Are You Loathsome Tonight?

by Poppy Z. Brite

  Joe often likes to have one-off trysts with ugly men, men he finds physically appalling, but this one is a beauty: tall and smoothly muscled, with brown curly hair that tumbled into bright blue eyes, a thick Scottish accent, an exceedingly clever pair of hands, and a big-headed, heavily veined cock.

  In the late afternoon shafts of sunlight that filter through the barn's patched roof, they take turns kneeling on the dusty floor and sucking each other to a fever pitch. Then Joe braces himself against the wall and lets that fat textured cock slide deep into his arse, opening himself to this stranger in a way that he never can to Kenneth—not any more, not ever again.

  London, 8 August 1967

  Conversation after the lights are out:

  “Joe?"

  “..."

  “Joe?"

  “What?"

  “Why did you ask me if I'd kill you?"

  “I don't know what you're on about."

  “Do you want to die, Joe?"

  “Do I...” A sudden bray of laughter. “Hell, no! You twit, why would I want to die?"

  “Then why did you bring it up?"

  “Hm...” Joe is already falling back asleep. “I suppose I just wondered whether you were that far gone."

  His breathing deepens, slows. Joe is lying on his left side, his face to the wall. The collage spreads above him like a fungus, its components indistinguishable in the street-lit dark. Kenneth sits up, slips out of bed, maybe planning to take a Nembutal, maybe just going to have a pee.

  But he freezes at the sight on the bedside table: Joe's open diary, and balanced atop it carelessly, as if flung there by accident, a claw hammer. Joe hung some pictures earlier in the day, so the hammer has every reason to be there. But the juxtaposition of objects hypnotizes Kenneth, draws him.

  He extends his hand cautiously, as if he is afraid the hammer will disappear. Then it is in his palm, heavy, smooth wooden handle, a comfortable fit. He raises it.

  “Joe?"

  Slow breathing.

  “Joe?"

  I suppose I just wondered whether you were that far gone...

  And the knowledge that he is that far gone, that Joe must know that or be blind, sweeps over Kenneth like a dark sea. All the years he has invested, his work, his talent, his whole existence subsumed by Joe. The infidelities lovingly recorded in the diaries, literally under Kenneth's nose (the flat is only sixteen by eighteen feet). In that moment the dam overflows, the camel's back breaks, the shit hits the fan, and life as Kenneth Halliwell knows it becomes intolerable.

  Without allowing himself to think about it further, he lets the hammer fall.

  Nine times.

  The amount of blood on his collage is staggering. Even in the dark Kenneth can see that most of the cutout figures are spattered if not obscured entirely. The thing on the pillow is no longer Joe; it is like a physician's model, an example of a ruined cranium. And yet he still imagines he can hear that slow breathing.

  After undressing (Joe's blood is sticky on his pajama top) and scrawling a brief, unremarkable note, Kenneth goes for the bottle of Nembutal and swallows twenty-two, washing them down with a tin of grapefruit juice. He is dead before his considerable bulk hits the floor.

  Joe's sheets, however, are still warm when the bodies are found the next morning.

  London, 8 August 1996

  “Harder! It's not going in! Lean on it ... Oh, bloody fuck, Willem, get out of the way and let me do it!"

  Clive shoulders his way up the narrow staircase and pushes Willem away from one end of a large sofa upholstered in royal purple velvet. The other end of this venerable piece is stuck fast in the doorway of the tiny flat. Clive leans against it and gives a mighty shove. Wiry muscles stand out on his neck and shoulders. Willem mutters something in Dutch.

  “What?"

  Willem points at a spot just below his navel. “What do you call it when the intestines come out?"

  “Hernia? No, look, you push with your knees bent. Like this ... Ugh!” The paint on the doorframe surrenders several layers, and the sofa is in the flat.

  Back outside, they struggle to get an antique steamer trunk full of Clive's photography equipment up the granite steps of the stoop. The staircase looms above them. Everything seemed much lighter in Amsterdam, probably because they had two friends helping. Now that they are here, their possessions appear enormous and unmanageable.

