An Idol for Others (57 page)

Tom gazed into Jerry’s eyes. “I guess we really do want each other, don’t we? I guess we can safely say we all want each other. As long as you remember that Walter and I are madly in love with each other, I don’t see how it can do anybody any harm.”

“I adore both of you,” Jerry said, his eyes held by Tom’s. “There’s no secret about that.”

Tom laughed. “Our messages are getting through loud and clear.” He stood and hitched up his pants and looked at Walter with a smile. “OK, darling?”

Walter chortled. “You’re a monster.”

“I better go concentrate on dinner.”

Walter watched him go. He felt a bit shaken but not disagreeably so. Tom apparently intended to pursue his plan and could probably make it make sense. He rose and replaced him beside Jerry.

“He’s a wonderful guy,” Jerry said with more unmannered sincerity than he had yet managed.

“I think so. I suppose this is a bit peculiar.”

“What is, sweetie?”

“Oh, nothing.” Jerry was probably accustomed to threesomes and foursomes or any multiple thereof. “You and Tom look sweet together. I’m glad you don’t use much makeup on your eyes.”

“I should’ve known you’d notice. Do you think he did?”

“Probably not. You do it very well.”

Jerry put a hand between Walter’s legs and exerted pressure. “I’m still trying, sweetie.”

“You may yet succeed. But don’t try when he’s not here. You can do anything you like when he is.”

“Really? He said something of the same sort. It’s an interesting switch. Quite amazing.” He withdrew his hand.

“We’re amazing people.” Walter talked to him about Tom’s play, and Jerry listened and asked questions as if he found him spellbinding. It was his particular charm. Tom returned and announced that dinner was ready. Jerry rose and went to him and held his hand. “We were talking about you. We missed you. I made a pass at your lover, but I’m beginning to feel lost with one of you without the other. I guess it’s because you’re so right together.’ He turned to Walter. “You don’t mind if I think he’s as sexy as you are? It’s as if you were the same person.”

Walter stood and went to them and kissed Tom. “Is that it? Are we the same person?”

“Of course.”

“That’s good.” He moved between them and put his arms around them, and they went in to dinner. It was excellent, featuring braised sweetbreads expertly prepared. They drank wine copiously and grew quite merry. Walter was proud to note that Jerry didn’t once refer to himself or any other male in the feminine gender. They carried wine back to the fireplace and built a larger fire. Tom turned out most of the lights, and they sat in a row on the sofa, Jerry in the middle by mutual unspoken agreement. Walter’s arm lay along Tom’s, behind Jerry’s head, and they gripped each other from time to time. Jerry took off all his ornaments.

“They do make such a clatter,” he said. “I wonder why I even bother with them.”

“They suit you,” Tom said.

“I suppose they do, but I’m not sure they should. You two look so divine with nothing.” Jerry held heir knees and let his fingers stray teasingly over them.

They talked through their second bottle of after-dinner wine and got a good start on their third. They were beginning to get repetitious without being aware of it. Jerry wanted to know more about how Walter and Tom had got together in spite of Walter’s resistance to homosexuality.

“I pretty much worked it all out with you, sonny,” Walter said, “so I was ready for him when he turned up. I still wasn’t completely convinced I could fall in love with a man. I guess I had some sort of block that you two haven’t had. At least I have my sons. They mean more to me than you can imagine.”

“Are they as dishy as you?”

“Tommy’s met one of them. Ask him.”

Tom was seized with a fit of laughter. “You bastard,” he gasped.

“Writers are often incoherent,” Walter pointed out. “We must make allowances.”

Jerry’s laughter tinkled. “You two. What a divine evening. I think I’m a wee bit tipsy.” Once more he slipped a hand up the inside of Walter’s thighs; this time Walter made a sound of assent.

Reticence was forgotten. They all had their arms around each other in a close triangular embrace. “Do you think we should ask this pretty baby to spend the night?” Tom inquired.

“I don’t suppose he should drive in this condition.” They all looked at each other and leaned their heads together and burst out laughing.

Walter tipped Jerry out flat on his back across his lap and got a grip on the bottom of his pullover and peeled it over his head, baring his son’s hairless torso. Tom’s hands moved up over it, and Jerry dropped his on them and pressed them to his breast.

