POLA AND ME

Dear Lana,
Let me tell you a story. A story about me and Pola (whom you will see in a photo with me, once you get my present. I met her through Martha, my poor little rich girl friend, and one time lover of Hilda. Martha's cronies from Mexico City came down to see her, and I invited them all over to my house. Pola was among them. When they sat down in my apartment, Martha sat on the loveseat, while I sat by myself on the couch. Gabriel and Pola sat on their knees next to Martha. They both hated me because they saw me as competition. Pola I eventually won over, but Gabriel ended up being put in rehab by Martha's family ( he completely lost it, and even wrote LESBIAN on Hilda's front door).
Then one day, my friend Sylivie, a lesbian from Vancouver, invited me to go with her to San Miguel to visit some of her lesbian friends and meet up with Pola. She was going in the hopes that she and Pola would get it on. However, Pola and I ended up spending all our time together, without them. She had some ecstasy mailed to her, ingeniously hidden in an university textbook. So we went to the thermal baths in San Miguel, and took it there. I was sort of rolling around on the grass, while Sylvie and Pola lounged in a shallow pool. Around closing time, Sylvie and Pola realized that the water had disappeared from their pool. They were just lying there on the concrete for a while.
Then one night we all went out to this disco called El Grito (the Shout)—it had something to do with Independence day. Anyhoo, Sylvie and I decided to start taking off our clothes. We were promptly escorted out, but not before some architect guy bought me a dozen roses. Adriana, our host (she was one crazy dyke) said, "Do you have any idea who just gave you those roses?" as if I should. Then Sylvie said (bless her heart) "Do you have any idea who Alex is?" On the drive home, Adriana suddenly stopped the car and kicked me and Pola out. We had no idea where we were, so I said, "Come on, baby, I'm sure there's an after around here somewhere."
So we ended up in this hole in the wall, populated by Ranchero types (ranchero is the Mexican equivalent of rednecks). So Pola and I pretended we had just got married. We came up with the following dialogue, for any would-be listeners. I would ask her, "Tell me again why you married me." And she would answer, "For your money and your giant cock." Then we found one danceable song on the jukebox and danced basically our own version of the Lambada.
After we left, we wandered around downtown San Miguel. It was very late at night when we came upon a huge Catholic cathedral. And all of a sudden I started swearing at God, for having taken away my mother. Pola had just lost her mother as well, so she joined in. Pretty soon we grew exhausted from all this shouting and sat down. Then we lay down. Then the cops drove up to us, so we sat up as quickly as possible and tried to look as nonchalant as we could. The cops just looked at us and kept driving.
Then a morning jogger passed us, and I yelled after him, "You can't outrun death!" Pola doubled over in hysterics. Then she ran up to the jogger, waved her hand in his face, and said, "Hi, I'm Death."
The next night we went to this restaurant/pool hall called Lola's. Everyone could tell instantly that we were all from Vallarta, because of our tans and our 'tude.
Pola dug out the two extra hits she'd hidden and gave me one. Now, these were very powerful E's, the kind that radiates from you and infects other people. Remember the time that we took it at Limelight, and that girl sat with us to soak up our vibe? Well, this E was far stronger than that one. So Pola and I left our friends in search of adventure. We went to this crowded bar and sat down with a couple of newlyweds. Somehow, I think telepathically, Pola and I agreed to seduce them both (she the woman and I the man). In no time they were buying us drinks and telling us bad things about their partner. Pola and I grew bored with them and left in search of a gay bar.
We eventually found one, but it was completely empty, with the exception of the cute bartender, who as it turned out, was bisexual. Somehow I ended up in the DJ booth, spinning eighties faves. The bartender kept buying us drinks, and we made sure to order the most expensive ones. At one point, when he went to the bathroom, I snuck under the bar and put a bottle of J & B under my jacket. Then I went into a corner of the bar and passed out. I woke up about an hour later, and Pola and the bartender wanted to go to El Grito, but I objected, saying "What's the point of having a bar called the shout if they don't let you scream in there?" (referring, of course, to my previous attempt at a strip-tease).
We went anyway but they would not let Pola or me in. So the bartender gave us money for a taxi (did I mention we went out with no money? Pola was a genius in getting people to buy us drinks, and later, drugs).
The next day all of us, including Adriana and her poor girlfriend, Sylvie, Pola and I, went to see the Botanical Gardens. I took along the bottle of J & B, which Pola and I proceeded to drink, straight out of the bottle. Needless to say, we acted like silly fools the entire day. We had fun, but no one else did.
Actually, after that, I didn't see Sylvie for several months. She was pissed at me for stealing her girlfriend. If I did, it was completely unintentional, I swear.
I wuv you. Merry Xmas and hap happy New Year. xoxoxo a.

P.S. I would just like to point out that I had those sunglasses long before Paris Hilton-Sheraton did.

