by Rager, Bob
“And I became myself” Gentleman said. Then he held out his open hands, a magician showing that he had no tricks up his sleeve, showing instead that what you see is what you get.
“Has the Truth set you free?” Gentleman said with a little smile, his hands darting across the pages of the book in his lap.
“You see, perhaps you and I are not so different. We may look different you and I. You… so robust, so endowed… with strength and muscle and Beauty, and me crumpled in my chair like a forgotten Raggedy Andy!
“But I feel something so very different about you, something not like the other boys who come to tell their stories to me,” Gentleman said. He peered across the haze from his chair, his hands still at last and clasped together in his lap.
“I’m tired,” he said later… after he had finished the final act that was to end all their visits.
Chapter 25
Scarcely two days had passed when the Driver appeared at the curb slowly guiding the black sedan, merely one among a fleet of glossy vehicles fitfully circumnavigating the white marble fountain, its restless habitués just an arm length away.
He pretended not to recognize the car and stared blankly across the lanes of twisted knots of cars and pedestrians. He waited until he had formed in his mind what he would say, then he glanced with a sudden blink at the driver framed in the open window of the door, as if just now noticing him.
“No,” he said; he was already late for an appointment . He could see Gentleman in a couple days. The driver stared back at him, his mouth a thin straight line and looked at the clotted mass of beetle like cars and scrambling pedestrians that surrounded them. He picked up a cell phone and without a smile he passed along the message.
“He’ll pay double,” the driver said, his hand across the mouth piece.
“I don’t know man, I hate to stand up a date…”
The driver smiled in a knowing way and spoke again into the mouthpiece. He stopped and listened, the smile still on his face, then he looked up.
“He’ll pay…” the driver said a large number as he shook his head in wonder. The passenger door opened and shut and the car pulled slowly away.
Chapter 26
“Thank God!” Gentleman said, “I thought perhaps you had had, I don’t know, caught the night train to the border! I mean figuratively,” Gentleman said each syllable a single word.
“But you’re here and we must celebrate!… you know where it is, right over there. I’m so glad you remember because I want you to feel… at home here!” he said.
“A toast, a toast to my special brave friend!” said Gentleman a moment later. He raised a small hand, holding a wine glass so delicate it seemed invisible in the room’s dimness, and sipped with his perfect cupid lips.
He retrieved his black sketchbook from the jumble on the table at his arm and again made his marks.
“You don’t mind, do you? It helps calm my nerves… that’s right, there’s no need to rush, not that you are; so many are in a hurry I don’t know why. We all are going to the same destination and its name is Eternity. Oh yes your back, its muscles so hard and wide like the wings of a swan, a great powerful creature, the most manly of birds-- a beautiful bird with power to kill. Could you bring your arms up and put your hands behind your head?” said Gentleman. Then a long sigh wafted slowly across the room, the thin plume of smoke from an extinguished candle.
“Could you?…” Gentleman said and his hands came to rest in his lap. He looked up and cleared his throat. “Could you… its warm in here you don’t really,” cough, cough, “need those jeans.” Gentleman’s hands lay quite still as his eyes glowed brightly. At first his gaze danced here and there in excitement, a starving man facing banquet table, unsure that what he sees is real, amazed by each delicacy but unable to choose the first bite.
Then his eyes lingered at one place with a smile and a nod as Gentleman remembered something from long ago… when he was sated by one spot his eyes moved languidly to another; once there, with a glint of pleasure he again stared in silence, a demonstration of “drinking in with one’s eyes.”
The two proceeded in silence; Gentleman staring then blinking, flirting on the edges of a trance, his hand busy on the page, and his visitor changing from pose to pose with a smooth animal grace, until Gentleman said “I learned something from making my notes of my lovely boys. I learned that even the roughest boy, however toughened and coarse he at first seemed and my dear young friend I have seen them as rough as they come…” Gentleman stopped and shook his head.
“Even the angriest and scared became beautiful in my eyes just from looking, at first at the outside, at the skin and the muscle and the bone and something magic happens. I can’t explain it but the meanness and rancor float away and there before me is pure beauty.
“If you like you may sit again, you must be tired. There’s a… oh where is it? Over there! A throw you can wrap yourself in against the draught. Now isn’t that better? And just to be sure…”
Gentleman dug through the pile on the small table. He tugged at something and the stack of books and bits and pieces shook and quivered.
His visitor in two or three strides came to stand at the table to steady the tower of bric a brac. As he stood mere inches away, Gentleman held up a narrow flat box and pressed a key. A bright glow sprang with a rush of air from a fireplace that in an instant blazed from darkness into a waist high pile of flaming logs.
Gentleman gazed up and said “I love this, its gas operated by this little box.” He smiled and the dull skin and lines disappeared in an orange and yellow glow. His visitor stood a moment longer, the light of dancing flames playing intricate shadows on his taut chest and bare thighs; then satisfied and certain of the effect of light on his body he returned to the chair.
“Oh thank you,” Gentleman said. “I didn’t want you to go just yet.
“This house `gets damp from that mad strange Rock Creek. We get quite chilled this time of year.”
