Why are these stories suddenly so popular in Singapore?  In June, according to the site tracker, there were 1.27K views from Singapore.  For comparison, there were 173 views from the United States.  Would someone from Singapore please explain why is this one person reading and rereading these posts? Or are many different people from Singapore reading the posts? Or does it only appear that these views come from Singapore?

Later--it turns out this isn't the only blog experiencing high levels of views from Singapore. Ah well, thank you, Singapore-based bot for a spurious popularity. 

7 March 2024--the bot seems to have moved to Hong Kong.

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Comments are appreciated. Please post them here or email them to me at z119z2000@yahoo.com

The Runcible Lad

 2011

Yeah, I'm nervous. I'm not too proud to admit that. I've never been this nervous before. Look at my hands. They're shaking, and we've not even begun yet. I didn't expect to be this wound up. I'm not worried about the ceremony at the registrar's. That'll be over in a few minutes. That's nothing. Henry says 'I do' and I say 'I do' and then we sign our names. In at 10:45 and out by 11:00. That's just me and Henry and our parents and our friends Linc and Des as witnesses.

It's later that's making my stomach churn. At the hall we rented. When I have to get up in front of all our friends and everybody in our families and say something about why I'm there and what it means to me. Everyone I know will be there, and I don't want to look a fool. I want to say that I'm the luckiest man in the world. I want to tell them that. I want to tell Henry that. I've told him that before, but I want to tell him that in front of everyone so that they know it too.

But I don't want to do anything stupid. I don't want to do that to Henry. For the past two weeks, this speech is all I've thought about. And I can't ask anybody about it. They'll think me a right ass if I admit to being worried about it. But Henry deserves my best today. I guess I just want to say something important, something that everybody will remember, something that Henry will remember. A gift, it should be like my wedding gift to him. That's what I want to do. Give him this gift in front of everyone and let them share in it.

I'm just no good with words. That's my problem. It's like the day I met Henry. I couldn't find anything to say. I just stood there with my mouth open making noises. Grunting like. I was walking Blue--that's my dog--I was walking Blue in the park, and Henry--well, I didn't know it was Henry at the time. There was this man playing with a child. They were chasing each other around a tree. The child was shrieking, and the man was laughing. They were so happy. Everybody was smiling because of them. I thought they were father and son. I found out later that Carl was Henry's nephew. He's going to be there today. Carl, I mean. He's almost four now. Of course, Henry's going to be there.

I'm not telling this very well. I just can't think straight today. Anyway, Carl spots the dog and he stops running and says 'dog'. You know how children fix on things that catch their eye. One minute Carl is chasing Henry around that tree, and the next moment he’s toddling toward me pointing at Blue, saying 'dog, dog'. Of course, Henry came up behind Carl just to make sure that Blue didn't hurt him. He knelt down behind Carl and stretched his arms out around him. Not to keep him away from Blue, but just to be there to protect Carl in case Blue didn't like kids or something. Henry's like that. He tries to protect everyone he loves.

So Henry bends forward and kind of whispers aloud into Carl's ear and tells him to ask 'the nice man' what the doggie's name is. Then Henry looks up at me, directly into my eyes, and smiles. And it was like a flash of lightning going off inside my head. There was this loud noise, I swear, like thunder. That'd never happened to me before. It wasn't love at first sight. The love came later. I don't know what caused all that commotion. It was just something right and good for once, something that felt like it had to be.

You've seen Henry. He's not bad looking. But he's not handsome or gorgeous. I mean he's nice looking but he's not spectacular or anything like that. I'm not either. I'm not complaining. It's just that he doesn't have the type of looks to cause explosions. Yet there's this roaring in my ears, and I'm seeing black spots in front of my eyes, and he's looking at me as if he's beginning to wonder if I'm the village idiot, and then I stammer out 'Boo'.

And Henry says to Carl, 'The doggie's name is Boo. Can you say “Boo”?’

Carl reaches out a finger toward Blue and says 'Boo' and then he starts screaming with laughter and shouting 'Boo, Boo, Boo.' Blue is leaning forward trying to smell Carl, and Carl touches Blue's nose with his finger. And Blue licks Carl's hand and then Carl jerks his finger back and starts laughing even harder. Then he puts his hand out toward Blue again.

That sets Blue off and he's pulling against his lead and standing on his hind legs and leaping up and down so that he can get closer and lick Carl's face. Henry lifts Carl away, and I bend over and try to grab Blue. Blue's jumping about, and I lose my balance. That's when I fell over. There I am, lying on my back on the path trying to hold on to a squirming dog, and Carl is all excited and Blue is barking just to add his bit to the noise and this god I just met is helping me up and then brushing the dirt off my clothes and asking me if I'm all right.

I suppose I could tell that story. Lots of people tell funny stories about themselves at their wedding suppers. But I don't want to make a joke. In any case, I'm not good at telling jokes at the best of times, and today I know I'm not going to be at my best.

And I don't want to say anything about sex. I've heard people do that on their wedding days, and it's not right. I mean the sex is great. I’m not saying the sex isn’t great. But before I met Henry, but sex was just something that happened to me. It wasn't something I did. But the first time I went to bed with Henry after I knew that I loved him, I wanted to make it good. I wanted to make him know that I was going to spend the rest of my life making him feel great. And you know that made all the difference. When he moaned for the first time, it was like this explosion of joy going off in my bedroom. I didn't know. I didn't know how much better sex can be when you love the other person until I met Henry. But I don't want to talk about that. That's between Henry and me. That's private like.

I don't know how people get through all this. Maybe every groom is nervous. When I was ten or so, there was this older couple on our street. They were in their nineties and they had their seventy-fifth wedding anniversary, and everyone in the neighbourhood got together to celebrate. They closed off the road and then put trestle tables down the middle and covered them over with coloured paper. Everyone brought food, and we had this great roaring party. They had games and funny hats and noisemakers and balloons. There was a band and dancing and fireworks at night. And Mr Moore stood up and said how nervous he had been on their wedding day seventy-five years ago but that he knew that everything would come right in the end because he and his wife were like a poem, a proper poem with rhymes where everything fits together right and all the words are just what has to be said.

Maybe I should tell that story. Then I could say that that's what I would like, a party on our seventy-fifth anniversary. I'll invite everyone to our seventy-fifth anniversary party. In seventy-five years, both Henry and I will be 98. We could live that long. People are living longer now. That's what I would like--to have the neighbours throw us a party in the middle of the street. Maybe I could say something like that. Do you think that would be all right?

Oh, what idiot thought up weddings? There must be a simpler way for two lads to get married. Yeah, yeah, I know we're not supposed to call it a 'marriage'. It's a 'civil partnership', but to me and Henry it's our wedding day and we're getting married, and anybody who says different--well I'm not starting a fight at my own wedding but I'll not forget.

Oh, Christ, look at the time. It's already 10:15. Linc and Des will be here to pick me up in a few minutes, and I've not even put my tie on yet. I bought this blue tie yesterday. Is it all right? Does it look good with this shirt? Or would my red tie be better?

The End

 2007

I know the exact moment I realised my relationship with Nathan was over.

We had lived together for 28 years. I was 52 at the time, and he was 53. Our friends joked that we had a far more stable and enduring relationship than most married couples, and indeed our union outlasted those of many of our friends, gay or straight. Nathan was the first person I knew for sure to be gay, other than myself of course. I met him on my first day of graduate school. I had paused inside the front door of Old North Hall and was examining the list of occupants posted there and trying to locate the office of my supervisor of studies.

‘Hello, you must be Ross Cambourne.’ The hallway was dark and the staircase was brightly lit by the windows at the back of the first landing. I could tell the deep voice came from above, and the creaking of the staircase revealed that someone was walking down it toward me. But all I could see against the light was a dark figure. When I walked further into the hall and Nathan approached the bottom of the staircase, the figure resolved into a young man, taller than myself, his hand extended to shake mine. And I knew, knew without doubt, that this man was gay. ‘My name’s Nathan Sevenfields.’

‘How did you know my name?’

‘From your picture. It’s quite a good likeness. Mrs Jackson, the departmental secretary, tacks the new graduate students’ photos up on a board in our common room. I was just looking them over and spotted yours and now here you are.’

