Jacob, p.4
Jacob, page 4
Sometimes I would wait up for him—usually to his great annoyance. Sometimes he came home disheveled. Once his clothes were viciously torn, and I thought I saw blood on his shirt, but he waved me away, saying it was nothing for me to concern myself with, as he stumbled up to his room.
On other evenings, when we stayed home together, he often displayed a curious tenderness. Sometimes he would visit me in the bath, often bathing me like a father with his only child. His touch was affectionate, never untoward, but he seemed fascinated with the appearance of my flesh, openly admiring the rosy color of my skin, made even more red by the heat of the bath water—though I had become much paler now for spending so much time indoors. It was a curious behavior on his part, yes, but I’d experienced much worse at the hands of lesser men, and after a while I came to enjoy his attentions as a sign of his affection.
I had been with Monsieur for almost three years, and I was beginning to feel safe, even comfortable, perhaps for the first time in my life—but I had also begun to experience a growing unease. I was feeling incomplete, if that is even the right word. Perhaps it was an emotion without a name.
Monsieur must have sensed my disquiet for he asked me one night what troubled me. It was a cold rainy night, we were sitting in front of the fire, and I felt bold enough to ask Monsieur why he had brought me into his house if he found me so unattractive. He looked astonished and asked me what I meant by such a question. I told him that he had never once placed a hand on me, never once invited me to share his bed, never once even asked me to remove my shirt. The only time he expressed any interest at all in my nakedness was when he visited me in the bath.
It puzzled me greatly. I had initially thought that he had chosen me because he recognized my nature—but now I had no idea why he had taken me into his household, I could only assume that whatever interest he might once have had, must have long since faded, or perhaps even worse, perhaps he now found my nature somehow embarrassing or even abhorrent. He would not be the first to feel that way. Prior to my engagement with Monsieur, I had met and serviced gentlemen who sought out the pleasures of boys or other men, but pretended to the more typical interest in female bodies—
I did not get to finish. Monsieur interrupted me with that great gentle laugh of his. He reached over and placed his hand on my arm and reassured me that no, that was not the case. First, he told me not to be ashamed of my nature. Many men prefer the company of other men, women hold no attraction for them. He gave me the key to the locked bookcase and told me that I should read some of the histories of ancient Greece and Rome. And medieval Japan as well. He said that as I read more, I would learn that I was in august company. I shared the same nature as Plato and Socrates, Michelangelo and Leonardo. Great thinkers, magnificent artists. I should be proud of that shared spirit.
So why then did Monsieur not caress me or fondle me? Did he not share my nature? Did he not appreciate it? Again, he laughed. “Dearest boy,” he said, “I find you painfully attractive. There is nothing I would like more than to lie in your arms and enjoy the sweetness of your kiss. But I must not. It would not be fair to you.”
“Not fair? Please, Monsieur,” I begged. “I would be your willing servant in all things. Even in your bed.”
“And I would have you be just that, if I could,” he said. “But I dare not. For if I were to be so foolish, I would do you irreparable harm. And I care about you too much to cause you that kind of grief. Trust me, Jacob.”
I fell to my knees before him, sobbing. I buried my head in his lap and cried at great length. Monsieur said nothing. He merely sat and stroked my hair, it fell down past my shoulders, I’d never had a haircut, he’d never allowed me to. He just stroked my hair and waited until my grief subsided. Finally, I looked up at him, met his dispassionate gaze, and begged him as if I were begging for my life, perhaps I was and didn’t know it, but I was overwhelmed with emotion, I felt as if I might go mad if he wouldn’t tell me the truth of why we couldn’t consummate our passion, why we had to impose such impossible restraints on ourselves. If I surprised Monsieur with my desperate outburst, I surprised myself even more. I had never felt such desire for another person in my entire life.
Jacob interrupts himself. “Oh, yes—that’s something else you missed—the attraction.”
“Huh?” I had been so caught up in his narrative, it was almost a shock to return to the present.
