Boys of Life (36 page)

you could ever imagine having. Or maybe in one of Carlos's movit

"Carlos," I s.nd aloud m this normal I I hadn't

that name in years, and I kind of liked saving it aloud like that

valk in midtown Memphis. So I kept on. I ft iround in the

□ PAUL RUSSELL

crowd a little, just saying "Carlos, Carlos, Carlos," like I was some little kid who was lost and looking tor him.

"Who's Carlos Reichart?" 1 asked this hlack man in a three-piece suit. He had this huge gold watch chain hanging across his belly. 1 think maybe he was a preacher ot some kind.

"Don't you read the newspapers? Don't you watch TV. 7 " he asked me.

Neither of those were things I ever did.

The blue police barricades were a funnel leading to the open front door of the theater, and people lined them on both sides. A tew folks were going into the theater, and whenever the) did, they hurried m with a police escort while people in the crowd veiled "Shame!" at them. One little man in a bow tie kept trying to give away Bibles to the people going in, and even though the police kept leading him away by the arm, in a minute he was right back where he had been and trying to hand them out like his lite depended on it.

None ot the people hurrying into the pi.ice took the Bibles, or even dared to look at the crowd th.it was shouting at them.

I had to see that movie. 1 knew that. It was because 1 was still crazy about Carlos and I thought about him all the tune even though I was always telling myseli I never thought about him and that was all in the past. It was like I'd drawn a tarpaulin over that heap ot stufl that was my whole lite back then, and 1 thought I'd made it go aua\ but it I lifted up even a little corner ot that t.up, there it all still u.is,

bright and crazy and alive as ever. I'm crazy about Carlos, l thought. I'm still crazy about him. I ike it was some great discovery I'd i llsl m>^

when reall) I knew it all along and it was what bad been killing me

.rlos," I laid oik- last fiim-, and then I ran down that gauntlet r flu- little man with fbe Bibles and the ppliCC

barricades, right toward flu theatei entrance

"Who,i," thi 'id m .i really loud voice Mr grabbed me by

nd lu-ld me there "When- \.m dunk he

" 11 I told him lit" menle "

h felt ■ b.M

He |ut4 held me there I could lee the pores on I how there

"I'm un I I D

B O Y S O F L I F E D

He held me a second more, and then he winked at me. It took me totally by surprise. "Good/ 1 he said in this voice meant just tor me to hear, and he sort of shoved me along toward the ticket booth.

Inside, the theater was about halt hill. Everybody there seemed really nervous—no wonder, considering what they'd gone through to

inside, and they were probably all trying to figure how they were going to get out now that they were in.

I was thrilled and scared and totally singing inside, my heart was

beating like no tomorrow. And under my arms cold sweat kept dripping down. Where I was sitting, there weren't any people around me, and even though I was dying to hear what they knew about all this, I couldn't. All I could hear was this one pretentious man telling the woman next to him, about five different times, nor to worry, it was all ed, he was sure of that. At first I thought he was talking about the crowd, but then I realized it was the movie he was talking about.

You idiot, I remember thinking to myself, there's no such thing as staging in Carlos's movies. What happens there, one way or another, it's all definitely reality.

I also remember, as the lights went down, linking the fingers of my hands together, and unlinking them, and linking them again. Then the theater was totally dark and the movie started.

I telt like I was waiting to meet Carlos in person, even though 1 knew I wouldn't even glimpse him. He'd never be in his own movie— the whole time I was with him, he never let anybody take a picture of him it he could help it.

At first you couldn't tell wh.it you were seeing—it was this close-up that was so close up it wasn't anything anymore. Then the camera pulled back a little and you saw it was somebody's arm, and a knife, and the knife blade was moving along the arm so this scam of blood just opened up. It was like somebody peehnu hack a pair ot lips, and out came this red blood which you knew was real. There wasn't am ike it. It really was somebody slicing his (1 rm open with a knife. The camera pulled back even more and you could see rh.it person sitting on i rock in the middle ot the desert.

