Jeff's Journal
Keeping a journal to record the things I would start to recall was recently urged upon me by my benefactors, Brad and Tristan. I thought: why not? After all, it was only a simple and modest ambition – I mean keeping a journal, not so much regaining my memory.
But I'd also decided that I shouldn't spend too much time each day writing a report that was probably destined for a trunk in the attic.
Incidentally, my name's Jeff. I'm 19. And I have amnesia.
Whenever I forget, I rely on my reflection in the mirror to remind me of what I look like. I'm about 5' 11" tall. I have dark blond hair that's unevenly streaked to brown, dark blue eyes and pale skin stretched taut over sinewy limbs and a sparingly muscular torso.
Brad's bathroom scale is fairly reliable as well: I'm 151 lbs. today because I've had a big meal.
What do I like? I'm not certain, but as soon as it grips my recessed memory, I'll be sure to write it down.
When I first regained consciousness, it was with a jaundiced feeling. I was completely naked and alone, and the next thing I realized was I had no name. That threw me into a shaking panic; but even if I didn't have amnesia, I'd have panicked at the darkness that beset my vision upon opening my eyes. I screamed and clamored for the door, just barely visible in front of my bunk.
My efforts at navigating the corridors that led out of the maze of the upstairs floor were crowned by the discovery of a man in an equally ill lit chamber. He was rolling a joint with his nicotine-stained fingers.
"Oh, you're up. Finally," he coughed, apparently sharing in my triumphant entry into light.
"Please....sir, who am I?" I stammered. "Where's this place?"
"Ah, you can speak. You're Alex O'Keefe. You're my son. This is your home. Oh, and you can call me 'Pa'."
He went on to drag on the joint, very slowly.
"Pa," I had started to say again. But a remote scampering of footsteps intruded upon my intent, turning away Pa's attention, and suddenly, out of the confusing catacombs emerged figures in silhouette.
When the figures gradually materialized from the shadows I was able to receive a sharper picture of what were two malese forms: one was a bespectacled adult, who seemed to be about Pa's age, and the other, beside him, a youth. This one couldn't be more than 14 years old. And he was nearly naked. Only what looked like an adult-sized diaper was covering his private parts. His feet were unshod and his toes caked in soot as if he'd been laboring among cinders.
"Ryan's being a truculent little brat today," the older man said, prodding the youth toward Pa. "I believe his bottom wants to be taught a severe lesson."
Pa caught the unwilling boy. He was wiggling like a captive animal.
"What's the problem, Ryan?" Pa asked condescendingly. "You're not happy?"
The boy shook his head, his eyes wide and tearful, as if he was frightened to be thus presented, as it were, before a judge. Pa didn't appear moved by the boy's definitive language of fear. On the contrary, he seemed to extract a sense of omnipotence from it. The presence of a thing so helpless and vulnerable must be tremendously empowering for he went on to slap the boy across his grimy face.
Now, what was a boy to do under such circumstances – to be outnumbered and alone – but embrace his fate? Ryan was forcibly resigned to a victim's dispensation, so the two grownups could now take care of the punishment contingency.
But Ryan's diaper was in the way and must be removed. Opportunity and proximity enabled Pa to do this easily. The Velcro cooperated under his expert maneuvering and as soon as it unfastened with its distinctive snap, he ripped the cloth right off Ryan's hip.
Ryan doubled over in his complete nudity. He cupped his genitals at the same time, but suddenly cast his eyes on me, establishing me as a voyeur. I quickly shrank back into the shadows. I felt nigh ashamed.
Yet I couldn't help being riveted. Pa had picked up Ryan's 4-inch penis and smallish testicles, barely protected by the pubescent hair above them. He was stroking them for a long time.
"Beautiful," he sighed, swinging the body round. With what infernal god of fortune at his side, I wasn't sure, he menaced the nude posterior with little conscience. He put Ryan's anus through pinpoint scrutiny. Ryan's face did a slow burn.
I shrank farther back. My penis had started to extend.
