My Writing
Love, Simon
CHAPTER 1
The word boyfriend seems such a simple one, doesn’t it? It means many things to different people: love, happiness, loyalty, passion, and, yes, even sex. It means all of those things to me, too, but with the simple addition of tragedy. Why tragedy, and how could that possibly be simple? Easy… because my boyfriend’s dead; he was murdered.
It’s hard enough for anyone to deal with such a thing as murder, but for me it’s different. No, I didn’t kill him if that’s what you’re thinking, but I was there when it happened. In fact, I was almost murdered as well. Had Pat hit me in the head with the bat, as he’d done to Damen, I wouldn’t be here, either. His rage was directed at me, so he used his fists, and that difference saved me. You see, though they still hurt like all hell, fists are much less destructive than a wooden bat in full swing. I never thought about it until now, but physics actually saved my life.
But what kind of a life is it going to be? I’m seventeen years old, with who knows what kind of brain damage, my boyfriend’s been murdered, and I haven’t even graduated high school yet. How am I to pull together after all that? How am I supposed to walk on with my head held high, full of purpose and determination, while my Damen rots in the ground? Everyone keeps telling me I was spared for a reason—it was cosmic fate!—and that I should live my life so Damen’s death won’t be in vain. I should become the best and most successful person I can be to show Pat that he hasn’t won. What kind of pressure is that? Most seventeen year olds don’t even know what they’re going to do with their life, and now I’ve got to live mine for two? And guess what? Pat has won. Fucked up as he is, he’s not the one buried in a mahogany box. He’ll be laughing all the way to the grave.
Damen’s funeral was last week and nothing could have prepared me for it. I was ready to play the part of the widow, to sit there in a black veil and dark sunglasses, occasionally letting out a wild shriek and clutching a white hanky in my fist that would be dramatically smeared with mascara and eyeliner. But I had to remind myself that this was reality, not some Audrey Hepburn movie. For hours I stood in front of my closet, a whole mess of clothes strewn about my feet because they didn’t work. Where had all of my black gone? Why did I only seem to own pastels and primary colors? Hadn’t I gone through a rebellious stage at some point, damning the man and cursing the establishment? Surely some of that survived somewhere.
My mum came in and did me the favor of covering my bruises with some of her makeup. After a week they’d progressed to that nasty yellowish color, and I could barely stand to look at them long enough in a mirror to even consider them. I could tell that she wanted to say something to me, something comforting that mothers are expected to say in this sort of situation. I wasn’t expecting anything profound or even helpful from her—I didn’t expect anything from anyone anymore—and she eventually stopped opening and closing her mouth and concentrated on concealing my bruises. To tell the truth, I was glad of it. There wasn’t anything that she could have said to me to stop me looking towards the door every few minutes, so certain I’d hear Damen bounding up the stairs towards me. She knew he was the only one that could have talked me out of being sad, and that wasn’t going to happen; she had enough sense to leave well enough alone.
So, without my veil and dark sunglasses I was exposed, in the open for everyone attending the funeral to see—and they certainly weren’t abashed enough to hide their contempt and staring. The scarlet letter was on my chest, the lightning bolt scar seared into my forehead. Everyone knew who I was and that I was the reason that Damen was dead. It was my fault that they were all there that day, my fault they had to listen through long readings by the minister and sobbing friends and relatives all gushing over the deceased.
I was surprised by how many people were there. Most of them hadn’t given a damn about Damen in life, yet there they were with their sad eyes and feigned sobbing, acting as if some great chunk of themselves was now gone from the world. I was disgusted at their phoniness, and only the thought of where I was kept me from screaming out at them, or grabbing them all by the scruffs of their necks and throwing them from the funeral.
The first people I saw who were actually supposed to be there were our friends Jack, Lucas and Mark. They were sitting in the last row, Lucas holding close a sobbing Jack, and Mark staring stonily at the hardwood floor. Even in this crowd, even at this occasion, Lucas drew the eyes of most of the women in the crowd. He didn’t notice, as always; there were more important things to worry about at the moment.
