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  When Cyrus bounced back he talked on how I’d never get with her. She only bedded with ladies, older ones at that. “You ever hoedowned with dykes, JAG? The chillest,” he said, breaking away to waltz in circles with Bebe, a willing whirling partner until he spun her off-balance and she spiraled to the floor.

  Bending to help her to her feet, I got an intimate look at the wings on Cyrus’ back. I clawed my fingers through the feathers, asked if he was an angel.

  “Once upon a time,” he said.

  “He and the Almighty had a fallin out,” Bebe explained.

  “Whoa . . .” was all I could mouth.

  “Self-made, brotherman,” he said. “Free will. For better or worse, I am who I am.” He winked at Bebe who blew him a kiss.

  As we melted into the crowd I no longer felt alien, kindred with these new friends whose names and faces I’d pretty much forget the next day. But the fellowship was real, my sense of well-being undeniable. I knew everything would be alright.

  FIVE

  The ex was still giving me the treatment. That first letter from my attorney returned to sender. Same for the follow-ups. No matter how I pleaded with her for basic human decency, she wouldn’t let me see my son.

  The lawyer said it would be a long ugly battle, though he assured me we’d win in the courts in the end. He advised that I keep my head together, steer clear of the ex, let him handle all communications. But after one too many these-things-take-time, I descended on her doorstep with an appetite for ownage.

  Stomping on her folks’ porch, I broadcast our business to the neighbors. One after another, their dogs sounded the alarm. Then the busybodies all hobbled out of bed and cracked their blinds to gather intel for the gossip chain. After the police dragged me off, the good citizens would shuffle back to their lily-white sheets, too aroused to sleep.

  I’d stirred up a kettle, I realized, but I couldn’t stop myself. Delirious from overwork, I explained to the cops, I was pig-headed, foul-mouthed in my frustration. Shouting threats through a screened window, I said the ex was lucky I wasn’t savage or I’d be in there right now, doing what should have been done long ago. My son’s cry, sounding like a kicked cat, straightened me up some. Then out the front door came the ex’s daddy, shotgun by his side.

  “Goddammit, boy.” He punched the barrel at my chest. “You lookin to meet your maker?”

  “Pull the trigger, muthafucker,” I said. “Pull the fucking trigger.”

  I was charged with misdemeanor disturbing the peace and trespassing. The next day, the ex filed for a restraining order, granted immediately of course. While mothers get the benefit of the doubt, as they often should, fathers get no second chances. That’s a criminal act from where I sit. I wouldn’t be allowed now within a hundred yards of the ex, contact forbidden through any means other than my lawyer.

  I’d been gutted. If I meant nothing to the girl I once called my wife, whose life was mine and mine hers, then who was I now? If I couldn’t be there for my son, to guide him to grow up right, who was I?

  Feeling helpless, I worked. It was all I could do. Serving communities of faith like First Church gave me strength, if not hope, to get out of bed every morning, to do for others what I couldn’t do for myself.

  Cyrus understood. “The beast rears its nosty head,” he said when I told him how I lost it with the ex. We were listening to early Iron Maiden, lounging on the couch at my place. He said it happens to the best, then he went off again on how he’d get that bitch, just you wait. I told him I had it under control.

  He drew a finger round the rim of his glass. “Ya know . . .” he said, trademark grin slanting his words. “Ya know what JAG needs?” I confessed I was clueless. “Something he’s never done before.” His hooded gaze knocked the wind out of me.

  “I’m into girls,” I said.

  He kicked me with his scaly boots. “Girls are God’s good food,” he said. The guitars thrashed in the background.

  “I’m too busy to eat.” I was whining now. “I don’t need the trouble.”

  He trained his eyes on mine. “What if I told ya there was an easy way to get with all kinda girls?”

  He told me about fallenangels, this hookup site a friend of his in the Children’s Crusade circle had launched last year. “Social network for the disenfranchised,” he said. “The Dirty South’s response to snatch dot con and all that other horseshit for the squeaky cleans. It serves a noble purpose.”

