Room 306 breathes with sleep and central air. Do's asleep. Lanni-gan's asleep. The TV has long since cooled from the last bits of news: Chuck Savitch and his anthropomorphic brain tumor seen waving from the bay window of his mother's house, the crowd outside expressing their gratitude in the currency of camera flashes. The before-bed conversation (Do: "I wonder how we're going to feel tomorrow night?" Lannigan: "I hope we'll need those big dark glasses like the blues.") has degraded into snores. Thanks to the heavy curtains, the room is impressively closed-in with darkness. It gives Billy the impression of being trapped, like he's in a cave and every lightless particle is a rock pinning him down, and nobody knows he's missing, dying while they frolic above him, hand in hand, on the warm green grass. Billy moves his legs as proof against paralyzation. Are those dogs barking in the distance?
The digital clock glows red.
12:02 A.M. 12:23 A.M. 12:52 A.M.
Lannigan asleep. Do asleep. And Billy wide awake.
Not dogs, just the suggestion of dogs in the hum of central air.
1:00 A.M. Six hours until the alarm.
1:28 A.M. Five hours and thirty-two minutes until the alarm.
His brain is frantic with the awful math of diminishing sleep.
He counts backward from a hundred; he tenses and relaxes the muscles from his toes to his forehead; he tosses himself into dreams (I'm flying . . . Fm stuck in molasses); he rolls around for a comfortable position, stomach, left side, back, right side, repeat.
1:53 A.M. Five hours and seven minutes until the alarm.
Shit. Shit. Shit shit. Fuck.
Billy glances toward Do and Lannigan. Essentially, they're already awake, already greeting tomorrow morning, well rested, while Billy lags behind, knee-deep in yesterday.
Sleep can be a competitive sport.
He's tempted to scream, to make nightmare noises just loud enough to startle.
But there's another option.
Slipping free from the bed, Billy tiptoes toward the bathroom, the floor treated like twigs. He listens for disturbances in nearby sleep, stops, lets the silence resettle before continuing on. There's something calming, peaceful, about sneaking around in the dark, practically a childhood hobby for Billy, getting up in the middle of the night and stealing around the house, into his parents' room where he would watch them sleep, Abe and Doris intertwined like they were in a cold lonely place. He would try willing them awake by yelling Help! inside his head. He would crouch down until inches from their lips and smell their nighttime breath. More than once he would take something before leaving, a sock, a hairpin, or he would pop a button from a shirt, snap a shoelace, like a bitter ghost.
Billy reaches the bathroom door, finesses it open, closes it.
On goes the light.
The available real estate is minimal for the chore at hand. Maybe the floor, but the space is tight and a tad unhygienic. Maybe the toilet, but the toilet has no seat cover and maybe he could manage the ass-saddle, but this area seems specifically zoned for defecation, plus sitting on the pot too long can cause hemorrhoids, he was once warned in his too impressible youth. Maybe the shower, often an ideal locale, what with the running water and nozzle massage and soaps and shampoos and easy cleanup, but a shower right now is out of the question.
So Billy jerks off into the sink.
Underwear down, hips leaning forward, testicles pleasantly resting against cool porcelain, Billy begins. The first dozen strokes are uninspired, like a rally before a tennis match. Thoughts of am-l-really-doing-this? cross his mind, though only briefly. He's never been the type who imagines models or actresses or girls next door or aloof classmates in eleventh grade who might suddenly be interested in his tongue. He has no fantasy woman, no pinup posters taped inside his eyelids. Instead, he prefers personal history, the physical memoir of women he's touched and explored. In particular, he alights on their small intimate details, the galaxy of moles, the whorl of pubic hair, the veins and scars and tan lines, the knobby knees, the fur creeping around thighs, the belly button, the ridge of vertebrae. He cherishes freckles and collarbones, pilosity in natural light. Tits and ass, while wonderful, are more like product placements, the crass commercialism of propagation, whereas a birthmark the shape of Sicily is something else entirely. And really, when all is said and done, after a few months of physical distance, the random stand and steady fling and all the versions in between occupy just one fuck-byte of memory, whereas the marginalia, the scrawl of the pen, the edits and corrections, can bring you back to that first moment.
