Boys of Life (18 page)

"You mentioned he was your brother," I said. "That's all."

"When did I mention that?" He closed his eyes again, and 1 noticed how he had a sort of mole or freckle of some kind in the corner of his left eyelid I never noticed before, which you'd've thought 1 would've.

ilier," I told him.

"Mmm," he said, which 1 couldn't tell what that meant. He took

a deep breach and said, "Adrian was tWO wars older than me. When 1 was a kid 1 thought Adrian was the greatest."

"Where's In

were icill c losed. "1 le'i dr.id," he s.ud.

I didn't ia\ anything because 1 didn't think there wai anythii

is my fa riti part of* sunset, after it was gone and the bn

from tin- river picked up i little and started to cool ofl the city. ( arlot'i

brotl but I wi ■ there if thai moment 1 lapp)

nt.

I gi mind m he'd ^>

it whethei I s.ud anything oi not Sometime! in youi life U close to lomebod) else, maybe three oi fbui times

all) teel th.it u i\ It doe n ' h

ith thi-iii •«•! when then

i lot hardei to put

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lap and the sky going dark around us and lights coming on in all the

buildings—this feeling of complete closeness, like whatever games we were usually playing with each other were just games—another kind of

er you played with your life instead d a ball, but that's the only

difference. And none of that mattered like this mattered. Which was

just sitting there on that grungy root together and talking in peaceful

ces about whatever'd happened to US that we couldn't change even

it we wanted to.

"He was the first person I ever had sex with," Carlos said. He opened his eyes and looked up at me, I guess to see what my reaction was.

"See?" he said. "I do have some surprises left."

I never doubted that for a minute. But still I didn't say anything. It didn't seem like I had to. I liked the way Carlos's head was resting there in my lap.

He sort of laughed. "I used to go crawl in bed with him," he said. "I l:iicss it started when I was about eight or so, and our father took a real turn tor the worse. About the time he started stationing himself on the front porch with the shotgun. And here's something interesting. Everybody knew about it, the local cop and the neighbors, but nobody did anything. It was out of some kind o( respect for him, I think. Nobody blamed him for what happened to him."

"Talk about Adrian," I told him, because that was what I wanted to hear about.

"Well," Carlos said, "sometimes I'd wake up at night and hear my father walking around the house. He was so drunk he could hardly stand up, and SO what you'd hear would be his shoulders rubbing against the wall when he walked down the hall, and then a thump when he'd lurch against the wall on the other side. He'd just walk around down-srairs like he was looking tor something he couldn't find. He never came upstairs where we were, but I was always afraid he would."

Carlos drank some more whisky, though most if it dribbled down his chin and onto mv panrs, which were these thin billowy cotton things Carlos'd bought me a couple week before—he called rhetn harem pants, and I wore them all the time around the apartment because they were cool. Carlos was so drunk he didn't know he was spilling whisky on mv favorite pants, so I took the bottle from him and put it on the roof beside us.

I think what he rcallv wanted to kI> was pass our—bur I want* hear about him and his brother having sex.

□ PAULRUSSELL

"So how'd you have sex with your brother.'" I asked, prodding him awake.

He looked groggy, like a little kid who's just waked up from a nap.

"Oh, sex," he said. "You know, Adrian was a very talented painter. When he was sixteen he started painting, and he went atter it with a vengeance. Beautiful stuff, incomprehensible mystical stuff. I used to sit and watch him paint, and smell the turpentine, which was enough to give me a hard-on sometimes. He was the talented one. I'm just some tenth-rate jerk-off amateur who's trying to make up for him not being here anymore."

He reached for the scotch bottle but it was out of reach.

"I'm so fucking drunk," he said. "Are you fucking drunk. 7 "

"Yeah," I said, even though I wasn't very drunk at all. 1 ran mv fingers through his hair. I touched the tip of his nose with a fingertip.

"Did you ever have a brother?" he asked me. He was slurring his words a lot, but I thought his face was really great-looking in the dim light like that.

