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It was early evening when Solomon Tozer arrived, riding hot and loud down off the sun-baked asphalt of Ashbury Street, and dismounted the gleaming, roaring beast of his Harley in the shadow of house number 663.
The house was an old Victorian, the once-been grand domicile of some stately family who had lived lives of upright plenty. Now paint peeled off in great chunks, the roof was adorned with a patchwork of clumsily nailed shingles and the place housed - along with at least a dozen other residents, maybe more, there were always people coming and going - a small street-pusher in a small room. So it goes.
Solomon went in, nodded to a trio of heads in the foyer as he passed and swiftly ducked into the stairwell to dodge their attempts to bring him in on their debate on if a dining table that had no fake claws engraved onto its feet was more outside of the bullshit for its honesty, or if that was a failure to be playful that revealed whose game it really played.
He wrinkled his nose. The whole house stunk, a disconcerting melody of incense and cigarettes and rot and pot. Which particular scents were the strongest varied depending on where he walked, but the intensity was always the same.
The floorboards announced his presence for him as he climbed the winding stairs up three flights - removing his peaked cap he went, the foyer had been hot enough and the temperature only climbed as he did - and crossed the narrow hallway to his connection’s room, but he knocked anyway
Cornelius Hickey opened his door immediately, no doubt hearing the floorboards and anticipating that someone was coming to meet someone and the least he could do was overhear.
He wore an olive drab army shirt - surplus stock, Solomon could tell without asking that he’d never served a day in his life - with sleeves rolled up past his wiry forearms, half the buttons left undone and a pin-back button with warped text reading God is alive in a sugar cube stuck to his right breast pocket. He’d strung orange-yellow beads low around his neck and grown his orange-brown hair long, which he kept tucked behind his ears to avoid concealing any part of his thin, pretty face.
Solomon greeted him and watched his eyes narrow and lips curl, twisting his thin, pretty face into something with the look of a friendly smile.
“Solomon Tozer! You’re looking good, are those new boots?”
Solomon ignored Cornelius’s flattery and followed him into his room.
Cornelius was very efficient with how much he managed to cram inside such a small space, repurposing small pieces of furniture - a card table which hosted no card games, a filing cabinet which held no papers, and a thin bookcase with books on only the top shelf, the others occupied with folded clothes. He was so economic with his space that anyone who paid him a visit ended up feeling claustrophobic.
His walls were similarly utilized, all but coated in prints and posters and neatly clipped magazine cut-outs. Black and white photographs of handsome men of various types in various states of undress alongside images of Eastern spirituality colored vivid pink-yellow-orange-blue. A dual-sexed angel with two heads - both sporting long hair, naturally - souring in a split night-day sky. A great and mighty bear in American Indian style linework and Day-Glo colors, which as Cornelius had explained to Soloman before, was his spirit animal, a representation of his true, inner self.
Solomon was pretty sure Cornelius had the true inner self of a rat, or some kind of weasel, and smiled remembering how Cornelius had been genuinely offended when he told him so. All that mysto head bullshit gave Solomon the creeps.
“You know, I think you’ve gotten broader since you last stopped by.” He said it as if Solomon had gotten braah-dah. No matter how cagey he was about his past, Cornelius could never manage to shake his New York start from his pronunciation.
“I haven’t gotten any broader and I haven’t gotten new boots, and you should know by now blowing smoke up my ass won’t get you a sweeter deal.”
Cornelius did some kind of wiggle, starting from his head and traveling down to his ass, still smiling, and asked to see what he’d brought to sell this time then.
Solomon didn’t really think of himself as a wholesaler, but the heroin cooks affiliated with the Jolly Mongrels - a midlevel group of motorcycle enthusiasts Solomon was now something of a regional leader of - didn’t like to come down from the hills, and nobody really wanted to cut in some fink from outside their little brotherhood that high up the supply chain. So somebody had to go up and buy their supply of smack, bring that supply down to whatever city they’d come up from, and sell it off to street-pushers. About once a month, that somebody was Solomon.
So he’d settled into something of a routine with Cornelius.
