A Trip Up River

by Robert Klein Engler

As he nears the Clover Grill on the corner of Bourbon and Daumaine, Alan Roberts marvels at the boom, boom, boom of dance music that echoes down the street. The rhythm is continuous, like a heartbeat, or the lapping of a river against the shore, or the endless drip of water into a stone basin. Just another block and Alan will be at the source, the biggest gay disco in the French Quarter. Here are the head waters, the place where begins that stream from which Alan has been so long hoping to quench his thirst.

Even though he is still hesitant and unsure, Alan comes here to be at the gay bar and feel the beat of dance music vibrate in his bones. He comes to Parade Disco to drink vodka and to be in a space that is neither inside nor outside, a space he may call his own, a space that does not ask questions, a space that is loud, smoky, gay and if you know who to ask, one that offers adolescent beauty for sale. The river of money, the river of forms and the river of dreams make a confluence here, their currents mingling gold, clay and blood. The locks are open. Step in.

Ryan Patton was born in Gafton, Texas eighteen years ago and is seen often at Parade Disco. He is one of those young men who offers himself for a price. Such a price is sometimes more than men bargain. One risks love here, too, and that may be almost as treacherous as the Mississippi that bends its way a few miles from the disco’s high, French doors. But don’t ask Ryan now about love and risk. He is young and thinks he is an excellent swimmer. He cannot imagine the scourge of autumn ravaging his good looks.

Ryan’s father made a lot of money from real estate investments and sent his son to boarding school, where at the very least, Ryan learned self-confidence. After boarding school, although bright and possessing the resources to get into any college he wanted, Ryan decided to go to the University of New Orleans, not so much to study but to experience the freedom of the city. He dropped out of the university after a year and went into business for himself, even though his parents send him more than an ample monthly allowance on which to live. The money Ryan earns from being an escort, he spends on expensive clothes, scents and jewelry. Because it is a new generation, with e-mail and the internet, Ryan does not have to dissipate himself traveling between the cities of the night looking for clients. At this point in Ryan’s life there never is an occasion for him to sing of troubles. He does not know the song, “River stay away from my door.” He advertises himself as “drug and virus free.” In fact he is much more healthy and delicate than the run of the mill French Quarter hustler who passes more as a poster boy for heroin than an object of schooled desire. Yet many men like the look of rough trade, so they would not buy Ryan. Ryan appeals to the man who likes bodies that are smooth and young, and has the money to pay for them.

Alan first made contact with Ryan online. They had an exchange of e-mails, and agreed to meet after Alan arrived in New Orleans to spend the winter. At first, Alan was suspicious of meeting someone who described himself as an eighteen year old “escort.” Would this be a police set up, or worse, some kind of dangerous situation he could not get out of safely? Once Alan arrived in New Orleans and realized he needed to talk to someone besides the drunks he kept meeting at the disco, he decided to take Ryan up on his offer to get together. They agreed to meet at Jackson Square. Alan would walk from his apartment on Dauphine, and Ryan would drive in from Metairie. They planned a one-o’clock rendezvous.

It is a chilly afternoon when Alan walks around the square, looking for a young man who told him he would be wearing chocolate colored leather pants, a purple pullover and carrying a shopping bag from Saks 5th Ave. This is how the ladder that leads from flesh to ideal forms appears these days. At about ten minutes to one, Alan stops and takes a few pictures of the cast iron gates that lead into the gardens. He brought his camera to not only take a few pictures of Ryan, but to also pretend he is at the square on other business if something out of the ordinary happens. You see a lot of tourists at Jackson Square with cameras, Alan reasons so, he will just pretend he is one of them if things do not work out as planned. Alan studies the couples walking hand in hand, secure in the affection towards one another, at least for today. Alan is suspicious of these relationships because he is both jealous and disappointed. All his adult life Alan has been trying to ground a relationship with something that keeps floating away. As he walks around the square looking for Ryan, he recalls Proverbs 30: 18-19, “Two things I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, and the way of a man with a girl.”

