I Am Jack's Life Ch. 05

Author's note and acknowledgements

This story has sat on my hard drive for four years now.

I wrote it, all twenty chapters and 95,000 words of it in eight days of a frenzied, near trance-like state, sitting on my couch with my wife's laptop. She would occasionally have to remind me to eat.

When the dust settled, and I looked up, I realized a couple of things: one, I had just written a fucking novel in a week, whoa. Two, it seemed to be pretty damn good, double whoa. And three, what the hell was I going to do with it?

I tried editing it, I even enlisted the help of a Lit-Editor, who was invaluable for early editing, and confirming it was in fact, pretty good, or readable at least. I spent several months then, editing, unashamedly forcing it on writer friends to read, regular friends to read, and total strangers on writer boards. Everyone had different opinions of course, as people do, but all of them seemed to think it was pretty good, and I should probably try to do something with it.

So I spent another year trying to sell it.

Well nothing happened.

And I can't blame them, agents and publishers. It's kind of a niche story, hard to market. It's got too much sex for a coming age story, too much teenage drama for adult fiction, and not a single word about vampires or bondage to make it work as erotic fiction.

So it's sat on my hard drive for four years. I'll occasionally open it up, tinker with a line, or try to figure out how to re-work it into something more marketable. I always end up wasting a weekend trying to figure out how to change it, without losing the essence of the thing which I, and several others, feel is, "pretty good."

So fuck it. Here you go Literotica. I just want people to read it. I want people to get to know Jack the way I did. Writing his life made me feel like I was a part of it. He's a pretty good guy, I wish I knew him in real life.

So NEXT, some disclaimers.

This is a coming of age story. Which means first it starts out when the characters are too young to have sex (on literotica.) So there's no sex for a couple chapters. I hope that's okay. Second, this is a novel length story, including the prologue and epilogue, there are twenty-one chapters in all. Some are longer than others, and there is not a sex scene in every one. (Though some have more than one.) More importantly, sex is a thing that happens, it's not written to be titillating, but rather just as events in Jack's life.

So there you go. It's a story with sex in it, not a story about sex. I think it's pretty good anyway.

If you have not read the first chapter, please click on my profile and pick the story up at the beginning, its better that way, trust me.

*****

Let me back up a second.

It's the first term of my freshman year. I've finally got the route to my classes down. I'm still a dear in the headlights when I see a cute girl, especially one of the more developed upperclassmen seniors or something. I'm still a nerd who's never had a girlfriend, kissed a girl, or even attempted to speak with one since hitting puberty.

Before I met Beth.

I didn't ride the bus home from school. I rode it too school, but not home. I didn't live very far really, only about two miles. It was a pain to walk in the morning, but walking home was fine.

Besides, Todd Smith rode my bus.

Our freshman year, Todd was not the giant around school that he was by the time we were seniors. He was tall, sure, a head taller than me in fact, and a year older. I think he'd gotten held back third grade. But he wasn't on the basketball team yet, he wasn't on the wrestling team yet, he wasn't dating Beth Jenkins yet; though he was going to be doing all of these things later this year. It just hadn't happened yet.

What he was though, was a bully.

We'd been going to the same schools since 4^th grade, when he'd moved into my neighborhood. His first week of school he'd made friends with John Nelson, the other bully of our elementary school, and the two of them tormented me all the way through middle school. It took the two of them less than two weeks before one of them was holding my arms back and the other would punch me in the stomach as hard as he could.

I guess because that was funny or something.

The summer between 8^th and 9^th grade, John Nelson had gotten shipped off to juvie (so I'd heard) and Todd was left as sole commander of the posse of jerks and malcontents they'd co-led up until that point. This was sort of good, because John had been the real bruiser of the two, but it was also pretty bad because Todd had been the brains, such as they had. By the start of our freshman year, Todd was a head taller than any other guy in our class. He had started working out too, so he was also about twenty pounds of muscle up on most of us as well.

Let's see: tall, good looking, athletic, and a jerk to pretty much everyone. Except cute girls, where he had just enough charm and charisma to disarm them.

Yeah, pretty much my anathema.

