Elysium (Excerpt Two)

I fell in love with my first boy next door at sixteen. James was one of three kids spawned by a sweet but batty widow called Jane, who, having a stratospheric sex drive, had pretty much immediately gotten it on with her plumber, a burly, animal-hurting misogynist called Colin. James, his brethren and I were the only village kids post-Ben's fugitive fleeing; we used to mooch about the fields and lanes and graveyard pretending we were world war one soldiers; our bikes were spitfires, we'd raid army surplus stores as frequently as our meagre pocket money would allow. At about fifteen, James' feathers suddenly burst into a dazzle of alluring plumage, his sexual dawning kicked in, and within the space of a speedy blink, he switched from being the less irritating of twins into this comeplling, swoonsome, devourable little cocktease. I was absolutely floored. Back then I was a giddy explosion of hormones, as opposed to today's slow trickle of fetid complexes, and just his presence had my skin shiver with desire. In the summer we'd camp in their garden, a tiny two-berth tent accommodating three of us (the older brother was in his garrison rimming a schoolfriend), and I'd always position myself betweern the twins, so as only I had access to James. I never got any sleep, my erection so insistent; I'd just study him breathing, inhale his sweet-scented hay hair, obsess over the luxurious gulf of his lips, and the perennial and inexplicable tan. On the few occasions I did slide into sleep, the orgasm of my wet dream would be so detonative that I'd have to fumble excuses like, fudging, snapping, I was just trying to get comfortable you fuck. James got into football about this time, and, adopting all the tropes, overnight became acrobatic at gobbing phlegm everywhere, whilst kitted out in a red nylon football strip. His confidence, which manifested through my eyes as entirely sexual, was supernova, and I'd internally flagellate myself in his company for being nowhere near as cool, primal, slick or athletic as I perceived him to be, thus creating this fucked up sexual dynamic between us, whereby he'd flaunt all of the traits that constituted his appeal, and I'd reflect them back in my gushing, drooling awe, ad infinatum. Just the vaguest hint of him coughing up a batch of phlegm would bring me out in an erect flutter, and I'd traipse along to watch him play in goal for the village team, awestruck by his pistoning legs, and the odd vertical expulsion of phlegm, doubtless performed for my masochistic delight. Sometimes we'd be lying in the tent on a cold night, and we'd bundle up together, pooling body heat, and sometimes, he'd cough up something solid, and I'd slide my little finger into his mouth, meeting his tongue in a prototypical French kiss that never ultimately blossomed. I'd always lick my finger clean of his saliva afterwards. One night, tickling morphed by twilight into groping, and we came so close to a mutual admission, instead, the attraction thrived on a tension made more potent by being tacit. In time, I'd take to wiping James' tuberculer deposits off of the ground, and swilling them around my mouth, a remote kiss, a voodoo transubstantiative act, anything to get closer to this boy's fluids, skin, hair, warmth, magnetism. And this habit escalated into even unhealthier climbs when I became so fixated on gobbing as the hallmark of the profoundly hetero guy that would later become my Achilles archetype, that I'd contemplated dragging up these mucus strands whenever I'd see such deposits, anywhere, even beyond James' flightpath. James was so bewitchingly flirtateous, that I know, had I possessed any confidence at all back then, he would have been my first boyfriend. As it stood, I was a passive, traumatised, repressed chunk of turbulence, with an empathy bordering on emotional haemophillia. He and his family moved to a different town, and my boy next door archetype, with its costume of phlegm, football shirts, rich, messy brwon hair and otherwise straight attributes was galvanised tight. Last I heard, he'd joined the army and was about to be shipped out to Afghanistan. Naturally, I spent probably three minutes ofr each day wondering what the fuck happened to him, fantasising rabidly over what he might look like now, as a fully-formed twenty-something. The first is the blueprint, everything else an echo, a fascimile, a compromise.

I explain to Matt, over croissants and green tea, that there's no way I'd consider handing him over - she was just as responsible as you, it just happened you wer driving that night, and given she got you into junk in the first place, etc - As pastry flakes all over the duvet, he smiles thinly, ruffles my hair, and tells me I'm a good boy. Typically, I swoon, my determination to protect this boy intensifies, over a pastry blizzard we glumly exchange glances which confirm, yes, this could become a siege.

