by John O'Neill
He clicked off the TV and crawled under the sheets. Saw Alison rising from her drum-kit, sweaty and spent, nuzzling up against some wiry technician, slipping her hand into his pants. Leonard fantasized she had secured the television gig through the payment of her body and imagined her leading the technician to a backroom not unlike the projection booth at Innis. There, amid thick bundles of wires and under the eye of a video camera that he’d set up in oily anticipation, Alison yanked the man’s pants down by his keyring. Took his cock into her mouth. Mumbled her gratitude for its length and thickness. She directed his desire the same way she’d propelled her band, providing bottom for the flight. Leonard imagined him watching her head bob on six television screens in that backroom, so intent on the images that he forgot the real woman kneeling in front of him. The technician’s callousness increased Leonard’s excitement.
He was humiliated for her, for himself, for the whole television world. He couldn’t sleep. Fire down below. He got up, went to the downstairs bathroom where he masturbated with his eyes closed, conjuring again the image of Alison as she gave head to the undeserving, rudely inattentive young man. Leonard let the camera of his fantasy pan up past where Alison’s lips worked, above the thin male torso, and saw there, on the technician’s neck, not his head, but a plasma TV. It played the opening segment of the original Star Trek show, the Starship Enterprise zooming past star clusters. Confused, amused, satisfied, disgusted, Leonard went back to bed, back to sleep. He slept without interruption until light crept in.
That morning, still wrapped in sheets and aware of the sound of Cynthia moving around above him, Leonard made a phone call. He assured his nephew he’d only stay for a couple of weeks, until he could find an apartment. But that if Ellis liked his company, he’d be willing to stay indefinitely, paying his share of rent and utilities, of course. And although Ellis immediately agreed, his terseness left Leonard feeling bad – his nephew didn’t ask why his uncle was looking for accommodation, didn’t ask how his marriage had taken this turn; didn’t inquire about any of the practical details. Leonard wondered if he’d caught his nephew asleep or on the way to a pressing engagement. He tried not to think that his nephew might feel only unpleasant obligation.
12
THE CRAVING
Leonard decided that he’d kill time until the evening by walking around downtown. If he couldn’t be in Alison’s company, he could be in her world. He drove to Queen Street, found the popular Goth store Sirens. Alison had bought a coffin-shaped backpack there when she was a student of his and he remembered how it stood out amongst the more conventional packs lined up on the drama room floor. Sirens was tucked in amidst a row of bright textile and fabric stores near Bathurst Street, and was, from the outside, both fey and foreboding, with dark, ribbed curtains and a purse-lipped mannequin that sported a frilly Victorian shirt and frock coat. Hanging from its hand, on the end of a tangle of leather strings, was a puppet that resembled Nosferatu, all pointy fingers and teeth and a scowling, beak-like face.
The interior was lush Victorian, textured shadows and velvet walls, with rows of gorgeous, expensive clothing: lace vests, Victorian frock coats, dark smoking jackets, Lord Byron style shirts, lace-up pirate shirts, capes, kilts, ornate medieval gowns, jackets and Victorian corsets, most of it in deep shades of black, purple or burgundy. A back room was for boots and shoes: stilettos, buckled ankle boots, commando boots, pointed shoes flat to the ground and others with teetering, impossible heels. Just inside the front door, in a large cabinet, were books, all of them concerned with Goth culture and its antecedents; the work of Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, Anne Rice. In the centre of the store was a long, coffin-shaped glass cabinet. Its velvet interior held various crucifixes, Victorian candle holders, baroque letter openers, pewter coffin snuff boxes, bat-shaped ashtrays, lighters and incense holders, small twisting candelabras and ornate cigarette cases. Another glass cabinet against the side wall contained rows of brooches, rings, earrings, bracelets, chokers and necklaces, all of it referring to human mortality. Even the heavy, ornate cash register, busy with swirls and tiny crusted skulls, reinforced the theme. Leonard wondered if the proprietors would accept a vial of blood or a sliced-off ear in exchange for some of the merchandise.
