Vonderlust

Chapter 2

* * * *

Being her best friend, then and now, I joined Mina’s business after she got on her feet. She practically begged me to be her assistant: “We’re a good team. You’re the only person I can trust to do this with me, Liam. You have a strong mind, and your knowledge about antiques is incomparable. I can’t see you doing anything else. So help me…Help me.”

And so it was done. I quit my job at the Phillip, a small libertarian paper in Harker and helped her build her business. Together we traveled the world in search of antiques for her buyers. Interested clients would pay ungodly sums of money for the strangest things, which we would find for them: a rare Aboriginal soup bowl near Warburton, Australia; a blood pressure cuff from Auschwitz; three handwritten pages from a diary by one of the hundred and fifteen missing residents of Roanoke in 1587; an allegedly powerful Inuit urn from Vancouver. So many tasks. So many prized antiques. Lots of traveling. Big money.

I was in.

Mina had caught me.

We were a great team, just as she thought we would be. MCA was a huge success.

* * * *

The painting, oil on canvas…Lust Between Two Men by Renaldo Estuar, circa 1621. Estuar was said to be an understudy of the Flemish artist, Peter Paul Rubens. The two worked together for eight months in Antwerp before Estuar was murdered at the age of twenty-three. Like Rubens, Estuar practiced Counter-Reformation. Unlike Rubens, who created history paintings, Estuar, in love with a young man named Roberto Genova, painted himself with Roberto, concentrated specifically on scenes of lust. It is written in art history books that Estuar and Roberto were caught making love near a well. Hereafter, being caught, Estuar was hung in the well by his older brother, Stepho. Stepho thought the man-with-man s*x was the devil’s work. The young men were “serpents twisting together” according to texts that I had read about the painting. Outraged and disgusted by his brother’s sickening behavior, Stepho wrapped a rope around Estuar’s neck and pushed him into the well, hanging him to his death.

Other specifics of the painting entailed: bluish-green-black swirls comprised the background of the miniature painting; the foreground showed two young men bent over a grayish-brown stone well; both men were naked. Dirty, beige robes were in wrinkled bunches at their bare feet. Art historians interpreted the two men as Estuar and Roberto; no one ever disagreed with this analysis of the painting. Estuar was believed to be positioned in the front, and Roberto was positioned behind Estuar. Roberto’s ribbed stomach pressed against Estuar’s ever so slightly arched back. Estuar’s one exposed n****e was completely erect. Robert’s left hand was affixed to Estuar’s hip. Estuar’s arms were both stiff and locked forward, his palms pressed against the well’s edge, fingers digging into the sandy stones.

Many critics of the painting said, “If you use a magnifying glass, and look close enough, you can actually see Roberto’s p***s pressed inside Estuar’s bottom.” And others said, “Look at the pain and pleasure and anguish and satisfaction on Estuar’s face because Roberto is making love to him.” Every college professor in America pointed out, “Bubbles or droplets of sweat are on both the men’s foreheads and thighs. Such ecstasy. True lust between two men.”

Urban legends of the painting included: the artwork was said to be an aphrodisiac of sorts for the male gender. Being around the small oil painting (ten by ten inches) could raise one’s testosterone and arouse men. Erections could become larger by an inch or two. Scrotums could swell in size. Stamina could increase by minutes. s*x could be the best ever.

No wonder Lawrence Deaver and George McGlintock wanted to purchase the painting from Lord Harkford Hyde.

No wonder.

* * * *

The drive to Mount Castelul and Hyde Manor felt hazardous and endless. I took Interstate 80 along Lake Erie, going west to east. My four-hundred horsepower Nissan Titan swerved left and right on the icy and snow-covered single lane. A massive eighteen-wheeler slowed behind me, flicked its lights, telling me to increase my speed; I waited for it to bump into me, pushing me blindly off the road. I kept at a slower pace, though. Careful. Wanting to get to Hyde Manor safely. Get my task done.

As the afternoon darkened, closing on evening, the time and miles passed slowly. Again and again I looked in my review mirror at the tractor trailer behind me; it had backed off some, but not much. Occasionally I caught a view of myself in the mirror. Thirty-five wasn’t b***h-slapping me. I had faint wrinkles around my eyes that men thought handsome and dignified. My brown wavy hair had curled more because of the wet day outside. Cinnamon brown eyes stared back at me. My mother’s sharp, Norwegian nose screamed Hollywood good looks, landing me a man or two in bed throughout the last six months. And I had my father’s rugged, rugby-like jaw; the better to rub a guy’s cheek, chest, or inner thigh with, which each man I kissed seemed to enjoy and never complain about, instead coveting it.

Mina couldn’t believe a guy hadn’t caught and scooped me up yet because of my handsomeness. Frankly, if I hadn’t spent so much time with her, I might have been married and permanently under a man. Work kept us (me!) busy, though. Dating and meeting Mr. Right seemed out of reach when we were traveling to Lima, Peru and collecting a jade statue shaped like a panther, or flying off to Madrid to purchase a rare fan painted with Spanish Flamenco dancers. And one couldn’t pick up a guy and have a night of naked fun with him while traveling with a beautiful woman like Mina. Because every queer guy thought she and I were happily married newlyweds and lost in love. Therefore, I stayed single, alone, and faithful to my sidekick antiques-girl. Too bad for me.