Yesterday was release day for a book I wrote called Beacon, book one of the Nation of Five series. The book is about young men and an impossible task they set before themselves. Well, I know a lot about impossible tasks. I’m a DID survivor who suffers from hallucinations. I have bipolar and Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder. Getting through a day where I make dinner, hang out with my kids, be a husband to my wife, and not end the day screaming, is the completion of an impossible task. Well, it may be an impossible task that’s undertaken in the book Beacon, but it’s only even considered because of the friendship between four boys. Four teenage boys attempt this daunting feat. Got me thinking about the boys and men in my life. And so this weekend to celebrate the release of Beacon, I will be dropping upon you chapters from Reality of the Unreal Mind. These chapters are from the unreleased third volume, titled The Keep. I start at 7:30 in the evening on Friday, and will end at 9 at night on Sunday. So follow me now into the story of the men who made me possible.
He handed me a note on my way to fifth hour, and his hand brushed mine in a way it did not have to. When I got to class, I didn’t have to read the letter, but I did:
40/60
I crumpled the note Chalice had given me to a ball and dropped it into the trash. I fell into my seat and fought hard to figure out a way that I might save our friendship. Because this sort of thing was happening more and more often. And the numbers were getting bigger.
See, Chalice had a line and this was it: Everyone is a little gay. He was trying to get me to accept that I was, at least a small percentage, a gay man and that number kept getting higher. First I was ten percent gay. He could tell by the way I dressed and the way I walked. Then twenty-five. It was obvious by the way I looked at men. Now his guess had me at forty percent gay, sixty percent straight. There was no way to turn him from this subject, and there was no way to deny his theory.
Every time I told him I was not gay, he would say something about how much I was trying to deny it and that was proof right there that I was gay. Every time I tried to change the subject, he would insist I was trying to deflect. I had a real problem with Chalice now, and it was only getting worse.
He began brushing up against me. Then he would graze my ass with his hand. Soon it was a blatant grab, and then more.
I would be standing in choir talking to Ty, and Chalice would walk by, run his fingers through my long hair, and walk on. Every time I yelled at him about it, he would giggle.
There is something deceptive in the way the man giggles. It is childlike and devilish, and when you see it, he seems harmless. Once you see Chalice giggle, you can’t get mad at him. You can’t yell. There are people like this.
I was trying to tell my son about them the other night. There are some people who project a certain air that makes them untouchable. No matter what they do, or what they say, if you yell at them or hit them, it is your fault.
The way the whole thing works is that they seem harmless. Chalice could not rape me. I was way too powerful. He could not hurt me physically. Shadow would have torn him apart. Chalice posed no real physical threat to me in anyone’s eyes, so if I had made any kind of violent act toward him, I would be seen as a bully. With this deception, and his all-out disregard for my will, Chalice took every grab he wanted. He did anything he wanted to me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
He would come up behind me and whisper in my ear with a soft seductive breath, “Sixty, forty,” as he swiped his hand across my ass and walked away. He would wink at me and smile. Giggle. And stare.
It was every time I was around him. Every time I was at his house. It was every time we were anywhere together, and as I waited for it to go away, it escalated.
He walked by me in the lunch room in front of over a hundred people and slid his hand against my crotch. He giggled as I looked around, fighting to see if anyone had seen him, and he strutted away. Chalice would not back off. No matter how much I begged him or assured him I was not gay and was not into him, he pushed.
He had set his eye on me. And he would not let it falter.
I was desperate. I would be around friends, or his mother, and talk about the sex life I was failing at. I would tell them all about the last meeting I had with Mary and how terrible I was at any kind of fucking at all. My desire was to paint myself as a bad lover so he would pull back. Every time the subject came up, he would walk by me and smile.
“Does she know?” he would whisper.
“Know what?”
“That you are sixty-forty.”
I would hiss at him. “I am not gay.”
He would wink. And giggle.
Finally one day I had no more time. He was getting bolder every day, getting impossible to avoid. I reached into the last bag I had. I went to my greatest strength and began to build.
“We need to talk,” I said to Chalice. “Can I come over?”
“My mom is here,” he mumbled into the phone.
“Good. I want her there, too. I have a secret I just can’t sit on anymore.” See in my greatest desperation, I had created a final thrust. If I could not tell him to quit, and I could not convince him, I had to make him look upon me in disgust.
I had to make Chalice, and even his mother Silken, think I was as depraved and as filthy as possible. I had to make it sexual, and I had to be as convincing as possible. I knew Chalice was a gossip. I knew what this would do to my reputation, but I no longer cared. I had to make it end. Any way I could.
We sat in his living room and he leaned in close.
I rubbed my face and stared at the ceiling. I drew in air and let out a shuddering breath.
“I have to tell someone.”
“You can tell us anything, sweetheart,” Silken said. “Anything at all. We love you.”
“We can keep your secret. Let’s hear it,” he said.
“When I was a kid in Allenton, I was out one night alone and I broke into a mortuary.” Look at your feet. You have to show as much shame as possible. This is the important part.
Silken pulled back. She looked at Chalice.
“Why did you go in there?” she asked.
“Curious.” Now was the time to try to look them in the eye. Not for long. Shift the eye to her, then to him. Then back to your feet. Now fiddle with your hands. Fake a deep breath. My actions were as good as I could make them.
“Gay people are like vampires. They are beautiful and mysterious. They attract a lot of attention, some good, some bad, but they are acceptable.” I had to look at my feet for a little bit longer. Had to do the best I could to sell this. “I’m not a vampire.”
