Benediction

by Arnold, Jim

  21

  It was pitch black over the Atlantic. I’d blown up a soft, navy blue velourcovered pillow that bore the inscription “Further Afield.” It hung around my neck like a fat choker, allowing my head to rest against the cool window glass, inches away from the deadly deep freeze of the air outside the jet.

  Wayne left the moment I heard Adriano’s worried yell about closing time. In a split second he did his into-the-rocks meld, as if he was one with the mountain Sacra di San Michele crowned. Maybe he was; maybe this is what he got, what one got, when it was all said and done.

  I didn’t have a chance to ask about Connie.

  As we got back into the outskirts of Turin, it began to rain, and by the time Adriano pulled up in front of the Fratelli, it was pouring, the water on the car roof deafening.

  “Thanks for everything,” I said, looking down at my shoes. “I’m sorry—”

  He put a hand over my mouth. “Ben. Is wonderful to know you; maybe I see you in San Francisco?”

  I opened the door, felt the rain on my arm and gave him a quick “maybe you will,” before dashing in the hotel door.

  There were no messages from Davis and nothing further from Safe Harbor. Just a note from Stefano, telling me what time Laura would come for the final ride back to Malpensa.

  * * *

  We landed midafternoon at Kennedy. I’d agreed to make this quick New York stop on my way back from Turin because Hell for the Holidays was going to screen at the gay New Festival. Dad and Jackie were coming up from Coral Gables to see it.

  It wasn’t a work trip, however. I’d planned to stay at the Archer as usual and charge the company regardless. There’d be a cross-country flight later to figure out how to finesse the deception. I’d easily justify it to myself on the basis of mental cruelty coming from Tony—his…false accusations, what amounted to torture of a cancer patient.

  Mustn’t forget that. My bald pubes were a reminder, as were the bouts of diarrhea—which, to be truthful, declined in severity the longer I went without radiation.

  “How long will you be with us, Mr. Schmidt?” Severino said, just slightly above a whisper, while the gridlocked cross-town traffic inched along outside.

  “It may just be this one night. I’m on my way back home from Europe.”

  “Other than the chilly rain today, it’s been great. I love spring in our city—especially this year,” he said. “Too bad you can’t stay—it all seems so clean.”

  I suppose it was. They’d finally gotten rid of everything from the World Trade Center site. The girders, concrete dust, pulverized computers, blasted toilets, body parts. Had Severino had those dark circles under his eyes before?

  He gave me a quiet room on the ninth floor at the rear of the hotel, above an alley, but with a sliver’s view of Central Park to the north. I closed the translucent drape, laid back on the bed with my head on a chocolate-colored bolster. The ceiling was perfect. In fact, it was impossible to tell where the wall stopped and the ceiling began. For a second I longed for a bloody red handprint, which would indicate there’d been drama.

  The abortive attempt at sex with Adriano had given me one of the worst cases of blue balls ever, prostate cancer or no prostate cancer. I fished a Viagra out of my bag, grabbed the three tiny bottles of whiskey out of the minibar, left the hotel and jumped on a downtown train.

  * * *

  I’d been to the West Side Club before, many times in years past—but the awful truth was that with each passing season, fewer men seemed interested in sniffing up my carefully arranged, slightly open towel wrap.

  That, and it was really a poor excuse for a sex club, from its attitude-laden clientele—which had the saving grace of being diverse and unusually attractive but if not available, and really, what was the fucking point—to the ridiculously named “changing rooms,” which were little cubicles the size of (a) a closet, where you literally had to stand up for sex, or (b) a space large enough for a small, coffin-sized cot.

  I was horny and wanted to lie down, so chose Option B. I downed two of the three double shots of whiskey and left the cubicle, holding the thread-bare towel up around my hips.

  There were the usual businessmen—the love handles and perfect, eighty-dollar haircuts were a giveaway—who’d probably left the office early and stopped here on their way home.

  There were also a couple of what I understood to be college boys—who both had a dark, New York look that was undoubtedly Greek, Italian, or Jewish, and who may have been together but were cruising separately. They were totally uninterested in me, so I stopped staring.

