Saline Solution (4 page)

'Baby, you off inside your head again.'

'Then bring me out, make me real. Take control of me, use me, hold me. Slide down so our bodies feel the length of each other. Put your hardness between my thighs. Feel me open. Feel my legs part and raise up for you. Put it at the opening. Fuck me. Fuck me in the arse. Do it now.'

'Oohhhh, Jeeeessssussss.'

'It's all yours. I raise my arse so your cock can more beautifully sink hotly in. Your eyes burn into mine. I can't hold myself any longer. I am slipping and slipping. Oh, excuse me, let this wave of rapture pass.'

'That's once. You going to come a hundred times tonight before I'm finished.'

'Stupid prick, it's not you who does it, it's me. I let you make me come.'

'Get on your belly, bitch.'

'Yes, now I can't defend, I can't hold back. Your knees come in against the backs of my knees. How you strain into me, how your cock excites me. You slant it up, and then thrash to each side, and then slant it down. You cover all the inside of my hole. You fuck me thoroughly. Jolts of electric fire run through me. My fingers twitch and I bite the pillow. I am being fucked. I am being fucked. There is nothing in the world but being fucked. Now you call me. You have me look into your eyes. I look back over my shoulder, my neck bent like a bird's, and your wet warm mouth covers mine. My legs open more, and I feel you between them; you push your pelvis between my cheeks; I feel your hip bones against my arse, your cock inside me, inside me. I am naked to you. Open and bent, my cunt completely empty to your thrust. My cunt. My breasts are punishers for your hands, my mouth a receptacle for your spit, my eyes the record of my thought. You know it all. I am you. I have incorporated you. You push me to my knees. You hit hard at the deep tender spot. I feel pain. I hurt. I beg you continue. I push into you. Oh, snarling black animal at my neck. Oh, fuck me now. I give you now. Fuck me now. I have me now. And all the sounds I make into the night as you gyrate and erupt inside me.'

There was a long slience.

Then a low laugh.

'Baby, you are
too much.
¹
He paused. 'But I just can't make it today. When are you coming to the city next?'

'Maybe ten days.'

'Call me,' he said. And we hung up.

The problem is confusion. What is one to do with a club foot of salad? All my attempts to dead with living as a problem embroiled in technology, either of metal or of the mind. And I couldn't find the relationship between seriousness and silliness. The leaders laugh, but they have no humour.

I sometimes want and sometimes do not want. When I want, I move towards the process of consumption, romantically known as sharing. I seek out those people who have complementary need, and we service one another's vacuums. This is simple commerce. All the rest of it is soap opera for the slaves. Obvious truth, distorted by the masters, comes to seem contemptible in the face of sanctimonious official lies.

What was I to make of my shamelessly flinging myself at Bosley? What relation did that have in relation with my relation with Lucinda? With her, in the beginning, the pattern was classic: giving-and-giving, giving-and-taking, taking-and-giving, taking-and-taking, and mutual isolation. Every exchange we had, from fucking to fighting, fit this paradigm. The honeymoon period released in us enough energy for me to see the structures clearly. But she got sloppy, and I got lazy, and our days lost their sharpness.

It was becoming clear that I was interested in the dynamics of interaction with people, and the accompanying changes within myself, and it made almost no difference who the other person was, so long as he or she maintained a certain level of energy for the period we were together. In short, the person was not important, merely the person's effects.

When Lucinda and I began fucking, there was always fireworks. The first penetration past the tightness, the joy of discovery, the plunge into virgin virginity. Then there was the race through the Kama Sutra, working out all the possible acrobatics. 'Look, you get into a full Plow posture, and I'll support myself on the windowsill, and enter you from above and behind, and oh?! oh! OH!!' and etc. And when we had finished with all that we were left with the boredom which attaches to the stick when all the ice cream has been licked off. Then, no matter what rationalisations came to the fore, it was simply time to get it on with someone else, fresh energy, new variations. I had come a long way away from simple values.

