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From the Heart -- Part 1 Some angst. No sex. One for the Poppy fans. The fifth concert of the American tour has gone well. We go out to celebrate in our usual manner, our only problem being to choose among the plethora of bars and nightclubs of the city. No doubt about it, New Orleans is our kind of town: the people here don�t just taste life, they drink it in great gulps, feast on it with both hands and suck out the juices. We�re carried by the momentum of the city from one night-spot to another, until Stef is left behind at a gay club and Brian abandons my side in a bar in the French quarter. A stranger with chartreuse eyes has taken his fancy; the two of them flirt openly, shutting me out of their games. Perhaps it�s not intended that way, but that�s how it feels. The stranger�s one of those pretty little androgynes like Brian, the kind he fancies most, narcissistic little sod. As I drink alone at the bar and watch them so obviously enjoying themselves at the corner table, the evening�s good humour slowly turns sour. Dammit, why does Brian always have to case everything in trousers, or a skirt? The man is a tomcat. Couldn�t he put friendship before sex for one evening? Only when the pretty boy leaves does Brian come back to me, looking mightily pleased with himself. "Where would you like to go next?," he asks happily. By now I�ve worked myself into a sulk and intend to let him know it. "Are you sure you can spare the time to be with me?" I snap. "Wouldn�t you rather find somewhere to be with your little friend? Like a hotel, maybe?" He looks taken aback, then apologetic. "I�m sorry if I deserted you, Steve, but it�s not as if you had to sit alone all evening. There are plenty of people here, plenty of women, for you to talk to. Come on, cheer up and we�ll go somewhere fun." "Don�t tell me to cheer up!" I almost yell. He looks startled at my furious tone, and no wonder. I�m startled at myself. "It�s always the same!" I hurtle onward. "You go looking for someone to spread your legs for while your real friends are supposed to cool their heels waiting for you. I�ve done a lot for you, Brian--Stef and I both have--and I resent you taking me--us--for granted. It�s about time you got your priorities right." He stares at me, stunned. Then his eyes narrow and his lips tighten. "You don�t seem to be handling your booze as well as usual, Steven," he says coolly. "I think I�ll find more congenial company until you�re back to your normal self." He turns and walks towards the door. Everything is tumbling from my clumsy hands, falling and breaking apart. Having begun the destruction, I can only deliver the final blow by calling out, "That�s right, go and find your pansy friend. Get a room. I�m sure you can have a lot more fun with him than you ever could with me." He freezes at the door and looks back at me. Then, very deliberately, he walks back to me. Very deliberately, and oh, so very, very coldly, he says, "I�m going back to the hotel where we�re booked, Steve. I�m going alone. I may be a pansy, as you put it, but I�m not the slut you seem to think. And I don�t insult my friends." He leaves. Almost immediately my anger evaporates and remorse takes its place. Who or what was I angry with anyway? Where did that tirade come from? And yet the words seemed to rush out like molten lava long pent-up in a volcano, as if I were were voicing something I�d been feeling for a long time while being hardly aware of it. I resent you taking me for granted Ah, what have I done? What have I said? I must apologise, will apologise, not for form�s sake but from the heart. My mother always said never to let the sun go down on your anger. Well, the sun went down a long time ago, so we�ll take a similar maxim: never go to bed angry. I will apologise to Brian before we go to bed. The wording of that phrase in my mind causes a strange little curling feeling at the base of my stomach that is the first dawning of enlightenment. I�m sure you can have more fun with him than you could with me Understanding starts to swirl in my mind like dark clouds. Before, the clouds were a solid grey bank of certainty. Now my doubts and fears shift them like the wind, their movement revealing their presence, and beyond them a glimpse of something I fight not to see. I can�t fight it forever. I am in love with Brian, I realise with as much pain as pleasure. I am jealous because he flirts with other people. I want his sexual attention to be only for me. I want not only to be with him as a friend, but to touch him and kiss him and have him do the same