For those who remember -- or those who may have heard about 'em but never read 'em -- the long ago best-selling writing team of John Skipp & Craig Spector [1983-1993] helped usher in a bold and brash new generation of horror, and in their own bent way helped to forever change the face of ModAmHoFic (or, Modern American Horror Fiction.) Most of their work is out of print, but here you can read an exclusive seminal slice -- their classic story, "Gentlemen", which first appeared in TWILIGHT ZONE magazine and was subsequently reprinted in the first THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (St. Martins Press). The story later appeared in Skipp & Spector's fourth book, DEAD LINES (Bantam Books).

In many ways, "Gentlemen" remains quintessential "Skipp & Spector" -- taut, gritty, heartfelt, and truly disgusting. Is it "splatterpunk"? You decide.

GENTLEMEN
by
John Skipp and Craig Spector

From the novel Dead Lines by John Skipp and Craig Spector
© 1988 John Skipp and Craig Spector. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.

TO BE A MAN.
The words are carved on the sweat-smeared oak of the bar's surface. They're the only four that never seem to change. Like the troll at the taps, the regulars that surround him, the TVs and the black velvet painting of the Hooter Girl that hangs in sad-eyed judgment over all.
TO BE A MAN.
As if that were all there is.
I always hated Bud. He loves it. We drink it. One after another, we pour them down, while Ralph Kramdon bellows about trips to the moon. And the guys all laugh. You're goddam right.
They know about being a man.
And now, at last, so do I.

•••

I remember the night that my edification began. Every nuance. Every shade. The phone started ringing at 12:45, precisely. It was LeeAnn, of course. She'd just crashed and burned with another asshole relationship, and she needed to talk. And drink. Right now. I knew all this by the first ring. No one else ever called this late. No one.

"Damn," I muttered. "Not again."

There were a lot of good reasons for not answering. It was a shit-soaked night outside, cold rain falling in thick sheets. The steam heat had finally kicked in, and I was down to my jeans. I was halfway into a lumpy joint of some absurdly good Jamaican. Star Trek would be on in fifteen minutes. Seeing LeeAnn would make me miserable, and I'd just wind up sourly wanking off when I got home. Yep, a lot of good reasons. I took another toke and settled back in my chair.

The phone rang again. I choked. The smoke exploded in my lungs. I began to cough violently, great redmeat wrenching hacks. The phone rang again. I roared back at it, defiant, my eyes tearing and my throat desperately lubing itself with bile.

The phone rang again, and I got out of the chair. What was the point? The phone would ring forever. The night was already completely ruined; LeeAnn's face had control of my mind. I snubbed the joint and placed the butt in my pocket, for later. The phone rang once more before I caught it. I coughed a little bit more at the receiver as I brought it to the side of my head. What did it matter? I already knew what the first words would be. First, my name. No howdy, stranger, no long time no see.

Just:
"David?
Then:
"David, I need you..."

Like clockwork. I gave brief, fleeting audience to the idea of just hanging up, of pitching the receiver into the cradle without so much as a whimper. But then her voice, so characteristically vulnerable, spoke the final two words in the equation:

"David, please..."
I was slaughtered.

"Where are you?" I asked. Coughing had made me roughly twenty times more stoned in a matter of seconds; the air seemed thicker, my head felt muddier, and the crackle over the phone line raked like needles in my ears.

She let out a laugh I recognized: the resigned and barely-in-control one. I coughed. She laughed. I spoke.
"I still don't know where you are."

"I'm at this place called . . ." She paused; I could almost hear her neck craning, ". . . dammit, I can't tell. It's at Forty-Eighth and Eighth. The beer is cheap. The guys are all jerks. It's my kind of place. Can you come?"

"Shouldn't the question be, 'How fast can you get here?'"

"Jesus, I really am predictable."

"You're not the only one," I assured her wearily. "Give me some time, okay? I don't have any clothes on."

"Hubba hubba."

"Don't tease me, LeeAnn. I'm not a well man."

"Aw, poor baby."

I closed my eyes, and LeeAnn was behind them: leaning against a bar with brass rails, china-doll lips pouting, green-eyed gaze languidly drifting as her t-shirt slowly hiked its way past her breasts and over her ash-blonde head. Never happen, my rational mind reminded me flatly. It sounded barely-in-control, too.

LeeAnn must have heard it. The teasing stopped. "Please hurry," she said. "I need you."

"I'm on my way. Stay there."

The phone went dead. LeeAnn never said goodbye anymore; it was too commital. I set down the receiver and caught a glimpse of myself in the bureau mirror. Gaunt, sensitive features. Aquiline nose. Deep-set eyes. Quietly receding hairline. An interesting face: not handsome, certainly not repulsive. I smiled. Loads of character. The face of a poet, even...

Who was I kidding? I thought. It's the face of a fool. The reflection nodded in sad affirmation. I looked at the piles of dirty clothes on the floor, and grabbed up a dirty sweatshirt. Dress for success, I always say. Or said, rather.

Whatever.

At any rate, I was suited up and out the door before manly Captain Kirk had pronged the first of this evening's deep-space bimbos, way out where no man had gone before. The last three words from her lips echoed through me like a curse.

I need you.

Sure.

The cab ride was long and wet, cold rain pounding on the windows like a billion tiny fists. The whole way up, I brooded about LeeAnn. The whole way up, I hit alternately on the dwindling vial of blow in my jacket pocket and one of the two jumbo oilcans of Foster's lager that I'd scored just for the trip. The irony of getting wasted as a prelude to meeting a friend for drinks was not lost on me, but what could I say? LeeAnn made me crazy: the same kind of crazy that would inspire me to tromp out into a maelstrom on a moment's notice and woefully underdressed, from my army-surplus field jacket down to a pair of battered Reeboks with a dime-sized hole in the right sole. She unnerved me that thoroughly. I snorted and watched the passing streets slip by: each one, rain-slicked and on the verge of flooding. Each one, dark and bleak and utterly depressing.

Any of them, an escape route: infinitely preferable to where I was going.

