The Feeder (15 page)

Not for me, thank you.

As an individual who has spent a lifetime with one foot on either side of said picket fence, I was a firm believer in equality. Equal work for equal pay and all that shit. If, and that was a big IF, I happened to meet a person with whom I was content to spend my life or a good portion thereof, I envisioned that person being someone with a career, not some picket-fence freeloader.

It didn’t matter much anyway, since no woman would want to marry and settle down with a non-man who couldn’t father children or perform in all the ways a normal man could. That wasn’t to say that I was incapable of pleasuring a woman. I became a master of the art of cunnilingus, but for most women, that was not enough.

I could have easily stepped into either role. I found men attractive as well but my only sexual experience with a man was with my final victim, Caleb. I had ever considered going that way because my role in a male-on-male relationship would have been one of receiver. Being penetrated by a man didn’t sound like much fun and it brought visions to mind of doctors violating my body.

~ Chapter  20 ~

Rita

The closest I’d ever come to a long-term relationship was with my girlfriend Rita, whom I had dated from age twenty-four to twenty-eight. My first real sexual encounter with another person was with Rita. Rita and I met at a nightclub – a gay bar, to be exact.

In the months following my father’s death I started drinking more than usual to numb the pain. For a while, my desire to be an asshole just for the fun of it was gone and all I wanted to do was escape my own thoughts. I sought out public places because they served as a distraction but I avoided confrontation and maintained as much invisibility as possible. I found that in gay bars, I could blend into the crowd without turning too many heads. Nobody wanted to kick my ass for being too pretty. Propositions were few; the men weren’t sure if I was a girl and the lesbians weren’t sure if I was a drag queen in ‘civilian’ clothes. People in a gay bar were a pretty decent bunch, accepting of everyone and everything. It was one place where I wasn’t the weirdest person in the building; one place where I didn’t look gayer-than-cum-on-a-mustache next to the other men.

Rita was different from the other girls I’d dated. She enjoyed being with women as much as men. I was a novelty to her in the beginning; the ultimate conquest for a bisexual woman. She told me right from the beginning that she was bisexual and that if I had a problem with it, I should walk away immediately.

Being of the intersex persuasion, I was a little closer to bisexual than the average guy. I felt more comfortable with Rita than I had with any of the marriage-minded golddiggers I’d previously dated. For some reason I felt compelled to tell her all about myself on our first date – something I’d never done before. I blurted it out right after she informed me that she was bisexual.

She was intrigued and fascinated by my condition, which she knew very little about. Like many people, she had always assumed people were either male, female or hermaphrodite. She was unaware of the many shades of gray that existed between the ‘normal’ definitions of gender. The possibility of a person having ambiguous genitalia didn’t occur to most people.

Rita wanted to know everything about me and began researching the intersex condition right from the beginning of our relationship. She was fascinated by how many different variations of intersex there were. She was horrified by the stories of children who had been mutilated by doctors in the interest of making them ‘normal’.

Being able to be honest with Rita about my secret helped me grow as a human being. I felt more accepting of myself and less shameful about my sexuality. Best of all, she accepted me the way I was and cherished the fact that I was different. She was always telling me how special I was. With Rita, I didn’t have to hide the truth about my anatomy and then end the relationship when the threat of sex became imminent.

She did things to me orally that I’d never dreamed were possible. I had plenty of experience satisfying a woman that way but had never been on the receiving end of it before. Rita taught me how to enjoy the pleasures my body had to offer. I loved her; at least I thought I did. Our relationship was the closest I ever came to feeling love for anyone besides my family.

Rita was one in a million, so it was pretty tough to comprehend when I learned she was fucking around on me.

With a
real
man.

I discovered her affair purely by accident. I don’t know how long she would have gone on deceiving me if I hadn’t come home early from a hunting trip to my father’s cabin at Harrison Lake.

Rita admitted she wasn’t the outdoorsy type but had no objections to me taking my usual trips to the cabin. She understood the major role hunting played in my life. Her idea of rustic was staying at a resort with a view of the mountains and all the conveniences of home. I respected her preference and wouldn’t dream of forcing her to go if she didn’t want to.

On that particular trip, I bagged a young bull elk on the first day and didn’t see the point in staying any longer. Elk meat was the cream of the crop when it came to wild game. It had a flavor somewhere between venison and beef, and was preferable to moose, which could be dry and tasteless unless you knew how to prepare it. I usually had my moose meat processed into sausage but damn, a person could only eat so much sausage. Rita was a vegetarian, so…

I arrived home two days earlier than expected. Loud music echoed through the house. She was home. Rita always listened to music when she did housework.

I smiled, heading upstairs to change and shower before surprising her. The bedroom door was slightly ajar and I wandered in nonchalantly, not expecting to find her there.

Rita was there, and she wasn’t alone.

I didn’t see her at first. All I saw was some guy’s hairy white ass bouncing up and down. It took me a moment to register what was going on; I actually thought for a moment that two strangers were fucking in our bed and Rita had company. I was a little offended that she would let them use our room.

Then I heard the woman making sex noises and I recognized her voice. It was Rita.

“What the fuck?” I roared, dumbfounded.

They stopped in mid-hump, even though he looked like he’d been almost ready to finish. They stared at me in open-mouthed horror, especially him. He jumped to his feet and dodged first from one side to the other, trying to find a way past me. He was a big guy; he probably outweighed me by a hundred pounds, mostly muscle except for a bit of a beer gut. A guy that size could have thrown me aside like a rag doll and run out the door. Wasn’t like I could have stopped him.

The dude was so shit-scared that he ran past me and out the front door into the street without even stopping to grab his clothes first. At first I thought Rita was going to follow him because she looked just as terrified. She glanced from side to side as if looking for an escape route, even though she knew damn well where the door was.

