Under Construction

Under Construction

One afternoon after school Chuck, Jimmy Jacobs, and I were all in the upstairs bedroom that Chuck and I shared. I had been playing a video game, and Chuck and Jimmy more or less took it over from me. I was watching them take turns playing.

At some point during the game Chuck made the comment, “Go get us something to drink, faggot,” and then asked Jimmy what he wanted.

“Don’t call me that,” I said. Chuck more or less ignored my protest and told me he wanted a root beer. Jimmy wanted an orange soda. I was accustomed to Chuck making comments about me, but usually it happened more or less in private. But there was something about the times he hung out with Jimmy that seemed to exacerbate his sadistic tendencies.

Begrudgingly I went on down the stairs to the kitchen and poured both of them drinks. I poured the root beer over ice into a large plastic cup for Chuck, who by now had stomped on my last nerve as far as I was concerned, and then spit in the drink. It was about as far as I was willing to go to seek revenge against him, though even God knows, if there is a god, that he deserved it and far more. Then I poured a drink for Jimmy and one for myself and carried them back upstairs.

By the time I got into my room, they were both laughing, and by the sound of their laughter—that Beavis and Butthead kind of laugh, mean spirited with tinged with ridicule—I guessed something was up.

Chuck was showing him pornographic photos I had collected from the internet and saved to the computer. I had hid them in a file where I did not expect he would find them where I’d saved them on a floppy disk, like we still used in the 90’s, but he did.

“Looks like faggot to me,” Jimmy said, tapping on the monitor with one finger touch one of the photos.

They both laughed. My face was burning. Chuck opened up another photo, this one of Antonio Contrelle, a well muscled, hairy-chested man with an uncut dick that had been scanned from a Playgirl magazine. He was one of my favorite models growing up. Watching the two jerks rifling through my porn collection was beyond embarrassing. First, my interest in men was more or less confirmed—something I had not even confided to Chuck or Mark, let along anyone outside of my family. I was shocked beyond words that my elder brother was outing me to his friend before I had even fully come to the conclusion that my interest in men actually meant I was gay.

“Tell me about it,” Chuck answered Jimmy, and added, “I have to share a room with it!”

“He jerks off to these guys?” Jimmy asked, “I thought you said he was dickless.”

“He is.” Chuck then got up and came over toward me. I was sitting on the bottom bunk of the bunk beds, though I usually sleep on the top bunk. Chuck shoved me to one side roughly and then reached up under the mattress of the top bunk and pulled out my notebook that I kept under the mattress.

I actually said, “Fuck” I think. If it was possible for an added layer of heat to wash through my already reddened skin, the idea that Chuck had my notebook and was about to show it to someone was beyond endurance. I made a grab for it, but he eluded my efforts and quickly tossed to notebook to Jimmy while he wrestled me down onto the bottom bunk, anticipating that I would be going after it to stop Jimmy from reading it.

I was angry enough at this point that my efforts to get free of Jimmy were not just feigned. I was using every ounce of my strength to stop him from doing what he was trying to do, not realizing the damage was already done, Jimmy had the notebook open and was reading through it. He took out the 6 inch rules I had in the notebook to use as a book mark, and then suddenly dropped it like he’d touched something with cooties. He burst out laughing. It was an explosive belly laugh. The kind of laugh someone who doesn’t give a fuck about anyone’s feelings would do.

Jimmy understood what was in that book. I was furious, and my efforts transitions from trying to get away to trying to punch my brother’s ugly face. But Jimmy, ever the star athlete, had be defeated in just about every arena I might try to compete with him in, including wrestling.

Jimmy was reading my “growth diary”, something that Chuck had actually encouraged me to keep. Chuck knew about my small penis. I had done everything I could think of to change it, from kegels, to stretching, to supplements I had saved up for, to even swallowing Chuck’s semen, which he asserted would introduce more mature testosterone into my system and help my growth. But despite the fact that I was tall for my age my penis was not even close to four inches, and that was bent down at its longest measurement. I would later learn that bending it down and measuring was incorrect, that the proper way was straight out perpendicular to my body which gave me a hair over three.  By age 15 I should be at least 4.5 and closing in on 5 inches.  I was a long way from those measurements.

I had also noted some of the supplements I had purchased, and some of the techniques I was trying to achieve more normal penis length. By that age I had discovered that there was some variation in length from day to day. Chuck had suggested I measure it first thing in the morning when I had morning wood. Those were my best measurements. Even though he’d suggested it, and even though we shared a room, I still tried to be discrete, which I thought I had accomplished. It wasn’t something we talked about. I knew I had to get that book away from them and struggled even harder. We ended up on the floor.

Jimmy did an internet search and announced that by age 13 most boys were at least 3.4 inches in length. Though then he and Chuck argued about that when the same site also said that most men only measure between 5.5 and 6 inches. Both agreed that most boys were larger than what the site indicated and that certainly men were larger than 6 inches. Anything under 6 inches was small. Chuck was still holding me down, basically sitting on top of me, impervious to the occasional punches I was landing when I managed to get an arm free.

