“If you’re buying, I’m drinking. A boy has to take his pleasures where he finds them.”
“Indeed.”
Once the bartender, a handsome blond man whose features were marred by the addition of too much mascara ringing his blue eyes, had set their new drinks before them, Terence squeezed Edward’s shoulder. “So, tell me about your art.”
“Do you really want to know?” Edward sipped. He didn’t want to sound pretentious. He hated artists that were all the time talking, talking, talking. Art should speak for itself. And if the two of them ever made it back to his apartment, maybe his art would speak for him.
“You need a dose of self-confidence, young man. Artists have to be self-promoters, if they want to get anywhere. It’s a hard reality. So, what do you paint? What medium? What are you trying to get across?”
“You ask too many questions.” With trembling hands, Edward lit yet another cigarette. He knew that, soon, his throat would feel sore and scorched. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I paint myself.” Edward chuckled. “In more ways than one.”
Terence raised his eyebrows.
“Y’see, I smear paint on myself and then I apply myself to the canvas. I move. I apply more color, different color…and move. I roll. I twist. I wave my arms around, swing my legs.”
“So, you’re your own brush.”
“I suppose you could think of it that way. But I’m my own subject, you know? I’m hoping to say something about myself with my work, to capture something essential about me that people can see and connect with.”
Terence nodded, his dark gaze never moving from Edward’s face. “You know Mark Rothko’s work?”
Edward’s eyes lit up. His shyness continued to ebb. “I love Rothko! There’s something he said that sticks with me; it sums up what my work is all about. He said…”
Terence cut in. “He said something like, ‘Art is not about experience. It is itself the experience.’”
Edward was awed. The statement, slightly paraphrased, had been his credo since he had moved to New York five years ago, after making the decision that he would do whatever it took to live his life as a painter. “That’s exactly right. I’m shocked that you know that.”
And at that moment, the combination of Terence’s fine-boned, yet strong, features and his passion for art sparked something in Edward. Some would call it love. At least for the rest of the night, and for perhaps much longer, Edward knew he would do whatever this man asked.
*
The rain came down in sheets. When Edward had walked the dozen or so blocks from his apartment to The Tiger’s Eye, there was a mist in the air, chilling it and muffling sound. It was almost like a fog. But now, as he emerged from the bar with Terence behind him, a downpour of King Learish proportions had blown up. Thunder rumbled and roared. Lightning lit up the sky, leaving the smell of ozone as an afterthought. And the rain poured, hissing, seeming louder in the lull between thunderclaps.
Terence stopped and grabbed Edward by the shoulders at the corner of Sixth and Christopher Street. He smiled, not enough to show his teeth, just enough to look kind of slow and sexy, one corner of his mouth turning up more than the other. “Indulge me in a little romantic purple prose.”
“Okay.” Edward looked out of the corner of his eyes to see if they had witnesses. But the storm had driven most potential observers indoors; those who remained outside didn’t have sense enough to be outraged, amused, or confused by the sight of one man embracing another.
“Don’t worry. No one’s watching.”
Edward let himself fall into Terence’s gaze. He must ask him if he could do a portrait. Even though his work wasn’t representational, he still had the skills he had honed as an art student at Carnegie Mellon. He could dabble in realism.
“Come on, allow me this moment.” Terence gently guided Edward’s face to his own by his chin. “We have to use this line—it’s so brilliant!—in the first chapter of our ‘how we met’ story.”
“Okay…”
“It was a dark and stormy night.”
Edward rolled his eyes. Terence looked offended for just a second and then the moment broke, along with a thunderclap overhead. The two men collapsed against each other, howling with laughter. Terence took the opportunity to pull Edward closer, to brush a kiss along his neck. Edward didn’t mind.
He looked up at Terence, smiled. “God! We need to get you inside. You’ll catch your death.”
Terence said nothing, and if Edward witnessed the glimmer of a wry smile whisper across his features, he said nothing about it. “Why don’t we hail one of those horseless carriages to take us to our destination.”
“Because I can’t afford it and this is more memorable. Now, it was a dark and stormy night. Thunder roared overhead…
“The angels were bowling…”
Terence took Edward’s hand and they hurried through the night, while taxi headlights threw harsh illumination on their drenched figures.
