Last year Oz peeps raised money in the name of "Team Tergesen" for the Komen Foundation's "Race for the Cure" by writing stories, making graphics etc. The things that we do best. rustler bought my fic writing services and I embarked on an epic.

Some months later, the epic developed issues. Too many issues to be dealt with in a timely fashion. I realised that if this was going to be the story I write for rustler she could be waiting a loooonnng time for it.

So after some thinking about stuff (my navel mostly) I wrote this:

Title:Ten Stories
Fandom: Oz
Category: Beecher/ Keller, pre-series finale
Rating: NC-17
Summary: "That story is true. The rest aren't."

For rustler who always seemed to *get* this sort of thing.


I am twelve when I'm arrested for the first time. Auto theft. I can't drive but Ricki can. He's fourteen and he's been stealing cars for two years. He thinks it's time I learned.

We get caught because two kids behind the wheel of a pickup isn't an everyday sight in any state. Ricki says we're going to drive out to the country but we don't even get out of Queens.

At the police station they call my mom. She isn't home. They ask me where she works and I tell them I haven't got a fucking clue where she works or what she's doing. Three hours later grandma shows up: mom's mom. I haven't seen her in a year.

"Where's mom?" I ask her.

"The police can't find her," grandma says.

I get released into the custody of my grandma. On the way home she asks me when I last saw my mom.

"This morning," I lie. I saw her last night, right before I went to sleep. She wasn't there in the morning. It wasn't anything different. Sometimes she was there, sometimes she wasn't. On the mornings she was there she made me go to school so I was kind of glad when she wasn't around.

"Why aren't you in school?"

I shrug.

"Does your mom know you skip school?"

"She doesn't care," I say. It’s a lie but grandma can’t say any different. Where’s she been anyway?

We go back to grandma's place and she gives me dinner and a nice, clean bed with white sheets and two pillows. After dinner she says, "Did you mom ever tell you about your father?"

"She said he went to jail," I say. "Said he was trying to steal money to feed us." My mom said a lot of things about my father. She'd say he was a pimp or a priest, depending on her mood. I chose to believe the jail story because it sounded real. Most of the kids on my street had dads in prison. It made me just another kid, father-deprived by the system. "Is that true?" I ask, as an afterthought.

Grandma looks out the window. It's night outside so I don't know what she's looking for. She says, "Your mother wasn't a whore, Chris. No matter what anyone tells you, your mother was no whore."

That story is true. The rest aren't.

*

Two days in Oz and I still haven't seen Schillinger. I get word that he'll be in the gym today so I hang out by the weights, lifting, watching Alvarez sweat. Alvarez catches me looking and sneers. I wink in return.

Eventually Schillinger arrives and we pretend to hate each other until the gym empties and he tells me about Beecher. He says, "Make out like you're a sad case - like your father beat you or fucked you or something."

"You're fucking perverted," I tell him.

He laughs. “Better than being a pervert fucker.”

Back in the pod, I look for an opening. Beecher is non-responsive. He doesn't give a fuck where I've been or who's been fucking me. I say things like, "So how does a guy like you end up in here?" and he tells me to mind my own fucking business.

I hold up my hands and say, "Just trying to make conversation," and I think about how he's not the pussy Schillinger claimed he was.

It takes breaking a guy's nose to make Beecher sit up and pay attention. One Aryan in the hospital wing and everything changes. I find myself learning chess, pushing little statues around a checkers board like it means something.

I tell this story over chess:

"So one night, my old man hits me and I go flying - right up against the wall so hard the wind gets knocked out of me. I go down, but I get up again fast, and I come at my dad, screaming and yelling like a fucking psycho. I beat the crap out of him, leave him almost unconscious on the floor. I take some money out of his wallet, get my jacket and get the fuck out of there. Never looked back."

"Fuck," Beecher says. He rubs his chin, looks down at the chessboard and says, "Fuck," again.

"How about you?" I say. "Your old man ever hit you?"

"Nah." He shakes his head. "My old man was good to me."

"Yeah?" Every guy I meet in prison tells me a fucked up story about this father. Beecher doesn't know how lucky he is. I tell him, "You’re lucky."

