It's been said that any man of means in lack of a wife is surely in want of one. He's got no excuse if he's wealthy, handsome. Certainly, this creature wants nothing more than to be caught and owned. Otherwise, if he is too ugly or too poor or of disreputable origins, he is to be pities. Poor thing, for shame.

I am neither handsome nor am I repulsive, neither grandly rich or pitiable poor. I am simply Michael, a single man. If I look at myself from a distance with a stranger’s unbiased eye, this is what I see; a solitary young man, white and bloodless and drawn into himself, dark eyes and dark hair, a sullen and listless expression. This man lives alone on a quiet street. His bungalow–inherited, they say, from his dearly departed mother, poor boy–drips with bougainvillea and is shaded by many a black tupelo tree. His garden is neat and fragrant, predominantly Hidcote blue lavender and peace lily. Nosy neighbors and observant passersby alike might spy him through the filmy gauze of curtains settled in an armchair, nose hidden in a book of poetry, or else sitting at his baby grand piano, playing mournful sonatas by Bach and Chopin. He keeps to himself. His neighbors call him shy.

So desperately do I wish to be this man, this shapeless and awkward stranger. I want to be the reflection, not the source, but the mirror is distorted, and anyways, I cannot see myself in fine silver.

The truth of me is this. I am Michael and I am alone. I am not white, though I am light enough to pass for it, my mother’s Black genes lost somewhere in the coil of my hair, the fullness of my mouth. I’ve been told I’m the spitting image of my father. Though I appear to be like most men, I am nothing like anyone I’ve ever known. There’s something lurking inside of me, a foul thing that makes me queer and untouchable. I crave, endlessly, the curve of a man’s neck, the decadent sheen of sweat on the brow, the jaw. And of course, the hands, the wrists, the powerful legs, their pumping, pulsating veins heaving with blood, begging to be pierced, bitten and lapped, the jailed juice my own desire.

I am cautious of my hunger. There are others like me–monsters, inverts–who let their desires run rampant and let themselves go wild with lust. I’ve seen these sorts of men, how they prowl the streets, noses twitching and lapping at their lips like common dogs. Shamelessly, they flash their teeth in darkened bars, teasing and taunting at their prey until the men follow them into alleyways, stairwells and bathrooms. I’m not like these men either. Fear of discovery makes me vigilant with myself, and I lock the wicked thing deep inside of me and cool it with the arts. Poetry helps. Whitman and Baldwin and Hughes, though sometimes they too can bring heat to my neck with their terrible, irresistible visions. Music is better–nothing tames the beast quite like a chorale. The thing settles in my belly, lulled to sleep by piano, by the unending busy work of scales, reading sheet music, or writing music of my own when the old standards just won’t cut it.

And yet there are times when my desires are not so easily sated, times when my body burns with want and my vision blurs from how much I need. I loll in bed, writhe and gnash my teeth. I roll my eyes and claw at my skin, the itch right beneath the surface too strong to be soothed by Chopin. When this happens, when I feel I might literally split apart from hunger, I go out into the night.

I bare myself in daytime. I have my distractions, my tidy home to keep and all my twee curios that amuse me. A skin condition and a general aversion to sunlight keeps me indoors, the windows darkened with drapes. It is lonely, but I don’t mind it. I take my solitude with the practiced reservation of a man long imprisoned, a man to whom the sun is but a fleeting memory. So it is, so it is, I tell myself, and go deeper into my home, into another room to doze or read or play a little music.

At night, there are no excuses, no distractions. I go out dressed in featureless clothes, a plain black overcoat and boots, matching leather gloves and a dark scarf wound tightly around the lower half of my face to conceal my mouth, my horrible teeth. I go into the city where there is much too much temptation, men in bars and men twisting in the dancehalls with their lady loves. Through red and greedy eyes, I watch them dance, how they move their hips, how easily laughter comes to them, how smoothly they can grab one another’s shoulders. If fate were kind, if I were anyone but myself, I would go into these places and stand with these men, drink beer and grab shoulders, laugh at bawdy jokes with the same boisterous voice as them. Instead I stand at windows, my sullen face reflected as a strange beast with sunken eyes and cheeks, mouth watering for things it will not permit itself to have.

