Dhalgren

among the shovels (why shovels?), pipes, lumber, and canvas, were people in sleeping bags.

Someone had built a loft.

Three steps up the ladder, Denny looked back over his shoulder. 'You come up.'

Denny's boots went over the edge. Kid climbed. The planks (they gave some with his hands and knees) were strewn with blankets. The size of a double bed, the platform was without pillow or mattress. 'I keep all my shit up here,' Denny explained, pushing himself back among wrinkled cloth. By his left hand was an army compass, a green shirt (with gold trim) fresh pressed and wrapped in plastic, a dagger whose handle was a ball-in-claw, and a gaming case on whose outside were long, alternately black and black-outlined triangles for backgammon.

Kid crawled forward through army drab and a weave of paler green rippled through with an electric-blanket cord. In the window that rose above the platform, a mottled shade let tan light on the tangle. He pulled his feet under him to sit and realized his arm was shaking. 'How come you don't have half a dozen people sleeping up here with you?'

'I tell 'em to get the fuck out.' Denny's hands lay knotted in his lap.

A zodiacal poster hung on the wall: Scorpio. And another of Koth, the Dark Angel. 'It's sort of nice up here,' Kid whispered. His throat was tight. I'm scared of him, he realized. And I like him. 'Get the rest of your clothes off.'

'Why?'

Kid let out a breath. 'Nothing.' He thumbed open the top button and tugged down his zipper. 'Go on.' He pulled his penis and testicles free of the closing V of brass teeth and let his shoulders relax against the plywood wall.

The ceiling would not let Denny stand. With hunkered back and crouched knees, the boy walked across the bedding, his arms swinging like a skinny blond ape. And fell. Kid flexed his knee under Denny's hand. Denny's hair swung forward, brushed Kid's belly.

His mouth is cold! Kid thought, and pulled his hand away a little sharply. Then he realized that it was only that the boy's lips were wet. Heat covered his thickening penis. He bent his knees and clamped them on Denny's thin flanks. He pushed his hand down his stomach, through moving hair. Saliva in his wiry groin was already cool. 'That's good. Make it wet.' His fingers butted the base. He pushed back Denny's hair, suddenly bending (and failing) to see the flattened cheeks, the distended mouth. The hair fell back. He cupped the back of Denny's neck. An image of the corpse in the shaft made him let his breath; he wished it hadn't. An equally surprising urge to smack the bobbing head away. Kid grunted, 'Unn…' and then again, 'Unn…' and had to close his eyes at the sensation. He pressed his palm against the warm ear. The head moved up and his penis was cold.

'Is it okay?' Denny asked.

'Yeah…'

Heat fell down it like a loose ring. His scrotal sack loosened between his thighs, then shriveled when spit ran down his leg, inside his pants. The moving head shook Kid's arm to the shoulder. He reached for Denny's shoulders. Denny tightened his fingers on Kid's thigh, let go, let himself be pulled up to lay with his chest on Kid's, a clutch of chain and crushed vest between them.

Denny's face was hard and amazed. 'What you want?' All the small muscles of chin, cheek, and jaw were visible.

Kid rubbed Denny's back. 'I want you to take the rest of your fucking clothes off.' Denny's skin was hot and dusty dry.

With his other hand, Kid reached between them to move his cock, caught between creased denim.

Denny jerked back to his knees, took a breath, and began to unzip his pants. Kid thought: he doesn't want me to touch his dick. Something like anger gathered in his stomach.

Denny said softly and hoarsely, 'You don't have to take yours off.' He worked his jeans back beneath his knees, stopped to pull handfuls of chain from his neck.

Kid scratched his belly. Denny stopped all motion, his eyes caught Kid's groin. Something happened in Kid's throat and to his mouth that it was easy to think was fear, was easier to think desire.

Kid's cock, hardening, rolled up his thigh.

Denny's throat released the little air he tried to hold.

'Take your pants off…' Kid checked anger against desire. Checking only spilled the anger into his voice. 'Go on…' Desire remained, a heavy heat under his stomach.

Denny sat back to pull off his boots. On the right, the outer half of the heel was worn to the leather. He pulled the left off more quickly. Loops of chain fell around his ankle. The knob of bone divided three strands from four: a dog's choke collar, wrapped several times. Denny leaned back to pull his pants off.

Kid looked at Denny's hands, Denny's feet, Denny's groin. His own back, against the wall, was slightly stiff. Denny, changing the texture of his movements, now began to fold his jeans, not looking at Kid. To relieve his shoulders, Kid sat forward. Then he reached out and pulled the jeans out of Denny's hands and tossed them in the corner with the boots and blankets. Denny's expression, as his eyes sought something other than Kid's, moved from confusion to belligerence.

Kid smiled, and the smile became the soft laughter for a house full of sleepers. 'Come on.'

Denny pushed himself forward. Then he said hoarsely: 'That's pretty funny I should freak out now, ain't it?' The dry, hot skin brushed Kid's, pressed Kid's, a hand between their shoulders: heel hard, four light pressures and the length of thumb. Kid looked down at where the black-lined nails touched him. He reached around Denny's shoulders to cover the boy's fingers with his own. Child's? he thought. And then, with concern: Why has this child brought me here? He tightened both arms across Denny's back: Denny was shivering. 'Hey…' Kid rubbed the boney stalk of Denny's spine down to where the flesh thickened and became soft. Then up. Then down. 'Hey, cut that out. What's the matter?'

Denny still shook. 'Nothing.'

I'm afraid. And I want to stop this. Shit, no! 'Come on, then. You try to relax.' Kid worked further from the wall across the piled blankets. Holding Denny on top, he made a rocking motion. Denny turned his face away so that the side of Kid's face was all a-brush with yellow.

'If we just lay around like—'

One of the people under the loft turned over. And Denny stopped breathing for the count of three; then went on:

'— like this, we ain't never gonna do nothing.'

Go on and do what you want then, was anger. With the sentence in his mouth unsaid, Kid realized: I'm twelve years older than him. He said, 'Get down there and suck it,' which, at the scrambling over his chest and stomach and the welling heat in his groin, he knew was lust. He reached for the hair and hunched shoulders between his legs. With his leg, he rolled Denny over on his side, pushing and pushing. Denny held Kid's thighs. Their congress was intense and diligent, till Denny, not holding him, was hammering near Kid's hip. 'Okay…' Kid panted, and let the boy go. A quarter toward orgasm Kid hunkered down to press his hard groin on a hip, a thigh, something.

'Hey…' Breathing hard, Denny lay on his back. He raised his hand, glistening knuckles, strung with grey mucous. 'I guess I came.' He grinned. 'What am I gonna do with this stuff?'

'Eat it,' Kid said. 'That what you usually do?'

'Yeah.' Denny looked back up at the ceiling and put his fore knuckle in his mouth, turned his hand to lick the heel.

Kid put his arm, moist with effort, across Denny's thin, hard chest, still dry, and rubbed on the bony hip. Denny took his two middle fingers out of his mouth. 'You didn't come yet?'

'Nope.'

'Go… go on and do what you want.'

Yeah, Kid thought, that's anger. He laughed.

'When I was little,' Denny said and pressed the back of his hand against his open mouth, 'there were these two brothers who were the strongest kids in my neighborhood. I used to want to be like them. And once they told me they were so strong because they used to eat each others' come. I didn't even know what they were talking about then. I hadn't even ever jerked off, you know?' Denny turned to look at Kid. 'I guess it's protein or something. You do it too?'