Mirrors of Narcissus Read online

  All my life, I’d spent an inordinate amount of time in front of mirrors, though I tried to hide it from others. I would lose all sense of time as I examined my reflection, until my face had lost all its familiarity and become a stranger’s…like the feeling you have when you look at a word for a long time and eventually the word becomes unfamiliar and loses all meaning. In the mirror, the other boy’s beauty had somehow faded. I felt an almost obsessive need to find the tiniest little flaws that might detract from his looks, and to exaggerate them. I was happy to find tiny lines on my forehead, the beginnings of wrinkles, or veins in my eyes, a dark mole on my chest. I ended up feeling that I was ugly, and went into a depression. But this was only temporary, for I had a confident—even arrogant—faith in my own beauty.

  Also like Narcissus, I seemed unable to feel true passion for anyone. What I felt for Christine wasn’t love, but something closer to friendship. When Peter had hinted that I seemed incapable of loving another, he’d unwittingly touched upon one of my deepest fears.

  I’d always wanted an ideal soul-mate—someone who was exactly like me, and could understand everything I thought and felt. It was almost as if I pined after a twin brother I’d never had. I toyed with the thought that I might have been separated from him at birth, or perhaps he’d died at birth, and his grave was somewhere unknown to me.

  I had a fantasy that each time I peered into a mirror, I was searching for him. The boy I saw trapped in the mirror was my long-lost twin brother, and the only place we could meet was at that thin glass border which separated my side—reality—from his side—fantasy. Narcissism might be the search for the long-lost mirror twin we all once had.

  Perhaps that was why I was unable to love anyone else.

  The illustration accompanying the legend of Narcissus showed a young boy kneeling beside the fateful pool. He looked a little too effeminate for my taste; I certainly wouldn’t have fallen in love with him.

  I wondered how Peter would depict me. It excited me to think that for him, I was the present day Narcissus. I tried to imagine his feelings as he’d looked at my body. Perhaps for him, I was like that image in the water—so close yet so out of reach.

  From his spontaneous confession about his adoration of beautiful people, I knew that he probably desired me sexually. His having me sit before him naked, obeying his every command, had been a sort of possession of me. In fact, I suspected that painting was, for him, a way to possess the boys he craved. If that was true, then the satisfaction he’d experienced had been mutual. For, as I’d posed for him, I’d felt that his will had conquered me in the fullest sense. I’d been made submissive before a burning, omnipotent gaze which laid bare my most secret needs. The way his all-seeing eyes had traveled over every inch of my body, leaving nowhere untouched, had been like being caressed by him in the most intimate way possible—with the eyes only, without a single touch. He probably knew that posing for him had satisfied something within me which could be satisfied in no other way.

  I looked around at the other students in the library. After my heady meditation, they suddenly seemed so prosaic, busily occupied as they were in their tedious academic studies. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, the time of day when the library was most crowded.

  I caught a quick movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to look. A boy was hastily looking down at his book. Undoubtedly, he’d been staring at me. I didn’t recognize him. Perhaps he’d mistaken me for someone else. Anyway, this wasn’t the first time an unknown boy had stared at me.

  I got up to return the book to the shelf, then headed to the restroom. I usually checked myself in the mirror after being stared at by someone, because sometimes I had the nagging feeling that I hadn’t looked my best.

  I stood in front of the first sink, eyeing my reflection carefully, leaning in to check on the progress of a nascent pimple near the corner of my mouth. It was a barely noticeable swelling below the skin, but it bothered me. I thought of those disgusting boys back in high school who popped their pimples right in class, leaving bright red splotches of blood on their faces.

  Giving my face a final inspection, I took my comb out of my back pocket and ran it through my hair. My eyes never left the mirror. The restroom mirror: modern-day descendant of Narcissus’s pool in the woods.

  I walked over to a urinal and unzipped.

  The door creaked open as someone entered the restroom. Staring straight at the wall in front of me, I noted out of the corner of my eye that it was the boy I’d caught earlier staring at me. For a second, I thought he might have followed me in here, but immediately dismissed the thought. I was always trying to find hidden motives for the least coincidence.

  He placed his books on the shelf above the first sink and began examining the mirror. I knew from experience that it was possible to angle your gaze from there to spy on the boy standing at the first urinal…but I didn’t dare look up to confirm if he was doing it. After a moment he came over to the urinals and took the one to my immediate left. This in itself was a little strange, as most boys would have taken the one on the far left, leaving one empty between us for modesty’s sake. I became too tense to urinate.

  Pretending to be done, I gave my dick a loose shake to signal I was done, and out of the corner of my eye saw him turn his head toward me. When I turned to look, our eyes met and locked. He was looking straight at me, and I immediately recognized the look. There was no mistaking it, though it usually came from an older man, not from someone my own age.

  In answer to my questioning glance, he boldly shifted his gaze down to my dick, then brought his eyes up to meet mine again. Unable to meet his look, I lowered my eyes, only to find myself examining his dick. Without even the pretense of urinating, he was merely holding himself. As I watched, his dick began swelling out with no coaxing on his part. It gave a heavy dip before slowly rearing up; the fingers gripped it more tightly and encouraged it with a few slow strokes.

