Lebanon Hostage Ch. 03

Initially, I receive a little assistance from our captors' fundamentalist standards of modesty. When they give me the bag containing my summer clothes, and I see the two kinds of underwear, I assume that I've been given an extra set, a very welcome change. Dressing in the bathroom, I opt to put on the boxers, a first-time experience for me. I'm unhappy with how the boxers expose me at the fly, but I'm unhappier still with the mental picture of myself walking around in panties. When I come out of the bathroom, the guards are displeased: "No good!" I had heard them deliver the same scolding to the Praying Hostage, who was taken to the bathroom before me, but I hadn't understood why. Now the guards get me to understand that I'm supposed to wear the briefs under the boxers so that I'm not exposed. I feel unjustly chastised—how could I be expected to figure that out on my own?—but once they've managed to explain, I'm happy to go along. The extra layer will make me less uncomfortable in my own body, and it will make living with Allan's body less difficult.

Allan dislikes the doubling up of underwear. Soon enough I discover the problem myself: the sheer fabric of which the briefs are made does not breathe. As the summer heat rises, and the sweat pools in our unwashed crotches, Allan and I get jock rot. By the time this happens, Allan is already in the habit of stripping off his tank top whenever the guards aren't around. But after he gets jock rot, Allan spends nearly a couple of weeks entirely naked, except when he hears the guards approaching. He's trying to dry out his groin in order to starve the fungus. He squats in front of the fan in our door, letting the air blow onto his crotch and inner thighs. While doing this, he drapes his tank top over his buttocks while holding the arm straps forward around his hips as a makeshift loincloth.

When we lose the fan to a power outage, Allan resorts to lying on his mattress with knees bent up and legs spread open, fanning his groin with his tank top. I am in agony. I lie on my side with my back to him, to give him privacy and to prevent myself from stealing illicit glimpses. I am ashamed, nevertheless, that from glances cast while getting up to use my pee bottle, I now know that Allan is uncircumcised, something I have never seen before.

When he's splayed out naked, Allan doesn't talk. He lies with his eyes closed. I take this to be his way of trying to create a buffer zone, the illusion of privacy.

I deal with my own jock rot by removing the briefs and wearing only the boxers, which breathe better, until I hear the guards coming downstairs, at which point I hustle to strip the boxers off and put the briefs and boxers back on. I have time to do this, fortunately, because the guards start the feedings and toilet runs with the Praying Hostage's cell, right beside the stairs. While I'm wearing just the boxers, I take turns squatting in front of the fan the way Allan does, letting the air blow through my open fly to soothe the itch and dry out the fabric.

Despite the summer heat, the guards won't give us time to shower any more frequently than once a week, but I figure out how to multitask so I can soap up my groin with one hand while squatting over the toilet and then rinse off under cover of cleaning my ass. After the jock rot subsides, I retain the habit of "sneaking" a daily cold douche to my crotch to prevent a recurrence.

Once his jock rot has abated, Allan adopts my custom of wearing just the boxers and donning the briefs only when the guards are present. For comfort, I keep doing the same. So in the end, I lose the advantageous double layer that the guards' modesty had afforded me. I try to be as inconspicuous as I can about keeping my fly pinched closed. Allan lets his fly relax as it will, turning it into a forbidden cave whose mouth I want to peek inside.

Allan is better at estimating the passage of time than I am, so when he senses that it's about time for the guards to come down to feed us, we get "properly" dressed at a leisurely pace. Sometimes he misestimates, or maybe the guards come down early, and then we have to hurry to get our briefs on while the guards are delivering the Praying Hostage's food. We also have to scramble a little whenever the fan goes off—that is, whenever there's a power outage—so that the guards won't catch us in our immodesty if they come down to the basement right away and open our grate cover. When we're stripping our bottoms off and on again, we turn our backs to each other, but I have occasionally turned back around in time to glimpse Allan's ass.

