American Royalty

I remember wanting to cover my ears and block out what sounded like an animal in pain but it was more important to squish my little sister against me and prevent her from hearing our mother die. I did it for Christian, my life was already fucked over but hers wasn’t and let me tell you, watching your mother die on the floor with a bullet wound in her head was something that would haunt you forever.

Even on my best days it haunts me. It takes a large amount of alcohol and controlled substances to shut off my mind from the monsters that lurk in every corner. My dad thought talking to someone would help me get over my mother’s suicide, it would be the answer but all it did was bring out more questions. It’s said that the mind blocks off traumatic experiences that it’ll completely forget it ever happened. My therapist thought that my mind was doing that, and that my mother might have been letting men sexually abuse me for money.

I told her that was a crazy idea because my mother was an amazing women, she just had a rough patch. Sometimes people have rough patches, but you fix them up and send them on their way and they get better. My mom had a lot of rough patches but I’d fix her up and she’d be on her way, only this time I was tired of fixing her up and that’s why she shot herself in my living room, and that’s why I didn’t forget it, that’s why my mind hasn’t blocked it out because it’s my own fault.

I don’t know where that therapist came off from anyway, accusing me of being sexually abused. Now it’s all I can think about, and for hours I’ll sit in my bed and try to jog memories that never happened. Not only will the sound of the gun live in me forever but also the idea that I was raped without my knowing.

There’s only one person that knows all this and that’s Samson. But it’s not one-way because I know about him too. I know everything about Samson. I know that his parents don’t accept him for who he is, they live in the dark pretending their son dates girls, and dreams about the twat. It’s pretty fucked up what his parents do to him but I guess it could be worse, they could try to send him to get ‘fixed’ like you would with your dog, or they could disown him. So it could be worse. But is that ever really comforting? I fucking hate when people say it could be worse. Yeah it could be worse but its not, it is what it fucking is and if I want to mope about it I’m damn well entitled to it.

And sometimes I like to compare Sam’s and my own situation and try to figure out who has it more fucked up. The majority of the time I win, because while he does endure day to day torture from his homophobic peers, I endure night to night torture from memories that may or may not have happened (I’m not too sure anymore because my ex-therapist got this idea in my head I might’ve been raped and now sometimes I sit there and concoct this dreams and pretend they’re real). And while his parents may treat him like something he’s not, and completely ignore the fact he comes home battered and bruised, my dad completely ignored the fact my mother was unstable and instead left us, and she killed herself and has scarred me forever.

And if our lives aren’t fucked up enough, I happen to be in love with Samson in a way that isn’t friendly, or brotherly but rather the way where I’d like to spend my life with him forever, and he’s gay and he wants a boy that he can love the way I love him, and sometimes like right now, we sleep together and not like in the car before school but in the back seat, horizontal with no clothes on, and I feel something coming together inside and also falling apart because I know I shouldn’t love Samson like I do and I know that him sleeping with me the way he does isn’t fair to me.

Although I don’t agree with it, I’m going to have to say that it could be worse though. At least I have Samson in my life, because I could be alone. I couldn’t imagine living this life alone. I’m not going to lie and say he’s the reason I get up in the morning or that I dream about him every night because while I may love him like I’ve never really loved anyone else I know I don’t love him in the way that I have to be at his side at every moment, or constantly depend on him. I don’t like to have to depend on anyone, you have no idea how easy it is to loose someone that you depend on. It’s like your feet got knocked out form under you, you don’t expect it to happen and before you can stop yourself from falling to pieces you already have.

But maybe you do know how that is, I may be underestimating you. Maybe you know how it feels to love someone that doesn’t love you the same way and maybe you were raped once at a party or something, and maybe you’re gay and nobody accepts for who you are. You could be just like me, or just like Samson, or any other fuck up at my school. You could be popular and fake, or a loner, or a geek, or anything. Either way it’s going to suck, no matter what anyone else says. I’m convinced it’s always going to suck.

A knock at the door made my thoughts die abruptly, and I looked to my door in the darkness. I wondered if it was Christian, she sometimes liked to sleep with me at night, she was still haunted by what my mother did and couldn’t sleep alone all the time. I didn’t mind though, I could only sleep when I was with someone, usually Samson. Noah’s head poked in. “You awake?” he asked in a hushed whisper. There was something in his tone of voice that made me apprehensive.

“Yeah?” I murmured staring into the darkness waiting for a response. I’m hoping he’ll say something like ‘there’s cookies on the counter if you want some, hot out of the oven’ or maybe ‘would you like to watch a movie with me and Christian?’ but I know it’ll be neither.

“Samson’s mother called…he’s in the hospital.”

There was a time after my mother had died on the floor and the police hadn’t arrived yet and Christian had cried herself into a stupor that I’d felt nothing, completely empty. I’m sure it could be accurately described as ‘going white, staring wide eyed’. Maybe it was shock, I don’t know. I just know that it had only happened once, and when it happened again it really did confirm my feelings for Samson, not that I needed confirmation, I was sure the sex had already did that.

