Antigua, Guatemala is a town entrapped, haunted by its own past, in the shadow of volcanoes, left desolate by earthquake, catastrophe, surviving. I was staying at the best of the town’s cheap hotels. The man in the next room was exceptionally beautiful. From the moment I first saw Ben, I longed to ask him two questions. First: how did it feel to be so handsome, to live behind a face that drew all eyes? And: what would it take for him to condescend to having sex with a man like me?
Even if these were questions that could have been spoken easily to a stranger, something about Ben’s aquiline features, a certain impassiveness, discouraged asking the questions of, in particular, him.
For two days, I watched him greedily as he sat in the hotel garden, writing postcards and drinking bottled water. When he went back to his room, I would retreat to the bathroom of my own. Our baths shared a common vent which readily transmitted sound. I’d sit on the toilet in the dark as the music of his pissing filled my ears. I stroked myself into a frenzy, imagining the sight of hot liquid coursing from the inner recesses of his body, jetting from the tip of a perfect cock. Better still, I could hear him shower, hear the subtle changes as water flowed over his muscled torso, between impressive thighs, down the wiry, tanned legs his shorts had revealed. I imagined the water swirling around his feet, myself face down on the floor of his shower, lapping up the liquid that had cleansed his flawless body. I was lost in envy and desire.
The second night, Ben spoke to me, asked about a new restaurant in town, the only place in all Guatemala to get good Thai food. I cautiously suggested we go there for dinner. He accepted.
Conversation, over spicy yum-na and local beer, was polite, safe. I could feel myself straining to maintain the right balance of formality and friendliness. Watching that face, hearing him speak to me, was a privilege and a gift. The slightest sign of the urgency of my desire might scare him off. All the while, I wanted to yell: You are one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen. I wanted to beg him to use me as he saw fit.
On the way back to the hotel, through cobblestoned streets shadowed by the ruins of antique cathedrals, he stopped to buy some beer and invited me to his room for a drink. I followed him up the stairs, watching his muscles shifting beneath the thin shield of his clothes.
His open suitcase was on the room’s only chair. We both sat on the unmade bed. I could look past him, into the bathroom where he’d been naked. I caught my breath.
For several long minutes we sat wordlessly, drinking the slightly sour beer. He complained about the lingering heat of the day. Rising from the bed, he kicked off his sandals and, standing just feet away, unbuckled his belt and let his khaki shorts fall to his feet. Opening another beer, he sat crosslegged on the bed. His white boxer shorts gaped open at the fly. I had no choice; I stared at the thatch of black pubic hair, at a patch of smooth white flesh. He shifted slightly. The base of his cock came into view.
Ben reached over, put his hand under my chin, firmly raising my head until my gaze met his. His beautiful face gave nothing away. I stared into his eyes. He took my hand in his, pulled it over to him, to his crotch, to the gap in his boxers. To where he was warm and hard.
As he unbuttoned my shirt, I felt vaguely ashamed of my body. I touched his cheek, ran my fingers over his perfect profile, his nose, his mouth. Leaning over, he opened my lips with his tongue. He pulled off my shorts, releasing my swollen dick. I was naked, a poor gift for his perfection.
He took off his boxers. His dick was much bigger than mine and oddly shaped, massively thick at the base, tapering to a smallish head where precome glistened in his piss-slit.
He reached over to his suitcase, pulling out a rubber and a small tube of lubricant. He unrolled the latex over his stiff cock and covered it in lube. He put both his hands on my shoulders and shoved me back on the bed. I wrapped my legs around him and he lowered himself into me. I gasped as he slid in, opening me with the thickening shaft of his cock.
As he fucked me, his face remained expressionless. And he was still wearing his T-shirt. Even as he thrust into me, he remained somehow armoured, half-hidden from view. But I was wide open. I needed to bridge that gap.
I reached to his waist, running my palms up under his T-shirt, over his flat, hairless belly, the flawless torso I’d imagined as I’d masturbated. His nipples were small and hard. And his chest . . . What was that? The flesh of his chest was textured, a network of ridges running across what should have been perfect skin. My fingertips found their way along a welter of intersecting scars.
In that moment, Ben’s face had altered radically. Gone was the frozen mask. In its place was grief and something like anger. He pounded harder and harder until it hurt, until I had to grit my teeth. Just when I thought I could take no more, when I was about to beg him to stop, he came with a shudder and a shout.
He pulled out and went to the bathroom to peel off the rubber and wash up. Left alone on the bed, I pulled at my dripping cock until I shot hot flows of come over my sweaty chest.
Ben had returned, was standing over the bed, his face had softened. He took off his T-shirt. His beautiful chest was scarred, lighter lines against a deep tan. Someone had carved into his flesh, inscribed three Mayan glyphs, geometric symbols the ancient Indians had used as their writing. I must have gasped. Ben smiled, wrapping his arms around me.
“I have,” Ben said, “a story to tell you . . .
“Javier and I had been together six years. I thought he looked like a Mayan prince. Smooth brown skin, that incredible profile. His family came from the highlands of Guatemala, almost pure-blooded Indian, but Javier had never been further south than Tijuana. We loved each other a lot.
“Javier was HIV-positive when we met. I remained uninfected. From the first, we’d made plans to visit Central America, see the village his parents came from, tour the ruins at Tikal. But we were both always busy with school, and then work, and when we did find time for vacations, we’d end up on Maui or Key West.
“Then one summer, symptoms started to appear. Nothing much at first – Javier got tired more easily, got rashes on his beautiful skin. But his bloodwork wasn’t promising. We realized that if we were going to visit Guatemala together, time was growing short.
