Friday 5 November 2010

Duct Tape Is Silver

[Here's a rewrite. If you are going to read this story, I'd rather you tried the new version.]

As the boy comes he imagines this huge, greasy fireball disturbing the sleet grey February sky, an ephemeral grave marker in dirty red and orange, expanding and roiling back on itself.

Earlier that day he had sat in the ESCape Internet Café and chatted with his black Texan SM-Daddy about God, and suicide, forgiveness, and getting a cock cage and losing the key forever. Outside the city had been drowning in a week-long summer rain, flushing tourists and locals from the street like dog turds. His internet friends were the only thing he had taken with him when he ran way. The chat left him lonely and excited.

{I love you, son. Take Care.}

Yeah, right.

He had met Ponyboy one week before that, on the fringe of the fringe of the fringe. Ponyboy’s performance punk band had played a pub that hardly deserved the term venue. They used the bar for a stage. The boy had only been there because his partner in crime had made a little extra selling smack. When the band came on, Ponyboy, the singer, had already been so smashed he had to crawl along the blackened wood, between the combat booted feet of his friends. Once the boy observed the guitarist accidentally stomped on Ponyboy’s hand hard enough to break a pinkie. Ponyboy hadn’t even noticed until long after the show.

They both know it is a good-bye fuck. The boy doesn’t say anything, but the backpack, the poncho and the new hiking shoes explain his intentions eloquently enough. Ponyboy holds him from behind, one arm around the boy’s neck. With surprising and sudden force he jams a bottle of vodka into the boy’s mouth, bruising lips and clinking painfully against the teeth.

“Suck it. Suck it like it’s piss from my cock.”

A lot runs over the boy’s face and chest, but most goes down. Ponyboy makes fucking motions with the bottle.

“What if I don’t let you go?”

Ponyboy untilts the bottle until the downpour stops. The boy is coughing. Vodka is burning in his throat. He tries to mumble around the bottleneck “Who asked you to?” It comes out Oo ashked oooo?

“So you will stay with me?”

Ponyboy has resumed skullfucking, drowning, pickling the boy with vodka. This time he doesn’t stop for the answer. Choking and spluttering the boy shakes his head. The motion makes him dizzy.

Later, after the rimming and foot-sex, when they lie on the dirty grey, crumpled sheets of the bed, Ponyboy forces a kiss on the boy. With one hand he keeps the boy’s nose pinched shut, hard enough to impress a deep purple crescent-shaped mark in the ala of the nose, while his mouth is sealed to that of the boy. They share a lot of tongue, the chemical aftertaste of the cheap vodka, the bitter taste of Ponyboys shit, and the air from Ponyboy’s lungs. The boy is not allowed to draw any outside breath. It takes a bit of practice to synchronize their lungs, but after a while it becomes almost natural.

“I want to beat you.” Ponyboy keeps one hand clamped across the boy’s mouth and nose. “I want to beat your cock and balls.”

He has to stretch to reach his torn jeans on the offal strewn floor, to dig out the pack of fags and the lighter. He is additionally hampered by the splint keeping is pinkie and ring finger straight and taped together. The boy begins to squirm when Ponyboy puts one fag into his mouth and lights it with one hand.

“I’m not asking you, okay? Just saying.”

Ponyboy looks into the boy’s face, checks his eyes. Is it for panic or for permission? The boy doesn’t know and his depleted lungs distract him from the question. Briefly Ponyboy lifts his hand and blows smoke into the boy’s mouth before clamping it shut again.

The funeral was about the most depressing thing you could imagine. The blue-grey morning never had a chance of becoming a bright day. 10 o’clock merged into 5 in the afternoon. He had made his mum buy him a black suit and a white shirt. He had bought the tie from his own money, a cheap, plastic looking strip of black nylon that flapped ridiculously in the cold wind. This would be the only time he would ever wear either. His mum only realized that he had put on the pink chucks when they stepped out of the taxi in front of the cemetery gate.

“They were her favourites.” He couldn’t understand how this wouldn’t explain his decision. His mum couldn’t understand how he could think it would. But short of making him go on socks there wasn’t anything she could do. He relished every ridge of frozen ground, every pebble, and most of all the cruel frost biting him through the thin rubber soles. After all, it was the same cold ground that would eat her up now.

