Everywhere you turn, white light a.s.saults your eyes as if it were the white-light tunnel of death instead of moonlight glinting knife blade sharp off snow. Harsh air forces you to pull inward, shrinking back to yourself, shriveling, becoming smaller to hide from the cold. Nowhere you have been was the environment this inhospitable to human survival, although you realize other places on the planet are worse. Still, you haven"t been there and, in the midst of this trauma your cells suffer in antic.i.p.ation of freezing to death, speculation seems pointless.

You have searched this city for hours with this lanky s.e.xy prost.i.tute by your side. Together you visited places where Kevin has been seen. Inquiries here, there, his ident.i.ty verified by photo, all painting a fresh trail, or so your companion a.s.sures you. "Listen, Fran," Didi said at the last transvest.i.te bookstore, your name on his crimson lips sounding far too intimate, "we"ll find him. There are only so many places a broken boy can hide." That was many hours ago. Between then and now: dozens of taxi rides taken, club entrance fees paid, drinks bought in bars, seedy hotel clerks questioned, meals eaten and coffees drunk in greasy-spoons and diners frequented by she-males as Kevin likes to identify himself. You are not naive; this world is not the one you glide through ordinarily, yet it is not entirely alien. So many personas, each in its own way demanding love and acceptance. How you envy their seduction techniques; how they terrify you.

The last club was in the middle of a ghetto and as you left it, once again, you congratulated yourself that you only paid this pretty hustler a fraction of the promised money-he will make efforts to keep you unharmed to get the rest. "Listen, sweetie, taxis won"t answer calls to this neighborhood we"re going," Didi a.s.sured you. "We"ll hike it. Just you and me, romping through the snow!" Said with a Madonna toss-ofthe-head and a devilish sparkle to almond-eyes. That he plays with you, laughs at your expense does not bother you. Since long before Kevin"s treatments began, before his b.r.e.a.s.t.s swelled and his voice rose an octave and his body hair thinned, all of it leading to "the change" as he calls it, you have been to h.e.l.l and back many times. Nothing bothers you anymore. Except for one thing. The nightmare.

This northern city"s mean winter streets leave you hopeless. Life does not exist here in the dead of a cold night. No one sane walks around at 3 a.m. The last vehicle to pa.s.s inspired a fantasy of jumping in front of the b.u.mper and pleading with the driver, "Take me home! I just want to go home!" But there is no home, not anymore. Mother is gone. Father was too often there. Kevin is all you have. You do not even care that your baby brother is becoming your baby sister. You just want to find him before, as the nightmare leaves you feeling, things have gone too far.

Hands and feet half frozen, you finally reach a wide street, but you are so far from downtown that here it is deserted, of people, vehicles, shops. Life has ended, or so it seems. What must it be like in daylight? You shudder to think about the corruption that will be exposed when the ice melts. Now, a ridge of danger lingers, danger and desolation, two emotions that, combined, combust and leave a raw scar from a wound that runs deep to the marrow. A wound you have suffered. A scar you still possess. You know it is the same with Kevin.

Your companion points ahead gleefully. "See! I told you!" he cries, as if you did not believe he would find this place, and in truth you had doubts. The building resembles a burnt out factory: windows not boarded up are blacked out; bricks smoked and charred; aluminum siding covered by graffiti in various languages. It amuses you to think that tagging might bridge linguistic solitudes.

There appears to be no door, no sign. "It"s here somewhere," Didi insists, voice reeking with false confidence which relaxes into real confidence the moment a cab pulls up and two persons of indistinguishable gender emerge. They know right where the door is, a crack in the aluminum wall, a spike for a handle. "This is the place, Fran," Didi says, as if you are dim, unable to see the world for what it is.

This door would go unconsidered if you had not seen for yourself that it could be opened. Apparently no secret code is needed to enter. You open it now. Heat rushes out at you, and sound, loud, a cacophony of panting tongues and beating hearts and angry fists pounding flesh. Once you step inside, the sound swallows you.

