Peach skin. Blond haze. Freckles. The body stretched out before him, nearly level with his eyes, a lion-colored landscape, a Sahara of flesh. The slope of abdomen rose in the distance to the ridge of rib cage. Down below was a belly button like a water hole and, closer still, just under Henry’s nose, a pale briar of pubic hair.
It’s remarkable how sexless sex can be after the first half hour. Henry had to remind himself that the rubbery stiffness filling his mouth was Toby Vogler’s penis. He pictured Toby himself on the other side of his rib cage, head on a pillow, hand behind his head, frowning at the ceiling. The boy was not a terribly demonstrative bedmate, offering little more than an occasional murmur from the back of his throat, like a dog chasing rabbits in its sleep.
Toby or not Toby. That is the question.
Here he was, the Hamlet of his generation, down on all fours between a muscular pair of American legs, trying to make it talk.
Toby lifted his hips, took a sharp breath, and seemed to swell against Henry’s tongue. But no. He was only readjusting his buttocks, as if one cheek were going to sleep.
“Put your hand here. No. Here,” Toby commanded.
Henry had lost his own erection days ago. All he wanted now was to hear Toby groan and see him spurt. Orgasm had become a point of honor.
He was not entirely surprised. He had been caught off guard when they first arrived at the apartment and Toby started dropping hints, as light as crowbars, that he expected Henry to make a pass. It was a bit unnerving, like seeing a chess piece move itself, yet promising. But then they kissed and Henry could not find Toby’s tongue. He had to chase around his mouth before he caught it. When he opened his eyes, wondering what was wrong, he found Toby’s eyes already wide open in front of him, like the eyes of a terrified horse. Toby quickly shut them, suggesting a child feigning sleep, and Henry wondered, Am I like kissing Hitler?
But Toby did not flee. He let Henry take him to bed. He let Henry undress him. But he had looked sexier in clothes.
His trousers, for example, were not as loose as the ones he wore the night they met; the fold in the middle of his bum was smaller, though it too flicked back and forth when he walked, but more quickly, like the tail of a puppy dog. Inside the trousers were underpants, white with some kind of mathematical formula on the waistband—as if his playwright used him as a notepad. Henry had been overjoyed to kneel down, rub his face in white, then slide the underpants down and release a cock as excited as his own. It had been downhill ever since.
If I were his age, thought Henry, and my prick were in Olivier’s mouth, or even Gielgud’s, the history alone would be enough to make me pop. What was the name of the boy who’d sat naked in his lap and asked to be jerked off while they watched a video of Henry’s Hamlet? Now that was kinky, that was fun.
The phone rang.
“Want me to get it?” said Toby. He was closer to the nightstand. “Hello? Oh. It’s our food. Shall I tell them to send it up?”
Henry had forgotten about dinner. It seemed like hours ago that he had ordered food. He nodded. His mouth was empty now, but numb. His tongue forgot how to shape words.
“Sure. Send him up,” said Toby, who was hardly winded.
Henry sat up, curling and rolling his lips back to life. He looked down at his bedmate. The boy stopped being a problem in hydraulics and became a person again, albeit a person with an erection—it lay bright red on his stomach like the club from a Punch and Judy show. Toby gazed up at Henry, trying out different expressions: an amused smile, a sad frown, an apologetic smirk.
The door buzzed. “Right back,” Henry said hoarsely and threw a towel around his waist.
He opened the door on a Chinese gentleman in a yellow slicker, a middle-aged fellow who instantly averted his eyes.
“Oh, sorry,” said Henry. “I’d given up on you. I was just about to step in the shower.”
The fellow nodded. “Sure, sure. No problem. Twenty-five ten.”
Henry was counting out the money when he noticed the man peeking from under his eyebrows into the apartment. Henry sniffed the air, wondering if the man could smell Toby on him.
“Thank you,” said the man when he took the money. “Enjoy. Enjoy all things. Much good. Our age. Good night.”
Henry carried the shopping bags of food back to the kitchen. Our age, indeed, he thought.
