Flam was screaming hysterically now, so Steve reached down and grabbed his son’s testicles, squeezing hard, forcing the breath and the resistance out of the boy.
“Flam . . . it sounds like some kind of fruit cake. Is that what you are, a fruit cake?” Steve growled, squeezing even harder. “Do you like this? Do you like a man grabbing your balls? Is that what turns you on, you fucking Fruit Flam? Is that what you do down there in that bookstore with those old men?”
It was doubtful Steve really expected any reply, for nothing more than rodent-like whimpers was coming from Flam at this point as he fought for air and consciousness. Finally, when the colour palette of the boy’s face had played through hues of red and shifted towards a more malignant blue, Steve released his grip, in alarm that he might actually kill his son. Flam collapsed into a heap on the floor, his heavy breathing giving some reassurance he was still alive.
Steve bent over the boy and moved his face closer, until it was mere inches away from the boy’s own. The father bared his teeth, and as he hissed his final statement every foul molecule of drunkard’s breath was clearly detectable.
“I don’t ever want to see you in that bookstore again. Do you hear me? If I ever find out you’ve been hanging around with those men again, I swear I’ll cut your balls off and feed them to you. And I’ll do the same to that old faggot friend of yours downstairs.”
Steve straightened up, looked down at the whimpering heap at his feet, and delivered it a half-hearted kick. But the rage was now spent, and Steve shuffled off to the bathroom, enabling Flam to crawl to the table and drag himself into his sanctuary. As bad as his physical injuries were, the thought that he would be losing the one place that mattered to him, and the only friends he had in the world, was far more painful to Flam, and fueled his tears well into the night.
Mary returned home late and heard her son’s muffled sobs emanating from within the walls of books under the dining table. Puzzled and concerned, she went to him to seek out the source of her son’s sadness. Soon, however, she had problems of her own, as Steve awoke from a drunken languor, and attempted to cajole sex from his unwilling wife. Mary spent the night fending off her husband’s stumbling advances, leaving Flam alone to cry in his refuge.
Despite an unshakeable terror that his father would catch him and make good on his threat, Flam could not bring it upon himself to simply disappear from the bookshop without an explanation or farewell. The next day, he stuck his head in the door, quickly dropped a couple of books that Turner had lent him onto the front counter, and stood there silently, not making eye contact. Turner looked up, confused as to why Flam was hovering apprehensively in the doorway.
“Hail, young squire. Quid agis?”
“My . . . my father says I can’t come here any more,” the boy blurted out, trying hard not to cry. “I just wanted to give you those books back . . . and to say thanks for letting me come here.” With that the dam of despair burst and tears arrived in full force. Flam turned, as much to hide his crying as to depart.
“Flam! Wait! What’s wrong? Why won’t your father let you come to the shop? Let me go and talk with him.”
Flam had no desire to converse about his father’s abuse or threats. “He’s crazy, that’s all,” he wailed through the narrowing crack, “just stay away from him . . . just leave us alone.” And then the door closed, shutting out the friendship and sense of belonging the bookstore had provided to Flam, and the inner nourishment that had sustained him through his youth. He had never felt more alone.
Flam returned upstairs to the flat and crawled into his refuge beneath the dining room table, leaving the light outside. The pain within him now felt so intense he didn’t think he could stand it any longer. And tomorrow, he knew, would bring another day of torment—neglect and abuse at home, ridicule and beatings at school, punctuated only by loneliness, self-loathing, and now the loss of his friends. Surely death was preferable to such a miserable half-life, especially if it put an end to the unbearable suffering once and for all.
Although he had grown too tall for the space, and one wall of books had been removed so his legs could protrude out, in the darkness, the remaining stacks of books around him gave the snug space the feel of a coffin. He stretched out on his back and oriented his hands appropriately across his chest, and took slow, deep breaths, exhaling each as if it were his last, only reaching up occasionally to wipe away the tears trickling down his face. Eventually he stopped sniffling and fell asleep.
Chapter 4
Despite Steve’s attack on his masculinity, Flam had long been suffering the full heterosexual rampages of puberty, a suffering made only worse by his gluttonous diet of classical literary romanticism. At school, his debilitating shyness and pariah’s status among his peers made it impossible to approach female classmates in any attempt to slake his burgeoning libido.
This new dimension to his loneliness, and the even deeper depression it precipitated, induced Flam to momentarily shed his disguise of mediocrity. He seized on an end-of-term poetry-writing exercise assigned by his English Literature teacher, Mrs. Boyle. Flashing the razor sharp blade of his hidden intellect, he poured his aching soul into the assignment.
In the midst of the other juvenile pap that floated in on a sea of depressingly bad grammar, Flam’s submission shone like a beacon. Mrs. Boyle read it three times, and was so startled and moved by the verse submitted by the anonymous non-entity who haunted the rear of her classroom, she arrived at the only plausible conclusion—the work must have been plagiarized. So certain was she of this, even though a search of every anthology and literary journal in three libraries provided no substantiating proof, she summarily rendered judgment to that effect in front of the entire class.
“Did you really think I would believe you wrote this, Mr. Grub?” she growled, waving the double-spaced evidence around to emphasize her words, and accenting Flam’s surname to maximize the mockery. “Plagiarism will not be tolerated. It cheapens the whole educational process, and is a despicable affront to the author whose work you have so callously stolen! Consider yourself lucky I don’t have you suspended.”
Flam fought back tears. “No, Mrs. Boyle, it’s not true. It’s mine! I wrote it. I swear to God I wrote it . . . all by myself. I didn’t steal it.”
His appeal was ignored. Mrs. Boyle brought the entire affair to a climax by ripping the paper into shreds and loudly awarding him an “F.” His classmates, relishing the rare excitement in Mrs. Boyle’s otherwise utterly boring class, tittered and guffawed around him.
Flam had found a rare joy and purpose when writing that poem. He had felt connected on a whole new level to the stories and characters and beautiful words that had sustained him since boyhood—so much so that for the first time in his life he had actually been lifted from his gloom and self-pity. He had felt motivated. He had been inspired. His life suddenly had a purpose. Now, thanks to Mrs. Boyle, the warmth from that fleeting artistic spark dissipated. Flam was plunged back into the darkness of his miserable life.
Not only was Flam’s present filled with despair, but his future seemed to offer no hope either. With graduation from high school looming, the decision about his future as an adult had been weighing on Flam’s mind. Until the humiliation in Mrs. Boyle’s class, Flam had been summoning up the courage to approach his parents with the idea of going on to university, perhaps to study writing and literature. Now his ambitions felt empty and pointless, and the prospect of more years in school, suffering a whole new universe of degradation and scorn from classmates left him empty and utterly depressed.
Thoughts of ending his worthless life in an act of defiant heroism started to creep persistently into Flam’s mind. One day, they finally drove him onto the railing of an overpass high above a local freeway, and there he wavered, picturing himself hurling down onto the traffic that was speeding by below, oblivious to his misery. It was not fear, or some tiny vestige of hope for a better future, or concern for the anguish he might cause others that ultimately pulled Flam back from self-obliteration. It was a novel he had been reading, and which lay in the knapsack on the sidewalk. He was suddenly struck with a strong desire to know the