Ostracism Pt. 01

Author's note: This story contains several anti-gay slurs. This is not meant to insult anyone, but they are necessary for the telling of this tale. I hope that the reader can see past any offense he might take, and understand why they are integral to the story.

*****

There he sat, all alone. In a cafeteria full of other college students, he remained all alone. His name was Danny, nothing particularly notable or special, and the boy himself was hardly notable either. He was a bit taller than average, maybe six feet, with dark brown hair and sad brown eyes. He was wearing glasses, which set him apart, since most of the other guys - except for the geeks and nerds, of course - who needed corrective lenses wore contacts.

Thin he was, being naturally skinny, but the hollows under his eyes bespoke of meals skipped. His clothes hung on him, his belt having been tightened another notch, and his jeans, nominally a 32-inch waist, were bunched up at his belt.

Mary Margaret looked at him, as she left the serving line with her ugly yellow fiberglass tray. She had heard of Danny, of course, since everybody had heard of him. Famous on campus would be correct, but notorious would be the more accurate description.

Danny's notoriety began a month ago, even though the events which led up to it had happened earlier; they'd only come to light in early November. After three weeks of almost unrelenting horror and shame, things had settled down for him, as he went from humiliated to mocked to the much quieter stage of just being shunned.

She didn't know how many people felt sorry for Danny; surely at least some people did, but if they did, none of them sought to ease his loneliness or his pain. Mary Margaret was a good girl, obviously Catholic with a name like hers, and she could not only feel Danny's pain, but felt that she just had to help. Trouble is, she had felt that way from the beginning of his torment - they lived in the same coed dorm, girls on the even numbered floors and boys on the odd; she lived not only one floor above him, but in the room directly above his - but the ostracism he faced would fall on her, she feared, if she did anything to ease his pain. She had started looking for him in the cafeteria, but didn't always see him; from the look of his clothes, she knew that he'd skipped more than a few meals. That he was here, for supper, was less common than not.

How many times, she asked herself, had she thought of joining him for supper, or breakfast, just to be nice? It was hard to count, having not seen him at so many meals, but there must've been at least eight or ten in which she had the opportunity, but fear kept her from taking it.

What had Danny done? His problem was simple, that he was poor, poorer than a lot of other students. His solution to the problem had not been common. He had his dorm room paid for, and his meal card, good for two meals a day, six days a week, and perhaps 55¢ in cash. He had no allowance, and no job during the Spring semester, and jobs for college students were hard to come by. The ones which did open up were snapped up by better-looking guys or cute girls. Danny was desperate, and he did a desperate thing.

It was nothing for porn producers to hit college campuses, always looking for cute girls, and cute girls were everywhere. It was still a blur in his mind how he got involved, but when he did, it wasn't in a good way. Danny was straight, and he'd actually had a girlfriend not only in high school, but his first year in college. He wasn't a virgin, and thought that he had a respectable-enough looking cock, bigger than average, and looking bigger still on his thin frame. He thought, what the Hell, he was broke, he was desperate, and then, girlfriendless, he contacted the porn producers.

They liked Danny, but not at all for what he thought. He knew he could do a good job with some cute coed, and he'd seen enough porn to know that male actors didn't have to be particularly good looking. But while Danny got a role, it wasn't anything like he'd expected. He wound up in a series called Desperate College Boys, and it was gay porn. He was disgusted, but $5,000, in cash, sounded like amazing money to him. It was only a few hours, and it revolted him, and when it was over he was sore and sick. Still, no one he knew would ever see it. At worst, only gay guys would look at it, and he could always turn them down.

But that wasn't the way it went down. It was November 1^st, when someone in his dorm saw it and recognized him. It was a straight guy, one not at all afraid to mock the queer, and all of a sudden everyone, guys and girls alike, saw the film. They saw Danny getting gagged, having some porn stud with about ten inches of cock, shoving it down his throat, balls deep, and they saw Danny crying and puking repeatedly from getting face fucked. They saw Danny get gang-banged, with four studs, two white and two black, taking turns reaming his ass while another one of them was ramming down his throat. They saw Danny shitting all over himself from the constant sodomizing. And they even saw one of his sodomizers, with shit visible on his cock, shove it right back down Danny's throat. Then, to end it all, they saw, on the video, the producer slowly counting out $100 bills to the brutalized, beaten up college student.

