Boys of Life (10 page)

She let out this howl, and he held himself inside her for a second; then he went and pulled out. He had this enormous dick, especially tor such a little guy. He was almost a midget, he was BO short, but his dick looked about as thick around as a wrist. Somebody handed the woman a towel and a drink, and she sat there crosslegged on the floor, toweling herself off and drinking that drink, like nothing ever happened. The man climbed down off the stage and went over to one of the tables where two men were sitting. His big dick was >till halt hard and flopping around while he walked. He stood there talking to the guys at the table, these two fat men in suits, and smoking a cigarette. The white-blond girl was nowhere down there—the only woman in that room was the black woman sitting on the stage.

She started gesturing in my direction.

"Hey, white boy," she said. I looked around, but there wasn't any other white boy. "Come here, white boy. You like what you see here.'" She took one of her breasts and sort of shook it .it me —it had to be at me, because there wasn't anybody else in the part of the room where 1 was. Everybody was looking at me. though—the two fat guys, and the guy with the big dick, and these three other men in dark suits who, I suddenly noticed, were standing by the bar. They were all looking like they were really interested in me—in what I was going to d

I felt like I had to get out of there. I shook my head at the- woman, who was calling to me, "Hey kid, whyn't you come up here and some of that pussy you been needm'.' I know you been needin' it bad. I can see it in your face. \ I pimple on your cheek there, 1 can

see—it's from not gettin' enough pussv juice. I know. Come on \iy bere,

D PAULRUSSELL

let Mama give you some. Whip out that white boy dick and come on up here. Let Sugar Mama give it to you."

The two fat men were turned around in their chairs, craning their necks to see me. I remember the little man with the big dick standing there with his hands on his hips.

When she saw I was making to leave, she started saying, "Buy Mama a drink, won't you, honey? Won't you at least do that? One drink for Mama?"

I started to go up the stairs, but the three men in the dark suits were standing in my way.

"Don't you hear the lady?" one of them told me. He reached out and held my arm. The other two sort of clustered around me, so there was nowhere to go. "She wants you to buy her a drink."

"I got to go," I told them, trying to shake free my arm. "It's important. I got to be somewhere."

"Let's see your ticket stub," said the guy who was holding my arm.

"What ticket stub?"

"You got to have a ticket. You got to pay admission," he said. "You think this is a free show? Yolanda here's an artist. Joseph's an artist. You got to pay to see artists. You can't just wander in and take a peek and then go trot along your merry way. You got to pay for this."

"I don't have any money," I said, which was pretty true. "I didn't mean to come here. I was looking for somebody."

"Well, I think you found them." He was rubbing his fingers together to show he wanted cash. The other two guys were sort oi jostling me, just enough to make me nervous. I took out my wallet.

"See," I told them, "no money." I had two dollars m there, which the guy took out. He looked at the hills like he didn't believe them; then he held one oi them up, like it was dirty or lomething, And he spit on it. and then he Spit On the other one. Then before 1 knew wh.it

ening he punched me In the itomach.

The other two guys were holding nn elbows, so even though 1 doubled up tl Yt much I could An. "Don't," I croaked, hut he

bed UK- again, and again probably aboul five times. 1 couldn't

■ he

"I thmk rh.it aboul p.ivs tin price "i admission," said the

buy tlu lad) •> dunk'"

ild hardls see. I li n tu\ eyes, .unl I couldn't hie.ithe t

eitlv

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"I think he wants to buy her a drink," laid one oi the other guys. "I think he wants to buy her a two-dollar drink."

The guy who'd hit me gave me hack the wallet, minus the two hucks. Then the other two guys gave me a shove up the stairs. 1 >tunv hied and slammed my palm against one of the steps, hut I kept on going like a pack ot dogs was harking at my heels.

I could hear the hlack woman calling at me from the stage. "R\c," she said. "You have a nice day now, you hear.'"

