Photo from Clarissa Bird. 2020.
Lord knows Luke never witnessed any instances of abuse at Blake’s home. The then-twelve-year-old boy didn’t happen to be passing by the LeBlanc family home on the night that Blake’s father had come home from his golf game, inebriated and shouting. If Luke had been around that night, he might have heard Blake scream as Mr. LeBlanc slammed his wife’s head against the mirror in their living room. Luke had no concrete way of knowing that he himself was only the victim in his relationship with Blake because Blake’s misery needed some company. That day after school in the sixth grade, no concrete evidence appeared for Luke to explain how he’d realized that Blake was anything other than a bully. Yet, after that day, the bigger boy never bothered Luke again. Somehow this came as no surprise to either boy.
Luke Aster’s adolescence was not without silver linings. However, after three years of being thrown to four different public schools, his mother began to consider the possibility that her son should just find a school and stick with it. She chose Lake Castle Private School, presumably the best Slidell had to offer. Before he was to transfer, Luke’s mother told him that the school would be perfect. The principal, a trusty-looking man, assured her that every teacher at Lake Castle knew exactly how to instill in each pupil “a mutual respect for one’s classmates.” An unsurprised Luke quickly learned that the Lake Castle experience would provide him with the classic, tried-and-true experience for short, chubby boys who liked boys. He was shoved into lockers, pushed down stairs, called the standard, not-too-creative insults. More-or-less standard procedure for a boy who enjoyed Britney Spears and self-expression. But this was not new, not ever really personal, so nobody really got to him. Until Blake.
In the middle of the sixth grade, Luke loved reading in his secret spot between the school and the black top after school. On one particular day, Luke was reading The Hunger Games. The pages were coarse from bringing the book into the tub. His mother could never stop him from reading, even when he was forced to bathe. In his spot, seated behind the bush that concealed most of his body, Luke was giving the book his undivided attention. He was not paying attention to the group of lacrosse boys that had started playing Four Square with only three people just a few yards in front of his bush.
Luke had just reached the point in the novel at which the innocent 12-year-old Rue is murdered with a spear by Marvel, a horrible little jock, when he suddenly became vaguely aware of one of the boys yelling something. The kickball knocked into the book, launching it from Luke’s hands. They appeared through what he’d thought was the safety of his bush and, together, glared down at him maliciously. Did they think he had magnetized their ball to his book so he could ruin their game of Four Square? As he started to ask them this, Blake walked through the bushes. Luke stopped mid-sentence. The de facto leader of the group of sixth-graders, Blake LeBlanc—on whom Luke had a very guilty, angry crush—shoved Luke’s chest, hard, and asked loudly why Luke sucked so bad at sports. Then Blake asked why Luke couldn’t even catch a kickball coming straight for him. Then why he was such a bitch pussy. At “bitch pussy,” the other boys laughed their agreement.
Before Luke could finish responding they were moving around him, herding him like dogs to the south end of the big field, where teachers couldn’t see because of the trees. Luke could tell they were trapping him. Then, his stomach churning, he realized he could do nothing to prevent this. As they moved, Blake, speaking as though he were a wicked carnival barker, announced to the other boys that they were going to show the midget fag how to play Chicken. Not wanting to know what this meant, Luke sprinted to get past the smaller of Blake’s friends, but was shoved easily to the ground in front of Blake. Blake grabbed him and put Luke’s hand on Blake’s leg.
“What are you doing?” Luke asked, his voice barely audible over the other boys’ shouts.
“Go up,” Blake said, his eyes squinting. His mouth curled into a smile.
His grip tightened around Luke’s forearm as the smaller boy struggled to escape. Now full of adrenaline, Luke was able to rip his hand away. Reeling, confused, and scared, he fell flat on his back. If he stayed still, they might get bored and lose interest. Luke’s head filled for a second with that one scene in Jurassic Park, when the people stay still and the raptors can’t see them. Then the people were able to escape. Luke froze, facing Blake, trying to not breathe. He heard running from behind him before the smaller of Blake’s friends restrained Luke’s arms behind his back. Blake took this chance and elbowed Luke hard in the stomach.
“Do what I say. You fat fucking faggot,” he yelled.
Luke felt tears form and fall in the same instant. This display of weakness pissed Blake off. The others laughed harder. Blake repeated himself, this time in almost a growl. The biggest of the boys, Luke thought his name might be Brady, grabbed Luke’s hand and forced it onto Blake’s upper thigh. Luke’s resistance was laughable. Now there was no chance—Brady was in varsity football and lacrosse. As he steadily pushed Luke’s hand up Blake’s leg, the other boys’ slurs and shouts increased in ferocity and frequency.
“Trying to touch Blake’s dick!? Fucking faggot,” shouted Zach.