THE BOY WITH THE THORN IN HIS SIDE
Alex Gomez
Word has it that my last boyfriend, who was spirited away to Hollywood by a world-famous movie writer and director, is back in town. His name is Ulises, and he's been spotted driving a brand new sports utility vehicle all around Vallarta. His sugar daddy Roland must be off somewhere, promoting his latest masterwork of pre-fab celluloid trash. I'm not sure how long Ulises has been here or how long he'll stick around, but it has me on edge. The last few times I've seen him have been for the most part unfriendly and tense, though I'm certain it's because he's embarrassed about being kept. He knows how I feel about that sort of thing, and he must realize I'm none too happy about being lied to.
Truth be told, Ulises was never really my boyfriend, except in the strict etymological sense of the word. He was my friend, and yes, he was certainly a boy: sixteen years old. Not only that, he was my employee. Sure, I'm only ten years his senior, so it's not exactly a pedophile thing; but the fact is that he was under my power to some degree and that made sex a non-issue as far as I was concerned. Not only that, he was a virgin, and I actually liked him—which ruled him out entirely from what passed for a boyfriend with me.
I met him before I opened up my café, in fact the first night we actually talked I ended up taking him to see it, before all the finishing touches had been put in place. I had just come out of a disco on the waterfront with some friends, and ran into him on the street. It was three in the morning but it didn't strike me as odd to find him there, he was quite the ubiquitous young man and while I may not have spoken to him much before, I had definitely noticed him popping up practically everywhere I went. He was remarkably good-looking and craved attention, as was obvious in his tendency to dye his hair every couple of weeks—no color was too extravagant—and the milk-white contact lenses he was wont to wear, which rendered him a kind of demonic cherub. Normally his eyes were a clear, bright blue, and he was very fair. He could have been more handsome naturally which, I was to learn, he did everything to avoid. Still, Ulises was so desolately beautiful that I was unable to resist walking with him along the sea wall to my apartment.
\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>He told me that he was gay. I was in fact surprised by this information; only because I had unconsciously desired him so much that I'd refused to admit the possibility that I might have a chance, (and, moreover, that this chance could be thwarted—I had learnt that there was too high a price to be paid for beauty) but also because his father had died the year before and it was clear that he was still suffering the consequences. It dawned on me that this boy was remarkable on deeper levels than the obvious; that it took a clear mind and a great deal of courage to admit to a truth as heavy as his homosexuality in the turmoil following the death of the most important person in his life. I told him that I had denied such a truth for as long as I'd been able, in my case until I was twenty-three. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"You actually believed you were straight?" he asked. "Did you think you were just asexual?"\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I laughed because he was serious. "I was \n\u003ci\>very\u003c/i\> sexual," I explained. "It's just that I didn't want to commit myself to any particular sex."\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"So you slept with women?"\u003c/font\>\n\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I nodded. "I wasn't very convincing. From nineteen until twenty-three I was only with men, but then once in \nMadrid, I sort of had a relapse—I met a very assertive and beautiful woman who insisted on having her way with me."\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>",1]
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He told me that he was gay. I was in fact surprised by this information; only because I had unconsciously desired him so much that I'd refused to admit the possibility that I might have a chance, (and, moreover, that this chance could be thwarted—I had learnt that there was too high a price to be paid for beauty) but also because his father had died the year before and it was clear that he was still suffering the consequences. It dawned on me that this boy was remarkable on deeper levels than the obvious; that it took a clear mind and a great deal of courage to admit to a truth as heavy as his homosexuality in the turmoil following the death of the most important person in his life. I told him that I had denied such a truth for as long as I'd been able, in my case until I was twenty-three.
"You actually believed you were straight?" he asked. "Did you think you were just asexual?"
I laughed because he was serious. "I was very sexual," I explained. "It's just that I didn't want to commit myself to any particular sex."
"So you slept with women?"
I nodded. "I wasn't very convincing. From nineteen until twenty-three I was only with men, but then once in Madrid, I sort of had a relapse—I met a very assertive and beautiful woman who insisted on having her way with me."
\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>He told me about his one and only girlfriend, who I'd actually seen him with a few times in the past and secretly loathed. Nothing sexual had taken place between them and they'd recently parted as good friends, but even she was unaware that he was gay. I was touched that he chose to confide in me, especially after he told me that I had, for all intents and purposes, terrified him until that moment.\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"I always thought you would be the type to look down on me," he said, unflinching. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>But that was not to happen for several months. Sitting alone with him under the dim spotlights in my unfinished café, I swelled with admiration and desire. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>It never occurred to me to hire him to work there; when I met him and for as long as I'd known of him he'd been working in a gallery that belonged to a friend —and one-time boss of mine, and I instinctively preferred to keep my employees and friends separate. As it turned out, I betrayed my instincts more than once in that vein. One of the first people who worked in my café was a young and hyperactive queen named Ramses, who had been my occasional coke dealer and acquaintance in the party circuit. He lasted a week in the café, even when he himself had begged me for a job—which tended to interfere with his all-nighters—and I had unwisely conceded. Out of desperation I turned to Ulises, who quit his other job at the same time, confiding in me that he could no longer work for my friend in good conscience, as he believed that the man had fallen in love with him. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>",1]
);
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He told me about his one and only girlfriend, who I'd actually seen him with a few times in the past and secretly loathed. Nothing sexual had taken place between them and they'd recently parted as good friends, but even she was unaware that he was gay. I was touched that he chose to confide in me, especially after he told me that I had, for all intents and purposes, terrified him until that moment.
"I always thought you would be the type to look down on me," he said, unflinching.
But that was not to happen for several months. Sitting alone with him under the dim spotlights in my unfinished café, I swelled with admiration and desire.
It never occurred to me to hire him to work there; when I met him and for as long as I'd known of him he'd been working in a gallery that belonged to a friend —and one-time boss of mine, and I instinctively preferred to keep my employees and friends separate. As it turned out, I betrayed my instincts more than once in that vein. One of the first people who worked in my café was a young and hyperactive queen named Ramses, who had been my occasional coke dealer and acquaintance in the party circuit. He lasted a week in the café, even when he himself had begged me for a job—which tended to interfere with his all-nighters—and I had unwisely conceded. Out of desperation I turned to Ulises, who quit his other job at the same time, confiding in me that he could no longer work for my friend in good conscience, as he believed that the man had fallen in love with him.
\u003c/span\>"What makes you think that?" I asked.\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"Well, I wasn't sure of it, until he caught me smoking pot with a bunch of friends in the gallery when it was closed," he explained. "He didn't even fire me. He didn't even discuss it."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I shrugged. "Maybe he's just not uptight about stuff like that," I suggested.\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"Did I mention that the gallery was supposed to be open?"\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I nodded gravely. "He's head over heels. But let me just warn you that if I ever catch you doing anything like that here, I'll not only fire you, I'll slit your throat."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>We shook hands, and I hired him on the spot. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I managed to deceive myself into thinking that my feelings for Ulises were strictly platonic, and I attributed their intensity to the fact that he was brilliant, funny and extraordinarily artistic. We spent eight hours a day together in my café without ever becoming bored, and we spent virtually all our time together outside of work as well. We understood each other perfectly and had so many ideas and feelings to share; the inspiration was reciprocal and unwavering. I encouraged his painting as much as possible; I gave him the impressive collection of artist's materials that had been gathering dust at the back of my closet; I allowed him to use one of the café tables as his workplace, I made him countless cassettes of ambient music to listen to on his walkman as he painted. I took him out for lunch and dinner every other day and even hung out with him in gay bars. I was honestly surprised when people wondered if we were lovers, and indignant that they were blind to the purity of our friendship. \n",1]
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"What makes you think that?" I asked.
"Well, I wasn't sure of it, until he caught me smoking pot with a bunch of friends in the gallery when it was closed," he explained. "He didn't even fire me. He didn't even discuss it."
I shrugged. "Maybe he's just not uptight about stuff like that," I suggested.
"Did I mention that the gallery was supposed to be open?"
I nodded gravely. "He's head over heels. But let me just warn you that if I ever catch you doing anything like that here, I'll not only fire you, I'll slit your throat."
We shook hands, and I hired him on the spot.
I managed to deceive myself into thinking that my feelings for Ulises were strictly platonic, and I attributed their intensity to the fact that he was brilliant, funny and extraordinarily artistic. We spent eight hours a day together in my café without ever becoming bored, and we spent virtually all our time together outside of work as well. We understood each other perfectly and had so many ideas and feelings to share; the inspiration was reciprocal and unwavering. I encouraged his painting as much as possible; I gave him the impressive collection of artist's materials that had been gathering dust at the back of my closet; I allowed him to use one of the café tables as his workplace, I made him countless cassettes of ambient music to listen to on his walkman as he painted. I took him out for lunch and dinner every other day and even hung out with him in gay bars. I was honestly surprised when people wondered if we were lovers, and indignant that they were blind to the purity of our friendship.
\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>His paintings were mostly fantastical and surreal. I pressured him to find his own perspective, to paint his own reality, because it seemed to me that, much like his appearance, his art was contrived to shock and disgust in lieu of anything more sublime and meaningful. But he never stopped painting grotesque anthropomorphic creatures with tumescent, worm-like appendages and spiny orifices, against blood-and-milk skies\n\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>with mushrooming clouds or grass that was often, literally, blades. \u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"Reality is boring," he'd say.\u003c/font\>\n\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"Fantasy is too easy," I countered. "Sometimes a message conveyed with subtlety has a far more powerful effect than being banged over the head with it."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"You say that's more honest but it sounds like a trick, to me."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>And so on.\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Somewhere I have stashed away a series of black and white photographs that we took of each other on a day hike near Mismaloya, the place where John Huston, Ava Garner, and Richard Burton had made 'The Night of the Iguana.' Ulises invited me along after a girl friend of his supposedly cancelled at the last moment; he commanded me to take pictures of him in his underwear, on stilts, wearing a black mask over his eyes and huge metal platform shoes. Some of the photos, staged by Ulises, are zoom-ins on his crotch and the arm of a doll reaching out of it. Others, staged by me, portray the illusion of Ulises grasping at long, parched grasses as he slides over the edge of a cliff to the rocks in the churning water below. Ulises took pictures of me with my shirt off, highlighting my overworked abs, or an individual calf and a Puma bowling-inspired shoe. The photographs are erotically charged, to be sure, but I steadfastly refused to perceive them as such even long after the fact. Nor did I ever dare imagine that they were evidence, however slight, of Ulises's attraction to me. \n",1]
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His paintings were mostly fantastical and surreal. I pressured him to find his own perspective, to paint his own reality, because it seemed to me that, much like his appearance, his art was contrived to shock and disgust in lieu of anything more sublime and meaningful. But he never stopped painting grotesque anthropomorphic creatures with tumescent, worm-like appendages and spiny orifices, against blood-and-milk skies with mushrooming clouds or grass that was often, literally, blades.
"Reality is boring," he'd say.
"Fantasy is too easy," I countered. "Sometimes a message conveyed with subtlety has a far more powerful effect than being banged over the head with it."
"You say that's more honest but it sounds like a trick, to me."
And so on.
Somewhere I have stashed away a series of black and white photographs that we took of each other on a day hike near Mismaloya, the place where John Huston, Ava Garner, and Richard Burton had made 'The Night of the Iguana.' Ulises invited me along after a girl friend of his supposedly cancelled at the last moment; he commanded me to take pictures of him in his underwear, on stilts, wearing a black mask over his eyes and huge metal platform shoes. Some of the photos, staged by Ulises, are zoom-ins on his crotch and the arm of a doll reaching out of it. Others, staged by me, portray the illusion of Ulises grasping at long, parched grasses as he slides over the edge of a cliff to the rocks in the churning water below. Ulises took pictures of me with my shirt off, highlighting my overworked abs, or an individual calf and a Puma bowling-inspired shoe. The photographs are erotically charged, to be sure, but I steadfastly refused to perceive them as such even long after the fact. Nor did I ever dare imagine that they were evidence, however slight, of Ulises's attraction to me.
\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>The thing I remember most about Ulises, and what impressed me the most of the things he said, happened one day when I got to the café after I'd had a bizarre vision. I had been at my sister's house for lunch and had lain down for a nap on the couch in the study. I didn't actually fall asleep, but I entered a kind of trance, and all of a sudden I had a very vivid and lucid series of dreams that nearly traumatized me. I knew I could describe them to Ulises without having to justify or rationalize them. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"There was a voice," I told him, "or maybe a group of voices. They showed me things, they were trying to make me understand something. Only I didn't understand them. At all."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"What did you see?" he asked, patiently.\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"First the ocean, waves crashing on the shore repeatedly," I said. "And though no words were actually spoken, what they told me was that my life\n\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>was a mere wave in an infinite series of waves, that there was nothing…to hold onto."\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>He nodded, and waited for me to continue. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"After that, they showed me a whole galaxy, it was sort of panning out, like a camera pulling back, farther and farther, until the galaxy was just a speck in something even bigger—a huge universe. And then further and further back, forever, immense, endless. I saw it. I can't think it, but I saw it. And I don't understand what it means. I don't understand why I was shown that." \n",1]
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The thing I remember most about Ulises, and what impressed me the most of the things he said, happened one day when I got to the café after I'd had a bizarre vision. I had been at my sister's house for lunch and had lain down for a nap on the couch in the study. I didn't actually fall asleep, but I entered a kind of trance, and all of a sudden I had a very vivid and lucid series of dreams that nearly traumatized me. I knew I could describe them to Ulises without having to justify or rationalize them.
"There was a voice," I told him, "or maybe a group of voices. They showed me things, they were trying to make me understand something. Only I didn't understand them. At all."
"What did you see?" he asked, patiently.
"First the ocean, waves crashing on the shore repeatedly," I said. "And though no words were actually spoken, what they told me was that my life was a mere wave in an infinite series of waves, that there was nothing…to hold onto."
He nodded, and waited for me to continue.
"After that, they showed me a whole galaxy, it was sort of panning out, like a camera pulling back, farther and farther, until the galaxy was just a speck in something even bigger—a huge universe. And then further and further back, forever, immense, endless. I saw it. I can't think it, but I saw it. And I don't understand what it means. I don't understand why I was shown that."
\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Ulises seemed to take it all in stride. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"I think about stuff like that all the time," he said, after a moment. "I see things like that sometimes, at night, when I can't sleep, when I'm all alone. I get really freaked out too." He shrugged, then laughed. "But then I remember that I don't even exist."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I think he got up then, to get a coffee or something, and I just stared at him for a while, thoroughly amazed.\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\> \u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Ulises developed a crush on an American medical student from the University of Guadalajara, who came to Vallarta regularly to tan his perfectly sculpted physique and cruise the same uptight men who rejected him back in the big city. In Vallarta, known throughout the country as \nMexico's own Sodom and Gomorrah, everything was allowed, nothing was inappropriate, and David almost always scored. He was attractive, though not to me; he was too American and a little bit too plastic. I was wary of him, in part because he openly made advances to my own lovers more than once. In all, David did not coincide at all with my construction of Ulises as a paragon of physical and spiritual beauty. Ulises, on the other hand, did everything in his power to coincide with David whenever possible. In short, he stalked him.\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Ironically enough, David, who would eventually become one of my best friends, never noticed. \n",1]
);
//-->

Ulises seemed to take it all in stride.
"I think about stuff like that all the time," he said, after a moment. "I see things like that sometimes, at night, when I can't sleep, when I'm all alone. I get really freaked out too." He shrugged, then laughed. "But then I remember that I don't even exist."
I think he got up then, to get a coffee or something, and I just stared at him for a while, thoroughly amazed.

