Gay Meth Addict: Out of a Sex Club and Into a Fist

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 10 Part 2

Warning: Includes sexually explicit scenes and descriptions of domestic abuse.

When I entered the play area of the sex club, I felt like Cinderella arriving at the ball. A dozen or so faces turned to regard me, a new toy to play with. Several liked what they saw. I made my way through the center of the room flanked by slings, glory holes, and various levels of cushioned surfaces, all bathed in shadows cut by lights of reds, blues, and purples. The first guy I played with was even a perfect gentleman, asking my permission to fuck me, which I granted.

With the slam prior to our arrival still charging through my veins, for the next couple hours I was almost literally living my porn fantasy. I was playing on what had been the set for one of my favorite porns, Chi Chi LaRue’s Manhattan Sex Party, a veritable cornucopia of muscle and trade sucking and fucking. With porn being a tweaking requirement at all times, I’m surprised I hadn’t worn out my VHS copy.

A young brute had coaxed me down onto a mattress that lay inside a cage. After enthusiastically feeding on his cock, I flipped over and offered myself up to him. I hung onto the cage bars as he began taking me from behind. Through those bars came another delicious looking cock which I hungrily took into my mouth. For a few moments I got lost in the lustful, debaucherous bliss of being a pig on spit.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Richard’s head popped up out of nowhere, like a fucking Muppet, inches from my face.

“Now?” I asked, the comedy of the moment not lost on me or my playmates. Very Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her.

“Yes, now!”

I sighed. “Pardon me, gentleman.” After they extracted themselves, I made my way over to Richard. He had moved to a dark corner of the play area, picking at his face, eyes darting in every direction. Like a squirrel, he seemed ready to flee at any moment.

Honestly, I wish he had.

Nothing makes you feel like you have your shit together more than dealing with someone more tweaked than you are.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him like an exhausted parent.

“Jackson has spies here.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Jackson! He has spies. I heard them. Someone, some guy, he said…I heard him, he said, ‘That’s the guy. That’s the guy that fucked over Jackson.’”

When Richard and I had been dealing, Jackson had been our supplier — and for a short time my roommate. When Jackson and Richard were arrested, to avoid being arrested myself, and for Richard to show how he was cooperating with the authorities, we gave Jackson up to the DEA. Jackson had been locked up for nearly a year.

“Listen, Jackson is in jail,” I tried to reason. “He can’t do anything…”

“I’m ready to go. Let’s go.”

“Well, I’m not ready to go.”

“We have to leave, don’t you get it?!” He was almost yelling, starting to make a scene. I pulled him out of the play area and into the lobby.

“If you want to go, then go. I’m not ready to go, so I’ll meet you at home.”

Grabbing his clothes from coat check, he shook his head and laughed. “You don’t even know. You don’t fucking get it.” Not really talking to me more than he was thinking out loud. “They’re watching and you don’t fucking care. Fine, see you at home.” With that, he left.

I stood there for a second, wondering, always unsure if I made the right choice. As confident as I was that he was imagining things, a small part of me couldn’t help but think, Does Jackson have spies here? Is someone watching?

“Well,” said the guy manning the coat check. “That was a lot.”

“You have no idea,” I said, half joking.

“Oh, I have some.” His subtext had buckets of stories to tell. If these walls could talk indeed.

I made my way back into the playroom, but the damage had been done. The scene Richard caused had apparently covered me in a patina of undesirability. No one wanted to play with me. After the better part of an hour, I called it quits and left.

It was barely morning in early March, 2004, as I strolled through streets of lower Manhattan. It felt warm, like an early spring, but that could just as well have been the Tina jacking up my internal temperature. Though my enjoyment had been cut short, I still had been well and freshly fucked. I meandered through NoHo into the Village, savoring the lingering euphoria. I floated along in my respite from worries and responsibilities as the morning grew slowly brighter.

I knew full well not leaving with Richard would have him spiraling even more, if that was possible, undoubtedly leading him into another recitative on how I was working “for them.”

