Ben Soul

love affairs.

  “Now don’t think, handsome,” he said to Ben, “that your sweetie, here, did much carousing. He was always very proper, very well behaved, a real gentleman. I tried to get in his pants many a time, with no luck. When I couldn’t make a lover out of him, or even a sex toy, I made a friend out of him.” Harry clapped Ben on the back to emphasize his point. Ben flinched. Harry didn’t notice. Neither did Dickon.

  Harry regaled Dickon and Ben with stories of his salad days on the Street in the City, and before that, in the village in New York and along the beaches in Venice and Santa Monica. Ben worked on his rye and soda, craving oblivion. Harry was more than happy to oblige, by ordering another round, and a third, and a fourth. Ben’s head swam; his bladder threatened to burst. At last he mumbled to Dickon, “I think I need to get some sleep.”

  “In a bit,” Dickon said. Harry ordered a fifth round of rye and soda. Bleary-eyed Ben wobbled on his stool, and set to work sipping the drink in front of him. Dickon and Harry seemed unaffected by the alcohol they had consumed. More practice, Ben thought to himself.

  His stomach lurched. He slid off his stool, and braced himself against the table. “Need the key, Dickon,” he said. “Gotta use the facilities.”

  “Okay,” Dickon said. He extracted the key from his pocket. “Walk easy,” he said, and turned back to Harry, whose narrative, a long and complicated tale of an orgy past, flowed on unabated.

  Ben made several tries before he was able to unlock the door, climb the stairs, and find their room. The floors and steps refused to stay in one place. He nearly fell several times before he reached the safety of the room. Once in, he went directly to the bathroom. When he had finished and flushed, he bent over, still seated, to start pulling his pants up. He almost passed out. At last he got his clothes pulled up far enough he could stagger to the bed, where he collapsed with his underwear around his thighs and his trousers around his knees. He passed from the world for a time.

  Long Night’s Journey into Day

  Ben woke before the day broke. His clothes were off him, neatly folded on the chair in the room. Dickon snored softly beside him. Ben’s head hurt. His body hurt. He needed to get up and use the bathroom again. He presumed Dickon had stripped him and folded his clothes. Dickon did not stir or wake when Ben flushed the toilet. Ben crawled back in bed and drew the covers up over himself and Dickon. Sleep did not come at once. The light in the room, though dim, was enough to keep Ben awake. The noise around him, wind in the trees, the distant traffic on the highway, Dickon’s snoring, conspired with the glow of the neon outside the room to chase his sleep away.

  Worry contributed, too. Ben wondered just what he had let himself in for. He’d thought he knew who Dickon was. Tonight had shown him a different Dickon, drunken Dickon, prone to lewd conversation and flirtation. Ben dimly remembered Harry recounting Dickon’s extended courtship of a goddess-worshipping Lesbian. Ben’s conventional soul was reeling in shock.

  He and Dickon had come here to get better acquainted, Ben said to himself. He shouldn’t be surprised that it wasn’t quite what he had anticipated. He had expected to explore, with all tenderness, deeper physical contact between them, and deeper emotional sharing of their vulnerabilities. In a few hours, now, they would be on their way back to San Danson village. All he had learned about Dickon was Dickon could drink him under the table, and was very much at home with an old roué like Harry.

  Ben raised himself up on one elbow to look at the sleeping Dickon in the dim neon light. Was there some sign of character he had missed? Dickon’s clear complexion didn’t betray a propensity to heavy drinking. There were no broken veins leaving little red tracks on Dickon’s aquiline nose. True, he had incipient bags under his eyes, shadowy pouches forming, but Ben knew from frequent glances at those green orbs that the pouches were as recent as the night’s debauchery.

  Dickon was, after all, in his mid-fifties, from what he had said about himself, but his stomach was still reasonably flat, even at its most relaxed, like now. His legs and buttocks were firm, from frequent walking, and the roll of fat around his waist was small for a man his age. Ben only wished his waistline were as small.

  Ben lay back and thought. He had seen Dickon in a wild moment or two, mostly connected with Vanna’s behavior. He had not guessed that wildness lurked elsewhere. And yet, what had Dickon done that was so outrageous? Ben knew from long exposure to gay men that flamboyance, flirtation, and rebellious behavior were common. He’d even had an occasional moment himself. Why did Dickon’s drunkenness trouble him so?