I told him about Ted.

"Ted," he said. "I'd like to meet him."

"I'll kill you if you touch my brother."

"I know where he Lives/' Carlos said. "1 could go find him."

"I'll kill you," I teased, and bent down and kissed him which is

an odd angle to try to kiss somebody from, so after .1 minute 1 stopped and just put .1 couple oi m\ fingers in his mouth. He sort oi sucked on those a little, which w,is sew, and I felt around his teeth and gums but after about a minute I realized he was totally passed out. lie w.is even snoring.

To gel on the root you had to climb up this little ladder, which meant there was no way 1 him down tonight

blankets and sturl and we slept up there, which was coolei than

tment anyway since it was the middle d August.

I nevei did find out any more about his brother, Adrian, hou he

: oi whethei they really had sex, 01 even it any oi what he said was

true in tlu- first place It'd be just like Carlos to make all that up,

n I don't think he did. Whenevei Pd mention it

later he'd just lay that whole evenii I, It was .ill |ust •<

i from whk h it \ iy he

1 1, »1K1 hardly n em the whole

Mm find the bla< k headband he put on whin

D

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he had had hangovers because he thought pressure on the brain would cure ir, and when that didn't work getting him a cold washrag and laying it across his eyes the way my mom used to do when she was hung over, which didn't work either, and then going out to buy orange juice and soda and a bottle of aspirin he took about half of that afternoon. For some reason I was totally fine, like the way a tornado hits one house full on and the next one it skips right over for no reason you can figure out.

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were all dead. Just like that. I must've picked about twelve oi them up off the floor and flushed them down the toilet. I l;ucss .1 cold snap or something hit the room in the middle ot the night and that was that. Or maybe it was just their time. But I could tell from the first I saw them—thev were leftovers, they were all used up.

There must be a way to keep from going empty like that. I'm sure that's what Carlos was looking for all the time—some way oi filling himself back up. I know he woke up in the middle of the night sometimes to feel himselt emptying out, one day at a time, and that's when the panic would set in—he'd have to find some kid somewhere to fuck who still had lite in him, or he'd have to make a movie, or do anything to get it back, whatever it was that was emptying out of him. I didn't exactly know at that time—you could say it took me years to figure that out—but I know it now. And he infected me with it, I think. These days everybody talks about everybody infecting each other. But I think the real thing Carlos infected me with was that need to fill myself up again. To keep from going dry. When I think back about it now, in some way everything he did with me, and I don't just mean fucking me up the ass with that crazy scared energy of his, but everything, making those movies or even just knowing me, just sitting up on the root watching the sunset or playing soccer in Central Park or even leaving me alone in that apartment with Sammy Finkelsztajn for weeks on end—all that was his way of using me up so he could try to get back something that was his. Somewhere in his past somebody must've done that same thing to him, which is how he got started on all this in the first place.

Like I say—maybe it's not that bad a thing if writing all this down uses me up tor good. At least I'm not going to be out there doing it to other people. At least when I'm emptied out that'll just be it.

I remember something Sammy told me once about Carlos. Sammy was being very fatherly, which in his weird way I think he was always trying to he since he never had any children of his own, and with everything; he'd seen he telt completely sorry tor any children that ever

bom into this world, including Carlos—hut he used to say about Carlos, Carlos is burning his candle at three ends. Which I used to think about a lot—trying to picture it. And I finally figured it out. Those two flames burning at both ends and then the other one, the one that w.is Carlos's real lite, that flame burning deep down inside the candle, eating it out from the hearr and completely invisible t.

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icplorc some of the ones around Owen, but I was never rh.it crazj about closebrup spaces.

