by Raptor, John
“Wow, I think the faggot actually likes it?” one of the other numbskulls said.
On the next page, a woman bent over, revealing her ass and labia from behind.
I felt flush. I had never seen anything like it.
Naked women…right there. In front of me.
“That’s one hot bitch,” I said, trying to sound tough, cool, whatever the fuck.
The guys all laughed.
“Right on, Robbie. You do have a willie after all.”
I had never bonded with these boys before, but all the sudden, as we looked through the porno mag and scoped tits and ass and pussy, I was one of them.
It felt…good, in a way. To be accepted by these Neanderthals. But also, empty. I didn’t actually believe anything I was saying, and regretted saying it. Things like:
“I’d love to shove it up her ass.”
“Wish I could make that whore take it in the mouth.”
“I want to violate that cunt’s cunt.”
I was always shy (another weakness, according to Gramma), so the boys couldn’t stop laughing when they heard me (quiet Robbie) saying such vulgar things.
“You know what, Robbie? You’re alright,” Brady said.
They asked me why I hung out with girls so much if I was such a cool guy.
“I want to get some, duh. Why else would I hang out with bitches?”
“But the bitches here are fucking ugly,” Brady said. “All ones and twos.”
I stammered, froze. Didn’t know what to say. My face burned. Oh God. I was turning red like the bashful weak fuck I really was.
I couldn’t admit that I actually liked hanging out with the girls because they talked about stuff instead of kicking around balls and beating the shit out of each other like goddam animals.
That was weakness. That meant I was a cunt…I mean, a girl.
And girls were empathetic and nice, which was bad. I couldn’t be any of those things if I wanted to survive in this shithole world as a boy.
So I said: “Pussy is pussy. It’s all the same in the dark.”
Brady laughed.
I continued to hang out with the girls, under the guise that all I cared about was their pussy. And some of the other guys started hanging out with the girls too. And we acted different around the girls. We put on our nicest smiles and cleaned up our language and were real sweet on them.
But when it was just the boys, we’d trash talk them. Talk about how they were nothin’ but pussy, how they were fuckin’ bitches (nothing too original; that would require more than two brain cells to rub together). Brady bitched that he tried to kiss Abigail, but she refused to put out.
Brady called her a “retarded bitch” (I assume because she had dyslexia) and a “fuckin’ whore!”
“How can she be a whore if she doesn’t put out?” I asked.
“Oh, she puts out. Just not for me. She puts out for her daddy. And for her daddy’s friends. I bet she takes two dicks in her pussy at the same time.” He put two fingers through a cupped hand and laughed.
I laughed too (but inside, I felt sick).
Boys will be boys.
***
Brady hid the porno mag in his locker, and we agreed that’d we’d all share it. Each day, one of us would take it home. Brady got it for three days in a row because he was the one who found it. Second-bitch-on-the-totem-pole Neil didn’t think that was fair, but Brady threatened to make him first bitch if he didn’t shut his fucking mouth (not precisely in those words).
I took the porno mag home on a Tuesday, hidden between the pages of my Bible textbook (the guys thought it was a hoot). And that night, after supper and devotions, I holed up in my claustrophobic box-of-a-bedroom and cracked the text open. I could already feel myself getting hard. My nerves tingling with ecstasy.
The porno mag.
Such a thing of beauty for a 12-year-old boy. Not only the stepping stone to his manhood and the acceptance of his male peers, but…naked ladies!
I flipped through the pages, salivating over the still-images of big breasted blondes in their birthday suits bent in various poses.
My face flushed as my eyes caressed the heaving breasts, shaven vulvas, and big shapely asses.
I found my favorite spread: a tight shot of a girl’s vulva (from below), her fingers between the lips. B.g.: her long blonde hair thrown back in ecstatic pleasure, her other hand squeezing a breast. The nipple hard and erect.
I humped the bed as I stared at the image and burnt it into my retinas for later consumption.
The bed springs squeaked and I tried to slow my pace, fearing my Gramma would hea—
Footsteps. In the hall.
