Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:02:48 -0700 (PDT) From: Ted M Subject: Taking Mark's Virginity: What's In a Name? Part 1 6:10 p.m. Dang it, I'm late. It's already totally dark by the time I reach Anodyne, the coffee house where I'm meeting my pal. He likes this place and I do too. It's decorated in a lot of that tire-tread chrome and this weirdly painted furniture with original "starving artists" stuff on the walls, so it's always something different. Last week on the walls were portraits made out of soup can labels. Kevin thinks it's beautiful here. "Hey." I go up to his table and plop down. "You're late, Mr. Mark." "Sorry." I drop my bag into a metal chair next to him. "We kinda had a fight when I was on the way out." "What's wrong with the Big Guy?" Kevin asks. "By the way, I got you your latte." "Awesome." I grin to him. Kevin is totally cool and he's like one of my best friends in Minneapolis. I love that he's like, I dunno, like more than a decade older than me and he runs his own graphic design business but he still likes to hang out with me and be goofy. He knows my partner from their Love-fest weekend a few years ago. Three years ago, I guess. Then, a year later they got reacquainted at the dog park where we take Romero and Chipotle, but I don't think we had Chipotle back then. Just Romero. We've been friends with Kevin and his partner Roger ever since. And Kevin and I hang out a bunch too. We work out together and he's a really good listener. "Aw, he's just grouchy." I tell Kevin, reaching for the chai tea he bought for me. "His birthday is next week and he hates his birthday so he gets a little snappy." "No kidding." Kevin laughs. "Your partner gets growly? Golly, I hadn't noticed that about him." I almost laugh the tea right out my nose. Oooooo - it's still good and warm. "He's okay." I tell Kevin. "But besides his birthday, he's still mad at me for not wanting to sleep with other guys. He thinks I'm 'wasting my precious youth.'" I make a 'whatever' face. "So he's mad at you for NOT wanting to cheat on him. Hmmmmm. You picked a winner, Mr. Mark." Kevin winks at me and we laugh. He pokes at my head with his stupid straw and we giggle until it sort of subsides. We both get a little lost in our own thoughts, I guess. I'm thinking about my guy and then Kevin talks and I know he was too. "I tried to get to be friends with him." Kevin says casually. "After our 30 hour King-fest together. I tried calling him a few times to hang out, but he didn't really make any effort. Did I ever tell you that?" "No." I say. "But it totally doesn't surprise me at all." "I eventually stopped calling him because he didn't seem interested." Kevin sounds a little bummed. I mean, the four of us are totally friends now, but still. "Did you meet Fredi at our party last summer?" I ask him. He shakes his head no. "Wait -- is she a black chick? Gorgeous weave?" "I nod. She works at his garage. For like...years. The one that's on Franklin Ave. Anyway. About a month after I moved to Minneapolis, he came home and casually mentioned that Fredi invited us over to dinner AGAIN to try to meet me. But he said she probably was only inviting us because he was her boss." Kevin looks at me puzzled. I don't think he's getting my point, so I keep talking. "So I marched him over to the phone to call her and say, 'YES we'd love to come to dinner,' which was awesome beyond awesome because she's this great cook and she has a cake decorating business on the side in addition to being a mechanic, which is really cool, isn't it? Anyway, she made this super two-tiered cake for us with orange roses on it, just to celebrate that he finally came to dinner." "You lost me." Kevin frowns a little bit. "And you were talking way fast." He's right. I totally talk too fast sometimes. So I slow down and breathe. "She had been inviting him for dinner for three years. You know, just as...a friend." I feel sorta weird bad-talking about my guy, but Kevin and Roger know us pretty well, our best friends really. I figure it's okay. But my guy is so private that way. "He..." I struggle a little bit. "He...didn't really...have any friends when I met him. He didn't really know how to make friends. Not that he didn't have opportunities to make friends -- like with you -- and other people, but he just would get...shy or something." Kevin laughs. "Oh please. I don't think 'shy' is a quality I'd use to describe him." Kevin looks at me to see if I'm kidding, but I'm totally not. My guy is pretty good at seduction. Oh hell, he's pretty amazing at it. We are always exploring new fantasies together and even just the basics -- the fucking -- is well...Wow. But when I moved in with him, I told him that I wanted to meet all his friends. At first I thought he was ashamed of me because I was so young. Then I discovered that there was nobody for me to meet. There were guys he knew, like Greg, and others who would do anything for him. Anything. His 'kings' he called them. A whole army of them! But nobody to watch movies with or go for walks around Lake Harriett. As far as I know, I was his first real friend. And whenever someone tried to be friends with him, he didn't know what to do; he ended up blowing them off. "He mentioned you." I tell Kev. I don't like this part, because it sort of makes me sad. "By name. Before you guys met again at the dog park. Said you were a good man. A king." Kevin stops smiling. "But...he didn't think you'd like him much if there wasn't crazy sex involved." Kevin looks sad now. "Well, he's an idiot. I wanted to be friends." I nod. "I know. I told him he was an idiot. Over and over." Kevin laughs suddenly. "Of course you did, you little monkey. I bet you told him that just before you left the house." Now, I