Try

by Dennis Cooper

  The fat man nodded, then yawned at great length.

  “’Cos I’m too tired to—”

  “All right.” The kid’s beauty had sort of returned with his clothes, though it definitely seemed weaker. “But I can’t guarantee I won’t . . .”

  Robin nodded frantically. That’s when he missed his long hair most of all for some reason.

  “Do a striptease,” Ken said. “Reinvent yourself.”

  “What?” asked the kid.

  The fat man drew in the air with a finger, some kind of violent squiggle, maybe clothes flying around. “Then we’ll crash.”

  Robin whipped off his T-shirt, stood there, panting, already exhausted.

  “Slo-o-o-o-wer,” Ken said.

  The kid slowed.

  Punching the doorbell three times, Ziggy peeps through the little square grate to the left of the buttons, where Calhoun’s soothing voice will waft out, if he’s around or awake. There’s a spiderweb in there.

  “Uh . . . hello?”

  “It’s me,” Ziggy says, almost kissing the apparatus. “You up?”

  “Sort of, yeah.” The web’s fluttering gently. “I’ll let you in.”

  The metal gate vibrates, whirrs, and Ziggy shoves his way through. Halfway down the former toy factory’s dark central hall, he sees a slanted light, triangle shaped, with a dim, black, elongated blob wavering in the middle like a ghostly chocolate center or an X ray. That must be Calhoun’s shadow. Seconds later, yeah, his best friend’s mussed-up blond hair and sort of Quakerish features jut out a doorway.

  “Hey,” Calhoun says, blinks.

  “I know you hate to hear this,” Ziggy says, rushing up to him. “But, God, I’m so glad to see you. You don’t know.”

  Calhoun makes one of his fake perturbed faces, so instead of hugging him, which is Ziggy’s first thought, they scoot into the loft. Even Calhoun’s walk—tense, shuffling, back stiff, arms pumping rigidly at his sides—make Ziggy grin really happily. When Calhoun turns, seems to notice, Ziggy bites away signs of his pleasure, but not in time, it appears.

  “What?” Calhoun half-grins. He eases down in his desk chair.

  Ziggy sprawls on the bed. “Nothing. Just the usual glad-to-be-with-you stuff.”

  Calhoun nods nervously.

  “When do you sleep?” Ziggy asks, sitting up.

  “Shortly.” Calhoun’s pupils are so tiny from the heroin they’re like microdots of the Encyclopaedia Britannica or whatever.

  “Well, you won’t believe what just happened.” Ziggy grabs his knees, shaking them around. “I was at my psycho uncle’s. You know, the one who made that video I lent you? And he had this kid there—I forget his name—uh . . . doing a video, and I interviewed him—well, him and Uncle Ken, but my uncle wasn’t as interesting since I already know him. And I’m gonna print it in I Apologize. ’Cos it was amazing! I think I’m gonna do a bunch of interviews. Maybe I’ll do one with you.”

  Calhoun’s listening, mouth crumpled, visage otherwise blank if enlivened by occasional blinks and sniffles.

  “Would that be okay?”

  Calhoun scratches his nose. “Yeah, I guess. But what do I have to do with it?”

  “Well,” Ziggy says, sort of surgically removing wordage from his brain. “Because . . . you’re the antidote to all that. When I’m with you, it’s weird how okay all the horrible parts seem. Like it’s all just some interesting stuff I can tell you about. Really. The only times I feel good are when I’m working on I Apologize or when I’m with you.” He smiles beatifically.

  “Ziggy, Jesus,” Calhoun mutters, and saws the back of one hand across his nose. “I like seeing you too. You’re my best friend, but . . .” He gives his lap an agonized look. “. . . and I don’t mean to offend. Still, why do you always want to talk about our friendship? Why can’t it just happen? I mean, I know how you feel. Trust me.”

  Horrified, Ziggy laughs, but it’s an ugly honk thing. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m too verbal, I know. The school therapist says I’m, uh . . . I’m afraid if I don’t tell you I like you all the time—oh, ’cos I told her how important our friendship is now—that you’ll have a reason to reject me. But she says it works the opposite way, and, uh, that I’m really just trying to make it impossible for you to say how you feel about me, ’cos I’m afraid what you’ll say is I don’t really matter to you. But I told her, ‘No, our friendship’s really mutual back and forth.’ ” He looks up hopefully. “That’s what’s so brilliant about it, that we’re so bonded.”

