How To Rape A Straight Guy

by Sullivan, Kyle Michel

  “I don’t believe it,” said Wayne. “Maybe you forced yourself on a couple of fresh kids, but that doesn’t mean anything in the realm of empirical research.”

  “Speak English, you fuck,” I said.

  “He said your experiences don’t count -- .”

  “I know what he fuckin’ means,” I snapped. “I ain’t a retard. But he’s usin’ fancy words to hide the fact that he’s full of shit. All of it’s full of shit. ‘Empirical’ research. That’s some computer wuss goin’ out an’ askin’ questions of all these guys an’ decidin’ he knows what the fuck he’s talkin’ about, even when another wuss’d ask the same questions of a bunch of different guys an’ come up with a different answer. You wanna know what my ‘research’ told me? When I fuck a guy -- don’t matter if he’s queer or straight or old or young, don’t matter if I grab him at night or in the day, don’t matter if he knows me or never seen me before, don’t matter if he trusts me or tries to keep away from me -- when I get my dick up his ass, I can make him hard, an’ I can get him off. An’ I do it just to fuck him up.”

  “Pun intended?” Lenny snickered.

  Well...no, but I had to give him props for noticin’ it. An’ a chuckle. Guess I can be funny even when I don’t mean to be. But ol’ Wayne, he wasn’t done, yet.

  “Oh, please,” he said. “It’s impossible. Some men would be too afraid to experience even an erection, let alone an ejaculation.”

  “An’ just who told you that?” I asked. “Newsweek?”

  Wayne gave me this look back -- swear t’ God, if we’d been in prison, I’d of punched him. It was sort of an “I know what the fuck you’re up to” look that gets guys knifed. It must of popped out without him meanin’ it to, ‘cause a second later it was gone an’ this “Whatever you say” kind of manner took over with him. But it set off this bell in my head, not loud but there. An’ all of a sudden I’m wonderin’ if these guys think they can get me drunked up an’ back to their place an’ used like some piece of shit whore they’d conned into comin’ home with ‘em. Maybe they’d even grabbed a guy off Santa Monica an’ used him. Maybe that’s what all this bullshit chit-chat was really about -- checkin’ to see just what they might be able to get away with, or not. I mean, I know it’s happened.

  I met this one guy at Mid-State, he did it to a few fags over in Houston. Grabbed ‘em off the street in the queer district, tied ‘em down in the back of his van an’ fucked ‘em, then dumped ‘em out a few blocks away. They never got a good look at him; all they usually had was the color of the van. An’ even when one or two of ‘em told the cops, they never really came lookin’ for him. Typical. If you ain’t part of middle America or rich out the ass, cops don’t give a shit about what kind of shit happens to you. It means too much trouble for ‘em an’ they got troubles enough to deal with. Just ask a cop; he’ll whine for hours ‘bout how much crap he’s gotta put up with, like nobody’s got it worse than him. Selfish fuckin’ babies.

  Anyhow, the guy didn’t get caught till he pulled it on some fag while he was in San Francisco. He was seen kickin’ this beat-up half-naked guy out the back door of his van an’ was chased down by a bunch of pissed off queens. In drag! Even then, he figured the only reason he got put away was ‘cause the guy he fucked’s dad was one of those “I’m proud of my gay son” types an’ was a judge. No cop or D.A.’s gonna piss off the man who might handle their next case. So he got “two to five” an’ has to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

  “Like that means shit,” he told me. “If this’d been Texas, I’d have got off with probation, at worst. An’ you think when I go back they’re gonna give a shit what I do to a bunch of queers? Shit, no. Not with Republicans runnin’ the fuckin’ state.”

  I hear he got out six months ago. Wonder if he’s back in Houston?

  But knowin’ that guy -- an’ keepin’ my distance from him; not so much ‘cause I was afraid but more ‘cause I just didn’t want the trouble his kind of shit brings -- it got me to thinkin’, “Maybe they really think they’re gonna pull this crap with me. Maybe that’s really what this is all leadin’ up to.” If not that, somethin’ like it. It’d be funny to see what’d happen if these two middle-aged faggots tried that shit. An’ maybe a little fun. See who’s really in control here. See what happens when they find out I’m on to their crap. Okay, fuckers, I figure that’s a game I can play. Shit, I know it is.

