Best Gay Romance 2014

by R. D. Cochrane

  Once having tasted such delights, how then was I to be denied? I was not. From then on, for months on end, I bedded with my master and my mistress. True it was that the lady tired of our frolics earlier some nights than the fellow did, and would fall asleep, leaving Darrow to divert me. Increasingly as I appeared, I would in vain seek her and be told she was sharing Amy’s bed that night. Or more simply, “Getting her much-needed sleep, for she worked hard today, two shows and three parts, and she knows she’ll get little enough sleep with you about.” Said sternly, just before Billy kissed my lips and rifled my undergarments with his monkey-quick hands.

  In vain did I attempt to draw Miss Amy into our nocturnal diversions. “Leave her be, the poor thing,” Suzie would exclaim. “Haven’t she enough of men folk during the day!” This latter not so much directed at myself, who outside of the bed at Caravan One remained as shy and diffident as before; nor did it refer to our leader, much as I would come upon him all unawares staring at the lass when she knew not he was about, and he surely appeared to have more than theatrical ambitions upon his mind.

  No, but it did allude to Mme. Genre’s slow but certain new appearance, her growth, both physical and dramatic, lending her far greater stature and her experience, providing greater repute, so that when his wife complained of too much labor, our Billy-Boy simply transferred the roles to his niece. Amy took them on with a loud enough grumble and a demand for “more meat and less gristle,” but despite these noises, in truth she took on the new parts joyfully and acquitted herself very well indeed.

  So well that she acquired admirers. Indeed, by the time we had arrived as far as Nottingham Shire, Mme. Genre could rely upon several gentlemen’s carriages to be parked just outside the circle that comprised our audience; the owners seated upon foldout seat-contraptions prepared by their valets or drivers, near enough to the stage where they might admire Amy from closer quarters—an advantage Darrow charged a half shilling for, per head. I would not have been amazed to have closed down in one town and set up for travel to another and seen our little tripartite retinue followed by another entire and quite longer cortege of Amy’s guest-admirers.

  “They used to follow me so,” Suzie whimpered very early one morning when we had shared a bed together again, all three: she, I and Billy. The back curtains of the van formed a little V out which I could see the predawn constellation Cassiopeia clearly against the cobalt night. Her husband soothed her, holding her tight about as she sobbed on. “Even more admirers than she. Even higher born. Do you remember, Billy?” He did remember, loyal mate that he was and he said so, and they reminisced about Lord This and Baron That until she was mollified a bit, at which she caught sight of me and declared, “Does it never go down? I ask you, truly. Never? Ah, well, at least one handsome lad admires me,” and turned to cover me with her soft form, and so I was forced to somewhat awaken, while Darrow added his own domestic admiration from behind her.

  I mentioned triple ’vans because we had gained a third, somewhat smaller and older than the others and thus in a more parlous state, yet withal useful, because that’s where Darrow the Elder, and the silent and apart from us but for the stage Fifth Troupe Member now slept and kept their costumes and other belongings, Suzie having moved many of hers to be with Amy. So I now had a home up off the cobblestones and while not my own bed, at least the first real example of such an object since I was an infant.

  Partly this was ascribable to our increased “box-office” as the nightly monetary receipts were euphemistically spoken of, there being a box, if no office. Amy’s new followers certainly were partly responsible for that boon, but so it turned out was I. For I soon became a performer in the troupe myself, and if I may be immodest, a not terribly unimportant addition to the company, especially to the lasses and women-folk, for by now I, too, had grown almost as tall as Darrow and had sprung soft down upon my lip and cheek and chin, which Suzie and even Billy did fawn upon.

  Even in the most stalwart of troupes, actors “go down”—get ill, or depressed, or vanish two days on end larking with some townsperson, or refuse to leave their caravan from “a case of the sulks.”

  Our fifth ordinarily silent troupe member was the first to become ill, with a catarrh that interfered mightily with her ability to speak sans a cough. She did lovely work of hiding it or stitching it into the scenes she played, just as though it belonged there. The first two nights, at least, she did. The third night it proved impossible for her to get out of bed or leave Caravan Three for her feverish state, and thus I was cast in her place.

