Spitting in the Face of Love
I’d seen him in a small club off Old Compton Street, his blonde hair dry and brittle from too much peroxide, which, as the spinning dance floor lights struck it with their pulsing beams, always reminded me of a field of sun-scorched corn. His narrow ribcage would jut through his tight crop top with his pierced nipples poking prominently through the thin material, as his hands perpetually fiddled with the diamond stud dangling from his navel.
Through narrowed eyes pouring with hate, I’d glare at him as he strutted proudly past the crowded bar, mincing through the sea of shirtless men frenziedly dancing, and, melodramatically holding a hand to his tall forehead, collapse into the waiting lap of some obese suited lawyer, where he would wiggle like a Persian cat demanding attention, all the while sipping rum and coke through a straw.
I knew he was a rent boy, but always considered him far too ugly to warrant payment, his scratchy laugh tearing at my nerves like an animal’s sharpened claw as he haughtily glanced in my direction, waving a handful of notes given to him by a drunken punter, who would trail him towards the exit with their eyes fixed lecherously on his tiny backside, like some starving, flea-ridden donkey chasing a carrot.
Last week, they found his body under the derelict railway arches, a seedy area notorious for being the haunt of foreign male prostitutes, selling their diseased cocks for ridiculously cheap rates.
He’d been raped, and then stabbed repeatedly; the knife was still buried in his throat and the chasm-sized wounds scoring his blue skin slowly scabbing over as the first forensics team arrived on the scene.
I laughed joyously when I’d heard the news.
It was the third such murder this year, though the police seemed reluctant to investigate; as a result, a rabble of rowdy gay activists had set up camp outside the new purpose-built Met office, banners decorated with rainbows laid across each tent, under the awnings of which emaciated men gathered, tunelessly banging tambourines and drums throughout the night.
The rent boys still working there displayed not a single trace of anxiety or fear on their dark, blemish-free features as I headed across the nettle-strewn waste ground, stepping round the rusting wrecks of broken shopping trollies lying discarded. The overgrown footpath leading to the abandoned bridge was blocked by the burnt-out hulks of stolen cars, across the blistered bonnets of which reams of ivy clamoured, spreading like cancer as they insidiously slid their branches through the tubes of the blackened engines.
Disturbed by the thud of my heavy foot-falls, two men tentatively peered over the crumbling remains of a broken wall, their faces flushed. Sensing that I held no threat, they once again disappeared out of view; within seconds I could hear the wet slap of skin, accompanied by faint murmurs of delight.
The setting sun was hidden behind a clot of clouds; it had coyly peaked through earlier on, a mere flash illuminating the still, lifeless afternoon, like some stripper clad in fishnets dazzling a club of baying old men with a hint of her young, smooth skin.
Used condoms lay all around as if they had rained from the sky, a trail of scrunched white tissues streaked with brown pointing my way forward. I could almost smell the desperation of the men that cruised there, could smell their frustration, musty like a sodden locker room, its wooden benches littered with jocks and pants, could smell their hunger, metallic like blood, and I could taste their anticipation on my tongue, their expectation, their eagerness for satisfying release, sweet like warm milk.
A long-forgotten caravan, one side smashed in, the frame and wall girders twisted like a cubist nightmare was slumped forlornly on the cracked tarmac before me. Behind it, the tall brick supports of the bridge rose up like the legs of a stone giant. Despite the murder there less than six days before, the rent boys still kept it as their pitch, like territorial beasts reluctant to leave their scent-soaked burrow.
Beneath the enormous curved vault, the dying remains of a smouldering bonfire stretched out spectral fingers of smoke as twilight filled the rows of arches with oppressive gloom. Empty cans of industrial-strength beer rattled amongst the rubble as a sudden wind rushed past, like the old steam trains that once chugged across the tracks above my head. I stopped, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness; as I rapidly blinked, details on the far wall became more distinct, and I could dimly make out a faded, torn poster, promoting a rave party on the other side of town. I could see no sign that a murder had taken place there, save for a few shreds of police tape that flapped like blue and white bats in the chilly air.