"Yeah," he says. "Guess so."

Later I tell him another story, one about my ex, Bonnie. I tell him she's getting married again, that she's met some nice guy where she works, someone who isn't in it for sport. It's sort of true. Bonnie met a guy once - a brainy type who fixed the computers where she worked. She said she wanted to get married and I told her I'd kill him. She said she didn't believe me but three weeks later Bonnie is staying home on Friday nights and there's no sign of computer boy. I told her I wanted her to be happy, I just didn't want to share. She said that she understood and maybe she did. Bonnie was there during my arraignment and my trial, always looking out for me for reasons I can never figure out.

I told her some stories too. I try to remember them when I'm in the hole. Some stories get better the more you tell them.

Beecher asks me about Bonnie and my father. It's the day after I get out of the hole and he's drunk again. I'm impressed with how quickly he scored moonshine when I wasn't around. He says, "Was anything you told me true?"

I put my arm across my eyes. I should tell him to shut the fuck up and go to sleep because it's late and I'm tired, but instead I'm staring at the sag in the bunk above, thinking I could have him right now if I wanted. "This is a fucking prison, Beecher. Nothing in here is true."

"I am," Beecher says.

"You're drunk."

"Nothing truer," he says, and then he laughs. Or maybe he's crying. The noise is muffled, like he's face down on the pillow. It sounds raw - like a wounded animal. I'm a perverted fuck so, naturally, it makes me hard. I turn over and grind my erection into the mattress, trying to come quietly. I don't really succeed but if Beecher notices he doesn't say anything.

I hope I get to fuck him one day. I hope he makes that sound.

*

I tell him the story about me and Schillinger right before I break his arms. It goes something like this: I'm seventeen and in a real prison for the first time. I've been in and out of juvie, learning how to be a career criminal. Lardner is like nothing I've ever seen. Everyone is dangerous, everyone's a potential killer. A young guy like me is an easy mark, destined to be gang fucked as soon as the lights are out. And that happens, but I survive. I get good at surviving and eventually I get to be on Schillinger's gang rather than being fucked up the ass by them.

You get in with the Brotherhood and they got you by the balls. You end up on their bad side and it's the white guys as well as the blacks that want your ass.

Beecher gets the fast forward version of that story. He's probably got a longer version going on in his head, one where I'm some sad-ass kid looking to survive in a prison full of guys who only think of me when they're thinking of how their dick is going to feel tucked into my pretty, white ass.

Maybe that's how it went? I don't really remember. There's too many prison stories in my head, and they're all just piling up, one on top of the other.

*

I read somewhere that you can fool a lie detector test by curling your toes. When they ask you whether your name is your name, whether you're birthday is your birthday, you curl your toes into your shoes and push down like you're about to shoot your load.

No one ever made me take a lie detector test so I never got to test that theory. But if it's thinking about sex that gets you off, then I'm home free.

*

I don't tell Sister Pete my stories. I've had at least twenty shrinks since juvie and none of them really cared about stories. They say they want me to talk but then they tell me I'm not doing it right.

There was a blonde woman, younger than Pete but not by much. She piled her hair on top of her head and clasped her hands and tried to look serious. She asked me to tell her about my mother. I said, "My mother's dead."

She said, "That's not true, Chris. You know that's not true."

I was in Lardner. The second time. "She may as well be."

"Do you hate your mother?"

"No. What kind of asshole hates his mother?"

"The kind whose mother hates him."

I stood. I put my hands on the desk. "Listen bitch, if you've got something to say, say it."

The shrink jerked backwards in surprise. There was a guard outside but she didn't call. She put her hands on the edge of the desk, like she was about to grab hold. "Your mother... she didn't look after you properly, Chris. It's okay to hate her for that."

I slammed my hands on the desk and the shrink jumped to her feet. "Shut the fuck up!" I said. "Shut the fuck up!"

She called for the guard and they hauled me out of there, screaming and carrying on all the way to the hole.

That didn't happen. Beecher loses his cool. Not me.

Shrinks don't want stories, they want answers. I let Pete talk because she's got all the answers and I'm tired of trying to figure them out. I let Pete talk because her stories are better than mine, if only because they're true.

