How many times can you talk about one fucking blow job? Ned asked.
They were sitting in Ned's place on Telegraph Avenue.
Jeremy looked confused and distressed.
I'm sorry, Ned shrugged, but it's not like I haven't heard it before. I know. You were drunk. You were scared. You didn't want to do it. I believe you, and I'm not arguing with your feelings.
It's easy to talk when you can't feel what somebody else feels.
Oh, don't be pathetic.
I'm trying to talk about something very important to me, and you're insulting me.
Something important to you! If that's all that's important to you, then everything else you're involved in has to be pretty trivial.
Ned hadn't meant to be so severe, but he was fed up and frustrated. Since he'd run into Jeremy the week before last at the art institute, they'd been hanging around together. His hope of wooing him had pretty much been crushed under the weight of Jeremy's endless repetition of his "traumatic" drunken encounter with a gay man, when, "somehow," the night had finished off back in the guy's apartment and a round of sixty-nine. Big Deal!
Fuck you.
You wish.
What's that supposed to mean?
You figure it out, pussycat.
But Jeremy was in no mood to figure out anything, and charging at his interlocutor, broke his jaw and fled from the apartment.
It isn't right he said to himself repeatedly on his sullen trip across the country back to New Jersey.
He tossed his duffel bag on the bed and stretched. He parted the curtains on the window and pulled up the blind. He looked out onto a backyard that was like an orchard In the distance there was another house, equally grand as the one he stood in, his parents'.
They'd be back from Panama tomorrow. (What the hell were they doing in Panama? It wasn't to spend time on the beach.) So he had the whole house to kick about in by himself for the night. Good.
It was a good time to get a real feel of the place. He'd never live here again. At the end of the week he was moving into his own apartment in Greenwich Village. Not exactly his own. He'd have his own room and bathroom; he'd share the living room, kitchen, foyer, terrace with another guy.
They hadn't met, but the rental agent who put the deal together showed him the papers. Dalton Hambrode, what a name! He'd looked him up on the internet. His mother was Fanny Hambrode. What more did you have to know.
It was astonishing. He was a graduate student at NYU like me. Broadcasting. I was History and Political Science. I've wanted to be a White House Adviser since I was nine and got interested in politics.
Mary Anne had been his girl in high school, and they saw each other at regular intervals during time away at college. Now she came right over when he called.
She was dressed her sluttiest, chewing gum and smoking a cigarette sticking out of a long black holder. She was leaning against one of the columns on the porch. He opened the door.
Hey handsome, it's good to see you, she said, throwing herself at him and dissolving under him in one big kiss.
He'd been prepared for this; he was bare-chested, wearing jeans, boots and a chain with a St. Christopher medal falling on his smooth and well cut torso.
Come in, he said, breaking the kiss and leading her indoors.
Come in yourself, she purred, running spidery fingers across his back.
She is dark, Persian looking and frisky as a cat.
She growls and purrs simultaneously as he puts his hand on her inner thigh by her cunt -- that's how short her skirt is. He sees her high heels and her firm well shaped legs, her well-muscled, tight bare midriff, her breasts, her luscious whore lips, her velvet violet eyes, and he clenches his palm around her sex. Then he enters her with his fuck-you finger to explore her with complete right of possession, as if he's got her sitting in the palm of his hand.
Parents were paying most expenses, but he had to find a job. Father thought it expedient that he not work in the bank presently. Avoid any...no need to go into it. Always keep an eye on the future! It's hard to know about the future, and it's good to be adaptable.
No, please, not Dalton. Danny.
Danny, Jeremy said shaking hands.
Danny had arrived a few hours before. He was tall, well built with rugged good looks, sandy hair and irresistible eyes of blue.
They looked around the apartment together, with Danny sizing up Jeremy, and Jeremy avoiding the glances toward Danny that kept trying to escape him. Both had seen the place before, but by themselves. Now each had to absorb that it was not his but theirs. It would have to accommodate itself to them, and they were going to have to accommodate themselves to each other. There was an expanse of window facing west. The setting sun suffused the sky that filled their windows, and the broad expanse of the elephant-backed Hudson was below them, hardly flowing.
They went over to Bleecker Street and shared a hot, crusty pizza at John's. It was a blue sunny day. The people around them looked like they were doing things they wanted to do. It was a good world to be in.
You really want to be a presidential advisor?
Yeah. So?
It's a funny thing to think of. To be a presidential advisor, like it's a career goal. But why not? Somebody winds up doing it.