Mary Margaret knew all of that. She was a good girl, and didn't really care for porn, certainly not gay male porn, but it was all over the dorm, and it was like a train wreck, horrible to see, but something you just couldn't look away from. She'd seen his shame, and while the sex depicted was pretty revolting, what stuck in her mind was the look on Danny's face at the end of the film, as the pornographer counted out his money, and Danny then picked up his clothes, and walked out of the 'studio,' still naked, still with shit stains running down his legs.

Standing there, looking at Danny, trying to muster up the courage to go and sit with him, she was bumped from behind by a guy who'd gotten his food, and was trying to work his way around her. She almost lost her nerve, taking a couple of steps at a tangent away from Danny, when finally, finally! she managed to walk toward him.

The cafeteria was set up with a hundred or so four-person square tables, with wood-grain Formica tops and wooden chairs with ugly orange padded seats and back rests. Not only was Danny alone at his table, but none of the tables adjacent to his were occupied. The closest anyone sat to him was two tables away.

Mary Margaret could have taken one of the adjacent tables, which would have been seen as unusual now, but still safe for her reputation. Right up until the last second, she could still back out of this. She knew it, and was trying to keep up her courage. Finally she said it: "Danny, may I join you?"

Danny gave her a blank stare, not answering yes or no. She'd been seen talking to him, and overheard asking, so there was no turning back. When he didn't answer, Mary Margaret simply set her tray down and took a seat, not across from him, but at the 90º corner side.

"You sure that you want to be seen sitting with the fag whore?" Mary Margaret tried to read the emotion behind Danny's question, but his face was as blank as anyone's could ever be.

"I've heard the 'name' you get called, and I don't like it. That isn't the real you."

"It isn't? I let myself get raped on camera for cash, but I guess it wasn't rape, was it? Doesn't that make me a fag whore?" Danny's now-well-practiced poker face still betrayed nothing of his feelings.

Or did it? She looked at his eyes, as he stared at her, and thought she could see them just the slightest bit wetter. "You said that you were desperate for money. I've never been broke, Danny, and who knows what I'd do if I was ever that desperate? Who knows what any of these people would do, if they had been in your shoes? I can't judge you, Danny, and neither can anyone else here."

"A whole lot of people, a whole dorm full of people, think that they can judge me, have already judged me, and they're right. It's Margaret, right?"

"Mary Margaret."

"Catholic girl?"

"With a name like mine, could I be anything else?" For the first time, she smiled, some of her tension gone.

Danny had been prepared, he was going to say something harsh, like was he some kind of rescue project for her, was she going to try to drag him to church with her, to get forgiveness or something, but her smile disarmed him. The most he could get out was, "Why did you come over here?"

"You looked like you could use a friend. Is there anything wrong with me being your friend?"

"I don't have any friends." Danny's voice was cold, but Mary Margaret thought she could detect the slightest tremor in his words.

"You do now. Now, eat your dinner; you've been starving yourself." She surprised herself with how forceful she sounded.

"So? Who gives a shit if I starve to death?"

"I care, Danny. Please, we can eat, and talk. Is that really so hard?"

"I just want to be left alone."

"Really? You do? Did you always sit by yourself and skip meals before that stuff came out?" It was a stab in the dark, because she didn't know Danny at all before the video was exposed.

"No." That was all he said, but she knew, instantly, that she'd gotten it right, because his voice was quieter than it had been before.

"Then from now on, you're eating with me. We'll have breakfast and dinner together, every day. We can talk, about everything and about nothing at all." Then, almost unconsciously, she moved her hand across the table, and took his.

A loud scraping of chairs in the background caught her ear, followed by a laughing, yelled, "Better have fag whore take an AIDS test before you fuck him!" Danny's stone face returned.

"Ignore them, Danny, they're just assholes," she said, squeezing his hand a bit more firmly, reacting to a cafeteria filled with mocking laughter.

