Lent Novel, part 1
3 March 2015 04:32![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amulMassive trigger warning.
I'm writing a novel for Lent, because November is a shite time to write a novel for me. I had this great idea for a sci-fi near future dystopian thing, but then....well, this came out instead.
The names and details have been changed enough to qualify as fiction. Please don't try to break the reality boundary I'm setting up here. It's probably a TOU violation for you to do so.
If this one triggers you, you definitely don't want to read what's going to come out next.
---- BEGIN STORY ----
This was long ago. This was last night. This has been, all along. But don’t worry, you can tell yourself this is all just fiction.
I ran into one of my old college buddies on Messenger last night, Baker The Unstoppable Sex Machine. BUSM, for short. He told me that our friend, PigBoy, has been accused of four sexual assaults in the last year, and then had a psychotic break when BUSM confronted him about them. BUSM, Gator and Froggie had to restrain him and had him committed to Western Psych. Apparently, PigBoy hasn’t forgiven any of them, and now none of them will take the 41C Crosstown anymore for fear of running into him. I mean, it’s not as big a deal for Froggie now that she’s with Carpenter (Their kids are in high school now! Can you imagine?) but Gator is still living at The Tenement, so where’s he going to go without the 41C?
I know, I know. You’re thinking, “Well, what did you expect, from a guy named PigBoy?” And I just don’t know anymore, maybe there’s some kind of truth in that, visible with the clarity of hindsight, that had escaped me in my twenties.
Back then, we told ourselves that we were creating a safe space. Rape, and party rape in particular, was a big concern for me back then. Ever since Kelly Vandenhalt, my freshman year. I mean, fuck, the only reason Kelly even hung out with me, when you think about it, was because she got raped at that Delta Pao party earlier that month.
What? I thought I told you about that. The night she showed up to my dorm room and asked if I she could borrow a shirt? I talked her into a cup of decaf and let her warm up under my comforter while I finished some essay, and then she fell asleep on my bed so I spent all night catching up on homework and walked her back to Chatham College the next morning. Why the fuck do you think she needed to borrow the shirt? Why did you think I made such a big deal out of how honored I was that she spent the night? Fuck, you never listen.
Anyway, my point is that about a month later, she told me the whole story and for once in my goddamned life a girl didn’t swear me to secrecy after confiding in me about a fucking atrocity committed against her, and after that, anytime anybody asked me for help throwing a party, I came with a set of rules.
Baker loved it. Baker, and Chairman Meow, and Gwen, they made it a point of pride, that any party they threw at The Tenenment, I’d be there and that I was so obsessively concerned about that kind of thing. So I don’t know. It’s my fault somehow. I got lax. I moved away.
It’s not like we didn’t all know he’s had anger issues since he got out of the army. I mean, I only have Statler’s word for it that he was calmer before he enlisted, and Statler’s basically been an alcoholic as long as Waldorf has been.. I didn’t know the guy before then. We all knew he had anger issues. And it’s not like Froggie or Marie were ever shy about telling us what he was like in bed. Fuck, you think about the way Pig and Marie were when they were together, and it’s not….it’s not really all that surprising that he’s been raping girls under our goddamn noses for god only knows how long.
No. I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t ask because I don’t fucking live there anymore and I don’t want to play that game again, second guessing myself through a thousand old memories, the way I did when Roo told me about Wolfe.
I just don’t understand. I was so fucking vigilant back then, and now it turns out at least two of my friends from those days at The Tenement are serial rapists. I dunno. Maybe PigBoy didn’t start until after I moved away. Maybe that’ll somehow make it less painful to deal with some day.
And since I don’t have details about this shit with Pigboy, I keep thinking about Wolfe.
I don’t know if I ever told you about that. Roo told me. She swore me to secrecy. They always swear me to secrecy. I mean, I understand. All the guilt and the shame, and the last thing you want to do is create more commotion. They tell themselves that they’ll heal better if they can sweep it all under the rug, but if just one of them had told us, I would have believed her. I mean, I could have fucking told her that it doesn't work like that, that I've got decades of proof that lying to yourself about what happened doesn't make it any better, but I couldn't tell her that. I was sworn to secrecy. It wasn't my story to tell.
Anyway, I can tell you now. After it all came out, I asked Roo to add her voice, and she wouldn’t, but she said that I could tell her story.
She told me when she came to visit me after I moved to Chicago. It was like six months after I moved, less than a year after my divorce. I’d kept in touch with her, a part of me still wanted to try things with her, even though I felt bad about putting her in the middle of all that crap. It was her idea. I think she wanted something no-strings, but all I had to offer back then was strings.
We pretty much went straight from the airport to my bed…..
----END OF FILE ----
That's about 900 words. About 41,000 more to come. Constructive critique welcomed.
