Me & Madison And The Button Hunt

ME & MADISON AND THE

BUTTON HUNT

A GAY ACTION/LOVE STORY

WILLIAM JERVIS

Published By William Jervis at Smashwords

©Copyright William Jervis 2015

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction in its entirety. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. All characters depicted in this book are eighteen years of age or older at the time of any, and all sexual encounters. This book contains adult situations and language, read at your own discretion.

Me & Madison and the

Button Hunt

A GAY ACTION/LOVE STORY

WILLIAM JERVIS

1

GAY TEEN SUICIDE

When I first met Madison, I really didn’t know what to think of him. He was encroaching on my already fragile role as the oldest brother among my siblings. He was our first cousin whom we all had met for the first time except for my older sister, and this was his first bout with homelessness. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was homeless too. We were all living in my grandmother’s house, a time I recall as the worst years of my life. I, my two brothers and two sisters, had lost our mother and youngest brother in a tragic house fire almost two years prior. It was a two family house in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, on a seemingly quiet block. There was something funny about my grandmother’s house from the beginning, and I don’t mean ha-ha, funny.

The lights would flicker independently of each other, and always seemed unusually dim; the supposedly broken doorbell would occasionally ring on its own, one time I can remember it rang in a disjointed melodic tone. It was thought to be an electrical problem in the beginning. There would be putrid smells that seem to come from nowhere, and be everywhere; it wouldn’t travel on the wind, it was never a whiff; it was stationary. They would come as if activated by an unseen switch, and would linger sometimes for hours at a time, and sometimes linger for less than fifteen minutes; it would be gone the same way it arrived; abruptly. The doors would lock themselves it seemed; even the doors that didn’t have Locks. There was no rhyme or reason for these occurrences, nor was there any set pattern. It would be many years later that we all accepted the reality that the house was haunted. But for the time being it was just oddly curious. Besides, there were always other things going on in the house that would keep the mind occupied.

There were five adults in the house; there was my grandmother, Eva Sanders who bought the house several years earlier while in her early sixties. Her husband, Papa George our grandfather had died of leukemia several years prior to that. It was the insurance money from his death that paid the down payment on the house. Grandma, as we called her, was a devout Jehovah’s Witness and was always quoting scripture. Grandma resided over the house with a stubbornness that was detrimental to personal growth. It wasn’t intentional of course, but she was really old school, and depended on the Bible for guidance in all serious matters, except when something seemed to take hold of her.

There was my uncle Guy, he was an armed guard who worked at the Williamsburg savings bank in the downtown section of Brooklyn. He was in his late thirties to early forties around then. He lived with my grandmother because his wife had him removed from her home; he was violent with her and their three children. Guy was a Heroin addict, extremely and unpredictably violent. He would bring his revolver from work and place it in the closet, and hang it in its holster. We all knew where it was, and that’s how he wanted it. He was never the man of the house by any means, but he was menacing and extremely abusive towards us. He was dark skinned and had seen more than his share of good old American racism in his lifetime, and he seemed to develop a social malady that’s known to African Americans as ‘Color Struck’. You see we were light skinned and we were often the targets of his rage. My father’s father was a white Cuban. Our mother’s side of the family was from the south and dark skinned, and at times they would share Guy’s sentiment, some more than others. And that was depending on whichever way the wind was blowing.

Aunt Johnnie Mae lived in the downstairs apartment with her common law husband, Dudley. I and my baby brother stayed downstairs with them, while my older sister, another younger brother and baby sister stayed upstairs with my grandmother. We lost our youngest brother to the same fire that claimed our mother. Upstairs there were two other cousins who lived with my grandmother since infancy; their father had been incarcerated when they were babies. They were adults now, Lenny the eldest, and Larry. They would later prove to be either jealous, or had hard feelings toward us for moving in on what they perceived as their territory.

