Playing with Fire

I can’t say I was surprised. I always knew that kid end of murdered. The newspaper read: “Decomposing and naked as the knife used to slit his throat was how they found him. His head hung on to his neck by a strip of flesh. He was tied to a chair with a brown indoor extension cord – hands snatched behind him with gray duck tape like wild hair forced into an unnatural ponytail. His body was twisted like beaten clay. His black decaying wounds still wept blood. But his face, a frozen human gargoyle screaming last echoes of pain is what his sister who found him will always remember in her nightmares. His murderer showed no mercy. He died horribly.”

I’d known him since middle school. We became friends because I rejected him. I didn’t invite him to my birthday party, but he showed up anyway. He brought the best present. That was Roderick, always wanting what others told him he couldn’t have, always needing to prove that he was good enough. I felt sorry for him. His father was in the military and never home. His mother was an alcoholic. He had an older sister but they weren’t close. Roderick always seemed alone. He was a good looking kid: a slender body even into adulthood, silky black wavy hair, a kind intelligent face, and friendly eyes, but awkward. He was so put together that he looked rehearsed as if nothing he said hadn’t been practiced in front of a mirror. I don’t know why we stayed friends. I could just never lose him. I tried. He always found me. I didn’t really like him. He refused other people’s boundaries. I felt he only cared about himself. I knew I couldn’t trust him. He was using the world. He wasn’t a bad person, just too many demons.

In High School, he became the will of his mind. He told me I was gay and I believed him. He was a budding Lex Luther about to take over the known world. That is until he fell in love with Buck. It was more of an obsession and his first waterfall. Even if he could smell the rotting of broken bone and souls shattered needlessly on the jagged rocks below, he still couldn’t help but fall. The temptation to get closer was stronger, like a moth playing with fire.

Buck was seventeen and Roderick, sixteen. Buck was cliché masculine, a fucking tease, tall and athletic, always licking his lips and grabbing his dick, flirting with the girls, hitting boys in their arms, believing after high school he was going to play professional basketball for the Lakers or the Bulls, but he really wasn't that good. He just looked good in his uniform. Buck and Roderick took advanced Anatomy class together. Buck had this way of looking into Roderick's eyes, shamelessly flirting, and asking personal questions like if Roderick was a virgin, then he’d lick his lips again or if Roderick ever had his dick sucked, of course by a girl he would say after a deep pause and smile. Roderick tried to avoid Buck's questions. He didn’t like how his blood would boil and stir quickly in his veins. He didn’t like keeping his eyes silent. He didn't know if Buck was playing games or not. Buck would say things like, "You're so pretty. Shit, I know if I was girl, I go out with you. I may even give you some," then Buck would smile and lick those lips again and grab his dick. At night, alone and naked, it drove Roderick wild. He became obsessed with Buck. He started going to all of Buck's basketball practices and games. He started following Buck home. He’d do anything, to get closer. For Roderick, it was a game. He joined the photography club so that he could get a camera and take pictures of Buck. He would masturbate to those pictures. Eventually, fantasy wouldn't be enough for Roderick, so he decided to make him and Buck real. Loneliness and terrible longing caught Roderick and Buck alone in the boy’s bathroom. As usual, Buck greeted him "Wha up pretty boy." Roderick liked it when Buck called him pretty. In that boy's bathroom, it was like a fantasy for Roderick. He was wearing his Gap khakis, a pink polo long sleeve button up with a green v-neck sweater over it, looking preppy as usual. Buck was in his basketball uniform: Nike tennis shoes and letterman jacket, licking his lips and grabbing his dick. Roderick couldn't resist the temptation. Buck had been haunting his dreams for too long and he needed a release. He walked over to Buck and whispered almost tearfully in his ear, "Can I suck your dick?" Buck quickly turned to him, and for a moment, there was a look in his eyes, almost a window, but it slammed shut. Buck eyes turned mean and widened, his once relaxed hands became fists and he hit Roderick hard in the stomach. He called Roderick a "Faggot" and spit on him. Buck stormed out of the bathroom. Roderick laid there on the bathroom floor, not crying, but smiling, because he had gotten so close to Buck's lips, almost made contact, when Buck hit him, he came.

