Help! My High School Bully Is Gay & Hotter Than Me
How I locked myself in my apartment and came out with a novella
If you haven’t seen me for the last few months, it’s because I was working on something special. I effectively locked myself in the Overlook Hotel, depriving myself of any fun while I slaved away at a keyboard for hours and hours and hours.
Now, don’t get the wrong idea. Aside from the ‘all work, no play’ approach (which I will never do again — all work and no play makes Luke a dull boy!), I actually enjoyed working on this to the point that it didn’t feel like work. I didn’t have to force myself to do it. I was excited about it. Everything finally clicked!
This was the moment I’d been waiting for. Finally, I’d managed to detach from capitalistic brainwashing and motivated myself to make something for no reason other than because I fucking wanted to.
Well, for the most part.
The impetus was a post from a DIY zine I follow calling for submissions. The zine’s ethos is degenerate, faggoty filth — so naturally, I felt compelled to submit something. But what?
There wasn’t anything already in my portfolio that I felt fit the bill. So, I set out to write something new. And since I’d never written a proper piece of short fiction before, I settled on that. Honestly, the idea never really appealed to me before. The closest things I’d written before had been scripts, but lately I’ve been watching less TV and reading more novels, so why not take a stab at it?
The idea was loosely based on real life — not my life, though. (Depending on whom you ask, I was the bully in high school.) A few years ago, a friend and I were at a Pride party, and he came face to face with his high school bully, who went from prom king to circuit queen. He was muscled and waxed, with a trophy himbo boyfriend to boot. By all appearances, he was thriving (although his boyfriend was prettttty annoying). My friend was chill about the whole thing, but it got me thinking: How would I respond if I ran into an old tormentor, who not only was gay now, but “better” at it than me?
And so began my process. I wrote it “for the zine” to give myself a firm deadline, but my intent was to publish it myself whether the zine accepted it or not. I set out to keep the story under 4,000 words, but it ended up being almost 12,000. I no longer had a short story; I had a novella. Or a “novelette” according to some, but who the fuck has ever heard of a novelette?
I had a lovely launch party at my favorite bookstore, Black Spring Books, and read from my book with a live violin score by an incredibly talented violinist named Ledah Finck. As badly as I wanted to subject everybody to a 90 minute reading of the whole book, I read a few key moments to leave the people wanting more. And want more, they did! Everybody not only bought a copy, but told me they would attend an event where I read the whole thing 😈.
At this point, it would be rude of me to not share a snippet. Nobody is getting literary blue balls on my watch!
This is the part of the story where the action begins. Our hero, Crowley, is at a Pride pool party with his friend Steve, having a miserable time until a pasty twink invites them to do coke in the sauna. Steve finds himself enamored with the pasty twink, leaving a coked out Crowley to navigate the party on his own. Our horny hero starts having a great time when he sees the man of his dreams on the other side of the pool… but tragedy strikes when he realizes the man is his high school bully, Jason Van Epps.
"Crowley?" he said as he pushed my shoulder, just like he did when we were kids to assert his dominance over me. Reflexively, I recoiled. God, I wish I still had that knife. I took a deep breath as I returned to reality – and took a second to confirm that this was, in fact, reality, and not a drug-induced hallucination. Here was my high school nemesis, then a prototypical jock bully, transformed into a prototypical circuit gay. How fucking poetic. To make matters worse, he was even more beautiful up close. His skin was flawless, his dimples were deep, his teeth were pearly white, and his veiny muscles were even more pronounced. He was undeniably, insatiably, drop dead gorgeous. I hated it. "You good, babe?" he asked me as his unchanged, deeply masculine voice came out of his plump, kissable lips. "You look like you’re about to pass out." "Yeah," I said, unable to get any more words out as my coke-induced high prematurely plummeted. "What are…" I stammered. "What are you doing here?" "Oh, just stopping by to say hi before I go to Meat Market," he said, referring to one of the many overpriced, overcrowded Pride parties. "So you’re gay now?" I asked in the same tone a homophobic pastor would. He smiled. "Yeah. I came out in college after I started dating my lacrosse co-captain. We kept it secret for a while, but our team was so supportive when we told them. After we won the state championship freshman year, my boyfriend and I kissed each other on the field, and the whole crowd stood up and cheered." I closed my eyes and stiffly nodded my head, processing the absolute last thing I wanted to hear. Truly, I would’ve rather heard that my whole family was brutally murdered by OJ Simpson. What kind of upside down world were we living in where college lacrosse players were at the forefront of championing gay rights? Thanks, Obama. "We even were the school’s first gay homecoming kings!" Jason continued. "When you’re surrounded by love, coming out is awesome." I’m unsure what I looked like in that moment, but I felt like the twin towers after the planes hit: still standing tall, but on the verge of collapse as the pressure built and smoke billowed out of my orifices. When I came out, my dad cried and my mom yelled at me for ruining Easter – and that’s considered a successful coming out story. For 99.9999% of people, coming out is anything but "awesome." The fact that this fucker didn’t get even an ounce of what he gave was rage-inducing. "Do you live here or are you just visiting?" I asked, trying to change the subject. "I’ve lived here for two years. It’s so awesome! I’m having the time of my life." "Great," I said flatly, dashing my hopes that the city would turn him into a crackhead who clips his nails on the train while screaming about the illuminati. "What do you do?" "Well, when I first moved here, one of my frat brothers got me a job consulting for Google." Of course. Basic gays always had