Guide, p.6
Guide, page 6
“Specifically? Well, this is sort of embarrassing.” I look up at the ceiling, but I’m thinking of the sky. “See, Chris has these violent fantasies. And so do I, actually. So we have to be careful when we’re having sex, because …” I check back with Luke, who’s studying my mouth, or its movement.
“Does it bother you that I don’t like your books?” he interjects.
First I’m confused by the question. “No, I guess not.” Still, to be honest, I’ve wondered what it means. As Luke has explained, he doesn’t understand why anyone would want to write about the subjects my novels recapitulate so automatically. Neither do I, so we’re even. But to him, my work’s “obvious.” It “bores” him. He’ll start a book, then, three or four pages in, begin skipping whole sections, scanning for anything he can relate to. He thinks I’m obsessed with personal interaction, and not open enough to the idea that there could be magical forces at work in the world, things that supersede and transcend people’s specialized needs for one another. See, Luke’s sort of mystical, if you haven’t already guessed. To distill several long conversations we’ve had, he believes that romantic love, sexual desire, friendship, really everything potentially problematic having to do with other people, are just petty side effects of some far more intangible meaning to being alive, and that somewhere in books, movies, music, drugs, nature, there exists a particular way to believe, a mental system that, once successfully decoded and personalized, would organize everyone else into one vast herd of malleable symbols. Not to say he wants Hitler-esque powers. In his ideal world, everyone would be wizards of some sort, and life would be wildly, invisibly crosshatched with magical spells. Still, I think his motivation is simple. He wants what he wants. And he thinks anything should be possible, no matter what. And it frustrates him when others’ needs are in conflict with his. Anyway, I’m sort of spacing again. Let’s see …
“So,” I ask. “How’s it going with … what’s his name?”
“You mean, Michael?” Luke smiles deliriously. “I saw him the other night.”
There’s this guy Michael, some club kid whom Luke’s never said more than hello to, if that, but who he’s convinced posesses something—knowledge, spiritual foresight, emotional resonance —that Luke needs to incorporate into his life. I mean, to me it just sounds like Luke’s dying to sleep with the guy, and yeah, when pushed, he’s admitted the guy’s awfully cute. Anyway, Luke has been doing these … I don’t know, magic rituals? He refuses to describe them. From what I’ve been able to gather, these rituals “bend the universe”—that’s his phrase—in such a way as to align his and Michael’s trajectories, causing their needs to coincide. If it was me, and I found myself powerfully attracted to someone, I’d just hang around, hoping against hope that this someone would find me intriguing. To Luke, that’s the obvious, boring way to look at things like love and desire. What I can’t decide is if he really is way ahead of me on these issues, or if he’s just elaborately psychologically fucked up, as some of my friends, namely Mason and Scott, keep insisting.
“So what does this Michael guy do again? Is he an artist, or does he have a job, or …?”
A laugh’s sneaking into Luke’s face. “I don’t know.”
“Things like that aren’t important?”
“Not really.” Luke smiles knowingly—or it feels knowing.
“So are you doing your … uh, magic things to help it along?”
“I’ve done a ritual or two,” Luke says uncomfortably.
“I can’t get you to describe them.”
“If I did, it would diminish their power,” he says. “The idea is to do a ritual, tell no one, then forget you did it. You could do them too, you know.”
“How?”
Luke looks exasperated. “Read Liber Null & Psychonaut. It’s in my backpack.”
“Okay.”
“But you have to be sure it’s something you really want. Like with Michael, I’m just working on getting him interested. I can take it from there. So think of something you’re sure you want.”
“You mean, right now?”
“Sure.” Luke actually looks interested.
“Okay, let me think.” Not that I need to. I spend easily half of my life in my head, spaced out, imagining impossibilities. When I’m not lost in daydreams, I’m just sort of clumsily negotiating whatever the world puts in front of me. I wish the real me and the secretive me were united. I wish I could speak in one adequate, coherent voice and make sense. Or should I say, if I were a sane person that’s what I’d wish for. But divided in two as I am, everything’s subject to compromise. The only wish that both parts of my psyche have ever agreed on is this: I wish that whenever I saw someone I wanted badly enough to befriend, fuck, romance, murder, have a great conversation with, or whatever else, that I could mutter some word and, magically, there’d be an exact replicant of that person whose purpose in life was to accommodate my fascination. Once I’d exhausted my replicant, I’d say another magic word and it would vanish. That way I’d fulfill every fantasy, evil and/or benign, and never impose my fucked-up self on anyone else in the world. The only problem is, I can’t explain this to Luke. It sounds too psychotic. So I think of something else. “Okay,” I say. “I wish you could be happy and fulfilled all your life.” The sentimentality feels out of place in my voice.
