Angels And Bad Men

By: David H
(© 2011-2012 by the author)
Editor: Ken King

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

Chapter 7
“A Place for Friends”

There were some good times over the next couple of weeks, but there were also some emotional, trying moments.  One afternoon, a couple of weeks after Memorial Day, I got a phone call from Armando and Carmen.  The call was nice enough, but then toward the end Carmen let it slip that she’d seen the Myspace page of a guy named Kyle Rodgers… the guy that had supposedly hit me in ‘self-defense.’  Call me a glutton for punishment, but I had to see what was on that page.  I had to see what kind of person he really was.  I had to put a face to the emotions, to the rage, to the confusion and hurt feelings I was experiencing.  After a bit of reluctance, Carmen gave me the address.  After we got off the phone, I pointed my Internet browser to the site and looked at it.  There was a gaudy background image of some scene from a UA football game.

When his picture finally loaded, it was of him in a tux.  I read down the page.  He was one of those people that clearly had to note his sexuality.  He was one of those people that had to ‘try’ to be funny by putting in the favorite book category that he only looks at Playboy for the articles.  Under his relationship status, he’d marked ‘engaged.’

I didn’t know how to take that at first.  He was happy enough in his life to propose to some girl.  I read through a few of the comments.  There was one from Linda, the bartender from The Bar.  It was only a few days old, and it was all sweet and nice, congratulating them on their pending nuptials. 

At that point, I was getting kind of pissed.  ‘Kind of’ really doesn’t do it all justice, though.  I was livid.  I was angry.  I was enraged.  I was fuming.  I was furious.  I should have closed the browser right then and cleared my history, but I didn’t.  Something inside wouldn’t let me.  Perhaps it was the fact that as a Pisces, sometimes I can be a glutton for punishment. 

So, as any person can who understands how to work Myspace even a little, I scrolled back to the top of the page and clicked his profile picture.  There were several groups of pictures, including an entire section devoted to pictures of him and his beloved.  “Gina and me” the section was called.

Now, any good gay guy knows how to trash talk.  Even though I was in my room by myself, I started.  The first picture was of the two of them, sitting closely together in a booth at some restaurant or bar that I didn’t recognize.  She was wearing a black top that was cut far too low for the diminutive mammae she carried on her chest.  She had a pug nose and ugly hair.  Her eyes were also far too close together for my taste.  I wondered in that moment if her parents had been cousins.

As far as he was concerned, he looked as though he was depriving some poor village of its idiot.  He had protruding cheekbones and eyes that seemed to let anyone who looked at them know that there was little behind them. 

It goes without saying that I hate him.  I hated him; I hate him; I will always hate him.  I thought to myself after thinking that, however; maybe I didn’t hate him.  Maybe I just hated what he represented and the images I was seeing were a result of the imperfect vision in my left eye.  I pondered trying to think something nice about them as I scrolled through the pictures, but I couldn’t.  There was nothing polite I could say.  It was the first time in history that I could say that, and, to be completely honest, it felt kind of good.

I scrolled down the page a little more to look for more ammunition.  Oh, and there was a LOT of it.  There was a picture of them ‘dressed up.’  I honestly had seen chimps with better fashion sense than the two of them.  He looked like he hadn’t had a proper fitting for the tux he was wearing; she looked like her straight male cousin had picked out the painfully ugly pink dress she was wearing.  It was the kind of pink that glows in complete darkness.

At the bottom of the page, there was a drawing he’d scanned and proudly placed on the page.  It had been rendered with pencil on construction paper, obviously.  It was so badly drawn.  I imagined, however, that he’d presented it to her with a display of great pride in his accomplishment.  Of course, I could see her touching him in his special place in recognition of his hard work.  The one thing that I couldn’t figure out was this, though: had Zefram Cochrane already made his warp flight?  Had we made first contact with the Vulcans?  It certainly looked like that from the pointy ears the chick had.

At the top of the browser window, I clicked the ‘back’ button and the browser returned me to the listing of his photo albums.  There was another called “My Family.”  Given the moment, I had to see it.  I had to look at those who had produced such a foul individual.  In one picture, there was a snapshot of the whole lot of his clan, sitting around a table preparing for some holiday meal.

The first thing I noticed was that in the foreground of the picture there was a little brown-skinned boy.  Perhaps he was mexicano, or maybe guatemalteco.  I couldn’t tell from the picture alone.  I would have had to hear his accent.  The point of it was, though, that the group looked happy.

Then on the next row there were two pictures that caused my heart to stop for a second and then start beating again with a fury that I’d never in my life experienced.

