by Paul Russell
I MENTIONED THOSE SNAKESKIN BOOTS CARLOS GOT for me, and that I wore all the time. I remember, after I left The Company and was living in Tennessee, I used to keep those boots on a shelf in the closet. I never wore them, because they looked too good. What I mean is, they were great cowboy boots for New York City, but anybody who wore anything like that in Memphis would’ve been spotted for a fag in about two seconds.
I can remember exactly when Carlos got them for me. There’d been this nighttime spring thunderstorm over the city, and the air was cool, and when Carlos came back to the apartment—it was late—he was totally drenched from having been caught out in the rain, and he had these boots wrapped up in newspaper. He dumped them on the bed where I was lying, not asleep at all because of the thunderstorm and enjoying the way the cool fresh air was coming in through the windows.
“Where’d you find these?”
“Real snakeskin. For you.”
“You’re kidding.” I could tell right away they were fantastic boots. “You steal them, or what?”
“Would I do a thing like that?” Carlos sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up one of the boots to look at it. It was all sleek and shiny with little scales, like snakeskin’s supposed to be. “I just happened to see them, I thought they were completely you.”
It was great to hear Carlos say that. I always had the feeling he hardly even thought about me and now here he was calling something “completely me.” I think now he probably stole them, or took them off somebody who owed him money as a way of putting them in their place. But who knows? Maybe he really did walk into some store somewhere and buy them for me because he thought I might like to have them. It’s something I’ll never know—at the time I was way too happy with those boots to ask any more questions about them. I remember I hopped right out of bed and tried them on—walking around the apartment in them, loving the feel and the look. I must’ve been a hilarious sight, stalking around with no clothes on, just those boots. But Carlos didn’t laugh. I think he was as impressed with how great they looked as I was.
They’re the only things Carlos ever gave me. I mean, he gave me lots, but not stuff I could hold in my hands. Carlos never cared about possessions like that. He was a person who was totally content to live in this rundown loft with basically just a mattress to sleep on and a couple pairs of jeans and some T-shirts. He was trying to travel as light as he could, and I think he felt sorry for all those people whose lives got so tangled up in the things they owned that they weren’t ever able to do anything else except spend all their time keeping their possessions together. I think in some way that’s what all his movies were about—how even one pair of snakeskin boots can ruin your life if you’re not careful.
I guess by the time he gave me those, he thought he could trust me to be careful. I remember I wore them all the time—even in the hot summers—and some years later, when I was living in Tennessee, I used to take them out of the closet every once in a while just to look at them. They were all silvery-gray colored, and each one of the little scales caught the light a different way. You could study that snakeskin for hours and never get tired of looking at it. The other thing I liked was how tough they were, even though I know from when I was a kid and used to tromp around in the woods how a snakeskin after it’s been shed is the most delicate thing in the world.
But after I left New York I never put them on again, even on those nights when I’d find myself wondering where Carlos was that moment, what he was doing, and I’d wish I was there with him whatever he was doing. I didn’t care, I just wanted to be with him. Those were the nights I’d stop at the liquor store on the way home from work and buy a pint of Canadian Club for old times. I’d park my truck on the river bluff—this little park called Tom Lee Park—and watch the Mississippi flow past, and Arkansas in the distance on the other side. In the middle of the park, I remember, there was this monument to Tom Lee—a piece of rock that said on it, A WORTHY NEGRO. Tom Lee was this slave who swam out in the Mississippi when some riverboat caught on fire and saved a bunch of white people from drowning. And he got drowned himself.
I felt completely lonely, like I’d made some wrong turn and gotten very lost. Even though now my life was what you’d call normal and not crazy like it used to be with Carlos, still I felt like there was this wrong turn I’d made. I had a job and a house to go home to and Monica waiting for me and everything. Still, I’d watch the river go past with pieces of lumber and garbage floating in the current, and I’d think about Carlos and it all seemed so far away, like it was a dream that had happened to me but that was all. Those were the nights I might’ve gone home and dragged those boots out of the closet and put them on, but I never did. It would’ve been too depressing, and no telling what I might’ve done once I had them on.
After I left Carlos, there was only one time I ever put those boots back on—but that’ll have to be for later.
SO FAR AS I KNOW, CARLOS NEVER TRIED TO RELEASE The Gospel According to Sodom, which is what he called the movie we made in the warehouse. He edited it down and everything like he was going to release it, but then he never did. He kept it to himself, like some secret diary where he’d put down all his dreams, or maybe I should say nightmares, about me and Scott.
Probably he’d have gotten into some kind of legal trouble if he released it—but that can’t be the reason why he held onto it.
I know it was an important movie for him to make. Looking back on everything, I guess you could say everything really started there. I mean, everything that went on building up till the end, when it finally came down. Or if it didn’t start with The Gospel, then at least that’s where it came up to the surface. It was in all the other movies too, but Carlos never gave it free reign till he locked us in that warehouse for those three days to see what he could make happen. And even though in the next couple of movies he made after The Gospel he pulled back a lot from what he’d learned, still there it was inside him, and just knowing that freed him up.
I also have to say this—I don’t think Carlos could’ve learned the things he did without me and Scott, and so in some sense I’m partly to blame for things that happened later. I’m not walking away from it—I’m taking the blame. Plus, I want to say for the record that I think Carlos did exactly what he had to do, all the way up through that last movie, Boys of Life. Considering everything that happened, you might not expect me to say that. But I do say it. And I also say—I did exactly what I had to do, too.
Which is jumping way ahead to the end—and I’ll get there soon enough anyway.
About The Gospel: I know there’ve always been lots of rumors about that movie, mostly from people who weren’t there when we made it, and so couldn’t have known anything. But there was something about this being Carlos’s secret movie that set everybody whispering about the way it was made, the kinds of things Carlos made us do. Making things sound worse than they really were. First off, he didn’t make us do anything. Everything we did, we made up on the spot. You could say, we wanted to do it. The shit scene, for example. It’s true Scott squatted down over me and dropped this turd right on my chest, and it’s true he dabbled around in it a little and even tasted it. But Carlos never made us eat each other’s shit. I know some people testified that at my trial, and I know they did it because they thought they were helping me out by saying things like that about Carlos—but they’re wrong, and they know it. Just like those same people who later said Carlos hypnotized us before we did scenes like that, so we’d do whatever he wanted us to without being able to resist. But that’s also not true. I’ll say here for the record that it’s not true, and if Scott decided to eat his shit off my chest then that was something he decided to do, and there might’ve been a lot of reasons for it or maybe there wasn’t any reason at all, it was just something he did—but still he was the one who decided to do it.
I think some people who knew Carlos just a little, who talked to him only once or twice, probably figured that here was this guy who, if he wante
d to hypnotize somebody, probably could. But finally that’s wishful thinking, and Carlos never did any of that—no matter what some of my so-called friends from The Company say.
You didn’t find Seth saying things like that on any witness stand. And if anybody was the one to know, it was Seth. How’re you going to trust what a few sound men and stagehands have to say over Seth and his camera?
It is true about the fisting scene—I ended up doing that to Scott, but it was something he wanted. Talk about somebody totally into their ass. It’s the only time in my life I ever fisted somebody: I could feel his warm slick insides throbbing around me, and I remember I had this feeling I could just keep going, there wasn’t anything to stop me from turning him inside out if I wanted to.
The movie wasn’t all like that. There was some very funny stuff in it too—like Sammy’s part. He was supposed to be king of that painted city, and he got carried around through the whole movie on this throne by these four black men. He’d sit there dressed up in this gold lamé bathrobe, with an onion-dome crown perched on his head. “I’m touring the properties,” he’d say, making these blessing motions with his hands like the Pope. “My dominions,” he’d say. “Onions for the minions of my dominions.”
Also there were the angel wings Verbena strapped on our shoulders, these big gaudy peacock-feather things which were the only clothes Scott and I had on for those three whole days. We had a lot of fun with stuff like that—the huge chandelier throne that lowered down from the ceiling so Scott and I could sail away to heaven, and all the dildoes Sammy kept pulling out of the pockets of his robe to offer us whenever we tried to have a serious conversation with him. “Accept the bounty of my kingdom, fair strangers,” he’d say, and bow to us.
There was also the stuff with the pistol.
I know the pistol story’s part of the Carlos legend everybody likes to talk about, but everybody gets it totally wrong. And besides, it happened to me, not them.
It was the end of the second day, and everything would’ve been going fine, I guess, if I hadn’t seen this one thing that really upset me. Scott and I’d done some pretty heavy stuff with each other by then, including this one scene with one of the dildoes Sammy’d presented us with, this monster thing Scott went and worked up into me. None too gently, I have to say—like he was paying me back.
Afterward, I was walking around letting my guts calm down a little, feeling both incredibly lifted up and also totally emptied out. I’d wandered over to the corner of the warehouse where we’d tossed our clothes that first day, and then I saw Scott. He was sitting on this pile of tarpaulins, with nothing on except his peacock-feather angel wings. At first I thought he was jerking off—which would’ve been a little strange, considering. I took about three more steps toward him and then I stopped. He had a belt wrapped around his arm, and he was making a fist, flexing it. He drew a little blood from his arm up into the syringe and held it there, then eased it back into his arm, and when he did that he kind of shivered.
It’s something I’ll remember till I die, that shiver. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I could hear Verbena or somebody hammering something somewhere up in the rafters, but the sound was so hollow it didn’t fill the space of that warehouse at all. After what seemed like forever but was probably about fifteen seconds, Scott pulled the syringe out of his arm and laid it in a little case that was open on his lap. Then he undid the belt and wound it into loops, and laid it on his folded-up trousers.
He didn’t see me, and I backed away without making a sound. But I went straight to Carlos and told him I was getting out, I couldn’t stand this anymore.
He was sitting down, writing some stuff in a little notebook. He didn’t even look up.
