by Saints
Leo gave her a mock salute and immediately felt like a fool. Climbing the wide stone steps, he pushed open the massive wooden door, which was so perfectly balanced, it seemed to drift under his touch like a cloud. He stepped into the enormous foyer, and a waiter handed him a drink even before he had time to be appalled by the sheer quantity of marble and tea-stained hardwood. Gavin was coming down the curving staircase like Gloria Swanson—though in chequered seersucker, not organza—giving orders to a man in a salmon summer suit who jabbed at an iPad and hurried off. With no small amount of theatricality, Gavin noticed Leo and sashayed the rest of the way down the steps.
“Good evening, Leo the Lion,” he said, planting a demure kiss on Leo’s cheek. “Leave it to you to be early.”
“It’s almost nine o’clock, Gavin. You called the party for 7:00.”
“Oh, please! Only my parents came that early. They’re already in the kitchen with a bottle of sherry and two glasses, playing cribbage. Anyone who’s anyone won’t arrive until 10:30.” He leaned one hand on the marble newel post and raised the other in the air, indicating…everything. “Do you love it?”
“I want to run screaming,” Leo answered, sipping the champagne which he knew damn well was a hundred times the price of his usual New Year’s purchase. “Soon you’ll be alone in the middle of the night, wandering room to room like the ghost of Ian Curtis.”
“No dear, unlike you, I know how to enjoy life. I shall fill every room with cut flowers and uncut boys. You know, jealousy brings out the colour in your cheeks.”
Leo couldn’t help smiling. The rhythms of their conversation, 35 years in the making, were as comforting as they were taxing.
“Fuck you, dear,” he said. “I suppose a tour is unavoidable?”
* * *
As Sid entered the cavernous, half-empty garage behind the twinks, an earlier group of guys was being ushered deeper in the house. How many hot young men had this Arthur recruited? Sid was last in line as they signed in one by one with an older, severely thin man in leather jacket and pants.
“Which one are you?” The man showed him a list with their profile handles down one side. Hung+Yung, JustDave, YasKween…
“I’m NewInTown99. That’s me here.”
“Real name?”
Sid froze. “Oh, you need that?”
“Liability. Otherwise we can’t pay you.” When Sid didn’t respond, the man narrowed his eyes and drawled, “Don’t worry; I won’t let your mother near this list.”
“It’s Siddharth Sadangi.” He spelled it. They filled in the rest of the blanks and Sid signed the form. Still bent over the table, he looked up at the man and whispered, “I don’t think I should be here.”
The leather man raised one grey eyebrow. “No?”
“The other guys…They’re all really beautiful. They know how to dress and…and be properly gay. I’m…”
“New in town, I get it,” he responded with a smile like a lemon twist. “You need to relax, kid.” He took Sid’s hand and slipped something into it. He pointed over his shoulder. “Through that door to costume and make-up. You’ll be paid on the way out if you fulfill all your duties and don’t piss on Mr. Keenlyside’s azaleas.”
Sid peeked discreetly at the jolly, red gummy bear the man in leather had slipped him. He brought the candy to his nose and smelled the sweetness of artificial strawberry and the thick pong of weed. Before he could tell himself it was a bad idea, he popped the whole bear in his mouth and downed it after only a few chews.
Sid stepped from the garage into the house just as the boy with the nose stud emerged from a door to his left, pirouetting into the hall like a bad ballerina. He was naked except for a brief yellow bathing suit, which showed off his junk to fine advantage, and a leather harness with clear-plastic insect wings attached to it. His hairless body twinkled with a dusting of gold glitter, and a pair of black antennae poked through his curls.
“Buzz!” he told Sid, his wide eyes dramatically ringed in black and purple, before running down the hall, following a line of signs with printed arrows.
Someone inside the room called, “Next!” and Sid entered obediently.
“Another bee?” asked the heavyset woman in black sweats and black tee, oversized red glasses, and rainbow hair tied in pigtails. She didn’t bother suppressing a yawn. “Or maybe a dragonfly.”
