Ugly Man Read online

  Ugly Man

  Stories

  Dennis Cooper

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Jerk

  Ugly Man

  The Boy on the Far Left

  Graduate Seminar

  Santa Claus vs. Johnny Crawford

  The Hostage Drama

  The Brainiacs

  Knife/Tape/Rope

  The Guro Artists

  The Anal-Retentive Line Editor

  Oliver Twink

  Brian aka “Bear”

  Three Boys Who Thought Experimental Fiction Was for Pussies

  The Worst (1960–1971)

  One Night in 1979 I Did Too Much Coke and Couldn’t Sleep and Had What I Thought Was a Million-Dollar Idea to Write the Definitive Tell-all Book About Glam Rock Based on My Own Personal Experience but This Is as Far as I Got

  The Noll Dynasty

  The Fifteen Worst Russian Gay Porn Web Sites

  The Ash Gray Proclamation

  About the Author

  Other Books by Dennis Cooper

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Jerk” previously appeared in the book Jerk (Artspace Books, 1993).

  “Ugly Man” and “The Boy on the Far Left” previously appeared in Scott Treleaven’s art catalog Some Boys Wander by Mistake (Kavi Gupta Gallery, John Connelly Presents, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, 2007) and in Dennis Cooper: Writing at the Edge (Sussex Academic Press, 2008).

  “Graduate Seminar,” “Santa Claus vs. Johnny Crawford,” “The Worst (1960–1971),” and “Three Boys Who Thought Experimental Fiction Was for Pussies” previously appeared in Dennis Cooper: Writing at the Edge (Sussex Academic Press, 2008).

  “Knife/Tape/Rope” was originally the text of a performance art work of the same name created and directed by Ishmael Houston-Jones in 1985.

  “One Night in 1979…” previously appeared in the anthology Thrills, Pills, Chills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person (Alyson Press, 2004).

  JERK

  “Ladies and gentlemen, uh…” began David Brooks. He tapped his body mike to make sure it was working. Ping, ping. “The story you’re about to see is true, based on my own experiences as a drug-addicted, psychotic teen murderer in the early ’70s. But before I step behind the curtain over there…” He indicated a smallish, crudely built puppet theater in the heart of the auditorium’s vast, empty stage. “…and become the voices of my poor dead companions and victims…” He gave a little flick of his head, an old habit from the days when he had extremely long blond hair. “…I want to acknowledge…” He looked at the back of his hand, where he’d scribbled a note to himself. “…Professor William Griffith of the University of Texas, and his undergraduate class in…” squinted “…in ‘Freudian Psychology Refracted Through Postmodern Example.’ Whoa, that’s a mouthful.” He grinned. “Thanks to all of you for coming. Now each audience member should be holding a file. In it you will find two pieces of nonfiction penned by yours truly. In a moment I will ask you to read the first story. Later in the show I will ask you to read the second. They describe situations I feel incapable of representing adequately in my puppetry at this time. They also allow me time to move scenery around, prepare my marionettes, and so forth. So if you’ll excuse me for a moment…” David grinned. “…I’ll take my place in illusion.” He walked behind the puppet theater itself. His half dozen assistants were already poised along the raised platform there, leaning over the stage’s rear wall, string puppets dangling from their splayed hands. He caught their eyes, held up eight fingers, and cleared his throat, having carefully shielded his body mike. Then he took his seat before the music stand with its softly lit script. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he read aloud, relishing the cool of his echo-y, magnified voice. “Please open your files and read the first piece of nonfiction. You have exactly eight minutes. Thank you.”

  Dean Corll, a dumpy-looking man in his thirties, is sprawled in an overstuffed armchair, thinking about his life, then formulating the best of those thoughts into a speech. About 5:30, 6:00 p.m., Wayne Henley and David Brooks, two thin teenagers, let themselves into Dean’s house with a spare key.

  “Boys,” Dean announces, seeing them. “Sit, sit, sit.”

  The young duo flops down on the couch. “Hey, Dean,” mumbles Wayne. David just sits there with his arm around Wayne’s waist, sort of gawking at Dean like always.

  “I have a…favor to ask you,” says Dean. He rests his balding head back on the chair’s filthy old doily and gives his living room a long, pained look.

