Handsome Devil: Stories of Sin and Seduction

by Richard Bowes

  Starved herself to death, the policeman who found her said, shaking his head in disgust, only twenty-five, what a waste. The real mystery though was the meaning of the filthy red suede shoes nailed to the bedroom door with a kind of nail seldom seen anymore, hand forged with a square head, the type used a hundred years ago or so.

  She must have been really nuts, the policeman said as the EMTs carried the body out zipped into a black bag, you’d think someone would have noticed.

  After the family had cleared out her belongings, leaving the shoes behind, the landlord threw them in the dumpster behind the building. There they sat sinking deeper and deeper in the dark recess under the weight of other people’s garbage until they could no longer be seen below the detritus of everyday life.

  The Love of the Emperor Is Divine

  Tom Cardamone

  In vino sanitas

  —Pliny the Elder

  Loyal Publius,

  The love of the Emperor is Divine.

  So said one of my eunuch procurers to the last little tasty morsel shoved into my chambers. At least this one had been bathed. His tidy tunic was loose; no doubt he’d been thoroughly searched by the Praetorian Guards. Emperors fear assassins the way rabble fear indigestion; eventually one’s guts are stabbed. As you have dutifully reminded me before, I am nearly the oldest emperor to wear the Purple. Real danger is a slippery set of stairs. If the daggers come, so be it, as long as I don’t have to appear before the Senate again and accept their marbled accolades, beneficial poems, and painted statues that portray me as stronger than I have ever been in my life, more resolute and of sounder character than I’d actually care to be—a modern Seneca. Lo! If I live any longer they’ll carve statues of me riding chariots drawn by eagles while farting out golden apples of wisdom. Ridiculous. I want strong wine. I want Her Most Rotund Royal Highness to keep to her wing of the palace, and the occasional kiss from a sweet boy. The right kiss and I think of Decimus, and our carefree schooldays in Greece. Do you remember him? I’ve no idea of his fate.

  I am told by mutual acquaintances that you appear withdrawn and depressed since your banishment to Naples. Well done. The more solitary and disgruntled you appear, the more likely you will draw sour serpents from their nests. How the discontent love to compare wounds, squeezing out verbal pus to smear on one another’s lips and compare the pungent taste. Pay attention to the wives of the summering senators, especially old ones with patrician blood. Boredom loosens tongues and they know their wealthy fathers’ business as well as their husbands’, so there’s double bounty to be had.

  I know your accommodations are among the most superior along the coast as my uncle’s freedman once owned the very villa; who knew that rascal would flourish so financially once the yoke was lifted? His daughters are still whores, however. You can only polish rotten fruit so much. I expect you to start complaining in earnest by autumn. No doubt a suitable crisis, real or imagined, will present itself and you will be recalled. Until then, please pout and do not share the case of Narbonne wine that accompanies this missive. Importantly, when you decant, save, and reuse the corks; I went to a lot of trouble to have them treated to maintain aroma and keep the wine from turning.

  Report only salacious gossip and rumors of plot. I have no need for compliments. I am old and my reign will be brief. The empire is between wars. Our borders have grown and shrunk, expanded and withdrawn, an empire out of breath, an exhausted puffer fish caught in the net of history. Tired of assassinations, rattled by plague, with new religions racing up our backside like a mad rash, the Senate has hoisted this diadem upon my withered brow precisely because I look as worn out at the world feels.

  Burn this letter and do not copy your reply. Our discretion maddens my secretaries with fears of conspiracies, and I do like to keep these eunuchs guessing.

  Your Most Appreciative Emperor

  Loyal Publius,

  How does the clipping of testicles pull nostrils skyward? I’ve rarely seen a mincing eunuch who didn’t throw his nose up in the air at any task. The one who brings me my boys does so as if delivering dirty linen to the laundry. Think how past emperors would have had him crucified, or worse. But I’ve decided my short reign will be a peaceful one. My singular goal is to adopt the right heir, to find a bright young philosopher with a democratic soul to return republican principles to Rome. I am powerless in the present yet the whim of succession shapes the world! And lo, the princes and knights that leave their wives in my presence, thinking to divorce their way to the throne! Uglier are the ones who bring their ephebes around, the blond wisp of a beard tickling their curious and noble chins.

