A Safe House, Chapter 1

I was living with my parents when my life suddenly took a turn for the worse. I had just turned 18, and was about to graduate from high school when this all began. In fact, I was at school when my mother entered my room to put my freshly laundered clothes in my chest of drawers. That sounds innocent enough, but that was what set in motion a chain of events that changed my life. Because it in that process when my mother decided to get nosey and snoop through my chest of drawers, and so when she opened the bottom drawer, where none of my clothes had ever been kept, she discovered my coveted collection of gay pornography. Because my parents were, and still are, God fearing Baptists, I knew there was no way they would ever have approve of such material, and so I usually kept it better hidden in the back corner of that same drawer, but under a box of computer cords and jacks.

Unfortunately, the night before ran late with homework, and so it was even later when I got around to jacking off, something I do to reward myself for completing my homework. As a result it was even later when I put my pornography away. Because I was running so late I wasn’t as careful as usual, and so just tossed my porn magazines to the back of my bottom drawer. That resulted in pictures of man on man sex being readily visible when my mother went snooping, causing her to discover that I was not only gay, but that I was particularly interested in other men’s butts. Had I been raised in California or New York that probably wouldn’t have been a problem, but in Texas with its Evangelical Bible Belt values, our good citizens, including my parents, interpreted such material to be “the work of the devil”.

Without my noticing, my mother pretty much avoided me after I returned home from school that day, at least until my father got home from work. I was studying in my room when I heard heated voices coming from my parent’s bedroom. Then only minutes later my father came bursting through my bedroom door with my mother following close behind. Without speaking a single word to me, he went directly to the bottom drawer of my chest of drawers and pulled my man on man pornography from its hiding place. He then threw it on my bed for all to see, including my mother of course. I was horrified with embarrassment, but not for long, because when my father stopped declaring that my soul had been taken by the devil, he ordered me out of his house, instructing me never to return.

I was so shaken that I left without gathering any of my belongings, not even the few dollars I had stashed away. In fact, I all but ran from the house with the clothes on my back, three dollars and some change in my pocket, and no place to go. Because I was so deeply in the closet, I assumed that all of my friends were straight, and so I was afraid to seek refuge with any of them as I feared my parents might call their parents to warn them to protect their sons from my sinning ways.

So from that moment on I considered myself isolated and on my own. I spent that first night in my father’s backyard tool shed, but because I was afraid he would discover me there if I stayed a second night, I spent my second night in a dumpster that was full of collapsed cardboard boxes behind our hardware store, and then my third night under a highway overpass. It was there I was discovered by a Texas State Trooper. I thought he was going to take me to jail, but instead he took me to a “safe house” that was specifically intended to take care of dispossessed boys over the age of 18, but under the age of 21. It was sponsored by our local Unitarian Church, and I was truly thankful for its existence as I had run out of options.

Everyone at the safe house seemed friendly and welcoming. I was allowed to take a hot shower, after which I was given clean clothing and a frozen “microwave to eat” dinner. And then they introduced me to six other boys who were also there seeking charitable shelter. There was a live in counselor at the house whose office occupied what at one time had been one of the house’s four bedrooms. The master bedroom had become his sleeping quarters, which only left two bedrooms for us boys. We slept three in one bedroom, and four in the bedroom I was assigned. Even with bunkbeds, it was a crowd, but being that we were all over the age of 18, there were no other alternatives, no orphanages or foster homes for boys our age.

It wasn’t required that any of us divulge why we had become homeless, so I didn’t share any of my circumstance. Others were not so secretive as to what had brought them to the safe house, but no matter the reason it was incumbent on all of us to be drug free, and to finish high school if we hadn’t already, or at least be working on a GED. Of course we were also expected to get along and make the most of what the Unitarians were providing. Two of the boys had already graduated, three were working on GEDs with help from our counselor, while another kid and I were taken by bus to finish our high school at the very high school that I had been attending before my pornography was discovered.

The boy who I was attending high school with was very quiet and kept to himself. That’s probably because he was also the only black kid in the safe house. Even though he’d been attending the same high school as myself, I had never talked to him, nor had any classes with him. At first glance he seemed like a kid who had been beaten by life. But on second glance he was amazingly attractive, even beautiful in ways I hadn’t noticed before. Although blacks and whites didn’t mix all that well in Texas, I had an immediate desire to know him on a personal level. In fact, from the first moment I saw him I truly wanted to be his friend, enough that I began to dream that I was his protector, saving him from all who would do him harm.

