One in Ten Ch. 02

Oh yeah, I had just unloaded on a police detective - a sex crimes detective at that. I'd done it in front of anyone standing near her desk plus the two cops standing in my condo and the ten or so neighbors hovering at my door. Yay me! Apparently I wasn't done either.

"What are you looking at?" I turned on the two officers. "Get the fuck out of my place you fascist drones." They reacted as if slapped.

"Check that language, Mister," Cop One snapped back.

"Call someone who cares," I rebounded. "You've got your marching orders. Beat it. You'll have your grubby paws on me tomorrow at one. Until then your misandry is stinking up the place."

"You need correction," Officer Two chimed in. By that she meant therapy and drugs.

"Why? Because I resent you two breaking into my place and trying to drag me off illegally, because I stand up for my rights, or because I know you are not doing your jobs?" I griped. "You've lost 28 men now," I looked to the crowd at the door.

"Oh yeah, they lost four more of us last night in this city alone. The rate of our disappearances is accelerating nation-wide and by the end of the year it could be as high as thirty thousand," I lied about that last number but what the hell.

"Mister, you are starting a panic," Officer One cautioned somewhat fearfully.

"Lady, I work at the Mayor's Office. We get all kinds of data," I lied again.

"Wait, you are that guy from the news conference," a girl from the door called out. "You said everything would be okay?"

"One, I did not say everything was okay," I corrected.

"I said we all had to work together - to which the fascist police force responded to by dragging in the potential victims and treating them like criminals," I laid out. "That is pretty much the opposite of 'working together'. Secondly, the truth is that every man my age should get an illegal firearm, barricade himself in his home and only have his food delivered by his mother."

"I reasoned that the vast female majority didn't want to hear the truth and since they elect the Mayor, I sold out my gender," I stated firmly. "Now, if you don't mind, I have to eat a light dinner because I'm being forced to go out on a date with my ex-girlfriend who had me gang-raped in college and I doubt I'll be able to hold down food in her presence."

"My boss is demanding it because my desire to vomit whenever she is near is disrupting the office's work dynamic," I explained.

"That's plain wrong," Kuiko spoke up. The cops were making their way to the door.

"Kuiko, your defense of me earlier, while admirable and appreciated," I said as she smiled, "referred to me as one of the two functioning penises in a two block radius."

"That pretty much eradicates me as a personality. I understand that impulse though. That's why I only have sex with strangers - women I hope I will never have to meet again. They are vaginas that I'm forced to interact with by law, not by desire," I sighed. "I don't want to look at women solely as mammary glands and fuck holes. That would make me as bad as most of you."

"But we care about you," Kuiko blurted out. "I only said that to worry the police."

"Yeah and both of you knew it would work," I responded. "You assume I will put out eventually and they assume I am putting out, which I'm not and I'm not going to if I can help it. See, every time I screw a girl, I prostitute another part of my soul and chip away at any hope I have of finding happiness in this life. The truth is I hate having sex and I only do it because society will take away my freewill if I refuse."

By the looks the women at the door were giving me, this was an ugly truth they didn't want to confront.

"Maybe therapy would help," volunteered Venus from the first floor. She'd called earlier.

"Been there, done that, made me the man I am today," I bantered.

"What about drugs?" a lady I didn't know suggested.

"Why bother?" I grinned. "Go down to maintenance and borrow a screwdriver. Ram it into my forehead and lobotomize me."

"That's not what I meant," she responded defensively.

"What do you think those drugs do to a man?" I asked. "They take away our ability for rational thought where sex is concerned. We'd hump our mothers, sisters, a cop standing on a street corner or participate in a gang-bang on public transit. The worst part is we eventually come down from that high, we know exactly what degradations and perversions we went through and we know we'll do it again and again until the drugs cycle out of our system."

"It would be more merciful to make brain dead," I finished.

"Is there anything we can do to help?" Roni pressed forward. Oh fuck, Angel's roommate and someone I gave a damn about (Angel that is). I owed Angel an honest answer.

"Give me time," I sighed wearily. "Assume that I don't mind attempting to be friends, but I don't want a sexual relationship."

"Can we hug you?" Kuiko asked.

