Dwight Howard literally r*ped a neighbor.

In screenshots of the alleged text messages, the professional basketball star told his alleged victim that he's "into freaky s**t." He then told Harper that he wanted to see Harper's nudes and "c**shots." Howard went on noting, "Now I want you to know I'm not like gay or anything. I'm jus a lil nasty sometimes. Ion wanna offend you."

he's jus a lil nasty sometimes

this stuff always reminds me of a new york times article where some guy talked to a bunch of "downlow" black men in the early 2000s

By the lockers, I notice a tall black man in his late teens or early 20's staring at me from a dozen lockers down. Abruptly, he walks over and puts his right hand on my left shoulder. ''You wanna hook up?'' he asks, smiling broadly. His frankness takes me by surprise. Bathhouse courtship rituals usually involve a period of aggressive flirtation -- often heavy and deliberate staring. ''Are you gay?'' I ask him. ''Nah, man,'' he says. ''I got a girl. You look like you would have a girl, too.'' I tell him that I don't have a girl. ''Doesn't matter,'' he says, stepping closer

While William and many other DL men insist that they're strictly ''tops'' -- meaning they play the active, more stereotypically ''masculine'' role during sexual intercourse -- other DL guys proudly advertise themselves as ''masculine bottom brothas'' on their Internet profiles. They may play the stereotypically passive role during s*x, they say, but they're just as much men, and just as aggressive, as DL tops. As one DL guy writes on his America Online profile, ''Just 'cause I am a bottom, don't take me for a b-word.''

D. says he prefers s*x with women, but he sometimes has s*x with men because he ''gets bored.'' But even the DL guys I spoke with who say they prefer s*x with men are adamant that the nomenclature of white gay culture has no relevance for them. ''I'm masculine,'' as one 18-year-old college student from Providence, R.I., who is on the DL told me over the phone. ''There's no way I'm gay.'' I asked him what his definition of gay is. ''Gays are the cute twinks who dress, talk and act like girls. That's not me. ... As Chauncey points out, the assumption that anyone has to name their sexual behavior at all is relatively recent. ''A lot of people look at these DL guys and say they must really be gay, no matter what they say about themselves, but who's to know?'' he says. ''In the early 1900's, many men in immigrant and African-American working-class communities engaged in s*x with other men without being stigmatized as queer. But it's hard for people to accept that something that seems so intimate and inborn to them as being gay or straight isn't universal.''

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Still, for all the defiance that DL culture claims for itself, for all the forcefulness of the ''never apologize, never explain'' stance, a sense of shame can hover at the margins. It's the inevitable price of living a double life. Consider these last lines of a DL college student's online profile. ''Lookin 4 cool butt brothers on tha down low. . . . You aint dl if you have a V.I.P. pass to tha gay spot. . . . You aint dl if you call ur dude 'gurl.' . . . Put some bass in ur voice yo and whats tha deal wit tha attitude? If I wanted a broad I would get one -- we both know what we doin is wrong.''

Jigga says he comes from a close middle-class family and always did well academically. Considering all that, I ask him how he came to find himself here. ''It's some extra cash,'' he says. ''But mostly, it's 'cause I like the attention. What can I say? I'm vain.'' Jigga says he has s*x with both men and women, but he doesn't label himself as bisexual. ''I'm just freaky,'' he says with a smile. ... Jigga first connected to other DL men through phone personals lines, which still have certain advantages over Internet chat rooms. ''You can tell a lot right away by a voice,'' he says later. ''There are guys who naturally sound masculine, and then there's guys who are obviously trying to hide the fact that they're big girls.''

[On the set of a streetthugz.com shoot] ''Do these guys ever kiss?'' I ask Rick. ''Well,'' he explains, ''thugs don't really kiss. Sometimes they stick their tongues in each other's mouths, but it's not really kissing. Gay people kiss. DL thugs don't kiss.''

Chi loves women. He also likes men, although, like many guys on the DL, he doesn't verbalize his attraction to them, even when he's with like-minded people. When I ask him about this, he's stumped to explain why. ''I don't know,'' he says. ''Maybe it's because being black, you just learn to keep that to yourself.'' Anyway, he always had a girlfriend. ''Guys were there for s*x.'' Unlike many other DL guys, who never tell anyone about their private lives, Chi opens up with little prompting. He says that he loves his fiancée but that he doesn't consider the s*x he has with men to be cheating. ''Guys are a totally different thing.'' Unbeknown to his fiancée, he has been casually dating his male roommate for several months. ''I told her that he's gay and makes passes at me,'' he says, ''but she doesn't know we have s*x.''