"You don't have to do this, Travis. You were given other options to get through the Sigma Nu hazing phase."
"But this is the most interesting one, and will give me the strongest position in the fraternity," Travis answered. His friend, Nelson, a year ahead of him at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and already a member of the Sigma Nu university jocks fraternity, wasn't meant to be there in the Ron's Place gay clientele roadhouse on West Poplar Street on the northern edge of the university town. As soon as he'd heard that Travis had taken the most demanding option the fraternity hazing committee had given him, he'd followed Travis to the roadhouse.
Travis was a sophomore transfer from the University of Miami, where he'd gotten into trouble for this and that in nonacademic activity, but was good enough of a lacrosse player for other universities to give him another chance. The "nonacademic activity" had focused on rough gay sex, with Travis willingly having been on the receiving end and the university shrinks not having been able to convince him this was self-destructive.
Nelson was a star on the Razorbacks' basketball team. He was a top and had matched up with Travis as soon as Travis had arrived at the university. Their relationship was complicated, though. Nelson was into Travis, but Travis was into more dangerous sex than Nelson would give him.
Travis and Nelson were at the bar, on stools next to each other, at Ron's Place, drinking beer. The roadhouse was for gays--but for leather gays. It was a favorite watering hole for gay bikers. Trim, dancer-like, prepping-looking, good-looking guys with long, frosted hair like Travis were magnets for rough-and-tumble biker types who buzzed around Ron's Place. You didn't come to Ron's Place looking like a submissive without expecting to be rough fucked--even gangbanged.
"What exactly were the instructions?" Nelson asked.
"I was to come here and piss off a couple of bruisers--and take note of and describe the consequences," Travis answered.
"Suicide," Nelson said. "Come on, let's get out of here. Surely they had something like streaking from Union to Old Main on the list."
"Yeah, but there were points. Pissing off a couple of bikers at Ron's Place gave the most points. Do this once and there won't be another round of hazing." He didn't add that it might involve rough gay sex, but that had as much reason going for it to do it as getting instantaneous respect as a bad ass and acceptance in the fraternity was.
In any event Nelson's plea had come too late. A waiter came up to the bar, said something to the bartender, and the bartender drew a draft and slid it in front of Travis. "Compliments of the two men in blue at the back table," he said, and moved on down the bar to serve another customer. Both Travis and Nelson swiveled around to take a long into the far dimness of the smoke-hazed room.
"Shit. Cops," Nelson said. "And big bruisers too."
"Yes, they are," Travis agreed, with a grin.
"But, shit, Cops," Nelson repeated. "And in a leather club. One of them's looking at us--at you. This isn't a good idea. They maybe are here looking for male prostitutes to run in and they've decided that's you. I think we should--"
"I like it here just fine," Nelson said, giving the cop who was leering at him a saucy look back.
The cops' presence might have accounted for this being a light attendance night at Ron's Place, which was when most trouble here erupted--when the pickings were contested. They were sitting in isolation, and, although none of the leather guys were hassling the two cops, they certainly were giving them a wide berth. It wasn't just that they were in blue and had weapons hanging off them. They were biggest, baddest-looking guys in the room.
And they were offering Travis a "come sit with us at our table" drink. Having cops sitting in a gay dive was, in itself, intense situation fodder, but they'd singled Travis out.
His response to the situation was that he took the proffered mug of beer, lifted it up, gave the two cops at the far table a grin, and, bringing the mug out to where to hovered over floor rather than bar, turned the glass over and let the beer pour out on the floor. It wasn't that gaspy of an event in normal circumstances. Ron's Place was a real pigsty. A lot of beer had gotten sloshed onto the floor. But these were two cops confident in themselves to be sitting at table in a gay bar, making a pass at another, young guy.
Nelson gasped, and the two cops, already mean looking, took on expressions of surprise and outrage. "Fuck. Now, you've done it," his hissed. "Those are cops--fuckin' cops, Travis. We can't stay in here. Let's get out of here."
"You need to back off, Nelson. I don't want you to get involved in this. And I didn't ask you to follow me here. The instructions are to piss guys here off, not to flirt with them. Pretend we don't know each other. Stick it out on your stool and show interest in someone else."
