by John Boyne
Back in the office, I ignored an endless conversation that my colleagues were having about Jacqueline Kennedy and sat down to write a long letter to Julian, telling him that I’d fallen in love with a beautiful girl I’d met in Bewley’s Café. I described her in the most complimentary way I could and implied that we’d been having relations every which way for the last few months. I did everything I could to sound as sexually promiscuous as him and signed off by saying that the only problem with having a girlfriend was not being able to take advantage of all the other girls that were out there. I couldn’t do that, I told him. I love her too much. Still, I added, just because I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I can’t take a look at the menu. I sent the letter care of the Western Union office in Salzburg, where he and that Suzi harpy had gone skiing, and hoped that his curiosity might bring him back to Dublin soon so we could go on double dates together and then maybe the girls would strike up a friendship and tell us to go out for drinks on our own so they could talk about knitting and recipes and so on and it would just be Julian and me left alone together, like it was supposed to be.
Within a few weeks, Mary-Margaret and I were an established couple and every Sunday she gave me a list of the things we would be doing during the week ahead. I had Tuesdays and Thursdays off but had to be with her every other evening, most of which were spent sitting together on the sofa in her front room while her daddy watched television and ate chocolate-covered Brazil nuts, all the time proclaiming that he was sick of chocolate-covered Brazil nuts.
After about a month, it occurred to me that nothing sexual had occurred between us yet and decided that it might be worth a try. After all, I had never enjoyed any intimacy with a girl and there was always the possibility that if I tried it, I might actually enjoy it. And so, after her daddy went up to bed one night, I leaned over and without any warning pressed my lips against hers.
“Excuse me,” she said, rearing back on the sofa with an appalled expression on her face. “What do you think you’re doing, Cyril Avery?”
“I was trying to kiss you,” I said.
She shook her head slowly and looked at me as if I’d just admitted that I was Jack the Ripper or a member of the Labor party. “I thought you had a little bit more respect for me than that,” she said. “I had no idea that all this time I was going out with a sex pervert.”
“I don’t think that’s quite accurate,” I said.
“Well, how else would you describe yourself? Here I am trying to watch Perry Mason, little knowing that all the time you were planning on raping me.”
“I wasn’t planning anything of the sort,” I protested. “It was just a kiss, that’s all. Shouldn’t we be kissing if we’re doing a line together? There’s nothing wrong with that, Mary-Margaret, is there?”
“Well, maybe,” she said, considering it. “But you could at least have the decency to ask in future. There’s nothing less romantic than spontaneity.”
“All right,” I said. “Well, can I kiss you then?”
She thought about it and finally nodded her head. “You can,” she said. “But make sure to keep your eyes closed and your mouth too. And I don’t want your hands anywhere near me. I can’t stand to be touched.”
I did as instructed, pressing my lips against hers again and mumbling her name as if I was lost in the passion of a great love affair. She remained rigid on the sofa and I could tell that she was still watching the television, where Perry Mason was getting tough with a man in the witness box. After about thirty seconds of this uncontrollable eroticism, I pulled away.
“You’re a great kisser,” I told her.
“I hope you’re not suggesting that I have a past,” she said.
“No, I only meant that you have very nice lips.”
She narrowed her eyes, uncertain whether that too might be the sort of thing a sex pervert would say. “Well, that’ll be enough for one night,” she said. “We don’t want to get carried away, do we?”
“Fair enough.” I glanced down at the crotch of my pants. There had been no movement whatsoever. If anything, there had been what could only be called A Great Shriveling.
“And don’t think that one thing will lead to another, Cyril Avery,” she warned me. “I know there are girls out there who will do anything to hold on to a man but that’s not my standard. That’s not my standard at all.”
“No problem,” I said, meaning every word of it.
Everywhere, People Stare
It was a difficult time to be Irish, a difficult time to be twenty-one years of age and a difficult time to be a man who was attracted to other men. To be all three simultaneously required a level of subterfuge and guile that felt contrary to my nature. I had never considered myself to be a dishonest person, hating the idea that I was capable of such mendacity and deceit, but the more I examined the architecture of my life, the more I realized how fraudulent were its foundations. The belief that I would spend the rest of my time on earth lying to people weighed heavily on me and at such times I gave serious consideration to taking my own life. Knives frightened me, nooses horrified me and guns alarmed me, but I knew that I was not a strong swimmer. Were I to head out to Howth, for example, and throw myself into the sea, the current would quickly pull me under and there would be nothing I could do to save myself. It was an option that was always at the back of my mind.
I had few friends and even when I considered my relationship with Julian I had to admit that our bond was built on little more than my obsessive and undeclared love. I had guarded and nurtured that alliance jealously over the years, ignoring the fact that were it not for my determination to stay in touch he might have moved on years ago. I had no family to speak of, no siblings, no cousins, no idea as to the identities of my birth parents. I had very little money and had grown to hate the flat on Chatham Street, for Albert Thatcher had acquired a serious girlfriend and when she stayed over the sound of their lovemaking was as ghastly as it was arousing. I longed for a place of my own, a door with only one key.
