Mirrors of Narcissus Read online

  Often we would sit at our beds chatting half the night away, and I’d wish our meandering talk could go on forever. But he would yawn, glance at the clock, ruffle his hair and mention tomorrow’s classes. And I would pull up my covers and turn to the wall, my heart a mixture of yearning and regret.

  I was in love with Scott—helplessly, hopelessly, endlessly in love with him. Every morning when I woke up, I felt unaccountably happy—and it only took a few moments to realize that the cause of my happiness was the fact that I knew Scott was sleeping in a bed just across the room from me. And I knew we would go to breakfast together where, over cups of coffee, I could stare to my heart’s content at his sleepy face.

  In classes I found it hard to concentrate. My mind kept wandering to the last time I’d been with him, the words we’d said to each other. What color shirt was he wearing today? And later, we might meet sometime during the day, depending on our schedules. After classes, we would study together, then go out to eat dinner, often with Christine, her presence being a convenient cover-up for my almost unbridled joy at being with Scott. I felt so light-hearted when I was with him, and so let down when we couldn’t be together. The talks we had were usually nothing special, but I cherished them.

  This feeling of happiness was something which simply inundated me, which colored my whole life from morning to night, changed the way I looked at the world. Now I loved the world, loved life. And my life was Scott. The sky looked so much bluer than it had ever been, the air tasted sweeter, everything was more vivid, alive with the intrinsic rapture of being. I smiled at strangers and they smiled back. I saw couples in love and knew I was of their number, though secretly. I felt lucky to be alive at the same time as Scott. Cruel fate could have had us born in different times, in different countries. But here we were, both miraculously in the same country, in the same state, on the same campus, and—most incredible of all—in the very same dorm, sharing the same room! Why was I so blessed? Did I deserve such luck?

  This was a new experience for me. I’d never been in love—truly in love—with a boy before. I’d had crushes; all through junior high school and high school, I pined after handsome boys to whom I would never have dreamed of revealing my feelings, adoring them from a distance, half feeling sorry for my plight, half reveling in it, telling myself that if my dreams ever came true, the boy would disappoint me. That he couldn’t be the perfect boy I envisioned—that no one was perfect except for someone you create in your own mind. And I’d had intense sexual yearnings, and erotic fantasies, hundreds of them, about the boys in my school, about my teachers, about professional football players, beautiful actors, and even faceless strangers.

  But what I felt for Scott was nothing like any of that. I knew he wasn’t perfect. I saw all his flaws, and I liked him because of his flaws rather than despite them. In many ways he wasn’t the boy of my dreams at all; what struck me about him wasn’t his physical beauty but his intellectual honesty. He had a high forehead which made me suspect he would bald young, but I didn’t care if he did go bald, as long as he remained the same Scott.

  These feelings had crept upon me so stealthily that I hadn’t recognized them for the longest time. And the only thing I could do now was to keep it secret from him. He must never know. Otherwise, our friendship would be destroyed. For in my happiness I almost forgot the fact that it was impossible for me to ever have my love requited. For he wasn’t gay. I knew that. He was a normal, heterosexual boy.

  I peered under the bed. There was a neat stack of girly magazines there, much more classy and tasteful than the raunchy stuff Jonesy had kept there. I flipped through one, noting the big-breasted beauties with their blow-dried hair and perfect, air-brushed skin, glowing and healthy-looking. When I’d first seen these magazines under Scott’s bed, I’d felt a little relieved, glad that he was “normal.” My pristine image of him needed to remain intact. I might have even been a little disappointed if I’d come across a copy of a muscle magazine.

  I glanced into the wastepaper basket beside the night table. At the bottom there was a crumpled-up Kleenex like a pale green butterfly which had died there. The sight of it was a raw reminder that Scott, too, had to satisfy the itch of sexual desire.

  Unlike most of the others in the dorm, he didn’t talk very much about girls. There were those who—even though I knew they weren’t getting laid—talked about “pussy” all the time, as if they were constantly getting it…and then there was Kruk, who obviously avoided a topic he was uncomfortable with. I knew Scott well enough now to realize he was a romantic heterosexual of the old-fashioned school.