"Warn me first," I replied. "Keep your hands above the waist and I'm okay."

"If you hate women, how come your reviews are so good?" Venus sounded a bit angry.

"I don't hate all women, just a specific few," I sadly met her gaze.

"When I have sex it isn't for the review. I don't hold it against the woman that I'm being forced into intercourse with so I show her as much consideration and attention as I can," I explained. "After my first rape, it was something they taught me in therapy. The theory was that if I could make a woman happy, she would develop concern for my wellbeing. That was a lie, of course."

"Wait," Roni muttered, "you've been sexually assaulted more than once?" I nodded. "But you are only 21. That's all fouled up." For a moment the mothering instinct kicked in. The women started flowing into my place causing me to stumble back in near terror.

"Whoa," Kuiko threw her arms out to the sides to act as a barrier.

"The last thing I think Israel needs is a bunch of us to swarm his apartment. Israel, you are still going to attend the party Saturday, aren't you?" Kuiko changed the subject.

"Sure," I nodded. "I look forward to matching personalities to faces."

"Do you ever think you will sleep with one of us - girls in the complex?" Venus worried. I took a deep breath.

"The last women I really trusted betrayed me utterly," I explained. "Three days ago, I would have had to say 'no'," and I watched the crowd deflate.

"But, since then I've willingly had two women in my apartment," not really a lie, "Angel and Kuiko here, and I wouldn't have believed that possible either. So, I say 'yes' there is a possibility that one day I'd trust enough to have sex with a woman I know well."

"Any hope of casual sex?" a woman whose name I thought was Samantha.

"Damn it," Roni erupted. "Haven't you been listening? He's got to work past feeling forced to have sex before he can hope to enjoy it. Asking him to have sex outside the legal requirements is stupid."

"Hey now," Samantha grumbled. "Sabatini and Clark both went missing last night. Who are we going to have sex with if not Israel?"

"Wait, who does that leave?" Kuiko groaned.

"Perez?"

"No, he got married."

"Vladimir?"

"He went missing a month ago."

"Huang?"

"Missing - I thought he moved but I checked this morning and he's vanished too."

"Damn, we are losing all our guys," several women worried and looked at me with a combination of 'please fuck me' and 'please don't vanish'.

Statistically speaking, there were roughly five thousand women of my age group in this district so there should have been two hundred males - my male demographic was below the total male average due to diminishing birth rates for men. We weren't only below that ratio, we were catastrophically below that ratio.

A bit of judicious checking, with people still hovering around my door, showed that not only had twelve of the twenty-eight missing in our city come from our district, but sixty-three had married and moved off to couple's housing. To add to the disaster, forty-seven had been granted permission to move out, which implied someone important's approval because their moving was a violation of the gender quota.

The quota had been dropping in this district for the past ten years, but this sudden exodus was devastating to the working class women who remained. The wealthier elements of society were moving younger men uptown into high security towers where they could be safer and more tightly controlled. The poorer classes were being left to fend for themselves.

I was a token offering to my district. Had I behaved, I would have been moved uptown in due time as well. I had no idea what they would do with my damaged ass now, though jail and rehabilitation seemed likely. The whole deal with Bethany made total sense too. She'd picked me and since she was from a rich and powerful family, she could expect to entice me into an attachment at some point and time.

Except for the piddling little reality that she'd raped me and I would rather die than wake up next to her in anyplace but the morgue.

"Do you want one of us to move in and be your roommate - to keep you safe?" a female voice requested.

I hung my head. I doubted a single woman out there - their number had grown to about twenty - was over the age of thirty but I could already hear their biological clocks ticking. 'Vladimir, Huang - why couldn't you have run faster or hidden better, you selfish bastards? Perez, get your lazy, one-woman ass back home. There is no way me and a fifty-five year old zombie can do this by ourselves.'

"Shit," Roni grumbled. "What part about 'traumatized' do you not get?"

"But he will get better, right?" Venus pressed. Roni should know because despite not being a doctor of anything, she was an EMT and she cured guys like me all the time. Maybe not.

"Israel, when did the therapy for the last assault conclude?" Roni asked.

