"Blood Oranges and Cotton Candy" originally appeared in
Johnny Was and Other Tall Tales

It’s illegal to operate a cemetery in the city of San Francisco.

In the late 1800s, San Franciscans became increasingly concerned about the public health problems created by city cemeteries as well as about the ever-decreasing available space for the growing city. If you have ever visited San Francisco, you know that it is now packed about as tightly as any city you’ll find. In 1902, the city’s board of something voted to outlaw any more interments within the city limits. They also demanded that the largest cemeteries in the city move their bones elsewhere.

This created a problem. Obviously, San Francisco still had people dying, and they needed to be buried somewhere. Following the lead of the Catholic church and a certain Archbishop Patrick Riordan—who had begun in 1892 to bury their dead in an old potato field five miles south of San Francisco—many people began to look to the small city of Colma. Quickly, this town of about 1,200 people took on a character of its own. Over a million people are buried in the town of Colma, the only incorporated city in America where the dead outnumber the living.

My name’s Paul. You can call me Tara. This is where I grew up.

My father—before he died—and his father—before he died—ran a funeral home. Not your fancy big homey high-end kind of funeral home. No, Jackson and Sons Funeral Home was what you might call your cut-rate no-frills funeral home. He died there, my father, of a heart 25 attack. In the basement while trying to piece together some dead guy’s head who had stepped in front of a MUNI bus.

When he died, my mom sold the business and our house to another family funeral home down the block. There’s one just about every block. In some cities there’s a Starbucks on every corner. In Colma, you get funeral homes. I didn’t want anything to do with Jackson and Sons. Mom used the money to open a floral shop. It did well. As long as people keep dying, there’ll always be a need for flowers in Colma.

I’m an only child. My younger sister died during birth. Her name was Mary. Is Mary. It would have been nice to have a sister, a live one that is. But Mary is still around. She visits in my dreams and shows me things. Not that most of them come true. Most don’t. I’m glad they don’t. It would be too spooky to have that gift, or rather have a dead sister who comes to you in dreams and shows you the future. Mary takes me for rides: some dark that let me see what might happen to those who hurt me, and some that are just fun. Adventures. My therapist knows about Mary but thinks she’s really just dreams working out day-to-day stress. Maybe so, but I’m glad she’s there.

Well, it isn’t exactly true that I’m an only child. I do have a brother. His name is Peter. He’s two years older than me. He’s a conservative right-wing homophobic fucker, a headstone maker, who thinks I should have been the one to die during birth. I prefer to pretend he never happened, and succeed most of the time. We don’t talk. Haven’t since high school. Probably won’t ever again. He’s dying of cancer.

Needless to say, my teenage years were spent trying to get out of Colma. And the years since leaving have been spent trying to deal with the damage that leaving
couldn’t heal.

Mary and I float above the house we have always lived in. A house that is also a funeral home. I am 10 and she would be 8. Unlike our parents, and Peter and I, who have jet-black hair, Mary’s hair is pale blond. It glows like bright light around her face. She is wearing a long white v-neck t-shirt that looks like it’s one of my Dad’s. She’s so pretty. I love her.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Mary,” I tell her.

“I am too, Paul. I am too. I’m here. I’ll always be here with you,” she says. “Daddy is hurting, Paul.”

“He is? I don’t want Daddy to hurt.”

“I know, Paul, but he’ll be fine. He is going to die. It is his time. See…”

We watch my Daddy in the basement work area. A red glow comes from his heart, then his left arm. He grabs his arm then drops the long syringe he is holding. It bounces off the edge of the ceramic and metal table where he works on the bodies and falls to the floor with a clang. Daddy tries to move away from the table but just jerks, then quietly lays his body over the corpse he has been working on. We watch Daddy die.

“No!”

“It will be fine. Don’t be sad. Sometimes it’s just your time. Even if it’s not fair. And I’ll always be here with you no matter what happens.”

“Green Tara is the loving goddess who is waiting to help you cross the ocean of Samsara, which is the illusory world perceived by the ego.”

Jennifer is my best friend. We are seniors at Patrick Riordan Catholic High School. She is reading to me while I do her toenails. I am painting them a deep green to match her fingers, which we did earlier at her house. We ate some pot brownies that her mom, Sue, had made and then came down here to our favorite grave in Final Rest Cemetery to be high and smoke our clove cigarettes. Sue said pot was okay, but she wouldn’t let Jennifer or her friends smoke cigarettes in the house—especially the clove ones we liked. Sue said they would give us a “urinary infection” if we weren’t careful.

