Boys of Life (22 page)

B O Y S O F L I F E □

"I like your body just fine,' 1 I told her. And I meant it. I was always glad to see Verbena, even it she didn't always remember my

name.

troll on around," she told me, "hang out in the cafes, visit the whorehouses. For angels, no visas required."

What was amazing were the shapes of those buildings, all piled up topsy-turvy on top of each other, and the colors, these chalky reds and greens, like once they were bright hut from lots of hands touching them they wore down to the dull color they were now. You'll say it was just a stage set made out o{ cardboard and plaster of pans, and you'll be right—but If you haven't seen it you won't know how there was something about it that put its spell on you and made you feel empty and sad and faraway.

"Amazing," I told Carlos while he was walking me through the set that first time—we were climbing the scaffolding up to the platform at the top. "I never knew anything like this was going on."

"Ever read the Bible?" he asked. Which I never did.

"The story of Sodom and Gomorrah," he said.

"Like in the last movie," I mentioned.

"Except all different." We'd made it to the top of the town, which was all built on stilts so if you looked at it from the desert down below, it looked like it was on a steep hillside, but now from the top looking down vou could see it wasn't a town at all, it was just lumber and heavy cardboard latched together and all painted up. Down below I could see Verbena talking with Sammy. She was doing the talking. I couldn't hear what she was telling him, but I could see he was busy banging the palm of his hand against his forehead in some kind of response.

"Not much of a view," I joked.

"God wanted to send his angels to Sodom to see if there was a single just man living there. But the angels fell into the trap of the Sodomites—the trap of sexual knowledge, sex as knowledge, since in the Bible 'to know' means both—and so out of jealousy God rained fire on the Cities o( the Plain."

Tre not planning on burning all this down?"

"Not exactly, no. I'm not following the Bible all that carefully. You might say I'm doing some long overdue revising on that old book. The angels'll probably take one look around and just settle down, live happily ever after inside those human bodies o( theirs. If that's what angels do. I haven't worked everything out yet."

"Let me guess," I said. I'd seen it coming a mile away. "I'm sup'

□ PAUL RUSSELL

posed to play one of the angels." But Carlos didn't answer me—instead he said, "Remember hack last summer, how we hooked the shower up on the fire escape?"

Carlos never reminisced about the things we did together.

"Yeah," I said. I was touched he wanted to remember that.

"That was pretty fun."

He put his hand on my shoulder, and one more time I remembered, We're never going to have sex again—which all morning had been a bell chiming inside me, every fifteen minutes or so, that thought—it's over, it's finished, whatever this is, it's something else now.

"You know," he said, almost like he was reading my mind, "hacking's just something that happens. It's like everything else."

I didn't exactly see what that had to do with the tire escape. Or with the angels.

"Fucking's just a motion, an activity, see? It's a set oi physical principles."

"What are you talking about?" I asked him.

He turned and looked at me, holding both my shoulders with his hands and looking into my eyes.

"This is really, really important," he said. "1 really need von. 1 really need you to do this tor me."

"Do what.'"

"You remember how we'd get going out there Sometimes, OUl Iffl

der the water with it pouring down all over HI And before We knew it

I be rucking? And there were these gUVfl who used CO watch, and it

didn't really matter whether they were watching or nut, it didn't have

anything to do with whai we were doing, so they could see us doing

thing rhe\ wanted to and If didn't affect what we were dome one

And you even M>rt ot liked it that the\ were watching, 1 ieinemhet

you got into it becau <• them some kind oi pleasure without

taking anythii u pleasure, In fact It even Increased youi

lusc you kneu how it w.»s pleasuring them too without you tything different to youi own pleasure than you'd normally d

it i .ime pouring out oi him like it'd md no* he was relieved to let it go. In cacti) what In • w're m il

Id you 1 to be n> sny ;

"I la ■ that But thfa I it you n difct

B O Y S O F L I F E □

ent person hack then, Tony. There was lots you didn't know. I think you know more about vourselt now," Carlos went on. "And about making movies. You're an actor, Tony. A very good actor. You under-Itand about acting. Anyway, porn is hardly the word for it. Did you ever lee B porn movie with a set like this? You don't exactly go building B city right our of Piero della Francesca just to shoot a porn movie there

It was odd being way up there near the roof and looking down on all that scaffolding and stuff, and knov/ing if you were down below and looking up it'd seem like we were two people standing on the very top ramparts ot this fantastically strange and beautiful-looking city.

