Excerpted from FLOOD

*

As the Mole turned to go Michelle said, “Mole,” making him turn to face her.

“Mole, you remember I asked you to find out about that operation? The one for me?” The Mole nodded, blinking behind his glasses.

“Would it work, Mole? Would it be what I want?”

The Mole spoke like he was reading from a book. “The operation is for true transsexuals — only for transsexuals. Biologically it would work. Assuming competent surgery and proper postoperative care, the only associated problems are psychological.”

“You know what a transsexual is, Mole?” Michelle asked him.

“Yes.”

“What?” demanded Michelle, looking intently at him. For her, I wasn’t in the room anymore.

“A woman trapped inside a man’s body,” said the Mole.

“Do you understand that?” asked Michelle.

“I understand trapped,” said the Mole, not blinking so much now.

“Thank you, Mole,” said Michelle, getting up and kissing him on the cheek.

I thought the Mole blushed, but I couldn’t be sure. He faded out the door and was gone.

*

© 1985 Andrew Vachss. All rights reserved.

Goin’ Down Slow

By Andrew Vachss

Saturday night, there’s always a woman in a red dress. Looking over at me when my hands are down—harp in one hand, mike in the other.

I drop my hands when Big G takes a keyboard solo. Most people, their eyes go to the man with the front music. Junior does vocals, Melvin plays slide—they get most of the looks. They both play the crowd too, working them.

But when I solo, I get lost. My eyes are always closed. It’s not a stage thing—that’s the way it happens. So, if a woman’s looking at me when I don’t have my harp up and running, I know why.

But if the woman’s there with a man, I know better than to look back. Woman like that, the red dress is a signal. She’s a fire-starter.

In the joints we play, it’d most likely be a knife, but a pistol’s always a possibility.

And even if her man walks off, you can’t be sure he won’t be back. Slick and quiet. And maybe your next drink will be the same kind that sent Robert Johnson off to pay that debt he ran up at the Crossroads.

But if that red dress is full of juice and there’s no man next to it, that’s another signal. And it ain’t “Stop!”

You have to play hard in these joints. I don’t mean loud—noise won’t get it. Hard enough, maybe that’s closer to it. Sometimes we get to play big places. Even a stadium once, behind a band with a label deal and all that. In big places, you don’t have to play hard. The people in the crowd make most of the sound themselves anyway.

But in the clubs, you better bring it. Or they’ll take you right off the stage.

That’s the way I started. Tuesday nights at the Ice Pick. The house band opens up, one slot at a time, the way a flower opens, petal by petal. That’s to see if anyone wants to sit in. Like, the slide man, he’ll make a gesture, then take a seat off to the side. And anyone who thinks he can make steel sing, well, he can just step up and try and take the man’s place for that piece of time.

It was a long time before I was ready. Longer than I thought, actually. ’Cause, the first two times, I didn’t make it. It wasn’t like the people booed me or nothing. They don’t do that. What they do is … they talk. To themselves, I mean. Just go back to their conversations like they’re in an elevator.

They do that, you’re done.

The third time was the charm, like the people say. I just filled in behind at first. Then I put in a few figures. And when the leader stepped off and pointed at me, I made the crowd quiet right down. Most harp men, they can juke you to death, but they can’t go slow. The great ones—Jimmy Cotton, Butterfield, Musselwhite—they can go either way, of course. Sonny Boy, Little Walter—they could go wherever they wanted.

I always modeled myself after Blind Owl Wilson. I must have listened to him on “Goin’ Down Slow” a million times. I wanted to make people feel what I felt when I heard him. And that night, I got it right, bending the notes over slow and soft … clean, not cheating off the feedback from the mike.

After that, I sat in a lot with different bands until Junior picked me for permanent. I’ve been traveling with them ever since.

I can’t read music, but I can hear it perfect. I told Honeyboy, and he said it was okay—he said he wouldn’t trust no preacher that had to read his sermon from a script.

I’ll never be the king of anything. My ambition is to be one of the thousand great harp men. Not to be in no arguments, just to be. Like the blues. That’s one of the first things Honeyboy told me.

