Mirrors of Narcissus Read online

  MIRRORS OF NARCISSUS

  Guy Willard

  * * *Clam Press * * *

  Part One: Axis Mundi

  1

  They were out there again today. I could tell by the way their curtains twitched. I’d never seen their faces, but I knew there were two roommates in the women’s dorm across the way who watched me regularly.

  Without closing my own curtains, I put my books on the desk and stripped down to my T-shirt and briefs. Then I pulled the dumbbells out from under the bed. Usually I worked out with them every day after my last class for about fifteen minutes before taking a shower.

  I stood in front of the mirror atop the dresser and began curling the weights alternately to my shoulders in sets of fifteen. I’d always worked out in front of a mirror to better enjoy the results of my exercise: the blood rushing to the muscles engorged them, filling them out sexily and making me look brawnier than I was. But ever since I’d noticed my secret admirers across the way, I’d angled the mirror so I could see their window reflected in it. I didn’t mind being watched at all.

  Finishing up my sets of curls, I set the weights down for a moment. Under my T-shirt, I could feel my pectorals hard and tight. I switched my grip on the weights and commenced my next set of exercises. With both dumbbells resting on my shoulders, I lifted the left one straight up, then lowered it, simultaneously raising the right one. I continued pumping them in this fashion—left, right, left, right—my elbows pointing straight outward from my body.

  I was breathing in through my nose, blowing out loudly through my mouth. In the mirror, the dark pink of my nipples was faintly visible beneath the white cotton of my T-shirt. I set the weights down again and wiped my hands on my shorts. Then I started in on some exercises designed to build up my triceps.

  As I gazed at my reflection in the mirror and, beyond my reflected shoulder, at the girls’ window, I imagined them kneeling down to spy on me from their posts behind the curtains. To know that I had an audience, however secret, added to the pleasure I got from working out. I even went to the trouble to give my voyeurs a little extra something for their pains.

  The work-out had caused my T-shirt to become drenched with sweat. I tightened my abdominal muscles to make my chest look even bigger, stretching the fabric tighter against my skin. Then I gripped the bottom of the T-shirt with both hands and slowly pulled it up over my head. I wiped my face with it, then casually walked over to the window with my bare chest exposed, continuing my work-out with the dumbbells there, pumping them until my muscles were so engorged with blood that the veins were popping out, and a sheen of sweat had covered the surface of my skin.

  Sometimes I wondered if the girls knew I was performing for them. It would be dangerous to make it too obvious, for one boy in our dorm had been expelled from school for exposing himself from his window. I’d never pulled off my briefs with the curtains open, because I knew that the sight of me walking around in only my shorts was more than enough for my voyeurs. Anything more would be too much—for my purposes as well as theirs.

  I whisked the curtains shut and stepped out of my shorts, then dumped them, along with the wet T-shirt, into the laundry hamper. Just as I stepped into the showers, I heard the door to the hallway open. In a moment, the shower door was opened, and Jonesy, my roommate, popped his head in. “Hey, Guy,” he said. “Didn’t know you were in.”

  I could tell by his expression that he had a girl with him. “You’re back early.”

  “You gonna be studying here?” he asked. This was our secret signal that he wanted to use the room for a while.

  “No. I think I’ll use the library this afternoon.”

  “Great. Because I’ve brought a guest in.”

  He shut the door and I began taking my shower, wondering what kind of girl he’d brought in this time. He went out drinking almost every night at Erewhon, a disco just off campus well known as a good spot to pick up girls. I would sometimes kid him later about his taste in women, and he would confess to me with a grimace that they’d looked so much better the night before, when he was drunk. But he really didn’t care how they looked, so long as they put out. He often said he would be content to put a bag over a girl’s face, as long as she had what was necessary down below. I think he secretly enjoyed bringing home girls who were easy lays—it verified his low opinion of women in general.

  When we’d first met, he’d made it clear that there had to be some system for bringing girls to the room. There wasn’t much space for privacy. We shared a single room with a large closet to the left as you entered, and a shower room to the right. Against the far wall, beneath the one window, were our two beds, convertible to sofas during the day. We each had a dresser beside our beds, and a study desk next to that.

  Theoretically, the left side of the room was my half, and the right side Jonesy’s. A folding partition could be pulled out to separate the two sides for privacy, but we never used it—and neither did anyone else in the other rooms.

  In my part of the room, I had a small refrigerator in which I kept soft drinks and food. Jonesy would sometimes borrow a beer or two from it. On top of the refrigerator was the coffee maker I’d brought from home.

  Jonesy’s side of the room was a perpetual mess, and though I was at pains to have him clean it up, he seemed constitutionally incapable of being neat. Despite my help, he was never able to bring any kind of order to the place. There were dried beer rings on the window sill, empty, crushed beer cans laying everywhere, and a rich, musty, masculine smell hovering over the whole place like a fine mist. His underwear and socks were everywhere underfoot. Beneath his bed were stacks of girly magazines, and tacked up on his wall were nude pin-ups cut out from them.

