Little Deaths, page 35
‘Distance myself if something’s too painful. Sure not alone in that.’
‘When you kept pressing him that time, he told me he blew up.’ Her body’s rhythm counterpointed that of her speech. ‘Said he knew how to drive you away. That’s what he did, obviously. I don’t believe he knew how upset you’d be.’
‘What’d he expect?’ I asked. ‘Don’t know if I’d talked to him, even if he’d called.’
‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘Otherwise you’d have called him. I gave you my number once, and you could have guessed he was staying with me.’ She drank her coffee in two swallows and signalled the waiter for more. He served her at once. ‘What got you so upset?’
‘He did something, reminded me of something he did before.’ Resting her elbows atop the table, moving her body as before, she reached up and wound her muffler once more around her neck. ‘Doesn’t bear repeating,’ I concluded.
‘That’s what he’d say. You two are more alike than you’d ever admit.’
‘How is he?’
‘Could be better. NYU might let him return for the summer semester but tenure’s a moot point. He’s told Elaine she can have everything, but that’s not enough. She won’t let him see Cecily. His wife’s so insecure. I think they stayed together because each reminded the other of their least intimidating parent.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Hangs around the apartment. Rewrites our notes. My ideas were easy to understand until he improved them. I write a sentence, he rewrites a chapter. He puts masks on, I try to get them off.’ Her eyes widened; they were bluer than I’d remembered. ‘Charles thinks nothing’s academic if you understand it.’
‘I know. That causing you trouble?’
‘We have our disagreements,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure we bring out the best in each other, but we have brought out what’s really there. That’s as much as you can expect in a relationship. Too much for most people. I don’t know if he’ll be staying with me after March. Couldn’t stand many more rewrites.’
‘You and Charles have been having an affair, haven’t you?’ I asked.
‘He wouldn’t call it that.’ She rocked more slowly; her muffler slipped away from her throat, which was as red as his had been. ‘He never expected to have this kind of relationship, so he thinks of it as being something apart. If you asked do we fuck each other, there’s no denying. How did we seem when you saw us together?’
‘Isolated.’
‘I asked him why we had to pretend we were Warren Harding and niece around you. He said it would make you uncomfortable if we didn’t, and you’d run.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s hurt everyone, the way he’s acted. Needlessly hurt himself. It’s masochistic.’
‘You think so?’ she asked, holding her muffler against her neck with her hands. ‘It’s as much deliberate as needless. Not entirely masochistic.’
‘Masochists love the sin and hate the sinners. That’s Charles.’
‘Not in every situation,’ she said. ‘You can’t be happy without pain. Charles does what he can.’ I nodded. ‘Do you know anything about his childhood?’
‘His parents were old guard. That’s all he’s said.’
‘Something happened to him back then that he won’t let me unravel. May not have been anything major. You never know what’ll affect you most, years later.’ Valerie returned one of her feet to the floor, resting it alongside mine. ‘But he won’t tell me what happened,’ she said. ‘I could tell you a horrible thing that happened tome.’
‘Some people have no trouble doing that.’
‘That’s what Charles told me,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘It was in junior high. One afternoon I was practicing gymnastics after everyone else had left.’
‘Valerie, if it’s something I don’t need to know, don’t—’
‘Maybe you do,’ she said, her movements more deliberate. ‘Two girls jumped me while I was in the shower and dragged me into a practice room that was being redone. They jammed an empty paint can on my head. They bent me over a balance beam and tied me to it. They held my legs apart and then their boyfriends came in. First one, then the other.’
Valerie told of what was done to her as if recounting the plot of a movie she’d seen, weaving the narrative with such precision that I would never have attempted an unravelling. The flat manner in which she related her story assured me of its essential truth; the details, almost lovingly expressed, led me to believe that her remembrance had been told not infrequently but many times, if only to herself. Perhaps the act of continual revision enabled her to tell it at all.
