To my wife, Joyce
“I’m never sad; I’m always kind of glad, when chickens come home to roost ...”
MALCOLM
ONE
D’ARCY’S GENITALIA: They were of unusual size; even in a state of purest flaccidity they measured several centimeters in the usual three directions. Under engorgement, the subject himself as well as several partners measured them as well over a foot in length. It is further attested that the unusual “slickness” and “warmth” of the organ made penetration unusually easy, even with “slightly built” companions.
D’ARCY’S SEXUAL PREDILECTIONS: They were, as we all know, completely heterosexual; any rumors to the contrary have been created by jealous and envious homosexuals whom D’Arcy again and again spurned to seek female companionship. He preferred normal intercourse in the seventh and eighth positions of Lilly, with certain pre-coital variations mostly involved with the buttocks and thighs of partners. Breast (buccal) tendencies were negligible, D’Arcy having been known to state often that he felt himself too well-endowed for “that preliminary nonsense.”
D’ARCY’S SEXUAL PERFORMANCE: It was, as all sources have testified, facile and almost incredibly accomplished, leading partners again and again to the “sublime” peak and letting them down always at their own pace and without embarrassment. Ejaculation was plentiful, fluid was copious, sufficient to “open-up” partners so inclined. Pre- and post-coital maneuvers were swift, gracious and wholly respectful of companion and circumstances. It can be said, then, that the subject’s sexual performance was excellent.
D’ARCY’S SOCIAL IMPORTANCE AS SEEN IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: It cannot be minimized. Dealing with the “quintessence of heterosexuality” (his phrase) raised to the “nth degree of pleasure” (words of Mademoiselle M, a lady of his acquaintance), it came along just at the right time to reverse the slow trend of the Age toward narcissism, masturbation and latent homosexuality. D’Arcy’s contribution, infusing as it did, all of his sexual “mainstream” with “new blood,” was nothing less than the reversal of history, the setting aright of the microcosm he knew.
WHY THIS STUDY IS WRITTEN: I must admit that there are some questions about that to be squarely faced.
This study will deal with the “lover” D’Arcy from the inception of that self-imposed role in December of 196Qto its tragic—and unpremeditated conclusion—in October of 196-. It will in no fashion attempt definitive biography nor does it presume to be more than a documentary of the public years of D’Arcy’s existence. The early years, the growing years, the dwindling years, even the brief but poignant dying day ... little of this will be touched upon within the confines of these pages. The historian must delimit to better define the quintessence of his insight. So few of our contemporary “biographers” admit this simple fact. As we diffuse, so must we move ever further from that basic kernel of insight which may, for all we know, be the metaphor for the folly of life itself. Aha!
So delimited, this work will address itself to such primary questions as these: did the subject feel love? Did D’Arcy, in the last smoke and plumes of love’s consummation, know emotional release beyond his gigantic physical bursts? Was he ever, during the public years, frustrated in his pursuit of sexual conjoinment? What did some of his partners think of him? What conclusions can be drawn? Exactly what was the breadth and length of a typical D’Arcy orgasm?
We will answer those questions all in due time. On hand we have documents and testimonies of many of the subject’s partners, none of them ever before revealed, confidentially given to the one who transcribes this memoir. In tandem they will piece together, we promise, into a shattering picture of our protagonist, revealing wonders and implications hitherto never before revealed.
THE QUESTION OF QUALIFICATION: It is always asked of the historian: who are you? What is your particular credential? Why do you presume to give the sense of this material to a gullible and easily misled audience? This is a painful century; the question of credibility perhaps its nexus.
Let me state modestly, therefore, that I knew D’Arcy well; far better than any other during the public years and during many of those years I stood by his side. Friend, confidant, partner, assistant, I lived in the closest conjoinment with the subject. The public prints do not indicate this, of course.
The reason for that is that I always demanded anonymity. “Not for me notoriety or exploitation, D’Arcy,” I said to my friend once while we were drinking wine together during one of his periods of “convalescence.” “I would be less a friend and more an agent of the opposition were I to attempt to benefit in any way from the fortunate fact of our interrelationship. I prize your friendship above all others, I will not have myself known. But, in my quiet way, I will stand by you always.”
