Rafael Yglesias - The Work Is Innocent

Richard was dismayed. He thought she was enjoying this chat, and the unreal assurance of her admiration changed to real assurance of her dislike. The loneliness pressed in on him again. What was just a fit of alienation due to the grass was really the burden of his life, unshakable and remorseless.

“Are you worried about going in there?” she asked.

He could confess everything, maybe she’d take pity on him. He looked straight at her and waited for the words.

“I mean they’re all nice people,” she said.

“The grass has made me feel weird. So I think I’ll go.”

“All right,” she said with what might have been regret.

Richard was spending the night with an old friend from Cabot, Bill, who had also invited a thin blond young man named Frank. It had all been arranged so there was no need for discussion. They seemed much like three clean-cut little boys: dressed in their pajamas, surrounded by Bill’s posters and records. Playboy magazines, schoolbooks, and two cots cluttered the room but added to the camp atmosphere. Each had taken a shower. Frank returned from his and found Richard and Bill lying on the cots and looking at the Playboy magazines. They put them aside and Bill picked up a pack of cards while Richard patted a place next to him for Frank. Frank sat down and looked at the five cards Bill had dealt him. Richard had a pair of tens and asked for three more cards. Frank got one and Bill pulled two for himself. Richard laughed and said, “I wish it was for money. Trip tens.”

Neither Bill nor Frank had better, so they took off their tops. Frank’s chest was hairless, his nipples very pink, but Richard got a glimpse of blond underarm hair which pleased him. Bill enjoyed the look of Frank’s smooth skin and flat belly. Richard dealt the next hand unsteadily, his tingling self-conscious penis eager that Frank should lose. Bill was also pleased when Frank looked sadly at his cards. Bill won and Richard quickly took his top off, fearful of missing Frank disrobing. Richard’s penis strained away from him as Frank stood in the agreed spot for important unveilings.

Frank’s erection pointed straight to his navel, falling forward and pointing ludicrously at the ceiling when he dropped his bottoms. Waves of longing and heat passed through Richard’s body, and he painfully stopped himself from coming, slowing his pace. Frank held his penis to his belly as he turned to show them his delicious small pink ass.

Richard won the next hand, distracted by Frank’s moist pubic hair. Bill removed his bottoms, but now the beautiful part was coming. Bill dimmed the lights and Frank stood woozily while Bill held his member with great warmth and tenderness, tenderness—Richard moved his lips over Frank’s, moistening them as he squeezed Frank’s tight superb ass. Bill in great heat was calling for Richard’s penis as he removed Richard’s bottoms held his demanding warm oh warm penis. Frank was putting was putting him on the bed with a hermaphrodyte’s love. Yes fragile womanish man. Bill kissed him kissed him and Frank closed his warm mouth over—

The three jerks his distended penis gave were regarded coldly by Richard, annoyed that he had ejaculated high on his chest and on his belly in great quantity. He grimaced as he pulled the bed sheet up and tried to wipe the semen off. He flipped the sheet away from him and turned on his stomach to dry thoroughly. The windows were resplendent with the morning sun. He had decided to let his imagination go and Christ! did it ever. Oh, how he had enjoyed it! No, there could be no doubt—he was homosexual. And why not if it’s that good?

While masturbating, his nudity had seemed lusty and exciting, but now, as he dressed, he was disgusted by the flattened, damp hairs that ran from his navel to his groin. He showered and brushed his teeth, enjoying it more than usual, and spat with vehemence.

The apartment was quiet, his mother off at work, his father locked away in his study. The kitchen was brilliant from the sun, and, engulfed by this cheerful light, he felt strong and healthy. He made eggs, bacon, toast, and fresh coffee—an unusually large breakfast. He read the Times from cover to cover and found it remarkably interesting. When finished, he energetically cleaned up and went to his room. He made the bed, glad to have removed any traces of his sexuality from sight.

Finally it became impossible to avoid thinking about his fantasy. He tried to stop himself from revoking his earlier judgment that he was homosexual. He wanted the issue decided and forgotten. But a voice argued convincingly that nothing had been proved: he would have to attempt sleeping with a woman before it would be. So he called Information and got Joan’s number. It was eleven and she would be in school, so he worked on his novel.

He had been within a few pages of finishing for several days. Everything he had planned to write was already in it, but he despaired of finding the words to end it. He was tempted to escape the problem by killing the main character. He sat at his desk and allowed the weary sadness of the music playing on his radio to mix with the mood of the most recent paragraphs. He had one of the few moments of inspiration while working and he was finished.

The manuscript was fat and definite. He raised the papers and dropped them on his desk, listening with pleasure to the soft slap they made. He could sit back and face the problem of living now; he could enjoy life with this as his passport.

If he could use the determination it took to complete his novel and improve his life with it, then—improve his life? How cold that was! Always confined, thoughtful, and self-conscious. Rule one: be natural. Have a drink maybe and tell his father.

Aaron looked startled when his study door opened with a bang. He looked quizzically at Richard standing triumphantly in the doorway. “It’s finished,” Richard said. “I did it.”

“Really? All done?”

His father wasn’t excited and the question embarrassed Richard. He felt he had lied. “Well, you know. The first draft. But it’ll just be a retyping, really.”

His father maintained his serious, almost stern, look and said, “Be sure to go over it very carefully.” Aaron crossed out sentences in the air with an imaginary pen. “Thoroughly weed it out. That’s very important. It’s slow, annoying work, but you mustn’t be impatient.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t be unprofessional.” Richard smiled ingratiatingly. He hoped to make his father be more cheerful. Aaron got up and walked over to his son with an abstracted air, putting his arm around him. “So you’re all done, eh kiddo?” His father hugged Richard to his side and pulled him off balance. “It’s terrific that you’ve finished it so fast. You know it’s a terrible habit of mine to get most of it done and then prevaricate forever over the ending.”

Richard laughed. “That’s funny. I was thinking what a fake I am. I just wrote the ending unconsciously.”

His father looked down at him, his face, it seemed to Richard, suddenly distant. It wore his father’s formal mask and Richard was frightened by it: had Aaron taken his comment as a confession of amateurism? “You know what I mean,” Richard continued in a rush. “I started out having an apocalyptic vision for an ending. It was almost as if I wrote the whole thing for the ending. But after a while I forgot what hideous idea I had, and in fact finished with the right thing.” This speech erased his father’s conventional look, but now Richard felt he was running off at the mouth about his book. He knew he had to avoid that. After all he was just a pretentious kid in the eyes of the world. His father was a respected playwright. He didn’t really know if his parents believed in his book. Let him finish it, he imagined them saying, when it’s turned down he’ll go to school quietly.