Jack and Elizabeth became a major item that night. And they would remain a major item until just after Senior Grad. Elizabeth fell hard. She became a permanent fixture in almost all our activities. She attended hockey games to cheer Jack on, and hung with us at our regular hang-outs, the Wizard and Mel’s. And I accepted it, but only because it meant that I could be closer to her.
Jack dragged me to all of her basketball and soccer games. It was years before I had a real threesome, but a grim executioner hovered over me with a three-bladed axe: Jack, Elizabeth and me, the pathetic third wheel. She frequently promised to ‘hook me up’ with one of her friends, but I didn’t want it and it never happened.
Whatever.
I convinced myself that I was over her, and moved on to other fruitless conquests. But truth be told, she froze me where I stood while her relationship with Jack burned at me. I tried, and sometimes managed, to keep it out of my conscious thought. It tortured me the most when I was most vulnerable – while I slept. But things got truly ugly after a hockey game in Tenth Grade, and that monster stalks me, even today.
We nursed our bruises after pummeling a rival High School from Ypsilanti. I sat next to him on the dressing-room bench, unlacing my skates. Everyone else was in the showers, so it was just the two of us.
He looked at me as if he had something to say. Never a good thing. He couldn’t hold anything in, and I challenged the dark gleam in his eyes. As he yanked off a skate and pulled off a sock, he peered at me.
“Elizabeth and I finally fucked.” Shocking pangs rebounded in my skull like a basketball. My fingers trembled while I tugged off a skate and sobbed inside.
“Yeah?” What to say? It was incumbent on me to slap him on the ass and give him a high-five. But my heart – frozen in a morgue and waiting for someone to identify its remains – was fired with resentment. Resentment that was well-entrenched in my psyche.
I know, I know. He never ‘stole’ her from me. I never had a chance with her. But it didn’t matter. It was a grudge that I was happy to hold. It was my God-given right, and dammit, teenage boys don’t need to rationalize. I wasn’t going to sit there and shower him with accolades like he was the triumphant warrior returned from battle.
Honestly? I tried to come to terms with the words of wisdom that Jack imparted on the first day of Ninth Grade. Stop being so pathetic. When they began to date, I made my peace with the sobering knowledge that battered me and got over it. But over it only in a way that I could maintain the façade that I didn’t give a shit. Internal defense mechanisms would take care of the rest.
The mechanisms began with the simple assumption that sex was on the block. Denial took care of that. I accepted it, but only because I didn’t have to deal with it or think about it. It was a vague consideration that never saw the light of day. But it never occurred to me that Jack and I would be talking about it.
I hated him for what he did to me. I tried to hate her, but it didn’t work. She was far too sweet and unassuming, even if she only talked to me because I was Jack’s friend. But secretly (at least I hoped it was a secret, for I don’t know how well I hid it), I was still hopelessly in love.
We became good friends, in spite of my desire not to go there. She confided in me, with things about her life and her relationship with Jack. Things she couldn’t tell him. I was enraged, because I hated the way he treated her. Dirt that you kick off your shoe at the front door.
But she used me to offset the dirt. She made our relationship a threesome of the most unwholesome kind. Jack was her physical lover and I was her emotional lover. I would have swapped with him in a painful heartbeat, careless of the consequences.
He knew how I felt, but didn’t give two shits. Nor did he attempt to make it easier for me. He was supposed to be my friend. I told him – repeatedly – how I felt about her, long before that fateful day in Ninth Grade. He barely listened, but he did proffer weak words of advice.
She’s wayyyy out of your league.
He stepped over my prostrate body to get his fix of arm candy, cavalierly, methodically and with prejudice. He did it without conscience, regret, or the simplest consideration for his best friend. Or for her.
Had he actually cared for her and treasured her above all else, I may’ve been able to understand, maybe even forgive. But he didn’t give a shit about her. It didn’t matter to him. He could have had any girl that he wanted, and he would have been just as content.
She was a prize, a trophy, something to be coveted. But coveted for personal gain only. She was a badge of accomplishment. That’s all she was to him. And as for me, he didn’t give a shit about the Guy Code.