And that was how we met. It was also one of the few times that I have kept a New Year’s resolution. At the beginning of that year, I had resolved that I would do something about being gay. You have to understand that this was 1966. I had first heard the word ‘gay’ only a few years before, when an acquaintance explained to me that he thought the word as used in the line ‘show me a man who rides side-saddle and I’ll show you a gay caballero’ in a Kingston Trio song referred to a homosexual. Other than meaning a man who was sexually attracted to other men, I wasn’t sure what being ‘gay’ involved, but I was determined to find out. I’m not going to bore you with a recitation of how difficult it was to be gay in the dark ages. Those of you who lived through them already know; those of you who didn’t can extrapolate from your own experience.

It was almost five months before Nathan and I first had sex. As he explained to me years later, after he had adopted the idea that honesty was essential to a healthy relationship, he hadn’t been attracted to me. He saw that I was horny and wanted to have sex, and he was feeling charitable and thought he would treat me better than another person might. And so began my initiation into gay sex and gay life. I thought we were in love; he was doing me a favour.

I don’t mean to imply that there was no love. It wasn’t like that at all. I will try to avoid the tendency common among the divorced to revise the past and exaggerate every woe and slight that occurred, and I realise that Nathan would tell a story quite different from the one I am telling. Both of us were enthusiastic about being with each other for the first ten years or so. We liked each other and could envision a life together. And that helped create a good relationship. We had the usual fights about money and clashes about life styles, but the commitment to the relationship helped get us past that. Both of us got jobs in the university after we took our degrees. We found a flat together and later bought a house. Gradually, without consciously intending to do so, we acquired all the possessions and chattels of a married couple—except children, although we did keep a succession of dogs and cats.

Our careers were successful. Both of us became senior staff in about the minimum time possible. Nathan specialises in ancient history and has written a series of highly regarded and popular books about the Roman Empire. He is what is known as a ‘solid historian’—he is careful never to go beyond the facts or indulge in speculation. And he writes incredibly well. As narratives, his histories are superb. My original field was Byzantine history, and a good part of my current work is still in that field. Rather early in my career, I reviewed a book on the philosophy of history. My comments provoked a spirited, and I must say somewhat intemperate, response from the author, and in order to defend my views, I had to think harder about the subject and publish on it. Many of my colleagues have little sympathy for such endeavours, and I’m afraid that, for some of them, I became a ‘once-promising scholar of early Byzantine history seduced by continental-style theorising into fanciful flights of philosophising’. I mention this because it was one source of tension between us. Nathan tends to receive invitations to speak to groups of enthusiastic amateur historians. I am asked to lead seminars by graduate students and to serve as a main speaker at professional conferences.

Another source was something I alluded to above: Nathan’s discovery of ‘honesty’ as a virtue in relationships. I don’t mean to suggest that we had been lying to each other before this discovery. It was just that like most couples we had left much unsaid and often did not bother to correct the other when something less than the whole truth was said. Nathan adored his mother, for example; it was one of his many virtues. I found her talkative and narrow in her interests (truth to tell, she bored me utterly), but I would never have told him that, and I endured many of what I found to be dreary hours in her company.

Sometime during our second decade together Nathan began using honesty as a weapon in the relationship. ‘Honesty’ in this case masked a determination to have his view of the relationship prevail. At first, none of the statements issued under this rubric was an outright lie. Frequently they were uttered with a tone of bemused tolerance. We were eating dinner with a group of colleagues once, and Nathan greeted the appearance of a serving of peas on his plate with the gleeful announcement that I didn’t like peas and he had to eat out to get them. Well, of course, I eat peas. They are not a favourite vegetable, but I do eat them and had often cooked them at home for the two of us. Nathan was simply casting himself in the martyr’s role, the long-suffering spouse forced to forgo an innocuous legume because of the misguided tastes of his partner. Over time, however, the statements stretched the truth further and had more serious consequences for our relationship. One night, for instance, Nathan announced to a group of friends that I hated travelling and hence would never take a holiday, forcing him to travel alone. It is true that I find travel tedious, but I had accompanied him on many excursions. Subsequently, however, this served as an excuse for him to take trips alone despite my protests that I was willing to accompany him. As he put it, he did not want to coerce me into doing something I found objectionable. I came to feel more and more that I was being channelled into a role and that attitudes and behaviours were being prescribed for me because it suited his convenience. Needless to say, it was an irritant in the relationship.

As I said, at first, none of these assertions was a complete lie. They seemed to be such small things that there was no reason to argue about them. As many people do, I suspect, eventually I found myself at the point of no return. I had for so many years put up with these statements and accepted them as the ‘official version’ of our relationship and history together that it became difficult to undo them. Small decisions, none of them of any particular importance and often made by others, accumulate, and the result is that one finds oneself in an intolerable position. Nathan is a much more assertive person than I am, and his view of the relationship—that he was the dispenser of charity and I the recipient—prevailed. It was a view that Nathan, understandably, felt redounded to his credit, and he was loathe to confront its untruth and incapable of looking at it dispassionately. Eventually any attempt by me to contradict this ‘family romance’ was met by vociferous argument.

It is difficult to write about this without sounding a complete fool. But there was much about the relationship that was good. We passed into middle age a relatively contented couple. We were comfortable together, and we had made a good life together. I aged more rapidly than Nathan, however. He is athletic and probably still plays a vigorous game of tennis. In my off hours, I preferred to potter about the garden or to cook. I became bald, he retained his thick head of black hair. My waist thickened (to be honest, I am fat); he remained slim. I was frequently tired by the end of the day. I grew to look several years older than he.

It was around this time that the infidelities came to my notice. I do not know when they started. I became aware of them because of a strange incident with one of his students. Nathan had introduced me to J_____ several months earlier. I happened to fall into step with J_____ as I was walking across the quad one day. I tried to strike up a conversation with him and received in return a withering look of contempt before he abruptly reversed course and headed back the way we had come without speaking. I mentioned the—to me inexplicable—incident to the group of colleagues I was meeting and was greeted by an embarrassed silence. Later, Margaret Brockston took me aside and told me that J_____ was Nathan’s ‘latest favourite’ and ‘might be jealous of my position in Nathan’s life’. Margaret also took it upon herself—rather presumptuously, I thought—to offer the opinion that Nathan was trying to provoke me and overcome my ‘phlegmatic nature and habitual tendency toward irony’. I thanked her for her willingness to tell me the truth and promised her—much more politely than she deserved—that I would reflect on her comments. Needless to say, since Nathan had many more ways open to him for getting my attention than having affairs, I did not give much credence to her views. In any case, I have little sympathy for such facile psychologising.

I spoke with Nathan about J_____ and, in the interests of ‘honesty’, was told that my increasing lack of desire for sex was forcing him to look elsewhere for physical release. Nathan subsequently made sure to tell me about each of his liaisons. According to Nathan, none of them was serious, and he promised that none would endanger our relationship. As far as I know, he took my advice and was careful not to get involved with one of his students again, however.

And so both of us reached our fifties, neither of us sufficiently dissatisfied to end a relationship of many years’ standing, but neither of us totally happy about what it had become. So why did I stay? Why did Nathan stay? Well, why does anyone stay together? Habit and inertia. The comfort of a familiar argument. A shared history. The semaphore flags comprehensible only to a long-time couple and thus in themselves a sign of their bond. Busy lives that gave both of us an excuse to avoid deep interaction. The awkwardness of admitting to a mistake and arranging a separation. My Catholic upbringing and the notion that divorce is a sin. Hope for an improvement. Convenience. The aged cat it would be cruel to dispossess of her favourite spot in the sun. The throbbing toothache that just might go away if one puts off calling the dentist for another day. Trivial reasons perhaps, but the glue of many relationships.

The event that made me realise the relationship was irrevocably over occurred on a Monday afternoon in Washington, D.C. I had been in Washington since the preceding Wednesday for the annual conference of a scholarly organization for specialists in Byzantine studies. The conference ended on Sunday at noon. When Nathan learned about the meeting, he suggested that he join me in Washington on Saturday and that we stay over for a few days and take in the Freer and the other museums. He also arranged to examine a manuscript at the Library of Congress and contacted some old friends of his to have dinner with them.

By Sunday at noon, I was weary of smiling and trying to remember the names of people I see only once a year. I was ready to sequester myself in our hotel room and indulge in the pleasures of being grumpy for a few hours. Nathan, however, was tired of sitting in the hotel lobby and reading the newspaper. The conference was at the Hilton above Dupont Circle. In the taxicab on the way from the airport on Saturday evening, Nathan had noticed (it could hardly have escaped his attention) that Dupont Circle and its environs were frequented by a large number of handsome young men. Even someone as lacking in the ability to identify other gay people as I had no trouble recognizing it as a gay area. Nathan insisted that it would do me good to change out of my suit and tie into more casual clothing and take a walk and get something to eat. I was half-tempted to tell him to go by himself and let me take a nap, but in the end I decided that he had travelled a long way to join me and that it would give us a chance to do something we so seldom did—be together in a place where we didn’t have to be Professors Sevenfields and Cambourne.