I didn’t care.

In fact, I was glad.

I was so fucking tired of fighting a pointless battle against his imaginary enemies.

As I descended into the West 4th Street subway station and caught an uptown A train, I knew I was returning to New Jersey to a very paranoid and irate Richard.

Fine. Bring it on.

I had barely shut his front door when he started in.

“So, had a lot to report on me, huh?”

Here we go.

For the millionth time “I wasn’t reporting in.”

“Sure, sure, then tell me, Mr. Innocent, why the fuck did it take you so long to get back here?”

I sighed as I took off my coat and hung it off the back of a chair. “Richard. I said I was staying. And that’s what I did. I stayed. For about an hour. And it takes just a teensy bit longer to get here without a car.

“No it doesn’t. Not that long.”

“Ok,” I said, bored with this fight. I leaned on the chair and looked at him, my face saying Can we please just cut to the end of the page.

He got a look in his eye and was quiet for a moment. He paced the room, like he saw himself as a hungry tiger in a cage knowing the door to the cage was unlocked.

“How’d you enjoy the 34th precinct?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

This was new. “What?”

“Ha! I knew it!” as if my “what” was somehow a confirmation.

“Knew what? I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Why the hell would I go to the 34th precinct?”

The 34th NYPD precinct covers the top of Manhattan including my neighborhood.

The absolute last place in the world I wanted to be was near a cop. Any cop. There was no way in tweaker hell I would walk into an entire building of them.

“He told me! He told me and, boy, he was right.”

“He who…you know what? Nevermind, I don’t care. I need to shower.”

I tried moving past him but he blocked me. He got up right in my face. “You traitor. You Judas.” His accusations spattered my face. His eyes were bulging. I could tell he wanted to scream these words but his paranoia wouldn’t let him, still sure as shit his apartment was bugged. He was so wound up I was fairly certain he had smoked or even slammed again.

I placed my hand on his chest and slowly but firmly pushed him back to arms length.

“Richard, let me pass.”

“Who is it, huh? Who are you reporting too?!”

“I’m not reporting to anyone.” I began to raise my voice. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

“Shush! Keep your voice down. Bugs. They can hear you.”

“I DON’T CARE IF THEY CAN HEAR ME!”

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut UP!”

The first two swings landed on my left shoulder.

The third was a full force open palm to the left side of my face.

The sound of the smack rang in my ears. I stumbled to the side as a flash of pain blinded me for a second. I reached for my face which was immediately tender. I stared at Richard in stunned horror.

I had never before in my life been struck. I’d never been in a real fight or been beaten up by the schoolyard bully. I’d never, till that moment, known physical violence.

Richard shattered my emotional glass jaw.

I instantly regressed into a frightened child.

I stumbled back till I fell on the couch.

I began to cry.

I covered my head with my arms, afraid he was going to hit me again.

Instead of hitting me, he immediately rushed in with repeated apologies. Not remorseful, but like an older brother who injured a younger sibling and was afraid he was going to get into trouble.

“I’m sorry. Shush. I’m sorry! It wasn’t that hard. Shush!”

He covered me with his body as I hid under my arms whimpering. He wasn’t hugging me so much as he was smothering me, like putting a lid on a grease fire, probably still concerned about me being heard by the “bugs.”

Just as quickly, Richard got off me and started flitting around the apartment. He seemed desperate to try and busy himself with something, anything else. He sat down at his piano and tried playing, he went to the kitchen and started doing the dishes, he went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, but just as quickly turned it off.

The whole time I sat on the couch holding my face. I continued to cry until “Will you shut the fuck up!” Frightened, I bit my lip to keep from making any more sounds.

I don’t know how long I sat there as Richard buzzed around the apartment, but there came a point where I finally spoke.

“I think…” I began to say. Richard was back in the kitchen at this point. “I think…I think I want to call Reid.”