The first photograph was labeled, “Me with the Lesbian Aunts.”  The second was one of him and his niece on her birthday.  My whole body began to shake.  It was painfully obvious from his comments to the police that he had felt threatened by my sexuality, but yet he’d posed for a picture with homosexuals.  He’d climbed into a hot tub with members of MY community.  It was like it was a spit in the face.  Any anger I already felt toward him began to quickly intensify to the point at which I became unable to control my body temperature.  It seemed to climb to points that I couldn’t quite explain.  It was as if the scar above my eye was throbbing after a moment, much like the scar Harry Potter has stings when He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named is around. 

Then there was the other picture, of him and the precious little girl that was an innocent in the whole thing.  She was cute, far cuter than he deserved to have in his life.  I began to cry, as I had on many an occasion in the recent past.  This time, however, it was different.  This was an angry cry.  Tears flooded every part of my face.  My eyes swelled.  My vision became blurry at best.  There he was, in that picture with his niece.  Smiling and happy the two of them were.  I wondered if, when he looks at that picture, he realizes that his actions, actions which he didn’t deny to the police, almost took me from Heidi and Chloe, my own precious nieces.  Did he realize he left me in a pile of blood to simply lie there and die?

Now in a rage, I shut my computer.  I sat on my bed for a few minutes as I tried to compose myself.  But the thing was, there was no way for me to calm down right then.  I was filled with hate and rage and anger toward him, toward his betrothed, toward his lesbian aunts for allowing him to develop into the maniacal bigot he had become.  In that moment, I wanted him to trickle blood from his anus for the coming sixty years and then, when it did come time for him to pass into the great beyond, he would suffer, mightily.  I wanted him to develop such guilt for what he’d done to me it would be like a cancer for him, festering through his being until the only thing left on his mind was that he wanted it all to be over, much as I wanted it to be over for me.  I hoped that, when they did procreate, their children would have all that they desired, but that he would suffer having gay offspring.  I hoped he would watch them turn into productive members of society.  I hoped he would see them grow, and I wished they might never have to face the same torture that was going on in my mind, a torture that he had inflicted upon me, the lowlife son-of-a-bitch.

Why did he get to be happy?  It wasn’t fair.  It simply wasn’t fair.  He had love, yet I was left alone to wallow in this world that HE had created for me.

I don’t remember the precise details, but at some point Justin opened the door to my room from the bathroom that we shared.  He asked me an innocent question, and I snapped.  Every muscle in my body tensed up.  I squeezed my computer with fury, trying to smash it.  I wanted to break it in half.  I wanted to inflict pain on something.

“Are you okay?” he asked as he walked over to me.

“NO!  I’M NOT OKAY!” I yelled at him.  “I’m not okay.  I’m going fucking crazy here, and I’m not okay.  And I really wish that everyone would just stop asking me that!  I’m not okay.  I’m not going to be okay.  I will never be the same person that I was before.  I will NEVER get back what I lost that night.  I will probably rot in the bowels of hell from now until my life is cut short by the demons that are plaguing me.  I JUST WANT IT ALL TO END!  I WANT IT ALL TO BE OVER!  I WANT IT ALL JUST TO END SO THAT I WON’T SUFFER ANYMORE!!!!!” I screamed.  I bellowed.  I uttered a long, loud, piercing, painful cry.

Justin tried to wrap his arms around me, but I wasn’t having any of it.  I wasn’t going to relent.  I wanted nothing more than to open my body up with a dull blade and finish the job Kyle had started.  With my computer still in my hand, I stood from the bed.  I took slow deep breaths and calculated things in my mind.  I didn’t know exactly what I was scheming, but there were definitely things going on up there.  I placed the laptop in my right hand.  I held it up.  I contorted my body and tossed the computer through the air.  Justin had to move to get out of the way of the projectile.  It hit the wall and sent echoes throughout the house.

I gaped at the hole in the wall that my MacBook had created.  I stared at it.  If I could have had my way, I would have punched holes throughout my entire room.  I wanted to punch something.  I wanted to inflict pain on something that was there, something that couldn’t fight back.  Perhaps part of me wanted to feel what he felt, so I could understand his thoughts.  Maybe it was just my way of managing the rage.

“I think I should call Dad,” Justin said as he grabbed my cell phone from the dresser.  I heard him speak to the man who had helped produce both of us, but I paid little attention.  He eventually hung up the phone and placed it back on the dresser.

I looked at Justin.  My younger brother, a man in training who was afraid of little, stared at me with fear in his eyes.  I could tell he was worried about what I might do next, not to him, but to myself.

I felt myself shaking again after a moment.  The natural feeling slowly returned to my limbs and muscles.  Seeing him standing there, worried, made me melt.  I felt my legs becoming weak.

