Being in Boys and Girls Club saved my life, I think. If I hadn’t met Coach Dan, the boxing coach, I might have just gone out on the streets like so many kids who aged out of foster care. You turn eighteen and the system’s done with you.

Which is great in one way, because nobody can tell you what to do anymore. But it also sucks because there’s nobody to tell you what to do anymore. It’s not unlike prison lifers – when you’ve been institutionalized that long, it’s tough to “make a fresh start.” Hell, make any start at all, when someone’s been ordering your whole day, when you always know where you’ll sleep, what you’ll eat.

Coach Dan got me into a transitional housing program for “kids like me.” Which is to say, the non-violent ones, no drug history, just…shitty luck. And a lot of anger, but not enough to have sent you postal. And he got me my first job, working retail at the Big Barn electronics superstore. The manager, Clark, was a former foster kid, and he made a point of recruiting from the transitional home.

When you’ve been in the system, working in Sales comes naturally. You’ve already learned to give people fake smiles and have a “great attitude,” whether for potential “real” parents who’ve come shopping, or for your regular psych evals so they don’t put you on some head-blunting shit pills, or for city councilman visits to the group home. Whatever bullshit you’ve got on the menu that day, you’re ready.

“Welcome to Big Barn!” I’d say at the front door, in my khakis and bright red polo shirt. “Let us know if we can help you find anything!”

It was a perfect first job for me, with no other skills yet. You get a big smile from a good-looking kid on your way in, and a big smile and narrowed eyes on your way out, well-practiced eyes checking your coat for bulges and your face for overall shiftiness before saying, “Thanks for coming in, have a great day!”

Or, of course, “Sir, could you come back here for a moment, please?” And they almost always did, if you had that in your voice. If they’d seen your fit young boxer body and the glint in your eyes, and then you put all those nice polite words inside a metal glove. Then it was all, oh, I forgot to pay for that, oh gosh my wallet’s in the car, let me go get it! And you know, fuck it, why bother calling the cops if you don’t absolutely have to, get the merch back and let ‘em run.

Life was going good. I had enough money in my paycheck to get my own little studio apartment. I knew what to do with my freedom, or at least, I could savor what I didn’t have to do anymore. Nobody could make me watch Dog the Fucking Bounty Hunter for the 100^th fucking time, nobody could bitch me out for not making my bed just right, nobody could tell me how much ice cream I could eat, nobody could rat me out when I had kitchen duty because I replaced a steam tray before it was completely empty so I could shovel its contents down my gullet right before I put it in the dishwasher.

And I had the one thing I’d missed more than anything: solitude. It took me a while to get used to that at Matt and Susan’s, a world where I had my own room and there were no other children yelling and fighting and demanding. Then I lost that at the group home, had to readjust to the never ending carnival atmosphere.

Some nights I’d come home to that little studio apartment and just sit there, and look at the ceiling, for hours, no TV, no radio, because silence was like this wonderful drug.

I had friends, too, at least, “work friends” I hung out with on paydays. Some of them blew their wads in one night, drinking and partying, but not me. The ones who fucked it all away were usually kids who’d never been raised to see tomorrow as real, or raised to see tomorrow as something that was just going to take that money anyway, making them spend it on some dumb shit like car repairs, so you better party today, man.

I was terrified to have one beer, afraid it would loosen me up like them, afraid I’d say o what the fuck and order six more and then where’s the money for the power bill. I’d seen what a sudden income collapse had done to Susan, when Matt died and she got sick. I’d seen what America did to you when you weren’t a viable consumer anymore.

So I was the Dudley Do-Right in the crowd, the designated driver (Coach Dan had taught me how to drive), the one they laughingly called “Mr. Future Assistant Manager.” I laughed too, but that didn’t sound so bad to me.

And that whole reputation for upstanding, decent behavior was probably why Raz picked me.

I’d always known I was gay, but I’d never acted on it, and fuck no I’d never told anyone. It’s kind of hard to explain to people now, in Seattle, that I wasn’t “closeted” so much as I was secretive. Not out of shame, but because I’d learned that secrets were things that could be used against you, by other kids, by bad foster parents, by the system. Tell the wrong counselor that you’re struggling with your sexual identity, and hey boom, everyone in the house knows you’ve been remanded to the sexual identity shrink. And then…

Remember that foster dad I told you about? The one who said I could never play poker, because all my feelings were all on my face all the time? I tried to work on that. Getting that flat, neutral look. And I did pretty well at that.

Until the day Raz started at Big Barn.