Ponyboy has rammed three socks so deep into the boy’s throat and all through the beating he has to concentrate to keep from throwing up. Because of the sweat, the vodka, the snot, and the saliva on his face the duct tape doesn’t stick very well. A corner comes lose and flaps under his nose in rhythm with his ragged, mucus-clogged breath. The rod is thin and whistles impressively in the air. Physically, the pain is worse than anything he has experienced until then in his life. The ropes and knots hold, but at the height of his thrashing, he breaks the post of the free-standing bookshelves Ponyboy has tied him to. Ponyboy is standing there, out of breath, shivering with early withdrawal, rod in hand and looking down onto the boy and the books and the stacks and stacks of classical sheet music. His rents had once made him learn the piano. It is Ponyboy who looks beaten. The boy finally loses his battle with the vodka and the gag reflex and pukes through his nose and in funny little seeping quirts past the loosening duct tape and socks.

That night when he had first seen the fucked up Ponyboy crawl around on the bar, screaming slurred lyrics into a crowded pub that smelled of wet dog, that night, too, had ended in vomit. It had been Ponyboy who had finally puked all over the bar, the draft levers, and the patrons in the front row. The pub’s owner had dragged him out by the ankle and tossed him out into the rainy night like an unwieldy bin bag. The boy had – turned on beyond belief – followed and had helped Ponyboy to his feet and brought him to his flat, while the rest of the band had partied on.

When his online SM-Daddy had attempted suicide, ten years ago, after his wife had discovered his queer, pedophile, sadistic fantasies and had left him, he had been visited by an angel.

{I took a whole bottle of sleeping pills. I actually felt my breathing come to a crawl… and then an angel appeared to me and held my hand… and I called my friend John. I still don’t know how I did it to this day. }

{Wow} was all the boy could think of typing. He didn’t believe a word.

{John came and took me to the ER.}

{A real angel?}

{Yeah.}

{What did it look like?}

{It was just a glowing figure of light. I could actually make his face out. It was shaped like a human that just glowed. It was a bright light.}

When the boy had tried to kill himself, there had been no light. Just cold and darkness.

{God must really love you. }

{Yeah, he does.}

The boy thought: I hope he is lying.

Ponyboy doesn’t remove the vomit soaked gag. He kneels down next to the boy, amidst the books and crumpled, soiled sheet music, and puts his index finger first against one, then against the other nostril, allowing the boy to blow the vomit from his nose. They are out of lubricant and Ponyboy doesn’t want to go to the shared kitchen to get cooking oil. Fresh shit works good enough.

The corner of a hardcover biography of Allen Ginsberg is poking painfully into the boy’s abdomen as Ponyboy fucks him. His nasal grunts are strangely squeaky and abrupt, like the squeaks of a pig. Ponyboy has to laugh. The boy feels very tired. Everything begins to blur.

“And nobody knows you are here, right?”

The boy grunts and tries to nod in affirmation. His limp cock burns.

“Nobody can link you back to me, right? If you died here, I’d be scott free?”

The boy grunts. His heart picks up some speed. His cock begins to stiffen again.

Ponyboy stops. He lifts his body up slightly, remaining on elbows and knees, his cock firmly rammed deep into the boy’s pussy. Ponyboy gently reaches back onto the bed behind him, takes the roll of duct tape. He begins wrapping it around the boys head, beginning with the chin and working himself up to just under the eyes. Before he closes off the nose, he sais:

“Get me off. I’ll take it off when I’ve come. Not before.”

The panic is delicious. It is the first emotion that truly fills all of him since Leeds. These days fear is the only thing that can do that. Tied up as he is, the shifting drifts of books and sheet paper underneath, it is hard work to get a good rocking motion. Ponyboy remains still. Only his breathing quickens a little bit.

“It should be you.” That was last thing he had shouted at his father, pointing at the open grave. “It should be you in there, not her.” They were separated afterwards, and the boy was made to sit in a small, dark room in the chapel, while they tried to regain some illusion of dignity outside.

For a while he tries to milk Ponyboy in earnest, but the booze, and the lack of oxygen, and his aching cock, and that damned Ginsberg biography keep distracting him. As the oxygen levels sink, his panic rises. He doubts that Ponyboy’s smack can be as good as his adrenalin. He impales himself on Ponyboy’s cock, but it’s just too hard, too tiresome.

When he had run away, he had promised his online Daddy that he wouldn’t do anything {stupid}. He had known what was meant by that, but the banality of the euphemism had annoyed him. Casual obscenity, now that was a phrase worthy of the deed.

He thinks of listening to Childhood’s End together with Jonas, and of the first time Henrik had kissed him. Of how beautiful Ponyboy had looked, on all fours on that bar, when the vomit had run from his mouth and hung in glistening, oatmeal-coloured strings from his chin. He thinks of the Highlands he wants to see when he leaves Edinburgh, and of the never-ending rain. It hadn’t rained during the funeral, but later, on the way home, when he had been told of the car accident, it had rained then.

