I had often wondered, throughout the week, how early the sun actually rose in Luxor, as it had been light outside every morning when my alarm had wretchedly woken me at ungodly hours for our daily excursions. It was 4:17am when I startled awake from a fitful dream and it was dark outside.
It was our last full day in Egypt and for the first time since we had gotten there, I was free to get out of bed anytime I wished - before 10:00 if I wanted to catch breakfast. That thought was comforting, as I dreaded letting myself drift back to sleep. There had been a lot of yelling in my dream, loud, angry, vehement shouting directed at my brother Dustin and at other, less crisply identified, figures. In all likelihood, these shapeless recipients of my rage had been allegories or proxies of my mother. I resented feeling so predictable and letting the earlier conversation with my father affect me so. I closed my eyes and tried to wave off the nagging flash images of my dream and the lingering physical sensations of an imaginary throat ache and a less easily explained pang of claustrophobia. A fleeting yet brittle recollection of me lashing out at Adam during my nightmare shook my body awake again. It was 4:23 and it was still dark.
I looked through the window and saw a black starry night. I considered going to the balcony and use the cool air to clear my head, but put on some jeans and a t-shirt instead, and silently stepped out of my bedroom. The contact of the hallway carpet on my bare feet felt nice and somehow added a sense of illicitness to this still aimless stroll. It did feel like sneaking out, not unlike when I tiptoed out of my home to go to a bar or a party or to a girl's house. But I sensed that my cautiousness not to wake or alert anyone was intended to protect the solitary nature of my escapade. I wanted to roam around the hotel alone, not run into a fellow insomniac or a hotel clerk. As I came down the stairs toward the lobby, I noticed the reception desk was empty, yet the door behind it was wide open, leading to what looked like a brightly lit back office. There was a faint sound of Arabic coming from a radio. I quickly made my way outside, where the paved ground felt a little warmer than the cold marble inside.
I lay on the chaise which Adam had made a habit of occupying and took in the view and the silence. All the lights had been turned off, even those of the pool which had always radiated a warm yellow glow when I glanced at it at nights on my balcony. The moonlight was bright enough, however, to intrude on the night safe and comfortably. A little breeze made the plants and shrubs around me bristle sporadically, but the only sounds were those made by the creases of my jeans and the readjustments of my body to snugly fit into what I imagined was Adam's imprint on the chaise.
I thought about him, briefly. I may even have considered the ways to alert him of my presence and to beckon him. I couldn't quite throw pebbles at his window and I quickly realized I wasn't actually seeking his company, or anyone's company. I felt like I was reclaiming a sense of possibility and uncertainty in this hotel, in this foreign land. There was a great thrill, childish and absurd, to being alone in the dark, while everyone around was sleeping. A thrill that quickly became, as it does, forbiddenly erotic.
Jason had once claimed, as a way of justifying his very first, albeit tentative, grip of my dick during one of my sleepovers, that he sometime felt overwhelmed by his constant horniness. He professed an amazement at how, since he'd been thirteen years old, there was rarely a moment when he didn't think about sex, rarely a situation where he didn't find himself picturing the girls around him naked, rarely a time where he found himself alone and didn't feel the urge to use that opportunity to jerk off. I had expressed similar feelings and longings, even if I knew they didn't quite play out in such a seemingly permanent and ongoing manner. My horniness came in bursts – unexpected, clouding, and brutal. It was a frequently untameable little monster, but one that reared its head following a pattern and logic which were inscrutable to me. I could usually sense its coming, like a wave slowly taking shape as it moves towards you. And indeed, I usually braced myself to surf it with hankering dedication.
Predictably, I felt my cock grow, pulsating heavily and grating against my jeans. I placed my right hand over my crotch, softly, and concentrated on the feeling of the throbbing of my slowly forming erection. I watched my jeans bulge and felt a selfish anticipation of a truly personal pleasure coming ahead. This erection will be mine to dispose of, I thought, a little bemused. It had only been a few days since I had masturbated, but the last couple of times had already been for Adam or thinking about Adam or joined by Adam. This one would be mine and mine alone to dispose of. It was dark, I was alone, and I could conjure up any images, any man, any woman in my mind.
Sex with Adam had been astounding. We had thus far usually managed to meet up in the afternoon and late at night - in my bedroom usually, in our bathroom by the pool at times. He hadn't come by that night, however, and I was not unhappy with climbing in my bed alone for once. Two days ago, Adam had first said, as I entered him with panting determination, "I'm yours, Ben, I'm yours". Something he had repeated a few times afterwards, with varying tones in his voice. He whispered it when we stood next to each other at the buffet, he mouthed it when we swam past each other in the pool, he breathed it when he kissed me and hugged me tight on my bed – after talking to me at length, and rather incoherently, about his past, about his feelings, about what I seemed to mean to him.
