The Wild Boys (5 page)

The doctor was a Southern gentleman of the old school. Rather like John Barrymore in appearance and manner he fancied himself as a witty raconteur which at times he was. The doctor had charm which Audrey so sadly lacked. No doorman would ever stop him no shopkeeper forget his thank you under eyes that could suddenly go cold as ice. It was impossible for the doctor to like Audrey. “He looks like a homosexual sheep-killing dog” he thought but he did not say this. He looked up from his paper in his dim gloomy drawing room and pontificated “the child is not wholesome.”

His wife went further: “It is a walking corpse,” she said. Audrey was inclined to agree with her but he didn’t know whose corpse he was. And he was painfully aware of being unwholesome.

There is a screen directly in front of him, a screen to his left, a screen to his right, and a screen in back of his head. He can see all four screens from a point above his head.

Later Audrey wrote these notes: “The scenes presented and the manner of presentation varies according to an underlying pattern.

“1. Objects and scenes move away and come in with a slow hydraulic movement always at the same speed. The screens are three-dimensional visual sections punctuated by flashing lights. I once saw the Great Thurston who could make an elephant disappear do
an act with a screen on stage. He shoots a man in the film. The actor clutches his ketchup to his tuxedo shirt and falls then Thurston steps into the screen as a detective to investigate the murder, steps back outside to commit more murders, busts in as a brash young tabloid reporter, moves out to make a phone call that will collapse the market, back in as ruined broker. I am pulled into the film in a stream of yellow light and I can pull people out of the film withdrawal shots pulling the flesh off naked boys. Sequences are linked by the presence of some arbitrary object a pin wheel, a Christmas-tree ornament, a pyramid, an Easter egg, a copper coil going away and coming in always in the same numerical order. Movement in and out of the screen can be very painful like acid in the face and electric sex tingles.

“2. Scenes that have the same enigmatic structure presented on one screen where the perspective remains constant. In a corner of the frames there are punctuation symbols. This material is being processed on a computer. I am in the presence of an unknown language spelling out the same message again and again in cryptic charades where I participate as an actor. There are also words on screen familiar words maybe we read them somewhere a long time ago written in sepia and silver letters that fade into pictures.

“3. Fragmentary glimpses linked by immediate visual impact. There is a sensation of speed as if the pictures were seen from a train window.

“4. Narrative sections in which the screens disappear. I experience a series of quite understandable and coherent events as one of the actors. The narrative sequences are preceded by the title on screen then I
am in the film. The transition is painless like stepping into a dream. The structuralized peep show may intersperse the narrative and then I am back in front of the screen and moving in and out of it.”

Audrey looked at the screen in front of him. His lips parted and the thoughts stopped in his mind. It was all there on screen sight sound touch at once immediate and spectrally remote in past time.

THE PENNY ARCADE PEEP SHOW

1. On screen 1 a burning red pin wheel distant amusement park. The pin wheel is going away taking the lights the voices the roller coaster the smell of peanuts and gunpowder further and further away.

2. On screens 2 and 3 a white pin wheel and a blue pin wheel going away. Audrey catches a distant glimpse of two boys in the penny arcade. One laughs and points to the other’s pants sticking out straight at the crotch.

3. On screens 1 2 3 three pin wheels spinning away red white and blue. Young soldier at the rifle range beads of sweat in the down on his lip. Distant firecrackers burst on hot city pavements … night sky parks and ponds … blue sound in vacant lots.

4. On screens 1 2 3 4 four pin wheels spinning away, red, white, blue and red. A low-pressure area draws Audrey into the park. July 4, 1926 falls into a silent roller.

1. On screen 1 a red pin wheel coming in … smoky moon over the midway. A young red-haired sailor bites into an apple.

2. On screens 2 and 3 two pin wheels coming in white and blue light flickers an adolescent face. The pitchman
stirs uneasily. “Take over will you kid. Gotta see a man about a monkey.”

3. On screens 1 2 3 three pin wheels coming in red white and blue. A luminous post card sky opens into a vast lagoon of summer evenings. A young soldier steps from the lake from the hill from the sky.

4. On screens 1 2 3 4 four pin wheels spinning in red white blue red. The night sky is full of bursting rockets lighting parks and ponds and the upturned faces.

“The rocket’s red glare the bombs bursting in air Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.”

A light in his eyes. Must be Doctor Moor’s mirror with a hole in it.

