THE NECESSARY EVIL

Once upon a time last year, I told the story about the Love of a Boy. In that story, I mentioned that I’d initially attended a public school with no fence, a school which my mother took me out from after my junior secondary class to a private and mission school.

Well, I had some experiences in this public school as well. And this story is one of them.

I was in JSS2, maybe 3; I’m a little vague on the class timeline. I was this small, shy boy, sweet-natured and presumably innocent – the other students presumed, not me. These characteristics made survival somewhat easy to negotiate. A lot of senior students were fond of me, some wanting to befriend me by being my school parent, which oftentimes led to quarrels and, in one case, an all-out fight over who was supposed to take care of me. You have to understand; I was a good looking, sweet, little kid, who hardly complained or raised excuses when getting sent on errands. I was the perfect school son.

But, being this fragile also had its disadvantages. I got picked on a lot, mostly by bigger students in my class. And one of these bullies was a boy named Saul.

Saul was a very dark-skinned boy. At the time, he was considered huge for his age, and he rolled with the big boys of our class set. He had a knack for getting into scuffles with other mates of ours, and he’d tease and make fun of me in public, sometimes, even getting physical by roughing me up.

However, whenever he caught me alone, he’d grope me. He’d still taunt me and all that, but he would get very handsy with me during this time that nobody was looking. Now, as a preteen who already knew he liked men, I found this intriguing, and even though I protested his invasion of my body, I secretly enjoyed those moments, his hands that grabbed at my derriere and his hips which he aggressively thrust against my behind. I found all that exhilarating.

On the days when we did laundry in boarding school, water was always an issue. Junior students had to go to nearby streams to wash, bathe and relax. On one such day, Saul came along to do his laundry as well. And as you can imagine, it was the usual “all you can bully and grab” buffet with me. As usual, I put up a struggle, garnering snickers from other students.

Then, at one point, while I was drying my clothes a little farther away from the others, Saul came from behind, grabbed my arm and pulled me deeper into the brushes. I squeaked a protest, but I didn’t fight him, instead letting him drag me a little distance away from the stream. I didn’t know what was happening, but I secretly liked where this was going.

Once we were safely away from prying eyes and comfortable enough not to be interrupted, he proceeded to unbuckle his belt. He dropped his pants and ordered me to give him a blow job.

Of course I refused.

He looked around for a stick, which he threatened to use on me if I didn’t suck his dick.

“And I will kill you if you bite my dick,” he said with a warning look.

Well, now a boy had no choice but to suck a dick.

I went at it, and I obviously was doing a good job because he soon started moaning and kept encouraging me, calling me “baby”. I started to get into it, grabbing at his plump, fleshy ass, and pulling more dick into my mouth as he grabbed my head. Whenever I stopped for air, he’d mistake it as a sign that I wanted out and raise his stick, threatening me some more.

Dumb fuck! I’d think to myself. Have you no clue that I’m doing this because it’s what I want?

As I slurped on his dick, I was tempted to ask if he wanted to fuck me right there. I knew he’d totally go for it. But a little voice in my head told me to let the blowjob go on for awhile longer, to just keep sucking him and see if he’d be the one to instigate penetrative sex. I wanted that throbbing preteen dick inside me, but I had to play it safe.

As I bobbed my head against Saul’s crotch, I saw something.

Someone!

I saw Abraham.

How I caught sight of him, I cannot tell. It could’ve had something to do with my almost-perfect long-sightedness which compensated for my shortsightedness. But I saw him. I caught sight of him in the distance seated on the ground, books spread out in front of him.

Abraham was one of those upstanding students, righteous, rarely broke any rules, bigger than most of our classmates, probably because he was kinda older than us. He was an indigene of the area where our school was located, one of those bible-thumping, goody-two-shoes kinda boys. And so, it wasn’t so surprising that he’d be hidden out here in the bushes, studying.

When I saw him, I did something I never thought I’d do under the circumstance.

I didn’t stop sucking Saul’s dick.

I am blessed in the art of theatrics, I have found. I could be shocked by something to my marrows, but not react immediately to the situation. And in that moment, even though I was shocked by the fact that somebody had caught me fellating another male student, I didn’t stop what I was doing.

I mean, there Abraham was, intently watching us, and I wasn’t even sure if he’d noticed that I’d seen him. I continued sucking Saul’s dick for several more seconds, during which time I processed in my head what my next course of action should be.

Then I took a deep breath, and stopped. I could see Abraham approaching stealthily from the corner of my eye, and in his hands was a big branch. As if on cue, Saul raised his stick, ordering me to get back to what I was doing or he’d hit me. But this time, I resisted. I was still on my knees, his wanker jutting out at my face, as he tried to force it back into my mouth. He must’ve been pretty close to ejaculating when I stopped, because he became really pissed and started to actually hit me, not so hard, but enough to play into the villain script I’d mentally prepared for.

It wasn’t until Abraham was a couple of feet away, and Saul heard twigs snapping, did he suddenly become aware of the foreign presence. He was hurriedly pulling up his pants when Abraham bounded out into the clearing where we were and lashed out at Saul on the back.

