Erotic Lives of the Superheroes

by Marco Mancassola

  He stretched out, hurtling past the rocky coast. He extended beyond the shoreline. He reached further, out over the strip of transparent water, out to where the vast depths began. He sailed on for miles, effortlessly, driven forward by his own momentum, by the tension of his muscles, thrusting back against his legs knotted to the lighthouse. He pushed forward, extending out over the ocean surface, travelling out to sea, towards the faraway opposite shore, towards the rest of the world. He stretched, straining, weeping with effort, his face disfigured, certain that he could make it, I’m going to embrace the world, I’m going to wrap myself around the entire planet. But when he felt the ripping tear, it came as no surprise. I knew it. I knew there was something in my hip. A seed of pain that was destined to blossom.

  Back there, miles behind him, he felt the wound opening, and even though he knew that minutes of agony awaited him, he remained calm. I’m Reed Richards. I’m Mister Fantastic. My son died in the flames, I’m going to die in the ocean. He fell into the waves, twisting like a serpent, his mouth full of salt water. His screams were lost somewhere, in the watery depths, resembling echoes of distant whales, and all the pain he’d felt in his life seemed to come back, all at once, one last time, before tumbling forth into a neutral, perfectly new sensation. This time it’s true. I’ll never go back to my original shape. I’ll never go back again, I’ll never go back.

  There, where his body had torn open, the blood issued in a steady stream, a slow pour made up of cells that kept enlarging, once they’d left his body, stretching out in the water like jellyfish. The red stain spread out for miles, and for a moment it seemed to take on the form of a face, before that was lost in the ocean currents. The ocean lay immensely mute, a silence as piercing as a scream. Everything was concluded. All pain seemed to have ceased. In the distance it was just possible to make out the hum of an aeroplane or two, and perhaps a passing melancholy freighter.

  A thousand imperceptible sounds crossed paths in the air. Echoing radio and magnetic waves vibrated in all directions, igniting the air with their elusive chant, enveloping the earth with their rivers of information. Soon the news would ricochet around the globe that another hero was dead. Reed Richards, father of Franklin, the old glory of the superhero scene, had left this world.

  But for now, other news filled the airwaves. News that was as shocking as ever, as routine as ever. The world’s stock exchanges had taken a jolt. American soldiers had been killed in the Middle East. NASA had successfully launched a space mission from its base in Florida. The launch had gone well, the spacecraft had left the earth’s atmosphere. Aboard the spacecraft, it was reported, three men and a woman were in perfect condition…

  *

  On board the space probe, the crew members were in fact doing fine. Especially Elaine Ryan. To tell the truth, she’d never felt better in her life. She’d witnessed the take-off with a sense of panic and peace, a clarity of mind unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. She’d heard the fuel roar in the combustion chamber, the friction of the atmosphere against the side of the probe. She’d felt the pounding in her chest, the flow of blood in her veins. She’d done it. She’d lived for years holding her breath, focusing on this single objective, facing down other people’s scepticism, and uncountable times she’d felt utterly alone. She’d nurtured her desire over time, she’d dragged its weight for years. But she felt as light as a snowflake now, as the spacecraft left the earth’s gravitational field, as the commander issued orders to the crew.

  Elaine stirred. There was a new amazement in her body, a profound sense of both yearning and breaking away. She turned her gaze towards the spacecraft’s porthole. Her eyes opened wide, her pupils dilated like the blossoming of a flower. The earth was down there. A luminous, solitary sphere, fragile in appearance. It seemed moulded from pure light. Oh, there was her planet. The layer of water and air where reality took shape, and broke down, where everything was designed to be sensed, where memory accumulated everywhere. In that fluorescent atmosphere she had been born. In that atmosphere she had grown up. In that exquisite blue light she’d gone to school, she’d read biographies of superheroes, and she’d become acquainted with the taste of tears, with the disconcerting flavours of truth and falsehood. It’s actually happened. I’m on my way to outer space. In spite of all the obstacles, in spite of the enormity of the effort. In spite of Reed…

