“My parents, they have a lot of money. So, they go on a lot of vacations, which never included me. They used to say it was because they didn’t want me to miss school, but I always felt it was because they didn’t want me around.” He took another long drag of his cigarette. “For the longest time, they just left me with babysitters, family members, or other random caregivers they could pawn me off on. Like one of the maids who needed extra money.” He tried unsuccessfully to hide the feelings of hurt that permeated this statement. But I knew Ly well enough to catch the subtle intonations that betrayed his resentment towards his parents.

“When I was fourteen, my half-brother Nathan moved in with us, and he became my unofficial primary caregiver.” A smile of pure joy crossed Ly’s face as he spoke his brother’s name. “Nathan was seventeen and had spent most of his life living with his mother, who was awarded full custody after a messy divorce from my father.” Ly twirled his fingers to signal to me to roll a joint, which I immediately began to do. He nodded his head in approval and sighed loudly. “Sadly, Nathan’s mother was killed in a drunk driving accident. So, he came to live with us. And I could not have been happier!” Another joyous smile overtook Ly’s face, and he began to bob up and down as he took the joint from my hand and puffed away at it.

“I loved Nathan. To me, he was the epitome of cool. He represented everything I hoped I would be. He was well-dressed, well-groomed, had gorgeous hair, a toned body, and could make any woman fall for him with just a glance of his doe-like eyes. And he was so calm and collected. Even at his mother’s funeral, he betrayed no emotion; he just kept a cool face while still managing to look super sexy in his all-black outfit.” Ly took a final drag of the joint, then handed it back to me. For a seemingly long moment, he stared at his hands, which were cusped over his upwardly bent knees. His fingers began to twitch as though they were unconsciously playing some piano riff that only they could hear.

“One night, Nathan broke into our parents' liquor cabinet and pulled out a very old bottle of vodka. ‘They’ll never notice,’ he said as he began pouring the first of several drinks that night.” Ly stared at the burning ember that topped his freshly lit cigarette. He continued in a tone that sounded hollow and distant, as though his mind had separated from his body to cope with the psychological trauma of the story he was about to recount. “I was a pretty tiny kid and had very little experience with drinking. So, I got really drunk, really fast. At one point, I wound up puking in the kitchen sink, leaving the whole room reeking of vodka. I laid down on the floor while Nathan giggled and washed the vomit down with the sink’s tap. When he finished, he scooped me up in his arms, and carried me to bed.” A bitter, crooked smile forced itself across Ly’s face. “But not to my bed. To his bed. Which felt cool as he first laid me down, but quickly became warmed by the heat that I was irrepressibly emanating. Through my alcohol-blurred vision, I could make out the series of gestures that slowly informed me he was undressing. Unfortunately, by the time my mind had fully processed this information, he had already pulled down my pants, ripped off my shirt, and was slipping his hands into my underwear.” Ly’s eyes swelled with tears and his voice began to crack as though he had reverted back to his fourteen-year-old self. “He started playing with…playing with my…playing with me. In the front at first, then he moved to the back, where he put his fingers in my…in my…” He let out a sob as the tears began to drip down his cheeks and onto the knees of his jeans.

“I guess this made me grow hard, because he grew hard, and he began rubbing himself until he came all over me.” Ly wiped the tears from his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie. “I’ll never forget his face: that look of self-satisfaction as he watched the thick liquid spray across my chest, stomach, and chin. I’ll never forget the warmth of that liquid, and how it made me feel as though I was loved by somebody, in a way that I had never felt loved by anyone before. But it also made me feel sick. Sick because it was my brother, who I loved very deeply. But it was because of that love that I felt I deserved this forced affection, and all the pain and regret that went along with it.” Ly paused to take a deep breath. “I fell asleep that night wishing that the whole thing had been a dream. I realized my wish hadn’t come true when I woke the next morning lying next to Nathan, both of us naked, and my torso covered in come.” The pace of Ly’s voice became slower and the choice of his words became more deliberate. “I got up, walked to the bathroom, took a piss, then jumped in the shower. I scrubbed off the come, curled myself into a ball, and cried for a half hour while the shower water poured over me.”

