CHAPTER

SEVEN

THE EXPRESSION ON CHRIS’S FACE COULD HAVE curdled milk.

He was as cocky as ever, in his mid thirties, good looking, and athletic. The women at District Four, who swooned over his pencil sharpening, dubbed him “Spaghetti Spinetti” referring to his birth in Boston’s Italian North End, and the rumored likeness, long and thin, of his prominent family jewel. His dark hair and eyes and full black mustache garnered Chris more than his share of sexual opportunity with women. Opportunistic men had to wait in line. He had fathered two daughters, and then more than a year ago, after ten years of marriage, his wife divorced him. The rumors started then: stories of Chris haunting tearooms, cruise areas, the Zone, all in the name of police work.

Chris came down hard on me when I was shot. He was sure the case was more than small-time robbery (my story) and he was right. I was trying to score. I could see the low-life scum look aimed at me. He questioned me in the hospital until I prayed for an overdose of Percocet—anything to stop the chatter in my brain. Then he tried baiting me. He was sure I was a dealer, and he knew my contacts, etc., etc. I had sold to my drug-using friends small-time, not to make a living. Chris didn’t like me—he made that clear— and he was eager to escort me, at my earliest fuck up, to the nearest slat house. I sensed there was more to his anger than just a desire to rid Boston streets of drugs. Call it intuition, prophecy, whatever you want—Chris was angry with me because I was gay. I was too much of a homosexual for his tastes. An over-the-top queen who didn’t give a fuck about anyone else’s opinion. I could see it in his angry eyes as I sweated in my hospital bed.

There was a rumored darker side to Chris, too—whispered secrets on the street. I tried to persuade Stephen that Chris wasn’t the Jesus figure he imagined, but Stephen’s mind was made up. My somewhat naïve journalist friend liked Chris’s ego stroking: the easy charm Chris could display when needed, the flirtation and compliments, the solid-working class, no-bullshit attitude. But all was not right in the world of Chris Spinetti and I knew it. Chris’s divorce had been nasty. There were tales of abusive behavior, presumably against his wife. The two girls were in their mother’s custody, so Chris was alone in the world, and, as far as I was concerned, a loose cannon. Added to that were the rumors about his homosexuality, which from his attitude towards me, I judged to be true.

“Asshole!” Chris’s voice boomed through the Déjà Vu. “I’m on a case—I should run your ass in.” Several men jumped to their feet and rushed toward the exit.

I lit a cigarette. “How’s the wife and kids?” I asked in a breathy exhale. “I paid my admission, just the like the rest of you perverts.”

He reached for my throat, but then thought better of it.

“Cody, you’re fucked up. You got nothing to do with this, so, be my guest, take a hike. Strictly business, understand?”

Stephen, sensing the impending explosion, spoke up, “Look, why don’t you two cool off. Des was the one who convinced me to come here. I didn’t want to come alone. My mistake.” Stephen rose from his chair and slammed the seat against its back. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Wait a minute,” the detective ordered. “We’re not through.” Chris stepped over his chair and settled in next to me. “A TV on drugs is not your most reliable person.” His shiny white teeth looked vampiric in the flickering light.

“I’ve been clean since I was shot and you know it. You remember—we had some tea and sympathy in my hospital room about my unfortunate mishap. After that came recovery and serenity. You ought to try it.”

“I hear about the bodyguard shit you try to get away with. It’ll be a cold day in hell before you get a license. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen.”

I pointed my cigarette in his direction. “You seem angry, Chris. You got a bad case of the coming out blues?”

“What are you saying?”

“Enough,” Stephen said. “Let’s at least go into the lobby where we can see each other.”

We trooped from the seats into the dirty brown light of the lobby. I gathered my share of stares, the most disapproving of which came from Chris. He looked like a wild beast ready to kill, like a junkie without a fix. My black dress, blond wig, and faux pearls were lost on Chris. I crushed out my cigarette under the “No Smoking” sign. Chris lit another. The men leaving the theater avoided us, and those coming in gave us suspicious looks before veering off into the darkness.

“On second thought, it stinks in here,” Chris said. “I’m leaving.”

