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stronghours · 4 months

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Delphine

Vampires in July was the current marathon theme. Jules was a block away with Cal at the Dairy Queen. They were depressurizing after Daughters of Darkness at 10AM and Jean Rollin’s The Rape of the Vampire at noon. Artistically jittered by Delphine Seyrig’s costuming, Jules insisted they skip something called Blood and Doughnuts based simply off the juvenile title, to be better prepared for Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu, and so Jules could sketch in his little pad – Cal toddled faithfully behind him. After Marty, and after Ava, Jules prioritized Cal; the kid, besides support groups and therapy and work (he was a receptionist!) had absolutely nothing in his life, as far as Jules knew. No close friends, no hobbies, no clubs, no events, no strong interests. He did not watch television; he did not listen to music “on purpose”. No wonder the guy was so fucked up. They spent a lot of time together that would otherwise have been devoted to Marty, who had begun to casually, supportively, ask, what are you and Cal up to this week, kid?

Once seated, Cal, courteous, asked about Marty; Jules, insane, told him about the belt situation. Explained further when Cal appeared confused. It wasn’t shocking to tell Cal these things – he told Cal, consciously and on purpose, things he’d never told anybody else in his life. Small, untalented, generic, and flavorless as he was, he possessed an influential miasma that Jules could not resist.

“That’s not so bad,” Cal insisted, after Jules tore through the belt issue in its entirety. “That’s like, a really standard category of, you know, S&M discipline stuff. That’s not bad at all.”

Cal had learned this from Jules, who had also lied to Cal after being told some of his most outrageously literal – coprophilia literal – Sadeian fantasies. “That’s not a big deal!” Jules would say. It took every ounce of strength to make it truthful on his face. “Get real, I’ve heard ten times worse than that.” And he’d been rewarded by Cal’s potent relief.

“He sounds like a nice person,” Cal continued. “I don’t know why you refuse to talk to him about this stuff. It’s not like he’ll force you to do every weird thing you ever fantasize about.”

Cal had yet to be told the full extent force factored into those fantasies, but it was still an unwise thing to say to someone like Jules, who could respond: “If you actually believed that, then a lot of your own problems would clear up.”

“Hey, that’s not nice.” Cal owned a very cute sulk. He showed it off sometimes. It almost gave him a personality. He was blond, bland, and adorable; cute as a button, in fact. In drag, he would have looked like Mimsy Farmer.

Inside his head, Jules would stuff him into frocks, make up his face, fuss with his hair, and furthermore, to think about doing so would give him serious thrills. It made him rub his legs together. This absurd stuff was so outside the bounds of both Jules’ acknowledged and denied sexuality that it had no power to disturb him.

“Maybe you want to get beat up because you feel guilty about something,” said Cal. “Maybe that’s what scares you about it.”

“What have I got to be guilty about?”

“Uh, I dunno. Being a huge dick? Skipping Group because you have a hot older boyfriend now?” Cal sulked (cute, cute!). “No, I’m joking. Childhood stuff, obviously. But I would say that. But if you feel guilty, you’re perceiving the fantasy as a form of self-harm. And your physical body knows this and abhors it – the physical body doesn’t want to die. Your body can’t commune with your brain, because your brain is responsible for pumping all this anti-life energy into your body – so you’re suffering.”

“Do you think about hurting yourself ever?” Jules asked, trying to cut through all the somatherapy. “You to yourself?”

“Yes,” said Cal, who leaned so well into Jules’ cuts. “Every second of every hour of every day. Are we gonna be late to Nosferatu?”

No – a problem with the reel delayed the screening. The Vampire Lovers slipped in its stead.

Jules and Cal cuddled in the back, not Jules’ normal survey when he attended the movies alone. Jules, who was nineteen years old before he could step foot in a movie theater, now had a favored spot to sit at the movies. Gran did not like indoors that were not her house. If you were indoors in a place that was not your house, if you continuously put yourself in strange indoors, ever closer you came to being indoors at the same time as an anti-social terrorist with a gun, or a brown terrorist with a bomb, and he’d blast your brains all over that structural interior. You would get your fucking brains blown out (Jules, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, looking up headshot victim on the family computer) (Jules, same, looking up Columbine security camera feed on the library computer in Ellettsville) (Jules, copy/paste, rotten.com, computer, The Gaping Maw, at least until 2005 – oh well!) At fourteen, he could cook a thanksgiving meal for five, draft original dress patterns, play Arabesque Op. 18 in C Major on the piano. At fourteen he didn’t know who Shakespeare was, had been shaky on the differences between continent/country, but goddamn did he know the visual aftermath of a suicide bomb. Him, indulging these perversions, while Cal four hundred miles southwest in Missouri, got his brains raped out.

