Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 01:50:18 -0300
From: Duncan Ryder <duncanryder@hotmail.com>
Subject: Everybody's Wounded Chapter 13

I followed Josh into his condo thinking: "I know what betrayal looks like."
I had, after all, learned it the hard way, barely two months before, the
first time I'd come here.  Betrayal looks like a beautiful, blonde boy with
newly pierced ears. It looks like a boy I had loved and trusted completely
telling me he needs someone else. It looks like a boy weeping faithless
tears as he kisses my face and says goodbye.

That's what betrayal looked like to me.  I had no idea what it looked like
to Josh.  I could see, however, that it had shaken him utterly.

He turned on lights and led me into his living room.  The windowed wall was
a night black canvas, and facing it was the image of him staring defiantly
up into that storm- filled sky.

Josh turned his back to the painting and stared out the window into empty
night, his back stiff, his hands clenching and unclenching.

I watched and waited, but he just stood there, silent.  Finally, I went
over and stood behind him, and rested my hands lightly on his
shoulders. "Come sit," I said.  "I'll make you coffee."

He still didn't move, so I gently propelled him over to the leather sofa.

"Sit," I said again, and pushed lightly until he sat.

The kitchen seemed unreal.  Josh was almost compulsively tidy, but there
were unwashed pots on the stove top, the table was cluttered, and there
were several plates of congealed food on the granite countertops.  They
looked untouched.  Though it was totally unappetizing, it reminded me that
I was starving, and my stomach growled.  I ignored it, found the ground
coffee in the fridge, and set up the coffee maker.  While it brewed, I went
back into the living room.

Josh was sitting exactly as I'd left him.

"Over there," he said, pointing to the glass and chrome dining table at the
far end of the room.

I looked over there.  A laptop was open on the far end of the table, which
was strewn with papers and packing materials.  I walked over to it
curiously.

And then I saw it.

Propped against the wall on the cantilevered wall shelf.

Another of Graham's paintings.

I looked at it and froze.

I don't know how long I stood there, taking it in.  A long time.  It was at
once so exquisitely beautiful that it took my breath away – and such a
devastating violation that I wanted to put my fist through it.  I turned
back to Josh and found him standing behind me. He was fighting hard to keep
his face calm, neutral, but I could see it breaking up around the edges.

I pulled him into my arms.  He was trembling.  All I could do was hold him
against me, and absorb the force of his anguish.

And understand.

Graham had painted Josh's face.  Just his face.  Twice life size,
flawlessly realistic.  Painted in black and white, like a fine art
photograph, except for the eyes, which were touched with the exact, perfect
green that was Josh.

It was the expression that knocked the wind from your lungs.  For though it
was only his face, it was the most blatantly erotic image I had ever seen.

I knew instantly what I was looking at.  I had seen that face, that
beautiful face, in exactly that instant.  I would remember it perfectly my
entire life.  The painting was of Josh's face the exact instant he had
shattered beneath me, his legs wrapped around my waist, his face more naked
than I'd ever known a face could be.

To see that exquisite nakedness captured like this on canvas, like a fly in
amber, was a shocking violation.  It wounded me; I could only imagine the
pain it caused Josh.  For such a private man, it was a betrayal beyond
understanding.  Graham might as well have raped him on canvas.

In a sense he had.

We stood like that for a long time, Josh leaning into me, me staring at the
painting.  Finally, he pulled away.

"It gets worse," he said.

He took me over to the laptop and the pile of papers beside it.  "You might
as well start with this."

It was a pamphlet from the opening of a show in London.  Another image of
Josh's face, this time in repose, eyes closed, black and white except for a
flushed hint of pink in the cheeks.  "The Joshua Series," it said.  Graham
Campbell.  And the dates and location of the exhibit.  The fine print
beneath Josh's face said, "Number Twelve."

"I guess I'm supposed to be flattered," he said wearily.  "The great Graham
Campbell made me into a fucking series."

I opened the pamphlet.  There were photographs of ten paintings of Josh's
face; but they were numbered one to twelve.  I looked more closely; numbers
ten and eleven were missing.

"Read this," Josh said, handing me a newspaper clipping.

It was an interview with Graham Campbell.

The first part gave some background on Graham which I admit I read with
interest.  I'd no idea Josh's former lover was such an important artist,
according to the reviewer one of the leading realist artists in the world.
He then went on to describe the exhibit, which consisted of a series of ten
20" x 20" acrylic portraits.  It described the paintings as Campbell's only
"overtly homoerotic" work.  "While Campbell's sexual orientation has never
been a secret," the reviewer wrote, "He has to date largely focused on
political themes; never before has he focused his formidable talent so
narrowly."

"Individually, these are portraits of a beautiful young man, with a range
of expressions open to interpretation. While intense and revealing as
individual portraits, it is the sequencing that reveals them to be overtly
sexual, portraits of a man being slowly aroused, at the peak of passion,
and then at peace.

