Absinthe

I

In Antibes, just outside the walls of the old city, on the rue de Recherche, where boys lean against the wall wearing hardly more than their dark summer tans and wait for free-spending tourists to notice them, there's an absinthe bar in the basement of a shop that sells gourmet olive oil, scented vinegar, hand-crafted kitchen implements, mixed herbs, exotic pastas, and fancy soap during the day mostly to Americans and Germans who have a particular fondness for their kitchens and their bathrooms and the money to indulge it.

Looking like a van Gogh in yellow, blue, olive, and red, the assomoir is open after the shop upstairs has long been shut. Patrons come and leave through an ill-lit side entrance negotiating a flight of steep and twisting wooden steps. The pale and dirty stucco walls are coated with a red stain cast by the bare exit bulb stuck in the ceiling.

It is a quiet place with marble table tops and amber light bulbs. Water carafes with little spigots stand on chrome feet at the center of the tables. Sometimes some of the boys from outside lean against the bar nursing a drink and look blank, waiting for something to happen. I had taken to hang out there nearly every night, either passing through just for one drink at the bar, or sometimes settling at one of the round tables to write or to sketch. Every now and then I'd gaze at the boys, admiring their youth, but since I never would consent to be a paying customer, none of them had eyes for me. And all I was left with was to wonder at their unreflecting inwardness.

As I was about to leave one evening in early August, hoping to take a walk along the ramparts overlooking the blue Mediterranean before complete nightfall, a young American, a good looking sunned and tousle-haired boy of around nineteen with sparkling, questing, needy eyes asked if he could sit down at my table.

Sure, I said.

I've seen you several times before this, he said, fastening his gaze upon me and catching mine in his.

I looked him over to see if I could recognize him, but had no recollection of having seen him before and was quite certain, given his good looks and lean but well-wrought frame apparent under his loose-hanging striped boatman shirt and faded jeans, that I would have if I had.

He smiled showing perfect teeth.

You're not one of them, I said.

What?

You're not one of the beach boys that hang around the street at night.

No, he said. I'm not.

I can tell, I said.

How? he asked smiling. By my eyes?

No, I said. By the loose hang of your clothes.

He blushed.

Who are you? I said.

He told me his name.

I've never seen you here before, I said. But I recognized his name.

Your father... I began, but he interrupted me.

Yes, he said, and I knew all I needed to know and from politeness moved quickly away from the subject.

Have we met? I asked.

I don't expect you'd have noticed me, he said modestly. The last time I saw you, it was at the Picasso museum and you were totally absorbed by the de Stael exhibition. A few days before that, I saw you with a German boy having coffee in a cafe above the beach.

I winced. I remembered him.

He blushed when he added, the only thing I think you could see was his eyes. You both were gazing into each other's eyes to the exclusion of everything else.

It happens, I said, when I get lucky, I added, not without irony as we continued to mirror each other's gaze.

He registered the ambiguity but proceeded without letting it sabotage him.

I want it to happen to me, he said, and blushed again, nevertheless looking straight at me.

You do? I said.

With you, he said.

With me, I said, quizzically.

Yes, he said, determined not to be put off.

Have you ever had absinthe?

I've only read about it, he said, shaking his head.

Laurent, I said to the barman, signaling for a glass of La Muse Verte for the boy and a refill for me.

He brought them and I added water to each.

You can put sugar in if you like, I said, but I don't.

Then I won't either, he said. I want to do things the way you do.

I looked at him.

I have a sixth sense, he said, as we tilted our glasses towards each other, and our eyes began their slow embrace.

I want you to make me your boy, he said. I want to belong to you.

Do you know what that means? I said.

I think I do, he said, and I want to know how it feels.

His voice was deep and sweet and slow.

I couldn't tell who was taking control of whom as we gazed into each other's eyes.

Have you ever made love to a man? I asked.

No, he answered.

Do you want to?

If the man is you, he said.

We stood beside each other on the old embankment above the beach and our eyes traced the vast blue stretch of the Mediterranean as it spread laterally and reached the infinitesimal depth of the horizon. Violet overspread everything as the sun fell. He took hold of my hand.

I have imagined this since I first saw you, he said, and brought his lips near mine.

Please, he said, withdrawing a little and then kissing me again.

Our lips met and our breaths became indistinguishable from the on-coming night's translucent air.

There's something unhealthy about this, I said, the next morning when he brought a small cup of coffee to my bedside.

I don't understand, he said, frightened. Didn't you like it?

Yes, I said, I liked it very much.

And that was true. We had sustained a peak of excitement, we had become joined in an overwhelming pulsating vibration I had not known before and we had exploded with a profundity and breadth of sensation that shattered me completely but left me very happy. He had torn me apart and was luminous inside me, and I had penetrated his depths and was rooted there.

But, I said, I am not sure where all this is coming from.

It's coming from us, he said.

I looked at him without saying anything.

Why won't you believe that? he said.

I don't know, I said. It's too simple.

Don't be afraid, he said.

Afraid? I said.

Of your happiness. I am not like the others.

The others? I said.

He blushed.

What others? I said

I know, he said, but you need not worry.

Worry about what?

That I will be like the others.