He looked out at the river as I had done previously, seemingly staring at some past memory that only he could see. “I wanted the water to wash away all the pain and ugliness of the night before. I wanted it to cleanse me and leave me feeling new and removed from the trauma I had just experienced.” He sighed loudly. “But it didn’t. It didn’t do anything. It didn’t wash away the hurt. It didn’t make things better. It didn’t make me feel better. Instead, it left things feeling the same. It left me feeling the same. And I didn’t want to continue feeling that way. I didn’t want to continue feeling anything. I just wanted to feel invisible, and to pretend that the whole incident was invisible, and impossible, and had never happened. But it wasn’t easy. Because he wouldn’t let that happen.” The pace of Ly’s voice quickened, and his body began to shake. “He wouldn’t let me forget it. He let it continue to develop, eventually progressing to full-on genital penetration.” Ly ground his jaw so loudly I thought his teeth would shatter from the pressure.

“The frequency began to increase, too. Even when my parents were home and fast asleep, he would sneak into my room and play his sick, twisted games with me. And every time I would feel so horrible and nauseated, and so desperate to distract myself from the physical and emotional pain I was suffering that I began to starve myself. Because the emptiness and hunger pangs that racked my body made me feel good, and somehow full and whole.” Ly’s eyes glazed over, and his face took on a look of intense contemplation. “I can’t really explain why self-starvation felt so satisfying. Maybe because it somehow caused some release of endorphins that allowed me to associate the incestuous rapes with feelings of happiness in order to distract me from the fact that all I really wanted to do was die every time I so much as looked at Nathan. Maybe it acted as some sort of personal test. Like, if I could tolerate starving myself, then I could tolerate living with my rapist while struggling unsuccessfully to gather the strength to tell someone what was happening to me. Maybe it acted as some sort of cry for help. Like, if I got skinny enough and lost enough weight, maybe someone would notice that something was wrong with me and try to help me. Or maybe it was some sort of deterrent, a way to make myself look unappealing and unattractive in order to ward off his advances.” Ly let out a low, sarcastic snort. “Or maybe I wanted to make myself more attractive to him, and the whole thing was just driven by vanity.” I didn’t believe this last statement, and I knew Ly didn’t believe it either. “But whatever the reason, I came to love starvation, and it came to be a constant part of my life. It made me happy; it let me cope; it gave me a reason to keep powering through life. Even though, deep down, I really just wanted to give up and die. So, in a weird way, I suppose that anorexia gave me life, even though it's always been slowly killing me.”

After an awkward pause, Elio croaked out, “How long did this go on for?”

Ly’s eyes began to swell with tears again and he let out a deep sigh as he responded, in a trembling voice, “Two years. Two years before my parents began to notice that I wasn’t eating; that my weight had plummeted to less than one hundred pounds; that I became sad and depressed after every encounter I had with Nathan. But it still took them six months more before they really became concerned. At first, I thought it was because they actually started paying attention to me and my problems. But I later learned that they only started to worry after one of the maids had confessed that she saw Nathan and me making out by the pool one evening when she had worked late and assumed we didn’t realize she was still there.”

“So, what did your parents do?” Elio asked, his voice a barely audible whisper.

“They waited, I guess, and watched us closely. I suppose they became suspicious enough to intervene because, one night, when Nathan was just about to fuck me in the ass, they flung open the door and came barging into my room.” Ly began to shake violently as he fought back tears and struggled to keep an even, emotionless tone to his voice. “Nathan began sputtering out a series of excuses that no one in their right mind would have believed. I don’t know what my parents thought, or how they physically reacted, because I buried my face in my pillow and struggled to constrain the sound of my sobs of fear, embarrassment, and relief that my parents had finally, finally realized what was going on between us. I didn’t hear the majority of the conversation. I only remember hearing my father send Nathan to his room, while my mother curled up in my bed next to me, and I cried for an hour into her chest until I fell into a fitful, unsatisfying sleep.”

