Arturo Fontaine - La Vida Doble

And so I understood him, I understood his fascination because I was also kissing his masculine breasts. “Your nipples are big and round like coins, like monedas.” That was the only thing he said to me.

“It was on Calle Moneda,” I told him. “Remember? You pointed your gun at me.” I don’t think he heard me. He seemed really high. He was panting in my ear the same way he had on that frightful day. It was him, no doubt about it. But that day on Calle Moneda he’d been very nervous, he could have fired accidentally. And I felt the cold of the gun barrel on my temple. I’d been more serene than he was. He entered me, his phallus long and thin like a bull’s, reaching deep inside me. I shuddered. Like a good bull, he came in no time. And that was it.

When I came back from the bathroom, they weren’t there anymore. The two of them had left. I went to the bar. I ordered a tequila.

And then, wandering around, I found a shadowy room full of cells, like a gym with weight machines, or like a torture chamber with black leather beds with straps, and handcuffs, masks, nipple clamps, rings to put around a phallus, whips, of course, and crops and various chains: in short, the classic paraphernalia of that particular tribe.

I went into another room, small and dark. In it there was a cross that you could be tied to, whipped, and spit on. And I saw a man wearing a mask, one of those men of indefinite age, short, double chin, long hair, muscles that had once been defined and were now soft waves, a potbellied man, with a fevered and broken spirit — I saw him seek out that place of transformation, of death and resurrection, and place himself up there in the role of a slave. I recognized him by his garlic smell. He was there. He had that high voice, as if he were faking it. My confessor, my all-powerful, my unseen one, my ally, my accomplice, my boss, my corruptor, he was there, a few droplets of sweat shining on his weak lips. At first I didn’t dare look at him for fear that he would recognize me in spite of my mask. My heart sped up, I felt anxiety tightening in my stomach. I should have left, I wanted to and I didn’t want to; I stood there turned to stone before that mortified figure. Behind his mask his eyes were hollow and red; he didn’t notice I was there.

I moved backward and circled around until I was looking at his back. In that place he was so much shorter and fatter and more insignificant. . I saw myself lying down, tied up, naked, and blindfolded, imagining that the one who was pressuring me with his questions and punishments was a beast both beautiful and cruel. I lost myself among the people surrounding the crucified man. It was him, no doubt about it. There’s a memory that remains in the flesh. He was my deus absconditus to whom I had sacrificed myself trying to imagine he was good. At that moment I started to retch, but I held it back.

It was contagious; there was a woman and a strapping, strong boy and a skinny, ugly man with long hair tied in a ponytail. They took turns punishing him with a crop. After a while even I laughed with pleasure, like an idiot, and I spit on his back and I wanted to whip him. In truth, at that moment I wasn’t out for revenge. Real revenge, when it came, if it came, would be something quite different. But I didn’t know that art, and they turned me away.

Now another youth with sunken eyes and gaunt face whom I hadn’t noticed before takes the whip. The crucified man looks at him with imploring tenderness. The other looks back with distant severity. Do they know each other? Is he a detainee? Could he be an informer like me, though he’s the master now? I’ve seen him, it seems to me I’ve even talked with him. A prisoner. But I can’t be sure. Maybe he was an agent, or a whore, who knows.

“More, harder,” the whipped man begs confidently.

The other doesn’t change his rhythm. They search in each other’s eyes. After a while the skin has started to relax and the man with the whip gives it to him harder but keeps a steady rhythm. I watch in fascination. His muscles contract. The other man shouts in pain; it seems like he wants to stop the game. Why doesn’t he? To be like victims burned at the stake, signaling through the flames. The man with the whip is sweating and he goes on whipping, perhaps a little harder still. He yanks off his leather jacket and throws it to the floor, and he’s left in a sleeveless black shirt, sweaty and tight against the muscles of his chest. I like his collarbone, thin and feminine. He starts up the whipping again at a slower, more violent rhythm. His sweet, reddened face shines with sweat. This is not a genital orgasm; it’s a voyage into unknown territories of the mind. They look at each other like they’re hypnotized. There are no shouts now, just a giving in to the love in each lash of the whip.

“More, yes, yes, more,” the victim says, “that’s it, keep going, more, more.”

On his back red dots have sprung up that lengthen into drops. The eye contact resumes and it’s like a tense thread about to break; they see something in each other that I can’t see, a phosphorescence, an apparition.

At some point everything stopped. Gato was untied. He was trembling and swaying, panting. He took off his mask and tears were falling down his cheeks and blood down his shoulders, his back and ribs. The young man helped him sit down on the floor. “Cover yourself,” he told him, solicitous, “cover yourself.” And he put a damp towel over Gato’s shoulders and sat down next to him. I left the two of them shivering in an embrace on the floor under that towel, and I rushed off to the bathroom to find a line I desperately needed.

That inversion was a cruel game, but it was consensual. Completely different from the unilateral horror, from the power imposed by one body on another. We are taught to be ashamed of our instincts. Our hypocritical education, a gag. There’s a tyrannical pleasure in the degradation of oneself. We are that, too. In the underworld of that dark, bewitched house, I lived it frenetically, like one returning to a lost Paradise — not the sterilized and anodyne paradise of Genesis, but a cruel and delicious unleashing, a plunge into the burning and confused sea of our origins, a sudden fusion with the savage animal that inhabits us and that we deny ourselves. In that pit I touched the bottom of the truth that we deny ourselves, the truth that we invent. Not “The Truth” but rather instants of vehemence, vertiginous truths like bites or burns, momentary passions that I lived deeply and free of doubt.

I say to Flaco: I’m going to leave you, I’ll retire and start my own security business. Don’t you think I’d be able to start a security business and make money?

And he says: Of course. You could start a business and make a lot of money. I have no doubt.

And me: And you know what I’m going to do with all that money?

And he looks at me with questioning eyes, and waits.

And me, smiling: I’m going to buy myself a penthouse, or, more like it, a penis-house.

And he: Oh! Really? That’s what you want?

And me: It’s not what I want; I need it.

And he: A penis-house. .

And me, very seriously, holding back the laughter: Exactly. So I can have lots of penises in my house.

And he, laughing: So you need lots of penises. .

And me: Yes. One night with one, another night with another. To miss out on all of them, except yours, shows a serious lack of consideration.

And he: You’re unfaithful to the core. You can’t help it.

And me: Who told you? The thing is, I’m a different person with every man I like. That’s why I don’t feel guilty. It’s just that I’m a different person.

And he: You like to change men, then.