“The blues is always going to be here. Like a convict run off from a chain gang who the Man never find. Oh, he have to lay low sometime—disco made the blues lay real low for a while back—but he always going be around. Always be running, though. Never be on top for long, but never be gone neither. Remember that part, son—never be on top to stay. Lotsa white boys, they made that mistake. The ones who come up in the late sixties—it was good then. College kids loved it. Record deals for everyone. Stadiums, TV, everything. Then the sheriff called to the hounds, and the blues had to get back in the woods. Those white boys, the ones who expected it to last forever, they stayed out in the open—and they got cut down. So what you got to remember is this one rule:

“They can’t hang you while you running.”

I never forgot that. But I don’t know what to do now. It was a Saturday night. It was a woman in a red dress. It was a man I didn’t know she had.

A young man. A white man. A rich man’s son who crossed the tracks one too many times.

Now he’s in the ground and I’m on the run.

I’ll be all right if I don’t go back to the clubs. I’m nobody … as long as I don’t pick up my harp again.

I wonder how long I can go without.

I wonder how long I can go.

.

Originally published in Everybody Pays

© 1999 Andrew Vachss. All rights reserved.

Read more on the impact of emotional abuse here

Burt Reynolds was a friend and I will miss him. Among his many talents, he was an enthusiastic writer and reader, and a devotee of the short-story form.

Burt selected each of the stories included in Proving It, my audio short-story collection, and narrated nearly all of them. For anyone who hasn’t experienced his spoken-word work, click the link for a glorious example.

Dope Fiend by Andrew Vachss
Narrated by Burt Reynolds
http://www.vachss.com/audio/dope_fiend.mp3

From DRAWING DEAD by Andrew Vachss

➢➣➤  The Shark Car’s doors hissed open.

Princess stepped out onto the sidewalk, and waited patiently for Tiger to climb over Cross from her position between him and Buddha.

Tiger and Princess entered the gaming establishment together, her hand resting lightly on the cartoon-muscled arm of her gentlemanly escort. The three proprietors, identically dressed in white T-shirts sporting the game cave’s logo that draped down to the knees of their jeans, stopped whatever they’d been doing to stare! at the invasion. The blazing-colored comic books that lined the entire back wall had come to life, leaving them stuck somewhere between fascination and terror.

Others were so deeply engrossed in whatever was on the screens of hexagonal tables scattered throughout the room that they didn’t notice. At first. But the rolling wave of gaping silence coated the room like the spray from a slow-motion tsunami—even the faint pings of the demanding screens seemed to be muting of their own accord.

“Hi!” Princess boomed, as Tiger pranced around him, whispering, “Rip your shirt off, honey,” to the monster child. Princess tore off his lilac mesh shirt and stood silently, still waiting for the dumbfounded crowd to respond to his greeting. He was utterly without makeup, a ridiculous .600 Nitro Express pistol holstered under one arm. His body gleamed; its armor coating flexed and popped as if acting on its own instructions.

He’s right out of Geof Darrow’s pen! a few of the more sophisticated watchers thought, in a single, soundless a capella.

“You and Sweetie just watch the back wall, honey. I want to talk to those boys over there, okay?”

Princess dropped Sweetie’s chain. It hit the floor like the sixty-pound linked iron it was, but all eyes remained glued to Tiger as she stalked over to the counter. Her every move threatened to crack the coating of the scarlet body-paint she must be wearing … Nothing else could be that tight! being the universal, albeit unspoken, verdict of the watchers. It looks like she stepped right out of that poster. That big one over on the far wall …

“Don’t do that,” Tiger said in a sugar-sprinkling voice, as she snatched a cell camera phone from one young man’s hand. “I don’t like having my picture taken with all these clothes on.” Without looking back, she flung the phone at Princess, who deftly caught it in one hand, and closed his fist around it. The crunching sound that emerged didn’t frighten any of the gamers—this had to be some kind of illusion, right?

