Authors: Chris Adrian
The Great Night (6 page)
There was no disguise left to cover them. People saw them for what they were, a hundred and two faeries and a dead boy proceeding down the hall with harps and flutes, crowded in the service elevator with fiddles and lutes, marching out of the hospital with drums. Mortals gaped. Dogs barked. Cats danced on their hind feet, and birds followed them by the dozen, hopping along and cocking their heads from side to side. It was early afternoon. The fog was breaking against the side of the hill and Buena Vista Park was brilliantly sunny. They passed through the ordinary trees of the park, and then into the extraordinary trees of their own realm, and came to the door in the hill and passed through that as well.
They marched into the great hall and put down the bier. The music played on for a while, then faltered little by little, and the players came to feel unsure of why they were playing. Then the hall was quiet, because they didn't know what to do next. They had never celebrated or mourned a death before. They were all looking to Titania to speak, but it was Oberon who finally broke the silence, announcing from the back of the room that the Beastie had died of its grief.
B
esides Henry, Will, and Molly, there were five other people present in the park at the moment that Puck gained his freedom. None of these others were particularly brokenhearted, though neither were any of them entirely whole of heart or, for that matter, whole of mind. None of them were invited to Jordan Sasscock's party, or even knew him, though Jordan had scolded one of them once for scaring some toddler's mother in the ER on Parnassus Avenue. Bob had been trying to play with the little boy, the sight of whom transported him into ecstasies of sadness for no reason he could fathom, but his patty-cake made the mother shriek and drew a lecture from Jordan on the responsibilities of the drunken and the smelly. You were supposed to lie quietly on the gurney and leave the kids the fuck alone.
esides Henry, Will, and Molly, there were five other people present in the park at the moment that Puck gained his freedom. None of these others were particularly brokenhearted, though neither were any of them entirely whole of heart or, for that matter, whole of mind. None of them were invited to Jordan Sasscock's party, or even knew him, though Jordan had scolded one of them once for scaring some toddler's mother in the ER on Parnassus Avenue. Bob had been trying to play with the little boy, the sight of whom transported him into ecstasies of sadness for no reason he could fathom, but his patty-cake made the mother shriek and drew a lecture from Jordan on the responsibilities of the drunken and the smelly. You were supposed to lie quietly on the gurney and leave the kids the fuck alone.
Huff, Bob, Mary, Princess, and Hogg: they were in the park to rehearse a musical, far away from curious ears and prying eyes, because the musical was a weapon whose potency depended on secrecy. People were disappearing from the streets of San Francisco, and the players knew why. It was not a very
complex mystery, but because the disappearing people were homeless, no one was trying very hard to solve it, and in the halls of the homed people had barely noticed the problem at all. Each of them could count two different people who had disappeared: sometimes it was a friend, sometimes just an acquaintance, and sometimes it was someone they all knew, but every week there was always someone else who was suddenly not where he or she ought to be.
complex mystery, but because the disappearing people were homeless, no one was trying very hard to solve it, and in the halls of the homed people had barely noticed the problem at all. Each of them could count two different people who had disappeared: sometimes it was a friend, sometimes just an acquaintance, and sometimes it was someone they all knew, but every week there was always someone else who was suddenly not where he or she ought to be.
The disappearing was not the reason to perform. People disappeared all the time; everyone knew that. People passed through, or moved away, and, yes, people diedâthere were a lot of reasons a friend or a companion or a sister might not be on the accustomed corner. But it so happened that the disappearances coincided with a mysterious beneficence from the office of the Mayor: suddenly there was food everywhere, kitchens open in formerly abandoned buildings or in the corners of churches that had been closed for months or years for lack of funds. More sinister than the mysterious plenty was the change in people's attitudes. The ladlers and the carvers and even the lady who always wanted to test you for syphilis had become inexplicably cheery, as if the weight of their work had suddenly been lifted from them. A bounty of food was not a problem by itself, but a bounty and a sudden change in people such that they acted as if the homeless problem had been solvedâand indeed both Huff and Princess had overheard conversations to that effect, in which one party congratulated the other on all their fine work and commented that at this rate the
problem
would be solved before the wildflowers bloomed again at Point Reyesâthese pointed most obviously toward a gruesome plot. San Francisco was feeding the homeless to the homeless.
problem
would be solved before the wildflowers bloomed again at Point Reyesâthese pointed most obviously toward a gruesome plot. San Francisco was feeding the homeless to the homeless.