Ulises developed a crush on an American medical student from the University of Guadalajara, who came to Vallarta regularly to tan his perfectly sculpted physique and cruise the same uptight men who rejected him back in the big city. In Vallarta, known throughout the country as Mexico's own Sodom and Gomorrah, everything was allowed, nothing was inappropriate, and David almost always scored. He was attractive, though not to me; he was too American and a little bit too plastic. I was wary of him, in part because he openly made advances to my own lovers more than once. In all, David did not coincide at all with my construction of Ulises as a paragon of physical and spiritual beauty. Ulises, on the other hand, did everything in his power to coincide with David whenever possible. In short, he stalked him.
Ironically enough, David, who would eventually become one of my best friends, never noticed.
\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>It must have been about six months after we'd met that Ulises developed an obsession with surfer Dave, the first one he'd ever developed as far as I know, and the first to seriously disturb me. Even then I was blind to the simple jealousy that the situation inspired in me. I chastised Ulises for squandering his attentions on someone who, as far as I could see, was obviously unworthy of him or of any serious amorous ideals. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"How can you say that to me?" he finally snapped. "If anyone is squandering their attentions, it's you. It never ceases to amaze me how you go through men like candy wrappers. The prettier and stupider they are, and the farther they live from Vallarta, the better."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Stunned, I could only answer that I had expected better for him than I did for myself.\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"That's exactly my point." He was suddenly furious. "Why don't you sort out your own shit before you start dictating mine?"\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>After that I decided that I should help Ulises get what he wanted rather than criticize or judge him. In a truly demented fashion I went out of my way to introduce him to David and orchestrate meetings between them in bars and parties. It soon became clear that David wasn't at all interested. Afterwards I tried to 'help out' with other men that Ulises lusted after. For all of them, he was just too young and inexperienced, a kind of emotional liability. And in a world where the majority wanted easy access, strings-free sexual relationships, Ulises was by no means a tempting option. He was too different and too intense, for all his youth and beauty. And the ideal in this circuit was someone like David—someone who was handsome in a completely generic and innocuous way, with a body perfected for energetic sex. \n",1]
);
//-->

It must have been about six months after we'd met that Ulises developed an obsession with surfer Dave, the first one he'd ever developed as far as I know, and the first to seriously disturb me. Even then I was blind to the simple jealousy that the situation inspired in me. I chastised Ulises for squandering his attentions on someone who, as far as I could see, was obviously unworthy of him or of any serious amorous ideals.
"How can you say that to me?" he finally snapped. "If anyone is squandering their attentions, it's you. It never ceases to amaze me how you go through men like candy wrappers. The prettier and stupider they are, and the farther they live from Vallarta, the better."
Stunned, I could only answer that I had expected better for him than I did for myself.
"That's exactly my point." He was suddenly furious. "Why don't you sort out your own shit before you start dictating mine?"
After that I decided that I should help Ulises get what he wanted rather than criticize or judge him. In a truly demented fashion I went out of my way to introduce him to David and orchestrate meetings between them in bars and parties. It soon became clear that David wasn't at all interested. Afterwards I tried to 'help out' with other men that Ulises lusted after. For all of them, he was just too young and inexperienced, a kind of emotional liability. And in a world where the majority wanted easy access, strings-free sexual relationships, Ulises was by no means a tempting option. He was too different and too intense, for all his youth and beauty. And the ideal in this circuit was someone like David—someone who was handsome in a completely generic and innocuous way, with a body perfected for energetic sex.
\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Eventually Ulises did meet someone who reciprocated his desire, a boy from \nSan Francisco who was only in town for a week. I was away somewhere when the affair took place, and when I came back, it was all that Ulises could talk about. I was forced to suffer through explicit details of Ulises's first sexual encounter and praise of his lover's mythically proportioned anatomy. I continued to play the patient listener, withholding judgment, no matter how much my insides might churn. This went on for two or three weeks, until Ulises started to pine over the boy, who had gradually ceased to answer his emails. It was when that Ulises began conspiring to get himself to \nSan Francisco—which for someone like him was utterly impossible—that I finally broke down. \u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>We were walking to my apartment one night after we'd been to Paco Paco, Vallarta's biggest gay club, when I finally told him that I was in love with him. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"Ever since I met you I've been fighting this," I said. "You're my best friend and I don't want to do anything that would change that. \n\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>But I can't hold it in anymore, and I can't go on watching you make yourself miserable over men who aren't worth your little finger."\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>The street in front of my apartment was empty and silent at this hour. We stood facing each other under the dark canopy formed by two trees. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"Please don't think that I expect anything different from you," I stammered. "The love that I feel for you is different from anything I've ever felt, it's beyond demands or obligations. I don't know what to do with it at all. The only thing I know is that I can't lie to you any longer."\n",1]
);
//-->

Eventually Ulises did meet someone who reciprocated his desire, a boy from San Francisco who was only in town for a week. I was away somewhere when the affair took place, and when I came back, it was all that Ulises could talk about. I was forced to suffer through explicit details of Ulises's first sexual encounter and praise of his lover's mythically proportioned anatomy. I continued to play the patient listener, withholding judgment, no matter how much my insides might churn. This went on for two or three weeks, until Ulises started to pine over the boy, who had gradually ceased to answer his emails. It was when that Ulises began conspiring to get himself to San Francisco—which for someone like him was utterly impossible—that I finally broke down.
We were walking to my apartment one night after we'd been to Paco Paco, Vallarta's biggest gay club, when I finally told him that I was in love with him.
"Ever since I met you I've been fighting this," I said. "You're my best friend and I don't want to do anything that would change that. But I can't hold it in anymore, and I can't go on watching you make yourself miserable over men who aren't worth your little finger."
The street in front of my apartment was empty and silent at this hour. We stood facing each other under the dark canopy formed by two trees.
"Please don't think that I expect anything different from you," I stammered. "The love that I feel for you is different from anything I've ever felt, it's beyond demands or obligations. I don't know what to do with it at all. The only thing I know is that I can't lie to you any longer."
\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>He was looking into my eyes with a solemnity that made my heart race with fear. For a moment, he was quiet, assimilating the shock of my confession. "How long have you felt like this?"\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"From the start," I said, mentally reeling at the extent of my self betrayal. "But I made myself believe it was something else."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"Why?"\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"Because I'm twenty-seven and you're seventeen, because I'm so fucked up about love and sex, because I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to become vulnerable to any man and I tend to attack first when it starts to happen."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>He looked away, furious now. "I can't believe you never said anything. You should have said something long ago."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"I'm sorry for being so dishonest. I said things and acted in ways that were meant to keep you at a distance. We spend so much time together, everything between us is so intense, I didn't know what else to do… I was trying to protect you, and I was trying to take control of my feelings and change them into something else."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>He glared at me. "It's really too bad, Alex. But it's too late now. You have made me lose trust in you, and what's worse is that you've confused me so much, ever since we first met. You scare me. You really do. I never know what to think…" His eyes had welled up with tears. Abruptly he turned away. I was paralyzed and speechless. \n",1]
);
//-->

He was looking into my eyes with a solemnity that made my heart race with fear. For a moment, he was quiet, assimilating the shock of my confession. "How long have you felt like this?"
"From the start," I said, mentally reeling at the extent of my self betrayal. "But I made myself believe it was something else."
"Why?"
"Because I'm twenty-seven and you're seventeen, because I'm so fucked up about love and sex, because I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to become vulnerable to any man and I tend to attack first when it starts to happen."
He looked away, furious now. "I can't believe you never said anything. You should have said something long ago."
"I'm sorry for being so dishonest. I said things and acted in ways that were meant to keep you at a distance. We spend so much time together, everything between us is so intense, I didn't know what else to do… I was trying to protect you, and I was trying to take control of my feelings and change them into something else."
He glared at me. "It's really too bad, Alex. But it's too late now. You have made me lose trust in you, and what's worse is that you've confused me so much, ever since we first met. You scare me. You really do. I never know what to think…" His eyes had welled up with tears. Abruptly he turned away. I was paralyzed and speechless.
\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"I'm going home," he said finally. "Thank you for telling me the truth. I'm going to think about it, okay?"\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I didn't know what else to say.\u003c/font\>\n\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I nodded. "That's fine. Anything you want to say or do is fine, Ulises. I'll always be your friend, no matter what happens."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I walked up the stairs and lay awake in my bed the rest of the night.\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\> \u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Ulises quit the café shortly after. He claimed that a friend of his who owned\n\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>a graphic design company had offered to train him and give him a job. I panicked at first, thinking that if he left the café I would lose an important asset to my business—it was true that he attracted a younger wedge of my clientele and lent the place a good deal of color. Really what I was afraid of was losing my hold on him, which is precisely what happened. Even though he continued to come to the café practically every day and spent several hours there, he was no longer dependent on me, either psychologically or financially. Eventually he reverted back to being an interesting but largely unimportant child in my eyes. I even forgot the extent that I'd pined for him on certain sleepless nights, and when I realized that Roland the big-shot Hollywood director was spending a good deal of time with him, I attributed a Peter Pan syndrome to the man, which was bolstered by his ridiculous movies, largely sensationalistic, cartoonish, and utterly without depth. \n",1]
);
//-->

"I'm going home," he said finally. "Thank you for telling me the truth. I'm going to think about it, okay?"
I didn't know what else to say.
I nodded. "That's fine. Anything you want to say or do is fine, Ulises. I'll always be your friend, no matter what happens."
I walked up the stairs and lay awake in my bed the rest of the night.

