work of art

“It isn’t a felony, you know, it’s theft.”

“All property is theft,” Brandon says in the unmistakable too-bright tones of the school’s only remaining Marxist, regrettably known to them both. He must be feeling the pinch right now, that poor fellow. Phillip’s pulse is still pounding in his ears, in his chest, most disagreeably in his throat —

“Shut up,” Phillip says. “You don’t believe that.”

“I don’t believe in anything.”

Someone is being mocked, but at least it’s not himself. It all looks ludicrous now, piled up on the bed — these are the things boys steal, just impudent schoolboys on a spree. A typewriter, a wristwatch, a large gold cigarette case that was almost certainly stolen in turn from the intimidating leather-topped desk of somebody’s industrialist father, a black leather book full of addresses and appointments. Other odds and ends that were easy to hand while they made their burglary but are hardly the haul of the century.

They haven’t robbed, they’ve pilfered. But Phillip is out of sorts now, as if they’ve done something much worse than burgle a classmate’s bolthole apartment with a pilfered key. That part was the clever part, as far as Phillip is concerned, getting the key — the crime that came after that was merely an obligation, something Brandon wants to do that Phillip merely tolerates, the way Brandon merely tolerates trips to the orchestra.

And this is the crime after the crime.

Phillip’s in a state of excitement — he’d paced, he’d bitten his nails, he’d burned through still another cigarette helpfully proffered by Brandon from the vast gilt case. But Brandon is excited in a whole other swarm of ways. He enjoys the daring of it, the unmitigated gall of taking what he has no conceivable use for — he enjoys the cruelty of the act and the anticipation of the pain it will inflict when discovered. They don’t feel pain, these Ivy League boys, only mild distress. Brandon can’t needle them deeply enough to strike a nerve. Phillip is easier.

“I’ve done what you asked.”

“You hardly seemed like you were enjoying yourself. I thought you were going to be sick.”

“It doesn’t matter if I enjoyed it as much as you did, only that you enjoyed it. That was what we agreed upon. You got your kicks out of it, didn’t you?”

Eyes bright and fixed, cheeks flushed, nostrils slightly flaring as if he’s just bounded up three flights of stairs or run a race. He’s had an erection since the cab ride back, before that, maybe. He’s aroused; that much he can’t hide. If he’d been any more excited by the act they’d have done it right there; Phillip could have taken him on the floor, on the ugly rug in front of someone else’s ornamental fireplace, and Brandon wouldn’t have been able to play aloof.

It must frighten him, to know how he likes this — to know he’s not some indifferent piece of trade but that he’s receptive to another man’s advances and it’s Phillip who does it to him, not he to Phillip. And that much is arousing in its own way. It arouses fear and pity — fear of the contempt Brandon must feel for him as the weaker of the two, fear of the consequences of their acts, pity that Brandon is made the way he is, that he was fashioned

“Take off your clothes.”

“Why would I do that? That wasn’t what we agreed upon. It was never necessary before.”

Like before — like the first times, in prep school, greedy and terrified. But it’s a token resistance, Brandon goading him the way Brandon lives to do, and not a qualm. There are certain things that would give Brandon Shaw pause — having a hand wrap around his throat and squeeze, for instance.

“It’s implicit in the terms. You’re going to undress first.”

Brandon’s insolent hands, unbuttoning his shirt; Brandon, insolent altogether, slinking out of his clothes. The figure of the man emerges from the contents of his wardrobe. When he stands before him in an undershirt, Phillip makes a gesture, and he takes that off too. There on the edge of the bed, pert and naked. Really, it’s harmless. A long lunch and a trip to the baths, a sunny afternoon in the gymnasium at school. His bare chest is tremendously beautiful, and tremendously naked — there are no prizes for this sort of thing, you know, the body whose aesthetic appeal is rooted chiefly in knowledge of history, personal history. If you’d only seen him before.

“Aren’t you going to—”

Phillip is in his shirtsleeves and his socks. He is as naked as he cares to be. Brandon on his back, entirely naked, is a very pretty sight and he levers him into that position with enthusiasm and little difficulty. Gripping his hairy leg to bring him back and feeling the muscles tremble under his fingertips — wonderful, wonderful.

