“You don’t want this.” Calhoun chuckles. “It’s expensive for one thing.”
Ziggy doesn’t know how to phrase this, but . . . “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. But it’d be stupid for you to start when I’m thinking of quitting.”
“No, I know. Actually, don’t get pissed, but I wish you would quit, ’cos I keep worrying you’re gonna O.D., and—”
“I won’t,” Calhoun mumbles.
“Are you . . . sure, ’cos . . .” Ziggy strums his forehead kind of punkily.
“Yeah, I’m sure!” Then Calhoun shuts up, but his silence is somehow more like whatever the opposite of silence would be. Like a scream? “Look, just . . . just don’t do it.”
“Okay, I won’t.” Ziggy’s right hand crumples the Baggie.
“Hey, do whatever you want, though. Don’t not do anything on my account.”
“I don’t want to.” Ziggy reduces the Baggie to a wad in his fist.
Calhoun’s voice squeaks frustratedly.
“I just . . . don’t want to hurt you, you know? You’re my best friend.”
“Yeah,” says Calhoun, either resigned or uncomfortably pleased or . . . something. Then, luckily, he chuckles.
“And I love you a lot. Sorry.” Ziggy punches his forehead. That flattens the wrinkles out.
“Yeah, I know, I know. Just . . . do whatever you want.”
“I won’t do it.”
“O-kay!”
“And I’ll, uh . . . come over and see you . . . tomorrow,” Ziggy adds as casually as he can.
“Yeah?” More silence or . . . turbulence. “When?”
“Uh, wait . . . oh, shit.” Ziggy pounds his forehead. “My fucking dad’s flying in from New York tomorrow, and I think we’re going to, uh, sleep together, ha ha ha. So . . . as soon as I can get away from him. Can I . . . call you?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure.”
“And I’m sorry about saying all that shit about loving you and all. I didn’t mean to stress you out. You know, I’m just—”
“It’s okay,” Calhoun says. “Well, see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, uh . . . bye.” Ziggy hangs up, moans, positive he’s stressed Calhoun out. He opens his fist, and watches the Baggie unwind crookedly on his palm. It’s intact, powder sparkling inside. It reminds him of . . . what? A smashed-down snow dome or whatever. Pretty. “Ziggy, you’re such a fucking loser,” he whispers, glancing forlornly at a nearby trash can. If he tossed the Baggie in that direction, he could conceivably make a basket, but . . . Seconds later, he shoves the thing into his back pocket—“Shit”—then hits the sidewalk, thumb already out.
Calhoun stares into his desk’s open drawer. At a glance, it’s a mess—six, seven majestic if well-used syringes obscured by a flattened-out cloud bank of bloody cotton balls, blackened spoons, gummed-up cellophane squares . . . To Calhoun, it’s a relatively organized kit. Things don’t have to be cordoned off in pockets, drawers, towns, neighborhoods, etc., to function. There’s the possibility of genius in chaos, in having to fumble around, knowing whatever you need isn’t all that well hidden a half-foot in any direction. But . . . Calhoun’s accidentally caught sight of his arms, spotlit horrendously well by the desk lamp’s wide spill. Jabbed to shit, they legitimize him in a way. Others reemerge from various parts of the world tanned and bubbling with tales one’s heard millions of times. Someday he’ll be able to roll up his sleeves and half-grin, Mona Lisa–like, while people wonder and worry a little in retrospect. These arms are his, like the moon is a handful of astronauts’. Subliminally numb all the time, streaked with collapsed, ashen veins, they’ve begun to repel needles’ pricks, no matter how fine the implement. Locating a usable vein requires eight or nine pokes as of earlier today. He’s even been forced into poking the backs of his hands, which are noticeably puffed up and blanched. Studying them, he feels a dull, far-off sadness, which, right on fucking cue, his dimming high turns into spaciness before he can drift into too much analysis. Through heroin, Calhoun has found the kind of questionable comfort and amorality he needs to survive, for a while anyway. But it’s too typical and ironic, he thinks, that love—since love is just how the thing between heroin and him reads, based on his limited info—would finally enter what’s left of his life all enmeshed with this . . . this . . . —he looks at the drawer’s sort of volcanic contents, then at his unfocused, inflated hands struggling to stay aloft in the foreground—this . . .
