Mitchell Sunderland | December 20, 2012 - 9:45 am
Reblogged from: The Homo Life
Cut offs, tall socks, and Doc Martens is the uniform of any liberal arts gay.
Like most social interactions, my sexual assault started with a Facebook message. Sitting at my desk scrolling through Facebook because I had yet to develop a real social life at college, I received a message from the Boy—a boy I barely knew and still barely know.“Hey. Are you going to the dance tonight?” he asked me. I ignore messages from people I barely know. But most people who message me are girls, wannabe fag hags who assume I like to go shopping. The Boy was different. We had only met a few times, mostly at lesbians’ parties at our lesbian college; we were friends (on the internet). He was like every other gay boy I knew, an object to stare at. You see, I didn’t talk to boys back then. I touched them. I looked at them. They touched my body and looked at my hair. And that night, the precursor to my sexual harassment, I looked at the Boy on a computer screen. In his profiled pictures, he wore Hawaiian shirts in that oh-so-cool Brooklyn way, which is sexy to 19-year-old boys who just moved to New York—I responded to his message right away.“I might go to the dance,” I said. “Are you?”“I dunno.”“Let’s go.”“Yeah, let’s.”“I’ll see you in an hour. Kay?”
I logged off and tore off my clothes. I searched my closet, a glorified shelf, for a look that would lead to a boyfriend instead of another boring blowjob. In high school during my Blowjob Queen phase, I drove around in my car listening to the High School Musical 3 soundtrack dreaming about taking an imaginary gay boy to prom. Once I realized I had to take a bitchy South American girl as a prom date, I dreamed about a college boyfriend instead, but, of course, he never entered my life either. My first semester of college consisted of me chasing after my friend's Harvard boyfriend, whom I never even blew. At college I wasn’t even the Blowjob Queen. I was just a sad faggot nobody wanted—but the Boy could change that, I thought. He was cute and shopped at American Apparel; I was cute and shopped at American Apparel; it was a potential love. Tan skin and shiny shirts—mmm…yes, that’s my 19-year-old definition of love.
The Boy and I never danced that night (a flood destroyed the dance hall), but we met up a few nights later at his friend’s Chelsea apartment. I took the train from Bronxville, where I attend college in Westchester, to Manhattan. He met me outside his friend’s silver building. Instead of asking me about my day, he hugged me and said, “Hey.” I rubbed his hip; his ambivalence pleased me.
I followed him to his friend’s apartment. The apartment looked like all overpriced Chelsea apartments occupied by Parsons students: grey carpet better suited for a Hard Rock Hotel, a glass coffee table, a white couch, and a 20-year-old gay kid whose vintage floral print shirt made him look more like a piece of furniture than the studio’s tenant.
“Hey,” his friend said, as I walked into the apartment. “I’m Keith. You’re Mitchell, right?”
I nodded. Keith poured a glass of wine; the Boy took a seat next to his friend. I stood at the door, examining the way the Boy’s button down shirt pressed against his nipples and his blue jeans wrapped around his crotch.
“You can sit,” the Boy said, laughing because like a fat child waiting for a kickball captain to choose him, I was socially retarded. “You can drink wine.”
“Yeah, just drink,” Keith said. “Help yourself, man.”
I sat on the couch next to the Boy. He didn’t wrap his arm around me. He asked his friend about their old friends back in Los Angeles: where everyone’s parent is a movie star, a has-been, a movie star’s assistant, or a has been’s ex-assistant. I didn’t pay attention to his friend. The Boy spoke to him: He didn’t want his body.
“I recognize those heels!” the Boy said.
“I don’t hear any,” Keith said.
“Listen.” A pair of high heels clicked down the hallway toward the apartment; the friend sat up. “Heidi’s here!”
The door slammed open. A blonde girl walked in. She collapsed on the couch and flung her fur coat on the floor, her Mary Kate Olsen styled hippie dress splashing against my legs. Nobody introduced her to me. Nobody asked about me, but the Boy looked at me—everything was perfect.
An hour later the Boy stood up. “You want to head back to Bronxville?” he asked me. “Yeah, I’m down,” I said. He kissed Heidi on the cheek and then lifted his brown leather purse from the ground. “I’ll see you next week, Keith.” The friend kissed his cheek, the way platonic Europeans greet each other.
