Boys of Life (24 page)

I think some people who knew Carlos just a little, who talked to him only once or twice, probably figured that here was this guy who, it he wanted to hypnotize somebody, probably could. But finally that's wishful thinking, and Carlos never did any of that—no matter what some of my so-called friends from The Company say.

You didn't find Seth saying things like that on any witness stand. And if anybody was the one to know, it was Seth. How're you going to trust what a few sound men and stagehands have to say over Seth and his camera?

It is true about the fisting scene—I ended up doing that to Scott, hut it was something he wanted. Talk about somebody totally into their ass. It's the only time in my life I ever fisted somebody: I could feel this warm slick insides throbbing around me, and I remember I had this feeling I could just keep going, there wasn't anything to stop me from turning him inside out if I wanted to.

□ PAULRUSSELL

The movie wasn't all like that. There was some very tunny stuff in it too—like Sammy's part. He was supposed to he Icing of that painted city, and he got carried around through the whole movie on this throne hy these tour hlack men. He'd sit there dressed up in this gold lame bathrobe, with an onion-dome crown perched on his head. "I'm touring the properties," he'd say, making these blessing motions with his hands like the Pope. "My dominions," he'd say. "Onions tor the minions of my dominions."

Also there were the angel wings Verbena strapped on our shoulders, these big gaudy peacock-feather things which were the only clothes Scott and I had on for those three whole days. We had a lot of run with stuff like that—the huge chandelier throne that lowered down from the ceiling so Scott and I could sail away to heaven, and all the dildoes Sammy kept pulling out of the pockets of his robe to otter ui whenever we tried to have a serious conversation with him. "Accept the bounty of my kingdom, fair strangers," he'd say, and bow to us.

There was also the stuff with the pistol.

I know the pistol story's part of the Carlos legend everybody likes to talk about, but everybody gets it totally wrong. And besides, it happened to me, not them.

It was the end of the second day, and everything would've been going fine, I guess, if I hadn't seen this one thing that really upset me.

i and I'd done some prett\ heavy stuff with each other by then, including this one scene with one oi the dildoes Samim \1 presented us with, this monster thing Scott went and worked up into me. None too

gently, I have co say like he w.is paying me back.

Afterward, I was walking around letting mv guts calm down a

little, feeling both incredibly lifted up and also totally emptied out. I'd

lered over tO the COmei oi the warehouse whor we'd tOtSed OUI

clothes thai first day, and then 1 saw Scott. He was sitting on this pile

ins, uith nothini epi his peacock feathei angel wings.

At htst I thought he was |erking ofl which would've been a little

idering. I took about three more steps toward him and

then I He had a beh wrapped around lus arm, and he was

making i fist, flexing it. He drew i little blood from his arm up Into

the n I he-Id it there, then eaaed It bt* V Into his arm, and when

! thai he L Ind 1 4 ihiv<

II re m ember nil I die, thai ihivei I didn't m ,1 it, r I could heai \ mebod) hammering lomething

; m tfa >llo* n didn't till

B O Y S O F L I F E □

the space of that warehouse at all. After what seemed like forever but probably about fifteen seconds, Scott pulled the syringe out of his

arm and laid it in a little case that was open on his lap. Then he undid the belt and wound it into loops, and Laid it on his tolded-up trousers.

He didn't see me, and I backed away without making a sound. But I went straight to Carlos and told him I was getting out, I couldn't stand this anymore.

He was sitting down, writing some stuff in a little notebook. He didn't even look up.

"You can't get out," he said. He was completely calm about it. "It's too late," he said.

"Of course I can," I told him. "This is a free country. I can walk out any time I want to."

"Try it," he said.

That's when he pulled out the pistol.

My heart stopped. "I don't believe it," I told him. "You're crazy." I was yelling at him. "Can't you understand about people's lives? People's lives aren't movies."

"I'm not making movies," Carlos said. He was still sitting, and still completely calm. And still pointing the pistol right at me.

I'm sure I was a sight. Standing there in front of him completely naked except for those stupid peacock-feather angel wings.

"Then what do you think you're making?" I said.