  The play was The Bard’s Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet and the most unlikely part I was to take over for her was a small female role, that of Lady Montague, Romeo’s mother, with but a handful of lines. The largest role that I must slip into in her stead was that of Mercutio, playing to Billy as my best friend. I had learned by heart the two speeches already: one fantastical and the other pathetic. Later on, I was to play gruff Friar Laurence, and what lines I was unsure of would be whispered to me by someone or other in the company, offstage at the time.

  In the first role of the young smart, I japed much with Billy who played Romeo, and who in turn flirted back at me, giving a new significance to these young men’s close friendship in the play. This impelled one Oxonian within the audience to laugh out loud and call, “Why, look! They are as Greek as ever were Italian lads! And I’ll wager as prompt at each other with their cods as with their daggers!”—a comment that earned much merriment.

  Later on, as the Friar, my beard did itch badly, as did my monk’s cowl, and I was eager to be rid of those, but the applause was delightful, and when Mercutio was called for, I vanished and reappeared sans beard and blanket but wearing the other’s doublet and feathered hat, and bowed to even greater kudos.

  Later that night, as we sat in the local public house gobbling down our late and by no means undercooked dinner, t’was Suzie who said of me, “He’s bit. Why look. As surely as though it were a gadfly upon his neck, he’s bit by the streaming limed-lamps he’s fired up himself and by the yokels’ hand claps—stage-bit, the great dolt!”

  I colored deeply for it was not entirely untrue. Darrow Elder—who seldom spoke once his tankard was in hand—deigned to utter to me, “A capital Queen Mab, lad.” Then pondering, he added, “A somewhat less creditable death speech.” Which drove us to hilarity, for he could not give aught, not even words, but he must take something back, all the time.

  After that night I remained onstage with The Invincible Theatre troupe, earning my own sobriquet, Monsieur Addison Aries, a name conjured by the Darrows, husband and wife, out of my own given name and an old Astrological Almanack one of the company had snitched somewhere in Northern Wales and which they followed closely, for they were a superstitious lot, all of them, our mysterious fifth actor included. None of the women stepped onstage without first spitting behind herself and twirling her index finger in a curlicue while uttering below her breath, “Pig’s foot!” Though none could tell from whence it all derived.

  And so, My Lord, I passed my thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays as Mercutio and Tybalt, as Friar Laurence and Lady Montague, as Lord Marchmell and the Duke of Tickles, as Raggs the Sheep-herd and Stiggs the Scrivener, as Charles Surface, and Young Dornton, as Captain Absolute (to Billy’s seductive Catesby) and Sir Derleth Tyrone the Younger, as Doctor I. M. A. Dandy and Mlle. Camille du Sprech, as Young Fool and Old Liar, as Unknown Bandit, and First Soldier, once even as Lord Beverley, and twice as Lord Mayor of London; but in short as a repertoire-actor. For Billy Darrow was no fool and knew that whatever extra I earned from him on the boards I soon brought in trebled in farthings, quickly gaining for that new Invincible troupe actor, M. Aries his own little “claque,” for so one’s followers are named.

  I was furthermore useful in so many other ways to his company: as stage worker, as tender lover to his wife, who thus minded less her usurpation in the company by her niece and so didn’t make the expected trouble; and not least of a
ll useful as Billy’s own personal Antinous, for I was rich with spunk, and he was determined to mine it out of me one way or t’other.

  I have mentioned before the fifth member of the Invincible Theatre. But have always done so mysteriously and for good reason: mysteriousness seemed to hover about this troupe member from morn till night and despite the greatest illumination thrown from a fire-lighted stage limelight.

  This actor played both male and female. No surprise, when so did myself at different times, as did Amy Green. I have also said this actor possessed a voice of surpassing range. Singing from a higher soprano than Suzie Darrow down to bass notes that our senior-most fellow, old Jonathan Darrow, might—and regularly did in his speeches—encompass. They boarded together in one wagon, yet utterly apart; and it did not signify that anyone knew the better nor associated the more with this Theatrickal Enigma.