Todd and I lived just a few blocks from each other. Far enough away we had different bus stops, but not so far away that he was entirely avoidable. In the mornings when I'd get on the bus, he was already on it, but he and his friend's generally sat in the back, so I could avoid that encounter by sitting up near the front or middle. Usually my best friend, Tommy, would save me a seat, so that wasn't an issue most of the time. After school though, my sixth period class was about as far as you could get from the buses and still be on the same campus, so I had to run to make the buses after the bell rang. As a result, the seats were almost always full. Tommy's mom picked him up for piano lessons after school three days a week, so he couldn't save me a seat.

So obviously, that meant sitting in front of Todd and his cronies was inevitable roughly 100% of the time.

After a couple of weeks of spit balls, gum in my hair, wet-willies, getting poked, taunted, and otherwise tormented beyond what was reasonable for any rational human being to bear; I'd started walking home after school. It was only two miles or so and it wasn't a bad walk really. Hell half the time I could get there just before the bus did anyway, because of the route it took. Also, walking took me right past one of my favorite places in the world: Elliot's Coins and Collectables.

Elliot was a fifty-seven year old super geek. He was the sole owner and proprietor of Coin's and Collectables. C&C was really more of the 'Collectables' side of things than 'Coins'. The coins part was just there for the yellow pages and people looking to off load grandpa's buffalo nickels. His real trade was baseball cards and comic books.

It was comic book nirvana really.

He had thousands - tens of thousands maybe. Back issues going back to the 1940's of every title you could imagine. He had all the new stuff too; Marvel, DC, and a half dozen Indies. Image comics wasn't up and running yet, but he carried them too once they were. He had it all, including Heavy Metal magazine, which was my personal favorite. If you aren't familiar, Heavy Metal was (is) a science fiction mag that had graphic violence, dark fantasy, and erotica. Impossibly proportioned men and woman spilled each other's blood across its pages in every state of undress. There was nudity - lots of nudity - both men and women; and more violence than a slasher movie. But there were good stories too, and some of the best artists in the business. It was most certainly an NC-17 publication, but I loved it, and Elliot would sell it to me anyway.

Elliot was a nerd's nerd. He knew all the facts, all the artists and writers, all the characters of every imprint. I was in awe of him really. C&C was a home away from home, and I spent many afternoons there hanging out, reading back issues, chatting with Elliot, his one employee and the other patrons, buying sodas from the small mini fridge he kept to sell to kids like me. I bought tons of stuff from C&C, but moreover, it was a refuge from the social ecology of school. In school I was just a smart kid who was a little short, way too skinny, and painfully shy. At C&C I was one of the guys. A fellow geek, one of the people who knew the secret code and handshake. (Excelsior!)

Heavy Metal released only every other month, so I was always fiending for the next issue. The first of November, I hurried after school to get to C&C's to pick up the new release. Elliot had it waiting for me on the counter.

See, the system we had worked out, since he wasn't supposed to sell it to minors, was that he would leave a copy of it on the counter. You'd put your four bucks on the counter next to it and then walk off with your copy. If the cops ever asked, he'd say you stole it and that you'd must have lost the four bucks in his store. Now, he probably could have legitimately gotten away with selling it until someone complained, but this way, it was like a secret agent thing. Underhanded and conspiratorial; something only those in the know got away with. It was awesome.

I snaked my copy, casually dropping up four crumpled up bills on the counter while his back was turned to get me a coke, and slipped it into my open back pack. He must have waited to hear my zipper, because he gave me a full ten seconds before turning back around.

"Here you go Jack," he said in his ever amused gruff old man voice.

"Thanks Elliot," I said with a knowing smirk. I paid him the fifty cents for the soda. My four bucks for the magazine got swept off the counter as well and dropped in the cash box.

"New Spider man in," He offered.

"Nah, maybe next time, I'm already broke for the week," I grinned.

He just smirked, and I was out the door.

I didn't quite run home to read it, but it wouldn't have been out of the question to say I speed walked. I was in such a hurry that I cut back into the loading alley behind the supermarket and pizza parlor that was just a few blocks from my house. I normally avoided this way, because Todd and his thugs hung out at the pizza place a lot. It had cheap arcade games, and they'd steal cigarettes and porno mags from the grocery store.

