Snake

SNAKE
By Bill McLeod
(Drummer #15.1977)

Johnson, suffering by his own design, his red plaid shirt a bit dusty from the road, leaned against the gate unconsciously rubbing his crotch as he stared at the landing prop-jet thinking — no, dreaming, much as he had been dreaming over the past few months — of Snake. An acute longing was relentlessly uncoiling itself in his gut, an unmonitored garden hose with back trouble.

"Don't know how he got the name Snake, but he's got one hell of an Anaconda in his pants," Johnson said to a person standing a few feet away who was also waiting for the flight to San Francisco with intermediate stops at Reno and Sacramento. The person moved away mumbling, "Goddam prevert!" — a result of the true disgust he was feeling.

Johnson was oblivious to the derogatory appellation mostly because the screaming plane had reached the gate and because of the postorbital vision in his head of the handsome face, rippling stomach and thoroughbred thighs of a kid called Snake.

* * *

I am seventeen. It is a good age. The men, the handsome men like Johnson, seem to prefer me in tight white tee shirts and Levi's. It is so easy to be provocative, to buy the right clothes, to etch the right expression on one's face. Mother taught me how. We lived in Monterey. There's so much to remember — the ocean, the smells I became accustomed to there, hints at the age of three of the wonderful things to come. "It's like a magic tea pot," Mother said, her eyes gleaming like tide-stranded jelly fish, this is where the heavenly potion comes from, and this — oh, Snake! — this is the spout!"

Johnson will be here this afternoon so I must begin to get ready. A nice, hot bath with oils, a good shampoo, a careful blow-dry so that my hair looks good and casual, falling just so, as it does over my eyes. It is so exciting to them. Perhaps I'll shave, or is this youthful fuzz more enticing?

* * *

Johnson boarded the plane having to sit, as luck would have it, next to the gentleman from the gate who appreciates neither faggots nor irony.

"Mind if I shit here?" Johnson asked with a sarcastic laugh as he took his seat. During the flight, on the leg between Reno and Sacramento, Johnson was overcome with emotion. He had done this before, off to he knew not where, following some glimmer of hope, after some guy he didn't know, totally in love, in theory at least. Reality escaped him, it always had. They had been so poor when he was young, childhood memories of their desert shack, the dry Nevada dust gritting in his mouth, and worse, his father exposing a rotund fanny for convenience: "Come here, you little bastard, we're out of paper again and I got a mess for  you to clean up. Yeahhh, taste good, buddy?" Johnson had many friends, most of them cactus. They stood silently in the desert, he ran to them, their spindly arms reached out to him. There was Albert and Doris, and his favorite, Princess Grace, who was actually a Joshua Tree. They played for hours, telling each other their deepest and darkest secrets.

Giving in to deafening social pressure, Johnson made up dark secrets. "Grace, your Majesty, guess what Daddy did to me today. The beast!"

Now Johnson is wealthy, owning every slot machine in Winnemucca. He could go to San Francisco whenever he wanted to nibble the breasts of the golden boys who gathered in that city for such purposes. Johnson turned to the man in the seat next to him and with a cracking voice said, "Nevada is a tough state, a man's state. Christ!"

* * *

Snake was beginning to think he had lived in the city too long. The business was doing quite well; everybody is into plants these days. His lover, Dave, was honest, dependable, responsible, handsome — truly everything Snake could ask for. He was only intermittently bored with him. Snake sat in the living room of their Twin Peaks apartment next to the phone contemplating the view. The phone rang. Snake was hard pressed to comfort his friend, actually a friend of Dave's, Robert, whose trick from the night before, had in a fit of depression, swallowed his entire bottle of amyl nitrite. Snake hung up the phone and decided that banana trees would be the next big seller. He picked up the phone and dialled.

* * *

I am compelled. I do not act out of reason; our family would never do that. We are guided by the Almighty. He prefers it that way. In Monterey, when I was ten, the priest came to me. "Snake," he said — even then I was called Snake, I don't know exactly why, perhaps out of Mother's interest in the exotic, but more likely because of the size of my dick. "Snake," he said, "when my great-great-grandfather came to Monterey he discovered your great-great-grandfather and built the church around his gifts. We are indebted to your family and always will be. You must carry on the family line."

I told him that, indeed, the Lord works in mysterious ways, and that, in fact, I was queer. Our powers would prevail, but, since it seems to be left up to me, our family would not. So it goes. He never quite recovered from the shock. Poor man, so close to God, so far from understanding His ways. Fortunately, I do not have that problem. I dispense my gifts as He would want me to, orgasm after orgasm. I do much to stimulate this tired world. He is pleased. I am compelled.

* * *

They say she tried to kill him, Johnson's wife did. She was killed instead. The car in which she was driving Johnson plunged off the cliff into a lake she didn’t know about, and she, jumping from the car as planned, splattered her brains on a State Historical Marker which she neglected to observe. He has been much more popular, even celebrated in Nevada since. A little publicity never hurts — that poor man with the demon wife. He is certainly happier without her — having affairs with men, for example, has been simplified. Perry in Carson City was hot while he lasted. Jake in Sacramento was a charmer. But now there was Snake. Snake was magic, a wizard with an impressive pet serpent.

Johnson, quite stoned now, looked endearingly at Snake and giggled, "Once a snake, a little dazed from the sun ran across another snake and said, 'Man, you're beautiful!' 'Don't be silly,' said the second snake, 'I'm your other end!' " They thought this to be exceedingly funny. Snake was still laughing as Johnson buried his face between Snake's buttocks, savoring the salty masculinity that gathered there, his heart pounding like the desert sun. It was all Dad's idea.

* * *

Shit, Johnson! You're the sexiest mother-fucker I've seen in years — electric rivers flowing through your tongue up my spine to whitewater in my head. Your hands, big and dusty, appreciating the hard contours of my chest, like being loved by the desert itself. Man, I give up. I'm so hot now, to breathe is to come. I feel one body, a snake's body, ours. I am weak and ugly, a fucked prune, all yours, my best moment. This is difficult for you. I understand.

You explode inside me, scattering us both into space.

* * *

I am unhappy. I have lived in this city too long. Johnson is dead. How he must have wept knowing he could not see me again! Banana trees were a big success. I made Dave move out last year to live with that ugly friend of his in Santa Cruz. I need my peace. It is a long life and there is much work to be done. The priests keep calling. I think I'll let them see me tonight on Folsom Street at the leather bars. My friends! I need my peace but Johnson would want me to socialize, loony till the end. This is my element, we are all so close, swimming in this smoke and beer atmosphere. Let's fuck! I'll be right back, just got to water this other fellow's garden, making that thing grow thick — he will not forget me. Suddenly, there you are. We stare. Finally, the deadly gas balloons in my throat: "You live in the city?"