It could not have been simpler. I was unhappy. I was on the verge of becoming isolated and bitter. I was trying to fight it by ignoring it. Not by denying it, just ignoring it. Not to give it scope. Not to grant it admission to the chambers of my heart. The thing to do was to crowd it out with other sensations.
In the past I would have run through phantom, endless, tortuous conversations in my mind with the shadow of the person who was not there until total depletion. After years of being torn apart and distraught every time a relationship crashed, however, I had finally developed a means of coping. I had learned to hypnotize myself. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and stared into my own eyes with a penetrating vacancy.
Perhaps it was homeopathic, but I also used small doses of pain. Small doses of pain, properly administered, usually in the form of clips applied to my nipples while I did push-ups energized me. With that pain-induced energy I could push myself through several strenuous work-outs. The pain set me moving. That got me breathing. And I generally felt better afterwards, light, released. Not least, I felt a pride in myself which shattered relationships usually drained me of.
Pain! Strange! But yes, I who had always wept for pleasure, longed for it. I, who in my youth danced with lovers through the streets and sang as if we were back in a black and white Fred Astaire movie, now I was clamping my nipples and making them burn, and it made me yelp. But there it was.
December is a rotten time to be alone. But there I was. And I had two tickets for Henry the Fourth. We had gotten them months ago. But he was gone -- to Colorado. Skiing! The theater was not crowded, and I could not give the other ticket away. So the seat next to me was empty. It was convenient. I had some place to put my coat. There were quite a few empty seats in the theater. There were a lot of coats watching the show.
It had, without my knowing it, begun to snow. I was sitting in the theater, watching the drama of Henry the Fourth unfold. Outside, the December streets, as the grizzled day tumbled into a phosphorescent night, right before Christmas, in mid-town Manhattan, the streets were preparing for me a fairy-tale luminosity which the Shakespearean imagination at play, which had taken me far into the realms of wish and wonder, had made me entirely ready for.
Strangely, too, I had even been prepared for the unexpected sight of the trembling boy that met me from across the street as I pushed open the brass and glass door leaving the theater lobby. He was shivering unmercifully in a moth-eaten overcoat. He crossed the street to try his luck in the not very thick, exiting crowd and, choosing me, approached with a plaintive and yet not wholly submissive request that I give him some change, spare change -- change I might spare, but not change I would give sparingly. If it were to be change, it would have to be a big change. That much was obvious from the depth of his gaze, from the depth of my heart. There was more life in that gaze than the moment might suggest.
You need more than that I said, looking at him with the scrupulous scrutiny you reserve for actors who approach you intimately without stepping across the proscenium of the stage and demand you meet them only in your thoughts, a scrutiny which you usually withhold from actual personages. From them, from actual people, this I knew, the necessity of caution and the dictates of survival demand you protect yourself, for once you let another person who actually exists gain a foothold in your consciousness, once you look with any kind of intent, to say nothing of taking hold of your sympathy, the dreadful chance is you may begin to discover you cannot live only for yourself, but must gather within that previously self-enclosed definition of yourself, somebody else. And then. And then.
Thus it was that as I looked at him, simultaneously I recoiled and then recoiled from that retraction and found myself propelled by an energy unusual to my schooled reluctance, my wise wariness, and invited the young man to go with me into the steakhouse which presented itself at the corner of the street of theaters, amber in its lighting, advertising itself in gold lettering on a green paneling which had an age-darkened warmth which, combined with the after-theater appetites of playgoers, beckoned invitingly those with money enough to enter.
You are hungry as well as cold, I said rather than asked, told him as if to keep him from telling me.
Yes, he said, allowing both wistfulness and a smile to rise from within him to inform the features of his face and present to me a beauty of physiognomy that I intuited before I had actually seen it and which would always frame him with a marvelous allure when he was illuminated by a sense of gratitude.
Had the restaurant been crowded, we would have been, undoubtedly, turned away, so unsavory was his appearance then and, in fact, inadmissible in that society of diners who shunned such a reproach to their self-satisfaction which his obvious need imposed upon it. But it was a quiet evening. Nearly everyone was home or almost, snuggling in the fantasy of family. So here in this inn we were allowed a reserved hospitality, comfortably hidden behind a full and fine and thickly ornamented Christmas tree.
Ill-clothed as he was, it was apparent immediately by the way he took his place at table and held the waiter's gaze despite that steward's studiously applied air of contempt in serving the table, that the young man was not ill-bred. Want of money had not been his birth-right but something notoriously achieved. Begging was not his nature, but something to which he had been driven, or, it was a posture, more likely, a response to the disbalance of some forces -- internal or external, or a conflict of both? ^Ö to assume which he had compelled himself.
You would not take it amiss I said, after we had eaten and had taken the last of our coffee, his, I saw, he had profusely sugared, if I invited you back home with me where you might shower and change your clothes.
Why should I take it amiss? he asked with the lilt of a smile, which was perfectly attuned to the music of his voice, brightening his eyes.
You should not, I said, and stood, and he did, too.
But I have no other clothes, he said, to change into.
You can wear some of mine.
Thanks, he said.
Outside, the snow had grown thick in its fall and we soon were in a cab, smelling like warm mint tea, being driven cautiously by a turbaned, bearded man down a nearly empty Ninth Avenue to Twentieth Street in Chelsea. Oddly (oddly?) the radio was tuned to a station playing Lester Young in a mellow mood doing I Can't Get Started with You.
You don't have to do that, I said looking up from my book after he entered my study, clothed only in a towel and kneeling in front of the chair I sat in beside the fire blazing in the fireplace.
