The Sensual Mirror Read online

  “Because this isn’t anything I do with other men, even men I’ve known a long time.”

  Robert gazed at the wall over Martin’s head for a few seconds and then replied, “I guess that the major advantage of homosexuality is that it tends to remove the fear of homosexuality. Two men who get close usually get frightened. Will he embrace me? Will he kiss me? Will he grab my cock? And all that. But when you’ve already done all that with a man, there is no fear. Then, so what if he does? The trouble with homosexuality is that it often tends to get fixated at that level, so that a gay man will often opt for a bit of flesh friction before he even exchanges names. I think I’ve pretty well cooled out both extremes, with Babba’s help, so when I’m close to a man I don’t necessarily want to fuck him, nor will I necessarily push him away if he wants to fuck me. I can just be with him, without innuendoes or undercurrents.”

  “And women,” Martin asked. “What about women?” He was hungry for knowledge, and he did not know how to find it. With Robert, suddenly, he thought he had found a handle and he would pump it until the well produced the water of truth to slake his thirst.

  “Women are a problem to men,” Robert said simply. “Because we issue from the womb of a woman, we have a tendency to mistake the hole between her legs for the Source of All Creation. Mother Nature and all that. We wind up worshipping pussy instead of God. We turn cunt into a fetish. And the ladies, as you know, are very suggestible. If a man looks at one with moons in his eyes and tells her that she is the most important thing in the universe to him, she will have her head turned and believe him, never suspecting that it is his cock talking and using his mouth like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Then, when his desire is slaked, which takes anywhere from one night to one year, depending on how much charge differential there is between them, he begins to see the stretch marks, and finds her asshole less than marvelous, especially since she, from time to time, farts under the sheets. At this point, he usually turns on her, and blames her for not being perfect, which is what God ought to be. She accuses him of being unfair. He flexes his muscles. She has an affair. Etc. etc. etc.”

  During the entire discourse, Martin nodded his head, again and again, more and more forcefully as Robert detailed the graph of modern relationship. At the end he took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.

  “Oh, don’t you know it,” he said.

  “The foolish worship of women is counterbalanced by an equally absurd phobia. The monthly blood, the hideous emotionalism, the inability to think coherently, the essential whorishness, and all the rest of that trip. It’s the same in the gay world, from the usual refusal to even touch a woman to the Judy Garland cult. And beneath all that, somewhere, is a creature that is of the same stuff as us, in fact, of the same stuff as all creation. Women are just one more manifestation of God, although a very thorny one. Not nearly as easy to deal with as, for example, trees.”

  The waitress arrived with a circular black tray nearly three feet in diameter. She put it down on the adjoining table and transferred the various bowls and plates to the space in front of the two men. She had heard the last two sentences of Robert’s talk, and it might have fascinated her under other circumstances, but at that moment the insistent ache in her arches took dominance over the most airy and delicately articulated metaphysics. She had an hour and forty minutes to go. It would be a long stretch.

  Outside, on Greenwich Avenue, thousands of people swept by, strolling, rushing, prancing, shuffling, cruising, shopping. Most of them were fixed on a goal, a destination, oblivious of automobiles, dog shit, and the setting sun. They operated on automatic pilots, their bodies mere vehicles to get them from one psychic melodrama to another. A few paused every now and then to wonder at the wonder of it all. Occasionally a street crazy ambled by, talking out loud, gesticulating to an invisible audience. It was a circus of conditioned anarchists, choreographed by an industrial afterthought.

  “Have you ever been . . . involved with a woman?” Martin asked, wondering whether he might be transgressing the bounds of civility.

  “Oh, a few,” Robert said. “I’m even a father. Had an affair with a girl in California when I was nineteen, I left for New York shortly thereafter, and received a letter from her telling me she was pregnant. I sent a telegram telling her I would pay for an abortion, but she wanted the baby. She later married a Navy Lieutenant stationed in San Diego. And then there was Anita, who broke my heart. And a hooker who got to be my friend and used to drop by to talk and have coffee and give me free fucks. I think I’ve done most of the basic scenes that a man can do with women.”