“Oh, Thomas. Your hands are fabulous. They’re strong and yet so gentle.” He moved them down over him and folded them on the swelling mound of his crotch.

There was no doubt about where Tom’s attention would be directed for the moment. This was the part Walter expected to be hard to take. He lifted Jerry’s shoulders and gathered him to him and took his eager mouth. All his paternal-erotic tenderness flowed to this man who willfully remained a child. He felt his hips lift and heard the light sound of his trousers being pulled off. Their kiss deepened, and Jerry’s arms tightened around him, and he moaned and shuddered against him. Walter steeled himself to look at what was taking place and drew back and surveyed the shapely body of his naked son.

Tom had worked his way down and held Jerry’s sex upright. His open mouth moved over it. Jerry’s pubic hair looked as if it had been trimmed into a small neat triangle from which the astonishing masculinity of his sex lifted to Tom’s face. Walter gazed transfixed at the lips and tongue paying obeisance to his son. He supposed being slightly drunk made the sight bearable. Jerry lay in his arms, his head back, his lips parted, moaning ecstatically, little shudders of delight passing through him. Tom’s pleasure was so open and unabashed that Walter couldn’t help being proud of having a son that Tom wanted. He ran a hand over Jerry’s chest and belly, feeling keenly aware of being father to the flesh he was caressing. Tom reached for his hand and folded it around Jerry’s cock. Walter was on the verge of orgasm. He hadn’t dreamed it was possible to achieve such depths of intimacy with another being. Through Jerry, he and Tom were growing together, growing into each other. Tom lifted his head, and they stared at each other intently.

“It’s almost you,” he murmured. “Get undressed, darling. I’ve got to see you naked together.” Somehow Tom was making it all seem natural and right.

Walter extricated himself from Jerry and laid him back on the sofa and rose with a slight lurch, and his clothes seemed to drop from him. When he turned back, Tom was still dressed, but Jerry had got his clothes open down the front and they were locked together, writhing in a kiss. Walter leaned over and lifted Jerry’s nearest arm. They immediately released each other, and Jerry let himself be pulled up into Walter’s embrace. His hair was beautiful in lustrous disarray. Walter ran his hands through it and turned him in his arms and held his slight back against his chest. Jerry swayed his buttocks against him.

Tom pulled himself onto his knees and leaned against the back of the sofa, surveying them. His face looked bruised with desire, and his hair tumbled over his brows. He was coming out of his clothes as if he had been raped. “God, yes,” he muttered. “Come here.”

Walter held Jerry at his side and moved closer to the sofa. Tom shrugged off his shirt as he edged forward on his knees. His eyes were riveted on taut skin, swelling veins, sinew, muscle, whatever it was. The staff of life. Two. They loomed enormously toward him in the unsteady light of the leaping flames. Swelling with power. The focus of all his desire. One was father to the other, the father clearly master.

He slowly reached for them and brushed them with his fingertips and watched them lift and sway to each other and touch, the great thrust of Walter’s power conferring power on his son. He clung to Walter’s hips and lowered himself and stretched his mouth for him. Walter gripped his hair and thrust himself into him. Tom groaned in an ecstasy of submission. It was what he had been longing for. He felt the power newly unleashed in Walter, no longer confined by his sweet restraint, fierce and intoxicating. He somehow tore off his shoes while Walter’s power swelled in him and strained his jaws. Walter pulled him up, and he kicked his feet free of his trousers while Walter held him close, rough with passion.

“Now, darling. Take me. Take us both. We’re both yours. Take us.”

“You’re incredible, baby.” Walter’s arms gripped him, and he kissed him hard on the mouth. “Come on.”

They moved together to the bedroom, jostling each other, all of them careening when one of them underwent some vagary of balance. They fell into bed together. Walter drew the two slim bodies to him, and they rolled about together, laughing wildly.

Walter seemed to enter a dark tunnel of sensual rapture from which he emerged in the shower. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d got there. The wine had really caught up with him. He knew he had taken Tom and had encouraged him to suck Jerry’s cock while he was doing it. He had held Tom in his moment of climax so that Jerry could take him into his mouth. The world of exclusive male sexuality that he had avoided all his life held back no more secrets from him now. He had enjoyed it all and felt more at ease with his body than he ever had. Tom had pulled off some sort of miracle. He hadn’t attempted to disguise his attraction to Jerry but neither had he ever made him feel that his primary attention had been diverted; the current between them had dominated everything they had done and had run strong and hot between them. The shower was reviving him. He wanted to get back to them. God knows what they’d be up to while he was gone.