  “Yeah,” says Calhoun. His eyes seem like they’re aimed through Ziggy’s chest at some infinite point. “I don’t know . . . I guess I don’t want to be that close to people.”

  Ziggy nods, but it feels really stiff. “Don’t you think maybe you do like how close we are now, you just can’t think about it too much, like you said?”

  “I don’t know.” Calhoun’s still staring way out . . . wherever. “I hate talking about this.”

  “Yeah, sorry.” Terror, albeit mild, has weighed down Ziggy’s head until he’s watching Calhoun through the smoke of his unfocused eyebrows. “I understand. Uh . . .” He clears his throat. “. . . but I guess I sort of have to decide you do love me a lot, and you can’t tell me so, ’cos . . . it’d be hard to go on if I didn’t believe that. I know it sounds weird.”

  Calhoun nods, tips a cigarette out of the pack on his desktop, and uses his lighter on it. “Okay,” he says through a smoke gust. The cigarette hand hits the arm of his desk chair and pats nervously a few times. He’s forced a degree of warmth into his eyes from somewhere. They meet Ziggy’s, and pass along something very close to reassurance.

  “You mean so much to me, Calhoun,” Ziggy whispers. But he has to glance away at a bad thrift-store painting of Venice to actually pronounce that. “You really do. But now I’ll shut up. And, uh . . . we can talk about something else.”

  “You mean a lot to me too.” Calhoun manages a . . . smirk? “But, you know, shut up.” His voice squeaks on the up.

  “Right,” Ziggy says, smashing his lips together.

  Calhoun’s smirk devolves into a grimace. He looks down, probably at the chunk of text glistening on the screen of his laptop computer. Or he might be studying the spare, nasty snowfall of bloodstained, crushed cotton balls all around it. Or maybe it’s the combination. Anyway, his face has this softness and poignance that starts the idiotic emotion bomb ticking in Ziggy’s chest, albeit a tick so subtle that they could easily part before it goes off or whatever.

  “Guess what else?”

  Calhoun enlarges his eyes, but they’re still aimed somewhere on the desk.

  “I fucked this girl Nicole . . . I forget her last name. Lampley or something? Do you remember her from school?

  “Yup. Nice-looking girl.”

  “Totally!”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Yeah, she’s cool. We’ll, uh, see what happens now, ha ha ha.” Ziggy slugs the bed happily. Again.

  Calhoun nods. “So, I should do my next hit and crash,” he says. He takes a drag on his cigarette.

  “Right.” Ziggy leaps to his feet, making both knee joints crackle explosively. He jams his hands into his pockets. “Uh, sorry.”

  “Oh, I got you a present.” Calhoun reaches into his shirt pocket and slides out a cassette without taking his eyes off the desk. He holds it out. “I stole it from work.” He smiles dimly.

  Ziggy glances at the tape, then snatches it like it’s worth multimultimulti-zillion dollars. “Wow! Thanks, Calhoun.” It’s this new collection of Hüsker Dü rarities and outtakes. “I’ve been dying to hear this.”

  “So . . .” Calhoun rips his eyes away from the desk, meeting Ziggy’s. Anytime their eyes lock, even accidentally, Ziggy’s warmed and, well, honored, but this time his best friend’s expression seems so, uh . . . disturbed by what has to be, has to be an emotion or serious thought about him that he feels kind of trapped, though he knows he could move around technically. “. . . See ya.”r />
  “Yeah,” Ziggy says. “Uh . . . sleep well.” He takes three stumbly steps backwards. “B-bye.”

  Sprawled on his back, Calhoun turns on the TV and watches a rerun of Sanford and Son. It keeps his eyes moving if not too much else. But it can’t prevent them from veering down to those discolored arms. They crisscross his stomach, bulging out below the wrists like clowns’ “hands,” one plunked with an ashy cigarette. He needs to shove in a needle ere long. Yeah, where? He squints, raises his head, which feels . . . ticklish. No, nauseating. Shit. He has to give up this idiocy soon, horrified as he is of the rocky unhappiness he tells himself was his preheroin life. Still . . . the perfect drug hasn’t successfully distanced, attenuated, and framed everything, provided the world with a laugh track, then let Calhoun zone on his bed, observing its inhabitants’ antics. But it’s not like his life has been downgraded either. Things aren’t less valuable exactly. It’s more like addiction’s funereal pace has mediated or . . . quelled certain threatening aspects. Where it used to be sleep’s gentle weight on the eyelids would sort of erase Calhoun’s misery for eight to ten hours at a time, nowadays dreams just compete awkwardly with his high, in which the world doesn’t have to go away to improve. When heroin’s out of his system, if ever, his life’ll be . . . what? He can’t remember too well. Well, he’ll write again for one thing, and be a savvier friend, especially to Ziggy, whose irritating devotion, even when Calhoun’s an asshole and virtual zombie, socially at least, seems so uncalled for, inexplicable, and impossible to reward at the moment, that he has to immediately deep-six his eyes into the rerun—specifically Redd Foxx’s character faking his eight billionth stroke or whatever—to keep a nagging teardrop inside. He’d let it loose if he knew where it came from. Not that there aren’t numerous, really great reasons to cry. Just not now. At some future point, he’ll sort out this Ziggy, etc., shit and . . . whatever. Calhoun sniffles. Make a note, he thinks.

