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I noticed him before he noticed me. He couldn't have seen me when my eyes first landed on him; he would have if he had slightly turned around, if he had felt my gaze upon him that first time, and if my gaze had stirred him into glancing shyly, intensely, blushingly back at me, like he would on so many occasions in the few days that followed.
He was tentatively applying some sun cream on the very pink back of his wife, displaying his own slightly pink one for me to see, despite the blinding, slowly setting sun of a late afternoon, at the poolside of a small resort on the Nile, where I had just arrived.
My father was taking care of the formalities required to finally check us in, after a long and exhausting trip from Philadelphia. I had headed straight to the pool, calmly disguising my eagerness to discover for myself what my father had excitedly raved about: a U-shaped building around a beautiful swimming-pool, right on the bank of the Nile, overlooking what could be the Valley of the Kings - or what you could imagine was the Valley of the Kings, if you were so inclined when relaxing on a chaise turned toward the view, with the post-colonial architecture of an upscale hotel left behind you.
The place was astonishingly beautiful and quiet. I relished my dad's preference for this smaller, British-oriented hotel rather than the large, bloated international resorts at which our van had made stops on our way from the local airport. There was a subdued elegance to this place and the fact that it seemed to have known better, more glamourous days when the prices of flights to Egypt had been more of a deterrent to the masses, gave it an added layer of faded charm. There were a few people lounging by the pool, most of them dozing, reading or silently sunbathing. The only noises, faintly shrilling, were coming from this woman with a very pink back, who seemed irritated at her husband's clumsiness with the lathering of sun cream – his gestures made all the more irrelevant by the fact that his wife was already well burnt and by the somewhat late time in the day. They were both in the late twenties, much younger than most of the guests I could see; she sounded British and they both seemed unhappy.
I heard my father's voice calling me from the lobby behind me. Our rooms were ready. They were next to each other, on the third floor, the top floor of the south wing. Each had a balcony overlooking the pool, facing the other leg of the U. But when you sat down on one of the two small wicker chairs, turned it sideways, rested your feet on the other chair, and relaxed, you were facing the Nile and the setting sun.
I was seventeen, about a month away from my eighteenth birthday, half a term away from high school graduation. My father had taken my brother Andrew to this very same hotel ten years before, to the day. With each of us, he wanted to properly celebrate the "end of an era", as he called it. He was already planning my younger brother Dustin's graduation trip ("Though I can't quite come back a third time in Luxor, can I? I mean, these beautiful ruins don't change that much, do they?"). His trip with Andrew had been an intense bonding experience for both of them; it was the first time they had found themselves alone together, at least since my father had remarried, many years before, after the early death of Andrew's mother.
My father was never one to hide his excitement or elation. He had been planning this trip for months, drawing me in as much as he could in all the logistics and planning. There hadn't been much to do, however, as once the flights and the hotel were booked, the week planned itself quite obviously: the hotel offered morning excursions to all the sites of the areas, all you had to do was to tell them which ones you were interested in joining. My father wanted to do them all and many Sunday nights of that winter had involved the browsing of the photo albums he had lovingly and assiduously put together when he had come back from his trip with Andrew. My father's planning was thus mostly desultory: he voiced his firm intention for us not to miss this or that king's tomb while in the Valley for instance, and I kept silent my conviction that our guide was bound to have included them on the planned tour anyway.
My father's gleeful anticipation was touching. Yet I found myself resisting his efforts to drag me close and found it difficult to express a similarly joyful anticipation when looking at maps and at pictures of Andrew as a broadly smiling youth. I was not a demonstrative teenager, but I knew that my reluctance was mostly due to the ardent yet implicit wish of my father to replicate with his second son the emotional connection his first trip had cemented with his oldest. The pressure was a little daunting, however much I loved my father – and I did, tremendously and wholeheartedly, ever since my mother, his second wife, had taken off when I was five, left us behind, and started her geographical and personal meanderings.
But my preoccupations were elsewhere: I was soon to graduate high school, enter college in the fall and, just a couple of weeks before we left for Egypt, I was dealing with the repercussions of my callous behavior. My girlfriend of six months had found out I had repeatedly cheated on her with a cool, unruly, magnetic young woman who attended the community college across the street from our school. The drama and her long monologues that ensued were draining, even if legitimately inflicted. In retrospect, they may very well also have been a slightly welcome distraction from the nagging unease and confusion ignited by recurrent evenings of masturbation with Jason, my friend from soccer practice.
I heard the shower running in my father's bathroom next door. I lit a cigarette and leaned on the rails of the balcony, taking in the view and the scene around the pool. People were starting to pack their things, as the early April sun sets somewhat early and as the hotel, to accommodate its mostly British clientele, had set dinner time at 6:30. I watched the previously bickering couple. She was putting her light summer shirt back on, cringing with the obvious pain caused by the contact with her sunburned skin. She shoved him with little affection, signaling him her intention to leave. He moved slowly and reluctantly, rubbed his eyes, looked around him, yawned, rubbed his eyes some more and, looking up distractedly, saw me. I looked away, back to the greenish color of the river and the golden sand of the hills across. When I looked back in their direction, they had gone.
