“Oh, fuckin’ Donny, you’re in trouble.” I gasped for air.
“Kenny, man, I think he likes you.”
“Not me, man. You the Jew with the schnoz. He wants to fist-fuck your beak, man.” The amyl was wearing off.
“Hey, later for this room. They’re all posers in here. I want to show you the back room, you game?” Donny winked.
“Shit, let’s go.” I was still laughing as I followed Donny to the rear of the bar.
At the archway we were charged a buck to go any further. We rounded the arch into another bar with maybe a hundred and fifty guys standing in a twenty-by-thirty area—nominally a dance floor. The only light was reflected off a movie screen mounted overhead. In the movie two Boy Scouts crammed what looked like a five-pound salami up the ass of a tenderfoot. Donny bulled his way toward the center of the cluster. I didn’t want to follow, but I wasn’t hanging out by myself, so I moved through the crowd in a mild panic, my forearm clamped in front of my groin like a police bar. I kept my eyes trained on chests, found three square inches of space and planted myself.
I stood rigid, packed in on all sides, staring at the screen. The crowd was dead silent; faces were stony. There was some kind of movement in the crowd, but I couldn’t figure out where. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I noticed that some guys were jerking each other off. A few had slipped to their knees and were giving head. Fuck that. I wanted out. I couldn’t move. The crowd had me hemmed in. Donny was nowhere to be seen. I started pushing. I felt like everybody suddenly decided to move in the opposite direction and I was bucking a tide. A hand brushed my cock. That was it. I was gone. I made it through a hundred guys in two seconds. I stood on the edge of the pack, sweating. Teeth and shirts glowed ghostlike under an ultraviolet light I hadn’t noticed before. I stared into the mob. Donny emerged. “Kenny, Where’d you go?”
“Fuck you.”
“Hey, relax, anybody grabs your joint, just push their hand away.”
I flashed on a Jacques Cousteau film I once saw where a diver in a shark gage tapped the noses of inquisitive sharks. Donny plowed back in. Screw it. Back in I went. Somebody brushed my joint. I pushed his hand. He went away. I felt a rush of power. Pricks blossomed out of flies like speeded-up nature films. I started to gawk. A short bald guy was desperately grabbing at every cock in sight—getting slapped away, like some creep trying to grab a slow dance at a mixer and getting shot down by every girl.
Against a wall I saw Donny, his arms behind him, gazing at the screen. A big dude approached him, his broad back obscuring Donny from my view. I could see Donny’s face over the guy’s shoulder. Donny briefly glanced at him, then returned his attention to the movie. I had never noticed that look on Donny’s face. It was one of power. Control. Hidden talents. Suddenly I Teal-ized I didn’t know him. Donny Goof-off. There was a lake in his face, a deep lake of other things, other hungers, hardnesses. There was more to him than met the eye. More to everything than met the eye, and I didn’t goddamn like it. The guy made some movements with his arms, then began jerking his elbow back and forth in short, rapid strokes. Donny looked down momentarily, then back at the movie. I shoved out of the crowd to the same wall I’d run for earlier.
I stood there staring into the snake pit and all I could think about was finding a caption for the picture. If the disco music hadn’t drowned out the nonstop shuffling of feet and a few sporadic groans or grunts I probably would have jumped out of my skin.
“Hey, man, you keep getting lost.” Donny reappeared.
“Nah, you know how I am at social gatherings. I’m shy.”
“Unbelievable, right?”
“I saw some guy in there with his fly open. I would have passed him a note but I didn’t want to embarrass him.”
“Kenny the Riffer.” Donny chuckled, wiping sweat from his eyebrow with the curl of his wrist.
“That’s me.” I smirked. “The grim riffer.”
“Let’s take a walk.” We left the Stockade.
“You get done?” I tried to make the question sound casual. .
“I got done, I did somebody—the whole shot.”
Getting lone didn’t seem too bad, but doing somebody made me jump back. I imagined Donny on his knees in front of some guy. The image was too much and I changed channels. I no longer noticed the leather boys as we walked along the black street. They were there, but they didn’t stand out so much anymore.
“How you doing, Kenny?”
“I’m good, I’m good. I got done, too.”