  We pulled up the home page on my laptop, scanned the W4M section: hundreds of girls, ages eighteen to forty-five (the oldest we saw), living in or around the Carolinas. They had posed for their photos in a range of outfits, from bondage gear to less typical kink, like this preggo with peanut butter and chocolate kisses on her breasts and belly. Her eyes were black-barred, an app you could switch on if your situation required discretion, Cyrus said. “Ya got your CC riders on here, for sure. And we don’t give a fuck. But not everyone’s upfront about who they are. Can’t afford to be. Those Zorro honeys are soccer moms, school teachers—”

  “Ministers’ wives?”

  “Ya never can tell.” He was on a roll, not registering my crack on Good Charlotte. “See, the beauty is this scene embraces all comers. No pedophiles or goat lickers, but everyone else is welcome. All the so-called fetishists, perverts, ‘weirdoes,’ whatever ya wanna call em. Peeps the holy rollers spit on from their horse ‘n’ buggies. This is where they go to work out their shit. No judgment among the fallenangels.” I remembered the wings on his back. “We all lookin for love, no?”

  I was surprised by the quality of many of the pictures, professionally rendered, just shy of porn, but no racier than what’s in fashion or photography magazines. These girls had invested in self-image. “They’re calling cards,” Cyrus said. “Write-ups in the profiles lay out their wants and needs. Fair warning, bro: their desires are extreme. But ya find what does it for ya then just go for it. Consentin adults, brotherman. It’s all about consent.”

  He showed me how you sign up to meet the girls by filling out simple info on your vitals, answering the Q’s about what you’re good for, uploading a hothot pic or two, then you go hogwild. I asked to see his profile. “I’m off the grid presently,” he said, leaning back into the cushions with that cockeyed grin of his. “There’s this girly I’m gamin. She wants a boyfriend legit.”

  “Guess she don’t know you so well.”

  “And you know who?” His head lolled to the side. He poofed out his lower lip.

  After Cyrus left I got back to work, monitoring a thread on the FEAR NOT blog related to WALKING TALL, an editorial I’d posted on the surge in pedestrian fatalities and the public scare about not being able to walk one’s own neighborhood at night. My job was to keep the discussion lively, respectful, inspirational. I would delete uncivil or inappropriate comments and add competing opinions, under multiple user names, to spur debate. Mostly I played the voice of reason. On this topic: use crosswalks, look both ways, be aware of your surroundings. The basics.

  I was having trouble focusing. I kept seeing all those fallenangels, thinking on what Cyrus had said: extreme desires, no judgment, consenting adults. It had been too long since I’d felt needed, let alone wanted. The closest I’d come in years to loving touch was that time at the Playpen. I realize how folks on the outside looking in might call that superficial, but who are they to judge? I know my experience didn’t lack substance. It was genuine, intimate, despite the anonymity and the chemical influence. I was receptive, my openness met in kind.

  Flipping between the web sites, I signed up on fallenangels, choosing for my handle jesusangel, my given name, which no one here but the ex knew. On FEAR NOT, I scrolled through the posts, let the stock comments stay: “Ain’t nowhere to hide, the Lord’s gonna call you when your time is up,” “As tragic as it must be for the families of the deceased, we need to keep in mind that the Lord has a plan for each and every one of us,” “It’s not our place to question the wisdom of God’s way.” I fille
d out the form on my physical stats, snapped a self-portrait, uploaded it, clicked the option to black-bar my eyes. I cut lines like “survival of the fittest” and “shit happens.” I answered the questionnaire on my wants and needs, checking every box from GFE (girlfriend experience) to H2O (water sports) to see what such inclusiveness might bring. I contributed the following pearls: “Use a light if you find yourself on a dark road. Be cautious without being paranoid.” Lifting a page from the Reverend’s playbook, I closed the comments with this: “You never walk alone when you walk with Jesus. Have faith. Walk tall. Fear not.”

