The Wild Boys (8 page)

I sit down and order a Stinger. “Rumble in a square. I lost a Nub.”

“Saw it all from here. I think Donald knows about a good Nub.”

“I am burying my Nub in the American cemetery. We can meet there and plan our route to the party. Might have a spot of bother on the way you know.”

“More than likely. A.J. has been criticized for his lavishness by a few ridiculous malcontents the eternal bane of the very rich.”

Next day after the Nub is laid away with taps and all the trimmings thirty of us join forces and set off for A.J.’s compound which is outside the walls. Rather conspicuous we are too with our Nubs clad in aluminum jockstraps and sandals carrying wire shields to screen us
from stones and at their belts for emergency use the razor-sharp machetes. So we walk along between our Nubs very
dégagé
as if we aren’t actually there.

“The old man will break a stack of bricks with his karate of course it’s a bore but there’s no stopping him. Any case it’s free meals and drinks for a month. I will say for him when he does a do it’s a do.”

The streets are worse than I ever see them the walking dead catatonic from hunger jammed in like so many sacks of concrete the Nubs shove with the stave the bodies bend and come right back up again they are all shuffling slowly forward and all headed for A.J.’s. From between the legs of this river of flesh the wild boys dart like vicious little cats slashing with razor blades and pieces of glass, slash and then dart back into their burrows of walking flesh. A young agent just down from West Point where they call him the Ferret he can snake through a football line like a ferret down a rat hole follows a wild boy in there and what we found after some fast machete work you don’t tell the next of kin.

There it is just ahead now the electric gates thirty feet high set in a wall of black granite. Stumbling over legs we make the gate and click in while the crowd sticks its hands through the bars and shoves fingers in their mouths drooling like cows with the aftosa.

A.J. resplendent in white robes greets us from a dais over the outer courtyard. He smiles and waves to the slobbering crowd.

“They know the score right enough. The better I eat the better they eat. Le gran luxe makes tasty leavings.” The outer courtyard is a small arena with balconies around the sides. We get up in the balconies and A.J. walks down into the middle of the arena.

“Release the bull.”

There is a blast of music and the bull rushes out a chute sees the old man and heads straight for him. He stands there fist drawn back and there is a light seismic tremor as he plants himself for the kill. Then his fist flashes forward and I see the brains go. The bull stumbles by him and falls on its side one leg in the air kicking spasmodically. Within seconds the carcass is butchered and the raw bleeding meat heaved to the crowd.

We go through the inner gates into the compound. There are open air restaurants serving smórgåsbord, beer, chilled aquavit and the hot fish soups of Peru, quiet riverside restaurants in blue evening shadow, redbrick houses with slate roofs whole blocks serving home-cooked American food the way they used to serve it turkey, fried chicken, iced tea, hot biscuits and corn bread, steak, roast beef, homemade strawberry ice cream, duck, wild rice, hominy grits, creamed chestnuts. There are pools and canals, floating restaurants covered with flowers, old riverboats with a menu of passenger pigeon, lark, woodcocks, wild turkey and venison, zeppelins and dining cars, chateaus of haute cuisine ruled by eccentric tyrants, Russian country sideboards with sturgeon, caviar, smoked eel, vodka, champagne and hock, farm restaurants and all varieties of plain peasant cooking, inaccessible cliff restaurants famous for a pigeon with white meat. And every famous restaurant in the world has been duplicated to the last detail, the 1001 from Tangier, the old Lucullus restaurant from Marseilles, Maxim’s, the Tour D’argent, Tony Faustus from St Louis.

I notice that if anything is left on a plate or in a glass it is scraped or poured by the waiters into hampers one
for liquids the other for solids. After we have circulated and put away what we could we are summoned to a balcony overlooking the main gate where the poor of Marrakech mill around waiting. A.J. harangues us briefly on the importance of maintaining a strong benevolent image in the native mind and at this point a panel slides back in the wall on one side of the gate and a huge phallus slides out pissing Martinis, soup, wine, Coca-Cola, grenadine, vodka, bourbon, beer, hot buttered rum, pink gin, Alexanders, glog, corn whisky into a trough forty feet long labeled DRINKS. From a panel on the other side of the gate a rubber asshole protrudes spurting out Baked Alaska, salted herring, duck gravy, chili con came, peach melba, syrups, sauces, jam, fat bone and gristle into another trough labeled EATS. Screaming clawing drooling the crowd throws itself at the troughs scooping up food and drinks with both hands. The odor of vomit rises in clouds. A.J. presses a button that seals the balcony over. Ventilators whir and a smell of cool summer pools and mossy stones envelops the guests. We all stay a month which isn’t hard to do considering what is inside and what is outside.