“You did?” Donny stopped abruptly.
“Shit, yeah, I got blown by a one-legged dwarf in a motorcycle jacket. I never knew sex could be like that.”
“Seriously, Kenny, how you doing?”
I didn’t know how to answer that question. All I could do was come up with one-liners. I wasn’t tired anymore, and I wasn’t shocked. Maybe numb, but the type of numb that came out as “oh yeah? what else is on this planet?”
“I’m just taking it all in, man. It’s very bizarre, very bizarre. What time is it?”
“About two, two-thirty. You want to try one more place?”
“Why not.” I had my immunity, and I knew I was going to shake Donny after the night anyhow.
Donny walked me over to a new place. The Garrison. We walked in and ba-boom! Sodom and Gomorrah. Hundreds of guys slammed and barraged by lights, jungle disco, nudity, heat, dungeons, come and sweat.
He pushed me through to the bar. Inches from our drinks and hands a young Spanish go-go boy, wearing construction boots and a gem-studded leather ring around his cock and balls, was strutting, prancing, mincing, twirling. Six of these nubile pubites danced around like that. Above their heads hung knotted, heavy ropes and wooden perches. They swung and flipped over the bar. They hung upside-down from the perches, flexing their assholes, the expression on their face pure Mae West. The disco pound was ear-shattering. A half-dozen large, dance-hall reflecting balls threw wild fragments of colored light like shrapnel against the floor, the walls, the paralyzed faces in the room and finally leapt up to the ceiling. The heat and packed flesh were unbelievable. On raised platforms, two ash-gray spades with the most finely chiseled musculature this side of the Alvin Ailey dancers twisted and contorted to music from outer space. One was nude except for a cowboy hat and a cock ring, the other was draped in chains. Above the pounding thunderlust shrieked a nonstop trill—a cross between a tropical bird and an ambulance siren. At first I thought it was coming from one of the go-go boys swinging wildly upside-down on his perch. I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell. Maybe it came from me. The walls.
Donny was standing next to me at the bar, ignoring the dancers but intensely scanning the mob.
“This is incredible, Kenny. This is the wildest! You gotta get into it! You gotta get into it! You can’t watch it! You gotta get into it!” He was sweating like death and looked half-gone with excitement. Suddenly he grabbed my wrist and pulled me through the crowd.
“Feel the excitement, Kenny! Feel it! This is where it is!”
“This is where what is?” I tried to wrench my hand free but his grip was cemented with his intensity. I was stumped for a funny answer to my own question. I was riffed out. He scared me. Donny was gone in his eyes and wouldn’t have heard me anyhow. Crazy son of a bitch. In a way I was .glad he was acting like this. With every moment I felt more and more distant from him and safer by myself.
He yanked me into the back room. Once again it was cluster-fuck-suck-snake-pit action under the flickering lights of two West Pointers reaming each other’s assholes on a movie screen. The crowd was so tight I was gulping air. We plunged into a catacomb. Musty brick, crumbling, moldy, utter blackness. I could see shadows. People on their knees.
Donny had disappeared somewhere deeper into the darkness. I moved out into the back room. In front of me, a guy in Jockey shorts was getting blown. Older men clustered around the action, watching, heads to one side, hands behind their backs, as if they were observing a chess ma
tch in the park. In a corner an enormously fat middle-aged man masturbated—his face to the wall. A kid buried his head into somebody’s buttocks and his glasses dangled on one ear. Cocks and mouths.
I moved into the crowd to break through to the front room and immediately got stuck. Movement was constant yet nobody went anywhere. I was dripping wet, stretching my throat for air, like a prehistoric animal trapped in a tar pit. I could see the dancers over by the bar spinning and swinging. On the fever-pitch disco track some spade chick came in waves, the heavy, relentless brass section stirring up images of pile-driver dicks. I was dying from the heat, drowning in invisible come. I was turned on. Motherfucker, I was turned on. I was thinking pussy but I couldn’t exactly ignore where I was. I tore through the crowd to the relatively free space of the front room. I cooled out, calmed down.
