Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 18:42:02 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Ryan <johnny_vengeance@yahoo.com>
Subject: Johnny's Flight

          This story is a work of fiction and all persons and events are
the product of my imagination.


	   John and I had been friends for as long as I can remember.  The
group calls him little Johnny, just because he's so big, the beefy kind of
guy, ya' know, the jock-ish type.  He may look menacing to people that
don't know him, but once you sit down and talk to him, you realizes he's
the type of person that would do anything to make you happy, even if it
means putting himself at a disadvantage.

            I was born in southern California, but my dad grew up in a
small town, and he wanted me to do the same, so when I was 3, we moved to
Camden, South Carolina, which isn't far from Myrtle Beach, the tourist
attraction.   John and his family lived next door, so it was natural that
we got to be friends.  Our moms would take turns babysitting for each
other, and we'd have sleep overs all the time.  My parents were his
second family, and his were mine, except that I never really saw much of
his father.  Over the years we became inseparable, but we gradually
stopped hanging out at his house, and started doing more and more at my
house.  I'd ask him why every now and then, but he'd always just say
that there was more to do at my house, so I let it go.  At around the
time we entered the fifth grade, he started sleeping over my house a lot,
which was cool, because we were best friends, and that meant we had more
time to hang out together.  Every now and then, his mom would come over
to get him, saying "I think you need to sleep over here tonight", and
he would fight and cry, but he always ended up going home.

            It's kind of funny how the things you know now are the
things that you needed to know back then, when they really would have
been useful.  It took me a long time to realize that the mornings after
he was made to go home he didn't show up for school, and that when he
did come back, he didn't do much when we had free time in school.  I'd
just go over to him and talk to him, assuming that he wasn't feeling
good.  The pattern of the going home fights and the day after absenteeism
went on for about a year before I asked what was going on.  But the
second I asked, the tears welled up in his eyes and he curled up into a
ball on by bed.  We sat there for a good fifteen minutes, me trying to
get him to talk and him rocking back and forth sobbing, before he even
said a word.  He told me all about his dad's drinking, about how his mom
could usually keep him calm, and about the times he had gone home and
either he or his mother had been beaten by his father.  We just sat there
on my bed, and I holding Johnny in my arm telling him that everything
would be ok.  From that day on, I had decided that I was going to do
everything in my power to keep Johnny from being hurt.  It seemed that he
was more fragile than he appeared.

            But the knowledge of what was happening to Johnny took a
serious toll on me, and the fear I felt for him ate away at me every
moment of my waking day.  I decided that to make things ok again, to
protect Johnny, I had to tell someone.  I went to the most powerful
person I knew of, the atomic bomb of my arsenal, my mother.  Usually when
I go to talk to her about something, I beat around the bush a little and
she had to drag it out of me, but this time I was getting down to
business.  I told her everything that Johnny had told me, and watched
tears run down her cheeks as I finished explaining what I had heard.
When everything was said and done, she reached out and hugged and kissed
me a couple of times, like it was her how was abusing me, and she was
apologizing for it.  "I love you so much, do you know that?" she said,
"And you are so brave for telling me.  We're going to make sure that
Johnny and Helen are safe, and this will never happen ever again."

            That day my dad came home early because my mother had called
him at work.  They sat down at the table and started talking about what
they could do to help, strategizing, and reformulating their plans over
and over again.  After a while they went to Johnny's, and brought him
and his mom back over our house.  Johnny and I were sent up to my room
and my parents talked to Mrs. Helen for a long time.  We were supposed to
be playing, but Johnny and I both knew what was going on, so we listened
at the bottom of the stairs to what was being said.  Johnny cried quietly
the whole time.

            It turned out that Mrs. Helen had already filed for divorce,
but when her husband found out he beat her to a bloody pulp and then
started on Johnny.  She let Johnny stay over as often as she could so his
father couldn't get to him, but when his father asked why he wasn't
home, she had to come and get him so his father wouldn't get made.  My
parents called the police, and Mrs. Helen made a claim of spousal and
child abuse over the phone, but the police needed proof.  Mrs. Helen
asked if my dad would go down to the station with her so that the police
could see the scars and bruises left by her husband and they left
immediately.  That was a scariest night of my life.  We locked the doors
and closed the blinds, preparing for when Johnny's dad came home.  Dad
and Mrs. Helen were at the police station for a long time, but when they
came home, they brought the police with them.  The police found Johnny's
dad drunk and passed out on their living room floor, and they took him
off to jail.  Johnny and his mom had to go to court and testify, but we
were there for them the whole time.

