How To Rape A Straight Guy (19 page)

Sure enough, my old mug shot from Mid-State flashed onto the news the next day.  “Wanted for questioning.”  “Person of interest.”  I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid.  I was stayin’ in this piece of shit motel on the east side of Vegas’ airport.  One of those cribs where there’re more bars on the windows than you find in prison.  Where you know the cops’ll stop by sooner or later an’ the clerk’ll turn you without even lookin’ up from his “Playboy.”

Everything got real clear, after that.  I left the motel room, bought some new clothes, then came back an’ showered an’ shaved.  Then I went over on the strip an’ had a decent meal at the Paris -- my first since before that night.  Then I drove back to L-A.  No way was I gonna make this an “extradition” case an’ add to the headlines.

I got in early -- well, about ten pm.  I didn’t want to do anything ‘fore the eleven o’clock news, so it wouldn’t make headlines till tomorrow.  So I stopped near my mom’s house.  She was livin’ in Altadena, north of the 210, with her shit of a husband.  But I didn’t care about that; I was lookin’ for my little brother.

Last I’d heard, he’d be graduatin’ from college right around then.  It’d taken him five years.  Mom an’ the SOB’d made him work his way through; their “real” kids took preference.  I just wanted to see if he’d made it.  But no way was I gonna knock on that door.  No fuckin’ way.  So I sat there an’ waited.  An’ hoped he’d happen to show up an’ send me a sign or somethin’ on how he was doin’.

Funny, my wantin’ that.  We’d talked about crap like that the last time I really saw him.  I mean, we’d talked on the phone a couple times -- when he answered it instead of my mom or the SOB.  But I hadn’t really talked with him since just before I was sent to Mid-State.  Shit, almost eight years ago.

It was just before my trial.  He was fifteen.  At a bus stop, on his way home.  I’d been waitin’ for him, an’ when he saw me drive up, he wasn’t surprised.

“Hey,” was all he said.

“Hey.  How’s it goin’?”

“It’s goin’.  You comin’ to see mom?”

“Fuck that.  I just wondered -- well, you wanna grab a bite or somethin’?  I’m payin’.”

“Sure.”

He hopped in the car an’ we hit an “In an’ Out Burger” just down the road.  He wolfed down a double with fries an’ four refills on Dr. Pepper.

“Shit, don’t mom feed you?” I asked.

“Healthy shit,” he said with a shrug.  “Crap that tastes like cardboard.  But the girls love it since that’s all they know.”

“They’ll learn.  Listen, I...uh, I may be gone for a while.  Three years, maybe.  Dependin’ on how things go.”  I was a real optimist, back then.

“Oh.”

“Didn’t want you to think I forgot you.”

“You want me to come visit?”

God, he was a sharp kid.  “They won’t let you without mom, an’ she won’t let you.”

“Okay.  I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

We sat quiet for a while, then I asked, “How’s school?”

“Okay.”

“You think you’ll go on to college?”

He grinned.  “I’m already workin’ on it.  Doin’ an AP.”  I must’ve given him a full blank stare, ‘cause he added, “That’s Advanced Placement.  Good for college credit.”

“Shit.  You always were smart.”

He shrugged.  “I figured it’s necessary.  Sort of a preemptive strike.  Mom let me know, all I’ll get is room an’ board if I go on.  This’ll cut the cost.”

“Fuckin’ bitch.”

He shrugged.

“So you’re goin’ on, then.”

He nodded.  “I like English.  Lit.  I mean, all lit. Literature.  I’m thinking I might write.  Maybe work at a paper or some online news, something like that.  Who knows?”

“You won’t let nothin’ stop you, right?  Right?”

He just looked at me then focused on the last of his fries.  They were swimmin’ in ketchup in the little cardboard holder.  He picked some out an’ licked ‘em off his fingers.  An’ suddenly I was hit by how good-lookin’ he is.  Sandy hair.  Dark eyes.  Clean face.  Startin’ to fill out, just I did at that age.  All of a sudden, I hurt for him.

“I mean it.  Don’t let anything stop you.  Not mom’s shit.  Not that son-of-a-bitch she married.  Nothin’.”

I was close to cryin’.

He looked at me.  “Y’know, we’re studying Russian literature, right now.  Short stories, mainly.  By Chekov.  He’s all about man trapped in his fate, so no matter what he does, he can’t escape it.”

“You believe that?”

“I dunno.”

“You know what I think?  I think we got more control than we think.  But we’re too dumb or too lazy or too lost in stupid shit to see it.  Me, every time I’m about to fuck up, a little bell goes off in my head an’ this voice says, ‘don’t do it.’  An’ every time I’ve done my crash an’ burn, it’s been when I tell that voice to fuck off.  So you -- you got that voice in you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Listen to it.”

“Okay.”