When Princess opened his hand, the shattered corpse of the phone drifted to the floor. By then, none of the gamers were watching their consoles, not even those who had been utilizing the slide-out panels on either side of the individual seats for “private play.” All eyes were on Tiger as the Amazon hip-switched her way to the counter.

“Who’s the boss?” she purred, leaning on the counter. Her five-inch, scarlet-soled, black spike heels combined with her natural height to make it appear as if she were bending over extravagantly. The tables were filled with youngish males whose minds were too overwhelmed to even think the string of “OMG!!!s” that would otherwise be filling the micro-keyboards they all carried.

“We … we three are,” the long-haired male with a wispy mustache said. “I mean, we divide—”

“Sssshhh, baby,” Tiger said, so softly that he had to lean forward to be certain he could hear her. Tiger’s body-perfume wafted toward him as she pressed her elbows together. Fortunately for his equilibrium, he was only mouth-breathing by then. “I’m just … curious, about this place. Is that okay?”

“Sure! I mean …”

“Oh, stop teasing! I just want to show you a picture. Not like the ones we’ve been showing you. A photograph, that’s not much to ask, is it?”

As the other two partners moved closer to the man between them, Tiger reached down to one gorgeously sculpted thigh and pulled one of the twin daggers strapped around it. Her hand flashed, the dagger spiked into the wood counter. It stayed there, vibrating, as a photograph that had been tightly wrapped around the handle unrolled itself loose.

The dagger was back in its holster before any of the three could look at the photo. But, when they did, they were silent.

“Come on now,” Tiger whispered. “You don’t want to make me beg, do you? That would be a shame—the last man who tried to make me do that won’t be back anytime soon. Unless those zombies you’re always watching in your movies are real. Maybe they are, for all I know. But here’s what I know for sure: I’m real. And so is my friend back there. And that darling little puppy.”

“If we let you—” one of them said, stopping when he caught a look from the others.

“Oh, I know he’s not back there now. But this place, it’s got some more depth to it, doesn’t it?”

“Uh …”

“I understand. If all those boys watching me see me go behind that nice blue velvet rope and disappear, they’ll stay until you close up, waiting for me to come out. That wouldn’t be good. You’ve got another way for people … certain people, to get back there, yes? Sure, you do. And they pay real money to do that. You want to know how I know?”

None of the partners spoke.

“Okay, I will. But I still have to see it for myself,” Tiger said, not asking permission. “I’ll just disappear behind those two staggered mini-walls you flash stuff against … like those Tarot cards that are being dealt right now. It’s so clever, the way you have it set up.”

“There’s no one in—”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. I just want to see for myself. The way we’ll work it is, I’ll just walk back there and disappear. See this cute little glass ball? When I drop it: Poof! a lot of pretty scarlet smoke. By the time it clears, I’ll be gone. Cool, huh?

“Now listen, after tonight, you’ll be able to double your prices. ’Cause I’m going to walk out of there the same way people walk in. You follow me? Ah, never mind, here comes the really cool part. In a couple of minutes, I’m going to walk back in the front. And drag my friend back out with me. By the time anyone blinks, we’ll be gone.

“They’ll all have different stories to tell, but they will tell them, am I right?”

The man in the center risked leaning forward again. “There’s someone back there now. Only one person at a time. If he—”

“When I leave a room, every man in that room follows me, believe that. When we’re cleared out—just the way I told you we would—that room will be empty. I promise,” she said, licking her lips as if to make certain her lipstick was going to stay painted on.

➢➣➤  When the scarlet mist cleared, Tiger was gone.

As she silently entered the tiny back room, she could make out a shapeless form hunched over a holographic keyboard projected onto the black surface of a small table in front of him. Another soundless step and she could see the images on the 64-inch 3-D monitor that transfixed the shapeless form, pulling him virtually inside the screen.