Toby appeared in the doorway. He was still naked.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Don’t hate me.”
“Nothing to hate. It happens.” Henry was confused by how sad he felt to see him here, the boy from the Gaiety, standing nude in his kitchen. Be careful what you wish for.
“I guess I’m just feeling so awed to be with an actor that I admire so much.”
“Oh please. I’m not your type. Simple as that. You like me enough to get hard, but not enough to get off.” He hesitated. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am old enough to be your father.”
“I like you. Really. But I guess I’m still in love with Caleb.”
“Yes. There is that.” Henry was actually glad to remember this other reason.
“Did you want me to go?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We haven’t had dinner yet.”
“I’d like that.” He looked relieved. “Should I get dressed?”
“Or stay as you are. Whatever makes you comfortable.” Henry smiled, daring Toby to remain naked, even though he felt judged by the boy’s body. “I think I’ll be a nudist myself tonight,” he declared, undid his towel, and tossed it. He slapped his solid, youthful stomach.
Toby frowned and looked away.
“But you get dressed,” said Henry. “It’ll be like the night we met—with the roles reversed.”
That cinched it for Toby. “No, I’ll stay like this,” he said. “I should probably wash my hands.”
“Good thinking.”
Henry knew he should be feeling angry and defeated right now, but he felt fine. Somewhat sad, but not terribly so. He had reached the point in life where even bad sex was good sex.
A few minutes later they were sitting at the kitchen table. Henry briefly considered eating in the dining room, but it would’ve been too peculiar seeing their genitals through the glass tabletop.
He served up the food. “A nice paradox, don’t you think? There’s something absurd about a naked actor. Two naked actors is even more preposterous.”
“Could you pass the salt?”
They began to eat. The crunch of broccoli in the silent kitchen suggested two dinosaurs devouring a forest.
“‘We’re actors. We’re the opposite of people,’” Henry suddenly announced. “Who said that? It’s not original.”
“I’m not a real actor,” said Toby. “Not yet anyway.”
“But you are,” Henry insisted. “The child is father to the man. Wishes are horses. All that stuff. But actors aren’t so different from other people. Not at all. Whoever said that was talking nonsense. Once upon a time, maybe, when everyone else was God-fearing and selfless. We were freaks of vanity, monsters of egotism. Unlike the rest of humanity. Now, of course, everyone’s a narcissist. Every nobody and somebody needs to strike a pose in the public mirror. Amateurs.”
Henry was talking only to hear himself talk, happily filling the silence. But during their first meeting, Toby had done most of the talking. The boy must be feeling very low if he could say so little.
“You are a real actor,” he assured Toby. “I recognize the need in you. The hunger. And your interest in craft. It’s craft that separates a professional narcissist from an amateur.”
Toby took a deep breath. “I saw Caleb today. My ex?”
“Oh?” Henry speared a dumpling and plopped it in soy.
“I left some stuff at his place and had to pick it up.”
Henry shoved the dumpling in his mouth. “And he was wonderful,” he muttered around the dumpling. “And now you’re in love again?”
“No. He was awful. So cool and casual. Like I was nobody. But I said some things I shouldn’t have said.”
“Such as?”
“He had a boyfriend who died of AIDS. Six years ago. He’s still in love with him. You can’t compete with a dead person. They’re too perfect.”
“Quite true.” Henry had forgotten about Doyle’s dead lover, but he doubted that the widower was still in love, not at his age.
“I said he loved him dead only because he didn’t love him enough when he was alive and sick.”
“Oooo. That is bad.”
“Real shitty. He told me to get out. He must hate me now.”
“You poor guy.”
And Henry did feel sympathy, but for Doyle, not Toby. He was suddenly impatient and exasperated with the boy, and hurt.
“And that’s why you were so eager to go to bed with me tonight? To get even with him.”
Toby stared. “No. I just—I saw you in a show and you were great, and I thought it’d be fun, and make me feel better if—I like you, Henry. I wanted to make you feel good.”