"I didn't get any," I enlightened them. "I reported the assault to campus security. They told that I had gone to a sorority party, so what else should I have expected? They told me girls will be girls. They told me it was he said-she said, they were good girls and I couldn't prove it was non-consensual sex. And, as they laughed me out of the station, one of them told the others 'he's got a nice ass'."

"You went to a sorority party," Venus stated confidently. "Of course you had sex." I thought Roni was going to hit her.

"Sex? I'm not going to bore you with the list of physical injuries I sustained having so called consensual sex at this so called party. You wouldn't want to believe the authorities would overlook the damage because you want to think the system works," I stated.

"You wouldn't want to believe a group of women could treat a man so badly, or that they could get away with it if they did. If, by some bizarre chance, a man pushes you into a bathroom stall and sodomizes you, the police come, gather DNA evidence and the guy goes to corrections," I created an example.

"If a women does it to a man - we have to prove we weren't asking for it. For most men, going to the police is fruitless. We simple try to get on with our lives and are thankful she didn't bring a few friends along for seconds and thirds. None of you want to think about that, but that is exactly the way it is," I continued.

"It can't be that bad," a neighbor named Natalya chimed in. "Men go out to clubs, on dates; things like that."

"What are they supposed to do? We are required to meet women," I looked her over. "Some guys like revolving door sex, but a good number of us are either numb to the very act of sex, are trying to meet the 'one', or it is simply 28 days later thus we have to perform."

"You make it sound like half the male population should be cowering behind their doors, afraid to go out," Samantha fought back. "Clearly that's not the case." I was glad I'd taken the noodles off the burner because it didn't look like my fan club as going away anytime soon.

"Have you not been listening?" I snapped.

"I'm about to go out on a date with a woman I fear and despise. I don't have a choice," I growled. "Have any of you ever asked a man if he's been drugged, jumped by a date's roommate/sister/long-lost-cousin, or threatened with arrest, loss of employment, or physical injury?" No one responded.

"Let me explain something to you. Bethany Harmon was the first woman I independently had sex with. She wasn't my first. My first rapist took my virginity. After that, it was a series of very skilled physical therapists. I was proud when I could take them to orgasm but in the end it was still a symbol of my broken nature," I related.

"Bethany was different. We made love once that first night. After that, we were all over each other. During the week, it was two or three times a day at least. In her car, bathroom stalls, her apartment, my dorm, behind a lecturer's desk this one time - all over the place. I loved her voice when she called my name, the smell of her arousal, the way she'd arch her back when she came, the feel of her skin rubbing against my naked flesh, the taste of her when we kissed - everything," I recalled.

"Trust her? I couldn't 'not' trust her. She completed me. She was the one who vanquished my fear of the dark. She drove off the nightmares and brought me into the light," I stared back through the years. "I didn't feel safe - I felt invincible." Oh shit, I could feel the tears making tracks down my face.

"The next thing I knew for sure, I was vomiting into the trashcan beside my bed. My digestive track was a mess from a three day diet of hyper-stimulants, illegal aphrodisiacs and alcohol. I had severe memory loss and blackouts for weeks afterward but eventually I remembered everything, though I wished I hadn't," I muttered softly, tearing open festering wounds.

"I didn't go to a sorority party, Venus. I went with my girlfriend, who I loved and trusted, to meet some of her friends at a sorority house. No party was mentioned. I had every belief that Bethany wouldn't let anything bad happen to me, just like all of you claim to have the best of intentions," I continued quietly.

"I begged her to get me out of there when the others moved in. I cried out for her when they took my clothes - and she looked amused. She told me I had the whole sorority for the weekend and I should enjoy it. She had bragged to them how good at sex I was and all I had to do was show them - all forty of them," I related.

"When it was over, Bethany drove me home. She told me it was a great weekend and all the girls were jealous that she had such a fun, willing slut," I choked. "At my dorm room, she wanted to have sex one more time. I begged off. Afterwards, I staggered over to campus security, but I've already told you how that went."

"You should have sought out therapy," Samantha insisted.

"You clearly don't know how the law works," I lectured. "If an incident is reported and accepted as a sexual assault, the state pays for counseling plus I get a sexual exemption until my therapist says I'm okay. I get to live my life."

