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The process of learned helplessness is not a process in which the victim is a fully consenting participant. It happens slowly, one action building upon another, until one’s own loss of autonomy has an unclear origin. The victim is left gaping and open, questioning how it all went wrong so quickly, when in reality it happened at a pace far slower than their own frightened, beating hearts. The individual’s drive, their passion, their ability to fight and lash out and think and process that not everything is ok, is stolen from them. You will always fail. Everything will always be bad. It can’t possibly get better. Not now. Not ever.
Sometimes, Mike forgets that it wasn’t always bad. He forgets that he wasn’t always drowning. He forgets that he used to know how to swim. He is always drowning nowadays and he can’t even remember how to breathe anymore. Nonetheless how to not let his lungs fill up with water, ballooning and weighing him down until he is lost forever and the bottom of the ocean. He is drowning. He is always fucking drowning.
The bills keep coming. He is drowning. He cheats on that test. He is drowning. He gets kicked out of college. He is drowning. He gets evicted from his student housing. He is drowning. His granny gets more sick. He is drowning. She gets more sick and god he is fucking drowning.
So when he does it for the first time, he doesn’t even process how bad it truly is. Because nothing could be worse than drowning, could it?
Trevor loves him. In his own fucked up backwards sort of way. And he loves Trevor. So when he asks him to do it, well how would he know what it feels like to swim? He has always been drowning and he can’t sink any lower, can he?
Perhaps Mike was naive in that thought, because he certainly can sink lower and lower and lower. And maybe he doesn’t really want to do it. Maybe he doesn’t really want it at all. But he tells himself he wants it, that it’s ok, because Trevor gave him that puppy dog look. “Please Mike” he whines, “It’ll only be once” the man works his bottom lip through his teeth “it’s not a big deal”. And Trevor gives him that look the one Mike has never been able to say no to and Trevor pumps his fist in the air triumphantly, a coy look replacing the pleading on as Mike mutters “anything for you Trev”. Even though his brain is screaming no, while he shakes his head yes at the same time. His stomach gurgles and protests, but he has already agreed and he is far too afraid to change his mind. To turn back to disappoint Trevor and see that look on his face and feel like even more of a failure. He has already failed college, failed his granny, failed his life, he can’t fail Trevor too. Mike is once again too naive to realize that Trevor is the one failing him. Trevor is the anchor on his foot, the reason he is drowning.
So he does it. And he hates it, hates himself. And he is drowning and he feels as if he is watching himself while he sits on the ceiling as it happens. He watches the man push him down to his knees in the back room of some seedy bar in Brooklyn, grasping short blonde hair so tightly it tears at the root. He watches as the stranger in front of him interacts with the other stranger that is occupying his own unfamiliar body. He watches his head tilted back by the large hand in his short hair. He watches the fingers in his mouth, probing at his tongue and prying his jaw open. He watches the man replace the fingers with a cock, short and girthy and glistening at the tip with precum. He remembers the cum. Hot and warm and salty and disgusting against his face and his lips and the back of his throat. And in his hair. And all over the clothing he later balls up and throws out. He wishes he could throw out the entire night with the clothing. Forget it ever happened. The feeling of his knees on the ground, the hand in his hair and the taste of the cum.
He remembers trying to feel angry. Red hot rage in his stomach, bubbling and curling up, begging to be released. He also remembers the emptiness that replaces the anger when it refuses to be relaxed and rather sits heavy in his stomach, burning the man from the inside out. And he remembers the drowning. He always remembers the drowning.
He remembers promising himself that he would never let it happen again.
He regrets making a promise to himself that he knows he can’t keep. And when it happens again and again, well he can’t even find it in himself to be upset. He is too numb for sadness. His anger is unable to surface because time and time again, Mike has learned that it is a cycle that he can never escape. So the sadness and pain and humiliation bubble in his stomach- simply becoming the passive emotions he refuses to waste time acknowledging. Because Mike knows if he wastes time acknowledging the emotions, they will swallow him up whole and he will go back to the perpetual drowning.
And god does he never stop fucking drowning and drownign and drownign and as time goes on it gets worse and worse and worse until Mike no longer recognize himself in the mirror. There is stubble on his face, not quite a beard, but rather a permanent inky shadow on his skin. His eyes are hollow and numb and the skin beneath them is blue and purple- a constellation of bruised skin from countless sleepless nights. His hair is overgrown, flopping into his face and down his neck. He is a stranger, fully and completely and it scares Mike to think about how little of himself he recognizes anymore.
