Authors: Arty Nelson
Sounds from the street fill up the front window. Every once in awhile, a cry earns the right to be part of the tribal mega-symphony—loud
enough and angry enough to filter into the picture. Searing horns, nursed by double-decker engines straining, muted cries,
footsteps fast and hard, keep time true down in the square. Dinner’s calling for everyone, including my trio. We’re holding
out for the chemical option. I take another drag off the spliff. I’m still not used to the tobacco mixed with the hashish.
It makes me uneasy. I’m rushed. The couch is too soft and I’m sinking into it, drowning in the lint of a thousand drug deals.
I look around for a wooden chair to save me. I jump up and begin to circle the room, pretending to study the acrylic veneer
of the mannequins,
checking the frayed nooses that secure them into the ceiling.
No one in the room is speaking. Music rules any conversational attempts there might be. I pace silently, tied down and tortured
in my cerebral sofa. A single chirp runs the industrial gauntlet and I look up at a tree that runs alongside the window, a
lone blackbird jumping about on its skeletal limbs. I walk over to the glass as other birds begin to congregate on the limbs
of the tree. They’re chirping, looking into the flat. They look at me and babble on. Are they compelled to swarm this fucking
distorted den? Do they yearn to stroke this evil? I look at Donald and Louis, staring off—blank pages. Christian moves in
and out of the room like a two-legged cock priming a cesspool… Needing a taste of the bitter… To be part of the ceremony of
lifeless mannequins and golden walls and the music… I’m in a trance. The birds shriek and scream. I look at the baby slung
over Christian’s shoulder, helpless, looking at me, silent. I’m afraid to look back up at him. The night is black by now and
the streets are dying down except for an occasional scream. Only the birds. It’s all the fucking blackbirds.
“CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…CHEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Wrenching me, every muscle coiling on my neck with each scream! Gathering still. No one in the room looking at the window
but me. The birds know, they know about the drugs and the sodomy. They smell it and they love it. They smell us. We
smell it and we love it. I smell it and I love it and I hate myself for it. Deep down, I can’t take it. I hate the rooms where
I live! Unfocused and drawn into the void. Music shouts under the birds, careening off every wall, off every chair, invading
me and raping every ritual mannequin. Laying them down on their sides and fucking them. The sky above the tree, deep red,
crying yellow and orange tears. The birds drawing ropes around the muted face of the sky and landing back on the withering
tree. I take it all personally, so stupid to think it’s my world and they’re making me feel wrong. Not letting me breathe…
Or smile… Or laugh anymore! The birds begin to grow in front of my eyes. Each bird swelling, feathers shedding for scales,
teeth surge under cracking beaks. Shrieks turn to howls and finally, growls. Lindsey… My anger turning outward and rising
up in flying beasts. Coming down to me, crashing in through the window. Time stops, Donald and Louis frozen, Christian and
the lost babe gone from my sight. Ray’s corpse drawn up into the sky by vultures of guilt, swooping and diving. Virus… Rotten
apples falling down, being grabbed up by lovely children… I’m a victim… I’m a villain… No relief in either… Ringing… Raging…
Burning… Hissing… The birds and my nightmares marry… On an altar of my hate… Ill-fated gifts awarded on lechery… Fucking birds…
And death… Virus… And AIDS. Words ring off Lindsey’s lips in memory as she wonders. Where are the pirates and princesses of
my silly
baby dreams? All the places and all the wondering? Am I growing up or am I dying? Were the birds a message singular, taken
the form of many? A rush creeps over my body, pulling at my cock and grinding my face into a mass of blood and shredded flesh…
Seeping… They want me… I’ve done the walking and then want to fly me the rest of the way… Hissing and… Dying….
Christian comes back into the room, irritated.
“Look… I don’t think she’s coming back… And I gotta leave. So can you guys just take off?”
I don’t even so much as look at Louis or Donald.
“Yeah, good to meet you. I gotta go anyways,” and stumble out the door. “See you guys later; thanks for the pints.”
I run through the square, lost for about twenty minutes until I find a tube station and jump on a train back to Southfields
where the Helms’ flat is. Sweating and chilled on the train, feeling good as long as I’m moving. Still hearing the birds,
hoping they’re only a memory. Not wanting to face anything those fucking birds brought out in me. Just riding the train. Just
riding a train through London….
