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backdrifterWith Ryan gone, Respa’s grip on his humanity—never firm to begin with—eroded completely. The knowledge that he would never see Ryan again, not ever, made him feel like someone had carved a vital piece of his soul out to leave him raw and half-alive.
The first day alone he spent in one corner of the squat, hugging his knees and staring into space. If he felt hunger, he suppressed it—not that he would have been able to do much about it normally. The one time he had to piss, he peed out the window onto the scaffold, and fuck it if anyone saw him. Other than that, he felt nothing.
The second day he woke up screaming, and wakefulness didn’t stop it. He screamed until he thought he might gargle blood, and when he lost his voice he leapt down to the sidewalk and kicked over trashcans, newspaper dispensers, whatever he found that wasn’t cemented down. That second day he felt nothing but pure hatred, never tiring, never stopping. Nobody would come near him.
After that, his became a weary existence, peppered with violence. He packed up his duffel bag—he seemed to have lost even more possessions, somehow—and watched the charred safety hazard of a building he’d called home face the wrecking ball. He migrated downtown, all the way down to Washington Square Park, where so many of the other burnt out dirty zombie kids half-lived. He took sporadic catnaps there in daytime, the duffel bag serving as a pillow under his head secured with a death grip on its strap. Otherwise, he strapped the bag tight to his body and played bogeyman to yuppies and high schoolers alike. He would shout and chase them a little bit, though never enough for them to go and grab a cop.
But it wasn’t enough.
He began to seek out specific targets, looking for those who seemed most vulnerable to hurt and shame, especially in public. He tried women, at first, catcalling to them and watching them pick up the pace as they stared at their feet, but it didn’t feel right. Not in the sense of right and wrong, but in that it felt too easy. Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. They made him feel like a sexual predator rather than a simple jerk as their faces closed off, and that made him nervous. That made him hate himself more than he was ready to, and he stopped.
A week later he was back at it, though not in the same sense. He started hanging outside lesbian bars a little further uptown, casting himself into the role of “that guy.” You know, the one who probably figured into so many Lifetime movies as the creep who only saw lesbianism as something else for him to jack off to. At first, he merely stood there, trying to look unsettling, but the women mostly ignored him. He realized he looked like he was just waiting for a friend, so he stepped it up. On a night upon which he was feeling particularly ballsy, he took a step out of the shadows as a single woman was leaving the club, and said simply, “Dyke.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, stopping to turn and face him. She was dressed in a quilted jacket and slim fit jeans, with short brown hair in a sleek pixie cut. Her hands were shoved in her pockets; she seemed pretty relaxed.
“You heard me,” Respa said, his confidence waning already. He took another step forward, to stand over her.
“Do you have some kind of problem with me?” she asked, frowning up at him. “Like…you’re just stating the obvious, there.”
There was a silent pause between them, and then she jabbed a finger into the air around his face as she spoke again.
“You know, I’ve been dealing with assholes like you all my life. You really think I don’t know how to shut you down?” When he said nothing, she plowed ahead, moving closer. “I know exactly how to deal with bigoted jerks like you. You’re nothing but a flat out bully, so fuck you!” And then she walked away, head held high and hips swinging smugly. He’d definitely lost that battle.
And yet, he felt better.
He chose other lesbian bars to loiter outside of, and he made lewd comments at coupled women as they came in or out of the bar. He felt no attraction to them, sexual or otherwise, but he would shout proposals of threesomes at them, almost always greeted with disgusted sounds and dismissals.
The first time he hadn’t been dismissed right off the bat, the women had taken him seriously—it had turned out they were barsexuals, pretending to be lesbians for the attention of men, and by that logic Respa had fallen for their trick. He’d insulted their asses and their hair when they began to come onto him, and they had scowled at him and left. He’d breathed a sigh of relief.
The second time, the couple in question had approached him with hostility, giving him a verbal one-two punch as they told him first how he degraded women, then how he was utterly ignorant. Finally they had told him he smelled rank and thought too highly of himself, and the more feminine-looking one had kneed him in the balls.
“I hope that teaches you a lesson,” the other one had said, and spit on his back as he keeled over on the cement. “You’re a pig.”
“Fuck you, you cuntlicking dykes,” he had wheezed, pounding the sidewalk with one fist, and the one in a dress kicked him again, this time in the gut.
“Men,” the one wearing pants had snorted, and then they’d linked arms and walked away.
He stuck with that bar after that, waiting every other night for these particular women.
“We’re going to call the fucking cops on you,” the one in a fedora warned, but he shrugged and told her to go ahead.
“We’re going to call our bulldyke friend to come beat the shit out of you,” the one in heels said, but he told her he didn’t believe they had a bulldyke friend, and either way, bring it.
“We’re not afraid of you, you know,” the one in snappy leather wingtips told him, but he detected that first hint of fear in her voice, and this time he said nothing.
Finally, after two weeks of this, they both approached him again, and this time they had a friend. He was hard-faced, with blue-grey eyes and dark blond, close-cropped hair. He wore a tight t-shirt and slim cut black jeans, and he emerged from the club door covered in beads of sweat.
