Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2014 18:35:21 -0500
From: Jake Preston <jemtling@gmail.com>
Subject: Psychic Detective 12

Psychic Detective 12
By Jake Preston


This is a work of erotic gay fiction, intended for readers who enjoy a
murder mystery in which fully developed characters interact sexually and in
other ways. Their sexual encounters are sometimes romantic, sometimes
recreational, sometimes spiritual, and almost always described explicitly.
My attention is equally divided between narrative, character development,
and sex scenes. If you don't care for this combination, there are many
other excellent "nifty" stories to choose from. And remember that while
nifty stories are free, maintaining a website is not. Please think about
donating at http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html

Writing is usually a solitary avocation, but not necessarily so on
nifty.org, where a longer story appears in installments. If my characters
and my story grab your attention, you can always intervene with suggestions
for improvements. All sincere comments will get a response!

Jake, at jemtling@gmail.com

      *  *  *  *  *  *


Chapter 12
Laramie

	The next day Jack Jackson, Göran Svenson, Red Hawk, and Anna
Ravitch met the elders in Tribal Council. Jack did the talking. What
impressed them most was Jack's account of Göran's ritual mourning and
his vision. They dispatched Jack and Göran to Oregon. They promised to
communicate with the Nez Persé elders about their arrival. "Be sure to
stay at nice hotels, eat at good restaurants, and buy anything that you
need," they said. They gave Jack a tribal credit card. "Who would have
guessed that the tribal elders were so up-to-date with the modern world?"
Göran remarked to Jack. "I've never seen a corporate credit card
before!"

	"I wouldn't get too excited about that, Göran," Jack
said. "We'll be keeping a low profile and mingling with the natives,
especially the Wallowa Band" (he meant one of the Nez Persé tribal
clans). "The only way to get information is to mix with the people," he
said, telling Göran something that he already knew. Jack drove while
Göran worked on the crime report on his laptop, in constant
communication with Red Hawk, who worked on details at his end.

	After driving south and west for three hours, they reached Laramie,
Wyoming, early in the afternoon, and took a room at Hilton Garden Inn on
Grand Avenue, close to the University of Wyoming. "We need to visit the
places where Matthew Shepard lived and died," Svenson said.  "This isn't
tourism. We must try to understand the victims and perpetrators of hate
crimes."

      They walked to the University's building of Arts and Sciences, and
approached the 'Matthew Shepard bench', hedged between two white granite
blocks at the edge of the plaza. At the center of the back, a small bronze
inscription read: "Matthew Wayne Shepard, Dec. 1, 1976 - Oct. 12,
1998. Beloved son, brother, and friend. He continues to make a
difference. Peace be with him and all who sit here." Someone had left a
bouquet of red roses at the center of the bench, below the bronze
inscription. Jack and Göran sat on the either side of the roses.

      "Matthew walked across this plaza almost every day when he took
classes here," Jack mused. The place was crowded with students carrying
books or wearing backpacks. He reached out to Göran. They rested clasped
hands on the roses. "Growing up in Lakota, I never had a boyfriend," Jack
said. "I wouldn't have dared even ask. I never had a best friend. I thought
I was the only gay boy on the Res, maybe the only one in the world."

      "I've had too many boyfriends," Göran replied. "I've even used sex
as part of an under- cover disguise, to obtain information from a reluctant
witness. I hope you won't be scared off by these disorders in my sexual
history. Maybe I was looking for someone like you."

      "Your past is yours. Mine is mine. But the future is ours, as
friends," Jack said. "I've got two conditions, though."

      "Whatever they are, I accept them," Göran said.

      "First: I don't want to hear details about your past sexual exploits.
Second: no more under-cover sex."

      'Two men should never go anywhere in Wyoming holding hands.' That was
the rule.  Students saw Jack and Göran holding hands above the roses on
the bench, but gave scant notice.  In fact it wasn't an unusual
spectacle. The bench was a shrine for many gay couples for whom a trip to
Laramie was a pilgrimage, homicidal Wyoming values be damned!

      They found the Political Science department on the first floor of the
Arts and Sciences Building, where it had the dubious honor of sharing space
with the Dean's Office. The place was quiet. Only four faculty members were
there. On a bulletin board by door of the departmental office, they saw a
"call for papers" poster for the Matthew Shepard Symposium for Social
Justice, to be held the following April. Jack popped into the office and
asked the secretary for two copies of the symposium brochure. "I've got an
idea, Göran. Let's submit a proposal for a paper about investigating a
hate crime? It would be nice to come back here in April." That was Jack's
Emory education coming out. Svenson agreed.