*

I get back with Beecher and we spend the first five nights together fucking. The lights go out, the guard does a circuit and then Beecher is scrambling down from the top bunk and into my bed, his hands reaching for my boxers, while I pull his t-shirt over his head. I fuck him with his knees bent back against his chest, a pillow under his ass to raise him up, giving me a better angle. I bend over him when I come, muffling my mouth against his. He comes between us and it's all hot and wet as we wind around each other in afterglow.

The first night I let him fuck me. He gave me a blowjob against the far wall of the cell. After I came, I stripped myself down to nothing and lay face down on the bunk. I said, "Go on - what are you waiting for?" and he settled between my legs, his fingers trailing down the cleft of my ass.

He said, "Are you sure?"

I said, "Fuck, yes." I sounded kind of desperate. It surprised me.

I'd done it before; I'd told him that. I'd done it with guys who treated me a whole lot better than Schillinger did. I'd done it with guys who made if feel like fucking your way into heaven.

With Beecher it was cautious. From the moment he nudged my ass with his cock, ready to retreat at the first sign of resistance, to the moment he edged that last inch in, the moment where he was buried deep inside me and making that raw sound again, like he was crying.

We fuck with abandon after that. Me on top, him on top, my mouth around his cock and my fingers in his ass while he does the same to me at the other end of the bed. Beecher likes giving as well as getting and sex is something I do better than most people so together we make for some of the best fucking I've had in my life.

We get brave as the nights pass and we get caught once or twice, but it's a lockdown and the 'no fucking' policy isn't applied with its usual force. What else are we going to do?

There are times when we're lying there on our backs, covered in sweat and semen, breathing hard, Beecher nuzzling my shoulder because he likes the contact, that I think the arrangement is damn near perfect. Nothing but Beecher, a bed and our meals delivered.

Beecher's not so comfortable. He rests his hands against the glass and eyes the hacks as they walk past slowly, making rounds, like he's daring them to make something happen.

"How did you end up back here?" he says to me.

"This is my first time in Oz."

"I mean prison," he says. "Did you ever stop in the middle of committing a crime and think, 'I don't want to do time again, maybe I should give this guy back his money and go straight.'''

"Yeah, sure," I say. "Right before I start thinking about how I should get a real job and a family and a house in the suburbs."

"Seriously, Chris," he says, turning away from the glass. "What did you do on the outside that kept landing you back in jail?"

I tell him two stories:

The first is about working for Ronnie's uncle, a guy with a landscape gardening business. Ronnie worked for his uncle as a cover while he made small time deals on the side. He hid stolen goods temporarily, stashed them in bags of manure and gravel. He looked and sounded stupid so nobody thought to suspect him when his name came up in wiretaps and undercover operations.

"I used to shovel shit," I tell Beecher. "Good, honest work and the pay was regular but in the end I was shoveling shit and there wasn't much more to it. So one day I'm shoveling and spreading shit over some rich guy's lawn, when the guy's wife rolls up in her BMW convertible and starts screaming and carrying on over the job I'm doing. Eventually she calls my boss and it turns out I'm shoveling shit onto the tennis court. The boss goes postal and tells me I screwed up and he's not paying me for the day's work. I think, why the fuck am I taking this? I shovel shit for fuck's sake. I'm not doing anything anyone cares about. So I come back two weeks later and rob the fuckers. Tell me they didn't fucking deserve it."

I got fired more times than I can count, never for something so innocent. I fucked a customer's wife, I fucked a customer's son. One time I got Angelique to meet me at the address where I was working so we could fuck in a waterbed. Good, honest work is fine but I figure I only have so many hours between living and dying and I'm choosy about how I spend them.

"Maybe they did," Beecher says. "But you can't tell me you'd rather be in here."

I shrug. "It's not so bad," I say. "I got you, haven't I?"

"Yeah," he says. He smiles as he sits down on the end of the bed. "Yeah, you have."

I've made honest money in my time. I've poured drinks, poured cement, poured oil into car engines and went home with an extra dollar or two in my pocket for my troubles. Bonnie wanted me to go straight so she was always finding jobs for me to do. She was good at it too. That girl had so many contacts she could start her own employment agency.