  As I gazed at its steady rise, I felt the rude shock of cold porcelain. My own dick had gotten erect so fast I didn’t have time to think of stepping back from the urinal. And still I couldn’t pull my eyes away from his dick. There was a dream-like sense of unreality to the whole thing. A moment ago I had been sitting in the library; now I was displaying myself to a complete stranger.

  Who was he? I couldn’t remember seeing him before. It was possible I’d passed him on the school grounds any number of times without paying the least attention. He had the looks one might see anywhere: sandy blond hair, pale blue eyes, light, colorless lashes, freckles. He was an anonymous student, unremarkable in every way, just another face in the crowd. Yet in this brief interval, I already had the impression that I’d known him from some period in my life far, far back.

  Time was standing perilously still. I felt as if we were having a silent conversation; he wanted me to make a move but I didn’t want to. I was playing a game whose rules I didn’t know. I’d heard that this sort of thing happened sometimes, but had only half believed in it, never thinking it would happen to me.

  I was afraid of continuing this dangerous game, yet at the same time didn’t want it to end.

  I listened intently for sounds from outside, but all was quiet. Without looking away from my eyes, he reached for my dick and gripped it. Instinctively I reached down to cover his hand with my own. I felt myself being stroked, and found myself stroking along with him.

  Though this was like something out of one of my sexual fantasies, in fact there was a mechanical, lifeless air to the whole thing which was far from erotic. Perhaps it was my tenseness, but all I could feel was a baffled amazement at the incongruity of its happening to me right now, right here in school.

  His manner seemed so assured that I was certain he’d done this often before. How many others had there been? And how had he known I might not be averse to being approached? Did I have a look which gave me away—was there a certain something in my face or eyes which singled me out?

  Suddenly a d
oor slammed somewhere and we both froze—but it was far off, and after listening intently for a moment he resumed his movements.

  I felt a strange calmness come over me, even the luxury of giving myself up to enjoyment. My hand dropped away from his; I let him have complete control. With his fingers he lightly stroked my balls, and then the tip of his thumb gently teased the underside of my glans, the part where it felt best. My dick gave several involuntary twitches.

  I was beginning to lose my resistance…my mask was slowly melting….

  And then the restroom door opened. Instantly he was standing at the far urinal with all the appearance of just zipping up. I, too, after the initial shock, found myself feigning the same. But the sound we’d heard had come from the women’s room next door, magnified by our hair-trigger alertness and the intense silence of our activity. In any case, a large wooden blind just within the entrance shielded the inner room from immediate view. I felt weak with relief.

  But almost immediately after, the door swung open, this time the men’s room for sure. Just as someone walked in past the blind, my partner melted away, grabbing his books and slipping outside. We hadn’t once looked at each other since the first scare. Shocked back into strangers, we’d reverted to our former aloofness. Already the brief encounter seemed like a dream, fading away like a half-forgotten vision.

  The boy who’d entered looked lost and confused, bustling around trying to find a dry place to put his books. When he found one, he proceeded to noisily wash his hands at the sink and dry them off with a paper towel.

  Standing at the next sink combing my hair, I watched him in the mirror until he locked himself in the far stall. Then I filled the sink with cold water and splashed some onto my face.

  I could hear people outside in the library, but for a long time was afraid to step out there again. I didn’t want to meet the boy with whom I’d had my encounter.

  The toilet in the far stall flushed, and as if in delayed reaction, my hands began to tremble. From there the trembling spread throughout my body, until I was shaking like a leaf. I imagined shimmering ripples radiating outward from me, passing through the restroom walls, spreading out across the campus, to the far ends of the universe.

  6

  Even after I’d gotten back to the safety of my dorm room, I still felt shaken by the encounter. Now that a little time had passed, it seemed more like a dream than ever, like something I’d imagined.

  I decided to work out with the dumbbells for a little while to clear my mind. Just as I’d taken them out from under my bed, a sudden knocking on the door almost made my heart stop.

  “Who is it?” I called out.

  A voice I didn’t recognize answered. For an insane moment, I imagined it was the boy from the restroom, who’d followed me here.

  In dread, I opened the door. It was a boy I’d never seen before.

  “Can I help you?” I said.

  “Is this where Jonesy lives?”

  “Yeah. But he’s not in right now.”

  He thrust a handful of photographs at me. “These are his. Could you give them to him?”

  I took them. “Where’d you get them?”

  “He sold me his camera last week. But he must have forgot there was still half a roll of film left in it. So I shot the rest of the roll and developed his pics for him.”

  “I’ll make sure he gets them,” I said.

  “He owes me about 50 cents, but I’ll let it slide. He sold me the camera pretty cheap.”

  After he left, I looked at the photographs. Strangely, there wasn’t a single picture of Jonesy, though there were many of Kruk, and some people who looked like Kruk’s parents.

  I walked down the hall and knocked on Kruk’s door. He came to the door right away, almost as if he’d been waiting for my knock.

