“Ay, Dios mìo.”
If he hadn’t been drunk – drunk on need, not beer – he might have noticed that, even though his eyes were closed, he could see a nimbus of golden light around the head bobbing between his thighs.
*
1947. Marcus Seymour Marigold, 27, Caucasian, 5’6, 125 lbs., 9 inches, circumcised.
Marcus slipped into Central Park on his way to work in the Brill Building. His short commute from a cold water flat on East 53rd made mornings a leisurely treat: a stroll, then breakfast at one of the automats in Times Square. Friends (tricks where the sex petered out but they still caught up in bars –guys were always shocked, once they’d drifted into acquaintances, that Marcus always gave his real name) were impressed that he worked in the Brill Building. Though he wasn’t in the music industry, he brushed shoulders with stars nearly every week and told stories out of turn about who had pulled out the longest member at the urinals. He had read that morning in the Times that the Dutch had donated a swath of tulips, gratitude for the United States war efforts, to be planted in Central Park.
It was a chilly April morning, the kind of day where the temperature rose rapidly –the frost on the marble statues turned from silvery verdigris into runny dew before noon. Secretaries stalked into the subway with their coats tucked between their arms, scarves stuffed in purses. Men forgot their hats on their desks. He knew from the newspaper article that the tulips were to be planted in a neat square near that portion of the park called the Ramble. He’d been there, of course, but had always struck out. Fearful that the man approaching was a policeman, he’d resorted to picking up obvious trade in Bryant Park. However, after wandering the park for half an hour, he was on the verge of disappointment when the trail twisted into a square of dark, tilled soil: no green shoots, just subterranean hard bulbs of colorful flower about to burst into living fireworks, announcing, with Stravinsky-like fanfare, the arrival of spring. Standing still, he breathed in the crisp air and observed a twittering squirrel scuttle down the long branch of a winter-hardened Ginkgo tree. Marcus decided that he would alter his morning stroll and mark this spot every morning, to observe the birth of the tulips, to watch a season unfold. More than once he’d wished he owned a camera, knew how to take good pictures. But he was also secretly pleased that some moments go forever unrecorded, that the private discourses of dawn were his alone.
*
For the duration of spring, Marcus revisited this little field to observe their progress and growth. Year after year the tulips were replanted, once more in Central Park before being moved to the long median that divided Park Avenue. He always made an appreciative effort to pause and note the progress of the blooms. Yet those mornings of the initial planting within the park were somehow significant to him. He could be forgiven for not noticing in the morning light that one flower, the last bulb to bloom, pulsed with a golden hue.
*
1983. James Garamond, 27, Caucasian, 5’8, 145 lbs., 5.5 inches, circumcised.
James had heard rumors about the “Golden Boy of the Ramble,” had indeed thought he’d caught a glimpse of his gossamer form once, slipping off a large rock to follow a rather rough-looking gentleman. He’d seen a hot blond at the Continental Baths last summer that had a certain air about him, having dispensed with the prerequisite towel and seemingly floated through the halls. James was on Quaaludes that particular night and assumed the guy was just European, but now, having heard more than one ribald tale in the bars, stories swapped down by the trucks at midnight near the piers, he couldn’t help but wonder if this boy was some sexual fantasy writ large: a cipher on which the community’s collective lust was projected. Christopher Street Magazine had recently accepted some of his articles, had asked for more –the New York Times had rejected a book review of the new Edmund White novel, but encouragingly so. Tonight, he felt like he was on the trail of a real story, something different that would help prove his chops and get him noticed.
The night air had cooled. The dampness of the soil intermingling with spilt beer and semen generated a primal stench interrupted by stale cigarette smoke and the quiet exhalations of enraptured men. A shirtless black youth in bright red jogging shorts whisked pass and, from out of the darkness, a pale white arm reached to stroke the moving quarry but failed to connect. The pale limb went slack and James caught his breath–he’d had no idea someone else was so close. He instinctively patted his wallet. It was a dummy, stuffed with a few singles and crumpled receipts so any mugger would think it was legit –he’d been mugged a few times crossing the park at night so now keep his license and a folded twenty tucked into his tight tube socks, though he regretted wearing his new Reeboks as the trampled ground was muddy and trash-strewn. Another man in cut-offs sauntered past, a handkerchief in his back pocket. So seventies, James silently sniggered, but he pursued, not out of any sexual interest, but to keep moving.