You fight hard to hold onto yourself, caught in an audio intensity that forces you beyond your normal rhythm and into a power-drill mode of being. Remember why you"re here, you remind yourself. Kevin is more lost than you are. He needs you more than ever. The bad dream told you this, and more.

A man, or a large woman skimpily dressed glares at you as if you are an insect to be crushed, definitely not worthy of admittance. You know the look is real, but the true function is other. The function involves money. Didi whispers "Fifty. Each," in your ear. Reluctantly you pull large bills from your nearly depleted wallet and slap them into the hot hand this monolith shoves inches from your chest. A smile erupts on the heavily made-up face, one more sinister than sweet. The cash is theatrically slipped down between the b.r.e.a.s.t.s encased in black latex, down further past the exposed stomach, down into the leather pants, up under the crotch. All the while dark eyes mock you, patiently awaiting a reaction, but you show none. Life holds few surprises. A flicker of disappointment accompanies the thumb pointing behind.

Didi removes his fur, and his dress, leaving his body clad only in a white lace bra, g-string panties and garter belt of the same fabric, the last holding up white hose. He hands everything else over the counter with a No Drugs! sign attached to the wall that almost brings a cynical smile to your lips. A muscular tattooed arm reaches out of the darkness towards you, waiting. Didi turns. You shake your head. You have no intention of leaving your coat, let alone undressing. Fabric is the only protection you might have here, and fifty dollars should pay for your eccentricity. "Whatever," Didi says, obviously disappointed by not seeing you near naked. "Still gotta tip, sweetie," he/she smiles, and you hand over five dollars and do not receive change.

A dark plastic barrier is held open, like a v.u.l.v.a, or the entrance to a womb. You follow Didi in, the Amazon making sure you brush against him or her, but your coat protects you from contact.

Sound slams into you, rasping, raping your body through every orifice, beating your pulse into submission, racing towards the target, your heart. You gulp in oxygen to ensure you are still alive. The air is clotted with smoke that chokes you, and you cough uncontrollably. Your eyes tear then blur and you realize you cannot distinguish anything here, objects, people; although the room is lit with red and blue lights, the colors do not make things discernible.

You have come this far, and you know Didi has no more ides. To retreat is unthinkable. You must find Kevin. For once in your life, you need to act on his behalf, and on your own.

You step further into the room. Suddenly the floor shifts down a level, half as deep as a step, and you fall forward. Your knee buckles and you struggle for balance. You have always been sharp on your feet, thank G.o.d! and manage to right yourself, feeling not so much foolish as vulnerable-what you cannot see can hurt you, Mother! But she never would hear you, or Kevin, and now cannot.

The throbbing techno drives you to the edge of insanity. It makes you angry. At life, for inflicting all this craziness from birth onward. At your parents for solidifying the madness. At Kevin for being weak, for leaving you to struggle alone. You are furious at yourself and your misguided hands-off philosophy that gave your brother carte blanche, immersing him in unconditional love, extending extreme unction for his soul to pa.s.s into other worlds. You destroyed the power of conditions that led to self-responsibility. The degree to which you rein yourself in is the same extreme of permission he enjoys.

Your senses cringe in terror. You argue with your optic nerve, willing it to clear your vision. When it does, shapes become apparent. Bodies dot the walls like giant c.o.c.kroaches. One nearby drags on a cigarette, the yellow glow of fire casting h.e.l.lish illumination onto harshly-angled features. Not a friendly face, but the eyes look too distant for this to be an enemy.

You inch forward, now feeling with your feet for dips in the floor level that seem to be everywhere. The mallet-sound changes, like a hammer pa.s.sed from one hand to the other of an ambidextrous person. The beat is the same. It punches through your nervous system, producing more fury that you battle, and throbbing at your genitals. Most of these patrons must be high on ecstasy. This music would stimulate them in a different way, or so you have read about E.

