And sometimes many days would go by where I didn’t have those memories or those nightmares. Sometimes many weeks would go by. I was on one of those pleasant streaks during that June of 2019. It came to an end when I got a text message from Theo. “My cabin—first weekend of July. You in?” I liked Theo and I liked Bed and I liked Jimmy, but sometimes I thought about cutting off contact, just so I could really cut myself off from those painful memories. But at the same time, it was nice to know that there were guys who went through the same terrible events as me—guys I could relate to, even though we never talked about those days.
I checked my schedule. I was clear for that weekend. “Sounds good,” I replied. I liked going to Theo’s cabin. It was a relaxing place and I had very few excuses to get away from my nursing job with my long hours and late nights.
CHAPTER II
Theo’s parents technically owned the cabin, though they never went. He had rich parents who owned lots of properties around the world. Theo was always inviting all of us to their vacation home in Panama. Ben went once, but I could never justify the cost of the flight. Theo’s sister went to the cabin often—in fact, she spent most of her year at that cabin, because she worked at the nearby ski hill, working the lift for the skiers in the winter and for the mountain bikers in the summer. But she was always gone in July, off Europe with her friends, all expenses paid by Theo’s parents. Theo invited me to go to Amsterdam with him once, but I couldn’t afford the flight.
The drive up to Theo’s cabin in the woods always reminded me of high school. The first time I went to that cabin was just a couple of weeks after the first time I got dolled up by the football jocks. And the first time was the worst because I fought back. I tried to resist, and that only made them double down on the suffering. They used a rope to tie me to a chair and they used a belt to keep my hands tied behind my back. I’ll never forget the sight of them all standing around me, looking at my face, like a group of aliens during an abduction. They kept touching my face and one of the girls reached up my skirt and grabbed my cock and said, “I don’t think girls are supposed to have big dicks like this, are they?” They all started laughing. Then she got down onto her knees and started mashing my ball sack up into my body. She called it ‘tucking,’ and I’ll never forget that strange feeling when my testicles plopped up into my body. It didn’t hurt, but it was so humiliating.
And that was back when I didn’t know how to easily wash the makeup off of my face. I spent forty minutes at the sink, splashing my face with hot water and rubbing around my eyes with hand soap. I would buy myself a bag of makeup wipes a few weeks later, based on Jimmy’s suggestion. I missed fewer fourth period classes thanks to those wipes.
But I tried not to think of those times now as I approached Theo’s cabin. I didn’t want an entire stretch of highway to have a negative association. I didn’t want to spend my life avoiding everything that had anything remotely to do with my days in high school. It would be easy enough to become a crazy person. My gut would even turn when I saw a woman in a red dress. And how was I supposed to avoid the sight of women in red dresses for the rest of my life?
I was the last to arrive at the cabin. I parked behind a fancy white SUV—one of those electric Tesla SUVs. I got out from my car and walked around it, trying to figure out whom it belonged to. Then I heard a voice. “Like it?” I turned to the cabin and saw Jimmy standing in the doorway with a smile on his face. “You can take it for a drive later if you want. You hardly even have to touch the steering wheel. It practically drives itself.”
“How’d you afford this?” I asked.
“Work’s been going well for the past year or so. I decided to treat myself.” And that’s when I noticed the personalized license plate: ‘SELZHMZ’. It took me a moment to realize it was supposed to mean ‘SELLS HOMES’. Jimmy went straight into the family real estate business after school, and apparently it was working out for him.
The fancy white SUV made my little green Honda look like an old bumper car. It was the same green Honda that I bought in the eleventh grade, with the money I made landscaping for an entire summer. I didn’t take the job because I wanted the money to buy a car—I took the job because I thought it would help me pack some muscle onto my small body. But sadly, no muscle came with the job. It didn’t help that they put me on ‘softscaping’ duties, which was a fancy word for ‘planting the flowers’. While the other guys dug deep holes and moved large rocks, I sat in the dirt with the girls, planting pretty flowers.
“Come on inside,” Jimmy said. “I’ll get you a beer. Theo’s just down at the lake, trying to catch a fish for dinner. Don’t worry though—we’ve got tons of actual food so no one has to eat whatever creature he pulls out of that lake.”
I always forgot how extravagant Theo’s cabin was. It was nearly three thousand square feet: two stories plus a large basement. There was also a spacious four-car garage, which was filled with ATVs, motorbikes, and snowmobiles. One side of the cabin was all windows, looking out at a shimmering lake, which I’m pretty sure was privately owned by Theo’s family. I could understand why Theo’s sister wanted to live most of the year at that cabin.
We all got our own bedrooms and we all got our own bathrooms. And if we wanted, we probably could have all had our own living rooms—almost, anyway. There were three living room spaces in the house, two of which were never used.
When I walked into the cabin, I was excited to see Ben for the first time in almost a year. He was in the kitchen, mixing himself a drink. “Vinnie!” he said as he saw me. “You’re just in time.”
“In time for what?” I asked.
“In time for a drink. I accidentally made too much, so you’re getting half.”
“What is it?”
