Page 13 of Exquisite Things
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 audibleoh. 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 hislegs 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.”
“Oursavage 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.”
“I didn’t... I swear I didn’t... I didn’t do anything wrong.” I try to defend myself. Unconvincingly.
“Let’s go.” An order from my father.
I wait for James’s father to notice the pages on the desk. To realize that it was his own son who stole them from his office. But all he can see is his own repugnance.
And so...
Before I follow my father out...
I steal those pages. What does James know about the duty one has to one’s own self? He probably interprets those words as a call to selfishness and greed. Too much of a coward to stand by his own nature. I don’t want to be like him. I want to be brave enough to be myself. To live a life of truth.
