Frisk: A Novel (Cooper, Dennis)

by Dennis Cooper

  "They call it the Oaks."

  "Who calls it the Oaks?" She closed the book. It was Steven King's It. In the cover art, I and t were formed out of cartoonish human bones against a corpsy blue background.

  "People who don't live there," Joe said.

  "I'll tell you what." The librarian extended an arthritic finger. "If you walk through those shelves over there you'll see a door. Knock loudly. An elderly gentleman will answer. Tell him what you've just told me."

  Joe's eyes traced the trembling digit down a long, shadowy, book-lined aisle. A card taped to this end of the shelving read CRIME A TO G.

  He walked, knocked, asked. An even more ancient man in a fraying black suit led him into a room packed with file cabinets. The geezer shuffled to one, bent down, fished around in a drawer, and came up with a manila file bloated with newspaper clippings. They'd formed a ragged brown crust on three sides of the folder.

  "I don't mean to be personal," the old man wheezed, centering the file on a small desk mid-room, "but ... why? We don't often see younger people, at least not in this part of the library."

  "I found a bone in my basement," Joe said, sitting down at the desk. "I'm curious how it got there because it's human, apparently. And I'm twenty-six." He opened the file.

  Five-eighths of his way through the material, Joe noticed a bulging envelope. The words "Mysterious murder in Oaks" were handwritten shakily across it. He undid the flap, slid out some clippings, and read a dozen.

  One time he rested his eyes on the old man, who'd settled into a chair with a copy of Life magazine from the fifties. Maybe because he was so old, each time he stayed still for even one, two seconds, Joe was afraid he had died.

  Joe spent about a half-hour reading.

  On June 13, 1967, a dismembered male had been found in some weeds a few doors down Joe's street. The "mysteriousness" came in four parts. First, there was no apparent motive. Second, parts of the body were still missing. Third, the victim remained unidentified. Fourth, no suspects were in custody. One of the clippings included a sketchy portrait. Its caption read: "Victim-male, Caucasian, approx. 23 to 28 years old, shoulder-length brown hair, 510", medium build."

  Sounds a little like me, Joe thought vaguely. He snorted, shook his head. "Oh, great." He pocketed the clipping.

  (I'm outside the baggage claim area. There's a minute or two before the shuttle bus gets here that takes me to one of those car rental agencies. Hertz, I think. I just realized the major reason I'm so nonchalant about death is that no one I knew ever died until the last few years, when I was already pretty removed and amoral. Before then, someone else dying was strictly a sexual fantasy, a plot device in certain movies I liked. When people died in those contexts, the loss or effect or whatever was already laundered before it reached me. It was a loss to a particular storyline, say, but nothing personal. So now that ex-boyfriends have started to die off, the situation is really unique, even incomprehensible. The only thing I can do, friends and journalists tell me, is cry. But the idea of death is so sexy and/or mediated by TV and movies I couldn't cry now if someone paid me to, I don't think. I'm just weirdly, intensely entertained by the thought of a boy being deep in the ground and unreachable. I guess I've been thrown out of whack by actual deaths in some way, in terms of getting work done and maintaining routines. Sometimes I've tried to imagine and upgrade the deaths, making them scarier, messier, quicker. I sprawl in bed, dreaming up a spectacular ending for someone, say Samson (R.I.P.), usually while I'm jerking off, since that's the only time I ever feel anything about anyone else. Then I rerun the new death until its details are so familiar, and the actor in question so dead, that I'm ready to cast, kill, bury someone fresh. Pierre, say.)

  Monday night

  Joe imagined his back, ass, legs being punched by a freckled fist. That relaxed him a little. Then he reached for the phone and dialed the number he'd scribbled on the back of a Sears sales slip.

  "No one's around," announced a phone machine. "Give me something to come home to." Beep.

  "Hi," Joe said. "I ... uh, waited on you at Sears the other day? And this guy who I work with named Samuel-I'm not sure how well you know him-said you like to whack guys around in bed. I'm, uh, into that too, so-"

  Gary picked up. "Hold on a second," he said. His voice sounded less friendly than the recording's. There was a second beep. "Go on."

  "Well, like I said, you supposedly whack-"

  "Yeah, maybe. What do you look like?"

