Dan's Conundrum - 10. Chapter 10

Didn’t think I would but, I even enjoyed my first term at this college not because learning was fun, but because I had friends looking out for me. Life was better this way. Since when had I realised this fundamental truth? Not now, I hope. I felt I knew this from long ago, yet I put it in the back of my mind since nothing I learned seemed applicable or relevant in a new country. I had thought I was better off alone and safe than being tormented. But life was not all torture, was it? There were good times – the bit that was worth living. They flew by like a flash.

‘Hey,’ Jenna nudged me at break. It was the last week of term and we were at our usual place behind the tennis courts. ‘What are you doing in Christmas?’

Huh? Why was she asking that?

Anyway I didn’t want to be reminded of it and I wasn’t sure if anyone wanted to know. I contemplated my options: it would be rude to ignore her. Too rude, in fact. And I was trying to be a nice guy, remember? Well, I guess there was only ever really one option.

‘We’re going back to Hong Kong,’ I said nonchalantly. ‘For three weeks, I’m not going to get any work done.’

‘Oh. Never mind then.’ She smiled. ‘We found you this guy… Thought you two could chat and hookup some time...’

I stared at her as though she had grown an extra head. David wasn’t kidding. What the hell? She found me a guy? I froze, horrified by the prospects of this guy being Bilad24 and if that would ever work out.

Rescuing me from the dreadful subject, David asked, ‘Do you guys celebrate Christmas?’

‘We do,’ I said, raising an eyebrow. ‘But we’re not obsessed with it at the start of November.’

David chuckled. ‘Yeah, it’s a bit messed up over here.’

I looked at Chris, who was sitting against the fence, busy texting on his phone. David and I shared a sly smile, wondering who it was.

‘What will you be doing?’ Jenna went on. ‘In Hong Kong, I mean.’

‘Seeing our family, mostly. We haven’t been back in years.’

She smiled. ‘I hope you have a nice time.’

Her well-wished words drove a dagger in my heart. It took me a second to recover.

‘Thanks,’ I replied. ‘I know I won’t. My parents will.’

‘Dan, you will have a great time. Stop being so negative,’ David corrected, like it was in his power to promise that. ‘Hey, on a side note, do you have Facebook?’

‘No?’ I eyed him suspiciously.

‘Get it, hehe.’

‘We’ll see,’ I said. I was too lazy for that kind of thing. New subject required. ‘What will you guys be doing then?’

‘Probably be at my Nan’s,’ Jenna said. ‘Not fun.’

‘No work for you then, I assume?’ I turned to David.

He shook his head, making a small noise of contempt. ‘But cousin’s coming over – absolutely hate him.’

I never thought David could hate anyone. He was supposed to be a nice guy. Nice guys can’t hate.

‘Is he hot?’ Chris inquired, suddenly taking a break from texting, surprising us.

David cringed, turning to him, ‘What makes you think that?’

‘You’re related. Send him my way anyway.’

David told him, ‘He’s twelve!’

‘Ah.’ Chris stopped, blood draining from his face. ‘Never mind then.’

‘I’ll have him,’ I said in a shameless fashion. ‘I’m the desperate one here.’

‘He’s the least you deserve, Dan,’ David replied. ‘He’s just not your type.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Like you know what my type is.’

‘Well actually, I do.’ David smirked. ‘He’s just not me for a start. He’s not good-looking, he’s stupid, he’s small…’

‘Like you could tell a good-looking guy if you see one.’

‘Well, yeah? I’m not blind you know.’

‘Er,’ Jenna prompted. ‘We’re talking about a twelve year old here. Awkward.’

‘I was joking!’ I told her. ‘Really, I was.’

‘Thank God,’ David said, sighing with relief. ‘Last time he came to my house he ate everything. If you two went out I would just have to pretend I never met you…’

‘Thanks David. You know I can’t have a relationship, not now.’

Chris looked at me, surprised. ‘No?’ For some reason his eyes seemed to say, what the fuck?

