seconds, I didn’t realize what was going on. When I looked carefully, I saw that the second man had his hand down at the other’s crotch and was openly fondling the erect penis.

A queasiness gripped my stomach and I felt sweat break out all over my body. Here in the open, in the middle of the campus! How long had all this been going on? And virtually under my very nose! I’d often ridden my bike through here during the day without the faintest idea of what went on at night! I strained my eyes to see more, my mouth dry with excitement.

And then—I don’t know if it was a noise I made (for my blood was pounding in my ears too loudly for me to tell)—they looked up in my direction, and the one who was leaning back zipped up and began walking away. They parted swiftly, going separate ways. I ducked down farther into the bushes, my heart hammering so hard I felt a dull ache in my chest.

It took a long time for my excitement to die down. What if the two men hadn’t spotted me? Despite the danger I felt, I knew I had to find out more about this strange nightworld. A whole hidden world was out here, an invisible world which overlapped and intersected all parts of the daytime world, but which only a chosen few could see. It was a different country, not on any map, a perverse wonderland of the dark corrupt instincts.

I didn’t feel like returning to the dorm just yet. Until I could learn more about this new world, I knew I would feel incomplete, unsatisfied.

I decided it was time to go back and explore the restroom itself. It seemed to be the hub around which all the silent action in the dark revolved, their black heart. Indeed, the combination of the cool night air and my growing excitement necessitated a trip to the toilet.

I made my way back to the restroom by skirting the fence around this side of the football field. All about me was the sound of crickets and the far-off traffic of University Avenue. The darkness along the fence was even greater in contrast to the lights of the playing field which were always turned on at night, presumably for safety purposes. They had the effect of throwing the surrounding woods into complete shadow. It was here that the darkest shadows lurked.

The open area in front of the restroom appeared to be empty. I made my move. Stepping out into the open, I crossed the short distance and was just about to enter the restroom when I noticed someone sitting on a bench beyond it. I hadn’t seen him at first because the lights of the playing field had momentarily blinded me. By the time I spotted him, he must have been watching me for some time. Feeling a little foolish I stepped into the restroom.

It was well lit. I entered a stall and closed the door behind me. The graffiti on the walls was the same I’d seen earlier in my explorations, but now they had assumed an immediacy which they’d lacked before. I knew now that they described real actions, not just the lust-inspired fantasies of a dreamer. I waited a few minutes for my tension to die down enough for me to urinate.

When I stepped out of the stall, a boy was standing at the sink washing his hands. Was he the same boy who’d been sitting at the bench? His eyes in the mirror were looking right at me but I ignored him and quickly washed my hands and stepped out into the night again.

Just as I exited the restroom, another boy came walking up to the doorway—where had he come from? I could have sworn the surrounding area had been empty. He peered searchingly into my face, but, scared, I proceeded onward. Things were happening much too quickly for me.

I walked back toward the bicycle path as if I were on my way to the dorm. When I’d gotten far enough away from the restroom, I plunged back into the shrubbery and doubled back to a point beyond the bleachers, at the north end of the football field where the changing room was. From there I intended to make my way down through another wooded area, approaching the restroom from the other side.

As I neared the changing room, I could see a boy standing in the doorway. He was leaning against the wall as if standing guard there. I knew the building was locked up at night. Before he could see me I hid myself behind a shrub from where I could watch him.

Presently, an older man came out of the shadows behind the building and approached the front, giving the boy in the doorway a long look as he passed by. They looked hard at each other, the older man stopping to give his look added emphasis before continuing on. But the boy didn’t move.

After a period of time, the boy stepped out from the doorway and began walking up the slope toward the football field. When he got to a slight ridge, he stopped and stood still, his hands on his hips as if posing. Under the illumination of starlight, I could see that he was a well-built boy wearing tight jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. The statue of a young prince of the night, arrogantly surveying his realm.

I wanted to get a better look at him. Cautiously, I got up from my crouch behind the shrub. But before I could make a move toward him, a middle-aged man—not the one who’d approached him earlier—crept out of the dense shrubbery and drew near the boy. The boy, seeing him, suddenly turned and walked back down the slope.

The man, undeterred, followed about ten paces behind. I followed them both like a stealthy animal of prey, nimble, silent, alert. But at the foot of the slope I lost sight of them in the dark shadows there. I continued walking in the same direction until I caught sight of the boy moving past a low hedge. Before the hedge was a line of benches. A young man sitting on the first one muttered something to the boy but the boy ignored him and walked straight on.

He walked firmly, erect, head up, glancing neither left nor right. The middle-aged man continued to follow him, always about ten paces behind. And, unknown to either, I trailed them both.

At the end of the path, the boy cut up through the shrubs again, with the man right behind him. The latter made no secret of the fact that he was doggedly following. The whole silent pantomime was like a grotesque farce. There was the beautiful young boy; and there was the unattractive middle-aged man. This man had eyes only for the boy—who was obviously disgusted by the other’s attention. There was no subtlety in their actions. The man’s posture, his rounded back, the slightly obsequious way he moved, revealed his utter infatuation with the boy. And the boy’s disdain and loathing were evident in his haughty strides. Still, the man doggedly followed him. And I secretly following them both, was amused, yet fascinated by the entertainment. It was like watching the mating habits of animals who—unlike humans—make no secret of their desires and needs. Perhaps the older man felt that his persistence would pay off, that the boy would eventually give in out of sheer exhaustion, weary of trying to evade his attentions.

As we made our way past the bleachers to the south end of the football field, I heard the sounds of gravel steadily crunching. I looked right and saw that the road which looped down behind the main stand was filled with parked cars. Now I knew how all these men had gotten here. One car started up and turned on its headlights. As it swung around to back up, its headlights arced like a searchlight. The sweep of its glare washed over the boy who suddenly froze looking in the direction of the car. His face, caught momentarily in the light, was beautiful.

When the car had gone and all was dark, the boy turned his steps back toward the main campus. We were now walking up the sidewalk leading back to the arts building. It was lined on one side with statues. Here, the boy picked up his pace, and the older man was hard put to keep up with it.

Not taking my eyes off them, I’d become clumsy, knocking against a wire trash can in my haste. Before I knew it, I was nearly right up against them, not two paces behind, and almost ran into the man when he suddenly halted, turned around and hissed at me: “Stop following me, will you!”

I turned and fled into the night, feeling naked, and didn’t stop running till I was back at the dorm.