Page 21 of Rhymes with Metaphor

T he next morning, Joel went to the library to hunt up some more Delany and came out holding The Mad Man .

“That’s not the best book to read when you’re discovering yourself,” said Reg. “I don’t want you to lose your innocence yet.”

“Too late.”

“No, my little one.” Reg stroked his face. “It’s not.”

“I’m not little. Statistically speaking, I’m above average height.”

“You’re a nerd, Joel.”

“Yes,” said Joel emphatically.

Reg convinced him to read the Shakespearean sonnets next. Joel began and kept reading them over lunch.

“What do you think?” said Reg.

“I like them more now than I did in high school when I was forced to read them.”

Joel finished the sonnets and moved on to Shakespeare’s plays.

Juliet called Joel every day. Joel would always go off on his own to take these calls, returning subdued or peevish and fidgety, always seeming younger and shy of touching Reg afterwards.

“Have you told her?” Reg asked him once.

“It’s none of her business.” Joel threw himself into a chair.

“You don’t have to answer your phone whenever she calls.”

“She’ll worry if I don’t.”

“Tell her you’re all right, but you’re busy, and you won’t be answering your phone every day.”

“She’ll still worry.”

“Just because she worries doesn’t mean you have to. She won’t die from worry.”

For a while, Joel obsessively checked his phone, but Reg convinced him to limit this to once a day so they could enjoy each other’s company uninterrupted.

Joel put some boundaries in place with Reg as well. He would not take off his clothes for Reg, nor would he kiss him. But as the weeks passed, Joel gradually let his guard down. Reg once brushed Joel’s lips with his fingertips, and Joel let him, opening his mouth a touch.

After a few weeks, Joel stopped wearing T-shirts beneath his silk shirts and packed his scrubs away for good.

When Reg remarked on this, Joel said it was too hot to wear layers.

He still wore his shirts buttoned up, though.

And sometimes, Joel regressed to his former mindset.

Once, he woke in the middle of the night in a panic, hyperventilating, waking Reg in the process.

“Nightmare?” said Reg.

“I was running and something was about to catch me.”

“You’re safe now.” Reg held him. “I’ll look after you.”

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R eg found himself riding a creative waterfall of a strength and intensity unmatched by anything he had ever experienced.

He couldn’t stop writing now if he tried, and everything he wrote came easily and naturally, and, though he expected the words to dry up at any moment, they kept coming.

He knew not to look a gift horse in the mouth, so whenever a new idea hit, he would drop whatever he was doing to write.

It felt as though these poems had always lain dormant inside him until Joel had come and woken them up, and out they’d come like music spilling from a box.

One day, Reg, wanting to memorialize this time in his life, said, “I want to photograph you.”

“Why?” said Joel. “I’m nothing special to look at.”

“Joel, you break my heart when you say that. Will you pose for me, please? You don’t have to take your clothes off—except your shoes.”

“All right.”

So Reg spent the next few days photographing and drawing Joel.

He gave Joel all sorts of clothes and costumes to wear, and taught him to be mindful of his body.

Once, he had Joel lie along the diving board over the pool, and he took Joel’s hand, pinching each of his fingertips, followed by each of his toes, then had him dandle his foot and hand in the water.

“Feel,” said Reg. “Every millimetre of your body, my little stripling.”

Reg’s favourite photo was of Joel sitting in the window seat in the library with one foot on the floor, the other on the sill, a novel balanced on his palm like a prayer book, while behind him, each pane of the mullioned window showed the back garden where every tree had been planted for the colour of its leaves: Light green incandescence, dark green shadow, variegated, burgundy, and sun-gold honey.

Every day, Reg asked him to try on a new identity, and each day Joel compliantly donned them, draped over the granite boulder in the rockery while staring off into the distance, dressed as a dying Roman soldier, or eating a cream bun and licking his fingers.

Reg enjoyed teasing Joel, kneading his shoulders, then caressing him here and there, smoothing his hand along Joel’s loin or resting it casually on Joel’s thigh, then, when Joel was aching for release, retreating to his chair to pick up the camera or the pencil or the stick of charcoal to capture his palpably aroused image.