Outside his building, Edward felt a flush of shame at the seedy walk up and its rusting fire escape, upon which laundry-minded neighbors had hung wash, which would now need a second dry cycle. He noticed his building through Terence’s eyes and saw how obvious its flaws were: the boarded-up window on the third floor, the graffiti marring its ground floor, and the cans and bottles littering the front sidewalk. What would Terence think when they entered the grimy vestibule, with its chipped green paint, broken tile, and millennia-old odors of cooked cabbage and perspiration?
“I’m afraid it’s not much.”
“I assume it’s dry.”
“God! I’m sorry. Let’s get inside.”
Edward fumbled with his keys, dropping them once before he finally got the one that matched up with the lock on the front door. As he was opening the door, he quipped, “Just think of what you’re smelling as the rarified air of despair.”
Terence grinned. “Just move it. We need to get upstairs. I need another drink.”
Once in the apartment, Edward lit candles. The overhead bulb would not do. And besides, candles were more romantic and economical (he couldn’t help but think of the practical, now that he had spent his last five dollars on well whiskey).
“I don’t have much to drink.” Edward rummaged around in the refrigerator, but its interior was empty and the action was more for show rather than any actual results. “Water?”
“I’m fine.” Terence had taken off his shoes and sat down on Edward’s mattress. He patted a spot next to him. “Why don’t you come here and sit down beside me?”
“Said the spider to the fly?”
Terence raised his eyebrows and laughed. The laugh was a bit too loud and a bit too shrill, causing hackles to rise on Edward’s neck. He shook his head, shivering.
Stop it now,
he told himself,
you’re being stupid.
But bad things can sometimes happen to boys who bring strangers home. Fear is never stupid.
Perhaps Edward would have paid more heed to his inner voices if his mind hadn’t been fogged by lust and liquor. The spot next to Terence looked very inviting indeed, in spite of his hesitation. He ambled over to Terence and the bed, concentrating on walking in a straight line.
I am not drunk,
he thought,
I am merely feeling good. There’s a difference.
He sat down hard enough next to Terence to feel the wooden floor beneath the mattress painfully on his ass.
“Careful, there.” Terence grabbed his shoulder to keep Edward upright.
Edward let out a big sigh and turned to look into Terence’s eyes. “You know, all night long, I wanted to meet you.”
“And I you.”
“You were the best lookin’ fella in the place.”
Terence nodded. “Next to you, my friend.”
“Aw, get outta here.” Edward swallowed. The room was spinning. This wasn’t going at all the way he thought. He felt nauseous, the tiny bit of food and the alarming amount of alcohol he had consumed that day churning in his stomach. He couldn’t throw up. He just couldn’t. He’d lose the guy for sure. But as his face began to feel clammier, hot and cold intermingling, he began to think that being alone might not be such a bad idea.
And what if he did throw up? He didn’t even have a bathroom. The toilet was in full view across the room.
He hadn’t even given the guy a show of his art.
Edward stood, swaying. “Don’t feel so good.” Spittle ran down his chin. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.
He would not kneel and vomit into a stained toilet bowel in his first encounter with this handsome stranger. He hurried to the window, struggled to get it up high enough to allow his head to emerge, and vomited down four stories, retching until nothing came out but yellow bile.
“Feeling better?” Terence was next to him, rubbing his shoulder.
Edward’s face was slick with sweat, but his stomach felt more settled and he was seeing things—whether he wanted to or not—with renewed clarity. “I am so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. It has its own beauty.” Terence reached out with his finger, slid it along some of the vomit that had landed on the sill, and took it into his mouth.
Edward took a step back, tasting bile at the back of his throat.
Terence cocked his head. “What? It’s you. I’m tasting you.”
“Maybe tonight isn’t such a good idea.”
“But I want to see your art.”
“Another time for sure. I just don’t feel so good anymore.”
Terence knelt by the windowsill and licked more of Edward’s bile up. He looked up and smiled. His teeth were very tiny and very sharp. It almost seemed as if he hadn’t moved from the kneeling position when suddenly he was holding Edward in his arms, close enough that Edward could smell gastric acid on his breath.
“I have something that will make you feel a lot better.”
Edward shook his head. “Honey, if you’re talking about sex, I…”
“Not sex. This.” Terence held out a small pipe, carved from burled walnut and ebony. Into the bowl of the pipe was etched a grinning skull. Terence touched the springy, mossy bud within. “This will settle that queasy tummy and make your forgot
all
your troubles.” Terence pressed the pipe into Edward’s hand. “Go on, take it.”
