Dean

'THE LEGEND OF THE HOUSE OF SHAME ...'

Editor's Note: This terrifying manuscript is not offered as an authenticated document, neither is there any indication that its contents are anything other than the day-dreaming of a fantasist (indeed, at several points in the manuscript the anonymous narrator suggests that this is, in fact, the case). Nevertheless, there must be conjecture... did the events so vividly portrayed here actually happen? Can we be certain...? Doubts must remain. Similarly, although the narrator finds a form of salvation towards the end of the testimony, in which he rises above the disadvantages of his background, and the problems of his incarceration, there is a subtext to which he is not probably aware, that his relationship with 'Bryan' will also be of an exploitative nature. That once - at his own admission, 'broken in', his supine acceptance of abuse will continue once he returns to the world beyond 'The House Of Shame', albeit within the framework of a consensual arrangement. Therefore this uncorroborated document is presented for your consideration in the form of what is termed a 'Misery Memoir', yet more as a sociological study of an extreme state of mind rather than an accurate record of lived experience...

*****

(1) DEAN

A forbidding place, set in wooded grounds behind impossibly high walls. A chilling sense of foreboding the moment the darkness of its gates falls over me. Normal life and the rules that govern it cease forever within its enclosure. This is the moment you know it's for real.

It's September, the death of summer, only bleakness ahead. I'm beyond help, set apart from everything I know, a victim of powers with absolute control over every aspect of my life. And here I'm trapped in a world with no escape clause, inhabited by no-hoper delinquents and no-account maladjusted youths. At eighteen, I'll be one of the youngest. I strip naked and shower as the social worker watches. Entering my new life as naked as I'd come into my old life. Given a pitifully inadequate rough-textured towel I struggle to keep in place as I'm hustled from the shower-room into the adjoining clinic. With a single gesture of his finger the bored doctor indicates its removal, so I stand before him naked again.

I'm weighed and photographed. Yes, I appreciate the need for photographic records, but why does that mean full-frontal nude, arms by my side? I read faded posters blue-tacked to the wall. Warnings of unsafe sexual practices. Illustrations of infected body-parts. Anatomical 'visible man' diagrams of muscle-tissue and the nervous system. The male reproductive organs, showing a droopy little penis, and a cross-section illustrating the chambers that engorge with blood to produce erection. While, during the cursory medical, surely the Doctor's taking too long examining my scrotum for hernias, rolling my balls between his fingers? And why use a rectal thermometer to take my temperature, and why probe it so deep?

"Do you have homosexual tendencies?" he asks, ticking boxes on his chart.

A noncommittal shrug. "Not particularly."

"Pity" he muses. "Spend some time here, you'll come to appreciate certain aspects of it. We can't eliminate sexual activity among inmates. That'd be impossible. But you're all age-of-consent, and at least we can monitor to ensure there's no communicable genital infections. We do that. We're a clean establishment... y'understand?"

I nod, not sure exactly what he's telling me. So I act dumb.

"But any problems, any problems of a sexual nature, come see me, OK? No need to book an appointment."

"I don't have any sexual problems."

"You will. An attractive young boy like you, believe me you will."

Surely that's a weird thing for a doctor to say? Stranger yet, because I'd never really thought of myself in that way. Attractive? - me. Naw, I've always been the problem. Not the solution. He merely nods to indicate the session is over. The chair I'm sitting on is moulded-plastic, so my bare bottom - still slightly moist from the shower, sticks to it. As I stand up it makes a sluuucking-sound, as if I'm not self-conscious already.

With the towel barely around me I'm hustled into the next room where I'm issued with grey tracksuit bottoms and a long-sleeved grey sweatshirt to wear for my induction-period. A leering guard watches as I struggle into them, and I despise the way I feel in them. Like I've left the last vestige of individuality behind and I now belong to this place - as Bryan later phrases it, 'detained at her magistrate's pleasure.'

This is my freaky story. I'm telling you every detail, and it's not for the faint-hearted. It's not that I'm bad, not as if I'm evil, just... disturbed, just easily led, suggestible and confused. I've always been the skinny ticky kid who lacks self-confidence, always weak-willed, always giving in to a more forceful personality. The regular truant, with disruptive behavioural problems. Drawn into shoplifting more through attempts to fit in than by criminal tendencies. 'In need of care and attention.' After recurrent prosecutions for persistent petty crime I wind up here, in this Secure Assessment Centre for an indeterminate period - in practise, nine months. This House of Correction, this Home For Wayward Boys. A long way from town, a longer way from the familiar world, a large Victorian building which at any given time houses some fifty dysfunctional miscreant youths who sleep in six-berth dormitories, only half-a-dozen of the low-risk trustees granted the privilege of their own room.

