The late Essex House initially published this vicious but undoubtedly artful artifact of the late sixties. His theme, the deadly intersection of eroticism and violence, is not so often explored in American fiction, which probably explains why so little is known about the “Evil Companions” (Perkins, 1993). This is the first novel by Michael Perkins, written when the author was 25 years old. It contains a lot of the nonsense that one would expect from such a young novelist–overly superficial descriptions, shaky narration— but a genuinely mysterious, witchy quality elevates it far above the type of shoddy exploitation one would expect given the subject matter. However, the book also has a dark, driving energy generated by the upheavals of real life during its writing. Much of this is quite outdated, but at its core, it is as radical and shocking today as it was back in 1968.
It all starts with the fact that the young actor is scalded with hot coffee by Ann, a colleague whom he has just scolded. This sets the tone for their subsequent relationship, which is deeply perverted from the beginning and inevitably involves torture and murder. Ann resorts to tricks to make ends meet, and a couple of her clients end up falling victim to the psychosis of this depraved couple; one guy’s corpse becomes a human plant, raped in every conceivable way by his captors, who even cut holes in the torso to create new sexual holes. About how our not-too-heroic heroes fall out of society, grow long hair, and unite with a coalition of scoundrels who share their taste for murderous debauchery.
In short, these “Evil Companions” became everything that honest America was afraid of back in 1968. Nevertheless, events take an unexpected turn with the appearance of some researchers who want to use the main characters as guinea pigs in a series of experiments based on sex. The penultimate chapter, in which the main character takes to the streets of New York after his already overly excited libido has intensified even more, is impressive.
The fusion of pornography and the noir crime novel is tough to achieve without erasing the noir themes of guilt, loss of identity, or sinister reaction to internal needs or social injustice and replacing them with language and behavior aimed at stimulating the sexual curiosity or arousal of the reader. Suppose the writer depicts the self-realization of two people discovering sensual and spiritual reciprocity, discarding their social and religious sexual taboos. In that case, he describes a pagan holiday of feelings as “soft primitivism”. However, the main characters have freely expressed their desires but can only look into the void they have created within themselves; their will to exist is paralyzed. An example from “Evil Companions” is the narrator’s strategy of referring to his mother when he commits sadomasochistic acts (Perkins, 1993). It’s the example of opposite primitivism where ego release, resulting in the individual’s lust, preys on other people’s bodies, destroying both body and soul and, ultimately, his prerogative to exist in any human group. Perhaps the essence of the vision in all porn noirs lies in “rigid primitivism.”
The action of “Evil Companions” takes place in the East Village during the Vietnam War. Its plot involves several murders and mutilations of people lured into the apartment shared by Nameless and Ann. The story mainly consists of sexual mutilation and humiliation, rape, torture, necrophilia, castration, and, finally, the implantation of male genitalia into female genitalia. Events unfold on the verge of predatory sensuality, turning a sexual partner into dead meat. This is a kind of cannibalism if it means having the body of another in hatred and not feeling like a part of a divine universal living organism, as soft primitive peacefulness suggests. If the characters were not so amazingly wild, they would be overshadowed by scenes featuring anarchic mixtures of bodily fluids: urine, feces, semen, milk, vomit, and blood.
Porn noirs usually focus on extreme, psychopathic, neurotic, dysfunctional mental states. Identity doubts and paranoid insecurities are inherent in studies of sexual restrictions and their violations. Evil Companions combines this noir aspect with harsh criticism of the American society of the 1960s. Perkins puts forward arguments against how average citizens use money, the media, and lower-class outsiders to meet needs they are afraid to express openly. Dirty streets, begging children, alcoholics and poor representatives of the working class, office workers looking for earnings, and underage prostitutes are an example of the average person’s disinterest in the social injustice and repression surrounding him, which people from the “real world” apply to their psyche. In the background is hypocrisy about Vietnam and its war crimes.
“Evil Companions” is an ambiguous book of the 60s. In New York, in the turbulent years, a young couple explores the lower regions of the erotic unconscious. Exploring the connection between pleasure and pain, Perkins creates a scenario of what would happen if the hippie generation was as depraved and perverted as conservative observers imagined. Plunging into forbidden sexuality is shocking and intriguing. It is a delightfully pernicious play through the sexual taboos of mid-twentieth century America.
References
Perkins, M. (1993). Evil Companions. Masquerade Books