The Coming Storm

by Paul Russell

  But in his fingertips the memory of Noah’s skin was startlingly alive. What if, instead of outrage, he’d had the presence of mind to draw Noah’s face to his, tasting those pouting lips, seeking with his tongue the wet insides of Noah’s mouth? Then where would the outrage have been? It shocked him to discover that he was actually trembling. Had there been any liquor in the house, he might well have considered pouring himself a drink; he could use one of Louis’s generous scotches right about now.

  It was early, only ten o’clock; in all probability, Arthur Branson was still awake. With his less-than-soothing cup of chamomile, Tracy settled cross-legged onto his futon, at whose foot Betsy, the evening’s too-brief excitements behind her, curled in what he took to be contented sleep, though the occasional tremors running through her sleeping body made him wonder what restlessness she might be dreaming away. Was she running away from him in her dream, longing for some state of independence he had no ability to grant her, having freed her from the pound into a new kind of servitude, which, grateful and benign though it might be, was servitude nonetheless? Dogs and their masters. She had been a lark, an accidental current whose flow he had simply let himself be carried by, and he remembered how he had felt mildly annoyed with Claire, after the fact, for her brisk efficiency in getting him to the pound before he could have second thoughts. Did she manage everything in life that effectively, even ruthlessly?

  With sudden resolve, he reached for the phone and dialed. “I’ve just had the strangest experience,” he would say. Or he would say nothing. Arthur, my dear friend, please be there, he thought wildly.

  “Oh,” Arthur yelped on hearing his voice. “And I thought I was going to have to come up there and give you a spanking myself.”

  “I’ve been really, really busy,” Tracy apologized.

  “But now I’ve got you,” Arthur told him. “So I bestow my forgiveness. I’ve just been dying to talk to you. Want to hear my news?” Without pausing for an answer, he charged on, announcing in a grand voice that brooked no resisting, “I went and got my penis pierced.”

  So it was not to be about protease inhibitors or miraculous misdiagnoses. Tracy felt a sudden, desperate disappointment. “And I’m in love with a boy,” he wanted to say, as if all desperate measures were somehow commensurate. But he said nothing. He let Arthur chatter on, grateful, he supposed, to be distracted like this.

  “I met this woman at a party the other night, this brainiac lesbian, you’d hate her, but anyway, we got to talking and it turned out she had her nipples pierced. So I said, Well, can I see them? And she pulled up her shirt for me right then and there. Those crazy lesbians. But then it got me to thinking. There’s this piercing store in Chelsea I walk by all the time, so I just thought, You know what? I’m going to go do this. You’d be so proud of me. I marched myself right over there the next morning and said to the boy behind the counter, Excuse me, do you do genital piercing? It turns out, he’d just gotten it done himself, and he was very pleased with it.”

  Feeling somehow resistant to all this information, Tracy thought he should say something to indicate he was still on the line. “So did he show it to you?” he asked.

  “Of course. He had just a lovely cock, and it looked quite beautiful with a piercing though it, I must say. Very exciting. So we looked through his catalog at all the different possibilities, and then I decided on one. It’s called a Prince Albert, don’t ask me why. Take a couple hours and think about it, the boy at the store told me. Just to make sure. Then come back this afternoon.”

  “And you actually went back,” Tracy said. Why did Arthur’s exploits always bring his lurking prudishness to the surface?

  “Of course I went back. I could hardly wait. He was very professional. He took me through the procedure step by step. Then he did these breathing exercises with me. When he decided I was ready, he took this long Q-Tip and stuck it up my urethra and held it there for about five minutes to let the anesthetic take effect. And the whole time I’m sitting there thinking, Golly, I’m really going to do this.”

  Just hearing the details was making Tracy squirm, but his penis, powered by some other source, stiffened with excitement.

  “So he takes out a pen,” Arthur went on—clearly this wasn’t the first time he’d narrated the story—“and he marks the exit hole on the underside of my dick, then he slides this hollow steel surgical tool up my urethra and lines it up with the exit dot. The needle goes through the tube, then once the hole is made, the jewelry goes in, he aligns the ends with a pair of pliers, puts the ball on, and voila, my cock is now a work of art. Why are you laughing? Is this making you nervous?”

