Bound by Lust (16 page)

Afterward, while Jacqueline chased after the missing lid and fished it out from a clump of pale, dead grass, he splashed his face with ice-cold melt water and looked up at the overhanging willow.

Standing, he pulled at a low branch and bent it back until it gave way. He worked at the green stem until it splintered free. It wasn't easy to break living wood, but it came eventually. He batted the stick against his palm.

“What's that for?” she asked, joining him.

“Later,” he said, smiling as he took her hand. They turned toward the path and walked on into the blossoming day.

—Stephen Elliott

 

W
hen I was ten, an ice cream truck drove through our neighborhood playing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” in the middle of June, and my brother pulled down his shorts and pissed on my bicycle wheel. It was the beginning of chaos, when I started to twitch, when sunlight pressed me to my knees in front of my bike, and I ran a finger between the spokes of my bicycle wheel. I inhaled the ammonia of my brother's piss and gagged a little, swooned.

That same year, I started to dream someone came in my room while I slept and slugged me in the stomach. I'd wake gripping my gut, then double over and drool off the side of my bed.

My parents sent me to a psychiatrist.

“Ronan, why do you hit yourself?”

I tried to tell him. Didn't matter what I said though. I had an
inferiority complex. The shrink explained it to my parents: I felt inferior to my brother.

 

In high school I had an English teacher who said love stories saved people. Lately, I walked up and down Hawthorne Boulevard and imagined I garnered heat. Marcelle was an ember in bed beside me at night; if light came through a window I saw a disturbance across her face. She complained she hadn't slept well since her teens. Sometimes she kicked off the blankets and then writhed. I bent my body around hers the way she'd told me to, then held my hand below her collarbone, above her breast, and counted how many times her heart struck her ribs. Infinite.

 

Five months ago I turned eighteen and left my parents' house in suburbia. I had to go; I felt claustrophobic, crazy, except ghosts were like ticks under my skin. I itched. After a week on the street, I crashed at a homeless shelter, then took my first shower in six days. Later, I sat in a corner and ate a sandwich. I had a backpack with me, a few things: this faded three-by-five photo of my brother in his soccer uniform, number 33. He was tall and lean, always beautiful. The perfect martyr asshole.

I folded the picture before I could see much else, then slipped it into my backpack again.

This is a love story. When you tell a love story, everyone wants to know how you met because the genesis of most things is sexy even if it's graceless, Point A, something you can see. I used to walk around looking at the ground so my brother wouldn't say, “You staring at me again, Ro-Ro the Twitch?” Eyes were the windows to the soul.

Five months ago, while walking with my eyes on the ground, I found twelve dollars.

Two days later, Marcelle found me in a bookstore.

“Hey there, hey you, look up.”

Between rows of books and a smell of book bindings and coffee, I looked up. No way I couldn't. Her voice traveled the length of my spine, curled around my throat, tightened. There she was, the most stunning girl in the world. Strawberry-blonde hair and red lipstick. The girl didn't smile. She dropped a book to the floor. “Pick that up,” she said to me.

 

Love was holy. Love was a visceral thing. Here was peace. After Marcelle flogged me with such force and attention, I collapsed to the floor, then she blew through her lips at the welts on my stomach. I was so sore, I'd never leave her. She cradled my head. “Thank you,” I said.

 

Six months ago, when Marcelle found me in a bookstore, we were in the erotica section, or maybe it was romance. I could never tell. After I retrieved the book for her and held it front of me I said, “Here,” and she looked me up and down a moment.

“Oh, I don't want it,” she said.

“Okay.” I looked for place on a shelf and tried not to twitch, except it was as much a part of me as the mole on my elbow.

“I like you,” she said.

“What?” I studied the bookshelf and twitched.

“I mean I know you.”

“What?” I twitched again. “From where?” I looked at her.

“Right here,” she said.

“I've never been in this store before.” I found space on the shelf and replaced the book.

“Why do you do that?” The girl cocked her head. “Nervous habit? You have that condition?”