Each step felt as if I had run a mile. My legs were heavy and stiff. My heart, too, and my breathing quickened. Any moment I would be close enough to look into the depths of the long wooden box before me. Why is the casket open? I remember thinking. The image of Damen at the hospital flickered before my eyes. He’d died by the time I got to him, the curtain having already been drawn about the bed. His face was covered in blood, and you could only see his skin where the tears had washed away the red. I’d climbed into the bed with him before I knew what I was doing. He was still warm. He could have been asleep but for his lack of breathing. And, besides, Damen always knew when I was near him, even when he was asleep. He wouldn’t keep me waiting this long for him to wake up and find me, hug me, kiss me, look at me with those brilliant green eyes. I laid there for hours, until Becky told me the nurses needed to come in and tend to Damen’s body before his parents arrived.
Becky was at the funeral as well, sitting a few rows in front of Jack, Lucas and Mark, crying silently into the arm of her aunt. She always seemed to know when I was around, too, and turned to look at me as I came up the aisle next to her. In one fluid movement she was off her chair and wrapping her arms around my shoulders, digging her face into my neck. Her touch was almost too much for me to bear, but she let go quickly. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and kissed me on the cheek before slowly returning to her seat.
In that moment a flicker of doubt fluttered through me. I wouldn’t be able to do it, I wouldn’t be able to look down into the box and see his face. Not like this. Not since the first time we met had I not been able to touch Damen when I wanted. He was my rock, my firm footing on this earth, and without him I would fall, I knew I would. But then I felt the firm grip of my father’s hand on my shoulder, and my mum’s arms slip around one of mine, holding me from floating away, anchoring me. With their help I shuffled forward, slowly at first, but faster and faster with each step. My legs now felt as if they’d biked miles, still leaden and stiff, but with my parents as the wheels, allowing me to glide ahead.
I had to throw on the brakes all too soon. At first I couldn’t believe that body could be Damen’s. His face looked like a caricature of his former, puffy looking and oddly shaped. It took a moment of hard staring before I was able to recognize the familiar shape of his lips, the color of his hair, the contour around his eyes. I buckled.
My legs no longer cared to support my weight, and my parents had to catch me before I fell to the floor. I started to cry uncontrollably, and am sure I made quite the scene, but I couldn’t have cared less. They say that when you die time stands still, and in that space passes your entire life. At that moment I wished I was dead, that I would revisit all of the memories Damen and I had shared. But there I was, alive, curled up on the floor in my mother’s arms, all the world staring at me and not at Damen.
Then, through the screaming in my head, I heard a woman shriek.
It was Damen’s mother.
“How dare you show up here?” Her voice cracked with the effort of shouting through sobs. “You have no right! Don’t you have any respect for what you’ve done to him?”
I was too stunned to respond.
“It’s your fault he’s dead. You did this to my baby!”
I managed to find my voice, weak as it was. “How can you say that? I love Damen, more than you’ll ever know.”
“If it weren’t for you he’d still be alive.” She lowered her voice to a growl. “You lured my son into your filth, your sins, and look where it’s gotten him.”
The first retorts that came to mind were spiteful, full of venom fit to piss her off, but then I remembered that she had lost Damen, too. It wouldn’t have been right of me to tell his mother off during the funeral. So, I settled on the simple truth.
“I love your son and I didn’t have to lure him anywhere. He came to me willingly.”
“GET OUT!” She collapsed onto the floor. Several people rushed forward to help her.
Maybe it was a little spiteful.
I guess it’s probably a good time to mention that my name is Simon. And yes, I’m gay. Now you understand the screaming, the contemptuous stares, the beating… bashing more like it. Damen was killed (and almost me) because of ignorance and hate.
That’s why I’m sitting in this chair, the old woman behind the reception desk staring at me with a sickeningly sweet smile stretched across her ugly face. Okay, she’s not ugly, at least not as far as old people go; I just don’t want to be here. I’m waiting for the door to my left to open and for my new therapist to emerge, all glittering teeth and handshakes, laughing when I call her ‘doctor’ and asking me to call her by her first name like we’re buddies, like we’re friends, like it isn’t costing my parents a hundred and fifty bucks an hour for me to be here.
