An Idol for Others (52 page)

“I guess maybe we were born for each other.” They looked into each other’s eyes. Their gaze intensified, and then they both burst into laughter. “It’s happening, but then it does all the time. Is it immoral to go to bed before lunch?”

“I’m willing to risk it.”

They had several days of total peace and isolation while Tom got to work on the play’s sex change. Walter wondered what it would be like when they let the world in. So far, it was still a bit like a dream, but he was tired and was content to drift. He supposed he was getting old enough to need time to recover from the trip. It wasn’t unpleasant, simply a lethargy that made reading and admiring Tom’s three novels and making love to the author a sufficient expenditure of energy. He was going to have to call Clara in the next few days if he didn’t hear from her first, and he wanted to be able to offer her more than lethargy. If he talked to her in his present condition, he would sound bored by anything they had to say to each other, which wouldn’t be polite.

There hadn’t been time for him to feel really separated from her. He tried not to think about her but had constant impulses to turn to speak to her about something–a habit he had to break. He even wanted to discuss Tom’s work with her. He thanked God for the steel in her nature. She would be in a rage with him, not weepy or hurt. He laughed wryly to himself at times when he thought of her. Dear old friend. That’s what she could be if she ever let up on him. He didn’t think she would want anything as simple as a divorce. There were money matters to be straightened out, but she was rich, so that shouldn’t be a problem. The test would come when he and Tom began to be seen together and word spread of a clearly homosexual liaison. Clara would no longer be able to pretend that the Makins were still the ideal couple of popular myth. He was willing to postpone that day as long as possible.

He was lying out in the sun one morning on a big beach mattress, not even reading, having finished Tom’s novels and gone through them a second time. Marjorie had gone, so he had been able to strip. A towel covered his loins. He was getting a good tan. Tom was in his study, near enough to make his presence felt. All was right with the world. He was surprised when Tom appeared in the door well ahead of schedule wearing his scruffy work dress. He saw his erection thrusting out from between its folds as he approached the mattress. Walter sat up with a chuckle. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Don’t be rude. I couldn’t concentrate. That is, I was concentrating all too well on you, as you see.” He slipped off the robe and dropped down between Walter’s legs, pushing the towel aside, and curled up against him with his hands flat on his chest Walter put his arms around him. “I’m feeling ridiculously kittenish. I’m not really built right to be kittenish, am I?”

“A kittenish cowboy? Why not?”

He stroked Walter’s hardening sex and watched it lengthen and fill out. He put two fingers under it and lifted it so that it stood upright between them. “Is it over a foot long? I wonder.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ve seen one a foot long. Unbelievable.”

“Well, I know mine’s well over seven inches, maybe eight, depending on how you measure it. That’s the sort of thing a serious writer knows about. Look at the difference between us.”

“An inch or two maybe.”

“Listen to him. An inch or two. As if that didn’t count. Never mind. It’s two feet long if that suits my poetic fancy. I know at last where I want it.”

“Do you, baby?” Walter had been waiting for this. Tom was still tinkering with his precious “male-female balance.” Walter had continued to give himself to him, hoping that repetition would reduce the pain, wondering if he might even learn to like it. He didn’t share Tom’s phallic preoccupations, but he liked the feel of a man’s body, the play of a man’s mind, the poetry of a man’s love. He had learned that much over the years, although he wanted to substitute Tom’s name for the collective noun. Honesty obliged him to make some acknowledgment of being gay. If Tom hadn’t turned up, it could have been somebody else, although he found it difficult to imagine.

Tom lay his head on his shoulder and kissed his neck in the area of his mole. He was fascinated by the mole. He worked himself down and ran his tongue around his cock, and for a moment, while he stroked his hair, Walter thought that this might be where his experiments would end. Tom straightened and looked searchingly into Walter’s eyes as if pondering a decision, and then he swiveled and lay back with his arms flung out above his head, his legs thrown over Walter’s thighs. “Do it, darling. The stuff’s in the pocket of my work rag.”

“Out here?”

“Yes. God, yes. I want to be fucked right now. I never dreamed I’d ever know anybody well enough to say it. I want you to fuck me in broad daylight so there’s no mystery about it. Your cock inside me where I want it.”