I went scrambling up those stairs and down that long dim hallway and up the next set of stairs and through the lobby. Nobody followed me, and the lohhy was empty—that man in the silver jacket had totally disappeared on me.

Out on the street the sun was shining, there was traffic, people walking by, hillhoards advertising XXX movies. I was shaking all over and sweating this cold sweat—though I was at leasr beginning to catch my hreath. I had to start laughing. I went swaying along Broadway, humping into people, reeling around like I was halt drunk, laughing up a storm. And sohhing like a hahy too, it you want to know the truth. It was blocks till I calmed down.

I never told Carlos about that afternoon. It wasn't that I was afraid to—just that I didn't have any idea how. I couldn't get it straight in my head. I just kept seeing these pictures: that little guy with the big dick standing there with his hands on his hips, like everything was totally normal, and the black woman saying the things she did, and then wanting that drink from me. It all made me squeamish to even think about—it was shameful somehow, like some disgusting dream you have and then would be embarrassed to let other people know about. Now that I've tinallv told about it, there doesn't seem that much to it. It's been ten years, and worse things have happened—hut at the time, it bothered me so much that, if my belly hadn't hurt where I'd gotten punched, I might've talked myself into thinking I'd made the whole thing up.

The only other thing I never told Carlos abour not tor a

while, was going to the library with Sammy, and that book with the pictures in it—but that's another storv.

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Things I spent a lot of hours in Owen dreaming about and jerking ofl to, but never expecting them really to happen to me. Never thinking

there was somebody else who wanted them the way 1 did. Somebody who wanted me.

Carlos totally loved my body—every bit of it. Which shocked me

at first, that anybody could love everything about somebody else's body the way he did, but it also completely excited me. With Wallace it was always how this was getting his rocks off, but where girls were concerned I was definitely second best. And with Candy in the back seal of the car, well, we'd just fumbled around—it you asked me wh.it did she look like, I couldn't even tell you anymore. Bur Carlos treated my body like it was some amazing discovery of his he just couldn't gel enough of—sniffing my armpits, my asshole, licking my nipples and between my toes and behind my calves, all those places 1 never even thought about. He'd graze the top of his tongue along my skin-exploring my whole body that way, pulling all the different parts o( me together into this one complete shining body.

You could say he took this comic book kid, all jerky freeze-frames, and threaded him all together into a moving picture. It's wh.it nobody else in my life ever did with me, before or since. Just trailing his dry tongue around on the surface o{ me, he could cause me to explode on him.

Then he'd go inside me.

One of the things about Carlos was how he looked .it me. It was rude, and scary, and I never got used to it. He'd pin me there on the bed with those glittery black eyes of his, and then ease his dick into me, all the way up inside me. I'd take a deep breath, and he'd be balanced up above me, locking my wrists down with his hinds, his dick in me and his eyes boring a lot deeper into me even than that- and me forcing myself not to look away, to keep srarinu back at him nn matter how scary it was to lock eyes with him like that.

He'd flex his dick in me, just once, and I'd practically taint.

The only thing about all that stuff we did was, Carlos never wanted me to do any of it back to him. He wasn't interested in that, like his body was something he already knew all about and so he w other things. I'd try, sometimes, to give him back what be was giving me—try to go after that wiry, h^hrer's body of his. He had Itom muscles I could die for, and I loved the big veins m his arms. Atter he'd been inside me, I'd want to go down nn him and gel a r.isre >>t where he'd been. But he'd just say no. ,\nd push me aside to where he

□ PAUL RUSSELL

could get at me again. I guess you could say he was greedy with me, but I didn't care one bit once he started in on me. In some weird way, it made him even more exciting to me—the way he wouldn't let me really go at him the way he went at me. Like it was different for him in some way. Like he'd already been to all the places he was taking me too many times to want to go back anymore.

