by John Schultze
My shame, my shame;
my bitter, punching, screaming shame—my God, he’d be so incensed
if he knew I were telling you this. But what else can I do? I’m
torn up with grief. He’s gone. I get up at three o’clock in the dark and pace back
and forth through these big empty rooms waiting for him.
The narrator, Alwyn (“It’s easier just to call me Allen”) Barrow continues
to rave in a similar vein, raising questions that require reading the rest
of the book to answer, as the author teasingly strips away layer after layer
of mystery—occasionally revealing further mysteries. He skillfully
reveals just enough to keep it interesting, but never enough to fully satisfy
reader curiosity.
Allen himself is not mysterious. He isn’t even very interesting.
He’s just a cog in the banking system with no life to speak of. He
suffers from low self-esteem and insecurity about the size of his penis, describing
himself as a “box of cracker jacks without a prize.”
Enter Destry Powars, gorgeous but “a bit paunchy.” After meeting
Allen in a vigorous bathhouse encounter, he begins taking possession of him,
lifting him from his banal hand-to-mouth existence into one of opulence and
decadence. Destry is filthy rich but secretive, never revealing exactly
where his money comes from. He’s always attending “meetings” where
he “makes deals.” It eventually becomes apparent the deal of deals
for him has been a Faustian one—or maybe not. Allen, being kept as
Destry’s plaything, stumbles upon a locked room in the latter’s apartment
containing strange talismans and leatherbound tomes of bizarre arcana, objects
that fascinate and disgust him.
Allen is both attracted to and repelled by Destry as well. He realizes
he is being possessed, but finds himself unable to escape. Although
he is possessed, he is also a possessor—Destry depends on him; for what,
he will not say, but it is, he claims, a matter of his continued existence.
Perhaps it has something to do with the vampiristic “extractions” Destry
makes that leave small incisions on Allen’s scrotum each time he fellates
him. Whatever it is, the thought of losing Allen brings the big man
to his knees, blubbering. One might say they have each other by the
balls.
Allen’s adventures with Destry take them to both the fanciest restaurants
in New York and that city’s sleaziest demimonde dives, leading ultimately
to the story’s climax at an exclusive lodge in the Swiss Alps. These
settings are described with the terse, vivid prose for which Brass shows
a great facility. And while the story is generally dark, he occasionally
gives a bit of comic relief, as in this description of two of Destry’s business
associates, who are
...so starvation
thin, so corporately mannish, that they reminded me of ruthless drag queens.
They had glossy, helmet-clipped hair and wore nearly identical
outfits with tight black shirts and four-inch pumps. I thought about the
bitch hostess on The Weakest Link, and could imagine them with
names like Leona Spreadsheet and the ambitious Imperial Grand Dutchess, Ivana
Kutchanutsoff.
Brass lavishes his most detailed descriptions, however, on the characters’
clothing; the caress of cashmere or the slickness of silk are almost palpable.
While clothing has its place in emphasizing the differentials of wealth and
power between the characters, sometimes this novel reads like a review of
a fashion show or the captions in a clothing catalog: “The pants were
artful, with minute pleats placed exactly where they should be and discreet
side pockets, the kind in which a man might stow a single, pearl-handled
knife but never show it.”
But this tale is not driven by images; it is a trip into the soul of Allen
Barrow, a soul tormented by insecurity, sexual longing, and by its gradual
absorption by the dark forces that already hold Destry Powars in their thrall.
It is a soul on a quest, unsure of what the quest is. Allen’s curiosity
leads him unwittingly into life-threatening explorations, but he is only
aware of an intense curiosity to see what may be in Destry’s luggage or in
a brown paper bag in his bathroom. Of course, readers may be egging
him on; maybe what he finds will satisfy everyone’s curiosity. The plot
is also driven by sex. The image on the cover of a man’s head hovering
over another man’s crotch is not misleading. There’s oodles of sex
in here, but it’s never gratuitous; it’s part of the process by which Allen
and Destry come to possess each other. Ultimately, Allen may simply be on
the quest for happiness, but even that quest is not satisfying. Near
the end of the story he tells us, “...happiness, I have learned, does not
always fill that hollow feeling, it just rides over it.” If you’re looking
for a happy ending, you won’t find it here.
Yet neither fans nor newcomers to Brass's work will not be sorry they
picked up the novel. With Warlock, Perry Brass has added a
delightfully readable, compelling work to his already imposing body of work.