"Different good, or different bad?"
"Different. I don't know. Why do you ask?" There was silence in which both men did not know what to say, and in it Nawin reproached himself for making the situation more awkward than it had to be, and then reproached himself for finding anything awkward in it at all. As though it were justified to be cautious upon finishing intimacies with a stranger he did not approve of or to be apathetic with an undertone of supercilious, sneering antipathy, any more than to partake of the carnal episode itself. Still he could not conceptualize anything innately wrong in activity with another man. Beings were attracted elements, compounds that enjoyed times of coupling as double compound entities; and cathartic releases of physical desire toward one or the other gender, like medicine to illness, restored one toward a more logical inquiry of thought. But, he told himself, he had gained no such release. His paramour had him spellbound and made him no more than a galley slave rowing the master's carnal euphoria. Perhaps, he thought, moral dilemmas were not on moral grounds at all. Perhaps they could be reduced to such basic factors as sexual frustration. He forced himself to reciprocate a feigned interest in enjoyment although he was not able to extricate himself from the phlegmatic tone that spewed from his mouth bearing his thoughts. "What about you?" he asked.
"I love you. Do you love me too?" Nawin looked away and did not say anything. Whether this question was an artifice contrived for monetary gain or a real neediness he did not know. It did occur to him that having this man really interested in him (a suitor of sorts) might be more disadvantageous for him economically than a brief tryst—not that the prodigal son needed to retrench his life with fewer mistresses and zero misters, and he was still contemplating the addition of a nurse at Siriaj Hospital to his intimate menagerie. Worse, he thought, if the neediness of this other party was one of emotional rather than financial deficiencies, he himself, a married man, might be dogged if not stalked by this undesirable, desired being, this being who might desperately need to register himself into a companion's brain. What was worse than to be with someone who needed to be needed, who needed another person to be wistful and yearn for him, and who needed to etch himself personally and as indelibly as one could onto the adventitious, impermanent putty of the human mind? It was not easy to be compassionate and extract oneself from such parasites. He could not believe anything that was linked to such an amorphous word as love, which only had one consistent thread within it and that was what all love was, a neediness within projected onto that which was without.
"Are you in pain? Did I tear you up?"
"Did you what? Did you tear me up?…Well…since you ask sitting is a bit painful but as much as I can tell, I guess that I am not torn up, as you call it. By the way, I am not used to this sort of thing and…to tell the truth…it is rather embarrassing to say this…with the action and all I think…I think I soiled the bed sheet."
"Soiled?"
"Soiled. What other word do you want me to use?"
The paramour laughed mildly. At first Nawin appreciated that the dry laughter was so terse and restrained. Then the fact that he had laughed at all seemed as inordinate insolence. "Maybe you should get up and I'll remove the sheet," he said irascibly.
"No, I'm going back to sleep. If it didn't bother me the first time I can sleep on it again. Leave it for the maids. It makes something new in their days."
"You're going to go back to sleep?"