CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
THE END OF THE BEGINNING

 

How the fuck did I get here?

 

 

          “Strip off your clothes—all of them.”

          The foreboding words were spoken to me by a skinny, middle-aged redneck with a moustache. I reluctantly walked into the small, windowless room and kicked off my sneakers. My arms reached above my head to pull off a polo shirt and I tossed the garment across a wooden bench. I removed my white socks, throwing them with my sneakers in the corner. The floor felt cold and filthy beneath my bare feet, a perfect fit for the uninviting ambiance of this solitary room and entirely appropriate for what was about to happen next.

          Turning to face the skinny redneck, I saw that he was staring intently at me, his dark eyes watching every movement I made with the predatory obsession of a child molester. I moved my hands to my shorts and boxer-briefs, intending to drop them both with one swoop.

The redneck lowered his eyes and his moustache twitched with the hint of a smile. He was enjoying this. Degrading me. Or maybe he was just a queer.

          I yanked down my final garbs of clothing and stood naked before him. It was uncomfortable, humiliating, and dehumanizing. The redneck stared at me so hard I could feel his eyes touching my bare skin. He seemed to be studying every detail, memorizing what he saw, storing away the image so he could use it later for his perverted entertainment pleasure.

          “Now lift up your privates,” he said.

           I grabbed testicles and shaft and lifted them to my belly. The smug face of the redneck continued to show signs he was taking pleasure in this—but I saw through his facade.

He was indeed enjoying himself, but not because of any sick desire he had to sexually violate young men. At least not primarily. No, this asshole was one of those pussy bitches who became a cop for the power of it all. Pig. He didn’t join up for duty and honor, for brotherhood and public service, or even for the decent middleclass salary he was being paid. No, this asshole wanted a shiny silver badge so he could intimidate with that badge, hide behind that badge, and become that badge rather than the weak and inconsequential human being he had been in his former life. Fucking pig.

I was the one being probed and degraded, but I had already learned far more about this cop than he ever would of me. It was not just that the redneck wanted to control other people with the power of the law—he needed to do so because he desperately needed to alleviate the inadequacy and self-doubt he carried with him each and every day of his miserable life.

Standing there naked with my genitals in hand, I saw this quality in him, the insatiable need to dominate others with his badge. And I saw something else too. Bitterness. The middle-aged redneck resented me for being a young college student with my whole life in front of me and he was indignant with himself for not being a police officer out on patrol, chasing down criminals, solving murders, eating donuts, and doing whatever else real cops do. He was a fucking piece of shit corrections officer stuck working inside a shit-hole county jail filled with ghetto thugs, white trash rednecks, alcoholic bums, crackhead junkies, repeat DUI offenders, and snot-nosed college kids like me arrested for felony assault. His life was going nowhere and he had no control over his pathetic future, but he did wield absolute power over my life here and now. Behind the barbed wired fences, within this jail, and inside the cold solitary cell—this was his dominion where he was master and I was a slave to his desperate need to achieve self-validation by controlling others with his fucking badge.

          The moustache of the skinny redneck cop twitched again and his lips formed into a vile sneer of a smile.

“Turn around,” he commanded. “I want you to bend over, spread your ass cheeks, and cough.”

It was right about now, with some lowlife toy cop looking up my asshole, that I gave serious consideration to the question: How the fuck did I get here?