At the bar I grabbed a drink, then another. Staring at the go-go dancers, I tried to feel turned on again. Nothing. I felt pissed. Like a kid having a great time playing pinball then suddenly the machine jams. As my anger angled toward depression, I got hit with the absolute silence of the place. Despite the music, the trills, the lights, the dancers, the crotch violence, there was a total silence. I scanned the front room. Not one conversation. Eyes clicked and roamed like radar blips, but everyone was alone. La Donna. I wanted my baby. My mommy. I needed her. I loved her. Don’t give me this time shit. There was no time. I was hugging myself. We could work it out. Hug-crush love blows away all the bad air. I wanted her so bad I would gladly cut it off in the morning for just one more night. Turn priest, nun, anything. Donny popped out of the crowd and crashed into me, laughing and panting.
“Whew! Awright, lemme just cool off here so I don’t get pneumonia, and we’ll blow this popstand.” He seemed calmer now.
“I go fucking berserk in this joint, Kenny, you know? I get everything out here. It’s like a gym for me, you know what I mean? I walk around all week like I got bees in my head and I just blow it out here. You okay?” He was breathing like a six-day bike racer at halftime. “You know, Donny, I was just thinking; despite all the dead-end stuff I was talking between me and La Donna, I do feel that if I’m gonna change then La Donna is the person I have the most potential stuff going with and so I shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”
“Oh yeah?” He ran his forearm across his face. “C’mon, let’s split. I’m fuckin’ exhausted.”
We flagged a cab. He started nodding out, his head resting against the window.
“Fuckin’ Kenny, man.” His eyes were closed. “I had more fun tonight, man, than in the last five years, thousand years.” Eyes still closed, he extended his hand for a slap. “Maybe we’ll go to college together, man. Go back to college.”
I felt like punching him in the face. Fun. What fun. That was like the descent of man in there. Dissociated jerk-off. But as the cab rolled on and Donny nodded out, his hand still extended limply for a slap, I flashed on doing amyl and laughing our asses off, grooving on Straw Dogs in the yom palace, our heads down heart to heart in the restaurant.
I didn’t want to be alone. I needed company. The thought of going home, whacking off and going to sleep was unbearable. I felt like asking Donny if he wanted to snag something to eat in an all-night diner. Doing a recap of the night over coffeeand. Buddies. Forever buddies. No. Not tonight. Enough was enough. Suddenly I felt furious. I felt deep hate like an asthma. I felt like there was a con man in the cab. I couldn’t turn my head in Denny’s direction. I needed to get out, to get laid, to find some soft bitch and do it to death. I wanted to get off again in the worst way. Dump Donny and get some slash. A thought hit me and took my breath away like a suction pump in my lungs:
Go back! What? Go back! Suddenly my heart started pounding enough to make my eyes pop out of my head. I can go back to the Garrison! What? No! Yes! Go! You can’t! I can do anything I want! I wanted to go back and have someone pop my nut. I wanted to stand against a damp brick wall and have an anonymous mouth suck my dick. Dear God, was thai the end or what? You can’t do that! Whata you mean, I can’t do that? Half the goddamn place was wearing kneepads!
“Stop the cab.”
“Huh?” The driver craned his neck to the rear.
Donny blinked and rubbed his eyes.
“Stop the cab, right here. This is good.”
“Kenny, what’s happening?” Donny tried to shake the nap from his face.
“I know this chick in this neighborhood.”
“Becker, it’s four in the morning!”
“It’s cool.” I got out and leaned my head inside the window. “She’s just getting off work.” I extended my hand inside the cab. “Be good, Mr. Donny.”
Donny gave me a tentative slap.
“I’ll be in touch.”
I staggered back to the Garrison. I couldn’t see straight. I was totally torn. My heart was pumping Kool-Aid. My hard-on was going up and down every ten seconds. This was evil. This was bad. I was ripped between a terror and an excitement that I didn’t understand. I didn’t even know where I was. One block from the Garrison I grabbed a cab, gave the cabby directions. He looked at me like I was nuts.
“You wanna go one block?”
My face turned red with shame. I felt ugly and slimy. I was being the baddest bad boy in the world. But I was still turned on. Maybe that’s what the turn-on was all about.
If Mommy only knew.
