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California Rimshot!

By: CalHollows



Maybe I'm just stupid. Maybe that's the reason. I have to learn and relearn the same lesson over and over: Sometimes our dreams and goals spin around and bite us in the ass.

I'm Chip Beaker. I'm in a lot of trouble. And it all started with that damn apartment.

Way out on Santa Monica, it sat high over the street and glimpsed the big, blue Pacific, out there heaving against the shoreline. ...A front of windows angled from the sun. Balcony - to sniff that fresh salty breeze. Airy. Roomy. Furnished - OK, in that Ikea flatware look, but I needn't do any heavy lifting to settle in.

...Don't get me started.

Sitting at the breakfast bar, filling out the paperwork, I felt tenant-envy coursing through me. I hadn't a prayer of landing this place. It was out of my reach. But maybe... maybe something could be arranged, something would iron out the wrinkles and I could land in this little corner of paradise with my oversized bath towels, Tupperware, and ancient Ned the bipolar parrot. 

The calm super took the forms, looked at me and winked. He swiped his fingertips up my midsection and whispered, "Hope you get it." I'd made him the moment we met - closeted, traditional family at home anchored with at least two fat kids, payday-to-payday, sketchy criminal history, horney as a truck driver. Nevertheless, I gave him a look of shocked disdain. It's good to keep in practice. He chuckled as I huffed out, so I flipped him the bird over my shoulder.

Later, a call came from the landlord. His voice was accented... Russian, I guessed, with a rather unsavory lilt dripping in it.

"I'm looking over your information," he said. "Do you have any other source of income?"

Somehow, I knew bartending four slow nights a week at a West Hollywood cruise hole called Bottom Out didn't impress him as high-flight life choice.

"There's nothing I can really... sink my teeth into," he continued. At his pungent stress on "sink", I realized he was blessed with delicacy of an Australian saltwater crocodile. I recalled leaving a Xerox of my driver's license. It wasn't a bad photo. In fact, I thought it made me look quite youthful and dewy. Evidently, so did he.

"I see... How deeply would you need to bite?" I asked, the answer already filled out in my head.

"Why don't we talk about that? In the flesh?" he oozed.

Sometimes, in life, we come to a crossroads. We realize the decision we make, in that moment, could affect us all the days of our lives. An apartment, even one in the cool of the city, with a view and spacious closets, seemed poor exchange for my self-respect, my integrity.

"Sure," I answered quickly. "...How 'bout tonight?"

"Perfect," he said. "We understand each other."

"I think I can provide what satisfies your needs."

When I hung up, I debriefed myself on exactly what I was getting into. As a younger man, I'd traded some of my time and energy for... benefits. I wasn't a common rental - don't the wrong idea. I didn't haunt stoops and doorways, waiting for some guy with radar bone and a wall of quirts at home. My clients deliberately and discriminatingly were chosen to provide me with lifestyle to which I was thoroughly unaccustomed. Some of them, oddly the most indulgent and receptive, were deep in the coat hangers, with public reputations as bold breeders to uphold.

However, that randy game was long past. The best keptors like 'em young. The older we go in the trades, the smaller the rewards - in every way - and less desirable the clientele. At 25, you're geezed out. And a few years after that, you might as well be Bob Barker doddering in studded chaps.

Still, I wasn't exactly sure what I was in for. For the first time in my life, I wanted someone at my back, so I decided to talk to Ron about it. Didn't really know how to put it to him, though - how to ask for... Help? ...Protection? ...Someone to call the authorities if I fly out a window with splooge in my mouth? I rolled into his bar in Sunset Junction, just west of Silver Lake and its unfortunate innocent-bystander carnage. The smell of beer breath washed over me in a cool wave of air-conditioned familiarity. 

While he shot pool and occasionally broke for a smoke outside, I laid out the deal to him. Finally, he propped himself on a cue and studied the table.

"It all sounds pretty safe to me. Don't see why you need help." He made a loud shot and a ball grumbled into a pocket, then thundered in the guts of the table. He took a sip of beer. "If you think it's worth getting boned for a place to live, go for it."

"You wouldn't?"

"Look, Chip, you came to me for permission, right?"

"Well, no, dad, I can make up my own mind, thank you."

"No, no," Ron said waving his finger. "You want me to validate this as a good idea. You want me to say it's OK."

"Leave out the thrift-store psychoanalysis, Ron, and let me have it."

"OK. This is immoral. It's dispiriting. And I wouldn't do it." 

I couldn't believe it. This was the guy who once suggested we roll a drunken drag queen on Los Feliz; I barely talked him out of that little stunt. Now he'd gone all Billy Graham on me.

"You're kidding me, right?"

"I don't whore, Chip. My ass is precious."

"Precious? ...To who? A drunk Mexican soccer team?"

"It's your life, Chip. Do what you want. But it all seems cheap and disgusting."

It occurred to me our perspectives were off-kilter because I'd never filled in Ron on my history as a stash. The set-up didn't mean the same to him as it would to someone who'd... done... made that kind of... arrangement. I decided the best idea was showing him what was at stake.

"Look at this. Here it is," I said, pulling the color property brochure out of my pocket and circling the table. Glancing at it, he said, "Yeah, real nice. Still wouldn't fuck him for it.""

Out of sheer frustration, I blew my top. I left a few moments later, after Ron and I had exchanged scatological profanities - what they'd call in a Shaker community "oaths". I made a few calls and finally lined up Jamal to head downtown with me. And fuck Ron. He'd blow the guy in a second for a keep so fair.

That evening, Jamal and I sat in his car at the landlord's address, across Seventh near Fig, looking at what seemed a mixed residential and office building. Lights blazed at the top where, counting the floors, I assumed my appointment would be waiting. ...Waiting to drive his hard bargain.

"So just, remember, if you get my auto-dial in the first half-hour, it means we're in trouble," I said, checking my cell for no good reason.

