mala fide (lams)

discere

to learn

SUMMER IS SUPPOSED TO BE FREEING. From seasonal jobs to hot weather to no school, it was supposed to be fun, especially for a teenager's last summer before senior year of high school. Alexander had spent his summer working at a movie theater and interning for Mulligan on the side. Proportionally, what with realistically fifty hour work weeks on top of the two college courses he took and the preparation he was doing for college applications in the fall, he worked more than he played, but he still had felt free, purposeful. He felt good.

John's last summer before senior year was spent at camp — not the kind most people went to, with swimming and canoeing and friendship bracelets, but a pseudoscientific Christian bible camp.

He was so young when he first met the Kinlochs that he didn't even remember it. But as the years went by, every time they visited, Francis and John grew closer. They were pen pals and the best of friends. As they got older, their bodies changed, thereby their interests and curiosities. It should have been innocent, a normal part of growing up, but everything they ever knew about being that way told them it was unnatural. At first, John struggled with it more, and then as they got older, and Francis found he could get with girls just as easily, he pulled away and he was the one insisting there was something wrong about their relationship.

It wasn't official in any capacity, and they hesitated in sexual endeavors, but during the last visit, spring break, it was enough to where they were so tangled in one another and so engrossed despite Francis having a girlfriend back home, that when Francis' father walked in, the offer to drive the to get lunch together was forgotten, and the boys were separated until further notice. John had no idea how he was doing, even all these months later. He wasn't allowed to write him and his father and Francis' parents were sure to put an end to communication via text, email, or on the phone. It was a painful break.

When John first arrived at camp, he was melancholy and combative. It took three weeks for them to break him, between the trauma sharing, self-hatred instilling, and the recitation of cherry-picked verses of the Holy Bible. Of course, the real kicker was when John finally received a letter from Francis. All of their mail was vetted beforehand, and Francis had sent it through John's father, so it was viewed twice before being handed off, with the adults' permission, to John.

Long story short, Francis regretted what they did. He wrote that same-sex desire was not only a sin, but a sickness, and that he likely would never have been infected had he not come into contact with John in the first place. He wrote that John's intentions had always been carnal, that ever since they were boys, he had that darkness in him, and implied, on top of it all, that John had pressured him into their deviation, that he was forced into infidelity, and he was glad he had a good Christian girlfriend who supported him and would not leave him through these trying times. "I have a good girl, John.  You will get better if you find a girl and love her."

It'd be unbelievable if that wasn't Kinloch's handwriting.

John? He went for a jog. He might have run away if he'd known where to go. He screamed in the woods, punched a tree until his knuckles were bloody, and for the first time, his ideations became a contemplation. The only thing that stopped him from killing himself was the shame of causing a scene. He held off for a long time because of that. Plus, after the bruised and bloodied hands, the staff at Jesus' Love for Salvation kept an extra-close eye on him. He was trapped.

And with Francis' help, they had finally broken him.

He believed every word: the explanations biblical, biological, and social. He believed that his mother's death, his brother's accident, the inability to make his father proud, and the preexisting self-hatred all led him to desire those of the same gender. For a long time, he even believed that there was a way to be cured - until it became glaringly apparent he couldn't change, so he resolved to live a life repressing those desires in order to be a good Christian.