Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:23:28 +0200 From: Julian Obedient Subject: A Second Chance The stars, the stars, they fired the heavens with magnesium jets of desire. They burned in his eyes as he walked by the river. Never had he suffered such grievous despair as now he was feeling. He was flaming with desire and aching with the fear of feeling it. The trucks were rolling under the West Side Highway and the moon looked like it would fall out of the sky, but it continued to hang there nevertheless and it turned into a pallid stream of light, a band stretching across the black surface of the Hudson. There was nothing to do but to go home and to go to sleep, hoping that the band of light might transform itself, in sleep, through sleep, into the multi-foliate shape of a dream -- such a dream as makes sleep more appealing than waking. But a dream can bear pain as well as pleasure, recapitulate torments undergone as well as realize wishes. He woke confused. He had been a slave in a red Moroccan palace and wore only a cloth of gold skirted round his hips. He stood high like an Egyptian with his nipples stiff and commanding. First thing he had to do was to try to remember what he had done last night. Everything had been going smoothly in the days, the weeks, the months before. He thought he had it beat this time. Miriam had been tender. She was no longer talking about leaving him and taking the children with her as she had that night two years ago when she'd called him a rotten bastard and cursed him for continuing his gay cruising even after the birth of the twins. He had felt guilty enough to listen to her shouting without trying to defend himself. He did not want to go to Dr. Nostrand, but he did. For the sake of his marriage, he did. He pressed his lips together and vowed to give it his best shot. He'd been trying to beat this thing since he was twelve! Nostrand took him by the upper arm and guided him into his office. Please, he said, pointing to a leather chair. I feel pain. You feel pain. I want something I'm not allowed to want. I feel something I must not feel. So it feels like pain when you have to stop yourself from feeling what you feel? It feels like pain, yes. Then the solution is simple. You must feel what you want to feel and feel also that you are afraid to feel it. Yah. Expose all the feelings. Right now they are powerful because they are in hiding, waiting in ambush, using the darkness you are providing. They can jump out at you at any moment and overpower you because you can't see them. Yeah. So if you give them darkness, they can only get stronger and bide their time. No. You must acknowledge those feelings, bring them into the open. In the light you can see them. And then you can discard them. So Andrew felt what he knew he felt. But now he felt it like it was something that existed, yes, but was not necessarily his. He could just pass it by. Andrew thought it had worked. Miriam did, too. She had let down her guard. So had he. So it was strange that suddenly -- (suddenly?) he was overwhelmed, as if he'd been hypnotized and given a post-hypnotic suggestion, by a desire he did not want to have. It was a hot August night. Miriam had flown with the children to her parents in Sussex for a fortnight, and he was busy at the office every day. He got home Friday after seven, having spent a very long day doing research and writing briefs in the Spenser trial, which was on the docket before Judge Hermandiez for the second week of September. You're wasting your time, darling, O'Brien said, leaning against the window and watching the sun set illuminating the glass panels of a skyscraper neighboring the one which housed their offices. Huh? Andrew said You're wasting your time. You'll never win this one. Whose side are you on? Andrew said with indignation. Everyone knows Hermandiez is a ball buster. Maybe, Andrew said. But, then again, maybe I got tough balls. Oh, butch! O'Brien cried. But, really, honey, you're a pussy. Exhausted, hungry, unable to shake off O'Brien's smarminess, when he got home, or was it just the heat? His mind was grinding on nothing, like the wheels of a car spinning in sand. Eating or resting, both impossible. He showered, shaved, toweled himself dry. He was pleased, turned on, at how good he looked in the mirror. What a fool he'd been in his twenties when he was still caught up in a superficial gay boy sensibility and thought that thirty-seven was old. He hadn't gone to The Web since, since he had tried to turn...to reestablish things with Miriam. But tonight, even as he drifted over there without being deliberate about it, once he was inside, he realized that a part of him had known all day long that that was where he was going to wind up. He went home with a guy named Max Harrison who lived in a high-rise off Ninth Avenue on Twenty-third Street. Harrison was a few years younger than Andrew, slightly taller than him, and well built, nicely muscled. His body was firm and hard. I'll give you a massage, Harrison said sensing the tension that prevented Andrew from responding to him. Lie down. Andy stripped down to his black boxer briefs, smiled, and then to nothing. He lay face down on a narrow bed in a long, narrow room painted maroon, lit only by candles. Harrison warmed some scented oil, lily of the valley, rubbing his palms together. He began with Andy's lower back, spreading out slowly gentle circles to cover his entire back with the kneading of his fingers, playing the cords of his neck as if he were fingering a recorder. And like a recorder, Andrew began to sing in long low moans the tune being played upon him, the song of desire and surrender. But before desire could peak or surrender become the erotic force that drives him into a wild kind of submission and reciprocation, he spilled himself in a slow and senseless ooze. I can't stay, he said, and fled, shirt half unbuttoned with shaking fingers, to the street in panic, although Harrison made no effort to detain him. It's okay, he said. Would you like some coffee before you go, but Andrew thought it was a trick, that Max could spike the coffee, and then, who knew what might happen? It would have been the end of it, and everything would have been fine, except for one thing which made the situation incomplete and therefore unfinished and therefore a dangerously, damagingly lingering one. He could not stop thinking about Harrison. Or, at least, his body could not stop. And whenever his body thought about Harrison he became furiously sexually aroused. When he went up to Harrison at The Web the next night when he was standing at the bar, Harrison snubbed him. It made sense. What else could he do? Andrew had walked out on him last night, left him high and dry. He was not a shrink or an eleemosynary institution for confused faggots. And he did not need serial blue balls. So he turned his back. It made sense. But, Andrew said, I'm really sorry about last night, and I want to try it again. What the hell do you think I am? Harrison turned from the torso and said. I