“I didn’t set out to do that, Stash. I don’t know about you, but my thought processes don’t shut down completely, just because my dick is in action. I liked Trent. Enjoyed every moment of the sex, and also just being in his company, when we weren’t having sex. Still—there was a sense in which I felt like a whore. Both of us knew that our time together was limited. The clock was ticking, so we were kind of desperate to get the most out of it. And now, of course—off we’ve gone, on our separate ways.”
“Isn’t that kind of typical of gay life, though, when you’re single? Unattached?”
“You tell me,” Carter suggested, boldly. “You’ve got no one waiting for you back home, do you, while you travel all over the world?”
“No one at home,” Stash agreed, “except for a few reliable old fuck buddies, some of whom I’ve known for years. They’re the kind of guys you can call and say, hey, I just got back in town from my latest shoot for the show. Want to get together and fuck? They usually say, sure. Once or twice lately, though, I’ve been surprised. The guy says, I’d like to, but I’m in a relationship now. Or he informs me, while you were away, I got married. To a man.”
“And how’d you feel, hearing that?”
Stash shrugged. “I felt glad for them. Sorry for myself. With everybody pairing up and settling down, which seems to be the big gay thing nowadays, sometimes I do feel a little left out.”
“You may not be alone.”
“Oh? You want a partner, Carter? A husband?”
“I’ve thought about it, sure. But getting back to you, Stash. On your trips to all of these foreign places—?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you ever hook up with any of the locals? You’ve suggested to me that you have.”
“Sure I have. All the time,” Stash said, without embarrassment. “I do try to be discreet, though. I don’t want any whiff of scandal to waft its way back to the sensitive nostrils of the network brass.”
Carter laughed. “Yeah, considering how many gay men and women work in our industry, it’s really absurd, how conservative the upper echelons can still be.”
“Well, the show still has to play in Peoria, as they say. We play the game—until the rules change. I think of myself as an infiltrator. I’m sneaking in the gay representation, indirectly, bit by bit. I suppose some gay militants would call me hypocritical. But at the end of the day, you do what you have to do—and you do what you can do, even if it’s a very small step.”
“Getting back to the subject of sex on the road—”
“Yeah?”
“So, let’s assume you’ve had a quick, furtive, fleeting encounter with some hot guy. How do you move on and go about your business, after enjoying that?”
“Because you have to,” Stash said, firmly. “And you nailed it when you said after enjoying that. Maybe you’ll never see the guy again. Or maybe you’ll have made a lifelong friend, whom you stay in contact with, either regularly, or at least intermittently. That’s the secret. Accept it for what it is, try to live in the moment. Let the future, the long-term aftermath, take care of itself. Because you can’t dictate it, even if you want to.”
“Don’t you ever want to have a real, steady lover? A partner, or a husband?”
“Sure I do. In theory, that sounds great. But you can’t order a soul mate from a catalogue, can you? It has to happen. And usually, I gather, based on my friends’ experiences, it happens when you least expect it.”
“Meanwhile—?”
“Meanwhile, let’s agree to enjoy each other’s company, shall we, and leave it at that for now?”
“Sure,” Carter agreed.
Their conversation turned to more immediate, mundane matters.
“We’ve reached the northernmost extent of our voyage,” Stash pointed out, showing Carter their current position on a map. “Now Duncan and the other guys are going to turn the boat around and head back south. Along the way, we’ll stop at a few places we missed on our way north.”
“Including Rum, right?”
“Right. That’s where Liam is spending the summer, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t fool me, Carter. You’re looking forward to seeing that boy again. To fucking him.”
“I won’t deny it. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. Haven’t we had this discussion? What right do I have to mind?”
“Well—you and I have been intimate.”
“We’ve had fun. I hope we can continue to have fun together. But I don’t own you, and you don’t own me, Carter. When you see Liam, I want you to take some time off and get reacquainted with him. In every sense of the word.”