"If there is no acknowledged rape then I have to commit myself into a mental health facility on the grounds I cannot perform sexually," I explained. "Then it is very little therapy and lots of drugs. In counseling, they wean you off of drugs. In self-commitment, if you stop taking your drugs, they arrest you and make you take them."

"After campus security laughed me out of the building, I was doubly screwed. If I turned myself in, I would have lost my scholarship and become a drug addict, or I could piece my mind and body back together on my own as best I could and exit college as fast as possible. See, Bethany's sorority put out a video of my greatest exploits at their soiree. Suddenly I was the college whore so it was open season on me on campus."

"Lucky me; I graduated at the top of my class, I got a nice job and what I hoped was a fresh start. Instead, I find out that Bethany got me the job and expects me to be suitably grateful. It's college all over again. I am trapped and there is no escape for me," I sighed hopelessly.

"You are not going to kill yourself, are you?" Venus worried.

"I have not mentioned ending my life," I went over the legal rigmarole, "I have not made any plans to end my existence and I have not hinted at reasons for me wanting to cease to exist." I had to say that because of the laws covering male suicide/attempted suicide.

"You sound pretty depressed," Kuiko murmured. "Hell, you sound awfully depressed."

"I've given up on hope, not on life," I lied. My first plan - to exit college and build a better life - had failed, but I'd struggled on through Bethany and what she did to me and I wasn't going to give up now. I didn't know how I was going to survive. I had to believe something would come to me.

"You might find love again," Roni suggested hopefully.

"Bethany was my second love. The first was my high school girlfriend. After my first rape, I was too ashamed to see her," I confessed. "She moved away before I went to college and I've never had the courage to seek her out. We were going to be each other's first, but..."

"Okay," Venus muttered, "that is officially the saddest thing I've ever heard in my life. Is that tequila on top of your refrigerator?"

"Sure," I shrugged.

"Can I have some?" Venus requested.

"Why not," I nodded. "All of you can help yourselves. Glasses are in the top right cabinet. I'll be standing in the corner over here," I moved away, keeping my eyes on them of course. "Sorry Kuiko, but I think you have figured out I don't drink."

"That's okay," she smiled playfully. "At least you didn't throw it out like you did the food."

"How'd you know?" I regarded her.

"The inside of the container was damp. When you take the food out, the surface dries out over time. Obviously you had just gotten rid of it before placing the Tupperware at my door. I was hurt and offended but now I understand. It's okay."

I nodded. What else could I do? Thankfully, Roni and Kuiko herded my other neighbors out and closed the door as they left. I hustled up my dinner, ate rapidly then headed out to the gym. I was five steps out the door when I felt the crushing weight of all the fucked up shit I'd done already that day and I still had to work around Bethany later.

I didn't know what to do. In reality, I did know what to do, only I didn't like it. Walking down the hall to Kuiko's place, I rang the door and waited. Aniqua answered.

"Hello Israel!" she beamed. Her enthusiasm made me take a half-step back. There was something going on in the background but I couldn't concentrate on it.

"Hi Aniqua," I stumbled. "Is Kuiko in?"

"Oh - yes she is," she kept smiling. "She told me there was a problem at your place earlier. I'm sorry I missed it."

"Not much to miss and definitely not my finest moment," I tried to make light of the fuck-up.

"Kuiko, there is a guy at the door for you," Aniqua yelled over her shoulder, chuckling.

I suddenly realized that background noise was a shower.

"Wait! Wait!" Kuiko yelled. She appeared in their condo's hallway, a hand towel clutched to her chest, clearly soaked and running right at me.

By accident or on purpose, Kuiko had only one breast covered - nothing else.

"Hey Israel!" she bubbled with excitement. Had I said 'let's have sex', I was guaranteed to be jumped right then and there. Hopefully Aniqua would be kind enough to drag us by our ankles out of the public space.

"I am going down to the gym and wanted to know if you wanted to come along," I requested.

"Sure. Let me get dressed," she nodded happily. She turned and sprinted back to what must have been her bedroom, fully exposing her finely muscled back, pert ass and slender, athletic legs.

"Nothing on the backside, Crazy-K," Aniqua snickered while rolling her eyes then looked me over.