If I'd been stronger, maybe, I'd have taken one. Sure. Of course, the same line of inarguable reasoning could be applied to any other quarter of my world, from my unpublished short stories to my unfinished novel to my utterly unrequited lovelife, with exactly the same results. The gross total of which, combined with fifty cents, would buy me a packet of Gem safety blades.

The better to slit my miserable fucking throat with.

The thought deflated as quickly as it came. Of course I would never really do that. Neither, of course, would I tell the cabbie to turn around and take me home, or just grab LeeAnn by the hair and force her to my heap big masculine will, or do anything but what I always, always did. Which was to go to her: whenever, wherever her next whirlwind sorte ended. In tears, in disaster. In rain, sleet, or snow. Good Ol' Dave would be there, day or night, with the right words and the right drugs and a shoulder to cry on. Good ol' Dave was never more than a phone call away. I hated myself for being such a stooge to this endlessly cyclical farce, for being so hapless in the face of my own flaccid desire.

The cab sploshed indifferently onto Tenth Avenue, heading uptown. The beer sploshed in my roiling guts, heading south. And the memories came boiling up... We went back a little ways, LeeAnn and I. Long enough to count. Worked for the same messenger service: humping the bullshit of the business world by day, pounding at the walls of our dreams at night. She was in the office, I was on the streets. She was sharp and funny and smarter than anyone else in the whole fleabag organization; I was the only one in the entire company who would talk to her without staring incessantly at her tits. No easy task, let me tell you. But I did it, because I valued her trust almost as much as I hungered for her touch.

So there we were, sharing in the adventure of being young and piss-poor in New York, trying desperately to make it in our respective careers: clone of Kerouac meets fledgling Bourke-White. Came to spend a lot of time together; scrutinizing my first drafts and her black- and-whites over a dinner of ravioli and Riuniti; wandering the streets and parks in search of inspiration and free entertainment. We grew very tight. Very close.

With one rather glaring exemption.

You see, for all that deep meaningful contact it never quite gelled for LeeAnn and I. It was ridiculous, yes. I mean, I'd heard the most heartfelt feelings she'd ever cared to offer without blushing or batting an eye; I would have taken a bullet or thrown myself gleefully into traffic to save the tiniest hair on her head.

Sure. I could do all that. But somehow I couldn't bridge the safe, comfy distance between friend and lover. I just couldn't bring myself to tell her how I felt, to grab her and give her the kind of kiss that would make her reciprocate my passion, my love.

In retrospect, I realize that I was waiting for her to do it. I cringe to think of it now, but it's true. Part of my heart sincerely believed that she would wake up one day with the realization that no one would ever love her like I did. No one else could be so tender, so compassionate, so understanding. No one else would bear with her through her tragedies and madnesses, devote themselves so selflessly and completely to her needs.

She would wake up one day, I told myself, kicking herself for her foolishness. And she would throw herself, weeping, into my arms. And I would tell her that it was okay, it was over now. And we would be swept away into a love that not even death could destroy.

One day, I knew, she would realize just how much she was saying when she said the words Dave, I need you.

That was the bullshit I believed. I preferred it to the cold hard truth.

As for LeeAnn, well...

LeeAnn preferred a different kind of guy.

A guy like Rodney, for example. I grimaced as his sneering pug loomed up like the answer in a magic Eight-ball toy. Rod the bod, punk hunk par excellence. Took her on a three-month, nightmare tour of the Lower East Side, every nook and alley and rathole club that charged four bucks a beer. Rod, the artiste. Rod, the super-intense. He was inspiring her, giving her photography a whole new edge. Sure. Asshole inspired her, alright: eventually o.d.'ed on crack and went nuts in her apartment, damned near inspiring her to death before heading off to be shot by the police.

I upended the first can, draining the dregs, and popped the second in a ceremonial toast. Rot in hell, Rodney. If they'll have you...

After that it was Willis, the far side of the pendulum. I think she met him at a Soho gallery opening. Willis of the shining white mane, who was strong and stable and financially secure and about old enough to be her father. Willis wined and dined her like a princess; my god, he even proposed to her. And she actually accepted, to my unending shock and horror, though I think it was more political than emotional. He had connections. He could help her. That is, until she found that her Svengali absolutely forbade her to work after the wedding. Not a woman's place, you understand. LeeAnn shouldn't worry her pretty little head with thoughts of careers. LeeAnn should worry about tending to Willis' earthly needs.

Or how 'bout Roger, her latest disaster. Yeah, Roger was great. Handsome and fortyish and too hip to hurt; cut him and he'd probably bleed Ralph Lauren aftershave. Now they were an item, and soooo good for each other. He was doing a book on Central America, was going to take her along as his photographer. Maybe her big break. I remember her coming out of the office at checkout time, pulling me aside to tell me the great news ... The great news ended rather abruptly at the Midtown Women's Services clinic, at precisely the same microsecond that the urine test came back positive. That was six weeks ago, give or take a millenium.

Well, he did pay for exactly his half of the costs, which was awfully decent of him. But he wasn't there for her on the day it happened, with a smile or a hug or a hand to hold. I was. And he wasn't there in the guilt-wracked weeks after, or ever again.

I was. Yeah, Roger was slime, and Roger went the way of the wind. But even he wasn't the worst. First, there was Martin. There was always Martin....

The cab cut up Tenth Avenue like a shark through dark waters. Forty-Second Street floated by; I blinked back fractured patterns of garish light and color that winked like beacons to hungerlust and loneliness, previews of coming attractions that would never hit town. The moron-parade marched on in my brain: an onslaught of compelling, charismatic bastards who, for all their disparate differences, had held one thing in common. Which I had not.

LeeAnn. Lithe, lissome bane of my existence. An otherwise intelligent woman who wouldn't take two ounces of the same shit on the job that she ate buckets of in her personal life. And who, for some equally unfathomable reason, liked her men either old and sensitive or young and macho. Old, macho men were chauvinistic pig-dog bastards. Young, sensitive men were wimps...

