“You saw how his eyes are green? Nobody knows his real name, I heard he’d been a high school teacher but I don’t know if it’s true or not. He’s crazy, really, we don’t know where he lives or whether he has a family, just that he’s been here a lot longer than we have, seems he’s been in Japan an awful long time. Don’t he look like Charlie Mingus? Maybe he came after he’d heard something about you. He say anything to you?”
That black man had looked very uptight. I’ll give you just this much, he’d said, then rolled his eyes around the room and left as if he were making an escape.
His face hadn’t changed even when he saw Moko was naked, and when Kei asked him, How about some fun? his lips had trembled but he didn’t say anything.
“You’ll get to see the black bird sometime, too, you haven’t seen it yet, but you, you’ll be able to see the bird, you’ve got them kind of eyes, same as me.” Then he’d gripped my hand.
Oscar said not to take any of those capsules, because Green Eyes had once passed around laxatives. He told me to throw them out.
Jackson sterilized a battlefield syringe. I’m a medic, he said, so I’m a real pro at shots, right?
First they shot me up with heroin.
“Ryū, dance!” Jackson slapped my butt. When I stood up and looked in the mirror, I saw what looked like a different person, transformed by Moko’s painstaking, expert makeup technique. Saburō passed me a cigarette and an artificial rose and asked, What music? I said make it Schubert and everyone laughed.
A sweet-smelling mist floated before my eyes and my head was heavy and numb. As I slowly moved my arms and legs, I felt that my joints had been oiled, and that slippery oil flowed around inside my body. As I breathed I forgot who I was. I thought that many things gradually flowed from my body, I became a doll. The room was full of sweetish air, smoke clawed my lungs. The feeling that I was a doll became stronger and stronger. All I had to do was just move as they wanted, I was the happiest possible slave. Bob muttered Sexy, Jackson said Shut up. Oscar put out all the lights and turned an orange spot on me. Once in a while my face twisted and I felt panicky. I opened my eyes wide and shook my body. I called out, panted low, licked jam off my finger, sipped wine, pulled my hair, grinned, rolled up my eyes, spit out the words of a spell.
I yelled some lines I remembered by Jim Morrison: “When the music is over, when the music is over, put out all the lights, my brothers live at the bottom of the sea, my sister was killed, pulled up on land like a fish, her belly torn open, my sister was killed, when the music is over, put out all the lights, put out all the lights.”
Like the splendid men in Genet’s novels, I rolled saliva around in my mouth and put it on my tongue – dirty white candy. I rubbed my legs and clawed my chest my hips and my toes were sticky. Gooseflesh wrapped my body like a sudden wind and all my strength was gone.
I stroked the cheek of a black woman sitting with her knees drawn up next to Oscar. She was sweating, the toenails at the end of her long legs were painted silver.
A flabby fat white woman Saburō had brought along gazed at me, her eyes moist with desire. Jackson shot heroin into the palm of Reiko’s hand; maybe it hurt, her faced twitched. The black woman was already drunk on something. She put her hands under my armpits and made me stand up, then stood up herself and began to dance. Durham put hash in the incense burner again. The purple smoke rose and Kei crouched down to suck it in. At the smell of the black woman, clinging to me with her sweat, I almost fell. The smell was fierce, as if she were fermenting inside. She was taller than I, her hips jutted out, her arms and legs were very slender. Her teeth looked disturbingly white as she laughed and stripped. Lighter colored, pointed breasts didn’t bounce much even when she shook her body. She seized my face between her hands and thrust her tongue into my mouth. She rubbed my hips, undid the hooks of the negligee, and ran her sweaty hands over my belly. Her rough tongue licked around my gums. Her smell completely enveloped me; I felt nauseated.
Kei came crawling over and gripped my cock, saying, Do it right, Ryū, get it up. All at once spittle gushed from one corner of my mouth down to my chin and I couldn’t see anymore.
Her whole body glistening with sweat, the black woman licked my body. Gazing into my eyes, she sucked up the flesh of my thighs with her bacon-smelling tongue. Red, moist eyes. Her big mouth kept laughing and laughing.
