Abominably
Perverse Incident
There
are many depressing depression stories.
This is one of them
I made a few friends in the Red Hook area. In the public library, opposite the small Red Hook Park, I met those with an interest in reading and learning. One influential man in my young life was an old man, Professor Oberg. He was an unemployed college professor living alone in a small hut in Hoover City, the slums of Red Hook. Unemployed individuals and families had established and built a community of makeshift homes. Some were composites of scrap lumber, tin, bricks, and of any usable building or insulating material. At times, the Professor would sit in the park and talk to me, and a few other youngsters who were interested in learning. He inspired me, and guided me, in my selection of literature and science, expounding and explaining in detail, those areas of science that I questioned, or did not understand. He answered those questions that I never dared ask my parents.
Sometimes he brought along, Jeff, a fourteen-year-old blind boy. Jeff was bright and inquisitive, and he sat in the park with us, listening to our talks. Three years earlier, Jeff was blinded in an auto accident that also killed his father. Jeff lived alone with his mother, in an abandoned shack near the professor. Sometimes the professor would leave Jeff in my care, while he went to scavenge along the docks. Since Jeff had memories of colors and objects, he would ask me to describe what I saw in detail. He especially enjoyed my descriptions and opinions of the people I saw and described to him. He was older than me, and had developed a curiosity and interest in girls. He would confide in me, and talk of his frustration and anger, in not seeing and meeting girls.
At times, I guided him back to his home in Hoover City. It was a tiny, tar-paper over boards, one room, flat-roofed shed. In opposite corners were the sleeping arrangements, an army cot for Jeff and an old mattress for his mother. Two five-gallon cans contained the drinking and wash water. A small, one-burner gasoline stove was for cooking. Two crates served as chairs and a large, turned-over crate was their table. I met Jeff’s mother, a small, sad-eyed woman, probably no older than my mother, but her gaunt face and unkempt hair made her seem much older. She smiled, exhibiting a gap from a broken front tooth, and thanked me for my interest in Jeff. I could smell alcohol on her breath, and noticed a liquor bottle at the side of her mattress. These were difficult times and some sought escape from reality through alcohol. I few times I thought I smelled beer or alcohol on Jeff’s breath.
Once when it looked like rain, I wanted to take Jeff home but the professor told me to wait until supper time. I did not know why I had asked to delay taking Jeff home, so I took Jeff to my house. The weather became more threatening, so I took a poncho along, in case rain started, and led Jeff to his home. Jeff and I were talking loudly as we approached the shack. His mother appeared in the doorway, clutching a sheet in front of her. After putting a finger to her lips, she desperately waved me away. As she turned and reentered, I saw the back of her was nude. I led Jeff in a circle and after a few meandering
Abominably
Perverse Incident
turns, I saw a man leave the shack. Jeff’s mother appeared wearing a slip, and waved me in. I realized that Jeff’s mother needed more than alcohol as an escape from reality, or perhaps it was her way to eke out a living, or both. I also knew then why Professor Oberg took a blind boy temporarily away from his environment. I started seeing less of Jeff. When, on occasion, I met him, he looked shabbier and smelled of beer. Then I did not see him anymore. In time Professor Oberg told me of Jeff’s fate.
Mike and his cronies would occasionally find and taunt Jeff. They would play cruel jokes on Jeff, but at times they took him with them. Mike boasted of the girls he knocked up, and were sent to The House of The Good Shepherd. This house, run by the Catholic Church, was located on Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn. Enclosed by a brick wall, with broken glass top surfaces to prevent leaving or entering, the grim buildings housed unwed, pregnant girls. Too often, this was the only refuge for some.
