The following, lengthy story, although it can stand alone, is a continuation of the first one I posted, "Divine Neglect," (/nifty/gay/adult-youth/divine-neglect) which was itself slightly revised and recently posted in gay/beginnings under the title, "As Flies to Wanton Boys." It may help, but it is not necessary to read one or the other version. The author-- park517@aol.com -- welcomes comments and dedicates the story to Matt, the first reader to respond to "Divine Neglect" a decade ago.
[DISCLAIMER: The following completely fictional story, the sole copyright for which belongs to the author and translator, contains explicit depictions of sexual intercourse between men and should not, therefore, be read by anyone under the legal age of consent in whatever jurisdiction or by anyone offended by homoerotic and/or pornographic material. It is forbidden to post the text electronically or disseminate it in any manner without permission of the copyright holder.]
Doctor of the Heart Chapter 2
We took my car to pick up his belongings from the hostel and made a date for supper with Tommy. I suggested we go to his mother's restaurant, but Tommy said she would nag him and spoil his appetite, so we settled on Hoang's instead. Mitya said he had eaten Chinese food and Thai food and sushi but never Vietnamese. "I like anything spicy," he said.
"Then you'll like Hoang's," Tommy assured him. "You can clear your sinuses just by smelling the food."
We did more than smell it. We inhaled it, and quite a lot of St-Ambroise along with it. We talked and we argued. Tommy and I told stories about each other and about growing up in Montreal. Dmitri listened and laughed when he should, but he didn't tell us much about himself or his family. We learned that he has an older brother, who lives in Vienna and runs a trading company. His father was the dean of the university in Montenegro but now just teaches history, because he was not sufficiently enthusiastic in public about Serbian nationalism. Mitya's mother is from a much bigger family and spends her time taking care of its more dramatic members and of her husband. After his year in England, Mitya also lived in Vienna and learned German, "but my English is stronger," he said. "It is just not up to the date, but you two will make me modern, nicht wahr?"
"Definitely," I promised. "Out with the old. In with the in-group. Speaking of which, Mitya, how old are you?"
"Twenty-five until February. You?"
"Twenty-three. Also February. The fourteenth."
His eyes and his smile lit up. "My birthday, too."
"And St. Valentine's Day. Do you like chocolate?"
"Better than flowers. Almost better than anything"
"Sex?" Tommy was getting to the point.
"Do you mean do I like sex or do I like it better than chocolate?"
"Both."
"Yes."
The alcohol levels in our blood had reached just the point that we all found the exchange hilarious. We were gasping with laughter when an aggrieved-looking waiter handed Mitya the bill, probably because he was the biggest and oldest. I snatched it away. He tried to take it back.
"No, Mitya. Not your first night with us. This party is to welcome you."
"Under those circumstances, I will try to be gracious. Thank you, Yves. Thank you, Tommy."
"Just Yves. And he's filthy rich, so we must let him entertain us at every possible opportunity."
"You do not mind to be a kept man, Tommy?" Mitya was grinning.
"It is my fondest dream. Right after world peace and saving the whales."
That set us off again, but I managed to pay the bill and find the car and get it to Tommy's apartment and then to my flat. Mitya had to finish unpacking, he said, and I told him I planned to work for a while. We wished one another good night. I heard him use the bathroom a little while later, but I stayed downstairs for at least another hour drawing his face from memory, trying and failing to catch that mysterious sorrow in his look. Finally, I gave it up and went to bed and masturbated, for the first time in years, to a fantasy of Mitya in my arms. All we were doing was touching, occasionally kissing, mostly gazing deeply into each other's eyes. It was enough. I went off like a mortar and just as messily. And then I went to sleep.
Once I am asleep, I usually stay comatose straight through the night, but at about 2:30, I sat bolt upright in bed, totally alert and slightly alarmed. The hall light that I had turned off was on. I heard a clatter downstairs. Maybe my guest had not been joking about possibly being a thief. I got up and started out the door before I remembered that I was, as I always am in my own bed, naked. My bathrobe was at the cleaners. "Improvise, Yves," I urged myself. I groped in my closet and found a kind of light Japanese jacket, a happy coat that my sister had found at a flea market and given me a few years ago. It had a belt. It covered my butt. It would have to do.
