“So hey, now—how ’bout you give that to me, nigger?” Joady said. “I done had me a thirst for one of your loads for the longest time—months, fella. I seen you shoot enough of that damn stuff. I wanna find me out what it tastes like.”
“If the boy don’t want it, Joady—” Al still called Eric a boy, though Eric was well into his forties—“ain’t no point in savin’ it. If you want, it’s yours.”
Joady reached up and took the condom in a grubby, knuckely fist. “Damn, nigger—that’s the biggest rubber I think I’ve ever seed. That looks like about six loads in it. At least.”
“Nope. It’s just one—my first one today, too. I thought if it was gonna go in the chili, I could spare it for the bash. But that’s all it is.”
Taking it now in two hands, Joady stretched the knotted end out, bit at it, pulling it out with his teeth, till at once the stretched latex tore. Now he up ended it and squeezed. Viscid and yellowish, it rolled from the condom into Joady’s stubble-ringed mouth.
Two other guys had wandered over. One of them said, “Jesus—is that yours, Al? You give it to that old cocksucker?”
With gruff friendliness, Al grunted. “What the fuck you care?”
Pressed tight, Joady’s fingers descended the length a second time. More welled from the tear. Finally, moving his tongue around inside his cheeks, Joady looked down and frowned. “Damn—that don’t taste like nothin’ from no human bein’, Al.” He put his head to the side, looking up. “I mean, black or white—even a damned Chinee. That’s gotta be from a fuckin’ horse!” He threw out a knuckley fist with an extended forefinger toward Al. “Yeah, I knew I recognized it! That tastes just like horse cum! It was too much for a man to shoot, anyway, I don’t care how big your dick is. You went and put a load of fuckin’ horse cum in that rubber—didn’t you?”
“You one dumb white cocksucker,” Al said. “I did not. Why’m I gonna ruin the man’s cookout with a load from a horse? Besides, where am I gonna find a damn horse in the Opera House? ”
“Joady, how you know what horse cum tastes like—anyway?”
“’Cause I used to work on a breedin’ farm up in Tennessee, years back. The grooms and the jockeys all knew I was a damned cocksucker: they’d get together and pay me a hun’erd bucks to watch me drink that stuff down—”
“You sucked off horses…?”
“There was a couple of them stallions I had trained what would let me suck their dicks—it’s like tryin’ to get a damned toilet plunger in your mouth. Them things flare. Takin’ ’em up your ass, you can get yourself killed that way. And if you actually manage to get the head in your face, and suck and rub on it, the sonofabitch can drown you, if you ain’t ready when he goes off. But there’re always a few guys who gonna work themselves up to it. It’s always the little butch fellas, too.”
“Then I guess you wasn’t one of ’em,” the redhead said.
But Joady was going on with his narration. “The easiest way, if you want horse cum—well, you seen them big long artificial leather horse pussies they got, that they grease up and slip over the horse’s damn dick. He comes in that thing, and it all runs down into a jar they screw onto the end.” Joady held up his hand, indicating the jar’s size—about three or four inches high. “Them stallions fill that thing two-thirds, three-quarters of the way up. Some of it they use right away for breeding, and some they refrigerate. Well, I’d unscrew the cap off a damned fresh jar and drink it right down in front of all of them boys, and they’d just laugh and slap their knees and about fall out on the ground, they thought it was so funny. I liked it, too. Gettin’ it straight from the horse’s cock is good—but you can’t always count on it. Either the fucker’s gonna drown you to death or decide he wants to kick your head in. Like I say, you gotta work with ’em and get ’em trained. Mostly I’d take a bottle with me and use some of it to jerk off with later. But once you get it in your damned mouth, you can’t confuse it with no nigger’s—or no white man’s, either. I’ve filled my belly up with enough of both to know. And I’d swear on my mama’s grave, either that stuff I just drunk was fuckin’ horse jizz…or you—” he turned to frown up at Al—“ain’t a damned human bein’!”
Several guys laughed—including Al. “Can’t you guys come up with somethin’ else to say about me? I’m gettin’ tired o’ yall always talkin’ like dat.”
