Three Ex Presidents and James Franco Read Online Free PDF Page A

or D-Day. We became experts in guerrilla warfare, but ignored large conflicts. As though the gene for great struggles had sailed across the Atlantic.
                   It is possible that here in America it flourished. Egged on by the need to survive in a foreign land. Complemented by the addition of some Spanish and German chromosomes.
                   To me it was a dead impulse. Violence was something for movies and news clips. Weapons were alien things.
                   So I was genuinely shocked about an hour later when Dom reappeared, interrupting the moves I was making on Jake, and excitedly blurted out: “Eric has been shot. James has gone and fucking shot him."
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    The Second Part - Jake, James and Me
    18. Two months later I was lying naked on the bed looking at the picture of James Franco. I fancied his countenance was more relaxed today. As though he had resigned himself to his role of overseeing the comings and goings in Jake’s bed.
    Jake was barely older than me, there was no barrier to us being intimate, but there was no love. He was treating our relationship as a training exercise.
    At the time I was sure I didn't love him and that the feeling was mutual. It could have been otherwise, had my education not included cruising and anonymous sex. I’m sure I was begging to fall in love with someone, probably any someone. But he didn’t want to teach me about that.
    Jake was lying beside me, naked also, stroking my leg with one hand. In the other he held the remote control with which he constantly flicked between two channels. The news and wrestling. The only things he ever watched.
    "Want to fuck?" I asked. Using the word 'fuck' was a new pleasure. I’d had cause to use it in conversation before alright. I had used it as a noun, an adjective, a pronoun. Sometimes all in the same sentence: "Who the fuck does that fuck think he's fooling for fuck sake?'
    Now I was using it just for the pleasure of finally giving the word its proper use.
    "Sure." His reply had the quick response of a daily routine. As though I'd asked if he wanted breakfast.
    I rolled over on the bed, as he fussed with a condom and finally entered me. While we fucked he kept the TV on the wrestling. He spent most of the time with his eyes on the screen, fantasising about one or both of the muscular masses grappling for our viewing pleasure.
    For my part I was looking at James Franco. I apologised silently to him for what he had to witness. Nothing in his whiskey swilling, girl chasing, California dreaming past prepared him for what he had to endure in his new life on Jake's wall.
     
     
    19. Strangely, Jake had read the Bible. My only friend who had. Christianity wasn't the only enemy activity he kept abreast of. He had books on Scientology. Internet printouts on Scientology. Biographies of famous Scientologists. Also, the Holocaust had a rich and underused bounty to offer on the oppression of gays. He had shelves full of books on the war. The only pages which were read were those pertaining to the Pink Star.
    There were books everywhere in his house. It was one of those collections that it would have been physically impossible for one man, reading constantly, to conquer in a lifetime. There were many on psychoanalysis, socio-biology, and copious amounts on genetics. Jake didn’t strike me as a great reader, but such was the vastness of his library, it was obvious he was a compulsive collector.
    The gay theme was maintained in his fiction collection, with one major difference. While all the other books were gleaming and relatively new, all the fiction was second-hand. Some were well used to the point pages were falling out and the spines were sellotaped together.
    My initial assumption was they were all so old because he wanted them to look read. And had no intention of reading them.
    I tested this idea when I picked up a copy of Armistead Maupin. One of his chronicles of