Pieces of Hate (25 page)

He followed one in. At first, all it seemed to be was a dirty bookstore filled with the filthiest, most disgusting books and magazines and pictures Peter had ever seen. His skin crawled. He wanted to take a shower immediately. He couldn’t have felt more soiled if he’d messed his own pants. But he followed the wandering faggot as he browsed over a few of the shelves, then went to the counter and muttered, “Five dollars in tokens, please.”

The cashier took the bill and gave him the gold-colored tokens.

Then the faggot crossed the store to a black-curtained doorway with a sign over it that read:

.25¢ VIDEOS

He disappeared through the black curtain as Peter watched. Thinking he might be on to something — seeing a possibly interesting twist in the pattern — Peter went to the cashier, got five dollars in tokens, then steeled himself and went through the curtain.

He looked down a long, dark, narrow staircase, started down slowly and noticed that the air became more and more thick and moist and filled with the smells of sweaty bodies. There was a lot of noise below: loud music, murmuring voices, footsteps, and constant moaning and panting and cries of “Oh, yes, fuck me, fuck me!” and “Harder, do it harder, baby!”

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he turned left and saw them. He couldn’t count how many there were, all pressed together in a narrow corridor lined with doors like the doors of bathroom stalls, but made of smooth, paneled wood. At the other end of that narrow, man-clogged corridor was a red EXIT sign, but Peter would never be able to get through that crowd . . . not without touching them . . . not without letting them rub up against him . . .

He immediately spun around and started back up the stairs. But there were three very big men on their way down, clogging the stairway.

Peter’s eyes widened and he began to perspire a great deal. He turned and headed into the sea of men who were wandering in front of the doors. His lips quivered with disgust as he felt them against him on his way through.

He noticed one of the doors open and, immediately, one of the men in the crowd ducked into the booth. It happened again and again as he made his way slowly through the crowd.

Then, he felt the hand, warm and firm, on his behind, squeezing, its fingers wriggling between his legs.

Peter jerked forward and spun around, but none of the eyes in the group met his — or one another’s, for that matter — so it was impossible to know who had done it. He turned around and started pushing his way through. Until the next hand.

This one covered his crotch. It squeezed, it felt, ever so gently, then harder, teasing . . .

He had to clench his teeth to keep from screaming and his eyes were stretched so wide that he thought they might pop out of their sockets. So when another of the doors opened, Peter threw himself into the booth, slammed the door behind him and locked it.

Spinning around, he turned his back to the closed door and covered his sweaty face with both hands, trying to catch his breath. Everything was so loud . . . the movement outside the booth . . . the rock music playing over hidden speakers . . . all the moaning and profanity coming from the booths.

Finally, he pulled his hands away and saw the dead screen before him. He saw the slot beside it for the tokens. Not sure what else to do, he took a token from his jacket pocket — taking a moment to feel the knife beneath his jacket, just to make sure it was still there — and dropped it into the slot.

Suddenly a man and woman were doing unnatural things to one another on the screen and the sound was so loud it immediately gave him a headache. That was where all the moaning was coming from. There was a square, red-lit button beneath the screen and he hit it. Again and again and again.

They flashed before him: men with women . . . women with women . . . men with men . . . amputees . . . dwarves . . .

He turned his head away from the screen, sickened, and saw the hole to his right. When he looked to his left, he saw another, directly lined up with the one on the right. The holes were built into the booths. He leaned down and could see through booth after booth . . . until he saw the back of a head bobbing up and down.

Peter stood up straight and scrubbed a hand over his sweaty face, muttering to himself, “Guh-g-g-guh-gotta g-g-gggget outta he-he-he-here.”

Then, from the booth to his right, he heard the door slam. He looked down at the hole and saw an eye peering up at him. The eye disappeared in an instant.

His head was throbbing and his stomach felt sick, but he was going to have to go back out there in that crowd of perverted animals.

But before he could do that, he caught some movement in the very corner of his eye.

He looked down.

And there it was — an erect penis. It was enormous, long and thick, and it twitched and throbbed ever so slightly.

Peter didn’t even have to think about it. It just fit into the pattern: the music, the loud moaning, the movement, all that pulsing noise and, best of all, the concealing darkness of this basement of sickness.

He reached into his pocket, unsheathed the skinner’s knife that he sharpened twice a day, lifted it up and brought it down hard.

It sliced through the penis with very little resistance.

The penis did a cartwheel on its way down and hit the floor with a thunk.

Blood began to spurt again and again and again, all over Peter’s hand, all over the walls of the booth, and, somewhere in all that noise, Peter heard the man scream. He would have to leave quickly.

He put the knife away, left the booth with the video screen still playing and pushed his way through the crowd, confidently this time, hands in his jacket pockets, until he got to the exit.

And that was how it had begun.

He developed a system. He went to work at his first job in the morning, spent the afternoons outside the clinics choosing the right men as they left and following them home, then went to his second job at night, then to the video parlors. They were all over the place, not just Times Square, so it was easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

But this was more productive. He was, after all, helping everyone . . . doing the world a favor.

It had gone on for a long time. He couldn’t even remember how long anymore. Day after day after day, the same thing. And it was very fulfilling, it made him very happy. In fact, he thought his work had made him happier and healthier than he’d ever been in his life.

Until he got the cold.

It seemed to last forever, the coughing and sniffling, the sore throat and the fever. That was why he had made an appointment with Dr. Kittering. The doctor had put him on some antibiotics, but nothing happened. He took some blood tests. Peter returned to the office three times. The third time, the doctor asked a question that made Peter so furious, he couldn’t speak for a moment.

