i’m gonna quote a line like, like, from, from, uh, yeats i think it is, like from him, and that’s called the best lack all conviction while the best are filled, no, no, it’s the other way around, the best lack all conviction (laughs) and the worst are filled with a passion and intensity now you figure out where i am.” lou reed live—take no prisoners (1978) — my apartment was the entire second floor of a converted house. i liked it because it was up in the air. the east side, where my bedroom was, looked out through trees, onto other buildings like mine. the west side, where my kitchen was, looked out—in order—over my back porch, the alley, a restaurant parking lot, and into the next street. facing me across all this was a three-story apartment building. red-brick, boxlike and nondescript. there were two first floor picture windows and—above them—four five-by-eight foot balconies. it looked like the apartments behind them were small. i couldn’t see inside them very well unless their lights were on at night. and even then not clearly. well, for many years it was an apartment building, but at some point in the last couple of years it had turned into a halfway house for the recently paroled. i didn’t realize this for a while. i just assumed that only guys lived there. but—as it happened—although our street names were different, their street number and mine were the same. so one time when i received mail with the same number but the wrong street, i walked it over and realized—from being closer, and from the presence of a “doorkeeper” or whatever they’re called—what was what. it began to make sense. the guys i had seen there were a little more rough and muscular and tattooed than your usual neighborhood residents—depending on where you live, i suppose. i do remember the first time i definitely knew i was looking at a ex-prison guy. he was on the balcony on the third floor left side. it was a sunny day and he had come out to smoke a cigarette. he was hispanic, short, about five-four or so, and had long straight black heavy metal hair. he stood there in jogging pants and no shirt and muscles like cannon balls. the biceps on his short arms were nearly perfect spheres. his tits were the same. you can picture that. i saw the four hard mounds of muscle in a horizontal row. plus that shiny black hair breaking over his shoulders. i got out the binoculars. i could see his nipples better then. dark ovals hanging on the edge of the sudden dropoff from pecs to stomach. the stomach which rippled down into the top of the pants. this was a body you got from working out while you were in prison. hard everywhere. i jerked on my dick while i watched him. i thought about what it would look like if i could see his cock. how it was probably dark and hairy and fat and uncut. but mostly all it took for me was to see his chest and his muscles. that was enough to make me come. for weeks after that i would automatically check out the view when i went to the kitchen, but most of the time the male scenery was not that fine, so i got out of the reflex. although it would seem to be fertile fantasy material for a homosexual with imagination, it got so i didn’t really think much about them. i was getting enough real faggot dick that i didn’t have any need to obsess about the dicks of straight men in dormitories. i mean, i had a few old reliable videos, but that was an occasional thing and not really my trip. i watched them for the strangeness of them, but generally if i wanted half-witted trash i didn’t have to go outside of the community. because . . . my bar of choice at the time was the twenty-two. it was basically a hustler bar with a dance floor. i liked going there to dance and also because one of the bartenders was my drug dealer. this was during my coke period. i wasn’t at the bar every night or even every weekend. but usually at least every other weekend. and i wasn’t doing drugs every weekend. only when it was available. you can see how it all fit together. i didn’t have to pay the hustlers if i shared the drugs. so why should i care about the straight ex-cons across the street when gay criminals could give me all the same characteristics i like best—rough, sleazy, and dumb—with practically no effort at all? so i’d go to the twenty-two and get the coke and—if i saw someone i liked—find out if he were willing to skip a cash exchange in return for getting him ripped. we would hang out in the bathroom doing it up, drink and dance—have you even met a hustler who can dance well? i haven’t—and then taxi back to my place for some serious all-balls-out nastiness. this routine worked well most of the time. yeah, of course every now and then one of them would disappear when it was time to go, but i knew those were the risks i took. on the other