Autobio: Crazy Boys Get Money
Feb. 5th, 2026 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeCrazy Boys Get Money (D Stories)
Summary: Two teens in Texas hook and heist their way out of danger. True story.
Series: LB autobio (D Stories)
Word Count: 8100
Notes: Winner by a long shot of the February fan poll. Depending on how this story is received, I’ll be pulling out more regarding this period of my life, a series called “the D Stories.” Normally I would break it into 3 installments, but due to the nature of the content, I have chosen to upload it all at once. I feel professionally obligated to disclaim that this story is not appropriate for anyone under 18… but this was my life when I was younger than that, and it's both insulting and degrading to say that my youth is unspeakable to the very age demographic it happens to.
Content warnings for anti-black racism; coerced, underaged, bad sex work, and (separate) consensual, okay teenage sex, along with the circumstances surrounding both. More information is in the comments.
Summary: Two teens in Texas hook and heist their way out of danger. True story.
Series: LB autobio (D Stories)
Word Count: 8100
Notes: Winner by a long shot of the February fan poll. Depending on how this story is received, I’ll be pulling out more regarding this period of my life, a series called “the D Stories.” Normally I would break it into 3 installments, but due to the nature of the content, I have chosen to upload it all at once. I feel professionally obligated to disclaim that this story is not appropriate for anyone under 18… but this was my life when I was younger than that, and it's both insulting and degrading to say that my youth is unspeakable to the very age demographic it happens to.
Content warnings for anti-black racism; coerced, underaged, bad sex work, and (separate) consensual, okay teenage sex, along with the circumstances surrounding both. More information is in the comments.
I suck him like a hospital Hoover sucking shit off a bathroom floor. I suck him like I’m trying to get him to ejaculate his entrails, which I’ll eat raw because I’m that fucking hungry. I’m seventeen and can’t go home. He is twenty-one and his parents are paying for an apartment with 24/7 power, heat, and hot water.
He sees me as his girlfriend. I see him as a shitty customer. I hate his money, and I hate myself for not having my own, for having no marketable traits except a superfluity of warm, wet holes.
But I need that $50, and he isn’t going to help me for free, so I suck him off, and he blows his load in five minutes.
I spit his jizz in the sink (he isn’t paying me enough to swallow) and ask for my money, which I foolishly didn’t take up-front.
“That wasn’t good,” he says, which is true. “I don’t think you earned that.”
Of course he doesn’t. I’m supposed to be his girlfriend, and girlfriends are supposed to suck you for free. But I have no intention of haggling my already too-low price; I’m hungry. “Let’s bring my friend up here, then,” I say, “and let’s discuss it.”
He blanches… or would, if his complexion allowed it. Movements resentful, he pulls his wallet from his back pocket, pulls out the money. He tries to hold it back when I reach for it, but I snatch it away. “What has he got that I don’t? Is it the car? Money?”
I snort, openly counting the bills in front of him.
“Is it his dick?”
I laugh at him.
My boredom infuriates him. So he says something about someone I love.
I turn, slap Jeff across the face, and march out. He watches me go, clutching his cheek, eyes wide with shock, tail flaccid between his legs.
There in the parking lot, engine idling in the Texas summer heat, is the red muscle car that brought me here. The tension leaves my shoulders and I feel a smile come to my face. I open the passenger door and swing into the navigator’s seat, next to D, the one my heart adores.
“Hey, Rogan,” he says. His sunglasses slide down his nose, showing stormy gray eyes, worried and checking me for marks. “All good?”
I brandish the money. Groceries for a week, for him and me both. No sneering food bank, no paperwork requirements, no food we don’t get to choose, no fear or worry or hunger. I have procured us human dignity.
He takes the money and counts it, just as I did, his eyes full of sadness, guilt, gratitude, concern. He didn’t want me to do this, but nevertheless, he drove me, offered to act as security.
“I was worried he wouldn’t pay you,” he admits.
“I slapped him,” I replied.
His head snaps up. “What, really?” He’s trying not to smile, but it’s sneaking up on him.
I don’t pretend to have that kind of self-control. “He wanted to hold out on me. And he said some ugly things. So I slapped him.”
He claps me on the back, turns it into a hug. “Man, good for you! I wish I could’ve seen it! Aw, I wish I’d had a camera!”
I laugh. “It felt pretty good, not gonna lie.” When he leans in to kiss me, I turn my face away. “Not till I wash my mouth out with bleach. No offense.”
“Okay.” His smile dims. As he releases the parking brake, he says, “Hey. One question. You don’t have to answer it.”
“Yeah? What’s up?”
“He get ugly over you, me, or both?”
I think, decide I’m okay with answering. “Both.”
“What’d he say?”
I squirm. “You really want to know?”
“Yeah.”
I look at him, check his face. “He called you a pimp. My pimp.”
I expect him to be upset. Instead, his expression turns thoughtful. “Huh,” he says, tapping his chin. “I can maybe use that.”
“Use that?”
“If he thinks I’m some big scary pimp looking out for you, maybe he’ll be less nasty to you. Was he?”
I think back on it. “Yeah,” I say, realizing. “You know, he was. I was in and out in like five minutes. He didn’t hit or scream at all.”
“He scared of me, you think?”
That’s easy: “absolutely. He thinks you’ll shove him in a locker or something.”
He snorts. “Man, how old is this guy? Ain’t he 21 or something?”
I shrug. The customer is one of those insecure white geek boys whose hatred of high school is equal only to their refusal to ever move on from it. To him, I am a symbol of all the pretty girls who never looked at him, everything he should’ve gotten but didn’t, and D is a symbol of all the black athletic boys who got to fuck those pretty girls. Objects of desire, objects of resentment. He has no idea who we really are.
I might still be in high school, and D may have only just graduated, but our minds are already far further into adulthood than the john is.
“Yeah,” says D, eyes distant as he drives, thinking hard. “Yeah, if that’s what I need to be, to keep him off your back, then that’s what I’ll be. That won’t be hard. I can be gangsta.”
I snort. “Are you kidding?” The mental image is absurd. “No way.”
“You doubt me?” He feigns woundedness, hand to his heart. “C’mon, he thinks it already. All I got to do is show up and not pretend I don’t hate him.” He puts on an overdone scowl and slouch, would cross his arms if he wasn’t driving.
I start snorting into my hands.
“What, you think I can’t look mean? I can do mean. I’m gonna bust a cap in your cracker ass, fool!”
I’m laughing now, hard enough my sides hurt. It feels so good to laugh, and at the john’s expense no less. “Stop, stop! You’re killing me!”
“You lay off my boy or you gonna get drive-byed!”
“That’s not even a verb! You can’t past-tense it!”
“Oh, like he’s gonna know any different…”
I finally manage to stop laughing. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry, but you are not gangsta at all.”
“To you? Nah. But you know me. He doesn’t. He’ll be easy.” Pause. “Hey. You really okay, after that?”
I wipe the tears from my eyes, run an inner diagnostic. “Yeah. I’m okay. It wasn’t fun, but… I’m okay.”
“Okay.” We’ve arrived. He puts the car in park, opens his arms. “Hug?”
I fall into them and he hugs me tight, kisses my hair. I just soak in the security, the smell of him for a bit. I feel my body relax, my heart calm. Yes, I’m okay. Everything’s okay now.
“Hey,” I ask, “are you okay?”
He looks away. “Man, who cares about me, all I had to do was drive, sit on my ass, and wait…”
I pull back so I can use his own “no BS” look on him.
He sighs. “Okay. I was worried, you know? That he wouldn’t pay you. That he’d get ugly and keep you in there. That you’d be… hurt, afterward.” Pause. “I didn’t like you having to do this.”
I touch his cheek. “I know.”
“But…” he sighs. His expression is sad. “That money’s a big help, right now. I don’t want you going back home,” he hastens to add, “but… I just wish you didn’t have to keep doing this, you know? I wish it was different. That’s all.”
“If I had to do it again,” I say, “would you still be willing to look out for me?”
“Sure. If it means he doesn’t get nasty, I’ll play pimp all day and night.” His expression is guilty. “And… I should tell you something. Money’s… real bad right now. Bills piled up, things like that, you know?”
I nod. I suspected something like that. He’s been single-handedly covering the apartment, the bills, the food, all by himself, and he just has a crummy part-time job at the local laser tag place. “I can probably get more out of him. Give him a day or two to calm down and I’ll hit him up again.”
D’s expression is so guilty and relieved. “It doesn’t feel right, asking you to do this.”
I put a finger to his lips, shushing him. “You’ve been taking care of me for months. Shush. I pay my way, baby, so let me take care of things a bit, okay?”
His shoulders go slack and he lets his head rest on my shoulder. He seems so tired. He’s been carrying us for so long. It’s my turn now.
And besides. I have no words to express the sheer visceral revolt that rises in my guts, being the white girl he has to take care of. That’s not what I am to him, what we are to each other. We are each other’s boys, seeing each other in a world that wants us invisible, and if that means being a mercenary whore, then so be it. Better a whore, an equal partner who works and gets paid, then the innocent broken bird, forever opening her beak for the charity of men around her.
After a moment, the boy my heart adores straightens up, brave face back on. “Burgers tonight?”
“Yeah. Let’s celebrate.” Our first animal protein since before the food bank.
We go triumphantly grocery shopping. When we get home, to his beige box of an apartment with no heat and barely any furnishings (a mattress, a couch, a folding table with two metal folding chairs), I brush my teeth and wash the memory of the job out of my mouth while D cooks the burgers in a cheap frying pan over the electric coil stove. The smell is glorious. Nothing seasons food like hunger.
When I come out, put my arms around his waist, and rest my forehead against his shoulder, he turns around in my arms and kisses me, and this time, I don’t turn away. He isn’t tall or bulky, but his arms span all the world’s safety, in my mind, and the scent and textures of him are my home. His kisses have the softness of peach fuzz, mingled with the prickle of stubble, and gentleness, always gentleness. In a cruel world, this golden-hearted young man took me in and chose to be kind anyway.
