Chapter Nineteen

 

 

 

Jacob

 

Julian told me to wait for him near the big hermaphrodite, and I knew exactly where he meant. Centennial Park has this weird sculpture left over from when Atlanta had the Olympics. It was called Androgyny World, or something like that, and it was supposed to represent a perfect fusion of male and female. I never really got it. It always reminded me of the animated cheering section in Wii ping-pong, those weird little legless dudes in the crowd who get all bouncy when you make a particularly good shot. But it was in a nice part of the park, away from all the kids at the fountains.

It was a perfect fall day. The leaves hadn’t turned yet, but the air felt different. Cleaner, finally, after all that summer heaviness. I lay down a few yards away from the hermaphrodite. I could feel the warmth of the ground. The sky was the kind of blue you see in a cartoon. Squirrels were all around, doing the kinds of things that squirrels do.

I was surprised that Julian had called me. He was the last person I expected to hear from, given how much he’d seemed to hate it when I showed up at his apartment. I had been thinking about him a lot since then. Something about him had taken hold of me, some sense that maybe we had something in common. Maybe we could understand each other. I guess you could say I was looking for some understanding. I was looking for some help.

I must have dozed off for a bit, because next I knew, Julian was lying beside me, his presence so strong that it woke me up. I turned my head to get a better view of him, to see if he was asleep, but his eyes were wide open, staring at the sky.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” I asked.

“You looked so peaceful. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Not long,” he said. “Maybe fifteen minutes.”

I felt like I should sit up, shake myself out of sleep, but I didn’t want to lose this sudden and surprising intimacy. It felt good to be lying beside him, not talking. So I just watched his chest rise and fall with his breathing, and I waited.

After a while he spoke.

“What did your father do to you?” he asked, still staring up at the sky.

So, this was going to be one of those conversations where it’s easier not to look at each other, to pretend, instead, that you’re simply talking to yourself while lying on the warm ground on a fall day.

For a moment, I considered the standard evasive tactics, answering his question with a question—“What do you mean?” or “Why do you ask?”—or simple refusal—“Nothing,” or “I don’t want to talk about it.” But here, lying beside me, might be the only person who could really get it.

“It’s not so much what he did to me,” I began, “but what we did together. I get how weird this sounds, but at first, it was a welcome change from how bad he was at being a father. He was so awkward. I remember when I first went to live with them, my mom seemed immediately cool. She was comfortable with everything and didn’t have to work at it. We just hit it off. But the Reverend, he was different. He was following some sort of owner’s manual that he had in his head—How to Be the Perfect Father. Nothing was ever natural or easy. I mean, he was making all the right moves, telling me he loved me, wanting to throw the ball with me, but all of it felt performed. Awkward and fake. The older I got, the worse it got. Just being in the same room with me seemed to freak him out.

“I don’t know where he got the idea, but that’s when the holding started. We were watching TV on the couch in the basement—his man cave, he called it—and my mom was out somewhere, probably at one of her church-lady parties. I could tell he was working his courage up for something, but I didn’t know what. He reached over and put his arm around my shoulder. His touch was so tentative, like he was afraid of being rejected. My first response was to move away, to shake him off me, but I let his arm stay there, so light, so nervous. After a few minutes, I leaned into him just a little bit. And it was nice. It felt right. This was what fathers and sons did. This was the kind of stuff you see in the movies. This was normal. And when he pulled me into his lap, that was normal too.

“It’s important that you understand this,” I said, looking over at Julian, who kept staring up at the sky. “I wanted this. I remember what it was like to have him look into my eyes in that moment, something he had never done before. I remember his hand was warm and comforting on my chest. And when I felt him under me, that was normal too.

“Anyway, this got to be a pretty regular thing, and gradually the rules changed. He told me to take my shirt off, and I did. He told me I’d be more comfortable without my pants on, and he was right. He said it wasn’t fair that only one of us was naked, so that changed too. I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t like that. At least not at first. He told me how beautiful I was, and it felt so good when he rubbed me all over. This was what I had wanted without even knowing it.