I walk the streets. I keep my hands in my pants pockets so no one will see them twitch, and whistle to myself; Ode to Joy then the opening chords of Fur Elise. Warm yellow street lights brighten the way. Posters encouraging young men and boys to enlist in the war surround me, billboards with uniformed men gazing optimistically at nothing, signs screaming Do your duty! For your country! I do not think so much about the words as I do about the men with their Leyendecker looks, chiseled jaws and bright eyes that look right through me.

I’ve not fallen far enough to find companionship in alleyways, so I find my way to a bar that promises good jazz and liquor. The bar’s dim and moody, candles arranged artfully on each of the tables, and lights positioned over the stage and bar for extra ambience.

There’s a black man crooning up on the stage, a song I don’t recognize but like immediately. Something about gay places, women with traces of joy, about sad looks mistaken for love–I guess I was wrong. Again, I was wrong! I take a seat at the far end of the bar, far from the other patrons. When the bartender asks me what I’d like to drink, I order my usual.

“A Bloody Mary, please,” say I, and thank God for the dimness of the bar because the heat on my neck and cheeks is enough to reduce me down to nothing. Are they looking at me? What sort of mean thoughts is the bartender forming about me, and do the people at the other end of the bar think lowly of me for ordering such a “fruity” drink? Has even this small thing implicated me? I straighten my back and square my shoulders, harden the line of my wrist so I don’t look so damn foppish. I blink and clear my throat, avert my eyes and unwind my scarf.

I am my mother’s child entirely. Her hands, at least, are mine, long and graceful with pianist’s fingers. She used to joke that my father all but stole her from a jazz bar, him an uptight and stringent white man bowled over by her smile, the way she played. My warmest memories of her are the ones in which she’s playing piano for me, winking at me, teaching me my scales. The uglier memories also have her music as a score, I’m afraid; swing music blaring brazenly from her Victrola after a bloody fight with my father, the discordant noise of a piano being taken apart key by key. I remember her aging, her fine hands curling in on themselves. Mine, at least, will never wither, the delicate orchids never wilting.

The bartender returns with my drink and I let it sit there in front of me, a prop more than anything. I’ve got a sensitive stomach, most foods and drinks making me retch if it so much as touches my tongue. This ungodly mix of alcohol, tomato juice, tabasco and celery is sure to ruin my belly, but it’s better to be seen with something near you than to sit at the bar drink-less, gazing around the room like a predator looking for its prey. I keep a hand on the glass and listen to the man singing. His repertoire is melancholy, romantic. One moment he weeps about his blues, the next he reminiscences over a lost April. Naïve, I think to myself that this might not be so bad an evening, that it’ll be enough to hear music and go home. No blood needs to be shed, nothing regrettable need be done.

But then he comes in. I lose my breath, my eyes grow wide. His is a vision, a perfect Arrow Man, the jaw and hands and dazzling eyes that smolder in the dark of the bar. From the way he’s dressed, to the way he looks around the place, unamused and bored, I guess he’s one of those beatniks. Even clothed in black and thick glasses, shrouded by disaffection and that practiced moue, the beauty of this boy astounds me, his nose and mouth, his hair curled boyishly around his ears.

My stomach clenches. I tremble. I reach for my drink and take a long, slow sip, grabbing at anything that’ll distract me from the ever-loudening pounding in my head. Need it, need it, need him, my body cries. I watch the man from the corner of my eye as he scans the room. I turn my head, just an inch, just for one more look at him, and our eyes meet. Hellfire runs through me, from the tip of my fingers to my loins then out through my toes. My mouth dries. I flex my hands against the bar top before quickly stuffing them back into my pockets.

He comes to me, and for one brief, terrible moment, I think that I’ve tricked him somehow, hypnotized him into doing my bidding, but no. He is clear-eyed and curious as he takes the stool next to me. He discards his jacket and orders a drink, some heady masculine thing that he knocks back with a grimace before ordering another.

“Cold night, huh?”

His pliant mouth, his strong hands, the scrub of his beard against my smooth face. I am weak in the knees, weak in the spirit. I want to take him into my mouth, like communion, feel him on my tongue, lust and hunger merging into one carnal need to bite, to devour. I smell the blood pumping hot in his neck. I lick my lips and fall to my knees, and take all that I am given.