I followed the Boy out the building, trailing him instead of looking at his face or holding his hand. We walked a block, and then he received a phone call. “Fuck,” he said.
“What?”
“Bonnie’s calling me.” He picked up the phone. Bonnie screamed on the other line. He hung up. “I have to go,” he said. “She always does crazy shit. It’s usually nothing.”
“Well then she’ll be fine.”
“She’s an old friend. I’ve got to check in on her. Maybe another night?”
“Oh. Sure. Yeah. Totally. For sure. I like riding trains alone anyways. I can just listen to Cat Power and do my own thing.”
He pivoted and then headed down a deserted, quiet street in the gay city that allegedly never sleeps, as if he had never Facebook messaged me. His looks meant nothing…no they meant everything. Actually, no, he puts hags before fags. Fuck him. But then why did he talk to me? Why did he talk to me? I hate him. I hate him. I hate him. My mind span questions in circles, but I had no answers. On the train ride back to Bronxville, I slouched against the seat, Cat Power blasting on my iPod, accepting that he wasn’t my dream lover; he was just another Boy. But then he texted me.
“Bonnie’s fine!” he said. “She was just being crazy. I’m coming back to Bronxville. Want to meet up?”
I rang the Boy’s doorbell an hour later. He opened the door wearing the same outfit he wore at Jamie’s apartment, but I was not wearing denim cut offs and a Ron Jeremy t-shirt. He looked from Ron’s furry face to my pale, thin legs, and then smiled. I walked past him. “It’s better to look hot than feel cold,” I said. Finally, his look pumped confidence through my veins with the force of heroin traveling up Courtney Love’s arms. He laughed, grabbed my hand, and then led me to his room.
The Boy might suck cock, but he lived like a dirty heterosexual frat boy. Generic indie music posters covered his walls, and dirty underwear covered his floor; he sat on his bed, legs open, and then waited for me to lay down on his navy blue bed. I collapsed next to him, my head up against his wall. He passed me a pillow. “Be comfortable,” he said. I sank into the bed. A medley of faces stared at me from his wall: generic faces—blonde girls like Heidi swimming in pools and hip Asian girls you’d only find in L.A eating brunch—and several portraits of a tall white boy with glasses, a boy who looked unmistakably like me.
“Who’s that guy?” I asked.
“What guy?”
“That guy. The one there’s multiple pictures of.”
The Boy leaped up and tore the Polaroid's from the wall. “He’s just my ex,” he said, and then he opened his desk drawer and shoved the snapshots inside.
I’m just rebound. I’m just rebound. I’m just skinny, white boy rebound, a refrain repeated in my head. I need to leave. I need to leave. I need to leave. Then the Boy picked his laptop off the table and turned on a Cat Power song. “I want to be a good woman,” Chan Marshall sang. “And I want you to be a good man.” I moved my head from the pillow to his lap. He hummed the song. I closed my eyes. When I opened them I saw his eyes starring in mind. He placed the computer in front of me. “Watch this movie,” he said. After typing in some words into a search engine, a silent movie played. A clown walked up a building’s exterior wall. “This movie is old,” the Boy said, as if I couldn’t tell that, not that I mentioned to him that I could tell that. “And that’s old Los Angeles. It was a beautiful city. It still sort of is, despite all that superficial shit. You want a drink?” I looked away from the computer screen. He held a teacup full of vodka in front of my face. I smiled and slurped from the cup without thinking about possible repercussions. The Boy listened to folk music, watched silent movies, and wore Hawaiian shirts; he could never hurt me. The movie ended, and he turned Cat Power back on. I lifted my head and frenched him. He grabbed my shoulders and pushed me down on the bed.
With his laptop still laying next to us, he crouched over me, licking my neck. He rose to remove his clothes, and then he fell back down to tear off mine with his mouth. Afterwards, he kissed me, and I kissed him back. I licked his neck till I felt something smooth and clearly unwrapped go up my ass.
“OW!”
“Why are you squirming?” he asked.
“I’ve never bottomed,” I said. “I’m not into that. At least on a first date.” In reality I would never do that. Till last summer I was one of those gays that thought cum and shit don’t go together. I only participated in oral. After he pulled his tip out, I thanked him.
“No worries,” he said, and then he continued kissing me. A few seconds later another chip of dick slid into me.
“Stop squirming,” he whispered in my ear as if he was saying sexy talk in French.
