Tomorrow is my birthday. I won't have any visitors, and if I'm lucky, Joe won't remember. It wouldn't do to have "the kids" find out. Their celebrations, and I use the term facetiously, too often involve humiliation and pain. In here, it's best to go along quietly, ignored by both the inmates and the guards.
My birthday is significant only because it means I'll be going before the parole board soon. I arrived here two days after my twentieth birthday, and spent the first ten years counting the days to this one. Somewhere into the second ten, I stopped counting or caring. Lately, I've come to realize that I arrived a young man and I'll go out, essentially, an old man, still without prospects, thoughts or hopes for the future. And of course, without Joe or anyone else. He doesn't come up for another four years. Maybe two and a half if he keeps out of trouble. And who's to say, once he's out, that things between us would be like they are now. He had a wife before. True, she divorced him two years into his sentence, but I'd be naive to think he wouldn't choose a woman if he had the opportunity. And like it or not, he'll hook up with someone else after I'm gone, and that whoever he is-- I've made a list of likely candidates in my mind-- will make me a distant memory pretty quick.
Twenty years ago I'd have laughed in your face if you'd said I'd be afraid to leave here when it came time. But now I wonder about where I'll live, and how I'll live. I read enough to know it's a whole new world from the one I left. I wonder about the boy, who's going to be twenty himself. Should I contact him? Does he even know about me? And I wonder about my sister, Ari. I had a Christmas card from her eight years back, the first and last contact since I came here. I assume it was a lapse in judgment, a kindly gesture regretted as soon as the mail box slammed closed. She's the only person I know on the outside, though I have no idea where she is now. For all I know, she moved down south or out west.
"You working today?" Harrison asked, smacking my cell gate with his stick. Harrison doesn't like me, doesn't like anyone classified a Sigma (think sissy), and he barely tolerates Omegas (think ordinary), like Joe. My feeling is a tough guy who only likes tough guys-- the Kappas-- is not really such a tough guy. He's a guy wishing he was a tough guy, pretending to be a tough guy, using real tough guys as models for behavior. Of course, Harrison is the last one I'd share such an opinion with.
"Porter in the library, Sir," I tell him. For years I resisted all use of the honorific, especially for someone like Harrison. But you learn, in time. You learn to give the word a dual meaning with the tiniest change in inflection. For people I truly do respect, Sir is a polite acknowledgment. For Harrison and others like him, I speak the word in a way that means, to me, asshole.
Harrison smirked as he keyed the lock, sliding the gate open and I stepped out of the cell. He's never actually roughed me up-- that he saves for the newbie Sigs, but he likes to threaten me or shove me around. He loves stepping too close, invading my personal space, looking down on me, exhaling his garlic or onion breath to see me wince, whispering obscene things to see me blush. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
"Get your ass in gear, Lopez." I didn't reply, but waited for him to escort me down the hall. As we passed Joe's cell, Harrison leaned in, his breath warm and moist on my ear, "I've been wondering about your ass, Lopez. Yesterday I saw Joe pulling his dong in the shower. For him to carry on the way he does when he's dicking you, you've got to have one tight ass. Shit, my kid's dick is bigger than his." I didn't look at Joe, nor did I acknowledge Harrison. With him, it's best to just get on with it. Don't give him anything to grab hold of and life goes along pretty well. He laughed like he was the funniest thing around. Reaching the end of the block, Harrison sent me through the gates to Tull, a decent enough guy, to take me to the library where I'd mop, dust, and re-shelve.
Library porter is up there with the best jobs. Seniority and the last porter's untimely death qualified me for the position. Two weeks into it, I discovered a small cache of romance novels-- not a typical men's prison genre. I've read the six of them at least a hundred times now. If I'm efficient, I can get most of my work done, disappear in the accounting section and read for twenty to thirty minutes each morning. I don't dare take one of them back to my room. If Harrison caught me, it'd be all over, literally, and then I'd be back to watching out for my ass the way I did the first few years I was here.
I guess that's one pleasurable thing I could do when they let me out-- check out romance novels from the library, tell them my mother's bedridden, and I read to her. Joe knows I love them and he likes it when I relate the sex scenes, whispering to him as we fuck about heaving breasts glistening in moonlight, kiss-swollen lips, slippery warmth, pulsing shafts, giant pecs and iron abs.
"Have a good one, Andy," Tull said as they buzzed me into the library.
