Contemporary Gay Romances (14 page)

So Ben contented himself. Especially after the first few weeks, when he began to realize the impossible love between them could only occur suddenly, impulsively, unforgettably: like any other miracle.

Victor’s comings and goings appeared to fit some obscure plan. Ben wouldn’t see him for days, only come upon him mowing a shaggy patch of lawn, or wrapping heavy black tape around a split waterpipe of one of the studios. Then Victor would come by the little cottage early one afternoon, spend all day, remain for a hastily concocted dinner, talk about people and writing and books until past midnight. Only to disappear again for days. Only to reappear again as suddenly, stretched out on the yellow plastic lawnchair at midday as Ben returned home from a walk, or suddenly diving past Ben’s surprised face into the clear water of the pond and swimming to the other shore. His appearances were unpredictable; the hours he spent with Ben so full of talk, of complete attention that Ben would be charmed into persuading himself that Giove was merely being careful; getting to know Ben better: making sure of him totally, before he would suddenly turn to Ben, put his arms around him, and…

That was when Ben would feel frustrated all over again, full of lust, and he would have to go into the bedroom, to lie down, to picture how it would be, sometimes masturbating two or three times after Victor had been with him, feeling his fantasies becoming so real that the impossible
had
to happen.

Once, Victor came by after dinner when Ben was writing. Giove lay down quietly on the sofa, began to read a magazine and fell asleep. When Ben realized that, he could no longer concentrate. Even sleeping, Victor was too disturbing. Ben wandered around the cottage, trying to wake the older man by the noise he made. He even tried to fall asleep himself. But it was an absurd attempt—the bedroom felt as cold, as uninviting as the first night he’d spent there.

Finally he decided to waken Victor—he was so tall he had to sleep bent up. He would awaken with cramps, pain. Ben didn’t say it to himself, but he suspected that once they were in bed together, Giove would relent.

Victor woke up, stretched, stood up, looked once at the bedroom hallway, as though trying to make up his mind whether or not to stay, then said he wouldn’t hear of it.

That night, it was hours before Ben could fall asleep, even after he’d taken a mild sedative.

He had purposely not touched himself during those tormenting hours of unrest. During the night, however, half-awakened, he felt heat emanating from his genitals, couldn’t fight it off, and worked groggily if efficiently to bring himself to orgasm. Dazed, exhausted, he sank back into slumber.

The following afternoon, Victor was at the pond again when Ben arrived for his daily swim. With Victor, sitting on the tiny dark sand beach, wearing a huge sun hat, was a chaperone: Joan Sampson. Ben remained with them only long enough to be polite.

After that day, Victor and Joan always seemed to be together. Victor was seldom alone.

Even without her interference, Ben thought she was the least sympathetic person he’d met in the colony. She epitomized all he disliked in the others: their utter sophistication and true provinciality; their brusqueness, their bad manners, their absorption with themselves and lack of interest in anyone else except as reflections of themselves. Joan’s frail child’s underdeveloped body and the expensively casual clothing she wore, her birdlike unpretty face and unfocused blue eyes that seemed to look only with disdain, her arrogance, her instant judgements and devastating condemnations of matters she couldn’t possibly know, her artificial laugh, her arch gestures and awkward mannerisms—she might have been a wind-up toy. Next to her, large, naturally graceful, athletically handsome Victor, his Victor, looked bumbling. Together they were grotesque.

Ben now went out of his way to not see them together. He pleaded work when they asked him to join them for dinner. He didn’t show up for readings of their work. He stopped going to where he thought they were likely to be.

The impossible, he began to see, was indeed impossible. He had to forget Victor, to forget him, and above all to stop fantasizing about him.

*

When the cold showers and manual work he made for himself around the cottage no longer served to keep his mind off Victor Giove, Ben began to run miles every day along the two-lane road, to swim hours at a time, in another, larger, pond he’d discovered a short drive away. When he realized these methods were not working either, Ben got into the Volvo late one night and drove to the all-night truck-stop diner.

