by Damon Suede
“Is this a triple-X comic?” She said the word without judgment. She could have asked, Marvel or DC?
“No. I guess not. But no Lycra suits.” A big sleek idea with teeth swam around down below him, like a shark on a moonless night. “Lotsa skin…. Fetishy style. But not necessarily bowchickabowmow hornification.”
“It could be. We like hornification.” Rina had zero hang-ups about sex. “What’s the spookiest, dirtiest, funniest, silliest, sweetest story you can imagine telling?” She glared at him and beckoned. “Will you come down here?” Trip knelt awkwardly and squeezed his chest.
“Okay… now close your eyes.”
He closed them, even though he felt stupid. He smelled her sugary cucumber perfume.
“Just pretend a sec.” Rina’s voice got quieter. “You had a crappy day at work. You’re going into Midtown Comics on Wednesday. You climb the stairs, pass the counter to the big wall. All the new covers like ripe fruit. And then—pow—something fabulous catches your eye….”
“Huh.” For a split second, a picture flashed across the inside of Trip’s eyelids, too fast to catch clearly. “That’s weird.”
“Yeah? Whatchagot?”
His knees creaked on the floor. He imagined the dust, though he saw none; he preemptively tensed against the impulse to sneeze. “Mystery. It’s a mystery.”
“Cool. Like murders or spies or what? Mr. Scarlet with the wrench in the john.”
“No. Mysteri-ous, I guess. Puzzle-ish.” That he knew, at least. “A dark city, more Gotham than Metropolis, y’know?” Actually she didn’t know, but he did. “But not crime-fighting shtick. More soapy. A little kinky. Schemes and secrets and rescues.” His pencil rat-a-tapped more quickly on the floor between them. Telegraph from the Muse.
“That’s not a mystery?”
He fought the impulse to sketch blind. “No, more… haunting. But not autopsies and courtrooms. Gothic.” He tried to see it in his head. The slinky comics he’d loved as a kid where laws didn’t protect people. “Sexiness. Tragedy. Obsession. Happy endings that scare the bejeebus out of you.”
“A romance.”
“And again I’ll say fuck off, Sabrina.” But she was right; he hated to admit it.
“Babe, that’s my turf. You say gothic, I say romance.”
The word “romance” bled into the ocean of his imagination, and a few hungry concepts circled it with razor-packed mouths. Images floated up to him: a church filled with owls… a crescent moon over flames… a garden of swords… a naked man with hooves, face craned to whisper at the sky. Trip’s hands twitched and itched to draw: not stories yet, but the shimmering trail. He stood blinking and lurched toward the table and his sketchbook.
Then he knew. “A demon.”
As soon as he said the word out loud, he could feel the big idea turn and swim toward him in the dark. As he bent his brainwave into words, he spoke quietly, afraid to scare it back into the shadows. “Not brimstone and nuns. No pitchforks or preachers. And not Lovecraftian fthooloo-marula bibbity-bobbity monster mash.” He recalled his date last night. “Something seductive.”
“Mmmh.” Rina rocked up on her knees. “Yeah. A broody devil who humps the hell outta people. Whaddayacallem? Succu—”
“Incubus.” He said the word like a sleepwalker and took a breath. The word threw sparks across the vault of his dark imagination. “If he’s male, then he’s an incubus.” And somehow his hero was. The pencil he hadn’t realized he still held swish-skiffed across the sketchbook he hadn’t noticed tugging open on the drafting table without bothering to sit.
Trip could just make out a studly silhouette as it coalesced between them. “Like… they ravish people and claim their souls. He’s a seducer. Not good or bad.” He rubbed his bristly scalp against the nap. “Y’know how Catwoman is a thief, but sometimes she’s a heroine. Anti-hero.”
Rina stayed silent.
Already Trip saw the broad shoulders, the burnished skin, the tiny horns, the cocked brow, a jaw like an anvil, thick lashes.
“Can he have hazel eyes?”
“Not hazel.” Did he sound defensive?
Definitely not hazel. He’d make his hero’s eyes wolf-silver. No connection to any recent events.
In a few seconds, the exact slant of Silas’s gaze stared back from the paper; Trip’s incubus come-hithered him with borrowed eyes again. No one would ever notice.
