Criminal Behavior

Criminal Behavior

by JH

Suck in your gut, I tell myself, and I inhale deeply, flexing my abs to show a little definition. Jesus, I hope I'm doing this right. I shoot a glance into the mirror above my dresser, and the guy that glares back, lit up by the light of two amyl scented candles, looks bad enough. The candle flames flicker, dancing off the metal studs in my body harness and giving the black leather of my boots an evil sheen. Yeah, evil. That's the word. I say it again, feeling my mouth stretch back for the "E", my teeth bite into my lower lip for the "vil". I eye-fuck my reflection with a new heat on, and for a moment there, a split second, the fantasy doesn't seem so contrived. A whiff from the candles sets a pulse in my head thumping, and my cock, which was sinking down to half-mast, rallies into a new hardness.

I check out Roger, who is groveling at my feet, off in his own little world of humiliation. He's got on a studded dog collar, handcuffs, and leg irons. The dim light gleams off his double-ball tit clamps and the chrome chain that links them; it makes an interesting play of shadows on his back as he squirms on the patch of carpet in front of me. "Interesting play of shadows". Hell! I sound like I'm looking at a photo exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art. I've got to quit slipping out of the fantasy. Okay...okay...Roger's hand inches forward and touches my left boot. When I don't kick it away, he gets bolder and begins nuzzling his face against the leather. Like Tiger, I think. When she wants to be fed. He's acting just like my damn cat. I think of kitty B&D, and it takes everything I've got to keep from snickering.

Roger looks up at me, an expression of exaggerated adoration on his face.

But when I just return his stare, doing nothing, his eyebrows pull down in irritation. Damn it, I must have missed another cue. I jerk my foot away.

"You putrid faggot," I growl. "Did I tell you that you could slobber all over my boots?"

"Please, Sir," Roger whimpers, gratified. "let me clean them for you."

He begins licking my boots with quick, short jabs of his tongue, and again I'm reminded of Tiger lapping up milk from her bowl. I clench my teeth and try to will myself back into the mood. But the more I strain for it, the more it slips through my fingers. Roger looks like such a jerk down there. There's no way I can go through with this.

I clear my throat, wondering what the best way is to say what I'm about to say. I know I'm on shaky legal ground here. I almost laugh at that thought. Shaky, my ass. What I'm contemplating here is a possible felony. And my record is bad enough as it is. All things considered, it'd be better just to play this scene out to the end...

But I just can't. I'm so damned tired. The unfinished part of this fantasy with Roger stretches out in front of me like the Mojave Desert. It was a mistake for me to have set this in motion, but then, what choice did I have? On my desk in the living room is a blue slip of paper with the City of San Francisco letterhead on top. "Our records indicate that you are two weeks behind in your fantasy quota. Won't you please correct this oversight (with proper verification from your partners)? Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter."

My only salvation from this mess depends upon my ability to win over Roger's good will.

"Um, Roger," I say, my voice so full of false heartiness that I sound like a snake-oil salesman. "Can we call time-out for a second?"

Roger jerks his head up in surprise, and there's nothing submissive in the glare he gives me. "Look," I continue, making my voice reasonable. "Why don't we skip all this and just have some nice, uncomplicated sex instead?" I watch nervously as the expression on Roger's face shifts from shock to outrage, and I hurriedly add, "Baby, I'll make sure you have a good time."

"What the fuck is this?" Roger snarls, and I know I'm in for it now.

"Get back on your belly, you worthless whore," I rap out.

But the damage is done. Roger struggles to his feet and confronts me with murder in his eyes. "Unlock me!"

"Roger..."

"Unlock me, you son of a bitch!"

What else can I do? I walk over to where my pants lie on the floor, and fish my key ring out of the back pocket. I open my mouth to say something,

but the look on Roger's face shuts me up. I meekly bend over and unlock Roger's handcuffs and leg irons.

"Everything was going great," Roger sputters. "And you had to screw things up." He almost chokes on his rage. When he gets like this, he starts spraying little flecks of saliva with every word. "You killed the fantasy!" he screams.

I wipe his spit from my face. "Everything wasn't going great. It was all wrong. In fact, it sucked."

Roger's face turns dark red and a vein in his left temple begins to throb. He looks like he's about to have a stroke. I should be so lucky.

"You're going to pay," he gasps. "You're going to suffer for this."

I think dispassionately of taking one of the steel based lamps from the table and beating his brains out. Then I think about this with somewhat less dispassion. Actually, it would be a very easy thing to do. It's late at night, and I stand a good chance of sneaking Roger's body down to the garage below without being seen. A twenty minute car ride to the Golden Gate Bridge and Roger will have been swept out by the tide before anyone even notices he's missing.