England had been damper than usual that March, and Nathan was right, it was a treat to step outside into the spring sunshine, flowers, and warm air. To judge from the ready smiles and laughter, everyone else felt the same way. Even apparent strangers were exchanging pleasantries. The pavements outside the restaurants were so packed with people waiting to enter that it was often difficult to edge around the queues. We walked around for about an hour looking into the shops. The noon rush was over by then, and we were able to find a spot in an Italian restaurant that had an outdoor seating area. It was very pleasant to sit there, and Nathan and I traded horror stories about conferences. The food wasn’t the best—the cook was one of those people who thinks al dente means crunchy in the middle. By the end of the meal, half-cooked bits of pasta were ground into the recesses of my teeth and were proving impervious to the nudges of my tongue. I think chefs in the United States were going through a raw veggie and no salt phase. The “sauce” had consisted of crisp chunks of vegetables that had briefly been in the same room as the stove and was so lacking in flavour that it was an incentive to diet. But even the bad trendy food didn’t impinge on our enjoyment, and the waiter was young, handsome, and attentive enough to rate one of Nathan’s raised eyebrows and amused smiles as he walked away.

The day continued in much the same way. Nathan’s friends invited us to their home for dinner, along with another couple. All six of us hit it off immediately. The conversation was animated and droll. It was a very urbane evening. When we got back to the hotel, Nathan was in an amorous mood (he often was in hotels), and our lovemaking was more vigorous and prolonged than it usually was. For me, and I think for Nathan, it was one of those happy days that came only occasionally by that point in our lives. We spent the night curled up next to each other in one of those huge American hotel beds with its cool, smooth sheets. The bed was so big that in the morning the blanket on the far side was hardly ruffled.

Monday morning we spent at the Library of Congress. Nathan had arranged beforehand to view the documents and artefacts he wanted to see, and he and the librarian were soon engaged in a deep technical conversation about archives and manuscripts. It was pleasant to sit in that book-lined, light-filled chamber among people so enthusiastic about their profession. I shortly tuned out what the two of them were saying and became lost in a reverie about libraries and books and my own research.

Around eleven we went to the Freer. As usual Nathan’s tolerance of museums was greater than mine. I find my desire to view objects diminishes rapidly; museums have too much to see, too many things that demand that one look at them, in my opinion. It would be far better to display only a few of the best items at a time and let the rest remain in storage. Nathan, in contrast, is indefatigable in museums. He wants to see everything and examine every object in great detail and then discuss what he sees. He can speak with such authority that he often collects an audience who treat him as a docent/lecturer. He loves that. But by four that afternoon, even Nathan’s enthusiasm had begun to falter, and he readily agreed with my suggestion that we take a cab back to the hotel.

That was a mistake. Within two blocks we were stalled in a traffic jam caused by a parade of demonstrators walking up the mall toward the Washington Monument. It seemed endless at the time. We must have been stuck at that intersection for twenty minutes before traffic began to move again—slowly. Every light turned red as we approached, and Nathan and I, not to mention the taxi driver, were beginning to be impatient. When Nathan spotted a coffeehouse in Dupont Circle, he had the taxi pull over and we got out. We found two seats at the front window and had a full view of the street scene. The subway station there disgorged a constant stream of people coming from work. It was enjoyable to sit there watching others be busy while we were relaxing.

Opposite the coffeehouse was a gay bookstore, and Nathan asked if I would mind if we browsed for a while. I hate shopping for almost everything, and he loves it. Over the years, we had reached a compromise. Bookstores we did together. Food, I shopped for alone. Clothing—he was on his own. The bookstore was quite large and had a surprising number and range of books. I headed for my favourite shelves—the mysteries section. I had read a few gay mysteries but had had no idea how many there were. Most of them were American publications not available in Britain, and I spent an enjoyable half-hour limiting myself to the four I thought I could fit in my luggage and whose covers would not alarm a customs agent. I jotted down the authors’ names and titles of others that looked promising. I was surprised to find how much time I had spent browsing. We had to be up early the next morning, and I thought I had better find Nathan so that we could eat and then pack for the flight back in the morning.

Nathan was in the photography section, examining a book of male nudes. Those books were displayed on a table, and that area of the store was more open. He happened to glance up as I walked toward him. When he saw me, he pretended that he hadn’t and focussed on the picture in front of him. At first I thought he was doing what he usually did and trying to ignore what he knew would be a prompt from me that we ought to be moving along. ‘I found several books. How about you?’ I held up the four books I intended to purchase. Nathan looked up at me blankly and then turned away. ‘Are you about finished? We should get back to the hotel and pack.’ Nathan closed the book he was looking at and put it back on the table. He moved a few feet away and then picked up another book. He carefully positioned himself so that his back was towards me.

And that’s when I realised that Nathan didn’t want to be seen with me. He wanted anyone who had been watching to think that I had tried to pick him up and that he had snubbed me. As I stood there trying to figure out what to do next, he put down the second book and walked away from me, into another area of the store.

‘Sir, are you ok?’ It took me a second to make sense of the concerned young face that was looking at me with alarm. One of the clerks was holding out his hands for the books. ‘I can keep these at the counter for you if you would like to browse some more.’

‘No, these will be all. Thank you. I’ll just get these.’ I paid for the books and walked back to the hotel. What surprised me most was my acceptance of what had happened. I wasn’t feeling regret or anger so much as relief that the relationship was finally over. I returned to our room and took a shower and then began packing. Nathan didn’t come back for another hour or so. He had decided to ignore the whole incident, perhaps in the hope that it would all blow over quickly, and he said nothing when he came in. I continued to sort through the papers in my briefcase, and then I said, calmly and without thinking much about what I would say, ‘If being seen with me embarrasses you, you do not need to feel that it is necessary to invite me to accompany you. I am quite happy on my own.’

Nathan didn’t even bother to try to deny my interpretation of the incident. He just nodded. All he said in response was ‘Yes, perhaps that would be best’. He changed and then left. When he returned after midnight, I was pretending to be asleep. He got undressed in the dark and then slid into the other bed. In the morning we flew back to London. Since Nathan had made his reservations long after I had, we weren’t sitting together. So I had a good eight hours to think about my plans for the future. I knew that I wanted out of the relationship. The question was how best to engineer that. Nathan, I knew, would not tolerate my leaving him. His pride would not stand for that. I had to arrange for him to leave me. He had to ‘dump’ me and that fact had to be known to his friends. I decided that as long as I was free of him, it didn’t matter what his friends thought.

Back at home, to all appearances we resumed our familiar routine, with only a few differences. I had started waking up in the middle of the night a few years earlier and often, in order to avoid disturbing Nathan with my restlessness, I would get up and move to the bedroom that was designated ‘mine’ on those, mercifully rather rare, occasions when it was necessary to convey the notion that we were merely sharing a house. Gradually I spent more and more of my nights in my bedroom, until we were sleeping apart. I also found excuses to avoid spending time with Nathan alone—the proofs that I had to return the next morning demanded that I stay late at the office; a particularly boring visiting colleague who needed to be fed dinner in college. It wasn’t hard to devise reasons. When necessary, we could still become the devoted couple for our friends and associates, but psychologically and physically the relationship had ended. For many months, however, I was unable to realise my goal of ending it definitively. For Nathan, I would say that my presence was a convenience. I did the cooking and the day-to-day cleaning and cared for the gardens. An occasional conversation was a small price to pay for the services I supplied.

But the gods do provide, if seldom as quickly as we mortals might wish. Enter the only person from Liechtenstein I have ever met. Alois von Hohenlohe was, is for all I know, an overpowering person—tall, muscular, handsome, engaging, intelligent. He came as a visiting external student to study with me and to use our library collections and those at the British Museum. Moreover, Alois, it soon became apparent, liked mature men. His hints to me were unmistakable. I invited him to a dinner party at our house and sat him beside Nathan. They enchanted one another. I made sure that Alois became a frequent guest. It took little effort to persuade Nathan to accede to my suggestion that the vacant and unused nursery and nanny’s room on the third floor would make a perfect apartment for Alois.