I wish Allan would wear his tank top regularly. I'm afraid that one of these days he will catch me looking down at his nipples or at what little hair he has on his torso. I worry, furthermore, that wearing my tank top when he's not wearing his looks suspicious. Evidently Allan finds it normal to go bare-chested in this heat. What excuse will I give him if he ever asks me why I don't get more comfortable by removing my tank top? What if he senses that I keep wearing the tank top because I feel uncomfortable being so nude with another man? What if he starts to wonder why this makes me uncomfortable?

To prevent that line of inquiry, I eventually work up the courage to lay aside my tank top, too. I hate it, though, not only because I'm putting myself in a situation that feels erotically charged to me, but also because I dislike my body. I always have. I'm ashamed of how underdeveloped my body is, but I have simultaneously prided myself on being an intellectual who doesn't care about something as shallow as developing his body. I am aware that this is a self-defeating attitude. The fact that Dale, the one man I've ever slept with, evidently enjoyed my body mystified me—although I was pathetic-puppy grateful that he did. That was part of why I kept giving in and going back to him: his interest made me feel better about myself, physically.

Over time, sitting shirtless in the cell with Allan, I come to feel less ashamed of how my body looks. The fact that I've lost weight helps—although given why I've lost the weight, I worry that feeling positive about that will grow into some kind of eating disorder. (I'm always at least a little hungry. My stomach has never downgraded its demands to match what I receive.) Allan's exercise regimen helps in a much healthier way. I don't see any difference in my physique, but I feel better about myself. I derive satisfaction from knowing that I'm finally doing something to develop my body instead of feeling alternately supercilious and inadequate about not doing anything.

As I grow accustomed to constantly being around Allan in just our undershorts, the sexual edge to the situation becomes less sharp. But it doesn't turn blunt. The situation never comes to feel chaste. It never stops feeling risky. It just doesn't feel so intensely risky.

It's not that I'm constantly stewing in homosexual desire, I have other emotions. I get stressed. I get low. I get mind-numbingly bored. I can get caught up in a conversation with Allan and cease to be distracted by the awareness that we're sitting pressed to one another's sides all but naked. I can feel grateful toward Allan, or tender, or irritated, or laugh with him without also lusting after him.

Still, lust is part of my emotional repertoire. It turns up, makes appearances. And when it does, I open the door and let it in because... it feels good, at least until later, when guilt comes barging through the doorway, too. I spend so much time feeling bored, or uncomfortable, or stir-crazy, or worried, or homesick, or discouraged, or frustrated, or worn-down, or frightened, or trapped, or degraded, or hopeless, that I need to let myself feel good at times. I need the pleasure of looking at the tantalizing frontier where Allan's thigh disappears up into his shorts, or the smooth white expanse of his back, or the slope where his side descends to his waistband, or the pink disc around his nipple, or the vulnerable nape of his neck, or that narrow line of hair worming down from his navel to burrow into the front of his shorts, or the roundness of his buttocks veiled behind his boxers, or his naked foot resting up against mine as we talk side by side, or the lap of his boxers, with its teasing opening, glimpsed just out of the corner of my eye. I need that shot in the arm, even if the pleasure is fleeting, even if I berate myself for it afterward.

When I describe the situation to myself that way, it sounds like an addiction. Like Allan and his nicotine. Just how far does that comparison hold true? Do I need my illicit gazes at Allan's body in the same way that Allan needs his cigarettes? Is my survival going to be fueled by the moments of guilty pleasure I snatch from Allan's body? Or is that just a Strange Idea? It's such a risky pleasure. Not to mention an exploitative one. What will happen if Allan realizes what I am doing to him?

I pray: Please help me control it. I won't pretend to you that I'm going to try to stop entirely, I know you know better. I'm weak. But please don't let me be so weak as to do something stupid, something that will throw up a wall between us or make him retreat. Don't let me destroy our friendship.

That prayer doesn't feel right. If Allan and I are really friends, I shouldn't be ogling him, much less asking God that Allan not catch me doing it.