"What do you mean 'we', honkey. You're the one fuckin' him."

"I'm glad I got you on my side, Jamal."

I breezed up to the top floor. There was only one door outside the elevator; I stepped out to the entrance, enclosed in slick metal. Just as I was about to knock a perfunctory voice said, "It's open," through an intercom. The speaker was just at ear level and I gave a little start as the sudden words popped out of nowhere, right next to my head.

Opening the door, I paused to scan the place and stopped when I saw him; he stood cross-legged, leaning on a rich desk at the other side of the vast aircraft hanger of a room. He smiled, and indicated with his finger "come" and "sofa", so I did just that. 

"There's no point in waiting for to come the street car," he began. His accent was much stronger in person. "You want an apartment. I want some... companionship. I don't think I have to draw for you a picture."

He was burly and handsome in a hawk-nosed, ancient Roman senator kind of way. It was easy to picture him with a glass of Madera, taking in the Mediterranean as a kid gargled his knob. His polo shirt looked like it cost most of Thailand just to stitch up, and his shoes would someday be featured on "Antiques Roadshow" in the "you hit the jackpot" wet-dream.

"I get the idea this won't be a one-time thing," I said, clearing my throat slightly.

"...Depends on our deal."

"One time, you knock $800 off the rent and no security deposit."

"...Once every week, half the rent and I forego security until you move out," he shot right back.

I was feeling a little cocky. "Why don't we defer nailing it down until you know what you're getting?"

He looked puzzled. I was in a mood to gamble: "This first one is free. If you likey, then we do this: Free rent and $100 per visit, every other week."

"You're pretty sure of yourself," he replied. "A hundred is fine - but every week."

"...Then $200."

"...Deal," he said quite unexpectedly. "Would you like a drink?"

As he poured, lit up some weed and made small talk about traffic, weather and Lakers, I scoped out his orgy pit. ...Blood-red curtains, black marble, polished red and white slate floor tiles, and rugs from big endangered animals. ...Very suitable for an outer ring of perdition.

Finally, I put down my wine glass and stood against a wall, facing him.

"I don't know why it's important to me that you know, but I've never done this sort of thing before," I lied. 

I began unbuttoning my shirt.

"But you are a very attractive man (that wasn't really empty flattery). I think something like this would be very difficult if that weren't so. (No... not really.)"

My fingers moved to my pants and I unzipped them, then ran my finger up the fly, fingertip just poking inside. He rose from his desk and approached. At full height, he wasn't as big as he seemed across the room. Once he reached me, he thumped open the top button of my jeans, and I gave a little start as they fell open.

"Call me Mig," he said softly, with his accent blurring the line between "Mick" and the jet fighter. He began running his hands up and down my torso, pausing to pinch nipples or run a finger along the root of my dick. It was my intention to look unsteady and a little anxious - the shy always fire the hungry.

"Do you need to call your friend across the street?" he asked, watching me breathe.

I became genuinely unsteady and a little anxious.

"No," I said, stifling a cough.

"There's nothing to fear." His words oozed through a shark's smile.

Once his hands traveled up to my shoulders, I relaxed. The set-up was clear: He'd push me to my knees, I'd toot the flute and that would be that. But then he disappeared from view. I felt my pants jerked down and a ravenous mouth gobbled my dick.

"Ummph!" I grunted, and fell back on the wall, startled. He was going to town - deep-throating the length of me in long, even gulps.

Wow...

Suddenly, I found my pantomimed arousal much easier to perform. I sighed after one particularly long swallow and reached out for support, grabbing the antlers of what looked like the stuffed head of a midget antelope hanging on the wall.

"Yeeeoww!" I cried as the horn point jabbed my palm. Convinced this was a yelp of passion and I was heating up, his furious sucking grew stronger. I shook the pain off my hand and gave in to the blow-job. Mig was quite the oral artist, really. He swirled his tongue around the cap of my dick and then engorged himself fully on it. My body involuntarily rippled with each stroke.

"Uh... Mig," I whispered in a gasp. "I'm about to come."

He didn't seem to hear me. Instead, he paused to slurp a forefinger, then jammed the wet digit up my ass before launching back on my beet-red dick. That was all the trigger needed, grandma. "Ow," I yelled. "Ahhhhhh!" ...To which his strokes became even more frenzied. I shot my load in his mouth with a moan, and banged against the wall in tremors awhile. His cheeks bulged a moment. Then he took his time lapping my dick clean. At least the guy's neat, I thought.

I leaned against the paneling, not even trying to collect myself. Mig stood and shouted behind him.

"Gnep zee shtep borzinitski snet."

A door at the rear of the room flew open and a woolly buffalo of a man chugged out in a bathrobe. From it's opening in front, an angry dick the size of a celery stalk bobbed like a tuna-boat fishing pole.

I gulped.

When this ambulatory Gibraltar reached us, he flipped me around to face the wall and pushed me against it. Then he squirted a tube of lube up my ass and poked inside me the blunt tip of his vein-shot Louisville Slugger.

"Yeeeeow," I yelled, my cry garbling away into heaving moan as he lanced deep into me and began stroking. After a few life-changing thrusts, he picked me up by my armpits and held me against the wall, about a foot off the ground. There was very little I could do but take it. I whimpered, my face against the wall. Trying to balance myself in flight, so he wouldn't damage anything vital, I reached out, and Tinkerbelle the Gazelle antlered my other hand.

"Yeeeeaaawww," I repeated, strenuously.

From the corner of my eye, I noted Mig watching us intently, jerking his own dick, popped from his pants. "Schmortzi vidish katzendoodle," he said. At that, my giant whirled me a few feet to the sofa, still spindling me. He stripped me of my shirt; Mig helped with my pants and whatever scraps were left. In an instant I was naked and big-bone dumped me on the cushions, never breaking anal connection. Then he knelt behind me, holding my ass in the air and drilling me as I crunched my face in the couch

"Uhhhhnnnnn," I grunted, in something like alarm.