They were just assholes, but somehow Mary Margaret gave him the strength to finish eating his dinner.

"So, what do you do with your evenings, Danny?"

"I take my stuff over to the library, to get my homework done. It's quiet there, away from the dorm, and away from my fucking roommate."

"How are you handling things with your roommate?" she asked; all of the dorm rooms were two-person suites, with a shared bathroom.

"We don't talk; we say nothing to each other now. He gets a lot of gibes because he's stuck rooming with the fag whore, and he wants nothing to do with me. He hates my guts, and I hate his."

"Well, I've got homework, too. What say we head to the library together, and we can both get ours done?"

"You're being awfully nice to me, but you don't have to do this."

"Actually, I've kind of gotten behind on my work, so a study date would help me out a lot, too."

Danny was taken aback at that one, his mind racing. Mary Margaret had called it a study date, and maybe she hadn't really thought her words through, but it was difficult for him to ignore the word 'date' in there. Danny hadn't been on a date since last spring, and while he'd hung out with some of the guys and girls in the dorm a lot before the big blow-up, he hadn't had a real girlfriend in a long time. The truth was, the last time he'd had sex was when he made that fucking porno, and that was the worst day of his life.

And while he had taken his sex life in his own hands before, once things exploded when the video became known about, he couldn't even do that. Oh, he could have found the time, in the suite bathroom, because his roommate was frequently someplace else, but he was so down and depressed that he just never felt like it.

He was away from Mary Margaret for a few minutes, while they each went to their respective rooms to get their laptops and stuff for their study "date," thinking about what was happening, and about her. She was cute, sure enough, kind of girl-next-door cute, with light brown hair and freckles. He'd noticed her light-colored eyes - were they blue or grey? - behind 'librarian' glasses. It was late November, and she and been wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, so he wasn't quite sure about her figure, but while she wasn't quite as thin as his fantasy dream girls, she seemed more solid than overweight; she was a bit on the short side, maybe 5'2" or so. If she'd been wearing any make-up, it was so subtle that he hadn't noticed it.

Still, other than the word 'date,' which might just have been a figure of speech on her part, she hadn't been flirting with him. Instead, she was just being nice, and Danny was worried that he was just some sort of 'project' for him, like a Mormon mission for just one, even though he didn't know that Catholics did that. Hell, he didn't know anything about Catholics, other than they just were. His parents never took him to church other than on Easter Sunday, and while he wasn't an atheist, he thought of himself as more of an agnostic, and really didn't give church or religion much thought. But, whether she saw him as a project, or she was just being nice, still, she was the first person to speak to him kindly since everything crashed in his life.

They met outside of the dorm, on the steps, and walked over to the library together. They both had their stuff in backpacks, leaving their hands free, and Danny thought about taking her hand, but wasn't sure that he should, wasn't sure if he might be reading the wrong thing into this, so he didn't. Their conversation, such as it was, was about nothing important, just how the basketball team would do and the (minor) bowl game that the football team had made.

In their studies, they had nothing in common: she was an economics major, while he was in electrical engineering. At least in E school, he hadn't taken as much grief, because most of the other engineering students were nerds and nebbishes and geeks; about half of them were Asian, and they (mostly) left him alone, though none socialized with him. Heck, after the video came out, even the gay guys avoided him, being mostly disgusted with what happened to him, and not seeing him as being one of them.

Doing their homework was mostly without conversation, because they both had a lot of it, and, being in completely different majors, there was little each could do to help the other. Still, Danny felt calm inside, something that he hadn't really felt for a month now. Sitting across from each other, with their laptops up, he could barely see her, her eyes on the screen, or a book, rather than on him. The library table they were using was too wide to reach across to take her hand. Nevertheless, she exuded a quiet confidence that he hadn't felt for a long time, and it was pleasant to be sitting with someone who didn't have to be there.