On the ground floor no burglary was in process. The noise I'd heard had come from Mitya's search through the kitchen cupboards for a cup and a teakettle, which he'd found, and for tea, which he hadn't. From the stairs I watched a minute or two for the sheer pleasure of seeing a beautiful barefoot man in his underwear move around my kitchen. The thick covering of black hair didn't hide the grace of his arms and legs, and the thin, clinging fabric of his undershirt packaged a chest as broad as a snow shovel and wavy ridges of pronounced stomach muscle. His feet came with the most alluring toes I had ever seen.
I am not a freak for buffed bodies or fur coats, but on Mitya the two went together and the sum of his visible parts had me weak in the knees. Once I found my voice, I spoke his name and asked if I could help. After we got past his apology for waking me, he let me show him the canister of herbal teas and the chamomile he said his mother used to give him when he couldn't sleep.
"Like Peter Rabbit and his mother," I said.
"Yes," he smiled. "It was my first book in English."
"And mine. Some things are universal."
"Art, music, great literature, religion, hatred, war, murder."
"Was that free association?" I was surprised at how serious he had suddenly become.
"Yes. I am sorry. I think it is being bitter that wakes me out and now you in the middle of the night."
"I don't mind, Mitya. I really don't. But you forgot one universal. Love."
The kettle began to whistle, and he turned off the flame, poured out two cups and gave me one. "I did not forget love, Yves." He pulled out a chair and sat down. "It may be a universal but in my experience it does not continue... endurate as long as the others. I have had love..." He seemed to want to say more and not be able to. The mysterious sorrow. Maybe I could get him to confront it, to share it, to lift it.
"Mitya," I sat down across from him at the kitchen table. "Please be honest. You do know that I'm gay?"
"Gay?" He looked briefly puzzled. "Oh, yes. Homosexual. I thought, maybe. But I was not certain. I have seen a lot of ... you say, gays? ... here in the last two days. It seems Montreal is a good place for them."
"You're not?"
"Homosexual? I do not think so. It is true that I have been with two men." He hesitated. "No, two boys. But it did not go well." He stopped, locked his hands together, looked directly at me. "Yves, I am sorry. I would rather not talk about that. Not yet. Maybe later. Forgive me?"
"Of course. I have no business... We don't know each other..." Most unusual for me. I was at a loss for words. He moved into the sudden silence.
"Yves? I do not dislike men who love men. How could I? I have been one such. But I have decided I want to love only women and not even them for now."
Some expression in my eyes - disappointment would be too mild a word for what I was experiencing -- must have jarred him. He unclasped his hands and put one of them on mine. "Yves," he said, "I hope I am not giving you disappointment. You are very warm and kind and very beautiful. If I thought I could love another man, I would certainly be ... be invited. But I want to stay away from love. It hurts too much when it ends. Can you understand? You have not fallen into love with me, I hope?"
"Oh, no," I lied, shaking my head vigorously. "No. I just didn't want to be untruthful about myself or to shock you. I want you to have a good time here, with me, with Tommy, in Montreal. You seem so sad. I would just like to help cheer you up." I turned on one of my sincere, insincere smiles. It seemed to work.
"Thank you, Yves." He stood up and took his cup to the sink to rinse it out. "I need cheering up. You are in the right. Thank you for taking me in. Thank you for wanting to help." He bent down and kissed my forehead. "Now, I go back to bed, and I know I shall be able to sleep hard. I will see you in the morning. Well, it is morning. In the sunlight, I should say."
I heard his steps going upstairs, but I sat there frozen. He said I was "very beautiful." I felt the spot where his lips had touched my skin. I would never wash there again. "Love doesn't hurt." I nearly said it out loud. "Love is wonderful. And I'm in love."
I called Tommy. "It is almost three in the morning, Yves," he said as he answered. "What if I'd been sleeping?"
"You're a vampire. You never sleep at night. Tommy, he said I was 'very beautiful.' Not just 'beautiful' but 'very beautiful.' Isn't that wonderful?"
"And then, I suppose, he ripped your bodice and pressed his throbbing organ against your flesh. And you gave a little cry of delight and melted in his arms. Right?"
"Wrong. Damn it. Have you been reading Terry Southern again? No, he says love hurts too much to fall in love. And he may not even be gay. But he kissed me. On the forehead. Still, it's a start. Isn't it?"
"Of course it is, goose. On the forehead?" I could hear him trying not to laugh. "Now go get your beauty rest, Scarlett. Tomorrow is another day."
"Good night, Tommy. I love you."
"Good night, Yves. I'm happy for you. Sleep well."
