THE LOGAN TAPES – 2 – Sex in the slammer 2

To Nicole Wagner the Deadly Gambit in the hope that she gives
us Broken 3 soon because, frankly, I do need my Nicole fix.

We go together to the showers and wash in silence.
I admire his softhard young masculine beauty, he really is
beautiful, like a classic statue, long elegant muscles and
velvet-silk skin. For some reasons he keeps his front obstinately
turned away from me, thus affording me the unalloyed pleasure
to ogle his plump little ass, mandolin shaped and still almost
hairless – that's the greatest beauty of pure redheads, no hair. I
can see he's not started shaving yet, the copper fuzz on his
buttocks mirrors the one on his face – inviting and proud and
sweet and remote all at the same time… Logan, Logan, now you
wax poetic on an ass!
Yes, well, but if you could have seen it then, all
diamond-sprinkled by the the shower and wriggling enticingly, if
unconsciously so, you would have waxed poetic too, believe you
me. My hands itch to touch it and the Wolverine-cock struts its
stuff, but I'm a man of my word and so I just watch, and, because
Logan-me has dignity, I don't even wank.
Ordeal – oops, shower – over, we dry oursleves, put on our
depressing uniforms and go to eat our breakfast.
We eat our breakfast – dusgusting but this is a one-item-menu
restaurant – in silence, almost deafened by the frantic whispers
making the rounds.
"Steel's mark…" "Steel's mark…" "Steel's mark…"
Have they got nothing else to talk about? It seems not.
I eye the kid to see how he's taking it, but he seems indifferent.
"Nice control you have there, kid, hope you can keep it up." I
suddenly murmur to him and he finally looks at me and nods.
`Ah, so you don't want to talk, huh? No prob.' I think and eat.
Breakfast over, I go to the library and the kid comes with me.
Boring, isn't it? Monotonous, dull, repetitive, tedious… dead
boring!
But that's life in the slammer for you. And that's why I'm editing
out large chunks of narrative because every day is the same,
every day the same things happen in the same sequence. Let's
leave that as read and let me tell you of the interesting bits.
When the kid finds out I'm going to the library his eyes grow
huge.
"What?" I bark, but inside I'm laughing `ah, that look on his face!'
"N… nothing monsieur" he stammers a little in surprise.
"I don't look the type, huh?"
"No!" indignant, then he surrenders "Well, yes, monsieur. I was
wrong."
"Ok. By the way, they call me Steel here, but call me that and you
can tell your head goodbye."
He tilts his aristocratic head and says, not quite smiling: "Is
monsieur alright?"
"Yes. Or I'd have told you to stop before."
"And what's my name here? Cunt?"
He can't get *that* out of his head, can he? Well, it's
understandable, I would find it a very large and very hot potato to
gulp down.
"No. I'll call you kid, because that's how I think of you, but they'll
call you Red. Or else. Don't worry."
He doesn't much like `kid' or `red' either but, like me, he comes
to the conclusion that things could be worse so he nods.
That night he lies on his bunk awake for a while listening to the
nights sounds of sex, pain, grief or desolation that are the
darksong of the slammer.
When lights are out you can be yourself in the dark, you can do
all the things you never do during the day, and I do mean *never*,
like touching tenderly or cruelly, like whispering the secrets of
your soul, like weeping which is the day's cardinal sin. They
smash you, and you rage or fall sullenly silent, if you weep you're
made to weep every day for the duration of your enforced stay in
here. But the night is for weeping, in the merciful darkness you
can sob to your heart content.
Next morning I remember I haven't done a very important thing
so after breakfast I push the kid back into our cell and say:
"You a streetkid, aren't you?"
He nods "Yes, I was. Not now. Why?"
"You've never been in jail." It's not a question.
"No!" Damn his temper!
"Spare me." I snap, "And curb your temper. Getting time is
nothing, it happens. See? I don't want to know if you're innocent
because I already know you are. We are all innocent here and
that's a given."
He smiles then, a small secret smile.
"Now you may know streetlaw but you don't know fuck about
slammerlaw. So sit down and listen."
I tell him the written rules and the unwritten law and explain that
the unwritten law is never to be broken. I say loud and clear that
he may circumvent the written rules and if he's not caught at it
nobody will rat on him. But if he breaks the unwritten law I'll be
the first to rip him open and the last to help him.
He listens and I see he's trying to memorise what I'm saying.
"You can ask me anytime, just so nobody can hear you. Okay?"
Poor kid! Poor streetwise kid in hell. He's a cocky bastard, he is,
but this is a bit much.
