The Laboratory of Love Read online

  THE LABORATORY OF LOVE

  Copyright © 2013 by Patrick Roscoe

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a license from Access Copyright.

  ARSENAL PULP PRESS

  Suite 202 – 211 East Georgia St.

  Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z6

  Canada

  arsenalpulp.com

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada (through the Canada Book Fund) and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program) for its publishing activities.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons either living or deceased is purely coincidental.

  Some of these stories appear in previous books by the author of: Bookmarks (Penguin Books Canada, 1990) and The Truth about Love (Key Porter, 2001).

  Cover photograph by © David Pinzer Photography/Image Source/Corbis

  Editing by Susan Safyan

  Book design by Gerilee McBride

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Roscoe, Patrick, 1967–

  [Short stories. Selections]

  The laboratory of love / Patrick Roscoe.

  Includes new stories and stories previously published in The truth about love and Birthmarks.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55152-521-1 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-55152-522-8

  (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8585.O7236A6 2013 C813'.54 C2013-903256-8

  C2013-903257-6

  Other books by Patrick Roscoe

  Beneath the Western Slopes (1987)

  Birthmarks (1990)

  God’s Peculiar Care (1991)

  Love Is Starving for Itself (1994)

  The Lost Oasis (1995)

  The Truth About Love (2001)

  For all those who have survived the laboratory of love

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance between its contents and actual people, places, and events might be called coincidental, except that under the peculiar care of God there are no such accidents: every dream of love is the same, and similarly real.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Part One: Before I Was Set Free

  Rorschach I: The Rough Beast

  The History of a Hopeful Heart

  Sweet Jesus

  Angie, Short for Angel

  Part Two: After the Glitter and the Rouge

  Honey

  The Real Truth

  Eureka, California

  Lucky

  After the Glitter and the Rough

  Part Three: What the World Takes Away

  Rorschach II: The Black Hole

  Peggy Lee in Africa

  Beggars

  The Lemon Tree

  Wild Dogs

  Shells

  Chiggers

  What the World Takes Away

  Part Four: How Much the Heart Can Hold

  Rorschach III: Ventriloquism

  The Sacred Flame

  The Murdered Child

  Phantasmagoria

  Marie

  Part Five: The Laboratory of Love

  Rorschach IV: Mutilation

  The Beauty Secrets of a Belly Dancer

  The Tattoo Artist

  Hieroglyphics I: Only the Bird Knows the Wing

  Hieroglyphics II: Only the Wing Knows Flight

  The Truth about Love

  Touching Darkness

  Pulsera

  The Laboratory of Love

  Compromise

  Rorschach V: The Last Word

  Acknowledgments

  Portions of this book were originally published, sometimes in different form or alternately titled, as follows:

  “Rorschach I: The Rough Beast” (as “Autobiography”) in The Vancouver Sun (Canada)

  “The History of a Hopeful Heart” (as “My Lover’s Touch”) in The New Quarterly (Canada) and in The James White Review (US)

  “Sweet Jesus” in Blood & Aphorisms (Canada) and in Queen Street Quarterly (Canada)

  “Angie, Short for Angel” in Descant (Canada)

  “Honey” in The Fiddlehead (Canada) and in The Church-Wellesley Review (Canada)

  “The Real Truth” in Canadian Forum (Canada)

  “Lucky” in The Malahat Review (Canada) and in North Dakota Quarterly (US)

  “The Sacred Flame” in Christopher Street (US)

  “The Murdered Child” in Exile (Canada)

  “Phantasmagoria” in The New Quarterly (Canada), in Horsefly Literary Magazine (as “Harrop”) (Canada), and in Lodestar Quarterly (US)

  “Mutilation” in The Capilano Review (Canada) and in The Danforth Review (Canada)

  “The Beauty Secrets of a Belly Dancer” in Canadian Fiction Magazine (Canada)

  “Peggy Lee in Africa” in Prism international (Canada), in The Little Magazine (US), and in Wisconsin Review (US)

  “Beggars” in Grain (Canada) and in Alaska Quarterly Review (US)

  “Wild Dogs” in Prism international (Canada) and in South Dakota Review (US)

  “Shells” in The Dalhousie Review (Canada)

  “Chiggers” in The Dalhousie Review (Canada)

  “The Lemon Tree” in Books in Canada (Canada), in Qwerty (Canada), and in South Dakota Review (US)

  “What the World Takes Away” in Queen’s Quarterly (Canada)

  “The Tattoo Artist” in Descant (Canada) and in Blithe House Quarterly (US)

  “Only the Bird Knows the Wing” (as “Hieroglyphics I”) in Prairie Fire (Canada) and in Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly (US)

  “Only the Wing Knows Flight” (as “Hieroglyphics II”) in Event (Canada) and in Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly (US)

  “The Truth About Love” in Prairie Fire (Canada) and in Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly (US)

  “Touching Darkness” in Exile (Canada)

  “Compromise” in paperplates (Canada) and in Lodestar Quarterly (US)

  “Rorschach V: The Last Word” (as “The Last Word”) in Descant (Canada)

  Some of these stories were reprinted as follows:

  “The History of a Hopeful Heart” (as “My Lover’s Touch”) in Winter’s Tales: New Series Six (London: Constable Publishers)

  “Sweet Jesus” in Queer View Mirror 2 (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press)

  “Lucky” in Best Canadian Stories (Ottawa: Oberon Press)

  “The Murdered Child” in Death Comes Easy: The Gay Times Book of Murder Stories (London: Gay Men’s Press)

  “The Tattoo Artist” in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror: Fifteenth Edition (New York: St Martin’s Press)

  “The Truth about Love” in Contra/Diction: The New Queer Male Fiction (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press)

  “Touching Darkness” in Bend Sinister: The Gay Times Book of Disturbing Stories (London: Gay Men’s Press)

  “Peggy Lee in Africa” received the CBC Canadian Literary Award for Short Story (First Prize) and a Distinguished Story Citation from Best American Stories

  “Beggars” received a Lorian Hemingway Short Story Award

  “Wild Dogs” received a CBC Canadian Literary Award for Short Story (Second Prize)

  “Hieroglyphics I” received a Prairie Fire Short Fiction Competition Prize

  “Chiggers” received a Prism International Short Fiction Competition Prize

  “The History of a Hopeful Heart” was filmed by Jeremy Podeswa as Touch for Rebelfilms/da da Kamera

  “Angie, Short For Angel” was performed by Patrick Roscoe at The Edinburgh Festival and for CBC Radio

  “Peggy Lee in Africa” and “The Tattoo Artist” were also broadcast by CBC Radio

  Part One: Before I Was Set Free

  La vie de chacun d’entre nous n’est pas une tentative d’aimer. Elle est l’unique essai.

  —Pascal Quignard

  Rorschach I : The Rough Beast

  “Don’t ask,” I say when the dark beast wonders about my past, as if the simplest questions regarding personal history are too complicated to consider. Even name and age and place of birth remain for me elusive points beyond the reach of plain statement; I have invented and reinvented my life story so often and for so long that fact can be separated from fantasy only with difficulty, and never with finality. Was I born in 1962 on an obscure Mediterranean island floating off the coast of Alicante, or did I appear upon this planet three years later in some cramped Canadian town? Was my childhood dreamed amid the jungle of Tanzania’s Ngondo Hills or in a Mexican village sprinkled beneath slopes similarly tangled with green? Perhaps seven early years were spent in a cold, dark cage where I was persistently starved, beaten, violated; or, for an equal amount of time, until they said she was unfit, I orbited the Pacific Northwest with a mother who danced out of reach of men with eyes that burned in the dark beyond the stage. Say the pale nuns at St Cecilia’s had to care for me when I remained mute about what happened before I was found on their steps. When I wouldn’t tell who, when I wouldn’t tell why. Did my adult voice emerge when I discovered myself at the northern edge of the Sahara, adrift upon the dunes, in search of the lost oasis?
Or, by then, was home a decaying rooming house in Hollywood, a corner on the Boulevard, the coffee shop where beat-up angels ruffled wet feathers and waited out the rain? In what year occurred that cold winter in Paris where, from my hotel window, I studied the tops of trees in the park across the way, as if the design they made above grey roofs might explain why I shivered here until spring? An autumn in Vienna blurs into four difficult seasons in Lisbon, bleeds into six years caught within the spell cast by garlic and orange blossoms, lit by gaudy neon on the Guadalquivir. Do you really wish to travel with me through a labyrinth of names and dates and places, in hope of discovering the Minotaur who with hollow voice demands the straightforward, sequential data of a past before he fills on the human flesh which embodies this experience? Occasionally I examine my map of skin for clues about where I have come from and what happened to me there. Lines, marks, blots. Upon my left elbow curves the thickened raised souvenir, shaped like a worm, of my fall from the top of an apple tree (twenty years ago?), from where I believed I could see to the end of the world, to the end of this existence. Adorning my forehead, at the hairline, discernible only by touch, a slight indentation betrays that a white horse’s unshod hoof once broke my skull and allowed the eager blood behind to find release. A souvenir from an L.A. knife crosses the right side of my torso; decorating my left knee is a nagging reminder of one more African accident suffered upon the Ngondo hills. Evidence of too many years in southern sunlight creases the corners of my eyes as, in bed, I explain to lovers how these scars came to mark once blank, perfect skin. Of course, this autobiography I spin like some ersatz Scheherazade may vary from one telling to the next. Of course, I’ll resort without qualms to any of my dazzling tricks to sustain your interest, to postpone your departure. Really, my torso was torn in Tanzania when I was ten, and not by a knife. Actually, what the knife slashed was my knee; honestly, this happened in San Francisco, not Los Angeles. In truth, I looked from a Paris window in summer, not winter. When conflicting memories disturb me with the notion that autobiography may be a science less than exact, I turn to documents designed to define a human being in the baldest terms. They offer little help: my driver’s licence presents a birth date found nowhere on my passport; in fact, there are three passports—one genuine and two forgeries—each sufficiently authentic to allow borders to be crossed without incident. Yes, I’ve travelled through the world using various identities—not because I dislike my true history and wish to eliminate it, but because of an inability to stay contained within the parameters of autobiography, of any constricting system: I still insist I can be anyone, everyone; anything, everything. For television cameras and journalists, we continually invent ourselves—all of us who inhabit this skin with its multiple layers that will ultimately be dissected and probed and analyzed in the laboratory of love—we stubbornly embark on yet another act of experimentation, creation, rebirth. In the end, I am only a fiction: shaped by editing, subject to revision, open to interpretation, always in danger of going out of print. Every year or so, a Who’s Who entry bearing one of my names is updated with what are, hopefully, at least approximations of the truth. One day, I may perform this task with greater certainty. Would that indicate evolution, maturity, self-acceptance? Or serve instead as a white flag of defeat, an admission of limited possibilities? Such questions do not apply; the jargon that poses them rings absurd in the dark tunnels that connect longing to loss; it has no relevance to this fumbling journey. “Never mind,” I tell the Minotaur, who still insists on concrete fact, before I rewrite myself once again, this time as hero. Now named Theseus, I slay the rough beast and his desire for something more than myth.

  The History of a Hopeful Heart

  One night, when I am six, I fall asleep in my bed but wake up somewhere else. I’m naked and hungry and cold. The room is bare and dark, with walls and floor of rough cement. There are no windows. The steel door is locked. If there’s a light socket in the ceiling, the bulb is missing or burned out. As surely as my heart will beat again and then again, I know my parents will not open the door, will not bring me clothes and food and blankets, will not arrive with comfort. They don’t know I’m gone, they aren’t able to find me, they have decided not to bring me home: the reason is unimportant. It’s irrelevant how I got here, or where this is. It doesn’t matter why I remain in this room, and others equally dark and bare, for the next seven years.

  As soon as I realize my mother and father will not save me, they become only any woman and any man who have as little to do with me as the boy who now shares their pale green house instead of me. I can nearly taste the sweetness of his breath as he sleeps in the bed that held my body. I’m almost able to hear him playing with toy soldiers that once felt my touch. His name remains elusive until I learn from darkness that there’s no difference between what is imagined and what is known.

  My sense of time is imprecise and marked only by the ticking of my heart. After spending what seems like several days in darkness, I become as old as the ancient wanderer who has searched one thousand years for love. He has crawled back and forth across the world, as I have done between these four walls, to find the holy place where He might appear. Only the desperate are ever truly hopeful.

  If you stood outside the door and listened through the keyhole, you’d hear me chant: sky is blue, grass is green, God is good. These are songs I croon, arms wrapped tightly around myself. I wonder if anyone hears. Listens but does not answer. I never call out for rescue. There’s no use. I know that right away, before my throat can swell with a single scream.

  I lie on the floor, press against the wall. Both surfaces are equally ungiving. Cement soaks up my body’s heat but offers none in return. I try to recall sensations of softness and warmth with such strength that there might materialize beneath my head a feather pillow, against my skin a sheet of silk. The more frequently memory reaches for a vision, the sooner it fades. We must add to and not only draw from the images stored inside ourselves like money in a bank, or we become a vault as empty as this room. Cement is hard and rough, I remind myself while darkness blurs the simplest definitions. What’s soft, what’s smooth? I grope blindly for an answer until I realize only one such thing is present. I touch my bare skin.

  As light drains from the chambers beneath my porous skin, darkness seeps in to replace it. Peering through an opened flap of my flesh, you would be unable to discern between outer and inner obscurity. I must fight the feeling that my body has dematerialized into particles of darkness. I savour sensations of hunger and cold because they prove that my physical existence continues. I’d be grateful for any touch that provided further evidence that I remain alive, whatever the emotion to inspire it.

  For a long time, I am surrounded by pure silence. The walls that enclose me must be very thick, and this room must be far removed from the world. Eventually I can no longer hear my voice, my breath, my heartbeat. I hold my hand an inch before my eyes, but the darkness fails to thicken with a hint that anything is there. I suspect I’ve become deaf and mute and blind as stone.

  By touch I discover a bucket in a corner of the room, though I’m convinced nothing stood there before. Its purpose is to contain the urine and feces I’ve been licking off the floor to stay alive. As the bucket fills and the air stews with decay, my nostrils quiver with excitement that my sense of smell remains intact. This emotion toward the bucket turns to gratitude for providing evidence that my hearing has also survived. An insect rustling to and from my collected wastes breaks the utter silence. Each crunch of a roach by my teeth sounds loud as a gunshot. No matter how many insects I eat, there will always be more. I’m dizzied by this wealth of food, this endless supply of company.

  When I can’t stop shivering, I smear my naked skin with fresh excrement and luxuriate in its warmth. Even as the blanket cools, it continues to beckon swarms of roaches that offer further heat. Their tickling makes me giggle.