Gun Sex Page 15

  "I want some floss," Reseda said. Speedy looked at her, almost irked to be needing a translation. "That's cotton candy to you," she said, squeezing Speedy's hand.

  There was a gaggle of maybe half a dozen kids in front of them in line at the concession stand; they looked like rich kids slumming. Speedy supposed these kids had snuck out of their various parent's houses for this gig. They were down from the Hills, or maybe from over by Lake Merritt.

  Their white bread folks would be appalled that their sheltered children would ever come to a venue like this. Or would their parents think it was cool, were their folks aging hippies that would be wistfully nostalgic that their kids were partying hearty here in the meat locker?

  One of the slumming rich kids was black. His parent's were undoubtedly black professionals, not ghetto, no way. He looked like he was high on qualudes. The Oreo's torpid eyes were almost shut and there was a sleepy languor to his movements, his apathy in sharp juxtaposition to all his blanco friend's excited gazes. They looked around marveling at more black and brown faces than any of them had ever been exposed to up close and personal before this.

  As the rich kids got their rancid leather dogs and pogie bait from the concession stand and ambled off chattering, Speedy noticed a trio of black guys to the side watching the Oreo closely. These bloods were the real deal, dressed to be as unobtrusive as their ebony faces could possibly make them in a racist Amerikkka terrified of blackness.

  They were trying to be as unobtrusive as Speedy, actually. Like him they wore Dickies, work boots, and anonymous thrift store flannels.

  Speedy and the three brothers might have all looked working class, but Speedy had never held a straight job in his life. He suspected none of these dudes were pulling down legit paychecks neither. They were a trio of genuine g-thug-units, gutter brothers just like Speedy despite the separations of race.

  As he paid for the 'floss' and handed it to Reseda, Speedy studied her, attuning to her excitement as she looked around at the larcenous chaos of the loud, lit-up Midway. She was grabbing big greedy handfuls of cotton candy as they walked, her face glowing like a fluorescent light.

  One urgent question was answered for Speedy: this place was obviously home to her. Reseda was a carny.

  "C'mon," Reseda said, finishing her cotton candy and tossing the paper cone down onto the sawdust at their feet.

  She grabbed Speedy's hand and led him through the crowd, her tiny form slithering easily through the thick crowd. Bobbing along behind her holding her hand Speedy had a harder time, his wide angular frame bumping and jostling people. Some of them gave evidence of irritation, but all Speedy's attention was on Reseda's slinky little ass as she led him to the Maze of Mirrors and inside.

  The couple's reflections extended off to infinity in all directions. They were the only people that existed: the tiny intent carny girl and her big Doberman would-be lover, bumping into mirrors and dead ends as they worked their way into the heart of the Maze together.

  Reseda laughed as she spun to plop her back against a mirror. Speedy grabbed her wiry butt and lifted her up into the air, pulling her against him so their crotches ground together.

  She grinned as she felt him rising to the occasion even through the thick denim of his jeans. Reseda wrapped her legs around Speedy's thighs, squeezing so tight it felt like she was applying a scissors hold on him.

  Their faces bumped together hard enough their teeth clicked, both mouths wide open, fish gulping as if they intended to swallow each other whole. But when their lip lock paused long enough for them to come up for air, Speedy saw that it wasn't him she was looking at.

  It was her own reflection her stare was locked onto over Speedy's shoulder. A million mirror-image Reseda's were looking right back at her. Speedy watched Reseda watching herself as she wiggled one small hand in between them and started fumbling at Speedy's fly.

  Raucous laughter sounded behind them and Speedy turned his head quickly to see a pack of giggling little black kids staring at him and Reseda. He couldn't tell how many kids there were or how close they were either.

  Their reflections spilled out to infinity just like his and Reseda’s reflections did. They could be in the next mirror chamber over or on the other side of the Maze. A million couples grafted together at the crotch even if still fully dressed, a billion laughing little kids watching.

  "Get a room!" a pudgy girl maybe ten years old said. Then the kids ignored Speedy and Reseda to hunt and chase each other screaming through the Maze.