Respa felt the bottom of his stomach drop forever, and he broke out in a sweat to match the man’s. He could see that it wasn’t the same man; the features were less blunt, the eyes bigger, the muscles leaner, but he couldn’t tell his psyche that.
“This is Horace,” the one in sheer tights said, her mouth pulled tight as she crossed her arms.
“And he’s not a homophobic bastard, like you are,” the one in a fitted blazer said, standing with her feet apart.
“If you don’t leave these lovely ladies alone,” Horace said, stepping forward, “I’m going to have to beat you senseless, and you’re really, really not going to like it if I do.”
“H-hey, it’s no problem,” Respa said, trying to keep the tremors out of his voice as he shrugged. “I haven’t been bothering them, really.”
“That’s not what they say.” Horace stepped closer, too close, and Respa swallowed hard. He wanted to ask if Horace had a brother who wore douchey t-shirts and who went around committing hate crimes, but he knew the answer was no.
“Look, I just hang around here,” he tried. Horace raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry if that disturbs you guys, or whatever. I’ll just leave.”
He started walking down the block, hands shoved in his pockets and glancing over his shoulder often. When he saw Horace turning around, though, he spun on the balls of his feet and sprinted back, aiming to knock down Horace from behind. Unfortunately, he hadn’t taken into account the two women who were still facing him—stupid—and Horace was warned with time to spare.
He was caught by the forearms in two crushing grips, and Horace forced him to his knees and wincing. “That was stupid,” Horace said quietly, and he let go of one arm to spin Respa around and twist the other one up behind his back, bringing him back to his feet. Respa groaned.
“Did you really think that was going to work?” one of the women asked him, and he didn’t bother to look up to identify which one.
“What made you do something so stupid?” the other one asked.
“I just hate,” he said, his mouth dry, “faggots like him.”
Horace whipped him around and punched him in the gut so hard he thought he might vomit, except there was nothing in his stomach to throw up, there hadn’t been for days. “And I hate homophobes like you!” Horace shouted, and some people stopped to point and stare, but it wasn’t long before they moved along. Now that Respa bore the label of a homophobe, no one in this neighborhood would lift a finger to help him.
“I’m gonna give you till the count of ten to get out of my sight, and then I want you to get out of this neighborhood and never come back,” Horace said, his stare intense. “Do you understand?”
Respa nodded quickly, and then Horace released him. He ran heel to toe at breakneck speed, turning the corner violently at the other end of the block and crashing to the sidewalk in a heap. He gathered himself swiftly and kept running, back downtown.
True to his word, though, he never returned to Chelsea.
The first day alone he spent in one corner of the squat, hugging his knees and staring into space. If he felt hunger, he suppressed it—not that he would have been able to do much about it normally. The one time he had to piss, he peed out the window onto the scaffold, and fuck it if anyone saw him. Other than that, he felt nothing.
The second day he woke up screaming, and wakefulness didn’t stop it. He screamed until he thought he might gargle blood, and when he lost his voice he leapt down to the sidewalk and kicked over trashcans, newspaper dispensers, whatever he found that wasn’t cemented down. That second day he felt nothing but pure hatred, never tiring, never stopping. Nobody would come near him.
After that, his became a weary existence, peppered with violence. He packed up his duffel bag—he seemed to have lost even more possessions, somehow—and watched the charred safety hazard of a building he’d called home face the wrecking ball. He migrated downtown, all the way down to Washington Square Park, where so many of the other burnt out dirty zombie kids half-lived. He took sporadic catnaps there in daytime, the duffel bag serving as a pillow under his head secured with a death grip on its strap. Otherwise, he strapped the bag tight to his body and played bogeyman to yuppies and high schoolers alike. He would shout and chase them a little bit, though never enough for them to go and grab a cop.
But it wasn’t enough.
He began to seek out specific targets, looking for those who seemed most vulnerable to hurt and shame, especially in public. He tried women, at first, catcalling to them and watching them pick up the pace as they stared at their feet, but it didn’t feel right. Not in the sense of right and wrong, but in that it felt too easy. Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. They made him feel like a sexual predator rather than a simple jerk as their faces closed off, and that made him nervous. That made him hate himself more than he was ready to, and he stopped.
A week later he was back at it, though not in the same sense. He started hanging outside lesbian bars a little further uptown, casting himself into the role of “that guy.” You know, the one who probably figured into so many Lifetime movies as the creep who only saw lesbianism as something else for him to jack off to. At first, he merely stood there, trying to look unsettling, but the women mostly ignored him. He realized he looked like he was just waiting for a friend, so he stepped it up. On a night upon which he was feeling particularly ballsy, he took a step out of the shadows as a single woman was leaving the club, and said simply, “Dyke.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, stopping to turn and face him. She was dressed in a quilted jacket and slim fit jeans, with short brown hair in a sleek pixie cut. Her hands were shoved in her pockets; she seemed pretty relaxed.
“You heard me,” Respa said, his confidence waning already. He took another step forward, to stand over her.