Yes, he chose to be kind anyway.
“You hungry?”
Always, my shining one.
Burgers on buns, ketchup and mustard and pickles and fries. A banquet, a bounty, and for once, the boy I love isn’t the one having to pay with money he doesn’t have. We clunk our plastic cups of tap water together and feast like kings on the fruits of my labor, making silly pretentious comments like the snobbiest of food critics. We smile and laugh and eat until the empty skins of us are full, and never once does he act sorry for me.
…
“You really think he’ll go for it again? You did slap him last time.”
“Oh, he’ll go for it.” I have utmost confidence. “And I’m getting $200 from him this time.”
D raises an eyebrow. “How you gonna pull that off?”
I point to my cunt. “He’s wanted in this all year. He’ll pay up.”
D looks conflicted. “Charge him three, and make sure he uses a condom. If he won’t, get me.”
“Oh, definitely. No way I’m getting pregnant again.” I’m not sure I like that look on D’s face. “You okay with this?”
“No,” he says bluntly. “You hate that shit, don’t you?”
“Well, sure. But I want to keep the power on.”
Pause. Now there’s a face I really don’t like.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Even if you get it,” he says, “even if it all goes smooth… it won’t solve the problem.”
And he admits to me he’s even deeper in the hole than I realized. Rent for this whole place is expensive, and there’s only so much we can milk out of the john.
“There’s another option,” I say.
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m gonna say.”
“You’re not going back to those people.” He never calls them my family. “They’ll kill you.”
“No they won’t; they’ve already bought the plane tickets.” He’s getting that stubborn look again. “Listen. They ordered my bank card for Harvard. It’s surely come in by now. They’ve got it, and if I can get it, I can get ahold of all the money I’ve saved, and we’ll be golden.”
“This guy’s bad enough,” he insists. “Those people are dangerous. I’m not getting you killed trying to keep the lights on.”
I sigh. “Fine. Jeff it is.”
Back to the pay phone. Sure enough, he’s vile and vicious over my getting one over on him, but I tell him I don’t have many quarters and offer him “real” sex.
His voice is full of disgust. “Is he making you do this?”
“No,” I say. “I’m doing this because I need $300 and can’t go home.” I’ve told him this. Someone like him doesn’t understand need. “Now, do you want this or not?”
He does.
“Make sure he has the money up-front,” D coaches me as I get dressed. We never discuss why he knows appropriate prices and security for this. “Do not go in unless he shows it to you.”
“Relax,” I say, squeezing his arm. “I’ll be in and out in ten minutes, same as last time.”
But my beloved is less sanguine, pacing back and forth, shaking his head. “He’s mad at you. He’s gonna get nasty. Wish you had a phone.”
I kiss his fuzz-and-stubble cheek. “Don’t worry. I can handle it. If he gets screamy or won’t wear a condom, I’m out.”
His eyes are tormented. “You promise?”
“Promise.”
We squeeze each other’s hands, I pull the brush a few last times through my hair, and then we get in the car.
This time, I’ve made a modicum of effort. I’ve brushed my hair, put on my girliest clothes and the one non-sports bra I took with me. It’s not much, but it’ll do; part of Jeff’s attraction to me is his idea that I’m “not like other girls” and that he gets to break me in. I’ve even trimmed my pubes, knowing how he feels about them.
When he opens the door, he radiates wounded pride and resentment. He looks and sees the muscle car, and his lips curl in the whitest sneer I’ve ever seen.
D, wearing sunglasses in the driver’s seat, gives this little sardonic wave, as much a bitter “hi asshole” to Jeff as an “all good?” inquiry for me. I nod and give my love my best smile. He’s surely tense.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Jeff snipes, “for him.”
I do not want Jeff visibly angry or agitated in sight of the boy my heart adores. I do not want my love to get out of his car. As cathartic as it’d be to beat and rob this guy, that’ll get the cops called, and Jeff has a family lawyer on-call. I can control this situation.
“Let’s go inside,” I say.
Jeff lets me in like I’m a Bible salesman.
His apartment is cold, and not just from the AC. My neck prickles as he shuts the door behind me, and I remind myself that this isn’t like other times. My boy has my back. I’m in control here.
“Do you have it?” I ask.
Jeff holds up a fistful of twenties, but yanks them back before I can touch them. “I can’t believe this,” he says. “I’m your boyfriend.”
Oh brother. “That’s a turn-off,” I say, and yank him into the bedroom. “You got a condom, right?”
“Psh, I’m not paying $300 to wear a condom.”
“Oh yes you are,” I say, “or I walk out right now, and I give him,” I jerk my head towards the door, the muscle car outside it, “what I won’t give you.”
That scores. Jeff goes through a rapid-fire panoply of expressions: shock, indignation, disgust… and lust. D really gets his goat, and I’m not above using it if it gets us our $300 quickly.
“Does he wear condoms?” Jeff sneers with a hint of slaver.
I shrug. “Go out and ask him.”
“You worried you’ll give me some disease?”
“I’m worried you’ll get me pregnant,” I say. “So pull out a condom or I’m out of here.”
“I forgot to buy some.”
What a surprise. I pull one from my pocket. My love bought them for me, both of us knowing Jeff’s feelings about being sexually inconvenienced. (And the both of us are right; Jeff will father a child and end up in a shotgun wedding in 2011.) “You’re lucky I plan ahead.”
He looks aghast. “You bought them?”
“Uh, yeah. I told you, I’m not risking a baby.”
He’s looking at me with disgusted awe. “Are you even a virgin? Were you ever a virgin?”
Not since I was five years old. “Do you want this or not?”
We go into the bedroom. He goes into his old litany—he can’t feel anything through a condom, the odds of me getting pregnant are so low, how dare I charge him $300, etc. He still gets hard when I fluff him (with efficiency if not enthusiasm), and then he loses track of what he’s saying.
The boy my heart adores has coached me on how to do the condom right, and I sure don’t trust Jeff, so I do it, mixing it with enough oral that he doesn’t complain. I let him honk and juggle my tits.
“I can’t believe you’re letting me do this,” he says in that same disgusted, awed, titillated voice, “for some pimp.”
I would fuck a Roman legion if it meant me and my love would be okay. “Lucky you.”
It’s weird. He’s so disgusted, but that contempt seems to excite him. Maybe he feels like he has to measure up to what he thinks my love is, prove what a virile man he is. He gets on top of me, shoves it in (ow) and gets to pumping like an oil drill, pawing my tits.
I keep an eye on the clock. He ejaculates in like five minutes, and the moment he’s done, I’m pushing him off me so the condom doesn’t leak. My cunt hurts and feels abraded. I’m so glad I didn’t come.
“What? Come on,” Jeff complains. “I want my cuddle.”
“That’s extra.”
“Was I as good as him?”
I just look at him. He can’t fathom what me and my beloved do together, and I have zero desire to shift his ignorance. “Where’s my money?”
But he’s trying to get me to talk about my feelings so he can dissect them and explain to me why they’re wrong and that clearly the rational, superior choice is to become his 24/7 live-in unpaid girlfriend experience. No way. I find his cargo shorts, go through the pockets till I find the money. Either before or after, I redress.
He doesn’t like it. “I can tell you’re not a virgin,” he snarls. “He’s left you so stretched out, you could shove a train in there.”
I snort. “Thanks, Jeff. Have a great day. Bye.”
I leave before he gets dressed and ignore everything he calls after me.
The boy my heart adores is waiting, tense as a panther. “All good?”
I brandish the cash. “$300, baby.” I sniff it. “Smells like money.”
“He get nasty?”
“Whiny. He’s got some crazy ideas about you and me.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” D’s eyes are still worried. “Are you okay?”
“My cunt hurts but otherwise I’m fine.” I feel tired. “Let’s… let’s go home, please.”
We do. He holds my hand all the way home, except when he needs it to steer or change gears or whatever. I’d lean on his shoulder, if the seats allowed it.
I feel dirty. I’m quiet and withdrawn, and my love picks up on it.
“I shouldn’t have made you do that.”
I roll my eyes. He’s the one person in this equation who isn’t making me do anything. “You’re not the problem. He just said ugly things about you, that’s all. It pisses me off.”
D pulls in, parks. “Bet he said ugly things about you too, and you’re the one had to listen.”
“Who cares?” Getting out of the car hurts and I wince. “Jesus, like a fucking jackhammer, Christ—”
My love puts his arm around me. I lean into him, taking comfort from his presence.
“I—I think I need to cry some,” I say.
“Okay.” His voice is sad. “You want me there for it?”
“Please.”
We go inside. We sit on the couch, he opens his arms, and I fall into them and start crying on his shoulder. He holds me.
“We aren’t doing that again,” he says. “I’m not okay with this.”
“Okay.” I’m not either, and Jeff is only going to get nastier the more this happens. “He was just… gross. Now he knows I’m not a virgin, it’s like I don’t matter at all. Even though I lost that long before I met his sorry ass.” I can’t bear it. “Why doesn’t it bother you?”
“Because I’m not a virgin either,” he says. “Why would I give you hassle about that?”
He makes it sound so simple. I squeeze him tight. “I don’t care that you’re not a virgin.”
“Yeah,” he squeezes me back. “Me either.” He kisses my hair. “We’re still just as good, right? We just did what we have to do. That’s not bad, so we’re not bad either.” Pause. “You cool if I check you out down there? Make sure it ain’t too bad?”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that, I’ll be okay tomorrow, he was just rough, that’s all. I could really use a shower, though.”
He gives me that sweet, sad, shell shock smile. “I’ll wash your hair?”
I sniff. “I’d love that.”
And we do. If there’s one thing the family’s taught me, it’s that a lot of pain, grief, and dirt can get washed away with a good shower.
That night, the boy my heart adores goes out. He’s been quiet and somber since the $300, stormy-eyed. When he grabs his keys, I ask, “Where you going?”
He hesitates. “I’m going to make some money for us.”
“At this hour?” It’s not his job at laser tag; I know his schedule. “What are you doing?”
Another hesitation. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Should I come with you?”