Into the middle of this debacle came my younger brother Mark. He came practically bouncing into the room curious about what all the hubbub was about. Jimmy with all the tact of a feral cat, asked him how big his dick was, and Mark, of course, went quite looking at Jimmy and trying to figure out if he was being pranked.

“You’re 13 aren’t you?” Jimmy said to Mark, who nodded. “Says here that your dick should be at least 3.4 inches long by now.”

Mark hesitated, then went for it, saying “It’s longer!”

“How long?” Jimmy asked.

I was really struggling to get out of the situation with Chuck so he wasn’t much involved n the conversation, but then Chuck always had a talent of starting shit and then letting it play out.

“Four,”Mark said tentatively, still a bit worried that these guys had set him up for something.

Jimmy laughed again, and at first Mark blushed, thinking Jimmy was laughing at him, but then Jimmy said, “Well you’re a full inch longer than Davy then.” Then Mark laughed, at least at first probably relieved that the joke was on me and not him.

“Your brother keeps a dick diary,” Jimmy said, laughing, and showed Mark the notebook. Mark went over to the desk and started reading my notes and measurements. Never write anything down that you do not want someone to find out. If you don’t keep a secret in your head it is destined to be discovered.

By this time I was crying. The embarrassment had transformed into anger and then embarrassment again. I could not ever remember the kind of humiliation I was feeling. I had long had a feeling of shame associated with the fact I was sucking off Chuck (at his behest), but it was secret, in fact he swore me to secrecy about that. Chuck had teased me about my size enough that Mark already had heard some of it and knew I had a little dick, but no measurements had ever been thrown around before.

Mark saw me on the floor struggling with Chuck and edged around between me and the bed to squat down close to my head and started to help Chuck restraint my arms. He got one of my arms above my head and put his knees onto my arm which hurt like fuck and successfully pinned that arm so that Chuck was much more easily managing to keep me down.

“Is he crying?” Jimmy asked from the computer desk.

I was breathing real heavy from all the efforts, and thought a couple of times I was about to throw up from the exertion. Then Mark, sensing the gist of the conversation, leaned down and said in a singsong voice that teenage bullies eventually master, “I have a bigger dick that you.”

“No,”I growled trying for all the world to stop this, fighting against the fact that it was happening. This was maybe the first time I can remember where I was actively rejecting that this was happening. In a weird way I kept thinking if I could escape this grapple that I would come back to find out it had never happened, that the cat was still safely in the bag.

“I have a bigger dick, Davy.” Mark sneered at me like brothers do when they won some competition and want to grind you down. But then he went a direction I wasn’t expecting, “I’m your big brother.”

The other guys in the room laughed at Mark’s attempt to lord his size over me. I was in a world of shit.

“How big are you,” Jimmy asked Chuck, as if their casual conversation were not being interrupted by my efforts to break free.

“Six and a half,” Chuck said, then continued, “close to seven.”

“Same here,” Jimmy confirmed.

“Say it,” Mark continued.

“What,”I said, but it came out all mumbly and garbled in my efforts to get my arms free .

“Call me ‘big brother’,” Mark said. “I’m bigger.”

“I hate you,” I said looking at Chuck, but I meant it equally for Mark. I spit in Chuck’s face when he got close enough during our tussle. Chuck grabbed a t-shirt from the floor and shoved it over my face. Then put one hand down. It stopped me from spitting, but it was also making it damned hard to breath. Nothing I was doing was helping.

“I’m bigger.” Mark chanted over several more times, “admit it.”

Chuck joined in, “You better admit it.” We’re not gonna let you up until you do.”

Mark quickly added, “I’m gonna take your dick diary to school and show everyone.”

He could have stabbed me with a knife and twisted it. Or drawn a gun and pointed it at me. Ether would have had the same effect of knocking me dead in my tracks. Nothing I was doing was helping. Nothing. Every protest, ever action had just made things worse with these guys.

I stopped struggling.

But I didn’t stop crying.

If anything the waterworks really broke. Sometimes that happens when you are totally defeated, when you realize that there is nothing that you can do, that the bad guys have won and that you are a loser and there is nothing else the fuck you can do except be a loser and accept defeat. But I kept clinging to the thought that there was no way those words could come out of my mouth, no way could I call Mark “Big brother.”

I thought of the book, 1984, and wondered if my illiterate younger brother had any idea was “big brother” actually meant.

I was actively sobbing while my two brothers held me down.

Mark leaned over my face and I could see his face upside down hover over me now. There was no expression of empathy, only a haughty look of victory. “Say‘Mark has a bigger dick.’”

I had never do well with the “Say, ‘Uncle’” routine. Chuck had used that on me a few times in the past, and though on at least two occasions I had broken down (in pain from him twisting my arm), on more occasions he just got bored and gave up. But Mark in many ways was meaner that Chuck. He certainly carried a grudge as we’d all discovered. He would keep his word and take my diary to school to show off. Unless I could get it away from him.

“Say it.” Mark repeated.

I mumbled in the sweaty t-shirt Chuck was pressing tight against my mouth. Even if I wanted to talk I couldn’t, not with the t-shirt and Chuck’s hand holding my mouth shut.

