Mirrors of Narcissus (23 page)

He seemed unconvinced, so I went on:

“Believe me, Scott, if you were homosexual, you’d know. Sure, there are some homosexuals who don’t want to face the fact, but even
they
know, deep down inside, that there’s no denying it. When you’re queer, it’s something which colors your whole life, almost from the time you’re born, and not something which can be changed by a single incident. So your worry is just a waste of time.” It felt strange to be trying to convince the boy I loved of his heterosexuality. It could only succeed in pushing him further away from me. At the same time, I needed him to be pure; I loved him for his purity.

“Well, if you say so, then I must not be.”

“You love Christine, don’t you? That feeling is no lie.”

“But you did, too, didn’t you? I mean, before.”

“But that love was probably different from the love you feel.”

“Are you going to tell Christine about what happened?”

“No. In fact, I don’t think I’ll tell her anything anymore.”

“What do you mean?” His face went pale and he looked ready to crumple into tears.

I looked straight into his eyes. “Scott, Christine needs a normal guy, not someone like me.”

“Normal? What’s ‘normal?’ I don’t think I know anymore.”

“
You’re
normal, Scott. Perfectly normal. Better than normal, because you’re open-minded.”

“Open-minded….”

“I know Christine likes you, and you two have a lot more in common with each other than with me.”

“Guy….”

“I don’t care how you feel about me, but my feelings for you will never change. You’re the first person I ever truly loved, Scott. Don’t take that away from me. You can think of me as a friend, but from my side, it’s love, pure and strong. I love you, Scott. Just accept that. You don’t have to return it. Just know that I love you, and don’t reject me for it.”

“I don’t understand. Such a relationship can’t exist. There’s never been anything like it. Either two people love each other, or they are friends. There’s no in-between relationship like that.”

“Just let me enjoy the crumbs of your affection, every now and then, like just now. Or I’ll go crazy.”

“Guy, what I told you earlier— I said it made no difference. But accepting you for what you are doesn’t mean I want to join you.”

I turned my face away and felt my eyes fill with hot tears. There was silence for a long time as I gazed downward at the floor unable to look up. I felt a heavy weight on my heart, like the weight of centuries of failure, a lifetime of deception, of lost hopes and shattered dreams. All my frustrations were suddenly gathered together into one point and focused with a white hot clarity upon this moment in time.

I felt his hand on my shoulder.

“Guy, don’t take it like that. It can’t be helped. There’s nothing I can do. You know I’ll do anything I can for you as your friend. But there’s a certain line I can’t cross. Please don’t ask me to. What you’re asking me to do is something I can’t do. If you accept that, there’s nothing that will stand in the way of our friendship. You know that.”

I said nothing.

“I’ll go to the limit for you, Guy. As a friend. That’s what friends are for.”

Scott suddenly seemed to have become so much stronger than before. In our relationship, I was the weaker one now. He was the conqueror, and I the slave…to my need of him. He knew my secret now—that which constituted my very weakest, most vulnerable point. I almost wished that I hadn’t given in to my sexual desire. A moment’s rashness had completely altered our relationship. Still, I knew I would do it again, in an instant, if I knew I could hold him in my arms again, kiss him, and touch his dick. What we’d done hadn’t diminished my love for him at all. If anything, it had only strengthened it. I still needed him more than ever.

But the vision of the two of them, Scott and Christine, happily heterosexual, content in their relationship, one unbreakable unit, excluding me—forever—seemed to rise up before me. The beautiful picture they made, I wanted to destroy it, utterly.

I felt a thrill race through my heart. My love for Scott had never been stronger than it was at this very moment. It was like a drug which was charging me with a strange energy. With it I would be able to crush him, completely. For the only way I could satisfy my love for Scott now was to destroy him, and his budding happiness with Christine.

In the crazy logic of my ecstasy, I knew that my love could only culminate in his utter destruction. It was all so clear, like a mathematical theorem. If love was need, then love was also selfishness, the ultimate ego gratification.

I wanted to crush him. It would give me a pleasure by comparison with which sex with him was a joke. I knew that my love for him could only climax at the moment of his utter humiliation. Only when he was totally humiliated could I could love him completely, to my heart’s desire. He had to be dirtied, dragged down to the lowest depths.