There was always chaos in that house, not run of the mill family issues, no, we would often have black eyes and busted lips. There was the psychological abuse to contend with as well. When Madison arrived with nowhere else to go I thought to myself; somebody else I’ll get ass kicking’s from. He was about two years older than me and street savvy. He had been locked up as a juvenile for something or other, and seemed extroverted and outgoing, whereas I was introverted and cowardly. Both of his parents were alive and together, so I figured he must have done something really messed up for them to not want him around. I simply avoided him as best I could. Faye, my older sister by eleven months would play hooky from school and go to hooky parties at Madison’s parents’ house, so she actually knew him before any of the rest of us. I would hear them speak in hushed and clipped tones some time. This caused me pangs of jealousy I couldn’t speak of to anyone. But Faye and I were really close at one time, and she was still my closest connection to our dead mother, with whom I was very close.

Madison was ahead of me in every facet of the home life we were saddled with. He was dark skinned so everyone expressed a certain pride in him that I was never afforded; I couldn’t quite define it then, and it took me some time to know he had their respect where I didn’t. I had a lot of chores, more than anyone in the house. I didn’t think it was unfair at all; it simply was my place in the structure of the house. I hated school, at least the one I was relegated to. I was not a tough kid, but the school was extremely tough. There was a guy there named Leroy Schultz who was a bully, a very dangerous bully. He was from Jamaica, and the first person I’ve seen with what was supposed to be dreadlocks. He had two brothers who would patrol the schoolyard robbing the other students. They never robbed me because I never had any money. Leroy scared most of the teachers there; he and his brothers put one of the teachers in the hospital. Leroy would sometimes bring a cop’s gun to school, a (Saturday night special) or long nosed .38, which was the weapon of choice back then, I don’t think Glocks were even invented yet; he would give it to one of his brothers, who would give it to the other on a rotating basis to keep it from being found. The entire school knew he would bring it to school sometimes, if not every day. I told my aunt I had been attacked by him and his brothers one day in the schoolyard, and she told me I had to be a man about it, and stand up for myself. She didn’t seem to understand, or really didn’t care that that attitude would have gotten me killed, I was just fourteen at the time. That’s just the kind of school it was. This was decades before metal detectors were even considered for safety in the New York school system. I.S. 210 was notoriously dangerous, and the entire state was aware of it. But alas, it was just a black school in the ghetto.

One day, for whatever reason I really started missing Mommy while in the school yard, and couldn’t fight back the tears. So, I cried. That was a disastrous event. My sister Faye, who went to the same school as I, noticed me in an isolated area of the schoolyard, and came over to comfort me. The other students in the yard noticed this and followed her. Not to offer support you see, but to harass me and embarrass her; children can be cruel without measure. How we got away from that I can’t remember, but it became a reference point for whenever the other students had nothing else to do but pick on me. They all knew I wasn’t going to fight back.

I didn’t know why at the time, but my grandmother seemed angry with me all the time, I would never go to her crying about anything; she hated me. I would do just about anything for her approval, but that was always an exercise in futility. If there ever was a movie that didn’t match the soundtrack, it was my grandmother. She would quote scripture one morning, and deny me food that same night. Not because there wasn’t any food, but simply because she despised me and she said as much. I would often have to steal something to eat after she fell asleep. Or sometimes one of my brothers or sisters would sneak me food. My mistrust of women derives from memories of my grandmother. As you may well imagine, I eventually stopped looking for her approval, and any respect I showed her became mechanical and duplicitous, I really tried to just avoid her. Her constant quoting of scripture caused me to consider the bible nothing more than rubbish, and a crock of shit.