Walter disentangled himself from Tom’s legs and lifted himself to his knees and found the tube in the heap of his robe. Tom pulled his knees up and hugged him with them as he moved in between them.

“Let me watch you getting ready. Yes, like that. More. God, it glistens in the sun. You’re magnificent, you and your two-foot cock.”

“You’ve gone mad.”

“Maybe. I’m demented about that–your huge gleaming cock. Let me have it, darling. Drive it into me. It’s going to open all the doors.”

Walter slipped a hand under his balls. Tom lifted his hips and groaned with pleasure. “Christ, I can let you touch me there without being ashamed. You can take all my body. I’m so proud your cock wants it. God, does it ever. Look how it wants me. I want it. I want a man to take me and use and come in me. I want it to be you, darling.” He started to twist around onto his stomach, but Walter restrained him.

“Stay there.”

Tom looked puzzled, and then his face lit with rapture as Walter lifted his legs over his shoulders and entered him. He slipped slowly but easily into him. “Yes!” Tom cried. “God, yes, darling! That’s it. What heaven to be able to look at you.” He stretched his arms out and toyed with his face with his fingers. “You’re beautiful when you’re fucking me. I make you look like that. Oh, yes, darling! This is it!” He shouted as his body plunged about under Walter and his ejaculation sprang from it. He laughed with an exultant note. “Now, yes. Oh, God, I can give you what you want. It’s immense–your cock is immense, darling. Oh, Jesus. You’re doing what you want with it. You know. Yes, I want it. I want it. Wow! Beautiful. Yes! Now! Oh, darling …” They shouted into each other’s eyes with naked recognition, and Walter collapsed onto his chest. Tom kept his legs jackknifed over him and held him close until Walter slipped from him and sprang up. Tom followed him into the shower, and they exchanged slyly ambiguous and exploratory looks as if they were testing each other’s reactions but didn’t speak until they turned off the water. Tom giggled, and they both burst into a gale of uncomplicated laughter.

“You think I’m crazy,” Tom said while they dried themselves.

“A bit, in a fascinating way.”

“Oh, darling, we’re going to have such fun. We’re going to live together for the rest of our lives. I know that. I’m ready to show you who you’re living with. You’ve got to be gay to understand.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean by that. You don’t just mean about sex?”

“No, everything. It leads in and out of sex. All the doors are open for me now. No more shame. I know you didn’t like my, you know, fucking you, but you’re gay enough to understand what it meant to me. It’s made a man of me. I can let myself be yours now without being swallowed up by you. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that’s not like being married, is it? That’s being two men together. You’ll let me be myself and still belong to you in the way I must. You know what I mean. It’s the way I’m made.” They pulled on brief trunks and went to the kitchen, where Tom began to prepare their usual picnic lunch. “I’m stunned at how much I want to be fucked,” Tom said. “This morning I literally couldn’t think about anything else. To make sure, I thought of guys I wish had fucked me. There were quite a few. I had a hard-on for an hour before I let myself go out to you. If you didn’t have that divine cock, I shudder to think what might have become of me.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“No, I don’t either, but you can’t let me become myself without looking at the dangers. I don’t mean I want to go out and get laid by the whole town, but I might if you couldn’t do what you just did for me. It’s a side of me I didn’t know about. You found it. Before, I was just a simple cocksucker. Now look at me.”

“I’m looking. I like it.” They kissed playfully across the mayonnaise. “Just drop any idea about getting laid by the whole town–or even a small part of it.”

Tom laughed. “We’re going to make each other jealous. That’s obvious. I know I’ll have to behave myself–that’s never been a problem–but I want you to look at the boys. I want you to want them. It’ll make you want me more. You’re much more masculine than I am, as we both very well know. I’d cleave, no matter what you did. The only thing that bothers me is that I don’t seem to change you. I turn into 12 different people before your stunned eyes, and you go on being the same–enchanting and adorable and fiendishly sexy. I suppose it’s maturity, but it’s a bit frightening. It makes me feel you haven’t any faults. Hurry up and turn gay, darling. I know I’ll be able to hold on to you if you do.”

“Without the slightest difficulty.”