“Traditionally offering protection from drowning, thieves, lions, snakes, fire, spirits, imprisonment, and wild elephants—here, look how beautiful she is.”

Jennifer hands the book down to me and I look at the detailed color drawing of the bald green goddess.

“Looks like you, Jen.”

“Yeah, I know. Call me…Green Tara—” and she starts cackling madly. The pot from the brownie must have started to hit.

I hand the book back and giggle with her while I finish her toenails.

“Green Tara—that’s me!—brings courage to see things in new ways and to move in new directions. Historically, Green Tara was the Nepalese princess who married Songsten Gampo, the first Buddhist King of Tibet. Hey, Paul! I was married to a King!”

I finish the last nail, the scary one on her little toe. It’s tiny and gross, not more than a misshapen little strip about the size of an ant.

“Maybe I was King Gampo!” I exclaim rising to my feet and twirling around.

“No, listen. The same king also married a Chinese princess known as White Tara. That’s you, Paul! White Tara!”

“Cool. White Tara and Green Tara. I likes!” I sit back down and take off my Doc Martins, then my socks, so I can do my own toenails.

Jennifer leans back against the gravestone and lights a cigarette. It sizzles every time she draws the heavy smoke into her lungs. She coughs and I look up. Her long straight hair—cut shoulder length, exactly the same as mine—has been bleached then dyed both blue and black. It glows an unnatural blue-black in the sunlight. Mine I’ve left its natural black.

“So here’s our new chant, White Tara—”

“Yes, my Green Tara?” I ask as I finish foot number one and start on the second.

“OM TARE TUTTARE YE SWAHA—”

Sue’s brownies kick ass. It must be the brownies. I don’t understand what she is saying. I start laughing and fall over forgetting about the last couple of toes.

“OOM TARE TUTTARE YEEEEEEEEEEE SWAHAAAAAAAA,” she sings.

“You sound like Lisa Gerrard!”

“Kick ass! You know it! DEAAAAD CAN DAHHHHNCE! DEAAAAD CAN DAHHHHNCE! OOM TARE TUTTARE—”

“What’s that for?”

“It’s the suggested meditation for compassion and protection…”

I roll onto my back looking up at the blood orange tree that hangs over us. I see an orange that had dropped by my arm and I pick it up. It’s overripe and covered in ants and it opens up when I touch it. Its juice rolls down my arm, warm and sticky, like blood.

“…relax your body and allow your mind to clear…”

Mary and I float above Final Rest Cemetery. I am 14 and she would be 12. She is taller than me and her shiny white hair is long and blows in the wind. She is wearing one of my Mom’s nightshirts and she has the sleeves rolled up because they are too long. She’s eating a blood orange, slowly peeling off one section off at a time and putting them in her mouth.

“I missed you, Mary.”

“I missed you too, Paul. But I’ve never been far away.”

“Peter hurt me, Mary. He hurt me pretty bad.”

“I know. But you will be fine. You’ll see.”

“It doesn’t feel that way. His friend Jared—”

“I know, honey. I know. But you’ll be fine. And he’ll die soon enough.”

“Jared?”

“No. Peter. Even now it grows. See…”

We look down and see our brother Peter jerking off in his room of the split two-level house that Mom and Peter and I live in. He is lying on his back on his bed, his thin long pale dick in hand. A red glow comes from his balls. He masturbates and comes in stringy globs onto his stomach, then takes a Kleenex, wipes it off, and tosses it across the room to a trash can.

“What—”

“Cancer. He’ll start having great pain in a couple years, then he will die before he’s thirty.”

“That’s good. He deserves it. But you won’t leave me will you?”

“No, Paul. I’ll always be with you no matter what happens.”

I run as fast as I can, but it isn’t fast enough. Two blocks with a head start get me to Final Rest Cemetery. But they catch me. My brother Peter and his best friend Jared catch me. They are royally pissed, and I am fucked.

My brother manages to trip me and I fall down, falling flat on my face nearly hitting my head on a gravestone. He pounces on me, sitting on my back and gripping my wrists above my head so they scrape against the stone.

“You are so fucked now you little faggot!” screams Jared as he catches up to us.
“It was a misunderstanding, Jared. Jesus, get off me! Come on, Peter, let me up!”

I am trying hard not to cry. That would surely give them even more reason to kick me around. I can taste blood in my mouth and my bottom lip is starting to swell. My brother’s hands are gripping my wrists roughly and my hands are getting numb.

