Try

by Dennis Cooper

  “No, uh . . . Shit.” Ziggy tosses the Polaroid away, digs a hand in his hair, concentrates. “Never mind. I’m just blabbing. I’m still whatever I always was. Bisexual, I guess.”

  “I think it’s better this way,” Calhoun says.

  “I agree.” Ziggy feels like he’s going to cry. So he yanks his haircut into loonyville. “It’s kind of, uh . . . refreshing, ha ha ha.” He twiddles the hair.

  “I hope it’s okay with you.”

  “It’s definitely okay with me.” Ziggy’s lower lip’s going crazy for whatever reason.

  “Good.”

  “Yeah,” Ziggy says. “What about the idea, though, of, like, us both, uh . . . fucking a girl at the same time? Is that . . . interesting at all? ’Cos . . . Shit, I don’t know. Maybe that’d be, like, a compromise.”

  Calhoun clears his throat. “But wouldn’t you . . . I know this sounds presumptuous . . . wouldn’t you want to do more things to me than to her? I mean, since you feel the way you do about me?”

  “No, no, uh—”

  “I’m just not interested in men at all.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “And I think I’m more of a one-on-one type of person.”

  “Yeah, yeah. That’s cool. Really, though, it’s not about fucking you. It’s . . . like . . . we’re brothers?”

  There’s a stretch of Calhoun’s patented, nerve-racking silence. “So . . . ,” he says. “How’s it going with your father?”

  “Oh, uh . . . horrible.” Ziggy lowers his voice. “We used to talk about bands and drive around . . . it was great, but now he’s pressuring me to have sex every second. He’s just, like, this total fucking sleazeball. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Ziggy pounds his forehead. Again, again.

  “Come on over,” says Calhoun. “Now. Blow him off.”

  “Yeah, I will. In a while. But I promised the guy, and, uh, I sort of have to go through with it. I’ll be there tonight, though, for sure, and . . . Can I crash at your place for a few days?”

  “Sure, but . . . don’t get any funny ideas.” Calhoun chuckles. “Sorry. And bring along that heroin you bought, if you have any left. In case I can’t quit. Then I won’t have to score when I’m sick.”

  “Okay,” Ziggy says, feeling his pocket to make sure it’s still in there. Yeah. “Will do.”

  “See ya later.”

  “Oh, wait.” Ziggy grabs the pencil, paper. “My interview, uh . . .”

  “Can’t we do it tonight? I’m kind of beat.”

  “No problem. That’s probably better anyway. ’Cos then I’ll be looking at your face, ha ha ha.”

  “Yeah,” says Calhoun.

  “And . . . shit, I’m so glad you’re gonna quit heroin.” Ziggy draws a big box around the words “Calhoun quits.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Calhoun lets out or takes in a scared-sounding drag.

  “And . . . forgive me, okay?” Ziggy’s doodling the box into a kind of, like, punk picture frame. “For, uh, being so emotional with you.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I . . .” Ziggy really wants to convey how he feels, though he’s so unsure what that entails that his mouth’s stuck just sorting it out. Doodle, doodle. “Uh . . . oh, fuck . . . I’m . . .”

  “Don’t worry about it,” says Calhoun immediately.

  “No, it’s just . . . that, uh . . . Fuck, fuck, fuck. Do you know what I’m going to say?”

  Calhoun takes a drag.

  “Should I say it or not?” Ziggy squints at the punk picture frame, which looks just realistic enough that it’s worth, like, refining a little.

  “It’s up to you.”

  “But would it help you to know how I feel?” Doodle, doodle.

  “I know how you feel.”

  “And . . . well, does it bother you, or . . .?”

  “Nope.” Calhoun clears his throat.

  “Shit, uh . . . Okay then, can I ask you the worst question I’ll ever ask you, and just get it over with now, if I promise to never ever mention it again?” Ziggy’s started decorating the frame with minuscule, screaming human faces.

  Calhoun takes a drag.

  “Uh, do you love me? I don’t mean are you in love with me, ’cos I know you’re not, and I’m not in love with you either, don’t worry. I mean ‘love,’ you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you just saying that so I’ll shut up?”

  Calhoun chuckles. “Of course.”

  “So,” Ziggy tries to say, but the word’s all, like, shredded. He has to shake his head to keep from bawling this second. “That’s . . .”

  “No, I’m lying.” Calhoun breathes out. “Look, I don’t know what love means. I really like you a lot. Maybe I love you, I don’t know.”