As time goes on, things only get worse and the sensation of drowning becomes second nature. As the temperature becomes warmer, Mike’s mood usually becomes happier. He shakes off the feeling of drowsy winter depression and focuses on sunshine and happiness and joy. But this Spring is different and it almost appears as if Mike never transitions from one season to the next. The young man still wears large sweaters and pants all throughout the warming April and May and further into the scorching heat of a New York June. His clothing dwarfs his skinny frame and Mike fleeting remembers when the same clothing had fit him the previous year. The anxiety has caused him to lose weight and the bruises on his skin are better protected under sleeves anyways.
That summer is when the drowning climaxes and Mike swears he spends more time on his knees then he does otherwise. And when he is not on his knees, he is leaning over a toilet puking or shaking and cowering while curled in a ball on the floor in the space between his dining room table and the wall. Or biking around the city. Or screaming into a pillow. But never sleeping. No. Never sleeping. And the eye bags get worse and he is drowning.
One sweltering night in July, Mike hears Trevor through the crack between the floor and the bottom of the door, as he sits with his knees up to his chest against the door. His brain is trying to convince himself that his skinny frame would keep the door closed if Trevor tried to open it. He’s not allowed to lock the door to his room, though the physical lock is still there, the man has never questioned Trevor. If Trevor says don’t lock the door, well that means he is not going to lock the door. Mike doesn’t question Trevor. He just can’t.
Trevor owes his friend, a 30 something named Harley with ratty brown hair and a mean face, a grand and Mike winces. Biting his bottom lip so hard it bleeds, he hears Trevor through the door. “I don’t have it now,” Mike can picture the other man squirming, picking at his nails and scrunching his thick eyebrows together, “But you can have 3 joints and Mike for the night.”
His frame does not in fact keep Trevor out.
And no matter how hard he tries to dissociate he can still feel the cum and the blood on his lip and the tears on his face mixing together. And he can feel himself screaming because the man did not prepare him enough and he feels like he is being ripped apart from the inside out and he is own fire and fuck he hates it so fucking much. He hates it. He hates it. He hates it. He hates Trevor.
Mike could never hate Trevor. He loves Trevor and Trevor loves him and he will be ok. They’re boyfriend’s after all. Or at least he thought they were until Jenny and Trevor became official and Trevor slung his arm around Mike’s shoulder. “You’re my best friend Mike” he said “For now and forever, I need you dude” and then he kisses Mike and pins him against the wall and Mike pretends that Trevor’s hands aren’t against the ghost of a hundred bruises against his wrists. Because if Trevor is paying attention to him then Mike will be ok. Because Trevor loves Mike. Right?
And things actually feel somewhat better, until a few weeks later when they are at the same bar in Brooklyn that they were at the very first time it ever happened. And Trevor is playing pool and he is down, down bad. And when the men around him come asking for the money they are owed. Well, Trevor just smiles the same shit eating grin that is permanently etched into his features when anything money or drugs are brought up and he laughs. “Can I offer you boys the finest cockwarmer in Brooklyn?” And then they all laugh and pause as if to actually consider it. And Mike spends the night reciting law handbooks in his brain and ignoring the feeling of hands on his cock and in his eyes and on his throat and in his hair and he is drowning.
And then Trevor is bored and lazy and unemployed and needs another fix and it’s right back to “If I give you a go at mike and my word can we put this behind us?”
“Can I offer you Mike in exchange?”
“I’m broke but I know someone who can suck cock like a motherfucker”
Mike is always the answer. And Mike is always drowning.
Sometimes, he wonders if Jenny knows what Trevor has Mike doing behind closed doors (and sometimes in back alleys and bent over bars and pool tables and any other flat surface). Sometimes her warm gaze lingers on him just a second too long. He can feel her looking at the hand shaped bruises on his wrists, the ink blue and purple thumb prints on his neck, the marks in his hips when his shirt shifts or rides up. She stares at them, refusing to make eye contact with the man whose skin it adorns. It only ever lasts a few seconds and then she walks away with little huffing breaths, as if she can’t be bothered to process the information in front of her eyes. To put together he friends gaunt form, the bruises, the swollen lips and puffy eyes from crying, the sadness that pours and oozes and seeps out of Mike.