know, Andy said. I freaked out. What's it to me? Harrison said. I don't force people to be with me, but once they do choose to be, I expect they want to, that they know what they are doing. I'm really sorry, Andy said, but I can't get you out of my mind. What do you want from me? Harrison said, amusement and disdain expressing themselves in his voice and on his face. Do you even know? I'm not sure I do, Andy said, but I know I can't get you out of my mind. Tell you what, Max said. I'll give you a second try, but there have to be some stipulations. Stipulations? Andrew said. Stipulations, Max repeated. You know what that means? I ought to, Andy said. I'm a lawyer. So much the better, Max said. Stipulations. Complete obedience, complete passivity, unconditional surrender. He sounded like the very devil extending his most alluring possibilities. And Andrew said he'd sign the contract. He meant it metaphorically, but the words felt eerie. Go home, now, Max said. What? Andrew said not understanding. Go home, now, Max repeated. But I thought... There's no need for you to think, Max said, gently, consolingly, as if speaking to a confused child. But nothing happened, Andrew said hoping that would be enough. It was almost true, too. It was not enough. Miriam crushed her cigarette out in the sea shell ashtray on her desk and exhaled a cloud of pungent smoke at the same time. What happened happened inside of you, she said. Whatever actually transpired is not important. What is important is... My god, Andrew shouted. You want to control every electrical impulse that tingles through me. I thought we had come to the point where you were able to acknowledge responsibility for your own behavior. He took a deep breath and he felt the isolation in his heart that he had been damned with from birth. And every time it had been succored, it was only temporary. But isolation was solid ground. Everybody else was a phantom you had to watch out for. He moped around the house when he was not at work. But at work, he felt himself in another world, free in the solitary of his active mind, formulating doctrines and making sense of human action through the mediating grill of the law, which, it seemed to him, was the only thing able to make experience sensible. I don't know what to do with you, she said. He shuddered inside and held the ears of his soul to keep his tranquility undisturbed, but listened with the ears of his mind to try and figure out how he could improve and prove himself more satisfactory to her. But sometimes he got tired of that and saw himself made up and costumed, serving in a candlelit chamber a beautiful boy who adored him, to whom he had surrendered his very soul. He had in a stupid moment, given one of his e-mail addresses to Harrison. I will expect you this Friday at 9:30 at the bar at The Web. That's all it said. Andrew was inclined to ignore it but was drawn to linger over the message and read it again and again. Miriam was irritable Friday morning as she was packing her small bag for a week in New Orleans where she was going for The National Book Association's annual convention. There were three titles, important books by important figures, a political memoir, a historical romance, and a critique of the policies of the present American government that she had particular interest in. She had shepherded them through printing and wanted to supervise how they were marketed, too. She ought to have been excited. But she was uneasy. She reviewed the possible causes, anxiety about flying, fear that her books would not be well received, the same misgivings she always had as a mother leaving the children for any length of time. Sure, all those were possibilities. But, no, it was Andrew. Something was unsettled. She could not put her finger on it. But there was something disquieting in the air between them. Oh, well, she sighed and cleared her mind. She was cheerful at parting when she got into the taxi for the airport, regretting that she had been irritable. Don't be too lonely without me. Don't let the kids run you ragged. Don't wear yourself out at work. Any do's? Do think of me when... She blushed. You know when. And don't you exhaust yourself either. The books are wonderful, and I know you'll be able to place them. He left her and picked the kids up from school and took them to the health food restaurant for dinner and read the next chapter of Silas Marner to them before bed. Once they were asleep, he mixed vodka and grapefruit juice over ice and sipped slowly as he looked over his e-mails. As if in a trance, he changed his clothes to an old, torn pair of jeans and motorcycle boots. He stood in front of the mirror trying to decide whether to put on a white sleeveless athletic shirt or a black one. He played idly with his nipples which seemed to stretch with undefined desire and stiffen. He chose a square-topped white tight-fitting top. Margie, he said, speaking into his cell-phone. It's Andrew. Is it ok if I go out for awhile and you keep an eye and ear open for the kids? Margie was a downstairs neighbor. She had a key to the apartment and often looked after the kids when Andrew or Miriam wanted to go out. Sure, she said. Mind if I go through your DVD collection. Not at all, Marge. Or if I fall asleep on your couch? Of course not. Thanks so much! There's some cold Raki in the fridge, too. It was chilly enough that he could wear his leather jacket but still not so chilly that you couldn't leave it unzipped. He was a little self-conscious about his nipples, but he also liked it, the way they pressed against the tight fabric. He breathed deeply and stretched his pecs upward. The smell of beer hit him as he pushed his way into The Web and over to the bar. Hello, Andrew said to Max. I want a vodka martini was all Harrison said, but it was clear he expected Andrew to bring it to him. Yes sir. Andrew had intended it to sound cheeky. But it didn't. It didn't sound anything out of the ordinary. Andrew came back with the martini for Max and had gotten one for himself, too. Harrison laughed and waved a finger. No, no, he said. That is not done. You don't get anything for yourself without getting my permission first. Andrew pulled a disbelieving face and Harrison said in a low voice, smiling, as if he were speaking of love, speaking slowly, if you're going to be my bitch, you're going to follow my rules. Put your drink down next to me. You drink if and when I say you do. By the time he left the bar, Andrew, with Harrison's permission had drunk enough martinis to make him stagger giddily. You really ought not drink so much if you can't hold it, Max laughed pressing him tightly to him, steadying him as they walked. But you said I could, Andrew teased back, looking into his eyes and stumbling because he could not see what he was doing. And do you do everything I say, Harrison asked with an amused grin. I do, Andrew said. I absolutely do. How do you account for that? Harrison taunted him. Because...just because. [When you write, please put the story name in the subject spot. Thanks.]