Mirrors of Narcissus Read online

  I caught Scott’s eye and we smiled at each other. At that moment, I felt as if I were dancing with him. He moved toward me, and for a while we danced facing each other, trying to talk over the loud music. I moved against him, and he leaned toward me, pressing his mouth against my ear, but I couldn’t hear a word he said.

  When we got back to the table, I learned that he’d only been asking for directions to the men’s room. I got up. “I have to go, too.”

  The restroom was in the far corner, hidden behind some hellish-looking “flames”—actually strands of orange, yellow and red vinyl being blown upwards by a small electric fan.

  Inside the restroom, standing at adjacent urinals, I asked him, “What do you think of Jill?”

  “She’s all right. A little bit on the wild side, though.”

  I wondered if he’d heard the rumors about her. For me, Jill’s reputation wore itself around her like a cloak, wreathing her in an aura of magic, the magic of the many whispered stories about her. Such girls had always fascinated me; the knowledge that she’d been to bed with so many different boys gave her a semi-divine status in my eyes. I tried to envision all the male virility spent into her, all the boy-skin she’d touched. Some atavistic longing had made me go after such girls in high school. Maybe I’d felt a primal need to connect vicariously with all the boys they’d been with. I knew many boys—straight boys—who shared this subconscious longing to bond sexually with other males, but in a way which left their precious sense of masculinity intact. For them, too, the idea of possessing the girl a friend has once had, and passing her around in a ritual sharing, was a sexual stimulant.

  I smiled at Scott. “I think she likes you, Scott. This is going to be your lucky night. I just know it.”

  He looked uncertain.

  “Don’t worry,” I assured him, misinterpreting his look, “she’s supposed to be…you know…friendly. You’re almost sure to score.”

  For a moment I thought I saw a trapped look in his eyes and regretted my subterfuges. My man-to-man assurances seemed only to trouble him. For me, however, the thought that Scott would soon be having sex with Jill gave me a giddy sense of power…and a nervous feeling of anxiety. I felt like a playwright about to see his own work performed on stage for the first time.

  We returned to the table where Jill was eagerly waiting to pull Scott back out onto the dance floor. Christine and I followed them. We danced the next several numbers, then returned together to the table, sweaty and tired. Scott and Jill seemed to be enjoying themselves thoroughly. We all sat listening to the music for a while, and talking.

  I found myself ordering more and more beers by the pitcher. After a while, it must have seemed to outsiders that we were intent on getting drunk. Christine’s words were beginning to slur, and Jill’s laughter had turned loud and strident. Scott, too, looked quite drunk, drunker than I’d ever seen him. As I thought of the night ahead, my own intoxication became edged with panic; the scenario I’d sketched so blithely earlier was now fading away in places, leaving sinister blank spots.

  “Let’s get back to the dorm before we get too drunk to walk,” I said.

  Jill looked at me with, I thought, a flash of understanding. Had we somehow turned into secret accomplices?

  Outside, I put my arm around Christine, and Scott and Jill were walking just behind us, locked arm in arm. My plan was for all of us to go back to the dorm where we would relax in our room. If the atmosphere and timing were right, I could make some excuse to walk Christine home, leaving Scott and Jill alone in the room. But if everybody seemed willing, I could just pull the partition closed, separating the two sides of the room, and both couples could make love right there in the same room. With luck, there might not even be a need for the partition. As I envisioned being able to see Scott and Jill naked in each other’s arms, I felt my steps begin to hurry. This would be a night to remember.

  Back at the dorm, there seemed to be a party in progress in the lounge, but we sneaked past its door and headed straight for our room without looking in. Only after we’d closed our door behind us did we all burst out laughing.

  Jill drunkenly pulled Scott to herself and began kissing him, clumsily guiding him down onto his sofa-bed as she did so. I suspected she was acting drunker than she really was. I looked at Christine; she gave me a wry smile. But when I signaled for her to come to me, she just shook her head.

  “Well, you two lovebirds,” I said, “Chrissie wants me to see her to her room, so if you’ll excuse us….”

  As I began guiding Christine toward the door, Scott’s passion seemed suddenly to cool. “Wait,” he said. “Not before having another drink.” The look of uncertainty on his face indicated he wasn’t so eager for us to separate just yet.

  “Sure.” I walked over to the refrigerator where he quickly joined me. As I handed him a couple of cans, he whispered:

  “Guy, please. Can we call it off?”

  I stared at him. “What? Just when you’re about to get laid?”

  “I—I think I’d prefer another night. The time’s not right.”

  “It’s not?” And then the reason for his reluctance came to me. “Tell me something, Scott. Is this your first time?”

  He looked at me ruefully. “Yeah.” He blushed and I knew he was telling the truth. Though I knew he was innocent, I’d never quite thought of him as a virgin, perhaps taking for granted that he’d slept at least once with his high school girlfriend.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I said. “It’ll all come naturally.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “You do like girls, don’t you?” I felt like a hypocrite for saying it, but a part of me was suddenly eager to hear his answer—perhaps I still had a faint hope that he was gay. And another part of me wondered if I hadn’t planned the whole evening with just this in mind—to prove one way or the other whether he was or not.

