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This time Chris didn’t chuckle—he full-on laughed. “Oh, man. That’s a good one.”
I glanced at Anthony, who seemed confused. I moved forward to have a view of Chris’s face, not caring that Jay was still holding his gun.
Chris looked up at me. “You guys think you have me all figured out.”
“Well, why don’t you enlighten us?” Jay put his gun-free hand on the back of the couch and crossed his legs. “When did you lose your virginity?”
“When I was nine.”
The word didn’t register in my head. “What did you say?”
“I said nine, E. It’s a number.”
“You’re fucked up in the head for saying shit like that,” Jay snapped.
“I’m fucked up all right, but I’m not making this up.”
“Was it…” I cleared my throat, but the lump there remained. “Was it when you were in the group home?”
Chris kept looking forward, although his eyes weren’t really looking anywhere. “Yes.”
I opened my mouth to ask if it had only happened once but realized I was about to have an intense conversation with a kneeling naked man. I hurried to grab a chair and put it next to Chris. “Sit.”
He looked at Jay, who nodded his agreement, wariness on his face.
Chris pushed himself up and sat on the chair in the middle of the living room.
“I’ll bring your underwear,” I said.
“No. It’s appropriate I be naked for this.”
It wasn’t the kind of logic I could understand and, therefore, couldn’t argue with. I took a step back and crossed my arms. Anthony moved to stand on Chris’s other side, all three of us looking at him from a safe distance.
Chris put his palms on his knees and took deep breaths, composing himself and gaining back the control we had stripped from him during the night. I both wanted him to share his truth and dreaded hearing it.
“I always figured we’d have this conversation eventually, but not quite like this,” Chris finally said. “I first got to the group home when I was eight after my mom died and my grandma was too poor to take care of me. I never met my dad, and my grandma used to say he was trash who split town before I was born. There were around twenty kids at the group home, and I was the youngest for a while. Mr. David was the one running the place. It was dumb calling him that, but he liked going by his first name, and he insisted we’d say the Mr. Part.”
He paused before saying, “On the day it first happened, I accidentally broke a plate when it was my turn to clean the kitchen. When Mr. David later called me to his bedroom, I was so scared I had to stop to pee on my way. I’d never been to his bedroom before and couldn’t think of anyone else who had. When I got there, he seemed calm, the opposite of how I expected to find him. The other kids used to say he looked like a mouse with his pointy face, but what I always noticed was how his eyes constantly moved like he was scanning everything around him. He caught me looking at the books he had lying around and told me to go ahead and check them out. When I did, he said that I could borrow some, but I mustn’t tell anyone because then the other kids would know I was his favorite.” Chris snorted and shook his head. “His favorite. I felt ten feet taller hearing him say that. I had no intention of reading any of his boring books about economy and whatnot, but he was putting a spotlight on me, and for a moment, I was special.” He stopped again, seeming to struggle to control his breaths.
“Water?” I asked.
“A beer would be better.”
I went to grab one of the last beers we had and brought it back to him. He opened the bottle and took a long sip, then placed it on the floor and continued. “It was during that first visit to his bedroom that he asked me to take off my clothes. I wasn’t sensitive about being naked after living for months with other boys, so I took off my clothes, and for a long time—it felt like an hour—he watched me from his chair while I was standing and waiting.”
Bile climbed up my throat. Less than two hours ago, Chris had been standing naked in front of us while we were sitting and watching. I glanced at Anthony, who looked nauseous. We were both thinking the same thing.
“After a long time, Mr. David said that I was beautiful—the most beautiful boy in the world. Man, I felt like heaven, felt like I could fly. When he told me to come close and put his hands on my hips, I was too happy to care. I was beautiful, you know? And someone’s favorite. I remember his fingers being cold, then warm after a while. I didn’t ask questions, didn’t worry about what might happen next. He kept complimenting me, so even when his hands did things that felt weird, it was okay.”
Chris cleared his throat and grabbed the beer for another sip. He let out a small burp, which felt ridiculous considering how heavy the mood was. It made me smile for a second, and Chris caught it and smiled back.
He put the bottle back down and said, “He didn’t fuck me that night, not technically. He told me to lie on his bed and to play with myself. I told him I don’t have any toys to play with, so he took my hand and put it on my dick.‘Play with this,’he said, and I thought that was the silliest thing I ever heard. I asked,‘You want me to play with my pee-pee?’and he said‘yes’, so I did, thinking that was a waste of time, although it did feel nice. Then he played with it as well, and it felt much better because he was using his mouth. I remember being sleepy by the time he told me to turn on my stomach. He spread my legs and breathed on my asshole, then slowly slipped his pinky inside.”
Chris rubbed his face. “That was all he did that night. The sex came a few weeks later when we were all supposed to go to some Christmas event at the local church, and he told me to pretend to be sick so we could stay back and have the place to ourselves.”
He stopped talking. The rain outside had been reduced to a lazy drizzle. I had a hundred questions floating in my brain, but none that would have ended with an answer I wished to hear.
Anthony was the one to break the silence. “You were in the group home until you were sixteen. Did it… did it last until then?”
