The boys ride again. The boys from the Bird section of Northwest. From Stærevej, Swallow Street. The boys from the block. There was a time that would have made me happy. Us, back together.
Your first friends are your best, you’ll never have better. That thought warmed me while I was in prison. The thought that someday we would meet again, Christian in a shirt and tie, Nabil who had finally figured out what he wanted to be, a driving instructor maybe, pointing at a blue Audi parked and shining in the sun. I would pull out my wallet, show photos of a girl in her late twenties, a pretty girl. Another photo of two kids. Maybe just a boy who looked like his father. We would sit in a café, toast with beer. Talk about old times, laugh, and feel just a little bit ashamed of all the shit we did. Boys’ pranks.
It’s still quiet in the car, no one says a word. No one laughs. This wasn’t how I pictured our reunion.
Maria on the screen. She’s dancing without music. She pulls the front of her dress down, gives a shot of her breasts. Dances some more, shows her ass, striptease. She’s much better than the first girl on the tape, and though she almost falls a few times from her heels, she’s always showing a naughty smile.
“Now you’re going to suck my cock.” The voice comes from the man behind the camera. Maria grabs a pillow from the sofa and lays it on the floor. I would never say it out loud, but she does it so naturally that this can’t be her first film. The camera shakes and turns upside down a moment when it’s taken off the tripod. Then the man films down on himself. Films Maria with her knees on the pillow, reaching out for the zipper of a pair of dark blue jeans, pulling a half-stiff cock out of the gap in a pair of boxers.
The phrase for this is POV. Point of view. A subcategory of gonzo. I’m not trying to remember this industry lingo. But the words pop into my head, and I’m ashamed to think about them while Christian’s little sister gives head on the screen. If I hadn’t seen her in the hospital bed this would be hot. I try to hold the image of her in my mind as the little girl going to confirmation class in Grøndal Church. Nabil and I took turns following her there when Christian couldn’t. Because we thought it was too far and because we knew the ugly side of the neighborhood better than she did. Knew boys like us. She laughed and said that we were being silly, that she could walk there just fine herself. But she never refused us. I think she was proud to have an older boy escort her.
Now she’s lifted the guy’s member and is licking it underneath, also his balls. Christian still says nothing. His face dead, eyes unblinking. If you didn’t know him you would think he doesn’t feel a thing. It’s impossible to look more indifferent than he does right now, to show less emotion. Christian was always the toughest one of us three, the one always willing to go the farthest.
Being tough was something he had to learn and learn fast, because he was an outsider. If he had continued his suburban ways he would have been beaten up. And beaten and beaten and beaten again. So he turned tough and he was good at it.
With his free hand the man grabs Maria’s neck, jerks her throat around a few times. She makes a half-choked sound, as if she’s about to throw up.
More fumbling with the camera, he sets it back on the tripod, zooms in so it’s filming the sofa.
Then he steps into the picture. Still only his upper body and part of his legs.
The condom he puts on is pink. It’s hard to hear what he’s saying but it sounds like: Doggy.
Maria kneels on the edge of the sofa, sticks her ass in the air. He lowers himself onto her. First time we see his face. A half profile, turned away from the camera. He has light-colored, curly hair. He’s thin, the way you’re thin if you’re badly fed as a child.
“I think…” Nabil says, but doesn’t finish the sentence.
The guy’s ass moves up and down. Dimples.
She says: Fuck me.
She says: Fuck me, it’s so good when you fuck me.
She says: Give me your cock, give me your big cock. Oh God.
She moans. An artificial moan. One she’s heard in other porno films and she’s imitating.
That’s how horny sounds.
“I’ve seen him before,” Nabil says.
The man on the screen turns Maria around on the sofa. Bends her legs backward as if she were a folding chair. Her head is lying on the sofa’s arm, feet next to her ears. He presses his hands into the hollows of her knees and starts banging away. She still moans, tries to sound horny, but it’s getting harder and harder for her to make it sound natural. Now more scream than moan.
He holds his hand over her mouth. “Be quiet,” he says. “I have neighbors.”
“Almost sure I’ve seen him,” Nabil says.
I think we’re all shocked when the guy on the screen hits Maria the first time. A hard smack with the back of his hand that leaves a big red mark on her cheek. She looks up at him, surprised. Then she tries to smile again. As if it was kinky, something she liked. “You want punished?” he asks. “You want punished?”
“Yes,” she says. “Yes, yes, yes.”
The next few slaps aren’t as hard as the first one. Each time she tries to moan and cry out, Yes.
Then he starts using his fists.
I turn off the sound. Had hoped that these images would be easier to watch without sound. That they would be less real. Like old film, silent film. But it makes no difference.
It’s still Maria lying on the sofa. The man on top of her is punching her in the side, in the ribs. Several times in the stomach while he holds her by the throat so she can’t straighten up. Meanwhile his cock is still driving in and out of her.
He looks over at the camera a few times. Like to make sure it’s still taping. That it’s picking up everything he’s doing.
“I know I’ve seen him before.” Nabil is mostly talking to himself. The man on the screen slams a fist into Maria’s mouth. Her lip splits.
“I can’t take this anymore.” Christian is holding his hand over his mouth, the words slip out between his fingers. “You’ll have to watch the rest of it. You have to watch the rest of it, watch everything he does to her. And turn the volume up. I want to hear what he said. Get all of it.”
Christian walks out into the hallway. I turn the volume up when he’s out of the room.
On the screen the guy is covering Maria’s nose and mouth. She’s fighting off his hands. He lets go, and when she gasps for air he punches her in the side. It should stop now. But it doesn’t. He keeps going. It goes on and on. It gets rougher. Her eyes start to lose focus.
He slugs her a few more times, then he pulls out and gets up.
I hear a lighter somewhere off screen, a cigarette being lit. Then his naked feet on the hallway floor. He pisses long and hard, a small waterfall the camera’s mike captures. Maria is lying just like he left her. The girl on the sofa, I say to myself, just a girl on the sofa. She could be dead. Then an arm moves. The girl’s arm. Slowly she turns on her side. Stands up with great difficulty. Hobbles a half-step before she falls off screen, lying somewhere below the camera. The camera films an empty sofa and a framed poster on the wall above. Two dolphins jumping out of the water, the full moon is so big that their snouts almost seem to touch it. Then Maria comes back in the picture. Her head hangs down halfway to her chest, she’s sobbing very weakly. Falters a few steps forward on shaky legs. The sound of a toilet flushing. His naked feet on the hallway floor. Maria stops. Lifts her head just a little, eyes staring at a spot behind the camera, the doorway. It feels like minutes, not seconds. Her staring, the feet approaching. Then the sound of a cell phone. And the feet walk away again. Out into the kitchen, I’m guessing. He says hi, hey, how you doing. His voice cuts through clearly. First they talk soccer. A Brøndby match that didn’t go exactly the way it should have.