Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:00:20 +0200
From: Julian Obedient <julian.obedient@gmail.com>
Subject: Love and Power IX

And if, Giovanni said in a whisper, if I succeed now, despite having
put myself at a disadvantage, if I succeed now in getting you back
despite your resistance, that won't be something to spit on.

No, Ted answered, it won't be something to spit on. But look at you.
You are not the same man who transformed me, who changed my
life...twice. When you disciplined me and enslaved me so completely that
you could transform me. And when you threw me out. That was the real
test. I was a credit to you then because I got through it. I proved
that I was worthy of the interest you took in me. I went all the way
down and I came back up. If anything was, that was proof that there
must have been something about me originally that made you want to
have me, even if just to reshape me. You saw something valuable in me
that I was suppressing and you gave it life.

What did you giving me in return?

I had nothing to give but whatever you could take. And then you
stopped wanting to take anything. That made me feel I was nothing.
Then it was not you but me that had to bring me to life.

And now?

Now, friendship, if you are equal to it.

I'm not ready for this, Giovanni said.

Ted shook his head. Everything turned out differently from what you
bargained for.

Giovanni nodded in painful recognition.

It doesn't matter, he said.

Ted said nothing.

•

Giovanni did not succeed in mastering Ted. He could not reassert the
dominance he once had. Had he been able to, he could have basked in
pride and self-contentment and preserved the idea of himself that
generated the power he exerted. He would have felt confident again,
especially if he been able to deliver Ted and consequently gotten free
of Bud Hournet.

Giovanni did not, actually, care much about Ted. He would have given
him to Hournet to keep, gratefully, with no hesitation, if that ended
it, as he believed it would -- just as once he had replaced Ted, at
Farrell's insistence, with a boy Farrell wanted Giovanni to train. But
it went wrong and Farrell took the boy back.

Ted's progress since Giovanni had turned him out, in fact, bothered
Giovanni. It made him jealous. He was jealous of the person Ted had
become. He was his successful rival and the force that disempowered
him. Giovanni was frustrated at his own growing lack of power, at his
own fall. He had overreached.

•

They were gathered, the three of them along the shore of the Hudson in
Riverside Park, Ilia, Ted, and Philip. The late winter snow that comes
always as a surprise during the latter half of March in New York City
was just beginning as heavy flakes began to tumble earthward.

What a strange way for that to end, Philip said.

I doubt it has ended, Ilia said as they began walking out of the park.

My guess is you are right, Ted nodded in agreement.

Giovanni is not the colossus that he was, he continued. It's sad. His
skin has lost the copper glow with which it used to burn. The force of
his muscles does not break through his clothes anymore. Taxi! He's
struggling not to be unsure of himself. He longs for me in a way he
never showed before. He is ashamed, Taxi, that he does not project the
image he once did, but he is unable to acknowledge the reality of his
fall, so the shame is inadmissible and it stays bottled up inside him.

One stopped, and as the three of them climbed into the back, Ilia
asked Ted, How do you feel about that?

Ted bobbed his head forward birdlike and compressed his lips. Philip
sat between them.

About what?

His interest in you.

I would not send him into exile, Ted said, turning to look at Ilia,
but I'd have to be convinced he was sincere and trustworthy.

And you're not?

Not so much. I don't think Giovanni has much control over what he can
do anymore, if he ever really did. He is not a free agent. I don't
know how much of a hold Bud Hournet has on him or what it is exactly.
But Hournet is a guy who likes to have a hold on as many people as he
can. That's why we got him mad.

And still do, Philip said.

By the time the cab let them off there was a thick fur of snow draping
everything and carpeting the now deserted streets of lower Manhattan.

Once they'd gotten inside and stomped the snow off and gotten out of
their over clothes, Ilia brought some rum to a simmer and tinkered
with it, adding cloves, lemon slices, pieces of cut up apple, and
brown sugar. They warmed their palms around the cups and inhaled fiery
fumes. They sipped and held the sweet, tart, tongue-teasing taste of
the hot liquor in their mouths. They swallowed. Fire spread from the
heart. They embraced each other and did not let go.

•

If you don't like it, you can leave, Bud Hournet told Giovanni. What a
lot of fucking nerve. I ask kindly for a favor and you get miffed,
begrudging me what you owe me.

I owe you?

Goddam right you owe me.

It's fair payback, Hournet explained. You are bound to do it after
what I was able to do for you after...your fall.

He spoke the words with an ironic dismissal of their very subject.

You have contempt for me, Giovanni said.

