Rafael Yglesias - Hide Fox, and All After

After that week, though Raul knew he had failed nearly all the tests, his parents, believing he had done well, left him free to see Alec over the weekends. The weekends with Alec were bursts of sunlight in the midst of threatening skies.

During the next week Bowden, Miller, and all of Raul’s teachers smiled and patted him on the back. “Glad to see you’re working hard,” Bowden said. Miller smiled at him. “Keep your nose clean,” he advised. He hadn’t failed all his tests, and with the teachers he had, it didn’t matter — just that he made them up.

“By lying,” Raul told Alec, “I’ve bought a little freedom.”

When Raul had just begun to relax, to feel free to walk about the campus without teachers running up to him, asking about this test or another, he got the news that the gym department was after him.

“Trouble comes in a downpour,” Bill said. “One of the jocks was up in Miller’s office asking about you.” Bill had a class, he had to go.

Raul sat down and sighed. “Why don’t they leave me alone?” he cried. “Why can’t I have any peace?”

He tried to avoid them, but two members of the gym department came into the cafeteria, spotted him, and went over to him. They tried to make him feel as uncomfortable as possible. He promised to go. He didn’t and heard nothing more about it.

At last his peace was won. The next trouble would come with final examinations.

Iolanthe was nearing production. Alec had been seducing one member of the cast after another, but he seemed tired of it — the hours of stupid lies and inane protestations of love. Raul talked to him for hours about having a serious relationship, and Alec became eager for one.

A girl named Barbara, who had seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, became his target. Not for mere seduction but for love. What blinded Raul to the absurdity of the decision was his happiness at the attitude.

Neither of them, for this was a joint seduction, looked very carefully at the girl’s character but went full steam ahead into a mass of ignorance. Alec took her out but failed miserably to interest her even in a good fuck.

Raul knew why Alec was suddenly so clumsy. For a change, his line was truthful, and nothing is so absurd as sincere affection.

Barbara took mescaline, and they knew she would be tripping that night. On Raul’s urging, Alec said she could come over, for they would be smoking.

Alec was more than despondent — the blow to his ego had been a sharp one. It’s like seeing a god in misery, Raul thought, that this great seducer should suddenly lose his prowess, his image.

Alec was sure she wouldn’t come, Raul tried to convince him otherwise. Alec insisted she wouldn’t; evidently they had exchanged bitter words, but Alec was vague about it.

They smoked, their respective losses of face passing from view. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern rose easily within them. Their egos were riding high as they assumed the grace and power of the stage, the music’s volume surrounding them with majesty.

After a time, deep in the dance of their game, the ringing of the telephone, a sharp reminder of reality, broke through the suddenly discordant noise.

Alec left the room, Raul subsiding in a heap, lost without his companion. Soon Alec reappeared. He turned the stereo off, leaving the room in a dismal silence. “It’s Barbara,” he said. “She’s downstairs somewhere and wants us to meet her.”

They left the apartment in silence. Alec looked troubled, Raul dismayed. In the elevator Alec said, “Did you hear the doorbell ring?”

“When?” Raul asked absently.

“When we were in the room.”

“No,” he said, surprised. “Why?”

“Barbara said she was here, ringing the doorbell.”

“Maybe she was trying the wrong apartment.”

“I don’t know.”

They met her at the corner of Eighty-sixth Street. She looked tired and degenerate. They walked back. “I kept ringing the doorbell,” she whined somewhat frantically. “Where were you? I kept ringing and ringing. With the number getting bigger.”

“What number?” Raul asked.

“The door number!” she said, surprised he didn’t know. “Where were you? What the fuck were you doing?”

“We were just listening to music. We must have had it on too loud,” Alec said.

“Oh,” she said, and fell silent.

Neither Alec nor Raul responded to anything. Raul was lost in another world and looked blankly on this one. Alec was deep in thought; troubled, his face looked severe. Barbara was slowly calming after feeling paranoid and lost. They walked the rest of the way in silence, remaining so until they reached the apartment.

Alec turned the stereo on, lighting another joint. Barbara did not wish to smoke, saying she didn’t like grass. Alec sat apart, by his desk. Raul sat on the bed in front of the lava lamp. Barbara sat near him. She slowly began to weave a story. Depressed, anguished, she spoke of how she had overheard, when she was young, her father saying, “I don’t love her.” Beginning to cry, she repeated the phrase over and over. Echoing deep within Raul was the thought that this was bullshit; but he felt a great compassion for her.

“I think,” he said quietly, “that you are reveling in dramatic self-pity.”

“Yes,” Alec agreed.

She quieted after that, grew suddenly very calm. Alec continued to be distant. Barbara, more and more, was speaking to Raul, who was moved by what she said.

Because of the mescaline, she explained, her fingers were hurting her. They were cramped. She complained of them more than once. She said she wanted something to hold onto. Raul had been thinking about her story. It would make a good short story, he thought. This whole evening would — it’s been strange. Rather absently and very stoned, he made his left hand into a fist, offering it to her. She put her right hand out, Raul placing his fist in it.

He was thinking intensely, lost in a maze of plots and counterplots. The warm flesh yielded to him. It seemed to be merging with his own. Suddenly, except for his left arm, his body went numb. An abstract was flowing throughout that arm, concentrating in his hand, and flowing to hers. His fist moved, slowly, back and forth. She was responding to it. The room was totally silent. “Flesh into flesh,” Raul murmured. He realized its sexuality. He withdrew his hand.

“No,” Raul said quietly to no one.

Barbara looked up at him with wondering eyes. “What was that?” she asked.

Alec leaned forward. “Yes. What was that?”

“I believe,” Raul said coldly, “that it was symbolic of the sexual act.”

Barbara sat forward attentively. “Yes, but what did it mean?”

Raul stared into Alec’s eyes as he spoke. “Nothing. It merely involved translating an emotion into a symbolic act. Not an emotion toward a specific person, just an abstract generalization of one. One might say,” he smiled thinly, “that it was concentrated sexual frustration.”

“But, Raul,” Alec said, “that means, within, you do want to go to bed with someone.”

Raul laughed frankly. “Of course I do! Of course.” He chuckled to himself. “But that’s not the point. It was just an experiment. I was testing whether my theories on grass are correct or not.”

Alec and Raul stared at each other. The world centered, for them, between their eyes, the earth fast disappearing beneath them.

Barbara broke this by getting up and leaving. She seemed, her head bowed, a light, running step, to be weeping.

They deflated, shocked. “What’d we do?” Alec asked, with a child’s look.

“I believe,” Raul said quietly, “that my cold speech, refuting something strange and beautiful, was painful to hear.”