Mirrors of Narcissus (18 page)

I fought against the urge constantly. Each time I went I vowed it would be my last—and when I eventually shook off my qualms, I looked forward eagerly to the next time. Especially during periods of stress—during midterms, or while working on a particularly difficult research project—I would feel a queasy excitement in my stomach as I thought of the coming darkness. A visit to Nightworld was like a reward for my labors during the day; it was a way to unwind after a hard test.

During the day I was a serious student, asking the professors erudite questions, working hard on my essays. No one had the slightest idea that at night that very same student was down on his knees sucking dick. I couldn’t believe it myself at times, so great was the contrast between the two personalities I presented to the world.

The darkness gave Nightworld its glamour; it made me feel like an initiate in a clandestine society about which no one else knew. The daytime world held no sway there; the men cruising Nightworld had their own rituals, their secret signals. They were the sexual outlaws, the subversives who were covertly undermining the foundations of society, the kind of people I’d always identified with.

I was proud of my secret. It made me feel superior to all the people I was fooling. Little did they realize that I had a foot in both worlds, that I enjoyed the love of a very attractive girl, and at the same time, took pleasure in things she could never give me.

I liked to imagine heterosexual desire as something like a burning flame, stoked higher and higher until it became red-hot…blue-hot…white-hot, but the desire I felt as I prowled Nightworld was like a cold, pale rainbow flickering in a winter sky absolutely devoid of all heat—like the Aurora Borealis snaking silently in the Northern heavens.

Suddenly I heard a sound from outside. Someone else had come in. I sat with my heart pounding, waiting to see what would happen. With a bang, the door of the next stall opened, and someone sat down.

Through the hole, I could see my neighbor—or a part of him. He was sitting on the toilet seat just as I was. But it was only for a moment. He began undoing his jeans and pulling them down, until they were about his knees.

And then I felt my eyeballs grow hot.

Centered in the hole, framed perfectly, was an uninterrupted view of his dick. I couldn’t tear my eyes away, I was spellbound. Out in Nightworld, it was usually too dark to be able to see anything with such clarity. This was what I’d always fantasized about: being able to watch another boy’s dick to my heart’s content.

He brought his left hand up and began playing with it in a way which left my view unimpeded. I watched it swell out, then up.

This was nothing like the cloaking darkness of Nightworld, where every action felt like a dream, where I groped almost blindly to feel a shadowy hardness with my fingertips. Though the lights in here were dim, I could see everything.

I watched as his fist gripped the shaft and made the glans bob up and down as if nodding. Then he began delicately massaging his shaft as if he were signaling me with it. I liked the way he stroked, and felt glad to be able to watch him like this, with nobody to bother me. It was as if he were communicating to me silently, altering the pitch of his strokes, fondling his balls and angling his penis so that I could get a good look at it from all sides. He was stroking himself with teasing motions, luring me, enticing me. I had become the audience in the dark, the spectator in the stands. We were united by his performance. The hole in the partition between us was the only reality.

A violent trembling went through me.

Suddenly I realized what he was waiting for—and what the previous boy had been signaling. Feeling as if my limbs were metal-heavy, I reached my hand up to the hole and put my fingers through, drummed them on the partition on his side.

He stopped stroking and got up from his toilet seat to approach the partition. The next thing I knew, he’d come right up to the hole and pushed his dick through into my side, hard up and big. I reached my hand to grip his shaft. It felt nice and hard—just as hard as mine.

I began stroking him, feeling the warmth of him in my palm. I could feel him twitch in response, straining upward with each stroke. I bent down, bringing my face to his dick. For a moment I savored its nearness, feeling its heat against my cheek, smelling its spermy effluvium. Then I lowered my mouth over it, closing my lips over the throbbing glans, feeling it twitch upward at the contact.

I began sucking.

I sucked like a madman, forgetting everything. This wasn’t the hip-sashaying, fluttering, faggoty sort of thing I associated with queers—this was sex in the raw, a brutal transaction which gave me a deliciously perverse thrill. It was unfeeling and impersonal, but that was the beauty of it. Here I was in the shadowy world of piss-smelling couplings, a quick, lurid suck-off in a men’s room. I was doing what faggots are supposed to do. At this moment, I felt that all “feeling” sex was meaningless, was for sissies and girls. What I was doing was the action of a rebel outlaw. I felt one with the criminals and junkies of the old movies, those black and white film characters, tough-talking and brutal. At heart I was an outlaw and this proved it; I wasn’t bound by the laws and rules which shackled everyone else.

