Rigor mortis, weird.
Ugly sugary smell from Robin’s basic direction.
Ken, trying to fill in a narrative.
He edged over, pinched his nose, peering down into Robin’s new asshole.
Behind the fat man, subtle toweling sounds.
“Thanks again,” said Frankel. “Sincerely.”
Ken nodded, hypnotized.
Tick, tick, tick . . .
Frankel moved to Ken’s right, watching, toweling. “Mm mm,” he joked. “I’ve been there.”
If the kid was alive, moaning . . . If this was Calhoun, maybe . . . As is, the fat man felt less and less horny each second.
Tick, tick, tick . . .
For whatever reason the corpse ended up on Ken’s floor. Some kind of strange, avalanchelike commotion.
Thunk.
Robin, a toppled statue named Agony or something.
“Too bad they rot away,” Frankel said. “I’d take him home.” He pulled the bath towel taut, snapped at the statue. “Have a few friends over.”
Ken snorted.
“No, seriously. I think I’m in love.” He aimed, snapped.
“With what?” asked the fat man. He pointed. “That?”
Frankel looked . . . how to put it? “Long story,” he said.
“You did this . . .”—Ken waved generally at the statue—“. . . before?”
“Once.”
“Same situation?”
“Quite similar.” Frankel sat on the bed, eyeing Robin impassively. “Friend of my son Ron’s. Drugged out, long-haired mess. Cuter than this baby. Used to come around, even when Ron wasn’t home. Talked to him, took him seriously. Bright kid. Deep emotional problems. Came by one night full of tranquilizers. Couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk. Don’t know how he got there. Helped him into the guest room. Said, Sleep it off. Came back to check up a few hours later. Kid was dead. No question about it. Ron was over at Peggy’s, his girlfriend. Figured nobody knew where the druggie kid was. Loner type, few friends. Even Ron was fed up with his bullshit by then. To me he was interesting. Different standards, I guess. So I thought, What the hell. Stripped him, did a heavy little number. Beautiful, beautiful ass. Loved how immobile it was. You can mold a dead body. Move the muscles around, they get stuck. Had an incredible time. Made him into a monster. But his smell got bad. So I buried him in the backyard. Police never came around. Never heard anything. Never stopped thinking about him. Still can’t. Thought this might clear the air. Maybe it will. Definitely have a better sense of the experience now.”
Ken had been listening, studying the statue too. “Yeah,” he mumbled.
“Human brains are amazing.” Frankel was up on his feet getting dressed in fast motion.
“So I should bury him?”
Frankel straightened the scarf in his breast pocket. “I honestly would take him with me, but . . .”
Reality, weird.
Down below, Robin’s corpse smelled like an oven with something grotesque being cooked at a low heat inside it.
Frankel paused, staring off at some nowhere. “You want to know the difference between Ron’s friend and him?” he said, blinking. “I knew Ron’s friend. Built my interest up over a year. He wasn’t just cute, he had meaning, you understand? I knew who was dead. I knew something was missing. This situation here . . . is more . . . technical.”
“Maybe I didn’t know what’s-his-name long enough,” Ken said.
“You’re a fortunate man.”
Frankel whipped out his checkbook.
By the time we reached Brice’s, I’d given up trying to change Ziggy’s mind re: the move to New York. Truth be told, I had soured a bit on the idea myself. Strange how repressed lust can doctor, retouch, etc., some nice-looking nobody. Mine had virtually deified Ziggy when, as became more apparent each minute, his beauty came with uncontrollable contents. Still, while that surface remained both intact and available, I was pleased, nay, honored to partake. So I ordered him onto the futon.
It was perhaps, oh, twenty-five minutes later—by which time I’d become quite a foul piece of work, I don’t mind telling you—that I was startled to hear my son’s voice. (Just to show you how anonymous the sex felt, I thought for a moment, What’s Ziggy doing here?) He said something about a . . . “cavern” supposedly hidden away in his buttocks. Had I discovered it yet? he wondered.
Of course he meant his rectum, I answered, and, yes, I’d grown familiar with its existence at least.
He seemed enthralled. What’s it for? he wanted to know. Did everyone have one? Charming.
“Your fecal material collects there,” I said, and dug two, perhaps three fingers into his ass, deep enough that I could bend their very tips and explore the rectum’s slippery walls. “And when there’s enough shit,” I continued, “it weighs on the tube, and . . . time for your toilet.”