Me! What about you? You want to be a broadcaster, right?
I want to figure out what's going on and tell everybody.
Jeremy met his slice of pizza half way and nodded as he chewed.
In Washington Square Park a passing boy smiled at them and Danny winked at him. Jeremy pretended that he didn't see.
But Danny had a sense that there might be something dangerous about his roommate. Something told him this guy could fly off the handle.
Television hypnotizes people.
What's wrong with that?
It makes them into obedient robots.
You think that's what hypnosis does?
Yeah.
Uh-uh, you're wrong. You talk about hypnosis like it's a message, but it's a medium, it's a method of focusing the attention and clearing the mind and making it receptive. What the mind actually receives ^Ö that's something else. If it's lies, subversion and deceit or truth, openness and support makes all the difference.
You ever been hypnotized?
Yeah, Danny said.
Really! from Jeremy. What's it like?
Very smooth, like falling asleep with the lights on so you know you're sleeping, you know; you experience yourself sleeping even though you're asleep. It's not like you're dreaming, but like you're the dream. You become very graceful and easy going and good natured, blissfully compliant. It's cool. You never been?
No. Have you ever hypnotized anybody?
Quite a few times. How'd you think I pay for graduate school and a West Village apartment?
Your mother.
She's a big believer in independence and becoming yourself. I worked the Catskills and the Berkshires as a stage hypnotist for the past three summers. And I didn't use my mother's name, either.
Jeremy was stretched out on the futon in the common room making notes in his copy of Henry Kissinger's memoirs. His body was twisted uncomfortably but he forced himself not to notice.
Danny had smoked a little and was sitting with headphones listening to the Winterreise and sketching cartoon images and trying to figure out captions.
Hey Danny, Jeremy called out.
Lifting his ear phones, Danny turned to him.
I gotta talk t' yuh. Now ok?
Sure. What's up?
I don't sleep. The girls I meet are boring. I'm restless. You think hypnosis could like maybe de-stress me a little?
Could.
Around this time a guy in the film school Jeremy met was making a student film based on a short story by Julian Diener, and wanted Jeremy to be in it.
It was a complex project. The film was going to be about twenty minutes long. The guy had already gotten somebody's apartment on the Upper West Side to shoot it in.
When they completed shooting, Marty, the guy who made the film, threw his arm around Jeremy, pulled him to him, loudly kissed him on the cheek and said, You were terrific.
And Marge, who lived with Marty, said why don't we go to the Grand Teccino for dinner?
You what? Marty nearly howled.
What's so funny?
This is a worthwhile thing to grow up to do?
What's wrong with it?
Go find out. And if you don't think it is wrong when you find out, you're not the same guy who played Derek all these last weeks.
What's that supposed to mean?
Hey Jeremy, what's your sexual orientation?
Why do you want to know?
Well, if you're straight, Marge can have you, if you're gay, I can, and if you're bisexual, both of us can.
I didn't like that this excited me, but it did. Still, I have both will power and strength of character, not to mention a guarded attitude for the sake of my future hopes. So I said I really couldn't, that I had to study for finals bright and early.
They both looked at me like they knew I was lying, but they didn't call me on it.
I'm not stupid, and I'm not repressed. I knew what was going on. Danny was a faggot. I could tell just by the way he looked at me. Too bad for him. If I'd let myself I could'a fallen hard for him. The shadow of a thought went fleetingly through my mind and then dissolved. It wasn't gonna happen.
But I still wanted to be hypnotized. I was edgy. I was getting headaches. I wanted to chill. I figured hypnotism could make me relax. I didn't have to worry about becoming Frankenstein's monster or doing something I didn't want. Hypnosis doesn't give anybody that kind of power over someone else. So I wasn't worried.
I wasn't surprised when he asked me to hypnotize him again. But I was wary, and when I told him I would, I also silently told myself that I would proceed cautiously.
I did. I told him that he had to get himself prepped for it. We set a date - a week from the evening of our conversation, the next Wednesday. He was comfortably stretched out on the futon.
Relax Jeremy I began and got into a slow and rhythmic induction until I had him tightly. No loose ends or open spaces, gaps where some resistance of his could seep in and dilute my control.
You are very comfortable, very relaxed, very loose. Your body feels as fluid as water and your mind feels light and airy. It feels good to answer my questions. When you feel this good, you know everything you say must be the truth. It feels good to speak the truth. To speak words that are untruthful would take such a strenuous effort, you simply couldn't do it. Open your eyes now Jeremy and remain in this deep delightful trance.