By happenstance that boy was also one of the other three boys with whom I shared the aforementioned bedroom. I don’t remember much of my dreams that first night, but I do remember that he was the subject. His name was Keenan Greene, and we didn’t really communicate until I made a purposeful point to sit next to him on the school bus that following morning. He was friendly enough, yet he tried to keep some distance from me. None of that would have mattered to me, except that he was so attractive that I made a point to sit next to him on that school bus every day thereafter. As a result, I slowly managed to get a little closer each day to the real person that lurked beneath his beautiful brown skin. Then, after our second week of riding the school bus together, while I was on lunch break I saw him coming from the boy’s gym. His left eye was swollen, and his lip had been bloodied. I approached him and asked what had happened, but instead of answering he walked right past me as if I didn’t exist. I reached to his shoulder so I could take a closer look at his injuries, but he pushed my hand away, and said, “You don’t really want to know.”

“But I do.” I insisted.

Keenan continued to walk on without looking at me or making further comment. I had to run a few steps to catch up to him so I could ask, “Who the fuck did that to you?”

Once again, Keenan brushed me off, saying, “Look, Nate, you need to go back and be with your fucking white friends. I’m just a dumb nigger who doesn’t need your help.”

I wanted to hug and comfort him, but instead I said, “No, I’m not going to leave you like this. Now come with me to the boy’s bathroom so we can put some cold wet paper towels on your lip and eye.”

Keenan finally relented and allowed me to guide him to the upstairs boys bathroom as I knew it would most likely be unused by the lunch crowd. Once we entered I ran cold water on some paper towels before applying them to Keenan’s eye and lip. He seemed more angry than injured, but once we were alone in that bathroom, tears began to stream from his eyes. Somehow that made him even more beautiful to me, to the point that I held the middle toilet stall door open, and said, “Please, Keenan, come in here with me.”

“Why?” Keenan asked.

Instead of answering I took a hold of his shoulder and guided him into the toilet stall. After closing and locking its door, while still holding Keenan by his shoulders, I looked into his eyes, and said, “Look, I don’t know why you think I’m just another white asshole, but I’m not, and I’ve never done anything to make you think that. The truth is, I really like you, and so I’d really like to be your friend.”

Keenan glared into my eyes, and said, “Lots of guys say that, but in the end they always side with their white asshole friends.”

“Well, that won’t be true for me.” I said as I let my hands fall to his waste, and for the first time in my life, I took another boy in a loving embrace. At first Keenan tried to struggle from my grasp, but then he caught himself and hugged me back. I was so moved to be holding Keenan’s body against mine, that without any more thought, I kissed his neck. I was afraid that I had over stepped my bounds, but he shocked me by kissing my neck while squeezing me even harder.

I soon ended our embrace as I feared someone could enter the bathroom at any moment. Keenan just stood there looking into my eyes before pulling my body back to his so he could plant a big kiss right on my lips. It was a wonderful passionate kiss that caused me to pull him back into another embrace. And then he broke from that kiss, and said, “So now you know. I’m not only a dumb nigger, but a dumb faggot nigger.”

While focusing on his eyes with all the seriousness I could muster, I said, “Well we both may be gay, but you’re no nigger, so please stop saying that. It hurts me to hear you say that when I feel so much love for you.”

Keenan’s only response was to continue to gaze into my eyes. So I said, “We had better get out of here before someone comes in and gets suspicious about what we are doing in here.”

I unlatched the stall door, and we stepped back to the row of sinks where I said, “You can trust me. I promise not to ever let you down, okay?”

Then while placing a fresh wet paper towel back to his lip, Keenan said, “You know that your white friends will fuck you over if they think you’re my friend.”

I smiled, and said, “Fuck’em. It’s you I care about.”

“You mean that you still want to be my friend?”

“Yes, more than ever. I’ve wanted to be your friend since the moment Mr. Whitfield, (Our safe house counselor) introduced us.”

“But aren’t you afraid I’ll get some of my blackness on you, or give you some kind of black people’s cooties?”

Without hesitation, I said, “No. That’s silly. What I’m afraid of, is that you might not want to be my friend as much as I want to be yours.” Then I thought for a second before adding, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the real truth is, and I know this may be hard to understand, but I think I love you. No, actually I know I love you. Even if you think I’m some kind of white asshole faggot, I know that I love you.”