Ulises quit the café shortly after. He claimed that a friend of his who owned a graphic design company had offered to train him and give him a job. I panicked at first, thinking that if he left the café I would lose an important asset to my business—it was true that he attracted a younger wedge of my clientele and lent the place a good deal of color. Really what I was afraid of was losing my hold on him, which is precisely what happened. Even though he continued to come to the café practically every day and spent several hours there, he was no longer dependent on me, either psychologically or financially. Eventually he reverted back to being an interesting but largely unimportant child in my eyes. I even forgot the extent that I'd pined for him on certain sleepless nights, and when I realized that Roland the big-shot Hollywood director was spending a good deal of time with him, I attributed a Peter Pan syndrome to the man, which was bolstered by his ridiculous movies, largely sensationalistic, cartoonish, and utterly without depth.
\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>But when Ulises told me that Roland had offered to pay for him and two of his friends to travel through \nEurope, I was alarmed.\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"You can't possibly accept that," I said to him. "How could you ever pay him back?"\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Ulises frowned. "He doesn't expect us to pay him back. He's a multi-millionaire and he's our friend and he's just being generous."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I thought it utterly creepy that a forty-something foreigner was throwing money at young, poor Mexicans who, while they might not have had much of their own at the time, stood to earn it—through their personal efforts and creativity as they ventured into responsible adulthood. I told Ulises that I'd had a few offers of money and holidays (including the promise of half a million dollars from a deluded old man who'd thought he could buy me as his lover, a house in Madrid from a Basque lawyer who wanted to stop me from continuing my travels when I was twenty-two in Europe, and an all-expense paid trip to the Hamptons from an American naval officer), and had always politely declined. "I would never accept a favor that I couldn't repay somehow," I told him. "And anybody that knows that you can't repay something they offer you is deliberately putting you into their debt."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"You are cynical and perverse," he snapped.\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>",1]
);
//-->

But when Ulises told me that Roland had offered to pay for him and two of his friends to travel through Europe, I was alarmed.
"You can't possibly accept that," I said to him. "How could you ever pay him back?"
Ulises frowned. "He doesn't expect us to pay him back. He's a multi-millionaire and he's our friend and he's just being generous."
I thought it utterly creepy that a forty-something foreigner was throwing money at young, poor Mexicans who, while they might not have had much of their own at the time, stood to earn it—through their personal efforts and creativity as they ventured into responsible adulthood. I told Ulises that I'd had a few offers of money and holidays (including the promise of half a million dollars from a deluded old man who'd thought he could buy me as his lover, a house in Madrid from a Basque lawyer who wanted to stop me from continuing my travels when I was twenty-two in Europe, and an all-expense paid trip to the Hamptons from an American naval officer), and had always politely declined. "I would never accept a favor that I couldn't repay somehow," I told him. "And anybody that knows that you can't repay something they offer you is deliberately putting you into their debt."
"You are cynical and perverse," he snapped.
\u003c/span\>"And you are naïve and willfully blind," I returned. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>But I tried to put myself in Ulises's place, honestly trying to discern whether I was against the gift of the European tour on principle or whether what I considered to be principle for me was in fact only the privilege of being able to refuse charity. I had noticed Roland and his entourage out and about town, a group that was mainly comprised of teenaged Mexican boys who I knew to be unemployed for the most part, and some of whom survived by plying the sex trade with older tourists, or selling cocaine. Naturally I was suspicious of his motives in putting someone as young and innocent as Ulises into his debt. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>It had been the boy's dream to travel to Europe, a dream which I had inadvertently encouraged with tales of my own unforgettable adventures through the \nOld World, the first time when I was twenty-two, for four months, and the second, three years later, for three months.\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Even though I accepted the fact that Ulises came from a poor family and was unlikely to coming into an inheritance in this lifetime, I still thought he should pay his own way through \nEurope. After all, he was only seventeen, and had only worked for a year. Even I, who did receive an inheritance that I wasn't able to spend until I was twenty-three, had been put to work in Canada by my mother during high school. I didn't see why Ulises should be exempt from paying his dues, and certainly not just because some depraved old man thought he was pretty and had cash to spare. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I'd had the occasion to meet Roland a few times, but he showed no interest in my friendship and seemed to respectfully maintain his distance whenever we were in the same club or restaurant . Ulises would usually be obliged to trek back and forth between us. Roland was mostly stationary, always surrounded by people I would have instinctively repelled. He didn't appear to have much to say, and was more often than not content to keep his lips pressed to a beer bottle. One night when I found myself alone with him, and completely at a loss for anything to say to him, I introduced him to my good friend Martha from Mexico City (and one of the wealthiest and snootiest families in the country). She hissed in my ear once we'd left him, "He smells bad."\n",1]
);
//-->
"And you are naïve and willfully blind," I returned.
But I tried to put myself in Ulises's place, honestly trying to discern whether I was against the gift of the European tour on principle or whether what I considered to be principle for me was in fact only the privilege of being able to refuse charity. I had noticed Roland and his entourage out and about town, a group that was mainly comprised of teenaged Mexican boys who I knew to be unemployed for the most part, and some of whom survived by plying the sex trade with older tourists, or selling cocaine. Naturally I was suspicious of his motives in putting someone as young and innocent as Ulises into his debt.
It had been the boy's dream to travel to Europe, a dream which I had inadvertently encouraged with tales of my own unforgettable adventures through the Old World, the first time when I was twenty-two, for four months, and the second, three years later, for three months. Even though I accepted the fact that Ulises came from a poor family and was unlikely to coming into an inheritance in this lifetime, I still thought he should pay his own way through Europe. After all, he was only seventeen, and had only worked for a year. Even I, who did receive an inheritance that I wasn't able to spend until I was twenty-three, had been put to work in Canada by my mother during high school. I didn't see why Ulises should be exempt from paying his dues, and certainly not just because some depraved old man thought he was pretty and had cash to spare.
I'd had the occasion to meet Roland a few times, but he showed no interest in my friendship and seemed to respectfully maintain his distance whenever we were in the same club or restaurant . Ulises would usually be obliged to trek back and forth between us. Roland was mostly stationary, always surrounded by people I would have instinctively repelled. He didn't appear to have much to say, and was more often than not content to keep his lips pressed to a beer bottle. One night when I found myself alone with him, and completely at a loss for anything to say to him, I introduced him to my good friend Martha from Mexico City (and one of the wealthiest and snootiest families in the country). She hissed in my ear once we'd left him, "He smells bad."
\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I told her who he was, and the movies he'd written and directed. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"I don't care who he is, he smells horrible."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"He has a rotten soul," I snickered. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Another night at the club, Ulises was trying to drag me over to Roland's table, but I refused, even though I was standing by myself at the bar. One of his movies had just been released to a huge audience turnover and unanimous critical disdain. Ulises told me excitedly what Roland had told him about the contract he'd signed with Sony for a number of future projects based on the financial success of his current film. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"I've seen his movies on television," I said, "and they bore me. I realize he's a master salesman, but his films are trash, and they offend me by their blatant appeal to the basest instincts of the masses."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Ulises was outraged. "You're just jealous because Roland makes more money than you do," he spat.\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I glared at him, and replied in the iciest tone I could muster, "If I were the kind of person who measured people in those terms, I wouldn't be here talking to you now. Excuse me."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>",1]
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I told her who he was, and the movies he'd written and directed.
"I don't care who he is, he smells horrible."
"He has a rotten soul," I snickered.
Another night at the club, Ulises was trying to drag me over to Roland's table, but I refused, even though I was standing by myself at the bar. One of his movies had just been released to a huge audience turnover and unanimous critical disdain. Ulises told me excitedly what Roland had told him about the contract he'd signed with Sony for a number of future projects based on the financial success of his current film.
"I've seen his movies on television," I said, "and they bore me. I realize he's a master salesman, but his films are trash, and they offend me by their blatant appeal to the basest instincts of the masses."
Ulises was outraged. "You're just jealous because Roland makes more money than you do," he spat.
I glared at him, and replied in the iciest tone I could muster, "If I were the kind of person who measured people in those terms, I wouldn't be here talking to you now. Excuse me."
\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>He was stunned. "Wait, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>"I know you didn't," I said wearily. "I think it's better if we give each other some space, okay? Go and sit with your friend, have fun. I'll be fine."\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\> \u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Ulises called me as soon as he was back in Vallarta. I was surprised that he came back, having heard that Roland had offered to put him up in art school as soon as his tour of \nEurope was over. I was more surprised that he called me. My new best friend Lulu, an eccentric artist from Mexico City, wanted to come with me to see what all the fuss was about. We rendezvoused with him and his friend Ivan (who Roland had also sponsored through \nEurope) at a small martini bar owned by a Canadian lesbian. \u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Ulises's travel stories were mainly comprised of drug-induced experiences in the Old World, being banned from hotels he was staying at because of his appearance, and most excitedly of his side trips to \nSydney and Tokyo. "We wanted real sushi," he explained, "and Roland put us on a plane to Japan." I inwardly groaned. "The weird thing was that there was no sushi to be had."\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>\u003ci\>\nNo, \u003c/i\>I thought to myself, \u003ci\>that's not the weird thing.\u003c/i\>\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Ulises showed me some of the expensive, new-fangled gadgets he'd bough in \nTokyo on Roland's allowance. Lulu was not amused, and suggested we head over to the then trendy club, Revolucion. Somehow I ended up alone there with Ulises, listening enraptured to Finary Binary's ",1]
);
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He was stunned. "Wait, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that."
"I know you didn't," I said wearily. "I think it's better if we give each other some space, okay? Go and sit with your friend, have fun. I'll be fine."