The Guy Code. It’s the unwritten legislation that binds us to a code of ethics and dictates how we comport ourselves. The unspoken pact between males that governs how they treat their friends’ prospects, girlfriends and exes. The Rules of Conduct. The other Rules of Engagement, and no less important or serious than the Hippocratic Oath.
The Code dictates that Jack, by virtue of my expressed interest in Elizabeth, had to back off, QED. No questions asked. No doubts, no qualms, no gray area. The Code states that he’d have to approach me and say something like, ‘dude, she’s hot for my bod. But I’m not going there. Our friendship is too important. Just wanted to let you know.’ High-five.
Unless he initiated the ‘Above Board Clause.’ He could ask me to give him a pass. ‘Dude, I’m really sorry, but I like her. She likes me. She doesn’t like you. Are you okay with this? I’ll back off if you want me to.’ Handshake.
At that point, you have no choice but to grudgingly tell him to go for it. The ‘Above Board Clause’ is the male equivalent of the Catholic guilt trip. You don’t know what to do, but either way you feel like you’ve sinned.
The Rules of Engagement. However you approach it, you have to come forward with it. You can’t leave it unsaid. You have to tell your bud the way it is. The Code dictates that you bring it up once. That’s it. No questions asked. You move on and try to laugh about it. What you don’t do is recklessly piss all over the Code, and that’s exactly what he did.
Jack had no morals. For him, there was no Code. He didn’t care about that crap. It was fluff that got in the way of his ultimate goal: pure personal gratification. To get what he wanted, and to get it now. That was his only motive, and if he had to step over a few bodies to get it, he never lost any sleep.
Okay, I don’t think any guy has ever been totally clean on the Guy Code. I haven’t. It’s nothing to covet someone’s girlfriend or wife; to imagine what it would be like to have her. Or to do things to improve your status, when the both of you are interested in the same chick. Guys break the Code, repeatedly. And some do more than covet – they take. But that’s what separates the men from the assholes.
I have to admit it: I was as guilty as he was, by letting it slide. Why did I stay friends with him? Why didn’t I try to kick the living shit out of him? Why did I befriend Elizabeth? I’ve had a lot of time to ponder those questions.
I don’t have a satisfactory answer. The unsatisfactory one is similar to why Elizabeth stayed with Jack. His ineffable charm, popularity and magnetic personality. It drove me nuts. I hated it, and yet I remained his friend. I would end up paying for my stupidity.
So I was unlacing my skates. He had just told me something that cut so deeply, burned so intensely, and killed me so convincingly. And all I could say was, ‘yeah?’
What the FUCK?
A raging wildfire burned in my brain. The image of both of them naked together, Jack doing things to her that I only dreamed about doing, every night. I couldn’t go there. I fiercely fought it back – way back. I couldn’t think about it, couldn’t bear the excruciating agony which devoured my raw heart. Even today, I can’t let myself think of the two of them in carnal passionate embraces. I prayed that he was done, that it was enough for him state it. We could move on and talk about the game, school – anything else, for Christ’s sake.
But it wasn’t enoug
h. Even then, he didn’t care how intensely I felt for her. He didn’t give a shit that this would break my heart, again and again.
On a practical note, he didn’t even care how distasteful it was. Was he aware of the multiple conventions of good taste that he breached? If he wasn’t, he was a sociopath in every sense of the clinical definition. And if he was, he was the biggest asshole ever attached to a cock and two balls.
“Yeah.” Pulling off his jersey revealed his bare, muscled chest, sparsely populated with adolescent hair. “There was nothing to it. Dead fish. You figger the hotter they are, the better the fuck. Who would’ve thought?” I certainly wouldn’t have.
These mortifying exchanges should never be drawn out. I wondered how to end it while I rubbed a bruise on my right forearm. It was from a hit I took in the second period. I wished that I was back out there, getting repeatedly slammed into the boards. It would’ve been far less painful.
I focused on the silence of the locker room. Nearby showers echoed running water and teenage boys laughing. Comparing dick sizes – a hollow, vague reiteration of what Jack had just told me. Silently, I begged him to leave it there. Talk about anything else. I wanted it to end so that I could flee to the safety of my bedroom and deal with it in my own way.