After he’d stroked the sleeves of weeping shirts and run his fingers along the rack of wisteria dresses, a salesgirl appeared. She wore a long lace gown with a scooped neckline and dripping cuffs. Her hair was shoulder length, crow black with red highlights and she had the requisite white face, murky eyes and bee-sting lips. She also wore a band around her head, thorny crown of leather. She asked Leonard if he needed help. He almost giggled at her high voice: it was prepubescent. He’d expected a subterranean growl. She grinned broadly and stood close to him, and he imagined that the owners of the establishment instructed their sales staff to be extra friendly with customers to offset the unease that probably prevented most shoppers from staying long enough to spend.
“No thanks, just browsing,” Leonard said. “The clothing is beautiful. I like it, the Goth culture. It’s intriguing.”
He felt himself flush at the vacuousness of his words. He imagined how he must have looked, standing there in his cotton shorts and polo shirt, without cruelly drawn lips or dark eyes standing out from his face’s natural pallor. Without the funereal uniform that would have lent his paleness definition, given a frame to his ghostliness. Stunned, he went on, unable to stop himself, fixated on the girl’s lips.
“You know, last summer I was in Richmond, Virginia,” he said. “I visited the Edgar Allan Poe museum. They had some early editions of his poems. They had his walking stick, with his engraved initials. Do you like his stories?”
She was staring at him, wasn’t smiling. Her expression suggested retreat.
“Never heard of him,” she said.
Leonard nodded.
“So, what do you like about Goth culture? Is it the look, or do you relate to the darkness of it?”
He felt interrogative now but she relaxed a little at his question.
“It’s easy to accessorize,” she said. “I don’t have to think about what to wear when I’m coming to work.”
“So, do you dress differently, you know, when you’re not here?”
“No.”
“You work here full time?” Leonard asked. “Are you a student?”
She was making no move to walk away, though she could have retreated behind the counter, or attended to the racks, or done any number of things to escape. He felt obliged to continue, partly in apology for his presence.
“I quit school last year,” she said. “Bitch teachers, excuse my French. I like the money.”
Casually, but deliberately, Leonard turned away, began to examine again the rows of shirts and jackets, working his way to the front of the store, closing out the conversation with a “Yes, money is good” over his shoulder.
He glanced at the jewellery in the glass case near the register. He didn’t want to exit too abruptly, for fear of offending. When he was ready to make his move, he looked up to see that she’d drifted behind the counter, had rolled up a sleeve to adjust a bracelet near her elbow. Crisscrossed just above it were a number of faint scars. She saw him staring, so Leonard pushed out the front door, almost bowled over a young man who was hovering there. The fellow looked as if he could replace the vampire mannequin in the window: sad, sallow face, inky lips and eyes, black jacket and pants. Leonard wanted to volunteer his services, to offer to play the young man’s puppet, to dangle happily from his hand in a hammock of strings, a suburban Renfield to this young, urban Dracula. Once he walked away from the shop and the Dracula boy, Leonard realized that he’d stolen a silver pendant, a small wheel with tiny spikes. Absently, he let it slide into a pocket of his shorts.
In contrast to the dark lush interior of the store, Queen Street was ablaze. Heat radiated from the pavement. Near the corner of Queen and Spadina on a wheelchair ramp that led to an elevated bank mac
hine, a huge German Shepherd stretched out, panting. People had to step over it to access the ATM. As he passed, his head level with the dog, Leonard felt furry heat, animal humidity. A young girl in a tank top, red hair in dreadlocks, shoved a flyer at him. Three teenagers with crossed arms, smudged faces, were propped against a brick wall with a sign that read will sing for money. One pushed his legs out so that Leonard had to veer sideways. Against a newspaper box was an apparently more desperate young man, slouched behind a bucket that read: kick me for a loonie.
Approaching, a woman with cat glasses, leopard-skin coat and tight matching pants. Face deeply tanned, deeply wrinkled. Without breaking stride, she threw one of her pointy feet into the kick me boy, simultaneously dropping some bills into his bucket. His eyes flickered, and he said, loudly, nastily: “Thanks, mom.” Perhaps he really was her son, and this ritual constituted the extent of their relationship.