  Jonesy was the life of every party, the one who was always getting things going…and had been ever since the very start, when we’d all just come here as strangers, a little disoriented and shy. He’d gathered us together that first evening and suggested that we all go out and get “shit-faced drunk.” Which we proceeded to do. By the end of the evening we were all good friends.

  He was almost a parody of tough, macho masculinity, and there was something innately vulgar about it, the way he walked about the floor in only his boxer shorts, a can of beer in one hand, scratching his balls, plunking himself down in front of a TV to watch a football game…. However, the heavy-lidded look to his eyes, and his firm jawline gave him an appealingly cocky quality.

  When I stepped out of the shower, Jonesy and a thin, red-haired girl were sitting on his bed listening to music. She had brought a radio-cassette player.

  “Hello,” she said to me.

  “Hi.” I didn’t recognize her. I proceeded to dress, then picked up some books from my desk. “Guess I’m off to the library.”

  “Don’t rush off on my account,” said Jonesy. The girl giggled.

  “No, seriously,” I said. “I have to catch up on some reading.”

  “Wish I had your study habits.”

  “Midterm’s coming up, buddy.”

  “Aw, I’ll hack it. No sweat.” He didn’t seem to have a care in the world about his grades, but somehow always managed to squeak through his classes. It was a wonder how he did it, with all the partying he did. He’d received several administrative warnings, and was even now on the Dean’s warning list.

  “Later, Guy.” He winked at me.

  I nodded to the girl, then to him. “See you later, Jonesy.” I stepped out into the hall.

  Laughter erupted from down the hallway and I could hear music playing. As usual, there seemed to be a party going on in the lounge, and from the sound of the voices, a couple of girls from the dormitory across the way must have been invited. I intended to slip past the lounge without being seen, and duck down
the stairs at the end of the hall, but my plan was thwarted.

  Guy, where you headed? You’re missing a good party.” It was Frank, who’d apparently just stepped out to use the restroom.

  “I’m going to the library. Which is what you guys should be doing, too, if you don’t want to flunk out.”

  “Listen to you. As if you wasn’t one of the biggest partyers here.” He came over to me and lowered his voice. “Hey, listen. Can you spot me for a ten? I’m all out of rubbers.” Frank was the “mooch” of the floor, always borrowing soap, razor blades, or toothpaste from the others. He never seemed to have anything of his own. As he was heavily bearded, there was a perpetual five-o’clock shadow on his jaws which I found quite sexy.

  “Borrow some from Jonesy.”

  “Jonesy kicked you out of your room, huh?” He grinned and pulled me closer. “I seen that chick he was with. He’s probably dogging her right now. She was all over him. A real nympho. I think I’m gonna try for her after Jonesy gets through with her.”

  “Just don’t pick up the crabs again, huh?”

  “Aw.” He pulled me by force into the lounge, where I was greeted with a shout. There were four boys from our floor, and three girls I’d never seen before. I nodded my greetings to Billy, Corky, and Diego. Billy raised the can of beer he had in his hand and dug out another one from the pile on the table. “Hey, Guy, come join us.”

  “Naw, not this time.”

  “Party-pooper.”

  I glanced around. Our lounge was typical of all the ones in the dorm. There was a dilapidated sofa which no one used (sprawling on the floor was preferred,) a television set which worked intermittently (more often, the guys would gather at a private television in one of the boys’ rooms,) and the paperback bookcase. The only other furniture was a small coffee table, which was now covered with beer cans and smoking ashtrays.

  Corky was talking to one of the girls, a big grin on his face, his eyes unfocused. To me, he seemed out of place in such an atmosphere. He would probably rather be having quieter fun, but he was trying hard to be the buddy Jonesy wanted us all to be—drinking, flirting, partying. And he paid for it the next morning, too, with his painful hangovers.

  Diego came over and dug a knuckle into my ribs. “Don’t give me this study crap. You’re not going out to study.”

  I raised the books I was holding at my side. “What do you call this?”

  He shook his head. “You’re going to Christine’s room. That’s where you’re going.”

  Christine was my girlfriend.

  Corky looked over. “I wonder what he’s gonna study there.”

  Billy laughed. “I wish I could study that particular subject.”

  Frank overheard us. “It ain’t books he’s gonna open up tonight. Hell, with a girlfriend like Christine, he don’t need none of this, does he?”

  “Come on, Guy, at least have a beer with us.”

  “No thanks. Maybe later.”

  “All right. But you’ll live to regret it.”

  “I know….”

  I stepped out of the lounge and turned down the hallway towards the stairs. Three flights down, on the first floor, was a foyer which we jokingly called the lobby. Against the wall by the front door was a bulletin board on which were pinned notices of concerts, rallies, or marches. On the opposite side was a row of mailboxes. I checked my own box before heading out.

  “Hey, Guy, wait.”

  I turned around.

