This section is from "Rape In Holding Cell 6, volume 1" and is being told by the novel's protagonist, Antony, as he considers telling someone he loves just how crazy he is becoming and how he started being that way.
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It was when I was fourteen years old -- a kid I sort of knew killed himself. Not because he was gay -- he wasn’t; but that didn’t keep some monstrous brats at school from brutalizing him, anyway. Berating him for being gay. Beating up on him for not being man enough for a fifteen year-old. And not one person did anything about it. Not his parents. Not the bullies’ parents. Not the teachers. Nobody. Nobody cared, not really, ‘cause he was just this skinny little fuck who couldn’t take care of himself -- and had nobody who’d take care of him for him -- until he took matters into his own hands.
What’s sad is, even I made fun of him. Because I was scared they’d start doing that shit to me. And so he was found hanging in his bathroom, one morning. And I didn’t feel bad about it. I felt -- better him than me.
But then I watched all the adults and all the little fucks who’d picked on him act like they’d done nothing wrong. Laugh about it. Make sick cracks about it. And that’s when something cracked open inside me. Something deep that slowly built up this hideous anger. Still, I kept it bottled up, inside, afraid of it.
Until a year later. When a kid outside LA got murdered by a classmate for being gay, and hearing about it scared the fuck out of me, at first. I couldn’t go to school for a week because I was sure that everybody knew that I was a fag, too, and fags kill themselves or get killed and I’d be next and -- and -- .
And then I heard that killer’s attorney start blaming everything on the murdered boy, all but brushing aside the fact that a young life had been taken thanks to hatred -- and the anger boiled up, again. That some motherfuckers would make it seem like -- like how you were born is wrong, and is an excuse for slaughter, and they’d make you scared to be who you are because they can’t handle it -- that was so sickening to me, two weeks after the murdered kid’s funeral I told my mom I was gay.
She told dad and they tried to talk me out of it, of course. Said I was just confused and upset. I was too young to understand what I did and didn’t like. Didn’t work. So they asked me to keep it to myself. People in our town might not be so understanding. And I agreed, but for one reason only -- so I could work with the football team. Because five of the suicide kid’s worst tormentors were on the Varsity Squad.
You see, nobody at school did know I was gay, yet. And I’d already been learning about massage and pressure points and stuff from Aikido and that paramedic. So I got the job to clean up the locker room and make sure the guys had towels when they finished showering and finally got to show coach that I could rub out leg cramps and sore arms when he was too busy. And by the end of the football season, I’d rubbed each of those five assholes down good. And made damn sure every one of them got a woody. Very embarrassing for them, but I laughed and explained it away and they thought everything was fine.
Until we returned to school from Christmas break. That’s when I came out to everyone and quietly told a friend (near some nosy-gossipy girls) that I’d sucked every one of the football bastards off -- though the truth was, I hadn’t. They were all butt-ugly to me. Of course, word was all over campus by the end of the day. A couple of the guys found out and tried to beat me up -- and I got knocked around a bit; they outweighed me by twenty pounds each -- but I slammed into freak-out-pissed-off mode for the first time and broke one guy’s nose and another one’s wrist. Then word spread that they’d been beat up by a fag.
Well -- they couldn’t buy their way onto a college football team, after that, no matter how much they swore it wasn’t true. And that is hell for a high school football star from Texas. I’d crushed their dreams in revenge for a kid I barely knew. And I felt good about it. Which scared me, a little -- because I didn’t think I should have felt that way.
But that wasn’t the end of it. After graduation, three of them joined the military -- Army, Marines -- and got sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. One was killed. Another got hit by an IED -- and his parents are taking care of him, now, because he’s just a couple IQ points above a vegetable. The third, I think he’s on his second deployment. The other two -- one’s a dealer who’s his own best client and the other went to Michigan State to get away from the gossip. Last I heard, he’s the only one doing good -- but he was never allowed near the football team.
And I still felt like this was a job well-done.
This is what my story is about -- anti-gay nonsense coming from society and the legal system, and how Antony determines to fight back in ways that become inappropriate and dangerous. There is no underage sex, just a lie perpetrated by Antony. There is no incest. And in the book, rape is presented as a soul-destroying action, not something just to titillate. This section does lead into a very intense sex scene between the adult Antony and Jake, the guy he loves, but is not that much more intense than something you'd find in a Jackie Collins novel.
Just to emphasize my point.