by Jim Grimsley
“You are so fucked up. Do you do this a lot?”
“Every chance I get.”
“Well.” Newell leaned over, adjusted the water, felt for the hot, adjusted again.
Mark shivered and looked down at the young man’s shoulder, hearing the country lilt in his voice. Newell had become Leigh, Mark could see her bending down like this, filling a tub with water, stepping into it. Leigh letting down her hair, before, when she had long hair and kept it in a twist at the back of her head.
Water in the tub, Newell in the tub, pulling Mark there too, the men sitting face to face, legs wherever they would fit. The grimy tub under his butt, the gray cast to the light in the room. For a moment Leigh had been here, and Mark lay back and closed his eyes.
“What are you thinking?”
“You don’t know Leigh,” Mark said.
“No, I don’t. Who is that?”
“A woman. She’s kin to me, some way. She was in the Court of Comus a few years ago.”
“What is Comus?”
Mark closed his eyes and felt the shimmering, the shivering world, ringing in his ears, the pressure on his ribs, the water. Breathe, breathe. “The queen of Mardi Gras. Leigh’s from an old family. I don’t even know why I’m talking about her.”
“Because you’re fucked up and talking about all kinds of things.”
“That’s right. That’s why.”
“What kind of drug are you on? LSD or something?”
Mark giggled. “LSD. LSD. Shit. Oh shit.”
“That stuff is supposed to mess up your chromosomes.”
“Who knows what the chromosomes bring?” Mark asked. “Nobody knows.”
“And you have flashbacks.”
“You don’t have them enough, you have to take more acid to get the good ones.”
“Acid.”
“That’s what it is. L-something, lysergic something. I don’t know. You want some?”
Silence for a moment.
“Sure.”
“Then we have to go to Prilla’s.” Mark stood in the tub, swayed and slipped but caught himself, and Newell helped brace Mark till he could step out of the tub and reach for a towel. He rubbed it over his hairy legs, his arms; he admired his own body very much. Soap on his skin, but he couldn’t remember washing. Newell standing too, drying with the other towel.
After a while something occurred to Mark, and he turned. “You don’t even know who Prilla is.”
Newell giggled. “Well, no, I don’t.”
“You don’t even know who I am.”
“You’re Mark.”
Mark was trying to find his clothes, to dress, but he kept getting tired. He found his underwear and lost his energy and sat on the edge of the bed holding the briefs. The floor had begun to ripple and wave again, the whole world was waving and rippling in every direction. A horn sounded, a ship passing on the river, a long, low, moaning horn that made him shiver up the spine. “Put on your underwear,” Newell said, and Mark obeyed quickly without thinking about it.
Step by step. Mark would stop upon completing a gesture, fixed on something new, a miracle the way light fell from the open bathroom door, spilling across the dark room, making long shadows of everything, but nothing holding still, nothing solid.
“We have to go,” Newell said, and held out Mark’s shirt.
“You’re in love with me.”
“That’s right. Put your arm in there.”
“You like this.”
“Nothing else like it in the world,” Newell said, but by then Mark had forgotten what he meant. They walked out the door and down the back gallery through the loggia. A cool interior courtyard. On the way to the street they heard the voice of a girl and a woman, You don’t need to treat me like a baby, the girl was saying. Then don’t act like one, the woman was saying. I’m so tired of how you act, well I’m so tired of how you act. Back and forth like that, till the sound faded to nothing. Nothing else like it in the world.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. You were the one who said we had to go.”
“To Prilla’s. That’s right. Say it.”
“To Prilla’s.”
“In case I forget again.”
“Who’s Prilla?”
“My aunt.” Though this was false. Prilla was not part of his family. “She’s not there right now. On Governor Nicholls.”
In the brisk night air he was feeling more like himself, more capable, the world less runny and squirmy than indoors. The sensation of wind on his cheek felt like the most tender kiss.
Times like now when he was tripping he could see ghosts on every side in every window, some in midair suspended behind windows that no longer existed, echoes of past houses that had burned down or fallen down or been torn down. By now he had become convinced the ghosts were real. He always saw them, though he was never frightened—as if he had become assured of their distance. Echoes down the long corridor of the past, images that remained impressed on the air itself. When Mark was very young someone told him the story of Aldonse Duval who met the wicked Sade on the way out of Paris, but no one would tell him anything about Sade except that he liked to eat children. From then on he had gathered family stuff in his head. His study of history had begun from a suspicion that the story might be fiction. That same Duval married a girl who was raised by the Ursuline nuns, Emilie Aimée Beauchantesse, and he built a house for her on St. Ann. Emilie was an orphan whose parents had died in the fire of 1788 and who had inherited a large tract of property in le carré de la ville. The nuns gave Emilie to be married to Aldonse in exchange for what? A woman was a valuable commodity, especially a pure heiress raised in chastity by religious sisters. Mark was sure that if he walked along St. Ann near the corner of Dauphine he would see the outline of the windows of the old house, which had burned in a later fire; but tonight the house would be there, Emilie in one window and Aldonse in another, him with a glass of whiskey. Aldonse liked his liquor, liked other substances as well, like the opium that sometimes made its way to the port. He liked good food and grew quite fat. He invested his money well in brickworks, real estate ventures around the city, and at one point owned a sugar plantation and two dozen slaves upriver near Germantown. He had four sons and no daughters by his wife and two daughters by his mistress, whom he kept in a little house in the Marigny fauborg. She had been his slave when she mothered the girls, though he freed her when he died, in his will leaving her the ownership of her own daughters as slaves. So many facts in Mark’s head, so many papers to turn over in his fingers.
