Happy Baby by Stephen Elliott

coming off of it so I couldn’t see, and she whispered that there was nothing I could do. Then she pinched the tube and I couldn’t breathe. It felt like I was relaxing for the first time in my life. I usually go on Fridays but recently it hasn’t been working for me. Recently it hasn’t even been close.
    I sit naked in an airy waiting room with my hands folded into my lap, my clothes in front of me in a wicker hamper. There’s a large desk with a rotary-dial phone on it, a bowl full of mints. On the wall a single black and white photo of a dark-skinned woman, a whip curled around her body like a snake. A blond lady comes in carrying a riding crop. She’s new. She’s tall, six feet at least, with enormous breasts and wide hips. “Let’s go,” she says, snapping her finger in front of my nose.
    I follow her, carrying the wicker hamper through two rooms full of medical equipment, rubber masks with plastic eyes and long snouts, masks shaped like dog’s heads, enema bags, baby cribs, cages, and into a third room which is populated with a padded wooden table, two large thrones with throw rugs in front of them, a leather hammock with metal chains at the end of it, walls full of whips and strap-on dildos. “On the table,” the blond lady says. “Now.” I climb onto the table, face down. She yanks straps around my ankles. “Lower,” she says. “Wider.” She pulls on my legs, then my wrists. She pulls me around like a doll. Then her hand comes down heavily on my back. “Maybe I’ll have to come back and watch you,” she says. “Are you an exhibitionist?” I nod my head while sucking in on my lips. “I might like that.” And then she leaves.
    The table is cold, especially against my genitals. I wait for the familiar clap of Mistress Jade’s heels tapping the floor. She usually leaves me like this for ten minutes before coming in. The hospital is a long way. I’ll go there from here. Today was a bad day at work. Everything is bad recently. They used to get Petey in the bathroom with towels full of soap bars, over his head and in his stomach, drumming him with their heavy bags. He’d end up lying on the tile floor, his face full of blood, trying to smile, the blood running in rivulets through his teeth. I’d wash myself in the corner slot and stare at him lying there. He was this deformed white animal.
    I hear the knocking and the long slide of a metal latch, the door opening as Mistress Jade walks in. Then I see her, standing in front of me, latex shorts, thick brown legs. I stare straight ahead, to the top of her thighs, her voice above me. “What have we got here? Look at him. Oh, he looks so funny.” I hear the other girl, the blond one, laughing. Mistress Jade walks away from my field of vision. “What is this?” Mistress Jade’s hand searches between my legs, grabbing, holding, and then squeezing, my body arching up to give her a better grip, the familiar, painful squeeze shooting into my stomach. “Look, he’s getting hard. He’s a pervert. You want to use this? I don’t think so. Hmm, hmm, hmm.”
    The other girl’s hands are pressing firmly on the sides of my face, her fingers pinching my ears. She’s wearing a strap-on dildo. She rubs it under my nose. Mistress Jade is wrapping a cord around my penis. I open my lips and the dark silicone head of the dildo pushes toward the back of my throat, making me gag. Mistress Jade pulls the cords tight and I let out a muffled scream. “Come on now, sissy. Sissy, sissy boy.”
    Petey is alone in a pasta-colored hospital room just south of Bryn Mawr Avenue, the bed next to him empty. In the homes, we were never alone, squeezed into rooms on mattress quotas. When we got out we all swam away. He’s watching the little TV up on the stand above him and shuts it off when I come in. He has dark yellow circles under his eyes, bandages across the middle of his face. Both legs in casts. When he smiles I see the missing teeth, but he was missing teeth