I recall when I was about seven, and my father was head forester of an estate which also used to throw extravagantly middle-class festivals on gardening crafts etc. A bellicose diva was headlining the outdoor stage in the evening, and as an inquisitve seven-year-old, I scooted discreetly around the side, heading backstage, where I found a circus performer sitting naked on a straw bale, her legs oozing thick webs of blood. She was crying, and as I moved closer, my innocent concern appeared to warm her, anesthetise her just briefly, and we spoke. I don't recall the details and I'm certain most of the words wouldn't have graced the lexicon of a seven year old, certain concepts are best left inexpressed and thus non-existent when it comes to a formative intelligence. She kneaded my thick, matted hair with her bloodless right hand, and we bonded so fleetingly. Next, a huge, burly man grabbed her by the arm and sidled her away backstage where I hope blood-stemming apparatus were administered, but where, for years, I have suspected much more bloodletting occured. His intervention, nuanced with a grave severity, had me terrified for the girl. Years later, I would recognise a similarly graceless horror in Ben's violent grapplings with his mother. His grapplings with myself were relatively generous and tender in comparison. I scuttled back into the audience, located my parents and explained what I'd seen. My father summoned his posse of menfolk by walkie-talkie and they dispersed backstage, unearthing no trace of the scenario I'd described.

Likewise, a month later, at my primary school, generic playtime had ensued, the chaotic half hour where we'd all play hide and seek, or skipping, hopscotch, or just plain unfocused sprinting between trees. I backed into a dense mesh of scrubby foliage and heard rustling beyond that which I'd created. I turned around to see a fat man in a brown mackintosh taking his hand out of his pants. His hair, a spidery combover, had splayed across his face, and upon being disturbed, he yanked his trouser back up and urgently shuffled off. I screamed and ran into the fray of milling kids, the safety in numbers principle, then, breath collected, dashed across to a teacher and explained what I'd seen. The caretaker was dispatched into the scrub and returned with only a service station sandwich carton, and an empty condom packet, stating he saw no evidence of anyone's urgent shuffling, but that he'd maintain a sensitivity to the possibility and stay vigilant.

Matt appeared to operate in a totally hermetic coccoon, emotionally, responsibly etc, and although this could be reductively attributed to the junk, I also sensed that he'd always been prone to this state of blissed-out, free suspension, long before anything other than blood coarsed his veins. That he'd taken to my kindness so unquestioningly was a shock and a delight. I guess over the weeks of tacit support, a trust had been established, and I suspected that the gaudy, plush confines of my flat were far more salubrious than the mildewed grothole where he usually grabbed sleep in stoned, desperate fragments. It worked pretty symbiotically: I got to dwell in his presence indefinitely, gazing admiringly at his woozy, absent grace, and he got to stake out in my pad, some distance from the anxiety of his other life - I kept him in junk funds, food, shelter, and he kept me in awe. We'd curl up by candlelight for epic, broken conversations about our lives, what is, could have been and could still be, and charged with body heat we'd drift into sleep in a deep coiled embrace. My sexual interest never phased him, instead he found it sweetly flattering. His comfort with the notion, twinned with a mild junkie impotence, ensured that I was happy enough to cuddle up and be amongst him. Occasionally, when he was really mellowed out, we'd engage in a lush, open-mouthed kiss which he never appeared to regret in the morning. Outside of work, which I attended diligently throughout all of this, I'd match him in my stoned inactivity, we'd while away evenings in this manner, and they found me at my most content; my platonic, fugitive junkie lover. To my knowledge, nobody witnessed his arrival at my flat, and given the no-fixed-address status of most junkies, tracing him was gonna prove pretty awkward for the police, so I mentioned him to absolutely nobody. He was never inclined to leave the flat anyway, more content to idle away hours in bed, jacking up, reading my books, and scribbling poetry onto my bathroom wall with crayons he'd found behind the systern. I'd bundle in about half six every evening, arms encumbered with groceries, hollering 'honey, I'm home!' and we'd switch immediately into our shared state, our resonant dimension, where glyphs, phonemes slurred in soft legato murmurs, candles flickered and music underscored all, a subtly decadent hobotopia... We figured this existence was pretty sustainable and resolved to militantly guarantee its longevity by being so low-key that people would forget even I existed. I slowed my own gregariousness to a trickle, but kept up a few appearances so as not to prompt speculation amongst my other friends outside our sphere. His skin against mine had me in an elated present so extant from cold mundanities, that I became fixated on this union, this meld, and his palm on my cheek, his arm around my waist at night as we lay still, his head nuzzled into my sleeping nape; all of these would stir my intensity of passion into that of a poet. We openly acknowledged our love for each other, and discussion barely wandered into the sexuality underpinning it, so transcendent was our state that the sexual act was rendered irrelevant. The siege would last for weeks.

