Homo Erectus

Chapter 10 of Carnival

Carnival

Chapter 10

Homo Erectus

jooli 2 1967

jime

thengz hav gawtn awl scrood up fas

mik haz gawn undrgrown an edz bhin brz

thu man bustd us ystrda in san loois obispo an took ed an mi pawt but it wuzn mi fawlt ed wuz holden it 4 me az uh favr an thu pigz kawt him with it

i don no wut hapund 2 mik he split az soon az thu pigz pold us ovr an iv bin siten her awl da awn thu hiwa in kas he kumz bi but if he duznt iv dsidud 2 kep goen newa bcuz im nawt thu kin uv dood 2 kawp owt wn thu s**t gts thik

ukordn 2 mi map its ruf stuf frum her awn no mor big sitz until mawntra

frs theng iv gawt 2 doo iz gt uh hold uv sum mor pawt but thu wa it loox thaer won b much chans uv skoren 4 uh yl so il hav 2 w8 an c wut wrx owt

kevn

And now Kevin, in the shade of a rare palm, slipped the letter into his last envelope and dropped it in the mailbox. All morning and much of the afternoon he’d loitered here in Morro Bay, watching the highway on the off chance Mike should come pedaling his way. Kevin wasn’t holding his breath. Odds were Mike was on his way back to Santa Monica. And even if the little punk were to continue north, he’d surely be too paranoid to travel in plain sight. No, whichever direction Mike chose, he’d move by night, and by the most circuitous route available.

Morro Bay is one of the loveliest stops the coast highway has to offer, but Kevin wasn’t moved. The hauntingly picturesque windmills and sun-buttered marinas seemed incredibly alien, and the enormous hump of rock rising majestically from the bay only brought to mind Big Joe, who loomed in his thoughts at every turn.

Kevin found a small, clean, family-run cafe. He wasn’t all that hungry, but the cafe’s windows offered a superb highway view and, beyond, the gentle crescent of the sailboat-dotted bay. The cafe’s outer wall was painted in washed blue and marine green, with infantile illustrations of sea life; seahorses, lobsters, crabs, a many-tentacled blemish meant to represent an octopus. Kevin parked his bike and stepped inside. He took a chair at the table nearest the door. The dining area was deserted, but there were active voices in the kitchen, arguing in rapid Greek. The cardboard menu featured a lot of unfamiliar and unpronounceable dishes. When at last a squat, swarthy man in janitorial white came to take his order, his dark eyes beaming with false hospitality, Kevin tentatively ordered falafel, which turned out to be some mildly spiced deep-fried vegetable mush, and a large Pepsi.

While eating he heard a vehicle pull into the lot. A classic powder-blue Ferrari 250 GT parked in front of the café, and a youthful man of thirty-five, after spending a few minutes fussing with his wavy blond hair in the rear view-mirror, stepped out with a neat sashay and proceeded cheerfully up the walk. At the door he stopped to study his overall reflection in the glass, whipped out a fancy comb and spent at least another minute on details around his mane’s part. Kevin saw that this man’s complexion was very smooth and fair. His movements utilized an exaggerated grace, imparting an unpleasant suggestion of effeminacy. There was something of this, too, in the eyes, which were of a twinkling and distant blue, like aquamarine rhinestones. He was dressed as a pseudo-hippie. Kevin imagined he’d told his tailor, “Dress me for the New Generation. You know, like all these young rebels go about nowadays.” But the attempt to mix was simply too obvious. The brightly colored Nehru shirt and alabaster peace medallion were excessively “mod”. The suspiciously soft Levis, though bleached and patched, in no way exemplified the proud, hardy dropped-out set. And the rope-soled sandals were so unworn they appeared virtually brand new. Also, there was a familiar look to his hair…that look, of being long enough to be non-conservative, yet way too well-tended.

Kevin, gloomily munching his vegetable mush, couldn’t help taking all this in. A window should never be used as a mirror. It really didn’t make any sense, unless the man was some kind of a…Kevin guilty looked into his drink. There was a puff of hot air. The blond man waltzed in and stationed himself by the cash register while studying Kevin with an unwavering merry stare. After a minute or two of this the boy grew uncomfortable; he turned his head in the man’s direction and nodded curtly. The stranger continued to eye him gaily.

The squat proprietor came back out and made much of this newcomer, apparently a regular and favored customer. The proprietor wrung his hands with grotesque servility and lavishly flattered the Ferrari. But the blond man’s eyes never left Kevin. He shooed away the proprietor and, without preamble, joined Kevin at his table. Kevin looked away.

After an interminable span the stranger said in a wheedling voice, “You’re certainly an intent road-watcher. You’re waiting for somebody? Hmm?”

Kevin shrugged a shoulder--the shoulder farthest from his unbidden guest. “Sort of. I got separated from a friend of mine back in San Luis Obispo. I’m hoping he’ll come riding by. Sort of.”

The stranger folded his arms on the tabletop, still smiling. “So you’re new in town, is that it? You live in San Luis Obispo, do you? What brings you up to our sunny little resort?”

Kevin grinned lopsidedly. His resolution concerning strangers was easy prey to lonesomeness. “No, I live down near Los Angeles. A city called Santa Monica; maybe you’ve heard of it. Me and a couple partners were riding our bikes up to the Haight to catch the Big Jam at the Park.”