He and Cal held hands. They did this at the movies. Jules and Marty held hands sometimes, while they laid down together. Jules would get the idea Marty was staring hard at the back of his head, trying to figure him out. Jules felt the eyes. He stared hard at the wall, stared intentionally, blinked intentionally until the wall lost meaning, and disappeared. In this same manner he could stare at a movie screen when he could not focus or had seen the film before. His brain was an accordion mirror he could flatten or zigzag until pleasantly refracted, and so deeply separate from his meat, it could chew and swallow details and discard others without his input. In this buzzy state, he held Cal’s hand, and after this state, it would be difficult to stand or speak or be unhappy.

Not like that, it’s not meant to be worn over a bodice. It would ruin the shape. Take it off. Go on!

Oh well…alright.

“You’re not even watching,” Cal hissed.

…the dress you have is very pretty, but it’s for a country girl! In town, you must be more sophisticated…

I’ve never worn anything so daring – what will my father think?

He will enjoy it. All men enjoy such things. But I fear it will be too large for you.

Cal tugged Jules’ hand. Jules was currently Ingrid Pitt, a pale-eyed pair of professional breasts, nude before her vanity mirror. Call tugged harder. Cal was the current topless brunette ingenue in the bedroom, bobbing trimly over her discarded undergarment.

“I’ve seen it before,” Jules said, and put his arm over Cal’s shoulder and pulled him hard within so Cal could embrace him and rest his face in Jules’ neck. The armrests in the old theater did not fold up so this was painful but expected. They’d done this many times before and Jules was not physically capable of feeling guilty – he’d already told Marty a little about his feelings about Cal and the mild physicality that occurred between them. He was not guilty at all, not even over their occasional kisses, which was nothing like the nasty fuck-kissing he did with Marty.

And Marty, in his nice-man voice, had said: I think it’s important for you to have relationships with boys your own age.

Marty, art-wise, was active in New York City from 1980 to 1988, and the bulk of the stuff Jules was really interested in, the videotape trade material, had dematerialized with the closure of the bars and clubs that hosted the libraries. Marty estimated he’d helped produce what would have amounted to 150 films. The leather house where he’d done his training supported itself with this entrepreneurship, filming harder scenes by host request, and occasionally free and clear when the inspiration struck. Three of these tapes survived within Marty’s possession, housed at his real place in San Francisco. Two were so delicate he was afraid to touch them without better technical help – one, a stouter character, a friend had digitized and burned onto a CD, which Marty stored in his laptop. He showed Jules one free afternoon.

Scene: a dim, stone cellar interior that bears a creepy resemblance to Jules’ illegally zoned basement apartment. A powerfully built clone, made more tantalizing by the fact he’s in his thirties, no waify queen this, stands rod-straight, his arms chained and shackled behind his back. His chest thrusts and heaves with desperate breath, and the tendons in his neck bulge against a choke chain –

“This was a huge craze at the time,” Marty explained.

Several cuts focus on the man’s straining wrists, his writhing pectorals, his twitching thighs. In these standing shots, he is filmed only from the top of his pubic line. Thankfully, the man’s huge cock inexorably rises, and cuddles up with his hairless abdomen. A well-timed zoom catches its delicate, minute twitches, its graceful widening –

“Hello,” Jules said, and stroked his throat automatically.

Another man enters the scene, also of powerful build, but with less delineated musculature. His authority is symbolized through the costuming of his large belly; that he wears a beard and a cross-chest harness; that he holds a length of chain which he uses to flog the bound man’s thighs and chest. The man howls –

“This is kind of general to be representing a craze,” Jules observed.

“Wait a second.”

“You have flouted the authority of my house. You have sown chaos and discord among my slaves. You have insulted those you should have adored and respected as masters. For these crimes there can be no trust, and because there can be no trust there can be no forgiveness, and because I cannot forgive you, I sentence you to death!” Panning shot across a table. On the table: a thick rope noose, solemnized by its usage of a traditional hangman’s knot.

“Okay,” Jules said, enlightened.

Protracted hanging scene: Some budget ingenuity is exercised to immerse the viewer in this woeful situation. A long time is spent on the executioner looping the noose through a hook system drilled into the stone ceiling. The condemned man gasps when the choke chain is removed but does not plead his case. The noose is tightened around his thick neck. Several isolated shots are devoted to the rope twitching and tightening under its mortal load. Several shots are devoted to the man’s face and neck, which gradually redden, then purple. Veins stand out on his forehead. His temples throb. The executioner begins to flog his nonetheless dripping cock. The pain improves its size and the victim’s mouth fish-gasps wordlessly, webbed with spit. The cock is, frankly, the bestest, most prettiest cock on the face of the planet –

“He was a pretty popular guy,” Marty said.