  A young man passing on the street stops to watch their efforts. Clive is annoyed until the man, who is distinctly rough-trade, says, “Need a bit o’ help wi’ that there?"

  They accept too gratefully, and he asks for forty pounds. They bargain him down to thirty. A bargain it is, for they could not have done it alone. By the time their things are in the flat, they feel sufficiently comfortable with the young man to ask if he knows where to get weed in Islington. The young man exclaims that he lives right around the corner and knows a guy who had some good stuff coming in today. They pay him the thirty pounds, give him an additional twenty toward the weed, and say goodbye half-expecting never to see him again.

  Of course, they never do.

  “Fucking London,” Clive grumbles over Indian takeaway that night. “Fucking welcome home. Forgot why I left, I did."

  On the verge of thirty, Clive has received glowing reviews for his art photography, but couldn't get the lucrative portrait work he needed to live well in Amsterdam. He has decided that Dutch people don't care for having their pictures taken nearly as much as the English do. Even Willem in all his scruffy blond loveliness is a lousy model, always fidgeting, wanting a cigarette, wanting a joint, saying he is cold. Willem is a writer (some of the time) and can work anywhere (or not), so they have decided to relocate to Clive's home city. Willem is excited about the move; he is twenty-five and has never lived outside the Netherlands. Clive hopes it will be temporary.

  “We'll get it somewhere else,” Willem consoles.

  “You're in England now, lovey dear. You can't just wander down to the corner coffeeshop and ask to see the menu. Anyway, I don't care about the weed.” Clive makes an expansive gesture ceilingward. “It's the attitude of this place I loathe."

  “The flat?” Willem looks around in alarm. He selected their new home, and particularly likes the pink and yellow tiles on the ceiling, though he wondered at the wisdom of bringing the purple sofa.

  “No, no ... London. Filthy place, innit? Always somebody ready to rip you off, from the drug dealer on the street to the poshest restaurant in the city.” He looks up at Willem. “Don't you think so?"

  They have visited London twice in their three years together, and Willem has been coming here on his own since his teens. He loves the grand spaces and vistas, the whirl of traffic, the diversity and dazzle. “No. I find it glamorous."

  Clive smirks. “Wait ’til you've lived here awhile."

  Willem finishes his rice, sops up the last of the lamb vindaloo with half a chapati, and begins to clear away the containers. “Shall we do some unpacking tonight,” he asks, “or are you too tired?"

  “I think I'm too tired for unpacking."

  Willem stops on his way to the kitchenette and looks at Clive. Clive is still smirking, but in a wholly different way.

  “Only for unpacking?” Willem inquires.

  “Well, the bed's already unpacked, innit?"

  The first sex in a new home is unique, preserved somehow in the watching walls that have already seen so much. It marks the space as your own, and you are conscious of this during the act. It also awakens things in the space that may have lain dormant for years—currents, if you will, or points of energy, or electromagnetic impulses. Or ghosts.

  Clive and Willem don't know anyone has been murdered here. Clive has heard of Joe Orton and his famous death, though he would be hazy on the details if asked. Willem has seen two of Orton's plays produced in Rotterdam, but knows little of the author's life in London. He found the plays very clever, had admired their facile wit. Now here he is, all unknowing, sucking his lover's cock on t
he spot where that wit met its end.

  Admittedly, it is the obvious place for a bed, against one of the longer walls under the big window. Thirty years’ worth of paint, the latest coat a semenesque oyster-white, covers the bloodstains and nightmare collages. Clive lies sprawled on the bed, his back arched, his fingers tangled in Willem's hair. Willem's mouth is hot and smooth on his cock, tongue teasing the head, lips slipping down the shaft. The soreness and tension of moving day begin to drain away, and Clive lets himself relax into a stupor of equal parts bliss and exhaustion.

  What the FUCK...

  This is Joe's first thought, and he suspects that it is not particularly original. But the feeling is too much to describe, the memory of the hammer blows, the sensation of leaving his body slowly, so slowly, trying to wrench himself free of the mangled meat like an animal chewing off its paw in a trap. Kenneth nearby, but maddeningly cold and dead, having taken the easy way out. Having gotten the last word, Kenneth was not bound to this place; he could have died anywhere.