Luke’s hand continued its ascent up Blake’s thigh, higher, higher, until Luke was shaking, really frantic now, pushing all his weight against his back in a last ditch effort to move Brady—and thus himself—away from Blake. Finally, unsure what else to do, Luke turned his head up and fixed his eyes on Blake’s. Blake’s eyes were sky blue. In that moment, something took Luke away from the field. In a second outside of time, Luke and Blake stared at each other and what had been happening just sort of fell away. From somewhere unknown, Luke felt anger replace his terror. Why did this boy have to be his enemy? His own eyes must have reflected this, because now Blake’s eyes tilted and his smile disappeared. Now Blake had the same look as Luke had before. No sooner did Luke notice this than the two were both back at the field, surrounded by Blake’s friends. Neither understood what had just happened.
As fast and as hard as he could, Luke made a fist and moved it forward rather than back, slamming into the bully’s groin. Blake shouted, clutching his shorts, as his chest hit the ground. Luke turned to hit Brady too, sure he would die at the end of this, but too full of adrenaline-fueled rage to run away. Before he could move his arm, Zach had tackled him to the ground. Blake, having partially recovered from Luke’s blow, was now pinning the small boy’s head and back down while the other boys restrained his arms. Blake’s grunt seemed to echo slightly as he pushed down on Luke, who cried out a little in pain. Luke couldn’t help but wonder, his head in the dirt, if the trio had practiced this before on someone else. Before he could wonder too long, a blunt black boot seared pain into his left cheek. He didn’t have to see his blood spreading through the grass to know that Blake had kicked him in the face. Then Blake put his face right next to Luke’s. Everything went quiet for a second and again it felt like it was just the two of them. Luke couldn’t pull his face away, and had to feel Blake’s hot breath in his ear. The captain of the lacrosse team’s tone was cool, a strangely loud whisper.
“If you ever fucking try and touch my dick again, Aster, you fucking faggot, I’ll kill you. O.K.?”
This was bizarre. There was typical stuff in his voice: anger, overzealous rage, the Self-Righteous Bigot Crusader. But it wavered at the end, when he said “O.K.?” Suddenly Luke realized that Blake had seen the change in his eyes before the punch. The other boys were laughing harder than before, but they sounded distant now. Luke strained to look up and saw that they were already running. Blake was up, sprinting after them. Luke hardly noticed the pang of pain in his face as he smiled into the wet red of the grass.
Blake LeBlanc had been scared of him.
For the rest of middle school and all of high school, Blake didn’t approach Luke again. Maybe Blake lost interest because other kids were gayer, or fatter, or both. Or maybe, after that moment on the ground together, Blake knew he didn’t have power over that particular faggot anymore. Either way, the two almost never saw each other.
Luke didn’t forget.
Years later, December of his junior year at Loyola, Luke got a Snapchat. When Blake’s name appeared in his Snapchat notifications, his face got hot. It felt like he wasn’t supposed to see this, like Blake had snapped the wrong person and Luke would certainly get nothing but trouble from opening it. It was a chat message, not a picture. It just said “wat up.”
The texts started simply enough. “Wyd” was most common. Soon enough it became clear that what Blake was looking for was an outlet. He would start with a “wyd” and slowly but surely spiral into a full-blown discussion about the details of anal sex or, if he let Luke steer the conversation, the beauty that could come from intimacy between two men. But the latter never lasted longer than a few half-assed responses on Blake’s part. It always came back around to sex. It didn’t take long for him to realize that what Blake LeBlanc wanted from him was phone sex. One night, Blake steered the phone sex into a place that was pretty vulgar, almost violent. It didn’t take long for Luke to start giving in, little by little, to Blake’s advances. After all, he had once had a crush on the boy. He also knew what closeted straight guys could do if they started to feel cornered. If they realize they’ve lost control. Bathing for a few minutes in the rich irony of this situation, Luke smirked. Then he sat down at the kitchenette in his apartment and thought, enjoying every second of it, “What would I have done in sixth grade?”
On the TV, Katniss Everdeen ran through the jungle, searching for Rue, but to no avail. Suddenly she started sprinting once Rue’s screams for help began. Luke got up from the bottom of the bed and walked into the tiny bathroom. He reentered the room wearing a pretty red lace nightgown and holding a shower rod. He was crying now, staring at the TV. Marvel had just thrown the spear, mortally wounding the little girl. Drool spilled down from the gag in Blake’s mouth. His ankles and wrists were encircled by bright red marks from all his thrashing. There was something profoundly funny for Luke, seeing Blake like this. But he knew better than to get distracted. As Katniss turned, firing an immediate arrow into Marvel’s chest, Luke leapt onto the Motel 6 bed, raising the sharpened shower rod high above his head. His voice rose, matching the bellow of Blake’s trembling shout. His heavier weight wasn’t a problem now; now it meant strength. Now it could only help him. Pausing, he let his eyes meet Blake’s. Nothing was new; just the same shallow blue he’d seen all those years ago. Luke’s arms plunged downward with inhuman power. The shower rod, which felt more like a heavy spear to Luke, descended with a crunch first through Blake, then the comforter, then the sheets, and finally the mattress. The bed frame shook dangerously, creaking as though threatening to give out. Luke, breathing heavily, slid off the bed and used two fingers to close Blake’s eyes.