Luke clears his throat. “Cool,” he says. His face is strangely calm, fixed. The theater of his personality is regrouping backstage or whatever.
“That’s my wish,” I say, feeling totally blissed.
Luke’s eyes glaze for a couple of seconds, then unglaze. “Cool,” he repeats.
“Great,” I say. Actually, it’s more like a croak. It feels like Luke’s just said he loves me, and maybe he has. It feels much more true than, say, Chris’s “I love you,” I don’t know why. Luke is easily as complicated as Chris. Maybe that’s it. Maybe someone this complicated can’t just reduce what he’s feeling to language, and if he does, the idea must be stagnant or finished, like a work of art once it’s been given a title. But then I’m pretty complicated myself, and I could tell Luke that I love him in a second. Fuck, I don’t know.
“There’s something very powerful between us,” Luke says. Then he yawns. I don’t think it means anything, apart from the obvious.
“Amazingly,” I say. I must look insane. Really, my face is completely unaccustomed to having to represent happiness.
“I should sleep.” Luke yawns again. Then he rolls over. “Sweet dreams,” says his voice. That’s his favorite phrase. He says it whenever he leaves someone he really likes. So I guess it means “bye.”
“You too.” That was a little abrupt. Or maybe it’s just that I’m not very sleepy. Still, I reach over and flick off the lamp, then lie there watching Luke’s hair, neck, and shoulders emerge from the black. For minutes I study them, feeling the faint, totalitarian, internal whir of the acid’s decay into whatever lower-brow, speedlike substance it was cut with. At one point Luke, now asleep, rolls over again, and his unconscious face flops down, oh, half a foot from my own.
I don’t know why, but when cute guys are stoned or asleep or frozen solid in photos, my imagination feels safe and takes over my thinking. I can’t control what comes next, and I hardly even notice the change. Suddenly I’m irrational, although it’s not like a physical change. My body’s still painfully shy and respectful of whoever’s space, but inside … well, it’s hard to describe. What I’m trying to say is, I catch myself thinking how sweet it would be if Luke opened his eyes, saw the love in my eyes, and his affections were triggered. We’d gaze back and forth long enough to realize that our goals were a match. Then we’d kiss very softly. No tongues or anything. But speed’s evil, as regards me at least. So the second our mouths are enmeshed, I get hungry. Luke too. Next thing I know we’re French-kissing and wrestling and licking and biting and … If I were a sane person, it would be perfect. Being me, things go totally wrong. I have to punch, slap, and kick myself free of the image. You know, like the thought is a rapist. Not just mentally, but physically. I literally jump out of bed, and tiptoe into the living room.
When I need to jerk off, and the image of Luke feels too volatile, I turn to this small clique of fantasy figures, this mental harem of cute understudies whose membership changes from occasion to occasion like an ill-starred rock band’s. At the moment my choices are (1) Chris, the old-timer, (2) Goof, (3) Drew Baldwin, whom you’ll meet very shortly, (4) Sniffles, that HIV-positive street prostitute, (5) Chris Gentry, guitarist for the English band Menswear, (6) Daniel James, Tinselstool’s singer/guitarist, (7) Brad Renfro, actor, and (8) when I really want to spoil myself, Smear’s Alex Johns, the most technically beautiful guy in the world, or should I say the most accessible beautiful image right now, thanks to Smear’s popularity.