“Help?” I asked, meekly.  Justin didn’t waver.  He took two steps and wrapped himself around me.  He guided me back to the bed, where he lay me down and placed me on my right side.

“What’s wrong?” Dad asked as he ran into my room.  He first looked at me, lying there helplessly.  He then glanced at Justin, who had an expression of both uncertainty and worry wiped over his face.  He peered behind me and saw the hole in the drywall in which my computer remained rather precariously half-buried.  “Justin.  Go get a glass of water and a damp wash cloth.”

“Yes sir,” Justin complied.

Dad knelt down beside my bed.  He ran his fingers through my hair.  Justin returned to the room with a bottle of water and a damp cloth.  “Justin.  Go into the living room for a little bit,” Dad ordered.

“Okay,” he said as he reluctantly left the room.

“What happened?” Dad asked me.

“It’s gonna sound stupid,” I warned.

“Just tell me.”

“I found his Myspace.”

“Whose?”

“HIS,” I answered.

“Oh.  Did you get anything from it other than a hole in your wall?”

“Dad.  He’s happy.  Why does he get to be happy, and I have to suffer?  What did I do?” I cried, like a child.

“You didn’t do anything, Ry.  Sometimes people are just ignorant, and they do ignorant things.  I don’t know why he did this, but you didn’t deserve it,” Dad answered as he bent down over me.  Quite possibly for the very first time in my life, I then saw my father crying.

“I’m so sorry, Dad.  I never meant to hurt you or Mom.  I never meant to scare Justin.  I never meant to upset anybody.”

“Shhh.  It’s okay.  Promise.”

I sobbed like a baby, lunacy taking over my being in that moment.  I simply wanted it all to be over, and I was almost willing for the finality to come at any cost. 

At some point, I fell asleep.  I don’t know when or how, but I fell asleep.  Both my conscious and subconscious selves needed the numbness that only solid, deep slumber could provide.  Not even the dwindling supply of weed in the tree house could have provided such a trance as what my body cried for in the form of physical and emotional pain.

*********************

I woke up Friday morning.  The last thing I remembered was falling asleep in my father’s arms on Tuesday afternoon.  I’m sure that I woke up to take drinks of water or something and to pee, but I don’t remember any of it.

I pulled myself into a seated position on the edge of the bed.  I still wore the same clothes in which I was dressed on Tuesday.  They stank, as did my body.  I stood, and it took a long, uncertain moment for me to get my balance back.  The sleep had obviously been that deep.

I heard sounds coming from the living room, so I walked carefully into the other room.  It was obvious from the noise that Parker and Justin were sitting in the living room playing a game on Justin’s Wii on the big-screen TV.

“You bastard!” Justin yelled.  It was obvious from Parker’s laughter that it was futile for Justin to try to come back from the crushing defeat he’d been dealt at the hands of our older brother.

“Ryan!” Parker exclaimed as he stood from the sofa.

“Hey,” I groggily responded.

Parker looked happy to see me; Justin, however, had a darker aura about him.  It became obvious I’d affected my brother in a negative way, far more than was ever my intention.

“Justin.  I’m sorry about the other day.  You shouldn’t have had to see that,” I said as I walked over to my brother.  He wouldn’t look at me, however.  I reached out my hand, but he wouldn’t take it.  I could tell that he was deep in thought.  As I pulled my hand away, he stood and looked up into my eyes.

“Canteloupe!” he said as he looked at me.

“Are you offering me fruit?”

“No.  That’s the word.”

“The word?”

“Yeah.  In the future, when you feel like you’re going to go off the deep end, just say ‘canteloupe.’  There’s a whole call tree ready if you ever use the word,” Justin declared as he continued to look at me.  In just a moment, my younger brother, a man far more sage than any of his contemporaries, wrapped his muscular arms around me and held on tightly.

“I’m so sorry, Justin.”

“It’s okay.  It’s just that I’m not ready to be without both of my brothers.  After all, if it hadn’t been for you guys, I wouldn’t be the dashing young man I am today!” he said with a grin.

“Shit!” Parker joked.  “You got that shit from me… not Ryan.”

“Fucker!” I turned and said to my older brother, who I could also count on, without fail, to be by my side.

There was now something in the air, something good.  There was at last a sense that things would get better, that life might somehow return to a point of normalcy.  There was something to be said for a mental crash every now and again.

“So, you really should go get showered,” Justin joked.  “You smell like ass.”

“Little bro.  You need to remember something,” Parker started.  “He is… what he eats!”

Laughter erupted. 

To be continued...

Posted: 12/30/11