Fake House by Linh Dinh Read Free Book Online Page A

hallucination, my hallucination. It was theater, a clumsy skit performed among friends, an amateur production, and not emblematic of anything. If you could walk into my job right now, you’d see a rather generic, tall,well-built, bearded gentleman in a conservative tie and suit, sitting at his cubicle.
24. A Flag with Wind
    Aside from inspiring me to grow a beard, Patricia also inspired me to drink. It took the edge off our time together. It was also, as it is for everybody else, an aphrodisiac. It made me an enthusiastic lover. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I ever penetrated her sober. Like the saying goes, a man without alcohol is like a flag without wind.
    Unfortunately my drinking habit did not go away after Patricia and I split up. I drank and drank and drank and drank and drank. I drank and masturbated to revive our best moments together. The habit of shaving my entire body also came back. I shaved my face and my chest and my inguinal region. I plucked out my eyelashes and my eyebrows.
    But I no longer had a spiritual foundation for these private rituals. I was a drunk who was compulsively depilating himself.
    One night, as I was squatting over a small mirror to prune the hair from my ass, it happened.
    I cut my dick off.

A C ULTURED B OY
    I had to make him understand that there is a correspondence between touch and feeling, between gesture and emotion. I had to teach him that the body has a limited vocabulary, is a limited vocabulary, that there are only so many things we can do to each other.
    Each touch must be warranted: an index finger on the lips, a head nestled between the breasts.
    When it comes to physical contacts, to the dialogue between bodies, there is a hierarchy, absolute and vertical, corresponding to degrees of emotional intimacy. It is a gradation that must be sorted out and calibrated.
    It was no small event when he placed his palm on my hip, when he rubbed his knuckles against my cheek. The first time his tongue entered my mouth, I thought his soul was trying to escape its solitary confinement to enter my body.
    But he was impervious to the implications of these nuances. Later, when he fucked those girls, it was simply a kinetic spectacle, a punch up the middle, a twitch of the nerve.
    He was my first. I chose him. We dated for seven weeksbefore it happened. Our first date was at the Ritz. We saw
Remains of the Day. We
sat in The Last Drop and drank cappuccino. We took the 32 bus to the zoo on a Saturday afternoon. We went to the art museum on a Sunday. We gave each other books to read.
    At the zoo we saw two massive turtles coupling: one tank teetering on top of another. He joked, “They look bored.”
    “You can’t tell the male from the female,” I said.
    Later, back in my apartment, we sat on the couch, drank Rolling Rock, and read Walt Whitman out loud to each other. He thundered,
“What is this that frees me so in storms? What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging mean?”
    At midnight I said, “I think I’m ready for bed.” He gave me an imploring look. We were drunk. He followed me to the door. We hugged. I gave him a kiss on the cheek. We had never touched lips. Impulsively I said, “Now for the other cheek.” But before I could do this, kiss his other cheek, he intercepted my lips with his own. I had kissed boys before, but only perfunctorily, chastely, without passion. Never had one stuck his tongue into my mouth. He stuck his tongue into my mouth. I was shocked by its texture, by its violence. It was a thumb gyrating, a blind animal thrashing inside my face. I thought his soul was trying to escape its solitary confinement to enter my body. He kneaded my ass with his hands. He made these
um, um
sounds. He said, “You feel so good.”
    I pushed his chest away and said, “You’d better go.”
    How is it possible that, at nineteen, I had never really kissed a boy, never had sex? There is a correspondence between touch and feeling, between gesture and emotion. The body