The Tides of Lust

by Samuel Delany

  Bull moved a boot on the floor, hefted his crotch. His fingers closed, were stopped by something big. “What do you want to know, Captain?” His hands went back to his pockets as he looked up. “Let’s sit down and talk.”

  They sat at a table near the back wall.

  “Do you know either of these people?” the captain asked, taking out the wallet. Bull reached across the table and took the leather folder. He fingered the pictures, grunted. “I do.” He looked up.

  “Who’s the woman?”

  “The wallet belongs to the man.”

  The captain raised an eyebrow. “What’s his name?”

  “Jonathan Proctor.”

  “What can you tell me about him.”

  “He used to come in here. A couple of times he brought the woman. But not recently. Hey,” he looked up. “Hey, Nazi; this nigger here came in while you were out. He wants to know about Proctor.”

  The dog worked from under the table, barked three times. Gunner punched at his head, and Niger went back under.

  Nazi: a hairy, big-knuckled bruiser. Give him a quarter of a century from across the room. Up close, add another five years. The hair is black. (The girl with him was dark, slim; she wore black.) He wore a leather jacket, unzipped, no shirt. One black boot.

  The other foot was bare. Like the captain he wore a chain. Smell: grease, hard sweat. Old sweat. Hair, hands, and foot: pretty dirty. He hooked a broad thumb with its broken nail (crescent of black) over the twin brass rings of his buckles. “What’s he want to know?” He looked down over Bull’s arm.

  “Where is he?” the captain asked. “I want to see . . . him.”

  Nazi dug his nose with his forefinger. “He’s some sort of artist. Got a studio upstairs over a warehouse a couple of blocks away. He lives there. You just go up and knock. If he’s busy, he’ll kick you out. He’s . . .” Now Nazi sat on the edge of the table, and his hand went to the girl’s hip; he shook his head, and scimitars of black fell down his face. “. . . sort of funny.”

  The captain surprised Bull by taking the wallet back. “Which direction is his studio?”

  “Huh?” Nazi lifted his head from the velvet hip beside him. “About three blocks that way.” He looked at what was on his finger, put it in his mouth to the second knuckle and sucked.

  The captain pushed the chair back. The dog pushed by Gunner’s leg, made the door. The captain looked back, called, “Come on, Niger,” and left.

  The two men frowned at each other. Bull’s eyes went to the children. “. . . Mmm . . .” He looked back at Nazi. Then he let the grin break out. “I guess you came in time. I seen you lookin’ at them little blond bastards.”

  “Yeah?” Nazi.

  The woman looked down at him, then at Kirsten. She did something with her tongue behind her cheek.

  Bull looked up at the woman Nazi had brought with him; said to Nazi, not looking at him, “I’d like to eat some of that classy Colson Hill tush. About right now.” He winked. She looked away.

  Nazi said, “I been sticking my dick in it all afternoon. Been real spiced up for you, Bull.” His hand, on Kirsten’s shoulder, slid behind her neck. The little girl looked back from the door.

  Bull looked at her face for apprehension.

  Nazi didn’t. His other hand rubbed on her thigh. “Let me get my face in that. How many times has that black motherfucker had his dick in that today?”

  Kirsten put her hand on Nazi’s chest.

  Bull, prodding the other woman’s small breasts with his hard fingers asked, inanely, “What’s your name?”

  “Kim,” she said, oddly, but no less provocatively because the sensuousness was obviously affected.

  “Well, Kim—” Bull put both hands on his thighs—“I’m going to eat your cunt.”

  Kim did not laugh.

  Gunner watched from the corner of the table.

  Bull licked his lower lip. Kim rubbed his head. Bull stood, picked her up. She started, as he sat down on the table, pushed her back—she grabbed the edge by Gunner’s hands—Bull yanked the waist of her panties with both hands.

  “Hey . . . !” as they tore.

  He dropped his head in her.

  Nazi took Gunner’s shoulder. “What you gonna do if I suck your sister’s box?”

  “Lemme suke you!”

  Nazi’s lips tightened on a grin, “Yeah,” that turned, with the word, to laughing. “You’d look good down there on my pecker. Get down on the floor, boy. That’s right. Now come over to me. Yeah, on your knees.” (Sometimes, everything flattens out . . . Attention.)