How do you feel, Jeremy?
Good.
That's right. You feel very good; you would like to feel this good all the time; you know that I can make you feel this good, but only if you please me. From now on you will always want to please me. You feel very good when you succeed in pleasing me. You feel very bad when you don't please me. Trying to please me comes naturally to you.
I didn't do much more than that. I told him he would return to his trance state whenever I said "Groucho Marx." I told him whenever I said "Grouch Marx," he would begin to smile and before the smile could grow into a laugh, he would be in this delightful trance and eager to obey me completely.
I questioned him briefly. He was a mess, an angry confused guy who was always in competition with himself and trying to achieve victories over himself and hell-bent on obliterating anyone who could challenge or threaten his ability to feel secure, which meant to feel like he was on top of it all. He also had set up a strong armor against his own incipient violent responses. Ergo all that bodily pain and discomfort.
I suggested he was going to start wishing I'd give him a massage every day.
He liked that. He didn't know how much, the bastard; he was as queer as me.
Glistering snow covered New York and soon became grimy. It hadn't snowed for days, but the sun disappeared for almost a week and things were dismal, dingy and altogether dull. The fresh but already discarded pine and fir trees lined the curbs in front of houses all over the city declaring the gay times so fiercely anticipated already gone with nothing but uprooted trees and a nebulous sense of loss and waste remaining.
This is not the spirit I need to be in, Jeremy thought, more consciously and painfully depressed than he had ever been, and unable to pull himself out of it.
Danny was a sight for sore eyes.
Jeremy surprised himself, but nevertheless realized that the very sight of his roommate cheered him immeasurably.
Hey man, he said, exhilaration running out of him, I been so fucking down. It's good to see you. I don't even know why I was feeling so bad. Whew!
And then Jeremy realized he wanted to hold Danny in his arms and kiss him and keep on kissing him.
You're angry, Danny said, surprising him.
Jeremy was thrown. It was just the opposite of what he felt.
Or you will be.
What you talking about?
I don't know.
Look, I want to hold you in my arms and kiss you.
That's what you're angry about? Danny asked.
Huh? Jeremy was thrown again by what seemed to him like a non-sequitur.
Yeah, Danny said. You feel a desire and you forget everything else but satisfying it. And once you do you get mad at yourself for having been preempted by such feelings, and it makes you passive and angry till you explode. It's a very back-assed way of coming.
Jeremy was growing more and more uneasy.
Groucho Marx.
He almost laughed, and then his eyes shut.
What are you feeling? Danny asked his entranced roommate.
Empty.
Why?
I'm torn.
How?
I want you and I don't want to.
What does that feel like?
Horny and angry.
Breathe slowly and deeply, in and out.
That was as far as I was gonna go now. I was right. Horny and angry! What a combination! Deadly!
Jeremy.
Yes.
You feel easy, calm, rested. When I count to three you'll wake. You won't remember anything you said or that you even said anything. You'll remember that I massaged your neck and that it felt very good. You're going to feel quiet and content when you wake and you're going to stay in a good humor. Any time I say Groucho Marx you'll immediately fall back into this trance but even deeper. Do you understand?
Yes.
Good boy. One, two, three!
He opened his eyes and, looking around and reorienting, he smiled like a waking baby who sees his mother watching him as he wakes.
And then he did something that surprised me. He rose from his chair, and came over to me.
Stand up, he said.
I hesitated.
Come on, he said. I'm not going to bite.
I was not quite sure as I stood what he was going to do, but I did not hide from myself that despite my qualms about his stability I found him very attractive, and I wondered in an instant whether his very volatility might not be at the root of my excitement.
And then he kissed me, gently, and I yielded, but after a moment drew back and looked at him.
He blushed.
And then something snapped. We crossed over into each other's fields. Our lips met, then our tongues.
I drew back.
You're going to regret this, I said.
I won't, he said.
You have in the past.
That was different. I was different. I was stuck. It was like being locked in a room and banging on the walls and beating at the door. But somehow the confines that imprisoned me have vanished. I'm out in the open. There's nothing I have to break out of. I just breathe and become the thing I'm breathing. Look, here, he said, setting his lips on mine, softly breathing.
I surrendered. Tomorrow would be time enough for caution. I'd be cautious tomorrow.
[When you write to me, please put the name of the story in the subject slot. Thanks.]