Full Frontal Fiction

by Jack Murnighan

  He shit himself, says Horse. Interesting.

  Sally tastes gin in her throat and runs to the kitchen.

  Laughter and running water. Sally washes her face and spits repeatedly into the sink. She opens a drawer. Bits of foil and rubber bands and books of matches. A small knife with a black handle. She picks it up between two fingers. The blade is thin and bends easily and she tests the edge with her thumb. A line of blood runs to her wrist and she lets go of the blade. She slips the knife into the waistband of her underpants and sucks the blood from her thumb.

  Tripper is gone. A damp spot where he was sitting. Perhaps a shadow. Sally sits on the floor, near the window. The length of a body between herself and Horse. She sucks her thumb. Sunlight swims in dust and smoke and she realizes she doesn’t know if it’s rising or setting.

  Alone at last, angel.

  Where is he? she says.

  Horse smiles and she feels herself shiver.

  The Penguin? I told him to have a bath, he says.

  The sound of running water. Distant and soothing.

  I wish you wouldn’t call him that.

  He doesn’t mind, says Horse. It makes him feel like a superhero.

  What about the money?

  Horse closes his eyes and sinks away from her. He lies flat on the floor. Sally looks at the flickering television, where predatory teenagers glare back at her with superior, indifferent faces. It might be an ad for blue jeans, or a push for safe sex.

  I want fifty dollars, she says. At least. That’s enough for a bus ticket and a grilled cheese.

  You aren’t going anywhere, angel.

  Sally stares at the heels of his boots. There is another game show on television and she decides it must be morning. After a few minutes Horse breathes slowly, as if he is asleep. Sally sits very still. She watches television for two hours, three. The game show becomes a soap opera. She tells herself to demand at least a hundred. Her legs begin to hurt. Horse has not moved. He’s not going to give her any money. He’s only amusing himself. She stands up and there is a cracking noise, like knuckles. Horse still sleeps and she edges past him, like a whisper. A finger strokes her ankle and Horse smiles up at her. His teeth are terribly white.

  I will give you the money, he says. I promise.

  Horse’s bedroom is dark and sensuous. It always shocks her, somehow. The ceiling is a mosaic of silk scarves. There are blue paper window-shades glowing in the afternoon sun and the air has a dreamy, underwater quality. In one corner are a table and chair of scarred cherrywood, both piled high with books. Beneath the blue window is an antique chest of drawers that looks very fragile. The surface is littered with masculine accessories: a silver cigarette lighter and matching cuff-links, a collection of pocketknives, a wooden hairbrush, three pairs of expensive sunglasses. Sally turns to face the bed, a simple futon with white cotton sheets and five or six puffy pillows on an iron frame. On the wall above it are two framed photographs, blown up to uncomfortable proportions. One is a naked, red-haired woman wrapped in gauze bandages. The other is a dying horse, its body white with foam. Sally takes her dress off, drops her underpants to the floor. She looks at herself. A girl’s body, but the breasts are too large and her nipples strange, translucent. Her thin pubic hair is growing back. Faded white razorblade scars on her arms and legs. She hates this body.

  Horse watches her, his eyes lidded. His tongue flashes between his lips and the silence is like the prick of a needle. Sally holds her breath, waiting for him to say something.

  Then he whispers, Very nice. I’ve got to have a piss.

  Sally stands there, conscious of herself. She forces herself to recline on the bed, her hands hiding her crotch. Horse leaves the bathroom door open and pees endlessly and loud. The toilet flushes and now Sally rolls over to wait on her belly. When she looks up Horse is standing naked in the doorway. His muscles are fluid, his skin smooth and hairless. He laughs, softly. He has a nice laugh.

  He sits next to her, kisses her hair. She looks down and his penis is sleek and pretty.

  Are you afraid? he says.

  Yes. I’m afraid.

  But why? he says. We have done this before.

  I remember.

  Horse laughs again. His finger moves slow and faint as breath down her spine.

  I want some protection, she says.

  My body is a temple, he says. I assure you.

  Protection, she says.

  Relax, he says.

  He produces a condom in gold foil. She opens it with her teeth and the lubricant tastes of copper and bad breath, of shoe polish and dead skin and wet hair.

  I love the taste of spermicide, she says.

  You have beautiful feet, says Horse.