  “Yeah?” Wayne asks after a few seconds.

  “It’s about what we’ve done,” Dean continues, voice a little scrunched by the bend in his neck. “And about what we haven’t been able to do. What we’ll never do, can’t do.”

  “Is this about…what we’ve been doing?” Wayne asks cautiously. “I mean, the murder shit?”

  “Yeah,” Dean says, and looks squarely at both of their cute, jaded faces. “That. ’Cos I’ve been kidding myself…thinking us killing those boys was…like…an accomplishment? Only I realized today that there’s tons of shit going on inside those boys’ heads while we’ve been killing them that we don’t know about. That…all this time I’ve been thinking, ‘They’re cute,’ you know, period. So killing them was like…the big finish. But I realized today that we haven’t…known them at all. Not any of them. So it’s like they’re not ours anymore, not even dead. They got away from us.”

  “Dean, listen,” Wayne says anxiously. “Those guys are fucking dead. I was there, man. You’re just—”

  Knock, knock, knock.

  “Who is it?” Dean yells.

  “Buddy Longview,” says a tense voice behind the front door.

  Dean thinks back. “Oh, right!” He gives Wayne, David a wink and two enthusiastic thumbs up. “Come on in, it’s open.”

  So in walks this boy, maybe nineteen, skinny, angelic face, kinda bored-looking, wearing a T-shirt and Bermuda shorts.

  “Make room for our visitor,” Dean says. Wayne and David slide to opposite ends of the couch. Buddy fills in the gap.

  “Wayne, Buddy. David, Buddy.”

  The teens nod at each other.

  “Hi Dean,” says Buddy kind of sheepishly. He looks at Wayne and David like he wishes they weren’t there, then lets his eyes go out of focus on one of the rug’s myriad paisleys. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, man. About death and stuff. And…yeah, I’m sick of life. Definitely. I want to go. And I want to go like you said…make a big, fucking, gory mess.”

  Dean leers at Buddy, picturing what he eternally pictures—sex, torture, mutilation—but newly aware of how superficially he understands the young stranger. “Yeah, all right. I’ll take you out, but first, as bizarre as this sounds, I want you to live here with me for a few days, a week, and let me get to know you.”

  Buddy shrugs. “No problem,” he says softly, “but I’m a fucking waste. That’s why I’m here, right? So don’t expect much.”

  “Right.” Dean reaches out for an old bamboo bong pipe. Even unlit, it stinks up the house like a big stick of incense.

  They all get incredibly stoned.

  “Time’s up,” announced David Brooks, noiselessly turning a page. The auditorium’s lights started dimming. “It’s four days later now. We begin the theatrical part of our story in the basement of Dean’s house. Buddy’s lying face down on a bed that’s basically just a large piece of very thick plywood on four legs. Dean and Wayne have smashed the back of his head in with baseball bats. Once screaming pitifully, he’s been silent for several minutes. Dean’s fistfucking what’s left of him. Wayne’s watching that go on, mesmerized. As usual, I’ve been running arou
nd with Dean’s Super 8 movie camera recording the murder for posterity.”

  Looking up from the script, David eyed an assistant who yanked a cord. Round front of the puppet theater, curtains noisily parted on four marionettes, like tiny human beings, posed against the first of several spare yet evocative hand-painted sets. As the Wayne puppet turned its head to “speak to” the Dean puppet, the real David Brooks licked his lips, preparing to throw the first of his finely tuned vocal impersonations into the thick of that fakeness.

  WAYNE (smirking): So, Dean, does it feel like Buddy’s dead? Is he…ours?

  DEAN: Good question. (He withdraws his fist from Buddy’s butt, and stands there, arms folded, wondering.) Ultimately, no.

  WAYNE (angry, waving his arms around): Shit, Dean. You think too much about this stuff. Who cares what the fucker was really like? Killing’s just about power, man. You can make up whoever you want and…like…imagine that person in this fucker’s body.

  DEAN: Really?

  WAYNE: Duh.

  DEAN: Like how?

  WAYNE: You want me to tell you? You’re the genius!

