The pianist led me to a stone slab, the kind popular at morgues in the world above. He laid my head on a granite pillow; it was the softest substance I had ever felt graze the baby hairs on the back of my neck, and it lulled me to sleep.
When I awoke, I found my host hovering over me, his oyster eyes dripping tears onto my folded hands. My first thought upon waking: Where was his piano? Didn’t he own one?
Qu’est-ce que tu veux faire ce soir, mon beau? Ne te gêne pas, petit garçonnet, j’ai tout entendu…Nothing can shock me at my age, quoi.
Do you know how to work a soldering iron?
Bien sûr, sois sans crainte—alors, pourquoi? Non, non, laisse-moi deviner…
I explained to him how it was going to work: I would tell him a story. He would listen to the letters I stuttered on and brand them into my back with the soldering iron. Then he would force me to tell the story repeatedly until I got it right. We both knew the game could go on forever. We both knew that stutterers, no matter what kind of treatment they received, couldn’t be reformed.
Perhaps I had been reading too much Franz Kafka.
The pianist prepared his accoutrements like he was setting a table for dinner. He laid out, with perfect etiquette, the soldering iron, an assortment of ointments and gels, and a white cloth napkin, and nothing was out of place. He had clearly done this many times before and was a trained minister of pain. With utmost delicacy, and humming a tune to himself, the pianist plugged the soldering iron into the rock, which was wet with sewer water. I would surely die of electrocution if not blood loss.
Tourne-toi, Marilyn…Montre-moi ton dos.
I turned onto my stomach. He buckled me in with straps and covered me in ointment. He brought a bit of wine to my lips in the palm of his hand. I refused it. I wanted to focus on the proceedings and resign myself fully to them. For my story, I started to recite the Book of Daniel. The pianist started to brand me right away. I bucked against the leather straps. I recited and he seared me without cease. My mistake, going into this, is that I had expected breaks. But there was no reprieve or pardon. Even when I thought my speech was smooth, it turned out to be illusory because he didn’t stop. No way out of this cellar except through my skin. I grimaced and babbled through beasts of the sea and the Son of Man, the feast of Belshazzar, the prophecies, the promises. Daniel had related these dreams to unbelievers, gifts of heaven that they paid back with ridicule. He died unfulfilled, promised heaven but rejected on earth. I tried to relate the story faithfully, but I failed miserably with a mouth unholy. The pianist carved letter after letter into me, starting a new one as soon as he finished the last. Hesitation was not in his repertoire. He engraved deeply. It felt like a forked tongue planting evil deep inside me, filling me with sex and lust and murder and greed and rebellion and disobedience.
Then my mouth told a story I’d never heard before.
Your Holiness,
Father, esteemed Judge and Jury, and Representative of the Almighty on Earth, it is not without extreme Trepidation that I come before You today, contrite and aware of your Schedule and Commitments as they pertain to overseeing the unrighteous Souls of the Flock, mine not excluded, and those, no less, of the World over; But if I, as Magistrate of the Court and your Servant, did not bring this perfidious and troubling Matter to your Attention, given its Severity and Implications, I would be lacking in my Duties;
His Holiness is no doubt aware of the Affliction of Stammering on certain wretched Souls, whereby the Tongue, born as a sacred Vessel in the Service of the Lord, embryonic and formless, shaping its first Utterances around Praise of the Almighty and all His fine Works, and whereby this original and unquestionable Function now ceases to operate as intended, but instead, has procured for its Owner a truly horrifying Spectre of Maladies, presenting in the Patient the following Symptoms;
Blocks, Repetitions of the most inane Sort, uncontrollable Drooling, Hesitations, and other lack of Commitment, Squirming of the Lips, interminable Prolongations, overall Laziness, Lack of Clarity, uncontrollable Spittle, muscular Contortions, Rigor Mortis of the Face, Paralysis of the Jowl, Wasting of Time better spent in the Service of the Church, Inability to express Piety as a natural Expression of facial Rest, shut Eyes, and an Inclination toward Sodomy, Rape, Incest, Lust, Murder, Gluttony, Insubordination, Hubris, and especially Paedophilia;
Let the Record show that we believed the Patient to be, according to our Assessments, curable, if not completely, then at least mostly, for his Devotion to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit remained high, and we initially perceived the diseased Patient as nothing more than one of the Unfortunates, who perhaps contracted the Illness through Parasites, which, by way of Explanation, we know to originate in Water not blessed for the Clergy for Use, or perhaps by the thoughtless and accidental Overcooking of Meat, or some such other pedestrian Stupidity to which the Masses are prone;
Therefore, we strapped the Patient into the dental Chair, and with Tongs applied the traditional Leeches to the Tongue, which siphoned out such a large Quantity of obviously poisoned Blood through the diseased Organ that the Patient passed out in Relief; Within a few days, however, the Illness returned, so Garlic and Vinegar and Rounds of bovine Urine were poured into the Throat of the Patient, who demonstrated Signs of Progress including Vomitations that rendered his Body once again pure and worthy of Service to the Lord; The Ailment, however, persisted;
The pianist continued to melt holes in my back. My dick grew so swollen under me that it hurt. Pre-cum flowed out and onto the slab in a thin liquid sheet. I was leaking sweet pleasure.
