Chapter 7 - Celluloid Nightmares.
“Seriously, how do you get away with being that drunk at 10:30 in the morning? I mean, the second I stepped into the house I could smell the booze wafting off her. It’s like it was coming out of her fucking pores. And when she spoke, her breath alone was almost enough to get ME drunk too,” Daphne chuckled, still ranting about her visit with Joan Kinney even as we pulled up outside her apartment building. “The whole time we were talking, she was sipping something that clearly was NOT Earl Grey out of this dainty porcelain teacup, acting like I somehow wouldn’t catch on to the fact that she was getting sloshed. Hell, the entire room reeked of cheap cooking sherry. I hope she wasn’t that much of a souse back when Brian was a kid because, if so, she would have been a menace to her children. By the time I left, Joan looked like she was about to pass out; I’m not sure she didn’t as soon as I walked out the door . . .”
I hadn’t really been listening to Daphne’s rant. I was still trying desperately to grapple with the horrible conclusions I’d been led to by our confirmation that Coach Creepy had been in Brian’s life a lot further back than previously known. I was getting more freaked out by all these coincidences as we went. My gut told me that shit was seriously wrong here. But, at the same time, my head was telling me to slow down; we didn’t have any PROOF that anything bad had happened . . . At least not anything more than a possibly coerced blow job involving a minor and his adult teacher/coach, who had apparently known his victim since childhood, and had fostered a relationship which eventually caused one of the parties enough trauma that he’d suffered a near-total breakdown.
Yeah, maybe I should be listening to my gut, not my head, this time.
Daph knocked on the window of the passenger door to get my attention. She was waiting for me on the sidewalk next to where she’d parked the car, the box full of Brian’s old soccer memorabilia in her arms, looking at me with big brown eyes full of concern. Meanwhile, I was toying with the fleeting fantasy of just refusing to leave the car. Ever. Because, maybe, if I hid in Daphne’s car for the rest of my life, instead of following her upstairs to begin going through that box of pictures, it would all somehow be okay. Things would miraculously work themselves out. I’d never have to confront my fears about what we might discover and I could pretend nothing was wrong. That way I could ignore the unpleasantness I knew in my gut we were about to be forced to acknowledge
Daphne, unfortunately, ruined my flight of escapism by pulling open the door and asking, “You coming?”
Which left me no choice but to return to reality and face up to my fears. I reluctantly got out of the car and followed my friend up the stairs to her third floor apartment. Daphne plopped the box full of pictures down on her coffee table before detouring to her kitchen to grab us two beers - apparently not at all fazed by the hypocrisy of us starting to drink before noon after she just spent the entire car ride bitching about Joan’s day drinking. Whatever. Personally, I figured I was going to need a beer before this was all over so I wasn’t going to point out Daph’s moral shortcomings. When my alcohol-bearing friend joined me on her couch we tapped the necks of our beer bottles together in a sort of toast and then turned, as one, to contemplate the waiting mystery box.
“We don’t know that it means anything,” Daph began, echoing my own thoughts almost exactly. “Just because Langley is a bit touchy-feely, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s doing anything wrong. He could just be a really affectionate and caring guy who likes working with kids.”
“And who also engaged in sexual acts with a fourteen year old boy while employed in a position of authority that gave him an unequal power advantage?” I countered.
“Okay. Yeah. That’s bad,” Daph conceded.
“Really bad.”
“True. But, the way Brian tells it, he was the one who came on to Langley in that shower scene, right? Maybe the guy really was innocent and just succumbed to Brian’s overwhelming charm?” Daphne suggested with a hint of humor.
*Pffff* I shook my head at my friend’s feeble attempts to lighten the mood. “Like that would make a difference. No matter how charming a fourteen year old Brian Kinney might have been, it’s still statutory rape. And, it’s one thing if it happened just the one time, with some rando, hot substitute teacher, but when it was someone who had known Brian from the time he was just a kid? That’s just . . . Ew.”
“Yeah. Really, ew,” Daphne agreed with me, scrunching up her face into a mask of disgust. “Plus, from the way Michael talked about it, it sounds like whatever happened kept on happening the whole time he was teaching at their school. Otherwise, Brian would have snapped out of it sooner. Although, we don’t have any proof of that.” Daphne paused to take a swig of her own beer. “How’s Brian doing, anyway? Is he still being Zombie Guy?”