In desperation I turned to Charles, asking for a loan of one hundred pounds so that I could set myself up in a better situation. I had seen a flat above a shop on Nassau Street with a view over the lawns of Trinity College but I could never have afforded it on the pitiful salary that I earned. The loan, I told him, would allow me to live there for two years while I saved money and tried to build a better life for myself. We were sitting in the yacht club at Dun Laoghaire when I broached the idea, eating lobster and drinking Moët and Chandon, but he refused me instantly, declaring that he didn’t loan money to friends, as such acts of philanthropy always ended badly.
“But we’re more than friends, surely,” I said, throwing myself on his mercy. “You’re my adoptive father, after all.”
“Oh come along, Cyril,” he replied, laughing as if I was making a joke. “You’re twenty-five years old now—”
“I’m twenty-one.”
“Twenty-one then. Naturally, I care about you, we’ve known each other a long time, but you’re not—”
“I know,” I said, holding up a hand before he could finish that sentence. “It doesn’t matter.”
Of most concern to me, however, was my overwhelming, insatiable and uncontrollable lust, a yearning that was as intense as my need for food and water but that, unlike those other basic human needs, was always countered by the fear of discovery. There were nighttime excursions to the banks of the Grand Canal or the clustered forests at the heart of the Phoenix Park, furtive explorations of the narrow laneways off Baggot Street and the hidden passages that zigzagged from the Ha’penny Bridge toward Christ Church Cathedral. The darkness concealed my crimes but convinced me that I was a degenerate, a pervert, a Mr. Hyde who left my benevolent Dr. Jekyll skin behind on Chatham Street as soon as the sun went down and the clouds passed slowly to cover the moon.
Satisfying my lust was not the problem. In the city center, it wasn’t difficult to find a young man with similar predilections and a simple exchange of looks coul
d create an instant contract as we made our way wordlessly to a hiding place with little chance of discovery, fumbling behind bushes, careful not to look into each other’s eyes as our hands pulled and caressed while our lips moved hungrily as we stood with our backs against trees, lay together on the grass or knelt before each other in attitudes of supplication. We would paw at each other’s bodies until one of us could take no more, then gush forth into the earth beneath our feet, and although the urge was always to leave as quickly as possible afterward, good etiquette meant that you could not go until the other boy had reached his climax too. A quick thank you would be followed by our turning in opposite directions and walking quickly away, making for home with a silent prayer that the Gardaí were not following us as we swore in our heads that this was the last time, that we would never do such a thing again, that we were done with it forever, but then the hours would pass, the urges would return and by the following night our curtains would be twitching as we looked outside to see what the weather was like.
I didn’t like going to the parks because they were usually populated by older men with cars looking for someone young to fuck in the backseat, the stench of their Guinness and sweat enough to sublimate any desire that I might feel. But I went when I was desperate, fearing for the day when I too might find myself driving past Áras an Uachtaráin in search of young skin. I stopped going when the old men began to offer me money. They would pull up next to me and if I refused them would say that there was a pound note in it for me if I did what I was asked. And once or twice, when times were hard, I accepted their pound but sex without desire was not something that turned me on. I could not commit the act for money. I needed to want it.
Only once did I dare to bring someone home to Chatham Street and that was because I was drunk, dizzy with lust, and the boy I had met, a few years older than me at twenty-three or twenty-four, put me so much in mind of Julian that I thought I could spend a night with him and imagine that my friend had somehow succumbed to my desires. The boy’s name was Ciarán, or at least that was the name he gave me, and we met in a downstairs bar off Harcourt Street, a place whose blacked-out windows encouraged its clientele to feel that they, like the Beatles, had to hide their love away. I went there occasionally, for it was a good place to meet someone as shy and anxious as me under cover of simply stopping in for a pint. I saw him as he returned from the bathroom and we exchanged a look of mutual appreciation. A few minutes later, he came over to ask whether he could join me.
“Of course,” I said, nodding toward the empty chair. “I’m on my own.”
“Sure we’re all on our own,” he replied with a wry smile. “What’s your name anyway?”
“Julian,” I said, the name out of my mouth before I could even consider the wisdom of the choice. “And you?”
“Ciarán.”
I nodded and took a drink from my Smithwick’s, trying not to stare at him too intensely. He was ridiculously handsome, much better looking than the type I normally ended up with, and of course it was he who had made the decision to approach me, which meant that he was interested. We said nothing for a while. I racked my brain for some sensible conversation starter but my mind was a blank and I was relieved when he took the lead.
“I’ve never been here before,” he said, looking around, and the familiar way in which he nodded at the barman made me know that this wasn’t true. “I heard it was a bit of craic.”
“Me neither,” I said. “I was just passing by and stopped in for a drink. I didn’t even know there was a bar here.”
“Do you mind if I ask what you do?” he asked.
“I work in Dublin Zoo,” I told him, which was my standard reply to this question. “In the reptile house.”
