by A M Homes
Carefully casting my corporeal container into the curves of a contortionist, I fit my mouth into the slot in the door.
Henry’s needle pokes my cheek. “You’ll have to guide it in. I can’t see anything.”
I feel the needle in my mouth; a drop of poison drips onto my tongue.
“Ready?” he asks.
I curl my lickety licker around the needle, rolling it around until the prickly pointer is aimed down, under my tongue. A guttural aha indicates that the position is perfect, and Henry plunges the needle in. Flesh pierced, drug in, needle out. My head swims. The flavor of blood swirls in my mouth. I fall to the floor, slipping into something like sleep, like a dream. I travel back in time, living my life in reverse until I’m back at the beginning. The rest of my journey is a travelogue.
What makes a man become a man become a murderer? This is the story you’ve been waiting for. What makes a man become a man become a murderer? A girl. Ruby Diamond Pearl. Call her Jewel; ruby of my heart, Alice.
I have rented a small cabin in New Hampshire, the farthest part of a fallen family compound as advertised in the pages of the New York Times, May 7, 1971: “Contemplation? Quaint summer retreat, secluded, perfect for single person, near lake, no smoking, no small children.”
(The now yellowed clipping, the one-half inch of typesetting that changed my life—remember that her family paid to have it placed—I keep mounted for conservation considerations on a three-by-five, acid-free index card. Its presence is a cornerstone of my archive.)
I have come away, leaving life behind in an effort to escape the power of my predilections.
In Philadelphia I frightened myself.
Fitting feet in a children’s shoe parlor, having for the tenth time sold myself short, accepting a position thoroughly beneath and below me only to be closer to the objects of my obsession. I made my on-the-job entertainment my methodology for testing to see whether or not the shoe fit. Pulling close to the kinder who sat safely next to their maters, or the mater’s maid—the baby-sitter—I spread my legs and drew the foot toward my crotch. Tenderly cupping the heel, I slipped off the walking shoe and pressed the besocked pedalis against the bulge of my balls, then asked, “Can you wiggle your toes?”
And while Mummy watched, the little puellae gracefully gave me a sweet minimassage. No one ever said anything, stopped me, or even indicated they thought it anything out of the ordinary. “Go tell Aunt Rhody.”
“Good. Good. Now the other one.”
Massage completed—the immediate need satiated—I set the footie on the floor, picked up the old shoe, and directed my attention to the mother, the old gray goose.
“Were you thinking of something special? Anything particular come to mind? Do you see something on the wall?” And so the shoes were sold, the deal was done, again and again, day in, day out. But on that particular afternoon my frustration had peaked, and looking for something new, some fresher and more furious relief, I insisted on walking home a girl whose mother had sent her for Mary Janes. Using the odd excuse that the delicacy of her feet, their fine contours, shape, and delectability, made it absolutely essential for me to test the fit of all the shoes in her closet, I led her home, hinting that if the rest of her footwear was as ill fitting as those she’d walked in with, she’d quickly become deformed, defective, would suffer strange bony protrusions and other assorted crippling, crusty deformities. Within months she’d be walking like an old woman, if walking at all.
All too easily she took me to her parents’ house, a hideous modern monstrosity. I should add a brief description of the girl; she was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, my selecting her was part of the scare I gave myself. My standards were slipping. She could quite honestly be described as bovine-to-be, a cow in the future if not immediately. My only excuse my boredom, my deepening depression.
I imposed, inviting myself to her home, having become so practiced, so recently slick, that I believed I could get a girl to do anything. One quickly learns to detect the perfect princesses who will, all too willingly, say yes. In this case the illustration of interest, mounting desire, however unconscious, was extreme—played out in the pink puff of her lip. When she spoke, this thick lip rolled back exposing an enormous amount of gum, the lips themselves slightly swollen—and all ye men will understand this— quite clearly giving the impression of the lock they could form on one’s privatest parts. In other words, her mouth screamed blow job, forgive my crudity.