‘My coach came back to get something and heard me trying to get loose. He untied me but I couldn’t get the can off my head. I was suffocating. When I passed out I relaxed, and he was able to work it loose. When I came to he was standing over me, looking. I was still naked.’
Letting go of her muffler, she stopped rocking, opening her eyes as it she’d been screamed awake; her body shivered, her face flushed. At first I thought she was going to cry; then realized her tears wouldn’t have flowed in sorrow. No one was watching; Valerie moved the foot upon which she’d been sitting down to the floor, where she prodded my shoe with her toes.
‘I was fourteen,’ she said.
‘Are you all right? I mean—’
She smiled. ‘It affected me, but I deal with it.’
‘The boys and girls who hurt you,’ I said, convincing myself that I shouldn’t find an excuse to leave. ‘You reported them? Were they arrested?’
‘They were on the team. They knew people. Knew my coach. I was suspended. They went to good schools.’
‘That’s—’
‘Typical,’ Valerie said. ‘I dealt with it. Stare at a wound long enough and it doesn’t hurt anymore. You’ll see its beauty, eventually.’ She studied the table’s surface, as if becoming aware of something previously unseen. ‘Has part of your problem been that you’re attracted to me, too?’
Caught unaware as I was, I’m uncertain of what I showed; Charles once told me my face was as readable as a cheap novel. Valerie must have inferred much from my hesitation. ‘You’re beautiful,’ I said. ‘You have a remarkable mind.’
‘Charles said that when I asked him what he thought of me. Were you two ever in love with the same woman?’
The nature of his response to Valerie was clear to me that afternoon—it was fascination as well as attraction, as when a deer freezes, seeing oncoming lights. Either of us would have confessed to anything if she said we should. ‘It’s more complicated than that,’ I said.
‘What was her name?’
‘Gail,’ I said. ‘We were together through our junior year.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t think about it.’
‘Except when you do,’ she said. ‘Tell me. We’ll keep each other’s secrets.’
‘We argued, one night,’ I said. ‘About what, I don’t remember. Charles saw I was upset. He told me he’d talk to her. Smooth things over. Next night he went to her apartmmet. She lived off campus. Valerie, I don’t think—’
‘What did he do?’
‘He was still asleep when I woke up. I called Gail. She hung up when she heard me. Wouldn’t let me in when I went to her apartment. Stood at her door and asked her what happened. She said go ask your friend. When I got back to the house Charles was having breakfast.’
‘Keep talking. It’s all right. What did he say?’
‘He told me she was drunk. One thing led to another. When she woke up, he said she got weird and he left.’
‘You didn’t believe him.’
‘I kept saying tell me what really happened. He started telling me what they’d done. What she did to him. In detail. Smiling the whole time he told me. Finally said if Gail and I ever slept together again he wouldn’t be surprised if she called out his name instead of mine.’
Valerie stroked my face with her hand, caressing my cheek, pressing her fingertips under my ear. ‘She was your first girlfriend?’ she asked. ‘Only girlfriend?’
‘She thought I sent him over to her. I did. He offered to go, I said yes. It was my fault too.’
‘It wasn’t,’ Valerie said. ‘It’s all right. It is. What happened to Gail?’
‘She didn’t report it. No one did, back then. We didn’t get back together. Month later she transferred to Berkeley.’
‘And you stayed friends with Charles after that?’ I nodded. She petted my ear; ran her tongue along her lips, as if they were dry. ‘I guess you do understand masochism.’
‘Getting late, Valerie,’ I said. ‘I better go.’
‘But you don’t have to run, do you?’ she asked. ‘Not this time.’
‘Give my best to—’ She slapped my face, as if in play. ‘Get home safe.’
‘He’s home, or I’d say walk me there. I keep telling him he doesn’t get out enough. I’m glad you live close by.’ She watched me rise. ‘We should start hooking up more often.’
‘I’ll call.’
‘Charles gave me a lot of new material,’ Valerie said, smiling. ‘I could use a good editor.’
