by Damon Suede
The sun had fully risen from its grave, and the air was shot with gold and green. Volunteers in the Closet shirts scurried in pairs and trios on their ways to whatever. A steady stream of bodies poured from makeup toward the rest of the walking dead.
Trip thrust the portfolio at him, wishing the light was better. A blush rose over his cheekbones. His stomach twisted and tied itself into a sloppy bow. “Best work I’ve ever done. I mean it. You make me a better artist, Mr. Goolsby.”
“Well, you made me a basket case, so I think maybe that’s not such a great deal for me, huh?” Silas scowled.
“No, Mr. Goolsby.” Happy accidents. For a second, Trip remembered holding the plastic handful of Max’s artistic shrapnel. Shared pieces. He smiled. “You are my demon and you possessed me. Body and soul.”
Silas glared and opened his mouth as if to spit out a response, but Trip cut him off.
“I wanted to deserve you. My damn hero is—” Trip flipped open his portfolio to extract a drawing of Silas’s face. “—you. I spent all this time, weeks and weeks and weeks, drawing you and drawing you, before and after, but when you went and I couldn’t see you in the flesh, I just put you on the page.”
Trip rifled through the folder and a few pieces fell, too small to stay in place. “I couldn’t miss you or I would have lost my mind. I think if I’d had to miss seeing you, I’d have just given up. So I didn’t let myself.” Another sketch fell and another, until Trip squatted and laid the portfolio on the ground, trying to gather them.
Silas bent his knees slowly and looked. And saw.
Trip fanned through the drawings: Silas flipping the bird, Silas cutting okra with his rough hands, Silas leaning back with one leg crooked, the plump jut of his nuts just visible. His mouth eating a peach. His legs climbing a ladder, cock bobbing. Sometimes his face peeked out of the paper, but even faceless all of them were undeniably him.
Not Scratch.
Finally Silas reached out to paw through them: his eyes, his ankles, his treasure trail, the back of his knees… hundreds and hundreds of doodles and sketches and studies… matchbook covers and folded posters… some in pencil, some in charcoal, some fully inked and painted in throbbing acrylic. “Wow.”
A portrait of Silas’s powerful back, the insistent curve of his buttocks doodled around the margins. A full naked torso, the manly jawline to the fat jut of his penis.
“These are….”
“You, Mr. Goolsby. They’re you. They’re every inch of you that I could still find in here”—Trip tapped his noggin and flashed his eyes like a lunatic—“and catch on paper. I’d saved up, apparently. And then you were gone, and I just kept looking and looking until I saw you everywhere. I almost died, I looked so hard. Until I was so full of you that it ran out of my hands onto the pages. I know every line and arch. I know you, Silas. I know you.” Tears starred his lashes.
Silas gulped and pulled out a loose sheet of vellum with a pencil study of his hands, the scars reproduced precisely in ruthless, affectionate detail. Behind it, a double-page watercolor showed Silas on all fours straining and wet as if being pounded from behind, his mouth open and drooling, his hair matted.
Trip shrugged and bent his lips into a tired frown. “I’m not even ashamed. It kept me from losing my mind. Meditation. You don’t know. After the first week, I worried that I would forget moments, and so I drew them. Everything I could think of, every angle. I dreamed about you. And I tried to capture you so I wouldn’t lose a single second of a single moment, because what if I never got to have them again?”
Sketch after sketch of his ears and chin, Silas’s blunt fingers and wide shoulders.
On the footpath, three passing goons in Unbored hoodies spotted Silas and stopped but didn’t come closer. Trip knew he was running out of time. He held up a hand, hoping for five more minutes.
Silas pawed further, and loose pages slipped out too… a ballpoint sketch on an ATM receipt, a drawing of his abdomen on one page of lined loose-leaf paper, his broad nose on the back of a postcard. Carefully, he gathered them all back into the portfolio.
“If you were gone, and I was gonna stay alive, I needed everything I could manage to capture while it was bright and right in front of me. It was just easier to let my hands learn you by heart.”
“No.”
“Please, Silas. Let me love you. We already did the hard stuff. Please.” Trip zipped the portfolio shut before handing it over. “The rest is easy.”
“I don’t think I can take it.”
