Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:16:17 +0000
From: jkeele777@yahoo.com
Subject: Shadow & Light, chapter 1

	WHILE SOME OF THE EVENTS DESCRIBED IN THIS STORY ARE FICTIONALIZED,
SO I CAN RETAIN WHAT'S LEFT OF MY SANITY, MANY OF THE EVENTS HERE ACTUALLY
HAPPENED AS DESCRIBED. YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE YOU CONTINUE THAT THIS STORY
CONTAINS GRAPHIC ACCOUNTS OF CHILD ABUSE AND VIOLENCE, AS WELL AS DRUG USE
BY TEENAGERS. IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED OR THIS KIND OF MATERIAL IS
ILLEGAL FOR YOU TO READ, PLEASE STOP NOW. IF YOU ARE, OR KNOW OF A CHILD IN
A SIMILAR SITUATION, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! CALL THE POLICE. CALL SOCIAL
SERVICES. DO ANYTHING, BUT DO SOMETHING!


Prologue


This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the
way the world ends. Not with a whimper, but with a bang.

One of the best lines, from one of my favorite movies, The Southland Tales.
I always thought it was a reference to nuclear war, but now I'm not so
sure. Maybe it's about finally having enough of the pain and the fear and
the loneliness. Maybe it's about finally having the balls to check out. All
of this might make more sense to you if you knew a little about me. I'll
try to explain, but it still doesn't make sense to me, so I don't expect
you to understand.  Maybe I'll be the one who is surprised this time.

My name is Jeremy. I'm 34 years old, and I have finally had enough. But
this story starts nearly twenty years ago, and there are parts that start
way before then.  I will also say that I do not blame my parents for
everything that happened through the course of my life, although as you
read this, you may think that from time to time. I have not changed names,
dates or places. There are no innocents here.

Let's start at the beginning, I guess. My mother was sixteen when she
married her first husband. She had just dropped out of high school in here
junior year, and she was four months pregnant with my older brother,
Chris. It was January of 1974. I would like to say that they were happy
together, and that they were in love, but none of that is true. They were
miserable. They hated each other. It was definitely a marriage doomed to
fail. And fail, it did. Spectacularly. In mid to late 1976, my mother began
sleeping with a boy she had gone to high school with, named Steven. When
she became pregnant again, it was clear to her that this was not her
husband's child. The timing was just wrong. The last time she saw my father
was when he was called to testify at her divorce hearing. I had not been
born yet. He, as far as I know, never made any attempt to contact her. He
never tried to have anything to do with me, either, but that didn't matter
until I was a teenager, and by then, the damage was done. When I was almost
two, she married her second husband, Bob. He was the best man I have ever
seen her with.  Now, Bob had his issues, don't get me wrong. He was a
stoner, and he loved his beer and whiskey, but I don't remember him ever
hitting either of us, or ever even being mad. We lived in a little A-frame
house across the driveway from his grandmother's house, on his family's
land, in rural Louisiana. For a few years, we were happy there, and then we
left. I don't think I ever asked why. It doesn't matter now. He died a long
time ago. In 1981, just before I turned five, My sister Heather was born,
to my mother and husband number three - Steve, AKA Junkie, AKA Bank
Robber. You get the picture. He was a great guy. When he went to prison,
she left him. As soon as he hit the free world again, though, she was right
back. A very short time later, in early 1983, we were all joined by Rachel,
the youngest sister. Once again, Steve went to prison (this was not to be
the last time, but we aren't going to talk about him just yet), and this
time we left for good. When I was eight years old, she met and married the
man who would be my nemesis for the rest of the time I lived at home,
Tom. At least, looking back, I can say that he never tried to hide who he
was, so I guess we all should have seen it coming.

Just after we moved in with loser (read husband) number five, Tom, I
started to think that maybe we would all be OK. He had never tried to touch
me, or my sisters, and was generally on his best behavior around us. Now,
of course, I know that he was just trying to impress my mother and her
parents, but at the time, I was still reeling from the things that happened
with Steve, and I just wanted to be OK again. The first time he broke my
nose, I was eight. I dropped a glass in the kitchen, and he punched me in
the face. I started crying, of course, and it just pissed him off even
more. He picked me up and threw me into the living room floor, screaming at
my mother to "get this little faggot out of my sight". I had never heard
that word before. I didn't know what it meant, but I knew it had to be
terrible, and I didn't want to be that. I couldn't be that. That was not
the last, or the worst of the times to come. Every person on this planet
bears the scars of their childhood, I suppose, but unlike you, mine are on
my face, my arms, my back and my legs. After a few years, I got used to
being hit and screamed at, I guess. I just didn't think about it. I assumed
that everyone lived like this. Eventually, I didn't even feel it any
more. Nobody ever stepped in. When I started to show signs of a violent
temper, and started using heavier drugs, is when people finally started to
pay attention. Of course, by then it was too late. That is where our main
story begins, in the summer of my fourteenth year on this planet, 1991.



