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The last two days had felt like a 100 years. It was impossible to grasp the changes that had taken place in me in such a short time. I felt completely numb. Yet my feelings for Ben were so close to the surface, threatening to avalanche over the precipice of my heart and out into the open, flattening everything in its path and then dragging me along with it in a tangle of broken limbs and emotions. The sheer injustice of the loss of my dear man to a system so defective, so pitiless and absurd had cast me into a pit of despair. The helplessness of our situation drained any sense of relief at escaping an attempted rape, right down the plughole of futility that was my continued existence in this hellhole.
I was all but oblivious of my surroundings as my friends crowded around me and wheeled me to our bungalow. Warm, firm hands reached out to give my shoulders a steady comforting squeeze, but I was only dimly aware of the gentleness being demonstrated to me. In my mind was a jumbled amalgam of the two men that had both brutalized my psyche in such a short time, one with kindness and one with cruelty: Ben, his kind eyes, comforting, manly protection and soft voice, contending with the scheming, damaging and damaged machismo of Vosloo. I felt as if my heart was dying inside of me, the last pathetic spasms testifying to a life's perverse determination to endure in spite of its dismal pointlessness. When we reached our destination I was again wrenched into stark reality by the barrenness of Ben's bunk above mine. It caricatured a coffin in its inescapable austerity, the absence of its occupant not even softened by the knowledge that he had `gone to a better place.' The presence of the folded pisvel (piss sheet/mattress protector) laid out like some sort of bare flag of dishonour only mocked me anew.
As we approached the bunk that Ben and I had shared for months, before it became the scene of the consummation of our love, I shrugged off the hand of the mate that was trying to ease my isolation and anguish and wheeled myself to where I was sitting staring at our bed. I felt like an octogenarian at a gravestone, staring at the shriveled flowers left by some well-meaning relative. But there wasn't even an engraved name with a date of birth and passing to anchor me to the breadth of life and death of a man that had won me with his love and sacrifice. There was only a blank bed that denied that such a gallant man had ever existed and graced the warped era in which we found ourselves.
It was Sunday night. Tomorrow was Monday, and army life was to continue, even for those of us that were unable to move under out own steam. The SADF and the world at large was ignorant of the fact that my lover was persona non grata (even though they had engineered this outcome) and that one of their twisted officers had tried to rape me. The mission must continue, and I was only an irrelevant piece in a nonsensical puzzle that, when completed, looked like the huge puke of a megalomaniacal ignoramus with more power than brains.
I was due to see my "psychologist" tomorrow. What a laugh! The notion that I should be treated for the emotional scars left by the loss of my limbs, after the weekend I had endured, seemed like treating the victims of a hurricane for flatulence. Mercifully, when I finally went to bed, sleep overcame me and my dreams were as blank as Ben's pisvel.
I sat in my wheelchair and faced the man in front of me. Major Blatt looked like his name, a burp of a man, deposited by the system he served, as a shapeless blob into the badly designed chair behind his desk. His inane stare testified to his profound apathy for anything I might have to share. He was PF--permanent force--an apt description if ever there was one, if not for the reasons one might think; the system it described designed to apply unflagging pressure to humanity until it toppled and shattered or just capitulated and died. No intelligence implied; just dumb, unrelenting, dogged determination.
"So how are you feeling, Pretorius?"
Clearly the years of compassionate overload had sharpened his technique, his heavy-lidded eyes barely containing the dim flicker of his intelligence that almost escaped the black hole of his stupor. Silence flowed like a gooey gel out of the nozzle of time as I debated whether to actually share some of my weekend with him and test the system one last time before finally abandoning myself to my two-year stint with just the dim hope that I might make it out with my sanity intact. I decided to step over the edge.
"Lt. Vosloo tried to rape me last night."
My words hung there in the air, as the significance of the words "rape" and "Vosloo" in the same sentence struggled uselessly to kindle some spark of comprehension behind the profound tedium that dulled the therapist's mind.
As he grappled with the idea I suggested, and I watched the beads click slowly in the abacus that constituted his intellect, I decided to plunge ahead. My voice was a dull monotone.
"Lt. Vosloo ordered me to come to his quarters at 14h00 to do his laundry. When I got there he wasn't wearing any clothes. Later he tried to get me to masturbate him and when I wouldn't, he tried to rape me by pulling my shorts off and forcing ... himself on me."
The light of comprehension dawned in his eyes and the intelligence that must have once illuminated his pre-PF mind gave a wheeze as it almost revived.
"What do you mean he `forced' himself on you? Are you suggesting that an officer of the SADF might have been trying to get you to satisfy him..."
He couldn't bring himself to say it. I helped him.
"...sexually." I paused.
"Yes, Major."
Click. Click. Again, the abacus at work.
"Are you saying that the Lieutenant is a..."
Again, words failed this unbiased dispenser of psychological comfort and I had to assist him.
"The lieutenant is a queer. Yes. Or at least, he acted like one. He made me rub his back while he had no clothes on. Then he got an erection."
Dimly, a picture was forming in his mind.