Putting on the musical was Huff's idea. He had seen the movie years ago and almost entirely forgot it, but then he saw
it again at the beginning of the summer, projected on a giant inflatable screen in the middle of Dolores Park. He had fallen into a troubled sleep there, dreaming of his disappearing friends, and opened his eyes to find the sunny afternoon had been replaced by a foggy evening, and his isolated spot on the slope of the hill had become crowded with young folks, a sea of fuzzy fleece flowing down the hill to the giant screen. He lay unmoving and watched Charlton Heston have his dystopian near-future adventure, and when he proclaimed that Soylent Green
was people
, Huff knew what he had to do. He already suspected what was happening to his friends and colleagues; Charlton's message only confirmed it, and Huff lay stunned while the young folk rose and shuffled off in a soft herd. He considered the implications of what he had seen and suddenly conceived of the project by which he would bring down the coalition between the Mayor's office and whatever latter-day Soylent corporation was helping him turn people into food.
it again at the beginning of the summer, projected on a giant inflatable screen in the middle of Dolores Park. He had fallen into a troubled sleep there, dreaming of his disappearing friends, and opened his eyes to find the sunny afternoon had been replaced by a foggy evening, and his isolated spot on the slope of the hill had become crowded with young folks, a sea of fuzzy fleece flowing down the hill to the giant screen. He lay unmoving and watched Charlton Heston have his dystopian near-future adventure, and when he proclaimed that Soylent Green
was people
, Huff knew what he had to do. He already suspected what was happening to his friends and colleagues; Charlton's message only confirmed it, and Huff lay stunned while the young folk rose and shuffled off in a soft herd. He considered the implications of what he had seen and suddenly conceived of the project by which he would bring down the coalition between the Mayor's office and whatever latter-day Soylent corporation was helping him turn people into food.
The first song came to him immediately. It was just a fragment, but it was lovely, and just having that one little bit come so easily made the enormity of the project less intimidating. He sang it in his head as he walked down the street, and then sang it to Mary when he found her in her customary spot at Noe and Seventeenth Streets.
People
, he sang,
people who eat people
⦠That was all he had so far. If he followed the song from which he'd taken the melody, the rest of it would say that they were the luckiest people in the world, but that was not what he wanted to say. Still, he knew right away that this was going to be the signature theme of the whole musical, and it would be sung by all sides, both the people who believed that eating people was a sin and a crime, and those who believed that you ate people and you had to.
, he sang,
people who eat people
⦠That was all he had so far. If he followed the song from which he'd taken the melody, the rest of it would say that they were the luckiest people in the world, but that was not what he wanted to say. Still, he knew right away that this was going to be the signature theme of the whole musical, and it would be sung by all sides, both the people who believed that eating people was a sin and a crime, and those who believed that you ate people and you had to.
What about them?
Mary sang back. She had a lovely voice, which was something Huff had not known about her, and discovering it seemed to be a sort of blessing upon the enterprise.
Mary sang back. She had a lovely voice, which was something Huff had not known about her, and discovering it seemed to be a sort of blessing upon the enterprise.
“I don't know yet,” he said, “but it's coming.”
And it did come. Over the next few weeks the music came in little snatches of melody, and lyrics came in pieces, blazing letters he would see across the back of his eyelids when he closed his eyes, and the choreography came in stretches of involuntary movement that would steal over him as he was walking down the street.
Mary was his first recruit. She brought in Princess, who happened to know that Hogg played the guitar and the cello and had perfect pitch. Bob showed up one day uninvited in the little room at the library where they gathered to watch a videotape of the movie over and over again. He was unobtrusive and easy to work with, and while he didn't talk much, when he did it was usually to say something very useful. It was he who suggested the park when they were ready to start rehearsing.
This was already their second night of rehearsal. The first had been particularly profitable despite some disagreement over the best place to do the work, with Hogg and Princess inclined toward the clearing at the top of the hill, while Mary and Huff pointed out that it was too dark to see anything at the top of the hill and too far to walk every night anyway. They preferred the tennis court, a nice flat surface. Bob offered no opinion except to say that the tennis court was nice footing for dancing. And he did a little dance, as if to prove his point, a rather complicated five-step maneuver, repeated five times. “That's brilliant!” Princess had said, and they had all learned it, more or less, right then, on the sidewalk outside the Duboce Street entrance to the park. They were all so pleased with how
easy it was to get started rehearsing that they all went very merrily to the tennis courts and blocked out the first half of the first act in two hours.
easy it was to get started rehearsing that they all went very merrily to the tennis courts and blocked out the first half of the first act in two hours.
