Page 7 of Exquisite Things

my son and you’ll act the part.” The way my dad lays claim on me— my son —chills me. But perhaps not as much as the fact that he is commanding me to play a part. I must perform the role of the perfect

son once more. Forever, if he has his way. Make-believe might be fun onstage or in the pages of a novel. In life it’s a curse.

“Everything looks better from above.” My eyes are glued to the park below.

“That’s what the king’s cousin told me once.”

“I know. I was there, don’t you remember?” There’s accusation in my voice. I hate him for not remembering my childhood. For

rarely being there. For never filling my stories in for me. My first words. Favorite toys. Childhood likes and dislikes. All

a void. “I was standing by your side. She said that when you’re up high, you don’t see any of the conflict and sadness of

the world, only its beauty. She said that from above, one realizes each individual life is but a dot in the grand Impressionist

painting of life, which even then I found a strange thing to say. That a single life was meaningless, when what is more important

than each living thing?”

My father turns to me in shock. “You were just... How old were you when she said that? You must have been four or five....”

“I was six.”

“It’s incredible you remember.” There’s a glimmer of respect in his voice. “You’ve always had a sharp mind. It cannot be wasted.”

“I’m not planning on wasting it. Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps I have something to teach you, just as you’ve taught

me?”

“No, it has not. When I was seventeen, I had a plan for my life. All you have is silly fantasies.”

“My plan...” I take a breath. “Is to be free.”

“Freedom has a price.” Rage flashes across my father’s face. There’s violence in his eyes. He punches the wall. His frustration

bubbles into a boil. Numbers are his domain. Not people. He always saw me as an equation. Plug in the right variables. Get

the right answer. He got me instead. A wrong answer of a son.

The headmaster does not argue when my father announces he’s pulling me out of school early and why. The headmaster shares

my father’s concern. He’s equally disgusted by Wilde. By the details he’s read of London’s filthy homosexual underworld. He

assures my father that the problems will disappear when Wilde is found guilty and put away. He calls it a cult of personality.

As if our love for other men—which began long before the late nineteenth century—is due to one modern man. He speaks of Wilde

as Dionysus. Putting others under some Bacchian spell. Not once in that meeting does the headmaster address me. It’s my father

paying the bills, after all. My education is simply a transaction. I its miserable product.

I pack my bags. Realize how little I own. Nothing belongs to me. Not even myself. Boys I’ve hardly spoken a word to say their

goodbyes. There’s a pang of sadness when I contemplate never seeing them again. Perhaps we’ve never been friends. But we shared

spaces: Classrooms. Dormitory hallways. Cricket fields. Skating rinks. I go to James’s room when my bag is packed. He’s alone.

Asleep. A book of Keats poems by his side.

I place a hand on the page that lulled him to sleep—“ Four seasons in the mind of a man: He has his lusty Spring ”—and the other hand on his hot cheek. “James.”

His eyes flutter open. “What are you doing here?” Hazy panic in his voice. He pushes my hand off his cheek.

“I’m leaving.” I keep my eyes on the poem: “ He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature. ”

“Good.” He rubs his eyes. Closes the Keats book. “I hope nobody saw you come in. I told you to—”

“James. Listen. I’m leaving. Forever. Tomorrow morning. My father is taking me back home. To Persia.” I watch as he tries

to decide if this news makes him happy. Sad. Perhaps both. “You were reading poetry.”

“So, this is goodbye?” He flips the pages of the book anxiously. Words glide by.

“I’m afraid it is. I hope... that you find someone else you can speak honestly to someday. As we did.”

His eyes soften. “If you’re leaving, then what’s the harm in one last night together. I’m due for dinner at my parents’ tonight.

Join us.”

“My father—”

“Bring him. It’s one night. One meal. What’s the worst that could happen?”

My final night in London. We’re seated at a long dining table in Mayfair. Eating an endless barrage of rich food: Soup. A

roast. Stew. Sticky pudding. Cheeses. Tea. All served on ornate porcelain. The game was hunted by James’s father only a few

days earlier. He speaks of killing an animal and turning it into stew as a source of great pride. It sickens me to chew the

meat.

James’s parents offer my father a tour of their private gardens after tea and cheese has been consumed. They leave me and James mercifully alone.

“Come, I want to show you something.” James leads me to his room. It looks untouched from when he was a much younger child.