Ulises called me as soon as he was back in Vallarta. I was surprised that he came back, having heard that Roland had offered to put him up in art school as soon as his tour of Europe was over. I was more surprised that he called me. My new best friend Lulu, an eccentric artist from Mexico City, wanted to come with me to see what all the fuss was about. We rendezvoused with him and his friend Ivan (who Roland had also sponsored through Europe) at a small martini bar owned by a Canadian lesbian.
Ulises's travel stories were mainly comprised of drug-induced experiences in the Old World, being banned from hotels he was staying at because of his appearance, and most excitedly of his side trips to Sydney and Tokyo. "We wanted real sushi," he explained, "and Roland put us on a plane to Japan." I inwardly groaned. "The weird thing was that there was no sushi to be had."
No, I thought to myself, that's not the weird thing.
Ulises showed me some of the expensive, new-fangled gadgets he'd bough in Tokyo on Roland's allowance. Lulu was not amused, and suggested we head over to the then trendy club, Revolucion. Somehow I ended up alone there with Ulises, listening enraptured to Finary Binary's
\n1999\u003c/i\>, which I told him was my favorite song at the time. For a moment I felt the old bond between us again, and it seemed that he felt it, too. He hugged me violently and told me that he'd miss me terribly while in L.A\n. \u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>But he never wrote and he never called. I got news of him through mutual acquaintances: he was driving a Mercedes all over Hollywood, he went to the same gym as Keanu Reeves, and Roland arranged for his new pornographic, computer-generated 'art' to be exhibited in a gallery. The few times that I ran into him in Vallarta, he would pointedly avoid me. Our former mutual friend and boss told me that Ulises had told him how much in love he claimed to be with Roland. And finally, I could no longer deny the reality of the arrangement. I understood why Ulises no longer wanted anything to do with me. He knew perfectly well that I would be disgusted with him for selling himself. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>So these days I've been sort of hoping that he'll stop into my restaurant to see me; he's been visiting everyone else. I keep my eye out for his silver X-terra when I'm running on the sea wall. I never see him. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I wonder what I would say if he did appear. Is it true that I would look down on him? Or would I feel the same old pathos that came over me whenever we were together? Would I see a shallow, selfish boy or someone who simply took advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime? Would I warn him that Roland will eventually trade him in for a newer model a few years, and that he'll be left with nothing—no high school education and no job training, yearning for the glamorous life?\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>",1]
);
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1999, which I told him was my favorite song at the time. For a moment I felt the old bond between us again, and it seemed that he felt it, too. He hugged me violently and told me that he'd miss me terribly while in L.A .
But he never wrote and he never called. I got news of him through mutual acquaintances: he was driving a Mercedes all over Hollywood, he went to the same gym as Keanu Reeves, and Roland arranged for his new pornographic, computer-generated 'art' to be exhibited in a gallery. The few times that I ran into him in Vallarta, he would pointedly avoid me. Our former mutual friend and boss told me that Ulises had told him how much in love he claimed to be with Roland. And finally, I could no longer deny the reality of the arrangement. I understood why Ulises no longer wanted anything to do with me. He knew perfectly well that I would be disgusted with him for selling himself.
So these days I've been sort of hoping that he'll stop into my restaurant to see me; he's been visiting everyone else. I keep my eye out for his silver X-terra when I'm running on the sea wall. I never see him.
I wonder what I would say if he did appear. Is it true that I would look down on him? Or would I feel the same old pathos that came over me whenever we were together? Would I see a shallow, selfish boy or someone who simply took advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime? Would I warn him that Roland will eventually trade him in for a newer model a few years, and that he'll be left with nothing—no high school education and no job training, yearning for the glamorous life?
\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Or will I listen to his crazy stories and his convoluted ideas, forgiving him for being a boy and giving into temptation, rather than bearing the torment of his impossible desires?\n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\> \u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>Ulises has been back in town for the past six months (after an absence of four years). After I emailed him the story I wrote about him, he came to see me at the café. He informed me that he'd phoned Roland and asked him to give him money to go to school, and that, in the process, he'd called him a 'fucking pedophile.' At first I laughed. But after he left I realized that Ulises didn't even know the meaning of the word. A pedophile doesn't give his prey a choice of whether or not to enter into a sexual relationship with him. Ulises entered the relationship willingly, despite my warnings. A pedophile doesn't pay for his prey and two friends to travel the world. A pedophile doesn't buy his prey an X-Terra. A pedophile doesn't leave his prey a two million dollar home in Conchas Chinas. A pedophile doesn't buy his prey's mother a house in Patzcuaro. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>I told Ulises that I hadn't meant for him to like my story. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>He said, "I know."\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> \u003c/span\>And for all the money that Roland paid him after he found another pretty replacement, Ulises has yet to invite me out for lunch. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/b\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp style\u003d\"margin:0cm 0cm 0pt;line-height:200%\"\>\u003cb\>\u003cfont face\u003d\"Times New Roman\"\>\u003cspan\> ",1]
);
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Or will I listen to his crazy stories and his convoluted ideas, forgiving him for being a boy and giving into temptation, rather than bearing the torment of his impossible desires?

Ulises has been back in town for the past six months (after an absence of four years). After I emailed him the story I wrote about him, he came to see me at the café. He informed me that he'd phoned Roland and asked him to give him money to go to school, and that, in the process, he'd called him a 'fucking pedophile.' At first I laughed. But after he left I realized that Ulises didn't even know the meaning of the word. A pedophile doesn't give his prey a choice of whether or not to enter into a sexual relationship with him. Ulises entered the relationship willingly, despite my warnings. A pedophile doesn't pay for his prey and two friends to travel the world. A pedophile doesn't buy his prey an X-Terra. A pedophile doesn't leave his prey a two million dollar home in Conchas Chinas. A pedophile doesn't buy his prey's mother a house in Patzcuaro.
I told Ulises that I hadn't meant for him to like my story.
He said, "I know."
And for all the money that Roland paid him after he found another pretty replacement, Ulises has yet to invite me out for lunch.