On the second night they came back to the tennis court with no disagreements, but then an argument began, after they had briefly recapitulated the blocking they'd done the night before, about what should be done next. Princess happened to have come upon a set of jai alai baskets and was wielding them with both hands and demanding that they proceed immediately to choreograph the scoop dance.
“But that's three-fourths of the way to the end,” said Mary. “Maybe even closer. It's the penultimate scene. The penultimate! If you know what that means, you'll know it's far too early to hash it out now.”
“Here comes the scoop!” Princess shouted in reply, and proceeded to try to maul Mary with her jai alai baskets. Huff shouted, “Order!” and Hogg shouted, “Cut! Cut!” and someone else shouted, “Poodle!” Bob seemed not to be noticing that anything was happening but had cocked his head to the side and was staring into the dark beyond the tennis courts. Just then the tennis court lights went out. Princess stopped her swinging.
“That happened later last night,” she said.
“We're out of time already,” said Mary, “and you wasted it all.”
“Do you hear that?” Bob asked them.
“Hear what?”
“Screaming,” he said, and then the streetlights just outside the park did something odd. Without exactly going out, they became considerably dimmer, as if a not entirely opaque veil had been thrown over them.
“I don't hear it,” said Mary, shaking her head. “But what's happening to the lights?”
“An eclipse!” said Princess.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Mary. “Those don't happen at night.”
“But look at the moon,” said Princess. “It's all fucked up.” That was one way to describe it, Huff thought. It was not discolored or misshapen, but the man in it had an unpleasant look on his face. He looked horrified.
“It looks fine to me,” said Hogg.
“No, it's a sign,” said Princess. “Go home. Scoop another night!”
“Never mind the moon,” said Mary. “You're the one who's fucked up.” But Huff was still staring up at the sky, and now the face was looking even more horrified and worried, and even as he watched the expression grew more distinct, and the face grew brighter. He realized in a moment that this was because the streetlights were now nowhere to be seen.
“What horrible shit,” Huff asked all of them, “is the Mayor up to now?”
“Now do you hear it?” Bob asked them, and they did, very faint initially, sounding at first like a tiny siren wailing at a distance, then as it grew closer and louder it seemed a noise a cat might make if you did something truly horrible to it, and then as it got very close it seemed unmistakably human: something was afraid, and it was coming their way.
“Enough for tonight!” said Hogg, and ran for the gate to the tennis court.
“Get back here!” Huff shouted after him. “We haven't even started yet!” The screaming got louder, and in another moment the others were gone as well, all of them scattering in the direction of the street, though none of them would find it in the thickening dark. Huff stayed where he was, more angry than afraid. He was sure it was going to be the Mayor making the noise. He'd come riding up in a tiny open car, so small his
knees would be touching his chest, and there would be a tumbling red light and a set of shrieking siren horns on the hood. “You are under arrest,” he would say, “for conspiracy to disrespect me.” Huff planted his feet and lowered his chin and squared his shoulders, feeling ready for what was coming, though it was true that there was something about the sound that made him feel sure he was going to throw up and shit in his pants at the same time. He wasn't ready for what he saw, though. A tiny person, no higher than his shin, came running by. He had an extraordinarily big nose and curly brown hair and blue eyes as big as tennis balls. He stopped in an odd way, as if he managed to go from running to being perfectly still without having to bother to slow down, and stared at Huff. “Better run,” he said after he stopped his screaming. “The Beast is coming.”
knees would be touching his chest, and there would be a tumbling red light and a set of shrieking siren horns on the hood. “You are under arrest,” he would say, “for conspiracy to disrespect me.” Huff planted his feet and lowered his chin and squared his shoulders, feeling ready for what was coming, though it was true that there was something about the sound that made him feel sure he was going to throw up and shit in his pants at the same time. He wasn't ready for what he saw, though. A tiny person, no higher than his shin, came running by. He had an extraordinarily big nose and curly brown hair and blue eyes as big as tennis balls. He stopped in an odd way, as if he managed to go from running to being perfectly still without having to bother to slow down, and stared at Huff. “Better run,” he said after he stopped his screaming. “The Beast is coming.”