            That was a rough year for them, for all of us really.  Mrs.
Helen had to go out and find work, but they were always over our house,
eating dinner or playing board games with us, so I guess we had a little
bit of fun.  Johnny never heard from his dad after that.  My parents said
the when he got out of jail he moved to the other side of the country,
but I'm still o the lookout for him to this very day.

            Middle school and most of high school went by pretty
smoothly.  Johnny and I got closer and closer, if that's even possible.
We were almost connected at the hip.  We had the same classes, ate at the
same lunch table, and had the same friends.  Senior Year was the year I
met Colleen, the first girlfriend I had had since those little "dates"
we had in 6th grade.  I really liked spending time with her, she was
funny, she was pretty, she loved animals, and she really liked Johnny,
which was one of the most important things to me.  Our relationship was
kind of funny though.  There was something there, or something that
wasn't there that made it feel kind of awkward.  She didn't seem to
notice it though.

            That was about the same time that Johnny started to get
quiet.  He was always there by my side, but he didn't say as much with
Colleen around as he did before.  I'd kiss Colleen in the hallway, and
Johnny would kind of shrink back, kind of fold into himself in a way I
can't even describe.  It occurred to me that he might be jealous of me,
that maybe he liked Colleen too; after all, we were like the same
person.  I made a mental note to talk to him about it, but that sort of
thing doesn't work out for me very well, and I forgot about it.

            That thing, whatever it was, was really getting to me, really
messing up my concentration. Over the next couple of months I tried every
chance I had to intensify my relationship with her.  I held her hand
every time I walked with her, kissed her when we parted ways, and called
her every night before Johnny came over. What ever it was, it wasn't
going away, if anything, it was getting stronger.  I decided I was going
to pull out the big guns, and take her to a special spot.  Johnny and I
used to go up on the roof of the science building and sit on the ledge
during classes we really hated.  I took her up there with my backpack
full of our favorite food, and watched the stars come out.  We made out
in the darkness, the empty feeling in my stomach getting bigger by the
second.  We fell asleep on the roof top and woke up to a beautiful
sunrise in the east.

            I dreaded getting on the school buss that morning, because I
knew Johnny would be hurt when he found out where Colleen and I had
been.  But I was really surprised when he wasn't on the bus.  I think
that was the first time in 3 years that I hadn't seen Johnny on the bus
and didn't know where he was.  I called Mrs. Helen on my cell phone, but
she said that she didn't know where Johnny was.  As far as she knew,
Johnny was on his way to school.  That got me really worried.  He never
disappeared like that, not without telling anyone, least of all me.

            I got to school and search around the school, looking in all
of our favorite spots to hang out, but I couldn't find him anywhere.  I
was in the Quad on my second round of the school, when I heard the
yelling.  Over by the science wing, people were standing around yelling
up towards the roof.  I ran over there to se what was going on, and
that's when I saw him.  Johnny was standing on the edge of the roof, his
back facing us, his arms out like he was being crucified.  Before I could
even get a word out to him, to try and stop him, he leaned back and fell
through the air.  I could see it happening, but it was like I was
watching it happen in slow motion from a mile away, but I could see every
detail of his body, of his cloths, of his face as he fell through the
air.  I saw the tears fly from his face, his eyes closed, and he hit the
ground.

            My heart broke at that very moment.  I felt like my chest was
collapsing in on it's self, and I could barely breath.  I remember
pushing through the crowd, knocking people to the ground trying to get to
him.  I got to the inner circle that was surrounding him, and broke
through to the center.  Everyone was just standing there, afraid to do
anything, afraid to even touch him, but my fear couldn't stop me from
getting to him.

            I knelt down beside his limp body, scooped him up into my
arms, and cried.  I remember somewhere amidst the crying I yelled for an
ambulance, not realizing in my grief that one was already on its way.
His left arm twitched a couple of times and I had never hoped for
something so much as I hoped then that he was still alive.  I felt the
eyes of everyone in the crowd watching me as I sat there rocking him in
my arms, screaming to him "Don't leave me Johnny, please don't go!"

            The ambulance came and it took help from the people in the
crowd to peal me away from Johnny.  I remember knocking people to the
ground, fighting the people who were taking Johnny away from me, and
screaming as the ambulance rolled away without me in it.  Colleen fought
her way thought the crowd, grabbed my arm hard, and pulled me to her
car.  The wheels spun on the gravel of the parking lot as we sped away,
but I didn't hear it.  I didn't feel her hand holding mine; I didn't
feel the tears streaming down my face; I didn't feel the air rushing
into my lungs as I hyperventilated.  My world consisted of flashback
after flashback of Johnny's flight through the air, of him hitting the
ground, and his broken body lying in a circle of people who couldn't
help him.

