College football is king in Alabama.
In a living room of the house next door. The television plays the National Championship game: Alabama versus Arkansas. The father had purchased a new VHS recorder specifically for the occasion, you imagine, and the older son makes a point of showing you the well worn video which you look upon with a half-interest. Everything smells fusty and peculiar in that house; it smells like two rough-and-tumble boys. It smells like DeJohns. (DeJohn being their last name).
The oldest boy kept asking to borrow articles of your clothing. You lent him some insulated socks you'd gotten for Christmas the past year. They were red and had white, raised tread on them. When you finally got them back, weeks later, they smelled like DeJohn. The scent nauseated you. You tried to wear them, but you couldn't quite make yourself do it. They lingered, unworn, in a dresser drawer for some time after that before you finally decided to toss them into the trash can.
Like most boys of the period, you collected baseball cards. Following their lead, you supported the Chicago Cubs, and their perpetually intoxicated announcer, Harry Carey. The Cubs never won much of anything, but that really wasn't the point. During long summers, you could always count on another afternoon Cubs game to be on WGN.
Both boys had a dislike for the pitcher Melido Perez. They openly burned his card whenever they found one. You recall that he had Eazy-E hair and an ugly nose, but you never quite understood why this necessitated the death of his image by fire. Still, you laughed with the manic energy and enthusiasm that is typical for young boys.
The older boy, Brad, had flared out, equestrine nostrils. He was tall and gangly--baseball player gangly--all arms and elbows. You challenged him to a fight once, but quickly backed down when it was very obvious he could have beaten you senseless, he was, after all, three or four years older. Part of you found it strange that he always hung around much younger boys. He was always so arrogant and so full of himself, a condition you might have diagnosed as low-self esteem had you been a few years older.
Yet, he took a liking to you. The younger brother, Michael, who was your age, never quite held your attention. Memories of him are still fuzzy and indistinct.
The two brothers shared a room together. They had single beds set up side by side each other. Brad always made highly sleazy, juvenile sexual comments around you, and as you were very much the innocent, you found them most uncomfortable, but said nothing. So you didn't think much besides uncomfortable when Brad kept mentioning,
I think Michael comes and stares at my dick in his sleep.
Most of Brad's comments were coarse and crude in this sort of fashion. Most of them made reference to his penis or his brother's penis. You assumed, though you didn't have a phrase to attach to it at the time, that such comments were made merely out of homophobia and not anything else. But sometimes thou doth protest too much.
At this point, you have gaps in your memory.
You have gaps in your memory, for instance, starting earlier than that. You remember feeling decided creeped out by the boys father, who kept a beer by the side of his dingy recliner. The instant you arrived at his house, you feel ill at ease by his very presence. He never talked, he just started ahead of him at the television.
A cheap ad for a weed-wacker came on television and you said, rather awkwardly, parroting their purileity, I wonder what it would be like to have a dick wacker.
And at the moment, the creepy old man looked at you. Odder still, you know he must have been around the house more than just one time. This, however, is the only time you can recall.
You have another gap in your memory starting here.
Other fragments you have are of Brad smiling at you at the ballpark, months later, and you desperately avoiding eye contact. He had moved somewhere with a relative, you faintly recall, and then was back to visit.
But you are getting ahead of yourself...
You had never been a particularly violent child. You played tackle football in the yard with the boys of the neighborhood. And yet, around this time, you started being incredibly violent to your sister. You would throw her against walls and between doors.
Your father, who didn't know what else to do, would whip you viciously. These brutal whippings became daily events. Normally they would culminate around 6 pm or so when he came home from work and was informed of the sort of trouble you had caused once again.
You can't remember the sexual games and play with a neighborhood girl, who was three years younger than you, being particularly erotic. You would lie on her bed and pull down her pants and rub her ass. She would oblige, and you remember being revolted by the sight and smell of stale shit. These lasted for a few years, maybe two or three.
Eventually, she masturbated you and you masturbated her, and that was about it. It was awkward and fumbling and neither of your enjoyed it particularly that much. The whole thing seemed strange and alien.
Around that time, you would place the ends of plastic coathangers into your anus. You had a strange anal fixation. You didn't stop it, even when your mother walked in to find you with some inantimate object shoved inside you.
When the sex play between you and the girl became too strange and gross, and when you found yourselves inexplicably washing your hands in between sessions, you stopped. It was at her request, you recall.