“Naw. You’re a damned horse. You tired of it, you go live somewhere else and don’t let no cocksucker with no horse sense get after ya’ dick. Probably your daddy was a horse got after yo’ mama in the field—”
“Don’t go playin’ that,” the redhead said. “You don’t got to be sayin’ nothin’ about the nigger’s mama.”
“Why not? That’s the only thing that would explain it. I mean, I just drunk the fuckin’ stuff, didn’t I? And I know what the fuck I put in my own damned belly.” Shaking his head, he fingered the torn condom down into his shirt pocket, where it wet through the cloth.
Not more than twenty, and with his black hair in a ponytail, Pope, who’d had been coming to the Opera pretty much every day for the last three months, suddenly said, “Hey—you know you old guys are really fuckin’ disgustin’? You know that? You really are!”
“No, we ain’t,” Joady looked back. “We just got the balls to do what you kids wanna do but are too damn scared to.”
“Whacha mean?” Pope asked. He wore a belt around his jeans that was set with myriad square studs.
“I mean, who gets to drink a load of the nigger’s goddam cum, right out his own scumbag? You or me?”
“Well, why the fuck—” Pope emphasized it with a dropped chin—“would I wanna do somethin’ like that?”
Joady grinned at him. “Don’t worry, son. If you don’t want it now, you will. Then you’ll wish you had the horse sense to do it when you had the chance.” He turned away to pad off, bow-legged, through the crowd, a tear across the seat of his jeans displaying his butt crack.
Al was still standing there, towering above the others. The sunlight on his black arms here and there caught his tattoos’ darker markings.
“Hey, Al.” Eric called. “Come over here a minute.”
Al eased a few steps over.
“There’s somethin’ I been meanin’ to ask you—for years, actually.”
“What?” Al said. “You wanna know, too, whether it was my mama or my daddy what was the fuckin’ horse—?”
“Come on,” Eric said. “No. Not that stupid stuff. What’s it say on your arms, there? It’s hard to read—’cause it’s black on black.”
Al raised his right biceps, turned it, and looked at it. “Aw, that’s just some stupid shit I had Tank and Cassandra put there when I was a kid and didn’t know no better.”
“What does it say?” Eric stopped stirring the pot.
Al moved closer to the cooker and raised his arm, protruding from his torn-off T-shirt sleeve, for Eric to see.
Looking closely, on the dark, dark skin, which seemed suffused with micro-diamonds of perspiration, Eric read from the ornate Gothic print: “‘This…dick…fucks…everything…including…your…ass…Bend…over…bitch…I…love…you!” Eric laughed, stood up, and stirred again.
“It’s all shit like dat.” Al turned to the other side, to show his other arm. “I was an asshole when I was a kid. I thought that was real smart.” He chuckled. “Since you was a kid, you done wrestled wid my fuckin’ dick a lot. You always treated it with respect, too.”
“Well, as dicks go, Al, yours is…pretty respectable. And most of my wrestlin’ with it was in the theater, where it was dark.” Again, Eric read from the tall man’s proffered arm: “‘It…takes…a dick…like…this…to…run…the…motherfucking…world!’”
“The ink’s moved around so much on them things, you can’t hardly read it no more. Tank drew up a whole alphabet for me, what they used to write this stuff out on my motherfuckin’ skin.” Ten or fifteen feet away, the two heavy tattoo artists—Tank in denim, Cassandra in past
els—milled among the others waiting for the food. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I was their very first customer, too—or one of their first. I ’member me and Jay was both in there at once, a couple of times.”
Again Eric read out: “‘There…is…the…Eiffel…Tower…There…is…Cleopatra’s…Needle…And…there’s…MY…FUCKING…DICK!... Get…on…your…knees…and…I…may…let…you…suck…it…But…this…nigger’s…dick…needs…some…shit…lubrication…at…least…three…times…a…day!’”
“Come on!” Al grinned. “Don’t read that stuff out. Tha’s embrassin’. I mean, you don’t need to hear stuff like that. You always knew how to treat my dick, just natural-like. When’s the last time you sat on that thing—I mean, up in the Opera?”
“I dunno…” Eric said. “What—six, seven months ago? Yeah, it was up in the balcony. Nobody had been botherin’ you for a while, so I thought I’d come over and throw my ass in you face. Have myself some fun.”
