We all started laughing like morons at that.
"You never even thought about it?" Vlad asked.
"Nope," Julian said, almost as the same time Vlad finished the sentence.
"Well, I thought about it, but I can't say I found it arousing," I said honestly. "Actually I found it kind of repulsive. I don't mean that I find gays repulsive, but that the thought of, say Julian, giving me a blow job just doesn't work for me."
"Good God!" Julian exclaimed, eyes bugging. "Harlan, I can't believe you just fucking said that? What the hell is wrong with you? Did you have to use me as an example? Eeeeew! Jesus! I've never thought it. I've never almost thought it. I've never even come one scintilla of a fraction towards having the thought."
"So you haven't thought about it?" Vlad asked and it took Julian a second to see that he was being teased. I smiled.
"Well, I think I'm going to die with you, Harlan," Julian said. "Do you realize how pathetic this is? Here's you, Vlad, and me. Three virgins out on a Friday night, sitting on the hood of a stolen car having homoerotic discussions. I guess it had to go there sooner or later. I need to get laid and that's that. If I don't, I'm going to end up all sexually confused like our new friend Vlad here."
"Um, I'm not a virgin," I said.
I was tired of hiding it from him already, and Vlad didn't know Suzanne, so it didn't matter.
"Shut up!" Julian exclaimed. "You lie, Sexton! I thought we were friends? Who?"
"You're gonna die when I tell you," I said, a mischievous smile plastered to my face.
"WHO!"
"It was...It was...It was...No, I can't tell you," I said laughing as Julian grabbed me by the hair.
"Harlan, I swear to Jesus himself, I'll kill you!" Julian shouted. "Who!"
"Suzanne," I said, and sat back and waited as my bomb exploded.
"No....fucking...way," Julian said, eyes wide. "Suzanne-Suzanne? As in the gorgeous thirty-something neighbor that lets us smoke her pot and drink her beer Suzanne? No way. I don't believe you. You lie. You lie. You lie. Fuck off. You lie."
"Ask her," I said. "She told me that I could tell you."
Julian let go of my hair. "You're really not kidding, Harlan? You actually slept with her?"
"Hundreds of times," I said with a wicked smile. It was probably more than that, but I didn't want to rub it in.
Julian was smiling now, too. He saw I wasn't lying. "I hate you, Harlan! My dick's actually getting hard for you. My God, dude, she's amazingly hot. Big tits, nice ass, the works. Even Vlad here would probably get a hard on for her. Was she good?"
"Infuckingcredible," I said, laughing. "Monumentally awesome!"
"Monumentally awesome?" Julian said laughing along with me. "I'm not lying, Harlan, I really do hate you. It's just so not fair. Suzanne rules."
"I know. I actually love her. She's helped me through so much shit over the past couple years. She doesn't treat me like a kid."
Julian began to beat the back of his head against the hood softly. "Oh shit, now I really feel like a loser. My best friend is a sex machine and I talk to Mr. Hand in the bathroom every night. I'm sorry, Harlan, but I'm jealous."
"You should be," I said. "I worship her. I've actually been sleeping over there a lot lately. I just sneak back to my house in the morning."
"Sounds like you have it made," Vlad said.
"How in the hell did you keep this secret from me?" Julian asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose like he had a headache. "Is she, like, your girlfriend?"
"Not exactly," I answered. "I mean we've had this discussion. No one can know. Who would accept it? She could probably even be arrested. She sees other guys. I get jealous, but I deal with it. I'm supposed to be seeing other girls, but the opportunity never occurred."
Julian sat up. "I can't believe you were able to hide this from me. I've known you for what, a little over a year? How long have you been screwing her?"
"Two years."
"Two years!" Julian shouted. "You're probably more experienced at sex than any kid in high school! All this time I thought we were buddies because we both had nothing! We were losers! Oh Jesus, Harlan, you're like a Sex God now! Whenever I have a question all I have to do is ask the God, Harlan be thy name. Like, have you like done everything?"
"Everything. Every way, every position, everything."
