Child Victim's Act

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Why Can’t I Be You?

Published March 8, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

“William likes horror films, too,” Lou informs me, one Sunday afternoon in August after mass.

“Really?”

“Yeah!”

“Nice! We should hang out!”

William, who has the soft, handsome looks of some teen sex comedy hero, is visiting Lou for a few days before beginning college at SUNY Buffalo. In fact, he is just one of many attractive young men who have visited Lou, ever the youth loving pied piper, over the years since he has arrived at St Patrick’s. I never question this virile form of loyalty, though. More than anything, I feel a familial sense of pride. Lou, who is so popular, is like our family uncle & he, seemingly, loves us more than any of these affection hungry intruders from parishes long past. So, I always provide the guys who arrive for quick intervals of time with a bit of brotherly compassion. A benediction, as it were, from the one who is truly favored.

Almost by accident, we pick the perfect evening to gather. Fright Night, which I saw in theaters the summer before, is debuting on HBO and I am eager to revisit it. William hasn’t seen it, so I happily recount to him, while drinking our pre-movie fest sodas in the rectory kitchen, about watching it with a small group of kids from a theater troupe I had joined the year previously. Every time Jonathan Stark’s Billy, the vampire-villain’s slavishly devoted sidekick appeared, we would gleefully shout out “Gay! Gay!” at the screen! Since that evening, though, I have secretly wondered about the authenticity of those outbursts. What if the Billy character wasn’t gay? He could have just been extremely devoted to his master. I had seen the slavish way the nuns had reacted around priests all my life…some almost trembling with devotion when they walked into room…and there was surely nothing sexual there…or so I hoped. The thought of a shaven headed, wrinkle skinned ghoul flagellating herself over love for an unreachable colleague a la Vanessa Redgrave in The Devils, one bizarre cult film that my father actually heartily encouraged me to watch (in Lou’s living room, nonetheless, as it came on during one of their late night talk-a-thons) due to its literary and historical references, was simply too much for me to imagine.

Besides, if there was going to be homosexuality portrayed on the screen, why couldn’t it be straightforward? The Billy-Jerry relationship was cloistered in secrecy and innuendo and sadistic power plays – another coupling, if that was even what it was, that made something secret and shameful out of being gay. I would have actually much preferred Charley, the tentative, moonstruck hero, and Ed, his socially awkward best buddy, being the leading couple as opposed to Charley and Amy, the no bullshit lass who, ultimately, became the object of desire for both central male characters. As if to make up for this affront, Ricky, a member of the acting group, and I parked in the alley behind that movie theater, post-viewing, and passionately made out. Once or twice, we had to duck below the swinging orb-like glow of police lights – an adventurous thrill. My grandfather was the postmaster of Dunkirk, the small town where we would gather to rehearse and often perform for civic groups, and the thought of his reputation taking a hit due to the discovery of my deviant midnight lip locking seemed both horrifying and recklessly thrilling all at once. The fact that the handsome, raven haired Ricky, a confirmed bisexual who was already the father of two-year-old twin boys, exuded a devil-may-care, new wave James Dean vibe only heightened the power of those moments.

But that all seemed very long ago and despite my outward enthusiasms, I pulsed with the nervous energy that accompanies one leaving home for the very first time. College was just days away and I was distracted, seemingly filing that long ago sexual energy away for some true love that I knew was just waiting around the corner in Chicago. I could picture him now – some rippling, dexterous athlete running down the corridors of my dorm, tossing a football, thoughtlessly, in the air…our eyes would latch…and… Or maybe we would even meet cute like Frannie and Kirk on As The World Turns, an accidental collision turning from a rude and caustic energy to an undeniable connection.

Back in the present, though, I am curious about William’s decision to commute to college from home. “Don’t you want to escape from your parents a bit?” I ask as Jerry whirls the dazed Amy around the dance floor, attempting to seduce her away from the frenzied, (wrongfully) love struck Charlie.

“Maybe by my junior year. This is more convenient now…and with my job and school, it seems like I’ll barely see my parents.”