Well, at least I was relatively stationary, not stuck on oak paneling in fuck orbit. My excitable brontosaurus really got his rhythm working at that point, and his thrusting pushed my guts well into my thoracic cavity.

Still connected, the big guy flipped me face up. I yowled a little as his dick twisted a corkscrew in my colon. Mig pushed a cushion under my shoulders and leaned my head back until its top rested on the sofa seat. Then, his way clear, he pushed his dick in my mouth. My midsection bowed up as each man drove into me. I felt their warm, padded hands running up my trunk, raking my ribs with their nails.

Somewhat distracted by a stranger's aromatic rectum so close to my face, I reflected for a moment on angelic Mrs. Carter, my elementary school teacher, and what impression she might gather from this sight.

Mig pulled from my mouth with a cork pop after one final drive and gag from me. "Spatzi pedette prazzhdo," he muttered heavily to the noble ape going crazy between my legs. He was beginning to get to me, and my little wiggles and whimpers each time he drove himself home were beginning to get to him. He made low growls of what I took to be anti-matter components of pleasure.

When the big fellow kept stroking, Mig shouted "Budo". Then repeated it. I decided that must be his name. It beat my choice, Donkey Kong, and fit his size and personality as appropriate death-match opponent for Godzilla.

Budo suddenly pulled out with another boink and moan from me -- genuine, by the way. He left the couch in somewhat of a huff and Mig took his place, plunging his wet dick into my bottom. "No fisting!" I yelped and bucked back on the sofa as his pumping began. At one point, he yelled some more Smirnoff over the couch, I assumed at Budo; my sight was blocked by the furniture's back. The tone was a little different though, explanatory, almost pleading. Through it all he just kept pistoning away.

At that point, it didn't take long for him to come, and I took it with a little jolt and groan. Looking up, I saw him frozen in the air, a grimace on his face, then he growled and withdrew his spent, wilting member.

Well... at least these Ivans didn't come in my mouth.

For awhile, I tried to gather myself. I heard a door close. I thought about getting up, and when I did so, rather slowly, I felt a padded dinner tray some might mistake for a human hand push me back down. It was Budo, he was still naked, and he stuck me again. As his dick's length ran into me, I wheedled meekly, "Don't you guys ever finish?" I let him do his stuff, and I must say, it wasn't the worst fucking I ever had. Slowly my own dick got hard again, and he jerked it in his hand until we both came in messy ecstasy and guttural squeals. Then, strangely, he leaned over and tenderly kissed my forehead.

After that grueling ordeal, I must've passed out. When I awoke, I could feel a bucket-load of come congealing on my bottom. Across the room, a cleaning woman rigorously ignored me as she noisily vacuumed; a scowl imprinted on her face.

As I dressed, I noticed a paper and an envelope on Mig's desk. The paper was a very generous renter's agreement and the envelope contained $500 - beautifully stacked notes in various convenient denominations. The deed I signed and left. The envelope I did not.

As I exited, the cleaning woman gave me one last stink-eye and made the sign of the horns at me. I pondered the charming voodoo all of half a second.

The next morning, I sat all wink-eyed, having coffee with Tricia. I pushed the envelope I'd lightened somewhat across the table to her. 

"Here's that $200," I said. "Sorry it's so late -- and thanks."

"I thought you were broke," her eyes narrowed. "How did you get it?"

"I sold my ass to a couple of horney Ruskies and a mutant billy goat."

"Be serious," she said, then shook her head, smiling. "OK. It's none of my business. You don't have to pay it back right now, if you need it."

Tricia gave me that doe-eyed look of feminine over-concern. I made a mental jot never to buddy-fuck a straight woman.

"No, we're good." I sipped my cappa-crappa-cino and tried to relax. I'd paid Luis, his crew of cousins and some Home Depot loiterers to move my stuff into the new place; I wondered if they were done. Filling in Tricia on the apartment, I noticed my excitement wasn't contagious.

"How did you pay for all this?" she asked, utterly refusing to let go of financial issues. "You're not making those movies again. Are you?"

These were some masterpieces I'd made over the years for quick bucks, and after a friend of hers came across one on Manhandler cable download, she screened it herself. Those episodes didn't comprise any of my proudest moments, but they did iron out some sticky rent situations for me. It peeved me that Tricia, utterly unfamiliar to gay male sex, saw how it was done without ever understanding why it was done. Besides, it kind of... mortified her.

"Hey... Trish. Why don't we just drop it? I have a second... income source. It's all good."

Her Mother-Hubbard expression held title to her face and we sat there in awkward silence a moment. I've never been sure what it is about women -- gay or straight -- that makes them believe they can read souls as easily as flipping through a "Harry Potter"; it was delusion that made my teeth grind. It had been obvious for some time - throughout most of our friendship, in fact - that Tricia had a something of a crush on me. For her, my sexual predilection was obtuse and unfathomable, and she tried never to address it. ...Except... of course... when "TwinkBusters II" cascades through her 28-inch High-Def at 2 in the morning.

I patted her hand. "I appreciate your concern. It's good to have a friend like you. But I'm an adult. And, I tell you - I'm boomin'" That last part wasn't entirely untrue. After all, I had a coastal address now.

"You can always stay with me, you know," she said intently.

I shuddered. Yes. I'd roomed before with straight women. Narcissistic personality disorder, damp undies in the shower and all the "Twilight" updates I could handle. Patting her hand again, I said, "Thanks. I mean that."

She checked her watch, saying, "I'd better go." I kissed her forehead. With her red hair and bright Irish eyes, she was quite lovely in that ambiguously female way. If I was hetero, we'd be pumping out pups by now.