“Yeah, you always been a good boy, what knew how to do right by that thing. You get all down on the floor between my knees, take it out, and suck on it and make love to that ol’ thing, and when it’s hard, you stand up and sit on that fucker and I grab hold of you, and we have some fun, too—don’t we?”
“Yeah. I guess we do.”
“I was even thinkin’, I ought to ask you to live with me for a while, six months, a couple of years even. See, when I was a kid, I’d never do nothin’ like dat wid no men. Live with ’em, I mean. For more than a couple of days—like a weekend. I’d do it with women. I had about six women, there, once, all on the same street, what I was fuckin’. It was good, too. I didn’t want nobody callin’ me a faggot. But I didn’t want nobody to think I was even friends with any of the men I fucked. The fact is, though, I’m older now—and I don’t give a fuck what nobody calls me today. I can deal with anyone who respects my fuckin’ dick and treats that nigger right. Man or woman, it just don’t bother me no more. Some of them houses in Split Pine is goin’ empty. So I thought, maybe, it wouldn’t hurt to ask some guy with a nice ass to shack up for a bit.” Al grinned. “’Specially if he could make chili.”
“That’s…nice to hear, Al. But the fact is, I’m kinda taken care of in that department.”
“Yeah, you think you taken care of. But if I told you I wanted you and took my fuckin’ dick out, and waved it in your face, you’d come a-runnin’. I seen it too many times—like I say, men or women. It don’t matter. Yeah, you’d come if I asked you. Truth is, up there in Split Pine, I don’t got no women right now—I mean, permanent. That’s why I spend so much time down at dis place. So I’m thinkin’ I should try changin’ my luck a little. So you keep me in mind. I’ll keep you in mind. And when I want you, you be ready to come. Hey—and give a shout out when this chili’s ready. You know, some of my kids are runnin’ around here today. I brought ’em over here. You make sure you give ’em some of that chili.” Chuckling Al turned and walked away through the crowd.
“Will do.” Shaking his head, Eric went back to the stirring—something was sticking to the pot bottom. He scraped at it, stirred harder, and turned down the flame.
Ten minutes later, in her voluminous flowered pastel, Cassandra came over to the cooker, laughing. “Hey, there! I was just talkin’ to Jay.” She nodded where, through the crowd, the tall, white-haired man with the beard was walking with his salt-and-pepper haired partner. “Seems like the only times we done seen him in the last few years is when him and Mex come out for your chili bash. They don’t get past the Lighthouse these days when they come in on their runs—if that far.”
“Well,” Eric said. “They’re gettin’on—we all are. They gotta be sixty now.”
Cassandra looked at him sideways. “Closer to seventy, I bet.”
“Really? Well, maybe so. Hey, Al was just lettin’ me read over some of your early handiwork.”
“That crazy stuff?” The two tears beneath Cassandra’s left eye were faded enough to think, if you looked quickly, they were a natural discoloration. “You know, when he came to us, we had to have a whole evening’s conference about him, Tank and me—Lord, he couldn’t of been more than nineteen back then. And Tank was even younger—I was twenty-one and both of us was very idealistic. You would think we was havin’ a political summit—all the talkin’ we did.”
“About what?” Eric asked.
“Well, we was startin’ a tattoo and piercing business, and we had principles: no profanity—no bad language at all. Nothin’ on the hands, below the wrists. Nothin’ on the face. Genital piercings, but no pictures—on ’em or of ’em. And no swastikas—only, of course, the first ten people who walked through our front door, damned if that wasn’t what nine of them asked us for. We thought we was gonna be like the big city places and hadn’t realized yet that’s why most of them was comin’ out to the country. Jay with his damned snake on his hand—like the one you went and got.” She nodded to where Eric was still stirring, the back of his hand heavy with veins and supporting its serpent head. “Then that dick proud nigger, Al, with ‘nigger this’ and ‘nigger that’ all over him. That wasn’t what we’d set up, plannin’ to do.” Tank shook her head. She had a lot of earrings in one ear.
“So you changed your policy?”
“We had to make a damned livin’,” Tank explained, stepping up. “You know what that boy had me tattoo on his goddam pecker—it was my first pecker job, too; though, God knows, it sure was not my last!”