I don't know who the hrst person was that found Paradise Grotto, which is what the cave was called, or when, hut around the 1920s

during Prohibition it used to be a speakeasy, and people would drive

from about four counties around to drink there. That's when they put the metal door in, and the lights along the walls, and a long bat and rabies and chairs. At the rear of rhe cavern, where the ground sloped down, there was a lake rhar some people said was bottomless, though I'm sure rhar's nor rrue. Back in the twenties they had a platform built our on rhe water with a piano set up on it, and SO when you went to rhe speakeasy there was this man sitting out in the middle ot the water playing rhe piano for you. My mom told me about that. She used to go out there when she was a teenager in the fifties and they still had the piano on the ratt then, though nobody played it. I don't know what happened to it—by the time I went there, there wasn't even any platform. But then by the time I went there, it was pretty rundown. You could tell it was once fixed up with colored tiles on the walls and stuff like that, but they'd let it go over the years. It wasn't a bar anymore, they only served soft drinks—but in the summer it was a great place to go and stay cool. There was always this breeze coming up from deep inside the ground, like water from a well. And this hollow wind sound.

Outside the cave, about fifty feet from the entrance, there was a concrete swimming pool where for a quarter you could go swimming. In rhe summers Ted and I were there practically all the time, from when ir opened at ren in the morning till it closed at eight.

I remember this one thing we used to do—and I'd completely tor-ten about ir rill just now. There were these openings along rhe side ot the pool, right below the water level, where new water was always lertinu inro rhe pool to keep it full. I used to stand right up against one ot those holes and pull my bathing trunks out so the water was lerring right down into my rrunks. It was a weird squirmy feeling, and rhar was rhe first rime in my lite I ever came.

Ir was some kid my age who first showed me. He wasn't anybody I knew, I think he was visiting from somewhere and that's the only rime I ever saw him. But I remember he swam up to me and iiist said rmhr our, VC'anr to see something tun.' He nuzzled up to rhe concrete edge ot the pool where rhe water was coming out and pulled his trunks down — that was the tirst rime I ever saw anybody with a hard-on, except

mne myself. I remember he and I spent all afternoon doing that,

D PAULRUSSli

m oiu- spray nozzle to another, all the way around the pool, till tn\ dick hurt with standing up so much. We didn't touch each othei 01 anything, we just took turns .u the nozzles and watched each other while we were doing it, and after that one day 1 never saw him again.

1 showed red about it, but he was shy about me watching him. He'd always turn away so 1 couldn't see his hard on which 1 remember 1 was always really curious to sec. Sometimes I'd catch him over at the rai end of the pool up against the side, and I'd know what he was up to. I'd sunn over hoping to catch a glimpse of his hard-on, though most ot the tune he'd see me coming and Mutt himself hack in. 1 always teased him when 1 caught him. I'd reach down and grope his hard little dick, which would get him all embarrassed and he'd sunn away to

another part ot the pool. I'd chase hun and we'd usually end up thrash

Ing around in the deep end with me trying to grab hun m\k\ hun trying

to twist away. We could spend hours doing that.

I hadn't thought ot ,m\ ot that tor a long tune, and now 1 wonder it other people s.iu us doing that with the water vents. Pid the\ know what we weie up to' I'd s.n probably yes. 1 know \ou'rc supposed to teel all shy ahout stuff like that, hut 1 guess I've JUS! never really cared it people s.uv rue or not

It's runny how led comes and gO€S in m\ head. There'll he tunes when 1 think hack and I can't realh rememher anything ahout him at all. au<\ then other tunes I'll rememher something, like those swimming

pool games, I'd completely fo rgot te n ahout. It was Like that the whole

time I was m k. I'd go fot I while without thinking ahout him.

hut then I'd he walking down the street ot taking a piss oi atuthi:

and suddenly I'd he thinking ahout hun.

1 hete was always this twinge 1 cot when 1 thought ahout hun, like

I'd run out on hun in SOinc wa\ I didn't teel good ahout I ike 1 uist lett hun (here 1 ne\er tell that wa\ ahout tin little sisu-rs. but then

they little to really K felt that

ii my mom. I herself was the one thing

she knew hov «11\ wel! un 1 thought

ii I cA 1 is empty

bklC ^k\. and the light's just right this

• emptiness hut also something tull