Screwjack. A short story.
Many people are not aware that Duke appears in Thompson's other stories. Here is a terrifying short story entitled "Screwjack" that is supposedly written by Raoul Duke.
Here is the synopsis:
"The heart of the collection lies in its final, title piece, an unnatrally poignant love story. What makes the romantic tale "Screwjack" so touching, for all its queerness, is the aching melancholy in its depiction of the modern man's burden: that "we are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School ...and after that maybe even Law School. We will never see her again."
Ostensibly written by Raoul Duke, "Screwjack" begins with an editor's note explaining of Thompson's alter ego that "the first few lines cotain no warning of the madness and fear and lust that came more and more to plague him and dominate his life...."
Among the many documents, manuscripts, personal papers and artworks that miraculously survived the Great Firestorm that swept the Duke Estate in the winter of '88 was this one-a profoundly disturbing love letter that he wrote to his wife only sixteen days before his disappearance.
The first few lines contain no warning of the madness and fear and lust that came more and more to plague him and dominate his life, as he felt his crimes coming back to haunt him.
-The Editors
I was just joined by the rich and famous Mr. Screwjack, who ate the last of the tuna fish and gave me one of those head jobs under the chin, and then tried to coax me outside with him, but I refused... so he shrugged and went out by himself, into the cold and sunless dawn.
He would rather have stayed inside with me-the two of us curled up on the couch together, watching Oprah Winfrey on TV... I could see it in his cold yellow eyes, a wistful kind of yearning for love that would have to wait, or perhaps could never be....
His whining drove me crazy as I carried him in my arms to the front door and just before I hurled his wretched black ass out onto the thin crust of snow that had settled on the porch since midnight, I lifted him up to my face and kissed him deeply on the lips. I forced my tongue between his fangs and rolled it around the ridges on the top of his mouth. I gripped him around his strong young shoulders and pulled him closer to me. His purring was so loud and strong that it made us both tremble.
"Ah, sweet Screwjack," I whispered. "We are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School and then to El Centro, and after that maybe even to Law School. We will never see her again."
He stared at me, but said nothing. Then he twisted out of my grip and dropped to the floor.
...And then he was gone, with no noise, like some ghost from my other world...and I knew in my heart, as his dirty black shape leaped away from me across the woodpile and through that shadowy hole between the blue spruce tree and the cold silver grille of the Volvo, that I would never see him again.
At least not for six years, and probably not then; and the next time we met he would weigh 200 pounds and flip me over on my stomach and fuck me from behind like a panther.
Like my beast and my dolphin, my perfect dream lover, like that ghost that I must forget... and my beautiful little tattoo that will cost me $1500 to get burned off my shoulder with a laser needle.
Forgive me Lord, for loving this beast like I do, and for wanting him so deep inside me that I will finally feel him coming on the soft red skin of my own heart... and for wanting to lay down beside him and sleep like a baby with our bodies wrapped into each other and the same wild dream in our heads.
I am guilty, Lord, but I am also a lover---and I am one of your best people, as you know; and yea tho I have walked in many strange shadows and acted crazy from time to time and even drooled on many High Priests, I have not been an embarrassment to you...So leave me alone, goddamnit, and send Mr. Screwjack back to me; and if the others have any questions or snide comments about it, tell them to eat shit and die.
Who among them is pure enough to cast the first stone? Or to look on me with those rheumy courtroom eyes and say that I was wrong for loving a huge black tomcat.
Never mind that, Lord. I can handle it. Just keep the lawyers off my back, and the pious... and leave us alone to make babies.
R.D.
At the depths of my social leperism I remember Duke's strange letter...And I am horrified to realize that I am fondling the cat... We were smoking marijuana a moment ago, maybe for one or two minutes, and now he is acting wild. He is rolling his nuts at me for real this time, on his back in my lap and suddenly curling up to put his fangs on me. He uttered a low kind of whimpering sound, then he opened his mouth and grabbed the ball-muscle of my right thumb with all four of those goddamn white fangs (I was stroking his navel, at the time)...and for one very high tenth of a second I thought the crazy black bastard was going to do it.