Being naturally shy, avoiding confrontation, with low self-esteem, I'm nervous of my enforced stay in this threatening place. Already I sense insolence and aggression in the air as I'm escorted deeper into the lock-up. There's intimidation implied by the stance and slouching menace of those we pass. I've been cast into a Never-neverland among the Lost Boys. Only they're psycho-Lost Boys. Lost Boys and good-for-nothing youths, wackos, nut-jobs and weirdos reverted to psycho-barbarism, direct from the pages of 'Lord Of The Flies'.

They escort me to where I'm to share a small dormitory room with four others, already it's a prospect that horrifies me. There's a formation of five utilitarian beds, each with its bedside cabinet large enough for a minimum of personal effects. And it scares the hell out of me. I eat in the common-room, conscious of eyes on me, appraisals taking place from sociopath scum, slow-learners, retarded brats, and low-life inadequates. They're sizing me up as their next target. Their next victim. I feel weak and wretched, dreading the weeks and months of unpleasantness I'm going to have to endure here. I watch a mind-pulp of TV in the evening, and keep out of their way as much as possible, avoiding their eyes.

In the room I'm to share there is Dean. Although no more than two or three years older than me, he's the only one who seems to inspire anything like authority. A brooding arrogance, a dark pent-up insolence, a burning aloofness that sets him apart, and when he passes by, all misdemeanour ceases. But dark, taller than me, he's quiet, as though concealing depths of hidden energies. His bed is set apart at the far end of the dorm, beneath the window. To the left are two beds that belong to Solomon - 'Sol', a black layabout perhaps a year older, and suedehead Ian who is maybe a little younger. To the right, Hooch next to Dean, and then my bed, nearest the door.

Welcome to the House of Fun! But if my first day is hell, the night is to be even stranger. I wait as late as I can, hiding in the toilets, then slip into bed as the lights go out, and lie still. Once in bed I consider myself safe. By closing my eyes into blackness, the breathing of others in the dormitory is the only reminder of my imprisonment. There's a long moment of stillness. I hear the distant tide of wind in the trees outside. The low hum of circulation, water percolating through the radiators, or something like it. Footfall and muffled indecipherable conversation passing by in the corridor outside.

Then there's a closer stirring, the squeak of bedsprings, and I stiffen involuntarily. I sense something in the air. Next thing I know there's movement and sniggering in the darkness. The slap of bare feet on canvas, the creak of disturbed floorboards. I don't like the sound of those sounds, each creepy crick and crack. My stomach contracts, I shrink protectively deeper beneath the coarse blankets. Nearer. Nearer still. I cringe inside myself. Suddenly my covers are ripped back, and I feel a looming naked body straddling me, knees nudging up against my ribs. I'm confused, it's twilight dark, I'm only half-aware of darker shapes and a sudden weight as he sits heavily on my chest, high up, driving the breath out of me, so it's difficult to inhale, his leg-hairs brushing rough up against my cheeks as his knees scissor in at either side of my head, the genital aroma of him inescapable.

The bedspread rustles as I try to draw away, but immediately his hands clamp on me. Not hurting, but firm. I half-heartedly resist, squirming ineffectually, mind swirling in numbing panic, but one hand is guiding the side my head, I sense the other arrowing his erect penis at my mouth, radiating heat, quivering and flexing in the darkness like some thick python with a forceful animal life of it own.

"Shhhh, just suck it" he urges.

I writhe helpless. It's not like I'm unaware of what I'm supposed to do, I'm neither stupid nor naïve, I've been around, done stuff. Just frightened to do it, but more frightened to resist. I squirm, the rubbery pressure of it smearing bluntly up against my lips, rigid and insistent. What can I do? Fight him? No way, he's older - stronger, more dominant. I'm weak and scared. Shout out? I'm trapped in this dorm with him, he can exact whatever revenge he chooses, at his leisure. Fighting will only make it worse. I have no alternative. Sick with fear and revulsion. I can delay no longer.

