Winter Eyes by Lev Raphael

Author:Lev Raphael [Raphael, Lev]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, General, Gay
ISBN: 9780312105761
Google: W4nWNlqwuPkC
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1993-12-14T13:00:00+00:00

A few nights later, after their homework was all done, Louie came up to his place so they could watch Ben Hur. Sasha was off giving a late lesson.

They gobbled pretzels and popcorn. Stefan had seen the movie before, been excited by it, but sitting there now with Louie he understood his excitement for the first time. It wasn’t just the battles, the trumpet calls, the costumes and huge pillars, even the vicious chariot race. It was Charlton Heston, slim, dark, hairy, almost naked.

“You can see his dick,” Louie muttered, waving at Charlton Heston’s loincloth in one scene.

“Wow.”

Stefan imagined himself in the sea-battle scene, rescuing Louie as a Roman, and drifting on a large raft with him. They would hold each other, and touch, and later, picked up by the Roman galley and returned to Rome, they would be bathed by slaves, perfumed, combed, massaged, and dressed. They would feed each other, drink from the same goblet, and at night find themselves in a room swathed in silk and cloth of gold, where they would spend the whole night together.

“Would you want to do it with him?” Stefan asked, when there was a close-up of Charlton Heston.

Louie shrugged. “You’re enough for me.”

Stefan forced himself not to fling his bowl of pretzels into the air with a shout. He just stuffed some more into his mouth and chewed.

“Those Jews,” Louie said at one point, shaking his head.

“What about them?”

“They killed Jesus, dummy! That’s what.”

Stefan remembered Sasha explaining this question to him years ago. So now he said: “The Romans did it, and it’s wrong to blame the Jews.” His words sounded stiff, rehearsed, and he wasn’t sure he meant what he said.

“That’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says they did and they knew it and God’s always gonna hate them. Haven’t you read all that?”

Stefan was too embarrassed to say he had never opened a Bible, not even in the library or a bookstore. He always felt a vague unease around one—something in Sasha’s attitude had communicated itself to him. And once his mother had said, “More people have died because of that book than any other.” It left him feeling that somehow the book itself was as dangerous as kryptonite for Superman.

“You’re so stupid, sometimes,” Louie concluded, and Stefan had to quietly agree. “Aren’t you worried about going to hell or anything?”

Stefan felt on safer ground. “My Uncle says he’s seen hell, and it’s on earth.”

“Like where?”

“In Europe, in the War.”

“Was he a soldier?”

Stefan fell silent. He didn’t want to reveal the vastness of his ignorance and be mocked even more, but he didn’t want to lie to Louie either.

Luckily, there was a key in the door, and Sasha let himself in.

“Hi, boys. What are you watching?”

“Ben Hur,” they chimed.

Sasha nodded and went off to the kitchen.

Thinking of Charlton Heston, Stefan said, “It should be Ben Him, get it?” And he dug his elbow into Louie until he admitted that it was funny.

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