  That’s when I smiled an’ looked at Lenny an’ said, “Fuck, ol’ Wayne ain’t much fun, is he?”

  “It’s been a rough year for him,” said Lenny. “He’ll loosen up with a couple more screwdrivers.” Then he gave me a look an’ added, “Of course, we have the makings for all kinds of drinks, at home. It certainly wouldn’t take up so much of our ready cash.”

  I got the hint. “We’ll buy you drinks as long as you want, but if you want some money from us, there won’t be as much left.” So I smiled an’ gave off a good long stretch that showed off my pecs an’ shoulders an’ said, “I don’t like silly drinks. All it takes is a decent beer in the fridge to make me happy.”

  “You like an ice cold Beck’s?” he said. An’ that was the magic word -- Beck’s. Ol’ Lenny went in for the kill an’ got lucky. That’s when I decided for sure, “Let’s see what happens with these two fucks.” So I smiled at him...an’ then at Wayne. An’ he sort of smiled at me, an’ all three of us left.

  Lookin’ back -- I could tell, even then, I wasn’t all that up on joinin’ ‘em. The little bells were still chimin’ in my brain, givin’ off the idea that I was makin’ a mistake. That I oughta go home to my wife, get a good rag goin’ an’ wind up fuckin’ her. An’ Connie, she had a lot of good things about her. I mean, it ain’t many chicks’ll stick by you through six years in prison. She even got me some jobs on sets -- carpenter an’ crap like that -- but then things’d quieted down an’ she had to fight to get jobs for herself. Oh, she could’ve made it okay if she hadn’t had this big dick of a husband draggin’ her down, but she never said nothin’ ‘bout me gettin’ lost. Except when she was pissed, an’ even then it was more like, “pull your own weight, asswipe.” So I had an idea, even then, I was tossin’ aside somethin’ I really needed -- no, wanted. But like the big dumb log-headed idiot I am, I just sort of drifted along with ol’ Lenny an’ Wayne, sniffin’ after a brewski an’ a couple of bills. Driftin’ just like I had my whole life. Driftin’ straight into hell.

  What a fuckin’ idiot.

  Chapter Two

  I walked with them over to Lenny’s place, that turned out to be Wayne’s, too. They shared this townhouse or duplex or whatever you want to call it in West L-A, where the parkin’s the worst an’ parkin’ enforcement’s mean as a gangbanger after a week in solitary. It wasn’t a fancy place on the outside -- I mean, from what I could tell in the dark -- but even with the nearest street lamp half a block away an’ the night clouded over, I could see they kept it up. The two inches of front yard they had was covered with roses an’ this thick kind of ivy-like stuff reachin’ over the cement blocks beside the steps an’ up the cement walls. The place was square with a flat roof -- not good in LA in the summer; makes the house hotter -- an’ a yellow light was on by an iron gate of a door. The windows had bars over ‘em, too. Reminded me of my six years at Mid-state, though this was a little cozier lookin’.

  Inside, it was all done up in the best queer taste -- big solid antiques all over “draped” with pillows an’ afghans an’ flowers in vases or plants in pots, knickknack shelves an’ big-framed pictures coverin’ “tastefully subdued” wallpaper, windows that had what Connie once told me were “treatments” to give them “character” -- making it just scream “faggot hole.” Most of the pictures were of smooth naked guys posing like girls with pouty lips an’ arms stretched back. Like any real man’d think that’s sexy. Made me want to laugh an’ puke at the same time.

  What is it with fags buyin’ into everybody’s idea of what a fag is like? Girly shit everywhere
that no girl’d have in her place. Connie’s big into nice things an’ decoratin’ an’ makin’ a place to her taste an’ all, but she never had crap like this around her. She went for clean an’ simple an’ easy to keep up an’ comfortable, things that make a room a home an’ not some overdone shit you find in a decorator’s window. But these two? They’re the type that gives all fags a bad rap an’ keep it goin’.

