Ron Taylor: Roped and raped

"Hello, Marilyn," the man said. "Angela's told me a lot about you."

"Well I never heard a fucking thing about you," I snapped back bitterly, taking a step towards them. Violence smoldered in my fists, but against whom should I direct that violence?

His clothes were tossed haphazardly onto a chair beside the bed. I saw them then, for the first time, and the first thing I noticed was a clerical collar. I started giggling hysterically.

"Please, darling," Angela tried to explain. "What you and I had, what we shared in prison – it was beautiful and I wouldn't take anything in trade for the memories. You kept me sane; helped me become a woman. But I came here, Marilyn, and…"

"And she met me," the man interjected. Without his clothes on, he didn't look very clerical, but straight guys don't wear collars. My God, was Angela fucking a priest? With her background, a priest seemed the obvious choice, though.

"Yes," Angela said. "Mark is assistant director of the Newman Center on campus, though he's planning to leave the priesthood soon. We drifted together by accident, we became friends, and in time we became lovers. When it happened, Marilyn, it happened without plan, without forethought. But it was such a magical thing, so incredible, like a mystic experience."

"Marilyn," her partner added, "you and Angela were thrown into a vicious, unnatural institution, and what happened there was almost inevitable. But it was only inevitable in that prison setting. Here, in the real world, it couldn't last. If Angela hadn't met me, she'd have met someone else. She's too much a woman to be trapped in homosexuality. She's…"

"This is ridiculous," I interrupted angrily. "I have been betrayed and thrown aside like a used rubber, and the only thing that comes to my mind is, 'Well, at least Angela found herself a good Catholic boy'. Does anyone particularly mind if I go into the bathroom and slash my wrists?"

Angela had the graciousness to arise from the bed. Over her shoulder I could see the man stretched on the bed. He had a long, lean body and appeared to be well-hung, if that matters. To me, it doesn't matter. I hated him, I hated her.

She came towards me naked, her body still flushed from the screwing Mark had given her, and she extended her hands to me. As if that would make it any sweeter! God, I'd been fantasizing, not two minutes ago, and what had I been fantasizing? That Angela was graciously breaking off with some substitute who'd eased her loneliness during my absence. The only thing I had wrong was the identity of the discarded lover. It was Marilyn who was getting the gate, and I felt as if she'd slammed it on my fingers.

"I'm sorry," she said when I rejected the offer of her hands. "I'm sorry for you, Marilyn, but I've finally found out what love truly means." That's the same thing she used to tell me in prison as I sucked her pussy and licked her little nipples. "Mark and I are very happy and when he leaves the priesthood, we're going to marry. And have children. I want children very much, and so does Mark."

"Whoopee shit."

"Please don't take on so, Marilyn. I still love you very much, as a person, as a friend. I hope we can always be close. It won't be the same as before, but I want to be your friend. Oh, please say you understand."

I didn't say anything. Angela went on, "If you want to, you can stay here with me until you find your own place. We can't be intimate any more, of course, but…"

"Why don't you stick it up your ass?" I suggested. "And you can tell the University to do the same with their fucking job. Which I got, not that it's of any interest to anyone, because I'm leaving. And I wish you – both of you – all the happiness you fucking deserve. Don't think that's a hell of a lot!"

"Marilyn," she said again, but Father Mark interrupted.

"Her mind's made up, Angela darling. She's obviously living in a dream world, and she won't listen to reason. Let her go, if go she must," He was damnably cool for a naked priest, and thinking of cool made me wish for an icicle. SO I COULD RAM IT UP HIS COOL FUCKING ASS!!

Angela listened to him, too, the cunt! She didn't move to stop me as I gathered up my clothes and stuffed them into my suitcase. Instead, she moved towards the bed and took his hand and turned her big soulful eyes on Mark's face with an intensity that made me sick. I wanted to kill. Kill them both. Mark for snaking himself into the settled pattern of my life and Angela's, and Angela for being so shallow as to let him. Didn't she understand that he only wanted a piece of her ass? Men will use any means necessary to get into a woman's cunt. Leave the priesthood? I'll bet the cock-sucker had a cardinal's hat in his closet, just waiting for the day of his appointment many years hence. Couldn't she see that I, Marilyn, was the one who loved her? I could see it. Why not Angela, too?

And the gracious gentility and hospitality she'd offered me. I could stay on, if I wanted to, but I had to stay out of her bed. I wished she were in prison right now, being raped round the clock by an army of bull-dykes with broomsticks and dildos! And I wished I was dead and buried and far removed from the bitterness my life had become without warning.

"Good-bye," I said, not looking back, afraid I'd break down and crawl to her on my knees, begging for another chance. I had my dignity to preserve and I left with that dignity intact. My heart resembled something that had passed through a paper shredder.

I threw my bag into the car and took off, intending to drive until I ran out of road. At that particular moment I was confident that no matter what happened next, it had to be an improvement. I had never been more wrong in my life.

"Goddamn it to Hell!" I screamed in frustration, thumping my hand on the steering wheel.

Of all the fucked-up places for the car to get temperamental, this had to be the pits! It was very late in the afternoon, I'd crossed the line into West Virginia a couple of hours ago, and apparently I had taken the wrong turn somewhere. I was deep in some wooded mountains, and only the bumpy pavement of the road itself convinced me that I wasn't the first soul who had ever wandered into this particular piece of country. It had been an eternity since I'd seen another car or human being or even a stray dog.

And now the car was malfunctioning. Oh, damn it all! I thought, getting out to investigate.

I'd left Angela's in a huff and a hurry, not even bothering to change out of the clothes I'd worn for my interview. A gas stop allowed me to get out of the sweater and skirt and the damned confining underwear, though, so at least I was comfortable in a sleeveless top and blue jeans.

I had a jackknife in my bag, and I did a little exploring under the hood, and that was when frustration really began. Oh, shit! I knew when I left Boston that my carburetor was on its last legs. Why hadn't I taken care of it then? Why had I trusted so blindly in luck?

And then there was a sound, and my heart almost stopped. Oh, God, it was an automobile engine! I looked in both directions, trying to localize the noise, and all I could see ahead of me or behind me was the empty narrow road, yellow dividing line faded almost to invisibility. My ears perked. They were coming up the ascent, definitely, the same way I'd been traveling, for I could hear the engine straining to pull. I blinked, and in a moment I saw a pickup truck come around the bend a few hundred yards below. I breathed a sigh of relief and waved one despairing hand.

The truck pulled off the road and stopped, just below my car. The doors opened on each side, and two youngish men stepped out. From their looks they had to be brothers, rangy hillbilly types with unkempt hair and pinched, sharp-featured faces.

"Havin' trouble?" asked the one who'd been driving.