Breaking The Illusions - An Autobiography - 2. Chapter 2

The Changes of Adolescence

My tenth year was a very formative time in my life. While this part of my story will largely be about my early adolescence, the changes which took place for me began in my tween years. Along with the biological changes of puberty, which I will not address directly as I believe it's largely unnecessary to establish what those changes are, there were simply changes to what was happening in my life which need to be addressed.

I will also have to backtrack a slight amount, if only to include a few details which I previously left out, which are more pertinent to this phase of my life than they were to what was happening with Jackson and Timothy previously.

Up until the age of ten, and even after, friendships were quite rare for me. It wasn't for lack of trying, but largely due to circumstance. The children my age in my neighborhood who lived near me had a habit of leaving. Two were children of divorced parents, who often spent time with the parent who didn't live near me (they belonged to two different families, for clarity's sake). A third moved away within a year of becoming friends with me, and I ended up in an irreconcilable fight with another boy my age.

Unfortunately, though I knew other children through my local church, I was not close with any of them. I don't know why I never really connected with them, but I nevertheless often felt out of place among them.

This is as good a place as any to describe my religious upbringing. I was raised in the Mormon church, also known as the LDS church, or by its full name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The purpose of telling my story is not to malign the church, despite my many disagreements with its dogma, culture, and doctrine, but there are a few things which I must make abundantly clear.

The central focuses of the Mormon church culturally are family and community. While these are great principles to focus on in general, there are certain approaches that the church takes on these matters that can be disorienting to a nonbeliever. I was always a nonbeliever. Even at the point in my life when I was most dedicated to the church, it was in an attempt to prove to myself whether or not the dogma was true.

I sang the songs as a child because some of them were fun to sing. I attended class, because at least I could be around other children my age. I didn't fit in with them, but because the church fostered community, at least they were amicable toward me, for the most part. But never as a child did I pray with sincerity, nor did I find the concept of God to be anything that I could relate to.

While it may appear that my story jumping around a bit too much, I promise you that it all connects. There were many different things going on for me at that young age which created a turbulent atmosphere for both my physical and mental wellbeing. The bullying I suffered from Jackson is just one aspect, though it is a cornerstone of the foundation of the prison I built for myself.

Religion and family were both cornerstones as well; with the changes that I undertook as a developing tween forming the last corner of that foundation. Every negative behavioral pattern I developed was built upon these four things.

I first discovered an attraction for boys when I was ten. While I can't say I fully understood what it meant at the time, I didn't know that it meant I was different from my peers. I can't say for certain who the first person was that I found attractive, but I'm certain he was male.

Despite the current complicated climate between the Mormon church and Boy Scouts of America today, there was a time when the two were very closely linked, and a significant portion of scout troops throughout the western United States were Mormon troops. To say that it was a regular part of my development from the age of eight onward is an understatement. Attendance was mandatory in my family, and expected from my religion.

If you know anything about the history of either the Mormon church or the Boy Scouts of America, you know that neither organization has a spotless history with members of the LGBT community. Certain things have changed in both cases, though when I was a child it was not okay to be gay in either organization.

When I was ten, I met a boy through Cub Scouts who made me question a lot about myself. We'll call him Bryan. I met him at the church house, which is where most of our scouting events took place. It was his first week there, as he had come to live with his grandmother over the summer while his parents worked out some issues.

It was the first time I ever experienced that feeling of kismet. I met his eyes and instantly knew I would like him, like he understood some fundamental secret about the world which I had also unlocked, and we were the only two who knew it. We became instant friends. As time went on, we hung out together at every scouting event.

At a particular event, which involved washing a neighbor's car as part of a service project—an activity which seemed incredibly boring to ten-year-old me—Bryan and I decided to ditch the activity and head to his grandmother's house.

Despite our friendship, it was the first time I had ever been there. He showed me around, introduced me to his grandmother's dog, then we went up to his room to hang out for a while.

It was nearing the end of the summer, and Bryan was telling me excitedly that he'd asked his parents if he could stay with his grandmother during the school year and attend school with me. They told him he could, and the enthusiasm between us continued to grow. For the first time in my life, someone was going to be sticking around.

This was the first moment I can remember ever wanting to kiss someone. I didn't, but there was an energy in the room, which started making both of us a bit nervous. We shared subtle glances, spoke awkwardly about how cool it was going to be to hang out all the time, and then finally decided to go outside to play.

We wrestled a little bit on his front lawn, and then paused to rest. This was the moment where things truly started to change. In the most innocent form of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours", we crossed a threshold of intimacy and revealed our parts to each other. It was playful, but more than that, and we made jokes about the experience, though not each other.