Around them the faces and men in the pictures shimmered in the light of the leaping flames. The faces seemed to move, the mouths to whisper and smile and laugh.
Gentleman talked to the picture “Oh do you see it too? How they love the fire the way I do?” He cleared his throat.
“There’s someone missing; oh perhaps not missing from our little crowd, but absent… the most beautiful young boy.” Gentleman sighed. “Absent. An unexcused absence I’m afraid.”
“I was you see absorbed in my work and before that many years of school, a way to keep at bay the demons unleashed so early in my life. The same years when other young men go off to learn about the world and its ways and how to take care of themselves. All that time I was bent over my books, and diagrams and machines in laboratories, in the deepest part of buildings, my head filled with formulae and ciphers, and codes.”
“I thought I was content, at times I imagined even that I was happy but then something happened. My superiors said I should rest from my labors. ‘Take a trip’,” they said.
“And so I found myself sitting under the sun at a beach at the end of a road, a road that crossed the continent all the way from the Atlantic and the rocks and boulders of the colonies, a road that ended in the sands of the Pacific. And there I sat under an umbrella wearing a hat, my bare arms and face and legs sheltered by layers of sunscreen. One of my life’s paradoxes, the very thing I crave threatens to harm me.
“And each evening the sun sank into the ocean taking in its condemning flames each day, its sadness and its joy, plunging into water and going out. So different to my eyes, all through my life the day ended with the confusion of light shattering into dark tangles, but here I was hypnotized by the Pacific rolling towards me and sinking into the sand; and around me people familiar in shape yet as unknown to me as inhabitants from Mars, but I was the visitor, the stranger and these marvelous creatures the inhabitants of this magic land where people lived outdoors and the sun ended the day in the ocean.”
“At first my
eyes for so long weak from colorless fluorescence and shadows of the laboratory were blinded by the high bright sun but gradually one late afternoon when the sun was lower a young man rose up out of the ocean in front of my little fortress of umbrella and beach chair.
“He loped across the beach, his long legs and powerful arms undulating with each step like a lion; all tan with deep brown locks of hair. And my dear he carried a surfboard!
“He lay his surfboard in the sand. He looked around and then at me; his eyes were a liquid blue like gemstones and he smiled!
“Then he did the most amazing thing: he pulled off the top of his wet suit and with a towel wrapped around his waist he climbed out of and peeled off this rubber skin in slow motion.
“I pretended to ignore him behind my sunglasses but I saw perfect long legs.
“The great migration west of the pioneers brought long tall men and women and their children to the valleys and canyons and mountainsides west of the Sierra. And now I held my breath as I saw one of the magnificent children of the brave, the searchers and the restless and the discontent.
“He lay on the towel, his long face, tan legs and bare chest glowing with a fine grail of blonde hair sparking in the sun.“I had never seen such a creature so close, breathing, alive, so idle! Just lying there, not reading, not listening to a radio, just staring out at the ocean.
“I had you see only permitted myself the briefest interest in such a creature, though unsure as I was of my longings I was certain that the objects of my interest would have no interest in me, a pale strange young man from a planet of the industrious, the serious, the gray faced people of purpose and worthy causes.
“Yet I dared hope as he lay nearby.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I risked blindness and took off my sunglasses. Then I turned to face him, thinking that I might steal a moment of pleasure at the sight of him before he turned away in disgust from my grotesque and unwanted attention.
“But instead he returned my glance with a steady unblinking regard. I wasn’t sure if he actually was looking back at me; I saw his eyes and a sleepy smile, a young lion gazing across domain, at the brilliant white sand, the other creatures gathered at once obedient yet at a careful distance, half seeing this odd timid creature that had dared to look directly upon the young god-ruler of this kingdom by the sea.
“Frightened by my boldness I quickly gathered my books as I prepared to flee back to my hotel.
“And as I stood my fingers clumsy and uncertain as I held my books, a shadow fell across the sand. I looked up and The Prince stood in front of me, very tall, his shoulders wide and one bulging arm pulling his surfboard behind him on a leash. ‘Could I help you with those?’” he said.
“For a moment I thought I had died and gone to Heaven for I was so trapped in the darkness of my fears. I could not permit myself to imagine such a creature would even glance at me and yet here he was talking and smiling. It so happens that a surfboard has uses outside the ocean. I don’t know what I said or even if I said anything at all but he wrapped my books in a towel and lay the bundle on top of his board.
“Wordlessly I turned and gestured at the terrace of my hotel. Like a true aristocrat he simply took command without force; we walked across the golden sand so bright that the brim of my hat and dark glasses scarcely let me see my way.
“I didn’t care that the clerk at the hotel desk seemed to recognize the Prince. I would later find out that my new friend was no stranger in these parts.
“But even when I understood how my friend earned his living I didn’t care. Beauty makes its own rules; beauty is a kind of intelligence, a kind of skill after all, a labor as deserving of reward as any other trade!
“For that was what my new friend was as I learned; trade that rough word for the kindness that my prince and others have shown me.
“But I didn’t care!” Gentleman said, his voice ringing with traces of the excitement and hope of so long ago.
“In the morning I woke to find him sleeping with that soft smile, the young lion in repose.
I watched him not wanting to wake him, wanting to see him as he stirred with the first rays of the sun poured in; as he lifted his arms and stretched them over his head. And when he yawned I imagined, I heard a rumbling purring.
“He was so manly; I had never before seen a man so close: Oh yes I had seen the peculiar creature that decorates the streets of certain neighborhoods, but my prince was nothing like those perfumed, blow dried facsimiles, my prince was the real thing. He was… raw and bold… he sat at my side listening to my nervous chatter, with that sleepy smile, listening yet lost in thoughts.
“ ‘Sometimes’ I said to him one night, ‘you seem so quiet! Are you sure I’m not monopolizing our little conversation?’
“And he said something I will always remember. He had the most incredible voice, a rich baritone that vibrated through me. ‘I would say something if I could think of anything to say.’
“As close as he ever came to a flaw… but I came to understand that his face and perfect skin and long legs spoke to me in ways mere words never could.
“And words--what of them? I knew words, the devious utterances of my shadowy world, the twisted meaning and empty promises of my world--how do people say it?… Oh yes, ‘the check is in the mail.’ Words in transit, in disguises en route from deception to the terminus of empty.
“But my young puma simply was; and in his beauty I found a glimpse of Truth!
“Oh we talked when I pressed. He was so modest; his ambition so pure and clear; he wanted to be a pool boy! And he was saving his money to buy a truck. Oh you may think what you will, that he was playing on my generous nature for I can be very generous in the right circumstances,” Gentleman said. He peered at his visitor a moment then
“But he was so sincere and I knew that his dream was as heart felt as my own yearnings. And really what’s money between two who shared our kind of friendship. And what truck could give me what he gave me during the enchanted, all too brief time we had together.
“You know there are pictures around us that are far more valuable than any truck could ever be.
“His desires and his beauty belonged together so completely. Can you imagine a lion confined to a cage? I hear them every night, the sad humiliated lions at the zoo; they roar and yowel their misery to a world that isn’t listening. They know they are trapped in a life they weren’t meant to live; performing a few tricks in exchange for bits of bread.” Gentleman paused and laughed in a giddy cackle.
“Performing tricks for bread, the rough trade call it; the desperate and lonely and the firm and flesh exchanging bits of bread.”
Gentleman stared into the shimmering flames now and then looking away at the faces quivering to life in the dancing orange glow.
“But who is the desperate and who is the strong and desirable? The desperate, the lonely, the young and the hard they look at each other's faces looking in a mirror.
“But he was more than that. Some of my boys—many in fact perform expertly, they do their tricks exceedingly well. After all they have practiced their little sleights of hand again and again.”
Gentleman raised a hand in gesture at the restless flames; a ring of carved jade glowed against his pale knuckles.
“And we are grateful, very grateful. Still there are limits to what my boys can do and we care about them just the same. Some boys give what they can and yet sometimes it isn’t enough. I give back as we agreed in the beginning. One can’t summon Beauty and Truth with mere desire alone. One does what one can, one can only give away what one has.
“And I don’t want to be small about money.
“But my Prince traveled paths to my deepest being.
“Ah naughty boy, you smile, making a joke of my tenderest secrets…
“But I forgive you,” Gentleman said. He raised a hand to forestall any objection that may or may not have come.
“My Prince gave from a place within, and crossed a gulf as
wide as the continent crossed by the road that had brought me to his kingdom on the ocean…
“And the magic he showed me, the spectacular landscape of the mountains soaring above the beach, the twisting roads of the canyons, in one direction the Pacific hungrily devouring the sun in conflagration and in another the blanket of lights weaving and glittering and keeping at bay the black void to the East.
“And the amusements! He took me to Galaxy Studios, an alchemist laboratory where runaway locomotives and rampant dinosaurs lunged at visitors as we rode little trains and shrieked in delight and amazement at the wonders conjured by the imagination of subjects of this land of wonders.
“And he gave a party before I had to return,” Gentleman said with a catch in his throat.
“He said he had a surprise for me, a surprise for me whose life had always been as predictable as predetermined as a mathematical formula. He said he wanted me to meet his friends.
“And he was young and so were his friends, beautiful, young, the men as breathtaking as the women, cowboys and cheerleaders, street toughs, and curious creatures pale with hollows in their eyes called Goths.
“But not like the Visigoths or Ostrogoths-- these Goths wore delicate, fragile, secret smiles on their faces, beguiling in their strangeness.
“And I watched them all, feasting on their beauty, their youth but as much as I dwelled on what I saw I thrilled at their… anarchy! Their lives outside the confines of the harsh prison that I had known of acceptable manners, of the right thing to say, of the right thing to wear, of the right way to live. I learned that night that life like beauty was beyond rules. His friends simply lived without apologies, or excuses, or rules.
“And they danced while I watched in fascination. There’s something deliciously tantalizing about a grown man bouncing his thighs and legs to loud music, undulating without a second thought…
“And now and then I looked around to find my prince’s eyes on me that, sleepy smile for me, for me!” Gentleman’s voice rose, with surprising strength he beat a fist against his chest.