He was furious! His shock and disgust were starkly etched on his face as he ranted at us, waving the branch in his hand as though he wanted to give us a good thrashing but didn’t know who to start with.

Saul fell to his knees and began begging, his hands slapping against each other as he pleaded. “Abraham, abeg, abeg, it’s the devil. Abeg!”

Then Abraham turned to me, his face contorted with rage and lashed me across the back with his branch. “You!” he spat at me. “You just knee down, dey suck man preeq, abi?” He was going on and on about how Saul and I must walk back to the school naked, and how he’d report to the school authority about this abomination he caught us doing. He was scandalized; he couldn’t believe he’d been watching us the entire time we got there and started doing what we were doing.

At this point, I decided he had gone on long enough; it was time for me to play my part. I got to my feet, held my head high and pointedly asked him if he, at any point during which he’d been watching us, seen me enjoying what he saw me doing.

“Like, are you even serious?” I screeched at him. “Look at me, and look at him!” I gestured at Saul.

This brought Abraham up short. He paused in his fury, obviously seeing things from my side, and judging from what he’d witnessed the whole time he was watching us, he arrived at the conclusion I wanted him to get to.

The big boy forced the little boy to commit the abomination against the little boy’s will.

Abraham’s anger refocused on Saul, and he began calling him all sorts of dirty names, cussing him out for taking advantage of such a fragile person simply because he couldn’t fight back. As he raged, Saul begged like I’d never seen him beg before. He was this rich kid who walked about the school like his father owned it, and here he was, cowering in shame before the poor – albeit bigger – kid who was the son of a local farmer; who was probably attending the school based on some government-sponsored program for indigenes; who under normal circumstances would never even dream about sitting next to Saul at the dining table.

Abraham must have considered all of this, because eventually, his rage began to cool, and he was no longer hell-bent on forcing Saul to go back to the school naked or to report what he did to the school authority. Instead, he was now sternly warning Saul to never indulge in such acts again, and threatened to expose him should he ever get wind of Saul doing this again. He demanded that Saul apologize to me for the trauma he had caused me, and Saul promptly dropped to the ground, begging me to forgive him, promising that he would never bully me again. I mumbled an okay, and Abraham consoled me, encouraging me to forgive Saul and not tell anyone about what happened. I almost laughed out at that: what was I going to tell people? That I got caught sucking a boy’s dick? Yeah, no!

Abraham told me to go back to my laundry, and a short time later, perhaps after more warnings, Saul emerged from the bushes after me.

As I did my laundry, my heart was beating hard in my chest as I contemplated the many ways this could’ve gone south. Heck, it did go south obviously. But what if it had gone deeper south?

Saul soon came up to me, and again profusely apologized to me for his actions. I gently nodded at him, taking note of his tear-streaked face and runny nose as he walked away from me, looking deflated. I kept washing my clothes, scrubbing hard like I was going to tear the fabric. It wasn’t until I couldn’t quite see what I was doing, that I realized that I was crying. Shame overwhelmed me. I was crying for Saul, and how I let him take the fall for something that deep inside me, I knew we were both responsible for. He didn’t know it; in his mind, he’d forced me to do this, but that wasn’t the entire truth. What I lacked in strength, I made up for in verbiage and audacity. At any point during that time he wanted me to suck his dick, I could’ve stopped him. I could’ve said something that would’ve quickly killed his libido, stopped his “assault”.

But I didn’t.

Why?

Because I was homosexual; because I enjoyed every moment he played at assaulting me; because I liked him touching me. I liked how proud and aloof he was, but then how he squirmed under my power when I touched him in places.

But there he was, a beaten-down boy, with no dignity left, and I was crying hard over that as guilt railed through me. Thankfully, the current of the water flowing violently downstream drowned my sobs.

I saw Saul a few times after that incident, but he wouldn’t look me in the eyes. He couldn’t. Shame, perhaps. And each time he walked past me with his head down, I died a little more inside. Thank God I changed school the following session.

I think about Saul a lot these days. I think about what I’d say to him if I ever saw him again. Somehow, “I’m sorry” doesn’t seem like it’d cut it, especially if I tell him that I wasn’t exactly the victim I’d played at when we were caught in the bush.

I ran into Abraham a couple of years ago. He hadn’t changed physically, and he wasn’t as big. He didn’t recognize me though, obviously because I wasn’t that scrawny skinny kid from way back. An athletic build and a face full of beards have changed that innocent face into the face of a young man who’s seen the evils of the world and survived. I let him walk past me without any interaction. And I smiled to myself, wondering if he still remembers that incident in the bush, or if it has ebbed away from his memories.

These days, I don’t regret my actions at that point in time. I was trying to survive. If I found myself in such a circumstance again, I’d probably do the same thing. But I am sorry about it though. I’d give anything to run into Saul today, if for nothing, then at least to give him some closure, so he doesn’t carry around the thought that he might have been an abuser. But then again, he was, wasn’t he? I don’t know. What do you guys think?

Written by Yusuf