“Still, you should try to make some friends,” Roxy said beside me, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “And try to lose some weight! You’re an embarrassment.” She skipped off and giddily ran into the arms of the captain of the football team, and richest guy in school. I rolled my eyes at my sister’s back and went on to my class with my head down.
Maybe I was an embarrassment to my family. My father was a hard worker, he had a window company that secured all the big accounts in Miami and was doing well for himself. My mother was a stay at home mom; she always had the house clean and food on the table when we got home. My sister Roxana had high aspirations of becoming a model, and as driven and ruthless as she was, she would probably achieve them. My other sister, the nicer one, Mireya, was in Orlando with my father for the week, trying to secure an acting gig. And there I was, gay and fat ass Rob, trying to survive another day. Trying to find myself in a sea full of lost souls. At least I had that going for me, I knew that beneath our successes, we were all lost souls.
My sister Roxana graduated that year and left me to roam the halls of high school by myself the next. She left to Europe that summer of 1982 and I felt lighter-only two judgmental eyes left in my household with me. Mireya never got a job as an actress the summer before, but she found something she loved more-dressing them. Much to my father’s dismay, Mireya moved to New York City with a boyfriend and got a job dressing up Broadway actors. I’m not sure what my father was more upset about: the fact that she gave up on her acting dreams or that moved in with a guy before getting married.
“Mireya, act on Broadway!” my father would tell her. To which my sister would respond, “Please. If I’m not on the big screen, I might as well be nobody.” Those were my sisters, soaring high while I was a loser trying to figure it all out.
That school year was the worst. You would think being a senior would put you at a certain level with your peers since you’d put up with their shit for three previous years. Nope, not the case for me. Brad, the head asshole was still slamming me into the lockers whenever I passed by just because I was wearing a Star Wars shirt and he clearly didn’t understand the movie.
I started hanging out with the oddities. You know, losers that are too much of losers to even sit in the loser area during lunch. The people that are so invisible that you don’t see them until after you run into them? Yeah, I dubbed those “the oddities”. I joined Year Book Club and was glad to see how happy my father was that I was finally going to football games.
“You came around,” he’d say. “Next season, baseball!”
I would smile and fist pump an excited “yeah!” Judging from the way his eyebrows pulled in, that was probably the wrong thing to do. I never bothered to tell him that the reason I went to the games was because I had to take pictures of the jocks to put in the school year book. One day, Brad cornered me in the bathroom after a game and put his fist in my face.
“I know you’re a queer! Noemi told me you wouldn’t even get to second base with her. She says you didn’t want to touch her tits. What kind of guy are you?” he sneered. “Don’t come into the bathroom when I’m using it! I don’t want you looking at my wiener when I’m taking a piss,” he said, his voice threateningly low.
I’m not sure what prompted me to do it, but I pushed him off of me. For the first time in four years, I finally pushed him away from me.
“Nobody wants to see your wiener, Brad! And stop calling me a queer!” I spat.
I got my ass beat that day—bad. I ended up in the hospital for broken ribs, a broken nose, and two black eyes. I had two friends at the time, real friends anyway, Mike and Carlos, and they were the only ones that came to visit. Some of my teachers sent Get Well Soon cards and balloons. Mike, who was president of the year book and always carrying around a polaroid camera, took pictures of me at the hospital and one night I got this idea that maybe I should plaster them all around school and let everyone know what a fucking bastard Brad was.
I juggled the idea for a while. On the one hand I thought I could prevent others from being treated this way, maybe we could all form a big alliance against the bullies. A pack of ants is more powerful than one cricket, after all… right? But Brad was on the football team, honor roll student, all around good kid on paper. Would teachers believe me? Would kids have my back or would they watch while he and his friends beat me down again for outing them? Bullying wasn’t spoken about like it is now a days. It wasn’t made a big deal of. Kids were just “roughing each other up”, parents would argue. “Your son needs to learn how to defend himself,” some would say. Police still went to the hospital and asked questions, but giving them information as to what happened was as good as writing it on a paper and ripping it up.
I cringed from my broken bones as I made an effort to sit up and use the bathroom. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror across from me, and was shocked by what I saw. I looked completely deformed to my own eyes. When had I become the guy that took the beatings? When had I become this loser, this pathetic excuse for a person? Maybe it was my fault that I was overweight, although it ran in my family and I didn’t eat more food than everyone else at the table, but maybe I could work on that. Maybe it was my fault that I had acne and had to wear braces. But I was a good person, I helped others, even those that never helped back. Wasn’t karma supposed to be on my side? Wasn’t it supposed to reciprocate the good I did for others? Tears ran down my face, my swollen eyes throbbed painfully as I shut them.
I heard the door open, but didn’t look. I was ashamed for my family and I knew it would be one of them. I couldn’t bear to look at them, couldn’t bear to let them see what I’d become, what I looked like for being a lesser man than I should have been. I stiffened when I felt myself cocoon in their arms.
“I’m so sorry, Rob,” I heard my sister, Mireya say. I could only nod.
