Paul first saw him in the prison library. His name was Dexter, and Paul helped him find a book. An adventure book with words that weren't too difficult to comprehend. Paul felt a chill go up his spine when their hands brushed against each other—and he knew.
Dexter was an indescribable mix of races that pretty much resolved itself into "mean." Skin that came across as deeply tanned without having taken the effort to go outside, a montage of tattoos that screamed brutality, and a physique that revealed he'd been penned up for years with little better to do than work out and work at working off angry aggression.
Paul couldn't believe—couldn't hope—that Dexter would ever be in a position to leave the penitentiary, but after months of exchanging pen pal letters, it looked like that might be the case.
While he waited, Paul, who worked a couple of volunteer hours a week in the prison library, dutifully went to his accountant's job in a medium-sized cubicle in an unending bank of cubicles on the third floor of a mammoth insurance agency and quietly and innocuously put in his time. After working into the early evening hours, he'd stop at a modest grocery store on his way home and pick up his canned or quick-frozen supper. And then he'd enter his sixth-floor, one-bedroom apartment without a view in a medium-rise, thirty-year-old apartment block and sit and eat his meal with a television show going in the background that he never watched or listened to.
While Paul ate, he'd concentrate on dredging up and continually replaying the last short, seemingly innocuous conversation he had with Dexter in the prison library. When he was finished eating his meal, he'd wash his dishes and stack them back in the cupboard. Then he'd walk over and turn off the television, take a shower, and then, naked, lie on his bed and masturbate to the rereading of the letters from Dexter and the imaginings of being fucked by Dexter, being Dexter's cellmate and being taken by Dexter without his consent. Then spent and satisfied, Paul would turn off his night light and sleep until it was time to start the cycle all over again.
When he learned that Dexter was being paroled, Paul broke out into a sweat and his hands trembled so badly that he could neither finish his evening meal nor his nightly masturbation. It was only then that he realized that perhaps the reason he had focused on Dexter was that he seemingly was unattainable. Safe. Probably never going to see the outside of the prison.
But Dexter was paroled. And on the day Dexter walked out of the prison, Paul was standing on the pavement outside the gates, as he had agreed he would be, waiting for Dexter.
"You got a room?" was the first thing a miraculously free Dexter said at the prison gate.
"Yes," Paul said meekly. And, indeed, he did. It wasn't his apartment, of course. It was a room at a good motel. And he'd prepaid for a week. He'd promised Dexter the room would be clean and his—for a week.
"Clothes first. I gotta get out of these shitty rags. And money. You said you'd give me a thou."
"Yes, here's the money," Paul murmured. He couldn't look at Dexter. He was all atremble. Scared and aroused at the same time. Being alone in his apartment with the letters and Dexter behind bars was one thing. Dexter here in the flesh out on the street and the content of those letters zinging through Paul's brain were something else altogether. "My car's over here. I'll take you to a good clothes store."
"Think they'll have something to go over these pecs and biceps," Dexter asked with pride in his voice. He flexed and made the tattoos running down his arm jiggle.
"Yes, sure, we'll find something," Paul responded. A whole other world, he was thinking. There was absolutely nothing that Dexter's world had in common with Paul's. But then Paul's life wasn't all that hot, he thought. This gave Paul a little thrill, and he felt himself going hard. Maybe this would be OK.
"A bar. After the clothes, then a bar. Then that room." Dexter gave Paul a look—that look—and he smacked his lips and sucked his teeth in.
Paul looked down and blushed.
"Hey, you really want this?" Dexter asked. "You know the money, clothes, and room will do me if you don't. I can find someone else to screw. That ain't no problem."
"No . . . no. The clothes, a bar, and then . . . the room. It's what I want."
Later, in the motel room, blinds drawn, and a underamped light bulb in a bedside lamp sending shadows into the corners of the room.
"What you said in the letters . . . what you described . . . did you really . . .?" Paul couldn't complete the sentence. He was hunched down in the chair, Dexter towering over him, naked and aglow from a shower now except for his newly purchased briefs, having wanted to wash every hint of prison from his body the first thing after they'd entered the room.
"Yeah, it's true. It's what I do. It's rough in there. And when you don't got no power in one way, it sorta shows in other ways. You either do or you get done. And if you do, you make sure everyone knows you can do."
Paul trembling a bit now. And aroused. On the edge. Those letters . . . they were quite graphic. And, as the correspondence had progressed, they had increasingly become focused on Paul. Paul knew it probably was only because of what he promised to do for Dexter—the transition from prison. But . . .
Paul looked up at Dexter, at the rippling muscles of his chest, the constantly rippling tattoo display, the barrel chest tapering down to the thin waist. The broken nose, the mean, screaming gash across his cheek. The ropy muscles with the veins popping out, the rock-solid meat inside giving them no place else to go.
The thought of what was there under the prison uniform, plus what was in those letters, had sustained Paul for months of solitary masturbation. Now, in the flesh. . . . Paul felt himself turning to jelly. He suddenly longed for this to be fantasy. It
had
all been a fantasy. Hadn't it? He attempted to transport himself back to his cubicle, among all of those other cubicles, soft, nondescript music in the background, crunching numbers as he listened to two guys down the corridor discuss the previous night's basketball game.
