The New Life

by Tom Crewe

dark. He was never touched. But he wanted to be. He read the Symposium; he fell in love with the possibility of love between men, chaste, clean and elevating.

He went to university. A friend, leaning his head against his knee, his curls tense around

It was impossible. Eventually he paid a soldier; they went to a room near his barracks and John had him undress. That was all. He sat in a chair and watched him undress; made him stand there, turn about. He lived on it for a year. And then he paid another. Again a shabby, shadow-stalked room, and this time he allowed himself

touch and be touched. Afterwards they smoked and the soldier told him about his life.

It was the first time John had ever spoken on equal terms...

And he began to feed his frustration into his work, like so much wood into a fire. Poetry,

His researches into the Greeks. Into the Renaissance, which blazed in his imagination as the rebirth of liberty, of sensuality, after the cold, sheer darkness of the Middle Ages. He discovered Whitman, another connecting fiber to the Ancients. He felt himself borne up by this large, simple man—as though Whitman had plucked him from the ground and placed him on his shoulder, the better to survey the world. Hark close and still what I now whisper to you, I love you, O you entirely possess me, O that you and I escape from the rest, and go utterly off, free and lawless, Two hawks in the air, two fishes swimming

imagination. That pitched behind his eyes. He wrote with more daring than he lived. He began to attract controversy. Catherine suffered. She felt, she said, under suspicion: for what woman’s husband wrote on subjects like these, and with such urgency of enthusiasm? But he found that he no longer cared a great

He had become an observer, an intelligence, a reader in obscure places—but also an agitator, stumping in his mind.

It was like a dance, John thought; you saw only the one face, all else blurred to insignificance.

If it should turn out that a certain fraction of the feminine sex should for one reason or another not devote itself to the work of maternity, still the influence of this group should react on the others to render their notion of motherhood far more dignified than before. There is not

much doubt that in the future this most important of human labors will be carried on with a degree of conscious intelligence hitherto unknown, and such as will raise it from the fulfillment of a mere instinct to the completion of a splendid social purpose…”

There was some superficial resemblance between the four of them, John noticed: him and Carpenter with their beards, their years, their educated speech, and the two young men with their moustaches, their accents.

could not have imagined it as a young man. I was near thirty before I first found a friend. Even then I thought I was a monstrosity. Was it the same with you?” “It was the same,” John said. “We owe so much to Whitman. Did I tell you I visited him?”

“We were talking late. I was young, it was around the time I mentioned, when I found a friend—’seventy-six. We got up for bed and he kissed me, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, which is how it felt to me. We went upstairs. I drank him up, swallowed him down, and went to sleep in his arms.”

John laughed and looked at Carpenter wonderingly. “What did he taste like?” he said, surprising himself. Carpenter laughed back. “Sweet, like age.”

When he was thoughtful, his face became concentrated, almost Christian, in its beauty. No one, John thought, would guess it of him.

“These are different times.” “Not different enough.” “Not yet. In the meantime, we must live in the future we hope to make.”

The young men scuffed their feet and clapped their hands for warmth, expelling the scent of tobacco. The house became charged with their return. Even the plates and cutlery by the sink took on an unclear significance.

He put his hand on Carpenter’s neck and made him shiver.

“To be unmarried is to lack the basis for independence. And yet I cannot marry, being constituted as I am. Unless I were to find a man like you, Henry—and you are rare indeed.”

“Why did you wish for Edith to leave me?” She did not slacken her pace. “Because two women can live together quite easily and go about together. Because it is simple for a man to live on his own—as you do already.”

“There is some news,” he said. “It will not seem like it, but it concerns you very much. It is about Oscar Wilde. You know who he is?”

he called him a sod. Sodomite. That was the word used. But, you see, it isn’t a libel. He is. Wilde is. Everyone knows it; who knows him, I mean. I can’t think why he’s gone to law. They say he’s mad on the subject.”

“I don’t.” Jack waved a hand, slightly upsetting his balance. “But the theater. These things are known. It’s true. He is. And they’re going to find out. There’s a man, an actor, collecting information. Letters. Boys who might confess. He plans to give it to the defense. Apparently there are swarms of

Douglas, Queensberry. Collins, Clarke, Carson, Lockwood, Gill. Kettner’s, Albemarle, Florence, Savoy. Parker, Grainger,

Did you take the lad to Brighton? And provided him with a suit of blue serge? You dressed this newsboy up to take him to Brighton? In order that he might look more like an equal?