Two vehicles—one he recognized as belonging to the owner—and a large red semi were parked in the gravel lot. Ben pulled up close to the truck, hidden from both the diner and the road, and waited. When the truck driver finally came out of the diner, Ben rolled down his window and asked for a light for his cigarette.

The trucker was close to middle age, and heavy set, definitely not Ben’s type, but he had kind brown eyes and an engaging grin. He lighted Ben’s cigarette. When he asked Ben if he wasn’t a little young to be doing this sort of thing, Ben shrugged, then leaned back in the car seat with a loud sigh. A second later, the trucker’s lower torso filled the car window frame, the worn denims were unzipped, not another word said. Ben sucked him off and came without touching himself.

The following night, Ben stopped at the roadhouse and struck up a conversation with a traveling salesman who had a suitcase full of encyclopedias. After a few drinks, Ben was able to convince the man he wanted something other than books. The salesman was younger than the trucker, thinner, better-looking, just as obliging. They drove separately away from the roadhouse, met a mile farther at a turn-off, and made love in the backseat of the salesman’s car for over an hour.

 Ben drove out late every night. One time he picked up a long-haired hitchhiker who offered him grass. They smoked, and Ben drove twenty-five miles before he got up the courage to ask if he could blow the kid. Sure, the hitchhiker said, unzipping. I was wondering when you were going to ask.

Several times, he repeated his first night success at the truck stop. He also discovered the Exxon station outside of Sagoponauk had a removable plank at exactly the right height between the two booths in the men’s room. High school boys came there after unsuccessful weekend night petting sessions with their girls, and local older men furtively used his services at various odd hours. Ben became bolder, picking up strangers leaving the roadhouse. He was often misunderstood, at times threatened. The bartender, a married partner in the place, offered to guide likely men Ben’s way in return for occasional favors. A week later he took his first payment, sodomizing Ben on a shiny leather sofa in the office after the roadhouse had closed.

During all of these experiences, Ben never felt less frustrated, less craving of sex, or less in love with Victor Giove. But he told himself that whatever else he was doing, at least it was better than fantasizing about Victor and masturbating. That seemed to help.

*

Although he had gone to sleep very late and was even a little drunk when he’d finally gotten back to the cottage, Ben awakened instantly, fully, as soon as he thought he heard the footpads in the darkened room. Fully alert, tensed, he kept his eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. Whoever had stopped at the foot of the bed was looking down at Ben.

Despite his terror, Ben didn’t panic. Then, oddly, he felt a wave of intense lust passing through his body. Odd, since the young man he’d spent two hours with on a blanket inside a clearing they’d driven to had been both passionate and solicitous of Ben’s pleasure. Ben had felt both mollified and physically exhausted when they’d parted with a long, lingering kiss. Despite that Ben now felt a biting, itching, erection, a pressing need to masturbate, as though he hadn’t had sex in a month.

The fear returned, Ben almost shivered. He pretended to be disturbed in his sleep, mumbling loudly, rolling onto one side before waking up.

During his exertions, whoever had been at the foot of the bed left the room. Ben felt alone again. He listened for noises in the other rooms, waited a long time hearing nothing, then got out of bed and crept first into the corridor, then into the rest of the cottage. The doors were locked, the rooms empty. Puzzled, wondering if it was a dream, Ben went to sleep.

*

Several nights later, he again wakened, sensing someone at the foot of his bed. Once more he felt a scalding, sweeping lust over his lower limbs, the need to touch himself. Then fear reasserted itself, and he was cold again. While he was sleepily trying to get out of bed, whoever it was got away. He was certain it wasn’t a dream this time.

Ben thought about the matter for the next two days and determined to ask Frances Ormond who else had a set of keys to the cottage. Walking to the Ormond house, he came upon Victor Giove, surprisingly alone, sunning on a blanket spread over the grass behind his A-frame studio. Victor’s gloriously tanned body was clad only in a pair of worn, red swim trunks.