  "You don't remember?" Joe said. "The other day? Well, I'm supposed to look almost exactly like Keanu Reeves, the actor. Know him? He was the nice kid in River's Edge. Also he played the best friend of the guy who killed himself in that film Permanent Record. Except I'm kind of battered up. Not my face, though."

  Gary's hand covered the phone for a second. That's how it sounded at least. Then ... "Why would someone who looks like Keanu Reeves want to fuck himself up?" The hand immediately covered the phone again.

  Joe scanned his living room. "I don't know." His eyes stopped on the bone.

  "Good answer."

  Joe didn't care what that meant. He carried the phone across the room to his bookcase. He grabbed the bone off its place on the second shelf down from the top and started studying it. "Can I come see you now?"

  "No." Gary's hand covered the phone for a second. "Wait a couple of hours. Eleven, eleven-thirty ...

  "Mm-hm." Joe shoved the bone under his arm, copied down the address. It was only a few blocks away. He thought about saying so. Gary hung up before he could. Once his hands were free, Joe plucked the newspaper article out of his shirt pocket, laying it and the bone side by side on the rug. "Hmm." Although the victim looked so much like him that the sketch could have been a dirty little mirror, Joe found the guy sort of unsympathetic. As for the bone ... well, it didn't particularly add or detract anything. Joe's mind drifted away. "Weird." Case solved, he thought.

  He laid the clipping and bone on the bookshelf, settled into his armchair, lit a cigarette. A few seconds later he walked back and slipped the clipping under the bone so it wouldn't accidentally blow off.

  He turned on the TV, switching around with the remote control unit until something violent appeared. His memory of the portrait and bone immediately blanked as his eyes started noting the action.

  Two men were backing a teenager across the roof of a tenement. They accused him of robbery. "Don't," he said. As the three neared the edge, the taller of the two men grabbed the seat of the boy's blue jeans, lifting him off his feet. "Don't!" The man carried the boy for a few yards, threw him over the roof. "Do-o-o-!"

  (I'm at the hotel. It took only five or six minutes of phone calls to snag that hustler. He's working for one particular escort service that handles a lot of gay porn stars. Man Age Models. I didn't actually talk to him, but the guy who arranges the trysts set one up for an hour from now. Pierre will be by. He costs $200 for "regular" sex, $250 and up for "rough stuff," which the phone guy described as "whatever you two dudes decide." Great.)

  (Later. Pierre's here ten minutes early. He's not really French. I feel totally unprepared. Shit. I told him to take a shower but not get his hair wet. He's in the bathroom right now. I hear splashing. This is just a quick note to say that while he's beautiful and everything, though slightly disappointing in person like everyone always is when you know them from reproduction, I'm suddenly struck by the problem of how to get what I want out of him, whatever that is. He immediately asked what I had in mind, the way hustlers do. I could barely talk I was so on the edge, but I said safe, intense sex. A lie obviously. He said okay kind of warily, maybe because I was being so vague. It is vague for me.)

  (Pierre just turned off the shower. He's about to come out. I think I'm ready. It's hard to describe these moments ...)

  Monday night

  Joe trailed Gary into a stuffy den. Overfurnished with scratched-up antiques, it had three tiny, sepia-colored windows. He went to a pane, cupped his eyes, peered out. The guy's yard be
longed in a children's book. Far, far off, halfobscured by trees, he could see a kind of giant-sized doll house whose windows glowed like kerosene lanterns.

  Gary was mixing gin and tonics. "You want a little painkiller in this?" he yelled. "You won't taste it."

  "Nah. I've got this weird nervous system or something that doesn't work right." Joe smiled at the doll house.

  "Lucky me." A full glass appeared by Joe's left shoulder, followed by Gary's face. Joe turned, took the former.

  Ding.

  They carried their glasses outside.

  "So, what are some of the movies you've acted in, Gary?" Joe was trailing the actor along a path roofed with the limbs of fruit trees. Oranges, lemons, pears, apples ... Perched in their branches, brightly colored birds blinked at the passing intruders. The night smelled intensely of punch. Joe smiled, batted some flying bugs.

  "Third-rate crap." Gary ducked. "Watch this limb. I doubt you've seen any. Friday the Thirteenth, Part Six, maybe?" They'd reached the doll house. "Look familiar? Ever see that old "Twilight Zone" episode where nobody ever grew up? This was the main character's home. Warner Brothers was throwing it out, believe it or not." He inserted a key, turned it. "Two hundred bucks."

