Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 02:48:40 EDT
From: TragicRabbit10@aol.com
Subject: Gay/HS: DRAMA CLUB, Part 8
THE DRAMA CLUB, Part Eight 'Running Gun Youngster'
[This is a work of fiction and all characters are imaginary. The story
involves sex between teen boys so if that's illegal or offensive for you to
read, don't. Author retains all rights. DO NOT download, copy, post/link
to any site or otherwise reproduce this story without written permission
from the author.]
Tragic Rabbit's email has CHANGED to: TragicRabbit11@aol.com. Please do
not send emails with imbedded files or attachments.
Please check out Drama Club and the many wonderful other stories at:
http://www.awesomedude.com/
When you write to me (or to Angel), you are automatically added to the
Drama Club mailing list and will receive new chapters as they are finished,
before they are posted. Let me know what you think of the characters, the
storyline and anything else you like or dislike. All emails are answered.
Chapters 7 and 8 were written to the musical accompaniment of Elton John's
album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
I am going to start cleaning up Drama Club, starting with Part 1, and
anyone who would like to help, please contact me. I need
proof/edit/critique/assist notes from anyone who is able to help. If you
need copies in Word to work from, just ask.-TR.
Constructive critique welcomed, friendly fan mail adored and answered, mean
stuff ignored. Is this a shameless hustle for emails? You betcha.
Kisses....Tragic Rabbit
'Some punk with a shotgun killed young Danny Bailey
In cold blood, in the lobby of a downtown motel.
Killed him in anger, a force he couldn't handle
Helped pull the trigger that cut short his life
And there's not many knew him the way that we did;
Sure enough he was a wild one, but then aren't most hungry kids?
Now it's all over Danny Bailey
And the harvest is in.
Dillinger's dead, I guess the cops won again.
Now it's all over Danny Bailey
And the harvest is in.
We're running short of heroes back up here in the hills,
Without Danny Bailey we're gonna have to break up our stills.
So mark his grave well `cause Kentucky loved him
Born and raised a proper, I guess life just bugged him
And he found faith in danger, a lifestyle he lived by,
A running gun youngster in a sad restless age.'
The Ballad of Danny Bailey
(Elton John-Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, 1973)
"Many people fight silently and alone with the painful questions
surrounding homosexuality. Young men and women struggle with their
sexuality, wondering why they're attracted to the same gender, wondering if
that's the way it has to be, but too afraid to tell the people they
love. Parents watch their children engage in self-destructive lifestyles
but aren't sure how to help them without pushing them further
away. Children with a gay parent wonder how to love them without condoning
their lifestyle.
"These are not easy questions - they're truly heart wrenching. But you're
not alone in this - whether you're a struggling youth, a parent or family
member, or a pastor, there's help here for you. To start, you might want to
contact an Exodus ministry to get some immediate help."
[Exodus Youth]
Lying on his bunk, Bobby thumbed the worn paperback copy of Ariel,
Sylvia Plath's final offering of poetry before she stuck her head in a gas
stove and snuffed out her life. The images were powerful; filled with
death and longing and a certain exhaustion with others. He'd had it since
junior high and had brought it, along with a script and some textbooks when
his mother packed him off this morning to Refuge, the Youth Camp run by
Exodus International. He'd already read it through several times today and
still had no plans to rejoin the others. They'd come get him eventually,
he knew that, but he prolonged his private time anyway. Bobby had a lot to
think about.
Waking up in the hospital ER hadn't been one of the high points of his
life. Bright white lights that refused to let him focus, loud sounds and
voices and something huge down his throat that made it impossible to talk,
almost impossible to breath. He wanted to scream, to pull away but he
couldn't, he was strapped down and ignored by the moving blurs that he
assumed were people. He struggled to talk, to yell, but the painful tube
down his throat stifled sound. He'd felt a horrible urge to swallow, but
was unable. He'd never felt so helpless.
The last thing he remembered was going to sleep Friday afternoon
before performance. His mind skittered across the memory of the pill
bottle and what he'd been thinking. He was just tired, really tired, he'd
insisted to the hospital shrinks that questioned him. No, he wasn't
suicidal, were they serious? He just wanted to sleep and maybe he took too
many pills but that's all it was. A mistake. He refused to talk further
and his mother checked him out that night over their objections. He wanted
to go home, wanted his room. He wanted to be let alone.
Refuge was a loosely structured camp, filled with counselors and
brightly printed posters extolling the virtues of godly living and healthy
relationships with others. He'd been given a mentor, a thirty-something
man with thinning hair and wire-rim glasses who wore his slacks a little
tighter than was necessary. Bobby thought he seemed like such a fag; it
was surely a joke that this was supposed to be the guy who'd 'cure' him.