“Stop staring at me,” I say to the secretary, not bothering to look up at her. She huffs and picks up the book she’d been reading, makes a scene flipping the pages, and settles down behind it. I notice she doesn’t turn a page the whole time it takes for the therapist to come out of her door.
She emerges, following a man, both laughing at some joke said moments earlier. Just as I pictured her: dark, wavy hair; chocolate pants and tan blouse; tortoiseshell frames swinging from one of her hands. She’s tall, but slight, and moves with the sort of grace a gymnast has prancing across those horrid blue mats during meets.
As the man heads towards the elevator across the room, her attention falls to me. She smiles when I stand, holding out her hand for mine. We shake. It’s all very proper, but she tries to make me feel more comfortable by gently placing her other hand over mine; a symbol of warmth, of friendship, of security. I guess she knows her stuff.
“I’m so glad to finally meet you, Simon,” she seems to purr. “Your parents have told me so much about you.”
I’m sure they have, I nod.
“Nice to meet you, too, Dr. Baker.”
“Please,” she laughs, “call me Stefni. I hate all that Doctor nonsense.”
Bingo. All I can do is nod again.
She smiles; her teeth are perfectly straight and unnaturally white, as if she had just removed one of those Crest strips. Her breath smells like spearmint.
I’m quite disappointed by her office, how utterly cliché it all is. There are overstuffed, brown leather chairs, plants that look too perfect to be real, and an oversized desk with pictures that show her and her family in various states of fun.
Stefni sits down in her chair and indicates that I should take the small sofa.
“So, how are you feeling,” she asks. It sounds almost sardonic, though I know she is trying to be genuine.
“Fine,” I say, using the automated response.
She gives me this sort of penetrating stare over her glasses, now perched on the tip of her nose. “Now I don’t believe that. You just lost someone you loved very much.”
Then, before I can stop myself, I say, “Fags aren’t capable of love, didn’t you know that? All we care about is finding our next fuck.”
Of all Stefni’s years of experience, of all the classes she’s taken and the patients I’m sure she’s had, none of it was able to keep the look of shock from her face. For that brief moment her true feelings surfaced and I felt a sort of vindictive pleasure in being able to bring about such shock from a seasoned psychiatrist.
“You don’t really mean that,” she says once she is able to regain her bearings.
I wrap my arms around my waist and look away. Of course I don’t mean it, any moron could tell that. One hundred and fifty bucks well spent, mum and dad.
“Simon, in order for me to try and help you, you’re going to have to put a little faith in me. Please, why don’t you tell me about what’s clogging your mind lately?”
I sigh. “It’s not just what’s happening lately, really. It’s more everything.”
“Well, then why don’t you just start by talking about what happened to Damen?” A very good place to start, I hear Julie Andrews’s voice sing in my head. “Tell me how he died.”
“The ending. Right.”
I take a deep breath and begin.
CHAPTER 2
It was so adorable to see Damen put the car in park, jump out, and run around to open my door. He looked funny as he pulled it open, his face serious and his back straight like one of those stagecoach drivers from back when.
He took my hand, bent down and kissed it.
“Quite the gentleman,” I said, laughing as he helped me out of my seat.
Damen was always doing things like that, anything to get a laugh from me. He didn’t care if people stared at him, nor did I. It was one of the things I loved most about him. I remember the time he sang to me at a restaurant when our favorite song started playing; he jumped out of his seat, grabbed a passing waitress, and twirled and dipped her on the spot. The entire restaurant clapped when they’d finished, Damen and the waitress taking a deep bow, and my face glowing red from laughing.
Foregoing the chauffer persona, Damen pressed into me, my back pushing up against the window of the passenger door. He was a few inches taller and stood there teasing me, lips hanging over mine just out of reach.
I squeezed the back of his shoulders, trying to pull him down. After everything he’d done for me the past week—helping me get back whatever normalcy I could after almost being killed—it was harder than ever to keep from touching him. It hadn’t been easy those first days back, when every touch sent flashes of the torture I’d endured through my mind. Now I just felt like a bitch in heat.
“I love you,” he said before his mouth found mine.
It was like when we’d first met and were exploring each other for the first time. Everything felt new and exciting, the very touch of him sending shivers through my body and jolts of fire through my veins.
