Mirrors of Narcissus Page 4

  “Believe it or not, a series of illustrations dealing with themes from Greek mythology. Look.”

  He picked out one of the canvasses leaning against the wall and turned it around so I could see. It was a painting of a boy half-undressed, in a secluded grove peering through some bushes at a bathing woman—a goddess, presumably.

  “No one does this sort of thing nowadays,” he said, “though it used to be the standard practice for artists. But that’s exactly why I want to do it. For one thing, I like the challenge of painting naturalistically. Everyone thinks that all I can paint are those abstracts which the professors are making such a fuss over. I want to prove to them that I can do other things—that I have mastered the traditional techniques. Just when they think they have me pegged, blam, I turn around and do something completely unexpected.”

  I was barely listening to him, so mesmerized was I by the painting. I remembered looking at pictures very much like this in my mother’s art books back home when I was a boy, but this was somehow different. Though its theme was just as traditional, there was something very modern about the way it had been done.

  The whole scene glowed with life, emanated a sense of reality, almost a super-reality, which riveted my attention. I’d never seen such minuteness, such painstaking attention to detail before. No photograph could ever be this realistic. It was as if Peter had actually gone back into a mythological time and had been there to record the moment. I was astonished. This painting transcended realism—gloriously. It lived, breathed.

  I was especially struck by the beauty of the boy’s face, and the attention Peter had paid to the delineation of his muscles, and wondered who the model was. Just the way the boy’s arm angled back to expose a tiny wisp of underarm hair made me ache with longing. I felt a hollow hurt in the depths of my chest.

  “Am I gonna look like that?”

  “Something very similar,” he said. “You’re going to be my model for Narcissus. You know who he is, don’t you?”

  “Isn’t that where the word narcissist comes from?” When speaking with highly intelligent people, I sometimes found myself almost unconsciously acting less intelligent than I was, as if adopting a pose of simple-mindedness.

  “Exactly. Narcissus was a beautiful young man who fell in love with his own image—and got turned into a flower for it.” He pointed to a flower in a wine bottle amid the clutter on the floor. “That’s Narcissus today, a lovely but somewhat over-refined flower.”

  “Why did you pick me?”

  “You fit my image of him perfectly. There’s something about you which makes you just right for what I wanted—something in your eyes, maybe. You seem so deep within yourself—as if you were gazing into a deep pool. And there’s also something about you which makes me feel that you’ve never been in love with anyone—that you might be incapable of loving as others love.”

  “Oh?”

  “Please don’t be offended,” he added quickly, blushing hard. “I don’t mean it to sound insulting. It’s just that that detached quality was exactly what I had in mind for my Narcissus.”

  “Well, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. As a matter of fact, I have been in love. Several times, in fact.”

  “Me and my big mouth. Please ignore what I just said. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m saying. I guess I got so carried away with planning my work that I’m still lost in it.”

  “I understand.” But in my heart I felt he’d touched on a truth inside me. I did have a secret fear that I could never love anyone in the manner he mentioned—the normal way all people fell in love and lived happy, fulfilled lives. I could only have crushes on people I could never have. Unrequited love suited me, and had been all I ever experienced. Perhaps it had been too easy for me to possess any girl I desired, for I seemed to lose all my desire the moment I possessed her. But the boys I got crushes on stayed in my heart for that very reason: because I could never have them, they remained unattainable dream ideals whose reality never intruded upon my immaculate images of them.

  “I like to play jazz records as I paint. I hope you don’t mind. It helps me concentrate.”

  “No problem.”

  He went over to the record player and picked out an album from a pile of them on the bench, put it on. Then, as he spread a rather thick rug on the floor before the window, he mumbled something I couldn’t catch.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  He cleared his throat. “You don’t mind modeling in the nude, do you?”

  “No, of course not.” I felt a prickling along the back of my neck. Thinking of the rumors about his sexual inclinations, I tried to repress the thrill which surged through me.

  “Would you be willing to pose fully nude?”

  “Of course. I suppose when you’re dealing with ancient Greek myths, it comes with the territory.”

  “Sometime in the future I might ask you to. But for today, all I need is the shirt off.”

  “All right.” As I pulled off my T-shirt I felt relief and disappointment in equal measure. It would have been nice to savor the heady danger involved in being watched by a gay man. But at the same time I was relieved of my worry that I might let my own excitement show. In any case, this painting of Narcissus might not require full nudity; perhaps the lower half of my body would be covered by a piece of cloth. “Shall I take my jeans off?”

  “Please.” He turned his back and began fussing with the palette and some tubes of paint. His eyes avoided mine as he set up the easel. He was trying hard to act nonchalant, but I could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down each time he swallowed.

  I pulled off my jeans and put them on the stool on top of my T-shirt. I was down to my white cotton briefs. In a way, it was even sexier to be in briefs rather than fully nude. “Do you paint many nudes?”

  “Some.”

  “Mostly male or female?”

  “Both.” He pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose. “Well, shall we get started?”

  “Sure.”

  He glanced at me and came over. “Please kneel down on the rug.” Guiding me with his hands, he had me sit gazing slightly downward at the bare floor, adjusting me slightly every few minutes until he had the pose he wanted. Then he began doing a rough pencil sketch of me directly onto the canvas.