"Thank you, Officer Tull. You too." I smiled before I stepped through. A decade ago, I had a crush on him-- used to fantasize about him fucking me in the showers, and sneaking me into the office so I could suck his cock. He's happily married, as far as I know, has a couple of kids in high school, likes to fly fish and bow hunt. You can learn a lot about a CO by listening to them shoot the shit with each other. Harrison has been married three times, and always keeps a chick or two on the side. Maybe one day he'll admit to himself he'd rather have a boyfriend.
"Harrison says you were pulling it for him yesterday," I said under my breath to Joe, holding a dust mop, pretending to be busy behind him while he scanned the new fiction shelf.
He pulled a Tom Clancy down and flipped through the pages. "I see it as my civic duty to give the guy jack off material."
"He says his kid has a bigger dick than you do."
"Now see, that's just wrong. He shouldn't have any idea how big his kid's dick is."
"You're a good man to worry about that, Joe. Personally, I've been picturing you jacking off all morning and by now, I'm hard as hell."
"Maybe you can show me where I might find Generally Accepted Principles of Accounting and we can look into your problem."
I loved Joe. "Right this way, Sir."
The accounting section was usually deserted. In fact, most of the business in the library these days was no where near the books, but on the computers.
"Touch me," I told him, holding the back of his hand against the bulge in my pants, while I humped it. "Did you really whack off for the cameras in the shower?"
"Yeah."
Still holding him against me, I used my free hand to grope him, feeling his cock rapidly firm. I kissed and licked his neck, below his ear. "Shit," I whispered. "I love watching you beat it." It was true. Watching any guy jack off got me hot as hell. I wondered, for a moment, if Harrison knew that or if he was just guessing. Shit, he probably gets off on it, too. I imagined him pulling it as he watched Joe, spurting his hot seed all over the video monitor.
For the record, Joe's cock, is not small. It isn't large either. Probably about six, six and a half with a decent girth. A good mouthful, and a good assful.
"You just love my cock," Joe whispered before kissing me, rimming my mouth with his tongue, making me quiver.
"Yeah." I was breathless, moaning more than talking. He turned his hand around, squeezing and rubbing my cock and balls through my issued blues. With a groan, I pulled open his trousers, pushed the zipper down and reached inside his briefs, but he pushed me away and pulled his cock out, stroking himself. I took a step back to watch.
"Oh fuck, yeah." My groin was boiling.
"You like this?" Joe he whispered, his hand slowly pulling his dick forward, stretching it away from his body, squishing the shiny, spongy head in the tight channel of his fist, then sliding it back, slowly, to grip the base tight making it extra hard while turning the head a deep, dark purple. With the other hand, he was pulling the skin away from his balls. I licked my lips, imagining the taste of him.
We were insane to be doing it in the middle of the library, accounting section or no. They wouldn't let me out if they caught me. I opened my pants, grabbing my own slippery knob.
"Yeah, Joe. Yeah, like that." Fuck, he was hot as hell. My balls were already tingling, pulling up tight. With a brutal squeeze I backed off, hoping the pain would slow things down a little.
"Suck it," Joe said. "Suck my fuckin' cock." He took a step toward me, dropping his nuts, reaching for me. "Suck it," he hissed again. I didn't reply, but felt a fresh burp of goo come out of my dick at his demand. Before my next heart beat, I was on my knees slurping his juicy head, ready to swallow him deep. Three beats later, I was deep throating him and yanking myself in earnest.
In my experience, there's no such thing as languorous sex in prison. Sex here is furtive, hasty and rarely satisfying for more time than it takes to restore clothing and lower your heart rate. Unless, of course, you're masturbating. I can spend quality time pleasuring myself in my cell, all night long if I want to.
As soon as his hips began bucking in the syncopated rhythm of eminent orgasm, I pulled back, hand still pumping, to catch his sperm on my tongue.
"Fuck, fuck... coming, I'm coming!" His exclamation was choked as spurt after spurt of salty, bitter, bleachy fluid filled my mouth. I shot my own load a moment later.
I dreamt about Danny-boy and woke up feeling as low as I ever had. Sure, my anxiety over the great unknown of my more and more immediate future had a lot to do with it, but spending time with Danny-boy in my sleep always left me sad. The content didn't matter-- if it was a sweet, sexy, nonsense dream or bits of the nightmare that resulted in me coming here 20 years ago, I still crashed afterward.