  “Yow,” Tracy said delicately. “Didn’t it hurt like hell?” he asked.

  “Nope. Didn’t feel a thing. It was a really dense anesthetic. But there was a lot of blood. I had to wear this surgical glove on my dick for thirty-six hours.”

  “And then what? What does it feel like? Can you feel it?”

  “When I’ve got my pants on, I can. I mean, I’m conscious of it. Right now I’m lying here fiddling with it. My new plaything. I can’t keep my hands off it.”

  “Have you jerked off?”

  “Not for about a week I didn’t. I thought, Oh my God, it’ll explode. But then I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I thought, Surely he’d’ve warned me. It’s hard right now. How about you?”

  “Actually,” Tracy admitted, “I am.”

  “Gosh. I wish you were here to play with it. I can’t wait to come up there for a visit and let you see it.”

  “Well, you should definitely come up,” Tracy said in spite of himself, all the while stoking the fires of his five-alarm cock. It was safe to talk. One could talk all one wanted. One could imagine anything at all and be perfectly safe. “Say I’m putting my lips to your cock right now,” he told Arthur in a voice whose hoarseness surprised him. “I’m wrapping my tongue around the head. Can you feel it? My tongue’s playing with Fat Albert.”

  “Prince Albert,” Arthur corrected him. “Nice slip. And yes, it feels great.”

  “Now I take your whole fat cock in my mouth. I go all the way down on it.”

  “I’m holding the back of your head,” Arthur said. “I’m pumping my cock in and out of your mouth. I’m knocking against the back of your throat.”

  “Yeah,” Tracy told Noah, “fuck my mouth,” as the boy’s cock, presumably neither so fat nor mutilated nor deadly as Arthur’s, shoved in and out with eager violence.

  “Okay, sweetheart,” Arthur whispered. “I’m almost there. I’m going to come in your mouth.”

  “Do it,” Tracy told the boy of his dreams. “Cream in my mouth. Blast my throat with it.” He was almost there himself.

  And then he was there. And Arthur, a hundred miles away, he could tell was there as well. And in his dorm room, sound asleep, Noah Lathrop felt what invisible shock waves pass through his undreaming body?

  He always felt a profound desolation after he came, as if one’s hopes and desires for anything were proved to be only illusory, the heat of the moment. As if nothing, however coveted, once gained, was worth anything. What had happened with Noah, that unforeseen misadventure so secretly longed for, ruined everything.

  “Well, I have to say…” Arthur’s bemused voice summoned Tracy back to himself. Pensively, he daubed his fingertips in the white semen cooling on his belly. “With Prince Albert here, right before I come, the feeling is definitely more penis-intense than it used to be. Sleep well, darling. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  VIII

  So,” the Fatwa told him, looking around with a frankly envious gaze, “I guess this is some place, isn’t it?”

  “I guess,” said Noah, suddenly aware of the room’s brash opulence. Why he’d invited this person to his dad’s apartment on a Saturday afternoon wasn’t entirely clear to him. By coincidence, when he’d arrived at the little station in Middle Forge to catch the New York train, he’d seen the Fatwa standing by himself and smoking a cigarette, the only
other person on the platform, and after a moment’s hesitation he’d gone over to him, struck up something like a conversation. Not that the Fatwa was either very talkative or very friendly.

  Of course, Noah thought, the Fatwa probably hated him. That would make sense. The Fatwa probably hated all of them on the hall, and why should Noah be any different?

  The Fatwa eyed him suspiciously, blowing out a thin line of smoke quite deliberately and staring off at the cars in the parking lot, the spindly little trees that had lost all their leaves, the frowning hills on the far side of the river. Noah had followed his gaze, wondering exactly what the Fatwa saw when he looked at that scene: whether it was the same as what Noah saw, or whether the different things that had happened to two people in their lives changed what they saw when they looked at something. And what had they talked about? Only a day had passed since that auspicious encounter, but Noah couldn’t remember. It wasn’t that he’d been trying to attach himself. The Fatwa was the one who’d said, when the train finally pulled in and they got on board, “You want to sit together?”