Finally you stumble upon the bar, close by the dance floor. A girl-or a good imitation-leans over, her n.a.z.i cap low over kohl-lined eyes, minimal b.r.e.a.s.t.s bare, tiny pierced nipples erect and staring at you. She does not ask you what you want. You have an impression of deep disinterest. Didi shouts his order and gestures for you to do the same. You lean in and her face shows distaste as she eyes the coat you clutch to your body, her look implying you are not brave enough to be here. Above the pounding, you scream "Jack, straight up!" Without a nod, she turns her back on you, and fades into the darkness. You glance to the right to watch the dozen or so dancers.

Young. Slim. Naked. Sweat dripping down sinewy bodies that have never known fat. These Danse Macabre figures writhe and jump to the beating noise, eyes rolled up so the whites glow in flashing black light strobe, tongues lolling, corpse-like puppets yanked on strings. One p.e.n.i.s, erect, suddenly shoots into the air like a fountain. Two dancers fall to their knees to lap up the discharge.

The light allows you to see patrons next to you at the bar, others across the dance floor, stripped of clothing, waiting, watching, fondling themselves and one another. All are skeletal, ribs jutting, hip-bones prominent, many bald, skulls so large compared to the child-like bodies, enormous fetuses. They resemble drawings of aliens, photos you have viewed of victims in interment camps. Watching them makes you hot, and you feel like a pedophile. Or a necrophile. You wonder when it became s.e.xy to look as if you"re starving to death.

The harsh tapping on your shoulder goes almost unfelt-the rhythm is the same as the music, the same as the fingers around you groping, the same as your heartbeat forced to synchronize to all of this. But you do notice, eventually, and turn to find your drink. Behind it, one hand still on the gla.s.s, the other fondling a ringed nipple, the capped bartender releases your shot to hold out an open palm in much the same way as the door person, the coat check. You have the impression of beggars, starving, willing to take anything from anyone, but of course they will not take less than they demand. The image is t.i.tillating in its obscenity. You offer bills that are s.n.a.t.c.hed away even before reaching the palm.

You want to ask Didi questions, about this place, about the preponderance of the thin, the beautiful who may live fast and die young for all you know, but the music prohibits verbalization. You only know this place is called Ecstasy, a 24-7 club that is more than a club, that is a lifestyle Didi a.s.sured you, frequented by transvest.i.tes, transs.e.xuals, gay men, lesbians, bis.e.xuals, straight couples and singles, fetishists, hardcore SM players, everyone with the need to be ecstatic, in Didi"s words.

Kevin, you know, loved to get high. Most of his life he gravitated towards anything that would obliterate his pain. You watched your brother transit s.e.xual preferences, chemical intoxicants, liquid libations, extreme physical ritualistic practices, various cults, and endless trendy diets to reduce the bulk he is p.r.o.ne to, all designed to take him out of the mud of this physical realm he loathes and lift him to spirit. You stood by helplessly for the thirty years you have known Kevin, unable to even aid yourself, let alone him. Each of his ventures was the answer, the salve to soothe the wound of living in a terribly imperfect world. Each would bring him the love and acceptance he longs for. Each was abandoned, or incorporated into Kevin"s perpetual morphing. You understand him, only too well. He acts out the inner turmoil you silently endure daily, turmoil that has driven you to three quiet suicide attempts, that causes you to sleep more hours each day than you are awake, that leaves you alienated and too depressed to make contact, or even to exhibit symptoms of your despair. Only the bulimia you battle in secret is evidence of your pain, and that goes unnoticed in a twisted world that values minimalism in everything to the point of praising your rejection of nourishment.

Kevin has tried it all, and you have watched like a voyeur, living vicariously through his efforts. Someone getting the thrills without the risks. You encouraged him, perhaps to placate the demon within you that demands extremes. When Kevin told you about his plans for the operation, and how if he were female instead of male, if he had been you instead of himself, life would be different, fulfilling, accepting, that night you had the first of what would become a recurring nightmare.