“Why are you trying to tell me this?” Newell asked, and Mark realized that he must have been talking this whole time.
“It would help me if I understood where I came from.”
“Do you go to college?” Newell asked.
“I did.”
“Where?”
“Right here. Tulane. I studied history.”
“Are you some kind of teacher or something?”
“I might start teaching one of these days.”
“Well, I still don’t understand why you’re trying to tell me about this guy who ate babies.”
“Turn here. This is Governor Nicholls.”
Smells coming from all sides, vomit and piss, spilt liquor, spices from somebody’s cooking. “I just wonder if the story is true,” Mark said, fumbling in his pocket for a key to the courtyard gate. Even he was no longer certain if that was the reason, however, and he simply looked at Newell.
The main floor of the house was Prilla’s apartment. Cool, calm rooms painted in pinks and yellows, tastefully furnished in the style of an uptown decorator. Somebody Father had hired. Four rooms, a back gallery with cabinets on either side, and stairs in one of the cabinets leading to the attic, where Mark led Newell.
Mark’s room was there, neat as a pin, and the sense of order made him happy. He had kept a room at Prilla’s house ever since he finished graduate school, and he stayed here more often than he stayed at home. H
e sprawled across his bed and stared up, the room spinning.
“This is a nice house.”
What did he mean by that? Why was his face so flushed? Or was it flushed, was it actually shimmering? They had come to do something. Newell was watching him. Newell still smelled like sex even after the bath. That was all Mark could smell now that they were inside. But Mark’s cock felt sore and tired. He would not be able to do anything no matter how excited he got. He sat at the desk. He had moved there for something, to get something, and Newell sat politely and waited.
“You’re supposed to be getting me some of this drug. But you keep spacing out.”
“Right.” Mark turned to the desk, opened a metal box. Tore off a tab with a red rooster stamped on it. “You think you should take a whole one?”
“I never did this before. What did you say it is?”
“LSD. Man, what a farm boy.”
“I never lived on a farm.”
Mark handed the tab to him. Tip of finger to tip of finger. The tiny white square. “Chew it up good, till the paper is soft. Then swallow it.”
“It’s paper?”
“It’s blotter acid. They drop it onto the paper, one drop.”
“That’s it?”
“Believe me, that’s enough.”
Newell shrugged, touched his finger to his tongue, drew the tab of acid inside his mouth and chewed.
Satisfaction warmed Mark through. To watch this child of the country now, to look into his eyes and watch the change, the secret of the chemical and the secret that the chemical would reveal. How long does this take? Newell asked, but Mark could only nod at first, so taken was he with the thought of what he was privileged to witness, on the same night that he had drawn a razor blade lightly across a woman’s breast, now to watch a soul cope with the knowledge that consciousness can be adjusted like the tuner of a radio.
“Did you hear me? How long before I feel this?”
“Maybe an hour. Maybe sooner.”
“That long?”
“You have to digest it.”
Newell nodded. Sprawled in a soft chair nestled under the sloped ceiling. Trusses ran the length of the room.
“You read all these books?”
“Sure.”
Newell ambled in front of the shelf reading the titles. “How do you say this?”
“Nee-chee. He’s a philosopher, like Sade.”
Newell shook his head and put the book on the shelf again. “I thought you said you studied history.”
“I did. I took a lot of other stuff, too.”
“You like school?”
“I did.” He turned away. Newell had begun to sound thickheaded, stupid, to become boring, but a moment later Mark had to look at him again, to see the creamy skin, the dark hair, and eyes. Maybe just the acid making him see too much.
“I liked it, too,” Newell said.
A moment later, Newell in front of him and the touch of Newell’s hands on his thighs sent him backward and before he knew it he was on the bed, not in the chair, lying back along the bed with the quilt pulled smooth across it, the bed neatly made because that was always the first thing he did when got out of it, like a monk or a boy scout. He lay back and let Newell have his body, slow sensations so liquid along him, as if the sex were a puddle he lay in, as if it immersed him. Oh, oh, he said. Oh, oh. Otherwise the room was quiet. The top of Newell’s head moved up and down, up and down, such a careful man.
Yes, Newell, yes, this is a worthy journey we are undertaking, yes, as I strive to rise to the challenge of the moment, and yes the flesh is weak and less than willing at the moment, pleasant to receive such ministrations, my dear Newell, but maybe a little frustrating for you, since nothing happens, really. But you are starting to feel something, too, aren’t you? A change in your eyes, a cast of seeing inward. Of looking suddenly inward at an open door.
“My stomach,” Newell said. “Wow.”
“That’s where it starts.”
