He knew what was happening, but he couldn’t stop it. He didn’t want to. When James climaxed, he exploded. This time, it was different. Blood burst underneath the tan skin, and oozed away in a beautiful, watercolor saturation of pink and red. He was a living, giant peach, for a moment. His eyes were open, the blue eyes floating in liquid, pickled.
Oliver calmly extracted his dick from the dead boy. The condom was covered in shit. He peeled it off, and stroked himself. He came, thick and pale, onto the corpse.
He had known, even before he went into the club, what was going to happen.
He washed up listlessly. Already, the scent of perfume filled the room. James the peach was melting, sweetly. Before he stepped from the room, he saw the odd poster staring at him. The head had deformed, melted. It was now a fabulous, formless white blob.
When he left the apartment, the room of synthesized jungle, he heard no music. Maybe there had been no music at all.
Baltimore at 3 a.m. was silent and clammy. The streets had cracks and fissures like burst capillaries. He walked them, without feeling or thought. The blocks went by. A hint of green appeared at the edge of the sky, changing the sky from black to darkest indigo. On a corner, there was a diner, its lights cheerfully on. He walked inside.
Everything was bright. The countertops, booths and stools were candy-apple red, accented by white and gray borders. The silver buttons gleamed. Disembodied music—syrupy strings, gentle, crooning tenor, and oceanic, “ahh”-ing female choir—blasted out of a jukebox. He headed for a counter, catching a flash of white in the corner of his eye. When he turned, he saw that the white thing he saw was man-shaped.
It didn’t really surprise him to see Silver in this diner. He seemed to bookend disaster.
Silver waved him over to his booth. “Oliver, I was just thinking of you. Fancy, meeting you here. Must be telepathy.”
Oliver slumped across from him.
Silver went on: “This place is great. 4 a.m., you get all types here. Great place for inspiration. And—” he leaned close, “the waitresses here all look like fat drag queens. You’ll see.”
One such elephantine woman took his order (a roughly grunted “coffee” he didn’t recall saying); her peach-pink uniform was tight against her girth, her hair piled into an impossible beehive, with a cloth flower stuck into its apex.
Silver babbled on: “I bought you something. I’ve been carrying it around since I got it, in case we ran into each other.” The song changed to some smoky female singer against a swaying samba. “I think you’ll appreciate it.” He slid a book across the table. The Story of the Eye. A pickled blue eyeball glared at Oliver from a swirl of flesh-colored smoke.
Oliver retched, each spasm painful and sharply felt. What was inside him came out. Except there was nothing left inside of him. Silver laid hands on his back. The ice chilled him, soothed him. The retching subsided. He was only hyperventilating now. When that ceased, he had his coffee in front of him.
“Easy. I had no idea that you felt so strongly about Bataille.”
“I,” he gasped, “I just saw someone die….”
Silver didn’t react. In fact, he didn’t seem all that surprised. Johnny Mathis mewled over a thousand sea-sick violins. The jukebox colors glowed, lozenges of pastel pink, mint, and lemon. The drag-queen waitresses patrolled their domain in luxuriant slow motion.
“It wasn’t what you wanted?”
Oliver stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. All those boys. Those ‘Nazi Fuck-boys.’” (How did he know?) “You got what you wanted from them, then they got what they deserved. What you wanted.”
“What are you talking about?”
This was not real, this conversation. Once he acknowledged this, it was possible to continue, to say anything.
Silver looked annoyed. “I gave you what you wanted,” he said in slow tones, as if speaking to a child.
They were interrupted by the behemoth-waitress. She placed a slab of lemon meringue pie in front of Silver. The meringue was like a strange mushroom: the top part blackened, the underneath pale colorless foam. The filling quivered like jellied urine.
Following the metaphysical thread of the conversation, Oliver said, “I wanted you. Why didn’t you sleep with me? Those others were just stand-ins.”
Silver mashed the disturbing pie into his mouth, turning his teeth bright yellow. “You can’t have sex with Want.”
Oliver laughed. “You’re losing me here. You’re saying that you are Desire with a capital D? That’s fucked up.”
