Call Me

by P-P Hartnett

  I spotted two pigeons fucking on the fire escape. Spunk continued to glide down from his navel. Before it hit the poly-cotton bedsheet, I captured it up with the middle finger of my right hand and spread it over his bottom lip, then upper, then over and over in a sideways figure of eight, before lightly plunging inside to smear his two front teeth.

  Not a twitch. He was dead to it all. I shivered pale green goosebumps as I took in the bachelor flat around me. Nothing soft about the furnishings, it was clear he preferred severity of surface.

  The breeze from the windows pushed the wardrobe door ajar with a squeak. From the breast pocket of a tweed jacket, rimless glasses magnified pale grey woven threads. A dozen or so ties awaited use. Shiny, black HMSO confidential waste bags spilled from a tea chest. Perhaps in a chest beneath a curtain and pages torn from The Independent, I might have discovered a skull, an assortment of lungs, kidneys and intestines. Or old throwouts ready for Oxfam.

  “Jack,” I whispered. “Wakey wakey.”

  Nothing. Bad Jack.

  On the bedside table, next to a cream enamel lamp, stood a box of tissues. Maybe a nasty streak in him chose to ignore them, wanting to defile my teeshirt. Beside the tissues lay a dusty pair of glasses, a Cannon Sureshot camera plus a tube of—of all things—superglue.

  I continued to look at his pale flesh without blinking, willing him to wake up. His breathing had slowed right down, like he’d reached a place he was meant to stay. And I the keeper.

  It was getting dark. England’s even worse when grey clouds take their usual place in front of the sun. Reaching over his body, armpit to nose, finger to switch, I turned the light on and with rising anger studied a map of previous stains on the sheets.

  Pointing the camera at his face I took the first of a series of snapshots. The flash didn’t work. This annoyed me. I’d wanted to startle him, but neither the metallic click nor auto-wind woke him. Easing myself down the bed, I framed another portrait shot, then a profile. Sweat had amassed at the nape of his neck, messing his haircut. Click. Then head and shoulders, cut to the waist, a three quarters.

  Over by the window, I got a full length. The pigeons flew away. Then I shot a rear view. A much fingered textbook arse: rock hard, boxy with the edges rounded off, inward curving dips creating cute shadows on the sides. Did I read that somewhere? Empty eye socket of an arsehole. Bullet hole of an arsehole. Corrupt belly button of an arsehole. Did I hear that somewhere? I could imagine an arm disappearing up there, clutching soft warm insides to rip out at the least expected moment. I took pictures which would surely be out of focus, too close in. He was in good shape, musculature many would buy by the pound. I walked, snapping, knowing the pictures would be a blur.

  I was hoping he might have opened up an eye quizzically, teasingly, before grabbing me to tickle and laugh like some Hollywood star. Rock Hudson. Or Rock Hardon. But he was miles and miles away. A good hard slap around his face would have been lovelier than that hour of licking. The careful incision of a knife along the jugular or the steady delivery of a weighty syringe was what he merited.

  Then he became an object of potential desire again, my own Sleeping Beauty. Listening to the beating heart, then the intestinal music of rising bubbles in his stomach and the slow, deep breathing rekindled my capacity for tumescence.

  Whilst he slept so happily with himself, I began to jerk off, hoping for a more satisfactory orgasm. Even with my own porno tableau beside me, I thought of Ray. My Ray. He had a beautiful waist, it really dipped in. He was skin and bone long before the chemotherapy left him skeletal. When laying on his side I used to rub the dip with a karate chop-shaped hand, like I was sawing him. Sex with Ray was gentle, so warm. (Ray, you bastard, I still love you. Can you hear me?)

  When my eyes focused into the shaded blackness of horse chestnut branches, a snapshot memory of Ray’s black eyes then (surprising me) the shelf-filler’s forearms and shiny forehead helped me come streaky splashes up, up, up my chest. Silently. I swamped it all into my navel.

  As I lightly spread another figure of eight over his lips, my eyes focused on the superglue. Just a drop between those lips could have shut his mouth for good. With another spreading of my warm slimy cum I touched his nostrils. Outside, then in. Had it been superglue, had I squeezed those nostrils shut, how long would it take for shutdown? Spreading the last of the now cool semen over his lips with my thumb, edging teeth apart to touch his tongue and feel the roof of his mouth, I saw his eyes open.