  It was Kruk, the boy who lived next door to me and Jonesy. Kruk was the “fat boy” of the floor, and Frank’s roommate. A quiet, studious type, he was generally hidden away in his room with a science fiction novel or a comic book. He wore oversized T-shirts with the name of our school on the front, which made him look even fatter than he was. His stomach hung out obscenely over his belt, and the slacks he wore looked like baggy balloons. I was put off by his unnerving habit of absent-mindedly crunching on sugar cubes. He kept boxes of them in his room, and would unthinkingly scoop up a handful and pop one into his mouth, much as people munch on candy. He would stuff them into his pockets when he went out. Because of this habit, his teeth had practically rotted out, the two front ones curving like fangs with linings of black where cavities were eating away at the tooth enamel.

  “Hi, Kruk. What’s up?” Nobody ever used his first name. In fact, I think many of the boys didn’t know it. I didn’t.

  He gazed at me through his thick glasses in an enigmatic way and peered about as if making sure we weren’t being overheard.

  “What’s the matter, Kruk? You look like you’re trying to hide from someone.”

  “Can we talk, Guy?” It was the first time I’d ever seen him with this furtive, cautious look.

  “Sure. Have a seat.” I sat down on a stair.

  He took a step toward me but didn’t sit down. “Guy, have you been missing anything recently?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think there’s a thief in the dorm.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a thief in the dorm. I’ve had some things stolen from my room.”

  We’d been warned about theft when we first moved in. The dorm regulations made it imperative that we keep our valuables locked up at all times in the top drawers of our desks, the only one with a lock. No one had taken the warnings very seriously, though. In fact, because of the perpetual party atmosphere of the floor, most of the guys didn’t even lock their doors, allowing anyone to go in and out of their rooms as they pleased.

  “Did you report it to the housing office?”

  He nodded. “Yes. And to the campus police, too. They say it’s most likely someone in the dorm. It happens all the time, so I just wanted to warn you to be careful.”

  “Is there anyone you suspect?”

  “No. But I’m pretty sure it’s someone on our floor.” He looked uneasy. “I’ve talked to some of the others. They’re missing things, too.”

  I didn’t have any valuables in my room, only my bank checkbook and some loose bills. I didn’t want to believe that one of the guys could be a thief. I wanted it to be all in Kruk’s imagination. Who could it be? The dorm supervisor had a master key, or duplicate keys, but he was a trustworthy person. The faces of all our dorm mates went through my mind.

  Suddenly I felt as if I, too, might be under suspicion.

  “All right. Thanks for the warning. I’ll be on the lookout for anyone suspicious.”

  “You do that, Guy.”

  2

  There were three libraries at our school, but the one I liked best was the oldest and least used, all the way at the other end of the campus. The Spenser Undergraduate Library was built during the 1930s in a classical style, and exemplified everything I found charming about my university.

  My route to the library took me on a bicycle path which meandered across the entire campus, first, alongside the stream which crossed the grounds from east to west, then over a small bridge and through some trees which grew thickly on the westernmost part of the campus. Many of the buildings here dated from the end of World War Two and had been used to house scientists doing wartime research at the school. I liked the dilapidated quality of the area. It had a romantic feeling of historical antiquity.

  Yet all of this was slated to go some day. The school was planning to rebuild this section into a model housing/recreation area. Housing had always been a problem with the school, and was a high priority in the current restructuring program. Indeed, my own dorm was destined to be torn down as soon as more substantial funds were forthcoming. The building itself had been quickly built—a prefabricated, slapdash affair put together temporarily to ease the housing crunch caused by ever-increasing enrollments.

  I felt a little sad at all the changes taking place. Though I’d only been in school for a few months, I’d already grown attached to the ambience of the old college town.

  I stepped in through the main entrance of the library. The floors were all carpeted, and there was a heavy hush throu
ghout the building. On the first floor, the innumerable study carrels and tables were filled with students busily taking notes. This entire floor was set aside for the reference books, bound periodicals, and texts which the instructors had put on reserve for their students to use. The upper two floors contained open book stacks through which we were free to wander, browsing if we chose.

  I went up the stairs to the third floor.

  There were fewer people on the upper floors, as most of the space was taken up by seemingly endless rows of bookshelves. The hush up here was inviting. I always felt as if I were stepping into a secret wood.

  For me, reading had always been bound up with sexual discovery. I’d learned the facts of life through a sex education book for youths in my junior high school library. And when I made the wonderful discovery that there were books which dealt with homosexuality, some of them containing explicit descriptions of sex acts, I became an avid explorer of the public library stacks.

  It had started in the main library of my hometown, where I accidentally discovered Naked Lunch. I was initially attracted by its bizarre title. Its dust jacket informed me that it was an underground classic. When I opened it at random, I found myself reading a description of two young boys on a riverbank masturbating each other. With a sense of unreality, I read on, about two other young boys, naked, sucking each other off, then fucking each other in the ass. I couldn’t believe how explicit the prose was. It was the first time I’d read sex scenes which reproduced all those fantasies which I’d thought I was the only one in the world to have, the things I’d daydreamed about in the privacy of my own mind, feeling that if anyone else were to view them I’d be burned at the stake.

  Not having the courage to check it out and take it home, I’d devoured it in the library during a couple of days in the summer before my last year of high school. Because most of my reading pleasure was focused on the sex scenes in novels, the act of reading itself had acquired a sexual cast for me. Indeed it was a sexual act.