Sure enough, around ten after one, Ryan shows up, wearing exactly what he said he would be wearing. Alan recognizes the young man instantly. “No mistaking you,” he says to Ryan as they approach one another, each smiling. “Hi, Alan,” Ryan says enthusiastically. Alan feels reassured after this welcome, and so does Ryan.

“Hey, let me take a few pictures of you right now?” Alan asks.

“I’d like that,” Ryan says. He is vain enough not to turn down the offer. Alan asks Ryan to stand in front of a fan palm and then snaps close-ups of Ryan’s profile and face. He then asks Ryan to put his sunglasses back on and takes a few more photos of Ryan looking mysterious.

“I’ll have these developed next week,” Alan says. “It will be a good excuse for us to get together again.” They both smile knowingly.

Alan suggests they go across the square for coffee at Café du Monde. Ryan agrees, and they spend about an hour there getting acquainted and searching each other out. “You don’t work for any law enforcement agency or police department?” Alan asks Ryan bluntly once they had finished their coffee. “Oh, my gosh NO,” says Ryan, throwing his head back and finishing his sentence with laughter. Alan realizes this young man, although with dark features, is very beautiful. His hands are small and soft, and Alan can imagine they are warm and know their way by experience around a man’s body. “I charge a hundred dollars an hour, seven-fifty if I stay the night,” Ryan says without blinking an eye.

Young men born into wealth often have an air of arrogance about them. Such was the case with Ryan. Alan sensed Ryan’s arrogance immediately, and did not like it. Ryan would spend more money on a pair of faux-snakeskin pants to wear at the dance bar than Alan would spend on food in a month. Alan never let on to Ryan that he works hard to have the funds for a semester off from college teaching to pay the rent for a modest apartment in the Quarter. Yet in spite of Ryan’s arrogance, Alan is drawn to the young man. Ryan has such an air of refreshing self confidence. Furthermore, Alan is fascinated by the stories Ryan tells of his “adventures,” especially the story about the prominent New Orleans doctor who only likes to watch. He gave Ryan and his tall friend Eric four hundred dollars just to see the two young men together.

“Eric is fun to be with,” Ryan says, “and we make an interesting pair, me being so slight and he being a college jock. Besides, it’s good to have Eric along just in case.”

After Ryan finishes his story, Alan feels the tide of eroticism rise in him. Then he wonders if to kiss Ryan is to drink from a common sewer. Nevertheless, Alan decides to ask Ryan, “Would you like to come back to my place?”

Ryan looks at his watch. “OK, I don’t have to be anywhere ‘til five.”

Later, Alan and Ryan sit on the couch at Alan’s apartment. Ryan makes sure he sits with his legs spread open so that Alan can see the mound of his crotch. Alan does notice it. They talk effortlessly about Alan’s trip next week up river. Alan tries to explain to Ryan his interest in steamboats. Ryan listens, but Alan senses he is growing restless. Alan goes on with a story he heard. “Sometimes,” he says, “when a steamboat dies, it becomes a towhead. This is what happened to the packet Belle of Helena, one of the most opulent steamers ever built. It caught fire one night in 1875 and sunk in the middle of the river. Since then, the mud and debris of the river’s flow has collected around the ruins and formed an island, or a towhead. Today, there are trees and shrubs growing up where the wreck occurred, and you can hardly see the boards of a once fine steamer that used to ply the Mississippi between Memphis and New Orleans. What started life as a boat, ended its days as an island.” Ryan nods approval, but is unimpressed. So, it is that when Alan asks Ryan if he would like some tea, Alan hopes he will not end up as a wreck on a sandbar, an old towhead made of ash and burnt timber.

“Do you have Earl Grey tea?” Ryan asks.

“Indeed,” Alan replies. “Give me a moment to boil the water.”

