Note: I'm going out on a limb writing from this perspective, so feel free to criticize my obvious lack of experience...
My friends and I would walk past his house almost everyday after school, possibly out of curiousity, but we just ended up pointing fingers and giggling about the young boy that lived there. Well, maybe it is best that the story tell itself...
Helena, Dites (pronounced die-tees) and myself, which obviously my friends refer to me by my name, Angelan -- I know it seems like an odd name, but my mother was dead set on the name Angela, and my dad was totally against such a common name. So they agreed that they would modify the name very slightly, and thus here I am, Angelan. Me an my friends are about thirteen right now, actually I'm fourteen, and Helena and Dites are thirteen. We are currently part of the in group at our school, which considering our age this group can manage to change on a weekly basis. It is so much fun to be able to put myself above everybody around me, I am after all the most intelligent person in the class, and the teacher, Mrs. Marshal, always tells me as such. Sure the boys do pick on me a lot, and in turn my two friends, but I'm getting to an age where I don't seem to mind the attention. Occasionally I find myself attempting to flirt with the cute ones, but I imagine how pathetic we must really sound, being so young and all. However it is a little better than kicking them in the shins.
Anyways, more about all of that as it is really required, and a bit more about me for now. I have an older brother, Lorenz, again my father with the wish to have a unique name truncated this already nice name, which my mother I think picked because it sounds "cool". It is often difficult to tell in my family who the mature ones are. Me an my brother get along very well, he is quite a few years older than me and is quite a bit more knowledgable and has experienced a lot more than me. He is the outgoing type that everybody can get along with and everybody wants to be friends with, particularily the girls, he always adds that when he speaks about himself, but I never really before knew what it meant, now I simply don't appreciate it. He has however had the same girlfriend, Monique, for a long time and is very faithful to her, and despite all his wit and wisecracks about almost everything, never says the slightest ill word about her. I think that she compensates for his personality by being a very timid and reserved person. Of course most of what I'm saying is only a collection of words gathered from TV and magazines, but hell, I'm only fourteen, I'm not supposed to know what I'm talking about yet.
My dad works somewhere, yes, that is it, he works somewhere. Maybe someday he'll actually tell us what he does. I'm sure that he has told my brother, but for some reason they won't tell me yet. I think they may believe that since I'm a girl I wouldn't understand, so I always get these silly notions that he is a male stripper or something, which would actually be really cool, but on the same hand would be kind of disgusting... yuck, images I don't need are coming to my head so I'll ramble about something else.
And of course my mother, not to exclude my favorite fuzzy dog, but that is all that he is, a small fuzzy dog that is spoiled more than you can possibly imagine. But anyways, about my mom, she is looking good considering her age, and again I'm just pulling these words from mass media that I continually feed myself and do enjoy devouring. I should really stop reading such garbage, but I can't break the cycle of teenage consumption of crap media that tells us about what we can expect in the years to come as we start dating and having these urges -- just once I'd like for a magazine to just tell me what these urges are. Actually I should clarify that the girl magazines like to use words like feelings and emotions, but when I glimpse at what the boys are reading I see words like urges and desires, seems to me like they're the ones that are going to have the fun at our expense. Err, so yeah, that's about all I have to say about my mother.
Friday afternoon was always a prime time for the three of us to make our way to this boys house and taunt him. We didn't really decide that it was something we should do, but everybody else in our class at one time or another, quite frequently on a regular basis, would go and make fun of this boy. "Hey dummy, you seem all alone, did your friends leave because you were so boring?" Helena always laughs as she lets out the cruel and unrelenting comments. She egged me on to say something, but I'm just not good at being mean, I want to be, seeing how much attention Helena gets for doing it, so I manage to force out, "hey, you'd be pretty cute, if you were a girl". I laugh at what I think is a fairly clever line. Dites runs up to the boy and grabs the toy truck that he is playing with and throws it into the nearby thorny bushes. The boy starts to cry and runs back into his house.