“You’re gonna come build the Horn Gate for Unbored, just the two of us with the time and money to do it right. Conjure up Scratch and that goddamn Judge and we’re gonna tell a story, you and me. A long one, and it has a happy ending.” Trip took another step. “Color outside the lines, and the only lines are ones we draw. It’s a romance, I’ll have you know. Rina promised.”
Silas leaned into the sunlight. A glistening diamond fell from his chin and hit the cover silently in a wet dot. “You broke me.”
Trip watched him carefully. “And I’m sorry. I got scared. I’m afraid now. Know what I mean?”
“Can’t. Can’t.” Silas shook his head but wouldn’t look at Trip. “I don’t think I can.”
“Please look at me. I’m standing here loving you, and I want you to at least look me in the eye and say no.”
“I don’t think I can.” But Silas did open his glinting eyes.
“You make me braver than I’ve ever been in my life. Please don’t give up on me.” He ran his hands over the stubble on his head. “’Cause I’m not afraid of anything but that.”
Silas studied the ground, but the corner of his mouth tipped up into a little goofy smile that lasted all of a heartbeat.
A squawk on one goon’s walkie-talkie, and he held up two fingers. At the makeup tent, a cluster of volunteers fidgeted impatiently, eyeing them. Silas ignored it, but Trip couldn’t and didn’t give a damn who saw him telling the truth.
He pressed closer. “I hate to say it, but I’m simply not gonna take no for an answer. It’s a trick I learned from an Alabama boy I fell in love with so hard….”
Silas looked up, riving pain and raw hope carved across his face. The trees overhead and behind him glowed green, and scalding daffodils dotted the ground. Somewhere nearby the runners had started to show up, a laughing, chatting crowd ready for Pride.
Trip nodded. “Oh, once upon a while ago. Studly sumbitch with raw hands and a thing for big dicks. You know what he said to me? ‘Don’t postpone joy.’”
“He did?”
“And I don’t mean to.”
Silas squinted. “And you loved him, huh?”
“Present tense.” Trip rested their brows together and took a slow lungful of the ink and vanilla scent he’d gone crazy trying to imagine for the past month. “You make me feel like I could right wrongs and leap tall buildings.” He wiped his nose and prayed it wasn’t as swollen as it felt. “You pushed me to take all these impossible risks and it kept working. You would say all these nice things that I couldn’t believe, and I forgot to pay attention.”
“No shit.” Silas glanced over Trip’s shoulder and fired a finger-gun. With that, the volunteers scampered up the trail toward the starting line. The goon trio lumbered after them.
Work to do.
Trip covered his mouth and laugh-hiccupped, wishing he knew how to explain. “I get….” He ran his hands over his face in frustration. “Dunno.”
Silas stroked his jawline. “Get?”
“Torn open, buttons everywhere.” Trip sighed and closed his eyes. “Like Clark Kent pulling his shirt open to reveal that big red S. Except it feels like I pull my shirt open to reveal my chest, and then I pull my chest open to reveal my heart, and I pull my heart open—”
“Why?”
“—and there’s the whole world waiting to be built from scratch.”
They grinned shyly at each other.
“And Scratch. He came out of that terrible pulled-op
en place. You make me wanna live in there, but I’m gonna need help, because every other part of me wants to close it and cover it up.” Trip stood and offered a hand.
Silas took it and rose. “Clark Kent.” He let go.
“You’re like Superman, and I’m stuck in disguise with the glasses welded to my face and my cape at the cleaners. Every time you duck into a phone booth to save the world, I vanish. And that doesn’t mean you should stop saving the world. I’m still in there.”
“Bullshit.” Silas crossed his arms over his faded overalls. “I can barely save myself.”
“I love being rescued. It’s fucking addictive. ’Kay? But every once in a while I’d like to return the favor.” Trip took a step closer. Somewhere close, a car honked on one of the hidden roads that threaded through the park.
Silas glanced at the makeup tent and at his watch. “You’re right.” His dimple appeared. “I know you’re right.”
Trip pressed his palm against the firm slope of Silas’s chest… touched him right out in public. His heart thumped and he ignored it. “Sometimes I gotta crawl back to my lair and put myself back together. Being alone isn’t the same thing as being selfish.”
