Growing Old Disgracefully by Casimir Dukahz The Acolyte Press P.O. Box 12731 NL-11OO AS Amsterdam The Netherlands Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio or television review, no part of this book or the cover may be reproduced in anyform of by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Phototypeset in The Netherlands Copyright 1986 by Casimir Dukahz Cover drawing by Otto Lohmüller. 1985 CIP-GEGEVE S KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK, DEN HAAG Dukahz, Casimir Growing old disgracefully / Casimir Dukahz — Amsterdam: Acolyte Press Met. Lit. opg. IBSN 90-6971-003-X UDC 82-3 Trefw.: romans; oorspronkelijk – Engels TVM Edition 2015 Contents I Meet Remy Child Abuse The Pseudo-Feminine Mystique Savoir-Faire The unGRAND disILLUSION The Other Oscar The Cocke Street Boys The Jinx on Dixon Amo Amish Unisex Dick and Jane: What Really Happened Panegyric to Pragmatic Peregrine Farce in Venice Analgesic Andrew The Lei-Lay of Waikiki I Am a Ball Cleanliness is Next to Sexiness Recipe for Stewed Chicken (Coq Au Vin) The Strayed Lamb It’s All Done With Mirrors! Remy Meets Me A Phony Euphoria Jabberwacky Chicken to Go The Gooseberry Fool Close Encounters With the Third Grade That’s the Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia! Chicken Thief The Little Unsaints of San Perdito The Cholesterol Kid The Sweetsop Sot Mother’s Day Oxymoron Axel The Happy Ending of Putzi’s Sad Tail Are We in Love—Or Are We Just Friends I Meet Remy Handsome is as handsome does and though ultra-handsome lads usually don’t (at least for me!), Remy is the coruscant exception: his face and form are 13er perfection personalized and ‘NO!’ dwells not in his sexual vocabulary — if you satisfy his exacting standards and he’s in an amorous mood at the crucial moment. I first caught sight of him strolling if not trolling ahead of me on East Baltimore Street, the Times Square of that presently unMerryland city whose municipal airport is called ‘Friendship’. Alack! No more! No more! Since 1977, Baltimore has become a veritable Plague Town scourged by moral, self- righteous hetero Huns and Visigoth Vandals whereby to date nearly a hundred Little Ones have been entrapped and threatened into Confessing All (whether True or Falser), and more than a score of tender, loving, caring Sugar-Daddies have been hassled and harassed and hurled behind bars, there to wistfully meditate on their minor but marvelous unSins. Fellow-boylovers in England and the United States — Dante’s Inferno is your inimical next door neighbor! However, it was bicentennial reassuringly safe 1976 when Remy initially hove into my vertiginous view and delirium’d by his patrician posterior from his sunlit flaxen hair that tailed into a natural point on his delicate nape, and on down to his trim taut rump that seductively shapes his skin-snug jeans, I palpitantly pursued the little pulse-quickener as I note his patriotic apparel: spank-new glans-red sneakers, whiter than sperm-white T-shirt, true-blew pants — obviously an ipsy-pipsy, Yankee Doodle Play with my Noodle All-American Boy or an unreasonable, highly seasonable facsimile thereof! Smitten with wholly unholy desire for the felicity of young flesh, I float in the wake of the lodestar kid for blocks (miles?) — and then suddenly he wheels around to confront me, emerald orbs ablaze. “Are you following me, creepo?!” he soprano-rasps. For some seconds I can only gape in awed admiration, for this delightsome Baltimore Sun-Son is even more comely in front than he is behind! “You know,” I at length rueful, “sirenic succulents like you shouldn’t be allowed on the streets because you’re an irresistable temptation to felonied misdemeanors!” At once the kiddy simmers down, perhaps placated by my sincere, well-deserved encomium. “I get it,” he grins, ravishing dimples at each corner of his lush-lipped mouth. “You got the hots for me, huh?!” “That’s putting it mildly,” I pant. “Actually, I’m a five-alarm fire!” “H’m, I kinda doubt that. Too many of you guys are big talk an’ little do! Do you give head?” “Do I? I’m the head-man of my tribe.” “What cannibal tribe you belong to?” “The WASPs, International — at your service.” “You’re a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant?! Hell, man, I don’t think we can get together ’cause I’m Polish an’ Catholic — an’ no cracks about Polacks or I’ll slug you!!” “My