"I'm yours", he had repeatedly said, yet it was my body who really seemed to belong to him. He looked at it, grabbed it, used it with a hungry and possessive eagerness - which actually seemed to turn my body into some kind of towering machine designed and purposed for his pleasure. It was an incredible feeling for a seventeen-year old: my arms, my legs, my cock all felt more adult and formidable than I had ever experienced. My erections were so powerful and my ejaculations so forceful that I often felt I would damage him in some way, bruise him or sully him; but he had instead reacted with increasing abandon and lustful fierceness to my vigorous fucking and thrashing around.
"I'm yours", he had repeatedly said, yet everything about him, his blushing glances by the pool, his clumsy discreet groping by the buffet, his voracious blowing in the bathroom, his raspy commands for me to cum all over him, his frantic speed at delivering scattered titbits of his disquieting affection for me, all seem to impersonate a primal urge to swallow me whole. His intensity was generally invigorating and flattering but, especially after my orgasms, it was also a bit suffocating and uncomfortable.
But this erection was mine, I thought, and I waved off all images of Adam as I unbuttoned my jeans. I was already regretting the prospect of climaxing fast, as the forbidden and dangerous aspects of jerking off in the open, surrounded by balconies, bedrooms and the Nile, were adding an urgency and intensity that would, I knew, rapidly build an uncontrollable ejaculation. I thought about other, previous forbidden and dangerous situations where I had impulsively masturbated and, as expected, I quickly started to feel an impending orgasm. I stood up and walked a few steps towards the pool. I stood on its edge; it was so dark, it seemed bottomless. Its infinite blackness felt like a hole attempting to vacuum me in. I started to cum and heard the sploshing sound of drops hitting the water. I couldn't see them sink, though I kneeled to watch, but I thought of them wandering around the pool, waiting for Adam to jump in tomorrow and splash around, his face warmed by the sun and his body encircled by cloudy little bales of my sperm. I thought of other men, all the other men in the pool whose legs and feet and asses might be similarly and tenderly soiled.
There was some cum left on my fingers. I looked at it and felt an urge, a last whim before my lustful recklessness evaporated, to lovingly smear the walls of the pool bathroom, our bathroom. I stood back up, a little disoriented, and made my way. With each step, however, that urge decreased along with the softening of my dick. When I reached the bathroom, I found its door locked.
* * *
I woke up past eleven; I hadn't drawn the curtains, yet the bright sun had failed to wake me. I scrubbed my eyes, showered, picked up a swim trunk and a tee lying on the floor, got dressed and headed down to the pool. My father seemed relieved to see me and greeted me with the warmest, most engaging smile. He handed me a shiny green apple: "I saved one for you from the breakfast buffet". I managed to smirk gratefully, struggling to fight haziness and crankiness. This was our last day here, I thought as I bit into the apple, glancing at Adam, glancing at the pool, remembering the previous night and my twilight sullying of its waters. I took a few steps away, towards the end of the garden, the gate and its latched door to the Nile. I watched the hills of the Valley across, eating the fruit with forceful bites. This was my last day here and I didn't know how to spend it.
I walked towards the bar to find a trash can and discard the core of the apple, looking at Adam watching me. There was eagerness and uncertainty in his eyes. The connection was brief, however, as Siobhan raised her head from her magazine and ostensibly pointed at one of its pages to her husband. Adam turned, dejected, and Siobhan flashed me an obnoxious smile. I felt really tired again.
"You should go have a swim", my father suggested. "It'll wake you. The water is cooler, because of yesterday's rain. It's quite nice."
I knew I could get away with sulkiness in the morning - my father had raised three teenage boys. "You have exactly one hour to become Mr Sunshine", I remember him telling Andrew when I was still a kid. "Until then, silence is tolerated, rudeness is frowned upon." Noiselessly and politely, I took off my t-shirt and flip-flops and dove in the cooling water.
I swam grazing the pool floor for the longest time I could hold my breath in, pushing myself around every time I reached one end of the pool. I came up for air, panting and slightly anguished. Adam was towering just above me. "Sorry. I wanted to dive in, but didn't want to hit you or scare you. You stayed an awfully long time down there", he said cheerfully, one tourist to another. He was blocking the sun, darkening his face and body with backlight. As my eyes adjusted, I realized I was staring at his stomach, where pearls of sweat were gliding towards the seam of his speedo.