This reasoning baffles me. My every aching, straining move since middle school has been to escape my present circumstances. I have been keen to cut through the strangling vines of my familial cords with a vibrant incisiveness and establish myself someplace, far away, in a world of freedom and creativity. The lure of this imagined plane has been so compelling that even the thought of failing my Regents Exams – which would have put a definitive damper on my aspirations – couldn’t interrupt my dreamy, cobble stoned wanderings. Even when studying in those last days of high school, I could barely concentrate, preferring to listen to the haunting strains of Suzanne Vega’s debut album…imagining the lyrical processes that went into writing a song like Marlene on the Wall. Which of Ms. Dietrich’s films had inspired Vega, I wondered.

Maybe William was questioning his choices, as well, and that was the reason he has come to visit Lou…to get advice and support. I can’t comprehend why anyone would really want to remain at home when the whole world glistened with adventure, with opportunities almost too precious to behold.

The credits roll and the next movie is announced. Ninja 3: The Domination. I am a little disappointed. I have no interest in some chop ‘em, sock ‘em Bruce Lee rip-off.

“Oh, wow. This one is really awesome. Have you seen it?”

“No. Have you?”

“Yeah. It’s this crazy demonic possession horror flick meets action-karate mish-mash. It’s wild. You’re going to love it!”

I have a feeling I will. I am also slightly jealous. It bothers me that I have never even heard of this movie while William has had full knowledge of its sure to be never fading awesomeness. Lucinda Dickey, who I’ve also never heard of for some reason – another sorrowful occurrence, plays a telephone line woman-aerobics instructor, bringing all the wonders of the multi-hyphenate to life in one role. She, indeed, is also possessed by the evil spirit of a ninja warrior – leading to floating, wind machine influenced, Linda Blair circa Exorcist 2 light shows. As the mayhem enfolds, William and I settle back into the comfortable space of two acquaintances connected by one powerful force. It’s as if the rhythm of Lou’s slumber-built breathing, coming from somewhere up in the rafters of the second floor, binds us. We will, surely, never see each other again, but both on the cusp of new beginnings and bound by the patronage of such an unusual force, we seem united and a brotherly contentment washes over us. We hug, with hearty back slaps, after the credits roll and I drive home, dreamily imagining, that in mere weeks I will no longer be this shimmering, barely formed mortal gliding, dreamily, down country roads. I will no longer be this person who merely passes the time away with a stranger, waiting for the revolution to begin. It will have already started —- in Chicago!

Impulsively, I drive back to the rectory the next morning. I want to drop off a couple magazines featuring coverage on Fright Night for William. I am possession hungry, but feeling the weight of my upcoming departure, I decided, after settling into bed last night, that I would shed some of the fat of my media works in commemoration of one of my final evenings in my hometown. It’s a hit and run moment. I pass the magazines quickly off to William, wish him well and start to head for the door. As I turn to go, though, I sense the flicker of Lou’s hand moving under the table… and I see a tension enter William’s frame as he flips through an article in a year-old issue of Fangoria. I am stunned into immobility for a moment. In a reverse sense of egoism, I had always assumed that I was the only one that Lou fondled in such a manner. For the first time, I consider that might not be the case. It’s a haunting thought.

But I am on a forward rushing trajectory, ultimately. I have no time to ruminate on the unknown, on relationships other than my own. I have college boyfriends to obtain and future stardom to initiate. The door to the rectory, with that oasis of wonder gleaming far beyond it, is looming before me. I regain my momentum. Without a glance back, I move on.

Note: (My first horror movie buddy was a priest named Lou Hendricks. Several years ago, Hendricks was named by the Western New York Catholic diocese as one of their most unrepentant predators in the ’70s and ’80s. Thus, I grew up watching monster movies with a monster – a man who was like an uncle to our family. Over the next few months, I will be sharing some of my stories from that period of time.)

Peek-A-Boo

Published March 1, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

I had made up my mind that it was never going to happen.

