OLIVER
I saw him come in through the first door, the one with the
armaments. I had just finished tending to Michael, after he had been done. He
was breathing fine, but there was something that kept me staying there, wanting
to make sure the breathing kept, but it did so I went out and saw them bring him
in. He wasn’t fighting at first, like most of ‘em, but after he saw the floor
he started to budge a little and then he started to blast.
They told him:
“Nathaniel, keep still! Keep still!”
That didn’t keep him still.
He fell to the floor, flat, and they called me over to help.
I helped as best I could and got him at least to his knees. That was when they
knocked him back down for looking up. I told ‘em to keep calm, but one basted
me in the fact with his fist and I fell flatter than he did, only I got up
faster, knowing faster meant better.
I said: “I better get
back to Michael. He’s in bad shape.”
One of them said:
“You get this queer to a room, right quick!”
The hospital had a hall for every problem and a room for
every incident. My hall was for the queers and that seemed to be where the
trouble laid. I don’t believe that queers are good, but I get paid for a job
and I do it. The job I’d want to do was something I couldn’t do so I did this,
and did it well.
They said they were a disease and I wanted to cure, to help,
to make sure they came out well.
Only they didn’t really come out. But I don’t ever think
that was my fault.
I said to the new guy:
“Just be still. Be all right. Follow me and don’t be dumb.”
I took him to a fresh room, one with a clean bed at least.
He asked him my name and I said it, only quiet. I like to keep quiet like that.
He said that he hates the name Nathanial and would rather be
called Nate. I call him Nate now. Just because it makes him happy, not because
it’s his name.
The room I led him to stunk, but only because someone died
there and no one bothered to open the windows.
Nate was lucky because there were windows to open. Most new
guys got the back rooms because they were better to make the change over time
more quickly. But if that didn’t work they went where the lowest electric bill
was.
I told Nate: “Just
calm down. Just calm down. It’ll be better that way and you’ll be better that
way. I promise.”
He gritted his teeth and then, after a second, spit right at
me.
He said: “Fuck you
and yours!”
I nodded and left the room. Once outside, I asked the men
what had happened.
They said, almost altogether, that it was none of my
business and that I should get back to work and that someone had taken a shit
in room 228, and that I should deal with that instead.
I go to room 228 and don’t find any shit just blood and a
cough and a cough
a cough I couldn’t contain.
MICHAEL
They didn’t say castrate, they said cure. So I saved my rage
for them, when it would be easy to rage then, but it was too hard to do
anything but hold my hands down there and swear. But I only swore to myself
because anything else would only hurt more.
They told me that it was for the best for me and for society
and for the good of the good. I’m not one to care about the good, the better,
or even the best. I don’t care about anything but my balls and how they took
those away, like kids hiding marbles in their pockets just in order to win.
My father always said I was a faggot and I told him right.
Right to his face. He went blank and I went back here and here I think I’ll
stay.
I’m in too much pain now to feel a change, or much of
anything besides pain.
There were places I used to go, places that gave me pleasure
that nobody but pleasure knew about. There was a park back home where I could
go and find someone who would lick my balls and I would come on their chin and
on the grass. They would give me a kiss on the cheek and ask for my number and
I wouldn’t give them that but would still take theirs, just in case. There is
no case for that now, I guess. There is no case to even consider.
I once told a guy I’d blow him only if he came in five
minutes.
He came in two.
The other one grabbed my head and pushed it down into the
pavement until I felt like rubber meat, bleeding out of one eye until I was
blind. I couldn’t see the kicks coming, and so I always sucked my gut in,
always ready for whatever would come. For whatever reason, after the last three
kicks to the gut, I came in my pants and then the boot came down and I can’t
remember anymore.
There was another time when I was in a store, in a bathroom,
and taking a piss. I had had a lot to drink and was taking a long time getting
rid of it all when another guy came in and started to piss next to me, even though
there was four other open places to piss away from me. But he chose the one
place next to me.
I took this as a kinda invitation, so I looked down at his
cock and he looked up at me and smiled. He was kinda hard, which made me get
kinda hard, and then I put my hand up against the bathroom wall and I leaned a
little bit towards him.
He grabbed my hand and threw it behind my back. With his
cock still out and half-hard he told me I was under arrest. He told me I was
soliciting. That I was inciting a lewd act against nature.
That was when I was taken to the station and after 36 hours
of waiting and questioning I was sentenced to coming here, where I could be
rehabilitated.
I didn’t think there was anything other than the arresting
officer that needed rehabilitation.
He was the one with the hard cock.
But I’m the one without balls, sitting in a bed with some
asshole coming in and out to see how I’m doing.
I’m doing fine, thank you cunt-swipe. I’m doing just fine.
OLIVER
Michael and Nate are doing fine, at least to me. Susan
thinks I’m not doing enough to handle Michael, but she’s dumb and hates what I
do anyway.
“Where’s Michael?” Susan says to me.
“I don’t see him in his room and there’s no trace
whatsoever…”
I tell her that he is probably taking a walk, just so he
knows he can.
If I had been castrated, I probably would at least want to
walk it off.
I tell Susan: “What
do you care? You give him medicine in the morning, and it’s only noon.”
I’m done with fooling for hope. This job only barely pays
for my rent, let alone for my kids and girlfriend. We struggle like keeping the
kicking chair something that’s stable. It isn’t stable and I can’t breathe when
I’m around queers that say they’ve done nothing wrong. They know they’ve done
wrong and still won’t say so and that makes a hurricane of bullshit that only
makes me hate them more even when I’m paid to care for them, even though that
means I’m a moron that feel sorry for queers and have to take care of them to
keep the food on the table for my family.
It’s about time to not stand for it. Or at least to pass a
law so I don’t feel so bad.
