YOU WERE SIXTEEN years old at the time. You were Sandro’s boyfriend, the mysterious person who had elicited such venom from Ethel. You arrived drunk after that awful swordfish dinner. Charles was cutting lines of cocaine on his glass-topped Herman Miller coffee table. I recognized you immediately. Your sexuality had been the subject of much gossip at Perdition when the restaurant was slow and we lounged in the waiters’ station, debating which celebrities were closeted. Rashad had always defended you, saying that your sensitivity was a testament to your talent and not an indication of your sexuality. I held the opposing view, eager to align you with the likes of Jackman and Cruise and Travolta, men whom our waitstaff had unanimously concluded were closeted. I suddenly wished Rashad was at the compound with me. I yearned for the warmth of his smile, the sharp staccato of his laugh. I wanted to run from this room, run off the property, run the length of Long Island to return to Rashad’s comforting embrace. Instead, I sat on the rug by Charles’s coffee table and drank my sixth Campari soda, attempting to hide my shock as you made your entrance.
You were Mace Miller, the child actor who had risen to fame thanks to an incredible performance in Sandro’s Academy Award–winning film version of The Plague, which had been produced by Charles, costumed by Ira, and adapted from his own stage play by Richard. You were on every list that year, every “Thirty Under Thirty” and “Twenty Under Twenty.” The press was eager to highlight your precocious abilities, your poise, and that fabulous behind-the-scenes wit. Sandro and Richard and Ira and Charles—your famous mentors who’d recognized your talents and championed your career—were a footnote in every article. “I owe them everything,” you insisted in the Times profile that had run earlier that year, a breathless work of journalistic fellatio that praised your performance in a highly anticipated Sundance indie and broke the news about your starring role in Sandro’s yet-to-be-filmed superhero blockbuster. You were, according to the cultural consensus of the day, unstoppable.
You were also kind of a dick.
“Save some for me, you whores,” you said in a lilting tenor, giving Charles a gentle kick as he railed another line from his seat on the white shag. Charles snatched your ankle and yanked you to the floor.
“Mean boys don’t deserve treats,” Charles growled as he violently wrestled you.
“Get off me,” you said, groaning.
“I win,” Charles shouted as he pinned you to the floor with brutal force. Tense laughter rippled through the room. Everyone chuckled except Sandro, whose eyes softened in lust as you disentangled yourself from the brawl and nestled in his sinewy embrace. Your smooth, pale face was ruddy from the fight. You gave Sandro a kiss, your plump lips consuming his thin grimace. The room fell silent, all of us watching as you climbed on top of him and straddled his lap. Your massive six-foot-four frame eclipsed Sandro’s, your body swollen with precocious muscle that felt incongruous with your cherubic and underage countenance. Your body was an adult’s, your face a child’s. On camera, it made sense. But in person, you were a jumble of incompatible parts.
You gyrated against Sandro, and the energy in the room shifted. Charles shuffled closer to me on the carpet. Richard pulled a waiter onto the couch. Ira’s hand stroked the crotch of his jeans. There was an inevitability in the air, a tension you cut by pointing at me.
“Who’s she,” you snarled.
“Jonah’s my new friend,” Richard said, massaging his waiter’s shoulders. “He’s staying with us for the summer.”
My head spun as you extended your hand. I was still sober enough to shake it but drunk enough to know that if I opened my mouth, my slurred speech would betray an embarrassing level of intoxication.
“Lovely to meet you,” you said unconvincingly and turned to Charles. “Where’d you find this one?”
“A gutter somewhere.” Charles laughed as he bellied up to the coffee table and snorted another line of cocaine. I felt sick. I gripped the shag’s soft tendrils, attempting to stop the room from spinning.
“Well, I hope she holds up.”
“Be nice,” Sandro snapped. “Only nice boys get to be superheroes, and your contract isn’t finalized yet.”
“I am being nice,” you mumbled, bravado deflated, acting—for the first time since arriving—like the teenager you were. Sandro leered as you shrank, and I understood the true reason Sandro had intervened on my behalf. He didn’t care if you were mean to me. He wanted to rob you of your adult pretensions. Expose the child underneath.
“Where’s Mrs. Danvers?” you said, pouting.
“She’s been let go,” Richard said, stone-faced. “We were worried she’d set the manor on fire.”
“But we’ve already found a potential replacement.” Charles grinned as he slapped me on the back. The slap took me by surprise—my muscles failed to respond in time, my body flew forward, and my head hit the corner of the coffee table.
“Are you all right?” Richard said with more annoyance than concern.
I nodded and the room went black.
Then: I was back, awake again, but the room was different. The three waiters circulated among us, wearing nothing but briefs, their tan physiques interchangeable. My body felt heavy; I was anchored to the shag, afraid to move. You ripped off your shirt, grabbed a small glass bottle from the marble kitchen island, poured a few drops into your drink, then passed the bottle to Richard, who sat on the couch stroking the bare thigh of a waiter. Richard took the bottle, dribbled the substance into his drink and the waiter’s, then passed it to Sandro, who, I suddenly realized, was crouched on the rug next to me, fully naked and wiping cocaine from his nostrils. He took the glass dropper, turned to me, and said, “G?” Before I could answer, a clear trickle of it hit the red surface of my drink and sank downward, sliding against half-melted ice cubes. Sandro took the glass and pressed it against my lips and poured the liquid into my mouth.
Black.