We continued to play, but there was a lot more of jostling into each other, making unnecessary physical contact just because we could. Our explorations grew more serious as the day stretched on, and it soon became clear the direction we were headed.

He made a move on me, which I wanted but, in my surprise, I initially pushed him away. It was just for an instant, and I tried to make things right, but in his ten-year-old mind, I had rejected him outright. He left in anger and tears, running back into his house and slamming the door. Not wanting to make matters worse, I went home.

I hadn't intended to go into great detail here, but I thought some of the nuance was important. Bryan and I had formed a genuine connection, and in many ways I think he could've become a prominent fixture of my life if things had gone differently.

My parents grounded me for skipping out on my scout activity, and for failing to let my sister know where I was, as she'd been responsible for me that afternoon. I was not allowed to see any of my friends for a week, and this week led directly into a family vacation during which we left the state. There was one week left before school started when we returned, and this was filled largely with back-to-school activities. I was excited to begin the school year, as I would be able to see Bryan there.

When school began, I couldn't find him. A couple of weeks passed, and I continued to look for him, but he didn't seem to be attending the school like he had originally planned. I finally went to visit his grandmother's house, looking for him, and learned that he had decided not to attend school with me after all.

While I don't hold extremely strong feelings of regret for this experience any longer, for nearly 20 years, it was something that weighed on me. Not only had I lost yet another friend, but this time I couldn't shake the feeling that it was my fault. This fed directly into the self-loathing that Jackson trained me to, and I withdrew even more into myself than I already had. That was when I began to construct my prison.

On top of this, I was starting to receive more of the instruction at church that pertained to young men going through puberty. They preached against the exploration of sexual urges, condemning acts such as masturbation or even entertaining the concept of lust. I had already discovered masturbation significantly earlier than this, a direct result of the abuse from Jackson, and this increased the negative pressure I felt towards myself.

While I didn't believe in the church, they and my parents formed the basis of what I understood to be right and wrong, and I hated myself for the dirty little habit I had. As my lessons began to include condemnations of homosexuality, and I came to realize my unquestionable attraction to my own gender, my morality-based self-loathing increased tenfold.

Now, in addition to considering myself not only worthless due to Jackson's perspective, I considered myself evil. It was the only logical way I could understand what I was being told. My entire youth was spent under the influence of the church. On top of weekly Sunday meetings, there was a weekly church-themed family night, and a weekly youth group I was forced to attend. My parents believed in daily Scripture study as a family, and insisted upon morning and evening prayers. Sundays themselves were enforced days of spiritual activities, when we were not allowed to see friends, or engage in anything which my parents considered 'worldly'.

My only escape was school, where I had no friends. The few kids I did know to some degree were all Mormon as well. They knew I was weird, and I didn't fit in with them. In fifth grade, my closest friend was my teacher. She had a very worldly manner about her, and spoke of exotic places, and exposed us to new ideas. I can say with certainty, that had I been placed in any other class available at the time, I probably wouldn't have made it. She was the one who exposed me to the idea that there could be something greater than the life I was being exposed to; a way to escape the oppressive dogma and find a place in the world.

On a brief side note, at the beginning of the school year I met another boy who had an impact on me for a long time. His name was Kevin, and I had an instant connection with him. Kevin was bullied every day, and shortly after I joined his class, he moved schools in order to escape the abuse he was suffering. I ran into him in middle school, where we had a repeat of that same scenario. Years later, in high school, I was misinformed that he had committed suicide. For most of my adult life, he was another weight on my shoulders, because I had always believed that I had not done enough to help him. Learning a few years ago that he was alive and well did a lot for my healing.

But in my fifth-grade year, he was just another failed friendship.

My fifth-grade teacher also put me in touch with a part of myself that I retain, and in which I take great pride. I have often been disenchanted by the notion of nationalism; that anyone would ever be better than anyone else due to the borders within which they were born.

My family, including my parents, was quite patriotic, as it turned out. They were the kind of people to say the pledge of allegiance and sing the national anthem without any regard for the troubles the country has caused. They've grown a bit since then, but at the time they did not take kindly to the disparaging remarks I made regarding the country of my birth.

A notable experience, one which I will always remember as the moment I learned I could never trust them with my full self, was when they sat me down to watch a movie. I was told in no uncertain terms that this movie was mandatory, and that I would be severely punished if I didn't sit through it.

It was a movie about Benedict Arnold, to whom my mother compared me. She made it abundantly clear that, if I didn't like the country, I was, most certainly, a traitor. I was guilty of treason, and that I would regret feeling that way some day.

To this day, I don't regret my viewpoints, only that I bothered to confide in my parents at all as a teenager. It's no wonder I never told them I was gay.