"So what is it if it's not a porn movie?" I asked Carlos. "You want me to take my clothes off, right? You want me to have sex where the camera can film it, right, and Seth can see everything I'm doing with mv dick hard, and everybody else can too, and besides, who'm I supposed to be having sex with since you said last night we weren't ever going to do it anymore?"

"And we aren't," Carlos said. "We can't. You understand why we can't."

I did, unfortunately—which didn't mean I didn't still feel like I'd gotten totally dumped for some new kid he had the hots for.

"We have to put everything else behind us," he went on. "We have to make the best movie we can."

I remembered the way Verbena shot flame from her butt. And Sammy shivering his way through all those February days because he thought Carlos's movie should get made. So who was I to say no, just because I wasn't crazy about waving my dick around in front of Seth's camera?

"I'm not pressuring you," Carlos said. "I want you to think about it. I want us to make the most amazing movie we can make. It's not porn—you'll see that. It's going to be something terrific and beautiful and when it's over, years from now, when you're lying on your deathbed, you'll be glad you had something to do with it."

As I'm sure you know by now, I can be talked into anything, especially it it was Carlos doing the talking; so though I said, "I'm nor going to let you pressure me," I think Carlos knew as well as I did there was no way I was going to say no. Because I really had meant ir when I told Seth the day before that things weren't ever, they were just starting out—and if Carlos wanted me to make a porn film with

□ PAULRUSSELL

him, it that was whore we were going to go, well than that's where we were going.

So we came hack down from the top of the city, scaling our way down those little Streets that weren't really Streets, and looking hack every once in a while to see the city start to look more and more like a real city the more we came down out ot it.

In front ot the city—the part ot the warehouse that was done up to look like a desert—a kid about mv own age was sitting. So this was the famous kid Carlos was fucking up the ass these days. He was sitting on a take rock underneath a fake palm tree. I'll always rememher that tirst glimpse I had of him: smoking a cigarette, Looking completely out

ot place there hut at the same rime relaxed, like he didn't care where he was. Like he was this person who carried around whatever he needed light there with him, and so it didn't matter.

So much tor first impressions.

"Scott," Carlos called to him, and Scort got up and came over to where we were. You have to imagine the two ot us there, Scott in the prep school outfit he was ^till wearing since he'd hopped the train in from Connecticut that morning, SpirTy And rich to the core with this sullen spoiled look on his t.ice and a haircut he must've paid twenty* five dollars tor—and then scruffy me with mv hair pretty lone and nothing hut jeans and a T-shirt and these gorgCOUS Snakeskill COwbo) b Carlos had gotten tor me back m the spring, which I wore all the time.

Scott smiled and ran his h.ind through his hlond hair and let it tall hack in place, which I gueSI yOU can do i f yOU ha\e a taiu\ h.unut. And I have to admit, he had this really great smile. He wasn't \er\

he looked onl\ fifteen or so, hut 1 tound out later he was seven

This wiry little bodj and thin ch a ith one single hn^ht

; Imple on his cheekbone. In the meantime he was checking me

me up and down, I imess to see what he was getting

And I could tell he ling to hunselt and vi. ,h. 1

\ en before we'd said •■ single word, making this big mo* l< lid

H, ! with his hands <»n his hips, completely n

: I still didn't know wh.it

• from til this, the other .

ti\ what

ith this - in- realhj

! was furiOUl with him I is a little painful ith this kid he d nist

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Jumped me tor. at the same tunc I know there was a movie here, and Carioi wouldn't be putting us through all th^ it then; wasn't.