The whole idea of curing him was confusing; he didn't know what was wrong
with him but he did want it fixed, wanted it gone. He knew it was dumb but
he wanted his father to love him and he wanted to be normal, to be just any
another guy. He wanted to date girls and like it and Mother said that
could happen if he did what he was told here at Refuge. So he was trying,
but it wasn't easy. The place was so boring and Richard was such a fruit.
Bobby sighed, setting down the book of poetry.
He thought of Angel, remembered being curled up next to him above the
theatre shop. Angel's eyes had been huge and black as he'd held Bobby
tight, kissing his hair and talking softly. Angel always smelled so good
when he was close and felt so warm and gentle when he touched Bobby. He'd
cried up there in Angel's arms, cried hard and for longer than he cared to
remember. It just all hurt so much. Angel said he understood but how much
could he understand, really? Angel liked the way he was, liked being
so....being different. So how could he really understand what Bobby was
feeling? And Angel didn't have these dreams...and didn't see the shadows.
There were things he'd done with Angel and Jaye that made him feel so
ashamed, made him want to hide his face from people, hide his thoughts,
hide himself. How could he have done those things? Mother said those boys
were the problem, that if he stayed away from them, he'd be okay, he'd be
normal. She said she was sorry for that boy, for Angel, but his mother
must not love him to let him walk around the way she did. She said boys
wearing makeup and tight clothes were part of the problem. All that had
just confused him, she said, but he wasn't to worry. She'd fix everything,
he just had to trust her. He did trust her but he was still afraid. How
could he stop wanting to do those things with other boys? How could anyone
reach inside his head and pull out those thoughts by the root, pull out
those feelings he got when other boys were around, when Angel or Jaye were
near him? He thought of all the nights they'd slept over, sharing his bed,
naked and playful in the dark, teasing him with kisses, with soft words,
with their bare limbs against his. Jesus, God, please take these thoughts
away from me, he begged someone, anyone, eyes squeezed shut on the bunk.
He was sick and he knew it. And Exodus assigned a fucking fairy to help.
He rolled over in the bunk and shoved his face down into the thin
pillow. He knew it wasn't that simple, wasn't so clear cut as Mother said.
But he wanted it to be, wanted it to be simple, wanted it to be something
he could wrap his mind around to understand and then eliminate it so he
could live a regular life. So he could go out with Alison when he got home
and have a good time, maybe take her out again. The things he did with
boys were furtive, quick and hurried in corners, and that's how you knew
they were wrong. If you had to hide something like that, if you couldn't
tell people, couldn't talk about it, well, that was because everyone knew
what you knew secretly, knew deep inside. That it was wrong. And Mother
didn't like secrets, she said. Bobby should tell her when he was worried
and let her help him. What else was a mother for?
Bobby thought about the football players and other jocks at school,
the ones who always bothered Angel. The other day in the parking lot, he'd
been scared, really scared, and not for the first time. He couldn't
understand Angel's attitude, how he could be so calm about it all. Last
year, Angel had to have stitches along his jaw where Ryan's ring had caught
and torn the skin and when the light was right, the scar showed pale on his
flesh. The varsity quarterback was loud about how he felt; about what he
thought of boys like Angel, boys like Bobby. Like Ryan thought he was,
Bobby corrected himself. He wasn't a fag, not really, he was just young
and thought about sex too much, was too confused. Anyway, that's what the
counselors here told him and he wanted it to be true. He needed it to be
true. It WAS true. God, if he could only sleep, Bobby thought, only sleep
one night through without waking up, without the nightmares. He looked to
the corner again, at the shadows there...they bothered him. Something
could be in those shadows and he'd never know. He looked away.
He thought about the look on Ryan's face as he'd spoken to Angel and
Bobby on Thursday and the feel of the other boy's hand on his chest. How
could they know, anyway, what he did with Angel, those private things? He'd
always believed 'it' didn't show, that no one could tell, but other times
he wondered. Did it show? How did that boy know? And why did it matter so
much to either of us, he wondered. Why did it make it all right to hurt
me, to frighten me...to hate me? His father's voice cut through his
thoughts, 'This will kill your mother.' Was that who he was trying to kill?
He had thought it was only himself he wanted to erase.
He thought about the pills; they must be gone now, whatever was left
of the smooth green capsules flushed away in Mother's zeal. He knew where
his father kept the key to the gun cabinet, though. All those gleaming
handguns and rifles, lined up like soldiers, neat and shining clean. His
father loved those guns. Guns were not toys, he'd told his son long ago.
Bobby remembered the long ago hunting trips when his father had tried to
show him how, show him what to do the way his own father had, he said.