Winding his way down one of the dim paths, he spied two men talking close, sharing a joint, one with his cock out, long, limp and damp as if recently sucked, now cooling off in the night air. In the city two years, he still reeled, still marveled, at how different life was here than in his hometown of Indianapolis. There cruising was circumspect, hesitant, fearful. In New York it was flagrant sport, feral and above all else, constant. Not too far from the weak light and mosquito whirl of the rare working street lamp, the silhouette of men encircling each other, the quiet grunts and rhythmic sawing of elbows pulled at him. Forgetting his research, James pulled off his shirt, fingered his hairy chest and looked for a break in the action so he could join. At the other end of the sexual circus he heard a wizened cough as a man was roughly pushed out. He was wild-eyed, high or drunk or both, he held his wrinkled shirt to his mouth to stifle his coughing –still, such ostracism was rare. James had been amused that though only hot guys approached other hot guys at the bars, anything went in the Ramble. Here he’d witnessed couplings so out of proportion in terms of expectations and assumptions that they ran from the humorous to the touching. But this guy seemed beyond deranged, on drugs and forcing himself on the group. Trying to use his exit as a point of entry, James ducked between a pair of naked, grappling men and noticed that, as they passed, the coughing man’s back was riddled with dark crusty spots. James froze. Just a few days ago, he was at the gym and caught sight of a young man he’d tricked with a few months ago changing in the locker room. He rather self-consciously pulled his collar up to conceal a purplish bruise, what James had thought was the thumbprint of a rather severe hickey at the time. Now he wasn’t so sure. His sexual appetite dissipated. James disengaged from the group and left the park and headed to Cat’s Bar for a drink. Gossip about the Golden Boy of the Ramble all but ceased after an article about a new “gay cancer” appeared later that month in the Times.
James would have plenty else to write about.
*
1988. Golden Boy. Age unknown, fluctuating height, between 5’4 and 6’2, depending on the length of the summer, same with his weight and cock size, uncircumcised (naturally).
Golden Boy. He’d heard that he was called that for several seasons and then no more. Curious that a name had been assigned to him, unconcerned that it was forgotten, he felt the absence of the men from before. It was as if they had been folded up and put away further into the darkness of the park, the black spaces of the city, the cold forgetful lake between the stars. Their lights had gone out and he missed them, whimpered even, when one that he had known so closely, had tasted deeply, just snapped out of existence. No matter how far away, how quickly that light had extinguished or painfully lingered, he knew when they were gone. Others stepped in to feed him, to take him and take from him, but differently, with a more abrasive economy than before, with condoms, with whiskey and fear on their breath. Everything had changed but the longing.
He learned bits of the language of men, enough to say to himself “I am not gold. I am green. I am not a boy, I am hungry.” And though he drank from an endless fountain of semen
most nights (except when it rained, except when it snowed), and as men bent him over and pushed his face down until he ate the blackest dirt and the insects secreted within, he was still ravenous. Some men pushed him to his knees and fucked his mouth until his bruised lips bled. Others laughed ruefully while urinating on his hair. Some fucked him slowly, lovingly, with all the deliberation of a secret dance, so that he was as still for them as a firm oak, their hands clasping his perfect waist as they unburdened themselves within his hot cavity. They whispered to him in every language, thick tongues in his ear. Some smelled like hard work, some like cheap wine and tooth decay, others a hint of their wives’ perfume or too many nights sleeping rough on benches. He took from them all and still hungered.