Stephen grabbed him by the arm. “Two men are dead. This whacko may be after me. Des dragged me down here because I— you got it?—I want you and your police buddies to do something. You won’t come to me, I’ll come to you. I don’t want to end up in the morgue.” He pointed to me. “Des, you might as well hear this, too. I’m getting death threats. More than one, in the mail, on the phone. I’m paying attention and I’m getting scared. Could be Rodney Jessup. Could be a neo-Nazi group like Aryan America. Could be a lone psycho. I need your help.” Stephen leaned against the grimy wall. His shoulders sagged and his mouth turned down in the tired light.

“Relax,” Chris said. He sounded a bit more civil as he looked around the lobby. “This isn’t the place to talk—not good for you or me. I’m available. Call me.”

Chris patted Stephen on the back and strode out past the bored Turkish ticket taker, leaving me to contend with a man as bleak as mid-January.

“Well, that was fun,” Stephen said, forcing a fake smile. “The next time you convince me to visit a porn theater remind me to have my head examined.” He wriggled his fingers at me, wanting a cigarette. I obliged. He lit up and said, “I’ve had my fill of this place. The movies look awful and John’s waiting up for me.” He pushed himself away from the wall.

“One question, before you leave,” I said. “What is Aryan America?”

Stephen frowned. “It’s not the Daughters of the American Revolution. I’ve been researching them for a column I’m doing. They’re based in New Hampshire, a group of neo-Nazis. Some of the younger ones, skinheads in their twenties, come into Boston looking for trouble. In fact, I was thinking that you might be a good plant.”

I laughed. “You’re insane.”

“You’d fit in. I don’t. You could get inside…put those hate mongers out of business.

“You are media struck. They’re more than hate mongers, they’re thugs, possibly killers.”

Stephen hugged me.

“Watch the makeup,” I said.

“Stay safe, Des. Thanks for being here. Sorry it didn’t work out tonight. At least I got Chris’s attention. Call me tomorrow.”

Stephen walked out the door and blended into a clump of men prowling the Zone. I was left with the incessant sexual gymnastics on screen. Oh, Déjà Vu, ma maison. The feeling was too comfortable.

I thought about Stephen’s crazy Aryan America idea for about a second before I dismissed it. He could use me as his researcher and I could go along with it, half because of ego and sense of adventure and half because I might put them out of business. I might even be able to pull it off. I could resurrect all the unfocused rage of my youth and channel it toward my own kind. I could bash fags with the best of them; open the vein of Aryan America and spill out its bloody secrets.

I shook my head to rid myself of that ridiculous idea.

Maybe I already knew too much about them for my own good, or they knew too much about me. After all, a bullet had come cruising through my hall window about a month ago.

And, I knew Stephen Cross.

One woe doth tread upon another’s heel.

Ten days after I turned 15, my parents kicked me out of the house because I was queer. I was one of those teenage statistics that you hear about so often. Not that my family was particularly close. My father couldn’t have cared less about me, and my mother was consumed with making a living. My dad was disabled and angry and spent most of his time coping with depression. It was up to my mother to hold the house together. I guess she figured it was easier to feed two mouths instead of three, so she supported my father’s rage.

On the eleventh day after I turned 15, I hustled in a porn theater. A businessman from Westchester County smuggled me into the Pussycat Theater on 42^nd Street. I crouched behind his pinstriped legs and moved under the turnstile. The large woman in a floral print dress who was selling tickets was too preoccupied with the weekly TV Guide to notice. The businessman got the blowjob of his life and I earned twenty bucks - good wages for fifteen minutes of work from a starving kid. I ate a steak at the Howard Johnson’s on Broadway and then found a flop house for the night where I slept in a tiny room on a bed with dirty sheets. It rained hard during the night and I looked out through the ripped curtains to the street which was white, red, and green with wavy reflected lights. I also saw the bums and winos huddled in a subway exit and sprawled in the doorways of deserted buildings. I thanked whatever God exists that I wasn’t sleeping with rats or shitting my pants because I was drunk or hopped up. Some bums were too proud to do what I did; but I wasn’t. From that day on, sex provided me with food and a roof over my head and I was grateful. Sex also defiled my innocence, made me look older than my years, and gave me countless cases of the clap and crabs. Most of that occurred before I learned that a hustler had to take care of himself in order to earn big money. I also discovered condoms. I was proud that I could slip a condom on a man without him ever knowing it. Sex gave me comfort in my loneliness, boosted my self esteem, and provided a rush. Sex led me to alcoholics and junkies, to financiers and CEOs. Sex strangled my youth, yet kept the boy and man alive. I desired sex as much as I desired book learning. A young hustler’s career is short. I worked as long as I could until I found other ways to make money. Dealer to friends. Occasional pimp. Sometime laborer.

