Hey, welcome to the Westpoint Tales - a series of stories set in a small New Zealand town over a time-span of 150 years.(This one's in 2005.)
All the usual disclaimers apply - this is Nifty. If you shouldn't be reading this, then don't and what are you doing here anyway?
Jason and Jordan's tale - 5
"JASON!! Jason you get your butt back in here Boy! Jason!! You get in here right now!"
No way. Jason was outta there and he was not going back in that house. Not now, not ever. Stuff'im.
He wrenched the front door open, leapt over the verandah, and hit the ground running. The dogs were barking excitedly, throwing themselves at the back-yard fences, as he ran out into the street.
He was away down the road as fast as he could go. At the end of the block, he plunged straight across the road not even caring if any cars were coming. He could hardly see through his tears anyway.
Across the road, he ran into the Domain and on down the flat graveled path under the dark tunnel of the overhanging trees. About half-way down, he veered off the path, through the tangled undergrowth, and out into his secret place - a small hidden clearing in the trees that only he knew about.
There, he folded up on the ground and sat with his back against a big old tree trunk, gasping for air. He was seriously unfit. That wasn't far to run - but he did do it in record time. 'World's Fastest Runaway.'
Jason hated his father, he was just a pig. Let him clean up his own mess for once. He hated his father and all of his family. He hated this whole damm town. He hated himself - what a loser.
If he was someone else, he wouldn't want to know Jason McDonald either. There was no- one, not a single solitary soul in this whole town, no-one in his entire world, that he could call a friend. Nobody.
"Ah, screw'em anyway. Who needs them?"
He turned around, still kneeling on the ground, and his hand searched around in the pile of old leaves and debris until he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a large, but 3/4 empty, clear-glass, bottle of vodka and hurriedly brushed the rubbish off it with his fingertips. He unscrewed the cap, raised the bottle and took a long urgent drink, then sat back, waiting to feel the effect.
Another smaller drink, and then another, then he tipped the bottle up and drained it. He carefully replaced the cap and hid the empty bottle away again, keeping it for when he made his next batch of vodka.
Jason was nothing if not organised, very organised, he had to be. He couldn't exactly just walk into a pub and buy his supplies of hard liquor. The money wasn't a problem, he had plenty of that. His father always made sure that he had more than enough for his needs. The problem was his age, he was only fifteen years old and that's way too young to buy booze. So he had to make his own, and he did, regularly. He needed it to survive.
Sometimes the booze made him happy, feeling good and giggling. Sometimes it made him sad, bawling and crying uncontrollably. But mostly it just made him dull - numb, lifeless and painless. That was what he drunk it for - to get out of it. To get out of his pain, his empty, cheerless, loveless life. Jason was a drunk, a secret drunk. No-one knew it, but he was. He needed it.
His mother didn't know. She wouldn't care anyway. Selfish cow. She'd gone, packed up and moved out and taken his sisters with her. But she didn't take Jason. Oh no, even she didn't want him. That was several years ago now, but it still hurt.
How could a mother do that to her only son? Well, she could if it was Jason McDonald, he supposed. He could go and spend holidays with her if he wanted to, but he didn't. He never had.
His father thought that he was the perfect son, bright, capable and independent, clean and quiet. That showed how much he knew! Jason worked hard, too hard, at maintaining that image, he had to. But that was part of his problem now, his father didn't know him. He didn't have a clue who he really was - even when he tried to tell him, he didn't know.
They moved here to Westpoint a couple of years ago. The plan was for Jason to stay with, and help, his grandmother during his father's regular absences. He was a commercial traveller and was on the road for at least three weeks out of every month. That plan came to nothing. His grandmother wasn't even capable of looking after herself, let alone a teenage boy as well. She finally lost her marbles and was now a full-time patient in the Old Peeps Home. She usually didn't even recognise her own family when they went in to visit her.
The next plan, plan B, was for Jason to stay with his aunt, his father's sister, and her family. That didn't work out either. Her husband loathed Jason and he wouldn't have him in his house. Aunt Karen didn't like him much anyway, but hubby dearest loathed him.