But I knew he wouldn’t stop there, and God help me, I wasn’t wrong.
“You know what was cool though? It was pretty bloody.”
Ohmigod.
He chuckled and I suppose that he looked over at me. I wasn’t sure, because I stared at my skates. One on the floor, the other still on my left foot. They looked beat-up. Like me. Strange, considering they were practically new.
As hot relentless tears welled in my evasive eyes, I pulled the other skate off.
“Of all the virgins I’ve had, she was the worst. I thought she was yanking my chain. Guess I have to believe her now, huh?” He punched me in the shoulder and I imagined pummeling him until he was a bloody lump. My mind was a raging hurricane, and shocks, almost physical, seemed to flow in ululating waves. They crashed onto my forehead and over the top of my skull, receding at the base of my neck. I still looked at my skates. Boy’s cracking voices, not wanting to be drowned out by multiple streams of showering water, raised in laughing timbre with words rife with sexual innuendo. Words like ‘pussy,’ ‘cock,’ ‘slamming’ and ‘sucking.’
That was it. That was all I could take. Unsteadily, I pulled myself to my sock feet. Still wearing my jersey and hockey pants, I grabbed my shoes, skates and hockey bag.
“I gotta go.” I barely managed the words in hollow tinny vocals. The pounding of my heart and tormented mind made everything seem quiet, small and distant. Even though I walked, I crept. Before I made my escape Jack piped up yet again. And even though his new words were infinitely less damaging, they were nonetheless unwelcome.
“Wait! Let’s grab a burger.”
I paused. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t look at the source of the storm for fear it would whisk me away in its tornado.
“Nah. I’ll catch you later.”
I left before he could respond.
Chapter 4
I learned to live with the three of them: Jack, Elizabeth and the agony.
At first I considered getting as far away as possible. Disappearing in a way that wouldn’t make me the total asshole. Finding excuses not to be available. Sicknesses, family gatherings, the need to study – anything so I didn’t have to feel this way.
But that would only have spared me the truth, and not the reality.
The anger surges and when I quell it, it quickly subsides, like waves on a beach at high tide. The thought of the two of them having sex was anguish unabated. I didn’t have to wonder how often either, for Jack kept me posted. Blow-by-blow…Oh God, blow-by-blow.
Every Friday night was a nightmare of epic proportions, and every Saturday was a stroll through the molten-hot rivers of Hell. Multiple times and multiple orgasms.
Why Fridays and Saturdays? Well, while not exclusive, they are the given date nights. That’s when I was haunted the most.
It starts out as the mental image of touching through clothes. Hot breath, lips locking, tongues tasting and exploring. Then it quickly changes to nakedness. Two bodies exposed, skin touching, genitalia exposed to musky gasping air, swelling with heat and moisture. Panting and sweating becomes fingers inserting and caressing, palms gripping and stroking. Caressing becomes licking, stroking becomes sucking. I sweep my hands around my head as if I can swipe the images away like mosquitoes. If I close my eyes, it just becomes worse as my mind’s sight provides agonizing visuals.
And then, when it can’t possibly get any worse, it does. Excruciating images of Missionary, Doggy, Reverse Cowboy, Spooning, 69, Cunnilingus, Analingus…Fellatio. Ohmigod!
Thoughts of tasting, feeling, hearing; moans and groans of ecstasy that shattered me with every single thrust, were announced by mock shrieks that disguised themselves as pain and discomfort, when they were really cries of concupiscent bliss and decadence. Auditory torture that didn’t require my ears for sufferance.
Edible pangs of tastes that I didn’t know, but for descriptions from friends. ‘Smells like fish, tastes like chicken.’ Olfactory rage of smells and scents run over by sticky-musky sweet excretions. Globs and globs in convulsive thrusts. A seminal Molotov Cocktail.
Multiple times and multiple orgasms. The problem was, I didn’t know which orgasms tortured me more. His or hers.
