Page 5 of Exquisite Things

“I’ve only read some of Wilde’s poems.” I feel a pang of shame for not being sufficiently in the know. I crave knowledge. I want to know everything. “I have catching up to do.”

“Poems? I think I’ve read everything but his poems.”

“I love poetry. It dispenses with everything but the necessary words.”

He ponders. “But isn’t it the unnecessary that makes life interesting?”

I laugh. “Perhaps.”

“I’ll lend you his novels and plays, if you like.” His tone feels covert. Boys share school texts. This is different. This

is menacing text.

“I would love that.”

The word love hangs in the air. A provocation. He skips around the cracks a little faster. He’s anxious. Also buzzing with life. I thought

he was just another boring schoolboy. How wrong I was. “Want to know a secret?”

I smile. I love secrets.

“That abhorrent man with the bouquet of raw vegetables outside the theater. Did you see him?”

“Of course. It’s not every day you see a man with crazed eyes and a bouquet of molding celery.”

He’s giddy with clandestineness. “That man’s son is Wilde’s boy .” He pauses. “Wilde is a bugger.” He allows the word bugger to waft like smoke. “A sodomite!”

“I know what a bugger is.” I hesitate. “I don’t love the word.”

“The Marquess of Queensberry, what a silly title. What does it even mean? The man is frothing at the mouth over his son’s

infatuation with Oscar. I overheard my father and his friends discuss it. They called Wilde and Bosie and their ilk vile menaces

to society.”

I adopt an authoritative voice. “Menacing. Menaces. Mendiosus.” I laugh. “Latin conjugation with Professor Hatcher.”

“Who I suspect is also a bugger.” He wields the word like a weapon.

“I think your father is jealous.”

“Jealous?”

“Your father, his friends, our classmates, their lives are all so predictable. Exceedingly dull. And no one is having more

fun on this planet in this moment than Oscar Wilde.”

“Did you just insult my father and all my friends?”

“I—”

I’m prepared to stammer out an apology when he claps his hands together gleefully. “Where have you been hiding all this time?”

“In plain sight.” I tap dance on the street. I’m not sure I knew what loving myself felt like before tonight.

“We must be friends. I can’t tell the other boys the things I want to.”

“Like?”

“Like how much pleasure it brings me to watch all our insipid parents cheer for Wilde and turn his plays into such ravishing

successes, when all the while he’s everything they claim to loathe in the world. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“My father isn’t cheering him on. He likely doesn’t know who he is.”

“Good for him.”

“Nothing good about him.” I hiss the next part out. “If you think your parents are awful, trust me, my father is worse.”

“Is that so?” I’m used to competition from classmates. Everything at school is designed as competition. “My father eats with

his mouth open.”

“Mine whips me with a belt when I make a mistake.”

“Oh.” He bites his lip. “Mine spanked me as a child, but never a belt.”

“My father has only visited me once since I arrived at school when I was ten.”

His face falls in shock. “You’ve only seen him once in the last seven years?”

“No, no, I spend summers at home. Unfortunately.” I look up at his face. He seems interested. I keep going. “I’m not a person

to my father. I’m just... a project. He wants me to go to the best schools and study harder than anyone else so I can someday

make him proud. Bring our family the glory he craves. All he cares about is money and power.”

“He must have money and power if he sent you to school here.”

I shake my head. “He wants more than he has. He works for the royal family. He wants me to marry into the royal family. To transform us into kings.”

“And your mother?”

“She died when I was born.” I step into a puddle. Kick off the mud. I know the true motivation behind my father’s grand ambitions

for me. He wants to transform me into a son who is worthy of his love. But that will never happen. Because I’ll always be

the son he blames for killing the one person he did love. “It’s just me and my father. He thinks I’m going to move back home

when I’m out of university. Work with him. Use what I’ve learned in England to help him ascend to even higher status.”

“And what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know yet, but...”

“But?”

“I’d love to write.” It’s the first time I’ve uttered these words. Perhaps the first time I’ve had the thought. The improbable suddenly feels possible on this crisp February night. Admissible, at the very least.

“What would you want to write?”

“Poems, maybe.” I allow for a short intermission in my words. “Menacing ones, of course.”

He cackles. “You know what I’m fascinated by?” He skips over a crack. Almost falls. I hold him up. His long body in my arms.

We remain frozen like that for a moment. We’re in an alley now. A shortcut I know from my wanderings. No one else is in sight.

“Book binding.” His face below mine. My hands under his shoulders.

“Book binding?” That’s not what I was expecting.

“I observed the physical creation of a book once and it was enthralling.” He cranes his neck to make sure we’re still alone.