  After that, nothing. It might have been a second or a century since the first blow fell. There was no heaven, no hell, absolutely nothing at all. Just as Joe had always expected. Until now. Until he finds himself not only sentient, but in the middle of an orgasm.

  “Willem!” he hears himself gasping. The name is unknown to him, but the sensations are deliciously familiar.

  The young man who has just finished sucking his cock looks up, smiling. His face is square, honest, and beautiful, his eyes china-blue, his full lips still glistening with traces of come.

  “Please, will you fuck me now?” he says.

  “Well—well, alright."

  “You're not too tired?” Willem has a charming little accent, German or Dutch, could be Hottentot for all Joe cares.

  “Absolutely not.” As he gets up onto his knees, he takes stock of this blessed body he has found himself in. Its build is much like his own was, smallish but solid. It has a big uncircumcised cock already swelling back to half-mast as Willem kisses his mouth, strokes his chest, bites his nipples. It feels young, healthy, glorious.

  He turns Willem around and rubs his cock between the younger man's arsecheeks. The crack of Willem's arse is lightly furred with gold. He groans as Willem pushes back against him. Willem passes him a tube of lubricant and a condom. Joe applies the lube to his erect cock and Willem's pretty arse, gently sliding a finger in, then two. He tosses the condom away, having no idea what else he is supposed to do with it.

  Willem feels Clive entering him unsheathed, which is strange but not entirely without precedent; each of them has tested negative three times, and since the third time they've gone condomless once or twice. It feels so good that he doesn't protest now. Clive's naked cock slides way up inside him, faster and harder than Clive usually puts it in. Clive's hands are clamped on Willem's hips, pulling Willem onto him. Clive has always been a wonderful fuck, but Willem cannot remember the last time he felt so thoroughly penetrated.

  It seems to go on for hours. Just when he's sure Clive is going to come, must come, Clive stops and catches his breath and kisses the back of Willem's neck for a bit, then starts fucking him again. At one point he pulls out, flips Willem over with no apparent effort, pushes Willem's legs up to his chest, and reenters him. They settle into a slow, deep rhythm. Clive is nuzzling at Willem's mouth, not just kissing him but inhaling his breath, sucking hungrily at his lips and tongue. Hungrily. That's how Clive is making love to him, like a man starved for it.

  At last Clive whispers, “I'm going to come now.” His cock seems to go deeper yet, and Willem feels it pulsing inside. Then Clive is holding him ever so tightly, pushing his face into Willem's neck and (Willem could almost swear) sobbing. His sperm sears Willem's insides, hot and effervescent, melting into Willem's tissues and suffusing them with something Willem has never felt before. It is a little like an acid trip, if all the hectic color and strange splendor of an acid trip could be folded into the space of two sweating, shuddering bodies.

  “Thank you,” says Clive, kissing him. Willem sees that Clive is crying, and when he kisses back, the tears taste of salt and copper on his tongue.

  Clive knows something happened while Willem was sucking his cock, but he can't say just what. It was the sex of his life (both his cock and Willem's arse are satisfyingly sore for days), but there was something detached about it, almost as if he'd been watching himself fuck Willem instead of actually doing it.

  Never mind, he tells himself. They were both exhausted from moving; that's why it was a bit odd. Not bad, though. He wouldn't actually mind if it happened again.

  Within days of their arrival, Clive's entire Amsterdam portfolio is taken on by a posh London gallery for a handsome commission. He won't be doing any portrait work for a while. On the way home to give Willem the good news, Clive buys a Polaroid camera.

  When he enters the flat, he is surprised to see Willem banging away on his old electric typewriter. As far as Clive knows, Willem hasn't done a lick of writing since the move. But now a sheaf of pages has accumulated on the desk beside him.

  “I wasn't thinking of anything in particular,” Willem explains, “and then suddenly I had an idea for a play."

  “A play?"

  “Yes, I've never written one before. Never even liked the idea.” Willem shrugged. “I don't know what's gotten into me, but I hope it stays."