Come morning, the taste of the beatnik’s blood is hot and rank as halitosis in my mouth. Shame binds me to the bed. My desperation embarrasses me, how ready I was to take anything and everything he could’ve offered. I did not kill him, I don’t think. Even in my lusty haze, I knew to stop before draining him or ruining him altogether. My mind, a petty punisher, shows me images of all the times I did not stop, all the times that I let my hunger rule me, all the men I’ve sucked and emptied and left as husks, men I’ve made into monsters.

(Fabio, one of them was called. He was fair-skinned and eager, and when he held me in his hand, I felt he held all of me, all my memories and evil thoughts. When I woke from my daze, he was lifeless and breathing and almost ash, and I ran before I saw him become nothing.)

The sun rises. Light trickles in and around the curtains, just enough to make shadows in the corners but not enough to hurt me. I watch the light dance as memories of the night previous come to me. One good thing about my nocturnal hunting is that I only have to do it so often. The right man, the right vein, will keep me sated for weeks on end. I recall a few months ago, nipping the flesh just behind a sailor’s ear, his hands traveling down the line of my back. His blood kept me for a while, and often, when my urges feel strong enough to break me, I remind myself of his smell, how he groaned when I bit into him, like me soiling him was the greatest pleasure he ever had.

The beatnik will be more than enough. Even in my disgust at myself, I’m happy as a cat with cream at the thought of his mouth upon mine, his hands and wicked tongue. He will wake–dear Lord, let him wake–to find himself covered with curious bites at his wrist and neck, strange bruises where I gripped and held fast, and God-willing, he will move on. Keep writing poetry, find a nice girl to settle with, have two and a half cheery, apple-cheeked babies.

(I am no fool. I know he is a man like me. I imagine him with a wife, with children, and even with those chains, he will fly to the nearest alleyway, find the prettiest thing and take and take and take. Poor thing, I think. For shame.)

I rise, try to pull myself together. The house is not so beautiful without daylight, but I make do with lamps and light fixtures. I go through the house and click each of them all until the place is bright, then settle down in my library to waste a few hours. It used to be my father’s study, but what he studied here I don’t know. He wasn’t an intellectual man; reading was effeminate, book-learning was for sissies. What a mockery I make of him now, curled up in my cozy chair, Lorca’s Ode to Walt Whitman warming my lap. I drift in and out of dreams; James Baldwin visits me in one, teasing me with French poetry. I slip stems of lavender into his tooth gap, but I force myself awake before my mind sullies the beauty of the moment.

The day passes slowly. In summer, I’m confined to my rooms, reading and writing. Occasionally, I’ll get the idea to change something in the house, and I’ll pull out the furniture catalogs and scry through them until I realize I cannot and will never change a thing in my mother’s house. At best, I’ll refresh the flowers that sit in the antique vases, though always the same genus and colour, always the same arrangement of fronds.

My father was a wealthy man, proud and self-serious. His affair with my mother was his one and only act of impulsivity, a loosening of his tie, if you will. My mother said to me once that she made him feel lawless. There was never any joy in her voice as she repeated his words to me, never any private pride. Only shame, a slight curl to her lip that showed me what it was like to be black and visible. The unbroken mirror showed animals; maybe it’s best if my reflection is skewed?

Anyways, I don’t think they loved each other. My mother, at least, loved me, and she proved it in little ways that seem grander now that she’s gone. She bought the house we shared with hush money from my father, and built up the garden walls to keep us private. She instilled in me from youth the understanding that no matter what showed on the outside, on the inside I was her child, her black child. My pale face in her dark hands, her deep eyes my first and only mirror.

Did she know what kind of man she raised? She must’ve, must’ve realized I wasn’t quite like the other children, even before my turning. She was sensitive to my tenderness, my fragile nature and later, once I returned from a trip down south to visit some relatives even more drawn and closed off than ever, she had to have had ideas. Oh, but Mother was gentle; she drew closed the curtains and pulled me in tight, her precious boy, not so precious.

The phone rings at three o’clock, and I know before answering who’s calling. I smile and say, “Charlie Yewman, you’ve got a lot of nerve calling me before sunset.”