The blond man was delighted. “That’s marvelous! Riding your bicycles up you say? That’s thrilling. How very, very camp. Are you carrying the banner of the Movement? Hmm? Flying your freak flag? Participants in the Summer of Love?”

Kevin looked at him narrowly, wondering if he was being put on. But the answering twinkle was candid. After a moment he felt satisfied the stranger’s enthusiasm was genuine.

“More or less,” he admitted proudly. “A guy would have to be a fool to miss this big a happening.” He looked up, trying to jog his memory. “--‘The world has too long saved itself from becoming meaningfully involved’,” he articulated, “--‘and now to become meaningfully involved is to save the world from itself’.”

“What lovely thoughts you have in your head.”

“Not really,” Kevin said quietly. He looked back into his glass and let the ghosts coalesce. “A good friend once told me that. My…best friend.”

“Still, it’s the conviction that really matters, especially in these turbulent times. But what about your little friends? I’m quite sure you said you were traveling en masse. Where are they?”

Kevin shook his head. “That’s the real bummer. Yesterday the man stopped us and busted Eddie with my pot--” He raised a hand halfway to his mouth.

The blond man placed a thin hand lightly on Kevin’s arm and squeezed. “You don’t have to worry about being discreet with me. You can rest assured I’m no pro-establishment straight. Believe me, I turn on with the best of them.”

There was something really ugly and leading about the way the phrase “turn on” was used here. Kevin squinted. The moment was gone.

“Really?” he asked, curious and skeptical. “You get high?”

“Oh, my. Oh, assuredly. Pot, hashish, acid, some of the best pharmaceuticals money can buy. And let me tell you, none of the lovelies passing through my system are cut, mixed, or tampered with in any way. There is no high like a clean high.”

Kevin used the straw to stir the ice in his glass. At last he said, trying to not appear too eager, “You think you can maybe score me a lid? Like I said, I’m all out of pot.”

The little stars dancing in the irises of the stranger’s light blue eyes now blazed with some inner secret transcending merriment. “Can I score you a lid?” he asked with mock indignation. “Why, do you realize (and you’ll keep this to yourself, please) that you are speaking to the individual solely responsible for stoking the heads of ninety percent of this quaint resort? That is, of the gross turned-on populace. I don’t think more than sixty percent, all totaled, of the men, women, and children of Morro Bay turn on. But, believe me, the time will come, and it won’t be long, when there won’t be a living soul on the face of the globe who doesn’t use pot, acid, and pharmaceuticals. Why, did you know that the Chief of Police in this town has been known to turn on before coming to work? The Chief of Police! Of course you didn’t know. How could you? How could you even guess? But--and I’m not fabricating a word of this, mind you--you wouldn’t believe the number of prominent and ascending socialites who turn on in this cheery little community. It’s the in thing to do. But I don’t have to tell you all this; I can see by that clever look in your eyes that you turn on too, hmmm?”

But Kevin, strange to say, was just too dumb to be subliminally influenced. “Well,” he said, “of course I couldn’t have known those numbers. Things are a lot tighter where I come from. But really,” he said, trying to look the smiling blond man in the eye, “I had you figured for a head as soon as I first saw you. I was just fooling, you know, so you wouldn’t be worried about me being a nark or anything. I mean, really, I believe what you say.”

There was a weighty silence. Again Kevin looked away, totally disgusted by this flashy sweet peacock. For, dumb as Kevin was, he wasn’t so dumb he couldn’t recognize a lousy sticky-lipped, bottom-feeding, heinie-humping rectum reamer when he saw one. Yet the stout boy really wasn’t afraid of any physical advances. He’d heard that homosexuals were easily put off, and he knew that, if the situation should arise, it would be no problem to overpower this frail little man. Besides, Kevin held his own appeal in such low esteem that it seemed ludicrous to imagine a member of either sex seriously propositioning him. So he could pursue the matter.

“Well, do you have the pot on you? I mean, is it here, or do you have to go and get it?”

“Oh no,” the stranger said dreamily. “I never carry quantities with me. We can just skip over to my place and pick it up.”

“But my bike,” Kevin objected. “I can’t leave it here. It might get ripped off. Can’t you just go get the stash and meet me back here?”

The stranger waved a limp hand. He stood and picked up Kevin’s tab. “Nonsense, nonsense. I’ve got a way around that. You just leave it to me.” When they had exited he showed Kevin a gleaming chromed bicycle rack on the Ferrari’s trunk. He laughed. “What did I tell you--no problem!” He gracefully lifted Kevin’s bike onto the rack, saying, “Upsy-daisy now!”

Kevin awkwardly climbed into the sleek little car. As the blond man put the Ferrari in gear and started away, a cassette tape featuring Rod McKuen began immediately. The driver pulled a neatly rolled joint--rolled in paper the same powder-blue as the car--from above the sun visor and lit it with a delicately embossed gold-plate lighter. He handed the joint to Kevin, who knew immediately from the smell and taste that this was foreign grass of high potency. He took two draws and began coughing. When the fit was over his mind was bobbing.

“Wow!” he fumbled. “This is like--this is really dynamite. I mean…wow!”

The blond man looked at him with his widest smile yet, extremely pleased. “What did I tell you? Nothing but the best.”