Soon I was lying down; Moko, her hands braced on the edge of the bed, shook her butt as Saburō thrust into her. Everyone else was crawling on the floor, moving, shaking, making noises. I noticed that my heart was beating terribly slowly. As if matching its beat, the black woman squeezed my pulsing prick. It was as if only my heart and my cock were attached to each other and working, as if all my other organs had melted.
The black woman sat on top of me. At the same time her hips began to swivel at tremendous speed. She turned her face to the ceiling, let out a Tarzan yell, panted like a black javelin thrower I’d seen in an Olympic film; she braced the grayish soles of her feet on the mattress, thrust her long hands under my hips and held tight. I shouted, felt torn apart. I tried to pull away, but the black woman’s body was hard and slippery as greased steel. Pain mixed with pleasure drilled through my lower body and swirled up to my head. My toes were hot enough to melt. My shoulders began to shake, maybe I was going to start yelling. The back of my throat was blocked by something like the soup Jamaicans make with blood and grease, I wanted to spit it up. The black woman took deep breaths, felt my shaft to make sure it was deep inside her, grinned, and took a puff on a very long black cigarette.
She put the perfumed cigarette in my mouth, asked me quickly something I didn’t understand, and when I nodded she put her face to mine and sucked my saliva, then began to swivel her hips. Slippery juices streamed from her crotch, wetting my thighs and belly. The speed of her twisting slowly increased. I moaned, getting into it. As I screwed both eyes shut, emptied my head, and put my strength into my feet, keen sensations raced around my body along with my blood and concentrated in my temples. Once the sensations formed and clung to my body, they didn’t leave. The thin flesh behind my temples sizzled like skin burned by a firecracker. As I noticed this burn and the feeling became centered there, I somehow believed I had become just one huge penis. Or was I a miniature man who could crawl up inside women and pleasure them with his writhing? I tried to grip the black woman’s shoulders. Without slackening the speed of her hips, she leaned forward and bit my nipples until blood came.
Singing a song, Jackson straddled my face. Hey, baby, he said, lightly swatting my cheek. I thought his swollen asshole was like a strawberry. Sweat from his thick chest dripped onto my face, the smell strengthened the stimulus from the black woman’s hips. Hey, Ryū, you’re just a doll, you’re just our little yellow doll, we could stop winding you up and finish you off, y’know, Jackson crooned, and the black woman laughed so loudly I wanted to cover my ears. Her loud voice might have been a broken radio. She laughed without stopping the movement of her hips, and her saliva dribbled onto my belly. She tongue-kissed Jackson. Like a dying fish, my cock jumped inside her. My body seemed powder dry from her heat. Jackson thrust his hot prick into my dry mouth, a hot stone burning my tongue. As he rubbed it around my tongue, he and the black woman chanted something like a spell. It wasn’t English, I couldn’t understand it. It was like a sutra with a conga rhythm. When my cock twitched and I was almost ready to come, the black woman raised her hips, thrust her hand under my buttocks, pinched me, and jabbed a finger hard into my asshole. When she noticed the tears filling my eyes, she forced her finger in even deeper and twisted it around. There was a whitish tattoo on each of her thighs, a crude picture of a grinning Christ.
