by Greg Kearney
THE DESPERATES
THE DESPERATES
A NOVEL BY
GREG KEARNEY
Copyright © 2013 Greg Kearney
This edition copyright © 2013 Cormorant Books Inc.
This is a first edition.
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Ontario Ministry of Culture, and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Kearney, Greg, author
The desperates / Greg Kearney.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77086-302-6 (pbk.).— ISBN 978-1-77086-304-0 (mobi).—
ISBN 978-1-77086-303-3 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8621.E23D48 2013 C813’.6 C2013-903668-7
C2013-903669-5
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For Dick, Arlene, and Cindy Lee.
“There was, in the way he stood, in the way he ate the peach, in the way he moved his mouth, the way he chewed, and in how his body weight shifted in the lowering evening light, a lewd perfection. It made me want to follow him wherever he would go, and though I’m not sure of this, I think he saw me, think he knew I was devouring him. For an instant, he seemed to look at me, too.”
CHRISTOPHER COE, “SUCH TIMES”
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgements
1
THIS NEW PHONE SEX JOB is a fresh start, as fresh a start as tree-planting or massage therapy training at George Brown, or canvassing for Greenpeace, or any of the other job opportunities listed in the back of NOW. Who knows where it might lead, the phone sex? Maybe voice work. The half-day stint as janitor at St. Marc Spa last week didn’t lead to anything except him running from the building after having to clean up a mound of feces someone left on a towel beside the whirlpool. But that was a bathhouse. This is phone sex.
Joel stands before his bathroom mirror and parts his hair down the middle; it seems a hopeful way of parting one’s hair. It’s an unflattering look for Joel, bisecting his long, lippy face into two gawky lobes, but the important thing, this first day on the job, is not his face but the intention of his face. A man with a middle part is a man who wants to work, pay back the student loan he blew through in four months, stop hitting up his mother for money every few days, and beat back the great, sucking fear that he is destined only to step barefoot on a thumbtack and die of septic shock.
The phone sex office is in Scarborough, thirty minutes by transit. The travel time gives Joel the chance to read or, more likely, fantasize about men with enormous hands that cup and warm him, small as a robin’s egg, and then set him gently on a silk pillow made especially for his small self.
The manager is a woman named Brenda, who smells of fabric softener and wears her lank grey hair pinned tightly behind her ears. She constantly adjusts a pewter rose brooch that droops from the thin linen lapel of her black blazer. She says she’s thrilled to have Joel join the team, although, in their walled-off carrels spread out in a huge room, there is nothing team-like about the team. She has Joel sit beside Bernie, a middle-aged, sunburned guy who Brenda introduces breathlessly as “phone sex royalty.” Joel is to listen in on a few of his model calls.
“Straight in, you’ve got to give ’em permission to be sexy,” Bernie tells Joel, setting aside his paperback copy of The Stand. “Otherwise, you’ll be talking about the fucking weather for ten minutes. I mean, you want to keep ’em on the phone as long as possible, obviously, but you also have to keep things on topic. I pretend they’ve happened to call just as I’ve started beating off. ‘Oh, hey, buddy, it’s fucked up that you called in when you did, because I just started beating off!’ That kind of thing. And then you do lots of masturbreathing.”
“Masturbreathing?” Joel asks indulgently, even though he already knows what’s meant.
“Yeah, like this,” he says, emitting several short, punchy breaths. “So it sounds like you’re pounding your meat. Dudes love that shit, always does the trick. I’ve been doing this for a year and a bit, and I’ve got lots of regulars, and I’ve never been with a guy in my life. My ex-wife got shot in the pelvis last month — we were still fooling around occasionally, but I guess she’ll be out of commission that way for a while.”
Bernie takes a call. He describes himself as having “super long hair” and a “nice dick, not big and scary at all.” Immediately Joel knows that Bernie did not lie when he said that he’d never been with a guy in his life. He repeatedly asks the caller if he’s getting close to coming, and when the caller confirms that he is about to come, Bernie, not looking up from The Stand, grunts “me fucking too,” and lets loose a series of diminishing moans. At the end of the call Bernie tells the caller to have a good one.
“See? Nothing to it,” Bernie says. “Only thing you gotta watch out for — don’t talk about, like, feelings and all that, like you would have to do with a chick before she’d let you go for it. I made that mistake early on with dudes on the phone — ‘oh, hey buddy, glad you called, I think I’m falling in love with you, I’m so lonely’ — and they’d fucking hang up.”
“No feelings. Got it.”
