Images of Heidi’s apartment suddenly play like a slideshow in my mind. She had flashed that picture in my face that twisted night I found myself in her apartment. It was the ID with the pretty face Heidi was determined to duplicate. Billy’s tentacle prints are all over this scheme. Was this the “justice” he was talking about? The woman who now sits before me was our prey: chewed up and spit out like countless others. I was a part of a wicked machine that ruined lives and now I’m face-to-face with my evil. The problem is, without the drugs I have a conscience, and I’m devastated.
I sit there listening to her tell me the story I played an integral part in. I can actually feel her confusion, disenchantment, and anger, coupled with the urge to exact some sort of revenge or instant justice. If she only knew. Now here’s the question. Would she be more at ease if I were to disclose my connection to this wicked scheme? If anyone would understand, it would be Ms. Frey. She makes a living out of caring and being sympathetic, right?
Well, I never come clean with Ms. Frey. I quit the program after that day. I had a chance to make good and it disappeared as quickly as it revealed itself to me. I can’t bear to be around Ms. Frey at all. It’s true what they say: Secrets keep us sick. I’m still as sick and twisted as ever.
Months pass and I’ve got two days before I’m released. Soon I’ll be back in the abyss, and I’m sure this time it’ll be deeper and darker than ever. The game is funny that way — just when you think you’re on your way out, it pulls you back in. Rikers Island can’t change years of what life in the Bronx has bred. Who the fuck was I kidding?
Look what love is doing to me
by Marlon James
Williamsbridge
This is the year of the monkey. A Chinese john told me this after coming back from downtown to celebrate Chinese New Year. I was just shocked to see somebody Oriental cruising ass anywhere past Grand Concourse. I think he was rich too. But then they’re all rich, these johns who have wives and kids back home but then whisper to me that after feeling how tight an asshole is, could never truly love pussy. They tell me all sorts of stuff. Mostly they tell me to act like a girl, so I call them honeychile and flick my wrist like a faggot and that makes it easier, I guess.
Hey, white boy, watchu doin uptown? Lou Reed, the original signifying monkey. I’m older than I seem and younger than I look. Clever. Brains couldn’t save me last year when my dad kicked me out because I didn’t dig girls. I was like, Yo, Pops, I don’t eat pussy but I suck a mean dick. Not really. Not at all. After he got through with me, after my mom was more sick at the beating than what I was getting beat up for, she screamed and he stopped. Now I walk like Ratso and one day I’ll fuck him back up.
Right now it’s 11 in the night and I’m by Hammersley and Ely, right outside Haffen Park, watching cars go by. Cruising of a different flavor. Yeah, boyee, clever. I’m at Hammersley and Ely and I’m waiting for Gary to come shuff me off this mortal coil. Gary likes a good old mess so he’ll probably use that sawed-off of his. Or maybe his bowie knife. It’s weird waiting for somebody to kill you. Knowing that you’re going to die, knowing the end of the movie before the middle makes you do all kinds of shit. Wicked fly shit. It’s like knowing you have cancer so you can do that live-every-minute thing. So I went to McDonald’s and bought two fries. I shoplifted some Garnier Fructis from Rite Aid on Eastchester because I should at least smell good when they find me off Gun Hill Road somewhere.
A snapshot. We’re in the living room of my parents’ house on Gunther. We’re Jews, baby, the last of a dying breed in the Bronx. Gary is sprawled on the love seat, legs spread wide with boots on the chair arm. His vest is dirty as fuck and he’s wearing no shirt underneath. Baggy jeans, the brown ones I don’t like with speckles that look like dried blood. He really looks like shit, but it works. As I said, we’re in my parents’ house.
My mother is dead now. So too is my father. Both died this year. My sister Diane died several years before but just a few years after Dad stopped fucking her. Andre, he’s in jail with nothing but a conviction and no remorse. Ten months before they found him at the gate, trembling like they had dunked him in ice. Dude was still clutching the bloody hatchet and shaking like he got fits or something. The Post said they charged him for double murder and resisting arrest. My father had three hatchet wounds in his forehead, fingers chopped off, probably from trying to block the blows. My mom had to be buried with a closed casket. But enough about them. Gary is going to kill me.