these inexplicable, vague-sounding jobs like "consulting" or "marketing." Typically, this meant they sent emails, put numbers in spreadsheets, and got paid way too much for it. "I was making six figures, but it was soulless. So I quit to be a full-time content creator." It took every ounce of energy to not roll my eyes so high they would never come back down. What was up with these bland millennial yuppies ditching their vague corporate jobs to "be their own boss" doing something even vaguer? They all either become "content creators" or go on The Bachelor. If there were a gay version of The Bachelor, I’m sure his bleached butthole would be first in line to apply. "Oh yeah?" I asked, trying my absolute best not to sound snarky. "What kind of content do you create?" "Oh, all different kinds. Some comedy, some fashion, some fitness. I’m just trying to spread love and good vibes." I let out a loud, involuntary snicker. There was no way this fucking meathead was spreading anything other than herpes. Suddenly, a college-aged twink nervously approached us. "Hi, Jason?" he trembled. "Uh, sorry to bother you. Just wanted to say I’m a huge fan." "Aw, thank you," Jason said with a smile before immediately turning his head back to me, signaling to his admirer that their interaction was over. The kid walked away looking utterly starstruck, as if he’d just run into Lana Del Rey at the airport. "Does that happen a lot?" I asked, genuinely curious. "Yeah," Jason answered. "It can be a bit much sometimes." I closed my eyes for a few seconds so I could roll them over and over and over. The plight of the poor muscle gays! Everybody wants to talk to them and everybody wants to fuck them when all they want is to drink their protein shakes and do meth in peace! I always figured once we got into the real world Jason would no longer be the big man on campus, but it seemed like now he was even bigger. I guess that’s what happens when you go your whole life having everybody constantly shower you with praise and adoration. Perhaps my theory about how muscle gays came to be was all wrong. Maybe they’re not trying to become their tormentors… Maybe they were the tormentors all along. "What about you, babe?" he asked. "What have you been up to?" "Ah, well… you know…" I stammered, entering fight or flight mode. I couldn’t tell the truth: that I was working as a waiter and occasionally writing freelance articles about sriracha. He had to think I was thriving. "I’m a novelist," I blurted out. It wasn’t a complete lie. Sure, I’d never written a novel, but I had an idea for one I might write eventually. Imagine a dystopian sci-fi novel set in 2055, where the U.S. elects its first AI president, who immediately gets hacked and can’t stop saying racial slurs. "Crowley!" There you are," Steve said as he approached, saving me just in time. But once he saw Jason, his face lit up. Oh God. Don’t tell me Steve is another one of his pathetic fangirls. "Stevie!" Jason exclaimed, kissing him on the lips and wrapping him in a tender embrace. I slapped myself across the face, because surely this was all a product of my subconscious. Schizophrenia does run in my family. "You guys know each other?" I asked, bewildered. "Of course! Jason is queen of the party scene," Steve said gushily, clinging to Jason like velcro and giving him another peck on the lips. I felt like I was going to vomit any second as I watched my best friend cuddle up to my abuser. "He’s that super kinky guy I told you about." My eyes widened. "The one you tied up and twisted his nipples so hard they stayed like that for a week?!" They both giggled. "Yeah," Jason admitted. "I’m so in control of everything in my life, so it’s super hot for me to give it all up and let someone do whatever they want to me." "Mmmm," I said tersely, clenching every muscle in my face to keep myself from screaming. No wonder Jason loved to torture me so much. To him, torture was the ultimate form of pleasure. Of course, I had to wonder: did he choose me simply because I was an easy target, or was it something specifically about torturing me that aroused him? "Crowley and I became friends at work," Steve explained to our newfound mutual. We’re both waiters at The Eager Beaver." Shut the fuck up, Steve! As far as Jason knows, I’m up for the Pulitzer. "Nice," Jason said dismissively. "Well if you guys aren’t working tomorrow night, you should come to Butcher’s Boat." Butcher’s Boat was supposed to be the Pride party to end all Pride parties. Charlie Black, a trust fund kid turned mediocre DJ, took one of his family’s three-story yachts for a night and turned it into your closeted uncle’s wet dream. Tickets were $300 and sold out in seconds. Everybody who was anybody was going, and everybody who wasn’t desperately wanted to. People were selling tickets online for $1,000, no joke. It was easier to buy a kidney than a ticket to this party. I didn’t understand the hype. Why pay that much for an experience if you’re gonna black out anyway? "Well, we don’t have tickets," I told him, "and I don’t have any organs to sell." "Ah, don’t worry about that," Jason assured us. "Charlie is one of my best friends. I can get you on the list." "Well, tomorrow I’m going to Pheromone," Steve said. Pheromone was a party where feral guys found fuckbuddies the prehistoric way, by sniffing each other’s armpits. "But Crowley, you should totally go!" I already had zero desire to go to this party. But to go and hang out with my high school bully? Yeah, still no. I would’ve rather been thrown into a well with the girl from The Ring. It felt like the universe was playing a prank on me. Somehow I had managed to go two years living in the same city as Jason without running into him – an impressive feat since apparently he’s the gay Chloë Sevigny – and just when I’d finally started feeling comfortable in my skin, he showed up and sent me spiraling again. My blood pressure rose as I began comparing myself to him. The biggest, most infuriating difference between us was that he had nothing holding him back. The voice in his head was probably his mom saying she loves him or something, while the voice in my head was Jason calling me a retarded gaywad anytime I moved a muscle. A decade later, I still couldn’t let it go. "Uh, yeah, maybe I’ll go," I said as my vision began to blur. I had to remove myself from the situation before I popped a blood vessel. "I have to pee. I’ll find you guys later."