"Yeah, sorry about that." I said, a little brisk, as I hauled myself out of the pool, brushing his hairy calves. "Go ahead. All yours."
Before he could take the plunge, he was pushed by Siobhan, who had sneaked behind him. He fell in the pool with little grace and an unattractive shriek, which caused his wife to laugh with an innocence and girlish spontaneity I didn't suspect she had. Her smile disappeared swiftly when she caught mine and she jumped in the pool, as an additional and firm request to leave her and her husband alone.
I lay on my chaise and let the scorching sun dry me. I dozed off for a while and woke up with a strong urge to use the bathroom. I resisted it, a little apprehensive about sending Adam the wrong signal. I was still a little cranky and was weary of his likely gushing. He seemed to be sleeping too, however, his book folded over his chest, with one hand clutching it, the other dropped on his side. I hurried towards the bathroom but, as I was washing my hand after using the urinal, he barged in.
"I missed you," he said, darting towards me and taking me in his arms. Within a few seconds, he managed to cup my face, kiss me, squeeze my crotch and place one of my hands on his ass.
"And I missed you last night too", he whispered to my ear.
"You didn't come", I said, pulling back.
"Well, no. I don't know, it seems you and your father were having a pretty serious conversation. And I didn't see any lights in your bedroom for a long time. And, well, I just fell asleep." He put his lips close to my ear again. "I've been pretty knackered after the last few days".
"Yes, it was probably just as well", I said, disentangling myself from him and moving towards the center of the room, closer to its exit. "My dad and I did talk forever. And I was probably not in the mood after all that."
"What did you talk about?" he asked, concerned. My face went blank and his went pale. "I mean, sorry, I don't want to pry."
"No, it's okay. We talked about my mother."
"Oh."
"Yes, oh." I had told him a little bit about my family situation, but hadn't gone into any specifics.
He took my hand in his hands and, suddenly and very briefly, I felt like melting, I felt like burying myself in his neck and rest my head on his shoulder, or on the light patch of hair of his chest.
"He basically wants me to forgive her," I said sternly, trying to hold it together.
"Did you?"
"No, not really."
"I understand."
"Do you?" I said, just a little too defiantly.
"Well, I guess I do. She must have had her reasons, but she still hurt you. She basically abandoned you."
"Then you don't understand, Adam. You don't understand her reasons and you don't understand the hurt."
"Okay, fine, I probably don't. All I'm saying is, somehow, it must have been really hard on her too. It must have been an awful situation for everyone involved."
"But see, that's the thing, everyone is trying to come up with some kind of excuses for her. I don't give a shit about that. Plus, I don't think her leaving is the worst part, but everyone is completely obsessed with that."
"What's the worst part?"
"I don't know."
"You don't?" he said, doubtfully.
"What pisses me off the most is when some friend of hers or her sister comes up with shit like `You know, it was very brave for a woman in those days to claim her life and her future' or `Sweetie, you have to understand that people make mistakes, they take the wrong path and it takes a lot of guts to say `enough' and to do what's right, even if it might hurt people and yourself'. And blah, blah, blah."
Adam was silent, obviously considering what he wanted to say, weary of my outburst. Rather tentatively, he started: "Well, I don't know, maybe when you get a little older, you –"
"Oh, come on. Please. Fucking please. I'm old enough to fuck your brains out, but I'm too young to see what kind of mess she is and always was?"
"I didn't mean it that way. I just -"
"I know. I'm sorry."
It took him a few seconds, and a few strokes on the small of my back, to break the silence. "All I'm saying is, people do things when they're very young because they think they're supposed to do them, they think that's what will make them happy, because, hey, it seems to be working for everybody else. How young was your mum when she left?"
"I don't know. Young."
"See," he said, relieved to be proven right.
"She is a coward and a selfish mess, Adam, she just is. I have no patience nor tolerance for that."
"I'm not sure I see it that way."
"Fuck, Adam, of course you wouldn't. Of course you wouldn't."
He was startled and immobile. I took his hand and led him out. "Come on, let's just go. It's creepy to be talking about this in a bathroom, with you having a semi-hardon to top it all." I attempted a reconciliatory smile.
"I have to see you, Ben. I miss you. I have to see you tonight."
"Sure."
"It's our last night. And we're leaving before dawn tomorrow. I don't even know your address or anything. I want to talk some more. And I want you. I'm all yours, you know that, right?"