It was a risk to cut back there, but I figured I was safe, after all they were still on the bus right?

Murphy's Law said there was about a 100% chance that I was going to run into Todd.

I was almost through the alley when a familiar voice called out, "Hey, it's Ass-clown."

Sigh.

I turned to look. Todd and two other guys were stepping out from around the side of the pizza place. They'd probably gotten off a few stops early. Shit.

I turned back around and kept walking. I tried not to break into a run. They were like wild dogs, they could smell fear.

I must have been like a bouquet of fresh, warm meat to them.

Laughter and a couple of more taunts were flung in my direction. Nothing I'd never heard before, but that didn't make it suck less.

Footsteps slapped against the pavement behind me as they hurried to catch up. I started picking up the pace.

"Hey Jack, seriously man, wait up."

I knew better, I really did, it was a trick. I knew it was a trick.

But, like an ass-clown, I turned around to look and wait. Maybe if I demonstrated I responded to my actual name, they'd learn to show some respect.

Billy Miller and Keith Haverton lunged forward and each grabbed an arm.

Maybe I was just an idiot.

Todd walked up to me in a lazy fashion, cocky expression on his face; he was fully in command of the situation and everyone here knew it.

"Where you running to buddy?" he said and put a hand on my shoulder.

"Just walking home, can I go please?" I tried to sound defiant, but there was an undertone of pleading there.

"First I think you little reminder of stuff. When I call your name, you stop and wait for me, understand?" he said, squeezing my shoulder, hard.

"I did," I said defensively.

"No, you didn't, you see, your name is 'Ass-clown'" he poked my chest with his middle finger. The two holding my arms sniggered like hyenas

"No it isn't. It's Jack," I said, trying to keep my chin up. That's what you were supposed to do right? Keep your chin up.

"Maybe that's what Mommy and Daddy call you, but out here, between you and me, it's Ass-Clown," he said getting his face right in mine. His breath smelled like stale onions.

Sometimes, a man has to make a stand. Hold his head up and refuse to budge on his principals. "No it isn't, it's Jack." I said again.

He delivered a hard jab to my stomach. Stars exploded in my eyes and all my air whooshed out of my lungs in a sudden gasp. His friends laughed again. Because I guess it's funny when it's not you.

"Ass-clown. Your name, is Ass-clown."

He hit me again.

I coughed, trying to catch my breath.

"Say your name, Ass-Clown," He demanded.

Sometimes a man just has to make it home in one piece.

"Ass... Ass-clown..." I gasped, tears from both pain and humiliation burned in my eyes.

"Good Ass-Clown, the whole thing, 'My name is...'" He demanded once again in a mocking voice that personified everything I despised about adolescence

I sniffled, my eyes burned, I didn't want to say it.

Thug one and thug two started to twist my arms back painfully.

"Ahh! Ow! Ass-clown, my name is Ass-clown!" I cried out.

"See, was that so bad?" Todd asked in a mockery of sympathetic intonations.

"Let's see if Ass-clown has any cash, I'm hungry," grunted one of the thugs, Billy, I think.

Todd nodded and Keith let go of my arm to rip my back pack off my shoulders. Billy re-gripped my now free arm as I tried to flail it around to fight them. It was a pretty useless gesture.

Keith opened my bag up and dumped the contents on the ground. Out spilled my notebooks, my school books, a couple of Amazing Spider-mans...

And Heavy Metal.

The cover was a scantily clad, gray skinned, well-muscled elven woman, with a giant black panther. Her tits were barely covered by the tiniest triangles of cloth, and she had strip of cloth that couldn't have been charitably called a loin cloth by even Mother Teresa. Keith picked up the magazine and stared at it. My cheeks flushed in embarrassment. Heavy Metal had some great stories in it, but for a fifteen year old nerd, it was also porn in comic form, and I used it as such a lot of the time.

"What's this, Clowny?" Todd asked in a tone of curious delight. He took the magazine from Keith and started leafing through it. Page after page of gore and nudity flipped by, and he got a big shit eating grin on his face.

"I think Ass-clown likes cartoon porn," he laughed, "Do you watch porno's little Ass-clown?"

"Shut up, and let me go!" I struggled against Billy, but I might as well have tried to free myself from a steel bear trap.

