Читать книгу Full Circle - Michael Thomas Ford - Страница 21

Jack’s renewed dedication to his studies lasted about a week, during which he managed a C+ on a speech about the origins of the Peace Corps and a 72 on an art history test in which he mistook Turner’s painting of Norham Castle at sunrise for Monet’s landscape portrait of Paris’ Parc Manceau. As his enthusiasm for his classes waned, he returned to Andy’s room more and more often. Apart from our shared classes, I had not seen much of Andy since interrupting his tryst with Tracy, but he continued to be friendly to me and in no way seemed offended by my decreased presence in his room.

I, however, was miserable because of him. To my annoyance, I’d discovered that I was fantasizing about him often. Even when I was with Jack, I would sometimes see Andy’s face, or recall the glimpses I’d had of his dick. He became a distraction to my studying, an ever-present figure in my thoughts who demanded attention at inconvenient times. I resented him for it, and I hated myself for allowing it. I should, I believed, be able to control my thoughts and feelings.

Objectively, I understand that my growing infatuation with Andy makes little sense. Love seldom does. Its unreasonableness is what makes it so dangerous. It’s what allows so many of us to make terrible decisions, decisions that can lay waste to lives (especially our own) and end with us sitting wounded and bleeding in the midst of ruin, wondering what happened. It also sometimes results in unimagined joy, although I suspect that’s more true of movies and novels than it is of real life.

I can’t, even now, fully explain what it was about Andy Kowalski that allowed the hooks of love to plant themselves in my heart. Partly it was his wildness, which I both admired and was jealous of. Partly it was his beauty, which was undeniable. And partly it was because he wasn’t Jack. I can see that all these years later, although at the time I didn’t allow the admission to enter my conscious thoughts.

Jack had been my best friend for nineteen years, my lover for four. Having taken place in secret, our relationship had therefore also been untested. Until our arrival at Penn, there had been no other possibilities for my romantic interest. Now, though, I was discovering that my feelings for Jack might not be exclusive to him, and that frightened me. Like so many people, I’d come to believe that love flowed only in one direction, its course as fixed as that of the Mississippi or any great river. That this river could have tributaries, that it could flood and overflow its banks, was a shock.

It was made worse by the knowledge that Andy was unavailable to me. His hunger for women had been made clear, and despite his invitation to join with him and Tracy, I could not imagine that he would have any interest in me as a solitary object of desire. This made my feelings for him all the more ridiculous, and deepened my misery. I retreated more and more into myself as a way to dampen my feelings, although admittedly it did little to stop me from weaving daydreams about being in Andy’s bed.

Jack didn’t notice. One of the advantages to self-absorption is that you’re able to completely ignore any cracks in the foundations of your relationships. Being on top of the pedestal precludes having to view the base, so that by the time the marble has started to crumble, it’s usually too late. Again, I’m being a bit harsh on Jack. He had no more experience of relationships or love than I did. Also, he had the disadvantage of never having lost. He had not learned to recognize the signs of impending trouble. Even if he had, he would expect someone else to divert the danger, leaving him safe. He had no reason to think that our relationship was beginning to shift in a perilous direction.

Halloween of 1969 fell, conveniently for those interested in celebrating it without the worry of having to attend class the following day, on a Friday. The campus was the scene of multiple parties, all of which began as soon as classes were out in the afternoon. I remember walking back to the dorm following my history class and passing through a crowd of ghosts and ghoulies, all of them in a festive mood. In particular, I recall a girl dressed all in green, with sequins sewn to her clothes like scales. A long tail extended from her backside, and she’d painted her face to match her costume. As I walked by, she exhaled a cloud of marijuana smoke into my face, exclaiming, “Happy Halloween from Puff, the magic dragon!”

That was only the beginning. The halls of Pinchot were filled with revelers. I walked past pirates and devils, hippies (probably uncostumed), and Gandalfs. On the second floor landing, I encountered two Richard Nixons sharing a joint. And in my own room I discovered Jack laying out some items he was pulling from a brown paper bag.

“What’s that stuff?” I asked him, eyeing the goods warily.

“Our costumes,” he said proudly. “We’re going to a party.”

“We are?”

He nodded. “Andy invited us. It’s at the house of some friend of his. Off campus.”

I didn’t want to go to a Halloween party. Correction—I did want to go to a Halloween party. Just not one that Andy would be at. I couldn’t tell Jack that, though, not after he’d gone to the trouble of actually buying us costumes.

“What are we going as?” I asked, resigned to spending a night dressed like who-knew-what.

Jack held up a cowboy hat. “Butch,” he said.

“Let me guess,” I said. “I’m…”

“Sundance,” he said, holding up a second hat.

He’d also found some vests, chaps, and cheap plastic spurs, all of which we put on. When we were done, we looked like the world’s worst cowboys. Jack handed me a toy pistol.