Damen’s lips traced down my jaw and onto my neck. A breeze blew past and made little cold patches where his kisses had landed.
There were no clouds to impede the stars that night, their light staring down at us like the eyes of angels. One of them blinked out as I stared at it overhead, as if one of the angels winked at me.
As I looked back at Damen something moved in the shadows of the front porch of my house, but I couldn’t make it out. I stopped Damen short. The light wasn’t on.
I moved forward a few paces, straining my eyes trying to see. “Who’s there?”
Damen gripped me tight around the waist from behind.
“Oh,” came a low, drawling voice, “just your friendly neighborhood Spider-man.”
A palpitation ripped through my chest. It was Pat.
He emerged from the darkness and into the moonlight, a wooden baseball bat hanging languid in his hand.
Damen stepped in front of me, placing a hand on my hip to hold me back. Always my protector.
“What’re you doing here?”
I didn’t understand. Weren’t we done with all of this? Wasn’t he ever going to let me alone?
Pat’s eyes were fixed on mine, not even registering Damen’s question. “Got AIDS yet?”
Damen’s grip tightened, almost painfully, but I welcomed the feeling.
“If I do it’s from one of your mates, not mine,” I said.
Pat laughed. “Yeah, I heard they fucked you. Bunch of fags…”
“And to think you’ve been hanging with them all this time,” I said.
Dark shadows moved behind Pat’s eyes. He swung the bat around his fist and took a step closer.
I didn’t know why I was being so glib; I certainly wasn’t feeling as brave as I was talking. It was more nerves than anything, I think. There was no way I could have been prepared to see him again.
Damen moved to the side, blocking more of me from Pat.
“I’m not a fag,” he said. The words hissed through his clenched jaw.
The windows of the neighboring houses stared at our standoff with dead eyes. My own house, too, was empty. Why had I suggested my parents spend the weekend away?
“What’s this going to accomplish?” Damen said. “You barely got off for kidnapping Simon. Why don’t you stop while you’re ahead?”
Pat’s gaze finally flicked over to Damen, his face taut.
“Because I can’t sleep again until I know he won’t talk.”
“But I haven’t told anyone,” I said, my voice rising to an unnatural pitch. How could he bring this all up again? Hadn’t I proven time and again that I wasn’t going to blab? “Not even Damen. No one knows but me.”
I saw Damen scan the surrounding area. Was he looking for a weapon of his own? He wouldn’t be any match against a wooden bat. But there was nothing.
“You know,” Pat said. He sounded hollow. “That’s one too many.”
I put my hand on Damen’s chest, his heart thumping almost as mad as mine was against his back.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Damen didn’t move. I pulled back with my hand. “Let him cool off on his own.”
Damen’s foot made an almost imperceptive shuffle backwards, but then took a step, and another. We started towards the car.
“No!” Pat bent low and pulled a brick from the walkway beneath his feet. With a grunt, he lopped it over our heads at the car, shattering the windshield.
Damen shielded my head with his arms, bending both of us away from the torrent of glass speeding toward us through the air.
“Fuck, man,” Damen cried.
“You’re not going anywhere, Simon.”
I turned to Pat, all my nerve gone.
“I won’t tell anyone, I swear.” I held close to Damen. “Please, you can trust me. Just leave us alone.”
“Trust you?” Pat spat. “You expect me to trust you after what he did to me?”
He stopped short, his eyes wide. Pat’s gaze darted to Damen, probably looking for any sign of recognition about what he’d said. When none came, he turned back to me.
“You’re all liars, every last one. You’re no different than him.”
My heart yearned to tear from my chest. “No one else knows.”
Pat started walking toward us, the bat swinging from side to side. He wouldn’t take his gaze from mine.
“He was evil,” I said. “No one should live through that. We’d never want that to happen to anyone.”
“Don’t,” Pat said. His voice was hard. “Don’t talk about him.”
“I’m sure whatever happened to you was wrong,” Damen said. “We can help you get through this anger. You don’t want to do this.”
A flicker passed over Pat’s face. His eyelids narrowed.
“You can’t help me,” he said to Damen. “Get out of the way, I’m not here for you.”
Damen took a step towards Pat, holding me back with his hand.