  On the whole, he supposed, the most interesting parts of the conversation had been those that had happened in his head. His new friend put on his headphones and stared out the window for most of the trip, while Noah constructed various exchanges between them, discarding one after the other till he had the slightly discomfiting realization that, though he might, for whatever mysterious reason, want to talk to the Fatwa, he really had no idea what they might talk about.

  Only when they’d stopped in the tunnel coming into Grand Central, the lights flickering out, the train in complete silence and darkness, did any real conversation happen. “So what are you down for?” the Fatwa, now just a disembodied voice, had asked him. “What sins are you indulging?”

  “Visiting my dad, I guess,” Noah had told him, adding, as if it were merely an afterthought, “mostly just hanging out. We should get together.”

  “That’s right. It’s classic,” the Fatwa told him as the lights in the car winked back on. “Never say a word at the Forge, then best friends in the city.

  It was wounding, obviously, and meant to be. But then the Fatwa surprised him. He fluttered his eyelids—a disconcerting habit—and said, sounding weary, as if this wasn’t a fight worth having, “Sure, why not? Like, maybe, tomorrow afternoon. I’ll bring some weed. We’ll go from there.”

  It wasn’t an appointment he’d exactly expected the Fatwa to keep; nevertheless, he’d stayed at home, fielding phone calls for his dad, who had been expected to be back already, but whose arrival from Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan, Noah got them confused, accrued delay after delay until, according to the latest phone message from Heathrow, which Noah had listened to from the warmth of his bed but decided not to pick up, he was no longer expected till the evening, when there was supposed to be people over, a party of some kind. But for now, midafternoon, here was the mysterious Chris Tyler moving warily about the apartment’s spacious living room, sizing up with cool interest the collection of antique Buddhas on glass shelves along the wall, the mellow old Persians on the floor, not least of all the truly fantastic view, from the balcony, of Central Park in hazy Indian summer sunlight, a forest in the heart of the city waiting patiently, Noah always imagined, till the day came when it could retake the island of which it had been dispossessed. Because he hated New York, really—its hive of humanity, all their futile industry, their joyless pursuit of pleasures. The only place he liked was the prehistoric solitude of the woods, and from those, by his own hand, he’d been expelled forever. The forest, he told himself sternly, gave no second chances.

  “So what’s your old man do to deserve a dump like this?” the Fatwa wanted to know.

  “He’s in business,” Noah said.

  The Fatwa looked amused. “Just business?”

  “International business ventures,” Noah revised. Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan, somewhere over there. He dreaded the party scheduled for later—in celebration, he presumed, of one more dubious deal his dad had closed on, one more inexperienced third world capitalist about to learn some free market lessons the hard way—but though he had half a thought to skip out (the caterers were to come set up at seven), that wouldn’t make his dad very happy, and he’d learned, over the years, that whatever it took to make Dad happy was what you did. Like everything else, a therapist had told him once, being an only child comes with its share of responsibilities, of which he was reminded every time he signed his name. Grandfather, father, son. If he felt the weight of that “III,” looking like nothing so much as the pillars of a ruined and roofless temple, at the same time he never for an instant considered omitting it from the carefully printed, childlike letters that passed for his signature.

  “Well, gee, my mom only sells real estate,” the Fatwa said. “She’d pass out if she saw this place. But enough idle chatter. Let’s get stoned. My morning buzz is starting to wear off, and you don’t want to see this boy without his makeup. It’s not a pretty sight.” He laughed, a nervous whinny that trailed off abruptly, self-mockingly, as he reached into the pocket of his khakis to extract a small pipe and a plastic bag. Noah reminded himself that the Fatwa was a freak. Everyone knew that.

  “Can we smoke in here, or is out there more, uh, prudent?” asked his guest, glancing over his shoulder at the balcony.

