Cameron Adamski · @MiniCannibal
9th Sep 2014 from TwitLonger
Warm Up
If he’d heard the word, it was long ago. Back when he was too young to understand what it meant. Three days after his thirteenth birthday, he heard it for what may as well have been for the first time.
/Faggot./
The music stands in the band room had collected an impressive array of graffiti even before budget cuts extended their life indefinitely. Few were unmarked. Mostly pencil, a lot indecipherable scribbles, some in crayon or marker. Some were predictable:
T.P. + M.R.
Fuck
(a crudely drawn penis)
Others marked territory:
rachel was here
Baddie R is MINE!
David’s Stand (this one considerately written on a piece of masking tape)
Some were worthy of Jaden Smith (and probably written to be posted to instagram):
Perhaps God stays in heaven because He too, lives in fear of what He's created?
is it a good day?
Or vaguely creepy:
You R Mine
Or even sweet:
Do or say one Nice Thing today J
“You brought your own sax?” Grace leaned over while he was inspecting the graffiti on today’s stand.
“Uh-huh. I got it from my dads for my birthday.”
“Happy Birthday!” Grace barely batted an eye at the plural, but wasn’t skirting the subject. “Is one of them your bio dad, and you’re adopted by the other, or did they both…?”
“No, neither of them are my biological dad. I barely remember him—even he said I wasn’t his son.” He shrugged, tracing the letters written in red Sharpie barely visible on the black-coated metal.
B-a-s-t-a-r-d. Bastard. His real father had called him that. He didn’t really know the literal meaning. It was filed away in his mind as an insult, and left there where it couldn’t bother him…or be of any use.
He first heard Phoenix Underwood call Timmy Shaw a faggot. Both boys were laughing. Timmy had done something, played some joke, and the playful antagonism between the trombone player and the drummers had come up again. The second time he saw a skinny goth boy emptying out his backpack in the bathroom to scrub at letters written in black marker on his pale blue backpack.
Faggot.
The third time was the second Friday he had seen as a middle schooler, written on today’s music stand alongside
Taylor is a whore!
and
666
Just that one word.
FAGGOT
He got the idea that it was a bad thing. Cam wasn’t stupid. He merely indulged a momentary curiosity before Mr. Abel was scheduled to pull him aside to explain just what a major scale was and why Every Good Boy Does Fine.
“Grace? What’s this mean…?” He blushed a little, having to ask, and knowing that the word was probably rude. He wondered what his father would make of these graffiti artists, and whether his disapproving glances would be enough to spare school property from damage.
“What? Fa…it’s an insult.” She shrugged a little, deciding that the more specific answer was probably required, because of his fathers… “Aimed at gay guys.”
“Oh.” /Oh./
He didn’t say more on the subject, even when Grace gave him sidelong glances as if asking whether he /really/ had never heard anyone called a faggot before. Packing up he gave the word one more look when he shuffled his sheet music—still more or less a blur—back into his backpack.
It stared back accusingly.