I winced, biting back the thoughts, denying any possible truth. The cab turned onto Forty-Eighth and crossed Ninth Avenue as the last of the Foster's slid down my throat. I felt bilious, and I needed to take a leak. My mind was burnt crispy. My nerves were live wires.

But as the cab slid up to the corner, I resolved that this time, this time it would be different. Tonight would mark the end of her love affair with the scum of the earth. I felt a queasy determination that I underscored with a toot of cocaine courage, an alkaloid surge of ersatz bravado. It's my turn, dammit!, I told myself. If it could be done, it would be done.

It wasn't until I paid the cabbie and hit the pavement that I started to get nervous.

Maybe it was the way she sat, back framed in the grimy bay window, red and green neon backwashing her features like some DC comic damsel in distress. Maybe it was the window itself, which hung dripping like a plate-glass gullet. The way it displayed her.

Like bait... I felt it, alright. As I hunkered over and puddle-dodged toward the door, it was there: a small, wormy gut-rush, synching with the Bud and Stroh's signs that blinked wanly behind the glass, vestige of some primal warning mechanism not entirely obliterated by the drugs. Saying No...No....No...No...

It was enough to register. It was not enough to stop me. The place was a dump, alright, but I felt sure I'd seen worse. It was nestled in the middle of a block dominated by drug dealers, pimps and pawnshops, with the occasional ratbag adult emporium tossed in for good measure. The sign above the awning read simply "BAR", with a badly painted-over prefix that looked as though the name had changed hands so many times that they'd just given up. The grime on the big window was thick enough to carve my initials in. The street itself was mercifully void, thanks to the rain; a sole chicano bum not too far from his teens sprawled by the doorway, oblivious to the pounding. He twitched and muttered sporadically .

I fingered the folding knife thrust deep into the right-hand pocket of my jacket, the one that I'd habitually carried since being mugged last summer. It was long and thin and very sharp; stainless-steel casing, stainless-steel blade. I had never pulled it, never even used it, and often wondered if I carried it as a kind of a talisman more than a weapon. I hoped that I wouldn't need it in either capacity tonight. The thought oh shit, LeeAnn, what are you into now? loomed forth . The only possible answer was directly ahead.

The smell of bridges burning lay behind.

The first thing that hit me was the stink, a palpable presence that grew exponentially as the door shut behind. The usual stale smoke/stale beer bouquet, yes. But something else, underneath: a vague, foul underpinning. Familiar. Like--

Sewage, I realized. Great. My stomach rolled. I grimaced and took in the layout in an instant . The interior was long and low and dark, the furthest reaches of it enshrouded in greasy shadow some forty feet back. A psuedo-oldtime finger-sign pointed down some steps near the back, one word emblazoned in large gold script.

GENTLEMEN.

The source, no doubt. This must be my night. My bladder begged to differ. It wouldn't be long before I had to hit the hopper. It was no longer an idea I relished.

I noted that the rest of the decor was strictly Early Kmart: imitation-walnut paneling and formica as far as the eye could see. The bar itself was unique, hugging the wall to a point halfway down the far side. It was a large and graceless structure replete with tarnished brass hand and foot rails, and somehow managed to be constructed entirely of oak without being the tiniest bit attractive. Twin ceiling-mounted Zenith 19-inch TVs blasted cablevison mercilessly on either end.

The Hooter Girl adorned the center.

She looked like one of those paintings of the hydrocephalic sad-eyed children, pumped full of silicon and estrogen. The kind of black velvet sofa-sized monstrosities you see cranked out by the yard and offered up on abandoned gas-station aprons across America, right next to Elvis and Jesus and the moose on the mountain. Big moon eyes and tits like basketballs. Pure class. The neon color scheme had faded over the passage of smoke-filled time, leaving her once-electric tan lines merely jaundiced.

It might have been funny, under other circumstances. At the moment it was making me ill. That and every other sordid detail, from the fly-specked ceiling tiles to the screaming vids to the sodden regulars that lined the bar like crows on a barnyard fence. What the hell was I doing here, in this hole, at this hour?

The answer crossed the lateral distance of the room and wrapped herself around me before I could mutter a word. We stood there for what seemed a very long time. I probably would have remained in that position forever, but for the eyes that had followed her course to me. They were hungry, angry, gimlet eyes.

The hunger was for her.

The anger was all mine.

"Would you please tell me what the fuck is going on here?" I said under my breath. It came out a little more hysterical than I'd wished. Good start, chump. I thought. Don't whine.

"Thanks for coming," she whispered into my armpit. I waited for more. It did not seem to be forthcoming, but she added a squeeze for emphasis. The warm flesh of her back shuddered beneath my touch, but for all the wrong reasons.

"Hey, are you okay?" I asked, not entirely certain that I wanted to hear the answer.

She nodded and snuffled just the tiniest bit, but she didn't let go. It worried me. Very gently, I pried her arms from around my waist and started to say, "C'mon, Lee, what's going on h--"

I never finished. LeeAnn looked up.

She had a black eye. Slit-swollen. Nasty. A tiny crescent-shaped cut had congealed just under her left eyebrow. She smiled gamely, chagrined. Her right eye crinkled with little smile-lines; the left remained fixed and droopy, like a bad impression of the Amazing Melting Woman.

I don't know why I was so surprised. Maybe I wasn't. I'd seen it before. But I couldn't bear to see it again: not now, not ever. My gaze flitted spastically to my shoes, the tubes, the goons at the bar. Anywhere but her face. Her face was dangerous. Her face made me dangerous. I stared in red-eyed rage as twin Rambos dispensed endless all-beef lessons in how real men take care of business.

But the goons at the bar weren't watching that. They were watching us. They were watching me.

They were smiling.

It was too much. There was nowhere to turn with my anger but back to the source. The words that came were clipped and vicious, in a voice I barely recognized as my own. I didn't like it. I couldn't help it.

"Who. Did. It."

