Almost spiritual

July is the sticky month when Will did ecstasy for the first time and his cum went thick as glue. But wait. We can explain.

It begins in a warm, dark cave. Will’s hand is on the thigh of a stranger. He notices the indiscretion and apologizes for the last time that night. “It’s okay,” says the stranger. “It’s okay.” Will smiles, then laughs.

“I think it’s beginning to work!”

Two months later, Will saw this man on the street, begging for change, and remembered him perfectly. He walked by as though he did not.

Three topless men learned this was Will’s first time and led him toward a six-foot fan. They took his arms, they took his legs, they took each inch of his body, as the Naiads took young Hylas under water. Will decided that he loved ecstasy and that he loved these three men and that he loved this place and these lights and this musicAnd he loved those shoes. And this button

“You’re grinding.” The voice sounded familiar as his parent’s backyard but the face was obscured by a mask of flesh-coloured scales. “Here, chew some gum.”

Poison? thought Will, and he popped the offered stick.

In the bathroom, Will attempted to pee and fell backward into a chest, which grew into another man with scales for skin. “Drink more water,” said the scaly creature.

“Everyone takes care of me!” cooed Will.

A crab walked innocently across the ceiling and Will thought to himself, “I’m hallucinating. Perhaps I shall speak with God. Or David Bowie. Either/or.”

Two men who reminded Will of boys he’d loved in high school took him by the shoulder and brought him up some stairs. “If you smoke some pot before you come down, it makes it better,” said the first man.

“You look like the boy” said Will. And, turning to the other, “Your eyes are like a doe’s.”

A door opened and a strange street fit around him like an oversized coat. Grey, threadbare.

“Stay away from them!” shouted a homeless guy in yellow overalls and muck boots. “They’ve got AIDS! Fuckin’ AIDS, man! They’re sick whores, you know!”

“Don’t pay attention,” said the man with doe eyes.

The pot was sweet like the smell of heather and the world was sweet, too. “Does the world taste like heather?” he wondered out loud, but then couldn’t continue. His teeth had begun mashing again.

It was the most beautiful man in the world! And Will wanted to cry it was so beautiful-he thought of all the cruel things he’d done to boys, the harsh words and harsher silences. He thought of all these things with the grand encyclopeadic powers of epiphany. And leaned in to kiss the boy and absolve himself. The most beautiful hand took Will’s hand, as simple as the price of candy when he was 10, and led it through a buttoned fly.

Will was holding the cock of the most beautiful man in the world! Andand and Will was the most beautiful man in the world, too! He grabbed his own cock and held the pair of them like two joysticks. It was remarkably spiritual.

“Oh, do you want more? Should we do more? Here, we’ll share.” And the boy proffered his tongue with a broken white tablet stuck to the end. Will sucked it off.

Granville street, after all, was not Granville street. This was some new, slightly pink wonderland, though a woman in a power suit went marching to work and that felt heavy to watch.

They caught a cab to someone’s house and within the hour-grey, transparent, morning hour-Will had discovered a little bed in a little room with a little window looking down on him like music.

Robby had been there that night. And Robby came in to check on Will. Was Robby the boy?

“You look like the boy,” began Will-but he lost the thought and stared.

Do you want to come in bed with me-had he spoken? He hadn’t been able to speak for an hour or so. But Robby said no, he would sit at the edge of the bed. Was there blood in his face? Will could see the pain in Robby’s soul, it was red-coloured and he wanted desperately to fix it.

“You can just watch then, okay?”

“Okay.” Said Robby, rocking a bit by the bed’s quilted corner.

Will made lonely love to himself, lying backward over the edge of a cool mattress, and what used to come out long and silky came thick as mayo and that made Will cry out with surprise and worry, but Robby, with a tongue-licking, big-tooth grin said “oh, baby, it’s okay. You’re dehydrated. The more you dance the thicker it comes.” This seemed so important to Will that he wrote it down, in jagged streaks of lipstick, across the wall.