"Aaaauuuggggh!" Julian shouted again, reminding me of Charlie Brown after Lucy pulls away the football. "This is fucked up. How am I ever supposed to look at her now and not see you two having sex? She's really all right with me knowing about this?"
"Yep. She knows you're my friend and you wouldn't tell anyone."
Julian pointed at Vlad. "What about Vlad? She wouldn't want him to know, would she?"
"I doubt it," I looked at Vlad. "Can we trust you?"
Vlad nodded. "Shit yeah, man. I need some friends. You guys seem pretty damn cool to me. I won't tell a soul."
"Good," I said. "We would have had to kill you."
Julian was still shaking his head in disbelief. "And you still want to kill yourself? Jesus Christ, Harlan you're the luckiest kid in our high school. Do you know what a dream this is? This is actually the sort of thing that most sixteen-year-olds fantasize about and you're living the dream. I know I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but I say it again. I hate you. I'm jealous. I hate you."
I sat back against the windshield and looked up at the stars. I always liked to look at the sky. Unlike most people, I actually liked to feel insignificant. I like the idea of thinking that I'm nothing. When you look up at the sky, you feel like you can just be swallowed up and not have to worry about anything. If I was as lucky as Julian says I was, then why was I so damn unhappy?
If only I knew.
Chapter 2:
Horror High
The rest of the weekend passed by rather uneventfully. We ditched the Mustang at Julian's house and he crept inside and got a suitcase full of his clothes. Luck was definitely with us, because Ross was nowhere to be seen. He was probably at the hospital getting his nose fixed.
We spent the next few days bullshitting, which is pretty much all we usually do. Vlad hung out with us on Saturday and Sunday, so it appeared that he was now with us for good. For some reason, we both felt completely comfortable around him.
It is now Monday morning and I can hear my mom waking up downstairs. Just as I predicted, she had no idea that Julian was even here. I told her, too, she just doesn't listen to me. I can't lie and say I don't love my mom, I do. It's just that I hold a lot of things against her. I still haven't gotten into the stuff about my father, but I will say one word that pretty much describes my childhood.
Brutal.
My father was an absolute monster. Some part of me will never forgive my mother for not pulling me away from Hell. He hit her too, probably more than he did me. She could have taken me away. She could have done something, but she just accepted it. She accepted it for thirteen long years. I never got to have a real childhood, which is surely the reason I feel so fucking empty inside. My mother could have saved my innocence—she could have tried to run, she could have taken me the hell away from him. Not once did she try. The only reason he's gone now is because he met some whore at a bar. Now he lives with her.
When I think about my abuse—I mean really ponder it, I get real messed up. This journal in some way is an attempt to look into all that, and most of all chronicle the last year of my life. I suppose you could say I'm soul searching, and perhaps searching for a reason to live. If anything, I have to say I'm proud of myself. I don't let the fact I was abused work as an excuse on my part ever.
When I screw up I don't say things like, "That's just because I was abused." I cannot. When I screw up, I screw up on my own terms.
However, I know one of the reasons that I'm so unhappy is because of my abuse. I know it. It eats at me every day like a fucking parasite, feeding on my very soul.
"What you thinking about?" Julian asked from the corner of my room
. I had forgotten he was even there. "You look all bummed out."
I looked over at him and nodded. "Julian, did you ever have a moment, just one brief moment where you're happy and then it just instantly goes away?"
"Sure. All the time, Harlan. That's normal."
"I know, but what I'm trying to say is that I never get that. Even when I'm laughing, even when I should be happy, I'm really not. I always feel like I'm somehow outside of myself. Like I'm just observing myself laugh and then saying, 'Just what in the hell is he laughing at?' I've never had a moment when I'm truly happy—not ever. There is always something depressing lurking in the back of my mind. I always feel like I'm going to explode. Just go off all over the place."
Julian tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. "Oh man, Harlan, this shit is way too deep for this early in the morning. You haven't changed your mind about giving me until May to stop you from offing yourself have you? God, I fucking hate when you get like this."