"And you say he tried to rape you?" He was getting the idea.
"He held me down with my arms above my head, held my knees apart with his legs and tried to force his penis into my anus."
Major Blatt looked as if he was in danger of losing his no doubt generous breakfast. His face drained of blood and his pasty face looked like a shapeless vetkoek (deep fried piece of dough) above his collar.
"You say he `tried to rape you'... So he didn't succeed?" he finally managed. His voice sounded strained and weak.
"Some members of my platoon arrived with the Chaplain and several MPs and they stopped him just in time. If they hadn't arrived just then, he would have."
The dam of emotion that I had been holding since the previous night's events spilled over the edge. Tears started to trickle down my cheeks and very real sobs wracked my frame as I sat, legless, on my wheelchair.
Somehow the significance of what I had endured pierced Major Blatt's immunity to empathy and he stood up from behind the protection of his desk and lumbered around to come and sit in the chair at my side.
"Lance Corporal, you must be sure of what you're saying. This is a very serious allegation you are making against Lt. Vosloo. Um...are you sure you didn't...."
I knew where this was going. I had made it clear to the psychologist from the start that I was gay myself. I had hoped that this fact, plus my disability, would get me out of the army. Fat chance.
I struggled to control my sobs to answer him, and struggled even more to control my irritation at the implication that, somehow, because I was gay, I couldn't stop myself from hitting on any and every straight man. I took a deep breath.
"No Major. I didn't lead the lieutenant on. I was tempted to, because he's ... very attractive..." The Major made an embarrassed harrumphing noise and I knew that I'd said enough.
Ben Jordaan sat on the side of the thin, dirty mattress in the cell that he had been occupying for about 24 hours, his head in his hands. Typically, he was very worried about Bennie Pretorius. His stomach gnawed at itself, partly from hunger, as he'd been unable to eat anything from sheer agitation, but mostly from the prospect that something awful had befallen his beloved gay boy. He knew instinctively that Vosloo was dangerous and that by now Bennie could be in any number of untenable situations. He himself knew it was only a matter of time before he was taken to the psych ward and he could deal with that. What he couldn't deal with was the uncertainty about fate of the boy he would gladly give his life for.
When he had been removed forcibly from the bungalow just after lunch the previous day, he had been dumped here in the DB (Dog Box) and except for the meals at supper and breakfast this morning, had been left alone. There was no activity at all, but for the occasional MP making his rounds. They didn't acknowledge his presence at all but that didn't faze Ben. He was out of his mind, with terrifying scenarios of Bennie's rape and injury playing through his brain like bad horror movies. The worst was his complete impotence, a man with the strength to help a cow stuck in the mud out with his bare hands, now emasculated by the simple device of a set of bars.
He did the only thing he knew how. He prayed.
"Dear Lord Jesus, please, please, take care of Bennie. You know Gay Boy didn't do anything to deserve being hurt. I know what the Bible says about what I feel for him but I know you better than that, and I know you don't care about whether we're both men or not. You just care about love. I trust you, and I always have. You love Bennie as much as you love anybody and so I ask you, no, I BEG you for his protection. I can't be there to take care of him so I trust that you will. This is such an evil place and there are evil men who will do anything to get their own way. So, as you say I should, I will bless my enemies."
Through gritted teeth he groaned: "I ask you to bless Parvus Excrementum, and..."
He paused as he worked up the grit to pray the following: "... Lt. Vosloo."
His fists clenched and unclenched as waves of bitter anger gripped his chest and he breathed deeply to calm himself.
"They ARE my enemies and I pray that you will do the WORST POSSIBLE thing to them: open their eyes so that they will see themselves for what they are."
He still fought to contain the violence of his emotions and Bennie Pretorius' sweet face appeared before his mind's eye. He was captured again by his inexplicable devotion and love for this little man, and lost himself in the vain hope that he might see him again.
"Amen..." he said at last, with a deep sigh of resignation that punctuated his certain knowledge that the bliss he had known for one night and one day would never be repeated.
His head shot up as a terrific clatter and shouting disturbed the deathly silence in the DB wing.
"Take your fucking hands off me you dumb dick!"
There could only be one voice like that.
Vosloo...!
When I returned to the bungalow the guys were also returning from their various forms of therapy. There was a dark pall of misery that hung over the place. The last two days had been exhausting for everybody. The wild swings in emotion and sexual license had taken the group from glum to glorious to gloom in much too short a time.
In spite of the fact that the army tried to create the illusion that these men were still a functioning part of the faulty machine that was the SADF, they still had too much time on their hands and it was then that they missed their families and the ignorant bliss of normally functioning bodies. Some spent the hours of idleness working out in the gym, building the remaining parts of their bodies into gleaming compensations for the loss of their other limbs. Others sat and smoked, playing cards and talked shit to one another and reminisced about better days. But the topic of conversation on this Monday was what had happened to Vosloo and what was likely already happening to Jordaan.