“No, promise me you’ll listen to it!  Please!  Please.”

He finished his fries an’ slugged down the last of his DP.  “Thanks for the meal.”

I knew I was pushin’ too hard, so I just said, “It’s nothin’.”

I drove him up the hill to about a block from the house.  As he was gettin’ out, I said, “Y’know -- you’re gonna be okay.”

He looked at me.  “Will you?”

The question shot right through me.  He’s the only person who ever asked me that.  The only one who ever really honestly gave a shit.  An’ I didn’t have any answer.  All I could do is shrug.  He just nodded.  Nothin’ more to be said.

I watched him trudge up the hill to where he lived -- I refuse to call that fuckin’ place a home.  He didn’t look back.  Didn’t wave.  Nothin’.  Just walked into the house.

So there I was, just down the street, waitin’ for -- shit, hopin’ for a final glimpse of him.  Waitin’ for somethin’ to show me how he’d done.

Y’know, I’m not gonna bullshit anybody here ‘bout how this sounds.  Comin’ from me.  Knowin’ what I’ve done an’ how little I’ve fuckin’ cared about the aftermath of it.  But I know if anyone’d ever done to him any of the things I’ve done to -- to some guys, I’d have killed the motherfucker.  If I’d found out Wayne an’ Lenny’d made him one of their boys, I’d have tracked ‘em down, cut off their dicks an’ rammed ‘em up their asses before I slit their fuckin’ throats.  An’ no walls could’ve stopped me.  No cops.  Nothin’.  I’d felt like that about him all along, even while I was wreckin’ other men’s lives in Mid-state.  An’ after.  But until this sudden fuckin’ freaky connection I’d made with Shayes, I hadn’t realized how -- shit, just how fucked up I was to have done it.  To’ve found reasons for it.  To’ve excused it an’ made myself feel better ‘cause of it.  ‘Cause there were lots of other people feelin’ the same way ‘bout their brothers.  An’ sons an’ friends, even.  An’ till I’d lost Shayes, my attitude would’ve been, “fuck you.”  Now?  Now I didn’t know what the fuck to think.

A car drove up the hill.  A little Mini.  A cute little brunette was behind the wheel.  She pulled into the driveway -- an’ my brother popped out of the passenger seat.  An’ God, he was perfect.  Clean clothes, cheap but nice.  Wide grin.  Happy eyes.  I could see ‘em dancin’ even from fifty yards away.  He’d filled out a little; not nearly as much as me but as much as he could of, considerin’ his old man was a married accountant in Minneapolis.  Accordin’ to my mom, that is.  But the bitch might’ve been lyin’.  An’ he held himself straight.  Rock solid.  The girl got out an’ they hugged then headed into the house, his left arm over her shoulders.  An’ I think I caught the gleam of a ring on her finger.  I think -- no, I know.  I know.  I know for abso-fuckin’-lutely sure it was a ring.

An’ I started bawlin’.  Blubberin’ like a fuckin’ baby in that old Malibu.  Thankin’ God for how dark a night it was so my brother never could’ve seen me.  Thankin’ God he was gonna be all right.  At least somethin’...somethin’...somethin’ in my life was gonna be all right.  Somethin’.  In spite of everything.  It wouldn’t be perfect; I don’t believe that’s possible.  But he wouldn’t be a total fuck-up like me.  Wouldn’t kill anyboy’s future or hopes or dreams or love or any of that shit.  He wouldn’t be like our mom was with us.  I could see it in how he kept contact with her.  Even now as he was about to start his own life.  Even now that he was able to tell her to fuck off, like she deserved.  Even now he could move to fuckin’ Maine an’ never have to see that cunt, again.  He was keepin’ contact with her ‘cause she’s his mom.  Cunt that she is, she’s his mom an’ she’s part of his life an’ he was gonna make the best of it, no matter fuckin’ what.  An’ then one day the fuckin’ bitch’d see.  She’d finally see how much she’d fucked up her life, too.  Especially now that she’s made it so perfect.  She’d never admit it to me, but she might to him.  An’ that was good enough.  That was good enough.

It took me ten minutes to regain control.  An’ when I did, I drove straight to LAPD headquarters an’ turned myself in.

Epilogue

To make this already long story a little bit shorter, I got twelve-to-twenty on a plea deal.  Seems the videos showed not only what I did to Shayes, but what Wayne an’ Lenny did to him after I was out.  Obviously out.  For four solid hours.  The D-A wouldn’t tell me what was on ‘em, but I could guess from how tight he got in his voice.  An’ I can’t blame him for not wantin’ anybody to know about that an’ fuck Shayes over, even more.  Plus, I know they showed me bein’ raped, too, which complicated things.  On top of it all, the D-A had some details he wanted kept out of the papers.  Like what happened to Shayes -- well, let’s just say there’d been a couple of complaints filed against Wayne an’ Lenny before, for -- how’d they put it? “Gettin’ carried away?” -- with some of the guys they’d hired.  An’ how the cops hadn’t done a fuckin’ thing about it.  But now they had it all on video.  With sound.  Glorious fuckin’ sound.