He is pale now, but his eyes are still direct and strong – you've
no idea how strong he is, he has a soul like tempered steel…
and me? I am a sucker for strength. It draws me like a magnet,
like a lodestone.
And the Wolverine-cock adores strength.
"Okay, monsieur. What do we do now.?"
He said `we', have you noticed? I savour the sound and the
implications. `We', yes, I like that. I like that very much.
"I'm going to the library. But you don't have to follow me. Nobody
will touch you now you're marked."
But he follows me and I don't know why. Not for protection, that's
for sure, and not in fear. And as he walks in liquid long strides he
looks like a panther, not a puppy following his master.
Days pass; hours drip, dribble and puddle in the sameness of
the days.
Nothing happens at night.
He always has his back to me in the showers, and I will die
before I try to steal a peek, but I'm curious, you've no idea how
curious I have become.
I have the time to read three new books.
And to renew his marks three times.
We're in the gym… Ah, right. I forgot to tell you this is a *very*
modern jail, all the comforts of home. Flushing toilets – don't
make me say again how old I am, this should date me – a
library, two workshops, a theatre group and a gym.
From the first day he discovered the gym, my kid is there all
afternoon, after the obligatory walkabout in the yard. I go there the
first time to ensure the beefs in there know he's out of bounds,
but stay most days just to watch him.
He goes through a hellish lot of exercises that fluidly they melt
into one another. That's lovely to watch, but that's just for
starters.
It's when he starts his jumping, kicking, pirouetting, jumping,
landing, rolling, twisting, kicking, jumping, landing routine that all
stop doing what they're doing and watch, hypnotised.
It's such a joy to watch him dance this dance of balance and
flight that I smile, foolishly, I admit, but then everybody's smiling
foolishly so it doesn't matter.
You could believe him invincible then, you could believe him a
godling come to Earth for a lark.
You could desire him to madness, then, as I do, forcibly erasing
images of those supple limbs entwined with mine to keep the
beast at bay.
This particular day, this ugly beef comes in in the middle of this
pyrotechnic display and stops dead with his chin kissing his
sternum.
He's a new one, he's young, he's really beefy, really tall and
really really mean.
He's never been to jail before.
How do I know? He makes straigth for my kid, his intentions
clearly legible in his mad pig's eyes.
He's trouble.
Trouble with a capital t.
He says: "Come down and give me head, cunt."
The silence that ensues is not the silence of people not making
any sound or of people thinking of their own business or even
the silence of an empty room. This is a silence beyond
not-sound, when it becomes so loud it hurts your ears. This is
the silence before the kill.
The kid lands light, as usual, but the tiny sound breaks the
bubble of silence and is deafening.
We all blink.
"Make me?" the kid says, cocky and higher than a kite on the
sheer joy of moving that fine-tuned body. His words are carefully
insulting, his voice carefully lethal.
I lean back against a wall and grin. This will be fun to watch.
A terminally stupid beef by my side says: "Aren't you going to
save your cunt's a… OOOOOOOFFF!"
Oof because I've punched him in the belly with all my strength
and all the Wolverine's rage so he folds and is out of it.
"Nah." I tell the ambient air "Red needs the exercise."
Now you can't fight long in the slammer for the ABC reasons I've
told you, but Turd – that's how I've decided the pigeyed beef is
going to be named, apt, huh? – doesn't know them and he starts
to run towards my kid, roaring.
Roaring, for fuck's sake! He has lost any supporters he may
have fleetingly had with that, now everybody is ready to finish the
job if the kid and I don't do it.
But the kid is in waiting for him – I don't know if he is scared in
that moment, he doesn't show it, in fact he's grinning an evil grin
that makes his mutant eyes glitter – and as soon as the beef is
near enough he kicks viciously at his balls – way to go, kid!
That's how we flatter them in the slammer! No fucking etiquette
when you're a stick and your enemy's an elephant – then, so
quickly you can barely see his leg, he kicks higher in the belly
and the chest. *Then* he jumps and kicks him in the forehead.
The beef is thickskinned, yes, but he's starting to fold, so my kid
just kicks him twice on the chin and jumps back not to get
squashed as the beef – no, Turd now – falls down.
It happens faster than the time I take to tell you and the kid is
standing untouched, unmarked and gloriously, thoughtlessly
drunk on his victory.
He smiles so wide and luminous he can't laugh around it and
that's good because we don't need a whoop of victory after the
roar, but I can't help smiling back as proud as he is, and I'd rot in
here a thousand years before I refrained from smirking all
around, a smirk that proclaims: `See? Touch him and you die!'
I limit myself to saying: "Tell Turd when he wakes up not to try
and take revenge by doing some cute ratting to the guards, will
you?"
