Poem: "The Closet Is Vast"
Jan. 14th, 2022 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis poem is spillover from the October 5, 2021 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from siliconshaman and acelightning73. It also fills the "Dress up / Costumes" square in my 10-1-21 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred, ng_moonmoth, janetmiles, and edorfaus. It belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics.
Warning: This poem contains intense and controversial topics. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers. It includes a lack of self-awareness, overcontrolling and manipulative parents, bad fit at a fraternity, spiked punch, sudden illness, superpower manifestation, confusion, university forcing students to change their major or minor, personal discomfort, fear of being cut off from family support and funding, sexual repression, unsympathetic teachers, unwilling sexual discoveries, lack of friends, abandonment, activism, self-discovery, hope, and other challenges. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.
"The Closet Is Vast"
[Fall 2012]
Sam Johnson grew up
in Lafayette, Louisiana.
He was kind of a geek,
more interested in literature
and Louisiana history than
sports or school dances.
He didn't mind being
a bookworm. The books
never made fun of him.
Sam rarely showed
much interest in girls,
but that was okay -- he
had other things to do,
always busy with school.
His overcontrolling parents
ensured that he didn't dare
think much about anything else.
In September 2012, Sam enrolled in
the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
He wanted to major in English - Literature,
but his parents were paying for the tuition.
They insisted on Business - Management
instead, as a more practical degree.
"Reading books won't pay any bills,"
his father said, shaking his head.
"No, but teaching literature would,"
Sam grumbled. "I wanted to be
a teacher, not a businessman."
"Teachers die poor," his father said,
which had been true in the past,
though it was getting better.
They did let Sam choose
Literature as a minor, though.
He also wound up joining
the Sigma Chi fraternity,
like his father before him.
The company wasn't fun,
but it gave him a place to live
that was a lot nicer than the dorms.
He had a big bedroom to himself,
instead of sharing a tiny one. Plus
the house had a kitchen, a living room,
and a huge rec room in the basement.
The business classes were every bit
as boring as Sam had feared, but
he did manage to take a couple of
writing classes for the requirements.
He also found a batch of classes
about conserving the environment and
its resources, which got him thinking
about sustainable business. His father
might be convinced to go along with
that, as long as it turned a profit.
College might not suck too much.
[Fall 2014]
Business classes continued
to be just as boring as ever,
but the ethics class was
rather more interesting.
Sam was almost done with
his Literature minor, too.
Louisiana Literature was
fascinating this semester,
although he wasn't sure what
he'd pick to finish in spring.
Then disaster struck.
The Sigma Chi fraternity
got caught spiking the punch
with an alleged love potion
during a wild party at the house.
This caused many of the students
to get sick, and a few of them
never regained their health.
Sam was rather more concerned
with the fact that, after he stopped
throwing up his toenails, odd things
began happening to him now and then.
Sometimes nobody seemed to see him,
or else they'd jump when he spoke to
them as if he'd come out of nowhere.
Then he started falling through things,
instead of bumping into them as usual.
Even more startling was the discovery
that Sam could bend around things as if
he had no bones, or stretch incredibly far.
So he did what any frisky college boy
would do, and used his mouth on his cock.
It confirmed that, yeah, dogs had it good,
because that was a lot more fun than
his few fumbling attempts with a girl.
The university could not prove
exactly who spiked the punch.
However, they were outraged
by the incident, so they decided
to punish the fraternity as a whole.
The three suspected culprits
were given a choice of leaving
the college or switching their major
to Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Only one of them actually stayed.
The other brothers in the fraternity
had a choice of leaving the college
or switching their minor instead.
"That's not fair," Sam protested.
"I only attended the party because
the house rules require meeting
a minimum of social events hosted
by the fraternity. I had nothing
to do with planning the thing!"
"It doesn't matter," his advisor
said with a shrug. "You belong to
Sigma Chi, so you change your minor
to Gender and Sexuality Studies or
you have to leave the university."
"Yeah well, you get to tell my parents
that they have to pay for more tuition,
because there's no way I can finish
my major and a whole new minor in
just three semesters," Sam snapped.
"That's another eighteen fucking credits!"