“The monthly excursions—you know what those were for, of course. No, we don’t have to feed every night, we don’t have to feed at all, but we do have a lunar cycle of our own, and in those days—before anti-depressants and mood-altering substances, we were often caught up in our own hormonal storms. Our own bipolar madness. That part has never made it into popular lore, has it? Of course not, real biology complicates things. The facts get in the way of masturbation fantasies, eh?
“But that’s key to understanding the other thing—our unnatural pheromones. Yes, we have pheromones. It’s part of the condition. And they’re strongest at those times of the month when we’re hungriest. It’s a chemical lure that serves to overwhelm any fear you might experience. You experience it as irresistible attraction. Male or female. The more you are exposed to one of us, the more you are—oh, what’s a good word here—enchanted? Fascinated? Enthralled? Captivated? Held. From the predator’s point of view, it’s a very useful adaptation. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Jacob smiles. He shows his teeth. The chill of panic starts in my groin and spreads outward, rising like a wave, up through my belly and my chest, expanding outward in a rush, but almost immediately it turns into a surge of heat—or something—all the way up through my throat and finally to my eyes. I wipe the moisture off my cheeks.
Jacob reaches over with his incredibly well-manicured nail and touches the top button on my shirt. Without a word, I fumble it open. I’m ready to undo the next one, when Jacob leans back, smiling but wagging his finger at me as well. “See, what I mean?”
I swallow hard. Regret as much as relief.
Jacob gives me a look—is it pity? “That’s just the barest intimation of what I was feeling for Monsieur.”
Monsieur must have been moved by my tears, because he said, “Jacob, my son—yes, that is how I regard you—as the son I wished I could have had. You have given me more happiness than I ever believed I was capable of. I have trusted you with my well-being for almost three years now, a blink of an eye for me, half a lifetime for you. It is time for you to know just how much I trust you.
“‘You know that I cannot abide bright lights of any kind. It is why I must avoid the daylight. It is a condition of the blood. There are other disabilities as well, far more severe, and I shall discuss those with you as it becomes necessary. But for the moment, dearest boy, please understand that my candor on this matter is a gift of enormous trust—were I to succumb to my attraction for you, were we to consummate our passion, you would very likely be exposed to suffer the same disabilities in time. I simply cannot risk that. I dare not pass this condition onto your shoulders. Not at this stage of your life. At least … not yet. As much as you have begged me for physical attention, I must with even more intensity beg you to resist—resist with all your heart and soul, as if your very life depends on it, because it does. My denial is not a rejection of your spirit, dearest Jacob, but an affirmation of it.’”
Of course, his words only increased my distress. I was heartbroken—now that I had spoken my affection and Monsieur had spoken his as well, now that I knew the depth of his feelings, the situation was even more untenable.
I was caught up in his pheromones, of course. But Monsieur understood all too well why he dared not expose me. At that stage of my life, still barely a teenager, I would have become a monster stuck in a post-adolescent hormonal storm, a captive of my own relentless lust. I would have created monsters around me.
Such an event was not unknown to The Community—that regular gathering of Monsieur’s associates—in the past, the community had acted immediately to destroy any such monsters that might have been inadvertently created, quickly before such a plague could flame out of control.
But Monsieur had not yet shared any of that with me. Perhaps he thought I would imagine him insane and go to the authorities. Perhaps he feared it would destroy my affection for him. Instead, he simply assured me that it was for my own good that we not share a bed. Despite my hormone-driven pleas, he insisted. I even told him that I would not mind sharing his disability, but—he argued just as fervently—who could we trust to protect the house and the both of us during the day?
It has been repeated so many times and in so many places that knowledge is power, that most people believe the statement without ever questioning it. But my experience demonstrated to me that it couldn’t possibly be true. Not always. Certainly not here.
Some knowledge drains you of power, leaves you feeling empty and helpless. Staying in the same house with Monsieur became intolerable—I spent long hours in distress, my mind churning, even to the point of considering that if I wanted to preserve what was left of my sanity, I should leave his house forever.
Monsieur could not have been unaware of my anguish. He was suffering considerable misery of his own. Night after night, he went out into the darkness, staying out till the first rays of dawn, often returning as feverish and wild-eyed as an escapee from an asylum. I had never seen him so crazed. When I asked him if there was anything I could do, he only glared at me—I cried out in alarm, he must have misunderstood, for he flung me back against the wall in anger or some other unidentifiable emotion—but he gave me a look of such rage I did not dare to speak.
The next evening, as soon as the last rays of the sun disappeared from the drawing room, he came rushing downstairs, wearing only his dressing gown, disheveled and grief-stricken. He clasped both my hands in his and begged my forgiveness for his fury of the previous night. He had no excuse, he said, only that sometimes his condition, as he called it, sometimes drove him into fits of madness, an uncontrollable lunacy. He believed he had been managing it well, but obviously he had become over-confident—last night had shown that he had not maintained himself as well as he had hoped. He was so terribly terribly sorry that I had suffered the brunt of his fury that I felt his anguish as my own.
Of course, I forgave him. How could I not? But as we sat there together, alternately apologizing and forgiving each other, it was clear that we were both struggling with the situation. We whirled about a common center of turmoil—the same way the Earth and moon rotate around a common center of gravity. But because the Earth has much greater mass, that center of gravity is actually located a thousand miles deep within the surface of the planet, so while the moon swings around this world, the combined center of gravity follows it, rotating around inside the planet’s core, relentlessly stirring the mantle—and so, the Earth wobbles in its orbit.
That was the effect I had on Monsieur, disturbing him in his own eternal course. Like the moon, I circled him, always keeping the same face to his ever-changing moods, my presence pulling him first in one direction, then another. Around and around we circled, a strange and terrible dance in darkness.
Finally, one late night, as I rested sad and alone in my bath—even after the water had lost all warmth, I felt no urge to withdraw—I realized that Monsieur had done me no favors. All the tutors, all the lessons, had produced only one terrible result—I had grown educated enough to experience true despair. I knew too much of life, too much of the world, to accept anything less than all of it—and all of it was what I could not have.
As I lay there, lost in the slow dissolution of my soul, my head devoid of purpose, my mind wandered into territories I thought I had left behind. Suspicion overwhelmed my soul. I began to wonder on Monsieur’s intentions when he left on his solitary walks. Unaware of his true nocturnal purposes, I could only imagine him tangled in the arms of some other boy, perhaps one of the familiar boys of the streets. I still saw them from time to time, whenever Monsieur and I still went out together. Monsieur must have noticed them as well with his extraordinary awareness, but even to an ordinary mortal the boys of the street were unavoidable—they postured languidly against a lamp post here or the corner of a building there, not-so-discreetly advertising their availability.
Show a bit of calf, bare a sleeveless arm, it was enough—the nocturnal dances were a healthy business in those days, albeit short-lived. If a boy had looks, if he was wise enough to avoid the ravages of disease, he could survive a while, until he finally grew strong enough to find a place on a fishing boat or cargo vessel or some other useful trade. In that business, a young man’s attractiveness would dissipate all too quickly. Escape was always a desperate avenue.
I’m sure the boys must have noticed us as well. Those few who might have remembered me from my days among them must have assumed that I was now serving only a single wealthy patron as a kept boy, but I had no desire to explain or justify my situation to anyone, so I ignored them. But as I said, they could not have escaped the notice of Monsieur.
But when I examined my jealous thoughts, holding them up to the cold light of logic, I fell into a most curious argument with myself. If Monsieur would not want to risk passing his condition onto me, then surely he wouldn’t want to expose any of the boys on the street—but if he had no affection for those fellows, why would he care if they were exposed or not? And if he wasn’t out there looking for a bit of horizontal refreshment, then what was he looking for? I did not know about the possible creation of monsters at the time, or I would have been reassured that he was not soliciting the custom of the street.
Once again, Jacob interrupts his narrative, giving me a sly smile.
“Yes, now I know what Monsieur was doing. He was feeding. Unable to satisfy his sexual appetites, his blood-lust had surged. Flared. Fortunately, Seattle was a rough seaport then. It still is. Dead bodies were not uncommon. But … Monsieur was not sloppy. He did not need the city plunged into the same kind of panic that later paralyzed London when Jack the Ripper roamed free. I’m sure he feasted well. I am equally sure they never found the bodies—”
On that particular night, as the stillness stretched into the last hours before dawn, as I lay cold in my bath, waiting for I don’t know what—perhaps even death would not have been unwelcome—finally I heard the sound of the front door and footsteps on the stair. I recognized the gentility of his step, Monsieur had returned.
It was his custom to check to see if I was awake. Sometimes we would share a bit of bread and sausage, cheese and wine before he retired. This night, not finding me in my bed, he came to the bathroom next. Finding me unexpectedly in the tub, he became alarmed. He put a hand into the water and withdrew it quickly, startled. “My God, it’s colder than me. How long have you been lying here?”
I said, “I don’t know. Forever, I think.”
My reply further alarmed him—as it revealed my disassociated state of mind. Without regard for my nakedness, Monsieur pulled me to my feet, lifted me from the tub, and wrapped a heavy towel around me. He grabbed another and toweled my hair, my neck, my shoulders, my arms and back and chest, lower down as well.
When he was finally satisfied that I was dry, he put me into his own dressing gown. He scooped me up in his arms—I’d known he was strong, I hadn’t known he was that strong—and carried me to my bed. Once he had settled me among the pillows, he looked at me very sternly. “We cannot continue like this, Jacob, can we?” No, we cannot, I agreed.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, I remember every detail of the moment, how the mattress creaked, how it gave beneath his weight, how I felt myself pulled toward him. He looked away from me then, studied the wainscoting of the wall, looked beyond it as if he was seeing something a thousand miles away.
In the silence that followed, a flurry of emotions swept through me. I felt cautious and skeptical, hopeful and afraid—because even as I feared what he might say next, I hoped for the strength of his wisdom.
And yet, at the same time—I was also beginning to fear Monsieur. Despite his own erratic behaviors, more so now than ever, I still believed in him. But I did not trust his friends. I didn’t like the hungry way that some of them looked at me. And if these strange men were his friends, then what did that say about Monsieur? We are known by our friends, are we not?
Finally, Monsieur turned back to face me, with such an expression of sadness on his face that I immediately wanted to pull him to me, but I had long since learned not to engage in such open and enthusiastic expressions of affection, he always pulled back alarmed. But tonight, he surprised me. He reached out and took my hands, holding them gently between both of his. “Let me ask you this, dear Jacob. Have you given any thought to your future?”
I didn’t answer his question, I couldn’t—because the future had been all that I had been thinking about. That black unknown tomorrow I had been fearing for so long had pushed me beyond anguish into despair. I had come to the terrifying conclusion that I would have to finally leave this house. Although I had experienced so much comfort and wonder here when I was younger, now there was only distress. The tension between us had become unbearable. But I couldn’t tell him the truth. I couldn’t speak at all. Instead, the tears rolled down my cheeks unabated.
I’m certain Monsieur must have known my thoughts. If ever it was possible for one person to read another’s thoughts, Monsieur must have known mine as clearly as if they were engraved in fire. My feelings were loudly betrayed in the pageant of my expressions.
“Dearest Jacob,” he began, “You cannot have missed the confusion and disarray I have been experiencing in my own thoughts. I have been considering this problem at some length. And—” He stopped himself. The words were painful, even for him. “I have no choice, in this. It is for both our sakes. No stop, don’t speak—”