“I’m bored to tears with insects,” answered a man standing behind a chair in front of a big mirror topped with bright lights. His hair was a fire-engine red bowl cut, and he was straightening out his makeup kit, cleaning a large brush. “Stand up tall, boy, let me look at you.”
He approached and cupped Sid’s chin in a hand whose liver spots and wrinkles belied the surgical smoothness of his face.
“Remove your glasses,” he said, and Sid did as he was told. “This one is clearly a satyr.”
“I can do that,” the woman answered and began pulling costume pieces from a large duffel bag.
She undressed him so fast, Sid had no time to resist. He was fitted out in a leather vest and leopard briefs; iridescent stripes of gold were painted on the brown skin of his exposed torso. He didn’t even realize he had been given curved horns of white bone until he sat down in the makeup chair before the big mirror.
The makeup man contemplated his living canvas for a moment, then began. Sid saw the dull square shape of his face grow contours under the flashing brushes, the jaw line softening, the cheek bones rising to prominence, until he was both delicate and dangerous. His eyes were curved out and up, and his hair whipped into waves like the sea.
The reflection Sid saw in the mirror made him gasp. It wasn’t that he was unrecognizable; on the contrary, he knew this untamed creature as someone long banished. It was the child he had been—a wild, free animal, mostly, but not altogether a boy. But how could that be? That young innocent had not survived. And yet, staring back at Sid was the very child. Somehow, in this mirror world, it had lived to be dipped in the miracle waters of puberty, to emerge fully formed—a perfect beast of the night—lithe, sensuous, and rich with lust. Sid stood up from the chair, leaning forward on the makeup table to stare deeper into the mirror. His image seemed to throb before him, the long frame with its black hair, its grace, the weight of the bulge in the leopard shorts. And the eyes! Victorious and amused, they seemed to say, You thought you could crush me, didn’t you?
Appearing behind his shoulder, the makeup artist sighed and cooed, “Mama, I’m pretty…I’m a pretty girl!”
Sid turned and snapped at him, “I’m not a girl!” and hurried out of the room. His head was spinning as he followed the arrows on the wall deeper into the house, toward the domain of the beast.
* * *
Leo was already sorry he’d signed up for the tour, sorry he’d not stayed at home with the new remastered Blu-ray of Max Reinhardt’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Instead, he nodded mechanically as Gavin droned on and on, attaching a price tag and contractor horror stories to each “exceptional detail” of his new house. The home theatre, the crafts room, the wine pantry…And they’d only covered the ground floor. Leo sent up humble thanks when they again crossed the foyer, because at the moment, the great door swung open and Stefan entered.
“Steffer, come!” Leo yelled as he lurched forward and grabbed his friend’s wrist. “Gavin is giving the most fascinating tour!”
That inevitable look of the lost lamb crossed Stefan’s face. His peach jacket was cut like a morning coat, and from the breast pocket, a cerise handkerchief lolled like the tongue of a Labrador. Stefan never seemed to age. The grey was hardly visible in his soft, careless blond hair; his face wasn’t so much wrinkled as traced with fine cracks like antique porcelain.
“Great,” Stefan said, and piled a tiny plate high with hors d’oeuvres from the offerings of two passing waiters. Sober six years, he waved away the proffered champagne, and Leo made himself resist another glass for his friend’s sake.
Gavin swirled his heavy crystal tumble
r of whiskey in apparent distress. “Maybe I should start the tour again.”
Stefan crossed to Gavin, planting a kiss among the sparse hairs on his scalp. “Just pick up where you left off. I’ll get the rest on the next round.”
Gavin perked right up. He pointed at a huge, soulless painting on the wall and said something about “expressionism” and “resale value.”
Leo whispered to Stefan, “He’s unbearable.”
“Only to you.”
“I’m an excellent judge of character.”
Gavin spun around. “You’re literally talking about me behind my back.”
“It’s a beautiful house, Gav,” Stefan enthused.
“Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet!” Gavin marched them up the sumptuous curve of the staircase and down a wide corridor which thrust through to the back of the house like the grand concourse of an ocean liner. The corridor ended at a huge picture window that revealed a terraced backyard, stepping down and down into the ravine below. The patio, where guests were filling plates at a buffet, was just below them, lit by art nouveau lampposts. Down a level was a lawn and long beds in full flower. Further down, another lawn melted into the shadowed forest of the ravine. The trees reached into the night sky, swaying ghostly in the glow of spotlights.
Leo noticed figures at the forest’s edge, flashes of pale skin caught by the electric moonlight.
“What the fuck?” he said. “Have you recreated a cruisy Queen’s Park summer night, circa 1985? How nostalgic! If I go down there, will I find leather men from Burlington on their knees?”
Stefan laughed. “You could give them your old safe sex speech, Leo.”
Gavin rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, everyone loved you interrupting their 3 am fucks for an impromptu condom lecture.”
“I saved lives,” Leo snapped back. “More than you can say.”
But Gavin had lost interest in their squabble. “Look!” He pointed as two boys in slutty faerie costumes ran out onto the lawn, skipped a tandem circuit, and disappeared back into the trees. He chortled with pleasure. “I hired nymphs! You know, Leo, from all that mythology you love.” Gavin leaned against the walnut railing and explained to Stefan. “Nymphs were like the geishas of the Greek gods.”
“No they weren’t,” Leo objected, even though he knew he was being teased. “They were minor gods themselves, worshipped and revered as aspects of the natural world.”
Gavin downed the rest of his whiskey. “Isn’t that basically what I said?”
“Shall we continue the tour?” said Stefan.
* * *
Sid stood at a door at the back of the house. His head floated free like a balloon, somewhere above his body.
“Are you okay?” Jeannine, the stage manager, asked.
“Great,” he told her, trying to access his best job-interview face.
“So, mainly you’ll stay at the edge of the forest, peeking out from behind trees. Try and let the lights catch you. And look seductive if you can. But don’t climb the trees; we won’t be liable if you fall out of one.”
I can be seductive, thought Sid, loosed by his transformation and by the magical gummy bear. I am the bear in rut, stumbling through the forest in search of a mate.
Jeannine was still talking, and he tried to focus. “There are two food and drink stations, and yes, there’s alcohol, but remember you’re here to do a job.”
Sid peered out around the doorframe. There were a lot of guests—mostly on the patio, but some in the garden below. A bat flew through one of the spotlights, and Sid startled.
“Just remember,” Jeannine said, “you’ve been hired as an actor. It’s not your job to perform sexual favours for the guests. If anyone makes you feel uncomfortable, you come and find me.”
“Unless I want it,” said the bear, and Sid raised an embarrassed hand to his lips. “I’m sorry.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jeannine muttered. “Why did I take this gig?” She gave him a little push out the door, and his momentum carried him down the steep stairs toward the lower yard and the forest beyond. His flip-flops went slap-slap on the steps.
Sid remembered running, remembered like it was yesterday. The long, blue towel had been a superhero’s cape, but also—more secretly—the long sash of a prince’s royal garb, and most secret of all, a princess’s sari, straight out of the stuttering Bollywood tapes his mother watched on her ancient VHS player. Eight year-old Siddharth ran the length of the beach, rail thin and swift as a greyhound, the towel and his long black hair flying behind him.
His mother was under their faded family umbrella, talking with a woman Siddharth didn’t know, both wearing bright one-piece swim suits. His father sat on a beach chair with a medical journal, stubbornly sweating it out in the sun. Siddharth circled around the two women in a tightening spiral before collapsing, breathless and dizzy with pleasure, beside his mother. He could feel the cozy heat of her bare, brown thigh against his side.
“And is this your daughter?” the strange woman asked in her big, friendly, American voice.
Siddharth sat up in panic and immediately caught his father’s disapproving glance, eyes cold as steel over the top of his journal. Siddharth’s shame put him back on his feet, and he dragged himself away, all his lightness gone. Like a bad bit of math, the pieces of him didn’t add up. His heedless pleasure was a problem to be solved. It put him in danger—maybe endangered them all. No matter the cost, the equation would have to be balanced.
