I’m wearing the sweater my friend Jason gave me for my birthday. It’s by Golden Fleece. It almost matches my hair, and everybody says it brings out my eyes (they’re blue). I decided to wear it to the party tonight with my tight black jeans. The Fleece makes my nipples itch a little bit (I’m not wearing anything underneath).

Waiting for my friends to pick me up, I flip through magazines on the floor of my bedroom, spray French cologne and play with my hair while I go through my little black book. I’m bored. Some I call just for confidence.

“What are you doing tonight?” I ask one of my ex-boyfriends.

He says: “Whatever you want.”

I call the next name down the list. “Got any plans this evening?”

He says: “I was supposed to hang out with my friends, but I can blow them off. What are you doing?” 

Enough with the rat-faced boys of my past. I want a new adventure. Jason and Cody come pick me up and we go out. We walk down slimy alleyways to the party, smoking a joint I rolled too tight.

We get to the party, a big garden apartment to celebrate this geriatric artist. An 85-year-old queen celebrating another retrospective. He’s seen it all and would love to give each and every one of us a tongue-lashing about the good old days (before the Apocalypse), but he’s too drunk and his dentures are out. He’s sitting asleep his wheelchair in the center of his dining room, drooling a little. As the guests arrive we leave armfuls of flowers in his lap. Someone’s made him a paper crown.

“Loved the show, Louis.” He makes paintings of decapitated teenage boy bodies. They’re really expensive. Jason and Cody and I fix ourselves some drinks and sit on a low couch at the back of the room, watching people come in to the party.

Other old art witches come in to nuzzle the spit off of Louis’ chin. An ancient lady art collector has a cute boy on her arm. Black curly hair and a tight leather jacket. I am staring at him from across the room. He stares right at me too, and I am fixed in my seat.

On the settee, I do not break eye contact with the boy across the room, but I lean over to Jason on my right: “Do you know that guy? He is so cute.”

Jason says, “Yeah, he just moved here from the South somewhere. His name is Bobby.”

I lean over to Cody, on my left: “Let’s get high.”

Cody says: “Okay, gimme five minutes.” Cody sneaks out to the backyard where old rich fags in suits are smoking cigars cause one of these Wall Street art-buying motherfuckers is probably holding. Cody goes to charm the crowd in the backyard under the neon paper lamps from Chinatown.

Jason and I go get some punch. Bobby ladles some into his cup.

“How are y’all doing tonight?” he asks. The word is drawls. He sounds like an idiot. Trashy badmouth. His hair is greasy and dirty.

“Um,” I say, handing a glass of bright red punch to Jason, “We’re good. Or whatever. We’re great. How’re you?”

“I’m good.” He says. “My name’s Bobby.” And sticks out his hand. He has long fingers and thick forearms.

“I’m Billy,” I say and we shake hands. “You wanna join us?”

We all sit back down on the green velvet sofa. The air is thick with incense, hash smoke and sweat. Cody comes back inside, out of breath, and throws down a big bag of blow onto the table. We cut it up using Bobby’s credit card and each do two bumps. They’re playing jazz on the stereo and Cody is tapping his fingers on Jason’s thigh.

A few minutes later and we’re all really high. Chomping on ice cubes from the punch bowl. I look and see Cody and Jason grinding their teeth and looking side to side, and they slip their hands into each other’s pockets. I dig out my coat from behind them on the couch.

Bobby pulls me aside. “I wanna show you something.” We grab a half-empty bottle of scotch from a table and he leads me down a crowded hallway, opens a door covered in a poster for Turandot. Down a flight of wooden stairs into a dank basement. Bobby flicks a light and the room is suddenly too bright.

Stacks of paintings lean against the walls. There are bright yellow fluorescent lights all over the ceiling. It’s three a.m., and it feels like noon bright daylight. It feels like a morgue. It’s awful. The walls are covered in pictures of bloody torsos. Oil paint gesso and cigarette butts. I dig around in my coat pocket and put on my sunglasses.

“Cool guy,” Bobby says.

“So you’re new in town? How do you know Louis?”

“I’m his new assistant.” Bobby says.

“Oh really,” I say. I hate small talk. “What do you do for him?”

Bobby smiles and walks over to a painting. Armless, headless and legless and splayed. Pink egg tempera nipples with cascading ribbons of blood. He taps the edge of the canvas nervously.

“You paint for him?” I ask.

“Yeah. I mean, he’s real old. He sort of directs me, and sometimes he’ll do sketches, but I actually paint them.” I sit down cross-legged on the cold wooden floor and take a swig of the whiskey. “My mom used to be Louis’s secretary in the 70s, then she introduced me to him a couple years ago when I graduated, and he taught me how to paint.”