  Elaine thought of that man, down there, and the strange love affair she’d had with him. She thought of her embarrassment when Reed asked her not to go. He’d tried to make her feel sorry for him, he’d tried to exploit the death of his son. That was an ugly thing to do. Elaine had felt disappointed. For a while, at first, her affair with Reed had been an intense one, because older men know how to court a girl; plus going to bed with a childhood hero certainly had its appeal… Sometimes, with him, she’d even let herself go. Too bad Reed had stirred up all those fantasies in his mind. There was something deeply egotistical about men of that generation, they’d grown up in a greedy time, they came from a century when people thought you could conquer everything, whatever you wanted: freedom, fame, public glory and private delights. The way she saw it, times had changed, long ago. Most important of all, people couldn’t possess one another any more. I couldn’t stay with you. When I was with you, I wasn’t even real, I was just an obsession you had.

  The spacecraft was vibrating slightly. Elaine took a last look through the porthole, trying to pinpoint the place where her city stood. New York. She looked down on the coastline as if it were a distant mirage. It was too far away to make out Staten Island, but she could recognise the slender fragment of Long Island. Off the coast of Long Island, she noticed something odd. She blinked and went on looking.

  “Do you see that too?” she heard the commander ask, as he looked out in the same direction from the porthole next to hers.

  “Yes,” Elaine responded, unsettled by that sight.

  “You think it’s an oil slick?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said the commander. “Not with that colour.”

  Elaine studied the tiny patch of colour far beneath her, the red striation in the blue of the ocean. She decided that the commander had a point. Maybe it was a natural phenomenon of some sort. Maybe a giant colony of algae, or a huge school of scarlet fish, or who knows what else. What an incredible spectacle. That red, so vivid. A series of shivers ran through her body, and a surge of absolute, desperate love filled her veins. “Whatever it is, it’s incredibly beautiful,” she declared, her voice quivering. Unexpectedly, she felt about to cry. “Don’t you think it looks sort of like a face?”

  “That’s true,” acknowledged the commander with the same emotion. There was a moment of awed silence. “This planet,” the commander mused, “just never seems to run out of surprises, does it?”

  Book Two

  Batman

  April 2005

  &

  1980s – 1990s

  ‌

  He was in the bathroom, wearing nothing but a pair of two-hundred-dollar boxer shorts. His skin was bronzed and his abs were taut. Bruce Wayne looked into the mirror, smiled at himself, and started to dance, feeling a pleasurable surge of energy inside him, as an old disco song pounded out from the stereo in the living room. Still dancing, he spread a moisturising lotion over his body. He massaged his chest and shoulder muscles. When the song reached its chorus, he swivelled his pelvis with rhythmic thrusts and began singing, in a velvety voice: You are the best in town. You take me up and down.

  He slipped on a pair of black socks and, dressed that way, in boxer shorts and socks, he started moving through the house, singing to himself as he went. He did a spot check: everything seemed to be ready. Shafts of discreet light illuminated the place, silhouetting the large cactus plants with their thorny arms, in the corners of the rooms, as if they were trees lit up by a distant fire. The light was perfect, fleshy, the kind of light that would set off his tan—he felt sure—to its best effect. The same light bounced off th
e crystal glass tabletops, the books on the shelves, the movie posters framed on the walls, the collection of old vinyl LPs piled in stacks. The stereo still blared out the disco song. Bruce started dancing again, in delight, contracting his abs, raising both arms, smiling at an imaginary audience. Bruce Wayne, lithe dancer. Bruce Wayne, the most seductive ex-superhero on earth, the sexiest man of his generation, in underwear and socks, in all his splendour.

  That afternoon, the cleaning woman had done the rooms, leaving them in a state of almost excessive tidiness. Bruce began moving the occasional object, a cushion, a book, the hem of a curtain, to bring back a lived-in look and avoid having the place appear too contrived. He sprayed an air freshener around. Minuscule drops settled on his skin. Next to the sofa, a pile of carefully arranged magazines testified to the broad range of his interests: The Economist, The New Yorker, Variety, and Sports Illustrated. Among the magazines, apparently by chance, were a couple of older issues that contained articles about him: BRUCE WAYNE: STILL RIDING THE WAVE. BATMAN: ‘SEX APPEAL ISN’T KIDS’ STUFF’.

