Leave This Small Town - 1. Chapter 1 - Exodus

This wasn’t the way his dad should’ve found out – if he were to ever find out at all. But as it were, Stanley knew the gig was up when he opened a copy of the Eaton Gazette and saw his own panicked face in a crowd of other gay men desperately fleeing a burning nightclub in the outskirts of the Midwest town of the same name. The fact of it being an attack would garner no sympathy from Stanley’s staunchly homophobic, slicked-hair, goatee'd, beer-bellied drunkard of a father. Stanley had always fantasized about leaving this place, this sorry excuse for a home on wheels. Now, he would have no choice. Perhaps it was better this way.

The only thing he was unsure of was whether he should make the first move, or let his father do it. Either way, his bags were packed, and he was mentally ready. Seeing his father’s reaction to this new discovery wasn’t something that would faze Stanley. He’d been witness to the shouting matches with his mother, which often included broken glass bottles and dents punched into walls. He’d seen the final, explosive fight, which left their living room looking like a warzone, and which finally forced his mother out, never to be seen again. “Why are you still living there?” pleaded his brother, who’d long since moved to the other side of the country. It wasn't a question Stanley could ever answer with any certainty. Maybe he was clinging on to the hope that things would somehow, some way, work over here, here in the small town where he’d grown up, where he’d made his first friend, where been to his first school dance, where he, regretfully, kissed Mary-Sue behind the sports equipment shack and prayed she would tell everyone about it and spread the story of his ostensible heterosexuality, but instead had kept the whole thing under wraps. Of this place where – well, who was he kidding? There was no hope here. The real reason he wanted to stay had a name – and that name was Cooper, Stanley’s erstwhile friend, back in junior high, who, after reaching the pinnacle of puberty, no longer deemed Stanley cool enough to hang out with, but of whom Stanley was totally enamored. It had reached a point where breathing the same air as (the decidedly straight) Cooper made Stanley swoon. And while that passion had faded over time, Stanley was inexorably drawn to Cooper, with whom he was now only on amicable terms with. Like a magnet, he drew Stanley in, not allowing him to move outside of the range of his magnetic proximity.

But that link was to be broken now. Stanley put the paper down atop his suitcases, and scoured his bedroom to check for anything he’d forgotten to pack. What would become of this place after he left? Would it be destroyed in a fit of rage? Or left to collect dust? Or would it be transformed for another use? No matter. The fact of his departure was set in stone now. The only question was whether to wait for his father to come home, or to leave on his own merit.

The decision was made for him when he heard his father’s Pontiac roll up to the front of the trailer.