Silas did have a rakish vibe and that easy laughter which gave all kinds of permission. “This guy holds people in thrall. Men and women both.” Not that he’d use Silas as a model, but maybe the upper face, the torso, and hands. Getting warmer.
Just to balance, Trip gave him Cliff’s widow’s peak and high forehead… better for the horn buds anyway, short and blunt, like a baby goat’s. “I don’t think I wanna call it a comic. This is gonna be a”—quotey fingers—“graphic novel. Okay? Smart. Dark. Mature. For adults.”
“Okay… not porn, but an erotic comic, so call it a very graphic novel.”
Laughter sloshed out of him. “Awesome. A very graphic novel.”
Rina joined him. She leaned her head almost to her shoulder as the figure took shape on the page.
“So wait.” He tapped the drafting table with the pencil. Tap-tap-tap. “What’s the story arc? Incubus fucks strangers, rinse, repeat.” Eye roll.
“Papa, if it was me, you’d say—”
He sagged in defeat. “Yeah…. What’s he need? What’s missing?” He stopped treading water and concentrated on baiting the idea-shark. As though on its own, his pencil crept over the paper, carved solid shoulders and a brooding profile out of the white space. The greater the evil….
Trip leaned against the windowsill. Down in the street, a brownish mutt nosed in a pile of restaurant garbage in front of the Korean place he ordered from sometimes. His stomach rumbled. He’d forgotten to eat again, and he’d whittled his pantry down to a lone box of questionable Devil Dogs. He’d have to run down to the deli.
“Well, what does a sex demon dream about?” Rina asked.
“No fucking idea. Penicillin? Truth, Justice, and Gummy Dildos for all?” Trip stared out at the dog and pretended not to see the sleek idea sliding closer. Come bite me, motherfucker. “Touch?”
She plucked at the edge of the paper. “Like… maybe he has to touch people.”
“Yeah: skin contact feeds him. He doesn’t kill them, but he drains their mojo. An assassin. Or a spy. Archaeologist.” His pencil laid down blocks of shadow on the page. “Something haunty.”
“Like, he fucks the truth out of them.”
“No. Jeez.” He sighed in frustration. “With his ninja-humping skills.” He traced the swell of a round haunch and exaggerated pectorals. “Fiddling sinners, for Satan, forever. What do I call him?”
“I dunno.” She snapped her fingers and pointed. “Horny Bastard!”
Trip snorted silently. “Sure. Placeholder.”
“Uh-huh.” Rina wiped the edge of her dark lashes. “I wonder where that idea came from. Not.”
“Silas is not a superhero. Or a sex demon.” He erased the impish smirk to convince himself. Stop that.
Silas would dig this kind of book. The risky rightness of the “sex demon” concept felt like bones in his drawing arm, like a tank full of gas in a brand new car. Why haven’t I ever done this before? Trip might not be cool enough to date Silas, but this “very graphic novel” would make him cooler by association.
“What’s the downside?” She patted her thigh. “What’s his whatchamacallit—kryptonite?” Rina stayed very still, as if afraid to scare the idea away. “Sexy devil, live forever, no bills, glam digs, six-pack and good hair days, hot meat all the hell over. Hard life.”
Tchoo. The sneeze burst out of him. “Sorry.” Trip remembered that strange sustained languor of Silas taking his time in front of S’MAC, wanting Silas to step closer… the other Silas hidden under the sexy shimmer, the secret geek who got Trip’s jokes. I gotta take sips of you. “Actually, being an
incubus must suck.”
Rina eyes shone. “But he’s a total rock star.”
“And everyone knows how happy rock stars are.” He sniffed. “I think he’s lonesome.”
Chomp! He froze as the glossy idea-shark sank its beautiful pearly whites into him. He almost arched with the pleasure, the answer so sharp and true it practically drew blood.
“Is he?” A small smile played at the edge of her rusty lips.
“Yeah.” Yeah. Relief and certainty gushed through him in bright red ribbons. The character took shape, fleshy and solid. “He has the whole tortured immortal thing, like a vampire. But no gore; he feeds on connection and can’t find it.” Irrationally happy, Trip smudged the lines on the sketchbook page with a shaking hand.
Rina tilted her head to get a better view. “Wait, are you talking about Horny Bastard or you or one of your gentlemen?”
“How ’bout ‘E) All of the Above’? The male animal.” Trip barely controlled the huge wet idea bleeding out of his hand. “He needs the connection. To be touched. Maybe if he goes without intimacy for a period of time, he’s weakened.”
