Bobby Carapisi

By Kyle Michel Sullivan

You never know what life will throw at you. Bobby Carapisi got slammed when he was living his dream job as a relief pitcher for an expansion baseball team and went out to buy ice cream for his pregnant wife. For Eric Larson, it was when he was en route home after a particularly nasty shift of waiting tables. Each man happened to cross the path of Allen Barrow...and the brutal encounter sent their worlds spiraling out of control.

To all appearances, Allen was a quiet, unassuming kind of guy...but he was also partnered with a pair of sexual predators who had a plan to get away with sexually assaulting any young man they chose. The three of them first brutally assaulted Eric then, not long after, chose Bobby for their fun.

Eric reported what happened to him but ran headlong into the nightmare of an uncaring system of justice. Bobby, on the other hand, just wanted to ignore it all so he could focus on his family and career...not realizing his own psyche would not play along.

What was worse? The rest of the world had other plans for them both, and when society decides to crush you, what can you do but fight back? Even if it means destroying someone innocent?

This book is a story of acceptance and redemption, even as each player in this tragedy fights to avoid his destiny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kyle Michel Sullivan
• Release date: Jul 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463840962

Kyle Michel Sullivan

I am a writer and self-involved artist out to change the world until it changes me...as has already happened in far too many ways.I have written books that range from sunshine and light (David Martin) to cold and dark (How To Rape A Straight Guy, which has been banned a couple of times) to flat out crazy (The Lyons' Den) to mainstream (The Alice '65). I have ventured into SF-Horror-Suspense with The Beast in the Nothing Room and taken Capitalism to its logical extreme in Hunter. I've also written murder mysteries (Rape in Holding Cell 6, The Vanishing of Owen Taylor, and Underground Guy). I've just begun a gay vampire series titled Blood Angel, that will be in seven e-book parts. All contain strong romantic entanglements.Currently, I am working to complete A Place of Safety, my Irish novel.I try to build characters as vivid and real as possible and have a lot of fun doing it mixed with angst, anger, and amazement ... but that's the lot of a writer.My paperbacks and hardcovers are available through Amazon, B&N and any independent book shop.

Book preview

BOBBY CARAPISI

Kyle Michel Sullivan

KMSCB, Buffalo, NY

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and situations are purely the result of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights are reserved by the author, including the right to reproduction in whole or in part in any form, manner, or concept.

It is for adults only.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each receipient. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover design: JamTheCat

Copyyright 2009, 2011, 2021 by Kyle Michel Sullivan, dba: KMSCB

Dedication

To the guys I know who’ve been through this.

Table of Contents

Book One

Prologue

Eric

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Bobby

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Book Two

Eric

Fourteen

Fifteen

Bobby

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Collision

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Benediction

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Book Three

Eric & Allen

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Thirty

Thirty-one

Thirty-two

Thirty-three

Thirty-four

Thirty-five

Thirty-six

Thirty-seven

Thirty-eight

Thirty-nine

Forty

Coda

Forty-one

About the Author

Other Books by Author

*****

Book One

Prologue

I never met Bobby Carapisi. We never spoke on the phone. Never exchanged letters. No messages were left but missed, nor were e-mails sent but not received or left unanswered. We didn’t frequent the same restaurants or clubs, so we could never have run into each other by accident or just missed each other or left coded messages on the bathroom walls for the other to see or anything. As for his baseball games — well, me being the sort of freak who loves his non-stop-chaos-with-full-on-body-contact ice-hockey as opposed that one-two-three-strikes-you’re-out boredom, I never attended one. And I can find no occasion where we even might have been at the same social event, including as patron (him) and catering server (me). I want that understood.

I know some people insist we looked like brothers, but that’s a simplistic observation based on nothing more than us both having dark-hair. However, mine is a thick brown mop I have to keep cropped tight so it won’t go wild on me while his was black and sleek and shiny. Plus I’m a tan five-ten and all angles while he was olive-skinned, four inches taller and smooth.

Smooth — what a way to describe someone’s appearance; but that’s how he came across. From the line of his face to the flow of his body under his uniform to the way he pitched relief, he blended together with a fluidity that kept all harshness and hardness and sharpness from his persona, making him your basic slab of dark-eyed, Italian-American beef mingled into the clean good-looks of a guy who was a sharp quick-witted player (and interview, on a good day), but from whom you never got the sense that anything about him was really at the edge. Some sportscaster nicknamed him Mr. Delivery, and it fit. Nice, simple and more eloquent than you can imagine. But did he even know about Chekov (the playwright, not the Trekkie guy) let alone see any of his plays? I doubt it.

That’s not to say he wasn’t nicely muscled, once upon a time. For a while there he was buff and toned and sexy in a baby-fat-innocent sort of way. I noticed that when I watched an old interview during his rookie year in his team’s locker room, just after he moved up from Triple-A. He was cheeky enough to wear nothing but a dangerously droopy towel as a female reporter tried to ask him something about the game he had just saved while doing her damnedest to keep her eyes focused on his. The cameraman caught her glancing downward, once, and it became a classic clip. Made it onto a dozen television shows about live TV bloopers and awkward moments in broadcasting and junk like that. Oh, in ten years he’d have gone to fat (maybe even, five) but the way he was then? He was close to all-American Perfect.

Which is the exact opposite of me. I’m rib, not steak, and I won’t even try to claim it’s prime. In place of his beef, I carry lean muscle that I work like a dog to keep up; if I don’t, I shrink into an anorexic Armani model. Seriously, where he usually weighed over two hundred, I have NEVER been more than one-sixty-five. Where his body had dancing fields of black down swirling over his skin, mine has minimal dustings in areas that served to emphasize my linear aspects rather than soften them. Even our profiles were opposite, with his almost Roman and mine close to pert; comes from my background being Swedish mingled with Welsh. And my eyes are blue. So what it all boils down to is — the only real physical similarities between us were we’re both young, Caucasian and male.

