WHILE SOME OF THE EVENTS DESCRIBED IN THIS STORY ARE FICTIONALIZED, SO I CAN RETAIN WHAT'S LEFT OF MY SANITY, MANY OF THE EVENTS HERE ACTUALLY HAPPENED AS DESCRIBED. YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE YOU CONTINUE THAT THIS STORY CONTAINS GRAPHIC ACCOUNTS OF CHILD ABUSE AND VIOLENCE, AS WELL AS DRUG USE BY TEENAGERS. IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED OR THIS KIND OF MATERIAL IS ILLEGAL FOR YOU TO READ, PLEASE STOP NOW. IF YOU ARE, OR KNOW OF A CHILD IN A SIMILAR SITUATION, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! CALL THE POLICE. CALL SOCIAL SERVICES. DO ANYTHING, BUT DO SOMETHING!
Prologue
This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a whimper, but with a bang.
One of the best lines, from one of my favorite movies, The Southland Tales. I always thought it was a reference to nuclear war, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe it's about finally having enough of the pain and the fear and the loneliness. Maybe it's about finally having the balls to check out. All of this might make more sense to you if you knew a little about me. I'll try to explain, but it still doesn't make sense to me, so I don't expect you to understand. Maybe I'll be the one who is surprised this time.
My name is Jeremy. I'm 34 years old, and I have finally had enough. But this story starts nearly twenty years ago, and there are parts that start way before then. I will also say that I do not blame my parents for everything that happened through the course of my life, although as you read this, you may think that from time to time. I have not changed names, dates or places. There are no innocents here.
Let's start at the beginning, I guess. My mother was sixteen when she married her first husband. She had just dropped out of high school in here junior year, and she was four months pregnant with my older brother, Chris. It was January of 1974. I would like to say that they were happy together, and that they were in love, but none of that is true. They were miserable. They hated each other. It was definitely a marriage doomed to fail. And fail, it did. Spectacularly. In mid to late 1976, my mother began sleeping with a boy she had gone to high school with, named Steven. When she became pregnant again, it was clear to her that this was not her husband's child. The timing was just wrong. The last time she saw my father was when he was called to testify at her divorce hearing. I had not been born yet. He, as far as I know, never made any attempt to contact her. He never tried to have anything to do with me, either, but that didn't matter until I was a teenager, and by then, the damage was done. When I was almost two, she married her second husband, Bob. He was the best man I have ever seen her with. Now, Bob had his issues, don't get me wrong. He was a stoner, and he loved his beer and whiskey, but I don't remember him ever hitting either of us, or ever even being mad. We lived in a little A-frame house across the driveway from his grandmother's house, on his family's land, in rural Louisiana. For a few years, we were happy there, and then we left. I don't think I ever asked why. It doesn't matter now. He died a long time ago. In 1981, just before I turned five, My sister Heather was born, to my mother and husband number three - Steve, AKA Junkie, AKA Bank Robber. You get the picture. He was a great guy. When he went to prison, she left him. As soon as he hit the free world again, though, she was right back. A very short time later, in early 1983, we were all joined by Rachel, the youngest sister. Once again, Steve went to prison (this was not to be the last time, but we aren't going to talk about him just yet), and this time we left for good. When I was eight years old, she met and married the man who would be my nemesis for the rest of the time I lived at home, Tom. At least, looking back, I can say that he never tried to hide who he was, so I guess we all should have seen it coming.
Just after we moved in with loser (read husband) number five, Tom, I started to think that maybe we would all be OK. He had never tried to touch me, or my sisters, and was generally on his best behavior around us. Now, of course, I know that he was just trying to impress my mother and her parents, but at the time, I was still reeling from the things that happened with Steve, and I just wanted to be OK again. The first time he broke my nose, I was eight. I dropped a glass in the kitchen, and he punched me in the face. I started crying, of course, and it just pissed him off even more. He picked me up and threw me into the living room floor, screaming at my mother to "get this little faggot out of my sight". I had never heard that word before. I didn't know what it meant, but I knew it had to be terrible, and I didn't want to be that. I couldn't be that. That was not the last, or the worst of the times to come. Every person on this planet bears the scars of their childhood, I suppose, but unlike you, mine are on my face, my arms, my back and my legs. After a few years, I got used to being hit and screamed at, I guess. I just didn't think about it. I assumed that everyone lived like this. Eventually, I didn't even feel it any more. Nobody ever stepped in. When I started to show signs of a violent temper, and started using heavier drugs, is when people finally started to pay attention. Of course, by then it was too late. That is where our main story begins, in the summer of my fourteenth year on this planet, 1991.