His parents agreed with extreme resentment,
not wanting to waste the money that they
had already invested in his college degree.
Sam could cram the first couple classes
for the new minor into his senior year,
because he was damned if he'd give up
Literature when it was almost done, but
he would need the summer semester
to finish the rest of the gender classes.
[Spring 2015]
The spring semester was ...
rather challenging for Sam.
His Human Resources class
brought up all kinds of issues
that he had never thought much
about before hitting that homework.
He had also decided to get a jumpstart
on the gender stuff by picking a class in
Queer Literature, Media, and Culture
to complete his English minor.
That was making Sam start
to think uncomfortable things
like how most people who weren't
into girls were actually not straight
like he'd always been told he was.
So if he wasn't straight after all,
then what the hell was he?
Sam watched the protests and
rallies for queer rights that he
could never hope to attend.
If he dared step out of line,
then his parents would cut off
his tuition funding and thus
all hope of graduating.
Instead, he stayed home
at the Sigma Chi house that
he hated more every day,
and did his homework, and
felt ever more uncomfortable.
"What do you have to complain
about?" his father said. "You
met their fool demands, so
you get to stay in college."
"If only you knew," Sam said
as he looked the other way.
[Fall 2015]
Sam had finally gotten through
most of the stupid requirements for
his Business degree, leaving him
room to choose electives for it.
He found a senior seminar
on Local Businesses, so that
wasn't a total waste of his time.
The Ideas and Issues class
for his new minor just about
made him want to climb out
of his own skin, though.
"Your paper lacks depth,"
the teacher said quellingly.
"I expect to see more detail
in the future if you want
to pass this class."
"I'll try," Sam muttered.
"This isn't really my area."
"It is now," the teacher said,
"so learn to deal with it."
Sam was trying, really
he was, but it was hard.
Nothing seemed to fit
the way that it used to,
and he didn't like that.
There was nothing
he could actually do
to change it, though.
Sam was gay.
He couldn't hide it
anymore, at least
not from himself.
He had to hide it from
his parents, if he didn't
want to get kicked out.
So no coming out for Sam,
no party with rainbow cake
and glitter-glazed flowers,
not for a year or more.
If then. He didn't really
relish the idea of having
his whole family refuse
to speak to him ever again.
[Spring 2016]
Sam managed to land
an internship about
sustainable business,
so that had potential
for future employment.
He also had a minor class on
Sociology of Sex and Sexualities,
which made him squirm inside.
He wasn't comfortable with
that stuff yet, but he needed
the class for the requirements.
Sam should have been
getting ready to graduate,
but now he couldn't.
He didn't really have
any friends on campus,
but almost everyone he
knew was preparing for
graduation and going
out into the wider world.
Being left behind sucked.
So Sam took advantage
of his new superpowers of
Phasing and Elasticity.
He bought a bodysuit of
sparkly metallic krevel with
rainbow stripes and started
going out as Everygayman.
It made him feel powerful
and even a little fabulous
in a way that nothing else
had ever done before.
He went to all the protests
and rallies that he couldn't
afford to attend as himself.
He began advocating for
queer rights in a state
that pretty much wished
queer people didn't exist.
Whenever things turned
dangerous, Everygayman
used his abilities to help
the other queerfolk escape
from bigots and police alike.
Once he even got interviewed
by another college's newspaper.
"What do you think about the closet?"
the student journalist asked him.
"Most people think the closet is
a small room," said Everygayman.
"When you're inside it, though,
the closet is vast. You can
do a lot in there, more than
anyone ever imagined."
He wasn't ready to come out,
not yet, and he knew that.
He wasn't finished
growing into himself.
However, he still had
four more classes
to take for his minor.
Maybe they would help.
* * *
Notes:
This poem is long, so its notes appear separately.
siliconshaman and acelightning73. It also fills the "Dress up / Costumes" square in my 10-1-21 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred, ng_moonmoth, janetmiles, and edorfaus. It belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics.Warning: This poem contains intense and controversial topics. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers. It includes a lack of self-awareness, overcontrolling and manipulative parents, bad fit at a fraternity, spiked punch, sudden illness, superpower manifestation, confusion, university forcing students to change their major or minor, personal discomfort, fear of being cut off from family support and funding, sexual repression, unsympathetic teachers, unwilling sexual discoveries, lack of friends, abandonment, activism, self-discovery, hope, and other challenges. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.
