In ‘97, I was eleven, living in Toronto when what should have been just another sleep over at my best friend Hiram’s house turned into a nightmare. It started out typically enough with us stealing gulps of his parents’ lousy vodka and salty wine, sneaking out to the basketball court across the street to smoke some shitty pot, watching French-Canadian pornography until 2AM.
The television screen softly flickered writhing ladies: undulating breasts, pussy eating left and right. I could feel my jeans shrinking against my erection. Excited and little boy buzzed from the booze and pot I blurted, “Oh wow look at that one!”
“Shhh, you’ll wake my parents up” Hiram scolded.
Hiram was silent but out of the corner of my left eye I noticed him staring at me. At thirteen, he was two years older and my initiator in all things I then considered cool: skateboarding, smoking, and kissing girls.
“What do you think about when you jack off?” Hiram asked, rubbing his crotch, eyes darting from the television screen to me, gleaming with sexual tension that scared me.
“Pamela Anderson in ‘Barbed Wire’ I said. “Or Mrs. Tam our 3rd grade teacher.”
We both laughed and he stopped touching his dick. I was relieved but confused. He was my best friend, so I tried not to make too much of his gaze.
At 3AM we went upstairs to sleep. I slept on a futon, near the door on his floor while he fell heavily onto his bed. I woke to Hiram straddling my back. I could feel his pubescent pecker on my pajama bottoms. I tried to get up but he placed his hand on the small of my back and forced me down.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled.
“It’ll feel good,” he said.
I thrashed and twisted, smashing him in the balls and shoving him into the closet.
“What man? It’ll feel good, it’ll feel good,” was all he muttered.
Hiram’s mother poked her head in the door
“What’s going on here Hiram? Are you two fighting?” she asked
“No, mom we were just wrestling sorry.”
“Is this true Nicholas?’
Hiram looked at me in fear.
“Yes, sorry,”
“Well quiet down or there’ll be trouble,” she warned.
We went back to our beds and I lay there in the dark until morning. I was frightened sharing a room with someone I had trusted, now a stranger. I anxiously waited for my mom to pick me up.
Things weren’t the same between Hiram and I back in the sixth grade. We never talked about That Night, but it was in the underlining of all our conversations. The closeness we had shared as friends was replaced by unspoken aggression. Despite our sleep over, Hiram will always be the coolest of my childhood friends, the guide who showed me how to shoplift from the Don Mills mall.
-N.P. Milanoff
