The Last Closet_The Dark Side of Avalon

by Moira Greyland

  The sex was a tedious thing that I was beginning to be guilt tripped into taking part in, be it Gregg, Walter, or these traveling priests. I had very little of my true self involved in the activities. Believe me, I am not one to hang around when chores are to be done.

  Then one day Sterling dipped into Walter’s wallet, and the group pointed their fingers at me. Being accused of a crime I hadn’t committed drove me further off, and the catty little rumor mll took off.

  I left! My friends at the cafe greeted me with pensive arms. The accusations had followed me to the only place I felt safe. So, what had been a disturbing drug problem before, became extreme.

  Years later, the ghost of Walter’s whining bothered me. He had insinuated himself into every niche of my life that he had access to. I was running from myself when I should have been running from him.

  I felt misrepresented. Most of my friends were hippy kids, and hippy kids were very leery of homosexuals as most all of us had been made advances at throughout our lives. Being the creatures that dwelt within the hedges of the campus; we had seen what lurks in the bocage. Old jerks jerking off. We Berkeley kids had a few secret forts (well, not that secret) around the UC campus. The steam vents, down and over, the beach, the grove, Afghanistan, up and over, these were our secret names for various hiding places. Mostly we would go to these little edens, (thank you, UCB gardeners) and be alone with each other reading poetry, throwing tarot cards, smoking pot and sharing food (remember, we were teenagers). We would be perfectly at home, until an intruder happened by. The joy instantly gone, we would look at each other, thinking “When is this guy gonna leave??”

  Walter had taught me distrust. A nasty lesson, but necessary.

  Do you know how stories are often given depth by character actors? Well, Greenwalls was full of these sorts. Odd bodkins who would do their rounds monthly, weekly. This always included Marion’s house. I say Marion’s house because the house was her caliphate.

  And, oh the humorous sacks of water that came through those doors! Isaac, THE MAGICIAN, he had little more to give than an angry aging hippy who had never been cool. Izak, ha ha. Various female Renaissance Faire people of voluminous proportions. Mostly washer women or innkeeper’s wives in their various personas during Northern Faire. Often the buxom cuddly hawkers during Dicken’s Faire. They would come babbling through the door in their costumes. Playing their parts as if it were true. Method actors, I guess?

  It wasn’t until many years later in my life that I actually had enough insight to see how Walter had damaged me. Some would say, “but you invited it. You didn’t fight back.” Well, I spent a long time holding onto that same attitude. I woke up at night cursing myself for being the fool that I was. A thousand twitches, unexpected swearing at myself while others tried to avoid me. I had been broken. I would like to think of myself as a fine piece of china that has been glued together so many times that it was no longer of any use.

  I remember one fellow named Andy, whose company I no longer keep, saying quite clearly in my earshot, “That Nick is a waste of human flesh.” You might be able to imagine how that hurt. Adding on insult, and injury daily I became a desperate addict. Anything to get out of myself..the boy who hadn’t fought back. Still in the darkness when I had woken up from a serious drinking bout I would feel the claws of remorse digging deep into my already drained heart. Had you seen me in passing during this period, you would think to yourself, “He smiles. He jokes. He laughs. There is still something really wrong with this kid.”

  My mother tried to send me to an old-school (Freudian) psychologist. I made him angry when I told him that there was nothing he could do for me. I was set so firmly in my ways that nothing would be able to change me. I was, perhaps, 17 at the time, having been kicked out of three very good schools. Somehow I could have one of the worst attendance records on campus, yet on test days… I would ace the entire test. I didn’t like classrooms (unless they were art classes). My attention span was ridiculously short. Boredom was a constant battle. I could not bear to spend the whole day in class. For me, that style of learning just did not work. I taught myself. My choices of subjects were completely useless as to their career potential. I might have done better back in the days when kings had court magicians. I had little concern for the clothes I wore. If it hid my nudity, that was good enough. It confused me to see people spending inordinate sums of money on clothes.; clothes to me were a thing that you found, not bought. My mother said that she had bad dreams of me being one of those guys who wore rags, and picked through trash cans while cursing to themselves.