A single tear ran down his cheek, as he asked, “So what does that mean?”

I paused, trying to think of a cool way to express my feelings, but came up blank, so instead I said, “It means that I love you, and want to be your very best friend. It means that I want us to be the kind of friends who can honestly share everything, no secrets no shame. I’ve never had that kind of friend before, but I want to be that kind of friend with you. In fact, I want that more than anything, so now you probably think I’m the dumb one, but that’s how I feel.”

Keenan took me in his arms again, and kissed me, swollen lip be damned. I was really afraid someone might enter the bathroom, so I pushed away, and said, “I really do love you. In fact, I love everything about you, but we need to save this for later. We don’t want to get caught by some faggot hating asshole. I don’t know how, but I’ll figure something out, someplace where we could have some privacy.”

We left the bathroom, and went in separate directions to attend our first afternoon class. And because we had no classes together, I didn’t see Keenan again until it was time to line up for the bus ride back to the safe house. His eye and lip looked better, but you could still tell that he had been assaulted. After taking our seat on the bus, Keenan leaned over and asked in a whisper, if I still felt the same way as I did when we were in the boy’s bathroom together. Not sure as to exactly what he was referring to, I told him that I was sure I meant everything I’d said. Then he leaned even closer, and whispered, “My family kicked me out of their house when I told them I was gay. They even threatened that if I ever returned they would call the cops because they were afraid I might somehow make my little brothers gay.”

Then he turned away to look out of the bus’s window, so I leaned into him and said, “Don’t feel alone. I don’t even have a little brother, and my parents did the same to me.”

Keenan continued gazing out of the window for the longest time before he finally turned to face me. He looked around to see that the other nearby students were preoccupied with their conversations or electronic games before he leaned close enough to whisper, “I want to trust that you meant what you said in the bathroom, because I not only think you’re really hot, but I think I love you too. And I’m not just saying that because you said it, I really mean it.”

I looked into the depth of his eyes and said, “I’m glad to hear that. If we weren’t in public, I’d kiss you right now.”

Then he asked, “What did you mean when you said that you wanted us to be totally honest with each other?”

I thought for a few seconds, and then said, “I meant just what those words mean.”

Then Keenan caught me off guard by asking, “You mean about everything, including sex things?”

“Yes, of course, maybe even especially sex kinds of things.”

“Well what if I’m into some weird kinky kind of stuff?”

I had no idea as to what he might be referring to, so I said, “Well I don’t know what you’re talking about, but yea, I mean everything.”

“Well it’s nothing bad. In fact it’s kind of medical.”

I still had no idea as to what Keenan was getting at, so I said, “You’re going to have to be more specific. That could mean a lot of thing.”

He leaned to my ear once again, so close that his lips actually touched my ear as he whispered, “Do you know what an enema is?”

I was embarrassed by his question, and so wanted to say no, but because I had been the recipient of a few enemas while growing up, I told a half truth, and said, “Yea, I can’t really remember, but I think my mom gave me one when I was real young.”

Just then our bus pulled up to our stop, we both got up to wait in close association with several other students who were exiting the bus at our stop. That made it impossible for us to carry on our conversation, which gave me time to think. Keenan was ahead of me in that line of kids, so I also had the opportunity to stare at the perfect rounds of his athletic butt without him knowing, and without him knowing that my imagination was running wild while I wondered where our conversation was headed.

Keenan had beautiful brown eyes, short curly black hair, a perfect complexion, and a dimpled smile that seemed to make my dick hard. He was 5’ 8” tall, and even though he didn’t seem to be involved in any sports, he had the most defined muscles I had ever seen. But to me, his most defining physical characteristic was his truly fine, perfectly shaped butt. Of course I would never do such a thing on a school bus. But at that moment I wanted to reach into the back of his trousers and caress the muscular rounds of his butt cheeks while I imagined them naked with an enema hose snaking out from between them.

We made our way to the front of the bus, and then to the sidewalk where we walked side by side toward the Unitarian safe house. We didn’t really talk again until the crowd of kids dispersed enough to give us some privacy. Only then did Keenan ask, “What if I told you that things were different at my house, and I got a lot of them”

“A lot of what?” I asked nervously.

Keenan looked around to assure our privacy before saying, “Enemas.”

“Oh.” I said, “But why?”

Keenan was quiet for a few seconds, and then said, “Actually, just forget I ever mentioned it. I don’t think you’d understand.”