And my dear, dear friend said to me, sipping his wine slowly, stirring the sediment with his finger in that characteristic gesture, “Truly, you are a friend. But I cannot ask this of you. If there is profit to be made from our friendship without discredit or interference to me, then take it, I say. Give an interview. Let your face be known. Tell them what I say about women, when I am in a kindly mood, of course. Advise them of my culinary idiosyncrasies. This will keep my name as always before them and you will derive a small income from your ramblings. I give you permission to do all of this as long as you understand from whom the permission comes and from what high motives; that is all I ask.” And lifted his glass in the sun so that the purple glittered as stone, mixing toward the purest refraction of his driven, absent face.
And once again I said, raising my own glass, my blunt features dwindling to infinitesimal condition as the sun darted behind a cloud, “never, my friend; this will never be. As long as I have health and strength to continue on our mutual travels I will never lend you the betrayal of publicity.”
Even so, it is with a heavy heart that I begin this journal. Well-qualified as I am, there are certainly others who would be equally so: having never, for instance, truly “known” the hot embrace of D’Arcy in bed nor felt the pressure of his massive, earnest thighs against mine, I am obviously less qualified than many to talk of some of the more explicit aspects of D’Arcy’s performance. But who else—I say again, who else?—could possibly take up the wearisome pen, shuffle the papers and commence?
Most of those juxtaposed to D’Arcy in the way I mention can neither read nor write, some cannot spell, the majority cannot perform the simplest mathematical examples. Too, a large percentage of these people are missing, which is to say that they are beyond the efforts of local authorities and institutions to find them.
It is peculiar but it is so: a high percentage of D’Arcy’s companions are so far on the margin of our society as to be beyond its devices. Nothing, an acquaintance of mine once said, nothing is as unlocatable as a common tart; even in the bedroom it is often impossible to find one. D’Arcy’s career, then, like a rocket in full, booming flight, discharged a trail of gas and combustible matter which negated its origins to the exact degree that the major ascent opened up new territory. I have often found that this is a general rule; being, of course, a strong adherent of the great man theory of history.
Only I, then, an Ishmael of the post-coital ecstasy, remain to tell the tale. My whereabouts fixed firmly by due process of law and institutionalization, my literacy shaped by 18 years of tutors smuggled from the public schools, my credentials beyond dispute, my humility attested to by my years of close friendship with the subject, I would not think that a further apologia is necessary. Awash, then, in the sea of possibilities, tossed by the whale of retrospection, I cling to the flotsam and jetsam of total recall, trying to spare immersion to the thousands who wait cheerlessly on the sands.
Of course, I remain attuned to the possibility that I may be prohibited from the removal of these notes from my present confines. There is a rich precedent for this: so many of my companions and enemies within these gates are similarly “writers;” were all the tracts, correspondence, romanticized history and pseudo-legal writs composed daily in this place to be piled in one stack, it would probably reach to half the height of the senior attendant who demands that all our written material be placed in his hands for censorship and approval. Since this senior attendant, a bulky man with large ears, can neither read nor write, it is suspected by many of my companions here that their writings are being instantly tossed to perdition, most likely after “taps,” when scufflings and rustlings and billowings in the hall might suggest the lively flush of toilets sending handwriting on its way. Nevertheless, I discount the possibility. The press visits me now and then and also some acquaintances; surely I could place my jottings in their hands were I to feel an imminence of capture. The important thing, as has been truly said, is to do one’s work; a good conscience is its own best reward.
THE CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH THE STUDY IS BEING WRITTEN: Art and craft, being inextricably linked to environment, it would be fair, perhaps, to describe what it’s like here. It is not the most felicitous of ambiances.