  Sometimes I would think of Christine’s belief in reincarnation and wish to become a girl in my next life so I could openly express my love for him. He would remain the same Scott, of course—nothing would ever change that. But I would be a beautiful young girl who could kiss him on the lips before the whole world….

  But that wasn’t exactly what I wanted, either. I wanted to love him as a boy loves another boy. The forbidden nature of my love made it that much more precious, more sacred. What I felt for him was what only a boy could feel for another boy, and which could only be satisfied by masculine responses. Against all the censure of the world I wanted to cherish him.

  On the other hand, if he were gay, my feelings for him might not have been so intense. There were plenty of obvious gays on campus but I’d never felt for them what I felt for Scott. They were just like me; and they attracted me in a purely sexual way—the kind of sex that might be satisfied in an anonymous encounter in Nightworld. It was because Scott was different from me that I adored him. He was what I longed to be, he was the ideal me.

  So I was caught between two feelings; one part of me wished he was gay, but the other part wished just as fervently for the opposite. I desired him sexually, yet I also wanted him to remain pristinely heterosexual. That precarious balance was the equation of my love. If I satisfied my desire for him, I might also shatter my love by the same act.

  It was torture, yet I loved my torture. Let it go on forever, just this side of unbearable. Oh, to be young and gay and in love.

  I got up and went back into the bathroom. A hint of dampness hung in the air, from the shower he’d taken this morning. His bath towel was on the towel rack, alive with the odor of his sweat mingled with the aromas of his soap and after-shave. I held it up and plunged my nose into it, rooting for the essence of Scottness in its folds. All the articles of toiletry he used for his morning shower had the magical ability to preserve his essence like faithful messengers. Perhaps because we used different brands of everything, the smells his things left behind had a powerful way of evoking him for me.

  The bathroom was alive with Scott.

  Some mornings I could hear him from my bed urinating in here, and the hollow-sounding gurgle of his piss as it hit the water at the bottom of the toilet bowl was like a secret message from his dick.

  In the shower stall, separate metal soap dishes were fixed in the tiled wall. On Scott’s light green cake of soap, I would sometimes find a single curly black pubic hair embedded there.

  If I heard the shower on when I got back from class, I would come in here and pretend to be busy at the sink, just so I could see the flesh-colored shape of Scott beyond the translucent frosted-glass shower door. We conversed with each other, shouting over the sound of the jetting water. Sometimes I knocked on the shower door and opened it, stuck my head in. He would turn around to face me, the jets of warm water dashing off his back, into my face, the steam all but hiding him. The easy camaraderie of dormitory roommates did away with any sense of prudery.

  When he came out of the shower, I always made sure I was looking at him straight in the face. He would be wiping himself off, toweling his hair dry, wrapping the towel around his middle, his chest and shoulders steaming, the air alive with the smell of his toothpaste, after-shave, and deodorant. But every time I had a chance to glimpse what I most wanted to see, a meddlesome hand “just happened” to be eclipsing
the longed-for sight.

  Beneath the bathroom sink was the covered wicker basket we used as a clothes hamper. Scott and I used to wash our clothes together down in the basement laundromat until we decided it was a waste of time for both of us to go. So we elected to share wash-day; once a week, one of us would take both of our loads down and wash them together.

  This was my week to do the laundry and I wondered whether to use the unexpected gift of this free time this morning to do the chore.

  I always enjoyed watching the promiscuous mix of his clothes with mine in the dryer, his briefs and T-shirts tumbling about in loving play with my own. And touching his most intimate things as I folded them up afterwards in our room was an act of love for me.

  I lifted the top off the hamper basket; a musky smell came up to my nose. I knelt down and fished around in the pile of clothes. On top were some shirts and jeans, and beneath them were our underwear.

  He wore size 30 briefs, the same size as me. But his taste in underwear was conservative—standard white cotton BVDs; he said he was too embarrassed to wear the slim bikini styles I preferred. Whenever I handled his briefs, I always looked closely for stains in them, because the faint after-image of urine or semen excited me. Even the traces of brown “skid marks,” far from disgusting me, only made him that much more lovable.