She leaned toward him, loomed over him. “Pretty goddamned romantic when you think about it.”
“Romance sucks.” Trip paced while the sleek idea slid through his nerves and slammed against the insides of his fingertips, wanting out. “In a comic book?”
“Don’t say comic. It isn’t.” She frowned in distaste. “It’s kinda serious, actually. You were right.”
“Rina, who’s gonna publish a ‘very graphic novel’ starring a lonely monster with a kickstand cock?”
“Bitch, anyone will publish anything that makes money.”
Trip ignored her. Horny Bastard took shape under the pencil as his hand cut light and shadow into rotations, profile, the leg… the knotty foreskin, a straining hand, a corded throat, the skull tipped back to shout at the stars.
Trip was not his own master. He felt like a horse being ridden by a warrior.
Rina counted the specifics on her short plum nails. “Nude dude? Check. Spooky occult woo-woo? Check. Movie and merchandising appeal? Big check, with lotsa zeroes. Tortured erotic romance I could fap to? And you’re Jewish, yo. Add some Kabbalah and Madonna might blurb you.” She leered conspiratorially. “Slashtastic-Sandman with low-hangers. H’yeah. I’m a straight girl getting worked up just imagining that shit.”
Even as he slammed his own idea, Trip saw the hypocrisy. He might be ashamed to put his name on it or take credit, but he’d order a copy in a heartbeat and read it to rags. Horny Bastard distilled every comic he’d ever wanted to read, like a smutty liqueur. “’S’kinda deranged. Depressing.”
“Demons.” Rina’s eyes flashed melodramatically. “Deceit?” She extended her arm like a sorceress and intoned the last word. “Debauchery!” She tittered.
“He can only screw strangers, and they have to stay strangers ’cause they die and poor Horny Bastard lives forever. He can only touch them.”
“Until someone touches him back,” Rina answered quietly.
Chowmp-chomp. A deeper, truer bite as the idea closed its jagged teeth inside him and tore a chunk out of his doubts. Trip’s stomach fizzed and his balls literally drew up as if the idea was about to squirt out of him onto the pine floor; his voice was a reverent whisper.
“I’m not writing about myself.”
“You write it, you’re in there. That’s the deal.” She rubbed his bristly noggin affectionately. “You taught me that.”
“Bullshitski. You think I’m afraid of getting serious with… Silas… or Cliff or whoever.”
“Didn’t say that.” Her lilting tone said plenty. “And I hate to break it to you, hun bun, but dating won’t kill you or damn you to Helsinki or any other crap you’ve cooked up to justify holing up here instead of living in the world. Cliff blows you off, and that nice Silas isn’t trying to ruin you or save your soul for valuable cash prizes.”
Trip traced the incubus smoldering on the drafting table and wrestled with the urge to see Silas, to study him up close and personal. “Horny Bastard is not Silas.”
“No shit, cabron. You don’t know the poor guy well enough. After one date and a wet dream or two?” She scrunched up her face in cartoon confusion.
“Well, he can’t be Cliff, either.”
“Nobody said he was. This fucker’s way too cool and tortured to be anyone’s Unboyfriend. And if he wanted someone, he’d just possess ’em.”
“No. People lose control with him. They make stupid choices.”
“Yeahhh?” Her Cheshire cat smile got wider. Ten more seconds and she’d vanish, leaving nothing but perfect teeth and cucumber perfume.
“Who, then?” Trip chuffed his confusion.
“Lonely. Sexy. Obsessive.”
Oh. He waved the notion away as if wiping a dry erase board.
She stood and examined her nails, offhand. “Feeds on attention while he stays hidden.”
“Wait… you can’t possibly think—”
“Hair-trigger libido but allergic to anything alive.” She shimmied into her coat by the door and buttoned up. “I don’t need to think. I know.”
“Where are you going? I thought we’d have Lebanese.”
“Pfft.” She glanced at the semisketch, then at him. “A big Horny Bastard’s banging on your gate.” She yanked open the swollen front door and stepped into the hall. “Sounds to me like you got hell to raise.”
Thunk. His door closed. Rina’s descent got quieter until he couldn’t hear her above the hum of the Greenwich traffic. He picked up the phone, put it down, and picked it up again. What could it hurt to feed his imagination a little raw meat?