Stuck at the bottom of a dark empty well, you look through a soulless mirror that liquefies. This noir river begins to flow into you, your nose, mouth, ears, a.n.u.s, v.a.g.i.n.a, even your pores. Little animals with barbed bodies scratch this tender penetrated flesh, stimulating you almost beyond endurance. You are poised in midair, air black as night, body throbbing with desires that will not allow release. And only when the black fire of pa.s.sion forces a scream of exquisite agony from your lips do you wake in your lonely bed, covered with sweat and tears, thighs slick with juices. And no amount of stimulation releases your volatile frustration.

Eventually, when you had dreamed this enough, and cried miserable tears until your ducts emptied, it dawned on you what had been happening all along. And now, like the religion that both of you turned away from when it failed you, you have come with no answers to save Kevin from himself. But in the process of trying, perhaps you will be rescued as well.

Didi nudges you and you follow, away from the safety of the bar, around the outer corners of the room. You pa.s.s between people, and hands reach out to touch you, finding fabric instead of flesh. You smile, happy to have thwarted their expectations. But then one hand discovers your secret and worms beneath the fabric, inside your blouse, down under your bra, the body pressed hard against your own, following, in step, bony fingers tweaking your nipple in time to the pounding beat, forcing your head back, your mouth open, the black river flowing once again- "This is it, what we came for," Didi says. The hand is gone, leaving your nipple burning, your body freezing.

Didi opens a door and enters. You step into a cathedral of ice, with lighted grottos on each side of you. As you walk down the aisle, you pa.s.s these "rooms." On the left a man is suspended by his wrists and ankles. Four naked attendants shave his head, strip the hairs from his torso with wax, pluck out his eyebrows, and the hairs around his a.n.u.s ... To the right, a bald woman"s bare body is cut with a scalpel, little cuts, deep enough to bleed, not enough for permanent injury, her flesh a canvas of tiny crosses, out of her mouth deep erotic pleas for forgiveness ... A genderless being is having finger- and toenails clipped very very short, eyelashes singed, dead skin cut from the feet ... You bend to peer inside a small door to find three pale and slender bodies p.r.o.ne on blond-wood shelves, sweat pouring off them as an attendant splashes water onto steaming rocks ... Another grotto, a woman with her finger down her throat, vomiting, peeing, s.h.i.tting, bleeding from her v.a.g.i.n.a, all at the same time ...

You have seen each of these worlds in one way or another, and they do not shock you. All your life you have known that to rid the body of everything leads to purification, to spirit. Every major religion reinforces this value. The culture in which you reside prays for the destruction of the flesh.

At the end of this corridor of pain and humiliation is a white door with a white Gothic arch above folding inward. Didi opens the door and you realize that somewhere along the way she has discarded the rest of her clothes. You move up the three steps to this altar of rejuvenation.

The inner sanctum glows with twinkling lights, bright as stars. All here is colorless, odorless, pure and uncorrupted: walls, floor, hospital gurney, sheets atop it. A frail woman lies still as death, attended by skinny hairless beings dressed only in white latex gloves and milky rubber shoes.

Didi puts a finger to lips, and you stare into her liquid eyes, realizing that they remind you of the black liquid fire. Her body is lean, angular, the dead refusing to die. Your v.a.g.i.n.a spasms.

This side show is interesting, but you remind yourself of the purpose of this quest. The pounding techno is a fraction dimmer here, enough to allow thought. Kevin is not here. You turn to leave.

"Fran?"

The voice catches you in a net of fragility. You glance back at the gurney, and the languid corpse-like form lifts its skull. Unnaturally bright eyes-familiar-peer into yours from deep in their sockets, as if beckoning.

"Kevin?"

"I"m Fran now," he tells you, and your body jolts with this confirmation. "I need you for the reinventing."

It is Kevin, or what is left of him. Instantly you move beside the gurney as if it is a coffin. He has no hair, no eyebrows, lashes, no finger- or toenails. His body is covered with pale st.i.tches, like a rag doll repaired too many times.

"What"s ... happening to you?" you ask.

"Ecstasy," he says, his voice more feminine than masculine, the tone otherworldly.

"Drugs-"

"No. True ecstasy."

