(by Edward Zeusgany, copyright 2000, all rights reserved)

“Its an example of Einstein’s Theory of Relatives,” Parmly asserted when he and Uncle Andrew were comparing notes on their respective afternoon encounters.

“That’s relativity I think,” Prof. Heston mildly corrected.

“His best known theory concerns relativity, but I’m referring to the other one, about relatives. ‘They don’t alter time or space, they only warp each other.’”

“Ha ha,” Uncle Andrew managed. “Well, I have to admit, that really is pretty funny.” Busy giggling at his own joke, Parmly didn’t notice the grudging acknowledgment.

It was shortly after this that Parmly announced his intention to move the operations of Billings DeForrest, permanently and at the end of the school year, to Puerto Rico. Business and life were too exciting for him to want to continue in college. That he wouldn’t have quite enough credits for his degree did not bother him.

Parmly was fond of the Caribbean and there were tax advantages to establishing his headquarters on the island. Spanish speaking and European looking, the old city had charm but was still part of the U.S. He and Walter, who was graduating with his class, made frequent trips in preparation. Uncle Andrew stayed behind until all the arrangements had been made. Then he and Parmly moved.

They lived in a hotel for several weeks while remodeling was accomplished on the properties Parmly had purchased. They were two nearly identical, ancient buildings, side by side on a level and narrow side street, near but not at the top of the hill. The business would use the first floors, soon to be connected, of both structures. The second and third floors were reconverted into nearly identical residences. They would have separate street entrances, but be joined on the second floor by means of a short passageway.

At first, Prof. Heston thought that one of the apartments would be for Walter and Erica, who were soon to be married. But it turned out that Parmly had other plans. It was a quite a shock for Uncle Andrew to find out that his friend and lover was intending to find for himself, a wife.

“My father convinced me that my grandfather would have wanted me to have children. I owe it to him, he said, and to the family. If I had brothers or sisters, or even cousins, it would be different. But as things are, if I don’t have kids it will be the end of the line,” Parmly explained.

So he set out, as he did everything else, methodically to accomplish his objective. Foremost, it would be a social and business alliance between families. But he also wanted someone from whom he would not have to hide the other aspects of his life.

The leading candidate was an eighteen year old Parisian, who was both sprightly and charming. When he met her, Prof. Heston was captivated in spite of himself. On the few occasions when he had been attracted at all to a female, it was to a girl like this. Quite boyish in appearance and demeanor, she was slim and vivacious.

“You know you never really cared for all those social functions I have to attend. This will relieve you from most of it,” Parmly went on. Prof. Heston knew this to be true. But he also saw how Jacqueline could be for Parmly an intimate friend his own age. Maybe he should step aside, find some way to get himself out of the picture. Perhaps he should have done, but he couldn’t bring himself to give up whatever would be left for him with the youth he loved.

Both the marriage and Parmly’s business trips conspired to give Uncle Andrew a lot more time alone. Prof. Heston really didn’t have any friends of his own. It began with the newlyweds’ honeymoon trip, a two week excursion in the far east.

There are a number of gay bars, guest houses and hotels in the beach and tourist section of San Juan known as the Condado. Prof. Heston explored them while Parmly was away. It was just something to do, he thought at first. He noticed that there were some Puerto Rican boys to be found in and around these locations.

After his day of painting, Prof. Heston would tell himself that he would just have a little supper and go to bed early. Then he would be rested and relaxed for Parmly’s return. His companion had assured him that their life together would go on much as it had before.

Uncle Andrew had given up red wine before dinner in favor of bourbon manhattans. Of these, he had several. The wine was opened with the soup. He ate slowly, savoring his libation between spoonfuls of minestrone or sausage and bean, lobster bisque or cream of asparagus. By the end of the meal and the bottle, the urge to drink was replaced with an equally powerful desire to visit the bars.

“I don’t want to go out, but I have to,” he would say, laughing to and at himself for his lack of discipline. He took a cab to his destination.