He kisses him, and Brandon kisses back like a drunken man, ardent and uneasy. His erection is unconstrained by anything now, still only halfway there — for a moment it’s fun to play at being the indifferent one who’s caught Brandon at a disadvantage but Phillip can’t keep that charade up for long, when just the wet scrape of Brandon’s mouth along his throat makes his cock twitch. He can handle him freely — dragging his fingertips up over Brandon’s long thigh, or cupping his balls, or fingering him apart — and Brandon permits it. Not resisting, not sullen, not stiff and cold like a dead man but merely receiving what he’s used to dealing.

Between his legs is a wonderful place to be. He can grope and feel for whatever he likes, and Brandon will exert a pleasingly firm opposition — to lift his hips, or to cast an arm over his shoulders, to grip him through his shirt, though the last one comes uneasily close to puncturing the illusion of control over the whole scene. Brandon is open and ready to be touched, every part of him, but it doesn’t need to follow that he has a grip of his own.

The first time, it wasn’t like this. Phillip was just as eager, just as hard and ready, just as greedy and just as frightened — but Brandon’s whole body was stiff underneath him, he was waspish and unhappy afterward and not pleasantly destroyed. That was some summers ago, and now here they are, men of the world.

(Maybe he and Rupert only ever talked—)

He moves inside him — his cock inside him, and his fingers finding the secret vulgar places on Brandon’s body. Brandon groans a blasphemy, and rocks his head back.

“Don’t speak,” Phillip says. “I like it better if you don’t speak.”

“I don’t believe that’s true,” Brandon says, trying to be arch, but the memory of his thickened voice is too recent and the faint stammer in his voice ruins the effect. He always stammers when he’s excited.

The thought of anyone else seeing him like this — in complete abandon — makes Phillip strangely angry. That’s not within the scope of their friendship or the terms they’ve drawn up between them, the same terms that give Phillip the right to do as he does with Brandon’s body, but it’s true.

He forces savage kisses down Brandon’s chest, marking that unmarked surface and spoiling its innocence — he wants to leave some sign for the next person who comes this way, some trail marking to show that Brandon Shaw is a dangerous animal and must be treated as such, with sportsmanlike firmness and absolute caution. When his teeth catch at Brandon’s nipple it elicits another little shudder of pleasure — if Phillip did that he’d call it feminine somehow but when it happens to Brandon it’s exquisite torture and an encouragement to do it more. He’s buried inside him, lost inside him, palming at his cock enough to tantalize but not enough to satisfy.

He thinks that Phillip is soft, that Phillip is easily bidden, that he’ll do all manner of things just for a scrap of attention from his schoolboy hero. That much might be true, and more, but he still knows how to get his money’s worth. Brandon’s finished already, gone soft already, but he yields completely just once — grinding against him in a complete hard jostle that brings their bodies together anyway, sharp bone to sharp bone. He fixes him in a hard clacking kiss, but it’s not cruelty, not a winning flourish — but sheer need on display.

“I should have fucked you on the spot,” Phillip says against Brandon’s raw, faintly scraped-looking mouth. “Right there at the scene of the crime.”

In broad daylight, just like the crime itself — but the daylight is leaving them now, it shrinks away in the sky and casts weird shadows through the picture windows. There would be no denying that, and no ambiguity. If Brandon means to say anything it’s lost in his broken breathing. His belly is wet with seed. Some of it has gotten on Phillip’s shirt. What will Mrs. Wilson think?

When he finishes his own climax he’s quietly appalled at himself, in some way he can’t understand. He wants to roll over on his side and hunch his shoulders and never speak again, or to lock the bathroom door and wash his hands until there’s no trace of Brandon on them. But instead Phillip lingers, and lets the horrible fixedness of what he’s done turn his mind’s eye into a camera. Brandon looks mildly stunned and shockingly fucked-out, but not so stunned by his conduct that his mouth isn’t quirking again into a cruel smile, or that he can’t arrange his naked limbs to the greatest aesthetic advantage.

Here in the wreckage — in the rubble of their crime, the tangled-up bedsheets and the stolen wristwatch and the stolen typewriter lying at a diagonal from Brandon’s head with its disheveled hair and perfect press of red color on one cheek. Still life with sexual perverts, 1947. If they aren’t very careful the typewriter will fall to the floor and all its keys will be bent and it won’t be worth anything, even as a spoil of war. This is their bed, where they sleep. It isn’t always war between them; it won’t always be a crime.