I don't really know about all that. Sometimes here at the Eddy I'll be lying on the mattress dreaming about the things Carlos and I used to do—or I guess I should mostly say, what he'd do to me—and I just have to wonder. When I think about it now, I realize there were lots of things I never knew about him, and I guess, being just a kid back then, I never felt like I wanted to know. I can't believe all the things I never asked him, but they just never occurred to me. But now I wonder sometimes. I wonder where he'd been, all those years before he met me, that made him so crazy for this sixteen-year-old kid the way he was. Crazy to the point where he didn't want anything from me except me, and nothing else.

After Carlos died, there were lots of newspaper articles—junk, mostly, which was pretty easy to shrug off. But one of them that Earl showed me from his scrapbook got under my skin like some wood splinter and stayed there. It was this famous movie critic writing in The New York Times, and I'm putting what he said in here just so you can see how totally different the Carlos I knew was from the one everybody else thought they knew.

The singfe time I was in the presence oj ( arlos Reichart, at a film festival here in Sen York, he was so closely sheltered K members of his famous troupe, The Company, that there seemed to be a conspiracy afoot to keep him m some kind oj protective custody from the world iit large, He radiated what I can only describe as a remarkable aura oj depravity, as if having come straight from unspeakable debaut hes, I le teemed < uriously disoriented a master actoi who suddenly and inexplicably finds himselj onstage in the wrong play And I suddenly began to reati& something terrible about this man, on rathei about my sense oj him that then

whose films m, ike one long, intensely, to knou the man behind the film But with ( 'arlos Reichart, one must finally that, howevei much one migjht admire his films, one had no knou the man himself

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I guess I feel sorry tor the guy who wrote th.a. I picture him going home from that day, and being really happy to Bee his wife, and the dog, and washing his hands with soap tor a long time, and suddenly realizing that's what he's doing. I picture him telling his wife how much he loves her, which is something he hasn't done m a long time, but seeing me and Carlos that afternoon seared him in some ways he doesn't want to think about. Because he's not dumb— he's seen Carlos's movies, he knows they're better than anything anybody else is doing these days. And he also knows it he's going to go on watching them, it he's going to understand what they're really about, then he can't go on living the way he does. Which is too much tor anybody to ask. He looks at his face in the mirror. What's wrong with iik.' he wonders, and so he washes his hands again. He can't get Carlos and me out of his head, that picture he has of Carlos walking into that room.

It's Earl all over again—getting nervous about something he sees and he's not sure what to do with it. Maybe I'm being defensive.

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and the cans of black beans and guava juice with rust spots on them on the shelves, it felt like maybe you were in Cuba. At least it's how I always imagine Cuba: this cheesy music on the radio, everybody smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. They drank these extra tall cans of Budweiser, even the women.

Whenever Carlos walked in, the three little kids who were always in the store, usually sitting on the floor playing some game with bottle-caps I could never figure out, would jump up and just surt shrieking, they were so happy to see Carlos. I don't know what tor, exactly, since he never gave them anything that I saw—but there was just something about him that made those kids go wild. Like it was a holiday. And the women and old men would talk to him—he knew some Spanish, I don't know where from—and they'd babble away, gesturing with their hands and laughing these big laughs that were like gunshots g<

Carlos was in some ways a really shy person, and he always seemed embarrassed a little by all their attention. But he also loved it. He knew they thought he was special, even though he'd never have told you that. But it brought him out of himself—the way certain things, some pretty kid walking down the street, or rain coming down in the morning, or just anything somebody might say that was odd to him, could bring him out.

I remember one time we were in that grocery, and they were all whooping it up—Carlos was grinning that nervous grin of his and the little kids were clamped onto his leg and he was patting the tops oi their heads. Then this man started talking to me. They never talked to me, and at first I couldn't even understand what he was saying, his English was so terrible. But he was saying, "I give you job."

It sort of freaked me a little.

"You want," he said, "I give you one. Like rh.it. You vet) fine boy for job."

"What's he talking about. 7 " I asked Carlos. 1 felt like 111st some other kid clamped around his leg tor protection.