Osamu had conked out a few minutes back. I was gazing on him with extremely mixed feelings. Luckily he reeked of sex, particularly his much-explored ass, the smeared crack of which seemed to radiate nose-tingling spiciness, like something I’d just slid bubbling from an oven. As I crouched by the teenager, sniffing that garbagey reek—and preparing to hustle him out my front door—I must say I felt a very strange, even indescribable poignance.
“Osamu,” I said. The boy opened his eyes, scared at first, then apparently pleased to be sprawled where he was sprawled. Soon he was happily regrinding his by-that-point-understood ass into my still mildly overwhelmed face.
Fifteen minutes later we lay side by side, spoiled, tired, frazzled. “Osamu,” I said again. The boy was doing some kind of dancery lying-down leg exercises.
We discussed what had happened and what was potentially forthcoming re: us. I could have been much more straightforward, okay, but Osamu seemed so, well, positive about us as a couple. More to the point, I couldn’t risk alienating him, since his folks could’ve technically called the police. So I persuaded the boy to take a compromise. In short, I wouldn’t just cancel my flight to L.A. there and then, as Osamu was urging; I would guarantee that, if worst came to worst, I’d be equally true to the “boy in the West” and my guest.
Relatively satisfied, Osamu took a long shower while I stuffed a suitcase.
Maybe I was imagining things, but when the boy left my bathroom, he seemed to be strutting his stuff, as they say. There was a curious tilt to the towel he’d fixed round his waist, and it rode his hips far too precariously. Still, this lurid display was so totally unlike the Osamu I knew that I had to observe him for several minutes before I was sure.
“You’re a slut,” I announced mock accusingly. He was back in the bathroom again, blow-drying his hair with the door wide open.
Osamu claimed he was a virgin.
I accused him of cockiness.
Osamu said he was just happy.
As a rule, teenaged skin lulls me, nicely offsetting my intellectual response with its peacefulness. Osamu’s skin followed suit, coming to rest—hovering really—around his bright musculature, not to mention the loveliest skeleton in New York, with such innate modesty that I had to repossess it that instant.
I entered the bathroom, ripping away Osamu’s towel. The boy turned, smiled, triumphant. He told me something on the order of, use me however you wish, in a defiant tone that I assumed had popped out of some rock song or movie, as it was both fraught and a little clichéd.
I commandeered the blow dryer, switched it off, dragged the giggling teenager back to my bed, posed him, and spread his asscheeks so wide the ass lost its division entirely, becoming a perfect, grayish brown ball, albeit with the most luxurious and harshest-smelling puncture in the world.
Bzzz, goes Calhoun’s doorbell. He’s just done his shot, and is amdist an impeccable nod, but, guessing who’s probably out there, he clutches the chair’s arms, and, sniffling, propels himself into his messy room. Momentum carries him to the little intercom unit, which, luckily, he painted an eye-stabbing red in tribute to his oft-seen blood. “Yeah?” he asks, out of breath, pushing the TALK button. As he’d hoped, prayed even, it’s Annie’s unmistakable twang at the other end. “Come on in,” he says, holding the DOOR button down for a fairly long time. Then he weaves through the halls and byways of his loft to the main entrance/exit. Hurling open the thick metal door, he squints. Here Annie struts with her boyish attire and that big, goofy grin wherein he used to want to bury his co
ck. Not that it’s not still a reasonably delectable thought, just a spacier one. It’s up to her now. If she suggests sex, he’ll try to fulfill his daydream, as impotent as heroin has left him of late. “Hey,” he says. They wander into Calhoun’s spacious, disheveled room. Is Annie smiling at him really warmly? Seems so. She strolls around, eyeing his paltry if beloved collection of bad thrift-store paintings. She’s just sold some heroin to Ziggy McCauley, she says. “Yeah, he called me.” Calhoun takes his usual seat. Ziggy sure does adore you, she adds. Calhoun nods. “He’s a good friend.” Anyway, she says, reaching around in her pocket, here’s your dope. Calhoun accepts the profferred Baggie, and pulls out six twenties. She stashes them, then, unexpectedly, stands about a foot from his chair, her weight shifting from Doc Marten to Doc Marten, sort of . . . leering at him, it appears. Here’s where in the old days he’d have thought about making a delicate suggestion. “Uh,” he says, and tries to leer back complexly. “So . . .” Calhoun can’t find the words. Even so, he wouldn’t know how to give them a requisite comical spin, he’s so zoned. Fuck other people, he thinks, sulking. Bitch. He’s close to tears, not that it shows. Bored is how Calhoun’s unhappiness reads. Tick, tick, tick, tick . . . Well, you take care, she mumbles reluctantly it seems, and heads for the door. Calhoun wants to say, Stay, or something to that effect. Instead, his mouth just sort of falls open, hangs there, a reddish black, roughly triangular slot, at the far back of which are some inventive emotions that don’t have a chance against the shit heroin throws over everything in the world except its own . . . whatever. Slam.