Brenda leads Joel to a nearby cubicle. He is anxious; he has never done dirty talk. The few encounters he has had with men since arriving here in the fall have all been mute, glancing, furtive, sad affairs: some mutual masturbation, a bit of frottage — oh, and that older guy in the porno video booth who knelt to blow him but then made a stink-face and waved him off … Why? Were his balls musty? Was it
a foreskin thing? Still, he knows himself to be a passionate person, boundlessly so, so surely a little dirty talk should be easy.
The first call is breathing and a hang-up. The second one asks if Joel is Chinese; Joel decides to say that he is Chinese to keep things going, but the guy says that Joel doesn’t sound Chinese and hangs up.
The third call is a very cordial gentleman who greets Joel with “Hello, how are you?” Sounds like he has a slight accent that could be English, lockjaw or exhaustion.
“I like your voice,” the man says.
“Really? That’s so nice of you. I hate my voice. Shit, that was an emotion! I should say, I have no feelings about my voice one way or another. I have thought about maybe trying to get voice work. I always thought my voice had an annoying sort of twang to it though. Not that I care, at all.”
“I disagree. You evoke Mandy Patinkin. Do you know who that is? He’s in musical theatre. A high tenor. He also featured as the romantic lead in Yentl.”
“Oh, yeah! I remember him. My mom loves that movie. He was really hot in that. But Barbra couldn’t settle for only ‘A Piece of Sky.’ So wow — you think I sound like him?”
“Yes. You have the same singsong, slightly nasal quality to your voice. It’s very rousing, very ‘strike up the band.’”
“You’re so nice. So warm. I’ve found Toronto to be a pretty chilly city, socially.”
“It can be, yes, definitely. We’re a pretty cautious lot.”
“Yeah. I’ve been really lonely — Shit! No, I haven’t.”
Joel looks up worriedly at Brenda. Brenda looks down worriedly at Joel.
“You sound a little conflicted.”
“Me? No, not at all. I have no feelings.”
“What’s your name?”
“My name is Joel —”
Brenda shakes her head violently: no real names!
“— but everybody calls me, like, Rocky. Or Chad. Yeah, Chad.”
“Well, hello to all of you. Edmund here.”
“Hi, Edmund. Nice to meet you.”
Joel shrugs his shoulders at Brenda; he can’t not acknowledge someone who has just introduced himself, and Joel is starved for human contact, and this man is attentive and sympathetic.
“Anyway,” Joel interjects, “It’s so funny that you called when you did because I just started masturbating. Beating off, I should say. I have super short hair and a gigantic cock.”
“That’s great. Are we going to talk about sex now?”
“Ooh, yes. Sex is great.”
Mollified, Brenda goes to answer the ringing phone at her own desk.
“We don’t have to talk about sex, you know. I don’t necessarily need to get off. I’m bored. The house is so quiet. I’m looking for a friendly voice, more than anything.”
Joel squeaks with delight. “I’m looking for a friendly voice more than anything, too! It’s my first day here. I’m supposed to pretend that your phone call interrupted me while I was masturbating, but I think that’s so forced, don’t you?”
“I do. That approach may hold some appeal for people with a tight schedule, but happily — ha ha — I don’t have a tight schedule.”
“What do you do? Are you a psychiatrist?”
“No. Why do you ask that?”
“Your tone is so even and calm.”
“Ah. No. I don’t do anything anymore. I had some business interests there for a while, but that was some time ago. I’m in — transition, I guess.”
Brenda approaches.
“It’s my supervisor again. I’ll have to say sexy things. Isn’t that hot? Wow. Hot.”
“Why don’t you call me sometime?”
A nice older man is asking Joel to call him. He starts to shake. Must be subtle, with Brenda right beside him.
“I’d love to,” he says, scribbling Edmund’s phone number on his left hand. “That is so hot. You’re coming? Me fucking too! Talk to you soon. Take care.”
Brenda starts to say something but Joel immediately gets another call.
“I need some major CBT,” a breathy guy says.
“CBT? Cognitive Behavioural Therapy? I don’t know if this is the right line to be calling for that, although I did that for a few months in grade eight. Didn’t really do much for me, but I didn’t really give over to the process, so …”
“What are you talking about? I need some major CBT. Cock and ball torture.”
“Ohhhh … sorry. Right. No problem. Sure. CBT is so hot.”
“Fuck yeah. Fuckin’ hammer a big fuckin’ nail through my dick. And my balls — just fuckin’ crack ’em. Stomp on ’em.”
“Okay. How do I — okay. Crack, crack. Stomp, stomp.”
“Fuck yeah. Fuckin’ stomp on ’em ’til they’re just fuckin’ slush, man. Then fuckin’ slit my bag and fuckin’ drain that fuckin’ ball slush and pour it into a fuckin’ mug and fuckin’ make me drink it!”
