The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Malachi the Queer
By
Damian Jay Clay
AVAILABLE TO BUY
from the same author
Jack’s Diary
Ollie and the Clingfangers in the Dark
For more information please visit:
www.facebook.com/damianjayclay
Or add Damian to twitter @damianjayclay
Please leave an Amazon review. It makes all the difference.
Dedicated to Tom Sherry
for opening all the windows.
With thanks to Charlotte, Aaron and Luke for their invaluable feedback and special thanks to Barbara Bloomfield.
But yours the cold heart, and the murderous tongue,
The wintry soul that hates to hear a song,
The close-shut fist, the mean and measuring eye,
And all the little poisoned ways of wrong.
~ The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
(translated by Richard Le Galliene.)
Chapter One
There are reasons to be afraid of the night: the inattention of the world – God's eyes are closed – which they say makes anything possible; the darkness cut clean with the flash of lightning that tries to get you and the silence of everything but the hum from the electric fan of the laptop. All these things are dangerous and all these things are beautiful. They are the background to my life. Yet none are as dear to me as Noah.
He shifts and turns in his sleep, half covered by a duvet, and flaps air through his lips making a staccato hum which ends in a relaxed giggle. From here at the computer desk the monitor light illuminates his pink feet and the burn scars on the back of his calves that, though presently hidden from view, continue midway up his back. Like mine, in places they are ill defined and scarcely noticeable at all but, also like mine, the scar around his ankle, as thick as an ember wedding band, remains unfaded from where the innocence was burned away from the flesh. The thought of it leaves me with a bellyful of weeds.
He turns once again so now he is on his back and only a corner of the duvet covers his belly. The temptation to go back to bed and hug him awake – to run my hands over the hair so new to his chest, sends pulses up my arms and down into my groin. My mouth moistens at the thought of the taste of his skin but how can you bring yourself to wake someone you love when mirth comes so hard for them in the waking world and yet they laugh so joyously in their sleep?
The high ceiling in this room has given me a kind of insomnia. It’s impossible to drop off unless shattered and instead making the mistake of lying on my back and fixating on the space above. I worry that in falling asleep I’ll be lost in the air or that I’ll lose something and everything will change again.
The room is bigger than the lounge of my parents’ house and is filled with over stacked bookshelves, some of which lean precariously and creak when Noah or I walk past at too close a distance. The walls are covered in photos from the past year: the holidays to Boston and Val Thorens, the weekend in France and the trips to Oxford, Cambridge and most of the museums in London, not framed, all held in place by blue tac as if waiting to be pulled down. Though nothing could be further from the truth.
This is my room but, most nights, more or less every night, Noah ends up in bed with me. It's not that my foster parents approve of this or even that they don't know and would disapprove of this. They know full well and it wouldn't even cross their minds to have a negative position on two people who are in love sharing a bed.
I’m not sure why we never end up in Noah's room. I think it’s because I’m always working or at my books and he always comes in to disturb me. Though that makes it sound like his disturbances are unwanted, which isn’t true either.
I turn back to the computer screen – the problem remains: how to translate this particular passage. It wasn’t exactly a plan to re-imagine Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance into modern English; Noah won’t read anything other than soppy gay teenage fiction if left to his own devices and though he’s not stupid (he’s rather brilliant actually, in ways I would never hope to be), there’s no way he will sit through a book written in the language of a dead, eighteenth century poet and philosopher.
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Why is this so important? Because this book transformed my life insomuch as it inoculated me against the prescription of right and wrong and from the demands of the expectation of others. Or maybe it was everything that happened which did that and these beautiful words crystallised the experience. These are things Noah needs to understand for himself and, even though I don’t doubt his love, these are things he should understand about me. Perhaps people will think it’s presumptuous for a fifteen year old boy to be editing Emerson but I think I can do it justice. In fact, I think my translation will be brilliant.
But tonight the words race and turn and don’t want to be pinned down. They are all disconnected and pass by like when I'm scanning for a word in a dictionary. Perhaps tiredness has caught up with me but, at the moment, sleep still seems impossible.
The computer gives out a light ping that tells me an email has arrived. It’s from Jacob, which means he’s either writing to tell me how much fun college is, he’s coming back to see us for a weekend, or (as in mails over the past month) it’s something about our court case. Inside is a link to The Guardian and four words from Jacob: Have you seen this?
IDAHO MAN KILLS HIMSELF WHILE AWAITING EXTRADITION
When the link opens, the headline tightens around my throat. Then there is the name, Gareth McNeil, which pushes my eyes an inch back into my brain. I feel my temples tighten and my mind become a war zone.
