Mirage

by Perry Brass

  Wright was frisky, but he was not into sharing. He was frankly jealous. Insecure. He knew Alan was interested in boys—guys in their early twenties, preferably. Alan started off liking older men. He'd been drawn to them. But now that he was getting a few stray grays of his own in his curly dark hair, youth was starting to get a charm that was definitely appealing. Vanilla ice cream bodies. Hard little faces with those sweet, "Buy-me-a-big-one-Daddy" smiles.

  They just about made Wright sick. Wright had a wang men liked and an ass you'd want to take a big bite out of, so why was Alan always looking in another direction? It upset the hell out of Wright. He wasn't good at showing his feelings. He knew he kept them tight as a brigadier general's anal sphincter before two martinis. He was a WASP from Michigan. He grew up on a dairy farm that had been in his family for three generations, up above Saginaw Bay, near a white-picket-fence sort of town full of Elks and Masons called Roseville. His father was a taciturn but sweet-natured man. "You pay your bills before you have your fun," was his motto. He didn't like frivolity. Frivolous people—the kind he used to point out as being homosexual—made him uncomfortable.

  Wright rebelled against this much of his life, but it was something he couldn't escape. As a kid he was a loner and a dreamer. He dreamed about a special place that was his, a place where people like himself felt comfortable. Where the kind of friends you yearned for touched you.

  It would take him a long time to find it.

  In college, he realized his two interests both began with the letter A: Architecture and Archeology. He wanted to build a new world, or find an old one. He read Frank Lloyd Wright and Mary Renault. He found himself actually getting aroused by the idea of an ancient world without modern inhibitions. But neither of his college interests was the easiest thing to make a living at. His father had stopped supporting him after his second year, and he had to work his way through U. of M. after that.

  After struggling through all the courses he could in both areas, the blueprint for his own future became apparent to him: he didn't have the talent to be a first rate architect. He didn't have the kind of imagination that meandered through his own "inner" space and came back with the prototype for a new skyscraper. He was a concrete, inhibited person. And being a second string architect—the type who ended up hunched over all day, revising plans for somebody else's garages—didn't appeal to him. Nor did he have the scholastic drive to make it in archeology.

  In his Egyptology course, he kept mixing up the dynasties. He could read some New Kingdom hieroglyphics, verbatim, but still couldn't figure out what they meant. It has hard enough remembering that Horus changed names every other century and ended up becoming Amen-Ra himself. Greece was a bore. Everyone was into Greece. Linguistically, he was not particularly gifted. Reading Greek inscriptions didn't thrill him at all.

  Then almost by accident, at the University he bumped into an old man named Henry Rutledge who had deep little wrinkles etched all over his face and looked like he had been baked in clay himself. He came in every so often and taught an Assyriology course. Wright loved it, and quickly picked up Sumerian and Akkadian letter forms. These were so old they preceded by a millennium the writing called "Pre-Alphabet." They were in cuneiform, little wedge-shaped marks pressed over four thousand years ago into wet clay. Very difficult. Every moment with them was like cracking a code. Wright, once a loner on a farm in Michigan, loved codes. This certainly helped him in his later pursuits in life—sexual and professional.

  By his third year at Michigan, he realized he didn't want to teach. This dumped most of ancient history down the drain; the chances of him simply making a living out of it, and not putting up with the academic world, was impossible. He wasn't comfortable with the professors and post-graduate types who'd never been out in the "real world." His mind was more technical, realistic—he came to the conclusion—than even he originally thought.

  He was not high-tech. Computers did not fascinate him. But he could figure things out. He'd been a wiz at fixing farm equipment. At fifteen, he'd put up a new barn almost entirely by himself. His dour father quite burst his buttons with pride. Wright decided he was good at working through the puzzles of everyday life—the here and the now. In other words, why not be an engineer? Michigan had a world-famous engineering school, but had never been any great shakes in architecture. At least he was in the right place, at the right time.