Dropping off Tricia at her blankly anonymous office, she was barely out of the car before I floored it out Santa Monica. This was where I was headed all day. I breezed into my brand-spanking new apartment, just as Luis and the crew were finishing up. Paying them off, I plopped on one of the Viking fuck seats and looked out at a wonderful present to myself. As I was drinking in the whole, fresh, Sunset Magazine enchilada, my cell phone rang. It was Cynthia, my sister.


California Rimshot!



"I gotta work tonight. Can you pick up Angie and baby-sit?"

"It's my night off, Cin," I whined.

"That's... why... I'm asking."

I saw my wonderful evening in my new digs fade forlornly in the rearview. Well... at least it'll allow some time for the fresh paint to air out. 

As I readied my departure, there was a knock at the door. It was Fahim, the super.

"Just checking..."

"Everything's fine," I cut him off with a slice of Antarctica.

"Look... about the other day, I didn't -"

"Forget it," I interrupted again. "We're fine. G'bye." I brushed past him and headed for the stairs. Mig must intimidate everyone he encounters, I thought to myself, and idly wondered how I could squeeze this to my advantage. Fahim must know I have some juice with the man at the top. That's why he's so puppy-dog. ...One way to find out. So I turned at the stairway. 

"By the way, Fahim, those little drink carts - portable wet bars? I was wondering if you could find one for me."

His rattled, hesitant look told me I'd hit the jackpot.

"I'm not sure..."

"I am, Fahim. Dig one up and have it in there by tomorrow. Bye!" I waved sweetly and bounded down the stairs. ...Served him right for getting so grabby.

On the other edge of the cosmos, Angela, my niece, was perfectly named. She was a little angel and just about my favorite human in the world. Bounding with energy at six, Angela was always a joy to behold, and time I spent with her never was wasted. That night, after helping her finish homework I was astounded a first-grader could handle, I tucked her in.

"Where do babies come from?" she asked, eyes as big as china dinnerware.

"Well, mommies and daddies bake them. They put a lot of love in the oven and out pops you." I touched the tip of her nose and she smiled. Although her father Ralph and I got along like heat and gunpowder, he was traveling most of the time so the point was moot. I wondered how he would appraise what I considered one of my most-positive summaries of breeder relationship.

Alone, waiting impatiently for Cynthia, I watched "Nightline" bored out of my skull and fought the inclination to flip over to a bitter-facelift reality show in the big-number channels; but I'd already seen the housewives contort and watching a third time would indicate something about me I didn't like. I reviewed the events of the past 24 hours and realized, all in all, things could be worse. The set-up gnawed, though. Something told me my new landlord was up to no good.

Later, as way of payment, Cynthia rustled up a midnight breakfast of eggs benedict, which she would dish out like nobody's business. Then she stirred around the kitchen as I scoured plates in the sink.

"You OK?" she asked.

"Sure. Everything's fine."

"C'mon. What's going on?" she smiled and rubbed my shoulder. "Is the underworld chasing you?"

That one startled me. "Drop it," I yelled. She jerked way, surprised. I calmed her down with a lot of bullshit about creeping insomnia and psychobabble. I couldn't do the same for myself.

Driving back home, I rolled down the window of my car and drank in the air of L.A. It's not as toxic as any other city in America, although I wouldn't want to have been here in the '50s, pre-emissions control. Old-timers told me the mountains were never there.

I love the town. For one thing, West Hollywood is refreshingly short of gay mustaches. There is something in the gay fashionista gene that makes us follow trends like baby ducks trail momma. A local hero grows a goatee, and soon everyone has a mouth patch. This can be taken to hideous extremes, as in the woefully resilient piercing fever or thankfully passe Croc footwear disease.

Next day, after waking refreshed in my dream flat, I drove over to pick up my paycheck at the club. I thought of walking down to Fubar, where I knew Ron should be, but I'd already left him a couple of messages and the dick hadn't responded. So I strolled into Bottom Out to pay Jamal and get briefed on the new espresso machine. That irked me. It's the kind of thing that's fine on the Riviera, but you start serving booze and caffeine goofballs to Americans and there will be carnage on the highways that'll make Baghdad look like Tomorrow Land. Besides, I'm a purist, and damn it - steamed milk has no place in a reputable dive.

Slapping $50 on the bar beside Jamal, I asked him if he'd heard from Ron. He shook his head with that "you don't wanna know" look.

"What's up?"

"Just between you and me, I think he's upset you're fuckin' the Russian mafia."

Ray the swing man piped up: "Broke his heart, man."

I genuinely liked Jamal. Not only was he great in the sack, but he was knockout cute and knew it. Even still, he never let it go to his head. There was no fake modesty and bullshit about him, but no preening, either. He had the most detached approach of anyone I knew, and his insight and curt analysis of any given situation was bracing. 

Not today, though.

"Does the whole fucking town know about this?"

"Hey," he said in an unruffled drawl as he idly fingered his glass. "I never said anything."

I jogged out huffily. This was getting ridiculous. I'd done everything but mercy-fuck Ron after a bad breakup the previous year left him gibbering at the moon. Then he got all wedding-cake on me, pressing me to - he even used the phrase - "go all the way". Yikes! I tried to tell him I just didn't feel that way toward him, and he started getting progressively belligerent. Any more ruckuses and I'd drop him as a friend. I meant it.

Scooting over to Rodeo Drive to burn up the last of my ill-gotten gains, I came across a smashing white and dark blue print scarf I just had to have. On my way back home, I got a strange call. An unfamiliar voice said Mig wanted to see me. I asked the disembodied and very disquieting growl what this was about. "He wants to see you NOW," then an address spat out and the phone went dead. ...Hmm. I didn't expect our sessions to begin so soon, and I was put out. So I began rehearsing a little scolding I wasn't certain I had the wad to deliver.

