The Lurid Sea

by Tom Cardamone

  Time and water.

  Water and time.

  Really, measuring both qualities is such a worthless endeavor. After all, they do just flow. They both flow through your fingers as easily and frequently as they move through the unhinged jaws of disintegrating skulls at the bottom of various seas. Still, I have had the urge to test the limits of my confining-yet-oh-so-exploratory journey. I cannot step outside a bathhouse or I will be summarily whipped back into the deep end of the dirtiest pool in some other era, mostly unaffected, save a sore neck. However, I can enjoy “nature” so long as I am still within the confines of bathhouse property. Meaning I have sunned myself in garden grottos and stood on rooftops to see blinking stars through tearful eyes. Establishments with such trappings are rare, as the very purpose of these institutions is to be hidden, internal, insular. Here, however, I knew the stairs led up to an outdoor smoking patio affording a banal view of other buildings and an anemic slice of sky, but it was here I first saw snow. Night and snow. The surprise of the cold. Mater Roma never felt like this in the most bracing of my childhood winters, yet it was a delicious difference.

  The closest I had ever gotten to seeing snow was ice brought down from the Alps for a banquet. I remember the evening well, as it was the month of August and Mother, who rarely entertained, invited an unusual assortment of guests to our villa in Baiae. I was allowed to stay up to witness the spectacle of ice. Slaves brought it into the dining room upon a silver platter, their entire bodies painted white. They had been instructed to exaggeratedly shiver and hold each other for warmth once the ice had been deposited in the center of the low table covered with a smattering of dishes containing half-eaten delicacies. Divans with lounging guests surrounded the scene. Soon the slaves began to show signs of arousal and the guests applauded and began to take off their clothes, as this signaled that the feast had officially transitioned to an orgy. I was ushered out, but not before I touched the ice, already perspiring as drunken senatorial wives raced around the room. But I didn’t get to taste it. Here on this island nation, it occasionally snows. The night sky is a dark canvas of floating white petals that melt upon my hot tongue.

  I love Japan.

  * * *

  A warren of sighs and gray shadows, of thoughtful figures in repose surrounded a grunting pair, one restrained by others as an earnest boy worked a fist deep inside the other’s forgiving rose. I forever marvel at the self-discipline of the genuine voyeur, something unique to this culture. In Europe and the Americas, men who happen upon other men having sex in saunas either join in or observe. In watching, they regress into a hunched pack of masturbatory jackals. Not the Japanese. The Japanese watch as if taking in some private sport, divining new techniques, appraising the skill of others. The fist in a dark room. Raw contact to fill more than an opening, pummel the void and, what, exchange pleasure for pain?

  Viewing this act opened up my own full flower of thirst. I dropped to my knees, and a group of men, naked or wearing open, short kimonos of stiff cloth converged. I parted my lips and extended my tongue, awaiting their offers. A fat dick head rubbed across my nose, and I leaned in to catch it. Some of the men waved their cocks in my face, teasingly, thumbs on stiff shafts protruding from shredded nets of pubic hair. Others hit my eyelids with cummy cockheads or prodded my cheeks. Dizzy, I tried to touch them all with my tongue, eyes closed, silently begging them to lead me from the dark and into the light. Semen splashed across my eyes, and I sucked a man who, instead of shooting in my mouth, painted my lips white. The baptismal ritual of bukkake had commenced. Men pulled on their dicks as I sat supplicant still, awaiting anointment. The light applause of multiple men whipping their cocks wafted throughout the chamber. Some would dip their penises into my mouth for momentary lubrication. Others circled, touching no one but themselves, pulling out their orgasms like rare albino birds coaxed toward initial flight. Others fucked my face. The old man from my earlier visits observed this sexual parlance from the shadows as if watching a familiar ritual, sorting for new rites, awaiting the appropriate opportunity to anoint my lips. Some of the men laid their cocks across either shoulder and waited patiently until I could take them up and into my mouth. All doused my head until my skull was laced with drizzled white loops of primordial ooze.

