IT BEGAN WITH DRAWERS

It began with drawers--rainbow colored drawers that looked like giant flowers scattered across my floor. I took silk boxers and made them into beautiful drapes. Ratty “Fruit-of-the-Looms” that had tangled around ankles, I turned into baby quilts and donated them to Hospitals. I never had too many “Polo” drawers. I guess Polo wearing men didn't need me enough. They wanted other Polo men like themselves—affluent and well connected. I had to be sneaky to collect all those drawers.

“Hey, man, where my drawers at? Where my drawers at?” they would ask--shiny black ass glowing in the early morning light, cock jiggling and nestled between hairy thighs.

“Man, I don't know. You’re the one who pulled them off. Look under the bed. Or were you wearing any?” I'd say coyly as I massaged the balled up underwear tucked neatly into my pillowcase. “Leave me an address or P.O. box and I'll send them to you if I find them.”

One poor fella broke down and cried. “What will my wife think if I come home without any drawers?” I loaned him a pair of mine.

By Monday morning I was washing sometimes a dozen pair of drawers from my weekend conquests. I hung them in the bathroom to dry. I sat on the toilet and recalled the bodies that had occupied the drawers--brown eyes that glittered like stars, chests that looked as if carved from solid brass or mahogany, and the round round asses. Man love isn't all the time about the heart and any of that romance writing bullshit. Sometimes it's all about ass and dick. I remember the juicy fruit breath that wore a pair of size twenty-eight “Joe Boxers.” He was very college educated, telling me all his plans to get out of Roxbury, become an electrical engineer. He went on about the future house in Connecticut full of children and wife. Then he asked me almost childlike if he could still come and see me on Wednesday nights for his “special needs.” I threw him out the house--without his drawers of course. I'm not a prostitute you know.

And there was that size thirty-four with the crotch stretched big enough to hold a softball and then some.

“Hey, man, where my draws?”

I shrugged my shoulders. His zuchini size cock brushed across my chest as he flipped the blanket back and forth for a cursory search. He stood with his hands on his hips. He looked at me for a long time. His eyes slowly fogged over all sultry. His sex trembled, rose, and aimed straight at my throat.

“You got my draws somewhere. If you don't tell me where they at, I'm gonna beat your ass and make you suck me.”

Jesus, what a crossroad I was at. Should I tell him or not? Size thirty-four made up my mind for me. He seized the back of my head. My mouth parted like a hungry baby bird's.

I have a room that is closed off--well it was closed off to the world--and in that room is where the drawers go when they are dry. I arranged them as best I could in a kind of artistic fashion on the wall--in fan-shaped or heart-shaped patterns. I hung some from the ceiling with string like a mobile over a baby's bed. I sat in my gallery and read sexy novels under the leg holes of drawers. Sometimes I sewed. I took the older drawers that I grew tired of reminiscing over and made quilts that I donated to orphanages for the little babies. By Wednesday night though I'd get bored and be ready to go to the Ramrod to add to my collection. The Ramrod is a better place to mine for drawers. The men at St. Anthony's are too stuffy to shed their drawers. Won't get out of them unless you're pouring Dom Perignon into their Boston Loafers. Boys on the street are not a good source for me either. Their drawers are too funky and too full of holes and piss stains. I like clean drawers in my gallery. So it was to the Ramrod. But for some reason it got harder for me to mine at the Ramrod.

I lived alone. Didn't even have a cat or a bird. There wasn't a whole lot of room in my place. Two rooms, a kitchen, and of course a bathroom. A bathroom is very important to me. I like to be clean outside of me as well as inside of me. In addition to my boxes of smell-good flowery soaps, I have, well had--some good strong laxatives. That is one thing my Mother taught me. Moses, you must keep your body clean inside and out. She gave me enemas every Friday night until she died. I was eleven when she passed. I continued the practice until a few years ago. In here, if I ask for an enema bag, a psychologist comes to visit, or he used to. Now they give me some little brown pills that gripe my stomach.

There certainly is value in living alone and having control of your life. I miss my porcelain toilet, my soaps, laxatives, and my gallery. I'm sure I would have had all of that until now, but I did something my Mother warned me against. I opened my arms and heart to someone.

After my Mother died, I was shuffled from Aunt to Aunt who felt obliged to take in Emma’s “strange” son Moses who spent too much time reading and playing with his computer. My father left money for me to go to college. And since other boys thought I was weird (I called all boys I met “sir”), I wasn't the kind they wanted for their gangs or their basketball teams. I was just “Ol' Mose”.

“Boy, you acts old. Ain't your piss hot yet? When you goin' to get you a girlfriend?” an aunt would ask me.