I knew, with the certainty vouchsafed only to the gods, that I was perched at the emotional climax of my entire life. My love for Scott had now taken over my human form and was guiding it like an alien intruder.

I faced him calmly—so calmly that my blood ran cold at the mastery I possessed over my emotions, the calculating manner with which I was plotting my own downfall.

“You want to know the truth, Scott? The whole truth?”

“What do you mean?”

His look of concern only goaded me on. I wanted to hurt him—to give him more pain than he’d ever given me. A shadow of concern flitted across his face. I wanted to savor that look of helpless fear. He was afraid of me—of the hurt he’d inflicted on me.

“You want to know something, Scott? Your feelings for Christine…I knew about them all along.” Stop, Guy. Don’t do it. “I knew you were in love with her.”

“What? You mean she—?”

“No. She didn’t say anything. And do you want to know why she slept with you?”

“Guy….”

“Do you think she did it out of love for you? Or because you successfully seduced her? Wrong. I
asked
her to sleep with you.”

“What?”

“That’s right. I wanted you to lose your virginity. I wanted—”

“Guy! I don’t want to hear any more.”

“You weren’t betraying me, Scott. You had my blessing. It was the way I wanted it. Because that was the only way I could have you—through Christine. Get it?”

“I don’t believe it, Guy. I really don’t. You’re just saying that.” Tears flashed in his eyes.

I looked away. “I guess I thought I had a chance of winning your love, even if it was shared with Christine. I don’t know what I thought. A three-way scene where we could all be in love with each other. Because I knew Christine is partly in love with you, too. I’ve known it for a long time, and wanted to see it grow…and mature. I just gave it a little extra push.”

He rushed for the door.

“Wait.”

The door slammed and he was gone. I jumped to my feet and ran after him, feeling the floor swaying under me. The hallway outside was crazy, reeling and making silence into a long tunnel I had to traverse. I saw Scott at the far end of it rushing down the stairs; one moment he was in my vision, the next moment he was gone.

I leaned against the wall for support, almost knocking the telephone off its cradle. Without thinking, I reached into my pocket and slipped a quarter into the slot, began dialing Christine’s number, almost by instinct. I had no idea what I was going to say to her. I just let myself go, watching myself as if I were watching a character in a movie. I knew that Scott was heading for her place. I knew it. There was nowhere else he could go. And maybe I wanted to beat him there, to get to Christine before he could. But when I heard the dial tone sounding, I hung up. There was nothing more I had to say anyone anymore.

I went back into the room, shut the door behind me.

I went to Scott’s bed and sat down. Blankly, I gazed at the wall, at my mirror. From where I was sitting, it was angled to reflect our half-curtained window…and beyond that, the women’s dorm across the way. I sat up. I thought I saw a slight rustle of the curtains in the girls’ window opposite, and a furtive movement. Was it the wind? Surely it was. It had to be. The curtains were still now. I waited for them to move again. I waited for a long time, but they remained still. Completely still.

6

I heard the
plock plock plock
sound before I saw him. He was hitting a tennis ball against the back wall of the student union cafeteria. Overweight, wearing a loose gray sweat suit, he looked ungainly; his weight seemed to flow around him almost gracefully as he ran back and forth.

“Kruk! Take a break.”

He turned around, wiped the sweat off his forehead and came over to me. “Where have you been, Guy?” He took off his glasses and ran the back of his sleeve over his face and replaced his glasses, blinking as if to get his focus back.

“Looks like you’re serious about losing some weight,” I said, sitting down on a bench nearby.

“Yeah. Besides, I have to get in shape for next term. You need at least three credit hours of phys-ed to graduate from here. I may as well get it over with this year.”

As he sat down beside me on the bench, the smell of his sweat wafted over to me, a not unpleasant sensation.

“You’re looking better already, Kruk.”

“Thanks. You know, it’s not supposed to be true, but people do judge you by the way you look. And—I want to look my best, that’s all.”

“Are you in love, boy?”

“Get out of here.” He punched me—hard—on my upper arm. “What have you been up to, Guy? I haven’t seen you around the dorm very much lately.”

“I know. I’ve been busy.” I’d been with Harry Golden for the past several days, had practically moved into his house. Without knowing the exact nature of my heartbreak, he had consoled me, and I had been glad of his presence. The sanctuary of his home had provided me with much-needed isolation, while our nightly sessions of lovemaking had progressively deepened my understanding of gay sex. And it had all helped me to forget. A little. But after a few days, I knew it was time to move on.