I took a respite from hustling for two years. I ended up one miserable night at a home for wayward boys on the Lower East Side because I got the flu. Fortunately, one man, an ex-Catholic priest, who was a saint as far as I was concerned, offered to take me in. He introduced me to Shakespeare, Marlowe, Tennessee Williams, and William Inge, all the great dramatists. Plays were my escape. Many nights in the kitchen, we would act out the parts and then talk about what the lines meant. The ex-priest had been an editor and knew language. He made me write essays about the plays and then corrected my English. I was never happier. He made me understand the benefits of study and the worth of learning. So, for two years I wrote, studied, and learned all I could. But my idyllic little world ended when the home was closed and my mentor was forced to move away. I took it hard and I fell off the wagon with an offer of money for sex. Soon, I was back out on the street.

I did too many drugs and had too much sex over the years, but I was never stupid. I kept reading because some viral voice in my head kept telling me that I needed to learn from words, and most of what I needed to know was in Shakespeare.

I looked at the black silhouettes in the Déjà Vu and remembered why I was there. Not for sex, food, or money, but for the love of a friend. Who were these men that hovered around me? Were they sad, happy, drunk, gay, or straight? What about the married man from Wellesley in the fifth row? What had convinced him to leave his wife at home on a Saturday night? Too many questions on his mind? All these years he thought he was straight, until he noticed a neighbor showering at the squash club. Now he can’t stand to be around men because he gets shaky inside. A trip to the Déjà Vu, a straight porn theater filled with fags, will confirm his heterosexuality. Maybe the American Dream is collapsing around him.

I bought into the American Dream for a time. But it faded one crystalline October morning in Central Park. I lost the dream of cars, white-picket fences, two kids, and Golden Retrievers. I knew him from the times I’d had to rough it on the streets; he’d been kind to me. I discovered him on his stomach under an iron bench near the Alice in Wonderland playground. I knew what it was like to be without shelter. His exposed skin was tough and red and his clothes were soiled with chocolate brown spots. A gray squirrel loped to his side and nipped at his right hand. I chased the squirrel away and watched the sun split through the buildings in the east. The park was as good a place as any to die. I alerted a jogger in blue sweats that my friend had died and asked him to call the police. Standing a safe distance away, I watched as the ambulance drove into the park, casually, as if in slow motion. There was no rush. This was someone homeless, without friends or money. Why not take their time? They put on their yellow latex gloves and loaded him onto a gurney. I decided I didn’t need the Dream because of its inequities. No amount of Dream living was going to change who I was—a small-time hustler who worked the streets for money. However, I didn’t hate myself. My determination to be my true self was stronger than the Dream could ever be.

Shortly after 11p.m., sex walked into the Déjà Vu.

I watched as the man I’d talked with outside Matt’s Leather Emporium pushed open the theater doors. He was wearing the same black jeans, white T-shirt, and leather jacket with taloned eagle patch on the right arm. Butch lifted each booted foot with commanding purpose. In the smoky cavern of the Déjà Vu, the young man with the incendiary blue eyes strode down the aisle like an agent of Lucifer, choosing the men he would cast into hell. I followed within a few yards.

Butch scooted into a seat next to an older man, leaned to the left, and whispered in his ear. The man shook his head. Butch lifted his long legs over the seats in front of him and disappeared into the depths of the next aisle.

I lost him for fifteen minutes. I covered the theater, poking my head into places I shouldn’t have. My mind began to play games. I half expected to hear a scream—the knife plunging into the next victim. Was Butch the Combat Zone killer? Knives floated through my mind like an insomniac’s sheep. Stephen’s SS dagger. Silver, gleaming blades. I was getting spooked.