Like just about everybody in the Bronx now, Gary is from Jamaica. I don’t know if he was doing guys given how Jamaicans, like, kill homos and shit, but I know he used to kill back there. Back in the ghetto and shit. See, I know, I represent. I miss him. I hate that. I sound like somebody old, and I have to be tough like him. I want to say I miss him, but I can’t. Maybe I’m just relieved. I don’t know. Some things you can’t unsay and some things you can’t undo. I’m at Hammersley and Ely and a car just slowed down. They used to kill people in this park almost every night before Rudy cleaned things up.
Another snapshot. When I met Gary I was already turning tricks, like four months after Daddy kicked me out of the house and I went downtown just to see the river. Nothing but boys in the street. I was so fucking hungry, yo. One of the boys was eating fried chicken. He handed me a piece and I ate the bone. Mad hungry. Chill, bitch, he said. I asked where he got the chicken, and he said I should let an uncle pay for it. One of them will be driving up in his Chrysler minivan soon enough. I’d only have to do two things. One was wait. He didn’t tell me what the other one was.
A car pulled up. He got in and waved at me. Darkness was hiding everything. I turned to go back to, I don’t know, uptown, I guess, even though that would take forever. Then this car pulled up and stopped beside me. “You’re new,” the man said. I didn’t know what he meant. I asked if he could get me some KFC and he said, “Get in.” I’m not stupid. I was sixteen and I knew a lot of shit and it’s not like I was going to vomit. Part of me wanted to be in the car. He got me some chicken and when I started to eat he unzipped his pants and took it out. I thought jacking off a dude was the same as jacking myself off and I was hungry. I grabbed his cock and he said, “No, baby,” and pointed at my mouth.
Gary’s coming for me. So stupid, all the shit that lead to this.
Third snapshot. So one day, or night, rather, I’m walking down Baychester, looking for a better highway to sleep under, I guess. First mistake, nobody looks for cock on Baychester. One person in the car says, “Yo, you one of them good-time boys?” and me, I’m thinking that I’m a pro so I can show some sass, so I say, “What kind of time you think is good?” And I’m riding this moment because I get to be all witty and shit, clever, and the car stops and he tells me to get in. And I’m looking around because this is the Bronx yo, not Chelsea, and I don’t want any trouble. But the man shows me some cash and I get in. Second mistake: Don’t jump in a car with a john without checking the backseat first. And the man, another Jamaican, says him don’t buy puss in a bag so open the bag and make me see the goodies, and I zip down my pants and take it out, and then he asks me to jack off and I’m feeling weird, like this is one of those real freaks who just wants to watch me cum, so I start to rub my cock even though it feels really, really weird, and suddenly the car stops and three guys jump out from the backseat. “Fuckin’ batty boy,” one of them says, and they open my door and pull me out. I didn’t even notice that we had turned down some lane and the only witnesses would be rats. So they form this circle and one by one they grab me by the shirt, spin their arms like a whirlwind, and punch me in the face or the stomach, and every time I get hit it’s like another explosion, and I vomit and that just makes it worse. And if I fall they pull me up and punch and kick me over to the next one, who punches and kicks me in the balls and I fall to the ground again and taste the garbage on the asphalt, and my eyes are so blurry that I can’t see nothing. All I see is four blurs bent over me, then all of a sudden there are three blurs, then two. Two blurs jump up and try to fight a new blur. The new blur is black and white at the same time. The new blur flashes something shiny and plunges into one of the two. The last blur runs to the car and drives off. The new blur smells like sulphur. I see a hand coming toward me and I try to push it off, but this last blur is too strong. Then I realize that I was in the air. Gary picks me up and carries me back to this place.