“His Honor has decided,” the interpreter said in his broken English as the judge rattled on in the singsong gibberish they call a language in this country, “that you are both equally guilty.”

Equally guilty my ass! It was Ray who raped the bitch! It was he that violated her virgin pussy and it was his cock that had put a second load deep into her teenage throat. I had only served as a minor accessory, providing the booze that got her drunk and loaning him my room. Most of the country is very modern and is very progressive, morally speaking. The outlying districts, like the one in which the mine is located, aren’t quite as forgiving and are, shall we say, socially retarded. The normal punishment for my transgression would be a fine, a few weeks in jail, and then expulsion from the country. The worst I expected was to receive a couple of swats in my ass with a cane first. I felt my ass pucker and a tightening in my scrotum; rapists are summarily castrated. No appeal. No anesthetic. In the public square at high noon. “His Honor regrets only that he can not punish you both to the fullest extent, so he has decided that one of you shall either receive the maximum punishment or that each can share a lesser punishment.” Huh? “His Honor decrees that one of you shall be castrated, or that both of you shall be flayed. It is your decision, and he is generously granting you twenty-four hours to make your decision.”

I nearly fainted. Flaying was a nasty mutilation of the dick and is actually worse than castration. True, you got to keep your balls and are therefore technically qualified to still be a man, but a guy that has been flayed can never copulate or even masturbate. What remains of your cock is essentially dead but the sperm continues to accumulate in your balls, and according to popular belief will eventually drive you insane. The only way to get relief is for an extremely skilled woman to digitally massage your prostate gland to orgasm or for a somewhat less skilled man to do the same thing without using his hands.

“What’s this flaying bullshit?” Ray asked as soon as we were back in our cell. He had been hired at the mine only a month previously and hadn’t yet seen much of the country.

“They strip you naked, tie you to a post, and then play with your cock until you get it up,” I explained. “Then they tie a cord around the base of it so you don’t go flat, then they take a sharp knife and skin it.” A sheen of sweat suddenly appeared on Ray’s face and he went pale.

“Is that all?” He asked, crossing his legs and squirming.

“No. After that they force rock salt into the open wound to staunch the blood flow and to ah, preserve the meat, so as to speak. You won’t die but all your dick will be good for is pissing. I suppose a good surgeon might be able to fix some of the damage, but they won’t let that happen. You go back to jail for six weeks and by then it’ll be too late.” I paused for a few minutes to let all of this sink in. “Do the right thing, Ray, let them take your balls.”

“No way! Never!”

“You can take hormone shots and still get it up, maybe even better than before. Also, you won’t have to worry about knocking someone up,” I said, although I knew right from the first word that it was hopeless. Ray’s balls were the very essence of his life and he would never willingly part with them.

Ray and I went to school together as kids in Fort Collins and we had roomed together in Golden at the Colorado School of Mines. He had been okay in high school but once out on his own he turned into a world-class cunt hound and he had a different chick almost every weekend. I spent almost as many Friday and Saturday nights sleeping in a chair at the student lounge as I did in my bed.

The big money jobs for newly minted mining engineers are overseas and a guy can get rich if he could handle the family separation and the third-world environment. Ray had planned on working here on the island too, but he knocked up his girl friend, and with a kid on the way decided to stay stateside. I kind of liked his wife and hoped she had the appetite that she’d need to keep Ray satisfied. We exchanged e-mails now and then and it really didn’t surprise me to learn that he was single again. Old habits die hard. A little later he asked me about the job market and decided that since he was no longer encumbered that he might as well go for the gold.

It should have been easy for Ray. Prostitution is legal here and you can get boys or girls or men or women or livestock. All you have to do is pay, and a whole night of whatever floats your boat only costs the equivalent of an hour of our salary. Ray decided that paying for pussy was an insult to his masculinity and that there was no reason to pay for something that you could get for free.

I think that ‘free’ was the key word. The divorce and the expense of getting here had left Ray strapped. I let him move in with me until he got his feet back on the ground, and he was saving every nickel he could to pay off the rest of his debts. It was almost like college, with a different gal coming and going every few days. Some of them looked pretty young but there’s no such thing as statutory rape here; if they’re big enough they’re old enough, and Ray was a handsome exotic Westerner with a silver tongue.

Getting her drunk was an entirely different matter. Alcohol here is sort of like handguns are in the US. You can posses but you can’t legally use. There are exceptions, of course. A doctor can write you a prescription, sacrament can be taken, and wedding toasts are traditional. You can have a bottle in your house and take an occasional shot but you can’t under any circumstance appear outside your own dwelling under the influence. For that reason alone this will never be a tourist destination, and all of the Westerners at the mine take their rest and recuperation holidays off island.

Ray’s conquest had only been thirteen years old. She was a poor girl and had been curious about the exotic wonders that my apartment might contain and Ray had generously given her a tour. She was reluctant to spread her little thighs, so Ray plied her with Black Velvet from my secret stash and then fucked the snot out of her and sent her on her way. When a cop jailed her for being drunk she complained that she had been raped. The cops raided my apartment and found the liquor and took Ray in for questioning. He admitted to pronging her but claimed it was consensual. It was my apartment and my liquor so I was picked up also. We went before the judge the next morning. He passed sentence on us after listening to fifteen minutes of the cops’ and the gal’s testimony. No trial no nothing. That’s how justice is dispensed here.

“Listen up, Asshole.” I tried my best to act tough. “This is all your fault and there’s no reason for me to suffer too. If you had any balls you’d take it like a man!” A few seconds later I realized what I’d said and instantly regretted my choice of words.

“I’d be dead in a year without my balls,” Ray stated.

“Well, what about your cock? Isn’t that worth anything to you? Mine sure as hell means something to me and you’re putting a hell of a crimp in it, Bud.”

“I can live without my cock easier than I can my balls,” Ray said. “As long as my balls work I’ll find a way to get them off, and as long as I have a tongue I’ll be able to get a lady off.” Ray was sensitive and romantic all of the way. “Let’s sleep on it. Our embassy should have things straightened out by tomorrow morning.”

Yeah, right. It’s probably our last night as fully equipped functional males and he says ‘sleep on it.’ “You don’t fuck with judges in this country,” I informed him. “If we can’t decide he will decide for us, and he may decide to literally hang both of us up by our balls. He has that power.”

Ray stretched out on his bunk and closed his eyes, and I sat on the edge of my bunk and untied the heavy work boots I had on when they picked me up, then loosened my belt and slid out of the dirty pants I’d been wearing. They don’t bother with fancy orange jumpsuits and flip-flop sandals here. If you want to hang yourself go ahead and do it, all the less work for them. I thought about it for a while, trying to find a way out of the situation, until Ray began to snore. I finally stuck my hand down inside the heavy steel-toed boot and punched the air a couple of times, then as tenderly as I could I clocked Ray on the chin. I used one of the long bootlaces to ties his hands behind his back and the other as a tourniquet around his scrotum. My belt buckle contained a small novelty knife, and it was this I used to castrate my fraternal twin brother. I put his precious balls in the tin drinking cup and hollered for the jailer.

The judge was rightfully pissed about having been denied his justice, but I stuck to the story that I had misunderstood the interpreter and thought that in addition to making the decision we were supposed to also perform the castration.

Mom and Dad still won’t speak to me. I explained that it had been Ray’s problem, not mine, and what I had done was the fair way to handle the matter. They didn’t see it that way. Fags neither need balls nor deserve having them and I should have surrendered mine to Ray so that he might continue to begat them grandkids.

I paid for Ray’s ticket home and went back to work. I kind of like it here and I think I’ll stay.