“D’you want whip cream, sir,” the barista said to Luke, his voice exceedingly bored.
“Yeah, uh, please,” Luke said. He massaged the bridge of his nose and took his coffee, exiting the CC’s Coffee in his therapist’s office building. Sighing, Luke thought about what Danielle had told him about giving in to revenge fantasies. They were getting harder to resist. According to her it was fairly dangerous for Luke to even be speaking with Blake considering the toxicity of their relationship. Luke always emphatically agreed with her when she explained why this was, nodding his head and saying things like “exactly!” or “I know!”
Then in two weeks he would return to Danielle, and she’d hear every detail he could recall about the sex he and Blake had had since their last session: how awful and hateful and phenomenal it had been. These conjugal visits had been occurring on and off for five months now. Luke truly felt like it was driving him insane. He’d tell Danielle that he was depraved, sick in the head, that he was reprehensible. She would listen, and then, after a pause, ask him why he continued to see Blake if he knew so well how bad it was for him. In each session, his reasoning changed. At first, he’d claimed he was “not denying Blake’s advances” simply for creature comfort, for the attention of an attractive man. When she brought it up for the third session in a row, he snapped, shouting at her that maybe Blake just had a big dick and she just didn’t know what that felt like. Luke immediately regretted this, noting that this outburst had created an awkward dynamic for the rest of the session. But when he subsequently broke down, she reassured him that he was making steady progress. As he confronted himself with Danielle’s help session after session, Luke eventually came to the conclusion that he looked forward to the texts he would get summoning him to Blake’s house. The ride from his place uptown to Blake’s truly shitty apartment in Slidell was always excruciating: a cocktail of nervousness, sexual tension, and frustration that erupted as soon as Blake would let him in. The sex itself rarely changed significantly. Blake was always very concerned about neighbors hearing them, so the first few visits were nearly silent. This bothered Luke more than he thought it should. First of all, they were grown men. Second, it felt egregiously wrong that Blake was the one who was more obviously embarrassed by their relationship. Then, one night, Blake texted Luke asking if they could hang out at Luke’s instead of the usual place. Luke rejected this suggestion. His apartment was a safe place. There, he could usually pretend that Blake had remained a shithead he’d once known. After a substantial amount of insisting on Luke’s part, Blake admitted that the reason for this suggestion was that Blake’s father was back in Slidell, and had demanded he be allowed to stay at Blake’s apartment. Luke told Blake that he could fuck his dad instead then, for all he cared, but that the two young men would certainly never be meeting at Luke’s.
It took three days for him to yield. As soon as Blake walked into the well-kept Uptown apartment, he grabbed Luke and threw him onto his own bed.
“What the fuck!? Hello!” Luke said, genuinely upset that Blake hadn’t even acknowledged him in these circumstances before starting.
“Shut up faggot,” said Blake, shoving Luke’s head into his pillow.
“No. Fuck you! Get out!” as Luke shoved Blake off of him, he wiped some tears from his face. Standing up, he grabbed Blake by his collar and tried to yank him from the bed.
Blake objected slightly, still horny and unsure if this was part of it or not.
“I said get the fuck out!” said Luke, sobbing now. “Get out. Leave!” His voice shook before it broke completely.
Getting the idea that this was not, in fact, part of it, Blake began to laugh.
“Are you okay, James?” he said, his voice thick with mock concern. “You really are a stupid faggot, y’know that? Get back on the bed and let me fuck you. Dumb bitch.”
At this, Luke raised his head and locked eyes with Blake, staring into the sky blue he wished he never would have stared into. Then he shouted, his voice high-pitched and unhinged. “Blake, get out of my house right now or I swear to God I’ll fucking kill you.”
The smile evaporated from Blake’s face as Luke began to seethe, glaring at Blake with real hate in his eyes. Blake turned, stumbling, and almost fell down the stairs in his hurry to get back to his Toyota Corolla.
Slumped in a heap against the bar of his kitchenette, Luke felt too exhausted to cry. Eventually he noticed the sun seeping through the blinds. He peered up at the clock on the stove. 6:21 am. This was not the first time he had broken down because of Blake. Feeling tears forming again, Luke heard a stubborn voice tell him that it would have to be the last. He pictured Blake’s eyes as they had been hours before. They were beautiful, but by now Luke could see the shallowness in them. Blake, Luke decided then, was the kind of person who existed in the restrictive comfort of the closet—in ways not just concerning his sexuality. Blake had been in the closet so long that it had become part of him, part of his identity. For Blake, there was no closet to come out of. The suppression, the crudeness, that was all he’d known since long before their first meeting all those years ago. Coughing, Luke realized with a strange melancholy that it didn’t matter how much control he had over Blake. Danielle had said to him two sessions before: why did it matter if he controlled any aspect of Blake’s life, if he didn’t control his own? Quickly, Luke shot to his feet. Taking his phone from his pocket, he first blocked, then deleted Blake’s number.
“That’s it,” he said to himself. He walked to his bed and lay down on top of the covers, his eyes swollen and still wet.
That’s it.
Luke smiled.