The address was a cheap motel in Pacoima in a neighborhood that gave me the willies. When I raised my hand to knock on the door, it flew open and a hand my fat aunt Iris could bathe in grabbed my face vise-lock tight and snatched me painfully inside. I was shoved into a cheap stick of furniture that flipped over, dumping me on the floor in a clumsy backward somersault, punctuated by the sound of my head banging the bare floor.

Somewhat rattled at this point, I was unavoidably displeased when some very strong hands picked me up without my cooperation and slammed me on the wall like a flyswatter.

It's funny how some people can be so darned active - passionate, even - and show nothing in their eyes. I peeped out at a set that were dead inside; if I'd been a speck of dandruff on a prized comb, I'd have gotten more emotion. Behind Big Hands was another formless stack of malice chewing a matchstick.

"Well," I said, unable to think of anything else, and trying to smile. "I suppose you boys have some news for me?"

In a voice so bored it could dry paint the new guy said: "Nothing that will surprise and delight."

The two of them hooked up together and roughly floated me over to an unmade bed. They dropped me on it. After reaching sitting position, I coughed into my hand.

"Y'know..." I began, "Before we really get started here, I want to remind you that this could simply be a case of mistaken identity."

The first guy, Mr. Monster Truck, threw a punch at me with such quickness I didn't see it coming. Usually, I can struggle fairly well and would've ducked, but it just came out of nowhere and left me nowhere to go. But it stopped, so close to my face I could feel its tiny jet stream tickle the tip of my nose. For a split second, I was taken at how beautifully engravers had rendered Los Angeles City Hall - every detail painstakingly carved into that quite attractive, egg-shaped shield that whispered sadistically, "LAPD".

"Did you know prostitution is illegal in this state - even if you got a dick?"

"...Hmmm." I put my finger to my chin. "Odd... I watch a lot of 'CSI' and the like, so I'm pretty familiar with law enforcement run-down. I don't recall hearing that."

"Do you know who's fucking you, asshole?"

I shook my head and he began filling me in on Mig's astoundingly seamy background. It was every bit as disturbing as I'd imagined, only more so. One pertinent scrap of information was his part in a vast Ponzi scheme that had stung a host of L.A. judges and lawyers - so the legal community disregarded him somewhat.

"I tell you, they hate everything connected to the guy. Y'know, being his bonesmoker and all, you could be looking at, lemme see," he scratched his head, quite the comedian, "...three years, at least."

Prison for guys like me isn't what it may seem. From what I've heard from people I trust with sorrowful experience in the matter, lockup actually makes men preternaturally straight, and that delicate power exchange that is human copulation becomes ugly and one-sided. What may seem like gay sex to the uninformed is really attack and dominate. And guys like me may not fare well. Being treated like a frat-house sofa cushion that morning brought all this home.

There was a quick pop-pop-pop down the street; they had that hard roar underneath that indicated they weren't firecrackers. The other guy turned and the cop facing me said, "Leave to the uniforms." He had a neck like a banyan trunk; I decided he and Budo must clothes-shop at the same spots.

In a quick briefing, Mr. Big, who finally introduced himself as Detective Cenders, told me the police department -- yea, all peace-loving citizens of the City of Angels - wanted me to get Mig in my apartment and get him talking. In this way, these dedicated although somewhat brusque lawmen could bring this international miscreant to justice.

I nodded in full agreement.

They left with a cheery, "I'll be in touch," from Cenders. I was a little unsteady on my feet but I left as damned quickly as I could.

Once I got back in the sea breeze, everything eased somewhat. But the whole baggage now soured my new quarters. The knot of tension in my stomach grew to Gordian proportions. And I was low.

When I got in and dumped my keys on the coffee table, I noticed Fahim had delivered the wet bar. "Good boy," I said and jerked it open. It was filled with vodkas and Eastern European, Greek-type liqueurs, and I punched his office on my phone.

"What's with the belly-dance hookah stuff in the bar, Fahim?"

"It's what I like."

"Not me champ. Let me see, I'm looking around me. Yeah. It's MY apartment, not yours. Look, by tomorrow, I want some scotch involved. Got it?"

He was calm and half-agreed very languidly. That disturbed me. It was as if his anxiety motivation had evaporated. I wondered what was up.

But then, the day was just too beautiful to ruin. I poured some Turkish delight from the fridge into a tumbler of ice, stripped down to my tiny Groovin' undies, put on a cotton robe and padded out to the balcony. I stood and surveyed the whole spread, breathed the air - constantly washed clean by marine layer out here - and tried to let the urban nightmare slide into insignificance.

Taking a sip of the concoction, I gagged: Burnt licorice -- mmmm, my taste sensation. I set it down and stretched. That's when I noticed Fahim, down in the building's service entrance; he was staring up at me. He didn't look so humbled. In fact, he had that bold look of a bear sizing up skinny-dipping Boy Scouts. I looked at him and smiled, wiggled my body a little when I raised my sunglasses, let him get a good look through my open robe. He just stood there, frozen, with that insinuating smile pasted on a hammered-hard face.

Then I lay down on my towel, stripped off everything and let the sun work its magic. 

After a buttery while, when the sun had passed me into warm shade, I felt a dark cloud pass over without measurable change in light. I looked up and saw Fahim in a robe of his own, open just enough to reveal one of those Euro man-kinis bulging with a hard-on only half the size of the Washington Monument.

"What do you want, Fahim?" I growled.

"Nice day," he said, smiling and looking around.

"I'm not sure Mr. Mig would like to hear about this."

"I'm not sure he'd like to know you're talking to cops, either," he replied, with chilling bluntness.

After that irresistible entrée, he lay down beside me, propped up on an elbow and cradling his head in his palm.

"Even if that were true," I said queasily, "how would you know?"

"I know cops," he replied. "They came in with the cable guys this morning and wired up your place."

"Bugged?" I tried to feign surprise.

