Red Bull

Red Bull Chapter 4

Chapter 4

“Who did the gun belong to?”

I stay silent. The man questioning me was a detective by the name of Westinghouse.

The room is a sweltering heat. I can’t pay attention much. I think of my Isabella. I think about her smile. I think about her eyes. I wonder why it is God would take one so innocent as her. Life was so fleeting and everything was so sad in those moments. Perhaps I was further along than I wanted to be. Perhaps I should have done more. Not too far from me down the hallway at the police station is my brother Jamison.

“Says here you have a record as long as my arm...”

The guy talking to me is a cop. He's bout 6’1, muscular and has a stern-looking face. Maybe in his 40s. He has this salt and pepper thing happening on top of his head. The room is a private one, that is not video recorded like the other rooms.

He lays the Barretta on the counter. Seeing the gun again I get trauma. More trauma than I know what to do with.

“It’s not mine if that’s what you are askin’. My gun is registered and I don’t bring it in the house ever. If you want to go check, I leave it outside the house, high enough that no one would ever get to it.”

He shakes his head, “I am not saying it's yours. I hear you found Jesus now. “

I grunt, “Something like that. I’m not sure.”

“I do think you know whose gun that is though. Your brother has been dating a guy who has a record just as long as yours. Anthony Keefe, also known as AK. “

“I know of him…”

I get quiet.

“I’m sure you crossed this guy a couple of times. Been to your club a few times. Nothing doper in the city.”

“It was….”

I’m hesitating. But why? I had a specific plan. I was going to tell the cops I saw AK bringing a gun over. It was simple. Plain. The cop wasn’t going to say but he had a conversation with Jamison about what happened. Jamison already pinned it on AK but my brother was drunk that night. They needed someone to back up his story.

“You can say it…”

It wasn’t just about AK. The thing is I notice something that I haven’t noticed before. For some reason, I’ve been staring at the police officers' ass. I’ve been staring at the way it’s quite a bubble butt, round and firm just like my girlfriend Marcella. I imagine what it would be like to grab it. I imagine what it would be like to stick my dick in it. I felt so many temptations at that moment. Temptations I’ve never felt before.

“Shit!” I cry out.

I spill some coffee all of myself.

“You Ok?”

I don’t know how it happens that he is been over in front of me cleaning up the table. His ass is so fat that the seams of his pants were stretched to their limit.

It rips.

A loud “Shrkkkkkkkkk” fills the air.

When his seam splits I see the brown skin underneath. It’s round and hairy. He’s Unshaved and the musk of sweat fills my nose as his puckering ass hole is only inches from my mouth. I could lean forward if I wanted and wrap my lips around his hole.

He may not have noticed or been too embarrassed to mention anything about it because he continues cleaning. He continues exposing his pink asshole in front of my face.

He hurried to clean up and in the process enters into my personal space. He smelled like a man. There was nothing feminine or floral about him.

“I really don’t feel well right now.”

He gives me a look as though he knows something made me change my mind but surprisingly he doesn’t press it. He tells me that the investigation will continue and to contact him as soon as I feel better

-

I don’t feel better though.

That was the issue. In the car, I have this nervousness and this anxiety.

“You need to call him back. You need to tell him,” Jamison tells me.

My brother Jamison is wide-eyed when he’s talking. The way that he looks in the passenger seat of that car just doesn’t sit well with me. He should have been spending more time mourning. More time worried about what happened to Isabella instead of worrying about throwing AK under the bus.

“It wasn’t him. It was Meek…”

I'm so angry. I had no one to be really angry with. Not truly. But it makes sense that Meek brought this around. It was his gun. I was pretty sure about that at this point. If AK had guns he would have made sure he kept it away from kids.

Meek brought the gun.

“Meek?” He asks, “This isn’t on Meek. It’s on you. You were the one who allowed the impure spirit in AK and Joshua to spread to you and to bring about the death of your niece.”

“Now hold on motherfucker… your son shot her…”

“Get the fuck out.”

I look over at Jamison. He had to be shitting me. The mere mention of Sean causes his eyes to get beat red.

“Fuck outta here…it’s the highway.”

“Get the fuck out.”

“Keep moving before I beat your ass Jamison.”