laugh. "That might have been said before I kissed him goodbye." Kevin arches his eyebrows suspiciously. "So why did he make the effort after he ran into us at the dog park? What changed?" "Oh." I blush a little bit because I thought it was obvious. "He had me." Kevin nods slowly. He gets it now. "Plus I was training him!" I laugh. "But you can't ever tell him that." He makes a face. "How were you training him?" "I made him get a dog. I told him we absolutely needed a woofer to complete our family, but secretly, you know, it was just for him. A shelter dog is like a starter kit for real friends." Kevin smiles at me, but it's one of those sad smiles. I kinda start to blush because it's not that big a deal, but Kevin pokes me with his straw again and I growl at him to quit it. "As long as we're telling secrets about your Big Bad Lover," Kevin says, "what's the deal with his older brother the cop?" "Malcolm?" I say. "Yeah." Kevin nods and stirs his cocoa. "We met him when he was in town visiting. Same party." I nod. And I already know the question. "He was a big black dude." Kevin frowns. "How come his 'older brother' is a huge African-American guy that's like...20 years older?" "I don't know." I blush when I tell him. "But they kinda adopted each other years ago. And not as friends. They really consider each other brothers." It totally bugs me but I have no idea how Malcolm got to be his brother. I get angry sometimes, because my lover doesn't like to talk about his past. 'It's over.' He says to me when I ask him. 'Dead.' Kevin and I goof off for a while and he's trying to embarrass me so he starts singing and I laugh but then I threaten to sing the only song I can think of -- the Brady Bunch theme song -- and he agrees to stop. After a while he has to go. He's meeting Roger for salsa dancing. "You guys should come to a class." He tells me while he's buttoning up his brown leather jacket. It's early March and almost warm enough that you don't have to wear a hat, but it's still a little too early. "Salsa dancing is totally sexy. We go home and fuck like dogs after almost every lesson." "We'll see." I smile at him. I don't want to have big conversations about the future or make plans. Me and my guy are kinda hitting that spot where we have to finish working through this one big issue or else we call it quits. Well. I'm not calling it quits. He can if he wants to, but I'm not going anywhere. Big stupid dork. "What are you getting him for his birthday?" Kevin asks as he's putting on his gloves. "I was thinking about one of those inflatable mattresses. Those ones that make good hideaway beds." Kevin frowns. "Why?" "I don't know." I tell him unhappily. "I don't know! I never know what to get him for gifts. He already has everything." "That's right." Kevin leans in to kiss my forehead goodbye. "He has you. Later, Little Bro. Tell Big Dog that we're grilling out on Saturday at 6:00 and it doesn't matter if it's still snowing." "We'll be there." I smile kinda weakly. "And don't forget our Friday workout." Kevin reminds me and he's already got his gloves on. "We're doing shoulders. Don't blow it off." I pretend to groan but I still wave goodbye. I study for a while but I can't really concentrate. I can't believe that things are weird between us. We're in love with each other, but he's really bothered by the fact that he might be the *only* guy I have sex with. It really bothers him that I'm not interested in sex with anyone else. I can't convince him. We might break up over this and the stupid thing is we totally love each other. He drives me crazy. I leave the coffeehouse and go get a burrito. I put it in my back pack for later. Then I head over to St. Paul because we're gonna meet at a night club tonight and do a little fantasy role play of mine. I love that he never finds my fantasies stupid or weird. And he knows how to coax them out of me too. Whenever I shyly start to say, 'you know what would be fun...' he always cocks his head and gets this naughty smile and after he hears it he says, "Yeah, we could do that." I love that naughty smile. I love that one. So he's gonna pick me up at a bar, pretend to be strangers. I have a club outfit to put on, a shirt that he bought me once. I don't love it, actually, but it will be funny to tease him with the shirt while I'm pretending not to be interested in him. It's gonna totally make him horny if I make him work a little bit for my attention. I'll turn my back on him and ignore him and oh man will he fuck me hard later tonight. I arrive at the bar and go get the shirt from the trunk of the car. It's so fucking cold! This bar in St. Paul is in this warehouse district that's all industrial looking and totally working class. St. Paul is like the working guy city. The club entrance is through the back of this huge industrial building with pipes and shafts running up and down its exterior and the parking lot is kinda shunned from the other nearby buildings, they all have their backs turned on this grubby space, so it's all wrought iron staircases and dark shadows. There's always steam coming out of the manholes near the corner, which makes it look kinda rough and sexy. I'm shivering while I'm buttoning up the shirt and then suddenly - while I'm on the third button from the top - there's a hand on my mouth. And then an arm locked behind my arms. And I'm being dragged. Holy shit, I'm being dragged! HOLY SHIT! It's over before it's started because I'm suddenly flung onto a mattress. It's one of the last things I see, the mattress. There's this thing over my eyes and then I hear duck tape and it's so fast that I'm totally bound up! Holy shit! Is all that my brain will think. HOLY SHIT, I just got dragged into a van or something! It's like my brain