You must be asking yourself: ‘how?’ How did I know what it was like? Hey, I may have been a virgin, but we were on the cusp of the Information Superhighway. Porn answered my questions far better than any Sex Ed class ever could.
It was all there, except for the smells and tastes. What I didn’t get – by virtue of their lack of imagination – from more experienced classmates, I found in graphic detail with a mouse and a modem. More than I ever bargained for too, for the grim truth lies in humanity’s unending predilection for things that most people can’t even conceive, and certainly can’t believe. Graphic images that only made my imaginings of Jack and Elizabeth out-of-control phantasms of things that I hoped she’d never do.
I know that if Jack had his way, the content on the Internet was to be his modern-day Kama Sutra. His guidebook to all the degenerate fantasies that are best left to black little pieces of the world. Dark dingy rooms in countries that suffer from the ravages of war and revolution. Willing victims by virtue of their society’s deterioration and financial decay. Another way to put bread on the table, for the price of enemas, double penetration, golden showers, scat and innumerable other horrors that are best left to a sick imagination.
I wanted to escape them. I wanted to scale the walls of my world, flee into the night and shiver in my soaking clothes. Run until there was nowhere left to run.
But I couldn’t, and I knew it.
Jack was my friend. Sure, he was a self-righteous asshole with a penchant for gratuitous self-promotion and no regard for anyone but Jack. True, he’d screw his own mother to get what he wanted. If it wasn’t for his ineffable charm, I’d challenge any one of you to spend five minutes with him. Yes, he screwed me royally with Elizabeth and never even acknowledged it. Even though he knew that I loved her.
He was my best friend. You probably think I’m the fucking idiot for saying that, but you have to understand the whole story before you start judging me. Believe me, he had his redeeming qualities. I just couldn’t remember what they were most days.
Then there was Elizabeth. The other reason I couldn’t just walk away. She was a glorious flower with a pure beauty and gentleness that made me fall in love over and over again, every time she walked into the room. She was pure, unblemished and almost totally uncorrupted.
I could blame Jack for whatever corruption possessed her soul.
She was incredibly kind to me. She was the faithful friend who would sit and listen to me ramble, without judging or criticizing. She made me laugh, and every moment that I was with her, I
felt good. I mean, really good, like a beautiful spring day that makes you stop to take a deep breath, smile, and rejoice while the sun hits your face.
She was thoughtful and caring. I watched her save a caterpillar’s life once, just before he was about to stomp on it. She ran over, butted Jack out of the way, and cupped the tiny creature in the palms of her soft gentle hands. She shot him an irritated look – one which would grow in fierceness over time – as she relocated the creature back to grass. He laughed and shook his head. Told her she needed to learn how the real world works.
She didn’t deserve Jack, nor did she deserve what he did to her. So as much as I wanted to – needed to – I couldn’t just abandon her. I sucked it up and dealt with it as best I could. Which wasn’t very well.
Time passed, and my primary coping mechanism became gradually-settling denial. I found ways to block him out. When Jack described their sexual encounters, I discovered ignorance by battling dragons and warriors in another world. While I fought beasts that should have been far more ferocious than his words, his voice swirled in my head with thoughts of writhing nakedness. I tried to think of anything but touches, tastes, sounds, smells and sights that punctuated a thousand lonely nights.
Sometimes it worked. But most of the time my settling denial was more like settling shovelfuls of dirt. Six-feet style. As he buried me, I turned to school in the hope that it would save me from the false God that I worshipped. Books and knowledge would become my savior. Understanding things that shape our minds and thoughts should be vindicating, right? The greater scope of life eclipses the here-and-now trivial. Nice theory, but it’s horseshit.
So did I learn anything at school? Sure. In Tenth Grade, I learned that Jack fucked her for the first time, that she was a virgin, and that she had a pet teenager named Malcolm. In Eleventh Grade, Jack gave me touches, tastes, sounds, smells and sights of their sexual exploits while Elizabeth sobbed on my shoulder. I learned that the demon which snarled at me had two faces, not one. Which one was going to devour me first was anybody’s guess. That’s what I learned in Eleventh Grade.
The House that Jack Built Page 3