“Me too, Herm,” my sister Roxy cooed. My body trembled in sobs at the sound of her pet name for me, one she hadn’t used in so long, I thought she’d forgotten about it.
“What did I do?” I sobbed. “What did I do other than be me? Am I really that horrible?”
My sisters both began to cry, squeezing me tighter in their arms until I yelped from the pain. They both backed away and I opened my eyes as they were wiping away their tears. I looked at them, my two beautiful sisters, not one prettier than the other. They had different body types, Roxana was tall and thin and Mireya was shorter with wider hips and a bigger butt. They’re faces were angelic, though, and neither of them had zits like I did. I wondered what they saw when they looked at me. Did they see the same ugly monster that everyone else seemed to see?
“You’re a lovely soul, Robert,” Mireya whispered hoarsely. “And whoever can’t see that is a moron.”
Roxana sat beside me and clasped both hands around my unbroken one. Her golden brown eyes looked straight into mine. “People are scared of different, they don’t understand it. I know this now, I’ve seen it, lived it. There are many others like you… and they’re happy.” She didn’t have to tell me what that meant, I knew she was referring to gays without actually saying it. I could tell she was still weirded out with the idea. “You know what? A lot of the designers I work with are… and they have…” She cleared her throat and leaned into me so that only I could hear her. “They have boyfriends and they kiss and everything! In front of everyone!” I could tell she was still shocked by this, but then she did the oddest thing, something I would’ve never expected her, of all people to do-she smiled. “And they’re happy, Rob. They’re happy being together. And their love is beautiful.”
Tears filled both of our eyes as she said those words and I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Thank you, Roxy.”
She shook her head. “Don’t thank me. I’m sorry for being so closed-minded. God, I’m such a bitch sometimes.”
“You’re always a bitch,” Mireya chimed in, making us all laugh a little.
“But we love you,” I said.
After my s
isters and parent’s left later that night, I sent Mike a beeper message, hoping he would go and see me. When he did, I asked him for all of the Polaroid photos and wrote a small message on each of them. I asked Mike to tape them to everybody’s locker at school-everywhere that people would see them. Pictures of me, lying on a hospital bed all bruised up—all broken. My message was clear and I accepted the fact that maybe they would come after me again. Maybe they would beat me again and maybe the next time I wouldn’t be as lucky.
Going back to school was scary. I thought for sure if one of those guys didn’t kill me as I walked through the doors, I would die of a heart attack, because that’s how fast my heart was beating. Nonetheless, I pushed my shoulders back, channeling a little piece of Roxy, and walked down the hall. The first pair of eyes met mine and gasped. I braced myself for a slew of hateful words, but they never came. Still, my heart clenched. Then I saw Brad. He was standing with a group of football players, some of them had aided in my beating. He stepped away from them and crossed his arms over his chest shooting daggers at me with his piercing blue eyes, but he never said a word.
Later that day, I saw him again outside of third period and this time he brushed past me, hitting me slightly with his shoulder. “You’re gonna pay for that, Robbie. One day, you’re gonna pay.”
I tilted away from him and looked him in the eye, we were except this time I wasn’t scared of him anymore. This time, if he pushed me and I pushed back, I was going to do it with no fear-nothing holding me back. I was never one to embrace violence, I’d seen enough of that at home to know that I didn’t want to play with the monster that rage could turn people into, but this is one case I was willing to take a chance in. I was doing it for everybody-all of the losers being made fun of, all of the hate being thrown at undeserving people, and him. I was doing it for Brad and others like him. I was doing it because he needed to see what he was doing to me, to us. He needed to know that it wasn’t right, that it wasn’t fair. And I think in that moment of us looking at each other, sizing each other up in that empty hallway, he saw that.
He looked away first, then looked back at me. “You’re still a pussy,” he said before he walked away. I accepted his hateful words knowing that he was really calling himself that. That day I realized that Brad was fighting his own battle, his own self-hatred probably getting the best of him as he acted out on others. And that was the day I learned to let it go. I gulped down the anticipation that was lodged in my throat and walked away feeling free. Feeling light and hopeful.
I knew life would bring many more, probably much worse trials my way, and I knew that I would take the mean blows as gracefully as I could. Everybody is fighting their own demons. We all have a darkness that threatens to take over our thoughts, our feelings, and our lives. It’s up to us to choose whether or not we’ll let it win. It’s easy to give in and succumb to it. It’s easy to say, “I’m so sick of this shit. It’s not worth it anymore. I’m not worth it.” But you are. We all are. I’ve made it this far and it hasn’t always been easy, in fact, it’s been hard as hell. Some days I wake up not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to see or hear anybody. But that would be easy. Locking myself up in my shell would be the easy thing to do, and over the years I’ve learned that easy things are usually not the best things. It’s the things that take time that end up being most gratifying. Life is like fine wine, you have to take your time fermenting yourself. You have to learn the great qualities you have before you can accept others to see them. And sometimes that takes a while, learning your good qualities. Shit, it might take forever. Lord knows it’s taken me forty-five years and I’m still learning. But that’s the beauty of life: you live, you learn.
