A Cage of Bones

by Jeffrey Round

  “Where are you going? Did I say you could leave?”

  Warden felt lips brush softly against his back.

  “I don’t remember asking you. Besides, I thought you were still asleep.”

  “What? After I’ve let you molest me and get me all aroused?” Joshua lifted the sheets to reveal an ample erection. “Don’t think you’ll get off that easily.”

  “You’ll have to adjust,” Warden said, slipping from his grasp.

  He pulled aside a corner of the blanket covering the window. The sky was clear, with a few tall clouds in the distance. Joshua raised his arms like a crab scuttling away from the light. A dusting of chest hair showed in the crook of an arm where it bent to cover his face.

  “Coward,” Warden said, slipping on a T-shirt. “We’ve missed it anyway. The day, I mean.”

  “Nothing to miss,” said Joshua. “Nothing of consequence ever happens in the daytime.”

  “Except your sleep, I suppose.”

  They left Sanctuary and headed for a park. A man in shabby clothes stood by the gate with his hat extended, holding a cane in one hand. Four gangly youths with shaved heads had gathered around watching.

  “Do you want money?” the tallest boy asked. “Is that why you’ve got your hat out like that?”

  “Yes,” he answered warily.

  “So do I. I want money,” said the boy in a voice that sounded deceptively polite. “I want your hat, too.”

  Another boy in brown trousers and a green shirt struck a wooden match and flicked it toward the man’s hat. It grazed his sleeve and fell smoking to the sidewalk. A second match bounced off his chest while a third landed inside the upturned hat.

  “I want his cane,” said the third boy, joking with his friends.

  More matches flew, striking the man and falling to the ground. He stood there stiffly and waited. The first youth reached into his hat and pulled out a coin, flipping it into the air.

  “What’s this, lads—are you stealing from the blind now?” Joshua asked.

  They laughed gruffly.

  “Ahh—we’re just having a little fun, Josh,” said the tallest boy. “No law against that, is there?”

  “Don’t steal from the poor, lads. That’s what the government’s for. You need to be like Robin Hood—take from the rich and give it back to poor sods like this one.”

  He took the coin from the boy’s hand and let it fall back into the hat. Warden watched them scatter and disappear into the park, skipping stones and balancing on fences like any other twelve-year-olds.

  “They respect you,” Warden remarked when they’d gone.

  “Why shouldn’t they? We’re all family here,” Joshua replied. “This is my neighbourhood and I’ve been around for about a million years.”

  Warden wondered how he saw himself. As soldier or saviour? As innocence corrupted or a hero holding out arms to embrace a shattered world? He was such a contradiction, furious with the world one moment then human and kind, loving its weaknesses and imperfections the next. He seemed to want to make a heaven out of earth, unable to leave behind the wounded of the world, taking them all into his hands one at a time, watching over them with the light in his pale clear eyes.

  Warden travelled throughout the spring as Calvino sent him a steady flow of work. Each time he returned to Maura’s they treated him on his arrival as he’d seen them do with the big star of the summer before. He was never long in one place and soon lost track of where his image might turn up next.

  His photo on one German magazine cover with a lock of hair curled charmingly over his forehead made Rebekah proclaim him a movie star. Elizabeth Smart herself placed it as the opening shot in his new portfolio. Although he’d ceased to be amazed where his face would pop up next, Rebekah continued to exclaim over each appearance, buying several copies of anything he appeared in. He was amused as she palmed the glowing pages of the magazines, her face alight with pleasure.

  “For god’s sake, Rebekah, you practically live with the man. What do you need all those pictures of him for?” Ivan chided.

  “I’ve never known anyone so beautiful before,” Rebekah gushed. “I think I shall always love him.”

  Because of the unpredictability of his schedule, Warden found himself drawn into Joshua’s lifestyle as his own was slowly turned around. Frequently they slept over at Sanctuary. Lying in one another’s arms at night, they seemed to be listening to a noise in close-up, a fever burning in the very marrow of their bones, as though their hearts were on fire. The greased, polished machines of their bodies barely appeased the hunger that fed on itself, leaving them both trembling afterwards.