He nodded. "Everywhere but out here," he said, twirling his gnarled finger in the air. "We're so lucky." His other hand moved up my side to backbone to neck, then its forefinger began a slow course down my spine to my butt-crack, and slowly back. Each time, the finger ran progressively farther into the furrow between my buttocks.

"You're a little darker in the small of your back at this angle, but when I raise up, your tan blends back even," he said in mock research. "Charming."

Now his finger began circling in the small of my back. "You have very nice skin." 

Inside, I was broiling at the situation and this jackass. There was little I could do, though. My hide crawled at his touch, but in that moment, it was preferable to a shallow grave in the desert.

Fahim pressed his finger in the small of my back and began probing different spots in a slowly narrowing spiral. 

"Knock off the foreplay, Romeo," I growled. "Let's get this over with."

Just then, his fingertip poked a spot that sent a frighteningly sensual cord of sensation though my body. Seeing my jerking response, he pressed deeper - into that 10th scapula that ran nerves all through my soft underbelly, as it were. Without leaving the place in my back, his thick finger seemed to trace along my waist to explore my abdomen. Irritated as I was at him finding a circuit to most of my primary erogenous zones, his digital exploration was knowing and insistent, and I began squirming in arousal under his touch. His finger seemed to stick right through to probe my navel, and heat started building in me. As he pressed and teased, a gasp escaped my lips.

"Yeah," he said with sinister delight.

That brought me out of my self-destructive reverie and I shook him out of this antipodal weak point. His spread hands slid down to my oiled butt cheeks and grasped them tightly. Fahim did have quite a grip, I had to admit. As he kneaded and squeezed, I began wiggling again and inadvertently moaned when his thumb circled my puckered asshole. It was better, I decided to just let him have his little jollies; it'll end the ordeal more quickly. Besides, this was the most excited in I'd been all week. When he pushed his thumb inside and brazenly probed my colon, I began a little tremble in anticipation.

He doffed his robe and silly little swimsuit and knelt beside me.

"Roll over," he said. "I can play with you."

"We'll do it like this," I spat. "I'd rather not watch." My voice was up a key.

At that, I expected him to go all Zorro and run me through. But he eased in the tip of his dick with only the slightest jerk from me and began fucking his way in, each stroke penetrating further. After a few moments, he was at the end of me and still had length to poke. I know I've had thicker dicks, but I can't remember any longer. Like the Eveready Bunny, he kept going and going. When he stretched me to maximum inside, he started long, deep, even pumps that seemed to push new buttons all through my plumbing. 

I finally moaned deeply and rose up to my elbows. I didn't give a damn anymore. Like a shameless little hussy, I began undulating on his rod; I couldn't help responding to this extreme spindling. Fahim hissed delight through his teeth and quickened his rhythm. Rising to my hands and knees, I started pushing back on his down-strokes, to run his dick deeper into me. Finally, the sheer momentum and depth of him drove me back to the mat.

Fahim smoothly pulled his dick from my insides accompanied by my groan and rolled me over belly up. I let him... even helped a little. He was fucking me good and deep, and I didn't care if he knew it. Holding up my thighs slightly and spreading them, he speared me to the hilt and shook out from my belly a deep, quivering moan. He immediately began his deep-stroke again, watching me hungrily as I squirmed at each deep plunge. He ran his hands up and down my body and squeezed my nipples. His expert thrusts built a fire in my belly, and he began working my dick with his oiled hands. For awhile, it seemed this human piston would go on forever, pumping into the nut of my guts. My head rolled back and forth, and my body rippled an undulating reply to his energetic penetration.

As he ran his hand up and down my chest and belly, pausing to scratch and explore all the right parts, he chuffed and grunted, approaching orgasm. Then, with his fingers poking and prodding pertinent points, I squirted a geyser of jism straight into the air. Moments later, he came inside me -- an exploding bullet of gummy juice. It arched me upward with a gasp.

We collapsed together awhile. Then he licked my come off my midsection; when my breathing got heavy as he forcefully tongued every last drop from my navel, he skewered me again and fucked us to another orgasm. By that time, I was getting a little fatigued.

We lay together a few minutes, him running his finger up and down my spine, just as all this began, eons ago. 

Getting from him location of one of the bugs, I feigned cute surprise and wiggled my hips at him.

"You remove them?"

"No," Fahim answered. "But I can."

"You're pretty good at this," I giggled.

"I got all the bugs out of Mig's office. Every time the cops put them in, I take them out."

That was information which interested me quite a bit.

"OK... Fahim. I gotta get ready for work."

"But..."

"No buts. We can do this again. Since you've got a gun to my head you're guaranteed a dick in me. But now: Tah-tah."

I got up and waltzed into the bathroom for a shower. When I came out, Fahim was gone. Rubbing my hair with a towel, I walked to the breakfast bar and retrieved my cell phone. My blood was up, and I decided to take action.

If God so hated us, He would not have made us so smart.

Back on the balcony, I punched in a call to Mig. Surprisingly, I reached him.

"Look... Mig. I think the police bugged my apartment. I found something, a wire, something, in a lampshade. Funny thing... I told the super... Fahim? I told him about it and he said to forget it, he'd take care of everything. Funny, huh?"

There was a long, dangerous pause on the other end. With a sound in his voice like he'd just discovered Bea Arthur muff-diving his daughter, Mig said, "I take care of it."

Click. I didn't really care for the sound of that hang-up.

Next, I punched in Det. Cenders' number. He sounded irritated, like I'd just pulled him away from a maple bar.

"This is crazy, detective. But a little birdie told me Mig's office is unplugged, so you don't have shit evidence against me. We can forget that prostitution crap. Anyway, I think Mig's onto us and I want to get some protec..."

Click. I exhaled. ...Tried to calm down. Punched in another number and dialed up voicemail.