Bobby had loved being alone with his father; loved walking the woods beside
him in the early morning light, learning to fire the rifles. He'd loved the
look on his father's face when he took a rifle in his hands.
Bobby had loved it right up until he'd shot a deer and watched it leap
up lightly to meet the bullet and drop down on one knee in a slow motion,
pausing to turn its great sad brown eye to him, kneeling gently into the
leaves to nestle down for that final sleep. Bobby turned and vomited onto
his father's boots. And that was the last time he'd been taken hunting, or
taken anywhere with his father. The last time his father had wanted to be
with him at all. The look of disgust on his face was still clear in
Bobby's mind; that sudden sharp look of distaste, quickly shuttered. The
look in the deer's eyes had been one of...of what? It had been a look of
gratitude, he was sure of it. And the bullet that ripped through the air
and tore out its life had been the lightening swift arrow of God.
'It is a heart,
This holocaust I walk in,
O golden child the world will kill and
eat.'
Mary's Song (Sylvia
Plath, 1961)
Friday night, Ryan switched off the television angrily and threw down
the remote control. His mother called out again to him, to turn that damn
thing off, but he ignored her. He stalked through the hallway and into his
room, slamming shut the door on her voice. His room was dark and
cluttered; posters of smiling sleek women with dark hair and deep eyes,
Brooke Burke and Ali Landry, his nighttime lovers, decorated the walls;
footballs and trophies lined the single wooden bookshelf beside the bed.
Safe space, safe house.
Dirty clothes littered the floor, the unmade bed and even the back of
the chair in front of his computer. A small television sat chattering on
the top of the wooden dresser. He shoved the heavy 20-pound free weight
against his door to discourage interruption and threw himself across the
bed. He reached into the bedside drawer, rummaging for a pack of smokes.
No cigs. He pulled out the pistol he kept there and lay back. The
television was muttering, flashing pictures fast across his thoughts. He
flicked off the safety, checking the chamber.
As he stared unseeing at the TV screen, .45 in his left hand, his
right hand went to his fly automatically, rubbing the fullness there and
undoing the button. He slid the zipper and fished out his dick, pushing
down his jeans for access. He blocked out thought and got to work, jacking
slowly with his right hand, cold pistol in his left, as he settled back
onto the headboard, eyes closed. He thought of women, unknown women, full
breasted and eager, spreading their legs with a sly smile, pink lipped and
willing. He thought of shooting with his father; hitting targets in the
field at dawn, rifle bucking in his hand as it shot, hard and heavy against
his body.
He stroked and shaped his dick, making it harder, feeling it lengthen
until the hardness in his right hand matched the hardness in his left. He
was breathing faster, closed eyes watching women give themselves to him.
Women not saying 'no', never saying no: willing women. Hot rifle shot
against his shoulder, power knocking back in rough release. Pumping
faster, he felt his balls tighten, his own release beginning. Women's
faces, smooth skin, plump breasts, legs spread, mouths open: pictures
flicker faster on his eyelids.
He finished: hand on his dick, hand on his gun, pumping as he shot,
his left hand squeezing tight as he came, chamber clicking empty, finger on
the trigger. A single low groan as he milked out the last. He wiped it
up, wiped it off, wiped it down; sated.
And so the night went.
"And in truth it is terrible,
Multiplied in the eyes of the flies."
Totem (Sylvia Plath, 1961)
Bobby huddled under the bunk, peering out into the shadows in the
corner. Shadows moving in the corner. He felt safe under the bed, tucked
away tight. They twice came to find him but he was quiet and they left.
Clutched in his hand was the paperback angel, Ariel, and under his knees
was the tile floor. He shuddered and looked away from the corner, the
darkness there. Anything could be in the dark, anything could live there
and look at him. He whimpered.
What were they giving him, what were the pills? Why did the shrink
bring around his file and ask questions, make lists, ask more questions? It
was time for basketball but he didn't get up; let them come find him, let
them seek. He didn't want to play games, he didn't want to join groups, he
didn't want to share feelings. Mother said to listen, said to make an
effort, she said she had confidence. She had confidence in Bobby, she
said. He wished he had confidence in something, in anything. Shadows. He
kept dozing off, then waking, startled. Nothing there.
He heard Angel's voice in the quiet, was it Angel? How could it be
Angel?
"Bobby, face it, you're gorgeous." Nasty tone, nasty boy. Was it
Angel? Quick image of Angel stripping down, skin smooth in a light that
drew Bobby's eyes down to the root. Cock nestled in tight briefs. Don't
look. Don't think.
Gene in his dream, suited in armor and riding a horse. Light in his
hair like points of stars. He held a shotgun across the saddle. He hefted
the gun, drew it up to his shoulder...
"You're the most beautiful guy I've ever seen, Bobby, and I've always
wanted to tell you that." Softly, but did someone really say that? Or was
it a dream?