  I picked up what I thought at first was a pair of briefs. When I realized what it was I almost had to catch at my breath.

  It was a jock strap. Scott’s. I knew he took PE, but he’d always put his gym bag away in his bottom drawer, and I’d never seen his jock strap before.

  My stomach felt queasy.

  I replaced it in the hamper and tiptoed out to the hallway door and listened carefully. All was silent in the dorm. It was still too early for most of the guys to have come back from their morning classes. And anyone who didn’t have a class was probably sleeping in. Not even the sound of the TV in the lounge came to my ears. I locked the door and returned to the bathroom.

  I pulled the jock strap out again and made my way back to my bed. There, I sat down and examined my find. I flipped the pouch inside out and held it up to get a better look. There was a barely-noticeable yellow stain in the very middle. I brought it up to my nose and caught the briny scent of urine…and of something else: a faint whiff of semen.

  I felt faint. The image of the pouch firmly cupping Scott’s genitals came to me, and I felt my own dick stir. Feeling the keenest shame, I closed my eyes and licked at the cloth where Scott’s dick and balls had nestled.

  The ignoble nature of what I was doing shamed me, yet I felt impelled to it. For this was a token of my love—a love for which I had assigned the purest motives. If Scott could see me now, what would he think? I knew all too well.

  With a feeling of hopeless despair, I realized that this was as close to him as I could ever get. Unable to caress his flesh, I would caress that which had touched his flesh. This emissary of his body would have to do. Love was selfish, love was blind—and lust was an insane madman screaming for release. I wanted Scott’s body, I wanted it now.

  With trembling, impatient fingers I undid my belt and fly, and kicked myself free from my jeans. Then I slid my briefs down to my ankles and flipped them away into the corner. My dick was up hard and straining, its flesh stretched taut to bursting point, the glans shiny and pulsing.

  I lay back on my bed and brought the jock strap up to my dick. With pounding heart, I buried the head of my dick in the pouch, then wrapped the leg strap and waistband around the rest of my shaft.

  I began pumping.

  I thought of Scott naked atop his bed, masturbating to his girly magazines. It was a beautiful picture. I imagined him shooting off within seconds, with vigorous young spurts, all the way up to his chin, leaving sudden quivering drops of pure white pearls dotted all across his chest and belly.

  A strap had come loose, and was playing rhythmically against my balls. Oh, how I wished I could be this jock strap, encasing Scott’s dick and balls so intimately, hugging his hips and buttocks in a firm clamp, feeling his body, hot and restless and hard, boy-clean and innocent, heterosexual. Not queer like me….

  I was beyond all shame now. I didn’t care about anything, only about that hard rod of muscle I was stroking, into which the whole universe had become compressed, tight in my fist, and nothing else mattered, nothing. Not even if the whole world were to barge in now and see me.

  For I was with Scott now, I was one with him. I was encased in his flesh and stroking his dick. I could feel his pleasure brimming up to the rim, to the very lip, where a single drop of lemon juice squeezed out and trickled slowly down the side, and I couldn’t hold back any longer, no longer, no more….

  I jammed my shoulders back against the mattress and arched my back, made of my body a bow, as the tension drew taut—taut—taut—and then was suddenly, gloriously released as I shot an arrow straight up to heaven, up to the only heaven I knew.

  *

  Part Three: Mare Clausum

  1

  Erewhon, the disco just off campus on University Avenue, was the most popular place to go on Saturday nights. Christine and I liked to go dancing there occasionally, and tonight we had asked Scott to join us, along with a girl named Jill who lived in Christine’s apartment building.

  Christine (and I, too) had been trying for a while to set up Scott with a girl. We knew he regularly received letters from a girl named Linda, but it was my impression that he didn’t care deeply about her. They seemed to be nothing more than friends, though they confided in each other about everything.

  Even before tonight, Christine and I had introduced him to a number of girls, usually friends of hers, but nothing had come of them. His shyness was an inhibiting factor. Also, there were very few girls among them who could match him intellectually. Scott himself protested that our solicitous efforts were an embarrassment to him. But Christine reassured him that she thought of him as something like a brother, and wanted to see him romantically happy.