  The poets of this age are humorless, or at least in this city. If you find a wit on your end of the world, send him my way, please. I’ll stand him dinner every night of the year for the chance to utter an unexpected laugh. These evenings of stale theater and watered-down wine will be the end of me. A novel idea: assassination through boredom. Nero tried it on the world, perhaps the world now exacts its revenge regardless who occupies the throne?

  Your last letter was interesting. You speak of recent dreams of Decimus? That you have nighttime visitations from one so fair speaks that the sap still runs through your veins. I envy you, it now takes greater effort on my part to summon what used to flow so freely. Later this month a party of senators from Hispania Ulterior will decamp from Rome and borrow Bassianus’s estate. Get invited to one of their evenings of frivolity; I hear they’re quite bawdy and would like a firsthand report. Your last letter was interesting but hard to read. I’ve enclosed my favorite ink and will have more sent; I find it thicker and less blotty than what the imperial stores provide. Ignore the red tint when first brushed on papyrus, it dries to an ebony hue.

  Again, burn this letter and do not copy your reply. I don’t want future ages studying our drivel and gossip as if it were sagely advice the way scholars sort poor Claudius’s material.

  Your Most Jealous Emperor

  Loyal Publius,

  The feverish weather oppressing Rome makes your seaside villa more appealing than ever before. Half the city wants for banishment as luxurious as yours! Thank you for the complete works of Claudius, they’ve only just arrived and are as musty and droll as your wit. Next time you are at the market look among the latest coins for my image on the new sestertius. My likeness is that of a crone. Even the laurels look withered. I blame this heat.

  I approve of your lonely walks on the beach in the morning. This invites approach. No chance of being overheard. Wise move. Make sure your sandy march takes you past that churlish old equestrian Ligus’s tiny villa. He’s an early riser and blames me for the increase in last year’s grain tax.

  No, I do not remember Decimus as anything more than a harmless plaything. And playthings do not cry blood when they embrace you. Don’t blame the Narbonne for your bad dreams, my friend. This comes with old age. Unspent lust piles up and pours back out under the crack of whatever nocturnal door it was secured behind. These carnal thoughts never die, but ferment into an ugliness that requires the company of youth. Buy some young, choice slave. Treat him unjustly and you’ll sleep deeply and soundly, like the babe you just spoiled.

  Ah, but this heat makes me desire of sleep.

  Your Most Exhausted Emperor

  Loyal Publius,

  I’m glad you have heartily renewed your approval of the wine, more is on the way. Your description of the Hispania party was exact; I daresay our scribes at the courts could use a lesson from you! I have a small favor to ask. I’ve included a scroll I need discreetly returned to Proconsul Gnaeus’s library. It’s fragile and dusty as he collects the works of obscure Stoic philosophers. Return the scroll to his household upon receipt of this missive, before the Hispania party departs. Inquire if the proconsul or any guests are summering there. Try to appear as if you’re begging for a dinner invitation and explain that you borrowed the scroll summer before last. Gnaeus is currently touring Gallia to wean his son off a rather serious predilec
tion for Roman harlots, and I would like to ascertain if he indeed lent his house out and if so to whom. Our spies have information that the Hispania senators are in Naples for a clandestine meeting with unknown parties. Have no fear, you were at his house two summers ago and he pleaded with you to borrow this particular text, so cover is provided—Gods, the eyes of these imperial agents are everywhere! They even have record of that trip to the Isle of Rhodes we took while still so young. Also recorded, the name of the girl you abandoned me there for, as well as her height, hair color, and even a general appraisal of her teeth! I learned a lot, puttering around the ruins of old Tiberius’s playhouse, though I’m sure you learned more when you finally caught up with her in the port of Misenum. Yes, that’s recorded in the imperial records as well, and so too are some of the gymnastics the two of you tried out in bed. It’s both thrilling and startling to think we had caught the eye of empire at that age. No word on Decimus in any of these scrolls, however, as if the spies and secretaries knew he’d come to naught.