      Outside one office by the door, a portrait of Matthew hung on the
corridor wall. Just as they were about to leave, a professor approached
them and invited them in. Svenson and Jackson introduced themselves and
explained that they were investigating a series of hate-crime murders.  She
introduced herself as Professor Eileen Mayfield, and said: "I remember
Matthew as a free spirit. He had to work hard to earn a B, and he skipped
class more than he should have done. As I remember, he took classes for a
few months at Catawba College, in North Carolina, but he couldn't transfer
any credits because his grades were too low. Even so, he stood out from
other PolySci students at Wyoming, because of his international experience,
which was extensive for a twenty-year-old boy. He attended high school in
Switzerland, and traveled in Europe, in the Middle East, and in North
Africa."

      "Were you aware that Matthew suffered from post-traumatic stress
disorder?" Göran asked. "He was gang-raped by some thugs in Morocco, and
he suffered emotional problems ever since. That might explain his erratic
behavior as a student."

      "I didn't know at the time. Naturally I learned about it after he was
killed. I'm relieved that I wasn't too strict with him about
absenteeism. I'm sorry I didn't realize how much he was suffering. Maybe I
could have helped him. Some of the male students get attached to me as a
mother away from home. You know, Sheriff Jackson and Sergeant Svenson, in
the late 1990s some feminists recommended rape as an illuminating
experience for men. They never understood that men who get raped are
nothing like their rapists. They never understood that rape could send a
woman or a man on a downward spiral of depression that could end in
ruination or death. They reduced rape to a cheap melodrama of the Wild
West, as if a victim could be rescued from its consequences at the last
moment. The rape of Matthew in Morocco was a prelude to his murder in
Laramie."

      Before they departed, Svenson mentioned his and Jackson's interest in
presenting a paper at the next Matthew Shepard Symposium. "It's a series of
multiple murders in three states, each one staged to look like a
cult-sacrifice, but our focus will be on certain technical problems in the
investigation." Professor Mayfield said she'd be interested. "Normally
papers run for twenty minutes each. In your proposal, you should ask for
twenty minutes apiece, back to back. That would give you enough time to
explain technical issues." They exchanged business cards. It wasn't until
then that Svenson and Jackson realized that Mayfield was the professor in
charge of organizing the academic side of the conference.

      Göran and Jack drove just outside Laramie to Sherman Hills, where
they found the wooden buck-fence with three railings, upon which Matthew
Shepard was hung, crucifixion- style, barefoot, bleeding, and dying from a
skull-fracture, after Aaron McKinney had bludgeoned him with a .357 Magnum
pistol on the cold night of October 6, 1998-assisted by another homophobe,
Russell Henderson. Memorials of teddy-bears and flowers were long gone, but
on a sequence of stones in the ground outlined a cross to mark the spot
where Matthew died. Göran and Jack held hands and wept quietly, and
passed a handkerchief between them.


      * * * * * *


	Jack and Göran drove around downtown Laramie looking for
Fireside Lounge, the bar where Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson tricked
Matthew into thinking that they were friends; the bar from which they
kidnapped him and led him to slaughter. The bar was closed, and stripped of
identifying signs. They looked for a vacant yellow brick building on a
corner, with a parking lot across the street. "Except for a bench and a
symposium, Laramie has erased Matthew Shepard," Jack said when they looked
at the building that once was Fireside Lounge.

	"Erasing the visual reminders of Matthew-that has its counterpart
in the shifting stories about him," Svenson replied. At first, at their
trial, McKinney and Henderson said Matthew had propositioned him and they
attacked him in self-defense. They had a gay-panic attack. Then they said
their motive was robbery. Then they said they were high on drugs. Next
thing you know, Matthew was high on drugs, too, and a drug dealer. His
murder was a drug deal gone wrong.  Every new version of the story got
further away from the essential truth. The motive for murder was
homophobia. It was a hate crime."

	"But does this teach us anything about the murders at Eight Eagles
and Buffalo Run?"  Jack asked.

	"Just this," Svenson replied: "The culprits in a hate crime have
primary supporters and secondary enablers. They have primary supporters in
the people who practice and condone bullying, like the Westboro Baptist
Church when they picketed Matthew's funeral in Casper.  Their enablers are
public figures who say that gay men and lesbians have only themselves to
blame for choosing a bad lifestyle. People hate gays because their leaders
tell them to. Our killers at Eight Eagles and Buffalo Run feel justified in
killing young men whom they presume to be gay. They're demented, but
they're not off the margin. They're at the extreme end of a sliding scale."