            Colleen woke me out of my nightmare when she stopped in the
emergency entrance circle, and I ran inside, knocking people out of my
way.  I reached the desk and almost couldn't think straight, but managed
to ask here what had happened to Johnny.  She told me that he had been
rushed right into the emergency room and it would be several hours before
I would hear anything about him.  The gang came in and took me over to a
chair and sat me down.  They tried to tell me that Johnny would be ok,
that the doctors would be able to save him, but I didn't hear any of
it.  I just sat there hugging my knees up against my chest, reliving my
nightmare over and over again.  I could see their mouths moving, and I
watched them all shuffle around, taking turns trying to talk to me, but
it was like watching a silent movie that you can't pay attention to.
Thoughts flashed into my mind as I watched Johnny fall over and over
again.  What if he doesn't make it?  What pushed him to do this?  Was it
me?

            The time crept by slower that any time I can remember, but I
didn't notice it at the time.  It was dark outside by the time someone
came out to talk to us, and by then almost half of the school had showed
up, along with Mrs. Helen  and my parents, and all but a few of us were
asked to stand outside.  The surgeon told us that they had been saved
him, but the head trauma caused his brain to swell and he was in a coma.
He wasn't breathing on his own, so he was on a ventilator, and he had
broken his back, some ribs, an arm, and his legs, all of which were
repaired without crucial damage.  If Johnny ever woke up, he would be
able to walk again, though he might need to use a cane for the rest of
his life.  The only thing we could do was wait.

            My parents helped Mrs. Helen and I into the recovery room
where Johnny was, and I remember blacking out when I saw him wrapped up
in bandages with the tube down his throat.  I woke up on the floor a few
seconds later, my head pounding from the contact with the floor, but all
I wanted was to see him.  My dad picked me up and guided me over to sit
next to Mrs. Helen at the side of Johnny's bed.  There was a lot of
crying that night, but none of us left that room.  Someone was sent to
tell everyone outside what was going on; I guess it was one of the
nurses.

            The next couple days I spent all of my time at the side of
Johnny's bed, except to go to the bathroom I never left his side.  I
couldn't eat, and refused to go to sleep for fear that something might
happen to him while I was out.  Sleep overcame me though, and I found
myself jerking my head off the side of Johnny's bed a couple of times.

            After a week, my body gave out, and I found myself waking up
on a cot in the corner of the room.  My dad took me home with him so I
could get cleaned up and get some sleep, but I couldn't handle not being
at Johnny's side, and he finally brought me back to the hospital with a
suitcase of my cloths.  Two and a half weeks passed by with me living out
of a suitcase at the hospital, eating the food people brought us,
sometimes eating the hospital food, but not really eating much.  My dad
took Mrs. Helen home a couple of times so she could try and get some
sleep, but I was always there, by his side, incase something happened.
 Sometimes I slept on the cot, but mostly I slept in the chair by his
bed.

            I remember so clearly, the day that I truly knew that Johnny
would be ok.  I fell asleep talking to him like I had been doing for the
past few days, and remember lifting my head up off the side of his bed,
and straightening up in the chair after having slept for hours in a
slumped position, but my hand was pinned down to the bed because
Johnny's was laying overtop of mine.  I wanted to jump up and tell
everyone what had happened, that Johnny had woken up enough to grab my
hand, but I also didn't want him to let go of my hand; of me.  I decided
that I could wait to tell the others when they came back in, but in the
mean time, I was going to be there for him the only way I could at the
time; I grabbed his hand, interlocked our fingers, and held on tight.

            It was a few days after the hand incident that Johnny woke
up, and you would have thought the US had won a war or something.  People
were running around talking to each other about what was happening with
Johnny, and practically everyone came to the hospital to see him, but I
was always there with him, by his side, incase he needed me.

            Every couple of hour a nurse would come in and take a blood
sample, or give an injection, and he would grab my hand when the needle
came.  He'd hold my hand tight when he got poked, and would let up when
it was over, but he didn't always let go completely.  It was kind of
weird at first, just sitting there holding hands, but it was like "Hey,
this is Johnny, my best friend. Who cares?"  and the more we held hands,
the more it hurt when he eventually let go.

            Wait a minute!  What?  How is that right? What's going on
here?  When did I start feeling that way?  Huh?  I'm so confused!

