Reese Gabriel - Captured!--On Film

Was it the events of last night, then? He contemplated this, wrapping his brain round the idea as his arms and legs continued their steady paddling, his body a solid board, rigid as a hard shaft. Certainly the sight of them both, his beautiful young stars, limbs intertwined at break of day had had an effect. Such deep affection did he feel, such appreciation for and connection with the two of them. It was as if he had always known them, the way their bodies smelled, the way they moved, the touch of their youthful skin.

Yes, this was it. They had taught him the meaning of loneliness. To be lonely is to want for an object of desire and pleasure and until now he had never felt this pure longing. To wish for Sofia in her absenses over the years-and there had been so many, physical and spiritual alike-was a yearning of a different kind. With her it was dread fascination, the titillation you feel approaching an object of beautiful torture. A spider or snake you know from a nightmare but which you cannot bear to overlook.

In the end, Sofia was a drug, designed never to satisfy, but only to frustrate. In all fairness to the woman, it was herself she frustrated most of all. She was not a sadist in any sense of the word. If anything she was a masochist, forever wanting to cut her bare feet on the sharp rocks of life, forever wanting Giovanni to pick her up, to bleed with her, fight with her, and above all love her, in the only way she knew how.

Hard and fast and nasty. Like animals locked in mortal combat, teeth bared, claws extended and razor sharp. More than once she had laid nearly fatal slashes to his soul with those claws. But with the two young actors, it was entirely different. They were so obviously in love, whether they saw it themselves. They lived for one another already, yearning to be each other's strength and shining vision. It would take time, but they'd find it out for themselves.

The way he and Sofia might have if they'd not been both of them so proud and stubborn. Years and years they had let pass, and in the end it was too late. She had died alone just as he would in just a few minutes.

He was slowing dramatically. Soon he would be able to advance no further. He would be reduced to treading water and then, slowly, he would sink, coughing out the first few mouthfuls of water, until he could no longer expel it. Then the sea would rush in and fill his lungs and life would be a burden no more.

All the best he wished the naked young lovers, whom he'd left in their sweet sleep, dreaming of their future, of a home, by the seaside, perhaps, and children. Awaking some time after ten this morning, they would be hungry for one another again, and they would make a baby. Grigori's baby. Giovanni had been careful on this score, making sure not to spill himself in Julie's womb, lest their be any resulting doubts as to paternity.

To his knowledge, he had never fathered a child, and he did not intend to start now. Especially when he would not be there to see him or her grow. Should he have bestowed a final kiss? Left them a note at least? But how could he explain what he did not understand himself. Feeling like a character in one of his movies, he began to sputter. The taste of salt in his mouth as he slipped momentarily below the surface did not amount to some Valhallan victory, but rather a terrible mistake.

It was a bitter taste: regret. A humbling one. A new phase of this loneliness. For the first time in his life, he wished he were somewhere else. With Julie and Grigori, being made love to, kissed and massaged, given the full benefit of their devoted tongues and their young, eager fingers. Such bodies they had. No effects yet from gravity in the case of Grigori and only minimal ones in Julie's case. He would bask in the glow of their enthusiasm, in the unwritten possibilities moist in their eyes. He would devote himself to each in turn, pleasing their sexes. He would never end, he would clutch to them forever, if only there could be another chance.

The boat was too far away. He would never make it back to shore. And there was no one in sight to rescue him. The Great Ambrosiano laughed, never failing to miss the irony in a given situation. When asked once what was the secret to his directing powers, in fact, he had given that very answer

If you can see the irony inherent in any given situation between two people, the particular form of the cosmic joke called life which they are given to perpetuate, they you will know to direct the scene.

The irony here was in bringing together two perfect people and not living to see the fruits of his work. Starting what might have been the best film of his life and leaving it to someone else to finish.

There was irony, too, that once upon a time he had been the strongest swimmer on the docks when he was Grigori's age, and here he was about to drown himself. Perhaps the greatest irony, though, was proving his critics right. After all these years; he was finally floundering, as they'd said he would, in over his head, vision gone, no sense of the real and the fantastic … no sense, ultimately of life and death.

I do not want to die.

This single affirmation, pulsing through his veins was the clearest thing he had ever felt or known. Or was it very thing he had always known-the very force that had kept him going all along? The young man struggling to succeed, taking any work, any work at all.

He thought of Marie now, the young woman he had known in Livorno. With her jet-black hair and deep blue eyes and her pretty dresses, red and green and yellow. She would sneak down to the dock each day to watch him work. She was supposed to be at piano lessons. When he would take his break, she would be there behind the crates and they would kiss. She had a rag that she would use to wipe the sweat from his shirtless chest, her small hands arousing him with her delicate touch.

They did not ever speak a word, not once over the three months she came to him. He only learned her name one day by following her back to her aunt's house. She did not even speak Italian. It was Summer time and she was visiting from her home outside Paris. All this he learned from a neighbor. It was with her, perhaps, that he had first developed his fascination for love transcending language, for lust that needs no shared vocabulary to ignite.

Those fifteen minutes each day with her, for that one Summer, were in many ways the most precious times of his life. One could almost say he was lonely to lose her, but he had never had the sense of possession where she was concerned. He could no more miss a butterfly when it flitted away, as much as he'd enjoyed its splendid visit settled upon his finger.

Marie was like a butterfly in many ways. So many colors. Each dress bringning out something different in her eyes. She breathed the same air, but was not of it. She did not walk, she floated. Marie had a grace, all her own. Her kisses reflected this above all. Like any young man he did not appreciate what he had. There was no way to know then that these were ethereal kisses, fragile as Venetian glass, rare as diamonds.

Each one unique to a moment, reflecting a new understanding, a new passion. It was as if she could think about and mold each one and put something into it all its own. Like an artist with a canvas. The thing he never did was touch her in response. Only to put his hands on her waist, nothing more. His cock was hard always, and it was all he could do to make it through the rest of the day without masturbating after seeing her.

But it would never have been right to do anything about it with her. She came on her own, she rose to tiptoes on her own, she planted kisses on her own. This, too, had been an unspoken agreement between them, almost from the very moment he laid eyes on her in a small grocery near the waterfront. Their eyes had met, she had followed discretely and learned his place of employment. From then on, she came, once each day, an hour or two before his break.