  “Will there be anything else?” the waitress said. She had been standing at their table since putting the food in front of them, waiting for them to notice that she had indeed served them. Martin glanced up sheepishly.

  “No, no, thank you,” he said, and made a note to himself to give her an extra large tip. She grimaced and walked off. Her ploy of anguished intimidation made her approximately fifteen dollars a day more in tips than she might have ordinarily accumulated.

  The two men picked up utensils and spent the next several minutes concentrating on their food. They were both slightly ravenous and ate rapidly, Martin taking large bites and swallowing almost at once while Robert chewed each mouthful exactly twenty times. It was only after they had consumed half the volume of stuff on their plates that Martin went on.

  “I really don’t mean to pry . . . “ He stopped and checked himself. “I’m sorry, that’s foolish. I do mean to pry. I’m very curious, and everything you’ve said so far is opening up my thinking tremendously. What I don’t understand is why you . . . “ He let the sentence trail.

  “Why did I become a homosexual?” Robert finished. “Is that what you want to know?”

  Martin nodded.

  “Well, it was summertime, and we were cruising the Caribbean. There was a moon, and the music from the lower deck, and . . . well, I know it was a mad, mad thing to do, but Dirk was so handsome, so irresistible, that when he took me in his arms I . . . “ Robert had undergone a complete transformation. The pleasant, soft-spoken man of a few moments earlier had turned into Holly Woodlawn. He talked in a throaty falsetto and waved his arms about, his hands fluttering like spastic moths. For an instant Martin could see the invisible shawl he flourished in the air. But in the middle of his monologue he stopped, froze, and stared Martin in the eye. It was another of those sudden shifts which left Martin stunned and totally at a loss as to what to say. Robert saw the other’s consternation and smiled.

  “I hope it doesn’t upset you when I dash off like that. It’s just that you get so serious sometimes I can’t help myself.”

  Martin blinked. “It’s all right,” he said, clearing his throat, “it’s something like watching a frog turn into a prince before my eyes. But I suppose one can get used to anything after a while.” He watched Robert watching him for a few moments then went on, “But seriously, why did you . . . ?”

  Halfway through the sentence, however, he heard his own voice and the incongruity of what he was saying and how he was saying it struck him. “But seriously, why did you become a homosexual?” was the full question and in such a form could give rise to nothing but laughter, which it did. The two of them sat in their chairs and laughed, long and loud, Martin ending in a high-pitched giggle and Robert in a low chuckle. All through it Martin thought, I’m laughing, I’m really laughing, I must be having a good time.

  They settled down after a while and resumed their meal. The other people in the restaurant withdrew the covert glances they had cast in lieu of open and friendly attention. The two women who had looked them over earlier now exchanged expressions of smug certification, a harmonic I-told-you-so humming between them like a bridge across which an army is marching in locked step.

  Somewhat abashed, the two men finished their food, and watched the table be cleared and fruit brought for dessert before they went on talking.


  “Homosexuality is one of the simplest and most complicated of all human syndromes,” Robert said at last. “I mean, what could be more natural than two people’s liking one another, showing affection to each other in a physical way? But then you can go to the libraries and bookstores and find literally thousands of volumes written on the subject, analyzing a kiss or a lick between men to such murky roots of motivation that it makes your head spin. For me the choice was very simple once I realized that being gay was no more or less peculiar than being, say, a gasoline truck or an avocado. I’d had a child, I’d had an affair of the heart with a woman, I’d had hard-edged hooker fucking, and that just seemed enough of that. I decided to go with men because it was more pleasant, more friendly, healthier. I know that may sound weird, but it’s the truth. All of the married couples I knew were busy strangling one another, playing Woman in the Dunes on one level or another. But the gay world gave me support, understanding, a way of life that was expansive, not continually contracting.”