is reporting the events but that's all it can do. I can't think at all, I'm just reporting it all to the rest of me, in case my wrists hadn't figured out why they can't move. HOLY SHIT. I remember hearing a car right behind me as I was changing my shirt in the parking lot, but I don't remember hearing anyone get out or a door opening. I have no idea how many of them there are, but it feels like two sets of rough hands, they're pushing me down and tying me, and there's hands on my legs pulling them apart and also it feels like hands on my shoulders a split second later, so are there three of them? Three sets of hands? Malcolm was a cop. He trained my man. And my man trained me. So I can figure this out. I can think like big, strong Malcolm. What would Malcolm do? What would he do? HOLY SHIT! Well, he would calm down; Malcolm would listen. So I stop fighting for a split second and listen to the sounds. We're still in one place; I don't think we're moving yet. It doesn't feel like moving. Am I still in the parking lot? I must be. I hear one of their voices and then a lower voice disagreeing, but the first voice, he's the boss. I haven't heard any of the words, but Malcolm says the tone is as important as the words. The words might say who's in charge, but the tone will tell me for sure. "Meet us there." Says the guy, the first thing I hear clearly and then the driver's door opens. He gets in and slams it shut. Malcolm would also figure out how he was tied up, so he'd know how to get out of it. I'm still lying flat on the mattress, face down it seems, because my wrists are under me and they're against the mattress. My legs are spread eagle and secured in a weird way so that I can't move very well. And it doesn't feel like rope, more like a foot sling or something. I don't even know what a foot sling is, but those are the words that come up. We're moving. It's the motion that helps me figure out how I'm tied up and what the things around my feet feel like. My hands are duct-taped, and I'm already starting to twist them, I have to get them free. My eyes have a cloth or something like a dishtowel and duct-taped onto my skull. So it's not high quality stuff. And my mouth is gagged but with something else. I can breathe around it, so it's not a little rubber ball gag. Already it doesn't feel like a sex scene, not one where the guys have invested money in you know, like rubber stuff or things that make you think, oh, cool, this is kinda sexy. HOLY SHIT! I'm in a moving van! I shudder because I keep forgetting this. Part of me that is just me is freaked out because, hi, I'm in a moving van and I'm helpless! And the other part of me, the part that He has cultivated in me, the part that's his love and everything he feeds me, well, that's the part that's remembering Malcolm was a cop and his big brother taught him how to read things: people and situations and sounds and how to figure out what's really going on. The truth. So I'm going to keep saying HOLY SHIT every now and then because that's me too, but for right now, I'm going to listen to the other part of me that has been built up by love. I can't figure out what direction we're heading because I couldn't even do that if I were sitting in the front seat and was unblindfolded- I'm not so great with directions unless the sun is out - so I'm just going to listen to things, like cars and highways and weird noises that may help me know more about where I am. But I dunno, I don't know St. Paul very well. That's kinda a bummer, actually. I wish I knew more about what was near here in the warehouse district. Oh my god, am I totally thinking about St. Paul while I should be freaked out of my gourd? When did I forget to get freaked out? We turn some corners and I don't know, I don't know. Where are we? Who's meeting us? There's a point at which the light changes and it's brighter then dimmer, then brighter, then dimmer. It's hard because there's no color and just the tiniest bit of sensation, more like I feel the presence of something on the blindfold and then nothing, but I also know it's light. Why does it keep going dimmer and then brighter all of a sudden? "You stay fucking quiet." Says the voice in the front seat, real low and dark. "I mean it." Then something slides shut, like a door or a panel. God, why didn't I turn around when I heard a car right behind me in the parking lot?! I was right there and changing my shirt, why didn't I just notice it? I can hear the drivers' window roll down and then the driver says something. I can't quite hear all the words, but I recognize the friendly cadence that you take when it happens, and I can piece together the question I just heard: is there a problem officer? Cops. He got pulled over by cops! There are police officers right outside the van, right at this second if I can just make them hear me! I wriggle around, but I can't do anything. I try to push up enough so that I can pound my wrists into the mattress, but that doesn't do much in terms of sound. I'm pushing up on the crown of my head but there's duct tape across my arms around my chest, so I can't really move them free enough to make a real sound. I can still feel the weird sensation on the blindfold and now I know that it's a flashing police light. There's conversation up there between my driver and the officer and my driver is totally friendly and I hear him chuckle and I bet he's making real nice jokes, that motherfucker and HOLY SHIT I'M IN A VAN! I try fighting, wriggling - giving this everything I got trying to make a sound, a noise. And it doesn't do squat. I am still on this mattress and I can't even shake the van because my feet won't let me kick the sides of the walls, oh man, I can't make a sound. And whatever exchange the officer