“No.” No hesitation that time. “No, this is a me thing. Better you’re not there for it.”
“Will you be gone long?”
“No. Should be fast.” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t worry, huh? I should be back in an hour or two.” He leans over to kiss my hair. I hug him.
“Be careful, okay?”
“I will.” And he goes.
…
He comes back right around the two-hour mark, and he’s bleeding. When I run to him, asking what happened, he just holds up a roll of bills and says, “money, baby.” His voice sounds far away.
I grab a chair, press him into it, get the first aid kit. I wash the blood from his face. His knuckles are bruised and bleeding, so I clean them too. He lets me, eyes empty, expression flat, body unmoving. He knows how to vacate his body as though it were a house on fire, same as me.
“Does anywhere else need to be looked at?” I ask.
“No.”
Even the rubbing alcohol sting gets no reaction from him. Where he is, there’s no pain.
“Come back, baby,” I say, rubbing his hands between mine. “Come back to me, it’s over now, please come back.”
The power starts coming back on behind his eyes. His expression turns anguished. He starts to sob, and I hug him tight, rock him.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. You made it. It’s over.”
He clings to me and cries.
When I ask him what happened, he only says, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
…
That night, I come to a decision. I have plenty of time to think it over, laying sleepless in bed (well, couch) with my exhausted, bruised, and bloody beloved in my arms. He falls asleep quickly from sheer exhaustion. I do not.
So, the next day, as we get ice cream at a parlor to discuss our options, I say: “We’re going to my family and getting my debit card.”
His response is immediate: “No we ain’t, boy.”
“Oh yes, we are, boy,” I shoot back. “I’m not letting you get hurt again.” He has a Band Aid on his forehead.
“Well, I ain’t letting them kill you, so—”
“They aren’t going to kill me, or even hurt me, because I have a plan.”
“No way.”
“Bills don’t pay themselves, D.”
“No.”
“Think of it as another Jeff thing.”
Wrong thing to say. “Hell no.”
I’m getting frustrated. “For god’s sake, I can do this! Let me do this!”
He just looks me in the eye and says, “No,” quiet, calm, and utterly immovable.
I grab my hair and make a suppressed scream sound. “Darius Knight, you are the stubbornest man alive!”
“Yup,” he says, “and you’re stuck with me.”
I plant my face on the sticky table. I want to beat my head against it.
“That last time, when you were crying?” D says. “I’m not doing that again, and Jeff’s nowhere near as bad as those people. When I die and go to Saint Peter—”
“Ugh, again with the Saint Peter!”
“—and he goes, ‘hey, which did you value more, your bills or your boy?’ I’m not saying bills. I’m just not, and you can’t do this without me, so that’s the end of it.”
He has a bulletproof argument and he knows it, but I still want to cry from sheer frustration. “I can get the card! I’m so close!”
He snorts. “Boy, they ain’t never giving you that damn card. You could do the whole Dallas Cowboys and they’d just go, nah, not good enough. I’ll still not convinced they’re going to let you go to Harvard either.”
I sit there, hating that he’s right. “My family’s so rich, and I can’t even get my own stupid money.”
He tucks some hair behind my ear, kisses my hand. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s gonna be okay.”
No, it’s not, and I’m so helplessly, furiously angry. Years, I’ve been saving that money—babysitting gigs, birthday checks, allowances, my job at the movie theater, saving, always saving for a rainy day, and now it’s pouring and Dad just says no. I did everything they told me I was supposed to, and none of it matters, because Dad said no. (“Running away from home, behaving erratically… I just don’t know that I can trust you with that kind of money.”)
My debit card is there. I know it is. Surely it’s come in the mail by now. I just have to get it.
“One last thing I can try,” I say, and put my hand to my beloved’s lips before he can finish saying no. “Just listen, huh? The card has to be there by now. It’s in that house. I can find it.”
His eyebrows go way up. “You’re going to break into those crazy people’s house?” he whisper-shrieks.
I roll my eyes. “Ain’t breaking in when it’s your own house, come on, I got a key. You think I ain’t snuck in before? Do it late at night, dog knows me—”
“Man, they’re gonna think you’re a robber and shoot you!”
I snort. “Don’t be silly. This is a ‘nice neighborhood.’” I say it as nasty as I can. “Besides, Mom and Dad’s room’s at the opposite end of the house from the door I use to get in, which is the quietest.” I use condensation water on the table to make a rough horseshoe shape representing the house: Mom and Dad’s room at one end, back door almost at the other. “I can check rec room, kitchen, and living room… and steal us some food while I’m at it. Easy. Hell, I’ll grab some things from my room too, Bro sleeps like a log, we could bring the whole school band in and not wake him up.”
D’s shaking his head. “Boy, you are out of your mind; if I were them, I’d keep it in my room.”
“Ah, but they ain’t you,” I say, wagging a finger. “You’re smarter’n them. You’ve outfoxed my dad twice and he doesn’t even know you done it.”
“What if you don’t find it?”
And when he says it… light bulb. Enlightenment. The idea is so beautiful, so perfect, that I have to hold it to the light and rotate it like a diamond, just admiring it…
D sees it. “What? What’s that face?”
I grin. “D,” I croon, “you’re a fucking genius.”
“Wha?”
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier,” I breathe, “it’s perfect…”
“Boy, this better be good.”
I’m smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. “They keep emergency cash in the pantry. Fake soup can.”
He goes still. “How much?”
“Wanna find out?” I ask.
His expression tells me everything I need to know. “Boy, you are crazy.”
I mime angelic innocence. “I’ll pay them back when I get my debit card.”
He sighs. “Fine. But this is it, you hear me?” Pause. “Am I coming in there with you?”
“Dog doesn’t know you,” I say. “She won’t bite you or anything, but no way I want her to bark.”
He doesn’t fight that. He knows as well as I do that there’s no way he can navigate a strange house in the dark (with a dog!) effectively, but he doesn’t sound happy about it. “Then I’m in the car and you have my phone. I see anything that worries me, I’m getting involved.”
“Sure, baby, whatever you say,” I say sweetly.
He mock-frowns at me. “Don’t you pull that ‘baby’ on me, you’re still crazy.”
“Crazy boys get money,” I say, kissing his cheek.
…
It’s night, late. We are sitting in the family car, out on the street, because my beloved’s red muscle car is stupid conspicuous, in both sight and sound, and we had to leave it at the sewage treatment plant down the road. Once he parked, I walked up to the family car, used my own keys to drive it back to pick him up, and then drove us back the few hundred feet to the family house, keeping him safely unseen the whole time. We park, and I put my car keys into his hand; he puts his cell phone into mine. If things go bad, his job is to drive; mine is to call the cops (even though that has never once worked, but he insisted).
My beloved seems less wired this time—though whether from confidence or fatigue, who knows. Me? I’m ready. This part, I’ve done a bunch of times, and Dad won’t be expecting it. He thinks I’m still mulling over my punishment options. If I do this right, they won’t even figure it out till later.
The house is dark and quiet, except for the porch light.
“Be careful,” D says, and kisses me for luck.
I kiss him back. “I take care of my people.”
I take a deep breath. I get out of the car. I feel Gigi press up behind my eyes. She’s the sneakiest, stealthiest one of us, and I don’t have to hide things from her. I honestly don’t know what all she’s seen and knows, the way she keeps to herself, but I appreciate her assistance.
The family house is one-and-a-half stories, built roughly like a horseshoe. Our parents’ room is at one end, and the rest of the bedrooms go down that side, off a narrow hall. It’s easy to get trapped down there; the one saving grace is that the room that’s ostensibly ours is close to the middle of the horseshoe, with fewer squeeze points. Mom and Dad would need to not just hear us and wake up, but charge down the hall fast enough to corner us in our room.
The other leg of the horseshoe is all the communal rooms: “wreck” room above, utility room and garage below, kitchen and dining room and living room in-between, with the living room (and front door) right in the middle of the horseshoe. The fake soup can is in the pantry, between kitchen and dining room, and nobody from the bedroom side can run us down without being clearly seen the whole time… and we have our choice of exits too: front door, back door, or even garage, if we really have a bad time. Way less dangerous.
Gigi and I unlatch the back gate, sneak around the blind side of the house to the communal end of the horseshoe. We check around the corner to see across the lawn to the bedroom leg of the horseshoe, the sliding glass door to the master bedroom: all dark. My eyes feel gritty, my nerves jangling, fatigue and adrenaline duking it out. My goal: mail, soup can. In, out, fast. I don’t want my beloved to worry. Gigi doesn’t want to get caught. We don’t say a word to each other. We don’t have to.
We unlock the back door, creep in. There we pause in the utility room, listening. Silence.
We crack the utility room door, blessing its whisper silence. Dark. Quiet. Pause. No change.
I have our backpack—plastic bags are too noisy—already partially unzipped so we can easily put things in without having to touch the zipper further and make noise. We ooze into the kitchen, touch no lights, open the pantry door, find the odd can in the dark. Unscrew, no light or time to inspect the contents, just dump them into the backpack. Screw can closed, put it back.
Still dark. Still quiet. Now: mail.
Nothing on kitchen table or counter. Coffee table either. We ignore the rec room; mail won’t be there and we could get cornered.
Okay. Our room. Sneak sneak sneak.
The dog is in her accustomed place, far at the end of the hall, in front of the master bedroom. She raises her head with a collar jingle and pricks her ears when she sees me, yawns but doesn’t get up. Good dog.
Our bedroom door has been left open. And to my gleeful astonishment, some envelopes are on my desk, as though we’ve just stepped out for a moment: Mom and Dad’s orderliness, working against them.
Snatch. Blow a silent kiss to the dog. Get the fuck out of there, locking the door on the way. It’s like we were never here.
Heart pounding, I walk down the driveway, normal speed. Gigi dissipates, no longer concerned, which eases me more; she has a better danger sense than I do. My calmness must show, because when I get in the car, D doesn’t look about to jump out of his skin.
“All good?”