“Shut up, you little pussy!” Peter says. His anger scares me. It always scares me.

I start whimpering. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry, Peter. Let me go. Please, I’m sorry.”

My brother’s weight lifts from my back, but his grip on my wrists grows firmer. Then he kneels on one of my arms and grips my hair with the now free arm. He lifts my head back and whispers in my ear, “Jared always said you were a faggot. Now we know the truth. I don’t know what you thought you saw, but it was nothing. Nothing! You hear!”

I smell the wet earth. I smell the fresh sod, and mud, rotting oranges, and my blood. I smell the cement of the gravestone and the dying flowers right next to my white knuckles. I smell my brother’s angry sweat and I smell my fear as I feel Jared’s arms reach around under my stomach and unbutton my shorts.

My vision is blurred from my tears. I’m crying and my nose is running. It’s too late to worry about being a baby. I try unsuccessfully to sniff the snot back into my nose as I cry out for them to stop…for them to stop…please no…Jared…don’t…stop!

I always get home from school before Peter. Mom works at her flower shop until six or so every night, so I usually come home, fix a sandwich, and do whatever homework I have to early—while the house is empty and silent.

I’m sitting in my room at my desk listening to the radio, trying to ignore the math I don’t understand in front of me. I get up to look for my Culture Club cassette. But it’s not there.

“Fucking Peter!”

I storm out of my room and down the hall to Peter’s room, blaming him for taking my tape even though he hates Culture Club and probably didn’t take it. I’m just mad at the math.

I stop once I’m inside his room and look around at the mess. I’m rarely inside his room since we’re not exactly best friends. If my tape was in here I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to find it. There are heaps of clothing everywhere. His bed looks like he hasn’t changed the sheets in years and it kinda stinks bad. Like him. What a loser!

The front door slams and I panic. I hear him running up the steps and there’s no time for me to run back down the hall. Fuck! I open one side of his sliding closet door and climb inside, kicking a pile of clothes out of the way. Crouching down, I pull it almost shut just as he and his ignorant friend Jared come in.

“Wonder where the fag is?” Peter growls.

“Out suckin’ dick, no doubt,” Jared says.

“Yeah, probably.”

“He ever do you?”

“What? No way!” Peter squeaks. My brother’s voice squeaks when he’s excited.

“You ever do him?”

I’m so scared I’m shaking. Here I am trapped in my brother’s lair. It’s hot. It’s stinky. And if he finds me I’m dead meat. Dead meat. I’m in the right town anyway. I fight back a giggle. I always laugh at the wrong things…and at the wrong times.

“Shut the fuck up!”

“Sorry, man. Settle down. I’m just horny. It’s my hard dick talkin’ that’s all. You want to jerk off?”

“I told you that was a one time thing!”

What? My brother jerks off with Jared?

I peak my head out a little and I can’t believe what I see. Jared has pulled his dick out and it’s hard. He slides his pants down around his ankles and starts stroking his dick hard and fast. My brother is sitting on the bed right by him. Jared turns and puts his dick right in Peter’s face.

“Come on, man, suck it.“

And I lose my balance. I fall out of the closet nearly ripping the sliding door off. I land with a thud right at Jared’s feet with a “Shit!” from both me and him.

I’ve never been a runner, but I give it all I have. I run. I run from Peter’s room and I run from my house. And I run from his anger. Peter is going to kick my ass for being in his room. And for seeing what I saw.

And they run after me. I run fast. But it isn’t fast enough.

“Jared, man, what are you doing?” I hear my brother ask.

“Your brother’s a snoop. And a faggot. I know what he wants.”

My hips are lifted and my shorts and boxers are pulled down exposing my ass. My hard-on flips loose and I feel like I’m going to pee.

“Fuck! Peter, let go, fucker! Fuck!”

And Peter lets go of my wrists and stands up. But I can’t run because Jared now has his knees pinning the back of my calves.

“Jared, damn. What are you gonna do?”

“Look at him, Peter. Faggot’s got a boner! Did you like what you saw, faggot?”

“I didn’t—”

“There was nothin’ to see!” my brother squeaks.

I hear a zip and look back. Jared pulls his dick out of his pants and strokes it. It’s short, but really thick and a scary purple red.

“Jared, come on. No way. Let’s go.” My brother says and starts walking towards the cemetery entrance.

“Jared! Come on!” he shouts. “He won’t say nothing. Paul won’t—”

“Jared, no—” I cry.

