My Friend and Protector - 11. I Want You, Humiliation, and a Sense of Normalcy

Saturday - From the viewpoint of Michael Armstrong Sr.

Mr. Armstrong is frustrated. Every single recruiting office he can locate is closed on weekends. How the hell are working parents supposed to banish their hooligan kids to the military if they're only open weekdays? I can't trust Mike to go alone during the week. His mother doesn't agree with me, so she won't take him. I guess Mike gets to stay here and enjoy whatever punishment I can dole out. Who knows? Maybe that will be better for the little thug. I know I'm going to try to enjoy every minute of his misery.

"Mike!"

"Yeah, you ready to go?"

"We can't go. None of the fucking recruiting offices are open today."

Mike smiles.

"Don't look so happy about it. Now you have to deal with whatever I can think of as your punishment here. And you still have to figure out a way to pay for the tires."

Mike's smile disappears.

"Yeah. Didn't think you'd be happy about that."

At the Rose household, a little later in the morning

"Tony, get your ass moving. I told Mr. Marini we'd be there around 11."

Tony yells his response from his room.

"I changed my mind. I'm not going."

"You're apologizing or you're out of here today!"

Tony comes downstairs naked.

"I'm not going to get dressed, so you can't take me anywhere."

"You think so, huh?"

Mr. Rose grabs Tony and drags him out to the car.

"You want to play this the hard way, fine. I don't give a shit if you're naked, bleeding, or crying, you're going."

"Stop, you can't do this!"

"I can't? Or you don't want me to?"

"Dad. Please!!"

Mr. Rose puts Tony in the back seat and makes sure the child locks are set. He gets in, starts the car and heads to the Marini's. Tony is beating the windows the whole way. Once there, Mr. Rose opens the back door and drags Tony out, physically carrying him to the front door. Mr. Rose is a big man and Tony is slightly small for his age. Ringing the doorbell is not a problem for Mr. Rose while still holding on to Tony. Much to Tony's chagrin, Mrs. Marini answers the door. His father has him in a bear hug, so it's impossible for him to cover himself.

"Daaaad. Stop this. PLEASE!!!"

"Mr. Rose, do you really think that's necessary? Come in, get him out of anybody else's view."

"It's Greg. And yes, it's necessary. He didn't want to come apologize. He thought he'd pull one over on me by coming downstairs naked. He'll live through this. Would you go get your husband and Carlo?"

"Um, sure. I'll be right back."

Mrs. Marini leaves for a couple minutes, returning with her husband and Carlo. Carlo makes an effort to hide his mirth, but isn't very successful, chuckling when he sees Tony being held there, naked.

"The quicker you speak up, the quicker this is over."

"I'm NOT apologizing. The faggot got what he deserved. He's damn lucky it wasn't worse."

"I can stand here holding you as long as you want to be stubborn."

"Fine. They've seen my cock. I don't care at this point. What more can you do to me?"

Greg finds a way to add to Tony's embarrassment by bending him over his knee and spanking him.

"OK. OK. I'm sorry I sliced your tires. Thanks for not pressing charges."

"Didn't sound sincere."

Tony repeats himself, a little calmer. It still wasn't good enough for Mr. Rose, so he makes Tony try yet again. He's finally satisfied after the third attempt.

"I'm also sorry my son had to put you through this. He won't be bothering you again Carlo."

"It's OK. Apology accepted. You can take him home now."

"Nope. He has another apology to make. Maybe I won't need to spank him in front of the Marlows. Have a nice day."

The Marinis, still stunned, say goodbye.

The scene is similarly repeated at Karl's house, with the added emotional pain to Tony because Karl's sister was asked to witness the apology as well. However, as Greg Rose expected, no spanking was necessary. He let Tony ride home in the front seat, since there was no reason for him to attempt escape. As they pulled into their driveway...

"I fucking hate you."

"You're free to leave whenever you want. I won't stop you. I'll even give you a few bucks, so you don't starve."

"I'm not going anywhere, and you'll pay for this. I'm going to do my best to drive you broke."

"Do your best. Keep it legal or you'll find you ass in jail. And by the looks of it, it would be very popular ass."

"Fuck you!"

The response to that wasn't verbal, nor was it an open-handed slap. A hard right jab to the solar plexus put Tony on the ground. Greg went into the house and locked the door. Tony banged on the door for ten minutes before his hands couldn't take it anymore. Tony's anger was not reduced due to the pain in his fists. There were a number of two-by-fours along the side of the house from some unfinished project. Tony took one and walked around the outside of the house, breaking every downstairs window. Greg was calm. He simply called 9-1-1 and told the dispatcher his son had gone crazy and was outside naked breaking all the windows in the house. The Rose's next-door neighbor made the same complaint, albeit without the gone crazy comment. She was simply angry because her young daughters saw Tony. Tony had moved on to beating the siding by the time the cops arrived to take him away.

Monday

Karl and Carlo walked to school together in the mornings. Today, they needed to discuss Tony.

"I heard Tony went to your house too and had to apologize."

"Yeah, Carlo. I guess he was naked at your house as well?"

"Yeah. It was funny and sad at the same time. He refused initially, so his father spanked him in front of us."

"Ooof. I don't know which was worse then. Mr. Rose insisted my sister listen to his apology too. So he was standing there, well, being held vertically, naked, in front of all four of us."

"I actually feel sorry for him. His father really shouldn't have treated him that way."

"It got worse."

"How?"

"You know Janet's a clerk at the municipal building, right?"

"Your sister, yeah?"