I put my arm out in front of Keenan and stopped, halting him where he was as I asked, “Why are you giving up on me like this? I can and will understand. I told you that I really care about you, and that I want us to be fully honest with each other. So I’ll do my best to understand any and everything that’s important to you.”

Keenan hesitated for a few seconds, and then said, “What if I told you that I got a lot of enemas growing up, and not just because I was sick.”

Once again I didn’t know where his conversation was going, so I asked, “What other reasons are there?”

“Punishment!” He said without hesitation, “My father always gave me an enema to hold any time he was going to give me the belt.”

Just picturing that happening to Keenan truly made me want to hold and kiss him while once again telling him how much I loved him. But instead, I had to settle with, “Wow, that sounds rough.”

Keenan then said in a lowered voice, “It was. And because I always had to be naked for my punishments, the enemas were really embarrassing, and the belt really stung.” Then Keenan looked directly into my eyes as he said, “I don’t know if you can understand this, but even though I hated those enemas, and my dad for making me take them, there was always something about them that turned me on. So over the last couple of years when I had time to myself, I’d give myself an enema and jack off until I came with the most mind blowing orgasm. So what do you think of me now?”

My dick had erected in my pants by that point, so I said, “I hope this doesn’t scare you, but you’re telling me all of that has given me a boner.”

With a very serious look on his face, Keenan said, “Does that mean that you wouldn’t mind giving my black ass an enema every now and then?”

“No.” I said, “It means that I’d love to give you an enema anytime you feel the slightest desire.”

Keenan smiled for the first time since getting off of the bus, as he asked, “You really mean that?”

I looked into his eyes and saw only a shy innocence, as I said, “I can’t believe you’d let me do that to you, but yes, it would be real sexy for me. In fact, I’d give you one every day if you’d let me.”

Then Keenan smiled a truly sexy smile as he said, “Then maybe sometimes you might even let me give you one.”

Two teenaged girls were approaching from behind, so we moved aside to let them pass, and then remained silent until they were far enough ahead that they would be out of ear shot before I whispered, “Yea, in fact, I think I’d love that. Especially if you wouldn’t mind if my dick got hard while you were doing it to me.” Then while looking directly into his eyes, I went on to say, “I wish I could kiss you right now so you’d know that I mean everything I just told you. But because I can’t, you’re just going to have to trust that I really love you.”

…

Two weeks later Keenan and I graduated from high school. Mr. Whitfield, our safe house counselor, had found us both summer jobs at a local hardware store. He also gave the both of us a pamphlet from a state operated vocational school, while stating, that because we both graduated with good grades, the Unitarians would cover our expenses and support us if we decided to continue our education at that school.

Because my parents were conservative evangelical Baptists they actually hated people of the Unitarian faith. But I saw them as saviors. People who were actually doing Christ’s work, while at that same time I saw my parents as haters and sinners, people who would turn against their own child and hate anyone who wasn’t exactly like them. I wanted to flaunt my high school diploma in my parent’s faces, but chose not to stoop to their level. Instead, I was trying to forgive them for their small minded ways. Unfortunately, that’s something I’m still working on to this day.

Then two days after our graduation Keenan entered the safe house’s bathroom while I was brushing my teeth. He closed the door and smiled at my reflection in the mirror, and then turned my body so he could plant a big kiss on my sudsy mouth. Unfortunately, at that very moment, Donald, one of the other boys we shared our bedroom with, entered the bathroom without knocking and saw us kissing. I was shocked, and so didn’t know what to say. But in a voice loud enough that no one in the house could miss, Donald exclaimed, “What the fuck? You guys are queer.” Then he stepped back out of the bathroom and slammed the door.

He continued to rant and rave as he walked to the counselor’s office where we could hear him announce that he wasn’t about to share a bedroom with a couple of queers who could watch as he changed clothes or slept. Mr. Whitfield tried to calm him down, but from Donald’s rantings both Keenan and I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Before that day was over, Keenan and I both decided that it would be best for all if we left the safe house. We told Mr. Whitfield that we were planning on hitchhiking to California. He tried to talk us out of such a drastic adventure, but once he understood that we were determined, he managed to get the Unitarians to give us two hundred dollars each so we would be able to eat while making the trip. We were both thankful, and so with the clothes on our backs and two hundred dollars in each of our pockets, we left the safe house and headed for the highway.