  Speedy pried Reseda's legs from around his thighs and adjusted himself inside his pants before leading her through the happy kids in search of the exit. A little boy sprang into the same mirror chamber as them and grinned admiringly up at Reseda with a buck-toothed smile as he slithered past them in search of the rest of his friends.

  After they managed to escape to the Midway, Reseda said "If you really need privacy to perform, there's always the Simp Heister."

  She gestured toward the Ferris wheel across the way. Speedy studied the huge lit-up spinning disk, looked at how the gondolas were all semi-enclosed, at how no one could see what you were doing when you were close to the top. He nodded compliance.

  They got on the Ferris wheel and started riding the ascent. "I'm so terrified of heights," Reseda said in a satisfied happy tone.

  Her tiny expert little hands were opening his zipper; an enigmatic grin wider than her usual Mona Lisa smile lighting up her face. By the time their gondola stopped at the top, she'd deftly tugged him out with all the eagerness of a mountain lioness scooping out prey from a rodent's burrow.

  Speedy was delighted as Reseda held him, cooling his heat as they both looked all around at the East Bay's lights. Reseda started stroking and he reached for her in return but she slapped his groping hand away with a giggle.

  She squeezed tight onto him for an instant before relenting into relative gentleness again. Speedy took the hint and clasped his hands behind his head, leaning back as far as he comfortably could with the .45 in the back of his waistband. The cold metal digging into the small of his back made an interesting juxtaposition to the feel of her hands.

  They were on top of the world up here, all alone. No one could touch them or intrude on them without his permission.

  The lights of Oakland sprawled all around them. Neon and sodium beamed up to drown the stars in that eternal promise of riches and horror, splendor and despair.

  These streets belonged to Speedy; he was King of the East Bay with Reseda's hand on him. Anything was possible for him with Reseda here next to him, doing him right.

  She seemed to sense how close he was getting and sped up her ministrations. She was moaning in his ear with little chipmunk gasps as she worked. Whether she was panting from her expressed fear of heights or from the naughtiness of this semi-public sex, Speedy didn’t ask.

  The lights of the Bay were spinning as stars shot up in his vision and he came and came in a wave of ecstasy. He'd never felt the likes of this before, he almost blacked out as he went off like a fire hose; his money shot arced out into space in endless Olympic spurts. Even through the fog of orgasm, he heard the angry shouts that instantly arose from below.

  Reseda was still massaging him in a proprietary manner as Speedy leaned forward to look down over the edge of their ride. Their gondola rocked and Reseda gasped in a bedroom manner as Speedy looked down at the next gondola below them.

  The Mexican couple in the next unit down sat there with his jizz drenching their heads. The girl was crying, ripping at her previously neatly coiffed blue-black hair which was now lank, matted with Speedy's semen.

  Her fella was staring up at Speedy with hell blazing from his eyes. The intended menace of Semen Boy's shrieked series of Spanish curses was marred somewhat to Speedy as he saw his own cum dripping down the guy's cheek.

  Speedy sat back and stared straight ahead at the city lights that had been so engrossing a few moments before. He considered the current tactical situation as he removed R
eseda's reluctant hands and tucked himself back into his pants.

  "Carnals," he heard the guy in the gondola below shouting down to person-or-persons unseen on the midway. "Carnals, aqui."

  Their gondola began its ratcheting progress downward from the heights, stopping for a few seconds at each notch of the assembly line to let each respective gondola's passengers out onto the midway. Reseda leaned against him, giggling as more and more angry voices rose from below, gathering in wait for them when they reached the earth again.

  Speedy didn't try to clasp Reseda in return; he was learning her ways here tonight. Courtship, he supposed some might have called it.

  Speedy hadn't done prison time yet, but he knew enough graduates that had. He knew Mexicans were crazy about 'making numbers’ in the Yard, they had that whole 'Sureno versus Norteno' thing going on,

  Blacks and Whites had the option of staying in their cells and reading or playing chess during off hours. But any Eses that didn't make muster to stand with their respective cliquas at Yard Time would be ostracized, expelled from their crew and thus easy meat for the wolves.