I quickly hid the porno mag under the sheets and sat up with my Bible text.
Gramma Wilkins entered the bedroom, glowering at me.
You been lookin’ at the girls, Robbie?
Panic.
No.
Those girls are demons. Harlots and whores. Jesus said to even think about one of them whores in a lustful manner is as bad as adultery. You don’t want to be a sinner, do you, Robbie? I know you’re at that age now, that age when them girls are going to start lookin’ pretty, but you better keep out of their snatch ’less you want your widdler to rot off. Those whores and harlots have sex diseases, Robbie. They may be pretty on the outside, but inside, they're pure nastiness. The book of Revelation says the whore rode the Beast. You don't want to be the Beast, do you, Robbie? There’s a special place in hell for the Beast and the False Prophet. Ordinary sinners will just burn up and die, but the anguish and suffering of the Beast and False Prophet shall go up forever and ever. You do not want to be a Beast, Robbie. One of them ornery Beasts that fucks harlots in the backseat of their sports car and ends up with a soulless fornication child. Right now, you have a soul, Robbie, but you can lose it. Those harlots are incubi and they’ll suck your soul right out through your widdler. They’ll infect you with their diseases. They might even try to convince you to take them to one of them baby-killing factories if your silly willy breaks the condom.
I won't do any of that dirty-nasty stuff, Gramma. I promise, I promise. I want to be pure for the Lord.
Now Robbie, don’t lie to me. Lying is a sin, and liars burn slower and hotter, along with adulterers and gossipers. Thou shall not bear false witness, number nine.
Gramma tossed a pair of stiff boxers on the bed.
I found a pair of your shorts in the laundry bin, Robbie, and there’s a peculiar stain on them. You mind explainin’ that stain to your dear ol’ Gramma? What would your mama think? Your sweet ol’ mama who ripped her insides apart to bring you into this cesspit world, who withstood the degradation of sexual intercourse to bring forth your existence? Thank Christ she's dead.
I don't know where that stain came from, Gramma. I don't know.
You goddam well know where that stain came from, you little shit! You’ve been touching your widdler! You’ve been defiling the Holy Temple of God with impure thoughts and actions! Is this the way you repay the woman who raised you and fed you and clothed you…by degrading yourself? Your poor dead mother must be rolling in her grave. Is this why she died, Robbie? Is this why your father killed her by not being man enough? So you could act like a goddam animal? We might as well have evolved from monkeys like those nasty-evil scientists say if impure imps like you wallow in sick fantasies and spray your seed all over the place! That seed is meant only for the womb of a woman to whom you are married.
Gramma shoved the boxers in my face, grinding my lips against the stiffened, crusty fabric.
See this stain? SEE IT!?
Crying.
Yes, Gramma. Yes, Gramma. Please, Gramma. Stop, Gramma.
This stain is a waste of potential life! Life wasted on the inside of your shorts, just because you were too horny to keep your filthy hands off your widdler! What were you thinking about when you were touching yourself? Were you thinking about your sweet dead mama? Surely not, or else you would have kept your hands t
o yourself. So what were you thinking about? One of them harlots! One of them Whores of Babylon! You know that all who enter Babylon are lost, don’t you, Robbie? Don’t you?
Yes, Gramma. Yes, Gramma.
Do you want to be lost, Robbie?
No, Gramma. No, Gramma.
If I see any more stains on your shorts, if I see any stains on your bed, on the carpet, if I hear you’ve been seeing one of them harlots, touching their skin or their insides, I will cut that widdler of yours right off! You understand, Robbie? You understand?
Yes, Gramma. Yes, Gramma.
Then she left, slamming the door.
…34 YEARS AGO (1975)
It was the summer Jaws came out and everyone who left the cinema was afraid to go into the water. I remember this because I kept seeing ads for the film next to the article about my dead parents, and thinking to myself: I wish I could be afraid of something so silly.
Instead, I had to fear what would happen to me and my sister.
