And after making love a second time they lay together quietly, their need expended, their thoughts returning to the immediate, and outside they could hear the London rain tapping a slow drum-rhythm on the streets. Jim kept needing the reassurance that Melissa was real, and her best way of confirming this was to kiss him. But neither spoke about themselves; their private lives seemed unshareable, and each time Jim was about to ask Melissa about her life, and to enquire where she lived and what she did, he hesitated. And he seemed to have no desire himself to tell her of his personal history in the way that lovers impart fragmentary things which in time become a whole.
Eventually he fell asleep in Melissa's arms. When he awoke it was still raining, it was hardly dawn, but she had gone. The bed was in a chaos of fetish items. Jim lay there a long time. There was no note. Nothing. He began to think that he had dreamt Melissa, but when he sat up he saw the dark imprint of her lips on his stomach, a lipstick tattoo. It was the only trace of her, and he decided to keep the mark until that too should fade.
By the same author:
NOVELS:
The Lipstick Boys
Blue Rock
Red Eclipse
Inhabiting Shadows
Isidore (a novel about Lautréamont)
Red Hot Lipstick (Erotic Stories)
When the Whip Comes Down (a novel about De Sade)
The Pleasure Chateau (an erotic trilogy)
Chasing Black Rainbows (a novel about Artaud)
Diamond Nebula
Dorian (a sequel to The Picture of Dorian Grey)
Boy Caesar
The Grid
Here Comes the Nice
POETRY:
Target
A Long Shot to Heaven
The Isthmus of Samuel Greenberg
Saints & Psychotics
Bleecker Street
A Man Afraid
By the Fisheries
Nero
Selected Poems
Engaging Form
Nineties
Brigitte’s Blue Heart
Claudia Schiffer’s Red Shoes
Turkish Delight
Red Haired Android
Kicks
Sweet Sister Lyric
Saint Billie
Black Sugar
Patron Saint of Eyeliner
Dicing For Pearls
Heartbreak Hotel
Orange Sunshine
This is How You Disappear
Bona Drag
West End Survival Kit
Black Russian: Out-Takes 1978-9
Piccadilly Bongo
Bona Vada
POETRY/PHOTOGRAPHY
Pop Stars (1995) – with Mick Rock
Big Orange Day (2010) – with Lisa Wilkerson
Exploding into Colour (2012) – with Lisa Wilkerson
TRANSLATIONS:
The Coastguard’s House (Eugenio Montale)
Tempest of Stars (Jean Cocteau)
The Complete Poems (Jean Genet)
Praries of Fever (Ibrahim Nasrallah)
All That’s Left to You (Ghassan Kanafani)
On Entering the Sea (Nizar Qabbani)
The Sheltered Quarter (Hamza Bogary)
Hymn to the Night (Novalis)
NON-FICTION
Heart on my Sleeve
Madness: The Price of Poetry
Angels, Divas and Blacklisted Heroes
Caligula – Divine Carnage (with Stephen Barber)
Lipstick, Sex and Poetry (autobiography)
Bitter Blue (autobiography)
BIOGRAPHIES:
The Last Star (Marc Almond
Another Tear Falls (Scott Walker)
Waiting For the Man (Lou Reed)
The Last Decadent (Brian Jones)
Born to Lose (Jean Genet)
Delirium (Arthur Rimbaud)
A Stranger on Earth (Anna Kavan)
The King of Carnaby Street (John Stephen)