H
enry was lost. He had been walking for half an hour and had not only failed to exit the park again, he hadn't even found the top of the hill. He had been getting lost in all sorts of benign places ever since he was a child, when a trip to the supermarket inevitably involved an agony of separation from his mother, and he routinely lost his way in the hospital where he had been working for a year. It was hard to get lost in the boutique wilderness of Buena Vista Park, but he was not particularly surprised to have done it tonight. Since coming to the understanding that he had willfully, if not consciously, driven away the one person in the world who had loved him without any taint of sadness or rage or resentment, he had developed a whole new wary relationship with his subconscious, and though he had decided that going to Jordan Sasscock's party would be good for him, and even that cutting through the park would add another sort of correction, he knew some part of him still thought it would be better to stay home for another night of weeping and doughnut-feasting and masturbation.
enry was lost. He had been walking for half an hour and had not only failed to exit the park again, he hadn't even found the top of the hill. He had been getting lost in all sorts of benign places ever since he was a child, when a trip to the supermarket inevitably involved an agony of separation from his mother, and he routinely lost his way in the hospital where he had been working for a year. It was hard to get lost in the boutique wilderness of Buena Vista Park, but he was not particularly surprised to have done it tonight. Since coming to the understanding that he had willfully, if not consciously, driven away the one person in the world who had loved him without any taint of sadness or rage or resentment, he had developed a whole new wary relationship with his subconscious, and though he had decided that going to Jordan Sasscock's party would be good for him, and even that cutting through the park would add another sort of correction, he knew some part of him still thought it would be better to stay home for another night of weeping and doughnut-feasting and masturbation.
It felt like he had been walking in a circle, always uphill.
He had passed some landmarks that he recognized from the miserable outing with Bobby: the tennis courts, where some homeless people seemed to be settling in for an early bedtime; a willow whose droopy branches hung low enough to scrape the path. He passed the shin-high stone wall, made with old pieces of headstone, that wound along the path to the steep stairs that rose to the bald little crown of the park. He'd started up those stairs but never arrived at the top of the hill. Every hundred steps or so he paused, and looked around, and saw the same thing: a darkening vista of pale eucalyptus trees in the steep ravines, and through them a glimpse of the city below the hill and, beyond that, the bay and the bridges. But glimpse by glimpse, the city was obscured. It hadn't been particularly foggy when Henry had left his house, but it rolled in precipitously while he walked the steps, and soon he could only see a wall of fog beyond the trees, roiling and heaving as if it were breaking upon an invisible barrier.
He had passed some landmarks that he recognized from the miserable outing with Bobby: the tennis courts, where some homeless people seemed to be settling in for an early bedtime; a willow whose droopy branches hung low enough to scrape the path. He passed the shin-high stone wall, made with old pieces of headstone, that wound along the path to the steep stairs that rose to the bald little crown of the park. He'd started up those stairs but never arrived at the top of the hill. Every hundred steps or so he paused, and looked around, and saw the same thing: a darkening vista of pale eucalyptus trees in the steep ravines, and through them a glimpse of the city below the hill and, beyond that, the bay and the bridges. But glimpse by glimpse, the city was obscured. It hadn't been particularly foggy when Henry had left his house, but it rolled in precipitously while he walked the steps, and soon he could only see a wall of fog beyond the trees, roiling and heaving as if it were breaking upon an invisible barrier.
The steps led to still more steps. He thought he must have taken some detour without noticing, because soon he was going straight across the hill and then down before he went up again, and then he was deposited in a little clearing, a flat field cut into the side of the hill and ringed by trees. There was a rock with a flat seat and a high back that looked, to someone who had been walking uphill for twenty minutes, a lot like a chair.