Joel gasps a little. Is this a prank call? But who would pay $3.99 a minute to make a prank phone call? Must be the real thing. But who would get aroused by drinking liquefied testicles? Joel is worldly, but … Well, actually, he is not worldly.
“I’m sorry, I think I might have a boundary issue around this. I know that you can’t legislate desire and everything, but violent castration? And the ingestion of liquefied … I can’t engage that. Sorry.”
“I want to speak to your supervisor.”
Joel motions at Brenda, hands off the phone to her.
“Man Handlers, this is Brenda speaking, how may I help you?”
Joel wanders off. He wasn’t told that he’d be expected to handle extreme kink, straight out of the box. And the previous call had been so romantic. He isn’t sure he can handle such whiplash.
2
EDMUND LOOKS AROUND HIS DINING room, checking the newly repainted, sunburst yellow ceiling for erratic brush or roller strokes. Miguel is normally reliable, but this year he slipped up. He was about to paint around the dining room chest of drawers, until Edmund said something. He was quite dour, he didn’t hum to himself as he worked. “The dead have risen,” is what he said when Edmund met him at the door, and although he was smiling he sounded almost annoyed by Edmund’s return to health. As though Edmund had done something unseemly by surviving, as though he should’ve refused the new anti-virals and meekly followed his lover into death. Edmund apologized in response: “Yes, still here. Sorry.” He said it breezily but not entirely without real remorse. Maybe it might be time to start looking for a new house painter. Even the sturdiest relationships can suddenly rupture for no reason.
Eighteen months, it’s been. Eighteen months ago he was bed-bound, skeletal, a mouth full of thrush. Not quite yet a Casey House candidate, although Lila had been more nurse than personal assistant for some time. He’d been quietly, even contentedly, dying for more than a year, shuffling through his cold, bare house, holding up crosswalks and grocery lines unapologetically when he ventured out.
Then came the cocktail. Within a few weeks he was free of fever, full of vim, and endlessly hungry for bread, vinegar-drenched vegetables, bag after big bag of marshmallows. At first he threw it all up, but soon enough it stayed down and moved through him leisurely; his first solid bowel movement in three years had him laughing to himself in disbelief.
Disbelief. That has been his prevailing state, this past year and a half. He wanders through his spacious days, still braced for the violence of illness, only to find himself dazed, worn down by a gusty sense of emptiness, at the end of each healthful day. For so long he took baroque sickness in stride — black and bloody diarrhea, hands and feet sizzling with pain — and now there’s maybe the odd bit of tummy upset, easily tamed with milk and gingersnaps while watching Antiques Roadshow. This relative wellness is nice. It also makes him anxious.
Initially he filled his time with urgent errand
s — power walking to the post office, the bank, Holt Renfrew. Then he ran out of errands.
He tried to reconnect with loved ones, but with Dean and all of his closest friends long dead, he found he had run out of loved ones. (He still has his mother, of course, although her vain, silly, insular, long distance presence has never counted for much. I DO know the depth of loss you’ve experienced, thank you very much, she wrote back, years ago. I’ve been reduced to having my hair done by a WOMAN, and a woman hairdresser is only a saboteur when cutting another woman’s hair. I would honestly rather be bald.)
His remaining friends have mainly gone bilious or druggy from fear and grief. Incapable of introspection, they talk about celebrities, or they nod and murmur over shared memories of incompetent drag acts or falling down the stairs at Chaps. The few times that Edmund has brought up the subject, no matter how elliptically — Remember those brother bartenders at The Barn? Tino and Sly? Did Tino die first, or did Sly? — these equally empty men look at him like he’s psychotic and then make a diversionary, huffy fuss about lighting a cigarette. And so he has stopped asking questions. He has stopped having friends.
Well, he does do one thing, all day, every day: he listens to the house. He stands motionless and strains to hear spirit voices; not necessarily Dean’s, but any spirit voice, faintly saying something, anything, one little thing. Hi. Here. Me. Us. You. He was always openly scornful of other people’s plunges into magic when things got bleak, and he still doesn’t consider this listening of his to be some psychic endeavour. It’s … what one does, after a loss, in a lonely, old house.
He has also been calling phone sex lines, looking for a pleasant, sprightly living voice. Apart from this boy just now, Joel/Rocky/Chad, they’ve all been disappointing. Through the clack of knitting needles, the tubular scrape of Pringles in their can, and the din of other bored, boxed voices, they’ve all been robotic, terrible listeners. It’s unrealistic to expect good listening skills from a phone sex guy, of course, but who else is he going to call? He can’t ring a crisis line just to gab.