*
1988. Jonathan C. Raleigh, 45, Caucasian, 6.1, 185, 6 inches, uncircumcised.
Raleigh (all his friends, even his wife, called him Raleigh) loved his business trips to New York City. He hated the Javitz Center, loudly, repeatedly disclaiming to anyone in earshot, “It’s like an airport without a city, for Christ sakes,” as if that joke never got old. As a buyer for a major chain of department stores across the South, he carried a lot of weight and was deservedly wined and dined during his quarterly visits to the Big Apple. He told stories that were too long, referencing his wife so often that more than one designer had rolled their eyes, mouthing “Methinks he doth protest too much.” Raleigh eschewed the baths and bars during the spring and summer months and made sure he always booked the Marriot in Times Square. He would tell his wife he’d call her in the morning –that he’d be with sellers all night, no matter how often she insisted that he call her when he got in, that there were Puerto Ricans everywhere. (She’d latched onto that particular group as the cause of all malfeasance in New York City for no other reason than that they’d recently befriended a black couple at church, so for her it was like moving to a different city and having to root for a new team.)
Raleigh lit a Benson and Hedges, dropped the match and stepped into the Ramble. It was a warm night and men in shorts sauntered past. Men and boys – young swishy things, cadet cocksuckers, he thought – new arrivals to the woods: their nascent sexual energy was as prominent as the humidity, as constant as the buzz of invisible crickets punctuated by the grunts of rutting men. He pawed his impatient erection, heavy in his linen trousers. He kept his suit and tie on when entering the Ramble –as he’d aged, he had observed that certain men were attracted to business attire and willing to enter into some pretty hot scenes. A naked man with long hair stepped from behind a black tree and straddled the trunk, one hand ridiculously caressing the bark. Raleigh moved on. Now freely perspiring, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and patted his brow. As he crammed it back into his pocket he realized that he’d forgotten to take off his wedding ring. He had heard horror stories about muggings in Central Park and had always left it in the hotel safe before venturing out, but tonight he had come directly from the bar, fueled by too many Chivas on the rocks. His cheeks reddened with annoyance. He didn’t dare take the ring off and slip it into his pocket –it was too dark, the action too suspicious. A gaggle of ghetto youth burst laughing from the bushes and his hand instinctively dropped to his rear, as if to protect his precious wallet, but their peals of laughter bloomed into effeminate whispers so he relaxed. But it was time to get on with it.
*
Golden Boy arched his back and opened his mouth wide –his extended tongue pulling moisture from the air. He was wearing a pair of torn, soiled madras shorts he’d found the other morning draped across the back of a park bench. And nothing else. Broken glass didn’t puncture his bare feet; the rough boulders that dotted the Ramble never scraped his backside. He’d been entered by several men already tonight, and had been on his knees pleasing a group at the edge of the Central Park Lake for quite some time, the stoic twin cameo of the Dakota apartment building peering over the park’s edge like disapproving neighbors. He didn’t mark time as the men who frequented the park did. He tasted seasons. Hibernating winters within the trunk of the largest tree he could secret himself within, he would stretch himself into a long line of golden sap and wait until the first birdsong of spring, then at dusk he pulled his thin, naked body from out of the tree and thank his host with a deep, reverent bow before making his way through the paths of the Ramble, returning at dawn to sleep away the day. As spring turned to summer, he grew stronger and taller, repeating the hot whispers men dripped into his ear until the words became something he could use –though he wasn’t aware that different languages existed, so when he did speak it was an odd mixture of Spanish and English. (He had heard dozens of languages but those two were the most frequently spoken as cocks slipped in and out of him.) He retained these words while he slept through the winter. As he logged more and more winters, he thought more about his hunger and the men who came to him in the park. He fed from their beings, enjoying their fluids and heat, but was this what he was meant to do? And the confines of existence, the stone walls he never crossed, what kept him contained –was he rooted here like the trees? Questions like these arose if he went too long without touching a man and before the answers could come a man always did.
He heard the promise of an unzipped fly and blinked as a broad shouldered man stood before him, legs wide apart. Golden Boy slinked down onto his knees and fed.
When he was done, as always, he wanted more.