  More than once did I ask Billy Darrow who this Personne de Grand-Chance might be, in truth.

  “Leave it be, Addison, my love, for no good can come of your needing to know.”

  “But surely that person is not of the Darrow kith and kin?”

  “That is so.”

  “Then how came this person to your troupe?”

  “By slow degrees. By a downfall from a greater estate,” Billy said.

  We were pulling up stakes for the tented enclosure against poor weather that some folks paid a shilling extra for as we spoke, so I well recall our conversation. “But surely a smart lad like you has already discovered that for himself.”

  “You mean because of this person’s great adaptability?”

  “That, too. But mostly because who else among us can hold an audience so completely rapt?”

  “Why yourself,” answered I, ever loyal. “With your tumbles and leaps and tricks.”

  “Aye, that foolishness—and only betimes!”

  “And your sire, too, with his tragic speeches.”

  “All five of them—when he chooses to be sober.”

  “And Miss Green, when she wears her bodice low upon her bust and flirts.”

  “And yourself for all that, when you are dressed in gold and well peruked and flirt with the ladies in the second row,” he answered. “But surely you’ve noted how different our Great Person is?”

  I had and yet could not put it into speech, and so I held my own.

  “Do not be bothersome to any one in the troupe, Addison, or I shall have to whip you, too, among the many fleshly duties I already manage.”

  So was I warned.

  By this time we had begun a new play, Mr. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, much expurgated, naturally enough given our audiences and their general understanding, chopped back to no more than two hours, albeit full of wit and flirtation. None more so than between the maid Viola, dressed as a man to court the noble Olivia for Duke Orsino, and Olivia herself, who then mistakes Viola’s stranded brother, Sebastian, for Cesario and forces him to wed her.

  We had rehearsed this, myself as Sebastian for The Invincibles, but most of all playing opposite Suzie, with whom I had been second husband for nigh three or more years by now and with whom I felt most congenial.

  All the more of a surprise then, when Amy came down with a rotten tooth and could not play the opening. An even greater surprise to myself that Suzie Darrow would then play Viola, a role she knew well, and that our fifth person then took over the role of Lady Olivia, evidently having been several roles in the play in previous years—or decades—I knew not which.

  This I discovered only as I made the announcement of the parts and the cast before the curtain on opening day in a rather large market square at the town of Croydon.

  Our mysterious fifth actor as Olivia flirted believably and also gave the part emotion, and even evoked tears on the cheeks of the females of the audience with her sad plight. More than one of them had loved a youth and not been loved in return.

  I was astonished when she dropped all the reserve that had surrounded her with mystery and grasped my hand, clasped me about the body, stage whispered insinuating and lovingly, and then kissed me so deeply I thought I might lose my wits. Baffled I looked then—as fitted Sebastian in the play—but in reality, too. For one who had never before as much as regarded me, now seemed to have adored me from afar, and only just then allowed me to understand that fact. Rustlings among the front seats showed that they, too, had intuited the real passion exerted betwixt us two. From the back-most standees came low whistles and even a growl or two, marking me as a “lucky dog.”

  Nor was I physically released during the short scene behind the curtains but held ever more closely, with much hand fumbling about my person, so that I must stick out like some fool jackanapes did I not put my clothes in order in time for the final scene in which Viola and Sebastian are reunited and the Duke and she become as one, while Sebastian and Olivia again passionately and lovingly retroth their pledge and all exeunt, leaving Billy all alone onstage to sing, “When I was a tiny little boy, with a heyho, the wind and the rain.”

  Behind the curtains once again, I turned to our mysterious fifth player and said, “Tonight. At ten o’clock. Be certain old Darrow is dead drunk.” She responded with a hand upon my manhood.

  And so as the clapping endured and we two were especially applauded, was that stage that had been my life—and I do not at all mean that little makeshift stage that was The Invincibles Theatre—set for its next quite dramatic act and transformational scene.