hand, once in a while they would still go home with me without the drugs because we got to be familiar with each other and—face it—sometimes even a hustler just wants a dick up his ass on a saturday night. and then there were the times when the drugs were available but the boys were not, or i had something different in mind for the evening. there were times when i would want to go to the bar, get the drugs and do the alcohol and dance, and then go home to my apartment for a little party/ritual all on my own. the point was to indulge in a fantasy evening. do the lines, play the stereo loud, drink some more, and then, once the libido was primed, shove in the videos and zoom off into neverneverland with a bottle of poppers. those times were the ones when me and the drugs came face to face. the problem was i got very. . . hyper. . . when i did cocaine by myself. i thought i was a homosexual angel sent by god who could do no wrong and make no wrong decisions. i believed i could see perfectly through reality and anything i did was the right thing to do. maybe that was just a magnification of my normal personality. even on a regular day i thought of myself the way nikki giovanni put it—“i am so hip even my errors are correct.” if you had accused of me of having any oversize ego, i wouldn’t have argued. although i think it was not all a matter of ego, knowing myself as i do from the inside out. i think it was more a matter of liking to live big. i liked being ‘too much’.” although sometimes that thing inside me—the thing that made me go—got the upper hand. like the song says, “i am the need in you for more and i control you.” which it is going to do shortly here. anyway, back to the drugs. i don’t understand it when people say that speed or cocaine diminishes the sex drive. alcohol diminishes my sex drive. cocaine makes me want to fuck a fire hydrant. and yes, i am thinking of that hispanic guy again. there was one time about two years ago when i was having a cocaine-vodka-poppers fix. i was in that state of invincibility. i was convinced that any of my actions was completely justified and in accord with the universe. and i almost—almost—went across to that halfway house to stand outside and yell “any of you cocksuckers who miss getting butt-fucked in prison get your hairy dicks out here now.” now, you’re probably either laughing at me and saying, “yeah, that’s exactly what i would want to do too”, or you’re shaking your head in horror and saying, “god, somebody drag this man to rehab.” at that time i didn’t go over there only because my weakened mind tripped over some unfortunate homosexual culture reference to blanche dubois and i vaguely remembered what—eventually—happened to her. and although i didn’t think i would end up like that, you never know. this next part is real. it’s about a time when maybe—maybe—i did go too far. one night i did go across the street. ———— there was a day that year in april when i saw a guy washing his car in front of that building. he was wearing a white t-shirt and jeans and running shoes. he was tall and lean and had long curly dark hair. he was there—in the sunlight with a hose and a bucket of suds—washing a red mustang. some of the guys leaving the building would stop to talk with him, but he kept on washing his red car by himself. i could tell right away that he was hot, and i watched him for a while as he stretched across the hood or bent over to wash the sides. i started to wonder. where does a guy like him get such a fine cherry red mustang? was this his car from before? it had to be. it was in prime condition and he was handling it with care, slowly soaping it up, rinsing it off, and buffing it down. as i watched him do all this, and as i watched his body moving, i got hot. all i wanted to do drop to my knees and suck his cock. you know what i mean. you’re the same way. he stayed. i don’t mean washing his car. he stayed in the halfway house as the months passed from spring to summer. he would sit out front, in front of the hedges, on the brick wall. he was very comfortable with everyone. he would talk and laugh with them. he seemed to get along with everyone. he was always wearing a t-shirt and jeans. sometimes he would wear a different t-shirt, but he never took it off. one day as he sat there talking to a guy, he took off his shoes and swung his bare feet back and forth. as i watched them—for some reason they seemed so naked—i thought i could have died happy right then. i wondered why he stayed while all the others left? what was he waiting for? didn’t he have anyplace to go? he stayed and i watched and he stayed. once or twice, not often, i thought about him when i beat off at night in my bed. i didn’t get off while i was watching him, like i had with the other guy. maybe