I ducked into a darkened doorway. The red plastic exit sign and background lights were shattered. I backed into a corner and bumped into a body. I turned, startled. Cat eyes would have helped, but eventually my vision adjusted to the extreme darkness. Butch was molded into the corner. I could barely see him in the paltry light that filtered through the door.

“Sorry,” I said.

No response. I moved away.

He grabbed my shoulder. “You’re a man.”

“Sherlock Holmes, I presume. I think we’ve had the pleasure of meeting.”

“This afternoon—”

“—Perceptive. I believe you stood me up. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Butch hitched his jeans. “I got another trick. More money.” He stared at me. “Why do you think you’re better than me?”

“Better than I. In that sentence, you need to use ‘I’, not ‘me’.”

“That’s exactly the kind of bullshit I mean. Better than us hustlers. Talking like you’re a fucking English major. You’re working this place, too.”

“Not exactly. But if I was, you couldn’t see me for the crowd.”

“You got that twenty-five?”

“Not on me. I don’t carry wads, least of all cash, to the Déjà Vu.” I pressed closer to Butch. The moment our intimacy started to heat up, the sex hounds descended. Three men walked out of the darkness and surrounded us like hyenas anticipating a kill. Testosterone was thick in the air. I asked them politely to move away and they retreated. Prickles of excitement skittered across my skin. I thrust my hips against his, ran my hands over the firm stomach and pectorals underneath his shirt. I should have resisted, but I couldn’t. “How’s your girlfriend?” I whispered.

Butch shoved me from the corner and sent me hurtling into a row of seats. The back of my thighs struck a wooden armrest as my heels went out from under me. I caught the top of a vacant seat to keep from tumbling backwards into the chairs. My tight dress worked against me, and I struggled not to fall. I yelled and kicked into the darkness, but he was gone.

“Shit,” I said to the shadows. The back of my legs stung and my dress was ripped about two inches below my ass. I saw a flashlight swinging down the aisle. It was time to exit before the manager made the decision for me. I held the back of my dress together and walked out. A depressing mist swirled around me as I hailed a cab at the corner of Essex and Washington Street. When I arrived home, I gave the driver my strand of faux pearls as collateral while I ran into the apartment to get $10. A quarter of a jar of cold cream later, I was in bed, rubbing the back of my legs.

***

Four loud knocks awakened me from a heavy sleep just after 2:30 a.m. The pounding on my metal door seemed like a dream at first—then the knocks came louder, harder. I was naked and sluggish, but bright enough to grab an iron fireplace poker I kept under my bed for just such an occasion. I snatched a towel from the bathroom, wrapped it around me, and barely missed stepping on my favorite Lena Horne album as I stumbled to the door.

“Who is it?” I asked.

No answer.

“I’m not opening the door until I know who’s there.” I wasn’t worried about forced entry. My door was triple locked on the frame and police-bar secured from the floor. Feet shuffled in the hall and a shadow blotted out the crack of light under the door. A shiver ran over me.

“Please open the door.” It sounded like Butch, although the voice was cracked and dry and barely above a whisper.

“How the fuck did you get in?” I was pissed now and heat rose in my face.

“Someone left. I came in.”

Damn neighbors. I unlocked the door and opened it a crack, but kept the chain lock on. The unprotected bulb in the hall glared down. Butch was slumped on the floor near the window. Blood had caked from a cut on his upper lip and his right eye was purple and puffy. I was ready to take the poker to the other side of his face to even him out. “Spying on me? How did you know I live here?”

“Let me in,” he pleaded. “I knew you lived here. I’ve seen you.” He crawled toward the door.

I thrust the poker through the crack.

He stopped.

“Fuck you,” I said. “I don’t play games. You’ve got ten seconds to get out of here, otherwise the cops come.” I slammed the door shut.

“Wait, Cody….”

I froze. He knew my name.

I grasped the poker and crept to the door. As quietly as I could, I disengaged the chain and swung open the door. He was standing in the hall like I was going to invite him in. I grabbed his jacket and slammed him into the wall. I brought the poker down on his windpipe and jammed my knee in his crotch.