I’m told to go see to Cal, just to see he’s breathing. He
is.
I ask him: “How are
you doing?”
He stares at me like a stone statue.
I ask him: “Do you
need anything?”
He blinks, which means he does, but I don’t ever know what
it is it actually means so I give him some broth and hold his hand for a second
and leave, turning off the lights.
NATE
They
gave me pills, they did, but I didn’t swallow them. I’d make the gulping sound,
hide them under my tongue when they made me open my mouth, and then go to the
bed they had planned for me.
This
was what they called a “rookie mistake”.
Some
told me that there was nothing to do but swallow, otherwise they would
eventually find out and something worse would happen.
But
now I see them sitting there like buzzards, building a case for themselves to
die, or just die. Those were the choices given. When the nurse gave me the
pills, she touched my cheek and smiled, like what she was doing was something
good and to her it was good. To her, it was her blessing.
I
gulped and opened my mouth and smiled.
When
she left, I spit the pills out in my hand and she came back and slapped me
hard.
“You
take the pills like you’re supposed too!” she yelled, still smiling.
She
grabbed the already soggy pills in my hand and stuffed them back into my face.
She told me to chew, and waited, watching me chew, until the pills were down in
my stomach and I felt like I was drowning and couldn’t breathe.
“That’s
the good boy,” she said. “That’s the good boy.”
She
left the room and my eyes rolled back. I coughed but nothing came up. I coughed
again and nothing came up again.
I
cough and cough and drown in my coughing and then the doctor comes in and shows
me pictures and I cough and the picture changes and I cough and the picture
changes and changes and I cough and I cough and the picture changes and I cough
and cough and cough and the picture changes and I cough and then I gasp and
then the picture changes again.
The
picture changes, I cough, I gasp, and can’t remember whatever next.
OLIVER
Susan said there was a problem with Nate, that she had to
take matters materially.
She said there was going to be a bit of cleanup and that I
should bring a bucket.
I ask her: “What kind
of bucket? What should I expect?”
She says: “Whatever
kind of bucket you have.”
I washed out the bucket I had. It had some blood and vomit
and stuff in it, so it took two rinsings to get it clean again. I filled it up
with some warm water and carried it into Nathaniel’s room with a mop in the
other hand and a sad face.
He seemed too soon to be needing this. But nothing surprises
me anymore.
Nathaniel had thrown up some blood on his bed. He had shit
his pants too, which somehow slipped down onto the floor. He had bruises, but
they always have bruises, and that’s not nothing a mop can clean up.
I clean up what I can, calling him a queer every time I smell
his shit, which is often.
“Faggots have the smelliest shits you know,” I say to him,
but he stays quiet. I wonder if he’s alive but then think it doesn’t matter.
There’s gonna be another one any day now anyways.
I don’t know why I got this job, other than needing the
money and they offered me money. I would normally say no to touching queers,
any given day, but the day I got the job I thought money was more important and
so I let it all go, at least for the job. I thought the doctors were doing a good
job here, doing good at getting rid of the queerness and all. It might hurt,
might make my job harder, more cleaning and all, but they do what they do for
the greater good and I’m proud to be a part of it all.
Anyways, these queers look at me like I’m helping them, and
I am. That’s what Christians do and that’s what makes people good, getting rid
of the bad and change it to good. The good in all of us, here totally welcome
and all that. Totally welcome to change the bad for the good and that’s good and
well that makes me good in the eyes of our lord and savior.
I’m the savior of the sinned to make them good again. Like
children.
It hurts to know that sin exists.
MICHAEL
I lay here and feel nothing, even with my hands between my
legs.
He was the sweetest thing that ever I saw. I can still
remember him even if nothing comes of it. But only a lot came of it, just when
I came.
I picked him up at a bar that I used to go to a lot, a place
that was quiet about it, us being it. You know, the kind of place where you
could get a drink and get your dick sucked, both at the same time. I would go
to those places looking for hot trade, but usually just found the same old
lonely faggot that would sip his gin like a jap jumps at ginger.
He told me his name was Jax and I shoulda known better. But
he was smokin’ and I put my hand on his leg and asked if he wanted a drink.
“That’s OK,” he said. “I always like a guy that’s
chivalrous.”
I wasn’t intending to be chivalrous, only just to get laid.
Halfway through his drink, I could tell he was hard.
I remember wanting to know how his balls felt in my mouth,
but I can’t say for certain anymore.
As they say here, “What is it about a man that makes you
want him? What is it about yourself that you lack that the other one has?”
I always said to them:
“It’s California. What else do you expect me to do?”
They just told me that I was queer and queers needed to be
cured. So I was here, a queer, waiting to be cured.
SUSAN
I held the cup in my hand a few minutes, I think, before
giving them to him. I held the cup and then gave it to him.
He took it and then took the cup of water I held before
swallowing them. He swallowed them.
I looked at him with pity, I have to say. The way he
grimaced at the way he swallowed. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and
shouldn’t be here, but what was I to do? I didn’t get paid to fee pity. I got
paid to push him pills.
Michael was always my favorite. I felt sorry for him because
he knew what was happening to him and didn’t like it. I really didn’t like it
either, but that’s what we do here. Not like anything.
There was one time when I asked him if he needed any pain
medication, just after the surgery, and he said “you mean something that would
just kill me?” and my heart stopped and I didn’t know what to do and so I
touched his forehead and said that I just wanted to help. He closed his eyes
and said I had done enough and that I should just leave the room. I didn’t
leave the room and after an hour or so he opened his eyes and said “you still
here, then?” and I said yes. He said if I wanted to do something I could bring
him a cup of tea and then I did.
He took two sips of the tea and on the third one he spit it
right out at me and smiled.
