“I think,” he said quietly, “that you are reveling in dramatic self-pity.”
“Yes,” Alec agreed.
She quieted after that, grew suddenly very calm. Alec continued to be distant. Barbara, more and more, was speaking to Raul, who was moved by what she said.
Because of the mescaline, she explained, her fingers were hurting her. They were cramped. She complained of them more than once. She said she wanted something to hold onto. Raul had been thinking about her story. It would make a good short story, he thought. This whole evening would — it’s been strange. Rather absently and very stoned, he made his left hand into a fist, offering it to her. She put her right hand out, Raul placing his fist in it.
He was thinking intensely, lost in a maze of plots and counterplots. The warm flesh yielded to him. It seemed to be merging with his own. Suddenly, except for his left arm, his body went numb. An abstract was flowing throughout that arm, concentrating in his hand, and flowing to hers. His fist moved, slowly, back and forth. She was responding to it. The room was totally silent. “Flesh into flesh,” Raul murmured. He realized its sexuality. He withdrew his hand.
“No,” Raul said quietly to no one.
Barbara looked up at him with wondering eyes. “What was that?” she asked.
Alec leaned forward. “Yes. What was that?”
“I believe,” Raul said coldly, “that it was symbolic of the sexual act.”
Barbara sat forward attentively. “Yes, but what did it mean?”
Raul stared into Alec’s eyes as he spoke. “Nothing. It merely involved translating an emotion into a symbolic act. Not an emotion toward a specific person, just an abstract generalization of one. One might say,” he smiled thinly, “that it was concentrated sexual frustration.”
“But, Raul,” Alec said, “that means, within, you do want to go to bed with someone.”
Raul laughed frankly. “Of course I do! Of course.” He chuckled to himself. “But that’s not the point. It was just an experiment. I was testing whether my theories on grass are correct or not.”
Alec and Raul stared at each other. The world centered, for them, between their eyes, the earth fast disappearing beneath them.
Barbara broke this by getting up and leaving. She seemed, her head bowed, a light, running step, to be weeping.
They deflated, shocked. “What’d we do?” Alec asked, with a child’s look.
“I believe,” Raul said quietly, “that my cold speech, refuting something strange and beautiful, was painful to hear.”
They talked the rest of the night, sleeping toward dawn. Carefully Raul had babied Alec through it: assuring him that it was nothing, saving his ego. It’s settled, Raul thought, finally sleeping. Thank God it’s over. We’ll never see her again.
Danger had been averted only slightly — how could you have slipped like that? Raul chided himself. How silly of you.
He was sleeping on the floor, as he usually did. Fully clothed, he looked uncomfortable. Alec kicked him. Raul woke and looked up. Barbara and Alec were sitting on the bed.
Surprised, he reached for a cigarette, mumbled good morning, and asked, “What are you doing here?”
She smiled pleasantly. “I was staying nearby, so I came back.” She bowed her head. “I was upset last night.”
Raul stood up. Alec moved toward the door, asking, in an unfamiliar voice, “Raul, Barbara, would you like some coffee?”
“I would,” Raul said.
“No, thank you,” Barbara said.
Like a weird dream, Raul invited her to his house, lying to Alec about his motives. But they were unclear — vaguely, this was a chance to lose his virginity. Why? Later, it seemed as if, madly, he had set this up. Against every logical consequence, something or someone in him acted to his and Alec’s worst interest
He wasn’t himself. Smiling boyishly, he led the characters about. Alec off, suspiciously, to work on the stage crew, Barbara going to his house. He watched himself: the silly grin, the boyish glee as he led events on.
Why? Again, against every personal rule, he didn’t question her motives. She was functioning as a symbol — the personification of an abstract.
Stupidly, foolishly, he placed some measure of trust in her. Why? Why had he given up his power? How far he fell, how easily he became the frightened virgin.
He pleaded with her, miserably, using all his tricks of language, to fuck, never asking outright. Cringing fool, whining worm. She looked complacently at him while he said all this. A pouting, fat face, he thought, a benign moronic expression. He hated her for allowing his humiliation.
They necked — as a consolation, he thought. His body, soul, whined like a crushed, dying insect. Alec called. Where was he? He said he’d be at the theater. Was Barbara there? Yes.
He was his friend, Alec said, hanging up. How could he be so treacherous?
After Barbara left, Raul looked fearfully at his capricious acts. He’d lose Alec for an uncomfortable bitch without even the promise of fucking.
He felt lost in a maze of possibilities. How to exploit them? How to act? No, he wouldn’t be willing to give up the chance of sex, despite the animalistic overtones. Yet beyond that, over something so foolish, he would not abandon the glory of art with Alec. The two, it seemed to him, had to be resolved. Alec would surely not be so obstinate: there were hundreds he could fuck.
10.
For four days Alec successfully and impossibly avoided meeting Raul. Raul repeatedly phoned his house, searched for him about the theater, watched with nervous and anguished eyes out of Mike & Gino’s, but he was nowhere to be found.
Alec was staying with Richard, therefore he couldn’t be caught at home. He left the theater early, before Raul was let out of class, and ran past Mike & Gino’s, taking care never to go in. His ego was outraged. He’s on my hunting ground, he thought, and cannot win.
Raul was bewildered and lost. Deserted, he felt wounded and looked about the world with pitiful eyes. It seemed to scorn him as frivolous, as if he had capriciously toyed with a sacred idol.
His feelings toward Barbara grew in anxiety. He hadn’t digested her character: she could be playing any number of games. To allow an invasion of his solitude that would ridicule him made him writhe with the strangest, twisted hate. He had never trusted any human: if they were not false to themselves, they were false to another. He didn’t love her, like her, or even gently admire her: she was repulsive to him.
But the promise of a body, of a release from his icy, frail virginity, was too inviting. He paused, filled with self- disgust, writing his notes. All he could record, his pen limply poised, were two sentences: lose the actor to the minor cunt; intellectualism reels, drunk, to carnal games.
He mentally saw himself as jester, pitiably trying to amuse this fat, pouting queen’s face. Alone, he was riddled with disgust, and he surrounded himself with media, to drown with mindlessness his castigating thoughts.
She couldn’t go to bed with him, she said, while she was having her period. In any case, she had no pills. It would be silly for him to use a prophylactic: it wasn’t a real fuck.
Transparent lies, but his mind blocked them out. His knowledge of human nature turned against him: he tempted what others mildly disliked in him, heightening their distaste. Routine caution with lies was dropped as he made himself more vulnerable.
He returned home on the fourth day, frightened that he really might not see Alec again. The dreary, exhausting day of school, Barbara, Alec, and his self-hate overcame him. He fell on his bed, weeping; clawing in witless, impotent fury at his pillow.