He didn’t like the little man much, but dealing with him had its advantages. For starters, Cornelius was not a junkie. He often smoked pot, which had seemingly no effect on him, and occasionally dropped acid, which he always grooved on so much that he was left deeply and insufferably mysto for a week or more after his trip should have ended - but Solomon knew the difference between a habit and the kind of addiction regular junk use brought on. This was getting to be rarer among the street level junk dealers of San Francisco, and junkie dealers were notoriously unreliable.
He was also a good lay. Adaptable and skilled at any position - a real renaissance man despite his bony ass and small-ish dick - and Solomon had never seen him tired or known his energy to flag. He was also not bad to look at; surprisingly muscular in a scrawny, featherweight kind of way with a face like a B-list matinée idol, and like many heads had a hermaphroditic quality about him that Solomon found equal parts repulsive and alluring.
Cornelius squinted as he examined the smack on the card table, which was his usual four grams of his usual stuff, and said it looked to be of ‘decent’ quality. Solomon didn’t know why he still bothered with the hard bargain routine.
“Eighty dollars for that.”
“Eighty dollars?” He titled his head, long hair falling to the side “I’ve never bought from you for anything more than fifty five. You raise the price like that and I’ll have to cut it with enough milk sugar that I’ll practically be selling pastries just to make even.”
“I got charged more this time, something about increased overheads. I’m not here out of charity, Cornelius. ”
“You don’t even make the stuff. Why don’t I just track down your supplier - can’t be that hard to figure out who he is when you’ve got matching jackets - and buy directly? If he rides anything like you do I’ll hear him from ten miles off anyway.”
The idea of Cornelius not only finding out the location of the discrete little shack where the chemist was, but also hitching there through some real country miles with some real country folk who tended to not take to kindly to sawed-off longhairs with beads around their necks and rings on their fingers, and then convincing the manufacturer to break his rule on outside distributors to sell to him, of all people, was on its face absurd. Cornelius must have known he’d get stomped - or worse - ten times over trying all that, or at least known that trying would be more work than he’d want to do.
“Sure, if you want to give that a shot, or if you think you’re cut out to be a full-patched Jolly, be my guest.” Solomon tapped his cap to his leg, “You’re lucky I cut you in at all.”
“All right, that’ll take some time, so,” Cornelius straightened his back, “I’ll buy two grams now, and then I’ll call you in a week or two and buy the other two. Not likely to sell more than that or have much come up in the meantime, so that works out good for the both of us. ”
“And what, leave me with two grams of heroin in my back pocket for two weeks? I’m not taking that risk when I can just find some other guy who’ll buy it tonight.”
“I keep it in my bedroom.” There was an edge creeping into his voice. It was a hell of a lot easier for a wholesaler to find a new street-pusher than it was for a street-pusher to find a new wholesaler.
“Well, yeah.” Solomon shrugged. “You’re a pusher. And I’m not taking credit either. Last time I let a guy do that he ran off before I could come around to try to collect.”
Cornelius’s eyebrows knit as he glared up at him, “I wouldn’t ask you for credit.”
“Good. Twenty dollars a gram, take it or leave it.”
Cornelius rifled through his wallet, slapped the cash into Solomon’s palm.
Solomon counted the money - a couple fives, twenty eight singles and eight quarters - and tucked it into the inner left pocket of his leather jacket.
He caught the briefest flash of a smirk from Cornelius as he, in a single swift movement, yanked the heavy metal chain of Solomon’s skull-and-bones pendant and brought their teeth clattering together in what could only most charitably be described as a kiss.
Solomon allowed himself to be shoved towards the neatly folded bed, Cornelius nipping at his lips all the way there. When the back of his calves hit the bed his cock had already started to fill, pushing against the rough denim of his jeans.
Cornelius wasn’t really worth his time, he knew, Cornelius who came up from New York or God knows where to scrap and half starve in San Francisco for the sake of the impossible dreams that puffed from the lips of idiots to clog the air here, who stole and schemed and sold poison, three dollars a cap to high school kids - who hustled himself when he had to - just to survive, and still believed it all was a march towards a sublime new day, still preened like a great and mighty general in a war with the world he’d already won.
He should grab his stuff and head out now. Leave Cornelius to rot along with this stinking, infested house. Both were halfway gone already.
Instead, he leans down to push his tongue into the little man’s mouth and pulls him close, and when Cornelius presses his lean body flush against his and he rocks his hips into that lean body, lets Cornelius slip his hands under his jeans to dig sharp nails into the meat of his ass and, as Solomon moans into his mouth, bite his fucking tongue.