I raid the pile of rock magazines that I keep by the couch, grab the new issue of Vox, which has a Smear cover story, and flip through the pages until I find a decent picture of Alex, in this case drunk, shirt askew, holding a beer toward the camera. Then I sprawl on the couch and concentrate on his perfect, hazed face. Next thing I know, he’s sitting just to my right. I strip off his trendy clothes, devise a lanky white body, pose it on the rug, shut his eyes, open his mouth, fill him with primitive sounds, dive in, suck his dick, lick his balls, eat out his ass, shove my dick inside, and fuck him very, very hard, all the while licking and biting his shoulders and neck. A knife appears in my hand. I reach underneath him, place its point to his chest, and tell him he’s going to die, to which he makes some agreeable noise. I bury the blade, then drag it down to his groin. When his guts topple out, I shoot my load in his ass, which in turn makes me come on my hand—in the real world, I mean. Orgasms on speed feel so cheap. It’s like a sputter. Then I hobble into the bathroom, wipe myself off, flush, and return to the couch. That’s better.
In the weird afterglow, I absentmindedly hoist Luke’s backpack into my lap, unzip the top, and watch my hand flop around in the deep, lumpy tide pool of rave fliers, tarot cards, sage bundles, cassettes, drug paraphernalia, and so on, until I find the aforementioned book, Liber Null & Psychonaut, by one Peter S. Carroll. I page around, feeling cowed by its biblical tone, until I find a long-ish chapter on magic rituals.
From what I can glean in my speed-read, there are several ways to perform rituals, the most interesting involving this thing called a sigil, which is an emblem made up of letters drawn one on top of another, then enclosed within a circle, so that all one sees is a pattern that looks like an extremely busy logo. Apparently you’re supposed to reduce what you want to a sentence— say, “I want to be rich,” or “I want so-and-so to fall in love with me”—then build the aforementioned logo out of its letters. Once you’ve devised an acceptable logo, you stare at it, either in some sort of meditative state or during masturbation, and the meaning behind the logo lodges itself in your thoughts. Somehow, because of your intense concentration or something, a magical process is triggered, and the wish enters reality, viruslike, then fucks with the order of the universe, and you get what you want. Something like that. Supposedly one can devise one’s own sigilesque thing, then take the basic principle of the sigil and run. Thanks to the acid, I’m sure, it sounds half-plausible—or charismatic, at least. So I space out around the idea that the alphabet’s just a collection of secretive forms, i.e., Aladdin’s lampettes. That would explain some of history’s eerier twists. I mean, if you factored in magical tweaks. Then I remember what I do when I’m not stoned. You know, write novels that are essentially long, involved wishes for offbeat utopian worlds that I can’t realistically enter. And within a few seconds I have this idea, which, if it’s not obvious, involves writing a novel/sigil that has a wish neatly embedded inside it. I guess it can’t hurt.
I move to my laptop computer, which, like Scott’s and Mason’s worktables, is isolated away in a small half bedroom that I use as an office. First I pull out a blank piece of paper and think for a second. Then I write down the one thing I’d wish for if wishes could actually be granted. I can’t reveal it to you, because that would interfere with the mystical process or something. Anyway, it’s not the wish you’d expect, if that helps. I thumbtack the page to the bulletin board over my desk. Then I stare at the wish for a while. Then magically or whatever, I start writing a novel. I begin by describing exactly what’s happened to me since I snapped myself out of the heaviest part of the LSD trip. In other words, I start here—or, rather, a dozen or so pages back. That’s where everything begins.
Blur
Luke’s asleep in my bedroom. I’m at the laptop, milking the speedy tail end of the acid trip. Mason’s home making art. So’s Scott. Robert and Tracy are filed away inside freezing-cold, human-size drawers. You can basically forget them. Chris just arrived at Pam’s studio. He’s shooting dope in her office. Pam’s a wreck. Goof’s right where we left him. His skin’s stiffening up like some tiny, wintry lake. Death’s so complex.
Mason tore Alex Johns’s face from Select magazine.
In the boom box, a Sebadoh compilation tape. Turned low, it helped maintain Mason’s mood, which was typically grim, detached, horny.
In the shot, Alex was grinning at Graham, Smear’s guitarist. In the collage, he’ll be imagining Mason’s dick. Oh, he wants it. Yeah, right.
The phone rang three times. The machine picked up. It was Scott. He sounded weird, so Mason snagged the receiver.
†
Scott’s at his worktable. Until a few minutes ago, he was drawing. His art utilizes a clean, pseudo-comic-book style to deconstruct his psychological makeup. It’s mildly entertaining, over-intellectualized, and slightly obscure, just like him. At the moment his drawing pad holds a partly complete comic strip—or, rather, “comic strip.” The main character, a waifish androgyne with hippie togs, nervous mannerisms, and mild psychic powers, is modeled on Luke. In the comic, Luke is battling one of those de rigueur insectlike monsters of Japanimation. The monster’s supposed to represent Luke’s inner child or whatever. And the whole piece is really about Scott’s subconscious desires. So it’s a little incoherent.
