The Dark Side of the Moon 4

There was a loud knock on my door that jolted me, sweating, back to reality. Chase and Connor were practically thrown into my room and behind them was the much larger Jimmy.

Chase growled at Jimmy, “Okay, man, we can fucking do this ourselves! Why don’t you just go play with yourself?”

Jimmy glared at him and said, “Don’t fucking push it! I know plenty of shit about you!”

Chase and Connor dress like jerks in baggy, really baggy clothes with baseball caps on backwards and it’s just really stupid. Jimmy, somehow, never went thru that stage and always looked more like a college guy that a high school guy.

They stopped halfway into the room and stared at me. They looked, I dunno, put upon I guess.

Finally Connor walked over and sat on my bed while he looked my body over. “Dude you look like shit.” Behind him Chase turned back towards the door but it was pretty clear that Jimmy wasn’t moving from the doorway so he turned back with a dramatic sigh.

Connor reached out his hand to my face and without thinking about it or even wanting to do it I jerked my head back. Connor’s tempered flared. “That is so fucked up! I didn’t do this to you ya little queer! Quit tryin to make me the fuckin bad guy!” Chase had backed up to the wall and glared at me.

From the doorway Jimmy yelled, “Connor!”

Connor jumped up and turned on him. “Don’t fucking “Connor!” me! I did not do this!” He spat every word out then swung back to me and yelled, “One of my fucking friends got hauled outta school by the fucking cops, Robbie! The fucking COPS!” He wiped spittle from his lips while I cringed and tried to move back against the headboard and maybe thru the wall.

He pointed his finger at me and it was shaking. “Jeff would not fucking have done this! What’d you do you little fairy, try to suck their cocks?” He wiped his eyes hard with the back of his hands. He yelled, “I’ve seen the way you fucking look at guys!”

He swung back and screamed at Jimmy, “He’s a fucking faggot! Don’t you fucking get it? He’s a faggot!” It was one of those moments when death seems like the only way out but nobody is gonna help you with that. “I’m not fucking staying here!” He pushed his way past Jimmy with a sullen Chase following him.

Jimmy started to walk towards me while saying, “He didn’t mean it, Robbie. He’s pissed about Jeff but he hasn’t really thought this thru. He’ll….”

I felt bad about letting Jimmy go on defending me…..at least from the charge that I was gay. I mean eventually he’d find out that it was true and I didn’t want him putting himself out there for me when I knew there was no point and besides this seemed like as good a time as any. I really couldn’t see how I could be worse off than I already was.

Inside my head it felt like my head was spinning and that it’d make one loop and stop and then a couple of seconds later make another loop. I wanted to grab my head and hold it steady but I knew that wouldn’t help.

“He’s right, Jimmy. Not about my tryin to do anything with those guys but about my being gay.”

Jimmy’s head dropped immediately and he stood there with his shoulders hunched forward staring at the floor. I started to talk, I wanted to tell him that there wasn’t anything that I could do about it and that I didn’t want to be gay but I just was. But as soon as I started to speak he held up his hand without looking at me and said, “No! Just………don’t…talk.”

I must have slept but I got this feeling like life was going on around me while I slept. I mean not like it usually stops or anything but more like the feeling that people were walking around my bed and talking and stuff. When I woke up I felt tired like I hadn’t really slept at all. My door was closed and I could hear conversations from other parts of the house. All the way down in the kitchen I could hear my mother say the occasional word to someone and muffled voices from what sounded like a television. Then over that conversation my dad on this floor talking, I think to Connor but it could have been Chase. I didn’t hear Jimmy’s voice at all.

My dad was saying, “Looks better…needs you guys…don’t you think.” It was all a jumble made worse by my spinning head but it sounded like he was pretty much asking my brothers how I was. My heart stopped as I waited for them to tell him that I was gay but it didn’t happen instead Connor told him that I was fine and that I seemed to be getting better. He sounded really upbeat. Maybe I had just imagined him yelling earlier. I remember having that nightmare and reliving shit and then, maybe it was a dream. No. That couldn’t have been a dream. Obviously I’m not that lucky. And thinking that brought a tidal wave of fear. I was really alone. It was pretty clear how my brothers felt and I was pretty certain that Karen would go along with them, well at least with Jimmy. After all, they were twins. When dad did finally find out about me he’d feel the same way that my brothers did and maybe mom’d feel that way too. I mean why not? That left me with basically nobody on my side and the way my head has been spinning I could barely make it to the bathroom without falling much less somehow get away from all the people who hated me…or probably would hate me. Since the thought of going back to school made me literally need to puke I kept pushing it away whenever it tried to get into my head.

The thought kept coming into my head of Connor pulling my mom and dad into my room and then pointing at me and yelling. “He’s a fucking faggot! Don’t you fucking get it? He’s a faggot!” Suddenly I felt very undressed and vulnerable lying here in my pajamas and I pulled the covers up to my chin. I’ve read about parents kicking their kids outta the house when they find out that they’re gay but I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t do that and maybe Connor would never even tell them. Maybe Jimmy would. Why the fuck did I think of that? That’s what’ll happen! Jimmy’ll get all dad like and figure he needs to spill his guts to mom and dad so that they understand about their son the faggot. He won’t even think about them maybe kicking me out it’ll all be “for my own good” and to get me help and shit. I’m soo fucked! I didn’t think it could get worse but I guess that it always can.