My consciousness seemed to have become the product of the story. To me, life was a book, was a film. I lived in the physical centres and the mind. The only emotion I didn't find vulgar was cosmic sadness, ultimate poignancy. And I have had the full spectrum of advice, from the intimate friends to therapists to gurus, and they said things like, 'You're schizoid,' or 'You've lost touch with the Other,' or 'You're afraid of your feelings.' Yet, what of it? Can I be other than I am? Not all birth defects are physical. To be crippled in the emotions is as real as to be crippled in the limbs. One does not say to a man with a paralysed leg, 'Why don't you run?' Then why does one ask of a man with a heart hardened through too much

sensitivity shattered, 'Why do you weep?'

Francis came downstairs.

'And you're even colder than I aim,' I said.

'Bertha's sleeping late. What shall we do?' he said.

We set out to walk to Cherry Grove together, three miles down the long strand of white sand and stunning blue sky with clouds, and the constant swish of wind and tumbling waves. The Grove was the cultural centre of the Island where the homosexuals had claimed a township of their own.

'Can you imagine what it would be like if all the homosexuals were given a state, say, Wyoming, and could set up whatever kind of society they wanted?' I said.

Francis smiled to himself, setting up the projector in his own mind. 'The first overwhelming mood would be one of exhilaration,' he began.

'Right, the seeming freedom from all sexual restraints, the new sense of purpose, the rapture of discovering a sanctioned identity.'

He nodded. 'It would probably come together under some charismatic leader, a gay Lenin. MetaFag. The queer Moses.'

We came to the first house which marks the beginning of the Grove after the long stretch of government preserve known as the Sunken Forest. The vibrations changed drastically, instantly. The people lying on the blankets in this area were not pretending, as did the denizens of the straight sections of the beach, that nothing was happening except what could pass muster on the family TV show. Here, the sense of presence was palpable. Everyone was aware of being there, and how he was there, and how he saw others being there, and how they received him. A constant flutter of extremely subtle communications in the most sophisticated body language went on ail the time. The air was charged with attentiveness. My skin bristled. I looked over at Francis.

His face was set in a mask of unperception, as though this were merely a place to look at, not to relate to. I wondered whether he was actually straight. His drawings denied it, as did occasional oblique comments. I assessed him physically, and found to my surprise, no intimation of sex. I couldn't penetrate my own condition to sufficient depth to know to what degree I was suppressing desire. Given our extraordinary closeness, fucking ought to have been the natural conclusion, yet we hardly ever even touched. Perhaps it was a tacit understanding on both our parts that the absolute lack of sexual involvement is what allowed our friendship to continue.

'The entire sociology would be arranged differently,' he continued. 'There would be almost no provision necessary for children, and the nature of education would change radically. Time would tend to disappear.'

'I wonder whether the sexes would be integrated?'

'There would be no overt or legal discrimination, but a subtle sexual apartheid would insinuate itself, and male and female ghettoes would come into being.'

I grew excited. 'Imagine the scenes when the new nation begins. The wild and open cruising, the public lovemaking. Total euphoria.'

Francis drew in a sharp breath and seemed to snap to. For the first time he registered his surroundings. 'So this is Cherry Grove,' he said.

'You sound disappointed,' I said.

He looked over at me. The obvious had suddenly become seductive. There was nothing to stop us now from stepping into the act itself. Then there would be no barriers. And perhaps the problems with the women would dissolve. Yet, as we hovered at the edge, a blinding sense of impossibility paralysed our wills, and we said no to the new, refusing to transform it into the old.

'It's better not even to bother,' he said. 'I need one person at least that I don't have to pretend sexual passion

to.' He paused. 'And anyway, you're not my type.'