The threat doesn’t work. Even when I grab my little brother by the neck he doesn’t seem to give in. It’s unlike Jamison. He always cared about his well-being more than any point he had to make. When we were only teenagers I realized the best way to shut up the irkiness troll behavior in Jamison was to threaten to fuck his ass up.

This time he just shakes and says, “I don’t care what you do to me. I’m not going to let you call my son evil. I won’t let you call my son a murderer.”

He was serious. I’d never seen Jamison shake the way he was shaking right now. He wasn’t religious before but in these moments he clings desperately to a cross hanging from his chest. Tears are piling up at both ends.

“When did I do either?”

He stares at the doorway when he responds, “It is us who brought the evil thing to our house. We must repent this thing. We must repent our sins.”

This evil thing. He was referring to the demons of homosexuality.

I pause, “I hate AK but we do this Jamison… we frame an innocent man and we won’t be able to take that back. That’s not what we do Jamison. That’s not what our family is like.”

“If you support Joshua and his sexuality...then you are part of the reason that Isabella is dead and you are no family to me.”

No family. I have to admit it hurts. We weren’t teenagers anymore. We were adults who managed to make a lot of enemies over the years especially after opening up Club Marchioness.

All we had was each other. And now he was saying....

“We are brothers…”

“No brother of mine has a homosexual spirit in him,”. He states, “You must get it out.”

I pause… “How?”

That is when he leans over and hands me a card. And before I can even look down he pulls the passenger seat door closed and leaves.

I look down and read what my brother has given me. I read into the possible cure and it’s simple.

Gay conversion therapy.

~

Two weeks have passed. It’s New Year’s Eve at The Marchioness.

Normally I would be with both Jamison and Joshua for this but today was different. I haven’t seen or talked to either. They were beefing and this time it was different Jamison wanted nothing to do with the club or me and Joshua was in mourning. The Marchioness had been popping. It was the place where people saved up during the week to go. They forgot all their struggling for a moment, they forgot all their pain. They allowed themselves to go numb to it for a while and I’m not sure that’s as a bad thing. The Marchioness never pretended to save your soul but at least for a few hours, you’ll forget it is there.

It’s the place people got their little check and went to the mall. The heavy hitters mixed with the poor. Joshua managed to draw the crowds for the space we owned. We talked about expanding the club and making more money but Joshua kept saying we weren’t ready.

And I have no idea what he meant by that.

I remember the gift Joshua got me. I reach into the backseat. It’s New Years and I completely forgot about it. I open it and see a key. Weird. I pocket the key though.

I pull up to the club, past the lines of people trying to get into the line.

“OK----I see you, bra,” one of the bouncers laughs as I throw the keys to my Benz to Jay Jay the valet.

Don’t get me wrong. We weren’t rich. We were ghetto fabulous in so many ways that I didn’t even realize. What the bouncer doesn’t know is that my over-compensating brother Joshua just gave up everything including this car to pay my destructive sister’s debts.

“Ohhh. Joyous…”

But at this moment girls were turning my way. People were checking for me. Sexy girls. I mean I do have to admit I looked good regardless. I was the best looking Wallace brother and that was saying a lot. My brothers were very attractive but I was on a whole different level and everyone in the hood knew it. That’s no cap. But it did help that I was a part-owner of the Marchioness with my siblings to get this sort of attention.

There was an interview in 2015 about a shooting at a club in Baton Rouge. I remember the girl in that video was so upset that she said: If you can't go to Bella Noche's where the hell could you go?

That’s what this was. This was our Sin City. This was our hood Hollywood.

And I had to admit my brother Joshua had a taste that matched the best clubs anywhere. Plush red and gold outfittings give the super-lavish interior some warmth. He’s made this club into perfection.

“Wassup sexy…” this girl states walking up on me.

Some big-name DJ was going in on the spin tables and shorty takes this as her opportunity to grind up on me as I walk in. She gets me hard. Real hard. And that’s when I feel another hand. Marcella.

The girl is about to say something but she recognizes Marcella. A few people in the hood knew the reputation. My girlfriend was a mega-bitch. She didn’t fight. She didn’t argue. She got people thrown out and pressed charges. She was a tough bitch and she also happened to be my on-again, off-again.

