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PR-377 The Big Blow
The Big Blow
Pleasure Reader
PR-377
Peter Tuesday Hughes
$1.95
FOREWORD
The fat body seemed deflated, flattened in the middle of the bed, the once-violet sheets now dark red; blood had soaked onto the floor and into a thick, purple shag rug, forming an odd-shaped pattern like tentacles of an octopus. He avoided stepping in this, inched closer; Darrell’s eyes behind puffy folds of flesh seemed to stare up at him accusingly, and he caught his breath, shifted his eyes to Sam, who stood watching his reactions. He barely heard Sam’s voice say, “Got it in the jugular, see? That kitchen knife in his throat.” Moving to the opposite side of the bed, Sam went on, “Never cared much for old Hoff, but, shit, he had his good side, the side he rarely showed to anyone.” His eyes raised from the sprawling body to Tony’s ashen face. “Not very pretty, is it?”
“No.” He forced the shaking of his legs to calm, his voice to tremble less. “Poor bastard. You know I hated his guts, but not enough to kill him, Sam.”
“If you say so,” Sam muttered.
* * *
For an island, it wasn’t much: no more than ten miles long, a half-mile wide. But the other island—the larger, further up the coast—had become overrun with Broadway types; Seventh Avenue types; would-be actors and artists from the Village scene; bisexual swingers from Upper Eastside bars; and rougher types from towns along the shore who crossed to the islands on weekends, looking for somebody to give them a blowjob.
Therefore, many of the summer residents—long time owners of houses and less pretentious shacks who’d bought property years ago—sold out, picked up their collections of Oriental art, naked paintings, albums of pornographic photographs, lavish furnishings, wardrobes of blazing colors and imported fabrics; the others merely gathered their few pieces of broken-down furniture, kerosene lamps hung on brass chains, pots and gadgets from galley kitchens, denuded their humbler abodes of findings along the beach—shells, spiked-blowfish, driftwood, heaps of sparkling rocks—and they, too, whisked every possession to the smaller island, and set up housekeeping for the months of summer.
Owners of former mansions built more elaborate houses on the smaller island, carefully placed in an area at the north end (far from the commoner crowd), filled them, as they had before, with coramandel screens of exquisite workmanship, crystal chandeliers, had swimming pools tiled in turquoise, cabanas, gardens, swung Japanese lanterns for parties, served the same exotic drinks, told the same stories about each other, dished the commoner crowd; and life went on very much as it had on the larger island: “Leave that fucking place to the Forty-second Street faggots!” they laughed, swizzling their gin-fizzes.
The beach was the same wide expanse of white sand; the Atlantic the same treacherous trap for those unfamiliar with undertow. The same areas were in the middle of the island where stunted growths of sand-pine and scrub-oak furred deep hollows obscured by dunes; and naked men cruised each other, had sex together under a blazing sun. So, all agreed, the take-over of the larger island by townspeople and New York hustlers had been a blessing in disguise.
Businesses opened: a grocery store, with outlandish prices, but the residents were used to this, bitched in the same old way; were told, coldly, pay or starve, as before. It sold meats, fresh vegetables, frozen items; offered shelves of liquor, suntan oils and creams, ice cubes by the bag, a few bits of clothing, such as Levi’s, sandals, the usual assortment “beachfaggots” (which is what the grocery owner, contemptuously, called the residents, even though he depended upon them for a living) might forget to pack when coming to the island for a swinging weekend. It was placed near the long wooden pier erected by the land-lease company in Bayshore to accommodate the ferry and the new influx of “New York fairies” (which is what the company, contemptuously, called them, even though the island would have been nothing but a deserted expanse of wind-swept sand without the new invasion). But everyone seemed happy with the arrangement: the Bayshore company made money from the small ferry they provided to float the crowds of gaudily dressed men from the mainland every Friday night, back each Sunday in late sunset evenings. The new residents were happy they didn’t have to bother any longer with squares and rough types who used to come to the larger island (and still did) to get their rocks off. Now the residents could have naked orgies on the sand at night, dress in drag (those who went in for this kind of thing), and hold dances in the newly built Nynn’s Hotel—a ramshackled reproduction of the other, older beach hotel they’d known for years. The land-lease company was forced by the state to erect a small firehouse; when the brass bell sounded—just as before—everyone had to fly from the beach, grab pails of water filled and ready for such an occasion; and, with much screaming and yelling, the fire would be put out. But these had been rare, fortunately, in the five years since the smaller island came into its own.
Gradually, other shops were built: a camera store with equipment for photography-buffs (a backroom with boxes of porn-jobs for those who had this particular hangup; and it soon got around there was also any form of drug from marijuana to hard stuff; the camera shop did a thriving business). A men’s clothing shop, Dingle’s, which competed with the higher prices of the grocery, bringing them down slightly and creating a bitter feud between the two shop owners, which amused the residents, provided endless cocktail conversation. Available were the modish outfits for the beach and parties given regularly—three or four each weekend—fabrics, sequins, feathers, fake jewels for costumes to be made. An End-of-Season ball was always held Labor Day weekend to which some of the remaining residents of the larger island came to scoff. They had named the smaller island Bitches Dream; its local name, according to fishermen, Duck Island, quickly changed by the residents to Fuck Island, which they thought rather chic.
And there were the same problems with the ocean washing away sand from beachfront properties, the usual battling with the Bayshore company to erect tide-erosion fences; the usual threats of hurricanes. And, as usual, lurid stories circulated over cocktails about the time (twenty years before) when the Atlantic had swept completely over the larger island; many had been drowned in the debris of fragile board and chicken-wire houses, typical of the period. So everyone decided no such thing could happen here: hadn’t most of the new houses been anchored to cement pilings buried deep in sand? And weren’t all of their houses more substantial? (Aside, of course, from those crummy shacks at the other end made of nothing but spit!) “Let the queens drown, if it comes to that!” they laughed, went on telling campy stories with their usual viciousness about the poorer residents.
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