A sense of disappointment weighed down my mind.
Perhaps I was expecting blood, smeared across the gravel and sprayed all over the graffitied walls.
Perhaps I was expecting to see ripped clothes strewn about, dyed a dark crimson.
Instead there was nothing, nothing sinister, nothing macabre, nothing grotesque; I should have stayed in my apartment and tried the three grams of ketamine I’d been sold yesterday in a pub toilet; at least I would then have felt something, would then have experienced some distracting sensation, lifting my thoughts from banality and freeing my mind from the slothful ennui perpetually clinging to it like a hunter’s trap biting into the leg of an agonised animal.
I wanted to feel excitement -
Wanted to feel scared -
Terrified -
Wanted to catch the smell of the rent boy’s fear as the murderer first pulled out the knife -
Wanted to hurt like the rent boy hurt as the knife sliced through muscle and sinew, waves of pain racing through his nerves -
More -
More -
I wanted my heart to pound like his killer’s, his bloodstream overloaded with adrenalin, as he looked down at the dead body and realised what he’d done.
I wanted to feel -
I wanted to feel -
I wanted to feel something.
But still there was nothing, nothing inside my brain, nothing inside my mind and my soul just a vacuum, empty of any emotion and devoid of all love.
I was vaguely aware that perhaps I should feel some shame at dwelling on such ghoulish thoughts. But, as I imagined the screams, as I imagined his petrified cries, corrupt feelings of violence, hate and rage sprung like thick black oil from the fissure lancing through long-buried sub-stratas of my being, and the violence -
The hate -
The pure, untainted, untameable rage -
They felt comfortable and familiar as I welcomed them like long-lost friends, clutching them to my chest as they filled me with such warmth, such energy -
Such life.
And then they were gone. My eyes slowly opened, and I was standing alone in the dark. There I stayed for what seemed like hours, dazed, almost exhausted; the experience was like that of the most gruelling speed-comedown. Then footsteps and a tall silhouette tentatively edging closer to me; the light that spilled from the nearby motorway blazed about him as if he were some spirit poised on the fiery bridge spanning life and death. Unfazed, I turned in his direction, calmly pulling out a Menthol; the stuttering flame from my lighter lit his pale, heavy-set features and the thick wiry eyebrows that hovered like storm clouds above two small orbs of bottomless black.
He stopped, cocking his head at an angle, like a puppy whining for food; in the funereal, stagnant atmosphere of the arch, I could hear the nervous throb of his heartbeat growing in intensity as he sided up to me.
No greetings, no introductions, no words, just the grip of his cold hands against my groin as he clumsily fiddled with my stubborn flies, the staccato bursts of his garlic-breath brushing my cheek like cobwebs.
I knew he was trade; it was no surprise then, when, in stilted English, with his guttural Eastern European accent disfiguring each word almost beyond understanding, he began to reel off a list of prices.
Five for a suck.
That was cheap. He was obviously realistic; with his lack of good looks and an awkward demeanour that suggested he still hadn’t fully learnt to control his rebellious limbs as they twitched uncomfortably about, he’d be lucky to get much more. His long worm-like fingers poked through my now-open zip, roughly prodding my cock as if prompting it into life.
Seven for a suck and swallow.
Unfastening my trousers, the buckle rattling as they fell past my knees, he sank to the ground and violently wrenched my foreskin back. I winced in discomfort; he was clearly a novice, with little experience of a man’s body.
Probably not even queer, just desperate for money.
Hesitantly, he kneaded my buttocks with his bony knuckles, all the time worriedly looking around. I bent down, grabbing him under his sweat-soaked armpits, and pulled him up.
Seven for a suck and swallow, but ten if I wanted to kiss as well.
