• The name Hayvel School for the Creative Arts had been printed a long time back in a brilliant white against a dark blue pamphlet. The picture on the front fold was of the school’s main office with a statue of Taylor M. Hayvel playing the violin, her dates of 1958-2010 and her name printed on the base at her feet. Aaron had received this pamphlet from his English Lit professor, who was also the advisor for the school writing club, after Aaron had won a state-wide prose contest. Although his father used more than half of the prize money for his alcohol habit, Aaron was more excited about being somewhat famous within his community. Who knew that a scrawny 15 year old kid from a nowhere town in Texas would garner praise from JK Rowling or John Green? It was the time of his life, and he enjoyed the glory, continuing to write and honing his skill.
    It was enjoyable until the day after his 16th birthday, when the whole world found out Aaron had an ex-boyfriend.

    The first time his father heard about it, as well.

    A month after recovering from the beating and the verbal abuse all across Facebook and his own school, Aaron took up his professor’s offer of going to Hayvel on a full ride scholarship.

    There was, of course, the matter of emptying the closet in secret, packing what he could while sending the rest to Goodwill in black garbage bags. There were things Mr. Aaron James Carlisle didn’t want his father, Franklin, to know. Sure, the “I have no son” remarks stung to the deepest reaches of whatever hell the human imagination could create, but Aaron by no means wanted to reveal his darker and more occult truths about his private life. Facebook abuse about his being gay was one thing …

    All he could take with him was his clothing, a webcam, a few personal effects, and a flash drive with his writings. Bedding he had to buy on the cheap from whatever was left from his winnings. Also gone was the high-powered custom PC he loved to use for both writing and gaming – his father destroyed it, thinking that the computer was the source of the “sin.” Aaron would have to rewrite the drafts he had on that computer, not too difficult a task as there weren’t too many drafts on there in the first place and a file of sources was on the flash drive. The writing was never an issue – or at least Aaron never thought it was when his father first learned about, to use his father’s words, his now disavowed child “doing faggy s**t instead of playing sports.” No – what caused the destruction was an entry in the browser history that said “/hm/ - Handsome Men,” a link to the gay channel on 4chan.

    Further searching by the father lead to awkward questions, angry words, and the older man’s looking for a hammer.
    Aaron was only glad his father never bothered to search the closet.

    Luckily for the young man, he escaped the house and called the police from a neighbor’s house. The physical damage, however, was visible enough that the neighbor would later testify at the trial out of what she said was “mother bear instincts” and her “Christian duty,” even if Aaron was a homosexual.

    “Aaron is still a young man, gay or not, who was beaten just for being a curious kid,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve this drama. A real father would …” He drowned out the rest at the trial. He couldn’t cry then … he still couldn’t cry. His father was a penniless b*****d, and even what could be sold and auctioned off after the trial for funds wouldn’t be fully accessible until Aaron turned 17, which wasn’t for a few months.

    He wouldn’t even let the police inspect the bags of clothing he was donating when they came to help him pack up for Hayvel – they were there to prevent his father’s drinking buddies from bring parting gifts, but they wouldn’t understand. The k-9 unit didn’t find anything suspect so the protection detail let the quirky request slide.

    And here he was at Hayvel, being offered a ride from the same officers and, for the third time in less than two years, getting attention. The writer in training was looking forward to good, small bursts of attention, rather than the long, protracted negativity he had received from neighbors and people from far outside Texas, and the semi-supportive but distant and impersonal attention from so-called allies.