“Do you realize we haven’t been together two full weeks yet? I feel as if we’d packed a whole lifetime into a few days. If it goes on like this, I’ll be able to write a ten-volume novel about it before year’s end.”

They took sandwiches and fruit and a bottle of wine and went down the wooden steps to the water. Walter’s eye was caught by the little boat. “When are you going to take me for a sail? There should be a nautical bit in our novel.”

“Soon, darling. I don’t want to take the time yet.” They sat on the jetty and ate. “I know we can’t go on like this indefinitely. Real life is going to come in the door one day soon, and we’ll have to start rushing around doing all the necessary everyday things. First, I want to have an orgy of belonging to you. I want you to take me as often as you possibly can, beginning in about five minutes. I want to learn to be the best lay you’ve ever had. I keep thinking of things. Let’s spend the rest of the day more or less in bed.”

“No argument, Tommy. It’s a sport I’m very partial to. I told you it would be more divine with you than anybody. You’re wrong about my not changing. I’m not remotely the same as I was two weeks ago. To begin with, I’m happy for the first time in God knows how long. Maybe truly happy for the first time ever. It started the first moment I really looked at you, so you’d have no way of knowing what I was like before.”

Tom looked at him, and his heart accelerated. The chestnut wave fell across his forehead. The eyes slanted. The corners of his mouth curled up impishly. There was a change. He was no longer the worldly Walter Makin he had first met. He was a thrilling, naked, ageless faun. Tom swallowed with difficulty. He had surrendered all of himself to him and felt wonderfully whole. He leaned his naked body against him and brushed the side of his face with his lips. “Darling Walter. Beloved Uncle Walt. I’m going to make you happy all our lives. We can express our love with our bodies. Your cock in me. It doesn’t sound like much, but it joins us completely. Did you know I’d find out I needed it?”

“I knew we’d find what we wanted in each other. We had to. We always will.”

“You must be gay to believe that, darling. I do. You see what I mean? Only a gay would talk about love and forever in the same breath these days. It’s the cockeyed vision of total lucidity.”

Another dreamlike day passed and another. For no particular reason, except for the feeling that if he didn’t do it now he never would, Walter decided he could no longer postpone calling Clara. He waited till mid afternoon, when by her time she would almost surely be home getting ready for the evening. He carried the phone to the sofa and made Tom sit beside him. They had been making love and were in their dressing gowns. Tom opened Walter’s all the way down the front. He tucked his legs under him and put his arms around Walter and lay his head on his chest.

“I’m listening to your heart beating. I won’t move a muscle. I can suck your cock from here if you should happen to want a little light diversion.”

They chuckled, and Walter moved an arm around his shoulders. He wedged the phone into the sofa and dialed with one hand and took a deep breath and waited. A male voice answered, probably the pretty new young thing. He asked for Clara.

“Is this Mr. Makin?” The voice sounded flustered.

“It is.”

After a good deal of clicking and popping, Clara was on the line. “There you are, dearest,” she said briskly. “I thought perhaps I was never going to hear from you again.”

He was grateful for her instinct to attack. It was just what he needed to save him from any possibility of getting maudlin. “David gave me the impression that you had a pretty good idea where I was. I knew you’d find me if you wanted me.”

“He knew?” she snapped.

“I told him when I got here.”

“Well, what have you called about?”

“I thought it was about time we were in touch. I didn’t want to make it any more awkward than necessary.”

“How very considerate of you. I’ve had to tell this ridiculous story about your being sick. I’ve considered letting it be known that you’d gone out of your mind and had to be put away. I suppose everybody on the Coast knows you’re thriving.”

“No, I haven’t seen a soul.”

“The boys will be home in a week. What am I supposed to tell them? Fortunately, they’ll be leaving almost immediately for Hopie’s ranch, but they’ll doubtless notice your absence.”

“I don’t see why we don’t tell everybody as much of the truth as you like. I’m here with a well-known writer. I’m interested in his work, and I’m planning to put on his first play. I’ll be working out here for the foreseeable future.”

“And what’s the rest of the truth?”

“I’m very much in love, Clarry.” He refrained from adding “for the first time in my life.” Tom hugged him closer. Clara made a sound of contempt in her throat that came winging across the nation.