Henry sat down and kicked off his shoes and put his feet in the soft grass. This was a pretty ordinary gesture, but for him it was still something of an extraordinary accomplishment. Once he had a terror of the ground, because it was dirty in the ordinary sense of dirty, and because it was dirty in all the new, miserable ways he had learned things could be dirty since the threat of true love had turned him into a younger, poorer sort of Howard Hughes. He wanted to say,
Bobby, this is nice!
because it
was
nice. The grass was soft and cool and dry, and though he thought he could properly appreciate it through his socks, he took those off, too, and dug his toes into the tight spaces between the blades until he could feel the deeper cool and softness of the soil underneath. In the first days of his recovery, he had done things like this demonstratively, always showing off for his absent, rejecting ex-boyfriend, but soon he was doing all the formerly forbidden things for the joy of them, because it was lovely and interesting and sustaining to put one's feet in the grass, or to shake the paw of a strange dog, or even marvel over some pornographic vagina, formerly the abomination of abominations and the anathema of anathemas. Now, beyond any hope of reunion with old stay-the-fuck-away-from-me Bobby, Henry had nothing left to prove, and for the first time in forever he did things for no other reason than because it made him happy to do them.
Bobby, this is nice!
because it
was
nice. The grass was soft and cool and dry, and though he thought he could properly appreciate it through his socks, he took those off, too, and dug his toes into the tight spaces between the blades until he could feel the deeper cool and softness of the soil underneath. In the first days of his recovery, he had done things like this demonstratively, always showing off for his absent, rejecting ex-boyfriend, but soon he was doing all the formerly forbidden things for the joy of them, because it was lovely and interesting and sustaining to put one's feet in the grass, or to shake the paw of a strange dog, or even marvel over some pornographic vagina, formerly the abomination of abominations and the anathema of anathemas. Now, beyond any hope of reunion with old stay-the-fuck-away-from-me Bobby, Henry had nothing left to prove, and for the first time in forever he did things for no other reason than because it made him happy to do them.
He sat for a while appreciating his feet on the grass, and appreciating the feeling of his bottom and his back against the stone, and wondered if this could reasonably be considered the end of the night. He had already socialized more in twelve hours than he had done in a typical month of days in the past year, even though he hadn't made it to the party and the only interactions he'd had so far were smiling at some friendly men on Eighteenth Street and a short talk about the possibility of fog with a pierced-up fellow in a café on Haight and Scott, where he'd stopped just before heading up the hill. There were nights back when he lived in Boston when he would never venture out of his apartment, because it was too much effort to get out of bed, or put on his shoes, or navigate the gauntlet of contamination that the mailman, who might have touched a letter that touched a letter that touched a letter that his mother wrote, left around the front door and the stoop and the sidewalk. He had gone days without talking to anyone, and when
he did talk to anyone it was usually Bobby, who happened to live next door for the whole first year after they broke up, and who, from Henry's kitchen window, could be observed talking on the phone, or eating cereal, or frolicking with his new dog. Some nights he closed every shutter in his house and left Henry to speculate miserably about what might be going on behind them.
he did talk to anyone it was usually Bobby, who happened to live next door for the whole first year after they broke up, and who, from Henry's kitchen window, could be observed talking on the phone, or eating cereal, or frolicking with his new dog. Some nights he closed every shutter in his house and left Henry to speculate miserably about what might be going on behind them.
It was almost enough, to have tried to go to the party and to have made an honest effort to be sociable. Giving up and going home, when the party was simply not to be found, did not make him a depressive recluse, did not make him what he was before losing Bobby had caused him to come to his senses. He could not be blamed for going home, and yet, when he really considered it, he decided that he didn't want to go home. Other people had become a whole lot more interesting since he had been freed from the labyrinthine solipsism of his self-enforced misery. He could not previously have imagined a more boring waste of time than to go and drink in the company of strangers and quasi-strangers, but now there was something decidedly intriguing about it, even if he was enough of his old self to feel that sitting alone on a rock in the middle of the park in the late evening was its own sort of good time. Rather slowly, he decided that the night had only just begun, and he was in no hurry to get home, and he would get to the party eventually. For now, he continued to sit on the rock.