  Living at night and sleeping in till afternoon, Warden often found himself going out just before midnight. Three times in one month he showed up at photo shoots looking so haggard they had to be rescheduled. His booker sent him to a tanning salon to get some colour in his pale face. When he missed a flight to Italy one day because he failed to wake up, a whole day’s shooting had to be rearranged. Calvino was furious.

  “What do you mean you overslept? I would rather you tell me you were in an accident. I am very angry with you for this!”

  Warden apologized and caught a later flight so he’d be there that evening and have time to rest for the next day. It was the ‘bad’ behaviour of the models who were too successful that both Jimmy and Calvino warned him about when he started. He promised himself he’d do better.

  22

  If Joshua Behrens and Wheel of Fire were unknown, it was only because they refused to record their music or promote themselves other than through public peformances. Among the youthful crowd that considered itself in-the-know, however, they were among its worst kept secrets.

  Had the group chosen a commercial route to success they could have walked quickly into the heart of the music world. Their aim, however, was not one of artistic progress but rather of political affiliation against what they perceived to be the forces of power and corruption, including such hallowed institutions as the recording industry. Instead, they aligned themselves with the practitioners of cult following, quickly becoming the new messiahs of underground culture.

  Warden first saw Joshua perform at an anti-drug benefit. In actuality, the event seemed not a rally against but rather in praise of drug use in all but name. Heroin was making a comeback as the drug of choice for a new generation of dispossessed youth. The auditorium was filled with the nervous energy of junky hands and bodies, an ethereal band of Magi drawn onward by a dull deceitful star.

  The venue had once been a theatre of aristocratic bearings. Now covered in day-glo spray paint, it had buried its past beneath the lurid colours, giving up the ghosts and melodies of music hall nostalgia. The interior had been gutted and turned into a dance floor. A forest of scaffolding supported lights and sound systems along the walls where bodies clung to the grid-work like barnacles buoyed high above the sea of moving shapes below.

  A band dressed in Santa outfits thrashed frantically on-stage. The song’s nearly incomprehensible lyrics matched the violence of the music while dancers slammed heedlessly into one another. The singer cried out, “Dance! Dance! Dance the Armageddon!” urging the participants on in their nihilistic fury. Warden watched with fascination as bodies collided with one another again and again.

  “It’s what they used to call slam-dancing,” Joshua said in answer to Warden’s curious looks.

  Someone let loose a bag of feathers, sending thick handfuls floating upwards in the blue and red lights playing over the crowd. A body fell—or jumped, rather, for the action seemed self-willed—from the scaffolding and landed on the crowd below, knocking down several dancers and disorienting others. The dancing continued without pause as did the shedding of physical inhibitions at an even greater rate. Another body belly-flopped into the crowd from the high towers as the band wound up its frenzy of masturbatory violence.

  “What are they doing?” Warden asked in disbelief.

  “It’s a kind of ritual,” Joshua answ
ered. “They take one or two out a night in ambulances. The others are luckier.”

  Cathartic destruction seemed the intent as things were smashed or shredded around them. A couple copulated on the floor by the stage while the music ground on and feathers floated in the air. Everything seemed a pretence for posturing or violence, as though either could come with unwitting ease. A boy attempting to scramble on-stage was smashed over the head with a guitar by one of the Santa-suited musicians before sprawling backwards into the crowd.

  “I hope he’s all right,” Warden said.

  “He’ll be all right when he wakes up in the morning. Sid Vicious used to do that sort of thing here and it’s been the same ever since,” Joshua answered, as though it were merely a matter of history.

