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Piper’s Song By C. N. Pitts
He said he was doing it for your own good, every time he hit you. It was the mantra of your childhood. Didn’t matter where you were or who was around, if you misbehaved or he was in a bad mood and you happened to set him off, down went the panties and out came the hand. He’d smack your bare ass and then leave you standing there half-naked, tears of shame and humiliation burning hot trails down your little face. It was worse when you were home and he’d been drinking, because those were the times when he’d beat you at random, and beat you hard. Not just spankings either. Like the time when you were twelve and you had your Backstreet Boys CD playing just a little too loud for his taste. He slammed your door open, threw you down, and slapped the shit out of you, even throwing in a punch before he wrestled you out of your pajama bottoms and went to work on your ass. By then it was almost a game; you knew he wanted you to scream and cry so you’d take whatever he dished out for as long as you could. Sometimes he’d win and you’d give up and cry, other times you’d make it through until he ran out of steam, standing over you panting and calling you a stupid little cunt. By the time you hit fourteen, you didn’t cry during the beatings anymore. You did cry when the beatings became rapes, but only the first few times. Ten years later and you’re in a shitty motel room, lying on a big pad that’s meant to be used for housetraining dogs and letting some anonymous guy piss all over your tits for the $20 it’ll take to buy enough heroin to get you through a few more hours. He tells you he wants to piss in your mouth, and you let him. You want to cry but you don’t. He said he was doing it for your own good, every time he hit you. Thanks, dad. * * * I was walking back to my motel room from the store on the corner, on the down slope of my high but still wrapped in the fuzzy Jesus-kiss of the heroin, when a white mini-van pulled up ahead of me and parked. The passenger-side window slid down, and I stuck my head in. “Hey, you need a ride?” the guy asked. They always do. “Not really, man,” I said, pointing down the street. “I live right over there.” He wasn’t bad looking, for a guy on the pull. The crew-cut was bald at the top of his head and he was a little on the podgy side, but he had nice eyes behind the glasses and the smile he was giving me seemed genuine rather than predatory. I lit a cigarette and waited. Family guys and first-timers are always awkward when the dance starts. “A little company then?” I looked at the pale spot on his finger and made sure he saw me doing it. “Your wife not gonna mind?” I asked. “The wife’s at work,” he said. “Hop in, let’s talk.” “Sure.” I got in. “My name’s Piper, what’s yours?” “Edward,” he said. “My friends call me Big Ed.” I let him have the innuendo-laden giggle that I knew he’d been fishing for. “And do you want me to be your friend, Big Ed?” I asked, staring openly at his crotch. He fidgeted at that, rubbing the spot where his ring would have been if it wasn’t in his pocket. First-timers always do this, hide the ring. Like hookers are judgmental or some shit. “Depends on the cost of friendship, I guess.” He looked me over bottom to top. “How much would it cost for me to be friends with you, Piper?” “How good a friend do you want me to be?” I asked, flipping my cigarette out of the window and rolling it up. “I think,” he said, after a brief pause, “that for the next half-hour or so I would like for you to be my very best friend.” Conversation isn’t the only thing family guys and first-timers are twitchy about. I knew the “half-hour” would be more like ten minutes, and the better part of that would be spent taking off and putting back on his clothes. Unless he wanted some freak, I’d have him ridden to heaven and back with plenty of time left to score again and still get home before Days of our Lives came on. “Handjob or a blowjob is ten,” I told him. “Fucking is twenty. I will do other shit, but unless you’re a regular I charge extra.” “How much extra?” he asked, and I could tell just from looking at him where he was going with it. Poor guy, wifey won’t let him put it in her tight little Catholic asshole no matter how much he begs so now he’s out trolling for his fantasy. Anal is nothing. There are things that hurt a lot worse, and I like those too. “You want, you can fuck me in the ass for forty,” I told him. “Sounds good,” he