  He was amazed how well he fit into this engineering world, basically—in those days—of men. Guys who wore Right Guard Deodorant instead of cologne; guys who wore Vitalis instead of hair spray; slow thinkers and methodical tinkerers. The stomach-turning 8 A.M. lab courses where every chemical converted into rotten eggs. And the wash-and-wear shirt pockets stuffed with slide rules and broken ballpoint pens. None of that bothered him. He took all the engineering courses he could, and ended up, after a lot of make-up courses, three years later, with a BS in Structural Engineering.

  After college, he didn't feel like jumping cold into the job waters, especially in the Midwest. He didn't want to land there; he wanted to travel. There had to be something else. By luck, he was outside an Air Force recruiting office in Ann Arbor and decided to go in. What the heck, right? The recruiter, a hot looking, utterly sincere blond with a trim mustache, offered him everything in the world. "You an engineer? It's all yours, Mister!" Free travel. Choice of location. Post graduate training. You name it!

  All bullshit.

  The travel was free to some of the most awful, mosquito bitten places he'd ever been. He could not qualify for graduate training because he was already a college graduate (Revelation after boot camp: "Mister, we only train junior college level. Who told you otherwise?") And he was very sexually frustrated, while pretending with all his might to be straight. The Air Force, if you got caught, was notoriously hard on homos.

  He stayed in the Air Force for eight years. The Viet Nam War was over; his biggest enemy was boredom. He did play around some. He couldn't help it. He was stationed in Germany for three years, and there was too much temptation. But he did not take part, to any degree, in a gay lifestyle. He met men in the johns of a few railroad bahnhofs. Once during a very drunken Fasching, the German Carnival season, he got a scrumptious blow-job in the locked men's room of a tavern right outside of Munich. He also found out where a notorious bathhouse was in a small town twenty kilometers from his base. He was popular. He had plenty of straight, "Gee-wiz-Wright-how's-zit-goin'?" buddies. He worked hard. But he could not make a career either out of the Air Force, or out of sneaking around.

  During his last year in the Air Force, he decided what he wanted to do, professionally and personally, with his life: Work with good architects as a consulting engineer. Move to New York. Really come out. After a few weeks in New York, he discovered New York Jewish men. It was like sticking a firecracker up his ass. He couldn't sit still around them. Maybe it was a leftover from being stationed in Turkey, where the men were gorgeous, dangerous, dark, and out of fear he didn't touch anyone for almost two years. Or was it a reaction to Michigan, and his father who would have surely thought Jews—if he ever met socially a single living one—were frivolous. (Code: untrustworthy. Code: subversive. Code: perverse.)

  But Wright's passion was unquenchable. He couldn't figure it out. It shocked even him. He picked up a lot of Yiddish words very fast. Every man he fell for was Jewish. The first time he saw them at lunch on Madison Avenue, coming out of the ad agencies and publishing houses—in stylish suits, with dark mustaches and five o' clock shadows, deep blue eyes and smiles that seemed to start right at their balls—he had to count backwards from fifty to keep his cock from pushing through his boxer shorts and making a tent in the front of his chino trousers.

  Then he met Alan—tall, attractive. So voluble. So expressive. Alan was boyish when they first met, a boy with a dark hairy chest. Alan was definitely a long ride from Michigan. He was warm; Michigan was cold. He was fun; Michigan was boring. Now Wright was scared he was going to lose him. They were lying na
ked on the sand, and Alan suddenly got up, waving himself and his hairy chest in the air. Wright loved the curls on Alan's chest. When he was wet, his chest hairs curled. Wright knew Alan was surveying the scene. Seeing who was down by the water.

  "Anyone down there?" Wright asked blandly.

  "Not at the moment," Alan replied, but thought he'd go in anyway. He sprang up and lobbed down the dune that separated them from the beach and the water's edge.

  Wright got up. What a golden afternoon it was. The Atlantic was really green, but further out, where the sun hit it, it looked positively gilded. He saw Alan start to swim out. The water must have been cold. It never really warmed up until July, but Alan was a mer-man if there ever was one. Alan could be such a bitch. He drove Wright to distraction when he got into one of his impossible-to-please, temperamental, New-York-Jewish moods. Wright was nuts about him, but this thing for the kids—that was hard to deal with. Wright thought for a moment about surprising Alan. Going in the water after him. Why not? he thought. Then he saw Alan talking to someone in the water. Another kid. Wright could see the man was young, and they were talking.