Edward grasped the little pipe. Already the pungent aroma of marijuana, green and bitter, drifted up. In fact, the idea of a little smoke did seem soothing. He positioned the pipe in his hand and raised it to his lips.
From within a pants pocket, Terence fished out a silver lighter. “Now just suck,” he whispered, bringing the flame closer and closer to Edward’s face. “You do know how to suck, don’t you?”
Edward shut his eyes and prepared to draw in.
2004
Each line must be perfect. Elise steps back to survey the drawing before her, taped to a board on an easel. To give the parchment paper more of an aged patina, she has stained it with coffee. She sighs, trying to concentrate on form and function rather than the emotions the drawing arouses.
Maybe that’s a good thing
, she thinks,
maybe the fact the piece elicits a visceral reaction even in me means something. Perhaps my striving is getting me somewhere.
Still, is this vague feeling of dread somewhere she wants to be?
There he is, the man from the night before, the one in the van. He had been middle-aged, overweight, a pale featureless face, doughy. But Elise has transformed him with charcoal. Dark squiggly lines have made of him an insect: the eyes blind black orbs, a cavity for a nose, black pincers almost mobile at the corner of thin lips. Delicate wings sprout from his back, segmented, bifurcated, transparent. Elise has made her perspective from below, so the man/creature looms above, menacing yet distant.
She has a flash of him in memory: grunting as he thrust into her, his face clammy with sweat, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, lips parted to emit stale breath, exerted. What should have been pleasure looked much closer to disgust.
Elise picks up a tube of black acrylic paint. She creates a border, thick, like piping, around her drawing. The framing device works, confining and highlighting the creature. Elise stares at the drawing for a while. Her lower lip quivers. And then, sobbing, she smears the ink, obliterating and erasing what has taken her all day to create.
It is too good. Too good for him.
She turns her back to the easel and stares outside, where the sky glows purple. Dusk signals the end of one workday and the beginning of another, when a different kind of discipline and diligence will be required. The night is waiting outside for her, like a suitor on a doorstep.
And, she supposes, so are the creatures inhabiting the night. The starved and the starving, conning themselves into believing she has something that will remove the hunger, that will sustain them. She trembles at the thought of how she will deal—yet again—with their rage when they realize she offers only the most temporary respite and that, in the end, offers them nothing.
But she needs these creatures. Needs them for her own sustenance and, more importantly, for their essence. It is their essence that allows her to continue to create.
*
The vampires don’t always travel together. They sometimes hunt alone. Even though their insatiable hunger unites them, sometimes it’s more efficient to work alone. They even form relationships and have experiences that do not include the others.
This is one of those nights. Terence heads north on his 1953 Harley FL Panhead. He has restored the bike to its original glory and there is nothing that makes him feel freer than to be astride this roaring beast, especially when the night is clear. A glowing silver moon shimmers above the rolling waters of Lake Michigan and the promise of the hunt is fresh and new. He feels powerful as the bike roars, spitting out exhaust, noisily shifting, and cutting strategically between lanes to claim an always-constant pole position. He is powerful with anticipation, secure in his ability to lure, seduce, and kill.
The feeding is all the sweeter when it’s not shared, when victory is his alone to claim. Sometimes he wonders if he wouldn’t be better off solo.
Wind slithers through his hair. The glow of the moon makes his skin bleached bone, marble, alabaster. He has dressed himself from head to toe in leather, and it creaks satisfyingly with every movement.
His destination is Howard Street. Perhaps he will strike gold again. As he rounds the corner from Lake Shore Drive onto Hollywood, he remembers the whore from last night and the heat of her blood as it pumped into his mouth like a copper ejaculation, the intense gaminess of her flesh as he ripped it away. The scent of the blood and the rent flesh. Terence’s cock squirms inside tight jeans. Heading north once again, now up Sheridan Road, Terence feels anticipation: an electric current, pulsing.
There will be another perfect one. Waiting just for him. Waiting for a fall.
Terence twists the throttle, revving the engine, and swerves left to claim the open space in the lane.
*
Elise pulls the door closed behind her, not bothering to lock it. After all, what is there to take? Her art? Who among these filthy minions would appreciate it? Where could it be fenced? Her other belongings? They could be found anywhere, discarded with the trash.