Contrary to my usual habit, I accepted many requests to deliver guest lectures that term. Often it was necessary for me to be away overnight. Even my notorious and fabled dislike for travel did not prevent me from accepting the invitation to deliver the Norhouse Lectures at that university in the other Cambridge. I was gone for ten days. Again the gods stepped in. The breakup of our housekeeping arrangements would have entailed much division of common property. We would probably have had to sell the house. Nathan and I would have continued to cross paths at the university. We would, of course, have been civilised and not discommoded our colleagues and friends, but there would inevitably have been unpleasantnesses and awkward moments.

My lectures were very successful. Modesty will not prevent me from saying that I was unusually thought-provoking, not to mention witty and charming. A group of students even insisted that I accompany them to a ‘pub’ in Harvard Square after one of the lectures so that they could continue to talk with me. At the time I thought ‘pub’ was an Anglicism trotted out to spare me the embarrassment of having to admit my ignorance of the American ‘bar’. To my surprise, however, I discovered that the place is indeed called a pub and, moreover, fully deserves the name. (The stout made on the premises is quite good and has grown to be a favourite of mine. Should you ever visit Cambridge, I recommend you to try it.) I enjoyed that evening immensely. I appeared to be a ‘hit’ with the students, and that is always flattering and satisfying.

After the final lecture, I was invited to have dinner at the Faculty Club with several professors from the History Department as well as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. After the waiters had cleared the table and coffee and drinks were being passed around, the Dean leaned over and asked if he and a few others might have a ‘private word’ with me after the dinner. To make a long tale short, I was offered a major professorship at a salary that quite took my breath away. As protocol demands, I did not accept immediately, although I knew as soon as I heard the offer that I would. I promised to let them know my decision within a few weeks.

I had told Nathan and Alois that I would be returning on a Thursday. They thought I meant during the day. Actually the flight arrived late Wednesday evening, and I reached our home around three o’clock Thursday morning. I found them asleep in bed together. I think I managed my surprise rather well, even with aplomb. I told them not to get up and to go back to sleep. I would leave before they awoke in the morning. And I did. I left it to Nathan to devise the official story. Vraiment, c’est ça son métier. I spent my few remaining weeks in England in lodgings. I arranged with Nathan to remove my belongings while he and Alois were out. I buried my sorrows in seclusion and refused all invitations.

Nathan, I would guess, quite relished my misery. That is, until he heard that I had resigned to take the job in the United States. I doubt that he has forgiven me that. Of course, no one suspected my hand in manoeuvring him to end the relationship. One of the advantages of Nathan’s pursuit of ‘honesty’ in our relationship was that I was cast as the more naïve and bumbling partner who needed Nathan’s help to survive. No one could credit an unsophisticated professor of Byzantine history with a capacity for such deviousness.

 

The E Train Doesn’t Stop at Kenmore

 

2009

 

To Lenny’s gratification, someone spotted the resemblance almost immediately. He had entered the hall devoted to British paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston twenty minutes earlier and was wandering slowly around the room, pausing before each work and gazing at it for a few minutes before moving on to the next one. He tried to look like a thoughtful connoisseur of art. He had paid several exploratory visits to museums in New York City and observed how people behaved. There were some who hurried through the rooms, stopping only briefly before one of the more famous paintings or sculptures. Those Lenny had dismissed as boors unworthy of emulation. He had finally settled on one well-dressed, distinguished-looking middle-aged man, who moved slowly about the rooms. The man positioned himself in front of each painting and regarded it attentively if impassively. Occasionally he would raise an eyebrow in amusement. A few paintings merited a quiet smile and nod of approval. When Lenny had returned to his apartment, he had practiced the look of rapt attention and the nod of satisfaction before his mirror. 

For the trip to Boston, Lenny had chosen clothes to match the colors of those in the painting. He couldn’t copy the dark fur robes and the white lace collar of the figure in the painting—that would have been ridiculous and in any case beyond his means—but he wore a black crew-neck sweater over a white shirt. After he had bought a ticket and entered the MFA, he had stopped in a bathroom to check his reflection in the mirror. A few quick tugs had brought the edge of the shirt collar neatly above the neck of the sweater. The sweater emphasized his trim build. His trousers draped perfectly over his hips and buttocks and down his legs, and the cuffs broke just slightly over his polished shoes. Lenny knew that he looked good in the outfit. Elegant. That was his goal. Elegance. Not ostentatiously elegant, just nonchalantly and comfortably elegant. A gentleman who had found himself in Boston and had decided to spend a few hours strolling through the Museum, engaged in the leisurely appreciation of art. 

It was a long way from Cove Point. But that’s why Lenny had moved to New York City. To get away from Cove Point and into a world where people made time for things like the leisurely appreciation of art. He had taken care to create his new, urban self slowly. He didn’t rush into things, he didn’t risk mistakes. The last thing he wanted was to make a fool of himself. He watched and studied and listened. Once he had selected the type of person he wanted to be, he watched how such people dressed. He studied how they moved. He listened to how they spoke and what they said. Only when he was sure that he understood how people behaved and how things worked for them did he begin to mimic them. And he was always careful to review his behavior and others’ reaction to it later. Had there been a moment’s hesitation in responding to him when he acted in a certain way? Were people laughing with him or at him? Did they and others accept him as one of them? 

Lenny saw the portrait as soon as he entered the hall. It hung about a third of the way down the left-hand wall. He intentionally began his circuit of the room on the right side to delay his arrival before the painting as long as possible. He was examining the third painting to the right of his target when the couple entered the room through the same entrance he had and began walking toward him along the left-hand wall, devoting a minute or two to each painting. Both of them appeared to be vigorous senior citizens—the types who kept active and still played golf or went on long walks along the shore. They were more casually dressed than Lenny. Both wore tennis shoes, and the man had on a pair of Dockers. They did, however, look alert and intelligent. And that was all that Lenny required. He could forgive their sartorial failings as long as they turned out to be appreciative of fine art. 

Lenny timed his perusal of the paintings so that he stood before the painting next to his portrait when they moved in front of it. The man bent forward slightly at the waist and read the contents of the card beside the painting. “Charles Leland Roberts, 1794-1859. Portrait of John Lawrence Sommerville, 1801-1852, Fifth Marquis of Creeslough. Oils on canvas. 1826.” The man and woman contemplated the picture briefly and then turned toward Lenny to move on. Lenny stepped back and smiled vaguely in their direction, allowing them to pass in front of him. 

The man gasped and then looked back and forth between Roberts’s portrait of Sommerville and Lenny. As Lenny stopped before his portrait, the man whispered into his wife’s ear. She turned casually in Lenny’s direction, letting him drift into her field of vision, and then nodded at her husband. The two of them smiled at each other. As Lenny stood before his portrait, he knew they were comparing him to the image in the painting. 

The resemblance was remarkable. Lenny might have sat for the portrait only a short time before. The facial features, the general shape of the body, even the hair color matched. Luckily Sommerville had favored a simple hair style that still more or less acceptable, and Lenny’s barber had been able to come close to it after Lenny had described it to him. 

The art student had brought the resemblance to Lenny’s attention. He had told Lenny his name but Lenny hadn’t bothered to remember it. He knew that he would not be seeing the guy again. When they had met in the bar, the student had told Lenny that he looked familiar. “I can’t quite place you, but I know I’ve seen you before.” Lenny tried to remember if he had had sex with the guy before. He didn’t think so. Perhaps, he thought, it was just a come-on—the guy’s way of pretending to a familiarity that didn’t exist. After another drink, they had left the bar together and gone to the other man’s apartment. It was small and crowded with books. The student had hung several of his paintings on the walls. As soon as they walked in the door and switched on the lights, he made sure that Lenny knew that he had painted them. It was practically the first thing he said. “I painted all of these.” 

Lenny didn’t think they were any good but shrugged off his lack of interest to his ignorance of painting. To be polite, he made a show of looking at them. “Nice,” he said. “I like that one. It’s very colorful.” He pointed at the brightest of the paintings. 

The art student ignored his comments. “I know I know you from somewhere.” He had repeated that thought about a dozen times. Lenny was beginning to get tired of hearing it. The bar had been ill-lit, and the streets had been dark. It was only when the student switched on the overhead light in his living room that he could look closely at Lenny. He stood there examining Lenny, tapping an index finger against his lips. Finally, he said, “Yes, of course” in a satisfied voice. “I know.” 