I mean, even our backgrounds were different. He was working class Philadelphia, born and raised there. Dad worked the docks all his life; mom stayed at home in a three brothers and two sisters sort of world, where aunts and uncles were just as numerous on both parents’ sides. A good Catholic family that fit every cliché in the book, it seems.

And me? Born in middle-class Seattle but raised in middle class Minneapolis, where mom and dad were nice middle-class professionals (him a lawyer who loved doing pro-bono work for the ACLU; her, a registered nurse with a well-respected hospital). Two people who did everything just right for their three middle-class sons (my brothers are Gerrod and Nils), guiding all of us into degrees from a nice Presbyterian college and steering at least two of us into nice middle-class careers; Nils is finishing his pediatrics residency in St. Paul while Gerrod works for a non-profit in Baltimore. A total white bread existence.

So you really need me to tell you who grew up wanting pumpernickel?

And for the record: my full name is Eric Ryan Larson, and I’m Mr. I-wanna-be-somebody-else-cause-I-don’t-wanna-be-me to the max — AKA: actor. The type who drives everybody crazy with his method style of living the character because he read somewhere that’s what other actors do and he never lived enough of a life to just latch onto any kind of real motivation. And crowed about having four lines on some sit-com last year and preened about being the asshole victim of a psycho who gets killed off in the first five minutes of a second-rate cable-made erotic-mystery-thriller. And who’s always loved to write lame-brain-twisting sentences like the previous ones while waiting tables, something he only does in-between his real jobs and then only to pay for his next best acting class. Seems years of English and speech and diction aimed at simple clarity went straight down the tubes soon as I hit LA.

Anyway, all of this extraneous information is just to emphasize that I knew nothing about Bobby and he knew nothing about me, absolutely nothing, until mid-August of last year — no, year before last; time’s been kind of scrambled, lately — and even then he couldn’t have told you anything except that I was the other guy in this mess with Allen.

But reality is, why SHOULD he have known me? I was one of those actors who’s between gigs, so I was working at a decent restaurant for money enough to keep me in rent, classes and headshots. And while Il Senso was hardly in Bobby’s league (pun intended) it wasn’t like I was working as far down the food chain as, say, Denny’s or Mickey D’s.

And like I said, I didn’t care about baseball or know much about it because, say whatever you like about strategy and athleticism and focus and skill and difficulty in some aspects of the play, it’s really boring. Games take hours to go through nine innings. And hours and hours. The players mostly just stand around (except for the catcher; he squats, a lot) and chew massive wads of what I thought was gum but apparently was something even more disgusting. Most of them have this lumpy sloppy feeling of arrogant masculinity and few of them looked like they burned with the brightest wattage. But there were just enough little beasties to make me sit up and take notice, what with their consistently soft uniforms helping to define the occasional well-made body.

Oh, also for the record — I’m the gay one. I knew I was long before puberty, learned just how much so with a hockey buddy named Camble and had not one second-guess about it from then on. But again, I want it understood from the beginning — nothing I write or say or detail about Bobby is colored in any way with any sort of sexual attraction. For me, the perfect man would have Einstein’s brain and look like Burt Lancaster, and not by any stretch of the imagination could you even begin to suggest that Bobby approached those parameters. Emphatic enough?

Now, I’ve seen a tape of every single solitary one of his games — and I still don’t get baseball. But I DO get the people in it. And I loathe them. Players, coaches, umpires, owners, the mother-fucking fans — I’d send them all to hell, if I could. Even now. Well, most of them; I’ve gained some perspective. But I really felt the iron-like taste of hatred against them the moment I watched a tape of Bobby pitching a save. His coach handed this particular one over, first — said I should start with his second season in the show; his best — and God, even from the two innings he played, you could see how much he loved the game.

There was one play that took my breath away, and that’s with me not even knowing how it really worked, yet. Bobby was called from the bullpen when the team’s first relief went into meltdown, let four runs score in the bottom of the ninth and put two more men on with walks. There were no outs, so in order to go into extra innings Bobby had to keep those men from scoring. He strolled up to the mound, took his eight warm-up pitches (who came up with that number?) and then played a game of cat and mouse with the runners that even caught me up in its suspense.

First, he slung a curve at the batter. Ball one, and I think it was deliberate. Something just to get the feel of the guy at the plate. Then he whipped another for a second ball. Then as he seemed to be curling up to sling a third, he whipped around and fired the ball at the first baseman, doing it like a millisecond before anyone could call him for a balk (as Coach Rizal told me, later). He caught the runner looking and the guy got tagged out. That made the second base runner keep closer to the bag. And as if to emphasize it, he played a little with the guy, tossing casual quickie balls to the second baseman to keep the runner jumping back to the plate, almost all of them with a little wink — okay, I may be reading something into how he squinted against the sun, but that’s how it felt.

Then he played a little with the batter, tossing him two solid strikes and, when the guy crowded the plate, forcing him back with a near peg on the shoulder. He gave a little shrug, as if to say, Sorry, then readied his next pitch.

And held himself in readiness for as long as he could. Finally, he tossed a casual fastball. And this is what made me jump. The batter hit it, the ball skipped to the ground and Bobby caught it, backhand, then slung it to third base to get the runner. All nice and easy, right? Happens every day. But the way it played was PitchHitCatchThrow. Like it was planned. And all so fast, the third baseman was able to get the ball to first and nab the batter, too. Then his guys scored a run in the top of the tenth and he shut down the last three batters and they won. And his reaction? Just doin’ m’job, ma’am. Okay, I added the ma’am part, but that was how it felt in the post-game interview I saw. He deserved his Gold Glove.