Alan nervously fills the electric teakettle with bottled water and plugs it in. He tries to keep a conversation going while he measures out some tea into a mesh tea ball. Finally, the water boils and he pours it into the teapot. Steam rushes out of the top of the pot like the steam that issues from the pipes of a riverboat. Eager to please Ryan without delay, Alan dunks the tea ball a few times, and without waiting for the tea to steep, pours a cup of rather weak colored tea.

Alan realizes the tea hasn't brewed once he hands the cup to Ryan, but Alan does not say anything. He wants to hear more about Ryan’s amorous adventures, and is now debating with himself weather or not he should take a hundred dollars from his wallet and set it on the coffee table. Instead, they talk about modeling and photography. Ryan agrees to do some nude modeling for Alan, then looks at his watch and concludes he has to go.

“I need to change my shirt first,” Ryan says. Standing up, he removes one of the knit shirts he bought from Sax earlier. He carefully unfolds it. Ryan then removes the shirt he is wearing and slips into the new one. Alan see for a moment the soft flesh of Ryan’s stomach and his breath hesitates. Is this his last opportunity, Alan wonders? Should I make a move now? But Ryan is determined to leave, and so he will. Yet they agree to meet again in about a week. Alan can hear the footfalls as Ryan walks across the patio flagstones on his way to the front door. He sits on the couch and catches his breath. Later, on the TV news, Alan hears that the river is low this month. All the ice up north has not yet melted.

Alan always wanted to take a steamboat trip up the Mississippi River. This visit to New Orleans, Alan promised himself he would do just that, even if he has to go alone. Alan hates to travel on cruises alone, but he doesn’t have a partner, so there is no other way. Ryan would be bored to tears on a poky steamboat, and Alan’s sister and her husband are “embarrassed” to travel with Alan, so he just goes off alone and does the best he can. He has booked passage on the Bayou Queen. They leave the port of New Orleans in an hour and will go up the Mississippi, stopping at various river towns, and returning back to the Crescent City a week later. Usually, there are some friendly women on the cruise who keep Alan company at diner, and he is good at being by himself now, having had a great deal of practice at it, so the trip should be enjoyable.

When he was younger, Alan would not only pack too much for a trip like this, but also have the burden of his personality to carry around. Alan wasted a lot of time feeling sorry for himself then. These days, he knows just what to pack and his personality is not so heavy with worry and self-reproach.

In the Gentlemen’s Card Room aboard the steamboat Bayou Queen there is an old stereopticon. It is a primitive device for viewing images in three dimensions. Cards printed with double images are inserted into a slot in front of binoculars and when viewed, the stereopticon gives the illusion of seeing a place or object in depth. The Victorians loved these views. A two dimensional image is turned by a trick of the eye into one having three dimensions. Usually, the cards hold images of what was popular but often unattainable for many: exotic places like the Amazon River, crystal rooms in European castles, or scenic wonders like the geyser Old Faithful. Often, the cards were sold to tourists the way postcards are sold today. People would collect them as mementos to their travels abroad. Other cards tell a story. Sometimes the story is for children, but other stories are for adults, and titillate the way only the Victorians could, about grave matters like seduction, betrayal, and furtive romances. Such are the series of stereopticon cards left in part on a table in the Gentlemen’s Card Room. Were they left there to discourage or encourage shipboard romances? Or are they an unintended cruelty, a way of forcing retired couples who vacation on this steamboat to wonder about their youth, their dried up passion, their past opportunities for happiness missed and squandered? Or are they here to encourage dreams?

It is to their credit that when the Victorians decorated a room they left no surface untouched. The Women’s Tea Room on the steamboat Bayou Queen is a good example of their use of organic forms to do just that. Sunlight filters through lace curtains and painted shades are decorated with floral motifs. The pillows on the couch are embroidered and the wallpaper is patterned with golden, flowing flowers. Every piece of wood, the arms and legs of tables and chairs, are all carved with angels, leaves, and claws. There are doilies and fringed shawls, gilded cups and hammered silver teapots. The cold meat forks, soup ladles and cake knives are covered with silver ivy and polished to a shine. A swirl of pink and white roses against a blue background completes the carpet on the floor. Such is it that some men like Alan Roberts come to desire the things of women, but not the women themselves.