if he had taken his shirt off. so—prelude over—we get to my bad night. actually there was a stretch of many bad nights. i don’t know whether i was losing it because one too many guys had died or because i hadn’t had enough dick to suck in my life. whatever. i was coping that particular night by getting coked out of my tits and throwing stoli down my throat. each time i opened the freezer to get more vodka, i saw the two bottles of poppers i was saving until i got really fucked up and was ready to watch videos. that’s what i did. who wanted to go out and meet somebody alive? better to stay home and watch the perfect images. fast forward. rewind. fast forward. rewind. i was wearing running shorts, like i usually do at home, but the only running i was doing was from the coke to the stoli to the stereo. playing a lot of nine inch nails, of course. after i had been doing this for a while, i stumbled out onto my back porch. i liked the darkness. i could stand out there, listening to the sirens on colfax, watch my mind turn to garbage, and howl at the moon. i lurched over to the edge of the porch. and saw that i could see him—inside. he must have changed rooms. he was on the first floor now. for the first time, i could see inside his apartment. he wasn’t wearing a shirt. i nearly fell over myself running to get my binoculars. i knocked things off the shelf as i dug them out of the back of the closet. he was tall and lean. there were dark patches on his chest and upper arms that looked like tattoos. fuck the videos. watching his window in the darkness was like watching a television screen. he leaned. he turned. i saw his back. he reached. he ran his hands through his long dark curly hair. he stood still once, his hand lightly rubbing his stomach, looking off to a corner of the room. but you know if you’re fucked up you can’t decently adjust the focus on binoculars. plus the fact that your eyes are fucked up anyway. watching him, but not being able to see the details, was driving me into a state of horniness i cannot begin to describe. i had pulled my dick out and it was hard in my hand. i was massaging it. my porch was dark enough for some protection, but someone still could have seen me, seen what i was doing. some fuckin’ pervert jerking on his cock and watching somebody with binoculars. fuck what they thought. that was where i was supposed to be at that moment and nothing could have made me think otherwise. i held onto my hardon and stroked it. i got hornier. i wanted to see him close up. i thought, why the fuck not. so under the influence of the drugs and my own deranged sexuality, i lost my control. i was more than willing to give it all up to god. for the sake of having sex with that man. time to make a bad decision. i went back inside and put down the binoculars. i cut myself two huge fuckin’ lines, did them, choked two or three hard swallows of vodka down my throat, and did two more lines. i was on my way. fuck it all. i tossed my shorts aside and put on the first dirty shirt i found, jeans, and shoes. i got one of the bottles of poppers and shoved it in my pocket. i left the stereo playing and the door open. half a fuckin’ block away. and i was almost too fucked up to make it there. it was about one-thirty. i walked right up to his window and stood outside. he was in there, and then he was gone and then—when he came back into the room the next time—he saw me. he stepped back. i was crazy and he could tell it. you know how people get when they see a crazy person. they back away. i didn’t—or couldn’t—do anything but stand there, weaving and staring, trying my best to project my desires through the window. he watched me cautiously, but after a while, he looked like he was more worried about me, about what i was on, than he was worried about what a freak i might be. that killed me. he came out and got me and took me inside. is this how fucked up i had to be to get close to someone like him? i could barely walk without falling over. he sat me down at the small kitchen table he had. i don’t remember now what he said when he took me in. he looked at me. he was talking to me. i was fucked up, but not so fucked up that i didn’t try to get a better look at him now that i was this much closer. long and lean and dark, like i said. the almost fu-manchu mustache that said straight boy. he was not heavily muscled, but everything was well defined. i could see the tattoos. i mean, as well as i could see anything clearly in my condition. on his left biceps he had the harley logo. on the right he had a dagger through a rose and “do or die” crudely lettered beneath. he went to the sink to get a glass of water for me and i saw some other words in a banner elaborately tattooed across his upper back, but i couldn’t make out