Then N I Carlos.

The camera circled around him very slowly, all the way around him. He was totally alone on that ro^k in the desert, barefoot, without a shirt, wearing just this beat-up pair d jeans. And that black headband he used to wear sometimes —to put pressure, he alwavs said, on his brain. He was fixing a tourniquet, holding one end oi th in his

D PAULRUSSELL

teeth and pulling it tight, I guess so he could control the flow o\ blood from his arm. In front of him was a low table—sort of an easel—and the camera focused in on that. Carlos took a little paintbrush, the kind you use to paint model airplanes, and dipped it into the blood that was welling up along his arm. Then he started to write with the paintbrush on a big piece of paper that was spread out on the easel.

I watched him write out the whole thing in his own blood on that big sheet of paper there in front of him. The whole time he was still bleeding, probably getting faint. It was a race against time to see if he could finish writing that thing down before he passed out, and in feet the last part of the writing was very shaky and then he did pass out. He slumped down onto the easel, and the blood from his arm smeared across the paper, and then the easel fell over because of his weight on it and he crumpled to the ground.

The camera didn't really seem to care about all this. It moved m and studied Carlos's face for a while. His eyes were shut and his mouth hung open and a fly was crawling on his lower lip. It was like that camera wondered in this cool detached way who this man was, but it didn't really care all that much whether he was alive anymore, or dc.wl.

Then the picture faded to black and the rest of the movie Started.

All of which was just agony to watch—it must've taken Carlos fifteen minutes to write what he wrote in his blood, very slowly, very carefully. Plus what he was writing was so horrible that you didn't know whether or not to believe it, and at the same time you knew it must be true, because why would somebody write something like that in his Own blood it it wasn't true? But then when the rest ot the movie started, there wasn't tune tO think about that anymore. You just had to put it

on hold to deal with later.

i see shots of the desert, sleep) little \1e\k.in villages. It's .ill

efuUfeeling. A tree, a donkey standing under it. This bright blue lizard sunning Itself on .1 rock. It goes on and on, An old woman walking along bent ovci under •• huge sack of something on hei back.

< vultures ,ue making h:\ CircrtS in the sk\ OVCI Something OUt

there that must I I remembet .ill these things com

1 IK. I h< he's some drug lord,

riminal who's In hiding, 01 even 1 rabbi gone beserk whoevei he • • • the nv itt beautiful fa A t Into his ha< lenda

11 end. but his h.u tend.i's J

me to tell him this I he) walk In the garden

D

BOYSOFLIFE □

in a rainstorm, and they talk. These bells in the distance arc ringing-all the bells in the village, plus goat bells and cow bells and the wind

chimes that are hanging from the arches of the hacienda—SO von can barely hear what the governor and the angel lay to each other. Their

voices come and go over the hells. The angel's barefoot, dressed all in

white and wearing a floppy straw hat like you'd think some young Mexican farmer would wear. He promises to help the governor, but he says God's going to want some of the boys for his own. "You never know who God's going to want," he says. "That's why the bells ring. God gets greedy whenever it rains on the earth."

The governor is played by Carlos. It's not Carlos's voice—he dubbed it like he dubbed all his voices. But it's Carlos's body. I used to know that body better even than my own. I guess, after that first scene, I got over the shock of seeing him act in his own movie—not to say I wasn't shocked from beginning to end by what I saw. But I accepted it. I told myself if he was finally in one of his own movies, then he was probably doing what he needed to do and he didn't have any choice.

When the rainstorm's over but the bells are still ringing, Carlos takes the angel by the hand and they make love in this beautiful bedroom in a big canopy bed with flowers and hundreds of candles burning and plaster statues that start bleeding for no reason—you just notice there's blood running down a face or a hand where you're Mire there wasn't any before.

It made me queasy to see Carlos and the angel undress each other like they did—these long quiet motions and the bells still ringing. I remember thinking what a great body that angel had, all smooth and hard like I liked bodies and the candles coloring his skin honey-colored. And it was nice, I also remember thinking, to see Verbena was still on board after all those years. At least I thought that bedroom was probably her doing.