The man heralds his own death with a massive comeshot. It arcs away from the terminal body and destroys itself under its own velocity and is instantly lost in poor lighting. The tight length of rope just above the noose knot is abruptly cut with shears and a heavy THUMP is heard –

“I was so angry they cut the rope,” Marty said. “It took me about a hundred tries to tie that damn knot. We could have used it again.”

Jules thought the cross-sensory coupling of the cut rope vanishing from the frame, and the audio of whatever they threw on the floor to represent the load of a dead body had been genuinely good filmmaking, so he just said “Hmmmmm.”

An intimate pan of the victim’s dead muscles, his sweaty, peaceful face, the manly, diminutive eyelashes of his closed lids. Then another abrupt cut, to the sheared noose on the table, laid out in the same position it had been introduced. Cinch.

“There you go,” said Marty. “From ’83 to ’84 all anybody wanted to see was extremely muscular men die and orgasm in simulated hangings. The old guys told me it was a minor fad in the early sixties, and then it came back for a blip.”

“And it was one hundred percent faked?”

“Our standing-up ones were,” Marty answered. “The ones with those real dramatic nooses, yes. We didn’t even stick them on top of a box. He was standing on the floor the whole time.”

“I’m glad there weren’t any shots of his like, feet rising up on tiptoe,” Jules said. He closed the laptop. He enjoyed exercising some minor authority over Marty’s belongings. “You know, from heel to tiptoe and then cutting away the second he’d have to start being lifted into the air. That would get old fast.”

“There was no shortage of people who had actual safety harnesses for hangings,” Marty mused. “Plenty of groups doing the same thing as us could have shown someone strung up and dangling. But I never saw them in videos when this was popular.”

“What was the hanged guy’s name?”

“Robert. Robert, never Bobby. The people who could call him by a nickname called him Bertie. He’s got some land and a cute little piece in the Adirondacks, now. They stay up there in a cabin and live a wholesome life.”

“Him, his piece, and his massive dick.”

“Hey, now.” Marty was currently Big Spoon. It had been pecking rain and humid all day, and it made the hours long. Jules had risen at the crack of dawn to bang out some necessaries in the shop basement, departed for a half-shift at Domino’s, and adjourned to Marty’s sublet, where he liked to lie down after work. Marty’s request for one private get-together a week had been overindulged to the point of becoming unnecessary – Jules gave him most of his free time, now. He skipped Group. He’d stopped volunteering for Roscoe’s various community events. Roscoe, a big fan of the whole Marty/Jules thing, was not snippy about it, though Jules could have gone without the maiden-aunt looks of indulgent approval Roscoe was inclined to grant him, these days. “He was so, so insecure about his dick. He thought he would never find true love because everybody would only love him for how big and beautiful it was.”

Jules cooed sympathetically. It mimicked an unconscious noise he made during a good deep necking, and so well that Marty automatically, helplessly, rooted toward his neck and cheek. Jules stretched away, chastely.

“He was a celibate person when I knew him. He went kind of hypochondriac in the 80’s. A lot of guys did.” Marty, chastened: “He was lucky he was so talented at solo work. But he stayed healthy and now he has some money to enjoy, thank god.”

“Who was the fat dom guy?”

“That,” Marty explained, with some serious acid, “was Magister Gary.” Jules cackled. Marty rolled him over onto his back and held him down by the stomach, as one would with a gentle and forgiving cat. “And he was such a great big fucker. He was such a dick. That execution speech wasn’t scripted. The man really talked like that.”

“You, you, you have sown chaos and discord among –”

“Trainee Martin,” recited Marty, “you have allowed three granules of powder to remain atop the Barkeeper’s Friend canister. This flouting of order cannot stand. Without the caning I am about to visit upon you, these three granules of powder will grow into a mountain of chaos and discord.”

“Aw, you got caned?”

“All the time,” Marty said. “I was a pretty bad kid.”

“That’s sexy.”

“Oh, well, if you say so.” He rolled over on top of Jules, framed his waist between his knees and stared down, his expression an ambiguous sketch. “How would you feel,” he said, after an awkward period of meeting one another’s eyes, “if I said I wanted to film you?”

“I’d say,” Jules answered, “that it sounds like you want to film me.”

Jules pondered if 18, 19, 20, 21, 22-year-old Marty, in accordance with what the old guys at the bar called the good old days of tradition and ritual, had been obligated to give up ass to the corny greyhairs ruling his leatherhouse. He wondered if Marty had to suck dick he wasn’t attracted to, take on unnatural poses, wear stupid outfits, go by generic, boring names (you, boy!) to filigree the dour concept of going through what everybody else around him had gone through to win their cute little leather caps they kept so special in pussy-ass octagonal velvet-lined corrugated boxes.