"Be nice Clowny, or I'll have to straighten you out again," said Todd. He flipped to the center of the book, where there was a full color picture of a similarly scantily clad girl surrounded by these werewolf goblin things, Heavy Metal didn't shy from the horrific and dark, so you could see the male members of some of the monsters. Things didn't look good for the heroine. Things looked even worse for me though.

"Does your Mommy know you read this smut Clowny?" Todd taunted.

I shook my head.

Billy, who'd been craning his neck to see, laughed out loud, "You can totally see their dicks. I bet Ass-clown likes looking at dicks."

"Is that true, do you like dick, Ass-clown?"

"No!" I shouted. Nerd humiliation was bad enough without being thought of as even less of a man for being gay.

"Well, I'd better keep this so Mommy doesn't find out what a naughty boy she has," He folded the magazine up and stuffed it in his back pocket.

"Yeah, he's a dirty boy alright," laughed Keith.

"We'd better put him with the rest of the garbage," said Todd.

They laughed and started to drag me to the Pizza parlor's dumpster a few yards away.

Now I really started struggling. The Pizza place also did a lot of Italian food, and had lots of nasty rotting tomatoes and stuff in their dumpster. Being tossed in a school dumpster was one thing. It was mostly soda cans, wrappers and paper trash. The back of a restaurant was another matter.

I shouted in defiance and tried to get away. But it was futile, like most struggles in nature. The weak and the young are separated from the herd, and the hyenas circle in and feed. I was going down like a gazelle that's been caught by the pack. I bleated for the herd, but no one came.

Keith flipped the lid open and I could smell the most disgusting aroma of rotting dairy products mingling with the odor of meat gone bad, stale beer and wine, and a dozen other dumpster smells that were probably even more foul that I didn't have names for.

"No! No! Help!" I shouted in vain.

"In you go Ass-clown!" said Todd and heaved my legs up and over, so I ended up somersaulting into the pit of refuse.

I screamed.

A word of advice. If you ever find yourself getting dumpster tossed. Don't scream. Keep your mouth shut.

I landed on a bag of something squishy and foul beyond words, and rolled off it, face first into a container of rotten cottage cheese, getting more than a little in my mouth. My gag reflex was instant. I puked. And because the container was still in my face, my own puke over flowed the funky cheese and ran down over the side, past my cheeks and onto my clothes. I heaved again. I could hear them making disgusted sounds and laughing themselves to the point of tears.

I struggled to free myself, and ended up further entangling myself in black plastic trash bags. Fully in panic mode I thrashed and succeeded only in ripping open the bags and pouring more foulness over myself.

I struggled to pull myself up and out, and with a herculean effort, I ripped myself free from the maw of the dumpster and fell, ass-over-tea-kettle, onto the concrete below; which itself was a cesspool of split wretchedness. I scrambled away and heaved again, the taste of vomit and rotted cheese curds still on my tongue.

To this day I still can't eat cottage cheese.

They were running as fast as they could, I could still hear their laughter as they rounded the corner and disappeared out of the alley.

Standing up I cried out at a sudden pain in my leg, I must have twisted my knee somewhere in the process, because stabbing agony rippled through my left knee every time I tried to take a step forward. It was too much, I started crying.

Through tears, pain, humiliation, and rage; I gathered up my school books and notes, trying not to get cheese slop on them and limped my way slowly home.

I have no tolerance for bullying as an adult. Not among children, not among adolescents. Not from adults. Twenty years later I'm a loud and vocal advocate for anti-bullying campaigns. The suffering we inflict upon our fellow human beings in the name of "Coming of Age trials" is vastly under estimated by those who've never felt the stabbing emotional anguish of being dropped in a dumpster and then having to limp another mile to get home.

Bullying is not a rite of passage. It's socially accepted torture. Never tolerate it.

After I saved Anna, I guess Todd and his goons figured I was no longer a target, I'd stood up to someone, picked a fight, and saved a girl from a horrible fate. Maybe it was just because I was dating Kimmy, and when a hot cheerleader identifies you as her boyfriend, you get indoctrinated into the upper echelons of society. Maybe it's because they'd finally started growing the fuck up.

Probably not.