We dance about the lawn in victory, giggling very loud and making more cruel remarks about the boy. We then walked back to Dites house in order to sit in her basement room, that is always cool on a hot summer day. Today was the day the new issue of Sassy came out, and this month has a feature about the perfect wedding. Reading further I realize that it is actually a series thing and this month is about the perfect man. The exercise presented to us was to think of our perfect husband.
Helena, never short for words, started first, "He will be tall, handsome, and strong. He will be a lawyer or a doctor, or a really big hunk of a football player." She giggles, "he will hinge on every word that I say, and blah blah blah" It is really unimportant when she gets on a role, and I tune myself out and continue to hear her say nothing for the next twenty minutes or so.
Dites picks up after Helena returns from the washroom, probably the only thing that stopped her speaking, "I'm going to find a rich man and he is going to travel around the world with me, taking me everywhere that is nice." I think that Dites is even worse than Helena, as she takes the next half hour basically describing her version of utopia with prince charming being her favorite darling.
I suppose that since I really brought up the issue I have to say something. I feel a little different about the subject, possibly because I'm a little older, so I say, "I just want to find a man that will love me unconditionally, through goods times and bad times. The rest seems rather unimportant to me." Both of them start laughing and making stupid comments, at least until I roll up the magazine and start hitting them with it.
So that is the way it is, this pattern of abuse and ridicule of the young boy continues for a couple years. We continue to read those silly magazines and do all the rating of our boyfriends, prospective mates, and of course nothing is complete without the almost twisted communal self-breast examination. On that note I should probably mention that we are a little older now and those silly notions of feelings and boys urges are beginning to become more apparent and stronger within us.
I am however beginning to grow apart from Helena and Dites, as they continue to frollick as carefree children, likely acquiring more diseases than I care to mention, I am growing into a responsible person, at least in my own mind. My brother is keeping a very close watch over me, but would never actaully interfere with what I am doing, as if to give me the opportunity to screw up, which is what I am about to do.
There is this guy named Mark in my class, he has always been very nice to me, and we ended up dating for the past several months. This week he asked me over to his place to watch a movie. I heard through the grapevine that his parents were out of town, and I don't really understand what significance that has, due to naivity I'm sure. I show up at his house sometime after seven and he invites me it. He is the same Mark I've always known, very friendly and hospitible. We cuddle together on the large sofa, something I'm sure I enjoyed more than he did as he would always try to get his hands free to change the channel or something. About half way through the movie he wriggles to get his hands free, and sure enough he grabs the bowl of popcorn and begins indulging. He sets the bowl back on the coffee table and returns his attention back to me and the movie. However he places his hands somewhere I don't feel comfortable with. I don't know what to do, I'm scared and think that it is just an accident and he will realize that and be very embarassed. I am wrong, he continues to move his hands about my body and I freeze. I just sit there and let him take advantage of me, up until he gets a little to bold. I jump from the sofa and run out of the house crying.
Being such a common path to take I find myself running beside the boys house, the one we made fun of. The sun was still in the process of setting, and the young boy, who quite intriguingly hadn't really changed at all in appearance over the past few years, is outside just bouncing a ball against the side of the house. I can't help but to stand and watch him, I'm still crying and in a fret, but there is just something so compelling, and it is the first time I don't say something rude.
The boy turns around and looks at me, I'm positive that he is going to take this opportunity to make fun of me, and he rightly should. Very much to my surprise, without too much pause he walks up to me and hugs me, lets go, then goes back to bouncing his ball against the house. Strangely I feel a lot better, and with the faintest of voices I get out "thank you." I didn't think he heard me, but he turns and smiles then continues to play with the ball.
I make my way back home, I avoid making eye contact with any of my family because then I'll have to explain why I am crying. I simply go to my bedroom and sit at the side of my bed contemplating what has just happened. To some degree those magazines I read had some truthful knowledge about Mark, but nothing I had ever read was able to explain anything about that young boy who just hugged me. We would every week make fun of him, taunt him, and make it miserable for him to live. And after all of this he seemed to have no ill feelings towards me. I just can't comprehend what had just transpired, but somehow I knew that next week would be very much different because of it.