"Yes, Adam, I do."
* * *
My footsteps led me towards the gate, towards the Nile. Lunch had been a rather silent affair, though I had made every effort to be attentive, considerate, and kind. My father had seemed content to watch me eat, to watch his seventeen-year old son take full advantage of the hotel buffet. He had commented on my tan, twice. He had looked happy.
I pushed the gate open, stepped down a few concrete stairs and found myself on the dirty footpath of the bank. A few Egyptians, lounging on the dock, alertly raised their head, and perfunctorily asked "Felucca? Felucca?". I blurted "Non, merci", then wondered why I thought French might be better understood than English.
I hadn't had a real purpose when I had decided to walk out of the hotel compound. I just needed to push that gate open and to be on the other side. Now that I was, I pondered my options. I really wanted to sit down and watch the Nile, but the footpath and its verges were dirty and inhospitable. The puzzled and weary stares I was getting from the Egyptian men, who had conspicuously stopped their conversation to watch me and my next move, made me turn right and start walking. The bank itself wasn't pretty or enticing, and the river seemed muddy and thick. You had to look slightly up and far ahead to unobtrusively take in the beauty of the place, of the hills gilded by an early spring low sun. I reached another small wooden dock, in front of a low wall and an iron gate similar to those of my hotel. I had obviously gotten to the adjacent compound, another resort whose imposing yet tacky entrance our bus had passed every time we drove to and from our excursions.
A couple of German tourists were climbing cautiously out of a felucca, repeating "shukran" to an effusive Egyptian, who was then slipped some money discreetly by the man, as if the tipping of a local was something distasteful from which he had to gallantly shield his wife. The Germans darted toward the closed gate, distractedly cutting me off. I decided to follow them, as if my destination had always been their resort. I made a polite gesture to let them pass ahead. The man was briefly puzzled, and suspicious, but when he looked up and down and saw my western clothes (and, probably, my light skin), he smiled courteously and said "Danke schön".
I nodded and followed them, mechanically, after the man had used his key to let us all in. The garden was bigger and lusher than the one I had just left; I quickly realized that the whole resort was probably at least twice as large as ours. It was more recently built, imposing and flashy, mixing awkwardly architectural styles that were thought to appeal to tourists: marble and tiles, stones and sandy concrete, columns and awnings, faux colonial and tawdry post-modernism.
The German couple was faster than my leisurely and uncertain stroll and they quickly disappeared ahead. I reached the pool, busy and swarming, and took a little time to find an empty chaise, in the shade and with a panoramic view of the vacationing crowd.
I made myself comfortable and fairly inconspicuous, and watched.
Ahead of me, sitting cross-legged and sideways by the pool, was a lifeguard. He was in his early twenties and extremely tan. His bleached and moist hair was pulled behind his ears and grazed the base of his neck; he wore the typical red-white short and tee combination, and had an ankle bracelet, a fat silver ring on a middle finger and a seashell necklace. He was chatting up a young woman in the pool, who had rested her elbows on its edge and looked up towards him, in awe. Within a few minutes, a few women, of various ages and physiques, passed by him and giddily greeted him. He greeted them all back with the same flirtatious, raspy cockiness.
To my left lay a greying man, probably in his late forties, early fifties. He was bulky, with a strong frame and a wide waist, his torso and legs displaying hulking yet softening muscles. He had the face of businessman with the body of a retired football player. He sat straight on his chaise, next to a much younger woman who was, interestingly, not as attractive as he was. Neither of them was reading or sleeping, they never exchanged a word, but traded affectionate glances, the young woman often placing her hand with cheaply painted nails on his thigh, rubbing it slowly and playing with its salt and pepper hair.
The lifeguard distracted me by rearranging his crotch with one hand, using the other to shield his eyes from the sun, as he looked up to talk in broken English to a young, giggling teenage girl.
To my right sat two young German men, who looked and behaved like college friends. The one closer to me was very tall, with broad shoulders and strong arms, a thin waist and long, gangly legs. He had a small face, relative to his large frame, deep-seated eyes covered by black-rimmed glasses resting on a big crooked nose. He had a mop of unruly black hair and was browsing distractedly at a sports magazine. He had placed his huge right leg on his bent left one, ankle on knee, creating an imposing and complicated sculpture of limbs, flesh and wiry muscles. His friend next to him was short, pudgy, sunburned, with reddish curly hair. He was sipping a beer and looking at women in the pool. I gazed further away when I saw him casually burp.