Ben moved on with a wave, but Giove hailed him over so insistently that Ben reluctantly joined him, and even took off his shirt to get some sun.

He was “pale as February,” Victor assured him, and he would burn unless he put on some suntan oil. When Ben began to splash it on, the older man said he was doing it all wrong; he would show him how. As Ben lay on his stomach, he expected to feel the large, strong, applicating hands transformed into messengers of caresses. They weren’t. They were brisk, efficient, they spread the lotion evenly, nothing more.

Giove didn’t seem to have noticed that Ben had been avoiding him. Their conversation was the usual: what Victor was writing, what Ben was doing, what was happening among the others at the colony,

Ben stayed almost an hour—once his disturbance at their near-nude closeness vanished. When he got up and put on his shirt, Victor said:

“You should get more sun. And rest more. How are you sleeping? You look sort of done in to me.”

Ben was so stunned he couldn’t answer. Why would Victor say that to him, unless it was Victor himself who was visiting him at night?

When Ben finally did say he was sleeping well, Giove seemed skeptical, then added, “Well, you know best.” He rolled on his stomach, and his wide shoulders, his long, muscled back, two solid buttocks stretching the bright red nylon of his swim trunks, his thighs and legs—honey brown and flecked with sunbleached hairs—all jumped out at Ben. He wanted to fall down right there and kiss and lick every inch of that body for hours on end. The black, curly ringlets of Giove’s hair shone like white gold in the sun. Shoving his itching hands into his trouser pockets, Ben managed to mumble a supererogatory good-bye before tearing himself away from the spot.

He was imagining things, Ben told himself, walking away. Victor had only asked how he was sleeping because he’d probably heard Ben driving past his studio late every night for the past three weeks and he was concerned.

Frances Ormond confirmed that she herself had heard Ben’s Volvo at two and three in the morning at least a dozen times. She was far less subtle about it.

“That’s the way Stephen Hunter began his terrible descent,” she said, “staying out late, coming home late, getting drunk in roadhouses. Summer after summer. Night after night, toward the end.”

Ben thought it was none of her business, but defended himself by pointing out that he had written the two required stories and had already begun his novel. Late hours helped him work, he said.

She pursed her lips as though to counterattack, but changed the subject, feeding him coffee and freshly baked berry pie instead.

She told Ben no one else had keys to the little cottage. None were needed: the locks didn’t work; anyone could get in if they wanted. Stephen Hunter had once told her he’d had enough of locks in the city, he wouldn’t have any functional locks out here. It was his undoing, she added, because it enabled his murderer to get at him so easily.

Without much prodding, she narrated the grisly tale of three summers past. The young vagabond had been captured in a saloon a few towns away. He’d confessed and was imprisoned. At first he made some foolish claim about Stephen owing him some money and refusing to pay; about them being friends for years. Under pressure his story changed to one of revenge. Stephen had molested him, he said. It wasn’t convincing, even to the unsophisticated local sheriff.

Back at the little cottage, Ben discovered she was right—both doors could be opened, the locks just flapped on their hinges. Should he have them repaired? Yes. But whoever was visiting him at night did nothing to him, did nothing but look at him. Was that reason enough to change something Stephen Hunter had done? Ben would never bring anyone he met back to the colony. He congratulated himself he never had. And he still couldn’t get Victor Giove’s words of earlier that day out of his mind. He was once more almost certain it was Victor.

So he didn’t repair the locks. And the next time he was awakened in the middle of the night and sensed a figure at the foot of the bed, Ben felt only a few seconds of the usual fear. The figure remained motionless. It seemed to be the right size for Victor. Then Ben began to feel the intense warm itch sweeping from the tips of his hair to the soles of his feet.

Slowly pushing back the light blanket, Ben let the dark figure warm him with its gaze, then began touching himself on his legs and groin. He thought he heard a sharpened intake of breath from his visitor, and Ben let go, slowly, luxuriously caressing and stroking himself, thinking of Victor at the foot of the bed watching him, wanting him, not daring to touch him. His climax that night was shared; he was certain of it.