Desperate for some escape from the pressures of family, and the overwhelming loneliness I felt, I returned to Jackson and Timothy. They welcomed me back surprisingly easily, though not exactly with friendliness. I had some similar interests with them, and that was really what allowed me back into their lives.

They had only recently begun explorations into Dungeons & Dragons. If you've ever played the game, you know that it's very difficult to play with only a few people, and my interest brought their number to a good-sized group. This was, however, nothing more than the natural evolution of Jackson's storytelling. It would become his new mechanism for influencing how I thought about the world.

The same aspects of his control permeated everything in the game. He was the dungeon master, the person who told the story and kept the rules while the others played their roles as characters. I once again became enamored with the concept of Jackson's superiority over me. Many of my opinions about anything at all were sharply influenced by him.

He continued to belittle me, specifically about my weight and appearance, both of which had continued to worsen as I dug deeper into my depression. Yet, at least with them, I had company and stories to keep me entertained. With them, the world made sense, even if it was negative energy.

Plus, there was Timothy.

In the wake of my newfound predilection for males, Timothy became my new obsession. I thought he was the most attractive person in the world, and I began to look up to him every bit as much as I looked up to Jackson. Despite my other feelings toward Jackson, I had never found him physically attractive, nor did he ignite my lust, in any way whatsoever. Timothy definitely did, and Jackson noticed.

Strangely, this was not something Jackson used to demean me directly. I theorized that his own attractions may have been along similar lines to mine, and that making fun of me for being gay would've been one of the few things that would've been distasteful to him. However, he did recognize that his power over me was beginning to transfer somewhat to Timothy, and he used that in other ways.

This is one of my fuzzy memories; I'm not entirely certain where it belongs in the timeline. It was either a rare moment that I went to their house during the summer I spent with Bryan (in which case, Jackson knew I was gay way before I did), or it took place during the next summer.

It was the Fourth of July, and of that I'm certain, for they were preparing to light fireworks off in front of their house. Timothy pulled me into the garage and told me he wanted to do something fun. He then pulled down his pants and did a little dance for me in his underwear.

Then he told me to do the same thing. I did, without question. This was Timothy, after all, and I was both attracted to him and liked him generally. But then he told me to wait while he grabbed Jackson. When Jackson arrived he was smiling, and he asked me to dance for him. I did it several times, all while he watched, clearly enjoying himself.

It should be noted that at this point he was either fifteen or sixteen, and I was either ten or eleven. He knew exactly what he was doing, and I, at best, knew that this was something naughty. In looking at it now, I'm certain that Jackson orchestrated the event, and coerced Timothy into putting me in that position so that Jackson could enjoy it afterwards.

Memories are fuzzy, but the look on Jackson's face is clearer than most things. No matter how much he made fun of me for my weight and appearance, he wanted something when he looked at me. What it was, I can't be certain. Perhaps he was simply relishing the control he had over me. Perhaps it was lust. I could speculate all day, but I do know that he manipulated those events specifically to make me show him things.

There were other points along the way when Jackson used similar tactics to get to me. When he entered high school, he was making a film project and joked several times about how he should coerce Timothy and me into having sex and film that. He didn't do so, though my admiration for him and my obsession with Timothy made me strangely excited for such things.

I didn't understand how wrong it was then. I didn't notice the ways he treated Timothy, either. How he encouraged his friends to abuse him, often in sexual ways, though only lightly. How the way he spoke was always to reinforce his dominance.

Slowly, however, he faded in my eyes as Timothy replaced him. Timothy did bully me, but not as much. He'd make some of the same jokes, but it was just parroting from Jackson. Timothy never touched me inappropriately, and never encouraged any sort of sexual behavior from me, except in the one incident recounted above, in which I believe he was coerced. I knew with certainty that Timothy was a better person than Jackson would ever be, and at least that small part of me connected with the humanity in Timothy.

And in many ways, that's where my mental prison was finally completed, and I threw the key away.

Things came to a head for Jackson one day while I was at their home. He'd turned eighteen, and had been fighting with his father for weeks. Having never fought with my parents in the way that I witnessed here, it was one of the most surreal experiences I'd ever been a part of. Jackson's father, yelling at him to get a job so he could do something with his life, and Jackson in his underwear, telling his dad to "go fuck himself".

That was the day I saw him for what he really was. I saw the boy who'd never worked a day in his life; the boy who was always in control. The boy who thought he knew everything. And he was just a skinny kid in his underwear, refusing to do his fair share of the work. He'd never had to do it before.

What a waste, having spent so many years looking up to him.

But I was already broken. It was too late for me to unlearn the lessons before they'd taken hold. I didn't understand how I'd changed, but only that I had. I sided with Timothy from that point forward, and never looked back at Jackson as being the person I wanted to become.

Following Timothy, of course, caused its own fair share of problems.