  The interior was painted black. A large X made of two massive pieces of wood, maybe seven feet long, one wide and deep, stood upright room center, decorated with handcuffs. The floor was an inch deep in whips, paddles, knives, etc. Joe stood in the middle, hands on his hips, peering around, impressed. "Wow."

  Gary balanced on one leg, removing a sock. "Thanks. Strip."

  Joe undressed, which took a fairly long time because stuff kept getting snagged on his scabs. Gary finished first and leaned back on the X, right hand jerking his cock, left hand pinching a cord that dangled from a light bulb perched up in the rafters. "Oh, by the way," he muttered, fingering the cord. "You don't look anything like Keanu Reeves." He yanked. Click, click.

  The room grew dark gray. Joe could still detect Gary, the X. "Do you want me against that?" he asked, pointing through Gary's chest.

  "Good guess." Gary stepped aside.

  Joe walked over, revolved, and made his nude body into an X. Gary reached up, snap, snap, bent down, snap, snap, securing things. Then he backed off a few feet and stood there, jerking off. After a minute or two, that looked boring, to Joe at least. He cleared his throat. "Ahem," he added.

  "I'm making a decision," Gary whispered.

  "Can I help?"

  "Not really." Gary backed into a shadow. "It's like this," he continued quietly. "I always fantasize murdering people I play with, but something usually stops me. I think it's beauty. But whatever it is, it's not there with you. I really want to kill you. It doesn't seem romantic at all. It feels like the practical thing to do."

  "That's interesting," Joe said. "But what exactly are you saying?" It was impossible to tell from the actor's expression.

  "What ... I ... just ... said." The phrase left Gary's mouth at a trudge, like it was physically deformed or weighed some incredible amount.

  "Well, um, you shouldn't do it, because I don't want you to, and I'm half of this." Joe tried to gesture emphatically.

  "If I don't do it," Gary said, "that'll be why. But it's the only reason, which is strange, because there should be others, right?" He crouched down, rummaging through the articles on the floor. Clink, bang, tinkle .. .

  "But you're not going to do it. That's what I need to hear you say.". . . Clunk, clang, ding, thump. Gary held up a knife, smiled. "Answer me, Gary," Joe said, almost yelling.

  Gary strolled toward Joe, still smiling, knife shaking wildly in one hand, cock scrunched up in the other. "I really think I'm going to kill you," he said hoarsely. "I can't fucking believe it."

  The knife stopped just short of Joe's right nipple. Joe gazed at the nipple. Then he gazed at the point of the knife. He raised his eyes to Gary's tight little smile. He lowered his eyes to the smudge of pre-come on the head of his own cock. When he shut his eyes a second later, the four things-pink nipple, knife point, crinkly smile, white smudge-were superimposed against the reddish darkness of his lids. It looked like a flower. "God, Gary, you know what?" he said. "I-"

  Stab.

  SPACED

  1987-1989

  Pierre sits on the edge of the bed, gently kicking a wet towel. It's on the rug where he dropped it. First it looks like a twist of whipped cream. Another kick, it's discarded gift wrapping. Kick, a scroll. I'm perched to his right, elbows balanced on my knees, chin in the heels of my palms, staring down at the scroll or whatever. "Thinking?" Pierre whispers, kicks.

  "It's complicated," I say, turning to see him. My eyes zigzag down his chest, stomach, crotch like they're watching a tiny or distant rock climber. "If you mean me," Pierre sighs, "I'm easy. If you mean you, well, what can I do to help?" My eyes have drifted back to the towel, which glows in them. "Usually the problem's simple," he continues. "I'm not what you expected, or maybe you're nervous or shy ..

  "No." I shake my head. "You're exquisite. I mean, there's this mental transition you have to make-and I'm not saying you specifically, I mean the collective `you' or whatever when you've experienced someone as an image and suddenly he's sitting here talking to you. You have to reevaluate him, but I've done that. And you're great."

  "Mm," Pierre says, glances at his watch, which is all he's wearing apart from a thin, gold bracelet. "But, uh, fourteen minutes are already up." I nod vaguely. "It's not always the case," I add. "Certain people don't translate. Like that pretty brunet in that porn video, Pleasure Mountain? Scotty was so `me.' Ever see it? But when I actually bought him, well ... maybe he'd just gotten older but. . .