Some will find it disappointing that what one can only expect to be key
paintings in the series – numbers ten and eleven – are missing.  When asked
about them, Campbell says only that they are "too personal" for him to show
or sell.  He has kept Number Ten for himself.  Number Eleven is in the
hands of the model, whom he describes as a former lover.

The writer concluded the article with an oddly sympathetic view of the
artist.

"Campbell's style is meticulously hyperrealist, almost photographic.  Yet
he denies ever working from photographs.  In the case of the Joshua series,
even the subject was lost to him.

"The series was painted entirely from memory," he said.  "This boy was my
muse for almost five years, and it's been hell escaping him.  For a year, I
locked myself in a room and painted, exorcising him from my soul.  These
paintings are the results."

One can only wonder at the intensity of a passion that burned so deeply
into the mind of such an artist.  And one can only wonder if this boy, this
Joshua, understands the scars he has left behind.  .  "Fuck," I said
softly, putting the article down.

"There's more," said Josh wearily.  "He sent me the entire series.  With
the missing portraits included."

He reached for the laptop, and started a slide show he already had set up.

Number One was the public Josh, the calm, controlled man I knew so well,
with green eyes meeting mine frankly from the screen.  By Number 2, the
control was already slipping.  As the series progressed, all his constraint
and control was lost, and his face became pure, raw emotion, deeply moving
to observe.

Number Ten, the painting Graham had kept for himself, was undeniably the
most painful – literally and metaphorically.  I knew, both from its place
in the series, and from my own experience, that it captured Josh's face at
the exact instant of fast, hard penetration.  Everything was there – the
yearning, the pain, the desperation, captured in taut skin, straining
muscle, a sheen of sweat, and a flash beneath the skin.

I reached to advance the slide show, but Josh stopped me, continuing to
stare at the image on the screen.

`The bastard," he said softly, as he stared at it, his voice oddly calm.
"He kept that one to remind himself of the power he had over me.  The one
he sent me – it was so I would remember that, too. He never let me forget
it.  His power over me.  He always wanted me on the brink. Always on the
brink."

I found myself looking from the screen to Josh's face.  I didn't like the
weariness I saw there.  Or the acceptance.  He should be angry, I thought.
I was fucking angry; he should be, too.  It would have been much better for
him if he were angry.

"Fuck, Scott," he said.  "I feel like one of Picasso's models.  Except he
stopped beating me to capture my pain, and started fucking me instead."

Stopped beating him?  I wanted to hit something.

"You might as well read it all," he said, leaving me then, and heading back
over to the window.

***

There were a number of clippings: articles, interviews, reviews. The one
he'd shown me was typical of the kind of reverence in which Campbell was
held.  There were even photographs, which I studied carefully.  He was a
very thin man, looking every one of his forty four years and more, with a
hard, lined face and thinning black hair pushed back from a high
forehead. He always had a cigarette in his hand; his fingers were long and
narrow.  Even in photographs his eyes were so piercing they were almost
frightening.

When I finished reading, I closed the file on his hard drive, removed the
CD, and put it back into it is jewel case.  Then I gathered up the letter,
the clippings and the CD, and returned them to their wrappings.  Then I
wrapped the painting and returned it to the shipping case, and slipped the
envelope in behind it.

There was only one thing I didn't include in the shipping crate; the letter
that had accompanied it.  It was on plain white bond, with faint red and
black smudges of fingerprints.  Paint.

"Here you go, Baby Boy," he'd written in a vicious black hand.  "It's the
least I can do for my muse.  I won't sell mine.  You do what you want. The
entire show is pre sold, £12,000 a pop.  Nicky says you can probably get
twice that for Number Eleven – it is the money shot, after all.  I'm sure
he'd handle it for you; he always had a soft spot for you, and I didn't
think he had any soft spots.  Or you can burn it, for all I care. That, and
the one I left on your wall.  It's been two years, Baby Boy. Maybe it
really is over for you. I hope the fuck it's finally over for me."

"You want this?" I asked Josh's back.

He didn't turn around.  "What?"

"The bastard's letter."

"No."

I tore it up.

"Did you save the slide show to your hard drive?"

He shook his head.  "No."

"Good."

I stood up, put the painting by the door, then walked over the window and
stood behind him. I didn't touch him, but the inch I kept between us was
enough for me to feel the heat of his body, and for him to feel the heat of
mine.  All he had to do was step back into me...

And finally he did.

"I'm nobody's fucking muse," he muttered.

"It doesn't matter," I said.  "That's not you. It's paint and canvass and
someone else's memory.  It's not you."  I folded my arms around him, and
pressed him close.  "This is you."

"No," he said bitterly.  "That's me.  He knows it and I know it.  That's
what he did.  He stripped me naked in so fucking many ways, and took it
all.  You don't know."