When he reentered the bedroom, Tom and Jerry were tangled together in a complicated knot, whispering and giggling together, their slim, long-limbed bodies interlaced. He stopped and studied them and felt an opening up of love for them both. He knew how they felt in each other’s arms. His imagination summoned up his small gallery of partners–cheerful Harry, angelic Philip, grave Mark–and his heart contracted with little spasms of love as he saw them in moments of physical perfection. One by one, he had blocked them out as exceptions to his ordinary needs, but he knew at last that the mystery of male union had always dominated his life.

As soon as they saw him, the rearranged themselves on the bed to welcome him. Tom stretched out on his back with total abandon, his head on Jerry’s stomach, Jerry’s revived erection nestled against his cheek.

“We’ve decided we’re both slightly lesbian but madly in love with the same man. The role-switching has worn me out.” Tom lifted Jerry’s cock and moved it over his face. They burst into laughter. “Come on, Gerald, let’s show him a willing harem.”

They lifted themselves and reached for him and pulled him down to them and made love to all of his body with their mouths. Walter stroked arms and legs and backs and chests and bellies and tumbled them over and kissed leaping cocks.

They slept, Tom wrapped around Walter as usual, Jerry stretched out beside them. Walter woke up in broad daylight in an empty bed. He reached out for Tom in the first moments of awakening, and it took him another minute to piece together the events of the previous evening. Had any of it really happened? Hot sweat broke out all over him, and his heart began to beat heavily. Taking stock, he couldn’t find the residue of ugliness he assumed it must have left. Memory told him that it had contained an excitement of discovery that transcended sexual excitement. He knew he would be speechless with embarrassment when he saw them. Where were they? Had Jerry already fled in shame? No, not Jerry. He would have accepted it as normal. But surely Tom must be suffering some remorse. Why? They had done shocking things together and had loved it.

He chortled and grabbed a dressing gown and tossed it aside. He wanted to show himself to Tom the way he was. Tom wouldn’t mind if he gave Jerry another look.

He went out the door that had been left open. He had reached the entry area before he heard them. He stopped abruptly and listened. He changed direction and forced himself forward on legs that suddenly felt numb.

The door to the office bedroom was open. He moved to it with difficulty and put a hand on the frame for support and looked in. They were tangled together on the bed. Tom was taking his son. The cries were ecstatic. Tom’s body was an arc of power, riding Jerry hard. A great shout of outrage gathered in Walter’s throat. He turned and stumbled and almost fell and rushed blindly back to their room.

He closed the door and fell into bed and pulled the covers around him. All his body trembled with rage. He would wait till they were through and throw the little whore out of the house. He would tell Tom what he thought of him and clear out himself. Even better, he could leave with Jerry. Thoughts of revenge raged through his mind and gave him the illusion that righteous wrath was carrying him beyond the possibility of being hurt. He was sick of the whole thing. They would end up living in a male brothel. Home. They had been drunk last night. Tom wasn’t drunk this morning. He would smash his goddamned face in and leave before he wrecked his whole life. He despised him. He was in love with him. He was lost. He had made his bid for life and freedom and had nowhere left to turn. He was a victim of the flaw he had always suspected must be there, the flaw of a love unsanctioned and undefined by any law. How could two people make their own rules and expect them to mean anything? The rules were there to be broken. Tom had practically said as much, but he hadn’t listened. He had wanted to believe that Tom offered something real and true. Fidelity between men was a farce. Tom had driven him and broken him. Now he was alone. Misery engulfed him.

He hypnotized himself into a sort of drugged semiconscious torpor that didn’t exclude his misery but made it almost bearable. He heard the door burst open, and he was immediately awake and trembling violently with some emotion he didn’t attempt to identify. Tom was with him. He would beat the shit out of him.

“Hey, darling,” Tom greeted him exuberantly. “Wake up. We’ve been waiting for you. Are you going to sleep all day? Jerry and I have–”