She led me to her room. Her chamber was painted Pepto-Bismol pink and featured matching plush carpeting, heavy wooden white lacquer furniture decorated with golden trim, and a canopied virgin bed—a twin—all of it implying I had entered the lair where an angel would sleep. I sat on a red-tufted chair that fit snugly under her vanity and tried not to spy myself in her mirror. She threw open the double doors of her closet. Laid out neatly on the floor were at least a dozen pairs of shoes. I smiled, pleased with the cache—this would take hours. To slow my excitement, to distract myself, I glanced around the room. Fixed on the wall were the theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy. On the night-stand, a pink diary lay open. I had no desire to read it, I knew it would only inflame, enrage my current condition.
“And what do you wear with those?” I asked, pointing to a pair of patent pumps.
A black velvet dress was extracted from the closet and waved back and forth in front of me.
“Show me,” I said.
She stepped into the closet, which was not really constructed as a fitting room, but she walked into it anyway, displaying a modicum of modesty. If she were truly genteel, she might have excused herself or me and made her changes in the bathroom down the hall. However, she stepped into the closet and pulled the louvered doors closed behind her. There was the sound of a bitty battle raging, crash and clang, hangers falling, thump, thump, elbows banging, so on, so forth, all of it fast and furious. Clearly she was rushing, working fast, hoping I wouldn’t lose interest.
Finally, she flung the door open and stood before me transformed.
I played dumb. Bending to my knees, I crawled toward her, felt her feet, squeezed her toes, all the while resting my left hand on the cool, smooth, silken skin of her bare white thigh. Sigh.
“What else have you got?” I asked, my eyes slowly rolling up from the floor, first sweeping under her dress, catching sight of the tender plump of her inner thighs, then traveling higher still, over the latent breast, ultimately catching her eye, smiling. “Let’s try something else,” I said.
And as she dipped back into her costume closet, closing the door behind her, I unzipped my own trapdoor, took wild Willy out, and let him get a feel for the room. Stroking myself, still sniffing the sweet stink of her, I wax and wonder and Willy grows strong and hard. As I hear her making final adjustments, banging against the doors, I tuck the mighty member away.
She has put on her pink tutu, her little leotard, her entrance is a dance she does for me. And while I am supposed to be admiring her technique, her ability to be en pointe on the Pepto-pink carpet, as she makes her jetes across the room, I am watching the breast buds bloom seemingly before my very eyes. The same goes for her crotch; through the cling of her tights I swear I can see the labia lips thickening, dousing the nasty nylon with something sweeter than sweat.
I massage myself through my trousers, pausing to applaud the great performance. “Encore, encore,” I shout, adding to my cry the question, “What time does your mother get home?”
“Not until eight-thirty or nine.”
“And your father?”
“Tuesday.”
“What other roles can you perform?” I ask, standing to stretch, to flip through the remaining outfits, to consider what I’d like to see her in. “Have you got any uniforms?” The truth is, as I glide over the rack, parting the hangers, sending some off to the right, some to the left, with my free hand I’m rearranging matters in my pants.
I rummage through and find a blue satin dress.
; “From my sister’s wedding,” she says.
“Matching shoes?”
Nodding, she retrieves a pair of silk pumps hidden beneath her bed—what other goodies might be buried there? She hurries into her cramped cabana, sensing my mounting impatience. In truth I am already hopelessly bored, my air of annoyance is just an affectation, a demonstration of my affliction. I look out the window. It is coming close to seven; my stomach growls. No mention has been made of dinner. And while I’m sure I could all too easily have her whip up something for me, it’s better not to bother. I want to do this and then depart to dine alone, feasting on the memory, on further fantasy, on what I imagine might have happened, if only, if only.