  Browsing fallenangels for the rest of the night took me back to the summer of seventh grade when busty blond Heidi Kotchke kissed me at a block party on a dare. We went out until New Year’s when your dad was assigned to the Pentagon, little brother, and we up and moved to Alexandria. You may recall how Heidi and I capped our relationship on Christmas Eve. It was the first time for us both. We were almost fully clothed, steaming up the windows of her parents’ minivan. I remember hearing her family carol through the garage wall. The snow outside was soft and light.

  My hookups after this followed a similar pattern. I’d often grow closest to a girlfriend just prior to marching off to the next suburban war zone. Times were best for me when your dad was commanding his “elite task force” in the Gulf or the Balkans, while we were stuck in the same town long enough for the love I couldn’t get at home to take root elsewhere.

  There was an urgency to my relationships, a do-or-die quality my partners saw as passion. I wasn’t fooling around like most guys my age. I didn’t think I could live without giving all of me. I still feel the same. I need to give, but it’s more than this: I need to be received.

  In the years up to and including the ex, when I was with a girl, I was with her. I’d never stray, lie, cheat. I was present, my commitment total. My aim? Connection at the core. I didn’t do flings or one-night stands. Sex for me was never meaningless, manhood not a numbers game. Confident not cocky, I liked to think of myself as adventurous, open-minded. Ten minutes on fallenangels showed me I still had much to learn.

  As Cyrus had said, many of the fantasies were hardcore. Some I’d never heard of and wouldn’t have imagined on my own. Pony play? I couldn’t see the turn-on. Horsing around in a leather mask, hooves and harness, being saddled, ridden and stuffed with carrots seemed more suited to child’s play. This was when I first thought how maybe such desires were less about sex than something I couldn’t yet wrap my head around.

  The calls for acts of violence and degradation were tough to stomach. Pissing, shitting, cutting, choking. I asked myself if I’d follow through on such requests, if that’s what my partner desired, and if I did, what would this say about me? Where’s the line between abuse and love, attending to a lover’s needs? I kept telling myself: non-judgment, mutual consent.

  I wondered about the pornography influence. Most of the fallenangels were in their mid twenties to early thirties, my peer group, the Internet Porn Generation. Of course, I’d seen some videos. I even starred in one with my second to last girlfriend before the ex. It was a private production, for our eyes only, and we deleted it soon after recording it. We were young. She changed her mind, said I was cheating on her when I’d watch our DVD while making love. Such disembodied e-voyeurism puts me off anyhow. I crave human contact, real-time connects.

  The most intense profile I came across was from a girl whose photos were shadows. She described herself as an educated professional, a preacher’s daughter, God-fearing, half English-German half Native American, twenty-five years old, attractive, fit, a survivor. She wrote: “My life coach has told me that I need to own the experience of being violated, to relive the violence, but this time I control it. This will help me take possession of my rape and unfreeze the psycho-emotional blocks I’ve built up over the years since it happened. I’m dead to the world. But I want to live again.”

  She described how she needed a stranger “to reconstruct this atrocity. On a designated night, you would follow this script to the letter. You would break into my place by smashing the window at the back door, unlocking it from the inside. You would have to be brutal, slapping me in the face, calling me awful filthy names, threatening to kill me, binding my wrists behind my back, tying my legs to the bed posts . . . Believe me, I don’t want this. But I need it. I need someone outside my regular life to recreate this for me so I can get beyond it once and for all. I need to be hurt to be healed.”

  She physically required a white man who matched my age and height. She said the guy had to be drug- and disease-free and, incredibly, a man of faith. She was willing to meet one time to answer questions, sign disclaimers or otherwise put down in writing her expectations, waiving criminal charges. She pleaded: “Will you please help me? God bless.”

  Cyrus was right. This online community served a purpose far beyond sex play. But who could meet such a demand? This wasn’t a request for rape fantasy. It was a call to be raped. Who could do such a thing to her? for her? Only a rapist, I thought.

  Lines from the Reverend’s sermon flashed through my mind. The trauma this girl suffered erased who she was. Her former self now ceased to exist. But could reliving such cruelty—being destroyed once again, this time of her own free will—bring her back? What’s the line between self-destruction and redemption?