to me. I sit very still. I have to let this new awareness sink into me before I�m able to deal with it, able to decide what to do next. It takes a long time before I�m ready to leave the bar, ready to go home to the hotel and find Brian and share this new knowledge with him, ready to place it at his feet and let him do with it as he will--crush me in his anger at the way I treated him tonight; or hand me his gentle, charitable pity in lieu of a love he cannot feel in return; or--beyond hope--tell me he is mine. Probably my actions tonight will destroy me, if they haven�t already. No matter what happens, things will never be the same between us as before. But I�ve lied to myself long enough, and lied to Brian as a result; it has to stop now. As I hurry through the moonlit streets my determination turns to eagerness. Finally released by acknowledgment, my love--my passion--is mounting, and I�m increasingly anxious to share it with him. With every minute I grow more hopeful that he will, must, reciprocate--perhaps not now, not tonight, but in due course. Above all I think of him going to bed hurt and bewildered at my behaviour tonight. He must be angry with me, convinced that I�m angry with him. I must set this right. Every minute between now and the accomplishment of this task becomes intolerable. In my eagerness I break into a run. But before long I can run no further, for the simple reason that I�m lost. Even by daylight this town is unfamiliar, and the streets of the French quarter twist and turn. That narrow street between the high buildings, almost an alley-way--didn�t we come through there earlier tonight? I�m nearly sure of it. Nearly sure, in fact, that it offers a short-cut to the hotel. As I step into the little street, the bustling sounds of the main route become muffled. It�s closer here, darker and more secluded. I�m almost at the exit onto the next street when a figure steps out from nowhere. The figure is small and vaguely male, and in the light of a single dim overhead bulb, the face is attractively androgynous: for one joyful moment I believe it�s Brian--that I�ve found him or he�s found me, it doesn�t matter which, simply that we�ve found each other. I�m a fool, ofcourse, and have probably been drinking too much, because Brian never had that caramel-coloured hair. Nor--I realise as the figure moves forward into the weak light--does he have those extraordinary green eyes. Green as jealousy. Green as danger signs--no, I have been drinking too much--danger signs are blood red, ofcourse. Green as poison. It�s Brian�s mate from the bar, I realise with vague resentment. He�s a reminder of unpleasant things, and besides, I�m in a hurry; I hope he doesn�t try to delay me with hail-fellow-well-met conversation. "Hello, Steve," he says in a cool sinuous voice, drawing out the vowels: Hellooo, Steeeve. "How do you know my name?" I demand, before realising that ofcourse Brian must have mentioned me. "I know a lot of things about you, Steve," he says. "Your little friend is quite the talker, isn�t he?" He�s got some nerve calling anyone little, I think, although the way he stands, so proud and poised, he might as well be seven feet tall. In another part of my mind I wonder whether to be more gratified that Brian has talked about me or uneasy that this seductive squirt perhaps knows more than I want him to know. "You have the advantage of me, then," I say stiffly. A soft laugh. "Yes, I do, don�t I?" A pause. "Zillah," he offers finally. "My name is Zillah." A girl�s name, I start to think contemptuously, then wonder, who am I of all people to speak complacently of the boundaries between masculine and feminine? He doesn�t seem in a hurry to say anything more, so I shuffle and fidget to show that I want to be on my way. When this doesn�t get a reaction, I say, "Well, it was nice seeing you again, Zillah, but I really have to get going." "Yes," he says, "you�re looking for your friend, aren�t you? I like him, Steve. We had a rather delicious evening together." I stiffen. What exactly does he mean by that? Brian said he was going back to the hotel, alone. Did he meet Zillah on the way and change his mind...? As if he can read my thoughts, Zillah laughs. "Talking together, I mean. In the bar." I relax a fraction, then he goes on, "I was watching you, Steve. You seemed very put out that Brian was paying more attention to me than he was to you. I wanted to talk to you about that." He has no business, this stranger, to talk to me of such personal things. He knows too much and notices too much. "I really don�t think this is anything to do with you," I say, and