had with the driver, it's over because the window is getting rolled up and I wonder how long I have been fighting with every ounce of my strength because I am totally sweating and exhausted, god am I tired and I didn't even know it. But the window goes up and after about another minute, we pull away from the curb. Now, I'm exhausted. I thought I was exhausted before, but I still had one breath left in me. Now I'm exhausted and there's no air. I am completely flat against the mattress because I put everything I had into making a sound, some noise, but the cops have driven away and I'm still on this mattress. Oh man. I can't listen for a minute because all I can hear is my heart pounding and there's a wet sound to the ragged breath that is huffing out of me because apparently I started breathing again. So I can't hear anything and we're still driving. Holy shit. I don't even have the energy right now for being freaked out. There's a sound that cuts through my gasps, that rough static sound that's hard to disguise. A walkie talkie. I perk up and try to breathe more shallow. "No." says my driver. "We got delayed. Yes, I know. Fucking tags, I told that asshole..." I have to strain to hear the words and this guy has got a low voice. I thought my man had a low and rumbly voice, but this guy sounds like Darth Vader. I don't like it. It's not a kind voice; it doesn't know kindness at all. "Yeah, absolutely." He says all darkly. "Soon. In five minutes. Did you guys find him?" I listen for a voice on the other end, but I can't hear it. I hear the static again and then there's a response, but it's hard, I can't hear it. He turns off the walkie talkie after saying something short, I can't hear it, and then it's just us in the van, him driving and me blindfolded and gagged. My mind flashes through all the arguments I would use how I would try to bargain with this guy because either he's the boss or he has some pull because he gets a walkie talkie. I only know this becomes of Malcolm and I get this surge of anger through me, really fucking mad at this asshole named Malcolm who -- fuck! How come I have had training in how to think like him and I don't even know exactly how he knows my Man? I have met Malcolm and I dig him -- he's a good guy. He's about 63 I guess and his eyes are really watchful, which I guess you get after being a cop for all those years. And he's the only family that my lover has, the only one. He was my boyfriend's only Christmas card that first year we were together. That's different now. The van stops and I hear some noises. The driver mutters, "No, you ass," and hops out. I didn't hear his door slam, so now would be a great time for me to try to make noise again, but well, I know how successful that would be. Been there and totally done that. There's a screeching sound of metal moving nearby and someone hops back in the van. I don't know if it's the same guy, I don't know because the guy kind of makes this sound like a guffaw or a hard chuckle. It's like...like he just looked back and saw me tied up and it made him laugh. And the driver had seen me so he wouldn't even bother to look back at me. This is someone new. The van lurches forward and this moron doesn't know how to drive a van. We're moving, real slow actually, humping around in these start and stop jerks that are from him pushing on the brake too hard. I think he's trying to ease it inside a garage because the sound quality kind of changes. I don't even know what exactly changes but I can sense it's different to my ears. I am getting rocked around back here, but that means almost nothing because I'm so well tied up that the little jerks are small. But the new driver is totally irritating me. The ignition turns off after a rough stop and we're here, wherever that is. He hops out eagerly and I wait for sounds, for voices, for whatever. What would Malcolm think right now? HOLY SHIT! I'M IN A VAN! Wait, calm down. Listen. Listen for what's true. What's true and what's the truth. That's what he's always telling me. Look for the truth, not just what's true. Too bad he can't take his own damn advice and then he would understand that I'm totally his and he would know it was truth. But if he can't get that through his stupid head, we're through, we're done. He makes me crazy. The back doors open and I prick to attention, like cold air rushing all over my body. But there's no change in temperature. HOLY SHIT! The thing with the cop really freaked me out. I had my chance, I had my opportunity to get away but I was helpless, totally and utterly helpless. I want to scream because I am NOT helpless, but I can't scream so I just lie there in the dark and the back of the van is open. "Do it." Someone says off to the side. I think it's Darth Vader. My legs are let down and then these rough hands drag me out. I am carried in this weird way, by the back of my shirt and my jeans at the same time, like I'm a piece of baggage. Like golf clubs. And my legs, why don't my legs hit the floor and start running? I'm back into HOLY SHIT mode where I can't quite believe this is happening. This isn't happening! Doesn't anybody know that? I am totally freaked out because I had my chance to escape with the cops right there but now I'm being carried like golf clubs and then set down on the balls of my feet. But the thing is, I had kept working on twisting my wrists. Back in the van I started the motion of pulling them one way and then the other trying to make it so there was more give each time I pulled. And all the time I was listening real carefully and lying there unable to move my wrists kept the twisting so that now, they're almost undone. When my feet hit the floor I wrench my hands hard, super hard, so that they twist free and I immediately