  Pierre lies back on the bed, entwines his fingers, cradles his head with them. "Mm-hm." I turn sideways, stare into his crotch. "Like, kids want to befriend their favorite cartoon characters. I did. Well, my dad took me to Disneyland so I could meet them. He aimed me at these huge walking toys and, well, I tried but ... they couldn't even alter their facial expressions.

  "That Scotty was similar. I mean, he looked vaguely like the star of the video I'd loved, but there was something wrong in his-" Pierre feels a grin sneaking up. "Weird," he says. "Anyway, why don't you suck my cock." He hates spouting cliches like that. Still he checks my expression to see if it's worked. I'm shaking my head. "Or lick my ass," he adds. "Fuck me with a condom, uh..."

  "Your skin, you mean," I mumble. Pierre raises his head. "What?" I reach down, pinch an inch of his thigh, jiggle it like a faulty house key. "Skin," I repeat. "I get to use your skin, and the little areas of your skeleton I can feel underneath, and whatever I manage to squeeze or suck out." Pierre feels confused, which must look ultra-unappealing. So he relaxes his face.

  Then he props himself up on his elbows. "Yeah, uh, okay." "Well. . . " I lean down, sniff his crotch. "That's information. Crotches smell pretty identical from guy to guy, if they're clean." I sniff again. "But because you're a beauty, the smell's more profound. Still, what does it tell me that a hundred other men haven't already learned. No, the profound stuff's in here." I poke his stomach.

  Pierre's face gets confused again. Shit. "Go on." He hopes I'm too spaced out to care. "Well, if I think you're one of the most extraordinary boys I've ever seen, and I do, then logging your tastes, smells, sounds, textures isn't enough somehow, for me at least. I want to know everything about you. But to really do that, I'd have to kill you, as bizarre as that sounds."

  "Maybe." Pierre squints at me. I look calm, but if the slightest insanity distorts my face, voice, he's ready to leap for his clothes. "So that's what I'd do, if I was courageous-kill you. I'll dream I'm killing you while I go over your body. I'll seem like your usual sex fiend, but I'll actually be far away in a place where your life's meaningless and your body's carved open."

  Jesus, Pierre thinks. "You know," he says, "I do this a lot, fuck for money. I just came from another guy, in fact. But it's true that the way men deal with me is like I'm a kind of costume that someone else,
someone they've known or made up, is wearing. The way they look in my eyes and the way they look at my skin is completely different. Is that what you mean?"

  I'm looking intently at his cock, which I've stretched very taut. It looks like a fat, misshapen rubber band. "No." I let it go. It lands, wobbling, on his thigh. "Really, you should just know that you fascinate me so much that in a perfect world I'd kill you to understand the appeal. If there's any way you can take that as a supreme compliment, do."

  "I'll try." Pierre glances at his watch. "So, are you planning to pay for a second hour?" he asks. "Because otherwise ..." I nod, my hand swimming around on his sandy-colored stomach, in the cove between his hipbones and ribs. "For now just lie quietly," I whisper. "Get stoned if you want." "I don't do drugs," Pierre says, reaching for a pillow. "I need to keep an eye on stuff."

  For the next forty, forty-five minutes, Pierre receives the ultimate, detailed massage. That's how it feels. Still, so little of me actually skims him and what does touch down is so wet or pointy, or moves so continuously, that he has to raise his chin five, six times and reorient himself in the hotel. I'm always right there inching gradually up his body, hunched down like I'm licking a very large envelope.

  From the thighs down, Pierre's dry if kind of grungy. From crotch to neck, which I'm currently studying, he's varying degrees of soaked, tingling. He's relaxed enough generally to mumble some pointers-what feels good, what's boringsome of which I acknowledge with grunts, snorts, moans. Now I'm licking his left ear. "So what are you thinking?" he asks.

  My tongue leaves his ear for a second. "Lots." It relands with a squish. A few minutes later I start breathing normally, lean back. Pierre figures I'm bored, rolls over onto his side. "Phew, I-" "Wait," I say. "I'm almost finished. Uh, could you spit in my mouth?" I cringe hopefully. "Or we could kiss," I add. Pierre stiffens. "I don't kiss." "Fine." "I just can't." "No problem." "My boyfriend..."