  “You’re the greatest person in the world.”

  “Jesus, Ziggy.” Calhoun starts scratch-scratching his lighter, it sounds like.

  “I believe that,” Ziggy says. “And I just feel incredibly lucky to know you. Every second of knowing you has been . . . Wait . . .” Tears are rolling. “Sorry . . .” He sobs. “Shit, you just . . .” He jags the mouthpiece about a foot from his mouth.

  “Thanks,” says Calhoun’s voice. It’s far off.

  Ziggy slaps one hand over his wet, shaky face to keep the noise down so Roger won’t hear him, rush in, and ruin everything.

  “Come on over.” Calhoun takes a drag.

  “I . . . can’t.” Ziggy sniffles. “Uh, but tonight.”

  “Look, you can come to my place or call me anytime you want, okay?”

  Ziggy’s throat squeaks involuntarily.

  “You . . . you’re my best friend. Hm . . . Look, we can talk all this shit out tonight.”

  Ziggy nods, squeaks.

  “You’re definitely going to come.”

  Ziggy forces the pencil to page and draws a screaming face. “Yeah.”

  “Okay.” Calhoun takes a drag. “See ya later then. I . . . have to go.”

  Click.

  Calhoun’s staring at an incompetent painting of Paris. What . . . has . . . he . . . done? On the one hand, he meant whatever he just said to Ziggy, even if the whole conversation’s already a wreck in his memory. Compassion burst of out of his mouth on its own. At the same time, no words have ever definitively caught what he means. So every time he speaks up he’s a liar in some sense. Calhoun has relatively successfully danced—though it’s more like a veer—around his emotions for years, it seems. Partially that’s to protect other people. In any case, he’s become an enigma, even to himself, though there’s a handful of relatives who’d more than love to debunk his philosophy and prove how conventionally fucked up he is. To them, he’s a scared, irresponsible, obnoxious, perpetual child whose life-style constitutes a simplistic disloyalty. And they’re waiting for him to accustom himself to his fate—membership in their incestuous, small-town kingdom, i.e., a handful of drunks and control freaks for whom a distorted, shrunken world’s better than facing the real one. They’ve made him distrust people. And he’s tried very hard to be comfortable alone, with heroin’s help. But Ziggy’s friendship is fucking things up now, because the guy’s so okay if insistent and needy. Ziggy’s a golden, complicated opportunity to . . . whatever, feel stuff without mentally strangling it at conception. Still, who’s to say the guy won’t get bored with mere friendliness, chase down the next basket case he can find, leaving Calhoun with all variety of painfully dug up emotion and nowhere to aim it, except maybe into his novel, one paragraph of which is still barely visible across his room in the laptop’s small, windswept blue window? Like . . . decrepit skywriting? Calhoun blinks himself to attention, strolls over, rereads it. Tick, tick, tick . . . Not bad. His description of Gwen, meaning Josie, is strangely . . . what? Sad but riveting, and kind of distantly sexy too. Thanks to him—or, more specifically, thanks to his heroin “problem”—she’s found her way into the ominous rest of the world. She’s probably over. Gwen’s still “around.” Heroin’s going away maybe. He’
s practically alone, as he wished. Ziggy cares, for whatever that’s worth. The cursor pulsates hypnotically. Tick, tick, tick . . .

  Mr. Frankel, a slight, balding, neatly dressed man in his late forties, entered Ken’s bedroom a foot and a half behind his lumbering host. Nervous little baby stepettes.

  “So . . .” Ken’s shrug indicated the corpse, not that anybody could’ve overlooked it.

  One dusty window’s glow over everything.

  “You can tell. Right away.” Frankel leaned over the soon-to-rot kid, one fingertip holding his glasses in place.

  “Mm-hm.”

  A delicate, stub-fingered hand pressing down on a chest like a crushed, shrink-wrapped cage.

  “What a perfect temperature,” said Frankel. His palm touched the genitals. Icy. “Oh my God.” He pushed down. Harder. Goose bumps swallowed that arm.

  “You want to see him alive?”

  Tick, tick, tick . . .

  Back in the living room, Fatso pushed PLAY. “First the buildup,” he said. “Getting to know Robin.”

  On TV, Robin, casually dressed, hair intact, sto-o-oned, slouched on a tartan couch, smirking.

  Frankel, rapt, kneeling close to the TV. “You’re a fortunate man.” He eyed Ken.

  Ken pushed SLOW MOTION.

