CHAPTER 9: NEVER FORGIVE, NEVER FORGET

Chuck (1995)

One afternoon after school Chuck, Jimmy Jacobs, and I were all in the upstairs bedroom that Chuck and I shared. Mark's best friend, Ray, had been there too, but I remember he left just before all hell broke loose.  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, cocksucker,” 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, made some circles with the glass to get it mixed in good. It was about as far as I was willing to go to seek revenge against him, though even God knows, if there is any kind of god, that he deserved it and far worse. 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 had learned 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 any real men were larger than 6 inches. Anything under 6 inches was too 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 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. He was laughing raucously.  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.”

“I'm just north of seven,” 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. “'Cause 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 done 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 undone. 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 my spirit with those admissions and 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 knocked him backward into Jimmy. In the same motion I kicked back at Mark, and sent him sprawling off balance into the window blinds, which came down in the collision. 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, just itching to get into the act, 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 saw that my main measurement page was missing, so 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 it 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.

After she got home I had to deal with my mother’s wrath as well, since Jimmy and Mark had the time to 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.

I hate my mother.  You hear people say that, but I actually mean it.  She cared more for her Jesus than she ever did for anyone else.  Fucking religion!  I never call her, but she calls around holidays and always complains that I never call. Get a clue.  I left home the moment I could.  I was obligated a few times to visit at Christmas.  But aside from that I have estranged myself from them.  I haven't talked to Chuck in 20 years.  Fuck them!  It is possible to hate family members.  It happens.  And quite often I suspect, they deserve it.  

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.  

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.  Oh she loves him.  But less than Jesus.

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?  I haven't spoken to Chuck since I left home except during an obligatory Christmas home visit and a phone call where I confronted him about the shit he did back then.  He denied everything.    I don't ever plan to speak with him again.  

Nope, I have never forgiven Chuck.

And I never will.

MARK'S COMMENTARY:

I had always been fascinated with David and his junk.   Which is a weird thing, I know, to say about a brother, but I think we all have a fascination with the strange and different.  Even though he was my older brother his penis was much smaller than mine.  When he was soft his penis was retracted inside him so it looked like it was missing, just some foreskin showing above his nut sack.  Chuck, our older brother and I both have very similar dicks, though when we were kids, at least, his was bigger because he was older.  David was uncut, but Chuck and I had both been circumcised as babies.

Now as an adult I am bisexual.  I am not sure if I would have had any interest in men if it were not for my experiences as a child.  I have been told that sexual identity is genetic, but I don't know if I believe that.  At least not completely.  I think our sexual identifies may be shaped through our experiences too. 

I think we are affected not only by what happens to us personally, but also by what we see happening too.  When I was a kid, Chuck and David had a bedroom at the corner of the upstairs.  I had the room next door to them and we shared a bathroom.  We also shared a closet, in fact you could slide open the door on my side and walk through the closet between the clothes racks and walk into the other bedroom if there wasn't too much junk in the way.  This is important because that shared closet changed everything. 

One night I remember hearing a loud noise.  It almost sounded like a muffle scream or something and I heard Chuck tell David to "Shut up!"  My closet door was open, and so was theirs, which is probably why I was able to hear anything.  I went over to the closet and was able to get about halfway through before some of Chuck's boxes were blocking me, and I could see Chuck on top on David, pinning him to the bed with one hand over David's mouth.  David was face down on the bed and Chuck was fucking him with one hand reaching around to cover David's mouth.  I may have still been a kid but I knew what fucking was and this was fucking not wrestling.  Chuck was thrusting away at him like a rabbit and David was making little screams in his throat just about every thrust.

About that time where I could really see, David said something I couldn't hear and Chuck got off him and then sat down on his bed.  David got up slowly, crawled around Chuck, and knelt down in front of him, put his head between Chuck's legs and started to suck his cock.  Chuck had his hands on David's head and seemed to be guiding or controlling his head with them. Chuck's face was intense, it didn't look like he liked what was happening, but almost more like the same expression when you are working out, like straining.  David kept making these weird noises and these sort of glugging sounds too. After a few minutes I heard Chuck moaning, and then David started retching and his head pulled back far enough for him to toss his cookies onto Chuck crotch, stomach and chest.  He vomited all over Chuck, Chuck's bed, the floor, and all Chuck's stuff on the floor next to his bed.  It was bad.  Chuck started cussing, and I think he punched David.  I know he pushed him down on the floor.  Chuck went to the restroom and then downstairs to get a buck and mop to clean the room.  David sort of laid there in his own vomit for a few minutes before he got up and cleaned himself off and started to help clean the room.  I am pretty sure they did a load of laundry too while they got everything cleaned up.  After that I started to pay more attention to what was happening, and what I saw was that pretty much every night David was down between Chuck's legs sucking his dick.  Except for that one night, the first night, it was pretty different.  Chuck and David seemed to get along well.  I mean Chuck would rub David's hair afterward affectionately, and David would smile.  Chuck told David almost every time to remember that it was secret.  I knew that meant I wasn't supposed to know about it either.

