“His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood” (1990)

My first story by Poppy Z. Brite (aka William Joseph Martin) is a pretty good one, all things considered. It was published when he was only 23 but seems to be hardly his first—I’m seeing some 1987 publication dates, when he was 20. On ISFDB this story is classified as belonging to the “Cthulhu Mythos” series, which obviously has many H.P. Lovecraft stories as well as various by others. I did not get a Cthulhu hit off this story, but some of it reminded me of Lovecraft, macabre details like the grave-robbing, a main feature. Brite’s sense of sexuality is miles beyond the timid Lovecraft. Weird editors Ann & Jeff VanderMeer compare Brite to “Decadent-era French and English writers [more] than the contemporary horror scene.” That seems like a reasonable point—are we talking about Baudelaire, Rimbaud, de Quincey? The open perversions here are almost refreshing. Brite is a trans man and takes masculine pronouns, but he may be more nonbinary. I’m not sure. Sexuality is all over this but it’s also indeterminate. The first-person narrator is a man and so is his partner. They start out having sex with others, sometimes together, and end up having sex with one another. They drink absinthe they stole from a grave, which is partly responsible for inspiring them to rob more graves. Finally, apparently, they steal from the wrong grave, as one night a strange apparition of a beautiful boy appears at a nightclub. I love, by the way, how Brite integrates clubbing into the mise en scene of this story. And I like how it’s just out there in terms of “divine decadence” (my term by way of the movie Cabaret). It all comports with my sense of Brite—I’ve been meaning to look into him since the ‘90s—except it’s much better and more natural than I expected. It always sounded a little like a put-on and possibly it is. I still don’t know that much about him. I believe he has moved on from horror since the ‘90s, but I don’t know. This story, which is quite fine in its own right, even if I’m missing the specific Cthulhu elements, definitely makes me think he’s worth looking into further.

Poppy Z. Brite, Wormwood
The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Story not available online.