As the shape pushed back his monk’s cowl, he lightly tapped a key, and an audio icon blinked. That’s when Tiger noticed he was wearing an elaborate set of earphones. She quickly glanced at the screen. He’s scoped onto the kill-spot! filled her mind. Just like there is on an alligator. Only alligators don’t have any choice about what they are …

The Amazon came back from wherever she’d gone. Looked through the red mist as it wisped away from her vision. The man was nice-looking: well-dressed, nothing extreme except maybe that over-sized wristwatch. One of Tiger’s daggers protruded from his spine, a surgically bloodless strike between the C-1 and C-2 vertebrae.

Deliberately looking away from the screen images, she ran her forefinger down the dead man’s back, found a belt—alligator, she thought grimly, her thumb against its grain. Hoisting him like a golf bag in one hand, she used a blue LED flash to guide her out the front door of the cave.

Kicking a heavy black rubber wedge into the opening, she stepped into the night air, and drew a deep breath in through her nose. The Shark Car was where she’d expected it to be, trunk already slowly opening on its own. She tossed the dead man inside, knowing the trunk would be lined with a triple-thick black plastic wrap.

The Shark Car waited, as silent as its namesake.

As Rhino entered the now-empty back room, Tiger walked around the corner and entered the gaming parlor.

Heads swiveled. Tiger waited until the owners were looking directly at her, pointed at the back of the room, shook her head with a clear message: “No.” Turning to Princess, she whispered, “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

They were inside the car in seconds. It was gone in less.

➢➣➤  “Roll now, Buddha,” Cross said. “I’ve got to pick up a car in The Badlands, and then come back for Rhino.”

“I could—”

“Get Tiger back to our spot,” Cross cut him off. Turning to include Princess, the gang leader said: “Getting rid of that outfit isn’t going to make you invisible, Tiger. And Princess, you go with her, make sure nobody— “

“Nobody’s going to be a problem,” Tiger stopped Cross’ instructions with the pad of a talon pressed against his lips. “I’ve been over at my place for hours. Princess has always been after me to take him along, so … tonight was the night.”

“Me and—”

“Oh, honey, please! Didn’t I promise you? All the girls are going to love Sweetie, I guarantee it. Fair enough?”

“Sure! You hear that?” Princess crooned to the beast. “The ladies won’t be as beautiful as Tiger; that’s ’cause they couldn’t be. But they’ll all be nice to you.”

© 2016 Andrew Vachss. All rights reserved.

It was just the latest example of guilty plea from a predator caught possessing and trading thousands of photos of children being sexually abused.

The District Attorney, pounding his chest, offered this comment: “It is important to remember that these images are for all intents and purposes crime scenes — they depict real children being cruelly victimized both physically and emotionally.”

If the DA’s “analysis” sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve heard it before, right here:

[C]hild pornography is not “speech” — it is the photograph of a crime, and the trophy of a predator. It cannot be produced without violating a child. It is per se contraband, and not within the orbit of First Amendment protection. If kiddie porn is “speech,” then so is a snuff film.

But this isn’t about press conferences; it’s about net results. And here is the only measurement that matters:

First, we must raise the stakes. With significantly higher penalties — for everything from simple possession to production with intent to distribute — we will immediately accomplish two things:
1) Some purchasers and producers will be deterred, because the risk/reward paradigm will have suddenly shifted.
2) As for those who refuse to be deterred, we will be able to incapacitate them for very long periods via extensive prison sentences.

Let’s watch this case closely. Remember, New York State has one of the most media-genic sentencing schemes in America. The media will report the maximum sentence length, while pointedly ignoring the minimum, often a mere third of the length.

It’s one thing for a DA handed a slam-dunk to talk big at a press conference; it’s another thing for him to deliver on his rhetoric. So let’s see if this so-called non-violent offender receives nothing more than a sweetheart sentence (with “counseling,” of course). Let’s see if this case ends with another plea bargain that’s a “bargain” only for the offender.

