2.

It is night in Manhattan. He is worlds distant.

"I have to go to work," he'd said laconically, as if the key club were a supermarket or a hardware store.

"Crazy job," she'd said.

He'd dressed, walked back up to Broadway and took the subway downtown. He felt funny. Weak. How to excite himself like that, on the spot? Did he have it in him? Every night the same question. Few men could do it. Even more difficult, how to stay aroused? There in front of the audience. Walking across that little stage, nervous and trying not to be. And thinking, thinking, thinking. And trying not to think. And if he couldn't do it, he was a failure. Everything ruined. It's all in the head! everyone said. You have to handle it mentally. Above all! The other guys, the best, were small, insignificant until they took their pants off and showed that hard penis. Then they were gods. But why? Why do it? Just for the good money? Or maybe to be godlike for a few minutes? He was an intelligent man. He'd studied philosophy at the university. He used to claim he was a philosopher. And a lover. Like Plato, he believed that all philosophers were lovers.

So why did he do it if he was really a lover? Sometimes it seemed like a kind of test. Just to make it. Yet he was embarrassed when they said of him, 'he can always get wood.' It was the highest accolade in the club from the crazy manager who went by the artistic name of Stephen Hardwood. He was appreciated in the club. They loved him. He wanted to be loved. He was tall, sensual, Hardwood said. He was the ideal porno star. They paid him for the hard job of showing a hard penis. He got wood, always. They said you could get rich in films if you could get wood anytime, in Los Angeles or in Las Vegas, night or day, in the gym, on the Strip, on the waterfront. How many times they'd offered him 20,000 for a short film. The Italian stallion! It was a hard job for males. But he couldn't do it like that. Kiss some man? Take it in the ass for money? If they only knew!

Maybe it's a sickness. Ellen would say that he was insecure in his sexuality. Ha! Successful on the stage, impotent in bed. He'd always loved women. And Ellen loved him. But recently something had happened in his vision. His old imagery was fading. Descending like a veil over his eyes. His sex was like his life. The duality of his sad, depressing world.

Artist: Brandon Newell sir.ben@usa.net

He steps out onto the stage. Clapping and shouts. He takes off his shirt and pants, boots and socks and drops them around him, feeling all the time like a comical Pierrot. Up there to entertain the bourgeois! Long legs, good chest and shoulders. Rugged face. Cold eyes. Oohs and ahs break out. The male God from

Italy. The King of Wood. The King of Wood. The statue. He never dances or throws his underwear to the spectators. No provocative movements of hips. No display of his ass. No. He just disrobes, looks blank and, looking at himself down there, wills his erection. He looks strangely black. A black horn. "Un bel cazzo," some regulars have learned to say in Italian. The voyeurs roar their admiration. Who didn't wish they could do it?

Gaetano stares out into the lights, a lonesome grin on his face. He shivers, feeling sick. He's cold. He thinks of the river. He feels the solitude of the artist. His spirit is unsettled. But he must hold it. Resist. Don't think! he thinks. Don't think! He tries to distinguish the people. There on the side, the male couple holding hands and smiling at him. And there, the two middle-aged women. Regulars too. And there ... there ... but back there under the lights, is that Ellen? No! Impossible. No. But ... could it be? She's grinning. Look at her, grinning like that. Her face is a mask. How did she know? But why is she here? To accuse me. To blame me. To ridicule me. To tame me!

Suddenly he feels it. The weakness in his legs. A powerful wave of vertigo. He staggers imperceptibly. A lessening of his muscles. A nervous twitch there. Has he not sunk a few centimeters from his comfortable position straight up? He sees her and doesn't see her. She's pale and smoky. He squints. But what's that on her forehead? What's that? A hat? No, no ... it's a small horn. White. He feels him sag. It's definitely a horn. He sags lower and lower. His power is passing. He stares down at himself now shriveling and now retreating back into his body. The Unicorn leaps high in a frenzy and dances on two legs. Pitiless hunters plunge their spears into the shiny white animal. The man on the wet pavement holds his hat with the initials IHS and cries "Mary, succor me." Laughter breaks out. People are slapping the table. Shouts. "Away with him!" "Send him back to Italy!" He covers himself with his hands and looks around helplessly. Ellen has disappeared. Maybe she was never there.

~

He's there, as he promised. Babbo, dead for five years, returns in his dreams. Periodically. Always welcome. In his dream, Gaetano is aware that it's a dream. Strong, smiling, helpful and strangely garrulous, his father. He wants to play again. A big room. Toys all around. Shiny remote controlled cars, table soccer, entire zoos of stuffed animals. Where's the Unicorn? the boy asks. Babbo, where's the Unicorn? His father smiles. The boy searches in the closets, under the beds, on the balcony. He's in a frenzy. He opens the Bible - "unicorn" references have vanished. He turns thousands of pages in the big Rizzoli Encyclopedia - no entries for "unicorn." "No, Gaetano, it was only a children's story. Horses, ponies, mules, zebras - but no unicorn. The Unicorn doesn't exist." The boy cries and cries. His father did it on purpose. "For you," he says. His mother gives him a hot bath, wraps him in a thick white robe and makes him stay in bed so as not to catch another cold.

"Wake up, levantate, Gaetano. Wake up, she's on the phone." The Puerto Rican has been shouting for several minutes. Let them wait, Gaetano thinks. His dream lingers. Let them all wait. He waits. The dream is already vanishing. A failure in bed. A failure on stage. No Los Angeles for him. No Las Vegas. No New York City. Maybe a failure in life. Punishment for his self-righteousness. He waits.

The sun is shining when he steps out on deck. Thank God Ricardo has given up. Reflections arrive from New Jersey windows. His boat is riding on the current. He walks around the deck and stops to watch the ducks in the channel between him and the promenade. Suddenly the white swan glides alongside his boat. The only swan wintering in the Boat Basin this year.

"Why it's King!" he exclaims. The bird watchers call him the King of the Swans, the biggest, the most regal of all. This powerful flyer! Why has he returned? Without his mate! Alone! Instead of staying with her and the others, wherever they are this year, he's come back.

The swan looks up at Gaetano. The King looks infinitely sad. His is the look of an abandoned lover. Gaetano leans over the railing to see his eyes. They're inscrutable, King's eyes, buried deep in his tiny head. But the lower half of his beak is gone. His power is gone. Half of his great yellow beak!

King's an outcast. An exile. Maimed and humiliated, he has returned to his only home - and his solitude. Magically he can still fly, but with half a beak he cannot survive on the cold river.

 

Originally from Asheville, NC, Gaither Stewart has lived most of his life in Europe, chiefly in Germany and Italy. For many years he was the Italian correspondent for the Dutch daily, Algemeen Dagblad, while writing for many publications in various countries. Since leaving journalism he has been writing fiction full time. His work has appeared in a number of literary publications, including The Paumanok Review, Critique, Linnaean Street Literary Review, Crossconnect, East of the Web, The Southern Cross Review, EWGPresents, The Tower of Babel, and Ceteris Paribus. He lives with his wife Milena in the hills of north Rome.