We cut in from the beach and walked down the boardwalk in silence for a few minutes. 'And then,' Francis began again, 'they discover that they still need people to take away the garbage, and that they have to put together some form of monetary system, and they have to get into the whole supply and demand hassle with food, and that they have hostile neighbours.' He paused. 'The rest is history. The bright ones learn how to get the stupid ones to do all the shitty jobs. They gather power and hypnotise the rest with the rituals of government and religion. And they find that they are addicted to hatred and violence and lust and guilt and jealousy and all the sins which are part of the human heritage. There is dissatisfaction. Radical groups challenge the established authority. Heresies arise. And a new voice is heard calling for the rights of bisexuals to be respected. But MetaFag dies and the faggot Stalin comes into power. Executions happen. Happy Homoland becomes another tyranny.'

I laughed. 'Imagine how things would have been if people like Trotsky were gay and . . .'

Francis turned and pinned me with one of his steely looks. 'Oh, Trotsky was gay,' he said. I was caught up short. It seemed stupid to wonder whether he was putting me on. I took him for a tour of the bars and scenic sights, and for a walk through the meat rack. But he got very uptight, and we left quickly, to trudge three miles back to Seaview.

When we got back to the house, Lucinda had returned and was in a panic. But it was general, and she had no way of letting herself know how she felt. I was too taken by the scope of the day to notice where she was at. She latched on to me and made herself unpleasant in unspecified ways. It was as though she were a child and just wanted to be picked up and held. But at the time I didn't see that. That's the whole of the matter. I just didn't

see what she needed. And she was unable to ask.

We began bickering, and then arguing. I went into the bedroom. She followed, and within seconds we were shouting at one another. I began to walk out. She grabbed my arm. 'Let me go/ I yelled. 'Don't you see my state? If I don't get out of here, I'm going to hurt you.'

A revelation crossed her face.

'You want to be hurt, don't you?' I said. 'Well no,' I shouted, 'I'm not going to play that game, I'm not going to beat you up.'

I turned to go and again she grabbed my arm. I went blind with rage. I flung her from me. She threw herself at my legs. I yanked her head up by the hair, lifted her bodily, and threw her back on the bed. She fell on her spine and lay there for a moment in total open confusion. I felt a charge of sexual energy. I leapt on her and slapped her very hard across the face, two times, three times. And then I jumped back and ran from the room.

I stayed away for over an hour, and when I returned she was wiggly and warm, wanting to cuddle. I was, in turn, properly gruff and tender.

It is appalling the way in which we mechanically trip through the most tawdry scenarios. And still there is no escape. Knowing what we do seems to have no effect on our continuing to do it. What if I killed her one day in just the same manner I had beat her up? Such things happen. The single most apparent item in the jumble of our interaction is the fact the ante is continually being raised. There are more convincing ways of travelling through the void than on a see-saw.

Perhaps we would be fucking. She would be straining to have every conceivable portion of me imbedded in her. I would be struggling with the desire to immolate her and the opposing fear of having her drag me into her own pit. I could see how it would start. . . .

I push her face down into the pillow, squashing her mouth out of shape, while she laps at the palm of my hand and sucks my fingers. My hand forms a fist and I push down harder. I begin to hurt her. She digs her nails into my back, simultaneously returning the pain and edging me on to greater devastations of herself. I punish her cunt with my cock. I don't move my pelvis. I institute a constant insistent push, letting her squirm to impale herself more deeply. The rivers of black flame cascading in mountainous wild waves from the sexual fusion destroy the stage and theatre where our images work out their drama, and violence bursts the bonds of fantasy. I rear back and smash my knuckles into her mouth. A tooth breaks, a lip is torn.

Within a few months I am beating her regularly and pissing in her mouth every day and forcing her to eat her food on her hands and knees from the floor. I bring men to the house and force her into acts of mediocre pornography with them. Her addiction for the depraved grows. And one day, mostly out of ennui, I kill her.

Lucinda made dinner and the four of us sat down to eat. Francis began to tell some of the adventures of the day's trip, including our discovery of a bird sleeping in the middle of one of the walks.
⁴
It was just sitting there,' he said, 'with its beak under its wing, sleeping, I mean, right in the middle of the path. And I bent down and said, "Can we help you?", and it took its beak out from under its wing, shook its head, looked at us, and flew away. I found it extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary.' And he said the final word with heartwarming relish.