My ruminations, my dubious daydreams, have left me not paying attention, and while I was out to lunch, she must have popped out of the closet, and unfortunately, this time the bovine beast forgot to duck and has knocked her head against the low interior wall with an unbelievably loud ka-thunk, like the metal-on-metal cacophony of a car crash. She has again captured my attention. I snap to and find her falling backward, her legs collapsing beneath her, head landing with a thud on the pink carpet. Out cold. I rush to her side, am instantly upon her. The blue satin dress is hiked up a bit; I raise it farther still, pulling down the panties, exposing the gemstone, which is clearly glowing, beckoning me.
She makes no move, no sound but a soft moan, the result of the blow or my touch?
Alone with such a thing, free to do with it as I please, no watching, no waiting. First, I open it and have a long, slow look, working my eyes more closely, less romantically than I would otherwise be able to do; this is the clinical view. I examine it, amazed, ever in awe, then poke at it with my tongue, paving the way.
It is all about me, my desire.
I fuck her every which way, pulling out just in time to leave my squirt, my hot sealing wax splashed over her lips, gracing her face. When she wakes, she will think it is heavy drool; she has slobbered or seized in her artificial sleep.
A warm rag doll. A living, loving thing, laid back in complete compliance.
I dance around the room, paint my face with her lipstick, and leave strange kisses on her cheeks, which I then rub in, giving her a false blush. I fuck her again, can’t help myself. It is the first time I’ve stolen sex, taken something without asking.
There is no desire other than my own. I think only of myself and it is incredibly liberating.
Truly done, going home, I pull up her underwear, taking the time to tuck her hand down under the band, to spread things so her finger is between those lucky lips—if someone finds her first, she herself will be the prime suspect.
“What were you thinking, dear?” her mother will ask.
Feigned innocence. She’ll shake her head, it will throb from the concussion. She has no idea.
I leave her, soundlessly sneaking down the carpeted steps, darting out of the house, disappearing into the twilight of a spring night. Fireflies blink at me, flashing yellow like caution lights. I pay heed and upon returning to my home, telephone my employer and offer condolences on the occasion of my early and unexpected retirement. I must leave town immediately.
“Sorry to see you go. You were a hit with the customers, never saw a salesman bend balloons the way you did,” he said, referring to my apparently unique ability to twist inflated wands of rubber into sculptural objects to be given to the boys and girls as rewards for good behavior. “Are you sure there’s no circus in your blood? The only people I ever saw who could make rubber curl like that were circus folk.”
“No circus,” I said. “Just practice, much practice. Well, I should be going. Thanks. Thanks again,” I said, hanging up—he could go on for hours.
In my shame, my fear, my deep consternation as regards my apparent loss of control, I respond to the advertisement in the previous Sunday’s Times.
I’ve been to New Hampshire once before with my mother and father when I was three or four. I have no memory of it. I have nothing except a small black-and-white photograph; the three of us in a rowboat. My mother, porcelain and milky glass, fragile, not yet cracked. My father, even seated, towers over everything, as if the picture were a bit of trickery, playing perspective games, making the man look bigger than the boat, larger than the lake he’s floating on. He wears a white shirt. He holds me up, high above his head. I am hanging, hovering, flying. In a striped T-shirt, I am a human bumblebee.
I have come to New Hampshire to repair myself—if such a thing is possible—to piece together the puzzle that is me.
In Philadelphia the girl has come to or worse yet has been found on the floor still disarranged, the box containing her Mary Janes spilled beside her. Someone has called the police. My clever craftiness has caught up with me.
Prison. Captivus interruptus. An enormous clattering, rolling wheels. They have fetched a stretcher and are taking Frazier away. He wheezes his way off-key through an entirely new version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
The sergeant stops at my door.
“Busy day,” I say.
“Either it happens all at once or not at all.”
“What time is it?”
“Haven’t got time,” he says. “Are you dressed? Pull yourself together, it’s not a pajama party. They’re coming for you, they’re on their way.”
“Okay, okay,” I say, resenting that he won’t take a moment to tell me the time, resenting his intrusion into my daydream.