  Then there was the one perfect Chelsea Boy, who wandered in circles, hopelessly disappointed, which you could tell by the unchanging, crestfallen expression on his otherwise handsome face.

  Despite different particulars, I was in the same ghastly predicament.

  Wondering whether I looked that unapproachable, I made my way to the bathroom to check. Hogging the trendy, pedestal sink with swan-shaped spigot was a man I hadn’t seen before.

  The first thing that struck me was his boyishness, though he was clearly in his thirties, if not older. A slight, Madonna-like gap between his two front teeth as he smiled, freckles that started on his face and ran across his shoulders, messy, dark brown hair in need of a comb. He exuded energy which seemed, at first, youthful.

  “Hey, how’s it goin’? How you doin’ today? You looking great, uhhuhmmm,” he said.

  “Kind of quiet around here,” I said.

  “There’s a bigger crowd at night, but this isn’t bad for a Friday; you saw all the guys walking around, right? Lots of dudes upstairs.”

  We both did the once-over thing, accomplished in fractions of a second, the tentative deal sealed.

  “I’ve got one of these stupid little rooms; wanna hang out?” he asked. “Actually, it’s not that small a room compared to the baths up in Providence. You ever go up there, to those baths downtown there—in Providence?”

  What the hell was he talking about? But I did want to hang out—for little while, anyway. “Yeah, sure. I’m Ben, by the way.”

  “Dougie.” He pumped my hand with a surprisingly strong grip.

  * * *

  I got a sense this was not going to be an ordinary bathhouse encounter when I saw the colored, twinkling Christmas lights Dougie had draped around his cubicle.

  “This is…festive,” I said, sitting next to him on the vinyl bed cover, our thighs lightly touching.

  This was the anti—Den’s Delight—whereas that Sydney room where I “played” with the farmer in the dell was brightly and badly lit, with loose wood panels tacked to the walls and no place to sit, this seemed more like the beginning of a ride at Disneyland.

  His lips were on my neck, and I put my arm around him, stroking his back. Then he moved to my other side, startling me with little bites on my earlobe. Dougie pulled me back to lie with him on the narrow cot, his hands massaging my chest and abs, his fingers slipping beneath the towel, loosening it.

  I’d swallowed the Viagra in the Archer’s elevator but it hadn’t yet done its rigid trick. In an attempt to conceal this temporary embarrassment, I kissed him deeply and put my hand on his crotch—which to both my chagrin and delight was as hard as the stone Sacra di San Michele was built on.

  “Don’t you like me? What’s wrong?” he said, in a whisper I was sure they could hear out on the street.

  “It’s not that, really. Sometimes, I have medical issues.”

  He removed my hand, which was stroking his chest in a circular motion, and sat up. “Oh, yeah? I got just the thing for you, my friend.”

  Dougie switched on a light—which I hadn’t realized was even an option—and retrieved a vintage, blue Pan Am gym bag, which had been stuck in the corner next to his ankle boots.

  While his back was turned, I furiously rubbed my cock—thought of Jake, Eric, Davis, even the unattainable Adriano—with my right hand while checking the watch on my left wrist. I still had an hour or so of play
time before I’d absolutely have to leave for the screening.

  Blame the lack of wood on the whiskey. I’d downed the last of the three bottles I’d taken from the hotel on the way to Dougie’s room. Maybe a little high, but certainly not shitfaced. God, if all this was going to be so unpredictable—

  “Wow, no luck, eh? No luck.” Dougie stared at my uncooperative penis.

  The Pan Am bag was open. It was now plainly obvious that he was a drug dealer. A user, too, I figured, putting the fidgetiness, the lack of body fat of any kind, the talkiness into reductive perspective. Funny how horniness and denial so easily work together, I thought, as Dougie pulled various baggies and syringes out to display on the cot between us, like a friendly door-to-door salesman showing his wares to a customer who desperately needed something.

  “I got that sweet injection here—the Caverject stuff; just what you need.”