“What’s in there right now?” Ziggy asked between winces and nips at his bottom lip. Brice’s bedroom had started to smell like an extension of his bowels. Or like . . . their museum.
I dug, dug. “Mucus,” I said. “And some mysterious seaweedy objects. It’s quite hot in here. You must have a slight temperature, but then I’m no G.P., of course.” Perhaps I found other things, I can’t remember. Chiefly, I was stunned by the ease with which his ass had accepted my digits. “Indulge me, Ziggy,” I said. Then I gently explained the term fist-fucking, and asked his permission to try this miraculous feat then and there, with a respectful narration, of course. (I know I’m speeding up. Pardon.)
“You won’t, like, destroy anything?” he asked.
Reassuring him that I wouldn’t—though, as we all know, life is guarantee-free—I bounded to my suitcase, withdrew the tube of lubricant, and beautified my right hand, while Ziggy watched and swallowed in my peripheral vision. It seemed nigh impossible that my nonpetite paw could start wearing his hardly palatial young ass, yet, once I’d rejoined the fair creature and unsealed his crack, the anus positively yawned. Fixing my eyes on that too-trusting face—meaning approximately half, as it was lying on its side in a pillow—I squeezed the tube’s goo down his maw, and started punching inside.
Ziggy yelped, tensed his body, and let out this unforgettable scream that sounded ten miles away.
Four fingers sank almost immediately, and I was wedging my thumb into that slobbery knothole as well, when Ziggy lifted his head, which, I might add, was unpleasantly obscured by a thick, beaded curtain of sweat. “Oh fuck,” said his voice. “Listen.”
“Just . . . one . . . more . . . inch.” (Have I mentioned that I was also masturbating this entire time?)
“No, listen.” Ziggy reached back and clutched at the wrist that was seconds away from immersion.
Ziggy forces his bedroom door shut, steps around busted things, and starts hurling on any old clothes he can find, no matter how wrinkled and sour.
Roger’s snatched an old Hüsker Dü shirt from the floor and is toweling lubricant, shit, etc., off his hand.
Tick, tick tick . . .
“Fuck, it’s hopeless.” Ziggy plops on the bed, looking worriedly down his misfastened and inside-out shirt. “Okay, uh . . . we’re gonna tell Brice you’re visiting. Uh, and I let you crash in his room.”
Roger nods. “That sounds reasonable, but—”
“Wait, wait.” Ziggy slaps a fingertip to his lips. There’s a racket about, say, the distance away of Brice’s room, which isn’t so dangerous, but, fuck, it suddenly mutates into the creaking that always precedes a grand entrance.
“Where do I hide this?” Roger’s shaking the shirt around. “Ziggy?”
“Over . . .” Creak, creak, creak . . . “Shit! Anywhere, Dad.”
The door blasts open, sproing, knocks a fried egg–sized hole in the wall, then swings into Ziggy’s room, vibrating. Enter Brice. He’s dressed up in his much, much too tight leather jacket and pants that, to Ziggy at least, always sort of soften his scariness, or make it seem more, like, preplanned, give it guidelines or whatever,
assuming the stuff Uncle Ken used to say about S&M being a harmless if X-rated sport still applies. Here’s hoping. “I want an explanation from him,” Brice says, indicating Roger, who’s hunched way over, covering his crotch with the T-shirt. “And you,” meaning Ziggy, no doubt, although Brice doesn’t look. “. . . you shut fucking up.”
Roger’s stumbling backwards. “Well . . .” He peers at Ziggy, who can’t seem to make his eyes say anything in particular, apart from whatever they naturally exude, which, the school therapist tells him, is neediness, period. “The . . . explanation is . . .,” he says, garbage breaking, crunching, etc., under his footsteps. “. . . that . . . I’m in town from New York on some business, and . . . I needed a pit stop.”
Brice’s face grows a smidgen more purple and taut. “So why does it smell like somebody’s just taken a dump in my bedroom?”
Roger shakes his head. “I really don’t know.”
“Here too.” Brice sniffs the air right in front of his face, then cranes his neck, inhaling dramatically nearer Roger. “It’s coming from you.”
“I ate something that didn’t agree with me,” says Roger. “I was about to step into the shower in fact.”
Brice glares at Ziggy, Roger, Ziggy, Roger. “You’re fucking.” He runs a hand through his greasy red hair, which has gone kind of Bozo in all the commotion.
Roger opens his mouth.