start to go for my blindfold, because it would be pretty stupid to start running without seeing where. There's a grunt sound from the guy carrying me and then he has me in an arm lock before I can even get my hand halfway to my face. Crap. I'm carried again. But he changed it up. Now I'm being tossed a little bit so that it's harder for me to tell where I am in relation to the floor. I'm getting a little disoriented and dizzy. I don't think it's an accident. When I am put down on my stomach, I can't get my bearings, whether to push up or to push forward, because my head is all weird and funky right now. And then before that sensation of which-way-is-up gets restored to me, my legs are on something, like wooden crate board or something and they're being taped down, the left first. I can hear that ripping sound of pulling duct tape off a roll, that dark screech and then Darth Vader says, 'Toss it.' Then my left right leg is being duct-taped to this piece of wood. I shakily push myself up on my elbows but that's only temporary because my right arm is grabbed and held down to the flimsy wood. I don't get it, what I'm being tied to. It's shifty, somehow and I'm getting spread eagled on it. Then the left arm is done, just when I'm starting to get clear-headed. These guys move fast and I don't like that for some reason. It seems like they have done this before, that this might be a particular skill or something and that makes me nervous that these guys are like, I don't know, professional at this. But who is professional at this kind of thing? I can't even think about who would be professional at abducting someone from a bar parking lot. It's not like St. Paul, Minnesota is the crime capital of the Midwest. It's not like it's Chicago. Oh. Chicago. I'm spread eagle. Flat. I fight the duct tape but this stuff is pretty secure. But my body feels weird. I feel like, I don't know...I'm resting on plywood, but it shifts and moves around on me, like it's not against a flat surface and I have no idea what this is. It's chilly, not super freezing, but I'm not in someone's living room, it doesn't have that kind of feeling. And I can hear the footsteps going away. There's a slight scuffling sound, but not loud. Maybe someone is trying to be quiet as they walk away but there's a rock caught on the underside of the shoe. I pull against whatever, the duct tape, I guess and I can't move easily. Not at all. Malcolm wouldn't do anything - couldn't do anything - right now and I am totally irrationally mad at him. I stop thinking about this because I can hear an argument in low voices and it's not near me. I keep trying to hear distance and if there are more walking sounds because I have no idea how many of them are here. I mean, probably not more than five -- that's ridiculous, but maybe three. Or is it just two? The walkie talkie is still off, so they're not worried about chatting with another group anymore. Or maybe they don't need to know what's going on. But there's this low arguing. Two voices. "No." I hear, definitely hear that. 'No' to what? Then there's other footsteps coming towards me and these aren't trying to be quiet. I am sure I am like a deer in headlights, I'm totally perked up listening to everything, every sound because HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT I AM TIED UP IN A FUCKING...I DON'T KNOW WHERE. HOLY SHIT! Okay, get a grip. The sound is like cowboy boots. HOLY SHIT! There's a real distinctive sound to cowboy boots, it's a very precise and sharp clatter. We have gone country dancing a few times and I love that sound, the way when a man in cowboy boots walks across a floor it's distinctive and it you can hear it right away. Well, these aren't cowboy boots, but it's like that sound. Crisp. Clear. Like expensive alligator shoes you'd wear to a wedding. I don't know. It's just a distinctive sound. And he's walking towards me without apology, without quiet. He doesn't care, this new guy, about what I hear. He doesn't even fucking care. His name is Gator. I decide this because of his expensive boots. Yeah, I bet he wears alligator skin boots. And this makes me shiver. When he gets near me, I can smell him. Oh, I can smell things. I smell cold, my nose prickles at the breaths I take in this big cavernous room. But what I smell right now makes me kinda gag. It's cologne. Ick. Cologne! When I moved in with my guy, I brought with me this bottle of Polo, a gift from my older brother when I was a sophomore in high school. Anthony gave it to me with a wink and a jerky smile and he told me, 'Yer a good-lookin' guy. You'll be getting laid a lot now,' but I was really afraid of that because I didn't want to get laid like the other guys did. And when I moved in with my guy, he asked me about the Polo, asked me if I liked it and I sort of was embarrassed to tell him that I only brought it with me when I moved because I thought men were supposed to wear cologne, that I was supposed to like it. We stood at the bathroom sink with him shirtless behind me, both of us watching each other in the reflection of the medicine cabinet mirror as he dumped the Polo out into the sink and he said quietly, "You won't be needing this anymore." I shuddered down my spine and I was so in love with him because he was totally right, I didn't need anything but his smell, and mine to make a new smell together: us. This guy smells like cologne. Not a ton of it, but enough to make me gag. This cologne is sweet and I don't like it. But I'm distracted by the sound of clicking happening close to my head. I can't figure out what the sound is, this sort of dull thud almost of something catching into place. It's not but three seconds later when I figure out what it is. A knife. And I figure this out as my