The second story is about my job as a doorman for Bonnie’s brother's club:

"So I'm just standing there, trying to look all scary in case someone tries to start some trouble, and this guy comes out of nowhere and punches me in the face. I'm so blown away I don't even think about reacting. I just stagger back against the wall, holding my face like a fucking idiot. The guy says, 'stay the fuck away from my wife' and I don't even recognise him. Turns out his wife is one of the bitches behind the bar. She’s trying to lose him so she told him she met someone at the club. She figured a doorman would be tough enough to take anything her husband could dish out. I just wish she'd filled me in on the story - I know a thing or two about breaking up a marriage."

Beecher laughs. "So why did you lose that job?"

"Bonnie made me give it up," I say. "She didn't like me working where I could get myself punched in the face. She said she liked me looking all pretty and making her girlfriends jealous." That part at least is true. Bonnie said she didn't want a meathead for a husband. The club wasn't supposed to be the type to attract thugs so she thought I'd be safe. What can I tell you? Shit just follows me around.

I left out the part where I fucked the bitch behind the bar in the club bathroom. And the part where her husband knocked me to the ground with his first punch and kicked me in the balls while I was down. Details confuse people. I’m a purist.

The thing about a lockdown is you got nothing but time. So you can take it slow, whether it's sex or telling stories. You can get creative.

So I'm stretched out on top of Beecher, and he's face down on the bed, legs spread and hands holding the bed frame. I'm wearing a wife beater and boxers that are half way down my thighs. Beecher's naked. I'm working my cock against his ass cheeks, just sliding along the crevice, taking it slow. I press my face into his hair, just above his neck. He smells salty, musty.

"What are you doing?" he says.

"Shh," I say. My hands run down his sides, feeling his ribs. I tuck my fingers under his chest and feel his nipples, hard and pointed. I slide one hand further down until I'm circling the tip of his cock, just gliding a finger over the hood, easy as I can.

He says, "Mmmm..." into the pillow, lets his breath out slow.

Fucking Beecher is different and I'm not sure what that's about because I've been in love often enough and I've fucked guys before so maybe it's just Oz and this whole lockdown thing that's screwing with my head. Maybe it's Beecher and the way he thinks only bad guys go to prison and that he doesn't really belong and how he loves me anyway. If Beecher loves me there must be something good about me, right?

I think I should tell him this, only it sounds stupid when I hear it in my head, something you hear in the movies or on Oprah.

Instead, I reach for the grease: petroleum jelly. Nothing it can't do. I work it around Beecher's ass and on the tip of my cock.

Beecher lifts his hips, impatiently, shifts his ass against my groin. "For god's sake, Chris. What the fuck are you waiting for?"

I'm enjoying making him squirm but it turns out I want to be inside him just as much as he wants me in there. I slide in nice and easy. Beecher makes an, "Ahhh," noise and his cheeks clench around me. I fuck him nice and slow.

"Hey, Chris," he says, between breaths. "Your first time - getting fucked in the ass - was it in jail?"

"Yeah," I say.

"Was it Schillinger?"

"Yeah." I push forward. Beecher raises his hips up to meet me. I press my forehead to his back while I shift my position, move my hips so my cock is in just the right spot. "But it was different. I pretended I bought all that Aryan shit, made out like I looked up to him. He wasn't such a big deal back then so he liked having a fan club."

"He treated you better."

"He treated me like a groupie."

"For how long?"

Schillinger stopped fucking me long before I'd finished with him. I had plans to set him up on a rape charge. I wanted to get caught in the act, though. No squealing. I thought a rape would look good when it came for my parole. A couple of sessions in rape counseling, a little crying over the consistency of abuse in my life and there'd be some poor shrink giving evidence to the parole committee about how much progress I'd made.

"Dunno," I say. "He found someone else eventually. Of course I was deep in the brotherhood by then. I guess Schillinger thought that was out of loyalty to the cause."

"Did it hurt? The first time?"

