Killing Me Slowly
by William King
I was trapped in the grotty living room of a basement flat, dark enough to be a dungeon. The worn out furniture looked like it came third hand from a charity shop, or car boot sale. The man was probably old enough to be my dad. Easily thirty-five, maybe forty, and I'd gone there willingly.
Yeah, it's hard to believe, but he'd arranged to meet me on Sunday, with some bullshit story about going for a drink. "I liked beer, didn't I?" That's what he'd asked when he picked me up in the street. In fucking broad daylight, I was waiting to cross. He caught me off guard, of course he did, who the hell expects that?
"Do I live round here? What am I doing? How old are you? You got a girlfriend? What's your name?" By the time he got to that last question, I was ready. "It's Michael," I lied. "Well, Michael. I could meet you here next Sunday? I'll take you for a beer." That's when he said, "You like beer, don't you?"
"Yes, sure," I replied, when I'd only taken one sip of a beer in my life. Bitter! I didn't like it at all. But it's what men do, isn't it? Drink beer. And I was definitely a man, no longer a boy. That's bollocks, you know that, he probably knew that as well. Sure he did. He knew what he was doing, he was a manipulator, he knew what I would say before I knew it myself.
"See you here next Sunday then, two o'clock." That's the last thing he said, then he was gone. I wonder if he even cared whether I'd be there or not. A fifty fifty chance maybe. But I was there, and don't ask me why. I can't tell you, even though I knew what it was all about. I'm not naive. Stupid maybe. Irresponsible, that too. Why did I go through with it?
He's standing there in that dark underground living room. Standing looking at me. The door's locked. I saw him turn the key, take it out of the keyhole and pocket it. Yes, I was scared. Wouldn't you be?
"Take your clothes off," he said matter of factly. Just as if he'd asked me to sit down, or if I'd like a cup of tea.
I didn't move. I was frozen to the spot. I knew I should do what he said, but I was frightened and embarrassed.
He waited, watching me. "Keep your pants on. But take the rest off." His tone was the same, just as though it was all perfectly normal. It wasn't. I knew that. So did he.
Frankie, I guess you would say was my best friend. We'd known each other since around seven years old. We were nearly always together. In and out of each other's houses. He lived just down the road. I had other friends of course, Robbie, Sean, Ishmael, Kyrie, Ali, but Frankie was the one who I'd known the longest.
Frankie and I used to play together, hang out, and talk about everything. Everything except sex. We never ever talked about sex. Which was fine. Fine until I got to be thirteen years old. The summer of my thirteenth year my parents sold our house and we moved out into the suburbs. Not so far away that I couldn't get back to visit. Around an hour on my bike. Thing is it was still a long way, with no guarantee that he would be there, or that any of the others would be home.
That summer was lonely. It was the summer I found out about myself. I never planned it like that. It just happened on my way to see Frankie, waiting to cross the street. I knew nothing much about sex, this was 1971. The world then would be difficult for someone born later to imagine, things have changed so much.
I reached puberty, my body was changing. I found I liked the feeling of having a hard cock, something which happened quite a lot. It made me smile to think that when I was around nine years old I'd told my mother it was so annoying to have my willy stick out, that I wanted to chop it off.
I'd always liked boys, that's even before I ever heard the word homosexual. Why did I like boys? Was it because I got told off by Gillian's mum for catching and kissing her in a game of kiss chase? Was it because I never really knew my dad? Maybe it was because I spent all my childhood with my mother and grandmother?
It didn't really matter why. I knew I was different. I learned to masturbate from 'The Little Red School Book' and I thought about boys, looked at pictures of men or boys, when I did it. Preferably pictures when the men or boys had no or very little clothing on.
I wanted to explore and play around with another boy, but that was very difficult to know how to do. When I was ten years old, Sean, he was seven at the time, told us about two brothers who lived next to his aunt. Not far away, the same neighbourhood, almost. Well he said they would pay half-a-crown if you let them stick their cock in your arse. I'm sure it was true, I don't think Sean would have done it, but who knows? He once stood stark naked in the window at the front of his house when we dared him.
Thing is it made me think about it, sex. Sex with a boy, or a man, what would you do? How would you do it? Would it hurt? I mean, if someone stuck their cock in your arse, would it hurt? I thought it wouldn't be bad to meet someone older who could teach me. It's terrible when you don't know, it's terrible when the only thing you know is you're different. It was only reading that book that I found out I wasn't the only one like this. Maybe it was alright so long as you never told anyone, never got found out. They did after all ban that book and it was only a couple of years since it became legal for two men to have sex, if they were twenty-one.
I think about it a lot. More and more. I blame myself. I could have walked away. But, I didn't. Sure, I got over it. Maybe. I'm not sure. I was innocent, but not so innocent. I was looking. Not for that. Not for what happened. Nobody would look for that.
That dark grotty basement. I can see the pattern on the worn out carpet he made me kneel on. I don't spend too long thinking about it, but I can see that carpet. Not his face. That's all a blur. It's done. Gone. Water under the bridge. I can't think about it anymore. Faded memories. Fuck it!
Voting
This story is part of the 2018-2019 story challenge "Recovery". The other stories may be found at the challenge home page. Please read them, too. The voting period of 4 January to 25 January 2019 is when the voting is open. This story may be rated, below, against a set of criteria, and may be rated against other stories on the challenge home page.
This challenge is to write a story based on the recovery of one or more of the cast from a dark place. There is no picture. Instead we are looking for tales which are able to paint a dark word picture and show recovery and hope.
Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.
[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]
* Some browsers may require a right click instead