“Stash, you’re—”
“What?”
“You’re very sweet.”
“Ah, pull the other one, as they say here in the British Isles. Jesus! You do seem to be getting sentimental, in your old age.”
“Sorry about that.”
“I’ll overlook it.”
“Getting back to business,” Carter said. “Are you pleased, with how the trip’s gone so far?”
“Very. We’ve got plenty of good material in the can. Maybe from now on, we can relax a little, and instead of obsessing about the show, we can enjoy ourselves.”
Carter smiled. “Live in the moment? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Exactly.”
Chapter Twelve: The Gay Ghost
“There are no such things as ghosts,” Carter insisted. “And there are certainly no such things as gay ghosts. The whole idea is absurd.”
“Aye, think so still, my lad, until experience proves you wrong,” the landlord of the public house on the island of Islay said.
“The locals here, obviously believe it,” Stash pointed out to Carter. “And so, as visitors, we should respect their beliefs.”
“Bullshit,” Carter said. “I refuse to buy into this nonsense. I’m going to strike a blow for rational thought. Okay, I know that the people who live on some of these small, out of the way islands have to rely on tourism to make ends meet. I can’t blame them for talking up and exploiting whatever local legends they have. But really, Stash. A gay ghost? Absolutely ridiculous. Too bad Duncan and the other guys are staying on the boat tonight. They’d get a kick out of hearing this nonsense.”
Carter and Stash were spending the night on Isay. They’d taken a room at the local pub, and now, after a long day devoted to exploring and filming on the island, they were enjoying a nightcap in the barroom, before going to bed.
They weren’t the pub’s only overnight guests. A young couple had, for some reason known only to themselves, chosen this isolated spot in which to “get away from it all” and celebrate their first wedding anniversary, with a second honeymoon of sorts.
When he and Stash checked into the pub and met their fellow guests, Carter had admired the blandly handsome young husband, but he told himself that the guy was off limits.
Stash had noticed his cameraman’s interest. “Keep it zipped, will you?” was Stash’s no doubt sensible advice. “He’s taken!”
“I was just fantasizing. Thinking is still no crime, surely.”
“What you’re probably thinking ought to be a punishable offense,” Stash retorted. “Those two seem to be quite devoted to each other. Hands off.”
Duly admonished, Carter had concentrated on his work.
The island was a lovely, grass-covered expanse of land. Along with its two neighbors, Mingay and Clett, it lay peacefully on Loch Dunvegan. The name Isay, Stash had determined, probably came from the Old Norse, meaning “porpoise island.” Back in the early 1800s, Isay’s 148 acres had supported an industrious population of about ninety people. The island was then an important fishing station, with its own general store, until heavy taxes imposed on such imports to England as salt, meat, and fish had an adverse effect on the Scottish fishing industry.
At the time of the two Americans’ visit, only a few signs remained of the island’s former prosperity
. In the center of a cluster of occupied houses, the pub hung on, providing food and drink to the locals, and housing any visitors who wished to stay overnight. Once the two Americans ventured outside the village, they found few signs of human habitation.
A forlorn row of dilapidated cottages and blackened, burned out old houses ran along the east shore toward the remnants of a crude stone jetty. At the south end of this abandoned older village was the ruined manor house of the erstwhile local lord, an edifice which might once have been imposing and impressive, but which was now the subject of a gruesome local legend.
Stash, with his keen nose for anything extraordinary, naturally wanted to learn everything he could about this story, and he wanted to devote a filmed segment to it.
Late that afternoon, under an ominously cloudy sky, he and Carter went to film on the site. Carter wasn’t particularly impressed by the ruins of the house. It was a roofless structure. Its west gable had a large “arched” hole in it, which gave it the appearance of the west gable of a church. This was, evidently, where the fireplace for the main hall once used to be. The main entrance to this hall was accessed from the south side, on a higher ground level, by way of a stone staircase. The ground floor appeared to be divided into three rooms, and there was an outhouse—possibly the kitchen—on the east gable.