* * *

He had it down pat, the big smile, the whole “howdy do, ma’am” thing. He was so handsome, he looked like Adrian Grenier from Entourage, the whole hot Greek boy thing, right down to the big mess of dark curly hair. Only Adrian Grenier had that loose, easy, happy puppy thing going on. To see Raz, you have to take that actor and switch out the eyes. Take out those warm smiling orbs and put in equally blue eyes… But sharp, hot, laser blue, unlimited unnatural resources of rage and hate and disdain burning through everyone they looked at.

But I didn’t see the eyes. I mean, I know, right? Me, the foster kid, who’d seen every way shape and form that people could lie and cheat and deceive with a look of perfect innocence. All I saw was the classical statue face, the swimmer’s lean hard build. All I heard was the voice, deep and smooth.

The only way I consoled myself later was by realizing that I wasn’t the only one he’d tricked. Clark the manager was a former foster kid, too, and he should have seen it. But Raz… He was just that good.

“Nick,” Clark said to me one day, “This is Raz, our new recruit. I need you to mentor him on the door today.”

“Sure thing, Clark,” I said, handing my cash tray to someone else. I’d been promoted from door to cashier, and I was working towards a sales job, which I’d get just as soon as Clark decided that I knew enough about the products to do it well.

“Hey,” Raz said in his deep, silky voice.

“H…hey,” I said.

And he knew he had me. I could see it, the way his pupils contracted, the way he must have smelled it on me, the longing, the loneliness, my fucking reeking virginity.

He took my hand to shake it and he held it, just a little too long. His hand was warm, the back of it hot and soft where my fingers grazed it. I was starved for touch, just touch, for all the hugs and pats and laps I hadn’t had in years. Oh, and add an eighteen year old’s raging hormones to that formula? I was fucked.

I stumbled, trying to begin his training, trying to be all professional and shit. “So, um, when people come in the door, you…”

“Hey, no worries, man. I’ve been in my share of Big Barns, I got this.” And in came the first customer of the day, and there it was, a smile to eclipse the sun, a politician’s megawatt charm turned on the little old lady. “Good morning, ma’am, welcome to Big Barn, can I help you find anything?”

That wasn’t quite the script, because he was supposed to say, “Let us know if we can help you,” so that we could send the customer to a knowledgeable salesman in the right department.

“Oh, yes, I’m looking for an I thing for my grandson.”

“An iPod?”

“Yes, that’s it!”

He put a gentle hand on her little shoulder. “They’re right this way. Do you know that iPods now come with a phone built in, too?” He walked away with her, and I was going to stop him, I was going to be Dudley Do-Right and make him hand her off to a sales person.

I really was. But then he turned and winked at me, his crooked grin making me a willing accomplice in his conspiracy.

And I melted inside. And just like every customer from that day forward, whatever he was selling, I wanted it.

“What’s Raz stand for, anyway?” Melanie asked flirtatiously on our first payday night out with Raz.

“It’s short for Rasputin,” he said, looking at me with one of those goddamn winks. I grinned back, loving that I was in on it, the joke that only he and I understood. Susan had taught me enough Russian history that I knew the name of the “Mad Monk,” the brilliant monster who’d pulled the strings behind the thrones of Nicholas and Alexandra, last of the Romanovs, and whose decadent behavior had helped bring down the Russian Monarchy.

“Oh, cool! What kind of name is that?” she asked, eyelids fluttering.

I knew damn well it was really short for Erasmus, because I’d processed his paperwork, putting in extra time to help Clark catch up in the back office.

“A very, very bad one,” he whispered theatrically, and she disintegrated into nervous giggles.

I couldn’t be jealous, because Raz turned that charm on everyone. He turned it on Clark, who loved to see a system kid become a “success story.” On the other employees, who (including me) didn’t even resent him when he vaulted over our heads in one week to become a floor salesman. He was just that good with the customers. He could sell ice to Eskimos, or, even more difficult, an extended warranty on a TV that already came with a long factory warranty.

Morally, maybe I should have been appalled at that unnecessary add on, but the angry poor kid in me thought, Hey, if you can afford a $4,000 TV? Fuck you. Give the kid a commission on the fucking warranty you won’t even need, because you’ll be buying an even bigger TV next year.

And besides, I was the one Raz liked best. I was the one he really seduced.

The word you use most in stories like this is “later.” Later I realized that I wasn’t special, I was just…well, convenient, but also necessary – after a certain day.