Suddenly Kruk let out a sigh. “Looks like one thief replaced another, eh?”

“What do you mean?”

“Scott stole your girlfriend away from you, didn’t he? Anyway, that’s what all the guys in the dorm are saying.”

“What else do they say?”

“That he’s moved in with her.”

I felt a pang. “Well, I hope they’re happier now.”

“It’s not fair. It’s just not fair.”

“I told you once that I was really in love with someone else, didn’t I?”

He looked surprised. “You mean you’re not upset?”

“Why should I be? I’m happy for them, Kruk. I wish them the best.”

“Wow. I can’t believe how easy you’re taking it, Guy. You almost convince me that you wished it’d happen.”

“Let’s just say I’m only bowing to the inevitable.”

“I guess you just don’t have any luck with your roommates, huh?”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Speaking of former roommates, have you heard about Jonesy?”

“No. What about him?” I’d almost forgotten about Jonesy. He seemed like a faint echo now from out of my remote past, in the pre-Scott era, pre-heartbreak.

“Frank saw him in the city. And guess what? He joined up. He’s in the Navy now.”

“Jonesy in the Navy?” I had a flash of him dressed up in a sailor’s suit. Somehow it seemed a perfect picture. I imagined him in a foreign port, in some seedy hotel with an exotic-looking woman in bed with him, picked up in a bar. Fist fights, drunken brawls, broken bottles. My image of him had always been haloed with a sinister beauty; now I could all but see him with an unlit cigarette dangling negligently from his scornful lips, one eye blackened, and an anchor tattooed on his chest. It was like looking at a picture postcard found in a musty old trunk. “It’s the perfect place for him,” I said after a pause.

“He was in a bar with some of his shipmates. His ship is in port for a short stay before they head out across the Pacific.”

The free and easy life. Tropical islands. Brown-skinned native boy lying on the sand.

“Listen, Kruk. I have a favor to ask of you. A big favor.”

“Sure. What is it?”

“I’m dropping out of school.”

“What? But why?”

“I’m just tired of everything. Nothing seems worth it anymore. It’s pointless. Maybe I just need a break from school. You know, school is all I’ve ever known, and I’m beginning to wonder if there’s more to life than just school.”

He looked a little downcast.

“Don’t tell any of the guys,” I said quickly. “I’d rather kind of slip out without anyone knowing about it. That’s the way it should be.”

“What about your classes? The finals?”

“I’m through with all of that.”

“So where you going?”

“I don’t know. I think I’ll just knock around for a while, try to get my head together.”

He looked at me with some envy. I couldn’t imagine what was going through his head, but from the look in his eyes, he seemed to view me as a romantic hero of some kind.

“Just like that?”

“Yep.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a piece of paper—an old overdue notice from the library—and wrote down my home address on the back. “There’s some clothes in my room I’d like you to send home for me. Some stuff I couldn’t pack in the suitcase. And some books. Notebooks. It’s Sunday today so the post office is closed. And I don’t wanna stick around till tomorrow.”

“Sure. No problem.”

“I appreciate it, Kruk. You’re a real pal.”

“Will you keep in touch, Guy?”

I looked at him, and suddenly felt all his loneliness flow into me. I saw it all in a flash: the ugly fat boy, unloved, rejected…his whole life reeled in front of me, from the past all the way into his future as a computer technician. I knew that he’d probably tasted miseries I couldn’t begin to conceive of, but my own brand of hell was enough for me to bear right now.

“Yeah, Kruk, I’ll write. I know your address here.”

We shook hands, and I felt unexpected tears well up in my eyes. I turned away quickly to go before he should suspect them. As I walked off, I knew he was looking at my back, trying to impress the memory of this moment into his mind. For several long seconds there was no sound at all. Only after I’d turned the corner and disappeared from his sight did I hear the
plock plock plock
resume, this time more slowly, less vigorous than before.

It was a warm day. All along the campus plaza people were sitting on the benches, eating early lunches or reading. A long-haired boy who, from the looks of his clothes, probably wasn’t a student, was playing a guitar and loudly singing a love song, but no one was paying any attention. It was still spring, but for me it felt like the first day of summer vacation.

*