Free Mahu Vice by Neil Plakcy Page A

parking garage. In the half hour that it took us to climb the hilly roads to Manoa, though, the trade winds had swept the clouds away and a brutal sunshine glared off every reflective surface. I parked at a meter near the law school. “You want to go over there alone?” Ray asked.
    “Why don’t you hang back, but keep me in visual.”
    He nodded, and I strolled up to the law school library, where students were congregating on the concrete steps and under the giant kukui trees, and walking on the paths. Somebody was playing Keola Beamer’s Wooden Boat , and the gentle rhythm of the slack key guitar made me smile.
    I was looking at a notice board covered with decades of staples and the remnants of hundreds of flyers when a guy appeared next to me.
    I did recognize him, though I’d never known his name. As I thought, he was one of my hookups from MenSayHi.com, an island dating site for gay men. He was about five ten, very handsome, with short, dark hair and skin the color of a coffee bean.
    I knew the first time I signed on to MenSayHi.com it was a mistake. All it would take is one disgruntled trick to report me to the department, or start spreading vicious rumors about me being a sloppy bottom who loved to get plowed, and my career could go up in flames. I already had guys teasing me about working for the Department of Homo-land Security, or snickering behind my back. Cops are among the most homophobic guys I’ve ever met, pouncing on the straightest guy who mentioned seeing a chick flick, asking if he’d started pissing sitting down—anything to get a rise out of you.
    But when it came to getting laid, I was willing to take a few risks.
    I’d tried meeting guys in ordinary ways. I’d met my first boyfriend on the beach, and I’d met Mike on the job. I’d picked up, and been picked up by, guys at bars and clubs. But after I broke up with Mike, I didn’t want to go out. I just wanted to get laid, frequently, and in ways that reminded me what a lousy human being I was for the way I’d dumped Mike without giving him a chance to explain.
    So I logged into MenSayHi.com and answered a couple of ads, and had some sexual encounters that went from bland to disturbing. The things I got off on scared me a little—mostly men treating me badly, physically, tweaking and slapping and pounding various body parts. Somehow I got punishment confused with sex; I thought because I’d been a jerk when I broke up with Mike, I should be treated that way by every guy I met. I’d always been a little intrigued by S&M, and I indulged myself and my throbbing dick.
    A few of the guys had simply been closeted, though, and if I recalled correctly, this was one of them. “I’d rather not give you my name, if you don’t mind,” he said. I couldn’t place the accent, though it was South Asian.
    We walked off to a bench in the shade of a big kukui tree. I saw Ray leaning up against a palm across from us, watching, and I said, “I remember you. You didn’t give me your name then, either.”
    “My situation is difficult. My wife doesn’t know what I do. Her father is paying my law school tuition, and he will cut me off and force my wife to divorce me if he ever finds out.”
    “Wait a second,” I said. “I thought this was about the fire?”
    He frowned. “I was here at the library Sunday night. Studying. I got a text from a man I had met on MenSayHi. He was working late, had the whole office to himself. Wanted me to come over.”
    “Office on Waialae Avenue?” I asked.
    “Across from that shopping center that burned. We finished, like maybe ten o’clock, and I walked out to my car.”
    “Where was your car parked? In the lot in front of the office building?”
    The guy shook his head. “I was afraid someone might see my car. So I parked around the corner, on that side street that dead-ends into Waialae Avenue.”
    I pictured it in my head. “Facing toward the street, and the shopping center?”
    He nodded. “I sat in the car