I shrugged and then twitched again. “Started when I was a kid.”

“Amazing how much starts then.” The girl touched my shoulder. “I'm Marcelle.”

That was a fantastic name: her name was everything. I stared at the bookshelf in front of me as if the books could compete with this girl. Impossible. Funny. “I'm Ronan,” I said.

“Doesn't fit you,” she replied.

“What?” I looked at her, twitched.

“Ronan,” she said.

I shrugged. “It's Gaelic, means little seal.”

Marcelle cocked her head again.

“My brother called me Ro-Ro.” Shit. I shouldn't have told her that.

I mean, why did I have to bring up him?

“Ro-Ro?” Marcelle stared into my eyes. “Maybe they both fit.”

“I guess.”

“What're you up to here?”

I looked around the bookstore. “I was going to…borrow a book or something.”

“Borrow?”

I shrugged, then cracked a smile.

“You need a job?”

Twitch. “I don't know, maybe.”

“I know a porn shop that needs help.”

“What porn shop?”

Marcelle told me.

“Isn't that a gay porn shop?”

“So?” She smiled. I twitched.

To tell you the truth, people often assumed I was gay. My brother was the athlete: I was the faggot. Aside from the fact I was thin and sort of gangly, my hair curled into what my mom once referred to as “ringlets.” Death of me. My brother
let me have it. “Ringlets? Ha ha. Girls have ringlets. Ro-Ro, the girl.” Sometimes I imagined wearing girls' underwear, but I wasn't sure that made me girly or gay or even effeminate, maybe ambiguous. Anyway, I'd never admitted it.

Who could I tell and not be ostracized for life?

“The guy at the porn shop is nice. I know him,” Marcelle said.

“Thanks. I mean I've got nothing against gay porn shops. I'm just not gay.”

Marcelle smiled then pushed a piece of hair behind her ear. “Where do you live?”

Jesus. Hard questions. You need a job? Where do you live? I'd strike out with this girl any second. “I don't know,” I said. “Places, I guess.”

Marcelle stepped closer. I saw the pores in her nose, a few freckles; then I admired the bow shape to her lips. “Let's get out of here,” she said.

“Okay.” I continued to stare at her mouth.

When she started to go I followed. Outside she pointed west. “My place is that way, eight blocks.”

I couldn't believe this. She wanted me to go with her? “Okay,” I said.

We started to walk. Above us the sky looked dusky as we traveled west up Hawthorne Boulevard, the time of night before vampires came out. Traffic passed us on the street. I wanted to ask if she believed in vampires, things that went bump in the night. She walked with her eyes forward and chin out. No hint of a smile. The foggy dusk light loved her. She was like a movie, all motion and purpose. Here was the city, the place where we met. More depressed people lived in Portland than anywhere else. Mold grew like crazy, and so did the vegetation. The air often smelled like rotting flesh. The Willamette River flanked the city,
and the ocean wasn't too far away. We were hound-dogged by fog and clouds most days, and even in summer it rained.

“You've got a masochistic tendency, don't you?” Marcelle finally looked at me. The sidewalk was crowded. She leaned into me. I felt her warmth, caved to the pressure.

We got closer to the curb.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Like I'm a pussy?”

“Being a masochist doesn't make you a pussy.”

I twitched. “My parents sent me to a shrink when I was ten. He said I had an inferiority complex.”

“You should never see a shrink again.”

“I won't. I mean, I wasn't going to.”

“You need someone to give you what want.” Marcelle smiled. “Like, I could shove you into traffic right now if you want.”

“What? That's crazy. I mean, that's dangerous.” And then I think I felt a twitch in my cock.

Marcelle shoved me off the curb; she was strong. I fell backward into the street. A driver honked his horn then yelled, “Asshole!” I leapt back onto the curb. My cock was stiff as a dead man. “Jesus Christ! Jesus!” Suddenly, I was invincible. Maybe this was how it had been for my brother when he'd kicked a winning goal. Yeah. I'd almost pissed my pants. Jesus!