I’d seen enough movies like this to know the outcome.
“No,” I said. Even though Damen worked out and ran track at school, he was still unarmed. Muscles meant little against a weapon.
“You don’t need to do this,” Damen said to Pat. “You could put the bat down, walk away. No one’uld have to know.”
Though Pat raised the bat higher, his fingers fidgeted over the handle and his eyes darted around the silent street. Why didn’t he drop it? It could have ended right then.
“Please, Pat,” I said, “don’t let him win. Don’t let yourself turn into him.” Pat’s face slackened and a tear escaped from each eye, but he wouldn’t let go of the bat. His grip tightened. “You’re better than him.”
Pat looked at me, his whole face trembling. As he took a deep breath, Damen acted.
He leapt forward and tackled Pat around the waist.
The two of them fell backward and landed on the grass, a grunt escaping Pat’s lips as the fresh lungful of air was forced out by Damen’s weight.
They were a tangle of arms and legs, the bat thrashing like mad as Damen tried to tear it from Pat’s grip.
The bat swung around and hit me in the side of the face as I hurried in to help, knocking me down.
Pat cried out, his voice shrill and child-like; it almost reminded me of Gollum.
“Let go,” Damen said.
My vision cleared and I looked up to see Damen straddling Pat’s waist. He held the tip of the bat in one hand and hit Pat repeatedly in the stomach and chest with the other.
Pat had both hands gripped on the bat. He twisted under Damen’s weight and punches, kicking out with his legs and kneeing Damen in the back.
It seemed like the worst kind of movie, the kind where you couldn’t suspend your disbelief far enough. How had I ended up in a B-movie version of my life?
I crawled to the struggling pair, grabbing the bat with both of my hands and pulling it to the ground above Pat’s head. I tried to pry his fingers away from the wood, but there was no moving them, even as mine clawed his bloody.
Damen leaned forward and pressed Pat’s wrists into the grass.
Pat was crying, his voice eking out in scratchy squeaks, the sort an injured animal makes and you can’t bear to look at them. He wouldn’t let go of the bat, not for anything.
“It’s over,” Damen said to Pat. Then, to me, “Get my cell phone for me. It’s in the car.”
“But—”
“I have him.”
Pat seemed to have given up; he wasn’t struggling anymore. His chest rose high as he took deep breaths, his cries weak.
Damen nodded towards the car. “In the cup holder.”
“Okay.”
The glass from the shattered windshield lay in a half-circle around the front of the car, and I skirted around it. The interior, too, was completely covered.
I leaned in the driver’s side door, keeping one hand on the roof for balance.
Pain flared up my arm and I gasped. A piece of glass was sticking out the tip of my index finger.
“What happened?” Damen called.
“I’m fine,” I started. “Just a piece of gl—”
“No!” Damen cried.
I looked up just as Pat flipped Damen off him.
Would it sound too cliché to say it all happened in slow motion, that it felt like I was watching a movie and not living the events folding out in front of me? Where were the violins and flutes, that angelic score that would cause the listener to tear up every time they heard it in the future? This wasn’t one of those movies. This was a horror.
Pat punched Damen’s face and scrambled to his feet. He reared the bat high in the air and brought it down on the base of Damen’s skull.
The bat broke with the sound of a gunshot that echoed down the street and in my ears.
Damen’s eyes grew wide for a moment before he crumpled to the ground.
I remember screaming, but I couldn’t tell you what.
My lungs tore in my chest, my throat seared.
The glass made running slippery and I fell into the lawn, not even feeling the shards that dug into my flesh. Grass tore easily under my fingers as I scrambled to my feet, my Damen still lying on the ground before me, staring.
Pat was in front of me. He pushed hard into my chest.
My legs kept running where my body could not follow.
I fell, the angels’ eyes above me swirling as if they were going down a drain.
He stood over me, his tears dripping on my face.
“You shouldn’t have read it.” He could barely speak. “Why did you read it?”
I couldn’t answer.
Damen.
Pat knelt next to me.
He pressed his lips close to my ear, trembling.
“Take it to hell with you.”
Pat sat up slowly.
His fist swung through the air.
Then came the darkness.