  And now, the final touch. Bruce set an elegant steel ice bucket on the table, full of ice cubes, with a bottle of white wine inside. Outstanding. The stage was set. A new evening of delightful entertainment was about to unfold. He took an ice cube from the bucket and went back to the bathroom, where he stood before the mirror and tapped his face with the ice. He worked on his cheekbones. On his cheeks. He carefully tapped along the contour of his jawline. He moved down his neck and that’s when he saw it: there was something on his chest. He picked up a pair of tweezers and yanked out a white chest hair. You little bastard, he whispered, dropping it into the sink with a sigh.

  It was time to start getting dressed. He slipped on a white shirt. He had bought the shirt, made of a fine mother-of-pearly fabric, earlier that day. As he did every Friday, Bruce had spent half the afternoon in a boutique on Madison Avenue, trying on clothes, looking for items that showed off his athletic figure. It was never easy to make a choice. The clothes had to be understated, suitable for someone his age, and at the same time a little cheeky, capable of showcasing his body. A mature style, a sexy style. That afternoon, he’d tried on dozens of shirts, sensing the friction of the fabric over his muscles, as well as dozens of pairs of trousers, scrutinising in the mirrors of the fitting room how they made his bottom appear. It took patience. It was nerve-racking work, but someone had to do it. He had always had a precise understanding of the importance of clothes. He’d always believed that it was crucial to dress as if there were a chance you might die that day, and choose each outfit as if it were the last: the outfit in which you wouldn’t mind being found, dead, sprawled out in the street.

  He remembered the days when he was active as Batman. The time when he’d put on his skintight suit every night, after sprinkling his body with talc to make sure the suit slipped on. The period when he wore his dark cape, well aware that in that outfit, indeed, he might have died. One thing was certain, he wasn’t going out for fun or to take the poodle for a walk. He was going out to wage combat, to take on the city’s criminals. Every night, for many long years, he’d left home unsure whether he’d ever return, and yet he’d been comfortable in his clothes: that suit did honour to his body and that cape wrapped him in gloomy splendour. To die in that outfit wouldn’t have been unseemly. And even though his clothing was different now, clothing that would never be worn to fight crime or wage ferocious battles… still, the principle remained the same. An outfit that you could imagine as your last was an outfit that was worth putting on in the first place.

  That day, in the leisurely atmosphere of the boutique, he’d spent quite some time in the fitting room, while two ceremonious sales assistants handed him garment after garment, commenting every time with sighs of approval. “That’s a very nice drop, Mr. Wayne.” “The shoulders on this jacket, Mr. Wayne…” As the proceedings went on, he ventured out of the fitting room and noticed another customer. A well-built young guy was standing in front of the large mirror that screened the fitting area, bare-chested, lazily waiting for the sales assistants to bring him another item. Bruce couldn’t help but give the guy a glance. Almost without fail, the physical beauty of other men both enchanted and annoyed him. The guy had smiled that particular kind of smile that people seem to put on when they recognise someone famous. It was a smile that seemed to say hey-I-know-who-you-are but it could just as easily have been a smile that said how-about-we-get-to-know-each-other-a-little-better, and Bruce had turned his eyes away and withdrawn, with a grimace, into his own fitting room. Damn it. Come-ons from other men always made him cringe. He had decided it was time to leave the store and it was then that he noticed on the floor of the fitting room…

  Bruce’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted. The sound of the doorbell had rung through the house. The sound echoed through the rooms, causing the air to reverberate, startling him ever so slightly, but pleasurably. Nine o’clock on the dot. Right on time. Punctual people put him in a good mood. He had just finished dressing and all he needed to do now was put on his jacket. The stereo was pumping out the tail end of the disco song, and Bruce hurried to replace it with an album of atmospheric music by a refined French band, although in his head the refrain continued: You are the best in town. You take me up and down.