  Wright turned around. Made a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn; and then went back into the dunes. He wanted to see what was shaking back there. If there was any new talent for the season. The sand felt crinkly and clean under his feet and between his toes. He loved the feeling of beach reeds brushing his thighs, and the wind licking his skin, and his body movement making his dick flop about in the air. He made a circle of his favorite path. But all he saw were two robins, a beach rabbit, and two men he'd seen for almost a decade finally getting it off between them. They were in a pit of wind-swept oaks that was such a notorious sex area that even European guides to American gay life mentioned it. But that was it: nothing else.

  Then something hit him. He had no idea where it came from, but it was more than merely a thought. It was like an intuition to get down to the beach. He started bolting through the paths. He couldn't stop himself. He felt driven by the urge that he had to be on the beach as fast as his legs could carry him. Even faster, if that were possible.

  He barely felt his feet hitting the sand. His breath started to rasp his throat. He was flat out flying. His heart pounded like a jackhammer, while his eyes stared in front of him, toward the ribbon of glassy sea that shimmered just beyond the dunes and the beach. Then a nasty piece of lumber tripped him. Luckily, there were no nails in it. How it ever got back there in the dunes was anyone's guess. But it was. It caught him by surprise, and he went flipping into the air like he'd jumped on a see-saw. He landed on his left hip. He didn't even stop to think about the black-and-blue mark that would result from the trip, but got right back up and continued running until he hit the beach.

  It was so quiet, all he could hear was his breathing, even up over the hiss and splash of the surf. Then he saw him.

  There was Alan, alone. Too far out into the water. Some current must have been pulling him out, just as some intuition, some primitive flow of the brain itself had pulled Wright out of the dunes and towards his friend. Wright screamed so loud several times that his voice cracked. At that moment, there was no one else out on the beach. What was Alan doing? It looked like he was floating calmly. Going further and further out. This was crazy. Any further out could be disastrous. Tragic. The water temperature—it was just too cold to float about aimlessly—could play fatal tricks on you. Any second Alan might be chilled. Cramped. Any second, he might drop below the surface.

  Wright had to get out there. He'd been through the exact experience in the Air Force once. In Turkey, on a beautiful beach in the evening. They were all pretty drunk—but Wright still had most of his brains about him. On a dare, one of his buddies went in and almost drowned. But in Turkey, Wright had been lucky. There was no time to think; he just shot in and grabbed his friend. He was only a reasonably good swimmer, but in Turkey Wright was smart enough to even out the risks. He knew when to push out. When to crawl; to float if he had to. To pace himself, and to get the hell out.

  Why didn't Alan?

  Wright jumped in and began cutting the water with smooth, controlled strokes. This was no time to go nuts. Alan got larger as Wright approached him. Finally, about a hundred and sixty yards from the water line, he saw him. Alan looked like he didn't even recognize him.

  "What are you doing??" Wright shouted, as loud as his hoarse voice allowed. "Don't you know you can kill yourself out here? What happened to that young number you were talking to?"

  Alan didn't answer him. He just looked vaguely at him, like Wright were so far away Alan could make him out only in silhouette. But Wright was there in front of him; he started to float to conserve his strength. "You didn't swim all the way out here to be with him, did you?" Wright asked and then started to laugh. "Where'd he go?"

  Alan looked at him. "Who are you?" he asked.

  Now Alan was really scaring him. Wright had no idea what to do. Obviously Alan wasn't drowning, so he got closer. He put his arms around him. Alan's body felt so warm. How could he keep his body temperature up after being in cold water for so long? More than thirty minutes now. Was Alan that much of a polar bear?

  "You really scared me, baby. Why are you scaring me? Is this a new game with you, Alan?"