  Concerning your stated worry over the recent arrests and reassignments among the Praetorian Guard: don’t try to make sense of it because it doesn’t make any sense. I find it valuable to throw a little chaos at our military minds, they cannot comprehend anything that doesn’t fit their chessboard vision of order and armor, so they read endless meaning into the occasional, random execution. If they’re looking over their shoulder, then they’re not looking for the throne.

  No word of Decimus? Somnus denies your trysts?

  Your Most Nostalgic Emperor

  Loyal Publius,

  I’ve started composing my letters to you late at night. The air is still hot but there are no supplicants, slaves, or aggrieved citizens in the halls; their bustle and complaint agitates the very temperature of Rome. Did you know that during summers past the Emperor Domitian had ice hauled down from the Alps? Nerva put a stop to that and I concur, nothing incites a rabble so much as obscene luxury in the face of their suffering. I find myself obsessed with past rulers, and sympathetic toward those I had once considered vile. I was drafted into this lonely collegium and am now on the inside looking out, a prisoner of lisping litigants and petitioners weeping over the border skirmishes of countries I did not previously know were clients of the empire.

  Palace life is not as I imagined. I do note rule the world, I merely keep its accounts. I go to bed late and wake up early and in between dream that I am adding my seal to heaps and heaps of documents. Unlike you and your unseemly tussles with Decimus, I never dreams of boys or, even more obscenely, the gods as I used to in the days of old. I used to dream in the Roman tongue, then Greek, and now I dream in figures, revenues, taxes, duties. Speaking of duties, it is not news that you report Quintus despises me. Find me the envious, those are the snakes which bite—I don’t care about those that only hiss and shake.

  I miss the sea air and long to join you. Make an offer to the gods for me, I beseech you. Use the incense I have enclosed. Do not be put off by its powerful fragrance; the scent is designed for otherworldly nostrils. Perhaps it will mollify the monster you claim Decimus has become in your dreams. I read your last account aloud to one of the eunuchs and he pissed his toga. Lo!

  Your Most Nocturnal Emperor

  Loyal Publius,

  Thank you for your lifetime of friendship and service to the Empire. Your ready advice and willing ear have served my rise and have much benefited the throne. I’m sure by now news of the conspiracy and summary executions has reached you, and I know that everyone, even the favored, fear for their throats at moments like these; I’ve experienced my own night sweats as the Purple passed from one bearer to another in our eternally uncertain city. Be calm. Keep reading. No daggers are intended for you.

  I never told you how I killed my father. It’s an interesting story, not fraught with moral drama, nothing remotely Sophoclean about it, really, just pure calculation. I knew early on that I was born to the Purple. Late one night as a small child I woke from my crib, without a cry or a start, and looked out the window to see lightning but I heard no thunder. It was a marvelous vein of gold; though it lingered in the sky for only a moment, it was forever burned into my mind. I knew it was the whip of Jove goading me on toward my fate.

  From youth I understood that my family’s station exacerbated the situation, that if I reached for the throne, it would be denied. I would have to wait until it was offered. Father was my sole obstacle. I know you are shocked to read this, find it unfathomable. Please, have that last glass of Narbonne and know that the tears I shed when we both learned of his death were real. It pained me greatly to remove my progenitor from my path, but the goal was mighty, and his good health and relative youth, as well as his thrifty management of our estates, were my greatest impediments. When he died I inherited all. I quickly sold our vineyards in Gallia at a good price to our neighbors, the formidable but financially struggling Amlianus family, and their gratitude propelled me into the arms of their oldest, humorless, plumpest daughter. Our marriage was my introduction to the social stratum where I met my second wife, but you are already familiar with these stories. What you never knew was how purposeful our youthful wanderings were to me: when you dabbled in Cypriot whorehouses, I visited the last living tutor of Marcus Aurelius. You should have stayed longer on Rhodes, Publius, for there my real education began. At a dingy bookstall I stumbled upon the diary of Tiberius’s eunuch procurer. I devoured the secrets within. Aside from the devious acts he committed on behalf of the mad emperor, and the frightful errands he ran for other members of the twisted Julian line, he rather offhandedly recorded how he gathered the components of an ancient Sumerian spell the Emperor’s mother, the inimitable Livia Drusilla, utilized to exert control from behind the throne.