I want to, he said, his gaze open and penetrating, astonishing to me that he was looking at me with an admiration I had thought would much more have befitted the way I ought to have looked at him.
Why does it make you sad? he said.
It does not make me sad, I said. And he did not pursue his intuition, although he was right. I could not have said why. To try to would have made me sadder.
What are you reading? he asked without rising from his knees in front of me, but rather now having slipped himself between my legs which he had parted with a gentle assurance.
The play I saw this afternoon, Henry the Fourth.
Once more unto the breach, he said.
No, I said, smiling, that's later. That's Henry the Fifth.
But it's the same person, he answered.
Yes, it is, I said. Yes.
He took the book from me and laid it on the side table and slipped his warm palm around the back of my neck and brought his fleshy lips to mine and breathed the sweet breath of youth and touched me with his silken tongue on mine.
Is it alright I do that?
You don't have to, I said.
You said that already, he said.
I did. I know, I said. But I don't want you to feel you have to, to reciprocate in any way.
I know, he said. But why do you think I would only want you from a sense of obligation?
You may if you like, I said, sleep here tonight, if you have nowhere else to go but back into the street.
And what about tomorrow night? he asked with a mischievous smile.
Tomorrow night, too.
And the night after that?
And the night after that, I said. And the whole winter if need be.
If need be.
If need be. I have an extra bedroom.
You don't want me sleeping with you?
They are not my wishes I am consulting.
What are your wishes?
I'm not sure where you are leading this.
I did not think I was leading it anywhere, he said.
It looks to me like you are, I said, touching his thick sandy-colored hair.
I like when you do that, he said.
I like to do it, I said.
There, he said. I like when you say what you like.
Why are you doing this? I said.
Doing what? he said.
Weaving a spell.
Am I weaving a spell?
Yes, I said, yes, I think you are.
Good, he said, and kissed me long and gently.
What will you do today? he asked in the morning after he had caressed my cheek and kissed me delicately.
I don't know, I said.
I would like to walk in Central Park, he said, with you.
Alright, I said.
You have not asked me about myself, he said.
No, I said.
Why not? he asked. Aren't you interested?
I'll listen to anything you want to tell me, I said, and kissed his forehead.
Don't do me any favors, he said.
I did not intend it to sound like a favor.
What are you afraid of? he said.
Why do you think I'm afraid of something?
Don't answer a question with a question, he said, looking almost hurt.
Alright, I said. I'm not afraid of anything.
I don't believe you, he said.
Well, then, you seem to know better. You tell me what I'm afraid of.
He looked around and took my hand and drew me to him and looked tenderly in my eyes.
You are afraid of falling in love with me.
You're pretty sure of yourself, I said laughing.
No, he said. Don't laugh. I'm pretty sure of you.
At that moment, at least at that moment, if a physical response is any indication of love, he was right, for now I had begun to shiver, although my coat was not tattered as his had been yesterday.
I think I better take you inside for a coffee, he said.
I'd prefer brandy, I said.
Let's go, he said.
We walked out of the park at 59th Street and over to Lexington Avenue to Russell's an old English style place with a mahogany bar, dark red leather booths and amber lighting.
Why are you afraid to love me? he said after we had touched glasses.
Aren't you rushing things? I said. I met you yesterday.
That's irrelevant.
Irrelevant? I said, almost condescending to his innocence.
He took my hand from across the table. We sat facing each other.
Look, he said, love defies time. When you met me, you entered a different dimension. You know that.
And you, did you enter a different dimension when you met me?
No, he said.
No? I repeated.
No, he explained. I was there already, waiting for you.
For me?
Why do you think I approached you yesterday when the street was full of people who had just come out of the theater?
Because I looked like a soft touch, I said laughing. And because I was alone and probably more vulnerable.
You are vulnerable, and you're afraid I'll hurt you, cause you pain.
I looked at him without saying anything, wondering just what he was doing, just where he was taking this.
Perhaps you'd even like that, if I caused you pain. I might enjoy it myself. Make you beg.
What are you doing? I said.
I don't know, he said. Getting to know you?
You'd look really hot with pierced nipples and little diamond studs at the tips.
What? I said.
You'd like it too. It would feel even better when I did this to you, he said and moved his lips away from mine where he had just been lavishing kisses on me, and like a frisky dog began biting my nipples with the tips of his teeth.
I shivered with immense pleasure and was lost in my own hardness.
You see he said, wrapping his palm around me and grinning.
Are you the devil or what? I said.
I'm the devil that takes you to paradise.
Or makes me into the kind of fool who mistakes hell for heaven!
Shut up and kiss me, he said, and when our mouths were pressed tenderly together and I was swimming in his warm moistness, he suddenly pinched my nipple and dug his nail into it. When I gasped and tried to pull away he pressed me tight to him by the palm behind my neck and would not let me go. He overloaded me with such sensations that I could not distinguish any more between pain and pleasure. My nipple felt ice cold and burning hot.
I looked at him with amazement.
Yes, he said.
How did you know? I said.
I'm like that, he said.
As he broke me with kisses he pushed his long fingers inside me and played with me until I was grabbing for him every time he pulled out of me. He raised my legs over his shoulders and slowly entered me with his full hardness and filled my mouth with his saliva. I arched my back and rocked to pull him deeper down into me, never wanting to be doing anything but this.
At last he flooded me and I broke out in an overflow of spirit.
Afterwards, I was hollow without him still inside.
[When you write me, please insert story name in subject slot. Thanks.]