  A smile arched over Alan's face. Wright felt he was looking at Alan for the first time. His individual aquiline nose; sensuous lips; cheekbones. Chin with an almost perfect cleft in it. That cleft—Wright remembered the first time he saw Alan at the Museum of Modern Art. That cleft he used to love to kiss. He started to kiss Alan in the water, both of them naked, and feeling so weightless. Wright felt warmed by Alan's warmth. He clutched Alan's body, and felt the warmth of it flow through him.

  He'd never felt such a warmth. It was like there were two people there. One man could never keep so warm in that water. Even in Turkey, where the water had been so much warmer, Wright couldn't be in it more than ten minutes. Now he didn't feel cold at all, and he had the strangest feeling that some one else was there, some one else was floating right next to Alan.

  "Alan," he said, his voice lower, "I'm scared. I don't know why, but I'm scared. Let's go back."

  But Alan wouldn't let him go. He held on to him until Wright started crying, there in the water. Tears welled up from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks and dissolved into the salt of the water at Jones Beach. He was frightened, more frightened than he'd ever been in his life—more frightened than he'd ever been of his father's worst displeasure. Alan, whom he loved so much, was leading him closer to death.

  "Alan, you've got to let me go. Please!"

  Alan was transparent. Still warm; but Wright could see the veins running through Alan's neck and body. Alan's hands gripped Wright's upper arms, and his grip was like steel—icy and hot—at the same time. Wright was sure he was going to panic. He kept telling himself that he'd been in these situations before. He'd saved that drowning buddy once in Turkey. On that beautiful beach in the evening. That evening when he felt so lost himself, and lonely and drunk, and he jumped right into the water and saved him. And how many other jumps had he made? He'd made dozens of jumps from planes. Training jumps. Jumps into fear itself. Although he'd never really made a jump under enemy fire. But why quibble now, right?

  He told himself all this, while he knew Alan was pulling him down, helplessly, to drown him. Now, they were under water. Wright looked up and saw the water like a sheet pulled over him. He'd had a dream once like this. It was a dream of death. Death was like having a sheet pulled over your face. The sheet was cold and dark and clear, like this water.

  But now this water was solid and heavy; and Wright's mind squeezed out its last, anxious image of Alan. Wright went blank. He stopped being afraid—Alan no longer frightened him.

  Alan smiled and then kissed him. One of his hands released Wright's upper arm, then went to his balls. He kept his hands on Wright's balls, not squeezing them, just holding them.

  Alan's warmth flowed through Wright's body that wa
s now cold. It seemed to go from Alan's body into Wright's scrotum. Alan pulled him closer to him, so close that Wright could feel the hairs on Alan's chest waving in the cold liquid up against him. Alan took one of Wright's hands, and brought it to his groin.

  Passively, Wright's hand—the fingers cold, like rubber—was guided to touch Alan's balls. They floated incredibly loose and warm in a pouch of waving skin. Wright's fingers became warmer and warmer, until they identified what he was sure was a third testicle. It was slightly larger than the other two and moved on its own in Alan's ball sac. Wright felt unexplainably contented; the water no longer void, cold, and frightening. He couldn't account for the feeling. He had stopped thinking rationally. He had stopped being Wright for a moment, then he recognized Alan in a way that was new—foreign to anything he'd ever known; and finally, ancient and familiar.

  He knew, somehow, he'd actually seen Alan like this before.

  He encircled his friend's waist and pushed him slightly up, above him underwater. He buried his face in Alan's groin. The hairs waving from Alan's crotch tickled his face; he began to suck, carefully, on Alan's third testicle.

  Alan's cock enlarged. Wright massaged the third ball, and then placed the fattened head of his friend's penis in his mouth. He sucked Alan all the way, until his lips reached the hilt of the younger man's cock. Alan, his eyes closed but inwardly opening to another self, caressed his own third ball, mingling his fingers with Wright's. The water became warm and golden. It rippled with light. It began to bubble at that delicate seam of flesh where Alan's penis and scrotum met, as his syrup, the seed from this new third ball, surged into Wright's throat.