Chapter 1

The summer after I turned fourteen was amazing. My stepdad was gone most of
the summer, working out of state. I even actually made a couple of friends,
Cody and Kevin. Cody lived with just his mom, and Kevin lived with his mom
and her boyfriend. Cody was fourteen, like me, and Kevin was a year older,
but in the same grade as us. In school, the year before, we had all started
playing baseball together, hanging out during the week and generally
fucking off, as kids tend to do. We had discovered pot together, and
alcohol, and they had discovered girls. I didn't know why, but I just
wasn't interested in girls. I didn't want to hang out with them, talk to
them on the phone, nothing. I had, however, met a boy outside of our group,
who seemed to be just like me. He was quiet, soft spoken and confident. His
name was Ben, and I thought he was the most beautiful thing on the
planet. He terrified me in almost every possible way.

 I had learned how to play baseball on city league teams beginning just
after I turned nine. My stepdad thought team sports would "toughen me up",
and "make a man of me". It turned out that I was a decent player, and I
LOVED the game. I was a good pitcher, and a good second baseman. I finally
had something that was mine, and I threw myself into perfecting my game. I
worked out constantly, I practiced every day. I was basically a kid with a
new toy.

At the beginning of the summer, just after our city leagues had finished
for the year, I met Ben. Cody and Kevin were on vacation with their
families, and I was headed down to our spot on the creek to smoke a joint
and hide for a while. When I got there, there was a kid sitting on our
rock, just looking at the water. When I spoke, he jumped about four
feet. He immediately apologized and started to run off, without ever
looking up. "Wait", I called after him. "You don't have to leave", I
said. "I was just coming down here to hang out for a while. I'm Jeremy." He
looked up, and I was stunned. He had the most beautiful green eyes I had
ever seen. He was also covered in bruises.

 "I'm Ben", he said, extending his hand meekly. I shook his hand and looked
around. "Hey, Ben, you wanna get high?"

 His eyes got wide when I took the joint out of my pocket and fired it
up. "Sure, man, I'm down", he said. And that was that. We sat on a rock and
got high. I couldn't stop staring at him, that whole first day. I had no
idea why I couldn't stop looking at him. I only knew that I wanted to touch
him.

Over the last few months of eighth grade, and the first month of summer, I
grew from an average kid (5'7, 130, skinny and awkward), to be my current
height of 5'11 and just a shade under 180 pounds. People started to notice
me, and it freaked me out. I had always been able to blend into the crowd
and disappear; hiding from the bullies at school and the prying eyes and
minds of curious adults, which was how I survived my first thirteen years
on this planet. Now that security blanket was gone, and I found myself
staring at this boy, and all the wrong things started to happen. I started
to throw a bone. Ben looked over at me, since I had gone quiet, and got a
twinkle in his eye. "Dude!" he said loudly, pointing at my shorts, "you're
boned up!"

 I thought I would die of embarrassment, right there on that rock. For the
entire time my friends had been looking at girls, I had been looking at
boys, and now I had gotten caught! I was afraid he would beat me up, or
worse, tell my mom. Who of course would tell my stepdad, and he would just
beat me until he felt better about the whole thing. I started crying, and
yelled at him "I'm sorry!" and just ran as fast as I could to get
home. When I got there, mercifully, I was alone. I got undressed, got in
bed and cried myself to sleep.

After my first run-in with my stepdad ended with him yelling at my mom to
"get this little faggot out of my sight", I had slowly learned what that
word meant. I knew it meant my stepdad would hate me more than he already
did, and worse, now he would have a reason to. I had learned from teachers
and books what it meant to be gay. All my friends ever had to say on the
subject was that it was "gross" or "nasty" or that gay people deserved
whatever happened to them. I wanted to be normal so badly that it made me
sick. After that first meeting with Ben, I don't think I left my room from
more than a few minutes for almost two weeks. I was afraid. I couldn't eat
or sleep. I didn't want to be "that way". Since I did not have a lot of
friends anyway, there was nobody calling or coming by to alert my parents
that anything was wrong. I'm pretty sure they never even noticed, thank
God. As luck would have it, the first person I saw, the first time I left
my house after all of this, was Ben. I had finally gotten my shit together
enough to go somewhere besides my bed, and there he was, walking down my
street. God he was amazing looking. He was a big guy, like me, having gone
through puberty a couple of years before. He had honey brown hair and, like
I said, the most amazing green eyes I had ever seen.  I couldn't tell how
he was built, because he always wore baggy clothing, but GOD I wanted to
know! I was so ashamed of myself, I almost turned around and ran back
inside, but he had seen me. It was too late to hide, so I just sat down on
the steps and tried to prepare myself for the first punch. The first one is
always the worst. After that, you either shut down or you fight back. I
hadn't been taught to fight back.