Even the atmosphere can be decorated with incense and perfume. Since ancient times the scent of vanilla was used in love potions because of its power “to compel.” This morning Alan goes to the steamboat’s gift shop and uses the tester to spray a sample of “Evangeline” on the back of his neck. He reads that this perfume has a vanilla base, with other notes of violet and freesia. There is no one on this cruise Alan would want to attract except Roger, the young man who busses his table and supposedly has a girl friend in Utah, but still Alan can pretend.

Alan passes the first afternoon of his cruise walking the promenade deck. On either side of the Bayou Queen, the Mississippi River twists and turns through the low lands of Louisiana like the meandering of Alan’s thoughts. In the low light of shadows, the river water could be the color of muddy vanilla. Alan is compelled to follow.

Alan watches the pitman arms of the steam engine thrust back and forth like the force that makes the generations, back and forth, turning the steamboat’s red paddlewheel. Now the paddlewheel is churning the muddy water into a riot of coffee and cream colored foam. Listening to the forlorn melody of the calliope, Alan thinks of all the grace that leaves the world through conflict and confusion, and all the lost causes that drift away with the current of time. Now the aging men sit in the grand salon next to their aging wives. The dull wheel of time keeps them in bed late and slows their bowels. Alan thinks about the long river of desire that follows these men from one generation to another, thrusting us into a life that remains forever open to the mystery of who we are. Is this river long enough to quench our thirst? How am I any different from all the rest that travel here, Alan asks himself? Now the boat is in the middle of the river with the rest of the traffic: barges, ships, steamers, fishermen, and tugboats all making for a port, all churning up the muddy flow. “Live steam,” that’s what they say powers this boat, that’s what they warn against, that’s what they marvel at, and that’s what sends the melody through the pipes of the calliope. Live steam. Back and forth go the pistons, bursting with power, back and forth, translating their oiled thrusts to roll the wheel round and round.

While on the river, Alan thinks of those men who pray to the Lord for rain, those farmers of the dust who think little about the pleasures of the flesh. He thinks, too, of those men who tramp the desert in search of water holes. What glory is a river for them and how they shun the city with all its diversion and depravity. Could Ryan ever survive such a life, and why should he? And Alan’s life, why has the flow of it come to this point, thinking his thirst can be satisfied with Ryan? On the river we learn to appreciate the...well, Alan doesn’t know what exactly now. On the river minds wander. All Alan knows now is that he is far from where he set out. Thoughts, like the river have a main channel, but there are weary places where the river bends and then gets cut off, just like an argument heading to a conclusion, but instead, meandering to an association. In those lost eddies of water and thought the streams dry up. Then the alligators leave because the fish are gone and they won’t be back until the flood comes and brings with it high water.

For a moment the fog makes time stand still. Something constant from the past may only be seen by shadows and fog. So it is that even these days along the Mississippi the fog softens the profiles of men and makes their hearts seem younger. There is always someone here dreaming their way out of the mud. Today, a poor boy rides his older brother’s bike down to the river when he hears the steamboat’s calliope play. From the bluff, he sees the white boat with its twin black stacks issuing smoke. He watches the passengers board with their bags and packages. How wonderful they look to him, sailing from wealth to wealth. “Someday,” he says, “someday,” and then turns to ride back home and swallow the lump in his throat.