Time is running out. It is a conscious decision when he stops bucking and jerking, tearing on the rope the binds his wrists, wipping his face across the detritus underneath in a frenzied, panicky attempt to dislodge the tape. Against his instincts and his body screaming for oxygen, he makes himself lie still. He only turns his head as far as he can, so that the duct tape pulls on the skin of his face like on an ill adjusted ski mask. Through somewhat slitted eyes he looks up at Ponyboy’s questioning expression.

Let it happen, he tries to say with his eyes.

His vision is blurring and already fading to grey, but he thinks he can still see the sudden understanding flood Ponyboy’s own eyes, followed by a tidal wave of lust. Through the ringing in his ears he hears Ponyboy groan. Without moving at all – except for a slight shiver running through him – Ponyboy comes. As always the sudden, liquid hotness begins to cool immediately.

At once Ponyboy rips away the duct tape and pulls out the soaked socks and kisses him, blowing breath into his starved lungs. For a while they kiss and share the air again, then Ponyboy drags the tied-up boy up onto the bed to spoon, reach around, and jerk him off. The boy’s malnourished tummy, his upper thighs and above all his pick are bruised and ribbed with seeping welts.

They will not speak another word. After the boy comes they will both fall asleep, and in the morning the boy will sneak out and head for the Highlands.

But now, as he comes, agony and ecstasy at once, his semen shot with blood, he imagines the explosion, the fire and smoke that in part consists of burning, shredded bits of his father. The highway pillar that the car has crashed against is a monolithic cock, the roiling black and orange cloud the bloody cum, and the spitting grey February sky is the dirty shroud of a bed-sheet.

Maybe he had been visited by an angel after all.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow(is all the boy could say)

Amazing stuff. why don't you just use this very piece as it is? Don't change it. Not now. It doesn't have to be integrated. Maybe later.

That was intense and beautiful and the different time-lines and scenes blending into each other...Loved it!

Paul Curran said...

Yeah, I think it works really well. Great stuff.

Anonymous said...

FreeFox,I'd very much like to talk to you in private as well. My e-mail is:orestes.gr.m@gmail.com.

I'd appreciate it if you sent me your e-mail, if u want to that is, yeah?

Think about it:)
respect
L.

Changeling said...

there's plenty I like here ( shit - like I thought I was monopolising the vomit erotica corner - uh - but here you're hardcore rubbing my face in it :)) So generally, I'm keen on the juxtaposition you present - sad & difficult with a really sweet humour & lightness of touch.
there's some points where you kind of dispense with this - I dunno - but trying to milk that much drama & profundity out of fucking grates with me a little. also maybe, pushing some point or image too hard, trying too obviously to press some 'shock' button? like, you know, the shit/lubricant part? (I mean - old fashioned, romantic spit is just a typo away?) I'm just questioning it cos I don't understand it's intention in the context of the piece - like maybe it highlights you're protagonists frame of reference in a way I'm not getting? for me though, it detracts some from the really successful melancholic beauty you build around it - that's really in keeping with the setting.

some ways this section takes way more risks with form and content - like the concentrating on the sexual gives you some licence to take more risk elsewhere? I like the more broken text - the flitting between images without feeling the need to plot the exact narrative steps. the character that emerges from the more adventurous prose style has this enhanced complexity and elusiveness that I find more interesting/exciting, or something.
trying not to impose my own stylistic patterns on you but I still want you to give some of the very beautiful, powerful and funny images you create here a bit more breathing space, less explanation.

not sure it doesn't overshadow some of your other work if you're going to put it next to it? really liked reading it. thank you

FreeFox said...

Glad you like the vomit, Changeling.
Where do you think the drama & profundity grates? (All instances if you can, the most grating ones if you're in a hurry, please ^_^) What point and/or image do I push too hard? The car-accident orgasm? What is the "shock" of the shock-button I am trying to press?

The shit was just, well, I think trying to be honest. For one, the incident this is based on, that's what we used. Also, I dunno, probably unnessary whimsy, but shit really is the best natural lubricant. Beats baby oil, no comparison to spittle. It seemed like the right place to publicise that fact, but you are probably right and that was the wrong call.

"I still want you to give some of the very beautiful, powerful and funny images you create here a bit more breathing space, less explanation." Please, tell me where I over-explain!!!

"overshadow some of your other work" Yeah, that is why it doesn't work for my Chapter 5. Obviously, to put it into the novel I have to tone it down. And anyway, Edinburgh is also about a second bloke, no sex, just crime, but as much sick beauty and cold love. And I have no idea how to put both into one chapter. But I figured I work them both out as pure and unafraid as I can do it, and then work from there.

Anyway, thanks so much for all of this. Great help!!!!! I owe you.

Anonymous said...

It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep may be.