  My own motives were a bit more complex. I, too, wanted to see him romantically fulfilled, but even more than that, I wanted him to be sexually active. Though he claimed that he didn’t feel deprived in any way, and that he was too busy with his studies to pay much attention to girls, I knew he was a healthy young boy with the normal sexual appetite of a 19-year-old male. To be the instrument of his sexual happiness, even indirectly, would give me the greatest pleasure.

  Yet at the same time, another part of me wanted him to remain unattached. I was already jealous of whichever girl would eventually have her hold on him. Maybe that was why every time Christine consulted me about introducing someone to him as a possible girlfriend I always found something wrong with her. I was perfectly happy with the way things were, with the friendship among the three of us.

  There was a large crowd of students outside the entrance to Erewhon, some waiting for friends, others (mostly high school girls) hoping for an escort to take them inside. We showed our student IDs at the door and got in at the student discount rate.

  Twelve steps led us down into another world, a place very much like Venusberg. For Erewhon was decorated like the inside of a mysterious cave. A red light pulsating from just beyond some realistic-looking rocky crags gave a hellish atmosphere to the place. The music was loud and made my head feel stuffed up.

  “Let’s find a table,” I yelled, above the sound of the music.

  The dance floor was packed, as it usually was just after midterms and finals. A sexual ambience pervaded the whole place, inundated as it was by the nakedness of sexual desire. The beat of the music was sexual, and the bodies dancing to it all around us were writhing in passionate abandon. Boys in tight jeans were sweating from the exertion of thrusting their hips in a gyrating motion. Brushing against them on the dance floor as I led the way to an open table, I could feel that some of them wore no underwear. The girls they were dancing with seemed oblivious to the fact that their breasts were rubbing provocatively against me
. There was a dizzying atmosphere of orgiastic promiscuity in here.

  The tables on the far side of the crowded dance floor were all but obscured behind some pillars designed to look like stalactites and stalagmites. As soon as we found a table, a waiter dressed as a red demon came over to take our orders for drinks. When he went away to bring them, we headed back out to the dance floor and began dancing.

  Whenever I danced, I felt a wonderful sense of freedom, as if I were being unleashed, a comet spinning through black space. The disco beat sent a primal message to my nerves; I felt I was back in the jungle again, back at my roots, in communication with the deepest part of my psyche. The rhythm sparked a genetic memory of my ancestors dancing wildly after a kill, or performing a ritual courtship dance. At times I felt I wasn’t dancing with Christine so much as with my ancient blood relatives.

  Christine was quite a good dancer. For her, though, dancing was more of a practical physical exercise, a way to work off the accumulated stresses of study.

  I looked beyond her to where Scott and Jill were. Scott looked like he was having a good time. He was dancing and laughing with Jill. I noticed her large breasts bouncing, bra-less, against her tight ribbed sweater.

  Jill was one of those girls who had a reputation for being easy, and Christine had vehemently protested my choice of Scott’s partner. We’d almost had a fight about it earlier. She saw me looking over at Jill now.

  “That girl’s a pig,” she said. “Her roommate tells me she sleeps with a different guy every week.”

  “So? If unattached men can have multiple sex partners, why can’t women?”

  “She isn’t for Scott. She’d eat him alive.”

  “Maybe he’d enjoy that.”

  “Guy.”

  When I’d first set eyes on Jill this evening, I’d been a little disappointed that her looks hadn’t matched her reputation. I had been expecting a sleazy-looking tramp or a bewitching vamp, but the girl who’d met us at the dorm with Christine was of average looks, a trifle vapid-looking but otherwise nondescript. The skill of her make-up left something to be desired, and she used a little too much perfume. There was only one thing which gave a subtle hint of her promiscuity: her body seemed as if it didn’t belong to her. She gave the impression she was only borrowing it for the occasion, as she would wear someone else’s dress to create an enticing allure, a sexy gown designed for a woman much older than herself.