What's that fucking song say? "Don't bury me at all; just pickle my bones
in alcohol." No way. I can't even stand this crap, though sometimes I need
the oblivion. Tastes awful, too. I mean, sure, I learned to drink anything;
that's part of my job. And this is real vodka; not some imported Stoli piss
but the true potato-mash, veggy-trash rotgut I got off a broke Russian
seaman in exchange for some good whiskey. This is the real thing. Tastes
like shit.
So why aren't I at least drinking something like mellow aged scotch?
Because I hate myself, maybe. Hell if I know. Because this tastes like the
very essence of childhood, and anything else is a lie.
Scotch pretties it up. Wine pretends to be sunny, all French countryside
and dancing peasants. Beer is hearty Germans in leather shorts. But vodka,
vodka's nothing but what it is: garbage. Fermented throwaways.
Fuck it, I should at least have gone to a bar tonight. I could have tried to
pretend I wasn't alone there. But this crappy little room is real, like the
vodka. A mean little bed; a table with one leg taped; a folding chair that's
starting to lose one hinge. And one crippled little Russian loser.
Oh God, it hurts. Not the arm—well, yes, that hurts too, it always hurts,
but at least the vodka numbs it a little. But the deeper pain, the wanting,
nothing helps.
I've started to dream about them, these rooms. You know? I dream about
waking up in these places and I can't remember what town I'm in, or what
mission I'm on, and maybe there's no door or the room starts getting smaller
or I find the door but there's nothing outside it but black emptiness, or a
grave, or a crowd of people laughing.
Or the door opens and I'm in the city, I can't remember what city, but it's
all there, all normal, sidewalks and stores and pigeons, and newspaper
blowing down filthy alleys. All except the people. I'll be walking
somewhere, and I can't seem to find where I'm trying to go, but there's
no one on the street, no one in the parks, no one in those empty cars. And
I keep trying to find where I'm going, but it's getting darker, and there's
no streetlights and maybe it's starting to rain. But then lights go on in
the windows, and I can hear voices in the rooms, so I try to go in there,
I pry at locked doors or go up dark stairs or even climb up the walls, and
I can see people in there moving and talking, whole families together, or
pairs of lovers laughing, but when I open the door or break the window,
there's nothing there but dust. Dust or my little room again. And I have to
keep going.
Fuck! Bad enough to dream when you're asleep, asshole. Don't waste good
vodka (hah!) on those dreams when you're awake. Think of something else.
But not people. Not hands that hit when you want to be held. Not the icy
scientist in her lab coat who didn't have time to be your mother. Not the
alcoholic wreck you lived with when she was busy. Was he really your father?
Fuck, who cares. You were a mistake and a throwaway, and she never wanted
you even after the old man died, never wanted you until you were old enough
to give to her bosses like a bit of second-hand trash.
How the hell can you even imagine being held? Not like you know anything
about it. God, asshole, you're crying. Be a man. Hell, be a woman like your
mother. Be as cold as a Moskva winter and stop sniveling over some warm
touch you've never felt.
Oh, they touched you. She was always careful, as if she were handling
delicate microscope slides. And old Yuri-papa would touch you nicely
sometimes when he was sober. But nothing real, nothing like what you
want from... From him. Don't think about him.
It's not sex. I mean, sure, I like sex. I'm good at it, too. And I'd give
my other arm to fuck him just once, or oh God be fucked by him. But what I
really want is love. And that makes me the stupidest asshole who ever took
a shit.
Damn it! Just go get laid, Lexya. You've got the money and you've got the
skills; you could pick up someone at the nearest bar in half an hour. And
with your training, you could probably even stay hard when they first saw
your arm and tried not to throw up.
Blow job in an alley, that's the way. Nothing open but your fly, nobody
seeing anything that mattered.
Nobody touching you anywhere but there. Cold alleys, cold hands, cold soul.
You've been there, and it's like those rooms. You could have nightmares
about those alleys and the mouth throating you fading into the night wind.
Peskow, at least he'd been a friend, if you wanted to call it that. Sex as
pragmatic as your professional relationship, and as ultimately remote.
You'll never know what goes on behind those eyes; you'll never feel his
hand on you for anything but immediate stimulation or an act of violence.
But no warmth. Hell, it wouldn't be enough even if he was the snuggling
type; he's not the one you want. The one you need. The one your bones ache
with needing.
You know where your hearthfire is. You know—No. Don't think about him.
Damn it, that's enough.