  Frankel, back on his feet, hands in pants pockets, walking in very crude circles.

  On TV, Robin’s face looking totally abstract.

  The past. FAST FORWARD, PLAY.

  On TV, same kid, naked, zonked on a bed, really sparkly, being slowly reduced to a narrow white stripe under Fatso here.

  Two tight-lipped men staring into a TV set, faces gone . . . religioso, eyes and mouths in particular.

  No sound.

  “Details,” said Frankel.

  The fat man pushed FAST FORWARD. “How so?” PLAY.

  “Anything at all.”

  On TV, same kid with his head shaved, gagged, arms and legs flung in the air, overly lit into an eggshell white splash.

  Frankel walked into Ken’s bedroom, glancing back at the TV, peering into the room, TV, room, TV, room . . .

  “Well, he was a big Heavy Metal fan.” Ken pushed PAUSE.

  . . . TV, room . . .

  “Thirteen years old.”

  . . . TV, room . . .

  On TV, a freeze-frame of Robin not that far removed from the corpse over there.

  “And that’s about all . . . I—”

  “Ready,” said Frankel, basically to himself. He took a baby step backwards.

  PLAY.

  On TV, same kid, face unbelievably slutty, whether he’d planned it or not.

  In the world, a door creaking shut.

  Ziggy, still a bit puffy-eyed and sniffling, sits, or, rather, bounces shotgun in Roger’s red Honda Civic, suburbia smeared to either side. “Dad?” Ziggy eyeballs the guy, who’s changed his clothes to look even more teenager-friendly, though it just makes him seem like a kid with a really bad body and face. “I’m sorry I was on the phone for so long, but I decided some important, uh . . . stuff, you know?” The car jolts into its next highest gear. “About me and Calhoun. You know, my best friend.” Roger’s fists knot, empurple on the steering wheel. “No, listen,” Ziggy says, waving his arms around. “I got upset with him, and I never do that, ’cos he, like, hates it. But he acted incredibly nice. And, uh . . . I guess I realized . . . what?” Ziggy pounds on his forehead. “. . . that Calhoun needs his friends to, like, be really insane before . . . Shit, I can’t explain it. But he trusts me now, that’s the thing. It’s so amazing.” Ziggy grins hugely at everything. “And I never trust anyone either. So it’s like . . . I’ve been testing him too. And, you know, I guess he passed, ’cos he . . . sort of said he loved me. Just now.” Ziggy turns his happiness on Roger, who’s blanked out, eyes fixed on the road, not listening, though that’s obviously impossible, because of . . . physics or whatever. Shit. “Anyway, you don’t care. Fuck it.” Ziggy glares out the side window, chewing his bottom lip. House, house, house, house . . . indistinguishably blurred. “Take a right here,” he mumbles. The car’s turned so suddenly that Ziggy grabs onto the dashboard, and just avoids falling face first into Roger’s lap, which, uh, was probably the secret plan, knowing his dad. “It’s, like, three blocks up there on the right,” Ziggy adds, resettling. He presses his face to the glass. Roger floors it. “And, uh . . . I’m also not sure anymore about moving to New York with you.” . . . house, house, house . . . “’Cos Calhoun needs me. He’s quitting heroin, and I’m going to help him or whatever, so . . .” Deep in the exterior blur, a plaque, reflective white, numbered 832. Ziggy points. “Oh, there. Stop!” he yells. They’ve just whizzed by a house with nothing particularly noteworthy about it, except for how manicured to death the front yard is. “Back there.” Scre-e-e-e-ech.