When I returned my attention to the scene in progress, Ryan was on all fours on a low table, his bottom raised, his thighs spread.
"How many, Stoner?" Pa asked the other man.
"5," came the reply.
"That's 25 lashes, Ryan, for being defiant," he informed the boy. He had also raised a short cane, holding it high above his shoulder.
"Pa," I called nervously, unwittingly impeding the progress of the boy's sentence.
He turned to me. "What?" he said irritably.
"Please, sir, what about my clothes?"
"What about them?"
"I....I'm naked."
"And you'll stay naked. Now go back to your room, that is, unless you want to be put over my knees and spanked for disobeying as well."
I turned on my heels just as the first wail was obtained from Ryan's lung.
I shan't detail the rest. Suffice to say, 3 weeks of my life had gone to waste as a result of an accident at the Lexington Avenue subway. But now I was all right again. My memory should be restored to me by and by: Dr. Stoner – Pa said he was the family doctor – would help me get it back.
Well, they were never really persuaded on this prospect. Instead, Stoner had been persuaded to feed me with saccharine and placebo and pump me full of tranquilizers, and Pa kept me semi-conscious every night during which they both kept me heavily engaged. What in? Porn home movies. I came upon this knowledge when I joined Ryan as a principal actor.
One night, I awoke, perspiration spewing out of my open pores and screams that found no sound as if a claw had been sunk in my throat blocking it, and I remembered the words NYU. It seemed I had made some kind of breakthrough but it was not pleasure unalloyed. I was clueless what significance was held by those words.
I hastened to ask Pa, believing he would be as excited as I was, but he had scoffed at the suggestion that I might be a scholar. That shattered my illusions. I'd have thought the basic premise of family life was to be considerate of helpless children, even post-adolescent children who were sick, as I was. But Pa's attitude so attacked the basic doctrines of society that my spirit felt crushed.
Small wonder there was no charge for the role of father.
II
Persuaded by my memory of NYU – the words – I determined to do some sleuthing. Over the three weeks that followed my awakening, I had discovered that my father and Dr. Stoner were men of not small malice. With their malicious games, disguised as the eccentricities of middle age (games big-boys-in-midlife-crisis played, as Pa used to call them), they thought they could get a waiver on all points of etiquette and decent behavior.
What did they do?
For one, they kept me holed up, as far as possible naked, or else clad in just a diaper to catch my excrement, in a poorly ventilated cell, contending that I was a wanted man. My felonies filled a volume at the police department and this explained why I did not work and had had no schooling. And why I had just one change of clothing for going outside and was cash-strapped, save for the three dollars a week allowance from father.
For another, they kept me a child, dependent on them, helpless and retarded, socially and emotionally. Like Ryan, I was spanked over Pa's lap or given the switch on my bare buttocks whenever I questioned anything, and rewarded with an extra dollop of spud at suppertime if I worked hard to ingratiate myself to them. This I did by cooperating with them in their home movies – usually subjecting my bared bottom to their spanking and caning scenes. Often, non-consensual corporal punishment of minors was the theme.
Although I feared them, I endured the results of their insane brand of generosity and _s_e_x_ual taste in exchange for their scant resources – food, hospitality and responsibility. For a time, I did feel safe and grateful to be insulated in my burrow, constantly being given reminders that outside, where the Feds were crawling and combing the streets for me, could be even more frightening. But I felt no amity, warmth or privacy.
One day I decided that enough was enough. I had to go out. The Feds could have me. Could their prison be a worse experience than the prevailing conditions in my dungeon, free yet bound by illegal chains and darkness? I told Pa I wanted to buy him a birthday present.
"I have to," I stammered, justifying my request, my body shaking from the cold. "It's your birthday. I love you. I thought I ought to show you."
He was persuaded at length to take my point of view. He watched me intently as I clothed my own nudity with his meager provisions, but he'd denied me my only underwear – my white briefs.
"You don't need underwear," he'd said, "since you only have one good pair, and I cannot afford to buy you more. Those diapers already cost a fortune. Put on your jeans over your bare hip."