"I'm making reality," Carlos said. "I'm trying to make a little bit of reality

"You are crazy," I told him. It was the first time I ever stood up to him like that. "You don't know what's what anymore."

"Or maybe you're afraid I actually do," Carlos said. "And that scares you to death, doesn't it? That I took some dumb little fucked-up country kid and showed him some ways of looking at things he never even thought about, and now he doesn't know what to do with all that. He doesn't know how to use it, and so he's afraid of what he sees. He closes his eyes, because he's afraid what he sees all around him might really be reality. And so he wants to run away."

"There's not anything real in your movies, Carlos, there's not anything there," I told him, sick in the pit of my stomach to know all of a sudden that he was right and I was wrong, that it really was reality, me and Sammy wandering the alphabets, me and Scott fucking in some warehouse in Brooklyn—all that was just as much reality as anything else, and what's worse, it was my life. I'd lived through all those things

□ PAUL RUSSELL

and they were just as real as anything that ever happened to me. And it all those things could happen and be my life then anything else could too.

Carlos was also right that I was scared to death. Plus he had that pistol.

"All right, all right," I told him. "I'll sta\

"I knew you would." He grinned that tight grin oi his, then he put the pistol away. He'd never even stood up in the whole argument. But I could see he was embarrassed, like the instant he pulled that pistol was the one single time in his life he hadn't trusted me, and he was ashamed of that.

I was fine for the moment. I told everybody within earshot I wm fine, not to worry. But as soon as I got away from Carlos and found a place to sit down and put myself back together, I started trembling all over just thinking about what had happened. He must've known 1 was uoing to be upset, because I hadn't been sitting there three minutes before he came over. He sat down beside me and put his arm around me, which with those angel wings was clumsy to do.

"I guess angels don't hug much," he said.

"Angels don't do a lot of things. They don't even exist.''

"Look," he told me. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorr\. 1 don't know what happened."

u have a gun," I told him. I still couldn't believe he WM carrying a gun.

He rook it our. "Go ahead," he said, "it's edl yours. ^ hu , t nu . 1

rve it."

"I don't want to shoot V ou, arc you CfB

IK- forced me to take the gun In my hand any*

"Pur u to my head," he Mid. "Pull the I

IK- took m\ hand where 1 wai holding flu- mm and draped it ovei

temple. "Then-," Ik- laid . pull flu

I threw the gun down on tlu tloor it made ■< clatter) nois<

r< •< even he

I locked .it him. "\X < going to I had t<" tell

him And I Kuess he faieu th.it He ieood up and put Ins handi m his Udn't I it's hard," he laid "It'i kmpoaiible We have to keq

ill tli.it I hi

■

B O Y S O F L I F E □

said Pessimism of the mind, optimism oj the will Do you understand what that means?' 1

I did understand, sort of,

"We have to keep living that way," Carlos said. "Every single one

of us. You and me ^\nd Scott and all of us. Until we drop down dead." He picked up the gun and put it hack in his pocket.

And that was that. Maybe 1 should've pulled the fritter—when I look hack on it. I think that maybe he really did want me to shoot him riiihr then and there. But I wasn't about to do that. It wouldn't have made any sense to do it.

When I thought about it, it made complete sense that Scott was shooting junk—I should've guessed it from the start, the way he couldn't keep his dick hard tor more than half a minute at any one time. It was frustrating—1 used to nibble at it like it was some little fish I was trying to >lurp down, but nothing would happen. After a while it'd usually start to crank up. and I'd think, Oh good. It'd get about halfway there and then die down again. The whole three days I kept trying to work him back into a hard-on like he'd had for a couple oi minutes that first time when I was undressing him, but I never did.

One last thing I should mention about that movie—how the last scene we did tor it was in a way just the reverse of the first scene we shot. We unstrapped those dumb angel wings we'd been wearing tor the last three days. I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt, Scott got back in his prep school outfit. I remember watching him disappear inside his clothes, till he turned back into this prep school kid anybody could see walking down the street and never know about. But underneath all those clothes was still his dick I'd sucked on and his balls I'd licked, and under the balls that smooth hard cord of muscle running back to his asshole I'd been inside of, and past that—all his insides I'd felt my

ip into.