In addition to the restaurants of the compound culinary expeditions on location to all parts of the globe are organized for the more vigorous guests. The guests are up at six for a breakfast of fruit juice, fried eggs perfectly cooked so that the yolk runs slowly when you cut it, bacon that bends slightly over the fork neither too crisp nor too limp, homemade bread, tea and coffee a cigarette and a rest and they start out through the flaming autumn hills. It is a bright blue October day. They walk ten miles to a river where the flatboats are waiting.
The river is cold and clear and deep. They float downstream fishing along the way in pools and bays and inlets. Tying up the boats for lunch the guests arm themselves with springy clubs and walk along the bank killing frogs and skinning the legs which they fry in bacon grease and eat crisp with cold beer. By late afternoon when they arrive at the farm ferry they have an ample string of jack salmon (also known as walleyed pike), black bass, perch and channel cat. Red-brick house on the hill bourbon and marijuana grown in Missouri summer heat on poor hill soil has a special tang, purple weed they call it. A twilight like blue dust sifting into the river valley as they sit down to a meal of jack salmon steaks, fried perch and bass cooked in bacon grease with a faint smoky tang cider and apples from the farm orchard. They hunt through the autumn woods and return to a dinner of quail, wild turkey and squirrel with chestnuts, spring onions and sweet potatoes. Other locations feature skiing in preparation for smórgåsbord with chilled aquavit, hot chili dishes after a ride through the mountains of northern Mexico, lobsters and clams on the beach, iced tea and fried chicken at The Green Inn.

Food is only one attraction. Every pleasure, sport, diversion, interest, hobby, pursuit or instruction is provided for. To list some of the facilities: computerized libraries with complete references on any subject, expert instructors on any subject, sport or skill. There are gliders, balloons, parachutes, aqualungs and deep-sea diving from the coastal estates. There are sense-withdrawal chambers, immersion tanks, no-gravity capsules simulating space conditions. There are ranges where
you can practice with every weapon from a laser gun to a boomerang. There are blue movies of incomparable artistry. Every period of history and every place or country is represented in A.J.’s International Pavilion. You can enjoy a trip to the 1920’s, Renaissance Italy, Mandarin China, ancient Greece or Rome. Every sexual taste is provided for in any setting you want. Jack off in the 1920’s? Fuck temple virgin? You make Gemini with nice astronaut? Greek youths clad only in beauty and sunlight? Forecastle on whaling ship? Afternoon in the Roman baths? See me fuck Cleopatra? Kinky Chimu kicks? Sex in a 1910 outhouse? Rumble seat? Bomb shelter in the blitz? Bedroll for two in the Yukon? The old swimming hole? Viking ship? Bedouin tent? Public school toilet? Anything that you like.

This morning after a breakfast of fruit, yogurt and pheasant eggs I walk over to the glider hangar. A.J. has several hundred gliders derived from the early models you launch by running and land on your feet sometimes. There are gliders that can be launched from skis, roller skates and bicycles. In all cases the gliders have been designed to most closely approximate the dream of wings and flight. If you have your own ideas for a new model the designers will make it up for you in a few days. The gliders are of many materials and colors to match different landscapes and sky conditions and many of them are painted with landscapes. There are red models for sunset gliding, transparent plastic for ski gliding, blue wings for the mountains. I select a mountain model that shades from lightest egg blue to blue black. The wings are of ramie fabric. A small electric dirigible takes us to the launching station up in the
Atlas mountains. From the station a steep concrete runway slopes down. I put on roller skates and pick up the glider, the wings on each side my hands braced on two struts. The ship is piloted by shifting weight with the hands the pilot being suspended between two struts at the center. When your arms get tired there is a sling seat. I start down the launching run faster faster knees bent I zoom right off across the valley legs dangling over two thousand feet of space. This is really flying like you do in a dream, piloting the glider with both hands feeling it vibrate through me I am out there now in the wings, my wings sailing across the valley. I sit down on the sling seat and see the city spread out between my legs. I bring it down on a cracked weed-grown subdivision street and skate back to the compound for an afternoon in the blue movies.