  The room was a little cool. I felt a tiny tension in my nipples and along the surface of my skin. The idea that Peter might make a pass at me was at the root of the tension I felt, even though he seemed so otherworldly, as if sex were, for him, secondary to painting. I imagined his glances at my body as tiny caresses, brushing feather-like here and there, occasionally rasping roughly as if a finger were rubbing an unshaven cheek. I was praying that I wouldn’t get aroused. But I needn’t have worried. As soon as he began painting, he was lost in his work, and I began losing my own self-consciousness.

  He dove into his work with a voracious appetite, animated by a hidden power which seemed to have taken over his conscious self. I could tell he was in another time and place. His unblinking gaze went up to me then back to the canvas, communicating some message from eye to brain to hand. His face had no expression at all; I felt he was seeing right through me, at something which wasn’t of this world, and I was a little frightened by it.

  For him I was nothing more than a problem in lines, colors, shades. I had been reduced to the reflection of lights on the surface of my skin. For all he cared, I might have been a desk, an apple, a sunset.

  But I was used to this by now. Modeling hadn’t been as easy as I’d thought it would be at first. Standing still for thirty minutes at a time, sometimes in an uncomfortable pose, knowing I was being closely scrutinized, mentally stripped down to the bare lines and planes of my physical existence—all of this was sometimes quite unsettling. During a posing session, every inch of me was public property; I was merely a life-sized doll to be analyzed for the angles of my bones, the shade of light against my skin.

  And sitting so still before a classroom f
ull of students was often a test of endurance, almost a Zen-like discipline. I thought of it as a Spartan training to achieve mental detachment. Indeed, the way I concentrated on my breathing, the sensations on the surface of my skin, the play of light in the air—all this was a sort of meditation. At such times, I was not the usual me but another, more abstract being. My mind went blank and I thought of nothing, only occasionally brought back to reality by the tiny sounds made by hatching pencils, rubbed erasers, dropped paintbrushes.

  Still, the ferocity with which Peter was attacking the canvas could very well be seen as a sublimation of his sexual desire for me. His intense, bug-eyed expression and the sweat popping out on his forehead only added to the bizarre illusion.

  I wondered if he found me sexually attractive. The most satisfying thing about being a model, of course, was the sheer joy of just being looked at. I’d always been self conscious of my looks, perhaps too much so, for I’d known from an early age that I was attractive, and this knowledge carried with it a burden as well as joy. Whenever I walked down the street, I always secretly counted the number of heads I’d turned, the number of people who’d stared at me. And if no one or almost no one looked in admiration, I began to worry if my looks were going. By modeling for artists, I knew I was being looked at by people who knew and cared about how beautiful my body was. It was a way of reassuring myself that I was desirable.

  “Can I see what you’ve done so far?” I asked. I was curious to see what I’d inspired, in the same way everyone wants to know how his photo came out.

  “Sorry. I’d rather you didn’t see it just yet. You’ll have to wait until it’s done, okay?”

  “When will that be?”

  “Don’t know.” When he saw my reaction, his expression softened. “I’m sorry if I seem rude. But that’s just the way I am. I hate for someone to look at a work in progress. It’s a superstition I have. I don’t know if I can explain it.”

  “That’s all right. I guess with your talent, you’re entitled to be a little eccentric.”

  “Talent? What is this talent that everyone talks about? I hate to be singled out like some kind of freak. Everyone has some kind of talent.”

  “Not me.”

  He stared at me. “You do have a talent. Your beauty.”

  “Beauty is a talent?”

  “Of course it is. Beauty is a God-given talent. That sounds strange, I know. But believe me, I’ve given it a lot of thought. Beautiful people are that way by an act of will. They seem to radiate something from within, some sort of power which is the source of their attraction. I say this because I’ve seen many people who have all the attributes of physical beauty—the proper proportions of face and body, and so forth—but who don’t attract us. And on the other hand, there are others who might not have the natural material of a beautiful person, but who have this strange ability to draw our eyes. I’m not talking about charisma, either, or ‘personality.’ I’m talking about the true source of beauty, the magical talent for clothing oneself in physical desirability.”

  “I think you’re making too much of all this.”

  With a trembling hand, he took off his glasses and began polishing them with a handkerchief. Evidently excited by the topic, he continued on, stammering occasionally in his rush to elaborate. “Physical beauty is something we all want—if we don’t have it ourselves, we seek it in others. We want to possess it. And if we can’t possess it, we make it. I’ve always been fascinated by attractive people. Not being attractive myself, maybe I was jealous. I wanted to believe that it was impossible to touch them—that their surface beauty came between them and any sort of human contact. An unattractive person who is used to pining away for someone wants to believe that the burning desire he feels for his beloved is something which the beloved can never feel.”

  He put on his glasses again and looked at me but I couldn’t see the expression on his face because the setting sun outside had lit the sky up in an orange glow and was reflected on the surface of his lenses. All I saw was a twin pair of orange ovals. I said nothing and he went on:

  “Our society categorizes people by their looks. We pretend it isn’t so, but it’s true. Supposedly we are all created equal—we all have an equal chance to succeed. That’s all bullshit. In everything, whether it’s sports, business, or academics, the odds are stacked heavily in favor of those with good looks. Look at all the successful people, and nine times out of ten, except for geniuses, the successful ones are those who look good.