Robin scratched at his gag.
Ken switched off the camera. “Shit,” he said. Filling an old hypodermic with clear liquid sedative crap he’d had sitting around in a bottle for years, he pushed a sparkly drop out the tip and jabbed the Metal kid’s shoulder.
Slayer’s tape was white noise, to Ken’s mind anyway, but if the kid liked it . . .
Robin, scared, woozy, lost, immobile, period.
Back at the video camera, Ken slowly zoomed in on the kid’s reeking butt.
Giant butt in the foreground. Unfocused, Britishy face in the distance. Great shot.
Robin saw what he could manage to see.
“My nephew’s on his way over,” Ken said, in case Robin could hear. “That’s my hurry.”
Then Ken butt-fucked the kid, who just lay there all tensed.
Luckily Robin’s face seemed like he was mentally into it, thanks to the drugs, no doubt.
“You’re weird,” Ken said, imitating Ziggy’s voice maybe.
Good old Slayer.
Good old drugs.
Robin, pinned on his back, legs folded up, fat man balanced about an inch overhead like a teetering boulder, really fucking, hard, sweat dripping down, plip, plip, plip, on the kid’s perky face.
Then the doorbell cut faintly through Slayer’s LP.
“Shit,” Ken said, climbed off the kid.
Robin opened his eyes a slit, saw light.
Ken was dressing. “My nephew,” he yelled over the onslaught.
Ziggy punches Ken’s bell, but the one-story house might as well be a giant, eccentric amplifier. It’s shivery from the force of some dumb Heavy Metal the guy or his guest has cranked up. So Ziggy reaches up, locates the key Ken hides under the petrified shit in his birdhouse. Yuck. Click, click, cre-ea-ea-ak. “Uncle Ken!” he yells, mouth cupped. The living room’s usually neat to the point of psychosis. Today the rug’s hilly and spattered with wide-open porn magazines, not to mention innumerable smallish, twisted articles of clothing. Budweiser cans line both arms of the fake-tartan couch, or, rather, couch bed, since its usual seat cushion’s an unmade queen bed. Weird. Nobody’s in the john, kitchen. That’s obvious from here. But the Sex Hole’s door’s closed, not sitting open an orangy slit, as per most visits. So Ziggy does like he does when Ken’s doing whatever he, ha ha ha, does in the Hole, and turns off the stereo system, to let the guy know he’s present. . . . A cannibal’s desire feeds the fire that burns in your—Click. Ziggy loves how, like, even after it’s off, loud music, especially guitar, hangs around in the air tinkling faintly for two, three seconds. “Cool.” It reminds him of . . . what? He scrunches his face up. “Hm.” Just about the time that . . . ear ghost or whatever is burning off, Ken, who always makes Ziggy think of that actor Ned Beatty—but fatter, for sure, and with a dated shag haircut—throws back the door of the Hole, slams it behind him, and stumbles into the living room, dressed in black jeans and a tight blue T-shirt with red, white, and black polka dots, looking fifty pounds heavier than even last visit if possible, not to mention unusually trashed, on the surface at least. He drops on the couch bed. It squeaks wildly under his weight, thin metal legs slamming the floor. Several beer cans fall off, pummeling the rug. Clunk, clunk, clunk . . . clunk. A little beer mixed with soggy tobacco or pot oozes out of one can near Ken’s bare, hairy feet. He just sits there, hunched over, while air explodes in-out his mouth, and beer spreads in an octopusish pattern.
“Your shirt’s backwards,” Ziggy says, leaning back on the TV, a little dazed by everything.
Ken just watches the beer move. “Yeah,” he manages. “I threw this on. In case you changed your mind and brought Calhoun.”
Ziggy sets his jaw—pissed, jealous, something. “So the Heavy Metal kid’s in there?” He nods cursorily in the general direction of the room where things happen, which means he has to look past this huge, framed poster of naked kids swimming around in a lake that some supposedly famous dead German photographer traded with Ken for some rare kiddie porn.
“So, how is Calhoun?” Ken asks, zoned.