And my brother Joshua’s best friend and assistant. She basically ran the books for the club. She was the one who really made my brother the fierce man who he is. Or maybe it’s the other way around. All I know is they were so similar. Cold sometimes at the surface to people they didn’t know.

The way she looks at me is the way that Joshua walks around when it comes to business. Straight up resting bitch face.

“Upstairs Joyous...2 minutes…”

The way she talks to me is just disrespectful and a couple of the girls see it and almost feel bad for it. Honestly, it turns me on a little bit. I loved a strong girl.

Lionel notices, “Man how you deal with that girl. All these fine ass girls and you out here still wanting that Maleficent-looking bitch.”

Lionel actually makes sense. It was pretty much how everyone looked at Marcella, but I liked it honestly. She was a Snow Queen and the only woman who ever dumped me. It was kind of shocking. But I liked it.

That’s when my cousin Sheila butts in and alerts her brother with a swift, “Lionel..this really what you care about with that man on the loose?”

He nods at that moment, “You’re right, Jamison did say that AK posted bail..”

“He was arrested?” I ask.

“Yeah wild that they set a bail for him right? For killing a little girl… damn…”

“He didn’t…”

Both my cousins look at me like I have two heads when I say what I say. It’s as though none of them remembered that this was an accident. It was as though they thought somehow AK took the gun and pointed it at Isabella himself.

I don’t know how to react to this.

All I care about is one thing “Is Eva Ok?”

“Joshua isn’t picking up. He must blame himself,” Sheila stared down at the ground.

“It’s his fault after all. Like Jamison said.”

Jamison got to my other family members with his bullshit. I figured he would. He was the kind of guy who liked to make sure everyone in the family was always on one accord and one page——his.

I’m concerned, “You guys talk to Jamison?”

“He says you protecting Isabella’s killer…”

Here we go again.

“Her killer?” I ask, “Sean?”

“Don’t be cruel Joyous,” Sheila responds, “Sean is a kid. You always say that the whole homosexuality thing was wrong. I should have listened to you. Maybe if I did Isabella would be..”

My cousin begins to tear up. I didn’t like Sheila. She was a gossip and she’d muddied my name in Compton countless times in a way family shouldn’t but that didn’t mean she didn’t love the kids. We all did and that was the one thing we had in common.

“Maybe I was wrong,..”. I suggest, ”I’ve seen AK with the kids. He loves them. They actually make a cool little family unit—-minus the whole gay thing.”

I get the shadiest look from both of them.

“You are really lost Joyous. Don’t you see we will lose everything because of the homosexual spirit? Look around. The club is popping…for now,” Lionel states, “No one knows we are going broke…”

I grab Lionel up at that moment. I yoke him up against a wall, “Yo you shut the fuck up about this. You hear me. As far as you know everything is fine.”

“Then fix this. We all depend on this club. I won’t be a failure because Joshua isn’t right with God.”

The two start nodding in agreement. They would always stick together but it is frightening, to say the least. What if the club was failing because of our lifestyles? What if we did have to change?

The appearance was everything especially in Southern LA where no one else had an appearance of doing good. We were this great hope. I remember last October, my brother Joshua and Marcella did a food drive for the kids in the neighborhood and raised more money than any church in years.

I'm walking away thinking about going to meet Marcella but for some reason, I don’t have the desire to.

“Hey…”

I turn at that moment and see him. Meek.

I almost spill my drink.

“What the-----”

“Can we talk?” he asks me.

I don’t know what to do. At first, some homophobic shit comes to my mind but then I remembered I wasn’t that same guy anymore. I had grown past that. I had gay brothers. I learned what it was like to actually be open-minded to things. So why the fuck was I tripping now.

Maybe it was how my cousins were reacting. I see them now still talking about Isabella's death passionately in the VIP area.

“I’m busy right now..”

“I can’t get you out of my head.”

“Stay away from me.”

“Wait…”

“My niece is dead because of you!”

I look around. Marcella is at the top of the staircase that leads to the luxury Mezzanine that my brother called the Lady’s Eye. From the Lady’s Eye, he could see all around the club. He could see what everyone was doing. He could see how everyone was doing it.

“What are you talking about?” He asks.

