Sometimes, going home with the wrong guy can be a mistake, a terrible mistake...
*
It started out a lousy day. And it just keeps getting worse. I meet him in a bar for the poor, the stupid and the stinky. I'm sat there drinking, thinking, sinking, feeling low, hungry, depressed and far from home, wondering what I'm going to be doing once tonight is through. Watching an endless flow of sad and derelict faces.
He says 'hey boy, you got a match?' He's gaunt, fidgety, not an especially attractive character. I could have walked away, but I was alone.
'No sorry, cigarettes are not one of my addictions.'
'So what is it you prefer to slip between those pretty lips?' He was attentive, sympathetic, and eventually, I decide not entirely bad looking. Some years older than me, sure, but with a charming seductive manner and a no-nonsense aspect that has me intimidated from the get-go. Intruding into my personal space. He'll intrude into even more personal space before the night is through. He's so close it's like I'm breathing in my pure essence. When he looks at me, I can feel that smile crawling across my body. Me, who's on first-name terms with the shittiness of life.
'Beneath this rough roguish, devastatingly handsome and extremely well-hung exterior beats the heart of a true sophisticate. I am lonely, but you can free me' he leers. 'This looks to be the kind of bar where only namby-pamby suckers hang out.'
'You could say that.'
He makes his intentions clear from the open. 'You got a sly tongue on you. You one of those suckers?'
I look him up and down warily. Sometimes there are voices inside my tongue. Sometimes they take me places I don't particularly want to go. Or say things for me I don't really want to say. Now it's saying 'Guess I could be. For a guy who had the right... attributes,' and I can't stop it. I meet his eyes. Then look away.
'You look hungry. Looks like you could do with something to swallow.'
I look up. Nod wearily. 'What exactly do you have in mind?'
'You know something, boy? Even if you don't have a match, I sure as hell do. My todger and your pretty white throat would make a perfect match. What'dya think eh?' he sneers unpleasantly.
I turn away, unsure how to react, 'honestly sir, whatever would make you say something like that?'
'I like that respectful way you call me 'sir', boy. Keep that up while I'm fucking your throat and we'll get along just fine.'
Here we go again. He slouches up, makes a thumb at the exit. Indicates me to follow. Meekly, I do so. Out into the sultry night. There's a world out there. Across the street, tripping on a cracked paving stone (those things can cripple you!), hurrying to keep up with him. Into a dark parking lot where his half-truck stands. He indicates me into the passenger seat, sprawling the drive-side recliner back for himself.
'Are you going to make me do bad things now' I pout.
He ignores my attempts at coquetry. 'So do it.' I have to do the work. Sometimes I hate this. Sometimes I'd be in physical dread of this moment. Throat-dry, tongue-tied, clumsy, perspiring. Other times I hate not doing it even more. Missing the chance of human warmth, of intimate closeness. I was born under a bad sign, slapped when I came into this life, and I've been slapped every day since. Ever since I could walk and talk people have been against me. And they outnumber me. I'm a failure specialist. Failure is what I know best. You don't have to love your specialty to be a specialist, you just have to live it.
Nervous, reaching down to unzip him. Sucking a guy's cock is the quickest way of making a friend. Give him good head, he comes back for more. It's a survival technique I've learned by experience, do it good, it buys you favours. Not for long, not forever, but long enough. I can be a total shameless slut for the right guy, and most times for the wrong guy too. Of course, I've had what I call 'lovers'. Some of them lasted up to a fortnight. I'm told they were abusive relationships. To me, they were just relationships. This is what men like to have done to them. If I want to be liked by them -- and I do, this is what I have to do. Having an abusive friendship is better than having no friendship at all. I'm grateful for their attention, while it lasts. And when they drop me I know absolutely it's because of my inadequacy, and not through any fault of theirs. What other reason is he going to want me for? My intellect? My erudite wit and sophisticated conversation? I think not.
This is all I'm good for, but it's enough. Fishing a rank semi-hard cock up and out, with an ancient earthy faintly sour smell, levering it, a pale magic 'shroom with faint matching fungus bouquet. He's crude, far from the smooth-operator of my dreams, but this fuck-tool is just about the sexiest thing I'm likely to encounter this night. He's watching me, so I avoid his eyes, dipping in at it to conceal my face. Fisting it up, lips closing around the salty glans, following its sensual flared contours. It looks, smells and tastes like the rankest mushroom in the patch, my mouth stretching open further and further as it slithers in. It's hot and raw, its salty taste bursting in my mouth. I hear him exhaling sharply somewhere way above me, encouraging me to take it deeper.
Again he grunts, then confusingly he's tugging at my hair, 'get up off-of it you slut.' I come up, wiping my mouth. He's laughing at my expression. It's like I've got a wire crossed upstairs. There are spirits with claws that wake me when I try to sleep, by gnawing at my skin and the roots of my hair. Sometimes it feels as if there are spirits of dead ancestors and alien shape-shifters that must have teleported down, and are fighting each other for possession of my physical form. It's like I'm being eaten alive from the inside out.
I protest 'I don't fraggin' need this. Can't we just do this thing, or you go mind-fuck some other guy.'
'Slow down, don't be so eager' he chides. 'All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die. Is that such a bad thing? I'm thinking. Weighing things up. You're a cool guy. No doubt about that. But what happens when I come into you? I know your dirty little ways. I've been with sluts before. I know what you do. You make me come before I'm ready and cheat me out of what I'm rightly entitled to, what I'm about to pay good money for, right? You're sneaky little fuckers, all of you.'
'So do you want it or don't you?'
'I'll tell you what, I'll make you a deal. You got somewhere to go? Someplace to sleep tonight?'
I shake my head, truthfully. Friday night and I'm going nowhere, all the green lights in my life have switched to red. Rough-sleeping with the garbage is no alternative.
'Thought as much. So come with me. This is the deal. We get to spend a little quality time together, ya might say. I'll do some crazy stuff in your face, we make it three times. You stay with me until it's done. Then I pay you, and you can go. If you want to.' A passing car paints his face with a splash of headlights. He's smirking at me. So this is a transaction, not a relationship. So be it, all relationships are transactions of a kind. At least this way the rules of engagement are clearly defined.
I won't go back where I've come from. No way. It was there, in the Big House I'd just signed myself out of, that they'd strung me out, torched my soul, tortured me with electrodes, amputated my arms and legs with a rusty chainsaw, then stitched them back into place. You can trace the dotted cut-here lines still visible. I guess having your drokkin' cerebellum cauterised will do that to a boy. So, no. With no skills or aptitude to learn them, no book-learning, looks or ambition to do anything with my life, I guess I'm what they call dumb. Sometimes I try, but just as quickly I forget, it's too hard, too difficult, it's no fun, so I don't do it. To people I don't know I appear surly, sullen, awkward, uncommunicative, withdrawn and self-absorbed. I never know what to say to people, and when I do get to speak it seldom comes out the way I intend it to, so I sound dumb. The only thing I've ever been interested in, or have ever been any good at is sex. And with the right guy -- or sometimes, even the wrong guy, I use my lips, but I don't need words.