Kevin hit it again. Wow. There was a gustatory undercurrent, whatever that meant, giving the weed a slightly off taste, as though it had been cut with…Kevin’s balls scrunched up his butt. Meth? He turned to face his benefactor.

Lance’s smile was an enamel cartoon. “Goo-oo-oood?” He cupped Kevin’s knee playfully. “So glad to have turned you on.”

They motored along. Kevin shook his hard and grinned. As they were humped at an intersection he offered his hind in appreciation. “My name’s Kevin.”

The blond man took his hand without the slightest pressure. Kevin had a fleeting impression of an indecipherable change in the man’s smile, but he put it down as a strange effect of this powerful marijuana.

“And I’m Lance.” This statement was made in a velvety undertone. He removed his hand as though Kevin’s body were a thing diseased and unclean. They drove on.

Kevin looked at the beautiful car dazedly. “Wow,” he said, “I just can’t get over this. What…what do you do for a living, Lance?” He blinked, adding quickly, “If I’m not being too purseonal, that is.”

Lance laughed. “Me? Oh, I bugger the mayor for a living, and any of his friends who’re feeling generous. I’ll bet you didn’t know the mayor was gay, did you?” He laughed again, and gave Kevin’s thigh a generous squeeze with his free hand. “I’m kidding, of course. Now this Ferrari is a real jewel. Mint condition. Original paint, would you believe it? Not a ding or a dent when I picked him up; never had a bit of trouble with the motor, runs like a dream. And feel these seats. Original interior; not a rip, not a stain.” He caressed and stroked the leather of the seat, reached up to lovingly pat the dashboard. “Oh, he’s a real beauty, all right.”

Lance pulled to a stop before a rather ordinary-looking apartment complex with an outstanding view of the bay. He carefully removed Kevin’s bicycle from the rack and told him to lock it to a cast iron ornamental lattice bordering the ground floor apartment’s front door. Kevin was by now too stoned to do anything but wordlessly comply, but as he passed the lock’s chain between the rear wheel’s spokes he grew increasingly apprehensive. He left the lock disengaged, just in case, for any reason, he might have to make a quick getaway. Then he followed his strange host into the apartment’s living room.

The decor was expensive and tasteful, but definitely effeminate. Scattered about the room were huge silky pouffes in variant tones of pink, from flesh to shocking; the lamp shades, as diaphanous as baby dolls, conformed to this tone scheme with subtle seductiveness. Conspicuously lacking were the materials a man generally uses to mood his lair: leather, chrome, rich woods were nowhere to be seen. With a start Kevin realized that all the framed nudes were males. Hiding his revulsion, he tried to focus on what his host was saying.

“Oh, I know it’s not much,” Lance gushed, slouching against a delicate rice paper partition and growing prissier by the second, “but I make do.”

Knowing it was expected of him, Kevin murmured, “Oh, it’s really…really swell, Lance.” He quickly brought the small talk back to basics. “Look, I don’t mean to rush you, but could I just get that lid?”

Lance pooh-poohed the interruption. “No bother; I’m in no hurry. Gracious! What kind of host am I, anyway? Do sit down. Make yourself comfy. What’s your drink?”

Kevin remained standing, unconsciously balling his hands into fists. After a moment he said, very quietly, “I don’t drink.” Then, with barely concealed anxiety, “Listen, Lance, I didn’t tell you before, but I’m really in a hurry. No offense or anything, man, but just let me cop a lid and split, okay? Don’t get me wrong, I sure do appreciate the hassle you’re going to and all, but I’ve really got to be on my way. I don’t want to go into details, but I’ve got a heavy date, right away. With,” he added quickly, “a girl. My girlfriend’ll be waiting and I hate to make her wait.” He managed a sickly grin. “You know how women are…I--what I mean to say is, like, let’s just forget about the lid, ’cause I’m in a like super-hurry so I guess I’d better just split. Nice to meet you and thanks for the ride. I really dug the ride, that’s a really nice car you’ve got there, really. Well, I guess I’d better be going, so take it easy.” He ended lamely, “Thanks again.” He had to look down.

And the room frosted over. Lance’s aquamarine eyes weren’t twinkling anymore. He said softly, “You’re nervous. I’m making you nervous.”

Kevin nearly blacked out. Something absolutely primitive in his subconscious caught his courage before it could hit the floor, and his mouth, on its own, replied: “Just who the f**k are you to tell me whether I’m nervous or not, huh, man? I mean, where the f**k do you get off thinking you can read my mind, huh, prick?”

“You’re getting rowdy,” Lance responded. “I’m making you rowdy.”

“I’m not getting rowdy,” Kevin gasped. “It’s just that you keep coming on like…like…”

“Go ahead and say it,” Lance hissed. “Like a queer, is that what you mean? Like a fairy? A f****t?”

“I…I…”

“Well, that’s just an assumption. That’s not only unfair and premature, it’s characteristic of a bigot, and if I’d known you were a bigot I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to help you score like this.”

“You…you said it wasn’t any hassle.”

“It’s going out of my way to entertain a bigot.”

“But,” Kevin groped, “I’m really not all that big. I just come from a…large family.”

And Lance was smiling again. “You know what, cream puff? I believe you. There’s nothing more disarming than innocence. And,” he divulged, “just to put your mind at ease, I want you to know you’re not the first person to jump to that conclusion.”