That was the day I found out how Raz had become a salesman so fast, how he’d acquired his vast knowledge about consumer electronics before he ever started at Big Barn. I saw him process a customer return, an ordinary “I didn’t like it” return on a laptop. But he put it on the wrong shelf, the shelf we used for defective items. I opened my mouth to say something, but he saw me looking at him. And smiled. And I forgot what I was going to say.

I approached him that night when we closed at nine, before he could leave with the rest of the crew and I locked the doors behind them. (Yeah, I was the foretold Assistant Manager by then.)

“Hey, Raz, can you stay a minute?”

“Sure,” he said, “no problem. What’s up?”

“I saw you make a mistake today? You put a non-defective return on the defective shelf. And I don’t see it there now. So you must have figured that out. But you didn’t restock it without testing it, did you?”

Raz’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, no, man.” His face came close to mine, so close I could feel his heat. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“N…no, I… I just…”

I couldn’t breathe, he was so close. Guys like that, it’s not just their looks, it’s their pheromones. They get in that zone and your body just…

“Hey,” he whispered, putting a hand on the back of my neck. “Relax.”

And then he kissed me.

It wasn’t an innocent kiss. It was slow, but insistent. My lips parted in a gasp of disbelief at how good a man’s lips felt, and then there was his tongue, snaking into my mouth, flicking at my own.

His grip changed to the hair on the back of my head, pulling it tight, making it hurt, but I didn’t care, I wanted this, I wanted whatever he would give me. He pulled my head back and his teeth nipped at my throat, like a predator’s, toying with its prey before it took the killing bite.

He pushed me down on my knees, right there in front of the sliding doors. If any customer had come up to them, not knowing that we closed at nine, if any employee had come back for forgotten keys, they would have seen us. They would have seen it all under the bright fluorescent light, Raz unzipping his tan khakis, pulling out his big fat dick, and me feasting on it like a starving man on a steak.

He was rough with me, he took control and I loved it. I choked on his dick, but some distant part of me thought how odd it was, that the bigger and harder it got, and the farther down my throat it went, the easier it was to swallow it, to hold it. And the groans, the unfaked groans of pleasure, that Raz gave me in exchange for my choking, gagging refusal to back off it, God they were worth it. The more he made me suffer, the harder he got, and the harder I got from making him hard.

He drilled my head, yanking my hair hard when my teeth slipped and nipped his dick. “That’s it,” he crooned as I wrapped my lips just over my incisors. “You’re a natural cocksucker. Suck my fuckin’ dick.”

It felt so good, pleasing him, it was so hot. And he let me touch him, let my hands run under his shirt, touch his flat stomach, its hard ridges, his muscle-plated chest. I was starving for that more than anything, the feel of another human being’s skin under my hands.

Until he shot his load in my mouth, with a shout, and then threw me off him. “Fuckin’ a,” he gasped, tucking himself back in. “Good fuckin’ job, man.”

I wiped my mouth, gasping for air, looking up at him, my new god. “Thank you.”

He laughed. “Any time. Shit. Yeah.” He walked out the doors, then turned his head. “Closing tomorrow, right?”

“Fuck yeah,” I whispered.

And he laughed and was gone.

I’d totally forgotten about the laptop.

* * *

How could they? People ask themselves that, when they find out their loved ones have given all their money to Sergeant Ibrahim Lolapalooza of the United States Army, based in Nigeria, who has served his country and who sent them an urgent email, all about how he desperately needs money to unlock a secret fortune he’ll split with them.

Because you want to believe. All the fucking reality in the world doesn’t mean shit, when it’s the thing you most want to be true that feels like it’s just in reach.

How could I endanger my job, how could I betray Clark and Coach Dan, how could I lie to my co-workers?

Because it was what Raz needed, and I needed Raz. That was the simple logic that trumped everything else.

His shit got shadier, more daring, and I knew he was fencing shit. Nothing ever just disappeared from stock, oh no, he was too clever for that. But Clark was generous with his return policy, and Raz encouraged people to make a purchase and “just take it home, if you have buyer’s remorse tomorrow, just bring it back, I’ll take care of you.”

Which meant I became more complicit, covering up his paper trail, restocking the merchandise in the system as if it was back on the shelf, and delaying the refunds and telling angry customers that they’d take “30 to 90 days to appear on your card.”

At some point, they’d demand the manager, and somehow, they would get to him, get around my stonewalling. But “at some point” was later. All I cared about was now, nine o’clock, all I cared about was the promise that tonight, once again, he’d bend me over the cell phone display case and give it to me in the ass, the way he liked it, fast and hard, making it hurt like a motherfucker…

And the damn thing is, the way I excused it was that this was just temporary. That this wasn’t who he really was, that he was going through a bad patch, that when he said he was having a “financial emergency” and desperately needed the money, I believed him because I wanted to.

