Red Hot Lipstick

by Jeremy Reed

  And after making love a second time they lay together quietly, their need expended, their thoughts returning to the immediate, and outside they could hear the London rain tapping a slow drum-rhythm on the streets. Jim kept needing the reassurance that Melissa was real, and her best way of confirming this was to kiss him. But neither spoke about themselves; their private lives seemed unshareable, and each time Jim was about to ask Melissa about her life, and to enquire where she lived and what she did, he hesitated. And he seemed to have no desire himself to tell her of his personal history in the way that lovers impart fragmentary things which in time become a whole.

  Eventually he fell asleep in Melissa's arms. When he awoke it was still raining, it was hardly dawn, but she had gone. The bed was in a chaos of fetish items. Jim lay there a long time. There was no note. Nothing. He began to think that he had dreamt Melissa, but when he sat up he saw the dark imprint of her lips on his stomach, a lipstick tattoo. It was the only trace of her, and he decided to keep the mark until that too should fade.

  By the same author:

  NOVELS:

  The Lipstick Boys

  Blue Rock

  Red Eclipse

  Inhabiting Shadows

  Isidore (a novel about Lautréamont)

  Red Hot Lipstick (Erotic Stories)

  When the Whip Comes Down (a novel about De Sade)

  The Pleasure Chateau (an erotic trilogy)

  Chasing Black Rainbows (a novel about Artaud)

  Diamond Nebula

  Dorian (a sequel to The Picture of Dorian Grey)

  Boy Caesar

  The Grid

  Here Comes the Nice

  POETRY:

  Target

  A Long Shot to Heaven

  The Isthmus of Samuel Greenberg

  Saints & Psychotics

  Bleecker Street

  A Man Afraid

  By the Fisheries

  Nero

  Selected Poems

  Engaging Form

  Nineties

  Brigitte’s Blue Heart

  Claudia Schiffer’s Red Shoes

  Turkish Delight

  Red Haired Android

  Kicks

  Sweet Sister Lyric

  Saint Billie

  Black Sugar

  Patron Saint of Eyeliner

  Dicing For Pearls

  Heartbreak Hotel

  Duck and Sally Inside

  Orange Sunshine

  This is How You Disappear

  Bona Drag

  West End Survival Kit

  Black Russian: Out-Takes 1978-9

  Piccadilly Bongo

  Bona Vada

  POETRY/PHOTOGRAPHY

  Pop Stars (1995) – with Mick Rock

  Big Orange Day (2010) – with Lisa Wilkerson

  Exploding into Colour (2012) – with Lisa Wilkerson

  TRANSLATIONS:

  The Coastguard’s House (Eugenio Montale)

  Tempest of Stars (Jean Cocteau)

  The Complete Poems (Jean Genet)

  Praries of Fever (Ibrahim Nasrallah)

  All That’s Left to You (Ghassan Kanafani)

  On Entering the Sea (Nizar Qabbani)

  The Sheltered Quarter (Hamza Bogary)

  Hymn to the Night (Novalis)

  NON-FICTION

  Heart on my Sleeve

  Madness: The Price of Poetry

  Angels, Divas and Blacklisted Heroes

  Caligula – Divine Carnage (with Stephen Barber)

  Lipstick, Sex and Poetry (autobiography)

  Bitter Blue (autobiography)

  BIOGRAPHIES:

  The Last Star (Marc Almond

  Another Tear Falls (Scott Walker)

  Waiting For the Man (Lou Reed)

  The Last Decadent (Brian Jones)

  Born to Lose (Jean Genet)

  Delirium (Arthur Rimbaud)

  A Stranger on Earth (Anna Kavan)

  The King of Carnaby Street (John Stephen)