"The Closet Is Vast"
[Fall 2012]
Sam Johnson grew up
in Lafayette, Louisiana.
He was kind of a geek,
more interested in literature
and Louisiana history than
sports or school dances.
He didn't mind being
a bookworm. The books
never made fun of him.
Sam rarely showed
much interest in girls,
but that was okay -- he
had other things to do,
always busy with school.
His overcontrolling parents
ensured that he didn't dare
think much about anything else.
In September 2012, Sam enrolled in
the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
He wanted to major in English - Literature,
but his parents were paying for the tuition.
They insisted on Business - Management
instead, as a more practical degree.
"Reading books won't pay any bills,"
his father said, shaking his head.
"No, but teaching literature would,"
Sam grumbled. "I wanted to be
a teacher, not a businessman."
"Teachers die poor," his father said,
which had been true in the past,
though it was getting better.
They did let Sam choose
Literature as a minor, though.
He also wound up joining
the Sigma Chi fraternity,
like his father before him.
The company wasn't fun,
but it gave him a place to live
that was a lot nicer than the dorms.
He had a big bedroom to himself,
instead of sharing a tiny one. Plus
the house had a kitchen, a living room,
and a huge rec room in the basement.
The business classes were every bit
as boring as Sam had feared, but
he did manage to take a couple of
writing classes for the requirements.
He also found a batch of classes
about conserving the environment and
its resources, which got him thinking
about sustainable business. His father
might be convinced to go along with
that, as long as it turned a profit.
College might not suck too much.
[Fall 2014]
Business classes continued
to be just as boring as ever,
but the ethics class was
rather more interesting.
Sam was almost done with
his Literature minor, too.
Louisiana Literature was
fascinating this semester,
although he wasn't sure what
he'd pick to finish in spring.
Then disaster struck.
The Sigma Chi fraternity
got caught spiking the punch
with an alleged love potion
during a wild party at the house.
This caused many of the students
to get sick, and a few of them
never regained their health.
Sam was rather more concerned
with the fact that, after he stopped
throwing up his toenails, odd things
began happening to him now and then.
Sometimes nobody seemed to see him,
or else they'd jump when he spoke to
them as if he'd come out of nowhere.
Then he started falling through things,
instead of bumping into them as usual.
Even more startling was the discovery
that Sam could bend around things as if
he had no bones, or stretch incredibly far.
So he did what any frisky college boy
would do, and used his mouth on his cock.
It confirmed that, yeah, dogs had it good,
because that was a lot more fun than
his few fumbling attempts with a girl.
The university could not prove
exactly who spiked the punch.
However, they were outraged
by the incident, so they decided
to punish the fraternity as a whole.
The three suspected culprits
were given a choice of leaving
the college or switching their major
to Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Only one of them actually stayed.
The other brothers in the fraternity
had a choice of leaving the college
or switching their minor instead.
"That's not fair," Sam protested.
"I only attended the party because
the house rules require meeting
a minimum of social events hosted
by the fraternity. I had nothing
to do with planning the thing!"
"It doesn't matter," his advisor
said with a shrug. "You belong to
Sigma Chi, so you change your minor
to Gender and Sexuality Studies or
you have to leave the university."
"Yeah well, you get to tell my parents
that they have to pay for more tuition,
because there's no way I can finish
my major and a whole new minor in
just three semesters," Sam snapped.
"That's another eighteen fucking credits!"
His parents agreed with extreme resentment,
not wanting to waste the money that they
had already invested in his college degree.
Sam could cram the first couple classes
for the new minor into his senior year,
because he was damned if he'd give up
Literature when it was almost done, but
he would need the summer semester
to finish the rest of the gender classes.
[Spring 2015]
The spring semester was ...
rather challenging for Sam.
His Human Resources class
brought up all kinds of issues
that he had never thought much
about before hitting that homework.
He had also decided to get a jumpstart
on the gender stuff by picking a class in
Queer Literature, Media, and Culture
to complete his English minor.
