A. Rich - The Hand That Feeds You

I was a middling high school student dreaming about becoming an artist, an actress, a poet, in the tradition of clueless youth, without giving any consideration to whether I had talent. I took a Greyhound to New York City shortly after I graduated and arrived at Port Authority at 2:00 a.m. on a rainy summer night.

I had planned to stay at the YWCA, but I met a girl on the bus who had already done what I was planning to do. She had been visiting her mother in Cleveland and was going back to Brooklyn, where she’d been living for six months. She was waiting tables until she could get modeling work and invited me to crash at her place. She lived in a first-floor studio looking out onto the Navy Yard. The kitchen was makeshift — just a hot plate and minifridge. The walls were bare and the institutional sea-green paint was scuffed. I slept on an air mattress, while she took the sofa bed.

Around six the next morning, I heard a key in the lock. A man let himself into her apartment. I called out to my friend, Candice, and she said sleepily, “It’s just my boyfriend, Doug.”

Doug said, “Hey,” to me, and then to Candice, “Hey, babe.” He sat on the edge of the sofa bed and took off his Frye boots. He wasn’t wearing socks. And for some reason, that alarmed me further.

I started to get off the already deflated air mattress. “I can head out now. Thanks for letting me stay over.”

“No need to go,” he said, taking off his shirt. “I’ve got to be at work in a couple of hours.”

My duffel bag was on the other side of the room and I would have had to pass near him to get it. I’d chosen to sleep in just a T-shirt and bikini underwear.

He took off his jeans. Without taking my eyes off my duffel bag, I could see in my peripheral vision that he had also forgone underwear. He climbed onto the sofa bed beside Candice and I told myself to calm down, I was in New York and I was lucky for the place to sleep.

The air mattress was a mere six feet from the sofa bed, so of course I could hear Candice tell her boyfriend to quit it, but she wasn’t angry when she said it. I hadn’t yet gone all the way, but I’d been on enough double dates to know what was going on. Those were the actual words that came to mind — going all the way. I was already constructing the story for my friends back at New Trier in Winnetka, the high school famous for talented and precocious students such as Ann-Margret and Rock Hudson, though my friends were the late bloomers.

I closed my eyes, placed my pillow over my head, and pretended that this kind of thing happened to me all the time. At some point their activity died down and I fell back asleep.

I woke up coughing, and the pillow seemed to be the reason. It was still covering my face, but pressure was behind it. I couldn’t get enough air, and when I tried to remove it, I felt the arms that were holding it in place.

“Oh, for God’s sake, you dick, leave her alone,” I heard Candice say. But the hands didn’t let go. I began thrashing and kicking.

“Let her breathe at least,” Candice said.

One hand let go of the pillow and I gulped in air before the free hand pinned my arms.

“Get her feet,” Doug called to Candice.

“I don’t want to get kicked again,” Candice said, but I felt her grab my ankles anyway. By now the air mattress was only as inflated as a sleeping bag.

“I told you the air mattress had a leak,” Doug said. “This is going to be hell on my bad knee.”

“You were at Walgreens yesterday.”

“So?”

“They sell air mattresses.”

Despite what was happening, their inane bickering made me think I might still be okay.

“If you let me up, I can go get you a new air mattress.” I felt the effect of my words as his grip slackened, then tightened harder.

“You think we’re stupid,” Doug said.

“Candice,” I pleaded, “I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me.”

“She’s not doing it, I am,” Doug said.

I revised my hope of getting through this okay.

“I won’t say anything if you just let me go. I don’t know where I am. I just want to go.”

“Babe, get the duct tape from under the sink.”

His body was on top of mine, pinning me down. The pillow still covered my face but I could breathe. I twisted my head and saw Candice was dressed as I was, only the T-shirt was Doug’s. She was tearing off a strip of the silver tape.

“Hold her head,” Candice told Doug. Then she squatted beside me and covered my mouth with it. She was so close to me that I caught the sudden scent of Doug’s ejaculation. If it wouldn’t have choked me, I would have retched.

“Tape her wrist to the radiator,” Doug ordered.

Doug took my right wrist and held it against the metal. As Candice tore off another strip and then wound it around my wrist, Doug hummed “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” When she finished securing my other wrist, this time to the leg of a bureau, Doug slid down the length of me, removing the bikini underwear as he did. I heard myself make a sound of protest through the tape covering my mouth.

Doug said, “Babe, can you get me a beer?”

“I’m not your servant, and anyway we’re out.”

“What the fuck, you were supposed to get some.”

“Oh, when was I supposed to do that? I just got back from fucking Cleveland.”

“Then go get some now.”

“Like anything is open at six a.m.”

“The Walgreens is open.”

“They have beer?”

“Yeah, they have beer!”

I prayed that Candice would not leave me alone with him.

She pulled on leggings, then went through Doug’s pockets for some money.

“She was so eager to buy us an air mattress, let her pay for the beer,” Doug said.

Candice picked up my jeans and took all my cash, $300.

“You should really get traveler’s checks next time,” Candice said to me, then shut the door behind her.

“It’s a shame to cover such a pretty mouth,” Doug said. “Tell you what, how ’bout I take off this tape and you stay quiet.”

I nodded.

“This is going to hurt a little.” I thought he would rip it off like a Band-Aid, but he pulled it off slowly, as though this were foreplay. “You had a lot of boyfriends?”

My eyes teared up.

“Or just one special fellow? I bet you let him go to second base.” He lifted my T-shirt and pinched my nipples. “Candice outdid herself this time.” As he began rubbing his erection between my breasts, his cell phone rang. He picked it up and looked at the number before he answered. “Yeah? Now what?” While he listened, he rubbed the tip of his penis against the nipple he’d pinched. “I don’t care. Coors.” He hung up and said, “Shit.” He climbed off me and went to the window. He was no longer fully erect.

He started rubbing himself, and when nothing happened, he walked back to me, straddled my chest, and said, “Help me out with that pretty mouth.”

I reflexively turned my head away, but he grabbed my jaw and opened my mouth. He forced himself inside. I gagged and tears rolled out the sides of my eyes.

This appeared to be a turn-on because he was hard again. “I usually wait for Candice, but I don’t think I can wait this time.”

He pulled out of my mouth, pried my legs apart with his knee, and in an instant I was no longer a virgin. He finished quickly and I was still alive. He was inside me when the door opened — Candice with the Coors.

“You fucker, you were supposed to wait.”

“Well, if you hadn’t dragged your ass getting back…”

In spite of that, she cracked open a can and handed it to him. She cracked a second can and took a long gulp. She then opened a third and put it on the floor beside me.

“What, you’re a hostess now?” Doug asked.