Puppeteer: Gold Codes, by Max Steele
Artwork by bowerystudio

Sister Cotton and Sister Antlers and I go out together. Sister Antlers is taller than I am and Sister Cotton is shorter than I am. I’m Goldilocks. We are the youngest boys at the club in San Francisco. We’ve known each other since before we had nicknames (Antlers, Cotton and Billy) and we sleep in the same bed, hold hands when we walk down the street. We’re like young French girls, we show affection openly. And also like little French girls, men in San Francisco think about fucking us.

Antlers and Cotton take me to the dance floor and then someone turns on a strobe light. A fog machine starts up. Crazy rainbow lights. We smoked a joint and drank a bottle of gin on the way here. Cotton takes off his shirt, he’s got black hair on his chest. Antlers takes off his shirt, he has brown hairs on his chest, and a moustache. Cotton shows us how to dance, clenching his fists. I don’t have hair on my chest, so I just watch.

A tall boy in glasses says hello. I like boys shorter than me, and this one is a full head taller. I like to be the bigger one, but letting him be bigger feels really familiar. He asks me where I’m from, and why, if I’m from New York, I’m in San Francisco.

I get impatient when I’m telling him about myself. He buys me a whiskey and I drink it really quickly, even before he’s paid for it. He seems really smart from his glasses. He asks me about my band, what kind of music I like to listen to, have I been to this club before, do I want to go hang out at his house. It’s a little bit, he warns me, of a walk. Says he hopes I have strong leg muscles.

(My friend Betsy teaches an acting class in San Francisco for mentally retarded adults. One of the people in the class, Annie Ding, was born without eyes. Betsy says that she is puppeted, that someone has to hold her hand to take her anywhere. Her puppeteer leads her to the middle of the room and she sings.

“I GO OUT WALKING AFTER MIDNIGHT”

Her puppeteer is a gorgeous but too-skinny boy. He stands behind her, holding her up by her wrists.)

When we get to his house, his bedroom is pitch black. I ask him: what’s your sign? When were you born? Under which animal?

(I’m only asking because I used to go out with an Aries and I read somewhere that Arieses are supposed to be the best lovers for me. For a lion like me, I mean.)

He throws me down on the bed on my back and says “Guess.”

“I hate to.”

“You don’t want to try?”

“No.” I think this is going to be really bad. I don’t want to have to guess anything. This is the worst boy in the whole city coast Californian country. Back in New York where I live, if this were happening in New York and someone throws me onto their bed and then I asked him what sign he was born under he would just TELL ME. We wouldn’t need to talk about it like in California: movie stars, beaches, farms. There’s not a lot to talk about.

So okay, finally he gives up and says what animal he was born under. “I’m an Aries. Are you going to fuck me?” he pulls my legs up, so my knees are on his shoulders “Or are you going to get fucked? What’s gonna happen?”

The Nerve! to ask me what is going to happen!

HERE ARE THE RULES - SOME TRUE THINGS:
NEVER FUCK ANYONE YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO BE.
EVERYBODY’S HUNGRY. EVERYBODY’S HIGH.

And he fucks me - and slowly.

Slow enough for me to think about how I when I used to go out with an Aries I always fucked him like a mommy. How the astrology sexual compatibility chart (capability chart) said that an Aries always likes to top and that an Aries always likes to top without being gentle - likes to top swiftly. And makes me think: someone here is lying. Either the guy I used to go out with, or the guy fucking me, or an astrologer, and I’m thinking about the lying and that makes it hotter, and his dick gets harder, mine gets harder.

THE GOLDEN RULE: DO UNTO OTHERS

The GOLD CODE, laws, a rulership, kingdom of Gold Codes.
I let him fuck me the way my ex-boyfriend liked to be fucked. That is to say I raise my hips the same way he used to. I touch him in the exact way that I would want to be touched, the places I like to be. I pretend that he’s me, he’s Billy fucking me, Billy’s ex-boyfriend. Fucking him the way I would want to be fucked. Keeps bouncing back and forth into me. My head is spinning from whiskey. I say I hope you have strong leg muscles and he proves he does, acting the part of me. Bouncing around just Billy! Billy! Billy! I hear feedback from guitars.

Says I hope you have strong leg muscles.

Inside of me, he says “relax”. I tell him in a calm voice “I am relaxed. You should relax maybe.”

He pushes his dick inside of me all the way, but slowly. I’m thinking about speed, gathering it. And inertia. The sound of doors slamming. Loud sounds that wake you up. He grunts, he moans at me. I think: I can’t take all of his dick inside me. Think: guess I already am. Think: I contain all of him already, I can get all of him. I close my eyes, him in me slowly, but again. I’m acting like someone else so I can pretend he’s me. Like a hand making my arms move from the inside.

Getting fucked by a boy you don’t know who wants to talk to you about Derrida. Pretend to be someone else so you can imagine the other person is you fucking your own self.