  I knew a couple of fags at Mid-State who were as much like a guy as me. They were in for drugs -- possession, I think, but it might of been more -- an’ didn’t seem all that bright; but hey, look at me -- I ain’t exactly a poster boy for higher education. But these guys, they were okay. Couple of regular mutts, not overbuilt, not smooth skinned, not bitchy or faggotty, just a couple of...well, I guess they sort of fit into the stoner dude life an’ they just got off on each other. That don’t mean they couldn’t fight if they had to. One of ‘em knew Aikido an’ showed it off on a couple of vatos who thought he’d be funny on his tummy; the other just fought like a street punk, mean as shit an’ nowhere near as fair. You could respect both of ‘em, even if they did like to suck dick.

  I figure there’s lots more like ‘em all over the place. But since all you see on the TV an’ in movies an’ in the news an’ shit is the weird ones, you think all of ‘em are weird. An’ guys like Lenny an’ Wayne buy into the weirdness, too, an’ keep it goin’...just like most of the guys in queer town.

  But at least Lenny made good on his word -- a dark ice cold Beck’s. I dunno what it is, but black German beer makes me happy. An’ horny. Maybe it’s the bite to it. How it don’t just pretend it’s beer, like that piss-water from Colorado, but first it lets you grab it an’ then it grabs you right back, like it’s sayin’, “I ain’t gonna play around, asshole; I’m the real shit.” I once thought that I wouldn’t mind goin’ queer if I met a German faggot who owned a good brewery an’ was built good an’ liked it up the ass. But most of the Germans I’ve seen look like sneaky rabbits, an’ I hear none of ‘em’s cut, so I guess that leaves that out. Too bad, in a way.

  I took a long drink of the beer an’ flopped onto a big-backed chair. No sense in lettin’ myself wind up on the couch too quick, not till after the third or fourth Beck’s. Maybe. I was already buildin’ a little buzz from the Heinekens at the bar, though they don’t really count as bein’ beer ‘cause they brew ‘em here in the states an’ make ‘em half what they are in Europe. I know ‘cause this one faggot I let have my dick had some direct from -- where’d he say? Denmark? Holland? -- but I’d had three or four, so I was gettin’ in the mood.

  Lenny an’ Wayne sat on opposite ends of the couch, both lookin’ at me an’ tryin’ to be cool, but I could see their eyes dartin’ from my face to my crotch to my pecs to my legs then back to my face. An’ I played ‘em, no question. My jeans were tight an’ I wasn’t wearin’ my briefs; I took ‘em off last time I hit the john. An’ I kept my legs apart, not so wide it looked like I was tryin’ to be hot but just wide enough to let ‘em get a good idea of what they could have. I was figurin’ I’d get maybe two-fifty, three-hundred from ‘em an’ an encore at some later date, the way they were droolin’...Lenny way more than Wayne.

  We bullshitted some -- about how good Beck’s is an’ how long they’d had their joint an’ how they thought of themselves as the West Coast “Felix an’ Oscar” but out of the closet. Wayne had to explain to me about “The Odd Couple” since I never watched TV outside prison. Never paid attention to reruns. He did it like some bitchy old maid schoolteacher would; “Well now, little boy, this is a story about two middle-aged men who live together, and who are real opposites, in everything, and how they get on each other’s nerves, just like real people do,” an’ yap yap yap, just like a Chihuahua. What did Lenny call him? “Condescending.” Yeah, that’s it.

  Thing is, Wayne did look a little like Jack Lemmon. I’d seen him in this old movie Connie made me watch, which I didn’t mind so much ‘cause I’ve always had the hots for Shirley McLaine; she looked like she could handle herself. Anyway, Wayne had that same fussy directness an’ the same kind of hair an’ sort of the same chin, even if he was a good forty pounds heavier.

  Now I could tell Lenny’s got all these questions he wants to ask me ‘bout what happened in prison, but he kept dancin’ around ‘em, like they were snakes tryin’ to bite him. It was Wayne who finally gave up on the bullshit.

  “Tell me something, Curt,” he said, leanin’ forward just a bit, his eyes lookin’ straight at me. “Have you really raped a man?”

  Lenny rolled his eyes at that an’ sneered, “Of course he has, twit. He’s been in jail. I mean, look at his tattoos.”

  “Porn stars have the same kind of tattoos, Lenny,” he sniped back, “but they haven’t necessarily forced a man to have sex with them.”

  “Porn” stars? Fuckin’ asswipes that let themselves get fucked for cash on video? That got my back up. I glared at Wayne as I said, “You think I do porno?!”

  He backed down a bit...but not much. “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I’m asking.”