I have to say—I was so nervous through all this, it somebody'd COUghed or touched me on the shoulder in that the,iter I'd have died of a heart attack. Which might've been the best thing. It made me miserable to see all this, though I was getting a hard-on in spite of myself. Carlos looked older, his bald spot a and he had this

flower tattoo around one of his nipples. It set him apart in Some wav trom the Carlos I used to know, and I wondered it Rate had anything to do uith him getting that tattoo. Then there was his dick, sliding in and out of the angel's butt—I squirmed to remember what it telt like

□ PAUL RUSSELL

having Carlos's dick rooting around inside me like that, all the things it made me feci. But I couldn't remember—I'd had too manv dicks inside me since then, and then none for three years now, and all 1 was seeing on the movie screen in front of me was just a picture—it wasn't real like that dick that had sent me places I'd never known you could go out there under the power lines that first time years ago when I was just the crazy needy kid I used to be.

I can't say when it first started to happen—I was just starting to calm down a little and get used to the things I was seeing up there. The candle light was wavery and dim, and mostly it was just arms and legs and backs and a dick that could've been anybody's dick sliding in and out of what could've been anybody's asshole. Anywav, I've never been all that good with faces in the first place— I've always said, it I see somebody I know from one city walking down the street in some other city, I wouldn't even recognize them. Not even my own brother.

It'd been eight years since I saw Ted. He was only fourteen when I left Owen, and lots of things can happen in eight years. I knew it was impossible, even when it suddenly clicked. It had to be impossible. I kept looking and looking at that angel, and most of the time he looked like some complete stranger I'd never seen before in mv life, but other times—the way he smiled like the camera was always catching him off guard—there was this terrible feeling I got.

This all makes me really uncomfortable to talk about. What 1 have to say is, by the tune Carlos and the angel finished making love in thai room with all the candles and bleeding statues, 1 knew it was led, even though I still couldn't see how it could possibly be Ted. rhere were long stretches through the rest oi the movie when I was able to myseli I had it .til wrong, and it was the pressure oi watching Carlos in a movie thai was making me sec things. It just seemed in

arlos could've wine up with 1 ed, i ciall) when he'd rtevet even mei him. And I also couldn't imagine red movie like H<>\s of /

ild still he C 'arlos. I knew . even aftel all

f his mo>

b it I le'd twin in.ike fOU think it ..• s, iinc ; in in\ tune, whn h you aln

the kinds of

i a half, D 278

BOYSOFLIFE D

those boys rounded up and started m on them. I remember being aware

other people were getting up and leaving the theater, so that when the Lights finally went up I was about the only one still in there.

I'd been thinking I couldn't stand this, 1 couldn't stand to see another kid get tucked and then his tongue cut out or Ins dick lopped off, or shit on or hanged. I didn't care whether all this was about how consumer society does to our minds what the Nazis did to people's bodies, or any ot the other stuff the movie kept saying it was about in these voiceovers that came and went during the torture scenes. I didn't care whether the torture scenes were staged or real or what. And just when I couldn't stand it anymore, that was the end. We were b.uk outside the hacienda, everything looked so peaceful vou'd never in a million years guess the kind of stuff that was going on behind those white plaster walls. Under this desert-looking tree these two little girls were placing a flute and a violin, the way little kids play who just barely know how, and these two little boys are dancing with each other, like they're this old-fashioned couple dancing some waltz.

"What're you doing tomorrow. 7 " the girl who's placing the violin ne ot the little boys.

He starts to answer her, but then the screen goes black and it just says in white letters against the black, in memoriam ted blair 1966— 1986.

"No!" I remember yelling at that screen, this deep yell that started way down inside me and just went and went till there was no yell lett. And before I knew it the words were off the screen, like maybe they'd never been there in the first place, I'd only imagined them— and th.it was the end.