“What a dump,” Carter decreed, dismissively. “It’s quite small, really. I don’t get it, Stash. What’s the big deal with this place?”
“It’s where a terrible crime once took place,” Stash told him.
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. This happened back in the early sixteenth century. Back then, an evil man named Roderick MacLeod of Lewis owned this island. He was ambitious, and ruthless. He wanted his grandson to inherit the island of Raasay and the lands of Gairloch, but there were two other families of his relatives standing in his way. They had a prior claim to the estates, so, obviously, they needed to be eliminated. Roderick invited them here to a banquet on Isay, promising them they’d hear something which would be to their advantage. During the meal, Roderick made a speech, insisting that he needed to have a personal and private conference with each of his guests on a matter of great importance. He led each of his guests in turn into a separate room—presumably, right there where you’re standing now, Carter—where he had each of them murdered in cold blood by his henchmen. Sure enough, his grandson gained his inheritance, because all of the other claimants were now conveniently dead.”
“Ooh, creepy!” Carter protested. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
“Yes, maybe we’d better,” Stash said. “After all—they claim that Roderick’s ghost roams freely about the island, after dark.”
“Shit,” Carter muttered. He was beginning to feel a chill, imaginary or not. During their excursion, the sky had begun to turn ominously dark, filled with rain-laden clouds.
Now, snug and warm inside the barroom of the public house, while rain fell outside and there was the occasional flash of lightning and crack of thunder, Stash brought up the subject of the infamous Roderick MacLeod of Lewis. The landlord wasn’t shy about providing additional anecdotes.
His audience consisted not only of the two American men who had arrived on the Rock Dove. In addition to them and the landlord’s employees, there were a few locals enjoying food and drink after their work day, and a contingent of other overnight guests—notably, that amorous young couple, husband and wife. Assembled in the pub’s barroom, around a blazing fireplace, with warming drinks in their hands, the company listened to the landlord’s tales.
His recital received added flavor from the fact that, in the immortal words of Edward Bulwer Lytton, it was a dark and stormy night. Rain descended, rattling against the pub’s windowpanes, and frequent peals of thunder rumbled in the distance.
“The vile laird Roderick—he wasn’t just a cold-blooded murderer inspired by Satan, a slayer of his own kin. He was also a notorious sodomite,” the landlord whispered. “No lad was safe from him, and his lust. Some, he seduced, because their unnatural inclinations agreed with his. Others, he persuaded to yield to him, with money. Still others, he forced himself upon them. He raped them, in short!”
“Forcible buggery? Damn. This story is getting me hot,” Carter said.
“Control yourself,” Stash advised.
“When he slaughtered his own kinsmen in that infamous house, one by one, he had to kill their servants, too, to silence them. But the youngest and the most beautiful of them, he spared, because he was inspired by a vile lust for him. He forced the boy, willy nilly, to be his catamite.”
“Yeah, that was the kid’s story, and he stuck to it,” a cynical Carter suggested. “The little bitch probably enjoyed every minute of it!”
“Oh, sir! What a shocking thing for you to say!” the landlord protested.
“Sorry,” Carter mumbled. “It’s the skeptic in me.”
“Roderick’s spirit still haunts this isle,” the landlord insisted. “Restless, damned, he wanders about here in the dead of night. There have been many sightings of him. Often, though, he appears here, under this very roof, in the Red Room.”
“The Red Room?” Stash asked. “What’s that?”
“It’s the best of our rooms for rent. It’s here, right above the barroom,” the landlord explained. “The old oak wall paneling, you see—it was brought here from Roderick’s house. And his spirit came with it!”
“We’re staying in that room,” the young husband said. “We’re celebrating our second honeymoon in it.” He’d had a good deal to drink, and he leered at his pretty young wife in a decidedly uxorious and lustful way. “Can’t wait to go to bed,” he added. “Go to bed, and—!”
