The Lazarus Heart by Poppy Z. Brite Read Free Book Online

didn't need anybody to pull him aside and tell him, "Frank, faggots are not welcome on the force." He saw the hatred in his fellow cadets and recognized it for what it was, absorbed an acute awareness of the silence he would have to keep like priestly vows of celibacy if he was to have both these things, sex with other men and the badge, without having to endure any lessons firsthand. He saw others who were not so sharp, and that was enough for Frank.
    By the time he came on the New Orleans PD as a beat cop in the Fifth Ward he understood the fine line he would have to walk, and he kept his arms out straight, placed one foot carefully in front of the other. Shortly after he entered the force two officers were busted after trading leniency for sexual favors from male hustlers in the Quarter. Before their subsequent hearings and dismissal Frank saw the other things that happened to them-the threats and beatings and humiliation-and he took note.
    Four years later he was promoted to the rank of homicide detective, four long years he'd spent walking the walk, talking the talk, and satisfying his hungers with his hands and pornography, and even the pornography was a big risk. He knew that, and he kept his magazines in a locked strongbox in the back of a closet and never bought anything from the local newsstands or porn shops. Everything arrived at a post office box he kept in Bridge City under a false name, sexual care packages in anonymous brown paper, the magazines and videocassettes that served as surrogates for anything like actual companionship or satisfaction.
    He learned the masquerade, the smoke-and-mirrors game, and prided himself that no one suspected a thing. He dated fictitious women. Whenever the guys were going on about some woman or another, Frank was always right up front, his lines as well rehearsed as any actor's on opening night. "Oh, man, did you see the titties on that bitch?" somebody would say, and Frank would clutch at his crotch and grin on cue. He knew every queer slur and joke, excelled in the phony swish and lisp and limp-wristed pantomime. He had looked the other way on more than one occasion when he saw cops beating up on fags. The machismo was just another part of his uniform, after all, just as easy to put on and take off again as his hat and shoes, and if there were ever doubts, well, that's what confession was for.
    It was all easy enough to rationalize. If they'd just show a little fucking self-restraint, if they'd act like men, nobody would know and this shit wouldn't happen to them.
    But sometimes he would catch a glimpse of his thin face in the bathroom mirror or a store window and there would be only the mask, no vestige left of the man hiding underneath. He would have to stop then, would have to lean against a wall or sit down until the vertigo passed. There was a ballooning sense that he was somehow slipping out of himself, that the man he saw reflected had already consumed the real Frank Gray. And even this was something small enough to dismiss. Shit, it was a stressful fucking life and he couldn't expect not to feel it every now and then. He told himself it was just something else that came with the territory and if he had to have a few drinks before bed to keep the nightmares away, so be it.
    The boy in the bathroom stall smelled like sweat and sunlight, and Frank tried hard to concentrate on those delicious smells instead of the sour stink of urine and deodorant cakes. He sat on the toilet seat, his hands savoring the soft bristle of the kid's scalp, holding back, wanting it to last, knowing it might be weeks before he allowed himself anything this wonderful again, weeks before he was desperate enough to risk it.
    When he finally came, Frank leaned over and kissed the kid's scruffy hair, tasted salt and Vitalis. Tiny bursts of orgasm still lingered somewhere between his dick and his brain, and he didn't want to open his eyes, let in the ugly light of the rest room, the uglier reality of