  How inflamed I was after that provincial premiere of Billy’s expurgated Twelfth Night you may easily imagine. Seldom have I been quite so heated.

  The hours I must wait dragged by like Eternity itself and it was all I could do to not drink myself ale-blind, as we four, Suzie, Billy, Jonathan and myself, celebrated our quite substantial take from our performance in a local pub, named—and this is one of those coincidences that makes my life so piquant—The Fallow Deer. Naturally Billy was looking forward to future performances as we were already the talk of the town, especially as several townsfolk stopped by our table and asked for a repeat the following night. More cheer followed that, you may be assured.

  At last we all wandered away to our wagons, Jonathan drunk, Billy and Suzie cordially tipsy, and myself in a quiet frenzy of anticipation, albeit acting as though I, too, were inebriated.

  So they pushed me into sick Amy’s wagon, where she slept snoring away and none too clean smelling, while they celebrated with a rare husband and wife cohabitation.

  As the ’vans were placed together in one side corner of a minor lane of the main square, I could, by peeping out of the curtains sometimes even see what took place in the other two. Thus, at ten o clock sharp—by the local steeple bells—I was on the flagstones outside the smaller van, as washed and close to undress as I dared be, making my whistle-signal to the Grande Personne herself.

  Naturally the interior was dim-lit, a mere candle-end set upon a carton of costumes that served as a bed stand. Through the wooden partition, I could easily hear the stentorian gasps and wheezing, snores, and assorted harrumphs of old Jonathan in his sleep.

  And there lay my Love, all soft and white skinned amid her furled bedclothes. Her hair lay in shining ringlets upon her noble neck, and tumbled a bit upon one ivory shoulder. I might easily make out the softly ridged concavity of her back, guarded as it was by her two pillowy softnesses. She turned an unpainted face toward me and with one finger, soubrette style, to her lips bade me be very quiet.

  She lay like that as I removed my shirt and trousers—I’d come barefoot—as though musing, and she seemed most pleased, as she reached for my extremity that greeted her so avidly.

  Soon enough I was atop her and fondling. Unlike Suzie or even Amy, she was slender rather than voluptuous, smooth skinned, free of that padding wherein I might lose myself after passion. Her breasts were small and almost firm but were as much her weakness as any other female once I had them well in hand. Soon enough was I hand-guided to her lower regions and there she equaled Suzie we
ll enough.

  As onstage, her kisses were intoxicating and I will even use the oft repeated term breathtaking. At times, I believed I might never recover my breath unless I detached myself from those avid lips. I did so less and less as she guided me within herself, and from atop and behind her I began my manly ministrations.

  Believe me, My Lord, when I report I never had encountered before and seldom since, such passion from a partner in lovemaking. Most ladies merely receive a gentleman, some with greater motion than others, few with such enthusiasm and few with her (I thought of the words at the time) athleticism and unstanched hunger.

  Quickly enough, despite my efforts, did we rise and fall toward that bliss that is common to all. Much as I resisted, much as I had been taught by Suzie and Billy Darrow to resist, all teaching went for naught in that bed. Nor were either of us satisfied even then, but we must start up again for a second time, and while that lasted longer and we rose to new feats of intertwining, never mind conclusion, even that did not suffice—but we must try a third time.

  If I seem somewhat muddled in the telling now, My Lord, you may well imagine how utterly befuddled with longing and lust was I at the time. And so I shall attempt to write it as I recall, precisely and in order.

  Firstly, we had risen off the mattresses, such as they were, and now were standing up, my mistress holding on to the curbed upper bars of the caravan for support, myself holding on to her chiefly and every once or twice in a while, also grasping an overhead strut.

  As I was riding my way into my final voyage de amour, one hand cupping her small breast slid downward; to it I joined my second hand and just as the great heat was upon me, it slipped farther down and encountered—how can I write it?—manhood as large and stiff as my own! Yes, right there, inches above a distinct womanhood.