said, and then the whole world imploded. * * * The first unmarked cruiser screeched to a halt in front of the van, while the second one rolled into position behind it. Cops in plainclothes with their badges hanging from chains around their necks poured out onto the street and surrounded it. The biggest cop I had ever seen in my life tapped on the window by my head with the hand that wasn’t behind him on his gun. “Miami-Dade police!” he barked. “Step out of the vehicle with your hands where I can see ‘em, now!” I looked over at Ed and he shrugged. “Sorry,” he said, and flashed a badge at me. “Ah, shit,” I said, and popped the door. I stood, turned, and put my hands on the side of the van. There wasn’t much point in a “What’s this all about officer?” after telling an undercover cop that he could ass-fuck me for $40. My arms were pulled back and cuffs locked around my wrists. “She says her name is Piper,” said Officer Ed from somewhere behind me. “We’ve got her on tape making an explicit deal, sex for money. No question.” “The offer’s still good too,” I said, laughing. I think it’s fucking hilarious that any random dipshit in a bar can drop $40 worth of liquor down your neck, lie his ass off to you, and then drag you home and take advantage of you, but charge them up front to go straight to the punchline willing and it’s handcuffs and cop cars for you even though it’s the same fucking thing, only with honesty. There’s nothing on God’s green earth more pointless than a vice cop, and I think deep down they all know it. I looked at Ed. “It’s gonna be another ten for the cuffs, though. I told you I charge extra for the kinky shit.” “That’ll be enough, ma’am,” said the big cop, turning me around. “Name please?” I nodded in Officer Ed’s direction. “Dude already told you, it’s Piper.” “Not your street name, ma’am,” said Officer Big-Boy. “Your real name.” “I don’t got one, man,” I told him. The problem with heroin is that you can’t really control where the high takes you; all you can do is make suggestions and hope that it listens. It’s like trying to work a puppet with rubber-bands instead of strings. Right then it was starting to get tired of all of those useless, buzz-kill motherfuckers, and it was getting real tired of me telling it to stay cool. Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy. “Do you have any personal identification on you?” he asked. “Aren’t you a big fucker,” said the heroin. “I bet you have a big ol’ horse cock too. Can I see it?” “I asked you, ma’am,” he said, “if you have any identification on your person.” The other cops were chuckling, and I could see the redness creeping up Officer Big-Boy’s neck. “C’mon man, show me your cock. I’ll let you fuck me. I’ll let all you guys fuck me if you want.” “Ma’am, I am not going to ask you again,” he said, and it was easy to see that he was getting close to full-blown pissed off. “We’ve already got you on prostitution and if you don’t start cooperating there will be additional charges filed, starting with obstruction and resisting arrest. Do I make myself clear? Now what is your name?” The heroin didn’t like him anymore. I could feel it like a glass breaking in my head. “Fuck you!” my mouth screamed as the rubber-bands snapped. “Fuck you fucking Nazis! I’m missing my fucking soap opera!” I tried to knee Officer Big-Boy in the balls, but he got himself turned just enough so that I only grazed him. Bug-eyed and grunting from the pain, he reached out with a meaty fist, grabbed my top, and yanked, hard. My feet tripped up on the curb, and without my hands to catch me I slammed face-first into the sidewalk. Fireworks were going off inside my skull, there was a knee in my back crushing the wind out of me, and somewhere out in the fog I could hear voices yelling for me to quit resisting. Heroin is called ‘horse’ for a reason. When horses get pissed, they kick. It was still kicking and screaming at them when they finally got the leg restraints on and picked me up like so much garbage. In the cruiser I was shoved belly-down across the back seat, but managed to catch one of the fuckers on the kneecap with a last fish-like lunge of my legs. I heard the grunt of pain and I hoped it was Officer Big-Boy. The door slammed. “Fuckers!” I spat blood and snot onto the floor of the car. “I’m missing my fucking soap!” * * * Four hours later, they told me I was dead. * * * in
a now-defunct anthology from the Red
Light District.
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