Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 16:30:53 -0700 (PDT)
From: Boris Chen <borischen@rocketmail.com>
Subject: A Dish Served Cold, chap 2

Chapter 2

Let me go back in time to 2005 when my mom started dating this guy named
Steven Seward Darrow. I had to read a book to understand his legacy but
he's the great great grandson of the famous American lawyer Clarence
Darrow. If you want to read the short version go look it up in Wikipedia.

Mom and Steve got married just before Labor Day Weekend in 2006, sailed up
the coast to San Fransisco, gone for eight days.

We hit it off right away. He was a really decent guy who seemed to improve
mom's attitude towards her two sons, plus he knew about my orientation
right away and never seemed bothered by it. If anything it seemed to make
us all that much closer.

Like his ancestor, he was a notorious lawyer on the west coast too. He was
a Hollywood lawyer taking on cases of criminal activity and rights
abuses. He loved to go after the LA cops for big settlements. He was the
number two on staff defending Rodney King and OJ Simpson too.

He has a sailboat in the harbor, which mom fell in love with. It's about 55
feet long with a nice cabin and lots of luxuries, but sailing it is a lot
of work.

Over the months he was teaching my brother and me to be deckhands and how
to sail on the ocean. He always said he'd love to sail to Hawaii and
back. We talked about the four of us making the trip. A 55 foot sailboat on
the open ocean can be a bit on the small side if the weather isn't just
right, plus you could get stuck in Hawaii waiting on decent return weather
for weeks if you timed it wrong. The good part would be, you'd be stuck in
Hawaii!

It was a Sunday afternoon. Steve and I were on his boat cleaning decks and
just hanging out in the foggy Malibu weather. We got there about 8am that
morning.

ST: "So you and your brother are both gay, right?"

B: "You really need to talk to him about that yourself, but for me, yes."

ST: "What age did you figure that out?"

B: "Probably in third grade I think is when I figured out I was different
from the other boys, but I kept it to myself."

ST: "When did you come out to your mom?"

B: "I never did really, she told me in 5th grade she knew and that was it."

ST: "Same with Scott?"

B: "Again, you really gotta ask him, I'm not his spokesman."

ST: "Tough cookie?"

B: "At times, yes. But on this I'm certain. Scott does his own thing, I do
mine. We're not close."

ST: "Can I ask some personal questions, I promise you attorney client
privilege."

B: "I thought you could only offer that to a paying client?"

ST: "Nailed again!"

B: "I do watch some TV y'know." I said with a grin.

ST: "Got any change in your pocket?"

B: "Why?"

ST: "Indulge me. Look I married your mother, you can trust me."

B: "Trust the lawyer? That's funny."

ST: "What about a quarter or a dime?"

B: "I reached in my pocket and found a quarter, handed it to Steve."

ST: "Now I work for you. Today, twenty five cents, all day long. Now
anything you tell me is our secret, okay?" I just stared at him for a bit,
but it was hard to resist his charm and his smile.

B: "Go ahead, ask away."

ST: "Are you a virgin?"

B: "No. Freshman year at the RV park on the Pacific Coast Highway, I went
with friends of mine to visit someone he met, we got high and the four of
us did it for hours. That was my first time."

ST: "You got a boyfriend today?"

B: "Nope."

ST: "Why not?"

B: "The swim team. Nobody will date a marked man. I've been marked for
execution I think."

ST: "What?"

B: "Guys on the swim team hate me, they hate all the gays, but me most of
all I think. It's only a matter of time now."

ST: "That's not funny."

B: "No shit!"

That was the beginning of his awakening to what I lived with at school. It
took him a while longer to learn the extent of the abuse and neglect. He
had to realize that my mom, his wife, was part of the problem. Would he
take sides or not was the question now. And when?

The months in 2005-6 went by as mom and Steve got even closer. Christmas
came and went. Then came the summer and the end of another year of abuse in
the public schools by the same Neanderthals, always varsity swim team.
Luckily this year I kept all my teeth but only got shoved into lockers,
pushed down stairs, got my cellphone tossed into the toilet, and my gym
clothes set on fire in the shower room twice.

I would dutifully tell mom, who dutifully would do nothing month after
month. Same with the school staff.  Then one month it got really bad when
the Koshgarian's moved into town.

 Gary Koshgarian was about two inches taller than me. He was a swimmer. I
think his parents moved to Malibu to put him on our team. I heard he could
barely read and write. He was homely and dumb sounding but he had all the
grace and speed of a dolphin in the pool. That's all that matters at my
school, and maybe if you drive a German import helps too. Plus, he had the
all important team look, except his ears sat lower than most of the others
on the team.

The moment he first laid eyes on me in the hallway I knew I was dead meat.
He saw a silent easy victim. I was one of the school's official whipping
boys, a target, a mark. And if you think being known as gay at school with
thirty percent of the staff rumoured to also be gay might help, you're
wrong. I was trying to avoid becoming dead wrong.

At first he would shove me sideways into the lockers once a week or so, but
it slowly escalated. I tried telling mom. Nothing happened. Teachers in the
hallway saw but only rolled their eyes. I knew if I put up my fists he'd
flatten me, my 2nd bloody nose, and another trip to the dentist after weeks
of people staring at my broken teeth.

I hated him, I hated my life, my family, and my school. I just got angrier
and angrier inside. It was slowly making me sick.

(note to readers: everything in this story is fictional, none of it
happened)