In a living room of the house next door. The television plays the National Championship game: Alabama versus Arkansas. The father had purchased a new VHS recorder specifically for the occasion, you imagine, and the older son makes a point of showing you the well worn video which you look upon with a half-interest. Everything smells fusty and peculiar in that house; it smells like two rough-and-tumble boys. It smells like DeJohns. (DeJohn being their last name).
The oldest boy kept asking to borrow articles of your clothing. You lent him some insulated socks you'd gotten for Christmas the past year. They were red and had white, raised tread on them. When you finally got them back, weeks later, they smelled like DeJohn. The scent nauseated you. You tried to wear them, but you couldn't quite make yourself do it. They lingered, unworn, in a dresser drawer for some time after that before you finally decided to toss them into the trash can.
Like most boys of the period, you collected baseball cards. Following their lead, you supported the Chicago Cubs, and their perpetually intoxicated announcer, Harry Carey. The Cubs never won much of anything, but that really wasn't the point. During long summers, you could always count on another afternoon Cubs game to be on WGN.
Both boys had a dislike for the pitcher Melido Perez. They openly burned his card whenever they found one. You recall that he had Eazy-E hair and an ugly nose, but you never quite understood why this necessitated the death of his image by fire. Still, you laughed with the manic energy and enthusiasm that is typical for young boys.
The older boy, Brad, had flared out, equestrine nostrils. He was tall and gangly--baseball player gangly--all arms and elbows. You challenged him to a fight once, but quickly backed down when it was very obvious he could have beaten you senseless, he was, after all, three or four years older. Part of you found it strange that he always hung around much younger boys. He was always so arrogant and so full of himself, a condition you might have diagnosed as low-self esteem had you been a few years older.
Yet, he took a liking to you. The younger brother, Michael, who was your age, never quite held your attention. Memories of him are still fuzzy and indistinct.
The two brothers shared a room together. They had single beds set up side by side each other. Brad always made highly sleazy, juvenile sexual comments around you, and as you were very much the innocent, you found them most uncomfortable, but said nothing. So you didn't think much besides uncomfortable when Brad kept mentioning,
I think Michael comes and stares at my dick in his sleep.
Most of Brad's comments were coarse and crude in this sort of fashion. Most of them made reference to his penis or his brother's penis. You assumed, though you didn't have a phrase to attach to it at the time, that such comments were made merely out of homophobia and not anything else. But sometimes thou doth protest too much.
At this point, you have gaps in your memory.
You have gaps in your memory, for instance, starting earlier than that. You remember feeling decided creeped out by the boys father, who kept a beer by the side of his dingy recliner. The instant you arrived at his house, you feel ill at ease by his very presence. He never talked, he just started ahead of him at the television.
A cheap ad for a weed-wacker came on television and you said, rather awkwardly, parroting their purileity, I wonder what it would be like to have a dick wacker.
And at the moment, the creepy old man looked at you. Odder still, you know he must have been around the house more than just one time. This, however, is the only time you can recall.
You have another gap in your memory starting here.
Other fragments you have are of Brad smiling at you at the ballpark, months later, and you desperately avoiding eye contact. He had moved somewhere with a relative, you faintly recall, and then was back to visit.
But you are getting ahead of yourself...
You had never been a particularly violent child. You played tackle football in the yard with the boys of the neighborhood. And yet, around this time, you started being incredibly violent to your sister. You would throw her against walls and between doors.
Your father, who didn't know what else to do, would whip you viciously. These brutal whippings became daily events. Normally they would culminate around 6 pm or so when he came home from work and was informed of the sort of trouble you had caused once again.
You can't remember the sexual games and play with a neighborhood girl, who was three years younger than you, being particularly erotic. You would lie on her bed and pull down her pants and rub her ass. She would oblige, and you remember being revolted by the sight and smell of stale shit. These lasted for a few years, maybe two or three.
Eventually, she masturbated you and you masturbated her, and that was about it. It was awkward and fumbling and neither of your enjoyed it particularly that much. The whole thing seemed strange and alien.
Around that time, you would place the ends of plastic coathangers into your anus. You had a strange anal fixation. You didn't stop it, even when your mother walked in to find you with some inantimate object shoved inside you.
When the sex play between you and the girl became too strange and gross, and when you found yourselves inexplicably washing your hands in between sessions, you stopped. It was at her request, you recall.