Saline Solution (20 page)

I lay back and had him kneel over me, a knee at either ear. I looked up at his manoeuvred manhood. I broke the ampoule, dropped it into the inhalator, took a whiff, and within seconds began the pulse-pounding ride into the oblivion of surrender. He got hard immediately and began fucking me in the mouth.

'I'm paying off some strange debt,' I thought, 'taking Lucinda's role of the night before and using Felix to play my part.'

There are only five or six good hits on a single charge of the drug, so it was imperative for him to come within the span of time. I looked up at him, he seemed worried. I stepped into my Rumanian role. 'Why don't you masturbate, darling,' I said, 'and use my quivering mouth as your receptacle.' Of course, that seized his fancy.

The rest was quite pleasant. I lay there in a state of somnolent sexuality, buzzing lightly with the energy he jerked off in his desperate need to ejaculate. I sniffed the amyl nitrate from time to time and soared into a private perfumed tent. Finally I heard the sort of grunts associated with male orgasm, and in a moment several thick drops of spunk dribbled onto my tongue.

We had almost nothing to share immediately afterwards, so he went into the kitchen to make some tea. Then we talked about gay liberation, and he promised he would take some nude photos of me. 'I'd like to have a comingout party,' I said. 'Except that everytime I step out of one closet I realise I am moving right into another one. It seems impossible to remain unidentified.'

I left to go to church.

One of the sex trade-journals had advertised a weekly afternoon mass to be held by the American Orthodox Church, a gay congregation. I flashed the possibility of this being the ultimate in camp, with stained-glass windows showing a faggot Christ.

But when I arrived, I found that everyone there was peculiarly straight. They were that particularly odd variety of homosexual that tries to pretend that nothing is amiss. I suspected that the congregation, made up mostly of unattractive people, suffered from a wide range of difficulties, ranging from loneliness to impotence. But who there would understand the sublime sarcasm of that statement?

The priest was a bouncy long-haired and moustached showman of about forty-five with a five-inch aura around his head. He was dressed in all the classic vestments, and garbed himself in the vestibule to the proper prayers. He was assisted by five altar boys, ranging in age from about twenty to forty, performing the usual canopy of activity, swinging incense holders, carrying candles, moving various books and objects around on the altar. One of them had a face of Spanish decadence seen in Velasquez. The choir pew held five young men dressed in slacks and soft sweaters. It was amusing that one did not have to wonder whether any of the choir boys were
that way
, for, presumably, every one of the ninety or hundred people in the church were that way.

I waited through the opening procession, and the first movements of the mass for some spark of put-on, some spirit of celestial goof to lighten the mood, but none appeared. The service was an ancient French rite which had been transcribed into English. We lumbered through the scenario, the hymns sung without comprehension of the meaning of the words, the words from the canon read without elevation of the soul. It was as empty as anything that happens in any of the Catholic or Protestant or Jewish churches every holy day throughout the year.

How odd it was to see all the artifacts and motions which had been engraved in my head as a child, when I, too, took the altar boy trip now going on in this baroque, unintended parody. When I was young, I took it all seriously. To me the priest was an actual representative of God, and when he nodded-out behind his mumbled morning mating call, I used to believe that the bread and wine were literally transformed into the body and blood of Christ. But these people were all adults! Especially the priest. I had nothing but the highest admiration for the theatre which had been mounted, but the actors were taking it all so seriously and the dullness became asphyxiating. History lifted her skirts and smirked as the neo-Christian wing of the gay revolution attempted to breath life into a dead form.

Two moments were heartfelt enough to be moving. At one point, at the consecration of the Host, the altar boy with the ravaged face rang the large church bell by the thick knotted rope which hung by the sacristy. Hearing that golden imperious sound echo off the walls brought sudden tears to my eyes.

And the sermon almost brought me to my feet cheering. As though working out the charade in its most meticulous detail, the priest began with announcements about church business and the formation of a new theatre group. 'We are doing morality plays for Christmas,' he said, and totally missed the irony of his condition. He launched into an inspired rap on the essential worth and dignity of the human being, and included a loving condemnation of the other so-called Christian churches which have no room for their gay brethren. 'We must accept our own beauty,' he said. 'We must realise that being the way we are is part of god's plan for the world. So we do His bidding by being most ourselves. We must stop being ashamed!'

I wanted to jump up and shout, 'Right on brother!' but everything in the church militated against that sort of spontaneous expression. They may have been gay, but Lord, were they
properl
They took their rejection by the monsters of Western civilisation seriously. And now they were resorting to the quintessential form of that civilisation in an attempt to come to terms with their right to exist fully.

Where the militant gay grouls were strident, these people whined. It struck me again that the history of mankind is the history of repression, and that large groups of people can be so mocked and threatened from birth that they carry scars of inferiority and fear all their lives. I felt a fine flush of anger, and as has been accompanying that feeling lately, my hand itched for a gun. It seemed that an awful lot of killing would have to take place before the species came to terms with certain basic problems. I felt a strong and animal bond with all the poor bastards in that church who hadn't been allowed to grow into their own kind of people. But as soon as I began thinking about the problem in practical terms, weariness overtook me. Who to kill? How? The enemy was internal as well as external. One couldn't go after a virus with an axe. And I smiled to think of the revolutionaries who would answer my despair by the cry ORGANISE. Organise whom? We are the enemy. And the natural inclination of any group is sooner or later to form an army. War leads to war. There is no hope.

I received communion, and went back to my pew with my head bowed and hands folded. The taste of the wafer sent me into Proustian ecstasies.