And his fist hits the back of my head
.
And I hear Peter run away.

And then I feel Jared touch my dick. I think I might shoot. “Jared, don’t.”

“Don’t what, faggot?”

“Don’t. I don’t want—”

But I did. I was afraid, but I did. His hand feels so good. And I’m going to come. I’m going to come! Then he stops.

“Take off your shorts.” He moves his knees and I fall over as pain shoots through my legs. I roll over onto my back with my legs up in the air, my shorts and boxers still around my knees.

Jared pulls my shorts off over my tennis shoes, then my boxers, and grips each of my legs in his hands.

“Ah. Nice faggot. Now I’m gonna give you what you want—”

“Shit, Jared, no. Let me go and I’ll suck your—”

“You want to suck my dick, man?” Jared looks down at his dick, then spits out a long hocker, which just hangs there, then finally separates and lands right on his purple dickhead.

“Yeah, Jared. I’ll suck your dick. I will! Promise! You don’t have—”

He lifts my legs back and my ass opens up. I fart. I feel his dick press against my asshole, then pressure as he tries to slide it in. I feel pain shooting through my gut and legs and I grab onto his shoulders pulling at his t-shirt. Then my dick does shoot. I don’t touch it. I don’t have to. Having Jared’s dick partway into my asshole is enough.

“Aeeeeeeeeeeee—” I scream as my dick explodes and my asshole clamps down even harder around Jared’s dickhead than it had been before.

“Ah fuck, Paul! I’m going to shoot!”

Paul? He hadn’t ever called me anything but faggot. I feel a tiny pop as his stubby hard-on pulls out then I feel his warm come shooting on the back of my legs.

“Don’t ever fucking tell anyone, you shit!” he says, then stands up and tucks his wet and already soft dick into his jeans. “I mean it. Or I’ll do it again!”

He takes off. I grab my boxers and wipe up all the come, both his and mine, then put on my shorts. On the way out, I toss my wet boxers into a trashcan.

My brother never mentioned what happened. And I never told him what his friend Jared and I had done. Actually, Peter and I rarely talked again after that afternoon except when forced. Jared never came over to the house again either, and I guess they stopped hanging out because I never saw them together.

I thought of asking my brother about what he and Jared were doing in his room. But I didn’t.

I thought of asking Jared if he wanted to do it again. But I didn’t. Even though I wanted to.

“…Breathe slowly and deeply. Visualize the image of Green Tara. Repeat the mantra—”

“The mantra?” I ask.

“Yes, Miss White Tara! Geez, where’ve you been? The mantra: OM TARE TUTTARE YE SWAHA…”

“Have you seen Jared Bowker at all recently?”

“OHHHHHHHHHM.”

“Green Tara! Hello!”

“I heard you! Why do you want to bring up that redneck creep now? I thought you were over him. We’re meditating.”

“I’ve just been wondering where he went.”

“Don’t tell me you still think about doing him again? Come on, White Tara! Paleeze!” She rolls her eyes at me.

“Jen—”

Jennifer reads from the book again, “Imagine a beautiful emerald green light coming out of Tara’s heart and flowing like ribbons into your heart…”

I stare up at the tree and my vision blurs and shifts. The tree’s branches smooth into arms and a face appears. I see a beautiful emerald green light shining through the blood orange goddess tree.

“…Let yourself be filled with this light as you feel her healing protection all around you.”

Mary and I float above the apartment I rent in San Francisco. I’m 21 and she would be 19. The fog is rolling in and we are floating in the middle of clouds and I should be cold since I’m naked but I’m not. Mary is wearing a pair of my jeans without a shirt. He breasts are small with bronze-colored cherry-sized nipples. She’s wearing a green stone in her belly button. Her hair is waist-length and braided into one long white ponytail. She is eating cotton candy, delicately pulling the spun pink sugar with her fingers and letting it melt on her tongue.

“I love him, Mary.” I say as we gaze down at my bedroom where I am making love.

“I know you do, baby. I know you do. But be careful what you do, big brother.”

We watch below as my lover Jared slowly moves his hand back and forth inside me. I lay on the bed with my legs over his shoulders and my arms behind me gripping the iron headrest. His hand is inside me and my asshole is tightly clenching around his wrist. His other hand gently rubs my chest and stomach in circles. He is smiling. My eyes are rolled back into my head and I’m making soft moaning sounds like a chant.

“Oh, that? It’s fine. He’s very careful. He knows what he’s doing. And I always go into a zone like that when he handballs me.”