We got to the restaurant later than most of the other guests; we were shown to our table, one that seemed to be assigned to us for the whole of our stay. The atmosphere was quiet, a hint of sophistication given by the uniforms of the waiters that reminded me of those I imagined were worn on cruise ships in the thirties. I was wearing an oxford shirt and felt suitably fitting in the surroundings, even if I sensed a slight of unease at the very bourgeois conventionality I had so quickly conform to.
I quickly noticed the young couple occupied a table close to ours, but my father had taken the seat facing them. I occasionally tried to concentrate on catching the kind of conversation they might be engaging in, but despite the relative quiet of the room, I concluded I was either too far from them to hear anything distinctly or they were immersed in a version of silence that would be left to interpretation. I was at the appetizers' buffet when they were perusing the dessert table and I got my first good look of them both.
She looked rather wholesome, with long, permed, dark ginger hair. She had a light dress, flowery but rather bland, with thin straps that displayed her burned shoulders. She wore little make-up and her face betrayed nothing but her irresolution at choosing the dessert that would bring her the satisfaction she seemed frowningly to yearn for. Her face, patchily reddened by the sun, seemed to promise sparkling blue eyes and a delightful smile, but was too tensed to deliver on either. She was rather petite, but exuded strength, even some harshness when she waved off the tentative efforts of her husband (I presumed they were married) to help her choose among the tantalizing display.
He was rather thin, just below average height (or was it his demurred demeanor when dealing with his wife that shrunk him slightly?). He had light brown hair, carefully and neatly slicked back. Strong cheekbones, a face both masculine and delicate, thin lips and thin eyebrows. His dark polo-shirt and light khakis made him look like many men I'd pass by in a mall in the Philly suburbs, but the little I caught from their curt conversation confirmed that they were both definitely British. His whole demeanor seemed caring and warm, but clumsy and gauche, as if apologizing for a slight he hadn't yet committed.
I thought briefly how they were both potentially beautiful individually, but how, together, they mutually quash any shy surge of sexiness.
"What are you staring at?" my father interrupted.
"Nothing. The dessert table."
"Cornucopia, he?"
"Yes, Dad," I replied, touched by his persistent appreciation of somewhat obscure words and by his obvious delight and pride brought by my understanding them.
On my way back to our table, I nearly bumped into the husband, who was concentrated on his small plate overflowing with an assortment of desserts. Our eyes locked. He blushed. I smiled. He blushed some more.
Dinner was lovely. My father and I easily found a nice groove to our conversation. He insisted I have a glass of red wine with him, as had been the custom of our Sunday night dinners for the past few months. "This week, every day will be like Sunday". I told him this was pretty much the name of a not-so-happy song by The Smiths, but he stared at me blankly. We reminisced a few trips we had taken together, he and "his three boys", over the previous years. He shared his joy to be "on another continent again" and to be with me here. "This means a lot to me. You know that, Benjamin, right?" He called me Benjamin only when the matter was important ("Benjamin, we need to talk about your mother, I think", "Benjamin, there is a letter from Princeton on the dinner table", "Benjamin, do you think your younger brother is happy?"). "It means a lot to me too, Dad," I managed to mumble, genuinely. I raised my glass, with a tiny drop of red wine left, a gesture that seemed to bring him close to joyful tears.
We had an early rise the next day and didn't linger much longer in the restaurant. Back in my room, I went straight to the balcony to smoke a cigarette. The lighter flickered a tiny bright light in the otherwise dark setting. The pool was dimly lit and, except for a couple of bedrooms which had the lights on behind the curtains, most of the guests seemed to have decided on an early night as well. But I saw a figure slightly moving by the pool. The British man was alone, sitting on a chaise, sipping a beer, and looking pensively straight ahead, towards the Nile bank. He briefly glanced up in my direction, as he must have heard the sound of the lighter, or seen its glow. I briefly felt like going back inside, embarrassed to intrude on his privacy. But he looked away again and didn't seem intent on shortening his introspective break.
There was something sad and moving about the sight of him; yet I felt the pangs of something altogether quite different. I wanted him to look at me again. I found myself inhaling and exhaling smoke a little louder than would be natural, moving the wicker chair to create the noise necessary to remind him of my nearby presence. I stared at him the whole time, but, despite some flickers of movement, some aborted tilts of his head towards me, our eyes didn't meet again. He stood up and left just as I was finishing my cigarette.
I went back inside, undressed and brushed my teeth. Facing the mirror with just my boxers on, I felt the urge to jerk off. This was more than a daily occurrence, common enough that I never stopped to think about its motivations or origins. It was usually dealt with swiftly and efficiently. Indeed, that night too, a few tugs were enough to bring me to climax, angling my body to neatly release myself in the sink. I rinsed it all, splashed some cold water on my face and headed to bed.
As I was about to shut the curtains, I saw across the pool, on the same floor as mine, but slightly to the left, a bedroom that wasn't lit earlier. The British man was standing on his balcony, the backlight making his face inscrutable but his posture suggesting he was looking at my window. I froze briefly, then, almost hypnotically, I lowered my boxers slowly, took them off and stood naked, facing him, the faint throbbing of my still semi-hardon as my only movement. I stared at him, for ten, maybe twenty long seconds. I went to turn out the lights and, with him still immobile, I shut the curtains, putting a quite theatrical end to my brief performance. Despite my heart pounding, despite the jetlag, I fell asleep quickly.
Next chapter coming up soon.
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