  Your role in uncovering the conspiracy against the royal personage was invaluable. The scroll you returned to Gnaeus’s estate was quickly found to belong to Bassianus, as I knew his astute personal librarian would examine the document and see the intended inscription. He attempted to deliver it himself, and was arrested by the Praetorian Guards at Bassianus’s gates. It was there that the scroll was again reviewed, in full public view of the astonished Hispania party, and shown to contain a secret map of the royal bedroom as well as the schedule of my guards. Word travels fast. Bassianus opened his wrists before the guards could remove him from his modest mansion on the Aventine Hill. The trial for the Hispania conspirators will be a quick one. The confiscation of their estates will go a long way toward satiating the ravenous imperial budget (Narbonne is not cheap, my friend).

  I have always hated Gnaeus.

  But what of Father? On his birthday, I sent him the same rare ink you have been using yourself. On Lupercalia I sent him wine of moderate expense, infused with the same herbs I had sprinkled into yours. I had the household slaves burn the required incense in his presence. The dust you inhaled from the Bassianus scroll was of the same substance mixed into the power my mother brushed her cheeks with, the cheeks he dutifully kissed every morning before inspecting the farm. These ingredients, when delivered in the right order, serve as an aphrodisiac for my alphabetic demon. Oh I’ve sent him everywhere! Britannia. Cyrenaica. A fitting way to dismiss those whose service is no longer required. The elements needed to distill Dispater’s ink require the resources of an Empire to draw upon, yet another reason to assume the Purple. My minion travels flat on the page, painted black letters that only rise when summoned. Summoned by your poisoned breath, Publius. I’ve only seen this dark rising once, when I perfected the process on unsuspecting Decimus. He’s the only soul to ever read one of my poor attempts at poetry. He must have thought it my attempt to win his favor—when he clearly favored you. To mock me, the creature now takes his form, or the shadow of a nightmare there of. Or so I am told. I do not dream of Decimus. He refuses me still. And so I sent him to you.

  Watch the ink, slippery as an eel, thin as a knife blade, black as a sibyl’s cunnus, leap from the papyrus and take form. It pulled Decim
us’s lips apart and forced its way down his throat. The thing will worm its way through your innards, until it reaches your mind, your heart—to leave you stricken as if by apoplexy.

  I can imagine the discomfort you are feeling now. It’s not the effect of nerves or wine that makes the page shimmer so—the ink is reaching for you now. This is one letter you needn’t burn. As the words rise from the page the parchment turns to ash.

  Your sacrifice immeasurably improves the Empire. When word reaches Rome of your demise, I won’t be alone in being distraught. The panegyrics I will commission on your behalf will be a rallying point for the citizenry to put this horrid assassination plot behind us. I’ll erect a statue of your likeness in the very Senate we both so despise. You will stand there forever, a pale immortal. Seashells will adorn the base, symbolizing your philosophical, ruminative nature, your oceanic wisdom. Upon viewing this marble masterpiece, the masses will all exclaim a singular sentiment—

  The love of the Emperor is Divine.

  Please Do Me: An Oral History

  Nick Mamatas

  Sasha Kambayashi—vocalist, Trouble in the Treble Clef

  The whole scene was extremely sexual. Of course, every scene is extremely sexual. I’m sure model-train fancier get-togethers feature nightly orgies. But the chordgaze scene was especially extremely sexual. TTC was, except for about six months, an all-woman line-up, and when the bloggers would write afterwards that “the whole room smelled like pussy” they weren’t being sexist, or complimentary. It was just a fact. We got so wet up on stage, playing. I think it has to do with the reintroduction of the guitar and live playing into EDM.

  Anyway, guitars mean a backline and a backline means a road crew. We were all just kids with laptops who had played too much Guitar Hero and Rock Band. TTC especially, we just wanted something real between our legs, hanging off our necks. Enter Gustafson! We found him the old-fashioned way. Not even Craigslist, or the Village Voice classifieds. I hung flyers around Hillside Avenue like an asshole, like I was waiting for something to happen just by putting myself out there in public. We did the Book Your Own Fuckin’ Life thing, but we needed some support for the tour.