Silver made a great, fussy show of wiping his lips with a napkin. His breath—cold yet sugary—drifted over to Oliver. “Consider the word vanilla. When you think of vanilla, you think of white ice-cream, bland, boring. White bread. But the source of vanilla is a bean that’s black.”
Laughing, Oliver shook his head. Silver continued: “In order for anything to become really pale, it has to be in a place where no light comes. It must be in the dark.”
“Ridiculous. Fucked up. Pompeii told me you were a user, a fuck.” Oliver stood up, reached into his wallet, and threw down a dollar. It missed the table. “Don’t talk to me again, you fucking freak. My brother was right; you are a devil.”
The denouement of “These Boots Are Made For Walking” blared out of the speakers, a fanfare of horns and kitsch. The waitress moved by in trance, oblivious as a blimp. He stomped out of the diner. When the door banged shut, he heard no sound. Nothing. When he turned back, the lights of the diner were off.
It was abandoned.
- - -
Miles Davis issued in shades of blue from his speakers. The sound bounced off his dorm room walls. The curtains were drawn against the soupy gray light of outside. In the semi-dark, Oliver worked intently on his project. The gods and goddesses—orishas and loas—were freed from their prison of wires and industrialization, and elevated on pedestals of black marble, wood, and brass. They wore royal robes, and were surrounded by their familiars—toy plastic lions, hyenas, and snakes. He had altered the dolls’ faces; they now wore fierce, primeval expressions.
He was in the middle of making a robe for the Afro-Brazillian sea goddess Iemanja, cutting a sheet of sapphire cloth, when someone knocked on the door.
“Just a minute.” He put down the scissors, and walked over to the door. “Who is it,” he said.
“Just open the door, girl. I’ve been knocking for-fucking-ever!”
Standing in the door frame, Pompeii wore a black muscle T-shirt and tight, forming-fitting gray jeans. His head was freshly shorn, and a ruby stud sparkled in his nose. It had been a while since Oliver had seen him.
“Where have you been, girl?”
“Busy,” Oliver answered. “I’m working on a new project. I haven’t had time to hang out.”
Pompeii let himself in. Oliver hesitated before closing the door after his entrance.
“It’s been a month. Look at you, girl! You’ve gone all ethnic, and shit. What’s this you have on—a dashiki? Kente cloth? And you’re playing—what is this? Where’s Joy Division and Christian Death?” Pompeii had flopped himself on the bed. “I hope you haven’t become one of those born-again black people.”
At first, Oliver ignored him. Then he began to get pissed off. What right did he have to judge him? Besides, if Pompeii only knew—
Just as he was about to yell at him, Pompeii said, “Look. I’ve been worried about you.” His tone was serious. “I mean, ever since you told me about, you know, I’ve just been….”
Oliver stared at him.
“I mean, you had a some kind of, I don’t know, breakdown or something. I respect space, and everything. But. Don’t leave your friends outside, Okay?”
“I did not have a breakdown.”
“Oliver, boys don’t die by melting or cumming blood. You can’t kill anyone by having sex with them. You don’t have that power.”
“Fuck you. You didn’t see….” He was choking on something.
Tears. The words gasped out. He didn’t know what he was saying. All he knew was that suddenly, he was in Pompeii’s arms, wheezing against his expensive shirt. Probably ruining it. But Pompeii pressed him closer, until the wave of emotion subsided.
“This Silver guy, he really fucked with your mind.”
“But—”
“Oliver! Listen. I didn’t hear one damn thing about mysterious deaths. Not one thing. What does that tell you? And this get up. You can’t get rid of whatever you’re going through by pretending to be something that you’re not. I think you need to see someone. I’m telling you. I’m gonna nag you until you do. And you know what a bitch I can be!”
Oliver laughed through snot and tears.
Pompeii placed his hand on his shoulders, and began to gently knead them. “Another thing. Take this shit off.”
Oliver removed his shirt. Pompeii’s hands came in contact with his flesh. He was rippled by a tide of gooseflesh.
“It’s gonna be all right,” Pompeii murmured. The sound was moist, and intimate.