	Svenson proposed that they test the homophobic environment in
Laramie by going to downtown bars as a gay couple. He was interested in
Buck Horn and JR's in particular: "the more redneck the better." Jack
vetoed the idea: "If you're gonna be Gilgamesh, always full of adventure,
I'll be Enkidu and rein you in. Do you want to drink some beers and get
beat up, or shuld we go back to Hilton Garden and make love?"

      When two guys decide to make love, a dialogue begins. Who will top,
and who will bottom? Often this is predetermined unromantically, as in
internet hookups and bar pickups. You know the drill: 'GWM brn/grn athletic
hairy 5/11 #155 top ISO similar bottom, any race, some kink, no scat, no
fats, d/d free UB2'. But Jack and Göran had a friendship that blossomed
into romance. 'Top and bottom' wasn't discussed. Each man assumed that the
other was a top.  Neither one knew how flexible his partner would be on
this point. They'd have to work it out as Nature took her course.

      They stood naked in the bathtub under warm water from the
shower-head-a good way to melt the ice in a new romance. It's like
California wine, always reliable. Göran let Jack soap him frontally
first, knowing that he'd been starved for cock for six years. Jack didn't
conceal his enthusiasm for its hardened surplus, its light fleshy
purple-veined tones, its mushroomy circumcised head, three times different
from his own. He liked the asymmetry of Göran's fulsome balls, the left
hung perceptibly lower than the right. Hairiness of chest and hardness of
torso filled his heart with joy.

      Differences attract. When they changed places, Göran expressed the
same enthusiasm for Jack's dark-skinned intact cock, his torso-smoothness,
his thirty-inch waist, a muscular-gracile litheness that he admired. He
sensed that Jack felt a thrill to be touched by another man.

      Jack soaped Göran's backside. "Don't be shy about my butt. Get
your fingers in there," Göran said. Jack took him up on the invitation
by fingering his buns and his cleft. When it was Göran's turn to scrub,
he fondled Jack the same way.

      They dried each other off. Göran told Jack to lead him by the hand
to the bedside. During a passionate kiss-their first-they fell into bed and
engaged in energized oral exploration from earlobes to ass-probes. Whenever
Jack fondled Göran's butt, Göran moaned and twitched. Jack got
increasingly aggressive. When he got up the nerve to insert a finger into
Göran's butt, Göran invited Jack to fuck him. They experimented with
missioning, doggie-style, sidling, and A- bucking. Göran orgazzed during
a sidling. The fragrance of jizz filled the room. Jack face- flopped
Göran and humped him furiously until he came.

      The 'top-bottom' dialogue started when they lay sidled in
aprčs-sexe. Göran asked Jack which position he liked best. "The beast
with two backs and two cocks," Jack said. He meant missioning.

      He asked what Jack ranked second. "What lowers the roof-beams by
raising them high?"  Jack asked. "A-frame," Göran replied: "It turns the
house upside down. This is the house that Jack built," he laughed, and
swatted Göran's butt-cheeks.

      Jack got horny. "This is the door to the house that Jack built," he
said, and fingered the portal.

      Göran fondled Jack's cock: "This is the dormouse that opened the
door to the house that Jack built."

      "This is the pole that the dormouse used to open the door to the
house that Jack built," Jack said. He pushed his pole into Göran.

      "This is the sack at the end of the pole that the dormouse used to
open the door to the house that Jack built," Göran said. He fondled
Jack's scrotum, and added: "These are the pods in the sack at the end of
the pole that the dormouse used to open the door to the house that Jack
built."

      "I've got the seeds that were made in the pods in the sack at the end
of the pole that the dormouse used to open the door to the house that Jack
built," Jack said. They fucked.

      Göran reached down and probed Jack. His fingers massaged Jack's
prostate. "This is the oil-can that oozed the seeds in the sack at the end
of the pole that the dormouse used to open the door to the house that Jack
built."

      "These are the Oglala swimmers that swam in the ooze from the oil-can
that oiled the seeds in the sack at the end of the pole that the dormouse
used to open the door to the house that Jack built," Jack said. He oozed
himself into Göran, and pulled out.

      Göran: "This is the santorum that was left behind when the Oglala
swimmers swam in the ooze from the oil-can that oiled the seeds in the sack
at the end of the pole that the dormouse used to open the door to the house
that Jack built."

      Jack fingered Göran's wet hole. "This is the gape that ejected the
santorum that was left behind when the Oglala swimmers swam in the ooze
from the oil-can that oiled the seeds in the sack at the end of the pole
that the dormouse used to open the door to the house that Jack built."

      "I can't top that one, Jack," Göran said.

      "That's because I'm the top," Jack laughed.

      That's how Göran and Jack managed their 'top-bottom' dialogue.