The Grand Ballast (9 page)

Sibyata slipped from her
bar and gripped Roulette’s thighs, her lips around his cock. The
crowd cheered. That was all Bode was allowed to see of their
performance, because then he entered, led in naked by LJ, who
dragged him toward a raised platform. Bode went to his knees there,
and LJ grabbed his hair, rubbed the front of his pants against
Bode’s cheek. Bode made an exaggerated show of resisting, trying to
escape but being drawn back each time like a yo-yo, until LJ’s dick
was slamming the back of his throat. The music flared as Kayak
walked by on his hands, his body folded in half, his own dick in
his mouth, his hairy ass spread wide.

The fanfare ended as
suddenly as it began. The music stopped, silver and blue spotlights
on each frozen performer, Kilroy’s voice, deep and backed by a
grin, floating through the speakers. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome
to the Grand Ballast. You’ll see wonders…” A sigh through the
microphone, like a hiss of excitement. “You’ll see beauty.” Someone
in the audience yelled something, but Bode didn’t hear what.
“You’ll see, ladies and gentlemen and those who don’t wish to be
ladies or gentlemen and those who were once considered ladies but
now are gentlemen and those women who have ceased to behave like
ladies and those men who are not gentle… You’ll see what we
truly
are
.”

Kilroy spoke the last word
with a violent relish, so that it seemed ripped from his throat and
fluttered through the air.

After that, Bode waited
backstage under the watchful eye of Mr. Lein. Kayak’s act was
first, then Roulette and Sibyata. Then the snake charmer. Then LJ
and Bode. Kilroy often participated in Bode and LJ’s act—though
there were some nights he stood aside and watched. The others were
also brought on for Bode’s act, so that he could demonstrate his
ability to suck or get fucked by multiple people at once. Sibyata
had a massive blue dildo she strapped on for the
purpose.

Tonight would be Bode’s
first performance without the Haze, and he was anxious, convinced
he wouldn’t know what to do. The Haze wreaked havoc on awareness,
but made obedience simple. Under its spell, Bode wouldn’t have been
able to describe his routine to anyone, but he could perform it
easily. Tonight he would just have to count on muscle memory to get
him through.

At last, the snake charmer
finished, and Mr. Lein pushed Bode toward the entrance to the ring.
Kilroy said something into the microphone about the Grand Ballast’s
star attraction. About beauty and skill. A cheer went up. Mr. Lein
slapped Bode’s ass. “Get on in there.”

Bode stepped into the ring.
Curled his toes in the fine sawdust and blinked in the harsh
lights. He looked up at the shadowy top of the tent and saw the
dust caught in beams. The trapeze rigging high above. He looked
down at his footprints. At Kilroy’s boots. This crowd’s murmur was
gentle. So different from the roar during the other
acts.

The music started. The
spectators hushed. Bode looked at his feet.

It struck him suddenly
that he was
in control
. If he chose not to slide his toe that first inch—if he
chose to move in a different direction instead, chose to move out
of time with the music, he could change this show. He didn’t have
to be a prisoner to choreography, to Kilroy.

But precisely on the beat,
he moved his toe. He began a dance that took him spinning and
leaping, kicking up falls of dust. He glided in and out of the
light, trying to move gracefully in spite of the uneven ground. LJ
waited for him in the center of the ring. His mind flickered, and
he wasn’t sure if he was doing the right thing—if he was doing some
dance from long ago. A moment later, he saw Kilroy walking toward
him with long, deliberate strides.

Should he stop
moving?

He wanted to get away, more
than he wanted to follow the music. It took a moment to convince
his body to cooperate, but once he took the first intentional
misstep, the music’s spell snapped and he staggered away from
Kilroy, nearly falling in the dust.

Kilroy lunged for him, and
Bode whirled, raced, no beauty and all fear. Kilroy barreled into
him. Knocked him to the ground. The crowd cheered and rumbled.
Stamped in the bleachers
.
Kilroy whistled for LJ.