dear child, I love liberated little Polacks and their hot spicy kielbasi sausage that ever riots my taste-buds. I once knew a wee Polski about your age named Supinski who when supine was sublime and who when prone was paramountski!” “But do you blow ass?” “Kiddy, I blow like a gentle zephyr from a pagan South Sea isle!” “Yeah, well, I kinda go more for a rough suck back there — it’s kickier.” “Can do! I strive to please and your pleasure is mine. Uh, sweetie, your pretty puss is strangely familiar — I’m positive I’ve seen you somewhere before.” “You’ve seen me behind, too!” “Not in the flesh — but the contour shapes up most appetizing.” “Well, you prob’ly saw me right here on Baltimore Street, ’cause this’s where I score the quickest.” “That can’t be as I was never on this street of dreams before. I usually prowl at the other end of town.” “So could be you saw me bare-ass in some porn-flick. I’ve been in about five of them.” “Yes, that’s it! I remember now. Those films were works of art and so were you — I loved you at first sight!” “Oh, sure! I’ve heard that kinda crap too often an’ it don’t mean a friggin’ thing!” “But I do love you, baby — really, truly and sincerely. Gimme a break!” “Man, you shoot a big line of bullshit, but I’ll give you a trial-run ’cause business is bad right now.” “Fine, great, wonderful! Your place or mine?” The boy frowns. “Not my place ’cause my Mama’s still at home.” “I see. Your Mama doesn’t know you go with men, I gather.” “God, no! If she knew she’d cut my kielbasi off an’ sew my asshole shut with barb-wire!” “Does your Papa know you hustle?” “Three years ago my poor Papa got killed by a hit-an’-run tricycle.” “Oh, come on, kiddy — that’s impossible!” “Not if the tricycle is five feet high an’ driven by a mad Lesbian bulldyke who hates everything that has a cock!” “Lord save us all!” I almost tearfully exclaim. “These benighted United States are becoming much too violent for me! Perhaps I should emigrate to peaceful Beirut or brotherly-loving South Africa.” “Don’t go yet, man, ’cause I’m sorta kinda half-ass gettin’ used to you an’ I like wanta sample your style of lovin’.” Naturally, I am immensely relieved, delighted and grateful that this refulgent youngling ‘Goes Out’, as they say — is on the Great Game of Body-Vending and apparently is ready to accept me as at least a pro tem partner-player. It has ever been my amatory policy to attempt to partake of hyperbolical lads as they come — but too frequently they exhibit a marked reluctance to come with me! Far too dismally many times extremely engaging pre- and post-pube sex-merchants have mistaken innocent harmless TLC me for some type of Fuzz or Truant- or Probation-Officer, thus raising lowest Hell with my juvenile love-life. However, this fetching tolerant tot is obviously different so — my jittery arm about his warm hard young shoulders — we wend toward my mini-midget basement apartment which is a dump in a reeking slum but it’s a clean dump and all I can afford, what with the price of food and rent and touting little ball-toters being so inflationary these sorry days. En route, I say: “What’s your name, little luscious — and if you don’t want to tell me, I’ll understand.” (God, I want to go down on him right here on the street in broad daylight!) “I ain’t got nothin’ to hide! My name’s Remiliusz Taczanowski but if you call me anything but Remy, you’re gonna get a fat lip!” And he brandishes a small fierce fist in my face. “I adore Rerny,” I reply in all truth. “It calls to mind ‘Remy Martin’, an expensive booze which I’m certain can’t be half so intoxicating as your own inebriating boy-liquor!” “Man, I’m expensive too — an’ don’t you forget it!” That’s somewhat commercially down putting but perhaps the kiddy will later prove to be open to negotiation. One can only hope and gird one’s loins. Here my companion queries: “So what’s your name — if you got one!” “Most kids call me Duke — If they’re not pissed-off at me.” “I useta have a cur-dawg named Duke but I couldn’t toilet-train the son-of-a-bitch so I swapped him off to another boy for a piecea ass.” “Was it a bargain?” “Naw! We all three got cheated.” Arriving at my dingy domicile, I ask my scintillant visitor if he’d like a sandwich or something — stomach-stoked sub-striplings later generally feed me all the more copiously from their rarer haute cuisines. It’s the Only Way, really.