He just wanted to make love, you know. How to blame him?

One hour before, at his home in his apartment in Rome, he had plunged his calloused and rough hands in the tea box: these hard and brittle leaves from Darjeeling, he had put them in the metal ball, then in that old teapot bought in Yemen, during the filming of the Thousand and One Nights. I’m sure the fingers of his corpse still felt the tea.

There are still a few days, you were in Paris to proofread your translation of Salo. You hesitate to stay longer, run bookshops, look for old editions on the Seine shores, lose your time in the Louvre, watching your reflection in the photographs of Man Ray. While searching for old B&W ones, you had stopped in front of this color photo (a self-portrait, self-timer, an Indian poet, in a white shirt dress-up just above the knees, her legs crossed, with brown leather shoes, against a wall, her proud and cold eyes behind dark glasses, black as her thick hair coming down to the roots of her breasts, and this shirt, like me, you had wanted to caress and lift it slowly (but surely). You were planning to adapt some ghazals by Hasan Sijzi, but Persian is so hard to read… You had projects in mind, Pier Paolo, but also desires, dreams, and fantasies.

Now you lie on the sands of Ostia, surrounded by the tire tracks of your Alfa Romeo. Your hair is matted with red-brown blood that flowed from your face. Your body is dislocated, you, barely human form: that little bastard Pino the Frog bashed you up well, you who had a pretty face. On your corpse, he urinated, perhaps worse? How can one want you so bad?

You just wanted to make love, and you found rage: rage, chaos, death.

***

All day, I smoked just one cigarette. That’s all I had, you know? I would take one drag and put it out. I even picked up discarded cigarette butts from the dirty streets of Roma, my beloved whore of a city. No food all day. The bastards do not know hunger, look at them eating, do they know how vulgar they look, bastards, how utterly disgusting their throats look while swallowing. Their hands caressing that cold pint, look at his hands, what is it, a body, do you want to fuck it, old man you, fuck it then. What do I care?

Pelosino, they call me. But I am only seventeen. I fuck for money, so what? Every man sells himself for money. If I sell, they have a problem. If I steal, they have a problem. Why doesn’t this world just collapse? Everything is all wrong. I am chewing grass, have you ever chewed grass? It tastes green. Where did this cut on my finger come from? It’s metallic, the taste, a little salty too, my dirty finger.

If I had a little money – it’s a slow day today – I’d eat some spaghetti with oil and garlic. If I had a lot of money, I’d order a chicken breast, too. The meat on the bones, are there people in the world who haven’t chewed meat?

I could have money if I wanted, you know. Adolfo told me today that if I could finish a job, the big people would give me a lot of money. Those people are always looking for someone to finish their jobs. But I told him, straight, I couldn’t kill a man. If I know one thing, it is this that I will never kill a man. But Pasolini was not a man, you know? That’s why I could kill him. Savagely. Like a pig. A dirty pig who thought only about my dick without even seeing my head.

Eh! Your luxurious car, brand new, I’ve crashed your face three times with it, bastard. Your pretty face of love: nothing more, just a pool of blood, with a little spunk. I opened your stomach with a knife, because I was curious to know what you had inside you. And I found what? Black bile. Fat. Wine turned sour in your life.

On your 100,000 lire costume, I clipped this poem by Ekaku you recited in a low voice, while kissing me:

“Oh young folk –
if you fear death,
die now!
Having died once
you will not die again.”

 You feared death, Pasolini, but you thought only the little death. But it is the great, the true, the only one in whose jaws you got caught.

While leaving, I turned around and pissed on your hot corpse. I was relieved. I no longer felt your breath on my neck for ten crumpled bills. I will not be forced to lower my pants between trucks on Rome’s ring. I could not stand, Pasolini. But even in death, you do not disappear. I’m gonna have to kill even your memory.

***

I don’t know what that fucker thought of himself but in the restaurant, I was so hungry, you know, he told me I could order anything.

Ha, I had nothing but smoke in my body, strangers penetrate me with their hard dicks, they don’t even take off my shirt, those motherfuckers, only my pants, you know the first time everyone cries, it hurts so much, a boy from the next house – what a crazy mind – bought a sharp knife from the first money, a good knife, the one that actually cuts, and suddenly under an old lamppost, while walking, takes out the knife and – dash – cuts his wrist. I was walking ahead, I only heard him falling. Ha, the bastard was dead. But I am not like the others, the first time I was so happy to get the money, all night I had roamed the cheap streets singing old Italian songs to the whores, I even gave cigarettes to a few of them. I had a whole pack.

Now this bastard Pasolini was telling me that I could order anything. What a joke. But what do I care. I told the plump waitress that I wanted some spaghetti with garlic and oil. But that joker just asked for some beer. I asked him if he wasn’t going to eat anything. He bloody said he wasn’t hungry. Not hungry. Ha. You know, I didn’t even cry then. I just watched the cook skin a chicken with his knife.

Then I asked the waitress to bring me some chicken. Pier Paolo only wanted another beer.

***

When we had a drink together, Pasolini, just before fucking, your nose bled.

I remember it very well because it made a red spot in a corner of your chic waterproof (English, no? A Burberry, I think). Blood, blood sank a lot in your dirty corpse as sand of Ostia drank it with relish. But this picture, I remember very well, I’ll always remember. This intense red color, brilliant, a little refractory, tense, this metallic taste one could taste outside your dirty body, the tone, the bitterness that went so well with your treacherous eyes… I dipped my finger in it, Pasolini. I wanted to know what taste you had. Inside. Before it was too late… before it would all be over, before someone inevitably finds out … I wanted to know if Pier Paolo – you know, I hadn’t even heard of Pasolini before I stepped into his car, I don’t give a penny for such people, he told me he makes films, that bastard, I asked him why, he couldn’t tell me, didn’t say a word – this great artist, ha, they tell me now, tasted like the others, you know. He tasted just like me.

In the car he told me I reminded him of Ninetto. A young boy he was in love with, he said. I asked him if he’d taken Ninetto for a ride like this, how much did he pay him, I can fuck like him, you know, I told him. Pasolini didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at me, he kept staring at the empty road in front of us. After some time, he sighed, and said, in a low voice – I hated that low voice– ‘When I was in Canterbury, I wrote this for Ninetto’:

“I can’t pretend your resistance
doesn’t cause me pain.
I can see the future. There is blood on the sand.”

*** 

That Pier Paolo – what a name, who names their child Pier Paolo – started boring me with things I had no interest in listening, so he wrote poetry for that young boy he liked to fuck, what does it matter to me, you know once Adolfo had kissed my neck and had whispered into my ears that I have beautiful eyes, big, like a frog. Once he wrote a letter to me – he slipped it into my door, mama thought it was from a girl, ha – where he called me Pino, the frog. ‘Adolfo, you are a poet,’ Rosa told him when I showed her the letter.

He was still talking about that Ninetto – I don’t remember much, I was really bored, but I think he had married someone, a woman, and this bastard was sad about it or something, I don’t know, I don’t know why these big people get sad – but suddenly he touched my neck with his jeweled finger, a gold ring he was wearing, the spot where Adolfo had kissed me. I started kissing his hands, with my tongue you know, I licked his stout fingers. I always like doing that.

Ha. Do you really think someone can see his future, Pier Paolo?

No, he said.

***

You hurt me, the first time. You’re too skinny, Pasolini. Your bones rubbing, banging on my flesh. I had bruises, bruises all over the body, indelible stains on my white skin. You, dog! Not only you soiled me, but you disfigured me. You respect nothing, not even my body. It amazes you that I wanted to smash your face, make your eyes go out of your sockets, pull your tongue that had sucked me the whole night, break your hands that had caressed my butt without causing me any pleasure. Never. I wanted to love you, Pasolini. I wanted to wish you, but no. I expected you to make me cum, but no. Your lust, your passion, your love for me was nothing but boredom.

You see, I even remember the taste of your mouth, Pasolini. You had smoked just before. Some bitterness. A hint of alcohol (gin? It must be gin…). The smell of your hot sweat, too, on your unshaven beard – I could never love a hairless man, for me it is not an adult, it’s a child. The smell of your hair: camphor? Musk? Lemongrass? Something bewitching, more exotic than you (you sold me the dream, little dog). Your 300,000 lire sunglasses – damn, how many coffees I could drink at Sant’Eustachio with that? An eternity ? – hiding, even in the dark, your vicious eyes of pork.

I, in my mouth, had the taste of your unwashed dick. Your kisses (too fiery for me) did not make this disappear, and I had a mad desire to vomit.

On your naked body – it was not fully naked, but there was skin in flashes, in gaps – was a black birthmark. I’d wanted to stab you there the moment I saw it, marked for a knife you were, Pier Paolo, since birth. You know, you wanted me to believe that your dirty dick – how many boys have you been inside, you bastard? – was love. Because you make some boring films, everything you do is beautiful, because you wrote some lines for another boy? Ha, you moron, you thought I was an idiot. You picked up that wooden stick thinking I’d do anything for money. You fucking bastard, you thought you could stick a piece of wood inside me? Why? Was your dick too precious for a poor boy? Was your body too beautiful to enter mine? Did you think you were very beautiful, Pier Paolo?

The first time you looked at me, I mean really looked at with intensity, not a glance, I had my head between your legs, and my mouth was full.

There was a red light in the corner. I think it was in a bar. Crapper, perhaps (emergency exits, lit). A Perroni (hot) we drank.

You looked at me with something akin to gratitude. But with a little something servile, yet. I did not like it. You stroked my hair with your hands – too good for you. You know what? I even think that you had kept your gloves. Asshole. As if you were afraid to touch me. To mess with me.

At the end, I spat on the floor, in the middle of cigarette butts. The evening was spent talking about nothing. You were talking to yourself, anyway. I was just a fucking machine.

Later, before leaving for Lido di Roma, I returned to pee. On the ground, I almost slipped on your cum and my saliva. I was wrong. This was not going to end well.

You were standing beside the car when I came out, under the lamp you looked so old, you know – you were so old. 50? 60? I don’t know. On the backseat was this huge poster of naked people, all on their fours, like fucking animals.

Is that what you like? What, you fuck yourself looking at it … ? Oh, old man, tell me something interesting, I am so bored. Ha. You made this film? You make blue films, you dirty old man? I must have watched one of yours then. Antonio, I used to go to school with him, I used to suck him in the bathroom, ha, he sells these films on the corner, doesn’t even take money from me. Good one he is.

Christ, then you started talking about some … what was his name … de Sake, de Sade, or something. The last line stuck with me, you know, but I read the whole thing later, in jail:

“What does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act? That everything around you give you its utter attention, think only of you, care only for you…every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates.”

You, fucking bastard, you told me that you will give me some books to read, that it will do me some good. What, you thought I was some rat from the streets? Ha, you know my nonna used to read Dante to me, at bedtime, few lines I still remember. So, I suddenly said in a loud voice – you should have seen your face, it was so funny – THIS IS FOR YOU, PIER PAOLO:

“In that book which is my memory,
On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you,
Appear the words, ‘Here begins a new life’.”

***

Three days before, close to Porta Portese, the neighborhood of whores and transvestites. A Thai massage parlor, you know, where you do not know if it’s a guy or a girl who cares for you. Green neon lights, the cheesy music, fake red glass Buddhas, the sound of passing out in the overheated room. You were lying on a creaking bed, I was next to you. I was watching you.

The concept was simple. Lights off. You do not know who massages you or how. You do not know what happens. Breaths, sniffs, coughs. You are lost in circumstances. Your fantasy.

My masseuse propped my head between her breasts. I could hear her heart beat (slow: I was not doing her any effect). Effective, ritualistic, meticulous, without feeling. Just a dialogue between her hands and my skin. A monologue, in fact: no exchange.

You, you were erect under your towel. I saw the shadow of your dick, enormous. Your masseuse could have been your mother, she was so old, wrinkled, ugly as the Sybil of Cuma awaiting death with haste like a deliverance.

Sometimes I did not know if my masseuse hurt me or if it was a delight. “At the border”, was the second concept. Sometimes I did not know if it was two or ten hands… a monster derived from the Greco-Roman mythology, maybe? My mind wandered. One image haunted my retina: the breasts of a woman, an Indian dancer, with a red birthmark near the nipple. And I tried to remember the shape of her breasts. And the color of her areola. And the grain of her skin. God. My memory…

Shortly before the departure time, she asked you if you wanted to be finished. You dare all, Pasolini, you dare everything. And this mummy that could have been your mother sucked you to the bone. Me, I just finished by my own hand.

***

We were on the downward slope.

All this debauchery, this lust, how do you want it to end well. We are not in a fairy tale… Or maybe you’re the monster, son of a bitch.

Your excess, your permanent intoxication, your absence, your daydreams, your lustful urges, your battered body, your sadism on others, masochistic tone on yourself, your bottomless thirst for dirty sex. Your cock, as a discipline, a hair shirt, bloody ordeal. What obscene god will you bring, Pasolini? In your enjoyment, you shout names: Siva, Dionysus, Legba. Some nights your cock tastes like blood. Bad omen…

I understood it, I always understood bad omens. It feels like an unexpected blow to the heart – one night, I’d dreamt of a knife wound to the heart, a deep cut, that’s how it suddenly felt looking at you, you bastard, you were going to be my end. For a moment, I stood there contemplating my whole life, the next moment you asked me to get on my knees and suck you, suck you until you cum in my mouth, you dirty man. I could have said no to you, you know? What could you have done? But I got on my knees, obediently, and stroked you and then sucked you till moans of pleasure and pain came out of your dirty disgusting mouth. You know why I did it? I wanted to know the taste of the man I was going to kill.

The john is your kingdom. A well murky place where you can do your small business quiet, quietly, away, no witness, neither seen nor known, I sucked you.

One night we dined in a seedy Chinese restaurant, and in a fortune cookie, you found the word: “If you were a murderer, how would you kill?” It’s fun, because the fortune cookies usually announce the future rather than posing tortuous question. Almost as if it was a twisted psychoanalyst who wrote this sentence and slipped it into the marzipan. (Carl Gustav Jung, was he with you?)

It took you a long time to find the solution. We had time still to drink shots, furtively fuck in the bushes of a motorway service area, buy two cigars at a gas station and refuel your Alfa-Romeo.

“My little Pino” you started – I had already demolished your face for this voice that you have when you say my nickname – “My little Pino, if I were to kill you, what would I love is to suffocate you slowly but surely with my cock…”

Me, the romantic, I thought back to my Indian dancer: if I were to die and kill both, it would be for love, but the true one. We would love for hours without food or drink. Not counting the time or the hour. Without seeing the day or night. Only our bodies entwined, nestled one inside the other, our breaths, our successive rhythmic delights, ecstasies our frenzied, in tune with each other, give everything for each other until death, until the kill unconscious pleasure, until they can not get up again. Die of love. Kill by love.

But in front of me when I opened my eyes, I had this old playboy. The next time he will force me to suck in squalid toilets, I’ll bite his dick. His blood tastes better than its juice.

I don’t remember loving you even one day. Not one, you realize? Have used you, yes. Seduced, too. Fucked up the rope, so much.

With you, it was traveling into the East, previews of movies with Fellini and Truffaut, afters with whores sniffing coke until the morning (that we were drawing bare the toilet bowl, their face full of shit), dinners where alcohol flowed freely (when you throw up on the floor, wiping your mouth in my hair)… It’s true with you, I’ve lived a hundred lives instead of only one. Or a hundred hells?

I think the first thing that I rode in your beautiful Alfa Romeo was your cock. Then your dirty mouth. Then, your manicured hands of vicious asshole. Then your tattoos close to your dick where you have put my name with a small green and ridiculous frog…

Nothing was bound to chance, you know? I was very methodical. I just took some medicine and a sip of alcohol (of Metaxa, a kind of a little sweet Greek brandy – drops, you do not know) to give me a little courage. I could do without it, I had the courage to kill you a hundred times!

Everyone in this world believes that I killed him the night I met him, that I’d never seen him before, but they’re crazy, idiots, all of them. Ha. I love fooling idiots, they’ll believe anything, those motherfuckers. I learnt how to kill from my darling, my sweetheart, the one between whose breasts and thighs I’d discovered peace – yes, me, peace. What, you don’t think I understand these things? Ha. You crazy fools. She loved this one poem – and Pasolini thought he’d introduce me to books, the arrogant bastard, I should have pissed on him more – I don’t remember the title, it’s been some years, and she’s been dead for longer, but it’s about all the moments future lovers don’t meet, where they’re yet to know each other – the many moments of not meeting, she’d call it – do you know what she told me one night? That it’s the same with murderers and their victims – victims, as if they don’t deserve it, as if that son of a bitch didn’t deserve it, cumming in my mouth, on my ass, on my face night after night after night, no it was not just one night, I spent an eternity with him, I can draw the precise shape of his dick right here for you, I will tell you all the things I could taste in his blood and spunk, that … that pig, that dog … for art, thoo, I spit, I spit on such art –

My darling, my love, oh my love, she asked me one night, I was right next to her in bed : how many times have you passed the person you will murder one day? She said that just like they’re no loves at first sights, they’re no murders at first sight either. Nothing is chance. A murder is a symphony orchestrated by the universe, it’s destiny. You’re brought closer to the victim, step by step by step. You know how she died? She killed the man she was destined to kill. I was right there when she did it. The man thought she couldn’t be that cruel, that she wouldn’t actually pull the trigger – she, so elegant, so proper, she hadn’t even slept with anyone yet, not even with me – and right then she did it. Straight in the head, then in the heart. And then, and then she shot herself. Under the chin. Why she didn’t shoot me, I will never understand.

But every night, I wonder, how many times did I pass Pasolini on the street? How many times did he see his murderer, vaguely, faintly, in a flash?

Did he know I was the one who would ejaculate on his battered, ugly corpse? Ha. He could see the future, that fucker, could he see that only his death would make me hard?

***

That November morning in Rome, you had looked at me like my dick tasted.

In front of the Pantheon, near the market of the four seasons, you had that hard look, proud, haughty, conceited, sure of yourself. You were the master of the world, Pasolini, but in fact you were not even the master of yourself. You believed that you could hold the world in your hand while it was only twenty centimeters of my dick. You did not have my heart, Paso, you did not have my heart. Not for a second. Not for a moment.

After love – love, what a big word. Sex – after sex, when you were asleep just after having thrown your cum in the mouth, I was watching you. Your mouth wide open, your raucous snoring, your hair slicked back, your bulging muscles, your abandoned penis… Even unconscious, you were sweating excessively. You are too much, Pasolini. What do you bring to the world if not suffering. You hurt me. When you fuck me, when you fuck the world with your highbrow films. Viewing Salo: what have you done? How God – if God exists – could He forgive that? You are only perversion, scrapings of shit, to kill you would do justice to this nation.

On days you fucked me so much that I could no longer sit – between each shot, each scene, in the trailer that is for your fucking rather sleeping -, I pitied you. What fun can you have in life, you? Me, Pino the Frog, I at least know the pleasure that I’ll have in killing you.

You became a drug, for me, for others. We watch your movies to escape, as we will inject a dose of dope. You are harmful, you know, you’re toxic. You kill softly, bitch. But for me, you are a poison, a permanent danger, an absolute risk, an evil genius.

Pasolinin: such a molecule would degrade one by one all my vital functions.

A drug that would do more harm than good. That’s what you are. That’s what you will no longer be.

This whole fucking planet and its disgusting people drain out the evil of their hearts drop by drop, they fucking wait all their lives to get rid of all the violence, all the filth of their soul. Not me. When I looked at you, Pier Paolo, I didn’t see you. I saw an opportunity to purify my soul. When you were busy fucking me, jamming your dick into me with closed eyes, you fool, I was observing every inch of you. On your body, I was drawing a map of my own release. I knew your face had to go, you were too proud of it – Jesus, you fucking monster, you painted yourself with a flower in your mouth, ha, who does that? Did you think you were so pretty, Pasolini? You were nothing but a fucking pig. Disgusting, the memory of your odour makes me vomit even now – you know how it was? It was like someone had perfumed a pile of rotting trash with roses and made it worse than before. You smelled like that, you know?

One night, one hit with the Alfa Romeo, one mad moment and all the evil : out. Out of my heart forever. I will be able to live peacefully after that, at least. You know, Pasolini, that’s the mistake you made with you life. You didn’t kill anybody. And the devil lived in you till the end. El Diablo, ha, I know some Spanish, too. I was scared for myself, Pier Paolo. I thought if I don’t kill this man, I will become this man. I didn’t want to be like you, you whore.

In the end, you were the drug that made me kill you. Of my life you were the end, you were the beginning.

Pasolinin, are you the only man I’ve ever truly loved?

…

M & Mrs Hyde are the two tantric and trashy sides of a forgotten soul, with frequent Jungian mood, tiny red spot obsession, Bombay Sapphire passion, frequent insomnia, recurrent headaches, taste for Darjeeling, and fascination for words. Always travelling from East to West, and inversely.