“Don’t forget this,” he said. “Now you look like the real thing.”

The final step was to paint on moustaches. We’d been growing our own out since the beginning of the semester, but the results had been unimpressive. At least mine had. Jack’s was thicker, but because it was blond, it looked a little scraggly. We fixed that with some greasepaint. We also painted on heavy beard growth, smearing our cheeks with the stuff. The combined effect of the makeup and the getups was presentable, if a little haphazard.

Andy had given Jack the address of the party, and we drove over there in Jack’s Fairlane. Things were already in full swing, even though night had barely fallen. A grinning jack-o’-lantern greeted us on the front porch, a flickering candle lighting up its eyes and mouth. A paper skeleton hung on the front door, flanked on either side by arching black cats.

Our knock on the door was answered by a young woman dressed as a witch. When we told her that we were friends of Andy, she showed us in, saying, “Andy’s over there talking to the milkmaid.”

She pointed to a couch on one side of the room. We saw the milkmaid, all breasts and pigtails, and we saw Andy. He was shirtless, and his pants were covered in what looked like clumps of fur. On his head he wore what appeared to be a fur hat with pointed ears affixed to it. It wasn’t immediately clear what he was supposed to be.

We worked our way through the crowd of people standing around with beer bottles and plastic cups in their hands. There were perhaps twenty people crowded into the house’s living room, and the din of their voices, combined with the Cream album being played on an invisible stereo, made it difficult to hear anything. When we reached Andy and the girl, it was all we could do to say hello.

“Look at you two,” Andy said. “Git along, little doggies. Who-hoo!”

“What are you?” I asked.

“What?” Andy mouthed.

“What are you?” I shouted.

Andy lifted his head and howled. “A-woooooooo. A-a-a-woooooooo.”

“The Wolfman!” Jack exclaimed. “Cool.”

“I hope you brought a silver bullet,” Andy said to the girl, biting her neck. The girl laughed. Andy grinned. “Guys, this is Melanie. How do you like her milk pails?”

Melanie laughed again. I could tell she was high, or drunk, or probably both. Andy, too, seemed to be stoned. He squeezed one of Melanie’s breasts and stood up.

“Come on,” he said, putting an arm around each of us. “You guys need a drink.”

He led us back through the crowd to the kitchen, where a table was piled with cookies, candy, and other assorted treats. Andy picked up two brownies and handed one to me and one to Jack.

“Try these,” he said. “They’ll start you off right.”

While Jack and I ate the brownies, Andy procured three beers from the refrigerator. He popped the tops off and handed us each one.

“That’s good shit,” he said, nodding at the brownies, which we’d almost finished eating. “Premium California weed. I’ve had two already.”

The pot was good shit. Within minutes, all my worries about Andy, the party, and Jack were gone. I was laughing at everything Andy said, and when we returned to the living room to see what was happening, I even found myself in conversation with a mummy about the films of Franco Zeffirelli, none of which I’d actually seen. The mummy, most likely as high or higher than I was, didn’t seem to notice. He (or she, I never saw the face behind the toilet paper wrappings) nodded a lot and said very little.

I know I went back for at least one more brownie, and possibly more. Having skipped dinner, I was easily wasted, and soon I had no idea of the time or much of anything else. When Andy came over and guided me back into the kitchen, I went willingly. He’d brought Jack as well.

“Here,” he said, handing us each a small square piece of paper. “You’ve got to try this. Don’t eat it. Jut put it on your tongue.”

I didn’t ask what it was. I placed the paper on my tongue and waited for something to happen. Nothing did. I looked at Jack. He, too, was holding his paper on his tongue, looking from me to Andy and back again.

“What’s it supposed to do?” I asked.

“Just wait,” Andy said. “It takes awhile to kick in.” He put a tab on his own tongue, then motioned for us to follow him.

We went upstairs to the second floor, where Andy led us down a hallway and into a bedroom. The lights were off, but several lava lamps glowed in the corners, the purple, blue, and yellow blobs inside them bubbling thickly. In their glow I could see that the floor had been covered with several mattresses, on which nude bodies were writhing. Their moans mingled with the music of the Beatles as Abbey Road played in the background.

“Come on,” Andy said, stepping over a pair of legs and heading for a bare mattress.

I hesitated, unsure of what was going on. I saw full well what was happening in the room, but I didn’t know what we were doing there. But I was also high enough that it all suddenly seemed perfectly ordinary. I took Jack’s hand and walked to where Andy had seated himself. He was stretched out in the middle of the mattress, arms behind his head. Jack and I took up positions on either side of him.

“Just listen to the music,” Andy instructed us. “Let it talk to you.”