  He slipped the jacket on over his shirt of mother-of-pearly fabric. He touched up his hair, donned the most seductive expression he could muster, and went to open the door.

  *

  The girl was tall, androgynous, unquestionably his type. She wore stiletto heels and skintight jeans. She had narrow, almost masculine hips, and under her T-shirt you could make out a pair of small breasts, like a young girl’s. Her face seemed carved from some precious glowing metal. Short dirty-blond hair, twenty at the oldest. She walked through the door and stood there, allowing him to admire her, blinking in the warm light of the living room. Then Bruce offered her some wine.

  Bruce studied the hand with which she had taken the glass. It was a small, delicate, determined hand. He raised his own glass with satisfaction: “Here’s to us,” he toasted.

  “To us,” she said, looking at him with half-closed eyes.

  Bruce took a sip, even more pleased for having chosen the right wine. Light and aromatic. He sensed the flavour wash over his tongue and spread in his mouth, slowly, delightfully, a domino effect of sensations that seemed to reach, without effort, the most sensitive regions of his throat. He wondered whether the girl knew anything about wine. He noticed that she seemed to be sunk in who knows what obscure thought. “What is it?” he smiled at her.

  She shook her head and laughed briefly. “Sorry,” she said. She shook her head again and explained: “I was just thinking… I just thought, for some reason, that you’d come to the door in your costume.”

  Bruce continued to smile affably. “I hope you weren’t disappointed.”

  “Oh no,” she hastened to reply, wavering in a moment of apparent uncertainty. Her eyes were a chilly, vague colour, somewhere in the shifting chromatic scale between grey and green. She looked around, perhaps in search of a distraction, and made up her mind to ask a question: “Do you mind showing me around?”

  “Of course not,” Bruce said. He stood there, peeking at the girl’s face as she wandered around the room.

  She let her eyes slide over the walls, halting for a few moments on the framed movie posters. There was a mixture of shyness and indifference about her that Bruce seemed to find, almost always, in people her age. An indecipherable expression flashed over the girl’s face, then she said: “This is an interesting place you live in.”

  Bruce nodded as he took another sip from his glass. He found enigmatic people sexy. “Come with me,” he invited. “I’ll show you the rest.”

  They walked down the carpeted, arched hallway, proceeding silently like two explorers in an enchanted grotto. The girl followed him with a tranquil air. “Are we alone?” was her only question. “I mean, what about your butler?”
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br />   “My butler?” Bruce asked, baffled. He wondered if she was talking about the butler that often appeared in movies inspired by his life. In fact, there had been someone more or less like that, many years ago, but the movies had definitely embroidered reality. “Little one, I think he died before you were born.”

  “Oh,” she sighed, with a hint of disappointment, or perhaps it was relief.

  “Come with me,” Bruce urged her. He led her into a small room, where a vast wooden armoire covered three of the four walls. Pointing to one of the doors, he challenged her: “Guess what’s in here.”

  She looked at the door of the armoire. “I couldn’t say,” she said, cautiously.

  “Guess.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  “Come on,” Bruce said, touching her hair nonchalantly, as if he’d done it a thousand other times, or as if that gesture might help her to think of the answer. “Something we just talked about,” he suggested.

  She seemed to concentrate and ventured to laugh. “Your butler’s corpse?” she joked.

  Bruce laughed too, and decided that the girl had a sense of humour. Not all the girls did. In fact, almost none of them. He made a mental note to call the friend who had sent this one, to thank him for his stimulating selection. “Come on,” he said again. “Don’t tell me you can’t guess?”

  She shook her head with a sigh. Bruce stood looking at her for another moment, letting the suspense grow, before making up his mind. He opened the armoire. Inside, stored in a nylon slipcase, draped over a transparent plastic hanger, there was a shiny black costume. “Batman’s costume,” he announced.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “You can touch it,” said Bruce.

  The girl hesitated. She stared at the costume, perplexed, as if she’d been confronted with a strange animal specimen.