“That’s awfully adult for someone who lives on Ring Dings and jalapeño potato chips.” Silas poked him to move, and they veered along a curving path past the prep area where a group of runners clambered into costumes.
“Hey, we don’t stop growing up, right? I mean, it’s not like one day you throw a switch and you’re an adult just ’cause you’re taller and you have pubes.”
Silas nodded. “Fair enough.” A soft flame burned at the back of his brindle eyes.
“So we both open our shirts and chests and whatever and smush the big red mess together. Big mistakes. Beautiful disasters. The worst ideas. Deal?” Trip inhaled deeply, tried to take his time and give time back.
Silas swayed on his feet, watching Trip as if waiting for some kind of proof or guarantee.
Trip held up a hand, scout’s honor. “Goolsby and Spector. We’ll make it formal. Legal. Contracts and everything.”
“I gotta go do the pilot next month down Louisiana, but they’re flying you out as my very personal assistant, bubba.”
“Uh-yup. I do believe I feel sexual harassment coming on.”
Near the starting line, a news crew filmed four giant coffin-shaped boxes that stood to one side, their doors swung open so the trio inside each could breathe: monster closets.
Silas started walking, very slowly, toward the gigantic OutRun banners and the stands where zombies had gathered in orderly rows. They laughed and listened as a chirpy queen gestured instructions to them. “I think Spector and Goolsby sounds better.” He ran a hand over Trip’s shoulders, squeezed his bare neck, not letting go. A test.
Trip leaned into the touch. “Fine… then you get majority share so if I act like a paranoid schmuck you can punish me.”
“Stop.”
“I’m dead serious.” Trip favored him with a superhero smirk and pitched his voice to a radio announcer’s rumble. “We are not two men… we are ten men!”
“Umm.” Silas gawped. “Did you just quote… The Tick?”
“I watched every season. Sitcom and the cartoon actually. Great fucking writing going on. For real. Ben Edlund’s a genius.”
Silas blinked but didn’t smile. What was he thinking?
Just ask, idiot. “What are you thinking?”
“You surprised me.” Silas stuck out his lip. “Not many people do that, y’know, but you keep pulling rugs and springing traps. Hard to get used to it.”
“You willing to try?”
“Don’t think I got much choice.”
“Just one.” Standing in the wan sunlight, smack dab on the starting line with the entire park and cameras and God watching, Trip pulled Silas into his arms and brought their mouths together in front of the whole damned city.
Startled, Silas opened his lips a little and Trip took full advantage. He drove his tongue deep and crushed all that tawny muscle against himself like a raft in a river.
Silas whimpered in the back of his throat when Trip brushed fingers down his tailbone.
The sun rolled over them, and someone yelled in approval and applauded. Trip refused to let go. Tickety-tock.
Silas grunted and struggled at first as if he wanted to protest, but Trip wouldn’t let him free, just kept their mouths closed together and gripped the back of his skull with one hand and pushed into the side of his overalls so he could take a sweaty handful of that beautiful hard butt.
Silas raised his fingers to their lips and whispered, “Trip.”
Only then did Trip lean back and look. Whistles and waves from the bleachers where the walking dead received their final instructions. Their skinny captain tried to shush them with his hands, but the hooting zombie troops in decrepit clothing waved doughnuts and applauded the public display of affection.
“Jay-sus. Warn me next time.” Silas shook himself and then braced one hand on Trip’s ribcage.
“If I warn you, how can I surprise you?”
Silas rolled his eyes. “You’re such an asshole.”
“Why?” Trip sputtered. “What did I do?”
“The right thing. The worst thing.”
Trip stole another kiss and took Silas’s hand, grinning at their ragged, rotting audience, and gave a little stiff bow.
Silas watched and whispered, “You okay?”
“Think so.” Trip dropped his head on Silas’s shoulder. “Is that your army of dorkness?”
“Something like that. They gotta get into position soon.”
At the press table, a middle-aged fairy princess sat on a table fanning herself with the Post; a dog curled at her feet like a dirty Q-tip. Their eyes met and she offered Trip a grin as wicked as the one he gave back.