I was typing, but once The Boy put his fangs on me, things changed. I stared down at him very intently from a distance of five or six inches (compounded by a factor of 1.25 by the specs)...So I felt pretty close to the beast when he suddenly curled up in my lap and began sinking his teeth into me.
That's how it felt. It was a very interesting sensation, because I believed it was really happening. This monster was actually going to puncture me, draw blood, and change our lives forever.
Goddamnit! I thought. You fool!I trusted you, but I was wrong. You're no better than that punk Mailer fell for...and now I must cut your head off... And then the beast said "nevermore."
It was a very long moment, no more than a second--and then he suddenly relaxed and rolled his head back, releasing his bite on my thumb-muscle, as if it has never happened... He pushed his wiry little neck back against the palm of my left hand and gazed up at me.
I closed my fingers around his neck and got a firm grip on his shoulders. He began to purr and the pupils in his eyes closed down to blissful little black slits as he wantonly ground his sharp, ugly little hipbones down into the palm of my right hand, the one he almost bit.
The phone rang. It was Pat Caddell, calling from Santa Barbara with a whole raft of ugly political news. "I can't talk now," I said. "I have to deal with this animal. Call me back when you calm down."
Then I hung up the phone and looked down, once again, at Screwjack. "You're lucky," I told him. "That was Mr. Caddell, the political man. He sends you his best regards."
Then I clamped my fingers very suddenly around his neck in a vise-like grip that cut his wind off, while at the same time dragging his head backward and straight down, over my leg, causing his front claws to flap crazily in the air as he struggled....
With my right hand I seized the whole lower end of his body, between the front side of his groin and on the back where the tail connects to the spine, and I squeezed him like a grape.
There was no noise. He was bent and stretched out so far that he couldn't even hiss...
But not for long; it was a matter of split seconds before he was up in the air like a fruit bat, and then down into a trembling four-point stance about ten feet across the room. His eyes were huge and his white fangs were out of his mouth.
"What's wrong?" I asked him. "Why are you staring at me like that?" He shuddered and sat down heavily on the floor, near the icebox, saying nothing.
Here is the synopsis:
"The heart of the collection lies in its final, title piece, an unnatrally poignant love story. What makes the romantic tale "Screwjack" so touching, for all its queerness, is the aching melancholy in its depiction of the modern man's burden: that "we are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School ...and after that maybe even Law School. We will never see her again."
Ostensibly written by Raoul Duke, "Screwjack" begins with an editor's note explaining of Thompson's alter ego that "the first few lines cotain no warning of the madness and fear and lust that came more and more to plague him and dominate his life...."
Among the many documents, manuscripts, personal papers and artworks that miraculously survived the Great Firestorm that swept the Duke Estate in the winter of '88 was this one-a profoundly disturbing love letter that he wrote to his wife only sixteen days before his disappearance.
The first few lines contain no warning of the madness and fear and lust that came more and more to plague him and dominate his life, as he felt his crimes coming back to haunt him.
-The Editors
I was just joined by the rich and famous Mr. Screwjack, who ate the last of the tuna fish and gave me one of those head jobs under the chin, and then tried to coax me outside with him, but I refused... so he shrugged and went out by himself, into the cold and sunless dawn.
He would rather have stayed inside with me-the two of us curled up on the couch together, watching Oprah Winfrey on TV... I could see it in his cold yellow eyes, a wistful kind of yearning for love that would have to wait, or perhaps could never be....
His whining drove me crazy as I carried him in my arms to the front door and just before I hurled his wretched black ass out onto the thin crust of snow that had settled on the porch since midnight, I lifted him up to my face and kissed him deeply on the lips. I forced my tongue between his fangs and rolled it around the ridges on the top of his mouth. I gripped him around his strong young shoulders and pulled him closer to me. His purring was so loud and strong that it made us both tremble.
"Ah, sweet Screwjack," I whispered. "We are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School and then to El Centro, and after that maybe even to Law School. We will never see her again."
He stared at me, but said nothing. Then he twisted out of my grip and dropped to the floor.