She squeezed my throbbing cock, then plunged it into her mouth until her lips almost touched my belly. She licked all around, nipped, then stroked the tip with her rough pointed tongue, just like a cat’s. Whenever I was on the verge of coming, she pulled her tongue away. Her buttocks, slippery, shiny with sweat, face
d me. They seemed spread almost wide enough to tear apart. I stretched out a hand and dug my nails into one side as hard as I could. The black woman panted and slowly moved her butt from side to side. The fat white woman sat on my feet. Her blackish-red cunt hanging down from under sparse golden down reminded me of a cut-up pig’s liver. Jackson seized her huge breasts roughly and pointed to my face. Shaking the breasts that lay on her white belly, she peered into my face, touched my lips split by Jackson’s prick, and laughed Pretty in a soft voice. She took one of my legs and rubbed it against her sticky pig liver. My toes were moved around – it felt so bad I could hardly stand it – the white woman smelled just like rotten crab meat and I wanted to throw up. My throat convulsed and I nipped Jackson’s prick slightly; he yelled terribly, pulled out, and struck me hard on the cheek. The white woman laughed at my bleeding nose, Gee that’s awful; she rubbed her crotch even harder against my feet. The black woman licked up my blood. She smiled gently at me like a battlefield nurse and whispered in my ear Pretty soon we’ll have you shoot off, we’ll make you come. My right foot began to disappear into the white woman’s huge cunt. Again Jackson thrust his prick into my cut mouth. I desperately fought down my nausea. Stimulated by my slippery, bloody tongue, Jackson shot his warm wad. The sticky stuff blocked my throat. I heaved pinkish fluid, mixed with blood, and yelled to the black woman, Make me come!
WHERE THE WILD ROSES GROW
Mark Timlin
This story was inspired by a song by Nick Cave which he recorded in 1995 with Kylie Minogue. I was impressed by the tune, the lyric, and the video that accompanied it, and I felt that there could be more to the story. The title and theme of the song are used with the kind permission of the songwriter.
ON THE FIRST DAY the hot wind whipped hard across the central Australian desert and blew sand abrasively against the faded paintwork of the ancient Ford pick-up truck as it crawled across the dusty blacktop, the needle on the fuel gauge banging dangerously against the peg that showed that the petrol tank was empty.
The driver relaxed a little when he saw a signpost that told him that a town called Refuge was only a few kilometres down the highway. He lit his last cigarette and tried to remember how long it had been since he’d had human contact.
As Refuge got closer, the features of the land softened slightly and as he bumped over the narrow bridge that crossed the river that ran sluggishly beside the town he noticed red roses growing bloody and wild on its banks.
Seventeen-year-old Eliza Day was staring through the dirty, fly-blown plate glass window of the diner where she waitressed, as the truck pulled into town and stopped in front of the single pump of the small gas station that together with the diner, a general store and pub called The Moon In The Gutter made up the entire commercial area of Refuge.
God, it’s so hot, she thought as she fanned herself with a menu. When will the rain come and give us a break? And she swatted half heartedly with her hand as a sand fly buzzed around her head.
The truck was the only thing that moved in the heat and she watched as the driver climbed out of the cab. He was in his twenties, tall and thin with a slight stoop in his ragged denim shirt and jeans, over brown, high-heeled boots, and his long hair was as black as a raven’s wing. Eliza’s heart lurched at the sight of him. She wore nothing under the short cotton uniform dress that her boss insisted she wear and she could feel sweat running down from her armpits and between her breasts and staining the material until it was almost transparent. My God, she thought as she squinted through the haze at the driver’s sharply featured face. He’s gorgeous. And she blushed as she rubbed her damp thighs together and felt them grow damper still at the sight of him.
She continued watching as Jo-Jo the proprietor of the garage pumped gas into the tank, replaced the cap and took a few notes from the driver’s hand.
Don’t go, she prayed. Please don’t go.
As if he had heard her, the driver turned and surveyed the decaying township, got back into the truck, started it with a puff of smoke from the exhaust pipe and swung the vehicle across the road and parked it outside the diner.
Eliza ducked back out of sight, then went back to her place behind the counter as the driver exited the vehicle again, climbed onto the boardwalk and through the door directly in front of her.
Close up he was even more handsome than she’d thought, with a few days’ dark stubble darkening his cheeks and the most penetrating blue eyes she’d ever seen.
He looked round the empty tables and seats then at Eliza before he walked across the gritty lino floor and took a seat at the counter. “Hi,” he said, pulling some notes and coins from the breast pocket of his shirt. “I think I’ve just got the price of a burger, beer and a pack of Marlboro’s.”
She smiled shyly at him, ignoring the cash in his hand. “How do you want your burger done?” she asked.
“Bloody,” he replied, as he watched her take the top off a bottle of beer, freezing from the chiller.
