Status: completed.
9:42pm, November 23, 2009.
9:42pm
Ask anybody, and they'll tell you it was just an every-day assault and battery. No witnesses, two assailants, no identities. Police will say that the knife they pulled on me and the punches they threw were the result rage and boredom.
"College kids," they'll say. Nothing out of the ordinary. Case closed.
But there was a raw kind of hatred held tight inside their fists, and the words they yelled were heavy with disgust and contempt. The name for it is a hate crime. But people keep their distance from a word like that—verbal HIV. Everyone knows what it was but no one will say it out loud.
There are cuts on my face from the concrete, broken ribs from their boots, and bruises on my wrists from where they held me down. And just so everyone knows why they did it—what I am, the word 'FAG' is written on the inside of my arm, so deep it took fifty-two stitches in the muscle and seventy-five in the skin to mend it. So deep my right hand won't close because of damage.
Records show campus police received an anonymous call made from an emergency phone at 9:42pm on November 23, 2009. The caller was male, and remains unidentified. According to the records and logs, I reached the nearest hospital forty-seven minutes later, still unconscious and bleeding.
The concussion keeps the whole night in a fog—keeps me from remembering any details. Instead of faces, I see shadows beneath baseball caps and a day's worth of stubble. Instead of colors I see varying shades of gray.
What I do remember is the word "faggot," the way they spat it out and hurled it at as if it were a rock. I remember the sound of their shoes slapping hard against the ground.
I remember running.
A wall. Jumping. I remember biting down hard on the scream that exploded from my gut when I landed. The sick pop my ankle made as it buckled against the concrete.
I remember the stars.
They found me lying in the fetal position at the base of the wall. Already crying like a coward. Begging. Pleading.
After that there's black. All I have are indications of what happened next. The internal injuries, the shattered ribs, the handprints on my throat, the x-rays that show my left carpals, ulna and radius in pieces, the taste of blood that won't leave my mouth, the stitches.
The nightmares...
It's been five weeks.
"College kids," they'll say. Nothing out of the ordinary. Case closed.
But there was a raw kind of hatred held tight inside their fists, and the words they yelled were heavy with disgust and contempt. The name for it is a hate crime. But people keep their distance from a word like that—verbal HIV. Everyone knows what it was but no one will say it out loud.
There are cuts on my face from the concrete, broken ribs from their boots, and bruises on my wrists from where they held me down. And just so everyone knows why they did it—what I am, the word 'FAG' is written on the inside of my arm, so deep it took fifty-two stitches in the muscle and seventy-five in the skin to mend it. So deep my right hand won't close because of damage.
Records show campus police received an anonymous call made from an emergency phone at 9:42pm on November 23, 2009. The caller was male, and remains unidentified. According to the records and logs, I reached the nearest hospital forty-seven minutes later, still unconscious and bleeding.
The concussion keeps the whole night in a fog—keeps me from remembering any details. Instead of faces, I see shadows beneath baseball caps and a day's worth of stubble. Instead of colors I see varying shades of gray.
What I do remember is the word "faggot," the way they spat it out and hurled it at as if it were a rock. I remember the sound of their shoes slapping hard against the ground.
I remember running.
A wall. Jumping. I remember biting down hard on the scream that exploded from my gut when I landed. The sick pop my ankle made as it buckled against the concrete.
I remember the stars.
They found me lying in the fetal position at the base of the wall. Already crying like a coward. Begging. Pleading.
After that there's black. All I have are indications of what happened next. The internal injuries, the shattered ribs, the handprints on my throat, the x-rays that show my left carpals, ulna and radius in pieces, the taste of blood that won't leave my mouth, the stitches.
The nightmares...
It's been five weeks.
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