shirt is sliced off my body from the back of the collar. My goose bumps raise up. HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! It's sliced off me so easily and I'm suddenly mad as hell because even though I didn't like that shirt much, still, it was a gift from Him and that Gator Boots motherfuckers just sliced it in half. That was my shirt! I don't get too much chance to think about my shirt because my jeans are lifted right at the ass and that same big knife tents them up. HOLY SHIT! It's a big knife -- now I know that. Like a hunting knife or something. And that's how my jeans are sliced off me, with a fat hunting knife going down one leg with the blade pointed up and when my one leg is done, the denim just slides away, like it was extra skin and now the real me is exposed. My heart is beating faster and I struggle against the weird boards and they shift around under me. Maybe it's not a good idea to push too hard against these boards. I'm still not sure what I'm tied to exactly and maybe it's not a good idea to fight this so much. What if, I don't know, these planks -- yeah, these are planks that aren't connected -- are on top chairs or something? And I wriggle myself into falling on the floor. Oh right. I'm not on the floor. I don't know how I didn't notice that, but the Expensive Boots I heard coming towards me weren't at ear height. So I'm not on the floor! That's something, I guess. But is this a table? My jeans are off my other leg. HOLY SHIT! I'm probably wondering more about the room to keep me distracted. My jeans are off. The front half of my jeans flopped down, dangling from the plank, so that means that somehow, I'm not on a flat surface exactly. But the planks are flat and against my body, so some sort of surface where they need planks to keep me suspended. Oh. And I'm close to naked. Just my underwear is covering my butt now and I am not sure if it's going to get cut off me or not. I hope not. This pair of silvery boxer briefs are one of his favorite pair. I was going to let them ride up above my jeans to tease him. If they were just stripping me so that I couldn't run away, they would stop at the underwear. But if this is something else, they'll cut off my shorts. Oh man. He's waiting for me! The picture dawns on me all of a sudden, my lover standing in a St. Paul night club checking his watch and wondering why I'm not there. Maybe he assumed I'm tucked away in a corner somewhere acting bored. He'll walk a few laps before he's sure I'm not there, 'cause it's a pretty big place in that warehouse building. There's a room with three pool tables, a full dance floor, and then a huge bar area where a hundred people could hang out and talk on a crowded night. And he's pacing around there wondering where I am, maybe wondering if our fight from earlier would make me Oh no! What if he thinks I'm blowing him off? No! He's there, and he's looking for me and I'm here on some weird planks and that's when the knife slices through the underwear so easily, first one leg then the other. Gator has sliced them off and is pulling back the fabric like real tenderly like it's sunburned and he's got to be gentle. I hate it. I catch another waft of nasty ass cologne and this asshole won't say a fucking word. I'm completely naked now and this guy has stripped me. His hand traces along the side of my knee, up my thigh, up my waist and up to my shoulder that way. He's doing it all lazy like, like he doesn't care and I notice that he doesn't touch my ass at all. Why didn't he touch my ass? I mean, my butt is pretty good and all, I keep in pretty good shape for my Man. He likes my butt. Why doesn't this guy touch it? Oh. Maybe he's not gay. Maybe this isn't about sex for him; maybe this is...maybe this about something else. Power. Or letting me know he's in control. Maybe this is about intimidation. Well fuck you, Gator. I only let one man intimidate me and that's only sometimes because I let him. And that's when I hear a sound that makes me freeze and I thought I was kinda chilly already. It's a zipper. And it's happening right next to my head. No, no, no... What would Malcolm do? What would Malcolm do? This isn't happening like this, not like this. I am familiar with the clothes rustling sound, I know what's happening. He's taking it out. I've been blindfolded before, so it's not a new sensation to be without sight and hear the sound of a fat dick being pulled free. But...it's not his. It's not His. Then it hits me, this thing, this fat dick head. It pokes me. In the cheek. But it's not His! And I don't want this, I don't... It's dry when it hits my cheek, his cock head. And it's hard. The gag is preventing anything from happening, which is good, because on some level I'm not worried about Gator putting his cock in my mouth because there's that gag right there. The knife is at the back of my head and it cuts through the tape behind my ear, releasing the pressure all the way around my head. He pulls the tape off the back of my skull and it stings a little, not much, I guess, but it's a surprise this sensation as it pulls away from the skull. I'm glad I have short hair, because I guess I think it would hurt more if my hair were longer. He's surprisingly careful taking it off around my mouth, pulling the gag out of my mouth. That's not to say that he's gentle -- he's not. I know what gentle feels like. I know what it's like when I'm touched with love. This isn't that. This is careful. Careful. Like damaging merchandise. I don't like it, this being careful. It's not him. It's not Him. My mouth is free suddenly, and I exhale a bunch of air, stuff that was trapped from the parking lot a while ago. Oh my god, was that a half hour ago or two hours ago? No, probably only ... less than