A
solitary heron stood like a black paper cutout against the softly lapping
water. As Glen approached, the bird flew
ahead of him, landing a few metres further by the water’s edge. Glen slowed and softened his pace, again
approaching the heron before it flew off again a shorter distance. He got nearer the bird than before, when it
flew off again, yet a shorter distance.
Glen stopped and looked out on the water. What few stars had not been
blotted out by light pollution shone weakly over the lights of the distant
freighters. On his left and his right
shone the lights of West Point Grey and the North Shore. He imagined that almost everyone living in
those distant lit homes had their television on. They might have company over, be having
dinner parties, making love, sitting alone with a book or their dog or cat, or
playing with themselves. They likely
were all, or were almost all, watching TV.
Glen didn’t watch television, which he had also given up after the
fire. The heron flew back in the other
direction, landing a safe distance beyond where Glen had begun walking
Already there were several solitary men stalking the dark
beach. This had never been part of
Glen’s scene. He had to remind himself
that most of them were there to have five minutes of anonymous sex. Why was he here? What had lured him? He wondered when someone might come along to
shock him out of his seven-year celibacy.
Was this what he wanted—what he really wanted? Glen sometimes missed sex: Tim, the intimacy,
the warmth, the pleasure, the fire, the thrill, the sense of danger, of being
safely encircled by strong naked arms.
Ever since stepping into this zone, this part of the beach Glen had been
feeling sex. Of course. He was picking up signals, energy, the hunger
being directed at him. He should leave,
get out. Now. While there was still time.
Against the wall of the bathhouse
stood two young men. They were silent,
they glanced at each other furtively.
“At least be nice and say hi to each other”, Glen blurted.
From a different direction, someone
said, “It has fuck-all to do with being nice.
This is lust, honey.”
It was Pierre.
Pierre had decided not to be Tanya’s
escort. “I’m going to the Fruit Loop,
instead”, he said. Stephen replied,
“Suit yourself, dear. You always do
anyway.” This particularly stung, since
Pierre had always given well and beyond his reasonable share in their
relationship. Stephen had always
dictated the terms for them, as to when they should be lovers, when they should
be just friends, when they ought to be more like brothers. It was Pierre who’d befriended him, rescued
him, taught him a trade—all right, the sex trade, but still an honest
profession. He’d at least kept him away
from the worst kind of drugs. Pierre had
found them an apartment, made sure that rent and bills were always paid on
time, bought and paid for the groceries, cooked, cleaned and rendered Stephen a
thousand and one ministrations in order to cover his sorry little ass for
him. He carefully coached him in the art
of hooking, taught him the interpersonal skills, how to identify a bad date,
how to handle and manipulate difficult men, how to make sure that he always got
his money, not to mention how to fake the heights of passion while maintaining
a steady erection when servicing some of the ugliest trolls that had ever
crawled on the surface of the earth.
Stephen was selfish, supremely narcissistic. A taker.
Pierre loved Stephen, who dictated the terms of their relationship, who
was the relationship. Now, for Pierre to
suddenly get up and leave Stephen like that, to do something that he wanted to
do instead—this was most unusual. And
Stephen didn’t mind? Right now he was
Tanya. And Tanya—but it was always
Stephen, and only Stephen. Which made
Pierre his appendage? His
auxiliary. One of Jupiter’s moons. Stephen had only to snap his fingers and hey!
Presto! Pierre had come to resent this power that he had over people when he
wasn’t himself enjoying being absorbed into it.
Stephen had absorbed Pierre? And
now he was but a cellular membrane holding the nucleus, Stephen? What still remained of Pierre? For a couple of weeks, Tyler had been there
filling the void while Stephen had gone chasing after Marlene’s brother who
stood now in front of him, slack-jawed and awkward. Still he was glad to have
Stephen back. He always welcomed
familiarity. Pierre could never bear
being left alone for too long.
Tired from three days of weeping and
making love, Maria slept now in her lover’s arms. She was tired like she’d never been tired in
her entire life. Not even childbirth had
been so exhausting to her. Like a
blessed drug, sleep had finally come to Maria, the recent widow of Richard
Bertholdt. Jose, the man they had
shared, now clung to her for comfort.
They had no consolation to offer each other. Only a shared loss, an emptiness that neither
of them could fathom. On this typically
warm night in Managua, they lay naked together on top of their bed, covered
only by each other’s arms and Maria’s long hair, while outside the open bedroom
window the night creatures sang their dissonant anthem. They were the children of diplomats. They had grown up together between England
and Nicaragua. They had been always
inseparable. In London, in her father’s
house, they took each other’s virginity.
They were both thirteen. In
Managua, Jose had brought Richard to her, who loved them both. It had always been assumed that Jose and
Maria would eventually marry each other, so perfect were they together. As far as they were concerned, they had
always been married, that no nuptial agreement could make this fact any more
real between them. Between them,
marriage had never entered their minds.
They made love, they were like cousins, like a sister and brother—but to
become husband and wife, to have children together, such was not the nature of
their union. No one had known for
certain about their arrangements though many had already guessed that Maria
Beltran had two husbands. Maria and Jose
hated the Sandinistas, though they loved Richard, who hated no one. She had been shocked to learn that the two
men in her life fancied each other. She
could accept them both loving other women, for men often did. But each other? In the presence of Richard, Jose told her
that she would have to get used to it.
“No van a compartirme en la misma cama”, she replied. You are not going to both have me in the same
bed. In the next room slept her two year
old daughter, who had inherited Richard’s blonde hair and blue eyes.
Maria liked Canadians, having met
others besides Richard. She found them nice, polite and blander than cornmeal
tortillas. Reassuringly bland. She was sick of the violence. The Contras she was growing to hate as much
as the Sandinistas. They were killers,
all of them. With Richard dead, Jose was
threatening to join the Contras. He
blamed the Sandinistas for his death.
Who else would have planted those land mines? Stupid violence. Stupid male violence. Machismo was the undoing of her people. She might move to Costa Rica, where the men
were still swine, though there was no military to threaten their lives. But she was going to Canada. Probably in a few months, to live with
Richard’s parents, who had already invited her, on receiving news of their
son’s death. They didn’t want their
granddaughter growing up in the carnage of Nicaragua. Maria liked Canadian men, who were like the
English, though better looking. But the
English were sexier. Like Jose and
Richard, whose blonde and blue eyed good looks could not be matched. But Jose, he had only to smile in a certain
way, to touch her in a way that Richard had never learned. Jose, infinitely desirable, but not marriageable. And the handsome doctor from Canada was
hardly a match for Jose under or on top of the covers, but so infinitely a
husband, so infinitely a father. Perhaps
it had been better between the two men?
Maria didn’t want to know. By
unspoken fiat they had all known to never discuss openly their private
arrangements as couples. And yet the
very idea of tasting Jose inside of Richard’s mouth, or Richard inside of
Jose’s mouth sometimes lifted her to such heights as she had never known
before. One day, Jose ventured to break
the taboo. He began to tell Maria about
his private life with her husband, to which she responded with a hard smack
across his mouth. Now he obeyed her slavishly. But this nonsense about his joining the
Contras. She didn’t want him to. She didn’t want him to get killed. She didn’t want to be widowed again. Now they needed each other. But the child. Jose was not built for fatherhood. He tolerated the child. He never played with her. Mariana, Maria must raise her alone, or find
her a proper father. She didn’t want to
think about remarrying. And if Jose
joined the Contras and got himself blown to bits….
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