My struggle with lust is particularly infuriating given that I don't actually find Allan's body all that attractive. But it's male, and it's there, and that's all that's necessary to activate my sexual instincts. That's how effectively governed I am by the animal in me. And the fact that the animal is in charge prevents Allan and me from being just friends and companions, the way we might have been. The way Allan presumably thinks we are. The animal won't let the relationship be that simple, that wholesome. My sexual feelings pervert the relationship, twist it into something else, even if only under the surface.

I get low thinking about this. Undeservedly, I have Allan—oblivious, generous Allan—to pull me back up.

At least my sex drive is suppressed enough (because of all the negative emotion in my life, I assume, and probably the lack of nutrition) that I'm not in danger of becoming visibly aroused. That sounds so sordid. But it's something I fear. I fret about this possibility when I start wearing the boxers without the briefs. The last thing I need is to be seated beside Allan for a conversation, bare skin to bare skin, and suddenly have the evidence of what's really going on come poking its head out my fly. That never happens, thank God.

I never feel the urge to masturbate, either, not in a serious way at least. The sexual tension, insistent as it can be, doesn't climb to the level of making me want to do anything apart from look. Lucky for me, since there's nothing I could do in here, even in the dead of night, with Allan lying right beside me and never the cover of total darkness. Rarely I'll wake up in the morning half erect; but while that's embarrassing, it doesn't give anything away about me, it's merely male physiology. I just lie facing the wall, waiting for it to subside.

I hate that I have to deal with my homosexuality, with all its sordidness, on top of everything else that makes my life here miserable. But then, my homosexuality is what got me here in the first place.

* * *

There is a certain moment that later I will come to regard as a crucial turning point. The moment doesn't seem so important at the time. At the time, in fact, my inclination is to categorize this "epiphany," as I will later dub it, as a Strange Idea. It's not a Strange Idea I can discuss with Allan, though.

What happens is this:

It's night, meaning that the guards have given us dinner, shut the trapdoor, and gone to bed—otherwise, we'd have no way to tell. Allan's sleeping, I can't sleep. This is common. I assume that on other nights, or during different parts of the night, it's the other way around.

Allan is sleeping on his right side, which means he has his back to me. I should be lying on my left side with my back to him, but instead I, too, am lying on my right. I am looking at Allan's shoulders and back, the back of his scalp, the nape of his neck. There can't be much more than a foot between us. I'm imagining what it would be like to cross that gap, to snuggle against him, to rest my nose against the top of his spine, to bring my arm around and press it to the region between his chest and stomach. I am allowing myself to imagine this because as long as I keep my fingers away from his nipples and my lips off his neck, it is not a sexual scenario, albeit it is plainly illicit in some other way I'm not quite sure how to name.

I am enjoying the feelings that I imagine I would have if I snuggled against Allan. I feel soothed, consoled. I feel that I can bear up, that I can keep going.

Then the guilt kicks in. What the fuck are you doing? Don't do this. It is a slippery slope, you know that perfectly well. Don't spoil what you have with Allan. Don't taint it, don't turn it into something dirty. Stupid. Stupid.

This kind of thing has happened before, this isn't the epiphany. The epiphany starts when this time, a voice in my head says: Allan would make you apologize to yourself for what you just said.

Allan is always telling me, because I'm never quite persuaded by it, that guilt is unhealthy. Dangerous. Guilt drags me down, it makes me low. I feel that happening now. When I was imagining snuggling with Allan, I felt good. I felt comforted. I felt more optimistic about my ability to survive. And then after the guilt kicked in, those good feelings, the comfort, the optimism, went away.

If the guilt drives away the feelings I need to survive, why do I think it's good? Why do I think the voice that makes me feel guilty is right?

I thank God all the time for the gift of Allan, for the happiness his presence brings me. But I also ask God all the time to save me from certain feelings of pleasure that Allan's presence brings me. Do those prayers contradict each other?