LeeAnn shook her head. "Beer first," she said. It was not a suggestion. "And we'd better sit down." Then she pulled away, turned, and strode over to her place at the window end of the bar, next to the very payphone she'd probably used to call me, and gathered up her things. She gestured to the bartender, a withered old troll in a baggy white shirt who looked as if he'd spent all his younger days on some Lower West Side dock, trundling the very same kegs he now presided over. He grunted imperceptably, ash falling from the Lucky pinched in one corner of his lips, and began refilling her emptied pitcher with deft, wordless efficiency. She was back in control that fast. However tenuous, she was in charge. Of herself. Of me.

I stood in stunned silence, the rage draining impotently out, as LeeAnn returned. She squeezed my arm lightly, imploringly, and then walked back toward the shadowed and empty booths. I was supposed to pay; it was understood. I watched her graceful trailing trek across the room. I watched her hips. I watched her ass.

I wasn't the only one watching.

Two of the clientele, a pair of drunken dimwits interchangeable as Heckel and Jeckel leered at her in brief, neck-craning abandon. The third, a hairball with thick gold chains and too many teeth, managed a side-long snickering appraisal before resuming his ogling of the washed-out and weary-looking blonde to his left.

The blonde, meanwhile, was oblivious to it all: staring off into her drink as if it were a gateway to another world entirely. She was the Hooter Girl made flesh, and then stepped on. Not pleasant.

I stepped up to the bar, stoned and shell-shocked, drugs and wasted adrenaline making the seamy details painfully apparent. I fished out a crinkly ten-spot and stared blankly at the wooden expanse of the counter. It was scarred and pitted, with intitials and epigraphs and other vital pearls of wisdom. Ritual scarification. One stuck out like a message in a bottle: four words, carved deeper than all the rest.

TO BE A MAN.

To be a man. A bitter sneer engraved itself across my face. To be a man. I'd heard enough of that shit to last me a lifetime. My old man had said it. My peer group had said it. The first caveman to bludgeon his object of desire and drag her home by the hair had grunted its equivalent.

To be a man. You bet. If my mind had lips, it would have spat out the words. Somebody got nice and manly with LeeAnn tonight. It's written all over her face...

I looked up. The blonde was glancing at me with weak and wounded eyes. I could see every crack and sag in her features. Ten years ago or so she must have been a real looker, but that was ancient history now. That kicked-around look spilled off of her in waves: the way she hugged her vitals, as if waiting for the next blow to fall; the way she'd sort of sunken into her own carcass, as if the extra padding might help; the way her eyes kept darting to the back of the room.

I stared, waiting for the pitcher to fill. And I wondered how the hell she could have let that happen to her. Then the men's room door squealed open like a thing in pain. And up stomped the Mighty Asshole.

The gnarled little man with the pitcher of beer was forgotten. So were the drunks and the hairball, the blonde, the dueling idiot boxes where Rambo played out his bloodless charade. Even LeeAnn slipped from my mind for one long, cold moment, as the entire spinning universe funneled down to the behemoth pounding up the cellar stairs.

Big as life and twice as ugly, he swaggered toward the bar, fumbling absently with his fly. Arms like girders. Eyes like meatballs. Feet pounding the floorboards like an overblown Bluto in a Max Fleisher cartoon, sending shock waves up my legs from halfway across the room.

The impulse to retreat must have come on a cellular level, because I had backed into a barstool before I even knew I was moving. Connecting with teetering solid matter jostled me back to the broader reality, and I cast a nervous glance over to LeeAnn. She was watching him, too.

We were all watching him. It wasn't just that he was tanked, or that he was built like one. Or even that he was bearing down on us like some angry moron-god. Rather, it was his presence: the sheer force and volume of his rage. It was as vivid as the glow around a candle's flame, and black as the dead match that first fired it up.

The Mighty Asshole thundered over to his seat next to the blonde. The terror in her eyes answered my previous question quite nicely: they were an item. Like hammer and anvil, they were made for each other. I shuddered involuntarily.

Then the troll was back, pitcher and mugs clunking down onto the bar. He grinned at me, a toothless rictus, as I handed him the money. Looking into his eyes was like staring down an empty elevator shaft and never quite seeing the bottom. He smiled as he handed back my change, smiled as I hefted the goods, and kept right on smiling as I made my way back. The Asshole shot me a beady-eyed and territorial sneer as I hustled away.

I crossed the room like the guest of honor at a firing squad. The screaming of my nerves eased up only marginally, the farther away from the bar I drew. LeeAnn was already seated, tucked into one of the half-dozen claustrophobic, dimly-lit booths that ringed the desolate rear of the room. I joined her, setting down the pitcher and mugs, peeling off my wet jacket and tossing it into a heap on the bench. The beer sat untouched on the table. I sighed, grabbed the pitcher and filled both our mugs. LeeAnn watched. I handed her one, took a swig off my own, and waited.

Nothing. "Well?" I said. It was meant to sound level and controlled, but it came out all wrong. LeeAnn looked away. "Finish your beer," she said. She was serious. She was miserable. "What?"

"Your beer." She was adamant. "Finish it." I glared at her exasperatedly, then tipped back the mug, drained it in two gulps, and banged it on the table. "There," I said, "All gone. Happy?" "Very." she said, refilling my mug. "Have another." "What ?! C'mon, LeeAnn, this is bullshit."

"Trust me, David. Drink up."

I stared at her for a moment longer, weighing the situation. I didn't want any more beer. I really didn't. In fact, the whole situation was beginning to grate on my nerves. My clothes were wet, the night was old, my bladder ached, and my patience was wearing thin. The words don't play games with me, dammit flickered through my mind on their way to my mouth. I caught them just in time.

But the anger remained. It was not lost on LeeAnn; she knew who it was for. Her whole body flinched back for a micro-second. The gesture was mostly surprise; but there was no getting around the fear, iris-black and widening, at its center. I'd seen fear in her eyes before, but I'd never been its cause.

I felt like a total shit.

"Jesus, kiddo," I whispered. "I'm sorry." Now it was her turn to avert the eyes. I looked at the mug of beer before me. It wasn't that much to ask. I wondered what the fuck was wrong with me.