“Thing is,” Brice adds, studying Roger. “That’s a perfectly good explanation. Everyone wants to fuck Ziggy. Not just assholes like us. Women. Even a couple of straight guys I know.”
Roger glances at Ziggy, brows arched, possibly to mean, Hey, the guy’s not a creep after all, but their contact’s too quick, and Ziggy’s too physically fucked up in general, to counteract that with a knowledgeable grimace.
“So, with that out in the open . . .” Brice grins, for whatever it’s worth.
Ziggy extends an arm. “Dad,” he squeaks, paddling the air between him and Roger. “Don’t believe—”
“Shut up!” Brice yells. “I mean it.” He glances at Roger. “Ziggy pulls this emotional crappola every fucking day.”
“Whatever,” Ziggy mumbles. He’s begun studying a wall. Weird. Used to be he could count on it. Well, not it exactly, the posters. They’d beckon to him in a way. Not that any one member of Hüsker Dü ever looked enviably happy, but something about those three older guys’ eyes, and the misery they housed, did this great, corrective thing to the world. It seemed roomier or something. More . . . uncharted. They knew a spot. Somewhere realistically bizarre, not just overly imagined on drugs then transcribed in corny outer-space colors, like on the posters that spaced out most kids he’d grown up with. It would’ve been cool to see Bob Mould, Grant Hart, and . . . uh . . . what’s-his-name at the moment, instead of just whitish, depressing rectangles. “Dad?” Ziggy says, shivering a little. “I’ve got some heroin in my jeans pocket. Can one of you get it out for me? ’Cos I think I’m going to cry.”
Brice squats and starts fishing around in the crumpled jeans, which are so long unlaundered that Ziggy can smell their ancient piss stains from here. “This?” he asks, holding up the Baggie.
“Yeah. And there’s a straw in the pocket too.” Tick, tick, tick . . . Ziggy’s handed the stash. A straw’s jabbed between two of his fingers. He gets to his feet, pretty shakily, duh, and stumbles over to the last of the room’s decorations, a mirror. He lifts it off its cobwebby hook. Avoiding eye contact with anyone, he carries the thing to his bed, sits. Balancing this silvery sheen on his knees, he makes up two huge, chalky lines of the heroin, raises the mirror almost to his face, and snorts everything away. Now he can see a distorted reflection of Roger and Brice. They’re either hugging or wrestling each other. Weird. Sniffling, Ziggy throws the mirror down on the floor, where it basically blends in with the other ruined bullshit. Still, he can see a little bit of himself. He looks overweight, thanks to the angle, not to mention thanks tons to the heroin. It’s making everything fuzzy. Him too, or . . . warm’s better, yeah. Improved. Him, his dads, their poses, his thoughts . . . But, uh, something, like, shifts—he can’t tell in which direction at first—and a chill trickles into the warmth, tainting it, then—whoa—completely polluting him. He’s ice cold. “Oh, fu-u-u-ck,” he moans, remembering. “I’m going to throw up. I . . . forgot that’s what . . . happens.” He sort of writhes to his feet in slow motion. “Shit, I need to . . . get to the . . . bathroom.” He stumbles a few inches. “Don’t worry. I’ll be . . . okay.” Run, he thinks. Door. The hallway weaves, rocks precariously below him.
Robin’s . . . whatever oozed out of his nose. Overhead, leafy tree limbs swayed around, interrupting the pale moonlight shimmer on him.
In the corner of Ken’s eye, the body kept reanimating. Hands twitched, eyes blinked, etc. He had to keep freezing his shovel in midair to check.
“Phew.”
Fat, wet, reeking, breathless silhouette bending way over, straightening up, bending way over . . .
Chunky dirt piling up next to a ditch.
Distant barking pet dog for several nerve-racking seconds.
A corpse titled Robin, definitely not the young cutie he may or may not have been once. Hard to remember now.
Ken tried to be even more mechanical. Up, down, up, down . . .
Then he walked into the house, popped a beer, came outside, set the cold bottle far enough away from the digging that dust couldn’t filter inside.
Robin’s soul or whatever way off in . . . wherever death was, probably nowhere.
At some point the fat man sat down on a lawn chair. “Five minutes.” He wheezed.
And the sweat started chugging out.
Night sounded distant and soft.
Robin, flat on the ground, so fucking lost, like a kid in a “dead body” Halloween costume, but worse, more realistic, not endearing at all.
Ken spaced out on the body a while.