"See you around," he said, like we'd just met and nothing else ever happened, it was just some fever he'd had.

" Yeah, see you around," I told him. He didn't hug me or shake my hand or anvthinu—though he did hug Carlos. Carlos held him like that, facing me and looking over Scott's shoulder right into my eyes St rime —this look I cm still remember hut have no idea what it meant, only rh.u I think I knew it from seeing it in som< those pictures in the library hook Sammy took me to sec that time.

BOYSOFLIFE □

thin^. I'd Jeen that look before: this woman on the jurv, who kept looking at me the same way. For three weeks, no matter who was on the witness stand or what was getting said, she just kept looking at

me—this black woman, I guess about si\rv, sixty-five. One thing about

her—she wore a turquoise-blue dress one day, and a green dress the next, And then back to the turquoise and then the day after that it'd be the green one again. All through that trial, only two dresses. And the same pillbox hat: rainbow-colored, made out of feathers. You could tell life hadn't been too threat to her. But there she was, doing her jury duty. And looking at me the whole time like I had some kind of answer to all the stuff that was getting said. Like everything that got said was some kind of question to her, and she was desperate to know the answer.

I've got lots of reasons for writing all this, hut that old black woman's one of them. Earl too. I don't imagine I can clear anything up for either of them, but I can at least try to tell my side of things the way they really happened—even if it does make me look bad sometimes. Because I feel sick to my stomach when I think about what went on at that trial. It was my trial, right? I should at least've called a few of the shots. But I didn't. I let my lawyer do everything the way he wanted. I let him stand up there and call Carlos a "totally unnecessary human being." I let him say that. I let him tell the jury, with his voice all emotional like a preacher's when he gets to the part of the sermon where he asks for money, how Carlos went and took this young kid, practically stole him out of his mother's house. How he destroyed my life, and then wasn't content to just throw me away when he was finished with me, but had to go on hounding me even when I tried to find some normal life for myself.

I let my lawyer say that, I guess because I was scared and anything he could say to convince those people sitting there on the jury that what I did was what I had to do, then I was going to let him say it. I didn't know any better. I was too scared of dying.

For the record, I'm taking back everything my lawyer said. This time around, I'm trying to get it right.

B O Y S O F L I F E □

treated my running all over the city that hrst winter: like some great adventure that I'd learn tons from. And he was right.

He'd always say, "So, do you have B date?" Which meant, Was I planning to go out to Uncle Charlie's or the St. Mark's Baths and pick somebody up and fuck them.' And lots ot nights—Of afternoons, or even mornings—the answer was yes. I guess I just sort of said, Fuck it, and once I said that I wasn't scared anymore. I didn't mind going out all hours of the night all over the city, just looking around to see what was what. And once you start looking, at least in New York, it's all there—the bars, the clubs, the baths. If I couldn't have Carlos, then I was going to have everything else.

I had bike messengers and telephone repairmen, and a cop, and a businessman from Uganda in the Plaza Hotel, who paid me six hundred dollars. I had models who were doing shoots for GQ, and a ballet dancer and about twenty different waiters. I had two French sailors from the SS ]oan of Arc, and a graduate student from NYU who was writing his dissertation on the early films of Carlos Reichart and of course had no idea who I was. I had a fifteen-year-old Puerto Rican drag queen who said his name was Ramonda Ramrod with the biggest dick I ever saw, and a Pakistani cab driver who took me to Queens and we did it in the back of his cab parked on the shoulder of the BQE in broad daylight.

I never stopped wanting Carlos to fuck me again, but he never did. He'd gone on to other things, and I had to respect that. I had to respect him for knowing where things stopped. It didn't change anything else between us. In fact, you could say the instant he stopped fucking me, Carlos started treating me like one of the important people in The Company, somebody he depended on, like Sammy or Verbena or Seth. I started to understand how that was Carlos's pattern with people—he set his mark on them, and then when he knew he had them, he went on to collect somebody else. I don't resent that—I think I did for a while, but I don't anymore.