I grunt and pass him the backpack, turn on the dashboard light so he can see the contents and I can see the envelopes. Lone Star Bank. I rip them open and—
There it is. My precious piece of plastic.
“Hundred dollars in here,” my beloved reports.
I turn to him, triumphantly wielding my debit card. His jaw drops. He holds out his hand. I pass it over.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he breathes. “Where was it?”
“My room. On my desk.”
He laughs incredulously. “Oh my god. I can’t believe it.”
I grab him, kiss him hard, take the car key from him and spin them around my finger. “Tolja: crazy boys get money.”
We do the stupidly complicated car-rearranging, and it goes fine, and the whole time, my love stares at me wonderingly, shaking his head.
“You good to drive?” I ask.
“Oh, I’m good, baby. I am feeling no pain,” he declares. “But I am surely dreaming. Pinch me, Jesus.”
I tweak his ear and he obligingly yelps. “I told you,” I say. “I take care of my people.”
“You are a gangster, man. Watch out!” Pause. “Nobody’s ever done this for me before.” Another pause. “Oh hey, you have to activate that in the morning, get it set up.”
I see the phone number on the back. “That hard?”
“Don’t remember, I’ve had mine a while. So let’s not count the chickens before they hatch.”
“Either way, we got $100.”
He nods. He still seems on a cloud. “That we do.”
I have another Lone Star mail, my bank statement. That comes in handy in the morning when I call them up first thing. I can’t get it sorted, but the statement has the address, so we drive there and I do it in person, dressed as nice and girly as I can, driver’s license and bank statement in hand. My beloved waits outside (“so I don’t look like your boyfriend”). The very helpful bank employee cheerfully helps me through it, gets my card activated and ATM code set up, I do my first ATM withdrawal, give my best Southern white girl thank you, and walk out on sunshine. Even if Mom and Dad shut my card down, I’ve come out with $690 total.
I get in the car, wield the twenties, and declare, “Money, baby.”
D whoops, pulls me into his arms with zero regard for the muscle car’s design or our comfort, and we can’t stop laughing, kissing, and cheering.
“Is this enough?” I keep asking. “Are we good now?”
His smile is everything, free of worry and fear and degradation. “We’re golden! We’re golden, baby! Aaah!” If he could jump up and down, he would.
The gearshift is digging into me and I don’t even care. “Crazy boys get money!” I shout. “Crazy boys get money!”
“You’re really doing this?” His voice is so desperate. “This is really happening?”
“You bet your ass I am!” I declare. “We are getting burgers, and ice cream, and—and stuff!”
“That’s good. That sounds real good.” He still seems stunned. “Can we, uh… can you do that when we get back?”
It takes me a moment to catch his meaning, but when I do: “Oh my god, yes, that’s a great idea! You have the greatest ideas! Now?”
He laughs. “Man, I am not doing that in a bank parking lot, this car’s terrible for that.”
“You would know.”
He shrugs elaborately. “Just saying.” And off we go, nerves alive with possibility and hope and victory, and the moment we’re through the door, I’m shoving him against the wall, and he’s surprised but pleased and unresisting, groaning into my mouth.
“Now?” I ask. “Now good?”
He swallows. “Yeah.”
“Good. Let’s fucking celebrate.” I untuck his undershirt so I can put my hands up it.
“This is really happening?” he asks. “You’re really doing this for me?”
I kiss him again. “You’re worth everything.”
We stagger our way to the couch, pulling off each other’s shirts, which is when I remember I’m wearing my “nice” girly bra.
“Urgh. Pause, let me—”
He’s already scrambling for the Ace bandages. He wraps me quickly and efficiently; he doesn’t have to do that, but I like it when he does, so I hold still for it. The compression is soothing, familiar. I don’t have to wear anything else around him.
“This good?” he asks. “Too tight, too loose?”
“Perfect,” I say, and go back to kissing him.
We make it to the couch and I climb on top of him, reveling in the sensation of his belly and chest against mine, the gentle strength of his arms, the sweetness of his mouth.
Then he licks into my mouth and I jerk back.
“Right,” he says. “Shit, sorry.”
My body feels so warm and alive. “I… I might be okay with that.”
“Yeah?”
We start kissing again, tentatively exploring. He is a good kisser, neither trying to jackhammer my mouth or act like a baby bird demanding a meal. When he nips my lower lip, I start rubbing against him.
“I—I might go King Kong,” I warn.
He swallows. “That’s okay. Kinda what I was going for, to be honest.”
The thought makes a rush of heat blaze through me. We go back to kissing, and when I slip my tongue into his mouth, he shudders and makes a wanting sound, opens his thighs wider, hands dancing over my shoulder blades.
“Your wings out?” he asks.
“No.”
“Could you?”
So I let him out, and it’s a delicious, aching erotic tension when I do, embarrassing in its intensity. Even though he can’t see it, it must show, because he chuckles and touches me.
“Feel good, huh?” He touches them.
I bury my face in his shoulder, panting. “Letting them out right now feels—fuck.”
I’m rubbing helplessly against him now, not even meaning to. He’s touching the undersides of my wings so light, so careful, and he smells so fucking good. I kiss his temple, his cheek, his jaw and neck and shoulder.
“You’re pretty,” I blurt, “so fucking pretty—” And I jerk my hips and he gasps, bends his knees, trying to correct my angle, get me where he really likes it.
My brain is turning to rampaging horny sludge. “You want that, baby? That what you want?” I shift, grind, and his thighs squeeze my sides as he gasps.
“Y-yeah.”
“You got it.” And then I’m yanking off his shorts, whatever the hell I’m wearing, he’s already practically wet his boxers from excitement, and when I feel his lips and tongue, warm, wet, and willing around my fingers, his thighs around my waist and the rhythm of our hips, it feels like we have the parts we should, and I’m inside him, fucking him, and the desperate, needy noise he makes—
So pretty. So fucking pretty.
“Can I—can I lick you down there?” I ask.
His wide eyes are all the answer I need, and then he’s scrambling up the couch so I can slide down between his legs.
God, he smells like need and sex and all good things. I kiss down his chest and stomach, his abs tensing and pushing to their own rhythms, he can’t stop moving, he wants it so bad. I kiss his cock (it pulses under my lips), give it a lick, mouth his balls, and then move down.
I’m drunk on the scent of him, and when I lick him, I can only describe the sound he makes as a squeak. His hips jump, press to me, his thighs opening, a mute demand for more, so I go to town. The sounds he makes almost sounds like crying, but a quick glance at his face proves otherwise—it’s utterly rapturous, ecstatic. He looks like Bernini’s Saint Theresa, beloved by her angel. Can it really be me, making him look like that, feel like that?
“You’re beautiful,” I blurt, and put my mouth everywhere I can reach—his thighs, his hips, his Adam’s lines, and he arches up to meet me.
“Go in me,” he begs (for me, he’s begging for me), “please, come on—”
I bully my hips between his legs, and I swear he barely makes it five seconds before spurting hot over his belly, expression utterly transported.
“Keep going,” he begs, even as he does, “keep going—”
So I do, but it’s stopped meshing up, the old frustration is back, god I want to shove my cock in his mouth so fucking bad—
He must see it. “What do you want?”
I touch his lower lip.
“Yeah?” He smiles.
“Is that okay?” I ask. “Don’t know if it’ll work.”
His reaction is to smirk and shove me over. His movements are loose, a little uncoordinated, his expression dreamy and then our positions are reversed, his face between my legs. I feel his stubble against my thigh and jump.
“All good?” he asks. The sweetest face.
I nod frantically and then he’s sucking me off, making love to me with his mouth, not trying to tongue-fuck me, and I’m bucking up against his face, desperate, and he makes a pleased purring/chuckling noise.
Oh god yes.
Oh fuck yes.
“I love you!” I blurt.
He groans and speeds up, and my brain is melting and all I can do is thrust into his pretty mouth and babble, over and over, “I love you I love you I love you I love you—”
And then I’m gone, coming, making sounds I don’t even recognize.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” he declares when I go limp. He’s grinning, face a mess. “There’s some enthusiasm!”
I cover my face with my hands with embarrassment, but I’m grinning too.
He wipes his mouth and cheeks and his expression softens. “You love me?”
I sniff, wipe my eyes. “Yeah. I love you.”
“Oh.” The only other time I’ve said it was during a fight. “You… aren’t just saying that ‘cause…?”
I shake my head. I’m crying. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
I cup his cheek. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, right? This was just supposed to be… you know. Fun.”
“Hey.” He climbs up, so he can hug me. “Hey.”
“You don’t have to do anything about it,” I say, because I don’t want him to feel sorry for me just because I’m crying. “You don’t have to say it back.”
“Hey.” He rocks me.
“I’m sorry.” My love is not a compliment, I know. My affections are ugly, unwanted, a diseased flyblown mutt following you home and refusing to leave. “I’m sorry…”
His voice is gentle. “You don’t have to be sorry. I like it when you say that to me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” His voice is sad. “Why wouldn’t I?”
(Mom looming over me, shaking with rage. “You don’t love me. Don’t say you love me.”)
I don’t want to think or talk about that. “I can’t love like a real person, I don’t think. I’m… broken.”
He holds me, rocks me. I bury my face against his neck and collarbone.
“You know,” he says, “in the movies, there’s always this robot everyone says can’t love. But it’s always obvious it does, right? People just say it can’t ‘cause it’s a robot and they’re prejudiced. Well, it seems obvious to me you love.”
“Really?” I blubber.
“Sure. You love Sneak, right? You’d never let anything bad happen to her.”
“That’s my job.”
“Man, you take it way more serious than a job, ain’t no one paying you to do that. And… you love me too.” He pushes my hair back from my face. His touch is gentle. “I just never thought you’d say it when I was… you know. I must’ve done a great job!”
I laugh through my tears, despite myself. “You did.”
“Cool. Yeah, I’m pretty great.” He softens again. “You don’t ever have to say you’re sorry for saying that to me. Okay?”
Relief washes over me. “Okay.”
“It’s a compliment. Don’t got to apologize for giving compliments.” He kisses my hair, and I relax into his arms.