Sometimes, Joel would pursue him, and Reg would get him off, then go on drawing or painting him, fingers slick and sticky as he gripped the pencil or the paintbrush.

His obsession with Joel grew as the days passed, and as Joel matured from a diffident, reluctant model to someone so relaxed in front of a camera and so attuned to his body, he could express any emotion Reg asked of him, right to his fingertips.

The magnetic charm glinting inside Joel, like distant starlight flickering through the cloud of his illness, now shone like the moon on a clear night as he recovered his health, and his essence seemed to fill the house and grounds with a warm amber light and a bittersweet scent that lingered when he left the room.

Reg kept his notebook on hand constantly, because the poems were coming thick and fast. By now, he had produced enough to meet his thesis requirements.

Anything more would be gilding the lily, but he wasn’t writing for his thesis now.

He was writing because he couldn’t stop.

It was equal parts exhilarating and exhausting.

One day, while Reg was scribbling furiously in his notebook, Joel said, “Reg? Can I take a photo of you?”

“I suppose,” said Reg absently.

Reg wasn’t aware of anything while he wrote. When he looked up, Joel was pointing the camera at him, a serious, focussed expression on his face.

“I can see the appeal, now.” Joel set the camera down carefully, went to Reg, and touched him. “You look wonderful.”

But because Reg had his own boundaries, he clasped Joel’s hand and stopped him. “I’m writing.”

Joel sighed.

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O ne night, Reg made plans to meet an old friend without Joel.

“You wouldn’t enjoy yourself,” said Reg as he put on his tie. “We’ll just be reminiscing about our school days.”

Joel lay on Reg’s bed, watching him dress, looking morose. “Are you ashamed of me?”

“Why should I be?”

“Because I’m so much younger than you. Is that why you’re not bringing me?”

“You wouldn’t want to spend a dreary evening listening to reminiscences of things you weren’t there for.”

“It won’t bother me if I’m with you.”

“I want you all to myself,” said Reg. “And Barty doesn’t know you from Adam. Your presence would put a damper on the evening. He’d have to censor himself. Read some Shakespeare. I shall return anon.”

Joel hugged Reg goodbye at the door as though he were going off to war, and it made Reg reluctant to leave.

They hadn’t been apart for a single day in weeks, and he couldn’t imagine anything he wanted more than to spend another evening in Joel’s company.

But, aside from Martin, Barty was the only friend from his childhood who was still in his life, and Reg hadn’t seen him in over a year, and he felt a personal obligation to see him again.

He pocketed his cigarettes before he left.

Joel didn’t like them, and Reg wanted to enjoy the freedom to smoke without judgment.

In a return to form, Reg and Barty smoked and drank and reminisced.

They had known each other since they were six, but their lives were changing.

Barty was engaged, and most of their friends had finished school and were in serious relationships.

Reg felt like he was standing on a dock, watching the ships leave the harbour.

“How’s Martin?” said Barty.

“Gotten himself involved with a psychologist.”

“Examining him at length, is she?” said Barty.

They laughed.

“What about you, Reg? You seem eminently pleased with yourself. Has someone caught your fancy at last?”

Reg shifted uncomfortably. “Not in particular.”

“The eternal bachelor.” Barty raised his glass.

As Reg drank, he realized something: He had no need to hide his relationship with Joel.

He’d had to be so discreet when he was dating Flip that he’d developed a habit of deflecting questions that hit too close to the belt.

But Joel had been willing—eager, even—to meet Barty as Reg’s lover.

Still, Reg felt a certain reticence, a superstition, perhaps, that whatever was developing between Joel and himself might be spoilt by exposure to a third party.

So, he continued to say nothing as they drank.

Reg returned before midnight, and Joel met him at the front door, seizing him in a hug.

“What’s wrong?” said Reg.

“I thought you wouldn’t come back,” said Joel.

“You thought I’d go back to Canada without you?”

“I thought something happened to you.”

“I was only gone a few hours. What have you been up to?”

“Reading,” said Joel.

It turned out Joel had discovered Reg’s stash of gay erotica.

“I don’t mind if you’ve started ahead of me,” said Reg.