Chapter 1
The summer after I turned fourteen was amazing. My stepdad was gone most of the summer, working out of state. I even actually made a couple of friends, Cody and Kevin. Cody lived with just his mom, and Kevin lived with his mom and her boyfriend. Cody was fourteen, like me, and Kevin was a year older, but in the same grade as us. In school, the year before, we had all started playing baseball together, hanging out during the week and generally fucking off, as kids tend to do. We had discovered pot together, and alcohol, and they had discovered girls. I didn't know why, but I just wasn't interested in girls. I didn't want to hang out with them, talk to them on the phone, nothing. I had, however, met a boy outside of our group, who seemed to be just like me. He was quiet, soft spoken and confident. His name was Ben, and I thought he was the most beautiful thing on the planet. He terrified me in almost every possible way.
I had learned how to play baseball on city league teams beginning just after I turned nine. My stepdad thought team sports would "toughen me up", and "make a man of me". It turned out that I was a decent player, and I LOVED the game. I was a good pitcher, and a good second baseman. I finally had something that was mine, and I threw myself into perfecting my game. I worked out constantly, I practiced every day. I was basically a kid with a new toy.
At the beginning of the summer, just after our city leagues had finished for the year, I met Ben. Cody and Kevin were on vacation with their families, and I was headed down to our spot on the creek to smoke a joint and hide for a while. When I got there, there was a kid sitting on our rock, just looking at the water. When I spoke, he jumped about four feet. He immediately apologized and started to run off, without ever looking up. "Wait", I called after him. "You don't have to leave", I said. "I was just coming down here to hang out for a while. I'm Jeremy." He looked up, and I was stunned. He had the most beautiful green eyes I had ever seen. He was also covered in bruises.
"I'm Ben", he said, extending his hand meekly. I shook his hand and looked around. "Hey, Ben, you wanna get high?"
His eyes got wide when I took the joint out of my pocket and fired it up. "Sure, man, I'm down", he said. And that was that. We sat on a rock and got high. I couldn't stop staring at him, that whole first day. I had no idea why I couldn't stop looking at him. I only knew that I wanted to touch him.
Over the last few months of eighth grade, and the first month of summer, I grew from an average kid (5'7, 130, skinny and awkward), to be my current height of 5'11 and just a shade under 180 pounds. People started to notice me, and it freaked me out. I had always been able to blend into the crowd and disappear; hiding from the bullies at school and the prying eyes and minds of curious adults, which was how I survived my first thirteen years on this planet. Now that security blanket was gone, and I found myself staring at this boy, and all the wrong things started to happen. I started to throw a bone. Ben looked over at me, since I had gone quiet, and got a twinkle in his eye. "Dude!" he said loudly, pointing at my shorts, "you're boned up!"
I thought I would die of embarrassment, right there on that rock. For the entire time my friends had been looking at girls, I had been looking at boys, and now I had gotten caught! I was afraid he would beat me up, or worse, tell my mom. Who of course would tell my stepdad, and he would just beat me until he felt better about the whole thing. I started crying, and yelled at him "I'm sorry!" and just ran as fast as I could to get home. When I got there, mercifully, I was alone. I got undressed, got in bed and cried myself to sleep.
After my first run-in with my stepdad ended with him yelling at my mom to "get this little faggot out of my sight", I had slowly learned what that word meant. I knew it meant my stepdad would hate me more than he already did, and worse, now he would have a reason to. I had learned from teachers and books what it meant to be gay. All my friends ever had to say on the subject was that it was "gross" or "nasty" or that gay people deserved whatever happened to them. I wanted to be normal so badly that it made me sick. After that first meeting with Ben, I don't think I left my room from more than a few minutes for almost two weeks. I was afraid. I couldn't eat or sleep. I didn't want to be "that way". Since I did not have a lot of friends anyway, there was nobody calling or coming by to alert my parents that anything was wrong. I'm pretty sure they never even noticed, thank God. As luck would have it, the first person I saw, the first time I left my house after all of this, was Ben. I had finally gotten my shit together enough to go somewhere besides my bed, and there he was, walking down my street. God he was amazing looking. He was a big guy, like me, having gone through puberty a couple of years before. He had honey brown hair and, like I said, the most amazing green eyes I had ever seen. I couldn't tell how he was built, because he always wore baggy clothing, but GOD I wanted to know! I was so ashamed of myself, I almost turned around and ran back inside, but he had seen me. It was too late to hide, so I just sat down on the steps and tried to prepare myself for the first punch. The first one is always the worst. After that, you either shut down or you fight back. I hadn't been taught to fight back.
