Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 10:14:32 +0200
From: Julian Obedient <julian.obedient@gmail.com>
Subject: A Laughing String

Suffering for the pleasure of others is nothing new to me. I have even
begun to find a certain equine pleasure in it.  --  Leo Tolstoy,
"Strider: The Story of a Horse,"

And like a laughing string whereon mad fingers play amidst a place of
stone, be secret and exult because of all things known that is most
difficult. -- W.B. Yeats, "To A Friend whose Work Has Come to
Nothing."

				*   *   *

Nick Basin bit his tongue and sucked in his breath. He touched the tip
of his colored pencil to his lower lip.

He quickly withdrew it and fashioned the wings of the angel hovering
above the sleeping body poised as if to fold that body into its winged
embrace. It was an image that had haunted him for years. He daydreamed
about that angel and saw it in his sleep. He often imagined it raising
its head as if to speak to him but it always remained silent and
ineffably sad.

Snow was falling outside and he remembered how it had been when he was
a child and his older brother had pushed him head down into the
already-fallen, by-then-soiled snow and pressed him by the neck, and
forced him to take some of the dirty snow into his mouth when he
gasped for breath.

Maury was older now, selling real estate in Missouri, the father of
two girls and two boys and dominated by a sharp-nosed wife. Nick knew
he often wished he could leave her, but he was painfully weak. He was,
poor guy, a coward. With the boys he remained a bully still. It was
sad more than it was angering. But it was angering too, for the boys
were being scarred.

With the girls he tried to be the ideal male, stern but loving freely
when obeyed. The girls, too, were being scarred. And it was worse than
angering to see him with them. He was smug in his petty vanity.

Maury had not found the quiet center in himself. But Nick had located
his many years ago, and despite the vicissitudes of fortune, lived
there always.

Nick lived on the Jersey side of the Hudson on the twenty-seventh
floor and had a magnificent view of the Manhattan shore line. He was
forty-three, five foot eleven, a hundred fifty-three pounds. He was
lean but he had carved his body handsomely through years of gym
discipline. He still had all his hair, and it still was thick and dark
brown. His well-trimmed moustache, however, had traces of gray in it.

Every morning as he shaved, he wondered if he ought not to shave it
off. But he had not done that yet. Although he had not been with a man
in many years, he still imagined the possibility, and for that reason,
he kept it. It was for his own delight when he gazed at himself,
however, that he kept his legs and chest hairless and trimmed his
pubic patch into a neatly manicured triangle. His eyes were dark and
set deep beneath strong brows. His features were regular. His lips
were full; his jaw, square. His fingers were delicate, the nails
professionally cut and polished with a clear lacquer. His hands were
strong.

It was not because of his looks that he was alone but because his soul
was quiet and serious and closed.

But his heart was open. He was generous to friends and kind to
everyone. He worked in the photo archives of a national picture
magazine and had published a coffee table book on Vincente Minnelli
which had enjoyed some success.

He had been to Paris and to Prague and to London and to Vienna.

In Paris many years before, he had spent what he thought of as his
honeymoon with Larry. They'd embraced on the great marble concourse at
Trocadero with the Eiffel Tower not far in the distance, across the
Seine, against the infinite sky. They danced close there in each
other's arms, in the center of the plaza, to an inaudible music that
was mutual to them as tourists passed by furiously snapping pictures
of that emblem of endless longing and impossible desire which looms
above the Field of Mars.

In London, Nick came down with a fever after they had gone around,
non-stop, visiting swank shops, going to the theater, drinking in the
gay pubs at Earl's Court and sheltering from the rain on a chilly,
foggy day, inadequately dressed, on the portico of the British Museum.

At Faberge earlier, Nick had held the Russian Imperial "Diamond
Trellis" Easter Egg in his palm. The proprietor had lifted it from the
purple velvet pillow upon which it customarily rested and delicately
placed it there.

Nick spent three days afterwards in bed. Larry sat at his bedside
nearly the whole time in their little bed sitting room. Mrs. Pruallen,
a lean, washed out widow with a shrill voice and an impossible
cheeriness, brought tea throughout the day and Horlicks at night, and
expressed her nervous assurance that everything would be well.

She's right out of Dickens, Nick said in awe.

As he changed Nick's sweat-soaked flannel pajamas for the last time,
after the fever had broken, helping him into the new black silk ones
he had gone to Harrod's and bought for him, Larry caressed him by the
scrotum and said, This is my Imperial Egg.