Further right was a French family. The wife, with her two little boys behind her, was nodding goodbye to her husband, as she carefully lay on the three empty chaises various items to mark her territory and deter any intruder to steal or occupy the space she was claiming for herself. The husband watched his family walk away and resumed the reading of his newspaper. He was, quite uncannily, a younger version of the man to my left, except for a neatly trimmed, dark ginger beard. He looked poised and handsome. He dropped his paper to the floor and placed both his hands on the back of his head. He closed his eyes and basked in the sun with a satisfied smile.
The lifeguard loudly highfived the teenage girl who then darted, with exasperation, towards her parents. His attention was quickly diverted to a middle-aged woman, with highlights and a tiny bikini, swimming conscientious laps by him. He offered her encouragements, in a voice both goodhearted and sleazy.
My mind veered towards sex.
I imagined the lifeguard being led by that woman, later this evening, towards her bedroom. She would be giddily inebriated, she would be sloppily ravenous as soon as they'd get in and she'd push him on the bed. He would fuck her, losing little time with foreplay. He would position himself so that he could watch his own reflection in the mirror. He would wonder, at some point while changing her position, if the drops of cum he had emitted on the carpet of that exact same bedroom, previously occupied by another woman whom he had also fucked, if these drops were still there, encrusted in the cheap fabric, if these traces of his presence would still be around when the season would be over, when he'd have to leave and figure out if a winter resort will have him, somewhere, doing something, until a new season started and new women booked a seat on a charter flight in the hope of being fucked by a young lifeguard with a dumb bracelet on his ankle.
I imagined the older guy when he first realized that the young woman besides him might be willing to do things, to say things, to feel things that his wife had lost sight of or interest for. The young woman looks like she could be his secretary. They must have exchanged looks at work, teasing and clumsy, for days, weeks, before he made a move. Or she did make the move, because he had a few doubts, questions, reserves. She wasn't as good looking as his wife was, when younger; she was not as good looking as his best friend's mistress (a waitress, a knock-out); she was not as good-looking as the woman with whom he had imagined (he had known) he would one day cheat on his wife. But he caved in one evening, after work, when she had suggested some drinks for happy hour. And he had been kissed, and blown, and fucked, and touched by that woman in ways he hadn't quite thought were possible. And he had felt stronger and sexier than he had been feeling in a long time. And he had left his wife and moved in with his secretary in a new place. And he bought her gifts and took her to Egypt. And still she kissed him and blew him and fucked him and touched him like she was a porn star. Like he was a porn star. He came twice last night.
I imagined the tall German student taking off his glasses and slipping down his boxers before inserting himself in his girlfriend, a girl he met in class, a girl his pudgy friend crassly teased him about, a wholesome girl who gave herself to him fairly quickly, too quickly perhaps for him not to wonder if she really desired him or just wanted a boyfriend, to wonder if his hours at the gym were not wasted on her (if these hours have a point at all), if his feet were not too big or smelly, if his dick was big enough (it was, and he kind of knew it and he kind of didn't). He was happy to have a girlfriend, he was happy to be able to fuck once a week, he was happy to tell his pudgy friend that eating her out is wunderbar even if he never quite got himself to go down there, he was happy and relieved that he had a sex life and his pudgy friend didn't, even if he felt awful at times about these feelings. He loved fucking his girlfriend because it felt splendid to be doing the things you're supposed to be doing when you're a man. He didn't know if he was good at it, and that feeling, whenever it crept up, always made him cum in premature and slightly panicked knee-jerk reflex. He liked using condoms because he liked buying them, or boorishly telling his pudgy friend to bring him some from the grocery store when it was his pudgy friend's turn to do the shopping. He hoped he gave his girlfriend orgasms and believed her when she told him he did. He could never find the words to aptly describe, to her, to his pudgy friend, to himself, the mind-blowing sensation that his own orgasms jolted violently inside his tall, wiry, muscular body.