I’m sitting in the flat, drinking a cup of Drano-strength tea, looking at Sonja and Loren while they play more cards. I stare
at their beautiful faces, faces from other ends of the world. Faces of women. Deep in my most primal recesses I need them,
and yet, I act as if I could care less. It’s my only and weak defense. As if I need a defense, as if they wait for me to like
them. Needing the sex, the violence of the act, remembering mostly the beauty. Orgasms abrupt, a shower of lava, soothing,
draining rage and frustration. Looking for her to cleanse me. I need to come. It isn’t about wanting. I’ve never had a fucking
choice in my life. It’s got nothing to do with me. It’s him. It’s fucking him that isn’t satisfied! Lindsey doesn’t understand.
It’s not always about candles and fucking
Bolero.
Scream comes from the hollow, echoing out, lost and crying. I need them.
I listen to the girls talking. Voices delicate, laughter. The way they smoke makes vice an art. Soft between the lips, dangling,
then out between thin strong sexy fingers. Fingers that control. I can watch a woman smoke for an hour. I’ve done it sitting
in Washington Square Park with a dollar in my pocket. My last dollar. Listening to the comics and the musicians, deciding
who gets the last buck. Who’s the greatest artist on New York’s streets that day. Watching the girls smoke with gloves on,
with hats on. Little berets… Watching… Staring through sunglasses… Watching secretly… Watching Loren with her pearly smile.
“So what are you going to do after you take your little holiday?”
“That’s a good question, Loren, maybe you could give me an equally good answer as well.”
“I’m serious… I mean I don’t… I’m not prying, I mean to say. I was just wondering.”
“I know… Um… I don’t know really. After school, I bounced around the States working shitty jobs and basically, I decided that
I was tired of working shitty jobs in the States, so I came here.”
“That’s what we’ve been doing here for three years. I wish I could give you my job,” Sonja adds.
“Yeah, I met Sonja three years ago and we were only going to be here for a summer,” laughs, “I’m finally leaving, in a month,”
laughs, “a five-month safari through Africa. It’s taken forever to get out of this place.”
“I don’t think I’ve been in a place or a job that I didn’t eventually hate… And for all the same reasons I hated the job just
before it. Routine’s just a long spelling for RUT.”
“Only four telly stations in this town makes it even tougher.”
“Cable TV just prolongs the suffering… You’re not missing anything over here.”
“I can’t wait to be in a bloody Land Rover surrounded by huge bloody gorillas!” Loren’s always smiling even when she’s complaining.
Doobe told me that a buddy of his from Greece, Teo, had been hanging out with Loren and that she was still mad about him.
Apparently, Teo was one of those guys who could hit a broad in the head with a rock and be fucking her ten minutes later.
Loren has one of those double smiles. It’s the eyes, like a mirrored looking glass.
So we all agree we’ve worked too many shitty jobs. Or are we just alive? Is this what had Ray so worked up? He saw his life
as an indefinite stint ringing Big Macs up at the local Mickey D’s and said, wait a minute? Maybe he wasn’t afraid of gods
and churches? Maybe he thought of them as banks with lots of benches? And guilt-ridden child molesters with bad tailors?
“It’s OK to work shitty jobs as long as you’re not living at home. I’d be a waitress anywhere but back home in Sydney.”
“Nothing’s OK when you’re living at home… Living at home IS FAILURE!”
We watch the talking heads on TV for awhile. News about dead babies and burning houses and raped women and sick men and all
the things that make up reality. Finally, the girls lose interest and go to bed. I stay up and watch TV, figuring all the
bad
news in the world’s got to be better than laying alone in bed, until finally my eyes shut themselves.
The speed, the loudness, I don’t have control over any of it anymore. The voices begin to speak their own minds. I’m just
watching now while the voices come out of the shadows to dance… Watching.
“You know… I just never even imagined him all grown up. It’s like he wasn’t supposed to.”
I open my eyes, not quite aware of where I am, then realizing I’m peeling my face off yet another vinyl leisure product. True
love again.
“Did you ever see this?” Helms produces a picture from his pocket—Ray sitting in a dried creek bed with his girlfriend, Jane,
in what looked to be Colorado. The sun’s setting behind them, casting a pair of beam halos over their heads. I’d never seen
Ray look the way he looks in the picture. No life, like an empty closet. The only things familiar were the stupid tie-dye
socks he always wore for big events. I look at the picture, rubbing eyes, for a minute, and then Doobe hands me a bowl of
steaming hashish. I take a hit off the bowl and exhale, thinking that I gotta take a piss. I look up, and Doobe has pulled
out a pair of socks. THOSE SAME STUPID SOCKS. I wince at the sight of them, like Doobe’s a
grave robber or something. Helms looks at me, looks back at the socks, and starts to laugh. “Perfectly good socks,” and goes
up to bed leaving me with the burning bowl in my hand.