Miserably I gape my mouth, allowing the monster to slither in, already my lips are hooked over the raised ridge of his glans, I can trace its rim, which means its tip is somewhere past my teeth, and it's feeding in deeper, shoving my tongue aside effortlessly and socketing my retching choking throat. The pressure forces my head back, until it bumps up against the wooden headboard, and can go no further. Then he relaxes a little, and I'm sprawled there, his cock filling my mouth, distorting the shape of my lips around it. He nudges his hips back and forward, fucking in and out, my head crammed up against the pillow.

Then "C'mon, suck it, don't pretend you don't know how to."

His body-weight heavy on me, my only defence is to do what he wants, and get it over with, so, contracting my mouth around it, enclosing it tight and - still reticent, I exert tentative suction, swallowing the salty taste flooding my mouth, it twitches appreciatively in response, encouraging more, so I suck in a numb submissive acceptance, then suck again. After long uncomfortable moments he relaxes his grip on my hair as it's obvious I'm coming around to accepting what I must do, and he allows me to get on with it.

I can smell the stale maleness of his groin, sense his power and urgent sexuality, his cock thick and demanding in my mouth, pulsing up against my teeth and tongue. Although I feel I might suffocate on the sweaty fug of his thighs, in the wiry pubescence of him, my own thighs are crawling in answering bizarre sensations I can't control, responding to the enforced intimacy, the thrill of disgust, the base compulsion of raw sex. I'm ramrod erect too, on the edge despite my cold fear, closing my eyes in heady surrender to sensations stimulated by the twitch and pulse of him hard up against the roof of my mouth.

While I suck he offers no further pressure, but the moment I pause for breath he rams his hips forcefully into my face, so I take the path of least resistance. After some time I settle to his rhythm, then sense his breathing quicken, his hairy stomach flexing, he nudges forward deeper into my throat, his fat balls stirring, squashing up against my chin, with a shock of disgust I know what's happening.

He grunts obscenely in a way that must be audible to the rest of the dorm, I feel the raised ventral ridge of the sperm-duct running its underside expand and pulse against my stretched lower lip, and I taste the first spasm of creamy come spit up against my tongue. Like I'm taking a mouthful of electric shocks. It flexes vilely in my mouth as it pumps into me, it seems to go on forever, endlessly choking with its cloying spurts of fluid, as I lie petrified, frozen, my mouth gummed, unable to move or even breath, until it ceases and he's throbbing to quiescence, and I lie there with his cock absurdly still in my mouth, in a swirling fug of sweaty heat feeling him soften and the tension leave his body.

"Don't let it stain the sheets" he hisses. "Understand?"

Unable to reply, jaw aching and lips numb, I make a mewling sound, as he slowly withdraws inch by inch, leaving long drooling strands of saliva and spunk on my chin. As he gets up I catch fleeting glimpses of those distended testicles hung in pendulous obesity over my face, pubic hair moist with sweat rough on my skin. Just as suddenly I'm alone, shivering, sobbing quietly in the aftermath as shockwaves recede in a rage of adrenaline. It's not a warm night, but I'm damp with sweat and uncomfortably flushed hot. I feel dirty and used, his emission swimming around my teeth. I daren't spit it out. I can't get up and go to the toilet to gob his seed out for fear of drawing attention to myself. So I lie for long moments of psychological indecision. Then, when I can delay no longer, I screw my face up, and swallow. I feel sick, want to brush my teeth and rinse my mouth out.

This fulfils my worst expectations. Being here, in this place, is bad enough. Being sexually victimised too is a worst-case scenario. At least he hadn't hurt me, and now he's left me alone. I'm incapable of sleep for a long long time, drawn against my will, until it takes just two light wank-strokes to bring me orgasming to my own climax, ejaculating across my stomach and up as far as my nipple in long white gooey strands. I think of the diagram in the Doctor's clinic. The illustration of the droopy penis. The cross-section showing the chambers that engorge with blood to produce erection. Well, I've sure had a thorough demonstration of the way it all functions.