“Did you hear?” squeaked Scott’s voice. “Robert and Tracy are dead, man. In a car accident, on their way home from the Whisky last night.”
Sebadoh: Divide the time / The sky misfiring.
“That’s weird,” Mason said absentmindedly. “What about our junkie friend?” He had this slight thing for Chris’s appearance.
Sebadoh: Thing twirls / Hang it out the window.
“He wasn’t there,” said Scott’s voice. “So … what does it make you feel? Because I don’t know what I feel.”
Robert and Tracy were found by the police. The van they’d smashed into had flipped over several times, killing both occupants, a retired gardener and his ten-year-old son. Because of Robert’s tracks and the inordinate level of dope in his blood, it was assumed he’d nodded out at the wheel. That’s what would now be believed. So it was hard to know what to feel, since we’d already distanced ourselves from the duo, whom heroin had rendered remote, inauthentic, and wildly dishonest. I’d stopped returning their calls months before, for reasons I’ll try to explain very shortly. Anyway, Scott was shocked by the news, and Mason too, though a little less obviously.
Mason pushed SPEAKERPHONE, called me. Using the tip of one finger, he moved the Alex picture around on a blank sheet of paper. “Did you hear?” he asked.
“Yeah,” says my voice. “If you mean about Robert and Tracy. And you heard about Goof? You know, that kiddie porn star we like so much? He dropped dead at Pam’s place last night.”
“What?!” Mason lifted his finger off Alex. “You’re kidding.”
To Mason, a particular sort of male beauty is everything. It doesn’t exist in the world, but certain young actors and rock stars come reasonably close. Hence his art, which collages together extraordinary scraps of human matter—say, Alex’s face, Brad Renfro’s chest, James Duval’s stomach, various porn stars’ genitalia, Goof’s ass, Leonardo DiCaprio’s legs, et cetera—each body part carefully ripped from a photo or magazine, then glued down on a white sheet of paper and aligned with complementary fragments in painstakingly casual, Frankenstein-ish constellations. It’s instinctive stuff. He can explain it in theoretical terms, but it’s completely obsessive. Luckily for him, obsessive gay art is very trendy at the moment, so he makes a decent living. But his art’s just about his own loneliness, period, whether collectors and critics understand that or not. He’s building imaginary lovers, friends, sons, younger brothers, slaves, gods. It’s a vaguely creepy thing, and it means a fucking ton to him, unlike his actual friends and acquaintances.
Mason yanked out a file drawer and flipped through the folder marked “Beauty.” He found, removed a thin deck of Goof Polaroids. He’d snapped them off my TV screen several weeks back.
Them: (1) Goof’s face in mock ecstasy. (2) Goof’s body squashed to a sickly white stripe by an obese older body. (3) Goof’s tiny ass stuffed with a Satanic face. (4) Goof’s face in wide-eyed, lower-lip-biting pain. (5) …
Plucking the Goof-as-stripe shot, which had this nice painterly quality, he pinned it to the page and moved it here, there, steered by a mysterious Ouija-like force.
Sebadoh: I don’t care if nothing else goes my way all day.
The evening Pam lent me that kiddie porn tape, Mason and I held a mini-premiere in my living room. As I recall, we were similarly awestruck, turned on, and a little confused by our hard-ons. Like me, he’d half-wondered what it would be like to have sex with some underage kid. In fact, we both had this slightly discomfiting thing for Brad Renfro, the teenage costar of a stupid AIDS film called The Cure. But when we’d cast very young boys in our fantasies, there’d been no chemistry whatsoever. Actually, I should speak for myself. For me, it had something to do with the scale of their bodies. The things lacked … well, I’m not quite sure. Everything was too close together and sort of insufficiently lived-in. And no matter how I tormented or worshiped a boy, I couldn’t seem to excite him. He’d just seem sad, scared, upset. Obviously the snag lay in my imagination, since the men in the kiddie porn tape had no problem whatsoever with the size differential. Of course, it helped that everyone seemed so stoned.