"Well, she happened to be in the lobby when the cops dragged Tony in. They had a blanket around him, but she later checked the records, he was arrested for indecent exposure and destruction of property. Apparently, he broke a bunch of windows in his house while he was still naked. There were two 9-1-1 calls. His neighbor and his father."

"Holy fuck. I don't know if we should tell the rest of the guys. I think Tony's gone through enough."

"You're right. If they find out some other way, we can answer questions, but it wouldn't be right to spread the word."

Carlo was very subdued at lunch. The rest of the kids tried to get Carlo to tell them what was bothering him. Carlo just said it wasn't something he was comfortable sharing. It didn't matter. Tony's next-door neighbor had a freshman daughter. She was quite the popular girl telling the story that day.

Something else happened that Monday. Even though Mike's father wanted to drag him to a recruiting office, Mike was perfectly willing to go along with the idea. He arrived at a Marine recruiting office shortly after they opened. He ended up leaving his house right after his parents left for work. The recruiter said that he'd need a parent to sign their approval. He told the recruiter that wouldn't be a problem. He brought it up at dinner that night.

"One of you need to sign this."

"What is it dear?"

"Permission for me to join the Marines."

"I don't think that's a good idea Mike."

"I'm not staying here with HIM. If I have to wait the five weeks until I'm 18, I'll do it, but I'll do it somewhere else."

"Give me the form, I'll gladly sign it."

"Michael, you can't be serious."

Words weren't necessary. The form was signed even before Mrs. Armstrong finished that comment.

"Michael. Please don't do this."

"It's done. You can take this back tomorrow and join up."

"I plan on it. I just hope they'll let me go right away."

"Makes two of us."

Mrs. Armstrong couldn't believe her ears. She got so upset, she didn't finish her dinner and locked herself in her bedroom. An action that did not go over very well with her husband come bedtime. But he let her have her space and slept on the couch. Mrs. Armstrong resolved to make that a common occurrence from that point forward. And it was, at least until the divorce proceedings began a month later. At that point, Mr. Armstrong found other sleeping arrangements.

Mike had to suffer through six more days of his dad's ire. He was accepted by the Marine Corps, but their next deployment cycle wasn't until the following Monday. At that time, Mike left home and never spoke to his father again. He did keep in contact with his mother. Since his part in the story is over, it's a good time to share that he was a model Marine, spent 20 years in the service of our country and went into private security when he retired from the military. He actually turned into a man his father would have been proud of. That mattered not one iota to Mike.

Tony's future wasn't nearly as 'rosey,' but we'll come back to him at a later time.

School continued along without issue until mid-February. It was at that point in time that Carlo, Brandon, Lance, and Ken caused quite a stir. While there was no further bullying, shockwaves were sent through the school after they all arrived at the Valentine's Day dance together. Boys going stag wasn't uncommon. Kids hooked up with members of the opposite sex during the dance, platonically for the most part for those stag partiers. Carlo and Brandon danced together first. It was a slow dance. They didn't make out during the dance, but it was obvious to everybody what their relationship was. Lance and Ken joined them on the dance floor for the next song, which was a bit livelier. After a second slow dance, where all four were holding onto their partners tightly, the principal instructed the DJ that no more slow songs would be tolerated, at the risk of non-payment. None were. We'll watch things once again from Carlo's perspective.

The next morning, Principal Sabato was monitoring the hallways for our fearsome foursome. One by one, gathering us up to have a discussion in his office.

"First of all, boys, I'll let you know you're not necessarily in any trouble, but your actions at the dance last night were not well received by all who were present. I'm not going to pry into personal relationships, but it's quite apparent that the trouble last year was directly related to, um, this type of relationship."

"Because we're gay?"

"Yes, Carlo. Would you disagree that the issues were driven by that fact?"

"At that point in time, I would have to say they were driven by suspicion of that fact."

"Hardly worth the distinction. Now, I have no problem with male-male relationships, but as I said, not everybody feels the same way. I would like to ask you boys to keep any flagrant actions relating to that away from school functions."

"What do you mean by flagrant?"

"I suppose anything that would qualify as public displays of affection, Brandon."

"We didn't kiss in front of anybody, we danced close, no worse than hugging someone. There were plenty of boys and girls doing the same thing. As a matter of fact, some of them did what could be considered mild groping, which none of us did. So, what you're doing is discriminating against us because we're gay."

"No. That's not what I mean. I'm simply asking that you consider the feelings of those around you when you show any type of affection."

"Fine. I expect an assembly in the near future where you give these instructions to the entire student body. Otherwise, my and Lance's fathers may have something to say about it."

"Oh, dear. This is not going the way I hoped. How can I put it, so you'll understand where I'm coming from?"

"How about like this? Keep our fucking gay hands to ourselves."

"The language is not necessary Mr. Birch."

"Sorry, but that's pretty much the way we're hearing what you're telling us. If there are people who have a problem with us being gay, that's their problem. Don't make it ours. So, unless you have something non-prejudicial to say, I think we're done. Can we get to class?"

"Yes. I will attempt to put my thoughts together better and we'll have another discussion."

"Much better I'd hope."

"Yes, Mr. Gordon. I understand the hidden message there."

I was probably angrier than the others, having been the target of homophobic opinions longer than them. As we stood up to leave the principal's office, I took Brandon's hand in mine and caught Ken and Lance's attention. They followed suit. I turned toward Principal Sabato as we left his office. I could tell he wasn't happy. I smiled at his discomfort. Fuck him and all the rest of the gay bashing assholes in this school. I'm done hiding.

Next up - "Normalcy Moves Aside for Anger, or, Fuck Suspensions"