Perhaps since he’s been living at school for years. Hand-painted underwater scenes on the walls. Fish. Octopi. Reefs. A world

of magnificent colors. Where everyone and everything floats.

He closes the door behind us. “Look!” He pulls a manuscript from under his mattress. “I stole it from my father’s office years

ago.”

I read some of the pages. Handwritten pages about Dorian Gray. “Is this...”

“It’s Oscar Wilde’s very first, unedited draft of The Picture of Dorian Gray . Well, not the entire draft, of course. I couldn’t very well steal the whole book. And of course, by the time I took them,

edits were made, subsequent drafts were created.”

I leaf through the pages. Fifty or slightly more in total. I still haven’t read the book. I’ve been too scared to ask for

it. Wilde’s name has become synonymous with sin. My eyes land on a passage that stuns me. I read it aloud. “ The aim of life is self-development . To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have

forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. ”

The words move me to act. I push James against a painted whale. Kiss him. He mutters a barely audible oh . Animal instinct takes over. He presses his body against mine. The hardness in his groin thrusts into me. A shocking hint

of wetness in the fabric of his pants. I can hear my father’s booming voice outside. I push James away. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t

have kissed you. I should go.”

“No.” He pulls me back into his grip. “Why do you think I asked you here?”

“I thought perhaps...” I thought he would miss me. That we were friends. I was so foolish.

He smiles. “You’re tempting, and as Wilde says, I can resist everything but temptation.” He unzips his pants. Smiles. “Nothing

you haven’t seen in the showers before.”

“I’ve never seen it like that.”

“Show me yours.” Lust pours out of him. I look nervously at the door as I put the pages on the small desk in a corner of the

room. “Don’t worry, my parents give garden tours to all their dinner guests. My mother takes a minimum of fifteen minutes

to explain what each tree is, and what I have in mind won’t take long.”

“I-I’m too nervous. If we were in private—”

“There’s nobody here. The servants are all in the kitchen cleaning and our tedious parents are discussing the wonders of urban

botany. Now take your pants off. You know we want the same thing.”

I don’t want this rushed lust. I want a lifetime of love. Yet I pull my pants down. This is better than nothing, after all.

Soon I’ll be under my father’s watch once more. I’ll make the most of these hungry minutes before my lifetime of obligation

begins.

“There we are.” He pushes me against the wall. Begs me to touch him. Lick him. Pull his hair. He grabs a necktie from his

closet. “Tie it around my wrists.”

“What?” This, I wasn’t expecting. “Really?”

“Please, make me feel powerless for just a moment. Power is so exhausting.” He wraps the necktie around his wrists.

He can’t tie it tight enough without my help.

I pull the ends for him. Give him what he wants.

“Now I feel like a handcuffed criminal. Ready to commit the ultimate transgression.” He lies on his bed.

Spreads his legs apart. Begs me to press my weight against him.

To place a hand on his neck until he’s short of breath.

“Are you sure?”

“Quick, before they come back in.”

I hesitate. I do it. Straddle him. Put one hand on his neck. Stroke him with the other.

That’s how we’re found. Me on top. Me in charge. Staring at his parents and my father. All aghast under the bedroom door’s

decorative moldings. James’s hands are tied. He looks—as he wished—powerless. But he reclaims his power when he shifts his

accusatory gaze to me. “He forced me! He tied my hands and pushed me onto the bed!”

“I—I didn’t...” I look in his eyes desperately as I pull my pants back up.

“I should have known better than to befriend a foreigner. They’re brutes.” He’s crying now. An expert performance. His tears

are hot. His heart ice cold.

His mother rushes to his side. Unknots the necktie. “This was a gift from my mother.” She glares at my father. “Please leave

this instant. Go back to your vile country. Stop swamping ours with your savage ways.”

“ Our savage ways?” I hate to admit my father does sound savage. “I am not the one who creates legal defenses for the publishers

of smut in court. That would be your husband’s job.”

“And I regret it every day. Never again. If I knew what Wilde was, I would never have accepted a publisher of his as a client.”

“And yet you did.” My father speaks with more controlled revulsion now. “You played a part in the corruption of this country

and its youth. In the corruption of my son.”

James’s father fights back. “Your son is sick. He belongs in prison, and if you don’t take him home as planned tomorrow, that’s exactly where he’ll be.”