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It's been more than an hour now. The Beatles were playing on his radio, then what apparently is the new roar in Rome, groovy and luscious american music, and now it's back to some old terrone singing about the girls, the sun of the south, love. Primo spits, fiddles with the buttons but no other channel comes through in this area.
He paces the empty gas station, his impossibly long shadow stretching on the asphalt. The autoradio whines and screeches. Primo swears, kicks the gas pump, hurts his foot, swears again. The music slowly fades away, cinematically vanishing into bird noises and evening wind.
He knew about his fucking battery. No lights now.
An hour at max before it's dark, he ponders. At least it'll make the cicadas shut up. In this late summer, on those tall peaks, the sun sets early enough and the temperature drops fast. Primo has some moth-eaten wool cover in the back of his car, covered in equal amounts of sweat, blood and semen. It's sticky and scratchy, crusted in pine needles and dirt. At least it's warm.
He absent-mindedly roams the road, praying for some old peasant to drive by and give him a canister. No one does. And as planned, night falls.
For good measure, Primo screams again, incoherent insults echoing across the valley. He knows it's stupid but he's also very numb to his own idiocy, thanks to the generous amount of cocaine he's on. It's like watching someone on the movie screen, a tall and brave hero on a rugged badland. No one would ridicule Dean or Brando for this, this virile expulsion of pent up anger, this showing of teeth. That makes sense to him : and no one ever chuckles anyway. At least here in Calabria.
What is there to do? Too dark to read, too high to sleep.
-Puttana...
The only correct course of action is to pursue a synthetic sense of fun. He also does not feel equipped to deal with a lonely and cold crash, scrunched up in his Alfetta. Gotta stay high, raga , what else is there to do?
He's laying down on the back of the car with his socked feet propped up against the window. Expensive leather shoes unceremoniously thrown on the floor, next to some paper coffee cups. There's one thing he's proud of : his car has very little cigarette holes.
He therefore swears even harder when he makes a new one, ashes ignored long enough for the prickly smell of burned leather to fill the car.
Primo drinks because he's high and takes more coke because he's drunk. He feels tense and sweaty. His extremities tingle, split apart by a wild flowing of tainted blood. It’s the body cries, disguised as pure pleasure.
-Vaffanculo!
The nail full of coke he had grabbed is now nicely peppered on his chest. Not much to do, as he is still laying down on his back. He laughs at it, a little, guttural groans, his head thrown back and his prickly throat exposed, so long and so pale. He sighs, wets his fingers and gets all the powder on them. Licks them clean. His gums numb up, they feel cold and soft. His teeth are made of ice. Primo lights a cigarette as he feels the high from a previous hit of cocaine wash over him. Breathes slow and deep. Gets hard.
He sits up: leaning towards the front of his Alfetta and using the faint glow from his lighter, he looks at himself in the rear-view mirror. His face is grotesque, the thick glaze of cocaine sweat caught on his early stubble. Red lips, bitten and wet. His blue eyes, on deep sleep deprived sockets. The comedic white powder on his moustache.
-Non fottermi, raga’...
He strikes such an aggressive portrait : starts grimacing menacingly at his reflection. He knows he's good looking, he'd kiss the reflection. If the mirror was bigger, Primo would flush himself against it.
-Pagherrano, eh, cazzo...
It's puerile, but it's all he can expect from this life. The eternal back and forth of dirty money through dirty hands. Pay for your son to go home safe. Pay me and I'll protect you against myself. Pay a guy to bend down and open up his hole for me.
Pay for the oil, and I'll set all of that shit on fire : the thought of the Getty oil fuming and dancing, engulfing its heir in great dark waves.
This arresting thought reminds Primo of this photo of the monk in Indocina or something, crisp and calm, a blazing inferno on a tiny photo, a sinister jerrican and a car behind, watching the scene from concerned headlights.
He also thinks of mythology, but before he digs too deep through memories, he feels the drugs pressuring him to change the disc, as the song seems stuck, repeating the same verses with tiny little cracks, cracks, cracks.