My now worthless friends offered me little support in dealing with the Mark issue, and Mark was going about bragging about the whole thing. It very much left me feeling like shit, and in between classes I just find a place to sit and cry to myself.
Friday arrives, and not to my surprise Helena and Dites, now with a very large enterage go to the boys house and harass him some more. This Friday I stand in the background and simply observe, I know I should do something but I don't know what. It is very apparent now that the boy has suffered as much as he can, for he no longers cries or runs away, he simply stands there doing whatever it was he was doing before they all showed up. And if they take away his toys, he just stands there, never saying anything or showing any kind of emotion.
The large group disperses and the boy is just left standing there, coincidentally he is starting directly at me. Through this whole affair I did nothing, simply watched him suffer. I walk towards him, not knowing what I am going to say, but I feel I have to say something. I end up just standing in front of him starting at him, unable to say anything. He reaches out and grabs my hand and leads me into his house.
To my surprise there is nobody else in the house, and it appears as though he lives alone, which can't be right. He sits me on a couch and brings me a glass a lemonade. I have a chance to glimpse at some of the pictures in the living room, there he is standing beside somebody who could very well be his brother, but as his brother grows older he simply stays the same. There are pictures of this one I'm assuming to be his brother, getting married, and that is about where the pictures end.
He catches me staring at the pictures and takes my hand in his. He carefully begins to explain, "Yes, that is me in all of those pictures." In a manner and eloquence unbefitting of what I believe to be his young age he continues, "you see, I was born with this disease, and I won't get any older, I may grow a little, but nothing significant." I could only but stare into his eyes in disbelief.
"I am so sorry that I always bug you," my attempts to apologize we quickly thwarted, for as he sees the tears well up in my eyes he embraces me tightly and speaks softly in my ear, "don't worry, it is expected."
"I see that you noticed the pictures of my brother at his wedding." He takes the picture off the wall and places it in my hands. "They used to live here with me, they never thought anything less of me, and she welcomed me into her heart as much as she did my brother." Seeing that I was about to ask the obvious question of where they are now he replied to my silent inquiry, "they were caught in a hurricane last year and unfortunately never made it out."
I could see that he was withholding tears so I put my arms around him, I wish that I could offer him something, but I knew now that he was several years older than me, and had much more life experience than had I. We had this bond form between us almost immediately, and forever forward my life was changing rapidly because of him.
Another week passes and I find myself at his place again. He asks me to tell him about my experiences growing up, and despite I know how hard it will be for him to hear, I try to recount everything that is happening to me, and those around me. I'm sure he cries openly when I leave his house, and I urge him to know that it is alright to cry on my shoulder and that things will be alright.
As I grow older though, now nineteen, gone through many boyfriends and now with somebody that I really care about, I realize that things will not be alright for this boy, who I eventually discovered his name to be John. John is however very pleased to see me every week, and even encourages me to bring over my friends sometime. I was unfortunate that now I have no real friends and am really just getting by with my boyfriend.
As I grow together with my new found love, it begins to wear down on John as I tell him more and more about my life. As he approaches thirty and looks not a day over fifteen, I can't help but wonder what he is thinking about me, and what his life would be like if he weren't suffering as such. It has grown very apparent to me that everything I am taking for granted is not present in his life, while his brain has fully matured, his body has not followed. He will never be able to have a family, and will never be accepted into any real profession considering what he looks like.
I often sit alone at night now and cry over the whole situation, and consider all those times I would make fun of him, not realizing how bad his situation really was. It now all seems so funny, but I realize that I never really had the chance to apologize to him, so I quickly run over to his house.
When I knock on the door there is no answer, so I casually let myself in, as I have done so much before. I call out his name, but there is no answer. I suddenly get very scared that something may have happened to him, so I frantically search about the house. I enter his bedroom and see him lying silently on the bed. I casually approach and notice a note on a table beside his bed, it reads, "if I could have loved you I'm sure I would have". Tears come to me, but somehow I feel somewhat happy for him, now he may be relieved of his burden, and I bend over and kiss him, softly speaking, "rest peacefully, my love."