Читать книгу Impossible Princess - Kevin Killian - Страница 8

If you’ve ever seen Cat People, with Nastassja Kinski, you already know the first part of this story—how I became obsessed with big cats, the panthers and leopards at the zoo, how I battled my own best interests to become skilled in deceit. Mom and Dad had taught me right from wrong, but I dunno…. I was always a contrary boy. But if you’ve seen Cat People you know that I crept out of my apartment every night that spring, to drive to a distant neighborhood out by the beach. That I parked my car blocks away and jumped the fence—

—landing with a jolt that made my legs grow numb, to creep toward the cages, night after night, sitting there in the wet grass motionless each night, staring at the cats.

In the spring darkness they moved restlessly behind the bars, their great sleek torsos shifting like fluid in fur. The cages smelled like meat and urine, and something I didn’t identify but with which I identified, a primeval scent, maybe blood or animal sperm? Tell me if you know. You know so much, having seen the film—what did you do, rent a video or something?

Anyhow in the dark I let my fantasies run wild. On the cold metal bars moonlight rained down, casting shadows across our bodies—mine and the panthers’. Wrapped in fur and sweat, they purred as they edged towards me, pausing to lick some salt out of a flat metal pan in the center of the cage. I wished the weather were warmer, I could have taken off my clothes—I felt such a powerful desire to do so, but no, it was pretty cool. At home I told my wife the grass stains on my pants were from touch football. That’s an excuse I learned from watching TV detergent commercials. You always see these big macho hunks and from the waist down their tight, white, form-fitting chinos are long stains of grass and dirt rubbed in by hand, I suppose, by art directors of these TV projects. I wonder if the men are wearing the jeans while the dirt and grass get rubbed in and if they get sexually excited. That’s the kind of thing I used to spend hours obsessing on.

I went to my family doctor, told him my desire to become a cat, he said he’d put me on Rogaine if my insurance would cover it. Or Prozac—or both. Otherwise he suggested that I do just what I’ve done—make countless trips to the Zoo, watch them in action, get my rocks off that way. Or buy a couple kittens from the SPCA, teach them to fellate me.

But one night I could stand it no longer. I rose awkwardly and took the few steps to the panthers’ cage, and rubbed the front of my jeans up and around the cool bars. It felt good, like the bursts of light and stars you see when Cinderella’s fairy godmother taps her wand. My zipper was buckling up like a railroad accident—like some boxcar had collapsed, sending its freight careening down some gully. I guess nighttime is the right time? Like George Jones used to sing. Was it George Jones? Or George Michael, har de har har. Behind the bars a sleeping panther cocked open one large yellow eye. Growled softly. A rustling breeze bent back the nape of its black fur, and I pushed my groin closer to the iron bar, then edged my kneecaps in to produce some friction, a little. I wasn’t going for any one thing: I just wanted to feel a little different. I thought back in a flash—in a series of flashes—to the way I look without my clothes; I felt proud of my body, its stark glamour in dark places. I remember thinking that if someone was watching me—say there were paparazzi around—my thighs and legs were in A-1 shape and my hair was lightly scented with shampoo. I had nothing to be ashamed of. I’m a man. A man without a conscience.

What made that night different from all the other nights of my life? Yeah, there was a full moon above: you could pick out every detail of the cage and the thick paws of the cats, paws that moved and shone like heavy beefsteaks, their tread a whistle in the dark. Yeah, a pool of slimy water spread across the concrete floor, and the moon was in it, flattened out and golden. Yeah, and there was this long turkey neck down my leg, hot and puffed up, and it was my prick. “Bill Barbour,” I said to myself, “this is your night to howl.” Maybe there’s a little part in every guy that wouldn’t mind getting clawed if approached in the right spirit. Or if hit up when he’s feeling—down for other reasons. “Your night to howl,” I repeated slowly, under my breath. And so saying I licked the cold bar of the cage and watched it steam before my eyes, before slightly crossed eyes, azure eyes the color of Icelandic seas and seamen.

But enough about me. When my mother was a girl, and pregnant nine months with me, a cat jumped into her lap and gave a ghastly howl, right at her face! Sent her into convulsions and labor. So I figure that’s why I was there—it’s not a sex compulsion, it’s a gene or something. I wrapped my arms and legs around a tall cold iron bar and began to shimmy in, contracting and expanding the flexible muscles of my ribcage and hips, and feeling this icy heat at the base of my balls, flicker up bit by bit until my whole body was flooded with heat, a disaster for my suit—what a cleaning bill! But I felt for once alive in a primitive way, as I slithered between the bars to let myself be taken by the big cats. First they ripped off my jacket and pants as though they were so much cellophane. Then they stepped back as I swayed, trying to keep upright in my underwear, then they buffeted me with their snouts till I fell down among them, nude and helpless, a toy in the golden moonlight, my underwear a meal of shreds scattered like confetti around the cage perimeter. Next time you see kittens batting a catnip toy around, think of me on the cold concrete floor of the cage, pushed around, my neck snapping, their paws wet and warm on my chest, my legs, their claws retreating and contracting as they contrived to spread my thighs open to their hot rotten breaths.

* * * * * *

They cleared the cage and photographed my twisted torn body from all angles. Under luminol, the big cat’s tongues and jowls glowed a ghostly green, and my wife fainted dead away, first fishing my cufflinks from the bed of flowers outside the cage. My butt was nothing but a leftover carved-up ham the day after Easter. My eyes, though, my eyes still in death must have been glittering, gleaming, pleasure-mad. Ask them to show you the autopsy pictures of—my eyes, my glazed demented eyeballs. When I felt the panther’s slick meat inside me my blue eyes must have narrowed a bit, then rolled up into their sockets until only the whites remain visible, and I had to come, and I had to die.