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| Death mask of Aaron Burr at the NY Historical Society (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Kinsey's scale of heterosexual and homosexual responses, as outlined in Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| The 1948 first edition of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, the first of the two Kinsey reports. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| English: Aaron Burr death mask from the author's private collection (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
A TALE OF LOVE AND EROTIC HATRED
At fifteen, he knew
his way around New York’s Greenwich Village, and he was discovered by people
with sexual predilections who had to develop a clandestine network. Those with
intimate knowledge of what occurred in certain private clubs, before, during,
and after sunrise had to adhere to a code, insuring that those involved would continue to
maintain the utmost secrecy. These were often the most successful members of
society, and they had to conceal their esoteric sensual souls for fear they would
lose their position atop our social hierarchy. They required the indoctrination
of young men and women who performed compositions the members of this
collective had created from the compost of screen reminiscences. These performers
had to possess certain physical attributes but more than important they had to
have empathy, a tolerance for the macabre, without flinching in the heat of
one’s most inspired execution of the character they had were hired to assume.
Those who paid for the young thespians’ ability
that comprised of complete secrecy despite the odd, weird, or unusual behavior
of their clients. Those employed had to possess a unique temperament whose most
essential component was their ability to avoid displays of disgust, disdain, or
mirth during the acting out of these often bizarre plays or fantasies. Given
the joys of gossip, it was difficut to refrain from discussing their clients uncommon
behavior, and if hey could not control the temptations inherent in gossip, they
faced the most dire consequences that based on my own harrowing expereinces, included
death.
The actors embodied roles scripted according to
those who paid them to realize their most idiosyncratic sexual scripts. Most patrons devised these performance with consummate
attention to detail. In those days, many unenlightened and rigid members of
society would have deemed their associates sexual appetites as malignant flowers
in the bouquet of human sexual behavior. Personal physical allure was dependent
on its correlation with the individual roles those who paid Aaron and others as
disposable objects, performers, and disposable surrogates.
Since paraphilias, abnormal loves, or
erotic hatreds are almost the exclusive territory of men—and heterosexual men
in Aaron’s case—physical beauty was a variable in the more traditional sensual fantasies. A
client’s compositions often had complex roles and they had to remain interred
and gaffes in decorum again had lethal conclusions. If the toxic winds of human
gossip exhumed these intimate tales this breach in etiquette provided their
less enlightened competitors, enemies, friends, and even lovers with what they
might have considered perverse and a weakness they could exploit. At best, they
would appear odd, leading to disastrous personal and financial consequences.
Such unconventional behavior in their social strata
mad this form of exploitation, blackmail, and or worse, were the very reasons that
necessitated the creation of this surreptitious network in the first place. Aaron
soon learned of these dangers subsumed beneath the giddy mask of ultra sanity
these wealthy people wore to conceal the tumor of their pathological sexual
desires.
In those days, this world was so alien to the facade of pristine virtues in suburbia where the boy lived that the cultural
transition was a profound emotional shock. All the concomitant acts of violence
a player learned, either too late or not at all, were not isolated instances
but an agreed end game by those that had seduced children to perform on this
underground stage in the theater of the most absurd.
None of these perils occurred to a
fifteen-year-old kid from Great Neck bedazzled by the roiling of his hormonal
squall, making him incapable of passing on an invitation from a woman, named
Lana, whose comeliness elicited in him a most profound visceral hunger. Prior knowledge
would have failed to make him hesitate when she had proffered him an invitation
to dine at her home with her and her husband. Aaron had thought he knew and had
become habituated to the shock of the Village in comparison to the suburbs
would learn the false illusion of youthful immortality made fools of us all.