  As their gondola reached the ground, Speedy noted the carnals of the guy he'd just jizzed on were making numbers here tonight alright. The cum-stained couple and four other Mexicans were filling the exit to the midway, boxing them in as Speedy and Reseda got off. The Mohawker carny looked on with interest from his duck pond game stall across the midway.

  The girlfriend was still dabbing away at her face and hair. She’d managed to clean off her black-lip-sticked mouth, but the jizz was too deeply involved in her elaborate shag hair-do for it to come out with less than an aggressive shampooing. Her boyfriend Semen Boy stood next to her trembling so hard that the cum dripping down his cheek jiggled in little liquid stalactites off the curve of his jaw.

  Speedy was bemused that Semen Boy hadn't even tried to wipe off yet like his girl friend. Perhaps he was trying to pretend it wasn't even there?

  Still, Speedy was relieved that he didn't recognize any of them. Jingletown wasn't far away, and Speedy was down with most of the cholos that lived in that Hood.

  It would've been especially embarrassing if it had been one of his tighter Jingletown partners like Dreamer. But since Speedy didn't know any of these people he didn't have to care, and things were a lot less complicated.

  Four of the Mexicans, Semen Boy included, had their hands held down along the seams of their khakis. Speedy assumed they were concealing their fileros there until they had a clean shot at shanking him.

  It was the skinny little Ese in back of the group that bothered Speedy. His hands dangled empty as Speedy's own, which meant to Speedy that he was the one with the gun, the real threat.

  Speedy stepped in front of Reseda and stopped with about ten feet between him and the Mexicans. He kept his eyes on the skinny Ese's hands without making any kind of grab at the back of his waistband; they'd see his 45 when Speedy wanted them to. Right now he was thinking hard about what order he'd do things in, allowing them to continue thinking they were in control of the situation,

  Reseda sucked in a deep lungful of air and shouted "Hey Rube," in a voice surprisingly brassy and penetrating for her petite stature.

  The Mohawker yelled "Hey Rube" in immediate chorus, and Speedy heard the cry being echoed up and down throughout the carnival by every carny in earshot.

  As the Mexicans turned to goggle, Mohawker sprang over his counter with a crowbar in his hand and scrambled their way with the heavy steel tool brandished over his head. He was pretty fast on his feet and his first blow chunked into one of the Mexican's collarbone before any of them could react. Speedy heard bone snap as the Mexican spun away with a wail.

  But then Mohawker was backpedaling fast as two of the other Mexicans crowded him, swiping at his gut with their knives. Ride monkeys and other carnys were closing in shouting, and a lot of the customers stopped what they were doing to enjoy this entertainment.

  Speedy saw the skinny Ese pull his pistol and start throwing down on the Mohawker. Speedy took advantage of the Ese's distraction to pull his own piece even as Semen Boy charged Speedy screaming, his knife outstretched like a fencer's foil.

  Speedy didn't have time to shoot him, Semen Boy was too close. But Speedy managed to grab the guy's knife wrist and then hammered the butt of his 45 right in the middle of Semen Boy's cum-drenched cheek. Semen Boy went down, knife still in hand, as Speedy swiveled to aim in on the Ese.

  The Ese was turning to aim in on Speedy in response as if their guns were compass needles seeking each other. Ese was quick but Speedy was quicker; Ese looked astonished that Speedy was already aimed in on his face while his own gun was still parked off slightly to the side.

  Ese's eyes narrowed as he froze with his pistol aimed off to Speedy's right, a muscle in Ese's cheek was jumping at the fact that Speedy was aiming dead at his head. Speedy hoped Ese wouldn't force him to put a .45 round in his dome. Speedy didn't want to get nitrates all over himself on his first big date out with Reseda.

  Then a ride monkey sent an unexpected gift their way: a chunk of broken cinderblock about the size of a baseball spun through the air to hit Ese in the temple, felling him hard and removing that immediate threat.

  Things had suddenly gotten much louder, and Speedy looked around. The three black G-Thug-Units that had been scoping out the Oreo before had taken advantage of Mohawker's leaving his post, hopping the counter into his duck pond game stand and grabbing his cash box.