The following morning I feel guilty and confused. Encountering the crinkly hairs around my navel with my fingers, they're stiff with dried semen. It sparks off vivid flashbacks of how it came to be there. Looking around me I realise, my night visitor must have been the aloof older boy, Dean. But he doesn't speak, doesn't glance at me, doesn't even acknowledge my presence. When I take my morning ablutions my piss-stream is bifurcated by spunk-matted strands of pubic hair. The shower is freezing cold, I'm nervous of being observed, I can still taste him in my mouth, but can't understand my own physical reactions to what happened either, why had I been so aroused during the episode? There are jism-stains on my pyjamas, they are my own. What does that mean? Is it my weakness, the devil in me, my Achilles heel? - after all, I'm no rogue, but I've been no boy scout either. I desperately try to sponge them clean in the toilets.

The rest of the day is sheer torment. The walls are painted dull fake-neutral colours, and they smell of hospital corridors. There's a faint aroma of cheap polish in the day-room. The same tacky chipped down-at-heel faded quality of, just about everything. With an all-pervading stale institutional torpor spiced with something of the nastiness and playground cruelty that's an accepted part of life here. I've seen that movie, 'Scum', I know what to expect in this kind of enforced confinement. And I've always been ill-at-ease with others, over-conscious, hypersensitive to being singled out for ridicule and verbal intimidation. It's not my fault I don't belong. It's the world around me that's got it all wrong. How else did they expect me to turn out?

There's a postcard from my mother. She was never much into the writing thing. She explains how it is too far for her to visit me, but she's sure I'll understand. She's met this wonderful new boyfriend, and she hopes I'll wish them well. Yeah, like I've not heard that before!

Later, I have an interview for psychiatric assessment during which I stay sullenly silent, it lasts most of the morning.

"Do you understand why you are here?" He wears corduroy trousers and horn-rim glasses like a trendy-liberal English Teacher. Calls me by my first name too frequently, in an attempt to establish trust. I just nod. "This is an opportunity, not a punishment. We operate a progressive correctional regime here. We are people who have your interest at heart, we can help you. But only if you want to be helped. It's up to you. The choice must be yours. You understand?"

Another nod. Shuffling awkwardly in a cold sweat of embarrassment until it's over. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just leave me alone, you, them, everyone. If you want to count me, count me OUT! In the afternoon I'm delegated to help work in the vegetable garden where I keep to myself as much as possible.

After lunch the suedehead called Ian smiles across at me and says "You alright?" He's slim, slighter build than me.

"'Course I'm alright, what do you mean? Why shouldn't I be alright?" I respond defensively. Don't want to talk. Don't have nothing to say.

Until the evening. Night holds terrors for me. For some time I stand at the top of the stairwell where a window looks out over the grounds, to where mournful crows circle over the outbuildings and the potting shed. I can see the wall, the wire and the surveillance cameras that hem us in and define the edge of the world. The event horizon of what is possible. Beyond is only the endless bleak moor. If I could get out. Over that wall. Across the moor. Follow the road down apiece, catch a bus to take me away. To where? I got nowhere to go. But anyplace's got to be better than where I am now... isn't it? I'm trapped in a Gothic cliché, a counter-life, but if my experience here is meant to be a weird fable, then fables are supposed to be disconnected from reality. This is too real for comfort.

My clothes are in my bedside locker, laundered, ironed and neatly folded. Pyjamas too. My toilet bag with tooth-brush, flannel, nail-clippers, razor, a foil of paracetamol, a tube of Medac cream for those unfortunate acne breakouts (they used to say spots are caused by excessive masturbation, and I fear they might be right, monitoring each new facial eruption as a mark of betrayal proclaiming my guilt to the world. But what constitutes excessive? Five times a week - once every night, or more? Sure, I'd fought against temptation, but it was a long losing fight).

The door of the locker sags inadequately on its brass hinges. No locks. No key. A battered paperback crushed into the draw, left by the previous occupant - 'Man In A High Castle' by Philip K Dick. I surf through its pages, but can't concentrate. At lights out my heart is pounding loud up against my ribcage with dread. I lie in a terror of what's to come. Although I'm curled beneath the covers, in my head I'm climbing the walls. Then I hear the slap of his bare feet on the floor as he paces towards me. He draws the sheet back, his intimidatingly huge nakedness mounting my bed, saying nothing, until he's sitting on the pillow, legs splayed on either side. This time he just waits.

I hesitate as long as I dare. My mind screaming 'no, no, leave me alone, don't make me do it.' But, throat dry, afraid to touch it, but more afraid not to, I reach out nervously, find and grasp his stiff cock with a thrill of fear, and begin to masturbate him slowly. Up and down its full length.