The sky’s a thick light blue. The sun’s climbing back up above, with tiny beam legs on the edge of the horizon. Another day.
I look up at the clock on the wall and its hands tell me it’s 5:52. I lay back down, safe in the shadow of the couch, and
stare out the window. I watch the sunlight tiptoe up the street, one brick at a time. Time to sleep….
I look into the mirror at the two Xs I call eyes. The thrill of being bloated and green with red blotches is long gone. Living
out this cliché and it’s killing me. I got a beard that would make Paul Bunyan blush, and I think I’m cool because of a pair
of fake Beatle boots. I wear a motorcycle jacket because I had an old jap cycle for about ten minutes. On my arm is a custom-made
silver armband that I claim is the sure sign of any “Glamourboy Caveman.” I used to be a Little League catcher. And here I
am 15 years later looking like one of the extras in
Road Warrior.
I’m living a lie and it’s killing me… A NEW DAY HAS ARRIVED.
My vision fades in long enough for me to look down and see an uninvited guest—the dreaded boyish nuisance that is THE HERPES.
Three small white bubbles have surfaced along the right side of the shaft of my cock. A discovery, musically accompanied by
a deep sinking feeling, not totally unlike swallowing a broken Coke bottle. A feeling nurtured and groomed with every careless
selfish passing of the virus. Yeah… It ain’t AIDS… But it still sucks! An Eternal Scar. One slip and young lust jumps out
a window. The reality of virus, more concrete than love.
Having the herpes after awhile is NO BIG DEAL. Giving the herpes will always suck. In some of my more mock courageous moments,
I see it as yet another testament to my beautiful and halfhearted self-destruction. Just another Purple Heart to pin on a
suburban grown combat suit. There have even been twisted moments when I envision a whole tribe of gorgeous thirtyish women,
frolicking on the beach playing with their newborns, bearing full-length C-section scars—a testimony to OUR passion. Yeah,
that’s right, brand ‘em like cattle then sit back and wait for the Oh-So daunting Judgment Day. The perversion of knowing
that a child has to be cut from its mother’s body. The tunnel being closed due to disease. Unable to feel, to laugh, to ever
be a child again. To ever skip through a supermarket, tagging along mom’s shopping cart, singing “Puff the Magic Dragon,”
to smell a forest, all the trees and flowers, and feel free. Growing up sucks!
Lovers marked like a lecherous deck of cards and me… Me… Me… Me… Me… Me… Me.
I pull out a dull razor from behind the mirror. I begin to scrape the stubble from my face, slowly, with cold water, stopping
often to rinse the blade. It hurts. My first pathetic test of the day. A damp towel and one last look. The face looks better.
The dick still looks bad. Like a walking Ying-Yang, broken and grooved at the waist.
“Hullo?”
“Cheers, Jimi!”
“Diane, howya doin’?”
“I wasn’t so sure you’d make it over here!” It’s too early to be so upbeat but it’s good to hear her voice. Immediately, I’m
reminded by a squirmy itch that there’ll be more lesions sprouting on my penis. Just like a burn, always worse before it gets
better.
“Yeah, well I had a few months to kill before I could call it a life and I thought I better see Europe so I have something
to yak about at the retirement home.”
“Still playing the young old man I see… Jimi?”
“How’ve you been?”
“Great! We’re shooting a movie over here and I’m
in charge of interviewing all the actors… American ones! I’ll even get to talk to Mickey Rourke!”
“Great, great, so you’re pretty busy?”
“There’ll be time to chat a bit. I’m staying at my friend William’s house in Mayfair near Hyde Park.”
I’ve heard the name William before, some TV whiz kid, invented the game show in London or something groundbreaking like that.
Diane’s probably fucking him and she, in turn, is getting all the right assignments but I don’t know… We never get too deep
into other relationships. Ours is too tenuous. I’m the mutt in heat begging for some pussy. It’s important that I don’t give
a fuck or at least, that I appear that way—all James Deany, very american.