I didn’t realize, or rather know that you could still function while in a state of shock. I’m not quite sure how it happened but I’d thrown on the first pair of clothes I could find, some run down shorts and a sweatshirt I was pretty sure I’d pilfered from Sam, and had Noah drive me to the hospital. I didn’t like hospitals, and it had nothing to do with me really. I hadn’t been bought there numerous times as a child from accidents. It was just that every time someone I knew went to the hospital they rarely ever left alive.

“You don’t have to stay,” I told Noah as the elevator chugged up to the fourth floor rather slowly. His parents had already left; we’d caught them at the door. They’d said minor injuries, a couple of broken ribs, and a broken nose, nothing serious. Dick heads. If there was any confusion before it was gone now, Samson definitely did win in the ‘who’s life sucks more’ battle, and that wasn’t something I was happy about.

“You sure?” I think he sounded genuine like he might really stay with me while I stayed with Sam.

“Yeah, Christian’s at home you should get back to her, I’ll be fine.” I didn’t listen to him after that, my mind had gone somewhere else, not exactly back into shock but more into a place that was for my thoughts. I was wondering who had done it this time, and I knew that it was the football team. They were constantly messing with him; I mean everyone messed with him but them specifically. He’d been beaten up before but never did he have to go to the hospital for it. I can’t imagine how many people, or how long, it would take to do that damage.

When the elevator stopped I stepped out and nodded at Noah. “Call me tomorrow so I can come pick you up.” He’d taken to the father figure pretty easily, like he’d never left. I wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t left. My mom probably wouldn’t have gone into depression and she probably wouldn’t have ended up drinking like she was eternally parched and she wouldn’t have shot herself and I wouldn’t have ended up here and I wouldn’t have met Samson. And suddenly, momentarily I was happy for the life that I lived because even if it did suck I had Samson. That was all that mattered.

When I walked into his room, he had his back to me and was staring out the window. His face was bruised, and his nose was in a splint and he was wearing those ugly hospital gowns that have flaps in the back for pretty ass-views. I watched him in silence wondering if he could tell I was there or not. “Are you going to come in? Or just stare at me all night. I know I’m beautiful.”

I blinked back pitiful tears, and continued towards his bed. I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t and he looked at me with this expression that made me hurt for him. “It’s late, you didn’t have to come.”

“Like I sleep,” I said with a dry laugh trying to ease some of the tenseness. I kept looking at him and seeing him naked when he’s lying next to me or above me, or on his side beside me, and I’ve never had this problem before. Having sex with him has never been a problem before. “That’s some nose you got there, Paris Hilton would kill for it.”

“Oh yeah make jokes about the injured one, real nice.” Sam tried to keep a straight face but ended up smiling anyways. His smile dropped as he stared at me, and I wondered if it was true, if you really could see that I loved him on my face. Don’t they say that sometimes your facial expression reads I love you? “Are you wearing my sweater?” I guess not.

I grinned, and looked down at myself. “Is this yours? I was positive it was mine.”

“Oh right, sure. It looks better on me.”

I gapped at him. “You jerk.” I went to bunch him in the arm but then stopped myself. The playful smile he was wearing dropped and I guess we remembered that we were in the hospital and that his ribs were broken and so was his nose and whatever jokes we were going to laugh about next disappeared from the future.

“You’re crying,” he stated making me realize just that. I’d never been one to have tears sneak up on me but I wasn’t surprised that I was crying. There was something about standing beside Sam’s hospital bed that reminded me so much of standing next to my mother’s coffin at her wake, and I wondered if that was going to be the next step, that next time I’d be standing next to Sam’s coffin.

“What?” I said my voice cracking as I wiped at my cheeks. “I’m not crying. It’s the antiseptics in the air, its stinging my eyes.”

“You’re crying.” You’re really not supposed to point out a person’s crying when they’re crying it only makes them cry more. That and saying, ‘don’t cry’. It’s total reverse psychology, its going to make the person cry harder.

“I’m,” I wiped my cheeks, and pressed the sleeves against my eyes trying to clear the tears, “not crying.”

Samson stared at me sympathetically, and pushed back the starched sheet and knitted blanket he had on top of him. “Cooper.” That was all he needed to say before I broke down and climbed into bed with him. If there was anything particularly extraordinary about Samson it was his sentimentality. I’d never found being held and having someone run their hand through my hair soothing but with Sam, I sometimes felt like it was the only thing that was comforting when I was upset.

He kissed my forehead when I think he thought I had fallen asleep because I’d stopped crying, and whispered, “I love you, Coop.” I believed he did, but I knew it wasn’t the way I loved him and so I couldn’t say it back, I don’t think I ever could again.