“Like you.”

“Me?”

“Let’s be buggers tonight.” He waits. I say nothing. “What do you say?”

I grimace. “I don’t like that word. Can’t we be lovers instead?” I don’t know why I say that. I don’t love him. I desire him.

He doesn’t inspire that feeling the poems illuminate. When love’s arrow strikes. One of Wilde’s own poems comes to me: We shall be notes in that great Symphony.

James doesn’t love me either. That is clear when he proclaims: “Men can’t love men. But we can bugger each other.” Before

I can protest: “Would you let Oscar Wilde bugger you?”

“What? He’s old enough to be my father.” Wilde’s poetry keeps coming to me: One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years have lost their terror now. We shall not die. The Universe itself shall be

our immortality!

“My father, believe it or not, has some very handsome friends.” James enjoys the sound of this shocking thought escaping his lips. “Does yours?”

“I suppose I would prefer to be with someone closer to my own age.” I’m coming to these conclusions on the spot. Realizing

what I want only when faced with what I don’t. “What I want is... someone who might understand me. Truly and completely.

And still, despite it all, love me.”

“You’ll need a woman for that. Men aren’t meant to love. They’re meant to do this.” He puts a hand on my crotch. Rubs me until

I’m stiff. The way he does it makes me think he’s been taught how by someone else. Perhaps by one of the boys at school. “And...

this.” He presses his lips to mine. Shoves his tongue violently into my mouth.

Of course I crave him. But also more than him. Someone who makes butterflies fly inside me. A boy who makes me feel like a

note in a great symphony. I push him gently away. “Let’s not rush things.”

“Who’s exceedingly dull now?” He cackles.

“I’m sorry.” I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for.

He quickly forgives me. He creates an elaborate fantasy of what our futures could be as I lead him back to school. “You’ll

write poems. Even better ones than Wilde. And I’ll bind them. No, I’ll publish them. I’ll start a publishing house. We’ll

marry, of course.”

For a moment, I think he’s suggesting we would marry each other .

Then: “Our wives will be dear friends, and our children will be too. And when we need the company of a man, we’ll visit each

other surreptitiously. Doesn’t that sound glorious?”

It doesn’t. Not to me. All my father cares about are appearances, even if those appearances are lies.

I don’t want to pretend and deceive. But I can’t confess this to James.

There have been enough secrets for one day.

It’s clear to me that he’s a bugger. I am not.

I want something bigger than buggery. A love of the heart. A life of truth.

Whatever connection James feels with me seems to disappear once we return to the routine of school and sport. He goes back

to his usual friends. Their pale faces and mundane thoughts. I finally find him alone in the library after eight days have

passed. I catch his gaze. He quickly looks away. I wait for him to say hello. He doesn’t. I sit next to him. “I thought we

were going to be friends.”

“That was before.”

“Before what exactly?” I make no attempt to hide my annoyance. “Before you decided to go back to being a bore?”

He looks around to make sure no one is in proximity. “Haven’t you heard? Wilde is taking the Marquess of Queensberry to court

for calling him a sodomite.”

“The deranged man with the vegetable bouquet!” I say this a little too loud.

“Keep your voice down. I don’t know why Wilde couldn’t just ignore the old man. Now the whole city’s talking about it.”

“Perhaps that’s a good thing.”

His eyes narrow. “A good thing?” He shakes his head. “There will be a trial. The whole world will be disgusted by him. By—

By—”

I think he wants to say “by us.” But I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that it won’t just be Wilde on trial. It will be me

too. My lust. My desire for love. My deviant thoughts. That will be what’s debated in the court. Splashed across newspapers

around the world.

“Perhaps there’s something even more disgusting than being a sodomite.” I wait for his curious eyes to find mine. “Being a coward.” I stand up. Walk away from James.

He doesn’t dare speak to me again. Not as news of the trial sweeps across the city. Boys in dorms do fey impressions of Wilde.

They throw the word bugger around mercilessly. A dripping spittle of disgust on their lips each time they speak it. I hear James say it too. Mocking

the very thing he is. Loathing himself as self-protection. Pathetic.

I go back to walking. Observing. Keeping my mouth closed. The streets are abuzz with talk of the looming trial. What was once

gossiped about in private is now a public obsession. In the pages of the papers. I learn of the detectives Queensberry hired.

Of Wilde’s visits to male brothels. Tales of blackmail. Corruption. Cross-dressers.

They say: Not since the Greeks.

They say: We must protect our children from the likes of him.

The man all of London cheered for on Valentine’s Day is despised by Easter.