The Apocalypse Reader (28 page)

MACKEREL: So I heard.

Josh's boyfriend holds out the packet, then seems to have a realization of some sort, and pulls it back.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Wait, did you say josh is dead? Let me guess, or did you already tell me?

MACKEREL: (
impatiently
) Okay, fine. You know that guy Bin Laden? I'm answering your question with a riddle. It's an old straight-person trick from my childhood.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Sure, he's that famous person.

MACKEREL: Okay, then what do you think of the trendy idea that all Americans died on 9/ 11 ? You know, that all of that shit with the planes proved we're all the same whatever in God's overall concept of whatever.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: I'm into anything trendy. Just look around my living room. In fact, come on in. Where are my manners?

MACKEREL: On one condition.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Deal. I mean what is it? Forgive the sleazy old chicken hawk in me. He'd go to prison for however many life terms to get it on with a thirteen-year-old ass, I mean your thirteenyear-old ass. That's a gay compliment. Enjoy.

MACKEREL: The condition is that we travel to Pakistan together. On your credit cards, of course. There's a cute traitor guy over there I need to see. Long story. That's part one, and-this'll appeal to you-part two, I can get to Bin Laden. Check this out. So I overdose on heroin, right? I'm happy. Bin Laden rims my corpse. He's happy. You film it. Put the camera on a tripod, walk into the frame and murder him with your bare fucking hands. Then turn off the camera and eat me. Everyone's happy, and gay guys rule the world. It's a no-brainer.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Are you psychic? I make snuff films for a living. Duh, right? That's how I paid for this gay upper-middle-class lifestyle you see before you. Wait, Josh told you I made snuff. Of course. You're not a psychic at all. I'm confused.

MACKEREL: Hunh. If I'd been gay a little longer, I'd say the real gay dilemma is that no amount of working out daily in a gym can make a guy your age interesting to someone my age. The mind goes. It's just a sad fact. I'm so not in the mood anymore. But yeah, I'm psychic.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Then Pakistan it is. On one condition.

MACKEREL: It'd better involve dope.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: I'll pack my things, and-oh, it is-you strip and strike a nice doggie pose on my bed. I maybe gay, but I'm not stupid. Well, not that stupid.

MACKEREL: Blahdiblahdiblah. I mean deal.

AN HOUR LATER, a very sore-assed Mackerel cracks the psychic's door and clears his throat. Josh's buff, elderly boyfriend is right behind him carrying their suitcases.

MACKEREL: Are you decent? I guess that's a relative term in your case.

PSYCHIC: (
anxiously
) Who's there?

MACKEREL: God and a gay guy. Why, who's there?

PSYCHIC: Me, Allah's prying eyes, and some half-eaten teen whore. Wait, did you say God?

MACKEREL: And a gay guy, yeah. Coming in.

They enter the storefront. The psychic is sitting on the floor in front of Josh's dead body. He's holding a large, bloody knife, and Josh's once-so-perfect ass is no more, thanks no thanks to the psychic-turned-cannibal's terrorist attacks. Josh's boyfriend leans over, looking around in the mini-ground zero.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Josh? Is that your truth?

MACKEREL: (
to the psychic
) That's a cue to do your thing.

The psychic shuts his eyes and appears to go into a mystical trance.

PSYCHIC: (
in a sixteen year-old's voice
) What do you want, babe?

I'm kind of busy. Being eaten is like getting fist-fucked by the Colossus of Rhodes, only better.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: I told you.

He sets the suitcases down and reaches into the gore, then rips a chunk loose. He studies it carefully.

PSYCHIC: (
in a sixteen year-old’s voice
) What do you want to know? I know everything there is to know now.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: How do you taste?

PSYCHIC: (
in a sixteen year-old's voice
) Like blood. That's too easy. You want to know how the world ends? You don't, trust me. It's so not sexy. It's so not gay.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Does it have something to do with the gravitational pull of the dying sun?