an hour ago. Maybe an hour. We got stopped by the police. HOLY SHIT! And this time, I think my thinking 'holy shit' is pretty much warranted because his dick head is in my mouth. I only have time to start registering this single fact before I am immediately getting my face fucked. No -- But it's happening, Gator is putting his dick in my mouth and it's jabbing me kinda deep. It's rough and confused, jabbing the sides at angle because it doesn't belong here, it doesn't belong. When I suck my man, I know every inch, every contour of my guy and so when we make love with his cock in my mouth, it's this marriage where he knows me and I know him and if we were out of synch for a few days, I have to milk on him for an hour sometimes because it takes that long before we both feel the total groove of our own unique vibe. Once when I was sucking his cock it was after a long day at the garage and he was pissed because it looked like he was going to have to fire one of his mechanics, an ex-con who had been stealing some parts to sell on the side. So he was distracted and not himself, angry about having to fire someone who he wanted to trust. He always likes to hire ex-cons and he always believes that they'll come around eventually. He's a pretty good judge of character, because he's right about 70% of the time. Even the ones that steal from him, he doesn't fire them until after their third chance to do it right. (But he hired Fredi because he has a little wedding cake fetish and he secretly always wanted her to bake him a three-tiered cake. He told me this bashfully in bed later that night after we ate the orange roses cake at her apartment. She was our first friend.) But that one night he wasn't concentrating on me, he was just kind of angrily fucking my mouth that night, mad at work, mad at people. Mad at the ex-con who he wanted to trust. I guess maybe I should have been, you know, insulted. But he loves me so much that I don't need to see it every single second. I know that you can have a bad day and still love the person you're with even though the love is blocked and confused. I knew what he needed. Me. I loved him with all of me. Not just my mouth and sucking throat, no that wasn't enough. I put all of my energy on him; I was fixated on him. My kneeling was for him, my humping forward hips, the way I groveled at him...And I loved his body, loved his spirit, I loved him through by taking him as deep as I could. I worshipped him, every inch of his power and showed him what it meant to be loved. 'Come back to me' is what I was saying to him. 'This is what it means to be loved. Come back.' And that night, even though his fingers didn't move, somehow his gripping my head became less angry and more about me, it came through his fingers this really sexy, 'HEY IT'S YOU!' kind of recognition and he knows that I have been loving him all this time, with him while he's angry at ex-cons and while he's distracted and not in the room, I'm our anchor and I'm going to pull him back into himself, back into us. I won't let go and he'll come back to me. And suddenly he started dripping more precum which is how I always know that he's really, truly with me. It shows me the way every time. His precum starts juicing my throat and then we're in synch, we're one. I know it then. I know. I just focus all of me on him, on getting his fat, pulsating cock deeper in me. Come back to me. And it's those times when it's totally love because he just finds me all over again and he sees me for the first time all over again, that moment in the parking lot when he clamped his hand on my neck and whispered the word, 'Boy...' And once he finds his way back to me? Hooo boy! Well, then he takes me for a ride. And he shows me what a cock like his can do when it's furious in love. Oh man, he's crazy then. He's like a wild man, and it's so powerful and so sexy that he's this beast, this fury and it's not rage, it's like love but fused with all his masculine power. And his pale blue eyes get sharp and growly when he looks at me and I swear he's glowing and I know - oh boy I know - he's gonna make me his, stink like him, all over my body and my insides too are going to be his too. He's going to devour me. He's all that kind of man. And so when he cums out his spermy load down my throat, I devour his love with this eagerness that I don't totally understand but I if I were to make a guess, I would guess that I must believe all his fire, all his passion and his power must be in those milky drops because how else would you explain him not constantly overloading with all that smoke and fire? There's got to be a release valve, right? So I suck and suck feeling each drop of his fiery sperm shooting into my mouth and I luxuriate in it and it's never enough even when I'm feeling flooded and juicy and I can see the fire melting in his eyes because he's so happy to see it transferred into my own. Yeah, I guess that's what he's doing. Putting some of that power into me and for a minute I'm as wild and fierce as he is, sucking his cock and milking it for all those squirts, and now I'm the one who is on fire and unrelenting. Oh man. That's what it's like. But this isn't like that. Not with this guy. This guy is poking his stupid cock in my throat, he's fucking my mouth, you know, but it's not the good kind, it's more like I wanna tell him, 'what are you looking for with your penis? And would you even know if you punch it, because you're not really paying attention to what you're doing.' It's weird. Different. But it's familiar enough that I can still think. And I think I shouldn't fight too hard. This Gator cut my clothes off me in 20 seconds and he didn't even hesitate. Oh yeah, he didn't even pause. I didn't even realize that detail until