  The Metal kid eased out from under a sleeping fat arm. It dropped a half-foot but didn’t wake what’s-his-name up.

  Hands extended and trembling, way out in front of him, a bald-headed kid negotiated the gray, jam-packed house, roughly aimed at a tall, dim rectangle of kitchen.

  “Ouch . . . fuck.” Coffee table leg.

  Deep, deep, deep, deep inside the fridge, behind beers, Coke, etc., Robin touched a plastic bag that didn’t seem to belong there.

  The kid held it up under the moonlit north window. “Oh, yeah.” Hypodermic, spoon, packet of . . . heroin or speed probably.

  Robin’s pixieish face in a flattering light.

  A very tiny percolating soundtrack as the drug cooked.

  The kid studied the veins in his arms. “Shit, shit, shit . . .” Then he noticed one in his left biceps as bluish and wide as a felt-tip pen mark.

  Bodies, weird.

  Needle’s prick, blood seeping into the brown stuff, the mixture sluicing back into his system.

  Then the kid laid down Ken’s hypodermic and sta-a-a-ared at the great black outdoors.

  “Whoa.” The world started weaving around like . . . like . . .

  Robin tripped fifteen times on his way to the bedroom, which barely existed to his hazed-out eyes.

  Eyes shut, stumbling, the kid prayed to Tom Araya to help him . . . well, walk for one thing.

  Robin, down on his knees, head thrown back, neck stretched as tight as a pup tent, emitted a noise like his throat had been cut.

  But . . . he . . . made . . . it . . . to . . . to . . . the . . . the . . . the . . . bed.

  “Man?” he said weakly. His hand spasmed once, twice.

  Ken raised his head, eyes out of focus.

  Moonlit kid’s Britishy face with a . . . religious expression.

  Tick, tick, tick . . .

  Around the kid’s body, a world almost totally erased. “Beautiful,” Ken whispered.

  Whoosh. The fat man’s head flattened his pillow.

  Robin: An almost inaudible death rattle.

  Ken: “Snore.”

  “Thanks for the ride, ma’am,” Ziggy says. Slam. He trots up his driveway. Dawn’s more amazing than usual, maybe because Ziggy’s such a psychological disaster. The sky changes color and cloud configuration so rapidly he starts to feel dizzy, so when the door jiggles open, he runs inside, even though he’s already way breathless from lack of REM sleep before he picks up his pace. He immediately checks Brice’s whereabouts. Gone, it would seem, since everywhere’s vacant. Cool. Yeah, a note underneath an apple perched on the dining-room table reads, Ziggy, Back Sunday night at the latest. Dad. Scary handwriting, words twisted and bunched into scrawny haystacks. I should print this, like, what do they call it . . . facsimile, yeah . . . in I Apologize. Remember. Then Ziggy staggers to the phone machine, poking the button marked MESSAGES. “Three,” the machine says robotically. Whirr, beep. “It’s Ken, Ziggy. Ask your friend Calhoun to call me. Tell him I know a really great heroin dealer. Thanks.” Beep. “Ziggy, it’s Annie. Great deal on somethin’ new. Call if you want it.” Beep. “Hello, Ziggy? It’s Nicole. I just wanted to say it was nice last night. Let’s do it again. Call me.” Beep, beep, beep. Ziggy grins immensely for a second, then pushes ERASE. He wanders, daydreamy, arms swinging around, into his wrecked room. “Shit.” Luckily, exhaustion has softened its blow. He steps through the trash heaps, and topples back first onto his bed. Squeak, squeak. It’s practically 7:00 A.M. The world’s too dimmed, etc., by sleepiness to fully appreciate. So, rather than shortchange his thoughts about anything in particular, Ziggy sits up, undresses, sets what’s-his-name’s Slayer tape down on his cassette deck, then lowers the dust-caked venetian blinds over his bedroom’s one window. He unseals Calhoun’s gift, fits that tape into his deck, pushes PLAY, and flops down again. Ph-e-e-ew . . . If I listened to the things that you said, everything would fall apart . . . Exactly. “Calhoun, don’t die,” he whispers, picturing that pale, stoned-out face. I won’t. Get some sleep, Ziggy. “Okay, pal.” Ziggy yawns. “What a mess,” he slurs, glancing around his destroyed room. 7:08 A.M. “Roger’ll . . . think . . .” He yawns. “I’m . . .”

