[Fiction]

From Section Two of Call Me,"Abuser Friendly"

By P-P Hartnett

When he saw me leaning against the wall, waiting for the front door of the basement flat to open, my right leg tucked up under my knee, the old boy thought he had a legless lovely before him for one sweet second. There was a beat in which he looked me over, >from Blondie teeshirt to ankles.

"You've got a nice pair of legs, Roger. Shame you've got two of them."

Henry. God had a wild time making the mold for that one's face. He had one of those big ugly heads that you get sitting right in front of you at the cinema. This head was mounted on the neck of an aging labrador. Nose hairs you could make toothbrushes out of. He was breathless, seventy-seven and smelly.

As he let me in, his eyes savoured the fading love bite while his nose sniffed the ripe pineapple I handed him.

He'd lived a full life down in that basement. The kitchen area had something, somewhere that stank. It might have come from the towels, floorboards or drains. Perhaps a combination. Whatever, wherever, it needed sorting out.

Henry didn't sit but fell backwards into the chair, looking like a fresh delivery to Casualty. He'd worked hard paying contributions towards the National Health Service and now it had let him down.

Punctuating the mantelpiece were postcards, many from Greece. They all featured remnants of human shapes in stone. I could imagine him circling long, cool halls, caressing the collections of Greek statuary, Kouroi artfully placed on pedestals, casting elegant shadows. I bet he'd kissed cool nipples, slid his hands over lovely pale buttocks, fingered the mutilated groins of stony youths.

I wanted the promised coffee but he'd started the tour of Olympia. We'd already visited the Doric temples of Zeus. The pages were marked and ready for staring eyes. He talked in snatches, presuming I knew who and what these sculptures represented.

"Kiadeos, east pediment, ah yes. . .the river god, just look at that stretching forth, there's an absolutely armless one for you! Oinomaos, Myrtilos, the kneeling youth, Lapith youth Oh, that headless, armless, penisless Centaur is mine! Oh, you'd adore Apollo from The Tiber in El Museo Nazionale delle Terme in Rome. Absolutely stumpy, Roger. I've travelled a bit. I know what I like," he said clutching my right knee.

"There was a report, Roger, of three puritanical shits -- English of course -- who, when visiting a museum in Athens at the turn of the century, brandished hammers and chisels and chopped off two hundred and thirty one penises and God knows how many pairs of balls before the authorities, two attendants in their seventies in this case, got the situation in hand."

"Ouch!" I said to humour him. While he put the kettle on I inspected torsos, cupids, angels and saints as recommended.

He particularly liked Hermes and the infant Dionysus by Praxiteles in the Olympia Museum. Giving them a once over quieted him down.

"Pass over the Michelangelo like a luv. Now, look at that bum. What do you think of that?"

"Cool, white, marvelously shadowed."

He swallowed audibly.

"Yes. I can see we are going to get on very nicely."

Shutting all three sets of curtains he eyed me with nervous speculation: Is he from the News International? The copulating rhythm of the universe began to pound as the slide projector shone the torso of Hermes upon the wall by the bed. He'd bought the slides from some museum: Torso of Hermes (many angles), Herakles (side view, front view and rear).

When the slide show had finished, not wanting to raise his considerable bulk from the chair, he simply unscrewed the projector's bulb. The internal fan continued to buzz. Not much light came in from the small back window and no seepage from the curtains.

"I do hope you're going to kill me," I said, at a volume he didn't quite hear.

"Thrill you? Is that what you said? Turn the kettle off dear, while I hunt out some photos my doctor friend popped round. He's a keen photographer and has easy access to amputees. He's got a friend at Guys who No, turn it to the left. That's right."

Young boys, clinically documented before and after surgery, from many angles. (Side views, front views, lots of rear.) Previous BASA sports days featuring legless youths swimming, hopping the fifty yards, clearing moderate to great heights in the high jump. Male amputees in gleaming wheelchairs, with trophies and vulnerable smiles. Unaware pin-up boys, zoom-ins of crotches on crutches. One amputee had such a dignified face, freckled and alert. He was gorgeous. The missing leg seemed no hindrance to his being. He stood proud, holding himself a little to one side for balance.

"I can see you like that one. Have it. Go on, do. He's yours. My doctor friend won't mind, a bit too grown-up for his liking. Take him. Yours."

"Something for my kitchen wall."

"I'd love to see you fuck him right under my nose," the man said, as he stood to draw back the curtains. "I usually like a leg clean off but sometimes a foot can be very exciting. Cut above the knee is preferable to below. The higher up the more I like it. The stump, I love to rub it where the leg used to be. There's nothing like rubbing a stumpy femur."

The Cadbury's chocolate cake didn't resemble the picture on the box. Like the Elgin Marbles it was cracked and chipped, but still intact here and there. It was served rather like confetti.

"I do like legged men too, only secondary though. Take a look in those drawers," he said, before slurping down his coffee through teeth the colour of a rising full moon.

Years and years of yellowing lovelies he'd dedicated many a wank to, divine pornography awaiting the life-giving inspection. Q, International, Hunk, Colt, Binky, Blueboy. He had the Vulcan I'd seen at Mr. Mok's house that featured Ray in various stages of undress long before I'd met him in the Radiotherapy Department of Barts Hospital. Randy Ray.

"Nice dick on that one," he said.

"Not any more."

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