It was pleasant to sit still, in part because there was a lot more to experience and feel, even sitting and doing nothing, than there had been when he was his old self, and also because he was chronically exhausted, both from the relentless succession of twelve-hour workdays he was suffering under in his new job and the relentless procession of doomed cancerous children who crossed his path. He had started thinking that he had picked his profession because it was guaranteed to provide
an inexhaustible source of profound sadness, for how wonderful that must have seemed to the old Henry Blork, who thought sadness was his lot, and for whom it was a simultaneously sustaining and debilitating atmosphere. Any rest was to be cherished, though it left him open, like sleep did, to affectionate but utterly useless thoughts about Bobby. It did no good anymore, here beyond any hope of a reconciliation, to think of him, and yet Bobby was all Henry could think of when he wasn't forcefully distracted. There were other things to think about: dying teenagers on the Oncology Service at the hospital; whether or not his drug-addled ex-con sister was going to make it on her own now that their mother was dead; what kind of dog he would get when he got a dog. But he hardly touched his mind to any of these subjects when thoughts of Bobby intruded on them. He wondered if the teenagers would die without ever being in love, and any thought of love led back to Bobby. Thoughts of his sister led to thoughts of Bobby's brother, an analogously drug-addled beautiful soul who had died hardly two years before Henry and Bobby had met. And any thoughts of a dog led in prancing leaps to thoughts of Bobby's dog, a black Lab named Hobart whom Henry had come to love almost as much as he loved his master.
an inexhaustible source of profound sadness, for how wonderful that must have seemed to the old Henry Blork, who thought sadness was his lot, and for whom it was a simultaneously sustaining and debilitating atmosphere. Any rest was to be cherished, though it left him open, like sleep did, to affectionate but utterly useless thoughts about Bobby. It did no good anymore, here beyond any hope of a reconciliation, to think of him, and yet Bobby was all Henry could think of when he wasn't forcefully distracted. There were other things to think about: dying teenagers on the Oncology Service at the hospital; whether or not his drug-addled ex-con sister was going to make it on her own now that their mother was dead; what kind of dog he would get when he got a dog. But he hardly touched his mind to any of these subjects when thoughts of Bobby intruded on them. He wondered if the teenagers would die without ever being in love, and any thought of love led back to Bobby. Thoughts of his sister led to thoughts of Bobby's brother, an analogously drug-addled beautiful soul who had died hardly two years before Henry and Bobby had met. And any thoughts of a dog led in prancing leaps to thoughts of Bobby's dog, a black Lab named Hobart whom Henry had come to love almost as much as he loved his master.
It ought to be possible, he thought, to will himself not to think about him. Back when he would still return his calls, Bobby had described, rather too proudly, a process like that, by which he had forcibly lifted himself out of love with Henry, into a place where Henry didn't cross his mind at all hours of the day, and distract him from every task, and invade his dreams, and loiter in his masturbatory fantasies. “It was a lot of hard work,” he told Henry, implying that Henry had a lot of hard work himself to get to this loveless place. “That's the most horrible thing I ever heard,” Henry had said, and Bobby
had replied, “You say that now, but just wait.” Henry had done just the opposite thing, it seemed to him, falling every day more deeply into love while Bobby lifted himself ever higher out of it, until they could not possibly have been farther away from each other. Henry sighed and closed his eyes, suddenly feeling lost and trapped, in the park, in his feelings, and in the world at large. He began to think about how strange and stupid it was that his love for Bobby had, too late, displaced a combination of guilt and shame and sorrow as the organizing principle of his life, and he considered how wonderful it would be to live under that organizing principle of love if Bobby could return it again.
had replied, “You say that now, but just wait.” Henry had done just the opposite thing, it seemed to him, falling every day more deeply into love while Bobby lifted himself ever higher out of it, until they could not possibly have been farther away from each other. Henry sighed and closed his eyes, suddenly feeling lost and trapped, in the park, in his feelings, and in the world at large. He began to think about how strange and stupid it was that his love for Bobby had, too late, displaced a combination of guilt and shame and sorrow as the organizing principle of his life, and he considered how wonderful it would be to live under that organizing principle of love if Bobby could return it again.
He sighed again, more of a guttural huff of the sort that Hobart was inclined to let out every now and then when he met the rare thing that displeased him. This was not what he ought to be thinking about. There might not be any hurry to get to the party, but the night was going nowhere except in nostalgic spirals around Bobby. Even if he was never going to move on, it was time, for tonight, to get moving. He would have gotten up and started walking again right then, except that he knew his thoughts would be no different, while he finally made his way out of the park, while he knocked on Jordan's door, and even while he talked to the now-interesting strangers behind the door, even while making out with one of them, though that was an admittedly unlikely prospect. Bobby would still be everywhere all night long, a living ghost. There was really only one thing that seemed to banish him. Masturbation, Henry's regular companion since the age of thirteen, had used to extend and reinforce the depressive self-loathing under which he had labored on account of being gay, leaving him feeling simultaneously ashamed and wanting more of it right away, the way that sex had for most of his life. But lately it had become what he thought it ought to have become a long
time ago, an innocent distraction that harmed no one, least of all himself. And it had become a way, even though the act issued imperious invitations to thoughts of Bobby, of forgetting about him. It blew the Bobby fuse, and it could be hours or days before the yearning brimmed again.