  * * *

  Normally I didn’t consider myself to be an impressionable kind of guy, but this was obviously a false assumption. I took Dougie’s offer up on the instant erection offered by Caverject, almost without hesitation. To my credit, I insisted he use a disposable alcohol swab to disinfect my penis before he stuck the tiny needle into it.

  I knew it was the real thing because it came in the manufacturer’s package. Dr. Kim had discussed this alternative to ED oral meds a couple of times, and Davis had joked about it. I’d planned to give it a whirl at some unspecified time in a more controlled environment, but like they say—there’s no time like the present.

  While injecting me, Dougie rattled on about having his R.N. license from Connecticut—though he was between jobs. I lay back on my elbows and watched as my cock went from pathetically limp to rock hard and nearly purple in a matter of minutes, as if someone had used a bicycle pump on a flat inner tube.

  I’m not sure I’d ever been that hard.

  Dougie carefully wrapped up the spent syringe thing and placed it in the wastebasket. “I can do this one as a bonus for ya, babe, if you’re interested in anything else I got here. Look at all this stuff,” he said, indicating the drug bag with a nod of his tweaker head.

  “Do you have any ecstasy?”

  Dougie giggled, pulling various packets of drugs out of the bag. “I think I can help you out, cowboy.”

  * * *

  I returned to my tiny room to get Dougie’s cash, pressing my wrist on my erect cock to flatten it out against my stomach. Not that it mattered, as there was no one in the dark hallway this time.

  I bought several tabs of X, all for future use—a good investment, I figured—becoming a regular drug user was a definite possibility on the horizon, though I hadn’t had much time to process the opportunity what with all the cancer treatment.

  “Dude, you have to fuck me with that, have to, have to!” Dougie said. “Turn over, then,” I said. This had to be quick, as the Hell for the Holidays screening time loomed.

  We did it doggy style—which has definite advantages in casual, if not quite anonymous (he couldn’t really be anonymous now that he was my drug dealer) sex when one doesn’t want to chance a possibly revealing glance into someone’s eyes.

  “You like that, don’tcha, Doug; you like my big fat cock,” I said, channeling unoriginal generic porn.

  Dougie made an appropriate reply, which came in a groan or grunt or two, muffled in the faded blue West Side Club—stamped pillow. For the moment at least, he seemed to have lost his previous loquaciousness.

  “Yeah, Benny, fuck the cum right out, right out, do it!” His shout startled me but got me to pick up the pace, banging him faster, harder, my Caverjected penis now totally separate from the rest of me.

  Dougie collapsed on the cot, taking me down with him, still inside, my nose buried in the soft, wet brown hair at the back of his neck. He exhaled forcefully, the chemically enhanced warmth of his breath breaking over my cheek.

  “Did you like that?” I said.

  I’d had my dry orgasm inside the condom inside Dougie’s ass. He’d come all over the shiny vinyl cot covering—his body obscured the mess, but I could smell it, that essence of manliness lost when I misplaced my prostate.

  * * *

  It’d been great to be hard enough to have actual intercourse—my first time on top since the operation. Not so great was the need to maneuver my penis into my trousers at an odd and painful angle to zip up, something I last remembered doing as a horny teenager.

  The erection was not only not gone; it was still as hard as it was when we were fucking. It stayed that way as I walked south on Fifth Avenue toward the Village Cinema screening. I’d meet Dad and Jackie out front on Twelfth Street, just a few blocks away. The workday had just ended for millions of New Yorkers, and they all rushed uptown toward me, their eyes surely riveted on my protruding crotch.

  I bought the Daily News, which conveniently folded in half and was easy to hold against the front of my pants. The spring evening had turned warm—sweat from my armpits dripped inside my shirt and stung my waist as I approached the theater.

  I was still as hard as a virgin bridegroom when I turned down Twelfth. My father and his wife stood waiting under the marquee.

  “Hey, you guys,” I said, waving from a couple of storefronts away, my left hand holding the newspaper firmly against my front.

  Dad looked a little bent over, and I hadn’t noticed this before.

  “Benny-boy!” he said, loud enough for a probably unnoticeable cringe.