  Mohawker shouted in rage, quickly knocked out the two knife-wielding Mexicans he'd been tap dancing around til this point, and turned to face the Thugs to defend his stash. One of the G-Thug-Units leaned across the counter and smashed Mohawker in the face with his own cash box, and Mohawker slumped away clutching his bleeding face with both hands.

  As if that were an awaited signal, customers up and down Midway started assaulting the various rip-off game stands and over-priced concessions, most of which were unmanned. The majority of the carnys had left their various scams and rides unattended as they'd raced forward in response to Reseda’s carny 'Red Alert.'

  All that unguarded loot seemed to drive the crowd mad, and all the negligent carnys turned to assault the people trying to rob their money makers. The looters fought back, and it deteriorated into a general brawl.

  The looters were fighting amongst themselves over the loot as well, and fights broke out along racial lines as if on auto-pilot. Speedy saw three white guys standing back to back in a triad circle swinging and kicking wildly at the chivvying dog pack of skinny Asian kids that surrounded them like in a Run Run Shaw chop-socky movie.

  Around the way, a bullet-headed Mexican had his teeth buried in the neck of a huge black dude with head shaved except for a top-knot. Bullet-Head was trying to chew a hole in the Blood's jugular even as the black guy's ham-sized fist pounded into the Mexican's face over and over and over again.

  People were tearing the concessions and game stands apart, timber and planks being ripped away into toothpicks, and a fire started blazing high in a game stand halfway down the midway. People shouting and running around like in an anthill on crack.

  A woman screaming a long, endless, ululating howl like a driverless fire engine. Somewhere out of sight but easy enough to hear even over the pandemonium, the attention-getting sound of someone racking a round into a pump shotgun; the boom of buckshot being fired, at who or what Speedy didn't know or care.

  "My man just kicked your man's ass," Reseda crowed to the Mexican girl who looked down at her unconscious boyfriend lying there on the filthy earth of the Midway amongst his several other horizontal friends.

  The side of Semen Boy's face looked as if it were glued to the midway ground by the cum on his cheek, said jizz-stain caked with carnival filth now. This guy couldn't seem to catch a break.

  Speedy glanced across the way at where the Mohawker carny sat on his ass on the ground. Mohawker's legs were splayed out in front of him and his back leaned against what was left of hi
s duck pond stand as the mob tore apart his livelihood behind him.

  Both of Mohawker's hands were still pressed to his face concealing his visage and the extent of his wound. Blood had soaked the front of his shirt and was continuing to flow in a steady stream from beneath his pressing hands.

  Speedy figured the guy had stuck his nose in to help Reseda not Speedy, and Speedy hadn't liked the way Mohawker had looked at her anyway. Speedy didn't know him, didn't owe him, and the fool was on his own. Still Speedy grimaced for some reason as he grabbed Reseda's and whirled her away, keeping his pistol out as they began their getaway through the riot.

  There was a lot of blood splashed about, liberally. Reseda was laughing at the carnage and destruction swirling around them. She leered down at the unmoving bodies they had to weave around, said bodies getting trampled by the crowd. She grinned at all the bloody-faced people darting around with their eyes and mouths wide open in screams.

  Reseda was the Queen of the Night on a procession through her court. It was almost as if she thought she was causing all this frenzy just by being here.

  Speedy's skin crawled at the sound of her gleeful laughter as he strode through the crowd with Reseda in tow, aiming them for the thinner portions of the mob. That cold cautious core that had kept him alive up til now urged him to release her hand, lengthen his stride, and walk away from her alone, away from the mortal threat she represented.

  But if she was the queen of this mess, he was her king now. A ravenous satyr component within his heart wanted only to throw Reseda down right now and stick it in, fuck her brains out on the filthy Midway earth here at ground zero on the killing floor.

  Speedy neither abandoned her nor let his little head win out over his big head; he kept her hand in his as they moved forward like a royal couple.

  "In the face!" he raged at the top of his lungs as he marched, as if shouting to some imaginary adversary. He let his eyes roll wild so people would think he was 5150, pointing his pistol at any idiot who didn't get out of their way fast enough. "In the face!"