Third snapshot. So one day, or night, rather, I’m walking down Baychester, looking for a better highway to sleep under, I guess. First mistake, nobody looks for cock on Baychester. One person in the car says, “Yo, you one of them good-time boys?” and me, I’m thinking that I’m a pro so I can show some sass, so I say, “What kind of time you think is good?” And I’m riding this moment because I get to be all witty and shit, clever, and the car stops and he tells me to get in. And I’m looking around because this is the Bronx yo, not Chelsea, and I don’t want any trouble. But the man shows me some cash and I get in. Second mistake: Don’t jump in a car with a john without checking the backseat first. And the man, another Jamaican, says him don’t buy puss in a bag so open the bag and make me see the goodies, and I zip down my pants and take it out, and then he asks me to jack off and I’m feeling weird, like this is one of those real freaks who just wants to watch me cum, so I start to rub my cock even though it feels really, really weird, and suddenly the car stops and three guys jump out from the backseat. “Fuckin’ batty boy,” one of them says, and they open my door and pull me out. I didn’t even notice that we had turned down some lane and the only witnesses would be rats. So they form this circle and one by one they grab me by the shirt, spin their arms like a whirlwind, and punch me in the face or the stomach, and every time I get hit it’s like another explosion, and I vomit and that just makes it worse. And if I fall they pull me up and punch and kick me over to the next one, who punches and kicks me in the balls and I fall to the ground again and taste the garbage on the asphalt, and my eyes are so blurry that I can’t see nothing. All I see is four blurs bent over me, then all of a sudden there are three blurs, then two. Two blurs jump up and try to fight a new blur. The new blur is black and white at the same time. The new blur flashes something shiny and plunges into one of the two. The last blur runs to the car and drives off. The new blur smells like sulphur. I see a hand coming toward me and I try to push it off, but this last blur is too strong. Then I realize that I was in the air. Gary picks me up and carries me back to this place.
I’m in this shack for I don’t know how long. Back then I thought he was a miracle, but not long after that I realized that the only reason he was on that street was that he was cruising for ass too. I would have laughed if it wasn’t so hard. A gunman on the road, Jamaican at that, looking to pick up a male whore. That said, I barely saw him. His room stunk. It was a hotel room—no, it wasn’t, it was some Christian-home thingy. I soon realized that it was not his house that stunk, but outside. One of those places where garbage is never picked up on time. I didn’t care, I would have followed him anywhere. I was there weeks or months, I don’t know. He was barely there though. Sometimes I would wake up in the night only to hear heavy breathing beside me. He would smell like sulphur and he would be fast asleep. I’m wondering if people have asthma attacks in their sleep.
For a good while I couldn’t see very good so I thought what I was seeing was not really real. I thought I was making it up, but when my eye swelling went down and I woke up and saw who was in bed beside me, I had to slap my mouth shut to stop the scream. In the bed was the whitest man I’d ever seen in my life. I wish I could say how it shocked me, I wish I could. At first I thought he was white. I couldn’t form a word or a fucking thought. He was in the bed, sorta curled up in a red brief. His hair was light yellow, lighter than any blond I know, and his eyebrows were white and his skin was just covered in white hair. I stooped down beside his face and saw that his lips were thick and his nose kinda flat. I’d never seen an albino before. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. I touched his hair, which was really coarse, and when I moved my hand he was looking at me. We just stood there. I was looking at him and he was looking at me.
Every now and then—shit, who am I fooling, every goddamn day Gary will just disappear like that and don’t come back for hours, sometimes days. And he’ll either be in a really good mood or a really fucked-up one and ask me for coke. I will tell him that I never do that shit and I can feel his punch coming before he even clenches his fist. This is so damn pathetic. I feel like the woman who loved too much. Then again,