Boswell had his Johnson, Billy has his prick.
In all, there are fourteen lovers he can choose from, from Melissa of the walnut mole on the inner thigh, to Wendy of the scar under the chin, to Lily of the dimpled knees, to Diana of the lunar stretch marks on the breasts. But the severe present participial—standing up and snapping a quick one into a sink—distracts Billy from the past. Usually such work is done on his back, in bed, often followed by a nap, though in his youth he could be quite adventurous. Anywhere, anytime, twice in a library bathroom after discovering Our Bodies, Ourselves, with its sweet illustration of that pubescent girl. Then there were those special masturbatory techniques, like binding your wrist with a rubber band so your hand would go all numb, or using ordinary household items extraordinarily, e.g., those yellow cleaning gloves turned inside out, or licking your own armpit for virtual cunnilingus, a trick a teenage friend taught him, the closest thing to eating snatch without actually eating snatch, he said.
But Sally Hu, now his fifteenth lover, interrupts the past. Billy sees her reading the note, sees her saying Asshole, sees her puckering her lips which causes that single black freckle under her nose to disappear. Already she's slipped into abstraction. Yesterday morning might as well have been last year—Sally toweling the last remnants of her shower, Billy spying her from bed as she dried her legs, her thighs, her pubic wisp, with strange prosaic grace, then wrung her long black hair into one of those terry turbans women seem genetically gifted to engineer. Arms akimbo, she stood in front of the bureau and said, "Like I don't know you're pretending."
Billy gave up nothing.
"To be all asleep, you faker. But I know you're watching me." She spoke with an endearing New York accent. Here she was, as exotic as a specimen from Captain Cook, cheekbones molded by muscular thumbs, eyes pinched tight, nose fashioned from the leftover clay, skin fired eggshell smooth, but if you inspected the hallmark you'd see Made in Brooklyn stamped on the underside. Her voice embraced the monoglot of the streets, the raunchy assimilation of stoops. Sometimes she seemed like an Asian actress as dubbed by a bleach-blond moll.
Billy stirred awake.
"You're a lousy fucking actor," she told him. Her family was an American success story, her parents immigrants from China with three disputed corners of the Korean deli trade. They hated Billy. Every week they visited with produce and untranslated pleas of leave him soon.
Billy rubbed his eyes. Look at her. Even her breasts were imported treasures, perfect bowls with nipples unlike any he had ever encountered before: dark and cone shaped and fully realized on all levels of excitation. Pert Buddhas, Billy thought. He reached up for some spiritual enlightenment.
"Way too fucking late," Sally said.
"But it's early."
"It's too late and it's too early."
"Early late."
"None of that now." Sally started browsing her closet. "So what's for breakfast, honey? Eggs and bacon? An omelet? French toast?"
He tugged down the comforter and exposed himself. "Sausage," he said.
Sally clipped on her bra. "What a seducer you are."
Billy stomped his heels against the covers in spoiled protest. Maybe she would smile. Maybe she would humor him one last time. The sun transformed the dust motes and skin chaff into beautiful phosphorescence. We sleep in our own filth, Billy thought. Then he began playing with himself.
"Are you really?" she asked.
"I'm like a mountain climber."
"I wish."
"I mean in answer to the question why." He gestured toward his erection. "And you, you are my Sherpa."
"I'm so flattered."
He mused aloud, "Norgay Hu. Certainly more appropriate than Sally."
"Fuck you," she demurred. "You told me Sally means princess."
"Not 'Sally.' 'Sarah.' 'Sarah' means princess. In Hebrew. 'Sally' might be a form of 'Sarah,' but it's also a sudden outburst, an attack by the besieged."
"I know how that girl feels."
"You sally me. I sally you. We sallied. Please. Let's sully the sheets, Sally?"
"You're already exhausting me." Then she asked as cool revenge, "You working today?"
"Yes," he lied. "I'm working."
"Any plans tonight?"
"Nope," he lied again. "You know, 'Billy,' 'William,' in German means, as you can guess, will, as in force of will, as in purpose and determination and desire, as well as helmet, as will as helmet. Anyway, one of those combined forms, as in armor for the head, as in"—Billy beckoned with his dick—"the will of my helmet or helm my will, please."