“I did this. This is my fault.”
“Yes and you’re glad he’s dead aren’t you!”
“I didn’t ask for any of this to happen.”
“But you let it happen and you got your revenge. Wasn’t that enough?”
“He was an evil bastard.”
“He was like you. Just… like… you…”
The slam of the laptop makes Noah turn again and leaves him uncovered except where he’s hugging the duvet.
I think there’s little choice in the world. I didn’t chose to fall in love with Noah, it happened beyond any control I could claim. I didn’t choose for the things that led up to our meeting or most anything that happened after. I didn't choose to tear out my own heart.
I pull on my boxers and creep out of the room, shutting the door behind me as quietly as I can.
This house is an object of desire: five floors plus basement and a roof garden. I don’t know how many rooms it has as I never use anything above the cinema and games room on the second floor and only Catherine and Noah use the attic studio. There have been things in my life that I’ve desired and I always read in books how when someone gets a wish they become bored of it and move onto another but I don’t think I’m that kind of person because I still love this place and my new life here.
My feet mash into deep red carpet as I walk across the first floor hall, whose paint can only be seen behind the collage of paintings which hang three abreast and then anywhere else there is a gap, then down the wooden stairs.
The kitchen is huge, all glass, chrome and black granite with two floating islands at right angles. In a place of its own, almost like
a second room without a separating wall, is a large oak breakfast table, which is the epicentre of life in the house.
Catherine sits at its head with a mug of coffee in hand, reading one of the arty magazines which gets delivered every month and stacked on the sideboard by the table. She’s smoking a cigarette, something she only ever does at night. Before she notices me I watch her bring it to her lips where she gently caresses the filter before lowering the cigarette and blowing a narrow-lipped kiss to the air.
She taps the ash onto her saucer. “Can’t you sleep either?”
I hug her from behind, then sit down on the chair next to her and she rests her right hand on mine.
She touches my side with her left hand and I giggle and squirm away, then she lays her hand on and runs her fingertips down the ropy scar. Her touch is so warm and comforting and like nothing I could have gotten from my real mum. I sit here in my boxers and I don't feel threatened or ashamed. I feel loved.
“I don’t think they’re going to fade any more. Not quickly, anyway. Would you like something?” She doesn’t wait for my answer. She gets up and cuts me a slice of chocolate layer cake from the fridge and places it on a white china plate, then pours me some milk in a tall glass to go with it. She brings it over to me with a dessert fork and sits back down.
I instinctively hold my right side, which happens when anyone brings up the deep rectangular scars on my side or my back. “They don’t bother me that much. They’re easily hidden unless I’m in my swimming costume.”
She runs her hand through the back of my hair. “Is something the matter? You seem… I don’t know.’
“Gareth killed himself.” My speech is soft, even and unaffected. I take a bite of the cake which is one of Catherine’s own creations. It’s dark and not very sweet but deep and so rich it dries and stickies the inside of my mouth as I swallow.
Catherine runs her hand down my back, pulls me in and kisses my forehead. As we move back her face hangs in wait of my reaction. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t know.” I take a sip of milk. “It’s complicated. Everybody who reads the papers or the blog knows about us now but they never get it right. They don’t know what I lost.” Everything is secure here – everything safe. I even feel like I can cry in front of her if I want to, even though I don’t want to cry much any more.
She puts out her cigarette. “It’s all right to be angry.”
"I know."
And that’s all we say about it. I eat the cake and drink the milk while Catherine fusses over me. I love her attention – I’ve never felt so spoiled in my life since I came to live here. My foster parents give me all the time and attention I want and all the freedom I need to be myself.
We’re there for another glass of milk (a coffee for her) and then I go back to my room and drop my boxers to the floor. I catch sight of myself in the mirror as I’m about to get in beside Noah.
The memory comes back to me. My scars disappear and I see the boy I was over a year ago, just after my fourteenth birthday…
Part One – The Wilderness
Salvation to all that will is nigh,
That All, which always is All everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Loe, faithful Virgin, yields himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though he there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet he'will wear
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in his mind, who is thy Son, and Brother,
Whom thou conceiv'st, conceiv'd; yea thou art now
Thy maker's maker, and thy father's mother,
Thou hast light in dark; and shutst in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.
John Donne
Chapter Two
The naked boy in the mirror is thinking about his parents dying. His name is Malachi Russell and he is a liar. He’s five feet two inches, which he considers short. His once black hair is overgrown and now bleached blond but this is obvious because of his black eyebrows that are highlighted by his brown eyes. Something about this, alongside his nose which he thinks is slightly too long and slightly too flat, makes his entire face seem unnatural.