  Arms outstretched, he wore a subdued Hawaiian shirt, which seemed ubiquitous on men of a certain age, covered with a rather nice navy blazer. I wondered whether Jackie had picked it out, as it set off that other gift to me—the bright blue eyes—as well as his full head of white hair. The overall effect was quite striking.

  “Dad,” I said, hugging him with my right arm only.

  “How are you, son? Jackie and I have so looked forward to this.”

  She stood next to him, and, if anything, seemed even leaner and meaner than I’d remembered. She wore tight black leggings, showing off that great muscle tone, and a floral print top complemented her cool green eyes and red hair.

  It was always obvious to me that my stepmom could kick my ass.

  “We’ve been so worried about you,” she said, her hand on my arm. I bent forward to kiss her on the cheek; a hint of jasmine instantly reminded me of Palm Springs, the Jacuzzi, the ghosts of Connie and Mark.

  * * *

  The next few moments seemed to pass in slow motion with an ever-increasing level of horror. I met the festival director—a short, sticklike lesbian with a blond buzz cut who referred to me as “that Californian”—as Dad and Jackie sat in the VIP row and I fished my Hell for the Holidays intro notes out of my pocket without taking the newspaper off my crotch.

  I was told I’d introduce my film to the full house from the stage with the other shorts directors. Just like Sydney.

  Since the erection showed no sign of abating, that meant I could either (1) stand there holding the Daily News against myself, obviously hiding something or (2) forgo the paper entirely, pretending there was nothing odd about the conspicuous—and now painful—bulge in my pants.

  Neither of these scenarios was going to work, I realized at about the same time it became undeniable this was a priapism. I knew enough about Caverject to know that a trip to the emergency room was indicated if an erection lasted longer than four hours. I clocked mine at three hours, forty minutes, and counting.

  I didn’t know which was worse: standing in front of the Aussie men with a Defendor shoved down my pants or standing here in front of New York’s gay cognoscenti with a giant, problematic woody.

  The lights dimmed. The four other directors in the program queued up along the aisle, ready to approach the stage. Stick Girl pushed me into the line and said, “We’re starting. Follow this guy here.”

  “Wait just a second,” I said.

  I trotted as best as I could up to the where Dad and Jackie sat on the aisle.

&
nbsp; “Dad, give me your jacket,” I said, pulling it off his right arm.

  “What the hell, son?” He pulled back. This was going to be a tug of war.

  “Anthony, just give it to him. He’s obviously agitated,” Jackie said.

  “She’s right. I’m really stressed right now—I’ll explain later!” I got the jacket off him and thrust the newspaper into his chest. Arriving at the stage just as my codirectors had climbed the catwalk over the thin orchestra pit, I draped the jacket over one arm, held it against me, and joined them.

  * * *

  I supposed telling one’s parents you had a hard-on that wouldn’t go away and thus had to go the emergency room of a hospital in a strange city would be difficult under the best of circumstances.

  It got more complicated when you were in your forties, hadn’t seen said parents in years and had to finesse an explanation of why this happened to people who had no idea that there were injections for the penis meant to produce instant timber.

  Not to mention where or why I had done this today.

  Benediction All this tumbled out, so to speak, in the cab en route to St. Vincent’s—which was only about two blocks away. By the time the film was over, my cock hurt so much I couldn’t even walk. Dad had his jacket back on and I was holding the stupid newspaper, its ink now smeared luridly over the front page as well as my hands.

  Dad was mostly quiet. Seemed the more I tried to explain—about my prostate cancer treatment, about the need for “help” with erections and the singular efficacy of the drug I took—the more he sank into his seat in the cab, then into the wall at the hospital.

  It was useless to try to keep this male information from Jackie by whispering. On the contrary, she hung on every word, every confessional tidbit that came out, nodding slowly, even patting my knee.

  The three of us sat in a treatment pod, isolated from the rest of the ER by a stained beige pull curtain. I got the bed, Dad and Jackie the guest chairs.

  “Ben, if you were taking a bath, why would you need this kind of drug, and in your penis?” Dad said.