In New Hampshire, I start a diary, a kind of daybook, charting my moods, the measure of my madness. On page one I print the plan, the rudiments of my regime. Everything I do will be mandated, part of a prescription: eat, drink, exercise, smoke, etcetera, etcetera. A personal treatment plan. Five times a day I will be required to touch myself, whether I want to or not. Desire no longer has a destiny, the idea being that if I approach it before it arrives, force arousal using only the stuff of my imagination, I will eventually exhaust myself, causing my condition to come under control. The plan is this. Mornings at seven-thirty, reveille. I touch till eight, then the room is tidied. Breakfast is taken, followed by a brisk walk through the woods and twenty minutes of calisthenics. I boil water for tea, read for an hour, and break for a cigarette. At eleven I release myself again, this time dipping into the farthest reaches of my imagination. It takes the full hour. Noon is lunch. One o’clock, swim. Then nap and bath, the order of which is reversible. At three-thirty, the hour when, in the right season, school is typically let out, I am permitted to make an escape, to drive into town and run what errands I must. At six, cocktails are served, and I allow the liberating effects of the libations to lift my libido again, furiously frigging, while the dinner meat marinates. Dinner is served at seven, and at eight, dishes done, I listen to the radio or read until ten, when I prepare for bed, waxing myself once again before dropping off to dream.
For four days I have been the world’s best boy.
It is morning, I am reading, my virtue is high; however, the mind wanders, I daydream. Before my eyes is Philadelphia, her dress pulled up. I see a splash of hair that I didn’t remember until now. It comes off as quite charming, really rather endearing, a furry dot that marks the spot. My thoughts disconcert me. I don’t like hair. I know I don’t like hair.
Read.
I will myself back to the words.
Something dashes by.
Bam! Bam! Bam! I wonder how long that’s been going on. A heavy knock, a pounding at the door. And I notice that I’ve buttoned my shirt wrong. I hurry to do it again. Uncoordinated—it’s been a long time since I worked anything into such small holes.
“Assume the position,” a muffled voice commands me. “Hands behind your back, legs spread, back to the door. Freeze.”
Prison.
A flash like the explosion of a photo cube, the blue dot left in front of the eye. I see a girl. A girl, I blink. Again. The girl is still there. I am being tempted, teased.
Concentrate. The silence of the first few days, the extremity of being
alone, is excruciating. All I hear is myself, louder and louder, faster and faster, until I surrender, until I can bear to hear nothing at all. Silence.
A rare memory: my father’s undershirt, white ribbed, sleeveless, rests on the chair. I put it on, it hangs to the floor. My mother laughs. “Your dress,” she says, and we dance around the room. “Your ball gown is sweeping the floor.”
I cannot escape myself.
The lake. I swim in the lake. It is the one place I go where I cannot think, nothing enters my head except the sensation, the pain of the cold water. Forcing myself to swim, I go round and round in circles, praying I do not have a cramp or a heart attack. Although the water is not deep, one could easily drown. I swim naked, buck naked: my nakedness is proof I have nothing to hide.
I wish to thoroughly reveal myself.
A fever. My thoughts are filled with the odd imaginings of a heated head.
My mother’s face changes with her mood, dissolving while she sleeps. She is beautiful in her dreams. Awake, a streak of bright red lipstick splits her mouth, splashes her teeth. She kisses me and I go outside stained, the impression of her mouth everywhere.
There are noises in the woods. Something is out there watching me. They are watching me and I am writing it down. Hidden in my words are confessions. They are closing in. I feel the cold eye of a magnifying glass, a scope. I am writing down the very words I should destroy.
Ollie Ollie Oxen Free.
Dinner. Fish. A bit of flounder. String beans almondine, baked potato.
A pinch of marjoram.
Again the heavy knock, pounding at the door. “Follow the instructions. Assume the position,” a muffled voice commands me. Where is the sergeant, my friend? I struggle to stand, to do what they ask.
I think I see something. I will catch them at their game, get them watching me. On the windowpane is the wet press, the mark from where a nose was all too recently laid.
I’m not sure if I’m seeing this or dreaming it; she stares at me. There is war paint on her face.