I will admit — back then, he looked like somebody I would like to have known, been friends with, had as a brother instead of those randy overgrown johnsons I wound up with (well, Nils way more than Gerrod). And it was NOT a sexual thing; seriously, it transcended anything like that. You see, he had this nice easy lack of pretension and such a strong aura of humanity, I could feel that Bobby was a good guy. Decent. Someone you could trust. Who would be there for you. Never judge or condemn you. Never let you down.

Like he was let down.

Jesus.

That’s one more way we were opposites. I’ve been an asshole more times than I can say. Attitude for no reason. Cruel for fun. Pissed off for the hell of it. Everything. Jesus, how I used to obsess over my clothes and my hair; they always had to be the latest for image’s sake. And my body? Well, you already have an idea of how anal I was about that. I used to excuse the silliness by telling myself it was necessary for my line of work, but that’s bullshit. I did it to build my ego, to fit into the life I thought I was supposed to live, to look like the person I thought I was expected to be. And to stroke my own sense of self-indulgence. The actor’s endemic illness.

But at least I have enough self-awareness to recognize what a jerk I’ve been. And now? Well, I can still be a shit, but I can also be gentle and kind, and even generous. Sometimes without even thinking about it. I’ve always loved my big brown mutt, Jag, like he’s my child, and while I did drive meals to AIDS patients once a week before my crash and burn, now I do more than just volunteer so as to be a better member of the community. And yet, even before gaining the awareness that I now have, I pretty much understood that — well, being who I am and having my it’s your problem, not mine attitude — well, even back then I expected shit to pop up every now and then. As it did, every now and then. Which I handled. Every now and then. Shit, it’s the way of the world, and if you’re a guy who likes dick instead of pussy, the probability of it increases exponentially.

But Bobby — he didn’t deserve it. Not one damn bit. And that’s where the real hell comes from.

You see, I think Einstein’s full of shit. God not only plays dice with the universe, he hides them; just ask Steven Hawkins. And they aren’t those loaded things like you get in Las Vegas but real honest-to-Christ chance-hoppers that determine what happens with your living and your dreaming and your loving. There are over seven billion people in the world and maybe fifty million really got it good — which is worse odds than at a craps table. So don’t hand me this shit about science and math and facts and all. Nobody knows shit about anything. Just pay attention to history and you’ll see that today’s truth is tomorrow’s fallacy and anybody who tells you different is a nincompoop-head (as my Minnesota Gramma’d say).

Of course, I guess that means I believe there is a God. I didn’t used to — not really. God was like this phantom thing I’d hear about in Sunday school who’s all love and forgiveness with one breath and pain and sacrifice with the next (even Presbyterians can get carried away on that crap), but wasn’t something I ever really thought about except when my old Volvo was threatening to crap out on the I-10 and I was praying to him to keep her going till I was safe at home.

Until now.

Now I know he exists. He has to. Because I have always believed there’s a balance to the universe. A natural order of things. For every positive, a negative and vise-versa. I know that’s a silly way of putting it, but it’s more real to me than anything I’ve ever heard or learned or tried to understand in my life. And because I — well, I’ve witnessed evil — I’ve seen the devil at work, so I know for a fact that he exists. And if he does, then logically God has to. Sort of a double negative way of getting around to believing, I know, but whatever works.

I figure that’s who God’s playing craps with, but the devil’s got the house table and God’s deep in the red. Maybe it’s time for his luck to change. I don’t know. All I do know is, there has to be someone (some-THING) out there that is the devil’s opposite. I cannot see it (not at this moment) but I know it’s ready, willing and waiting to be found.

So that’s why I’m here. I’m hoping that if I write down everything that happened, if I try explaining it to somebody else, then maybe I can explain it to myself and find a way to accept it. And go past it. And find my way completely back to God and forgive him for letting it happen. And forgive myself.

So this story starts with me. And I know what you’re thinking. Of course! He’s an actor! It’s always going to be about him. And you wouldn’t be far wrong. I’ve been accused of worse than self-absorption in this mess (some of it with honest justification) but everything started months before Bobby entered the picture so please be patient with my rambling.

And also keep in mind, not all of this story will be in my words. Some will come from letters I got from Allen; some comes from Bobby. I may have assembled it, but I have neither censored nor edited anything; that was my promise to everyone concerned. Including myself. And it’s been hard to keep that promise; Jesus, Christ, it’s been hard. Especially insofar as motherfucking Allen’s concerned. But to not let everyone speak his own truth of events now would be to lock doors that desperately need opening, and I will. Not. Let. That. Happen. Not again. Never again. No matter how much it hurts.

No matter how much.

It’s funny, but it seems pain the only true proof of your existence. A verification that you actually DO exist. Joy is so fleeting. Beliefs are so easily altered. Excitement and fear are so joined to the nervous system they cannot be trusted, since they are also wired to the brain. But so long as you hurt, there is no question — you know you are here. And while it may be true that only a fool holds his hand to the fire until the flesh is burned away, if the intent is to remove a malignancy that threatens to exterminate your world, then only a fool would not do it.

Oh, Jesus, that sounded dumb and artistic. (Autistic!) I have to wonder if I’m making any sense. But I can’t go back and change any part of this, now. I can’t. To see it on paper and understand what I’m revealing would make me, at the very least, hesitate and shift what was written in honesty and openness to something that might be too careful to be true.

So this story must continue to explode from my soul, with confusion and without deliberate thought, and every word I put down here in that way, every word I accept and transcribe from Allen and Bobby, I hope (I pray) will help me show the world that what happened — what was done — was pure unadulterated evil. As vile as anything ever contemplated by Hitler or Stalin or Mao or the Ayatollah Khomeini or Osama bin Laden or Pol Pot or even George W. Fucking-I’m-king-and-who-the-fuck-are-you-Bush not that long ago. And it was done to a decent, loving, all-American guy named Bobby Carapisi.