His reservations, if even considered, would have
dissolved given Lana’s radiant flesh, her ideal feminine form, and incomparable beauty. If he was concerned about his existence, and what fifteen-year-old child
could ponder the stench of senescence while blinded by the odd paradox inherent
in youth that despite the biological conclusion of our lives, Death had failed
to seduce him into thinking he was anything but inviolate and he beloved, while
all evidnce led to the contrary, that he was shielded, a rationalization that
even known does not deter innocence from being beguiled, from the erosion,
plaguing those less fortunate. If not for that delusion, Aaron’s precocious
sensual soul, like any boys his age, manifested itself as a form of madness.
The thick cords formed a diadem of hair on Lana’s
crown. Dangling loose the red highlights of her auburn mane tumbled down far
enough to tickle her sacrum while she sat in her chair at one end of the table.
Across the mahogany divide her husband, Raymond the hulking owner of a famed
Village bistro, sat in his purple velvet smoking jacket, and matching eye patch
over his right orbital socket. The interstices in the weave of her black chemise
permitted Aaron a glimpse of her bare silken flesh he found impossible to
ignore. He had met her in his parents’ beauty salon where he worked every
Saturday. Lana’s green eyes, or Aaron’s jejune sense of the world, had failed
to reveal any reason for his anxiety, a dissociated tickle of dread that foreshadowed
the intimate nature of his implausible postprandial audition.
In their russet-colored townhouse near Washington
Square Park, he thought they’d invited him because Lana was a kind and amiable
customer, and her gratitude for the consideration she had received was handed
down to Aaron in the form of this invitation to dinner. Chicken Kiev—served by
their Japanese houseboy—while the simplistic overture for
the modest play that initiated him into a network few will ever know
or even imagine ever existed. Raymond was an intimidating presence whose palpable
sense of menace was enhanced by his eye patch. Aaron only wondered if Lana’s
comeliness was worth the sense of horror and foreboding he had perceived while
he was already seated. Dapper in his ascot and monogrammed smoking jacket,
Raymond began delving into Aaron’s precocious sexual history. Raymond’s fascination
for the details of the boy’s juvenile amatory history struck Aaron as bizarre
but inherent in this situation it triggered Aaron’s need to divulge the
maddening details he etched in the slim volume of his history of devotion of
the female somatotype and mind.
As Aaron spoke, he saw his sexual longings as an
aberrant erotic prison, and whether his disclosure increased the current of his
perturbation and desire, he could not say, given Lana’s beauty. She induced in Aaron
a mental stammer whenever he noticed her wry mischievous smile eliciting the
slight tremor of her upper lip, a wink, whose image violated him, causing his
heart to slice extra beats especially when he noted a corresponding smirk
ruffle Raymond’s lips. His quest for the nuances of Aaron’s affection for girls
continued to inspire Aaron’s account. Aaron believed, an accurate appraisal,
this voyeurism aroused his host whose seat squawked while enduring Raymond’s
mass and the childish pleasure he derived from each stroke as Aaron’s verbal
brush clarified his erotic self-portrait. Whether, or not, Raymond’s patch was
a conversation piece, or a necessity remained a disturbing mystery, a shroud
draped over the rendering of this pseudo plunge into his premature historical intimacy.
Describing his avarice for every pretty girl or
woman Aaron increased the unsettling force Raymond projected. He drew the boy
into what Aaron conceived as a vortex his cloaked eye concealed and for what
purpose remained unknown. His patch struck Aaron as irresistible
and the thing’s insistence for him to return and stare at it with the
same attentive visual caress as Lana had inspired. As if it existed on its own,
the patch throbbed and Aaron found this force drawing him ever closer to
something unspecific and Aaron needed a substantial conscious effort to
suppress a maniacal scream. Aaron’s hands demanded an equal exertion to restrain from ripping the thing off
the furtive wound, in his fancy, it cloaked. The more he spoke, the more
compelling the impetus to grab it, and the restraint needed challenged his
endurance and his will.
The patch its unknown but iconic meaning,
amplified the pressure in Aaron’s chest, making him strain to breathe, and to control
his sweaty hands. This feeling of sustained fear, and the curiosity regarding
their invitation, caused Aaron to vacillate between mild approbation and terror.