I imagined the French man with a masturbation addiction. He loved his wife and didn't desire any other woman, not really, not any real woman, not any woman he'd actually meet and who would actually be someone better than this wife, someone with a life better than his. He had a masturbation addiction and it was fairly new and rapidly growing. Not a recurring addiction he had previously suffered from (perhaps when he was fifteen, thought he was a normal teenager, he liked to think), nor an addiction that made him unhappy or anxious or guilt-ridden (not more anyway than the usual amount of feeble guilt he thought a married man carries, a man who made vows but who can't help secret and lonely erections). The addiction got the better of him, sometimes; it wasn't just a thingee anymore, something he had been relieved to see taking shape, complementing and merging with his healthy, even if a little cursory, marital sex life. But it still made him happy and made him smile. It made him reckless and he liked it. He jerked off at work in the office bathroom, he jerked off in his car (he once did it while driving, on a freeway at night), he jerked off in the middle of the night at home, locked in the downstairs bathroom; he loved jerking off in hotel rooms when he was out of town paging through porn magazines he bought at the local airport, magazines he never quite knew how to discard when leaving the hotel. He really loved jerking off during his jogs in the morning, when he'd go off the path, into the wooded area and masturbate behind a tree and cum with a just a few tugs because he'd been so aroused just thinking about that prospect when he walked out of his house and started running.
Are we all doomed to the terrible ordinariness of our sex lives? We are merely getting through our day, being a man, permanently negotiating the present and future contractual relationship with our dicks, our desires, our weaknesses, our humanity.
Then he looked at me. The lifeguard was scanning his surroundings, bored and vapid, and his eyes locked with my vacant gaze. I held his stare, flustered but resolute. He pouted and winked, quickly, subtle and silly. He looked away and yawned, theatrically, showing off his muscles and basking in his own beauty. He was preposterous and narcissistic, I thought, and I knew that a similarly preposterous narcissism must have been apparent to any attentive onlooker when I was myself performing my mating dance around Adam.
I felt a hardness growing. I smiled. It wasn't a shift of label or sexual assignation, it was a shift of perspective.
I imagined the lifeguard with the middle-age woman with the tiny bikini, panting after his orgasm, looking straight at her ravished face and telling her, winking, "Next time, we'll have your husband join us". I imagined fucking him in a broom closet and getting caught by one of the other women he'd had sex with the previous week.
I imagined fucking the older guy, in his own bed, while his secretary second wife was away. I imagined getting so wild on him that his mind and sexual psyche went through a second revolution, shattered again by the possibilities, the options, the rabbit-hole potential offered by his body, all of its flesh and orifices.
I imagined fucking the German guy and making him feel beautiful, making him want to fuck his girlfriend again, but better, making him want to find better friends, making him want to fuck better women.
I imagined running into the French man in his woods, making him startle just as he ejaculated. I imagined him so tantalized that he'd come back to the same spot the next morning, hoping I'd be there again, watch him again. I imagined getting into a game of dare with him, pushing him to jerk off in increasingly dangerous places and tell me about it the next morning, behind our tree. I'd make him bring proofs, I'd push him for more details, I'd make him drunk with his own horniness.
I wasn't self-inflated enough to think I could actually achieve all that subversion. But I realized the mesmerizing allure of the fundamental disruptions that adult sex has the potential to bring. Sex is a beguiling little monster, which feasts on breaking in the orderly arrangement of our desires, like barging in and thrashing about the neat and stuffy storage room of our expectations.
I wanted to walk to the other side of the pool, to other pools, to other hotels, to other cities. See the world and listen to the men. Hear their stories and disrupt their narratives, my narrative. I wanted to go home.
* * *
My father filled dinner with slow retellings of familiar personal anecdotes. He steered clear from my childhood, my mother, my brothers. Safe territory. At some point, he quickly retreated from venturing into a comparison between our trip and the one he'd made with Andrew ten years ago. He indulged in his endless fascination with the Clintons ("I greatly admire both of them individually, but I can't tell if I love them or hate them as a couple. Isn't that odd?" It wasn't.) He gave me updates on the marital woes of his childhood friend. He came back to the Clintons ("I wonder if you guys will one day be known as the Clinton generation? We liked to think of ourselves as the Kennedy generation.")
All I offered and contributed was silent attention. I wasn't petulant nor sulking, but all my energy and focus seemed allotted to and depleted by two other concerns. For reasons I couldn't fathom nor escape, I found myself avoiding Adam, dodging his glances and timing my trips to the buffet as to not coincide with his. I felt cruel and callous, and when our eyes did lock for a second, I submitted a merciful smile. But my mind was mostly reeling back to the conversation my father had dragged me into the previous night, back to the misgivings it had exposed and the omissions it had generated. I had disciplined myself into silence the evening before, I had managed all day long to not let myself be engulfed in the loop of self-analysis, chastisement and resentment. Listening to my father during our last dinner in Luxor, I wanted to scream at him, to hug him and to shake him. I wanted him to hold me and to let me go.