I drained the goddamned mug.

"Okay," I said, deliberately, with as much aplomb as I could scrounge up. "The beer is drunk, and so am I. I'm sedated. I'm fine. I will not get angry. "So tell me: was it someone you know?"

She nodded, still looking away. Her good eye glistened. "One of your lovers?"

Another nod, with an accompanying tear; that one hurt. It wasn't phrased to hurt. It couldn't help itself. "Who?"

No answer. "Who?"

A small voice, barely there at all. "Martin." For one terrible moment of silence, the world went cold and dead.

"Come again?" I said. Vacuum voice, through a throat constricted. I knew I'd heard it right, was terrified that I'd heard it right. My temples began to thud. The bile swilled in my guts.

"Martin," she said. Louder. Defiant.

"The Martin?" I pressed. She shrank back again; inside my skull, there was thunder. "Scum-sucking douchebag Martin? Originator-of-this-whole-downhill-slide Martin? That Martin? Is that what you're telling me?"

"Yes." Less a word than a squeak. She was still shrinking back, her spine flush with the booth. Retreating, now. Into herself. "Are you serious?!"

"YES!" She screeched, the tears flowing freely.

"JESUS!!" I screamed, clapping my hands over my forehead. "You're sick!" She winced. "How could you do that?!"

But I already knew the answer. It was easy. She had help.

Martin.

The first, and the worst...

LeeAnn had broken up with him about two years ago, right around when we first met. I'd only seen the guy once or twice, when he came by the office to meet her after work. He seemed alright enough; tall and good-looking in a yuppified way. Real confident. Real smooth. They seemed like the perfect couple, and I was crushed. But then I started hearing the horror stories: about how he constantly bullied and sniped at her, how the emotional abuse had begun to turn physical, and the physical act of love became brutal, supply-on-demand...until, when she finally grew sick of him and was no longer willing to offer herself, he went ahead and took her anyway...

Repeatedly.

No charges were ever filed. I hadn't really known her then, had only admired her from afar, and it wasn't my place to speak out. But I remembered seeing the bruises, and hearing about the asshole ex-boyfriend following her around, making threatening phone calls and an ugly nuisance of himself.

And I remember, even then, wanting to tear his stupid throat out.

She'd been with him for almost two years: a very gradual descent into hell. She never talked about it much; I had to piece most of my knowledge together from the rumor mill and an outsider's perspective. But the bitch of it was, I think she really did love him. And that's what scarred her so badly: she cared, and she trusted him. She'd truly given him a piece of her heart. His betrayal was tantamount to a traumatic amputation; even after the shock she could still feel a twinge of the missing piece. The phantom pain, where it used to be.

And tonight she'd gone back, once again.

To find it.

I really didn't want to hear the gory details; I could fill them in well enough by rote. She was scared; of him, of herself. She had good reason to be. It was a twisted sort of ourobouros, the snake forever consuming its own tail, forever vomiting itself right back up; victim and victimizer, locked in an endlessly spiralling deathdance.

And for the very first time I saw her, flung head-first off the pedestal and down into the slime. I saw her the way they must. Flawed. Vulnerable. Pathetic.

And for one bone-chilling moment, I thought that maybe Martin had a point...

No. The word was vehement, the voice very much my own. No no no NO! The vision ran completely counter to everything that I held dear, everything that I'd ever believed about the nature of love and the dignity of the human spirit. It made me crazy to think that such a thought had even entered my head... ...but still I could see it, in psychotic Technicolor clarity: LeeAnn, cringing before my swinging fist; the moment of glorious frission, as flesh met surrendering flesh...

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME?, I silently screamed. My eyes snapped shut. The vision vanished. I whirled in my seat, away from LeeAnn and toward the bar, not wanting my face to betray the merest hint of what had just gone on inside my mind.

Then the bartender turned toward me. And nodded. And smiled.

And the pain in my bladder went nova.

It was remarkably like getting kicked in the balls: the same explosion of breath-stealing, strength-sapping anguish. It doubled me up in my seat, brought my face within inches of the table-top between LeeAnn and I. At that distance, with the dim light etching them in massive shadow, I couldn't help but see the four words crudely carved across its surface:

TO BE A MAN.

"What is it?" her voice said in quivering tones. Her tears were subsiding; she was regrouping in the rubble. I dragged my gaze up to hers with difficulty, still drowning in the pain.

"It's nothin', kiddo. Honest." I was trying to brush it aside, to hide it. It wasn't working. My voice was even more wobbly and wasted than hers.

"Don't bullshit me, Dave. You're in pain. Is it an ulcer?"

"I don't think so. I never had one before." But I had to briefly consider the possibility, because, Jesus, did it hurt!

"You look horrible." "Thanks a lot." "No, I'm seri..."

"LEEANN!" I thudded my fist against the table in pain and frustration and rage. "We didn't come here to talk about my goddam pain! We came here to talk about yours! Now will you stop trying to change the fucking subject for a minute!"

She was stunned. In this, she was not alone. I could no more believe what I'd said than I could what I followed it up with.

"Baby, I'm not the one who got smacked around tonight! I'm not the one who went to Martin's and asked him to do it, either! I didn't even ask to come here! I only came because you begged me to, and I only did that because..."

I stopped, then. It was like slamming down the brakes at 120 m.p.h. The only sound in my head was the screeeeeee of rubber brain on asphalt bone. I blinked at the dust and smoke behind my eyes.

"Because why?" Her voice was soft as a whisper, warm as a beating heart. Her good eye was green and deep and inscrutable. It unnerved me, that eye, even more than its battered mate or the question that accompanied it. It scrutinized me with zoom-lens attention to every blackhead and ingrown hair on my soul.

Because I love you, my mind silently told her. Because I'm a goddam chump, that's why.

I couldn't decide which conclusion was truer. I couldn't even sustain the internal debate. If I didn't get up and drag my ass down the stairs, I would let loose in my pants, and that was all there was to it. It was a matter of Piss or Die now, and there was no holding back.