I tilted my head from side to side to indicate how iffy the whole Brian situation remained. “He’s better than he was those first couple of days after his NYC traffic debacle but . . . I don’t know, Daph. He just doesn’t seem like himself. He’s . . . Blank . . . That’s the only way I can describe it. He seems like he’s only going through the motions. He goes to work and he comes home and we sit on the couch and watch old movies but he’s not really there. It’s like, every time I try to talk to him about anything that’s not purely trivial, he turns into this big, blank, expressionless nothing. Which so totally isn’t like Brian, you know? He’s normally this uber-decisive, self-confident, control freak. But now he’s indecisive and wishy-washy and seems lost half the time. It’s not right. He’s not right.”
“Damn. That sounds . . . bad.”
“No shit,” I agreed and then downed the rest of my beer. “But sitting around here staring at that damned box isn’t going to fix anything so let’s see what’s in there and if it will give us the answers we need.”
“. . . Even if they’re answers we don’t want?”
I didn’t bother to reply to the implication in Daph’s question. Instead, I pulled the box closer to me and flipped the lid off. A brief look inside showed that it was going to take a while to go through all this crap so I sighed and grabbed the first rubber-banded stack of photo processing envelopes I saw. Daphne followed suit, pulling out a handful of old team participation medals whose ribbons had all become tangled together.
It took us quite a while to go through all the crap in there. The box was almost full when we started. At some point in time, one corner of the box had been exposed to water and, as a result, some of the papers and photos were slightly damaged. The really moldy stuff we just tossed aside without bothering to look through it. Most of the stuff, though, was salvageable. Still, it was a time consuming and laborious process to go through all the pictures and awards and knicknacks, looking for who knew what.
It was clear from the beginning that Coach Langley really had liked taking pictures. Specifically, pictures of Brian. There were SO many pictures of my partner - in every conceivable pose - running down the field, dribbling soccer balls, kicking soccer balls, posing with soccer balls. It was fun, at first, going through the pictures and exclaiming over how adorable Brian had been as a youth. But, as we went on, even I became inured to the overwhelming levels of cute Brian-ness. What was clear from the very beginning, though, was that Coach Langley had played a much more significant role in my partner’s life than just being a substitute gym teacher at his high school for a month; there were almost as many pictures of the two of them together as there were of Brian alone.
Going through that box was kind of like going on an archeological dig; the items near the top were more recent and, as we dug down deeper, we began to unearth older and older pieces of the puzzle. It was like watching Brian age in reverse. He got younger and younger in the pictures as we went. Finally, near the bottom of the box, I found a sleeve of really old photographic prints that showed a very, very young version of Brian. From the yellowish tinge to the photos, as well as the retro look of the clothing the people were wearing, it was clear we’d arrived at a layer dating back to the late seventies or early eighties.
“Hahaha! Look at this one,” Daphne held up a polaroid she’d unearthed showing Langley wearing suede brown slacks and a matching argyle-print sweater vest, his face decorated by mutton chop sideburns and a walrus mustache.
“Hey, he was probably considered quite the stud in those duds back in the day.” I laughed along with her at the ridiculous outfit.
“Macho, macho, man . . . I’ve gotta be a macho man . . .” Daph sang, giving her best Village People imitation.
I was about to join in and sing along when I pulled out one of the last of the photo envelopes and opened it to find the youngest yet incarnation of Brian Kinney. “Oh, shit he looks just like Gus in this one,” I commented, showing the snapshot to my co-conspirator.
“Wow. He’s really, really, REALLY young in that one. He couldn’t be more than seven or eight,” Daphne surmised.
“And totally adora . . .”
Daphne looked up with concern when I failed to finish my sentence. “Justin? Did you find something?”
“Holy shit!” I whispered, as I rifled through the photo prints I’d just discovered in that one envelope.
The top couple of pictures had been just like all the rest; Brian and a bunch of other kids dressed in soccer shorts running around on a field. Then there were a couple showing Brian and Langley together. There was even one of him with the Coach in a pose similar to the one in the camp flyer, Langley’s arm wrapped affectionately around the young Brian and a big grin on the man’s face. Brian was frowning in that one and looked like he was trying to lean as far away from Langley as the man’s grip would allow. I grumbled and shuffled that one to the back of the pile only to discover that the next photo was also of Brian and the coach, this time though, for a change, Brian was not wearing soccer clothes. This one had been taken indoors, in a small room that had a soccer field mural painted in garish primary colors on the back wall. Brian looked even more unhappy in that photo than he had in the last.
“What’s that?” Daphne asked, leaning over my shoulder to see whatever it was that had so startled me.
“No idea,” I replied. “But it’s pretty clear that they’re not still on the soccer field.”
“I wonder if this is one of those times that Langley picked Brian up and drove him all over the place, ‘taking him to games and offering to give him special training’, like Joan mentioned?” Daph suggested, the unspoken implications of her words making my stomach lurch again.