            I didn't know what was happening anymore.  All I knew was
that when I was there with him, everything was ok.  It was like we were
kids again, sleeping over at my house, talking and laughing and just
having a good time together.  But nothing could prevent me from having my
nightmares, and I had them a lot.  Every time I closed my eyes and
wondered off I could see Johnny fall.  He flew from that roof with the
grace of the ballet, stars flying past him as he fell through space,
until he shattered into a thousand pieces of glass on the sidewalk, the
glitter-dust that was his form scattered to the wind.  Always the same
dream.

            I had to know, it has killing me not knowing.  Why?  Why did
he jump?  But it wasn't in me to bring up that horrible subject.  It
turned out that I didn't have to.

            A week after he had woken up, when everyone had left for
food, Johnny asked me

"Do you know why I jumped?"

            I felt my stomach shrivel up and tie itself in knots.  I told
him I thought it was because maybe he was jealous of me having Colleen,
or because he was mad that I took her up to our secret spot, but that no,
I didn't know why.

            He sat there in bed looking down at his broken legs covered
by the sheets.  He knotted the cloth up in his fist, and spoke started to
speak, but stopped before a sound came out.

            "You can tell me, because whatever it is, it's ok.  You
know you can tell me; we're best friends, remember?"

            With shaky voice he spoke.

"I didn't jump because I was mad about our spot, or because I was
jealous of you having Colleen.  The truth is, I was, and still am jealous
of Colleen.  I see her with you, and I see something that I can never
have.  I've loved you for longer than I can remember, and I wanted to
tell you for the longest time, but I couldn't.  It hurt so bad to see
you two together and it got worst every day, until I just couldn't take
it any more.  I know it's kind of scary, and I'm sorry you had to find
out, this way or any other.  I know you and Colleen are together, and
I'll be ok if you decide to go.  It's not your fault. It's mine.

            The tears were flowing down his face and were making his gown
all wet, but he didn't look up, couldn't look up at me.  He just stared
down at his legs.

            This was the moment of truth.  I had to lay all of the cards
out on the table and tell him how I felt.  "Look at me." I said, but he
didn't listen to me.  "Look at me!" I said again, this time with a
little more force.  When he wouldn't look, I reached over and grabbed
his chin, pulling his face to look into mine.  He was flushed, and his
eyes were red from crying.

            "I don't really know what's been happening these past few
weeks, and I don't really know why, but you're the most important thing
in my life right now, and I have a feeling that it's going to be that
way for a very long time. I've been confused as all hell these past few
days, and I'm not sure, but I think I'm finally realizing that I love
you, and I probably have for a while.  I get something from being around
you that I don't get from anyone else.  And as far as Colleen goes,
there was something about her that wasn't sitting right with me. It's
been like that from the beginning.  She and I can never have what you and
I have, we just fit together, ya' know?

I love you." I said with my eyes welling up with tears.  I could feel a
smile crossing my face, the kind of smile that you get when you confess
something that's been bothering you for a long time;  A kind of nervous,
but happy at the same time kind of smile.

            I saw that same smile cross his face too, and we both just
started laughing together.  My laughter died down as the butterflies
fluttered in my stomach again.  I knew what I had to do.  I got up from
my seat, put one hand behind his head, and kissed him.  This was no
ordinary kiss though; this was a kiss that shook the earth were it stood;
the deepest, most heartfelt kiss there ever was, and maybe ever will be.
Unfortunately, it was also the kind of kiss that your parents walk in on;
the kind of kiss that leave them rooted to the spot; the kind that no
child ever wants their parents to see them having.  But ours did.

            It took a lot of explaining.  I had never thought about how
hard it would be to explain to my parents that I was gay, because it had
never occurred to me that I might be.  They didn't say much, didn't
argue; didn't really do much of anything.  I think they were shocked, as
any parent would be, but I think that they were content that I had
someone I cared about, and down the road they were probable glad that I
was with someone they knew really well.  I hoped that they could be happy
for me, but it was my happiness that I really wanted, and I found it in
Johnny.

            Two months after the accident, or what ever you want to call
it, Johnny and I returned to school, together.  Yeah there was shock, and
of course there was talk, but none of that mattered to us, at least not
to me.  Our friends stuck by our sides, and everything worked out ok.

            After graduation, Johnny and I both went to New York State
College and had a blast there.  We went to parties, we went to bars, and
we went to night clubs.  We rolled with a few different crowds, and never
hid what we felt from any of them, which is how it's supposed to be.
Unfortunately, it caused some problems.

            Johnny, the love of my life, made a run for some sodas during
one of our late night study sessions, and was beaten to death by a gang
of Straight Pride enthusiasts.  Their ignorance, their blind hatred, took
two lives that night.  One was Johnny's, the other was mine.


Thank you so much for reading my story.  Any comments can be sent to
Johnny_Vengeance@yahoo.com