Bill hesitated. He associated drugs with the long-haired stoners in high school who hung out in the student parking lot, furtively sharing joints between classes. “Degenerates,” his father called the potheads. It was the same word he used for homosexuals and it was enough to scare Bill off drugs.

“I don’t know,” Bill said.

“Hey,” Jack said, standing up and wrapping his big arms around Bill’s chest. “It’s okay, baby. Relax. I’ll take care of you.”

Bill imitated Jack’s movements, from inhaling the powder to tipping his head back and sniffing it into his nose. Jack watched him from the edge of the bed. He had tossed his towel aside and was completely naked, his big cock recumbent between veiny, muscled thighs.

“Feel it?” he asked.

Bill mumbled, “No.”

“You will.”

He yanked Bill toward him, pulled off his towel and reached around with a big calloused hand and pressed his thumb against Bill’s hole. When Bill tried to back away, Jack gripped him tighter. He no longer looked like a friendly dog.

Bill wasn’t sure how he got back to the apartment but the next morning he kept his eyes shut, pretending to sleep until after Waldo was gone. Images of the previous night seeped into his head—Jack pinning him to the narrow bed; more lines of coke; other men coming into the room and fucking him, one after another. When he went to the toilet, the pain was excruciating and there was blood in the water. He stood at the chipped bathroom mirror mechanically brushing his teeth and avoiding his own eyes. Back in bed he sorted through the emotions that churned in his chest. Shame, guilt, disbelief. He had expected those.

What surprised and alarmed him was how aroused he felt when he thought about what he allowed those men to do to him in that little room. It wasn’t just sex. He had allowed himself to be humiliated and abused and he had liked it. More than liked it. He had felt as if a void inside him had been filled by his degradation. His hand was on his cock and his cock was hard. Guiltily, he jerked off to the remembered images: Jack choking him almost to the point of passing out as he fucked him, another man yanking Bill to his knees, slapping him and pissing on him. He came in an obliterating orgasm and then lay in bed, semen running down his hand, mortified but still aroused. Something had been revealed to him about himself he had not wanted to know. Now that he knew it, he could not unknow it. He wiped his hand on a tissue and promised himself he would never act on the knowledge again.