Mike is sure however that even if the woman is naive she knows that him and Trevor are fucking. Far more often than she stares at Mike’s bruises, she stares at Mike for a secondary reason. Her eyes hold fury and envy and contempt and Mike spends a lot more time than is necessarily valid wondering if Jenny thinks that Trevor just likes it rougher sometimes. And that this rough sex has to happen with a man, with Mike. Maybe she thinks that Trevor doesn’t want to hurt her. And she thinks that it really is just about rough masculine sex. And maybe she is right to an extent. Because you never fucking see Trevor whoring out his precious little girlfriend. no . Jenny is precious and perfect and must be protected. Trevor loves Jenny. Not like Trevor loves Mike. No. He really truly, genuinely lovers that girl with all his heart and Mike is just the whore. The convenient one. The one who is drowning. Jenny had been this way in Trevor’s mind since the minute they had met her. She had always been the one Trevor loved more. Jenny was to be protected at all costs and whoring out was reserved exclusively for Mike.
Mike who had known Trevor since the second grade. Mike who was Trevor’s first kiss. First crush. First, everything. Mike who was Trevor’s fall guy. Mike who had begged his best friend to come out for years. Tears welled up in blackened eyes as Trevor yelled and screamed and punched things while Mike curled into a ball, arms protecting his head. That’s what happened when Mike said no. Trevor screamed and Mike cried and Trevor hated when Mike cried about as much as Mike hated when Trevor screamed.
Mike had always struggled with the label of victim. Words like domestic violence and abuse feeling forgein when he dared think them or whisper them aloud at his bruised and battered reflection in the mirror. Him and Trevor weren’t even dating and Trevor loved him and he was a man and he wasn’t abused. He wasn’t abused. He wasn’t abused. HE WAS NOT FUCKING ABUSED. FUCK.
But the rational part of his brain, the part that didn’t let years of abuse and gaslighting and manipulation taint his eidetic retellings of pamphlets for domestic violence victims. Well that part of his brain knew that he was abused. It wasn’t personal, it was a fact and he could cite the dictionary for god's sake.
“violent or aggressive behavior within the home, typically involving the violent abuse of a spouse or partner.”
Trevor and him were partners. And Trevor was violent with Mike and they lived together in a home. And god Mike knew he was abused. Not even to mention his partner pimping him out regularly, which was a can of worms that mike didn’t even want to open. Because it was easier to ignore the abuse when he refused to acknowledge any of it.
And yet it still hurt him that he was often nothing more to Trevor than a cheap whore, especially when he considered that Trevor was everything to Mike. But no, Mike was just a whore. The same Mikle who would do anything for Trevor. Mike the genius, who had let his future be washed down the drain for the very same man who rented him out to play cheap tricks to cover his not boyfriend’s perpetual, never ending debts. Mike the loser. Mike the fucking whore.
And of course what Mike gave would never be enough. Trevor gave him those eyes, begging Mike “Please baby, you just need to bring the briefcase to the room listed, stay for a little fun” Trevor waggled his eyebrows as Mike swallowed back acidic bile, “and then you can leave.”. His grime as coy and predatory, “it will be easy” he whined, leaning forward to kiss a despondent Mike.
Mike blanched at the statement, baring his teeth like a scared, corned animal. “It’s never easy” he fidgeted with his hands, pulling at each knuckle in his fingers “and it just seems like a lot…” he whispered. His heart refused to beat and the drowning feeling felt more like crashing, roaring waves in his ears.
He was naive when thinking the other man’s pause could mean anything positive, and he flinched, his entire body feeling far too hot, limbs feeling far too heavy, as the beer bottle smashed into a million tiny glass shards inches from his head.
“It wasn’t an option babe” Trevor laughed, smacking Mike backside, “I thought you were a genius princess, so you must know by now that I own this ass.”
There was blood on his face when Jenny came over a few hours later. Mike had been far too dazed and out of it to competently remove the shards of glass from the milky white skin of his cheek and Trevor was years past caring if Mike was hurt. Her face had screwed up when she saw the drying blood and her gaze shifted to the remnants of the beer bottle on the hardwood floor of the kitchen. Her eyebrows knit together and she looked genuinely concerned for one parting, rapidly fleeting moment of time. Mike wished he could keep the expression on her face bottled up forever, so he could have it all for himself anytime he felt lonely or sad or so helpless or low. Anytime he was drowning. But instead, the expression was gone so quickly it may have never existed in the first place, rather being a trick of the light or of Mike’s own delusional overwhelming need for love and comfort.