  I was well on my way by 21. Living on the streets. I discovered a trick to find a warm sleeping place. You can enter into the crawl spaces under houses through the little paels where the gas meters were. I had been doing this for a while when one morning I was awoken by a man carrying a tray with eggs toast and coffee. He had shimmied under his house, perhaps I had snored the night before? The man’s name was Ric, and he was a nice stable fellow. He had a good sense of humor. Something probably hard tested by me. He said to me that morning that when I was done with breakfast he had a few chores he needed help with. This beat being bored, and wandering around with nothing to do. I became a laborer. Construction paid well enough that I could stay stoned as much as I wanted.

  I worked a few jobs until I was a bit older, and then my job opportunities dried up, due to my erratic behavior, or drug addictions. I threw my hands up in the air, and went back to sleeping in garages, and parks. Nothing had changed. I was back at ground zero. I saw no feasible future for myself. I hated myself. I don’t think the damage would have been as incredibly crippling if it were not for the years of degradation I had experienced under the manipulation of Walter, and his “friends”.

  This was a very impressionable time for me. Who has ever been certain of themselves when aged 14? I was a neophyte waiting for some kind of direction. I looked to the adults around me to prove, or disprove, what I was thinking. And O! How my mind could wander! These bestial old men had no idea of what I sought. They reversed gears on me, making me feel shallow for the depth of my trek, my reason for being.

  One night I returned to Patrick after having been given a vial of pure LSD. The creepy old men had no idea what we were doing. It was a barely visible amount. We split it into two tiny sparkling piles. My friend had told me that pure LSD would actually produce light if you cracked a crystal of it. No shit! This stuff was good enough to prove that theory.

  We snorted the two tiny piles, one a piece. My God! I had never had acid hit me that quickly. We were overwhelmed by a need to leave civilization. We ran, completely dazed, up into the Strawberry Canyon nature preserve. Our minds were tripping balls. There was no way we could find our fingers without opening our mouths. An extreme sense of expectation drove its dowel down our spines. We hunted the perfect place, and we found it!

  A perfect bowl dug from the base of three giant oaks, and there at the bottom a few slabs of rock, as old as the hills. On one side of the bowl was a cliff covered in blackberry. The other side a mossy rim to that sacred bowl. It was beautiful beyond words. The very crux of life. The Holy Grail. We spent the following hours traveling on a wave, then in a spiral, and finally a brilliant point of blinding light.

  We came back home at sun up; weary, and fully worn out. The universe had kissed our brows, and blessed us as few had been blessed before. I tried to talk to Patrick about what had happened to us that night. He claimed to remember nothing. Nothing! Nothing!? The most intense spiritual journey of my life, and he had FORGOTTEN IT????

  I am aware of my own sins. Not all that I experienced after my molestation could be blamed on Walter. But certain things were unquestionably tied to his attempts at forced indoctrination. I was an obvious drug addict. A lazy teenager I was.

  If you have never attempted suicide you may not understand what I am about to say.

  Having watched through my rearview mirror the catastrophe that was my life, I decided that there was n
owhere left to go. My life was over.

  The sky lit like a fire under a cauldron. I slid down the wall to sit splayed on the floor. My head drooped so that the hair covered my eyes. Heavy stones seemed to be stacked on my face by all those I had ever known. My head rocked back. The cracks in the ceiling; a canvas for the hallucinating eye. I was not on drugs. (maybe that was the problem?) NO! The problem was myself and what I had allowed others to do with me!

  I remember looking up to the people who had effected my childhood view of the world. By the time I was 5 Berkeley was worldwide news. The rebels fighting against a war machine that was crushing its children under a juggernauts’ wheels. I looked at the counter-culture spokesmen as heroes. I thought that long hair, incense, pot, and paisley were the medals that “our army” wore. In many ways I still hold to a lot of the values that the flower children espoused. Love, peace, and cooperation.