The one good thing about having a concussion is that you sleep a lot and all things considered that was probably the best way for me to be spending my time. People don’t beat on ya when you’re sleeping and it was pretty unlikely that they’d push me out onto the street in my pajamas. It’d look like hell to the neighbors.

As I was waking up for like the zillionth time I was pretty sure that I felt hands on me touching me and even before I woke up my body was telling me that it didn’t like it. By the time that I actually did wake up I was sweating so bad that my pajamas were totally soaked and I felt like the devil himself had grabbed hold of me.
So naturally I woke up shrieking, yeah, not just hollering like a normal person but shrieking and screaming for them not to hurt me and shaking so bad that my mother had stumbled backwards with a shocked look on her face.

That’s probably the last time my mom will be checking to see if I’ve got a fever. Suddenly the room was filled with people, most of who were checking to see that mom was okay. I could even hear people pounding on the front door yelling their offers of help. Sweat was pouring off of my face and even the bed was wet. I must have dropped like a gallon of water with that little display.

And behind door number three is your little boy Robbie, nutcase and faggot. Would you like to try for door number three? Uh huh, uh huh, we didn’t think so.

Somehow dinner appeared on a TV tray next to my bed and I watched as it went thru various stages throughout the evening as I slept and woke, slept and woke. First the gravy congealed and the chicken got these little dried edges that kinda curled up and the broccoli just seemed to collapse into the plate. This’d probably be easier to deal with if the world would stop spinning. How can I actually feel worse than I did when I was in the hospital? It’s like nothing is certain when everything is literally spinning and it’s not like I need more uncertainty.

My parents have taken to opening my door and glancing in with worried looks on their faces which kinda makes me feel like I’m in the zoo. I do know that they mean well and it’s obvious that Connor hasn’t ratted me out yet. And that’s a little troubling. It’s like there’s this other really big shoe to drop yet and I don’t have a clue as to when that’s gonna happen but I’m pretty sure it’ll be at the worst possible moment and it’s occurred to me that maybe I should tell them myself but I just don’t have the guts for that and I’m pretty much relying on sleep to solve the problem.

Well finally I got the chance to go to sleep when it was actually night so then, of course, I couldn’t. I turned on the little TV in my room and put on my earphones and watched old sitcoms like Leave it to Beaver and The Andy Griffith Show and then somewhere around midnight I dozed off with the light on my nightstand still on.

I dreamed about the house that we used to live in when I was a little kid and we had this mean-ass neighbor guy who was always yelling at us kids. One day we were all horsing around and somebody, I found out later that it was Chase, broke one of the windows on his garage. So naturally they all took off running like crazy but I was little and I wasn’t even sure what had happened and then when I realized it was too late because the neighbor guy had blocked my escape. It was the first time that I ever remember being totally terrified. He had me trapped between the fence and the wall of the garage and he just kept walking towards me, the dried leaves crunching under his feet, yelling until there wasn’t anyplace else for me to go to and he stood over me screaming. I almost peed in my pants.

So that was the dream that always hit me when I was scared or worried or some shit and it was the dream that I had that night. I could feel myself tossing and turning and trying to escape the dream because I like knew it was a dream and yet I didn’t. You know? I guess it doesn’t matter cause scared shitless is still scared shitless but just when I was about to wake myself up something else did. At first I didn’t know what it was because I was still asleep but I still knew somewhere in my head that it was different from the dream, like something had interjected itself into the dream, something different than me or the dream.

My throat was really dry and I was wet again from sweating and my heart was beating so fast and hard that it felt like it was about twenty times bigger than it is but then I felt my dad’s hand on my arm and heard his voice and I realized that he was the one who stopped the dream.

“You okay, Son?” His voice was soft and deep, his hand was warm on my arm. I relaxed and laid my head back down on the pillow. He was lying next to me on his side on my bed and I turned to look at him. His hair was messed up and he had this really worried look on his face. I could smell him, it was combination of deodorant and some kind of shave lotion and, I guess, him. His chest hair was coming out of the neck of his tee shirt. It was one of those vee neck tee shirts and it was really really white.

When I tried to speak my voice felt all funny but I said it anyway cause my throat had been fucked up since “it” happened. “Did I wake you up?” I sounded like I was three but then he could have that effect on me.

He smiled. “Yes and no. I was just checking on you and I saw you having the dream. Were you dreaming about what happened?” He was still holding onto my arm.

I shook my head. My voice sounded so little. “No. I was dreaming about that time Mr. Drebner yelled at me.”

My dad sighed. “That prick! I told him he had no business screaming at you like that but by then it was too late. I figured it was something you might remember for a while.” He reached over and brushed my hair out of my eyes. “Can’t save your kids from everything.” Then very quietly. “Sometimes you can’t save em from anything.”

I don’t know why I did it. Actually I don’t even think that I thought about it, it was like some part of my brain that I didn’t have any control over did it. It was like a total surprise to me. I just rolled over and buried my face in his chest while tears started pouring out of me and I sobbed, “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry this happened!”

He pulled me hard against his chest and buried his face in my hair. His voice sounded almost like he was crying but probably not cause he doesn’t do that.
“ It’ll be okay, Robbie! I’ll make it okay!” But I knew that he was wrong. I knew that it wasn’t gonna be okay.