Page 64 of Rhymes with Metaphor
“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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Reg found himself ridinga 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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One night, Reg madeplans 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?”