  I was afraid for this girl who called herself happyhappy. I tagged her profile, intending to check her DEAR DIARY entries later to see what would happen next.

  Honestly, brother, this was more than I could take. Feeling sick, I was about to sign off the site when I stumbled upon a cute picture of a mom and her son. I clicked on the most innocent profile in the lot.

  SexxxeeYoungMama would soon be visiting from out of town for a week. She was looking for “good clean fun (wink wink)” during the downtimes. She said she hadn’t dated “forever” since her last breakup. She wrote: “I’m a hard worker and a devoted mother, but I need to feel like a woman again. Who’s up for showing a lusty lady a good time? Nice boys or girls, please inquire within. I’m an equal opportunity lover.”

  I messaged her at once. She wrote back the next day.

  SIX

  We arranged to meet for a movie (some horror flick, I can’t recall) on a Saturday night. It was early June, hot and icky, even after dusk. She wore a pink baby T-shirt with I BREAK THINGS on the front and a black pleated skirt that swayed with her hips as she sashayed toward me outside the mall’s multiplex theater. Her lips were wide and welcoming. I gave her a bird of paradise I’d been hiding behind my back. We embraced like lovers too long apart. She smelled of cloves and shampoo. When we separated I held her hand, stepped back to drink in her mongrel beauty. She was a rare crossbreed of European (French, Spanish, Dutch), Asian (Filipino), African (via the West Indies slave trade) and North American (Arawak) ancestry—a true blue American. My first impression: Earth Mother Goddess.

  Her untamed hair—milk chocolate, auburn-tinted, bleached from the sun—framed lotta-naughty eyes shaped like almonds. I longed to take them into my mouth. There seemed to be a sweet sadness to her smile, like she’d been beat down, through no fault of her own, but never knocked out. Her arms were smooth, toned, tan. I could tell she lifted weights. Her heels pumped her calves too. This SexxxeeYoung Mama was a powerful girl. Her name: Shenandoah Brousseau.

  Since we’d arrived early, we were able to chat before the previews and military recruitment ads kicked in and the people nearby hissed at us. I opened with a question on her equal-opportunity-lover pitch.

  “Mmm . . .” She sipped her soda. “That lil confession never fails to get the boys goin.” She pursed her lips into a perfect o. “I fancy girls,” she said in her sumptuous country lilt. “They’re soft and beautiful, juicy like a Georgia peach, yummy like pecan pie. Girls are just plain kissable, lovable, the best ever. It’s a fact uh life.”

  “I won’t deny it,” I said, adjusting myself in the seat.

  “Now men.” She paus
ed for some real-butter popcorn. “I’m attracted to manliness. Broad chests, strong arms that hold you like a man.” I tensed my forearm, bringing the veins to the surface. She ran her fingers along the blue lines. “Men are necessary, like bacon and eggs for breakfast. Girls are dessert, say, hot fudge sundae with cherry pie on top.”

  Her poetry was intoxicating, her frankness almost shocking and, in truth, a little intimidating. She wasn’t like the other girls I’d known. She went on about how she was into spanking and restraints and various lubricated accessories, including strap-ons. “I’m open to pretty much anything,” she said, “if there’s trust. That’s the hard part.” She pulled away from me.

  “I’m with you,” I said. “How can you know?” I reached for the popcorn in her lap.

  “It’s a funny thing. Contrary to the popular notion, I’ve found in my experience that most guys tend to have trouble with me bein with girls.” I arched my eyebrows. “It’s true. They get all worried up in themselves, thinkin they’re not man enough to do it for me. But that’s not what it is at all. It’s just different. Cats and dogs.”

  “You like it when it’s raining,” I said, aiming for wit.

  “Bull’s eye!” She faced me all excited now. “It’s like most men are cat folk or dog folk, exclusive, and they don’t get it that they all cuddle bunches that come runnin when supper’s on. They all get fleas and they all got claws.”