  “In a society which prides itself on egalitarianism, desire for beauty is supposedly an unhealthy trait. But we are slaves to our instincts. It’s ingrained in us for survival. When we lived by the laws of the jungle, the best chance of surviving, and having offspring survive, was for the female to seek a strong male. A male with a strong, muscular body could fight off enemies. That is the very type we identify as sexually attractive. The weaker males also gathered around him for protection against worse dangers. Even today, leaders—whether in sports, business, or politics—tend to be attractive. We feel we can rely on them to keep the wolves at bay. When we see athletes on a playing field, we feel an atavistic longing within us. Deep within our genetic memory is the shared experience of relying on such rough brutes for protection.”

  He paused and I shivered. I was struck by the incongruity of sitting almost nude listening to his spontaneous discourse, but couldn’t help but be strangely moved by his stumbling, stammering speech. He went on:

  “Maybe that’s why I try to compensate by my art. If I wasn’t so unattractive, I might not paint at all. But the fact is, given a choice, I’d rather be an untalented but beautiful person than an unattractive genius. I think all artists feel the same way. Deep down, we all want to be desired and loved by those whom we love. We try to capture the beauty which we lack, which we want. I use my talent in revenge against a world which gives all its adoration to the beautiful people.”

  As he said all this, there was no trace of bitterness; he was merely stating facts dryly, even a little tiredly.

  “I don’t think you’re unattractive, Peter,” I said, awkwardly. “In fact, when you—”

  He put his brush down and picked up a piece of paint-stained cloth. “I think we’ve had enough of a break. Let’s get back to work, shall we?”

  “All right.”

  I resumed my pose and heard him begin to mix paints again.

  5

  I posed for Peter three more times in the following week, after which he said he had enough to go on. At the last session he asked me rather diffidently if I would take off my briefs, which I did without any qualms. By then I had been longing for it to happen, and was somewhat disappointed at his seeming indifference to my finally becoming completely nude.

  The next day, I decided to go to the library to find out more about Narcissus. I vaguely remembered reading something about him back in high school, but now I felt a need to learn all I could about my mythical alter-ego.

  For me, there had always been something excitingly illicit about the Greek myths. I remembered my high school English teacher, Mr. Brown, telling us that many of the gods, including Zeus, were bisexual, with male lovers as well as female. In fact, the ancient Greeks—to the amazement of my classmates—seemed to have accepted sex between men as a normal activity. I wondered now if the story of Narcissus might not hold a secret waiting to be unlocked by me.

  I found what I wanted in the classic literature section of the Spenser Library: an illustrated reference book which contained capsule histories of all the major gods and heroes.

  Apparently Narcissus was a demi-god, whose father was the river god Cephisus and his mother a water nymph named Liriope. He was a beautiful youth; by the age of sixteen he was adored by both boys and girls. Almost everyone who saw him fell in love with him, but he himself seemed incapable of feeling a similar passion for anyone. Knowing nothing of the pain of love, he saw it as a weakness, a form of derangement which made people do ridiculous things. He mocked th
ose whose hearts were broken by him.

  One of the boys who had been spurned by him prayed to the gods in anger that Narcissus would suffer as so many others had for his sake—that he would fall in love with someone and never have it requited. The gods heard his prayer and answered it.

  One day Narcissus became lost in a forest where no man or beast had ever ventured. In his wanderings, he came upon a hidden pool surrounded by tall grass and trees. To quench his thirst, he knelt down to take a drink, and as he did so, saw his own reflection for the first time in his life.

  As he gazed upon the face of the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen, he experienced something he’d never known before. At first, he was happy just to gaze upon the other boy’s face, but before long, he desired more. He knew the other wanted the same. But though they stretched their arms out to each other, they could never touch. And when they tried to kiss, their frustrated passion dissolved into shimmering ripples.

  Two lovers pining away for each other, from different worlds, so close yet so far, separated by the thinnest of barriers—the one separating reality from illusion, that division which generates the most desperate and powerful of all loves.

  Obsessed by his twin, Narcissus lost all desire for food or sleep. His physical strength began to ebb away, his will to live sapped by his sorrow. Either because the gods were moved by his sorrow or by his beauty, they turned him into a flower forever peering down at its own reflection in the water, the flower which bears his name today, the flower I’d seen in the wine bottle at Peter’s studio.

  This story had a strange appeal for me. Like Narcissus, I had always known that I was attractive, and been proud of the fact, even using my looks as a weapon to get certain things I wanted. But there was always a kind of guilt attached to my pride. I was made to feel that it was vulgar—especially for a boy—to flaunt his looks. The word “narcissism” invariably had a negative connotation. And because it was considered something like bad manners to feel that I was more attractive than the average boy, my self-love had to be hidden away in my deepest, most secret place. If someone should suddenly walk in when I was admiring myself in the mirror, I felt as if I’d been discovered in a shameful act.