"Hey, Fahim. Hey, man, how they hangin'? Look... Mig's on to us. He just called me up and threatened to kill me, and I... well... I panicked and told him you were working for the cops. I'm sorry, man. I just lost my head."

As I was dialing Ron to ask for a place to stay, I saw Fahim and what I took to be his wife hauling ass across the street to a beat-up truck. They were carrying shabby suitcases along with a fat kid, and the wife, all 230 meaty-beachball pounds of her, had in hand a birdcage with colorful tuft of something inside. It was as I suspected: She wore the pants in that erstwhile household, and spat out at least five commands before they crossed the median. As he got to the driver's side, Fahim whirled and flipped me a long finger. I smiled sweetly, waved, and blew them a kiss. It's good to end things on the upbeat, I always say.




California Rimshot!



Finally, I got Ron, told him my sad tale and got a curt "fuck you" for all my trouble. So I jumped into some clothes and headed down Santa Monica as fast as my pocket rocket could carry me. Jamal was subbing for Tony "The Cannibal" Donner that night, and I asked him for a place to crash awhile, adding I was desperate.

"Yeah... you look desperate."

"It won't be for long - just until the cops can hide me in Barbados or Majorca while this blows over."

"And during that time, the Irish mafia could bust a cap up the black man's ass just because I'm in my own place at the wrong time."

"Uh... Russian mafia, I think."

"What am I? ...An Atlas? Look... Chip... I'd help, I guess... if I could. I can't. Bye."

Wheeling out of the Bottom Out, I thanked heaven for friends I could count on. Then I saw Budo. He was standing across the street, trying to light a cigarette with a surprisingly shaky hand when our eyes met. Some smoke blew out his nose in a way that left him a dead ringer for a crazy-with-rage Spanish bull, and he came across the street as fast as air-breathing granite could move. Needless to say, I headed in the opposite direction.

As I was racing down the street, the sun was setting, casting everything in long shadows and red-orange light. Now it had gone to tops of the buildings, and street-level was dropping into twilight. Looking around, I realized I was lucky to live in this town. The cool of evening was just whistling past my ears when I felt Budo's fingertips brush the scruff of my neck. This overactive gland case could move faster than I'd expected.

I zipped into an alley, and in that way my quick reflexes react to everything around me, realized it dead-ended a few yards away. There was no need to whine about it. Slowly, I turned to face Budo, and found myself staring into the small of his stomach. He looked down at me with an expression like I was a pet rabbit; a tear was in his eye. His big bear paws wrapped around my head and pulled me close.

I ran my hands into his coat and around his waist. Smiling up at him, I squirmed my hips into him and ran a hand down his fly, then unzipped it. Budo's dick sprang out like a fat man tripping off a stair. Taking it quickly, I cupped its huge head in my mouth and slowly began inching up its length, now growing in size and hardness. Finally, when it was as far down my throat as I could take it without chucking my lunch all over him, I began to stroke his dick in and out. 

Budo shuddered and suddenly arched back his body, almost bouncing me off. I kept up the stroking until, out of nowhere, and without warning, he suddenly blew his come into my mouth. It felt like a gallon. Mouthing my way back down his dick, I'd just released it when he shot another load into my face. 

When I looked up, I could see his face was red -- apple red - and his hands were raised to his neck. Oh, my God, I thought. He's having a heart attack. I've fuckin' BLOWN him to death. Then I saw another face, just behind his. This guy was grimacing and holding the ends of a belt that soon I realized was bound tightly around Budo's neck. Ah... that explained his raised hands; it wasn't a coronary, after all. At that moment, when I'd finally overcome shock of the jizz-bomb in my face and gathered what was happening, Budo suddenly bent forward and the guy behind him flipped over his back, missing me by inches.

In an instant, I was up and out of the alley. I flashed down the street and jumped into my car through the driver's side window - thankfully open. My shoulder jammed painfully into the console, but I didn't care; I was up in an instant and starting the car.

Out of nowhere, patrol cars appeared in front and behind, jammed brakes leaving burnt-rubber clouds of blue. Then a car pulled up beside mine, trapping it against the curb. Pulling myself out of my car window, I stepped along the hood and jumped to the sidewalk, as every car door surrounding me opened and started dumping out uniforms and suits, all seemingly furious. ...At me.

A couple of cops blocked the path of my initial run, so I turned just in time to see Det. Cender's teeth as he thundered up, grabbed me, and - using momentum of his charge - whirled my body and launched me like a catapult down the street. Bashing cockeyed a newspaper rack, I slammed into the sidewalk. Somewhere a woman screamed. 

Luckily, my fall was broken by my head.

Cenders hauled me up and slammed me against the wall.

"Well, howdy, donut butt," I popped off unwisely. "How's that Black Dahlia case workin' out?"

Cenders cocked an arm to let me have it, when squealing tires jerked everyone's attention to the alley I'd just vacated. A huge hayseed muscle car roared out in a wide, smoky curve. Budo was at the wheel and the would-be strangler was hanging on the roof. He made a high-pitched wailing sound, very much like a war movie air-raid siren. Budo's car sideswiped a taco wagon and roared off down the street, jostling loose the roof surfer. Cartwheeling across the pavement, he wrapped himself around a lamp post. The Mexican caterers ran after Budo's car, howling in Spanish and throwing plastic cups of salsa.

"Nice to see an undercover job run so quietly," I said to no one.

Now there was general screaming, and I think voices included my own. Cender's sidekick looked at him and jerked a thumb toward the mess. Maintaining my foolish interjections, I said, "Let the uniforms handle it." Cenders threw me into a small alcove formed by the entranceway of a store, encased in back by a steel security curtain. For a moment, we all watched the caterers, now chased back up the street by a guy whose shaved head was covered in salsa.

