Christos Tsiolkas - Merciless Gods

Mickey was no longer on his hands and knees but on his back. The guy was holding his legs up, fucking him fast, pulling out then thrusting back in, which was what hurt the most when mugs fucked me. But Mickey was still not making a sound, just looking up at the two cameras. From time to time he’d wince, but that was all.

The older guy suddenly stopped. He stood up, winking down at Mickey, and pulled the condom off his dick. ‘I’m ready.’

‘Sure, very good, sure.’ The director motioned for Mickey to get on his knees. The cameras were right up on his face. Saunders’ hand was on the back of my neck now, his grip tight. I had to keep watching. The guy with the moustache was jerking himself off, and even with the cameraman and the director filming around them I had a clear view of Mickey’s face. He was waiting, his mouth closed, his eyes screwed shut, exactly how he had taught me, so that the semen won’t get in your eyes and through your eyes into your blood so you don’t get the disease. The guy grabbed hold of Mickey’s hair and was pulling Mickey’s face closer to his cock all the time, shouting stufflike I’m going to come all over your face, fag , and Dick Cheese Saunders was breathing faster now, and under his breath he was going do it, do it, do it , and I couldn’t bear to look so I pulled away from his grasp and he was so focused on what was happening that he let me, though I was still jerking his cock. I looked out through a crack of the boarded-up window, and I saw a flash of blue and white, sky and cloud, and then the guy finally blew and he started howling, exactly like one of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park . Dick Cheese Saunders shuddered beside me and his cum spilt all over my hand and when I shook it off, it fell on the floorboards in front of us.

I looked over at Mickey, I looked over to see he was alright. His eyes were still shut tight; screwed so tight that deep creases had appeared on his brow. Sprog was splashed across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and it was dripping down his chin. The guy with the moustache was wiping his cock with some tissues. He passed the box to Mickey, who wiped his eyelids; only then did he finally open his eyes. He was looking straight at me and his eyes were shimmering. The sadness — no, the misery — of the world was looking at me. But then his mouth twitched towards a small smile and I saw Our Lord’s mercy.

I stood up, stepping over the cables and past the men. As I walked over, I ripped off the bottom of my T-shirt, and when I reached Mickey, I wiped clean his face and his neck. I kissed his mouth. As I did that I could see Jesus again in his eyes.

But as soon as I’d finished wiping away the spoof, Jesus had gone and it was just a sandy-haired black-eyed laughing boy staring back at me. ‘Don’t you dare kiss me again, ya crazy poofta.’

We were laughing like little kids at Luna Park, going down down down, fast fast fast on the Big Dipper. And just as we stopped laughing the red-haired kid stood up and was pointing at his arse. ‘I’m fucking bleeding,’ he screamed, and that just started us up again. We were crying from the laughing.

For my fifteenth birthday, Mickey got me a ticket for the Big Day Out. We took acid, it was my first time, and when it started, first with the tingling and then with the rush of colour and sound and smell and movement, I knew that this was how heaven will be. Angie and Mickey walked through the crowd, hand in hand, and I bumped into friends and even glimpsed one of my mugs in the crowd. Mickey slipped me an E as the sun was going down, and I watched Courtney Love bare her tits to the crowd. Afterwards I wandered to the techno tent and bumped into Angie and Mickey. The DJs were wicked and I was peaking and the crowd was going off and the music was in my body and in my soul and I was jumping around like a madman and so was Angie and so was Mickey and so was the whole world. Everyone was shining and screaming and dancing and I climbed onto Mickey’s shoulders and I was looking straight into the light and into the night, and the music was the sound of the angels and the bass beat was the sound of heaven and I raised my hands towards the stage and one of the DJs pointed at me I swear electricity shot from his fingers towards me and I was happier than I had ever been. I was happier than I would ever be.

That same night, on the train going back to town, Mickey was sitting in the middle of the seat, holding Angie, and I was next to him, resting my head on his shoulder. Then Mickey grabbed me, all of a sudden, and gave me a long kiss, his tongue in my mouth and his hands on my chest. His eyes were looking into mine. He stopped and Angie was laughing and the young kids on the seat opposite, straight kids, civilians, were looking away embarrassed. Then Mickey sat back with one arm around me and the other around Angie. He was smiling a huge motherfucking shit-eating grin.

I had fallen asleep by the time the train got to Central. Later, Angie told me that Mickey had carried me all the way home.

GHASSAN HAD NEVER TOUCHED A EUROPEAN before, not even to shake hands with. He had never smelt one up close. He was finally to do so. It was fated to be this pale young man beckoning him to come closer. As he approached, the man’s features became more distinct, emerging slowly from the hellish darkness. The only light came from the video screen behind them and a solitary red globe above them in the corridor. The blood-hued flickering illumination distorted everything, so that the man’s fair hair appeared orange and there were deep shadows across the bottom half of his face. Still, Ghassan could espy the white scar on the left side of his top lip, that there was stubble on his chin. The man reached out and tugged at the front of Ghassan’s shirt, bringing him closer so that their lips were almost touching. Ghassan had to resist sniffing at him: he wanted to search the man’s body with his nose, as if they were dogs, not men; he wanted to determine the source of the man’s distasteful odour. He pulled away from the European, who then offered him an anxious shy smile. He reached for Ghassan’s crotch and had his hand swiped away. Ghassan breathed in.

The man smelt of offal, of guts and stomach and lungs. He did not smell of skin. He smelt of the foul secrets inside the body.

Aware that something had changed, the man tilted his head to one side, his eyes now alert and suspicious. The two men stared at each other, as if daring each other to make the first move, to speak, to reignite or disavow their earlier intimacy. This is a dance, thought Ghassan to himself with some disappointment, not so different from the one we dance with whores. The man suddenly coughed, an abrupt sharp sound, but it acted as a concession. The man had coughed, and then he had raised his arm to scratch his head, the gesture reminding Ghassan of something a little boy would do, an act that seemed to encompass shyness and diffidence and assertiveness all at once. It was a sweet, simple movement. As the man had raised his arm, Ghassan had glimpsed swirls of fine wet hair under the sleeve of the man’s shirt; as well, his nose had detected the tang of citrus. The man’s deodorant banished thoughts of decomposition, visions of flesh and meat. As did the sight of the dark hair against the man’s pallid skin. Ghassan’s cock pumped with blood; he placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and drew him close. This was desire.

He had first noticed this European in the orientation week at the university; he always sat two rows in front of Ghassan, and he was clearly equally bored by the lecturer. They all were. The professor for Chemical Engineering Applied Methods was one of those men who seemed never to have been touched by youth, one of those insipid sexless European men who spoke in a hushed monotone that squeezed any passion or interest from the words. Granted, there was little musicality or emotion to be gleaned from the dry calculus and rules of applied engineering, but the man’s dullness caused spontaneous yawning, restlessness and fidgeting among the students within the first five minutes of the lecture. Ghassan dutifully scribbled down the notations and equations the lecturer wrote on the whiteboard, but the words the man spoke were nonsensical. Ghassan trusted his own intelligence, he knew that his command of the English language was adequate — no, better than adequate, he had a true aptitude for languages — but the man behind the lectern might as well have been speaking an obscure dialect of some ancient lost civilisation. It was as if the tedium of his delivery drained the words of their meaning. Ghassan found he did not understand a word of what was being said.