He pops the chunk into his mouth and starts chewing.

PSYCHIC: (
in a sixteen year-old's voice
) Exactly. Boring.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: No offense, baby, but we saw that together on the Discovery Channel. By the way, yum.

MACKEREL: I have a question. Where's Bin Laden?

PSYCHIC: (
in a sixteen year-old's voice
) You! Hold on a second. First of all, seeing isn't knowing, babe. There's a huge metaphysical difference, it turns out. Now you, you little boyfriend-stealing white-trash bitch. You're supposed to be dead. I've been hanging out waiting for you. Cross your ass over here.

MACKEREL: Make me. No, seriously, where's Bin Laden? Don't make me unconjure you.

PSYCHIC: (
in a sixteen year-old's voice
) Kandahar. Satisfied?

MACKEREL: No.

PSYCHIC: (
in a sixteen-year-old's voice
) Okay, ask my temporary form where Rakhid's Video is? Bin Laden's in the basement. Hey, you want to know how you die?

MACKEREL: As a hero. Unlike you.

PSYCHIC: (
in a sixteen-year-old's voice
) Tsk tsk tsk. Tell him, babe.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Tell him what, babe? Oh, right. You've been had. Chalk one up for us patient gay Capricorns.

MACKEREL: I'm not into astrology.

PSYCHIC: (
in a sixteen-year-old's voice
) Fact, my boyfriend quote unquote drives you to the airport. Fact, he makes a detour to pick something up at our house. Fact, the guys you stole that dope from are hiding inside. Fact, they rape and torture and whatever you for two days straight, then inject you with enough dope to kill Shaquille O'Neal, then rape your corpse for another two days. Right, babe?

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Pretty much. Well, rape in the broadest sense. If it's ever been called gay sex, it's in your future.

MACKEREL: (
smugly
) A hero's still a hero. Arkansas boy's dream to save the world from Bin Laden crushed by evil pedophile ring. Americans love that shit.

PSYCHIC: (
in a sixteen-year-old’s voice
) Yeah, until they do the autopsy and find enough sperm in your ass to start a small thirdworld country. We'll see how heroic you are after they drag your whorish, drugged-out lifestyle through the tabloids.

MACKEREL: Well, at least I have an ass. At least my ass isn't digested. At least my ass isn't some low-end Al Qaeda water boy's Taco fucking Bell. Say something, gay guy. Defend me. What kind of sugar daddy are you?

Josh's boyfriend stops ripping out pieces of the ass, and popping them into his mouth.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Look, Josh. Realism, okay? I'm gay, you're dead, he's thirteen years old, you saw his ass, what do you expect? Is death like Alzheimer's or something?

PSYCHIC: (
in a sixteen-year-old’s voice
) Forget it. So how do I taste anyway? Honestly.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Like blood. Not that I'm complaining.

MACKEREL WAS RESIGNED to his fate as the world's most extremely murdered boy until they reached Josh's boyfriend's front door. Now he's taken a nervous step backward, and his face is clouded over with thinking.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: What now? Your death has so much baggage.

MACKEREL: (
ominously
) I feel them. I don't mean psychically. I mean whatchacallit, that humanistic word.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Go somewhere more specific with "them" first. I'm no humanist. And when you're gay, "them" just means straight. So define "them" and quickly.

He looks at his watch.

MACKEREL: The former me's. Cute boys.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: You mean like old what's-his-name, my ex?

MACKEREL: For instance.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: So you feel like a blip? Like it's cool I'm so cute to one older rich gay guy and all, but it's not like he's Barry Diller? 'Cos that was old what's-his-name's beef, if memory serves.

MACKEREL: Empathically. That's the word I was looking for.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Break it down.

MACKEREL: Love without sex.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Whoa. Just hold on a minute. What the hell are you saying? This is so early Edmund White. You're far too young to remember him. He wrote novels. Do you know what novels are?