I worship you, Nick said, choked by an emotion that could have
suffocated him had Larry not brought his mouth to his and taken his
breath away.

But now Larry was dead, like so many others. And Nick's soul was closed.

When Nick finished the drawing he saw he had achieved something he
never yet had done. The angel gazed at the sleeping body below, and
Nick saw tenderness in that gaze he had never before been able to
represent. A great feeling of sleepiness overcame him. He yawned and
stretched and gathered up his pencils, laid them neatly in their box,
centered the drawing on his drafting table and switched off the lamp
that hung above his work space.

He stripped down until he was only wearing his black silky microfiber
boxer briefs. At the bathroom sink he brushed his teeth. Before bed he
did his nightly routine of thirty-five push-ups and thirty-five
crunches.

He got into bed still wearing his boxers, pulled the quilt over
himself, cupped one hand over his genitals, lay the other upon his
breast, and fell asleep.

He dreamed he was in Prague, sitting above the city, watching the
church steeples catch the morning sun, while bells rang out the first
calls to early Mass. In the Hradcanske Square he saw the changing of
the castle guard. The Vltava became a ribbon of apricot and silver.
The metallic sounds of streetcars above the cobblestone streets, and
the rumbling of the metro beneath them, provided the treble and the
bass notes of the city's music. In a delicate saucer on the marble
topped café table, there was a cup of coffee. A sweet roll waited on a
pale blue plate fringed like the cup and saucer with a wreath in gold
leaf circling its edge. Beside it lay a silver service and a sparkling
linen napkin.

He was not alone. Larry was there beside him and he reached out to
touch him. Nick extended his hand to take his but he was not there and
the bells of Prague were banging in his ears and that woke him.

He rose and saw the hawks that nested in the tower across the way
swooping in arcs through the air, presumably in search of their
breakfast.

He showered and took some breakfast, too, in just a fresh pair of
boxer briefs. He dressed, casually for work, but trim: pale Dresden
gray-green slacks, a pale red cotton shirt without a collar, brown
suede clogs, a silver chain around his neck, a four-button Edwardian
jacket he left unbuttoned.

The sun was bright and glistered on the fresh snow. He pulled a brown
leather belted overcoat from the closet, checked that the papers he
needed were in his briefcase and set out for the tube station to
Manhattan.

After work, he trudged over to Madison Avenue and took the 4 train
down to Union Square. In an old brownstone off Thirteenth Street,
Support-in-Action occupied the top two floors. He had begun to
volunteer at S I A a year after Larry died and had been there ever
since. Easy going, cheerful, attentive, friendly, non-judgmental,
perhaps slightly repressed in the expression of his feelings in a
public sort of way, he was someone everyone trusted, relied on,
confided in. Over time, in fact he had been offered a paid
administrative position and took on, in addition to his face to face
work with clients, much of the work it entailed, but declined the
salary.

I have enough, more than enough, he apologized.

It was almost six years ago now that he had been introduced to
hypnosis and first gone into trance.

He met Ross Barnstone at Crazy Benny's in SOHO on a Friday evening
after his shift at the S I A. He was on his second vodka martini,
sitting at the bar and he was thinking of Larry again, both of their
first years together, their long honeymoon, he called it, and of the
bad years that followed when Larry started coming home stinking drunk
after long nights out...how he had walked out on Larry when the torment
and the teasing and the betrayals got to be too much, how he stayed
with him when he got sick and there was no one else around for him.

Ross had been looking at him from across the way, and realized that
Nick was very far away.

Hey, he said, approaching and taking the stool next to his. Got room
for anybody else in there?

Nick roused himself from his reverie and blushed.

The pull of the tide of memory, he said.

It can drag you far out into the deep and away from the shore of the
present, Ross said. Believe me. I know.

It can be a drag, Nick said, smiling apologetically.

What are you drinking? Ross asked. Vodka martini, no? Davy, he said, two more.

Hey, Nick said.

It's ok, Ross said putting his hand on Nick's arm to prevent his going
for his wallet.

Thanks, Nick said. The next one is mine.

I think I know what you're going through, Ross said after Davy had set
down their drinks.

What? Nick said.

I think I understand where you are, Ross repeated.

Yeah?

Yeah. You've lost someone.

Does it show?