“I’m not in the phone book,” I said. “Talk. Now!”

His face contorted; he tried to speak and couldn’t. I eased off on the poker, but lodged my knee tighter against his testicles. My towel slipped off my waist.

“Let me go,” he sputtered. “I won’t bother you.”

“You’re fucking right you won’t because I’ll have your balls on a plate if you so much as move.”

He turned his head to the left, so I got the full effect of the beating he had taken. I felt slightly sorry for him.

“I’ve been in a fight. I feel sick.”

“How do you know me?”

“I lived down the street at number 91. Thought I recognized you this afternoon. I remembered at the Déjà Vu.”

I didn’t believe him for a moment. I knew everyone in this neighborhood except the shut-ins; such a hot number would have been extremely visible on the street. I was certain he had followed me. “You’ve got a good memory—maybe too good.”

I was naked and vulnerable. I stepped back, sliding the poker under his ribcage. “Open your jacket,” I commanded. I patted him down. No weapon. “Hands up. Turn around slowly.” He obeyed. I positioned the poker at the base of his spine. I ran my left hand over his body. My fingers stopped on the three-and-a-half inch handle of a three-bladed Browning field knife wedged between his boot and left pants leg. I thrust my hand under the cuff of his jeans, pulled out the knife and dropped it on the floor when I saw the blood on the handle. I needed to get my fingerprints off the knife.

I backed away. Except for the knife, he was clean. “Okay. Inside, but be careful. Don’t step on the records.”

Butch wove around the dustcovers on the floor and collapsed into a chair across from the bed. I switched on the overhead lights and pulled on a pair of gym shorts. Butch watched me blearily, unconcerned by my nakedness.

“Got any dope” he asked?

“Don’t do it. What do you want?”

“I came to collect on our deal.”

I laughed. “Now? You want me to pay you $25 to have sex now?” All I could think of was blood-spattered Emery after Alan punched him in The Boys in the Band. “You are definitely not ready for your close up.”

Butch looked perplexed and shook his groggy head. “I need the money.”

“You’re a bloody mess and I need my sleep.”

“I’ll take a shower. We’ll sleep together. Can I have a smoke?”

I tossed him the Marlboros from the coffee table and settled on the bed with the poker by my side.

“It was a good fight,” he said and then lit the smoke. “Assholes called me a faggot.”

“Do you have any sweet Jesus idea what’s been going on in the Combat Zone? The murders?” He shrugged, exhaled, and threw the pack back to me. I reached for an ashtray and lit up. “There’s blood on your knife. Mean anything to you?”

He stretched out his long legs and stared at his leather boots. I leaned closer to him; his eyes were bloodshot and tired. My hand started instinctively for him, but good sense told me to back off. He wasn’t like Danny, a college student out for a good time. This man touched me in a deeper way—he was one of the damaged ones, a murky inhabitant of the street. At one time, I had been like him; I understood his struggles. His taut skin was pale and creased with fine lines. The face was structurally handsome—wide, a bold chin, the blazing blue eyes the centerpiece of the picture. There was a small scar under the lower lip I hadn’t noticed before and his nose was slightly off-kilter from a break. Under my questioning, he bounced his fingers on the tops of his thighs and shifted his feet. I pushed myself further back on the bed, wary of the attraction spreading over me.

“I didn’t kill no one,” he said, his voice spreading over with pain. “Stanton didn’t deserve that. Everybody knew him. Stan—”

“—Stanton? Was that the kid from Dorchester who was murdered recently? He was a hustler?”

“Sort of. He tricked some—not much. He needed money for college. We talked sometimes. He was nice.”

I stared at him. Despite the cut and the puffy eye, he seemed physically unaffected by his injuries. It was obvious he’d smoked a joint or two.

“Sometimes johns get rough,” he said, reading my look. “The blood’s mine. A fight once in a while is part of the game.”

“Nobody called you a faggot?”

He looked away from me. “No.”

“What else have you lied about?”

“Okay, a few things, but I’m no fag. I’d seen you around. I followed your cab. Tougher to get inside. There’s a flyer on the stairs with your name on it and C. Harper on the mailbox. I took a chance.”