He turned to a book shelf and ran his hand slowly across the spines of the books before stopping at one and pulling it out. It was obvious to Lenny that he had known from the beginning which book he wanted. He was simply making a show of searching for it. Lenny began to wonder how long he had to wait before he could suggest that they undress and get started on the main business. The student flipped slowly through the pages. Finally he stopped and held the book up so that Lenny could see the picture. “I knew I had seen you before. I never forget a face.” 

The student kept talking but Lenny didn’t bother to listen. His face stared out at him from the pages of the book. Without consciously thinking about his actions, Lenny reached out and took the book from the other man and sat down, concentrating on the descriptions of the painting and the artist and sitter. The student had had to pull the book out of his hands and begin kissing him before he remembered why they were there. Lenny had bumbled his way through the next hour without interest, his body participating in the sex but not his mind. When they finished, the art student said a few polite things about how great it had been and then rolled over and went to sleep. Lenny waited until the other man was breathing regularly and then eased himself out of the bed. He picked his clothes off the back of the chair where he had hung them and his shoes from the floor. He carried them into the small living room and dressed as quietly as he could. He pulled the door to the bedroom closed and then turned on the small light next to the guy’s computer. Lenny found the book on the shelf and paged through it until he found his picture. He carefully tore the page out and then put the book back on the shelf. When he got back to his apartment, he had turned on his computer and searched the Internet for information about Sommerville. He quickly forgot the student. 

He began his preparations for the trip to Boston the next day, looking up plane schedules and investigating possible places to stay. His visits to museums began the following weekend. Barely a month after he had learned of his portrait’s existence, he was standing before it. The similarity really was astounding. Lenny wished that he could touch the painting. He wanted to feel the rough surface of the paint and affirm its reality. He knew from his reading that the painting was seven feet tall. The museum had hung it well above eye level, forcing the viewer to gaze upward at Sommerville. The figure in the painting sat in a chair. His body was shown in three-quarters view, but his head was turned to look directly out from the plane of the picture. His gaze was focused high above the head of any possible spectator. His right hand held a half-opened book. He appeared to have been disturbed in his reading, and his attention drawn to something in the center of the room. Both his indifference and his disdain were palpable. 

Lenny regarded the painting with excitement. He would have been dismayed if he had seen his open-mouthed stare. When he had envisioned the confrontation, he had imagined admiring throngs gaping at him as he stood coolly before the portrait for a brief moment before drifting to the next painting. They were nudging one another and whispering among themselves, speculating about the relationship of the handsome young man and the distinguished-looking Fifth Marquis of Creeslough. But when he came face to face with the painting, all thought of the impression he might be making evaporated from his mind. He was lifted up and became the man sitting in the chair and looking out at the world he owned. The world he was seeing as he regarded his marble hall was magnificent, and Lenny was one of the glorious immortals at home in it. 

“Another one.” 

Lenny turned toward the speaker. “What?” A young man stood beside him, beaming at him with evident pleasure and expectation. 

“Another match. I’m St. Sebastian. In the Italian Room. You have to come see me. I’m almost a match. But you’re much closer. The best one is the Japanese guy in the Buddhist temple. He looks just like one of the statues there. It’s too bad it’s Thursday. He only comes in on the weekends. Or you could meet him too. And then there’s the guy in the Spanish Room who claims he’s a match for one of the Goya paintings, but he’s not. The guard told me that there was a new match in here, and I had to come see.” 

The young man spoke rapidly and his words gushed out in a confused welter of sound. Lenny couldn’t make any sense of them. “I’m sorry. I’m not following you. What are you talking about?” Lenny drew back. In his own mind, he was still Sommerville, and he unconsciously spoke in what he imagined to be Sommerville’s manner. The interruption was cheating him of his glory. He wanted to shove the other man away and return to his painting. The guy was handsome, but he hadn’t come to the Museum to pick someone up. 

“We’re matches. Every museum has them. Someone who looks like a person in one of the paintings. Or sometimes a statue. Someone told me there’s a man in Chicago who looks just like one of carvings of a pharaoh there.” The young man put a hand on Lenny’s forearm and then pointed to the painting of Sommerville. “Like you and this guy. It could be you.” 

“There are others?” It hadn’t occurred to Lenny that there might be others like him. Living artworks. Somehow better than ordinary people, more refined, chosen and then distilled to an essence and preserved in art, there to be contemplated and appreciated. The thought that there were others, that he wasn’t alone, heartened Lenny. He wasn’t just a fluke, an oddity. If there were others, then the resemblances had to mean something. It wasn’t just an accident. There were others who had had a similar experience and could help him understand what it meant. 

“Yes, there are lots of us. Though there are lots of fakes. You have to be careful.” 

“Where are you?” Suddenly Lenny had to see evidence that the young man was indeed real. 

“In the Italian room. It’s three halls down. Come on. I’ll show you. I’m Antony by the way.” 

“Len.” The two shook hands. Antony held onto Lenny’s hand a bit longer than necessary. Before letting it go, he ran his index finger up and down Lenny’s palm. 

St. Sebastian’s flesh glowed white. His hands were bound above his head to a post, and his muscular body twisted away from the arrows piercing his flesh. The athletic youth looked upward ecstatically toward an approaching angel carrying a crown of martyrdom to place on his head. 

“You do look like him.” 

“I used to look more like him, a couple of years ago when I was younger. I’m growing old. In a few years I won’t be able to claim that he looks like me at all.” 

“But you look like him now. You are so beautiful.” Lenny wasn’t looking at Antony. He spoke to the body in the painting. He wanted to touch that flesh, to experience its wounds. He half lifted a hand and caressed St. Sebastian’s thigh in his imagination. The air felt solid beneath his fingers. The purity of Sebastian’s suffering was so sensual as he offered his body to the arrows piercing it. His flesh remained bloodless and passionate even as it closed around the wounds. Looking at it, Lenny began to understand why some people were so enthusiastic about art. It made him want to be part of that world. One of the people who felt things like art, to whom such things mattered, who was ardent about it. 

“Oh, he’s more muscular than I am. I’ve tried to recreate his muscles, but I can’t train mine into the same shape.” 

Lenny looked away from the painting and took a slow inventory of Antony’s body. “You must look almost like him.” 

“A lot of people think so. Especially when they see me undressed, like him.” Antony nodded toward St. Sebastian in invitation. “People like to possess him. I don’t have the arrows stuck in me of course. I’m not willing to go that far.” 

“Do people want that?” 

“Sometimes they want to reproduce the pose. Tie my hands over my head, that sort of thing.” 

“Do you let them?” Lenny licked his lips. He could see Antony/Sebastian bound. 

“Never have. Too risky. Some ‘art lover’ might decide to stick me full of arrows.” 

“There has to be some way of having the arrows without actually sticking them in your flesh.” 

Antony shrugged. “I never gone to bed with one of the other matches. It will be a first. We can see if we can figure something out.” 

It wasn’t until that point that Lenny knew that he and Antony were going to bed together. “Where do you live? I’m just here for a couple of days. I’m from New York. I’m staying in a motel near the airport tonight.” 

“On Beacon Street in Brookline. It’s not far. We can take the subway. We’ll have to take the E line and then transfer to the C line to go out Beacon. Did you buy a day pass? If you did, we can change at Copley. Otherwise we’ll have to go to Arlington.” 

A train was approaching the stop near the museum and they had to run to catch it, but they were at Copley within a few minutes. Antony led the way up the inbound steps and then across the street to the stairs leading down to the outbound platform. They moved away from the crowd of people and stood a bit apart. Antony faced down the tunnel staring at an approaching train. 

“Is this safe? It looks like it’s falling apart.” Lenny pointed toward the peeling and cracked plaster pillars holding the ceiling of the underground platform up. 

Antony shrugged. “The Green lines are the oldest ones. The tunnels must be safe, or they wouldn’t use them, would they? Oh, damn, it’s a B train. There should be a C in a moment.” He stepped away from the approaching train and leaned back against the wall of the platform. 

There was a small sign affixed to wall next to Antony. Lenny read it and then pointed to it. 

“Why do they tell you that? They made the same announcement on the E train when I took it to the museum.” 

Antony turned to the sign and read it as if it were the first time he had seen it. “ ‘For Kenmore, take a B, C, or D train. The E Train does not stop at Kenmore.’ Oh, Copley’s the last stop on this track for the E trains. All the Green lines come through here, but after this the E line branches off. The rest of them go on to Kenmore and then they branch off too.” 

“But what’s so special about Kenmore?” 