  For an instant Noah wasn’t even sure what the right answer was. He’d never smoked pot, even disapproved of it, and had, in fact, completely forgotten that weed had been part of yesterday’s promise.

  Together they moved out into the warm sun. Two chaise longues, hideous things, reclined side by side, and they lowered themselves onto the brightly striped cushions. The Fatwa fiddled intently with his pipe, packing and lighting it, then drawing in a deep and grateful breath. When he finally exhaled he seemed steadied, back on the secure footing he’d been without since his arrival at the apartment. He inhaled again, less urgently, and yet again, and just when Noah had started to hope he wouldn’t offer, the Fatwa contentedly passed the pipe his way.

  “You smoke a lot, don’t you?” Noah said, reaching out to take the small metal pipe he’d told himself he wanted no part of. He held the silver object, looking it over curiously, his nostrils bitten by the sweet scent. Only for an instant was he tempted; then a pang of revulsion set in. He handed the pipe back, confessing as he did so, “My dad’s a bit of a coke fiend. As are all his so-called friends,” an admission he’d never made to anyone before, not even his therapist, though what he hadn’t told his therapist, as a point of fact, could fill a book. “So I stay away from the stuff,” he went on. “Drugs of all kinds. Booze too. You could say I’m quite old-fashioned.”

  It made the Fatwa laugh out loud—which, in the middle of his toke, turned into an explosive cough.

  “That’s so twisted,” he said, grimacing, wiping a tear from his eye.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” was all Noah could think of to say. He had no ideas, other than the idea that lying with the Fatwa in the warm sun wasn’t too bad. Whatever he’d wanted to prove, maybe he’d already proved it. He could get someone’s attention. He always thought of himself as someone yelling “Hey, hey” into the wind, waiting for the wind to notice.

  “And to think I brought the really good stuff,” the Fatwa told him. “Oh well, my friend’s not going to miss it.”

  Noah considered for a moment the information he’d been given. “Your friend?” he asked, conscious of making a decision to embark on a certain kind of conversation. But then, wasn’t that what he’d wanted in the first place, to slake his curiosity about various things?

  “My friend who I visit down here,” the Fatwa told him. “He’s a doctor. Old guy—just turned forty. The most interesting thing about him is, he once had an affair with Rob Lowe. At least that’s what he claims. He’s got practically every photograph of Rob Lowe ever taken, including the parts of the videotape they never told you about. Strange guy, but we get along just fine. He’s got the money, I’ve got th
e charm. Actually, he’s got the charm too. Yeah,” he said, nodding, as if reassuring himself on that score, “he’s really got way too much charm, come to think about it.”

  Okay, Noah thought, here we are, and far more quickly than he’d expected. He tried to sound as casual as he could, though he wondered if, by sounding too casual, he somehow betrayed himself. Because it was either a big deal or it wasn’t, or maybe it was both at the same time—the point, however, being moot since the question, which was the question he’d had all fall, the question he’d failed to ask Tracy Parker that night a couple of weeks before, had already left his mouth and, in fact, the Fatwa was already answering: “Yeah, I’m queer as a three-dollar bill. So what?”

  Just like that, it was done. Noah wouldn’t look his way, but why should he, with all the park, its ailing forest and trampled meadows spread out before him, and of course the sky, that perfect, perfect blue marred only by one extremely interesting jet trail, which, if you watched it, could be seen slowly to move toward the horizon, its clear line gradually growing ragged, beginning to dissolve.

  “I just wondered,” he said evenly. “I mean, I kind of thought so.”

  “Yeah, well, so there we are. And you?”

  Noah knew that the Fatwa, comfortably reclined on his chaise longue, was staring his way.

  “I’m not really into that kind of stuff,” he said, his eyes intent on the blemished sky.

  “No booze, no drugs, no mad gay love. You really are old-fashioned.”

  “See, it’s what I told you. I’m a disappointment all around.”

  That the Fatwa didn’t immediately answer made him wonder, not for the first time, whether that might really be the case. But if he was a disappointment, well, he was also disappointed. The last thing he wanted was to have his questions turned back on himself. That was no fun at all.