"So tell me," I said.

But he shook his head.

I turned him in my arms and pulled him against me.  He was right, of
course.  I didn't know.  And if he didn't let me in, I couldn't know.

***

We sat on the sofa again, on opposite ends.  It was almost nine, we hadn't
eaten, and frankly, I was starving.  I'd been on my way to dinner from the
gym when Josh showed up.

"When did it come?" I asked him suddenly.

"Monday, Tuesday, I don't know."

I studied his face, the bowed head, the gaze steadily focused on his hands
that lay still and fragile like dead sparrows on his thighs.  I thought of
the congealed food in his kitchen.

"When was the last time you actually ate?"

He shrugged, shook his head.

I stood up and headed into the kitchen.  "I'm going to make us dinner," I
said.

"Thanks.  Do you mind if I take a shower?"

While he headed to the bathroom, I tidied the kitchen.  There wasn't much
in his fridge, but I managed to find some dried pasta, a jar of sauce, and
enough slightly wilted vegetables to doctor it.  Which I did, with
mushrooms and onions and half a hot pepper.  The salad stuff in his fridge
wasn't too far gone, and I was able to pick through it for enough to make a
passable salad.

I waited for him to get out of the shower before I put on the pasta.  Half
an hour later, he still hadn't emerged.  I wondered where he was.  Then I
realized I could still hear the water running.

I turned off the burners and headed out of the kitchen to the other end of
the condo.  His bedroom door was wide open, and the door to the ensuite as
well.  I stuck my head into the steamed-up room.

Josh's ensuite is large and luxurious, with a tub at one end, and a huge
walk-in shower at the other. The shower is tiled in stone, and has a glass
door set in a glass wall. It's got a rainforest showerhead and a row of
body sprays, and I knew from the last time I was there just how good they
felt on a tired body.  Josh had the sprays on hard, adjusted to knead at
his shoulders and the small of his back.

He hadn't heard me come in, and through the glass I could see him scrubbing
at himself with a luffa in his right hand.  He seemed to be in a kind of
trance.  As I watched, he scrubbed fiercely at his left arm, then across
his chest, down his right thigh, then his left thigh. Then he switched the
luffa to his left hand and scrubbed his right arm, then across his chest,
right thigh, left thigh, and luffa back into his right hand and he started
all over again.

I watched for another minute and realized he had no intention of stopping.
He seemed totally unaware of what he was doing.

I knew what I was watching.  It didn't take a rocket scientist.  I knew
that kind of almost ritualistic cleansing was not uncommon for victims of
violence, people who had been raped, people who had been violated.

I watched him repeat the cycle again, arm, chest, thigh, thigh, switch
hands, arm...and I knew it had to stop.

I took off my sweater and socks, and undid my jeans. Just before I dropped
them, I thought of my promise to my uncles, the one about keeping it in my
pants.  I remembered what my uncles had said, what Brandon had said, and
weighed their caring, and the wisdom of their words, against the pain and
vulnerability of the man standing in the shower.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't walk out of that room, knowing Josh was
standing there, alone in the steam, trying to scrub away some symbolic
stain on his skin that that bastard had left there.  Getting naked had
nothing to do with it.  This had nothing to do with sex, and I knew I could
keep my cock in my metaphorical pants. I dropped my jeans and boxers and
slipped into the shower.

He jumped when I opened the door and eased in behind him.  The body sprays
were on full force and very hot, and I winced when they hit my skin. I
reached around him to turn down the temperature and turned off the sprays,
leaving only the much softer flow of the rainforest head.  Then I turned
him towards me, and took the luffa from him and set it down on the cedar
bench behind me.

"I'm nobody's fucking muse," he said to me again, and there was a kind of
fury in his eyes that was so much better than the weary acceptance I'd seen
earlier.

"Josh, that's not up to you," I told him.  "But it's not your
responsibility either."

I massaged his shoulders with my fingers, feeling his heat, the water, the
sudden shuddering breath.

"You can't decide to be or not to be his fucking muse.  That's in his head.
But it doesn't have to be in yours.  That doesn't have to be you."  I gave
him a gentle little shake. "This is you."

He stood there, his face frozen as he looked directly into my eyes, his
hands hanging loosely at his sides. I stood there and waited.  And waited.
Until, a million heart beats later, he stepped forward to me, buried his
face in my neck, and finally, finally, began to cry.

It was the release I knew he'd needed, that I knew he'd been fighting from
the moment he'd opened the damned painting.

One good thing about the condo, the hot water never ran out.  Good thing,
because we stood under the pounding spray for a long, long time.

When he quieted, I held him a little away from me, and kissed his forehead.

I picked up the body wash, squirted a little in my hand, and began to wash
him, slowly and gently and thoroughly.  I used only my hands, starting at
his neck, working the lather up gently, then rinsing the soap away with
water in my cupped palms.