Yet, he found his confession as if drawn from the nexus of his soul by Raymond
and it forced Aaron to dig deeper into the nadir and depths of his brief sensual
life.
Raymond smiled then slapped the table and, “I knew
it. I mentioned it to Lana and she thought I was nuts. You see darling, I have
an eye for such things. Why the moment I saw you I knew you were perfect for…”
His lips seized and silence reigned, the boy couldn't think but thanked his
hosts as Raymond’s smile widened, and this demonic puppeteer with his huge head
and over sized lone eye horrified Aaron. He asked Aaron to tell him about the
first time he had sexual intercourse. He chastised Aaron for skimming over
details, and Aaron had the sense that if he did not tell him everything that
happened it would… well, he did not know, but he knew he was in some initial
stage of jeopardy.
Aaron’s impropriety registered in the swelling of Raymond’s
concealed socket that defied reason and grew with every word until it had a
slight but discernible gravitational pull, growing more robust and tumid with
the explication of every disgorged detail, transforming the purity of Aaron’s
lost virginity into an obscenity, and he could have sworn the fabric cloaking
his empty orb had pulsated faster in his imagination with a dim auditory thumping.
Yes, he would have sworn to all that violated reason and the laws of physics
that the thing issued a clunk, an embryonic heartbeat whose volume escalated with each detail Aaron
disgorged. He had the horrifying sense that it had a simple nervous system
energized by Raymond's vicarious thrill in Aaron’s vivid composition. He tried
to concentrate on Lana’s comeliness, but the lure of the bizarre organism
breeding in secrecy was then in control of his consciousness.
Was the patch covering an injury? Was a new
replacement being sized and prepared? Was its alternate soaking in their
bedroom like dentures in a glass, or did the piece of cloth hide an empty
socket. Given what ensued, Raymond might have had a miniature camera placed
behind that curtain. Raymond despite his visual limitations, and advanced age,
could've torn Aaron apart if events dictated the need for an aggressive
response, and his dread in concert with his modesty soared.
We sipped Irish coffee and nibbled on pastries, and
Raymond decided to step out for a bit of fresh air, and Aaron knew with
disconcerting certitude that Lana and he had another destination. Anxiety and
discomfort he perceived as a sense of physical and mental compression as
Raymond’s departure defined his destiny. He had the brief thought his pelvis
would crack while his scrotum contracted and expanded like a ragged accordion.
Lana clasped his hand and escorted him upstairs
in silence and into a Victorian bedroom with a marble fireplace, a walnut
bureau, mahogany bedside cupboards, a cheval glass, a four-poster, and
paintings. Within an instant now, but an eternity then, they were on the bed as
lone single hermaphroditic entity, and her exquisite face and body, despite the erosion of memory, her comeliness made him shiver, more in the future, then on
that night. Tumescence was almost a constant in those testosterone-driven
days—a car ride induced an erection—so short of severing his brainstem its
painful and often embarrassing protuberance did not defer to dread and had he been
older, given the alchemy of desire and awe, he may have disappointed his hosts.
Melding in oneness with Lana, a defiant crash
usurped their combined greed, when Raymond, Aaron later learned, had dropped
his camcorder, which was then the size of an air-conditioner. The clamor made
both Aaron and Lana stifle a nitrous oxide laughter, but given the occasion, as
if in the midst of a eulogy, they managed to contain their hysteria while the
comfort he found in Lana’s laugh and subsequent smile caused but a brief
interlude in their avarice. Despite
Raymond’s muted groans and ham-handed destruction of his cinema verite’
composition, the show did indeed continue until the curtain descended.
Aaron wondered if Raymond screened his work for an
upcoming family circle meeting. Aversion became joy, as he stared into the
glaze of Lana’s eyes, and her smile, which contained a serene air of stoicism
that concealed her mood. Aaron imagined the big pirate with cock in hand,
seminal spew dribbling on his slacks as if an exclamation point to his catastrophic gaffe and ludicrous attempt to salvage his night's effort like a
botched vaudeville act.