I always have, even when I was bailing you out following your bust up
with Malcolm Farrell. You were a fool who thought he was hot shit.

When things got really bad, maybe going-to-jail-for-cooking-the-books
bad, I remind you, I made a couple of phone calls on your behalf and
all the potential...pressure – that really is not the right word -- that
you might have experienced was vaporized.

Why did you do it? Giovanni said.

I thought you understood power, but, apparently, you don't. Power is
not a blow job. Start with that and maybe you can get somewhere.

•

I personally don't like rejection, Hournet said, and don't want to be
around people who are into it.

Giovanni looked at him stupidly. He had allowed Hournet to strip him
to the waist and he stood at attention as Hournet spoke.

What I mean, Hournet explained, was that it has never sat well with me
that your friend, Blum, refused his help when it would have been of
great use to the company.

Hournet clenched his teeth when he thought of Ted.

And then this kike goes and writes about it and becomes a national
figure because of his piece in Rolling Stone, and then does a book
about environmental damage – he said the words as if there were no
such concept in reality -- with some fucking pornographer.

It is more than I can stomach.

Giovanni maintained his posture and stared straight ahead, his eyes
fixed on a large kodachrome of an imposing pelican flying gracefully
in a bright sky over a dazzling bay, to the right of an oil rig.

Why am I telling you this? Hournet said. Because you are my agent! I
want Ted Blum to submit knowingly and voluntarily and obediently to
public humiliation. You got him to that point once; you can do it
again.

Giovanni spoke without breaking his pose.

He's not the same, he said, strongly but without expression.

Bullshit! People are always the same. The essential person does not
change. I want his life messed up. I want it made unbearable. I can
make that happen by thrusting you back into his world. I want you to
make everything distasteful that had been satisfying to him. I want
you to bring him confusion; I want you to blight his joy; I want you
to make him long for something that he will wish he did not want. I
want him groveling.

He never groveled, Giovanni said. When he belonged to me, he
worshipped me. I did not destroy him. I gave him my power. He returned
it by his devotion. He never groveled.

Your power, Hournet scoffed.

Power does not come, Giovanni continued, emboldened by derision, from
seeing someone grovel. It comes from seeing somebody becoming
stronger, prouder, more handsome and more intensely attractive because
he worships you.

The way you worshipped Malcolm Farrell and did whatever he told you,
including sacrificing Ted for the sake of a boy he was fixated on and
wanted to impress.

I cringe when I think of it now, Giovanni reported, but without a hint
of cringing as he continued to stand at attention.

Well, I want to see him, Hournet said in regard to Ted, cringing,
groveling, frightened, humiliated, and debased.

•

He never did see that. The erotics of Ted's desire had been sublimated.

Ted was at liberty because he had found his work. Work called to him
with unrelenting and irrefutable insistence. It was a force beyond
him, and he could not live without it. It was like love. It gave him
something to live for. It flooded him with power. It allowed him the
pleasure of extending himself and fulfilling himself by effecting
things.

There were things to protect, things belonging to nature and to
culture. He was impelled to champion honest words inside a torrent of
lies. He had to oppose every calumny of the spirit with a humane
vision.

I have not stopped being worshipful, Ted explained when Giovanni asked
him why he had.

But I cannot get you to worship me as you once did?

A force in his soul would be missing if he did that, Ted explained.

•

You failed me, Hournet said quietly but with a biting intensity.

Giovanni could not answer.

There was a live band playing middle fifties music and couples dancing
in the larger room that was part of a double living room.

Hournet stood by the window holding Giovanni by the shoulder, looking
out as night caressed the east side skyline across the way beyond the
rolling landscape of Central Park.

Anyone casting his eyes towards them would have thought they were
lovers restraining themselves, because in public, from the private
embrace they were both keeping at bay.

He is not important, Giovanni replied.

How do you know?

He's a media personality, one more voice in a torrent of voices. All
the words broadcast every day cancel each other out at the end of the
day.

It makes a lot of noise, unpleasant noise, and I don't like noise.

Isn't that what public relations is all about? Making as much noise as possible?

No, it is not, Hournet said, taking a sip of his vodka martini. It
certainly is not. It is about reducing noise to information.

I did some stupid things, Giovanni said, and I've never gotten it
together the way I once had it.

You lost confidence in yourself.

Giovanni looked at him with a hazy sense of longing in his eyes, as if
with just the right adjustment everything could be made right again.

And maybe you were right to.

Right to, Giovanni repeated the words without understanding them.

Maybe you were right to lose confidence in yourself.

Don't say that, Giovanni said smiling.

You ought to be punished.


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