His dog days were nearly done. Julian looked around cannily, from side to side. His real mind was emerging from behind the dogmind and he would soon resume himself, and Morgan, true to his disposition knew what to do.
Julian thought about Morgan with affection. He wanted to paw him..
It was awkward. Julian had a sense of what was going on. He had a sense of himself. He saw everything, he felt everything, his transformation, his canine behavior, his desire to jump on Morgan and tongue his face, but he was still a human intelligence watching, watching, and waiting, like the chick inside an egg.
Morgan was dressing them in loose fitting clothes, jeans, loafers, big t-shirts, hanging sports jackets. He wheeled them to a limousine in wheel chairs. Robertson had actual restraints upon his wrists and ankles. At the airfield, attendants took them from the limousine to Julian's plane. Morgan had gotten it flown over to take them home.
Parker stood in the entrance, at the top of the ramp as they were wheeled up to the cabin. His handsome face and muscular figure are in the foreground against the windswept gray marble sky. He is keen, devoted, obedient. He is as handsome and as loyal as a cliché. He stares out from the canvass of this story proudly gazing into each reader's eyes, aroused by the admiration he feels directed at him.
In Parker, too, devotion and obedience have wrought sharpness of mind, that aspect of mind which is capable of sympathetic perception; that knows the feelings and needs of another as his own. He was the master servant, the servant who serves by properly imagining his master's needs.
Julian knew him immediately and spoke the English words of a man. Help me up, Parker. Enough of this. It's very good to see you.
Thank you, Sir. It is very good to see you, Sir, Parker said lifting him out of the chair. Julian took to his feet easily, shook himself, the way a dog does coming out of the water. By it, however, he shook off the last vestiges of canininity and opened wide his eyes. He breathed out slowly and easily, and his face was alight with a smile.
And Mr. Robertson, Parker said, bowing to Robertson, who still was entirely dog.
Julian motioned with a sweep of his fingers and Parker maneuvered Robinson's chair into the plane and secured both it and him.
They landed in New York. Julian focused through the window as Kennedy's terminals began turning around outside and the plane taxied to its halt.
Now Parker put his big paw upon Robertson's chest, pressing the diamond piercing in his nipple, and the boy felt an ease he had no memory of and began falling, falling into himself. And he continued to sleep.
Julian walked to the limousine. Parker pushed Robertson in his wheel chair.
Indignant Spenser scolded Julian for one more time putting himself in danger and putting her at risk of forfeiting her vow -- through no fault of her own, she was forced to add -- made to his dying mother that she would make sure to see that no harm would come to him, but with his being as reckless as he was, how could she be a woman of her word?
Julian simply kissed her, and she fell crying into his arms.
And what do we do with him? she pointed, nearly all her passion spent, at Robertson, sleeping in his wheel chair.
Well, Spenser, we shall see. For the moment, we'll let him sleep.
Yes, Sir.
And perhaps now you might prepare some supper. Robertson will sleep through the night. No need to concern yourself with him for now.
Yes, sir.
But in the morning, Julian continued, he would be happy to find a steak bone and a bowl of water on the floor in his room.
Spenser retracted her upper body. The arch of her neck made her pointy chin seem even pointier. She squinted.
No, Spenser, I'm not teasing you. Please do as I ask. Everything will come out right.
If only your mother, Spenser said, wiping her hands in her apron and shaking her head, as much in wonder as disapproval.
It was a misty morning, the trees nearly bare, their barrenness only emphasized by a few tenacious leaves hanging from branches, brittle and sear with autumn's processing. They walked along a rocky path in a barren woods, Julian upright in khakis, a navy blue sweater with buttons on the shoulder and beige hiking boots; Robertson, naked on all fours, until now indifferent to the chill creeping into the air.
But the earth was becoming alien to him. the air was chilly. The power of his eyes as organs of sight and of judgment was forcing itself on him: he wanted to stand up. It was Julian. He saw Julian walking alongside him. He wanted to stand up.
As a traveler -- waking in another unfamiliar hotel room each morning during a long journey away from home -- faces a period of disorientation before absorbing that he is not in his own bedroom but in a chamber he had registered for at the desk the night before -- exhausted after a busy and bitter day -- begins to reassemble the world and his relation to it, so Robertson began to sense there was an environment that had meaning surrounding him.
Unable to coordinate action with incipient consciousness, however, he hurled himself into the woods, dashing forward and darting back. Would Julian notice anything. If Julian could understand, if Julian could rush into his mind and grab it before it sank behind a fog bank.