It was almost ten o'clock when they finally finished. Danny wasn't sure about where this was going, and neither was Mary Margaret. She didn't have a boyfriend at the moment, and had only gone out a couple of times the whole semester, both times with guys who seemed nice but thought that she somehow owed them sex. She wasn't a virgin, but she knew that she didn't owe anybody sex. She'd noticed Danny looking at her in a way which made her wonder if he was thinking about her romantically, but she wasn't sure she'd want him for a boyfriend. And what the asshole yelled at her in the cafeteria, that she'd better make sure he got an AIDS test before she did anything with him was in the back of her mind; just because that guy was an asshole didn't mean he was wrong about that.

But, she had plenty of time to think it over; it was Monday, and Wednesday at noon was the last day of school before the Thanksgiving break. Her mom would drive up from Corbin, the small town where she'd grown up, and take her home Wednesday afternoon. Still, it was a good conversation opener, since they were now walking back to the dorm, mostly in silence.

"So, where's home for you? You going home for Thanksgiving?"

Uh, oh! It had seemed an innocent enough question, but even in the dark, Mary Margaret could see a morose look on Danny's face. She waited for him for a few seconds, and thought that she'd have to say something again, when he finally answered, "No, I can't. My folks really don't have time to come get me, though they said that they could send me bus fare. They don't do Thanksgiving big anyway, usually just going out to a restaurant. I'll just stay here."

Holy cow, that was a horrible answer. The dorms didn't actually close for Thanksgiving, so Danny wouldn't be out on the street, but the cafeterias were all closed, so his meal card wouldn't feed him. "How are you going to eat, Danny?" She was genuinely concerned.

"I've got a little bit of money now. I had a decent job last summer, and still have a few bucks saved up. There are plenty of food joints around campus, and they'll all be open." Danny clammed up at that, not mentioning that he still had about $3,500 left in cash from his porno film. Somehow, after all he endured to make that money, he was reluctant to spend it, seeing it as tainted.

They didn't say much more, before finally splitting up as they headed for their separate dorm floors. "See you at breakfast," she told him, as cheerily as she could. "Seven o'clock OK for you?"

"Sure, that'll work." That was a bit earlier than he used to eat breakfast before everything blew up, and he hardly ever ate breakfast anymore, but the thought of Mary Margaret keeping him company was nice. She still hadn't given him the first hint that she was interested in him as a boyfriend, and he didn't have any idea how to move forward, not with his reputation.

"There is no way I'm letting you just mope around here for Thanksgiving," Mary Margaret said to him once they sat down to eat the next morning. "I already talked to my mom, and you're coming to Thanksgiving dinner with me.

"What? Really? What did you tell them?"

"Just what I needed to, that you were stuck here with no family. I told my mom that no, you aren't my boyfriend, because of course she asked, so you don't have to pretend or anything."

"Mary Margaret, are you sure about this? I mean, it's one thing for you to eat with the fag whore, but your reputation will be ruined if anyone sees me going home with you."

"One, stop calling yourself that. I don't like it, and I certainly don't think of you that way. Second, you let me worry about my reputation. I'm not a baby, you know, and yeah, people have noticed that I've been hanging out with you, but I'm fine with it." She was proud of herself for getting that out, that way, because it sounded a lot more confident than she felt about it.

They split up after breakfast, because their classes were in completely different directions, but Danny's mind was roiling. Mary Margaret had made it perfectly clear that she'd told her mother that he was not her boyfriend. Was that just to placate her parents, or was that her subtle way of telling him that no, she wasn't the least bit interested in him as a boyfriend.

Then a thought occurred to him: after that awful video, maybe he just figured was gay. She could have really just been being kind, thinking that there was no way he could be interested in her if he was gay. Heck, if she thought he was gay, she might even see him as a 'safe' friend, a guy who wasn't going to try to get in her pants.

And what nice pants they were. Mary Margaret wore jeans every day, and she had these faded ones, a light blue now - though not 'distressed,' like so many other girls wore - that weren't skinny jeans, but fit just closely enough that they showed off the shape of her legs. She wasn't a skinny girl, and the thickness of the jeans added to her legs not being thin, but they were very shapely, showing off just enough to let him know she had some muscle in her legs, and then they tapered down toward her ankles, where her short boots began.