Then he…we got caught.

Clark called me in one morning. “Nick,” he said, looking sad, almost defeated, and I knew he knew.

I wanted to start lying, to do what Raz would do, but I knew I wasn’t any good at it. I wasn’t as good as Raz. I started crying instead. Raz would have cried, too, which you wouldn’t think a psycho-sociopath could do. But they can always cry genuine tears… for themselves.

“You’re in love with him,” Clark said, surprising me, not surprising me, because I knew it was on my face all the time, my shitty poker face, everyone knew.

“Yes. I’m so sorry.” I took off my name tag, as if turning in a badge, prepared for the police to come and take me away, no resistance.

“You’re not fired.”

I heard a rustling outside on the floor, I heard Raz shouting, angry. “Nick, you fucker! Fuck you, I’ll get you for this, you asshole!”

My blood froze as I realized. Raz hated me. Had always hated me, had despised me, had used me.

“The police aren’t here for you,” Clark said. “I told them you were innocent.”

“But Raz,” I protested. “He’ll tell them…”

“He’ll tell them it was all you. That he was your pawn. I know. That’s how guys like that work.” He shook his head. “I was just as blind as you. He had nothing on his sheet, no arrests, no convictions. He was too smart to get caught, I guess. I’m sorry this happened to you, Nick. You’re a good person. A good guy. You… whatever your sexuality, I don’t care, I just know you deserve better than that.”

He paused. “Coach Dan told me you wanted to go into medicine.”

I laughed. That made it sound like I thought I could be a doctor or something. “Into EMS, yeah, be an EMT, maybe.” It seemed like a kid’s dream now, like being an astronaut or something that would never really happen.

“If you were arrested, convicted, that would be the end of that.”

I shrugged. “It was just a thing I said once, is all.”

He looked at me. “No,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t think so.” He got up. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“To meet some friends of mine.”

At this, nearly the end of my story, I signaled Andrew for some more cognac.

“He took me to a fire station. Introduced me to the firefighters, the paramedics. He didn’t say anything like, here’s a troubled foster kid, but looking back I guess he didn’t have to. I probably had that all over my face too.”

“Nick,” Andrew whispered, and I finally looked him in the eyes, finally saw his face, saw the tears falling down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said instinctively, always the peacemaker, always the one to smooth over the feelings before something bad happened. “They adopted me, you know? I kept working at Big Barn part time while I went through EMT training, and hung out at the firehouse like, all the time. They helped me study, they kept me sane. And then they hired me on at the fire department. And I worked there for a year, and then this pilot program opened up in Seattle, and…”

I laughed. “They made me do it. I said I was terrified, that they wouldn’t want me at SFD because they were used to two medics, I would be a bureaucratic intrusion, I’d meet with so much resistance… And they said, ‘Yeah. You will. They’ll fuckin’ hate you. And that’s why you have to do it.’”

Andrew laughed bitterly. “You knew. You knew I’d be a dick before you even met me. You signed on for all the shit I gave you before you even knew me.”

“Yeah. I did.”

Andrew was lost in his own thoughts now, I could see, revising everything he’d ever thought about me, cataloging things he’d said to me that he regretted.

“Anyway,” I said, bringing the story to a close. “That’s why I’m single. Because… Wanting so badly to be wanted, that’s my Achilles heel. And you know, it’s amazing what you do with a first impression, how steadfastly you hold on to it even after everything after that proves that you were wrong. You just keep telling yourself that’s an anomaly, he’s having a bad day, he’s the guy I met. You don’t realize that’s how sociopaths work, that all their energy is spent baiting the hook. Then it’s all about reeling you in at their leisure.

“I’m single because that’s how I am. I see what I want to see, then refuse to see any more. Because I’m really, really bad at reading guys. Because I take that first impression and hold onto it tight, I see what I want to see and I keep looking right there, no matter what else goes on in my peripheral vision.”

“That was just one guy, one time…”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not fucking up everything again to find out if it was or not.”

Andrew shook his head. “Your boss was right. You do deserve better.”

I wanted to be warmed by that. I wanted to reach out. I wanted to hug him and…

Yeah. There I go again. Seeing what I want to see, wanting it to be affection when it’s just pity.

“Thanks,” was all I said. “It’s cold and late. Let’s call it a night, huh?”

“Yeah. Let’s call it a night.”