Turning Tables
Lysicles
How long since my last letter to you? A month? However many days
have elapsed, it might as well have been but an hour. For in all
this time, there has been no movement on the part of Hadrian to
name and embrace a new favourite in the wake of Corinthus.
The Gelotiana is awash in breathless rumor and endless conjecture.
Additionally, Phlegon, Mordanticus, Salonius, Macedo and Statianus,
Cyprias, and, of course, Anaxamenos and Vitalis have each offered
me their private theories as to the cause of Hadrian’s delay
in calling upon me. Yet however plausible or outrageous their explanations
are, they each have very widely missed the mark that Hadrian himself
quite openly revealed to me: he is reticent to call me Favourite
on account of the title’s limitations and the formality of
the relationship it would prescribe for us.
Perhaps it is for this reason that I am able, far more easily than
I would once have expected, to accept the current state of affairs
and be by it not quite so perturbed as many of my friends. Then
again, if I am completely honest with myself, there is an entirely
different reason that I am not perturbed, and it concerns a new
and delirious distraction called Decentius.
I have seduced him. Ought I to be embarrassed by that? Probably.
But I consider myself to be living an extraordinarily remarkable
life – one for which I demand to be forgiven for turning the
tables on convention. After all, I am a page upon the Palatine,
yet without a clearly defined set of industrious duties to distract
or exhaust me. I am the favourite of the Emperor, yet he refuses
to acknowledge me as such by taking me into his bed. Thus I am considerably
under-sexed relative to the other boys around me, and quite envious
of them!
Behold Decentius: a beautiful and rugged man, with a heaviness upon
his brow and a weightiness in his heart that is at once pitiful
and edifying. He is like some heroic incarnation of Prometheus:
strong and intelligent, yet chained forever to the pain in his murky
past. And the fire in his possession (a working knowledge of Greek)
has not been given by the gods, but by me. Thus again am I turning
the tables; being, as Hadrian called it, audacious in my novel retelling
of the stories of the gods.
Yet in all the time that Decentius and I have spent together, I
have sensed in him a profound reticence to seduce me, despite my
ardent hope that he would. Certainly, I have made it very easy for
him, and given many clues as to my willingness for it and the enjoyment
I derive in providing pleasure for those I respect and admire. But
not once has he seized from me the opportunity.
That is why I very recently lost my considerable patience. “You
cannot convince me,” I said to him, “that from Calidus,
whom you loved and honoured upon the border of the northern frontier,
you did never take your pleasures.”
He gazed at me for a long time before answering: “All from
whom I have taken my pleasures, or given my love, or shared my soul,
have been ripped from me in one way or another. It is as though
the gods refuse to grant me my happiness for any more than a few
years at best, before they bring down upon the souls of my beloveds
untold tragedy, and leave me to wander again in the world bereft
of their joy. I cannot have you, Antinous, or even allow myself
to want you, else I shall just as surely lose you in some unfathomably
dark way.”
“That is nonsense,” I said. “You came to Rome,
promoted as a Praetorian, to effect a new beginning, and that is
exactly what you have done. You have learned to read Latin. You
have learned to speak and read from the Greek. You have found a
stable and nurturing peace in your life, far from the hardships
of the frontier. Is that not good and promising? Have not the gods,
at long last, been appeased in their hostile regard for you?”
He considered my words carefully, and seemed unable to formulate
a retort. I took this as both my victory and my permission. I pushed
him down to the grass – for we had come to our regular spot
on the riverbank, the same one that I had frequented with Anaxamenos
– and he lay there uncomfortably. I took his trembling hands
from his belly and placed them by his side. And then I sat upon
him, gazing down into his confused and struggling face. “I
am your tutor,” I said to him, “and as such am committed
to teaching you once again your proper role in achieving good and
prosperous relations with the youths in your life who admire you.”
At last I felt him stiffen beneath me. I smiled at him, and encouraged
it. Finally, the man allowed himself to laugh. I shed my loincloth,
and pulled down his own. I spit upon his manhood, and guided it
into me. Our union was brief but intense. His hands unshackled themselves
from his mind’s hesitations and reached up to hold and explore
me above him. He released himself within me, and I upon his belly
did the same. And then I collapsed upon him, my face in the hair
of his chest; his arms around my back. “I am yours,”
I said, “until Hadrian takes me from you, assuming he ever
will. And if, one day, he finally does, it shall not be your tragedy,
Decentius, but your triumph.”
As the man walked me back to the Gelotiana, he marveled at my forwardness;
at my ability to conceive of what I wished to see happen, and immediately
strive toward its achievement. “But there was nothing immediate
about it,” I corrected. “For you have not witnessed
(or should I say, you have ignored?) my long list of failed attempts
over the last few months to engage with you. This evening’s
achievement, as you call it, was merely the bubbling over of my
long and increasingly unbearable impatience with you.”
“But how did you know that tonight I would not reject you,
Antinous?”
“What a silly question,” I said. “I knew nothing!
All I knew was that, if you did happen to reject me, I would at
least have had an indication of how best to alter my behaviour in
your midst. But I would never have known that without trying.”
“But what was it that told you, this evening as opposed to
any other, that the time was right to try?”
I considered that for a long time. Finally I replied: “It
takes a certain courage and skill to properly analyze life’s
constant stream of occurrences. But even more importantly, such
analysis must be brought to bear upon each new situation with a
varied duration and intensity. Sometimes, the analysis counsels
me to wait, watch, observe, and continue analyzing. At other times,
it demands a swift action. It is this ability, I think, to know
how to vary my analysis, that has caused me to be so successful
upon the Palatine. For he that always and consistently acts without
analysis will sooner or later blunder into error, and he that always
and endlessly observes will never find occasion to move forward.
Yet I am fortunate, for I seem to have honed in myself a particular
skill of both lengthy and short reflection. It is alive in my letters
to Lysicles; it is present in my daily thoughts. I intuitively know
when to limit my analysis or indulge it. To continue thinking, or
to begin acting. It has served me well in the past. It served me
well tonight. And I’ve no reason to believe it will not continue
to do so in the coming years.”
Decentius did not answer. He merely absorbed that, and I felt happy
at prolonging my role for him as a tutor, despite the inversion
of it which we had just performed in the flesh. At the gates of
the Gelotiana, he kissed me warmly and bade me a good night.
In the few days since that union occurred, I have felt a great and
burgeoning happiness. At last I am complete. I am Greek. I have
achieved in Vitalis a beloved; in Decentius a lover. I am buttressed,
as is ancient and proper, on both sides of my age by fellows with
whom I feel warm and safe and alive. If Hadrian delays, it is his
own loss – not mine. Perhaps that is uncharacteristically
hubristic of me. Yet I cannot deny what I am or what I crave for
myself.
Alas, in this new configuration, there is only one problem: Hadrian
requires me on his trips to Tibur, meaning that both Vitalis and
Decentius must, for unspecified and unpredictable lengths of time,
be left behind. But I shall endure those voyages as the soldier
on campaign endures that formless absence from his family. I shall
survive their days in anticipation of those glorious returns into
the warmest embrace of my lovers’ company.
Yet why do I ponder such times? Why do I fret for an as yet unspun
future, when I am here tonight in Rome, in the Gelotiana, and Vitalis
has just finished another drawing? By the gods, he is dashing and
fresh, warm and lovely. I’m afraid this letter, therefore,
must end abruptly here. A.
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