“Shush,” his wife told him. “For shame!”
“And it’s called the Red Room—?” Stash inquired.
“Because of the décor,” the landlord explained, with relish. “Blood red, the carpet on the floor. Blood red, the fabric covering the walls. Aye, blood red, the draperies on the windows, the embroideries on the chairs and the benches, the drapes and the bedclothes on the bed—everything, the color of human gore!”
All tastefully color-coordinated, huh? Carter thought.
“So,” Carter interjected, cynically. “Why hasn’t somebody replaced the color scheme? With sky blue, for example? Or just plain basic beige?”
“We dare not,” the landlord said. “Lest the wrath of the black laird Roderick fall upon us! His restless spirit still thinks he is the master, here on this accursed isle.”
So the gay ghost has a flair for interior decoration, Carter told himself. Talk about stereotypes!
Carter chuckled. “Such nonsense!”
“You scoff at him at your peril,” the landlord advised.
“Assuming this story of yours isn’t total bullshit. Then just how, exactly, does this spirit manifest itself upstairs?” Carter asked.
“It’s always the same,” the landlord said. “He goes after the men guests who spend the night here—never after the women. In the dead of night, he appears. He pulls the bedclothes off the sleeping man. And then—he interferes with him.”
“Interferes with him? How, exactly?” Carter pressed.
“Need I spell it out for you? Sexually, of course!”
Carter snickered. “Absurd.”
“Ah, you may well laugh, because you have yet to spend a night under this accursed roof!”
Smiling, Carter turned toward the young married couple. “After hearing all that—aren’t you two afraid to stay in the Red Room?” he asked.
“Not at all!” the husband blustered.
“Good for you,” Carter said. “So—you’re not worried about being diddled, while you sleep?”
“Fuck the ghost!” the husband declared.
“That’s the spirit,” Carter agreed. “So to speak.”
“We’re going to go upstairs and go to bed and fuck!” the husband announced.
“Ah—you’ve had a lot to drink, dear,” his
wife said. “We’d better say goodnight, and go to bed.”
“If you insist,” her spouse grumbled.
“Goodnight, all.” The wife helped her unsteady husband up the stairs.
“Young love,” Stash commented, perhaps more than a little cynically. “Isn’t it grand?”
“Ah, may God keep them—and keep all of us, on this rough night,” the landlord said. “Now, gentlemen, it’s getting late. Last call. One more round of drinks, if you please, and then we’ll all go to our beds, and sleep soundly until the morrow.”
“And no need to fear ghosts, prowling about here in the dark?” Carter asked.
He was being facetious, which made him uneasy when the landlord looked serious, and indeed rather ominous.
“I could tell you tales,” the landlord said.
“Haven’t you, already?” Carter asked.
“Ignore my friend. Do tell us what you know, while we have that last drink,” Stash urged the landlord.
“I could tell you tales of Roderick—the vile bloodstained murderer, the filthy sodomite,” the landlord whispered. “Dead and buried, and damned to hell, centuries ago. And yet his unclean spirit roams about this isle at night. Insatiable, he still seeks to slake his unnatural lust. His wickedness has survived the rotting of his flesh in his grave, and the condemnation of his soul, before the awful judgment seat of God—”
“So what you’re saying is, he’s still horny, after all these years?” Carter asked.
“Aye, you mock me, lad, and yet—!”
“What?” Carter urged.
“I didn’t want to go into certain details in front of the young lady,” the landlord said, primly. “But now that she and her man have gone to bed, and it’s just us men here, I can speak more freely. Many a man who’s slept here in the pub has been visited by Roderick during the night. Visited—and violated. He wakes up with his semen spilled. And his bum sore, from having been plowed by the ghost!”
“So—Roderick’s strictly a top?” Carter asked.
“A top?”
“Meaning he does the fucking, as opposed to getting fucked?”
Desire in the Isles Page 15
