Dorian Read Online Free PDF Page A

they needed it.
    Inside the dark studio the nine monitors were sharply outlined. Across their faces, hissing with static, the fluid images of Dorian presented a cascade of motion. There was a soundtrack as well, an insistent thrumming beat entwined with a breathy fluting. Dorian was transfixed for a few moments, but then he moved closer and began to sway in time with his own televisual images. Nine naked Dorians and one clothed. In synchrony, youth and the images of youth waltzed to the heavenly and eternal music of self-consciousness.
    ‘Well, whaddya reckon?’ Baz blurted out from the shadows, and Dorian turned to see him and Wotton, their faces soiled with lust.
    ‘He’s absolutely superb,’ Wotton answered, ‘and this afternoon has become remarkable since I encountered your faun.’
    ‘I think I’ve caught him at just the right point –’
    ‘Oh, indeed you have, Baz, he’s like a ripe grape dusted with yeast.’ Wotton made as if to pluck one of the monitors and eat it.
    Dorian felt uncomfortable with the way the older men were speaking; was it at cross-purposes, or did they regard him and the video installation as entirely interchangeable? ‘How long will these tapes last, Baz?’ he asked.
    ‘It’s hard to say… Certainly years, if not decades, and by then they can be transferred to new tapes, and so on – for ever, I guess.’
    ‘So, these’ – Dorian gestured – ‘will remain young for ever, while I grow old, then die?’
    ‘Yeah, well,’ Baz snorted derisively. ‘You can’t copy bodies – yet.’
    ‘I wish it was the other way round,’ Dorian said, and to support the throwaway nature of the remark, he picked up a black windcheater which was slung over a chair and headed for the door, calling over his shoulder, ‘You coming, Henry?’
    ‘Er… yuh.’ Wotton stirred himself, as did Baz.
    ‘What about the piece, Dorian?’ he pleaded. ‘I need to do two more recordings for the soundtrack. I must do them.’
    ‘Well, if you must.’ Dorian’s whole tone had hardened since he’d seen the installation. ‘Personally I’m jealous of the bloody thing – it’s already hours younger than me.’
    Baz took this as the acceptable petulance of the patron who’s also a model. He smoothed his hair, hooking strands behind his ears, and began moving from monitor to monitor, switching them off. ‘As soon as the recordings are done,’ he told Dorian, ‘and the sequencing and editing are finished, I’ll bring Cathode Narcissus round to your apartment and set it up. Then you can do whatever you want to your several selves. Scratch their eyes out, or jerk off with them. Whatever.’
    ‘OΚ.’ Dorian paused in the doorway, and Baz, thinking of him at dawn – screaming with delight, trussed in a sheet, his erect cock arched like bow, a pearl of his semen on Baz’s tongue – couldn’t play it cool any longer.
    ‘Come tomorrow, Dorian, please, at around noon?’
    ‘All right, Baz.’ And withdrawing the psychic knife from between Baz’s ribs without troubling to twist it, Dorian left.

    It was, apparently, a tactical withdrawal, as if he wanted his rivals to fight over him forthwith. This they obliged him by doing: ‘For fuck’s fucking sake, Wotton!’ Baz howled. ‘How long are you gonna go on shooting me down like this?’
    ‘Only as long as you go on shooting up at my expense’ – Wotton was straightening his tie, patting down his clothes – ‘and poncing this studio off my mother.’
    ‘I like him,’ Baz near screeched.
    ‘And I like him too.’
    ‘You don’t like anything , Wotton, you’re poison running in the gutter.’ Baz walked over to Wotton and taking a wad of currency from his jeans pocket, peeled ten notes off and stuffed them into the top pocket of his friend’s overcoat. ‘Get us one of each, willya?’ he snarled.
    ‘What’s this – in funds, are we Baz?’
    ‘Dorian paid me for it – for the piece. Cash down.’
    ‘Oh really?’ Wotton sniggered