“You sure, honey?” Chalice said.
Silken chuckled.
“I am like Frankenstein’s monster. No one can look at me without disgust, and anyone who tries knows how monstrous I am.” I locked eyes with him. Let the gaze set the tone for my desperation.
“What did you do in that mortuary?”
“I found a body,” I said. I hoped I was being convincing, but I knew I wasn’t. The story was too outrageous to be believed, but I had to try. “I did things.”
“Things?” Silken said. Sick fascination. Total disbelief. I don’t think she bought it for a moment, but I had to try.
“Sex things,” I said.
“To a guy or a girl?” Chalice asked.
I knew I had to bring it all home. I had come too far now. I had to make him believe it if I could.
“Don’t you see this is why I am with Mary?” I said.
“Mary?” Chalice leaned in close.
“She is thin and almost emaciated. She is cold all the time, and pale.” All of these things were of course true, but I was no necrophiliac. I had never even been in the room with a dead body except at Chuck’s funeral. Had never imagined occupying space with one at all. But near my breaking point, this was all I had. This was my last chip. This was my final hand.
Well, it didn’t work.
He started coming up behind me, grabbing my ass, and pressing his fingers to my neck. He had gotten them cold with a can of soda. He started getting the girls in choir to come to me and press their hands against me when they were cold.
The last day I was at Chalice’s house, it was snowing. Winter was cold but not harsh, and he wanted to go for a walk. We hit the streets and he led me to a graveyard.
He didn’t care if I was a necrophiliac, or maybe he never bought my story at all. I do not know. All I can say is that my story did not deter him from grabbing me and groping me whenever he wanted to. It did not stop the blowing in my ear or the murmuring whispers he would give me in public.
And with every touch and every whisper, Shush was screaming. Chalice’s lust was Shush’s rape. Chalice’s giggle was a promise to Shush.
Chalice would not stop. I had gone as far as I knew how to go to try to turn him off. I knew nothing else would do it, and I was unwilling to be groped anymore.
Walked away from Chalice. Stopped answering his calls, stopped going to his house. I broke all ties and went off with the Degenerates.
Chalice told everyone I was a homophobe. He told them all that I did not accept him and that I was a monster. He probably told them I fucked dead people, too. I don’t know.
I didn’t see him again until Silken’s memorial. I had set it all aside by then. I ignored the way it felt to be around him, the fear I felt that he might just reach out and stroke me if he wanted to.
He didn’t. I said my goodbyes to that beautiful woman and accepted Chalice back into my life.
See, I do that. I just let the people who take what they want back into my life. It’s a sickness. If you hurt me or assault me in any way, I am likely to take you back. But not anymore. I’m done now.
The chapter ends on me and Chalice here tonight.
I’m not even sure Allenton has a mortuary.
Since Chalice, I’ve heard of the gay agenda. I find it absolutely ridiculous when a conservative talks to me about the gay agenda. I’m not gonna get into it here. If you haven’t heard of it, look it up. You’ll find plenty to talk about. And you’ll find examples like this right here. You’ll find examples of Chalice. But sex is sex, and lust is lust. And if a lustful person sets their eyes on another, they bend all reality and all morality toward that conquest. This is not a story about how all gay people want all straight people to be gay. Turn it into that and I’ll unleash Shadow upon you. This is a story about how one sexual creep decided he would disregard the will of another person and take what he wanted.
Does this sound familiar? Disregarding the will of a person and sexually taking what you want? The story of Chalice and Jesse is not the story of a gay person and a straight person. The story of Chalice and Jesse is the story of a potential rapist and a person trying to escape them. And so often it’s like this.
So often the person who is about to be raped is trapped in a world of, ‘well he only did this,’ and ‘he’s harmless but this.’ And that leads to a final violent act. So when you look at the story of Chalice and Jesse, look at it as the beginning of a game of poker. The dealer has a fistful of cards. Flip and a swish, and those cards are shuffled. Shuffle that, shuffle this story with an agile mind like the agile mind of that dealer. Sometimes the rapist is straight. Sometimes a rapist is gay. Let’s flip and swish again. Now the rapist is a lesbian. They’re pushing the boundaries of acceptance one after the other, until they’re grabbing your crotch in a room full of hundreds of kids eating. There’s a flip and a swish until, I don’t care what sexuality they are, they’re walking you to a graveyard. This is not a story about a gay guy and Jesse Teller. This is a story about a flip and a swish.
When I was thinking about the release of The Keep, I talked to a homosexual who had read the story of Chalice, and I said, “Does this hurt the cause?” Because the LGBTQ cause is important to me. It’s righteous. And that homosexual looked me in the eye and he said, “There are creeps of every sexual persuasion.”
And then he said something so intense that it rocked the very core of who I am. He said, “Don’t silence Shush. Let him tell his story. His story is so much more important than one sexual creep, no matter what sexual persuasion they are.”
So here we are. Boiled down simply, this is the story of one person being pursued sexually by another person, whether those advances are wanted or not. Look at it in no other terms. Pepper, Tumble, and Lenore are all female alters in this body. Every one of them is a lesbian. And none of them have forced themselves on Bekah. And in the experience of my life, none of them have ever forced themselves on any woman. There are creeps of every sexual persuasion. The ‘gay agenda’ is a myth. And Chalice is a sexual predator.
This chapter is from Reality of the Unreal Mind, Vol. 3: The Keep.
Jesse Teller 