Turned out the fuckers produced some of their own pornos.  Bondage things.  Leather.  “Fantasy Fetish” shit they kept in a back room an’ let only their “special” clients rent or buy.  They even did some “by request” or “special order.”  They had hundreds of ‘em.  An’ there were “indications” that some rich fucker from Belgium or Beirut or somethin’ was payin’ ‘em to do a queer snuff film just for him.  Shit, fuckin’ Wayne an’ Lenny -- givin’ good ol’ Larry Flynt a run for his money.

I didn’t fight it.  None of it.  I took the DA’s offer an’ let it roll.

So now I’m back at Mid-State.  An’ Connie’s jumped out of my life.  An’ it’s cool.  All she an’ I really had in common was the fuckin’.  An’ now that I can get that same sense with a guy, why even ask her to stay?  Not that she would’ve, but I think she was pissed that I didn’t at least ask.

As for Mid-State, it’s funny -- but I do get how this place works.  Get it like I never could get on the outside.  Like I was born to it.  Like Shamar said.  An’ fuckin’ Chekov.  An’ while the guards may give me a little shit over Shayes, him bein’ a “fellow cop” an’ all that bullshit -- as if, as regards them -- it got me a huge round of respect from guys in the colony.  Black, white, brown, yellow, fuckin’ pink purple polka dotted -- they all look at me as the guy who fucked up a cop.  So I get served the best chow.  I got the best cell -- a two-fer even though most of the new guys are crammed into tight little four-by-fours.  An’ I get first dibs on the new meat -- an’ yes, even with all I’ve said, I still make use of it.  It’s too much a part of the reality of this place.  Shit, I’m treated like a fuckin’ king.  An’ I like the power it gives me.  An’ the peace.

‘Course I never told ‘em a thing ‘bout how I felt about fuckin’ Shayes.  Never will.  Instead, I’m just tryin’ to get the same feelin’ with my new punk.  An’ I gotta admit, it’s close.  Close to the same tenderness an’ compassion an’ ache an’ anger.  This one’s a nice-lookin’ kid caught up in drugs -- makin’ cat or X or something like that an’ now in for ten.  He was easy to break in ‘cause I don’t make him do all that much.  Just let me hold him.  Pretend he’s somebody else.    An’ he’s happy to do it.  Sort of.  ‘Cause he’s seen what happens to other guys like him then they come in here.  An’ he knows I can protect him.  So I’ll probably keep him the whole time he’s in, even if somethin’ better is rostered in.

An’ somethin’ fresh an’ good is always rostered in.  We got a system that thinks it’s better t’ put guys in jail an’ let ‘em become whatever they become ‘stead of tryin’ to help ‘em stay human.  How’d this one guy put it?  “A survival of the fittest mentality.”  I figure eventually they’ll stop even offerin’ probation an’ just build enough jails to keep all the criminals in for the rest of their lives, no matter what they did.  Saves time an’ effort, in their little pea brains.

But I still gotta wonder how the hell I could let my life got so fucked up.  I didn’t aim to wind up here.  Didn’t plan to fuck myself so completely.  But somehow I did one major perfect job on me.  An’ yeah, I may’ve had help along the way, but that’s just an excuse.  It seems like this is the only future I ever really saw for myself, an’ I did my damnedest to fulfill it.  An’ so when you think about it that way -- I got exactly what I wanted.

But you what’s really funny?  I’m not sorry for it.  ‘Cause what I did -- as fucked up as this sounds, I connected with Shayes.  Somehow.  Way down deep.  I don’t know where or why or how come or anything.  I just know it brought me time with him.

An’ it felt so right

when we drove up the coast

on that cold stormy night

an’ for those few, few seconds

while my head felt so light

I knew deep inside

there’s no reason to fight.

No reason, at all.

Yeah, I know, I know -- what I did to him was rape.  An’ there’s nothin’ worse you can do to a guy.  But it didn’t have to be like that.  Not with any of ‘em.  It could’ve been more.  We could’ve been close.  Close like I’ve never been with anybody, not even Connie.  ‘Cause I didn’t really need the power.  Didn’t really need the control.  All I really needed was somebody as strong as me who’d let me hold ‘em an’ be with ‘em an’ even lean on ‘em if I needed to an’...an’ why couldn’t I have seen that, years ago?

Shit.  Looks like I fucked myself out of that, too.

About the Author

I read. I write. I paint and sketch. I want to make movies. I live in a quiet world, alone.