  “Oh, hi, Guy. What’s up?”

  “Do these look familiar?” I handed him a few photos.

  He glanced at one, then peered at it more closely. He flipped through the rest, then grabbed the entire batch out of my hand.

  “Where’d you get them?” he asked.

  “From a guy who bought a camera off Jonesy.”

  “These are from my stolen camera.”

  “What?”

  We stared at each other for a sickening moment and then Kruk whispered: “Jonesy is the thief.” His voice was shaking.

  My first thought was: Impossible. But the more I thought about it, the more likely it became. So that was where Jonesy had gotten all his partying money. As it sank in, I felt the blood drain from my face, and then a wretched feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. I felt a little sick.

  “He didn’t even bother to take the film out,” said Kruk. “I can’t believe it. He left the friggin’ film inside.”

  Kruk and I continued to look at each other blankly.

  “We’d better tell the other guys,” I said.

  “I’m going to the campus police,” he said.

  I went back to my room and made a quick inspection of my effects. As far as I could tell, there was nothing missing, but the thought of Jonesy going through my things looking for something gave me a creepy feeling.

  Ever since Kruk had first told me about a possible thief, more things had been disappearing from our floor—watches, rings, money. An air of suspicion had fallen over the dorm. Reports were made to the campus police each time a new theft occurred, and they filed the reports and made lists of the missing objects, but we knew that nothing more would come of it. Such cases were quite common, they said, and it was almost impossible to catch the culprits.

  Now it would be different. Kruk had firsthand evidence.

  I looked over at Jonesy’s side of the room. It looked the same as ever. Nothing was different, yet there was a strange feeling of change in the room’s atmosphere.

  Now that I’d discovered another, hidden aspect of Jonesy, suddenly the boy I’d known all along seemed false. And strangely, it was I who felt ashamed and embarrassed about it. A hidden part of his personality had been exposed, and it was like glimpsing a part of him which shouldn’t have been seen, as if I’d accidentally stumbled into the bathroom while he was defecating.

  I wasn’t angry; he’d stolen nothing of mine. But the fact that he’d stolen things from the other guys on the floor meant that I could no longer talk with him. He was no longer one of us.

  But even as I fought to master my disgust, this new, sinister Jonesy began to awaken a strange fascination within me. His outcast status made him somehow more attractive, for, mingled with my repugnance was a queer feeling of kinship with him.

  I felt restless sitting in my room. If Jonesy were to come back I wouldn’t know what to say to him, or how to act toward him. A sudden dread filled me. I realized I was afraid of facing him. I didn’t want to be here when he came back tonight.

  I put away my dumbbells and slipped on my windbreaker. I knew Christine would be in her room studying, and she wouldn’t mind if I stayed over.

  As I suspected, she was at her books when I got there.

  “Guy, what’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Christine, it was Jonesy. Jonesy was the thief.”

  “Oh, no.” Her face blanched. “So that was where he got all his money for partying.”

  “I guess so.”

  “He has been acting strange recently. His drinking’s been getting out of hand. And remember what I told you that time?”

  She was referring to her suspicions that Jonesy had been making a play for her, disguising it as friendship. He had called her apartment a few times when he knew I wouldn’t be there. We both knew he’d been infatuated with her ever since I first introduced them; he hadn’t made a secret of it. In fact, it was a joke between us: if I didn’t watch out, he’d steal her away from me.

  I let out my breath. “He had his bad points, I guess. But we did have a lot of fun together, especially in the early days. You wouldn’t believe some of the stunts he pulled.”

  �
�You talk of him in the past tense already.”

  “Now that he’s known as a thief, it’s impossible for him to stay in the dorm. There’s no telling how someone might retaliate. He’s finished.”

  “Sounds like the wild west or something. The world of macho codes.”

  “It’s hard to believe I only met him three months ago. The dorm will sure be different without him.”

  “Why don’t you move out?”

  “What?”

  “Nobody says you have to live there.” She began fingering her hair searching for split ends. “When you live in a dorm, you have to live with all the risks which come with communal living.”

  “What are you getting at?” But I knew already what she was leading up to. She had the tired look on her face which she always got whenever she brought up a topic she knew I wanted to avoid. “You mean about us living together,” I said, dumbly.

  “Mm-hm.”

  It was a topic which was coming up between us with greater and greater frequency, especially since Christine’s roommate, Nancy, was considering moving in with her boyfriend.

  There had been a time when it was I who was pushing for the idea of living together. When we were first going out, I’d fondly dreamed of a domestic arrangement—probably out of homesickness more than anything else. In addition, there had been the desire to impress the guys in the dorm: it was considered the ultimate sign of manhood to live with a girl. But now I realized that such an arrangement would never work for me. I’d grown much too fond of living in the dorm. And I needed my freedom.

  “I don’t know, Christine. I’m worried that if we lived together, I might not be able to concentrate on my studies.”

  “That’s an excuse and you know it. If you can study in that dorm, you’d be able to study anywhere. This quiet apartment is much more suited to study, if that’s what’s worrying you.”