I obeyed him. I had to, for under my circumstances, I hadn't the luxury of a normal relationship to start a family feud.
He had also sent his lackeys on my heels. I ignored them and reached the city in a few hours. Shortly after, I found just the thing for him.
I started peering into the other shop windows when I came upon a games arcade. Something compelled me to tarry here. I felt drawn to the vulgar machines with their full screen displays of advanced digitized pictures, their perfectly synthesized sounds and their ergonomically-styled controls – in these I felt the presence of the past. I recalled the smells of cinnamon and resin. But why?
And then, a face caught my memory, although now that I think about it, it wasn't really a tangible face because it appeared in my mind's eye, a featureless metathetic expanse. But this disappeared quickly together with the newfangled jangles inside the games arcade.
Whose face was it? For the moment, I was denied answers at every turn. Of course, I was frustrated, but this was an urge the memory bereft had been known to feel under stress.
Even so, the ability to find any recollection in even insignificant or innocent actions was comforting to me.
Then my heart began to race. Two men – young, strong, tanned and beautiful – had spotted me. I didn't know them, but they were hurling fast towards my path. I took instant flight.
I didn't know why, but I was afraid. Maybe I thought they were the Feds, and faced with the prospect of living into the next century serving time in a lonely prison cell, I took off. I was terrified and was running helter-skelter, knocking over elderly people, sidewalk stalls and tables and putting into motion runaway carts and trolleys. I stumbled and twisted my ankle when I landed badly over a fence and lost Pa's gift. As I tried to get up, the pain in my ankle drew from my lung a trail of invectives, so colorful I knew they were unsuitable for public usage. But the hell I cared for social graces at that time.
Then a dark shroud prevailed like an ancient curse and I passed out.
III
It wasn't so much the manner of the argument, as the arena in which it was being performed, that was a violation of the sense of the appropriate. Someone had taught me this. Someone had raised me on an arsenal of good etiquette.
But good etiquette was lacking in those men that surrounded me.
I had awoken on a hospital bed some half an hour ago. I'd been a little hysterical and grouchy to be stirred from my rest by all that noise. The two men from the city were having a shouted conversation with my father and a doctor concerning the possibility of abuse.
Pa suddenly turned me around and exposed my buttocks. "Sure, I cane him," he declared, "but I'm his father. Is it wrong for a father to discipline his son?"
Now someone else was pulling the sheets back over me. I found his touch a lot gentler. I looked up to find the blond one of the two men from the city. He was bending over me, his hands weighing anchor on my shoulders, making sure no one else could manhandle me again. And he was apologizing for their humiliating me, not in the usual phony use of the manners of friendship by strangers as to mislead me, but in the genuine manners of a close albeit recondite relationship.
I asked him if he was from the FBI and he broke into a gorgeous smile. That was when I had a disquietude that I could find another man attractive.
Then the cute brunette one of the men re-entered the room. He deferred to another man at the door. The latter, a vision of elegance, stepped forward and filled the entire landscape with an intense presence.
I found myself on a gravitational spin. For here he was – the one that had appeared briefly in my memory flashes, the one I'd seen with my mind's eye while I was in the city. It didn't make any sense, but in my guts, I knew it was he.
I must have been staring at him for he came straight to me, sat beside me and took my hand. In a display that was the antipodean of his steadfast emotions, he let his tears roll down his cheeks.
"Jeff; thank God," he whispered.
His voice was treacle to my tympanum, of late assaulted by a plethora of Pa's abusive language. And he was so handsome. Had I always treated other men as _s_e_x_ually available? I heard myself asking.
I also heard the blond god immediately reminding my handsome protagonist that I had no memory of any of them. But it was established: they all knew me. And it wasn't mutual.
"You know me?" I asked.
"You're Jeff O'Keefe," the one that had taken my hand said. "I've been looking for you for the past month. We all have."
"But I don't know any of you," I replied, pregnant with fear: If this man was speaking the truth, then why did Pa say I was a wanted instead of missing person? Who was he, the one I called Pa, in whose care I'd entrusted my health and life? So much of who I thought I was had been represented by him.