  DEAN: Hmmm. (He concentrates on the dead body, wondering who he’d most want to have killed today if he could’ve killed anyone in the world. Meanwhile Wayne and David go across the room and start French kissing. Eventually an idea comes to Dean.)

  DEAN (pretending he’s a corpse by flattening his voice): Hi.

  DEAN (laughing at himself): Who the fuck are you?

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE: I’m…the actor who played the older of the two sons on the TV show Flipper.

  DEAN (mock-startled): Really? I killed you?

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE: Yeah.

  DEAN: God, I had such a huge crush on you.

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE: I had a crush on you too.

  DEAN (with a shit-eating grin): Tell me that killing you was incredibly sexy.

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE: Your killing me was incredibly sexy.

  DEAN: Say my cock is God.

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE: Your cock is God.

  DEAN: This is unbelievable.

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE: This is unbelievable.

  DEAN (laughing uproariously): Wayne! David!

  WAYNE (unfastening his mouth from David’s): Yeah, Dean?

  DEAN: Guess who I decided the corpse is?

  WAYNE: Uh…Jimmy Page.

  DEAN: No, no.

  WAYNE: Wait, I know who. That kid you always moan about…what’s-his-name…Luke Halpin. On Flipper.

  DEAN: Exactly.

  WAYNE: Well, it would be kind of amazing if that was Luke Halpin’s corpse. I mean, the manhunt, the publicity…we’d be famous!

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE (stifling a smirk): Hi, Wayne. It’s me, Luke Halpin.

  WAYNE: Hey, faggot. Good riddance.

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE: Watch out or I’ll haunt you.

  DEAN (laughing): Cool, huh?

  WAYNE: Yeah, Dean. Cool. Now if you don’t mind…(He goes back to French kissing David as the curtains close.)

  “And so,” David Brooks read aloud, “days passed. We buried Buddy under the floor of a boat shed Dean owned. Maybe a dozen boys’ bodies were already rotting down there. Dean killed a couple more boys on his own. Then one day Wayne told Dean about this drugged out, incredibly cute boy named Jamie from our high school, and Dean said, ‘Sounds great.’ So Wayne, with my help of course, cornered Jamie, hyping him about a ‘party’ at Dean’s house, and he agreed to come with us that night. So, on the way to get Jamie, Wayne and I talked about stuff. I was unclear at that time about what Dean’s TV character fantasies meant. Wayne explained to me how since those characters are only what you see onscreen they have no interior life at all, unlike real human beings, who are really complex and impossible to understand, no matter how hard you try. So when Dean imagined his victim was, like, Luke Halpin, he felt he knew exactly who he’d killed down to the tiniest detail, and that knowledge made the death more meaningful and complete. So that was interesting. And about that time we arrived at Jamie’s house, sat him between us, and drove to Dean’s. We sat around there getting stoned for a long time and eventually Jamie decided that being killed would be cool, so we trooped down into the basement, and Dean and Wayne tortured him to death. So now it’s a couple of hours later. We’re still in the basement. Jamie’s lying carved up on the usual table. Dean looks down into the corpse’s wide open blue eyes, conversing idly with some made-up person. I’m filming the scene, walking around, crouching, standing on my tiptoes to get unusual angles. Wayne’s across the room covered with blood and sweat, experiencing some kind of existential crisis about having brought poor Jamie over here to die. I still don’t know what his exact problem was, but I think it had something to do with Dean having taken away the only thing Jamie ever owned, which was his identity. Anyway, this is what happened next.”

  DEAN (whispering in the corpse’s ear as the curtains part): Did you like it when I cut off your balls?

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE (trying to imitate Jay North’s chirpy little whine in DENNIS THE MENACE): Yeah, Dean.

  DEAN: You’ve been dreaming of this day all your life, right?

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE: Right.

  WAYNE: (punching the air, furious): Dean!

  DEAN (glancing up): Yeah, Wayne, what?

  WAYNE: Stop doing that to Jamie, asshole!

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE: I’m not Jamie, I’m Jay North.

  WAYNE (livid, shaking): No, he’s not!

  DEAN: Somehow I tend to take his word for it.

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE: Thanks, Dean. I love you.

  DEAN: I love you too, Jay.

  WAYNE: You’re losing it, man.

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE: Dean, who’s that loudmouth?