ERIC

One

I was headed home from work when hell came calling. It was just before midnight on a Tuesday late in March and I was feeling pretty good. Up till almost ten I’d had a nasty shift, working my butt off for less than seventy bucks in net tips — not much when your rent’s almost due, you’ve only got four-fifty in the bank, and you have to pay more than twice that much. But about five minutes before the kitchen closed, this guy came in. Allen. It was raining but he didn’t have an umbrella, just a long black coat that he hung by the door to let drip on the entry rug. At first glance he didn’t seem like much — slim, around forty, hair going thin and graying, sort of tall, wearing a simple shirt and pants — but the second I saw him I knew from the way he glanced at me that he was gay. His eyes were a clear blue, like ice, and held this — well, I call it a haunted look. It’s an expression some men get when they fear they aren’t attractive enough to catch the attention of a good-looking guy (yeah, like me; ego stroke, here). So when he sat at my table, instead of getting pissed that he was coming in late and that a one-top would be my last customer, I decided to serve him up right.

Now Il Senso is one of those hole-in-the-wall places that fights to ooze atmosphere — twelve tables and booths with red-checkered cloths, round-bottomed Chianti bottles whose multi-colored candle wax is supposed to convey years of buildup but was actually oh-so-carefully dribbled down the sides by some migrant worker in an El Paso sweatshop, red cloth napkins, and heavy place settings. Plastic grape vines twisted across ancient wood paneling and tile inlays, and thick dark beams of unfinished wood shot across the ceiling, giving the impression they were holding up the roof (they weren’t). It wanted to remind you of a New York City Trattoria; it succeeded in proving how tacky such things usually look — especially in LA. But I loved working there. The other waiters were cool, Rene (the owner) didn’t mind you taking off for an acting gig so long as your shifts were covered, and there were nights where I could turn every one of my six tables four times. Why? The food was fucking brilliant.

Thanks to Rene, who was also the cook and whose last name remains unknown. He was this steady stocky little guy with shining white hair flying from under his chef’s cap who probably didn’t have an ounce of Italian blood in him, but who could make a Ravioli Caruso in pink sauce that made you want to sing for the Pope. And his Pesce al Napoli was exactly like something your mother — no, your grandmother would have made if she’d lived in Naples. In the one other restaurant where I’d worked, you could nibble leftovers from what the diners didn’t finish. Not Il Senso; people cleaned their plates. I ate there every shift, and sometimes even the nights I wasn’t working since I’d get half off the menu price. And I’d bring friends. Who’d then bring friends who’d bring friends, and on and on. It kept our steady stream of regulars ever expanding and business growing and the joint jiggin’, most nights.

But then a pop music star and her new boy were paparazzi’d leaving after a low-key dinner (I was off that night, thank God; Ewan told me that when word on where she was exploded, the swarms descended and acted like bees on a hive, flashbulbs and all), so now we were seeing more and more of those waxed-up silicone types out to follow the latest trend or patronize the newest hot spot. Meaning someplace they might accidentally be paparazzi’d at because now Tom and Jessica and Nicole and Brad might show up. I heard this one screenwriter of a regular refer to them as The Hollywood Shit-Sifters; I comp’d him and his wife a desert.

Well that night, our patrons were more hot than usual and were being really brutal about it. My favorite was this one tinsel bitch who was botoxed within an inch of being infectious, who made a Grand Entrance with her I’m-too-cool-to-notice-you forty-nine-ish producer-boy-friend-slash-sugar-daddy (who probably never produced a thing in his life except fleas, he was so hairy), and demanded she be seated at the front window so everyone could witness how she was supposed to be someone you noticed. With her, a plate wasn’t clean enough, a fork wasn’t polished enough, the ice wasn’t cold enough, and the aroma from the unscented candle on her table was making her ill. To top it off, she claimed the vodka in her penne could get her drunk.

It tastes just like a Bloody Mary, she sneered.

But Rene uses very little Vodka, and half of it evaporates during the cooking process, I responded. Politely. Rene was harsh about us not being rude to his patrons, no matter how obnoxious they might be. Period. I’d seen him fire waiters for snapping at a diner. But if the patron was unbearable and you let him handle it, he’d back you up. Like when this one drunk began snarking about me being a faggot (and other assorted names of the same bent) loudly enough to be heard in Beverly Hills. Rene simply exited the kitchen, took the jerk’s plate away and escorted him to the door, all without a word and with such authority, the guy actually left. Quietly. But that was a rarity; the rest of the time he was simply of the opinion his food would calm their bitchiness, and normally it did.

But not this time.

The Botox Bitch slung the dish onto the floor with a snarly, Bullshit! I’m doing A-A, right now, and you’re gonna send me off the wagon! (Which made me wonder why the fuck she’d even ordered it since it’s called Penne alla Vodka on the menu.) Bring me something without the sippy stuff in it. A salad, yeah. Bring me a salad. With oil and lemon. Olive oil, if you know what that is!

I managed to keep a smile as I cleaned up most of her mess; Alfonso the busboy took care of the rest. I also managed to keep it from getting on my new black Chinos or white cotton shirt. I kept smiling even when she snickered, What a loser, at me as I headed back to the kitchen. But I almost lost it when she said in a voice pitched loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear, Gillie, why don’t you buy this place and put some real waiters in? Fortunately (or un, depending on your particular mindset), the swinging doors were right there — so I swung in.