Charlie laughs in response and my heart flutters to hear it. Charlie Yewman is my best and only friend, and I think I’m his best and only as well. We cling to each other, or I cling to Charlie, and he tolerates me and patronizes me with these friendly phone calls

Charlie’s a good man. There’s no other way to describe him, his easy going nature and his big laugh. Like me, he’s shy of others. The war’s made him nervous of the outdoors, shellshock turning this massive man jittery. If you loosen his tongue with whiskey, he’ll tell you stories from Germany about gunfire, the POW camps, and all the men he’s seen die. He remembers their names, our dear Charlie, and insignificant details about them that have stamped themselves onto his brain. During thunderstorms and on the Fourth of July, he keeps his house lit like Christmas.

“Really, though, Chuck, what’s convinced you to call me so early?”

“Ah, loneliness if you can believe it,” he says. “Got tired of watching the ol’ boob tube, and wanted to see how you felt about dinner.”

“In general? Positive. My place or yours?”

“Mine.” After a moment, he says, “After sundown of course. I think the sun’s going down around six.”

I rarely leave the house lest I’m out hunting, and Charlie’s good fun. He’s kind to me, asks no hard questions, and doesn’t mind if I don’t eat. I harbor suspicions about him–I think he might be my sort of man, lavender-coloured, though I’ll never summon the courage to question him about it. It’s enough to hear how he talks about the soldiers he once knew, their fit bodies and wise-cracking mouths.

Any port in a storm,” he once told me, laughing, though I knew and he knew that I knew that some ports were more favorable than others.

“You’ll come then?” Charlie asks. His voice is so quiet and meek. I think of him less like the big, burly man he is, and more as a tender, shrinking thing. I think of his hand reaching out to me through the dark, and I reach back for his.

Charlie’s waiting for me at the window when I walk up to his house at seven. The sun’s hidden her face behind some houses, and it’s dark enough for me to not worry about the eyes of neighbors. Charlie opens the door for me before I can ring the bell, slips me in as secret as a mistress. We wait until we are well inside to shake hands. He claps my back with his powerful paw, and smiles in my face, squeezing my shoulder. Charlie asks me about my day, and I tell him all that I did, though I’m sure it’s as uninteresting and unvaried as usual.

He brings me to his living room (cluttered, busy with magazines and books), and we sit in Charlie’s overstuffed armchairs to half-watch the television. An old drama is playing–Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in black-and-white, tearing around Rome.

“So, Michael,” he says after a while. “Keeping yourself busy?”

“Oh, you know.” I smile. “Doing this and that, poetry and sonatas. I’m thinking of writing jazz.”

“Careful now. You start playing that Negro music, and the whole neighborhood will get suspicious of that nose of yours.”

My nose?” I put a hand up to the offending organ, realize Charlie’s teasing me, and laugh. “Oh! Really, Chuck, nobody sees my nose enough to form any opinions on it. It could be a bat's nose for all they know.”

“Well, you are something of a bat, aren’t you? Cave-like dwelling, half-blind, nocturnal…”

“Since when did you become so knowledgeable about bats, Charlie Yewman?”

He shrugs and says, “Who’s to say I’m not one myself?”

I look at him carefully, and he looks back. After a quiet moment, he goes back to watching the movie. The silence that holds us is uncomfortable, strained. I see the red rising on his neck, just above his collar, and I wonder if it’s his own blood or something he took off another man. How does he like them, my dear Charlie? Lithe and swanny, long necks and delicate features? Does he like them strong, muscled, men in suits or in leather or uniform?

On screen, Hepburn is drunk. She mumbles about never having been alone with a man with a dress on, never mind with her dress off. She quotes a little bit of poetry and spars, gently, with Gregory Peck about the line being from Keats or Shelley. Charlie breaks the silence and asks me, “Which one is it anyways, Shakespeare? Keats or Shelley.”

I say, “I’ve no clue.” Which is true enough, though mostly I’m distracted by thoughts of Charlie’s boys. Do they come to his room? Does he overcome his fear just enough to fetch them for himself? When he bites them (if he bites into them, if he’s queer in the way that I’m queer), do they groan and twist in his powerful hands?

The movie blurs in front of me. Hepburn cuts her hair short and steals a Vespa, kisses Peck over and over and over. By the time the end comes, Hepburn and Peck making vague but grand declarations of affection, I am drowsy. I cover my mouth as I yawn and apologize to Charlie for my lackluster company.

“I fear this has been a real snooze of a dinner. No food, no drink, and not one of the guests had the class to sing a little something.”