  When Calhoun nods, if he’s lucky, it’s something like watching cartoons through the wrong end of a telescope. Well, not exactly cartoons. The hallucinations seem real, but the content’s ridiculous. They’re like loops of little snips from uninteresting movies he’s zoned out in front of. Delicate, meaningless moments that start out as tiny as dots, then rocket toward him down a fuzzily defined, grayish funnel, only to disintegrate on contact with . . . the tip of Calhoun’s nose or whatever. Eyes shut, mouth hanging open, he looks sort of mentally handicapped. Or he might look that way to a stranger . . . somebody who didn’t give a shit about him. To Ziggy et al., he looks like he’s dead. Truth is, he’s never been happier. The dichotomy’s insane. Heroin is so sophisticated it’s evil. Or if evil exists, heroin must be its chief go-between. How does one tell somebody this fucking peaceful to give it up, that he has to go back to functioning properly in one’s conception of the appropriate world? It doesn’t make sense. Ziggy just winds up praying in private like Calhoun is God, feeling helpless and too idealistic. Because . . . What could he say? Calhoun, your incapacitation is frightening me, or . . . If you O.D., I’ll be completely destroyed, meanwhile crossing his fingers in hopes his well-being still counts for anything with the guy. It does and it doesn’t. Certainly Calhoun can’t tell him so. Luckily, Ziggy’s half-learned how to sidestep his friend’s generalized behavior, decode contracted eyes, sift through that fuzz, overvalue the warmth of their rare outbound flickers. They’ve become the most beautiful things in the world, like the muffled cries of hikers trapped in landslides in the middle of nowhere. He’s learned to let them spark his imagination. Still, pray and daydream as Ziggy might, he can’t quite reconfigure what’s here. Here: a skinny blond teenager pickled in heroin, slack-faced, fallen limp as a corpse, brain discarding his lovers and friends for a half-life in decorous seclusion, unconcerned how it looks, or who he’s upset along the way, figuring nobody else will ever wander this far, check.

  Ken sat absorbing the Robin porn videotape, especially its earliest, fully clothed, softer-core part for some reason.

  Perfect kid.

  Yow.

  In the fat man’s mind: This is my finest . . .

  Robin, guffawing, head bobbing, hair flying in tempo with . . . what’s-their-name, that Heavy Metal band he loved so much, and . . . just . . . man oh man, just an edible-beyond-belief kid, if, that is, you don’t know he’s about to O.D. in a few hours. Or . . .

  A painfully hardening bump in the crotch of Ken’s pants.

  Not . . . again.

  In the fat man’s mind: Or . . . maybe knowing that Robin is dead makes this tape more profound just as long as you don’t have to look at his corpse, or . . .

  Metal kid’s face zooming in, out, in, out.

  Perfect “know-it-all” eyes.

  Ken fingered his bump bigger.

  In the fat man’s mind: Or . . . shoot some footage of Robin’s dead body and edit it onto the end of the tape to give this emotional weight and to jack the price skyward, or . . .

  Ken fast-forwarded through some head banging and so on until he saw skin.

  Play.

  Robin, nude, dru-u-u-unk, pinching hi
s nipples goofily on the fold-out bed.

  Perfect ironic-yet-vulnerable expression.

  Ken whipped it out.

  Pump, pump, pump . . .

  “Show . . . me . . . your . . . butt . . . kid.”

  Metal kid rising magically to his knees, turning, and sort of shoving that thing toward the camera until it gets blurred beyond all recognition.

  An Orson Welles-type seeing God in an unfocused butt shot.

  Pump, pump, pump . . .

  In the fat man’s mind: Or . . . keep the kid’s corpse around and shoot its decomposition then market the whole Robin tape and get infamous in certain circles, or . . .

  Perfect plan.

  Pump, pump—

  “Yo-o-ow.”

  Ken dropped a bit of sperm on his stomach again.

  Again.

  Ziggy, Cricket, and Roger are boozing it up in his/her parents’ dull living room. Really, the place barely registers, to Ziggy at least. Cricket’s prone on the carpet, cross-eyed, trying to braid the blondish hairs in one wide open armpit. Roger holds court on a couch, having dragged Ziggy—who’s an oversized Raggedy Andy doll, period—into his lap. The man’s imitating a, like, auctioneer, his usual haughty voice smeared by vodka tonics and all twisted up by his role. “What am I bid?” he warbles hectically. “For this . . . god?”

  “Oh, fuck you,” Ziggy slurs, not thinking anything. He waves his beer around.

  “Googolplex dollars,” Cricket mumbles, still braiding.

  “Oh my God, ladies and gentlemen. We have a tie between the bidder in . . . a badly fitting blue housedress, and the bidder in . . .” Roger tilts Ziggy forward by the scruff of the neck, presumably to check his own outfit. “. . . in stone-washed blue jeans and a My Bloody Valentine T-shirt.”

  “Fu-u-ck yo-o-ou,” Ziggy bellows.

  Cricket squeaks agreeably.

  “Let’s go somewhere . . . else,” Roger continues. He’s started to sort of, like, frisk Ziggy’s . . . groin for the most part. “. . . and divide up our loot, mm?”

  Cricket frees the braid. It immediately unties itself, droops. “I know where,” he/she mumbles, eyes locked on that pit, its hairs, which drunkenness must’ve redesigned into something mysterious like, uh, a dancing flame? Blink.