"And you haven't even had coffee yet."
". . . !"
"What?"
"Help me out a little."
"You should see your face." Sally went over and sat down on the bed.
"Where are you working today?" she asked.
"Signet," he lied.
"Again?"
"Yep. Half a day. A turn-and-burn."
"And you really need a fondle? You're really that desperate?"
"Yes," he answered. "Just so I know I'm not going at it alone."
"You know, this is my second-to-last Friday of work," she said. "I really should've taken the summer off and traveled or something." As Sally talked, she reached down—"At least gone to the West Coast or something"—and cupped his balls. She rubbed them, rolled them, weighed them. She edged her finger toward his perineum. "Silly not to have taken some time off."
Billy closed his eyes around Sally at business school, in class with her hand raised, in a study group, in the library, old Sally Hu, her fingers doing his balls like a frantic commodity trade a minute before the exchange closes. "Could you at least pretend to miss me?" Billy asked. "Maybe think back fondly on me, all those business-school types, young CEOs in the making, and maybe you'll feel nostalgic for a person like me, maybe you might think he was the guy or the kind of guy." His tone was dismissive though he meant every word.
"I'm rubbing your balls, for Christ's sake."
"Just pretend for a second."
"If you'll pretend to come."
"I'm not trying to be flip, okay, Imean, maybe I'm normally guilty of being flip, I know, of taking nothing seriously, but that can wear you down."
"Billy, you're telling me this while you're jerking off."
"It's just, it's like, at the end of the day I've got no muscle for it, for—"
"Either jerk off or talk."
And Billy, the weakling, decided on the former. He shut up. Soon enough Sally scooted down and began—Hello!—licking his balls, knowing this would speed up the process, like a shortcut home. Her tongue mechanically flicked along the seam, and she held her hair away from the action as though dangerous gears were down there. Billy perched on his elbow for the visual thrill. The cooperation between her mouth and his hand resembled genital CPR. A cock code blue.
Sally peered up. "Close your eyes."
"Do I have to?"
"Yes."
Billy leaned back, closed his eyes, though he still watched her through his squint, watched her work the pouch of old man skin, the tip of her tongue twirling, flicking, her lips smack-sucking, her left arm resting against his thigh, her skin hairless and impossibly smooth against his sunless flesh, a nice little contrast, like honey on snow, like she was poured onto him, and he wanted to shout, "I'm leaving this afternoon, I'm disappearing for no reason concerning you," he wanted to come clean, but her tongue was stopping up his mouth and dripping silence into his ear, the pleasure just pleasurable enough to slip him away for a second.
He came—
—Comes. The porcelain is an added perk against his balls. As always, there's an ejaculatory montage where flashes of weirdness temper pleasure. Jerry Lewis? Monkeys in a tree? The Brazilian rain forest burning? Opening his eyes, Billy sees his portrait in the mirror, a sort of Frans Hals, The Masturbator. And while he has no feelings of guilt or shame in the act itself—God no!—maybe there's something in the spillage, in the mess, in the soiling. Semen can seem like radioactive waste, the unfortunate byproduct of heat. His seed, spooge, spunk (no word can salvage the substance) plays as ironic leitmotif under the stamp of American Standard.
There's no "Finally" from Sally; no "You owe me"; no tossing of yesterday's boxers for the mop up; no "You better get moving or you'll be late."
No, "I'm snuggling with myself," from Billy.
No, "You make a cute couple."
No, "Opposites attract."
No, "I'll see you tonight."
No one last lie.
There's nothing but the familiar smell, the brackish backwater of tidal pools drying in the sun. Billy runs the water into the sink and imagines a million versions of himself drowning in the water, like those pigs in North Carolina, bloated Billies running down the drain, shoulder to shoulder, connected by the sticky pull of death.
Off goes the light—Christ, it's dark—and Billy fumbles back toward bed without any presumptions of stealth. His hands flail about, a zombie jolted awake by autoerotic galvanism.
A voice surprises him. "Can't sleep?" It's Do.
"Not really," Billy answers.
"Me neither."