"You working today?" Fucking Harrison.
"No, Sir," I said, surly as I've ever been, and pulled the blanket over my head, avoiding the bright light he was shining in my face.
"What? You sick Andy?" A shift in the light told me the flash light was moving over me and my shoe box of a cell. "You know you forfeit the porter job if you aren't sick enough to be admitted to the infirmary." I knew, I'd been here longer than he had.
"Not going to work today." I crossed my fingers he wouldn't decide to have some fun with me, forcing me out of bed, or taking me to the infirmary. Today was my birthday, and in honor of that and my dream of Danny-boy, I promised myself a good, day-long sulk. A genuine pity party. I wasn't going to get out of bed except to piss.
"All right then, but don't come crying to me when you're out of dough." I let go of the breath I'd been holding.
Besides lying there feeling sorry for myself, there was only one other thing I really wanted. A joint. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been high. Years. Sharing a joint was something I used to do with Danny-boy. It was how we met, sneaking out of seventh grade study hall to get stoned.
My sister, Ari, and I are a racial and ethnic mishmash, the products of a century of defiled cultures and people. Danny-boy was Irish, through and through, both sets of grandparents off the boat. His skin was the most exotic thing I'd ever seen or touched-- so fair it seemed to glow, particularly in street light. There were parts of him so soft, the skin so translucent, that I was afraid I might break it just by touching my lips to him. But he was a rough and tumble boy, never a delicate thing, despite his beauty.
The first time we got stoned together, it was pouring rain. We squeezed between the chained doors of the maintenance shed to the left of the gym, near the playing fields. It was warm inside, a thick, loamy smell of cut grass, and crowded with riding and push mowers, trimmers, edgers, chalk markers and various garden tools. We shared the joints each of us had brought along, discovering that we liked the same music and hated the same teachers. In addition to study hall, we had two other classes together, social studies and math. We also, both of us, confessed to getting horny as hell and jerking off whenever we got wrecked alone.
We became the best of friends, meeting each day to get stoned, either in the shed when it rained, or when it didn't, in the teacher's parking lot. Mr. Connors, our Social Studies teacher, never locked his car. It was a traveling trash can, the back seat stuffed with hamburger wrappers, soda cans, newspapers, a Playboy magazine, a few issues of Time-- three years apart, and more. But the prospect of digging deeper scared us. We were afraid we'd find spoiled food, or possibly even the bones of a forgotten pet.
Mr. Connors was a heavy smoker, with yellowed fingers and teeth, and breath so bad you could smell him huffing and puffing from half way across the room. The ashtray in his ancient Toyota was always overflowing, the floor around it littered with escaped butts and gray with ash. Often, we found it smoldering with the remains of cigarettes enjoyed on the way to school that morning. The vinyl seats were pox-marked with burns, and the car stunk, covering the smell of our dope easily.
It wasn't until high school that we started hanging out after school. Danny-boy's father kicked it and he, together with his six brothers and sisters, and his mother moved into our neighborhood. We walked to and from school together, got stoned, and hung out at a comic book store near where we lived. The hippie who ran it liked us hanging around, and it didn't take me long to figure out he liked Danny-boy in much the same way I did. Maybe even liked me a little that way, too, though he never acted on it.
Just before Halloween in my senior year, my Nana got sick, and Mama sat me down to tell me I had to be the man of the family and take care of Ari like she was my own daughter while she was away in Manilla seeing to Nana. We had no father, none that I could remember anyway. He died in Vietnam a year after Ari was born.
Anyway, that's how Ari and I came to be living alone. A month hadn't gone by before Danny-boy was living there.
"You don't have four sisters, man. You don't know how hard it is to fuckin' piss in the morning, let alone whack off. Most days I gotta pee out the window when I wake up. I'm lucky to get a shower on Sundays."
"Move in with me," I said. "You can stay in my room. Ari doesn't spend much time in the bathroom. Come on, Danny-boy."
You can be sure it was blissful torment having him there. I got to see him in his briefs, hear him whacking off. Join him, even, there in the dark, laughing later on. I mixed up our laundry on occasion, slipping into his underwear instead of mine on purpose. I stayed half hard all day at the thought of his cock having been right where mine was.