“I know he knows what he is doing, Paul. But do you? Not the sex. Your heart. Be careful of your heart.” She pulls off a long length of pink cotton candy and lays it on her tongue. We both look down at the scene in my bedroom. A soft red light hovers over my heart.

“Am I going to die? Is that a heart attack like Daddy?”

“No, big brother. That’s a broken heart. A bad one. A very painful one. I know who that is, Paul. I know how you found him. See…”

I’m back in Colma for my mom’s funeral. I feel alone. Everyone is dead, or dying in my brother’s case, or gone from Colma. I feel like I’m the only one left. Mary hasn’t visited for a long time and didn’t even show me Mom’s death.

The viewing is tonight, but I don’t want to go. Not sure why I even came home. Well, I guess it’s not really home now. Fine with me. It was bad enough talking to Peter on the phone. I don’t really want to see him. He’ll be here soon.

I do a line of coke and jump in my wreck of a Honda Civic and drive off before Peter can get there from work. He can handle the viewing alone. Right before the exit for the expressway to San Francisco I spot a carnival.

I pull over quickly and park. I’m at a carnival. How odd. My mom’s just died and I’m going to do what? Ride some rides? Not any of these scary rusty ones, that’s for sure.

I wish Green Tara was in town. She’s my only ally left in Colma. I had called her and left a message as soon as I heard the news about Mom’s death, but when she returned my call she said she was in Arizona for a visit with her husband’s family and wouldn’t be back in time.

I walk though the crowded little midway watching the families and couples play games. It’s noisy and cheap and more than a bit scary. I would have loved it when I was in high school with Tara, perhaps high on her mom’s brownies. But now it’s just crowded and it isn’t much fun and I’m high but the coke is just a way to cope.

Then I spot him. Jared. At a booth. He’s working in a booth. It’s one of those games with fake shotguns and a cardboard wilderness scene where for a dollar you can shoot at some cute little bunnies and ducks and deer, trying to knock down as many as possible to win some prize.

Jared, my brother’s fucked-up fuck-buddy in high school. Jared, who raped me in Final Rest Cemetery. Jared, the man who I feared the most, yet dreamed of and desired the most. He’s the reason I’m so fucked up—or at least he’s who I’ve always blamed. He’s the reason I’m such a slut—or at least he’s who I’ve always blamed. He’s the man I always look for in other men, and he’s who I see when I close my eyes with the other men.

He looks great. He’s filled out some. He appears taller, but his face still looks the same except for a little soul patch gone scraggly. He has on a blue tank top, baggy jeans, and a tight gold chain and crucifix around his neck. His arms are large and covered in tattoos. His hair is shoulder length and greasy, unkept, wild, like I like. Like mine. He is leaning over the low wall of shotguns trying to charm some kids out of their money in exchange for a large stuffed purple Barney. His jeans hang loose but I can almost see his dick’s outline where it bulges in front.

I walk over. I should run away but I don’t this time. I don’t turn around and run to my car. I don’t take the exit to the expressway and head back to San Francisco. I walk right up to him and slap down a dollar. He looks up from the gaggle of ten-year-olds to me and smiles.

“Paul? Paul Jackson?”

Mary shows me Jared and I later that same evening at his apartment. I’m down on my knees in his living room. We’re naked and I have his dick in my mouth and one of my hands on his balls and the other hand pulling on one of his pierced nipples and he’s holding my head with both his hands guiding himself in and out and I’m moaning loudly and he’s saying my name over and over. It didn’t take much convincing to get me to that point and time. I wanted him. I had always wanted him again. Since that first violent time, as sad as that sounds. And he wanted me too.

Mary hands me a blood orange she has plucked from somewhere in the clouds. It’s overripe and bleeding down her pale arm.

“I love him, Mary.”

“I know. The world is full of love, Paul. It’s full of desire. And sex. Yes, sex. Sex that rocks your world. Sex that you want more than anything else and fear more than death. Sex with your body laid down under a headstone taking hate deep within yourself. And sex with a man you’ve always loved but shouldn’t.”

“But I do love him, Mary. And he—”

“I know, honey. I know you do. The world is full of crazy misplaced love and violence and pain and yearning and blood oranges and cotton candy. And you can’t change what happened in the past and you can’t always see what’s coming or control the way things will happen. But be careful, Paul, big brother. Be very careful. This one is gonna break your heart. This one’s gonna hurt.

 

© 2006 Greg Wharton - Contributor's Bio