what it said. and on his chest . . . there was not much hair on his chest, mostly around the nipples, so the tiger stood out. it was full body, head snarling, teeth bared, claws extended over his tits. it faced outward, so it looked as if it were about to leap off his chest, over the lightly muscled stomach, and tear you open. it was scary. and hot. he sat in his chair and tried to talk to me, but after a while he gave up and just listened to my ranting about everything in the world but what was really on my mind, and why i was really there. i asked him if he had a beer. i babbled some more. i tried to say anything that would let him keep me there. i tried to bullshit him about the neighborhood and the apartment and i think i even made something up about knowing a guy or two that had stayed in the building before. he could tell that i was lying. he began getting bored and irritated. he would smoke a cigarette, wait five minutes, drink some beer, then smoke another cigarette. he looked like he had lost all patience with me and the world. maybe it had banged on his door once too often and he had had to answer it every time. he had been concerned about me at first, but now he was almost pissed off. i didn’t care. i was there in his apartment now and was watching him from close up. i had been trying to look at his body while his head was turned, or when he wasn’t paying attention to me. now i began to stare. in my eyes, he was pornography come to life. there were black curly hairs around his nipples. the nipples were square. the lean stomach had some of those dark hairs in a line that disappeared into his jeans, and of course i could see the lump of his cock. my own dick was beginning to get hard. i don’t think he noticed. or if he did, he was ignoring it. now i was the one getting irritated. who the fuck hell was he to ignore my cock? it was time to go for all or nothing. i decided to go dirty. i got fag. i looked at him through my haze and i said i had been watching him wash his red mustang and my big dick got hard watching him wash his car. i told him that i wanted to suck his straight fat dick. i told him i was a good cocksucker and i wanted to give him head. i told him that i wanted to suck his cock until he gave me his cum. i was squeezing my dick through my jeans while i said all this. he didn’t look too surprised. he kind of laughed softly, took another drink of his beer, and leisurely finished another cigarette while i rubbed my crotch and talked dirty. after he stubbed his cigarette out, he looked at me as if considering something. maybe the consequences. he got up and walked past me. he pulled the cord at the side of the windows and closed the curtains. hot fuckin’ damn. he went back and sat down. he sat there. i didn’t say anything. i didn’t want to bust any groove that might be happening. he slouched down. he pushed a thumb under the edge of his pants on each side and eased them a half-inch lower. a half-inch more of hair and belly came into view. he watched me as my attention stayed on the front of his pants. this was the offer. wasn’t this what i wanted? it was there and i could tell that all i had to do was take it, if i could. what do i always do when what i want is there, waiting for my mouth? i stood up as coolly as my condition allowed and walked over in front of him. i got down on my knees and starting to lick him. i started just over the top of his pants and licked his belly. i worked my way up his hard stomach, up to his chest. the tiger’s claw was over my face as i started to suck on his nipple. it tasted hard and dry. i worked my way from side to side. he balanced himself by holding the sides of the chair. he wasn’t saying anything at this point, just letting me work him over. even i knew better than to go up toward his face. i worked back down to the top of his jeans and then up again to his chest. all the hairs were getting wet, and they were sticking to his body. as i worked on his chest, i licked the blackness of the tiger tattoo. in my lust and the delirium of the drugs, its eyes blazed immediately into mine. its teeth scraped my face. its claws reached out to rip me up. i tried to find his hardon. my hand found his dick through his jeans, but it wasn’t hard. what the fuck? i cannot have lost my touch. as i worked on his chest, i hooked a hand over the top of his jeans, tugged on it a little, and said “please.” i could hear him laugh, far away. i leaned back from his body and he stood up. he unzipped his pants, pushed them down, and showed me his dick. it was soft and fat. he put his hands on his hips and pushed it out to me. i sucked on it. finally. once it was in my mouth, the blood began to flow into it. it thickened. it curved down. he was uncut. as he dick got harder, the