She then snuggled up with Trevor on the couch all night, tucking her feet up under her petite frame, kissing Trevor long and passionately and slowly, making eye contact with a bloody, battered Mike over her boyfriend’s shoulder. Mike himself was sitting on the floor only a few feet away from the couple. His back was against the couch and his knees were up to his chest and he was trying to make himself feel and look as small as humanly possible. But it wasn’t working and Jenny was looking at him as they kissed with a meanness in her eyes. Her expression aptly letting the other man know “he’s mine, not yours” and “you’re a faggot and a whore and I know what Trevor does to you and I think that it is a good thing and for the best”. And any number of other horrible things that Mike already thought to be true. She makes him feel invisible and exposed like a live wire all at once and he hates it more than anything.
Eventually, unable to take the sensation of being watched anymore, the sound of the kissing and the feeling of blood drying on his face, Mike decided to leave. He grabbed the briefcase as he left and Mike was rewarded by Trevor pulling away from sucking Jenny’s face just long enough for him to smirk and say “I knew you would do it, my good boy” and Mike left before he could process the pain of seeing his two best friends making out any longer. And further, he left before the overwhelming feeling of warmth and joy left his body after being Trevor’s good boy and in front of Jenny as well. He wanted to be Trevor’s good boy, so he took the briefcase and when Trevor texted him the address of the drop, he typed it into his GPS right away. He set the directions and then backed away towards the Chilton Hotel at a breakneck speed, hoping his borrowed suit and bloody face wouldn’t make him stand out too much.
As Mike ran through the hallways, out of breath, sweat sticking prickly blonde hair to the skin of his gaunt face. A part of him had wanted to give into the water in his lungs. Give up and let the cops overtake him. Just let it all happen. But the small part of his brain that still seemed to work even after everything he had been through reminded him that he needed to keep on running if only in the name of the tiny part of self preservation he still had. Perhaps a drug charge, on that would hold a 20 odd or something year minimum sentence, was not the way he wanted to let his life go. He was already broken and battered and bruised at the hands of his not boyfriend, sort of pimp, lifelong best friend. He already had no college degree, no future, not nothing. Wouldn’t prison only make that worse? The scariest, smallest part of his brain truly wondered if prison would be better. At least in prison there would be no Trevor.
So he let his feet carry him and his motormouth run wildly through the hallways and down the stairwell and then a pretty red head was letting him into a room and for the first time in a long time Mike’s heart fluttered for a single second, his nativity running wild once more. What if he could just become this ‘Rick Sorkin’, shedding Mike Ross like a snake skin. Leaving him, leaving Trevor, leaving the pain and sorrow and humiliation behind. He could be different. He could be new and smart and a genius again. His life could be back on track and everything could get better. Mike knew better than to hold his breath.
He reached forward to shake the man’s hand and the briefcase he had been holding so dearly spilled open and if Mike thought the feeling of constantly drowning was bad, well this was something akin to getting swung out full force with a baseball bat, all while drowning and being lit on fire all at once.
As the latch opened on the briefcase, first came the weed awkwardly spilling out. “Woah, what do we have here?” the man chuckled, but the laugh died on his lips as the briefcase continued to empty. Because after the weed came the condoms, 4 of them to be exact. And after the condoms came the little baggy of pills. And Mike felt so sick to his stomach he feared he was going to puke right on top of the strangers shining shoes.
The implication of what Trevor had intended Mike to have done in this drop sat thick and heavy in the air. He was disgusted and humiliated and so fucking angry. Trevor had implied that Mike “should stay and have some fun”, but he knew the other man was aware of how weary Mike was feeling over it. Trevor clearly had known Mike was tired, and the man was clearly more tired after he was beaten for daring to not want to drop the briefcase off at the hotel. He knew that Mike didn’t have it in him. He had to have known. And instead of Trevor even pretending to ask Mike to sleep with the dealers he was meeting, he had done far worse. He had provided all of the necessary items for Mike to have been trapped like a bug, unable to say no or protest. Drug and assaulted. All physical evidence caught in a condom and disposed of.
Mike shivered, his bony hands shaking. There were four condoms. How many people had Trevor intended to let use him? Four? All at once? One at a time or the same disgusting drug dealer, slowly using each condom separately. Taking his sweet time as Mike was drugged and helpless, unable to protest or say no or scream out for help when it all became too much.