  With the aftershock of orgasm, I shivered another spasm of pale green goosebumps when he looked at me. The shuddering came as a shock, dragging me up. His opened eyes were still, like the restart button had been hit, but the machine had not yet warmed up.

  I removed my thumb slowly, rising it up to his nostrils, and down the right side of his face, pausing upon a long narrow scar which I hadn’t noticed before. Gliding down to the side of his neck, zig-zagging to the nipple jumping slightly with increased heartbeat, then over to my mouth. I tasted saliva and body salt in a way he mistook for adoration. What I tasted more than him was me.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” he said.

  I smiled, saying nothing.

  “Go on, what are you thinking about?”

  “The garden of a little house I once stayed in,” I said, in a voice which struck me as sounding different from my own. Almost Ray’s.

  “Where?”

  “Crete.”

  “Which part?”

  “Just outside Palaiokhora.”

  “You angel,” he said, coughing.

  He kissed me on the forehead, then got up to make strong espresso in a mouldy coffee pot. By the time I got back that night I’d practically forgotten the existence of the body in Hampstead. The stains on Madonna’s face were boil-washed away as I phoned men I didn’t know with my nicest voice and manners.

  * * *

  The sky was identical to that of the morning Ray went into Barts to die. People were busy again after the bank holiday weekend. I stood and stared, had nothing to do.

  Ray’s back was turned to me. He was just wearing baggy old underpants, standing in his usual spot by the drain-pipe. I stood behind him, holding in the tears. He looked so sparrow. His body had always been precious to him, great and abundant. We could both feel his nourishing blood pump gently away, reducing his strength with the flow.

  One day demolition men would go about their work with cranes, drills and heavy hammers, pounding through partitions, lifting blocks, ripping out ironwork, reducing the block of flats to piles of raw materials to be sold for scrap, recycled or dumped—he’d said. The bulldozers of the site-levellers would tidy away before men with brooms appeared. Housewives would wipe their windowsills free of dust, then there’d be nothing left.

  It was the same soiled white sky as Ray’s last day at the flat, three years back. The grey of that view had invaded me with the fragile existence of those quickly thrown-up quickly pulled-down buildings that nobody loved.

  The smell of the coffee made only an hour ago was already fading.

  * * *

  The lights were green from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch. I covered Oxford Street in seven minutes, dodging the occasional lemming shopper. Coming off Bayswater Road I dismounted, obeying the ‘no cycling’ signs in eroded white on grey.

  I’d forgotten how theatrical the position of the Peter Pan statue was. Trying to look normal, I walked through the low gate, up two steps, entering the crazy-paved circular surround of the statue. The bronze of the rabbits, doves, snails and mice had been lightened with frequent touchings of tiny fingers. Areas at the base had also been rubbed bright by the bums of little ones posing for cameras.

  I sat for a moment on a bench down by the water, dark edges inviting me in. Off in the distance was the tall, thin, red brick building of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, where steak-fed young men stripped by windows at night, having learned how to kill during the day. Crows in the branches above—I counted nine—were making a
lot of noise squawking.

  Time can move so slowly when you’re waiting for a stranger. Dabbling ducks and diving ducks, opportunistic feeders, made the most of the granary bread I’d brought with me. One bird crossed from the other bank in a straight line, snapping up feathers as it came. I identified this bird, from a nearby notice board, as a grebe: ‘Grebes eat a large quantity of feathers to facilitate the passage of particularly indigestible items, such as fish bones.’

  I turned around a few times as I stood there on the edge, half expecting someone behind to give me a good push in and under, holding me down until the bubbles stopped rising to the surface. Only three mounted police trotted by, wearing fluorescent green tops and blank faces.

  By the time the grebe got to me all the bread had gone. I mustered up phlegm from the back of my throat, spitting with B Wing precision. My offering was duly snapped up and swallowed. I returned to the bench and realised it was splattered with bird droppings. I checked the seat of my shorts to be sure I’d escaped any smudges. Although the light was fading fast I kept my Oakleys on. I felt watched.

  Two women arrived with a little boy who looked as though a terminal disease was winning against the immune system behind his skin. They sat him on one of the lighter areas of bronze to take a photo, then fed the ducks some stale white bread. As they left, Allan arrived on a skateboard.

  The child who’d been warned so many times not to talk to strangers, not to accept sweeties from strangers and not to get into the backs of cars belonging to strangers, beamed first at Allan performing an emergency stop wearing beads and a huge buckled belt on his cut-down Levi’s, then at me. A nice, big innocent smile. (So young).

  The scrape of board on tarmac flustered the birds and off they went. A skimpy grey vest was half tucked into the back of his jeans. Here he was, my very own three-dimensional, animated Euro Boy. For a full five minutes he pretended to be just anybody, leaning against the Peter Pan statue, playing a pocket computer game in a bubble of boredom mixed with absorption. The colour of his skin, pale with pink smudged in, smeared up into the air around him. Something was happening inside my eyeballs. A tiny vial was dissolving in each: the contents first freshened then widened my eyes, making them hungry for glimpses to save and replay. It was a struggle to look away.

  To control myself while he decided whether to speak to me, I watched the water as if it were a cinema screen. After what sounded like the end of the world on his pocket game, he sauntered over, skateboard under his arm, and delivered a speech with which he’d often fogged mirrors.

  “The age of consent in Japan is thirteen and it’s legal for any two people over that age to have sex. In Spain it’s twelve. Hi!”

  The removal of a fresh pack of chewing gum from a front pocket depleted what I’d taken to be this fierce child diva’s shapely genitalia by a saddening couple of inches. (Bet that gum was nicely warm, instantly malleable.)

  “Hello.”

  Pointing to my teeshirt he said that he liked Oasis too (unlike myself) and started reeling off details of his musical tastes and bands he’d seen. Disarming and heart warming with his directness, he had the well developed cunning innocence of an embryonic ’dilly boy. No one would have suspected that we were strangers meeting for the first time. He was my fourth encounter, I was his fifth.

  He said I looked younger than twenty two. He was fibbing. I said he looked exactly sixteen, the truth. Too old to be a child star, too young to take leads. No facial hair dimmed his face. His pupils were shrunk to blackheads in the foggy blue. He was high on something and it wasn’t Wrigleys.

  He had the kind of nipples which didn’t know they liked being played with, yet. He was extremely abuser-friendly.

  I thought he was admiring my single pannier. He wasn’t.

  “Oh, Carradice Super C. Very flash! But crap. Mine fell to bits in six months.”

  From within the flash but crap pannier came two cans of Strongbow. He’d probably have preferred a Hooch.

  “To your good health,” I toasted, smiling.

  While the boy’s head rocked back to take a swig, I watched his narrow throat. At last he opened the gum, not offering me any though. The drink went straight to his head and he was off, speaking happily in gloomy negatives about lots of things he hated. His step-father, the National Curriculum, Ecstasy and warts were major concerns.

  Most of what he said was aimed at alternate armpits on clear display as he leaned back, arms behind his head. The pose lengthened his body, elongating muscles and giving a lovely definition to the ribcage. Smooth but for a little fuse of fine hair running down from the navel to under the buttons of his Levi’s. I imagined a murderer plucking teenage hairs from these armpits, placing them carefully in a self-sealing envelope marked ARMPITS, to complete a set of three—with PUBES and ARSEHOLE so neatly marked in evenly sized capital letters.

  From tv, films, extensive secret reading, pool changing room chats and the occasional 0898 phone lines (hard on pocket money in payphones) he knew lots about the wonderful world of sex. He knew of the possibilities open to him and he was impatient. He knew he was attractive and he knew that youth was something up his sleeve.

  “Your ad cracked me up! Have you seen mine? It goes something like Boyish skateboarding boy next door, recently 18. Blond, 5’ 9”. Slim. Dangerously cute. Inexperienced but keen to learn, seeks … Well, it varies a bit then, sometimes it says PE teacher type. And it ends Your place, not mine. No clones. No perverts. Photo please. London only. You know the sort of thing. Sometimes it’s over thirty words but they still put it in. They changed the wording once, I suppose it was a bit risky what I wrote. They stuck in words like masculine, dominant and active instead. Have you seen the ones in QX? They’re wild.”

  He was dropping hints with smiling eyes and a tongue which kept his lips moist. Although his voice was croaking a craggy path towards manhood, deep down in a delicate part of himself somewhere he still wanted to be treated as sweetly as baby Jesus. (So easy to destroy.)

  He smiled, keeping in his secrets. Every inch was sixteen-year-old perfection, especially the neck: a vulnerable dip at the back, below the graduated hairline, tendons creating a kissable rift. A slender pale neck, delicate and pure, ideal for sacrificial strangulation. A pleasure to kiss while still warm.

  I’m sure every luxury had been lavished on that youth—breast feeding, circumcision, microscopes, scuba diving … Life expectancy was his one weak point. Someone, somewhere, would systematically make him disappear.

  When he drop-kicked the empty cider can into the Serpentine I felt my face tighten. Used to be a nice boy, not any more. Dizzy queenling.

  From the depths of his baggy cut-offs came a pack of Silk Cut. He smoked half a cigarette standing at the water’s edge with his back to me, pretending to have a serious think, tapping the ash more often than necessary. His buttocks were lifted and separated just the way I like them. But it was the shiny declivities behind his lightly tanned hairless knees which I zoomed in on, pale and smooth and obviously soft. Soft as the small of his back or the nape of his neck or the sides of his teenage chest, but not as soft as his insides.

  Returning to sit alongside me, knees touching, he continued stubbing out his cigarette on the bench between his legs long after it was extinguished, flinging the stub into the water, hitting the same spot my phlegm had splashed down earlier. At this second litter crime, worthy of a one hundred pound fine, I wanted a good fairy to drop a serviceable implement of torture into my hand. No fairy made my dream come true. Do they ever?

  Being a resourceful sort, I speedily improvised. In my head I hoisted his battered body over my right shoulder with choreographed ease, carrying it down to the water’s edge, lowering it carefully (arms flopping), maybe even saying something soothing while tugging the clothes off and wiping down the movable parts: stage directions to an intoxicating ritual. (The younger the body, the lighter it is. Convenient for disposal.)

  Pulling him by the ankles would have grazed his back, sp
oiling it. Carrying the shipwrecked, washed-up body to the bench, laying the pale flesh down, so passive, so controlled, cleansed and sublimely at peace in the last of the daylight, pale, so pale—practically porcelain. Smooth rose-petal skin stretched over those shapely legs, my fingers running over the surface like braille. Wet, he looked like polished stone. Kneeling in reverence, I was half annoyed that it had all been so fast, I’d missed out monitoring those dying, dimming eyes.

  The cider made me burp one of those silent baby burps.

  A medium-sized kitchen knife is an unusual item in a puncture repair kit, handy though. I emasculated him with one simple cut, stuffing his church-candle white prick-teasing dick up his arse, a long way up. A coroner would later note that inside the Reebok socks stuffed down the boy’s throat, a long way down, were his nipples, sliced off immediately after emasculation. You cannot hurt a corpse.

  Perhaps a muscle man with good gripping fingernails could, clutching a buttock in each hand, have ripped the arse then body apart like they do the yellow pages on tv. Imagine that parting of the flesh. Great telly. And this muscle man could say, in a voice close to yodelling, “You’ll have no more troubles now, squire” like a Lassie film hero giving a helping hand in some dark valley.

  When he asked what my flat was like I was thinking that his beautiful empty head would make a cute addition to the Peter Pan statue, mounted sideways on the flute. How children’s book sections would swell after the tabloid fuss, with readers searching out the Barry book.

  I added three to the last digit when giving him my number.

  I had to get real, had to resist. Hands off. Jailbait. And not worth it. He said he’d phone me later, from his bed. He said this smiling, as the dropped cigarette was caught on an undercurrent and gently pulled under. Then he winked. I just smiled back saying, “Do that.”

  It was too dark to wear my glasses as I took the cycle route beneath the stretch of trees towards Speakers Corner, passing the barracks ever so slowly. I realised I was drunk on one can of cider. I’d hardly had a thing to eat all day. Not like me at all.