David and I talked about this all later on and he remembers it differently than I do.  I remember watching Chuck fucking David a few more times than that, but David says it only happened that one time, and he said it was because Chuck was drunk.  There were a few times I saw Chuck wake David up so David would suck him.  But I also saw David go over to Chuck's bed while his brother was asleep and start sucking on his hard dick.  Chuck always woke up, but he never complained about it.  If David didn't want to do it, he wouldn't have gone over to start sucking hi dick while Chuck was asleep.  I mean two and two is four, right?  Chuck had a lot of stuff packed into the closet.  I had to rearrange things so I could get into the closet to see through the slats in the door when they had the door slid closed, but usually they left it open or at least part ways ajar.  One of the things I won't ever understand about my older brother is how he claims to "hate' homosexuals, and yet he was fucking David and getting blow jobs from him.  I know also that Chuck and Jimmy had sex a few times too, from what a friend of theirs later told me. Once I brought up the subject to Chuck, and he told me that one night he woke up to David sucking him off.  He said that it freaked him out.  I asked him why it kept happening and he told me that it was a family secret that our brother was a "cocksucker" and that he was afraid if he didn't let David suck his dick, David would go out looking for other guys and it would bring shame down on our family.  I remember he told me that after he left to go to college, I could expect David would probably want to start sucking mine.  I know both Chuck and David, and honestly I didn't believe Chuck's story even then, but I also didn't think David was quite the victim he portrays himself to be.  Police say that eyewitness statements are notoriously unreliable, even when they are intending to tell the truth, and so suspect the truth lies somewhere between their accounts. 

Here's something I can add to it though that makes me tend to lean toward David's side.  I remember one night when David was off at a camp and Chuck came to my room and sat on my bed one night for a while talking to me.  It felt kind of weird and there were a lot of pauses when it seemed like he was wanting to say or do something, but he ended up just going back to his room.  I do remember at some point he said, "I bet you haven't even started jacking off yet," which was a weird thing to say, and though I knew what jacking off was I played dumb, cause the conversation just sort of made me uncomfortable.  I think I was 12 maybe. I always thought he wanted to do something sexual that night, but he chickened out for some reason.  We never talked about it again.  But years later I did tell David about it.  I know that by the time Chuck left I think he actually hated David.  Maybe hate isn't the right word, but he clearly had a lot of negative feelings, and it showed up in every interaction.  Chuck talked to David with the same "attitude" he had towards our Dad.  That teenage attitude that tells everyone the teen wished he weren't related, that he has no respect, and that he wishes he came from a different family.  That kind of attitude.  Chuck was always closest to our Mom,  Still is.

I read a story that David wrote about me several years ago and again I remember it differently than he does.  Yes it is true that Jimmy and Chuck were provoking him, but honestly David always had a chip on his shoulder and it wasn't that hard to provoke him.  Jimmy had found David's "growth journal" under his mattress and was making fun of it.  Honestly who keeps a journal about how big their penis is growing.  Jesus!  Keeping a journal of something like that is just asking for trouble.  Someone is bound to find it.  How many stories have you heard about some girl getting her diary read.  Right?  But now we live in this transparent age where everyone posts everything they do, what they eat, when they go to a movie, when they take a dump, when they get home, who they fuck, so nothing is really private anymore.  David got mouthy and I remember Chuck telling him that even I had a bigger dick than his.  I didn't say it. Chuck did, but David turned to me and called me a "creep" and then I told him what Chuck said was true.  And it was.  My dick had been bigger than David's since I was, like, age eleven, and by the time he graduated from high school I was probably close to twice his length.  It was the one thing I could lord over him.  His grades were better than mine or Chuck's, and he did really well in track and swimming.  Kids teased him but he was never really a pariah.  He was on student counsel and you don't get to be on student counsel if everyone disrespects you.  He was oversensitive about it.  But to his credit, this was an issue for David because I know he got teased about it mercilessly.  That bullying even carried over to me because I was his younger brother.  I can't even count how many times I had to show my dick to prove I wasn't hung like LD.  When you have older brothers, their reputation gets smeared onto you to and you have to work harder to pave your own road.  I don't think it matters that much how big your dick is unless it's really small, then if your unlucky it's like a  "Scarlet Letter".  At least it was like that growing up where we were. Anyways, however it happened, David ended up on the floor which Chuck on top on him and after he had been so mouthy, Chuck had decided that David needed to sing a few choruses of "Uncle", and did make him admit to having a baby dick.  And I'm pretty sure I jumped in and made him admit mine was bigger than his too.  When we let him up he tried to punch Chuck and all hell broke loose.  I know Jimmy tore out a couple of pages from his "growth journal" and showed them around, so I knew it was one of those watersheds where it just got worse and worse for David once word got around.  I wish Jimmy hadn't done that, and honestly I didn't know he was going to.  Jimmy was always a vindictive son of a bitch.  Got even worse later on.  But he is safe behind bars now.

David and I are friends now, whatever differences we had as kids we have worked through.  Took a long time though.  I have told David several times that his obsession with penis size is just that, an obsession, and that his life would be better if he could just accept who he is and move on with life.  I think the main value of these stories he has written might be to show people just how much our actions affect other people.  I think that a lot of things we do, not even intending to be cruel, just joking even cab hurt people, and we didn't even know it.  I think that some people just can't take a joke, probably because the joke comes to close to pointing out a flaw that they have come to believe about themselves.

Emotional scars sometimes never heal any more than physical scars.  They may remain as scars for a lifetime.  Once when he had really pissed me off about something I carved "David has a 3 inch Dick" into a tree near the school.  I know people saw it. They can repaint over graffiti, but they leave any words carved into a tree.  That carving was there right up to the time they cleaned up the lot to build something--years and years.  Emotional scars are like that too.  They stick around until the person finally creates something new and positive to put in the place their scars were stored.  But once scars are formed, its too late to take them back.  All we can do is learn from the lessons in our lives.  I'm sorry now that I took it out on him.  But he also could be an asshole in his own way back then.  Still I shouldn't have.  He will never forgive me for it.  Not completely.

Author's Note: As you read these chapters, please leave comments.  I would truly appreciate your feedback.