  The rubber is also golden. She thinks of locusts and salamanders. Horse slips his fingers inside her. His tongue is everywhere, touching her and disappearing and tickling her asshole like a feather, like the tail of a cat. Now he lifts her onto his lap. Veins stand out along his penis, fat with blood. The rubber is still clenched in her left hand. There is a wound on his shoulder, like a bite. She stares at it without recognition. Horse grunts as she slips the condom onto him. Her hair falls over her eyes and she hides behind it. Horse lifts her by the armpits. Sally is weightless. He can’t seem to get inside her. He lowers her again and prods at her ass and pelvis with his ridiculous gold penis. Sally stares at the bite mark and remembers: the police use the teeth to identify victims.

  Please stop, she says. This isn’t working.

  She feels his muscles tense. But he stops trying to push his penis into her. She feels it soften against her thigh and is temporarily sorry for him.

  Maybe a handjob, she says.

  Don’t insult me, girl.

  Sally pulls her underpants on and feels sticky. She picks up a shirt and realizes it’s not hers. The sleeves hang down to her knees. It doesn’t matter.

  I’m going to pee, she says. Horse doesn’t open his eyes.

  She shuts the door behind her. In the bathroom she washes her hands and stares at herself in the mirror. Then she turns to the toilet and sees the body. Tripper is sprawled with his legs like scissors, his arms around the toilet. His head is somehow wedged beneath the tank.

  Horse, she says. Then she says it again, she screams it and he is standing there, still naked.

  I know, he says.

  Tripper has one shoe on. He still wears the fouled white pants.

  What happened?

  He had a fit, maybe. An air bubble in his brain.

  There is a window above the toilet, small and dirty. A word is scrawled in the sun-bright dust.

  You might have warned me, she says.

  Horse scratches his belly. Then tugs absently at his scrotum. His penis is shriveled and damp.

  The way I see it, he says, the Penguin was taking his shoes off and his bubble burst. Hit the floor and started thrashing around like a chicken. Then he grabbed hold of the toilet and got his head stuck.

  The bathtub is full, the water murky.

  He just freaked out and died, says Horse.

  The water, she says. It was running.

  I turned it off, he says.

  When you came to pee?

  There is a cigarette butt on the sink. Horse puts it in his mouth and looks around for a match.

  I heard the toilet flush, she says.

  Horse smiles.

  He was dead, she says. He was dead.

  I stepped over him, says Horse. I emptied my bladder and flushed the toilet.

  Sally stares at him. She feels vaguely sick.

  Horse sighs. He wouldn’t be any less dead if I pissed in the sink.

  What is that word? she says. On the window.

  The word is dodo, he says. Another, more exotic, bird that can’t fly.

  Horse turns and walks back to the bedroom. Sally looks at the body once more, then climbs into the bathtub. The water is clammy, room temperature. She sinks until her ears are below the surface and everything is flat and gray.r />
  Horse is sleeping. She watches his chest rise and fall. Water runs from her hair. The shirt is soaked, the long sleeves cold and heavy. Her blue and white dress is a wretched clump on the floor. She tells herself to get dressed and go. He’s not going to give her the money. She takes off the shirt and suddenly is shivering. Her T-shirt smells like sickness and her stomach heaves. She crouches there, staring at her little black shoes. The knife from the kitchen glitters brightly, tucked into her left shoe like a gift, but she doesn’t remember leaving it there. It might have been Horse, playing a game with her. He would think that was wildly funny. She looks at him. His breathing is steady as a metronome.

  Sally kneels on the bed beside him. She holds the knife gently, like it was a bird’s blue egg.

  His skin is the color of wood.

  Between the ribs, he says.

  She doesn’t move.

  Slip the blade between my ribs, he says. Poke a hole in my heart.

  Sally backs away and he smiles, his eyes still closed. I would die in seconds, he says.

  She dresses in the other room. It takes several false starts to get her shoes tied. Her hands are shaking and she sits down to smoke one of Tripper’s cigarettes.

  The television is still on.

  Sally changes the channels until she finds one that is silent and blue. She wonders how long the body will be there. Another day, or two. The chest and stomach and thighs will turn purple, almost black. The blood will settle. She can see Horse waking up in the middle of the night, stumbling to the bathroom in the dark. He will surely step on Tripper’s outstretched hand and curse at him. She pushes the television over with a violent shrug and it crashes against the linoleum. There is a dull popping sound as the screen goes black.

  On the table before her are two cans of spray paint. Sally picks them up, listens to the distant lead rattle. The can that Tripper was using seems unclean somehow. She pulls the lid from the other can, rips a square of cloth from her dress. She folds it twice, like a bandage. She shakes the can back and forth then sprays into her fist until the can is cold. The paint is yellow. Sally presses the cloth to her face and breathes deeply.

