Page 64 of Andalusia Dogs
“Our wine.” Jago wrapped his hand around Alex’s under the glass.
Alex smiled as they raised it together. “To psychic flamenco.”
“To what?” Jago laughed.
Alex took a long sip. “Something Vicente said. I thought it was funny.”
Jago lifted the wine to his lips and finished the toast. “I’m glad you didn’t call it that. ThoughDogs of Andalusia? I don’t knowwhether to be honoured or offended. I hope Dali and Buñuel don’t sue.”
“I doubt that. I didn’t know what to call it. Joanna suggestedThe Bitch of the Basque Lands, but I thought that would get us into even more trouble.”
“Next time, when you have a faithful audience.”
“I don’t know. Next time I thought we’d go for something really silly, about a boy that works in a café? Maybe we’ll give him a seagull’s head?”
“Dear gods,” Jago pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are—”
“Stirring you up.” Alex took the wine back and drew another long sip. “I’m just happy, is all. Though I would have liked you to at least check in with me before talking to Joanna.”
“Yes, bad manners, I’m sorry.” Jago kissed him, squeezing his shoulders as he withdrew. “I’m just happy you’re happy. That means everything. But you have an opening night public to schmooze.”
Alex winced. Seeing Jago in that smart white shirt with red swirls embroidered on it, atop black leather trousers? Schmoozing had little to do with what he felt like doing, and their public had even less. “Be my date?”
Jago stared at him with surprised delight. “I would not have been so bold as to ask.”
Alex took him by the hand, leading him out of the theatre.
***
Alex had been glad of Jago’s hand as they’d weaved through the genuine well-wishers, the rubberneckers, and the jealous pricks who’d come hoping to watch them fail. Leo Mendoza fell into that last category, but Alex had smiled and accepted his congratulations with a frosty hug while Jago checked for knives in his back, or so they joked once Leo was out of earshot.
Vicente, who hated these gatherings, remained in the theatre. Alex wondered if Joanna had allowed him access to her dressing room, or if he’d been brave enough to request it. Maria had introduced Alex to several people sporting loud jackets and louder rouge whose names he promptly forgot, then abandoned him once it was clear Alex—or the cute item on his arm—could draw a crowd for himself. He wanted another glass of wine. Or six.
The four who’d breakfasted at Café No Mismothe morning after Si-Man’s death had snuck in at the last moment, though the director, Red Jacket, perhaps eager to avoid recognition, had shown up in dowdy drag, and might have been quite anonymous had the other three not dressed in much the same fashions as they had that morning. He offered Alex a knowing look in the lobby, which Alex took as good luck.
The theatre opened. The audience took their seats. Vicente gave the nod from the booth before Alex took his seat next to Jago.
“Ready to make magick?” Jago asked, grasping his hand.
Alex’s nerves denied him so much as a quick, sarcastic remark. The evening was going better than he’d dared hope. The crowd hushed, the house lights dimmed, and the same strange music that had haunted them at their impromptu audition filled the auditorium. Jago’s hand grew warmer, its softness wrapping around Alex’s wrist, until he felt the steady rise and fall of aman’s chest under his arm. Like a double exposure, he watched Joanna take the stage, each sweeping movement another sound in a language of male-on-male lovemaking in which she, to Alex’s knowledge, should not have been fluent. But fluent she was, as the handsome, dark figure of a man vanished his cock in one confident swoop of his lips.
Gasps from the audience ranged from scandalised to excited to titillated. Yet this was no pornography on stage. This was Joanna pouring herself into the dance and finding movements for words dubbed obscene for all that made them beautiful. Alex was vaguely conscious of two or three walkouts, but he was too wrapped up in the performance to be sure, much less care.
Joanna played the scene until both men teetered on the brink of climax. Then, with one dramatic sweep of her arms, and a scream so full of joy it might have revived the dead for a second go-around, they came.
All of them.
Alex hadn’t even realised he was hard, and was relieved when his pants remained dry. But the groans, cries, howls and gasps that passed through the audience as eighty-four semi-simultaneous orgasms erupted through the crowd like a string of firecrackers would surely haunt his nights for months to come.
Then, another gasp as the reddened, sweat-soaked face of the man who’d come with his lover within the confines of their story filled their minds—the modest, playful, grateful face of Federico del Segrado Corazon de Jesus Garcia Lorca.
This time, Alex was sure of at least five people walking out… and one screaming.
The music shifted, and Joanna progressed to the next movement. Anxiety and a fear of discovery now replaced allhorny sensuality. It was clear from the clothes that their story was a period piece, full of 1930s peasants in drab, dirty dress, interspersed with military men wearing hard, cruel expressions. The nervousness that overtook Alex wasn’t for them, however. A poem. Joanna’s dance now spelled out the cadence and rhyme of a poem. The anxiety of its near-completion gripped the audience in its collective gut, not knowing how they could read into the dance so clearly but unable to deny the sensation that unified them. It was a fear every actor, every director, writer, musician, painter, sculptor, poet, designer … every human who’d ever attempted to put anything into the world knew all too well. The fear of their work not mattering. Of being forgotten.
Lorca’s image blended with Joanna’s again, as she sat down on the stage, accepting the embrace of the man who’d so pleased Lorca—and the audience—in his bed moments before. The man caressed them with such assuring gentleness that the anxiety gave way to sadness. Alex, along with every soul in the audience, remembered chances missed for fear of failure—songs, stories, and images that had longed with such urgency to be shared, only to be shamed into obscurity, a private joke never told or a song never sung, and behind each one, a memory that had meant so much more than a lost piece of art.
Joanna became the poem, filling the auditorium with such joy and hope, it was as if she’d reminded them—as iftheyhad reminded them, for Alex was no longer sure where Joanna and her movements ended and the characters in their story began—why they’d chosen to be the person they were. They would make any sacrifice necessary to share their songs, stories, poems, and pictures; perhaps even life itself.