We’re at the crossroads, now, depending on which path this District Attorney chooses. This isn’t about a single case — it’s about where prosecutors are going to stand on one of the most pernicious and evil crimes against our society:

Myths such as “just looking at pictures does no harm” should be attacked for what they are: camouflage for predators. Because, in truth, every individual who purchases child pornography is subsidizing the rape of children. If we truly believe that exploitation of children is a human rights issue, how can those who purchase the “product” be “harmless”? How we penalize criminal activity is a cultural message. Any state which allows especially soft penalties for “simple possession” of child pornography has sent a message of its own — a message I personally do not believe reflects the will of its citizens.

An election is coming. And so, the usual tsunami of “tough on crime” rhetoric is being regurgitated. If you want to see our would-be public servants actually deliver on such promises, you have to demand that the journalists running the “debates” actually ask the candidates: “What are you going to do about this?”

“Child pornography” is a deceptive term, a sleight-of-hand that disguises the reality of the crime.

A child is sexually assaulted. Humans record the assault with photography, audio and videotape, or even in a live-stream over the Internet, creating a product called “child pornography.” Without the sexual assault, the product would not exist. “Child pornography” is the image of a crime: its import is not about the image; it’s about the crime.

Therein lies the sleight of hand. The term “pornography” generally refers to recorded sex acts between adults. Whatever your opinion of it, “pornography” is legal. But the rape of children isn’t legal, and it isn’t a debatable issue. Calling these images of crime “child pornography” analogizes it to a legal product; it leads us away from the underlying crime, and thus desensitizes us to its victims.

“First Amendment absolutists” take advantage of this desensitization to trivialize possession of child pornography. They claim that “mere possessors” are not dangerous to children. They agitate for nothing more than short-term jail sentences and probation for “simple possession,” convincing judges to ignore sentencing laws that require longer prison terms. 

But they cannot erase the truth: these images have a market because “possessors” want to possess them. Crime chases dollars. Although child pornography networks grab headlines, without individual customers, the networks are out of business.

Criminals use the Internet for their own ends, but changes in technology are not to blame for this crime. Technology is neutral; people’s choices in utilizing technology are not. 

What has changed due to widespread access to the Internet is that the product, once created, can be “test-marketed” widely and distributed with great ease. This is a business so high-profit, so low-risk, that organized crime has entered the picture. 

After any drug bust, the police inform the media of the “street value” of what they seized. When it comes to child pornography arrests, the lack of information about street value helps to hide the vicious reality of the market.

If we raise the stakes and impose penalties that match the crime, we could damage these vermin, instead of allowing them to damage our children. Our society pretends it has accomplished something when we tell our children to “Just Say No.” But a victim can’t “Just Say No;” it’s up to us to do that!

We need to force our representatives into passing an asset forfeiture bill. If “both sides of the aisle” can’t agree to taking the profit out of raping children, (without their private earmarks attached,) we don’t have a government — we have a collection of morons, thieves, and those sympathetic to the enemies of our entire species.

If we sentenced distributors of “child pornography” proportionate to the damage they do, or even to the value of their “product,” they would all be doing life sentences. Their victims are.

Belle sipped her tea, prim and proper. Her eyes were soft. “If I was a flower, I know what kind I’d be,” she said, half to herself.

— Blue Belle, by Andrew Vachss

   The recent events in Steubenville, Ohio, require us to confront the reality that a “rape culture” exists in this country, as well as in so-called “Muslim” theocracies around the world. 

   I say “so-called" because I do not believe that the Koran in any way supports the subhuman conduct some bizarrely call ”honor rape“ any more than I believe that the Bible supports the brutalizing of women. (Of course, a collection of so-called ”Christians“ would have us believe it demands all manner of perversions, including this creature’s claim that the Bible supports the death penalty for children.)

   Most underpinnings of rape culture are not so overt. How many juries have decided an accused rapist's guilt or innocence based on the attire or occupation of the victim? Why is virtually all "rape porn” designed to show that “she really wanted it all along?” How many people insist that “a handsome man would never stoop to raping an ugly woman”? How many secretly believe that any underage male student victimized by a female teacher is someone who “got lucky?”