But before I can do anything more than briefly entertain this thought, offer it a beer, so to speak, Roger has stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

Next morning, routine makes its presence felt. It speaks time, reminding me that this is the time I get up and dress myself for work. I give in to it. I stagger over to the closet, grab whatever my hand first touches, and put it on. I know I'm mixing my fantasies badly: a football jersey combined with fringed, buckskin breeches and the steel- toed shoes of a construction worker. I don't have it in me to care. Ten minutes later I'm out the door and in another five minutes I'm on the street corner, waiting for my bus.

It arrives. I climb aboard and push through the rush-hour crowd of passengers: the leather boys, the lumber jacks, the varsity jocks, the gold lame, sequined queens. I can feel the hands grope my ass, but I ignore them and plow through to the relative openness of the rear.

Two blocks later, a cowboy gets on, wearing a ten gallon hat with enough feathers on it to have plucked naked at least a dozen pheasants. He moves to the rear too, and it's just a matter of minutes before he's going through the whole eye-fucking bit with me. I make a conscious effort to appear unconscious of him, but this only piques his need for a response. With the inevitability of a law of nature, I soon feel his hand rubbing my crotch.

If he expects to find a nine inch rod of steel, he's in for a disappointment. I'm as far from getting a hard-on as I've ever been. I keep on looking at a point six inches to the left of his head, hoping he'll go off and search for other little dogies to rope. But damn if he doesn't begin to unzip my fly with one hand and fumble with my belt buckle with the other. Either he can't resist a challenge or he's a closet necrophiliac.

I seize his wrists and shove his hands away. "Look," I say, "I'm not interested." The cowboy glares at me and moves on, his body bristling with righteous indignation. The other passengers around me regard me with curdled expressions, as if I had just puked on a salad bar. I know I'm guilty of atrocious manners, but I couldn't give a damn. I'm now the leper of the bus, and nobody else bothers me for the rest of the ride to work.

I walk into the building lobby, past the concession stand where Eddie, the blind war veteran, sells his stock of dildos, French ticklers, and other rubber goods. I catch the elevator just as the doors are closing, and get off at the seventeenth floor, where I work. Janet, the receptionist, quickly takes in my mismatched outfit and greets me with a disapproving nod of her head. Her own fantasy today is a little hard to attach a label to, all metal and colored plastic, with blinking lights threaded through her hair. "Intergalactic Space Slut" most closely describes it.

I make a beeline to my desk, avoiding any encounters that could lead into a conversation. I want to ask Rose, my secretary, if she's finished with the letter I gave her to type yesterday afternoon. But today she's a dominatrix, with a bull whip and a black hood with zippered slots for her eyes and mouth. I give the idea up. She'd only make me beg and grovel for my letter, and I just don't have the heart for that right now.

I sit down and numbly begin sorting through the papers on my desk.

At ten o'clock, Francine, the refreshment lady, comes into the office, rolling in front of her the cart full of assorted aphrodisiacs, sexual toys, lubricants, and fantasy costume props. This marks the beginning of the morning break. The other office workers get up and crowd around the cart. After they've made their purchases they head out, laughing and chattering, to the office play pens and orgy rooms. I would like nothing better than to just sit here at my desk and not be bothered, but fantasy breaks are mandatory. I get up and shuffle towards the office john with as much enthusiasm as a man on his way to get a root canal.

When the bell rings, signifying the end of the break, it takes all the energy I can muster to rise and return to my desk.

I'm a few minutes late, but nobody notices. All eyes are turned to the reception area, where two police officers are in quiet conference with Janet. She nods and stares at them with wide eyes, the lights in her hair now blinking like a computer console gone berserk. They all turn their heads in unison and look at me. My heart is going bathump, bathump,

like a flat tire on a Chevy van, and my throat constricts to the point that I can hardly breathe. That son-of-a-bitch Roger must have turned me in. The cops start heading towards me now in a loose, casual stride, their arms swinging easily at their sides. They are both wearing the tender smile of a bridegroom approaching the marriage bed.

I back away slowly, my eyes darting over to the right, where the door to the stairwell is. The shorter of the two cops sees this and his smile widens into an pitiful grin. He nods his head gently and pats the handle of his gun. I can feel my knees turn rubbery; my legs give out completely. The cops continue approaching me with the easy inevitability that a pet store boa shows towards a rat thrown into its cage at feeding time.

"We have a warrant for your arrest, Larson," the tall cop says. He reads me my rights, the words pouring out of his mouth in a fast, clipped monotone. When he is done, he stares at me with eyes that show as much emotion as two ball bearings.

"What are the charges?" I finally manage to ask. I see that my hands are trembling, and put them down in my lap.

"Hands on the desk!" the shorter cop barks. I instantly obey. The whole office is staring at the three of us, caught up in this exciting drama. Janet watches from the reception room doorway, ignoring the lights on the telephone switchboard, which are now blinking as furiously as those on her head.

