Frisk: A Novel by Cooper Dennis

Author:Cooper, Dennis [Cooper, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, gay
ISBN: 9781555847739
Amazon: B0855R7B4V
Goodreads: 8600370
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 1991-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Pierre wakes up for good. As he’s lying there yawning, he vaguely remembers a couple of false starts inspired by a ringing phone. He looks to his left. It’s eleven. Next thing, he’s stumbling down the hall toward his phone machine. “Wait. Coffee,” he whispers in a shredded voice, veering into the kitchen. He does what he has to, then plays back the messages, sips.

Beep. “It’s Paul at Man Age. Appointment, twelve-thirty P.M., hour, Gramercy Park Hotel, room three-forty-four, name Terrence. Later.” Beep. “Paul again. Appointment, two P.M., Washington Annex Hotel, room six-twenty, a play-it-by-ear, name Dennis, I think the same Dennis from last night. Check with us mid-afternoon. You’re a popular dude. Later.” Beep. “P., it’s Marv, you there?. . . No?. . . Call me at work. Love ya.”

On his way to the shower Pierre makes a stop at the stereo, plays side one of Here Comes the Warm Jets, an old Eno album. It’s still on his turntable. It has this cool, deconstructive, self-conscious pop sound typical of the ’70s Art Rock Pierre loves. He doesn’t know why it’s fantastic exactly. If he were articulate, and not just nosy, he’d write an essay about it.

Instead he stomps around in the shower yelling the twisted lyrics. “ ’By this time/I’d got to looking for a kind of/substitute . . .”’ It’s weird to get lost in something so calculatedly chaotic. It’s retro, pre-punk, bourgeois, meaningless, etc. “’. . . I can’t tell you quite how/except that it rhymes with/dissolute.’ “ Pierre covers his ears, beams, snorts wildly.

Tying his sneakers, he flips the scuffed-up LP, plays his two favorite songs on the second side, which happen to sit third and fourth, and are aurally welded together by some distorted synthesizer-esque percussion, maybe ten, fifteen seconds in length. Pierre flops back in his chair, soaks the interlude up. It screeches, whines, bleeps like an orgasming robot.

All the way to the hotel, that sound rattles around in his head, gradually fragmenting into the sound of the cab’s motor. The lobby’s faint Muzak is gruesome—old Beatles, homely as a buzzing mosquito. It follows him into the elevator, down the third-floor hall. 338, 340, 342 . . . He knocks. The door’s thrown back by a nude, dyed-blond, pockmarked troll.

“Hi, Pierre. I’m Terrence,” the troll says. He revolves and walks into the room. He has one of those bodies that’s thinnish at the top, fat bottomed and ripply on the sides, sort of like a jug. “I love your videos,” he continues, sitting down on the bed, crossing his hairy legs. “But they don’t show your armpits enough. Your pits are spectacular, you know, and vastly, vastly underrated.”

Pierre just stands there. He has slid his hands into his back pockets. That’s supposed to signify boredom, cockiness—qualities that troll-types admire. Whatever works. “So, undress from the waist up and lie down,” Terrence says. “But first, do you use a deodorant?” Pierre nods. “Well, I may ask you to wash it out. We’ll see.” “You said pants on, right?” Pierre mutters, yanking his shirttails out.

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