*
Raleigh pulled his cock out of his pants while watching a nearly naked young man service a construction worker. Once again he was in awe of the secret fraternity to which he had been inducted. When he first read that Life Magazine article on San Francisco as a teen, he’d felt repulsed. He had never had a desire to be “gay” or leave his wife –he loved her, he loved their Atlanta, two-car garage home together. But what he had done with one of the other guys on the wrestling team remained: it was something that had brightened in his mind where he had always been led to believe that it would fade. So year after year he came here to enact that same desire, but for him these were still only moments, a vice, not a “life style.”
As the construction worker stepped away, Raleigh eagerly stepped up, ready to unload, to be done with it and back in his hotel room in time to watch Carson. Young lips brushed his cock and he shuddered and thought of the slender Pan Am attendant who’d refreshed his drink on the flight over, paid him just enough extra attention that he knew, they both knew, and as he engorged across nimble tongue he wondered what it would be like to take someone in his hotel room bed instead –the thought of the unanswered phone ringing, tanned legs spread on clean sheets. He was about to cum and jammed his fingers into the hot mouth beneath him to take total control and Golden Boy turned his head as if he had been in a desert for years, since his floral birth, and had never taken a drink before. Golden Boy lit up like a new sun and fear gripped Raleigh’s spine as he thought this new light emanated from the beam of a policeman’s flashlight, that he was about to be arrested. His boss would be woken up by the phone call, still in bed, listening in silence as gleeful Yankees explained that his employee had been caught with his penis inserted in another man’s mouth and would he like to arrange bail via Western Union?
Golden Boy’s eyes were open wide and he sucked harder than he’d ever sucked before as his true need churned within the pit of his stomach: he tasted gold for the first time, sumptuous ore, something that he innately knew he was meant to burrow through the earth and find and covet but somehow his path had been diverted by this sticky river of salt. He glowed even brighter and Raleigh, seized by panic, tried to extract himself from this teething, fiery starling by planting one foot on the boy’s shoulder while yanking his hand free. Golden Boy couldn’t let this prize go so he bit down hard and blood filled his mouth –another new taste, not bad but nowhere near as nutritious as the wedding band that rolled across his tongue. His teeth sharpened and worked the finger quickly away from the screaming man’s hand. Golden Boy had nightly lapped up semen, occasionally dran
k urine – once a disappointed man shoved a stick roughly up his ass (disappointed because Golden Boy didn’t scream but widened his slippery hole to be more accommodating) – and now tasted blood. None of which had prepared him for the flavors of gold. His skin practically burned. For the first time his wavering erection was sincere and not mere mimicry of those around him. Golden Boy swallowed the metallic morsel and dropped to the ground, purring in ecstasy.
*
Raleigh ran through the woods silently, holding his bleeding hand up as if it were something disgusting that he’d like to throw away but was nevertheless responsible for. He stifled a whimper, fearful that sounding like a wounded animal would attract other humanoid carnivores to take his wallet, strip him naked, and beat him to death. He tried not to hyperventilate as he reached 5th Avenue and hailed a cab.
*
In his hotel room, injured hand deep in a silvery ice bucket as the water turned pink, desperation ran its course and Raleigh called the concierge and requested an ambulance. There was no way he could explain away this one. (Honey, he’s a Jehovah’s Witness who was just so dehydrated I had to invite him in for a glass of water. I’m not sure how his jock strap ended up on the bathroom floor. They have mighty strange rites, like Mormons, you know?) He took yet another aspirin and chased it with one of those little plastic bottles of Captain Morgan’s rum the airline steward and flirtatiously dropped in his lap. He wasn’t going to call his wife tonight or tomorrow. Or his boss. He wasn’t going home. There was terse knocking at the hotel room door but he was too woozy to answer. Raleigh needed a long nap. Maybe he could get a job at Macy’s. Keys rattled and someone let themselves into the room saying, “Sir, sir? Are you alright?” He didn’t bother to answer. The throbbing pain coursing up his arm felt permanent. And if winters were too hard here, he thought drily, he could always move to San Francisco.
Abominations of Desire Page 16