Holding my finger to his lips, at last he fell silent, his embarrassment and lack of confidence obvious as he ripped at his dirty nails with his teeth, chewing them over and over as I produced my wallet and plucked out a note. Instantly he went to snatch it, his eagerness tempered with caution like a frightened rabbit hungry for the food in its owner’s hands.
It was his, if he showed me the exact spot where the rent boy was killed.
The night was freezing as he led me alongside the bridge towards a rising slope heaped with bushes. We passed three teenagers leaning against a pile of car tyres as they shared a cigarette and shivered in their skimpy shorts and tight vests; in hushed Polish accents they whispered secretively amongst themselves, eyeing me up and down. One called out to my guide, who spun round and spat aggressively at them. From each arch we purposefully walked by, I could hear the squelch of sticky lube being squeezed from a tube, overlaid with the constant drip of water.
Once I glimpsed two shapes close to the path, one bent over, with the other’s arm holding him in position as he writhed and wriggled, like some serpent climbing out of its shed, spent skin.
Still my man was running through his catalogue of vices like a waiter with his menu, the food on offer never filling, never satisfying, but always leaving you with a desperate hunger for more.
Fifteen for a fuck. Seventeen, a fuck, no condom.
The final arch had almost totally collapsed, a wall of waist-high weeds that rocked in the icy wind blowing off the river offering privacy and seclusion. Stepping amongst the rubble, the trade pointed to a narrow alcove, around which sheets of corrugated iron were propped, forming a makeshift barricade against any intrusion or disturbance. Inside the improvised den, a sodden mattress lay beneath ripped pages of an old porno, speckles of mould and mildew eating through the paper like a million mouths, chewing through the black and white images of naked youths and devouring the crust of dried semen spunked over the pictures of cut cock and virgin arse from years before.
Twenty-five for me to fuck him. With a condom; only with a condom.
Remains of small wreath lay at my feet. The heads of each flower had wilted, the petals dry and grey like an old man’s skin. A dedication card, torn in half, was close by. I picked up the two pieces, holding them together; it was too dark to make out the words, but could see a line of kisses queuing along the bottom.
I looked at the rent boy, still babbling, as I let the wind whip the fragments from out of my palm.
This was it; this was where it happened, where he spent his last few seconds in torturous agony as he pleaded with his attacker.
Forty, and I could have him and his brother.
I grabbed his face, squeezing it in my hand. He didn’t resist.
‘How much for you to fall in love with me, and then break your stinking heart?’
He tried shaking his head, though my grip was too tight.
‘No? That’s not on offer? Then how much for me to pull out my knife, hold it against your throat, scraping the thin flesh of your neck and then - ‘
Breaking free, he pushed me against the wall of corrugated iron, ringing out like a gong as I thudded against it. As he raced away, stumbling and tripping twice in blind panic, I noticed the ominous silence, like that of a crypt, settling all around me.
This was it; this was where it happened, with the feverish, brutal intensity of the crime scorched into every stone -
Every rock -
Every atom , as if the endless film of reality, playing in an eternal loop of birth, boredom and blissful death was scratched, the picture broken, the soundtrack damaged, exposing the nothingness beyond -
It was beautiful.
I spread out across the rotten mattress, feeling the broken springs, jutting like bones through the mottled flesh of a decaying corpse scratch at my back. The holes in the wet fabric felt like the pouting lips of a whore against my neck. Lying still, I didn’t even flinch as a wounded rat, its fur matted with blood and mud climbed boldly over my inert arm, sniffing about as it dragged its bleeding abdomen across my chest, its weeping wounds leaving a smear of mucus on the back of my hand, as it crawled painfully into a crack to die.
Here -
Here -
Here his attacker would have looked him up and down with hunger in his eyes, the rent boy dumbly assuming that he was just another punter, another blowjob, another quick wank, that once he’d finally ejaculated in an explosion of ecstasy tainted with repression and guilt, then would come the reward, the payment, a note thrown at his feet as the man, probably closeted, probably married, slipped away into the night.