But I learned more self-control, Marty later hedged. He was careful to balance his acid moments with diplomacy around Jules. I learned some self-control, some useful skills, and I learned what I wanted to prioritize in my own relationships. But, he continued, none of that guarantees you’ll know how to utilize that knowledge, because you’re still a stupid asshole in your early twenties.

Jules inquired how his own attitude would have flown around Magister Gary and the gang.

You would have been thrashed on principle about thirty times a day, Marty answered instantly. Or, Marty edited, you would get away with murder constantly. Fifty-fifty chances.

Jules took this as Marty’s polite way of telling Jules he was also a stupid asshole in his early twenties, and furthermore, that Marty was kind enough to let him get away with murder. Jules wondered how much longer he could possibly get away with the scam he was running on the poor guy.

Being filmed was not a titillating experience. Jules thought there wasn’t much point in filming if you weren’t having real sex, which he and Marty were not having, due to Jules being insane.

Scene: Jules hunkers down on the floor; Marty sets up the camcorder on its three little legs; Jules gives head; Cinch.

During, he felt he was being watched by an annoying little housepet left in the bedroom by accident. Jules hated animals, pettable domestics especially (cats, wary of; dogs, terrified of). What pure relief he felt, though, that this kink was not, after all, another repressed freak thing he’d have to deal with, a sexual curveball he might have failed to control himself under if he’d actually been into it – to survive this relationship, he would have to accept occasional curveballs – but it made him so sad to feel apathetic about sucking cock, the one thing he purely, truly, sincerely loved to do, beside kissing and being kissed.

Imagine! She bled 300 virgins to death!

Thinking back, he had no idea where he’d found the courage to ask Marty to stick his hand down his throat. He never asked again and Marty, wiser than Jules, didn’t bring it up. And Jules never asked for Marty to put the cold towel over his face again, or to rub him all over and scrutinize his body – so revolting and yet so interesting –

“Maybe if we watched it together later –” Marty suggested, elsewhere in the real world where adults like him could survive and kids like Jules could not.

– or to grab him hard at the nape (she hung them up by the wrists and whipped them until their tortured flesh was torn to shreds) or by the hair on the back of head which was the perfect length to be nabbed, (then she clipped off their fingers with shears) to hold his head and fuck his face, slap his face hard if he gagged, (she pricked their bodies with needles) slap him again just for the hell of it, slap him again and again – Jules lost track. Force him, (she tore off their nipples with silver pincers) to purely, truly, sincerely force him to accept real sex, (she pushed white-hot pokers into their faces) to force him to come from it, to force him while he kept his hand around Jules’ neck and tell him if he did not come he was going to choke him out, (and when they parted their lips to scream she shoved the flaming rod into their mouths) he would choke him until he was dead, call him a bitch and a whore and a slut for taking money from Phil and for not waiting patiently for Marty to appear on the horizon before sucking dozens and dozens of other men, to submerge his head underwater while he did all of the above, to thrash him on principle thirty times a day, and more explicitly, to beat him heavily, ass to ankles, with a belt, and a belt only; ass to ankles, then his chest, force him to (she pierced their veins with rusty nails and slit their throats) look.

Jules could tamp down the reams and reams of rape fantasies – rape realities, as they rapidly matured – mounding up and dirtying his affections, but he could not ignore the belt. He could not put away the inevitable fact that if Marty beat him with a belt, he would get hard, and if Marty continued to beat him with a belt, he would come from it without being touched. The belt existed without dressage, existed intrinsically unto itself. Jules snooped through Marty’s drawers once to make sure none of his existing belts lived up to the image – they did not. A problem? He would think it over.

“It was fine,” Jules reassured Marty, after he’d brushed his teeth. “We can try it again later, maybe.” And he looked into the mirror over the closet door to remember if he was wearing clothes.

Their white bodies pumped out young blood over her naked skin, blood, beautiful red blood over her hands and her arms and her legs and her face.

He hadn’t known, not at ten or twelve or sixteen, what Gran had been looking for when she frisked him so thoroughly for signs of adulthood, used all her selectively cogent faculties toward his body and not toward the computer or his movies or his music or his friends. Jules knew he was wising up because he couldn’t look back at those times without marveling at how stupid he had been. And if he had to focus, intentionally focus, not to hear now your chest, now your underarms, now your wee-wee when Marty touched him up kindly, then that was his own fucking fault. Marinelli’s were dumb, poor, fearful, inbred, uncommunicative, but they did not whine. No, they were not whiners. They could not. He would not. Her hands and her arms and her legs and her face. Blood, beautiful red blood. Gag.

One day, Marty would frisk Jules himself and divine what his little sweetheart really deserved. It was in his body, and it was in his pictures and his sound. And there was nothing Jules could do but grow up.

In town, you must be more sophisticated.

#ah! youth!#safeworld #2008

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