He'd spit, as if someone could witness him abandoned to introspection and call him a pansy or a faggot or something similar. Not like they would though. Well, he'd spit but he does not. He would not do this to his Alfetta, and opening the door seems far fetched for such a momentary lapse of reason.
Now it's been some time and his laboured breath has fogged up the car. No more feet against the wet windows. He sits like a proper boy, opens his fly, wiggles slightly out of his tight pants, and ponders his half hard erection. And that might be the one thing that bothers Primo : it simply is impractical, his inclinations. He wonders how no one has caught on to him ignoring women. Not that he actively avoids them, at all.
He is friend with the Madonna, and with the whores.
He likes the territory of women, interiors, gardens, shady apartments. Quiet afternoons reading, buried neck deep in the domesticity of others. Well aware of this simple fact : men like you should not even dream of this. Salvatore and the other guys somehow trust him around their wives, having unconsciously accepted him as some royal eunuch. The wives don’t get their asses pinched or their looks commented. Regina sees through him and lets him know. He shrugs it off, for he knows fully well that as much as he enjoys her territory, she will never step on his.
The other mafiosi, they want power, they want money, they want the girl. To be fair, Primo mostly wants the adrenaline, enough money to buy a simulacrum of freedom and some blood to feed the vicious circle. See, once you start you gotta finish. That's also the case on point here : with a handful of flesh, half hard and pulsing.
He reviews his recent days for anything exciting enough to focus on. No magazines on the car. He has not been in Rome in a while. In Trastevere there's a bar where only guys hang out. The atmosphere is quite virile. He breathes through wide nostrils, focuses on his own stench and it reminds him of his fellow men. He always has cocaine on him and he moves like a leopard through mist and smoke. The green and pink lights break on unfamiliar bodies, clothed in black and cheap colognes.
Primo's hand caresses the leather of his car seat as the other tugs at his cock, lazily. The cold surface feels like corpses, and the thought makes him grin. He's not into this but he could very well be. Maybe he could try and fuck Paul's body once he's back at the hideout. Take a Polaroid of his cock buried on the dead teenager's ass, and another one of himself smiling, sunglasses on and a half smoked Camel hanging out at the corner of his mouth. Send it to the Gettys and maybe get a raised eyebrow from the old cunt.
There's a thrill in shady business, he smirks, and carries on imagining ghost members, intricate penetrations, liquids oozing, in and out.
Now he is back to his fantasised club, in a private room, two lines of cocaine stretched on the table and some big guy next to him grunting on his right ear, babbling common places. Primo can hold his coke pretty well but the guy is too fucked up, a disappointing flaccid cock over heavy balls, hanging between his hairy thighs.
He is a solid head taller than Primo, it's like nothing happens when he drops to his knees. Primo's hands shoot for the curly hair, entwine like lice, pull and push. He moans, the man moans around his cock.
Primo wishes the guy would get his shit together and fuck him hard, flip him against the table and open him up raw. The stranger's promising prick, secretive and mute, ramming into him until he's slack, until the coke, the alcohol and the sex culminate in this white edge, this complete bliss, this pleasure only known to the overdosed and the dead.
The mouth around his dick and the fingers snaking in and out of him prove to be enough, and Primo comes, shaking, and with a laboured screech reminiscent of cats on heat. The guy gets up and smiles at him. It makes Primo visibly snarl and show teeth, which he quickly disguises as laughter. He gets out a pair of lira bills, rolls them up and offers one to his fuck friend of the night.
They do more coke, and the guy dips down again to lick his prick clean. The cocaine dripping from the man’s nose to his mouth gets on Primo’s glans, and the immediate feeling of cold and numbness makes him feel like a castrated creature, for a fleeting moment.
-Grazie.
The guy says : if Primo had a gun, he would have shot him on the spot. He grins instead.
He tries to focus on this memory but flashes of morbid fantasies blur them. He is still caressing the dead skin of his Alfetta, imagining the dead. He moans loudly, alone, shivers : the cold of the night has made his nipples raw, scratched by the fabric of his shirt. He pumps his hips, the car starts bouncing, cock effortlessly sliding through his spit wet palm.