Laila, a short thin wildcat with a golden burr haircut, was snarling out an order. That girl’s got lungs (she’s a metal rock singer the nights she doesn’t work) and she was having it as bad as I was.

What the hell’s going on, tonight? I asked.

The convention of the Malibu Zombies, she purred. Two dots in sauce (Ravioli Caruso) and slop (spaghetti in marinara)!

Rabbit food for vodka, Rene, I said. She says you’re trying to make her drunk.

You’re shittin’ me! said Laila.

She’s in A-A, I said, oh-so-sweetly.

More like A-C, Laila snapped. Absolute cunt. Then she roared out the door with two orders of the Pesce. Smiling.

Rene never said a word. He never does. He just nodded as I piled a plate with romaine, spinach and slaw and took it back out to Little Miss Botox.

It looks wilted, she said.

It’s Romaine, I said, not Iceberg.

I know that. Do I look stupid? This lettuce is old.

It was shredded just an hour ago.

Listen, you little fuck, do you know who I am?

I came so close to saying, No, and since you don’t either then it must not matter. But I didn’t. Instead, I took her plate, returned to the kitchen, pulled a fresh head of lettuce from the crisper, grabbed a bowl, went back to her table and shredded her a nice fresh salad. All under Rene’s now watchful eye. It looked like he’d about had it with her, too. She must have noticed him because she ignored me after that, and they left me a five dollar tip on a bill for seventy-five bucks. I almost chased them down to give it back, I was so pissed. So when Allen came in, looking like the total opposite of what I’d been dealing with all night, I was happy to take care of him.

He sat at a corner table and ordered the Ravioli Caruso and a glass of the house Chardonnay (like he’d been there before, though I’d never seen him). I complimented his choice, and I meant it. Like I said, it’s one of the best dishes on the menu. I brought him lots of breadsticks, I kept his water glass filled instead of having Alfonso do it and I chatted him up like I would the latest hot young hunk. He seemed to enjoy it.

Most of our conversation was bullshit stuff — the rain, how busy that night had been, how long I’d been working there, where I came from — but as I was handing him a second glass of wine, I let drop that I was an actor, in case he hadn’t already figured it out and happened to be somebody I needed to know. Of course, he asked me how it was going.

Not bad, I said. I’ve already been in a low-budget flick and been featured in a Tom Cruise movie (bit of exaggeration, there, but it’s part of the game, don’t ya know), but I’m still working on that big break.

I doubt it should take much longer. The film business loves attractive young men, and you have the look that’s very in, at the moment.

"Not in enough, lately, so..."

This pays the bills, he said, and he nodded around the restaurant.

Yeah. Barely.

Oh?

Well, at the rate things are going this week, I may not make my rent. Giving a not-so-subtle hint that I needed a really big tip, pretty please. I was shameless, all but batting my eyes at him.

"Yes, it is difficult to provide a decent living as a waiter in this town. Perhaps that is why so many turn to — oh, shall we say, other means?"

And the blunt-force-trauma of two well-placed words brought the freezing-wave-of-reality crashing in on me. Other means. Shorthand for, Let’s go back to my place; I’ll make it worth your while. Or I’ll pay you five hundred bucks to photograph you with a woody. Or even the old stand-by, Do you do any modeling? Then once you get to be a name, you wind up with photos and headlines about your porno past in The Enquirer. I needed cash, yeah, but my goals were more long-term than that.

I’ve heard about people doing that, I said, with care. Problem is, it ain’t exactly good for the career.

How so?

"Well, you know how moral people get once you become somebody. You can’t have needed money so bad you’d sell a kidney for it. You can’t have been faced with starving or losing your car or becoming homeless. You can’t have gotten sick and had to find some way of paying for a doctor. No, if you weren’t Little Sir Perfect your whole life, once you get to be successful, and it doesn’t matter in what field, they will rip you to shreds."

True. Morality is what humanity demands of everyone but itself, he said, his eyes locked on mine. Then up popped a sweet, creepy (and I do mean creepy) little smile. "Especially those in positions of power. It’s one of the games they play, where they alone may determine the rules and how they are to be applied. A method, of sorts, to keep the masses in line. Who was it — Charlotte Brontë? No, no, no, Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice — who allowed this rich snippy old bat named Lady Catherine de Bourgh to draw a distinction between the deserving poor and those undeserving, as though it was her right to determine who was which simply because she was rich and noble. And of course, by her rules, those who bowed and scraped and stayed within the confines of decent, Chr-r-r-ristian behavior were deserving, whereas those who dared be their own persons were not."

Wow. Guess she’d really hate me.

Ah, no one may confine you to another’s interpretation of propriety, is that it?

I just don’t like playing my-way-or-the-highway games. Except when it’s MY way.

He laughed. I completely agree. The games we play between ourselves should be no one’s business but our own.

Besides, how could I win? Like you said, the big boys’re who make up the rules.

Yes, I suspected you would rather make up your own.

No, been there, tried that.

Oh? In your acting career?

In a lot of things. The creepy smile slipped back to his lips, and I suddenly wished I hadn’t said that.

"Yes, sometimes that is what it takes to get by in this world. And if people were capable of being honest, they would admit it is so much more fun to, oh, wallow in the undeserving category. Tell the big-boys to, oh, keep their morality to themselves. Then he looked me up one side and down the other (as my Southern-Lady Grandmother would have said) and added, And allow for the truth of how much more profitable it could be. When approached with the appropriate attitude."

Wow. Right back on subject. Pay you fifty bucks to blow you, kiddo. Or something more. Dammit.