"You're getting a little cocky, aren't you, officer," I said dusting myself off. Cenders thrust something at me again, and I flinched; this time it was a small tape recorder. On it, in very nice modulation, were my fuck-grunts and yelps from the baby antelope mishaps a few nights before.

"But..."

"His building superintendent bugged him."

"Fahim?" (I almost followed with, "My Fahim?")

"He turned everything over to us. He's in witness protection with a real banshee wife after you ratted him out." Cenders paused to squeeze my mouth into a vertical figure-eight. "OK, here's the story. Since a little birdie told him about us, Mig pulled all Fahim's bugs. Some of his own people are trying to kill him now, since they think he's going down. And so you're gonna wear a wire to his place tonight and get everything we need on tape. And we can button this up real fast."

"I can't do that."

"You WILL do that."

"He peels me like an onion up there. He'll see the mike and blow my head off."

"Not my problem," Cenders said, leaning in close. "I couldn't give a shit. See... I just don't like fudge-packers."

"You know, detective..."

"Call me, Lou."

"The more I get to know you, Lou, the more I'm convinced you're something of a gaping asshole."

Cenders... Lou... put his arm on my shoulder. I was expecting a fist to follow and tried to relax into the blow.

"Chip... Can I call you Chip? Chip, the world is an asshole. I just live here."

They wired me up right there. At one point, they brought in the rooftop wrangler, to see if I could name him. At first, I didn't recognize him, since he was wearing a turban. 

"Who's Sabu?" I asked. 

"That's a bandage, you idiot."

In a very little while, I was sitting outside Mig's office building in an unmarked car, with a bored young detective.

I was thinking about prison. About the kind of men who went there, and how many of them had been inside repeatedly over the years, to the point the place was a second home -- familiar, comfortable, even. And I thought about what they'd done to get there, and I thought about the things of which they were guilty and for which were never punished. I shuddered at the vastness of criminal activity that represented. The violence component so integral to "inside" I didn't like at all.

"You're one dead fag," the young officer stated simply and quietly. "You don't stand a chance up there."

I ignored him. The imagined prison my mind was constructing was too formidable, to secure to be breached by an asshole with a toothpick.

"What's it like?"

"What?" I asked.

"...The homo life. How do you get through it?"

"You don't know?"

"What the fuck do you mean by that?" His voice was real low now, and scruffy around the edges as growls always are.

"C'mon," I replied. "It's like sitting in a car with Liberace."

I was ready for the backhand and blocked it off, but not easily. The radio crackled to life. It was Cenders: "What the fuck is going on up there?"

"Nothing," the young cop spat into the mike and hung it up. "You better watch you're fucking mouth, cocksucker."

"Look... officer. ...Didn't mean to be malicious. But I've been sniffing out gays since I was a teenager. You don't want to talk about it? Fine... It's dropped."

He burned a glare into me and a long, excruciating moment died and rotted around us. I went back to prison. There'd probably be guys with ironic nicknames inside. Tiny would be a rhino. Sweets would be the sadistic psychopath. They would have little in common except a determination -- a drive -- to commit mayhem. ...And, of course, a deep, deep hatred for homosexuals. The system had made them de facto queer, so their murderous contempt for the real thing was multiplied a thousand-fold by being forced to engage in such filthy perversity.

"So everyone knows..."

I looked at the detective beside me. "Only other gays on the force... I promise you that. ...No one else. You're quite the macho..." I locked the officer's eyes. "I mean it..."

Another long, dreary moment went by.

"It's just so hard... so lonely..." he began, his eyes half-closed, staring out the window.

Good gawd, I thought to myself. Here it comes -- soulful, semi-literary confessional. Why don't you just come out? Perhaps you haven't heard about Y2K -- the 21st century? 'Course, it occurred to me, there IS the queer ceiling. Nobody like us gets too high, really. Maybe he wants to be chief someday. Maybe he thinks the other guys will be self-conscious in the locker room and shun him. Maybe he just can't bear the prospect of ending those little snappy-towel moments.

The steam from the shower was a thick cloud. Through it, I could see Tiny's face, getting closer. Was he going to kill me? Rape me? Tiny didn't show up for serious networking about job possibilities on the outside. Tiny didn't show up for anything but brute fucks and bloodletting.

The young cop had been droning on all by himself, when suddenly, he pushed a photo into my hand. It was him, stark naked on a picnic table, blowing a guy and jerking off two others, while a cornholed him in manical glee.

"You were in the priesthood?" I popped out.

His face went sour and I jumped out. "Better get this done," I said,waving. He flipped me the finger and away I strolled down the street. Someday, my smarty-mouth is going to get me in more trouble than I can talk my way out of.

At the door to Mig's office building, I paused. I could be walking to my death, I thought. Maybe now I just take off running. They'll catch me. Then prison. Far away, something clanged -- a metal plate hitting the pavement... something. In my mind, a long row of cells clanged shut all at once, stacked atop each other, human shelves, as far as the eye could see. From the dark corner of my cell came Tiny again. Then from under the blanket of my bed, another goon emerged. I turned to run through the cell door -- mine was the only one open. And through it stepped Sweets, naked, and on his erect penis was a doggie sock-puppet, a small pink tongue dangling from its mouth.

Quickly, I pushed through the door and went to the elevator. In the last moment, onboard hopped the cleaning lady. She scowled at me all the way up. In the hallway, she went down to a door a few feet away -- I supposed a service entrance. She gave me one last damning look and went in, loudly jangling her keys.

Stepping up to Mig's door, I got off one knock before the door swayed open. Opening it all the way, I stepped in. Illuminated by the shaft of light from the hallway, I could see Mig at his desk and I could tell he was pissed, staring at me with an ugly grimace. He looked more than angry; he looked terrible. ...Funny about him just sitting there in the dark, too. ...Just sitting at his desk looking awful, and I decided the reason for his bad appearance must be that large and rather ornate knife buried in his stomach.

(This sordid tale will go on...)