I feared that we’d have to live on the streets, that we’d starve to death begging for food, that we’d become frozen to the pavement in some alley during the harsh Chicago winter.
That would have been a better fate.
Instead, the courts gave our grandparents (whom our father referred to as “religious pecans”) custody and we were moved to a state and town we knew nothing about:
Hell, North Dakota.
You couldn’t find a town or city on any atlas that would have described the next year of our lives more accurately…except, maybe, Hell, Michigan. (We would have been better off living there, because our crazy grandparents didn’t.)
Grampa and Gramma Wilkins lived on the outskirts of that appropriately named town, out in the middle of fucking nowhere (there was a lot of nowhere in North Dakota). If you followed Hell’s Main Street until it turned into Scenic Highway 200, and you kept going, past the trees and hills (yes, in western North Dakota, there are trees and hills), over the bridge that crosses the Hart River, and hooked a left over some railroad tracks, you eventually ended up on a gravel road that led to scattered houses separated by acres and acres of golden wheat fields. Our grandparents lived in a big ranch house in one of those fields; so secluded that their driveway was nearly a mile long.
Grampa drove us out there in his big pick-up, the big tires kicking up dust. And I remember the dread I felt.
My sister and I were used to the city: tall buildings, hot dog vendors, busy sidewalks and streets full of honking cars. Out here, it was dead. Quiet. Too quiet.
Grampa stared straight ahead at the ranch house as it loomed toward us like a gothic nightmare. He was a quiet man. Didn’t say much: less than two words since picking us up at the Bismarck airport. There was a tiny calendar pinned to his dashboard: Jesus knocking on a door, waiting for an answer. On top of the dash was a book titled The Great Controversy between Christ and His Angels and Satan and his Angels.
Religious pecans. That’s what our father had called them. It wasn’t offensive because they were his parents. He grew up with them. He knew all too well. Said he barely escaped alive. But never went into too much detail.
“Some people just want to believe in something very badly,” he had told me once. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But some people’s beliefs are more important to them than people. They will hurt and neglect others because of their beliefs. It’s called fanaticism. And it’s very dangerous.”
As if losing our parents wasn’t bad enough, now we lived with these pecans! And since we were minors, let’s not bullshit: according to the United State government, these pecans owned us. Custody is just a nice way of saying that.
Our dad had broken off contact with the pecans before Delilah and I were ever born. We had literally never met them until our parents died.
I held my sister’s hand as Grampa pulled into the driveway. I could see tears in her eyes. She was just as scared (maybe more) as I.
“Here we are,” Grampa said, glancing at us dismissively. “Home sweet home.”
Gramma greeted us in the foyer with a big smile and a hug, kissing our heads, saying how great it was to finally meet us after all these years.
Delilah and I didn’t say anything. We were wide-eyed, trembling.
“Don’t be afraid, my dearies,” Gramma said. “We won’t bite, will we, Arthur?”
Our Grampa, Arthur, only hrmphed.
She cooked us dinner (if you could call it that): some kinda weird loaf made of Special K cereal and cottage cheese.
“I’m guessing your mommy and daddy fed you meat,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “Well, we don’t eat the flesh of animals in this household. The Prophetess White said that if we were to eat flesh diets, God would have provided animals to feast upon in the Garden. You must flee from the evils of devouring flesh and instead feast only upon fruits, nuts, and vegetables. This is God’s original plan. Amen.”
Grampa said, “Hrmph.”
“What about cheese?” I asked. “Isn’t there cheese in this? That’s not a nut, fruit, or vegetable.” (But you’re a nut, I wanted to add.)
“There’s no cheese,” she said.
“But you said it’s cottage cheese loaf.”
“It’s just a name,” she said. “Now eat.”
At an early age, I would learn that our grandparents weren’t only self-righteous, but that they were also huge hypocrites (the folly of those who put themselves up on pedestals).
Our grandparents had set up separate bedrooms for me and my sister, because “boys and girls should never sleep in the same room, or else they might be tempted to lie with one another.”