That was making Sam start
to think uncomfortable things
like how most people who weren't
into girls were actually not straight
like he'd always been told he was.
So if he wasn't straight after all,
then what the hell was he?
Sam watched the protests and
rallies for queer rights that he
could never hope to attend.
If he dared step out of line,
then his parents would cut off
his tuition funding and thus
all hope of graduating.
Instead, he stayed home
at the Sigma Chi house that
he hated more every day,
and did his homework, and
felt ever more uncomfortable.
"What do you have to complain
about?" his father said. "You
met their fool demands, so
you get to stay in college."
"If only you knew," Sam said
as he looked the other way.
[Fall 2015]
Sam had finally gotten through
most of the stupid requirements for
his Business degree, leaving him
room to choose electives for it.
He found a senior seminar
on Local Businesses, so that
wasn't a total waste of his time.
The Ideas and Issues class
for his new minor just about
made him want to climb out
of his own skin, though.
"Your paper lacks depth,"
the teacher said quellingly.
"I expect to see more detail
in the future if you want
to pass this class."
"I'll try," Sam muttered.
"This isn't really my area."
"It is now," the teacher said,
"so learn to deal with it."
Sam was trying, really
he was, but it was hard.
Nothing seemed to fit
the way that it used to,
and he didn't like that.
There was nothing
he could actually do
to change it, though.
Sam was gay.
He couldn't hide it
anymore, at least
not from himself.
He had to hide it from
his parents, if he didn't
want to get kicked out.
So no coming out for Sam,
no party with rainbow cake
and glitter-glazed flowers,
not for a year or more.
If then. He didn't really
relish the idea of having
his whole family refuse
to speak to him ever again.
[Spring 2016]
Sam managed to land
an internship about
sustainable business,
so that had potential
for future employment.
He also had a minor class on
Sociology of Sex and Sexualities,
which made him squirm inside.
He wasn't comfortable with
that stuff yet, but he needed
the class for the requirements.
Sam should have been
getting ready to graduate,
but now he couldn't.
He didn't really have
any friends on campus,
but almost everyone he
knew was preparing for
graduation and going
out into the wider world.
Being left behind sucked.
So Sam took advantage
of his new superpowers of
Phasing and Elasticity.
He bought a bodysuit of
sparkly metallic krevel with
rainbow stripes and started
going out as Everygayman.
It made him feel powerful
and even a little fabulous
in a way that nothing else
had ever done before.
He went to all the protests
and rallies that he couldn't
afford to attend as himself.
He began advocating for
queer rights in a state
that pretty much wished
queer people didn't exist.
Whenever things turned
dangerous, Everygayman
used his abilities to help
the other queerfolk escape
from bigots and police alike.
Once he even got interviewed
by another college's newspaper.
"What do you think about the closet?"
the student journalist asked him.
"Most people think the closet is
a small room," said Everygayman.
"When you're inside it, though,
the closet is vast. You can
do a lot in there, more than
anyone ever imagined."
He wasn't ready to come out,
not yet, and he knew that.
He wasn't finished
growing into himself.
However, he still had
four more classes
to take for his minor.
Maybe they would help.
* * *
Notes:
This poem is long, so its notes appear separately.
Thoughts
Date: 2022-01-15 04:52 am (UTC)Woohoo!
>> There's so much we don't know here. <<
There's still a lot I don't know, too.
>> We get a very brief reference to people getting sick--this party was not a private event. It was a "wild party", so there were a lot of people there, both fraternity brothers and others. <<
Correct. It is wild in the way that fraternity parties often are, and why some colleges are vexed with them -- that environment invites trouble, and makes it difficult to determine what went wrong after trouble has in fact occurred.
>> The others were likely nearly all women students at the college. <<
There was a liberal mix of students, but it likely did lean toward sorority girls. That sort of fraternity likes a target-rich environment, but they also like having other guy buddies around. Aside from being their idea of fun, it muddles the search for culprits if multiple fraternities are represented.
>>Lots of people got sick, so presumably that includes a lot of the women too, not just fraternity brothers. Some of the people never regained their health.<<
Correct.