   Even attempts to measure the infusion of rape myths into our culture can have the effect of creating those myths. Consider this:

Race and prior victimization did not appear to affect the general acceptance or rejection of rape myths among this sample of college women. It is interesting to note that although most women in the sample rejected the rape myths, one rape myth received an unusual degree of support. This myth is the following:

   “One reason that women falsely report a rape is that they  frequently have a need to call attention to themselves.”

-Carmody and Washington, “Rape Myth Acceptance among College Women,” 16 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 424, 432 (2001).

   For many years, this has been Oprah’s New Year’s toast to the world: "Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right!“

Theocracy was dealt a crushing blow yesterday. Let’s keep it that way.

• • •

U.S. ELECTION, TALIBAN-STYLE

    At this point, the pattern is clear. The election has given these candidates (and more to come) the courage to publicly wallow in their own filth. And their dreams of a country where women are subjugated by law are nearing reality.

   I am not suggesting that anyone should base their vote for President on the statements of candidates running within any particular party. Mitt vs. Barack snipes are as pointless as those “liberal” or “conservative” TV shows which pretend to be news programs. A vote for Mitt doesn’t mean you endorse the repression of women, just as a vote for Barack doesn’t mean you are fighting against it.

    This isn’t about political parties; it’s about the looming danger of living under a theocracy—about a US version of Taliban rule. I am aiming at the elections of individuals who would, if elected, enact laws which are inherently repressive.

   These individuals would never have been brave enough to come out from under their rocks unless they believed their statements would increase their chances of winning. They know that anyone disgusted by what they say wasn’t going to vote for them anyway. They know some voters will vote the “straight ticket” without looking past the presidential slot on the ballot—party devotees who will never move off that square. They also know that some people will even throw away their vote entirely, either because they are disgusted with both presidential candidates, or because casting a ballot for a no-chance fringe candidate makes them feel good about themselves.

   But some people are working very hard to form a deliverable bloc of votes—and that bloc will go to the candidate who reflects their belief-system.

   So merely expressing outrage on social media is worthless. On Election Day, maggots like these won’t count your facebook “likes,” but they will count your votes. If you want to make your voice heard, focus on the races of the individuals whose public statements reveal their true agenda (no matter what they call it). If they aren’t running in your state, so what? If there’s anything more to “social media” than posturing and posing, now is the time to find out. So reach out … and let’s see if we can touch them. 

© 2012 Andrew Vachss. All rights reserved. 

• • •

U.S. ELECTION, TALIBAN-STYLE

    At this point, the pattern is clear. The election has given these three (and more to come) the courage to publicly wallow in their own filth. And their dreams of a country where women are subjugated by law are nearing reality.

   I am not suggesting that anyone should base their vote for President on the statements of candidates running within any particular party. Mitt vs. Barack snipes are as pointless as those “liberal” or “conservative” TV shows which pretend to be news programs. A vote for Mitt doesn’t mean you endorse the repression of women, just as a vote for Barack doesn’t mean you are fighting against it.

    This isn’t about political parties; it’s about the looming danger of living under a theocracy—about a US version of Taliban rule. I am aiming at the elections of individuals who would, if elected, enact laws which are inherently repressive.

   These individuals would never have been brave enough to come out from under their rocks unless they believed their statements would increase their chances of winning. They know that anyone disgusted by what they say wasn’t going to vote for them anyway. They know some voters will vote the “straight ticket” without looking past the presidential slot on the ballot—party devotees who will never move off that square. They also know that some people will even throw away their vote entirely, either because they are disgusted with both presidential candidates, or because casting a ballot for a no-chance fringe candidate makes them feel good about themselves.

   But some people are working very hard to form a deliverable bloc of votes—and that bloc will go to the candidate who reflects their belief-system.

   So merely expressing outrage on social media is worthless. On Election Day, maggots like these won’t count your facebook “likes,” but they will count your votes. If you want to make your voice heard, focus on the races of the individuals whose public statements reveal their true agenda (no matter what they call it). If they aren’t running in your state, so what? If there’s anything more to “social media” than posturing and posing, now is the time to find out. So reach out … and let’s see if we can touch them. 

© 2012 Andrew Vachss. All rights reserved.