  Dickon rolled over on his side, with his back to Ben. Ben’s gray eyes caressed the curve of Dickon’s buttocks. Dickon had flung the sheet back, or never drawn it up. He had shed his underwear before getting into bed. Ben fantasized waking Dickon with a sexual invasion. The fantasy stirred him to incipient tumescence.

  Then Dickon cried out, a wordless cry that carried terror and sorrow at the same time. He twitched and shook, his breath rasping in his throat, and moaned “No, no, no, no...” Ben touched his shoulder, just to let Dickon know someone was with him. Dickon shuddered with a great sigh, and was still. Ben wondered if Dickon’s cry had wakened anyone else. He then decided it could have been mistaken for a cry of passion as likely as for a cry of terror. Ben spooned himself around Dickon and held him. Dickon’s breathing calmed, became rhythmic. Ben’s breathing began to synchronize with Dickon’s, and Ben was soon asleep.

  Dickon woke to gray light thinning the neon light in the room. He felt Ben’s breath on his neck and a chill in his legs. No covers. He wondered through the fog of his semi-wakening which of them had pushed the covers down. Ben was warm at his back, of course, and Dickon nestled happily into Ben’s curve. Dickon could feel Ben’s dream-induced arousal and thought about impaling himself on it. He thought of Ben’s reticence, and that held him back.

  Last night with Harry Kerry had been a blast for much of the evening. When Ben didn’t reappear after an hour or so, Dickon realized something was wrong. He’d finally excused himself from Harry’s company. Harry was still talking to the table and the empty glasses as Dickon left. When he got to the room, Dickon found Ben soundly either asleep or passed out from the drink. Dickon spoke to him, but Ben didn’t answer. His breathing was regular enough, so Dickon decided he just needed to sleep off the booze. Vaguely he remembered Ben mentioning how hard an afternoon’s drinking with Emma had hit him.

  Ben had been out for years. He surely wasn’t a novice to the gay life, even if he’d been part of a couple for as long as he said. Dickon didn’t often cut loose like he had this past night, but stodgy pursuits wore thin after many days, and he needed to be a little wild. He had expected Ben to need the wildness as much as he did. Maybe not. Ben seemed to be so much more together than Dickon felt. He didn’t have any obvious hang-ups about being gay. Yet he drew back from displaying affection, at least in public. Just when he was getting to know Ben, or thought he was, this whole new side showed up.

  Dickon had no objection to monogamy, though he and Ben hadn’t really talked about it. After all, neither one of them had much temptation to wander in San Danson village. Maybe they had plunged too quickly into this affair, without talking about limits and expectations enough. Dickon sighed. He really hated talking about affairs, instead of just letting them unfold. He knew, because Carrie Oakey had told him often enough, that his laissez-faire attitude had doomed potential relationships in the past. He sighed. He’d have to figure out some way of talking with Ben about these intimate things. He yawned, and assessed the pressure in his bladder. Yes, it was enough to force him to get up and relieve it.

  When he came back to bed, Ben had rolled over on his other side. Dickon got in bed gently and pulled the covers up over them. He drifted off to sleep, waiting for the pre-dawn to turn red and gold with daylight.

  Ben woke first. Day was streaming into the room through the smal
l window over the dresser. He blinked his eyes against the intruding light. He could hear the pool boy clanking tins of chemicals. He got up, stretched, and moaned. His last night’s alcoholic debauchery fired mortar shells in his head. He hoped Dickon had brought some aspirin. Or, better yet, some Alka Seltzer or Pepto Bismol. His stomach was also at war with itself.

  Dickon heard Ben get up. For a moment, he pretended to be asleep, but then decided it was too late in the day to play that game long. He yawned and stretched on the bed.

  “Hello, Handsome,” he said to Ben. Ben’s round face grimaced with a frown. His gray eyes were shot through with red.

  “Hello yourself,” he grated.

  “What time is it?”

  Ben bent carefully over the dresser, supporting himself on his hands, to peer at the clock. “Almost ten,” he said.

  “You kind of disappeared last night.”

  “I was too drunk to stay up. Besides, you and Harry were reminiscing about a life I never lived. I felt lost.” Ben hoped he wasn’t sounding to self-pitying. He was angry, he realized, under all the hangover discomfort and queasiness.

  “I thought we were including you.”

  “I think you meant to. I just didn’t