Two establishments, directly across from each other, were the last buildings on a side street that dead ended at the ocean. The larger was a hotel that had a cabana bar on a patio just off the small lobby. Particular about who used their facilities, they had a reasonably refined clientele. The other place, enclosed and roofed, held only a bar and anyone could go in.

Between the two buildings there was a sea wall. At one side, steps led down to the beach, a dangerous place at night. There were always some young men standing about on this street or sitting on the wall itself. A few were very young.

Prof. Heston would go into the hotel bar. His evening drink was a stinger, cognac and white crème de menthe. He would order at the counter and give himself time to look around. If he saw a nice looking youth at the bar with an empty place next to him he would take that. Otherwise he would choose any of the vacant swivel chairs at the bar. When none was available he could sit at one of the white plastic tables where he would have a good view of comings and goings.

Sometimes a young man would come to him, though not always the one he had chosen to look at. They wanted money, these boys. Some would ask him to finance a meal. “Will you buy me dinner first?” a youth might say, implying a sexual liaison to follow. Or there would be the more common request that Prof. Heston buy the fellow a drink.

Most often, Prof. Heston sat there by himself and finished his stinger without such a welcome interruption. Then he would cross the street to the other bar. Here there were only a few rather high tables and stools set against the railing that overlooked the beach below. On this side, the room was open to the air blowing in from the ocean. Mostly, people stood at the bar or milled about.

If nothing interesting began in the span it took for him to finish his second stinger of the evening, he would walk back to the main street and a few blocks to the right, this time turning left down another side street to the next closest establishment. Here he climbed a set of stairs to the entrance. Inside there was a passage, painted black like the rest of the place. This led to the right and the first of several rooms, and the one that accommodated the bar.

Another room was entered through a door on a spring so that it would shut itself after each person passed. Inside there was some faint, pink lighting from fixtures on the ceiling that illuminated very little. Men stood against the walls, a few in the center, others wandered about, slowly, brushing against each other as they did so. It was a grope room.

Anyone who went in was agreeing to being touched wherever and by whomever. By watching the door, Prof. Heston learned that it was, for the most part, the older men who availed themselves of this service. And a very sensible one, he thought. The lack of light allowed fantasy to prevail uninhibited by actual appearances.

He seldom used it himself. Instead Prof. Heston stayed in the light waiting for a young man to present himself. He did not take any of them back to the home he shared with Parmly. The gay hotel was often fully booked during the tourist season, and almost always on weekends. But there were a number of inexpensive, nearly unmarked places that rented rooms by the hour.

Most of these encounters were unsatisfactory. Prof. Heston would be too inebriated to do much and the hustlers, for that is what they were, were intent on doing as little as possible and to obtain the rather modest fee in the minimum amount of time. This was peculiar only in that the really big reward would be in making a real friend of a person of means. But Prof. Heston was never taken for that.

Once, Prof. Heston gave the boy his money first. The kid took off his clothes and lay on the bed. But as soon as Prof. Heston touched his penis the youth got up, dressed and left. Another jabbered noisily and complained vociferously about the degree of sexual satisfaction he was deriving from the experience. They really only cared about the money.

It took a bigger man or one much more demanding than the gentle, little professor to make these transactions equitable. He knew this yet persisted in the game. It was the search that was exciting, would something happen or not. If Prof. Heston still had not found a young man at the third bar he would return to the first and try again, and so on. Sometime he was approached by a youth on the side street or would spy a youngster sitting on the wall and have a chat.

He left only when the bars closed at 2 a.m. Then he would walk to the nearest good hotel, where a cab or two would be waiting for a customer. On the street in front of his abode, Prof. Heston would stagger up the stairs, fumbling with the lock and his keys. Sometimes they slipped out of his hand and he fell over when he bent down to retrieve them.

Once in bed he would fall almost instantly to sleep, but only for a couple of hours. Then he would wake, further slumber alluding him. The next day he would hardly manage to remain upright for more than a half hour at a time. A few drinks in the afternoon would make him feel a little better, but it would take him twenty-four hours to recover completely. He laughed at himself for his folly.