The shorter cop draws himself up theatrically and announces in a loud voice, "You are being held in violation of penal code 5104c, willful and malicious destruction of fantasy." The room fills with a mummer of voices. The cop, in his element now, glares at me with contempt. "Getup!" he snarls. Before I can obey, he yanks me out of my seat, whips out a pair of handcuffs and shackles my hands behind my back. The metal digs into my skin, and my fingers begin to turn numb from lack of blood.

"Uh, masochism isn't one of the fantasies I'm registered under at City Hall," I say politely, and, after a surly pause, he reluctantly lets the cuffs out a couple of notches. The other cop prods the small of my back with his night stick, and the three of us march through the throng of workers and out into he waiting elevator.

I think I've been here for about five or six hours. There are no windows, and they've taken away my watch along with the rest of my valuables, so there's no way I can tell for sure. One thing I do know is that this sure doesn't crack up to the prison fantasies dreamed of outside. But maybe I'm being denied that because of the nature of my crime. They wouldn't want an old spoil sport around, ruining the fun and games of the other prisoners.

The door to my cell swings open and a guard motions me to get up. "You're lawyer's here to interview you," he tells me in a bored voice. Since I don't have any money, I've been appointed counsel by the court. The guard leads me down a series of corridors to a door with a black enamel plaque reading "Interview Room". He opens it and directs me with a curt nod of his head.

The lawyer they've assigned to me re-establishes my link to the outside world. He's wearing a skin tight pair of Levi's, a Fidel Castro cap, a pair of army boots, and a t-shirt claiming "This Face Seats Five". The hair not covered by his hat is black and cut boot-camp style. As I walk into the room, he regards me with a sense of Attitude so exquisitely cultivated that I can't help but be impressed.

"Have a seat," he says, nodding towards the chair opposite him. I obey.

"As you have no doubt been informed," he continues, "I've been appointed to represent you." He pauses, fixing me with a cool stare. It's the same look, I imagine, that he uses in a bar on those men without future trick potential. "My name is Mountain."

I extend my hand. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Mountain," I say, with a politeness ridiculous under the circumstances.

"Not Mr. Mountain," Mountain replies impatiently. "Just Mountain." He ignores my offered hand and I put it back in my lap.

Mountain glances down at a stack of papers in front of him. "You're being charged with willful and malicious destruction of fantasy." He glances up at me. "This is a felony, and even under the best circumstances you're risking a heavy prison sentence. Do you want to tell me what happened?"

I do, leaving nothing out. Mountain takes notes at the beginning of my narration, but after awhile he puts his pen down and just looks at me. There's a brief silence when I finish speaking. "What you are doing," he says dryly, "is giving me a confession of guilt."

I shrug my shoulders and say nothing.

Mountain extends his hands, palms upwards, and shrugs his back. "Well, what is it that you want from me?" he asks, half laughing.

This annoys me. I lean forward, pressing my palms on the tabletop. "What the hell do you think?" I growl. "I want you to get me out of here!"

Mountain's mouth twitches, and it's obvious that it's everything he can do to keep from laughing in my face. With an effort, he contains his laughter and begins flipping through his papers with a brisk cheerfulness.

All of a sudden, he's so jaunty. I half expect him to start whistling.

"You have quite a record, Mr. Larson." he says pleasantly. "Status reports from City Hall show how you've consistently failed to meet your fantasy quotas. And I have," his eyes flicked down to the table again, "oh, at least a dozen complaints here lodged by previous partners of yours. There's lackluster execution of fantasy, inappropriate costume and props for prearranged fantasy, conflicting fantasy signals, shifting fantasies without proper notification, et cetera, et cetera." Mountain smiles gently. "And you want me to get you out of here?"

I can feel a drop of sweat trickle down from my armpit. "What's going to happen to me?"

Mountain gives a friendly laugh. "I believe you've gone beyond a jail sentence," he replies. "Offhand, I would put my money on expulsion."

I stare at him. It's as if I have just seen the jaws of hell opening up before me. "What!" I shout.

Mountain is enjoying this! The color rushes to his face, giving it a sense of healthy animation. "Expulsion," he repeats amiably. "Exile, banishment. Run out on a rail, as the idiom goes. Ejection from the world."

I feel the muscles in my face stiffen as the implications sink in. "You mean Peoria?" I whisper.

Mountain grins. "Or it's equivalent."

My lips again form the word "Peoria" but no sound comes out of my mouth.

I reach over and seize Mountain's arm. "Listen," I say thickly. "You can't let this happen. You're my lawyer. You're got to think of some way to get me out of this!"