FORWARD TO: Editorial Production
Legault & Van Gelder/Adv Forens Compan/JANUARY
The following account appears to be the only case in the literature involving joint participants in what has been recently (Hazelwood, Dietz, Burgess, 1983) termed Kotzwarraism, [FLAG 32] or hypoxyphiha. The diagnostic criteria for these paraphilia include the acting out of masochistic fantasies involving torture, abuse or execution and a desire for sexual arousal through risk-inherent situations, being generally in these cases the employment of a preferred mode of self-induced (or, induced through the agency of others; op.cit. Asa and Burroughs, 1978) sexual excitement by means of mechanical or chemical asphyxiation. This case should be considered sui generis but the patterns are unmistakable.’
129. The victims were a fifty-year-old Caucasian male and a twenty-two-year old Caucasian female. A good state of preservation was observed, the temperature within the female deceased’s studio apartment being forty degrees Fahrenheit [FLAG 33].
Both victims were nude, obliquely reclined back to back in arched positions, touching only at the head and heels. An electrical cord was attached at one end to the female deceased’s neck by a slip knot, and tied at the other end around the male deceased’s ankles. Another cord interconnected her ankles to his neck in like manner. Both victims were also tied together at the neck with a blue and white repp necktie looped and knotted around the throats of the victims [FLAG 34]. Commercial lubrication cream was detected in the rectum of the female deceased. A small pink ribbon was tied in a bow at the base of the male deceased’s penis. No signs of struggle were noted. Neither a suicide note nor any writings indicative of depressive states were found.
The positioning of the victims assured that the leg movements of one would exert increasing pressure upon the neck of the other, compressing the carotid baroreceptors, slowing the heart rate, within a short time causing unconsciousness. The male deceased died of asphyxia due to laryngeal ligature. The female deceased died concurrently through vagal inhibition. Examination of the slip knots, in these cases often serving as a self-rescue mechanism, revealed that the female deceased’s hair had become entangled in her cord’s knot, precluding release. It was not evident that such release was attempted.
Six metal hooks had been installed in the ceiling to facilitate bondage activity. A dented metal wastepaper can showed signs of having been recently worn on the head by the female deceased as an entrapment device. Thirty-nine standard school notebooks kept in file cabinets were found to contain variant texts of a masochistic fantasy written in the hand of the female deceased.
Prescriptions for Stelazine and Tofranil in the name of the female deceased had been recently filled. The male deceased’s evident possessions consisted of a travel-size toiletry case. Among the female deceased’s possessions were a braided leather whip of the type known as a cat o’nine tails, lengths of 3/8″ diameter hemp rope, three spools of cloth twine, two children’s red jump ropes, twenty feet of clothesline, a roll of piano wire, a pair of wire clippers, battery cables, two Polaroid SX-70 cameras and eight boxes of film, seventy-three developed Polaroid photographs depicting the female deceased in earlier asphyxial episodes, battery-operated vibrating devices of assorted sizes including one capable of ejecting warmed fluids, six books on yachtsmanship and sailing, a sculler’s oar, two wooden paddles of a model used frequently in fraternity/sorority initiations, scrotum weights, a penis vice, and a leather belt studded along its inner length with carpet tacks [FLAG 35].
Smiles noted on the faces of both deceased were ascribed to rigor mortis until investigators ascertained the estimated time of death [FLAG 36].
32 Correct? Not in Stedman’s.
OK.
33 Dangling.
Not unexpected in these accounts. Fix.
34 Hard to picture as described.
Photo en route to Art Department should clarify.
35 Authors as obsessional as victims. Cut?
List already trimmed by half.
36 Necessary?
Stet.
ICE PALACE
by
Douglas Clegg
When I joined a sorority in high school my initiation consisted of a ‘Hell Night’. I remember dressing up in a silly outfit and rolling a raw egg down the street with my nose. It was terrific fun. So when I read in the news about young men dying from their ‘hazing’ and initiations in college or military academies I always find it a somewhat alien concept.