There ensued another of those excruciating silences, punctuated only by a slender crystal grandfather clock ticking patiently in the corner. Something about the steady tapping made Kevin’s mind hark back to that crucial November night in the garage loft, when Eddie’d got his head just as stoked on pot, and a similar tapping had portended an explosion that would profoundly affect his future.

“I just don’t know what it is,” Lance sighed, alternately sagging and recovering, “that would cause some people to get that impression.” His gaze oozed across the framed male nudes. After a reflective pause he began to discourse:

“Y’know, jelly bean, we’ve all heard this label-linking about ‘lifestyles’, and ‘sexual preferences’, and all this speculation about whether it’s a genetic thing or something an individual, presumably heterosexual by nature, gets sucked into through exposure to sickies and horniness--as if straight young men are caught in a helpless spiral; from pornography to prostitutes to queer dives. As if to say there’s a lurid substratum of compulsively masturbating thrill addicts needing a harder fix each time; and so moving up the sin ladder. That’s like assuming a pot smoker ‘does it’ for a voluptuous thrill until it just isn’t ‘good enough’ anymore, and so goes on to sniffing glue or dropping downers, finally ending up in a rat-infested tenement sharing needles with another little engine that couldn’t. So you see, passion fruit, our hypothetical assumptive personality, adamantly indifferent to the facts and completely ignorant of the experience, is the party with the least valid voice in the matter. But everybody knows that. It’s just that honesty takes all the fun out of a witch hunt.

“Anyways,” Lance elaborated, “there’s a mutual insensitivity that guarantees both sides’ll remain polarized. You take queer factions, for instance. Now, what outspoken homosexual groups are unable to understand, pudding buns, when they publicly attempt to assuage the straight community with all their rationale about ‘preferences’ and ‘lifestyles’, is…is…the absolute, soul-deep revulsion the heterosexual majority is going to experience. As an example I could say…oh…like I’m a member of the pro-cannibalism movement, okay? Just an analogy.”

“I know,” Kevin said remorsefully, “all about analogies.”

“Groovy. So we’ll suppose that cannibalism is my ‘preference’, or my ‘religion’, or my ‘philosophy’. Right? So…why in the world, my camp wonders, do you goobers react so violently, so canniphobically, to our druthers? I mean, we don’t castigate you for being strict vegetarians, or for being steak and potato guys, or even for being Sara Lee junkies. So why should it bother you that we eat our relatives? You’ve got your thing, and we’ve got ours. All we ask is that we cannibals are treated the same as so-called ‘normal’ people. You see what I mean? And I can stretch this kind of inductive nonsense as far as necessary. I can say, for example, that the morgue is an eco-friendly source of protein, and I can say additionally that people have been ceremoniously eating other people since people began, and that it’s only some weird right-wing taboo which prevents we finger-lickin’ liberals from enjoying, let’s say, the pleasures of the flesh.”

“That’s disgusting,” Kevin said.

“Exactly. But to our theoretical cannibals’ society it’s straight-up reasonable, and your aversion is just a popular prejudice. And that’s why queers miss the mark so badly. Apparently they don’t understand that homosexuality is nauseating, infuriating, and absolutely ugly; ugly in a way that wholly deflects sympathy and snuffs any desire to reach a compromise. When a f****t announces his fairyness to someone in the straight community, he’s not communicating to that straight someone: ‘I am simply a person like any other, who just so happens to be oriented toward members of his own gender rather than the opposite gender’. What he’s communicating is: ‘I’m a male who loves sucking on another male’s penis while my punk lover rams his penis in and out of my anus. I crave the sickest, most obscene behavior imaginable’.”

There was a lull while Lance collected himself.

“The premise,” Kevin said brightly, “is everything.”

Lance blinked at him. “What premise?” Then he said, “Oh, oh, oh! I see what you mean. Queers, cannibals, and democrats aren’t aware of their transgressions because they’re morally ignorant. They take the Constitution literally. In other words, liberty, perversion, and cannibalism are synonymous: we’re freemen!”

Kevin looked away, seeking words to encapsulate and close this increasingly uncomfortable subject.

“I really don’t care what people do in privacy,” he said. “But if it’s a bad thing it shouldn’t be in everybody’s face. I mean…I don’t think I should even have to know about it, except maybe from some book. Instead, there’s these parades and all this public stuff. They even say they’re proud of it. I don’t understand that.”

“Gay Pride,” Lance replied, again slouching against the rice paper partition, “is definitely an oxymoron. But I guess closets can become suffocating after a couple thousand years or so. Yet,” he said, holding up a hand to obviate any possible interruption, “after all the dirt has been swept aside, there remains one totally critical, unprejudiced question: why is homosexuality?

“Now, it’s a simple, undeniable fact that nothing occurs in nature, as a steady-state, without being a part of the Big Picture. Ergo, sweetmeat, homosexuality has a place in nature; it’s not just some temporary phenomenon or transient mutation. It’s always been with us, even though it’s been in the closet, retaining its natural hold on a percentage of the population. You can read about it in the Bible, or in the Wall Street Journal, for that matter. But why does it exist?”

Kevin shrugged. “The world doesn’t need more babies.”