When I got my first and only computer programming job writing actuarial programs that calculated mortality rates (Southerners who smoke live longer than Northern Black males who don't), my projects were always finished on time. And I didn't go for that office party or after work drink foolishness. My mother always kept a precise schedule.

Well Glenn--that was his name--upset my order. I don't know, maybe my order needed to be upset. Years of thinking about things have changed my perspectives. I wish this shaking up had come sooner, like when I was twenty. The twenties is a time to be loose. It's easier to shake off bad loves and go on to the next. If you wait until your thirties to experience love, then the first thing that comes along, you latch on to. You're scared to let it go, because you think, you'll never see love again as middle age creeps in.

I met Glenn at the Ramrod. He was very black. Very black from his skin, to his black leather jacket. He was short and built oxlike. Glenn was a fruit-of-the-looms no nonsense kind of man. He was muscled in the arms and his belt barely kept his stomach from oozing over his belly. When he looked at me, he pulled at something inside me with his eyes. It was more than a tingle between the legs kind of thing. I wanted to call him “Sir” lay my head on his thick shoulder and cry. His eyes pulled my breath out of me and I couldn't breathe for a minute.

My Mother always said for me to never open my arms and close my eyes in this ugly world. To do so she said, would make me vulnerable to the snakes of this world. “Snakes pushed your Father over the edge and he jumped.” Mother always cut the story of my father off at the point of his jumping. Why, where, how high up, and how far down, she never said. The vision I have of my father is a large black bird flailing away at the air all the time. So when Glenn looked at me, he cut off my breath and I flailed for air for a moment. I knew he would give me more than his drawers.

Despite my head being turned (I turned it 'cause I was afraid), he came over anyway and touched the small center of my back, right above the beginning of the parting of my ass.

“What's your name, guy?”

“Moses, Sir,” I answered.

“I'm Glenn.” He kissed me lightly on the neck and told me one day he was going to part my legs like the red sea.

“Yes, sir,” I said. Tears were forming in my eyes. My heart was leaping in its cage.

For weeks Glenn did part me like the red sea. He kept my legs as wide apart as the paws of the sphinx. Things Glenn did to me required a great deal of cleanliness. I found Mother's old rubber enema bag. It was more rugged and held more water than the little plastic thing Glenn brought from Walgreens'. Plus the soft vulcanized rubber felt like warm skin when it was filled with lukewarm sudsy water. In fact before I started my gallery, I used to fill Mother's hot water bottle and sleep with it against my chest.

I locked the gallery when Glenn started coming around. He asked me one day why that door was always locked. I told him it was an empty room, that I had no use for it, and not even the landlord had a key to fit it. Glenn called me a liar and made me pull down my trousers and underwear. I'm happy to say that no amount of spanking ever made me produce a key or divulge the contents of my gallery. We turned Glenn's curiosity and my reticence about the gallery into a little game. Glenn became the daddy and I was the naughty son keeping secrets from (“Daddy who gives you enemas, who cooks for you, you bathes you--and you lie to Daddy and keep secrets from him. Moses, I have to whip you. I whip you because I love you.”)

And so this went on for a couple of months. My arms were full of Glenn and they needed Glenn. They loved Glenn. But Glenn--well he stopped questioning me about the locked room. His punishments became less severe. He stopped bathing me altogether. When I recounted my sins of the day or kissed him without permission, he shrugged his shoulders, or slapped me and slammed my front door behind him. The nights with Glenn lying next to me began to grow farther and farther apart. Soon new moons were coming and going, but no Glenn. I had no phone number or address. I searched through the belly of the Ramrod, but there was no Glenn to be found. So I unlocked my Gallery again and made room on the walls for more drawers. But drawers weren't enough. Lord, why did I have to disobey my mother and open my arms? I bought more soap and more laxatives. I added mild detergents to the enemas, but nothing cleansed me. I couldn't wash the itching off my arms and hands. I needed to hold flesh. I needed skin and bone to caress and hold next to my heart.

At first it started with ears. You can easily cuckold a man out of his drawers, but ears are another matter. To take parts off a body, that body has to be totally immobilized. Poisons took too long and were unreliable. They're messy when they do work. I don't like cleaning up vomit. The men couldn't always make it to the bathroom on time. Besides, I started needing feet, hands, even whole arms with hands attached. So I bought a small twenty-two. Moother's old forty-five was too loud and left too big of a mess. As the subjects snoozed, drunk with whisky and sex, I shot small holes in their skulls. The twenty-two leaves nice small holes. I could wrap a plastic bag tight around the head and contain the blood. I wasn’t trying to kill them, I was only trying to immobilize them. Hell they coulda got up and walked away after I was done, if they chose to.