“It’s where Fenway Park is.” 

When Lenny looked confused, Antony continued. “It’s where the Red Sox play. I suppose the sign’s for people going to baseball games there so they don’t take the E train. Oh, here’s a C train. It will only be another fifteen minutes or so.” 

Beyond Kenmore, the C train climbed a slight grade and the tunnel grew lighter. After a pause, the train emerged into the open and ran down the middle of a broad street lined with brick apartment buildings. Both sides of the road were heavily traveled. Some of the ground floors housed small shops and restaurants. The train climbed another hill and then passed through a larger shopping district. The sidewalks were crowded with people, and most of the riders on the train got off at that stop. A residential section began within a couple of blocks. Large trees arched over the roadway and the tram line. 

Antony guided him off the train and to an old apartment building with the word “Empire” chiseled in the stone over the door. Two twisted wires, the metal long since corroded black, protruded from the top of a pillar that had apparently once held a lamp. The floor of the entrance was covered in cracked tiles, and the walls were painted a dark brown. Antony led him down the first floor hallway. It was so dark that he had to feel with his fingers and scrape the key against the lock to find the slot. 

The apartment had high ceilings, far higher than any modern apartment would have. Directly in front of the door was the kitchen, with an old stove and a refrigerator that was humming loudly and making ticking noises. A wastebasket overflowed with food cartons and packages. A short hallway led to a large living room, with a bay window looking out over the back yard of the building next door. A fireplace centered between two bookcases occupied the opposite wall. A vase of dried flowers in the grate and the lack of soot betrayed that the fireplace was fake. Over the mantel hung a reproduction of the St. Sebastian painting. Sections of several days’ worth of newspapers littered the floor and the cushions of the sofa. The room may once have been attractive, but the walls were cracked and in need of painting. Another door led to the bedroom. A trail on the carpet marked years of footsteps from the front entrance to the bedroom. The apartment smelled of old dust. 

Antony led him through to the bedroom. A double bed, a dresser, and two wooden chairs were the only pieces of furniture in the room. Clothes were draped haphazardly over one of the chairs. The back yard next door was dimly visible through a small, grimy window. Through a second window only the tarred wall of the building behind the apartment could be seen. Only a foot or so separated the two buildings. The room was quite dark even though it was early afternoon. Antony pulled off his clothes and tossed them toward the chair with his other discarded clothes. One of his socks caught on the seat of the chair and then slowly slid to the floor. “If you need to use the toilet before we get started, it’s through there.” 

Lenny shook his head. “I’m fine. Thanks. Do you need to pull the shades?” 

“What for?” Antony snorted. “No one can see in here. Even if they could, they’d probably enjoy it. I don’t mind if they watch.” He raised his arms over his head, and crossed them at the wrists. He leaned back against the wall and twisted his body in an approximation of St. Sebastian’s pose in the picture. His body was darker than that in the picture, except around his groin. There a white triangle highlighted his cock and balls. 

“Great tan.” 

“Just got back from a vacation in Puerto Rico last week.” His cock and balls swayed from side to side as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He pivoted his body around an imaginary rope fastening his body to a post. The tan lines on his ass revealed that he had been wearing a thong on his vacation. 

His body was a close match for that of St. Sebastian in the painting. Both were lightly muscled and hairless even around the groin. Lenny began stroking Antony’s body. He didn’t know why, but he had expected Sebastian’s flesh to be cool and smooth. Antony’s was hot and slightly moist and oily as if he had been sweating. His fingers tugged at Antony’s body instead of gliding over it. 

“I need to get another Brazilian wax. The stubble is beginning to show. That’s where I don’t resemble the painting. I have a lot of body hair. It’s a constant fight to keep it off. But people want me to be like the painting. You won’t have that problem. All you have to do is comb your hair like that guy in the painting and people will think you’re Lord What’s-his-name. No one knows what his body looks like. Speaking of which, Len, why don’t you get undressed and let me see what you look like.” 

Lenny turned away and undressed slowly. He took his time. He sat on the chair that wasn’t piled with clothing while he unlaced his shoes. He pulled the sweater over his head and then folded it carefully before placing it on the seat of the chair. He knew that he looked good. Let Antony enjoy the visuals before they moved in closer. He turned his back to Antony and undid his belt and trousers. As he was preparing to drape his trousers over the back of the chair, he felt Antony’s hands on his ass. 

Antony pulled him closer and shoved his hands up under Lenny’s shirt and T-shirt and began stroking his nipples. “Nice. I thought you would have a nice body. From the way that you look.” 

Lenny unbuttoned his shirt and pulled his arms out of the sleeves. Antony had waited long enough. He impatiently pulled Lenny’s T-shirt over his head and tossed it on the floor. He grabbed Lenny and spun him around so that they were facing. He placed his hands on either side of Lenny’s face and then kissed him, forcing his tongue between Lenny’s lips and into his mouth. His breath was stale, and he tasted of garlic. Lenny tried to pull back, but Antony held him tightly. He aggressively ran his hands up and down Lenny’s body and then grabbed his cock and balls and squeezed them. His hand pumped Lenny’s cock until it grew hard. 

He pulled Lenny over to the bed and then lay down, sprawling across the width of the bed and opening his legs. “Suck me until I get hard.” He pointed toward his cock and then laced his hands behind his neck with his arms spread out and resting flat on the bed. Lenny bent over and took Antony’s cock in his mouth. “That’s it. Suck it. Make me hard.” Antony pumped his cock into Lenny’s mouth a couple of times, but it was still flaccid. Lenny sucked on it as hard as he could. It tasted sour to him, and the foreskin was loose and slid up and down. He closed his lips around it and ran his tongue back and forth, trying to make it hard. He suddenly wanted the whole episode to be over as quickly as possible, to make Antony cum and then leave. 

Antony grabbed the back of Lenny’s head and began fucking his face. His cock jabbed the back of Lenny’s throat, and Lenny began gagging. He thrashed about trying to get free, but that just excited Antony more. Anthony sat up on his knees and began forcing his cock even further down Lenny’s throat. Lenny felt as if he could hardly breathe. He labored to fill his lungs between Antony’s thrusts. 

“Oh, yeah, bitch, suck on it. Harder. Come on. Take it all. You know you want it.” Antony never stopped talking. “Come on, your lordship. You’ve always wanted to suck a saint. Now’s your chance.” He extended an arm down Lenny’s back and pressed a finger into his anus. It was soon joined by a second finger. Antony’s nails tore at his flesh. “Oh, nice and tight. That’s going to feeeeeeeel so gooood when I fuck you.” 

Lenny shook his head no and tried to speak, but Antony just shoved his cock in again. It got harder and harder to breathe as Antony got more excited and his cock swelled. Finally he withdrew and hopped off the bed. Lenny bent forward at the waist and lay his face against the cover. It was rough against his skin but he didn’t care. He was just relieved to be able to breathe normally again. His face was hot and flushed, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. Behind him he heard Antony moving about. He hoped that he was through. He didn’t think Antony had cum but some guys didn’t have much, especially if they had had sex recently.

 Antony suddenly grabbed a handful of Lenny’s hair and shoved a lubed finger deep into Lenny’s ass and plunged it in and out rapidly. 

“NO, don’t. I don’t want to be fucked.” Lenny tried to pull away. 

Antony pushed his face into the bed and then slapped his ass. “You’re going to take it, your lordship. I ain’t no saint.” Then he pulled his finger out and thrust his cock into Lenny. 

Lenny screamed in surprise. “Oh that’s what I want to hear, bitch.” Antony started laughing. 

Lenny’s hands clawed at the bedcovers and closed into fists. He pounded the bed to keep from shouting out from the pain. He bit down on the covers, taking a wad of cloth into his mouth. His head arched backwards, lifting the sheets off the bed. His eyes were tightly closed, and his face was contorted. Antony rode him for almost fifteen minutes before he came. 

Lenny struggled for the first few minutes, and then he just gave up. The pounding continued. There wasn’t any pleasure in it for him. Occasionally Antony would slap Lenny’s ass to make him contract his muscles tighter around his cock. As Antony approached orgasm, his cock grew larger. Finally he came with a great shout and then collapsed on Lenny, still inside him. 

Antony wrapped his arms around Lenny and squeezed him tightly. He kissed Lenny on the back of the neck, growling with pleasure. “That was a good fuck, your lordship. With a little training, you would make a first-class cocksucker. You’re already a great fuck.” 