With that, Travis came off his stool. He looked meaningfully over to a table in the corner, where the two hunkiest senior fraternity brothers who had been sent to observe and verify were seated. He gave them a nod and then he slowly stretched as if he didn't have a care in the world, turned, very obviously flipped the bird to the two cops who now were standing up from their table, and slowly walked out of roadhouse, climbed into a car, and drove out of the parking lot.
The two cops stomped out of the roadhouse as well.
"Fuck," Nelson, who had turned to a middle-aged guy beside him who had been trying to strike up a conversation, muttered. The two fraternity guys at the corner table, having seen enough to fulfill the hazing challenge, rose from their table and left the bar.
"That's what I had in mind," the man said, with a smile. "Fuck," he said, in case Nelson hadn't got the reference. "How much will it take for you to come out to my car and hump me?"
Nelson gave the man a shocked look and just rolled off the stool and headed for the exit. Before he could get there, two beefy leathermen jumped up from a table near the door and intercepted him.
"Listen, guys, I'm not looking for trouble. Just let me leave," Nelson said.
"Were you with that good-looker with the frosted hair," one of the leathermen said.
"Yeah, and I need to get to him now."
"Was that a guy named Travis Taylor?"
Nelson stopped and turned around. "Yes... how did you know? Say, were you...?"
"A guy named Craig hired us to take Taylor on a ride--some sort of fraternity test, we were told. We were supposed to pick him up here, but he left quick."
"Let me get this straight. You were supposed to pick him up here and fuck him?"
"Hell, no, not fuck him. We were told just to play with him and make him think we were going to do that and take him back to the Sigma Nu fraternity up at the university and leave him on the lawn naked. We weren't supposed to fuck him. But he's a real cutie. You telling me he's really gay and maybe--?"
"Oh, fucking hell," Nelson exclaimed, pushing beyond the two leathermen and exploding out of the roadhouse entrance and into the parking lot. He saw the blue light and siren go on in the departing police cruiser as he ran for his car.
* * * *
Travis took off in a top-down 2018 black Fiat 124 Spider sports car, going something like fifteen miles over the speed limit east on West Poplar Street, intending to turn left on North Garland Avenue after taking a slight jag on Janice Avenue. North Garland would take him straight south into the University of Arkansas campus. The cops behind him had other ideas. They turned on the blue lights and siren of their police cruiser, came around him before he could turn south on North Garland, and forced him across the Janice-North Garland intersection and further down Janice, where the houses had stopped and they now were between two farm fields, each separated from the road by a ditch and a line of trees.
Travis pulled the convertible over to the side; the cruiser pulled up behind him, training a spotlight on him; and the two cops he'd flipped off at Ron's Place popped out of each side of the cop car. The one exiting the cruiser on the road side strode up to the driver's door of the Fiat, Billy club in hand, and the other cop came out with his pistol out his holster and walked up to the back of the convertible.
"Is there a problem, Officer?" Travis asked sweetly, assuming they were into roleplaying in the fraternity hazing test. He knew he'd sped away from Ron's Place, so he knew that at least that could be a problem in an actual traffic stop.
"Damn right there's a problem. There's a problem, isn't there, Larry?" the cop called back to his partner, who was approaching on the passenger side of the vehicles.
"There sure is, Pete," came back the answer.
"Was I going too fast? It's late at night. Nobody's around." He looked around for the first time to realize that, in fact, he'd driven onto what was a rural road. No one was on this stretch of the road or was likely to drive down here at this time of night unless they lived in one of the farmhouses further down the road--if there were, indeed, any houses further down this road.
"Worse than that. You've got a taillight out," Pete said.
"There's nothing wrong with the--" Travis cut that off as he heard the tinkle of the plastic when Officer Larry punched out the right-rear taillight cover of the Fiat.
"Hey, this is a borrowed car. Go easy on it. You're going to charge me with--?"
"I'm charging you with pissing us off. You want to step out of the car, son?" Pete said.
"Really, if you'll just tell me what the real problem is," Travis said, not so sure of himself now.
"You resisting authority, boy? I think he's resisting authority, Larry."
"Yeah, that's what it looks like to me," the other cop answered.
"Your chest camera working now, Larry?"
"Naw, the piece of shit keeps shorting out. And yours?"
"Mine's stop working too. Fancy that," Pete, the lead cop, reported.
Travis understood the implication of that and began to sweat. "No really, I'll--"