Now I'm well versed in cutting up chickens. I used to cook for mother and me. I'd let the blood gel a little. Then I'd take a hack saw to the soft part of a joint. I chose short thin men. It was a lot easier to maneuver the remains of a hundred-thirty or a hundred-forty pounds into old Mrs. McKissock's trash barrels. Plus it was easier on her back when she innocently wheeled her trash barrel from her porch to the curb.

“Moses, you haven't seen anyone putting stuff in my barrel have you?”

“No, M'am.”

“I swear this thing gets heavier each week. If I could stoop over I'd see what's in it.”

The gallery became full of an assortment of clothing. Nike tennis shoes, Itallian penny loafers, Levi's, Tommy Hillfiger shirts, Polo shirts, and drawers galore. I thought about wearing the more expensive items, but somehow that didn't seem right. I dropped things into Salvation Army bins. The neighborhood began to sport some of the most fashionable winos and street people.

You can't keep ears, or feet, or hands as long as you can keep drawers. I never studied Mortuary Science, so I always had to have something fresh in the house.

Mr. Moses, what's that popping noises late at night I hear in your place?” I tell Mrs. McKissock the cockroach problem is getting worse.

“Ask the landlord for some Combat roach traps, Mr. Moses. We will both sleep better at night.” I start wrapping the twenty-two in a towel.

There was a foot I hated to throw into Mrs. McKissock's trash barrel. Size twelve and toes all symmetrical, toenails clipped and clean. I remember his teeth, clean, white, and even like baby teeth. The first bullet woke him up. He jumped and grabbed his cock. I don't know, maybe the pain shot down there. I thought about sucking his cock one last time, kind of a final tribute, lightly you know, not as voraciously as I did a few hours earlier when I had made him tremble and buck from wall to wall. He was eighteen and gushed that it was the best blow job he had ever had. He wrapped his arms around me and called me Daddy. He said he could stay a while.

How long is a while? Is it a minute, a day? Is it a lifetime marked by stripes of misery and rings of joy? Is it Glenn who suddenly wasn't there anymore? I thought about all of that before I put the second bullet into the boy's head.

Unknown to me, the boy was my undoing. He had made a long distance call to his Mother in Alabama. When the boy didn't come home, his Mother panicked as I guess Mothers would do, and she got the police involved. They traced the call to my place. I knew something was wrong when a strange pair of blue eyes began following me around the Ramrod.

The eyes never smiled, never talked. Sometimes they hid behind shades, but I knew they were on me. At first the eyes worried my stomach and made my hands twitch. I would lie awake all night. Or if I did sleep, I would be suffocated by the dark shadows that hovered over my bed. I thought it might be a good idea to stop going to the Ramrod for a while. But then I saw the eyes watching me in the supermarket when I picked up my fishsticks and heavy duty trash bags. I saw the eyes lurking in the lobby of the Atlanta Life Building where I worked. I thought of running away, but something told me it was too late to run. You can smell your end coming before anybody else gets a whiff of your mortality. I was going to put a bullet into my head, but I just didn't get around to that. I had to rewrite a mortality table for Atlanta Life Insurance. People with AIDS are living longer. The insurance company is considering doing away with its Viaticals.

To the world, I am an evil man. So you want to think that my last day of freedom was one full of storm clouds, dark shadows and thunder. It wasn't like that. I slept good the night before. There was a little banging around Mrs. McKissock's trash barrels, but I paid no attention to it. The next morning watching Mrs. McKissock getting into her daughter's car all hysterical, all I could do was shrug my shoulders. I did notice how yellow the sun was for a February in Boston--golden yellow like old piss and warm. Then there was a knock at my door very loud and businesslike. I was in my vinegar smelling gallery sorting jeans to give to a homeless shelter. I knew who would be on the other side of the door. There were no body parts in the house, but still I felt as I did when I stood in front of my Mother and her enema bag--very helpless and resigned to endure a gut wrenching cleansing. I adjusted my clothes and checked myself in the mirror. When I opened the door, old “Silent Eyes” stood there in the sunlight holding a sheaf of papers. A squadron of blue men stood behind him. Some were armed with axes. I nodded my head and stepped aside. My body felt light and I floated above myself as they ripped and gutted my house.

So ladies, gentlemen, officials, Mothers, Fathers, and you the curious gathered to watch me die, it began with drawers. And yes I am deeply deeply sorry that I've touched you in such a hurting way. And, oh Glenn, Glenn if you could just hold my hand when I get to Heaven.