  Gunner put his arms around Nazi’s legs. Nuzzled the bar in the gamey cloth. His tongue there. He knew the taste of urine.

  Nazi pulled his fly down halfway with his thumb, “Fish it out, cocksucker. No, don’t use your hands.”

  Gunner was rocked by staggering movement, looked up. Kirsten’s legs hung wide from the table edge. Nazi lowered his face, and at the same time grabbed Gunner’s hair. The thrust caught him deep in the throat, and he was blind on the groin.

  He heard Kirsten gasp, gasp again.

  Later, he felt other hands on his back. Bull. Gasped sounds, spit on a dick: wedged in Gunner’s cheeks. Hot palms on his hips. Thick inches opened him. Bull’s chest slapped his back. Hair rasped him. Breath made a hot storm in his ear. Bull rocked on him, surged in him. One hand came up to Gunner’s face to gouge Nazi’s red sac from his pants. Slipped to the shaft, put two fingers in Gunner’s mouth beside the cock. His stroke in the boy slowed and strengthened.

  Kirsten’s foot, swinging above them, twice struck Gunner’s chin.

  Kim stood over the blonde girl. She caressed the yellow hair. Kirsten’s tongue parted dark silk, delved (below, Nazi’s tongue sank in, and her breath was harsh): Kim’s left leg quivered. Her eyes were not open. Her tongue pushed between her lips, pulled back suddenly, pushed slowly out again. She dropped her head, lifted Kirsten’s face in her hand. The rings of their mouths filled with doubled-back tongues pushing—then Kim’s, thrust hard. Her knees came down till her thighs brushed, then moved to press, Kirsten’s.

  Bull reached between them to work his fingers in the wet. The girls clung, sharing knees and lips. Breasts flattened on breasts, bellies flattened. Nazi and Bull pried in mingled black and blonde with tongues and fingers.

  BULL’S TALE:

  I used to live in the town next to this one, for a long time. Cugarsville? (He settles closer to Gunner in the dark, and wonders if the boy is asleep, but talks anyway.) Back when I was about eighteen or so I got this bitch knocked up. We got married, see. And she’s been dropping kids—I guess most of them are mine—every year since; although we don’t hardly live together no more. She’s a mean old whore is what she is. The middle girl, Bethy, she probably the sweetest one. Pretty. That’s when I got so I could go back and spend a couple of days with the old lady without trying to break her head before I left. Bethy, we’d go for walks in the woods, and tell each other stories. And wrestle too. She liked that. Shit, that little bitch could throw cunt around fast as her mama. I’d get me liquored up, and go scratch on the back window. She’d slip out. Nine. And I could always get two fingers into any of my little girls’ pussies anytime. When she was climbing out the window, I’d have my pants open, and waving it around, you know? She’d squeal, and I’d say, “You just come on here and take care of your daddy’s big ole’ pecker.” She’d love me so much I couldn’t stand it. Sometimes we’d go up in some old barn and stay at each other all day. Suckin’. Fuckin’. And suckin’ some more. She got knocked up, too, wouldn’t you know. And then the other little girl of mine—Marny. I slipped in that little bitch the wrong time of the month. And she was just eight. The two of them, blowin’ up with their pappy’s accidents. Now I thought that was fine. But mama didn’t like it too much. She was about to drop another one herself. Then this waitress who worked down in the diner near the Shell Station started going around saying I was daddy to the one she was lugging. Now that was shit: I�
�d been sticking her regular, but so had six other guys. And I was at that party where, maybe, ten of us who was working on the road crew got into her back of the garage. But she just wanted to make trouble for me, and take advantage of the rumor going round that Bull was instant babies. So I moved a town over. And I met that guy your boss is after.