Now — to be honest, I halfway considered taking him up on it. If he actually verbalized the offer. I hadn’t been with a guy in a while, not since Ted and I parted (Ted was this big blond gym-bunny I got involved with one weekend then spent three months becoming UN-involved with; hence the lack of cash — legal expenses). Plus I’d been offered something like that more times than I could count. And while Allen wasn’t gorgeous, he wasn’t exactly butt-ugly, either. He was just, I dunno — generic. Average. I could have closed my eyes, let him do his thing and thought of Gary Cooper in Morocco; he had the same kind of long lanky face and body. But something about that smile mixed with those frozen eyes, it set off a warning in the back of my head, telling me not to let this go too far. So I just shrugged and said, Yeah well, my attitude is, whatever floats your boat.

Oh?

Yeah. Now I have to get back to the kitchen. I’m setting up, for tomorrow.

Does that take long?

Half an hour or so. You like to see the desert menu?

No, this will be sufficient, thank you. And he looked away. Still with that creepy little smile.

I slipped over to the register, suddenly feeling like I’d done something wrong. Even to this day, I can’t say why; that’s just how I felt. I rang up his tab ($34.81) and took it out to him then helped Laila roll napkins. He didn’t look at me, again. He just put some money in the folder, said a generic, Good night, and left.

When he was gone, I grabbed the folder. And found he’d left me a hundred dollar bill! I was ecstatic. That made up for Little Miss Botox and all the other shit I’d taken all evening. Laila popped over as she was leaving, saw the bill and whistled, Why don’t the straight ones do that for me?

You don’t act like you’ll blow ‘em, I snickered. She swatted me and let herself out. Alfonso and our dishwasher, Octavio, went with her. I locked the door behind them, hummed some Velvet Elvis as I finished prepping, made sure the bus stations were set, got Rene to let me out, and headed for my car.

I was parked seven blocks away at a meter. I’d nabbed it just before another guy and figured I was lucky; I only had to put in fifty cents to take it past six, when the hours of op ended. Of course, it had also stopped raining so arrogant little Eric had left his jacket and umbrella in it, thinking he wouldn’t really need them, again; hey, I’m from where you learn real quick you don’t melt if you get a bit wet. And cold? What they call cold in LA is like a spring day back home. Except when it’s drizzling. Which it was. And all I had on was my shirt, tee-shirt, Chinos and shoes with two pair of socks to give my feet just a bit more cushion for the night, so I was damp and cold in an instant, but I didn’t care. I was still bouncing from what seemed like my good fortune.

This part of Melrose is deserted on a weeknight, except for the occasional restaurant worker heading home. Even so, I didn’t notice a vehicle approaching until it was right beside me and honked. I jumped and looked around. This ratty old Ford van, sort of a baby-blue with a black curtain behind the seats, was pacing me. I finally made out it was Allen behind the wheel.

Eric, he called, are you walking home?

First thought that hit me was, How did he know my name? Then I realized it was, Hi, I’m Eric, I’ll be your waiter, tonight. So I said, No, just headed for my car.

Where is it?

Couple blocks up.

Let me give you a lift.

That’s okay, I said, and I kept walking. And it wasn’t because I didn’t feel right about it; I got past my uncertainty about him the second he nearly doubled my take home pay. I was just being mannerly, like Grandmother had rammed down my throat.

He kept pacing me. Don’t be ridiculous! You’ll be soaked. Come on, I’m already heading that direction.

I’d like to tell you I thought it through before shrugging my shoulders and hopping inside his truck. That I figured he’d just eaten at the restaurant where I worked. That he was seen by people I know. That he didn’t seem like a threat. But all I did was shiver and make this snap decision to climb in. His heater was on and it was warm.

Thanks, I said. It’s an old white four-door Volvo about four blocks down.

They’re good cars, he said, and we started moving. Very, VERY slowly. What model?

Sixty-five One Twenty-two S. Built like a tank. You can’t stop her, not even with a Hummer.

Aren’t they expensive to keep up?

I shrugged. I do a lot of the work, myself. It sort of shamed me into it. Which was bull. Dad made us all learn how to change the oil. Install brake pads. Rebuild the clutch. That sort of thing. Thanks for the tip, by the way. Or did you mean to leave a fifty?

No. I left what was appropriate.

Well, thanks. Again.

I appreciate excellent service. Then he glanced me over, again, and gave me that creepy smile. And beauty.

It’s funny, but that little comment shot me right back to nervous, again. Still, I just shrugged and said, Thanks.

Would you care to increase your salary even more?

Okay, there it was. And to be honest, I wondered just what I would answer when he finally broached the detailed aspect of what he was hinting at. Because the idea of being naughty — nervous or not — was appealing as much to my baser needs as my wallet. I mean your right hand can only take you so far, don’t ya know. How?

Oh, just play a little game. By my rules.

I smiled. What kind of game? As if I didn’t know.

One that fits Lady Catherine’s view of what makes a poor man undeserving.

Lady Catherine? Oh, yeah. I don’t get you.

Eric, please. You’re much smarter than that.

He stopped the truck by a meter, two more hundreds appeared and they were tucked into my pants so quickly, I didn’t have time to react. Then he fixed those frozen-blue eyes on me and pulled the curtain open, partway. Just get in the back.

He said it with all the openness and gentleness he could muster, and that’s what hit me wrong. It was completely false. Like a bad-guy actor pretending he’s nice and doing it badly on a second rate TV soap. And that made my decision for me. I dug in my pocket for the bills and said, No, thanks; I don’t do that kind of thing.

But you’re gay.

Which pissed me off. I never once thought he’d be one of those assholes who seemed to think that just because you’re queer, you’re open to any kind of sexual offer. I reached for the door handle and snapped, So fuckin’ what?

He grabbed my wrist and an arm whipped from behind the curtain and slammed around my neck, and someone with a low voice snarled, So get in the back of the fuckin’ truck, bitch!