Nobody knew the reason for that. They just put it down to a personality clash, but Jason knew exactly why and his uncle did too. Dear old Uncle Harvey had heard the rumours around the town about Jason's being gay, and he thought that he'd get some of the hot boy action for himself. He had molested him, or tried to, when they were alone in the house. Jason, scared out of his wits, had laid him out. He whacked him over the head with the heavy pedestal ash-tray from the lounge, and he'd run away. Smoking really is bad for your health. Harvey had needed six stitches to control the bleeding and Jason wasn't welcome back there anymore, not that he wanted to anyway.
So that left plan C. Now when his father was away for weeks on end, Jason was left at home alone. At fourteen, (now fifteen), he was old enough to be left alone, and he was very capable in running the house - cooking, cleaning, gardening and paying the bills with the money left in his bank account. Security wasn't a problem; they had three very big, very scary, rotweiller dogs.
He cared for and looked after the house, the dogs and himself. He was, in his father's eyes, the perfect son. Little did he know. The household budget easily stretched to cover the cost of making the booze. There was enough money, there was a home provided - a house anyway - and there were the dogs, but they were all the company he had. Jason had no friends and no family except for a grandmother who didn't recognise him and a father, one week a month, who didn't know him. Even when he was home, Dan McDonald was too busy with his new girlfriend to have any time for his son.
The drink helped, sometimes, usually, but he was lonely. Alone, unloved, unknown, and so, so lonely. Fuck it! Booze helped, but he had to keep it secret.
Jason was on his last chance and he knew it. If plan C didn't work out, the only option left was foster placement under the Child Welfare Department, and he wasn't having that. That was no better than prison for kids.
Sometimes he wished that his father would chuck his job and stay at home. Even if they had to live on the unemployment benefit, it would be better than this. But he'd made it clear that that was not an option. He liked his job and he was not about to give it up. Besides, Jason was coping all right, wasn't he? Yeah, right!
He was coping with the running of the house - the house, the dogs, the lawns etc. It was not like he had anything else to do anyway. School was not a problem, not academically anyway. He studied and applied himself enough to score in the top ten percentile. Exam and test results were consistently B's and B-plusses with the occasional A as well.
He could do better if he tried, if he wanted to. He could easily top every class and score A pluses, but why bother? No-one cared anyway and neither did Jason. He'd rather not draw attention to himself. He didn't participate in any sports or club activities, he wasn't welcome. Fuck'em anyway.
He didn't care. But he did really. He was lonely - sad, lost and lonely and he didn't know what to do about it. Somehow, the other kids, everybody, had decided that he was gay and they'd rejected him for it. He wasn't bullied exactly, Westpoint High School didn't tolerate bullying, but he was rejected, shunned, and no-one wanted to know him.
Fuck'em. He put up his shields and he hid behind them He didn't want to know them either. But.
The drink wasn't having much effect. Surely he wasn't becoming immune to it was he? That'd be a worry. He needed to get out of it sometimes. Okay, often, lots of times. Today was about the worst day of his life. Even worse than when his mother left. He'd been expecting her to do that, she talked about it often enough.
When a teenager, after months of worrying and planning, finally summons up his courage and decides to go through with it, it was NOT supposed to go like this.
Jason had done plenty of reading on the internet and he knew how it was supposed to go. When a kid finally tells his father that, yes, he really is gay, one of two things was supposed to happen.
The kid's father should, either get angry and maybe beat him up and throw him out, or he should be supportive, accepting, warm and caring. What he should NOT do is to burst out laughing. That was just wrong.
Jason's father had laughed, laughed until he cried, and then he'd told him that he was still "shitting yellow", whatever that meant. It wasn't true anyway. No teenager wants to hear that, that was just embarrassing. Fuck'im.
And then he'd told him to make sure he finished the lawns before he went anywhere. Like he had anywhere to go anyway. Jason was not going back in that house. Not until he was good and ready to anyway.
Upset, embarrassed and, yes, totally feeling sorry for himself, he slumped miserably on the damp ground at the foot of the tree, his knees drawn up and his forehead resting on them.
About now, the silky curtain of his long, soft hair was supposed to fall forward screening his tear-streaked face.. He knew how it was supposed to go, he'd read enough stories, but it wasn't happening. His stupid hair wouldn't do that anyway, it was cut too short and it was too thick and wavy to make any sort of curtain around his face.