“That’s cool, I guess.” I say. I’m not acting nonchalant – I am not impressed. These paintings are horrible. Bobby sits down next to me, and I pass him the bottle. He takes a big gulp and smiles and leans toward me and puts his hands on my knees. I take another sip and I grimace. “These paintings are really scary,” I say. What I don’t say: WHEN YOU HAVE A BODY BUT NO FACE, THEN IT CAN BE ANYONE.

“You know what you look like?” Bobby says, slurring “you” into a word a lot longer than it needs to be, “With yer sunglasses? You look like a bug.” He says. Giggles and hiccups. I wonder if he makes a lot of money.

“Yeah,” I say, “that’s how I’ll look in my portrait.” I decide to keep my sunglasses on forever. I smirk, and Bobby leans in and kisses me. I close my eyes – even though I’m wearing sunglasses I realize his eyes are blue like mine and that they’re too bright. Reflecting light like tin foil. I can’t even make eye contact with him. I feel so suddenly fucked up, I roll onto my back and pull Bobby on top of me. 

We can do it here in the basement underground because the dead boys surrounding us don’t have any: 

- Eyes to see with
- Ears to hear us
- Mouths to talk about it
- Arms to interfere, or even
- Legs to run away

“A sexy li’l bug,” He says. He’s trying to be cutes but he’s frantically unbuckling our belts. “I thought you were hot the moment you walked in tonight,” he says. “with your friends.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I think you’re hot, too.” I pull off my Golden Fleece from around my neck. Bobby carefully folds it and puts it in a place where it won’t get dirty. He runs his hands up my back. Picture. Static. Surface.

“Your skin,” he says, “is so smooth.” I fix my sunglasses. Impassive. I feel like I am invisible, protected or something from Bobby. I cross my ankles behind him and suck his tongue like mint julep prohibition. There’s an expression in French: Bête comme un Peintre. It’s weird to be in this room, I feel like he’s at work. He gets paid here.

My favorite position, on my back. The way I like to fuck, we keep coming back to it. Savasana. If you get tired, you can return to this pose or to child’s pose. If it gets too intense and you need to rest, these are the positions you can go back into to recuperate. Here’s what you do: Lie on your back.

I want to turn into a bench. Turn to stone. I want to be an inanimate object, a statue, sculpture. Put me in a museum. Charge the public three bucks to come in and look at me. Schoolchildren; make them take notes. Write a paper about me to see how much they retain.

I’m drunk and my head’s beginning to ache, we’re rolling on the floor and it’s rough and it hurts, and I wish it didn’t though. I want a cigarette or another drink or something distracting. Bobby is kissing me with his eyes open, but I can’t see him. People milling around upstairs. I can hear the floorboards creaking. Bobby straddles me and jerks off – his cock is huge, uncircumcised and brutish-looking. Not an intellectual cock. Not an artist cock. Not a thinking cock, a feeling one. He spits into his palm with freaky long beautiful fingers and jerks off over my chest. I am pretending to be dead, decapitated, amputated. I am holding very still. In my mind I want to push him off of me and tell him how stupid I think he is.

“The dirtiest parts of me, I want to press them up against your most precious bits. Like slipping a ring onto a King’s fingertip. I want to press my asshole, warm and pink, against the underside of the shaft of your cock. This is where I shit from, what presses out. I want to feel you deeper inside of me, my intestines. I want you in my guts. This is where I absorb my nutrients. I want to take you in as if by osmosis become you. Instantiate you.”

But I keep my mouth shut. I want him to use me like a dildo, like I’m a part of the scenery. I want to be incidental to the action onstage. I don’t want to pull focus. I wanna lend. I don’t know what I’m doing here, except it feels good, and staring at him, I realize how stoned I am. I feel my own mass, heaviness underneath him. He’s jerking off and straddling me periodically leaning down to kiss my neck, bite on my lips and stare at the hard black plastic of the sunglasses that separate us. He starts breathing really fast and staring at me intently. Bobby moans for me to finger his ass, but he says “ass” with two syllables: “ay-uhss”. He also hangs onto the long “s” sound at the end.

I’m jerking off too but with my left hand I start fingering his asshole, it’s tight. We are intertwined, engaged. He’s jerking off with his right hand and he wraps his left arm around my shoulders and pulls me over so that I am on top of him now. Tableau Billy right hand cock, left hand Bobby’s ass. Bobby is right hand cock left hand Billy’s neck. Rubbing up against him, I realize he’s turned me into the utility I want to be. 

Perseus defeated Medusa by looking at her reflection on his shield instead of looking right into her eyes. I beat Boy Gorgon Bobby by wearing dark sunglasses indoors. It’s the same trip: to know that you see and then to put something in between yourself and the thing you see. The trip is mediation. Bobby doesn’t say he’s gonna cum, but I can feel it, inside of him, tightening and quick like a bird heart.