When I made my way towards my bunk the guys corralled me towards the TV where a stupid cartoon was playing. Coert, Wessels, Peter, Tobie and Jan offered to play cards with me and bet me that if I played strip poker they could have me out of my browns in less than 15 minutes. I wasn't really in the mood but not only did I need some light relief, particularly after the senseless session with my shrink, but I realised that we needed time to bond as a small masculine family so I agreed.
But I upped the stakes.
"That's cool, but if one of you gets naked before me the loser has to give me a blow job."
They all laughed raucously and some of the comments were decidedly blue. These boys had come a long way since their anti-gay boy beginnings.
"Who would want to put that little thing in his mouth?" Tobie scoffed. "You really want something filling to snack on!" He suggestively juggled his basket in his browns with his hand and Wessels leaned over to cop a feel. "There's an anaconda in these here browns," he mocked in a fake (and truly horrendous) American accent.
Wessels wasn't buying it.
"Shame little boy, you really need to experience something more substantial than that. Where I come from that would be considered a more of a worm than a snake!"
Surprising everybody with his lewd tone, Coert sniggered and added to the now sexually quite charged tenor of the conversation.
"Um... guys, you should all just keep your traps shut. Jan over here has a fire hose that will dwarf even Ben Jordaan's tree stump!" He immediately realised what he had said and as one they turned to me with wide eyes.
"Oh shit, Bennie, I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking...please, forgive me...?"
There was an awkward silence as everybody looked at me in dismay. I felt the blood drain out of my face as the mention of my lover's name hit me in the guts like a punch to the solar plexus. It took me a moment to collect my wits.
"Fuck me...!" I said uncertainly. "Whip it out!" I picked up steam. "Anything that would give BIG BEN JORDAAN a run for his money is must-see!"
The other guys also got over their awkwardness and started chanting: "Whip-it-out! Whip-it-out! Whip-it-out! Whip-it-out! Whip-it-out!"
Jan pretended to be shy and actually did blush, but Coert, now looking quite coy (remember I was absent at the circle Jerk at Parvus' "torture", and was only told about it later, so I had no idea why he should be) was the loudest.
"C'mon Jannie, show the guys what you got!"
Jan finally relented.
"But if I'm going to do a strip-tease you guys must supply me with at least some music." He said in his awkward Afrikaans-accented English. Wessels obliged with "The Pink Panther" theme of all things and everybody quickly joined in.
"Ta-da, ta-daaa, ta-daaa, ta-da-ta-da-ta-da-ta-da-ta-da-ta-daaa da-da-da-da-da-da-daaaaah!"
Jan gyrated his hips, hanging on his crutches and motioned to Coert to undo his pants, since he couldn't remain upright and do that at the same time. Coert seemed only too happy to oblige and hopped round to stand behind him, undoing the top button slowly at first, and then picking up speed. Jan's gyrations just happened to also do a fair bit of rubbing backwards into Coert's crotch, and this led to some sensual rubbing up Jan's stomach, lifting his shirt up and pinching of his nipples. The other hand was making its way down the fly, popping buttons one by one. Eventually Jan's white briefs were exposed, and a delicious trail of hair led the eye down to the goods within. Coert now abandoned the chest and began to tease us by inching the elastic of the white undies down bit by bit. The Pink Panther was beginning to lose a bit of oomph as everybody was watching the painfully slow reveal of Jan's allegedly humungous trouser snake.
"Guys, you've gotta do better than that! I need some encouragement!" Jan pleaded. A fresh chorus of the bizarre stripper music rose up like a cheer and in response Jan renewed his gauche strip tease. A fair amount of his generous pubic bush was now popping out the top of his pants and the progress of the painfully slow reveal seemed to hit a snag. Coert pulled the elastic forward to clear the hurdle and out jumped a schlong of porn-star proportions. Although erect (it appears that the contact with Coert's body behind and his nimble fingers in front, as well as the naughtiness of stripping for the boys had titillated his tool) it was unable to sustain it's own weight against the pull of gravity. There was a roar of approval and this encouraged Jan to renew his gyrations, causing the awe-inspiring member to do a lazy circle, as much as its pendulous heft would allow.
Jan apparently remembered who had been the originator of the request to honour us with a viewing, so he hopped towards my chair to give me a closer inspection. My mouth watered involuntarily as I realised the beautiful thing was not only huge but also uncut, a favourite in my book. He thrust his hips backwards and forwards sensuously causing the beauty to rise and fall, mesmerizing me like a reverse snake charmer. In a parody of the real thing he had me behind the head with his one hand and I absently thought that Jan should really explore the possibility of a career as an amputee stripper. Just when our applause at Jan's heroic penis reached its pinnacle and was starting to die down, I was brought back to reality by the calling of my name from a different direction entirely.
"Bennie! Bennie! Bennie Pretorius!" and then a pet name I hadn't heard since the night before I left for basics.
"Benjamas!" (Pronounced like pajamas)
Everybody froze and guiltily turned to look in the direction of the door, where the shout came from. I was the last to turn, the obscene dick still inches from my face.
In the door stood Grant, my recent Ex who had left me just before I went to the army because he didn't agree with my politics.
Well fuck me gently and call me Charlie. This is awkward!