I got two words out — Wait, what’re — ? before my voice was crushed into silence by a cloth reeking with fumes of some kind and I was dragged back between the seats.

Two

Bang! I tried to crash into struggle-and-kick-and-scream-your-fucking-mouth-off mode, but the fumes shattered my brain and I couldn’t figure out how the hell to do it. I felt like the time I was body-checked in a hockey game and wound up face down on the ice with two players piled on my head, and I was telling myself I couldn’t move till they’re off me. But they never had really piled on me; I’d just been given a nice mild concussion, according to the doctor, and only thought they had. And I had to give my brain a chance to accept that.

And that’s what happened here. I wanted to struggle, but all I could do was sort of flail about. Very ineffectively, too. I wanted to scream, but all I could do was moan or croak or jabber or something that made no sense. I almost think I was laughing. Or giggling. Or grunting like an ape or something. Which was ridiculous. Because the next thing I knew, I was face down on a mattress and my hands were tied behind me and my ankles were tied together and a third guy was putting his fingers over my eyes, forcing me to close them, while trying to tie a bandana around them. And clarity returned for an instant.

I rolled away from him, rasping, Hey, hey, hey —

Shut up! And my head slammed against floor of the truck.

The pain wasn’t so much intense as brisk and surprising. I froze. And I let him blindfold me. Then I let him shove some cloth in my mouth and tape it shut. I couldn’t see. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t really scream. Hell, could barely breathe. In the space of maybe ten seconds, I’d been immobilized.

What’s weird is, I wasn’t really scared, at that point. It may have been the stuff I’d inhaled, but it was more a case of where I just plain couldn’t believe this was happening; it was too bizarre. I mean, I honestly could not understand why they’d tied me up. My brain was still too fuzzy to connect with anything coherent. And it stayed that way in a spooky surreal fashion that reminded me a bit of some crappy drug I’d tried it in college (a classmate gave me a snort; called it Special K), but I hadn’t liked the loss of control that it brought to me. Or the brutal depression, afterwards. But it hadn’t smelled like this stuff. Hadn’t smelled like...like dirty socks mixed with a solvent of some kind, really.

So I was still trying to figure out what the hell was going on when Low Voice, who was one heavy son-of-a-bitch, lay on top of me. Crushed me into this filthy mattress that carried whiffs of sweat and piss and vomit. Molded himself against me. And I felt him open his pants. And press himself — press his dick against me. Right on my butt. And he said, Oh, yeah. You feel good. And man, if I’d been cold walking in the rain, I was fucking freezing now.

That’s when my body took on a life of its own. That sounds dumb, yeah, but it’s real. I freaked. Panicked. Started to buck and scream and tried to break away. What kept flashing through my mind was, They’re gonna kill you; the motherfucker’s gonna kill you! And I wanted AWAY!

The third guy joined the big one and helped hold me down. Then the one who was laying on me said, Shh, shh, lie still. If you get too crazy, you’ll vomit and choke. His voice was low. Calm. Almost soft. And deep down I knew he was right; if panic took over, I could easily swallow my tongue or the cloth in my mouth could shift into my throat, and I could suffocate from either. But I wasn’t in control of me, right then. I was still bucking and twisting and jabbering, Allen-c’mon-seriously-you-want-to-fool-around-that’s-fine-we-can-I-thought-you-were-good-looking-when-you-came-in-and-you’d-be-fun-to-be-with-just-not-like-this-man-c’mon-please-I-don’t-like-this-shit-please. But I knew I was only making the words in my mind. What came out from behind the gag probably sounded more like incoherent grunts or whines or even fucking hiccups.

A Third Voice said, Did we give him too much?

Low Voice chuckled, No, he’s just playin’ games. He sat on my thighs and rubbed his hands up my back as his helper pinned my shoulders down and used his knees to keep my head from moving. I pictured a leopard caught in a net and wrapped with rope, unable to do anything but scream from fear. Only I couldn’t even do that. Then Low Voice leaned in and whispered, Take some deep breaths, Eric. Long and deep. Come on.

They kept me still — and bit by bit my stomach stopped heaving, and I finally reached the point where I could keep a vague sort of control over myself, and even coherently mutter, Please, man, don’t. Please. Over and over. For all the good it did.

That’s when I realized what his hands were unbuckling my belt. And then unbuttoning my pants. Then yanking them down, pulling my briefs with them. Exposing my ass. Then he used those fucking paws to maul my cheeks and dig into my skin and probe me — probe into me and, holy fucking shit, I tensed away from him. Didn’t do any good. I had no choice but to let him do his finger-fuck of me — until he pulled my briefs away from my crotch and forced this sickening, groping intimacy on me as he — as he fondled me. And the whole time he made these vile little comments on how much fun it was. For us both.

Jesus Christ, I was manhandled in ways that weren’t just nauseating but sometimes hurt and threatened to send me crashing back into panic. More than once, I instinctively bucked away, but he’d hold on and snicker, You like it. You’re getting hard. I can feel it. Which was bullshit. Motherfucking bullshit! I was up in my scrotum, I was so scared.

Except — he was right. Not at first. But after what seemed like hours of — of feeling up my dick, it began to lengthen and my balls let themselves be fondled and — and once he saw that, he laughed and slapped my butt.

See?

Yeah, said Third Voice. Pretty.

Then Low Voice lay me face down on the mattress and — and I felt his erection slide between my cheeks — and probe — probe my hole — and then push into me. I screamed, it hurt so much. His only response was to hold my hips as he pumped in and out of me — slowly — slowly — and it felt like he was aiming to split me in half until he began to move faster and faster, slapping himself into me and slapping his hands against my cheeks and — and then he pulled out and I could feel him ejaculate on my legs and ass. Then he rolled me onto my back and returned to fondling me.