There was a moment of silence, of inaction, where they both acknowledged what was about to happen, the absurdity of it all. Pompeii pushed Oliver down on his bed, lingered above momentarily before leaning in to kiss him. After the kiss, Pompeii tongued down his neck to his chest, where he began to playfully lap and tug at Oliver’s nipples. He was sweet and mysterious. His breath was scented with something spicy. Nutmeg? It was delicious. Pompeii’s blood would taste of mulled cider, his flesh, like mincemeat pie filling. The sax shaded everything with the blue-gold of the clouds in Romantic period paintings. Oliver closed his eyes.
White things fluttered behind his lids. Moth wings, with specks of dark-pink. Creatures that could only hide in the darkest closet.
Pompeii grew rougher, gripping and kneading Oliver’s cock through his trousers.
Not Pompeii, Oliver thought. He pushed him off. Pompeii fell to the floor as he sat up. He looked sort of dazed. Then, when his eyes got their focus back, there was something burning in them. Something bright.
Pompeii pinned Oliver down on the bed. He bit his neck. His lithe body ground itself against his. Oliver was hard, in spite of himself. Pompeii was so beautiful, now the burnished color of ghee, his flesh hinted at succulence and muted iridescence.
“Not Pompeii! Please.”
Pompeii’s approach altered. The frantic behavior fell away. His kisses became gentle, even bashful. Oliver’s fingers rested on the smooth, amber upturned bowl of Pompeii’s head. He closed his eyes again. Moth wings fluttered. He found himself unable to open his eyes, as if there were a weight upon them. But with the sensations on his body, he found that he didn’t care that much. He knew that the moths were a manifestation of Silver, of his desire. He pleaded in between bouts of pure pleasure with him. Don’t take Pompeii, please. The music changed. The sax fell away, transformed into a woman’s voice, soaring over somnambulant architecture. Houses of terra-cotta, open deserts of swirling sand, frost-tinged cacti. Silver promised him this, in exchange for the sacrifice.
Oliver declined.
- - -
After Pompeii left, Oliver took a shower, washing semen and sweat off his body. He put on a Swans T-shirt, and black jeans. It was evening, now. The rain-washed scent of Baltimore drifted up to his dorm room.
Silver—or Desire—had listened to him, and spared Pompeii. He considered this.
“You can’t have sex with Want,” he’d said, that night in the diner.
But he could have sex with what he wanted. All of his life, his desire had been his enemy. The distant, beautiful boys. The “Nazi-Fuckboys.” Now, he could have them through some metaphysical loophole.
What he’d reacted to was their deaths, the needless sacrifices, of blood and sperm. But when Oliver thought about it, it made some sense. He had always wanted—desired—to hurt those boys. To make them want him, then leave them, stripped of their beauty. Their deaths were unpleasant, yes. But they were what he wanted.
Oliver stood up, and walked past the orishas. He took Kind of Blue out of the CD player, replacing it with Love’s Secret Domain. It burbled out of the speakers.
Tonight, he’d meet up with Silver, and they would hash out their arrangement. Where would he be? Someplace cool, that much was sure.
If Desire isn’t exactly my friend, at least he isn’t my enemy.
Her Spirit Hovering
Howard Stone liked the color black. It had many symbolic meanings. Some saw it as an inky darkness, pulsating with swallowed light and energy. Others used it as a representation of Nothing: a great gaping void that a body would be lowered into, devoured by the earth until nothing—no thought, no memory—would remain. The dark had a certain majesty. No wonder it was used to represent the glamour of evil. But there was none of that glamour here. None whatsoever. Sunlight poured through the stained glass windows, drenching the church in crimson, gold and pale green. These joyful, spring-like tones glowed on the pews, the walls, the audience and on the coffin where his mother lay.