You stare at his body, b.r.e.a.s.t.s plumped like white plums, his p.e.n.i.s gone, replaced by ... by ... nothing! This is disturbing, but what leaves you unable to speak is his once thick-fleshed frame, now lighter than air, an exoskeleton.

"I"m thinner than you are," he whispers with a smile so grotesque you shudder.

You can only shake your head, confused, horrified, resigned in your failure.

Suddenly, as if they are meant to distract, you notice the apparatus-clear tubes removing blood, suctioning fat from the body, washing out the intestine"s contents. You watch as one of the attendants pulls skin together over Kevin"s stomach where fat cells have been suctioned out, cuts the flab, stretches the skin taut, sutures ...

"My stomach is stapled now, so I don"t need to eat," Kevin whispers, eyes gleaming.

"What? ... why? ..." But you can no longer form sentences.

"To be you," he says, the words so simple. The message clear as a crystal bell. This is your nightmare, your legacy. What you have created in your own distorted image. What you cannot show the world but what Kevin displays on your behalf. You gave him permission to reflect your darkness. Now that you see yourself with clarity, you cannot bear the sight.

He stares at the ceiling as if seeing G.o.d, as if he is ascending, and your eyes fill with tears.

Didi gently pulls the coat from your ravaged body, your clothes, then fingers find you through all your barren openings, filling them with black fire.

At long last, the heavy basket slips from your grip. Finally, you descend.

Pop Star in the Ugly Bar.

Bentley Little.

"Pop Star in the Ugly Bar" was first published in Outsiders: 22 All-New Stories From the Edge, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and Nancy Holder, ROC, 2005.

I originally wrote this story in 1992 for an anthology t.i.tled Shock Rock, edited by the Hot Blood team of Jeff Gelb and Michael Garrett. They like the story and accepted it, but a month or so later, I received word that Pocket Books" lawyers were not so thrilled. I was never sure whether they thought the story was obscene and thus open to prosecution, or whether they were afraid that Madonna, who had just come out with her s.e.x book, might be in the mood to sue. Either way, they banned the story. Three years on, after several rejections in the interim, Poppy Z. Brite accepted it for her anthology Razor Kiss. Unfortunately, she soon got word from the lawyers that they could not allow her publisher to include my story, and I received notice that once again the piece was banned.

Finally, a full decade later, "Pop Star in the Ugly Bar" appeared in the anthology Outsiders, thanks to editors Nancy Holder and Nancy Kilpatrick, and the brave people at ROC. No one sued, the world didn"t end, and now it can be reprinted here for your reading pleasure.

She walks in, the pop star. Arrives with her retinue, wearing a black leather outfit that shows part of one t.i.t and is supposed to be revealing but just doesn"t cut it here in the bar. I can tell she"s slumming, looking for action. The second she walks through the door she"s acting as if she owns the place, and she tries to appear nonplussed when she finally figures out no one"s paying attention to her. She"s wearing a wig, pretending she wants to travel incognito, but now that no one notices her, she stands in her most recognizable pose, desperately willing people to recognize who she is.

n.o.body does.

I do, but I don"t say anything, just watch. I"ve seen her videos, read about her in Playboy and Rolling Stone and TV Guide, read how she"s outrageous and into kinky s.e.x, how she likes to pick up young black hitchhikers and have her way with them, and I see her now, this pampered b.i.t.c.h, and I have to laugh. Wild and outrageous? I"ll show you wild. I"ll show you outrageous.

Welcome to the Ugly Bar.

She said in an interview that she likes to be spanked, something pretentious about there being a fine line between pleasure and pain and that for her the two sometimes overlapped. Old news. Shocking maybe for grandpa in Kansas but babytalk here in the bar. I look at her smoothly unblemished carefully moisturized skin and I know it"s never experienced true funpain. I think of Desdemona, the time I carefully flayed her left b.u.t.tock and rubbed vinegar and lemon juice on it while Deke p.i.s.sed in her mouth, and I can"t see the pop star going for that.

Well, I can, but I can"t see her liking it.

