Twentysix by Jonathan Kemp Page B

onto the bed and climb above, thrusting into his face with my hips. He moans with pleasure as I feed him, as arranged. Grunts erupt from my throat with each release. He swallows every drop. I slide out and slide my body down across his till my chin rests on the top of his shaved head and I stay like that for a moment, feeling just enough tenderness to consider planting a kiss on his crown, and just enough restraint to hold back. I roll over onto my back next to him, recovering from the high, floating back into my body from the white light of orgasm. ‘Fuck, that was hot.’
    ‘It certainly was,’ he says, licking his lips and sitting up to get a cigarette. My fingertips glow from the UV, emitting their own light. As I look at them I wonder what it could possibly signify, this feral hunger that pushes me towards this.
    Does it signify anything at all?
    During the long walk home these words emerge like bubbles and I write them down for someone to read, someone like you.
    He has five more men due to visit him throughout the night.

C c
     

     
    A t three a.m., at the back of Jack Straw’s Castle, a fissure opens up in reality, through which he steps, and a new world unfolds beneath his feet; the trees grow denser with each step, the air more primitive and wild. He looks across the tree-tops and beyond to a sky the colour of which remains nameless, knowing that this night will never leave him. On his deathbed this memory will visit him like a nursing angel. The timeless landscape matches the timeless feeling inside. The wind gets tangled in the tops of the trees. The night races forward like a dark horse. Fear and desire commingle within the swinging pendulum of his stomach. The distinctive sound of a slap against bare flesh flaps through the air towards him.
    ‘Come on,’ his friend whispers excitedly, grabbing his arm, breaking the reverie, ‘there’s someone at the Spanking Tree.’
    The two friends move quickly through a shadowed clump of trees, where men lean and loiter, others passing slowly by, skirting close enough to make out the value of the chase. Now and then a cigarette tip burns redagainst the black, or a lighter flame momentarily pulls a face from out of the dark.
    They emerge in a clearing, in the centre of which lies a fallen tree, its trunk worn to a bare polish, its branches withered or broken. A naked man lies across the curve of the trunk, and in the half-light they can make out his moonwhite buttocks. Another man is standing beside him, bringing his palm down in slowly paced smacks that ripple through the silence. A group of men forms around them: hands moving across bodies, cocks emerging from flies, mouths meeting mouths. Outside the circle, a daddy bear stands holding his boy’s black leather jacket. He is big and round and white-bearded, Santa Claus in faded denim. His boy stands tall and lean and smoothly white amidst the pack, jeans puddled at his feet, white T-shirt rucked behind his head. Several men kneel before him, taking it in turns to suck him. The two friends approach, have their go and move on. Daddy walks over and whispers something to his cub and the young boy lifts his jeans and lowers his T-shirt and they walk away, to start somewhere else. Two or three men follow, dancing to his tune, cruising to the sweet smell of this naked climate.
    The darkness moves like a vapour, coagulating around bodies – only to evaporate in their heat. As the two friends move silently on one of them spots someone and, grabbing the other by the wrist, pulls him towards new prey. He approaches a tall, well-built skinhead, whispers something to him. The words disappear, lost forever. The three men move off towards some bushes,unlocatable now, without those maps that have yet to be drawn. Tucked into a space behind a tree, the two friends kneel before the skinhead’s porn-star cock, passing the amyl and taking it in turns to choke and sniff, choke and sniff. The skinhead lets loose a stream of verbal in