It takes maybe only a pair of seconds for his orgasm to wash through him and leave only disgust behind. He opens his shirt and wipes his hand on his belly, fuzzy hair dampened. Licks the rest off his fingers.
- Cazzo .
He says, and he means it. He sits slowly, and drinks a few quick sips of whisky. Could he send himself to sleep this way? Primo considers it, then goes for more cocaine. Considers sleep again, drinks some more. Swears off the coke. Takes another bump. The last one. For a solid five minutes.
This cycle repeats itself with the regularity of clockwork, swinging between highs and lows, hot thrills and cool shivers. Sleep eludes him. He begrudgingly puts his shoes back on, stumbles out for a walk.
Out of spite, he pisses against the gas station building, and in a particular fit of bad spirit, on the handle of the door. He chuckles idiotically with the innocence of a boy, holding his adult member with shaky hands.
The moon looks nice. A faucet drips water against the building and he has the good sense to drink some, but feels an immediate need to rinse it out with alcohol.
Walking back, he circles his car. It shines faintly under the stars glow. At least that’s how he sees it.
He considers how he drove people on his trunk more often than on his back seat. Crossing police cars and sweating, fear grabbing at his insides, corpse or guns on the back, powder on the front. There’s a long scratch on the left side, where he drove against a wall in some tight village, up there. He runs his finger against it and it pulls blood. He whines out of reflex, and despite the lack of audience, disguises it into a groan.
He slept inside his Alfetta so often that he knows that around the left rear door, there’s a slight crook where air comes in. He always angles his head towards it, especially in sleazy summer nights around Rome where open windows would look slightly too inviting.
He loves how obvious and loud this red automobile is. Primo likes to be noisy and that car knows how to play the part too. He roars down mountain roads, draped up in burnt tires fumes. A hundred wild horses stomping in his aluminium heart and smoke from his exhaust pipes. It’s easy to merge with metal, he thinks, having seen his share of accidents. Having caused some.
One day he was on some extortion mission around Rome, having taken a curly haired man as a partner in crime. Primo knew this would not last too long : not dealing with ladies did not deter him from knowing that work and sex should not mix. Guy needed money, was a decent lay and had a modicum of good sense. Primo would put a bullet through his head a pair of months later.
This man - Taddeo, was as tall as Primo, slightly darker, thicker, wider. Not as smart. Primo had no type when it came to men : if he met them in a gay club, then that was enough for him. The little remnants of sentiments he harboured were not to be abandoned carelessly, wasted on men that only felt disgust at his kind.
He remembered watching from afar as a teenager, wishing, pining. And realizing a few years later, how easy and careless things could be, when one could wave a few lire and a bag of cocaine in a smoked up bar to score a hit of intimacy. Primo thinks of this because they were in that car, driving a hefty amount of money on the back, nestled between guns and jerricans. Celebration was on the way.
Primo was driving, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Taddeo also smoked, which Primo could not forbid as he also indulged. Yet he stressfully watched the ashes dangle from Taddeo's cigarette, worried for the seats. Eyes darting from the road to the red tip, and back again. Taddeo smiled when noticing and said there was no harm this car had not already been through, so why the worry?
Primo got upset but just grinned. Coke was making him pliant that day, and a furious desire to get fucked overwhelmed him. He took a sharp turn, away from the traffic.
This was quickly arranged, at the end of a dirt road. Primo had hitched his tight shirt up and opened his fly. He was completely hard and leaking already. He leaned over to the passengers side, one hand on the back of the seat and the other on his mate's leg. It's never necessary but he craves this light debasement: the boss bent in front of his goon.
He sucks a performing hard-on out of Taddeo, using a copious amount of spit as the Alfetta fills with sordid wet noises. When the saliva starts pooling at the base of Taddeo's cock, no longer serving its purpose as it drips through the unruly pubes, Primo gestures for him to follow him outside. He doses them both with some final nail full of cocaine, that Taddeo takes while staring straight into his eyes. Kissing seems superfluous at the time.
He leans on the front of the car, torso flush against the car hood. Taddeo yanks his pants down and enters him swiftly. The metal is warm, from the sun and from the silent motor resting inside. As he gets fucked deep and fast, the edge of his shirt rolls up and pinches his nipples, his skin catching and rubbing against the red metal. Body heat emanates from all directions : under him, behind him, inside him.