She felt his eyes still on her as she turned and called the order through the hatch to the kitchen at the back.
“What’s your name?” he asked when she turned back.
“Eliza. Eliza Day.” She smiled again and stared into his eyes.
He smiled back and shook his head. “No,” he said. “You’re the Wild Rose and you are the one.”
“That’s what people call me around here. The Wild Rose. How did you know?”
“I didn’t. It just seemed to fit you.”
“And I’m the one for what?” she asked, although she thought that she already knew.
“You’ll find out,” he replied, smiled again and sipped at his beer.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Just someone,” he said. “Someone passing through.”
“But I must call you something.”
“Must you?”
“Yes.”
“Then call me Joe. That fits me as good as anything.”
“OK, Joe. Where are you heading for?”
“Nowhere,” he said. “Nowhere special, I might hang around for a bit.”
Oh good, she thought. “Where will you stay?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“They have rooms at the pub,” she said.
“No money,” he said. “I’ll camp out in the truck. I’m used to that. Where do you live?”
“I’ve got a room at the back here,” she replied. “It’s not much, but it goes with the job.”
At that moment, Sonny, the chef, owner and proprietor of the diner, and by definition, Eliza’s boss, shoved the hamburger through the hatch and she placed it in front of Joe, who took a bite, then almost delicately wiped the bloody gravy that dripped down his chin off with a napkin.
“That’s good,” he said, washing the mouthful down with beer. “What time do you finish?”
“Seven.”
“Can I see you later?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll call for you at eight,” he said.
She hardly had time to think before she nodded. “OK,” she said.
After he’d finished his meal he went back to the truck and drove through the tiny town back to the bridge that ran over the sluggish river. He pulled off the road to the riverbank where the breeze was slightly cooler and the wild roses grew in profusion, their petals the same scarlet as Eliza Day’s lips.
He sat in the bed of the truck on top of the old mattress where he slept when no other accommodation was available, lit a cigarette and dozed in the shade of the cab until it was time to meet the young girl.
Eliza was more excited than she could ever remember as she got ready for her visitor. After work she hurried to her room, stripped off her damp uniform and stood naked for a moment in front of the mildew stained mirror in the door of the old wardrobe that made up a quarter of the furniture in the room that Sonny allowed her to stay in for nothing as part of her meagre wages. Sonny was all right. Unlike most of the other men who passed through the town he di
dn’t undress her with his eyes, and although at first she’d feared it, he never came knocking at the dead of night to try and force his favours on her. When the diner closed at seven, he just exchanged his dirty white jacket for a leather one, and drove his ancient Holden back to Mrs Sonny, who waited on the small holding they owned with their two children.
Joe hadn’t undressed her with his eyes either, although she wished that he had.
She was happy with the sight of her slim, tanned body with only two white stripes where the bikini she wore covered her breasts and sex, and she tossed the long blonde hair that fell into a tangle around her shoulders off her face and stuck out her tongue at her own reflection, before she went to the little chest next to the wardrobe and carefully chose her underwear. White lace bra and panties, very brief, and she blushed again as she caught a second look of herself in the mirror as she opened the wardrobe door to choose a dress. I wonder, she thought. He said I was the one, I wonder if he’ll be the one.
For Eliza was a virgin. Unlike her school friends from the town and surrounding area, Eliza had refused to surrender her innocence to the first farm boy who asked for it. She was more choosy. She was waiting for the right one, and perhaps Joe would be it.
At eight precisely there was a knock on the door of her room. It opened directly onto the car park at the rear of the diner. Joe was standing there, a single red rose in his hand when she opened it. “I thought this must be right,” he said. “And I bought you this.” He gave her a red rose and she felt the thorns bite into the skin of her fingers as she took it from him.
“Thanks,” she said. “Come in, I’m afraid it’s not much.”
“Better than what I’ve got.” And he entered the room and sat on the arm of the broken backed sofa and watched as she filled a juice bottle with water and put the rose inside.
The Mammoth Book of International Erotica Page 29