I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I’d just been raped and it’s like — I didn’t really understand that. I hurt like a motherfucker. And he was still groping me — fondling me in his rough way. And I was just lying there wondering, Does he have to be so rough?

I finally realized we were driving. Could have been for hours; probably wasn’t more than ten-fifteen minutes. But now I had no idea where we were. We could have gone left or right or east or west or be halfway to fucking Fresno, for all I knew. Or the desert. Death Valley. Great places for a shallow grave. No one for hundreds of miles. Oh, Jesus.

I start to quake with fear. What the hell was going to happen now? What the hell were they going to do? WHY was this happening? Why now? Why to me? What the fuck had I done? How could I let it happen? How could I have gotten into this van without even thinking about this as a possibility because it was so fucking obvious this was going to happen to me, now that it HAD happened, and my brain was sure I could have avoided it if I’d been paying better attention. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! I had these questions racing through my mind in a continuous loop of terror as the bastard’s hand kept running all over me — and pulling on me — on my dick — and shoving my shirt up so he had access to my tits and could pinch at them as if that would help him get me to do what he obviously wanted me to do — until we took a sharp right and slowed down. And stopped.

Here we go, Allen whispered, and I heard him get out of the van.

Low Voice leaned back and pulled me around by my feet. I shook my head and mumbled No, but he just snickered and slapped my rear. My blindfold had shifted up, so I could peek around and just make out that he was big and burly like a wrestler. I’d been considering kicking him away when we stopped, but now I figured that wouldn’t do anything but piss him off.

I heard the van’s door open then the third man shifted me into a sitting position and slapped that cloth over my nose, again. The fumes cut into me and I bolted away from him, but it was too late; I slid back into incoherence. I vaguely recall the wrestler grabbing my legs and them carrying me out of the truck, half stripped and completely vulnerable, and into a room of some kind, me blabbering stupidly the whole way.

That room. I didn’t have the time (or awareness) to see much of it before they slung me on a bed, my ass and dick still exposed, and Low Voice said, Be right back. And I heard the door close. And the light vanished.

I have never been in such darkness. Not like what surrounded me in that room. Annihilating darkness. The kind where nothing exists, anymore. Where you’re not even certain of the fact that you exist. That you’re lying on a bed or that you’re in a room or you’re even still alive. Nothing was there. No sound. No silence. No sense of anything.

That’s my nightmare, now. I’m back in that smothering black room, my hands and feet tied. No clothing. Feeling the walls draw closer and closer to envelop me. Hearing the air slip away to suffocate me. Knowing something waits patiently to reach from the blackness and rip the life from me. The bed sits on nails that quietly cut just below the cover, planning to tear into me. And every time I move, even to breathe, they cut closer. The silence screams ten times louder than any voice could. I shift about, not knowing how close I am to the edge of oblivion. Feeling nothing beneath me. I try to slip my hands in front of me but cannot get them around my feet. And the nails cut closer. I try to find a knot in the ropes to loosen. And the nails cut closer. I finally just lie there and smell the remains of those who were there before me and quake and listen as the nails cut closer and closer until they shred my skin and I scream in a way that cannot be heard. Then the loud clumping of heavy feet grows closer and closer and the door screams open with a blinding light and I wake with a jolt.

But right then. Right there. I was stuck in that room to wait. For what, I didn’t know. I closed my eyes, squeezed them shut so be sure they were closed, then used every relaxation trick I’d ever learned in every acting class I ever took to keep from totally losing it. Deep breaths. Focus. Find your center. Calming moments from your past (an overabundance of those, thank you, Mom and Dad, for once). But headlines from Jeffrey Dahmer (BIG news in Minneapolis, even for a kid) and John Wayne Gacy (who became the latest version of the bogeyman for parents to scare their truant boys) and shit would blast into my brain along with poorly detailed stories about Randy Kraft (who liked to molest little Marines after he strangled them) and William Bonin (who used a van like Allen’s to kidnap kids off the streets to rape).

I was halfway hoping I’d read Allen wrong. That he was really just a homophobic freak who wanted to hurt some faggot who’d dared to flirt with him. That might mean being knocked around and bloodied up, but nothing more. I mean, I’d heard of gay men being beaten and raped by guys who claimed to be straight — but no — no, my gaydar was rarely off, and I just knew Allen was as queer as the Queen of Clubs.

So could he and his buddies just be nut cases who think this is the way to sexual fun? Grab a fag on the street, fuck him and let him go? It made sense. Hell, Gacy’d released some of his victims because so far as he was concerned, they were just having sex with him. I mean, it had to be something like that — people had seen us together. Talking. So I’d have no trouble turning the cops onto him. He must know that. He didn’t seem that dumb.

Unless he did intend to kill me. Which sent my stomach flip-flopping, again, till I forced myself to remember their voices. None of them held that much of a threat. I didn’t think they did. But then how would I know? I haven’t been around any killers, none that I know of. How COULD I know?

Then I noticed that mattress. The lumpy feel of it. The sound of it creaking. It was old. Well used. With hints of piss and sweat drifting from it and vomit and shit and something else. Oh, Jesus, was that the iron-like smell of blood?

Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Not blood! I fought down the panic to try and remember if I’d heard anything on the circuit about guys turning up naked and dead in back alleys. Or vanishing, like what somebody told me happened in up and down the west coast a few years ago. But there was nothing. Nothing.

Oh, shit! Shit, that’s not how I was supposed to go! I just knew it. I mean, it’s not like I did know how I would die; I just knew it wasn’t going to be as the torture-toy of three fucking perverts. That would’ve given the Southern-Baptist side of my family too much pleasure, and I’d live through anything to not let them have that satisfaction. But I didn’t know what their plans were!

Goddamn the son-of-a-bitch!