“That does seem to be the only logical answer. A queer won’t get his f****t sweetheart pregnant. But why would the population be regulated like that? Why not more miscarriages? Why not an asexual continuum? Or a naturally-regulated quota of infertile women, or impotent men?”

“Maybe because--”

“I’ll tell you why,” Lance broke right in. “I’ll answer my own questions, deary, if you don’t mind! I’m not making idle chatter here; I’m attempting to probe the deepest recesses, to get my hands on the naked truth. So…notwithstanding that homo sapiens is, to all effects and purposes, out of the food chain, and that our numbers don’t have to be regulated according to how many of our offspring are likely to be scarfed up, and…given that there are more effective ways for nature to maintain population control, and disregarding any ecumenical tripe about good and evil, we’re left with a sexual anomaly that resists logic and persists throughout history. And the answer is not to be found in mathematics, and it’s not to be found in reason. It’s even more abstruse than the queer community calling itself ‘gay’. Now there’s a dignified, ennobling title for you!

“Anyway, as I was attempting to impart here, the answer is far more basic. You see, peach, testosterone is an intensely powerful chemical influence. The sexual receptor is the libido, which is a blind area. Men will f**k women,” he sang, “men will f**k men. Men will f**k boys, men will f**k sheep. Men will f**k anything that will accommodate them. A man will f**k himself if he can figure out a way to do it. And it really doesn’t reflect on the individual, except where there’s no restraint. No matter how intense the provocation, each man still has an obligation to govern his reaction. It’s the mind--not the brain, the mind--which gives us the right to call all other species ‘lower animals’. We can’t spiritually go through life on all fours.”

“Now you’re starting to kinda remind me of my best friend.”

“Really!” Lance gushed. “I’m flattered. Is he cute?”

“I…don’t know,” Kevin fumbled. “I never thought about him like that. What I mean is the kinda stuff you’re talking about reminds me of him. I guess there’s a lot I haven’t given much thought to.”

“Well, shame on you. You don’t want to live in the dark, do you? That’s what this whole revolution’s about. People are opening their minds and their hearts, instead of just running around following orders and feeding the system. It’s not only the gays. The entire human race is coming out of one closet or another.”

“I just wish they’d do it without the parades,” Kevin said, “and quit trying to make everybody feel guilty about ’em being in there in the first place.”

“Hypocrisy,” Lance prognosticated, “is one practice that’ll never go out of fashion. So there might be a whole lot less of this homophobia if queers would just quit pretending there’s nothing disgusting about being queer.” Lance, placing his hands on his hips and pouting dreamily, now embellished, “Yet, you know, it’s the same thing, heterosexually speaking, when you put the pump on the other foot.

“Take the way women come off making statements about how they’re oppressed, and not seen as anything other than sex objects, whilst they demand equal access to the power thought-pool. Reverse the broadcast imagery, if you will. Now…just picture a man in a skirt, wearing special underclothing designed to ‘lift and separate’ his private parts into your focus, wearing lipstick and mascara and eyeliner, his hair dyed and his nails polished, stamping his heels in pique because you won’t take him seriously as a cool, deep, intellectual individual. Imagine it! Women are either as naïve, or as dishonest, as f**s. Hell-o-o out there, women! You’re painting yourselves, for goodness’ sake! What are you, aborigines? You’re painting yourselves! You’re dangling baubles from your body parts. You’re boldly walking around in public trying to be just as naked as you can legally be. Everything you do, everything you stand for…your entire ‘statement’ is sex--not gender, sex--yet you’re brought up to believe anybody who reacts to what you’re deliberately radiating is dirty-minded. You’re the ones who are dirty-minded!

“I mean,” Lance shivered, “can’t you just see some curvy guy in drag, expecting to be taken seriously! That…why, that’s so ludicrous it’s…it’s…delicious!”

But Kevin wasn’t salivating. Now the grandfather clock was pounding in his head, and Lance had become something out of a nightmare. “I gotta go,” he said. “Later.”

“Nonsense! Just relax. Pull up one of those cushions and take off your shoes. I’ll be back in a sec’.” He sauntered into the kitchen, pausing halfway to look back with his hands on his hips. “They’re painting themselves!”

After a moment Kevin sat on a lavender couch and gnawed his nails. If Lance would have stood in his way…it would have been different. But take off his shoes--hell! No way was he about to remove a single article of clothing. He told himself to be a man: a tough, resolute lumberjock with thighs of steel, a no-holes-barred hardon who wasn’t about to shake any lip off of some pretty-a*s blond weenie wagger. He’d come to screw a lid and, d****t, he’d perch here surrounded by posters of hot shiny naked guys all day long if he had to; it was no big deal, ’cause he didn’t lean that way, wouldn’t ponder leaning, wouldn’t dream of leaning. Kevin actually thought it was fall-down funny that dudes would even pose for other dudes; that was lady stuff, and since only guys liked to look at pictures, only women should spread for ’em. That one guy there, Kevin marveled, must have exercised forever to get abs like that. Or maybe it was just fairy luck: a bi-product of nibbling tofu and sprouts and other leprechaun food instead of real macho grub like hot dogs with heavy mayo and tight sesame buns. A string of saliva joined Kevin’s lips. Or maybe that guy didn’t just diet and work the abs; he was absolutely ripped, from his taut glistening pecs all the way down to his rock-hard thighs. It was really kind of funny looking at another guy’s penis like this. Not funny-haha, but funny…well, funny. It wasn’t an actual photograph anyway, just some kind of special effects mock-up, where great equipment augments a hairless model’s doink and doo-dads so whoever’s staring hard at it simply can’t look away. Kevin had heard of such stiff in orgio-video class: cameras, filters, lights and codpieces. Manimation. 3-D graphic sensories that feel the observer into believing a picture of some guy’s ripe rolling riftwhomper is, well, you know, engorging, or whatever the hell they call it, getting bigger and shinier and closer and thicker and oh for the love of God; Kevin closed his knees and covered his peaking lap with his forearms. Something totally wrong was going on here. And definitely not wrong-haha. He’d heard of such stiff in science class; bi-ochemistry it was called, where the bodies’ organs could penetrate even the tightest wad until some poor son of a b***h dropped to his knees and embraced a great God in Heaven something really queer was going on here. Kevin bit his lower lip and stamped a foot. For some reason a vision of his mom doing a striptease came to mind, and that was that. But man oh man oh men, somebody must have slipped him something. That grass must have come off a Thighstick. He’d heard about such stiff in Jim class…