Maybe the feelings of pleasure, the erotic feelings, are actually part of the gift. I certainly enjoy them when I'm not feeling guilty about them or afraid of being caught. I am, as I call it, "addicted" to these feelings. But maybe I shouldn't be thinking of the feelings in negative terms, as addiction. Maybe I should understand these feelings in positive terms: maybe I should understand them as part of the happiness that God wills for me.

Bullshit. That doesn't make sense. This is wishful thinking. This is a Strange Idea. Even if I went along with the premise that God doesn't really disapprove of homosexuality—it wouldn't be the first time I've contemplated that possibility—why would God will for me to have sexual feelings for someone who can't reciprocate? How is that going to make me happy? That's a pathway to frustration... and to totally fucking up the relationship, a relationship I am literally locked into living no matter how fucked up it may become.

In my memory, the response to that objection rises up in my mind right away. I suspect, in reality, that it actually emerges later, gradually, over days, as I keep thinking about this. But in my memory, the whole thought process has been collapsed into this single night when I'm lying awake looking at Allan's back.

So in my memory, what happens is: I look at Allan sleeping almost naked, in his boxers, a foot away with me, and I think, This is what it would be like to sleep beside a lover.

I've never slept with anyone before. I've "been to bed" with someone. But Dale and I never slept together in the strict sense. We... ejaculated onto one other ("safe sex"), and then I showered, and by the time I got out of the shower, I knew what a huge mistake this had been and wanted to get the hell out of there. So I wouldn't have spent the night even if Dale had offered, which he never did.

Dale and I weren't lovers, unless all you mean by that word is that we had sex. We were using each other. He was a not-too-attractive middle-aged man who probably had a hard time picking up the cute younger guys he was really interested in. And I was a socially inept, not-too-attractive young man who went home with the first man who invited me because I was afraid no one else would.

Allan and I aren't lovers, either, obviously. But what we have comes much closer to the images and feelings that the word lovers conjures up for me than what I had with Dale. We live together. We sleep together. We care for each other. We support each other. We rely on each other. In this place, Allan is all that I have, and I am all that he has.

If I were to have a lover, a male lover, a gay lover, I would want that relationship to be like what I have with Allan. Except, of course, that there would be sexual desire flowing both ways, not just one way. And, of course, we would be free.

When we talked about his relationship with Emily, Allan told me that there's much more to being in a relationship than what our life together in this cell consists of. I understand that. Still, our life together in this cell is the closest I've ever come to "being in a relationship." It's the closest I have to a real-life model for what a gay relationship could be like.

And the relationship I have with Allan is beautiful once I push the guilt and the fear out of the picture. It's nourishing. It's strengthening. It isn't sordid, or fleeting, or selfish—not like what I did with Dale.

Is it possible that this is something God wants to show me? Is this realization something positive, something redeeming, that I can take out of this otherwise traumatic experience?

It's a seductive idea. A part of me would very much like to be persuaded that God is fine with my being gay. And another part of me is drawn to the philosophically vexed yet consoling notion that my captivity isn't random suffering, that there's some overarching purpose, some divine plan at work behind the scenes.

That's the epiphany as it will later exist in my memory. No doubt it is the consolidation of a thought process that, in reality, unfolds over days or weeks. This new way of thinking about my homosexuality, and about my erotic feelings for Allan more specifically, doesn't suddenly transform me. I don't convert to it from night to morning. On the contrary, I suspect it for a long time afterward of being a Strange Idea that seems reasonable and attractive to me only because I would like to believe it and I can't discuss it with anyone who would make see how bizarre it really is.

Nevertheless, I keep entertaining the idea. It competes, now, with the other voices in my head, the voices that tell me I'm perverted and weak and in danger of destroying what's positive about my companionship with Allan. If I accepted the epiphany as true, I would still have to conceal myself from Allan, that wouldn't change. And concealing myself would remain stressful. But I wouldn't have to feel so disgusted with myself while I was doing it.