  The chorus of masturbation faded as each man finished on my face and stepped away toward the showers. The air cooled as less animalistic friction heated the confined space. I felt a kind, coarse hand pet my head in the darkness and knew it was him. He had mounted my face vigorously all those years ago, and after he had come in my mouth, he took me into one of the small sleeping rooms, laid me down without a word, and held me as we both slept on a thin tatami mat.

  Here, he parted my sticky, swollen lips with a slice of his finger, to clear a path for his throbbing penis. I nibbled at the head, just as I had done those decades past, and he whispered sweetly in Japanese. I could smell the whiskey and cigarettes on his breath. His cock tasted of nicotine from his masturbatory efforts. His familiar thrusts were more deliberate, practiced. I moved my tongue in unison and let out an alluring cry. He linked his fingers behind my skull to better control my reciprocity. Jaw lowered, head tilted, I teethed on his length in my mouth but sensed he was pausing, measuring his movements. He wanted this to last, this reclamation of his youth. I slowed my sucking to match his rhythm. His buttocks trembled as he tried to withhold orgasm, but I pushed myself forward until I had the hairy root of his penis firmly within my mouth and he relented. I swallowed as he exhaled. We disengaged. I felt his presence as he regarded me for a while, this sodden, eternal ghost. Like the others, he departed for a shower or a soak in one of the tubs. If he stayed the night, I would find him. For now I was complacent just sitting still, eyes sealed shut, happy to be rooted in one spot for a change. Wishing the strands that dripped from my chin and ear would actually take root in the ground, grow and solidify, until I was unmoving, not a statue but a fountain that flowed in reverse, fed by all of the men in Japan.

  Darkness and white petals that melt upon my hot tongue.

  How I love Japan.

  Chapter Nine

  Comes the Ocean

  Subterranean swimming pools cast an aquamarine hue across beveled ceilings ensconced with plaster cherubs who intermittently deposit flakes of white excreta into the serene waters below. I can float on my back for hours or somersault over and over in such environs. The sound of my fabricated waves licking the tiles echoes throughout the chamber. I love a good plunge. However, this is a rarity. By their very design and economy of space, the majority of bathhouses do not possess pools of note.

  Those that do provide me a distinct oasis, one where I tend to linger and luxuriate, leisurely swimming to exercise away the charley horses that come from hours of servile squatting. Certainly some of the finer, larger establishments have outdoor or even rooftop pools. These I enjoy, especially if I have gone a long time without exposure to the sun’s poetic rays, piercing or caressing my naked body depending on the season. But I prefer the underground pools, the way the light ripples across dark and dimpled ceilings. These black wombs feel like my intended home, or rather the epicenter of this startling rebirth. I emerge from these cerulean waters the rarest animal in the world, naked and dripping, ready to feed solely on lust. These are my underwater kingdoms, and if my aquatic roads and watery bridges occasionally lead to these manmade lakes, so be it. Such discoveries are a welcome respite before the next frolic, making the awaiting human banquet taste that much more succulent.

  Traipsing through these linked labyrinths, pathways of ecstasy interrupted by cool, refreshing plunges and then dark dungeons, I encounter desert pockets as well. Whether it’s the result of an off-season, an ungodly hour, or bad reputation, I occasionally happen upon an empty sauna. Even worse is finding myself alone in a basement maze. This can be disconcerting, to the say the least. Empty spaces devoid of both humanity and the water I require for transport. When this happens, I try not to let panic overtake me, fo
r I usually need only retrace my steps, though sometimes this is difficult, for these warrens, designed to create as many corners and dead ends as possible to increase the probability of erotic encounters, can lead to confusion when the goal is to escape, not mate.

  Alone, I find the air in these dead zones stale, cold, slightly bubonic, the uneven walls slicked with a mucus-like slime, odd corners populated by cummy fauna, miniature emerald patches of fuzz punctuated by tiny black mushrooms. I have stalked many a barren hall of crumbling brick fortified by shadow and the stench of stale urine. These low-ceilinged tunnels, unpopulated save for the scurry of an unseen rat or that eerily distant drip of water, that alluring sustenance of my travels, always makes me miss the ocean.