The muzak of a string queertet swished sweetly from speakers lurking in the balls. Lance pranced in, gaily jiggling a sticky woody tray. “Cumfy?” he queeried. On the shiny round tray were: a carafe containing a foggy liqueer, a tall glans of wine, and a bulging, ornately splayed hardwood box.

Lance laid the tray on the rump-end of a pronated coffee table. He opened the box, exposing its contents to Kevin’s frankly curious gaze. The boy half-expected to see a ghastly rectal arsenal of gadgets and lubricants, but the box contained various articles of smoking paraphernalia, little trays of hashish and marijuana, a generous variety of capsules and tablets, and several vials of powders. Now here was something to focus on.

“Did I lie?” Lance prompted gleefully. “Nothing but the best!”

Kevin threw his whole attention into the box of goodies.

“What kind of pot is this?”

“Here, Panama Red. This here is from Vietnam. And this is Acapulco Gold. Real Acapulco Gold, not the bunk you get on the street.”

“Wow! And the hash?”

“From India, here. This is from Iraq, and this here’s local.”

“Man! What’s in these little bottles?”

“Cocaine here, absolutely uncut. Pure PCP here. And this little vial contains s-s-s-mack! for those rare moments.”

“No kidding! And all these pills!”

“That’s right, spongecake. Uppers, downers, in-betweeners. Mescaline and Orange Sunshine. Pressed powder of peyote. And this…this is for you.” He handed the boy a neatly bagged ounce of pungent marijuana, and refused to accept a cent in payment.

Kevin looked up in awe and deep gratitude, a good deal of his natural repugnance replaced by envy and a sort of diluted idolatry. He stuffed the baggie in his left trousers pocket.

“So. Would you like a toot of that coke?” Lance offered delightedly. “I can guarantee you won’t soon, if ever, sample its equal.”

Kevin’s mouth opened wider. “Could I?”

“Of course! That’s what it’s here, for, Silly. You didn’t think I brought it out just to tease you, did you? Here’s the vial, and here’s the straw, mirror, and razor blade.” He pointed out these articles and settled next to Kevin on the lavender couch, watching over the rim of his wine glass as the boy indulged. He laughed with a trace of the old merriment when Kevin got a nosebleed from snorting the drug.

“Wow-w-w--” Kevin said at last. He felt he was out to sea, without moorage, without memory.

“Goo-oo-oood?” Lance asked. His voice was distant, soft as cotton on the eardrums. Kevin watched entranced as Lance leaned forward to extract a tiny jade pipe from the box, a slender hand on Kevin’s thigh for support. Lance filled the bowl with a large chunk of hashish and placed the pipe in Kevin’s numb fingers.

Some part of Kevin heard a voice say, “Here. Smoke this. It’ll make the high flow easier. It’ll soften you up. But first…as an everlasting symbol of our very, very close friendship.” Lance removed his alabaster peace medallion and draped it around Kevin’s neck. “Now!” The boy obediently puffed on the pipe’s stem while Lance held a sputtering match to the bowl. After three hits he was hacking uncontrollably. He felt the chill of a glass in his hand, and was gratefully gulping down a cold foggy drink.

The combination of all these stimuli had Kevin completely confused, but delightfully so. If he had previously been frightened and repulsed by his host, all was now forgotten in this wonderful cool weightlessness. He was bobbing and drifting, he was grinning lazily at the room. Lance’s smiling countenance became just another prop highlighting the strange backdrop floating round and round, and Kevin’s body had grown so numb that it was a full five minutes before he realized Lance’s hand was resting on his knee. He gawked at the man, or tried to gawk. Kevin Freaking Mikolajczyk was made of stone. Lance must have seen something in his face though, for he removed the hand and busied himself with the contents of the joybox.

“Come in, come in,” Lance was jabbering. “This is planet Lance to outpost station Kevin; do you read me? I say, you don’t seem to be receiving me, Station Kevin. Come in, come in. Are you receiving me? Are we making contact? Come in, please.” Lance passed a hand like a fluttering bat in front of Kevin’s face. “Dear me, what’s it like out there, Station Kevin? What do you see? Tell me. Tell me what you see.”

