Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

I had to violate this unnamable common activity because I could not abandon my urge to urinate. Curiously, they watched what I was going to do. For security reasons too, they wanted to know what the newcomer would do because it determined whether they’d continue the games among themselves that they had interrupted at my arrival. I could no longer use some ordinary dissembling to hide the real meaning of my behavior; my overstretched bladder could not relax under such tension, its functioning was also hindered by active waves of hyperemia. It would have been hard to avoid a complete erection. From my left the unknown man offered his own, from the right the blond idiot. Because of bladder tension, I should have avoided an erection and kept to a sensible sequence. Slowly, indulgently, holding their cocks at the root to make them visible in their entirety, both men kept pulling their foreskins over and off their bulbs to steady their strong erections or rather to keep them permanent. With which they not only held themselves in the daze of hyperemia but also showed off to the best advantage the tumescence of their genitals. They were competing with each other but also with the mustached assistant.

They offered a sight from which, theoretically, another man could not escape without excitement. At the very least his eyes would grow round, his pupils would enlarge to take everything in, as if injecting himself into the other man with his look, setting out involuntarily with his head to observe what it would be like to be that other man. And that causes the fragrance of the strange cock to invade his nostrils.

To take that bulb into his mouth, to eat it, to trigger and experience the other man’s pleasure.

The memory of mothers’ breasts surges in the mouths.

He won’t, he cannot do it; some men delay it, defer it throughout a lifetime, but the mere thought of the act makes them breathe faster and hear how the other man’s breath speeds up too. A few steps over, the mustached one was doing the same thing in his own way, while on the other side the gray-haired old man kept turning and busying himself, and next to him stood the giant, but I didn’t know what he was doing.

I didn’t dare look at him.

In a strong, large jet, as if bursting or erupting from me, urine began to gush out. I couldn’t have waited with it even if I had wanted to. It echoed as it hit the tarred wall.

The effect on the others was as if in some polite company I had committed the worst possible faux pas.

I had waited too long and that is why I became de plus en plus incommode .

The strong pressure of the liquid opened the urethra despite the mild erection.

I was making too much noise.

At the sound of so much churlishness, the men on both sides stopped what they were doing and hastened to conceal their erect pricks in the funnels of their palms.

I noticed only moving shadows between dark spots because, aware of my improper behavior and incompetence, I shamefully kept staring in front of me. I could see with my sense of hearing that they had indignantly given up on me and turned away. Hearing the splash of my urine, they right away had to look for different prey.

Sometimes, nothing wants to turn out the way it should.

With the unceasing searching and jockeying, everything stretches out indefinitely even though everyone strives to have things happen without delay. So that no one should have to wait another moment for the daily dose of pleasure. And nobody likes disappointing anyone, because he too might suffer the same disappointment.

Holding awkwardly his thick, short, swollen cock with the reddish, pointy little bulb at its end, the blond young man with his nervous, sometimes irritated movements turned unhesitatingly to the mustached one. Who at this very moment realized the possibilities in his dominant position, and probably made a challenging gesture that confused the fellow so busy offering himself.

These men, offering themselves to each other, often hissed or sent signals whose meaning an outsider could comprehend, if at all, only when seeing the resulting action in progress.

They quickly changed places and unexpectedly the mustached one was now next to me.

Something similar must have happened on the other side with the man who just a little while earlier had so startled me with his unruly erection that I hadn’t even wanted to see to whom his cock belonged. He too had been cheated. In his disappointment with me, and after looking through the gray-haired old man still gesticulating with his cock, and through the strange figure next to the old man, an underage, possibly crippled boy, as if they were made of air, he couldn’t turn anywhere but to the giant. He wanted to show it to him if he could not have me. The giant may have confused him, probably with some inviting movement, for he was showing himself not to this man but to me. Not only the giant’s cock but his entire loin was uncovered. Or so it seemed in the poor lighting provided by the thin beams of light filtering through the high windows. The crippled boy wore a platform-soled orthopedic shoe on one foot; his cane, which he could not hold, was leaning against the tarred wall. He was showing his to everyone, offering himself to anyone; a lit cigarette dangled from his lips.

I knew the exposed loins of the giant. And he knew their effect on me.

For five nights in a row, again and again, at different locations and in different positions he had offered me everything. Maybe his specialty was showing not only his prick but also his testicles, hair, belly, and top of his thighs. There was a certain merciless openness in this. The relief of his stomach, thighs, and loins, his head, and his entire splendid figure eerily reminded me of the man with anvil and hammer one can see on the twenty-forint bill. On each occasion, I had stupidly run away from him. To my shame, in the light of day I would take out the twenty-forint bill to see him and be with him. I couldn’t forget him. The only difference between him and his image on the bill was that on the latter the artist had used drapery to conceal the loins. It was because of the giant that I had returned every night.

Because of him, or because of my finally wanting to find someone, anyone, who would love me for my body.

Now, holding his cock, avoiding all other offers, he leisurely started toward me. With his other hand, he had to hold up his worker’s overalls, which had slipped down his thighs.

This did not make him look ridiculous. There was something flamboyant in the entire man, permissive and contented but not self-satisfied, or at least not petty. As if he had not bared the huge muscles of his buttocks intentionally, either, as if it just happened that way. But perhaps he wore no underpants. And that excited me extremely, every night.

Others quickly exploited the changing of places by these two and became active in the darkness. Again, it felt as if a gust of wind had blown across the landscape, only this time it did not pass on. I, or the person standing there in my stead, was the only one who could not move. However ill-mannered my behavior seemed in this company, I was very far from ending my noisy urination. As it kept pouring out of me in an ever larger and stronger spurt, my erection was gaining strength too.

In the meantime, I found myself flanked by the two men.

In my shame I glanced from one face to another. This seemed to them as if I were asking for their patience and their pardon for this unavoidable need of mine.

As if I could keep them away from me with meekness and alarm. Or from the somebody standing in for me. Who was hoping that some kind of distance could be maintained between people.

At any rate, I would be asking something from them, mercy.

They did not touch me, didn’t dare, not yet, but were standing so close that the emanations of our bodies, their heat and odor, flooded and penetrated all three of us. By turns, they watched my cock, the jet of my urine, and my mouth. From this close, the face of the mustached one affected me differently than before because he did not seem nearly so calculating or aggressive as he’d been when seen from a distance. Until now I’d feared some sly cruelty. Now, on the contrary, he seemed gentle, attentive, expectant, and self-controlled, careful not to ruin things with a wrong move or give me reason to flee again. He mesmerized me, as one does a dangerous wild animal. At the same time, there were signs of sadness on his childlike features hiding behind his meaty nose and deeply grooved forehead. Like a person who does not expect much good to happen to him yet cannot give up hope completely. Perhaps there was a chance. Maybe this very minute. Maybe with this complete stranger. Perhaps with him he could return to that elemental joy he had once received, then lost and could not find again.