Here the rent boy would have pulled a bottle of cheap cider from his bag, stuffed with condoms and sachets of KY, unscrewed it, and swished the alcohol around his mouth, spitting out the taste of the man’s semen, long pubes snagged in the plaque-filled gaps between his stained teeth. He would have picked up the note, holding it against the wan light of the moon as he inspected it, and then tuck it into his pocket. He probably was too shocked to even feel the pain lancing through his skull as his assailant struck him viciously against the head.
And here, here the violence that followed would forever be branded on the snow-soft skin of a hundred sobbing angels -
Here, the bludgeoning blows that fell like a judge’s hammer would forever pummel the aching hearts of a thousand weeping saints -
Here the violence, the hate, the rage would forever be etched like a tattoo on the streaming eyes of a crying god.
Two loud drunken men appeared in front of me. I didn’t move, didn’t react, didn’t even flinch as one, his face obscured by the night, stamped upon my leg with a heavy black boot.
The murderer knocked the rent boy to the ground, cutting open his shirt and exposing the trembling skin beneath, over which he slowly teased the point of the knife, red dots bubbling to the surface in its wake, as steadily, unstoppably, it reached the smooth curves of the prostitute’s quivering buttocks.
Pinning my chest down with his knees, the man spat in my face, the thick threads of snot and phlegm hanging across my nose like a bride’s gossamer veil. Still I didn’t resist; still I didn’t fight back, as his fist repeatedly pounded against my burst lip, blood and saliva gushing down my chin and the iron taste filling my gurgling mouth.
Pulling the trade’s cheeks apart, the murderer softly brushed the blade across the wrinkled anal opening like the loving caress of a husband for his wife, gentle, the stroke delicate, passionate yet still restrained, as if to prolong the joy of foreplay. And then, taking a powerful backwards swing, he plunged the knife deep into the screaming boy’s bowels.
The man’s hands locked tightly round my twitching throat, as the other began to smash my ribs with kick after kick, their boozy breath clinging to the sides of my nostrils like an engorged tapeworm lodged in bile-hot intestines. I felt a thumb press against my left eye, the pressure building as he forced it down, until I was convinced it would burst.
Teetering on the crumbling edge of consciousness, the rent boy was dragged onto his back, mumbling and mewling incoherently as if the victim of some tropical fever. The murderer lightly cupped his victim’s scrotum, rolling the small, round balls in his fingers as if he were playing with dough. He kissed them, his lips brushing against the hairless sac almost in reverence, as he breathed in the scent of musk, like a priest inhaling the pious smell of burning frankincense. And then the cold bite of the knife, slicing back the skin, peeling away the flesh like the rind of a juicy orange to reveal the network of tubes and veins clinging to each testicle.
I choked on my broken tooth as the boot crashed down onto my jaw, ripping the molar from my gum, like some sadistic dentist gleefully torturing his patient as they thrashed about in the chair. They grabbed my hair, stretching my scalp as it lifted away from my skull, my head loaded with agony as if I wore a crown of thorns.
The final fall of the knife, shooting past the rent boy’s spine knotted with pain to puncture the frenzied throb of his hyperventilating lungs.
The final kick to my face, leaving me stunned and dazed, my eyelids sagging as I watched the two men dash off into the distance, the mocking sound of their voices like the playground taunts of bullies.
The murderer stood up, wiping his face with his sleeve. The body beneath him, emptied of its final breath lay still.
The rent boy was dead.
The rent boy was dead.
As I pulled myself up from the mattress, flinching at my cuts and bruises, I became aware of a warm sensation sliding down my shivering legs. I thought at first it must be blood, but as I gingerly examined the area, I could feel the slimy strands of semen still pumping out of my erect penis.
I looked up.
There were no stars in the sky.
There was nothing but the unending blackness, stretching out and annihilating everything like amnesia obliterating a memory.
I smiled; I smiled, then laughed -
At last I knew -
I knew.
http://www.youtube.com/GeorgeRostov
http://stores.lulu.com/georgerostov