Kevin grinned at the jackass and his stupid room. He certainly did feel out in space, and this certainly was good cocaine, and mighty choice hashish, but there had been something in that drink…he felt oddly open to suggestion. He didn’t want to offend his generous, if comical, host, so he did everything in his power to pay attention, to focus his glassy eyes.

“Planet Lance to Station Kevin, Planet Lance to Station Kevin, we are sending up a shuttlecraft. Please open your receiving hatch. Repeat, we are sending up a shuttlecraft. Come on now, plum, open your mouth.”

Station Kevin saw a capsule-shaped shuttlecraft growing in his viewscreen, and obediently opened his receiving hatch. There was a sudden obstruction in his throat--and he was choking, choking, but his good friend and benefactor was helping him, holding his head while administering increasingly large doses of that same acidic drink. The offending lump slid down his throat.

“You know what that was, biscuit? Seven-hundred and fifty thousand micrograms of Latvian LSD cut with estrogenic esters of Eastwood. Margarine, anybody? Soon you’ll be orbiting out of all known planes, just a big juicy nebula lost in space, a happy creature of godlike luminosity. How does that strike you, sweets? Isn’t it goo-oo-oood?”

And Kevin closed his eyes to hide from the hypnotic voice, becoming an astronaut in a huge clumsy spacesuit, floating in a starless void. Far, far away drifted the squat body of his truncated module, a dazzlingly lovely thing shimmering in its own light. Kevin, groping for it, became aware he was without lifeline. He took that news in stride, and began swimming for the module. But the module was moving away, at a velocity precisely mirroring the little forward lurches he managed. He threw out his arms in despair, only to find himself tumbling over and over like paper in a gentle breeze. Kevin resigned himself to this tumbling, which soon steadied to a smooth spiraling. Abruptly the great body of the module was before him, and he was closing with outstretched arms. Once he’d embraced it, the module began rocking violently, as though a captive beast raged within. And from out of nowhere a great slug monster clamped itself to his back, growing, growing; bigger than he, then bigger than the shaking module, then bigger than space itself. Kevin cried out in alarm and opened his eyes. And the wildly bucking module became the lavender couch, and the slug monster on his back became his frantically humping ex-friend Lance.

Shock prevented his reacting for a moment. But only for a moment. Kevin scrambled to his feet with a wail of horror and disgust.

There were some really strange visual events taking place all about the room…and Lance was facing him, his Levis and shorts down to his ankles, panting, flaccid.

“Are you out of your mind-your mind?” Kevin cried, his voice splintering in his ears. “What do you--what do you think you’re doing?doing?do-ing-g?”

Lance was staring with vacant eyes, his mouth working soundlessly. At last he said, viciously, “I should paddle your fanny for that, you know that? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“No!” Kevin gasped, close to tears. “Get away! Please. Leave me alone!”

Lance advanced threateningly, only managing small steps due to the Levis fettering his ankles. “Or do you want to paddle my fanny? You can do it if you want! Yes. Do it! Do it!” He turned and proffered his skinny pale buttocks.

“No!” Kevin screamed. The powerful dose of LSD was taking command quickly, and with attitude. Kevin, cringing on the edge of the couch, covered his face as a dozen trail-images of his arms dissolved into multicolored streamers. Green paisley patterns oozed down the walls.

When he looked again Lance was gone, but he could hear a soliloquy from the next room,

“Insolent puppy! Telling me to get away! In my own house!”

Kevin stood shakily. He made for the door in slow motion, forcing the lead stilts of his legs through a thick, sluggishly flowing medium while the ocean roared in his ears. He finally reached the door, hauled it open. Behind the door was only a closet containing dainty garments. He willed himself to close the door but his arm would not obey, so he stood frozen, staring into the rustling disembodied finery. From the adjacent bedroom came an odd snapping, and Lance’s thin voice, “Rude. Naughty. Selfish.” Each word was punctuated by a cracking report. The voice was nearing. In a panic Kevin freed his hand from the doorknob and swam toward the center of the room.

“So there you are!”

Turning, Kevin was horrified to see Lance attired in powder blue panties, red high heels, and a limp black brassiere. In his hand was a flexible thing like a rubber ping pong paddle with a phallus handle, its diaphragmatic surface nearly covered with slender, villi-like nylon protuberances. He was slapping the device against his palm.

Kevin cried out and slowly dog-paddled away, assaulted from all directions by the most amazing and terrifying hallucinations. The room would yawn to swallow him, then tilt and revolve, drawing him deeper into its crazy reeling belly, and he’d be running along an unending, whirling hallway, puffing up a DOWN escalator, hacking his way through a vacuum, while colors and sounds strafed him from all sides. And everywhere he turned Lance’s feverish voice was in one ear, the smacking of the paddle in the other. The whirling hallway came to an abrupt end. Kevin was cornered. He turned with a snarl just as Lance pounced, both hands scrabbling for the fly on his guest’s Levis.

Kevin grabbed the first thing within reach, which happened to be the slender neck of a plaster lamp. With all his strength he brought the base of the lamp down on Lance’s intent, sweating face. The lamp exploded in his hand and the grip on his pants was released. He opened his eyes to see Lance’s grinning face next to his. There was blood all over that silly mug, and sharp chunks of plaster embedded in the cheeks and forehead. The look on the man’s face was ecstatic. Kevin, in pushing him away, undulated to his feet. Lance rolled on his back like a submissive b***h, grinning up at him.