Solomon pushes him away, almost calls whole thing off for that, but then Cornelius has a hand back down his jeans on his cock, another hand up his shirt on his nipple, tongue and teeth at his neck - just nipping, now - and he can’t quite find it in him to push him away again.
Cornelius kisses him, hot and open mouthed, and when he starts undoing his jacket with quick, clever fingers, Solomon manages to remember through the noise building in his brain not to trust those quick, clever fingers so close to his pockets.
When he elects to undress himself Cornelius doesn't seem offended, seems pleased to have his skills and cunning recognized. Doesn’t complain, just leers at him, hurry up Sol, you’re about to burst through your pants already, as he shrugs off his own shirt, you aren’t half built enough for the physique mag look, Cornelius, slips off his bluejeans and underwear in one go, shaving like that just makes you look like a department store mannequin somebody attached a dildo to, and aren’t you people supposed to be au naturale anyway, gives his cock a little tug as he watches Solomon drop his jeans, still forgoing underwear when you ride? you know that leaves you stinking worse than a dog, and pulls a tube of K-Y from his filing cabinet.
Cornelius watches him slip his riding boots back on - big black leather things he likes to hook against a man to pull him in deeper - and comes back to him, smirking and saying “so you want it like that, huh” with a firm hand on Solomon’s broad shoulder and a firm hand in the carpet he’s grown on his chest, and half pushes half guides him down onto his bed.
So Cornelius gets him on his back, works a thin, slick finger inside of him and asks if he thought about having his dick in him all the way home - Solomon tells him he thought about a lot of things so quit it with the goddamn vanity for once and tries to focus on the feeling of the nimble little digit pressing in instead of Cornelius’s chattering. That doesn’t stop Cornelius from getting in a crack about him wishing he was taking another kind of ride, which doesn’t make sense anyway because he’s on his back, which Solomon reminds him; and by the time all this has been said Cornelius has worked another finger inside him and gotten him moaning and aching for more.
Some kind of whining, whimpering noise emerges from Cornelius’s throat as he pushes his cock into him, sinking deep enough to bring his pale hips to Solomon’s hairy ass and quick enough to burn, but the look on his face is pure wild eyed bliss.
Cornelius fucks him, with Solomon’s boots digging into his back, and looks beautiful as he does it - beautiful in a way he has no right to - with his long coppery hair falling across his pretty pink cheeks and his big blue eyes gleaming with the intensity of an alley cat in her heat.
Solomon gets lost in it, in the feeling of this beautiful, worthless man slamming in-out-in-out of him, with one hand on his own cock jerking in time with Cornelius and another just gripping the sheets, holding on like if he didn’t they might both be pulled off, up and away
Cornelius keeps talking but his words have become sounds, as meaningless as his own moaning and the squeak of the mattress under them, the rattle of Cornelius’s beads and the slap of skin against skin.
The feeling of it is building, building, - a great white-hot whirlpool of lust swirling inside of him, vortex where Cornelius is joined and his whole body submerged in it, from his scalp to his curling, jackbooted toes.
The vortex swirls into a wave, ten stories high and building, but threatening to crash any moment now, and he wraps his hand around his cockhead to avoid making more of a mess of himself.
From somewhere unknown the thought comes to him that he'd like to pull Cornelius's head down and aim it into his hair; degrading - or paying tribute to, he's not sure - that prima symbol of his rebellion and commitment to absurdity: a woman's hair grown on a man's head. He's scared of this thought, honestly, but it’s that vision that sends the white-hot wave to its crest and has him spilling into his own palm.
Cornelius clamps a hand over his mouth as his orgasm shakes through him. "You're always so loud," he says, grinning like a devil, "anyone would think that between the two of us, you were the whore."
Usually a comment like that would be fighting words, and he flinches away from it, as much as he can with Cornelius inside him - but Solomon found himself too fucked-out to object. So he let Cornelius rut into his pliant body for maybe a minute more before finding his own climax, watched Cornelius bite his lip and fail to hold back another strangled whine.
Cornelius collapsed on top of him, boneless but entirely without soft angles, and Solomon shoved him off to flop into the space on the bed between him and the wall. They were not lovers and Cornelius weighted more than anyone his size should, the compact little fucker.