And what if someone is lying in wait when she comes home, ready to slit her throat? Elise shakes her head. She could never be so fortunate.
Tonight, she has dressed herself in a simple red satin sheath that drops to mid-thigh. The red and the dress’s Mandarin collar give it an Asian feel; sometimes that works. Even though her hair is auburn and her eyes are green, and her skin tells a tale of Scotland, there are those for whom the simplest visual cues can create an alternate reality. What does she care if they think of her as a geisha? A Thai streetwalker? Their money pays the rent just the same.
She turns the corner and stops. Her eyes closed, she breathes in. The scene is predictable, but still she hates the prospect, hates having to deal with all of this, wants to crawl into a hole and never come out again.
Howard Street swarms with people. Friday night: the cars roll by like insects, headlights glowing like hundreds of pairs of eyes. Exhaust fumes perfume the air. Profanity and greetings compete with car horns and mufflers.
Elise takes her place near the 7-11, hoping she won’t be chased away tonight by marauding youths or vice cops. In a way, she can’t wait until the evening is over and she can slide down the black fishnet stockings and kick off her red satin stiletto heels. At least there will be the comfort of not having to wear these stupid clothes, so obvious they’re laughable, but no one’s laughing. The passersby either ignore her, shooting her looks of distaste (“why are you fouling my neighborhood?”) or leer at her with lust, not bothering to conceal their salacious interest. Why bother? She isn’t worthy of discretion, out here selling it as she is. Elise braces herself for the catcalls and whistles, the verbal filth showered on her like a cascade of excrement.
Only moments pass before a motorcycle’s rumble drowns out all other sound.
The engine cuts and for just a second, it’s as if all the sound in the street cuts as well. Elise turns.
A man, impossibly beautiful, is astride the motorcycle. Leather and chains, boots. Not the type of man she would fancy in her other life. (
And what life is that?
Elise wonders, realizing suddenly this
is
her life and perhaps there is no other; that the “other” there once was has shrunk away to almost nothing…and that little is perhaps irretrievable.) He looks her up and down, his gaze frank. A smile, or a smirk, plays around the corners of his full lips.
He must fancy himself quite the prize. Cheekbones sharp and defined, skin almost too smooth to be real, white in the light from the moon.
Poseur.
Elise turns away; this is not the sort of trade she deals in. No, Elise is a lower class of street trade, in spite of her youth and beauty. It’s the role she has directed herself in for years now. Giving herself as a gift to worthless, ugly men somehow seems right. She doesn’t quite know why, and doesn’t choose to explore why she abases herself this way.
Perhaps she won’t like the answer.
A gloved hand, fingers cut away, caresses her shoulder. Elise shrugs the hand away and whirls to face the stranger. Her eyes spark. He grins. Warily, she smiles back.
“I’m not certain you’re in the right part of town,” Elise says.
“I’m not certain you know what you’re talking about. I know where I am, and it’s right where I choose to be, sweetheart.” His deep, resonating timbre distinguishes itself from the sounds of urban night. “How much?”
Elise shakes her head, her laughter mocking, derisive. “Again: I’m not so sure. You get right to the point, don’t you? Hasn’t anyone taught you the rules? Or were you too busy playing macho on your motorcycle?”
“The games I like to play are a bit more sophisticated than you can imagine, which is why I do get right to the point. Now, how much?”
Elise pulls hair from her neck, where it’s stuck with the glue of her sweat. Vice? Will it matter if she asks him? Contrary to popular belief, cops aren’t all angels of veracity. They lied to her before, when she was just starting out and relied on the rumor that, if asked, an officer of the law must divulge his occupation.
So what point would there be in asking? She could name a price for a specific sexual act and could be run in, end up cooling herself in a cell with other streetwise sisters for a few hours while the arrest is processed and then get sprung out into another humid night. Or, she could ask him to prove he isn’t a representative of the Chicago police force, vice division. He could respond with something clever, eyes growing wide, something like, “Me? You gotta be kidding. Now, why would you ask a thing like that?”
Just get it over with. She’s been run in before. An inconvenience. The arrests stop no one. In her desire to hasten the bust, Elise blurts, “Fifty dollars for a blow job, a hundred and up for more. Depends on what you’re into. Anal’s extra, but I’ll do it if the price is right.”
He doesn’t blink. Reaching into the pocket of his motorcycle jacket, he pulls out a wad of bills. Elise recognizes a hundred on the outside of the roll. He tucks it into her cleavage. “Got someplace we can go?”