  DEAN: Oh, just some creepy kid I should’ve killed years ago.

  WAYNE (looking around for a knife): Dean, you fuck.

  DAVID: Hey. Wayne, maintain. (He lowers the camera down to his side.)

  DEAN-AS-CORPSE: You were into Wayne? Weird. I can’t see it.

  DEAN (stroking the corpse’s cheek): Long ago, darling Jay.

  WAYNE (finds, grabs the knife he was looking for): That’s it! Later, Dean. Much, much later. (He rams the blade into Dean’s flabby back, pulls it out, stabs, stabs…Gurgling blood, Dean collapses onto the floor.) Die, you fuck!

  DEAN (beginning his death rattle): Glug, glug, glug…

  WAYNE (looking down on the corpse of his teenaged friend): Jamie, shit, I’m sorry.

  DAVID (flattened against a wall, terrified): W-w-wayne? Wayne (still talking to Jamie): I guess I just thought…you know, it’d be sexy like always…seeing Dean kill you, helping him. And it was, but I’m sorry, you know?

  DAVID (very tense and a little jealous): W-w-wayne!

  WAYNE: Jamie, I loved you, man. I could never tell you…

  DAVID (pounding on a wall behind him as the curtains close): My world is falling apart!

  “So,” David Brooks read. “I just stood there waiting for Wayne to come to his senses. I’m a jealous person, always have been. Wayne’s revelation that he loved Jamie was totally intense. I mean, I’d suspected as much, but…here was the news I’d dreaded. But Wayne kind of came out of his stupor after about fifteen minutes or so, and we wrapped the bodies of Jamie and Dean up in plastic, took them out to the car, and laid them in the trunk. Since I figured I’d heard the worst, I made the mistake of making Wayne tell me the whole Jamie story, and he not only revealed a ton of mini-orgies, but even more orgies with all kinds of boys at our high school. I was stunned, right? Wiped out. Some of these boys were supposedly good friends of mine, and there was Wayne telling me they were all smoking dope and fucking each other every time I wasn’t around. We got to the boathouse, and buried the two bodies, and I thought, Well, at least it’s over. No more killing. Hopefully, no more affairs on Wayne’s part. He seemed contrite, just sitting there shotgun in my daddy’s Cadillac watching the landscape zoom by, but…Well, I’m getting ahead of myself, ladies and gentlemen. House lights, please? Now, open your files again and read the second and last
piece of nonfiction. You have exactly fifteen minutes. Thank you.”

  “I wish,” Wayne says suddenly, then a fuzzy, subliminal, ongoing thought jells. “David, drop me off at Dean’s, okay?”

  David blinks at the road. “Why?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Wayne says. “I really don’t.”

  The world’s whizzing by the windows in two sandy ribbons. David grips the wheel. “Then I’ll stay with you.”

  “You don’t have to,” Wayne says, not even sure he wants company at the moment.

  “I will.” David glares at him. “But then we’re out of that place, ’cos eventually the police are gonna look for all those boys, and knock on Dean’s door…” His eyes glaze over with imagination. “Shit.”

  They drive on uneventfully. Darkness covers everything. After about a half hour David pulls the car into Dean’s gravel driveway and puts it in park. Slam, slam. They walk around to the front of the house, up the porch steps. Wayne’s feeling under the mat for the spare key when they hear a voice in the black to their left. “Hey,” it says, “who are you guys?”

  “Friends of Dean’s,” Wayne says, narrowing his eyes. Now he can see a vague, seated human shape. “Who’re you?”

  “Dean told me I could come by sometime if I was depressed,” says the voice, definitely a boy’s. “And I am, so…here I am.”

  “Dean’s not around but you can come in with us.”

  “Wayne,” David says angrily.

  “Thanks, guys,” mumbles the boy. Wayne feels around for the doorknob, lock, finds it, inserts the key, turns, pushes open the door, reaches in, turns on the living room light. Light filters out, hitting David and the boy who’s in the process of standing up. He’s a skinny blond with an unshaven face, sort of androgynous, early twenties, Janis Joplin T-shirt, holey jeans, altogether Dean’s usual type. “Hi,” he says, shielding his eyes. “I’m Brad.”