I stared at the ceiling, where the light from the lava lamps swirled in slowly-changing patterns. I watched circles form and stretch, becoming ovals that eventually broke into two. It reminded me of viewing amoebas under a microscope in biology class. As George Harrison sang “Here Comes the Sun,” the amoebas danced joyfully above me, changing shape and color. I became lost in them, following each one’s birth, halving, and death with intense interest.

I don’t know how long I lay there. I remember at one point looking to my left and seeing a man with his head between a woman’s legs as another man pumped his penis between her breasts. I was sure I could see writing on the men’s skin, and I was trying to read it when I felt someone take my hand.

“Do you feel it?” Andy asked.

I turned to look at him and saw the face of the Wolfman, all hair and teeth and dark eyes. But I wasn’t afraid. I reached out and stroked the soft fur of his cheek. He leaned forward and kissed me with his lupine mouth, his tongue slipping inside and exploring as I ran my hands down his hairy chest. I paused at his stomach, but with a firm hand he pushed me lower.

I felt something hard and pulled away, looking down. Jack’s face was buried in Andy’s lap, moving up and down slowly. What I’d felt had been the crown of his head. I watched, not comprehending. Jack was naked, and I realized with surprise that I, too, had somehow lost my costume. We were all three of us bare.

I felt something grab hold of my cock and begin stroking me. It was Andy. I bent my mouth to his stomach and kissed it, feeling hair beneath my lips. Slowly, I worked my way up his abdomen to his chest, taking a nipple between my lips and sucking. I lay beside him and wrapped one leg around his. I could feel his heart beating beneath me, a steady pounding that seemed to be driving the music that played in my head.

Jack moved up on Andy’s other side and the three of us lay entwined. I kissed Andy’s mouth, then made way for Jack. I kissed Jack, our heads meeting over Andy’s chest as he stroked us both. It felt as if the three of us were becoming one creature. I saw us joining, splitting apart, and coming back together until none of us were comprised of our original cells. We had melded into something new.

Hours seemed to pass, during which we changed our configuration many times. First, I would be between Jack’s legs, feasting on him, and then I would be on my back, Andy’s mouth drawing me in. Mouths, hands, and cocks came into contact with one another like colliding asteroids, connecting and going off in new directions, only to collide again. The whole time, a kaleidoscope turned in my mind, the images and colors shifting continuously. For a moment, a pattern would freeze and I would be looking as if through a stained-glass window in a church. Then it would melt away, becoming something new before I could make out what I had been looking at. At one point, I was turned onto my stomach and someone—I don’t remember if it was Jack or Andy—entered me from behind. A burst of colors flashed across my vision like thousands of tiny butterflies, and I found myself laughing as I was fucked, reaching out to try to catch the fluttering insects in my hands.

I don’t know how many times we came, or if we even came at all. At some point, I fell asleep, and when I woke up, it was with Andy on one side and Jack on the other. My head aching, I looked around the room and saw half a dozen other naked, snoring bodies scattered in various poses on the mattresses. The lava lamps continued to bubble, and somewhere nearby a record needle unable to lift itself from the final groove of an album repeatedly voiced its distress.

It took me a few minutes to remember where I was and what had happened. When I did, I wished I hadn’t. I looked at Andy. His Wolfman hat had fallen off and was lying beside the mattress along with my vest, chaps, hat, and spurs. His face and chest were smeared with the greasepaint Jack and I had used to draw on our facial hair. Jack’s costume was at the foot of the mattress, apparently where he’d taken it off. My ass hurt, and my nipples were raw.

I carefully stood up and tiptoed around the sleepers into the hall. Trying not to make any noise, I searched for the bathroom, which I found I badly needed. Fortunately, it was nearby. I went in, shut the door, and pissed forcefully and long into the toilet. Afterward, I looked at myself in the mirror over the sink. My makeup was smeared, making me look bruised, and there were two huge hickeys on my neck, one on either side, as if I had been the victim of twin vampires. I ran the water in the sink and cleaned myself up with a washcloth borrowed from the bathroom’s owner. Feeling marginally better, I walked back to the room with the mattresses and retrieved my clothes.

As I was dressing, Jack woke up. Rubbing his eyes, he looked around and asked, “What happened?”

I couldn’t think of a good answer to that, so I said nothing. Jack sat up, looked over at Andy, and then back at me. “You okay?” he asked, perhaps beginning to remember.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine.”

Jack nodded.

“I’ll be outside,” I said, gathering up my costume and standing.

I went downstairs, where more sleeping bodies filled the couches and even some spots on the floor. Outside, I breathed in the fresh air of a bright, clear All Saints’ Day and felt not the least bit better. My head was still cloudy, and the events of the previous night shrouded in mysteries I was almost sure would never be fully revealed. But one thing I knew for sure—things between Jack, Andy, and myself could never be the same again.