It always hurts the first time. Of course by the time I got to Schillinger I'd fucked everything and anything so Schillinger didn't do me damage. That story was a lie. Completely and totally. But it's what Beecher wants to hear, that we have Schillinger in common, and we do because Schillinger burned his shit onto me the same way he burned that swastika on Beecher's ass. It's just not the kind of poetry Beecher is looking for.

"Of course it fucking hurt," I say. "But it's over now, huh? Just you and me now, baby."

I lean back onto my knees, taking hold of Beecher's hips and lifting him so that he's on his knees too. I fuck him hard and fast now, finishing myself off in him while I wrap a hand around his cock and finish him off too.

When it's done we fall onto the bed in a heap, Beecher on his stomach watching the flashlights sweep past. "They're coming," he says.

"Fuck 'em," I say.

The hacks pass, don't even shine a light inside. The entire sweep takes less than five minutes.

"This lockdown has to end soon," Beecher says.

"Yeah," I say. I rest the back of my hand against his face. I have a feeling things won't be the same after lockdown. But I'm used to living for the moment so I don't think about it much.

*

The last story is one Beecher tells. It's after everything. After he's back in jail, after I've begged him to take me back, after I've struck a bargain with Schillinger to take Beecher down again, for old times sake. It worked so well the first time after all.

I find him in the library. I sit down next to him, look over his shoulder to see what he's reading. He's got his hand across the top of the page, holding his place. "What do you want?" he says, without looking up.

"What are you reading?"

"None of your fucking business."

"Come on, Toby," I say. I look toward the door where two homeboys are leaning against the shelves, watching us. I lower my voice. "You're not buying this alliance with Schillinger, are you? You know I'm just playing him - for both of us."

Beecher closes his book. "Yeah? And how do I know that? How do I know you're not playing me right now?"

"Why the fuck would I choose Schillinger over you?"

He laughs. "How the fuck should I know, Chris? You haven’t told me anything true since we met."

"Toby…"

"I got a story for you," he says. He leans forward a little, smiles like he knows a dirty secret. "When I was working on your case, I did some research. I found your mom."

I feel the room go cold, like they turned off the heating. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Your mom's in a psychiatric institution, Chris. You know that because you used to visit her when you were young. You haven't been there recently, but there are still people who remember you. Your grandmother signed her in when you were twelve. Apparently she used to disappear from home for days and then she'd come back like nothing had happened. They next time she disappeared they found her near Thompson Street where the hookers work the strip. They said she was a regular, although here's the thing: she wasn't asking for money. She was giving it away, to anyone and everyone."

"That's not true," I say. I clench my hands together so tight I can feel my fingers tingling.

"She had psychotic episodes. She was fine for a while when you were younger, but she got worse..."

"That's not fucking true! Who the fuck told you this crap?" I’m yelling. The library hack starts over.

Beecher holds up his hands. “It’s okay,” he says. “We’ll keep it down.”

The hack gives us a warning look and backs off.

Beecher looks sorry for a moment. His voice changes a little. "You gave your previous counsel access to your juvenile records. It's all in your file. Your grandmother gave evidence about your mother in Children's Court."

I laugh bitterly. "My grandmother hated my mother. She’d say anything to fuck her over."

Beecher gets up, tucks the book under his arm. "You told me your father beat you. There's no father listed on your birth record."

"I had a stepfather."

"Your mother..." He looks me in the eye. "Your mother got pregnant with you during a breakdown similar to the one she had when you were twelve. She didn't know who your father was. You'll probably never know who your father was."

He waits for me to say something. I don't look away.

He says, "Was anything you told me true?"

Does it matter? What's the truth ever done for anyone? What's truth got that's so great? Maybe we believe lies because lies make sense out of things that don't.

"I love you," I say. That part's true.

He shakes his head. "You don't even know what that means." He walks away, leaves me alone while the two homeboys whisper to each other near the door. They laugh and make lewd comments as Beecher passes.

I sit a while amongst the books, thinking about how I never read much. I wonder what would have happened if I'd read a book every now and then, whether I would have learned something different to what I know now. They say you get to a certain age where no one can teach you anything so I figure it's too late to start.

I get up, leave the homeboys to the books and go back to my pod.

When I tell this story, it ends here.


(End)