I pushed him off me. I rolled over to my side toward the window. “I told you not to do that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s fine. It’s really fine.” I felt wanted. I wasn’t mad. “Just don’t do it again.”
He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck. I sighed out of relief. He just made a mistake, I thought. He thought I meant no in a flirty way. He wants me. His continuous attempts to fuck me are just a gay boy’s way of kissing another gay boy and saying, ‘I love you.’ He respects me now though. I can sleep here—forever. And then he poked the tip of his dick into my bum.
“I TOLD YOU, I’M NOT FUCKING DOING THAT! GET THE FUCK OFF ME!” I elbowed him and sat up on the bed. His head lay on the pillow, a blank expression on his face. “Do you need another shot?” he asked.
“I’m going to sleep,” I told him, without registering that he had just sexually assaulted me without a condom three times and then asked if I need more liquor, because I’m too worried he won’t want me now that I’ve rejected his sexual advances.
“Can we at least sleep naked?” he asked.
“Sure. Of course. Let’s cuddle naked.”
He wrapped his arms around me. I felt special. He shoved his dick up my ass because he wanted me, and all I wanted was a boy to want me. How couldn’t I be happier?
“Can we at least sixty-nine?
“I don’t go past first base with guys I like on the first date.”
“Oh come on.”
“I have rules.”
“It’s just oral.”
“Forget it! I’m going back home.” I rolled off the bed, picked my clothes off the ground, and started to get dressed. I knew what a first date blowjob led to: nowhere. He wanted nothing from me. He just wanted to get his dick wet.
“It’s cold out,” he pleaded. “You only have shorts.”
“I’d rather be cold than…”
I didn’t know what I’d rather be cold than. I knew I’d rather be with a boy than feel cold, but I wanted a boy to want more than just his cum inside me. But I couldn’t say that to the Boy, because he was a boy. You just don’t say that kind of stuff to boys out loud.
“I just have intimacy stuff,” I said. “Okay?”
He nodded. He rose from his bed and put on his boxers. He smiled at me—confidence pumped through my veins again. He smiled. He cares, I thought. He really cares about me. I smiled a bigger smiled back.
“Let’s hang out tomorrow,” I said. “Maybe…” I wasn’t sure what we might “maybe do,” but I said it anyways. “Maybe then.”
The next day, the Boy and I went on a date. We went for coffee at a independently owned coffee shop, as liberal arts students do, and then saw The King’s Speech. Throughout the date, he held my hand in one hand and his leather purse in the other. We barely spoke; we just looked at each other. I loved every second of it, and thought, after he walked me to the train because I had to go into the city for something, that I would see him again. But I never did. Okay, I did. I saw him at dances kissing other tall white boys, and when we walked past each other in a hall, we smiled. But we never spoke. For a while I blamed myself. I should have let him fuck me, I thought. If I would have just let him fuck me raw I would have a boyfriend right now—albeit a boyfriend I barely knew.
Then one day I spoke on the phone with my fag hag. She said her boyfriend raped her. He put his dick up her ass, after she told him to never ever attempt anal with her. Listening to her I wanted to offer her my sympathies, but I was too busy having a personal revelation. The Boy assaulted me (I’m still unsure whether to label what he did to me as rape), and I was so obsessed with wanting a boy, it took me eighteen months to realize a Boy had assaulted me.
I’m laughing as I write this because I was so unaware back then. The Boy never wanted me for my personality. I looked exactly like his ex-boyfriend, whose picture he kept on his wall. To him I was just a body, not even a person, and I can’t be mad at him for that.
Looking back, I know my sexual assault began years before the Boy met me. It began on the playground, when teachers lined the boys up against the fence, chose the two most athletic boys as captains, and ordered them to pick teammates for dodge ball. I remember in the third grade watching the muscular boys pick other muscular boys, followed by fat kids, till the only boys left were another feminine anorexic twig and me. Boys only liked me when I stood in the middle of the court letting them throw dodge balls at me, as they shouted weird jokes at one another. Boys never spoke to me, because since youth boys are solely judged off our bodies and masculinity.
Of course, the Boy looked at me as an object and assumed he could shove his dick up his ass. Of course, I loved when he assaulted me. That’s how boys are taught to treat each other. When boys start fucking one another, shit is bound to get fucked up.
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