But Channel 59 was playing a Saturday October afternoon marathon of neutered horror flicks – Halloween 2, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Carrie – all interrupted, periodically, with brightly announced ads for local car dealerships along with speaker exploding reminders about the playtimes of long cancelled network shows and newly produced syndicated sitcoms. “See Mama’s Family every Saturday night at 7:30!” and – “Go back to a simpler time every afternoon from 3 to 4 with the Ingalls Family and Little House on the Prairie! Unsurprisingly, that Little House time slot was a favorite at Eden Heights, the old folk’s home that I volunteered at every Wednesday afternoon with several other eager, socially minded classmates. One of the beleaguered yet incredibly feisty residents – she once spat at a visiting Bishop and threw the rosary that he offered her back into his mighty, quickly reddening face – was a particular fan of the show. Every time that I entered the home with my fellow ambassadors of conscientiousness, I could hear her bellowing from her bed, “1,2,3, 4! The kids are here! The kids are here! I’m gonna kiss ‘em then I’m going kill ‘em. I’m gonna kiss ‘em then I’m gonna kill ‘em. Then, 1-2-3-4, I am gonna make ‘em sit ‘n watch Little House on the Prair-r-r-ie!” She, quite simply, was my heroine.

Her outrageousness seemed on the same Zen-like plane as Patti Smith, a squawky voiced punk priestess whose LPs I had begun discovering in cut out bins, after school, at mid-range department stores like Fisher’s Big Wheel. Most recently, I had found her 1976 recording Radio Ethiopia shoved into a tightly packed, impulse buy side rack at a grocery store checkout lane in Salamanca, New York. I loved the incongruity of finding an LP that featured a song called Pissing in a River, which I was surprised to discover was a fairly mournful ballad about the fading embers of youth, in a supermarket that catered to grade school moms and the hopeful, soon to be tenured teachers at the nearby academy of higher learning.

That afternoon, unsurprisingly, Lou also had his own ideas about further education- in this case, my own. Gathered together in his living room to watch the previously described, mostly bloodless terror-thon, he nestled against me, leaning his head on my shoulder, breathing words of hysterically inept seduction.

“You can take me like Rod takes Tina, stud,” he whispered in my ear, referencing A Nightmare on Elm Street’s doomed couple.

I chuckle nervously.

“That didn’t end so well, Lou.”

“True.” Beat. “You’re no fun,” he purrs with a cattish pout. He’s a round, bald bastardization of Ann Margret in Bye, Bye Birdie, a film that my brother and sister and I have recently watched in this very room while my parents were visiting, gossiping about church business into the long hours of a small town Saturday night. Now, on a kittenish roll, he begins rubbing at my crotch in long, incredibly cloying circles. I shift away from him, decidedly uncomfortable, a fact that he just as decidedly ignores.

“Take me now, Brian, and I’ll buy you a flower and bring you to the prom like Tommy did with Carrie.” His eyes twinkle, a comic counterpoint to a statement that is not only desperately silly, but almost unknowingly cruel. It hits too closely upon desires that I have long harbored in secret. I would love for some handsome young athlete to proudly escort me to a school dance. Often I have longingly stared at schoolmates driving off from Homecoming mixers in cars with their college age sweethearts. How, I wonder each time, did they pull off such a seeming impossible, totally desirable coup? Even my dreams at night are filled with images of me on dinner dates with ripped n ready soap opera studs…and the fact that Lou so assuredly crowns himself as being superior to them in desirability pushes at me with a fiery force.

“Fine,” I say. “Let’s do it!!”

“What?”

“Show me what you got!”

For the first time ever, I grab at his pants. Leering my fingers at his belt, I jerk at it with awkward revulsion…pawing at him, almost claw-like, the way my mother must do with certain objects. I have watched her make the motions I am now making 1000s of times. Her right hand withered by a childhood bout with polio, I have had to help her open cans, latch the buttons of her girdle, reach for out of place objects since the early days of my childhood. Now, I am, momentarily, afflicted like her, the physical cause of my distress not some relentless virus, but the seemingly unstoppable sexual overtures of Lou.

For the first time, Lou seems a bit nervous, if agreeable.

“Let me do it,” he squeaks. Then, in what is probably mere seconds, but feels like a film-roll eternity, his black tweed pants are down and bunched at his thighs. I almost laugh at what their unbuttoning reveals. Lou’s underwear is luminously grandfatherly – large, white cotton briefs with majestic give. Standing there, momentarily knock-kneed, he hardly represents the “underflair” highlighted in actor-model Jack Scalia’s highly provocative ads for Eminence briefs.