THE BEAUTIFUL DRACULA

for Julie Todd
I’d been trained to ride since the age of five. I told Mehmed that his artillery would be without worth in Wallachia, since my homeland was dense with forest and swampy marsh. However, as the Sultan had used Urban’s cannon so successfully against Constantinople, my warning fell on deaf ears.
Still, I did not doubt that we would defeat my brother. I led four thousand janissaries, all on horseback. Surrounding us were foot soldiers; behind was the Praetorian Guard, serving as Mehmed’s bodyguard. A cavalry force, recruited from the landed Ottoman gentry in the Balkans, trotted behind us. The advance guard was comprised of slaves, who could ostensibly buy their freedom—should they survive.
At the flanks of the army were the custodians of Mehmed’s weapons. Behind us marched the azabs; fearsome because of the long spears they wielded, mortal in battle. The archers followed. In the centre of the army was the artillery, which handled the cannons: one hundred twenty of them. On either side were the allied European and Eastern contingents, led by their own governors. The engineers travelled with us, to build the necessary roads and bridges, and set up the camps at night.
A motley crew traipsed after us; artisans, wheel makers, ironmongers, tailors, cobblers, musicians and cooks. Mehmed had brought along women (these rode in covered wagons), to service his troops, as well as himself. I’d learnt by now that he did not restrict his buggery to men—or children, for that matter.
On reaching the Danube, we found that Vlad had burnt down all the ports, which rendered Mehmed’s navy—some one hundred fifty ships—immediately useless. I hoped this would mean that my cousin Piotr would ride with me, but Mehmed sent the navy off to attack Bralia and Chilia, and, ultimately, to take the army home.
We janissaries landed in Wallachia first. The Sultan was with us. The rest of the army trudged after us. Once we entered the province, we discovered, aghast, that Vlad had set fire to the towns and villages. He was retreating northward, and had left behind destroyed crops, poisoned wells, and the butchered cattle he’d been unable to take away.
We had also to contend with the burning-hot deserts that had taken the place of the formerly luxuriant forests. More dangerous were the pits he’d had dug and covered with leaves for the unwary to fall into. They had been fitted with erect wooden stakes.
Vlad and his men took to leaping out of the woods ahead of us in order to attack—usually at night—and racing back into the shelter of the trees before we had a chance to defend ourselves. Soon, I discovered that Vlad had even sent men, disguised as Turks—sick with diseased veneries, leprosy, the plague and consumption—to corrupt our troops. I captured one of these men, a gypsy suffering the plague. I commanded him to tell me how Vlad had arranged such sabotage. He sputtered, “My lord promised to give me a hundred ducats if I brung the head-piece of a dead Turk to him.”
I tossed him my hateful turban and sent him scurrying into the woods.
As I rode over to tell Mehmed, the glimmer of an idea began to illuminate my mind. I saw my chance to escape—not only the Sultan, but the extent of his lecherous reach. I immediately sent my most loyal attendants, Wallachian and Romanian hostages of the Sultan Murad, to confer with the remaining members of Wallachia’s boyar, or noble, class. They’d been true to me since Mehmed had set us up in a puppet court at Constantinople—now Istanbul—and I’d promised to return them and their surviving families to their former positions as boyars.
One black night, Vlad entered our camp with thousands of men in tow, and proceeded to slaughter everyone and everything in his way. His target was Mehmed himself. His men mistakenly descended on the viziers’ tent instead. Their screams woke us, and we quickly rode over to defend the Sultan.
Vlad’s men were without armour, though they wielded axes and knives. It was apparent that they were either released criminals or peasants, since Vlad had already exiled or murdered most of the boyar and mercantile classes. They didn’t kill many of our men, who were better armed, but did manage to slaughter thousands of our camels and horses. I shed tears for these innocent beasts.
During the night’s siege, I caught sight of my brother, the self-styled Dragon; seeming so deranged as to inspire fear in me. He was ghostly of skin, and his red-rimmed eyes had sunk far back into his face. His mouth was bloody and twisted in a morbid grimace. When he saw me, he cried, “Sodomite!” I swung my sword at him, but he fled back into the woods, and left me behind to wonder what sort of monster he’d become.
My brother had always envied me, simply because I was more agreeable to the Turks (and therefore punished less often), and fairer. From the time that our father had brought us to Adrianople to meet Mehmed’s father, Murad II, I’d been branded a pretty prince. This hadn’t always been an advantageous title, especially after Mehmed had grown besotted with me. While my brother had been constantly whipped by our Kurdish tutor in philosophy for being stubborn, I was raped by Mehmed for my comeliness at the age of twelve.
Mehmed had kept me at his side ever since; more so after his father lapsed into a sleep so profound that he would never awake. My loathing for the new Sultan had festered like an open wound from the moment he violated me.
After Murad had placed Vlad on the throne of Wallachia—once my father and elder brother Mircea had been assassinated by a man named Hunyadi—he’d not only refused to pay the Sultan’s tribute, but had gone to the length of nailing the turbans to the heads of the Turkish envoys who’d been sent to collect it.
But Mehmed was not interested in vengeance. All he wanted was a path through Romania to the rest of Europe.
Next morning, we rode to Trigoviste, the capital of Wallachia. Making our approach, we came upon a horrendous sight: a forest of impalement. Before us stood a line of corpses, a league or so long, both of Turks and Wallachians, as well as their women and children, that had been set up on stakes. Their bodies were already rotting in the summer heat, and ravaged by crows and other birds of prey from the Carpathians. Some of them had nests in their skulls. Most of these people had been staked through their rear orifices and, finally, their mouths. I, along with many others, vomited at the sight and stench of death.
Though Vlad had certainly not been the first to use such repugnant methods, it was clear to me that he was alone in making a fetish of impalement.
The Turks were horrified. They pleaded with their Sultan to turn back. Even Mehmed’s spirit, for all its arrogance, seemed broken. He gave the order to retreat the next day. He told me that Vlad’s land was not worth the price of its conquest.
By the end of Ramadan, Mehmed had led us to Bralia, where he ordered the port burned in a final act of defiance against Vlad. He told me that we were going back to Istanbul by way of Edirne. Once we arrived at the former Adrianople, I protested, proposing a better strategy: that he leave me behind to win the favour of the surviving Wallachian nobility.
I promised to send him his tribute, already three years in arrears, and asked him to advance me twenty-five thousand ducats, to pay Matthias Corvinus, the King of Hungary, in order that he leave Wallachia to the Ottomans (I kept ten thousand ducats for myself, and gave the rest to Corvinus).
I suggested that he could always find another lover, and disingenuously pointed out the hordes of new hostages I’d seen arrive at Istanbul before we left. “There were some very pretty boys, Mohammed, aged six to fourteen.”
He snarled at me, and then consented, with poorly concealed regret.
I was greatly helped by the boyars that my envoys had recruited, many of whom came in person to Adrianople to plead with Mehmed to replace the Son of the Devil with his less murderous and better-looking brother.
From Edirne I travelled with a contingent of Turkish soldiers to the capital. At the throne I addressed the gathering of boyars; I told them that the Sultan could easily conquer and destroy Wallachia, and proposed instead that we reach an agreement with him, by paying him his yearly tribute. I swore to restore the ancient rights of the land, as well as forbid any Turk to settle on Wallachian soil. Everyone present shouted my name adoringly.
I learned later that Vlad had fled to Hungary to ask Mattias’s help, but that Matthias had imprisoned him instead.
I met with Piotr and told him of the plan I’d conceived upon my encounter with my brother’s plague-ridden man. I confessed that I wanted no part of ruling and would rather roam free, with him at my side. I told him that I would marry, to ensure the allegiance of Corvinus, and to have a child.
He said that it was imperative that I leave a remnant of my beauty in this world. I kissed him, remembering the games we used to play in the woods when he’d arrived with his family after having fled Bulgaria, to seek the shelter of my treacherous father. Since we’d been children, we had loved each other without question.
I told Piotr that Vlad had called me a sodomite. He laughed and answered, “Your brother is the ditch-born son of a slave and a whore. And being a sodomite I is far better than being an impaler.”
I corrected him: “Vlad’s mother was a gypsy whom he had beheaded after she announced herself to him. But my father was a slave—to Murad.”
He stroked my hair. “My heart, our love is so beautiful and natural that it couldn’t possibly be sinful.”
I already had a woman in mind; Maria Despina, beautiful and intelligent, of an old boyar family that had been ousted by my brother. She was eager to marry me in order to re-establish her family as part of the nobility. A year later, she gave birth to our daughter, whom we named Maria as well.
In the meantime, Piotr had been scouring Wallachia and Bulgaria in search of a candidate for my plan. He returned to my palace one night in a coach, a year after Maria’s birth. Having dismissed all the guards, I met him at the gates. My jaw hung when I saw the man he’d brought.
He was my mirror-image. His name was Dmtri.
I set him up in a guest house, and had only very faithful servants attend to him. I had him grow his hair long so as to resemble me even more. I had him fattened up.
Piotr suggested we flee to Italy, which was still out of Mehmed’s reach. He assured me that the Italians would welcome us as refugees; many of them still retained the practices from their Roman past.
I held court for the next three years. I thoroughly spoiled Maria Voichita, as well as my wife, knowing already how briefly our family would exist. In the third year of my reign, I rallied some troops, Wallachian and Ottoman and, with Piotr as my captain, went off to hunt down my brother. He’d been sighted prowling in the Carpathians.
We failed.
Vlad Tepes would not be found for some time.
Peace finally settled over Wallachia. The farms had grown again, and plentifully. When I learned that Stephen of Moldavia was conspiring to dethrone me (of course I’d known that it would be only a matter of time before someone did), the hour of Piotr’s and my departure had come. I told my wife that I’d been exposed to a venereal disease, by a man disguised as a Turk when hunting down my brother. I added that I would rather flee than have my family see me die.
I told Maria about Stephen of Moldavia, and permitted her to marry him, since he would rule over our land. We both wept copiously.
Shortly before Stephen arrived to depose me, I met with Piotr in the guest house where I’d secured Dmitri. He’d been suffering from syphilis for two years. We expected that he’d live two more. I told him that he was to be the new prince of Wallachia, and that, even when Stephen took over, he would not be harmed. I assured him that he would be delivered to a monastery and taken care of the rest of his days.
Having already sent my wife and daughter to a nearby refuge, I installed Dmitri in my place. He fit easily into my garments, and none of the servants could tell the difference. Before I left, I gathered the castle staff and told them that I was stricken with the clap, and would hence avoid all contact with anyone save a doctor and the cook.
Dmtri loved to eat.
Piotr and I departed the following day. Between us, we had collected enough jewelry (Mehmed had always sought to make prettier) and ducats to buy a substantial estate in Italy. For all his thoughtless cruelty to me, the Sultan had been generous. And Piotr had made a handsome sum as the admiral of his navy. We took a coach to the western shore of Yugoslavia, and boarded a ship that sailed to Brindisi. We settled just outside of Naples. We hired many local hands to help us build our farm. The farm prospered and made us wealthy.
In the next two years, news of my own death reached us. I found out too that my former wife and daughter were well loved by Stephen, which relieved me enormously. I’d fretted over them to no end, since learning that Vlad had been placed once more on Wallachia’s throne.
After Piotr and I had explored most of Europe, we prepared to retire on the outskirts of Rome. It was here I heard news of my brother’s death—that he’d been beheaded by one of his own men by accident (he’d been disguised as a Turk). After his head was delivered to Mehmed, his body was buried at a monastery in Snagov. Later, his tomb was discovered empty. Romanian superstition being what it is, my brother devolved into a creature of the night, who fed on human blood to maintain his immortality.
Vlad had been known to drink the blood of his enemies from a golden chalice.
But all of that is so far away now, and I am home at last.

