Carnivore: The most controversial debut literary thriller of 2017. Jonathan Lyon
– my veins were violet-blue, my skin ghostly and dotted with moles, and my hair was like feldspar in late afternoon light – while his veins were copper-green, his skin darker and unmarked and nearly hairless – smoothed by the coconut oil he lathered into it at night, and which made his hard muscles feel soft when I kissed them. I kissed them.
‘What happens with Eva then?’ he asked.
‘What you mean?’ I asked. ‘You’re a carnivore now, the kill is done. The more indifferent you are, the more she’ll love you.’
‘A carnivore!’ he laughed. ‘Fuck off! What’s that again?’
‘It’s from Latin – it means flesh-eater. The Greek version is sarcophagus – but that means coffin. So Greek flesh-eating tends towards death – while Latin flesh-eating goes the other way – towards life, towards sex.’
‘And which way do you go?’
I smiled back. ‘Both ways – I want to be a Greek and Latin flesh-eater – the demon of Europe’s worst fever-dreams – the answering scream of a generation fucked over by a whole millennium.’
‘And what about me?’
‘Well you just started, you’re still an entry-level Latin carnivore. But look what you did to Eva – you were talking about love – love is an old carnivorous urge – but it isn’t positive, it’s destructive – it’s meant to rip you away from your old mate with enough force to overwhelm habit and convenience – so you choose a new one. Me. That’s all this was. Flesh feeding on flesh. But these urges can warp, in some of us – become more irresistible, more flattened out, and spread beyond the systems of love…’
‘That’s not what love feels like to me.’
‘That’s because you haven’t learned how to feel.’
He laughed. ‘If I hadn’t met you I’d be so bored.’
‘Same.’
‘No, it’s true,’ he said. ‘Before I met you I was stuck. I mean before I did modelling I was proper stuck in South London. It was like there was a border around me. I wouldn’t go past it. It felt like you had to get a visa and like vaccinations to go to North London – it was so far away to me. It was all local girls and boys, that was it – and I couldn’t leave, really – and then with modelling I got to travel the world, non-stop travelling the world, meeting new people every day – and it was good, really good, getting different people’s aspects on life. I really respect modelling for that, cos it opens my eyes. But I was still stuck before you.’
I nudged my head against his to keep him talking.
‘When I got scouted,’ he said, ‘I did my first job for a gay magazine – and I didn’t really know what to think. I get up, I go on the job, it’s pretty good – it’s just fashion really. But a few weeks after that, when it gets released, I ain’t got a clue it’s a gay magazine – and all my friends want to see it ’cos it’s my first time – and I’m telling them “Go out and get your own copy, go on, show your mum” – all that, you know. And they see it’s a gay magazine and I get ripped!’ He laughed. ‘I swear! But that’s life, you know… I became a bit of a gay icon, and I never knew I’d want to do that myself. I mean if a gay man didn’t like me, I’d feel bad about myself, like I weren’t wanted, you know, I should feel like I’m wanted by both sexes. All sexes. I get people coming right up to me saying I want to fuck you, that kind of thing happens all the time… But I never thought it would actually happen with men, until you… Your world is so much bigger than mine.’
‘My world is tiny. I’ve never travelled, I’ve just read about it.’
He kissed me.
‘I ain’t got the focus for that,’ he said, leaning back. ‘You got the focus. You should tell me what to read. What should I read?’
‘Poems. You don’t have to focus for long.’
‘Tell me one.’
He shoved me off his shoulder so that he could lean against mine, pressing his cheek into my cheek. He was warmer than me – and at his touch I thought of sapphires cut in sunlight.
‘I don’t have a good memory,’ I said. ‘But in my head… there’s bits of a poem by Wallace Stevens, if you want. Called “Esthétique du Mal”.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘The art of evil.’
‘Alright.’
I could feel his smile against my mouth. We breathed each other in, as I recited:
‘“The death of Satan was a tragedy
For the imagination…
The tragedy, however, may have begun,
Again, in the imagination’s new beginning,
In the yes of the realist spoken because he must
Say yes, spoken because under every no
Lay a passion for yes that had never been broken…”’
‘What’s it mean?’
‘There’s bits I’ve forgotten. But it means creativity is satanic because it is disobedient. Satan was the original artist. You aren’t satisfied with what’s already there, you add to it. Evil is necessary to living vividly. Tragedy is necessary to living vividly. But to develop an imagination, you must also be physical…’
‘I can be physical,’ he said, shifting forwards to stand up. ‘I got a present for you.’
The odour of semen lifted in the air. He walked towards his fruit bowl – and from a mound of satsumas, he pulled out a necklace. I laughed.
The whip wounds in my back were beginning to ache more finely – like filaments heating into a red ochre colour. I leaned into them with pleasure. They complimented the colour beneath them, that was always there – my ultramarine – the ultimate blue of my myalgia, the superlative blue – the deepest colour that’s still a colour before black.
Francis squatted in front of me, tensing his abs into greater prominence, and swung the necklace before my eyes.
‘Since you’re not buying nothing nice for yourself… I got you this,’ he said. ‘I mean I got it in a shoot for free, but I wanted to keep it for you, as a present. It’s more your thing, I don’t do necklaces. Even though you got a bit of money now, don’t you?’
‘It’s for the deposit on the flat,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think it’s going to last. It’s Dawn’s money – that’s why I was keeping it safe.’
He caught the necklace at the top of its arc, closed it in his fist for a moment, and then released it again to lower it over my head. The pendant was a winged key.
‘I liked the little key,’ he said. ‘I felt like it had meaning, you know? And you don’t need to worry about your flat cos you can stay with me, can’t you? You don’t need to be worrying about money, even though I don’t get it, I don’t get why you don’t just go out and make money. You’re clever, why don’t you just get a job?’
‘I’m too ill.’
‘You don’t look ill,’ he smiled, assuming my answer was a joke.
I wanted to say: You don’t see that part of me, I don’t show it – my brain misunderstands my muscles, so they ache like I’ve always got flu, or my mitochondria are fucked, so they can’t make enough energy, or I don’t know, I just know that I’m in pain, and I can hide it with heroin. But I need to hide it from you too, otherwise you’ll think differently of me. So I can’t tell you. I’ll never tell you.
Instead I said:
‘Well I don’t believe in jobs. Most of us could be doing whatever we wanted, while machines did the rest.