"Who are you?" I asked him with the warm and tender hold still on my arm.
"I'm Brad," he said. "I know you can't remember me now, but we've known each other for two and a half years."
"What do you mean?" Pa asked.
But he was ignored -- and annoyed.
"Sir," the doctor asked him, "are you family?"
"You could say that," he replied, quickly and confidently.
"Are you brothers? Cousins?"
I heard his sigh of anguish as if there'd been some violation. Verily he answered, "We live together. Jeff and I share a house. Jeff's my beloved."
My arms flew to my head, crossing over my eyes. "Oh my God," I whispered.
"Son of a bitch," my father cussed. "My son ain't no fairy. Get out!"
"I'm not leaving, sir," the one called Brad said evenly, calmly. "I don't know who you are, but Jeff's real father left him and his family more than a decade ago. You have taken this boy here for a ride. I want to know why. What do you want with him?"
And then turning to me, he persuaded tenderly: "Jeff, listen to me. You're going to have to believe me when I say I know you. Your name is Alexander Jefferson O'Keefe. Friends call you Jeff. You're 19 years old and you're a first-year med student at NYU. You went missing five weeks ago ...."
"NYU," I acknowledged.
I turned to look at my father accusingly, and then I suddenly felt I would lose my mind. I felt so tired. They were all confusing me, telling me one thing and another. But nothing added up. I wanted no part of their tug-of-war tussle for me. I was mad and wanted to flail imprecations in their faces. I was a mess and sick of their pronouncements. When I was finally given a sedative, I fell asleep with my mess unresolved.
IV
The long sleep had sorted out some of my anger, fears and confusion. In the morning, I found a new level of understanding of my situation. I also found fresh flowers on the portable tray before me; they were peach and red long-stemmed roses from Brad.
I had been vomiting due to the lingering effects of the sedative. Brad had wound his arms around me, sitting behind me, while I threw up into a plastic bucket.
"I brought you this," he said much later. I was already feeling stronger. I watched him unwrap a packet and draw out a granola bar.
And here it was – the first close encounter of something I liked. I remembered it. The gold wrapper glistened as the folds caught the light on the ceiling above us.
"You always liked these," he said.
"Yes," I nodded. I smiled. So did he.
He helped me to tear the foil a quarter of the way from the top of the bar, baring a fresh chocolate-chip dipped fruit bar. Then he held it to my lips.
Such singular gesture of allowing myself to be fed must, by nature, be embarrassing but I wasn't embarrassed. He didn't look to be, either, as I clasped his wrists and clamped my teeth on the fruit bar. And then came the knowing: this had happened some time, somewhere before. It wasn't simply that I just had a sense of déjà vu about the experience.
"Pa will be back," I told him while I savored the grainy morsels on my tongue. Pa had been talking with the doctor for quite some time already, possibly settling with him the issue of abuse. "He won't like it if he saw you. He can get .... quite nasty."
"Thanks for the warning," he smiled. "But I can handle him."
I returned the favor of the smile. Somehow I had felt I had to warn him about my father. I didn't yet trust him, but I liked him enough to provide this service in order to defend him from future evil usage. I didn't want my father to harm him in any way. I knew what he was capable of. But I felt strangely safe to know that he had no fear of my father.
He also told me a bit more about himself: Ethan Bradley Hunt was a practicing lawyer on a temporary teaching tenure at NYU. That had been where we met. And we lived in a townhouse we had designed together not too far from the university.
Later, when an orderly came for my bath and he offered to do it, I let him. Just as I had let him feed me and had felt no inhibition. I hadn't felt any shame to be exposed to him while he carefully sponge bathed my genitals. Nor at the fact that he was privy to the old caning welts on my bottom when I turned around for the bath.
We didn't talk about the welts, and he was polite enough not to broach the subject, but just as he was leaving, I told him that Pa was probably checking me out of hospital the next morning.
Somehow I felt he ought to know.
© 1996, JRK. 2001, JRK & BWK.