  “But what about sex itself?” Martin broke in. “Is it as pleasurable with a man as with a woman?”

  “I miss cunt sometimes,” Robert admitted. “But I just look upon it as a drug I once enjoyed and have given up.”

  Martin’s mind was swarming with fragments of photographs. He tried to picture Robert with another man. What did they do? Did they embrace and kiss and hold hands? Who fucked whom? Did Robert suck cock? The images proliferated and filled his mind with pressure which could only be relieved by his asking more questions. And yet he was loath to say such blatant things, afraid he might be offending or embarrassing his newfound friend. The result was that a fierce excitement began to build in him, a need to explode which came close to having him squirm in his seat. Robert watched the man go through his changes, and had he been a bit less sophisticated he might have thought that Martin was getting in touch with a strain of repressed homosexuality. But Robert had for a couple of years resigned himself to the knowledge that Martin probably had no closet to come out of along those lines. The man sitting in front of him needed to be awakened, to be liberated, to be shown the reality of God. If, in the process, Robert could wrap his lips around the other’s sizable cock, that would be a bonus in a good cause. But it was unlikely to the point of impossibility.

  “I almost wish I could be that blithe about it,” Martin said. “I’ve been without a woman for two months now.” He leaned forward and added in a lower voice, “Well, I did stop in at a massage parlor three weeks ago and got blown but I hardly count that. I mean, the girl didn’t even undress. For all the contact I got, she might as well have been . . . “

  Again he was forced to stop before completing a sentence. Talking to Robert elicited more references along the lines of homosexuality than he had ever known in a conversation, yet each was decidedly difficult.

  Robert had caught on to the intended last word and rescued Martin from his momentary dilemma. “One of the idiocies of the conventional condemnation of homosexuality is that we engage in unnatural acts, like assfucking and cocksucking. Yet no man thinks a woman unnatural for going down on a man. And as far as I can tell, a mouth or an asshole doesn’t have any gender.”

  “That’s the way it felt,” Martin admitted. “It could have been a man. And it wasn’t enough just to come. I wanted to touch her and taste her and smell her. You know, get down between her thighs where it’s hairy and wet.”

  “Ah yes,” Robert sighed. “Pure nostalgia. Let’s take a walk down memory lane, there where the pussy willows grow.”

  “Then there are times when it all seems like a dream,” Martin continued. “I look at women on the street and they might as well be mannequins. I try and try but I just can’t remember what the cunt even looks like. All I have is an impression of a mat of hair and some movement underneath. I think of myself lying on a woman, my cock inside her, moving around, grunting grabbing, pumping, and then the sperm scalding my tubes, and it doesn’t feel anything like me. I know I used to do that, and I know I’ll do it again, but right now I’m outside the pale.”

  “One of my big revelations,” Robert said, “was looking through a men’s magazine. They had photos of some woman lying across a bed, you know, with her fingers in her bush and her tits flopping to either side and this look on her face that said, ‘Ain’t I the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?’ And I really studied that picture until I found out the hidden message, which is that she is supposed to be a kind of mindless pit of pleasure, and a man proves himself by giving her orgasms. I was right back at the old worship syndrome where women are regarded as some kind of rare object.”

  Martin was leaning back in his chair, his eyes unfocused, his chest rising and falling with his breath. For an instant Robert was concerned. “Anything wrong?” he said.

  “Oh? No, nothing, nothing really.”

  “You look pale.”

  “I was thinking of Julia, that’s all.”

  “That strong, huh?”

  “I loved her very much. Well, I still love her, whatever that means. I don’t know, when I get to feeling cynical, it seems like loving is just another kind of addiction. And missing her is nothing more romantic than going cold turkey on heroin.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I realize that I’m saying that a lot, but it feels good to admit it. One of the horrors of my marriage was that I always had to know, always had to be on top of things, always had to make sense.”