CEMETERY GATES

Alex Gomez
Dorian’s father wanted him to have pancakes for breakfast, which was absurd. The man should have realized that he wouldn’t have any desire for food. Even after an ordinary night at home, even if he’d slept fitfully till noon, Dorian wouldn’t have been enticed by the prospect of surrealist flour, butter and glucose. “I’d rather not eat anything,” he mumbled. “Nothing at all.”
“You’re already skeletal as it is,” droned his father, placing a no-stick pan on the glowing amber element.
“Good I never liked human flesh.” He scratched an eyelid and removed a rebellious blond curl from his forehead. “I’d much rather bare my bones to the wind. Literally.”
Dorian’s father thrust a livid wad of margarine at the smouldering pan.
“I’m leaving now,” Dorian announced.
“It’s not seven yet. The cemetery gates won’t be open.”
Dorian laughed derisively. “Father, if the door to Paradise were shut in front of you, you’d probably wait until someone came along to open it for you. I, on the other hand, have never found doormen necessary. Unless they’re beautiful.”
He chuckled to himself, well aware that his father wasn’t listening. “At any rate, I’m going to the graveyard. Now. Put your pancakes away.” He stepped into the hallway and began to pull on his tattered, dark green coat, more out of habit than necessity. The dough bubbled behind him and was abruptly reversed by a plastic spatula. Dorian sighed and shut the door.
It was snowing in town, though April had gathered her veils and was springing forward into the arms of summer. He adored the snowflakes, and watched them as they toppled from the gloomy abyss, each one the taunting whisper of a glorious secret that earthly ear would never understand. Yet every one of those intricate miracles would die an instant death when it made contact with the barren concrete stretched obscenely over a forgotten field, and snow became ice and slush. These things made the air colder and froze nostril hairs and coffins. Dorian regretted this—the cemetery was never impressive unless exposed to a furious sun, sprinkled with stars, or draped by a pallid fog.
Despite his oath to avoid the thought of his father, he felt his heart twist itself free of its veins and plummet like a burning coal to the pit of his stomach. He pitied the man, but he didn’t love him, and hadn’t since his turbid days as a child. Garrin Penner had blinded himself with his own hands and had transformed this shield of indifference into a mirror for all who approached him. He simply would not be loved, and Dorian had gradually acceded to his father’s will. In any case, this realization never failed to instil in Dorian a crushing sorrow; a sorrow that was closely connected to the jaws of pain that had devoured him after the loss of his mother, eight years before.
In his own perverse way, Garrin Penner had cared for his only child. Though he would shun the young man’s attempts at mutual feeling and sporadic gems of superhuman intelligence, he always provided his son with enough money so that he could play the piano (Dorian’s passion) and avoid part-time work. He’d also cooked his son breakfast on rare occasions, driven him to his piano recitals, and sheltered him with a bleakly geometrical box named One Hundred Eighty-One Graves Drive.
Often his customary frigidity served Dorian well. When his father had caught him smoking hash with a friend in grade nine, the man had calmly advised him to avoid burning holes in the carpet and left. The first day that Garrin Penner had discovered his son playing at truancy, he’d driven him to his afternoon doctor’s appointment in stalwart silence. Even when he’d returned home early from a business trip in the city and found sixteen-year-old Dorian having sex in his king-size bed, he had politely turned the lights off and withdrawn to his son’s room, without ever referring to this incident in the future.
For a year or two, Dorian had resented his father’s invulnerability to shock. The average teenager finds great pleasure in astonishing parents and other respect-demanding figures of authority. Dorian had known this, and had wanted desperately to put this knowledge to practice with his own father. But Garrin Penner had scarcely blinked at his son’s Mohawk in grade ten and his fascination with women’s cosmetics later in the same year. The shield of indifference had remained impenetrable throughout Dorian’s attempts to shatter it. Approaching the rusted, ramshackle cemetery gates, he was assaulted by the memory of last night’s dinner at home. Dorian had left his nut-and-grain burger untouched, watching his father munch through his own while he skimmed the pages of a financial magazine.
He had sighed emphatically, hoping in vain to attract the man’s attention. “Father, I’m dead.”
Garrin Penner had only cleared his throat and said, “Please pass the ketchup.”
Dorian had done so and risen from the table. “I’m leaving, I’m going to the cemetery.”
Garrin Penner had rolled up his magazine and casually dropped it on the floor. “Please don’t.”
It was Dorian who had been shocked.
“Stay. Sleep in your room tonight.”
And he had. But today he understood that it had been a terrible mistake. He’d left it for good almost two weeks before, expecting never to return (as anyone in his situation would have). Yet the memory of his pathetic parent kept pulling him back, rather like a noose keeping a dead man’s feet dangling over a cold floor. Absentmindedly, Dorian stepped through the thick iron bars and tramped through the slush to a hideous white crucifix. He paused to examine it for what he swore to himself would be the last time. Now he was sorry that Boris and he had never carried out their plan to set the thing on fire, for Christ’s sake rather than blasphemy. No one deserved to have his image so crudely rendered in death.
A cutting wind blew through the cemetery and shook the mournful, lifeless branches of the willows all around him. Dorian stopped to look at the orderly rows of nun graves to the right of the main path, and read once again those unusual and beautiful names. “Hello, Frances,” he whispered. “Hi Sofia, hi Ursula and Abigail, how’re you guys doing?”
They did not reply.
He smiled mechanically. “Just remember: you’re not rotting away in total waste; you’re keeping worms fed.”
He sauntered on, in the direction of the more elaborate, ornate tombstones. He stopped to chat briefly with the Mendoza family, which inhabited a spacious plot with weathered stone border. He blew the infant Petra’s grave a solemn kiss and departed for the ancient, gnarled oak that stood as the focal point of the cemetery. A small, solitary stone sat beneath the low-hanging branches, enveloped in a curtain of leaves during warmer climes. The names carved onto nearby gravestones had almost completely faded under the onslaught of time and the whims of occasional vandals. This particular stone appeared to have lain undisturbed for decades, though it had tilted slightly from what must have been originally a ninety-degree angle. Dorian knelt before it and extended a white, bony hand to caress its surface. “Hello, William Jameson.”
The stone told that the young man had been lost to illness in eighteen ninety-three, at the age of seventeen. It was strange that the coffin sat alone, that there were no other members of the family buried about it. Dorian supposed that this was because the boy had died an improper death, and that it had been deemed offensive to bury anyone else in his vicinity. The previous summer, Boris and he had searched the town library’s archives for news of the boy’s death. It had turned out that the scant information on his gravestone was false; William had not died as a result of poor health. The boy had hanged himself from a beam in the ceiling. Since the form of his death had been considered blasphemous, the townsfolk had raised an outcry at the very idea of having him buried in their community cemetery, amongst lawful and God-fearing Catholics. However, William’s father had been a clergyman and arranged to have his son buried in a decent manner, after all.
“Rest easy, Will,” said Dorian to the ground at his feet. He patted the stone and stood up, glancing about for a sign of Boris, who, as usual, was late in arriving this morning.
In fact, Boris didn’t seem capable of arriving anywhere on time, and this was the reason for his prolonged career as a travelling dishwasher. If possible, he would have been fired more often than hired; yet Dorian knew that this didn’t bother Boris, who was carefree on principle, and gave little value to part-time jobs as a rule—or any sort of job, for that matter. He wrote poetry incredibly well, and both of them were convinced that this would ultimately set him free from a life of servitude. For the meantime, society saw Boris fit only for the cleaning of greasy plates, and he was content to play the game as long as his earnings allowed him to pay his share of the rent, drink, smoke and buy second-hand classical literature.
After they’d met, almost three years ago, Boris had examined Dorian’s collection of books and been appalled. “How can you support those who butcher forests in unreason?” he’d exclaimed. “Merely to communicate their inadequacies. What? Harper Lee? She only wrote that one book, and she wrote it in dialect, which is just a way for a writer to cover up her illiteracy. Fitzgerald, Hemingway—haven’t you realized that there’s no such thing as a worthwhile American writer?”
Dorian had been offended. “What do you mean? There’s Steinbeck and Henry Miller.”
“Steinbeck is boring as hell and Henry Miller stole most of what he wrote from Anais Nin. And Hemingway was the worst for writing in dialect. Milan Kundera in Immortality wrote that he committed suicide because he was impotent. I myself suspect he couldn’t deal with that periphrastic title, The Sun Also Rises. I’m telling you, these people don’t write, they destroy trees.”
Dorian had become angry. “What about you? You use toilet paper.”
“No, I don’t.”
They had both laughed. Then Dorian had played Chopin’s Berceuse Opus 57, and Boris was left breathless with awe.
“That was amazing,” he’d sputtered. “You play beautifully. But then…but then, you are…Beautiful.”
They were both surprised and embarrassed by the remark. Boris had spoken again after a nervous silence. “Ever since I first met you, I’ve wanted to do this,” he’d said, and kissed him. “Writers don’t know shit anyway.”
Afterward they had painted their faces with watercolours and gone to buy cigarettes, looking like savages. If it wasn’t love, it was insanity, but no one should ever profess to be able to tell the difference. Whatever the case, Boris had lost his job at a truck stop, his family’s respect and home, and had gained a black eye and bloody nose—courtesy of his stepfather. Garrin Penner, on the other hand, had never objected to his son’s affair. In fact, he’d never even discussed the matter with Dorian and had stolidly ignored his lover (though he had been aware of his existence, having found the young man in his bed the night he’d returned early from his business trip). And when Dorian had asked him anxiously if he could have a friend stay over for a while, Garrin Penner had shrugged and said, “As long as we don’t get death-threats on the telephone.”
Nevertheless, Boris had moved in with some friends, and soon fell in love with one of his roommates, Sandra Kellerman. Dorian had ceased to meet or speak with him after he’d confessed this, and began to make arrangements to leave town, go to university elsewhere and forget everything.
He found himself paralysed. He couldn’t leave. He thrust his compositions into the fireplace, into flames that were by no means purging. Dorian estimated that his father had invited him out for dinner at least twenty times before he made his first attempt to get out.
He heard his name called and looked up to the gates. Boris was standing on the other side, smiling and waving maniacally. Dorian began to walk towards him.
“They’re locked! I can’t get in.”
“Try climbing the wall.”
Boris thrust a pair of red hands into the gaping pockets of his coat. “I did, it’s icy as hell. I’d need spikes on my shoes to do it.”
“I’m surprised you don’t already have them,” Dorian smirked.
He smirked back. “I did have a pair of spiky shoes, actually, but they’re now a permanent attachment to my stepfather’s face.”
Dorian was reaching for the thick metal chains that bound the gates together when he saw the burly, grey-haired caretaker shuffling towards them.
“Oh, shit,” he whispered, “look out.”
Boris grimaced and slowly turned.
The man’s face was contorted with suspicion and contempt—an expression that was unsettlingly familiar to both of them. “What’re ya doin’ there, ya hooligan? Hopin’ to spray-paint some more headstones?”
“Actually, dude,” Boris replied whimsically, “I was just coming to pay my respects to the last old fool who bothered me.”
The caretaker’s furry chin quivered uncontrollably. “Get the hell outta there before I calls the cops, you mouthy bastard.”
Dorian intervened. He closed his eyes in order to appear unseen. “Excuse me, but unless you want to end up buried next to me, you had better leave this boy alone. He wasn’t joking when he said he’d come to pay me his respects.”
The caretaker froze in stupefaction, glancing from Boris to the gates—behind which Dorian stood unseen—in frantic disbelief. “Jesus and Mary,” he stammered, and after a moment of comical indecision he turned around and ran away as fast as his parenthetic legs could take him.
Boris was seized with one of his violent fits of laughter. Dorian was unable to hold back a chuckle.
“That was really cruel,” he said guiltily. “Poor man.”
“That was fantastic!” Boris had practically collapsed in the snow at this point. “He almost had a heart attack, that jerk. He didn’t see you…He thought—he really thought--”
He stopped to suck oxygen into his lungs, salty rivulets forming in the corners of his eyes. “Ahh, God that was funny.”
“No, YOU are.” Dorian grabbed him by the collar and pulled him quickly through the gates. “Get in here.”
Once Boris had regained his composure, he stepped towards Dorian with his arms outstretched. Dorian dodged them.