He sat crying silently, big teardrops falling on to his bare legs. Again, according to the stories, some beautiful, handsome gayboy was supposed to come along, put his arms around him and tell him that he secretly loved him. That wasn't happening either. Why couldn't his life be like the teen-boy-gay-romance stories? Ah, Fuck it anyway.
And, it was raining. Again. He couldn't just sit there getting wet and cold, he'd have to go home. He needed a better hiding place, one with a roof.
Jason stood up, and then he quickly sat down again. His head was spinning. Maybe he wasn't so immune to this stuff after all. When the spinning stopped, he stood up again, carefully, and slowly walked home, in the rain, to go to bed. Alone. With the door locked. His life sucked.
Next morning, he was a bit hung over, but that was nothing new. He should be used to that by now. He went back to school, in the rain. It was raining seriously that morning, bucketing down and driven by the wind.
Jason didn't care, he was miserable anyway. Now he was cold and wet to go with it. Misery loves company doesn't it? Yeah, right. If he had company he wouldn't be miserable would he?
At lunch-time, it was too wet and windy for anyone to eat outside, so the duty teachers opened up the school hall and allowed them all to eat in there. Trestle-tables were quickly set up and seats arranged around them.
Jason arrived quite early, he was starving as he'd had nothing to eat since lunchtime yesterday. Not caring what anyone thought, he took a seat near the end of one half-filled table, opened his lunch, opened a book and started reading as he ate.
He didn't look up from his book, but he was perfectly aware of what was going on as seats scraped on the floor. Everyone else at the table got up and moved away leaving him sitting at the long table all by himself. Screw them all anyway.
He wasn't moving, he had as much right to be here as anyone did. If they all wanted to go and crowd around other tables, well that was their problem. He had plenty of room even if he did stick out like a nun in a whorehouse.
Westpoint High was not a big school. It wasn't tiny, but it wasn't huge either. It was just a school, three to four hundred students. A small school in a small town. Jason didn't know everyone there, he hardly knew anyone actually. He had no friends there but he did know their faces, and some of their names. He knew enough to know that he did not know that kid standing there looking at him.
He wasn't a handsome hunk or anything, but he wasn't ugly either. He was just an ordinary, nice-looking kid. What was he standing there looking at Jason for?
Two of the girls, Rachel Miller and Dawn Whatever-her-name-was were talking urgently to him as they also cast glances in his direction. What were they plotting? Were they going to come and throw him out of his seat and take the table for themselves? They could try. He was not going to go easily. He was NOT going to go and eat his lunch out in the rain, again.
The boy sort of puffed up, he straightened his shoulders and said something to one of the girls. Then he walked over and sat down at Jason's table, opposite him. Jason glanced across anxiously. What was going on here? This could not be good. All eyes in the quiet hall were fixed on them now. Was he about to be humiliated again?
The kid grinned and said, "Hey. I'm Jordan."
Jason snapped his attention back to his book. Maybe if he ignored him, he'd go away. The girl, Dawn Miller, came over, leant over this Jordan and hissed something at him.
He clearly heard part of the reply - "I'm gay. Get over it." ('What?') Dawn Miller stood back, and then walked away to the front of the hall. The other girls with them all followed after her. The kid sat and ate a sandwich, then looked at him again.
('Here it comes.')
"Hey. I'm Jordan Taylor. I'm new here. Your name is Jason McDonald, right?"
('What's he playing at? What does he want of me? Is this supposed to be scaring me? Well it is.')
"Yeah. Look, Taylor, I don't know what you think you're doing."
"Me? I'm not doing anything. Just having my lunch. Eat here often do you?"
"What? No. Get lost." He lifted his book up in front of his face, hiding behind it. He didn't want to play these games. But - nothing happened.
Glancing across the top of his book, he could see the kid just sitting there, looking embarrassed or something. Jason knew that feeling. Maybe this wasn't a trick? He put the book down again and asked, "Are you saying that you're gay?"
"Yeah, I am. I am gay, have you got a problem with that?"
('Who? Me?') "No. No, I guess not." ('Is he trying to pick me up? Here?? Or is he just trying to start a fight?') "Just keep your hands to yourself."
"Hey, I said I was gay, not a nymphomaniac rapist."
('Whoah.') "Whatever. Just stay the hell away from me." He hid behind his book again, trying to avoid this strange pushy person.
Author's Note : Any comments, questions, criticisms etc., please e-mail me at canned-heat@hotmail.com
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