Antony pulled out and jumped up. Lenny could hear him pissing into the toilet and then the shower began running. Lenny pushed himself off the bed. He grabbed a handful of Kleenex from the box on the nightstand and began cleaning himself up. His ass felt about three times normal size, and it was slimy with fluids. When Antony finished showering and came out, Lenny rushed into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. He turned on the shower as hot as he could and scrubbed himself. He stood there for ten minutes letting the water wash Antony off. He found a towel on a shelf and used that. It smelled faintly of mildew and left him feeling in need of another shower. He would take another one when he got back to the motel. 

Lenny stood behind the bathroom door for a minute and tried to hear if Antony was in the bedroom. He couldn’t tell. He eased the door open and peeked out, relieved to find that Antony was nowhere in sight. He quickly dressed and felt in his pockets to make sure that he still had his wallet and keys. When he was ready, he dashed into the living room, intending to make a quick exit. 

Antony was sitting on a chair before the fireplace, with his legs crossed, wearing just a pair of shorts and flip-flops. Above him, the figure of St. Sebastian still looked upward toward the angel. Antony smiled when he saw Lenny. “There’s a Irish bar up the street. It’s pretty good. At least this time of day. Later at night, they have all these Irish bands in singing about the Old Sod. And then all the drunks start crying about how much they miss Ireland. We can go there until dinner time and then go somewhere and have something to eat and then come back here and fuck again.” 

“I’m meeting some friends for dinner—in Cambridge.” It was the first lie that Lenny could think of. He didn’t know anyone in Boston, and he wasn’t even quite sure where Cambridge was. 

“Oh, that’s too bad. I was hoping … well, never mind. It doesn’t matter. What time will you be at the Museum tomorrow? I’ll meet you there.” 

“I’m going back to New York early tomorrow. I won’t have time to go to the Museum again.” Another quickly improvised lie. Lenny had planned to spend most of the day at the Museum. “How do I get to Cambridge? I take the C line out front and then I have to change somewhere, don’t I?” 

“Yeah, C line to Downtown Crossing. Go downstairs to the Red Line outbound and take any train. There are several stops in Cambridge. Which one are you supposed to go to? Harvard? Central Square?” 

Harvard sounded like the obvious place to go in Cambridge, and so Lenny said that. 

“It’s the third or fourth stop after Downtown Crossing. I don’t remember.” Antony waved a vague hand toward his front door. “You know how to find your way out and to the train?” 

“Yes, thanks. See you.” Lenny was relieved to get away so easily and so quickly. He sprinted toward the door before Antony could change his mind and decide to accompany him. 

“Yeah, see you.” 

A taxi was passing as Lenny stepped out the front door, and he flagged it down. He had the driver take him back to his motel. Maybe, he thought, he could get a flight back tonight on one of the shuttles. He didn’t want to stay in Boston any longer. 

 

The Canvas

 2008

 

It started with a streak of cadmium yellow.

The wind had died just after noon that day, and the heat rose from the dry earth, filling the air with the resinous smell of the rosemary and oleander bushes that surrounded the cottage. Raymond was working with all the doors and windows of his studio opened with the shutters latched to the wall in an attempt to catch any breeze. The idea for the painting had come to him in the morning and he was trying to get it down before the inspiration faded. At some point during the afternoon, when the sweat had begun running down his forehead and into his eyes, he had absentmindedly tied a rag around his head. He was wearing only an old, baggy pair of khaki shorts and sandals. His paint-stained T-shirt lay on the floor behind him where he had tossed after pulling it off when it became too hot to wear. He had covered most of the canvas with wet cloths to keep the paint from drying too quickly, before he had a chance to work the next layers of paint in. Only the area he was working on was exposed.

Dell came up from the beach and walked in the open doors on the seaward side. He had been swimming and was towelling his hair dry. He wore only the old flip-flops he had found in the hallway cupboard when they had opened the cottage for the summer, and his passage up the stairs that led to the beach and then across the patio had been heralded by the sound of the heels of the sandals striking the boards of the staircase and then the stones of the patio. He stopped to examine the painting that Dell was working on and then turned to Raymond for a kiss. Raymond put an arm around Dell’s shoulders and drew in him briefly.

‘Hmm, salty.’

‘If you can tear yourself away from this, you should go for a swim. The water is just the right temperature now.’

‘Maybe later.’ Raymond gestured toward the painting to indicate why it was unlikely that he would go for a swim

‘How’s it going? Can I see?’

Raymond reached forward and lifted the cloths and draped them over the top bar of the easel. He stepped back out of Dell’s way. It was then that he saw the mark for the first time. When he had hugged Dell briefly, he had been holding a brush and it had left a smudge of paint on Dell’s back. Just a small streak of cadmium yellow, barely half an inch long. The edges were ragged. The paint glowed against Dell’s tanned skin. In the three weeks they had been at the cottage, Dell’s body had turned a rich golden brown.

‘Oh, just a minute, let me …’ Raymond picked up a cloth to wipe off the paint.

‘What?’ Dell turned halfway round to look over his shoulder. The muscles of his back bunched, and the streak of yellow paint rose and fell with the motion. Raymond was transfixed by it.

‘Nothing. Just a stray thought about the painting.’

‘I should let you get back to work. Dinner about nine? It should be cool by then. We can eat on the patio.’ Dell draped the cloths over the painting again and smiled.

‘I’m sorry to leave all the work to you.’ Raymond stepped back to the painting and added a streak of cadmium yellow to the patch of open canvas. It was barely half an inch long and ragged at the edges. But against the mottled greens of the background, it drew the eye.

‘I’ll take my payment later, when we go to bed. For now, just think of it as my tribute to your genius.’ Dell patted Raymond on the buttocks and walked out.

Raymond nodded absently. Dell disappeared from his mind even before he had left the studio. Raymond lifted one of the cloths and began judiciously adding a few streaks of cadmium yellow. He didn’t want too many of them, not enough that they would overwhelm the painting, just enough to convey fugitive motion on the static canvas.

The mark was still there when they ate dinner. Dell sat to Raymond’s left, and every time Dell leaned forward, Raymond saw the yellow patch. It had cracked a bit at the edges as it dried, but it was still there. And it was still there when they made love later that night. As Dell lay atop him, pushing him down into the bed, Raymond gingerly felt with his fingertips until he located the rough patch on Dell’s shoulder. He was careful not to brush it off. In his mind’s eye, he could see the yellow against Dell’s flesh, moving with Dell.

In the morning Raymond awoke early. The light was just beginning to come through the window. Dell lay beside him on his stomach, with the sheet bunched around his waist, his back uncovered. The mark had disappeared during the night. Raymond reached over and gently touched the area where the spot had been. Dell’s flesh was smooth and cool beneath his fingertips. His deeply tanned flesh was almost black in the half light. Raymond eased his body out of the bed, careful not to disturb Dell. Without dressing, he padded through the cottage and across the patio. In his studio, he quickly located the tube of cadmium yellow and squeezed a dab onto his palette. He dipped a brush into it and held it up. The bright yellow colour gleamed in the dawn light. It seemed even brighter than usual. He walked back through the house and into the bedroom.

He held the brush poised over Dell’s back for several seconds, searching for the right spot to paint. In the end, he was drawn to a spot just under the right shoulder blade, an inclined area where the skin was stretched taut. Once he had located the spot, his arm seemed to move without conscious thought. The brush dipped, and a yellow spot appeared on Dell’s body.

Raymond stepped back a few feet and looked at Dell. A painting took shape in his mind. He could see the colours he would use and the shapes he would create. How they would flow together on the living canvas of Dell’s body. A flat canvas on stretchers wouldn’t do for the images flowing through his mind. And oil paints would be too stiff. They would have too much texture of their own. He needed something that would flow onto the skin and look like a second skin. The brush trembled in his hand. He wanted to move forward and make another mark on Dell. He knew the exact spot the brush should touch. Dell rolled onto his side, and the images in Raymond’s mind shifted and flowed.

*****

‘What are these? I’ve never seen these names before.’ Dell held up the list of painting supplies that Raymond had just handed him through the open window of the van.

‘I have something new in mind. I wasn’t sure what will work best. So I want to try various paints.’

Dell smiled and tucked the list into his shirt pocket, along with the grocery list and the other reminders of things he needed to buy and do in Genoa. He manoeuvred the van carefully through the narrow gate. Just before he drove off, he lifted a forearm out the window and waved goodbye.

