An intelligent mind scours itself even more than it scours others; it searches for weaknesses and tries to grind them
away. The weaknesses of habit and lack of ability can be removed, those of birth cannot and these flaws remain, devaluing
the whole.
He is aware of exactly how the world views his taste, there are words for men like him and he knows all
of them.
He doesn't act on his urges, his tablet of sins is clean of that; he hasn't had sex with anyone underage since
he was that age too.
Yet he lusts.
It is not the moments of highest stress that nearly undo him, it's the days
after, the slow relaxation as the world breathes out. The urge to do something, anything, rises and he has to use all of his
powers of concentration and determination to stop himself.
It would be so easy - he wouldn't even have to sneak out,
merely dress down a little, context is so important to identification, and wander down the right streets. All the wonders
of the world can be found there, for the right price. Young boys, come to find the stardust of the city, finding china white
and the hard cold of the pavement on their knees instead.
But the consequences are not worth it.
So he resists.
He
squires suitable young women to charity events and heads them off before they become too close. There are whispers, that he
dislikes sex, that he is a germaphobe - those whispers are followed by calls to remember Howard Hughes, and he makes sure
to be seen out and about afterwards - that he dislikes women because someone broke his heart or that he is a homosexual.
If
only it were so simple. He could at least do something about that, money gets you enough power to make very loud whispers
in important ears and to quieten dissenting voices.
His problem is that he is a homosexual man with a preference for
boys who, due to the inexorable march of time, are young enough to be his sons. To make it worse, his preferences are for
boys on the younger end of that scale, already masculine but not yet hardened by age. Would it were possible to find but one
perfect specimen and freeze him in amber, forever fifteen to do with as Adrian wishes.
It wasn't so bad back in the
heady days of Studio 54, when there were all tied together by each other's secrets and by the fact that if you broke faith
you were out, and if you weren't in then you were no-one. He was younger then and no one thought anything of it if he propositioned
any of the delightful waiters.
Those were the days.
He had already stopped going when Studio 54 shut down, there
had been too many leaks and his great work could not be undone by his weaknesses. He would not allow it.
He tried to
come up with other ways to sate himself. He finds most pornography distasteful, he worries about the conditions of the participants,
and he objects to a lot of the content, the violence and the constant calls to 'call me Daddy'. It's sick.
He has the
worst offenders anonymously reported, just because he'd given up on the mask didn't mean he'd started turning a blind eye
to such things.
He'd tried having some produced to fit his own taste, very hush hush, because his objections have always
been more the environment of the industry than the actual content and the participants in the only pornographic film he ever
produced were very well treated. The boy was over age but looked a lot younger and the man having sex with him was kept as
off screen as possible, so that Adrian's imagination could run riot.
It was a dismal failure. He had had few of these,
and it was dispiriting. It wasn't the young man's fault. He was picture perfect, responsive to touch and beautiful. The problem
was the jealous rage that enveloped Adrian as he watched, because he was paying for a man to do the things he wanted to do
to this splendid specimen.
Everyone involved was paid off handsomely and all copies of the film were destroyed.
After
that, he decided that he would have to make his imagination work harder.
He sees proofs of all the photos that Veidt
Industries uses, and sometimes, when he sees a photograph he particularly likes, he will take a copy of it, and keep it in
his own private file. His favourite is actually an outtake from a shoot. The boy in the photo is older than his usual taste,
dark curls and tanned skin, obvious even in black and white.
The model must have known the photographer, or worked
with him before, because he's smiling at the camera as he's putting his clothes back on after the shoot. There's an intimacy
there, in this photo taken to use up the film.
The smile on the model's face is a real smile, not the one he wore for
the staged photographs. His jeans are half fastened and the white tops of his underwear are peeking out. Despite the shadows
on his face, his body is hairless.
Even relaxed and "off-stage", the boy is unbelievably sensuous. He imagines talking
to the boy, late at night, after a product launch. The boy sips his drink quietly as all the other guests leave. Eventually,
it is just the two of them. They chat for a while, the boy is sweetly naive. He glances over the city and notices that it
has gone dark, and he suggests it may be time for the boy to leave.
The boy puts his glass down, and stands, limber
and certain.
"No, I think I'd rather stay." Adrian takes him in his arms that night, teaches him what he can. The boy
comes back. He keeps coming back, never aging, always a curious and insatiable mind. It's a very comforting fantasy, although
it didn't stop Adrian from finishing the run of adverts the model featured in when the product stopped selling.
He
starts holding on to that daydream, to keep the other dream at bay, but he's started to find that they bleed together, and
tries to forget how often he sees the boy's face in the raft of the dead.
~~~~