I'm writing a novel for Lent, because November is a shite time to write a novel for me. I had this great idea for a sci-fi near future dystopian thing, but then....well, this came out instead.
The names and details have been changed enough to qualify as fiction. Please don't try to break the reality boundary I'm setting up here. It's probably a TOU violation for you to do so.
If this one triggers you, you definitely don't want to read what's going to come out next.
---- BEGIN STORY ----
This was long ago. This was last night. This has been, all along. But don’t worry, you can tell yourself this is all just fiction.
I ran into one of my old college buddies on Messenger last night, Baker The Unstoppable Sex Machine. BUSM, for short. He told me that our friend, PigBoy, has been accused of four sexual assaults in the last year, and then had a psychotic break when BUSM confronted him about them. BUSM, Gator and Froggie had to restrain him and had him committed to Western Psych. Apparently, PigBoy hasn’t forgiven any of them, and now none of them will take the 41C Crosstown anymore for fear of running into him. I mean, it’s not as big a deal for Froggie now that she’s with Carpenter (Their kids are in high school now! Can you imagine?) but Gator is still living at The Tenement, so where’s he going to go without the 41C?
I know, I know. You’re thinking, “Well, what did you expect, from a guy named PigBoy?” And I just don’t know anymore, maybe there’s some kind of truth in that, visible with the clarity of hindsight, that had escaped me in my twenties.
Back then, we told ourselves that we were creating a safe space. Rape, and party rape in particular, was a big concern for me back then. Ever since Kelly Vandenhalt, my freshman year. I mean, fuck, the only reason Kelly even hung out with me, when you think about it, was because she got raped at that Delta Pao party earlier that month.
What? I thought I told you about that. The night she showed up to my dorm room and asked if I she could borrow a shirt? I talked her into a cup of decaf and let her warm up under my comforter while I finished some essay, and then she fell asleep on my bed so I spent all night catching up on homework and walked her back to Chatham College the next morning. Why the fuck do you think she needed to borrow the shirt? Why did you think I made such a big deal out of how honored I was that she spent the night? Fuck, you never listen.
Anyway, my point is that about a month later, she told me the whole story and for once in my goddamned life a girl didn’t swear me to secrecy after confiding in me about a fucking atrocity committed against her, and after that, anytime anybody asked me for help throwing a party, I came with a set of rules.
Baker loved it. Baker, and Chairman Meow, and Gwen, they made it a point of pride, that any party they threw at The Tenenment, I’d be there and that I was so obsessively concerned about that kind of thing. So I don’t know. It’s my fault somehow. I got lax. I moved away.
It’s not like we didn’t all know he’s had anger issues since he got out of the army. I mean, I only have Statler’s word for it that he was calmer before he enlisted, and Statler’s basically been an alcoholic as long as Waldorf has been.. I didn’t know the guy before then. We all knew he had anger issues. And it’s not like Froggie or Marie were ever shy about telling us what he was like in bed. Fuck, you think about the way Pig and Marie were when they were together, and it’s not….it’s not really all that surprising that he’s been raping girls under our goddamn noses for god only knows how long.
No. I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t ask because I don’t fucking live there anymore and I don’t want to play that game again, second guessing myself through a thousand old memories, the way I did when Roo told me about Wolfe.
I just don’t understand. I was so fucking vigilant back then, and now it turns out at least two of my friends from those days at The Tenement are serial rapists. I dunno. Maybe PigBoy didn’t start until after I moved away. Maybe that’ll somehow make it less painful to deal with some day.
And since I don’t have details about this shit with Pigboy, I keep thinking about Wolfe.
I don’t know if I ever told you about that. Roo told me. She swore me to secrecy. They always swear me to secrecy. I mean, I understand. All the guilt and the shame, and the last thing you want to do is create more commotion. They tell themselves that they’ll heal better if they can sweep it all under the rug, but if just one of them had told us, I would have believed her. I mean, I could have fucking told her that it doesn't work like that, that I've got decades of proof that lying to yourself about what happened doesn't make it any better, but I couldn't tell her that. I was sworn to secrecy. It wasn't my story to tell.
Anyway, I can tell you now. After it all came out, I asked Roo to add her voice, and she wouldn’t, but she said that I could tell her story.
She told me when she came to visit me after I moved to Chicago. It was like six months after I moved, less than a year after my divorce. I’d kept in touch with her, a part of me still wanted to try things with her, even though I felt bad about putting her in the middle of all that crap. It was her idea. I think she wanted something no-strings, but all I had to offer back then was strings.
We pretty much went straight from the airport to my bed…..
----END OF FILE ----
That's about 900 words. About 41,000 more to come. Constructive critique welcomed.