I had a start once; Uncle Guy called the house from work one day and needed me to bring him something to his job down at the bank. I had to retrieve it from the closet where he would keep his gun. It was a flat pouch. In it were a syringe, bottle cap, a rubber tie-off, and a book of matches. He had a friend bring him a bundle of heroin and he needed his works; he was sick. When I got there Guy was patrolling the lobby of the bank, looking astute in his uniform; he looked very professional with his hand on the butt of his revolver. To any would be bank robber, he was the representation of their worst nightmare. But of course they wouldn’t know he was dope sick. When I entered the lobby Guy almost immediately zeroed in on me and started walking towards me, as he got closer I could see he was sick; he looked as if he was about to cry. I handed him his little parcel and he thanked me like I was god, and for quite some time after that, I seemed to have had a formidable ally, which meant; I would eat undisturbed. But as they say; all good things come to an end. Guy enrolled himself in a methadone program and eventually ‘kicked the habit’ as they say. He moved back in with his wife and family and once again, I had to square off with dear old grandma. Lenny and Larry began joining in with her; there were many nights I wasn’t allowed in the house. My siblings would try to sneak me in sometimes, but that stopped because they would suffer for it.

Madison had left and moved in with who we all knew as his girlfriend Carol, and her family. What was striking to me about Madison is that he never joined in the merriment of fucking with me. So, I guessed I was wrong about him. He wasn’t so bad, and the only hard feelings I had towards him was the closeness he enjoyed with my siblings who by now realized that it was bad luck to be friendly with me. I was seventeen now, and really didn’t have anyone to talk to, so I would write a lot. I didn’t know it had a name; it was journaling. They would be more a less, letters to my dead mother. I would write about anything and everything. Why I hated school, what I hoped for, who upset me, who made me happy or sad; everything.

Lenny found it one day and read it. In it he found a passage about Kenneth. Kenneth was a class mate I found to be stunningly handsome. I would write about him in a lustful way wishing he would notice me, and it became clear to Lenny that I was gay. Of course that became the new battle cry for anyone who wanted to humiliate me; Lenny made a production of it. Larry however never did. He had stopped picking on me now. That was because he thought I might tell everybody that he had tried to molest me a few years earlier. To this day I don’t know if it was for sexual gratification, or simply to humiliate me. In any case, I felt humiliated. I never told anyone because I knew they would pretend not to believe me, I say pretend because everyone knew how sadistic Larry could be. I was on my own and I knew it.

That was the year I decided to kill myself. I simply couldn’t find a reason to keep going. I knew there was a god, but I wanted nothing to do with him, or anything he represented because by now, I thought I was nothing more than his entertainment and I was done with it. I would hang myself in the basement behind the boiler. It would be on an early Sunday morning when no one would be up. I took a stool and placed it under one of the hot water pipes where I would fasten a rope, place the noose around my neck, and kick the stool away and just fucking die.

2

SOMEBODY CARED ANYWAY

Madison had left a lot of his stuff in the basement and decided to come and get it the morning I was going to kill myself. I was about to kick the stool away when I heard him come in the front door and asked grandma from the bottom of the steps if the basement door was unlocked, I froze. He rattled the door knob; I couldn’t lock it behind me. He turned the lights on and I tried to hide behind the boiler. But the noose wouldn’t stretch enough, it was pretty taught. Madison noticed me immediately.

What the fuck are you doing? he asked me in a high pitched whisper.

You’re hanging yourself he stated more than asked.

He came over to me and jumped up on the stool and started untying the rope and I broke down and started crying.

Come down, come on… he gripped my hand and more pulled me, than led me; I had to come down. He was looking in my face; I wouldn’t return his gaze out of shame, guilt or embarrassment, whatever; I couldn’t look at him for fear I would see in his face what I had seen in my grandmother’s; hate and disgust. Then he just grabbed me with his arms;

Ssh…Ssh…its ok, go ahead let it out, but don’t let them hear you…its ok.

He was crying too now. He held me tight and we stood like that for at least five minutes. His t-shirt was wet with my tears and snot; I remember feeling guilty about that. He took the shirt off, and dug through his stuff and found a clean one. He said he needed help with carrying his stuff. He had four bundles, and I helped load them into a van he had parked out front.

"You got a