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If only you saw him, doctor, I could make you understand. George was beautiful. The boy’s long, slim body had once been light and wasted enough for a dwarfish thing like me to have laid over the back of my horse — he must have been a well-made youth once, even an athlete. It took weeks and weeks for the color and fullness to return to his face; just the same, he still wore the same intent and haunted look as when I first saw him face to face that Sunday afternoon in Marsh Hills. And the overlay of memory: the dry blood caking his mouth as he sucked at the wound in Marion's breast, the absolute amorality of appetite.
His dark hair was long enough to brush his collar, the way young men must wear it these days, and over the months it only grew longer. He was lovely, impossibly lovely — nothing had excited me in so long, and it was a confused sort of longing, alloyed with the fierce impulsive hate I'd felt when he was nothing to me but an intruder on my sacred territory, nameless and faceless. I knew his name now, and I knew his face. His eyes were very dark, and his mouth was very red.
The young man ate at my table, and slept in my bed — I slept on the floor, or in the leather easy chair. I played records for him, shared with him from my books by long-dead authors, and day by day I watched him grow stronger. I bought him shirts and razors and all the things a young man ought to have, and he showed his gratitude through his glances and through his abiding silence. I brought him cigarettes, and a heavy silver lighter. I couldn't stand to see him with a lit match between his fingers.
We kept a pad of note paper on the kitchen table, and there I wrote down whatever communication was necessary between us. On the rare occasion where it was necessary to leave the building, I wrote to tell him where I'd gone and when I would arrive back. Whenever I did return, he looked so pitifully relieved to see me.
*
One night I woke to the sensation of weight — I felt the easy chair sinking under me and the worn leather creasing. Had that been a stifled scream, some wordless cry — or had it only been the bedroom door opening on its decrepit hinges? I thought there might have been a fire, or some other accident. The young man, my George, was there bent low over me, and in the near-dark his face was perfectly haunted.
I reached for him in the dark, gripping him by the shoulder — I'm here, I could have said, I'm here, but I couldn't say a thing. It was dark, entirely dark, and I felt his strong young body trembling. No one had reached for me in twenty-five years — even longer than that. I opened my mouth as if to speak, longing to speak, and he kissed me. He kissed me, and he clung to me, and for a terrible moment I no longer felt my own deficiency, only the heat of his long limbs laid over mine. I'm ashamed to say what the press of his body did to me. He treated me with the same gentleness I'd imagined him showing his own sweetheart — no soft words but soft touches, like some strange unspoken agreement had been reached and he in his ruthless innocence knew everything I wanted.
I fumbled for him until our bodies found a rhythm together, and the cadence quickened. The sound of his groans excited me — the deep vibrations trapped within his broad never quite breaking into words. In fact I'd forgotten the sound of his voice. I could recall the words he’d said to his sweetheart all those months ago but not the timbre or the tone.
If I could have spoken then, the things I would have said - I hadn't spoken a word, not even to myself, for twenty-five years. Even now I couldn't bring myself to press through the weight of that silence, and the effort made a dull pain in my throat. Under my hands he was smooth and young, and strong.
His mouth working against my skin, his hands unbuttoning my pajama shirt. There was no sound in our house but the sound of our breathing. I felt the sting and then the pressure of his mouth — there was a razor blade in his hand.
What more could I give him? Perhaps I owed him this much, to let him drink.
psychomachia Thu 15 Feb 2024 07:31AM UTC
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Hokuto Thu 22 Feb 2024 12:41AM UTC
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