“We landed in Guatemala City, came here to Antigua, went on to Lake Atitlan. Visited Sololá, the Indian village his family was from. Got my wallet lifted on market day.
“By then, Javier wasn’t feeling all that well, occasional fevers, was losing a little weight. Still, we were able to finish our trip. We’d saved the best for last. Took a plane from Guat City to Flores, made our way to Tikal.
“Have you been to Tikal yet? You’ll love it. It’s the most incredible Mayan ruin of them all, a huge lost city in the middle of deep, lush jungle. In the centre of it all is the Great Plaza, a huge open space surrounded by ruined temples. Two huge pyramids, Temple I and Temple II, stand at the plaza’s east and west ends. With special permission, you can stay in the Plaza after dark, until eight o’clock. Well, Javier and I had something else in mind, so as the sun went down and the full moon rose over Temple I, we climbed the hill to the Central Acropolis and hid in the shadows. The stones of Tikal turned a misty white in the moonlight.
“Finally, at eight, the last loudmouth tourists headed back to their hotels and the guards’ flashlight beams vanished in the distance.
“We made our way down across the Great Plaza, all alone beneath the hulking ghost-white pyramids, their staircases leading to the heavens. You know, I used to have an idealized picture of the Maya; they were this peace-loving civilization destroyed by bloodthirsty Spaniards. But it turns out that on festival days the Mayan high priests would stand atop the pyramids and sacrifice enemy warriors to the gods, cutting out their hearts with obsidian blades and letting their still-warm, bloody corpses tumble down the stairs.
“On the north side of the Plaza there’s a long row of sacrificial altars. At one of them, a large carved column shows Yax Kin, one of the greatest rulers of Tikal, standing on the body of a bound prisoner. At its base, a round altar stone is carved with the image of another prisoner lying on his back, arms and legs tied with ropes, awaiting sacrifice.
“There, in front of Yax Kin’s altar, we stripped off our clothes. Javier put on a loincloth he’d made. I lowered myself onto the altar stone. I can still remember the coolness of the carved stone pressing against my naked back. Javier took some ropes from his backpack and tied me down. Rope around my ankles, my wrists, rope tight against my thighs. Lying there, head thrown all the way back, I could see the upside-down shape of Temple II. Everything was inverted. The great sweep of the staircase, which had been aimed at the heavens, now seemed to lead downwards toward some darkness that had become light. The night was anything but silent; the scream of the jungle filled my ears. As Javier tightened the ropes, my dick grew hard. He put his wet, hot mouth on it, took me down his throat. I arched my back, pressed myself against the comforting restrictions of the ropes.
“He let my throbbing dick slide from his mouth. I could hear him rummaging through the backpack. I couldn’t see him, but I knew what was coming.
“Javier put his face to mine, whispered that he loved me, and cut into my flesh. I lay there, feeling the sting of the sharp blade, as my lover traced out three glyphs: the Mayan symbols for Tikal, for the god Smoking Mirror, ruler of fate, and for the phrase Na-wa-ah, which means the gaining of merit through the sacrificial shedding of blood. As the moments passed, the pain became something other than itself, as though time had ceased to exist, as though there were no distance at all between the days of the Maya and that full-moon night amidst the ruins. I was in my body and yet not in my body; I don’t know if that makes any sense to you. I’m not sure I understand it even now.
“When he finished carving the glyphs, Javier took my dick in his mouth again, quickly bringing me to the brink of orgasm. Then, just as the ancient Mayans had done in their bloodletting ceremonies, my lover took a sharp needle and pierced the underside of my swollen dick. The love I felt for him at that endless moment was greater than anything I’ve felt before or since.
“Finally, as we’d agreed beforehand, Javier removed his loincloth and straddled my body, stroking his uncut dick until he came all over my bleeding chest. He lay upon me, smearing together my still-warm blood and his stinging hot come, and sobbed as he held me in his arms. Dawn lit the sky above the temples of Tikal.
“In a way, it all seems like a dream I had a long, long time ago. Javier’s gone now, but he left me with these warrior marks in commemoration of that night. Here, just over my heart, I carry the glyph for Na, which means ‘to feel, to know, to remember.’ And I do.”
His story finished, Ben fell silent. He stared at the whitewashed wall of the hotel room, toward some far-off invisible volcano. I stroked his beautiful face, running my hands down his throat to the marks on his chest. In each other’s arms we drifted off to sleep, my hands still resting over his heart.
We became sometimes-lovers after that night in Antigua. Back in the States, we tried living with each other for a while. But Ben wasn’t the easiest man to know. There was often something remote and frozen about him, a place where my caring couldn’t reach.
And Ben was HIV-positive. I assumed it had happened that night at Tikal, that night with Javier. But he always refused to talk about it. Speculation was futile, he said. In just those words. “Speculation is futile.”
As the months went on, Ben’s beautiful body became gaunt. Lesions appeared on his once-perfect skin. Eventually, the doctors put a catheter in his chest, right through the symbol commemorating blood sacrifice. And somehow, as he seemed to become translucent, as I could see the skull beneath the skin, I desired him all the more.
Strange how a random encounter in a foreign town can change your whole life. How it changed mine. How different things might have been. But speculation is useless. We go on, I guess because we have no choice.
And that, since you asked, is the story of these scars of mine. Ben is gone now, as Javier before him, but he passed his markings on to me, left me with these warrior marks. These scars over my heart. The central glyph reads Na-wa-ah. To feel, to know, to remember.
Here, run your fingers over them, and then we’ll go to bed.