An elderly couple, arm in arm, in matching pastel shirts and shorts, whose smiles were also identical. They walked half-facing one another, like Siamese twins, like a door closing. A young girl in a pink jean jacket struggled with a malfunctioning baby stroller, while the child in her care, in a tiny rabbit-eared hat, wailed. A woman glided by on roller blades. Startled, Leonard was annoyed by her efficiency, her arrogance, her sculpted back and shoulders. Her legs looked like ropes. He wanted to smash the wheels of her blades.
“Some are blessed,” he said out loud. “Most are condemned.”
He saw a stocky man in an I Love Alberta t-shirt, who grinned maniacally at everyone. Leonard was reminded of a newspaper item from the week before, about a man who’d driven in from Winnipeg and had approached two police officers on Yonge Street, telling them he had a gun in his belt. The officers restrained, disarmed him. The man then led them to a rusted car that contained a large cache of weapons, including several automatic weapons and rounds of ammunition, as well as a long canvas bag full of hunting knives. In custody, the man explained that he’d planned on killing people that day, but had come upon a small keening dog, leashed to a post outside a strip club. Apparently, its helplessness made him reconsider. The story didn’t elaborate beyond this.
Leonard pondered the randomness of things. He felt a desire to return to the Goth store, to swear his allegiance. To exist in a place where the grotesque was constant, strange longing acknowledged. Where mortality was fitted, like a ring. He pictured Alison there. He saw himself lying with her, their bodies wound together amidst the racks, the weeping forest of sleeves and shirttails. Got faint thinking about what was between her legs, what feeling he might achieve if she opened up to him.
The sun was a hot stone pressed to his forehead. He went into a pub near the corner of Queen and McCaul, into a booth whose seats were red velvet. The smell of beer was comforting (his father), the familiar look of the beer mugs along the bar opposite (his father, the Legion). Leonard ordered tea, let himself drift. He dozed off, roused to consciousness by the occasional visit of the middle-aged (Leonard’s age) waitress, who refilled his little blue teapot. He managed to kill two hours, fading in and out, picking over a plate of chicken wings. His departure was prompted by the arrival of the man in the I Love Alberta t-shirt, who sat close to Leonard’s booth, his wide sweaty back on display. Leonard could see his blank eyes and half grin in the mirror behind the bar. Afterwards, Leonard wandered Queen west, past Bathurst, browsing in used furniture stores, stopping for a four-dollar latte in a combination cafe/left-wing bookstore, before he headed north on Manning to his rendezvous with Alison.
13
BLUE COLLAR
Alison laughed when Leonard told her about his encounter with the salesgirl at Sirens. However he only shared the superficiality and the gist of their conversation and remained silent about the theft.
“For lots of those people, it’s a look,” she said. “But you don’t have to have, you know, a PhD in Gothic literature to indulge in the style. It probably runs deeper, maybe just not consciously.”
“I know, I know,” Leonard said, chastised, admiring Alison for her acknowledgement of the skull beneath the skin.
She asked: “Have you ever read Poe’s Imp of the Perverse?”
For a moment, Leonard couldn’t breathe.
“No, I, ah, love Poe. But I don’t know that one. Poem or story?”
“Story. The narrator has committed murder. He explains how people are drawn to things destructive, how we’re attracted to the thing that will destroy us. It pretty much sums up the Goth idea, I think. Embrace the darkness. But Goth’s also related to Beat, to Beat culture.”
Leonard’s mouth went dry. He was the student, being taught. “You know, Beat stuff. Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Ginsberg. I didn’t realize till I read On the Road that ‘Beat’ doesn’t refer to a style of music so much, like jazz, but means beaten or defeated, and beatific. Goth, I think, is like that. Always be dressed for your own funeral.”
They were in Alison’s room, sitting on the edge of her bed. She was dressed in her usual, cutoff shorts and t-shirt. Leonard had trouble concentrating on her words, though he liked listening. Her voice had a quality like radio static, giving the sense that an older, more worldly creature, inhabitant of some remote celestial island, was talking through her but that the transmission kept breaking up.
“Hadn’t thought of that, ” Leonard said.
She reached across and placed her palm flat against his chest, pushed him back onto the bed.