Just before Thanksgiving, things started to change between Ari and Danny-boy. Initially they had pretty much ignored each other. Then they began fighting. Danny-boy would tease her, relentlessly, often making her cry. Again and again I had to take him aside and talk to him about it. I knew she was a pest, but she was my sister. He just laughed. But within a week, she was giving him as good as she got. I was proud of her.
The Friday after Thanksgiving, they were going at it, bicker, bicker, bicker-- had actually been going at it since Danny-boy's mother set the turkey on the table the day before. I couldn't stand it anymore, the television flying between channels every five seconds, pillows, socks, kleenex flying, swiping at one another with cunt' or dickwad'. I split, going to the store for a root beer.
When I got back it was quiet, no sniping back and forth, just the sound of the TV, on one channel. I let myself in as quiet as I could be and got the shock of my life. They were stretched out on the couch, Danny-boy on top of my sister, lip locked, hips pumping. Her shirt was open, his was pushed up. They were making soft, needy sounds-- slurps and whimpers, ahs and grunts.
These people hated each other.
"What the hell?" I think I said. They startled, Danny-boy nearly fell off my sister and the couch. He looked at me, cheeks flushed, as if he'd been caught at something he wasn't supposed to be doing. His lips were a swollen mess. Plump and wet, glistening, and he was panting, obviously aroused as well as startled. I saw my baby sister's nipples, brown bullets pointing to the sky.
I was aware of pain in my chest, like my heart was trying to punch its way out of my ribcage. My vision was growing darker from the edges in, going fuzzy in the center.
Danny-boy had been kissing my sister, kneading her breasts. And Ari, she had been kissing my Danny-boy, tasting him, feeling his skin against her, his body pressed against hers. Danny-boy licked his lips, watching me, saying nothing.
I couldn't breathe because of the pain in my chest. A moment later, I was falling, my knees had gone to liquid. My ears were pounding in time with my heart, so I couldn't hear Danny-boy, Ari or even myself gasping on the floor, my fumbled root beer spread out before me in a brown foamy puddle. My Danny-boy. My sister.
Ari went to her room and closed the door and Danny-boy went to the kitchen for a rag.
"You probably think I don't know," he said, mopping up the mess on the floor. "But I do. I know you got a thing for me, always have." I tried to crawl away. The shock was wearing off, and humiliation was setting in, alongside a shattered heart. "Hang on, Andy. Hear me out."
I sat back on my ankles, not having any desire to turn around and show my face.
"I got a thing for your sister." The words sliced deep. "She's funny like you, and pretty, and sexy and she seems to like me all right." With that, I was back on my knees, crawling away again. "But the way you look at me, the way you're just... always there." He walked around me, dropping down, blocking my path. Placing his hands on each side of my face, he forced me to look at him.
"Poor Andy," he said, and tears of anger joined the tears of hurt streaming down my face. He leaned in to kiss me. A gentle brush of his lips against mine. And then he deepened it, pushing with his tongue to open me up, stroking my lips, my teeth, my tongue. I couldn't help the moans or the additional tears. His fingers were in my hair, pulling me up and closer.
Hesitating for only the briefest second, I put my arms around his neck. He didn't stop me. His lips were fruity tasting, possibly from the strawberry flavored papers we'd used to roll a joint earlier. Possibly from my sister's lip gloss.
Eventually, we were forced to part for need of oxygen.
"Fuck yeah," Danny-boy grinned. "You made me hard, Andy." He adjusted himself in his jeans. We burst out laughing and I leaned forward, wanting to kiss him again, pushing him back, until he was lying beneath me so I could grind my hard cock against his. The laughter faded pretty quick. For me the feeling was electric. Clearly it was something he liked as well because he grabbed by hips, holding me closer, rubbing himself against me.
Danny-boy wasn't the first person I'd kissed, but he was the first person I loved, and that made this so much better. Combined with the attention my dick was receiving and the idea that he wanted me like this, made for a real quick trip to Spurtsville.
It might have been a perfect moment, if it hadn't been for Ari. When my balls pulled up short, I tore my lips from Danny-boy's, trying to breathe, trying to let him know I was going to blow my load. All I could manage was an ugh-ugh-ugh, but he swore and followed me over the edge, punching his dick against mine, making his own delirious, sexy, guttural sounds. Almost immediately, we were aware of Ari standing beside us.