“He’s fine,” Ziggy says. “Well, he’s kind of heavy into heroin now, so that’s, uh . . . a big worry, but . . .” Ken nods vaguely off in the distance. “Anyway, you don’t care, fuck it.” Ziggy kicks at the rug.
“Have you slept with him yet?” Ken mumbles.
“No!” Ziggy yells, a little too insistently maybe. “That’s not . . . I mean I wouldn’t mind, but he’s really, really straight, so . . . and it doesn’t matter!”
Ken’s still studying the beer, his fat—to put it simplistically—face unfocused into a low-grade stare. “We have to deal with some details,” he says. “I’m making a porno. Right now.” He nods at the Sex Hole.
“Figured.” Ziggy looks at the Hole too, meaning a closed door.
“So, I’m in a strange place.”
Ziggy squints at the door’s folksy, hand-lettered sign, Gone Fishin’, ha ha ha. Ken’s news is too loaded to process. Anyway, Ziggy’s mostly curious about the Metal kid, who he is, how he looks, what his take is on being in porn, not to mention the Hole itself, which Ziggy hasn’t seen firsthand for . . . God, it’s been years. “Can the kid . . . talk?” Ziggy asks.
“Talk?” Ken sits forward, making his face slop around on his skull a bit. Yuck. “Well, he’s gagged. But, yeah, a little. Why?”
Ziggy’s eyes unfocus slightly. “Would it freak me out to see him?”
“I don’t know,” says Ken’s voice.
“Is the Sex Hole locked up?” Ziggy shoves a fingertip between his teeth and starts gnawing the crescent of skin that frames its very bitten-down nail.
“No, but—”
Ziggy nods furiously, already up on his feet, halfway across the room. He twists the doorknob, throws the Hole wide open, squints. So . . . It’s still a barely furnished little movie set. Same double bed on a platform, cheap covers, end table, lamp, very motellike in theory, except now, unlike in Ziggy’s day, there’s a videocam on a tripod midroom, as opposed to a super 8 camera, and the ceiling, once plunked with a single spotlight, is an upside-down trainyard of track lights, all their bulbs aimed at the bed, where a short, skinny, bleached-out, nude kid’s lying flat on his back—microscopic genitalia, eyes shut, mouth hanging open, legs together, arms clamped to his sides militarily. His chest is so sunken he looks like a human canoe. Also, he’s more, well, skinhead than Heavy Metal until, that is, Zig
gy realizes the gag in his mouth is a twist of long, blond—if obviously dyed—human hair. “All right, Uncle Ken,” Ziggy whispers, half impressed, half sort of horrified. He’s standing there, hands bunched in pockets, looking around, when the kid’s eyelids part about a quarter inch, blink several times, fixing on . . . Ziggy?
“Shit. Uh, hi,” Ziggy says. “I’m the nephew of, uh, Ken. But I’m neutral. I’m not into this stuff in the same way he is. I . . . come in peace, ha ha ha.”
The kid seems amazingly gone. Like if his brain had been slipped out the back so his eyeballs had nothing worthwhile to report.
“You’re tired. That’s cool. I dig.” Ziggy takes a couple of steps toward the kid, hands out to show he’s not holding a weapon. “It’s intense to see you. People are so weird. Especially Uncle Ken, as you know.” He smirks tentatively.
The kid doesn’t respond.
Ziggy reburies his hands in his jeans pockets, toes the wooden floor, careful to avoid a minigalaxy of . . . it looks like sperm driplets. “This is totally insensitive of me, isn’t it? I’m really bad about knowing when to censor myself. Everyone says so. Sorry.” He glances up from his shoe.
Staring, gagged, unreadable kid.
“Actually,” Ziggy continues. “The reason I’m here is to see if I can handle your predicament first of all, which I guess I can, and then to ask you some questions. Because I publish this magazine about, like, sexual abuse, and an interview with you would be an amazing coup.” Ziggy cringes, knowing how flip that sounds.
The kid’s just sort of looking at Ziggy, eyes full of . . . who-knows-what, skin so consistently sweaty he seems cast in resin. But sexy. Ziggy’s cock’s gotten hard just from studying the situation. Shit. He fiddles with it worriedly, trying to figure out whose side he’s on at the moment. Probably the kid’s, but . . . Now something among his thoughts gels, though it’s more like he’s realizing he’s realizing something than . . . whatever . . . a revelation. “Just a second, okay? Sorry.” He smiles at the kid, whirls around, runs to the door, and sticks his head into the living room. “Uncle Ken!” he yells.
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