“But you like the look, don’t you? The Gothic?” Before he could answer, she took his hands, pulled him up and said: “Go to the kitchen. I’ll tell you when to come back.”
The kitchen in the house was a typical student one; in fact, Leonard thought it somewhat contrived. Dishes were piled high in the sink. The counter was smudged with coffee grinds, strewn with crusts of bread. Brown rind of a melon. Ravaged box of granola. A dented pot, crusty with baked beans. The fridge held various flyers from recent art shows, local film festivals; and also several kitschy postcards: one from Florida that depicted a flamingo perched on an enormous bowling ball, another of a woman’s bare breasts, two open mouths drawn in lipstick around the nipples. A photograph of Alison hugging an older blonde woman, both of them stretching their mouths in mock horror, both wearing garish lipstick and dungeon eye-shadow, a red feather boa binding their necks: satanic flapper girls – a memory from Hallowe’en. Leonard thought of pocketing the picture, a new masturbatory aid, but concluded it’d be missed. He sat down on the rough wooden chair at the table, crunchy things underfoot. Looked down to see a cockroach slip under the baseboard.
The newspaper on the table was open to a half-page advertisement for an upcoming Fetish Fair, photo of a body completely immobilized by rubber. On the opposite page, outlined in red magic marker, was an article on how the provincial Conservative government wasn’t building any new affordable housing. Leonard began to study the ad, when he was interrupted by Alison’s voice.
“Sorry about the kitchen,” she shouted from the bedroom. More softly: “You can come in now.”
Alison sat on the edge of her bed with her legs drawn up, pressed against it, as if riding side-saddle. She puckered newly glossed lips and her hands sat demurely in her lap. She wore a mesh top like those at Sirens. Beneath, a black bra. Her short leather skirt came down barely to mid-thigh, left a slice of skin before her black stockings began. She’d put on a pair of velvety black pumps that pushed up her calves so the muscles were hard, defined. And she’d done something to her hair. With the background of the faded British flag she had pinned across her window, she looked as if she were ready for a photo shoot, soft-core, or an interview on MTV.
Ruin. Mock.
“Jesus,” Leonard said.
She stretched out her hands. Black nail-polish, little spikes of red in the middle of each nail. Leonard couldn’t believe she’d accomplished the transformation so quickly. Her efficiency wasn’t entirely to his liking.
“I thought you, we, were going to wait,” he
said.
“That was yesterday,” she said, putting her hands back in her lap. “I thought you were moving out. We can wait, if you prefer, but. It’s been a really long day.”
He didn’t answer, but sat firmly beside her. She drew herself up, let her shoes drop off, until she was behind him. Wrapped him in her arms and legs. Put her hands underneath his shirt and let her fingernails scrape his chest. Made little figures on his stomach, as if tracing something. She didn’t kiss his neck, but he could feel her breath. He was afraid to engage her, aware that he couldn’t live up to the impression she’d made. He forced himself to turn, positioned himself so that Alison was sitting on his thighs, her neck near his mouth. As he went to press his lips there, she leaned back, grasping his forearms for balance.
“No kissing on the mouth,” she said. “Yet.”
“I wasn’t. Okay. Why not?”
“Kissing is what we’ll build up to.”
She climbed off him and lay down on the bed. She took his hand, his forefinger between her lips. He ran his other hand under her skirt, discovered she was naked. His touch made her pull his finger from her mouth, press both her hands against his fist.
“It’s been a long time,” he said.
“Forever,” Alison replied.
He didn’t know what she meant. He answered his own confusion by gently working her skirt up, putting his mouth between her legs.
“Not there,” she said.
She guided his head to her thigh. He was relieved when she said: “Just there. You don’t need to go inside. Let’s not go inside.”
He was aware of his toes. His feet were hot. He said: “Sorry,” and paused to take off his shoes. Paused again, worried about the smell; he’d been walking all afternoon. Suggested he go rinse his feet. Before he finished the sentence, Alison leaned to the side, struck a match and lit some sticks of incense that protruded from a crack in the hardwood floor. Fell back again, closed her eyes and looked so unselfconscious, her legs spread, skirt hiked up, arms at her sides, that Leonard had to stop, consider.