Ly ran his tongue along his upper lip and slowly blinked his eyes twice before continuing. “The next morning, my father announced that Nathan would be going away to university in England, and that he was to begin packing his bags as he was leaving as soon as possible. My father also announced that he was hiring a nutrionist, who would work with me to improve my eating habits. And none of us would ever speak of the incident again.” Ly changed his tone to one of sarcasm and bitterness. “So, instead of psychological help, I got a guy who just told me what I was supposed to eat every day. And I mean, I guess it sort of helped, because eating did make me feel better and look better. But it was all superficial. It didn’t make me feel emotionally better. Not like anorexia did. So, the second my parents decided that I was miraculously cured, they fired my nutrionist and went right on pretending that nothing had happened, and everything was okay.”

Ly’s voice began to crackle with anger as he declared, “But it wasn’t okay! I still felt horrible inside! So, I went right back to anorexia! Because it offered the distraction and self-satisfaction that I needed to keep going. And no matter how hard I try, I keep coming back to it. Because it keeps calling to me and tempting me. And every time I go back to it, I feel happy, satisfied, full, and complete. Because without it, I would have to face the fact that no one gives enough of a shit about me to in any way attempt to punish the brother that repeatedly raped me!”

Ly broke down and began bawling. Ignoring our no-touch rule, I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him tight against me. He dug his face into my shoulder and poured tears onto my hoodie. I rested my right cheek against the top of his forehead and whispered, “It’s okay, it’s okay…”

Ly’s sobs slowly silenced themselves until they became a series of low, desperate whimpers. As his cries finally ceased, I expected him to abruptly pull away from our embrace. Instead, he nestled his head against my chest and entwined his left hand with my right. Nuzzled together, we quietly allowed ourselves to absorb all the drama of the day's events.

After a long pause, Elio sat down beside me and crossed his hands over his knees. “I’m sorry,” he said as he looked at each of us with sympathetic eyes. “I’m sorry that you both went through…what you went through.”

“Thanks,” we simultaneously muttered as we awkwardly wiped away tears.

We gathered our stuff and headed back to the apartment. Once there, we snorted lines of coke, which re-ignited the hallucinatory effects of the acid. Ly and Elio began to bond as they discussed the successes and failures of the dozens of paintings and drawings that crowded every inch of their surroundings. I stood back and watched their intimate interaction with a smile on my face. No longer would I have to act as mediator between these two. No longer would I have to wonder if I would be forced to take sides. Because I was witnessing a friendship develop before my very eyes.

We sat in a circle on the floor, chain-smoking cigarettes while the drugs slowly began to fade from our systems. As the influence of sobriety overtook our conversation, Elio asked, “Will you do something for me?”

Ly and I exchanged a quick, suspicious glance. I turned to Elio, offering an affirmative nod while avoiding eye contact.

“Will you both eat at least one meal a day? For me, and for yourselves?” Elio's eyes darted between us as they began to glisten with tears. “I don’t wanna see you end up like your friend Stefan!”

This comment cut deep. What else could I say except, “Yes, of course, how could I refuse a reasonable request like that! And from someone like you, no less!” Naturally, I was lying. I wasn’t ready to give up anorexia just yet. But I couldn’t let Elio know that. And I knew Ly felt the same way. But we both vigorously shook Elio’s hand in agreement. If he knew we were lying, he expressed no knowledge of it as he proudly smiled at us.

We fell asleep in a heap of blankets on the living room floor as the sunrise broke through the thinly-veiled apartment windows. Elio laid on my right side and Ly on my left. I laid on my back, staring at the ceiling, basking in the joy of being surrounded by the two men I loved most in the world.