I did not resent my mother for leaving us, for leaving me. Not really, not significantly. It happened when I was very young (which some people have used both as a mitigating and an aggravating circumstance), but her presence had never been a stabilizing or appeasing factor to begin with. My father ordered and structured our home life without our mother, he gave it purpose and meaning. Peace, calm and predictability settled in our house after she left, like the dust on the desk in what used to be "her study". Her leaving was a source of puzzlement, of course, for me and for my classmates; it was a source of embarrassed mushiness and protective effusion, often, from my teachers, neighbors and family friends; but it was also a source of tranquillity, of routine, of quiet domestic bonding. The concern from strangers and the tender nursing from my family made this very conclusion subversive and untoward, they made it ungrateful, incongruous and insensible to express.
"How is your food?" my father asked.
"Not bad, thanks".
I did not resent my mother for leaving, not really. I resented her deeply, seethingly, for her insistence to stay, virtually but effectively, in our lives, under her terms, her needy and changing and egotistic terms. My mother had decided at some point that my approval, my forgiveness, my co-optation to her choices was paramount to her own happiness. She never expressed it in those terms, of course. She was usually anything but subtle, but in her strategy to win me over and pulverize her guilt, she was fairly cunning. She had vocalized, much earlier than was appropriate, reasonable or healthy, her conviction that I was "such an adult already", that I was "wise beyond my years", and that I, "of all people", would understand what she was going through. I was indeed old enough to think her fairly pathetic for thinking of a ten-year old as someone who "gets her". I was too young to grasp the implications and consequences of these hour-long one-sided monthly phone conversations or the semi-annual visits to wherever she was then living ("You understand what I'm trying to build here, don't you? I know you do".)
"And yours?" I asked my father, suddenly aware of the silence.
"Not bad. Though I can't say it's what I'll miss the most from our trip to Egypt."
I did not resent my mother for leaving, not really. I resented her for making me gradually an accomplice to her failures, for sharing with me the responsibilities and endeavors integral to her elusive and delusional quest for self-realization. She relentlessly tried to make me an emissary to her sister, a women I deeply adored, with the impossible task of explaining her current circumstances and assuaging concerns or disappointments ("She'll listen to you"). If I wasn't at home when the unpredictable and infrequent caprice to call me took her, she would usually attribute to my absence unfortunate consequences ("Well, without your advice, it figures that I made the wrong choice and called him back."). Worst and most aggravating of all, she always ended our phone conversations and our hugs goodbye at the airport with "Take good care of your father". This always jolted me into brief terror, into sadness and into repressed yet simmering anger. I panicked at my ability to provide happiness to my father, I was distressed by the thought that he might be hiding a need for me to do so, I was quietly furious at her for burdening me with this spousal task.
"I think I'll have just another glass of wine. Do you mind?" my father thought out loud.
I didn't remember, at first, the episode of the changing of our locks. It came back to me as my father reflected on it. He thought I was afraid she wouldn't be able to get in if she ever decided to come back to us. I wasn't. I had briefly, childishly, been worried that she might come back and would get angry at the changed locks and would somehow blame me. That irrational fear had passed in a flash. My father, however, still remembered that momenthe still carried the weight of the misreading.
"Oh, hello!" my father said brightly. I looked up from my plate and saw Siobhan and Adam stepping awkwardly towards our table.
"Sorry to interrupt," Siobhan said. "We're leaving tomorrow very early and I just wanted to say goodbye. It's been lovely meeting you, Richard."
My father stood up, flustered, and I followed his lead. Siobhan did not address me and dropped a limp hand in mine.
"It was a pleasure meeting you both, indeed," my father replied, with a faint trace of British accent.
Siobhan, save from one fleeting moment of trembling warmth when shaking my father's hand, was formal and resolute; she seemed intent on making a point, though I wasn't sure what it was. There was assertive bravado, there was a subtle hint of vindictiveness too. She made her goodbye sound the way some people do: definitive, finite, irrevocable. Adam looked beautiful and lost, he uttered his goodbye with a gentle and expectant voice. Then they were gone.
We took our seats back in awkward silence. I stood back up and went to get a fruit. When I walked back to our table, my father looked sweet and concerned.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, of course," I replied. Then, seeing that my answer hadn't fully satisfied him, I added "I'm just sad we're leaving. It was a wonderful trip."
"Yes, it was." He looked searchingly in my eyes. "You know I love you," he said, putting his hand on mine. I felt the infinite goodness of his heart.
I had cried a little, the previous evening during our conversation. I had cried because, just for a moment, I thought he knew me so little, he knew so little about me.