Bending over the guardrail, Alan stares into the river water below. Even the bottom of the river here is not solid. Below the flow of water there is a flow of mud. The depth to bottom may vary as much as thirty feet in places, as the mud flow shifts and slides. No matter, ask any steamboat man and he will tell you all he wants below his hull is mark twain, or twelve feet of water. When Alan looks down to see if he can fathom the bottom, there is too much silt being churned up for anything to be seen. Instead, he stands and watches the passing shore. They say the river that runs through Paradise is so clear the bottom seems to be the top. Alan’s eyes follow the tree line the way a man would unroll and read a scroll. Then Alan’s heart reaches out to an image of Ryan. Below the blood flow there is a salt flow.

Alan lays in bed that night and listens to the hush of water rush by the steamboat’s hull. A whistle blows. There is a rush of water and steam, then the pistons relax. Alan slips back into the sheets, shuts his eyes and floats on the water of his dreams. Somewhere in Alan’s sleep, muffled voices call, contending across fog draped shores.

The origins of great rivers are insignificant. The river starts with a trickle, then waters a farmer’s garden and launders the clothes of maid. Then it turns a mill, and in its widening course, the river ends by cutting its way through mountains to reach the sea. So, too, something small begins in us when we are children; a word, a dream, a face seen once from a passing car, and then it grows, calls in tributaries, and before long we have become what we are. To change this may seem beyond our will. Mighty rivers make their own course. Only a force of nature or a beam of grace can alter what the deep waters have carved.

Upon returning to New Orleans, Alan sends Ryan a terse e-mail: “Your photos are ready. You may pick them up anytime.” Ryan agrees to come by Alan’s apartment at two the following afternoon. After thinking it over, Alan realizes it would have been better to meet Ryan again on some neutral ground, instead of having to deal with the temptation of Ryan being one wall removed from Alan’s bedroom.

When Ryan arrives at Alan’s apartment he looks irresistible. The new knit shirt he bought last week shows off his youthful form much better in the full light of a sunny afternoon then it did on the cloudy Wednesday when they first met. They exchange pleasantries, and Alan offers Ryan something to drink, but he declines. Ryan wants to see his photographs. Not wasting any time, Alan displays them on the coffee table. They both agree that the ones showing Ryan’s profile against the fan palms are the best. Then there is a pause in the conversation. Alan knows Ryan is waiting for him to make an offer. Ryan fidgets on the couch and moves closer to Alan.

Now Alan realizes where the current that carries him leads. His spirit moves in harmony with the course of his desire. “Ryan,” Alan says, trying not to be patronizing, “I have concluded I am too much a child of the sixties.”

“What does that have to do with us messing around? I told you I prefer older men.”

“That’s just it, Ryan, in the sixties we believed in ‘free love.’ Love should be free. You should not have to pay for it.”

“Well, how the hell do you think an old guy like you is going get a guy like me if you don’t pay for it?”

“I was hoping maybe we could mean something more to one another, that’s all,” Alan says apologetically.

“It’s just not going happen, at least not here in New Orleans, honey.”

“I am afraid you may be right, Ryan.”

“I am right,” Ryan says, moving away from Alan.

“If not paying means going without, then I will go without,” Alan continues. “Besides, I have concluded I can be alone in the world. Perhaps you will see my reasoning someday.”

“I doubt it. I will see you as just cheap,” Ryan says sarcastically. Then he looks at Alan not knowing what to say next. Ryan realizes he is over his head and in water that is muddy and moving with a current he cannot control.

After Ryan leaves, Alan fixes himself a martini. He sips the drink slowly and paces back and forth in his apartment, mulling over what has just happened. When he looks at his watch, it is almost five o’clock.

Alan gathers up his keys, pen, and notebook. Somewhere on one of those pages he has written his new resolve. He locks the French doors, walks across the courtyard flagstones, opens the font door and steps out to Dauphine Street. It is just a three block walk to the coffeehouse. A carriage rattles past him and then stops. The driver points out some iron grill work on a nearby building to a couple, sitting arm-in-arm in the back seat. Alan walks on. He listens to the white noise of the French Quarter as he turns the corner to St. Philip. Alan has cast off his lines and is caught up with the current now. It is all down stream. Let the river take him home.