"Excuse me a moment," I managed to mutter, rising up at half-mast and away from my seat.

But suddenly, LeeAnn didn't want to drop it. She grabbed my wrist just as I cleared the table. "David, please..." she said. It took everything I had to force the gentleness into my voice.

"I gotta pee, baby. Please. I'm gonna blow up if you don't let me go."

She actually smiled, then. In retrospect, were it not for the pain and embarassment, that might have been the finest moment of my life. "I really do want to know," she said, soft as before. And her hand stayed right where it was.

I laid my free hand over it. The fingers meshed.

"Hold that thought," I whispered. Not entirely romantic; speech had gotten very difficult. Then I turned and beat a hasty retreat.

She watched me go. I could feel her eyes.

I knew what they were saying. I will never forget.

Mark Twain once said that if God exists at all, he must surely be a malign thug. I wish it were true. It would be easier to blame God, or Fate, or the drugs, or the bar, or even LeeAnn.

But I know where the blame lays.

Right where it belongs.

I waddled away from the table with a smile on my face. The pain was still there...it kept me half-doubled-over...but those last few moments had rendered it nearly insignificant. I was aglow with proximity to my heart's desire. I was aglow with impending triumph. And that, of course, was when the Mighty Asshole chose to speak.

"Hey! Lookit the fuckin' creampuff!" he bellowed. "Guess you gotta go WEE-WEE, huh?"

There was a pause that crackled in my ears like static, dispersed by a ripple of harsh, raucous laughter. I turned to face a dozen mirthlessly-grinning eyes: the Asshole and his punching bag, the troll and the hairball and Heckel and Jeckel. All of them watching. Most of them laughing.

The Mighty Asshole, most of all.

Something clicked inside me. The words I don't need this took control of my brain. Under ordinary circumstances, I might have been scared. Not now. I stared him down for a long defiant second.

Then I smiled. And curtsied. And blew him a kiss.

"Eat shit," I said.

Crude, but effective. I felt better almost instantly. The shock on his face was a joy to behold. I turned and scuttled down the stairs before he could rally; my mind raced in mad tandem with my feet.

Never mind them, I told myself. You've got to get your butt back there, tell her that you love her, give her the kiss that you've been dreaming about. The time has come. She WANTS you, man!

Then the stairway ended, and my thoughts screeched to a halt. I had reached my destination. And the source.

The door itself was ill-hewn and splintery, lustreless and finger-smeared where the finish hadn't worn away entirely. The word GENTLEMEN was spelled out in eight-inch metal caps that glimmered flatly in the glare of the overhead bulb. I yanked on the handle; it was surprisingly heavy, beyond its mass. I pulled harder, and it reluctantly gave way.

I'd forgotten about the hinges, the terrible screeching sound they made. Like a thing in pain. The small hairs on the nape of my neck stood up like frightened sentries as the sound sawed through my eardrums and raked along my spine.

I stepped inside. The door creaked shut.

And the presence of the room assailed me.

There was the resonant boom that sent echoes bouncing off the filthy tiles. There was the overpoweringly ammoniacal sewage-stench, jolting up my nostrils like smelling salts. There was the dim insectoid buzz of the overhead fluorescents, spackling the interior with blotches of pulsing, spasming shadow.

And there was the size...

Mad, twirling Christ, it was huge. I stood in stunned amazement of what lay ahead. Now, the claustrophobic crapper of any midtown Manhattan working-class watering hole is just about big enough for the average-sized man to squeeze in and out of with an absolute maximum of discomfort. By comparison, this place was a fucking castle.

Twin rows of non-functional, moldy sinks: ten, in all. They lined a long tiled corridor on the way to the main room, from which I could make out a solitary stall.

A solitary stall...

Its door hung lopsidedly askew, as though wrenched violently off its hinges. An enormous pool of black, fetid water extended around it in a widening berth, apparently stemming from the blockage of gray, spongy effluvium that floated in the bowl like the lost continent of Atlantis. By craning my neck I could make out a pair of urinals just around the corner, clinging for dear life to the wall beyond.

One stall. Two urinals. Ten sinks.

Under any other circumstances it would've been weird enough to ponder. At the moment, my priorities were far more basic. I groaned, surveying the terrain. There was no way around it.

Only through it.

So I started in, holding my breath, gingerly skirting one of the main tributaries. Each of the sinks had its own mirror bolted to the wall above it. Nine of them had been smashed into glittering shards, held in place by inertia and thin metal frames. The buzzing light refracted off of them, making the streamlets of the pool appear to ripple with a malignant life of their own. The last mirror, the one nearest an adult novelty dispenser proffering big-ribbed condoms in tropical colors, was intact. My reflection fought its way back through the grit and haze; it looked pasty and haggard, forlorn.

"No wonder she's crazy about you," I muttered. "You gorgeous thing."

Something burbled, distinctly, from inside the stall.

"Huh?" I sputtered, startled, and turned to see a fresh ripple of foul water expanding outward in ever-increasing concentric rings. My thoughts turned to my quality footwear and nervously gauged the odds of making it over and back unscathed. It didn't look good.

The stall belched in agreement, sending out another wave.

I peeked around the corner, into the main body of the room. It was infinitely worse: the water actually deepened, and though it could only reasonably be a few inches, it looked bottomless. Some of the floor tiles were warped enough to form a series of little dry islands.

It was my only hope. Taking a last, desperate glance at my reflection, lips curled in disdain, I began to hippy-hop from dry spot to dry spot like a little kid crossing a creek. The beer made me clumsy, the drugs hypersensitised me, and the fumes burned like lye in my eyes and nose. But I made it, awkwardly straddling the sole oasis beneath the far urinal.

The stench was incredible. I momentarily regretted leaving my jacket upstairs, where a half-pack of Merits were serving no useful purpose. The joint was there, too, as were all of my matches. There was nothing I could do to abate the smell.

Those were the facts I had to face as I, at last, unzipped my fly.

