The City of Rossford

Reader discretion is adviced, this story contain graphic content depicting violence which may not be suitable to all readers. This is a fictional story and do not portray real events or real persons.

It wasn’t that Meredith Affren didn’t have nerves. She did. But the thing she feared most was being afraid, and this was just some shit she had to do. So she stood up and opened the locker room shouting, “Kip Danley! Kip Danley!”

A few seconds later she heard voices:

“Danley, it’s some bitch out there for you!”

“Who the fuck is that screaming?”

“Shut the hell up!”

“Kip Danley!”

“Dude, its some bitch out there for you.”

Meredith was pretty. In fact she was beautiful. She knew that when she was thirteen. She had made a man stop at the look of her, and not just pretty because she was white with some blond hair and blue eyes, as Layla would say, but beautiful. Yet the way that first man had looked at her… with a combination of worship and something like resentment…

As she listened to the men she thought, They hate us. They hate us and they fear us.

The door opened and a blond boy with very blue eyes smiled and said, “Are you calling me?”

He was so cute, in his way, and so winning that Meredith had to remember why she had called him.

“Are you Kip Danley?”

“You Meredith Affren?”

“Yes.”

“My mom goes to church with your grandma.”

“Well, if you know me,” she said, “then you know I’m friends with Robin Netteson.”

At once his face changed.

“Yeah,” Meredith said, softly. “That’s how her face looks everyday.”

He looked stupid and confused. He looked childlike.

He closed the door and took her gently by the wrist, to the trophy case.

“Whaddo wanna know?” he said.

“I want to know what happened,” Meredith told him. “I want to know why all of your friends—”

“They’re not my friends.”

“Well whatever they are… Why they are gone, and you’re here instead of suspended or on your way to jail?”

Sheridan looked at the screen of his cell phone.

“You alright if I just drop you off at home?” he turned to Chay.

Chay looked perplexed but said, “Sure. What’s up?”

“I just gotta run an errand or two,” Sheridan said in a voice that meant Chay should stop asking questions.

Chay had wanted to say, “Drop me off at Casey’s.” But then Sheridan would begin asking him questions. This wasn’t fair, but since when had fair entered into anything?

Sheridan stopped in front of his house and said, “I’ll wait till I know you’re in.”

“That’s not really necessary.”

Sheridan shrugged and Chay got out of the car. He pulled his bag after him. He knew Sheridan would wait until he was inside.

“I tried to stop it,” he muttered, pulling on the tail of his tee shirt. “I tried to stop it and I didn’t do it. I didn’t expect that to happen. Guys are… unpredictable. They do stuff… in a minute.” He snapped his fingers. “I mean they do it like that. Just like that.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t know what the fuck was coming. I tried real hard to stop stuff. I don’t ever…”

Kip looked at Meredith.

“You know I don’t sleep at night? You know I can’t even look at any of my friends the same? Or at guys. Or myself. In the mirror. Not that this matters to you, but I can’t even get hard without getting sick. That stuff sticks to you. It sticks to you. I don’t ever want to think about it again, and now it’s all I can think about. And I gotta go to court and talk about it. Describe it. You know what happened Meredith. You know… She got raped.”

Robin opened the door.

“Mom and Dad aren’t here,” she told Sheridan.

He nodded, trying to look as if he didn’t care.

“Come on in,” she told him.

Sheridan Klasko entered, shutting the door behind him. He stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“Do you have a condom?” he said.

“Yes,” said Robin.

“Alright,” he shrugged, and his expression was non chalant, but his palms were sweating.

“Well, let’s do this.”

THREE YEARS AGO, CHAY SAID “I didn’t know if I should tell you. But… I had to. You can’t tell anyone else.”

“Alright,” Sheridan nodded fervently. Then Sheridan suggested: “Can we look your dad’s stuff up?”

“No!” Chay said.

Sheridan shrugged.

“I didn’t think about it until just now,” Chay said.

“Well, how do you feel about it?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Thinking about my dad doing that stuff. I don’t know. I know he and James do that. It’s different though. Thinking about my dad doing that stuff in the videos… on a video.”

“You know what?” Sheridan said, “How old is your dad?”

“He’s like… Twenty-seven, I guess.”

“He’s really young. That was only a few years ago. I bet he was the same age as the guys you see on the computer.”

“Yeah,” Chay said. “I guess. I just don’t want to think about it. I wonder if they have kids too.”

“I saw on this one talk show that they have wives. Some of them,” Sheridan amended.

“I gotta go talk to Casey.”

“Who?”

“He’s a friend of my family. And he actually does that stuff.”

“What stuff? Makes movies?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

“Here?”

“Yeah,” Chay said.

“Well,” Sheridan considered this. “Shit.”

“And…Oh…” Chay continued.

“Oh, what?”

“I forgot to tell you. I think… No, I’m pretty sure that I’m gay.”

So when Chay turned thirteen, he was sitting in Sheridan’s bedroom, and Sheridan Klasko, just turned fifteen, looked at him.

“I’ve been thinking,” Sheridan turned to him.

“Yes.”

“You haven’t been kissed. Have you?”

Chay didn’t answer. He didn’t know what Sheridan was getting at.

“I’m going to kiss you.”

And then he did.

He overshadowed Chay, leaning over him, his wet mouth pressed to Chay’s lips, now his tongue in Chay’s mouth. Chay went rigid, and then his hands reached out for the back of Sheridan’s head, to feel the softness of his short hair, to pull him closer. It was so good. It was right, and then Sheridan pulled away and said, softly:

“That’s enough, Chay. I just wanted you to have that.”

And it didn’t make Chay feel good. It made his whole world darken, and his head spun a little.

Chay went to work for Casey’s studio the next year. Noah said little, but Chay knew his father wasn’t happy. Sheridan had gotten his license and driven Chay there one morning. As he was leaving, Chay, on the porch, watched him depart and Logan, who was an escort said, “I see you looking at him.”

“What’s that?”

“I bet he kissed you once, let you kiss him. And then nothing else ever happened again.”

Chay tried not to look surprised.

“Everyone thinks they have an original story,” Logan explained.

“He kissed you. You’re waiting for it to happen again. You’re waiting for something more.”

It was early autumn, still warm, and Logan had a little tattoo at the bottom of his stomach. He never wore a shirt at the studio. He folded his arms over his beautiful chest and stated, flatly:

“That kid’ll never let you suck his dick.”

“I don’t want—”

“When I was much younger,” Logan said, even though he could have only been twenty-one then, “I had a friend that used to take advantage of me being gay. I never thought that it made him gay too. He was always wanting to do this, to do that. Letting me kiss him, then letting me blow him. Then being kind enough to fuck me. I never even stopped to think I might be a tool. It took a long time for me to learn how to feel stupid.”

Chay didn’t say anything and, at last, Logan said, “What I’m saying is this: that guy cares about you. He’s never going to use you. And that’s why you’re never going to get more than that kiss.”