I had cried because, absorbed as he was by my relationship with my mother, he had failed to see that my primary concern, loyalty and empathy was, and always had been, for him.
* * *
I didn't turn the lights on in my bedroom. I didn't move the curtains. I undressed to my t-shirt and boxers in the corner by the desk, away from the window, I brushed my teeth in the dark. I didn't leave the door ajar, I shut it and locked it.
I lay still on the bed, above the covers, my legs paled by the moonlight. And I heard a faint rattle at the door. Then the knob shook a bit, then more vigorously.
"Ben? Benjamin?" I heard Adam whisper.
I froze and shut my eyes tight.
I heard a soft thumping on the door. Adam bit his nails to the core, I remembered. Fingers without nails make a distinctive noise when rattling on a door.
I heard him retreating, with careful steps. Then, barely a few minutes later, he was back.
"Ben? I know you're there," he said, still whispering. "You must be. You're not by the pool, you're not in our bathroom. What's going on? What are you doing? Ben?"
I feared the loud beating of my heart in the noiseless room was giving me away. Perhaps it was, as Adam's voice didn't betray any doubts about my presence.
"What are you doing?" he repeated, plaintively.
Then there was silence. Instinctively, I got up slowly from the bed and stepped carefully in the little entry leading to the door, as if getting closer might give me reassuring confirmation of his departure.
"Ben, please open the door", he said, with a slightly louder voice.
I sat on the floor and looked straight ahead, beckoning him to go away, to leave me alone.
"Ben, don't do this to me. Not now, not you. Please, don't do this to me." He was crying.
I could barely breathe, my head felt dizzy. I heard his body limply dropping to the floor and his forehead slowly and softly banging against the door.
"Not now, not you" he seemed to be chantingly lamenting. At one point, he also mumbled "I don't even know your name, I don't know where you live." But it was mostly silence and, repetitively, "Not now, not you."
I was chanting on my own, but wordlessly. Go away, Adam, please go away. You've made the wrong choices, you are everything I don't want to become. Don't make me a part of this. Save yourself, Adam, I can't save you. It's not for me to save you. Don't put this on me. Save yourself.
Adam was then completely silent, but he was still there. I could hear him readjust his body to be more comfortable. I could hear him touch the door, once or twice, as if his palm was caressing the veneered wood. I could hear sniffing, but his tears seemed to have stopped.
I lay on the floor, a few feet away from the door, and curled up. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go back to my life and to what lay ahead in the coming weeks and months. I wanted to go back to my books and exams, to my girlfriend troubles, to awkward and potent glances from men on the bus, to the simple of joy of scavenging with Jason our favorite record store in the hope of finding new imports of Oasis and the Happy Mondays. I wanted to go back to planning for the summer and rejoicing for the fall.
I fell asleep, after a while. I didn't hear Adam leave. My eyes opened at some point in the early morning; the sun had risen but its light was still feeble. My body ached and I sleepily stood up and headed for the bed. My father knocked on my door at 9:00am; it was time to pack and leave. I rubbed my eyes, went to the window and saw an Egyptian lady tidying Adam's balcony.
* * *
You do learn from life, obviously; you are taught or self-taught lessons. They come gradually. I learned mine when thinking and doubting in college rooms, yearning and hoping on beaches and mountains, holding hands and breaking hearts, disrupting and mellowing, and packing and unpacking an increasingly large amount of very personal belongings. You know you've learned some lessons when you start, indeed, to show empathy, out of curiosity at first, out of care later, when you start writing in the present tense.
Siobhan must have had a Callum; I reconstructed a Philip for Adam. They had to be people who were left, alone or behind. Otherwise, why would one be angry or scared or expectant? Where is the hope when there is no ache, where is the redemption when there is no wrath? We all have to leave something or someone behind, something or someone that stalled us, stunned us, shunned us. We must leave it behind in order to move forward and on. This is how I started to think of adulthood, this is what makes the difference between where you're found and where you're headed.
Dear Adam. I imagined and I wrote that you wanted someone to carry you somewhere new, nice and lovely. I hope someone has. You're now twenty years older. So am I. The recklessness and the arrogance of youth is the conviction you make a difference, that you have an impact. And yet. There are days, such as this one, Adam, when on an ultimately predictable bout of conceit, I do want to see you again, grab your hand and take you somewhere new, nice and lovely. The recklessness and arrogance of ageing is believing people forgave you when you think, you hope, you have forgiven yourself.