They all mutter agreement. Turd is a good name and they know
how to explain this thing very very clearly to him.
To each his own. Tastes I mean. The thought of screwing Turd
when that gigawatt smile is turned on me is ridiculous not to
mention nauseating.
Everyone in the gym is slapping the kid's back and muttering
gruntish congratulations and he's basking in all the glory, but
eventually he comes to me.
"Liked it, monsieur?" he asks disingenously, the smile has
softned into something so sweet my cock jumps a little – down
boy, bad Wolverine! NOT NOW! – "I did well, didn't I?"
"You made me proud, kid. I knew you had it in you."
BANG! His half-closed eyes slam open, he didn't expect this and
his smile disappears.
"I thought…" He's not sure if he wants to say this here, but now
he's started he can't see how to stop, so he gulps and goes on
"I thought you wanted to punish me."
Now it's my turn to be startled "What for?" I ask.
"For not saying I'm ready all this time, monsieur." There, now it's
out, he feels better.
It's not easy anywhere, I suppose, to say a thing like that, but it's
harder in the slammer where everything is magnified by the
boredom and picked to pieces in the search for an excuse to get
angry.
I realise that if I can't read him very well, he can't read me at all.
Because I'm used to the life, the growling fuck-me-not persona
is always on display and because we never talk much and never
at night, he knows nothing about me. Must have been really nice
for the kid to be alone in a cell with a claw-armed bastard who
wants his sweet fanny.
It makes me pity him and it makes me chuckle. The chuckle
wins.
"Hell, no, kid. We have an agreement and I can wait."
"Merci, monsieur."
His smile is back at that and I feel happy. I've made him smile
again, I want to bask in the glare and the howlingly tasty smell of
his sweaty skin.
I want to inhale his skin in the sweat of sex, I want to burrow my
nose in the short hairs around his cock – why in hell does he
hide it? It can't be ugly, I refuse to contemplate the idea of a
misshapen cock on this magnificent creature – and then snuffle
around his balls and down and under until I can drink the other
sweat, the secret sweat, the pungent sweat of his tight arse and
get drunk on it.
I said down! Bad dog! Bad Wolverine-cock! DOWN!
Ok, I promise I won't think those thoughts again, satisfied?
I'm going to the library to settle down and lose the
Wolverine-cock in books, but the kis is too fidgety and happy to
stand put, so I only see him when he come back to our cell at
night and I almost die of fright.
He looks shattered, bone white, bloodless white, ice white. His
eyes look blind and his mouth is slack.
What the fuck happened?
He sits heavily on his bunk takes a ragged breath and lies down
without a sound, his face to the wall, curled on himself.
What the fuck happened?
I can't ask, that's the bugger, not after all my laying down the
laws, I have to wait for him to tell me or some rattle to whisper it
down the line.
They can't have got at him. Impossible. That scrote, Turd, can't
have found allies so soon, beside I could call Baz on them and
nobody in his right mind would want that. Wouldn't he? But what
else could change the crowing cocky victorious godling into this
mortally wounded creature?
I can't sleep and so can't he. He is making no sound, but I know
he's awake. I smell salt on him… salt? Ohmigod he's weeping!
No, no, no, oh God, no, what do I do now?
Lie still and leave him alone? But I can't, how can I? Because I
love him, you see. I truly love him and his silent pain smashes
my heart to smithereens.
Oh, fuck, I can't.
So I jump down and grab him holding him close to my chest
careful to keep his face hidden, "Weep, kid," I whisper, close to
tears myself, "weep, is't night, it's allowed. Hear how many are
weeping too?"
This frees something in him and he sobs into my chest
drenching me with a grief like a torrent that has broken its banks.
Long hours of desperate weeping that shake his body and mine,
we're so entangled his heaves are my heaves and my one
thought is to help him through it before dawn comes.
Because at dawn you must look as if you've never wept a tear in
your life.
Finally he calms down a bit and realises whose warmth he's
clinging to.
"Monsieur…" he whispers.
"Of course, kid, don't worry it happens to all of us. What
happened?"
Damn! Fuck shit and damn! I can't handle emotions well, can I?
"No, no, let it pass." I say before he can answer "My mistake."
He's silent a bit at this and then he whispers: "I'm ready now,
monsieur. If you still want me, you can take me."
That takes me aback and I say without thinking "Of course I want
you, you're lovely and feisty and brave." When oh when will I learn
to think before I talk? Now I've practically told him I love him! Ok,
Wolverine, regroup and remember you're not at home for mister
cockup.
