I lift a shoulder, holding his eyes for a second—I see that they’re filled with tears—but then I have to look back down. “So…” Deep breath. “That went on for a while. For me, I think like a month? And they’d just…jerk you off. A bunch of women nurses. And the stuff they gave us—I think it was a mix of different stuff—it really did give you a boner. Sometimes it would hit hard, and I’d come from someone jerking me. Or using their mouth.”
I can’t resist a masochistic glance at Josh’s face, which I find slack with shock.
“Yeah, I know. It’s rape, but these people didn’t see it that way. They got paid well, so I think the place attracted sadists who could do whatever they wanted, off the grid. All the program wanted was to deliver a straight kid to its parents. They really thought they could re-program us. That was the point of the first part, in the cabins. They made sure one of the two partners was bi, if possible. And then they’d try to bond us with survival stuff. Remove your partner from you in the clinic phase, and you’d get lonely, scared and all. And then before you left, they’d tell you that the two of you would—” I look back up, waving my hand. “You know.”
Josh looks stricken.
“Fuck.” I say it loud and crisp. “If you could fuck, then you were cured. Cause everybody knows to be a functional adult, you need to keep your dick hard for sex with someone you don’t actually want to get with, right?” I frown at his shocked face, feeling numb and frozen. “I’m being too glib?”
“No.” It’s a soft whisper.
“Have you heard enough, Josh? It’s a good time for a break. You wanna pour a drink?” I ask him.
“No,” he murmurs.
I bite the inside of my cheek—hard enough to taste blood. “No one wants to hear this shit. Even I wouldn’t. So it’s okay if you want me to stop. I could explain my memory problems in just a few sentences if—”
“No, Ez.” He scoots closer, so his knees are almost touching mine and I can feel the heat of him. “Keep going.” His face is so soft and gentle. Even his voice is so soft, as if he’s speaking to a wounded animal. “Can I touch you?” he whispers. “Do you want me not to?”
I can barely choke out, “Not to.” I close my eyes, and he says, “Sorry.”
My eyes sting and throb, but moisture doesn’t come. “I’m telling you,” I say, holding my head. “The next part is not good.”
“I’m here for it,” he says softly. “If you want to tell me, keep going. I’m okay, angel.”
Again, the sting of tears—from the word “angel.”
“I’m not an angel.” I rub at my forehead, breathing deeply. For a moment, I’m consumed by disgust. I think of how he would feel as he hears this stuff, and I can feel the horror. I keep breathing, telling myself that it’s almost done.
“One night, I saw Riley in the stairwell. She was coming up from clinic. I was going down. Cause I’d gotten hard for dicks that day. And they were doing more stuff to be sure I wouldn’t keep that up. They had this shock stick, and—” I look at him, his handsome face distorted by the tears in my eyes.
“She looked fucked up,” I rasp. “I could see her nipples under her shirt. Her cheeks were pink, and when she saw me, she hugged me and like…rubbed my abs. And then her nurse took her away.” I bite down on my lip. Look down at my legs.
“Paul came into my room to talk to me. Because my dick kept getting hard for dicks on their porn. I mean, why would they even have gay porn, right? When they used their little shock stick—like a billy club with an electric charge—I could still stay hard. They didn’t like that.” I roll my eyes, and when I glance up at Josh, I see tears on his cheeks for the first time.
For a minute, I can’t go on.
It’s not sad. I want to tell him it’s not really not even that sad. It’s only awful in the way the world is. We all know how awful it is. People get raped every day, and it’s no big deal. No one ever pays the price except you. And you go on, because you have to go on. That’s the world that we have.
“I got into it with Paul that night,” I murmur, “over Riley. He was so mad, he locked me in my room for three days. And the windows there were plastic.” I wave my hand. “As one does when one keeps captives.”
Even though I’m looking down, I can tell from Josh’s breathing that he’s crying.