Trip stared at the demon staring back at him. “You are not Silas.” But he found himself dialing the number anyway.
5
NEVER underestimate the irresistible allure of a big-budget flop. From the ashes of fiasco grows many a homo romance…and for date 2.0 with Mr. Goolsby, Trip agreed to revisit one of the worst movies in history.
Situated on the corner of Eighth and Twenty-third, the Chelsea Clearview was a frequent destination for gay Manhattan. The gayborhood theater showed plenty of cheeseball blockbusters but also did specialty screenings of camp classics: Rocky Horror, Showgirls, The Covenant. On any given night, the audience would be two-thirds LGBT or more. So what if the mold and dust tortured his sinuses? Even Trip with all his PDA anxiety had made out once or twice on dates inside these walls.
Trip peeled off his seriously uncool jacket and glanced at his watch. Ten minutes early. He’d worn a tighter-than-comfortable Casper the Friendly Ghost T-shirt, and now he’d spent the entire walk uptown worried his triceps weren’t big enough.
Silas had texted that he’d bought tickets, so Trip just pushed through the door and paused outside the cavernous lobby area. He stepped in out of the cold to get his bearings.
He shifted his weight nervously. Next to the usher tearing stubs, a poster on an easel read “Nerd Herd” with a kind of pink triangle shieldy-thing and trumpeted Unbored Games as their sponsor. Right. Silas knew the owner, Kurt-something. On paper at least, Chelsea Classics made sense for fanboys on a date.
Thwump. A red-lycra Daredevil bumped into him and didn’t apologize, too busy talking to a Loki date, horns and all.
Oh shit: costumes. Like actual for real head-to-toe Halloween ensembles.
A tall mocha-skinned Green Lantern leaned against the wall between movie posters next to a stocky lesbian wearing a foam rubber Thing suit that turned her body into orange rubble. Catwomen in abundance, naturally, both male and female: six in the Julie Newmar disco suit, a handful in the classic purple unitard, and at least three working Michelle Pfeiffer-y bondage goddess getups. Why had he worn a T-shirt? These people took the Nerd Herd thing seriously: a couple of folks wore prosthetic makeup. Why?
Did Silas think Trip an incurable dweeb, or was this costume thing because they’d talked about comics? Trip’s eyes watered, his nose tickled, and
he squinted to hold back the sneeze. He wiped his damp palms on his upper thighs. The Nerd Herd clustered at the base of the stairs and the up escalator where a teenage usher scanned tickets.
As Silas had promised in his text, the Nerd Herd planned to screen Catwoman, God help them.
In the annals of superhero blockbusters, this flop remained one of the all-time worst comic book adaptations in history. DC had botched the project on an epic scale and created an instant camp classic that offered everything a gay geek could want: slutty cosmetic tycoons, whips and nips, a lame hip-hop score, sleazy catfights, and “pussy” puns galore.
Someone had scrounged up the infamous poster of poor Halle Berry wearing leather ears, fresh off her Best Actress Oscar, squatting like a kitten on the edge of a litter box. Trip frowned at her picture in sympathy.
Krash! Pow. Me-ow!
A couple of people examined him strangely. He obviously didn’t fit in. I’m not gay enough for this. The other patrons in street clothes stared openly at the Nerd Herders, and Trip spent a moment wondering if he should flee while he had the chance. Then he worried he might have already seen Silas and not recognized him behind his disguise.
Silas might already have seen his freaky entrance. Shit. Just in case, Trip moved to a central point with a clear view of the whole lobby and vice versa.
Another clump of guests came through the doors, this one led by a trim man with his face painted blue and a long tail wired into a curve behind him: Gleek, the Wonder Twins’ annoying monkey sidekick from Saturday morning cartoons. He held the arm of a steroidal Captain America with a dimpled chin and led a clump of Teen Titans just to round out the insanity.
Dork-tastic.
Just as the little gaggle of faggles reached Trip’s vantage point, a sneeze escaped his face. He covered his nose too late to do much good and sprayed all of them with his bacteria and saliva. “Gross. God.” He grimaced in apology.
“Ugh!” Gleek goggled at him with a wheeze and a sneer. A gangly Starfire pretended to wipe her tits dry in hyperbolic nausea. Captain America judged him with a scowl.