If I hadn't just shot my load, I would have wilted then and there. It was hard to read the look on her face, but I felt guilty as shit. Moments ago this was her boyfriend. Now he was mine. I looked at Danny-boy who was looking at her-- I assumed-- trying to figure out what he was going to say. I slid off him, keeping my crotch to the floor, praying there wouldn't be a telltale wet spot on the front of his jeans.
"You were right," Ari said finally. Danny-boy smiled and looked at me before turning his attention to back to her.
"Told you," he said.
"What?" I asked.
Ari answered, arms crossed, still looking down on us. "You're queer. I didn't believe him when he said you liked him like that."
"Well--" I started.
"Andy, there's a catch to this."
"A catch?" I got a bad feeling, like he was going to say it was a one time thing, that it hadn't meant anything. Or maybe, that it was a test or a joke.
My heart, which had just begun to slow down, started to pound.
"I told you, I got a thing for your sister. And," he raised his voice, hastening to add, based on the look of betrayal I could feel on my face, "and I got a thing for you. The thing is, I really like girls, Andy. I don't like guys. Just you."
I waited a moment before answering, hoping my voice would work. "So what are you saying?"
"We're going to have to share him." Ari told me, the same way she might have said we'd share a pizza-- like it was obvious, and so what.
When had they had time to discuss all this, I wondered. I'd only been out of the apartment for ten minutes. She sat down on the couch and Danny-boy climbed to his feet.
"Shit, I'm sticky as hell," he said with a laugh, pulling at the front of his jeans, extending his free hand to me. "Come on, have a seat, Andy. Let's work this out."
And that's how things got started between me and Danny-boy. And Ari.
"You okay?" Joe was standing outside my cell. I didn't bother to sit up or answer. When you have no privacy, acknowledgment or the lack of it becomes your walls and doors. "Come on, Andy. Talk to me. What happened?" I was right, he didn't remember my birthday. Dickwad. "You going to the yard today? It's a beautiful day." I said nothing. Lowering his voice so only I would hear, he said, "I'll do you later, Baby. However you want." I couldn't care less. Let him find a new bitch. It's not like he thinks of me as a friend, much less anything more than that. Just a couple of holes to use when he needs relief. "Fine, be that way," he said at last. And then under his breath, as he turned away, "God-damned drama queen."
Danny-boy never did that. I mean, don't get me wrong, while Danny-boy had "a thing" for me and for Ari, my sister was the top dog. She said jump, he said how high, and made me jump along with him. He'd tease me, that's true enough, but it was good natured teasing. And it wasn't just sex. He was still my best friend. There were times when we'd all be sitting on the couch watching TV and he'd hold my hand. Just hold my hand-- that's tenderness. That's something real. He never actually said it, but he made me feel his love. Actions speak lower than words, right?
Joe isn't my first "daddy" here. I'm sure that comes as no surprise, but in a lot of ways, he's been the best. My first, Jamal, (a kappa poster boy if ever there was one), used to beat me as often as he fucked me. In fact, he liked to fuck me and then beat me. I finally figured out it was because he liked fucking me a little too much, you know? He'd get so excited rubbing his dick over mine, or jacking both of us off in his huge fist. More than once I saw him licking his thick lips while he was working us together and I knew he was thinking about sucking me off. Most of the time, he'd come almost as soon as he worked himself inside me and stroked a time or two. He never lasted more than a dozen. Afterward, feeling sick about what he'd done, he'd beat the snot out of me. But beating me also turned him on, so then he'd rape my mouth. That's what he called it, clearly separating it from the way he fucked me. Raping my mouth, he was absolutely brutal, giving no thought to spit lips, a bruised jaw, swollen eyes, or a bleeding nose as he held my head and drilled me. If a tooth accidentally nicked him, he'd pull out and slap me senseless before shoving himself back in. Depending on his level of enjoyment, I might get a swift kick in the kidney or the ribs after he'd zipped up. Sometimes, just an "affectionate" slap on the face. Rather than say thank for the blow job or fuck, Jamal was more apt to express his dissatisfaction, again, related to his own feelings about our intimacy:
"You want to go back to bein' block pussy, just keep it up. You want my protection, you serve me, faggot."
For the record, I was not the block pussy. I've been raped a few times, but it's not like I was passed around from inmate to inmate. There are some sniveling sigmas who do their time on their knees or holding their ankles, but I'm not one of them.
Not three weeks after his release, Jamal took a chest-full of buckshot trying to rob a liquor store and died in route to the hospital. I didn't mourn.
tbc...