Julian crouched and extended his arms, palms open like cups and Robertson ran to him and began licking his palms and wagging his imaginary tale furiously.
It's ok boy. Back to the house. They ran through the autumn chill back to the library, Robertson stumbling as he ran, trying to regain his two feet.
Magnus had the fire ready. Parker brought Julian brandy and coffee. Robertson stretched out before the fireplace warming himself.
Julian crouched beside him and rubbed his head. Robertson looked at him and great waves of shame broke against the shores of his eyes.
Julian took him upstairs and into his bed.
For months they continued like that, Robertson gentler than he had been, but still doggy in disposition and aware of Julian only in a space behind his mind. He was frantic to break free, but stuck within, and lingered in his doggyness even after consciousness began to break in his mind like dawn in the sky, but the dog spell overpowered him. It had him beaten. Rebellion came out only in doggyness, barking, senseless barking.
Physical violence could not free him. Beating a dog just reinforces its identity as a dog, and there was nothing Julian tried that really gave him actual hope that he was getting to Robertson or confidence that he ever would.
If anything, his efforts were having a demoralizing effect on him. He no longer felt the sexual hunger for Robertson. He did not experience the electricity of attraction or the awe at Robertson's body that kindled his urge to dominate him and possess him, which had made Robertson when he was present as himself -- not like now, debased -- thrilling.
Now duty had replaced love, and obligation had trumped excitement. In looking after Robertson -- and he needed looking after -- like Eurydice, when Orpheus looked over his shoulder to see how it was with her, he disappeared. In his place was a humanoid dog dwelling in his body. Julian was devoid of desire for him, and he grieved at loosing Robertson and at losing his desire for him.
The winter months passed and Julian lived with a great gloom in his heart. It meant little to him that he won the National Book Award for Poetry or that a novel he had written ten years ago had just been bought by Sony Pictures for several million dollars.
Spenser and Magnus noted it, and Spenser coaxed numerous cups of a variety of herbal teas on him, and Magnus was always urging cognac upon him.
Julian maintained a Spartan regimen nevertheless, drank more tea than alcohol and drove himself, going to his office every day, answering mail, taking phone calls, sequestering himself each day between eleven and three to write. Late afternoons daily he took a vigorous hour at the gym. He'd never looked so good or felt so bad. His work was flowing with a brilliant vigor.
In May, "After the End" appeared in The New Yorker:
Again
That time
Again
The rain
A long
Extending
Empty
Avenue.
Our eyes
Met
And turned away.
The evening
Smelled like evening. The
Rose branch heavy with
Blossoms hung down.
Still your eyes haunt me.
I stare into them
Although they are not here.
At the intersection
of eternity and
the temporal
I meet your eyes
shining brown;
I long to touch
the nipples on your chest
I would have you submissive as flowers,
Overwhelmed by profusions,
Adorned with garlands,
like Bacchus or
Adonis.
The flesh of flowers:
the texture of your skin.
I will take you to Florence and put you among the marbles:
Michelangelo's David or the Dying Captive.
You will not be out-shown in perfection
By these precursors.
Glow in the ancient night, fit rival to those marvels.
We will know your submission
By a ring round your cock
A silver band encircling your love
A leather bracelet round your wrist
My breath the air inside your breast
I will fix your eyes upon a flame until they became smoky
Melted and turned so deep within that you become a flame yourself
To heat me upon your breast when winter snows oppresses my soul.
Haunted by the phantoms of a life I did not lead
Supine inside my heart, I watch my past lives bleed.
Within your heart is everything I need
My angel, my life, my new heart's new creed.
The breeze of my breath
Blows through the hollow of your neck
The sound of my words
Becomes the resonance of your mind
The meaning I give
Is the one that remains
6
The Sirens are singing again
Let your eyes gaze into the distance
And hear the voices of the Sirens
As their currents electrify and terrify
Nevertheless not threats
This time but possibilities
If you can take them for your own.
My mistress the moon
is rising above the roofs of Paris
It is the beginning of August
She is a ghost of yellow silver
A distant frigid lover
She draws me to follow her
with no reward but the glimpse of her gaze
indifferent gaze
a pallid wash of bronze
present and with no significance
The world exists
To be turned
Into words
He comes
A ghost of himself
Hungry
Captive
How distinguish between
I love you
I am hungry
I want to sleep by myself
Tonight
I turn the pages in the book
Unable to distinguish
The world in the words
From the world without.