Mike would beguile Jeff with stories of his sexual victories. At times Mike would get Jeff drunk, and he had a girl initiate Jeff to sex. Blind Jeff tolerated all types of teasing in order to be accepted by Mike and his friends. They plied Jeff with drinks, and laughed and encouraged his actions as they watched him sexually engaged with the females they provided. One day they promised him an unusual, one-of-a-kind experience with a woman. She was a mute, who could not talk, but loved to be tied up, and wanted rough, forceful sex. In the evening, Mike and three pals, took Jeff into the old, unused warehouse on the waterfront. They drank and joked as they described the animated actions of the mute girl they were all going to enjoy. Mike said that as the leader, he would be the first. The other three laughed as they described Mike’s vigor in frontal and rear engagements with the wildly thrashing mute woman. Jeff was further excited when Mike then described each of the other three cronies’ sexual engagements. Then they helped Jeff take off his clothes and lead him to the sexual arena. They guided his hands over a quivering, shaking body. They helped run his hands over her widespread thighs. Her legs had been spread-eagled, and her ankles tied to the floor. They put his hands on her breasts and told Jeff to kiss, suck and bite them, to make her more active. He did and the body turned and thrashed, and the others encouraged Jeff as he mounted her. Her thrashings became convulsive as they further encouraged Jeff. She strained to no avail. Her arms had been spread and fastened to nails in the floor. Encouraged, Jeff gripped and squeezed her breasts as he pinned her shoulders down, and amid the roaring encouragement of his friends, he finally he managed to enter the elusive, evading orifice, and with a certain, swift, and final thrust, buried his probe into her inmost recesses.
Jeff finally exhausted himself. He lay happy and panting on top of the warm, now inactive female. He reached for her arms, and found that they were bound and tied to a spike in the floor. He heard running feet, and laughter diminishing with distance. There was silence in the room.. He could hear her breathing. He groped and found her breasts, he fondled them, then he thought he hard a muffled moan. Jeff wanted to thank and kiss
Abominably
Perverse Incident
her. His hands sought her face, and found it. Something was tied around her mouth. His fingers slowly untied what seemed to be layers of electrician’s tape over a gag stuffed into her mouth. When he pulled the gag from her mouth, he heard his mother’s crying voice.
Professor Oberg told me the final outcome of the tragic situation. After untying his mother, they cried aloud of their horror and shame. They found more callused viciousness, when they discovered that their clothes had been taken away. When it was dark, covered with cloth torn from the old mattress, and cardboard from cartons bent around them, they went home. Jeff soon became irrational and self-destructive. He mutilated himself horribly, and was taken to a hospital. After a prolonged stay, he was taken away, perhaps to a sanitarium.
Jeff’s mother told the professor how the incident started. occasionally, Mike came to take Jeff on some adventure. She was glad that Jeff had made some friends,. Mike must have realized that she liked to drink. A few times, Mike left her some partially-filled bottles of whiskey. Then on that day of chaos and humiliation, Mike came to their home, supposedly to ask for Jeff.. He told her where she could get stolen whiskey very cheap.. He volunteered to take her to the warehouse where she could get a quart for a quarter, and he would even loan her a few quarters to buy whiskey. She knew she could sell the whiskey for twice that sum to her occasional patrons. She went with Mike to the warehouse where she was suddenly undressed, bound and gagged. They flung her on a mattress and pulling her arms over her head, tied her wrists to nails in the warehouse’s wood floor. They spread her legs apart and tied her ankles to spikes in the floor. She waited in a state of terror, and then watched with horror as they brought her blind son into the room. She suffered with sullen submission, Mike’s and his cronies abusive rapes, but there was no way she could prevent the incest with her son. Soon after she disappeared.
Without Divine assistance, justice is sometimes meted out.
Mike had a near-death drowning accident which left him with brain damage, and a future doing menial work with little pay, or hope. It is regrettable that Jeff and his mother would never know of Mike’s troubles.
Professor Oberg explained that Hoover City was a conglomerate of unemployed citizens, a self-regulating, cross-section of America. He often stressed that when police, or others, did not care about the indigent squatters, they took matters into their own hands. The three cronies who assisted Mike with Jeff’s and his mother’s humiliation, met with strange and unusual accidents. The professor never taught or told me all he knew.