When he ran up the steps, I guess I shrank back into the corner a little
bit. He stopped and looked at me sort of strangely for a minute and said,
very quietly, "are you ok, man?" I must have had an odd look on my face
because he didn't say anything else. He just sat down next to me and put
his arm over my shoulder. When I finally looked up, he said "you know, I
was just fucking with you the other day. I didn't mean to upset you. I'm
not sure what happens in there," pointing at my house, "but I owe you one.
Let's go smoke." When I stood up, he never took his arm off my shoulder -
he just kind of pulled me down the street and into his back yard. A few
minutes and three jumped fences later, we were sitting down at the creek,
smoking out and laughing. As it turned out, Ben was two years older than
me, having just turned sixteen. He was a year behind in school, because he
had taken some time off after his mom died when he was in sixth grade. His
dad wasn't home much, so it was pretty much just him and his little
brother. After we joked around for a while, he sat back down next to me. He
kind of elbowed me in the side and said, "So why did you freak out like
that a couple of weeks ago?"

I wasn't sure what to say. I had never been more nervous about anything in
my life. Before I realized what I was saying, I blurted out "Because I
think you're the best looking guy I've ever seen, and I didn't want you to
beat me up, or tell my parents that I'm some kind of freak! My stepdad
would kill me if he knew what was happening in my head, and my mom would
quit talking to me. I don't even know what any of this means, or what is
happening to me, but I'm scared. I don't want everyone to hate me!" As soon
as I realized what I had just said, I jumped up and started running
again. This time, though, I didn't get very far.  When Ben tackled me, I
automatically rolled onto my back and put my arms over my face to ward off
the blow I knew was coming. When it didn't come, I lowered my arms enough
to see, and he was just sitting on the ground, looking off across the
creek. He was crying!

 "I'm not gonna hit you, man. I'm sorry I tackled you like that. I didn't
mean to scare you. I've never had a guy tell me anything like that
before. I just want to talk to you. Mostly, I want to know why you're so
scared of me?" he asked, quietly.

I thought for a minute about what to say. I mean, nobody knew what happened
in my house. I didn't think I could tell him why I was really afraid all
the time, and that it didn't have anything to do with him.  Nobody had ever
asked me that before, and I was dumbstruck. What if he told somebody? I'd
die if everyone knew. People already picked on me at school, and generally
harassed me in the neighborhood. The only reason I was even outside lately
was that everyone was on vacation. "Ben," I finally said, "Look, I can't
tell you. I only have two friends, and even they don't know everything. I
can't go back to not having any friends, and if people knew, nobody would
talk to me anymore. I can tell you that I'm not afraid of you. I just don't
like to be hit, and I thought you were going to hit me. I'm sorry." This
time, he let me leave. I went home, with the idea of just crawling back in
bed for the rest of the summer, but apparently, that wasn't going to
happen.

I walked in the door, not really paying attention to the cars in the
driveway. I got about two feet into the door, and pain exploded through my
face and neck. I hit the door hard enough to pop it open and fall out onto
the porch. Before I could get up, my stepdad was out the door and on me. I
had no idea what I had done, or said, or thought about this time to set it
off again. After the first couple of punches, I don't really remember
anything. I guess he knocked me out, or I passed out. When I woke up, I was
still on the front porch. I was covered in blood. I couldn't open my
eyes. I could tell that my nose was broken again, but I couldn't tell how
bad it was. I had three teeth missing, and my lips were cut all to shit. So
was my forehead above my right eye. Great, I thought, more new scars.
Sometimes, I wish he would just kill me and get it over with. When I tried
to stand up, I fell over again. The pain in my ribs nearly made me pass out
again. It was then I realized that someone was with me. As the pain faded a
little bit, I figured out that I had not hit the floor, but had been
lowered to the floor very gently. "Who is that?" I asked, in what had to be
a very shaky voice. I tried to open my eyes, and still couldn't. Now, I was
very afraid. "Please, talk to me!" I said. "I can't see you, but I know
you're there. I can hear you breathing, and you stopped me from falling.
Now, who are you?" And then I heard the sirens. They were close, and there
were a lot of them, it sounded like. Great. Cops. My least favorite people
on the planet. My dad always seemed to know what to say to get them to
leave, even though I had been in the hospital twice before for broken bones
and bruised kidneys. "Please," I asked, "tell me who's there?  I don't want
to talk to the cops. They never help. I just need to get in the shower and
clean up." I started crying, if you can call it that. I guess it was more
like shaking and sobbing.

 "Jeremy, you can't go back in there," the voice on the porch said.  Fuck.
It was Ben. "I called the cops, because I saw what he did. My dad is a cop.
He will help you. I know he will. And right now, you can't go in. Nobody is
there, and the doors are locked. I tried to go in a get a towel to clean
you up a little bit. I didn't want to leave you here alone in case they
came back. Why did he do this?" Ben asked. The last thing I remember before
I passed out again is sirens.