Meek steps towards me with a concerned look. That’s right. He didn’t know about Isabella. He hadn’t known that me opening myself up to the idea of liking another man was the worst moment of my entire life. I feel stuck at this moment. I was unable to speak. I was unable to even cry even though every part of my body wanted to.

He steps forward, “Come here you let it out.”

“What.”

He looks at me. Meek had these broad shoulders, he had this look of real concern on his face as though he truly cared about who I was and what I was going through. Had he come here specifically for me. I try to walk away and he pursues me.

He corners me in my own club.

“You don’t gotta be tough with me,”. He tells me, “I want to know what you’re talking about. Let me help you. Stop running from me man. Be yourself…”

I’m not even sure what that means. Meek is this tough ass nigga. We were hood gods. We were gangsters. We shouldn’t be in some corner hiding out having this weirdly intimate moment.

I step off him, “Yo back off nigga. Me and you got beef now…”

“Beef?”

Just at that moment, I see Marcella. She’s finally gotten sick of it and has come to interrupt. It’s strange how she grabs me while looking at Meek.

“You coming?” Marcella asks.

Saved by the bell. I ignore Meek and move towards Marcella.

But for some reason, I turn back to Meek. He’s looking back at me too in his jeans jacket and his white shirt underneath. He is casual but clean as fuck. Had she known what I saw in him? And what the hell did she have to talk about?

“Yo, that guy is fucking weird yo——“ I keep saying.

“I thought we stopped having street guys come through here. Thought we were moving towards another crowd. One with more money. Like a gay crowd…”

“Fuck outta here.”

“What? It’s money. If we were more open...”

“This ain’t no fucking gay club!”

She knows I’m worked up and she knows why.

“Let me make you feel better…”

So here I am. Laidback smoking a cigar and Marcella is on her knees worshipping my dick in the Lady’s Eye. It’s kind of exciting because it’s a two-way mirror if we wanted to be. We had the settings on. We can see the club people on the lower level from here but they couldn’t see us even if they looked right up at us.

I lean my head back and take a long hard puff of my cigar full of marijuana. The smoke hits my lungs and I close my eyes. She’s slurping me up, letting her tongue circulate among the veins of my long pulsing dick.

That’s when a flash of the cop’s ass that day flashes in my head. And then his other parts as well. My dick stays swollen. It stays swollen the entire time.

She begins to circulate around the head and that’s when she says slowly, “Let’s do that thing that we did last time…”

I look down at her.

“What?”

“You know Joyous. When you let me eat it out.”

She gives me a look and does this weird motion with her tongue. At first, it’s up and down but then Marcella wiggles her tongue in a complete circle. I’d let her eat me out one time. She kept saying that I had a nice ass. She wouldn’t let up on it either. Kept going about how nice it was and then all of a sudden she just goes down on me. Lucky for her I keep myself clean because it came out of nowhere. And sure...I let her do it for a minute or two but then I stopped her and told her to stop that gay shit.

“Stop that gay shit,” I tell her again.

“Why you got to be like that?” Marcella complains, “Just a little bit. It doesn’t make you gay…”

I don’t know why at that moment I am thinking about Meek. I’d seen Meek. I try to shake the thought but it ketp popping up over and over like some sort of sick curse. It was a spirit. I knew that now. It was a demon perhaps. I had been so turned on before this though. So would this be so different? I do what Marcella tells me, lifting my leg.

She doesn’t do anything though.

I look back confused, “What?”

“Get on your knees,” she states, “Buck for me daddy…”

I do what she says turning around and letting her begin to eat me out from the back. Her tongue squirms into my ass pushing against my ass lips immediately causing my dick to jump. All of a sudden I find myself squirming all over myself.

And Marcella looks down at me.

I look up at her, “What’s this mean?”

I’d never cum before with not even touching my dick. Feeling her tongue go deep in me was something that I hadn’t quite experienced before. It was an emotion that wrapped my body intensely. Nothing had ever gone that deep into my ass before. I could still feel it in me even though her tongue had pulled it. It was like a ghost tongue was in there still exploring. I can barely move. I stay in place still enjoying it and my dick still continuing to drip.

Loads of thick, white ooze spray out of my dick and puddle up underneath me. My dick manages to be so long that in doggie style it still manages to smack on the cum gathering beneath me.

.