When he ran up the steps, I guess I shrank back into the corner a little bit. He stopped and looked at me sort of strangely for a minute and said, very quietly, "are you ok, man?" I must have had an odd look on my face because he didn't say anything else. He just sat down next to me and put his arm over my shoulder. When I finally looked up, he said "you know, I was just fucking with you the other day. I didn't mean to upset you. I'm not sure what happens in there," pointing at my house, "but I owe you one. Let's go smoke." When I stood up, he never took his arm off my shoulder - he just kind of pulled me down the street and into his back yard. A few minutes and three jumped fences later, we were sitting down at the creek, smoking out and laughing. As it turned out, Ben was two years older than me, having just turned sixteen. He was a year behind in school, because he had taken some time off after his mom died when he was in sixth grade. His dad wasn't home much, so it was pretty much just him and his little brother. After we joked around for a while, he sat back down next to me. He kind of elbowed me in the side and said, "So why did you freak out like that a couple of weeks ago?"
I wasn't sure what to say. I had never been more nervous about anything in my life. Before I realized what I was saying, I blurted out "Because I think you're the best looking guy I've ever seen, and I didn't want you to beat me up, or tell my parents that I'm some kind of freak! My stepdad would kill me if he knew what was happening in my head, and my mom would quit talking to me. I don't even know what any of this means, or what is happening to me, but I'm scared. I don't want everyone to hate me!" As soon as I realized what I had just said, I jumped up and started running again. This time, though, I didn't get very far. When Ben tackled me, I automatically rolled onto my back and put my arms over my face to ward off the blow I knew was coming. When it didn't come, I lowered my arms enough to see, and he was just sitting on the ground, looking off across the creek. He was crying!
"I'm not gonna hit you, man. I'm sorry I tackled you like that. I didn't mean to scare you. I've never had a guy tell me anything like that before. I just want to talk to you. Mostly, I want to know why you're so scared of me?" he asked, quietly.
I thought for a minute about what to say. I mean, nobody knew what happened in my house. I didn't think I could tell him why I was really afraid all the time, and that it didn't have anything to do with him. Nobody had ever asked me that before, and I was dumbstruck. What if he told somebody? I'd die if everyone knew. People already picked on me at school, and generally harassed me in the neighborhood. The only reason I was even outside lately was that everyone was on vacation. "Ben," I finally said, "Look, I can't tell you. I only have two friends, and even they don't know everything. I can't go back to not having any friends, and if people knew, nobody would talk to me anymore. I can tell you that I'm not afraid of you. I just don't like to be hit, and I thought you were going to hit me. I'm sorry." This time, he let me leave. I went home, with the idea of just crawling back in bed for the rest of the summer, but apparently, that wasn't going to happen.
I walked in the door, not really paying attention to the cars in the driveway. I got about two feet into the door, and pain exploded through my face and neck. I hit the door hard enough to pop it open and fall out onto the porch. Before I could get up, my stepdad was out the door and on me. I had no idea what I had done, or said, or thought about this time to set it off again. After the first couple of punches, I don't really remember anything. I guess he knocked me out, or I passed out. When I woke up, I was still on the front porch. I was covered in blood. I couldn't open my eyes. I could tell that my nose was broken again, but I couldn't tell how bad it was. I had three teeth missing, and my lips were cut all to shit. So was my forehead above my right eye. Great, I thought, more new scars. Sometimes, I wish he would just kill me and get it over with. When I tried to stand up, I fell over again. The pain in my ribs nearly made me pass out again. It was then I realized that someone was with me. As the pain faded a little bit, I figured out that I had not hit the floor, but had been lowered to the floor very gently. "Who is that?" I asked, in what had to be a very shaky voice. I tried to open my eyes, and still couldn't. Now, I was very afraid. "Please, talk to me!" I said. "I can't see you, but I know you're there. I can hear you breathing, and you stopped me from falling. Now, who are you?" And then I heard the sirens. They were close, and there were a lot of them, it sounded like. Great. Cops. My least favorite people on the planet. My dad always seemed to know what to say to get them to leave, even though I had been in the hospital twice before for broken bones and bruised kidneys. "Please," I asked, "tell me who's there? I don't want to talk to the cops. They never help. I just need to get in the shower and clean up." I started crying, if you can call it that. I guess it was more like shaking and sobbing.
"Jeremy, you can't go back in there," the voice on the porch said. Fuck. It was Ben. "I called the cops, because I saw what he did. My dad is a cop. He will help you. I know he will. And right now, you can't go in. Nobody is there, and the doors are locked. I tried to go in a get a towel to clean you up a little bit. I didn't want to leave you here alone in case they came back. Why did he do this?" Ben asked. The last thing I remember before I passed out again is sirens.