I know what it's like.

It's very common these days.

How long has it been?

Seven years.

That strong.

What can I say? I'm a faithful puppy.

When Benny's closed they trudged through the snow to Ross' loft on
Mercer Street, frozen despite their parkas, and Ross made Irish coffee
and they sat like two old gentlemen drinking that powerful brew and
contemplating the orange glow of embers dying in the fireplace as they
spoke of their dead husbands.

Come to bed with me, Ross said rising. It is late.

Naked under down comforters, Ross took Nick in his arms and their
flesh warmed each other's flesh.

I have not, Nick said softly in his new friend's ear, since Larry.

I will be gentle, Ross said, caressing his slim chest.

It is more than that. Although I want to, I cannot. My ability has gone.

I understand, Ross said, kissing him. Go to sleep in my arms.

And quietly, gratefully, Nick fell down into a dreamless slumber.

Are you familiar with hypnosis? Ross asked him in the morning as he
sat facing him in bed cross-legged as they sipped their mugs of
coffee.

I have often thought of it, Nick said.

But have you ever yourself been hypnotized, experienced the trance-state?

No, I haven't, Nick said.

Would you like to?

Yes, Nick admitted I would.

They took a cab together that evening to the Upper West Side. They got
out at 78th and Broadway and passed under the great arch and through
the black iron gate of the block-long Apthorp, the stately Renaissance
Revival apartment house with an atrium at its center. Every Saturday
evening Ross told Nick a group of students gathered there in Franz
Vyvyan's penthouse to learn about hypnosis, be hypnotized, and meet
like-minded folk.

Nick struggled to control the trembling excitement that made him
shiver in the taxi. He was overawed by the carved figures in the
limestone as they approached the building: graces and cupids.

Dr. Vyvyan was a pleasant looking man with graying hair and a
well-trimmed salt and pepper beard. He dressed in tan corduroy
trousers, loafers and a dusty Dresden green turtle neck with a kind of
multi-colored Navajo vest hanging loose over it.

Within minutes after the circle of young men had gathered in
comfortable chairs around him in a room scented with the delicate
scent of the aromatic candles -- which were the only source of
illumination -- all of them, guided by Vyvyan's mellifluous voice were
drifting downwards into a delicious trance, deeper and deeper,
surrendering to the voice they knew they wanted to obey until they
were feeling a gentle relaxation and their minds were empty and they
slept beneath the gates of trance and entered into the state of trance
and surrendered...as they went deeper and deeper, surrendered to
Vyvyan's seductive induction. It felt so good to obey the voice that
gently pulsed inside them.

When Nick realized he was asleep, he awoke and saw the roomful of
young men like himself rousing themselves, yawning and stretching. And
he saw Dr. Vyvyan rising from his seat and, taking a cigar out of the
pocket of his vest, light it. And although he did not usually like the
smell of cigars, there was something so gently fragrant about this one
that he took a deep breath and felt a convulsion of gentle pleasure
twist the inner stem of his body. And when Vyvyan offered him one he
gratefully accepted it and smoked it with pleasure.

It seemed quite natural to address him as Sir. Everyone did. And to
perform the little tasks Vyvyan requested of him, bringing hors
d'oeuvres to the table or clearing the ash trays and rinsing the
dishes. There was something erotic about it. And although he had just
met Dr. Vyvyan, as he was leaving with Ross and an older man whom he
had found himself increasingly attracted to, when the hypnotist bid
him good-bye, inviting him to return the following Saturday, it was
not at all odd to kiss the hand Vyvyan extended, bringing it to his
lips as he shook it.

Reginal Hox was the older man.

Where do you live? he asked Nick as they stood outside the Apthorp on
Broadway.

Across the river, he said pointing west.

A wordless look from the gentleman.

In New Jersey.

Surely you're not going to go back to New Jersey tonight?

Why not? Nick asked, smiling at the inverted provincialism that
commonly met the news of where he lived.

Because I should prefer it if you'd accept my hospitality for the night.

That's very kind, Nick said.

No strings attached, of course.

Thank you, said Nick, who found the man compelling.

No strings, he repeated with a wink, although, a few chains if you
like, he added, and then laughed at his own joke.

He hailed a cab and the three got in. They let Ross out in SOHO and
continued on to Brooklyn Heights.