And not a moment too soon; no sooner had I freed my screaming pecker than the pee blasted out and splished against the porcelain like a runaway firehose. I sighed, a deep and vastly relieved "Ahhhhhh...." , and leaned forward to brace myself against the wall, feeling slightly dizzy and a vague surge of pride at having made it.

I looked at the wall, while the bladder-pain receded. There was a profusion of graffiti there; the same sort of jerkoff witticisms that probably graced the Pissoirs at the Dawn of Time. Crudely optomistic penises pounding into yawning pudenda. Tits like udders, hanging from faceless, howling female forms. Phone numbers advertising good times at someone else's expense. Initials. Dates. Dreams of seamy grandeur.

And the same four words.

TO BE A MAN.

In the stall, something big went squish and then sputtered. I could hear the tinkling of falling droplets, delicate as the tines of the tiniest music box as they sprinkled the surface of the pool.

My spine froze. My pissing and breathing cut off instinctively. I leaned back as far as I could and listened.

Nothing.

"This is stupid," I informed myself by way of the room at large. My paranoia burgeoned. "There's nobody in there." Still nothing. Ripples, expanding quietly outward. I exhaled. My pissing resumed with great difficulty. And the door to the men's room flew suddenly open.

I jerked, nearly spraying myself. From inside, the echoing screech of the hinges resounded like a billion bat-shrieks in a cave. The door screeeeed and slammed shut like thunder. The walls boomed with the sound of amplified footsteps.

Every alarm in my nervous system went off. It was like pissing on the third rail of a subway track, a thousand volts of terror sizzling through me in the space of a second. The footsteps got closer, and I found myself wanting to get out of there very badly. Relax, I hissed silently, as internal organs tightened to pee faster. You're stoned. This is stupid. Nothing's going to happen. Nothing's--

"Well, well, well," he said, sneering. "Lookit what we got here."

The footsteps came up behind me and paused. I didn't want to turn around and look. I had to.

The Mighty Asshole stood at the edge of the swamp: arms crossed, legs spraddled, a hideous grin on his face. He said, "Looks like we got us a live one." Something burbled and glooped in the toilet stall.

What the fuck did he mean by that?, I wondered. The images it conjured were not very pretty. The smile that flicked across my face was meant to look cool and unruffled. It failed. I flashed it anyway, trying to hide my desperation. He grinned back at me, flat-eyed and mean as a mouthful of snakes.

The Mighty Asshole sploshed, indifferent, through the pool of rancid liquid. He came up beside me, unzipped his fly, and fenagled himself into trajectory with the urinal to my left. I took a deep, nasty breath and exhaled it at once, not looking at him. His pissing chorused with mine. A moment passed.

"You're a faggot, you know it?" he said casually. "You're a little fucking faggot." I looked at him then, peering straight into his idiot face.

"Yeah you," he continued. "A little fucking faggot."

" 'Zat so?" I said. "Geez. This is sure news to me." My bladder was draining, like air from a flat; and with it, the pain and the fear. "A faggot," he repeated, as loud as before, but his sense of utter mastery had dwindled a bit. Our eyes were locked, and I could see the sudden twitching of dim-witted uncertainty there.

" 'Zat a fact," I said, marking time 'til I was done. I didn't want to fight him, that much was for sure. My knife was upstairs, with the Merits and the joint. He wasn't all that much bigger than me, but he was blitzed and stupid; even if I jawed him, he probably wouldn't know it, and we'd end up rolling around here in the slime of the ages.

"Thass a fact, alright." He slurred it, and it took a long time to get out. Good sign. My pissing was almost done; by the time he formulated another thought, I'd be gone.

"I know a woman who'd be interested to hear that," I said. "Yessiree. She'd find that pretty goddamned funny." He laughed. I joined him. He stopped. I didn't. He hit me.

It was a short, straight-armed punch, with a lot of muscle behind it. It caught me square in the side of the head, sending hot black sparks pinging through my skull. I lurched to the side, off my little island, and straight into the sludge. Cold putrescence flooded up through the hole in my shoe.

"Shit!" I yelled, "Shit! Shit!" I splashed around to face him, waiting for my vision to clear. I could feel my ear starting to cauliflower, feel the hot trickle of blood seeping down. I thought about booting him right in the nuts, grinding his face into that same black water. I was furious. "You stupid motherfu--" I began.

And then stopped. Suddenly. Completely. Stopped.

In the pool. In the slime.

It started with the sole of the right foot: a numbing sensation that I at first mistook for the cold. In the thin web of flesh between the first and second shafts of the metatarsus, seeping up through the sodden expanse of my gym sock, the horror took root and spread. Up along the flexor tendons, through their fibrous sheaths. Soaking into the flexor brevis digitorum. An impulse, shooting out at the speed of thought, socked into the motor nucleus at the fifth nerve of the brain.

I couldn't move. The numbness spread. In the grume. Where He waits. Forever and ever. Up through fibula and tibia, dousing bone and soaking marrow. Up through muscle and sinew, tendrils snaking up arteries and conduits, putting frost in my ganglion, ice in my veins. Up through the femur and into the hip, the pelvis. Numbing my cock, my balls. Spreading down the other leg.

Ancient. Eternally crawling.

Blitzkreig in my bladder. In my spleen. Worming a finger up through my intestines. Oozing through the superficial fascia of the abdominal wall and then outward. Seeping through the pores. Bleeding through my sweatshirt. Eternally struggling toward form. And taking it. For His own.

My eyes riveted on the eyes of the man before me: moist and pulsing, the color of slugs. A spasm ran through us both, synchronised and uncontrollable. Then I was pivoted and slammed face-first into the filthy tiles above the urinal. I couldn't feel it. I could feel nothing.

In the stall, the burbling became violently frantic. I managed to lift my head away from the wall. The magic-marker scrawlings hovered inches from my eyes. Then they began to shift. To change. And He began to speak.

YOU'RE JUST A LITTLE FUCKING FAGGOT, He said. OH YES YOU ARE.