  Things been pretty good since. He was the first person in this town I really talked to. And after a couple of weeks, when I’d got work—in the police office, not out on the road—I asked him, “Hey, did you tell anybody to give me that job?” He said no. “What have you been doing for me?” I asked. “You been talkin’ to the people up on Colson Hill?” And he said, “No. Just listening to you.” “You been telling me things too, though,” I told him. He said, “It has to do with the way I listen.” He knows a lot of people, in this town, in other places. They even come to see him. He listens to a lot of people, I guess. And it changes things. I been lawman here for almost three years. And it’s been a good sight more peaceful town. I asked him if he thought I ought to take the job—got it by being deputy first. “Why not?” he said. I said, “Well, someone like me, you know . . .” He said, “How’s being instant babies gonna hurt your being law?” And you know something, we don’t hardly have any women criminals in this whole town no more.

  (He picks the gun up. The barrel taps the floor; he rears back on the chair, the dark stock flattening his thigh.)

  Bethy threw another little bitch. Shit, she must be six or seven years old now herself, though I ain’t been back much. I sure would like to get back there and take a look at her. You think a little girl six or seven could take my dick? Little girl gettin’ knocked up by her pappy ain’t all that bad. Or her grand-pappy. I like it sweet and smooth and young. Or real rough, one. Ain’t too far from here. And sometimes I just get to thinkin’, about that sweet little pussy waitin’ over there in the next town for me, someplace, you know?

  THREE

  FAUST IN ITALY

  Today, Wednesday after St. Vitus, 1528, one who calls himself Dr. Jorg Faustus of Heidelberg has been told to spend his penny elsewhere, and has promised not to resent or mock such summons of the authorities.

  —Record of expulsion from the

  minutes of the Town Council

  of Ingelstadt

  The captain walked beside the brick wall of the bar. At the alley, he turned, as if a thought had taken him. Five steps in, he thumbed apart the buttons of his pants, and turned to the wall.

  His water ran the cinderblock foundation, puddled. He moved the stream back and forth, breaking it on the bars of the cellar window. He heard his stream inside on the cellar floor.

  His puddle darkened the earth. Buttoning, he turned to go, when he saw: two hands, barred with ligaments, cabled with veins and scaly with dirt, grasp the wet pipes.

  The captain frowned, stepped back. Someone inside was licking the dripping bars.

  Niger barked from the head of the alley. The captain’s face showed both confusion and recognition. As he reached the street Niger ran up and nosed his palm. Absently, he roughed the black fur.

  “Hey, Captain!”

  He looked up.

  The sunburned drifter loped into the street. “Hey,” again. Robby’s hands came out of his pockets. “Any action in that place with all the curtains on the windows?” He gestured toward The Hall of Mirrors.

  The captain shrugged.

  “Nothin’, huh?” Robby’s elbow swung out from his side as he began walking with the captain. “Where did the kids go? Pretty little girl!” The swinging elbow hit the captain’s arm. “You ever get any of that? She had that sweet look hungry pussy gets when it’s walking around on the street.” Niger, reaching the corner first, barked again.

  “How you doing?” the captain asked. “Find anything yet?”

  “Shit,” Robby drawled. “I ain’t even been close enough to smell none.” He shoved his fists forward and squinted at the sky. Then his head came back. He spat. “I’m just walking around here, feelin’ through the holes in my pockets, playing with my prick and looking for a place to put it. Sure as shit ain’t nothing else to do.” He nodded at his own profundity. “You going back to your boat?”

  “Going to see about that woman.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The one you saw around the boat.”

  Robby shook his head. “You niggers have all the fuckin’ luck.”

  The captain let laughter. And laughing, he clapped Robby’s shoulder, then turned the corner, while the dog leaped, half a block away.

  —A CARTOON: DISNEY—

  The wooden steps rattled under the beast’s claws. Niger burst the door. The man wheeled on the stool and grabbed the edge of the drawing board. His forehead scored with surprise. His boots hit the floor (he started to stand); then, as the dog leaped backwards, and back again, the craggy face cracked on a grin. “Down, boy! Down—” And looked up because a barefoot buck was standing in his door.

  The man’s grin fell away. Astonishment lay under.

  The dog circled, then sat by the captain, forepaw on the black foot. The tongue lolled and shook over the black gums. The captain raised his hands and settled his thumbs under his belt. The shapes in his forearms changed size. “You’re Jonathan Proctor.”

