Christos Tsiolkas - Merciless Gods

Dick Cheese Saunders had found us.

I waited outside the kebab shop, my hands deep in the pockets of my tracky daks, trying to keep warm. I tried to scam money off some drunk working stiffs going past but the turds wouldn’t even look at me.

I was freaking out that Dick Cheese Saunders would kick the shit out of Mickey. Saunders was capable of anything when he lost it, and two thousand bucks was a lot to lose. Please, Jesus, I kept thinking to myself, please look after him. Please. That made me feel a bit better. Jesus wouldn’t let anything bad happen to Mickey. Jesus was in Mickey, I’d seen him.

And Jesus was there alright. Straight after, Mickey galloped up to me, all gangling arms, skinny long legs and the biggest shit-eating grin spread on his face. He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me to the ground, pretending to dry hump me. I punched him off. I had a stiffy.

Saunders had offered a deal: if Mickey agreed to do some porno scenes in a video he was shooting, Saunders would forget about the debt. He’d even promised to chuck in a baggy of heroin.

Mickey said yes straight away. ‘I’m gonna get fucking high,’ he told me. ‘So fucking high that it won’t be me on the video. Then I’m out of here. I’m gonna catch a bus back to Adelaide, find my mum and go cold turkey. I miss my mum, I even miss that hole of a city.’ His eyes were wide and shiny. ‘That way,’ he continued, ‘I won’t have no more debts, no reason for anyone to look for me. I can fucking disappear and never have to think of frigging Sydney ever again.’

•

Mickey was an angel and all of us were in love with him. All of us. There are whores in the brothels and on the streets tonight crying as they’re getting fucked because Mickey is on that bus back to Adelaide. There are men driving down to the Wall, looking for their sandy-haired seraph and returning home disappointed. After Mickey, no one else would do. I bet those faggots are crying as well. I’m not crying. I’m not sooking like a baby. I’m sitting on the beach, the waves crashing in the blackness, the waves that go all the way back and forth, back and forth, from here to America. I’m not feeling the cold. The heroin is liquid honey inside of me.

•

Mickey took me with him to the shoot. It was in some warehouse apartment in Annandale, around the corner from Booth Street. There was no furniture in there and the windows had all been blacked out. The whole joint was crammed with lights and cameras, microphones, cables and coloured plastic that went over the lights.

There was me and Mickey, Dick Cheese Saunders, and two young blokes, one holding a camera and the other the sound equipment. There was an older man, who said he was the director. He had a camera as well. He spoke in a thick accent that I couldn’t place, that I never heard before.

Mickey asked if I could come in on the shoot. He wanted me to make some money too. The director looked across to Dick Cheese Saunders, who shook his head. ‘The kid’s fucking cross-eyed!’

I looked down at the floor, humiliated, and then I went spastic, wanting to knife the cunt, but then I remembered what Alex, who was my sponsor at the Congregation, had taught me. He taught me that when I get pissed off, I should just pray, instead of losing it. So I started to pray and the director bloke came over and lifted my chin.

He smiled and asked me in that strange accent of his if I could open my mouth. ‘More, open more wide,’ he ordered me and I stretched it open so much it began to hurt. He checked my teeth, checked my profile, left and right, got me to take off my T-shirt, show him my dick, to bend over and stretch open my arse. He was like a doctor. ‘Is okay,’ he said finally, ‘we can use.’

Mickey winked at me.

But Dick Cheese Saunders still said no. Then his tone softened. He said something about the next time. He offered me something to get me high, an E crushed into a powder, and asked me to stay out of the way and be quiet. So I sat in a corner and got high and kept quiet.

A scrawny red-haired kid came rushing in. He had zits all over his chin and he was obviously speeding off his nut. Dick Cheese Saunders introduced him to Mickey but no one bothered about me.

It took ages and ages to set up, I smoked five cigarettes before it even started, and Mickey came over to sit with me. Saunders wouldn’t hand over the baggy till the shoot was finished, cos he was scared Mickey wouldn’t be able to get it up if he was high, so Mickey snorted some of the E instead.

Then they were ready. A white sheet had been pinned against a wall and some crates were piled in front of it. Mickey and the red-haired kid were sitting on the crates kissing, which I knew Mickey didn’t want to do, but he seemed to be getting into it, which caused a tingling sensation in my stomach which I knew was jealousy. They had to keep stopping and starting, something to do with the cameras.

When Mickey stripped to his underwear, the director couldn’t help himself. ‘Fuck,’ he called out in admiration, pronouncing it furrk . ‘Fuck!’

Mickey is so fucking beautiful. Mickey makes the whole world go Fuck!

Mickey says his mum is from the bush and his dad was from a place overseas called Caracas, which I’d never heard of but which always makes me laugh when he says it. Carac- ass . His dad was in South Australia one year picking fruit and fucked Mickey’s mum under a full moon. She got pregnant. She wanted to get pregnant to him, even though she was only sixteen, even though he was a stranger, a backpacker travelling through, because he was dark and handsome and she thought that with his genes and her Irish blood they would create a beautiful baby. And she was right. Mickey has a photo of his brother and his sister, and they’re alright, good-looking enough, but both their dads are strictly Aussie and the kids are nothing like Mickey. They don’t make your stomach crunch up like he does.

At the Congregation — it’s not a church, they don’t call it a church — they give you free coffee and sandwiches and you can crash there for the night. It used to be a movie theatre, back in the old, old days, and I like falling asleep in the ticket box, curled up in there. The place is always full of ferals and punks and whores and druggies, and then there are the old men and women who stink of their own shit, and everyone is snoring and cursing, but sometimes they are praying and sometimes we all pray together. That’s the best, when we are all praying and then I can get to sleep because I know I’ll be safe, that Jesus is in the old picture house with me.

Sometimes Alex is there. He always seeks me out. And always takes me out and buys me a feed. He asks how I’m doing, where I’m sleeping, how I’m getting my money, and even when I tell him I’m doing fine, that Mickey’s looking out for me, tears will always well up in his eyes and that makes me feel crap, like I done something to him, and I have to look away. Alex is twenty-six but he doesn’t look that old and he has a job and rents a house and is a normal civilian. Mickey, who never goes to the Congregation, who says he can’t stand their holy God-bothering bullshit, reckons Alex is like any other mug, that he just wants to fuck me. I tell Mickey he’s wrong, but he won’t believe me. Alex isn’t like that, he’s not evil. I’m the evil one. I wish Alex would take me home, that he would fuck me. I wish I could live with him forever.

I drift back into the warehouse. Even without the scag, Mickey was taking ages getting hard and the director was starting to get pissed off. The red-haired kid was on his knees sucking Mickey off and from time to time he’d drop Mickey’s cock out of his mouth and shrug at the men filming.

‘Nothing’s happening,’ he complained, sounding bored, like he wished it was all over.