Delilah didn’t want to sleep alone and wouldn’t let go of my hand.
Gramma scolded her.
“Get to your room now, young missy!”
“But I want to sleep with Robbie.”
“Girls don’t sleep with boys,” she said. “Don’t be a hussy! Get in your room now!”
“She’s afraid of the dark,” I interjected.
“Too bad,” Gramma said. “The world is a dark place, so she better get used to it.”
Delilah cried as Gramma dragged her into the bedroom (at the end of a long hallway) and locked the door.
That was a bad sign: the locks were on the outside.
I closed the door to my room, willingly…and cried as I listened to my sister’s shrieks from down the hall. God, it sounded like she was dying.
At some point in the night, one of the grandparents got up and marched to the end of the hall (the floorboards squeaking and creaking), undid the latch, and opened the door, slammed it shut…the screaming stopped.
They fucking killed her, I thought, minus the expletive.
I shivered under the sheets in my barren room (only a bed, four white walls, a hardwood floor, and a painting of Prophetess White), fearing that my sister was dead.
After an hour or so, I heard her bedroom door open again, close, lock, and then the footsteps moving up the hall.
Part of me wanted to get up and knock on her door…but I was frozen.
The blank face of the moon stared at me through the window. A bird screamed in the night. The noise was awful: sounded like someone killing a baby.
We were in the middle of nowhere, our parents were dead, and we were living with religious pecans.
It was the first time I had considered killing myself.
I was eight.
***
We weren’t allowed to watch movies or read fiction. We weren’t allowed to eat meat. We weren’t allowed to drink soda because it had caffeine (even though Gramma drank tea). We weren’t allowed to attend public school, because it was run by the government and they would try to indoctrinate us with satanic ideas about evolution and sex. We weren’t allowed contact with anyone outside the church (which met every Saturday, because Sunday was the Mark of the Beast, and all those who worshipped on Sunday would be cast into hell during the Third Coming of Christ, also known as the Second Death, when Jesus would
resurrect the evil dead and slay them with fire, and God’s remnant—the Last Day Adventists—would watch with glee as God cleansed the earth and set His New Kingdom upon the ashes of the wicked, where God’s chosen would live forever and ever). And we weren’t allowed to talk to niggers.
My sister wasn’t dead, but she looked dead inside.
She stopped talking.
Stopped crying.
Stopped feeling.
She tried to stop eating…but Gramma would shove whatever concoction she mixed together in that kitchen of hers down Delilah’s throat: soybean casserole, leek pie, soy dogs, gluten patties, lentil stew, tofu nut loaf, raw potato, facon (fake bacon). Gramma also made us swallow these terrible drinks that tasted like dirty dishwater (maybe they were).
She always talked about having good blood; not blood tainted by the flesh of animals or addictive chemicals.
Said we needed to be pure for Jesus’ Second Coming.
We needed strength for when the soldiers would come for us. Soldiers of the Vatican’s New World Order seeking out Sabbath Keepers.
In the end times, all Sabbath Keepers would be rounded up and tortured in unimaginable ways. But it was an honor to die like this: to die for Christ and Sister White. Yet we needed to prepare. Prepare to flee into the mountains, the woods. To fight the Catholic-run government when it rose up and declared a bounty on all Sabbath Keepers.
These were the kinds of paranoid rants we’d hear from Gramma, from the church she forced us to attend every Sabbath. And every Sabbath, there’d be a children’s story. The piano music would change to “Jesus Loves Me” and all the obedient children would flock to the front pew and sit down, waiting to hear some shit-story about subservience to god.
My sister and I always went to the front pew. We had no choice. It was either that or a whipping from Grampa’s belt.
One time, Gramma had the duty of performing the children’s story…with a little help from her friends of the Last Day Adventists, Pecans for Sister White. These members of this infected church-body were dressed like animals: a Bunny, a Dog, a Rat, a Moose, a Cat, and randomly, a Clown.