The money between her breasts is enough to free her for several nights. Yet, they still haven’t discussed what it is he wants. What if he’s into heavy S&M? Elise looks at him out of the corner of her eye, taking in all the leather; his deathly white pallor speaks of parties in dungeons. In spite of being a cheap whore, a streetwalker, she hasn’t really walked on the wild side all that much. She knows all about bondage, whips, cigarette burning, tit torture, and all the rest, but she’s a vanilla kind of prostitute. Straight-up sex. She can manage a little water sports here and there, or maybe even getting a little rough, but the more extreme end of the spectrum she leaves to her sisters. And yet, she can feel the stiff crispness of the currency between her breasts. She wants the money. But going this far could be leading her into a realm where it will be hard to escape. Suddenly, she finds herself wishing for a scared Loyola boy who just wants to get sucked off in an alley.
The stranger’s touch on her shoulder is cool, but insistent. “Do you have a place where we might get more comfortable or not?”
Elise breathes in, deep. The time for decisions is now. She takes the man’s hand, meets his gaze, and smiles, the curtain rising on her show. “This way. It isn’t far.” She leads him east, toward Greenview and the place she calls home. She pulls him along, hurrying him, the click of her heels insistent on the hot pavement. She wants to get him home, get him done, and get it over with.
“My name’s Terence.” His grip on her hand is firm and cool. He has no trouble keeping up.
She hopes she will have no trouble keeping up with
him
.
“Mine’s Midnight,” Elise murmurs, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. Wondering, will this be the time she regrets breaking her own rule and letting a john into her own home? Will this be her Mr. Goodbar, with strangling hands or a switchblade in his pocket? In spite of her earlier cavalier attitude toward her own murder, there is still a compulsion to live, a will to survive. Feeling threatened makes her realize that, no matter how desperate an existence she has, she still wants to keep it. It is her own.
She squeezes his hand and slows a little. “So, we haven’t really talked about it.”
“Yes?”
“What are you into?”
“I just like plain old sucking and fucking. I trust that doesn’t disappoint you.”
“Not at all.”
And Elise picks up the pace once more. His response is small comfort.
Once back in her studio, she doesn’t want to turn on any lights. Spare as it is, it’s still her home. It holds memories (once upon a time, things were different: it was brighter, crowded, not exactly happy, but still there were happy times…early on). It holds her art, and grim as that has become, it’s still a piece of herself, a substantial piece that she doesn’t want to share with a trick. She doesn’t want to share this world with anyone, not yet, not in any personal capacity anyway. Perhaps one day things will change and she will spend her evenings at gallery shows of her art, appropriately modest and dressed in black, but those dreams of glory hardly seem within her reach. Not now, with a horny trick at her back.
The moonlight streams in, making the short passage across the room easier. The moon gives everything a grayish cast, making of the easels, drawing board, and few pieces of furniture nothing more than dark shapes. As they move across the room, she is stepping out of her dress, kicking off her heels. She sits on the bed and pulls off her stockings in one fluid motion; she’s had practice. Naked, she leans back on the bed, draws in air, and lets out a slow, quivering breath.
Never let them see you’re afraid; never let them feel your anxiety. If you do, they sometimes pounce, smelling your weakness
. Recklessly, she tosses her hair back and puts on her most alluring smile, hoping its bravado isn’t lost in the shadows. She parts her legs and touches herself. The move is calculated to look like she can’t help herself; in reality, she hopes the digital stimulation will get the juices flowing.
She touches, flicks a tongue out of the corner of her mouth, stares. Provocatively, she hopes; she’s learned that the whore’s first rule is to get ’em excited, get ’em overly excited. That way, you get rid of them sooner. You learn to welcome the “afterglow”: his remorse and desire to get away. She pats the bed beside her.
“What about light? Surely, you have some candles around.” Terence stands above her, and suddenly fear grips Elise. The dark shape of him, the smell of the leather, the chain around his neck, the thicker one around his waist. She has put herself in this submissive position carelessly, and now she wonders how vulnerable she is and what will happen to her. It would be so easy—he is, after all, a big man—for him to just reach down and hit her, pummel her face, strangle her. She shivers. Such scenes happen all over the place—every night. She should never have brought him here. She will become—she just knows it—another grim statistic.