Closer

by Dennis Cooper

George Miles took a seat in John's bedroom and tried not to blink. He'd looked cute, maybe even a little too cute, across the school cafeteria but one-on-one he twitched and trembled so much he made John think of a badly tuned hologram.

John tried to draw but George was already ruined without his help.

From being a punk, John felt a slight pang of conscience. Punk's bluntness had edited tons of pretentious shit out of American culture, so, although John suspected that his work was nine-tenths pretentious shit, he tried to take the quote seriously, despite its has-been author.

“Punk orders us to demystify everything in the world or we'll be doomed to a future so decadent, atomic bombs will seem just one more aftershave lotion and so on. What you seem to like in my drawings is how they reveal the dark underside, or whatever it's called, of people you wouldn't think were particularly screwed up. But you should know the real goal of my work is a Dorian Gray type of thing. I make you look awful, and I start to look really good….”

At one point John leaned back and made absolutely sure George was as cute as he'd thought a few minutes before, then he plunged in again.

He felt something that could have been love but was too manageable and kind of coldly interesting. It was more like he understood how love might feel. The sensation itself wasn't anywhere as disorienting as love was rumored to be. Actually it didn't feel that different from having completed a portrait, except George's skin felt so great. That was the weirdest part, feeling how warm and familiar George was and at the same time realizing the kid was just skin wrapped around some grotesque-looking stuff.

His eyes were drab, his nose had been broken, his ears were caked with wax, his skull was shaped like an egg. He would have been nothing without punk.

He rolled George onto his stomach then climbed on top, tried to get his cock hard, couldn't, thought he could stuff it up George with his fingers but that didn't work so he rolled George back over and fucked his mouth.

“Hurt me,” he yelled in a hoarse voice. “Fuck me up and I'll never forget you. I really fucking love violence.

“Kill me,” the silhouette rasped. “I can't feel anything. I mean you're okay. Shit, I don't know.

When I'm dead you can fuck me as much as you want.

art, that might mean he could understand what he was trying to do with his life.

He couldn't decide if he wanted to draw David, fuck him, beat him up or fall in love with him.

He ran a damp washcloth under both arms, across his cock, between the cheeks of his ass. He tried to whistle the tune of The Smiths' “Handsome Devil” but the thing had no melody so he just sounded asthmatic. He smelled the rag and threw it over the top of the mottled glass door of his shower stall. When he got back to the bedroom George automatically stripped, and lay facedown on the bed.

“I'm just completely fucked up,” he whispered. “I don't have any real friends and I can't do my homework at all anymore. Sometimes I wish I was dead. Nothing makes sense like my mother has cancer and I don't know what's going to happen to me when she dies. It's nice to see you but I'm so alone all the time….”

Later they fucked or, rather, John fucked George and kept his eye on the last and definitive portrait, which, luckily, he'd framed and hung in clear sight of the bed.

“I hope you understand,” John added suddenly, “that I'm a much better artist than I am a person.”

“a boy's screaming countenance faced the horizon, emitting a fresh brand of sunlight.”

I lure children into adulthood by mouthing inanities like, “I love you,” when what I actually mean is, “You'll die someday.” I'm totally evil. I want them to die. I want … I don't mean any of this. I'm daydreaming. I find myself standing

“If God made a visit to earth it'd be in the form of a kiss. Being kissed by someone I admire is the closest I've gotten to peace on earth, like Xmas carolers sing. God would give each boy a

Two-thirds of his weekly allowance is spent buying drugs to undermine George's spell.