“A Green Mist. You’ll like it.” He slid me a glass of his concoction. The glass stopped perfectly at the end of the counter. Ben worked as a bartender and had worked as a bartender since the day he turned eighteen. He was good at it, though none of us knew where he worked. He wouldn’t tell us when we asked. Maybe he didn’t want us coming in to try to get free drinks. Theo had a theory that he worked at a strip club, and he just didn’t want us to know.
And there was Theo, who was just coming back from his failed fishing excursion now. He put down his tackle box as a big smile crossed his face. “Vinnie! You made it,” he said. Theo looked like he could have still been eighteen, if not younger, even though he was the tallest of all of us. He didn’t have a job that I knew of, and his complete lack of financial stress was probably helping to keep the lines from his face. But I’m sure he would have appreciated a few lines on his face—just a little bit of ruggedness to make him look more manly. You could easily see why mean kids would choose him to accuse of being a cross-dressing escort. He had amazingly smooth skin and big shining eyes—not to mention his prominent cheekbones and his long eyelashes. I’d always wondered why he didn’t just trim his eyelashes—or is that even something a person can do?
“Didn’t catch anything, huh?” Ben asked.
“Not today.”
“So I guess we’re stuck with those fifty dollar steaks that I brought,” Jimmy said with a sly grin.
“How will we ever survive?” Ben said.
“Hey now. A fifty-dollar steak is good and all, but nothing beats a fresh fish from Monroe Lake. You’ll see—maybe I’ll catch a couple tomorrow.”
“I’m sure you will,” Ben said, rolling his eyes.
It had been about a year since our last get-together. We missed our usual Christmas reunion because our schedules just didn’t line up. I was visiting family on Vancouver Island, Ben apparently had to work, Jimmy was in Vegas, and Theo was staying at one of his family’s homes in Mexico. But even though we hadn’t seen each other in a year, it felt like it had only been a couple of days. There were no awkward silences and no clumsy re-acquaintances.
“I brought that board game we were talking about before,” Ben said, as if only a few days had gone by. He motioned
towards the table where the board game was. “We’ll play it later. It’s a ton of fun.”
“But first, let’s eat. I’m starving,” said Jimmy. “Someone get those steaks on the grill. I bought them, so someone else can grill them.”
“I can do it,” Theo said. He zipped onto the back deck to fire up the grill. I was already starting to feel like I was on vacation. I’d forgotten how much I liked the guys—maybe because I spent so much time during the year trying not to think about them. They were easy to get along with, and it was nice to know that I was with people who weren’t looking at me and thinking about how short I was, or how skinny I was, or how I would look in a little red dress… And maybe no one thought that when they looked at me. Maybe no one had thought that since the day we all graduated high school.
“Want a hand getting your stuff to your room?” Ben asked me.
I only had the one small suitcase. “No, I’m good,” I said. “I should get this put away now, before we eat.” So I picked up my small suitcase and brought it to my room upstairs. I didn’t need anyone to tell me which room was mine—it was always the same, up the stairs and then down the hall to the right. Like all of the bedrooms in the house, it was spacious with its own en-suite bathroom, and lots of large windows looking out at the woods. It even had a little deck where you could see the shimmering lake in the distance. I put down my suitcase and then I fell onto the bed. It was soft—much softer than my mattress at home. I had some of the best sleeps of my life on that bed. I was almost ready to sleep now after the long four-hour drive. Long drives always made me tired for some reason…
I looked towards the doorway and saw that the door across the hall was open. I stared at it for a moment and wondered if I’d ever seen into that room across the hall before. I always assumed it was a closet, but now I could see the edge of a bed. I suppose I wasn’t surprised to see that it was another bedroom. Hell, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that it was another living room. I got up to check it out. I poked my head in and quietly said, “Hello?”
There was a bed in the room, covered with pink plaid sheets. There was a bin of dirty laundry in the middle of the room and an open closet door to my left. I walked in and saw that the closet was filled with women’s clothing. The room must have belonged to Theo’s sister.
I saw a book sitting on the nightstand. I walked over to see what the book was. House of Leaves… I tried reading it once, but it was just a bit too disjointed for me. Underneath it was ‘It’, by Stephen King. Apparently Theo’s sister was into horror novels.
I wondered what other books she had, seeing as I fancied myself a bit of a book snob. I opened up her nightstand drawer and then froze at the sight of a long, thick black dildo. It wouldn’t have been such a shocking sight if it weren’t so large and intimidating.
“Looking for something?” a female voice asked.
I spun around quickly, slamming that nightstand drawer shut, and saw Theo standing in the doorway, laughing. “I’m just kidding. Pretty good voice though, huh?” he said, using an impressively realistic female voice. That voice made my skin crawl. I was shocked to hear it coming out from his mouth. I’d assumed that, like me, Theo and the other guys would try to distance themselves from even the slightest bit of girlish behaviour—even if it was just a joke. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Fine. Just tired,” I said.
“Well come downstairs and relax. We’re going to have steaks in a minute, and then we’ll play that game. And then I want to talk to you guys about something.”
“Talk to us about what?” I asked.