time ago, an innocent distraction that harmed no one, least of all himself. And it had become a way, even though the act issued imperious invitations to thoughts of Bobby, of forgetting about him. It blew the Bobby fuse, and it could be hours or days before the yearning brimmed again.
Opening one eye, he scanned the clearing. There wasn't anybody there, though at this time of night it would not have mattered much if there had been. People came into the park for such things, after all, though it hadn't really been Henry's style since he was in college to engage in furtive public park sex. Yet it was somehow of a piece with the pleasantness of his seat on the rock, and of the feeling of his feet in the grass, to reach down his pants and begin to grope himself a bit. At first his head was empty of anything except for the obvious sensations and a mild anxiety about getting caught, but he was very soon in the place that brought memories of Bobby swooping into his mind. And they weren't entirely the sort of memories one would expect, given what Henry was doing with his hand, and given that Bobby had come to dominate his sexual imagination such that he could barely imagine having sex with someone else, even when he actually was having sex with someone else. There had been enough hot sex, back in the good old bad old good old days, to fuel whole seasons of masturbation. Thoughts of the sex flitted, swift as darting birds, in and out of his head, too quick to properly consider them. It was weirder, and sadder, to beat off while submersed in more innocent nostalgia, in distinct memories of waking up in the middle of the night with Bobby in his arms and realizing that he could hear it snowing outside, or of Bobby offering him a Benadryl when he was poisoned by bad sushi, or of puzzling together over a hysterical middle-aged lady with syncope, randomly encountered in a vacation hotel. It was strange and pathetic enough to do it in his own bedroom, and seemed stranger and more
pathetic here, outside and quite close to the geographic center of the city, but it was what worked.
pathetic here, outside and quite close to the geographic center of the city, but it was what worked.
He had hardly properly gotten going with it when he was suddenly aware, even though his eyes were still closed, that he was being watched. He opened his eyes and saw a little manâa very little man, not more than two and a half feet at his shoulderâstanding about three yards off. The man was panting and his face was shining with sweat in the moonlight, which was falling down into the clearing from an open sky even though the park was surrounded by fog. Henry stared, cock in hand, feeling a unique combination of revulsion and surprise. It wasn't actually so surprising that there might be homosexual midgets in the park; the lonely and the desperate came in every shape and age and size and color. But there was something stranger about this man than diminutive boogly trolldom.
“That won't keep him away,” the little man said. “He's not afraid of your little weenaloo.”
Henry let go of his cock and pulled up his pants at the same time that he pushed himself back and over the rock. He fell over the back of it, got up, and started running, not at all sure about why he had to get away so quickly from this admittedly harmless-looking little man. There was an etiquette to this sort of interaction, a way to indicate that you didn't want to be watched, let alone touched, during your public escapade, without necessarily hurting anyone's feelings, which didn't involve running away in such a hurry that you forgot to put your shoes back on or failed to pull up your pants and your underwear all the way, so they tripped you. He kicked them off and left them behind and ran again. It made less sense than was immediately apparent, to flee as he was doing, and he realized as he was running that what he was feeling had a lot of the character of his old reasonless fears, and then he stopped. He
had run into a stand of white trees, whose peeling bark gave them something in common with eucalyptus, but the grove reeked of cinnamon. He didn't know the park very well, but this looked like nowhere he had ever been.
had run into a stand of white trees, whose peeling bark gave them something in common with eucalyptus, but the grove reeked of cinnamon. He didn't know the park very well, but this looked like nowhere he had ever been.
Other books
The Fury of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western #4) by Rory Black
The Revelation by Lauren Rowe
The Apostates by Lars Teeney
Bombshells by T. Elliott Brown
A Montana Cowboy by Rebecca Winters
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler
No Letting Go: Man-Maid, Book 2 by Anne Rainey
The Balmoral Incident by Alanna Knight
Journeys on the Silk Road by Joyce Morgan