A throbbing beat, chill but insistent, rose from speakers in the garden, propelling his memory forward eight years.
Age sixteen now, Sid stared with satisfaction at his image in his bedroom mirror. With good grades, dull clothes, and a vicious grip on the reins of his sexuality, he had vanquished that fey waif of a boy, the one who cried when he wasn’t chosen for a team, the one whose hands and hips were too mobile when he was excited. He had forged from the stuff of himself a young man of wide shoulders and serious demeanour. Beloved Dadi—his tiny, round grandmother—said her Siddharth would soon make the young ladies swoon.
But deep down, he knew he wasn’t a real man. He wasn’t like his brother’s friend, Lucas, who never had to restrain himself. The masculine ease with which he inhabited his body, whether horsing around with his male friends or flirting with the blushing girls, made Sid furious with envy, stunned him with lust. And there was no strategy to deal with these feelings but to pull the reins tighter, bind himself without remorse until he breathed only once a day, late at night, alone in the dark of his room.
Sid’s drifting mind returned to itself. He was deep in the forest, though he couldn’t remember leaving the path. He leaned back to peer up into the tree canopy—black it was, with shadows blacker still—and immediately felt dizzy, circling down on folding legs until he was sitting on the dry twigs and cushiony moss. He laughed at this private slapstick show, and his laughter conjured two of the glistening nymphs. They ran the woodland path before him, lit by an inner grace. Sid had no choice but to rise and follow.
He found them in front of a bar, set up at the base of a broad and virile oak tree.
“Crantini, please,” said one nymph.
“Stoli and lime,” said the other.
The bartender answered, “I have Molson Canadian and white wine in plastic cups.”
Sid was staring deep into the indigo eyes of the beautiful bartender, who turned and asked him, “And what can I get for you?” The question seemed hilariously loaded.
But Sid just said “Wine,” and before he could form any romantic banter on his thickening tongue, Jeannine was among them, shooing them out to pose at the forest’s edge.
* * *
Now the house was abuzz with guests, and Leo asked Gavin, “Don’t you have to go play host?”
“I’m waiting to make a grand entrance,” he said, checking the lacquered lay of his thinning hair in a gilded hallway mirror. “And there’s one more room on the tour, one that only my two oldest friends will appreciate.”
They came around a corner into a short stub of a hall with a single door.
“Welcome,” Gavin said with a hand on his heart, “To the Hall of Memory.” He held the door open for them, and Leo and Stefan stepped inside.
The first thing Leo saw was an old, white yachting cap, hung on the wall like a hunting trophy.
He gasped. “You have Marco’s hat!”
Stefan came up beside him, and Leo could feel the tension before his friend even spoke. “Gavin, we wanted to bury him in that hat. You knew that. You watched me freak out at the hospital, blaming the nurses for losing it, but it was you who took it!”
Gavin clenched his fists like a child about to have a tantrum. “Marco was my lover. I had a right to take whatever I wanted!”
Leo watched Stefan’s eyes fill with angry tears. It occurred to him that anger could be a defence against pain. Because even when an ache is familiar—thirty years and counting, in this case—it still hurt.
In its heyday, their group had comprised sixteen beautiful and horny young men, laughing, drinking, and dancing their way through Toronto’s gay community. Leo remembered them marching on police headquarters together, part of a throng 4,000 strong, blocking traffic, chanting, demanding reform. After being raised in shame, they were claiming a place in the sun for their queer brothers and sisters. Then barely a year later, the first confirmed death in Canada from “the gay plague.”
Stunned, they had watched each other vanish like the shrinking guest list in an Agatha Christie play—one senseless death after another, no time between for the shock to abate. Sixteen friends, and all that was left were the three in this room, the only ones granted the time to lose their youthful beauty and contemplate a more prosaic death.
And there they were before him. All sixteen hanging on the wall of Gavin’s shrine: Jimmy, Jae, Alphonse, Kitty, Marco—smiling or blowing kisses, each 4X5 portrait in its own neat grey frame. All of a sudden, Leo understood the grotesque plan of the décor.