The Professor was almost always a happy drunk. But as matters worsened there began to be incidents. At the bar across from the hotel, one night, he happened to fall into conversation with a tourist about his own age. This fellow started poking him sharply in the chest with his index finger, perhaps in an attempt to assert some kind of dominance prior to suggesting a sexual encounter. But instead of walking away, Prof. Heston slapped the man’s face.

At the hotel one night there was dancing. It was crowded and a big fellow was throwing his weight around, shoving Prof. Heston from the rear. In retaliation, Uncle Andrew rammed his elbow into the man’s back. As the fellow turned and stood over him, Prof. Heston continued to dance as though nothing had happened. Then the big man stomped on his foot. “If you do that again, I’ll stomp you into the ground,” he warned. “Maybe, and maybe not,” Prof. Heston responded as ominously as he could manage.

Prof. Heston threw a drink at another large and belligerent fellow at the third of his hangouts. On that occasion, he left quickly through the crowd and was lucky enough to find a cab waiting at the corner of the main street. If the man followed him out, he didn’t see it.

Yet another problem was surfaced when he bought a machine that would take his blood pressure. It had been rising, and his medications had been increased. So he decided that he should monitor it more frequently. Usually he didn’t check it on the day following a trip to the bars. But the one time he did, he was aghast to see a reading of 220 over 120. He very nearly broke out into a sweat.

Prof. Heston lay down and rested for a half hour and checked it again. It was just as high. So he called his doctor and went immediately to his office. The dosage of his medications were increased again. The doctor commented, almost as an aside, that he had seen a number of men retire to the Island, begin drinking too much and experience a sudden worsening of their hypertension.

He had never admitted to the doctor how much he was drinking. When the subject came up, if he hadn’t had much the day before he would tell the man what that had been. Otherwise he would make a general comment about his consumption that only partially revealed the amount. “I usually have a couple of glasses of wine with my dinner.” It wasn’t a lie, just woefully incomplete.

But even this latest indication of impending difficulty did not persuade Prof. Heston to act. He was aware that his behavior was turning self destructive. Having always been a cautious person previously, perhaps even over cautious, he wondered if this was an effect of his getting older and having less to lose.

Prof. Heston woke up in the hospital. His stomach hurt terribly. He figured that he must have passed out someplace, until a police officer came and wanted to know how he had been stabbed. He had no idea, he hadn’t even known that he had been stabbed until the man told him so. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help, he told the fellow, he just didn’t know.

Parmly was there the next day, having flown back from Rome where had been on business. He was disgusted with the lack of cleanliness and care that his Uncle Andrew was receiving and ordered him transferred to another, better hospital. The doctors told him that the injuries were bloody and ugly but not severe. Prof. Heston had been protected by his layer of fat.

He was relieved that Parmly did not press him for an immediate explanation of how he could have managed to get himself into a situation where this could have happened. Instead the youngster seemed to blame himself for being away so much and leaving him so often to his own devices. Uncle Andrew soon found himself in the position of comforting Parmly.

“You’re busy, you have a new wife and a child on the way,” he consoled him. “Anyway I’ve made a phone call and found out where and when there are AA meetings. I’ll go there and get myself straightened out.”

That admission took care of the need for any further discussion of what had happened. They embraced and shed tears together. Parmly said that he wanted to go to with him the first time.

Years before, when Prof. Heston was himself a youngster, he had seen an old film about that organization and how it had started. The movie was in black and white and the men all seemed to wear fedoras and drab overcoats. At least, that was how he remembered it. But everything he had heard about the organization was good. He had long been of the opinion that AA was the only thing that really worked for the alcoholic.

And it worked for him. It was difficult at first, but after a few months he started to feel that he really could get through life without drinking. Gradually his confidence in himself improved and thoughts of liquor diminished in his mind. The danger of forgetting what he had been though and thinking that he could try again to drink, but moderately this time, was averted by his continuing to attend meetings and working with other drunks. He saw with his own eyes what happened to those who harbored such thoughts.