“Do you have some kind of problem with me?” she asked, frowning up at him. “Like…you’re just stating the obvious, there.”
There was a silent pause between them, and then she jabbed a finger into the air around his face as she spoke again.
“You know, I’ve been dealing with assholes like you all my life. You really think I don’t know how to shut you down?” When he said nothing, she plowed ahead, moving closer. “I know exactly how to deal with bigoted jerks like you. You’re nothing but a flat out bully, so fuck you!” And then she walked away, head held high and hips swinging smugly. He’d definitely lost that battle.
And yet, he felt better.
He chose other lesbian bars to loiter outside of, and he made lewd comments at coupled women as they came in or out of the bar. He felt no attraction to them, sexual or otherwise, but he would shout proposals of threesomes at them, almost always greeted with disgusted sounds and dismissals.
The first time he hadn’t been dismissed right off the bat, the women had taken him seriously—it had turned out they were barsexuals, pretending to be lesbians for the attention of men, and by that logic Respa had fallen for their trick. He’d insulted their asses and their hair when they began to come onto him, and they had scowled at him and left. He’d breathed a sigh of relief.
The second time, the couple in question had approached him with hostility, giving him a verbal one-two punch as they told him first how he degraded women, then how he was utterly ignorant. Finally they had told him he smelled rank and thought too highly of himself, and the more feminine-looking one had kneed him in the balls.
“I hope that teaches you a lesson,” the other one had said, and spit on his back as he keeled over on the cement. “You’re a pig.”
“Fuck you, you cuntlicking dykes,” he had wheezed, pounding the sidewalk with one fist, and the one in a dress kicked him again, this time in the gut.
“Men,” the one wearing pants had snorted, and then they’d linked arms and walked away.
He stuck with that bar after that, waiting every other night for these particular women.
“We’re going to call the fucking cops on you,” the one in a fedora warned, but he shrugged and told her to go ahead.
“We’re going to call our bulldyke friend to come beat the shit out of you,” the one in heels said, but he told her he didn’t believe they had a bulldyke friend, and either way, bring it.
“We’re not afraid of you, you know,” the one in snappy leather wingtips told him, but he detected that first hint of fear in her voice, and this time he said nothing.
Finally, after two weeks of this, they both approached him again, and this time they had a friend. He was hard-faced, with blue-grey eyes and dark blond, close-cropped hair. He wore a tight t-shirt and slim cut black jeans, and he emerged from the club door covered in beads of sweat.
Respa felt the bottom of his stomach drop forever, and he broke out in a sweat to match the man’s. He could see that it wasn’t the same man; the features were less blunt, the eyes bigger, the muscles leaner, but he couldn’t tell his psyche that.
“This is Horace,” the one in sheer tights said, her mouth pulled tight as she crossed her arms.
“And he’s not a homophobic bastard, like you are,” the one in a fitted blazer said, standing with her feet apart.
“If you don’t leave these lovely ladies alone,” Horace said, stepping forward, “I’m going to have to beat you senseless, and you’re really, really not going to like it if I do.”
“H-hey, it’s no problem,” Respa said, trying to keep the tremors out of his voice as he shrugged. “I haven’t been bothering them, really.”
“That’s not what they say.” Horace stepped closer, too close, and Respa swallowed hard. He wanted to ask if Horace had a brother who wore douchey t-shirts and who went around committing hate crimes, but he knew the answer was no.
“Look, I just hang around here,” he tried. Horace raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry if that disturbs you guys, or whatever. I’ll just leave.”
He started walking down the block, hands shoved in his pockets and glancing over his shoulder often. When he saw Horace turning around, though, he spun on the balls of his feet and sprinted back, aiming to knock down Horace from behind. Unfortunately, he hadn’t taken into account the two women who were still facing him—stupid—and Horace was warned with time to spare.
He was caught by the forearms in two crushing grips, and Horace forced him to his knees and wincing. “That was stupid,” Horace said quietly, and he let go of one arm to spin Respa around and twist the other one up behind his back, bringing him back to his feet. Respa groaned.
“Did you really think that was going to work?” one of the women asked him, and he didn’t bother to look up to identify which one.
“What made you do something so stupid?” the other one asked.
“I just hate,” he said, his mouth dry, “faggots like him.”
Horace whipped him around and punched him in the gut so hard he thought he might vomit, except there was nothing in his stomach to throw up, there hadn’t been for days. “And I hate homophobes like you!” Horace shouted, and some people stopped to point and stare, but it wasn’t long before they moved along. Now that Respa bore the label of a homophobe, no one in this neighborhood would lift a finger to help him.
“I’m gonna give you till the count of ten to get out of my sight, and then I want you to get out of this neighborhood and never come back,” Horace said, his stare intense. “Do you understand?”
Respa nodded quickly, and then Horace released him. He ran heel to toe at breakneck speed, turning the corner violently at the other end of the block and crashing to the sidewalk in a heap. He gathered himself swiftly and kept running, back downtown.
True to his word, though, he never returned to Chelsea.
Travel
Date: 2009-06-06 06:36 am (UTC)-K "Azalamael" Carr