The sharply dressed man in front of him dragged him out of his thoughts. It felt as if no time had passed between the snarky laughing over the pot and what came next, after the man saw the shiny foil and little baggy of pills on the floor. His face flashed with something akin to nausea, and regardless of the man being a stranger, he still felt like it was an expression that rarely graced the older man’s features. The expression was gone as quickly as it had appeared, however. His features rearranging back into a cocky smirk with the ease of someone who played people and their emotions professionally.
“Why don’t you go sit over there?” The man said, his voice charming and appealing. “This sounds like a great story that I need to hear.”
And then he left a shaking and bewildered Mike to lower himself into one of the chairs in front of the large oak desk, as the mystery man bent down to collect the spilled packages of pot. He looked bizarre, down on his hands and knees collecting the drugs and neatly placing them back into the briefcase and closing it. Mike was trying to self soothe, by repeating facts in his brain from the New York City Penal code
“. S 221.05 Unlawful possession of marijuana.
A person is guilty of unlawful possession of marijuana when he
knowingly and unlawfully possesses marihuana.
Unlawful possession of marijuana is a violation punishable only by a
fine of not more than one hundred dollars. However, where the defendant
has previously been convicted of an offense defined in this article or
article 220 of this chapter, committed within the three years
immediately preceding such violation, it shall be punishable (a) only by
a fine of not more than two hundred dollars, if the defendant was
previously convicted of one such offense committed during such period,
and (b) by a fine of not more than two hundred fifty dollars or a term
of imprisonment not in excess of fifteen days or both, if the defendant
was previously convicted of two such offenses committed during such
Period.”
Mike was shaken out of his thoughts by a warm hum, “You have got to be kidding me?” The man’s voice was snarky and full, “You are not reciting the New York City penal code as an anti anxiety measure” He barked out a laugh and for the first time in a long time Mike found himself smiling, the smallest little smile. He hadn’t realized he had been speaking allowed and if it had been Trevor he would have been backhanded for the annoying quirk.
When Mike did not respond, the man simply continued working. He finished packing the pot back into the briefcase and, leaving the other offending items alone as he worked. When he was done with that task, he turned to Mike “May I?” he asked, his voice never losing its cocky assuredness.
And Mike winced, swallowing hard. Was this the moment the seemingly nice man abandoned his own morals in favor of overpowering the already weakened Mike? Of drugging him? Fucking him? Once? Twice? More? Mike hated that he had started to like the stranger and the thought of this happening terrified him. But some deranged, naive part of him believed that this stranger was safe. That he was going to be ok. So he shook his head. Mike knew his place anyways and if the stranger wanted to fuck him, well at least he seemed like he would be nice enough while he did it.
The stranger smiled softly, placing the briefcase next to him and then using the toe of his overly expensive shiny shoe to push the offending items towards the door of the room. He then stuck his head on the door, clearing his throat “Donna, please see that these were disposed of properly and promptly.”
And if Mike thought he saw pity on Donna’s face, well the stranger's fiery assistant was somehow even better at hiding her emotions than he was.
“Now,” Harvey, Mike's brain supplying the information from when they had initially shaken hands, started “how the hell did you know they were the police?”
Mike was in awe that this man wanted him to actually share the story. That after all of that, Harvey was treating him more like a human than a piece of meat to be fucked and used and came in. Why was he being so nice? How could he possibly be treating him so nicely?
Harvey waved his hand a little, prompting Mike to tell the story, but the younger man simply couldn’t wrap his head around how kind this interaction was. Tears pricked at the back of his eyelids and he pulled at his knuckles once again.
“Hey,” the nice, pitying voice was back again and one large, warm hand was placed on top of his shaking one. “Let me help you kid.” Harvey tried to duck his head to make eye contact with Mike, “You’re safe now” the hand squeezed his “You are safe and clearly brilliant and I want to hear your story”
And for the first time in a long time, Mike felt himself breathe in air without his lungs filling with water. Without automatically drowning. He titled his head up, making eye contact with the other man. Taking a leap of faith. Opening his mouth and sharing his story. And Harvey laughed in all of the right places and seemed really truly engaged and god this amazing, smartly dressed man didn’t want to fuck him. And for once. Well for once, Mike truly and certainly, 100% was not drowning.