Evil
Companions
by
Michael Perkins
Blurb:
We had
gotten aboard a roller coaster, and it was a race for our lives, on a one-way
track.
In New York City during the heady, tumultuous years of the 1960s, a young couple meet. Together they embark on a dark erotic journey into forbidden sexuality - travelling on an incandescent road to nowhere in their tragic fall from grace.
Scorching and poignant, and banned upon its first publication in England, Evil Companions is a masterpiece of contemporary erotica.
'Evil Companions is a meticulous miracle of language and observation . . . A dark jewel on the erotic landscape.' Samuel R. Delany
In New York City during the heady, tumultuous years of the 1960s, a young couple meet. Together they embark on a dark erotic journey into forbidden sexuality - travelling on an incandescent road to nowhere in their tragic fall from grace.
Scorching and poignant, and banned upon its first publication in England, Evil Companions is a masterpiece of contemporary erotica.
'Evil Companions is a meticulous miracle of language and observation . . . A dark jewel on the erotic landscape.' Samuel R. Delany
Available from:
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Excerpt:
Some of
what happened to us, what we did to each other, might have been prevented. But
we had gotten aboard a roller coaster, and it was a race for our lives, on a
one-way track.
Circumstances,
the mood of the time, made our explorations seem natural, forecast in all our
stars. Most of them I haven’t seen in years, and wouldn’t care to—except for
Anne, that is. I’ve waited for her to come back, to finish the story. Maybe she
won’t because it doesn’t have an end, or because neither of us wants it to end.
Our
life together was a story we told each other at night, and we were always
careful to consider the obligations of plot and character. Anne, especially,
watched the dialogue and considered speech patterns, having decided that the
nuances of conversation and sound often tell the listener more than a character
would ordinarily want to tell. I had the same feeling about faces. We did more
than tell each other stories at night, though; we lived our whole lives then,
like—vampires. History is made at night, said Frank Borzage.
We met
during rehearsals of a play I was doing in a café theatre on the East Side. She
sat at a table on the side sipping coffee through a straw, and she looked ready
to scream. She was with friends, some people I knew slightly and hated. It was
obvious she was with them, but not of them. They ignored each other. The play
was dingy and amateurish, and I became quite loud in my objections to it; I had
the lead, but I had taken it in desperation, looking for anything to rouse me
from my lethargy. The actress I was working with missed her cue for the third
time and I exploded, cursing her, the director, and the script, which I felt no
affinity with.
Something
hit me in the middle of the back—the girl at the table had thrown her coffee at
me. I stood frozen, feeling the hot liquid run down my back.
“You
fucking faggot son-of-a-bitch! You actor! If you weren’t so goddamned
illiterate, you could handle that script!” Everyone just looked at her. As quickly
as she had flared up, she calmed down, and sank back into her seat. She looked
so embarrassed she might have sunk into the floor.
I
didn’t say anything; I went to the men’s room and cleaned myself off as well as
I could. Then I sat on the toilet and smoked a cigarette. When I got up, I went
straight to her table. She got up to join me without a word.
“Come
on, let’s take a walk,” I said. It was already dark outside. I hadn’t realized
I had been working so long. She had a peculiar gait, like a sailor’s; we walked
along. “Did I hurt you?” she asked me. “Let me see.” She pushed me in a doorway
and slipped her hand around so she could feel my back. Her hand slipped up
under my coat and over my buttocks with a man’s urgent touch. “You’re still
wet. Come home with me and you can get dried off.” It was practically a
command. She took my hand as if it were already a part of her, ready to pull me
along
if I hesitated.
The
building she lived in was one part tenement and two parts gingerbread house. I
went galumphing up the stairs behind her, noticing the runs in her stockings.
She wore stocking with seams down the back, those clay-colored things my mother
used to wear.
Her
apartment had its own particular smell, an aromatic combination I have never
been able to forget: a hideous incense called Dhoop, marijuana, and an exciting
odor of pure, raw sex,
mixed
with the smell of her cats. She had five of them; the leader was an old gray
tom she called Wino, who was missing one eye and any sense of decorum. I
learned that it wasn’t unusual for him to leap on guests with his claws out, or
to urinate in the middle of the floor and stand there proudly, daring you to
rebuke him. I wanted to call him Jean Genet.
She
still had my hand. She pulled me in the bedroom, but it was occupied by a young
Puerto Rican who was rolling his eyes at the ceiling. As soon as he saw us, he
rolled off and staggered out into the other room.
“Sit
down and take off your pants.” I sat on the bed and watched her move around.
She seemed unconscious of my presence as she took off her clothes. When she was
naked in the
red
light she sat down beside me and, without a word, unbuckled my belt and pulled
my trousers off.
“Don’t
be uptight. You’re an actor, aren’t you? Here’s a situation you can play your
heart out in.”
“Meaning
you?”
“Oh
man, don’t be muley! You act like a thickhead. It’s hot in here, take off those
damn clothes. I don’t trust anybody in clothes.” I did what she asked. My
scrotum was tight and
wrinkled,
and I felt like washing my feet. I noticed that hers were black. Her breasts
were small and sharp, the nipples bloodred.
She
noticed me looking at them.
“Touch.
Go on. Then maybe you’ll feel better,” she said dispassionately. I dragged my
underwear over my crotch and sat back, away from her. “What’s the matter? Is my
hostility
showing?”
she asked.
“Turn
it off,” I said.
“Turn
what off?”
“Whatever
the fuck this game is. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Anne,
sometimes.”
“Well,
Anne, what’s the game? I thought you hated me. It was a bad script.”
“If you
thought that, you wouldn’t have come home with me. You’re out in the cold. I
could tell that when I first saw you.”
~ * ~
Other Modern Erotic Classics available:
The Houdini Girl by Martyn Bedford
Lie to Me by Tamara Faith Berger
The Phallus of Osiris by Valentina
Cilescu
Kiss of Death by Valentina Cilescu
The Flesh Constrained by Cleo Cordell
The Flesh Endures by Cleo Cordell
Hogg by Samuel R. Delany
The Tides of Lust by Samuel R.
Delany
Sad Sister by Florence Dugas
The Ties That Bind by Vanessa
Duriés
Dark Ride by Kent Harrington
3 by Julie Hilden
Neptune & Surf by Marilyn Jaye
Lewis
Violent Silence by Paul Mayersberg
Homme Fatale by Paul Mayersberg
The Agency by David Meltzer
Burn by Michael Perkins
Dark Matter by Michael Perkins
Evil Companions by Michael Perkins
Beautiful Losers by Remittance Girl
Meeting the Master by Elissa Wald
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