She shrugs, “Means you came…”

She leaves after that like nothing.

I get dressed and when I open the door I see a shadow behind it. I open it and seem confused, “Marcella did you forget----”

It’s not Marcella though. The person looking back at me isn’t Marcella. It’s this guy. He is tall and thin. But not in a skinny way. He has a swimmer’s body that was hard and framed. He backs up with me squaring out his oval jaw and then there are his eyes. They are like some sort of rattled animal. They are all wild and full of imagination. Something that I can’t imagine.

And I’m shocked by who has come to visit me.

“AK…”

Seeing him here…now is a shock to the system.

“I didn’t do it. I didn’t fucking do it.”

He’s been drinking… a lot. His face is flushed.

He was here in front of me with this emphasis in his eyes as though he had something to prove.

“Why come here. Jamison is the one telling everyone that you did it.”

“I don’t give a fuck about Jamison. I care about my family and you were there. You can tell them. You can get my family back —-you can——“

He’s tearing up. Bad. Worse than anything I could imagine. I stand there for a moment and let him do it. I understand more than he knows. I understand more than he could imagine.

“I broke down like that before I got here too…”

For the first time, I see a human side to AK. This was a man who wanted to protect his family. He was a man who felt as though he and Joshua had this amazing life together.

“You love him don’t you?” I ask, “My brother I mean…”

“More than you know.”

I pause. I look at him hard. Tears were silently running down. Past him, I could see one of my security guards. I can have him removed if I wanted. I could fight him if I wanted. But for some reason, the things I used to feel aren’t allowing me to act.

It felt as though something was telling me not to. Was this God?

“Come in.”

He’s as surprised as I am that I am not finding a reason to argue or fight. He seemed to come prepared for that. When he sits he keeps looking down. I can see why Joshua is attracted to him. AK was always attractive and back in the day, I remember a lot of the girls talking about how there was this new younger, hotter version of me.

“You and me… we are one and the same,” AK explains, “Your family sees me as some sort of thug. That I’m bad for your brother because of it.”

“That ain’t the reason…”. I explain.

“Then what is?”

I pause.

I had to tell the truth, “My father was very abusive. I wanted to beat the gay out of my brothers so much. As you know Jamison turned over another leaf and is now straight. Our family just doesn’t agree with your lifestyle.”

He gives me this hard look, “You think Isabella dying was a punishment from God.”

“We have a God that should be feared.”

“No, we have a God that should LOVED and feared,”. He states.

I roll my eyes. “You sound like Joshua.”

“Who isn’t talking to me right now because his family is going around saying that was my gun. Your family is lying. Jamison is lying. The way I love that little girl is good. The way that I love your brother is right. It wasn’t my damn gun,” he says as tears roll out, “You have to believe me Joyous…”

In these moments I felt for him. He was young. He was pure and he was so sure of what he was doing. I was attracted to it. I was attracted to the idea that a man could be full of so much love that he cut so easily

“I do..”

“You do?” He asks.

We are sitting there for a moment. And every part of me gets it.

“I get it. I get the emotion. And you’re a good person AK. Maybe that’s why we don’t get along. Because when I look at you I see me. I get when something feeling so good. I get something feeling so misled. That the sin feels good. But you also have to understand my father was a pastor. I have a very religious family.”

“God is love. You really think he would rather someone deny who they are? To feel love in this world is to connect with another soul. You really think God is love except when it comes to gay love?”

Hearing him put it to those words makes me think. I think hard. It made sense. All my life I’d known that there was a real God, a living God that loved me just as I was.

“If God loves you the way you are then what happens when you start changing?”

He closes his eyes, “Ionno but love wins. I have to believe that. I have to believe when I can’t find God I’ll follow love and it will always lead me that way.”

“That was beautiful.”

I don’t know why I put my hand on his thigh at that moment. It’s AK, my brother’s lover who I hated and despised but who I also related to ridiculously.

“There’s is so much God makes beautiful. Who are we to deny him. There are 450 animal species who have same-sex relationships. He loves diversity. All of us are his works. He made us like this and he makes no mistakes.”

And at that moment there is this hope. It’s this hope that I don’t understand.

But that’s when I cross every line imaginable.

That’s when I kiss AK.

And that’s when he kisses me back.

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