After a few moments of panting Cornelius reached over the side of the bed - and Solomon, in the process - to pull a joint and a Day-Glo orange-pink lighter from a box he kept stashed below. The Day-Glo orange-pink lighter refused to comply with his demands, sending him sparks and an empty click-click-click noise
“I think you need a better lighter.”
“It’s just empty is all. You got one?”
Solomon grunted and, with a certain amount of reluctance to move at all, pulled his jacket from the floor and his zippo from his pocket.
Solomon pressed the lighter to the joint Cornelius held in his mouth, the flame reflecting in his eyes as he lingered. His gaze traveled down Soloman’s thick, road worn fingers. Then he noticed the engraving crudely pressed into the right side of his lighter.
“Is that supposed to be Snoopy?” He grinned and tilted his head to get a better look.
Solomon snapped the lighter shut with a shrug. “Got it engraved back in Vietnam. Me and some of the boys had a few days R&R in Da Nang, and we met this squat little man in a bar there who’d engrave small things on the cheap. We were all issued the same zippos, so we figured it’d be nice to give them a personal touch.”
Cornelius’s hands shot out to turn the lighter so Snoopy faced him, and Solomon let him move him and it, read the words engraved- the year and location of his deployment, and a “FUCK IT ALL” from Snoopy.
Cornelius grinned wider and looked as if he was about to say something, and then didn’t. Just let go and took a drag from his joint.
Solomon had scarcely gotten the zippo back into his jacket and the jacket back onto the floor before Cornelius was talking again.
Cornelius was as chatty after sex as he was during, was chatty most of the time anyway, and while Solomon generally found it irritating to hear him luxuriate in the sound of his own voice, he could feel something close to affection - patience, maybe - for any man in the twenty or so minutes after making it with him. Especially when lying comfortably in a warm bed - just a twin, but Cornelius was small enough that it wasn’t too much of a squeeze for the both of them.
“Me and Billy - have I mentioned Billy to you, Sol?” He shoved his blunt in Solomon’s direction as he asked - that was unusual, he typically made a show of not passing.
“Hasn’t come up.” He took a drag. It wasn’t bad.
“He’s an artist, and a real bitch.” He smiled fondly as he said so. “We’re practically married, Billy and me.”
“Good for Billy and you.” Solomon responded, not particularly wondering where this was going and half indulging the little man anyway.
“We’ve been talking about starting a commune. Down in Big Basin, among all those great big trees. Or up in Malakoff Diggins, maybe. There’s a hell of a lot of empty space in state parks just waiting for us. Doesn’t really matter which one, any of them would be a perfect spot to build a place - just with our own hands, wouldn’t need anything else - a place we wouldn’t have to put up with all the bullshit, a place we could, y’know,” he wiggled his head a bit, “let it all hang out.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We’re going to be having a lot of fun. So, I wanted to invite you, to.”
Even in the soft haze of his post-coital state and some pretty good grass, he couldn’t imagine Cornelius - and whatever bitchy artist he was shacked up with, by the sound of him - wanting to do the hard work of building the room he lived in and farming the food he ate when he could try to pawn it off on someone else. Which he told him, and Cornelius put on that he was real hurt by the insult to his character, and that he worked real hard when he had good reason to. And besides, why not tag along and see how things go? It’s not like he’d be chained to the place.
He did have a point there.
And he’d be lying if he said the invitation didn’t have appeal, to go out in the woods and not worry about the wrong person finding out about him - not these heads, who at least tolerated Cornelius, but someone that mattered - for days or weeks on end, get away from the ugly thread of anxiety that weaved in and out of him since adolescence. Not full time, of course, he’d never leave behind the Jolly Mongrels, not for anything; and anyway Cornelius was sure to bring along some real blatant types - he was halfway to blatant himself - that’d drive him up the wall after a while. But it sounded nice, as somewhere to go every so often to cut loose.
Cornelius stroked his chest, running nimble fingers through the thick hair there. “We’ll be able to fuck right out in the open, in full view of anyone. I’m sure we’d pull quite an audience, you and me.”
That was an appealing invitation too.
“Why not invite some of your friends along? You can’t be the only gay Jolly Mongrel.”