Mother packed his bag and didn't speak; they didn't speak as they
worked. He hunted for clothing and handed them over. He didn't want to go
but what's the use of saying it? Something had to be done, some solution
found. It was possible to get control, it was possible to start again, it
was...possible.
They gave him a cot, they gave him a folder, they gave him a fruit to
teach him how to be a man. His father's gun cabinet kept coming back to
his thoughts, was it locked? He pictured his father going hunting, cleaning
a rifle and going out to meet the dawn.
If he could just find his anger, he knew he'd be fine.
They should have brighter lights so the shadows didn't show. He
hunched under the cot and waited for night. Waited for the dreams.
"You, there on your back,
Eyes to the sky.
The spider-men have caught you."
Gulliver (Sylvia
Plath, 1961)
"Everyone is on a journey to find out who they really are. You are not the
only one. There are so many messages out there. Different voices yell
what's right and what's wrong. They try to tell you who you are and who you
should be. It can be loud, chaotic and confusing.
"Through all the noise, you want answers to some pretty serious
questions. Is gay ok? Are people born homosexual? Is there freedom from
homosexuality? How do I find answers to my questions? What is the real
truth?
"Exodus Youth believes there are real answers to these questions found in
the gospel of Jesus Christ. God wants to show us His plan for our lives. He
loves us and wants to walk with us as we pursue healing and freedom in
Him. For some, these answers are offensive. For some it is just plain
hard. For others it is completely life changing."
[Exodus Youth]
"Bobby?"
No answer.
"Bobby?"
"What?"
"Tell me about your dreams."
No answer.
"Bobby, what do you dream about?"
"I dream about angels in the shadows and knights in the forest."
"Do you dream about boys?"
No answer.
"Do you dream about your father?"
"Sometimes."
"Tell me."
"I dream he's hunting."
"He's hunting...and are you with him?"
"Yes."
"What are you doing in your dream?"
"My father is hunting."
"Yes, but what are you doing in your dream?"
"I'm..."
"Yes?"
"I think..."
"What do you think?"
"I think that I'm the one, the one my father is hunting."
"Your father is hunting...you?"
No answer.
"Bobby is your father hunting you in your dream?"
"Yes."
"How does that make you feel?"
No answer.
"Bobby, how does that make you feel?"
"It makes me feel...."
"Yes?"
"It makes me feel...alive."
"What happens in your dream, Bobby, when your father is hunting you?"
No answer.
"Bobby, can you tell me what happens in your dream?"
"My father is hunting....and he sees me...."
"Yes?"
"He sees me and he pulls up his rifle..."
"Yes?"
"He pulls up his rifle to his shoulder and...."
"And what?"
"He takes aim..."
"And then what?"
"He fires."
"And how does that make you feel, Bobby? When he fires?"
"It makes me feel..."
"Yes?"
"It makes me feel happy."
"Why does it make you feel happy, Bobby?"
"Because he loves me. Loves me with his gun."
"And how do you feel about guns, Bobby?"
"Guns are..."
"Yes?"
"Guns are the voice of God."
"Why do you say that, Bobby?"
"Because its true. I once killed a deer and made it happy. God takes it
all away and sometimes takes it all away with guns. Guns take it all away.
Like the deer."
"I don't understand, Bobby."
"That's all right. I don't understand it, either."
"Bobby..."
"Why did you take the pills?"
No answer.
"Bobby, can you tell me why you took the pills?"
"I was tired."
"And are you tired now?"
No answer.
"Bobby, are you tired now? Do you think you'll feel tired another time,
when you're home?"
"Maybe."
"Bobby, what do you want to get out of your time here at Refuge?"
No answer.
"Bobby, what do you want from us?"
"I want..."
"Yes?"
"I want to stop thinking about it. I want to stop thinking. I want to be
empty." I want to be clean, he thought to himself. I want to be...Good.
You'll love me if I'm good.
"And the soul is a bride In a still place, and the groom is red and
forgetful, he is featureless."
Berck-Place (Sylvia Plath, 1961)
Exodus Healing Statement:
Exodus affirms that reorientation of same sex attraction is possible. This
is a process, which begins with motivation to, and self-determination to
change based upon a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We facilitate
resources for this process through our member ministries, other established
networks and the Church. The key outcome of this is measured by a growing
capacity to turn away from temptations, a reconciling of ones identity with
Jesus Christ, being transformed into His image. This enables growth towards
Godly heterosexuality. Exodus recognizes that a lifelong and healthy
marriage as well as a Godly single life are good indicators of this
transformation.
[End of Part Eight]
[All Exodus and Exodus Youth material taken verbatim from Exodus
International sources.]