I had no idea who was on the other side of the partition. It could be anyone: a classmate, a teacher’s assistant, a campus worker, or someone who had no connection with the school. His face could be unattractive or he could be a beauty. But for me right now, his dick was Scott’s. For it was Scott’s dick I always sought whenever I went prowling.

Indeed, it could be said that all my wanderings and explorations ever since I’d first discovered my own sexuality had been but a search for Scott. These caresses with my lips and tongue were what I wanted to do for him alone. And the sad thing was, this hole might be the only gap I would ever find in the gigantic partition which separated us.

With the fingers of my right hand I fondled his balls, and felt the sac tightening, drawing his balls up against the base of the shaft, tiny and tight, ready to explode. With my tongue, I was making his dick dance and twitch. His glans was getting harder and harder in my mouth, swelling bigger and bigger.

I listened to a ticking sound as if it were a clock counting off the seconds before liftoff—it was his belt buckle tapping rhythmically against the partition. My face felt hot but my heart was oddly calm as I awaited his orgasm.

At this moment my pleasure was perfect. Nothing could have increased it or decreased it. The sound of the water dripping from the steam pipe behind me was as lovely as an echo in a cave.

*

Part Four: Ultima Thule

1

It was a clear night and the stars above us were brilliant in their icy splendor. Scott and I had just spent the evening in the undergrad library and were on our way back to the dorm. There were very few other people about and it felt wonderful to be walking like this, just the two of us. The winter term had just ended but the spring term hadn’t yet begun. No schoolwork needed to be done. We had just browsed and read the books we wanted to. Scott had been reading a book of interviews with writers, called
Writers at Work
, while I had been poring over a beautiful collection of antique maps which I’d discovered quite by accident.

I’ve always loved maps, especially old ones which depict worlds which have long since vanished. Even back in elementary school, I used to pore over the maps in my history books which showed the routes the European explorers had taken as they discovered the New World, the dotted lines of their passages hopefully reaching out into the Atlantic, curving timidly away as they approached the unknown. The world must have been so much more forbidding then, so much more exciting. Blank white spaces on maps indicated the Great Unknown. But as explorers gradually conquered the new lands, the unknown grew smaller and smaller, the whiteness giving way to all the colors of the colonizing nations like dye seeping into virgin cloth, pink for England, green for France, yellow for Spain, and blue for Holland.

We’d been walking in silence for some time when Scott abruptly broke my chain of thought.

“Guy, what’s been going on between you and Christine?”

Startled out of my reverie, I turned to look at him. “Nothing. Why do you ask?”

“Because it’s all so—changed. It isn’t like the old days.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well…Christine was talking about it with me.”

“She was?” I thought I detected an uncomfortable stir. It was obvious that he’d been trying to broach the topic with me for some time. “What did she say?”

“She didn’t go into much detail. But I sensed that something isn’t right between you two.”

I shrugged. “Maybe it isn’t.”

With a nervous look he said softly, “Christine thinks you’re seeing another girl. And she’s worried sick. She’s been worried for a long time now.”

I laughed.

“Guy, this is serious. I’ve been sort of delegated to—find out the truth. I don’t want to be a spy or anything so I’d rather ask you right out: is it true?”

“No. I’m not seeing another girl. No way. You can rest assured on that score.”

“Then is it something else?” He looked at me so trustingly that I was tempted to tell him the truth then and there. Seeing my dilemma, he pressed worriedly: “Guy, is something bothering you?”

He had a pained, sympathetic look on his face. I was touched by his concern. “Well, Christine and I are having some troubles.”

“A fight?”

“No, not exactly a fight. Just one of those things every couple goes through at one time or another. You’ll find out when you get a girlfriend.”

“I hope everything turns out okay for you.”

“Why are you so worried about what happens between us?”

“Well, you and Christine are so good together. I’d hate to see you break up.”

“Nothing is permanent, Scott. If a break-up happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. That’s all there is to it.”