Then: Cold night air hit my naked body. I was standing over the pool. I didn’t remember taking my clothes off. I watched as Richard and the same waiter kissed in the pool and Sandro stood by the bar cart as you knelt in front of him and sucked his cock while another waiter ate his ass and Charles sat on the pool’s edge and masturbated. I couldn’t locate Ira. I stumbled back, fell onto a pool chair. I sat motionless for a minute, attempting to orient myself. A dripping penis hit my face. I looked up, and Ira forced himself in my mouth. Chlorine stung my throat.
Black.
Then: The jangle of Charles’s keys as the entire party stood naked and dripping outside the windowless steel structure.
Black.
Then: Inside. Concrete floors. Two sets of bunk beds. Three of the beds were disheveled, sheets carelessly mangled. The fourth was perfectly made, with severe hospital corners. Our nine naked bodies crushed together in the small space. In the center of the floor, there was a large metal hatch with a thick iron ring attached. A waiter grabbed the ring and lifted the hatch, his eyes dead, muscles straining. One by one, I watched as bodies sank into the floor.
I hesitated. You stayed behind, Mace, observing me with a kind stare.
“It’s okay,” you whispered. Your secret, childlike tenderness surfaced. “It’s a little strange at first. But it gets easier.”
You stroked my back with a cold, wet hand. I could barely stand, let alone speak. I swayed above the portal to the basement, unable to stop my eyes from rolling backward. In an instant, your expression snapped from kind to annoyed, and your demeanor returned to its guarded, condescending default.
“C’mon,” you snarled. “You knew what you signed up for.”
With you at my back, I made my way down the hatch. The cold metal stairs stung my feet. As I descended, I caught a glimpse of a single Nike shower sandal under the impeccably made bed.
It was Evan’s.
One of the shoes he’d worn every day. The sight of it made my stomach turn; I wondered where one could go and how far one could get wearing just a single shoe.
Black.
Then: A massive basement lit only by a dim red bulb. The men became silhouettes, difficult to distinguish from one another. Outlines of strange structures loomed in the dark.
Black.
Then: I was on my stomach, arms tied behind me, face against the cold concrete. You were in the same position next to me. My eye caught yours, but you were somewhere else. Tears slid down your expressionless face. The men took their turns.
Black.
Then: Someone carried me through the basement. My feet were numb, worthless. A scream sliced the air, stifled by thick, padded walls.
Black.
Then: I was floating, arms and legs looped through straps suspended from the ceiling, my back digging into a leather sling. Fear shot through me and I froze, my eyes fixed to the ceiling. Hands stroked my body, my dick, my face. I tasted the grime on their grips as they pried my mouth open and stuck their fingers inside, tasted the tang of sweat and chlorine and lube and sex and blood. I spat, suddenly wide awake, adrenaline hammering my temples.
“Stop,” I screamed but a hand flew over my mouth. Someone thrust himself inside me. A sharp pain ripped through my insides and I screamed again. My consciousness escaped my body, became one with my howl, and I was pure sound, echoing off the walls of the basement, rushing through the thick stench, soaring over the crush of bodies below. I was noise, I was air, I was nothing. I watched myself from above as men took turns in the dark. Their figures dissolved and divided until the room was a jumble of shadows. All I could think was, This isn’t happening, and that phrase lodged in my brain, This isn’t happening, and repeated, This-isn’t-happening-this-isn’t-happening-this-isn’t-happening, until it became a drone of meaningless syllables. I needed to leave this room and so I screamed again and rode my scream to the sky. My body was in that basement but I was up in space. I became a star, long dead but burning bright, searing through time toward oblivion, toward blackness, toward God. Yes, this was surely God’s work—but was He punishing me or saving me? Was He in the basement or in the sky? Or was He everywhere all at once? Was He the terror that surged through my body, the paralyzing awe? Was He death, was this death, was this when I would slip away forever into His embrace, the promise of love I stopped believing in when my father destroyed my faith, a faith that roared to life in this moment so that finally I found myself praying to God, praying He would deliver me from this horror?
I prayed for my life.
Then: He answered.
A stabbing pain brought my mind crashing back into my body. I was in the basement again. I looked up to see Charles thrusting into me, mania contorting his face. I struggled with my straps, slipped loose, and kicked him in the stomach. He gasped, stumbled, fell to the ground.
Time stopped.
Then: I ran. I ran as their hands clawed at my body. I ran to the stairs, climbed out of the basement and into the waiters’ quarters, and slammed the hatch behind me, catching someone’s fingers with a sick crack. I stumbled through the stuffy, windowless structure, opened its iron door, and burst into the wildflower field. It was dawn. A wet fog sent a shiver through my naked body. A strange sob bubbled in my throat and I began laughing and crying all at once.
I ran through the field, past the pool, along the gravel drive. As I ran, I thought of my parents, yearned for their embrace, longed for their love. I ran toward my memory of home, the place where I was safe from nightmares, where my mother tucked my VeggieTales quilt under my chin and banished the monsters from my room, offering an extra prayer to God as I drifted back to sleep. I would run until I reached home, until I could tell my mother that I’d seen God, that all my father’s fire and brimstone had been bullshit, that the Lord had not abandoned me because of my sexuality, that He had just saved my life. I would tell my mother that the Lord loved me. My beating heart was the only proof I needed.
And so I ran. I ran toward my mother, anticipating the moment we could reunite, rejoice, share the Good News of Christ’s love. She would take me in, heal my wounds, make me whole.
I ran. Coarse grass sliced my thighs, stones cut my feet, but I welcomed the pain. It was through this pain that I would emerge on the other side, safe. Resurrected. I reached the massive gate and leaned against the call box, bursting with relief.
And then I realized: I didn’t know the code.
Black.