“Don’t,” he said warningly.
Boris frowned and followed him along the path. “How’s William?”
“He’s dead,” Dorian replied gravely. “Dead as ever.”
“Oh that William,” said Boris, clucking his tongue, “always so committed to what he does.”
They seated themselves in separate branches over the suicide’s grave. Dorian gazed upwards at the boundless white, brushing windswept locks of his hair from his face with characteristic languor. Boris watched him in silence, tying his brown woollen scarf tightly around his ears. They’d sat in the same positions so many times in the past, often reaching to kiss each other and swing from branch to branch like regressive monkeys. But today they were both aware that something was radically different. A vacuous grey mood fell upon them with the dizzying snowflakes.
“I love you,” Boris intoned quietly.
“Correction: you loved me.”
“No, you’re here, I’m here, it’s now and I love you.”
“Oh for God’s sake Boris, please shut up.”
“Piss off.”
Silence intervened for a sombre moment.
“My sister called me today,” Boris finally said.
“What’d she say?” Dorian didn’t bother to conceal the disinterest in his voice.
“She said, ‘Well now that what’s-his-name is gone, wouldn’t you like to come with me and a friend named Jenny, we could go dancing at this rilly, rilly amazing club.’”
Dorian laughed. “What did you say?”
“I told her that the only place I’d like to see her friend Jenny dancing was on a bed of hot coals, and hung up.”
“She still doesn’t believe we were lovers?”
“Oh, she believes it all right. She thinks it was only temporary insanity on my part and that I’m back to normal now that you’re gone.”
Dorian raised a questioning eyebrow at him. “Don’t you wish you were?”
“Of course not,” he scowled. “Who the fuck wants to be normal? I’m happy the way I am. I love men, so what?”
Dorian paused portentously. “So what about Sandra?”
“That was my moment of temporary insanity. I’ve already explained it to you, Dor. Why do you keep bringing it up?”
“Because I still don’t understand, okay? No matter how many times you explain it to me, I still don’t get it.”
Boris looked away. “I was deluding myself. I was afraid.”
“Oh, and I wasn’t?”
“Well, maybe you were, but your life wasn’t torn apart by your sexual inclinations. Mine was.”
“Well, I’m truly sorry that I had the luxury of a father who didn’t give a damn. So sorry.”
“Will you just listen to me for a second? My life was obliterated in a single stroke. I was kicked out of my home, Dorian, where I’d lived comfortably for seventeen years. My mother swore not to pronounce my name again; I’m still not allowed to see my little brother, because I might ‘infect’ him. How was I to know that the rest of my life wouldn’t end up the same way? I was scared out of my gourd, I just wanted to go back and be like everybody else. But when I introduced Sandra to the family, and I saw the relief in their eyes—as if I’d just been cured of cancer or something—I knew then that it was all bullshit. I didn’t love Sandra, I just thought she had pretty hair.”
“All right, fine. That part of it I understand. But you deserted me. ‘We’re better off as good friends,’ you said. Ha! Crap. We were better off dead, Boris. You really hurt me.”
“Well, what about you? What I did to hurt you wasn’t nearly as bad as what you did. Miles away.”
Dorian said nothing. Winter wailed at them disconsolately.
Boris broke a twig from the branch he reclined on and chewed it. “Did you see your Dad?”
He nodded.
“How’d he react?”
“Like nothing had happened. Do you have a cigarette?”
Boris gave him a perplexed look.
“Just give me one.” He reached for it, after Boris had lit two.
“Always suicidal, aren’t you?”
“Bad habit.”
“So tell me. About your dad.”
“Well, he barely listened to a word I said. In the end I didn’t bother to explain it to him. I’m not so sure I could have anyway. He made me dinner and that was it. Then he asked me to stay.”
“You didn’t, of course.”
“Guess again.”
“What?” said Boris incredulously. “You slept there? How could you?”
“It wasn’t exactly sleep. I just lay in my bed all night, pretending I didn’t notice every time he walked in to check on me. He wanted me home one last night. It was stupid of me to stay.”
“Bizarre is a better word,” said Boris, tossing his cigarette butt on the ground. “Why didn’t you sleep with me?”
“Are you insane?”
“Yes, I’m driving myself insane. Apart from that, I’m lonely.”
Dorian could see it in his eyes. Suddenly his throat constricted under the weight of sorrow, which filled his aching lungs and stretched malignant claws about his heart. He looked away, into the street. Traffic was becoming dense, as the other inhabitants of their charcoal world made their way almost desperately to the slave mines.
“Dorian, weren’t you happy?”
“When?”
“After Sandra. When we were together again.”
He wasn’t sure what to say.
“I guess it’s fairly obvious you weren’t.”
“Things just weren’t the same afterwards. But I hope you’re not thinking it was your fault. It was just…It was just one horrible thing after another. I was quite screwed emotionally. I always have been. I don’t think I had it in me to be happy for long.”
“You didn’t love me.”
“Oh yes I did. You can be very certain of that.”
“Yeah,” his tone was viciously sarcastic. “Very certain.”
“I loved you, you idiot. So much that—I replaced my soul with your image. I loved you to the point where I ached physically when you weren’t with me.” He flicked the remnants of his cigarette into the slush below. “I renounced reality for you.”
His voice was harsh and his eyes were glazed with restrained tears. “Then why did you do it? Why the hell were you compelled to kill it?”
Dorian sighed. “Because it would have died on its own. Like everything else in this world. Nothing lasts. Especially love like ours. Once it’s finished, it doesn’t seem real.”
“God, it was almost too real, Dorian. And even diluted love with you would have been better than none at all. Better than nothing. Which, by the way, is what I’ve been feeling these past two weeks. Absolute and utter nothing.”
Silence divided them again for a few minutes. Dorian looked at the palms of his hands. “Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to be so hurt. You must know that. And I’m sure I’ll be saving you worse pain in the long run.”
Boris had begun to cry. “No, damn it!” He dropped out of the tree and stood facing him. “You can be such a selfish bastard. I’ll never feel any pain worse than this. I’ll be lucky if I feel anything else at all, because of you. Because of what you did. Because you betrayed me…you cheated me.”
“Oh, stop it with your betrayal nonsense. You make it sound as if I belonged to you. Well, I never did. I belonged to myself, and I had every right to do what I did.” He leapt to the ground beside him. “I’ll say it again: I’m sorry. But it’s over now, it’s finished. I shouldn’t even be here now, talking to you. I should have just gone with custom and written you a letter.”
Boris ground a streak of tears into his cheek. He stepped towards him, gasping for breath. “I want…I want to touch you.”
Dorian’s eyes fell. “You can’t. I can’t. I don’t know what would happen.”
Boris groaned. “Fucking coward!” His leg lashed out, and the bottom of his combat boot met with William’s tiny headstone, knocking it out of the ground. Dorian’s mouth fell open in surprise as he watched him run furiously towards the gates.
He couldn’t pursue him, he mustn’t. The wind howled at him and swept the tails of his coat against his motionless arms in a flurry of snow. Dorian squatted to replace the stone in the wedge from which it had been kicked. It was ridiculously light; it was a wonder that it had stood over William’s grave for over a century, and not collapsed under a heavy rainfall. He let the bottom drop into the soil, only to hear something crack loudly beneath it. The sound it made was that of breaking wood. Instead of releasing the stone, Dorian pulled it back from the wedge and laid it carefully on the snow in order to investigate.
It had indeed been breaking wood—someone had buried a small and sturdy black box in the rich earth at the head of William’s grave. He scraped the object out of the ground and held it before his face. The container’s formerly locked lid had been spilt open, and a thin strand of tarnished gold had fallen through and dangled from the inside of the box. Cautiously, he opened it further and caught a gleaming medallion in the palm of his hand.
On closer inspection, he realized that the tiny medallion was, in fact, a timepiece moulded from gold. The miniscule silver hands lay still beneath the crystal window, perpetually marking the hour of four. Dorian knew that it hadn’t been William’s father who had buried this watch. Using his thumbnail, he carefully pried the locket open and saw that the rear shell had been inscribed with a name. He pronounced it to himself in amazement.
Nigel, eighteen eighty-nine.
He sprang to his feet and spun towards the gates. Boris hadn’t yet left. He was standing before the hideous Christ-thing, wrapping his scarf around his head one last time. Dorian called out to him and raced down the path to meet him. Boris watched his descent, his handsome face pale beneath the scarf, his nose and lips red with cold.
“You won’t believe this,” said Dorian breathlessly once they faced each other again. He held the timepiece by its chain and handed it to Boris.
“Who’s Nigel?” he asked, wiping his nose with his forearm.
“I have no idea. But don’t you think—he buried under William’s tombstone, not with him, in his coffin.”
“No way. That’s too coincidental.”
“Maybe, but after all this, I really doubt it. Think about it, Boris. A gold locket. Under the stone. The town outraged at the thought of giving William s some space in their precious cemetery. And, of course, suicide.”
Boris suddenly burst out laughing. “It couldn’t—they couldn’t have been--”
Dorian shrugged.
“Christ, this is too much. This is too bizarre.” He removed his scarf, unravelled the chain and pulled it over his head. “I’m going to keep it.”
Dorian nodded. “You should, William would want you to have it.”
“Ha. Doubt it. He must be pissed at what I did to his tombstone.”
“No, of course not. Will is—a very laid-back kind of guy.”
They looked into each other’s eyes, neither knowing what to make of this unforeseen moment of understanding. Dorian envisioned the previous summer...the minnow stream in the forest on the outskirts of town. One golden afternoon they had snuck through the construction site and run naked through the trees, throwing each other into the stream despite the toxic crayfish carcasses that lined is banks. They’d missed a spectacular sunset in the frenzied search for the forgotten location of their clothing. They had learned that the world in its original nature was beautiful and glorious, and that the concrete game-world that they inhabited, full of its endless tensions, resentments and misunderstandings, was not only horrid; it threatened the existence of that peaceful haven of trees and owls and fish which had received them without judgment and revealed life as it should have been.
But life was finished now; replaced by a monotonous, mechanical existence. The trees served only to extend the concrete shell until the entire earth was covered and asphyxiated. Humanity was a forgotten cause, a word without meaning. People had succumbed to over-production, over-consumption, and an apathetic god defined by greasy paper bills and electronic credit. It was doubtful that any vitality could be retrieved. Still, when Boris and Dorian had rested in each other’s arms beneath a blue and speckless sky, the madness had ceased temporarily and life was unveiled to them once more.
However, their moments had grown less powerful with frequency, incapable of deterring the tide of death that relentlessly infringed upon their union. The shelter that they had created for one another was bound to turn ashen and collapse under its merciless weight.
“That would have been unbearable,” Dorian told the black-haired, wide-eyed young man he’d once loved.
“You could have given it a chance,” Boris said heavily. His emotions were exhausted now. Dorian could see the subtle grey of death in his eyes, and heard it in his voice. He knew though that Boris would recover in time. His poetry, his very soul, would heal him.
“You could have given life a chance, Dorian.”
They parted at last. Before he stepped through the now open cemetery gates, Boris glanced back, looking very small and very lost under the colourless expanse of frozen sky.
Dorian sighed and chewed his lower lip, watching Boris turn and walk dejectedly down the gravel drive that stretched to the main road.
You could have given life a chance.
The words echoed and repeated themselves in his waning consciousness, causing him to shudder violently; the same way he’d shuddered when his mother had clasped his hand and died in a hospital bed. Was Boris right? Had he made an enormous mistake? Was this the reason he’d returned, after all that he’d put himself through? Had he destroyed some marvellous possibility? An opportunity for some kind of transcendence?
And suddenly Boris was doubled over with age on the sidewalk, cane in hand to support his aching, twisted spine, grotesquely visible under his ragged trench coat. His head had lost the greater portion of its hair and was spotted with moles. Overhead, the sky flared in a flash of summer. Crimson leaves danced through a thin autumnal air to descend upon yellowing grass. Persistent flowers bore their faces through the viscous soil, only to expose them to clouds, while buildings fell and rose in new arrangements all around him. Gravestones crumbled to dust and were scattered by a sullen wind Things had already begun to spiral into a vortex of darkness and light.
He walked on, through the graveyard, feeling himself fading away as he did so. He was determined to look upon what he’d been unable to face before. As he reached the pair of small headstones, through twisted, frozen shrubbery, he saw that the word FAGGOT had been spray-painted over one of them in fluorescent orange. He read his mother’s on the first stone, and then he read the name on the second stone for the last time.
Dorian Penner.