A moment later, LJ was in
Bode’s mouth, jerking and thrusting. LJ lost his hard-on partway
through, and Kilroy made some joke that guarded the edge of his
temper and took over fucking Bode’s mouth. He seemed just about
ready to call the other performers into the ring, when someone in
the audience shouted, “Clock the whore.” Laughter. Something
slapped wetly against Bode then
fumped
in the dust, and he thought
for a moment he was bleeding; he could feel liquid running down his
side. He lifted his lips from Kilroy’s cock.

A tomato lay in the ring,
side-bashed and leaking and coated in dust. Bode stared at it.
“Keep going,” Kilroy whispered fiercely, pulling his
hair.

Bode glanced up at Kilroy.
Kilroy’s face was red, contorted. He held Bode by the neck. Choked
his mouth open and stuck his whole hand in, rummaging around Bode’s
teeth and tongue, pushing back into his throat. Bode
gagged.

Kilroy pulled his fingers
out as Bode vomited onto the sawdust. Dragged Bode to his feet and
drew the ring stick from his belt. Struck him with it once, twice.
Bode didn’t even feel where the thorns cut. He struggled hard,
ignoring the pain. People applauded at first. But as the struggle
went on, a loud jeer filled the tent. “He’s got a mind of his own
tonight,” Kilroy called to the crowd.

Someone threw a bag of
popcorn. It hit Bode with a
thwack
and spilled across the dust.

Another sharp, wet slap,
and Bode turned to see Kilroy’s face dripping red-green goo. Kilroy
blinked. Swiped the tomato from his eyes and glared at Bode
furiously. The audience’s laughter rose.

Bode looked into the crowd
and spied a squat man with a blond crew cut, holding a caramel
apple by its stick. Kilroy must have seen too, because he yanked
Bode to his feet and held him like a shield. The apple hit Bode’s
chest and bounced off, leaving a sticky smear of caramel on his
throbbing skin. It landed in the dirt with the stick pointing
up.

Kilroy kept Bode in front
of him and shouted into the stands: “I agree he makes a beautiful
target.”

More people threw things—a
soda bottle, a paperback—but missed. Then, amid the shouting and
the laughter, a woman’s voice: “Aw, let him go! He looks
scared.”

A rage erupted in Bode
unlike any he’d felt before. He shoved Kilroy aside and raced
toward the bleachers. People jerked to the side, parting for him,
letting out cries of surprise and fear.

And fuck ’em all. I’m not
afraid.

He couldn’t see the woman,
didn’t know who she was.

Don’t you ever pity me,
bitch. Don’t you ever.

Kilroy caught him by the
ankle and pulled him back to the ground. Bode’s chin struck the
first metal bench. He coughed bitterly, bringing up mucus black
with sawdust as Kilroy hauled him backward. Lights popped around
him and dust rose, forming a haze.

Fuck you.

The ring stick fell again
and again, the thorns piercing him, intensifying his fury. He
struggled and twisted, until Kilroy’s fist landed against the side
of his head and he collapsed in the dust. He rolled onto his back,
coughing. High above, a trapeze bar swung slowly back and forth, as
though in use by a lazy ghost, and the silver ladder that led to
the platform gleamed.

Kilroy dragged him toward a
wheeled cross that had been set at the edge of the ring after
Kayak’s act. Kilroy motioned Mr. Lein out of the wings, and
together they lashed Bode face forward to the wooden X-frame, then
pushed the cross out to the center of the ring. The wheels
thickened the cloud in the air.

The spectators gawped back
at him, all grins and yawns, cotton candy disappearing into their
mouths. They hollered and whooped, booed and cheered. Another
tomato sailed by Kilroy. “Worst fuckin’ circus I ever saw!” a man
yelled.

Bode turned to Kilroy.
Kilroy’s jaw tightened, but a moment later, a grin spread across
his face.

“
Ladies and gentlemen,” he
said grandly, opening his arms and backing behind the cross. “Fire
away.”

***

Bode sat in the tub in the
bathroom of Kilroy’s car, listening to the sequence of soft
splashes as Kilroy wrung out a cloth. The water around Bode was
orange-red; tomato seeds and popcorn kernels floated on its
surface. He refused to look up, just watched the seeds drift by and
hugged his knees to his chest.

