THE MUTED ASSHOLE

"THE MUTED ASSHOLE - 1958"

After reform school had exhausted the possibilities of a traditional college education I sought out alternative teachings from behind the closed doors that I knew fronted forbidden streets. Even a stranger could see the depravity leaking from within the shuttered windows of the racially mixed apartments and rented rooms at the dead end of Elm Street. It was in such a set of grim rooms long before the days of political correctness that the Muted Asshole held court over a young, fierce pack of queer, black deaf mutes.

At seventeen I had come across my share of Negro homosexuals with slightly pink colored short dicks that never quite got aroused sitting there behind the wheel of a Packard parked down a side street making small talk. The queerest thing was that these grown black men wanted to prolong the ride to and from the rendezvous with two hours of attempted intercourse - social intercourse, that is. Hustling these old faggots put a few dollars in my pocket, but it also put a sinking feeling in my stomach every time I thought about how really lonely these old men were getting as we passed the darkened intersections in silence. Back then it was hard for me to fathom that I too was growing old and lonely at about the same pace as they were. I just looked younger, sitting there in my as yet unrumpled white skin, thinking far away thoughts about how old the earth might be, and how old the multitude of inhabitants upon it.

But nothing had prepared me for the night I encountered the Muted Asshole in his lair. Sprawled out on the sofa like a page from the National Geographic magazine, with black youth in bare chests and belted khakis in attendance, he was the epitome of Queen Bee with workers abuzz, supplying the golden nectar to her open lips. I entered the room with Delmar, a young Italian hustler married to a deaf mute and familiar with the community. He had set up a meeting with the Asshole and I was the distinguished guest of honor. This was no ordinary homo, the Muted One, for he was absolutely incapable of either speech or hearing. Communications were given in grunts and interpreted by a partially deaf black youth who sat at his feet like a religious follower, mouthing instructions in a voice that sounded like a rusted tin can bouncing down the flight of stairs I had just walked up.

Delmar had assured me that I'd get $3 for servicing the old man, who was at least sixty and bald all over. I wondered how much he would pocket for setting up the deal, but didn't much care because my share was enough for cigarettes, coffee, hamburger and fries, and bus fare if I decided to go anywhere else that evening. Delmar must have come that way himself in the past, but at 24 he had graduated and left the work to the young and naïve like myself who were walking the streets wondering what to do next. For awhile, he had a small group of us out at the shopping malls passing out cards with sign language symbols on one side and a plea for help on the other. We pretended to be deaf and begging for money, the majority of which went into our illustrious leader's pocket. He was no longer married to his mute wife, however she had shown him where to go for the cards in her name.

The Mute's apartment was as barren as his groins, a couple of worn couches and a television set with the sound turned off and the picture on. No one really watched the TV; it had been rigged electrically so it would flicker on and off when the doorbell rang. When we got to the top of the stairs, a silent tongued youth lunged from the doorway and caressed Delmar in the manner of faggots everywhere, but Delmar indicated that I was the toy to be targeted. I was led into the silent kitchen to a sight that had been overlooked by Dante in his description of the Inferno. For there in the center of the kitchen table, looking like a taxidermist's trophy, the Muted Asshole squatted regally on his elbows and knees, naked and greased all over with a fresh coat of Vaseline. He glanced once at me and lowered his forehead to the wooden surface. It was my job to fuck him fast and furious.

But the twist was that he didn't want my cock in him. It was my arm up to the elbow that he was after explained his interpreter, as he licked my clinched fist with a mouthful of his saliva. As my arm inched steadily into him, the Muted One began a ritualistic masturbation. How long it took for the arm to penetrate to the elbow could not be measured on a wristwatch, as I spent untold minutes swatting away the young fairies that flitted with wet tongues ever closer to my eyes and ears and mouth, spitting out garbled ecstasies from their underdeveloped voice boxes via silent tongues. To think that Cecil Taylor would teach the same thing at Antioch on a piano in the future was unthinkable in 1958, so I waited a long time to tell you how it was when the world was forming and no one gave a shit about appearances.

The amazing texture of the Muted Asshole was also beyond appearances. When I withdrew my arm from the chamber it was as clean as a whistle, only a thin translucent mucus gave the act away. No brown stains or blood smears but a clean swipe, that's all. And an asshole that grinned as wide and as toothless as the Mute did, from ear to shining ear, as he curtseyed when I left him to venture back out into Elm Street and over to Vine for a 25-cent hamburger before Sammy's closed at midnight.

BURKHART STUDIOS

2845 N. HALSTED STREET CHICAGO ILLINOIS 60657 773 348-8536