“I fucking hope not,” I murmured as I laid that picture aside and fingered through a few more showing the same odd background, all of which depicted an unhappy Brian with a grinning Langley draped all over him. “But these don’t look good.”
“What a fucking creep,” Daphne commented, voicing my exact sentiments. “I’m not sure this is enough to prove he molested anyone, but it’s still pretty gross, don’t you think?”
I shrugged without comment. These pictures might not be enough evidence to convict someone in a court of law, but they were more than enough to confirm my own suspicions about why Brian had freaked out so badly when he’d seen that flyer with Coach Langley’s picture on it. If Brian had survived the kind of abuse I suspected Langley was capable of, he had every right to be upset. What a creep was right.
That was when my world totally fell apart and I realized that even the suspicions I’d already had were far too naive.
As I came to the last few pictures in that sleeve of photos I gasped and almost dropped the stack of prints I’d been holding. The last four pics in that packet showed something much different than the snaps of boys playing soccer out on a big grassy field. These photos were taken indoors - in that same room with the strangely gaudy mural - but from a new perspective that showed a wider view of the room. In these pictures you could see that there was a bed in the far corner of the room made up with a soccer ball-themed bedspread and pillows.
Standing in front of the bed, his pale skin standing out in stark contrast to the dark purple and black of the bedspread’s background, was a very scared looking Brian Kiney, wearing nothing but baggy, white, y-front briefs.
In that first picture, the boy was standing face-on to the camera, looking like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck. The next two pictures showed the same boy, now arranged in what was obviously supposed to be ‘provocative’ poses; one with him turned three-quarters of the way away from the camera, looking back over his shoulder, and the other from the back with the boy’s thumbs hooked into the waistband of the briefs, as if in the process of stripping the cloth away. The final image showed the same boy sitting on the edge of the bed, looking scared and small and so very alone, with what appeared to be a tear glistening on his left cheek.
I couldn’t stop staring at that one. I think I was in shock. I’d suspected that bad things must have happened to have caused Brian to react the way he had, and Langley’s behavior towards the boy we’d seen at the park the day before had reinforced my concerns, but to see the proof right there in front of me like that was too much. It was just too fucking much. It made me sick to look at that poor boy - that tear on his fucking cheek - and yet I couldn’t look away because it was Brian. My Brian. The man I loved more than anything in the world. And here I was, a witness to something that was horrible in and of itself, but to know that it had happened to someone I cared about was so much more devastating than I could ever describe.
I barely even registered that Daphne, who’d snatched the previous pictures out of my hands one by one as I’d gone through them, was angrily expostulating about the many violent things she was going to do to Langley, most of which included uncomfortable acts involving the man’s genitals. When I wouldn’t release the last of the pictures for her to examine more closely, she instead picked up the envelope which had previously held this set of pictures. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her pull open the paper flap in the back where the negatives from that film roll were kept in a separate pocket. Taking the stack of celluloid strips out, she held each one up to the light as she scanned through the tiny reverse images, obviously trying to locate the one I was currently freaking out over.
“Motherfucking piece of shit fucking shithead cuntfucking damned douchbag fucking monster . . .” Daphne’s string of increasingly vitriolic curse words finally penetrated my shocked paralysis and caused me to focus on her.
“What?” I breathed, not really sure that I wanted to know what had obviously thrown her off the deep end.
“This! This piece of shit cuntfucker! This nutfucking monster . . .” Her curses died off as she looked at yet another of the strips of negatives. Whatever she saw there was apparently too much. She screamed out one last “FUUUUUUCK!” at the top of her lungs before vaulting to her feet and kicking over the coffee table, causing the bankers’ box and stacks of photos and piles of memorabilia and everything else to scatter all over the floor.
I didn’t have to say a word. I just held out my hand, pleading mutely, until she handed me the collection of negative strips that she’d been scrutinizing. I didn’t want to look at those images, but I knew I had to. I needed to know what I was up against. I had to know the truth even if it felt like whatever was waiting for me on those brittle pieces of decades-old celluloid was going to upend everything I’d ever thought I knew. Even though I was already certain it was going to hurt. Because, whatever was on those negatives had already hurt Brian, and I couldn’t do anything to help him until I knew the truth.
Unfortunately, I was right. It did hurt. A lot.
There were more negatives than there’d been prints in the same envelope. Either some of the pictures on that roll hadn’t been printed out or someone had removed several of the more incriminating prints before handing the envelope over to Joan; I suspected that the later circumstance was more likely. The regular soccer team pictures were there on the first few negative strips as well as the four pictures showing Brian in the room with the mural. But there were many more. More pictures taken in that room. More pictures showing a young Brian on that bed with the garish soccer-themed bedspread. More pictures showing things a lot worse than even the pictures of a scared Brian standing in front of the camera in his briefs.
