I took a long drink of the beer an’ flopped onto a big-backed chair. No sense in lettin’ myself wind up on the couch too quick, not till after the third or fourth Beck’s. Maybe. I was already buildin’ a little buzz from the Heinekens at the bar, though they don’t really count as bein’ beer ‘cause they brew ‘em here in the states an’ make ‘em half what they are in Europe. I know ‘cause this one faggot I let have my dick had some direct from -- where’d he say? Denmark? Holland? -- but I’d had three or four, so I was gettin’ in the mood.
Lenny an’ Wayne sat on opposite ends of the couch, both lookin’ at me an’ tryin’ to be cool, but I could see their eyes dartin’ from my face to my crotch to my pecs to my legs then back to my face. An’ I played ‘em, no question. My jeans were tight an’ I wasn’t wearin’ my briefs; I took ‘em off last time I hit the john. An’ I kept my legs apart, not so wide it looked like I was tryin’ to be hot but just wide enough to let ‘em get a good idea of what they could have. I was figurin’ I’d get maybe two-fifty, three-hundred from ‘em an’ an encore at some later date, the way they were droolin’...Lenny way more than Wayne.
We bullshitted some -- about how good Beck’s is an’ how long they’d had their joint an’ how they thought of themselves as the West Coast “Felix an’ Oscar” but out of the closet. Wayne had to explain to me about “The Odd Couple” since I never watched TV outside prison. Never paid attention to reruns. He did it like some bitchy old maid schoolteacher would; “Well now, little boy, this is a story about two middle-aged men who live together, and who are real opposites, in everything, and how they get on each other’s nerves, just like real people do,” an’ yap yap yap, just like a Chihuahua. What did Lenny call him? “Condescending.” Yeah, that’s it.
Thing is, Wayne did look a little like Jack Lemmon. I’d seen him in this old movie Connie made me watch, which I didn’t mind so much ‘cause I’ve always had the hots for Shirley McLaine; she looked like she could handle herself. Anyway, Wayne had that same fussy directness an’ the same kind of hair an’ sort of the same chin, even if he was a good forty pounds heavier.
Now I could tell Lenny’s got all these questions he wants to ask me ‘bout what happened in prison, but he kept dancin’ around ‘em, like they were snakes tryin’ to bite him. It was Wayne who finally gave up on the bullshit.
“Tell me something, Curt,” he said, leanin’ forward just a bit, his eyes lookin’ straight at me. “Have you really raped a man?”
Lenny rolled his eyes at that an’ sneered, “Of course he has, twit. He’s been in jail. I mean, look at his tattoos.”
“Porn stars have the same kind of tattoos, Lenny,” he sniped back, “but they haven’t necessarily forced a man to have sex with them.”
“Porn” stars? Fuckin’ asswipes that let themselves get fucked for cash on video? That got my back up. I glared at Wayne as I said, “You think I do porno?!”
He backed down a bit...but not much. “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I’m asking.”
That really pissed me off. I swallowed the rest of my beer an’, since Lenny’s was on the glass coffee table between us, I helped myself to his. He let me. Then I leaned forward an’ looked straight into Wayne’s eyes an’ said, “I did six years at Mid-State. For drugs. They don’t allow private visits with your wife, an’ your right hand only goes so far. You do the math.”
“But c’mon, there are other possibilities,” Wayne said. “Gay men who are willing to have sex in exchange for -- .”
“They give you AIDS,” I said.
“Oh, now that’s insulting!”
“That’s the truth, you fuck!” I snapped. “Most fags in prison got there ‘cause of drugs -- usin’ ‘em, whorin’ for ‘em, stealin’ to buy ‘em, that kind of shit. If they ain’t got AIDS from gettin’ fucked, they got it from a needle. Only dumb fucks do it with them. Then those dumb fucks take it home to their wives an’ girlfriends, or they gang-bang a guy an’ give it to him an’ he takes it home when he’s let out. Smart guys get fresh clean meat, straight guys in for the first time. Smart guys keep ‘em to themselves as long as they can.”
“An’ you’re a smart guy?” Wayne asked.
I just sneered at him. “I don’t think I’m all that fuckin’ dumb.”
“How many times have you been in?”
“Why?”
“Just curious. You sound rather experienced for someone who’s only been to prison once.”
Shit, the fucker was payin’ attention. An’ it was makin’ me feel...well, feel weird. Like they wanted me t’ tell ‘em more than I really wanted to. But it also felt...I dunno, felt good to be talkin’ to somebody besides Connie. Somebody who acted like they gave a shit, even if they really didn’t. Connie, she’d act like she’s listenin’, but after a while I figured out she was really thinkin’ ‘bout somethin’ like the costumes she had to pull together for nothin’ for some low-rent movie she was workin’ on, so I stopped tryin’ to talk with her. But Wayne -- it seemed like he wanted to know. Really wanted to. An’ not just to be nice, y’know? Or for chit-chat.
Then I got the idea there was somethin’ more goin’ on here, somethin’ I couldn’t quite figure out. An’ I remembered I got the same vibe earlier from him, so it made me