List of things this is like:

Karma
The Golden Rule
Singing the blues
Born without eyes
Being an actor
Puppets, puppeteers

I GO OUT WALKING AFTER MIDNIGHT

The next morning a man with a pink rhinestone-studded skull-shaped belt buckle follows me for three blocks, down the stairs to the subway station and onto the train. He sits down behind me and sniffs at the back of my neck.

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Our Job is to Quit, by Max Steele
Artwork by bowerystudio

I woke up this morning with the wan film of Joe’s cum in my mouth. I scanned the room at the top floor of the building in Chinatown for anything worth stealing. I felt entitled to the jewelry hung from a pushpin on the wall, the designer scarves, and entitled certainly to the stack of porno on the opposite side of the room. I wondered briefly if Joe and I were the same shoe size. He was, I assumed, loaded and foreign even though he said he was from Texas.

He had the overgrown and unformed build of a Scandinavian and an indecipherable accent: “How come you are a perfect lover all of a sudden?” I couldn’t answer I don’t know. Two times in one night.

When we got into bed I made fun of him for being old (25). He thought I was 18, told him to guess again and he sighed 21, fixed his hair and took of his underpants. I asked what he does and he said he is an actor.

I left a note and snuck out and walked to Union Square. No, actually, I left a note and went to the bathroom and put on all of his expensive cologne and Chanel Pour Monsieur moisturizer and hair cream and then snuck out. I walked to Soho and I was wearing the t-shirt I made that says “I fucked Sontag”, and I walked over to Deitch Projects and threw a sledgehammer through the front window. I just found it on the street. It was sitting up against a fire hydrant - a golden hammer and a black metal head. On its side in red paint the name AMY was written in cursive.(I remember now that Crystal, my friend, is reading Keith Haring’s journals and read part of it aloud to me, and one of the entries, a few Julys before he died of the Gay Plague, begins with poor Keith Haring saying “fucking sexy New York boys are driving me crazy.”)

Jeffrey, seeing me, realizing that I am the boys who drove men crazy. Keith Haring, Jeffrey Deitch crazy. Mad with kinetic energy, they can’t get into my ass fast enough so they go crazy and die.

Seeing me in my little black tank top and reeking of Swedish cum and cologne, seeing me break his gallery window with a golden sledgehammer called Amy, has a heart attack.

He clutches the golden chain that hangs around his neck under his Marc Jacobs shirt
 and feels his pulse leave his body.

(The Gay Plague that Haring died of maybe isn’t AIDS but it’s actually how Jeffrey Deitch died. It’s when fags come and rend you limb from limb. Ancient Greeks thought it was only women during Bacchanalia, when they’d leave their husbands and kids and run through the city. Actually, boys did it too after we killed all the Greek women. Now in NYC, it’s fags only. Men come up from downtown, they come up out of the water with beards and hairy legs, they run screaming across the Williamsburg bridge with cracked broken sharp teeth, and you’re torn open with wanting to fuck. Rich sons of privilege with golden crystal money assholes taking cabs from the Upper West Side just so that you can see yourself explode in your reflection on them. We come and we eat you up and make you watch.)

I was celebrated by the art world and famous artists wanted to sleep with me, wanted me to sit on their dicks. I had an interview in Artforum Magazine and was offered a teaching gig. There aren’t any photos of me killing Jeffrey Deitch, so all they could do was sell the sledgehammer named Amy.

I was tried for involuntary manslaughter and someone on the news called Deitch “a national hero” and called me a killer.

This is a dream ha ha ha.

I wake up in Chinatown with the wan taste of Joe’s cum in my mouth and look for something to steal. Less a souvenir than a way of covering the smell.

WHAT’S TRUE: I did leave, though, and walk uptown for a few hours. I could feel the sun baking me and my tender skin (I wish I had a harder body. A hard body).

My tongue is sore, I have a cut tooth and now I’ve cut open my tongue in three ways:

1. on the tooth
2. on a piece of glass that I sucked on while I danced at the club
3. on his stubble, licking myself off of Joe’s face (the greedy fuck) so that it wouldn’t harden there into a crust; so he couldn’t show his friends or roommate that Billy Was Here.Yesterday I worked a 15-hour day. My ex-boyfriend showed up at the club but didn’t try to see me of course. Maybe he did see me, maybe he saw me dancing by myself getting fingered onstage or he saw me smoking cigarettes out front. Chatting. Probably left, ran away, I was insane. I jutted up against the wall which was a mirror and pretended he was watching. Meanwhile, ex-boyfriend took a cab home.

Last night Crystal asked the DJ if she could request a song. He said “no” and smiled and turned his back to her to get a record out of its sleeve. So she started smoking on the dance floor (big no no no) and no one could stop her. No one came up to her. She flicked her cigarette ash on the turntable and threw her drink at a stranger so that he’d buy her a new one. We’re from the west coast. Faggots love her, we love Crystal don’t we?

