Twentysix by Jonathan Kemp Page A

know that sometimes it’s just sexier that way, making the gasps go inwards like blue smoke;
    This is for all those who find themselves on their knees at nine p.m. in a small park in this city of wounded boys and sexual warriors, barely hidden by bushes, sucking off a man in white trackies who told his girlfriend he was going for a jog (you know who you are); for all those who love it when he leans over to retrieve his beer can without breaking the stride of his wank; the way he slugs it back, fist still pumping;
    This is for when the blood turns black and burns you from the inside, for when you get the hunger – feel it unravelling within its long, dark spine of want; for when the only thing to do is go out and seek what you need in that place where the shadows grow as you pass through them, like a woman strolling through a cloud of perfume she has just released before her;
    This is for then, for those crystalline moments when your body moulds to your desires, contoured by the red heat of longing, and fuelled by all the imaginings you hold.
    For when no truth could be less secure.

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    W e spend the night exchanging handwritten notes, using a pad and pen the barman has supplied, you writing words you have never spoken, will never speak. Your writing is spidery as a child’s first efforts. I wish I’d kept them, those marks on paper which form a loop that binds us and pulls us back to my flat where we undress in silence and haste in my candlelit bedroom.
    And I am not prepared at all for the sounds that rip out of you when you come, the death rattle of pleasure, more bestial than human, which pierce the room like a gaggle of bats bursting into the night sky from the dark recess of a cave and filling it with Minerva’s screeches; from your cock is released a flock of snow-white doves. Trained in silence, locked in speechlessness, you are unschooled, untamed, letting go of sounds as you let go of your orgasm, in violent bursts that tear like an incision in flesh. Then you sink back into a big-grinned muteness that says everything there is to say about what we have just shared.
    These sounds you give to articulate your pleasure are far removed from the discreet insistencies of language.I snap at the darkness and swallow them like a bird plucking flies from the air. I too want to give up these sounds from a body rendered voiceless by language. I too want to tear myself open and release something monstrous and wild, something from the other side of language, where reason lies comatose and pointless.

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    I ring the doorbell three times as arranged.
    The door release clicks and I push the door open and enter the building. I make my way up to the first floor and the door to the flat is open, as arranged.
    The flat is in darkness, but for an ultraviolet glow from the bedroom. I enter to find a naked man face-down on the bed.
    He sits up, picks up a joint from the bedside cabinet and lights it, taking a long, slow pull before handing it over to me. I unfasten my trousers and step closer towards him before taking the joint. He slides his hand through my open fly and plays with my cock through the fabric of my jockstrap. The wind through the open window makes the blind throw itself against the glass in gatling fits.
    ‘Nice one,’ he says as he feels my cock stiffen under his touch. I push my jeans down and he pulls my cock out and slides his mouth onto it; I groan and lean across to place the joint in an ashtray before peeling off my T-shirt. The man takes a sniff of poppers and hands the bottle to me. My nervous system crackles in nitrous blueflashes as I reflect on the brain cells I’m killing, feeling each one pop like a blown light bulb in my skull.
    He sucks all the way down to the root, right down to the metal of my cock ring and the universe becomes a place I can live in once more.
    I spiral with pleasure, sliding along the curves of the spiral till I land in the centre with a splash. I push him back