18
Dr. E__ asks What is the nature of your fantasies, Quentin? & I am blank & silent blushing like in school when I could not answer a teacher’s question nor even (everybody staring at me) comprehend it. Saying finally, so quiet Dr. E__ had to cup his hand to his ear to hear, I guess I don’t have any—what you call “fantasies,” Doctor. I don’t know.
19
At the time of BUNNYGLOVES, RAISINEYES, BIG GUY I did not have access to my caretaker’s quarters of course nor the cellar at 118 North Church. Only my van & the two-room place on Twelfth Street. The tub in the bathroom.
My procedures were crude & I was continually thwarted in my experiments. A radio had to be played loud, heavy-metal sound on WMWM out of Muskegon & sometimes fucking ads would come on, the intrusion of some stranger’s voice at a delicate moment. & if my hands shook or if I was ’luded-out & could not perform as I bid my hands to do like in a dream when you’re moving through glue. & if I got TOO EXCITED TOO FAST. Oh shit.
BUNNYGLOVES who I had such hope for, him being the first, convulsed like a madman when I pushed the ice pick at the angle in the diagram through the “bony orbit” above the eyeball (or whatever it was, splintering bone) & screamed through the sponge I’d shoved & tied in his mouth actually snapping the baling wire securing his ankles but he did not regain consciousness dying in twelve minutes while I ran cold water on his face to wash away the blood & revive him. My first ZOMBIE—a grade of fucking F.
RAISINEYES lived for seven hours in the tub sometimes almost conscious & snoring or rattling his breath so I thought IT’S WORKING! IT’S WORKING! MY ZOMBIE! but I had to lift the eyelid of his remaining eye (I only “did” one) & secure it with tape, it never kept open by itself. I would move his arms & legs to get the circulation going. & handled & squeezed his cock (which remained limp & clammycool like a chicken’s innards) but NOTHING HAPPENED. & then it was over & SHIT WHAT A DOWNER.
BIG GUY was most promising for by then I believe I had learned to use the ice pick skillfully, it’s a skill you learn with practice, using a hammer like Dr. Freeman said instead of, what I’d been doing before, just pounding with the flat of my left hand, to drive the ice pick up into the “frontal lobe.” Also, BIG GUY for a part-nigger part-Huron Indian drop-out college basketball player-junkle-dealer from Lansing was weird, he was so healthy, I mean looked healthy, his hair thick & glossy-black & his bones so long & hard, his muscles, flat stomach & chest hair & his penis a length of blood sausage, his skin a deep rich plum-black I was crazy to lick with my tongue & my teeth to gnaw. Even his toes, his big toes!—JUST CRAZY FOR HIM. Yet BIG GUY let me down like the others for he never regained what they call consciousness after the operation & like RAISINEYES was breathing these deep shuddering snoring gasps after I yanked out the sponge thinking he was choking on it. Hey? Hey c’mon? You’re O.K. c’mon open your eyes? But the left eye I’d gone into with the ice pick was shot & the right eye wasn’t much better, rolled back in his head like it wasn’t even an eye but something else. BIG GUY lived maybe fifteen hours I think dying as I was fucking him in the ass (not in the tub, in my bed) to discipline him as a ZOMBIE & I only comprehended he was dead when during the night waking needing to take a piss I felt how cold he was, arms & legs where I’d slung them over me & his head on my shoulder to cuddle but BIG GUY was stiffening in rigor mortis so I panicked thinking I would be locked in his embrace!
My first three ZOMBIES—all F’s.
Yet Q__ P__ did not give up hope. Nor have I to this day.
20
HOW A DUMB ACCIDENT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
Supposed to meet a guy, young Wayne State kid, at the fountain at Grand Circus Park, downtown Detroit, it was a hot muggy summer night seven, eight years ago & Q__ P__ in the city for the weekend alone & fresh-faced amid the winos around the pigeonshit fountain strung out on Thunderbird & heroin some of them so far gone you’d mistake a young guy for old, a white guy for black, eyes bloodshot or filmed over in mucus & skin gray-moldery like an exhumed corpse. & this was the time I think this was the time when I was taking a course in learning to be a real estate agent in Mt. Vernon, my big sis Junie’s idea & it was a reasonable one, just didn’t work out. Maybe I’d been drinking too but I wasn’t drunk, for sure I am never what’s called DRUNK but steady on my feet & steady-eyed, steely. & I was looking pretty damn good in my tight jeans & palomino-skin jacket worn for reasons of style despite the 90° heat, my hair like wings oiled & combed back from my face curving just under my ears. Just come from sleeping & waking dazed not knowing where I was at first in the balcony of one of the big old palatial movie theaters on Woodward FIERY BOY LOVE & FORBIDDEN ECSTASIES. & now it was midnight & thrumming from electricity though Woodward & Gratiot were practically deserted. & I waited for my friend, & waited, & he never came & I was pissed wasting much of a Saturday night & went to some bars on Grand River & must’ve gotten drunk & afterward walking along the sidewalk I was grabbed from behind by two or three unknown assailants, might’ve been more of them standing watching, a nigger gang?—just teenagers but big & strong & laughing-elated doped to the eyeballs throwing me down like it’s a football tackle onto the filthy pavement & KICK KICK KICKING yelling Where’s your wallet, man? Where’s that wallet? I’d just seen a cop-cruiser pass through the intersection but nobody came to my rescue, if there were witnesses on the street they didn’t give a shit just walked away, or stood laughing at whitey getting pounded, his glasses broken & nose bloodied & the more he squirmed like a fish on a hook the more the kids laughed & yelled ripping my palomino-hide jacket & got my wallet within seconds but still laughing, chanting Where’s your wallet, man? Where’s that wallet? like these were words to some nigger music which maybe they were. & I’m sobbing & trying to say No! don’t hurt! oh hey please! no, NO! like not even a child but a baby, an infant might, & I’m pissing my pants & when it’s over & they’re running away I don’t even know it I’m still sobbing, trying to hide my face, double up like a thick writhing worm trying to protect my insides with my knees, & a long time afterward somebody comes over to peer at me & ask, Man, you alive? You want some ambulance or somethin’?