Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

That’s the nitty-gritty choice—white or black, winner or loser, alive or dead, and no ground between. Stand alive forever, on a pile of dead bodies—or be one of the bodies, that’s where it’s all at.

Wasn’t for Sara, you’d be on the side of the losers, side of corpses dead forever and you with them forever—you’re the fucking Black Shade, aren’t you? Sure you are! Sure you would!

And like a sewer leaking gray blood-muck it began to rain again, a dirty gray New York uptight rain straight from special effects.

Before him, the city was a dirty wash of colorless gray on gray, and in the living room behind him Sara had turned on the color organ and it was scintillating the room with colors… music… the homey orange glow of the firepit over the rich red carpeting and wood-paneled walls… Sara, bouncing about, alive and innocent and immortal… the living-color science-fiction California of the mind he had created twenty-three stories above the gray New York murk, and he had to let the rain hit him, fat and wet and dirty, for long gray minutes before it bugged him enough to give him the balls to go inside.

The living room was rank with the taste of Forever. He could taste it in the thickness of the carpeting the ersatz phoenix-flame of the firepit the jang of steel guitar over harmonica-wheeze over the squeaking-door voice of Dylan (dead Dylan), the drum-roll of the rain on the skylight facets flashing with random color organ patters the sweet funk of potsmoke in the air the wall of electronic gizmos in living-color satellite-network reality-contact with the whole wide universe, listen to the smell of Forever flashing! Life!

Life… Life was orange wood smell flames searing steak juices trickling down potsmoke music color blue color red color emerald clinking off the glass skylight facets, was harmonica riffs honking the night, was every tension-feel of every muscle moving as he walked across the carpet giving under his weight, was air going in-out-in bringing the smell of rain of flame of pot of the woman-musk of Sara, was the taste of his tongue in his mouth, was everything happening every moment in the electric universe inside him, was the surge of his own blood in his arteries—and life was Sara.

White skin he could feel with his eyes taste with his nose, rounded nakedness framed in an open black velvet robe lying with legs unselfconsciously bare and open on the orange-furred couch, moving her loose blonde hair in delayed afterbeat to the rhythm of the music, waving a half-smoked Acapulco Gold (getting ashes on the rug again, dammit!), the piebald flashes from the color organ ricocheting off the skylight facets and caressing her flesh with a thousand scintillating fingers of lovely-obscene stroking light, and on her face an open smile of feral child-happiness child-innocence of babies torn apart slug-green glands drip-dripping behind big brown nipples of pleasure screams of dying black faces behind—cool it, man, cool it!

Like the best image-Sara ever fucking twenty-six-year-old image-Jack Barron stage center on the monitor of his mind, she was there and perfect, breasts still tight-skinned massive softnesses smooth skin of Berkeley Acapulco LA nights hair freely flowing, there in his pad, in his California-wet-dream controlled reality, would always be there, young soft gonad-vision forever, alive forever, his forever, Sara forever… And beneath the soft smooth nakednesses, slug-green trails of black baby-blood drip-dripping drip-dripping drip-dripping…

“Jack! You’re sopping.”

She bounced to her feet, breasts moving nice and easy hide-and-peek like puppy-noses with the sensual black velvet robe as she walked barefoot across the carpet in long overstrides toward him and he moved real cool-like toward her, kicking off damp slippers (the fuck with the rug!), tossing aside the sportjac, and then letting her playful fingers take off the damp shirt as he functionally dropped his pants, kicked them away, and they stood lightly touching each other in robe and jockey shorts.

Eye to eye, pool-deep eyes of Berkeley-past New York-present not merged into a forever-future, eyes that had won, had won him on her back-in-the-old-Berkeley-bag terms, had won immortality like a free lollipop to lick forever, forever hers, forever free, no piper to pay, woman’s eyes shining, that had won every wet-dream of the girl, all in those hungry eat-me eyes—and it was all a lie.

All a shuck, and tomorrow night she’ll know, know for sure where her big hero is at when I start doing riffs on Bennie’s Freezing competition instead of giving him the knife she’s expecting. No way of keeping that from her, but at least she doesn’t ever have to know about slimy slug-green baby glands drip-dripping inside her.

He dropped his gaze from her innocent accusing eyes, rested his attention on the tactile shape of her neutral crotch-reality body, breasts hanging free and easy in the open robe over the kettledrum of her belly with its off-center mole a second navel leading his eyes to the haircurled triangle-parting of her smooth-skin curving full woman thighs, all so tactually hyperreal, like the massive sculptured reality of a Michelangelo realer-than-real living-marble statue and, if he played Bennie’s game, just as eternal.

“Jack…” She smiled, sighed, misinterpreting the sweep of his eyes, let the cool black velvet robe slither off her shoulders as she wriggled her arms out of the sleeves, breasts bobbing, then half-threw, half let herself fall against him, soft breasts against his self-felt hardness, image-contrast man-woman interface, with his consciousness living on the line between as he felt the full woman-strength of her arms contracted around his ribcage, strong, young, fiercely-tender woman-arms, young and strong and smooth like… like a healthy female animal, like young, like strong, like healthy, like forever.

She giggled against his chest, hooked her naked legs behind his knee, pulled back against the joint with her leg as she shoved her body-weight forward, and toppled him like a puppy over on his back, the warm rug-fur on his naked skin an electric charge erotic contrast with the smooth cool of the velvet robe he had half fallen on. He took the fall lightly, pulling her mock-fiercely down on top of him, dug the kick of the hard real woman-muscles of her shoulders beneath the skin-patina of softness on his finger-tips as she moved, round on round, belly to belly against him.

She pulled off his shorts, and now they were naked against each other, primal Sara pure flesh-taste of rounded masses moving against him in slow funky rhythm, and he reached out with both hands and smoothed her sweet wicked ass real and round and warm legs contracting froglike up and around him, opening herself to him coaxing him in hair-on-hair teasing as her mouth moved up his chest in a quicksilver trail of hard little biting kisses up his neck across his jaw, and he caught a glimpse of white wet pearled teeth and pink tongue-tip, closed his eyes, hips picking up on her slow-building pelvic rhythm as their mouths met.

Mouth to open mouth, tasting her breath in the warm wet soul-deep cave, and like an eruption of massive world-filling wet life-flesh her tongue poured itself into his mouth, filling it, engulfing it, overwhelming him with wet-on-wet sly man-woman role-reversal pleasure, filling his world with a huge, blind, wet-writhing organism, an amorphous damp creature with a will of its own like a blind pulsing thing from deep inside body-secrets, like a thing of glandular sentience from deep inside life’s secret juices overflowing drip-dripping wet huge alive and pulsing, drip-dripping alien life-juices into his mouth, moving and mocking and filling his cheeks with pulsing naked flesh-secret, heavy syrup drip-dripping like green slug-slime tongue-gland warm-blood wetness from carcinoma-ridden bodies of broken babies, choking, crowning him in stolen life-juices, cloying over-sweet immortality-honey from black children sleeping the long slide to Forever, catheters glucose-needles meeting in obscene trunk-line tube of death down his throat, her heavy huge rolling gland-organism-tongue choking him, choking him, choking him, retch-reflexes building against his will toward a gut-heaving spasm of broken black babies glands wet and writhing-tongue life-warm blood-filled blind organism, stolen life-juices filling his mouth in horrid pelvic rhythm—