Newell had a look in his eyes as though something were blossoming inside him, as though a space were opening in his gut, as if he were about to rise off the floor. A light of wonder and an edge of fear. “How long does this last?”
“A long time. You’ll feel it really strong for about six hours or so and you’ll feel a lot of effects till tomorrow about this time. Or even longer, depending on your brain.”
“Oh, this is weird.” Newell touched his stomach as though something were inside it. “I have to work tomorrow night.”
Mark wanted to say, you’ll be fine by then, wanted the words to come out, but there was suddenly some need to grind his teeth, to close his eyes. He made a low sound and realized he was still lying on the bed, shirt shoved up his belly, his pants tugged open and his soft wet cock feeling like a flap of string. He had been lying here like this and Newell had turned away now, was drifting in the room, reading the titles of more books, humming some sound, making some rhythm under his breath, and Mark sat up to listen.
“I can tell an Eskimo’s cold,” he was singing, “all you got to tell me is go.”
Mark tucked his shirt in, fastened his pants, between each gesture feeling the lag, the need to stop moving.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Mark said. “You should be outside when it hits you the first time.”
“I don’t know.” Newell was already somewhere different, the light in his eyes, the glow of his skin.
“You’ll be fine. We’ll be together.”
“This is so strange. My feet feel so far away.”
Mark laughed, and heard the sound echo. Newell turned to him puzzled, drifting past to a Mardi Gras poster on the wall, a fabulous mask trimmed with feathers and sequins, with blank, cut-out eyes.
“Let’s go walk,” Mark said. “I want to sit at the river.”
That time, when Newell looked at him, a feeling in Mark, something turning over, the memory of Leigh, that Newell had metamorphosed into Leigh once already tonight, in the bathtub, and that he might do it again. Might become Leigh again. Crazy. But the skin was the same, smooth as cream, without the creases of age that had begun to change Leigh.
Before they walked out of the room, Mark slipped another tab of acid onto his own finger, contemplated it, the fuzzy white paper that could alter the way he saw the world, and he ate it, to make the night go stranger still.
At times he would forget he was walking with Newell, the cool late-night air on his skin, the passing traffic and noise of horns, walking past an open door from which music was rushing out, pooling in the street, a dim interior, figures lining a bar. Shadows waiting for a drink. Walking under the galleries trying to imagine two hundred years ago, when the streets were mud and the houses hardly ran much farther out than Ramparts, named for the place where the fortifications used to run. Walking under the galleries, peering into the carriageways, occasionally seeing someone following him out of the corner of his eye and, recognizing Newell, remembering. “I love the way the streets are,” Newell’s voice distant and echoing oddly, as if he were speaking in a bottle underwater. So much noise all of a sudden—they were walking by the Bourbon Pub, all the gallery doors open and the dim lamps burning inside, the beat from the upstairs disco like a pulse. One of the songs he liked to dance to, “Contact.”
The sensation in his head became overwhelming and he had to remind himself that he was all right, that more than likely he was walking without any sign of the drugs in his head, more than likely nobody could tell that the smell of the hamburgers from the Clover Grill, the smell of the potatoes frying in grease, made the top of his throat go tight. But he was still breathing, in spite of the feeling of a weight on his ribs, the sudden smell of vomit from the gutter, somebody growling words from a shadowed entryway. Still Mark kept on breathing and walking, people passing, some of the men looking at him as usually happened in this part of town, but looking at him so fiercely in the wash of the drug. Newell said, “It feels like the top of my head is about to come off.”
�
��Oh boy.”
“But we’re almost to Jackson Square. Pretty soon we can sit down.”
“I need to,” Mark said.
Newell took his elbow and steered him. The Café du Monde was full, the sound of voices lively, a tired, big-boned horse standing in front of a carriage at the curb. They crossed the strip of land where the oyster sellers used to set their tents in the early days of the city, crossed the levee and looked across the batture the river had formed over the years. Mark smelled the dusky scent of the Mississippi, feeling the breeze pour across the water, rippling and dark, the river riding low.
“I need to sit down,” someone said, and it was Newell, sitting, blinking, and Mark noted the change in his demeanor.
“You all right?”
Newell nodded his head, looking at something. He never bothered to answer.
But Mark was watching Newell’s creamy face, turning lazily to look Mark in the eye, Newell gritting his teeth, working his jaw muscles. Throwing back his head to expose his white throat, the skin alive with some energy that rippled across it, Newell sitting up, eye to eye with Mark again. “I never had anything like this before.”
“You like it?”
“Oh,” Newell said and shivered, “too much,” and leaned forward and stared into the river, where the lights of a barge were moving.
“Just take a breath when it gets like that,” Mark said.
Newell was staring, though, in a halo of soft blue light, and when he took a breath the sound was low. He had begun to smile.
“You like to try things,” Mark said.
“Try things.” He ran his fingers through his dark hair. “Yes. This is nice.”
“New sensations.”
“Shut up,” Newell said. “I don’t want to talk, I just want to look at the river.” And Mark laughed and shut up and looked at the river, too.
“Shut up,” Leigh had said to him, in the same tone of voice, the same languid heaviness to her lids. “You do nothing but talk and I get so tired of it. Just pour me a drink.”