It is around this Time that a Conclave of medical Professionals was formed to analyze the Case; from afar were called an equine Veterinarian of the highest Repute, a Barber trained in the Art of Antiseptic, a Blacksmith, and a Priest; there could be no Discussion with the Patient, for obvious Reasons, so the Conclave, based on observing excess Liquid under the Tongue, inability to form clear Thoughts, Stamping of the Foot, Gyrations of the Chin, and Resistance to previous Treatments, amongst other abominable Symptoms, proceeded to diagnose Mental Disorder;
It was clear at this Time, Your Holiness, that only the calm Salvation of the Holy Scriptures could cure such a Case, so we proceeded in Haste to the Church; We could not take the Risk of leaving a Mental Disorder uncured for too long, lest the Door to Contagion be left wide open to ravage the Faithful like an unchecked Ague; It was a Tuesday night at ten o’clock, so the Deacon had to be awoken from Slumber and this, to his Credit, he did most graciously; The Patient was led into the Church to the front-most Pew, where he was made to kneel and recite to us from the Book of Psalms to calm the Torment of his Soul;
My testicles roiled in their pouch, and my groin fizzled with electricity. The pianist had figured out the contact points in my circuitry and was playing me like a theremin. I cried between sentences: Cum! Cum! Cum! Drown me inside out!
It is at this Moment when the most disgusting Display occurred, vile and unspeakable and in the most sacred of Places, no less, verbal Eruptions of a decidedly demonic Nature, for rather than read the placid Tidings of the Book of Psalms, the Wisdom of Job to give Respite and Balance to his diseased Mind, this Creature, no longer human but as debased as an Animal, began to speak in Tongues, babbling Nonsense that could have no other Source than Satan the Devil himself; This was confirmed when he began to recite, with perfect Fluency, I swear upon these selfsame Holy Scriptures, the Book of Revelation, the unspeakable Visions, Terrors, Spells, Potions, Warnings, Prophecies, Incantations, Hexes, and Demonisms, which, once spoken aloud, gives one the Mark of the Beast and presents irrefutable medical Evidence of Possession; We commenced posthaste in the Cellar with the following Treatments, in Sequence: Flogging, Electrocution by Eels in a salt Bath, Laxatives, Piercing of the Tongue with hot Needles, Removal of the Epiglottis, Freezing of the Extremities, Placement of a glowing Coal into the Mouth and sealing it shut with a leather Bandage, and finally, when nothing Else failed to release the Demon, when it
continued trying to speak through its earthly Mouthpiece, complete Excision of the Tongue;
Your Holiness, I report to You that the Patient did not survive the Procedures, but it should come as no Loss to the Church, as the Patient revealed himself to be nothing more than a Tool of Beelzebub.
I opened my eyes and saw that for the entire last part of my incantation the pianist had moved away to do some housekeeping. What the fuck?
The very idea that I had stopped stuttering, if it were indeed true, made me feel like a beast losing its footing on a cliff and falling, falling, falling, then exploding into demon guts at the bottom of a gulch.