After Buck, Roderick would be called names: "sissy" "Faggot" "deep throat." It never seemed to bother him. He didn’t give up. When he saw Buck in our high school hallways or the cafeteria he didn’t divert his eyes but made sure to make contact. He kept going to all Buck’s game. Even when Buck threatened his life, Roderick would just smile and snap a picture with his camera. I tried to get him to stop. Buck’s friends caught him walking home alone and beat the shit out of him. It didn’t stop Roderick from getting Buck’s number from our registration office and calling him late at night. The more Buck resisted him, the more Roderick wanted him. I just knew they were going to find his body stripped naked and hanging from a tree. Yet, his persistence sometimes got him what he craved. It was right after graduation, Buck showed up at Roderick’s house, he reeked of weed, rum and confused tears. He said he was going into the army in a couple of days and just wanted to say goodbye. They fucked in Roderick’s father’s tool shed. Roderick had won. I remember the look in his eyes when he told me the story, how Buck was such a bottom, how he immediately fell to his knees, how he begged Roderick to impregnate him, that he wanted to have his baby, be his bitch. I couldn’t believe it. I saw Buck many years later in the club, he’d become a Tina Turner impersonator.

Not many people knew the real Roderick. He graduated high school and got accepted into a good college. He was a smart kid. He was ambitious. He worked two jobs. He went to church every Sunday. He was well liked. Yet, there was a very dark side to Roderick. In college, he started playing his most dangerous games. He would cruise the boys dormitory community shower until he was attacked. The school newspaper made it out to be a gay bashing. Roderick didn’t care for people’s feelings. It didn’t stop him. His next game, he used his sister’s picture and pretended to be her on the internet. He would lure guys to obscene places like cemeteries or construction sites. He’d sometimes would meet the guy and give some trite story liked his sister was locked up in the house with their religious father and get the guy to hang out with him all night, try to get him drunk and then take advantage. It didn’t always go his way. Bruises for Roderick were just mistakes that needed to be corrected.

I stopped hanging out with him when he started his fantasy of wanting to get raped. He joined bondage clubs. He said he was looking for something destructive. I would ask him about his childhood, if he was abused and he would say that he had the perfect childhood. I didn’t understand it. I figured him to be suicidal. There were times when he could be so sweet. When I lost my job and couldn’t pay my car note, he took care of it for four months. He didn’t even want me to pay him back. It was his unexpected kindness that confused me. Yet, I got tired of picking him up from somebody’s ghetto after he been robbed and left for dead. The last time I saw Roderick he was in the hospital after being stabbed when he refused to pay some trick he picked up on the street. He told his family he had been robbed. I knew the truth. Of course he was very cavalier about the incident, making jokes but I could see sadness in his eyes. I was afraid for him, even if he figured himself invincible.

Roderick had decided he didn’t believe that there was such a thing as a “straight” man. He decided that all men were weak. Yet, he didn’t like gay men. He didn’t consider gay men real men. He was always looking for a real man. A man with the girlfriend, watched sports, drank beer and hung out at strip bars. He liked danger. Addicted. He liked testing himself. Testing the world. He liked seeing how far he could push the bar. It was his black hole. The farther he fell the more his insanity wanted. It was an appetite or thirst that was never to be fulfilled. Maybe we don’t choose. Maybe the call of the fire is too strong, maybe we are all just moths, fluttering out of control, and where the light is just too beautiful so we want to get closer.

The last time I spoke to Roderick he’d found a website for convicted felons, mostly rapists and murders. He said it was just a hobby. He was attracted to the danger in their eyes. He said he met someone. He sounded happy.

The night he died, his mother couldn’t sleep. She said she kept dreaming about blood. She called his sister and asked her to go by his apartment. His sister waited for two days. Roderick had been known to disappear without word for days. She drove straight to his condo. She felt a sharp pain in her stomach. She got to his door and knocked, but there was no answer. She knocked harder. Still nothing. Suddenly, she could barely breathe or speak. She felt nervous but didn’t know why. She put the key he had given her for emergencies in the door and pushed slowly against the hidden murder. First there was the smell, then the horror of the sight of twisted violence beaten like clay. Roderick was home but forever silenced. He was there. She had found him.

The police gave little details on his final moments. They just said it wasn’t a force entry. Roderick knew his murderer. Roderick car, wallet and computer had been stolen. The media made it out to be that Roderick met some street thug off a well known “down low” sex website, of course making the story trendy. The case went unsolved. Roderick was just another black fag who got himself murdered. Black Fags go missing often and then found in back of trunks, stuffed in trashcans or in pieces. Jeffrey Dahmer killed a lot black homosexuals and nobody went looking for them.

I can’t help but ask myself did he bring it on himself. I warned him too many times. He couldn’t be saved. When I found out, I told myself I wasn’t going to feel sorry for him. I always knew that kid end up murdered. But yet, I couldn’t help but weep. His lust had no fear. What was he looking for? Maybe Death?