Chuck leaned over me and said, “I’m going to move my hand away. If you spit on me again, I promise you will regret it in ways you cannot even imagine.”

Then he pulled the towel off my face.

I lay there breathing and coughing. Trying to stop the tears and reclaim any dignity I might have ever had while being restrained by my brothers.

“Say it.” Mark said, again, this time more forcefully.

I decided that nothing I had been doing had helped and I was just fighting the inevitable, that there was nothing to do, nowhere to go except to submit to them. To give them what they wanted. But some part of me was still resisting, knowing that on some level, something inside me would die, and that nothing would ever be the same again. Not ever. I kept trying to say it, I know my mouth moved, but I was horse and couldn’t seem to get the words or sounds to come out.

Then I managed to choke out, “Mark… has…” I started it, faltering, but then the waterworks started up again. Still through my sobs I managed to blunder through, “a bigger dick.”

“Damn right I do!” Mark said, accepting his victory over me.

“And who is your big brother?” Mark demanded.

“You are.”

“And who has a teeny weenie baby dick?” Mark asked. He was being mean. Rubbing it into my face. Everything I had done had just pissed them off so now they were making it even harder.

“I…do.” I barely choked out before my sobs choked off any possibility of further speech.

I was humiliated. They had wrestled every shred of dignity I had from me. Chuck said, “That’s enough,” and patted my chest and pulled his weight off me to let me up.

I’m sure they thought they had destroyed any fight left in me with the humiliation they had forced on me. But as I got up and tried to get some feeling back into the arm Mark had been sitting on with his knees, the idea that they needed to pay a price for their victory struck me, and I spun and swung and punched Chuck squarely in the right eye with everything I had. It was the one and only time I ever punched my older brother. It was a dangerous thing to do, but I had already lost everything so I did it. The punch connected solidly and he’d not been expecting it, so it knocking him backward toward Jimmy. In the same motion then kicked back at Mark, and sent him sprawling off balance into the window blinds. I’d aimed to kick him in the nuts but got him in the stomach, kicking the wind out of him, but that’s about it.

Chuck charged, tackling me to the ground and started pounding my face and upper body with his fists until Jimmy pulled him off me. I screamed out in pain as he landed a blow to my nose, and grabbed my nose. My nose was bleeding as Chuck followed up with a kick to my crotch taking all the fight out of me. I still managed to avoid some of his blows but at this point I was no longer attacking, just trying to keep myself from getting maimed. As much of an asshole as Jimmy could be, he wasn’t going to watch his best friend kill his younger brother. By the time Jimmy pulled him off me he’d blackened both my eyes and busted my nose. I was bleeding from my nose like a stuck pig.

By the time Jimmy had Chuck pulled away from me, Mark charged at me and landed a kick in my ribs before I grabbed his foot and twisted it, dropping him to the floor, about the only move I ever learned to do well from practicing with my cousins.

Jimmy said, “I think you better leave,” and he was right, even though it was my own room in my own house. I started for the door, but then, amazingly, had the presence of mind to grab my notebook off the desk and take it with me. I screamed back at my brothers how much I hated them and that I would never forgive them, as I ran to the restroom that was right next to our bedroom and locked the door. Before I even dealt with my nose or anything I ripped the pages out of it, tore them up and flushed them down the toilet, uncaring it the notebook paper made a clog somewhere, I just wanted then gone. That notebook had caused enough problems!

I made a mess all over the bathroom floor, and had to clean up my own blood off the floor and the sink. I would have taken a shower, but I kept half expecting Chuck to charge into the room at any moment. After that I ran down the stairs and left looking for a quiet place to lick my wounds. That place ended up being a tree house in our back yard where I didn’t think anyone would think to look for me.

By the time I got home I had to deal with my mother’s wrath as well, since by that time Jimmy and Mark had conspired to give her an account of our brawl that painted me as the bad guy. All she asked me was who through the first punch, and I had to admit that “I did.” In her philosophy the person to throw the first punch was the perpetrator of the crime. She had no notion that a human being could be goaded into fighting to protect himself. Mom went on and on, asking God to help her, and perseverating on “How could you hurt your little brother,” which inadvertently made me snort, given the context of everything that had led up to that moment, which of course she completely misinterpreted. She grounded us all, but grounded me longest. I punished her, and them, with silence by taking my love away. It was the only thing I had left in my arsenal. And it was true. From that point forward she was a parent I had to obey until I could graduate from high school and get the hell away from her, my fucked up brothers and my whole fucked up family. She still has Chuck, her golden boy, her first born, to comfort her. 

Rereading that paragraph, the anger came out more than I was expecting. Hardly surprising though. Even years later. Can you tell I never forgave them?

And I never will.

It was a day that started a downward spiral of humiliation for me. Not something I could ever recover from. We are as scarred by psychological trauma as by any physical injury. And the scars can be seen. You can read them in the words of this story, even if you can’t see them on my skin. I believe that emotional scars are far worse than wounds since wounds do heal naturally, given time, the body heals itself. But the scars of the mind remain with you forever. Even if you forgive, which is very hard to do, you never forget.

Under Construction

Under Construction

Under Construction

Under Construction

Under Construction