He turned away from me, perhaps a little hurt by the callousness with which I’d replied. But I couldn’t help it. Something impelled me to make light of the whole thing.

“It’s almost like you wish it’ll happen, Guy.”

“That’s not true, Scott. I wish no such thing.”

We were walking along the sidewalk in front of the Arts Building, where normally at this time of night, denizens of Nightworld might be seen lurking in the shadows behind the statues. At the thought of their invisible presence out there, my body began to shiver, to literally tremble like a leaf.

“Scott, I feel like getting a hot dog. Do you think Doggie Diner is still open?”

“It should be. They don’t close until eleven.”

“Come on. Let’s grab us a bite to eat.”

“Sure.”

I knew that from where we were, a short cut to Doggie Diner would take us right through Nightworld. I led the way into the bushes beside the path, down towards the football field. “Come on. This is a short cut.”

“I’ve never been this way before, at this time of night.” He seemed anxious, even a little scared.

“It’s okay. You’re not afraid, are you?”

“No.”

Soon we were deep in Nightworld. It was a quiet night, but I detected one or two dark forms flitting among the trees down by the stream. Scott didn’t seem to notice a thing. He looked around. “Are you sure it’s safe here? I don’t want to get mugged or anything.”

“Don’t worry.”

I led the way further into the dark. He followed me, though I could sense he was uneasy. We were approaching the restroom behind the stands. I spotted something going on.

“Hold it.” I stopped as if I’d been startled. “Duck down. I think someone’s out there.”

“Who? A mugger?” He was really scared now.

“Get down and follow me. We haven’t been seen. Something funny’s going on out here.” I led the way to the rise from where I’d first spied on the restroom and all the action which had been my introduction to Nightworld. When we’d attained a good vantage point, I urged him with silent gestures to squat down next to me.

“Look.”

There was a boy standing in the doorway of the changing room, leaning back against the wall, all but hidden in the shadows. It was that beautiful youth of the starlit night. I could tell he was peering out into the trees below.

“Who is he?” whispered Scott.

“I don’t know. But he seems awfully suspicious just standing there. Let’s watch and see what happens.”

We waited for perhaps fifteen minutes until we heard some footsteps coming from the direction of the bicycle path. A man was approaching the boy in the doorway. It was that unattractive middle-aged man who had dogged the boy’s steps on that first night. I’d seen them occasionally out here, up to their old games. Now they were looking at each other without any sign of recognition, only an alert awareness. The man halted about twenty feet away, his silhouette blending into the shadow of a tree. No words were exchanged. Only silent looks.

And then the man went off under the stands and the boy followed. Since that first time, the boy had obviously relented a little in his coldness.

“What’s going on?” asked Scott. “Is it a drug deal or something?”

“Maybe. Let’s spy on them.” I led him quietly around to the south end of the field, from where we made our stealthy way to the grandstand. There was an announcer’s booth in the middle, about halfway up the central aisle. From inside it, by kneeling down and putting our eyes to knotholes in the wooden floorboards, we could clearly see the area below. I’d sometimes hidden myself in this booth just to watch the action that took place beneath the stands, and I prayed we might be able to get a good look tonight.

We did. Though it was quite dark, we could make out the silhouettes of the boy and man against the shadow of a support pylon. It was difficult to see exactly what was happening, but the movements of the shadows clearly implied a sexual exchange. The man was down on his knees and the boy had lowered his pants. By the whiteness of his skin, we could see that he’d bared his lower torso for the delectation of the older man.

“Good God! Do you see what they’re doing?” whispered Scott.

“Yeah.”

“They’re homosexuals!”

“You’re right. It sure seems the guy on his knees is blowing the other one.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here before they see us.”

“Don’t worry, they won’t see us. And what if they do? They won’t do a thing. They have a lot more to lose than us.” I felt excited by his excitement. As we continued to spy on the couple, I kept glancing at Scott, more interested in his reaction than in what was going on below.

“This is fascinating,” he said, his emotion making his words tremble. “I can’t believe it’s happening right here. I always heard about such things, read about them in books.”

