wasting your time reading it? I doubt if you’ll find it interesting.”
“I’d be surprised if she’d care what a furniture historian thought about Italians in Algiers—I mean, in Abyssinia….”
“No, of course she’d like your opinion,” Julien said, unaware of Austin’s irony and the nuances of self-deprecation. “After all, you’re the only professional writer she knows, even if your field is somewhat different.”
Julien had just come from work, still in coat and tie, his face drained from twelve hours at the drafting table. The three-day spell of hot weather had been swept away by the coarse, scratchy broom of wind, wetness and cold that had descended on them overnight. Austin had always been alive to the appeal of the young male office worker in a starched white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular arms, the silk tie at half-mast, the top button pushed open by clamorous chest hairs that need to escape, the smell of effort breaking through the fading decency of a deodorant. Perhaps because Julien was so slender, the plastron of his shirt falling straight down from his breastbone like a plumb line, perhaps because he was so poor (Austin now knew he earned just two thousand dollars a month, got meal tickets from work for lunch and wore the green linen jacket every day because that was all he had), these vulnerabilities, physical and material, made all his posing just that much more touching.Despite the strange, extenuating details—an intellectual for a wife, another man, much older, for a husband—Julien was still the Latin male, not the shoulder-rolling Italian model but the French version, elegant and refined, though masterly nevertheless. Austin loved the way Julien, exasperated on the telephone, raked his hand through his straight black hair, raised his eyebrows above disabused eyes, drained cheeks and a chin of resurgent black whiskers, and then scolded his brother or Christine. Austin admired the way this man spoke in such a low, resonant voice that it shook his entire frame whenever Austin held him in his arms, as though the life force was boiling water that made the whole kettle throb.
Austin registered, with some relief, that their new sex games never got translated in Julien’s mind into anything psychological. It didn’t occur to Julien to want to be Austin’s slave. Not even during the drama of the moment did Julien ever roll Magdalen-bright eyes up at Austin. No, all he was relishing were the new sensations pouring through his body. His egotism was so sturdy, so carapace-hard, that he was incapable of imagining that his status, his own sacred status, could fall. When he looked at himself in the mirror during sex it was with intense fascination and only after he’d come did it occur to some responsible part of his mind to notice that Austin was still dressed and to wonder if he had felt any pleasure.
Austin’s pleasures were all performative—the sort he imagined a straight stud must feel when he’s racked a woman with yet another orgasm; he walked away with much fingernail-buffing vanity at having provoked such ecstasy and gratitude. Perhaps because Julien himself had always been encouraging Christine to flutter up to higher and higher sexual perches, he’d never stopped to wonder whether his own body was capable of the same buoyancy. Now that he knew it was, he, too, was grateful. He followed Austin’s movements with big, adoring eyes, though the adoration wasn’t pathological. It was frank, the same kind of admiration one athlete might feel for another.
Julien and Christine had fucked at least once a day since they’d met; sex was the one uncomplicated thing they’d retained from that first night in the bush beside the stalled jeep, the one thing that had weathered all their fierce arguments and their present hostile truce.
Austin just knew that in his place his other gay men friends from the States would feel compelled at this juncture to ask, “Well, are
“I’d be surprised if she’d care what a furniture historian thought about Italians in Algiers—I mean, in Abyssinia….”
“No, of course she’d like your opinion,” Julien said, unaware of Austin’s irony and the nuances of self-deprecation. “After all, you’re the only professional writer she knows, even if your field is somewhat different.”
Julien had just come from work, still in coat and tie, his face drained from twelve hours at the drafting table. The three-day spell of hot weather had been swept away by the coarse, scratchy broom of wind, wetness and cold that had descended on them overnight. Austin had always been alive to the appeal of the young male office worker in a starched white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular arms, the silk tie at half-mast, the top button pushed open by clamorous chest hairs that need to escape, the smell of effort breaking through the fading decency of a deodorant. Perhaps because Julien was so slender, the plastron of his shirt falling straight down from his breastbone like a plumb line, perhaps because he was so poor (Austin now knew he earned just two thousand dollars a month, got meal tickets from work for lunch and wore the green linen jacket every day because that was all he had), these vulnerabilities, physical and material, made all his posing just that much more touching.Despite the strange, extenuating details—an intellectual for a wife, another man, much older, for a husband—Julien was still the Latin male, not the shoulder-rolling Italian model but the French version, elegant and refined, though masterly nevertheless. Austin loved the way Julien, exasperated on the telephone, raked his hand through his straight black hair, raised his eyebrows above disabused eyes, drained cheeks and a chin of resurgent black whiskers, and then scolded his brother or Christine. Austin admired the way this man spoke in such a low, resonant voice that it shook his entire frame whenever Austin held him in his arms, as though the life force was boiling water that made the whole kettle throb.
Austin registered, with some relief, that their new sex games never got translated in Julien’s mind into anything psychological. It didn’t occur to Julien to want to be Austin’s slave. Not even during the drama of the moment did Julien ever roll Magdalen-bright eyes up at Austin. No, all he was relishing were the new sensations pouring through his body. His egotism was so sturdy, so carapace-hard, that he was incapable of imagining that his status, his own sacred status, could fall. When he looked at himself in the mirror during sex it was with intense fascination and only after he’d come did it occur to some responsible part of his mind to notice that Austin was still dressed and to wonder if he had felt any pleasure.
Austin’s pleasures were all performative—the sort he imagined a straight stud must feel when he’s racked a woman with yet another orgasm; he walked away with much fingernail-buffing vanity at having provoked such ecstasy and gratitude. Perhaps because Julien himself had always been encouraging Christine to flutter up to higher and higher sexual perches, he’d never stopped to wonder whether his own body was capable of the same buoyancy. Now that he knew it was, he, too, was grateful. He followed Austin’s movements with big, adoring eyes, though the adoration wasn’t pathological. It was frank, the same kind of admiration one athlete might feel for another.
Julien and Christine had fucked at least once a day since they’d met; sex was the one uncomplicated thing they’d retained from that first night in the bush beside the stalled jeep, the one thing that had weathered all their fierce arguments and their present hostile truce.
Austin just knew that in his place his other gay men friends from the States would feel compelled at this juncture to ask, “Well, are
Similar Books