...And then he was gone, with no noise, like some ghost from my other world...and I knew in my heart, as his dirty black shape leaped away from me across the woodpile and through that shadowy hole between the blue spruce tree and the cold silver grille of the Volvo, that I would never see him again.
At least not for six years, and probably not then; and the next time we met he would weigh 200 pounds and flip me over on my stomach and fuck me from behind like a panther.
Like my beast and my dolphin, my perfect dream lover, like that ghost that I must forget... and my beautiful little tattoo that will cost me $1500 to get burned off my shoulder with a laser needle.
Forgive me Lord, for loving this beast like I do, and for wanting him so deep inside me that I will finally feel him coming on the soft red skin of my own heart... and for wanting to lay down beside him and sleep like a baby with our bodies wrapped into each other and the same wild dream in our heads.
I am guilty, Lord, but I am also a lover---and I am one of your best people, as you know; and yea tho I have walked in many strange shadows and acted crazy from time to time and even drooled on many High Priests, I have not been an embarrassment to you...So leave me alone, goddamnit, and send Mr. Screwjack back to me; and if the others have any questions or snide comments about it, tell them to eat shit and die.
Who among them is pure enough to cast the first stone? Or to look on me with those rheumy courtroom eyes and say that I was wrong for loving a huge black tomcat.
Never mind that, Lord. I can handle it. Just keep the lawyers off my back, and the pious... and leave us alone to make babies.
R.D.
At the depths of my social leperism I remember Duke's strange letter...And I am horrified to realize that I am fondling the cat... We were smoking marijuana a moment ago, maybe for one or two minutes, and now he is acting wild. He is rolling his nuts at me for real this time, on his back in my lap and suddenly curling up to put his fangs on me. He uttered a low kind of whimpering sound, then he opened his mouth and grabbed the ball-muscle of my right thumb with all four of those goddamn white fangs (I was stroking his navel, at the time)...and for one very high tenth of a second I thought the crazy black bastard was going to do it.
I was typing, but once The Boy put his fangs on me, things changed. I stared down at him very intently from a distance of five or six inches (compounded by a factor of 1.25 by the specs)...So I felt pretty close to the beast when he suddenly curled up in my lap and began sinking his teeth into me.
That's how it felt. It was a very interesting sensation, because I believed it was really happening. This monster was actually going to puncture me, draw blood, and change our lives forever.
Goddamnit! I thought. You fool!I trusted you, but I was wrong. You're no better than that punk Mailer fell for...and now I must cut your head off... And then the beast said "nevermore."
It was a very long moment, no more than a second--and then he suddenly relaxed and rolled his head back, releasing his bite on my thumb-muscle, as if it has never happened... He pushed his wiry little neck back against the palm of my left hand and gazed up at me.
I closed my fingers around his neck and got a firm grip on his shoulders. He began to purr and the pupils in his eyes closed down to blissful little black slits as he wantonly ground his sharp, ugly little hipbones down into the palm of my right hand, the one he almost bit.
The phone rang. It was Pat Caddell, calling from Santa Barbara with a whole raft of ugly political news. "I can't talk now," I said. "I have to deal with this animal. Call me back when you calm down."
Then I hung up the phone and looked down, once again, at Screwjack. "You're lucky," I told him. "That was Mr. Caddell, the political man. He sends you his best regards."
Then I clamped my fingers very suddenly around his neck in a vise-like grip that cut his wind off, while at the same time dragging his head backward and straight down, over my leg, causing his front claws to flap crazily in the air as he struggled....
With my right hand I seized the whole lower end of his body, between the front side of his groin and on the back where the tail connects to the spine, and I squeezed him like a grape.
There was no noise. He was bent and stretched out so far that he couldn't even hiss...
But not for long; it was a matter of split seconds before he was up in the air like a fruit bat, and then down into a trembling four-point stance about ten feet across the room. His eyes were huge and his white fangs were out of his mouth.
"What's wrong?" I asked him. "Why are you staring at me like that?" He shuddered and sat down heavily on the floor, near the icebox, saying nothing.