An’ the guys I’d pass? They were nothin’ but my dinner. I’d smile at ‘em, laughin’ inside as I thought, “He don’t know what I’m gonna do. What if I did it to him? Is he anybody I’d do it to? Or him?” Didn’t matter if they looked good or young or queer or anything, I had this new standard for smilin’ at my “fellow man” -- was he worth prison?
So that’s why I put those restrictions on Lenny-boy. If I’m gonna risk a second strike, I want it to be somethin’ I’ll at least enjoy. An’ man, I have to admit, fuckin’ up some squeaky-clean asswipe of a guy, especially if he looked a little like fuckin’ Anthony, made me happy.
Now I ain’t gonna tell you I was thinkin’ ‘bout gettin’ caught. I wasn’t. Thought never entered my head. I mean, come on -- what “heterosexual male whore” in his right mind’ll admit to bein’ butt-fucked by an ex-con an’ forced to cum? Think about it. Just the fact that he shot his load would make any cop or D-A really wonder if the guy was legit or if he just got into something over his head an’ was freaked ‘cause his family might find out an’ dump him. An’ if the guys at his day job found out? They’d make his life hell. He might even get fired. Not for bein’ queer; oh, no, that’s illegal in California. But suddenly his job ratings’d fall off an’ he’d get all these black marks an’ just have to be let go for “poor performance” or some bullshit like that.
I mean, everybody knows it’s still okay to hate faggots in this country. Hell, in most of the world. Just listen to any so-called “man of God” go on ‘bout it on Sunday mornin’. An’ look at all those two-faced cocksuckers who’ll tell you queers can change an’ they got proof when any fuckin’ idiot can see they’re lyin’ through their teeth and’d drop an’ suck a cock the first second one was waved in their face. But hey, it’s all in the name of God, so that makes hate an’ stupidity an’ general pissiness okay, right?
Fuckin’ asswipes. They preach love an’ understandin’, but you take one fuckin’ step that’s wrong an’ you’re marked for life in their eyes. You want any help from ‘em? You gotta be what they want you to be. You gotta change into what they think is right. You gotta live how they tell you to fuckin’ live. An’ if you don’t? Just try an’ get ‘em to turn one fuckin’ hand for you. “I may be a Christian, but I do not believe it when Jesus tells me to love my neighbor as myself.”
Yeah, I know the Bible. Some of it. That fuckin’ priest that’d come by County thought he was gonna make me into one of his boys. Not like that, but as “a soldier in God’s army,” was how he put it. We’d sit together in his office twice a week, chattin’ about life an’ the meanin’ of God an’ how I got so off track an’ all that shit. He’d quote verses an’ tell me where they were in the Bible. He even gave me a small one so I could look ‘em up. An’ I did start lookin’ through it, more an’ more, tryin’ to figure out what the hell’d gone wrong with my life. Wonderin’ if maybe there was an answer in those tremblin’ little pages.
Now I gotta be honest -- I was goin’ there at first ‘cause it gave me a breather from dealin’ with all the shit you got in jail. Even a dinky assed county joint. Dumbshits tryin’ to prove who’s got th’ biggest cock on a twenty-four-seven basis. Takin’ letters an’ pictures an’ socks from guys that’re weaker than them. I mean, it’s pathetic, rippin’ off somebody’s fuckin’ toothpaste to prove you’re a man. Some guys had cigs stashed away, or bottles of whiskey or bits of chemicals, an’ they’d swap ‘em for protection. Or drugs. An’ sometimes a bunch of the “big dick” boys’d gang up on a new kid, wrap him in a blanket an’ fuck him, like hidin’ him made it more like they were fuckin’ a girl. Stupid. An’ me, I was sick of it. Sick of fightin’ the little fucks off all the time when they wanted my shit, even after Paco. Sick of gettin’ into noise-fights over if I gave one of ‘em a dirty look or not. Sick of always havin’ to watch my back in case some “big dick” who didn’t believe the shit spread about me decided he wanted to make me back into his new mouth. That’s why I never missed Father Tello’s little meetin’s.
He was all about readin’ the Gospels an’ followin’ in the teachin’s of Christ an’ all that. So that’s what I read. An’ what’s really funny is, for about ten minutes I sort of believed in it. Matthew, verses five through seven. Sermon on the Mount, he called it. All the stuff about not judgin’ others an’ lovin’ thy neighbor an’ doin’ unto others like you want them to do to you. An’ I’m thinkin’, Shit, I wish I’d been told about this shit. It was somethin’ to live by, a guidebook for a kid who was tryin’ to figure life out on his own an’ doin’ a pretty fucked up job of it.
Y’see, my mom...well, let’s face it -- she was a slut who’d do anything for a drink, though she’d never admit to that now. She’s all married an’ respectable an’ born-again into the middle class with two daughters that’re honest kids, not fatherless bastards like me an’ my brother. She really said that to me, once, leadin’ up to tellin’ me how I’m the bastard she didn’t want to have. But since she lived in this dinky-assed town in Wyoming an’