  But underneath the exterior facade lay a huge dirty brown paper satchel filled with perversions, mental incompetents, and straight up murderers on the run from the law. Drugs had drawn in some of the most despicable characters. Their idea of freedom was staying out of jail. Not the beautiful ideal based on our pioneer ancestor’s driving spirit.

  Here we were in one of the most lovely environments that God had created. The Bay Area is blessed with a warm climate year round, and a liberal political machine. It was behind this facade that Walter hid his wooly head. Wreathed in a purposeful guise as some kind of wizard he drew young boys in with the promise of free marijuana, and a permissive household. It is a complicated thing for teenagers to find somewhere to hang out. They spend most of their time scooting from one haunt to another. Finding somewhere you could do your own thing, and have free grass, and access to the fridge. Shit, what healthy 15 year old could deny this flower ripe to be picked? But the more one took, the more one owed. It was not a one-way street.

  The world was so much smaller then. A kind of closed loop filled with horrible old men, and unpleasant older women. Women who had denounced their love of the masculine, while emulating men in all their steps, their speech, their bearing. Men so utterly confused by years of hatred and abuse that they lived under Victoria’s Thumb. Shadows revealed to me the horrors I had been shot full of. Thieves of pride. Insulters of what I needed at that age; a strong man. Someone to guide me. Teach me the ways of human life. Instead I had become a pawn in some private game of perversity. A hidden world, shy from prying eyes. Felony grade shame, though claiming it all was proper, and the children suffered. Oh, how they suffered.

  Let me tell you about Father Jim. He dressed like a priest (which denomination is your guess as well as mine). As a young boy very interested in the mystical. I was the perfect patsy; a mark waiting for a con-man’s light touch. To gain my attention he told me that he would teach me magic, though his conception of magic was quite staid compared to mine. I wanted to break the cork off of the Universe, to drink its entire contents, wipe my mouth with my sleeve, and sigh in contentment. His intentions were based on one thing…sex.

  Now, I have had friends who are very interested in the lovely smoothness of erotic sensations, a beautiful thing. Something you share with your loved one; a complete act of trust, and a sharing of the glories of our odd circumstances riding within bodies capable of so much.

  Jim had a sickness. He saw sex as others might any addictive substance, or act. He was driven by a beast upon his back. How can I claim to know what drove him? You get quite close to someone whose hemorrhoid infested asshole is being shoved in your face. A kind of deeper understanding. Judge not a man by his words, but his deeds. Thus we can assume that Jim had very little concern about certain strictures laid down by our forebears. Murder, theft, and DON’T FUCK CHILDREN.

  His friend Richard also claimed to be a priest. I must say, I was a pretty trusting lad. He was younger than Jim, but driven by the same perversion of spirit. Lots of tall talk about how he had been some kind of adventurous martyr. Most of his games are dulled by the fog of age. I still wake up late at night confused and startled by what I had done. Things that my young body was trained to perform. So little of my self resided there. I shut it out of my mind.

  I was a holy sacrifice. This made it bearable. Some dream of lessons to be learned, and selfish demons fed. In shame I scream!

  Richard had me splayed on my back downstairs at Greenwalls. The kid’s area, between the other bedrooms. Right in the middle of the floor. I remember that floor like it was yesterday.

  Thinly laid artificial astroturf glued messily to the floor. Beneath it hard, flat cement.

  I was on my back, as I said, and oh how that carpet raked my back. Along with the cold concrete I was pretty miserable. Richard offered me an inhalant called “Locker Room”. Remember, I was on my back. The stuff came in a tiny jar that you would take the lid off of, and have a sniff of the vapors. Well, that is, if you’re standing up. Try this on your back, and the bottle empties a corrosive, and probably carcinogenic liquid into your sinuses and throat. I swear I felt as if I were going to die. I struggled, but Richard was in the throes of passion. He had no concern for me. He had seen the little jar glug into my nose. Any idiot would know that I might be in a mild state of DYING. He just kept up the rhythm.