  That really pissed me off. I swallowed the rest of my beer an’, since Lenny’s was on the glass coffee table between us, I helped myself to his. He let me. Then I leaned forward an’ looked straight into Wayne’s eyes an’ said, “I did six years at Mid-State. For drugs. They don’t allow private visits with your wife, an’ your right hand only goes so far. You do the math.”

  “But c’mon, there are other possibilities,” Wayne said. “Gay men who are willing to have sex in exchange for -- .”

  “They give you AIDS,” I said.

  “Oh, now that’s insulting!”

  “That’s the truth, you fuck!” I snapped. “Most fags in prison got there ‘cause of drugs -- usin’ ‘em, whorin’ for ‘em, stealin’ to buy ‘em, that kind of shit. If they ain’t got AIDS from gettin’ fucked, they got it from a needle. Only dumb fucks do it with them. Then those dumb fucks take it home to their wives an’ girlfriends, or they gang-bang a guy an’ give it to him an’ he takes it home when he’s let out. Smart guys get fresh clean meat, straight guys in for the first time. Smart guys keep ‘em to themselves as long as they can.”

  “An’ you’re a smart guy?” Wayne asked.

  I just sneered at him. “I don’t think I’m all that fuckin’ dumb.”

  “How many times have you been in?”

  “Why?”

  “Just curious. You sound rather experienced for someone who’s only been to prison once.”

  Shit, the fucker was payin’ attention. An’ it was makin’ me feel...well, feel weird. Like they wanted me t’ tell ‘em more than I really wanted to. But it also felt...I dunno, felt good to be talkin’ to somebody besides Connie. Somebody who acted like they gave a shit, even if they really didn’t. Connie, she’d act like she’s listenin’, but after a while I figured out she was really thinkin’ ‘bout somethin’ like the costumes she had to pull together for nothin’ for some low-rent movie she was workin’ on, so I stopped tryin’ to talk with her. But Wayne -- it seemed like he wanted to know. Really wanted to. An’ not just to be nice, y’know? Or for chit-chat.

  Then I got the idea there was somethin’ more goin’ on here, somethin’ I couldn’t quite figure out. An’ I remembered I got the same vibe earlier from him, so it made me want to be careful with how much I did tell him.

  I must of taken longer than I figured to answer, ‘cause Lenny added, “Well, are you up for a third strike?”

  I shook my head. “My first time, I was a kid. They wiped it clean when I met probation. Then came Mid-State.”

  “Were you raped?”

  That question came at me, low an’ quiet, from Wayne. Now I remember I’d already told these two I wasn’t, so now I knew they didn’t believe me. But I wasn’t gonna tell ‘em anything else. Problem is, he got my mind ripped back to my first time inside.

  I wasn’t even eighteen. Just a dumb-shit kid who got too deep into pot an’ wound up havin’ t
o pay off his dealer by doin’ some transactions in “home room.” I got narc’d out by this little fucker named Anthony on the school’s varsity baseball team. Little “Mister Born Again” Boy Scout bought a joint off me an’ turned it over to the principal, who turned it over to Vice, who turned me over to the County Jail.

  Now, I’d never been in trouble, before -- I mean, not where th’ cops had come down on me -- so it looked like it was just gonna be a smack the wrist time for this one. They put me in a holding cell an’ called my mother to come bail me out.

  Good ol’ mom did just like she always did -- she bailed. Told ‘em to make me take care of it, myself; that she was “tired of dealin’ with me.” Like she ever had really “dealt with me.” Fuckin’ cunt. She could get stoned an’ blasted an’ knock me around -- till I got big enough to knock her back -- an’ leave me to fend for myself most of my life, but th’ second I get in copland trouble, she figures, “Well, he sneaks out at night an’ gets stoned an’ had a fight or two an’ my new husband doesn’t like him, so he’s on his own.” I hate her fuckin’ guts, an’ when I finished with that stint, I split. I’ve only seen my brother, since.

  So there I was, this scared punk kid caught dead to rights an’ no one backin’ me up, with a public defender who had a thousand other cases to follow. He told me to plead guilty an’ he’d try to get leniency. I got lucky; the prosecutor offered a plea bargain of six months in county, an’ the judge said that if I was good, they’d wipe the slate clean. So in I went.