I did. And when I woke up a little after eight, I was grinning. Life was wonderful. Mitya was just down the hall and I had nearly a month to bring him from Elaine's room into my arms. Child's play.
My organ throbbed. All that beer. Remembering that I had said I didn't want to shock him, I wrapped myself in the happy coat again and darted out my door and into the bathroom. Bladder emptied, teeth brushed, face scrubbed (but not the forehead), I emerged into the hall to hear a most peculiar noise. An odd rhythm. Slap. Thump. Splat. Thump. It was coming from Elaine's room, and since the door was ajar, I quietly pushed it farther open and peeked in.
Mitya was on the floor, on his toes and fingertips, doing those ferocious push-ups where you clap your hands together on the rise. His pale skin glistened with sweat. His biceps were swollen, the size of overgrown squashes. Something substantial flopped inside the baggy green cotton shorts that were all he wore. I won't say that I felt faint, but I did find myself frozen in the doorway.
Abruptly, he clapped one last time and subsided, panting. Seconds passed. I tried to cough to announce my presence but my epiglottis had seized up along with my arms and legs. Mitya raised his torso from the carpet, got to his knees and then lifted his head. He looked directly at me and he smiled. A big, happy smile.
"Good morning, Yves. I was at the doing of my exercises." That was obvious. "Did you sleep well? I did. I cannot thank you enough."
"Yes, you could," I thought. "I heard you and I came to watch," is what I said. "Very impressive. If you've worked up an appetite, let me fix you, us, some breakfast. Do you like strong coffee?"
"That would be very good," he answered. "But I must to help." He was on his feet, and the flopping thing disappeared under the loose-hanging fabric. Damn.
"Well, you can tell me what you like in the morning. Juice? Fresh fruit? Croissant? Cereal?" Or, I thought, "would you like me to wash the sweat off your glorious body? In the shower? Here? Now? With my tongue?"
"Juice and fruit and a piece of bread, maybe with butter. If that is not a trouble."
"None. I'll go get things ready. You probably want to shower. It's all yours." I managed to get my feet to move me backwards into the corridor.
"Yes, thanks. Yves?"
"Yes, Mitya. Something else?"
"Just that you are too kind to me and ...," He was grinning. "Well, your sleeping shirt. It is a little short. At least to someone looking up at you."
I blushed like a circus clown in full makeup and tugged at the hem. "I'm so sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to embarrass you."
"You did not." He grinned. "I am a medical student, remember. We are going to be friends, will we not? To be a friend, you must always say what you see and tell the truth. Do you not think that?"
"Absolutely," I lied. "Thank you. That is the kind of friend I like best. I will start the coffee. See you downstairs."
I fled to my room. Decently dressed and almost composed, I got the coffee going and sliced some incredible American peaches I had bought two days before, feeling guilty as I always did when I broke one of Tommy's rules. America and everything it produced, he detested. He did sneak into some Hollywood films now and then, but from his father he had inherited a 1970s absolutism about the "plantation of war-mongerers" to the south. From his mother, a Vietnamese refugee, he had gotten a Gallic distaste for what he called "the fast-food, fast-sex, fast-buck" culture of the leader of the free world. He was not uncritical of Canada, but he was also the most intensely patriotic, copper-coloured, frizzy-haired Canadian I knew.
Still, the peaches were out of this world. Mitya agreed. "You are spoiling me, Yves," he said. "And much as I like it, I must ask you to let me do something for you. I cannot just take from you. It is not proper. Could I to wash your windows perhaps? Also, I know to iron."
"Mitya, first you are not taking anything. You are giving me the pleasure of becoming your friend. Second, I don't have an iron. I send my clothes out to a laundry service." I looked at the windows. "They're pretty clean already, I think. Madame Dubois - she comes in twice a week - did them just last month."
He looked a bit downcast. "What about your car?"
"Rosie? What about her?"
"Rosie?"
"For Rosinante. My faithful steed."
"She could be washed. I could be Sancho Panza."
"True, but risky. There's some possibility that if you take off the dirt, she'll fall apart."
"Yves, when did you last change the filters?"
"No idea. Are you sure she has filters?"
"Yes, and I would not be surprised if they were hindered and if that is why you stopped and could not go in traffic."
"Mitya, do you really know about cars and engines and all that?"
"I do. Will you let me prove it to you?"
"You won't hurt her?"
"I will be like a doctor. I am like a doctor." He was smiling.