Quite sniveling in your foul-tasting vodka and think about something else.
Fuck, what's worth thinking about in your whole fucking life, loser? You
had the childhood you deserved; you have the job you earned. And you have
his hate, which you also earned.
Something else. Think about something else. Fuck, you got a college degree
on your way to that FBI career. There must be something there to think
about.
Classes. Books. That sociology professor who talked about primate tribe-
families and how the great apes behave towards each other. That's real too,
that's what's under all our pretty plans and illusions; the stinking apes
who shit and fuck and sleep.
And touch.
The professor showed the tapes. Bare-assed fur trash loping around,
squabbling, hitting each other, squealing. The mothers clinging to their
babies; the adults sitting around grooming each other. Whole tribes like
that, touching and holding, hands smoothing arms, scratching backs, picking
off vermin, pulling each other in for a little wrestle or a roll in the
jungle grass. Touching. Hey, guys, I'm back with some food. Hey, come here,
your fur looks messy. Hey, good to know you're here. Hey, lay off my woman
or I'll bite you. You're ours; we're yours; let me touch you and you can
touch me. Warm hands, a familiar smell, reassurance, comfort, love—
Ah God, it hurts—
The tapes also showed a loner. Psychotic old bachelor; apparently he'd
killed somebody's kid and the whole group chased him off. The guy kept
trying to come back and join them again, but they'd just yell and throw
trash and chase him off.
You could see on the tape that he wasn't healthy. Not enough food, not
enough sleep, and no touching at all. He was bone-thin and palsied by the
last time you see him, and you don't even need the taped voice telling you
that he got caught and eaten a few nights later by some half-assed scavenger
who couldn't have taken on one of those mothers alone, much less the whole
tribe.
Oh, fuck it! Can't you stop whining, Aleksei Yur'ich? I don't want to listen
to you anymore. I don't want—
I want—
Oh God I want him. I want—I mean, he doesn't even have to hold me. If I
could even just hold him, touch him, give him some comfort when this razor-
edged maze they stuck him in gets him down. I just want to hold him in my
arms, head on my shoulder while I stroke his hair and whisper that
everything will be all right.
It would be too much to wish for, his touching me. Those long, scholarly
fingers; the heat of that lean body—But if I could just touch him, just
run my hand over his, share a little warmth with him. Maybe kiss his bowed
head secretly as it rested on my shoulder, brown silk on my mouth and the
smell of his scalp. Run a daring hand down his cheek for just one moment,
feeling the soft down and the living skin, the truth of him. Hold him in my
arms and feel him breathe. Feel his heart beat.
I'm losing it. I'm already crazy, I know that, but now I'm losing it.
There's no point in this. You're not gonna get the chance to hold him. He
hates you. You earned that hate over and over. And there's no forgiveness
in the world big enough for what you've done to him.
Be nice if you could lie to yourself about it, tell yourself he really
wants you through all that hate. But you know better. When you kissed him—
pathetic little fuck that you are—you saw it then in his cold eyes. There's
nothing there for you.
This icy razor, this loneliness, this is yours. It's real. It's all you've
earned, and it's all you're going to get. Anything else is a lie, and the
gods laugh at you for wanting it.
And that wish, that heart-dream of warmth and holding, that's crippling you
more than any fire-heated knife. And it hurts more, and it's going to kill
you.
So quit drinking this ox-piss, because it doesn't help at all. Go stagger
around the edge of the tribe so they can throw things at you again. Or limp
off into the jungle alone and wait for the little trash that'll tear you
down and gut you before you're even dead.
Or use that 9-mil. Or go knock on his door and let him hit you, shoot you,
whatever. But no, he's one of the good guys. He won't even finish it; he'll
turn you in and walk away while they lock you alone in another little room,
no vodka and no door, while you wait for the one who's sure to come, just
like you've come for others.
Oh God, it hurts—
Hell, if you're really lucky, maybe it'd be Peskow. If he does it with his
hands, not with a gun, he'll be the last person who touches you. One quick
blow with steady gloved hands, no more.
No more.
Lone Primate
by Nonie Rider
Christ, I've got to stop drinking this crap. I've got to stop drinking, or
it's gonna get out of hand and get me killed. And if I want that, the
Beretta 9-mil would be a lot faster. But the grave's so cold. You lie there
alone forever under your six feet of clay. Or your pond muck, sand dune,
leafmould, concrete, or bags of garbage, depending on who does you and
where.