Still, pent up annoyance rallying me forth, I reach for their elastic band below Lou’s smooth, rounded gut. Maybe he has an amazing cock? It almost might make this worth it, but…

No.

It is stubby and short – a thin 4 and a half inches. But I’ve started this and, as with the other awkward encounters I’ve had with older summer stock actors, I believe I’ve begun this, so I have to see it through. I don’t want to suck it, though, so I cup my palm around it – squeeze it once, twice, three times. Lou gasps as tiny drools of ejaculate start to leak from the tip.

Suddenly, a car door slams and the sound of crunching gravel echoes closer and closer to the back entrance of the rectory. It is my father coming to pick me up.

Lou’s eyes flare with mortified adrenaline. He hikes forward, dragging his pants up his nearly hairless legs, hitching his fingers into his underwear and pulling them towards his belly almost simultaneously. Boisterously calling out “Hello,” my father enters through the kitchen, as Lou scatters up the stairs to change.

I wipe my thankfully clean hands down the sides of my jeans as I turn towards the television. Jamie Lee Curtis, clad only in a hospital nightgown & what I can only assume is a very bad wig, hobbles down a long & winding corridor – a dankly lit path that does not seem to end. I sigh, as my father swings his head into the room and waves at me. I nod, my thoughts elsewhere. I am concentrating on Jamie and the path she jaggedly weaves down. I think that if she can make it out alive, maybe so can I.

Buddy Cole’s Gift

Published August 22, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan

Talking with a reporter for The Buffalo News last summer, I found myself navigating through some of the murkier dynamics of sexual abuse. I was 16 the first time an official from the Catholic Church touched me (This, of course, was after years of verbal grooming). That was the age when my hormones, like those of many other young men, were starting to blaze into perpetual existence. I remember watching, sometimes in sad disbelief. as the boys and the girls in my high school found their way to each other, often times in the most unlikely couplings. This left me eagerly vulnerable to any homosexual advances – even the passionately unwanted ones. Therefore, it felt like I was lifting a murkily illuminated rock off of one of my darkest secrets when I revealed during that conversation that, on occasion, I relented without protest and sometimes with the barest whiff of desire when one of those often corpulent officers of Christ beckoned to me, lustily. To my surprise, the journalist, who had been covering this type of subject matter for decades. seemed unfazed by this admission. “Even the youngest and straightest of male victims have often admitted to feeling pleasure of some sort during these encounters,” he admitted. “It’s one of the many realities that makes the whole issue so insidious.”

As influenced as we are by cultural suggestion, it seems that the dearth of this kind of complex representation in film might also contribute to our silence on such an emotionally complicated issue, as well. In fact, the only film that I have ever seen approach this psychological tragedy is 2000’s back woods gothic genre-piece The Gift. Written by Billy Bob Thornton & Tom Epperson, one of the plot points of Sam Raimi’s acclaimed film deals with the relationship of a small town psychic (Cate Blanchett’s sensitively rendered Annie Wilson) and one of her supremely damaged clients, a young garage mechanic (Giovanni Ribisi’s Buddy Cole).

Obsessed with his father and mentally unraveling, it is pretty obvious from the outset that Cole, as emphatically and almost beyond realistically played by Ribisi, has been sexually abused by his paterfamilias. But taking the circumstances to an interesting extreme, Thornton and Epperson reveal just how deviant the effects of this violation can be. Desperate and at the end of a rapidly eroding grip on his violent tendencies, Buddy finally confesses to Annie, “I’ve been thinking about my daddy and I’ve been touching myself. Why do I do that?” Naturally with the set-up of Cole’s fist pounding, explosive personality, when the truth ultimately reveals itself to him, it is met with a fiery, understandably criminal retribution.

Despite this distinctly celluloid resolution, as most real life victims actually take to therapy or the courtroom to deal with their damaged upbringings, the creatives here still need to be applauded. By digging deep into a seemingly never before acknowledged aspect of abuse – the recipient’s own conflicted carnality – they offer a representation that is meaningful to the many, including myself, who deal with the repercussions of such abuses on a daily basis.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!