Slowly and thoroughly, I washed his neck, his arms, his chest and belly,
then turned him around and did his back, down to his waist.  I turned him
around again, and knelt on the tile floor before him, washing his hips,
cock, balls, thighs, shins, feet.  Then I turned him around again and did
the same thing, the small of his back, his ass, down the backs of his legs.

His body was beautiful, hard and long, lean and well muscled.  As I washed
him, I took great care with it, studying its lines and curves, its light
and shadow.  I spent no more time, and no less, washing his cock and his
balls and his ass than I did the rest of him.  I handled them with the
exact same care and thoroughness.  He hardened, and I hardened, and I
ignored it.

When I was done, I stood up again, took a bar of soap I recognized as Body
Shop men's facial soap, and lathered up my hands.

"Close your eyes," I said, and rubbed the soap into his skin, massaging the
bones of his face with my fingertips.  Then I rinsed it all off with my
hands and the softly flowing water from the rainforest head.

When I was done that, I shampooed his hair.

Then I turned off the water, opened the shower door, and guided him out
onto the mat.  I found towels, and dried his body as carefully as I had
washed it. There was a terry towel robe hanging on a hook, and I helped him
into it, knotting the belt around his hips.

"It's done now," I said softly, looking straight into his eyes.  "You're
clean, and it's done."

He just looked at me for a moment, and then he nodded.  His face for the
world was firmly back in place, calm and impassive.  I wrapped another
towel around my waist.

***

How do couples set out the rules of domesticity?  I have no idea.  But Josh
and I, who weren't a couple, not then, maybe not ever, fell into it as
naturally as breathing.  Our rhythms were synchronized, and we fit together
as easily and as perfectly as we had in bed.

I knew he was still upset, but the immediate crisis was past.  He was
getting perspective.  I knew more than anything else he needed food and
sleep.

We got dressed and went into the kitchen together.  My parents are both
serious recreational cooks, so my sister and I developed our kitchen skills
early.  It was clear that Josh was equally skilled, and it surprised me how
easy we were together in the kitchen He turned on the pasta and dressed the
salad while I reheated my doctored sauce.  He took the wooden spoon from my
hand and tasted it.

"More garlic," he said.

"Couldn't find any."

He opened a cupboard and took a head from a small clay pot.

"Shall I open some wine?"

I shook my head.  "I need to work tonight.  I've one paper left to finish.
All my research is done and I want to finish the first draft before we fly
to New Brunswick tomorrow afternoon.  My laptop is in my back pack."

"You can set it up in my office," he said.

That was all.  No invitation extended or accepted, just my assumption and
his quiet certainty that I would stay.

Josh didn't work that evening.  He settled in the living room with a book.
From his desk, I could look up and see him there, stretched out in a black
leather recliner reading quietly as I worked.

Around 11 he brought me tea.

"Almost done?" he asked.

"Another hour or so."

He rested a hand on my shoulder.  "I can't make it that long," he said.
"I'm dead."

I turned around in his chair and looked up at the exhaustion carved into
his face.  He hadn't eaten for days, and I suspected he hadn't really slept
either.

"Go to bed," I said.  "I'll try not to wake you up."

He stood like that for a moment, very still, with his hand on my shoulder.

"I really am sorry," he said.

I put my hand over his and gave it a little squeeze.

"Go to bed," I said again.

"Thanks for tonight," he said softly.  "I don't know why it unhinged me so
much.  I thought I'd dealt with all this a long time ago."

Later, when I climbed into bed beside him, he stirred.

"Scott?"

I slid naked under the covers and spooned up behind him, pulling him
against me.  He smelled warm and drowsy and very good in my arms.  "It's
me."

He sighed, and moved so that his head rested on my bicep.

"I love you," he murmured, not really awake.

"I know," I said, kissing the back of his neck.  "It's ok.  Go back to
sleep."

***

My body's pretty much conditioned to get up at an obscenely early hour to
go to the gym, but I didn't go that morning.  I wasn't sure of the bus
schedule, and I didn't want to wake Josh, who was sleeping deeply and
peacefully. So I got up, showered, did a little more work on my paper until
I heard him stir.  Then I made breakfast for the two of us.

I had decided that I would take the painting and all the other stuff Graham
had sent with it to my room, and keep it there until Josh was ready to deal
with it.  We left with it in hand, leaving enough time to drop it off in my
res room on the way to my first lecture.

***

Josh and Luc live in the same building.

Luc and I take the same courses and have pretty much the same schedule.

It should have come as no surprise, then, when the elevators doors opened
and he got in.

It shouldn't have, but it did.




*** Thanks to all of you who take the time to share your reactions to the
story.

Very special thanks to Gabriel for proofing!

If you'd like to be added to the update list for the next chapter, just
drop me an email at the address above.