“I’m frightened of spiders,” said Ciarán.
“Actually, spiders are arachnids,” I said, as if I knew what I was talking about. “Reptiles are lizards and iguanas and so on.”
“Oh right,” he said. I glanced behind him to where an old man, his belly hanging over the belt of his trousers, was sitting at the bar looking longingly in our direction. I could tell from his expression that he wished he could join us, that he had some natural place in our company, but we were forty years younger than him, so of course he didn’t and he stayed where he was, perhaps contemplating the random unkindness of the universe.
“I’ll probably not stay long,” said Ciarán eventually.
“Nor me,” I said. “I have work in the morning.”
“Do you live nearby?”
I hesitated, having never brought anyone home to Chatham Street. But this was different. He was just too good to let go of. And then there was the Julian-lookalike thing. I knew I wanted more than some illicit fumble in an alleyway that stank of piss and chips and the previous night’s washed-away vomit. I wanted to know what it would be like to hold him, to really hold him, and to be held by him, to be really held.
“Not too far,” I said slowly. “Near Grafton Street. But it’s a bit difficult there. What about you?”
“Not possible, I’m afraid,” he said. It occurred to me how quickly we understood each other, how little discussion it took to make it clear that we wanted to go to bed with each other. For all they said, I was sure that the heterosexual lads would have loved it if women had behaved like us.
“Well, maybe we could take a walk,” I said, willing to settle for the usual if that was all that was on offer. “It’s not a bad night out.”
He considered this only briefly before shaking his head. “Sorry,” he said, placing a hand on my knee beneath the table, which set off sparks of electricity around my body. “I’m not really the outdoors type, to be honest. Sure never mind. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, am I right? Another time, perhaps.”
He stood up and I knew that I was on the verge of losing him and made a quick decision. “We could try mine,” I said. “But we’d have to be quiet.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, looking hopeful.
“We’d have to be very quiet,” I repeated. “I have a flatmate and the landlady and her son live downstairs. I don’t know what would happen if they found us.”
“I can be quiet,” he said. “Or I can try to be anyway,” he added with a smile, which made me laugh, despite my unease.
We left the bar and made our way back toward St. Stephen’s Green. There were any number of good reasons not to allow him to cross the threshold but none was strong enough to fight the fact that every atom in my body longed for his and soon enough we were standing outside the bright-red door where there was nothing left to do but slide the key into the lock. In my anxiety, I struggled to insert it correctly.
“Just wait here a minute,” I whispered, leaning so close to him that our lips were almost touching. “Let me see whether the coast is clear.”
The lights were out in the hallway and the door to Albert’s room was closed, which meant that he was probably asleep. I turned back and waved Ciarán inside and we made our way upstairs. When I opened my own door, I pushed him inside, locked it behind us and within a minute we were on the bed, tearing at each other’s clothes like a pair of teenagers and all notions of being quiet went out of my head as we did what we had come here to do, what we had been born to do.
It was an entirely new experience to me. Usually the temptation was to get it over with as quickly as possible and run away but for once I wanted to take things slowly. I had never had sex in a bed before and the sensation of the sheets against my bare skin was incredibly arousing. I had never run my hands along a man’s leg, never felt the ripple of the hairs beneath my palm, never known what it was like for my bare feet to touch his or to turn him over and run my tongue along his spinal cord as his back arched in pleasure. In the dull light that trickled through the curtains from the streetlamp outside we felt the sincerity of what we were doing and soon I forgot about Julian altogether and thought only of Ciarán.
As night turned toward morning, I felt something that I had never felt during sex before. Som
ething more than lust or the frantic urgency for an orgasm. I felt warmth and friendship and happiness, and all this for a stranger, all this for a man whose real name I probably didn’t even know.
Finally, he turned to me and smiled, shaking his head with that familiar expression of regret. “I better go,” he said.
“You could stay,” I suggested, surprised to hear such words emerge from my mouth. “You could leave when my flatmate is having his bath in the morning. No one would know.”
“I can’t,” he said, climbing out of bed, and I watched as he reached for his clothes, which were scattered among my own on the floor. “My wife will be expecting me back soon. She thinks I’m on a night shift.”
My heart sank inside my chest and I realized that I had felt the gold band on his left hand against my back as he had held me and thought nothing of it. He was married. Of course he was. And, as he buttoned his shirt and searched for his shoes, I saw that the revelation meant nothing to him.
“Have you lived here long?” he asked as he dressed, for silence was worse than anything.
“A while,” I said.
“It’s nice enough,” he said, before stopping and looking around the walls. “Is it just me or does this crack look like the journey the River Shannon takes through the Midlands?”
“That’s what I’ve always thought,” I said. “I’ve asked the landlady to fix it but she says that it will cost too much and it’s been there forever, so no harm.”
I lay back down, pulling the sheets up to my neck to cover my nakedness, and wanted him to stop talking and just leave.
“Listen, we could do this again sometime if you like?” he suggested as he made his way toward the door.