1. A flattened pyramid going away into distant birdcalls and dawn mist … Audrey glimpses bulbous misshapen trees … Indian boy standing there with a machete … The scene is a sketch from an explorer’s notebook … dim in on a stained yellow page … “No one was ever meant to know the unspeakable evil of this place and live to tell of it …”

2. Two pyramids going away … “The last of my Indian boys left before dawn. I am down with a bad attack of fever … and the sores … I can’t keep myself from scratching. I have even tried tying my hands at night when the dreams come, dreams so indescribably loathsome that I cannot bring myself to write down their content. I untie the knots in my sleep and wake up scratching …”

3. Three pyramids going away … “The sores have
eaten through my flesh to the bone and still this hideous craving to scratch. Suicide is the only way out. I can only pray that the horrible secrets I have uncovered die with me forever …”

4. Four pyramids going away … Audrey experienced a feeling of vertigo like the sudden stopping of an elevator … skeleton clutches a rusty revolver in one fleshless hand …

1. A pyramid coming in … Audrey can see stonework like broken lace on top of the pyramid. Damp heat closes round his body a musty odor of vegetable ferment and animal decay. Figure in a white loincloth swims out of the dawn mist. An Indian boy with rose-colored flesh and delicate features stands in front of Audrey. Two muscular Indians with long arms carry jars and tools. “You crazy or something walk around alone? This bad place. This place of flesh plants.”

2. Two pyramids coming in … “You not careful you grow here. Look at that.” He points to a limp pink tube about two feet long growing from two purple mounds covered with fine red tendrils. As the boy points to the tube it turns toward him. The boy steps forward and rubs the tube which slowly stiffens into a phallus six feet high growing from two testicles … “Now I make him spurt. Jissom worth much
dinero
. Jissom make flesh” … He strips off his loincloth and steps onto the vegetable scrotum embracing the shaft. The red hairs twist around his legs reaching up to his groin and buttocks …

3. Three pyramids coming in … The mist is lifting. In the milky dawn light Audrey sees a blush spread through the boy’s body turning the skin to a swollen
red wheal. Pearly lubricant pours from the head of the giant phallus and runs down the sides. The boy squirms against the shaft caressing the great pulsing head with both hands. There is a soft muffled sound, a groan of vegetable lust straining up from tumescent roots as the plant spurts ten feet in the air. The bearers run around catching the gobs in stone jars.

4. Four pyramids coming in … The flesh garden is located in a round crater four pyramids spaced around it on higher ground North South East and West. Slowly the tendrils fall away the Phallus goes limp and the boy steps free … “Over there ass tree” … He points to a tree of smooth red buttocks twisted together between each buttock a quivering rectum. Opposite the orifices phallic orchids red, purple, orange sprout from the tree’s shaft … “Make him spurt too” … The boy turns to one of the bearers and says something in a language unknown to Audrey. The boy grins and slips off his loincloth … The other bearer followed his movements … “He fuck tree. Other fuck him” … The two men dip lubricant from a jar and rub it on their stiffening phalluses. Now the first bearer steps forward and penetrates the tree wrapping his legs around the shaft. The second bearer pries his buttocks open with his thumbs and squirms slowly forward men and plant moving together in a slow hydraulic peristalsis … The orchids pulse erect dripping colored drops of lubricant … “We catch spurts” … The boy hands Audrey a stone jar. The two boys seem to writhe into the tree their faces swollen with blood. A choking sound bursts from tumescent lips as the orchids spurt like rain. “This one very dangerous” … The boy
points to a human body with vines growing through the flesh like veins. The body of a green pink color excretes a milky substance … The boy draws on parchment gloves … “You touch him you get sores itch you scratch spread sores feel good scratch more scratch self away” … Slowly the lids open on green pupils surrounded by black flower flesh. He is seeing them now you can tell. His body quivers with horrible eagerness … “He there long time. Need somebody pop him.” … The boy reaches up takes the head in both hands and twists it sharply to one side. There is a sound like a stick breaking in wet towels as the spine snaps. The feet flutter and rainbow colors spiral from the eyes. The penis spurts again and again as the body twists in wrenching spasms. Finally the body hangs limp … “He dead now” … The bearers dig a hole. The boy cuts the body down and it plops into the grave … “Soon grow another” … said the boy matter of factly … “over there shit tree” … He points to a black bush in the shape of a man squatting. The bush is a maze of tentacles and caught in these tendrils Audrey sees animal skeletons … “Now I make him asshole” … The boy dipped sperm from a jar and rubbed it between the parted buttocks. Nitrous fumes rise the plant writhes in peristalsis and empties itself … “Very good for garden. Make flesh trees grow. Now I show you good place” … He leads the way up a steep path to an open place by one of the pyramids … In niches carved from rock Audrey sees vines growing in human forms. The figures give off a remote vegetable calm … “This place of vine people very calm very quiet. Live here long long time. Roots reach down to garden.”

The rising sun hits Audrey in the face

Dawn light on a naked
youth
poised to dive into a pond.———

A thousand Japanese
youths
leap from a balcony into a round swimming tank.

Audrey
taking a shower. Water runs down his lean stomach. He is getting stiff.

Locker room toilet on five levels seen from ferris wheel … flash of white legs, shiny pubic hairs, lean brown arms …
boys
masturbating under a rusty shower.