“I haven’t,” said Joel.

It didn’t take much probing to get Joel to admit he didn’t masturbate, claiming he’d neither learned how nor felt the need to—particularly now he was with Reg.

“We’ll have to rectify that sometime,” said Reg as they lay in bed afterwards, Joel’s head resting on his chest.

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T he second time Reg had to leave Joel behind was when he went to meet his father in London.

Reg gave Joel some money. “Consider this a late payment for your modelling work. Have some fun without me. I’ll be back tonight.”

“Why can’t I come with you?”

“Because he’s told me he wants to talk about something serious.”

“Is he sick? Is he dying?”

“I don’t know what it’s about, but I detected a whiff of disapproval in his tone, so I expect he wants to tell me off about something, and I doubt introducing him to my eighteen-year-old lover would pre-empt that.”

“Then, what should I do?” said Joel.

“I’m worried you’re getting too dependent on me. I’m not your compass. Go where you will. Do what you will. Enjoy yourself without me.”

This time, Reg found himself worrying about Joel. Not because Joel was inclined to be reckless. He was common sense personified. But the way Joel had said goodbye that morning left him full of unease. He’d seemed so terribly upset.

When Reg returned late that evening, the house lights were off. Reg went inside and called Joel. Joel came downstairs slowly with an odd look in his eye.

Reg switched on the lights.

“Did you keep yourself occupied while I was gone?” said Reg.

“Yes,” said Joel, walking into his arms.

Reg buried his hand in Joel’s hair and felt something unaccustomed and hard under his thumb. “What’s this?”

Joel pulled back enough for Reg to see a bright metal ball in his right earlobe.

“I didn’t think you’d go berserk,” said Reg.

“Berserk would have been a Prince Albert piercing.”

“Fucking hell, Joel.”

“You disapprove?”

“It’s not for me to disapprove,” said Reg. “You’re an adult. You can do as you like. You surprised me, that’s all.”

That night, Reg watched Joel sleeping beside him. The stud glinted in the moonlight. Joel’s earlobe was red and swollen, despite him cleaning it before bed.

Reg had never been inclined to pierce his ear—or anything else, for that matter. That shiny metal ball, like an angel’s tear, felt like an interloper in their bed. But Joel was sleeping peacefully, so perhaps that was a sign Reg should stop worrying.

And that was when another poem came as a shape in the darkness.

His notebook was full, so he went downstairs with a pen, passing Joel’s room—though Joel wasn’t there, going in without his permission would have felt like an intrusion.

Reg found a pad of paper in the kitchen and looked out of the window.

The garden was bright with moonlight, so he went outside, jotting words on the pad.

He headed for the pool but sat in the grass before he reached it, as it was one of those poems that was experienced as much as written and that drew him by the hand down its dark green pathway.

He didn’t resurface again until he heard a sound behind him and saw Joel standing barefoot on the lawn.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” said Reg.

“I’m awake now.”

“You can go back to bed.”

“I’d rather stay with you.” Joel sat on the grass beside him.

Reg finished his poem and lay back. Joel moved so his forehead was pressed to Reg’s lips.

“What did your dad want to talk to you about?” said Joel.

Reg laughed humourlessly. “He’s going to become a monk.”

“Seriously?” Joel sat up on his elbows.

“Deadly.”

“How can he do that if he’s married?”

“He’s been a widower for twenty-one years.”

“What about you?”

“I’m an adult.”

“He can’t just leave you,” said Joel, sounding outraged.

“Joel, he left me twenty-one years ago. I’ve barely seen him more than once a year since then.”

“Don’t you care?”

“We’ve never been close,” said Reg. “My mother was the one who wanted children, not him.”

“But he’s your dad!”

“Why does this bother you so much? Are you close to your father?”

“No,” said Joel softly.

“Don’t be upset on my account. He’s leaving me the house and some money. The rest goes to the church.”

Joel’s eyelashes flicked against Reg’s chin. It may have been his imagination, but they felt damp.

“Why don’t I take you away?” Reg murmured against him.

“Canada?” Joel raised his eyebrow, and it moved softly against Reg’s lips.

“The other place,” said Reg. “Wales.”