I made the sign of the cross in front of him. "You have my blessing, my son."
"I will need also your keys." He took them, snooped around the broom closet for the automotive equivalent of scalpels and forceps and disappeared out to the street. Humming.
After I put the breakfast things away, I went back to the sketches of Dmitri I had made the night before but still found that although I could render the bone structure of his face, I could not capture his haunted, unhappy look. Putting the pad aside, I went to work instead on a pair of masks meant to fit one over the other, Inuit style, but to represent not a mythical spirit but a drag queen I knew who worked as a long-haul trucker. I became immersed in the work, and although I heard Mitya return to the kitchen a couple of times, I didn't even look up from my bench or notice how much time had passed since breakfast.
"You really do have a bad case of the hots for him, don't you, cheri?" It was Tommy, and when I swung around, surprised, I saw he was looking at my sketch pad.
"I didn't hear you come in," I said.
"But you're glad I'm here."
"Of course." I started to whistle our old joke tune, "You Are My Sunshine."
"No, I'm not. More like a wet blanket." He cut me off. "Have you seen your sunshine lately? He's out on the street, with half the neighborhood kids ogling him, including your special buddies."
"The Dubois twins?"
"And they have their shirts off, too, and everyone is covered with grease from your car except your car. It is as shiny as a virgin's asshole."
"How would you know?"
"Don't you remember? And I thought we'd always have Paris."
"I do remember. You were so gentle. Not like you at all. Come on. Take me to the Pied Piper."
He was covered with grease, and so were the hateful, luscious twins about whom I had so often fantasized. In bicycle shorts with their shirts off, they didn't look like the brutes I knew they were. They looked like Castor and Pollux. If I could only have one of them, I would die a happy fag, and if I could get them both to take me, one at each end, I would become immortal. But they were only 16 and revoltingly straight. Besides, they held me in total contempt.
"Mitya," I called from the steps, "what have you done to Rosinante? You only said something about filters?"
"Well," he was beaming, "we had to do exploring surgery, and as long as we were inside of her, we attended to the carburetor, administered an oil transfusion, substituted some belts and your front brake pads and cleaned out a valve. No bypass needed."
"We?"
"Luc and Jean-Pierre. Your neighbors. They have the makings of good surgeons."
The boys grinned at him and, for a change, did not hiss at me.
"And you've waxed her, too. Mitya, you're too much. Where did you get all the parts and stuff?"
"A supply store a few blocks away. The twins took me." The grins flashed again.
"Will you let me pay you back?"
"No. Besides, some of it was free. Luc is very quick, or maybe it was Jean-Pierre."
"That's called shoplifting. They could go to jail." And I could bail them out and have them put in my custody and ... oh, yes. Fantasy time.
"It was an emergency," Mitya laughed. "Rosinante was in extremis."
"Well, she looks fully recovered now. Thank you, Mitya. Thanks, boys. Please say hello to your mother for me and tell her that Mr. Njegos is staying with me for a while."
"Sure." Snickering, they elbowed each other. "Hey, Mitya, will you come over later? You can see if the 'blades fit."
"If I can, I will. I will make telephone."
"Great." They high-fived him. I turned green.
"Are you finished?" I asked. "Can I help?"
"Just a few more minutes to clean up," Mitya bent to pick up tools, and as the fabric of his pants stretched across his buttocks, I inhaled so sharply that Tommy pinched me.
"Stop it," he whispered harshly. "You're a spectacle."
"Okay," I said to Mitya. "We'll see you inside."
When he did come in, he reeked of gasoline he had used to cut the grease on his arms, hands and torso. He disappeared to take a shower, and when he came down, Tommy and I had a quick lunch of chicken salad and bread and cheese ready for all of us.
"Mitya, you understand, of course," I said through a mouthful of cheddar, "that you cannot get away with it."
"I did not try to get away. Your keys are on the table."
"No. I mean get away with charming every urchin on the street and fixing my car and not letting me pay you back."
"Urchins?" He seemed to be leafing through a mental dictionary. "Oh, the kids. Charm does not cost anything. Although with the twins it was not so easy. They do not like you very much. They even said you stole things."
"Bastards!" I exploded. "I won't be slandered by the likes of them. What exactly did they say?"
"They asked me how I could to live with a thief."
Tommy cackled. "Not 'thief,' my Montenegrin friend. I bet the word they used was 'fif.' Nastier, actually."
"It means?"