MACKEREL: Was Edmund White like Proust? Please say yes.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Yes. Not that I've read Proust. Like all gay guys, I haven't read a novel since 1994.

MACKEREL: I'm too good for you. What does it mean?

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: It means you're ultimate twink. That's why we all keep rimming you. You're God. Enjoy.

MACKEREL: But you don't fist fuck God.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Says who?

MACKEREL: The Bible.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: You don't have a Bible yet. You have die first. I promise you it'll be Proustian, whatever that means. I'll buy a thesaurus, whatever that is. I'll put in lots and lots of sex so gay guys will buy it. I'll make you look like whoever you want. Name it.

MACKEREL: Okay, who's the cutest boy in the world?

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: YOU got it.

He raises his voice such that the tweaking, soon-to-be gay murderers inside his house will hear every word distinctly.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Guys, cutest boy in the world. What's your guess?

Thousands of muffled, gay-sounding voices yell names enthusiastically at the same exact moment.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: One at a time. On second thought, pick a leader.

MACKEREL: They don't deserve me. This is superdepressing.

MUFFLED GAY-SOUNDING VOICE: Okay, we've got your results. But they're too close to call. How about we just narrow it down, and give you a choice? Any of them will do. You can't lose.

MACKEREL: Agreed. By the way, who are you, leader guy, so I'll know who's the top?

MUFFLED GAY-SOUNDING VOICE: Me? Carl's my name. I'll tell you what. Here's who I used to be, because I'm just a forty-ish, ugly, gay, gym-going dreg who watches too much porn now. But I used to be the slightly queeny but cute enough to make up for it blond boy who hung around in West Hollywood back in the eighties, if you remember that?

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: He's thirteen, dope. But I remember you. It's me. Lawrence, the old but muscular enough to make up for it guy. Ring a bell?

MUFFLED GAY-SOUNDING VOICE: Ding, yeah. How's it hanging?

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: It's hanging, dude.

MUFFLED GAY-SOUNDING VOICE: God bless the past, right?

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: You said it.

MUFFLED GAY-SOUNDING VOICE: Anyway, according to our poll, the cutest boys in the world are Taylor Hanson circa "Mm Bop," duh. Aaron Carter at any age, under any circumstances, duh. Devon Sawa circa that TV movie called something like Tornado. Aaron Carter. Nick Carter before he got chunky. Leonardo Di Caprio pre-" The Beach." And did I say Aaron Carter? If not, Aaron Carter.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Tough choice.

MACKEREL: Who's the first one he said again?

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Taylor Hanson circa "Mm-Bop."

MACKEREL: HIM.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: (
yelling
) He chose early Taylor Hanson. How hot is that?

MUFFLED GAY-SOUNDING VOICE: Shit. Fine, we're so horny and fucked up on crystal meth that we'll deal with the fact that he isn't Aaron Carter.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: (
to Mackerel whispering
) Pick Aaron Carter.

MACKEREL: Why?

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Why?! Am I losing my mind?

MACKEREL: You mean that "Aaron's Party" dork?

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: Bingo.

MACKEREL: (
mournfully
) Him then. But your pettiness is giving me pause.

Behind Josh's boyfriend's front door, the muffled good news spreads and muffled zippers start unzipping.

JOSH'S BOYFRIEND: So any last words? I mean before you just start saying ouch and all that?

MACKEREL: Yeah, actually. Let history record that a boy who only wanted to serve humanity by serving himself was sidetracked by the jihad that homoeroticism has unleashed upon the cute. My intellect could have saved us, had we known me, but my ass was too great a distraction, albeit for quite understandable reasons. That's it, I guess. Oh, and a secret. I was just a straight boy who liked being rimmed and told older gay guys he was gay because his girlfriends were so prissy. I don't deserve to die gay, therefore. Think about it. After you've thought about it, talk to me through a psychic of your choice, and I'll tell you the truth of life. Then blow yourselves up in a crowded place. See if I care. Oh, and anarchy rules.