A lone ponytailed figure on crutches gave Trip a salute he returned reflexively. The man stared hard for a moment, then gave a jerky bob of his head to Silas as if they knew each other.
“I’ll be damned,” Silas murmured.
Trip hooked his arms around Silas’s back and rubbed his cheek against the stubbled throat. He groaned. “I missed this.”
“Serves you right.”
“The drawings helped, but they don’t have your… stink.”
“Fuck off.” But Silas squeezed him close and nuzzled his ear. He took a deep breath at the nape of Trip’s neck. “Uhh. You’re giving me a huge mutant boner.”
“Well, that’s one of my superpowers.”
“But only one of ’em.” Silas rocked the ridge behind his zipper against Trip’s thigh. Silas’s wood flexed. “Public place.”
“Private joke.” Trip took a breath and pinned him with his eyes so there was no mistake. “I love you, Silas Goolsby… and until I can get that through your thick skull, you’re gonna have to deal with embarrassing displays of affection.”
“Well.” Silas blinked. “I’m fixin’ to love you back, so I’ll have to cope.” He squeezed Trip’s fingers but didn’t let go. “Spector and Goolsby.”
“Duh.” Trip stayed there a moment, wearing a lopsided grin. “But sometimes I get to leap tall buildings too.”
Head shake. Silas studied their linked hands. “I think Kurt’s run is starting.”
And how. A honking, rhythmic horn ripped into life twenty feet away.
Silas looked and whispered, “Zombie extras, go.”
“We’re in the way.” Trip tugged at his boyfriend.
“Naw.” He didn’t move. “Wait.”
Sure enough, though they stood their ground, hundreds of putrid, tattered ghouls surged around their little bubble on the starting line in search of their places. Trip held his breath, but as it happened, they were perfectly safe. Several of the monsters thumped Silas as they passed and gave him a thumbs-up, for the makeup probably, but to Trip it felt like a hundred hard-won blessings. Silas held up his hand to accept high fives as they trotted past, and then Trip did too, smiling back a
t them.
And then the pavement was clear. Silas shrugged and his eyes were wet. “’S’my favorite moment in the run.”
Mine too.
A wall of wailing sirens made them raise their heads. The rainbow-colored crowd bellowed its approval, ready to run hard.
Silas squeezed him. “Where we going? Wanna sneak out and head home?”
“Nah. You need an assistant this morning. Then the parade.” Trip clasped the rough fingers. “And I’m feeling awful proud, Mr. Goolsby.”
“Later, then, Mr. Spector.” Silas scratched his messy bronze hair.
“So… whatsay we go sign the paperwork with Kurt.”
Silas smiled at that. “Deal.”
Shouting. Applause. A chorus of gym whistles. The first group of laughing joggers lined up outside a gigantic tent that leaked chemical fog, ready to run for their lives.
“I should check on Kurt and the crew.” Silas pushed his hands into the pockets of his overalls and rocked on his feet. “Thanks for saving me.”
“Thanks for teaching me how. I was… afraid.”
Silas turned with the question on his face.
“Let’s get to work.” About fifty yards away, the rising sun beat the Reservoir into hot brass. Trip started to walk back toward the tents. “Coming?”
A beautiful, open, little-boy smile bloomed on Silas’s face. He looked about three inches taller and five years younger. He shook his head and whispered something inaudible.
“I didn’t hear you.”
Silas winked. “Y’didn’t need to.” A deep inhale.
“That okay?” Trip knew the answer but asked anyway.
Silas didn’t even nod, he just beamed with his eyes closed and his head tipped back in the sun for a few seconds before he responded. Then the wide eyes sparkled. “Feel like walking?”
“Fuck that.” Trip winked. “I feel like flying.”
Don’t miss Scratch in
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com
About the Author
DAMON SUEDE grew up out-’n’-proud deep in the anus of right-wing America and escaped as soon as it was legal. Having lived all over, he’s earned his crust as a model, a messenger, a promoter, a programmer, a sculptor, a singer, a stripper, a bookkeeper, a bartender, a techie, a teacher, a director… but writing has ever been his bread and butter. He has been happily partnered for over a decade with the most loving, handsome, shrewd, hilarious, noble man to walk this planet.