What others? I repeated

All the others: the ones who give you nothing and take everything away; the ones who stay with you until they are ready to go; the ones who stand around outside, beautiful, and empty, and waiting for something to bring them to life.

And you are not waiting for that?

He blushed again, but kept his gaze fixed on me.

No, I am not, he said. Not now. Not anymore.

Why? I said

Because, he hesitated, because I am here for as long as you want me to be.

And then?

He said nothing.

He gazed into my eyes.

I would like to hypnotize you.

What? I said.

I would like to hypnotize you, put you in a trance?

Why? I said dumfounded.

So that you will always want me.

We can go for a swim together, I said. But then you have to let me work.

Can we see each other again? he asked. Tonight?

I'll go to the absinthe bar around nine, I said.

I'll meet you there, he said.

I was disappointed when he did not show up but not surprised. It seemed to be exactly what I had learned to expect.

Nevertheless, it showed on my face.

You can hide nothing, Laurent said, moving over to my table with his glass. Tell me why you are so withdrawn tonight.

More so than usual?

More so. Do not pretend.

I've been stood up.

A boy?

A young man.

It is the same thing. One appreciates what they give. And then...

And then they go away.

That is what you expect.

That is what I expect.

The expectation perhaps is the cause then, not the result.

That my friend is cheap psychology entirely unworthy of you.

II

The dungeon of the fifteenth-century chateau whose ramparts stretched across the edge of the old city and served as a bulwark against the sea and originally as a look out and fortification was damp and lit by flaming torches planted in the crevices made by the fissures of damp rock and clay. Lavache stood with his feet spread and arms akimbo, bare-chested. Wearing only tight suede trousers that flared at the bottom over a pair of high-heeled pirate boots, he seemed, somehow more feminine than masculine despite his well developed physique and dark, perfectly manicured mustache. A black leather patch covered his left eye, and a silver band encircled his right arm, caressing his biceps with a force that kept them in a state of constant tension. Little silver rings stood glinting from his pierced nipples. He held a coiled whip in his right hand and softly slapped it against his left palm as he spoke.

The boy has been estranged from his father since he was fourteen. What was in your mind?

I thought, Sir, Ramsey stammered, afraid to lift his eyes.

You thought? Lavache goaded him.

I thought that was all there was to bargain with, that his father still felt...

Felt! Warwick Fox Chamberlin runs a conglomerate empire and did not get the kind of wealth and power he commands by feeling.

No, Sir. Only, I thought, if my master will permit me, that his father would be moved to forgive...

The whip cracked without notice an inch to his left and he started.

Will you make a fool of me? Lavache said with calm ferocity. Do you realize the trouble you have made? Do you understand that we are in real danger?

Jonathan shook his head as if casting off clouds of confusion.

He had been drinking a coffee on a terrace overlooking the sea and reading Anna Karenina. He was waiting for evening when he would go to meet Ben at the absinthe bar.

Now, there were chains around his wrists and ankles. As he sat up in an iron bed in a strange room with an aching head, he guessed what had happened.

He had been the victim of a trick. A man moving to a table behind him had bumped into him and made him spill his coffee just as he was bringing the cup to his lips. He remembered that. After an apology, he insisted on buying Jonathan another and went inside to get it himself.

He had spiked it. Of course!

But why?

He remembered nothing else. Everything was fog.

Lavache entered the room. He was smiling. Jonathan thought he had never seen him before. But Lavache acted as if he knew him. He sat on the bed beside him and, as if he knew him, kissed him tenderly, seductively upon the mouth and pried his lips apart with his tongue.

Jonathan responded before he knew he was responding and grew hard and arched his back as Lavache played with his nipples.

He pulled away, frightened.

Do you still insist on being chained to the bed? Lavache said with an ironic, indecent smile after he broke the kiss. Or have you had enough of kink for one night, mon vieux?

He was speaking English, and Jonathan was fluent in French, but he could make no sense of what this weirdly dressed stranger was talking about. As for the kiss, that had happened in a fog.

Jonathan surveyed the Mediterranean through dark sunglasses, still dazed. He was on his second cup of espresso. The dark period when he did not know what happened between the time he passed out until the time he awoke chained to the bed was haunting him with invisible images. But it had passed. He had been released. Just as arbitrarily it seemed as when he had been captured. He was puzz;ed.

A crumpled telegraph from his father lay in the ashtray. It had been waiting at his hotel. It made no sense to him, unless...unless what?

What hell you trying do me? Chamberlin had telegraphed his son. Time grow up. No?

===============================================================

Inside the assomoir I saw him before he saw me. He looked around, worried that I would be angry, that I would snub him, that I would not be there. But I was there, absorbed by something no one else could see, scribbling in my notebook. With an uncanny awareness, sensing the weight of the moment, I looked up. I saw him. Then our eyes met. I smiled. The boy trembled, painful longing in his gaze. He could not move.

I stood up, approached him. Under the arch where he stood immobilized, I wrapped my arms around him. One palm, cupped at the nape of his slender neck against the base of his skull, the other, holding the small of his muscled back, I brought him to me, pressed his cheek against my cheek, his chest against my chest, our hips and thighs together, too, and stood there gently rocking him, feeling the weight of his body dissolving into mine.

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