For one thing it is wretchedly cold in these rooms and for another, it is almost unspeakably foul much of the time. My collaborants in this large institution are, to an incalculable extent, unbearably dull—their efforts at the written word to the contrary—and entrapped by their small, circular obsessions. They are incapable, in short, of the mildest form of self-amusement, let alone the divertissement of one as complex and sophisticated as I. (It might be said, then, that I have taken to these notes out of boredom but this is not half the fact of the case; the act of writing can be as offensive as that of self-abuse and far less interesting.) The two young men, for instance, who share these rooms with me, seem to have reached an accord of many years’ standing—they preceded me here by a long time—not to address one another unless under the governor of extrinsic need, and then in some kind of bizarre code which appears to be the least inventive amalgamation of French, English and the arcane mumblings of the retarded. I find this a great burden upon an active sensibility, but I am completely unable to alter this.
Not that I have not tried. There was a time when I hammered upon the dense barrier of their sullen alliance repeatedly: did it with small jokes, quips, reminiscences and even—for their sake—the admission that I was a companion of D’Arcy’s throughout his notable career. I had thought that this final revelation would, when all else had failed, break us through to a small network of feeling or (at least) remonstrance but, shockingly, neither of them had ever heard of D’Arcy, much less possessing the slightest knowledge of his travels. It was when they made offensive comments to me about this acquaintanceship and my dear friend himself that I gave up on further attempts to establish a normal relationship in these rooms.
I exemplify: the other evening I was on the way to the “dayroom” here, prepared for yet another desultory game of chess with the bearded fossil who sits silently in front of the board all day, so immobile that it is necessary for his partners to contribute both sets of moves and announce imminent captures, when the elder of my roommates, a fierce man with wild eyes and blond hair so sheer that it might have blazed, said to the other, Monsieur ici est entrappe.
Non, non, chattered the other who was under the best of circumstances, rather elfin, il est disappointe.
Entrappe and disappointe together. Un jolie homme despite tout, however, est that non vraiment?
“Listen,” I said, “there’s no need to discuss a man to his face, it isn’t polite and it shows a lack of intelligence in the bargain. I’ll be wandering down the hall just a bit and you can say all you choose but for the moment call it off, yes?”
Est uproarious, said the first, taking a comb from somewhere around the perimeter of his waist and running it through his hair, squeezing the dandruff pods as they sifted downward. This never failed to excite the elf who stood, then, to the limit of his short frame and, running his own hands through a rather ferocious beard, gestured at me.
Felon, he said.
At that moment, my aged, bottled temper, stirred to the sediment, burbled forth. “Look, gentlemen,” I said, “I do not need such talk from you. The same institutions which committed me here have placed you as well and for a much longer period, I might observe. I tell you frankly that unless this behavior stops, I will be compelled to seek new quarters and whoever succeeds me will be far less tolerant of your display of manners. Does that seem clear?”
They laughed at that.
“Now look,” I said, “if I must start at the beginning, I will. I am a close friend, perhaps the closest, of the late, honored Justin D’Arcy and in that regard—”
I could not finish. I heard, interchangeably from them, an explosion of guttural monosyllables which sounded vaguely like curses. Ha, ha!, they added, ha, ha!
“Ha yourself,” I said then, and for the first time told them my secret. I had to, to quiet them.
They stopped laughing. The elf seized an ashtray instead and made with it a complex, obscene gesture involving three parts of his anatomy. The gyrations were quite intricate. Then he ceased and both stared, apparently assessing my countermove.
“Makes no difference,” I said, grandly, and with enormous dignity folding me like a shroud—that dignity I can conjure up under almost any circumstances—I quit the room and their presence.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL BIAS OF THE STUDY: There is no point in concealing this final notation: this study will be, inevitably, composed of a set of digressions from D’Arcy and deal on the personal level. My condition, of course, is so inseparable from his that our circumstances—until his unfortunate disappearance, that is to say—conjoined completely; our obsessions were so linked that it would be presumptuous to even assume that I could part from him. No, I am no cool, detached biographer although, to be sure, I am a faintly bewhiskered one. But D’Arcy’s ficelle; I see that now, despite my own considerable, prolonged and irreversible detumescence.
But, by all means, let me proceed, wander into the sunset of recollection, the old, hollow features tilted wistfully to the horizon, the faithful old frame complying, possibly for the last time, to the Master’s demands.