One afternoon I received a letter from Richard, announcing his decision to move into town, meaning we could see each other more regularly. I figured this would entail more opportunities where we might, ahem, get it on. Enclosed with the letter was a photograph of him shirtless and vacant, and this image, twinned with the news, stirred me into a state of sexual excitement, so I retrieved the phial of semen from the freezer to thaw, and the anticipation intensified the state to such delirum, that when Matt left the shower, towel around his waist, bare-chested and ravishing, I leapt upon him and we span in a dizzying cuddle as I told him the news. Exhausted so quickly, he dropped me to the bed, sat down and proceeded to shoot his first meal of the day. While he was preparing the shot, I explained my intentions, and asked his assistance in completing my intention. He conceded, very drily, and produced a clean, unbreached needle from his bag. I kissed him on the forehead and scampered off to make some lunch. By the time we'd eaten, the semen had thawed, meaning we could begin. In occult practice, a foundation principle is that of imitation - if you mimic the external circumstances of an act, then the internal state can be manifested and the desired result obtained. So, I stripped and crouched on the carpet with Richard's coquette-ish photo laid out before me. Matt, who approached the procedure with bemused acquiescence had filled the unbreached needle with Richard's thawed cum, and as I jerked off to this picture, he stretched apart my buttocks and gingerly inserted the needle, being so careful not to pierce my insides, even when my jerking-off got more exciteable. As I neared orgasm, he injected my asshole with a needleful of cum, and as it emptied, I burst forth a plume of my own, all over the photo. Matt gently retracted the needle and I leaned over to lick the shape of a heart into the cum across the photo, dressed, allowed this to dry and hung the 'artwork' next to the polaroid I took the afternoon after Richard's departure. The orgasm had been immense, and I was hungry again. Matt perched on the bed, laughing, told me I was fucking insane. The judgement of a sexually-ambiguous fugitive junkie poet was accepted with due bias. I laughed too and we ate the remaining pasta in between giggly spurts of hysteria.

John had wrestled me into his car very easily that evening. I'd been drinking since three in the afternoon, and by nighttime, the hunger was insatiable, so I'd joined friends at a club and continued drinking, dancing. It got so late that I'd missed the last bus home, couldn't afford a taxi, and was generally resigned to crashing in a doorway until the first buses stirred the next morning. I'd settled myself in the latest-opening venue in the area, a grubby gay club called Renegade, thrown my last few coins at the bar and squatted on a bench drinking malibu and orange, an unassuming spectre. John fell across the room, asked me why I was looking so glum on a saturday night. His demeanour was unthreatening. I explained my situation and he offered to give me a lift back to my pad. In my warped, tired, drunken state this sounded reasonable, so as the club emptied, we found his car and climbed in. He locked the doors - apparently his doors were prone to opening in transit if left unlocked - and we began the drive back. He offered to demonstrate a short cut via the coastal road. At this point my growing anxiety must have become tangible, and the scent of apprehension immediately empowered him; the dynamic established, he pulled up in a layby and offered me a drink from a flash he'd found in the footwell. I declined, and he said he'd brought me up here to show me where all the anonymous gay sex occurs in the early hours oblivion. My anthopological curiosity kicked in, I was happy to sit watching shadows blend for a few minutes. His commentary, informed by experience, got obscenely specific, and quickly, he began telling of his garden shed rapes, his father's best friend etc. Apparently his father had not only been aware of this, but had been receiving financial remuneration from the guy for the pleasure of abusing his son in the garden where they'd everyone enjoyed many a lazy summer barbecue. John's delivery was so nonchalantly resigned, that my sadness piqued, which he read as 'let's fuck', and his placidity evaporated, he turned animalistic, possessed, terrifying, and after the knuckle, blood, heart, pity, blowjob incident, I was able to make the dash to Kate's, under a torrential sheet of rain, hungover, fatigued and terrified. Frequently, I'll contemplate what might have been in the flask, and whether other less savvy boys had been numbed by its contents into being unable to resist John's ferocious, twisted advances. The homosexual climate of this town had been so tainted with tragedy over the past forty years, that such tales were often met with murmured apathy - it happens all the time, and therefore it's absolutely ok.