Mountain jerks his arm away. He leans forward wearing a grin of wolfish glee. "Like what? You've just confessed your guilt. Your record stinks.

What the hell do you expect me to do?" He falls back in his chair and the look on his face is one an Islamic would give a pork-eating infidel.

"I want another lawyer."

Mountain gives a loud braying horse laugh. "You think that'll make any difference?" He gets up and walks over to the door to call the guard. There's a red handkerchief dangling from his left pocket. He turns to me and smiles in a way designed (successfully) to make me want to tear his face off. "Baby," he says, "you're ass is grass no matter who defends you."

I'm looking at my leather jacket and trying to figure out how useful it would be if I took it with me. Not useful in how it would help kick off some hot fantasy out there. No, I'm wondering how warm it'll keep me on those cold winter nights, Out There. This is so weird.

I decide to take the jacket with me. I yank off its chrome chains, like epaulets being stripped from a disgraced soldier. I throw it into a suitcase (one of two that the court allowed me to take) along with a few flannel shirts and a couple of 501's. I sweep the room, trying to gauge what else could help me survive in a hostile environment. What I see doesn't reassure me. I don't think the sling, the tit-clamps, the acu- jac, or any other of my toys, were designed particularly for wilderness life-styles.

Two cops wait for me in the hallway outside. They escort me downstairs to the waiting squad car. It's late afternoon, and the sun hits the street at an oblique angle, bathing the cars, the rows of apartment buildings, the sidewalks, in a light more orange than yellow. One of the cops hustles me into the back seat, and we pull away from the curb.

This is Fantasyland's final kiss-off to me. I stare out the window like a pickled fetus in a glass jar, trying to understand the bright world it was never born into. At a street corner, a crowd presses together, their necks arched upward. I follow their gaze and see through an apartment window a young, tightly muscled man dressed only in sweat socks and a baseball cap. He's jacking himself off in slow easy strokes. In a Safeway parking lot a man suspended from a sling is being lovingly fistfucked by a partner wearing leather chaps and a motorcycle cap. An orgy is going on behind the plate glass of a Denny's restaurant, bodies writhing on the formica counter amidst the ketchup squeeze bottles and napkin dispensers. Out on the sidewalk are the cowboys, the jocks, the cyclists, the truck drivers, the hard-hatters, the marines, the drag queens, the muscle men, the street punks, every conceivable fantasy parading by.

We finally approach the battlements that surround San Francisco. The buildings stop a short distance away from the walls, leaving a broad avenue that forms the perimeter of the city. We follow the curve of the walls until we come to the twenty foot iron gates that are the only entrance into the city. The car stops and the cops signal me to get out.

"Hey fellas," I say hurriedly. "I just want to tell you this has been really educational for me. I mean, like I've gotten all these terrific new insights about fantasy, and how we all got to do our part to keep the ball rolling, so to speak."

The cops smirk and one of them irritably waves me out. "Cone on, come on, " he snaps.

"No, look," I rush on. "I know that I've been screwing around, not really playing into the general game plan of things. I see the whole picture now, and I can assure you that from now on I'm going to start taking fantasy a lot more seriously."

They exchange looks and then together reach in and pull me out. With a hand planted in each of my armpits, they start dragging me away.

"No, really," I babble. "I've just gotten some really intriguing ideas about some new fantasies I can set up. Just an overall perspective, so far, I'll need a little time to work out the details, but..."

"Hey Arnold!" one of them shouts. "Let 'er rip." Some invisible technician sets the gears in motion and the gates begin to swing open with a protesting screech of metal against metal.

"Sort of a Busby Berkley routine involving a rich, scintillating amalgam of cowboys and leathermen choreographed together to create a..."

The gates are about four feet apart now and with a concerted heave the cops throw me through them. I do a nose dive onto a patch of gravel. There's a "thunk, thunk" and I see my suitcases skidding along the ground,

coming to rest beside me. I immediately scramble to my feet and start running back towards the rapidly narrowing gap between the two open gates.

"Or if you want something on a smaller scale," I cry out, "how about... "

I stop abruptly as the gates slam together with a hollow reverberation. For a few seconds I stare at the patterns the iron rivets make against the steel plates, and then, with infinite slowness, I turn and survey the landscape around me.

I back away, almost unconsciously shaking my head no. There is a tubby gut, 48 year old man, dressed in a lime green polyester leisure suit. He is chuckling over his Reader's Digest. The approaching bus says "Atlantic City".

"Let me in!" I scream. "I'll be good! I'll live out and goddamn fantasy you want me to, I promise!" I begin clawing at the crack between the doors. No good.

I bend down and pick up my suitcases. I glance behind me one last time, but all I can see is the deeper blackness of the gates against the night sky. You blew it, Kevin, I think. I pick my way down the embankment and into the wilderness beyond.