  I dozed through most of the flight, waking up at a poke from the man in the window seat. He needed to pee. Then I sleepily watched the last forty minutes or so—sans headphones—of Leap of Faith, starring Steve Martin as an evangelist/healer unsurprisingly bent on relieving mid-westerners of their immediate cash. Fortunately for me, in one of the smaller roles there was a doe-eyed, big-eared, bee-sting-lipped, longish-haired teen actor who spent most of his on-screen time hobbling on crutches. In fact, there were so many shots of his laboring ass in close-up that I began to suspect the director’s intentions.

  Ahem. What is the source of my interest in asses? (This gets better. Wait.) So frequently lust wrests the power away from my intellect, and, ruminate as I might, I’m reduced to devising paeans, period, as though this worshipful predilection were common, which I presume it is not. I would hazard a guess that this little fixation involves an avoidance of more resolute body parts, namely the face and genitalia, both of which, while fascinating, present too much personality, thereby reinforcing my failure to penetrate the givens of people I crave. For, of the body’s main features, an ass is the most vague in meaning and structurally flexible. What is an ass if not the world’s best designed, most inviting blank space, on the one hand, and, on the other, a grungy peephole into humans’ ordinariness, to put it mildly?

  L.A. was entirely smogged over that morning, so I was denied the adrenaline rush of floating onto its endless and bleached teenaged-boy-peppered grid. I deplaned, crossed the airport, caught the car rental agency’s minibus. Avis. After a torpid half hour of waiting in line, and superficially friendly blah-blah with an I.Q.-less employee, I shot away cramped in a red Honda Civic. An hour later, it and I whirred into the scrubby, arid San Gabriel Valley, whose flat neighborhoods were inexpensive enough for my brainless, job-flitting, assholish ex-boyfriend.

  I’d visited Ziggy perhaps a half-dozen
times over the last several years, always on weekends when Brice was off fucking—I should say fucking over—some boyfriend. A brief, pothole-dotted driveway led to a standard garage, shut, yellow paint flaking unchecked off the door. I parked there, lugging my suitcase toward the nondescript, fifties-style tract house. One huge tree of an indeterminate type cloaked maybe half of the building, casting an immense, rough parabola of shade, especially slanted and dark at this early hour. I was grateful for it, since a slight trembling had begun to interfere with my movements, and worrying how Ziggy might misinterpret this nervousness left a discernible sparkle of sweat on my forehead.

  “Fuck, hold on,” Ziggy yells over the doorbell’s mind-boggling clangs. He plods down the hall, quasidressed in a Hüsker Dü T-shirt, period, one hand stretching its hem down, down, down over his flip-floppy genitals. Half to three-quarters asleep, he yanks open the front door. With his free hand, he shields his hazed eyes against the blindingly lighted outdoors.

  “Hello, angel,” says Roger’s voice. First the guy’s just some wavering shade sort of doused in fluorescence, but, as Ziggy’s pupils do their mysterious adjustments, his visitor crisps into focus.

  “Uh . . . yeah. Hi.” It’s weird, Ziggy thinks. Maybe his dad’s gotten older and heavier over the weeks, make that months, since they last hung around, but the “Roger” he’s been imagining to jerk off and the Roger he has to accept as, like, fact, as of now, could be . . . son and father?

  “So it begins,” Roger half-says, half- . . . moans? His short brown hair has thinned out to the point of transparency; his sharp-angled, colorless face is an abstracty bust, its bloodshot eyes, nose, and lips oddly spaced across the surface. Clothes-wise, everything’s just a little too fresh off the rack—“casual” stuff with this expensive patina—not to mention that none of it fits properly—strangly Sebadoh T-shirt, massive jeans, which, in his case, reads as hopelessly eggheaded, as opposed to, uh, devil-may-care, or whatever he thinks.

  “So . . . uh . . .” Ziggy waves his dad in.