He wasn’t; he’d spotted some of his compatriots in certain bars south of Market Street. And he’d thought before about inviting some of his boys - ones he’d known would be game - to take turns with Cornelius, pass the little rat bastard around for a while.
So he told him he’d be in touch, dressed himself - found it a touch difficult to get the old motorcycle chain he used as a belt secured while stoned, so he left it open - as Cornelius watched, still longing naked on his bed, and was off.
He was halfway across North Beach when he realized that in the heat of making it and the warm buzz after, he’d forgotten to take back the grams of smack that Cornelius hadn’t paid for and nearly caused a ten car pile up with how fast he turned his bike around, motorists in collared shirts screaming bloody murder as he rode off.
So that was why he came on so strong, and why he actually passed his joint this time.
It wasn't long before he was back where he started, speeding back down Ashbury Street and running up the stairs, where Cornelius’s door was locked with no one inside to answer to his banging.
One of the heads from the foyer had followed him up; a rat faced, short haired kid of about eighteen, who was now watching him uselessly shake a locked door handle.
“You see Cornelius Hickey around?” He asked the kid, voice soft and casual as he could muster. Solomon cut the kind of figure that cleared rooms in less wild climbs and intimidated anywhere, when he wanted to come on gentle he had to work for it.
“He just split, actually. He said something about how he’d just played a Jolly Mongrel, and would be, uh, retiring to the abode of his dear companion, until he - you, I guess - had cooled down. He meant you, right?”
“Now, that could be anybody,” Solomon joked, not getting a laugh or smile from the kid. “Yeah, that’s me.” He stuck out his hand, “Solomon Tozer.”
The kid hesitated, then took it and shook, his grip firmer than Solomon expected.
“Goldfish. Well, my name’s Bobby actually, but Goldfish is what everybody calls me around here.”
No mention of a last name.
“You know that companion?”
“Nah, don’t think so. I think I’ve heard him talk about some chick called Billie who works at a hotel or as a hairdresser or something. Or maybe that was the last guy who had this room’s old lady?” He looked around, as if the walls might know the answer. “I don't know where her pad’s at anyway, sorry."
While he had to give some credit to this kid’s startforth commitment to assuming the best of Cornelius’s sexual proclivities when faced with his open talk of that dear companion Billy, evidently having to much generosity or to little presence of mind to put two and two together with the timing of Solomon’s coming and going and the sound of their fucking some twenty-thirty minutes ago - his description was vague enough to point everywhere and nowhere.
Solomon imagined, briefly, going around to every hotel and salon in the neighborhood and asking if any of their employees were having a homosexual affair with a junk pusher he sells acid and marijuana to, if that helps narrow things down, the Solomon in his mind provided sweetly, and mushrooms if he can get his hands on them but he’s not very good at that. The surreal fantasy wouldn’t even work by its own logic, there was no saying Cornelius would stay put with his little boyfriend for long, and by now there had to be a hundred houses in the Haight like this, brimming with near interchangeable rambling, raving longhairs and Cornelius could sweet talk his way into any of them. He was shit out of two grams of smack with nothing to show for it save a sore ass.
Soloman ran his hands over his face, rubbed his eyes and leaned against the door with a groan.
The kid cleared his throat, passed him a small sack-cloth pouch and told him Cornelius had wanted him to have it, as if they where at Cornelius' funeral.
In the bag there was a folded sheet of yellowish lined paper with 4 S.T. written in big lopsided letters, a couple buds of pot. The buds were probably intended as a parting gift, but with the circumstances being what they were, felt more like a taunt. Solomon slipped them in his pocket anyway and unfolded the note to read Cornelius’s chicken-scratch cursive.
Dear S.T. Before you go writing me off as a rotten two-timer and two-bit cocksucker to boot, know that this isn't personal, just that even a weasel, let alone a bear, has gotta eat. I still think you're a real bundle of fun and my invitation still stands. Doubly so, since now I owe you a good turn - a turn I intend to repay. Love, C.H.
Solomon crumpled the note, brought it to the overstuffed wastebin in the foyer on his way out, stood there for a good few moments, then shoved the note into the inner left pocket of his jacket, alongside the money Cornelius did pay, and got himself out of the house with the patchwork roof tiles and creaking, decaying floorboards and twelve or more heads.