Faintly off in the house: Rrring, rrring, rrring, click, “This is Ken’s phone machine. Leave a short message,” beep, “Ken. It’s Brice. I’m running late. I told Perry we’d meet at your place. So if he gets there before me, have fun.”
How great to put an old-fashioned picture frame around everything from this moment on.
“I can’t think,” said the fat man.
Ken labored up to his feet, using the mud-caked shovel as a crutch.
Over to the left, Robin the nothing.
Calhoun and Annie are seated on his double bed, shooting up side by side. He talked her into it, even though she’d been clean for a month, all of which is extremely romantic to his mind. They settle back, nodding. He opens his eyes on occasion and watches her head bob, eyelids flutter. That’s sexy, he doesn’t know why. When their rushes dim down, he starts kissing her. Clothes off, they fuck, which is surprisingly easy on heroin. It’s impossible to come, if you’re a male, which helps Calhoun concentrate. After a few minutes, Annie makes a discomfitted face, jolts, relaxes, meaning he’s been a decent lay. They lie around together, not saying much. He switches on the TV. Some old Married . . . with Children rerun. During a station break, Annie asks if he’s giving up heroin tonight. He says he’s not sure anymore. It made sense when he said so to Ziggy, but now . . . She looks worried. That pisses him off, and he turns up the TV. Why not? she asks. Calhoun says he’s not ready. There’s more to be learned. If Ziggy’s disappointed that’s not Calhoun’s problem. Ziggy doesn’t know shit about heroin. Calhoun doesn’t want friends. People suck. Besides, who’s she to talk? I don’t know, she says, hugging her knees. Calhoun shuts up. They watch the rerun in silence. He’s hurt her. He’s sorry. He can’t apologize. It’s just not in his nature. Please leave, he thinks. That’s the easiest solution. He starts flipping the channels. She stares off. He’s so tense he goes over and sits at his desk, debates a moment, then does a shot. A magnificent one. Back in bed, Annie says she should probably go. That sounds tentative. But Calhoun’s nodding so heavily and nothing else matters. She gets dress
ed. Occasionally he opens his eyes and sort of watches her. He doesn’t know what he wants. Annie walks to the doorway, turns around, and tells Calhoun she really, really cares about him. He hates all emotion and can’t meet her eyes anymore. So she leaves. Slam. He lowers down on the bed, lets his nod loose again. Calhoun’s mouth’s dangling open, eyes basically shut. TV blares in the background. All those actors and actresses yelling dumb, memorized lines to prerecorded approval. God, Calhoun thinks, half-listening. That’s the stupidest . . . sound . . . in . . . the . . . world.
Ziggy’s crumpled over a toilet seat, heaving whatever the fuck’s in his stomach. A thin, sour soup of ex-food, beer, saliva, etc., squirts through his trembly lips and bared teeth. His clothes are soaked through with sweat. Underneath he’s incredibly fragile and blanched, a snowboy. His melty face dangles over a marbled, unfocused puddle, which rumples wildly whenever he breathes. “Shit, Calhoun,” he says, and gags from the effort of focusing on something. Hurry, pal, answers a scratchy voice. I need you. As soon as I’m . . . less nauseous, Ziggy thinks, gasping. He tries to grin, which makes his throat hurt. Like Calhoun could read his mind anyway, although they are supernaturally tuned to each other, right? Probably now more than ever, since he finally understands what Calhoun’s been addicted to. It definitely helps to picture him and his best friend in simultaneous, nearly identical poses across this huge city, each of them sort of gargling the other’s first name in a crushed, hopeful voice. In fact . . . Ziggy blinks . . . that might, uh, translate into a really great drawing or two. Like in I Apologize. “Hm.” He manages to raise his head, jiggling, to an odorless point inches over the john. Separate portraits on two facing pages, he thinks. Two thin, contorted, ineptly drawn figures, one blond, one brunette, looking painfully in each other’s direction across the magazine’s seam, both their heads crowned by, like, a trio of puffy cloudettes that curve up to a huge, mutual thought balloon/cloud that contains the words, uh . . . uh . . . “Shit.” Ziggy’s head plummets into the bowl, his forehead accidentally clipping the edge of the seat, ouch, which . . . uh . . . gives his latest, scariest implosion of nausea an appropriate visual—i.e., this glimmery fogbank that eats up the stuff in his eyesight, and makes Ziggy feel like he’s vomiting in . . . outer space?
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