“Please,” Seth said. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t make me repeat myself, Seth or whatever the fuck your name really is. It makes me angry.”
Seth undid the seatbelts.
Larison said, “Are you gay, Seth?”
“No!”
“Then why do you like to beat up gays?”
“I don’t like to!”
“So many lies, Seth. So much denial. I used to be the same. Although I never stomped anyone over it. Still, it’s always been a secret for me. A deep, dark secret I would never tell a soul. I’m only telling you because you’re a stranger and we’ll never see each other again. Isn’t that odd? I guess we have to tell someone.”
“I’m not gay.”
The dark, the privacy, the kid’s protests… the post combat aftermath. It was all turning Larison on. A lot.
“I’m going to help you through all that denial now, Seth. And here’s how. You’re going to kiss me.”
“No!”
Larison tightened his grip in the kid’s hair and pressed the knife a fraction harder against his throat. The kid whimpered.
“Lean forward, Seth, and open your mouth.”
The kid was shaking, but he complied. Larison, so turned on his heart was pounding, pressed his mouth over the kid’s, keeping the kid’s head in place with the grip he had in his hair. He pushed his tongue into the kid’s mouth and the kid moaned, in pleasure or disgust or both Larison didn’t know and didn’t care.
Larison broke the kiss and said, “Now stick out your tongue, Seth.” The kid did. Larison sucked on it. The kid tasted of alcohol and fear. The taste made Larison darkly crazy with lust.
Larison broke the kiss again. The kid was panting now. Larison could feel himself throbbing in time to it.
“Now, Seth,” Larison said, their eyes locked from inches apart. “Reach out and undo my pants.”
The kid, panting, said, “Please.”
Larison pressed the knife in and the kid cried out. “All right!” he said. “All right, I’m doing it…”
And he did. In the darkness, the sound of Larison’s zipper was huge.
“Now reach inside, Seth. Reach inside my pants and get my cock out.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Seth said. “Oh, God.” But he did it. Larison could feel the kid’s hand shaking as he gripped Larison’s cock.
“Now lean forward, Seth. That’s right, lean forward. You’re going to suck my cock, Seth or whatever the fuck your name really is. And you better leave me happy. Because if you don’t, I’m going to leave your body in this car. You understand?”
The kid nodded, eager now, maybe because he thought he saw a way out, maybe because he couldn’t help himself.
“You’re going to swallow everything I give you. Every fucking drop. You better make me happy, kid.” It wasn’t just the pleasure Larison was after. He also didn’t want to leave DNA anywhere it could easily be collected.
The kid nodded again and leaned in, Larison’s hand still gripping his hair, the knife still at his throat.
Maybe it was the kid’s fear. Maybe it was that it was that it was his first time. Whatever it was, it was the best head of Larison’s life.
When it was over, and the kid was sitting up again, gasping, Larison closed the knife and clipped it back in his pocket. He didn’t care if the kid ran now. It wouldn’t make a difference.
He redid his jeans and looked at the kid. “That’s what you were so afraid of,” he said. “That’s the thing you couldn’t face about yourself. Well, now you know.”
The kid, still panting, didn’t answer.
Larison said, “Now you don’t have to help your fucked-up friends jump faggots you meet in bars. Not that they’re ever going to be in a condition to again, but still.”
Again, the kid said nothing. Larison supposed he was in shock. He opened the glove compartment and found the registration.
“How do you like that,” he said. “Your name really is Seth. And now I know where you live, too. So God help you if I ever hear of a fag beating anywhere near the Lost Coast.”
“You won’t,” Seth said. “I promise.”
Larison wondered. “Get out of the car,” he said. “I’m going to drive it back into town. I’ll leave it near the plaza somewhere. You’ll have to look around, but you’ll find it. The keys will be under the front driver-side tire.”
The kid got out of the car and stood there, looking confused and afraid and forlorn. Larison slid over to the driver’s seat. He turned the key and the engine coughed to life.
He reached for the door handle and looked at the kid. “If I ever,” he said again. In the circles he was accustomed to, threats made you sound weak. But the kid wasn’t of that world.
The kid shook his head quickly. “I won’t. I won’t.”
Larison pulled the door shut and drove off.
Four minutes later, he was back in his car, the surfaces he’d touched in Seth’s Corolla all wiped down. Two minutes after that, he was back on the Redwood Highway, heading toward the Oregon border, the redwoods dense and shadowy to his right, the Lost Coast disappearing like a dream behind him.
He wondered whether he’d straightened the kid out, whether by fear or by shock. He wondered whether the kid would get over it, and wind up in another bar somewhere, flashing another lonely guy that same, beautiful smile.
He decided no. Because that smile was never going to be the same. It was lost now, like Larison himself.
Q&A: J.A. Konrath Interviews Barry Eisler
Joe: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe The Lost Coast is your very first short story. Why haven’t you visited this form before?
Barry: Because you’ve never suggested it to me, you bastard.
Kidding, obviously — my reluctance has been despite your frequent blandishments, and I’m glad you finally got through to me. I think there were a number of factors. The thought of appearing in an anthology or magazine never really excited me that much, even though an anthology or magazine placement could be a good advertisement for a novel. And probably I was a little afraid to try my hand at the new form (though now that I have, I think I must have been crazy. Short stories are a blast to write). In the end, I think it was the combination of knowing I could reach the huge new audience digital publishing has made possible and make money doing it. Plus you just wore me down.
Joe: I really liked the Larison character in Inside Out. Though he’s one of the antagonists in that book, I wouldn’t actually label him a villain. He’s more of an anti-hero, sort of a darker, scarier version of John Rain. Why did you decide to write a short about him?
Barry: As usual, it wasn’t a conscious plan; more something influenced by my interests, travel, and reading habits. Anyone who reads my blog, Heart of the Matter, knows I’m passionate about equal rights for gays. At some point, I was reading something about gay-bashing, and I had this idea… what if a few of these twisted, self-loathing shitbags picked the absolutely wrongest guy in the world to jump outside a bar? That was the story idea that led to The Lost Coast.
Joe: The ending of Lost Coast is pretty ballsy (in more ways than one.) You could have gone a more conservative route, but you didn’t wimp out and shy away from what I feel is a laudable climax. Are you purposely inviting controversy? Was this the story you intended to tell from the onset?
Barry: I imagined it from the beginning as a pretty rough story — a little about redemption, a lot about revenge. But midway through it got darker than I’d originally envisioned. Thanks for saying I didn’t wimp out because for me, the story was being driven by Larison, who while being a fascinating guy is also a nasty piece of work. When I’m writing a character like Larison, there’s always a temptation to soften him a little to make him more palatable to more readers, but in the end I’ve always managed to resist that (misguided) impulse. For the story to come to life, you have to trust the character as you’ve conceived him and as he presents himself to you. For better or worse (I’d say better), that’s what I’ve done with Larison.