I wasn’t really thinking at that moment. I just knew I was scared and I needed help, and Reid was the first person that came to mind. I knew he would come. If I asked him. I knew. He would come get me.

“Fuck! Call him. Fuck if I care. I don’t think I hit you that hard, but if you think you need to call him, fucking fine.” He grabbed his coat and his keys. “I’m going to the grocery store. I need to get some…hopefully you…just calm down. Breathe. Hopefully you’ll have calmed down. When I get back.”

And he left.

I don’t know how long I sat on the couch before finally standing up.

My head throbbed.

I made my way into the bathroom and looked in the mirror.

My face was blotchy from crying and red where I’d been hit. I could almost make out a clean hand print. I could feel my lips and face begin to swell, building up pressure with the sensation of hundreds of little pinpricks.

I stared at my face, the reflection of a frightened, broken stranger.

Something between a scream and cry escaped my lips, the stress of which sent a hard throb of pain shooting through my head.

I wandered into the bedroom.

I sat down in a chair next to Richard’s bed

I just stared into space.

I wanted badly to pick up the phone and call Reid, to tell him what happened, what Richard had done. I knew he would be over in a heartbeat to help me collect all my things and take me home to Nagle Avenue.

And if Richard was there, Reid would stand between me and him. Reid wouldn’t hesitate to get physical.

But I didn’t call Reid.

If I had, I would also have to confess that I was still using.

I would have to stop using.

And I didn’t want to stop.

So I didn’t call Reid.

After about an hour or so Richard returned.

I got up and met him in the living room.

He had barely put the groceries down when he said, “I’m so sorry, John.” He came over and gave me a real hug.

I hugged him back and, without thinking, said, “That’s ok. You didn’t mean it. It’s ok.”

It wasn’t that I was quick to forgive.

It was that I was relieved he wasn’t going to hit me again.

At least not in this moment.

What had happened was an aberration, a fluke, a mistake. We were both high and awake for too long.

We weren’t ourselves.

“Here,” he said. “Help me put the groceries away and then we’ll slam, ok?”

“Ok.”

And we did.

However, as much as I wanted to write it off and rationalize it away, the crack of Richard hitting me continued reverberating in my head throughout the following day and into my closing shift at Chipotle. As I washed the rice and sauce covered bowls and pans, I was amazed at how my face still stung with tiny pinpricks of pain an entire day later.

I felt broken. Emasculated. Weak.

Had he really hit me that hard?

Was I that fragile?

How could there not have been even a lick of fight in me to punch back?

Was I that…helpless?

Useless?

Pathetic?

Returning home, I sat on my bed eating chips with guac. Each salty crunch was accompanied by a crushing loneliness.

I missed my friends.

I was still in contact with them, to be sure, but mainly to retain the mask of sobriety.

Consequently, even when I was physically with my friends, I was never truly with my friends.

I also missed the days of endless slamming.

Of riding the euphoria till I crashed and then waking up to do it all over again and again and again, getting lost in lustful debauchery, too blitzed out of my mind to even begin to care.

Now, I was slamming, but not nearly as often.

And gone was the innocent thrill of being naughty.

That had vanished with Richard and Jackson’s arrest.

And any that was left was extinguished by my HIV diagnosis.

Now it seemed, with each fleeting slam, I was chasing the grand party I so fondly remember having but never really did, chasing the fuck to end all fucks that would be worthy of a life long HIV diagnosis.

I was trying to have my meth and slam it too.

I wanted my friends.

I wanted to party.

But in trying to have both, I was getting neither.

I was lonely.

I was broken.

I couldn’t keep doing this.

I couldn’t keep this up.

This had to stop.

I had to stop.

I had to choose.

One or the other.

Friends or Meth.

Then it hit me.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was playing three dimensional chess with myself.

Yet, I realized, by choosing one and diving in wholeheartedly, I would put myself on an inescapable path of forcing myself to choose the other.

So, I decided.

The next day, I would go in and quit my job at Chipotle.

And then chase the slam wherever it led.

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Chapter Guide

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