“Would you mind if I tested you for HIV, Peter?” Dr. Kittering had asked. “By law, I have to have your consent, but I think it might be a good idea. Just to, you know, rule that out.”

“Yuh-yuh-y-y-you mmmmmean AIDS?”

“That’s right.”

Peter became furious that he would even suggest such a thing and he tried to blurt out his anger, but was thwarted by his stutter. Then he stopped. Something occurred to him. He saw something in this particular pattern. If he protested, the doctor might think he had something to hide, might think that he, Peter, was one of them, one of those unnatural, rectum-obsessed, semen-drinking animals. What did he have to worry about? Nothing. Peter had not even been with a woman, let alone with — it sickened him to think of it — a man. What could a simple test hurt? He was clean. A clean and natural and moral person. So, he’d agreed.

And that was why he sat in the waiting room today . . .

“Peter Heckley, please?” the nurse said.

Peter stood, smiled and nodded at her, but remained silent as she weighed him and took his vitals.

He waited in the exam room for a little while, walking around slowly, looking out the window at the city street fourteen stories below. After a while, Dr. Kittering — a tall, grey-haired man with a pleasant smile and a soft voice — came in with Peter’s chart and closed the door. He rolled his stool over and sat before Peter, who was sitting on the edge of the exam table.

“Peter, I’m very sorry to tell you that you have tested HIV positive,” Dr. Kittering said, looking at Peter with a concerned frown.

Peter could only stare.

“Now, I think it might be a good idea if you were to think back over the sexual partners you’ve had in the last — ”

“Nnnnuh-no!” Peter shouted, jumping off the bed.

“Please, I understand the shock and the — ”

“I-I-I’m a v-v-vuh-vvvvirgin!” he shouted, pacing the room suddenly, moving about like a caged animal, his eyes wide, both hands buried in his hair, clawing and pulling.

Dr. Kittering blinked several times. “Really? You’ve never had sexual relations with any — ”

“Hhmmm-mm!” he growled through pressed lips.

The doctor’s frown changed, deepened.

Peter stuttered and grunted, “I-I-I am n-n-nnnnuh-not a fuh-fuh-fuuhhh-f-f-faggot!” He spun around, rushed toward the doctor, grabbed the lapels of his white coat and jerked him up off the stool, sending the chart clattering to the floor. “There’s a muhmuhm-m-m-mistake! I duh-don’t sss-sss-suck cuhcuh-c-c-c-cocks!”

Unfazed, the doctor put a gentle hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Peter, I understand that you’re very upset right now, but you don’t seem to understand that you don’t have to do those things, or be those things, to get the AIDS virus. Don’t you realize that? It’s not a homosexual virus, Peter. Viruses don’t really care what you do in your spare time.”

Peter let go of him and began pacing again, his movements more frantic and jerky, his steps broader, his face wild with horror and confusion.

“Buh-b-but how?”

“Have you ever had a blood transfusion?”

He shook his head hard.

“Tell me honestly, Peter . . . do you use I.V. drugs?”

Peter looked at him with crazed fury in his eyes and bared his clenched teeth, his quick breaths hissing in and out between them as he shook his head again.

The doctor looked confused as he sat on the stool again and picked up the chart. He frowned thoughtfully a moment, then said, “You’re a janitor, correct?”

Peter nodded. “Nuh-n-not thuh-that. Nuh-nnnnoth-ing.”

Doctor Kittering nodded silently, understanding what he meant.

“Tell me, Peter, in the last few years, have you come into contact in any way with, say, blood? I mean, maybe at the scene of an accident, or something? Perhaps some of it was splashed on you or — ”

Peter froze, his shoulders hunched. He turned slowly to face the doctor, face pale, eyes even wider than before.

“Buh-bluh-bl-bl-b-b-blood?”

“Well, yes, if you were to, say, get some blood carrying the virus into an open wound or if it were splashed into your eye at some time . . . that’s all it would take.”

“Blood?” Peter breathed without a stutter, his clawed fingers moving from his hair to pass down his face, pulling at his skin. “Blood? Blood? Bluh-bluh . . . blood?”

“Are you all right, Peter? Does that ring a bell? Do you think that could be . . .”

The doctor stopped, staring at Peter’s face as it literally bloated with anger and hatred and became almost monstrous.

Suddenly, Peter turned and ran toward the window, throwing himself through the glass, screaming, “Bloooooooood!”

And as he fell, wide eyes watching the street below grow closer and closer, Peter only hoped and prayed that he would land on at least a couple of those cock-sucking semen-slurping, butt-fuck —
 

OPHILIA RAPHAELDO

This is for Oprah, Phil, Sally and Geraldo; please remember that, in the great scheme of things, ratings mean nothing at all — and the dignity and feelings of the people you exploit mean everything.

Della was the last to arrive.

The four of them had agreed that morning to meet for coffee and some sinister, waist-expanding crullers at Lolly’s house. The other three women — Lolly, Marilu and Brenda — were seated at the kitchen table watching a nineteen-inch color television on the bar that separated the kitchen from the dining room.

“Hey, Della!” Lolly said with a grin. “Where’ve you been?”

She dropped her purse on the bar behind the television and headed for the table, saying, “I had to take care of some banking that Mitch forgot about yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah. Figures,” Lolly chuckled.

“Huh? What do you mean?” Della asked as she seated herself and grabbed a cruller.

“Well . . . it’s always the men in our lives who trip us up, right?” Lolly laughed, shrugging as she looked around at the others. She was a rather large, fleshy woman and when she smiled, her cheeks pooched out to make her white face look larger than usual.

The others laughed with her, all of them nodding in agreement as Della bit into her cruller.