  Proctor nodded. Grey hair, short. Grey brows marked his face with a frown. “Who are you?” Slender. Hands very wide. The left hung by hooked fingers from the board’s edge. The nails were thick. White hair pawed the back of his collar, clawed from his chest over the edges of his shirt.

  “I’m captain for The Scorpion.” And looked at the:

  Painted panels of Masonite, some twelve feet high:

  A gutted horse sat in flaming money. Two naked figures hid in its carcass, toying at each other’s genitals.

  A castrated Negro on a train’s cow-catcher moved forward through dispersing figures: one, the great flower of a woman’s face; another, a man with a broken sword.

  A musculature manikin was painted as a black, with real, woolly hair pasted on the skull; in his chest an open wound had been gouged, and a union flag draped through his arm.

  On a shelf sat a glove-manikin hand, black, and painted with a trompe l’oeil night: stars, moon, and the pale clouds before it.

  The captain took the wallet from his pocket. “Your picture is in this wallet. What can you tell me about the woman?” He tossed it toward the drawing board.

  Proctor caught it. As he opened it, his brows pulled together. He looked up. “Thank you.”

  “My dog found it on the docks and brought it on the boat. The woman dropped it.”

  “Catherine?”

  “Is that her name?”

  Proctor nodded. Then he said: “Won’t you sit down. Why don’t you have some coffee with me.”

  The captain nodded.

  “There’s money in this wallet,” Proctor said, looking up.

  The captain shrugged.

  Proctor fingered through the bills. “You should have some reward for returning it to—”

  The captain’s gesture erased the suggestion. “You tell me about the woman.” The captain sat on a crate, letting his feet go wide—

  “What do you want to know?”

  —balanced his wrists on his knees, and leaned forward: “How many times you had your tongue in her pussy? How many times you had your dick in her ass?”

  Proctor put his arm on the drawing board and laughed. “Fifty for each?” Then, “None?” Then, “What do you want?”

  The captain said, more softly: “Who are you, Jonathan Proctor? What do you have that I want?”

  The artist leaned forward. “There’s a rumor, Captain, that the day the devil comes seven times between noon and midnight, we will begin an age of moral chaos such as is only hinted at in the tale of the expulsion from the garden. There!”

  “Who made that up?”

  “I did.” Proctor shrugged. “I can tell stories as well as paint pictures. You want something from me? I’m simply te
lling you what I can offer. You come up here like a man who wants to eat pussy and stick ass. I haven’t been a pimp for a while.”

  The captain grinned.

  “Not to say . . .” Proctor drew his fist up his thigh “. . . I have no talent there.” Suddenly he looked over his shoulder and called: “Benny!”

  A lizard scurried along the bars of a bird cage, stared at them with a red eye.

  From a doorway, hung with paisley drape, came a sleepy boy, fifteen or sixteen.

  Proctor said: “Bring us some coffee.”

  Black hair, olive dark (the high cheeks of a Puerto Rican), eyes curious through fatigue: a long body carved by physical labor. He went over to the stove and began to make coffee. His hands were clumsily affectionate with the pots.

  “Benny spends much time here. He helps me with my work. I grind my own colors, stretch and prime my own canvas. Benny does a lot of that. He prepares stones for sculpture, polishes finished works for me, sharpens chisels.”

  The boy brought the captain his cup. Something large swung in the left pant leg.

  “Your boy here is hung like a horse.”

  Proctor laughed and Benny got embarrassed.

  “It’s a good handful to play with, hey, boy?” the captain said. As Benny turned, the captain smacked his butt. The boy glanced back, did not know what to do, so moved to his employer. He gave Proctor his cup, then dropped cross-legged to the floor by the artist’s knee. Proctor ran his hand across the boy’s hair. Benny let his head fall forward.

  “A good boy,” Proctor said. “He does what I tell him.”

  “Suck dick?”

  The captain was aware that Proctor was trying to keep an expression off his face. The captain nodded toward the boy. “Hey, Benny, how long is your master’s?”

  Benny looked wary, but his eyes fixed between his master’s legs . . . Proctor brought his knees together.

  “Bigger’n mine,” Benny said. Then, as Proctor let his legs open again, the boy reached between the denim thighs. Proctor looked at the beamed ceiling. His hand went back to the boy’s head.