  “Of course I like girls,” he said. “It’s not that, but—”

  A sudden sense of shame came over me. Why should he have to go through with it just to satisfy a longing in me?

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll make some kind of excuse.”

  “Thanks.”

  I went back to the girls. “Hey, listen. Scott says he feels a little sick from drinking too much.”

  They looked toward him. Sheepishly, he said, “I guess I’m not much of a partyer.”

  Jill looked a little disappointed. “Are you all right, Scott?”

  “Yeah. But I think I should hit the sack.”

  I said: “Chrissie, could you see Jill home? I think I’d better make Scott some hot coffee.”

  “Sure.”

  After the girls had gone, I filled the electric coffee-maker with water and plugged it in. As we sat waiting for the water to boil, I thought about the turn the evening had taken. Though I was disappointed that it hadn’t come off as I’d planned, I was happy to have gotten Scott’s confession of his virginity. Such a confession isn’t lightly given by any boy, and was another link bringing us closer together. I felt a new tenderness toward him.

  “It’s all right, Scott. My first time was really scary for me, too.”

  “It’s not that,” he said. He gave a nervous little laugh. “I’ve never talked about this with anybody because it’s a little embarrassing. I mean, it might sound so trivial to you, but for me it isn’t. You see, I’m not like other boys.”

  I stared at him, my heart almost stopping. “Go on.”

  “Guy, I have a confession to make. I’ve never undressed in front of a girl before. And the reason for that is…I’m ashamed of my own body.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m uncircumcised.”

  I didn’t know what to say. My first impulse was to laugh at something so trifling, but the look on his face was serious. “Is there something wrong with being uncircumcised?” I asked.

  “Well, it makes me feel different. I know most guys are circumcised, so I guess I have a complex about it.”

&nb
sp; “You shouldn’t. I mean, it seems so foolish to let something like that—” I was thinking: so that’s why he always hid himself when he came out of the shower.

  “You don’t know what it’s like. You’re circumcised, aren’t you, Guy?”

  “Yes.” When had he seen me?

  “So you’re in the majority. You have no way of knowing the feelings of inferiority and envy that an uncircumcised boy lives with, seeing the cleaner-looking penises of his friends. For the longest time I felt like a freak and an outsider. Circumcised penises were normal, uncircumcised ones were not. To me, my dick looked sickly and unhealthy compared to my friends’.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you that?”

  “No. But it’s something I’ve felt ever since the first time I saw my friends’ dicks. That was when we were about ten years old, undressing in my room to change into swim trunks. It was a real shock to me to see that I was different from them. And later, in junior high school PE class, when we undressed for the showers, I saw that almost every kid in class was circumcised.”

  “Well, at that age, everyone feels like a freak.”

  “Guy, what did you think of guys who were uncircumcised?”

  I shrugged. In junior high school, I, too, was curious—for different reasons—about other boys’ dicks. There’d been one boy whose dick was capped with a brown-skinned prepuce. The hood-like foreskin had completely covered the glans, coming to a puckered tip in front. Another boy had a dick which was half-covered; I recalled thinking the glans looked like a turtle’s head peeping out of its shell. In truth, the dicks which I’d found most sexy were those with a clean, round, pink glans exposed. But the idea that Scott was uncut—”blemished”—somehow gave him a slight flaw that made him even more endearing in my eyes. If only he knew how little it mattered!

  “Nothing,” I said. “It’s just a minor difference. Like some guys have straight red hair, others have curly black hair. What does it matter?”

  “For you, maybe. But try being the guy who’s different. It’s something you can brood about your whole life.”

  I could understand, though. Most of the things which bother us so much about ourselves usually mean nothing to a stranger. Still, it was hard to believe that he could feel so much anguish over a piece of skin covering his glans.

  “Come to think of it,” I said, “why do we get circumcised, anyway? It’s something I’ve never thought about.”

  “It’s been around so long—more than 4,000 years—that it’s become tradition in many cultures all over the world. For certain people—the Muslims and the Jews, for instance—circumcision was a religious injunction; for others, it was a rite of passage, marking adulthood. And in the U.S.—”

  “But why did it start in the first place? I mean, there had to be a reason for it.”

  “That’s right. It probably originated from sanitary reasons. You see, because the skin covers the head, sometimes dirt and gunk can get trapped inside. And there’s a secretion called smegma which is secreted by the inside of the foreskin as a natural lubricant. Some forms of bacteria feed on the smegma. Back in the days when people didn’t take regular baths, I imagine these things sometimes led to infections. So ancient people started cutting off the foreskin, making it easier to clean. It might have been crucial to survival back then, but with today’s sanitary conditions, many doctors feel there’s no real need for circumcision.”

  “Then why is it done? I don’t remember asking to be circumcised.”