Reginal Hox was a soft spoken, intelligent man originally from
Argentina, who had been living in the States since his boyhood. When
they were alone in the cab, taking Nick's hand, he said he was an
investment broker by day and a skin trader by night,.

Nick sighed and felt his body grow limp, and when Reginal leaned over
and kissed him, he yielded softly, inhaling his smoky breath, melting.

When he awoke the next morning beside the older man, he felt a
tingling throughout his body that was new to him. The sun was shinning
through the bay window. From the table in the dining room as they took
their coffee, he could see the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance.

I'm sorry," he said as Reginal sipped his coffee.

No need to be, the stronger man said tenderly. I don't need you for
that. You don't need to be hard for me to be inside you, do you?

No, Sir, I don't, Nick said. Thank you.

And you liked it when I was inside you?

More than I can say.

Then let there be no more of this foolishness. You know exactly what I
expect of you.

Yes, Sir, I do, Nick said, looking into his  eyes.

Come here, Reginal said.

Nick replaced his coffee cup in its saucer and walked over to him.

Reginal took him in his arms. Tell me, he said, what you want.

I want to please you. I want to be pleasing to you.

And what will you do after I dismiss you, he said, stroking Nick's
lips with his thumb, when you no longer are pleasing to me? Or
necessary.

Will there be such a day? Nick asked.

Yes, there will, Reginal replied as he gently teased one of Nick's
bare nipples.

A current of desire shot through Nick. He could not tell if it was
because his nipple was being teased or because of how he responded to
the idea of the suffering he would experience when this man abandoned
him.

I want you inside me now so badly, I don't know how I will live if you
do not take me.

You will suffer. That will be the last way you will be pleasing to me,
after you have given me every other kind of pleasure. You will give me
the greatest pleasure: you will find it unendurable not to see me, not
to hear me, not to feel me touching you, not to feel my strokes. But
you will have to endure it, and you will know it pleases me that you
are in pain, and that will make it worse. You will hate me and you
will love me and you will hate that you love me, but you will not be
able to stop loving me and desiring me and wishing that you could
still be pleasing to me. You will understand nothing of what has
happened or why, and that will only increase your suffering.

All the while, Reginal punctuated his words, which he whispered
breathily, blew them, really, into Nick's ear, with gentle strokes
against the side of Nick's neck using his long, warm, soft, strong
finger tips.

Reginal was a gentle master and a persuasive master, and Nick enjoyed
being hypnotized by him and guided through greater and greater depths
of a sleep he had never experienced before. It was a dream state
without the dream content. It was a heightened awareness of nothing to
be aware of. It was a profound loss of himself and of sensation.

He longed to feel it when Reginal touched him, but he had become desensitized.

You are ready, Reginal told him then, as he hovered over him, holding
him by the eyes as he slowly moved in and out of him. You are ready
for the whip. It will let you feel again. You will love the whip and
beg for it and eagerly kiss it when I put it to your lips before and
after each flogging.

For a moment he was afraid, and then he could not remember of what he
had been afraid. His mind was empty.

Reginal gave him thigh-high, calf-hugging, high-heel vinyl boots, to
wear, and low rise short leather shorts.

He had his nipples pierced and tiny silver barbell pins inserted
through each one. A leather choker circled his throat and iron
wristbands clamped his wrists. His eyes were lined with coal black.
His hair was cropped quite short.

His wrists were shackled to a bolt suspended from the ceiling, and his
feet spread and cuffed to spikes in the floor. Reginal used a
triple-stranded chamois whip with an ebony handle. He began by
caressing Nick's body with the whip and then intensified the strokes
until he was crying. And afterwards in tears, Nick put his lips to the
ebony handle and worshipfully kissed it and looking into Reginal's
eyes, said, Thank you, Sir.

After almost a year, it was as Reginal had said it would be...almost.
There was one difference. After he refused to see Nick anymore, the
pain Nick experienced was not for him. The pain of loss was still for
Larry. He had been entranced by Reginal, and he had surrendered to
him, but Larry, he worshipped.

And because of that, finally, the angel had appeared to him in a
drawing, like a dream, and although ineffably sad, had conveyed the
mystery to him. It was the mystery he needed to penetrate in order to
endure. It was a mystery that granted him the knowledge, akin to
magic, that became his because he had been true to his suffering.

When joy is irretrievable, what pains the senses and the flesh may,
within the soul, be turned to pleasure.


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