The car is yanked up and down, metallic noises echoing in the hollow of their bodies : Primo's lungs, the Alfetta’s depths. The pain increases, too deep and too rough, the overwhelming heat engulfing him, his cock on the edge of the hood, squished between them.
The unhuman cadence is impossible to bear, the machine pushes back at him, crashes against his prostate, Taddeo's grunts accelerate and the artificial bliss of cocaine roars at his ears once more. It's like a death rattle when he comes, his rugged moan and the creaking of the car. He removes himself from the hood, his entire torso covered in a painful rash of vivid red. It looks like the Alfetta's paint has bled off on him.
White pearls of semen adorn the faded metal. It trickles down and seeps slowly inside the gap. Primo imagines his semen evaporating against the still burning motor. Curious thought. They get back in silently and drive away.
The memory had riled him up as he paced slowly in lazy circles, by the mechanical and automated rhythm of a cocaine comedown. He's fucked up and hard. Fresh and clear pre-ejaculate running over dried semen.
He goes back in. Primo’s sticky armpits, the beads of sweat catching on his brow and facial hair, his overpowering stench : the irresistible portrait of a fiend in a cocaine bender, in all of its revolting beauty and animal appeal.
He feels greasy and impossibly excited, craving penetration once more. Cocaine turns his arousal into a bottomless recipient, never satisfied and always leaking. There will never be enough sperm, blood or drugs to fill this abyss inside him, this gaping hole.
The drug makes him empty, steals his deliberate feelings and replaces them with chimeras. In a rage, he snorts some more and throws the rest out of the door, making sure the spillage is irreversible. He immediately regrets it and washes his anger with whisky. The Alfetta's klaxon honks into the night in a tone-deaf spark of humor.
His eyes linger on the gear lever and he considers fucking himself on it, the thick knob enticing, its leather surface smooth and inviting. Primo is a messed up guy, but this goes a bit too far for him and he laughs it off.
-Vergognati, Primo, dai…
Later, despite a few fingers up his ass, his orgasm eludes him and he licks the gear's head, shaming himself further in a desperate effort to climax.
On occasions, as a teenager, his father had beaten him up for what he had perceived as the blooming signs of faggotry in his son. Primo snarls at the memory and groans around the shaft of his car, wondering if - and how - the beatings worked.
Humiliated with no witnesses, debased by his own drug perverted nature, he takes in the Alfetta's lever deeper, his spit and tongue shining the leather. His hands are impossibly rough and fast, inside and around him.
It's pure disgust that gets him over the edge. He rests his head on the seat and breathes out. The taste lingers in his mouth.
The wet and shiny member of his car looks at him through its metallic eye.
Primo won't sleep but he gets cold, and a sudden and unexpected loneliness seizes him. He wraps himself in the damp blanket and closes his eyes. Hours pass as weird and unpleasant thoughts linger in his head, chaotic successions of images he can not control.
The drug’s crash is completely unbearable.
He imagines how easy it would be to put a bullet through his skull right now, and the relief it would be for everyone involved in his blood stain of an existence.
It's the certitude that he won't be missed that makes him drop the fantasy : he intends on leaving more bite marks before he goes, more bits of himself, to dissolve piece by piece like a leper.
Liquid spite runs through him like diesel. He scrunches against the cold door and passes out, finally managing to fall into a parody of sleep.
-
On the floor mat, there's a journal. He bends to pick it, rips a page and folds it expertly.
The sun is shining weakly, and as the sound of a crank being turned stops, a tiny airplane slowly glides out of the window of the red Alfetta.
-
-terrone southerner (derogative).
-Puttana… whore, as in, fuck.
-Vaffanculo! go get fucked, as in, fuck.
-Non fottermi, raga’... dont fuck with me, guys
-Pagherrano, eh, cazzo… They’ll pay, hey, fuck.
-Grazie. Come on.
- Cazzo . penis, as in, fuck.
-Vergognati, Primo, dai… shame on you Primo, come on.