“Thanks,” I say. “I know I’m weird.”
He squeezes me. “I like your weird.”
I feel like a robot sometimes,” I confess. “Or a golem. Like I’m missing something inside, a soul or whatever, that makes me real.”
“You seem pretty real to me, man. And you sure have a soul, anyone can see that.” When I raise my head, he wipes my tears with his thumbs. “Ain’t no soulless robot crying ‘cause they said they loved me and worried I might be offended.”
I laugh. “Thanks, D.”
“De nada.” He kisses me. “Told you I’m good.”
“You’re the best,” I say, and cry from sheer joy.
“I like King Kong,” he says in that beautiful pleasure-deep voice. “He can stay.”
He sees me as his girlfriend. I see him as a shitty customer. I hate his money, and I hate myself for not having my own, for having no marketable traits except a superfluity of warm, wet holes.
But I need that $50, and he isn’t going to help me for free, so I suck him off, and he blows his load in five minutes.
I spit his jizz in the sink (he isn’t paying me enough to swallow) and ask for my money, which I foolishly didn’t take up-front.
“That wasn’t good,” he says, which is true. “I don’t think you earned that.”
Of course he doesn’t. I’m supposed to be his girlfriend, and girlfriends are supposed to suck you for free. But I have no intention of haggling my already too-low price; I’m hungry. “Let’s bring my friend up here, then,” I say, “and let’s discuss it.”
He blanches… or would, if his complexion allowed it. Movements resentful, he pulls his wallet from his back pocket, pulls out the money. He tries to hold it back when I reach for it, but I snatch it away. “What has he got that I don’t? Is it the car? Money?”
I snort, openly counting the bills in front of him.
“Is it his dick?”
I laugh at him.
My boredom infuriates him. So he says something about someone I love.
I turn, slap Jeff across the face, and march out. He watches me go, clutching his cheek, eyes wide with shock, tail flaccid between his legs.
There in the parking lot, engine idling in the Texas summer heat, is the red muscle car that brought me here. The tension leaves my shoulders and I feel a smile come to my face. I open the passenger door and swing into the navigator’s seat, next to D, the one my heart adores.
“Hey, Rogan,” he says. His sunglasses slide down his nose, showing stormy gray eyes, worried and checking me for marks. “All good?”
I brandish the money. Groceries for a week, for him and me both. No sneering food bank, no paperwork requirements, no food we don’t get to choose, no fear or worry or hunger. I have procured us human dignity.
He takes the money and counts it, just as I did, his eyes full of sadness, guilt, gratitude, concern. He didn’t want me to do this, but nevertheless, he drove me, offered to act as security.
“I was worried he wouldn’t pay you,” he admits.
“I slapped him,” I replied.
His head snaps up. “What, really?” He’s trying not to smile, but it’s sneaking up on him.
I don’t pretend to have that kind of self-control. “He wanted to hold out on me. And he said some ugly things. So I slapped him.”
He claps me on the back, turns it into a hug. “Man, good for you! I wish I could’ve seen it! Aw, I wish I’d had a camera!”
I laugh. “It felt pretty good, not gonna lie.” When he leans in to kiss me, I turn my face away. “Not till I wash my mouth out with bleach. No offense.”
“Okay.” His smile dims. As he releases the parking brake, he says, “Hey. One question. You don’t have to answer it.”
“Yeah? What’s up?”
“He get ugly over you, me, or both?”
I think, decide I’m okay with answering. “Both.”
“What’d he say?”
I squirm. “You really want to know?”
“Yeah.”
I look at him, check his face. “He called you a pimp. My pimp.”
I expect him to be upset. Instead, his expression turns thoughtful. “Huh,” he says, tapping his chin. “I can maybe use that.”
“Use that?”
“If he thinks I’m some big scary pimp looking out for you, maybe he’ll be less nasty to you. Was he?”
I think back on it. “Yeah,” I say, realizing. “You know, he was. I was in and out in like five minutes. He didn’t hit or scream at all.”
“He scared of me, you think?”
That’s easy: “absolutely. He thinks you’ll shove him in a locker or something.”
He snorts. “Man, how old is this guy? Ain’t he 21 or something?”
I shrug. The customer is one of those insecure white geek boys whose hatred of high school is equal only to their refusal to ever move on from it. To him, I am a symbol of all the pretty girls who never looked at him, everything he should’ve gotten but didn’t, and D is a symbol of all the black athletic boys who got to fuck those pretty girls. Objects of desire, objects of resentment. He has no idea who we really are.
I might still be in high school, and D may have only just graduated, but our minds are already far further into adulthood than the john is.
“Yeah,” says D, eyes distant as he drives, thinking hard. “Yeah, if that’s what I need to be, to keep him off your back, then that’s what I’ll be. That won’t be hard. I can be gangsta.”
I snort. “Are you kidding?” The mental image is absurd. “No way.”
“You doubt me?” He feigns woundedness, hand to his heart. “C’mon, he thinks it already. All I got to do is show up and not pretend I don’t hate him.” He puts on an overdone scowl and slouch, would cross his arms if he wasn’t driving.
I start snorting into my hands.
“What, you think I can’t look mean? I can do mean. I’m gonna bust a cap in your cracker ass, fool!”
I’m laughing now, hard enough my sides hurt. It feels so good to laugh, and at the john’s expense no less. “Stop, stop! You’re killing me!”
“You lay off my boy or you gonna get drive-byed!”
“That’s not even a verb! You can’t past-tense it!”
“Oh, like he’s gonna know any different…”
I finally manage to stop laughing. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry, but you are not gangsta at all.”
“To you? Nah. But you know me. He doesn’t. He’ll be easy.” Pause. “Hey. You really okay, after that?”
I wipe the tears from my eyes, run an inner diagnostic. “Yeah. I’m okay. It wasn’t fun, but… I’m okay.”
“Okay.” We’ve arrived. He puts the car in park, opens his arms. “Hug?”
I fall into them and he hugs me tight, kisses my hair. I just soak in the security, the smell of him for a bit. I feel my body relax, my heart calm. Yes, I’m okay. Everything’s okay now.
“Hey,” I ask, “are you okay?”
He looks away. “Man, who cares about me, all I had to do was drive, sit on my ass, and wait…”
I pull back so I can use his own “no BS” look on him.
He sighs. “Okay. I was worried, you know? That he wouldn’t pay you. That he’d get ugly and keep you in there. That you’d be… hurt, afterward.” Pause. “I didn’t like you having to do this.”
I touch his cheek. “I know.”
“But…” he sighs. His expression is sad. “That money’s a big help, right now. I don’t want you going back home,” he hastens to add, “but… I just wish you didn’t have to keep doing this, you know? I wish it was different. That’s all.”
“If I had to do it again,” I say, “would you still be willing to look out for me?”
“Sure. If it means he doesn’t get nasty, I’ll play pimp all day and night.” His expression is guilty. “And… I should tell you something. Money’s… real bad right now. Bills piled up, things like that, you know?”
I nod. I suspected something like that. He’s been single-handedly covering the apartment, the bills, the food, all by himself, and he just has a crummy part-time job at the local laser tag place. “I can probably get more out of him. Give him a day or two to calm down and I’ll hit him up again.”
D’s expression is so guilty and relieved. “It doesn’t feel right, asking you to do this.”
I put a finger to his lips, shushing him. “You’ve been taking care of me for months. Shush. I pay my way, baby, so let me take care of things a bit, okay?”
His shoulders go slack and he lets his head rest on my shoulder. He seems so tired. He’s been carrying us for so long. It’s my turn now.
And besides. I have no words to express the sheer visceral revolt that rises in my guts, being the white girl he has to take care of. That’s not what I am to him, what we are to each other. We are each other’s boys, seeing each other in a world that wants us invisible, and if that means being a mercenary whore, then so be it. Better a whore, an equal partner who works and gets paid, then the innocent broken bird, forever opening her beak for the charity of men around her.
After a moment, the boy my heart adores straightens up, brave face back on. “Burgers tonight?”
“Yeah. Let’s celebrate.” Our first animal protein since before the food bank.
We go triumphantly grocery shopping. When we get home, to his beige box of an apartment with no heat and barely any furnishings (a mattress, a couch, a folding table with two metal folding chairs), I brush my teeth and wash the memory of the job out of my mouth while D cooks the burgers in a cheap frying pan over the electric coil stove. The smell is glorious. Nothing seasons food like hunger.
When I come out, put my arms around his waist, and rest my forehead against his shoulder, he turns around in my arms and kisses me, and this time, I don’t turn away. He isn’t tall or bulky, but his arms span all the world’s safety, in my mind, and the scent and textures of him are my home. His kisses have the softness of peach fuzz, mingled with the prickle of stubble, and gentleness, always gentleness. In a cruel world, this golden-hearted young man took me in and chose to be kind anyway.
Yes, he chose to be kind anyway.
“You hungry?”
Always, my shining one.
Burgers on buns, ketchup and mustard and pickles and fries. A banquet, a bounty, and for once, the boy I love isn’t the one having to pay with money he doesn’t have. We clunk our plastic cups of tap water together and feast like kings on the fruits of my labor, making silly pretentious comments like the snobbiest of food critics. We smile and laugh and eat until the empty skins of us are full, and never once does he act sorry for me.
…
“You really think he’ll go for it again? You did slap him last time.”
“Oh, he’ll go for it.” I have utmost confidence. “And I’m getting $200 from him this time.”
D raises an eyebrow. “How you gonna pull that off?”
I point to my cunt. “He’s wanted in this all year. He’ll pay up.”
D looks conflicted. “Charge him three, and make sure he uses a condom. If he won’t, get me.”
“Oh, definitely. No way I’m getting pregnant again.” I’m not sure I like that look on D’s face. “You okay with this?”
“No,” he says bluntly. “You hate that shit, don’t you?”
“Well, sure. But I want to keep the power on.”
Pause. Now there’s a face I really don’t like.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Even if you get it,” he says, “even if it all goes smooth… it won’t solve the problem.”