  Warden sensed a dominion of pieces over the whole as a wanton eclecticism became the order of the day. Love and sex and violence mingled casually in a snarl of sensation, a dark netherworld existing solely by reason of its own desire, creating its own rules of order. They were as frivolous, Warden thought, as the hedonistic fashion crowds bent on their forms of oblivion.

  It was a culture erected on the belief that there was no longer any culture, and everyone wanted to partake of the spoils. Its message wasn’t a denial of the past so much as a total renunciation of the future, as though anything beyond today were not merely insupportable, but almost unthinkable. An all-consuming present seemed to be the only conceivable reality. The new vulgarity had come to demand its reign and for the moment the world was lit by a new light burning with sickening excess.

  “Welcome to the Abyss of Unmeaning,” Joshua said as they picked their way through the crowd.

  The band on stage had finished its set, ripping off their Santa suits at the end of the song, having already annihilated everything else around them while feathers whirled in the air. The crowd continued dancing like elements in chaos long after the noise had stopped.

  Joshua left to go backstage. Warden watched as the band made its way on. Joshua came out last wearing a tattered Chanel No. 5 T-shirt and red bandana, his trademark outfit at performances, a symbol for the anti-fashion crowds who demanded their icons as much as any other. Lights flashed on and Warden felt himself momentarily blinded.

  Joshua stepped into the light, taking refuge in its momentary radiance. A bass note pulsed as he reached for the microphone. Percussive sounds joined in, giving direction to its formless urges as feathers continued to fall.

  “You know who we are,” Joshua’s deep voice boomed over their heads.

  There was scattered cheering in answer, as though to say the crowd did know who was addressing them.

  “I’d like to say we’re glad to be here as part of this protest today in urging everyone to take the issue of drug abuse seriously. And we do…hope you’re taking it seriously.”

  A guitar wailed as Joshua broke into song. His voice contained a boyish wistfulness, a note of hope weighed down by despair. His presence was magically aloof, like an intoxicated god prancing before them. He seemed to lift the darkness overhead, hands raised in absolution through rays of light as he contemplated the world caught in his gleaming fist.

  The band played three songs then, their set over, they slipped out as the applause roared after them. Stagehands rushed out to make arrangements for the next act before chaos again took hold of the audience.

  Afterwards, Warden took Joshua to meet Rebekah and Ivan at a Soho nightclub. Rebekah arrived in a tuxedo, hair slicked back from her forehead. Ivan wore a strapless gown with a fur stole, greeting them with extravagant waves and kisses from across the room. The crowd turned to look.

  “Ivan, you’re gorgeous!” Warden gushed.

  “D’you like it?” he asked, twirling to display the costume. “I’ve been working on it for weeks.”

  “Versace would kill to say it was one of his creations.”

  Ivan raised a gloved hand to his brow. “Darling,” he said to Rebekah. “We’ll have to keep this one around. He’s good for a girl’s ego.”

  Joshua quietly surveyed the outrageous couple. Warden had worried about bringing them together, remembering Joshua’s tendency to bridle at anything he disapproved of. The frivolity of those he considered privileged was a pet peeve. He introduced them.

  “Charmed,” said Ivan, stretching out a gloved hand. “It isn’t every day one gets to meet musical royalty.”

  Joshua took the hand as though unsure whether to shake or kiss it. Ivan pulled it from his grasp before he could decide.

  “That’s enough for now—you can come back for seconds later if you want more.”

  “Most people find once is more than enough,” Rebekah interjected.

  “Darling, you’re just jealous because I’m more beautiful than you for once.”

  Ivan and Rebekah settled in across the table. “You make a lovely couple,” Warden joked.

  “And so do you two,” Rebekah said.

  “I expect you’ll be getting married any day now,” Ivan said with a sigh.

  “Ivy—you’re brilliant!” Rebekah exclaimed. “What a wonderful idea!”

  “What did I say?” Ivan asked.

  “A celebrity wedding, Ivy! Just think of it! ‘Famed gay pop singer marries top male model!’” she stated with all the vehemence of a newspaper headline.