I frowned. "I'm still giving you until May, but you're not going to change my mind. I want to finish my journal too."
Julian sat up and yawned. "Are you ever going to let me read that?"
"Yes. After I'm gone."
I got up and started to pick up my school outfit. Black as usual. Like the song lyric by Morrissey, 'I wear black on the outside, because black is the way I feel on the inside.'
"Harlan?"
"Yeah, Julian."
"I'm going to give you that moment. I promise you before May you will have a moment that you will truly be happy."
I offered a fake laugh as I threw the long sleeve shirt on. "Oh yeah, okay, Julian. You may as well have said, "Harlan, I'm going to levitate myself off the ground now and fly around like Peter fucking Pan. You may as well go to Never Never Land without me, my friend, because I'll never make it."
Julian got up and opened his suitcase. "And what's so bad about Never Never Land, Harlan? You never lose your youth there. You never have to get old. That sounds pretty cool to me."
I pulled on my pants and tightened my belt. I realized that I was getting thinner. I was going to have to start eating something soon. "I never had my youth, Julian, remember? My father made sure of that. Besides, we're probably not going to make it through the day anyway. Do the words 'high school' ring a bell? No? Well then how about 'Ross' and 'monumental pain'?"
Julian just groaned as he got dressed, realizing the truth in my words. If we managed to survive this week without getting a major ass beating then it would be a damn miracle.
We were out the door and walking towards school within fifteen minutes. Neither of us had our own car, so walking was the thing to do whether we liked it or not. I work three days a week at the local video store. The job sucks, but it gives me sixty bucks a week to do what I want with.
As we got closer to the high school, I immediately began to feel the anxiety. School is like stepping through the gates of Hades, flames licking hungrily at my feet as I walk. I always manage to get myself in trouble. Like there was the one time I asked Mr. Emerson, my history teacher, "How can you consider yourself a good teacher if so many people fail your class?"
Well, that was a week in detention right there.
School is prison. No exaggeration. There something vaguely Nazi-like about the concept that you need a fucking hall pass to go to the bathroom. You need permission to speak, to move, to eat. They have bells going off to remind us to move like a bunch of Pavlovian dogs. They have no respect for us whatsoever. Don't believe me? Try talking to a teacher in the same exact tone of voice they talk to you. Give them that same condescending Iknowfuckingeverything tone. Watch how fast they punish your ass. Watch how their eyes widen in total shock. I know—I do it all the time.
Every day you hear the same boring and insulting speeches. Every day they bore you into a stupor. They teach us all right, they teach us to be bland, zombie-like obedient little fucking animals. They teach us to cave into authority. They teach us that all authority is not to be questioned. What kind of teaching is that? It's sheep school. I'm sixteen years old and I know damn well that authority is meant to be questioned. To not question authority is to become a useless drone. Day after day, month after month, our tired brains are filled with one useless fact after another. It's a rare occasion when a teacher actually tries to do something that really makes us think.
And then there is my favorite thing about school. My peers. What do they teach us? They teach us that to be different or to have any kind of personality outside the restricted social boundaries of a retarded system is to be an outcast. A leper. When you are different like me, Vlad, or Julian, you are looked upon with scorn and snobbery. What? You don't like a popular band? Well, then you are shit, my friend. To stand out at all is to invite social ridicule and scorn from your peers. They want everyone to look and act the same. They want us all to grow up and be perfect little citizens, questioning nothing that happens to us. They want to numb us with boring, petty, repetitive tasks so that we can grow up and enter jobs that call for pretty much the same thing.
I don't mean to go on a rant here, but I'm passionate about this. My goal in high school is to make as much fucking noise as possible. I refuse to become part of the collective. I refuse to become just another nitwit with his hand raised in the air so he can answer some ridiculously easy question.
Don't answer questions—ask them! Make them tell you the truth! Answering questions merely shows that you can memorize a bunch of useless facts. Asking questions shows that you think. It shows that you process the information rather than just use plain old rote memory. The more controversial the question, the better. Challenge your teacher. Test their knowledge. They can't punish you for wanting to learn, although God knows they'll want to. And there are times where they probably will punish you for asking. But that only means that you’re having an effect on the system.
