Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,7
show him more.
Now the sorcerer runt knows that he’s got the kid. He bestows an enchanted black robe on the boy and crowns him with a velvet fez adorned with the seven precious jewels. Bartholomew is told that if he truly desires entry into the deaf wizards’ magical cult he must first make a gesture to prove his commitment, trust, and worthiness. A five-quart jug of yellow, sweet-smelling antifreeze is materialized by the elf, who demands that Bartholomew let his dog Bugs drink from it.
But the kid isn’t stupid. He knows that if Bugs licks up the engine coolant it will poison him and he will die. The sorcerer says, ‘Not so,’ that he personally can cast a protective spell that will render the dog immune. This is an initiation. Bartholomew must trust him.
The boy is afraid and hesitant. The light on the wizard’s glowing button is fading and when it vanishes he and all his magic will be gone forever. Bartholomew must have faith, act immediately or forever lose his power…
I couldn’t make up my mind how to end the deal. Does the kid get chumped by the wizard and let his dog die? Is the wizard a friend, a kind of guardian angel, or a malevolent, pernicious little fuck manipulating the boy to acquire the soul of his spaniel? I came up with two or three endings but found them all deficient. Frustrated, becoming pissed off, I decided to take a break and let the answer come by itself. For the next half-hour I lay on my bed with the window open, smoking cigarettes, sticking my toe in the cloth circle at the end of the shade cord, pulling the blind up and down, permitting my brain to go to other things.
A mistake.
Soon it was assuring me that my story was puke, worthless cockshit. Another moron idea I’d left incomplete. A failure.
I got up and went to my writing table, looking down at the pages and pages of words. It was true. I saw the misspellings, the hurried errors, my hopeless, inaccurate punctuation. Slobbo! I flung the pages in the direction of the trash can. I was talentless. No wonder I drank and let queers suck my cock. Loser! Stuck with no job, near penniless, walled in like a cockroach surrounded by a rooming house full of junkies and perverts. I was finally where I really belonged.
I tried to stop it. To distract myself and give myself something to do, I went out to the market for cigarettes and Fretoz but returned with a half-gallon jug of Mad Dog wine.
In my room, unscrewing the cap, I let the first few wallops hit my stomach. I knew instantly I’d be okay. I’d done the right thing. Fuck the story. What mattered now, the important thing, was to defend against the noise.
Around dark I was drunk and going in and out of awareness with a crazed need for sex. I walked the ten blocks to the pornos in Times Square. I remember being in the back row of the theater, the guy next to me loosening my pants and letting them slide to the floor. He sucked me off.
A while later, another guy, a kid, got on his knees on the filthy carpetless concrete, licking my balls and fingering my asshole, massaging my cock with his hand until I was ready to come. Forcing his head down on my dick as far as I could, I blasted off. Hours later I remember being in a hotel room with an older guy - a black man wearing a tie. More wine. More sex.
The run lasted three days after that. When I finally sobered up my mind began mercilessly replaying some of the flashes, the unquenchable need for sex and depravity. The thoughts evoked so much disgust that I had to stop them - shut them off - there was a terrible need to kill myself; cut or stab my flesh. To die immediately.
I had to sell some things to pay my rent and the other bills. Family stuff. My mother’s carved-ivory family heirloom scrimshaw pillbox that one of her uncles had brought around Cape Horn to San Francisco Bay in 1850; a ring bearing her father’s German coat of arms, a gold chain my father’s father, Nick, had kept his pocket watch on. Handmade in Abruzzi. The chain brought in the most. Two hundred dollars.
Chapter Five
DURING THE NEXT few weeks I went to work for another office temp place that I