The less than fantastic denouement—to this routine
script by the standards Aaron would portray in the circumscribed world of
perverse loves whose rocky terrain he had surmounted when Lana’s silken thighs cuddle his head while his knees indented the velvet ottoman as if he had eaten a
ceremonial wafer. Aaron’s behind, if Raymond regrouped to frame the scene for
his camera, had to have been an appropriate concluding shot. Yet the humdrum
events that transpired, the scotophilia enjoyed by a man of means and sophistication,
and the odd sensation Aaron felt while falling in love with Raymond’s gorgeous
wife was incomprehensible.
At the evening's conclusion, they sat in the
library drinking brandy and eating pastries. Imbued with a sense of surreal
disorientation, Aaron felt vertiginous. Based on Raymond’s recitation of the
virtues of the brandy, Castello Banfi Grappa, Aaron decided it was a tad more
expensive than a small nuclear device.
Raymond held a snifter up to the light. “Well, my
friend, did you enjoy the evening?”
He swirled the brandy and sniffed it while staring
at Aaron, and he wondered if under his eye patch, Raymond had winked.
“Yes, I did.” What would have transpired if he said
he was bored?
“Did you enjoy the meal?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Good. My wife is a beautiful woman, isn’t she?”
Lana had a whimsical smile on her face throughout
the night, and appeared to have interred her thoughts and feelings. She decided
then to excuse herself to freshen up. Aaron considered that he might have
misinterpreted Raymond's tone, its sense of menace as he slashed his words with
a resonant baritone scratched by his heavy smokers’ corrupted larynx. Lana’s
vaginal ambrosia mixed with semen in Aaron’s Jockey's, as he stuttered, “She's
gorgeous.” His words were discharged as if buckshot as he vacillated between
losing consciousness and mania.
“Then maybe we’ll see more of you.”
The temptation was torture as he choked back his
splintered words. Unless you’re planning to give me a barium enema, you've
seen just about all of me. “My calendar is open.” Sweat exploded from his
every pore.
“Excellent.” He sipped his brandy, and Aaron followed
suit.
He again sloshed his brandy studying it in the
light, “This has a splendid waxy nose of fruits and lanolin.”Was he referring
to laundry detergent? “It’s light, very ethereal, and crisp on the attack, with
a fruity, light-to medium-bodied, perfumed green apple jam flavor. Am I right,
Alan?”
I hesitated but corrected him. “Aaron.”
“Oh, of course, I’m dreadful with names. Ask Lana
when she returns from dawdling. She has a cleanliness fetish. Did you know she
douches several times a day?”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
“That was a joke. How could you possibly know?” He
stared at his brandy. “Arno...David, uh, Aaron, take a sip. Notice the
palate-tingling wave of peppery heat. It’s a nice fruity grappa without a
bitter note in the entire symphony.”
He looked at Aaron, who was petrified, staring at
this imposing Cyclops. Raymond asked if he wanted to preview a movie, he
had shot. Before he could answer, Lana returned with an envelope. Inside was a
check for two hundred dollars, a fortune. “For your trouble.”
“If this was trouble, you may…” His unarticulated
thought was ‘if that’s trouble you can disembowel me with a Bowie knife.’ Lana
heard, “Trouble me at your in … your convenience.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Lana winked which
underlined his absurd comment. “You’ll have to leave now. Raymond wants me for
himself now.”
His brain produced yet another inane comment,
“What a hog.”
Lana escorted him to the door and kissed his fervid
cheek. This mundane script had far more fantastic variations before its abrupt
conclusion. Raymond and Lana introduced him into a labyrinth of wealthy
and respected members of Manhattan society, many of whom were philanthropists,
devotees of the arts, involved in television, film, theater, and business
moguls who needed to maintain their mask of sanity.
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