For Raymond, one of Dell’s more endearing qualities was his lack of comment about Raymond’s work. Dell never wanted to discuss the paintings. He never felt a need to chatter on about their meaning or significance. He just accepted that painting was Raymond’s life and incidentally his livelihood. In response to a polite question early in their relationship, Raymond has told Dell that if he could find the words to say what he said with painting, then he wouldn’t need to paint. Dell had nodded and never mentioned the subject again.

Dell took care of the daily tasks that would have overwhelmed Raymond. He did the shopping and the housekeeping. He put the food on the table and made sure that Raymond ate it. He dealt with the plumbers and the carpenters. When his school let out for the summer, he organised the move to the cottage on the Ligurian coast. He arranged for the boxing and shipping of the paintings and saw to it that Raymond’s agent was kept happy with a steady flow of them. He drove Raymond where he needed to be, when he needed to be there. And several times a week, he made love to Raymond. If Raymond never lacked for anything, it was because of Dell’s foresight. Raymond took it for granted that there would be clean clothes in his bureau and closet, that there would always be hot coffee in the thermos and milk in the fridge, that the dentist would see him twice a year.

It never occurred to Raymond to ask himself if Dell was happy. He didn’t think about Dell’s existence in those terms. Dell was simply Dell. He was there. Raymond was quite satisfied with the arrangements. He knew he was fortunate that Dell was willing to manage his life. There were so many tasks that were beyond his interests and hence beyond his abilities. But the question of Dell’s satisfaction never arose in Raymond’s mind. He simply assumed, without devoting much thought to the question, that Dell would not do all the things he did if he were not satisfied with their life.

Raymond stood motionless in the driveway for several minutes after Dell drove off on the weekly trip into Genoa. He was staring out the open gate. A passer-by might have thought he was studying the rock wall opposite the gate. But Raymond’s vision was filled with images of the body of his lover, its surface completely painted. A human-shaped canvas, a canvas that shifted and moved, a canvas whose images were ever-changing and never the same. A canvas that could be wiped clean and repainted as often as he liked.

*****

‘You want to paint me? But you never do portraits.’ Dell looked up from the worktable in the kitchen and smiled. ‘This must be your first. I’m rather chuffed that you’ve asked me to sit for you.’

‘Not a portrait.’ It hadn’t occurred to Raymond until that moment that what he was about to propose might strike Dell as strange. The idea had been so present in his mind for the past few days that he thought that Dell would understand what he wanted. ‘I want to paint your back. At least that’s the first painting. It’s just a trial, to see what paints will stick to the surface. When I find the method that works best, then I want to paint your entire body. You’ll have to shave all your hair off, of course.’ The words rushed out. Raymond was never sure that language would bend to his meaning. Paint was much easier to manage than was speech. He looked around the kitchen for help. Everywhere shiny metallic surfaces reflected distorted images of himself and Dell. It was a domain he identified as Dell’s part of their living space, both here at the cottage and at the house in Norfolk.

‘You want to paint my body?’

Raymond nodded and held up the tube of yellow body paint he had brought with it. He handed it to Dell as if its very existence explained and justified what he wanted to do. The colours of the Cryolan paints were brighter, more lurid, than he liked, but he had experimented a bit and found that he could tone them down. He wasn’t sure what they would look like on Dell’s tanned skin or what would happen to the colour and lustre when they dried.

Dell turned the tube of paint over and over, reading all the labels. Neither man said anything for a few moments. Raymond tried not to disturb Dell’s thoughts. He was certain it was only a matter of letting Dell grow used to the idea.

‘It says to use face cream to remove the paints.’ Dell indicated the directions on the back of the tube.

‘For this kind. It will also come off with hot water and soap. I checked. The latex paints that you bought the other day will peel off. But they will take the hair with them. That’s why we need to shave your body first.’

‘But why?’

‘The idea just came to me. It’s … it’s an experiment. It will only take me a few hours to finish your back. Then you could show me how to operate the video recorder and I’ll take some pictures and you can remove it.’ It pained Raymond to say that. He didn’t want Dell to destroy his painting.

‘I suppose if it’s only a few hours …’ Dell looked Raymond in the face for the first time since he realised what Raymond was asking of him.

Raymond nodded.

‘When do you want to start?’

Raymond didn’t trust himself to speak. He wanted to start now, but he simply raised his hands and shrugged to indicate that Dell could choose the time. He didn’t want to appear to be in a hurry.

Dell looked at the vegetables that he had been chopping. ‘Just let me finish up here. It will only be ten minutes or so. Is my back hairy? Does that have to be shaved now? I’ll need your help if it does.’

The image of what he wanted to do was clear in Raymond’s mind, and Dell’s back was not as large a surface as the canvases he usually painted. The colours of the paints were more intractable, however. They didn’t blend in the same way as oils. Raymond wasn’t wholly satisfied with the results when he finished. But he could see what adjustments he would need to make the next time.

Dell had perched on a stool while Raymond painted his back. He hadn’t said anything and had barely moved the entire time it took Raymond to paint both sides of his back from the shoulders down to the waist.

‘It’s very sensual. It’s as if you were kissing each spot on my back. Tiny kisses with the tip of your tongue. Each kiss is a drop of moisture and then it dries.’

‘Do you want to see it?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t know why. Somehow I think … I don’t know. That it would be like seeing a foreign growth on my skin. Are you happy with it?’

‘It is beautiful,’ Raymond whispered to himself. He was entranced by the look of the painting on Dell’s body. It was as if he had created something from the raw material of Dell.

‘I don’t think I have ever heard you use that word about any of your paintings before.’

Raymond set his palette and brushes down. He walked over to Dell and then kissed his back. Raymond inhaled the paint smell slowly and deeply. The odour was different from that of oils, more natural, less processed and chemical. Dell’s usually cool skin felt hot beneath Raymond’s lips. He pressed his fingertips into the painting and felt the familiar flesh give slightly as if the paint had softened Dell’s body, made it more malleable. Dell stood up and undid his shorts. The unpainted portions of his body shocked Raymond with their nakedness. He blocked them out of his mind and focused on the painting as he stepped out of his own shorts. He pressed Dell’s back against his chest, with the painting between them.

The pattern of their coupling was different. During the eight years they had been together, Dell and he had fallen into easy habits, but that afternoon Raymond felt more active. They flowed together but Raymond for once set the rhythm of their movements. Raymond wasn’t dominant or violent, but there was just more energy and intensity.

The painting was ruined. As much of the greasy body paint ended up on Raymond’s chest as on Dell’s back.

Neither of them said anything. Each separately took a shower and washed his body clean. Dell finished cooking the evening meal, and they ate it in their customary silence. Something had changed, but they didn’t want to talk about it yet.

The next day, Raymond returned to his studio and resumed work on the painting on his easel. Dell followed his usual routine of swimming and pottering about the cottage.

The second morning, Raymond rose at his customary early hour and began painting before breakfast. Around nine he heard Dell enter the studio. He half-turned around expecting Dell to call him into the house to eat.

‘I’ve removed all the hair I could.’ Dell stood there naked, his body shaved. The purity of the canvas was an ache in Raymond’s psyche, a void in his mind that called out to him to paint. Several hours later when Dell’s body had been converted into a maze of colours and shapes, Dell made him videotape the painting. The colours swirled and the shapes shifted as he walked about in front of the camera. It was as if some creature had possessed Dell, possessed the both of them. Human, inhuman, Dell, not-Dell. Created yet always already there. They awoke in the morning with the evidence of their lovemaking on their bodies and on the sheets of the bed. The two painters came together again.

That set the pattern for the summer. Every few days Raymond would paint Dell. It became an obsession, to cover Dell’s body with images, to transform the familiar, to free them from the inheritance of form and shape and colour. Dell was scrupulous about recording Raymond’s work before the two of them joyfully set about celebrating the wonder they were discovering. ‘It will be a record,’ he said. ‘You can donate the tapes to a museum.’

One week toward the end of the summer, when Dell returned from the weekly shopping in Genoa, he walked into the studio. He was dressed in his usual summer outfit of jeans and a knit shirt and wearing the wide-brimmed straw hat he favoured. ‘I got a haircut.’ He removed the hat. All the hair on his head had been shaved off. ‘I left the eyebrows. I thought my face would look too strange without them, but we can cover them with petroleum jelly, and then you should be able to paint over them.’

As the critic for the Times wrote later, after the exhibition of the tape recordings at the Tate, Raymond’s first painting of Dell’s body and shaven head was ‘a sublime maelstrom of rapture’.