Cassandra shook her blond head, chuckling.
“Jesus,” Eric said. “He’s got something written on his dick?”
Tank raised a heavy hand to move it over the sky, as if outlining a banner against the clouds: “‘I…Am…the…Lord…Thy…God…!’ It’s black on black, like the rest of it. And he got it twice—up one side and down the other, comin’ and goin’! No kiddin’: you probably got to shine a flashlight on it to make it out today, but I bet you can still read it, twenty-five years on—or however long it’s been. Frankly, I don’t even wanna know—”
“I guess I never got that close,” Eric said.
“The hell you didn’t,” Tank said. “You had it up your butthole—on the first day you come to the Harbor, too. That’s what I heard.”
“From who?” Eric let go the ladle. Slowly it leaned over against the pot edge.
“From Al and Jay and Abott and Mex and Shit and Dynamite and Tad and Abott and—” Cassandra began.
“You said Abott twice, so I suspect he’s your real source, huh?” Eric laughed. “I think this goddam chili has gotta be ready!” Eric took up a padded mitten and turned to lift the cover from a second, simmering kettle. The smell rose with the steam. “Come on. Gimme a break…!”
“Now you know—” Cassandra put a surprisingly light hand on Eric’s forearm, over her vivid needled hues— “that’s why he wears a condom when he fucks.”
“What you mean?”
“I mean, you didn’t think it had anything to do with AIDS anymore, now, did you?”
“I thought he was just bein’ careful.”
“Naw, he don’t want people to see what he got written on hisself. So he covers it up with a rubber. Every few years—” she nodded through the crowd, where tall Al had stopped to laugh and joke with another set of men (once more about his probable equine parentage, Eric figured)—“Al goes and gets religion for a while. He feels a little funny about advertisin’ himself as the Lord God in Heaven.”
“Well, I guess for a believer that is a little coarse.”
“Coarse?” Stepping up beside her partner, Tank broke out laughing. “He’s afraid he’s goin’ to Hell! (Hey, you got that chili smellin’ real good!) But then another of his ‘wives’ decides she’s had enough of his bullshit and decides to go back to school or gets a job in some other city that ain’t Split Pine or even go out and be part of the life on Gilead, and there goes his faith, off comes the rubber—or at least he ain’t quite so regular about hidin’ his…aspirations there.”
Eric laughed—while he tried, and failed completely, to remember if his own last encounter with Al in the balcony had been sheathed or unsheathed. “He said he was thinkin’ of asking me to move out there with ’em. I could see it for a weekend. But that’s about all I think I’m ready for.”
Cassandra laughed. “Wonder what Shit’s gonna say about that.”
“Oh, he’d just tell me to give it a try for a couple of weeks, till I got tired of it, then get on home where the gettin’s good—you know, cuddle up with him an’ tell ’im all about it so he can get off over it.”
“Now that’s a wise man.” Tank shook her head. “Watch your pot, there—”
“But I been gettin’ a shot at it three or four times a year since I come to this place, anyway. Hell, Al ain’t really into guys. But I guess I’m supposed to feel honored that he even brought it up.” Eric gripped the ladle handle, stirred in one pot, lifted it out, then stirred the other.
“It ain’t that,” Tank said. “Like everybody else around here, he’s got a feelin’ you and Shit have somethin’ goin’ for you. He just don’t want you to say no to ’im and realize he’s wrong—that he ain’t got the Lord God himself swingin’ between his legs after all. He’s just a good horse in the pasture—like my brother used to say.”
“Was he gay?” Eric asked. “Your brother?”
“As you are,” Tank said, patted his shoulder, and looked his arms up and down. (Today Eric wore one of Shit’s old shirts with no sleeves.) “Yeah, that ink looks fine. I wonder why…? You know, people used to think there wasn’t no queer Indians.” Laughing again, she turned and walked away through the crowd.
A bearded black man moved up beside Eric. “Um…” he said.
Eric said, “Hey, Sandy.” And swallowed.
“I was wonderin’, sir—is this just for us black fellers in the place? I thought maybe…well, ’cause it was free, it was just for us.”