A sharp, remorseful sigh escaped from Stone. His eyes blurred momentarily. There lay his mother in a pine box. Her dyed red hair had faded. She was in a black gown with a lily pinned to her dress. A large, gaudy lily made of wax with cloth leaves. Even in death she could be tacky. He felt a pang of guilt; funerals were supposed to be sad occasions. Maybe he would paint a picture for his mother, a visual dirge of mourning elements: thunder, nightshades, warped trees. In the midst of this landscape would be his mother, a graceful, serene Madonna… Stone choked back a laugh. Unlike Whistler’s portrait with its elegant, dour subject, Stone’s mother would be in a LAZ-Boy, wearing a tube-top and plaid polyester leisure pants.
The pastor nodded at Stone—he was ready to begin. Stone nodded back, and looked at his own hands. They were knotted together in a complex linking of the fingers. He tried to separate them. But they wouldn’t part. He tried harder, fearful that he’d have to go through life forever with his hands stuck together, when a soft, gentle hand rested over his and the fingers came unglued, as if by magic. Stone faced the owner of the healing hand—it was one his mother’s mahjong partners. He jerked his hands away. He didn’t need her help.
A hush went through the church as the eulogy began.
“We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of our dear sister Martha Ann Stone. This should not be a day of sorrow, but one of joy, for our sister has left this harsh world to join the Father. We are all but little children in the hands of God, and our sister Martha has climbed into that great hand…”
Someone moaned and blew their nose quite loudly. A few coughs sounded.
“…was a kind woman, with many good friends and deeds behind her…”
The person moaned again, almost orgasmically, right in his ear. The mahjong partner. Her eyes were red and puffy, and the sounds she made between moans were rough, ugly barks for air. She blew her nose again, emitting a bleating whimper. Why can’t I cry? There was once a time when I did nothing but cry. Stone searched his body for anguish, but found none. He remembered when he’d cried without abandon, warm salt tears wearing grooves in his skin. He’d been seven years old and playing in the Forbidden Room. This room had an antique bed with a lacy canopy. There was an invisible guardian angel in front of the room, warning him. He ignored the angel. The thick, gothic gloom beckoned. He was so small and pale in his knee-length shorts and striped shirt. The bed was an island of Chantilly lace floating on a cloud of mahogany. It was irresistible. She was downstairs, working in the basement. He heard his mother even as he crossed the threshold: “Grandma Jenny had this bed from slavery times, when the Stones owned and bred the best Negroes in Jackson, Mississippi. It’s a genuine antique.”
She’d caught him on the bed, where he was sipping his Ovaltine and lining up his favorite stuffed animals: Tig the tiger with a missing felt eye and Sperba, the gooseberry-green duck, for some fantasy game. His mother spanked him ruthlessly—how dare he disrespect her, her grandmother and
her good family’s heirlooms! Now Stone thought of the Faulkner story, “A Rose for Emily” whenever he recalled that bed. Instead of a corpse decaying on the bed, he saw three generations of Stone women, every one of them with bad hairdos and dye jobs. Ever since then he’d hated every stick of furniture in that house. The brown and orange leaf-patterned couch. The two black and aqua chairs. There were pictures on the walls—a Virgin Mary and baby Jesus done on velvet, a picture of a father he’d never met. And overseeing her domain was her icon: cat-eye glasses, red hair like a clown’s fright wig, lips curled in a smile of quiet acceptance that didn’t question.
The pastor’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Martha is survived by her sister Thelma Waters, who could not be here today, and a son Howard, an artist whom she supported throughout her life.”
Supported! She never supported me! No, I’d earned that scholarship to the Corcoran School of Art. And when I opened his show in Atlanta, and the critics tore it apart, was she supportive? Did she say, “It’s wonderful! Those critics wouldn’t know artistic genius if it bit them!”? No. The night after those reviews had come in, she said, “Why couldn’t you have painted trees? Or a house? Why didn’t I paint a tree, Mom? Because I’m not aiming for a Starving Artist sale. I don’t want to paint green seascapes, purple mountains and wide-eyed puppy dogs.
After that failure he had a breakdown.
And she had come home one day, dancing with excitement. It seemed that she’d gotten a job interview for him. “It’s as an artist!” Her lipstick had been Popsicle-orange. Her smile had stretched as far as sanity could go.
Sea Swallow Me and Other Stories Page 6