Afterwards there was a social hour, with coffee and cookies. I had to keep a strong check on my cynicism, for within minutes after the mass all the celebrants were standing around cruising like crazy. But it was such a guarded and effete flurry of flirtation as to make it almost laughable, except that it made one sad. What were these human beings doing, pretending to plod their way through the fatuousness of organised worship and then coming on with all their selfpity hanging out? It takes great style to pretend not to know what one is doing and make that seem charming.

One tall and lithe cat came up to me and began a standard rap, neither original or despicable, like a Ruy Lopez opening.

'My name's Ken. What's yours?' And then. 'I'm a musician, what do you do?' And on the eleventh exchange, a surprise move.
⁴
Is there any place in the building we can go?' I looked down. His cock was making a bulge in his pants. He wanted a fast blow job.

I left the scene and went out into Eighth Avenue. Across the street was a familiar building, the City Clinic for Venereal Disease. I wondered whether anyone in the congregation had a sufficient sense of irony to appreciate the juxtaposition of functions.

I called Lucinda but there was no answer, then walked up to John and Janet's and found Jessica. I sank into fucking the way an alcoholic sinks into his bottle.

I did all the required things. I pushed her face with my hand, mashing her mouth and nose out of shape. I slammed into her cunt with full force. I tore at her lips with my teeth. I heard myself grunting and growling.

'Please, please hurt me,' she said.

I was tired and keenly aware of the presence of other people in the house. I couldn't get it together enough to really do it to her, for her to let her have the full hurt. I hooked her knees over my elbows and brought her thighs to either side of her breasts.

'If I don't do it for her, she'll find someone else,' I thought, and the threat of jealousy spurred me on. But as I slashed at her, listening to her cries, and felt my cock grow hotter and her cunt become slack and wet, I felt my anger rise. It was almost always the same with a woman. We begin together and then she sinks into a swoon of rapture, thinking that the depth of her mindlessness is all she ever had to do to please me. I fucked her until four in the morning, changing position, alternately erect and soft, until I could go no further.

'Christ, this is boring.' I thought.

I was suddenly tired of using my cock and caress as a tool to help other people work out the kinks in their sexual fantasies. Stripped of all its therapeutic dynamics, sex was an odd activity. I plunked the sperm into her and collapsed in her arms. She was trembling, seemed frightened. She called my name softly and drew herself closer to me. She said my name again and nestled my face against her chest. I was unsettled by the fragility of her, and waves of tenderness flowed from me to comfort her, to, in some very simple way,
know
her at this moment.

'I'm getting tired,' I thought.

We lay there for a while and soon a current of electricity pulled us together. I began to love her body with my fingers and mouth. She rolled onto her belly, and arched her arse up. I stroked her cunt, and balled my hand into a fist to crush it between her cheeks. Once again she began that high-pitched keening. I inserted one finger, then two, then three. I pushed my hand in past the knuckles and slid the fingers around one another, pummeling the deep inner walls of her cunt.

I slid down so that my face was level with her crotch, and like a mechanic trying to reach some almost inaccessible part of an engine, I probed insistently until I had found all the spots which revved her up to her optimum vibration. She went through one grasping convulsion, and then lay still.

I let my fingers slip out and then began to work with my mouth, licking up the length of her cunt and dipping into her arsehole, rimming her gently and insolently. I buried my face totally between her cheeks and she brought her cunt up, gyrating at her pelvis, rubbing the sticky lips over my forehead and nose and eyes and chin. I took a facial bath in her box.

Then the doorbell rang. I started with fright. It rang again. I became paranoid; I was convinced it was Lucinda. I heard Janet wake John up in the next room. He grumbled and came stumbling past as we lay there in a high-art cunteating posture. He disappeared into the hallway and soon strode past us again on his way to bed. I half sat up, peering into the darkness. I began hallucinating on the shadows. It was Lucinda, carrying a knife, waiting for the right moment to strike.

Jessica turned over and squirmed against me. My cock was numb, but she wanted more. I remembered when Master and Johnson were asked, 'What is the sexual nature of woman?' they answered, 'Insatiable.' She brought her knees to her chest and lay there, cunt agape, waiting for me to put my prick in. I took that absurd appendage in my hand and pulled on its stiffening length. It got hard and I brought it to her cunt, but on meeting that hungry hole, it softened once more. I tried three or four times, once actually rubbing the head of it against her cunt lips. And finally, I gave up.

'It's impossible,' I said, and lay down to go to sleep. Jessica immediately collapsed and curled against me. We fell unconscious breathing into one another's mouths.

I woke up once. John and Janet were fucking. The sound of a slap rang out, aad then another. And then eight or ten, very hard, in rapid succession. I could picture her pink buttocks as he crashed the weight and speed of his hand across her arse, WHAP WHAP WHAP.

'Oh God,' she moaned. And then more thrashing noises. He emitted the kind of grunt a person might make upon having a painful splinter pulled out. It was an orgasm of relief.

The next morning Jessica and I fucked once more. It was a grey day as I walked her to the subway. We talked about her former lover, for whom she still had a sense of openness. And about Lucinda, my charge and my sustenance.

'We can stand here after a night of hassle and pleasure and dig one another because we don't live together,' I said. 'It doesn't seem that kind of love is possible any longer. We seem doomed to strip one another very quickly of all our structural necessities, to burn the defensive postures so the energy can flow. But all we accomplish is rubbing one another raw, and destroying what we most admired in one another.'

She looked at me. 'You sure are grim.'

'Just factual,' I said.

I watched the traffic pass. Some four or five million people were beginning another daily round of their fiscal dance, swelling the office buildings and subways and sidewalks with their ordered activity, a vast army of automatons, as conditioned as any nest of worker ants. Freedom was a joke in such circumstances, and love a fairytale. I looked at the pretty girl standing in front of me. There was no way to make her understand my vision.