I couldn’t take it.
I came and came and came and came and came and came until I was a puddle of semen and blood.
My back was a lacerated mess; it felt simultaneously like razor burn, frostbite, pins and needles, and the residue of a vicious spanking. The pianist unplugged the soldering iron. I felt his smile fill the room. He disinfected my wounds with lemon juice and salt. I cursed him out for a solid five minutes. He eventually unstrapped me.
Ma chérie, quelle coincidence that the two letters that give you ze most trouble are my initials. C’est rigolo, quoi…
What are your initials, you fucking demented motherfucker?
Zut!
What did you write on my back?
He never told me. The pianist simply bandaged me up in silence and saw me out. I had to fumble my own way to daylight, swathed in gauze, dizzy with pain. I would never forget him, but I couldn’t come back. Then I felt bad, I felt sorry for this creature of the souterrain, because it was his loneliness that drove him to these cruelties, his sadness that could fill endless quantities of underground caverns. This phantom knew everything about me, but I knew nothing about him.
When I got home, I removed the bandages and looked at the words in the mirror, which, of course, were backwards:
GNOS NWO RUOY KCIP
REFERENDUM QUESTION
Do you agree that, after having offered a formal economic and political partnership to Non-Stutterers, which includes but is not limited to: the understanding that eye contact shall remain unbroken for a minimum of thirty seconds until the stuttered sentence is out, that classroom policy will be reformed so that students are no longer failed when they refuse to speak in front of the class, the immediate elimination of any assumption of fluency superiority, whether physical, mental, or developmental, the banning of knowing glances traded between Non-Stutterers when a Stutterer among them is speaking, the abolishment of the automatic assumption of guilt among parents, a mutual acceptance of guilt for verbal misunderstandings, the prioritization of writing over speech, the creation of pitiless zones, self-determination of the stutterer, recognition of non-verbal stuttering in a variety of physical manifestations, the understanding that stuttering may occur in one language and not necessarily preclude fluency in another, that the reason for a stutter may change over the years, that there may never be a knowable reason, and that is acceptable, that Stutterers shall declare sovereignty?
OUI
NON
REQUIEM
I spent a week making sure he would be hungry. This meant a calculated control over the contents of the fridge and the cupboard. I made sure that at least one key ingredient was missing from each of his favourite meals. We had white wine, pasta, and primavera sauce kicking around, so I made sure to dump the shrimp tails in a discreet vortex flush and then disinfect the toilet bowl rim for smell, scales, and other evidence. I found ground beef, hamburger buns, and pickles so I gave the bread crumbs to the birds. Faced with cereal and milk, I buried all of our spoons in the bottom of the neighbour’s trash can.
These means weren’t excessive, considering that Eric was a master at spoiling his dinner a few minutes before it was served. Besides, on that particular night, I needed his full attention. Gaining control of his stomach was the quickest way to assure that.
When lobsters hiss in a pot of boiling water, that’s not air escaping out of their shells. We all know they scream.
And perhaps they screamed even more loudly when, on their trip from the bathtub to the kitchen, they caught glimpses of a room decorated with floral arrangements, including the most grotesquely large hibiscus in free-range bloom, dripping deep red like aging blood and hung from track lighting, or when they saw the chef ignoring them to prepare a saltwater reflecting pool in the corner composed of igneous boulders hewn from Mount Royal after scrubbing off the squeegee-punk graffiti, or when, at last, the chef laid them in a bath of St. Lawrence River water, placed just so in a plastic pool from Canadian Tire, to which he added Greek sea salt from Arahova Souvlaki on rue Saint-Viateur. Or perhaps they were screaming in protest upon seeing the lobsters I had placed in the reflecting pool that would remain alive. I didn’t put them there to mock our dinner catch, I swear.
Anyway, I’d like to think that this all hurt me more than them. My back lacerations were still healing. Every twist opened me right up.