start to push past him--he�s standing between me and the exit--but he halts me with a surprisingly strong hand against my chest and a suddenly earnest look. "You shouldn�t be so insecure of him, Steve. Brian cares for you a great deal. Nothing happened between him and me, if that�s what you�re worried about." Perhaps against my better judgement, I pause to listen to him. Brian cares for me...? "Though I won�t say I wasn�t tempted," Zillah adds with a sly smile. "He�s young, attractive and...hot-blooded. But the fact is, at that time of the evening I simply wasn�t feeling, shall we say, needy enough." He brings his face up close to mine. His mouth hovers close to my own, so that I feel his clove-scented breath as he says, "But that was hours ago, Steve, and now I am needy. And here we are, alone...I have an appetite, and I want you to satisfy it." For one second I�m hypnotised by his green eyes, seduced by his voice, and I could almost fall. Then sanity returns; I remember that someone I love is waiting to be told that I love him. "Thanks," I say coldly, "but I�m not into quickies in alley-ways with desperate strangers." This time I push past him more firmly. To one side of the alley is an open doorway like a dark mouth, and some cautious instinct makes me keep Zillah�s body between me and it. Rationally I don�t believe he either would or could push me into that dark hole and attack me, but then there�s something about him that suggests that rationality may not apply here. As it turns out my caution is quite pointless, because he doesn�t try to push me. He pulls me instead. Grabbing my hand as I brush past him, he lunges backwards through the doorway and, with quite extraordinary strength, drags me after him down a flight of stone steps into a basement. I land heavily on concrete. Through my left ankle shoots the kind of pain that you know is going to need medical treatment to fix. My head is pinned to the floor: in the blackness I feel Zillah�s hand wrapped around my throat. This isn�t happening, I tell myself: it�s too bizarre. Surely he can�t mean to rape me? I must get this mad fool off me, I must get back to the hotel and tell Brian I love him. Whatever happens to me, above all he must know that. This is a delay and an impediment, nothing more. A tiny light flares in the darkness: with his free hand, Zillah has produced a cigarette lighter and flicked it on. His pale face gazes down at me. "You have a pretty face, Steve. Tasty, I believe, is the slang term you English people use. Not as delicious as your friend was, but still very nice" A hideous thought suddenly freezes my blood. "If you laid a finger on Brian, you motherfucking--" He laughs softly. "Still thinking about your friend, even now? Relax, Steven; I told you nothing happened between us. As far as I know, Brian is safely tucked up in bed right now." I breathe a little easier. As long as no-one but me is caught in this mess, I have only myself to save. I have control of my own destiny. "Ofcourse," Zillah adds thoughtfully, "I could be lying." I flail with my fists against his face and body; he barely seems to notice my feeble blows. "But I�m not," he says matter-of-factly. "When I met him this evening, I had no need for him to satisfy my wants, just as I told you. But now..." As he leans close to me, drawing back his lips, even by the tiny light of the flame he holds up I can see his filed teeth. His chartreuse eyes gleam like a predatory beast�s. "But now, Steven...I�m HUNGRY." As he sinks his teeth into my neck, mixed with the panic and pain is still the urgent sense that I must reach Brian, that I can�t die without telling him that I love him. The thought persists, even submerged like a single drop in a whirlpool of agony and despair, as I scream and scream until I can�t scream any longer. And as, finally, my life leaks away with the blood that should be bright as poppies, but in the darkness is black on the concrete floor, there is overwhelming sadness that tomorrow morning he�ll get up remembering only the harsh last words I said to him. Whether or not they ever find the body, whether or not he ever knows how I died, the conclusion to his memories of me will always be those hateful insults. I�d as soon draw those words back into me unsaid as I would draw my life-blood back into my body. As if in propitiation, I try now to move my lips, to shape the words that need to be said. "I didn�t mean it." "Forgive me." "I love you." No sound can come from a throat torn to shreds. There are so many kinds of pain. The end And urr, yes, the "bright as poppies" bit is a pun. Sorry. Next Home |