  She turned excitedly to Warden and Joshua. “You must! And it’ll have to be some place really special like St. Paul’s with a real ceremony and full regalia. And it’ll definitely have to be a drag wedding,” she declared, the idea growing as she went along. “We’ll put Ivy in charge of all the costumes.”

  “My sense of taste and styling is second to none,” Ivan concurred.

  “But only close friends will be allowed to come in drag. The guests will have to dress normally and content themselves with being ordinary,” she stated. “We need to show the world that not every gay man’s a wimp and every dyke a lady truck driver. What do you think? It’s brilliant, isn’t it?”

  Warden tensed, waiting for Joshua’s response. At the very least, he expected a curt reply to her suggestion, but Joshua laughed and put his arm around Warden’s shoulder.

  “All right,” he said. “St. Paul’s it is. You’re in charge, then. And I’m telling you now, I look hideous in lilac.”

  23

  Wheel of Fire’s mandate had been based on an agreement by the band’s members not to pursue popularity or commercial success. Apart from what they needed to support themselves, the band dutifully turned over their earnings to maintain Sanctuary as a rehearsal space and haven for others. Once they found themselves in vogue, however, the question of recording was brought up again as recording companies approached them with offers.

  After discussing the issue, Joshua declared himself in favour of the enterprise. Three other members sided with him. Only Jah, the group’s drummer, was opposed, seeing it as a betrayal of their vow to remain a vital political force undiminished by commercial concerns. He chastised the others for wanting to transgress their ideals, warning them they’d soon find their aims compromised.

  “It’s a way to spread our beliefs and find a wider audience than we reach by performing,” argued Kareem, the group’s bassist.

  Jah shook his head sobrely, his multi-coloured dreadlocks concurring his dissent. “That’s not the point,” he said sharply. “We’ve agreed that private property is public theft. If we make a recording, we’re creating a product to be marketed. We’re turning our ideas and music into an object for consumption. And it won’t stop there—these record companies are already talking about our image as if it’s something they can manipulate to make their product more marketable. I say it’s a total sham!”

  Apart from Jah, the others were willing at least to consider the offers. Eventually a compromise was reached, with a recording made by an independent label to be sold only in smaller record shops with a reputation for fairness. Larger chains and department stores were circumvented entirely.

  So practised at the art of ob
scurity were they that they refused to put their names or photographs on the cover of their one recording, making not the slightest concession to commerce or popularity. This didn’t deter the hordes of fans who knew of the collection long before its release proper. Nor did it prevent others from making pirated copies of their own.

  The recording was done without editing or sound-enhancing technology of any kind. They were one-take performances with all the flaws enshrined—feedback squeals, wrong notes, erratic rhythms—lionized like flaws in the face of life itself. The band was proud that none of their skills had been engineered or manufactured in recording the powerful raw energy of their sound.

  With the circumspect release of the recording, Wheel of Fire became the darlings of the musical press as well as the legions of underground fans who’d long been aware of their existence. The media quickly took up the cry, hailing them as a brave new presence on the musical scene until the band parodied the press itself as sycophantic followers of musical fashion in a song called Media Whores.

  Joshua had several run-ins with journalists perplexed by the idealism of his beliefs in contrast to the sudden surges of temper with which he expressed them. He was portrayed as a young man full of anger for everything, including himself. The other members were characterized as both heroes and clowns, while the crowds attending their appearances grew with every barrage against them.

  That summer the band was occupied between engagements and negotiations for filming a video. Their most popular song, Don’t You Think I Know, portrayed a spurned lover following his beloved through her conquest of hip society like a modern day Orpheus’ descent into the underworld with his cynical observations of all she’s become in the process, cataloguing the regrets of his unrequited love along the way.

  At Joshua’s urging, Warden was cast as the neglected lover. Warden asked Joshua why he wanted him in the video rather than himself.

  “Because you’re prettier than me, that’s why,” he said.