  “It’s a standard procedure here in the U.S. now. When little boys are born, most parents sign a routine consent form as part of the whole birth process, giving the doctor permission to perform the operation.”

  “The baby boy has no say in the matter, really.”

  “Right. Some doctors feel that circumcision at birth causes trauma in the child. After all, it is a painful operation—and anesthetics aren’t used for newborn babies, as it’s too risky.”

  “But they keep performing it because—that’s the way it’s always been done. Right?”

  He nodded. “Sometimes there are medical reasons for it, though, to prevent infection and so on. And sometimes it’s even necessary for grown men to have the operation.”

  “Why?”

  “Apparently, with some men, the glans remains covered even when they’re fully erect. Ejaculation is painful, and conception is difficult. So the excess skin is cut off so they can ejaculate normally.”

  “How about you?” I asked, feeling as if I were stepping to the edge of a cliff. “Do you have trouble ejaculating?”

  He didn’t seem bothered by the question. “No. As I get hard, the foreskin slips off, leaving the glans completely uncovered. When I was a kid, I didn’t know I had a normal glans like the others. It wasn’t until I was about 16 that the foreskin could retract all the way, and I discovered I had a normal glans under there. It was a gradual process: at first it didn’t slip off all the way, and was painful to move. But when I finally managed to slip it all the way back, you can imagine how happy I was.”

  A vivid picture of his erection flashed into my mind. “So what’s the problem?”

  “I still feel that girls will think an uncircumcised cock is ugly. They’re used to seeing something different, after all. And that’s why I’m so inhibited, I guess.”

  I laughed. “You’re creating your own barrier, Scott. Don’t worry. If a girl likes you, she won’t care one way or the other whether you’re circumcised or not.”

  “I don’t know….”

  “You have to get over that feeling of shame about your body, because until that changes, nothing will.”

  He sat thinking for a while. Then he looked up. “Guy, you seem so confident around girls. I suppose with your looks, you don’t have to worry very much about the possibility of rejection, do you?”

  “Looks have nothing to do with it. I had to work on my confidence just like everyone else. And anyway,” I went on, seeing his expression of disbelief, “what makes you think you’re not attractive, Scott?”

  “Come on….”

  “No, I’m serious. In fact, if you want me to be really blunt about it, you’re quite a good-looking guy. I happen to know that girls find you attractive.”

  “Get out of here,” he said with an embarrassed laugh.

  “No, seriously.”

  “Like who, for instance?”

  “Well…Christine, for one.”

  “Did she really say that?”

  “Sure. If she wasn’t going with me, she’d be after you.”

  “No way.”

  “Of course she would. If I was her, I would be, too.”

  “Come on….”

  “I’m serious.”

  He shook his head with such a comical look of despondency that I had to laugh. Then I said, only half-jokingly: “If Christine had a twin sister, we’d be all set up.”

  “Right.” He ran his fingers through his hair and looked thoughtful for a moment. “How did you meet her, anyway?”

  “At a friend’s party. We hit it off right away—I think, because she was so different from most other girls I’d met. That’s probably why I like her so much. A normal girl wouldn’t interest me at all.”

  “Did you have many girlfriends before her?”

  “A lot. Too many, maybe. I think, in a way, it’s deadened my feeling for girls. I tend to look down on a lot of them.”

  “It must be nice to have that problem.”

  “But I’m serious. When they’re so easily accessible, you really start not caring so much for them; you even come to despise them. Sometimes I think it might be better if it was all more difficult.”

  “I suppose it must be true, then, that the more out of reach something is, the more you desire it.”

  I looked at him in some surprise. “Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

  He seemed a little alarmed at the intensity of my reaction, and at the serious turn our discussion had taken. I decided to ease up a bit
.

  “We’re starting to sound like a couple of philosophy students at an all-night bull session.”

  He smiled weakly. “I’ve never been this drunk before in my life.”

  A loud burst of laughter from down the hall was followed by what sounded like the bookshelves crashing down.

  “Sounds like those guys are even drunker.”

  2

  It was late at night and I was on my way home to the dorm. I’d been studying at the library together with Scott, but when he’d told me he intended to stay until closing time, I decided to go home first ahead of him. My route took me by the arts building, then up the bicycle path along the football field. As I crossed over the tiny bridge leading to the bicycle path, a lone jogger passed me from behind, then turned off into the woods. I gazed after him thinking of my excursion into Nightworld a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t been back there since then.

  I felt a sudden excitement thrill through my nerves at the memory of the secret I’d uncovered then. My steps slowed and I found myself looking around. There was no one else about. Probably because it was just before the midterms, a silence pervaded the campus. There was no moon out.

  I told myself I should head straight back to the dorm without giving it any further thought. Nightworld was not for me; merely to know it was out here should be enough to satisfy me. There was no need to involve myself in its existence. If I were to go there again tonight, it would be like stepping irreversibly into that netherworld. Did I want to be like those hungry nocturnal shadows homing in like shameless predators upon coyly waiting game? It wasn’t worth the risk.