  “That’s one of the horrors of civilization. We need to use our knowledge to earn a living and yet the way to God is by daily discarding what we know, cleaning out the mental attic of old informational shoes and dusty bits of data so that Divine Grace can pour in.”

  “Excuse me,” Martin put in, “but I still kind of wince when anyone talks about God.”

  “So did I,” Robert said. “And probably because my early training was so ridiculous, picturing God as an old man on a throne. Later, after my atheistic phase, I got to think of God as a concept, the Supreme Idea. But when I met Babba, the bottom fell out of all that. God is the basic, eternal reality. God is what scientists are chasing when they search for ultimate particles or origins. It is what philosophers seek in their quest for meaning. It is what poets and lovers find in the embrace of their muse, the kiss of their beloved. It is what the conventional man seeks in his marriage and his work and his children. It is what the homosexual cries out for as he sinks to his knees before a throbbing erection. God isn’t to be found apart from any experience, any manifestation. But God isn’t these things.”

  “I’m a bit confused,” Martin said.

  “There are two basic errors that human beings make. The first is to deny that anything exists except what they can experience. These are what might be called materialists. For them, if it can’t be registered by the senses or by instruments which are extensions of the senses, it doesn’t exist. It’s an attitude so provincial, so limited, so stupid that one wonders anyone can entertain it for more than a second. And yet, entire nations are ruled by such thinking. The other mistake is thinking that what we experience is only an illusion, that there is some kind of ultimate reality of which this palpable universe is merely reflection. These are the idealists, the ones who hate life, who despise the fact that we are transitory, fragile, fated to live under the conditions of mortality. They are weary of earth, so they conjure up a heaven in which there is no pain, no separation, no death. And to rule over this place, they invent an idealized version of themselves and call it God. Any adolescent with a trace of intelligence is capable of seeing through this nonsense, and, unfortunately having no alternative in the culture, shucks the whole question. Thus people grow up vapid. And as they get older, they thrash about, trapped in the inevitability of their demise, grasping for some of consolation. Some get so bitter and frustrated they burst out in violence, or sink into debauchery, or run for president. Anything to keep f
rom facing their ingrown mediocrity. That was the place I was at when I met Babba. And he just looked at me, and saw into my soul, and the next thing I knew I was in tears, prostrating myself at his feet.”

  Martin looked at the man across the way, this relative stranger with whom he’d spent more hours over the past three years with anyone else except his wife, and with whom he had seldom exchanged a personal remark. Robert was glowing, his skin pink, his eyes flickering with an inner strobe, his hair shimmering gold in the soft light of the restaurant. Martin had heard words like that before, notably from what he considered fanatics on the street trying to give away free tickets to listen to some Korean munitions manufacturer who claimed he was the Messiah, here to complete the job Jesus never got finished. He’d picked up the same fervid tone watching Billy Graham on television one night. He was well read enough to know about the power of blind faith, the way in which the mind, when concentrated by a powerful belief, could accomplish extraordinary feats including curing disease, and totally transforming a person’s lifestyle. He even knew a couple back in Michigan. The man had been an Associate Professor of English Literature. He was a Ph.D., an urbane, witty, well-balanced man. One weekend he and his wife had gone to see a preacher who had come to town with his particular brand of Christian revival, and the couple just went around the bend. The man began telling his students that they had to put their trust in Jesus, that this was the only thing in life that mattered. His wife gave sermons at bridge parties. The incident was treated with civilized embarrassment, most people figuring that everyone was allowed at least one flip-out, that the couple would soon be over it and everyone would be able, before too long, to laugh at the entire affair. But when it persisted for more than three months, action had to be taken. The man was dismissed, and shortly thereafter the two of them left town, presumably to join the preacher’s caravan. Martin hadn’t even pretended to understand the dynamics of conversion, but then he didn’t understand the roots of schizophrenia either, and he dismissed the incident as just one of those peculiar things that happen from time to time.