Inner Beauty

At the baths, the biggest steroid queen I’ve ever seen: mound upon mound of tanned flesh covered with short dark hair and crowned with the face of a consummate thug. He’s just gross, I agreed along with the boys downstairs. He’s too much.

But when he finds me alone in the upstairs shower, when it turns out he likes me, that’s a whole different story: oh gorilla of my dreams!

His embrace surrounds me on all sides and, overwhelmed, I have no sense of a whole body, only parts. The biceps that cover my sides, the wing-like lats, the chest like a high counter we must lean over to kiss. There is so much of him: he extends on every side as far as I can reach, plush, queen-sized, super-deluxe. A living bed.

He doesn’t break bones or shove me to my knees. He doesn’t make me call him ‘Sir’ or ‘Daddy’. He kisses me and rocks me in his arms. His mouth is fleshy, generous as the rest of him, but his tongue is slender and delicate. The Steroid Queen is a wonderful kisser. I stretch and touch as much as I can reach. His colossal back is covered by small prickly hairs and studded with pimples. He squeezes his arms around me, mashing me between muscle groups. I think of the boa constrictor, the anaconda, his tongue darts into my mouth, I come onto his chest.

I’m not sure what’s acceptable post-coital talk with a Steroid Queen.

“So,” I asked. “Do you pose for calendars?”

He looks away. Obviously the wrong question.

“It sure is a good thing you’re friendly.”

I give up and kiss him some more.

While we’re showering, he tells me I’m handsome and I say, no, I'm not.

This is the Universal Gay Conversation. One man says, “You’re handsome.” The other man says, “It’s the light.”

“I can tell you’re a really good person,” he says. “That’s why you’re handsome.”

This excites me. Unbeknownst to myself, I am radiant with inner goodness!

“The inside is what matters,” the Steroid Queen says. “Even if the outside is, like, totally deformed--if the man is kind, he’s beautiful.”

I’m not sure I’m still flattered.

“But if the guy’s an asshole--” the gorilla queen continues, “then he’s ugly, he’s hideous, no matter how perfect his body is. It’s the inside that matters.”

I launch myself into his arms. Surprised, he staggers a little. Blessed redwood of a man!. I kiss him for a minute or two before I even know why.

I’ve just received a discourse on inner beauty from the man holding the record for the Largest Surface Area in Chicagoland.

We kiss beneath the shower. He holds me tight. It’s the inside that matters.

I believe in inner beauty too, just like he does.

Other people can rely on inner beauty.

We don’t trust it yet.

I want to tell him—and I want him to tell me—that what’s inside will be enough, that it can hold us.

Favor

A man has chained himself to the train tracks!

There’s no arguing with him. He’s not protesting anything.

This is not about Tobacco, not about Big Oil. This is not the War on Fur. Reporters point their mikes to his parched lips. “All I want is to be honest with myself, he says and adds: “I am in favor of everything.”

Sally Pierce ran out of her house for this, the latest disaster. A tragedy to be sure, and still the dishes must be done.

Meanwhile the neighbors beg him to relent, unlock, escape. Already they are preparing statements: The trash went on Wednesday. We are, all of us, very religious people.

But this train cannot be delayed by good intentions: the man is due to be crushed at a quarter past noon. In the meantime, his mouth is full of dust and praise for tube socks and carbon monoxide. He has seen up several ladies’ skirts and praised what he saw there.

A rumbling is heard: the train is coming. The reporters step back and cameras are lifted.

The train: what it is, what it is, what it is.

There’s a man on the tracks who loves the world and he’s not going to stop till it knows.

A small man is alive . . .

A small man is alive in my oven. He’s in there with the pie. He’s rooting for it. An update on dessert is all I want but there he is, plumped up like a baked apple, giving me advice accompanied by small puffs of steam.

“More is possible now,” he says. “Some of it is awful. Not all of it.”

I quickly close the oven door. I get scared when he tells me that I too must learn to cook.

Cheering Up

A tractor tire across your chest and all you have to do is pop it, which you try doggedly to do with your weapon, your tool, a perfectly white plastic spoon.

Human Touch

Grizzly bears walk upright out of the steam, white towels draped over their shoulders. Foxes chase rabbits down the mirrored halls. An octopus hangs from the sling. The tattooed rat tells me there’s a horse in the hot tub. The rat goes quiet; I watch him quiver against the steam room wall. A bear gets him. He disappears without a squeak.

We pride ourselves on being more dangerous than the average petting zoo. It’s eat, or be eaten, on Bear Night at the baths.