I remember suddenly thinking, I don't care whether Carlos wants me to fuck this kid or not —I'm going to fuck him. It came like a bolt of lightning And I was completely sure oi it And completely sure 1 could

do it. I'd never tueked anybody in m\ lite before —and now I was urgent

at the thought o! fucking this kid, sinking my dick into him till I had him sobbing and moaning. I felt in control tor once. I was somebody

who could take some kind ot revenge.

Thar sounds like bragging, and I admit it. But I could also see ti was the kind ot person anybody could d^ anything with and he

wouldn't care. Even before I knew anything about him, I could see it written all over him.

in we get to work now.'" Carlos said abruptly. It was like him nor to even ask me how I was feeling about all this—just to plow on ahead like everything had to be tine. He did this sad smile th.it tried to be funny but wasn't. Then the three o\ us sat down in the sand. Verbena had brought dump trucks ot real sand and dumped them on the tloor to make the desert, and while Carlos talked I kept running my hands through that sand which was once just sand on a beach somewhere. Looking up .it that city on the hill which wasn't a city but just lumber And plasrer and paper, I kept thinking how nobody driving by the warehouse on the outside could ever in a million years guess what was going on inside.

"This is a perfect moment," Carlos said to both ot us. "It's holy." He reached our and rook my hand and Scott's hand And held them

'her, covering them with both his hands and holding tight. "This is the movie we're going to make. And ir's Lzoin^ to t.ike all our self-conrrol and selflessness and our love to do it. We're going to have to

give up everything, and only it we really d^ manage to give up everything is the audience know that. You probably want to hear what it's about, why the citv nn the hill, why the silly costumes you haven't even seen vet, but don't worn, those'U come later. Right now vini don't knou any ot that. Think o\ it like a dream you're JUSI start to have; you're starting to hnd your way around inside it, and you start to think this dream is your own body vou're moving around insidl this i> what the dream is, u\ your own body, what your own bod) Can

ibout that body, it's a vision ot that body—

you could call it a porno-theology, the hoi) lite locked inside muscles

and skin—and then all that turned inside out, like a glove, and spilled

D PAULRUSSELL

out into the iconography of the Bible, the Renaissance, all our ways of thinking up to now, the present. Can you see that. 7 What can you do with it?"

It was like Carlos was trying to hypnotize us, which I think was more or less working on Scott, who just sat there nodding. Whatever Carlos said was fine with him, he could listen all day to it. As for me, well, I could tell from the word go Carlos didn't have am idea what he was saying. But that was okay: I knew he was trying to talk his way into something that maybe one day would make sense, but he wasn't there yet. It was something I totally recognized from making Gomorrah with him. There weren't any exact words yet for what he wanted to say. There wouldn't be any till he made the movie, and then the movie would be exactly his way of saying it.

In eight months, I told myself, he'll be telling some interviewer all this stuff he's telling us now, and that interviewer'll he eating it up. It'll mean something then.

It's what I always respected about Carlos—the way he was always Looking for some way into places nobody'd gone before. Ri^ht then I knew I had to be in this movie. I had to help Kin get wherever it was he was goinjj.

Scott on the other hand was willing to try anything just tor the

kicks oi it.

"I love this instant right now," Carlos said. "The way you're lit

ting here, you don't know a thing about each other, rhere's only one

moment like this between two people who .'.re just meeting, and this is

it, this is that one perfect moment where everything goes From here.

tart filming? Can we t.ike it from here?"

He motioned with his hand and Scth was there with the camera,

[uvs who wen- working on the citj cleared out oi the waj and the

klieu lights were I Kl and there we were, we were making ^ fefios's HlOt ie

I wished I had a long, long swi^ oi whisky somewhere to slug thumping awaj In mj chest like no tomorrow kiling hit nile at the camera Like he had no idea