"There goes Vlad," Julian said, as we neared closer to Horror High. Vlad was walking towards us, his hand out in a salute.
I realized that by accepting Vlad we were inviting more trouble than we already can handle, but what the hell. I like Vlad and to isolate him from me simply because others don't accept him would turn me into King Hypocrite. As he walked closer, I could see his makeup was caked way worse than the weekend. He looked vaguely reminiscent of Brandon Lee in The Crow, although without the muscle. We were going to look like quite the couple—both of us dressed in black and all.
Vlad smiled wickedly. "Harlan. Julian. You ready to face this?"
"Not exactly," Julian said. "But what the hell, if we're going to face it, it may as well be together."
"You're in my speech class, Harlan," Vlad said. "You rule. Mrs. Walsh actually starts sweating when you walk up to the podium."
I laughed. "What do you expect? I'm not going to go up there and show the class how to make a bowl of cereal like Dan Shockley did with his demonstration speech on Friday."
Vlad groaned. "I know! Wasn't that pathetic? I saw you laughing."
"What the hell do you expect? How could you not laugh?" I began to mimic Dan's voice. "'Okay, once you get your cereal in the bowl you have to add the milk.' Jesus, it was so retarded it was surreal. I was like, I think you may have gotten hit in the head one too many times with that football, Danny-boy."
Vlad laughed. "I like that speech you did on how to take over the planet in fifteen steps, that ruled."
"Well, your speech on death was pretty cool too," I added. "I remember when you said, 'Death is simply the biggest rush that a human being can have. You just can't get a better high than that.' Talk about sweating, I think Mrs. Walsh damn near passed out. I hear that she's actually thinking about giving students set speeches because of us. We're not going to be able to pick our own topics."
"Oh man, I wish I was in that class," Julian said. "Harlan can be a total terror to some of the teachers."
"Yeah, I've seen him in action," Vlad said, wincing as he saw the school looming ever closer. "Most teachers genuinely seem to ha
te him."
"Man, you guys sure know how to give a good ego stroke," I said, happy that my doings at the school were attracting any attention. "But if I'm notorious, it's because I'm loony."
Before we knew it, we were walking on the concourse of the dreaded white school. As I looked up at its ugly chalky visage it seemed to say, "Your ass is mine, Sexton! Step through my doors, we'll show you who the boss is."
I thought it was going to be another uneventful day at Horror High, but things turned out to be quite the opposite. To say that the day was memorable would be an understatement.
Hell, it made the newspapers. The stench of death can do wonders for waking people up, even boring obedient little sheep like the ones at my school.
Yeah, I know I shouldn't write a sentence like that and leave you hanging, but that's exactly what I'm going to do.
After I said goodbye to Julian and Vlad I stood in the hallway outside my homeroom, trying to blend in. There were about six of us lurking about, most of us still doing our best to deal with the depressing fact that we had a whole day of school to look forward to.
"And here comes the retard train," Jarrod Kray said, smirking at the long line of mentally retarded people that were walking down the hall. "Chugga Chugga! Choo! Choo!"
This went on every day. Our school had a program that dealt with about twenty or so of the mentally challenged. They kept them separated from the rest of the students, giving them a room on the first floor of the school. The only time you even saw them was now and at lunch time. Every day Kray, or some asshole like him, would comment that the retard train was coming down the tracks. Oh the wit, eh?
"And Carpy is here today!" Kray exclaimed, hands held up in the air like he was about to get a present, a big-ass shit eating grin on his face. "Hey Carpy, Carpy, Carpy!"
Carpy was a mentally retarded student named Robert who frankly had the biggest lips I ever saw. They were enormous. They were so big that you could see them when you were looking at the back of his head. Kray was fascinated with him and had dubbed him Carpy after a big lipped fish called a carp.
HARLAN Page 3