Yes, take a deep breath and let Logan have the con, ok?
"What I meant is that I would like to have sex with you. I don't
`take' people." Logan-me says gruffly "And not now, thank you.
You're too upset to know what you're saying and I'm not taking
advantage of that. `S not your fault, kid. I said all the wrong things.
Now try and sleep a bit or your face will be mess tomorrow."
"I am a thief…" he says in small voice
Oh poor kid! He wants to give me something in gratitude and I've
just cancelled an option. "You don't have to tell me this, kid. It's
alright, you would have done the same for me."
This distracts him. Good tactics Logan, way to go.
"You wouldn't weep like a baby, monsieur!" he's asking without
asking, a nice trick I have too.
"Yes, I would and have done on occasion. I just hide it better."
"May I please tell you what happened? I really want to. Now even
more."
"Ok just as long as you don't think you're paying a debt."
"I need to tell you, monsieur, maybe you will tell me I grieve too
much for such a small thing." His fingers are gentle on my
mouth - and oh! how I yearn to kiss them! – and he goes on "I
am a thief. I was on the streets and a kind man adopted me. He
made me into a thief because he is one, a great one, they never
caught him. I was a good thief, but when I was married…"
I can't keep silent at this "In the cradle? You're just a child!"
"Not a child, monsieur, never a child. I was younger and now I'm
older, that's all. I was married for politics, you understand, but I
really liked her, I thought I loved her, I was not unwilling. But the
same night something bad happened and I was in trouble. Big
trouble."
That I can believe very easily.
"I had to escape and I was banished from my home town. I
travelled, saw the world, money no problem, I am a good thief,
and I believed my father was on my side. He had to send me
away, but he always would find me and ask me to do things for
him, so I knew he still loved me. Then I got into trouble again,
some people tried to kill me in the streets of London and I had to
defend myself. I didn't want to kill them, but I had to hurt them to
make my escape. Only the police arrived and arrested me."
You and me, kid, you and me. We must be related, family name:
Trouble.
"A lawyer - no a solicitor, non? – came to see me before the trial
and told me my father had sent him to get me a good barrister
for my defence. But the barrister told me my father would help
me get out, no matter what."
He takes a deep breath. And another. This is the hard part and I
start to see where he's heading. As I said, you and me, kid.
"Today the solicitor has come again, sent by my father." Another
deep breath, he's fighting tears, but goes on doggedly "He said
that was a trap sprung by my and my father's enemies. He said
my father cannot help me, it's only a few months and I will learn
more of life which will be useful in the future. I had decided not to
tell him about the `cunt' thing."
It's still burning him, I see, must have felt like a brand, that stupid
name.
"But then when he said I had to stay here, I told him a little and
he…"
Voice totally suspended by tears he gulps air like a drowning
man.
"You don't have to say it, kid" For fuck's sake Logan don't you
start weeping too! He needs calm. "I understand. My so-called
family let me here to rot as well, so I know what it's like."
"No, you don't!" this comes out so forcefully I almost jump.
"Sssh!" I hiss "Lower you voice."
"He said as I'd been a whore on the street I could put my
expertise to a good use and to find myself a decent protector. He
said that my father thought it was time I learned a little
discipline."
All out in one breath, low enough thank God, but spewed out as if
it was puke. Which it is. It really is the foulest mass of puke I ever
heard in my life.
The rage singing like a buzzsaw in my veins I silently swear I will
personally hunt down and obliterate that bastard lawyer and his
bastard client. Slowly obliterate an inch at a time from the feeet
up until they can only gurgle `mercy' and I'll tell them, while
carefully cutting out their eyes, "Learn a little discipline."
He's looking at me queerly. Ah, so you can see in the dark as
well? Is that why your eyes are so strangely coloured?
"What?" I snarl, still in Wolverine killing mode.
"Are you angry at me, monsieur?" the shy small voice is back
again and there's a hint of… sadness?
"No, don't mind me, I'm angry at those people, not you…"
I suddenly realise that telling I want to slice his father – no matter
how much of a cruel bastard he is – is not going to endear me to
him or calm him down so I change gears in midsentence "but
there's nothing we can do about it now, so I'll calm down
presently and you'll calm down too. It's almost lights on and we
have to face the day."
"I appreciate you care for me, monsieur. You have kept your word
and I will keep mine. I don't mind you, monsieur. I didn't know
you were so kind."
Yes, well, this is very sweet, no, not very, actually, I'd rather not be
`not minded' by a lover… There I go again, this love-thing has
made me mushier then peas. I know I won't accept his kind
offer, so why carp at the wording of it?
The lights are on and day is on us.
TBC