You know, I just don’t want to know the answer to this one.
One of the straight boys is named Richard Bates. It’s a name containing too many possibilities, but they’re all so obvious that not even Eric picks on him. Although Richard did admit to us that his high school classmates saddled him with the nickname, “Master”.
So Richard gestures silently for me and Eric to follow him into the store’s office. On one wall are the shelves where we have gathered the rejected tapes, the ones with rape and incest and all that jazz. Richard picks up two of them carefully, using his fingertips and trying as much as possible to avoid direct physical contact with the cases. He gingerly pries them apart. They are stuck together. And whatever has stuck them together is still pretty fresh and wet. The smell is unmistakable.
Eric, ever the shy one, blurts out, “How the hell did you find that, anyway? I mean, what were you doing messing with those boxes in the first place?”
Richard does not ever really answer the question, and neither Eric nor I really presses too hard for the answer.
Eric and I tacitly agree that, unless there is a repeat of this incident, the less said about it the better.