Butch was a decent detective. “I thought so. You’re a little defensive about your girlfriend, aren’t you?”

“Sorry. I hate it when people make fun of me, when they think they’re better than me.”

I had to admit, I had used a tone of superiority with him at the Déjà Vu. I handed him the ashtray and he crushed out his cigarette. I gave him another and he lit it. I walked to the sink and doused a paper towel with water. He pressed it to the cut and the wet paper bled pink.

“When you need money, you do what you have to,” he said. “I got no parents. Ran away from a foster home in Albany. Boston seemed like the place to go. I thought I’d spend summers on the beach, but there ain’t no fucking good beach in Boston.” He took off his jacket. A blue tattoo popped out over his right wrist. I read two words written in flowery script: Aryan America.

I made no attempt to conceal my curiosity. “Aryan America. What’s that?”

“Used to belong. Not now. I left. Things got too personal.”

“They figure you out?”

He jerked his head up. For an instant, hell burned in his eyes. “Carl, Adam, Hugh, the others, they were my family. The best I ever had. They treated me like something other than a piece of shit. They bailed me out in Michigan. I was only doing what they said. Beat up a couple of black guys. Nothing against them, I was just doing my job for the family. Carl, he was like my father. His son, Adam, was like my little brother. Carl taught me what I needed to know. He loved me, gave me money. Fixed me up with Jule, this girl from South Dakota. I was lonely as hell before I met Carl. Spent some time in jail for assault. You don’t know how lonely life can be until you’re in jail.”

A full life for someone I judged to be no more than twenty-five.

“That’s all,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Tell me more.”

Butch drew in his long legs. “Pay me.”

“How much?”

“Twenty more.”

“Done. Go ahead.”

He took off his jacket and threw it on the bed. He pulled his T-shirt out of his jeans and ran his palms over his lean stomach. “Jule Percy was her name. I loved Jule. Long brown hair, beautiful blue eyes. Hugh, this guy my age, fell in love with her too. I met Hugh near the Zone one night handing out White Power stuff. He was doing what Carl told him. The next day he took me to New Hampshire to meet Carl and it was like Carl adopted me. Called me his lost son, just like the story in the Bible, he said. Carl was a father to every guy, but he especially liked Hugh and me because he figured we knew how to keep our asses clean. Whatever Carl said, we did.”

“Even if it came to beating up blacks and queers.”

“Couple of times.”

Butch’s eyes never waivered as he explained his past. I got the idea he could easily be a killer if pressed into service. He dabbed the paper towel on his lip. I got an ice cube for his eye.

“We were all close at the compound in New Hampshire,” he continued. “A real family, but that was when things went bad. I’d see Jule with Hugh sometimes. They’d be talking and it’d bother me. Then I’d wake up at night and she’d be gone. She’d say she had gone for a walk, but I knew the truth. I could smell spunk on her. I took it a couple of times, but one morning just before dawn she woke me up. I could smell Hugh on her and I hit her - hard. When Hugh found out, he said he’d kill me. But before anything could happen, Carl stepped in. He said it wasn’t good for the sons of Aryan America to fight each other. Not over a woman. ‘Stick to the rules,’ he said. That night when I went back to my cabin, Jule and all her stuff was gone. I never knew where.”

He stripped off his shirt; his chest was hairless and his stomach thin, but packed with a ripple of muscles underneath. His nipples were brown and large.

“What about Hugh?” I asked.

Butch swiped his shirt across his chest. “Hugh hated me from then on. He told Carl that he met me in the Zone, that I was turning tricks, that I was a fag. So, Carl tried to ‘convert’ me, teach me how to be a man. But that pissed me off, and I told Carl it wasn’t true, so he dropped it. Hugh still hated me because of Jule and he told Carl that I was after him. One night after dinner at the compound, Carl took me up to his office and asked me about what Hugh had said. I told him that Hugh was full of shit, but Carl thought it would be safer if I left Aryan America because this bullshit was all over the compound. I fucking wanted to kill Hugh, but there was nothing I could do.

“That night I heard scratching on the screen and I looked up and saw Hugh through the window, grinning at me in the moonlight. He was holding something, but I couldn’t really see what it was—I thought it might be a gun. Scared the shit out of me. I yelled and he ran away. The next morning I got out. Hugh’s crazy.”