While it was difficult to clearly make out everything that the tiny reverse images would show if they were developed, I could see enough to know they were the kind of pictures that would give me nightmares.
One showed the same small boy lying on the bed, stretched out and posed in a way that might have been considered ‘sexy’ if the image had been of an adult. This picture, however, just looked wrong. This boy was lying on his right side, with his left knee crooked up, exposing his crotch, his body propped up and supported by one elbow, and his other arm bent back behind his head. The face in the picture was frowning and the child’s eyes looked haunted. Another, still worse, depicted the same boy, again stretched out on the bed, but it seemed like the briefs were now gone and only a fold of the purple-black bedspread remained, draped over the boy’s hip, hiding the child’s nakedness. In that picture, partially cut off by the edge of the frame, you could also see the naked torso of an adult man. The man’s hand was lying proprietarily on the boy’s thigh. You couldn’t see the man’s face but you could see the boy, whose eyes were closed and his mouth puckered, as if he was trying to hold back sobs. I couldn’t look at any more.
I dropped the pile of negatives and they fluttered like fall leaves down to the carpet by my feet.
I’m not sure how long I sat there, staring out the window of Daphne’s apartment, too overcome to think. I eventually roused when I noticed Daphne collecting the telltale negatives from the floor and neatly stuffing them back into the pocket of the photo processing envelope where she’d found them. Blinking, I realized that, while I’d been lost in lalaland, she’d righted the coffee table, picked up all the mess, and restored order. All of the soccer memorabilia had been returned to the bankers’ box. All except for that one daming envelope containing the critical evidence. That one was waiting on the coffee table in front of me, as if reserved until I had proclaimed judgement over it.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do with . . . With . . . With,” I stuttered, flinging a hand at the incontrovertible evidence of something I never wanted to know about.
“We have to turn this over to the police, Justin,” Daphne stated with conviction. When I made a pained noise of protest - something halfway between a mewl and a groan of pain - she crossed her arms unrelentingly. “I’m sorry, Jus, but we HAVE to. Even just having shit like this in your possession is, like, a major felony. We can’t keep it. And we can’t just destroy it either. It’s evidence of a crime . . .”
“I know but . . . But it’s Brian. I can’t just . . . It feels like an invasion of his privacy to have even looked through it. How can I just turn something so . . . So revealing . . . Over to strangers . . .”
“I understand what you’re saying, Justin, but look at it this way; I know it’s probably way too late for the cops to do anything about what happened to Brian,” she pointed to the cursed packet of photos and I saw the rage in her eyes, “but it’s not too late to stop Langley from doing the same thing to that other little boy we saw him with yesterday.”
“Shit,” I moaned, thinking of that poor, quiet, sad little boy who bore a striking resemblance to Gus. And to Brian when he’d been younger. The fucking monster clearly had a ‘type’. “Shit!”
“Exactly,” Daphne continued, pressing her point. “You can’t really tell from those negatives, especially the way the framing cut off the face of the man, but I think it’s safe to assume that, even if it wasn’t Langley, he at least had something to do with what was going on in those photos since he took the rest of the soccer pictures on the same roll. And, judging by the way the shitstain was pawing at that other kid - what was his name? Taniel, I think - it’s likely that the same thing that happened to Brian is going to happen to that boy. Assuming it hasn’t already.” She paused and waited until I lifted my head so she could look me straight in the eye. “We have to speak up and tell someone, Justin. We can’t let him get away with it. We can’t let him hurt any other boys.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s just . . .” I had to force the words through my throat and out past suddenly parched lips. The sentences I was making tasted like betrayal and rage and left a bitter aftertaste. “This is going to destroy Brian.”
“Or save him,” Daphne countered. “He’s had to live with this hidden in his past for way too long, Justin. Maybe it’s time for it to come to light? He obviously can’t go on like he has been, unless you like living with Blank Zombie Brian?”
I slumped back into the depths of Daphne’s couch and ran my fingers through my hair, catching hold of the ends and tugging at it as if pulling my scalp off would somehow let the ugly thoughts inside my skull escape. “I don’t think it’s going to be that simple,” I replied, even as I resigned myself to the inevitable. “I don’t know. Maybe . . . Maybe I could approach Carl and see if he can give us some idea what we need to do?”
“That’s a start,” Daphne readily agreed. “Hopefully, as a family friend, he can at least try to protect Brian’s privacy. As much as possible, anyway.”
“Yeah, right . . . But, the real question is, how do I explain what we found to Brian?”