  If it were not for my age I might have died. No wonder he left in such a hurry. I repeat. I was a dumb kid.

  —Nicholas Bosson

  Armchair Psychology

  by Moira

  Nick is a wonderful young man. Talented, creative, and brave beyond words. Most of my father’s victims cannot admit they were hurt, cannot talk about what was done to them, and in many cases cannot even admit the reality. Many are dead now; others have disappeared without a trace. Thankfully, Nick is alive and can tell us his frank and incisive insights about what it was like to be sexually violated and even turned over to other predators by a man who promised mentorship and love when he had been abandoned by his own father.

  Transcribing his words has been painful. I love Nick dearly, and reading what happened meant I wanted to punch my father and those “priests” in the nose and throw them out of several high windows for what they subjected him to, between the brainwashing and the utter disregard for him other than as a sex toy. It is easy to see that for a young man, the need for a father figure is so strong that he will go through nearly anything, including massive and unforgivable sexual exploitation, for even a semblance of it.

  Like nearly all victims of sexual abuse, Nick blames himself. He was manipulated, seduced with the semblance of “fathering”, and brainwashed with much the same rubbish that was “taught” to me. Every time he wanted a girl, the brainwashing was renewed. The only peer-to-peer relationship he was “allowed” to have was the brief sexual connection with another boy, which he really did not want, let alone the externally imposed emotional trappings: Nick needed a father figure, he didn’t need to be another boy’s mommy; but my father knew that the day Nick got a girlfriend, he would stop being sexually available to him and to his friends. Therefore, establishing and maintaining the “born that way” lie was essential to my father’s continued orgasms at Nick’s expense. I hope you can see that even though Nick takes total responsibility for what happened, he never had a chance to escape. He was played by older men who were completely focused on playing him, and who had spent years learning to do so with other victims.

  Nick blames himself for his long, long addictions, and yet, unlike many, he has left them all behind. Addiction is nearly universal among traumatized children and teens because it provides a way to handle overwhelming feelings, and to create some feelings of pleasure in a situation where such things are almost impossible to feel, and cannot be trusted anyway. Anhedonia (being incapable of experiencing pleasure in anything) is characteristic in major depression, but it is enormous in traumatized people. Imagine trying to enjoy things while always being in a mild-to-moderate state of fight or flight. One’s attention is always, unconsciously, on the threat behind that door over there, e
ven if the only threat is really the pervert who is now dead or distant. Our brains adapt, and the adaptations of PTSD are often permanent, making the injury done to him even more heinous.

  Despite what anyone might have supposed, he has been married to the same woman for a great many years, and he walks dogs for people while painting prolifically and running a FB page for other artists. I will not pretend his life is easy or wonderful. Yet unlike so many of my father’s victims, he is alive, speaking out, and has developed and maintained a loving marriage: something which has eluded many of my generation.

  In the last paragraph, “Locker Room” is either amyl nitrite or butyl nitrite, also known as “poppers.” When a tiny amount is inhaled, it can enhance sexual pleasure. Nick is quite right—Poured into one’s nose, he could have been very seriously hurt. The base is acetone, and it would have assuredly destroyed the epithelial cells in the nostrils and sinuses.

  I believe that both Richard and Jim are dead, so I can’t kill them again even though reading this account makes me want to. Jim used to recite a “poem” which I think expresses the truth of the gay movement, and how it is hardly exclusive to one sex or age or even species:

  “I am a dirty old man.

  I make love wherever I can.

  Little boys, little girls, little sheep, little squirrels…

  I am a dirty old man.”

  Chapter 26: Flings, Fosterlings and Folly (1979–1982)

  “I can’t think of anyone who’s done more good than Marion has, for more people.”