‘Aww, why?’ Jenna asked. ‘I thought you wanted a boyfriend. That’s why I’ve been looking.’

‘Thanks Jenna, but I’m just a mess,’ I told her. ‘Even if I want one, however much I want one, they can find a better deal anywhere and they’ll dump me the first chance they get.’

‘Why?’ David asked.

‘Let’s just say…’ I looked around. ‘I can’t give them what they wanted.’

‘Is this about the whole sex thing again?’ Chris asked sharply.

‘Partly.’ It was that, and the fact there were too many dark spots on my soul to deserve being loved. I was not a nice guy. I wasn’t relationship material. Not until I fix myself.

‘What is your problem with sex though?’ he pressed again, almost annoyed.

‘I just hate it.’

‘Yeah we figured that, but why?’

I looked at him, then David, then Jenna, searching for something in their eyes, anything that might suggest we were on the same boat.

We weren’t.

David, perhaps seeing something in my eyes, said, ‘You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to.’

But telling does help. I realise that now.

‘No, it’s fine,’ I said as memories came flooding back. ‘I’ll tell you alright…’

It happened during that first year when I came to the UK. In this foreign world, I battled my own incomprehension of it just as much as my old classmates, and when the wounds from the school canteen were still sore and raw, the salt was never far away. At least my classmates were never far away and, little angels that they were, I could not be with them and be happy. I did not understand them or their motives for what they were doing to me. I was eleven, and at a stage where I realised nothing in my world made sense anymore. But then not everything would ever make sense. There must always be things in our past that kept us wondering for the rest of our lives, never knowing why they had happened.

I remembered walking into ASDA that day with my mum, shopping for grocery for the night. I hated being spotted by someone from school and, if I did, I would just have to pretend I never knew them after what they all did to me. They wouldn’t like me for it of course, but maybe by then I knew I would never be popular anyway. Besides, mum needed me for the maths and price comparisons. Not only were the products there like everything else in this country way too expensive, but we also spent half an hour trying to find something they did not sell and we weren’t confident enough to ask for help.

Would I have used the toilet if I knew what was waiting for me? I don’t know. It was useless to think now what might have been had I chosen otherwise. It already happened and I would feel its effects for years to come, even though I wasn’t to know that. I had always wondered the kind of person I would have been had none of it happened – useless thoughts, merely to distract myself from reliving the memory itself.

The gents’ room was damp, its floor slippery and floating in the air was a horrible smell. Nothing short of the ordinary in fact, and even my eleven-year-old self could tell that much. There were two cubicles in the room and one was occupied. I went inside the other, discovering its lock broken – had to make do with that I guess, and hope someone wouldn’t see a semi-open door and barge in on me. Despite my efforts, the door wouldn’t shut properly. But then my expectations of public toilets were low. The toilet was not flushed and the seat unclean.

Just when I was going about the routine of things I discovered my privacy was not complete. On my right, a wooden board that separated the two cubicles appeared to have holes. The largest one was two inches wide, with smaller holes on its side which I later learned was a medium through which notes were passed. Some smaller holes were blocked by tissues – the largest one however, was not. It was unsettling: I could easily stare into the other cubicle (though not the face of the individual, only his lap), and I was certain he could see plenty of this side too.

There were small noises coming from the other side, of movement, of skin against skin. It was unlike anything I had ever heard. Out of a simple, childish curiosity, I found an angle to peep through the big hole without being seen. A pair of large, hairy legs came into view, followed by the hand of a man rocking his own penis back and forth, whipping it against his abdomen. That was the sound.

Why would someone do this to himself? What possible purpose or satisfaction could someone draw from playing with that part of his body? And of all places, why did he do it here?

Then he stopped. I held my breath – I must not be discovered. I shouldn’t have been. I withdrew again, quietly calculating, hoping to make sense of it. Eventually I decided that, whatever he was getting from it, I had to try it to find out. Even that thought quickly vanished, because I soon caught something moving in the corner of my eye.