She screams if she doesn’t get her way. It’s the same way we’d all like to act if we were girls. Boyfriend faggot dripping with her rum and Coke and cigarette ash, hands her a new cocktail and calls her “hot bitch”. Said “hey there you hot fucking bitch”, she dropped her cigarette butt in his drink and went outside.

I’m from the west coast Crystal is from out of the country.

I walked over to where a group of huge black (radical) drag queens were dancing and they held my hands and smiled, gently shoved me away. Then two boys started kissing me, grabbing my ass so I thought I knew them. One of them doughy, unformed, malformed and without a shirt. He pulled me aside and asked where I lived. “Brooklyn-what-about-you-where-do-you-live?”

It’s like going through customs.

Has anyone else helped you pack your bags?
Do you have money for a cab home?
State the purpose of your visit: Blowjob, or beat me up?

I went home with the milkfed boy with the accent, white skin and blonde hair. “Texan”. He asked if I wanted to sit on his dick, um, no, sorry. Would you like to sit on mine? He apologized and whispered I usually don’t like to bottom. “Well me neither”, which is a lie. I never like to bottom and I hate to top and I actually hate fucking unless I get really stoned. Texan actors don’t smoke pot I guess. They wear cologne and take ecstasy and dance dance dance. He left his shirt at the dance club. This is a red flag, this is a message. It says to me: a) he’s a fucking idiot boy who probably knows how to suck dick or at least act like it, give it a shot, and b) he has enough money that he can lose a couture shirt at a stupid West Village nightclub and not care. It’s okay to steal from him - he probably has cash lying around his apartment.

I looked Jimmy up on the internet. I’m such a creep. I found out that he is an actor and has been in some movies and they are gay and successful. The one who begged me to cum on his face has a job, has a few, and all those pieces of ugly jewelry and shitty fashion clothes. There are photos of him wearing them at the Tribeca Film Festival. He knows young and cutting-edge directors. I should have stayed on the seventh floor apartment, but I hated the foreskin and the Amanda Lepore autographs.

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Brother, by Max Steele
Artwork by bowerystudio

“I’m obsessed with your butt” he says it like bubblegum.

“I’m so into your butt.”

I can’t get a good grip on him. His whole body is smooth. There’re tiny bits of stubble and I can’t get a good grip anywhere. Most boys you can grab on our hips or our shoulders or necks. Our ankles or wrists, or you can grab us by our ears or by our hair. He shaves his body all over, to get his skin to be smooth, to act like he isn’t hairy. Waste of an evening! He says how old are you I say 22 and a half how old are you? He says 25. He says let’s not talk about it. Like it’s so gross. Like I’m pestering him.

He cannot wait to take off my underpants.

“These are cute” The underpants are purple. My favorite color is Purple. It changed last summer, when it used to be blue. Some day it’ll be green then brown, then yellow then I won’t have a favorite color anymore, when I stop thinking about bruises, I guess. Then, my favorite color will be flesh-tone. I’ll be like the girl on the train. Today’s lipstick: Glossy Flesh Tone. Ultra High Gloss Flesh. Super.

So Brother pulls off my underwear and tells me “I love your ass. I’m obsessed with your butt. I am so into your butt.” I’m not obsessed with anything on myself. I feel exactly the same all over, everywhere on my body feels good and new.

Why do you think you’re you so obsessed with my butt? Because you know about my body? Because of my tight jeans and white belt possibilities of straddling you in the cab ride home? Talk about it like a television show.
Tell me what you really think, comrade.

It’s not hard - let’s make it together.

It’s like I’m blind: EXPLAIN IT TO ME. What does it make you think of? I’ve never been there, describe what it’s like. How would you change this landscape? What would you build, and where? I’m an immigrant, explain how to get a job in your city, sir. Magic and taxicabs. Brother alternately talks to me about records and movies and suck my cock.

I tell him: “Makes sense. Makes sense that you give good head. You’re popular. You have a lot of friends, you get around. It figures that you give really good head.” And I mean it when I say it.

I act like Brother’s a tour guide and I’m the passenger. Or, I act like he’s the tour guide and I’m the passenger and I’m also the bus. Who rides who? And I’m also the city, with old buildings to talk about. But mostly I’m curious what he finds so interesting about my butt. What can you tell me happened here, once, before you got there? Where can I find my way around? What do I have to do to make it here, my friend?

Two years ago I moved to New York City. I stayed up all night. Every night that summer, plugging myself in, in the middle of the night while you danced and drank expensive vodka and talked about the suburbs. I watched my veins open and we all turned 21.

At 4AM, Brother and I stop wrestling. I can start to feel my teeth again the nightclub drinks are wearing off. Brother says “I don’t know if I can do this. You’re so confusing.” Sibling rivalry. He says, “I don’t know. I get bottom vibes, but I also get top vibes too. From you.” He says. Hands me a pillow. “But, your ass.”

Hey Brother, show me how to win.

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