THE OEDIPUL SON Chapter Nine: i know this is what you really want

At the all day cinema, when Carlton was thirteen, a stranger of about thirty sat next to him and, during a break in the film, he bought him a coke and began to talk to him. He asked Carlton questions and listened to what he had to say as though his words mattered. Carlton felt as though he’d suddenly woken from a long dream, that he’d become alive, that he was no longer alone in the world, that he was no longer invisible.

The Stranger was smartly dressed but his clothes were slightly wrinkled, as though he’d slept in them. His handsome face was unshaven and he smelt of cigarettes and Old Spice.

He told Carlton that he was a pilot and offered to take him on an air flip over the city. Carlton and The Stranger sat at the sidewalk café of a beachfront hotel and he bought Carlton a coke and lit him a cigarette. Carlton felt grown up; suddenly sophisticated and not shy. A radio was playing and Sinatra’s voice sang, ‘Strangers in the night, exchanging glances, strangers in the night, what were the chances, we’d be sharing love, before the night was through.’  His new friend smiled and said, “They’re playing our song, we’re just strangers passing like ships in the night.”

‘Can it be real,’ Carlton thought, ‘I have a friend and we have a song.’

They went back to his hotel; a place that looked like a boarding house. The room was clean but sparse. A wind chime hung incongruously in an open window that overlooked a dingy courtyard where white sheets flapped from a washing line in the morning breeze. Carlton examined this trinket as his host showered in preparation for the promised flight; it was made of tiny silver angels that tinkled against each other when it moved.

Carlton’s heart was fluttering like the wings of a caged bird eager to be freed, excited at the prospect of flying, but something more; an inexplicable premonition that his life was about to change.

The Stranger came out of the bathroom wearing only his underwear, vigorously drying his wet hair he pulled back the covers of the bed to expose fresh, crisp sheets and lay down, propping his back with the white covered pillows. His body was dark and hairy and Carlton’s heart was wild now, ready for flight. He patted the sheet next to him, “Sit with me for a while before we go, I have no friends, please be my friend?”

Something in his words made Carlton’s heart go crazier still. He sat down on the cool white sheets that The Stranger’s hand had touched and listened to his words about loneliness and his longing for a friend. They hypnotized Carlton and he hardly noticed the man’s hand on his leg. All he could concentrate on was the sound of his voice and the tinkling of the wind chime; that sounded as though it came from a memory or a dream.

Carlton felt the warmth of The Stranger’s hand on his shorts and in that moment something dormant; some evil impulse buried deep inside of him; a feeling that he’d left in the dark chasm under the house of his birth rose up and consumed him. It was a moment that seemed to last forever. A frozen eternity from which the voice of his father emerged, like the voice of God; “Never allow a man to touch you like that, it’s the worst sin imaginable and the Bible calls it filthy and vile and deserving of death. It will enslave you forever and follow you into the fiery pit of hell.”

Carlton lunged from the bed and ran to the door but it was locked. The Stranger came over to him, trying to persuade him to stay, “Please don't go, I promise I won’t hurt you, please don't leave me?”

Finally he unlocked the door and stood close to Carlton as he edged past him to escape and Carlton felt his breath on his face as he whispered urgently and angrily; "Go, but you'll be back, I know this is what you really want."

Wind chimes sounded in some trapped breeze as Carlton ran through the streets without direction. Miraculously he reached home and flung himself onto his bed, his heart still pounding; knowing that he’d really wanted to stay.


When Carlton saw Adrian again and told him what had happened his friend wanted details, asking if he’d had a good look at the man’s body, “Did he have a big dong, did you play with it; did he play with yours?” Adrian, by then, had already experienced sex with older men, giving Carlton blow-by-blow accounts of these contacts.

Carlton was sanctimoniously aghast at this reaction and embarrassed that anyone would think that he’d even want to do these things, but late at night in the secret darkness of his room, he was aroused by thoughts of what that encounter could have been like. Fantasies of touching and being touched by this lying stranger were his wet dream, until he met Robbie.


One day after school Adrian and Carlton drank a bottle of wine that Adrian had stolen from his father’s collection. They grew dizzy and in their intoxication spoke more openly than they had dared to before, about their desire for other boys; comparing, with exaggerated gestures, the attributes and attractions of the jocks at school, Adrian describing in detail what he’d seen in the showers after physical training.

Carlton had never been allowed to play sport at school, ostensibly because of his asthma, but he knew in his heart that his father did not want the other kids to see the welts and bruises that he sometimes left on his butt and back.

After the wine was finished they lay, fully clothed, on the bed and kissed. Long luxurious kisses that seemed, to Carlton, to begin with his lips and sink deep inside of him, stirring up sensations that he’d never experienced before.

After some time Adrian began to fondle Carlton and it was this gesture that turned his sudden sense of relief and freedom into panic. He drew away from Adrian and in a slurred voice said, “I can’t do this, you’re too much like a sister to me.” They both laughed hysterically but something in Adrian’s eyes told Carlton that the feeling was one sided and that the joke was at Adrian’s expense.


When Adrian was very young and listening to the fairy tales his mother read to him, he wanted to be The Hero; The Knight in Shining Armour, the one who saves the damsel in distress and slays the dragon. But fate had blessed him with effeminacy instead of courage.

And later, when he watched Camelot with Carlton, he knew that his friend pictured Lancelot as his rescuer, imagining being carried away on his Knight’s shiny white stead. He expressed the same desires to Carlton but in his heart he wanted to BE Lancelot, and be adored for his courage.

When he first allowed himself to be used by an older man, and submitted to his abuse, he had felt powerful because of his youth. He’d continued to search for, and find others, who wanted his body. ‘Make no mistake’, he kept telling himself, ‘this is what I want’, until he believed it. Little by little Adrian buried The Hero in himself so deep, and ignored his pleas for so long, that now he can no longer hear his voice.

But when Carlton was around he felt courageous, bold, worldly wise, capable and experienced. He wanted to be Carlton’s Hero; save him from the vicious claws if Christianity and what it had done to his head; rescue him from his abusive father; educate him about sex and sexuality and show him the pleasures that he had experienced. He saw Adrian as a fallen angel, unable to return to divinity and unwilling to commit to what he really was. He wanted to save him and protect him so that he would become completely surrendered to the ownership of the powerful Knight in Shining Armour. He wanted to possess him and in so doing possess himself.


(Relevant Poem: Diamonds in the Dirt, posted in the Story Poems category on the 24th October)
(Digital Collage: Archetypal Images 1 by Carlton)
(Orientation Note for Readers: This serialisation is adapted from my semi-autobiographical novel Other Voices. If you wish to read the Prologue to the book, it was posted in the Fictional Prose category on 17th October 2013)
© Carlton Carr 2013
http://othervoices.blog.co.uk/