>> The aftermath of the party would have been very public indeed, with police and doctors involved in trying to figure out who spiked the punch and what with. <<
Ohhh, yeah. Much fuss and hubbub was made. But with zetetic materials, it's extremely difficult to pin down anything even if you have a pure sample rather than whatever is in the bodies of the people getting sick. Pinning it down to the party was easy with so many people there. Pinning it down to the punch bowl was only a little harder. Beyond that, they managed "Someone dropped a metagen in the bowl" and not much more.
Figuring out who might have done so generated a vast list of possibilities -- anyone at the party could, theoretically, have done it. But it's more likely to be a host than a guest; they'd have the opportunity to spike the punch before it was served. If they thought they were using a harmless aphrodisiac that would just put everyone in a horny mood, then they wouldn't mind dosing their brothers or even themselves, much the same as when punch is spiked with alcohol. The times you see controlled aim with things like roofies, it goes in something that only the target group will consume; jello shots are popular for targeting girls because many boys think they're too girly to touch.
So then you have to look at context. We've got a fraternity with a reputation for questionable behavior, which makes its members more likely suspects. The people responsible for planning the party and its beverages would be the leading suspects; possibly also the party monitor if they had one, but they're often unaffiliated and thus less implicated, and they can't be everywhere at once. Logically the university would've whittled their list down to the boys with the most responsibility for the event, whose records also indicated they made a habit of misbehavior in keeping with this example. Anyone with a clean record and/or little to do with the event would be implicated only by association (i.e. may have helped but not known all about it, or may have heard about it but not said anything). Without the hard evidence to make a court case worth pursuing, the college used the tools available on its own turf: academics.
I expect that the parents of other students likely sued the college for failure to maintain a safe environment. This is all fairly similar to what happens when punch is spiked with ordinary drugs or alcohol and someone(s) gets hurt.
>> How many other people developed super powers? <<
Probably two or three. The exact number may not be known if not everyone had a conspicuous ability, or if someone left the school. A big frat party like this can have several hundred people moving through it over the 6-8 hours of its activity, most or all of whom would indulge in free food and drinks. If you figure 1:100 people who drank the spiked punch later developed superpowers, that's a typical strength. Stuff with a higher manifestation rate tends to have worse side effects. Here, some people had permanent health damage but nobody died. That group is probably same size as or slightly larger than the ones who developed superpowers.
Something else we can tell from current information: whatever it was, didn't happen fast, at least in terms of dramatic effects. If it had, people would've noticed and the party would've been shut down, thus greatly reducing the number of affected individuals. They might have just thought they were extra buzzed that night, or unusually hungover the next morning, until things got worse. But once the first handful of students showed up at the campus health center with the same symptoms, it would quickly come out that they were at the same party, and then the college would try to contact everyone who went there in case it was contagious or toxic.
>> How many non-students snuck in? <<
Probably at least a few dozen. If they were fraternity alumni, they wouldn't have to sneak; graduated members are supposed to be a "responsible influence." (Consider that Sam is a legacy member; I wouldn't call his father responsible, but that's the theory.) Also, it depends on the house location and the campus parameters whether a frat house is considered part of campus or private property, which influences what rules apply; often they're not limited to student guests. Many colleges have fraternity houses either completely separate or offset, which is why Greek parties tend to be wilder and more popular.
>> I'm betting that at least one person asserted that the fraternity was innocent, that some supervillain snuck in and spiked the punch.<<
Well, yeah, anytime something is at a party that shouldn't be, the host insists that someone else must have brought it. This is often true. They can't search people, after all, that would be an invasion of privacy and thus illegal. Lots of people smuggle things into parties, but it's usually for personal use, or occasionally for sale. The hosts can't do anything about that unless they see it, in which case they can eject the culprit or in more extreme cases call the police. Think about it, if Heron caught someone doing that, he'd go apeshit. But if he thought it was zetetic, he'd be more likely to call SPOON than the cops.
Here's where the pattern of behavior comes in. If the fraternity has had problem after problem, nobody's likely to believe them that this time it was somebody else's fault. If the nerd party at the Foreign Languages department gets spiked, that's much more likely an outside attack, because they aren't in the habit of throwing parties that wild.