“Want to crash with me tonight?” Marcelle said.

I looked at her still breathing hard, adrenaline. I fell in love with her then.

 

My brother played soccer in high school and was headed to Olympic greatness. You could have asked my dad. He would have told you. My parents loved my brother more than they loved me. My dad touched him all the time: he'd pat my brother's
shoulder, run a hand through his hair. I peeked once at my brother in the bathroom, naked and golden in front of a mirror, how he reminded me of Brad Pitt, how distracted he was by his own beauty, a narcissist. Beside him a radio played a song by Billy Talent. The words went, “Being great must suck.”

My brother glared at his reflection.

 

Marcelle and I lived on the corner of 54th and Hawthorne in a house once occupied by a wine steward and his wife who wrote erotic novels involving S&M. That was why Marcelle had rented the house. She'd read all the writer's books. It was also why I had a tattoo on my left shoulder that said
Pain Slut,
the title of the writer's most popular book.

The night Marcelle stenciled me with a knife, I ejaculated into my pants.

Pain was a color, violet-red.

Marcelle left kiss marks around her artwork, and then I collapsed, blissful as I'd ever been.

The writer and her husband had left the states for Europe. Marcelle and I imagined their travels. We imagined bicycle rides through the country and patio cafés. We imagined wine and beer, pasta con sarde and Schweinbraten. We imagined leather bars and sex clubs. We imagined piss and come and blood. It was all so romantic. We slept on a bed in a pink bedroom. The blankets and sheets were varying shades of purple, crumpled-up blossoms. We had incense and porn. Marcelle had a turntable. She'd stockpiled records: David Bowie and Blondie and the Germs. She'd bought them at garage sales and on Hawthorne Boulevard, specialty shops and thrift stores. Marcelle had crammed the house with bookshelves and had more books than anyone in the world. My goal was to read every book she had.

One morning, before she left for work, Marcelle snapped a
cuff around my ankle, then attached the other to the leg of a table. She gave me a copy of
The Story of an Eye
by Georges Bataille and a bottle of water. She also gave me a pan to fill. By noon, I'd pissed twice.

When Marcelle returned home later, we gathered around the pan and gazed into it like a wishing well or something.

“Have you ever imagined drinking piss?” she asked.

I remembered the sting of my brother's ammonia, how the smell of it on my finger had sent me gagging and swooning. “Not exactly.” I twitched.

Marcelle curled a hand in my hair. I shivered more than twitched.

 

The guy who ran the gay porn shop looked like Philip Seymour Hoffman. His name was Cade. He fed me often, usually tacos from up the street, then teased me. “Don't lose your figure.” First time I met Cade, he looked me over, then said, “You'll be popular with my customers.”

“Okay.”

“You've got that whipping-boy look.”

“I do?” Marcelle had dyed my curls black. Sometimes she put makeup on me, mascara and eyeliner and electric blue eye shadow. The effect was less goth and more gay.

She'd pierced my ears with a straight pin and ice. She'd snapped a dog collar around my neck with a tag on it: Ro-Ro. She's said she loved how I looked in leather pants. Once she teased me. “My, what a big dick you have.” When I said thank you she said, “Kneel.” And then I'd knelt an hour with a lump in my pants.

“Sure,” Cade said. “You look like Japanese manga. Stick with the tight pants.”

“Okay.”

At first I did chores around the shop: sweeping and stocking mostly, but the customers kept asking me if I wanted to make tips.

Finally I nodded. “Alright,” I said.

The first guy just wanted to watch a porn film and jerk off on me. Cade kept Wet Wipes around. Today he asked, “Do you care if the customers hit you?”

“Nah, don't think so.” I got hard thinking about it because I imagined Marcelle watching the guys knock me around. Like a scene. I imagined her saying, “Hit him harder. I want bruises. Give him a nosebleed too.” My cock went tight with blood. I felt dizzy.