I came across a magazine clipping tucked between the pages of Art Treasures of the Louvre. The magazine clipping showed a man, naked but for a pair of English riding boots, seated on a black horse. The photo was erotic, but not because the man was the least bit sexy or even attractive by modern greased muscular standards. In fact, the man had a belly. He was white as bleached rice, and looked silly sitting surprised astride the horse's bare back like someone had stolen his clothes. What made the photo erotic was that it was hidden. And then discovered. It revealed a narrative of repression and transgression, both. The black boots made it better.
My uncle's erotica--which, like the photo of the man on the horse--was hidden in the pages of high art (Death in Venice and Eros in Pompeii) seemed self-conscious and earnest, aware of its own absurdity. Likewise, my uncle's best sexual adventure stories, such as his favorite tale of a fevered rendezvous with Montgomery Clift, came from decades when my uncle lived a split life, his desires and gay identity cached and charismatic.
Uncovering all my uncle's stashed erotica made me long for a return to sexual secrecy. I'm bored with sex as a subject now. Bored with frank, explicit dialogue and neat erotic formulas. We talk too much, too loud as if we know it all. My last favorite thing found in my uncle's ornate den was a telegram, received in 1958. In three words it encodes and reveals the tale: "No limelight tonight."