you belong with me - Eddie Munson

twelve

"Oh god...ehhhhmmm. You know, Pres...eh..."
He seem to doesn't know what to say.
"You don't have to tell me, you know? It's alright. I just wanted to help you if anything I did embarrassed you or somethi-"
"NO! Nothing you did embarrassed me!"
"Oh, okay..."
Of course he doesn't have to tell me, but the way he talks, and the way he feels more and more embarrassed, makes me think he is lying to me.
Eddie must've noticed me going silent, so he opened his mouth again.
"Alright, Pres. I'm gonna tell you, but please don't ask any questions about it, and please, like for real, PLEASE don't laugh at me, alright?"
I nod.
"Okay, so...this morning when I wanted to get up, and when I left my room, I-I-I had like a, you know..."
I don't loose focus from his eyes, even though he tries to avoid looking at me, his view wandering around the trailer, to his finger, to my body, to the ground, and again around the trailer.
"I had like-like a-a-a boner?", he says while squinting his eyes together.
"What is a-"
"I said no questions!"
He's right. But how am I supposed to know what he's saying is not because of me, when I don't even know what he's talking about?
"That's why I was...and still am, embarrassed"
I slowly nod at him, still not knowing what he's talking about.
"You don't know what a 'boner' is, do you?", he asks.
"No, I don't", I shyly laugh.
He breaths deeply in and out.
"Alright, alright....ehm...oh god, Pres, you making this really hard for me, you know that?"
"Sorry", I look down to the floor.
"No, don't apologize. It's more of my problem...I mean a boner isn't even something bad, or good, or whatever..."
He leans back on the couch.
"Okay, so...you know what a...penis is, right?"
I nod.
I don't really know anymore why I know what it is, but I just know that I know it.
"Okay, okay, that's good. And you know, when a penis gets hard, usually when the man is attracted to someone or just...idk when there's something happening that...that makes the guy like it, then you call that a 'boner'"
During his speech, he had a hard time looking at me.
I noticed that this is because his face turned a bright red, obviously ashamed of himself.
I want to let this conversation go, to not make him feel this way anymore, so I just nod.
"You not gonna ask anything else?", he suddenly asks.
"No...you are very embarrassed, and why should I want to continue that?"
My answer seems to surprise him.
But instead of leaving it all here, he continues to talk nervously.
"But I mean....I don't want you to think anything weird of me, you know?"
I give him a confused look.
"This is not cause I'm some perverted creep, you know? I just had a dream this morning, that's why it is like that!"
"A dream?"
"Yeah a...a-a-a you-know-what-dream..."
But in fact I don't know what dream he meant.
"Like a-a dream w-where I...I...it's just one of those dirty dreams"
"Dirty dreams?", I repeat again.
"Li-like...w-w-where...like a sexual dream, you know?"
Eddie talks very fast. He wants to leave the situation, yet wants me to understand it.
"You're talking about a sex dream?"
He looks at me in shock.
"So all these normal things you don't know of, but this is not one of those"
He kinda starts laughing, which soothes my concern for him.
He finished laughing and another break of silence follows.
Eddie soon breaks the silence with a now serious face and tone in his voice.
"Why do you know what 'sex' is, Pres?"
I look him in the eyes. In that moment, a memory rushed through my head. A memory, I thought I lost.
"I-I mean like, when y'all were just experiments, why should they give you the chance to do...that?"
But I don't really listen to him. I can barely hear his voice, as the memory continues to run through my brain as if I would live it again.
"It was one night...everyone should be asleep. There came one of the men in white in my room. They were there to...to protect us and to calm us down and whatsoever...", I begin, "I didn't know why he was there. I was very calm, and I simply slept..."
Eddie listens carefully to me, trying to catch every word I say.
"I don't know...he...he just...oh god", I try to find the right words to describe what happened, "He just did something...I can't quite make out what it was. It was just painful, and I felt uncomfortable and hated it, and hated him for it...but I forgot"
I in fact really forgot what this man did to me. I in fact really can't tell Eddie, or myself, anything more about this.
Eddie starts to get angry. But a type of angry, I have only noticed on one person before. Billy.
This anger that is so full of hate and so full of the wish of violence...
So I look up to him staring at the wall.
"What's wrong, Eddie?"
At first, he doesn't seem to want to answer. But he still opened his mouth.
"I think I know what happened to you, Pres", he gets even angrier now, "And I'm gonna kill those bastards for doing this to you"