86'd: A Novel - By Dan Fante Page 0,35

before allowing the head to pop from his mouth.

Then, while she was sucking on me, Sidney dropped down and started tonguing my asshole. Deeply. Then around the rim and back inside again.

A minute or two later, when I came, it was like a planet exploding against the sun. Boom boom boom.

Portia held my jizz in her mouth until she could lean across to Sidney and pass my cum through her lips to his. They tongue-kissed while swallowing my load.

When I opened my eyes the two of them were cutting out lines with the last of the coke. I reached for the rum bottle and sipped from it instead.

When Portia offered me more I refused.

She was smiling. “Did you enjoy that, dear Bruno? Am I back to meeting your needs?”

The words that came from me were a mistake. I was drunk and stoned and stupid and not conscious of the damage I was doing—or if I was I didn’t care. But saying what I said made me realize I had just pronounced my own death sentence. “Your guy Sidney is a master at sucking cock.” I said. “He’s better than you. Blowjobs should be Sidney’s life’s work.”

Portia was off the bed and slipping into her panties and shirt. “I’m tired now, Bruno,” she hissed. “I’d like to go to bed. Leave, please.”

I struggled up the stairs leaving the two of them in the chauffeur’s room. I knew she was pissed off, but in my mind she had it coming. Anyway, I didn’t care. I’d figure out what to do in the morning.

When I awoke it was because daylight was blasting through my curtains and I badly needed to pee. It was just after dawn and my head was pounding and Jimmy began yammering away: Good morning, asshole! Have fun last night? So it turns out that now you’re a faggot too. Just swell. You don’t care what you stick your dick in, do you? By this time next year you’ll be wearing lipstick and working downstairs on Selma with the rest of your swish pals.

I began to hear noise downstairs too. Real voices. The front door slamming shut.

As I tried to get up, swinging my legs toward the floor, there was a sudden sharpness of pain in my groin, a pulling at my thigh and testicles.

Slipping back down on the bed to a sitting position I tried my best to clear my head. That’s when I realized the problem: My penis and balls were stuck to my leg and some substance—something hard and dry—was covering my crotch area. My pubic hair was a thickened mesh of cemented steel wool. I tried pulling my dick away from the gathered skin of my testicles. It was impossible.

A foot away on the nightstand I saw a folded piece of yellow legal paper. On top of the paper was an empty squeezed tube of glue. Krazy Glue.

Unfolding the note I read the message:

Good-bye Bruno. You’re insane and I despise you. You are a monster and a prick and a son of a bitch!

P.

The emergency surgery to remove my superglued penis and testicles from my thigh lasted two and a half hours. After first trying an array of solvents and stinging chemicals it was determined that nothing short of cutting away the skin would do any good. I had a choice, the doctor said. I could lose the flesh from my cock or they could cut away the tissue from the leg.

Because I had alcohol in my blood the guy refused to put me under. I was numbed but fully conscious as I watched him sweating, cutting away at my thigh, removing a seven-inch-long patch of tissue. Part of the urethra opening at the tip of my cock had been glued shut too. An incision was made there to reopen the hole so I could pee properly again. In all, sixty-one stitches were needed.

In my room after the surgery and when the meds wore off and the pain began, I started to shake. I was jonesing in alcohol withdrawal, a tonic-clonic reaction. My body was out of control and the tremors were getting worse all the time.

I rang for the nurse. When she came in and saw me shaking and sweating the on-call doctor was summoned and they hooked me up with a diazepam IV. Half an hour later I was okay.

fifteen

The towering white-haired figure that stood in the hospital doorway blocking out most of the light was part man, part water buffalo. David Koffman had