foreskin pulled back and showed me the fat red head. he kept getting harder. i sucked it like a good cocksucker. at first i was working both my mouth and my hand on it, then he pushed on the back of my head with his right hand. he pushed it down onto his cock. when i pulled my head away he pushed it down on his cock again. we did that for a while. i looked up at him like i was supposed to. to show him . . . what? what am i saying when i look up at the face of a man whose cock i’m eating. look at me? look at me—down—taking your cock in my mouth? yeah. i think that’s right. he sat back down in the kitchen chair and made me lick his balls. i like balls. he leaned back and acted like he deserved it and i was lucky to get the job. fine. treat me like shit. i don’t care. i’m getting what i wanted. i managed somehow to get my hardon out of my pants. i stopped licking him long enough to spit on my dick to jerk myself off, and then i went back to work on his balls. i put one and then the other in my mouth, sucking them. i stuffed both of them in my mouth at once. you know from your experience that when you do that, and they’re big, that all you can do is wash them over with your tongue. you can’t really move them around very much. i tried pulling them away from his body, but i got the feeling he didn’t care much for that. i let them go out of my mouth and they fell back down between his legs. i licked them like a dog then—with short fast motions of my tongue—and then licked the bottom of his shaft, working my way back up to the cockhead. then i wanted it all in my mouth again. i wrapped my lips around the head and went down on the shaft. he stood up. he pushed my shoulders and i fell back on the floor. he got over me like he was doing pushups and started pushing and pulling his cock in and out of my mouth. he was not a nice guy anymore. he started to get rough with me. my head was being banged against the floor as he rammed his cock down into my mouth. i was choking bad, and i was afraid i was going to throw up. but that didn’t happen. he sensed when i was about to lose it and would lighten up. that’s when he would just pop the hard red head of his dick in and out of my mouth. my neck was hurting from the strain of lifting up to get at his dick. and it wearing my mouth out ‘cause i was trying to keep my lips tight on the shaft. his balls would lift off my chin and then press down into me again. when i had my eyes open, his taut and hairy belly was right in front of them. he was breathing heavily above me. i kept jerking on my dick. it must have been too much work for him in that position. he suddenly stood up. his wet cock stuck out from his lean body as he stumbled back to the kitchen chair and heavily sat down. i lay on the kitchen floor gasping for air. the back of my throat felt hurt and bruised. i staggered to my feet. his pants were around his ankles. i took a good look at him, his long body, and that fat spit-covered cock. i remembered my poppers. you know what a bitch it is to get that seal broken when you’re desperate and fucked up. he sat there watching me trying to tear the plastic with my fingernails and rip it off with my teeth. i finally got it off. unscrewed the cap. held one nostril shut and took a deep breath with the other. switched and did the same on the other side. what the hell. two more hits. he watched me. i said “fuck” and went over to suck his cock. i don’t have to tell you what i was like then. i took his cock in my mouth and sucked as hard as i could. my spit covered it as i moaned and sucked. i worked my hand up and down the shaft and sucked. and sucked. and sucked. his cock was as fat and thick and long as a man’s dick should be. well, he was a man, but i was a starving mad dog. and this was the only bone in the world. i flipped out and he got a rabid cocksucker eating his meat. his groans started to match mine. we were getting all worked up, so i pulled my mouth off and went to get the poppers again. i gave myself two long hits and handed him the bottle. he knew what they were for, although he used both hands. not like an expert faggot like me. when he handed them back, i did two more hits then got back on my knees. now he could talk. those drugs opened his mouth. “yeah faggot, suck my cock. come one, cocksucker. eat that big fuckin’ dick. come on, yeah. suck my cock, faggot. yeah, suck that big cock. yeah, you want to suck my big cock, don’t you, faggot. yeah, eat it up. eat it. faggot cocksucker.” i did what he told me. this faggot sucked his big fat cock. now we were both flipped out. at the first break, he grabbed the poppers and shoved them up his nose. i could barely get my own hits in before he stood up and tried to shove his cock back into my mouth. he thrust his hips forward. i