“Of course you did,” he said sharply. The boy hadn’t done a damn thing for him. “Could you have orgasms with your playwright?”
Toby winced. “That’s awfully personal.”
Henry shrugged. “Under these circumstances? I would think we could say absolutely anything to each other.”
Toby shifted around on his chair, acting naked.
“Did you fuck?” said Henry.
Toby looked down, his mouth pinched tight at the corners.
Henry leaned closer and softened his voice. “Or did you prefer frottage? Blow jobs or mutual wanks? What do you like?” If they couldn’t fuck in the flesh, they could at least fuck in words.
“Crap!” Toby cried. “Crap, crap, crap!”
Henry leaned back in alarm.
“I can’t do anything right! I can’t be a good actor. I can’t keep a boyfriend.” Tears garbled his speech. “I’m not even good sex!”
He was crying. There were actual tears on his cheeks. Henry scolded himself for being so cruel. He had never guessed his stripper could be so softhearted.
“Why am I a loser? Why does the world hate me?”
“There, there,” said Henry. He scooted his chair next to Toby’s and lay an arm over his shoulder. “There, there.”
“Why am I such bad sex?”
“Nobody said you were bad sex. Every man has problems down there. You’re not in the mood tonight. You’re in love with someone else. Besides, an orgasm is only external behavior.”
The boy continued to sob and shudder. “Damn him,” he snarled. “Damn him, damn him, damn him.”
Henry held Toby against his chest. “This is why I never fall in love. You think about Him all the time. Not a real Him, an imaginary Him. The most hurtful Him. A Him who makes you feel like an absolute shit.”
Toby twisted his face around. His eyes were red, his upper lip slick with mucus.
“You never fall in love?”
“Almost never.” He passed Toby a paper napkin. “I fell in love constantly as a boy. But then I understood that it was useless to be unhappy. Life is short. I refuse to take myself—or anyone else—so seriously that they will cause me pain. Oh, I allow some suffering, for the sake of my work. But nothing too awful and human. It worked for Noël Coward. It worked for Oscar Wilde—well, up to a point. It’s worked pretty well so far for Henry Bailey Lewse. Knock on wood.” Which he did.
“You must get real lonely.”
Henry was startled that Toby took his speech literally. Did he not hear the irony and wishful thinking folded into his philosophy?
“Not at all. I have my friends and mates and colleagues.” He laughed, kissed Toby on the temple, and released him. “I’m not nearly as lonely as you, my boy. I’m more self-sufficient. Besides, I get to break my heart playing at love for audiences. An actor does not need to feel a lot, you know, he needs only to feel accurately.”
“Maybe that’s why I’m not a better actor. I feel too much.”
“It’s possible.” Henry studied Toby, wondering how much of his drama was real, how much was put on, and if the boy could distinguish one from the other yet.
Toby resumed eating, so Henry resumed too. He was surprised the food was still hot. Their little scene had not lasted so long that anything got cold.
“I’d like to spend the night,” said Toby.
“Oh?”
“I don’t want to sleep alone tonight. But I won’t have sex with you. I’d like to, but I can’t. I hope you understand.”
“I understand,” said Henry. “Well, I don’t. Not really. But I’ll accept your terms. Tonight.”
He glanced at Toby and looked him up and down. The boy’s nudity had grown as natural and meaningless as the nudity of a Labrador retriever. But he was pretty. Henry enjoyed looking at him.
“Toby?” he said. “Do you use chemicals?”
“You mean drugs?”
“Nothing unnatural. I was thinking of grass.”
“No way. Not me. I’ve never done anything like that. I don’t see the point. That’s not why I am the way I am tonight.”
“I’m not accusing you. I was just—Oh never mind.”
He should’ve guessed that Toby was so square he wouldn’t understand that Henry partook, much less want to join him. It was just as well. There was no telling what kind of demons would slip into Henry’s head under the warm muzzy fog of a high while he shared his bed with this big blond Labrador of an American boy.