He shivered as Kilroy
touched a cloth to his neck and wiped another gob of
something—relish—into the water. Bode watched it float. Kilroy
dragged the cloth across wide bruise on Bode’s upper arm. Leaned
close to his ear. “You’ll listen next time, won’t you?”

Bode didn’t
answer.

Kilroy rubbed each knot in
Bode’s spine with his thumb. “Look at me.”

Bode closed his
eyes.

Kilroy forced his chin up
and squeezed his cheeks until Bode opened his eyes. The right one
was swollen; Bode could barely see out of it. “Do you miss the
Haze?”

Bode nodded. A mercy. The
blue pills would be a mercy. Only a fool would reject that bleak
kindness. Kilroy released him, and he stared at the water and
continued to nod with increasing vigor until Kilroy crooked an arm
gently around his neck and pressed Bode’s wet hair to his red satin
jacket. Bode leaned hard against him, chest heaving with silent
sobs.

“
Hush now,” Kilroy said.
“I’ll get your medicine. We have a trip to take after tomorrow’s
show, and I want you to be well.”

MAYBE I AM IN
LOVE

Then.

Kilroy broke the lease at
his old place and rented an apartment in the historic district of
town. It was old and drafty, but elegant, with a simple chandelier
in the living room, high ceilings, and detailed molding. Bode
offered to pay half the rent, but Kilroy refused.

“
What, are you a rich man,
and you’re just not telling me?” Bode asked, grinning as he looked
around the apartment.

“
I have enough.”

“
C’mon, you’re joking,
right? I’ll pay my share. I might need some grace time, because I
don’t make much at the theater, but—”

“
I have enough,” Kilroy
repeated.

“
Where’d you get it?” Bode
asked sharply.

“
I told you. I inherited
it.”

“
From who?”

“
Bode.”

“
I’m just saying, you want
to live with me…can’t you trust me enough to talk to
me?”

Kilroy gazed at him a long
while. “It would be a dull conversation.”

“
I know
you’ve said you don’t like to talk about…about where you grew up
and everything. I just… Isn’t there
anything
you can tell
me?”

“
We are not our pasts.”
Kilroy walked around Bode to examine the kitchen countertops. “I
want very much to make a life with you, where we are free of what
we were and think only of what we’ll become.”

“
That’s impossible,” Bode
murmured. But Kilroy didn’t look up, and Bode let it go.

The day they moved into the
new place, Bode spent the whole afternoon lightheaded, his heart
beating too fast as he unpacked box after box. Kilroy didn’t seem
to have brought anything but furniture, while Bode had tons of
junk—knickknacks and posters from the theater, clothes, flea market
clocks and salt shakers, every dance costume he’d ever owned.
Kilroy helped him find places for all of it.

“
I love you,” he told
Kilroy as they lay in bed that first night, surrounded by strange
walls. He touched Kilroy’s cheek. “You make me feel really, truly
alive.”

Kilroy’s brow furrowed
slightly. He caught Bode’s hand and kissed the backs of his
fingers. “You do? You love me?”

“
Let me, um…show you how
much?” Bode scooted down the mattress, tugging the sheet with him.
He was terrified—he always was, at first, when they did anything
sexual. He was embarrassed about his inexperience, and his
nervousness gave him a persistent need to prove himself.

He knew the way most people
addressed their sexual needs—quick ruts in brothels, in motels, in
the back rows of X-shows. His father had a folder on the computer
full of trashy pictures. Bode never wanted to look cheap, spread
wide, mouth gaping in false ecstasy. He needed to make sure he was
more to Kilroy than a body.

And tonight, he felt sure
he was. He felt like a gift, and he felt Kilroy had been sent here
to change him, to wake him, to add meaning and depth to the things
Bode created. He wanted to touch Kilroy, to get to know,
intimately, the blessing he’d been given.

Losing his virginity had
been simple, because Kilroy had directed it. But now Bode wanted to
give Kilroy something undirected, something raw. He studied
Kilroy’s naked body. Kilroy’s cock was simply a part of him.
Another bit of warmth and flesh and blood for Bode to touch. Bode
played with it, alternately using his lips and tongue. Kilroy’s
hands moved across his hair, encouraging, his nails digging into
Bode’s scalp once or twice.