Julian left his office and walked on Fifth Avenue through the crowd of pedestrians, shoppers, office workers just getting out, random souls wandering on the streets waiting for something to do. The Christmas tree blazed at Rockefeller Center. It was all as homey as a Frank Capra picture.
Except he felt bitterly the underlying falseness of everything. And it disgusted him. There was no one in the crowd that he wished to go home with, whom he wanted to be instead of himself. He was lost among his fellows, not part of them. He could not understand what motivated them to keep on living except inertia.
They were slavish, and their slavishness consisted in their being obedient to circumstances and resigned to the fact that they were obedient. There was nothing rebellious about them. The worst mark of their defeat was that their imaginations had been^Åcastrated ^Å perverted, rendered impotent. Imagination for them meant impossible erotic daydreams and explosions rather than the workshop of improvement, the instrument that brings bettering change into the world.
And then he realized what he had to do: turn grief at lost love back into love.
And if I can't do that, he said out loud to himself, I am no poet no matter how many verses I have published.
But no one noticed because the store windows were blazing and the people on the street stood in front of them crowd-deep, gazing.
A late February snow covered Manhattan the morning they flew out of Kennedy for Guadeloupe. They landed half a day later in the hot sunshine.
The pale sable of the soft beach stretched out beneath the villa. Julian looked out at the infinite horizon: the line which indicates the separation of the sea and the sky but also marks the place where they touch. Townsend lay at his feet on the deck, panting in the hot sun.
Julian squatted beside him. He took his friend by the back of the neck and moved his own face up close and looked the man who thought he was a dog directly in the eyes. With his other hand he took hold of Robertson's cock and held him fast. Robertson's deep blue eyes were radiant with the possibility that things that had become unspeakable might once more be heard. His breathing became calm and regular. He felt Julian's presence inside him. That very sensitivity conveyed a corresponding sensation to Julian and vivified his loins. He saw Robertson again after so long. He had not realized that one aspect of his own enchantment had clung to him even as he thought he had emerged from it complete and all himself. He had continued to see Robertson as a dog. He continued to see him as he had when he too had been a dog with him in Farrington's compound.
Now their gazes met again as they had earlier and became one dominant gaze that had them both enthralled. It was a mutual hypnosis. They were drawn together each by a power that captured him, emanating from the other.
The beach stretched out on the left and gently swerved. On the right it came to a cliff and made an almost ninety degree turn. The sun burned through the blue sky; the sand was red with heat. Solitary souls or small bands and couples were scattered random on its stretch.
Julian stood looking at Robertson. He was standing with the joy of having mastered a skill. He was not naked anymore but wore a black thong. His nipple diamond glittered in the sun. The intricate silver chain around his neck was not a dog collar. His muscular torso rippled with allure.
Julian, he said, I want you to be my master, but not as a dog. Will you have me as your man?
Julian said yes, he would, yes.
But first a swim, he said laughing.
And he ran towards the jeweled sea, the turquoise Caribbean, like a demi-god returning to the blue Aegean.
Robertson ran after him and grabbed him at the water's edge. Clutched in each other's embrace they fell upon the velvet sand at the water's edge. The tide ran out and left them in its ebb momentarily upon the wet sand, until it flooded over them again. They breathed one breath as they devoured each other with welcome, and their kisses exploded like the ocean foaming round them.
I love the power of your cock, Robertson gasped grabbing his master's rod. O Julian, take me like a man again, for I am only a man if I am yours.
There then upon the sand with Poseidon's fierce and mighty daughter dancing blessings all around them, they looked into each other's eyes. Julian stretched like the arc of a bow taut and trembling shot his quivers into Robertson. Robertson cried in ecstasy and swooned to feel deep within the wounds that heal.
Epilogue
I beg your pardon, Aunt Morgan, but I really do think you exceed the limits required for a friendship.
Milford, my love, I assure that I only stretch the limits of that friendship.
What do you mean?
If you'll a willing ear incline, my dear, what's mine is yours and what is yours is mine.
Whatever the devil are you talking about?
It's Shakespeare.
I know it's Shakespeare, and it's a damn lot of trouble for me to figure out what he's talking about half the time. I'll be sent as a candybox on Valentine's day if for the life of me I can figure out what you mean by saying it.
Me thinks the lady doth protest too much, Aunt Morgan said with a leer.
Enough Shakespeare, Milford said, stamping his foot.
Morgan smiled.
You are adorable, Milford, he said, when you become exasperated.
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