just now. But think about that for a second. So this guy could be pretty unforgiving if I were to tell him to take his damn penis out of my mouth, even though I'd have a pretty hard time mouthing those words around his fat cock which is knocking against my upper teeth. And that gives me another clue. He's an amateur. He probably doesn't get his dick sucked very often. Maybe even girls don't suck his dick, you know, he doesn't know that this isn't a great blow job. Uh oh. Why would an amateur do this? That's not good. If he's not doing this for pleasure, then he's like, I don't know, sending a message or something. Gator's not going to last long. I know that. A guy like him who isn't used to getting his dick sucked won't know much about controlling it. He'll keep fucking into my throat and he's got the aim down pretty well by now. He's nailing me with his dick, and sure, I'm sucking his cock, but I'm not fully cooperating. Maybe if I cooperate, I'll be able to get something. Some news. So I start to milk him with my throat. Up until now, he's only been fucking my mouth, that empty space where food goes sometimes and other times, yawns. And it's warm and tight, so that's cool for him, but I hadn't unleashed my super powers. So I start milking him for real, showing him what a throat can do for a dick and he freezes almost instantly. Gator didn't know it could be like that. What he might have been missing out on. And you know what? I'm proud. Because only one man in the world knows how good I am at this, how -- OH HOLY SHIT I choke when I realize that this isn't Him I'T S NOT HIM! and HOLY SHIT that catch in my throat was just the extra tweak that was needed to send him over the top. And he yanks his cock out of my mouth and it starts shooting over my face, these angry squirts zipping across my nose and I can feel the weight of it against the blindfold, and suddenly there's the ugly cologne again and his warm jism is dripping off my upper lip. My man would never do this -- waste his seed like it was nothing. I am tempted to lick my lips, really tempted, because I've never not...I've never not taken it in me whenever I could, whenever he fed me. Wherever. Right now I can feel it warm and cooling on my lip and every part of me says, 'DON'T LET IT GET WASTED' but then my brain says, 'No. Don't do it for this guy. He's not him.' His nut juice just drips down my face and I won't lick it for sure now because my moment of weakness passed and by the way, this smells awful like aspirin and asparagus at the same time and it's gross and I wouldn't want this loser sperm in me anyway. Gator doesn't say a word, utter a breath that's not calm and even and the fact that he doesn't even cum like a human being freaks me out a little more. He just blew his nut after cutting off my clothes and now he is buckling his belt in total silence and breathing long jogging breaths like nothing just happened and HOLY SHIT I am cold and naked on shifty planks and there's a dude's smelly cum hanging off my chin in fat little drops! And I'm breathing hard and gasping, making these little coughs because Gator didn't know how to fuck very well but my sounds are suddenly brought to silence as this thing happens across the room, a sound. It's musical and strong, like someone plunking a piano key really hard, but a stronger, higher pitch. And there's loud metallic clattering echoing all over the place. A wrench hitting the floor. Someone knocked a high-quality wrench to the floor. Gator takes off over there, his clackish boots quickly crossing the open, concrete space. Oh yeah. I know where I am. The wrench gave it away. I'm in the garage, probably the one on Franklin Ave. It's not far from St. Paul. I bet the guy against the far wall was watching from Fredi's work space. She is not gonna like it if they fucked with her wrenches. And Gator is clacking his way over there right now. A voice echoes around the garage and there's a murmured answer and I can't hear anything because they're too far away. And I am still naked with Gator's stinky goop dripping out of my mouth and yeah, I'm on a hydraulic lift. A car lift. Huh. That's what it is, but with planks across it. I should have known. I should have figured it out. Duh. The arguing gets quieter and then Gator clomps out that far door. It slams open and shut. And gradually I hear this noise, kind of quiet towards me, a regular walk and a slight scuffle. It's the Darth Vader guy again with his left scuffle, his rock on the bottom of his shoe. I wonder if Malcolm would have noticed that. Ha! I can hear the footsteps pause when he gets near me and he kind of whispers gruffly, "You 'kay?" I nod. I'm tougher than this, you loser. I was trained by the best. You don't beat me that easy. Plus they aren't even after me. They want him. Earlier on the walkie talkie, one of them said earlier, "Did you find him?" My guy was supposed to meet me tonight at a club in St. Paul. I wonder if they knew he was going there too or maybe they thought he had settled in for the night. Maybe he's there right now, drinking down a Summit Pale Ale, feeling sad because he thinks I'm not coming. He probably forgot to bring his cell phone. He always forgets it. Darth comes right up to my ear. His breath is right in my ear. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. HOLY SHIT! "How much," says Darth slowly, in a wet whisper, "do you know about your boyfriend, Vin?" And I know it's crazy, it's crazy to think this because you know, here I am naked in the garage and Gator's cum is finally a gel on my lips and I'm still panting, but I can't help it, my brain thinks it and telegraphs the message. Come back, Vin. Come back to me. *** Feedback and comments welcome and appreciated mpls_ted@yahoo.com