“My first life, while long enough, felt much longer than it actually was. Of everyone in our group, I’m the oldest. Not only have I been here longest, but I was also the oldest when Arrosha transformed me. It’s probably the reason that, with the exception of Geoffrey, I regard the others almost as if they were my own children. Geoffrey teases me constantly about being too much of a mother hen to the group, but I hope to think that it’s appreciated.”
Before Ben began to tell his story, I could never have imagined him as being neither handsome nor manly. But as he told his tale, a gradual change took place, as if a dismal shadow was now hovering about him. As his natural sunniness deserted him, his posture began to change and he seemed to withdraw within himself. His outgoing manner turned introverted, as if he were suddenly ashamed of who he was.
“If I’d lived in a big city I think my life might have been better because it’s easier to be anonymous, easier to change your circle by simply moving to a different neighborhood, to change your work to something in a more artistic field. But I grew up and lived in the Midwest, in a community that was just barely large enough to be classified as a city and not a town. It was still small enough for everybody to know everybody else’s business, and they never forgot it either. It was not what one would call a progressive place either. The arts of all kinds were considered big-city fabrications and the majority of the populace looked with suspicion upon all artists, with the notable exception of those along the respectable lines of a Norman Rockwell. Even the city’s lone movie theater reflected that taste and showed, more often than not, manly westerns and war flicks. Needless to say, my soul did not thrive there.
“My entire family lived in that small little city and had set down deep roots. You might say we were quite ensconced in the community. While I wanted to move, I didn’t want be alone. I couldn’t imagine living so far away from my family or even being able to get by without them. They were good to me, and while I couldn’t come out of the closet to them, they were loving and caring in so many other ways.
“I like to think that if I’d lived my first life in modern times, I wouldn’t have been ashamed of being gay, but times were so different then. It was incredibly difficult being open about homosexuality in those days, especially in a municipality as small as mine; it was a huge stigma, one that ruined careers and even lives. Of course, it wasn’t even called gay at the time; the word most commonly used back then was ‘queer’. But the word ‘gay’ wouldn’t have described me during my first life, anyway. There was absolutely nothing gay about me, at least not in the original sense of the word. I was just one very sad and very lonely homosexual, afraid that someone would find out one day who I truly was. You see, the pressure from my family to be an upstanding member of the community was overwhelming. My father was the rabbi of the extremely small Jewish community back home and I was expected to act accordingly.
“While I was terrified to come out of the closet, at that time, almost nobody else did either unless they were connected to the theatre in some way. Whenever I dreamed of starting a new life, I always dreamed of living in Manhattan, and I would always see myself working in the theatre in some capacity. I never aspired to be an actor, because I was far too shy for that; I just wanted to be a part of the production, perhaps a stagehand. My only ambition was to be able to become a part of that theatrical society, a society in which I could finally come out, be myself and blossom.
“I never did take that step, of course. As an adult, I actually managed to take a couple of short vacations to our nearest big city, namely Chicago. I went alone each time, looking for love and adventure. All I found, instead, was a horrible loneliness that sent me back into the bosom of my warm, if stifling, family. So thus, for my entire life, I remained perpetually afraid of moving to that big city of which I so often dreamed.
“You have to understand that in those days, the virtue of courage and myself had never been properly introduced. As a matter of fact, we had never actually even met. I know now that it was this extreme cowardice that was the true cause of my self-loathing. I have to say that, looking back upon my first life from my current perspective, I don’t think that I would have been a very different person had I not been gay. I think I would have been just as lonely if I’d been straight, although most likely then, my misery would have taken on the guise of a disastrous marriage to a miserable wife completely void of all respect for me. Had I been straight, I would have ruined two lives then instead of just my own.
“Yes, straight or gay, I would have been the same basic person, fearful and anxious about almost everything. When the U.S. first entered World War II, when so many other young men were willing to go to war, I was incredibly relieved to learn that I was 4F and not eligible to serve. I have no doubt that it was for the best all around. I’m certain that I would have frozen when the going got tough and that my cowardice would most likely have cost another young man, a more deserving young man, his life. I would have hated to be responsible for that.”
“Ben, you don’t know that. I think you’re being awfully hard on yourself.”
“I suppose, but that’s how I felt about myself back then. I had absolutely no respect at all for who I was and I still don’t. I was intensely afraid of everything and that fear ruined my life.
“Having finished college early, I got a job in the town library when there was an opening. I sank my nose into books and became the embodied caricature of the clichéd librarian. I spent my days dreaming but never living, a Walter Mitty personality in the extreme, dull in every aspect except for the secret life I led in my mind. I wasted most of my first life in those daydreams. I was so well read that I should have appeared on a quiz show, but that never happened because I was too afraid ever to audition. I lived for books, quite literally, because it was there in which I lived my entire life.
“But then, one day, for no apparent reason, I woke up. Out of the blue, I snapped out of my daydreams, only to find myself old, alone and nearly forgotten. It was a horrible realization, one that all the books and dreams in the world could not hide from me any longer. In an instant, I’d grasped the fact that my life had been completely wasted. I’d lived as a somnambulist, sleepwalking throughout the entirety of my existence without ever fully waking until now.
“I still remember that day as vividly as if it had happened only yesterday. One second I was happily daydreaming the day away, as usual, and the next, I was abruptly awakened. It was absolutely horrible. My life seemed over. I was so lonely that it soon it began to make me physically ill, for I was consumed by a screaming desperation within me that even my books and dreams were powerless to conquer. I didn’t know what to do. I felt ancient and obsolete, too old to start over, too old to make any real changes in my life.”
“How old were you then?”
“I was sixty-two.”
“Sixty-two’s not considered that old anymore.”
“Back then it was. More important than that was the way I felt, which was tired, exhausted, used up and worn out in every way, shape and form.
“So there I was, old, alone and desperate, when, only a few weeks later, as if in answer to my prayers, a much younger man of twenty-seven rode into town. He was handsome, witty and charming, everything I had ever wanted. He was exciting and had the most fabulous, funny stories regarding just about everything. He was the most entertaining breath of fresh air I had ever met in my entire life.
“This young man opened my eyes to a whole new reality. It was 1980 and times were changing for the gay community. While I had always cared far too much about what other people thought, he could not have cared less and in so doing, gave me the courage not to hide anymore. While I never came out of the closet officially, my homosexuality soon became apparent by the lifestyle I’d chosen to live with my young man. It wasn’t long after we met that he came to live with me, and we were together for a little over a year.
“I was so happy being with him, except for occasions when he would disappear for a few
days or even weeks on end. That drove me mad, but after a day or two, he would call me to tell me he was alright, that he would be home soon and that he loved me. I told myself that his disappearing act was just one of his idiosyncrasies, so I just accepted it, the passive man that I was. Besides, when he came home, it would always be with a plausible excuse. It was hard to stay mad at him because he would be so loving upon his return, so full of new, entertaining stories. He would make me laugh and smile again, and I always wound up loving him even more than I did before he left.
“We even took a wonderful trip to Manhattan on my vacation from work, which was a dream come true for me. On weekends we traveled to the larger cities in our area and partied big. Even at home, we held soirees with great regularity, to which we invited the more interesting people of the vicinity, people I didn’t even know existed until he introduced them to me.
“Being with him was paradise. I was ecstatic and my world had expanded. Life became one big gala, and I was making up for lost time, for all the celebrations that I’d let pass me by.
“But then one day reality hit, as reality tends to do. I was going through my accounts, something I once did with great regularity, but which, that year, I’d neglected badly. It seemed that without even realizing it, my young man and I had managed to run through my entire life savings. It was a terrible shock, but I figured that even though the money was gone, my young man and I still had each other. I was stupid to think that he loved me as much as I loved him.”
A deep sadness overtook Ben. He looked down at his hands again as if examining them, as if reliving the pain of the experience he relayed.
“He laughed at me for that even as he packed his bags. He was so calm, so cold when he announced that he was leaving me forever and that the money was the only reason that he was ever with me. He said that it was the only thing that an old man like me could ever have to offer him. I had to have known all along that he would leave when it ran out. I shouldn’t take it too personally, of course. He’d always been one to be on the lookout for the best deal he could get; it was his nature, you see. Besides, he told me, our situation was so apparent, so trite, how could I possibly imagine that he would stay with me now? He wasn’t into poverty, didn’t I know that? It was my own problem that I was too stupid to recognize the obvious and that wasn’t his fault, it was mine!
“Ashley, I was crushed. I’d never had a real-life lover until I met him!” Ben’s sorrow ran through me. “And I gave up so much to be with him! While the young man and I had been together, my family renounced me. For God’s sake, they said, Papa had been a rabbi, what would he and Mamma have thought of me? It was a good thing they hadn’t lived long enough to see my shame. My brothers and sisters, my aunts, uncles, everyone except for one cousin renounced me, declaring that I had disgraced them. It was bad enough that I was homosexual, they told me, maybe they could have dealt with that quietly, privately. But did I have to be so public about it, so flamboyant? Did I have to make sure that everybody knew?
“For decades I’d lived a life that my family found acceptable and I was miserable for it. When, for the briefest time, I’d finally been able to live the way I’d always dreamed about living, I was denounced for it, perhaps forever. None of that really mattered, anyway, because now I felt my life was truly over, and I was more miserable than ever. Why was it so horrible, I wondered, for me to find my first love so late, at the age of sixty-two? More importantly, why did I have to lose that love so soon?”
Ben held his head in his hands. Shaking his head, he looked up at me, his eyes moist.
“I fretted myself to the point of death, almost died of a broken heart. Because of my upbringing in the synagogue, suicide was never an option, so I tried to go through the motions of living as best I could, but failed. Until I met my young man, I’d never missed a day of work at the library since I started there right after college. Now that he was gone, I suddenly found myself unable to go in at all. I couldn’t even get out of bed. I used up all of my sick leave, and I had a lot of it accumulated. It wasn’t until they threatened to fire me that I managed to pull myself together enough to go back into work. It was beyond difficult, but I desperately needed the money. Not only had my young man and I gone through my entire life savings while we were together, he had left me with substantial debts to boot. I was grateful that at least I had my house and car paid off, because otherwise, I think I would have wound up on the streets. Where I had once planned to take an early retirement, I found I could no longer able to afford it. So I forced myself back to work again, forced myself to find solace in my books again and forced myself to ignore the looks and whispers of others.
“Life became so difficult that even the simplest things took greatest effort. As weak a man as I had been before, I was far weaker now, for my spirit was completely broken. Not that any of that mattered in the end, because in less than a year after the young man left, I was diagnosed with a bizarre new disease that was making its introduction into the world. No one had ever heard of it before, and for a long time, it didn’t even have a name. Later, they called it AIDs.
“While I had my suspicions, I’d never allowed myself to think too hard upon what my young man might be doing whenever he was away on his unexpected excursions. I’d made myself believe that he was only attending to business and that he was being as faithful to me as I was being to him. But in the back of my mind, I knew better. No matter how hard you try to deny it, there’s always that part of you that knows, isn’t there?
“After my diagnosis, the library didn’t want me back at all. Because of the curse my young man laid upon me, after a lifetime of dependable service, I lost my benefits. I didn’t have the strength or the will to fight my firing and this last blow rendered me too sick to work anyway. A little over a week later, I wound up in the hospital.
“I was alone, shunned by those I loved. Ashley, you can’t have any idea of how horrible that is. My family had left me, my once sweet young man had left me, and nobody else cared. No one was there for me, not even for so much as a short little appearance to brighten my day. The only people I ever saw or spoke to were the hospital staff as they quickly went about their rounds.
“The terrible thoughts that came into my mind as I lay there dying made my situation even more unbearable. Having no company to take my mind off things, I spent my last days reflecting back upon my life, and I realized that while I had led a relatively long life, I had touched no one. It was a terrible realization. My life had not mattered at all; it had meant nothing. Those I had loved wanted nothing further to do with me and the world at large was no better and no worse off for my having been in it. My life had been nothing but a waste, a phenomenal waste of time and energy. In those moments, I felt like less than a nothing, a huge, gigantic nothing. It’s a feeling that I would not wish upon my worst enemy.
“But then, at my deathbed, finally so weak and so sick that I was almost past despair, Arrosha came to me in the guise of a nurse. While she may have fooled the others, she didn’t fool me. I looked up at her and saw an angel. She was luminous, radiating a white light as if she were light incarnate. She gazed at me with a gentle smile and asked if I wanted to come with her. I thought she was the very angel of death, so I told her yes, willingly, for I had had enough of this world. Then she took out the box that I kept in the drawer by my deathbed which contained my cufflinks, the only personal possessions I had brought with me. Holding it, she then touched my cheek and all of my pain went away. I was sure I was dead, but instead she had restored me and renewed me. To this day, I feel so privileged to be able to say that I’m the only person she transformed personally, without a go-between. After that, she walked me over to the mirror by the sink and showed me that transformation which she had just performed.
“I could not believe my eyes. In the reflection before me, I no longer beheld the withered gargoyle I thought myself to be, but rather a tall, handsome young man. ‘It’s who you are now,’ she whispered softly. ‘We must go.’
Taking me by the hand, she led me from the building. I was still in my hospital gown, but no one saw us leave. It was then she brought me here, to her mansion.
“That very night, I partook of the essence alone, with Arrosha by my side to comfort me. That first essence allowed me to comprehend fully this new chance at life that I’d been given. Under its influence, I was able to see past the things I hated about myself. It gave me true insight into the kind of man that I really wanted to be. It allowed me to understand my deepest desires with greatest clarity.
“The next day, I felt those desires made real for I was changed so much inside that I no longer recognized my own character. I was no longer the passive little toad I’d detested all of my life, hating my fear, my passivity, my inability to stand up to anyone. Gone was my cowardice, my shame, my self-loathing. In their place now stood the qualities I’d admired my entire life, but could never achieve, the qualities for which I’d aspired during first essence. These were all qualities which I’d now attained, and I was finally the kind of man I’d always wanted to be.
“Even though my transformation was done in a very slightly different way than those of the others, which Arrosha told me was necessary only because I was to be the leader, the first one chosen, I want you to understand how important that transformation is, Ashley. It was with the completion of that ceremony that I had finally become the kind of man I’d admired my entire life. Now you see why I tell you how indispensable it is. Trust me, it will change everything.”
The Nightmare Game Page 41