And he admits to me he’s even deeper in the hole than I realized. Rent for this whole place is expensive, and there’s only so much we can milk out of the john.
“There’s another option,” I say.
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m gonna say.”
“You’re not going back to those people.” He never calls them my family. “They’ll kill you.”
“No they won’t; they’ve already bought the plane tickets.” He’s getting that stubborn look again. “Listen. They ordered my bank card for Harvard. It’s surely come in by now. They’ve got it, and if I can get it, I can get ahold of all the money I’ve saved, and we’ll be golden.”
“This guy’s bad enough,” he insists. “Those people are dangerous. I’m not getting you killed trying to keep the lights on.”
I sigh. “Fine. Jeff it is.”
Back to the pay phone. Sure enough, he’s vile and vicious over my getting one over on him, but I tell him I don’t have many quarters and offer him “real” sex.
His voice is full of disgust. “Is he making you do this?”
“No,” I say. “I’m doing this because I need $300 and can’t go home.” I’ve told him this. Someone like him doesn’t understand need. “Now, do you want this or not?”
He does.
“Make sure he has the money up-front,” D coaches me as I get dressed. We never discuss why he knows appropriate prices and security for this. “Do not go in unless he shows it to you.”
“Relax,” I say, squeezing his arm. “I’ll be in and out in ten minutes, same as last time.”
But my beloved is less sanguine, pacing back and forth, shaking his head. “He’s mad at you. He’s gonna get nasty. Wish you had a phone.”
I kiss his fuzz-and-stubble cheek. “Don’t worry. I can handle it. If he gets screamy or won’t wear a condom, I’m out.”
His eyes are tormented. “You promise?”
“Promise.”
We squeeze each other’s hands, I pull the brush a few last times through my hair, and then we get in the car.
This time, I’ve made a modicum of effort. I’ve brushed my hair, put on my girliest clothes and the one non-sports bra I took with me. It’s not much, but it’ll do; part of Jeff’s attraction to me is his idea that I’m “not like other girls” and that he gets to break me in. I’ve even trimmed my pubes, knowing how he feels about them.
When he opens the door, he radiates wounded pride and resentment. He looks and sees the muscle car, and his lips curl in the whitest sneer I’ve ever seen.
D, wearing sunglasses in the driver’s seat, gives this little sardonic wave, as much a bitter “hi asshole” to Jeff as an “all good?” inquiry for me. I nod and give my love my best smile. He’s surely tense.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Jeff snipes, “for him.”
I do not want Jeff visibly angry or agitated in sight of the boy my heart adores. I do not want my love to get out of his car. As cathartic as it’d be to beat and rob this guy, that’ll get the cops called, and Jeff has a family lawyer on-call. I can control this situation.
“Let’s go inside,” I say.
Jeff lets me in like I’m a Bible salesman.
His apartment is cold, and not just from the AC. My neck prickles as he shuts the door behind me, and I remind myself that this isn’t like other times. My boy has my back. I’m in control here.
“Do you have it?” I ask.
Jeff holds up a fistful of twenties, but yanks them back before I can touch them. “I can’t believe this,” he says. “I’m your boyfriend.”
Oh brother. “That’s a turn-off,” I say, and yank him into the bedroom. “You got a condom, right?”
“Psh, I’m not paying $300 to wear a condom.”
“Oh yes you are,” I say, “or I walk out right now, and I give him,” I jerk my head towards the door, the muscle car outside it, “what I won’t give you.”
That scores. Jeff goes through a rapid-fire panoply of expressions: shock, indignation, disgust… and lust. D really gets his goat, and I’m not above using it if it gets us our $300 quickly.
“Does he wear condoms?” Jeff sneers with a hint of slaver.
I shrug. “Go out and ask him.”
“You worried you’ll give me some disease?”
“I’m worried you’ll get me pregnant,” I say. “So pull out a condom or I’m out of here.”
“I forgot to buy some.”
What a surprise. I pull one from my pocket. My love bought them for me, both of us knowing Jeff’s feelings about being sexually inconvenienced. (And the both of us are right; Jeff will father a child and end up in a shotgun wedding in 2011.) “You’re lucky I plan ahead.”
He looks aghast. “You bought them?”
“Uh, yeah. I told you, I’m not risking a baby.”
He’s looking at me with disgusted awe. “Are you even a virgin? Were you ever a virgin?”
Not since I was five years old. “Do you want this or not?”
We go into the bedroom. He goes into his old litany—he can’t feel anything through a condom, the odds of me getting pregnant are so low, how dare I charge him $300, etc. He still gets hard when I fluff him (with efficiency if not enthusiasm), and then he loses track of what he’s saying.
The boy my heart adores has coached me on how to do the condom right, and I sure don’t trust Jeff, so I do it, mixing it with enough oral that he doesn’t complain. I let him honk and juggle my tits.
“I can’t believe you’re letting me do this,” he says in that same disgusted, awed, titillated voice, “for some pimp.”
I would fuck a Roman legion if it meant me and my love would be okay. “Lucky you.”
It’s weird. He’s so disgusted, but that contempt seems to excite him. Maybe he feels like he has to measure up to what he thinks my love is, prove what a virile man he is. He gets on top of me, shoves it in (ow) and gets to pumping like an oil drill, pawing my tits.
I keep an eye on the clock. He ejaculates in like five minutes, and the moment he’s done, I’m pushing him off me so the condom doesn’t leak. My cunt hurts and feels abraded. I’m so glad I didn’t come.
“What? Come on,” Jeff complains. “I want my cuddle.”
“That’s extra.”
“Was I as good as him?”
I just look at him. He can’t fathom what me and my beloved do together, and I have zero desire to shift his ignorance. “Where’s my money?”
But he’s trying to get me to talk about my feelings so he can dissect them and explain to me why they’re wrong and that clearly the rational, superior choice is to become his 24/7 live-in unpaid girlfriend experience. No way. I find his cargo shorts, go through the pockets till I find the money. Either before or after, I redress.
He doesn’t like it. “I can tell you’re not a virgin,” he snarls. “He’s left you so stretched out, you could shove a train in there.”
I snort. “Thanks, Jeff. Have a great day. Bye.”
I leave before he gets dressed and ignore everything he calls after me.
The boy my heart adores is waiting, tense as a panther. “All good?”
I brandish the cash. “$300, baby.” I sniff it. “Smells like money.”
“He get nasty?”
“Whiny. He’s got some crazy ideas about you and me.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” D’s eyes are still worried. “Are you okay?”
“My cunt hurts but otherwise I’m fine.” I feel tired. “Let’s… let’s go home, please.”
We do. He holds my hand all the way home, except when he needs it to steer or change gears or whatever. I’d lean on his shoulder, if the seats allowed it.
I feel dirty. I’m quiet and withdrawn, and my love picks up on it.
“I shouldn’t have made you do that.”
I roll my eyes. He’s the one person in this equation who isn’t making me do anything. “You’re not the problem. He just said ugly things about you, that’s all. It pisses me off.”
D pulls in, parks. “Bet he said ugly things about you too, and you’re the one had to listen.”
“Who cares?” Getting out of the car hurts and I wince. “Jesus, like a fucking jackhammer, Christ—”
My love puts his arm around me. I lean into him, taking comfort from his presence.
“I—I think I need to cry some,” I say.
“Okay.” His voice is sad. “You want me there for it?”
“Please.”
We go inside. We sit on the couch, he opens his arms, and I fall into them and start crying on his shoulder. He holds me.
“We aren’t doing that again,” he says. “I’m not okay with this.”
“Okay.” I’m not either, and Jeff is only going to get nastier the more this happens. “He was just… gross. Now he knows I’m not a virgin, it’s like I don’t matter at all. Even though I lost that long before I met his sorry ass.” I can’t bear it. “Why doesn’t it bother you?”
“Because I’m not a virgin either,” he says. “Why would I give you hassle about that?”
He makes it sound so simple. I squeeze him tight. “I don’t care that you’re not a virgin.”
“Yeah,” he squeezes me back. “Me either.” He kisses my hair. “We’re still just as good, right? We just did what we have to do. That’s not bad, so we’re not bad either.” Pause. “You cool if I check you out down there? Make sure it ain’t too bad?”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that, I’ll be okay tomorrow, he was just rough, that’s all. I could really use a shower, though.”
He gives me that sweet, sad, shell shock smile. “I’ll wash your hair?”
I sniff. “I’d love that.”
And we do. If there’s one thing the family’s taught me, it’s that a lot of pain, grief, and dirt can get washed away with a good shower.
That night, the boy my heart adores goes out. He’s been quiet and somber since the $300, stormy-eyed. When he grabs his keys, I ask, “Where you going?”
He hesitates. “I’m going to make some money for us.”
“At this hour?” It’s not his job at laser tag; I know his schedule. “What are you doing?”
Another hesitation. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Should I come with you?”
“No.” No hesitation that time. “No, this is a me thing. Better you’re not there for it.”
“Will you be gone long?”
“No. Should be fast.” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t worry, huh? I should be back in an hour or two.” He leans over to kiss my hair. I hug him.
“Be careful, okay?”
“I will.” And he goes.
…
He comes back right around the two-hour mark, and he’s bleeding. When I run to him, asking what happened, he just holds up a roll of bills and says, “money, baby.” His voice sounds far away.
I grab a chair, press him into it, get the first aid kit. I wash the blood from his face. His knuckles are bruised and bleeding, so I clean them too. He lets me, eyes empty, expression flat, body unmoving. He knows how to vacate his body as though it were a house on fire, same as me.
“Does anywhere else need to be looked at?” I ask.
“No.”
Even the rubbing alcohol sting gets no reaction from him. Where he is, there’s no pain.
“Come back, baby,” I say, rubbing his hands between mine. “Come back to me, it’s over now, please come back.”
The power starts coming back on behind his eyes. His expression turns anguished. He starts to sob, and I hug him tight, rock him.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. You made it. It’s over.”
He clings to me and cries.