“You can’t get out,” he said. He was completely calm about it. “It’s too late,” he said.
“Of course I can,” I told him. “This is a free country. I can walk out any time I want to.”
“Try it,” he said.
That’s when he pulled out the pistol.
My heart stopped. “I don’t believe it,” I told him. “You’re crazy.” I was yelling at him. “Can’t you understand about people’s lives? People’s lives aren’t movies.”
“I’m not making movies,” Carlos said. He was still sitting, and still completely calm. And still pointing the pistol right at me.
I’m sure I was a sight. Standing there in front of him completely naked except for those stupid peacock-feather angel wings.
“Then what do you think you’re making?” I said.
“I’m making reality,” Carlos said. “I’m trying to make a little bit of reality.”
“You are crazy,” I told him. It was the first time I ever stood up to him like that. “You don’t know what’s what anymore.”
“Or maybe you’re afraid I actually do,” Carlos said. “And that scares you to death, doesn’t it? That I took some dumb little fucked-up country kid and showed him some ways of looking at things he never even thought about, and now he doesn’t know what to do with all that. He doesn’t know how to use it, and so he’s afraid of what he sees. He closes his eyes, because he’s afraid what he sees all around him might really be reality. And so he wants to run away.”
“There’s not anything real in your movies, Carlos, there’s not anything there,” I told him, sick in the pit of my stomach to know all of a sudden that he was right and I was wrong, that it really was reality, me and Sammy wandering the alphabets, me and Scott fucking in some warehouse in Brooklyn—all that was just as much reality as anything else, and what’s worse, it was my life. I’d lived through all those things and they were just as real as anything that ever happened to me. And if all those things could happen and be my life then anything else could too.
Carlos was also right that I was scared to death. Plus he had that pistol.
“All right, all right,” I told him. “I’ll stay.”
“I knew you would.” He grinned that tight grin of his, then he put the pistol away. He’d never even stood up in the whole argument. But I could see he was embarrassed, like the instant he pulled that pistol was the one single time in his life he hadn’t trusted me, and he was ashamed of that.
I was fine for the moment. I told everybody within earshot I was fine, not to worry. But as soon as I got away from Carlos and found a place to sit down and put myself back together, I started trembling all over just thinking about what had happened. He must’ve known I was going to be upset, because I hadn’t been sitting there three minutes before he came over. He sat down beside me and put his arm around me, which with those angel wings was clumsy to do.
“I guess angels don’t hug much,” he said.
“Angels don’t do a lot of things. They don’t even exist.”
“Look,” he told me. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I don’t know what happened.”
“You have a gun,” I told him. I still couldn’t believe he was carrying a gun.
He took it out. “Go ahead,” he said, “it’s all yours. Shoot me—I deserve it.”
“I don’t want to shoot you, are you crazy?”
He forced me to take the gun in my hand anyway.
“Put it to my head,” he said. “Pull the trigger.”
He took my hand where I was holding the gun and dragged it over to his temple. “There,” he said. “Go on, pull the trigger.”
I threw the gun down on the floor—it made a clattery noise on the concrete.
“So we’re even,” he said.
I looked at him. “We’re not ever going to be even,” I had to tell him. And I guess he knew that. He stood up and put his hands in his pockets like he didn’t know what to do next.
“I know it’s hard,” he said. “It’s impossible. We have to keep on going in spite of all that. There was this newspaper, a revolutionary newspaper back a hundred years ago, and its motto was this—its motto said Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will. Do you understand what that means?”
I did understand, sort o
f.
“We have to keep living that way,” Carlos said. “Every single one of us. You and me and Scott and all of us. Until we drop down dead.” He picked up the gun and put it back in his pocket.
And that was that. Maybe I should’ve pulled the trigger—when I look back on it, I think that maybe he really did want me to shoot him right then and there. But I wasn’t about to do that. It wouldn’t have made any sense to do it.
When I thought about it, it made complete sense that Scott was shooting junk—I should’ve guessed it from the start, the way he couldn’t keep his dick hard for more than half a minute at any one time. It was frustrating—I used to nibble at it like it was some little fish I was trying to slurp down, but nothing would happen. After a while it’d usually start to crank up, and I’d think, Oh good. It’d get about halfway there and then die down again. The whole three days I kept trying to work him back into a hard-on like he’d had for a couple of minutes that first time when I was undressing him, but I never did.
One last thing I should mention about that movie—how the last scene we did for it was in a way just the reverse of the first scene we shot. We unstrapped those dumb angel wings we’d been wearing for the last three days. I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt, Scott got back in his prep school outfit. I remember watching him disappear inside his clothes, till he turned back into this prep school kid anybody could see walking down the street and never know about. But underneath all those clothes was still his dick I’d sucked on and his balls I’d licked, and under the balls that smooth hard cord of muscle running back to his asshole I’d been inside of, and past that—all his insides I’d felt my way up into.
“See you around,” he said, like we’d just met and nothing else ever happened, it was just some fever he’d had.