‘Ice Palace’ brought me a little closer to understanding some of the psychological dynamics of these rituals.
ICE PALACE
1
I once helped murder a boy when I was nineteen, only we didn’t think of ourselves as boys back then. It was in college, at a university in the mountains of Virginia, when the snow had piled up and the parties were in full swing. I lived with my brothers—we weren’t blood relations, except through the college fraternity system. It was February, and certain aspects of fraternity hazing were not yet complete. It was always in the harshest part of the season that the sadistic rituals took place on campus, from paddling to raiding to a particularly cruel torture called Ice Palace.
I was just buttoning up my shirt, about to start shaving, when Nate Wick, known as the Wicked Wick or the Flaccid Wick, grabbed me by the collar and slammed me against the wall; the whole world shook and I cussed him out something fierce; his face was all scrunched up like he was about to cry. He had hair growing from his ears even at twenty-one, and fat cheeks like a cherub gone to seed. I socked him in the jaw, ‘cause he could be crazy sometimes, even if he was my fraternity brother. He took the blow pretty good, and my fist ached like a son-of-a-bitch, and he dropped on my bed, right on the wet towel, so it made a smack kind of sound, and if he hadn’t been naked I’d’ve grabbed him by his collar and heave-hoed him right onto the balcony where it was twenty below and iced smooth.
‘Damn it, Wick,’ I said, ‘you drive me, you know that? You drive me, Christ.’
‘Drive you what? Nuts?’
‘You just drive me, that’s all,’ I said, finally catching my breath.
Nate said, slyly, ‘I know what you want, Underdog. I know what you want.’ I felt my face going red. Something disturbed me about his comment.
‘What the jizz you shiftin’?’ Stan, ever the poet, said from the doorway to my room. Stan was naked, too, which was pretty much how the guys went around on a Saturday morning in February when the nearest open road to the girl’s college was ten miles away. It was funny, being as generally modest as I was, how I’d got used to all this flaunted nakedness in the ice cold mornings. I never got out of the showers myself except with a big blue towel around my waist, and never left my room except with a shirt and khakis on.
Nate began laughing and I figured, given his jug face, that I hadn’t even caused him a moment’s pain; but I was still mad ‘cause I hated being surprised like that. Everything in that frat house was a surprise attack, especially on Big Weekends. Nate was on edge on account of his girl might not be making it down for Fancy Dress, so there was a chance he might be the dateless wonder. Nate said, ‘Look, Underdog, we got the pledges coming over for Ice Palace, and you look like a queer from Lynchburg.’
‘If that’s what you think, jerk-off, then you better not lie naked on my bed too long with that come-hither look on your face,’ I said. I went back to shaving in the bowl I’d put beneath the mirror in my room for privacy; it saved me from running to the communal and much-pissed-upon bathroom every time I needed to shave or wash.
Stan said, ‘Fuck the fuck it very.’ It was a line he said often, sober or drunk, and I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. He had patches of hair up and down his body, armpits to knees, like he had some ape pattern baldness problem. ‘I can’t wait for tonight, girls, I’m gonna get me some fine pussy, fine pussy.’
‘Underdog,’ Nate addressed me in his usual manner, ‘the hose queen’s coming down tonight. You want to get laid?’
‘No thanks, and get out of here, willya?’
This particular winter semester, my second year, Nate, who was my Big Brother in the House, wanted me to learn how to be a man as only Nate knew how. It wasn’t enough that I was flunking Physics for Poets because of the mid-week grain parties, nor that I had no interest in cow-punching or whore-hopping. Nate was a wild man and rich redneck from Alabama, and his life was something to marvel at. He had learned the ropes of human sexuality at twelve from his babysitter; at seventeen, he’d saved an entire boat-load of immigrants off the coast of Bermuda—losing three toes in the process. He knew life, how to live it, what paths to go down, when and where to get a hard-on and what to do about it and with whom. The bizarre part was, he was an honours student, his old man ran one of the growing tobacco companies, and he never, ever had a hang over.