It was then that I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so shitty.

I had just finished driving back from the mountains and then helping my butcher haul the quarters of my elk carcass out of the back of my pickup into his walk-in cooler. Rifle in hand, clothes smeared with blood… I was quite a sight. I must have looked like a murderous psycho to someone who didn’t know any better. No wonder that poor fucker ran without bothering to grab his clothes! I almost felt sorry for him… almost.

I had experienced love, and now I had experienced the negative side of love: heartbreak. It sucked worse than anything had ever sucked.

Rita tried to justify her actions, of course, using the lame excuse that she was bisexual and needed to be with both men and women. She should have just told me she didn’t love me because it would have hurt less. Telling me that she needed ‘both’ was the ultimate slap in the face. She might as well have said that he was a real man and I was not, and was therefore equivalent to a woman. Of course, I’d always known I wasn’t a real man, so how could I have been so naïve as to think I that could pass myself off as one? Rita had told me numerous times that I was all the man she needed and I had been stupid enough to believe her.

I refused to accept Rita’s apology, which wasn’t even an apology. It was just a flimsy attempt at making an excuse for her behavior without showing a shred of remorse or even promising it wouldn’t happen again.

I kicked her ass out of my house that night, tossing her a hundred bucks for a hotel room. I couldn’t look at her anymore. I told her to send for her things and I would have them ready the next day.

I never saw Rita again.

Losing Rita had left a hole in my heart, but it had also left me wiser and more guarded. I understood from that moment forward that women were not to be trusted and that I was an unlovable freak.

No one except for Cammie would ever truly love me. I was destined to be alone forever, but as long as Camille and I had each other, I was okay with that.

Now Camille was gone. For the first time in my life, I felt truly alone.

~ Chapter 21 ~

Polarity

Being alone was something that had never really bothered me before. I’d always preferred my own company to that of other people. The loneliness I felt in the months following Cammie’s death hit me hard and unexpectedly. I’d experienced loss before, first with my mother’s death, then my father’s more recent passing from a stroke.

Camille had always hated confrontations and did everything in her power to avoid them. I, on the other hand, welcomed any opportunity to tell someone off with my acid tongue or give an asshole a punch in the head.

Some might have considered my career choice to be an odd one, given that I didn’t fit the typical geek stereotype but to me it seemed natural. I couldn’t imagine myself working in customer service or sales of any sort. Eight hours of continuous interaction with idiots was bound to result in bloodshed before the end of the day.

I enjoyed working at Internet Works Unlimited, a small computer store that I owned. IWU offered repair service, upgrades and tutorials for people who needed help learning to use their computers. I employed a couple of willing tech students to do the tutorial work and run the front end while I took care of the repair work. I preferred to work alone with the computers, which, unlike people, were predictable and fixable. During my absence, I had closed the shop and posted a sign referring customers to the students, Zac and Dustyn, who were happy to take the jobs on a freelance basis.

Camille was my polar opposite when it came to people. She hated to be alone and always sought to surround herself with adoring fans, particularly of the male persuasion. I never understood her need to be near people, just as she never understood how I could be alone and not be lonely.

We lived vicariously through each other. Even though we didn’t share each other’s little social idiosyncrasies, we understood each other on a much deeper level than anyone could ever comprehend.

I enjoyed being difficult, daring people to challenge me. Camille had trouble saying no to people for fear of offending them. She couldn’t take rejection. Her fear of confrontation had led her into abusive situations more times than I could count. She expressed herself beautifully in writing but seldom did so on her own behalf.

At first it amazed me that she chose stripping as an occupation and that her highest aspiration was to become a famous actress. It seemed contradictory but in a crazy way it made sense. Choosing a job that placed her in the spotlight, stripped down to her most vulnerable form was Camille’s attempt to conquer her insecurities. I mean, after strutting around a stage buck naked in front of a couple hundred leering men, speaking your mind should be easy, right? The constant attention she got from men made Camille feel wanted, liked, loved, even. Not all insecure women get the urge to cast off their clothing and dance naked around a pole but it worked for Cammie.

All of Camille’s men were abusive. It was always the same story, like a sad and tragic play starring Camille, repeated over and over. The names of the cast members changed but they just kept following the same tired old script. As the lone audience member, I would have walked out long ago if the leading lady hadn’t been my sister. I was so tired of listening to Camille make excuses for one loser after another:

“He had a rough childhood. He just needs love. I can change him.”

Blah fucking blah.

Camille used the textbook excuses as if she was the first one ever to think of them.

She refused to acknowledge that she kept repeating the cycle of abuse. Each time it was the same pattern. The men were attracted to Camille for her looks, then treated her like shit because they didn’t care for her as a person. No matter how devoted she was, they were impossible to please. She twisted herself into an emotional pretzel, trying to mold herself into what she thought each man wanted her to be.

At the end, I didn’t think Cammie even knew who she was anymore. With the quantity of drugs and booze she was consuming, I doubted she cared.

~ Chapter 22 ~

Solitude

I tried to resume a normal life. I immersed myself into my work, until I discovered I couldn’t stand interaction with people anymore, even in small doses.

In the past, I’d managed to deal with clients when necessary. After I returned from LA, my attitude had changed, for the worse. I started to imagine myself killing some of my customers – an activity that would certainly not be good for business.

It was the holiday season and my student interns were finished for the year. I would be running IWU by myself until mid-January.

I realized I had a problem one afternoon after watching a woman storm out of the shop, laptop clutched under one pale, flabby arm. She had purchased the computer from a major electronics outlet a few months earlier and had brought it into my shop to be repaired, claiming that it “didn’t work right”.