"Faggot," I said. "Queer. Fruit. Pansy. Tapette. They are all horrid, hurtful insults."
"In Montenegro, people mostly say pede, for pederast, or homo. Or they do not say anything and just beat people up for being that way."
"Not just in Montenegro," Tommy interjected. "Here, too. Everywhere."
"Because they are afraid of you for their children?"
"That's some of it," Tommy sighed. "There are gays who go for young boys, but there are also many men, more I'm sure, who molest little girls. No, we are a threat because we are different, because we would like a society that is built around love, not money and property and clan or race. If gays ran things, Yves would be a starving artist instead of a rich one, and you and I, Mitya, because of our great beauty and our instinctive decency would be well-paid and respected judges." He chuckled. "Not likely."
"But Yves is beautiful, too."
"Still, he's the class enemy, and artists are supposed to starve. It's part of the natural order."
"Tommy," I asked. "Is this your subtle way of saying I didn't give you enough lunch? If it is, there's a melon on the counter and cookies in the tin."
"Store-bought?"
"No, from the bakery. Fresh two days ago."
Tommy rose from his chair and wrapped his arms around my neck. "See," he said, "subtlety has its rewards. Who else would like some melon?"
Mitya and I both raised our hands, and Tommy released me and began fixing dessert. "I was serious, Mitya," I said, "about not letting you get away with paying for all that stuff for Rosie out of your own pocket."
"I already have. It really was not much money."
"But it was money you should save. For clothes, for instance."
"I have clothes. Is something not proper with them?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. Please don't misunderstand me, but those checked trousers of yours, for instance, and the gray shoes... well, they're not what people are wearing now in Montreal."
"Yves, I do not care about fashion. I cannot care. I am a starving student of the medical school."
"And you are my newest friend, and I would very much like to help you dress so that when people stare at you, it is because you are so big and handsome, not because you look like a refugee."
"But I am a refugee, too. And you have not seen all my clothes. Some, I think, are satisfactory."
Tommy put our melon slices in front of us and the cookie jar in the middle of the table. Its top is a shark's head, jaws gaping. When you lift it, loud, ominous music spills out. Mitya did, drew back in shock and then laughed. "This is kitsch," he said. "I love it."
"Then maybe you're more gay than you think," I provoked him. "Will you let me look at your wardrobe?"
"Elaine's room does not have one. Just chests. And the closet."
"I'm sorry. Here wardrobe means clothes, not the place where you hang them."
"Yves, if it matters to you, then it is no problem. Only, please, my two silk shirts from Jermyn Street, you may look but not touch."
It turned out he was not joking. He had gorgeous silk shirts and three pairs of silk boxers that were fancier than anything I owned. "From an English lady," he grinned. "A summer romance on Corfu." Except for those and some first-rate sweaters from Vienna, most of his clothes and his extra pair of shoes were museum exhibits, thrift shop donations. That gave me an idea.
"Mitya," I said, "I don't want to insult you, but I do want to help you get off to the right start. You need things -- shirts, pants and shoes, even a heavy winter coat -- that don't mark you as a nobody from nowhere. I would like to lend you some money now and go shopping with you. Our big department store, Eaton's, is going out of business and having liquidation sales. We'll try there first and then, if we have to, the second-hand stores. They're cheap. Lots of students go to them to sell and to buy."
"It will be a loan, though? I will pay you back. We agree?"
"We agree."
Tommy declined to join the expedition. "I am going to practice obscure openings for our next chess game," he said. "And nap. I will guard the fort."
Shopping with my outsize dream man turned out to be frustrating - few things fit him - and fun - because when they did, they fit him well and accented his striking good looks. Some tan corduroy trousers, for instance, clung to his legs as though the attraction were magnetic. A long, belted, boxy second-hand leather jacket made him a work of art. Only once, at a Salvation Army outlet, did I unknowingly cross into forbidden territory. Holding up a perfectly faded pair of jeans, I found a hole under a back pocket and stuck a wiggling finger through it. "Mitya," I called across the store, "how about these? They come with cross ventilation for warm weather."
He looked over at me and turned ashen. He was horror-struck and couldn't even bring himself to answer. He just shook his head forcefully and swiveled away. I have no tact, and later, on our way home with our various finds, I asked him why the blue jeans had upset him so.
"A friend of me was wearing some just like that," he said slowly, "the last time I saw him. I think he was wearing them when he was killed. You could not know." He put his head in his hands. I didn't dare speak again until we were home.