When I ask him what happened, he only says, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
…
That night, I come to a decision. I have plenty of time to think it over, laying sleepless in bed (well, couch) with my exhausted, bruised, and bloody beloved in my arms. He falls asleep quickly from sheer exhaustion. I do not.
So, the next day, as we get ice cream at a parlor to discuss our options, I say: “We’re going to my family and getting my debit card.”
His response is immediate: “No we ain’t, boy.”
“Oh yes, we are, boy,” I shoot back. “I’m not letting you get hurt again.” He has a Band Aid on his forehead.
“Well, I ain’t letting them kill you, so—”
“They aren’t going to kill me, or even hurt me, because I have a plan.”
“No way.”
“Bills don’t pay themselves, D.”
“No.”
“Think of it as another Jeff thing.”
Wrong thing to say. “Hell no.”
I’m getting frustrated. “For god’s sake, I can do this! Let me do this!”
He just looks me in the eye and says, “No,” quiet, calm, and utterly immovable.
I grab my hair and make a suppressed scream sound. “Darius Knight, you are the stubbornest man alive!”
“Yup,” he says, “and you’re stuck with me.”
I plant my face on the sticky table. I want to beat my head against it.
“That last time, when you were crying?” D says. “I’m not doing that again, and Jeff’s nowhere near as bad as those people. When I die and go to Saint Peter—”
“Ugh, again with the Saint Peter!”
“—and he goes, ‘hey, which did you value more, your bills or your boy?’ I’m not saying bills. I’m just not, and you can’t do this without me, so that’s the end of it.”
He has a bulletproof argument and he knows it, but I still want to cry from sheer frustration. “I can get the card! I’m so close!”
He snorts. “Boy, they ain’t never giving you that damn card. You could do the whole Dallas Cowboys and they’d just go, nah, not good enough. I’ll still not convinced they’re going to let you go to Harvard either.”
I sit there, hating that he’s right. “My family’s so rich, and I can’t even get my own stupid money.”
He tucks some hair behind my ear, kisses my hand. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s gonna be okay.”
No, it’s not, and I’m so helplessly, furiously angry. Years, I’ve been saving that money—babysitting gigs, birthday checks, allowances, my job at the movie theater, saving, always saving for a rainy day, and now it’s pouring and Dad just says no. I did everything they told me I was supposed to, and none of it matters, because Dad said no. (“Running away from home, behaving erratically… I just don’t know that I can trust you with that kind of money.”)
My debit card is there. I know it is. Surely it’s come in the mail by now. I just have to get it.
“One last thing I can try,” I say, and put my hand to my beloved’s lips before he can finish saying no. “Just listen, huh? The card has to be there by now. It’s in that house. I can find it.”
His eyebrows go way up. “You’re going to break into those crazy people’s house?” he whisper-shrieks.
I roll my eyes. “Ain’t breaking in when it’s your own house, come on, I got a key. You think I ain’t snuck in before? Do it late at night, dog knows me—”
“Man, they’re gonna think you’re a robber and shoot you!”
I snort. “Don’t be silly. This is a ‘nice neighborhood.’” I say it as nasty as I can. “Besides, Mom and Dad’s room’s at the opposite end of the house from the door I use to get in, which is the quietest.” I use condensation water on the table to make a rough horseshoe shape representing the house: Mom and Dad’s room at one end, back door almost at the other. “I can check rec room, kitchen, and living room… and steal us some food while I’m at it. Easy. Hell, I’ll grab some things from my room too, Bro sleeps like a log, we could bring the whole school band in and not wake him up.”
D’s shaking his head. “Boy, you are out of your mind; if I were them, I’d keep it in my room.”
“Ah, but they ain’t you,” I say, wagging a finger. “You’re smarter’n them. You’ve outfoxed my dad twice and he doesn’t even know you done it.”
“What if you don’t find it?”
And when he says it… light bulb. Enlightenment. The idea is so beautiful, so perfect, that I have to hold it to the light and rotate it like a diamond, just admiring it…
D sees it. “What? What’s that face?”
I grin. “D,” I croon, “you’re a fucking genius.”
“Wha?”
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier,” I breathe, “it’s perfect…”
“Boy, this better be good.”
I’m smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. “They keep emergency cash in the pantry. Fake soup can.”
He goes still. “How much?”
“Wanna find out?” I ask.
His expression tells me everything I need to know. “Boy, you are crazy.”
I mime angelic innocence. “I’ll pay them back when I get my debit card.”
He sighs. “Fine. But this is it, you hear me?” Pause. “Am I coming in there with you?”
“Dog doesn’t know you,” I say. “She won’t bite you or anything, but no way I want her to bark.”
He doesn’t fight that. He knows as well as I do that there’s no way he can navigate a strange house in the dark (with a dog!) effectively, but he doesn’t sound happy about it. “Then I’m in the car and you have my phone. I see anything that worries me, I’m getting involved.”
“Sure, baby, whatever you say,” I say sweetly.
He mock-frowns at me. “Don’t you pull that ‘baby’ on me, you’re still crazy.”
“Crazy boys get money,” I say, kissing his cheek.
…
It’s night, late. We are sitting in the family car, out on the street, because my beloved’s red muscle car is stupid conspicuous, in both sight and sound, and we had to leave it at the sewage treatment plant down the road. Once he parked, I walked up to the family car, used my own keys to drive it back to pick him up, and then drove us back the few hundred feet to the family house, keeping him safely unseen the whole time. We park, and I put my car keys into his hand; he puts his cell phone into mine. If things go bad, his job is to drive; mine is to call the cops (even though that has never once worked, but he insisted).
My beloved seems less wired this time—though whether from confidence or fatigue, who knows. Me? I’m ready. This part, I’ve done a bunch of times, and Dad won’t be expecting it. He thinks I’m still mulling over my punishment options. If I do this right, they won’t even figure it out till later.
The house is dark and quiet, except for the porch light.
“Be careful,” D says, and kisses me for luck.
I kiss him back. “I take care of my people.”
I take a deep breath. I get out of the car. I feel Gigi press up behind my eyes. She’s the sneakiest, stealthiest one of us, and I don’t have to hide things from her. I honestly don’t know what all she’s seen and knows, the way she keeps to herself, but I appreciate her assistance.
The family house is one-and-a-half stories, built roughly like a horseshoe. Our parents’ room is at one end, and the rest of the bedrooms go down that side, off a narrow hall. It’s easy to get trapped down there; the one saving grace is that the room that’s ostensibly ours is close to the middle of the horseshoe, with fewer squeeze points. Mom and Dad would need to not just hear us and wake up, but charge down the hall fast enough to corner us in our room.
The other leg of the horseshoe is all the communal rooms: “wreck” room above, utility room and garage below, kitchen and dining room and living room in-between, with the living room (and front door) right in the middle of the horseshoe. The fake soup can is in the pantry, between kitchen and dining room, and nobody from the bedroom side can run us down without being clearly seen the whole time… and we have our choice of exits too: front door, back door, or even garage, if we really have a bad time. Way less dangerous.
Gigi and I unlatch the back gate, sneak around the blind side of the house to the communal end of the horseshoe. We check around the corner to see across the lawn to the bedroom leg of the horseshoe, the sliding glass door to the master bedroom: all dark. My eyes feel gritty, my nerves jangling, fatigue and adrenaline duking it out. My goal: mail, soup can. In, out, fast. I don’t want my beloved to worry. Gigi doesn’t want to get caught. We don’t say a word to each other. We don’t have to.
We unlock the back door, creep in. There we pause in the utility room, listening. Silence.
We crack the utility room door, blessing its whisper silence. Dark. Quiet. Pause. No change.
I have our backpack—plastic bags are too noisy—already partially unzipped so we can easily put things in without having to touch the zipper further and make noise. We ooze into the kitchen, touch no lights, open the pantry door, find the odd can in the dark. Unscrew, no light or time to inspect the contents, just dump them into the backpack. Screw can closed, put it back.
Still dark. Still quiet. Now: mail.
Nothing on kitchen table or counter. Coffee table either. We ignore the rec room; mail won’t be there and we could get cornered.
Okay. Our room. Sneak sneak sneak.
The dog is in her accustomed place, far at the end of the hall, in front of the master bedroom. She raises her head with a collar jingle and pricks her ears when she sees me, yawns but doesn’t get up. Good dog.
Our bedroom door has been left open. And to my gleeful astonishment, some envelopes are on my desk, as though we’ve just stepped out for a moment: Mom and Dad’s orderliness, working against them.
Snatch. Blow a silent kiss to the dog. Get the fuck out of there, locking the door on the way. It’s like we were never here.
Heart pounding, I walk down the driveway, normal speed. Gigi dissipates, no longer concerned, which eases me more; she has a better danger sense than I do. My calmness must show, because when I get in the car, D doesn’t look about to jump out of his skin.
“All good?”
I grunt and pass him the backpack, turn on the dashboard light so he can see the contents and I can see the envelopes. Lone Star Bank. I rip them open and—
There it is. My precious piece of plastic.
“Hundred dollars in here,” my beloved reports.
I turn to him, triumphantly wielding my debit card. His jaw drops. He holds out his hand. I pass it over.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he breathes. “Where was it?”
“My room. On my desk.”
He laughs incredulously. “Oh my god. I can’t believe it.”
I grab him, kiss him hard, take the car key from him and spin them around my finger. “Tolja: crazy boys get money.”
We do the stupidly complicated car-rearranging, and it goes fine, and the whole time, my love stares at me wonderingly, shaking his head.
“You good to drive?” I ask.
“Oh, I’m good, baby. I am feeling no pain,” he declares. “But I am surely dreaming. Pinch me, Jesus.”
I tweak his ear and he obligingly yelps. “I told you,” I say. “I take care of my people.”
“You are a gangster, man. Watch out!” Pause. “Nobody’s ever done this for me before.” Another pause. “Oh hey, you have to activate that in the morning, get it set up.”
I see the phone number on the back. “That hard?”
“Don’t remember, I’ve had mine a while. So let’s not count the chickens before they hatch.”