  In the bathroom again. She looks closely at Tripper. He hasn’t moved and she’s glad. She feels dizzy and turns to the mirror. The skin around her eyes is yellow. The color of lemons, aliens. Sally turns on the cold water and soaks her wrists. In her left hand she still holds the knife. She turns off the faucet. The fingers of her right hand brush the curve of her breast, her ribs. She has goose bumps. She feels her heart beating and lifts the shirt, watching herself in the mirror. She positions the knife and tries to push it through. The blade bends and she feels a thread of pain. A long thin cut opens down the left side of her body. A ribbon of blood, pretty and painless.

  Drained of color the light creeps up on her. Slow, reptilian. She washes her hands and face. Her mouth is that of a hanged man.

  The sun is high and bright. She feels blind. Three wild dogs, their ribs showing. They follow her, circling. For a moment she is one of them. Perhaps they smell blood and they are waiting for her to weaken.

  She nearly steps on the swollen, legless body of a rat.

  Minutes become teeth. She counts them. Her clothes are torn. The smear of yellow across her face. She wonders about the color of those Nazi lampshades. Would they be yellow or pink.

  She buys coffee in a small grocery. She decides a cop is watching her. His eyes behind black glasses. She goes into the rest room, locks the door. She takes out the plastic jar of lithium. Two pills remain. The prescription is expired.

  Raw pink punctures. She can’t tell dirt from shadow. His genitals were so pale and unthreatening. She won’t sleep. Not until dark. She finds herself walking toward the river. She’s afraid of the river. The sadness swells when she gets close to it. But the water pulls at her.

  Despair. The smell of animal waste. The city is below sea level. The dead are left aboveground and this gives the air a terrible heaviness.

  Now at the river’s edge. Sally sits on a bench. Two boys throw stones at a foreign object in the water, a shadowy lump that drifts lazily in the current.

  What is it? says Sally.

  Dead alligator, says one boy. I think.

  Bullshit, says the other. It’s a sleeping bag.

  Which would be more exciting? she says.

  The boys wander away and she hears a car. Then footsteps in gravel and a man is walking toward her. He wears an ill-fitting blue suit, with white shoes and hat. He grins, lipless and sunburned.

  Pretty day, isn’t it?

  I guess so, she says.

  Do you know a club called The Velvet? he says.

  She stares at him. He is nervous, shifting his feet.

  I never heard of it, she says.

  Sure, he says. I was hoping you might give me directions.

  I told you. I never heard of it.

  Twenty dollars, he says. I’ll give you twenty dollars to get in the car with me.

  Sally turns to look at the car. A silver Toyota sedan with four doors. Electric windows and heated leather seats and two air-bags. A roof-rack for luggage and bicycles and skis that he doesn’t use.

  That’s a nice car, she says.

  Thanks, the man says. Thank you.

  Where shall we go?

  Her skin never asks to be touched. It shrinks. His eyes are invasive, surgical. For six days the sun never drops below the horizon. A blunt object, the fist. The size of a heart.

  Tragedy in Burgundy

  BY JAMES HANNAHAM

  Dear Darnell:

  I am writing to you because my friend LaKeisha’s lying has to stop. It’s been more than a year since she started carousing around clubs like some shameless Jezebel, duping straight mens into thinking she was a woman. I can’t handle the dishonesty. I mighta left the Baptist church and never looked back the day after some deacon who made a pass at me at a barbecue on Saturday gave a sermon against homosexuality on Sunday, but I can’t help thinking in the back of my mind that me an LaKeisha is gonna be bunkmates in flames if we continue to perpetrate this lie. God will punish the wicked. I seen it too many times to doubt that.

  This is what’s really working me. Last week she went on a date with some brother—one tall, fine brother. We’re talking Nubian Prince of Egypt fine, jaw drop to the knees fine, capital F-Y-N-E fine, like “I never knew Adonis had a cuter younger brother” fine. This man is so hot that he could fry bacon in his hand. He could fry my bacon in his hand, that’s for sure. Brother used to be a linebacker in school, now he a lawyer. And she ain’t told him the truth yet. This is a man who could crush her behind with his eyelid. What if some queen sees her in the street with this brother and runs up going, “Ronald! Ronald!” ’cause not everyone be calling her by her drag name all the time like I do. How dead would her ass be then?

  Darnell, I am so scared something is gonna happen to her. She is my best friend in the world, like family, I’ve known her since kindergarten. She’s my twin sister, practically. If something happen to her, I’d be all alone in the world, ’cause I don’t got no family around here. And Sheba (that’s LaKeisha’s cat) just had eight kittens three weeks ago. Who’s gonna give a home to these poor innocent creatures if— oh shit, I’m starting to cry again.

  It’s one week later. I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to write this. But do you see what it’s come to, Darnell? I cannot live like this. Every weekend it’s another club with pastel neon lining the outside edges of the building and fake palm trees and women with big ol’ hair-weaves, so much makeup they look like Jason and nine layers of pantyhose on—there’s so much fakeness on top of these ’ho’s that if you took it all off they’d look like a upside-down mop. And LaKeisha’s no different, playing her little game of straight chicken. Have you heard of gay chicken, Darnell? You should do a show on it, it’s a good topic. Straight men will pick up a gay man and go through a whole date with them until they “get sick.” Ain’t that some shit? Buncha closet cases
if you axe me. I heard about this study they done, where they found out that if you attach a electrode to the dick of a homophobe and make him watch gay porno, that they dicks gets harder than straight men who ain’t homophobic watching the same pornos. It’s like, tell me some shit I don’t know. But what I do wanna know is, how they get them homophobes to tape a electrode to they dick? I was a homophobe, I wouldn’t let nobody with no gay porno and no electrodes within a mile of my ass.

  Unlike them closet cases, though, LaKeisha don’t wanna hurt nobody, she just having a good time. My girl loves to kiki. She the kikingest bitch around. And I don’t wanna be no party pooper or nothing, but I feel like she putting her life in danger (and mines) the way she be carrying on with every Tom, Denzel and Hakim that come up to her with a pup tent in they pants.

  Anyways, I still haven’t gotten to the A1 tip-top reason that Kiki Keisha’s lying has got to stop, that just happened a couple of days ago. So this guy that LaKeisha went on that date with, you know, Super Fly, he’s really into her. I mean really into her. But she don’t know that, ’cause he ain’t called her or nothing. But here’s how I know. The other day, I’m at Fremont and Tamika’s House of Beauty getting my finger waves redone, right. And I’m just chatting with Tamika, you know, it ain’t too many other people around, talkin’ ’bout this and that, whatever. Just chillin’ and whatnot. Tamika is very drag-queen friendly, the only one in Boston like that. I love her. And the front part of the House of Beauty is where Tamika husband, Fremont, got his li’l barbershop. So who walks in but Super Fly, and Fremont starts giving the brother a fade. So on my way out, I’m like, “Hi,” and Super Fly look at me like he seen a overseer’s ghost. He get up out the chair so fast that Fremont gives him a bald spot. A ton of kinky hair go spilling all over the floor. So I’m really charmed, I think the brother maybe like me a little too. But then he goes, “You LaKeisha’s friend, right?” And I go, “Yeah,” even though my li’l ego’s feeling ’bout as big as Emmanuel Lewis’ ho-ho.

  Then he like, “You gotta give me her phone number ’cause I left it in my pants and took them to the cleaners the next day and they washed it. I been thinking about her constantly. I been back to Ruby’s every night looking for her.” He start talking about how she’s the most beautiful woman, pitcher of femininity, gorgeous, womanly, etc., etc. I’m feeling a little cunty, plus he don’t know nearway how wrong he is, so I’m like, “I’d give you her phone number but I ain’t got it on me, sorry.” Like I ain’t had the shit memorized for ninety million motherfucking years. So he give me his business card. And at first I was gonna give it to her. But then I was like, I can’t let this continue. I’m gonna call the brother and tell him the real deal. So the next day I try like all day to dial Prince Charming’s number. I’d been dialing six numbers and then hanging back up so many times that my index finger be getting a big blister in the middle. So finally at nine last night I call him, hoping I’m gonna get his answering machine, ’cause I have this li’l prepared speech about how LaKeisha has put one over on him and he shouldn’t be mad because she was just having fun, whatever. So the phone rings three times, and I’m like, “I’m in the clear.” Then I hear Super Fly’s voice come on the line and the shit sound like a fucking black velvet couch come to life. Good God almighty, my knees starts shaking, my blood gets hotter than the Happyland Social Club—she’s about to have a conniption, honey. So I’m like, “Hi, it’s LaKeisha’s friend,” and he get all excited again—I can tell he’s like, drooling all over the phone—and he start talking about her. The phone keep slipping out my hand because of all the sweat in my palms. I can’t bring myself to shatter his little world, you know. And I don’t wanna be the Grinch that stole LaKeisha’s Christmas. So finally I’m like, “There’s something I gotta esplain to you ’bout LaKeisha, but I can’t do it over the phone. Let’s have dinner, I’ll tell you all about it.” Part of me is thinking he’s clocked us as drag queens from the git-go, and he doing some kinda serious denial trip. But some of them straight guys—you could show them Yaphet Kotto in a dress with no makeup and they’d think it was a real woman. Or attach a electrode to they dick without them knowing.