grabbed the base with my hand and put my mouth around the rockhard shaft. i worked the whole thing over and over again. spit was pouring off my chin as i sucked. he put one hand on the back of my head and started pushing it as far down on his cock as it would go. i started gagging again. he bent over, grabbed the poppers off the floor, and did two long hits while i blew him. when i eased off his dick and reached for the bottle, he wouldn’t give it up. he grabbed the back of my head with one free hand, and shoved my mouth back over his dick. he wouldn’t let the bottle go. as soon as he finished one side of his nose, he did the other. back and forth. for maybe three or four minutes. between hits he would go back to the talk. “fuckin’ faggot. you like that cock, don’t you. yeah. suck my fuckin’ cock.” my mouth and jaw were getting tired now, but i wanted more. it wasn’t enough then that i had his cock in my mouth. now that it was there, i wanted more. i got it. he had kept on taking hits while i sucked him. all at once, he screwed the lid back on and tossed the bottle away. he grabbed both sides of my head and started fucking my face. he had lost it. he rammed my head down over his cock. he rammed his cock into my mouth. i don’t think he knew—or cared—who or what i was. he was too rough. i could feel the muscles tear at the back of my throat. he didn’t care. he fucked my head while i fought him, but he was stronger. i tried to scrape and bite his dick with my teeth but that only made him madder and more excited. i saw the color red. somebody’s blood was spreading from the base of his dick up his belly. fuck, man. i couldn’t scream. i couldn’t breathe. i thought he was going to kill me. he kept fucking my head with his dick. i heard him growling. behind my eyes there were two dark blue patches surrounded by black. then the black slowly—oh, so slowly—moved in on them. taking them away. o.k., i said to myself. this is it. say goodbye. fuck it all. i stopped fighting back. i stopped biting him. he fucked my head. he kept shoving his dick all the way in and down my throat. it went down there, again and again. i don’t know how many times he did that, but then i heard him make some kind of noise and he shoved his meat all the way down my throat and held it there. he came. he held me there as load after load went down, choking me. then he threw me off. i looked over at him. for some reason i could see—very clearly—the blood and spit running down his thighs. i stood up and took a step toward him. i wanted more. he stepped back. i felt my heart give one big thump. it all went black. i fell over. when i came to, i didn’t know where i was at first. it was dark. i pulled myself to my feet and threw up. my throat ripped apart with pain when i threw up and i fell to my knees. after five or ten minutes lying on the ground, i tried to get up again. i looked around. i was in an alley. it looked familiar. i only had to walk a few feet to see that i was still in my neighborhood. he had dragged me out to the alley behind his building and dumped me there. he didn’t even bothered to pull me together. my dick was still hanging out of my pants. i had my keys, but—guess what—he had kept the poppers. it was the dead of night. as i walked back across the parking lot to my apartment, my goals were to not throw up, not fall down, and ignore the burning in my throat. i got back inside. as i was undressing i realized my jeans and tshirt were soaked. in piss. i don’t know whether it was mine or his. the next day—well, the next afternoon—when i woke up, i stumbled to the kitchen to get a glass of water. i looked out and he was standing out in front of his building talking to some guy. and laughing. asshole. on my way back to bed i stopped in the bathroom. there were my jeans. i picked them up. they were still wet. i lifted them up to my face and breathed deeply. then i chewed on them and sucked the wetness into my mouth. i pictured myself passed out on the dirt in the alley and him standing over me, giving it to me. i pictured his bare chest and the jeans open as he held his cock in his hand and pissed on me, laughing all the time. my cock got hard and i started jerking on it. i was going between sucking on my jeans and spitting it out on my dick. i got hard and started to jerk on my cock, sitting there on my toilet. i went to the kitchen to get the second—unopened—bottle of poppers. i looked out the window. he wasn’t there. i only had a chance to do one hit of poppers. after that hit, after putting my jeans back into my mouth again and chewing on them, after jerking on my cock for about thirty seconds, i came. can you see me? there on the floor, on my knees, pale and short of breath? shooting white stuff? the blood coming out of my mouth?