Control freak. That"s what we have here, folks. Walks on the wild side carefully modulated, well-planned. Little fantasy trips with safe, padded boundaries, escape routes if things get too real, if the monster gets too hairy.

Pleasure and pain Are almost the same To me Isn"t that a line from one of her songs? One of her videos? I look at her, at her Hollywood costume. Almost the same? I suddenly want to make her prove it. No matter that it"s an act, that she"s just entertaining people, trying to t.i.tillate them. The fact that she"s here in the Ugly Bar means that it"s no longer just an act, that she"s starting to believe her own press, that she really thinks she"s daring and provocative and out there.

I glance around the bar, catch the nods, catch the looks, and I know they all want to be in on it.

I walk up to her, ask if I can buy her a drink. Her eyes take in my mask, my codpiece, and I see, for a second, fear. She"s afraid. Not of me, specifically, but of losing control. She might say in her interviews that she likes big men, hung men, that she"s looking for a man who has enough between his legs to really satisfy her, but I can tell that now that she"s seen one, she"s scared. She doesn"t like it at all.

I push aside her bodyguards, and two of the Others come out of the shadows and drag them quietly off, taking them away. She says with all of the confidence she can muster, all of the confidence her money and power have bought, that, yes, she"d like a drink. The bartender pours it, holds it between his legs, stirs it with his c.o.c.k, lets a couple drops of b.l.o.o.d.y j.i.z.z fall visibly into it and hands it to me.

I grin, give it to her. "Here, bottoms up."

She grimaces, puts it down an arm"s-length on the bar, pulls back. "G.o.d."

The other patrons laugh derisively, and I think she realizes for the first time that she"s just an amateur here.

She looks around for her bodyguards, notices that they are gone, and I see the fear on her face again, but she pretends she"s not afraid, and she walks away from me, to the other end of the bar. She walks now with the grace and confidence of a dancer, the athlete she has to be in order to perform her stage show, but when I am through with her she will not walk that way. She will be hobbled and crippled, cleaned out with the razorc.o.c.k perhaps, or violated to hemorrhage by the first three feet of Mr. Pole, and she will never be able to dance again. Each step she takes will be filled with pain and will remind her of her former pretenses and her forced knowledge of reality.

What if I cut her off at the kneecaps, cauterize the wounds with lighter fluid and fire, use the leftover blood to lubricate her bottom two holes?

Could she handle living on stumps?

She looks at me from the safety of the other side of the bar, faces me. "How big are you?" she asks, feigning boldness.

"c.o.c.k or arm?" I say.

She blinks.

"Two feet c.o.c.k, four arm. More reach with the arm, too. I can maneuver around in there, feel out the womb, stroke those babygrowing sides with my fingers. Ain"t nothing like it, babe."

She looks sick, looks like she wants to say something, looks like she wants to bolt, but her bodyguards are gone, she"s a long way from the door, and she"s been left here and hanging and knows she"d better make the best of it.

A crowd is gathering. The Mother and Zeke and Mr. Pole and the Roothog. Ginjer and Liz. There"s an animal smell in the air. l.u.s.t. s.e.xual l.u.s.t. The l.u.s.t of victors for more victims.

The bar is never satisfied is it?

I drink her drink with the drops of b.l.o.o.d.y j.i.z.z, walk over.

The Roothog approaches. "A question," he says. "Do you have to be in love to have s.e.x?" It"s clear he still doesn"t know who she is.

She stares in open horror at his whiplike pizzle, and she nods slightly, tentatively. Her voice is a little girl"s voice, frightened. "Yes," she lies.

"Love is spending time together," he says to her. "s.e.x is just s.e.x." He grins, cackles, and pulls on his pizzle, and I realize that he does know who she is. He"s just thrown a quote from her book at her.

And she"s scared.

Sometimes the Ugly Bar surprises me.

She starts for the door. The Mother blocks her way.

I nod casually toward the Roothog"s pizzle. "He"s good with that," I say.

"Let me out of here!" She tries to maneuver around The Mother, who moves to the side, blocks her again.

"You want another drink?" I"m trying not to laugh.