I was a dead man so I couldn’t die, had nothing to lose. I could plunge in fire, make mudpies out of my shit and eat it. The kick was so intense I felt it rise like a tide past my teeth to my eyes. I was like the Invisible Man… invincible.
The cabby was staring at me over his shoulder. He threw the meter and, one arm across the top of the front seat, cruised to the Garrison. He turned to me, the look on his face one of amused contempt.
“Hey! I didn’t say here! I said Eighteenth and Eleventh, but I didn’t say here.” I was covered with a sweat as thick as butter.
He smirked. “Okay, which corner you want?”
“By the gas station.” I pointed to a deserted garage that had been closed a good six hours.
He sighed, drove fifty more feet and turned off the meter.
“Not everybody’s a faggot, you know.” I dropped a dollar and slammed the cab door.
I went into a phone booth by the blacked-out gas station and pretended to make a phone call until the cab was out of sight. My lust had died in seconds. I felt like a schmuck. Disgusted, heartsick, and exhausted. I didn’t give two shits about a blowjob. I just wanted to get away from Donny. Buddies in a diner was scarier than solo in a snake pit. My life. My fuckin’ life.
I moved toward the Garrison knowing I couldn’t get it up now with shin splints. As I walked through the door the music was just as loud as before, the reflecting lights just as chaotic, but I felt immune to the barrage. Jujuba the Nuba was up on the stage again. Coated with a protective fluid, he was in flames. Nude, glistening, he passed two torches across his crotch, around his ass, his thighs—blue flames like ceremonial wings danced on his arms. Caps of fire wavered on his fingertips. I ordered a gin and tonic. It felt sweet and heavy in ray stomach. I walked out.
There were half a dozen cabs parked in front discharging and boarding passengers. I wanted to fall into one, but I was embarrassed to take one right there. I didn’t want some guy checking me out in his rearview mirror. I walked east to Sixth Avenue and grabbed a Checker uptown.
SUNDAY
When I crawled in it was sunup. I felt like a vampire beating it back to his coffin in a race with the daylight. I headed straight for the bathroom, dropped my pants to my shoes and started beating off. The weak sun filtered in through the heavy leaded snowflake patterns of the window, bathing the room with a strange illumination—like the lighting in a Rembrandt painting. I crouched over the bowl like a ghoul throttling my meat, my brains a speeded-up film of pussies, cocks, assholes, mouths, faces, places, music, hair and groans. My kneecaps were trembling like overworked g
enerators, my elbows flaming with cramps. I lost my balance and almost fell face first into the wall. I caught myself on the sink, my feet trapped by my pants, and shoved myself upright.
My dick was throbbing, my lungs ballooning, my forearm charleyhorsed.
I pulled up my pants, sunk my hands into my front pockets and stared at the floor. “Oh man… Oh man.”
My skin was crawling. I felt infected, filthy. I stepped out of my clothes, jumped into the shower, then jumped back out before bitting the faucets. It wasn’t time for a shower. I felt like I needed to sweat more, to pump some of the shit to the surface. If I took a shower right then it wouldn’t have felt like anything.
Grabbing my barbell, I slipped on my sneakers and lay out on the living room floor, my bare ass on a pillow, my feet jammed under the couch.
I hit fifty without even blinking, without even breathing. Kenny makes a move. Kenny makes a move. What a joke. All my moves were frauds, to get out of things, not into them, to disentangle, to clear the boards of whatever pathetically little there was for me. Cleaner. Neater.
One hundred came and went. I couldn’t even feel my stomach tense. I could do it for hours, it was comforting. I started doing them faster, gripping the weight tighter.
I passed one twenty-five like a downhill train. The weight felt like a feather. Faster. Banging the iron on the floor with every downstroke, smacking my forehead into my kneecaps on the upstroke. Even anytime I wanted more, any time I wanted to get close, I was gone. I blew charge and retreat at the same time.
At one fifty my breath came out of my mout in soft chugs. My stomach knotted a little and there was the slightest clammy sprinkle of sweat on my back and chest. The pain was baby-sized, soothing.
At one seventy-five I tossed the weight aside to pick up speed. I started grunting.
What’s the difference? I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was a man. An adult. What was done was done.
Ladies' Man Page 24