  I miss the ocean.

  You would think that with my lineage, I would know more about the sea, be more of the sea, which I do take after, in my own web-toed fashion. Tricks tell me that when I giggle, I sound like a twee little porpoise. When I was a young boy and Rome was stifling hot in high summer, my family habitually retreated to our seaside villa in Baiae. Though my mother abhorred the sun, she did enjoy proximity to the imperial family, which historically summered there as well. My older brother and I were only ever at the shore in the company of slaves and the children of the other vacationing upper class, quietly competing to display their wealth—publicly by erecting elaborate tents on the sand, privately by procuring the most gorgeous slaves imaginable to satisfy their sexual desires, lending them to friends and neighbors as well, for Baiae had a well-deserved reputation for licentiousness.

  At the beach, I was happy to play with the other children, though my brother’s darker bent was already showing as he shunned the sun, roughhousing with boys his own age, and he certainly ignored me so artfully his actions were almost admirable in their consistency and complexity. He almost never acknowledged my presence unless forced to do so by social convention. He constantly positioned our attendants to obscure his view of me.

  I was fine amusing myself, however. On the beaches of Baiae, before it got too hot, I would collect all manner of shells and combine them into intricate piles, shaping with my small hands moats and walls and little rooms, all to be filled by the incoming tides. Looking back now, was I somehow prescient of my current fate? Was I, in fact, accidental architect to the mazes I currently inhabit?

  Surely my mother first encountered my father at one of these seaside excursions. (Midnight swim, the aphrodisiac of menstruation.) Before I was born, she had entered a marriage of convenience with a rich senator who needed access to her even greater fortune from a previous marriage. Additionally, this arrangement concealed for them both sexual proclivities best exercised far from the marriage bed. They tactically divorced once he achieved the desired proconsulship and their fortunes had increased to the point where the public leverage she provided was no longer necessary. Marriage had allowed her to carry on no small amount of affairs with married men, but as a divorcée, she was always suspect and vulnerable to an onslaught of suitors. Though I was born while she was married, I was too young to remember her husband and too self-conscious of my divine lineage to ever mistake him for my father. This senator did not sire my brother, either. He and I look nothing alike, as we have different fathers whose sole similarity is their shared immortality. He was born during her first marriage, the source of her current wealth. As proximity to the ocean introduced Mother to my progenitor, closeness to death delivered her the eternal paramour whose dark seed begat my yet darker kin. Her first husband was a rich merchant who had died of the pox.

  One terrible summer, most of Rome had emptied out as deadly plague swept over the city like a fire through a parched forest. I only know of this story having heard one of the older slaves whisper it to one newly purchased from Hispania. One of the younger slave girls showed the fever and the dark swellings beneath both armpits that heralded the plague. The other slaves were terrified and abandoned her in the basement quarters. The household, like much of the city, was in an uproar. The roads were choked with carts and palanquins making their escape. The bodies of beggars curled within the doorways of shuttered shops exuded a haze of black flies and putrid odor. At night, the Campania Mars glowed red with deep fire pits filled with the dead and, it was rumored, the forsaken doomed and still dying.

  Mother ordered the household slaves to pack essentials and, under the command of Perseus, to flee the city and prepare the Baiae villa for her and her husband’s eventual arrival. She alone would wait for his return, for he was in Ostia, just outside of Rome. As a wealthy merchant, he had rushed to the port town to ensure his warehouses were secure, for such calamity often invited pirates. Mother kept only one slave behind, a mute but reliable oaf deeply devoted to her. Her stated and noble goal was to await her husband, but the story this slave had grimly pantomimed for his compatriots was quite the opposite.