Kevin whirled, flipped over the lurking lavender couch, and somehow made his way to the front door. As he threw it open the fading daylight burst on him like a tidal wave. In the space within the door’s frame, the horizon was revolving kaleidoscopically about an angry, throbbing sun. Exotic shrieks filled his ears. He reeled into his bicycle and stumbled over it, rolled, picked himself and the bicycle up, mounted it backward, pitched headfirst off the porch. The lock’s chain was fouled in the spokes. He tore out the chain and left it where it fell.

A sound of stumbling from the front room. Kevin frantically threw himself on his bike as Lance came clopping out in his bra and panties, covered with blood and bawling, “Wait, Honeyhole! Wait!” Kevin kicked at him twice, missed twice, and wobbled onto the walk. Lance, doubled-over on the railing, shook his fist, cried, “Cockteaser!” and began hollering for the police.

Kevin insanely pedaled down the street, hallucinating parked cars rushing at him. The road pitched and yawed.

It was fortunate he found his way to Brokeback Beach, where someone in his condition posed little threat to himself or to the community. He dragged his bike through the sand until the front wheel turned on him: b***h. With the pink light district in front and the lubricant sea behind, Kevin found himself going south in the petering light. Butt he’d really pulled a boner this time: Kevin had stumbled upon an all-male nude beach! He backed onto a peephole grate, only to have a hot blast of air blow his sheer frilly skirt billowing around his eyes; and that wasn’t the worst of it--Kevin wasn’t wearing any underpants! Blushing bright crimson, he flitted off squealing, his hands desperately cupping his front and rear, an old man on crotches in hot pursuit. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide; a boy band was fingering him fully while searchlight beams danced gaily over the sand, exposing Kevin’s quivering spunkhole to landlubbers and semen alike. Queens to the left of him, jerkers to the right, and cuming up ahead--no, not sperm whales! This was nuts! Kevin screamed as Lance rose from the sand, violated an ankle, and tried to drag him down. The boy kicked and kicked until a snarling wedge of spokes bit into flesh. His bike’s front wheel half-turned, but it was enough to throw him face-first into the sand. In one lunge Lance’s ghost was on him. Weeping with the pain, Kevin dug himself deeper, deeper; a bottom-up b***h in a gangbanger’s gloryhole, holding his own while the naked night punked him to sleep.

* * *

When he woke it was just getting light. The sand was damp and cold, the area stinking of beached seaweed. His body felt sticky and limp, elastic, as though it no longer belonged to him. He spat the sand from his mouth and sat up. His left foot was swollen and numb, still wedged between the spokes of his bicycle’s rear wheel. With the utmost delicacy he extracted the foot and let it rest on the sand. Curiously, his first concern was damage to the spokes. When he saw there was no problem he let his Gumby body fall back on the sand.

And so the memories came rushing back. Kevin struggled to suppress them, to think of other things, but the drug’s effects still had him. Chief among his remaining sensations was this nauseous weightlessness, very much like an alcohol hangover. Yet faint traces of colored light still wriggled in the air, and the cottages off the strand exuded a sickly radiance.

He limped across the sand to the mouth of a little waking avenue, where he caught his reflection in the window of a notary public’s office. He hung his head. He looked and felt like hell. Kevin ran his hands over his matted hair, pulled his hat back in place, wiped his hands across his face and down his sides. He stopped when he felt a bulge in his pants pocket. Kevin fished out the squashed bag of marijuana. Only then did he recall the full horror of the assault. Kevin was filled with a rage so intense it left him limp and spent without having moved a muscle. He wanted to take Lance by the ears and smash his grinning face into a wall, into a window, into anything that would maim. But that, he realized, was exactly what the man craved. The world was just too sick and perverse to fathom. He continued shambling down the sidewalk.

He came to a tiny cafeteria and drank steaming black coffee. Now he could accept the looks of disgust and amusement he received from other customers; he’d become empathic. Not long ago, in another world and another life, he could sneer right back, Now he only felt guilty in public.

Shunning any solid breakfast, he dragged himself from the cafeteria and back to the beach, where he grudgingly rolled a joint. After two inhalations he began to hallucinate. He snuffed the joint and dropped it back in the bag.

Kevin, returning to the avenue, eventually found himself back on Highway 1. Resting there, watching the gorgeous morning stretch awake, he weighed the urge to chuck it all and just head on home. What prevented him he wasn’t sure, but, as he realized for the first time that Lance’s alabaster peace medallion still hung from his neck, a grim resolve shooed away his every thought of submission. He raised the medallion to his eyes, prepared to tear it from its chain and hurl it into the nearest storm drain as a proclamation of his outrage. He hesitated. It was a beautifully carved piece. No, he would keep this medallion, along with all the other junk he’d acquired--Kevin was a pack rat at heart. He stared at the gently shimmering houses, at the radioactive gulls scudding over the broad sparkling bay, then, in his mind, at the miles and miles of highway yet to be conquered. Slowly a hard smile turned away the furrows of tension on his brow. The sun, small and round in the east, was glazing the rooftops with gold. Like it or not, it was going to be a beautiful day.