I looked up and watched as a thick, angry penis pushed its way through the two-inch hole. His foreskin rolled back in a slow, sickening speed, making small, wet sounds as the membranes parted. I wanted to throw up. He frightened me. Never had I seen another man’s penis, let alone seeing it just inches away. He was red, sore and aggressive. From then on it seemed imprinted on my mind that penises, whenever the word was used in textbooks, looked like this. The similarities with mine were striking. The word took an actual form and I associated it with this experience. It was seared into mind, and I would remember what this man was doing with it for years to come.

For a moment he stayed there as though staring at me. I stared back, unable to react, not understanding a thing. Why was this happening? Was I, by the book of secret laws of social interaction with British people that was never written, required to do something? Kick it, hit it, tolerate it, I was unable to choose. I didn’t know which was worse. Whatever this was, I wanted it to end. I wanted to close my eyes and wished it would go away. It didn’t. He stayed there for two minutes, with the silence of a deadly standoff.

Then all of a sudden he pulled away, zipped his trousers and left the cubicle, no doubt dissatisfied because there was something he expected I did not give. He hesitated outside my door and I thought he would come in any moment and ask more of me. Fortunately he did not and he hurried away.

I was certain he was gone, but I remembered staying inside for a long time. I wasn’t about to cry. Why would some adult I had never met before do this to me? What did he see in me? Why me? Why did he do it?

There was no way of finding out. Perhaps he really had no good reason to inflict this upon me. That his actions were not of the logical but something deep within. A primitive beast perhaps, that reasoning and civilisation sought to banish and restrain for centuries and had never truly succeeded. That he was a monster, and in fact, we all were, if we allowed ourselves to be.

Or maybe he was just a selfish man, overrun by desires, and acted on impulse. I could not see what he wanted from it, or from me. But that day, when I finally summoned the courage to leave and be confronted by an angry mother who must be kept safely in the dark, I walked out with a new understanding of this world, and the country in which we lived. I felt worldlier than I had ever been, like I had learned something new. But this man was still out there, and he could strike again. And he mustn’t be the only one in this godforsaken country. One day, when I least expected, it could happen again and I would never escape it as long as I remained here. I must be prepared, for when it did, I must have the courage to resist, say no, or walk out. I could have done all that in the cubicle then. I could have resisted. I didn’t.

Now, whenever I think of sex, I think of that man – the man I must never be. It wasn’t just because I hated what he did or tried to do to me, but because he made me realise that sex was pleasant only to those who wanted it – specifically him. I had no doubt he enjoyed this kind of thing. And because of him, I learned not to at all.

As I finished the tale David leapt forward and held me in his arms – unreservedly, and unconditionally. He just held me in silence and I breathed in his scent. It was the antidote I needed. The hug made it better. The gnawing at my heart and the horror of that memory seemed lifted all away by the moment of magical contact, making the past irrelevant in the here and now, when I was surrounded by friends who loved me. At least in the here and now.

‘You have shit luck, man!’ Chris cried.

‘Aww,’ Jenna moved closer, but was unable to hug me because David was in the way.

‘It’s okay,’ David whispered. ‘It’s not your fault.’

Wasn’t it? Coming from him, everything sounded true. It wasn’t my fault that man decided to act this way. It wasn’t my fault that I was too scared to react. I was eleven.

This was what friends do – they hug away the past. I could never repay him for all that he did for me. It might even prove one of my recent theories: maybe my friends really cared about Dan.

They cared about –

Dan.

The person I pretended to be.

em>I remembered walking into ASDA that day with my mum, shopping for grocery for the night.
ASDA is a supermarket that operates in the UK, similar to Tesco's.
 
It wasn’t just because I hated what he did or tried to do to me, but because he made me realise that sex was pleasant only to those who wanted it – specifically him.
Technically, despite the strongest desires for sex, it can still be unpleasant. But one has to doubt Dan's knowledge in this field in general.
 
Thank you for sticking with Dan's Conundrum. I hope you all enjoyed Part 2.