An otter glides the length of the pool, water streaming his sleek belly, his eyes closed in private joy. I dive after him and he wakes, becomes an eel. I am a shark. The eel reaches the end of the pool, becomes a newt and darts away. I am a bullfrog. A ‘gator takes a fancy to me, but before his jaw snaps I am gone.

The otter, the eel, the newt in the triple X video lounge is now a cougar cub. I am my very best lion. His warm feline eyes survey me—god how I love him when he is a mammal! He is a gray-footed ferret. He runs. I pad through the maze, roaring and arranging my mane. Has a escaped? Look, a mouse! He starts to scram, I catch his tail. He’s about to be a short snack but now he’s a wolf-dog with ideas of his own. I am a bear, I cling to him as he turns into a tiger. I can be a tiger but his is a snake so I am a mongoose and he is a hornet. I am a wasp. The maze splinters, falls away. He is an elephant, a tusker. I am a mammoth, extinct until recalled by desire. We joust, we tussle, the other animals race away as from a fire. Can I be fire? I blaze, he rises up above me. Steam.

He is gone. He has escaped. A parrot appears above me in the air. He returns to me, green and yellow, in a flash of furious wings. “Make a wish!” he cries. “Make a wish!”

He knows what I want, but I can be a parrot too, and I squawk.

Twin explosions in the air, our other species rush past like books of pictures flipping fast as we try to be at once and in all parts together men.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 22

Is this seemly behavior for a Hindu wife?

Standing naked, black skin gleaming, her garland of human heads drips fresh blood on the lily-white corpse of her husband. Her red tongue sticks out nine miles and even dead he’s got a hard-on.

What’s going on here?

According to the commentator Dasgupta, originally the corpse was just a corpse, a heap of corpses, demons slain in cosmic battle. It is the touch of the Mother’s foot that turns the śava, corpse, into Śiva.

Nothing pure or impure. Nothing holy or profane.

Thus it is said: she herself has become everything,

Yama Kama Curry

As soon as I saw the sign I knew we had to stop. Yama is the Hindu god of death; Kama is the god of sexual desire—the same one that got blasted to cinders by Shiva.

Who could pass up a chance for lunch at the Sex and Death Curry Shop? We lack for nothing here in Tokyoland.

These moments interest me most: when the day offers itself for dream interpretation and appearance is a scratch on the sand beneath which a secret is buried.

Lunch special: fresh homemade curry, 880 yen.

Seven worlds up a river of light empties into a round expanse: in this world it manifests as a spoon.

In this world where absolutely everything matters--was beef the best choice?

There was even a stamp card--to keep us coming back. Excuse me, I can't read Japanese, but I hope to redeem my twelve entrees for entry to Paradise.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 21

When I was six I knew that when I slept a witch came with a rattling shopping cart to carry me off to the land of dreams.

About the afterlife I had no questions. I knew that when I died the shopping cart would ascend through all the invisible worlds, which were stacked one on top of the other, like a multi-storey parking garage.

Actually two parking garages. One was Heaven and the other, Hell. Heaven was on the left. Sometimes. Other times it was on the right.

That was the problem. Heaven and Hell kept switching places. You had to be very careful not to choose the wrong one and wind up in Hell by mistake. Needless to say, Hell put on a good show. At the edges it looked absolutely splendid. What you saw was a woman sipping a cocktail beside a pool full of gentlemen. It wasn’t until too late, until you’d already chosen, that you saw the cocktail was molten lead, the pool was pus and the men were all talkers with big opinions and no genitals. You had to look carefully and try not to get dizzy, as the devil offered you unlimited free pinball machines.

Heaven, on the other hand, was honest and humble, and generally lost out.I looked, and waited, and tried to decide. Meanwhile, my shopping cart kept going higher.

Where was I headed? I hadn’t a clue. Only the cart knows where it is going, up higher and higher, someplace unimaginable.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 20

In this dream I look out the window of a cabin into a snowstorm. I see only trees and I know that I am very far from any road or town. The snow deepens; I will be trapped for many days. This is when I ought to pray, I think. Just then a man steps out from behind a tree. He is a tall broad-shouldered woodsman, and naked except for a ski cap.

Snow falls on his fine hairs and his prick points to the sky.

I went to the wilderness to be good, to clear my head. All day I sat with my holy books and good intentions. All day I burned with hopeless desire. He has found me, even here.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 19

Wouldn’t it be nice, if everyone just went ahead and did what they were going to do anyway—but this time without beheading any cats?