While dinner made dinner noises, I adjusted the bow tie on my tuxedo, finger-licked my eyebrows into submission, and arranged the table in the middle of the living room. I had procured a set of discontinued bone china from a housewares store in a decaying strip mall on the Decarie Expressway where they could get away with out-of-season stock. The beauty of these obsolete finds was that nobody else with taste had them, and I could be assured of a thoroughly fresh and original night with my baby. I installed a mirror ball on the ceiling to refract the brilliance of every moment and to light up the dozens of scraps of paper inscribed with Jean Genet quotes—from the sanguine to the vapid—that I had taped to the walls. I figured if I was to present my freedom to Eric over dinner, then we should at least be surrounded by representations of prison. If constraints press hard enough on a person, does liberation emerge, as coal under pressure produces a diamond? I can only imagine and hope.
I piled the table high with claws, mopping up the butter as it slathered off the table and onto the floor, then skated on my socks over to the sound system, which I had slid into the centre of the living room just in front of the table. Our speakers weren’t adequate so I’d rented a stack of Bose subwoofers and tweeters and arranged them concert-style around the table. I was going for volume, for whatever would blow my baby’s mind and the whiskers off the crustaceans. In the war of self-discovery, there’s no music etiquette I can abide by, and the neighbours could go to hell, if hell was a place worse than the dinner I’d designed.
I had lingering doubts about the success of the night. Eric could’ve stopped into any number of fast food places on the way home or eaten lunch too late or suddenly become vegetarian or simply come home too tired for dinner. The stakes were high: it would take something remarkable to keep him sitting still so he could feel the music that I wanted him to feel. It would take a multi-course meal of things he’d never tasted or seen before. It would take lobsters marinated in juniper and crème de menthe, with their shells dyed in Easter egg colours.
Fortuitous timing, it was. Just as Eric walked in the door, I laid the vinyl on the turntable, licked the needle for good luck, and dropped it a little too hard. The music stuttered from the first few seconds. Eric took off his shoes. He looked at The Little Mermaid swimming pool, perplexed, and yelped when an ambitious lobster that had escaped from the bathroom pinched his ankle and awaited retaliation.
Don’t mind him. Things are a little crazy here. But you should sit down because dinner is starting to get cold.
It’s not getting cold, it’s attacking me. It smells garlicky in here.
All the better to kiss you with.
What’s with the speakers? More deaf humour? If it really gets you off, I can remove my ears completely.
No need, but thanks.
I played side two of the Hall & Oates album Bigger Than Both of Us as a kind of prelude. I seated my guest, pushed in his chair, and gave him a dinner jacket so that my tuxedo wouldn’t make him feel entirely out of place in his own
home. We cracked shells together and pulled out the meat with lobster picks. I had also prepared a plate of long-grained rice and a wakame salad with sesame oil. There was a side of crackers.
In case you don’t remember or have forgotten, like I did, the cover of the record shows Daryl and John sitting on a sectional sofa. John plays guitar while Daryl writes something in a book, perhaps lyrics or sheet music. Behind them, a mixing board landscape is visible through a huge bay window. There are avenues of faders with volume knobs at every intersection and apartments made of tuning needles stacked on top of each other. In front of them is a table with an open wine bottle and single wine glass, evidence that they shared such things intimately. The pièce de resistance is a box of Ritz crackers, a most curious and salty form of product placement, and definitely one of the more absorbing mysteries of the short but ostentatiously bright Rock and Soul movement.
There’s a detail that’s easy to miss if you don’t look carefully: a pair of feet in high heels are crossed in the foreground, the presumption of an unseen woman just outside the frame.
Isn’t there always an unseen woman?
I was getting turned on by how the butter collected in Eric’s unshaven facial hair, by how much of dinner he missed through distraction, just by focussing his body on the bass in the speakers, listening to the music through the floor, how he subconsciously inched his chair ever closer. I adjusted the table with my toe to compensate. Soon we were right up against the music, and we started to fill our gullets with shelled lobster. (The crème de menthe was disgusting, even from a sexual point of view.) Eric was rocking to the music. The mirror ball dappled us with light.
I got up to flip the record.
Eric looked at me, wiping the cracker crumbs off his lips. He leaned over for a kiss. I could tell that he knew. He saw in my face that after all the work I had put into finding a phantom song, I had found nothing, and now I was just playing what I wanted.
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