This is a story about male/male relations, and will include scenes of graphic sexuality. You should not read this story if it is in any way illegal due to your age or place of residence.
This is a work of pure fiction. This story is the sole property of its author and may not be copied in whole or in part or posted on any website without the permission of the author.
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TRAGEDY ON THE POTOMAC by Steven H. Davis
Chapter 3
BLAINE MAXWELL'S JOURNAL
Sorry I haven't been writing as much as I thought I was going to. Working on Dad's crew keeps me busy most of the time, except when I'm awake at 3 a.m. in some random hotel room like tonight. I'm on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, while Dad's somewhere in the Northeast part of town, renewing his acquaintance with Betty Ogretz, a teacher he used to see when Taine was going to Polk.
Taine didn't come with us to San Antonio, and tried to make us believe that it was because he had to study for an anatomy quiz. He could have done that here, but I knew the real reason was that he was afraid Dad or I would try to make him see Rick.
I don't know why he'd think that. We lived in Alamo Heights for almost two years after they broke up, and I think we only tried a total of three or four times. Whenever we did, he'd either clam up and hide from us in his room or look at us with that "how dare you?" face like we had just suggested he start doing porno movies. So eventually we just left it alone, hoping he'd get himself settled down enough to give the whole situation with Rick a real chance.
It didn't happen that way, and Taine just pulled back further inside himself. After we moved back to New York, he had a pretty rough time for the rest of high school, getting picked on because of his shyness, his clothes, and the way he would draw himself inside like a turtle at any kind of human contact.
He didn't date at all, although I managed to get him to admit that a girl had given him a handy at the only party he went to. I have to think that must have been the most awkward handjob in history.
I began crewing for Dad around this time, and we were gone a lot. Again. Taine didn't seem to resent it as much this time, and even came on the road with us once or twice, until he graduated with pretty low marks and decided that he was going to get a job.
Dad offered him a spot on the pit crew, but Taine didn't really get along too well with the rest of the guys. They were all pretty rough, blue-collar guys and didn't have much use for a skinny, delicate kid whose only real efforts at interaction were spurts of ill-timed sarcasm which just got on their bad sides.
Eventually he decided that he was going to be a fireman and began working out so he could pass the grueling physical. Firehoses are heavier than they look, and the idea of little Taine hauling one up the stairs of a burning building didn't exactly fill anyone with confidence. So the fireman thing didn't work out either, and the next attempt was at becoming a long-haul trucker.
I have to believe that all these macho jobs were Taine's way of distancing himself from his sexuality, from his perception of himself as some weak little gay boy who would never be normal, or what he thought was normal.
But every time that he embarked on one of these escapades, he just proved to himself once again that he wasn't man enough for the job.
Taine was actually very good at driving a truck, to my surprise. In fact, he was so good that his instructor had him helping some of the other guys, none of whom took too kindly to being tutored by a skinny young punk. Things got rough for him again, and it was on his first cross-country ride-along with his instructor that Taine realized that long-haul trucking wasn't his calling either.
I remember getting a panicky call from a rest stop in North Carolina where Taine was absolutely horrified that the truck drivers looked at him funny when he was brushing his teeth in the bathroom.
"Don't these people believe in hygiene?" he pleaded in astonishment and revulsion.
Yeah, this wasn't going to be the answer.
Finally, I sat down with Taine one day and tried to help him figure out what to do with his life. What I knew was that we had to minimize his interaction with other people, let him work with something which would let him feel like he was doing something useful, and -- most importantly -- find something which he could actually be successful in doing.
I felt in my gut that Taine couldn't handle another disappointment or he'd start harming himself again. He was already sinking into another of his self-loathing depressions, where he saw himself as useless, alienated from humankind, and a hateful waste of oxygen. When those feelings took hold of him, Taine would disappear into his room for days at a time, and would often re-emerge with cuts.
Dad tried to understand. He really did, but Sly Maxwell was the kind of person who took life by the balls with great zeal and gusto, and the way that Taine's mind operates wasn't really within his realm of comprehension.
So it was up to me.
I did understand, somewhat, based on my experiences with Elden Croyle. There were times, when I was held captive in his house of horrors, that I wanted to die. That I would rather be dead than watch that locked door slowly open again, revealing another of Elden's sadistic friends, all horned-up and ready to make me suffer the tortures of the damned for their amusement and pleasure. I eventually escaped, but there were long, dark nights when I thought I never would, and death seemed like the only way out.
Those experiences only partially helped me to understand Taine, though. I mean, it wasn't as if he was tied down in a bed for constant torture by sadistic sex maniacs. What had he really been through? Everything that happened at Polk -- the murdered dog, the vandalized car, and so on -- hadn't actually happened to him.
They had happened to Rick, and to Dad, and they happened because Rick had stood up to Taine's bullies so that Taine wouldn't have to suffer anything bad. And then my Dad and Rick's dad Rex had taken care of that, too, making a little visit to the bullies' homes and spelling out in no uncertain terms to their parents what would happen if they ever did anything which could be proven in a courtroom.
Taine had everything then. He was left alone at school, he had Dad's love and acceptance, he had his brother (me) back in his life, and, most importantly, he had Rick's total and unconditional love and adoration.
Rick would have killed or died for Taine, and then Taine just flipped out. He broke up with Rick, he left Polk, and we moved to Alamo Heights, where he got bullied again, all because he couldn't deal with being gay, something -- and this is the strange part -- for which he had never suffered one single ounce of rejection over that entire period of time. In the middle of Texas in 1981, the only person bullying Taine for his sexuality and his romance with Rick was Taine himself.
And he was still doing it. Pit crew, fireman, long-haul trucker. I was sure he would try to be a longshoreman next or join the Marines if I didn't step in and help him find something to do which made allowances for his fragility, his shyness, and his ego while still avoiding anything which smacked of weakness.
And then it hit me.
Taine had always been a dark soul. He liked horror films, sad Goth songs, pictures of dark angels and blackened, bleeding hearts. He had always been fascinated by death. He needed to work in isolation, safe from too much interaction with people. Well... interaction with living people, anyway.
"Mortuary science," I suggested excitedly. "Funeral homes, embalming. Dead people. You could work pretty much by yourself. You wouldn't have to deal with a bunch of assholes. And it's something that not every person has the balls to do..."
I knew I was being manipulative, but I couldn't just stand by and watch him run himself into walls over and over again by taking on jobs which were both dangerous and, frankly, beyond his capabilities.
Fortunately, Taine loved the idea, and after I had a long, high-pressure talk with Dad, he agreed to enroll my brother in the local community college, after which time he would enter the nearby funeral academy to learn what we were all sure would be his true craft.
What I didn't take into account or even consider for a second at that time was that working with dead bodies every day could do far more psychological damage to Taine than anyone could have predicted. It would increase his feelings of alienation and horror (or mortification, not to put too fine a point on it) at simply being alive in this world, a prisoner of his own mind and body in a sense very similar to what I experienced in Elden Croyle's awful spare bedroom.
That's what I couldn't get my head around at the time: that the reason I felt so responsible for helping Taine was that we had been to the same place. I went there for a few awful weeks, and I went there physically. Taine went there mentally and emotionally every single day of his life.
And with my brilliant, ill-conceived idea for finding him "the perfect job," I had just made things infinitely worse.
Thank you for reading Chapter 3. To be continued...
Once again, I'm always happy to hear from readers at DJAkeeba@aol.com.
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