He read the reports. He saw in his mind’s eye the boys. The narrowness of their bodies. Their charm. He found himself envying Wilde, for having had them. He heard their voices; their accents. He heard voices like his own, accusing them. He heard another voice like his own, denying them. “Gentlemen,” Frank said. “I always said it was gentlemen you needed to be afraid of.”

The letters arrived from publishers, all of them rejections. Some, like the one from Williams & Norgate, decorously avoided alluding to the present circumstances: beyond scope—ill-suited—list full—question of sale—commercial considerations—sincere regrets.

That, besides, promises meant nothing, nothing at all. Instead, he did not reply.

It was a study, book-lined. Addington was standing next to another, younger man. “Mr. Ellis,” he said, coming forward with his hand out. “It is an honor, at last. You are taller than I realized. This is my secretary, Mr. Feaver.” The other man took Henry’s hand. He was blond, with a moustache. “Good day, sir,” he said, in a strong London accent.

The smoke that poured from his mouth, under his squint, was intricate. He was extremely good-looking.

The country has choked itself on ill-feeling. Gorged on misery and heavy morals. Laughed themselves sick. I have never known anything so ugly. It seems hard labor is not enough, for the crime, though it will likely kill him. I doubt even that would satisfy them.” “It is something I hadn’t foreseen,”

The law, that births the blackmailer, nurses him, makes him fat. The law, that turns him witness—grants him pardon, when it suits, in order to secure the guilt of the sodomite.

“They have destroyed a man, who three months ago they doted on, because they are afraid of what they might learn about human nature. They have learned enough and they have turned the key on it. We are near the end of the century and are as primitive as we were at its beginning.

I’m sure we are expected to be grateful that Wilde will not be hanged—only left to be trodden slowly into his grave. At least before, we had the honesty to hang a man.” He turned to Feaver, who passed another

I cannot bear what a coward Wilde was. It is what makes me angriest of all, him lying twice over. That he should lie about what he had done with those boys, I understand, though it was a trial of his own stupid making. But to invoke the Greeks in his defense. To drag idealism into it. Shakespeare and Michelangelo. A pure and perfect affection, indeed. The love that dare not speak its name, indeed. He has brought each and every one of us down with him. All my work. All your work,

Henry. Every man who trusted us with his history. Our assertions of the blamelessness of our lives. All of it. It is all mingled in the dirty pot. The Greeks are made to justify the man who pays a boy drunk on champagne to share his bed, who deals with blackmailers as others do with their grocer.”

“Ah.” Addington smiled in recognition. “The admirer of intelligent teeth.”

The law has claimed a famous man, but he is not the first man, nor will he be the last. Our waiting will only allow others to suffer as he is now suffering. Ignorance

cannot be allowed to persist. It is a danger.”

Science requires a rational audience.”

“He knew what he was about. And he knew what’d happen if they caught him.” “We know what we’re about. We also know the punishment, if they were to catch us.” “It’s different with us. I know Wilde’s kind. I know the sorts of lads he’s been with. They don’t all of them like it. They’re doing it for money or food or drink. Wilde knew that. You said: blackmailers were like grocers to him.”

I thought about it for months. I walked the same street over and over, hoping to find him again.” Frank

passed a cigarette, holding out the match, the flame veering and steadying. “You think that makes you Oscar Wilde?” John drew on the cigarette. “I pay you.” Frank breathed on the match and then broke it. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be. You’re the first man I’ve ever taken money off and that’s because I liked you already.”

“It was not all bad with Wilde, remember. He had Alfred Douglas. There was the letter read out in court. I th...

I don’t think any of us are blameless—we haven’t been allowed to be. It is all furtiveness, lies, greed, vice, hurting other people out of fear.

I am prepared to use Catherine, to hold her up as a shield.

I will make him do what I need him to—his feelings do...

I cannot help thinking that, if mine and Ellis’s book exists, there might be men, even if it is only a handful, who read it, and see that they must never marry. Or