“I knew it was wrong. I did. Sometimes I’d tell myself that it was over, that it would never happen again, and I’d invent reasons not to go down there with him. I thought about how my mom would feel if she knew, and I hated myself. But I always went back. Yeah, it was wrong, but everything was wrong. I was wrong, deep down inside. And the Reverend was wrong. So much was wrong that nothing mattered anymore.

“The more I went down there, the more I wanted. That was the problem. It wasn’t him, it was me. I wanted too much. I didn’t know what I wanted, exactly, but I knew that what we were doing wasn’t enough. One night as he was stroking me, I rolled over and put my mouth on him. You’d have thought I’d bitten him. He threw me off the couch onto the floor, and he jumped up. He called me every name you could imagine. He said that I was sick, and that the Lord would punish me. He grabbed his clothes, and he walked out, leaving me on the floor, naked and crying. That was it. He never held me again. He never laid a finger on me after that. So you see, it was my fault. I was the one who broke the rules, who went too far. I was the sick one. Not him.”

I looked over at Julian. He was still staring up at the sky, but his face had changed. His jaw seemed different, harder somehow.

“How old were you when all of this happened?” he asked.

“It started when I was about eleven, I guess. Ended when I was almost fourteen. I remember, because that last time was a week before my fourteenth birthday. It was so weird, his response. I mean, we had done other stuff. As soon as I was able, he always had a towel handy. I was like a fountain. But putting my mouth on him changed everything. And I don’t understand it. I mean, what really changed? What we had together—that feeling—where did it go?”

Julian sat up and turned toward me, but for a while he didn’t say anything. He just looked at me, and it made my scalp itch.

“Guess where I’ve been,” he said.

“Where?”

“Your dad’s church,” he said. Instantly, I felt weird, like I might puke. I sat up, hoping the change of position would help.

“Why were you there?”

“I wanted to talk to your dad. I wanted to see him.”

“And did you?”

“Oh yeah. I definitely saw him. I saw your mom too.”

“You better not have said anything to her.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, “we didn’t actually talk.”

“And my dad?”

“Well, that was a bit more involved.”

“What do you mean?”

“We ran into each other in the men’s room, and he took me into a stall and sucked my dick. Then he said that if I ever came near him again, he’d kill me. He seemed especially pissed off when I mentioned that I knew you.”

I leaped to my feet. I wanted to kick him, I wanted to hurt him, but instead I turned and walked away. I was crying now, and I didn’t want him to see. I didn’t want him to see how angry I was either. He called my name, but I didn’t turn around. I just kept going. He caught up with me near the hermaphrodite, grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around.

“Wait,” he said. “We need to talk about this.”

“Why did you tell me that?” I cried.

“Because you need to know who your father really is, Jacob. You need to see him—like, really see him. I’m sorry if that hurts you, but you have to understand. Your father is an asshole. He’s a really bad man. He hurts people. He hurt me. He hurt that Neil kid. And he hurt you. He hurt you most of all. None of what happened between the two of you was your fault. He made you do those things.”

“No, he didn’t,” I said. “He didn’t make me want him.”

“You’re right. That’s you. That’s who you are. But at least you can admit it. He can’t.”

I turned away from him. I needed to think, and I needed to stop crying. He left me alone for a minute. But when my head started to clear, all I could see was Julian and the Reverend in that bathroom stall. The Reverend on his knees. Julian’s dick in his mouth. It was too much to see, but I couldn’t shut it out. I kept seeing it.

That was when I was finally able to hate the Reverend. Not because he had betrayed my mom and me. Not because of the stuff Julian wanted me to believe about him. No, in that moment, I hated him because that should have been me in that stall with him, not Julian. That should have been me that the Reverend wanted, that the Reverend was willing to get down on his knees for.

But it wasn’t just that. It was worse. I also wanted to be the one down on my knees with Julian in my mouth. I wanted to be the one who could make Julian feel like that.

I turned back toward Julian, dry-eyed and angry.

“Stay away from him,” I said. “My mom too. I don’t want you anywhere near either of them.”

Then I turned and walked away.