Some years ago the actors went on strike protesting conditions prejudicial to their dignity.

“Your flesh diseased dirty pictures how long you want us to fuck very nice Meester Slastobitch? We is fucking tired of fuck very nice.” Accordingly the great Slastobitch introduced a series of reforms. Considering the demands of the workers he decided that the blue movies must have story, character development and background in which sex scenes are incidental. For example a story of a whaling voyage 1859 two hours in length contains only eighteen minutes of sex scenes scattered through the film.

“The blue movies as a separate genre have ceased to exist. We show sex as it occurs in the story as a part of life not a mutilated fragment.”

I go to the old Palace Theatre on Market Street. The
first number is an educational short showing how le gran luxe can be achieved on a modest income.

“Now here is my immersion trough in the blue room just a trough full of glycerine sheet aluminum I got it all through the PX for almost nothing my dear now if you’ll just slip into this plastic cover Yage and Majoun for this trip Majoun is good on a bluie your first solo my dear and you are well prepared you see it’s all so simple home is where your ass is and if you want to move you move your ass the first step is learning to change homes with someone else and have someone else’s ass. I remember a science-fiction thing about an institute called Fishook given over to paranormal psychic things they have a box they get in and their minds travel to other planets. Well one of these planets is so ‘evil’ it drives an astronaut back to the Bible Belt where he preaches up a holy war against the ‘Parries’ they are called and by now everyone outside Fishook hates the ‘Parries’ and there are signs up ‘Parry, Don’t Let The Sun Set On You Here.’ And Fishook has closed the doors whole villages of nice old ‘Parries’ and the teenage ‘Parries’ all bucking for Fishook will be slaughtered.”

But there is another astronaut on the lam from Fishook security who knows about a nice quiet planet and he wants to rescue all good “Parries” everywhere but how to transport the paranormal assholes? In a flash the know-how comes to him from that “evil” planet and when he tells the villagers what to do they say

“But that’s dirty.”

“Not dirty just alien” he says. “Besides you don’t have much choice.” He points to a long row of headlights approaching the paranormal village. “The vigilantes
are on the way. So you see it’s time to move on. And what you find outside is only what you put there in the first place. Time to move into first place.”

He was lying on a bed in his shorts split bamboo walls top floor of the hotel. A knock at the door. The Indian boy stood there a quart beer bottle in one hand.

“Aquí Yage Ayahuasca … muy bueno … muy fuerte
…” The boy came in closing the door and put the bottle on a table. The American boy who was thin and blond got two tin cups from his rucksack. The Indian boy poured out the mixture from the beer bottle filling each cup two-thirds full. He passed his hands back and forth over the cups humming a little tune. He stopped humming looked at the American and smiled.

“This very good for fuck Johnny.” He made a tight brown fist and shoved a finger in and out. “We take Yage then fuck.” He unbuttoned his shirt.
“Ambos nudo Johnny
… both naked.” He dropped his shirt on a chair, kicked off his sandals, shoved his pants and shorts down. He waited until the American was stripped. “Now take Yage … act very fast.” The American drank and shuddered.
“Muy amargo sí Johnny
.”

Almost at once the American boy felt a blue tide cool evening air on his naked rectum his legs …
“Tomamos eso … ambos nudo
” … shadows fading hand on a tin cup eyes smiling and knowing the bare rectum the other was looking pressure the groin facing each other …
“Vuelvete
” … getting hard in the blue light … “Bend over Johnny” … The boy picked up a tin of Vaseline and slowly with a calm intent expression rubbed it on his cock … “Bend over Johnny and spread ass” … feeling the eyes and fingers on his rectum ass hairs spread the slow penetration … “Hand on knees Johnny” … He twisted his body in a slow circle hands
braced on knees stirring whirlpools of blue tighter tighter tighter spurting blue Chinese characters in the purple dusk of Lima gasps
“muy bueno
” hands on knees Carl’s eyes sputtering blue his face blurred out bone-wrenching spasms popped egg-blue worlds in air a wake of jissom across the sky.