“Oh, that’s fine. Really, it is, Mikey. I don’t go for singing much, anyways.” Charlie quiets, considering something, then he says, “Do you think you might play for me though?”

“Me? You want me to play something?”

“Yes. I have a little… Well, it’s not as grand as the ones you’re used to, I’m sure, but there is a piano in the other room. Come on, I’ll show it to you.”

Charlie leads me to an adjoining room, a small drawing room outfitted with disorderly stacks of books and overwhelmed with furniture. It’s dusty and stale, closed-off smelling, but to the right of the room, obscured by a ghastly floral sofa is a dark brown upright piano. Charlie lifts the cover from off the piano and shows me the keys, yellowed with age.

I didn’t know you played, Chuck.”

He ducks his head, bashful, and says, “I don’t really. My ma, she tried teaching me some things, nursery rhymes and hymns, but I never had the head for it. Hands were always too big, not quite gentle enough. The best you can get out of me is ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’.” Charlie takes a breath, looks at me sidelong. “I wanna you hear, Mikey. Sometimes I hear you, the music floating out from your house at night when you prop a window open. It’s the loveliest thing in the world, and it always sounds like you’re playing for somebody.” He catches himself, blinks rapidly, and clears his throat. “Play a little for me, Mikey? Please?”

The back of my neck burning, my stomach roiling, I take a seat at the piano bench and position my hands over the keys. “What would you like to hear?”

“Anything, Mikey” Then, after a moment, Charlie says, “Swan Lake. I’d love to hear you play that one piece from Swan Lake.”

I cannot remember the last time I’ve played for anybody. My mother, maybe. I used to put on shows for her, little concertos in the parlor to amuse her, but they never felt like this. Never like how it feels to sit in Charlie’s dusty drawing room, hemmed in by his possessions. I play for him, the beginning notes of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the introduction in moderato assai, building and building the music, slowly, gradually, until it fills the room entirely. I feel as if I’m being flayed alive, my own traitorous hands the ones that hold the knife that peel back the skin. I play for Charlie, and with each note, each chord, there is a confession. There is love and desire, a need so infinite and endless it threatens to unman me, if I were ever a man before. The surge of feeling makes me dizzy. He makes me dizzy, my Charlie, the way he watches me so quietly, so intently. I find myself regretting the beatnik, not only for the violence of my lust, but because he wasn’t Charlie, because it wasn’t his hands around my waist or his wicked tongue playing along my neck.

At the end of the song, my breathing is heavy, strained. Charlie’s eyes are wet with tears, and he weeps quiet and controlled. His tears, those delicate pearls dripping down his face... All of me seizes. Thoughtlessly, impulsively, I kiss them away, the salt headier than any blood that has ever touched my lips.

“Mikey… Oh, Mikey…”

His hands, undeniably rough from countless years of hard labor and gun handling, are lambs against my cheek. He holds me, and I allow myself to be held. For once, the heat that courses through me does not destroy; it lights, it warms. Charlie kisses my fingertips, my palms, my wrist. It’s a horrible mouth, I know it, full of horrible teeth that’ve committed atrocities, but it’s good on me and good for me. Good when this bloody man is shedding tears and kissing me oh-so-chastely, like I’m a storybook maiden and not a creature as vicious as he.

I make love to him, on purpose and with purpose. I shall not repeat the words that we said, nor the looks that we exchanged, but I will say this: in the dark of night when I am usually crushed by my loneliness, ruined by desire, I am held fast and warm and sweet things are told to me. Charlie rises at midnight and pulls open his curtains, moonlight spilling like silver over us, the moon’s gaze as peaceful and mindful as the gaze of God.

“Do you remember the sun, Michael?”

I hold Charlie’s head against my belly and say, “I remember going down to my aunt’s house in the summer, the sun shining through the little windows. I remember missing it too, afterwards, when it burnt me.”

“Fighting in the daytime, the sun beating me red, I thought I’d never want to be so hot again,” says Charlie. “Being cold is worse. I miss sweating, almost.”

“Almost, Charlie Yewman?”

He lifts his face to me so I can see his smile, his cruel canines, but also his tears. From above, looking down at this dear man, my heart rends itself in two, and I find I do not miss the offending organ.

“Yes, Michael, almost. There are things better than sunlight.”