He smiled. “Let that wait. Just come downstairs and eat for now.” He turned around and walked away, leaving me in his sister’s bedroom alone. I wondered if he knew about the big black dildo. I couldn’t imagine that felt very nice inside of her pussy. It would just be too big, stretching everything wide in an uncomfortable kind of way. I tried not to think about it, because the thought made my heart stutter.
CHAPTER III
Dinner was great. It was nice to eat something that wasn’t takeout from the Chinese restaurant beneath my apartment, and I was getting sick of eating the little sandwiches they sold at the café in the hospital where I worked. I even ended up eating what Ben couldn’t finish. The guys all joked around about how hungry I was—and it was a nice change from guys laughing about how girly my body was.
After dinner we played a round of that board game. It was a fun game where the players have to lay down train tracks to connect destinations. It sounded kind of stupid when Ben explained the game to us, but we ended up having a fantastic time. The alcohol helped in the fun department.
Finally, around 11:00 PM, we all migrated over to the main living room, with a big picture view of the moon shining over the lake. Theo threw a couple of logs into the fireplace and lit it up before grabbing a fresh bottle of scotch and four small glasses. “Cheers,” he said.
“Cheers to what?” Ben asked.
“To a great start to what I think will be a great weekend,” Theo said. We clinked our glasses and sipped our drinks. Theo’s attention was suddenly down at his feet. He had an awkward smile on his face, as if he was trying to find the words to say something.
“You okay, Theo?” Ben asked. “Scotch no good or something?”
“I don’t really know why I feel like I need to say this,” he said, “But my therapist told me that I need to be more open about my life.”
We all became silent as we looked over at Theo. I was expecting him to tell us that he was dying from cancer. I definitely wasn’t expecting him to say what he said: “I’m still a virgin.” He looked up slowly from the floor. He looked at me and then he looked at Ben and then he looked at Jimmy. “I’ve never been with a girl.”
I was waiting for him to break into a fit of laughter. I assumed it was a joke that was just flying over my head. And maybe it would have been funny if I weren’t a virgin. Maybe it would have been funny if it weren’t just a reminder that I was a few years away from thirty and I’d never been with a woman before.
But there wasn’t a bout of laughter. Instead, Ben chimed in by saying, “Me too.”
That silence returned for a moment. Then Jimmy said, “Same here. It’s not the end of the world though.”
And suddenly, everyone was looking at me. I kept my mouth shut, assuming this was some sort of prank that they’d set up before I arrived. I was an hour late after all—they had more than enough time to make this happen. But it wasn’t like them to set me up like that. They all knew what it was like to be mocked and bullied. They knew the horribly embarrassing feeling of being tricked.
“What about you, Vinnie?” Jimmy asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “What difference does it make?”
“My therapist said that it would be a big weight off of my shoulders if I started being more open. And I have to admit, it does feel like a bit of a relief.”
Ben nodded his head. “Yeah—it actually feels kind of nice. I feel strangely relaxed. Maybe that’s just the scotch though.”
“No, no—I feel it too,” Jimmy said, also nodding his head.
And maybe I would feel relieved saying it aloud. It was something I thought about all the time, especially when I was around girls. I always wondered if they could tell—if I made it obvious somehow. And I couldn’t help but wonder if the guys in the room now could tell. Maybe I could ask them. Maybe we could talk about it and then I would feel better about it. “Is this some sort of prank?” I asked, still hesitant.
“No joke. I’ve never been with a woman,” Theo said.
“I’ve never even kissed a girl before,” said Jimmy. “I came close with one girl, but she pulled away when I went in for the kiss.”
“I kissed a girl once,” Theo said. “But it was just a quick kiss, back in high school. Then that rumour got around and girls didn’t want anything to do with me.”
My skin suddenly felt cold. Were we really having this conversation? Were we abou
t to talk about high school for the first time since graduation? Did we really want to uncover all of those painful memories?
“A girl went to give me a handjob once,” said Ben. He took a long sip from his drink. “But I, uh, couldn’t get it up because I couldn’t stop thinking about that drama room, where they would dress me up. Remember that Amanda girl? She would play with my dick and then she would push my balls up. She called it tucking.”
“She did the same thing to me!” Jimmy said, almost sounding excited—and maybe he was excited, discovering it didn’t just happen to him. I have to admit that I felt a bit excited, knowing that I wasn’t the only one.
So maybe they weren’t pranking me. Maybe they were just opening up, trying to confront those old memories so they no longer had the power to haunt them. I bit down on my tongue and took a deep breath. “I’ve never been with a woman either,” I said. “I’m a virgin.”
The guys didn’t laugh. They just nodded their heads. “I wonder if those assholes know how fucked up they made us—well—how fucked up they made me,” Ben said. “I guess I shouldn’t speak for all of us.”
“No—they fucked me up too,” said Jimmy. “I can’t even tell you how fucked up they made me. My therapist told me that I might never get over some of the repercussions.”
“So you’re seeing a therapist too?” Theo said. “Did they tell you to be more open as well?”
“He said it once, but I never knew who to be more open with.” Jimmy took a deep breath and then he smiled. “But it really does feel good, doesn’t it?”
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