Yes, the books I’d lent him. Recently I was much more bold about introducing him to works by gay writers, sandwiching
Naked Lunch
among other more innocuous books. I knew he’d read the “good parts,” but I hadn’t yet had the guts to question him about them.

There was a slight commotion below; the boy abruptly pushed away the crouching man and pulled up his shorts. He strode rapidly away while the older man slowly got to his feet and much more slowly slipped away into the greater darkness. Then silence once more—except for the steady throbbing of insect cries which suddenly seemed to get louder.

We waited for a while longer before letting out our breaths and sitting up. We got up from the floor where we’d been kneeling, and sat down on the announcers’ benches. From here we had a good view of the whole empty stadium. The brightly-lit field below looked ghostly and haunted, the brilliant green of the playing turf seeming to glow coldly like carved crystal under lamplight.

There was no moon out, and beyond the artificial lighting of the stadium, a velvety blackness seemed to be laid over the whole campus. The lights of the distant houses glinted coldly against the invisible hillside. I could hear, faintly, the music from someone’s stereo. Above us, the red and blue lights of a shadow airplane winked in the night sky, travelling slowly from west to east. It was like the beginning of time and we were two cave dwellers looking upon the universe and wondering what it was all about.

“This is amazing, Guy. Do you think it happens a lot?” I noted the excitement in his voice.

“I don’t know. It probably goes on a lot more than we think. They didn’t seem to be novices.”

“There was something cold about it, so mechanical. I wonder how many homosexuals there are in this school.”

“Enough, I’m sure. Some of them are really open about it, too.”

“Yeah. Sure is different from high school.” He seemed a little dismayed.

“Weren’t there any boys in your high school who were gay?”

“Well, sure. I mean, there were guys who were effeminate-looking, and everyone called them fags, but I don’t know if they were really homosexual or not. I think most of it was just malicious gossip.”

“Why? You didn’t think it was true?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I just didn’t
want
to believe homosexuals actually existed.”

“Why not?”

“It doesn’t seem right that there should be boys so pitiful.”

“Pitiful?”

“Yeah. In my school, there were bullies who got a big thrill out of picking on sissies. They were like savage animals acting out the law of the survival of the fittest. Actually, the bullies
wanted
to pick on weaker boys, so they invented any excuse. Homosexuality was a convenient one, that’s all.”

“Well, I think homosexuality is a topic a lot of boys don’t want to think about. Because they’re afraid.”

“It’s a common fear. I mean, a lot of guys are afraid they themselves might be one.”

“Sure. Everybody goes through a stage where they have strong feelings for another boy, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I was touched by his chaste honesty. He thought for a moment. “Now that you mention it, I had a sort of crush, when I was about eleven, on a guy in the neighborhood who was a great football player. We used to play touch football after school, and he was always the captain of one of the teams. I’d always wish he’d pick me for his side when we chose up. And when he did, I was happy for the rest of the day.”

“I had crushes on boys, too. I’ll admit that. And if other guys were more open with you, I’m sure they would confess to the same thing. It’s one of those things that happen when you go through a certain age.”

“You’re probably right.”

“But that doesn’t mean you want to sleep with another guy, right?”

“Of course not.”

“It’s every boy’s worst fear—that he might be secretly queer. But tell me the truth, Scott. Have you ever thought about it?”

“Well, yeah. I guess everybody does. At least as an abstract thought. It’s natural to flirt with the unknown, with the dangerous and forbidden.”

“Do you think you would ever do it?”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it, but—sure, yeah, I’d do it just once, maybe, for the experience.” His honesty thrilled me.

“That’s what a lot of people would say if they were as honest as you. Voltaire once said: ‘Once a philosopher, twice a pervert.’ In other words, trying it once is like an experiment—to see what it’s like, to satisfy your curiosity. But if you do it just one more time, it means you liked it—and that makes you a homo, a pervert.”

“What do the psychologists say, I wonder?”

“They don’t consider a person homosexual unless he’s had repeated experiences, and actively seeks them out. A lot of boys try it out, especially in their adolescence, but it doesn’t change their basic sexual orientation toward girls. Actually, I think everyone is basically bisexual. If there were a meter inside us measuring our sexuality, and one side was homosexual and the other was heterosexual, the needle would point somewhere in between for most people, either closer to the homo or the hetero side.”