I thought bullying was over in high school, and a great part of it was, but I was bullied in college sometimes. Not in the same way, though. I was also bullied by my father when I decided to tell him that I was gay. He threatened to disown me, and he did. It was a rough period in my life, one where I felt alone, despite my sisters and mother being there for me. I was in my late twenties and still felt like I needed his acceptance. Unfortunately, he died before he could give it to me. I’ve learned to be okay with that, he didn’t know any better and I can’t blame him.
Now, at forty-five, I look around and see my small group of friends and family. As tears threaten, I squeeze down on the hand that holds mine and look at his handsome face. It’s been a long and bumpy ride for my fiancé Victor and I. Some people give us weird looks when we hold hands in the street and others preach that our love is wrong, but when I look into the eyes of the man that accepts me and loves me, I know there’s nothing about us that is wrong. When the door opens, I hear my family stand up behind us and cheer, knowing that Victor and I are about to make our union official. My heart skips a beat as Victor draws small circles over my palm and links our fingers together.
“I’m here to marry Mr. Robert Casas and Victor White,” a deep voice says, drawing our attention to it.
The officiate walks and stands before us, he looks at our joined hands with a smile before his eyes lock with mine and then Victor’s. He starts the ceremony by speaking about love and kindness. He tells us a personal story of his own and the way he used to bully a gay kid as a teenager. He says, as he looks at us, how sorry he is for what he’d done and how he makes it up to the bullied kid every day of his life. It turns out that the kid he used to bully is his younger brother and the only family he has left.
“Love knows no boundaries, because love is free,” he says.
I’ve learned that life is life a fucked up merry go round. You think you know where you’re going, you think you’ve got it all figured out until one day BOOM, it hits you that you don’t know shit. Nobody does. You don’t know if that kid you’re making fun of is going to end up hiring you to work for his company in thirty years. Or if the one that makes fun of you is going to end up scrubbing your floors.
Things change, people change, but there will always be constants: love and hate. They’ve been there from the beginning of time, and they’ll continue to be there long after we’re all gone. One of those two will make your heart full and fulfilled, the other will tear you down with time. Choose wisely.
“You may now kiss your spouse,” the officiate says to end the ceremony
Victor and I turn our bodies towards each other and hold hands. In his eyes I see the only things I need to see, the things that break the shackles I once confined myself in: truth, love, and hope. We close our eyes as our lips lock in a soft kiss as the lovely melodic cheers from our friends and family fill our ears and in that moment we’re sounded by so much love that I know hate could never stand a chance against us.
My name is Robert Casas, and this is my story.
THE END
About the Author
Claire Contreras
Claire Contreras graduated with her BA in Psychology from Florida International University. She lives in Miami, Florida with her husband, two little boys, and three dogs.
Her favorite pastimes are: daydreaming, writing, and reading.
She has been described as a random, sarcastic, crazy girl with no filter.
Life is short, and it’s more bitter than sweet, so she tries to smile as often as her face allows. She enjoys stories with happy endings, because life is full of way too many unhappy ones.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ccontrerasbooks
Twitter: @claricon
Web: clairecontreras.com
BEAUTIFUL
By
Kelly Elliott
Editor: Jovana Shirley
Copyright 2013 ~ All rights reserved
CHAPTER ONE
Skylar
The moment I saw him walk into my English class, I had to catch my breath. That was twice now that I’d seen him. He was breathtakingly handsome. All of the girls immediately started whispering, praying he would notice one of them.
I sat in the back right corner as far away from everyone as I could. There was no ch
ance of him noticing me.
Then, our eyes met. I instantly felt my cheeks blush when he smiled. Is he smiling at Jenny or at me? Jenny was a beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed cheerleader, who pretty much just had to look at a guy, and he would fall for her.
Mrs. Hathaway grinned at him and then told him to pick a seat. He turned and looked directly at me again. My heart started pounding so loud that I was sure everyone could hear it.
“I heard he moved here from New Mexico. He wanted to play football for a Texas high school, so a college would notice him,” Jenny said as she started to mess with her hair.
“What’s his name?” Mary Beth asked.
Jenny shrugged her shoulders. “Who cares? Look at that body.” Jenny jumped up and moved over a seat right before he got to her table.
For some reason, my heart was breaking. How stupid of me to even think he would notice me. Even if he did, everyone would tell him to stay away from me.
He passed by her table and walked right up to mine.
Oh. My. God.
“Hey, I’m Wyatt. Mind if I sit here with you?” he asked with a drop-dead gorgeous smile that melted my heart.
I smiled. “No, not at all. It’s open.”
He sat down, and I glanced over toward Jenny and her posse. They were all just staring at me. Trying not to look at them, I moved my gaze up toward Mrs. Hathaway, who was smiling the biggest smile I’d ever seen.
Mrs. Hathaway was also my next-door neighbor. She was one of the youngest teachers at my high school. She hated the way I got treated by other students, and she was always defending me. I was worried that one of these days, it would come back to haunt her.
Stories for Amanda Page 8