“Either way, we got $100.”
He nods. He still seems on a cloud. “That we do.”
I have another Lone Star mail, my bank statement. That comes in handy in the morning when I call them up first thing. I can’t get it sorted, but the statement has the address, so we drive there and I do it in person, dressed as nice and girly as I can, driver’s license and bank statement in hand. My beloved waits outside (“so I don’t look like your boyfriend”). The very helpful bank employee cheerfully helps me through it, gets my card activated and ATM code set up, I do my first ATM withdrawal, give my best Southern white girl thank you, and walk out on sunshine. Even if Mom and Dad shut my card down, I’ve come out with $690 total.
I get in the car, wield the twenties, and declare, “Money, baby.”
D whoops, pulls me into his arms with zero regard for the muscle car’s design or our comfort, and we can’t stop laughing, kissing, and cheering.
“Is this enough?” I keep asking. “Are we good now?”
His smile is everything, free of worry and fear and degradation. “We’re golden! We’re golden, baby! Aaah!” If he could jump up and down, he would.
The gearshift is digging into me and I don’t even care. “Crazy boys get money!” I shout. “Crazy boys get money!”
“You’re really doing this?” His voice is so desperate. “This is really happening?”
“You bet your ass I am!” I declare. “We are getting burgers, and ice cream, and—and stuff!”
“That’s good. That sounds real good.” He still seems stunned. “Can we, uh… can you do that when we get back?”
It takes me a moment to catch his meaning, but when I do: “Oh my god, yes, that’s a great idea! You have the greatest ideas! Now?”
He laughs. “Man, I am not doing that in a bank parking lot, this car’s terrible for that.”
“You would know.”
He shrugs elaborately. “Just saying.” And off we go, nerves alive with possibility and hope and victory, and the moment we’re through the door, I’m shoving him against the wall, and he’s surprised but pleased and unresisting, groaning into my mouth.
“Now?” I ask. “Now good?”
He swallows. “Yeah.”
“Good. Let’s fucking celebrate.” I untuck his undershirt so I can put my hands up it.
“This is really happening?” he asks. “You’re really doing this for me?”
I kiss him again. “You’re worth everything.”
We stagger our way to the couch, pulling off each other’s shirts, which is when I remember I’m wearing my “nice” girly bra.
“Urgh. Pause, let me—”
He’s already scrambling for the Ace bandages. He wraps me quickly and efficiently; he doesn’t have to do that, but I like it when he does, so I hold still for it. The compression is soothing, familiar. I don’t have to wear anything else around him.
“This good?” he asks. “Too tight, too loose?”
“Perfect,” I say, and go back to kissing him.
We make it to the couch and I climb on top of him, reveling in the sensation of his belly and chest against mine, the gentle strength of his arms, the sweetness of his mouth.
Then he licks into my mouth and I jerk back.
“Right,” he says. “Shit, sorry.”
My body feels so warm and alive. “I… I might be okay with that.”
“Yeah?”
We start kissing again, tentatively exploring. He is a good kisser, neither trying to jackhammer my mouth or act like a baby bird demanding a meal. When he nips my lower lip, I start rubbing against him.
“I—I might go King Kong,” I warn.
He swallows. “That’s okay. Kinda what I was going for, to be honest.”
The thought makes a rush of heat blaze through me. We go back to kissing, and when I slip my tongue into his mouth, he shudders and makes a wanting sound, opens his thighs wider, hands dancing over my shoulder blades.
“Your wings out?” he asks.
“No.”
“Could you?”
So I let him out, and it’s a delicious, aching erotic tension when I do, embarrassing in its intensity. Even though he can’t see it, it must show, because he chuckles and touches me.
“Feel good, huh?” He touches them.
I bury my face in his shoulder, panting. “Letting them out right now feels—fuck.”
I’m rubbing helplessly against him now, not even meaning to. He’s touching the undersides of my wings so light, so careful, and he smells so fucking good. I kiss his temple, his cheek, his jaw and neck and shoulder.
“You’re pretty,” I blurt, “so fucking pretty—” And I jerk my hips and he gasps, bends his knees, trying to correct my angle, get me where he really likes it.
My brain is turning to rampaging horny sludge. “You want that, baby? That what you want?” I shift, grind, and his thighs squeeze my sides as he gasps.
“Y-yeah.”
“You got it.” And then I’m yanking off his shorts, whatever the hell I’m wearing, he’s already practically wet his boxers from excitement, and when I feel his lips and tongue, warm, wet, and willing around my fingers, his thighs around my waist and the rhythm of our hips, it feels like we have the parts we should, and I’m inside him, fucking him, and the desperate, needy noise he makes—
So pretty. So fucking pretty.
“Can I—can I lick you down there?” I ask.
His wide eyes are all the answer I need, and then he’s scrambling up the couch so I can slide down between his legs.
God, he smells like need and sex and all good things. I kiss down his chest and stomach, his abs tensing and pushing to their own rhythms, he can’t stop moving, he wants it so bad. I kiss his cock (it pulses under my lips), give it a lick, mouth his balls, and then move down.
I’m drunk on the scent of him, and when I lick him, I can only describe the sound he makes as a squeak. His hips jump, press to me, his thighs opening, a mute demand for more, so I go to town. The sounds he makes almost sounds like crying, but a quick glance at his face proves otherwise—it’s utterly rapturous, ecstatic. He looks like Bernini’s Saint Theresa, beloved by her angel. Can it really be me, making him look like that, feel like that?
“You’re beautiful,” I blurt, and put my mouth everywhere I can reach—his thighs, his hips, his Adam’s lines, and he arches up to meet me.
“Go in me,” he begs (for me, he’s begging for me), “please, come on—”
I bully my hips between his legs, and I swear he barely makes it five seconds before spurting hot over his belly, expression utterly transported.
“Keep going,” he begs, even as he does, “keep going—”
So I do, but it’s stopped meshing up, the old frustration is back, god I want to shove my cock in his mouth so fucking bad—
He must see it. “What do you want?”
I touch his lower lip.
“Yeah?” He smiles.
“Is that okay?” I ask. “Don’t know if it’ll work.”
His reaction is to smirk and shove me over. His movements are loose, a little uncoordinated, his expression dreamy and then our positions are reversed, his face between my legs. I feel his stubble against my thigh and jump.
“All good?” he asks. The sweetest face.
I nod frantically and then he’s sucking me off, making love to me with his mouth, not trying to tongue-fuck me, and I’m bucking up against his face, desperate, and he makes a pleased purring/chuckling noise.
Oh god yes.
Oh fuck yes.
“I love you!” I blurt.
He groans and speeds up, and my brain is melting and all I can do is thrust into his pretty mouth and babble, over and over, “I love you I love you I love you I love you—”
And then I’m gone, coming, making sounds I don’t even recognize.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” he declares when I go limp. He’s grinning, face a mess. “There’s some enthusiasm!”
I cover my face with my hands with embarrassment, but I’m grinning too.
He wipes his mouth and cheeks and his expression softens. “You love me?”
I sniff, wipe my eyes. “Yeah. I love you.”
“Oh.” The only other time I’ve said it was during a fight. “You… aren’t just saying that ‘cause…?”
I shake my head. I’m crying. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
I cup his cheek. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, right? This was just supposed to be… you know. Fun.”
“Hey.” He climbs up, so he can hug me. “Hey.”
“You don’t have to do anything about it,” I say, because I don’t want him to feel sorry for me just because I’m crying. “You don’t have to say it back.”
“Hey.” He rocks me.
“I’m sorry.” My love is not a compliment, I know. My affections are ugly, unwanted, a diseased flyblown mutt following you home and refusing to leave. “I’m sorry…”
His voice is gentle. “You don’t have to be sorry. I like it when you say that to me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” His voice is sad. “Why wouldn’t I?”
(Mom looming over me, shaking with rage. “You don’t love me. Don’t say you love me.”)
I don’t want to think or talk about that. “I can’t love like a real person, I don’t think. I’m… broken.”
He holds me, rocks me. I bury my face against his neck and collarbone.
“You know,” he says, “in the movies, there’s always this robot everyone says can’t love. But it’s always obvious it does, right? People just say it can’t ‘cause it’s a robot and they’re prejudiced. Well, it seems obvious to me you love.”
“Really?” I blubber.
“Sure. You love Sneak, right? You’d never let anything bad happen to her.”
“That’s my job.”
“Man, you take it way more serious than a job, ain’t no one paying you to do that. And… you love me too.” He pushes my hair back from my face. His touch is gentle. “I just never thought you’d say it when I was… you know. I must’ve done a great job!”
I laugh through my tears, despite myself. “You did.”
“Cool. Yeah, I’m pretty great.” He softens again. “You don’t ever have to say you’re sorry for saying that to me. Okay?”
Relief washes over me. “Okay.”
“It’s a compliment. Don’t got to apologize for giving compliments.” He kisses my hair, and I relax into his arms.
“Thanks,” I say. “I know I’m weird.”
He squeezes me. “I like your weird.”
I feel like a robot sometimes,” I confess. “Or a golem. Like I’m missing something inside, a soul or whatever, that makes me real.”
“You seem pretty real to me, man. And you sure have a soul, anyone can see that.” When I raise my head, he wipes my tears with his thumbs. “Ain’t no soulless robot crying ‘cause they said they loved me and worried I might be offended.”
I laugh. “Thanks, D.”
“De nada.” He kisses me. “Told you I’m good.”
“You’re the best,” I say, and cry from sheer joy.
“I like King Kong,” he says in that beautiful pleasure-deep voice. “He can stay.”
More information on survival sex
Date: 2026-02-05 05:34 am (UTC)That is bullshit. I had to bury this for so many years for my own safety. I refuse to be complicit in that silence anymore, which mostly serves my family and Jeff, my "customer." If you have gone through this, or are going through this... I am so sorry. You are not alone.
In 2015, the Urban Institute did a study on almost 300 queer youth in NYC who did survival sex. It made me realize that far from singular, my experience reflected larger social trends. From that study:
Other things that helped me post this story: