Knights of Deception (Excerpt 2)

Complete Knights of Deception novel can be purchased @ G. D.'s Storefront on  LULU website @ http://stores.lulu.com/enlightenment4theheart

Peter Ripley

Peter Ripley’s life seemed to be spiraling out of control.  He hated his job, despised his circle of friends, and had grown irritated with the whole gay club scene.  He hated being called girl. How many times did he tell them he knew what he had swinging between his legs and it didn’t purr?  Every time he went out with them, he swore to himself that it would be the last time then, if his life wasn’t already complicated enough, Amanda’s persistent unwanted advances were wearing thin on his already frayed nerves. 

She seemed nice enough when he first met her and, for the most part, he did want to meet new people so he could start weeding out his current circle, but:  Damn. Damn. Damn. “What the hell was a straight woman doing in a gay club looking for a damn husband?” he asked Freddie Ortiz, a fellow coworker he felt he could trust.  

Freddie was a stunning Latina, with more curves than the Indianapolis speedway, she was brown skinned, with curly black hair, with an ass that would make most men say J-Lo who?  “Peter, you might be reading her wrong; she probably digs you the same way I do.  Do you think I’m trying to push up on you?  I’m always pinching you on the ass, and checking out your package I mean, hell, you are a nice looking man.  Are you sure you don’t want to taste a little coo-coo?” she asked, laughing, filing away at her long red nails.

“Bitch, please, I’m strictly dickly!” he said, laughing along with her.  “No, Freddie, it’s different with her.  I mean the way she looks at me, the questions she asks.  Like the one you just asked, she asked me too, but she had this look in her eye that caused me to perspire under my eyes.” 

“Really, hum…well, who knows, some women like gay men because they can relate so well to them but, any sane straight woman knows, if you both are into dick, instead of a relationship it would be a battleship, cuz let me tell you, I ain’t into sharing no man with nobody, know what I mean?” she said, again, laughing at herself. 

“I ain’t scared to fight a woman, baby!” I told her, laughing along with her again.  “Look, I’m serious.  One time when I was leaving my apartment I could’ve sworn I saw her car parked out in the front of my building.  She called me seven times last night”.

“So, what’s the big deal about that, maybe she wanted to talk about something”.

“Within thirty minutes?  I don’t think so…I think she is a camping trip short a tent”. 

We both laughed.

“Well…that does sound a bit extreme.  Have you expressed your concern about the situation, dude?” 

“No, not yet, but I believe I’m going to have to say something before it gets worse, because I’m not trying to lead no unstable woman down a rickety path without an escape route.  Damn, that’s what my ass gets for being polite – hey, wasn’t that a Jackson Five song?” I said, adding a little humor to the conversation. 

Sucking her teeth, and taking a break from her nail filing, she looked up at me and, waving her emery board she said, “Um…dude, I think you met Darling Nikki!” she said, bursting out in a bird like sounding  roll of laughter.

We both looked at each other then said, “Grind, Grind, Grind, Grind…!” again, both laughing.  

“I tell you what, sexy man; I’ll go to the club with you tonight.  Lord knows I need to get out of this rut I’m in, and at least I’ll be in the company of men I ain’t got to beat off with a damn fist – shit, that’s why I keep my ass at home now – I’m sick of meeting these brain damaged, self centered, ripped bodied, men…hell, I might meet me a woman up in that bitch tonight!” she said, cracking herself up again –something I loved seeing her do.

“Freddie you giving up dick would be like Kirk giving up sampling old R&B jams, turning them into church songs.”

Together we said “It’ll never happen…” Once again we laughed in unison.  

Peter Ripley grew up in a middle-class neighborhood which was predominantly black at one time, but the cultural landscape had changed over the years.  His childhood was somewhat normal until a life altering moment:   Carol and Mike Brady, Florida and James Evans, George and Louise Jefferson, Stephanie and Jonathan Hart, Joseph and Katherine Jackson – the whole heterosexual model broken – in that one moment when his dick got hard for Brandon Michaels. 

He and Brandon were buddies back in the day.  Their parents were best friends.  Their sisters used to play dolls together.  They must have rolled around and wrestled on the front lawns of their parent’s homes a million times, but that moment was different.  He never noticed the imprint of Brandon’s piece straining against the side of his left pants pocket before, but at that moment…they both touched each other’s… wait, how? What? …

“You want to do it?” Brandon asked with an intense look of lust in his eyes.  Both of us were breathing heavy and, I cannot explain the moment from his point of view but, from mine, it felt like a lion was in my pocket and baby it was ready to roar.

Well, without getting too graphic we “did it” dozens of times.  In the bed when we’d spend the night with each other, on that old trunk on the side of his parent’s house, in my room when nobody else was home but us, in his room when nobody else was there but us, until, one day, he told me he had a girlfriend.

“Damn, man, you don’t ever want to do it anymore,” I told him, but then, luckily, there were others more than willing to “do it”, and boy did I get to “do it”.  Eventually, one by one I saw each and every one of my “do it” buddies take the path to heterosexual-ville while I was on the one leading to homosexual-hell. Weren’t there any guys like me?

 That moment…that very instant…everything changed.  Showering at school became the ultimate terror because I couldn’t help thinking about:  What if the Johnston stiffened up and oh my god what if somebody caught me looking at theirs?  I was in adolescent agony.  I was in limbo behind iron closet doors, too frightened to step out, and too crippled by depression to fight. 

A year out of high school I went to my first gay club with a fake ID and, once I was inside, I knew I was in another world – but that world wasn’t one I could identify with – snowflakes were not only on the mountain tops, they were everywhere in that club.  It wasn’t until I went to a black gay club did I feel like there was hope but, I’ll be dammed, this became another crazy ass moment in life-- a moment when I realized I was, not just part of the black community, but I was now also part of another one, a gay one. 

“When I wake up in the morning…you bring me breakfast in my bed…”  Party time!  This club had the thumping beats, the chocolate brothers, and the rump-shaker dancing.  Fuck, I had arrived. 

Finally, I had found my place; however, right when I thought I had found a little peace and pride, a strange disease came along and started wiping out gay men. Bathhouses -- yea, I got to go to one twice – there was lots of naked men and sex, but it was never a scene I could stomach.  I likened it to loaning five hundred guys, I didn’t know, a pair of my shoes – hell-to-the-no – you keep the mother fuckers -- I don’t want them anymore -- you want to stick what where?  Oh, hell no that hurts.

I am not a prude.

I am not a baby. 

Damn.  Damn.  Damn.

Then, Brandon’s ass started grilling me about shit!

“You went where?” He asked, looking at me in disbelief.   “Pete, why you hanging out with that dude, everybody knows he’s gay, man; you don’t want people to start saying that shit about you.  Do you?” Brandon asked, looking at me from across the table. “Man, I don’t want to talk about it, Brandon”.  I was frustrated – and that wasn’t an understatement.  I still wanted to “do it” with him, but all he wanted to do was stroke the pole or have me bobbing up and down on the Sequoia  – which was something he never reciprocated – and damn, my jaws were tired.  

“Pete, man, how do you know you don’t like the pussy if you ain’t ever hit it before?” Brandon asked. 

“Man, I wouldn’t know what to do,” I told him, however, if it meant we could “do it” again, I was willing to try anything, so I continued to listen.

“All you have to do, rouge is get it hard, put it in the hole, and start poking it,” he said, rubbing my shoulders.  “I got a girl that will do it with you too.  She likes you anyway”. 

Okay, I agreed to try it.

He set things up.

Okay, I did it. 

Now I can’t get rid of her.

I felt like shit, because I used her. 

Plus, after all that, Brandon still wouldn’t “do it” with me again. 

Damn. Damn. Damn.

Finally, I had to flee that little community to be free.

I thought that life outside those walls would be less complicated. 

Yea, that’s what I thought.