  Monday's Special

  Just a parallel universe in which I took another career path.

  Monday's Special

  “Dr. Brite?"

  I looked up from my computer screen, where I'd been idly following a Usenet flame war about some obscure writer accused of child molestation. I didn't envy the lives of celebrities; even the least of them, like this hapless fellow, seemed to exist to be abused by the Great Unwashed. I had nursed literary ambitions myself once, but now I was glad I'd chosen the comparatively peaceful life of a coroner.

  My favorite assistant, Jeffrey, lounged in my office doorway. “A body just came in. Looks peculiar. Officer in charge wants you to see it right away."

  “I'll bet he does,” I said. Ever since I'd become the coroner of New Orleans, the cops were always in a hurry to show off their unusual cases to me, possibly (and wrongly) convinced that someday something was finally going to cross my disgust threshold.

  “She, sir."

  “Oh, sorry."

  The detective who'd come in with the body was Linda Getty, a tall young black woman just recently promoted. The body, still bagged, lay on a gurney by the big metal sinks. I had a heart attack case and a decomp waiting for me in the freezer, but apparently this guy came first. Jeffrey and I gloved and masked ourselves for action.

  “Guy was found dead on the street in the Desire housing project,” Getty told me. “Looks like he'd been dumped. No witnesses, nobody knows anything."

  “Imagine.” I unzipped the body bag and Jeffrey helped me peel it away. Our latest visitor was a young white man, skinny and blond, dressed in a black T-shirt and baggy pants dank with the residue of a rainy midsummer Monday. His bare ankles and feet were still bound with duct tape. Faint red stripes on his wrists suggested his hands had been bound too.

  “Has he been searched?” I asked. Getty shook her head. I slipped my hand into his right pants pocket. It was empty.

  But the left one wasn't. I pulled out a cheap leather wallet and a Baggie that held several small glass vials. Inside each vial was a crumb of something white.

  “You'll want to run this by toxicology, I believe.” I handed both items to Getty. “Anything in the wallet?"

  She flipped it open. “Louisiana driver's license. Gregory A. Chapman. No credit cards or cash."

  “I should think not."

  She held the Baggie up to the light and frowned at it. “I'm gonna take this on upstairs. See if they can get to it sometime today."

  I laughed. “Sometime this week, more likely."

  “Yeah, you right."

  She disappeared through the
sliding doors that led to the elevator. Jeffrey finished undressing the latest visitor to our way station in the basement of the big stone building at the corner of Tulane and Broad.

  “Hey, Doc, check out the bruises around his mouth."

  I probed the orifice with a latex-clad forefinger. It was full of jellied blood and enamel splinters. Gregory Chapman's four front teeth, two up top and two below, had been smashed off at the gumline.

  I took a careful look at the naked form on the gurney. “His abdomen's distended too,” I observed. In fact, it was grotesquely swollen and firm to the touch. “Looks like he got a pretty good beating. We'll see."

  I picked up a scalpel, placed the fresh blade tip against Mr. Chapman's chest and pressed down. The small amount of blood that pooled in the cut was dark and turgid, his skin rubbery. I made the two preliminary incisions that ran from the armpits to the sternum, then merged and sliced through the abdomen down to the pubic bone. The Y-shape formed by these incisions always struck me as apt for any number of faiths and persuasions: it might stand for the dark Yin or the vicious Yahweh, or represent a Yoni providing entrance to the forbidden recesses of the body. But this was pretentious tripe, the sort I might have fallen victim to had I pursued my artistic goals; on a good many of my clients the Y could be said to stand for nothing but Yat.

  We cracked Mr. Chapman's chest, spread his ribs, examined his heart and lungs. They were normal, as was his liver. I began to believe that this man had not died of a beating after all; there was no abnormal clotting, no suffusion of the tissues.

  I glanced quizzically at Jeffrey, who shrugged.

  “You want to open the belly for me?” I asked. Even after all these years, I still had an excitable tendency to thrust the scalpel in too deep, nicking the delicate viscera.