My eyes were glued to the words as they synched with the voice booming inside my head. JUST A LITTLE FUCKING CREAMPUFF FAGGOT WHO DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS. I thought about the blonde at the bar, her grovelling eyes. I thought about LeeAnn. I wanted to scream. He sensed it. It made Him happy.

LIKE HER, He said, immensly pleased. OH, YES. EXACTLY.

Something slithered out of the toilet bowl and landed on the floor with a thick wet splutting sound. LeeAnn appeared in grotesquely animated caricature on the wall before me, silently screaming as a monstrously bloated penis plunged in and out and in and YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO BE A MAN. YOU'RE AFRAID TO BE A MAN.

I tried to scream. I couldn't.

YOU'RE AFRAID TO GO OUT THERE AND TAKE WHAT YOU WANT.

Sliding up my larynx, out over my tongue. Pouring into the hollows behind my eyes. Oozing into the billion soft folds of my brain. Black static, eating inwards from the periphery of my vision. Blocking out everything.

But the realization. Forever and ever.

It was crawling toward me. I couldn't see it, couldn't turn my head, but I could hear the horror revisited in the breath of the man beside me. And I could hear it, slithering. I could feel its hunger. I could taste its boundless greed. A tiny voice in my head shreiked it's only the drugs: but the voice was tiny, and hollow, and fading.

Something small and moist grabbed onto my pants leg. NOW YOU'RE GOING TO KNOW WHAT IT IS Crawling up.

TO BE A MAN

Coming closer. Struggling toward form. TO BE A MAN

Tiny fingers clawed the base of my skull. My jaws pried open. A caricature appeared on the wall, mocking me. OH, YES.

And there was nothing I could do. But let Him in.

When I came to, some ten minutes later, the Mighty Asshole was gone. I knew that I'd have no more trouble from him that night, or ever after. In fact, I could come back as much as I wished. Again. And again.

I belonged now. Completely.

He had not let us fall, cunning fuck that He was. When I came to, we were in front of the sole surviving mirror, and He was splashing freezing water in our face.

He cleaned us up: meticulously washing away the blood, smoothing back the disheveled hair. Tomorrow we'd get it cut, He informed me. Nice and short, maybe a flattop. And we'd start working out, put some meat on these bones.

A real man, He said, always takes care of business.

When we were nice and clean, He turned and bought us a big-ribbed condom. For later. He smiled at our face in the grimy mirror. It was a cruel smile, and infinitely calculated. His smile. The mirror grinned coldly back.

And He smashed it. With my fist.

When we finally came up the stairs, twenty minutes had passed. LeeAnn was waiting anxiously at the table. "David!" she demanded. "What happened to you? I was really getting worried."

He lifted one finger, and told her to shush. She obeyed.

"You're a sweetheart," He said, moving close. Then He kissed her. Passionately. With my lips.

•••

There is a book on the history of photojournalism on the endtable beside me. It was one of LeeAnn's favorite's, but that's not why He keeps it around. He likes the pretty pictures.

And He likes to torture me.

Right now, it's open to the page on the liberation of the concentration camps, at the end of World War II. One photo in particular stands out, flickering in the dim light of the TV's hissing screen like footage from some long-forgotten newsreel. It's a black-and-white picture of the gate to Auschwitz. Perhaps it's even one of Margaret Bourke-White's; that would be nice, but I geuss it doesn't really matter. So what if I can't make out the credit? I can make out the inscription clear enough: ARBEIT MACHT FREI, in huge iron letters. That's what's important.

ARBEIT MACHT FREI.

Work Makes Freedom.

I've thought about that alot. One of the many thoughts that help me in the night, long after He's passed out in His favorite easychair, drunken and still-dressed. Tonight, He didn't even get the damned field jacket off.

I'm so glad.

I'm sure that LeeAnn would be, too.

It took her over a year to tear away: thirteen months of steadily escalating madness. Oh, He was great, for the first month or so: strong and sensitive and very, very sincere. He made all the right moves, said all the right things. And she welcomed my new-found assertiveness, with an ardor that both amazed and destroyed me. He waited with the patience of the ages, until the hooks were planted nice and deep. Until she fell for Him. Until she trusted Him. Until He could destroy her. It was amazing, how much groundwork I'd already lain. It made it infinitely easier for Him. And infinitely worse, for me.

And then, when the moment was right, He showed her His true self. Repeatedly.

I'll never forget the look of betrayal on her face.

It took her over six months to escape; we were living together by then. He tried to break her, and she fought Him. Escape cost her dearly: emotionally, mentally.

Physically.

But escape she did, and I love her for it. I've thought of her often, God knows. I've wondered how she's doing, wondered where she is. But I don't really want to know. And, besides, I never will.

Because every night after that, He dragged me downtown and back to the bar. The guys were all there, of course. The guys were always there. We got along famously, round after round, while the Hooter Girl sadly presided.

And every night after that, we went out in search of fresh meat. There were always women out there, waiting to be punished for something. He was always eager to oblige. He wanted me to watch. He needed me to forget. His failure. Her victory.

But I didn't, dammit.

I remembered.

Within the month, he'd found a suitable distraction: Lisa. She wasn't as sharp as LeeAnn, or as strong. But her blue eyes were bright, and her curvature dazzled, and her smile could have sold you the moon. We've been married now, the three of us, going on four years. We have kids, to my unending sorrow: Patricia, little David, Jr., and another damned soul on the way. Lisa's eyes no longer sparkle, and she hardly ever smiles. Thirty pounds of purpled padding grace the skeleton of her beauty like a shroud.

But tonight, that's all behind her.

It's taken four years. Four years of practice: at night, while He slept drunkenly on. Cell by cell. Inch by inch. Four very long years. LeeAnn would be proud.

I can move my right arm, you see.

Only when He sleeps, true, and not very much. It's not very strong, either. Yes, life is a bitch. But it was strong enough to open the book tonight. And with a little strength to spare... It'll be enough to reach the knife.

And so what if it takes me all night. ARBEIT MACHT FREI, right? Sometimes, that's just what it takes.

To be a man.


daysleeper