I was astounded by what I was hearing. Stephen’s research into Aryan America and Butch’s testimony had piqued my interest. “Where is the compound?” I asked.

“Don’t go there, unless you want to get shot. The family is all over Boston—I’ve even seen Hugh here, but he hasn’t seen me. The compound’s near Warren. Ask any of the hicks. They’ll tell you where it is.”

I jotted down the town. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. Who are you?”

“Clay.”

“Clay—a nice name. Very earthy.” A warm shock jolted me. “Take a shower, Clay. There’s a bandage for your lip in the medicine cabinet.”

Clay rose from his chair and stepped gingerly over the records on his way to the bathroom. I stripped off my gym shorts and took down a leather jockstrap from the wall. I picked up a Japanese condom from the nightstand and then put it back. As I recalled, Clay did not get fucked. I sat on the bed, smoked a cigarette, and listened to the water run in my tiny shower. The faucet squeaked, the water stopped, and Clay appeared in the door, a towel wrapped around his waist. The purple swelling around his eye looked less puffy. A bandage covered the cut on his upper lip. All-in-all, he looked fairly presentable. He walked in front of me and dropped the towel.

“I’m no fag,” Clay said.

“I know,” I whispered. I was transfixed. Hard muscles flowed underneath the lean flesh. Clay’s shoulders were broad and his hips narrow. A feathery trail of brown hair led down from his navel into the spreading hair of his groin. His uncircumcised penis was long and thick and hung, along with a hefty set of balls between two well-muscled legs. I caressed his thighs, then turned his back to the bed and sat him down so his knees rested over the side. I pushed his upper body back onto the mattress. I got down on my knees and rubbed his penis and testicles. His cock grew with my touch; the balls scrunched closer in their loose pouch.

Clay lifted his head and said, “Faggot, give me a blow job.”

In the right situation, the words could have been a turn on. I didn’t like them from Clay.

“Shut up,” I said. “I’m paying you. Don’t talk.”

I lowered my head toward his groin.

My mistake.

Clay bucked up from the bed. His abdomen smashed into my face; his right hand pushed my mouth into his crotch while he grasped my neck with his left. His strong hands forced the air from my windpipe. My ears buzzed. My throat burned. I gasped and tried to wrench myself free from his grip. The world was turning red.

“I should kill you faggot,” Clay hissed. “You’re scum, a maggot.”

The pressure increased and blackness began to spin around me. I opened my mouth as far as I could and bit hard, not knowing where my teeth would land. Clay screamed and his hands flew off my neck. I thrust upward with my head and butted him under the chin.

Clay shuddered and fell back on the bed. His penis was still erect as he went down. He was excited by his extreme domination. Blood flowed down from one leg. My teeth had carved a bleeding circle in his left inner thigh.

“Get the fuck out,” I shouted. I ran to the bathroom, rinsed out my mouth with mouthwash, then gathered his clothes and threw them on his limp body. I had definitely sent stars spinning in his head. Clay moved slowly under his shirt and jeans.

He shook his groggy head and said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Just how I get off.”

“You need a good master. I’d think twice before I’d try that on anyone else, especially considering what’s going on in the Zone.” I threw $45 on the bed. “Now, get out.”

Clay clutched the money and stuffed it into his jacket. He lumbered into his clothes as he felt his jaw. “Look…I’m sorry, man.” He touched his leg. “You fucking bit me.”

I glared at him before I opened the door and invited him out again.

He walked out of my apartment. I heard the downstairs door slam. I locked the door, retreated to my bed, and was consumed by a sudden shaking fit.

The next morning, I found Clay’s knife, name engraved on the handle, on the floor under the hall window where I had dropped it. I picked it up with a paper towel, wrapped it in a clean cloth and hid it in my bookcase behind Suddenly, Last Summer. As I stepped away, my legs buckled a little and visions filled my head. Clay thrusting the knife into Stephen on a humid summer day in Boston, Clay carving a swastika in the stomach of a sometime hustler from Dorchester. Clay, a bad boy with a knife. But was he the killer? I didn’t know.