Initiation

I go by Samael these days. What I used to be called doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve left that stupid, whiny kid behind for good.

It started with curiosity, boredom, and discontent. There was me, alone in my little suburban town, nineteen years old and rotting away in community college for lack of anything better to do. And then there were the rumors. They were society’s rejects, the druggies and dropouts and freaks and schizophrenics, and they had made some sort of hideout in the dark, empty places. Some people even said they were something inhuman. They were something like a gang, fiercely loyal and combative and secretive and united above all by a hatred of society. And I wanted to be one of them.

It was a miserable day in June when I gathered up my courage. Rainy, but the hot, sticky kind that only serves to make you sluggish and anxious and maybe give you a headache. College had let out, but I was killing brain cells all the same as a grocery store cashier. I pushed myself through morning with the thought of my midday cig break, but it was hardly a relief once it came, slumped out back behind the store in the sticky heat, dumpsters festering beside me. I felt sick and dizzy, and the cigarette was like a cheap knock-off of nepenthe, just barely enough to dull the urge to slit my throat with my “Hello, my name is” pin. I felt anxious and uneasy and uncomfortable, like there was an itch stuck underneath my skin that wouldn’t go away. I kind of felt like jacking off behind the dumpster, too, but I’m not sure if it was more horniness or boredom.

I rubbed idly at my crotch. I hadn’t gotten any, and certainly not anything good, in a long time. Lying to myself about my sexuality probably had something to do with it. The town was kind of backwards about certain things, and being gay was a big deal. No one, not a single person I could name, was actually out. Especially back in high school. It was all downcast eyes and sidelong glances and hands groping uncertainly in the dark, and then once it was confirmed it was urgent and needy, a quick messy fuck in the boys’ room. Sometimes one of them would have a black eye the next day, or not show up for a week. Not that I ever got involved in it. I thought about guys a lot, but I kind of liked girls too, so I managed to hold myself over with them and convince myself I was really a straight guy plagued by uncalled-for thoughts, which I occasionally gave in to and let myself jerk off to, but definitely only by accident. In school, I just spread the rumors about what I’d glimpsed in the boys’ room like a good, cruel little teenager and bragged about all the girls I may or may not have banged.

I took a long, deep drag and glanced at the sewer grate a few feet away from the wall. Those freaks, those -things-, were sometimes said to live down in the gutters (sometimes, it was said, they were actually allergic to sunlight, like vampires). All or almost all males, they were also rumored to be in the regular habit of screwing each other, and sometimes whatever other boys they could get their hands on. Maybe boys just like me. And somehow—I’ll blame it on the heat, the fog over my brain—that thought was starting to turn me on that day. I was fantasizing, imagining them abducting me, four pairs of callous freak hands all grabbing around my body at once, all pulling out their cocks for me, taking turns pressing my face against their crotches. Inexplicably, I wanted it so bad.

I checked my watch—just two more minutes of my break. Two more minutes until I’d need to go back inside and face another four hours without a smoke, with nothing but lines of bitchy old ladies and boxes of Cheerios. I shifted my eyes back to the drain, and suddenly all I could think was, fuck, I need to get away. I wanted something new, something strange. I wanted to find them. I wanted to leave behind this empty life, to join them, for good.

I thought about it for a minute. They probably didn’t really live in the sewers—if they were as vain as they were often said to be, surely it wouldn’t suit them. There was probably more truth in the rumors that they congregated in old, dark, empty places. There were two that came to mind instantly: a segment of subway tunnel over toward the big city that had been shut down some years ago and half-heartedly boarded up, and an old unused warehouse that I’d sometimes seen shadowy figures standing around after dark (but what were they, strange shadow creatures or just kids smoking weed?).

I was anxious, fidgety, excited to leave.