  When her husband returned after battling the crowds along the Appian Way, he was drained by the roadside carnage he had witnessed. Entire families had been wiped out by the plague, carts with all their possessions overturned and looted while carrion birds wove greedy patterns overhead. She served him a Spartan dinner and strong wine. It is likely they both perfunctorily cursed whichever out-of-favor sect the emperor had blamed for the pestilence, As these outbreaks crop up every few years, I have often heard Mother repeat the well-turned phrase “plagues give a carpenter calluses,” for these workmen serve double duty, carving out coffins for the dead while erecting crucifixes for that season’s screaming zealots.

  Whatever draught she added to her husband’s wine guaranteed a sound sleep. When he awoke in their darkened chambers, he rolled over to embrace her still form and recoiled. The cold body beside him was that of the now-dead slave girl. Her skin molted, crepuscular. He jumped out of bed and rushed to the door, only to find it bolted from the other side. He pounded and pleaded while Mother went about her household duties, making sure that whatever provisions the slaves did not take with them were not perishable, for she did not know how long they would be at the villa in Baiae.

  The only sure timetable was that she would not leave the house until her husband had not only been stricken by the plague but had extinguished from it. He shouted, he begged, he demanded and then, much later, he whispered memories of their courtship. He apologized profusely for forgotten anniversaries and slights unknowingly delivered over the years. She busied herself by packing essential papers and determining what of her remaining wardrobe was suitable travel wear during such troubling times. She only ever smiled when she heard the telltale cough issue from their bedroom. Her slave spent all of his time in his quarters, terrified, copiously weeping. He had long ago had his tongue cut out, to better prepare him for servitude.

  The stench of the dead slave girl permeated the house, as did the fumes of burning incense meant to mask the offensive odor. Mother’s grim vigil continued as she then had to wait the appropriate amount of time it would take for her husband to either perish from the plague or, in his weakened state, starve to death. The slave knew exactly when his master expired, for that corresponded with the arrival of Pluto.

  Her husband coughed hollowly from behind the door and fell silent. It was a dark, moonless night. The air was still as a figure emerged from out of the shadows of the atrium. Pluto was not the haggard ironsmith nor the beast of fire as depicted in so many murals and paintings. He walked into the dining room casually, like a man of means, his toga black and his skin midnight as well. He so exuded darkness, it was hard to make out his features other than his black hair, black eyes, and black lips. With each step he took toward Mother, he snapped his black fingers, and with each snap a candle was snuffed out, then an oil lamp. Once all the lights were out, he took her in his dark arms, raised his hand, and opened his moist palm to the night. With a final snap, the quivering mute slave went blind.

  * * *

  When Mother finally arrived at the villa, the household slaves had already begun to take small liberties, sneaking sips of the b
est wine and the like, assuming that all who remained behind in Rome had perished. She was so willing to fully commit to the role of distracted, mournful widower that she punished no one. Everyone in Baiae had an opportunity to see her in her black toga. Few noticed the brooch, a simple silver key. It would have easily been mistaken as a token of affection, a present from the departed. But the symbol of the key was as dear to Pluto as the trident was important to his brother, Neptune.

  She had long told family, friends, and acquaintances the tale of her brave husband tending to the sick girl, disregarding the risk to himself, and how both had eventually expired of the pestilence. She did not mention that upon arriving in Baiae, exhausted from the trying journey, she first stopped at her attorney’s home. There she delivered a fresh copy of her husband’s will before traveling on to her own estate, locally renowned for its inviting view of the ocean.

  Obsidio was born approximately ten months later. It was a long, assiduously difficult pregnancy and then birth. He clung to Mother’s womb, he so loved the darkness.

  * * *

  Had I known how rare the sea would be to me in later life, I would have drunk in those early days, lingered on the shore more, rushing back in for another swim as the slaves dried our laundry on the rocks. As immensely satisfying as my life is now, I miss the ocean, though I still have a very personal connection with it, for now the sea rises from within me, after a particularly raucous bacchanalia, where I have served multitudes and been used repeatedly until the point of engorgement. Then comes the ocean, slow and sure, an internal tide that issues forth in driblets from between my bruised lips. Regurgitated white honey tapped from countless, breathless men.