His body is soft and underdeveloped, still equipped with too much puppy fat and only just showing any hair growth between his legs or under his arms. He is what his mum calls – a late bloomer.
That’s how this ritual began, as a response to seeing the boys in his year at their showers and how he saw their bodies change and progress as they became men and he stayed a boy, scrambling for evidence that puberty had arrived. Now all that had changed and the ritual had taken on a new meaning.
In a tarot deck the sixteenth card in the major arcana is called The Tower. It depicts a naked man and woman falling from a medieval stone tower as lightning strikes and it is destroyed. In a reading from a fortune teller (if you’re stupid enough to believe in that sort of thing) it is considered an ill omen, perhaps the worst card that can be drawn. Some people say it represents biblical horror, like the destruction of the Tower of Babel, which men built in order to reach and talk to god; or the Harrowing of Hell, where Jesus descended into hell after he was crucified to free the souls of those already there.
But not even that interests me. The reason I like this card, and the major arcana of the tarot deck, is for the semiotics and iconography: the symbology. What the card represents to me is the loss of everything but yourself. So I stand naked in the mirror and think about the life I might have if my parents were dead. Not that I wish them dead, more so that I wish myself alive.
The tower is a reminder that you could lose everything you ever took for granted at a moment’s notice. That, while we live every day with the illusion of control, even the things we think we’ll keep forever are vulnerable. That is something I do understand through my own experience.
My room is like the cell of a monk. There is only a bed, the wardrobe with the full length mirror and a bookcase which I can reach when lying down. There are things I’m not allowed to have in my room: a television or a computer; a radio or any kind of music equipment; posters of bands or from movies. All the boys and girls my age at school have mobile phones but not me, not even an MP3 player. I would be allowed toys if I were interested in them. I still have my bear. The fact is, I’m not allowed anything that doesn’t glorify God.
Even the windows, which are made up of hand sized rectangles of glass set into wooden slats, form the shadow of bars on the wall in the evening sun.
It’s a stifling hot July day and it feels good to be naked. I go to my bed and lie back letting the air from the fan hit my body and cool me – luxury. I lay there for a minute, then reach under the mattress and pull out the hidden magazine, a holiday brochure I took from the local travel agents. I sit on the bed with my legs crossed and open it to page sixteen. There is a picture of a thirty something family man in Speedos holding a beach ball by the sea. I look at him and play with myself. I fantasise about running into his arms and thrusting my face into his hairy chest. He grabs and squeezes my arse and opens his mouth for my tongue which slides against the inside of his rough spearmint cheeks. I look down and nothing is happening. It feels good playing with myself but no thought or fantasy I’ve ever had can make it go hard. So I try again and imagine I’m sliding my hand down the front of his trunks and I feel him get hard in my hand. Yes, much better, much sexier. I lick his chest and take his hard nipple into my mouth and bite down on it a little.
“Malachi! What are you doing!”
I don’t notice the door open. Now my dad is standing right in front of me so I cover myself as the heat rises to my face and my body starts to shake.
He is tall and fit, unlike me, and he’s wearing the blue suit and one of the plain green ties he reserves for important meetings.
He does
n’t leave. He stares, and not at me but what I was looking at in the brochure. Then he looks at me and swallows. “You better get dressed. You’re going to be late if you don’t hurry up.”
No row, no shouting – he gently shuts the door behind him.
I am a heart attack. I feel myself struggle to breathe: so desperate for air, still trembling, still hot faced. I lay back down and beat the mattress with my fist.
My name is Malachi Russell and I think I’ve been found out.
I'm surprised at how fast I regain control. My mind starts turning everything over and it's clear there's no way to talk myself out of this one.
I go back to my wardrobe and get dressed: bleached white jeans and my coolest t-shirt which is dark blue. It has a picture of a surfboard on it and a river of dark purple. Not that I’ve ever been surfing, been anywhere near a place where you can surf or have the slightest interest in it or intention of going. It’s something that, like most of my other clothes, came from the Christian Aid charity shop and is the one that I hope will make me look the least weird.
I sit back down on my bed and read through the brochure. I’ve never been on holiday, not that I remember. The brochure shows pictures of a family holiday camp and lists all it has on offer: a swimming pool, golf course, putting green, crazy golf, fishing lake, amusements, family restaurant and bar with evening cabaret, on site shops and a kids club. The kind of holiday the children from school have every summer that ensures I have to argue about how much better and more important missionary work in Rwanda is than wasting your money on holidays. But in truth I envy them. I envy every one of them.
The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Malachi the Queer Page 1